I want to preface this by saying that everyones experiences and opinions are different, so here are mine: I probably wouldn't do many kicks if any in a real fight, but it would be on either side of the knee if I did. I've not been in a great amount of real fights, but the ones I've been in I've thrown one kick. I mainly threw punches and grappled. My background is heavy in boxing and wrestling though with Jiu Jitsu and kickboxing being what I do these days in a mixed martial arts class. I'm biased towards boxing and I've taking both boxing and kickboxing separetly and learned much more by concentrating on boxing. Of course we trained harder in boxing, so it probably had a lot to do with it and the coach was top notch and taught the ends and outs of the strategy very well. This I don't know. I think you know what I'll say by now. Boxing.