In general, I don't think most good Nak Muay are going to just hang out in punching range. When you watch high level MT fighters go against punchers, you generally see a few things:
- Lots of teeping and body kicks as the puncher moves in to punish him and maintain distance
- Lots of knees while keeping the high guard. Really sucks to throw a punch into someone's gloves while he blasts you with a knee
- Very fast phase shifting from kicking to clinching range
In boxing you'll get penalized for clinching too much so you don't tend to see a ton of it, but it works wonders as a way to shut down a puncher. Especially when you can parry punches and fold over into elbows, you can kill guys who are letting their hands go too much. One of my favorite fighters is Pornsanae (because he's so goddamn exciting) who, for a Thai, fights a lot like a Dutch kickboxer with a heavy punching + low kick game, and while he wins a lot of fights he also eats a shit ton of damage mostly from elbows.
Here are a few examples:
Also worth noting is that most Nak Muay don't throw a ton of low kicks. That's much more a Dutch thing. There are some (like Pornsanae) who specialize in them, but body kicking is much more common in pure MT.
