Exporting Good Ideas

In Thailand I twice went to the Muay Thai stadium at Lamai Beach, Koh Samui.

It is an excellent little stadium, attended by a mixture of curious tourists, Western Muay Thai fans and local Thais looking to bet on the fights. From the two events I saw Lamai seems to have more competetive bouts than the bigger Chaweng stadium, and it is cheaper to get in.

There are several good practices in Thai boxing I would like to see extended into Western boxing. All too often at bouts in the UK you see fighters slipping and sliding in the ring, often from the combination of water and sweat that swills about in their corner between rounds. This is not a problem in Thailand, where fighters are placed into what resemble giant saucepan lids at the end of each round, where they can sweat and slobber till their hearts content, without wetting the actual ring. A good practice, which should be adopted here.

A second change could also be to copy the referee's use of a towel to dry the boxers gloves between rounds. This removes the possibility of anything suspicious being smeared onto a glove (including legitimate substances like vaseline) and again removes sweat and water. I see no reason why a box of towels could not be kept ringside for this purpose.

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