What are your thoughts on Bill Wallace’s fighting system. He fights in a side ways stance and in American kickboxing back in his day, there was no low kicking. His side kicks look really smooth and quick and has some interesting counter ideas.
Do you think this would work in mma? How about in a k-1/ glory style fight?
Bill is a legend and one of the greatest above the waist kbs ever. His style is very interesting and effective.
In terms of its general applicability to other rulesets well, low kicks, if they are allowed are always going to be a problem. Yes as Bill has pointed out, lead leg kicks like side kicks can be used as a defence but it is a more energy consuming, proactive approach generally than checking. In a ring that long side stance will be harder to maintain when pressured and cornered due to the nature of the ring. Yes Wallace fought in a ring but when you add low kicks to the pressure game with the corners it makes stopping a walk down low kick approach harder.
With all that said yes, unlike more cynical purists, I think it can be successful in k1 and Muay Thai across all levels without the person being a one in a million wonder or athletic , albeit for maximum caution it might be good to box step into a neutral squared stance and circle out to reestablish range and learn to fight off the ropes whilst coming out of the side stance temporarily.
I'm going to assume the hypothetical transference to another ruleset of bills style means filling someone of the holes by at least getting used to countering low kicks and getting a very rudimentary understanding of knees and elbows and clinch whilst still maintaining the stance, strategy, flavour and kicking style of the superfoot approach.
Anyway out of all the rulesets mentioned it probably translates to mma the best. You see this with Stephen thompson who uses tons of stuff that is bill Wallace like (albeit he mixes that with some more genetic blitz style karate).
MMA and its takedowns would make spamming low kicks less of a thing, as does the stance most mma fighter adopt to maximise defence against said takedowns
The side stance alsonallows for good in and out movement which can be very good for range control, which is very important in MMA where it can be good to be either slightly closer or further away than in other combat sports, depending on what you are doing and the side stance can alsoncreate some Interesting takedown defence opportunities. If its in a cage that's an extra bonus due to the space afforded and lack of harsh corners to be backed into.
After that it's either k1 rules/muay thai rules. It's hard to say which one would be harder based simply on the rules and approaches found within if skill level of the k1 kickboxer and nak Muay opponent was similar.
On the one hand if its a Dutch style fighter on particular they are going to walk you down and combo into low kicks against you, which could be difficult to deal with, at the same time however Dutch lbs can be shut down via technical linear kicking and distant management as thais have done before.
A lot of people will probably bring up the Ramon Daniels situation, especially against nieky holtzken and say Dutch kickboxers would give someone who fought more like Wallace would pose more trouble than a nak Muay but thais would be able to compete more with the overall kicking skill of a superfoot styled fighter above the waist better than a Dutch kb in many respects and would use more tools.
If we factor in scoring k1 would probably reward the superfoot boxing and flashy techniques more than Muay thai and there would be a bias against karate style kicking more within thai style scoring. Side kicks would be the thing in Wallaces style that would be one of the best thing to use against thai fighters simply because they tend to be open for it due to being square and using a more high guard and you engage more out of their range than throwing a teep from a square stance.
