Media The Thais are finaly getting better at MMA

[Gratis]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Muay Thai rise to international prominence in the first place by Muay Thai fighters beating TKD and Karate practitioners in Kickboxing? Under a ruleset where Muay Thai is disadvantaged and at a time when MT fighters would have had less experience dealing with these martial arts than they do now. So I don't know where the notion that such disciplines overwhelm and "confuse" Muay Thai fighters is coming from.

 

[Blazeblack]

Guys, he managed to punk some MT guys in sparring matches in Stockton that's all the evidence he needs...

Yeah that’s what we in the biz call an anecdote. Which means less than shit.

A few years back I had a smoker against some French mma fighter who had a tkd and full contact background. I made him fight in the pocket and gave him a boxing lesson. Thus proving that Thai boxing is superior if we use his logic.

 

[KOcounter]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Muay Thai rise to international prominence in the first place by Muay Thai fighters beating TKD and Karate practitioners in Kickboxing? Under a ruleset where Muay Thai is disadvantaged and at a time when MT fighters would have had less experience dealing with these martial arts than they do now. So I don't know where the notion that such disciplines overwhelm and "confuse" Muay Thai fighters is coming from.

Partly yes. However it's hard to seperate Muay Thais dominance from the fact that Thailand has an infrastructure unlike anywhere else outside of South East Asia, with a more refined version of said infrastructure than anywhere else in the region. The thais start fighting as children and have quite the headstart in terms of training and Muay thai as a sport has decades of development on most other forms of kickboxing as well.

A lot of that has bleeded into the art in general but not all of it. So average practioners are probably much closer across full contact arts than high pro level examples in some cases.

One can say that certain karate and tkd techniques do play into some of Muay Thais weaknesses and could, with the right variables and other techniques/gameplans, be a pretty good way of beating Muay Thai, without neccesairly saying that those things in of themselves are enough to gain victory over nak Muay.

Its hard to say just how separable muay thais best practioners are from it as a style. There's an argument that with the same variables, some other styles of kickboxing could rival Muay Thai, either under an open or KB ruleset depending on the tools they allow, without losing what makes them distinct from it.

Modern Japanese k1 kickboxing s pretty impressive and produces pretty good fighters given its infrastructure, ones that are generally more comparable in many ways to MT fighters quality wise than what Dutch Kickboxing produces.

Sanda has also had some pretty good sucess against Muay Thai fighters under mixed rules, and not just through their obvious throwing advantage, but through their more diverse kicking game. This in spite of not having the same kick fighting infrastructure as Thailand.

Who knows what the dynamics would look like if all variables are equal. I do think by itself MT would be up there if not number 1, but its possible to have a kb style of equal quality that, for both better or worse, has a more varied approach kicking wise. Basically I don't think muay thai as a style is neccesairly inherently superior to some other styles.

If it is, its probably largely under a more open ruleset because of more tools, rather than because of how it does the things it shares with many other styles. And there are other styles that have a similar amount of tools which could be more equal, if not equal under the right circumstances.

 

[Kanka]

Another Muay Thai fighter

 

[GordoBarraBJJ]

Samuel Bark just fought last night





Not a Thai but a Muay Thai fighter - though I'm not a fan of the extra punch after the knee KO (the guy was clearly out).