A sad day for Muay Thai as European excursion fails to impress
Yesterday was supposed to be the day that Muay Thai went mainstream with Thai Fights putting on an exclusive, invitation only card at the Cannes Film Festival. The idea was presumably to sell the sport to the Hollywood types in town but the actual execution of the event was far from impressive.
The show, which was televised live on Channel 3 in Thailand, began badly with a five minute speech by a Thai politician Suwat Liptapanlop. The former Deputy Prime Minister is an avid supporter of several sports and a very recognizable figure in Thailand but he is hardly likely to impress a cynical audience in Cannes.
In Thailand sporting audiences are used to having to sit through lengthy introductions to people who, for whatever reason, have a high status in society but in Europe giving the stage to a politician rather than, say, a rock band just seemed a little quaint.
The invitation only nature of the even meant that the crowd was unlikely to consist of fight fans, let alone people with an interest in a minority sport such as Muay Thai, so the onus really was on the promotion to try and impress. Unfortunately, instead of trying to put on close, competitive fights they chose to match all five Thai fighters with inferior European opponents.
This might have worked well in Thailand where crowds never cease to tire of seeing homegrown fighters outclass farang, but in the slightly more refined surroundings of the Cannes Film Festival it was a little embarrassing. All five Thais won comfortably, the outcomes of their fights were never in doubt and only the most die hard supporter of all things Thai would have found any of them remotely entertaining.
Buakaw Por Pramuk, two times K-1 Max Tournament winner and Yodsaenklai Fairtex, winner of the Contender Asia TV show were both on the card. They are Muay Thais most marketable stars but are still far from being household names and people with no previous interest in the sport would have been unlikely to won over by the spectacle of a couple of marquee fighters going through the motions.
It was essential that at least some of the fights ended in fireworks but the matchmaking had the absolute opposite effect. Four of the five Thai fighters on the card weighed between 70kgs and 72.5kgs and could easily have been asked to fight one another but instead they were all given eminently winnable and overwhelmingly uninteresting match ups.
Whether self imposed or otherwise there was clearly a no blood policy in operation which is simply impractical in a fight sport which allows the use of elbows. As a result of this policy the first fight of the night ended after less than 30 seconds, to the bemusement of the audience, when one fighter suffered a cut which was certainly not severe enough to be clearly visible on the TV broadcast.
Muay Thai is such an entertaining spectacle precisely because of the blood which is sometimes on display, the guts of the fighters and the glory of reaching the top of weight divisions which are amongst the most competitive in the world. By trying to sanitize it for the Cannes audience Thai Fights actually removed many of the key components to the sports appeal.
If any of the Cannes crowd had been at the Channel 7 Stadium in Bangkok this lunchtime and witnessed the well matched back and forth fights with almost half ending in highlight reel knockouts they might well have been sold on the sport. Instead they must be confused and bemused as to why anyone would find Muay Thai entertaining after witnessing a show which even the most fanatical fight fan would struggle to enjoy.
It is not that difficult to put on a really good Muay Thai event, promoters in Thailand manage to do it almost every night for a fraction of the Thai Fights budget. In offering such an insipid, diluted, half-hearted version of Muay Thai this event did the national sport of Thailand a huge disservice.
http://asiancorrespondent.com/54507/a-sad-day-for-muay-thai-as-thai-fights-european-excursion-fails-to-impress/
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