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If you want to get good at fighting then you have to choose Muay Thai, brazilian ju jitsu, or judo. If you want to learn something useless in a street fight learn karate, kung fu, or taekwando.

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Contraversial, but I generally agree.

Muay Thai is super simple. To do it properly involves sparring though which you may or may not be up for. I do a wuss version of it which involves never going to the full sparring classes [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img].

Judo is very cool, teaches you how to keep your balance/make it very difficult for people to knock you over or take you down, and all sorts of throws. Some of it is taught a bit impractically.

BJJ is cool but it is often taught purely in terms of fighting on the ground, which is pretty limited in self defence terms. Lots of MMA classes will teach you a more rounded sort of grappling including both BJJ and stand up wrtestling/take downs etc. Can generally spar it without much risk of getting hurt, unlike MT/boxing (Judo too although I hear back injuries can be a problem for older practictioners from getting thrown so much)

General advice would be that if you want to learn to fight well, do something that involves sparring with fairly unrestrictive rules (I don;t mean no holds barred underground matches, I'm looking more that the contrast between Muay Thai and TKD competition rules for example, ie something that doesn't privilege certain things just because they're flashy/stylish) .

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Just speaking from a muay thai standpoint, it was pretty easy to learn after 4-5 classes

If you really want to become a fighter(which i dont think op really wanted to do) you have to have a mix of what martial arts you do

Also, in the muay thai class I go to we usually spar with shin pads/elbow pads and focus on technique so no one gets hurt