While the attention in Europe was catalyzed by the dream-fight between superstars Giorgio Petrosyan and Chingiz Allazov (VIDEO), a lot of interest in Thailand has been caught a completely different bout.
The match up was seeing two (quite talented in our opinion) extremely young kids-we can’t find any other way to refer to young nak muay that couldn’t reach the top rope in height- battling 5 rounds in a major promotion for a hefty side bet of 600.000 thb (~20.000 usd).The main question we would like to submit our readers is, leaving apart the cheap considerations about ‘muay thai culture’, ‘tradition’ or other nonsense, if it is good for image and credibility of muay thai made in Thailand, giving such visibility to a bout than for many can be only seen as exploiting minors and putting their health in danger for filling some adult’s pocket?
Here we are not talking about adult boxers that choose a professional carreer, nor a friendly amateur bout between kids for the sake of the sport.
We have just witnessed children pushed in a ring under high pressure of adults looking for a jackpot.
All this happened in 2018, with Muay Thai trying to enter the Olympics.
