San Da Vs. Muay Thai

Not a Simple Question
by Antonio Graceffo

After Pra Kru Ba (one of the last remaining Muay Thai monks in Thailand) finished shin-kicking my left thigh, he asked if I had any questions before he did my right one.

Think of a question fast! my brain shouted across the fog of pain. I needed anything to get a break from my lesson.

"Which is better, San Da or Muay Thai?" I blurted out. Seeing him with his shaved head and monk's robes always made me feel like I was back at the Shaolin Temple, in China, where we would debate this question for hours.

Pra Kru Ba looked confused. "What is San Da?" he asked.

This exchange started my three-month-long search for an answer. When I questioned professional fighters and trainers in Thailand, the most common answer I got was, "What is San Da?"

"It's Shaolin kickboxing," I translated it into Thai as best I could.

Pra Kru Ba made some Bruce Lee noises and stood on one foot, doing a poor imitation of snake hands. "You mean this? This is useless in a Muay Thai ring," he said.

Clearly, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean Wu Shu. I didn't mean Kung Fu. I definitely didn't mean Tai Chi. My question, a very legitimate one, was, "Which is better, San Da or Muay Thai?"

According to data published by the professional Muay Thai association in Thailand, no foreigner has ever beaten a Thai Muay Thai fighter.

The Thais see their Muay Thai as a national treasure and are fiercely patriotic about it. Patriotism often blurs obvious truths, however. There are numerous foreigners who hold professional championship titles in Muay Thai, in Thailand. So, clearly it is not true that no foreigner has ever defeated a Thai.

There is a common legend told around fighting gyms and repeated by National Geographic television, which alleges that five fighters from the Shaolin Temple came to Thailand and were defeated, easily, by Thai fighters in Lumpini Stadium. Once again, however, this story sounds suspicious to me. First of all, Chinese citizens are not in physical possession of their passports. They would never have the money - or permission - to just pop over to Thailand and fight at will. So, unless this were a large government-sponsored event, this fight couldn't have happened. And, even if it did happen, if they were truly from the Shaolin Temple, how do we know they were San Da fighters in the first place? They could have been Wushu or Biaoyan (form demonstration) practitioners.

In the US and Europe I heard similar stories, that kung fu practitioners were being defeated by Muay Thai fighters or western boxers. But when you hear these stories, you have no way of knowing if the kung fu fighters were actually San Da or Wu Shu practitioners.

The only fight that I was actually able to confirm was that in August of 2003, according to King of San Da USA, a sanctioning organization for professional San Da in the USA, five professional San Da fighters from China fought in Lumpini, winning a 3 to 2 victory over Thai fighters.

On the surface, this would seem to prove that San Da was better than Muay Thai. But once again, the issue is not so simple. The journalists reporting on the fight said that one of the reasons for the Chinese victories was that the Chinese fighters, learning from their experience of past Muay Thai bouts, had added elbow strikes to their arsenal of weapons. In professional San Da bouts in China and Taiwan, there are no elbow strikes. So, although the addition of elbows made the fight fair, it doesn't prove that San Da is better than Muay Thai because, strictly speaking, the San Da fighters weren't sticking to their own style.

What I saw of professional San Da training when I trained at Shaolin was that all the Chinese students started out by learning forms and Wushu. They often learned this for two years, before being allowed to choose a specialty, such as Qigong, weapons, or San Da. This program most likely varies from school to school. But the point is that all of the San Da fighters I ever watched or fought with in China and Taiwan had their base in kung fu before learning San Da. In the professional TV matches in China, as they introduce each fighter, he does a few moves to show off to the crowd.

Where American MMA fighters would probably do some shadow boxing or throw some high kicks, the San Da fighters, without exception, do some type of kung fu moves. This always confused me, since they were preparing for a San Da match, not a kung fu demonstration. But it shows how ingrained the kung fu is in the professional San Da fighters.

Other elements of kung fu account for the differences between San Da and Muay Thai. San Da incorporates side kicks and straight kicks, whereas Muay Thai doesn't (Muay Thai does have a kick similar to a side kick - called Tai Yak Kum Sao in Thai - but it is only for striking the opponent's base leg and is only used in certain styles of Muay Thai). Both arts incorporate the "push kick" (Thai: Mon Dien Lack). But training in this kick seems to be stressed much more in Muay Thai. When my teammates in China practiced the push kick, it really became a front snap kick, or a front straight kick, because of their kung fu background. Another difference is that the Chinese San Da fighters will also use the shovel kick, where you step across and down with your rear leg, to block a kick before it starts. This is a kick Bruce Lee uses a lot in his films.

Both arts use low kicks. And both stress the round house. The difference is that Muay Thai strikes with the shin, whereas Chinese San Da strikes with the area below the shin, but above the top of the foot. In Taiwan many of the San Da fighters have former training in Tae Kwan Do, so they will tend to strike with the top of the foot.

In China elbows are not allowed. In the schools where I have trained, in both China and Taiwan, they don't practice elbow strikes at all. In Thailand elbow strikes are extremely important. A ring announcer at Lumpini claimed that elbow strikes are the most common strikes in Muay Thai. My experience, however, is that it varies greatly from camp to camp and style to style. For example, Pra Kru Ba, my monk trainer, stressed elbows to the point that we often sparred only using elbows. Or one man would be free to use his whole arsenal, but the other would only use elbows.

I will probably get some hate mail for my next observation, but as a competitive western boxer, I have to say that professionals in both sports punch like a girl. In China, they used the excuse that kicks were so much more powerful than punches, so kicks were stressed and punches neglected.

In Thailand, they used the excuse that elbows were so much more damaging than punches that punches were almost unnecessary. I have been kicked in the head. And I have been elbowed in the head. And I would have to agree that either of those experiences was more painful than being punched in the head. But I still think boxing is an important part of training. And on the occasions that I did win in any of the three countries, it was because of superior boxing skills.

On many websites, they explain that one of the fundamental differences between the two arts is that San Da allows throws, but Muay Thai doesn't. This is false. Muay Thai has throws. The difference is that in China we practiced most of the throws off the hip. But in Thailand, we practiced most of the throws off the neck and head. In China we spent hours doing Shuai Jiao (Chinese wrestling) where we grabbed each other around the hips, and the first one to hit the mat lost. In Thailand we did the identical exercise, but holding on to each other by the back of the neck.

So, the question remains: Which is better, San Da or Muay Thai? The answer is, I don't know. More importantly, I don't know if we will ever know. The trend in professional fighting seems to be leaning towards MMA (mixed martial arts). Bruce Lee started the fad with his Jet Kun Do. He said, "Having no way as a way."

Here in Thailand and Taiwan, BJJ (Brazilian JuJitsu) and western boxing schools are springing up everywhere. Faces like Randy Coutour and Bas Ruten are regular fixtures around the big camps in Bangkok. Everyone who is fighting for money seems to be absorbing the best techniques of each of his opponents. By the time I left the Muay Thai monastery, I couldn't remember how to fight without elbows and neck grabs. The monastery, on the other hand, added my Shaolin kicking drills to their regular exercise routine. The only fighters who seem to be sticking strictly to their old ways are the kung fu people in China. There are two reasons for this. First, and understandably, they want to preserve their thousands-of-years-old art and not allow it to be corrupted by outside influence. The second reason is pure politics. Fighters in China don?t have much opportunity to mix with or compete with fighters from other countries. There is no way they could adopt new techniques if they don't see them first.

Maybe instead of asking which art is better, we should ask why, or even if, we have two arts?

Written by Antonio Graceffo for KUNGFUMAGAZINE.COM

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