Now I would like to refer you to a website titled "The Belt is In The Ring (Muay Thai Ring of Champions)" that will give you the TRUTH about Muay Thai and it's history with western martial arts. It is especially enlightening regarding the longtime controversial relationship between the famous American kickboxer Benny Urquidez and his "claimed" victories over Thai boxers. The author of the site, Pop Praditbatuga, has given us all a very well thought out and well written overview of Muay Thai history, rules, development, and how it has stood up against other ring martial arts.
You can view the site by visiting the following link:
"http://members.aol.com/Thaiboxing2000/muay.html"
Regarding my personal opinion on the Muay Thai and Benny Urquidez controversy, I think that Benny was too smart to get in the ring with a Thai boxer using full Thai rules (leg kicks and elbows), and that his listed "victories" over two Thai fighters is a crock of crap. Whenever he was asked about those "losses" to Thai fighters, Benny did a lot of world class verbal backpedaling. He called them exhibitions, or he claimed that the american public didn't want to see leg kicks and elbows, or some other jive talk. Lip service par excellance. Funny thing is that Benny always claimed that he was ready and willing to fight anyone, under any rules, anywhere in the world. Or maybe that was just what his publicists said? The truth of the matter is that Thai fighters were in a totally different league of ring warriors than the martial arts crossover stiffs that made up most of the people that Benny fought over the course of his career. He avoided Muay Thai fighters out of common sense. Read the article on the website listed above and judge for yourself. *I will comment a bit more on this subject in my next posting.
H.A. 09/17/06
No comments:
Post a Comment