I'm toying with an RPG concept, which includes a younger unarmed martial artist (14/15). As keeping with martial arts tropes he fights unarmed and may fight against monsters as well as humans, but all humans have potential to train beyond regular human strength and abilities in this world.
Acknowledging the limited effectiveness of fists compared to a sword I've decided to give him a much lower attack power then the others. This is made up partially by his being one of the best users of my block/avoid/counterattack system, so he gets a good amount of 'free' counterattacks. However, I intend to develop him primarily as a support character. He will have a huge host of skills that do things such as apply small debuffs with each hit (target the philtrum, make the eyes water, lower accuracy of opponent), attacks that delay the struck foes next attack (struck the solar plexus, knock out his wind, takes a little time to recover), or simply distract the opponent with a fake to lower their ability to block/avoid an allies attack for a turn. In short his damage sucks, but he contributes by wearing the foe down through other means and supporting his stronger team mates.
My question is what martial arts style I should model him after to best fit this feel? Do any particular existing styles feel more in keeping with this approach? Should I be depicting a striking style (which the above examples sort of imply, but I'm not at all committed to), or a style that focused more on redirecting opponents motions? Basically, if I need to describe or depict his fighting style are there things I should focus on to make it feel consistent for the role he plays in combat?
Personality wise he is a younger teen that has a view that he would prefer to enjoy life as much as possible, focus on the positive and find fun in life. He has made an almost conscious choice to hold on to his inner-child a bit, as he puts it an adult may see a tree in a plain and may sit under it for the shade, but a kid would climb it, it seems the kid gets far more enjoyment out of the tree so why should he limit himself to the adults approach? He can be quite mature when required despite this, but he only does the whole 'maturity' thing as long as he needs to; so a martial art like tai-chi that focuses on disciplined practice may be less suited to him because it wasn't 'fun' enough to learn; that doesn't mean his fighting style has to be flamboyant or inefficient though, he is not a show off and would naturally learn whatever worked best in combat.