Sure. When Cotto starts his hook he doesn't tend to chamber it, a lot of fighters with move their lead shoulder to the back, to feint a rear straight and then follow up with the hook. He starts his hook by extending his arm out like its a jab for the first millisecond, often with a sharp jolt forward that resembles his step jab and then he turns his arm over into a left hook.
Also, I agree with you, no way are the Thai's doing their own sport wrong, but this article isn't aimed at Thais, and when farang who are looking to get into muay thai are looking to improve their boxing - they always look at it as punching more, and not boxing scientifically, which I point out is something that Thais tend to do, although I do think they can often be defensively irresponsible.
I think it's a fair opinion to think Muay Thai is fine how it is, and I don't actually think you're a troll, I know we're just poking fun at each other. The only thing I'd really disagree with you on in terms of punching and muay thai, is that I think you sometimes downplay the impact boxing has on a lot of Thais games. I wouldn't personally say that it's just guys like Samart who are good at boxing, but even fighters like Sittichai, most of the Sitmonchai gym and 13 coins.
And for me, in my experience at least keeping a tighter boxing guard (keep in mind I've actually trained Muay Thai more than I've trained boxing) has kept me safe from elbows/high kicks etc.
It won't be the only one I do either.
I was actually supposed to do a breakdown of that fight before it happened, and analyse how their styles would match up - and I favour Pinca too. I've still got my notes on it, although I don't know if I will actually write the piece.
The fight is meant to take place under full Thai rules and Buakaw has a real issue with elbows. He got beat up bad by Khayal Dzhaniev's step in-left elbows, and Fabio Pinca is actually pretty good at those type of elbows and pretty adept at switching stances. It's not really relevant to this thread at all but just my thoughts.
