Hello fellow martial art practitioners.

What styles are your preffered and why? What combinations have you found most effective and for what?

From my personal experience, Krav Maga has been really helpful for streetfighting situations, specially because of all the training in being aware of your sorroundings, fighting several people at once and deflecting everything from kicks, knees, fists, elbows, bats, knives etc (though we were taught to always run if we encountered weapons or actually even if it was just possible in any self defense situation). I felt like i was pretty good in 1v1 sparring aswell in MMA, until i hit the floor for the first time with a BJJ purple belt. I got submitted like 4 times in about 2 minutes and i had no idea what was going on. I thought he was just lucky the first time, but i found out soon that i was a complete noob on the floor.

After this i've tried Kyokushin, which i really liked, specially the fact that you don't use safety equipment, so you get really toughened on the body. This was until i faught a Muay Thai boxer and we used boxing gloves, which made me feel like a retard, since i've always faught with open handed gloves.
When i couldn't open my hands to deflect punches and the size of those gloves (14 OZ) made me feel uncomfortable, i got hit in the head so much i felt like i had gotten worse at fighting, after training Kyokushin.The fact that only kicks and not punches to the head is allowed, had also made my instincts change, so i was looking for open body shots and with low guards, instead of protecting my head.

Then i started doing BJJ recently, and boy is it fun. It's the most mentally challenging martial art i've ever encountered, and the learning curve is so steep, that i think you can keep learning until you die in this sport.