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First of all, apologies if this subject has been raised before, couldn't find it. I recently had a discussion with a Western coach teaching at a gym in Cambodia. His background as a fighter is Western Boxing but he has practiced muay thai and Khun Khmer and had a good approach on how to combine the sports. He himself had to stop fighting due to a head trauma that happened outside of fighting. We ended up talking about how boxers getting "chinny" ie not being able to take strikes to the head anymore and we were puzzled about muay thai fighters having so many fights but yet, seemed to avoid the notion of getting chinny. My take on it would be the focus on play sparring, smart fighting without the focus on strikes to the head. Yet, CTE and depression etc seems to be something plenty thai muay thai fighters face. But I would be interested to know if there's another explanation for this. Especially in the context of a more Western-focused style dominating some promotions in Thailand right now. Whether that might increase the risk of getting 'chinny'?

I think CTE is going to go way up, due to the influence of these promotions. Way up. A few reasons why: 1. Defensive excellence is being downgraded in terms of score, so fighters literally will not learn it. 2. There is going to be a lot more head hunting, which isn't the traditional form of fighting. 3. Thais learn to fight at a younger age. To some degree this is mitigated by the strong emphasis on control and defense oriented scoring, the lack of head hunting. But put 1 and 2 together, and bring it to younger fighters, its going to be epidemic. It's really hard to speak now about "Muay Thai" because even within 5 years the sport has significantly changed, and maybe more than once. Fighter skills have devolved, generally, over the past 15-20 years, but now with Entertainment Muay Thai driving the sport you are seeing very different fighting skill sets (less fluent). And, one imagines its just going to get worse, unless there is a backlash in Thailand. Traditionally though, the knockout wasn't chased in the sport, and the defensive awareness and boxing acumen of most fighters kept everyone pretty safe. We've met and known many, many high fight veterans and legends of the sport and almost none of them exhibit obvious signs of CTE. And most of those that do, that I've thought to take note of, have also fought in other combat sports after their career.