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Muay Thai kickboxing (also known as thai boxing) is a martial art and combat sport that originates from Thailand. Muay Thai is known for its use of elbow, knee, and shin strikes in addition to punches and kicks, its emphasis on clinch fighting (like grabbing the back of the neck as strikes are thrown), and its intense physical conditioning.
The origins of Muay Thai can be traced back as far as the 16th century, where its early forms had applications in warfare. Modern Muay Thai is practiced mainly for sport, though it retains some older traditions, such as ceremonial prayer before matches.
Muay Thai has risen in popularity outside of Thailand as its effectiveness in mixed martial artist competitions (MMA) has been shown by the success of Muay Thai fighters and MMA fighters cross-training in the art. Muay Thai is now considered the de facto striking art of MMA, with many of its techniques having been incorporated into MMA training.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) is also a martial art and combat sport, but with a very different emphasis of grappling and ground fighting. BJJ seeks to end the fight with chokes or armlocks from dominant positions, with minimal or no use of strikes. BJJ can be trained for use in self defense, sport, and MMA. With its success in the original UFCs, and the high number of BJJ black belts in MMA, BJJ is considered one of the primary grappling arts of MMA. You can read more about BJJ here: What is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?
While Muay Thai and BJJ have very different approaches to combat, both martial arts value regular live sparring and full contact competition, which are important to keep the arts “honest.” Martial arts that lack this “pressure testing” degrade into unrealistic techniques and questionable training methods. Read this to learn what makes a martial art good or bad: What makes a martial art effective?
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