Burklerk Pinsinchai: Master of Sweeps

In partnership with

Hey y’all,

Right now I’m on vacation to catch-up with an old friend in Ireland. I didn’t have time to write an article this week so I asked my friend to write something about the best foot sweeper you’ve never heard of.

If you want to learn about foot sweeps from the one of the best muay thai fighters you’ve never heard of, this article is for you.

Now let’s get into it.

Few takedowns are as elegant and satisfying as a well-timed foot sweep. Something about its deceptively effortless nature hearkens back to the classic childhood fantasy of martial arts, where a weedy old master can flip a professional athlete on his back with nothing but his own momentum and the power of leverage. It’s the ultimate low effort, high reward technique, capable of achieving a dominant position with little more than an off-balancing tug and a flick of the ankle.

Most of the foot sweeps we see in grappling sports and MMA are the Judo sort, where the foot is turned inward and the inside or bottom of the foot used to guide the opponent’s leg out from underneath them. Nowadays you’ll see these foot sweeps in Muay Thai as well, but before the early 2000s, there was somewhere between a taboo and a prohibition on sweeping with the inside or bottom of the foot, meaning Thais had to get a bit more creative in their approach.

Burklerk Pinsinchai was one such Thai. One of the most creative sweep artists you’ll see in any sport, Burklerk fought in Muay Thai’s Golden Age, winning his first major title in 1983 and twice capturing the Lumpini Stadium Flyweight Championship. He was known as a master of balance breaking attacks, famous for his ability to kick out his opponents’ legs as they kicked, but equally capable of picking the perfect moment to shove them halfway across the ring.

There’s plenty of techniques and variations to sweep out a foot, but in essence they all tend to involve three main elements. First, the defender’s weight is removed from the leg being attacked, either by force or convincing them to do it themselves. Once the leg is light and easily moved, the foot is swept aside. At the same time, the defender’s weight is pulled or pushed back over the empty space where the foot used to be, toppling them over.

The standard setups for foot sweeps tend to involve timing the sweep when the defender steps out with the leg, or lightening the leg through pushing or pulling with an upper body tie. Kicking sports offer another option, as fighters need to put themselves on one leg to throw a kick or a knee. It was then that Burklerk’s sweeps found their mark.

Burklerk fought out of an orthodox stance and relied on finesse over power - in Muay Thai, this meant that he was often matched with hard-kicking southpaws looking to slam their rear leg into his open side, one of the highest scoring blows in Muay Thai. He couldn’t match many of them blow for blow, but his slick sweeps allowed him to attack the southpaw kicker’s main weapon directly and take it away.

While sweeping with the instep was necessary due to Muay Thai’s rules at the time, it also offers advantages for this type of sweep. Brushing aside with the inside of the foot is useful for quickly catching an opponent off guard during a step, but when kicking, the standing leg is rooted to the ground with weight on it for most of the motion, so being able to put some force into it is helpful to break that connection.

Burklerk typically fought out of a narrow stance with his feet close together, which often contrasted with his opponents’ wider, more set stances. A wider stance is typical of power kickers, coiling them to smoothly transfer weight forward into their rear kick. Burklerk’s advantages lay in quickness and finesse, and keeping his feet closer together allowed him to quickly shift weight between either foot, positioning himself to go second as his opponent kicked while landing first.

But it wasn’t just a matter of reacting to the kicks as they came. Timing is the most important element of scoring a clean foot sweep. When using it to counter a kick, there’s a moment during the peak of the kicker’s arc when the hip of his standing leg flexes and he drives up onto the ball of his foot to whip his kicking leg forward. This is the ideal time to strike, as the standing foot has little to no weight on it for a brief millisecond. However, it’s difficult to counter with such precision using reaction alone - as with any good counter, the key to consistently timing it well is to draw out and anticipate the strike you want to punish.

Burklerk was a master at convincing his opponents to throw their body kick when he was ready to sweep. His subtle retreating footwork and lateral movement allowed him to position himself so that the open side kick was his opponent’s most available weapon. He would also let some kicks fall on his guard (a scoring blow in Muay Thai), encouraging his opponent to repeat the kick with more commitment.

One of the simplest ways to draw out a strike is to throw it at the opponent first. This works especially well with kicks, since a fighter trying to answer back from kicking range has fewer options than they do in close.

Another benefit to Burklerk’s narrow stance is that it let him flow through stance switches seamlessly, as his feet didn’t need to reposition far to put him in the opposite stance. He would shift stances on retreat to control which targets were open to his opponent, but his shifting in kicking exchanges was a particularly powerful tool to score foot sweeps.

In Muay Thai, you’ll often see fighters switch stances in kicking exchanges in order to close off their open side. For an orthodox fighter, the right side of his body is “open” meaning kicks on that side will land on his ribs and the squishy bits of his body, rather than his more solid lat and back muscles. The open side is the primary target for kicks in Muay Thai, as it does more damage and has more power to move the opponent off balance. A fighter who can score a kick to his opponent's open side and then switch stances so their counter kick falls on his closed side has won the exchange, trading a higher scoring and more damaging strike for a lesser one.

A stance switch mid-exchange changes the targets available to the opponent, the distance the exchange takes place at, and which threats you present. Burklerk would often avoid kicks by stepping back into the opposite stance, extending the distance and taking him outside the kick’s range. A quick shifting attack can also surprise a fighter by hitting him with a weapon that wasn’t available only a moment ago, and that’s where his foot sweep came in.

While Burklerk was famous for yoinking fighters off their feet as they tried to kick him, aggressive punchers weren’t safe either. It’s a bit trickier to sweep out a puncher since they spend more time with both feet rooted to the ground. But in order to close distance into punching range, they have to commit to a forward step at some point, and that’s when their base becomes vulnerable.

The final component to a good Muay Thai sweep is the graceful exit. In a sport like Muay Thai where scoring rewards balance, poise, and composure, selling the move can be almost as important as landing it in the first place. And nothing emphasizes dominance better than a graceful turn and sashay away while your opponent flails through the air.

You can find Ryan on MixingMartialArts.com, where he writes about combat sports technique and tactics including MMA, Muay Thai, and Freestyle Wrestling. Along with regular free breakdowns, a $5/month subscription gets you access to a deep and growing library of in-depth premium articles, as well as early access to video breakdowns.

If you enjoyed this article and crave more Muay Thai content, check out Jomwo Chernyim: Lead Leg Kicking & the Secrets of a Narrow Stance.

I also write about grappling: Rani Yahya's Crushing Top Pressure and Deep Half Shenanigans.