Muay Thai vs. kickboxing

What is in a name? Is it Muay Thai or Thai kickboxing? In Thailand people simply call the sport Muay. In an international arena to differentiate it from the sport as it is practiced in Thailand's neighboring countries it is called Muay Thai. Cambodia, Burma and Loas all practice their own legitimate forms of Muay - In fact some Cambodian's claim that the Thais stole the sport from them! It seems likely that the sport developed concurrently throughout the region, at a time when the countries borders did not look as they do now.

Not everyone will understand the Thai term Muay, so when speaking in English it is often reffered to as Thai boxing, which differentiates the ringsport from Western boxing which involves only punches above the waist. As Muay Thai uses the legs and knees as weapons as well as elbows and punches some people call it Thai kickboxing to emphasise the use of the legs as opposed to Western style boxing and to differentiate it from a modern sport called kickboxing.

Some people incorrectly believe that Muay Thai is a form of the sport known as kickboxing. But kickboxing is a modern invention. Muay Thai is an ancient tradition. In the 1950s, Osamu Noguchi, a Japanese entrepreneur in the field of Western-style boxing, became interested in Muay Thai. He filmed Muay Thai fighters in action in Thailand and screened it back in Japan for the benefit of his students. It was in the years immediately following on from this that he devised the concept of kickboxing, a martial art which fuses Muay Thai's kicking techniques, with aspects of karate and to some degree, Western-style boxing. He later returned to Thailand with a troupe of his Japanese kickboxers to compete with Muay Thai fighters. The sport was introduced to Europe, thus originating the common misconception among Westerners that Muay Thai and kickboxing are synonymous, or even that Muay Thai developed from kickboxing.