Got it bro. In my case I did HS wrestling, then 4 months drinking the BJJ kool aid, then college Judo (only because I couldn't find local BJJ), then many years irregular cross-training in BJJ/MMA until I committed fully to BJJ about 7 years ago with wrestling cross-training when I can. So I've had much more formal training in grappling than striking. But I trained striking (mostly boxing) informally for about as long.
Grew up on Rocky movies and am old enough to remember Muhammad Ali. And in the 80's, the HW boxing champ was considered the baddest man on the planet. So when I was about 10, my dad got us some boxing gloves and told me and my 1.5 years older brother to settle our own disputes. My brother was always instigating shit and we used to fight a lot but he'd always win because he was bigger and stronger. About a year later I finally got a heavy bag and a speed bag and I mounted both on the patio with 2x4s, and trained on them for 10 - 20 minutes/day. And I did informal smokers on the front lawn with my brother and other neighborhood kids. Then about 2 years later I floored my brother with a hook to the liver without gloves on (because the fucker started shit before we had the gloves on lol) and he stopped messing with me.
Then I did 5 ammy fights in college and by that point I had probably 6 months of proper boxing instruction with years of drilling on my own. But that was enough to do well in my fights although my opponent and I gave each other concussions in my 5th fight and that convinced me to stick to grappling lol. But I kept up the bag work and shadow boxing for many years and always had a heavy bag in my rental apartment until early 30's. So about 20 years consistently throwing punches from orthodox stance.
IIRC weren't you a kickboxer? From what I've seen, I feel like kickboxers and TKD guys switch stances a lot more than boxers do, so become proficient from either side and probably have less imbalances as a result.
