People Imagine That Hyper-Aggressive Entertainment Muay Thai is Muay Thai “going back to its roots” as a Warfare Art – it’s not

Some common sense thoughts. Leaving aside the obvious fantasy that somehow what people are doing in a commercial ring is anything close to martial combat on a field featuring a huge diversity of weapons, multiple lines of attack and various group stratagems, there are some things about this image that not only gets things wrong, it gets them 180 degrees wrong.

Balance First – One of the essential elements on traditional Muay Thai is the scoring of “balance”, both physical balance, but also psychological balance. Are you in “control” of yourself. In a field conflict the last thing you would want is to fall off balance, or go to the ground. And you certainly don’t want to be emotionally out of control. Balance is hard to develop, so moving onto other more easy to train skills (like combo-ing) becomes tempting, as Muay Thai becomes “modernized” for tourism. Throwing 100% power, off-balance combos over and over is not really “martial”.

Defense – On a SEA pre-modern complex “battlefield”, unless you are just being Berserk, defense matters first. You do not expose yourself to even significant wounding (because deadly infection rates would be high). Instead, a priority would be defense-first. One of the aspects of traditional Muay Thai is that it largely emphasizes this A fighter who can defend and control the fight through defensive prowess was rewarded, scoring was biased along this slant for a substantial part of its history.

These two core aspects of Thailand’s traditional Muay Thai, scored balance and scored defense, are really closer to “martial” principles than anything you’d find in a highlight reel.

a continuation of these thoughts here.