Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

The Art of Eight Limbs

Mixed Martial Arts is constantly becoming more diverse. The onset of the UFC’s modern era saw a surge in striking based on traditional martial arts like Karate and Taekwondo, as practitioners began discovering how to adapt these arts to full-contact fighting. More recently, there’s been a small wave of Sanda practitioners making their UFC debuts. Although the best Sanda fighters aren’t yet making their way to MMA (an old and post-prime Muslim Salikhov notwithstanding), we’re already starting to see them employ unique tactics that are well-suited to wider adoption by MMA fighters.

One art that hasn’t seen much crossover with MMA is Muay Thai. You’ll often hear commentators praise a fighter’s “Muay Thai,” but there’s a useful distinction to be made between what they’re referring to and the combat sport of Muay Thai. The term “Muay Thai” has become a sort of catch-all to refer to any striking format with open rules. If you walk into a gym advertising Muay Thai training in North America, it’s far more likely than not you’ll simply be getting kickboxing with elbows and maybe a bit of clinch-work thrown in. Muay Thai as it’s practiced in North America often bears little resemblance to the Muay Thai practiced in Thailand.

The sport of Muay Thai in Thailand has its own unique meta-game which differentiates it from Western striking arts. A scoring system that prioritizes knees, elbows, and kicks changes the tactical focus of fighters. Whereas boxing tends to compose a larger part of a Western striker’s skillset, the clinch takes on a new importance in Thailand. Hands tend to be held higher up and away from the body, which both helps defend the higher-scoring kicks and allows fighters to effectively hand-fight into the clinch. That is not to say that Thai fighters can’t box. In fact, they tend to be more skilled boxers than elite Western strikers, and Nak Muays have had more success transitioning to boxing at the elite level than strikers of any other background. But the legs and elbows are the primary scoring weapons in Muay Thai.

Since they rely more on knees, elbows, and kicks to score, the set of techniques and tactics surrounding these weapons is far more developed in Muay Thai than in other striking arts. When an MMA fighter is described as having “excellent Muay Thai,” it generally means he can kick well and perhaps throw some knees in the clinch, but almost no one in MMA kicks, elbows, or knees like the Thais. The biggest gap in interaction between Muay Thai and MMA, however, is in the clinch.

You’ll often hear MMA commentators equate the “Thai clinch” with a double collar tie, but that’s a misnomer. Thai-style clinching is an entire phase of the sport containing techniques, tactics, and strategies rarely seen in MMA. Part of the reason we’ve yet to see these skills adopted in MMA is because they are largely limited to Thailand, which lacks the infrastructure to consistently develop high-level MMA fighters. MMA was banned in Thailand until recently, and even now there aren’t many avenues for Thais to get into MMA. Although there have been several accomplished Nak Muays who transitioned to MMA, most notably Rambaa Somdet and Dejdamrong Sor Amnuaysirichoke, they tend to make the transition well after their best days are over.

The MMA scene in Thailand is slowly improving, however. Tiger Muay Thai has put together an excellent MMA team, providing access to both Muay Thai training and the grappling necessary for success in MMA. For more information about Tiger’s roster of fighters, check out the work of my colleague and massive TMT fan, Ed Gallo, on Petr Yan and Rafael Fiziev.

UFC: Singapore represented a step forward in adopting Muay Thai tactics in MMA as Loma Lookboonmee made her debut. Lookboonmee is an elite Nak Muay fighting out of Tiger Muay Thai. While it’s difficult to find information on female Nak Muays, Lookboonmee is arguably the top pound-for-pound fighter in women’s Muay Thai. What makes her transition especially interesting is that she is (to my knowledge) both the only high-level Thai to transition to MMA while still in her prime, and also the only clinch specialist to make a full-time transition.

Lookboonmee put on a masterful display of clinch warfare against her debut opponent, Alexandra Albu, which demonstrates how the unique aspects of the Thai clinching metagame can be effectively applied to MMA.

What is the “Muay Thai Clinch?"

The main aspect of Thai-style clinching that distinguishes it from clinching in MMA is that it lacks a strict positional hierarchy. The clinch in Muay Thai is generally better thought of as a set of concepts and transitions. When clinching in MMA, the goal is often to achieve a specific control position and maintain that position while working towards a takedown or dealing damage. Clinch positions are more transient in Muay Thai, and a skilled clincher must be able to take advantage of rapid transitions between small sub-positions to deal damage and score.

There are several reasons for the increased focus on transitions in Muay Thai. The addition of wrestling-based takedowns to the rule-set provides an incentive for static control; wrestlers who rely heavily on the body-lock, such as Khabib Nurmagomedov, approach clinching by shutting down an opponent’s ability to transition and removing their offensive options, with the goal of achieving a position that will quickly lead to a takedown. Effectively striking in the clinch requires space, whereas wrestling benefits from the collapsing of space. The less space there is, the more opportunity for lengthy sequences of control. Extended control is also made easier in MMA by a lack of interference, as referees are much slower to separate fighters in the clinch.

The level of clinching skill also contributes to a faster-paced clinch game in Muay Thai. In MMA, the double collar tie is often used as a control position, and can even end fights once it’s locked in. Although its dominance continues to fade as clinching skill improves, everyone remembers Rich Franklin’s inability to escape or defend against the double collar tie of Anderson Silva in both of their Middleweight Championship fights. In comparison, the double collar tie is used infrequently in Muay Thai because it’s considered easy to escape. When it is used, it tends to be employed only for a brief moment, before the offensive striker transitions to something else. It’s simply more difficult to lock an experienced Nak Muay in position while hitting him. Comfort within clinch transitions still tends to be found only at the highest levels of MMA.

Loma Lookboonmee

Lookboonmee’s fight against Albu perfectly illustrates the general thrust of the clinching meta-game in Muay Thai. She flows effortlessly between interstitial positions, using silky-smooth transitions to create and deny openings. Albu often looked confused and disoriented, unaware when an elbow was about to collide with her jaw or her foot would be effortlessly swept out from underneath her.

Rather than looking for inert control positions, Lookboonmee primarily operates from a certain staging point that offers her a variety of options. When she does lock in a more stable position, she uses it to land a few clean strikes before transitioning back to something else before her opponent can transition to their own advantage.