WaffleNinja

The question of CMT's legitimacy as Muay Thai is also an interesting topic. If my knowledge of Muay Thai history is correct, it originally was fought in a circular sandpit with the rope wraps instead of gloves. In these regards CMT would be more similar to the original art than is stadium Muay Thai. But if we think of the stadium Muay Thai as the standard, there are still a lot of grey areas about what is real Muay Thai. Like how Thai Fight puts on those kard chuek fights, is that really Muay Thai?

My impression is that the direction Lion Fight took is not the traditional Thai style, its the aggressive style but amplified beyond what you see in Europe and Australia. The aggression of their fights is very high. It leads me to believe the aggressive style is not a significant factor in the popularity. Perhaps its simply the aesthetics being similar to UFC. I have a theory though and it goes like this: I think that the main factor is that their relative popularities are mostly the result of how they have been affected by the 90s cultural shift which created the fighting boom in Japan and the rise of the UFC in the West. Just as Muay Thai parasitizes the fan base of the UFC, Glory drew its fans from the remaining fans after the collapse of K-1, and gets the same crossover effect from the UFC. I imagine Buakaw has single handedly doubled the popularity of Muay Thai in the West through his success in K-1. Its like it creates a hierarchy of combat sports which are the most benefited from that time. It would look something like this: 1: MMA: benefited from both the rise of the UFC in America and the fighting boom in Japan. = popular 2: Kickboxing: benefited from the fighting boom in Japan, gets some crossover fans from MMA. = less than popular 3: Muay Thai: Did not directly benefit from either, but gets some crossover fans from both. = Not popular 4: Combat sports that benefit from neither and get no crossover from MMA or Kickboxing(e.g. Silat) = people have no idea what it is.

If Lion Fight were to fall, wouldn't the market demand eventually create an organization in its place, the same way when K-1 fell its place was taken by Glory? The only potential issue I see is that many casual fans consider Muay Thai and Kickboxing the same thing so that demand might be channeled into a K-1 style promotion instead.

***Spoilers: Meksen back to her winning ways!

From "LA NUIT DES TITANS" a French Muay Thai promotion. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ykkr9_anissa-meksen-vs-donatella-panu-la-nuit-des-titans-12-3-2016-tours_sport

Lion fight just said that they wired her the money this morning. Better late than never!

Very unfortunate. I admire how kickfighters pursue their passion despite the finances often not being there.

*Spoilers* Zulina got the decision. I had it: R1: Munoz 10-9 R2: Munoz 10-9 R3: Munoz 10-9 R4: McMahon 10-9 R5: McMahon 10-9 R6: Munoz 10-9 R7: McMahon 10-9 R8: Munoz 10-9 R9: McMahon 10-9 R10: McMahon 10-9 95-95 draw.

Jesus round 10 was rockem sockem robots! Two amazing warriors.

7 rounds in and McMahon still putting all her weight behind every punch!

Zulina going forward scoring in high volume, Christina backing up and countering. Zulina just walked into a few big haymakers.

Also found this link where Christina talks about some of the hardships and economic difficulties she faced getting to this point. Apparently she accepted the fight on short notice too: https://www.pledgesports.org/projects/help-christina-mcmahon-win-wbc-world-title/

Finalllyyyyy found out how to stream this. Its live now. Go to this site and click on the fight that says en vivo(live): http://internetv.tv/?route=games%2Fbrowse This one will be on in a few fights.

Super flyweight world champ Zulina Munoz vs bantamweight interim world champ Christina McMahon

Gabi's fight was crazy! Very entertaining!

One aspect of Muay Thai that interests me is that winning titles doesn't always directly correlate to supreme glory. For example, Somrak Khamsing never won a stadium title but is considered among the greatest nakmuays of all time. I remember reading one of your blogs that said to a similar effect that you don't care if you win belts as long as you get wins against the best fighters in the world. Perhaps it is not the regalia of Luminee that drives men further into their fighting careers, but a social condition which makes male success in Muay Thai more valuable than female success, both in terms of prestige and wealth. If all the major stadiums created female title but society placed the same importance on female Muay Thai as they currently do, I think the stadium titles would just play similar roles that the WPMF, IFMA, WBC, etc. titles currently do. Something very similar happens currently with the highest weight classes among male Lumpinee fighter. They're not viewed with the same prestige as the 135 and under weight classes. I saw a scientific article a few years ago that actually studied this bit of bro science by testing how sex or lack of sex changes testosterone in people. Long story short abstinence only has higher levels if a period of ~7 days is waited. Before and after the 7 day peak the levels were lower than the stable levels of the people who had regular sex. I'm a big fan of ancient history and I remember reading an ancient Pagan text which expressed the same idea. It was a father basically telling his son there is no problem with fooling around with men as long as he marries a woman and has children with her. I get the impression that the Abrahamic religions are largely responsible for the view of pure heterosexuality as "real" and everything else as this completely separate thing. Of course any traditionalist society will still have social pressures to encourage parenthood.

Hopefully nobody got hurt.

Its funny to think Japan has a popular Christmas joke that the West has no equivalent for. My first reaction to the topic is that it should be considered that it may be motherhood or potential motherhood that is the motivation for retirement, and not the marriage per se. To me working as a professional athlete doesn't seem any more or less befitting of a marriage than working any other job. However there is a difference in motherhood. If an athlete becomes pregnant they will have to stop or at least reduce training to ensure the safety of the child, and the extended period of reduced training will permanently affect the athletes ability to do their job. This also exists to an extent in some other job fields but for many jobs the mother can take a maternity leave and return to their job with no great loss in efficiency. My theory is that this either directly or indirectly causes the phenomenon.

I'm impressed that now even tiny villages have MMA gyms! Go to the MMA gym and ask if you can pay a reduced fee to only go to Muay Thai sessions. If so that's what I would choose. The training won't be as good as a pure Muay Thai gym but I don't think it will hinder your progress by any means.

I really admire her courage to talk so openly about what are clearly very personal emotional experiences. I think the haters are more likely to go after her for the Travis comment, even they usually have at least the small amount of humanity required to realize that making fun of suicidal thoughts is too far.

I'm guessing you need itunes to leave a review because I don't see the option on that page. Edit: I opened my old itunes from like 2008 that I never update and found the podcast and the option to review was there.

Ashley vs Chomanee would be epic!

A friend of mine went to Thailand mostly as a tourist. He likes Muay Thai but didn't train it or anything. He met some guys at a local bar and became friends with them and eventually found out one of them was a former Lumpinee champion. He was working a normal job and was indistinguishable from any other guy.

I went looking for a video of the fight and didnt find it, but i did find this gif of the finish: https://gfycat.com/LiveBlondGlobefish Yikes! She is a scary girl. I also found this cool art work of her:

Until now I had always read your posts in my head with an American accept, its kinda tripping me out to read your posts in your real voice now :laugh: Great first episode, I agree with Dtrick that talking about the female fight scene and the different fighters is a good topic to discuss on the podcast.