ok, but even still, the east has a much stronger tradition of hand to hand combat.
And it seems overly simplistic to say that boxing is any combat where you strike, and wrestling is any combat where you grapple.
however, i am asking about how can the west acquire the same richness in martial-arts tradition that is present in the east? and what would some of these traditions look like?
i'd be very interested if someone came up with ideas for alternate martial arts styles
It isn't overly simplistic at all, and it is in fact literally true. There is a greater complexity to the names of throws in Judo than in folk wrestling styles, but that's just because they were written down in a book by Jigaro Kano. To give an example of how this works, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and SAMBO are both nothing but Judo with different training philosophies and competition rulesets. The roots and style are the same, but BJJ has a much richer repertory of named ground maneuvers and simplifies standing grappling and throws compared to Judo, and SAMBO likewise with its usage of strikes and leglocks.
If you look at Chin Na, despite different roots, it's the same thing as Judo. An armlock is an armlock and a hip throw is a hip throw. The way the body works, there are only a certain number of ways to hurt people. How you codify them and train them may be different, but the number of techniques are going to be limited.
What "richness of martial tradition" are you talking about? The history of martial arts in India, China, Japan, mainland Southeast Asia, and insular Southeast Asia are very different. There isn't really a common theme except for the Chinese concept of internal martial arts, which was imported to China from India at some point over a thousand years ago and spread to other parts of Asia much more recently, in most cases since the 1800s. If you can clarify exactly what you mean when you lump all these disparate things together, then maybe I can start to help you.
European martial arts existed - undoubtedly as rich as anywhere else in the world - but they fell into neglect as their relevance to what they were intended for faded.
Preserving them as traditional fighting styles didn't have the appeal it did in Asia.
Again, this is quite literally not true. Look at how popular wrestling based on folk styles from England and France is in America today, and look at western boxing. Those are no less martial arts than anything in Asia.
As a note, most Asian martial arts styles around today are distinctly civilian styles, meant for use by civilians, for civilians, against civilians.
There are still civilian martial arts styles from the West floating around, like boxing or fencing.
Well, yeah. Martial arts intended as training for soldiers and martial arts intended for competition are different things, but tend to have similar DNA, since there is no way to test technique except in competition.