Muay Tae (kicker) style

[marxp44]

Hello all. I’ve recently joined the Muay Thai Library and am simply amazed at both the quality and quantity of knowledge provided. This is truly a beautiful project! One of my favorite parts is the insight you all provide on the different fighting styles within Muay Thai. I’ve noticed that there is a quite a bit of content on Muay Matt, Muay Khao, and Muay Femur archetypes but not a lot on the Muay Tae style (apart from Singdam and Kaensak) so I was just hoping to spark a bit of discussion about this lesser mentioned style. First a question:

Is the kicker archetype it’s own style or is just a sort of offshoot of the Muay Femur style? Or maybe a bit of both? For example, there are some guys like the two mentioned above and Sam-A who utilize a more defensive style, staying at range and scoring with round kicks and teeps; then there are guys like Yodsanklai and Samkor who just smash you into oblivion with a barrage of power left kicks. Would this all fall under the Muay Tae umbrella or would the former group of fighters be consider Femur? 
 

Who are your favorite kickers in the history of Muay Thai? I’m fond of Yodsanklai, hoping he’ll bounce back from his loss last weekend and I really like Apidej Sit-Hirun, his style was so efficient and effective, just good fundamentals and insanely powerful round kicks!
 

Very excited to hear you all’s input on this style and to be a member of this awesome community! 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

18 minutes ago, marxp44 said:

I’ve noticed that there is a quite a bit of content on Muay Matt, Muay Khao, and Muay Femur archetypes but not a lot on the Muay Tae style (apart from Singdam and Kaensak

The one to watch is Silapathai, maybe the best Muay Tae fighter ever: https://www.patreon.com/posts/21484000

Also Boonlai was a hell of a kicking fighter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/25122414

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

20 minutes ago, marxp44 said:

Is the kicker archetype it’s own style or is just a sort of offshoot of the Muay Femur style? Or maybe a bit of both? For example, there are some guys like the two mentioned above and Sam-A who utilize a more defensive style, staying at range and scoring with round kicks and teeps; then there are guys like Yodsanklai and Samkor who just smash you into oblivion with a barrage of power left kicks. Would this all fall under the Muay Tae umbrella or would the former group of fighters be consider Femur? 

You kind of tend to have two kinds of kickers, if you want to be really generalized. You have southpaw kickers who tend to have big, thunderous kicks (because their kick goes right into the power side of the orthodox fighter), like Yodsanklai and Samkor that you mention, and then you have orthodox fighters who are really more Muay Femeu, artful in scoring points and taking angles. Silapathai was unearthly in this. Check out his fight versus Karuhat were Karuhat, one of the most Muay Femeu fighters ever elected to kick with him:

 

Very few fighters ever could out kick Karuhat.

It's best to keep in mind that these "styles" are all just descriptors. If you said someone was Muay Tae, it isn't some kind of club he belongs to, you're mostly just saying "that guy kicks a lot". It's not purely that, but we tend to make a bigger deal of these style types than Thais do. Most kickers of the Golden Age though would consider themselves Muay Femeu. Femeu fighting just means "skilled" and "artful", something pretty much any fighter wouldn't mind being said about themselves. The torso kick was the most dependable highest scoring strike in Muay Thai, so the "art" of the kick was using it repeatedly to just rack up the points and demonstrate your control over the space.

[marxp44]

7 minutes ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

The one to watch is Silapathai, maybe the best Muay Tae fighter ever: https://www.patreon.com/posts/21484000

Also Boonlai was a hell of a kicking fighter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/25122414

Thank you for the suggestions! I hadn’t seen either of those yet and based off of this Silapathai highlight I’m watching, it’s exactly the style I’m looking for. Thank you so much! 

[marxp44]

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for clearing that up. I guess the style distinctions should be more of a description than a prescription, like fighters have so many subtleties to their style that no one is ever really just one style. I really like that about Muay Thai, there are such high levels of artistry present.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

1 minute ago, marxp44 said:

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for clearing that up. I guess the style distinctions should be more of a description than a prescription, like fighters have so many subtleties to their style that no one is ever really just one style

Really well said. This was really even much more the case in the Golden Age because fighters could do everything. There were very few successful one-dimensional fighters. These days you get much more singular fighting dimensions, it seems. Back in the day all the top fighters had all the skills. You couldn't just take their weapon away and win. I can never get out of my head the fight between Boonlai (a kicker) and Somrak (a few years before he won Gold as an Olympic boxer). Somrak wins without throwing a single meaningful punch (maybe not even a single punch, I can't recall). It's pretty amazing:

But so many of the top fighters had just capacities across styles. Chamuekphet was a relentless knee fighter, but could kick with anyone. Weeapol had very heavy hands, but could kick with everyone.

[marxp44]

They were killers in the Golden Age for sure, everyone just had a swagger and unique style about them. Thank you for these fights as well, they’re gonna be a great resource for study. I’m looking to implement a little bit of those Golden Age tactics into my MMA game so this Library and these discussions are truly a godsend! 

[Xestaro]

I remember a video of Sylvie talking to someone she took a lesson with (I don't remember who it was) while preparing for a fight and told him that she'd be fighting an opponent who prefers to... I forgot what. He didn't know yet that Sylvie was a Muay Khao style fighter but when he heard what kind of opponent she would be facing he was like "ah, then you just need to be Muay Khao!" as in "If that's the kind of opponent you're fighting, just adopt a Muay Khao style for this fight!".

Serves to show that Thais can be kind of flexible with styles.

[Snack Payback]

On 11/23/2019 at 1:46 AM, marxp44 said:

Who are your favorite kickers in the history of Muay Thai? 

Some great names already mentioned above. I'd like to add Nokweed Davy, who had an absolute sledgehammer of a kick

 

 

And Chatchai Paiseetong for his sublime head kicks

[Mitchell]

A long range and evasive style calls to me as well. Thank you for the resources all. 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

On 11/25/2019 at 3:01 PM, Xestaro said:

Serves to show that Thais can be kind of flexible with styles.

This is definitely true. Ideally, the supreme fighters, could move between styles. Fighters like Namkabuan and Namsaknoi for instance would fight a kind of femeu semi-aggressive style, and then go full Muay Khao in the 4th to lock fights away. Chumuakpet was definitely a Muay Khao fighter, one of the greatest, but when he fought a large Muay Khao fighter like Sangtiennoi, he fought almost all the scoring part of the fight backwards, in a femeu style. Other fighters of course really became locked into their style. Someone like Samson Isaan couldn't see himself dancing away in a fight. I remember him making fun of Karuhat saying that the femeu fighter was just flouncing about, and waving their hand "bye, bye" "bye, bye".