The recent female muaythai events have shown that the Thai female boxers are still for from being professional.

It is hard to believe that a fighter like Samson Sor Siriporn would deserve to be the world champion. She did not show any punching combinations, while her short-ranged punching was pretty much ineffective. Perhaps the root of the problem is that she was trained in the international boxing tradition, not the one of muaythai.

She could only beat the Japanese fighters and only in domestic tournaments. It is already very hard for the Thai women to be qualified to fight in matches abroad, let alone winning.

With two matches a week, the Thai women do not get to practice more than simple stepping and the basic grappling and kneeing. In the match, they typically skip punching and kicking, going straight to grappling and some weak kneeing. There is barely any technique to see whatsoever.

There are two reasons the Thai people watch muaythai – gambling and entertainment. The female fighters, however, could not provide a statisfaction to either. For the gamblers, they think the female matches too often end up with fighters whose skills are of different tiers. For the others, they may feel excited at first to see women fight but soon they grow bored with the lack of skills of the fighters.

Not helping with problem is the cancel of the plan to include female boxing in the Olympics as the International Olympics Committee (IOC) believed the sport would not generate enough ratings.

Actually, the IOC was not particularly fond of boxing to begin with. They would not even include the male sport in the Olympics if it was not already there since the early games.

The amateur female muaythai is suffering the same fate as its male counterpart. Their popularity is so limited that no one would even recognize an amateur champion. Even more troubling is that fact that some female fighters shift their careers back and forth between the amateur and professional muaythai.

The Thai women really have a long way to go in muaythai.  

News: Muaytoo number 1132