Is Muay Thai allowed in the USA?

[John Matao]

Can you fight with full Muay Thai rules or is it still that candy a$$ "American Kickboxing" crap that Don Wilson fought in?

[Evilution]

I don't know if it's illegal but it's uncommon. The dumb thing about american kickboxing is there are 3 or 4 different sets of rules. Muay thai rules (which aren't really muay thai rules) oriental rules (whatever that means) freestyle rules and maybe one other, I'm not sure. I've only seen one match that allowed elbows and both fighters had to agree to it, it wasn't a standard thing. The thing that bugs me is when they don't let the fighters clinch, or they say no kicks below the waist, or a minimum number of kicks per round.

[Jaguar Wong]

The organizations that run most full contact fights don't really allow real Muay Thai rules. The standard format is kickboxing (all kicks above the waist), but the also have international rules (kicks allowed to the legs), and modified Muay Thai (knees, but no elbows). They used to call it Muay Thai rules, but the World Muay Thai Council (One World, One Muay thai ) said that if they don't use the same rules as they do, they can't call it Muay Thai. Hence the "modified" crap.

I don't think that Muay Thai is illegal here, just like Evilution said, it's just uncommon. There's a guy that's bringing fighters and coaches from Thailand here to Vegas and he sets up Muay Thai fights all the time in other countries. I beleive he's trying to set up an organization to bring it here to the states. I'm sure it's here somewhere, he's just trying to make it mainstream like boxing.

[sccr06]

I don't know but I have seen a few ISKA matches on ESPN2 that looked like Muay Thai without elbows. Anyone else see those?

[duchman]

Muay Thai= Full thai rules

Thaiboxing= Almost the same as thai but without elbows

[John Bennett]

ESPN2 used to have a mixture on Sunday nights. There were some darn good fights there.

Somtimes they would have kickboxing, and sometimes "international Thai" like JW described above.

The only time the showed real Muay Thai rules were matches they filmed in Thailand. At least they did show some of those, usually at the end.

In their TV listings they only show it listed as "Karate".

It could be anything from stupid kung fu forms competition to full-on Muay Thai.

[Evilution]

I used to watch that stuff on espn2 until half the time the time they just showed fat karate guys breaking cinder blocks with their heads.