A Charade of a Queens Cup: WMC Night of Calamity

When you walk, through a storm, hold your head up high,
And don’t, be afraid, of the dark.
At the end, of the storm, there’s a golden sky,
And the sweet, silver song, of the lark.
Walk on, through the wind,
Walk on, through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed, and blown…
Walk on,
Walk on,
With hope, in your heart,
And you’ll never walk alone…
You’ll NEVER walk, alone.
Walk on,
Walk on,
With hope, in your heart,
And you’ll never walk alone,
You’ll NEVER walk… alone.

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That touching ballad, a favourite of drunks, the English and football fans (hence me using it) is for Tanyakorn Sor Tammajak and Tracy Lockwood, both robbed last night, and anyone else who has been fucked out of a belt, a ranking spot or a winner’s purse recently.

The WMC Queens Cup was a disastrous night really.

The card was a transparent and hugely favoured the farang (non-Thai) fighters. For some reason, every fight was for a WMC belt, not just the four intended title fights, and for one example, Farida Okiko’s WMC title bout, which she won (I’m glad, as I like her) was bumped to the televised portion of the card in favour of the 69kg world title fight between Lockwood and Gerry O’Callaghan of Sinbi, who both have 8x the number of fights/wins that Farida does. And now Farida is a WMC World champion at her weight, a weight that already has one worthy and several other world champions, including one sanctioned by the WMC!

Claire Haigh is a worthy and long-time world champion, who has won a slew of belts and beaten great opponents, but the title she fought for last night is already being held by Caley Reece.

Now that’s a great fight to make, but two world title fights at the same weight? Nice one -_-

Charlie Boy Peters is a mate, another person I like and he’s a good lad, and unfortunately he lost last night in his light-middleweight WMC title defence against Rolek from Dragon gym, his third to Rolek. Congrats to the Thai, but also ranked in that top 5 at 69kg are Kem Sitsongpeenong and Saiyok – will we be seeing Rolek against either of those?

WMC? Will we (WM) “C” who the ‘real’ world champion is at the weight, and match up Rolek with Kem or Saiyok?

Sol da Luz, with all due respect to her, was booed and jeered following the announcement of her win over Tanyakorn Sor Tammajak, a Thai with little name value who the WMC cant have wanted holding one of their title belts as opposed to the Finn. The crowd voiced their disapproval.

The thing is, it wasn’t in question. It wasn’t questionable, debatable, arguable. She was beaten in a fight, in a Muay Thai contest, in that ring, and then handed the belt afterwards.

Lockwood/O’Callaghan was an affair marred by its decision; bearing in mind that in Thailand the first two rounds do not practically count in the eyes of the judges (hence the pace of them), let’s look at 3-5; Lockwood fought on the backfoot in round 3, but landed kicks to the body, legs and head, matched Gerry knee-for-knee in the clinch, and outboxed her. In round 4, Tracy put her down in her own corner with a throw from the clinch, the knee counts were pretty similar, and Lockwood landed several head kicks, punches and elbows. And in round 5, as Lockwood pressed on with kicks, knees and punches and her opponent went on the backfoot, clearly winning the round as she had clearly in the 4th and more closely in the 3rd, the round was cut short – I’m sure a video rewatch will show round 5 to be less than half the regulated time, perhaps 80 seconds, drastically cut short.  Then, to the surprise of the two fighters, and many in the crowd, O’Callaghan’s hand was raised at the end of it.

This is no knock on Gerry – she is a tough veteran, and has already beaten Tracy twice in their now seven fight saga, but on the evidence of their last two fights, and on the evidence of last night alone, the weight-drained Lockwood was the superior fighter and deserved the win and the belt.

I’m not going to discuss any of the rest of the card – all I’ll say is warm congratulations to those who won, I am no Chantal Ughi and I’m happy people got opportunities and fought on a big card, and there is no disrespect intended towards ANY of the fighters who competed on the card. I hope I came across as un-Chantal-like as possible – my grievance is with the booking, the running order, the title fiascos and two of the decisions i.e. the organisation’s management, not the fighters themselves.

Let this show that Rajadamnern Stadium & Lumpinee Stadium title belts are head and shoulders above anything else out there.

Next time there’s a Queen’s Cup, King’s Cup, WMC Grand Prix, 4-man tournament, big card in Phuket or Pattaya, don’t call me, I’ll be having a Tommy Tank when that happens and watching Gestapo documentaries, or in a Sang-som Supernova in Rawai.

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