Sanda and the throws nobody else kept

Sanda — also written sanshou — was developed from 1979 as the full-contact competitive arm of Chinese martial arts. Its rulebook made one decision that separates it from every other major striking code: throws and sweeps score, and score well.

The reason is lineage. Chinese wrestling, shuai jiao, is old and institutionally strong, and the people writing the sanda rules saw no reason to discard it. So a sanda bout permits catching a kick and dumping the kicker, and traditional competition is contested on a raised platform, the lei tai, where forcing an opponent off it also scores.

The tactical consequence is immediate. Under K-1 rules a fighter can throw round kicks freely, because being caught costs nothing but a lost position. Under sanda, the same kick against a good wrestler is an invitation to be put on the floor and scored against. Sanda fighters therefore kick differently — faster retraction, more front kicks, more attention to what happens after the kick lands.

Cui Fei, Muslim Salikhov and Yi Long all came through this system before moving into kickboxing or mixed martial arts, and the catch-and-sweep habit tends to follow them. In the comparator, sanda is the only listed ruleset where a throw is a scoring action rather than a foul.