[quirkasaurus]

Hey, All,

This is a follow-up thread to a lot of the "which martial
art is the best" type of thread.

Cliff Notes:

BRAG: finally fought a Thai-fighter and held my own.

BEAT: Took some nasty shots to my shins and feet,
and can barely walk today!

VARIANCE: The site of me in great pain amuses my wife
to no end.

Longer version:

Tale of the tape: I'm 44, 5'10", 180 pounds of semi-in-shapeness
surrounded by a few extra pounds of blubber.

He's mid-20's, 6'1", 180 pounds of lean, mean, fighting machine.

If you asked either of us, what we thought, I'm sure both of
us thought we could probably knock out the other, if we were
doing more than just training.

My style looks most like Chuck Norris', think karate with
a lot of American style boxing thrown in.

Thai-style has a heavy emphasis on the roundhouse kick,
particularly aimed at the legs and head.

Yes, his kicks were as hard or harder as any I have faced.
His personal style, however, was more of counter-style, meaning,
he would wait until after I threw a few things before he
would react.

This meant that if came charging in throwing the kitchen
sink at him, he had about 1 chance to knock me out with
a roundhouse, or I would be all over him. I would say
that I was probably successfully most of the time, getting
past his initial defensive kick.

In my opinion, his hands were largely ineffective, and
I could take his punches to the gut ( with only 6 ounce
gloves on ) with out much ado. However, like I said,
once I got "in there", past his feet, he didn't seem
able to recover and I could punch ( it seemed ) at will.

Additionally, if he started on offense, his best weapon
was the fact that this guy was equally effective off of
both legs... he could throw a left fake, followed by an
explosive right, and vice versa. VERY EFFECTIVE and really
all you can do is back up out of his range... which
seemed to do the trick remarkably well. By the time he
got to his 3rd or 4th kick in combination, I was either
standing there, while he whiffed by inches, or standing
behind him punching him in the kidneys, back, stomache,
whatever...

His version of the fighting would probably equally be
slanted towards his successful forays, I'm sure. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

It was great fun. If we ever spar, again, I'm sure it'll
be even tougher. He was a great kid, and a great fighter.