Today I invited the Thai boxing teacher, who one of our students cross trains with, to give the rest of us a short seminar on his art. The teacher was a Korean Thai boxing teacher who learned from a Thai fighting teacher. His teacher’s teacher was Mas Oyama’s bodyguard. The Korean Thai boxing teacher was a 4th degree blackbelt in Hapkido and as well studied many years of Taekwondo. He was also very experienced in street combat.
Overall it was a very excellent seminar and I think it would benefit anyone to do something like that whether they like Thai boxing or not.
To start with he showed four major weapons of Thai boxing which are the straight punch, the round kick to the leg, to the elbow area and to the head, the knee and the elbow. There was also sort of a push kick.
Someone volunteered to hold some heavy-duty thick Thai pads so that the force could be demonstrated for each of these maneuvers. The person holding said every single strike no matter what kind was extremely explosive and stronger than anything he felt before from any other visiting expert. The teacher was not very big and his teacher was even smaller he said. For the round kick he showed a short clip of one test where he had to break two baseball bats with a roundhouse kick with several people holding the bats steady. With that kind of force this student found it very difficult to hold the pads without them slamming into his face each time.
The teacher compared the Thai kicks with Taekwondo and Hapkido kicks and there was quite a difference in mechanics and power output. The Korean army basically uses Hapkido but the elite group is also versed in Thai boxing he said.
He said the normal guarding position employed by many classical arts is a bit dangerous because of the exposure when fighting against the Thais. He said these positions come from the classical arts, which were for the most part designed around fighting multiple opponents. He said in Asia typical fighting usually involved five to ten gang members against one and so the fighting tactics, methods and positions are not the same as fighting one on one against a highly skilled Thai boxer.
The teacher said the Thai elbow is very devastating and has caused many deaths so in competition is it not used that much among Thai fighters because their livelihood depends on fighting and there is sort of a code of honor to not damage your opponent too much or else his family will starve. That’s not to say it isn’t used when the circumstances are right.
This teacher said in Korea mostly the young high school students take up Thai boxing because they like to fight. He said within six months these people are very good fighters. After that some turn professional. He said there were two streams for learning Thai boxing: one stream was for the regular ring fighters and the other was for the teachers who didn’t fight so much. He said Mas Oyama had a few experiences with the Thais, getting beaten twice but later winning two times against the Thais. His experience influenced his Karate teaching approach.
He also showed very effective neck controls and clamps that they use to knee you to pieces while at the same time applying a very sharp pressure to the neck as if the neck were clamped in between two dull knives.
The teacher said the shinbone was one of the strongest bones in the body. The Thais consider it like using a heavy steel pipe to whack someone with. The fist was likened to a hammer, the elbow to a knife and the knee to a spear.
The footwork was very mobile working off the balls of the feet. Every strike had the whole body weight behind it yet everything was very fast as well. When he teaches in Korea you might train a week or two on the footwork or mobility alone and then spend a good solid month on the development of each of the weapons and then putting them into a sparring situation.
One of the ways the Thais use the elbow is similar to the bending version of the Wang Kiu or Pan Nam style of Wing Chun elbows at the start of the Bill Jee. The positions and mechanics were almost the same.
As in any art there were plenty of fine points in order to get the maximum force, speed and mobility out of one’s body. He said many classical arts are fixed with the teachers claiming no changes are necessary because the art is perfect already. But he said Thai boxing is constantly changing based on the experiences fighters have in the ring. So what he was taught for how the foot was positioned for a knee strike for example was refuted a few months later when they discovered other ways, which were more effective.
He said some things you just have to get by the feel. Some things maybe take six months but then your body can feel that you are doing the right thing because you can make it work with speed , power and proper timing.
The push kick was used sometimes when the Thais get a bit tired to create some distance. However for the most part Thais like to be very close. For distance fighting they have other arts such as the weapons arts (Krabi Krabong etc.)
This teacher said although Thai boxing is very effective, there still is a use for many of the classical arts to develop a person in many other ways. He still has a use for his Hapkido for example and he was also open to learning other kinds of arts. In Korea he also had a chance to see many Chinese martial artists some of which he said were pretty good too.
A good Thai boxer is very deceptive in his movements and very deceptive in the amount of force you figure a small guy can deliver. It’s easy to see how they can pick apart many classical fighters who don’t have too much fighting experience. For most street fights he figures a lot of classical arts are fine but against a top ring fighter it’s a different story.
I think even if you don’t like Thai fighting, having a few lessons from a good Thai teacher never hurts. I found it’s another way to appreciate Thai boxing and also shows what Wing Chun can be if it is trained properly.
You can come up with 10,000 reasons why you think WCK is “better” than MT but the proof is in the pudding. What you mean by “average people” are folks that don’t want to do the work necessary to significantly improve their fighting skills but want to believe they have good fighting skills.