Rodney King has just put up some videos from the Crazy Monkey Defense program on YouTube if you are interested in checking it out. Just a small selection to start but he is planning on adding more.
Awesome. I have his DVD’s at home, but now I have something to watch at work.
In his “defending the jab” vid, he says, “you don’t want to taste the fury” That’s awesome.
I love his stuff. Very applicable. He’s related to SBG, right?
What did he study before coming up with Crazy Monkey (other than Western boxing)?
Rodney used to be part of the SBG although is on his own now.
As for Rodney’s background you can probably find it on his site, or if you can’t you could ask on his forum about it. I know Rodney started in traditional martial arts before he moved on to boxing and Muay Thai. He is a black belt in BJJ under the Machado’s too.
Rodney King’s “Crazy Monkey” defense is just a modern interpretation of old school Muay Thai defense positions. If I remember correctly, he called it “Crazy Monkey” because he actually witnessed a monkey fighting with other monkeys, and using his hands/arms in the defense positions and it gave him the idea regarding how to teach these defensive basics.
Oh, and Rodney King trained under Apidej Sit. Huron, who is one of the head trainers at Fairtex…
I thought the inner forearm is turned out and pushed slightly away in the old school MT stuff, rather than hunkering down and covering up(I was also under the impression that they pretty much always stood tall, rather than going hunchback)?
For those of you who have his videos or are interested he has just released some additional videos.
Here’s a post from his site about the upcoming DVD’s he is working on (the new Fight Compass DVD has been released already):
'We spent the day filming and more tomorrow. The outcome will be the Fight Compass vol 1 DVD, that will introduce everyone to the 4 fundamental styles of fighters. The 4 major strategies in each one of those styles and how to improve those styles and much more. This will replace our old Sparring 101 DVD…and the material on the Fight Compass is brand new, never seen before outside of our pro-membership program and seminars.
In addition we shot PLAY For Performance vol 1, that will give everyone a bunch of really cool, fun drills that will not only enhance your stand-up game, but also bring fun back to your stand-up game training instead of the monotonies working of fundamentals over and over again.
Depending on time tomorrow and how everyone is feeling, we may shoot an additional DVD on CMD Focus Mitt training. I know many people have been asking for this for sometime so we hope to get that done.
Our next project is to shoot our CM Boxing for the Street DVD. We really want to showcase how boxing can be an amazing art for self-defense. While there are many instructionals on boxing, very few if any really cover boxing for self-defense and very few have been able to leave the ring behind for a solid understanding of boxing street style.
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Rodney King- Creative Monkey’
Quick idiot question- is crazy monkey defense the same thing as crazy monkey boxing? They have two different youtube channels…
Without seeing a link to the crazy monkey boxing channel can’t say for sure but my guess is anything called Crazy Monkey Boxing is going to be his stuff also (if you type that in YouTube his older videos come up). The link I put at the top is a dedicated channel that he just created today.
Nah, it truth, the older MT guard had the palms facing one another (thumb towards your face).
Regarding the stance, some MuayThai styles fought tall. others didn’t.
The actual guard positions you see in the Crazy Monkey Defense are:
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Len Muay, which translates to “Playing with your hair”. This is where you place the palm on top of your forehead above your eye, with the elbow pointing forwards towards your opponent.
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Taad Mala, which translates to “Place a flower behind your ear”. This is where you place your palm over your ear (fingers curl around onto the back of your neck). Again, the elbow points forwards towards your opponent.
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Taad Mala Kwai, which translates to “Place a flower behind your opposite ear”. This is where you reach across your face and place the back of your hand over your opposite ear, such as the back of your right hand covers your left ear. The elbow is, of course, in front of your face and pointing towards your opponent.
In the video clip linked by the OP, all thats’ really being demonstrated is “Len Muay” vs. a straight attack.
Ok, I looked at the other videos, it is the same thing. The other channel is from a poster here at bullshido who put up some of the public domain stuff on youtube. The same guy is in both videos.
In CM the elbow points more down to the floor when doing the position mentioned above until you are actively deflecting - and then it does move upwards more towards the opponent for a brief moment. Not sure if that is what you meant.
#2 above is not an actual guard position of CM but just a position you move through while actively defending hook lines.
#3 also is not a guard position in the sense that you would not have your hands hanging out in that position but what you describe sounds like the 3 point cover that they move through while crashing the line (SBG calls it the helmet and I am sure other systems call it various names).
True, but from what I’ve observed, the CM is what I would refer to as a modern, or updated, version of the old Muay Thai guard positions. These positions have to be modified for sport fighting because of the way the sport has evolved. The older blocking positions have all been modified/adapted to varying degrees…
Heh, 'bout time. I remember spending a lot of time looking for those videos way back when., so this’ll be cool. His videos always were really useful.
Rodney added another 10 videos to his YouTube channel and 6 of these are interviews and he does talk about his background (for those that were asking).
It’s also pretty much the same as the bare knuckle boxing guard I learnt from my father and the hand discipline taught to me by my first san shou coach (a Malaysian Chinese who grew up among Thai boxers). I suspect it develops anywhere getting punched in the face by a bare/lightly wrapped fist is a common occurrence.
Yeah, it’s pretty much the same thing if I recall.