Muay Thai - The Genesis of Kickboxing

Many people are familiar with kickboxing, thanks to popular films like Ring of Fire, but not many have heard of muay thai, from which many of the rules and moves of kickboxing originated. Muay thai (pronounced mooay tie) is the national sport of Thailand, and is widely known throughout Southeast Asia. Muay thai was one of the first of the Southeast Asian martial arts to be exported to the West, and many of the earliest well-known martial artists based their own fighting techniques on muay thai. Bruce Lee, for instance, analyzed muay thai moves in the early 1960s. In Cambodia it is known as pradal seray, in Malaysia it is called tomoi and in Myanmar it is called lethwei. No matter where it is practiced, though, it