The old way was very slow. You don't rock the boat in rd 1 or 2 and the winner is known by rd 5 and the "victor" takes the foot off the pedal to assert dominance.
Then there is a somewhat mutual respect and understanding between fighters that while they want to win they don't want to get injured cos back then people may be fighting weekly. None of this 3 month fight camp and skipping and ducking fights for years that people like Mayweather did.
And then I never quite understood why but once everything was rigged by gambling circuits it all became very clinch dominant.
Not to mention that the traditional scoring also does not favour muay mat (punchers).
Chatri wants to make martial arts more entertaining because no one wants to see people just pull guard in BJJ or grab each other's legs in Judo. And why should only practitioners of Boxing see these huge purses when Buakaw and Saenchai stayed essentially poor.
Also very traditional muay thai/boran fights were done with kard cheuk anyway which aren't much different from those 4oz gloves...
Yeah, the need to fight weekly definitely had a lot to do with the style back then. As for the gambling circuits, my trainer once told me that the bookmakers didn't like surprise knockouts that could mess up their numbers, so rules and style changed. Maybe that has something to do with clinch being dominant, you certainly could get taken out with an elbow or knee in the clinch, but maybe less so. I do love watching old Petchboonchu fights though, it's amazing watching him clinch.
That's fair about kard cheuk being like the 4oz gloves, I've seen some fights with them, but like you said hands never scored as high, whereas One scores things equal these days iirc.
Truthfully, I don't know. There's some selection bias involved but anecdotally there is a culture of mutual self preservation because of MT being a career and also the relentless schedules.
It's almost like there's an honour code that you aren't trying to kill each other and ruin each other's career.
I guess it's like very very hard sparring rather than the kind of bad blood fights you see in some western promotions. After all, you do get KOs in sports like TKD too.
There are def some of the older generation who lament about injuries or head trauma and having a short career. But then you look at the muay femur who specialise in evasion (like Jockey Gym) and they all had decently long careers
Then there is a somewhat mutual respect and understanding between fighters that while they want to win they don't want to get injured cos back then people may be fighting weekly. None of this 3 month fight camp and skipping and ducking fights for years that people like Mayweather did.
And then I never quite understood why but once everything was rigged by gambling circuits it all became very clinch dominant.
Not to mention that the traditional scoring also does not favour muay mat (punchers).
Chatri wants to make martial arts more entertaining because no one wants to see people just pull guard in BJJ or grab each other's legs in Judo. And why should only practitioners of Boxing see these huge purses when Buakaw and Saenchai stayed essentially poor.
Also very traditional muay thai/boran fights were done with kard cheuk anyway which aren't much different from those 4oz gloves...