What is the best kicking martial art?

Tae kwon do

 

Muay Thai and it aint even close.

 

X2

It has a lot of weak points as a whole. But there is A lot of effective kicking techniques

 

Cause it all comes down to the practitioner. He was a better fighter still doesnt meant Savate is better than Muay Thai imo.

 

I would change this to:

"there are a lot of kicking techniques"

I'm sure Karate has more arm strikes than boxing (chops, palm strikes, whatever) and a great boxer might have only 12 different punches that he throws (straights, hooks, and uppercuts to the body and head) but no one would think karate is a better hands only fighting art than boxing.

I think the same is true for Muy Thai VS any other kicking art. There aren't tons of different kicks in Muy Thai (foot jabs, low kicks, Thai kicks to the body and head) but they are all effective and there are many different setups.

Truth be told, it's an impossibly vague question to answer. Are we talking about two top fighters in their respective style fighting each other kicks only who wins? Which style has the most powerful kicks? The most effective in MMA? The most kicks in total?

I think Muy Thai's emphasis on checking kicks also makes it superior. Not only does Muy Thai have very good kicks but it also has very good kick defense.

Edit: I am editing to make clear that I don't know **** about Savate or guys who fight Savate. I am comparing Muy Thai primarily to TKD, Karate, and other striking TMAs.

 

Savate doesnt even involve knees. Muay Thai works a lot of angles and footwork as well. Its not as linear as you make it to be.

 

Roach, why don't you give it a try and find out? At my old gym we had a national savate champion and he was REALLY tough to spar. Kicks coming from every angle. The thing about standing in a boxing/kickboxing/savate stance that's more angled and less square than a wrestling/MT stance is that it leaves your lead leg more exposed for takedowns and leg kicks. It's also not that easy to say "the sport version doesn't have knees or lots of leg kicks, but you can learn them etc" because a lot of the techniques of any sport/martial art are optimized according to making them successful within the rules of the sport.

If what you care about is MMA then train everything at once so that you always keep in mind what doesn't work in that set of rules. It may be that you can do best with boxing or savate instead of MT, but maybe in trying it out you'll see why everyone mostly goes with it.

 

Kyokushin Karate combines the hard hitting power of muay thai like round kicks with dyanmic pinpoint kicks ala tae kwon do. Andy Hug being the most prominent kyokushin kickboxer of note.