Olympic TKD

[Jason Mallory]

yes I was referring to missing when kicking in muay thai since that is what I was taught. When you miss, you raise your opposite knee to check a kick that might be thrown while you're turning around. If my trainer was lying and instead was teaching me a kickboxing kick then oh well.

In Tim's defense I think he meant he didn't see much authentic Muay Thai in America as it is taught in Thailand.

[ninel]

in respect for tim, i deleted the last comment since i felt it was disrespectful. you can see it in jason's quote.

[Jason Mallory]

in respect for tim, i deleted the last comment since i felt it was disrespectful. you can see it in jason's quote.

I took it out of the quote too.

[Jason Mallory]

Hmmm... I found this clip on the net where this authentic Thai Boxer, Master Chai Sirisute demonstrates spinning kicks, spinning kicks w/ raising the opposite knee and kicking with placing the kick down in front. So maybe there are differing theories within authentic Muay Thai.

The kicks are at 5:25:

[Jay Chow]

The kick on that video is definitely an authentic Thai kick, I learnt it from a guy called Master A, who is from Thailand, and has been training it his whole life.

[Jason Mallory]

I can't forget one of the pioneers that has a background in TKD, Bas Rutten.

[Jason Mallory]

Just heard Brendan Schaub say that he started in TKD on the MMA hour.

[Jason Mallory]

Cung Le talks about his TKD and MMA.

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[Jason Mallory]

^^^ Ooops ! forgot that we can't embed. Copy and paste the code into your browser to check out the interview.

[frank-theman-james]

In Tim's defense I think he meant he didn't see much authentic Muay Thai in America as it is taught in Thailand.

tim is right. having an american kickboxing background, I tell my students who come in and claim to have muay thai training, the first thing I ask is to let me see their back leg round kick. I'm amazed by the switch step that proceeds and telegraphs their intentions allowing me to either fade off of it safely or to shuffle in and jam it. there are a handful of guys in the U.S. qualified to teach muay thai, and the rest are just mimicing what they've seen in videos or in mma matches. Most of american kickboxing is deeply rooted in tkd, bill wallace, chuck norris, joe lewis, are some of your old school kickboxing guys who pioneered american style kickboxing. Joe lewis has extensive training in tkd, jkd, and parker kenpo. Truly one of the greatest fighters of all time ( and no, I am not talking about the boxer joe lewis). But don't let this discourage you, american kickboxing has a larger arsenal of weapons than traditional muay thai, adding the spinning kicks that as tim said are considered disrespectful in thailand. And spinning kicks are very effective from outside angles with a lot of power when excuted right. Just remember that in mma today, the ground game has taken a backseat to standup, as saw in this last pay per view. brilliant ground guys choosing to abandon their bread and butter, and choosing rather to stand and bang. problem is that there are less and less technical guys who truly understand proper footwork, and proper hand techniques combined to flow as they did before the big mma craze took hold.