Muay Thai is known as the “Art of Eight Limbs” which includes eight points of contact, such as: punches, kicks, knees and elbows. I have previously written several posts covering training tips for beginners, as well as fighting ideas for first timers.

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Today let’s move forward taking a higher level of competition. The featured video is my fight against former WBC Muay Thai Australian Welterweight champion Mark Sarracino. We battled it out in Perth, WA mid 2015 (here is the post-fight blog). Although I really don’t like the “moving back” performance the hits landed exactly where they were meant to go.

One can say that combat sports is violent entertainment. There is certainly an intention to cause damage when it comes to fighting, yet it is almost never personal in Muay Thai, which is a traditional martial art with the history lasting for several hundred years.

Few years back “The Man with the Golden Elbows” Nathan Corbett planted a seed in my head. When facing an opponent inside the ring, he said, he looked at the frame (chest, shoulders) and the legs. This gives a quick understanding of the core, physical strength of a person you are going up against. Height certainly plays role in order to figure the preferable range for the next fifteen minutes of joy.

“The Elbow Master” recently shared the video of his fight back in 2012 (below) when he made his first successful WKN World Heavyweight title defense against French champion Stephane Susperregui. The five-rounder headlined the best Muay Thai production Australia has ever seen, billed as “Total Carnage”.

“This man [Stephane Susperregui] was a different stylist with movements like we see in MMA these days, moving from every angle to create opportunities, openings and offset my strikes,” Nathan Corbett wrote on Facebook.

“Watch [it]. As the fight goes, on the way I find adjustments to stay in the fire to be ready to attack back, and able to work both sides: left and right, all levels of attack’s and multiple weapons, while remaining a forward pressure fight style as one could say ‘Carnage’.”

To summarize, here are some tips that might be helpful:

Analyse your opponent

Understand their strongest and weakest aspects of the body, height and width, which should give an idea where the pressure should be applied in the first place.

Understand their strongest and weakest aspects of the body, height and width, which should give an idea where the pressure should be applied in the first place. Strike for result

The idea in combat sports is to cause damage. This means the targeted hits make sense, other than striking for the sake of throwing.

The idea in combat sports is to cause damage. This means the targeted hits make sense, other than striking for the sake of throwing. Be versatile

Being able to be different every round, moreover to adapt to your opponent’s style is a craft. This can be practiced at training and sparring and, if required, applied in the ring.

One of my previous blogs covered women’s Muay Thai training and how to spar men. In addition, last year we filmed several videos dedicated to training techniques which can be found on YouTube.