Speaking for myself, I came from a system (Parker Kenpo) that has over 100 base techs, not to mention various extensions on those techs. That said, when all is said and done, we have quite a wide array of things to pick from. However, I'd rather see that list cut in half. I mean, you can have a million techs, but if you suck at all of them....well, you should see where I'm going. However, just because I have a few punch defenses that I personally like, doesn't mean that I disregard everything else, punch related. I mean, you could have 5 different people throw the same punch at you and odds are, you're going to end up responding differently, because not everyone punches the same. Hell, I've had a student throw the same attack at me a few times, during a class, while I was teaching, and there have been times, when I've had to adjust, due to slight differences from one attack to the other.
As for Muay Thai only focusing on the low round kick...well....I'm going to disagree with that. That low kick is used quite a bit in Kyokushin, which I now train in, however, much like boxing, that only has a handful of punches, it's the way they're applied to a given situation, that makes the difference. So, while there aren't 100 different punches in MT, there are hundreds of variations, all of which are drilled, over and over. A few weeks ago, during my class, we worked on various defenses against punches, and then moved on to kicks. Some of these were strictly for a sparring setting, while slight variations, made them more SD/street applicable.
