Despite all the craziness from the Martial Arts world, the grading systems in Muay Thai and a wide new spread of unskilled instructors, today we came across something incredible.
The most famous Master Toddy, promoted to the world today the fact that the Minister of Education is now permitting everyone that has a MTIA Trainer, Kru or Ajarn “Certificate” (from MTIA, Master Toddy’s own association) to now be awarded with a belt.
That’s right, if you have done one of those courses you can now get a belt. Seriously, this is way beyond anything we could have ever thought of.
We feel that our sport, specially in NSW, is going in a extreme downhill, and now seeing news like the one mentioned above, we understand a little bit more of the reasons why.
At the present time, in our state, there were changes made by the NSW Combat Sports Authority, in which are directly affecting the combatants of various sports, and we simply can’t understand why.
Our head coach Luis Soot Raaeng Geert, had his last fight in NSW, and for our surprise the fight had only 1 min break in between rounds, cutting in half the traditional time of the sport, making the fighters have less recuperation time and more chances of getting knocked out.
We wish we could have an explanation from someone on why this is the case and how long will it take until we, as NSW, start to follow the rules of our sport from the Traditional Entities in Thailand, and also follow the other states of our country that at the present time do a fantastic job in promoting and insuring the safety of the combatants of Muay Thai.
If any of you guys would be at the back preparation rooms of the fight scene in NSW, and had a guy with a NSW Combat Sports badge come to you and say, “the way you are wrapping the hands of your fighter is wrong”, and you would reply to it, “ok, could you please show me how to do it then?” and you get an answer like “I’m not sure how to do it myself, but I know it’s not like this”, you would understand where we are coming from.
Please may someone that has some sort of decency come to play and look after the Combatants of NSW, not only in Muay Thai, but in every Martial Art, people with knowledge and experience in the field, people that had been there and done that.
How unbelievably great would it be if there was an open election poll for us to elect the ones that supposed to be in-charge of the NSW Combat Sports Authority, representing us and looking after our sport.
Until that day, we will pray for our safety and hope for the best.
See you all at training SOOT RAAENG GEERT!