For nearly a century, Thailand has cultivated their national form of combat, molding what was unarmed military self defense into a viable professional sport, and proving along the way that their style of stand-up fighting is one of the most durable and enduring forms of violence.
A cultural phenomenon and high at the list of things to see for the discerning tourist visiting Thailand, Muay Thai has caught on around the globe, with many organizations purporting to have ‘World’ champions and various variations of the sport staging bouts every week and a good level of competition in the United States and Europe.
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And yet, there is only one place to see the crème de la crème compete, and that is Bangkok, recently found to be the most visited capital city in the World.
So even with Muay Thai being seen by many international visitors to Thailand why hasn’t the buzz been carried home with them? Admittedly Muay Thai isn’t the easiest sport to follow for the Westerner for a number of reasons.
Seemingly unpronounceable names of which the spelling changes depending on who’s in charge of the Romanisation? Check.
While the fights themselves don’t generate as much online traffic as boxing and mixed martial arts do, there is no problem Muay Thai, or Thai Boxing, lacking name recognition.
With new attention being diverted towards the East with the incorporation of Thai techniques into the regimen of any MMA fighter worth his salt, it can be sensibly argued that Muay Thai is the second most successful home grown export after rice.
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But this has happened before, and foreigners learning and using Muay Thai didn’t bring much international attention to the Bangkok fight scene itself.
The First Invasion & Kickboxing Boom
The outward expansion started nearly thirty years ago, when Jean Claude Van Damme’s cult ‘classic’ movie ‘Kickboxer’, shot in Thailand, made the quintessentially Thai style more visible to the wider World.
An international boom followed in the late 80s and early 90s, and saw a migration of nasty French and Dutchman to the Far East to test their mettle and further their ability to dish out bone crunching savagery.
However, the Japanese had got there first, sending their best Karetekas to Thailand in the 60s, with mixed results (there is talk of some Japanese beating Thai’s but aren’t much in the way of concrete sources, and videos show the Japanese being badly outmatched)
Learning what was needed to turn their rigid kata based martial art into a sport, the Japanese developed Kyokushin, a full-contact Karate sport, and sent their men back, culminating in Toshio Fujiwara becoming the first non-Thai to win a major title.
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At the start of the 90s, K-1, a professional kickboxing organization which came out of Kyokushin, was big business in Japan and internationally but focusing on larger fighters and within the confines of a rule set that was much easier for the Western fight fan to grasp.
At the start of the new millennium, K-1 branched out into promoting warriors on the lower end of the scale with their ‘MAX’ imprint, and made a bona fide Thai superstar out of Buakaw Por Pramuk when he won the K-1 title.
An international boom followed in the late 80s and early 90s, and saw a migration of nasty French and Dutchman to the Far East to test their mettle and further their ability to dish out bone crunching savagery.
Thomas Griffin 