striking game in vale tudo

[Kinjit]

How does it differ from say, pure boxing and muay thai? How does tactics and technique change?

[LEGEND]

Vale Tudo includes ground fighting. In the early days, you didn't see that many quality strikers that could deal with the grappler clinch/takedown. Nowadayz, since everyone crosstrains you see everythang striking/grappling working. It only took 10 years for everyone to catch up to what the Brazillians and Japanese were doing.

[Mr.Sleazy]

Not sure how general an answer you want. Vale tudo has strikes both standing and on the ground. Boxing, a clinch is broken up. Muay Thai, groundfighting is not part of the game and if a fighter is taken down or falls they will be stood up by the ref.

Don't take me as an expert on this (I have a year's experience in Pankration, similar to vale tudo), but here is my more specific input:

I find that striking in a vale-tudo style event or sparring, you always have to keep your opponent's takedown in mind, and can find yourself over-extended or off-balance pretty quickly, especially when kicking.

I seem to get taken down a lot when my opponent grabs my kicking leg, and therefore am working on not telegraphing so much, and in mixing up my kicks into combos beginning with punches (even if the punches don't land they are distracting).

Striking on the ground is a bit different - punches do not usually begin from the feet like a boxing punch, and are more arm and upper-body blows, and so are not as powerful. Nevertheless they can still produce a KO.

When both fighters are on the ground, much more important than striking prowess is position - get a dominant position and either strike or use a submission hold.

[Kinjit]

Thanks, the reason I'm asking is (and im talking about standup striking here) that I've read before that even though the striking draws largely from boxing/MT, special striking tactics have begun to evolve with the presence of grappling - i'm also curious about other kind of striking that is considered a foul in the boxing/mt ring, like striking with the forearms and headbutts, and so forth. Clear as mud? :)

[LEGEND]

Also if it's true vale tudo...there are no gloves and no tape fist. So there is a high level of guys using slaps more than hard punches due to danger of breaking the fist.