Muay Thai

Muay Thai is a hard martial art from Thailand. The art has a long history in Thailand and is the country's national sport. Muay Thai as it is practiced today varies significantly from its ancestor Muay Boran, such as in its use of gloves similar to those worn in Western boxing.


Muay Thai is referred to as the "Art of Eight Limbs" because it makes use of punches, kicks, elbows and knee strikes, thus using eight "points of contact", as opposed to "two points" (fists) in Western boxing and "four points" (hands and feet) used in sport-oriented martial arts.


A practitioner of Muay Thai is known as a nak muay. Western practitioners are sometimes called nak muay farang meaning foreign boxer.


It existed for centuries as a fighting martial art and is well known for its devastating knee, elbow and shin kicks. Muay Thai developed in Thailand and is popular today the world over as a ring sport for competition fighting.


All strikes are allowed in the ring, unlike western boxing, which prohibits all but strikes with gloved fists. In basic rules, a match formally have no more than 5 rounds, each round take 3 minutes to last, with a two-minute rest period in between. No additional round is allowed.


Boxers must regularly wear gloves and must wear only trunks (red or blue according to their corners). A sacred cord known as Mongkol can be worn around the head only during the pre-fight ritual of paying homage to ancestral teachers of Muay Thai, to be removed before the start of the fight.