Has Muay Thai Killed Kickboxing's Flair?

HAS MUAY THAI KILLED KICKBOXING'S FLAIR?

Is the fight game becoming more enticing and exciting and attractive or is it waning in its appeal? Does it lack characters capable of whipping you into a frenzy with their in-ring appearances and out-of-ring hype?

Today’s kickboxing fans can be thankful of the likes of Wayne Parr who, in 2008, is the embodiment of the media-friendly, easily-accessed and highly-marketable kickboxer that Stan Longinidis was back in the early 1990s. But how many other such stars with these ‘star qualities’ can you list in kickboxing at the moment? Yet if I ask you to cast your mind back, you can no doubt list a dozen or so media-savvy, easily-accessed, mega-marketable and fan-friendly fighters who sparked a range of emotions in fans every time they fought.

Some of those fighters included: Gurkan Ozkan – our sport’s bad boy, slightly crazy, with enormous heart and a stubborn head; Ian Jacobs – a flashy pin-up boy, eye candy for the ladies, but remained a man’s man, strong as an ox; Steve Vick – the real life Karate Kid, a dynamic performer, put his heart before his health in every fight; Tibor Vermes – humble, polite, respectful and flawless in the ring; Scott Bannan – paved the way for the new generation of Queensland fighters to take the spotlight, eloquent and energetic, a real showman; Paul Briggs – a ferocious fighter who epitomised young brutality and knockout style, well-spoken, good-looking; the list goes on and on.

Do our Muay Thai fighters of today match the pizzazz and the flair of the kickboxers of yesteryear? Outside of Dane Beecham and his pimping ways; Bruce MacFie’s fluorescent hair colours; Corbett’s grim-reaper ring entrance; and Wayne Parr’s gun-slinging struts, does Muay Thai’s current generation possess marketability and style beyond die-hard fans of the sport?

Australia is now predominantly a Muay Thai country. Kickboxing is effectively dead. You’d be hard pressed to see a fight without knees any more. While this is the result of fight sports’ progression (just as MMA is now becoming a hit) it begs the question as to whether Muay Thai has effectively killed the flair once associated with kickboxing? In taking so many aspects of Muay Thai directly from Thailand -- where showmanship, pizzazz, flair, pomp, pageantry, smack-talk and hype is not high on the agenda -- have we killed off a large part of what made kickboxing in Australia so damned exciting in the 1990s? Have we gone too far? Have we tried to become Thais and forgotten that as Western audiences we need a dose of Super Bowl-style sensationalism and hype to keep things truly interesting?

Muay Thai is still a relatively new sport in Australia and Average Joe need only see a Muay Thai fight to realise just how exciting the sport is. But getting Average Joe to put his beer and smokes money into a ticket to a Muay Thai show, or flick from the rugby or AFL to watch Muay Thai on television takes more than just an awesome fight.

While the fight itself will always be of the highest importance, we shouldn’t forget that sports today is as much about entertainment as it is about the competition itself. The humility of the Muay Thai fighter is admirable but the low-key attitude of most fighters who “do it like they do in Thailand” doesn’t translate as excitement for mainstream audiences. We’re not Thai; we don’t bet on fights as the Thai’s do and our fighters don’t fight as a means of transcending poverty. Our fighters compete for the passion, for the excitement, for the challenge and for the potential purses to sustain themselves as professional athletes. But so long as there are television cameras rolling and audiences paying a premium to watch we shouldn’t forget the importance of character-building, excitement and exhilaration.