Can you headbutt in muay thai

Further, Lethwei tends to be more lenient when grappling and does not have a traditional scoring system. Dave Leduc has been the Champion of Lethwei and is campaigning to make this into an international sport. If you have been watching Muay Thai and want to know more about Lethwei, then get ready to dive into some of the brutal facts of Lethwei.

But first, here is a short history of the sports. But we can assure you that it is more than just simple boxing. Since Myanmar gained independence, this has been their iconic sport.

Muay Thai is the art of 8 limbs, that is to say, 2 hands, 2 elbows, 2 knees, and 2 feet. Compared to this, Lethwei is the art of 9 limbs which makes it potentially even more brutal and dangerous. Very unconventionally, Lethwei allows head butts which opens up a whole new world of striking techniques. That is why Lethwei is considered a more effective martial art than others. It is savage, brutal, and dangerous in every way imagined. But critics believe that the inclusion of the head increases the self-defense techniques and makes it more effective for defensive fighters, although the head butt is still an offensive move.

Besides if you run into a street fight, there will be no rules. There are also some other major differences in both sports but before I dwell deeper into those, let us have a look where it all started. Muay Thai is said to have originated in the early tribal migration from the South of China to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. It is said that one of the tribes known as the Siamese fought fiercely for their survival as they moved south and had fights with other tribes on their way.

They reached Thailand and as far as Malaysia. Within this period they had to go through extreme conditions including hand-to-hand combat without any weapons.

For survival, they had to employ various techniques and tactics that were sharpened over the years and lead to the development of a very rudimentary form of what we know as Muay Thai. People who survived taught their young ones the techniques they used and soon it became a tradition among those tribes to know the art of Muay Thai.

They trained their children in using proper posture, defensive and offensive techniques. Each strike was meant to strike an offensive blow and the executor was supposed to gain maximum advantage in one blow. This fighting style evolved over the years through natural selection. Those who fought well survived. For centuries, the Thai was on constant guard from a probable attack from the neighboring countries and thus, were more focused on developing and sharpening their existing techniques.

They engaged in matches on an almost daily basis and the National Guard started recruiting soldiers from within the villages who showed prowess in the art. This opened doors for teachers to open schools for proper and organized training. With the need to survive and to protect the Kingdom, Muay Thai was ingrained into the culture and over years slowly started developing into a full-blown sport.

Similar to Muay Thai, Lethwei also originated on the battlefield. The ancient Burmese soldiers started developing a hand to hand fighting techniques to defend themselves against the aggressors.

The whole purpose was to use the techniques when they were without weapons. Burma lacked weapons and therefore, they had to rely more on hand to hand combat.

Like muay thai young practitioners train from an early age and are mostly from poor backgrounds and fight as a way to earn money to support their families. Similar to muay thai, khun khmer has its origins in the ancient battlefield arts. The ancient combat art that preceded the regulated ring matches of khun khmer is known as Bokator Khmer and its arsenal of weapons also includes the headbutt as a effective and damaging technique. In addition to the headbutt, Bokator Khmer even included the jaw and shoulder muscles as weapons.

This shows that a highly trained warrior in unarmed combat can use almost his entire body as a weapon and to kill or subdue enemy combatants. However the main difference is that with Lethwei, headbutts are permitted in competition in the ring. Without the use of gloves Lethwei competitive matches have the fighters using only tape and gauze around the hands. Ancient murals in the temples of Bagan, carved more than years ago depict Lethwei fighters and their deadly fighting art.

The headbutt technique, known as gowl tite in Burmese is very developed in Lethwei and consists of different forms of headbutt listed below:.

As a modern martial art that is based in combat and developed for use in the Israeli Defense Force, Krav Maga also includes the headbutt in its training and techniques. Again as purely a combat art without rules and to be applied against enemy combatants or in a self defense situation, it is useful for the practitioner to be able to use any part of the body to overcome an assailant. A special injury timeout can be used at any time during the fight except the 5th round.

This injury timeout is counted as 1 knockdown against you. During the injury timeout you have 2 minutes to recover. If the fighter is not ready after these 2 minutes then the bout will be ended as a loss for the injured fighter. Whilst lethwei is still not at all popular outside of Myanmar, it has gained international recognition. The brutal nature of the sport is more pure than other disciplines such as western boxing and karate.

The WLC is pretty much the only organization which streams lethwei to an international audience. Under WLC unified rules, lethwei bouts are only 3 rounds long and have a panel of judges to pick a winner if there is no knockout.

In addition to this, there are no injury timeouts and doctors are also allowed to stop a fight without the consent of a fighter. This is pretty much standard for any sport that becomes mainstream. Even though lethwei is still brutal, the organizations that run these tournaments cannot risk serious death or injury that would bury their company.

Although the fighters may still want the older rules, they must be changed to suit the viewers. The golden belt is the most prestigious prize in traditional lethwei. Much like other striking sports, a single belt is held by the best fighter in each weight category. Weight categories for men in lethwei vary from 51kg to 83kg. The weight limit of 83kg may not seem like a lot, but people from Myanmar are generally smaller than westerners, so this is still very big for a lean fighter.

Lethwei differs from other striking sports in that there is also an open weight category. Golden belt fighters from various weight categories will compete against each other in the openweight division to discover who is the best lethwei fighter in Myanmar.

Lethwei is extremely dangerous. It would be difficult to find an unarmed martial art that is more dangerous than lethwei. Since Myanmar is an undeveloped country with less health and safety laws than the western world, it is difficult to say for certain just how dangerous lethwei is.

However, if we judge lethwei compared to bare knuckle boxing, we can already see that there will be several injuries to hands, legs, knees, elbows and the face. This is even before we consider damage from headbutts. Many athletes such as NFL players, rugby players and even soccer players have sucessfully sued organizations due to concussion injuries.