Sanda vs kickboxing
Sanda scores throws. That single addition changes how a fighter is willing to kick, because every kick is now a chance to be put on the floor.
Sanda is China's full-contact striking code, developed from 1979, and it is the only major kickboxing-adjacent ruleset where putting an opponent on the ground scores.
The reason is lineage: Chinese wrestling, shuai jiao, was institutionally strong and the people writing the sanda rulebook saw no reason to exclude it. So catching a kick and dumping the kicker is a scoring action, sweeps score, and traditional competition on the raised lei tai platform also rewards forcing an opponent off the edge.
The tactical consequence runs backwards into the striking. Under K-1 rules a fighter can throw round kicks freely — being caught costs a moment of position and nothing else. Under sanda, the same kick against a competent wrestler is an invitation to be scored on. Sanda fighters therefore kick with faster retraction, favour front kicks and side kicks over committed round kicks, and pay much more attention to what happens in the second after a kick lands.
The clinch is different too. In sanda it is a throwing opportunity rather than a knee-scoring phase or a break, so the grips and the intent are closer to wrestling than to Muay Thai.
Sanda fighters crossing into kickboxing generally keep the catch-and-sweep habit, which is a foul or a wasted action under K-1 rules, and have to unlearn it. Going the other way, kickboxers entering sanda find that their best kicks are the ones most likely to lose them the round.