The lack of pressure testing in styles like Shotokan make it the opposite of pragmatic. As for accuracy - if you've never practiced trying to hit someone whilst that someone is trying to hit you, hard, then you've never truly practiced being accurate before. And multiple opponents. Fantasy land.
Pressure testing would likely make the Muay Thai practitioner faster and more efficient. Not fantasy land. Karate guys are under-rated I feel - go and spar with a black belt and see how accurate his punches are.
A black belt in shotokan karate doesn't mean you know all the techniques in the style. It means you know a subset of the techniques pretty well. You're not tested on, for example, elbow and knee strikes or trips, which are all techniques in most shotokan people's arsenal. So it's quite possible to have a black belt without being able to pull off any of those techniques. Similarly, I would imagine it's possible to get a high ranking in Thai boxing knowing only a tiny subset of the available techniques add long as you keep winning matches with them.
I sparred with a Karate black belt, and world champion, back in 2010. I went in with a similar attitude to holyheadjch, and came out of the experience with a very different attitude. That said, it is true that I wasn't able to go full-contact - despite that, he was surprisingly good.
I very much doubt that anyone would learn everything there is to know about Thaiboxing techniques in 4 weeks. I've been training for two months, at four two hour sessions a week, taken one N-class fight, and I am still learning new techniques. Clinch work is an art upon itself and there is much that can be learnt from just doing that. For your reference I have a year and a half experience in full contact & K1 rules kickboxing (green belt, working towards blue), and 2 months experience in Muay Thai. As a green belt in Kickboxing I sparred against a couple of black belts from one particular kickboxing club in my area when testing the waters for a new gym to join (before I joined my Muay Thai class) and I battered them. My kicking and punching technique was a lot better than theirs. They couldn't even throw half their kicks properly. Black belt doesn't mean anything because the quality of a black belt can vary so highly from school to school. Also go and watch a proper Thaiboxing match and tell me how many Karate black belts would be able to stand up to that level of punishment. Thaiboxing is brutal. Karate, while some styles can be respectfully challenging like Kyokushin, is like blowing bubbles in comparison. There's a reason why Thaiboxing, and not Karate, has such a massive influence on Full Contact Kickboxing, K1, and MMA.
EDIT: Apologies to Unreal Combat - if I'd simply read the posters name I would have contemplated more carefully what was being said ... more to follow! The original message here was an example of how negative intentions reflect badly on this forum/group as a whole. Right now, it is honestly difficult to post some really interesting stuff here, because of the horrible re-occuring "it's not that" sentiment
And this is where the question falls down even more. For my Shotokan Dan grading (and for my kyu grades) I was tested on combinations that included elbow and knee strikes and trips. Those are standard in the Kanazawa lineage Shotokan associations.
You can get all the punches, kicks, knees, elbows, the clinch, and escape in a month, no problem - right? I was making a very generalised statement. What I was really trying to say was that [generally] people look upon Karate as touch-contact line-dancing.....it 'aint.
A lot of karate has the potential to be very good, but is just touch contact line dancing because you get good at what you train for. MT does have an advantage that it gets people familiar with close range and contact right from the start.
I trained shotokan for years. Most black belts, even 2nd or 3rd dans would get their asses handed to them by a full contact fighter with half the experience. I've seen it happen. Baddasses in karate schools are baddasses in spite of their karate training. Not because of it.
There is a way of looking at this, which says I'm being stubborn... I'll grant you that karate is weaker if the mindset isn't there. Because of the difference in pressure experience, like you guys are saying. With the right mindset I'd argue you've only got to turn up the volume - sure that changes body dynamics slightly - but intention is friendly that way, it changes body structure too This is where I guess the generalisation swings away from what I was saying, towards what you guys were saying: How often the proper street mentality is taught? I have to assume it isn't taught often, because I've spent time with quite a few martial arts teachers and none of them even approached it, bar one...only one teacher - no physical training, just the mindset...done! If that's common, then yeah. It's like everyone says it is: i.e. full-contact is best, with MMA/UFC at the top and touch-contact at the bottom. Assuming no natural mindset (which might include those rebels you mentioned) ...something like that, in reality.
Wrong. You would barely scratch the surface of clinch in a month, never mind the rest. As I have said. I train a lot! Despite already knowing how to punch and kick from full contact kickboxing (which was also a good, solid, and renowned full contact club, not one of the many tip tap happy kicking clubs pretending to be full contact around) I am still learning new techniques and I've been with my Muay Thai club, training the same way the Thai's train (minus the heat), for two months. I would say any one starting Muay Thai with no previous experience in any other art would be looking at least 6 months before they were interclub ready and another year minimum before they're fight ready, depending on how serious they are with their training. People with experience in other arts can cut this time down, but they still need to learn Thai techniques, because in Muay Thai you are scored on technique, effect, and condition. And for the record I am not training under someone pretending to teach Muay Thai. I am with a damn good Kru with a lot of experience in Thailand. There are people on this forum who know him and can validate this also. I say this before anyone tries to say that it has something to do with the quality of my Kru (who also holds a black belt 4th dan in Tae Kwon Do).
Yeah, I don't dispute the depth and application of the techniques. But just the technique, you can get them really quick. I can jab now, I can't jab like a professional boxer though, that would take a lot of time.
There's more to clinch than people think. You might get a couple of basic techniques within a month, but certainly wouldn't master them or learn all the advanced stuff either. There is a lot of techniques to use in clinch, a lot. Not just entry, swimming, and basic defence. To put it quite simply, you would not learn everything there is to learn from Muay Thai in a month. It would be delusional to think, and pointless to argue, otherwise.
