The Different Rules of Kickboxing

I got this artical from the Sher Dog Website telling you all the different styles of kickboxing.The match I was watching had oriental rules meaning elbows and knees are allowed.here is the artical...

Kickboxing do not have any unified rules. There are as many variations in kickboxing rules as there are kickboxing organizations. More actually, since many organizations have more than one set of rules.
Japanese kickboxing (or oriental rules kickboxing) allows knees, clinch, elbows and whatever (they used to allow headbutts and throws too). Shootboxing (a japanese kickboxing organization) also allows standing submissions and throws.
Shin-karate is a meld of knockdown karate and kickboxing. It allows kicks, knees and punches anywhere, but no elbows.
American kickboxing tend to only allows kicks above the waist. No knees, clinch or elbows. European organizations tend to also allow lowkicks, and occasionally knees.
French Savate allows shoes (not foot-padding but actual shoes), which makes kicking with the point of the toes a valid weapon. Chinese Sanda allows knees throws -and sometimes elbows.

Also point scoring vary to a great degree between the organizations.
Sometimes, like in muay thai kicks (except lowkicks) are scored high and punches (and lowkicks) are scored low. But other times kicks and punches are scored equally

K-1 kickboxing allows knees, but no clinch (since they make for slow fights. They used to be allowed clinch throw one knee and then release, but that was banned since it was difficult to enforce -see Overeem vs Teixeira in the 2009 championship) -although you are allowed to do onehanded hooks+knees- and no elbows (since they cause a lot of cuts and resulting premature stoppage).
Throws are not scored or allowed in k-1, but they have been lax in enforcing this (see basically any 2009 fight with overeem).
In Muay thai kicks that hits the arms are scored as hits. In k-1 kicks to the arms are counted as blocked, and are scored as misses.
__________________
Most people can´t think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.
-R.A.Heinlein

If you want to learn more on kickboxing or just want infomation on MMA/UFC the you can go to the Sherdog website by clicking the title above...