The Thai Clinch: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Knees

“Grab his neck this time, I start knee! Knee! Push him down, grab, grab tight. He cannot defend the head. He cannot defend the body. I can rain! Knees! As long as I want!”

 -Former UFC Heavyweight Champion, former King of Pancrase, and MMA legend Sebastiaan “Bas” Rutten on knees from the clinch.

Muay Thai is a striking art that originated in Thailand, but was brought to Brazil in the late 1970s by Professor Nelio Borges. It was eventually passed on to a man named Rudimar Fedrigo, founder of Chute Boxe, a team that was once considered by many to house the most dangerous men in the world (BMTA). Its most famous members were people like Anderson Silva, the current UFC Middleweight Champion; Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, the winner of PRIDE's 2005 Middleweight Grand Prix and former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion; and Wanderlei Silva, PRIDE's 2003 Middleweight Grand Prix champion.

These guys are probably my favorite fighters, and some of their most memorable moments in my eyes are centered around their use of the Thai clinch. Brazilians are awesome with the clinch.

The premise of the Thai clinch is simple, but brutal: you grab the back of someone’s head with both hands, bring them close to your body, and now you have complete control of your opponent’s neck. From here, you can throw them off balance or use your knees to attack their body and face.

The clinch (also called the Thai Plum) is so effective that it was actually banned from use in kickboxing’s largest organization, K-1 (Coffeen). There are a few reasons why the clinch allows you to maximize the amount of punishment you give out while taking relatively little damage, including:

Clinching reduces the effectiveness of your opponent's attacks. This works because your control of the opponent's head interferes with their field of view, and your close proximity does not allow your opponent to land clean punches to vital areas. Notice how, in the above images, neither of the men opposite the Brazilians is capable of doing any significant damage.

Clinching allows you to control your opponent. Longtime MMA trainer Martin Rooney says that "the neck is the pillar of the body" (Rooney). That means that wherever your neck goes, the rest of your body follows. Using the clinch allows you to efficiently drag or throw your opponent via head and neck control, as artfully demonstrated by Thai Plum wizard Anderson Silva in his fight against Rich Franklin.

Silva was able to use the forward momentum of his foe, Rich Franklin, to his advantage. Franklin was whipped against the cage, which heavily limited his mobility and allowed him to be set up for a variety of strikes, throws, and trips. Moreover, part of the reason K-1 banned the use of the Thai clinch was its potential for defensive use; fighters with their backs against the wall would clinch their opponents and avoid being trapped in a corner of the ring (Coffeen).

Clinching allows you to throw your knees. You can uppercut, elbow, and kick from the clinch, but the real money lies in firing up your knees to your opponent's face or torso. Not only is your opponent's posture broken, thus lowering their head enough to be hit with a knee, but your control over their neck allows you to pull their face towards your knee as you strike.

 

Like I said before, Brazilians from the Chute Boxe camp are awesome clinch fighters. Now you know what people are talking about when they refer to something as the "Bees' Knees."

(Bees' refers to Brazilians'. I'm terrible, I know.)

Sources:

"History of Muay Thai." Brazil Muay Thai Association. Brazil Muay Thai Association. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. <http://www.bmta.com.br/>.

Coffeen, Fraser. "K-1 Rule Change Bans Strikes from the Clinch - Head Kick Legend." Head Kick Legend. Head Kick Legend, 27 Mar. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. <http://www.headkicklegend.com/2010/3/27/1392947/k-1-rule-change-strikes-from-the>.

Rooney, Martin. "11 Myths of Warrior Training." T-NATION. Testosterone Nation, 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. 

<http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/11_myths_of_warrior_training>.