That made my night awesome. Fancy foot work is nothing compared to a punch to the face.

It's usually the other way around. At least, in my experience it's 90% the other way around. Coincidentally the same reason why no one takes martial arts seriously, instead thinking that good old street toughness will win the day. What an incredible amount of people forget or just don't do when they learn martial arts is they don't ask two important questions of their teachers: What's the cultural context this was developed in? Tactically, why am I doing this technique this way?

So that video, capoeira vs some dude is a shining example of this:

Capoeira was developped by Brazilian slaves. They had to hide their training as a form of dance, and they had to be able to fight with their hands shackled. Hence the dancing, it hides what he's trying to do. That guy got beat down because he 1) Drills too much, 2) Fights only his system too much. If he asked the two questions above, how you apply technique radically changes. I bet if you asked him "why were you doing it that way" he'd say "Because that's what's supposed to happen." Some martial arts (Muay Thai, Sambo, Savate) leave their cultural context very well, while others just get murdered outside of that cultural context because they've been adapted and refined to be so specific.

The problem is largely that everyone who thinks they have good old street toughness doesn't actually know how to throw a punch that's worth a damn. Or target, for that matter.

The main issue is that humans are adaptive creatures, and teach how to adapt.

At least, they teach their theorycraft on how THEY adapted to THEIR surroundings.
Personally I'm not that interested in capoeira as I already hide 90% of my martial art (being an internal martial artist-- not that capoeira actually fools anyone) and I'm not interested in being flashy.
What happened there, was one guy gave a huge lead up, the other guy just used insight to picture how it was going to play out, put a large amount of linear force in, and the other guy smacked his own head against his fist hard enough to KO him.
It's not special, it's not especially skillful, it's just simplifying the issue down to basic principle-- most of martial arts are how you think about them and how you react. Also, moving into another player's square invokes an attack of opportunity.

But seriously, belts are for people who's pants don't fit.

Yeah, as a guy who went through years of Tae Kwon Do, I have to say that most of it isn't practical for normal use, but they never tell you that. 90% of it really is only good situationally and there was no instruction that I ever got on when to actually use it. Granted, I figured it out on my own, but then I also began pulling from pretty much everything I saw, so comparing what I do to Tae Kwon Do would be like trying to compare milk to a muffin. Pretty sure there's some milk in there, but I'm also pretty sure some of it was lost in the process and there's bits of all sorts of other stuff along with it.

In some ways, as much as the martial arts community I was introduced to showed a disdain towards it, mixed martial arts is the most effective road for actually defending yourself.

I don't know if I should feel good or bad about that.

I disagree as the art has been formulated specifically for intercepting and disabling an opponent, not strictly defensive.

I would agree however that compared to other styles it's probably the best for defending a larger range, like if someone tries to steal your bike 10feet away or your ladyfriend's purse.

If you've let getting some sort of physical trophy or some reward get in the way of your motivation and clarity of actually learning your martial art, then you might want to feel bad. Rewarding people like that just gives people a reason to concentrate less.

WOO A BLACK BELT. I AM DONE!

Well I guess I should feel good then seeing as I never let the fact that the only belt I earned in a month or two back in 8th grade was yellow belt stop me from studying it every now and then. Which was the highest the course went though the instructor offered if we wanted to continue at his dojo (for a fee of course) with the rest of his students.

I'd say parkour is more effective for self defense. Unless you happen to be Wong Fei Hung, it will save you in more situations than fighting ability will. Of course, it's not like you can't have grounding in both, and in situations where your goal is something beyond "don't get shanked," running away ability becomes less useful.

Such as:

As for this, I'm of the opinion that belts exist to sell belt exams.

I use to think they where just a way of showing rank or level of skill in Martial Arts.