Muay Thai coaching in MMA

chprt

Folks

I had a long discussion with a few UK lads at a show a few weekends ago. Thai Boxing is one of the best stand up arts there is, and is commonly used in MMA training, I think we can all agreee on this.

My question comes from the conversation I had with the Uk lads.

With the growth of MMA in ireland, and with so many new MMA clubs springing up all over the place, how many of the MMA clubs have a dedicated thai boxing coach, as many of them advertise themselves as teaching thai boxing or elements of it for MMA training.

To fill you in on my train of thought these were some well known UK MMA fighters ( who I wont name) but had said "on a whole" the standard of striking in Irish MMA was poor, so it just got me to thinking is all


thanks Paddy

HellsAngel

chprt wrote: »

To fill you in on my train of thought these were some well known UK MMA fighters ( who I wont name) but had said "on a whole" the standard of striking in Irish MMA was poor, so it just got me to thinking is all


thanks Paddy

The same fellas should have been watching the BAMMA middleweight championship fight of Jack Marshman vs Carl Noon was to quote some of the lads from the BAMMA7 thread "this is like 2 very drunk men outside a pub on pearse street.......that was gas, he looks like hes just stumbled out of the pub "

I would have thought a country like Ireland which has a good tradition of boxing would also carry over into other striking MA's. Maybe it's the Brits been too kind to themselves.:rolleyes:

theboxingclinic

they obviously havnt seen conor mcgregor

Bjj123

Or Owen Roddy, Ben Davis, Dec Dalton, Even some of the Semi Pro guys i've seen like Peter Quelly or Keith Coady would rival anything i've seen on english promotions....ridiculuos statement

manga_10

I think FAI have a muay thai coach not sure how many other clubs but the other guys are right we don't have too bad a time with striking looking at guys like coady and mcgregor.


Thats like saying the level of wrestling for mma in the UK is just dire

HellsAngel

manga_10 wrote: »

Thats like saying the level of wrestling for mma in the UK is just dire

Compared to the Americans and Brazilians it is.

Barry SeanScoil

I'm with paddy, i think alot of clubs are quick to over look the finer aspects striking and there i a big emphasis on ground work.

I'm not for one minute saying MMA striking in ireland is poor but its not all it could be.

There are are some world class Muay Thai Boxers and regualar Boxers in Ireland but at the moment most people (from what i have seen) that enter MMA either come form a grappling backround of are new to combat sports.
The same go's for coach many of them come from a grappling backround so there is emphasis on that side of things.

Barry

Sid_Justice

It's kinda an interesting one. Can you get a thai boxing coach that will teach striking for MMA or will he teach thai and leave it to the mma coach to adapt the thai to MMA?

It's hard to get a wrestling coach in ireland of a high calibre but harder even to get a wrestling coach for wrestling in MMA. You don't want the wrestling coach teaching the wrestling pinning system you just want take downs.

I guess it's the same for BJJ. Do you want a bjj coach teaching the entire art, points, and pins, and really gi specific stuff to MMA fighters? Or do you want a gi that teaches no-gi grappling for mma.

In an ideal world you'd learn Thai from a Thai boxer and do the whole art. You'd get wrestling from a wrestling coach and do the whole art. And you'd do bjj with a bjj specialist and do the entire art. In reality no one has the time or availability to do all that.

Obviously Thai is great for punching and kicking people, but the style of fighting in Thai isn't the same as MMA. You don't get more points for using your 6 weapons in MMA or standing there like a plum getting smacked around.

Barry SeanScoil

I think the future of MMA will devlop with mma coachs that will have learned all the arts involve in MMA and broken them down and taken the relevant parts to form a style that is perfect for MMA, they will pass on this to the next generation and they will have no knowledge of the other irrelevant parts of the orginal arts they came from and this style will become unique and perfect for MMA.
This has begun already but it'll take a few years to to devlop.

Take Rory McDonald for example he had no perviuos MA experience and learned purely MMA not a mixture of different MA's.

Langka

The problem is every mma gym has a so called muay thai coach. But only a hand full of them train muay thai fighters. They say things like I only do muay Thai for mma but you don't here boxing,BJJ and wrestling coaches say this! If them so called Muay thai coaches are not training Muay Thai fighter you would have to ask why!

theboxingclinic

Disagree, our wrestling classes are wrestling for mma. Techniques developed by Marc fiore and matt Hughes. I'm pretty sure every class at sbg is like that.
Agree with Barry but also reckon a bit of cross cross training will be relevant for working on weaknesses

Langka wrote: »

The problem is every mma gym has a so called muay thai coach. But only a hand full of them train muay thai fighters. They say things like I only do muay Thai for mma but you don't here boxing,BJJ and wrestling coaches say this! If them so called Muay thai coaches are not training Muay Thai fighter you would have to ask why!

Stephen_King

Langka wrote: »

The problem is every mma gym has a so called muay thai coach. But only a hand full of them train muay thai fighters. They say things like I only do muay Thai for mma but you don't here boxing,BJJ and wrestling coaches say this! If them so called Muay thai coaches are not training Muay Thai fighter you would have to ask why!

All style's have to be somewhat adapted for MMA-Wrestling, Muay Thai, Boxing, BJJ, whatever-they all have strengths and weaknesses in MMA that coaches which teach only for their specific style don't really have to worry about and may not know what to look out for unless they are versed in other aspects of the game.

Personally I'd be happy enough to learn from an coach who said his striking was purely MMA based so long as he was proficient in getting his concepts across and they proved effective.

As for the standard of Irish striking being pretty naff, I'd say we're on a par with our UK friends, I think most of our top guys would hold their own against anyone they have to offer.

cowzerp

I'd personally say our best MMA strikers are as good if not better than the top British MMA fighters in striking-It's grappling they have the edge on us as they have many BJJ black belts and High class wrestlers over there

Also most our top strikers in my opinion would have Boxing as there no 1 striking discipline from what i see, The likes of the mentioned Coady, Mcgregor for example, we're very strong in Boxing and also quite good at Kickboxing too.

Similar to the UFC where Boxing is definetly the most used Striking system so as valuable and good as Muay Thai is it's not the be all and end all of striking.