Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, is a martial art from Thailand. It's renowned for its overall simplicity and practicality: powerful roundhouse kicks, elbow strikes, knee thrusts and basic boxing-style punches. Although muay Thai is primarily practiced as a ring sport—mostly by teenage boys in Thailand—it has numerous self-defense applications. The sport version has been popular in Thailand for decades, and it has spread to Japan, the United States and Europe.

Some researchers insist that muay Thai is merely a subset of empty-hand skills that came from the comprehensive Thai art of krabi krabong. Both arts are claimed to be more than 1,000 years old. Historians say that ancient records tell how the skills were used in battles with the Burmese and Vietnamese.


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