Kevin and I are calling this the “Diamond Guard,” but because it’s influenced by some familiar boxing guards from legends like Archie Moore, Joe Fazier, a little by George Foreman. I personally first ever saw it when Kaensak Sor. Ploenjit, 2x Fighter of the Year and Muay Thai champion (who did spend some time in western boxing) flashed into it during one of our training sessions, 9 years ago in New Jersey. I was like, “what was that?!”
So this is exciting because it isn’t what it will be… yet. It’s something that Kevin and I are working with at home (this is written at a time when gyms all around the world are closed due to Covid-19 and many people are training at home) to see all the ways it can be used in Muay Thai – and specifically my Muay, which is forward pressure and closing range. To me, the best part of it is that it solves two of my own problems at once: 1) it’s protection against elbows and punches while closing distance for my preferred clinch range, and 2) you can strike out of it, it’s malleable. The “max guard” I’ve been using just makes me really tense and I end up eating strikes without being able to strike back. This solves that problem.
So, I’m excited about it. We’ll see how it develops, it’s one of these techniques that is truly under construction and none of us can know what it’s going to look like, ultimately, because it doesn’t exist yet. And that potential is really exciting.
Looking Deeper Into the Diamond Guard
If you are interested in the Diamond Guard and what I’m exploring it it, much more extensive vlog is available to my patrons here: The Diamond Guard. The post for patrons also has lots of reference material for sessions in the Library that have helped me get to this guard, and also western boxing edits which capture some of its antecedents.
