And when people do try and correct people on basic facts about the sport or moan about the extend of the misinformation or outright lying that goes on about muay thai, then they get called hipsters and fanboys. Goes to show how backward the English speaking kickfighting community is.
Its just not as romantic a folk tale if you say "Some Thais were doing that before us but we were the first besides them, and when we fought the Thais most of us lost but there was this one guy who could beat Thais who weren't half his size. Then K-1 changed the rules so we don't really fight the Thais anymore" lol
Not true at all. First off, plenty of thai who fought during the 70's and 80's had a punch heavy style or were good boxers, probably more than today. Second, you've basically conceded that what the Dutch were doing was not in any way unique. And thirdly if the Dutch did such a great job at combining boxing and kicking and this was such a great and revolutionary development, then how come they have so little to show for it. Which Dutch fighters wiped the floor with the Thais? Mikael Liewfat? Andre Massuer? Leo da Snoo? Michael Babb? Tommy Van Dan Berg? Where was their great boxing? Watch the fights between dutch and thai fighters which took place from the mid 80s to mid 90's, they would have fought each other hundreds of times. The Dutch maybe won 5 or 10% of the fights and they got beat up every which way. No objective observer could watch those fights and think that the Dutch a substantial advantage in any area.
That isn't true. The majority of the dutch guys I know of from the 80's to early 90's fought at 70kgs or below. You just don't know who they are because they had to fight against stiff competition unlike the Hoosts, Smits and Cikatic's of the world. All the guys who I already named fought at about 70kgs or less, but there are plenty of other guys where that came from. The vast majority of the fighters from the Netherlands during that era have been forgotten and for good reason, they weren't any good.
Again, not true. There had already been Japanese fighters in the 70's who achieved result which were better than anything the Dutch have ever done, and one even won a stadium title. French fighters from the 80' and 90's, who were contemporaries of the guys you mentioned, were more accomplished than almost all the best Dutch fighters. Fighters from the UK would arguably have been the equals of most of the Dutch contingent at the time.
Again, if you go back to the original point you were defending Rutten and saying there was some truth to what he was saying, there isn't. The Dutch didn't wipe the floor with the Thais, they got handily beat in every era that they fought them.
Dany BillThey were a lot of good French and Japanese fighters at the time too, but the lists aren't as long. How many can you name?
No. As I already said these guys were contemporaries with the Dutch guys I listed, most of them fought from the late 80's or early 90's into the late 90's or early 2000s.
It's not "arguable" that the Thais dominate muay thai today, they do dominate muay thai today. The thais have and do dominate muay thai to an extent which is far greater than any other mainstream combat sport I know of.
I think its just that those stories about the 80s and 90s fighters happened before there was internet or when there was primative expensive internet, so there wasn't anyone doing fact checking and the mythology spiraled out of control. Now we find ourselves in the awkward position of being given all the facts and noting the discrepancies. They will be corrected, but it takes time.
