Tactical Guide to the Sanda World Championships
Tactical Guide to the Sanda World Championships
We examine the standout performances of the 2023 Sanda World Championships and discuss both the nuances of Sanda tactics and regional styles.
Contents
Introducing Sanda
This year’s World Wushu Championships just wrapped up last month, giving us a chance to talk about a Martial Art that doesn’t get enough love.
Sanda, or Sanshou, is a competition format for traditional Chinese martial arts. It’s basically sportified Kung-Fu. Which also means that it’s effective Kung-Fu, since providing a competition structure for a martial art naturally filters out impractical techniques and training methods as practitioners discover what works in competition and what doesn’t.
At its core, Sanda is a kickboxing art with takedowns. It takes Muay Thai’s idea of being a “mixed” martial art that allows both striking and grappling, but extends the idea by legalizing more forms of grappling. Wrestling takedowns are permitted, but the first fighter to touch any part of their body but their feet to the mat gives up the point, so the wrestling exchanges are limited as fighters can’t drop to their knees to penetrate or finish a shot.
The world championships are conducted under amateur Sanda rules - rounds are two minutes long, fights are best two out of three rounds, and points are awarded for certain actions to determine the round winner. Punches and kicks are legal anywhere they normally are, but elbows and knees are illegal, though professional Sanda bouts legalize knees.
Kicks to the body or head are worth two points, while kicks to the thigh are worth one, and kicks below the thigh don’t score. A takedown where the attacker remains on his feet while the defender goes down is worth two points, while a takedown that grounds the attacker as well as the defender is worth one point. Finally, the fights take place on an elevated square platform called a Lei Tai. Pushing the opponent off the Lei Tai scores two points, and if a fighter is pushed off twice in the same round, they automatically lose the round.
The ruleset creates a style that lies somewhere between the extremes of Traditional Martial Arts and MMA. The fact that it’s a points game encourages a naturally bladed stance paired with in-and-out movement to score quickly and move, but the action is continuous so there’s opportunities to punish those styles with leg kicks and pocket work.
The two-point score for standing takedowns incentivizes kick catching. If you shoot a high crotch or double leg, it’s usually pretty easy for the fighter who’s getting taken down to drag the attacker down with them. But if you catch a kick, you now have the leg closer to the point of extension and further away from the opponent’s hands, making it easier to dump for two while remaining on your feet. This has resulted in a sort of arms race between kicks and catches, with kickers trying to finesse their way around the catch and catchers trying to draw out kicks to convert on them.
Sanda is dominated by three countries - China, Iran, and Russia, each with their own distinct style. Iranian Sanda fighters are similar in style to their counterparts in wrestling, who are famous for their underhook-heavy pressure attack. Iranians typically look to pressure opponents to the edge of the Lei Tai and either score with pushouts or use the opponent’s attempts to stay in bounds to score.
Russians tend to be slick wrestlers with excellent kick catches, excelling at sweeps, throws, and reactive takedowns. MMA convert and all time great Sanda fighter, Muslim Salikhov, is the perfect example of the Russian style.
The Chinese team is usually a bit more diverse stylistically, but they tend to prioritize distance management and slick footwork. You’ll often see heavily bladed stances and liberal use of side kicks, but they also tend to be adept at striking into quick takedown setups and hitting sneaky little trips in the clinch or off striking exchanges. Though their team this year stood more square than usual and several of them employed the light, bouncing lead leg typically seen in Muay Thai to check kicks.
Matchups between the big three countries often produce the most electrifying fights of these tournaments, but both the Iranian and Russian teams were unfortunately absent this year. Russia was presumably excluded for geopolitical reasons, while the Iranian team’s visa requests weren't processed in time. With their only real rivals out of the competition, China predictably dominated, but there were some solid showings from Italian and Central Asian athletes as well.
Leung Yu Hong: 60kg 🥇
Leung Yu Hong from Hong Kong won the gold medal at 60kg, largely off the strength of a slick lead-leg teep and counter body kicks. He has a peculiar style that doesn’t fit the typical Sanda mold - he stands much more square and narrow than the typical Sanda fighter, using the narrow stance to quickly pick up his lead leg into a teep at a moment’s notice.
To quickly teep off your lead leg, you need your rear leg underneath you, so a wider stance means it’s necessary to first bring the plant leg into position before firing. But Hong spent a lot of time with his weight on the rear leg bouncing his lead leg up and down, like you see often in Muay Thai to check kicks. As a consequence, his opponents had difficulty scoring on him with long-range kicks and he was able to effectively use the front leg as a reactive tool, quickly flicking it out as soon as his man stepped in.
Look at the footwork in the first several clips above and note how he keeps his legs in prime teeping position. He’ll take a sidestep with his rear leg and exaggerate the follow with his lead leg, or even step across himself to narrow his stance. That pattern of steps maximizes time spent with his weight on the rear leg and allows him to very quickly transfer weight from front to back, meaning that even if opponents try to time his movement to attack, he can quickly get his weight on the back leg and meet them with a teep.
With his opponents unable to beat his teep and defensive lead leg to score with rushes, Hong was able to draw them into the sort of long distance fencing match that he was better prepared to win. The key to his long distance attack was a light, flicking leg kick that he used to prod at them and create opportunities to score big.
Non-committal leg kicks with the lead leg are a fantastic tool to draw opponents into counters, as they attack the nearest target with a weapon requiring little commitment. Hong will prod his man with a the leg kick, thrown quickly enough that they can’t catch it for a takedown, to goad them into stepping forward and trying to counter.
If his opponent rushes in to follow the kick’s retraction, he’ll meet them with the rear body kick. Most fighters were conscious of this though and would try to pick him off with their own leg kick, but he’d just retract the leg in anticipation of their kick and then flick the leg up to hit their midsection.
The legs kicks weren’t only to set up counters though, he also used them to set up his more committed attacks without exposing himself. He would flick out the leg kick and step forward after landing, using it to take outside foot position on orthodox opponents:
As his leg touched down from the kick, he’d have an outside angle which puts him outside the path of his opponent’s hands and shortens the path of his powerful rear body kick. He finished his opponent in the first round of the tournament with a liver kick off this setup even through the chest protector. He’d also sneak his foot outside with the leg kick and then feed opponents a jab as they tried to punch back.
One of the downsides to the heavily bladed stance typical in Sanda is that it makes split-second lateral movement more difficult, so by sneaking his leg outside, Hong puts himself in a great position to attack, while the opponent needs a big adjustment to get back in position to score. That’s the perfect time to unleash your slower, more powerful strikes as you’re free to open up without risk of a counter.
The final piece in Hong’s coherent system of attack and defense is his rear leg body kick. The teep kept opponents at bay and the leg kicks defanged them on the outside, but if they tried to push forward and make it ugly, the rear kick was there to punish them.
Against orthodox opponents the setup was easy - he would stand an extra step away from them, so they’d need to step twice in order to reach him. As they started a combination to close distance, he’d let the first punch hit air, meet them with the body kick, then slide out the side. Against fellow southpaws who he couldn’t employ the distance trap against as cleanly, he would time their attempts to close distance with kicks, checking with his lead leg and slamming in the body kick as their feet planted.
What really impressed me about Hong is how well systematized his approach was. His movement and primary attacks were designed to score while keeping himself safe, funneling his opponents’ response into high percentage counters. It reminded me a bit of Floyd Mayweather’s crab system but using the legs rather than the upper body - the lead hand (foot) probes safely from long range and as opponents close distance, the lead shoulder (shin) is ready to shield him while he counters with his rear hand (leg).