The 3 Most Effective Striking Arts
There are many opinions about what are the most effective striking arts and there is no shortage of martial arts practitioners that are willing to put their fists where their mouths are. However, there are many different reasons why one fighter might pick one fighting style over another. The three most common reasons why anyone would choose to learn and apply martial arts skill are exercise, self-defense, or competition, but you can also use the arts as an employable skill such as being a bodyguard, or within the military/special forces community as well.
In order to narrow our search for the three best striking arts and for the sake of argument let us confine our discussion to the three best striking arts for competition or more specifically mixed martial arts competition. In the world of mixed martial arts fighter’s opinions on the best striking arts still vary greatly; fortunately, we can narrow it down to the three most popular applied styles of striking arts. The three most commonly used and effective martial arts forms used in competition today are Muay Thai, Kyokushin Karate, and boxing. Let us look at these three styles then you can decide for yourself.
The first style we are going to look at is going to be boxing. It has been said that a well-trained pugilist can defeat a martial artist easily and good reasons for this opinion. One reason this is believed to be true by many fighters is the simple fact that a boxer never leaves the ground and maintains a lower center of gravity. Another reason a lot of people say that boxing is the most effective striking art is the intense training boxers have in striking/punching their opponents. Two very well known boxers who have recently crossed over into MMA competition are Ricardo Mayorga, and James Toney.
Kyokushin Karate is a popular style of fighting that many MMA competitors favor, because the art focuses on full contact and employs a very effective arsenal of devastating striking moves design to incapacitate their opponents. Kyokushin Karate is entirely different from boxing in that not only does this art utilize punches, but also uses other parts of the body as striking tools such as the elbows in addition to very brutal kick techniques. Some of the more well known MMA competitors that use the Kyokushin in their fighting styles are Bas Rutten, Katsunori Kikuno, and George St-Pierre.
The third and final style we are going to look at is Muay Thai. Muay Thai or Thai Boxing is a Southeast Asian style of kickboxing that haws its origins Muay Boran and ancient for of boxing. However, Muay Thai has evolved greatly over the years and has come to include techniques from other styles such as boxing. Muay Thai is another art like Kyokushin that uses many different parts of the anatomy as weapons like the knees and elbows. Muay Thai is an art that uses very hard and extremely powerful kicks and punches designed to completely destroy an opponent just ask Danny Morales or Paul Daley who consider Muay Thai the most effective striking art of them all.
