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4998 Read Muay Thai in UK 15 : Born to Fight - HEYWOOD CIVIC CENTRE
| On Sunday 28th June I went to Heywood Civic Centre for Born to Fight, an afternoon bill of B and C class fights promoted by GFC Muay Thai, a particularly enjoyable afternoon’s boxing for at least three reasons. |
Obviously the quality of the fights was the principal one. The afternoon began with a terrific contest between two youngsters and, though the final contest was a disappointment (Josh Turbill of Spitfire catching Chris Hargreaves of Elite Bolton almost before the fight had started), the three before that were superb, notably an epic between ‘Goose’ (Fight Unit) and Sean Perry (Premier Thai Boxing), Perry taking the verdict.
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Mark Skeer VS Darren Till
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| Ryan Lowney VS Anth Shelton | |
Secondly I watch as a fan (with, of course, a particular affiliation to Billionmore), not a neutral expert, though I try to be fair. This time everything went well for my favourites. All the Phoenix boxers (customers and friends of Billionmore) won, with Anth Shelton producing the most decisive performance I’ve seen from him in destroying a lively and confident opponent (Ryan Lowney of Pythons) with body punches and knees and knocking him out in the 3rd round. On a personal level there is no boxer I enjoy watching more than Darren Till of Sapphire Gym. Superbly stylish in everything he does, wonderfully elusive in defence and with a wide range of attacking techniques, he had faded in his last two fights to take a late beating after winning the early rounds. After these two successive losses I was delighted to see him defeat Mark Skeer (Salford Thai) on points. |
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Brad Stenson VS
Mark Webster | |
Thirdly, the organisation of Darren Phillips was immaculate. There is nothing more irritating than waiting round for half an hour after the official starting time with no announcements forthcoming or counting the minutes after a 1st round finish because the next fighters were anticipating a 5-rounder. Darren (who ‘doesn’t do late’) is clear where he stands:
‘Being late is rude, simple as that. Starting on time and keeping the fights running is just down to being well organised, having the right team behind you and actually caring about what the public are seeing!’
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So the public had a great time, but how was the afternoon from a promoter’s point of view?
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Darren Phillips has been involved with Muay Thai since 1983, when he started with Master Sken, taught with Sandy Holt for many years and has been running his own full-time gym since 1996, so he speaks with the voice of experience when he tells me how he puts a show together:
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‘Finding the date is the first step, trying not to clash with other events in the local area, then figuring out which fighters you want on and what level you’re going to aim the show at. Normally I have an idea which matches to make based on the interclub circuit and fights I’ve already seen. I try to have most fights matched before I post on ax. I don’t like just asking on there. I think it’s lazy.’
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| Readers of these columns will be familiar with http://www.axkickboxing.com/ from many references and I could not agree more with Darren. Ax is a wonderful forum and it can be fascinating to see successful matches made on there, but there are limits. For instance, it does Muay Thai’s reputation no good when a promoter gets a governing body to approve a title fight, then advertises for an opponent for his aspiring champion – but it happens, especially at junior level. So what is Darren’s approach to match-making? |
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‘Matchmaking, if you do it right, is a difficult thing – and even then it doesn’t always pan out. You can look at the records on paper and match accordingly, but that doesn’t always give you the right fight. You have to look at the strengths of the fighters and gyms involved. It’s also difficult to match your own fighters on your own show. The three boxers I really wanted on this show I couldn’t match. In the end I didn’t do well from a pure results standpoint, but then I once had nine fighters from my gym on one of my own shows and won seven with one loss and a no-contest, and I got slated for dodgy matchmaking, even though all my fighters had to give away weight and/or experience.’ |
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Carl Alderson VS
Bradley Turner |
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This time four of five GFC fighters lost. In talking about them individually, Darren’s mixture of practical, unemotional common sense with a sense of what can only be called honour is typical of many of the people running Muay Thai in this country – most of them (not all) are well capable of leaving their egos in the changing room before getting involved.
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Darren had difficulty matching 12-year-old Bradley Turner, so in the end accepted an offer from Carl Alderson’s trainer at Hanuman. As Carl was giving away age and experience, Darren put a post on ax in advance thanking him and his trainer for taking the fight – a generous gesture that gave Carl an excuse for his upcoming loss. But Carl didn’t lose: he beat Bradley clearly on points, not through any failings of Bradley (who looked very promising), but because Carl was remarkably good! In the ring Bradley was mature and generous, as you would expect from a young man who asked for harder fights after two recent wins because he felt sorry for the other kids. And what was Darren’s response?
‘Carl just fought a great fight. You don’t mind losing fights like that because it was so good – watching kids like that gives you hope for the future.'
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Another youngster from GFC, Kyle Teale, looked outclassed on the day, being stopped in no time by the body attack of Pythons’ Dean Lowrey. On the surface it looked like careless matchmaking, but nothing could be further from the truth. Dean (‘a class act’, according to Darren) had already beaten Kyle over three rounds. Dean was tiring at the end, Kyle’s a slow starter, so the logic of a five-round rematch was inescapable. Unfortunately Kyle started just too slowly and had all the fight knocked out of him in the opening seconds. So what does that do to Kyle? Will there be a next fight? Can Darren lift him? No problem!
‘Kyle was back in the gym training the day after the fight and asking when he can fight again. It’s not about the winning for us.’
And that’s impressive whichever way you look at it!
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| Rian Mercer VS Rob Horrocks | |
As for the other two defeats, Darren speaks generously and approvingly of his fighters, but is absolutely clear about what they must learn. Rian Mercer is a real talent whom I look forward to seeing again, but he was overwhelmed in the 3rd round by Rob Horrocks (Super Gym). According to Darren Rian is ‘a good kid who won three junior titles, a gifted student taking a bucketload of A-Levels, but he lives at a distance and can only train once a week – and you can’t fight as an adult on once a week’. Persuaded by Rian to match him in the tournament, Darren was not surprised by the outcome and now hopes Rian sees his point. For Kat Holden, it’s simpler than organising a life around A-Levels, training and car-rides, it’s a matter of standing up more successfully to boxing. Darren reckons her points defeat to Wendy Bake (Phoenix) comes down simply to turning away from her opponent’s fists at one point and receiving an eight count. |
It’s pretty obvious that Darren cares more for the progress of his sport (which he is confident is still growing, even from its current healthy state) than for short-term success for his fighters. He is clear about what he is looking for at GFC: commenting that star fighter and fellow instructor Andy Thrasher is training harder for his next fight than for his world title bout, he adds, ‘That’s the kind of attitude I want to promote.’ He is also concerned that the sport is desperately short of competent officials and so turned to Tony Myers (who refereed impeccably throughout the show) to run a Judging Seminar the day before, the third time he has done that. |
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Darren’s attitude seems to me well-balanced, responsible and thoroughly honourable. For myself I take a fan’s more emotional and (sometimes) one-sided viewpoint. For instance, I know he’s right when he says of Darren Till that he needs to work harder to get the best out of his talent, but, so far as I’m concerned, the boy radiates star quality and it’s sheer bad luck he fades in the 5th! |
There were plenty of other fights worth mentioning, but space is running out, so I’ll just say it was great to see Lauren Humphrey (Phoenix) win on a stoppage after a difficult last fight defeat and Brad Stenson (Hanuman) looked magnificent in stopping Majestic’s Mark Webster in the 3rd – he’s another one I’ll look out for next time.
And, for the record, the one GFC winner was John Bakewell who took a unanimous points verdict against Matthew Morris (Majestic).
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Special thanks to Darren Phillips and GFC Muay Thai
Photograhs by www.muaythaiphotos.com
Read the latest Muay Thai News here ... www.billionmore.com |
Last modified : 10 May 2010 - 05:19 PM (GMT+7:00) |
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