Forum preservation thread

[jtwarwagon4life]

4. Now if they do get into the muay that scene a little bit, there is still no single big organisation that is easy enough for them to follow. Most people are lazy as shit nowadays. If you think alot of people are willing to spend hundreds of hours to follow muay thai like we do, you're deluded. Glory provides fight cards once a month and is easier to stick with for the average guy.

There is no one major organization in kickboxing either. If people just watched all and only the weekday Raja cards, they would have a decent sense of the major goings on muay thai. Better than if they only watched Glory.

 

[Kanka]

There is no one major organization in kickboxing either. If people just watched all and only the weekday Raja cards, they would have a decent sense of the major goings on muay thai. Better than if they only watched Glory.

Yeah there is no major but western people are tricked into thinking Glory is one. K-1 and Glory are established brands. Does muay thai have a big brand?

 

[jtwarwagon4life]

And funnily enough I've been in Thailand for a few weeks and all the Thai and Burmese muay thai fans I've talked to in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chiang rai, and koh pagnan when I asked who their favourite fighter is they usually say Buakaw or Saenchai 90% of the time, and those guys watch muay thai on TV all the time, go to the stadiums, and bet on the fights. And they don't really know anything about the western kickboxing scene.

This alone makes your whole point about the west ignoring thai fighters unless they are international a lot less valid. The majority of Thai people's favourite fighters are those Thai fighters fighting international and not the young stadium fighters.

I'll ignore the fact that this is totally anecdotal evidence because it makes no difference either way.

People in the west don't even know of the existence of muay thai fighters beyond Buakaw and Saenchai.

And most people in the west couldn't even make the distinction between someones being their favourite muay thai fighter and being the best. Buakaw is people's favorite muay thai fighter because to their mind he is the best and the only one they even know.

 

[jtwarwagon4life]

Yeah there is no major but western people are tricked into thinking Glory is one. K-1 and Glory are established brands. Does muay thai have a big brand?

The stadiums? Lots of people who don't watch muay thai have at least heard about them.

 

[jtwarwagon4life]

And yet the sport is ruined by the pace of the fights being dictated by the gambling and gamblrers. Why even bother having round 1 and 5? Why do fighters sometimes suddenly decide to coast for the rest of the fight? I don't see that shit in KB or MMA. Even Samart is disgusted by the current state of stadium Muay Thai.

And yet the quality of fights in the stadiums is still amazing.

Doubt that muay thai could really exist in the way we know it without gambling, it's been part of the sport for a long time. To eliminate it would probably kill the sport. And in many ways it the sport is better for it: the fights are always matched up more evenly, there is a more consistent officiating standard, the best always fight the best. The gambling is a big part of the reason for this, if we start making concessions to "sports entertainment", then we may be looking forward to more Yassine Boughanem vs Benz RSM or Chi Lewis Perry fights.

 

[Kanka]

The stadiums? Lots of people who don't watch muay thai have at least heard about them.

"MuayTies" is probably the closest you'll get to a unitary brand that is easy enough to understand. "The Stadiums" might be a brand conceptually but it's complex, not unitary.

 

[jtwarwagon4life]

3. If they happened to like muay thai they would still not know how to get into the muay thai scene. If they googled they would probably find Saenchai, Buakaw, Yodsanklai and maybe a few more. This is part of the reason they're so famous. If the managers and promoters behind Panpayak, Saen, Pet U Thong, Superlek etc did market themselves towards an international audience, they would be easier to find to begin with. But they're not and even if they do find them, they're not going to understand the level of fighters they are.

I wouldn't want to lay too much of the credit or discredit at the feet of the managers and promoters. Much of the hype around famous muay thai fighters is due to the fact that that there a random fight fans who make highlight videos of their favourite fighters. And because these guys only watch international muay thai then pretty much all of the highlights they've made are about Buakaw, Saenchai, Yod, etc.

You can pretty much say the same thing about journalists. They tend to highlight thais who fight international so there is almost never any incentive given for the average fan to care about Satanmuanglek or whoever.

 

[Kanka]

And yet the quality of fights in the stadiums is still amazing.

Doubt that muay thai could really exist in the way we know it without gambling, it's been part of the sport for a long time. To eliminate it would probably kill the sport. And in many ways it the sport is better for it: the fights are always matched up more evenly, there is a more consistent officiating standard, the best always fight the best. The gambling is a big part of the reason for this, if we start making concessions to "sports entertainment", then we may be looking forward to more Yassine Boughanem vs Benz RSM or Chi Lewis Perry fights.

I agree with all of this, but i also understand that it leads to certain shows attracting certain demographics. In thailand stadium fights are considered to be a thai equivalent of redneck sport aka gamblers who are their targeted audience. They don't even televise the best fights.

K-1, Thai Fight and whatever international kickfighting promotions there are out there probably try to get young fans who are more likely to react to hype.

I'm not sure if international muay thai gets that more coverage though i think it's more about the fighters. Any fight with Saenchai, Buakaw and Yodsanklai does get coverage.

I wouldn't want to lay too much of the credit or discredit at the feet of the managers and promoters. Much of the hype around famous muay thai fighters is due to the fact that that there a random fight fans who make highlight videos of their favourite fighters. And because these guys only watch international muay thai then pretty much all of the highlights they've made are about Buakaw, Saenchai, Yod, etc.

Yes that too.

 

[jtwarwagon4life]

I'm not sure if international muay thai gets that more coverage though i think it's more about the fighters. Buakaw, Yodsanklai and

Well then how did guys like Yodsanklai and Saenchai ever get famous in the first place? It wasn't because of their stadium runs that people wanted to watch them in Slamm and The Contender.

 

[Kanka]

Well then how did guys like Yodsanklai and Saenchai ever get famous in the first place? It wasn't because of their stadium runs that people wanted to watch them in Slamm and The Contender.

Maybe when they fought in promotions that focused on an international audience? Nothing weird about it at all...

 

[Snubnoze707]

Does anyone know where I can cop the new Buakaw's?

 

[DastardlyMass]

Still requires less investment. Muay thai requires more time and more thinking. As i said, people are lazy.

going to muaythai2000.com instead of glorykickboxing.com or liverkick to find the fight card is not more investment

 

[Kanka]

going to muaythai2000.com instead of glorykickboxing.com or liverkick to find the fight card is not more investment

Read my posts again

 

[DastardlyMass]

Read my posts again

i have and you just keep claiming it is easier to follow kickboxing than muaythai when you have to do the exact same thing to find out who is fighting and watch the event. It requires no more or less thinking as i said earlier the glory commenters have no clue who is winning so you still going to be thinking about the scoring like your claiming you would have to do with muaythai

You act like glory is the ufc with a large media company using its sports channel to hype them when that is certainly not the case.

 

[Kanka]

i have and you just keep claiming it is easier to follow kickboxing than muaythai when you have to do the exact same thing to find out who is fighting and watch the event. It requires no more or less thinking as i said earlier the glory commenters have no clue who is winning so you still going to be thinking about the scoring like your claiming you would have to do with muaythai

You act like glory is the ufc with a large media company using its sports channel to hype them when that is certainly not the case.

If you think they're equally to understand good for you. I'm just trying to understand the situation from a general point of view or from a casual fans perspective. If you don't agree with me i con't have more to add but the results speak for themselves.

 

[Tayski]

you people act like glory has some huge tv deal and has advertisements all over the place. You can only find out a glory fight card on the internet which is the same damn place you can find any high level muaythai card. If you want to watch glory live you have to do it on the internet and if you want to watch the entire full show you must watch on the internet as the sfs is on fight pass which must paid for on top of that.

The only difference between the two products at this point is english commentary but because for some reason everyone glory uses refuses to do proper pre fight investigate work on the fighters they only give you info you can find in 30 seconds with a google search of the fighters name. Bazooka joe has been calling fights for them for like 2 years and still can not tell the audience what scores and what doesnt or how to even remotely score a bout. SO it is not like this english commentary they have is bringing much to the table

Glory does Internet advertising, TV advertising, and street advertising. I guess there is street advertising and local TV advertising for muay thai in Thailand, however I don't come across TV adverts in western countries and I travel a lot. However I've seen adverts for glory events for example when I visited my parents in France it was on French national TV, they mentioned it on the main news channel that the event was coming at the weekend (it was a Glory France event granted). Glory also release all their events' fights on their own YouTube channel (luckily we have some muay thai fans doing for that for us), they have trailers, interviews with the fighters etc. It's more marketing than it is done for stadium muay thai. The fact no one barelly knows what lineups are coming up in the next 3 weeks or more at Lumpini says enough about how much marketing is done. Event the Lumpini website is clunky, not updated and with dead links.

The Glory events are also broadcasted on several international TV channels. At this point even k-1 of today doesn't have that.

English commentary is not for the hard-core fans like us, more for the casuals who need to be a bit educated and which is the biggest chunk of any sports' followers and watchers. The majority of people watch football on TV, but only a very few actually understand all the strategy, all the clubs' player lineups and transfers, how much they have to score to get x points or go through, etc.

The commentary also adds to the excitement, and as I mentioned before I got my gf into mma and kickboxing and she now really likes it, understands it and knows about the fighters, their recent wins and losses etc. For Stadium muay thai, unless we are physically there watching it live like we have done a couple of times (which she really enjoyed and appreciated the skills displayed), I cannot get her to watch more than 1 or maybe 2 YouTube fights when at home. And that's not just a problem with Thailand and stadium Muay Thai, it's the same with Kunlun and current k-1.

 

[Tayski]

People who are fight geeks don't even follow real muay thai either and neither do pretty much any kickfighting journalists or combat sports websites. But they somehow still manage to find a way to overcome all these obstacles when it's a random muay thai card in Japan or K1 or a kickboxing card in china or whatever.

Again marketing and communication. As Kanka rightly pointed out, most people are lazy and will go for what they can easily get or what comes to them.

I previously gave the example of the Russian MMA scene which is a great scene and has many top level fighters and cards, yet no mma journalists from the West follow that scene or post about it on combat sport websites.

 

[Tayski]

I'll ignore the fact that this is totally anecdotal evidence because it makes no difference either way.

People in the west don't even know of the existence of muay thai fighters beyond Buakaw and Saenchai.

And most people in the west couldn't even make the distinction between someones being their favourite muay thai fighter and being the best. Buakaw is people's favorite muay thai fighter because to their mind he is the best and the only one they even know.

Except that I'm talking about Thai and Burmese people that I met here in Thailand and who barelly speak English, not westeners.

It's anecdotal, but it goes against your theory of the West not being educated about stadium muay thai while people who live here in Thailand and watch fights both on TV and casually don't know most of the fighters and have Buakaw or saenchai as their favourites. Clearly its not like the general Thai muay thai public is as educated about the sport and its fighters as you try to make us think.

Even some regular gamblers don't even know the fighters and just bet on whatever the good odds are instead...

 

[Tayski]

The stadiums? Lots of people who don't watch muay thai have at least heard about them.

Only combat sport prctisioners, hard-core fans and people of Thailand. Back in Europe, I can guarantee no one I know who isn't a combat sport freak or martial arts prctisioner knows about Lumpini and raja.

 

[Tayski]

And yet the quality of fights in the stadiums is still amazing.

Doubt that muay thai could really exist in the way we know it without gambling, it's been part of the sport for a long time. To eliminate it would probably kill the sport. And in many ways it the sport is better for it: the fights are always matched up more evenly, there is a more consistent officiating standard, the best always fight the best. The gambling is a big part of the reason for this, if we start making concessions to "sports entertainment", then we may be looking forward to more Yassine Boughanem vs Benz RSM or Chi Lewis Perry fights.

I agree with the quality of the fights.

However I partly disagree about gambling being good for the sport. It brings mafia involvement, corruption, bribing, people getting shot, fighters being poisoned, and all kind of other bad things.

It's what may be keeping the sporg alive but it certainly isn't healthy.