With the growth of MMA the truely effective set of martial arts were slowly made apparent. Disciplines like muay thai, boxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu were proven to be more effective than other traditional styles like kung fu, aikido etc.
What I'm wondering is, as a stand-alone discipline traditional muay thai is leaps and bounds more effective than most other styles. I'm wondering if there's a reason why this developed out of thailand. It can't be just because of a rich martial history: most countries have that.
Thanks for any insight!
I think that there is a number of importent aspects that you are forgetting.
First lets look on the focus of each martial arts. Is it self-defense, looking good or full contact fighting.
Boxing, muai thai and jiu jitsu all have focus on full contact fighting a single trained opponent, either in a ring or on a mate. On the other hand aikido have a focus on how to defend your self against multiple un-trained opponents. Many kung fu tournaments are just as much or more about showing how good your style looks than about actuelly fighting. Most forms of karate and taekwondo are semi-contact sports, where you score points based on technique and the fight might be stopped after each hit.
So when we are talking about mma that is a full contact sport where you fight against a single opponent, then we would expect that the full contact martial arts are better. They are designed or have developed to that kind of rules.
Then why does muai thai seem like the superior striking martial arts?
Well there is two reasons. First of modern muai thai is actuelly itself a mixed martial art. Muai Thai started adopting boxing techniques back in 1913, before that the sport was known as muai boran.
Second and more importently, the striking rules of mma and muai thai are very close to each other. A boxer have to adept his defense and footwork to also be effective against kicks, knees and elbows. Muai thai already allows kicks, knees and elbows. Muai thai also inclide the clinch and thus a few ways to throw people, so standard muai thai is really close to mma.
I think you may need to provide context for what you mean by this:
Disciplines like muay thai, boxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu were proven to be more effective than other traditional styles like kung fu, aikido etc... What I'm wondering is, as a stand-alone discipline traditional muay thai is leaps and bounds more effective than most other styles.
In what way was that idea proven and what do you mean by 'more effective?' More effective as in being able to strike with harder blows, more effective in combat sports, real combat, etc?
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