Artwork by Gian Galang

Muay Thai is called the Art of Eight Limbs. Those are the arms, the legs, and the two bony shards shooting out half way up each. Punching, kicking, elbowing and kneeing. Though no-one uses them all equally effectively even at the highest levels of Muay Thai. Everyone has their favorites and things that they don't go to so much or at all.

It was a big selling point of Chuck Liddell that he had scored knockouts with each arm and leg. Similarly Anderson Silva scored knockouts with punches, kicks, knees, and an elbow. But no-one is really an all around master of applying all eight limbs, especially not in MMA where the grappling aspect changes everything.

Instead of looking at someone you consider the top striker and trying to note how they apply each technique, it is better to find someone who is excellent at each technique—maybe not even in the top thirty of his or her division—and look at why it works.

So today I'm going to drop a couple of dozen names who are well worth looking into on your own time for the way they factor in the dynamic, range, and shortcomings of each of the traditional Muay Thai 'limbs'.

The Hands – Stable but Weak

The hands are generally considered the least damaging of the weapons available to a striker. They are normally gloved and if they are not it only serves to make them more fragile as they are more akin to a sack of pebbles than the large, single bones of the elbow, the knee cap, and the shin. And yet they are considered the building blocks of combination striking and the vast majority of strikes thrown in any bout will be punches.

The reason for this is that punching has a combination of advantages which make it the safest and most versatile method of striking. The first is punching has a greater reach than elbow striking or knee striking. But kicking, the only method with greater reach, requires the kicker to be on one leg while he is striking—eliminating his ability to move freely and committing his weight in the event of a missed or caught kick.

That perfect balance of freedom of movement and reach makes punching the most versatile method. New angles can be formed through footwork as T.J. Dillashaw so often shows.

Or through altering the arc of the blow—where the range of motion on an elbow limits it to vague directions, the length of the levers in punching mean that a few degrees at the shoulder or waist makes the punching angle vastly different. Gennady Golovkin's downward left hook is a perfect example of that. Or in MMA, Igor Vovchanchyn's bizzare overhead lefts.

But the lead and rear hand serve different roles and always have. Back in the days of bareknuckle boxing, the lead hand was used to jam and bar overhand rights, and ones own right hand was used to deliver the majority of the offence. In the modern era the lead hand's role is almost entirely offensive. As the nearest to the opponent, it can be flicked out and reach the target in the shortest amount of time. To see that in action you only need watch Georges St. Pierre's lead, left hand beat Josh Koscheck's right hand on almost every occasion over twenty-five minutes.

But being so close also makes it a great counter weapon. A quick jab is enough to block the vision or raise the head slightly, which in turn throws off the aim and timing of an attacking fighter.

But that same proximity to the opponent which serves to make the left hand so useful as a long, straight weapon, also makes it dangerous as a hidden, close range one. Since it burst onto the scene in the late 1800s the left hook has been the king of the counters and a game breaker. If I were to take a guy off of the street and had a year to train him for a heavyweight title fight, I might as well just set him to practising the left hook in answer to everything. History is full of men who have no other weapons but learned this difficult punch and dropped or knocked out world class all rounders. David Tua and Tony Galento are the classic examples in boxing, but in MMA Paul Daley's left hook has blind-sided dozens of fighters.

To see the left hook catch men unaware from almost chest-to-chest, Kyoji Horiguchi's weaving left hook is the one to watch.

Or Mark Hunt's wicked counter left hook when opponents step in on him.

The rear hand is trickier to land, because of the greater distance involved, but there are a great many talented rear handed punchers in MMA. One of the more consistent right hand hitters in MMA is John Lineker, who has built his entire career around the wide right to the body. A fighter can often shorten the distance his right hand has to travel by aiming for the near side ribs and kidney of the opponent, rather than swinging for the head which can sway away or duck under his long, telegraphed blow.

Sergei Kharitonov was a middling grappler and couldn't check a kick to save his life, but his dexterity with his right hand almost got him onto the olympic boxing team and allowed him to confuse even gifted boxers like Andrei Arlovski. Kharitonov is a devotee of that Tyson style lever punch, doubling up on the right hook to the body and head, or the body hook followed by the uppercut. And it works like a charm almost every time. Arlovski himself has had even more success doubling up the right hand and almost forgetting about his left entirely.



Kharitonov knocking out Arlovski with the uppercut to right straight – ironically a favourite of Arlovksi's



Arlovski knocking out Travis Browne with the same pairing



And inverting it against Ben Rothwell.

Of course, once a fighter is in close, all the issues with the right hand when outfighting no longer apply. In MMA, holding and hitting is permitted and we still see too few fighters use it effectively. Daniel Cormier's performance the other week as he almost lifted Alexander Gustafsson off the floor with uppercuts really demonstrated the legitimacy of this method

The Elbows – Strong but Short

The elbows are massively underused in mixed martial arts. Even on the floor, where they are often accused of being too easy to cause cuts with, they scarcely make an appearance in most fights. One of those big lumps of ungloved bone, the elbow is good at opening cuts, but its also good for knocking people out cold.

One of the earliest successful elbows in MMA was actually the fair less versatile back elbow of Anderson Silva against Tony Fryklund. Nowadays you will see guys like Donald Cerrone using this same technique, and Joanne Calderwood even did a shifting right handed one. The downside, of course, is the preliminary motion. It is a two part strike—drop and rise—rather than one motion straight out of the stance.

Joanne Calderwood getting creative.

But more useful are the more classical elbows. Tying up of the hands and folding the elbow over the top is a classic strategy but still works at the highest levels of MMA. Chris Weidman likes the rear folding elbow.

Jon Jones likes to fold in the lead elbow.

Rory MacDonald does his slightly differently, rather than handfighting he will jab the opponent until their right hand begins parrying. Then he will fold his left elbow across the top of their right hand. Alternatively he will stick his elbow out in front as the opponent steps in off of the fence.

One of the great advantages of elbows in general is that they already put you in a half cross guard—sometimes called “folding” or “cupping” in old school boxing. Jon Jones' flurries of elbows on the fence against Glover Teixeira meant that Jones was always down behind his elbows or shoulders when he had completed or missed a strike. Teixeira swung wildly against large, bony outcrops of Jones rather than his fragile noggin.

More recently elbows have been proving invaluable in the vague area between the clinch and the outfight. If men stall for a moment, or fail to get fully to the clinch, the elbow can be used excellently to score a knockout while the opponent is still fumbling around and working out what he's doing. Alan Jouban scored a fantastic KO with a quick elbow strike of this nature.

The Knees – Hard but Unstable

Knee strikes suffer from the range disadvantage that elbows do, and the balance disadvantage of kicking. To knee one must get close enough for the opponent to strike them with power, and commit his weight into the blow while on one leg. It's a tough business, but the force that one can put behind a knee strike is ridiculous. Many of the most remarkable one-and-done knockouts in MMA have come from well timed knee strikes.

Stepping knees are far less popular in MMA than in Muay Thai because it is often simply presenting a takedown attempt to the opponent, but a few fighters have done decent work with them. Alistair Overeem was able to knee even the great Brock Lesnar in the body with impunity, readying his hands to fight off an immediate attempt at a takedown.

More popular are intercepting knees—wherein the opponent will do most or all of the movement to close the gap. Famously, Lyoto Machida springs in to meet opponents as they step in.

While Donald Cerrone does it on spot. Cerrone's intercepting knee has been a complete game-changer. It used to be that the way to deal with Cerrone was to crowd him and he'd throw loopy, wild punches which were easy to beat to the mark. Now he eschews punching at close range and instead greets his opponent with the knee.

Using the lead knee is a little trickier because it lacks the space in which to generate power. The switch knee is a nice way to create power on a left knee. Paul Felder, training partner of the aforementioned Cerrone, has some creative uses for the left knee—both intercepting and stepping.

More recently, Kyoji Horiguchi demonstrated a nice skip up knee—a Thai strike on a karate style skip—which seemed to work nicely despite a lack of a step or switch.

By far the most powerful use of the knee strike is also the one which takes the least action on the part of the man throwing it. Intercepting a takedown attempt with a knee can score a spectacular knockout. John Hathaway famously caught Diego Sanchez diving for his hips, but no one has made a specialty of it as Joachim Hansen did.



More than just knees, but one of the most exciting fighters I've ever seen.

And with wrestlers putting their head at knee height all the time, there's plenty of opportunities to try something new, as Yves Edwards did here...

The Legs – Long but Slow

Kicks are by far the most powerful weapons in the striking arsenal. The weight of the limb, the distance they travel, if you get hit with even a slapping head kick there's a great chance you're getting laid out. But kicking the head, as Bruce Lee famously said, often makes about as much sense as punching the legs. The best uses of the legs as a weapon in MMA tend to be against the opponent's legs and body.

Low kicks have been a big deal since Pedro Rizzo was a young buck, but they remain a key element of the game to this day. Jose Aldo really doesn't knock anyone out unless they are diving for takedowns, but in a striking engagement by far his most dangerous weapon is the repeated, lightning fast right low kick. A fighter is not the same person after eating five or six solid low kicks and nowhere was that more clear than in Aldo's bout against Urijah Faber.



Jose Aldo showing the Fitzsimmons Shift into a right low kick against Mark Hominick.

In the last five years we have begun to see the rise of straight low kicks. The oblique kick and the low line side kick. Along with round kicks to the calf and shin these serve the important role of “anti-wrestler” kicks. They score points, they hurt, and they land so low on the leg and at such length that they are much more difficult to catch. Anderson Silva debuted these as he avoided committing to punches against Demian Maia, but they have since been taken up by several other elite fighters.

Conor McGregor uses the low line side kick and pairs it with the jumping switch kicks, which in turn close the gap for his left straight.

And Jon Jones has ground down half a dozen opponents with long, low, straight kicks before they even get close enough to swing at him.

But the head kick is not as much of a rarity as it once was. The majority of the time it is set up with the basic middle kick, middle kick, high kick series. A classic and one of the main reasons that Mirko Filipovic was able to pick up so many high kick knockouts. If guys keep their guard up, you keep kicking underneath it, or at it, until it starts to sag a little and then you kick them in the head. The pairing of the southpaw left straight and left high kick is also a Cro Cop favorite which has served to score Anthony Pettis a couple of high kick knockouts.



Cro Cop feints the left straight and Mark Hunt ducks right into the high kick.

But while the legs are the longest weapon, they should not be considered exclusively for the outfight. One of the many things which goes almost forgotten in MMA is that there is a constant flow between the ranges and those changes in range are when you can have a technique which previously wouldn't have applied all lined up and ready to do damage. That sneaky elbow midway through a struggle over a clinch from Alan Jouban is a great example of that.

But kicking is something which is never expected from the clinch. Now not everyone is going to be able to throw high kicks from a body lock or quarter nelson like the Pettis boys but everyone can perform a stiff arm or shove, and that is consistently the most underrated movement in the fight game. Peter Aerts has more high kick knockouts than anyone in kickboxing. Most of them, particularly as he became a stiff, battle-worn old man, came not from beautiful, quick kicks at range, but heaving his leg up as he shoved his man off balance.

When you are pushed off balance, your hands will almost always move out of instinct. Try to walk along a curb with your arms folded or even held in a tight guard—it's incredibly unnatural. Aerts would shove his man back and as their hands twitched away from their guard for a moment, the foot would swing up and hit them in the head.

Now in MMA, one great application of this technique came from Fedor Emelianenko. Wobbled by Kazayuki Fujita and swinging like a wild man for the finish, Fedor pushed Fujita into the ropes, and immediately punted the Japanese wrestler's liver. One of the roughest and most effective ways to find a spot to kick available to any fighter.

Something which is catching on very slowly in MMA is kicking on the counter. Bas Rutten was sneaking in fast left liver kicks underneath drawn right straights back in Pancrase, and then no-one did it in MMA for years. Finally Donald Cerrone has started bringing them back and used a beautiful intercepting kick to wind Eddie Alvarez underneath the latter's right punch.

The ninth limb of Lethwei—the Burmese form of kickboxing—is the head. Though head butts are illegal in MMA, head placement has taken on incredible importance as can readily be seen in the gruelling dirty boxing of Cain Velasquez and Josh Barnett.

No-one in MMA can do it all, and in the pound-for-pound and 'best x in MMA' discussions we tend to lose sight of that. When you really start to look, you can learn as much from some freaky, one-dimensional guy on the undercard, as you can from the world champions. Provided you're only examining how he excels in that one dimension.

Pick up Jack's new kindle book, Finding the Art, or find him at his blog, Fights Gone By.

See more of the Gian Galang's amazing art on his website.

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