Martial Arts advice

If your not someone genetically gifted with a big strong punch, lots of reach, good chin, can jump around a lot & kick really high then I consider this a very good option.

The beauty of it is, that with wing chun you get to do very physical sparring/chi sao immediately. Thats the bread and butter of learning it. Pretty damn close to real life.

Would it be possible to go train bareknuckle boxing or muay thai realistically without getting seriously fucked up?

Do you really think you are physically capable of doing that type of fighting?

Wing Chun seems a very efficient means for striking & trapping blows without doing massive exuberant swinging of arms and legs which require large amounts of born-athleticism to be effective. Best thing is that it will probably be as effective when you are 80 years old.

Seems to be a very good base, just like Bruce lee pointed out, there are obviously limitations "use what is useful ...etc" perhaps throw some other stuff on top to be well rounded? Id go for some sort of wrestling, because again it lets you train in a full contact kind of way and develops practical strength merely by practicing. You could probably get decent at it just by practicing with a friend too.

While I somewhat agree about Chi Sau being a sparring like exercise that's the core of the system, I don't agree Chi Sau has the intensity of proper sparring.

No one is going to Chi Sau you in a combat situation.
And while you do Chi Sau you have to pull the punches, because otherwise you fuck your partner up, meaning that the intensity is dropped to something safe.

Further, people that Chi Sau you are using Wing Chun techniques, meaning that you rarely have to defend takedowns and big throwing punches of someone who knows how that shit works, with proper intensity.

I found this out the hard way by going to the Tai Chi guys for sparring, and basically being caught out by double leg take downs and big long punches that I wasn't used to. A proper wake up call, felt a bit dizzy after a couple of those.

I don't think you need to do bare knuckle fighting do good, useful sparring. Nothing wrong with gloves IMO.

Just out of interest: Do you still train Wing Chun? Mind sharing where / what lineage? I train in Finsbury park with the guys from Nino Bernardo.