Muay Thai, or Thai boxing, is a national sport of Thailand based on the Thai martial art with the same name, a swift stand-up fighting style with various clinching techniques. Muay Thai later became a basis for Kickboxing. It is known as "the art of eight limbs," as the art places equal emphasis on fists, feet, elbows and knees. A practitioner of Muay Thai is called a nak muay.
Traditionally, Muay Thai practitioners can be distinguised in artworks by their mongkhon headband and/or pha jiad armbands, and were often depicted wearing hand and leg wraps. Traditional Muay Thai practicioners prefer to fight bare-handed or with hand wrappings, though modern fighters also wears small boxing gloves or fingerless gloves instead.
While the derivative Kickboxing is very similar to Muay Thai, some of the distinctive moves that set them apart is the use of elbow and knee strike that were otherwise forbidden in Kickboxing.
