Phil Boutros

Yeah, I'm very familiar with the federal issue (to say the least, read ahead), and how every province has decided to interpret the laws however they want. There are a few ways to get it done, either with approval of the lieutenant governor, as you stated, but also by a body designated by the legislature. For some reason, here in BC, they had allowed amateur specifically, but not pro kickboxing or Muay Thai. Pro (and amateur) MMA was sanctioned for years. A bunch of people had been hounding the BC commission for years to try to change this here. I finally got tired of it, and actually wrote a bunch of stuff down. It turned into a rather popular petition. And, in large part thanks to that (or so my sources tell me), pro kickboxing is allegedly legal here now. No one has done a show yet, because it was supposed to start in early 2020. Feel free to use any of this if you so desire (it's public domain, after all). It took a while, but it eventually worked: https://www.change.org/p/bc-athletic-commission-allow-professional-kickboxing-and-muay-thai-in-british-columbia

I'm rather disappointed and sad to hear that my old home gym, Tri-Star, doesn't seem to have a good reputation in the Montreal Muay Thai scene anymore. I haven't lived in Montreal in almost 20 years now, but back then (when Conrad owned it), it had a great reputation. Heck, it was one of the few places where you could learn real Muay Thai back then. I learned first under Conrad, then under Peter Sisomphou (known on the Internet as the rather comical Muay Thai Masta) there for years. Is David Loiseau's gym (The Crow Training Center) still going? I have no idea what the place is like, when I left Montreal, David had just been training at Tri-Star for a bit. My goodness, is that still true? Back then, we could only do "American kickboxing", with kicks only above the waist, etc, in amateurs. But if you did Kyokushin Karate, you could have low kicks. Brilliant. I thought they had started allowing low kicks and knees for amateurs.