Muay Boran, which translates to "Ancient Boxing" ( Boran is a Thai loan word taken from the Khmer slang ), is the predecessor to Muay Thai. While often misunderstood among the Thais themselves, this word is highly used, granted incorrectly, in the West to refer to the ancient beginings of the empty hand part of the Thai fighting style.

The ambition of Muay Boran is to let a warrior survive a battle once he has lost his weapons (until that point, he will utilize a style reffered to as Krabi Krabong); its style is quite efficient, in that it maximizes the quantity of damage that every blow serves to leverage, and works well, in that it can easily make for the death or severe injury of the opponent.

Most prominently, Muay Boran supports the use of dreadfully powerful elbow and knee techniques, and combinations thereof, regularly thrown at thorough force and quickness, with the intent to defeat one's adversary as fast as possible, due to the fact that a different one would by now, be coming near or attacking.

A good amount of techniques in Muay Boran are forbidden in present-day Muay Thai tournaments and competitions. Even in Thailand it is getting more and more difficult to find a school keen to teach it; they prefer to focus more on "contemporary" Muay Thai, as this is more easily exploitable as a form of profit. Today many schools who claim to offer Muay Boran merely teach Muay Thai and sell it under the name of Muay Boran.

For the most part, Muay Boran was not well-known in the West beyond a little circle of practitioners. The art was featured in the 2003 Thai film Ong Bak featuring Tony Jaa. Muay Boran recombines all the Thai traditional bare hand fighting techniques. It is the total amount of the knowledge and experience of the Thai combat arts masters through the centuries. Its recent evolution gave birth to today's Muay Thai.

These types of traditional techniques are a precious cultural asset. In order to save them from oblivion, the Thai National Culture Commission was issued by the Thai Ministry of Education in the early 1990's the job to gather and classify the technical repertoire of Muay Boran. This duty was completed by the leading living Thai martial arts masters, under the supervision of the Honorary Chairman of International Muay Boran Academy (IMBA) : M. Payungsak Jantrasurin.

A thorough official technical progression was devised, permitting critical study and practice of Muay Boran by students from every where in the earth. The technical progression classifies the techniques of Muay Boran in four categories :

1. CHERNG MUAY : the principles of usage of the inherent human weapons (hands, feet, shins, knees, elbows, head) and their diverse combinations, to strike the critical spots of the opponent's body

2. KON MUAY KEE : the ways and techniques to defend (by evading, blocking, deflecting, anticipating) and counter the attacks of the fist category

3. CHAP KO : stand up grappling and close quarter fighting using particularly elbows, knees, the head, joint locks, throws and take downs

4. MAE MAI - LUK MAI : the essential forms of Muay Boran. Practicing these forms develops four key fighting notions : timing, distance, targeting the critical facets of the opponent's body and utilizing ones inherent weapons with maximum efficiency.