Stike Pros- Damaging, disrupting, punishing, psychological effect.
Cons- Trading precision and geometry for strength, a strike requires range, you give them whatever limb you throw out, you disrupt your posture, auto-armor most of your muscle mass, and it is as slow as anything else you could be doing-- and ultimately less effective.

I pretty much classify fighting in 4 different ways:
(1) Situation Gone Awry
-For some reason you either failed hard at your diplomacy check or a situation beyond your control, dissolve the fight as quickly and easily as possible, do not antagonize.
(2) Agro
-Someone is showing malicious intent in a way that cannot be dissolved, proceed to checkmate him with the least assets lost as possible.
(3) Threat
-Weapon or otherwise accelerated danger level, proceed to disarm and checkmate without preservation
(4) ITK
-Intent to kill-- Parkour, call assistance, reroll diplomacy, use terrain and full barrage of lengthy tactics to disengage for as long as possible.
???
Profit

My philosophy in fighting is to never harm when it isn't needed, which makes sparring more effective since you can spar for hours on end going all out with no fear of injuring a friend.

We know this about fights:
MOST of them are without weapons, if they are with weapons like a gun then hand to hand combat is near-useless to train with anyway, aikido is the best way to disarm someone and it's not strike base as much as it's grounding and standing grapple.

MOST of fights DO end up on the ground, regardless of style.

Fights are either diffused, or checkmated, a strike is a good way to alpha male the other person down, but a trained aggressor is usually acting that way because they ALSO have an alpha male mentality, so a pussyhearted bully can be diffused with soft combat as much as he can with aggressive posturing, with the same lack of actual damage to him, though you have to be noncombative to a jackass or else he gets riled up-- SO:
If A = wimpbully and B = meatbully then A is solved through soft and hard and B is only accelerated by hard yet diffused by soft, if B ISNT diffused by soft then you have to checkmate, which is easier through positioning than trying to take all his pieces (chess analogy), let him kamakazi his own pieces, posture defensively and softly, be the python not the bull because you know who would win in a fight.

Advantage: Soft-- even assuming soft and hard styles are par with each other at least soft has the psychological advantage.

Boxing is a great sport if you like sports where the goal is to see how quickly you can develop Parkinson's disease.

?

I thought the only things that were illegal in UFC were like eye gouging and fishhooking and kicking people when they were on the ground. And like most of that's even pretty new-ish.

You're not allowed to kick people in the junk either!

no knees to the head either, no direct hits with the elbow, no grabbing the fence

Seriously boxing is guys wearing huge padded gloves so they don't bruise their knuckles or subject the tenderhearted audience to the sight of icky blood as they repeatedly bludgeon each other in the head and then 40 years later everyone involved has a permanent case of the shakes and needs nursing assistance to take a shit, it it pretty much the worst, dumbest sport, if you don't understand why people like it that's because you don't understand why people like pointless, awful things.

People like pointless, AWESOME things too, Fifth. And watching people beat the shit out of each other for our amusement is awesome. It is bloody and awful but still viscerally awesome, like a car crash (NASCAR) or someone getting checked into the glass (Hockey), but the viscerally pleasing part is all the time instead of only once in a while.

I'm assuming that doing the actual fighting is also viscerally pleasing, or why would the fighters do it? Maybe it's a bit like smoking, it's great at first, but then later you get lung cancer...except I don't think smoking is great at first. Hmm, there is probably a better comparison to be made...okay, having sex with prostitutes is great at first, okay, but later you get syphilis.

But I also like poker and billiards, and, god help me, golf, so I mean, if they cancelled UFC I could probably live without it...and none of those are even contact sports, what's up with that.

*tearfully takes him behind the barn to end his misery*

It's delightfully non-violent! And non-exciting! It's perfect for our violent entertainment-free utopia! People can watch it while eating unsweetened applesauce and weak tea after their six-hour shift at the paper-pushing factory!

My father has always been a big boxing fan and has tried, forever, to get me into it.

I probably could, too. The fights are sometimes very exciting, and I understand the process well enough to follow along. The huge problem I have with it is that I strongly dislike any sporting contest which is likely to end in an arbitrary manner. The idea that the eventual outcome may be decided by a panel of judges (or ringside doctor or referee) makes the outcome less than legitimate to me, and I simply can't enjoy it knowing such an outcome is likely.

*sighs and points to the whores behind the barn*

Entertainment, my good man, entertainment.