Well, of course. :) Putting aside the obvious, though, let's extend that 99.99% of "everyday circumstances" into what we'd call "highly unusual circumstances." A bar fight, for instance, or a mugging at knifepoint, or worse. Obviously, your best move in these circumstances is to avoid the fight altogether. But if you have no choice, then your knowledge of——even mastery of——many of the more prominent martial arts won't help you.

There are many reasons why this is the case. I'll go over two or three of them. First, many of these martial arts were developed a very long while ago, in very different eras, with very different combatants in mind. Second, many of these martial arts are actually "staged" versions of real combat. If you're a karate master, for instance, you are mostly trained on how to fight combatants also using karate, who've been taught the same moves, the same stances, and the same patterns. Or, at least, you assume they've learned similar variants. Now, in a bar fight with a drunk, who's maybe got a few pounds on you, and is going to come out fighting irrationally and unpredictably, all of your karate staging, and your karate timing, and your karate pattern-seeking flies right out the window. Your mind will be addled by adrenaline. Your reflexes will be clumsy and jittery. You won't have time to think. If you've received very formal training, you may well panic and forget it.

Modern arts are a lot less formal, because many of them were designed with modern fights in mind——be it a close grapple with an enemy soldier on a battlefield, or a standoff against an aggressive assailant in a dark alley.

Full disclosure: I'm a 99-pound pencilneck who couldn't take your grandmother in a fist fight. I trained in karate to a fairly high level as a young teenager. To this day, I harbor no illusions that my karate will do anything for me, other than earn the occasional Daniel LaRusso joke.

Yeah, I agree with you 100% :) I have some experience and familiarity in this field. Thanks for the informative reply.