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The best Muay Thai in the UFC has to be possessed by Barboza, Jones and Trius. Very crisp technique....still just sad.
You have vets like Lawler thinking it's a good idea to answer knees to the body with rabbit punches.
Standing elbows and knees still criminally underused.
The vast majority of fighters can throw a semblance of a low kick, but don't have the shin conditioning to sustain a low kick attack, even if their opponent is not checking.
Worse still: you have a ton of guys who practice low kicks in the gym but have no low kick defense at all... Ex: Patrick Cote, who has trained at Sityodthong for over 10 years. But really, 99.9% of UFC guys can't check a damn low kick.
Who are these clowns training them? It's embarrassing..
However, the reason it’s underused is it’s really not the best striking art in terms of direct transition into MMA competition.
The rabbit punch thing is disproven by Cerrone vs Alvarez. They are a very viable recourse with 4oz gloves. The reason they aren’t used in MT competition is the fact punches don’t usually score and the large gloves make damage negligible and hitting the intended target very hard. 4oz gloves on the other hand slip through easily and deal lots of damage. When you’re getting punched, it’s not really easy to throw knees, and even if you do, you’re trading knees to the body to repeated strikes to the face...
Standing elbows - agreed. Weidman vs Munoz and Jones vs Gus show that they are very useful. Standing knees... mmmm not so much. Knees are among the easiest strikes to catch, easier than kicks. It’s very easy to get tripped upon an attempted standing knee. Also, they work in KB and MT because there’s less in-and-out movement there and more covering up and eating away at space. In MMA - you move forward, they take a step back. Don’t get me wrong, there’s place and time for them... just much much much less than KB competition, let alone MT.
Low kicks; agreed as well. Guys like RDA and BARBOZA have a good low-kicking game, but most other guys with a supposed ‘kickboxing’ background suck at them.
As for checking low kicks... I think there’s just too many threats to worry about rather than checking low kicks... punches are more lethal in 4oz gloves and are a prime concern, as are takedowns. Low kicks.... you can get away with eating a few usually. Also, low kick defense is good in MMA, e.g: Holloway’s counters to Aldo’s low kicks via catching and coming back with punches is more effective than checking in MMA, I believe.
Just my two cents.