Why is Western Boxing not considered to be a "True" Martial Art?

[npk9]

I've been skimming this thread and found that people kept going back to the kung fu bit. This is funny - I hate to say this (since I've been doing kung gu for a long time) but stances do nothing for you in terms of fighting. Let me say this again - they do NOTHING!!! Kung fu - for as we knew had it started had the stance but for what? Exercise for the monks to mediate better. It wasn't till later did they found out that it this exercise could be used for other things.

Even the Chinese San Shou Fight team and Taiwanese Kuosho Fighting Team do not fight in these ridiculos stances. In fight there is a constent action/reaction between 2 opponents (I'm talking full contact sport here - since when it comes to street I would rather just shoot a person and let the lawyers deck it out). I really hate seeing these kung fu master use the "old technique" for these modern day events. Granted these techniques might have been use effectively back in the day when you had 2 yrs everyday to work on 5 techniques in a dozen different types of scenarios.

Anyway back to my point, stances don't help - movement is key to win (sports remember - not street).

I like boxing - the big difference between boxing matches and martial arts matches is that boxers only fight one fight per night, Fullcontact fighters have 1 - 5 matches a night during anyone event.

Please don't flame me too bad as I am a noob!

[Ground Pounder]

I don't care who say what. I make my post short and sweet. In "stand up" a boxer will beat the holy living shit out of a kung-fu or tae kwon do or any other stand up art that doesn't get into the ring and excercise what they learn and use to apply their techniques. Most boxers punches are devistating because they "on average" only have 5 punces being jab cross left hook and uppercuts. 99% of martial artist learn new techniques on a regular basis and katas and a million other moves to beat a so called attacker. They never learn how to use 5 of their 1000000 techniques good. In addition to this a boxer knows how to take a punch alot better than 99% of martial artist. I have seen boxers fight against 6th degree black belts and multiple black belt martial artists and have yet to see the martial artist win. Only good martial artist is the ones that know reality from Hollywood. Good martial artist know boxing - ground fighting and "realistic kicks" like mui tai artist, savate artist or people that plainly know not to throw hich kicks unless they are set up right. Bottom line, boxers / ground fighters / mix of both own regular martial artist.

[teamfunzen]

There is a DVD called "Muay Thai in Thailand" which presents the Thai's philosophies and spiritual training, which is very different from the US & UK approach. I think amazon.com may have it.

[SOUTHPAW]

Great Thread! Someone said it well in his/her post...paraphrasing it came down to commercialization. It should be about cultivating the mind body and spirit of the fighter/student. I consider myself a "martial arts coach" and boxing is the foundation of what I coach. I incorporate Muay Thai, JKD concepts, Savate, and of course western boxing. i train people in my garage and outside at a park. We wear whatever as long as it isn't an offensive t-shirt or something. I try and let a fighter's own natural strenghts and talents develop within the framework of sound mastery of the basics and appropriate body mechanics. We spar often...hard. We ain't pretty but ALL of my kids can fight, regardless of whether they compete in the ring or not. And they all have respect for themselves and for one another.