That is an excellent post by Rob, it is one that is at the heart of the issue. An issue I personally have wrestled with here and continue to do so, as do others. Those of us here who judge fights try to take the middle way in terms of applying Thai scoring criteria. What I mean is we want athletes to develop genuine Muay Thai skills as opposed to generic stand up skills, we want UK fighters to fight with and be rewarded for fighting using the art of Muay Thai.

Mr Songchai's son when doing PhD on promoting the sport asked my opinion on what I felt needed to happen for the sport. Some people here may be surprised that I said, get celebrities Thai youth engaged with seen at ringside, create celebrities of boxers using the media, so people were interested in their personalities and if they won or lost, and score the whole fight. I am not a fan of just automatically scoring the first two rounds a draw, but do still feel you can score the fight successfully as marathon. Even when both boxers fight from the off, the early rounds are still often close because they are either cautious or both full of energy and strong. I also said while I am of the opinion throwing a boxer down should be considered in the overall decision, throwing a boxer a couple of times should mean that boxer wins just of itself.

As much as we try to be as faithful as possible toThai scoring here (essential for me so it is not a different sport), gambling does not influence judges here, one or two throw down does not win the fight (although it will count towards that boxer's score), and all rounds are considered, but the first rounds are likely to be close with judges being cautious to award points to early so that they can judge the development of the whole fight.

I have spoken to many judges who say similar things. I remember my own teacher asking a judge to explain how Sanchai had won when he fought Petchboonchu and Sakeddaow together. The judge could not answer clearly. I think here, judges can explain their decisions, and I think that is important.

While I am not a fan of a caricatured scoring system, I think we want to be close enough to what happens in the stadiums that we do not get some of the embarrassments we have had in the past, where Thai boxers have come here and clearly won under Muay Thai scoring, yet been awarded a loss because what was being judged was not Muay Thai. Equally we want to develop skills in our boxers here that mean they can win on points in Thailand and have the skills to make them international reputations in the sport. I actually think we have done a good job of that, but it is still work in progress.