Lethwei Kickboxing
Lethwei is a Burmese kickboxing style martial art, which has similarities to other Indochinese kickboxing styles like Muay Thai, Pradal Serey, and Muay Lao. The sport that originated in Myanmar has been practiced in the country from ancient times.
The only equipment that fighters use for Lethwei is a modified version of boxing gloves. At a junior level, participants use protective gear for the head and the shin.
Strikes like punches, kicks, elbow attacks, and knee attacks, that are part of basic kickboxing are also a part of Lethwei. Additionally strikes like head butts and knuckle strikes are commonly used by practitioners as part of takedowns. Some of the moves that are unique to Lethwei are, roundhouse kick, spinning elbow strike, knee and punch, knee and elbow strike, back hook kick, and jumping knee and elbow.
Today, Lethwei matches are conducted in two different formats, the traditional format and a modernized offshoot, which originated in 1996. The modern version uses a point based system adapted from Muay Thai for declaring a winner. In the traditional version, there was no scoring system used for fights, instead the winner was decided based on which fighter drew first blood.
Similar Sports
- Kickboxing —a group of stand-up combat sports based on kicking and punching.
- Muay Thai — a full-contact fighting sport in which fighters try to defeat their opponents by using different techniques that make use of fists, elbows, knees, and shins.
- Sanda / Sanshou — A form of kickboxing from China, which combines full-contact kickboxing, with wrestling, takedowns, throws, sweeps, kick catches, and in some competitions, even elbow and knee strikes. (it is one of the two Wushu disciplines)
- Sikaran — a form of kickboxing from the Philippines, which utilizes only the feet, the hands are only used for blocking.
- Pradal Serey — a type of kickboxing from Cambodia. Also known as Kun Khmer
- Pencak Silat — a fighting sport from Indonesia which collectively encompasses martial arts of various styles.
- Chinlone — the traditional sport of Burma or Myanmar, a team sport combined with dance (also known as Caneball).
- Bare Knuckle Boxing — two individuals participate to fight against each other without using boxing gloves or any other type of padding on their hands
Related Pages
- Sport in Myanmar
- Complete list of sports
- The Encyclopedia of Sports
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