Judging a Muay Thai contest can’t be an easy job. The ringside seats might be a blessing in terms of a top view, but the fast, frantic nature of this sport means you risk missing something vital if you so much as blink. Tony Myers is a man who’s been involved in judging, refereeing, scoring and researching Muay Thai over the past four decades, and if there’s anyone who’s been able to keep up to date with the rules of the sport – it’s him.
It probably won’t come as much of a surprise that the rulebook for Muay Thai is a complex, exhaustive read. After all, any sport nicknamed “The Art of Eight Limbs” was never going to be an easy one to understand. The intricate point-scoring system of this discipline (which can vary depending on the site of the fight) takes some getting used to, and whilst many within the Muay Thai community understand the basics, individuals who know the rulebook cover-to-cover are about as rare as hen’s teeth. Nevertheless, The Tanko Main Event managed to track down one of these enigmatic figures: the creator of Muaythaijudging.com – Tony Myers.
A Muay Thai author, international referee, judge, teacher and analyst at various points throughout his career, Tony has spent almost his entire adulthood discussing, researching and enforcing the rules and regulations of Thai kickboxing. He recently gave up his time to tell TTME how he became so deeply involved with the laws of Muay Thai, along with the experiences he has had implementing the rules across the world.
“Originally my background was in boxing, martial arts and karate in the mid 70’s” Tony explained. “I put on a couple of Thai boxing shows on in the late 70’s, having not really trained at that point myself. We had some good guys on there – Eval Denton, Paul Bates. They were decent shows.”
“Paul Bates had a couple of performances there and also some other good fights around that time. I liked his style, so I went to Manchester to train, and from there I developed links with Thailand. I went to the East regularly after that for the next 20 years or so, sometimes for quite long periods.”
It was during one of his many visits to Thailand that Tony met Pimu – one of the biggest influences in his life.
“It was around 1995 I met Pimu” Tony told TTME. “He was my coach at Pinsinchai Camp. By this time I was thirty-years-old, so I decided to take the leap straight into coaching rather than going into competitive fighting.”
Tony enjoyed his stopovers in Muay Thai birth country, but the fly in the ointment was his inability to understand exactly what he was seeing when he went to watch the fights first-hand.
“When I first when to Thailand I was watching fights in the stadiums and I didn’t understand what was going on!” laughed Tony. “Sometimes I just couldn’t work out why fighters were winning. I decided that needed to change. When I went to Pinsinchai gym, Pimu took me to fights and we’d sit together ‘til late at night while he explained what was happening. That was where it all started for me. I was coaching lads by then and I wanted to understand what I should be teaching them to win.”
Tony returned to England armed with fresh knowledge about the sport, and an exciting idea soon began to form in his mind.
“When I got home, I spoke with a lot of British referees and judges to see how they compared to Thai officials” Tony told TTME. “I found what they were looking for during fights was very different. I was doing a research degree at the time and decided to make this the topic of it.”
It was a subject in which other Muay Thai scholars had only scratched the surface, so Tony aimed to use the contacts he’d made in Thailand to go a little deeper with his own research.
“Through Pimu I developed good links with the heads of the main stadiums in Thailand – Lumpini and Rajadamnern.” Tony explained. “I also got to know the heads of some of the big governing bodies in Thailand too, so I was able to interview them as well.”
“In 2002, the Boxing Board of Sport released a new set of rules that enforced improved standards. Each stadium has a slightly different emphasis on certain things but these rules set a general standard. I was able to interview the person who wrote these rules, as well as a few other senior figures in the sport. I was also given training materials, videos and handbooks they were using to train referees. We then used some of these when producing the IBMTO handbook (the British version of Muay Thai rules and scoring).”
Tony’s research process was an interesting and thoroughly rewarding one, but the results he found from his investigation into the Muay Thai rulebook were equally as fascinating.
“The Thai officials proved to be very consistent.” Tony said. “We took around 50 fights, compared the scorecards of each, and found the level of consistency was about 93%.”
“We wanted to know if these results were influenced by the officials’ cultural background (some were ex-fighters themselves and had been around the sport their whole lives) or if the system/set of standards in place had played a bigger role. We began training officials in the UK to the same standards being used in Thailand, so everyone would be looking for the same (correct) scoring shots during fights.”
“When interviewing the UK judges, I found different judges were scoring different techniques and looking for different things to award points. Some were looking for volume of shots thrown, some were leaning towards aggression, it was a mixed bag really.”
“Prior to training, there was approximately 75% consistency in the scorecards on shows in the UK. We looked at it again about 12 months after training and found the consistency in 50 fights had risen to around 97%. So we concluded that it was more the system and the ruleset that had the influence rather than the cultural context.”
Tony then looked to see how understanding and knowledge affected performance.
“We examined 36 fights, analysing what techniques were being thrown, how much attention fighters were paying to balance before and after shot delivery, what areas shots were landing on, how effective they were, what stances fighters were adopting, etc. It was quite time-consuming but we were then able to compare whether styles and ways of fighting had changed to be consistent with the scoring.”
Tony was both humbled and enlightened by his discoveries and has no plans to stop re-examining the Muay Thai rulebook just yet.
“Ultimately you have to do what you need to in order to win.” he told TTME. “Our research in Thailand showed boxers had come to see that in accordance with the new understanding of the rules.”
“I’d like to do that now in the UK. I think we’d find the same thing here.”
