As a professional Muay Thai fighter I’m often asked why the majority of MT training isn’t real. Well, I’m going to give you the hard nosed answers.
1) Most people who purport to teach Muay Thai have never fought it. It’s pretty clear that to lean real, pure MT you need someone who has actually done it in the place it was intended for-the Professional Fight Ring.
2) Many of the trainers of MT have not lived in Thailand. If you want to learn the National Sport of Thailand it’s pretty clear you’re going to have to live there: to learn, train and fight real Muay Thai.
3) Modified versions of MT or what is Kick Boxing are not real. There’s a huge difference between Kick Boxing and actually fighting real Muay Thai: clinch throws, elbows, knees to the head, etc. If you haven’t trained and fought with these it’s not real MT and you don’t have the experience to teach real Muay Thai.
4) Not every fighter is a good trainer or teacher. Just doing something doesn’t mean you can teach it. Everyone reading this article knows English-but, how many of you can take a complete beginner who knows no English and bring him up to the level to understand this article? Teaching is a science and a profession, which accounts for the university degrees in teaching.
5) Muay Thai is in vogue so many gyms want to say they have a qualified teacher. This is to attract students and their money. Remember whenever anything is in vogue there will be knock off copies and lesser quality goods: just take a look at what happened with popular watches and clothing.
That then is a partial list of reasons why most MTis not real. If you try to use MMA as a base for saying you have real experience with Muay Thai that can be very misleading. Remember that most MMA matches do not allow all weapons from MT and a MMA trainer is not a real MT trainer either. It takes a specialist that has specific time in MT, fighting and teaching to give you real, pure MT training.
For more information about real Muay Thai training, I refer you to the author.