MUAY GOD | Saenchai & Buakaw
The greatest muay thai fighter... It's a close call, but it's typically between these two men. Saenchai and Buakaw. Join me as we explore the skills and styles of these two living legends.
Music: Free Download Hip Hop Instrumental - Numb (Smooth Type of Beat)
Free Rap Instrumental - 7 Nation Army
[FL Studio 10] Simple piano_cello_violin beat
script: Saenchai
Notice how saenchai lightly feints his lead leg, and his opponent reacts to it by raising the left leg. Huge reaction. Saenchai then comes in with very light jabs primarily using them to muffle his opponent vision. He then holds his opponents head with the last jab, and as his opponent drops the leg and resists forward, Saenchai basically forces a car crash of an elbow.
This clip is a pretty standard jab, straight, round house, but watch the way he taunts his opponent after dodging his strike.
Hahah thats so over exagerated, clearly taunting his opponent with playfulness. This gives us a sense of the kind of fighter Saenchai is. Lets continue.
Saenchais opponent blitzes in, and saenchai backs away dodging the strikes. Then notice how he feints a teep kick with just his hand movement and speed rushing forward. He feels a big reaction from his opponent. He then feints his right hand reaching with it, raises his right leg as a feint, and his opponent reacted to the feint by tilting away, moving into the direction of saenchais real kick, a left roundhouse.
This just to highlight weightclass is irrellevant to saenchai. He prefers fighting people bigger than him.
In this clip, saenchai pulls his opponents right hand away from his face, and then slip in a left cross, then just appreciate the way he transitions into a combo based upon how his opponent reacted.
Here saenchai rushes in, feints a teep, then feints a left hand, observes his opponents reaction, holds him from turning from that imbalanced position, sneaks to the otherside and demoralizes his opponent with a ninja status round house.
Feint, round house, feints his right jab forcing his opponents guard up, oponent on one leg and abdomen open, eats a big straight, and after that Saenchai knows his opponent has no choice but to fall back, uses that window of time to taunt his opponent whilst having his opponent react to the taunt, demoralizing him.
Lastly, his opponent over reacts to hits combo, and saenchai uses that as an opportunity to taunt his opponent pretended to throw strikes.
Now that we've got a feel for how saenchai fights, lets move on to buakaw.
Buakaw
Beautifull... pulls down his opponents guard with the left, then throws a powerful right straight. As he pressures his opponent back, we have to appreciate how shredded this man is. His conditioning is absolotely ruthless. This is basically Buakaws style. He uses a body conditioned to stone, and devastating ferocious power to pressure you back. He calmly advances waiting for you to throw a strike from that paniced position, then ruthlessly tries to smash you with bottomless killer intent. He just advances foward looking for vulnerable areas, methodically pushing you with powerful strike by powerful strike, either waiting for you to make a mistake he can counter against, or corners you and breaks into a devastating flurry.
His style is simple, with most of his moves easy to replicate for anyone. It's just his speed and conditioning paired with a mind and heart equally rock solid, using this ying and yang balance between calmly advancing yet ferociously smashing you... Body, heart, Mind, He is the quintiessential depiction of muay thai...
Understanding their styles
Both of these fighters are considered the greatest depending on who you ask, but one thing is for certain, their styles couldn't be any more different from eachother. Let's now extrapolate and understand their styles based upon the footage we just broke down starting with
Saenchai
Saenchai carries himself with an aura of playful dominance despite typically being smaller than his opponents. He almost looks as if he's never really serious, like you're his toy to play with, messing with your psychology through that frame. He's also obviously a master of misdirection. In our mind we have a portion of the brain known as frontal eye fields, and this portion is responsible for rapid targeted eye movement, or saccades. This targeted eye movement moves so fast, that your brain often hasn't painted a picture of what it actually sees while it's locked onto a target. Saenchai through his masterful use of feints, abuses this targeted rapid eye movement, using his speed to bait your attention, leaving you blind in another direction. This is Saenchai, a playful magician painting his killer intent with an unparralleled arsenal of moves behind that shroud of deception.
Bua cow
Buakaw is almost the exact reverse.
His style is very easy to see for anyone, and I'm sure the first word that comes to mind, is beast. That is what he is, powerful, fearless...