In every sport there are established, basic techniques and specific guidelines on how to perform them. Of course, there are truckloads of variations and different ways to train these techniques, but they’re still pretty universal. And then there are those who “break the rules” and do all kinds of weird or unorthodox techniques. They perform low-percentage, high risk techniques that come out of left field and surprise opponents who are used to working with the regular techniques.
Mixed Martial Arts and muay Thai are no different. Over the years, I’ve seen some really weird stuff that shouldn’t work but did. In other cases, MMA fighters just copied techniques from the traditional martial arts (the ones they loathed so much in the beginning. Yup, it’s my pet peeve again. :-)) and tried them out in the ring or cage.
Muay Thai is slightly different as it has a very long history and includes a lot of cool moves to begin with. Some are now illegal in the ring where as others are mostly forgotten or deemed unreliable. But every now and then, a fighter makes them work real well.
Here are some examples: [Read more…]