WaffleNinja

I just read Sylvie's blog. The story of the young woman martial artist going to train with the old master who puts her on a harsh training regiment made me think of this:

True, but I dont have much hope for a 20 year old muay Thai phenom suddenly leaving the sport for MMA. As for the Russian guy, the fight was at 65kg I'm pretty sure and that guy had a pretty good size advantage. Petchboonchu would probably compete at 135 if serious about mma. He is pretty worn and I don't see him becoming a superstar, but maybe he would become the champion of ONE C or WSOF.

There are rumors that Petchboonchu has been training MMA and may go pro. I think if anyone could show the world what Muay Thai has to offer its a guy like him. Maybe some waves will be made!

Good luck Sylvie! The training sounds very intense. Remember the words of Ali, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. Also glad to know I am among fellow language nerds :lol: Personally I didn't really enjoy German class. I liked that I was legitimately learning it and starting to think in German, mostly because of the similarities with English I think, but we very quickly arrived at the point where the grammar was done and the class was basically memorize a new 80 or so words a week.

I try and show my friends Muay Thai and none of them care. Even the 18-35 y.o. males who love MMA. I can't help but speculate that guys like Sage Northcutt and Wonderboy Thompson are taking some of the wind out of Muay Thai's sails by repopularizing karate-boxing, marketed as "new breed striking." To be optimistic though, Glory is now on Fight Pass so a bunch of MMA fans will hopefully cross over to kick fighting because of it.

Sylvie and Loma are gonna fight again! I'm more excited for this than McGregor vs Diaz! Also today I learned what cacophonous means :laugh: Excellent post Kevin, reading that made me feel bad for people who don't know Sylvie's incredible story. Hollywood really ought to make a movie about her one day.

So intense! I gotta watch that fight now!

Looking forward to reading more Kevin! I have always thought that after all this time getting to know Sylvie through her blogs it feels a bit strange that we don't hear too much from you.

Loma's reign of terror continues! Personally I'm not a fan of the interround dancers, it seems so out of place. I prefer the K-1 system of card girls doing that cool choreographed walk.

I pretty much expected Loma to land the dumps all night, she is crazy good at it! Hey Sylvie, have you tried copying her dump technique and incorporating it into your game? On a side note Chomanee has awesome shoes.

Hopefully we get someone filming it on their phone and putting it on facebook.

Awakening says Kim fights between 110 and 116 lbs, so she should have the size advantage. I'm curious about what the judging will be like.

Do you feel like the whole, become a badass world class fighter aspect of your life has transformed you as a person? Has it changed your outlook on life? If you met yourself from 10 years ago what would you tell yourself? Also did you happen to see the Lomanee vs Tessa Kakkonen fight?

You could try watching tape on highly aggressive fighters like Mike Tyson and Pornsanae and try to emulate their style.

Interesting. This topic is very fitting given your name :laugh:

The "amateur" world championships of Muay Thai just concluded. Both Loma and Lomanee competed. You can watch the replays here: https://muaythaiwc.solidtango.com/video/live-finals-muaythai-wc-2016-28-may-19-51 Its about $4 per playlist, it makes you repay each time you pick a new one, and the playlists are divided by days. **********Spoilers below!********** Both Loma and Lomanee lost! With that said, IFMA obviously doesn't use Thai scoring because Loma faced the same girl as last time and tossed her around like a rag doll just like last time. To the other girl's credit, she did land a nice head kick and some nice punches in the fight, but she still got dominated. The Lomanee fight was much closer, and I'm no expert on Thai scoring, but it looked to me like a legitimate win for the other girl. Round 1 they landed about equal kicks but the other girl landed much more punches. Round 2 Lomanee landed more kicks, but the other girl swept her twice! Round 3 was a back and forth round where Lomanee did better I think. She didn't seem surprised by the decision. The Loma fight is in the Finals playlist, the Lomanee fight is in the May 24th playlist. The girl Loma fought was Liashkevich, the girl Lomanee fought was Tessa Kakkonen.

My old roommate tore his acl. He had to have it reconstructed with a cadaver tendon. I have also heard that without this procedure your performance can be permanently affected.

I have a bit of anecdotal evidence that also suggests this kind of thing can be really limiting. I was on my high school's wrestling team and after a few years of wrestling the really dedicated kids got a chance to go on a trip to go to Poland and train with a Polish wrestling team. When we got there it wasn't long before it we noticed that the Polish guys were doing fine against our guys, but the Polish girls were getting crushed against our girls. After a while we found out that in Poland the men and women aren't allowed to wrestle each other, and the limitations showed in their performance.

It has always been striking to me how I can see you strongly value traditions and see their quaint beauty, yet oppose the bottom rope thing. I think there is much of tradition that we should maintain yet also elements that can be gracefully discarded to improve our societies. To me the rope thing reminds me a lot of the Christian and Buddhist religious institutions which reserve the highest of ranks for men. The practice suggests a lesser status of women, but I have always been under the impression that it is just seen as a harmless practice by most women. Maybe I haven't asked around enough though! Btw your current win streak is pretty awesome!

Yes this is an interesting topic. It reminds me of the more well documented "noble savage" stereotype of indigenous Americans. Its not racist in the malicious hatefully sense, but it is a racial prejudice which leads to a cultural misunderstandings, and is in its own way degrading. The "other" is held to a lower standard, so even when the intention is to help them, it is still conceptualizing them as in some way lesser. It is interesting how it seemingly does, consciously or subconsciously, complement the trope of the heroic compassionate male who saves the damsel in distress. I have a hunch they have an enabling effect on each other, and because the damsel in distress aspect seems more pervasive across cultures(possibly a bias of incomplete evidence on my part here) I think it is the independent variable which facilitates the ethnic preconceptions.

Great posts! I will be watching for this sort of thing from now on in fights.

Edit: just realized this is the Euro championship and not the world championship :laugh:

Good post Kevin! I agree that the Thai version will only exist in the West among a small group of purists, but it seems like that is how it has always been. Another factor which might have an effect on the Thai style is the (growing?) feeling in Thailand that scoring is too influenced by the gamblers. Samart put out a video on youtube where he said the Thai scoring is set up to benefit gamblers(easy to throw a fight by losing balance, etc) and leads to fights which only show off some of Muay Thai's beautiful weapons(way more kicks and knees than punches and elbows).

I always wondered what the local perspective was, very interesting!

That's an interesting perspective! I think it makes sense in an American context, yet I wonder if these same dynamics can be applied to say, Japanese society, where MMA started before it did in America and attained a much greater popularity at its peak. I think the biggest appeal MMA has is the Bloodsport/Mortal Kombat element, put all the tough guys in a big tournament with minimal rules and see who's the best. It explains why MMA is growing fast in so many different societies, it explains why the same development happened in Brazil 50 years earlier, and in ancient Greece thousands of years earlier. Maybe this is also what hinders the development of Muay Thai. Can a crowd looking to find their champion gladiator who overcomes all trials invest themselves in Muay Thai after having seen stand up fighters smothered by MMA grapplers? Maybe to most MMA crossover fans Muay Thai will always be a secondary interest for this reason, while most fans will never be passionate enough to seek a second fight sport. The one thing that kind of throws a monkey wrench into this theory is the enduring and global appeal of boxing. This begs the question, can Muay Thai achieve the same global appeal as boxing? Maybe, but I think it would need a catalyst, like if it became an Olympic sport.