Muay Thai defense versus bob and weave

[shemfu]

Personally, being a MT stylist, I don't understand this concept of MT fighters simply absorbing punishment. This is a ludicrous representation of MT. Weaving/bobbing/slipping/parrying are all very important parts of any fighter's arsenal. While ducking your head does tend to open you up for knees, I'd like to refer you to a post a few posts up for how you should properly move.. use your legs to lower your body and you'll find that you are eating a lot less and seeing a lot more opportunity staring you right in the face.

[Disaster Master]

Originally posted by fernando
i use what has been termed crazy monkey, a variation of the peek a boo boxing stance with alot of modifications, it works great for boxing, kickboxing and vale tudo

looks similar to what randy did vs liddell and rampage vs lidell

Do you have a link that shows the "crazy monkey"?

[Hedgehogey]

Yeah tell us more. I know it was developed by rodney king, an SBG affiliate.

[bunyip]

I've done a little bit of training with a SBG affiliate gym. I've heard the crazy monkey compared to Tyson's "peek-a-boo" style, which doesn't mean much to me, but may make sense to some of you.

Basically, the palms of the hands are held high on your own forehead, covering your face with your forearms. Forearms and elbows are used to deflect punches. The stance is also more squared off.

I found a link to an SBG clip showing some people training the crazy monkey.

http://www.straightblastgym.dk/video...eminartour.wmv

[Disaster Master]

That crazy monkey is very close to the way I do it.

[drunkenj]

it works well going forwards

[S.Anucha]

yeah it works well going forwards but what happens whith those wide open targets, the abs? I personally will stick with the Muay Thai hunch style. It is a hard defense to penetrate and the front Muay Thai defense is also very hard to penetrate using strikes.

Thecrazy monkey guard against a good Thai fighter wouldnt be much in my opinioin. as soon as the palms hit the top part of your head there is a devastating roundhouse getting slammed into the abs of the poor guy.

MMA's may find it usefull agaisnt ground grappling strategic fighters but against skilled Thai fighters i wouldnt use this guard.

B&W is generally not taught in Muay Thai dicipline becasue of knees and elbows. Absobing and countering immediately after an attack is a prefered strategy with Thais.

[bunyip]

I seem to have given you the impression that the crazy monkey involves standing straight and tall, leaving your abs exposed to the world, which is not the case. Once you've hunched your shoulders and tucked your chin, your elbows can actually cover a significant portion of your upper body.

The crazy monkey deals with low punches to the ab area mainly by level changing - more or less bending your knees and dropping your weight to get your forearms and elbows back in front of the incoming blows.

Similarly, for middle kicks, the defense involves level changing first, then sidestepping to ride the kick, then dropping an elbow into the path of the kick if necessary.

Still, like you said, this may not be the optimal defense in a pure muay thai competition. It is especially well suited for an MMA fight, where you have to defend against opponents shooting in on you, or possibly want to shoot in yourself.

Also, a quick disclaimer: I'm still pretty new to this style, so I don't know all the intricacies of it yet. But I'm trying to explain what I've been taught so far as best I can.

[Disaster Master]

I don’t do the crazy monkey exactly like in the vid, but I have used a very similar stance a few times on the street and it worked for me. I think it’s important to remember it works best for people who like to close and clinch quickly. If you prefer to stay stand-up and on the outside then a MT kick stance would be better IMHO.