# Muay Thai and Sanshou. same?



## ThuNder_FoOt (Mar 13, 2004)

I'm just curious to see if anyone sees any similarities between the two arts. I watched a fight the other night, where a Sanshou and a Thai fighter were competing. The Sanshou player seemed to emulate Muay Thai, so I couldn't really tell the difference. On top of that, the commentator was stating that Sanshou is really effective against Muay Thai. I honestly thought I was watching two Thai fighters... Any opinions?


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## flipthai78 (May 3, 2004)

My teacher from my "History and Philosophy of Martial Arts Class" at ucla stated that sanshou was born as a result from hurt chineses nationalism.  Back in the 80's china sent some of their kung fu stylist to challenge thai fighters and the kung fu stylists got there asses handed back to them.  In turn, the chinese fighters trained with muay thai stylists and gave birth to sanshou.  Today, sanshou and muay thai stylist are about equal in matches.  It just depend what rules they are fighting under.  When thai fighters are fighting under saunshou rules, sanshou fighters have the upper hand and utilize throws whereas he  muay thai fighters virtually have no defense to them.  Sanshou also uses more kick that involve the palm of the foot.  But ive seen a Muay thai fighter that was also a judoka destroy sanshou fighters.


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## ThuNder_FoOt (May 5, 2004)

Interesting. Well, my intention is not to bash Sanshou, but I was just wondering if anyone else recognized the possible similarities between the two arts besides myself. My limited knowledge of the art that I have come across, states that Sanshou is of Shaolin descent. Known as "Practical Shaolin", the style was used as a stepping stone to individualized stylistic type forms. 

I noticed that the only real difference was Sanshou's extra use of throws. But in my Muay Thai classes, we learn throws just the same... when working in clinching range. Throws that aren't executed to completion, usually used to throw your opponent off balance so you can execute a good knee or elbow strike squarely. Other than that though, the styles look pretty identical. The stance is similar, the attack combinations are done in the smae fashion. Counters and just about everything else I've seen just remind me of Muay Thai to the nill.

Does anyone practice Sanshou, that can possibly describe the distinct differences between the styles?


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## Drag'n (Oct 7, 2004)

I attended a number of san shou training sessions while in China. My impression was that it was a combination of TKD, kick boxing, and shuai chao ( Chinese throwing) Generally their boxing skills were poor.Lots of wild swinging.They didn't fully rotate the hips on their round kicks either, so couldn't produce the same power as MT. I didn't see much of a Kung Fu influence.Kung Fu fighting techniques are more suited to empty hands than boxing gloves.
They did train really hard though.5x 1.5 hr sessions a day !

I competed in a couple of san shou events here in Japan, but the level here is pretty low.A good place to get your feet wet before moving on to bigger tournaments.
A couple of my seniors went to China earlier this year to compete in San Shou.Mixed results.They complained about the rule system that awarded more points for throws than strikes.I felt the same when I competed.The winner of my division was a jujitsu fighter who used tackles to take down his opponents and score points.
Some Chinese fighters came over here to compete in K1 a few years back, but I think they all lost.I also saw a video of China VRS Thailand where the Chinese pretty much got whipped.
I think as the technical level of their kick boxing skills improves we'll see more really good fighters comming out of China.They train hard and fight with real heart.Plus to get to the top they have to get through ALOT of opponents!


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