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Top 3 Differences between Muay Thai and Kickboxing

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As a Muay Thai competitor, one of the dreaded conversations I found myself having on a regular basis is having to explain to people what I compete in and resorting to the old “I’m a kickboxer” answer.

These days with the growth of Muay Thai and Kickboxing, I now have the patience I didn’t have back then when it comes to explaining to people that I’m a Muay Thai boxer and NOT a kickboxer. I truly believe that in order to give both sports their due diligence and proper respect, I want to break down the three most significant differences between the sports of Muay Thai and kickboxing amongst others.

Rules

The biggest difference between both sports and the most obvious one is the techniques that are allowed to be used based on the rules. Muay Thai allows punches, kicks, knees, elbows, clinching (stand-up grappling) dumps, and sweeps; however, mainstream kickboxing rules allows punches, kicks, knees, and very limited clinch or none at all.

What I mean by mainstream kickboxing specifically refers to the kickboxing ruleset used by organizations like K-1, GLORY, and even ONE FC. However, there’s also other rulesets such as point kickboxing, Savate, Sanda, and even shoot boxing – the modern predecessor to the type of MMA we see today that was around before the first UFC.

To put it in layman’s terms, almost everything you are allowed to do in kickboxing you can technically do in Muay Thai but the same isn’t true for the flip side of that. Muay Thai is the closest thing you have to a pure striking sport that allows you to do damn near everything from a stand-up perspective.

Styles and Techniques

Because of all the different rule sets with kickboxing combined with hybrid elements from other striking arts, the amount of high scoring and flashy techniques is much higher than in Muay Thai which focus on constantly perfecting the basics and not putting yourself at risk by going for eccentric techniques that won’t score highly in a Muay Thai competition.

In fact, unlike a Muay Thai competition, techniques such as spinning backfists, spinning kicks, and jumping kicks are favored highly in kickboxing competitions. One famous example of a specific style of kickboxing is Dutch-style kickboxing, in which elements of Muay Thai, Kyokushin Karate, and Western-boxing combine to form an extremely effective and aggressive kickboxing style that has had proven success in both kickboxing and Muay Thai competitions worldwide.

Muay Thai styles, however, are defined more specifically by which weapon a fighter specializes in because the most common trope you’ll find in Muay Thai is that the best fighters are the ones who have simply mastered all of the basics of the sport to almost total perfection but they excel in one (or a couple of) element(s) in particular. Examples of the types of Muay Thai fighters are:

• Muay femur – Technical fighters that have excellent timing and flawless technique in all areas of Muay Thai; the complete package of a fighter

• Muay khao – Fighters who specialize in dominating in the clinch and breaking down their opponents with relentless aggression and devastating knees

• Muay mat – Aggressive fighters who have excellent boxing and use their heavy punches to set up powerful low kicks; these are the fighters who are usually knockout artists ready to go to war with little concern for the nuanced judging of Muay Thai

• Muay tae – Fighters who have mastered the art of the roundhouse kick in Muay Thai by using body kicks and kicks to the arms to not only win on the judge’s scorecard but slowly but surely wear down on their opponents

The way Muay Thai styles are described is almost similar to that of boxing in which you have your outboxers, swarmers, sluggers, and boxer-punchers. They’re all boxers who have the basics of boxing down but they have completely different styles based on body type, their training camp, and even other physical attributes such as strength and speed just like in Muay Thai.

Judging

Mainstream kickboxing and Muay Thai both have judging criteria that focus on effective strikes that do damage. The key difference in the judging for both sports is that unlike Muay Thai, kickboxing judges ALL strikes equally giving no favor to punches or kicks.

Kickboxing competitions are extremely high-paced and full of almost nonstop action for three to five rounds, the fighter who is the most active is usually the winner in these bouts if everything else is equal. But if a fighter is landing kicks that aren’t really slowing down their opponent but their opponent is landing flush shots using only their hands that aren’t being defended well, the boxer is probably winning.

Muay Thai, on the other hand, has certain strikes that actually score higher than others. For example, the highest scoring techniques in Muay Thai are clean body kicks and clean knees to the body even if the person taking them doesn’t react to them. Punches and elbows score the lowest unless the punches are resulting in clear damage to the person getting hit (I’m talking punches that are about to cause a K.O or T.K.O at any moment) and the elbows are causing cuts and landing flush on the chin or temple.

Muay Thai competitions are also paced very differently than kickboxing, traditionally the first two rounds of a five-round bout are very slow and used by both fighters to feel out their opponent with the last three rounds being the money rounds where they pull out all the stops. There is a lot more to judging criteria for both sports, but these are just the basics to highlight the differences.

Conclusion

Overall, even though Muay Thai and kickboxing have similar elements they are in fact totally different sports with histories and rules that are unique and deserve to be treated as such. In my opinion, using Muay Thai and kickboxing as interchangeable terms to describe either sport is diminishing to the legacies of both sports while simply being incorrect at the end of the day. In order to properly support both of these great sports, we need to put more effort into educating newcomers about what makes them different and why these differences make each sport special in their own right.