I was aware that the Japanese trained Thaiboxing aswell, just thought they'd be alot more geared towards Kyokushin or some other form of Karate, which I still believe can be an effective base for Kickfighting as long as you have a strong ability with the basic techniques and immerse yourself into the fundamentals of Boxing to round out your game, I don't take alot of the hand techniques they, along with TKD, teach very seriously though... TKD teaches one of the silliest punch techniques I've ever seen:
trained it for several years when I was a boy, didn't think much of it at first, but the more I practiced that technique the more I realized what a bunch of non-sense it was, my head instructor always said "hit someody in the solar plexus with this and you'll knock the wind out of them" yeah, if you can land it. You'd never see someone use it in free sparring, let alone in an actual fight, competition or street. They teach a great arsenal of kicks and it gave me a good base that now allows me to train other arts more easily because of this and fantastic leg dexterity and explosiveness/athletic movement, but that's really all ever took from it.
Funny thing, I'm still in love with alot of those kicks, I'm currently watching a Keiji Ozaki fight. That dude is fast with those spins.
Would like to train at Banchamek and Poptheratham gym one day, if they'll have me. Both Buakaw and Samart are big influences on me. Wish there was more footage of Samart, I can't seem to find much on YouTube, but that man had a great style, strong teeps and great hands.