Is Muay Thai that dominant?

[Karate Kid]

After quickly scanning through the page, I have a few quick questions about Muay Thai in general.

 

1) What are the body mechanics involved? Many Chinese, Japanese, etc. styles stress good form and that form brings power and speed. In the vast majority of the Thai fights I have seen, the form is less than notablel; granted, the fighters themselves are still superb.

 

2) What do Thai fighters aim for in actual confrontations? In both Matsubayashi Ryu and Ching I I have been taught to go for knee breaks and elbow breaks with the appropriately placed joint locks; and of course with the obligatory strikes. From what I understand, Thai fighters have somewhat different aims, although my grasp of the details is somewhat vague.

[VinnieDaChin]

1- the form thai fighters have is greater than you realize. a lot of chinese martial arts have this rigid possibly fancy looking stuff, thai fighters just do what works. when they kick youll see them turn over their hip and not extend their leg almost at all, kicking with a dead leg, for instance. believe me good form is of the utmost importance in thai boxing. the body mechanics are simply the most effecient way to hurt someone. also, i bet youd be surprised just how 'imperfect' the movements would be of chinese-martial artists in a real all out fight.

 

2-thai fighters when in the ring aim to knock the other guy out, plain and simple. if no one gets a knock out in thailand, its a tie, and they dont want that. now, for those of us who do thai boxing for the street, we train to simply beat someone down into a little pulp. and i, personally, truly believe there isnt a better art to train in to do just that.

[Gumbi]

2-thai fighters when in the ring aim to knock the other guy out, plain and simple. if no one gets a knock out in thailand, its a tie, and they dont want that. now, for those of us who do thai boxing for the street, we train to simply beat someone down into a little pulp. and i, personally, truly believe there isnt a better art to train in to do just that.

 

I would say they're trying to kill you, and knocking you out just happens to be the end result

[VinnieDaChin]

pulps can be living....

[SevenStar]

1) What are the body mechanics involved? Many Chinese, Japanese, etc. styles stress good form and that form brings power and speed. In the vast majority of the Thai fights I have seen, the form is less than notablel; granted, the fighters themselves are still superb.

 

One BIG thing to realize here - they are fighting. My longfist forms were beautiful when I trained them. In fighting, the applications aren't as good looking. Same thing with thai boxing. When shadow boxing, a fighter will have picture perfect form. When fighting, it generally looks ugly. Naturally, as fighting itself is ugly. it only looks flawless in the movies.

 

as far as body mechanics, hip motion. Naturally, that's not everything, but on a very basic level, it all comes from the hips. However, the thai boxer will turn his hip all the way over when doing things like a roundhouse kick, making it more powerful than the normal snapping variety. other techniques, like the teep and straight knees involve a thrusting motion of the hip, as opposed of a turning over. They use various energies as well, such as yielding and borrowing - things you may be familiar with since you have trained in chinese styles. the main difference here is that there is no name for these energues - they are just there.

2) What do Thai fighters aim for in actual confrontations? In both Matsubayashi Ryu and Ching I I have been taught to go for knee breaks and elbow breaks with the appropriately placed joint locks; and of course with the obligatory strikes. From what I understand, Thai fighters have somewhat different aims, although my grasp of the details is somewhat vague.

 

whatever is open. in general, good striking targets are the sciatic nerve, the inside of the thigh, the jaw, the liver, the xyphoid process and the kidney. the problem with knee breaks, elbow breaks, etc. is that you cannot train them with any force during sparring - it takes away from the training, IMO.

[Muaythaiboxer]

muay thai fighters are dominent because they train like mad men and have a good no nosense fighting style but they are not invinceble mas oyama went to thailand and beat quite a few with his karate.

[1kickKO]

Next time ya step inot a ring, bring a voodoo doll that looks like your opponent and start chanting in front of them..they should leave and you'll win by..uhh...I dunno what the technie thing is but you'll win.

[HanSword]

>>the training methods make the fighter.

 

I absolutely agree SS , but a lot of training method is determined by style .

 

MT does bag work , pads , drills , shadowbox, sparring etc

 

and Karate may do the above but they also have esoteric things like kata , and include technique of questionable utility like reverse punches and knife hand strikes .

 

so the style does make a lot of difference to how you train. problem is nowadays a lot of other styles borrow from MT and have the hypocracy not to admit to it.

 

I love MT and I would take over any form of karate .

 

as for being unbeatable I think that is only the perception of some people o/s the art.

 

PS. filho is not the best K-1 fighter , his record is 15-7-0 , good but not the greatest and I heard this guy did a whole lot of boxing too .

 

not to mention one of the owners of K-1 happens to be IKO ( kyushin ) . i bet that helped guys like filho a lot.

 

http://www.k-1usa.net/docs/fighters/fightfinder.asp?fighterid=12

[SevenStar]

>>the training methods make the fighter.

 

I absolutely agree SS , but a lot of training method is determined by style .

 

I completely agree. However, within certain styles, different methods are used. In sport styles, it's fairly consistent. In TMA styles, that's not always the case. that's why I separate the two.

[Muay_Thai]

I just want to add that if you train boxing then you go into Muay Thai. You will have to drop everything you have learned about boxing. (if you want to fight thai style). Muay Thai uses boxing but does not focus into the details wich boxing does. And if you train the those details it will limit your Muay Thai capabilities