Can I Learn Muay Thai From Duke Rufus Videos?

[CandyHammer]

I was wondering if I could learn to fight the thai style from getting the videos from Duke? I live in a small farm town and there is absolutley no training around.... What do you think?

[gabbah]

You can learn some of the theory behing techniques, and if you have a bag you can train some of them. But chances are you will be stuck with several errors that you cannot spot yourself, even if you stand in front of a mirror.
Also, those tapes don't show you the DETAILS of how to perform a technique correctly.
So yeah, you can learn a little, but FAR from the whole picture. And if you don't have a training partner you can't sparr.. without sparring it's useless.
Just my opinion.

[medic06]

still better than nothing. . . .

[gregimotis]

Just what Gabbah said.


Also, getting a partner to learn from the tape with you won't help either because then you are both learning errors together. What will happen eventually is you'll go someplace with a M.T. school and have to unlearn everything you learned wrong the first time.

Is there any wrestling around? It might not be what you had in mind, but it's a great grappling foundation (freestlye wrestling, not WWE bollocks, of course).

[KZL]

Where exactly are you? You never know when someone on this forum will know of a place nearby to train....

[CandyHammer]

Savannah, Tennessee

[chalambok]

See if you can find a copy of Duke's brother Rick getting beaten up by Kitsandruk. You can learn a lot from that...lol

[Tom Yum]

Ouch!

I think I saw that one on an old kickboxing video called championship kickboxing. It had a lot of big name fights in American Kickboxing and a couple of exhibition matches between American kickboxers and muay thai fighters.

I thought it was Rick Roufus fighting Kiatsongrit? Regardless, it was brutal for Rick - before muay thai became popular...

On the other hand, did you see the Peter Sugarfoot Cunningham fight?
He cornered that thai boxer and just went to town with 7 punch combinations. Kind of a clue as to how future western trained thai boxers might compete against the thais with superior clinch and kicks.

[chalambok]

Oh man, thanks Tom Yum. Sugarfoot Cunningham used to be one of my favorite fighters, but over the years I had forgotten his name. I agree about superior boxing skills. Still waiting to see it happen in a big way.