Well migo, your question is likely to take us a little off topic but I'll offer some opinions just the same since we appear to have resolved the previous sidebar.
What do you do for someone who can't handle the intensity of MMA or wrestling training? Well, first you try to determine what it is that they can't handle. Fights can be fairly intensive endeavors as well, and so you don't want to overlook preparation just because it's uncomfortable. If a guy can't handle training because, for example, he's out of shape, then the answer is to get him in shape. That's actually one of the things I really like about sports like boxing and MMA - you can't hide from your own training. If you have weaknesses you don't want to confront, they'll show up in the other guy's corner to fight against you on game day. So in that respect, a part of the process is building the person up to a point that they can handle the training. That doesn't mean they have to be competitors, but the types of sparring and conditioning that goes on in a lot of sports gyms is good for people of all backgrounds and ability levels.
Assuming then that the person has other limitations like chronic injuries or health issues that make it impossible to safely train up to athletic levels, then the only substitute I've ever found is treachery.
Teaching someone to be unassuming and ruthless is every bit as difficult as teaching them to be athletic, and it's not something you want to take lightly. Definitely not something you want to throw open the doors and teach to the masses, either. But assuming that the person is of good moral character and has a good head on his shoulders, what you're trying to teach now amounts to the purest self-protection available. I believe this is very likely in line with what TTEscrima might view as "self-defense." This is the ability to avoid literally every fight that's not a life or death ordeal. It means swallowing your pride a lot and letting all but the most severe of incidents roll loff your back. That kind of humilty is difficult, and the amount of ego suppression involved is tougher still. But because your athletic options are limited, you have to have some intermediate options that don't require force on force. Most often, that means apologizing even when you're right and finding a way out. When it gets bad, it's a matter of escalation, surprise, audacity, and violence of action (to use the military parlance). It means being that gray man, the one that looks like the average anybody and blends in with the wallpaper. It means identifying threats before they get critical, and recognizing the next four or five options you'll have if things go south. To put it the way a good friend of mine has: Be nice to everyone, be friendly with no one, and have a plan for killing everyone you meet.
It's very easy to walk that attitude right on into the realm of paranoia, and that's unhealthy and a misinterpretation of what I mean. Again, though, that's where the humility and lack of ego come in. The idea is that you're simply prepared. You don't worry, and you don't pack all your pockets with weapons. You don't strap knives to your forearms or wear kevlar to the grocery store or anything, but you recognize and make peace with the idea that if someone stops you on the way to your car and decides it's you or him, you're going to bury that Bic pen as far as you can in his skull and yank his eyeball out like a martini olive.
I think the thing is that the more athletic you are, the more options you have. If you can be an athletic, sport-oriented fighter that also has a solid background in the types of tactics that allow you extract eyeballs like martini olives, you have a whole host of options available to you that many others just won't have. You can decide to injure slightly, to control instead of hit, or to ramp things up and get nasty. You also (and this is truly, truly important) have the athleticism to run farther and faster than whatever bastard is trying to do you in. Fitness is a potent weapon, and it happens to be one that competitive sports of all types develop well. Combative sports are even better because they give you tools that do, in fact, work in fighting.
The second you decide that conditioning and athleticism are not viable options, the only real substitutes you have open to you are treachery and ruthlessness. It's a good option, but never overlook the fact that the conditioned and athletic can also be treacherous and ruthless.
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