Thailand Bans MMA

chprt

thoughts on this???

http://www.fightersonlymag.com/content/news/15911-thailand-government-bans-mma?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=cageriotmma_source%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightersonlymag.com%2Fcontent%3Fformat%3Dfeed&type=rss_feed%3DFighters+Onlydlvr_route%3DCage+Riot+MMA+Twitter

davmol

Im a huge fan of both but i think thats hypocritical of the Thai Government considering their national hobby/pass time is Muay Thai.MT condones the use of elbow strikes and knee to the head and ,i might be mistaken,allows kick to the head of a grounded opponent?
I think theres a bit of fear by the thais that MMA would dilute the focus on MT or take away from the popularity of MT in Thailand.

cowzerp

It's a joke and only been done to stop the demise of muay Thai I'd imagine

Clive

I think it's fair enough. Muay Thai is the national sport, so of course the government are going to protect it

Mr. CooL ICE

As bad as our government can be, I doubt they would ever ban soccer/rugby to protect GAA

El Guapo!

That's totally ridiculous. There's no reasonable argument to ban it on the grounds of being "too brutal"
All the striking would be basically the same as Muay Thai. And with submissions etc, I'm sure Jiu-Jitsu and Judo are still acceptable.

John Ferguson

In the States, Oklahoma have also banned it:

http://www.cagetoday.com/oklahoma-bans-mma-after-ufc-mounts-lawsuit-over-ppv-shakedown/

El Guapo!

John Ferguson wrote: »

In the States, Oklahoma have also banned it:

http://www.cagetoday.com/oklahoma-bans-mma-after-ufc-mounts-lawsuit-over-ppv-shakedown/

That's even more of a joke because they're only banning it because of money. A bit pointless as surely the UFC holding an event there could only be good for the local economy.
From what I've read they haven't actually banned mma,--they're just refusing to issue any more events for permits to hold shows.
It's not the UFC I feel sorry for here, it's the local mma shows that are going to suffer because of it.

Stephen_King

^The GAA had a ban on playing 'foreign' sports for years-didnt work out too well in the long run. They used to boot people out for just attending soccer and rugby games, let alone playing in them. The grandad used to tell me a story of how a him and a few of his mates had to flee from the scene of a local soccer match when they got word their hurling coach was on the way down.

Short sighted decision by the Thai's maybe, but its not such a big deal all in all seeing as MMA training isnt banned. As mentioned in the article the Muai Thai training industry provides a massive boost for the economy, and lets face it, not many people are going to move to Thailand to study BJJ. Their just looking after their own interests-I can see the logic in what their doing, just not sure if it will work out for them over the long term.

Mellor

LordChessington wrote: »

As bad as our government can be, I doubt they would ever ban soccer/rugby to protect GAA

I'm not sure if you are being ironic or not.

As mentioned above, its was against the rules of GAA for members to even watch sports like soccer, rugby, hockey etc. This was the case up until the 70s.

Even in recent times, rule 42 was in place to restrict foreign sports.

Dean09 wrote: »

That's totally ridiculous. There's no reasonable argument to ban it on the grounds of being "too brutal"
All the striking would be basically the same as Muay Thai. And with submissions etc, I'm sure Jiu-Jitsu and Judo are still acceptable.

Obviously its no more or less brutal than MT. But the article said that the reason was also to protect MT. "Protection" of a sport might seem a bit silly in a modern sense, but remember thailand is a developing country, the goverenment is trying to keep an identity, which is fine. An outright ban might not be the best option, but whats the alternative?

p to the e

I remember reading a while back that Thailand refused to join in a united federation of South East Asian boxing styles with Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and maybe some others who have similar styles to Muay Thai. They said that each country has it's own style and should promote it themselves. Muay Thai is a brand name to Thailand that brings a lot of tourists in and creates revenue from other sources so they would want to protect that.

cowzerp

Stephen_King wrote: »

^The GAA had a ban on playing 'foreign' sports for years-didnt work out too well in the long run. They used to boot people out for just attending soccer and rugby games, let alone playing in them. The grandad used to tell me a story of how a him and a few of his mates had to flee from the scene of a local soccer match when they got word their hurling coach was on the way down.

It's not really the same thing as what the Thai's are doing, The Gaa did not ban foreign sports for no reason, It was because the British had banned the playing of our national sports and tried to destroy our culture

At the time when all that was set down as policy it was correct, The Gaa was set up to save Irish Games and our Culture, If they where to do it today then that would be for competition reasons and totally wrong.

Be like Nutella

wonder does it mean they'll try and stop the many training camps that have sprung up over there in the last 5/10 years.... I was training in one a few years back for a month in Phuket and the MMA scene was just kicking off over there... 'MMA Phuket' is a huuuge MMA facility over there... many UFC guys have trained/do train there for spells (prob to lose weight in the heat) The guys in that camp (Ray Elbe etc) were really nurturing the scene over there... setting up grapple and strike type events and putting teams together to travel to other south east asian countries for proper MMA events... was really picking up... and the facility was mind blowing ... about 6 thousand times as big as any MMA camp here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRPCZm8waRg

Mellor

cowzerp wrote: »

It's not really the same thing as what the Thai's are doing, The Gaa did not ban foreign sports for no reason, It was because the British had banned the playing of our national sports and tried to destroy our culture

At the time when all that was set down as policy it was correct, The Gaa was set up to save Irish Games and our Culture, If they where to do it today then that would be for competition reasons and totally wrong.

The british only banned GAA is 1918 (until 192 I guess).
The GAA banned attending foreign sports since 1901.
Plus the ban on GAA sports didn't really work. The all ireland was played in each of those 4 years afaik.

I'm not saying the situations are exactly the same, obviously there was some politics involved here. I'm highlight the attmpts at protecting a sporting identity.

Personally I thinjk they are over reacting

Stephen_King

cowzerp wrote: »

It's not really the same thing as what the Thai's are doing, The Gaa did not ban foreign sports for no reason, It was because the British had banned the playing of our national sports and tried to destroy our culture

At the time when all that was set down as policy it was correct, The Gaa was set up to save Irish Games and our Culture, If they where to do it today then that would be for competition reasons and totally wrong.

I think the primary reason they put forward for banning foriegn sports was they were worried that the British were trying to infiltrate the organisation to plant informers, which was a genuine threat at the time.

The other side of that coin was that they did think it would encourage the spread of GAA over rugby and soccer, and to a degree, that worked-especially in the rural areas, albeit working out as a royal pain in the arse for people that enjoyed playing all sports.

As mentioned above, they kept Rule 42 on board-its was relaxed a few times- they stopped banning people for attending foriegn games around the early 70s, but the rule still stood for soccer and rugby being played on their grounds right up to 2005-and at that, I think the rules have been changed only in relation to Croke Park, not other grounds.

The Thais dont have to worry about informers, but I do think they are concerned about MMA camps popping up all over the shop and somewhat watering down the quality of the Thai fighters produced. The last thing they want is MMA camps that offer Thai training on the side as opposed to Thai camps that offer MMA training-they've likely seen the effect MMA has had on boxing in other countries and dont want to chance that happening with Thai.

Whether this works out well for them or not remains to be seen, like I said I can see their logic, just not so sure how it will turn out for them. From what I've heard of Thailand, its likely the law will just be ignored or bribed past if needs be, and much like the GAA, their governing bodies are probably thinking of allowing shows further down the line providing the price is right-the GAA made quite a bit of cash from opening Croker, the FAI and IRFU paid handsomely for playing their games there-wouldnt surprise me if an extra government grant or two was involved as well. I would think the Thais will do something similar if the UFC ever did make a concentrated effort to get in there.

Minstrel27

Clive wrote: »

I think it's fair enough. Muay Thai is the national sport, so of course the government are going to protect it

Fair enough? It is moronic.

Minstrel27

Mellor wrote: »

I'm not sure if you are being ironic or not.

As mentioned above, its was against the rules of GAA for members to even watch sports like soccer, rugby, hockey etc. This was the case up until the 70s.

Even in recent times, rule 42 was in place to restrict foreign sports.

That wasn't a government law though

Clive

Minstrel27 wrote: »

Fair enough? It is moronic.

Could you expand on that? Why is it moronic for the Thai government to protect their national sport from an obvious competitor?

Minstrel27

Why is it moronic to ban one sport (for bull**** reasons) to protect another sport? What has MMA actually done to merit a ban? Any legitimate reasons?

Could you imagine if the Americans banned Soccer to protect American Football or Baseball. Yes, that would be pretty stupid wouldn't it.

Clive

Of course when you just look at it from your own point of view it doesn't make much sense.

When you look at it from the Thai government's point of view, however, it does - they are protecting their national sport, which is culturally and economically important to them.

I don't like it either, but I can understand the reasons behind it.

Mark Hamill

Clive wrote: »

Of course when you just look at it from your own point of view it doesn't make much sense.

When you look at it from the Thai government's point of view, however, it does - they are protecting their national sport, which is culturally and economically important to them.

I don't like it either, but I can understand the reasons behind it.

If it was culturally important to them it wouldn't need protecting.

Stephen_King

Mark Hamill wrote: »

If it was culturally important to them it wouldn't need protecting.

Again the GAA point comes up?

Mellor

Minstrel27 wrote: »

That wasn't a government law though

Did anyone say it was???