Boxing - Then and Now

Boxing is one of most popular sports today in North America and continues to grow in popularity. Most countries of the world are familiar with boxing, with many of these countries having a multitude of boxing organizations within its borders.

The sport of boxing has been around for many more years than most people realize it has. Ancient historians have traced the beginnings of boxing back to 4000 BC during times when the empires of Rome and Greece were engaged in combat. Historians have found records that indicate that boxing, surely known by another name in ancient times, was fought with much more brutality than it is today.

Evidence shows that these ancient civilizations encouraged the boxing participants to fight each other using fists and metal spikes. It is believed that these battles often continued until one of the competitors was declared dead. These days boxing is much safer, with strict regulations in place to protect the boxer.

Boxing being a bare bones hand-to-hand combats till today continues to have an element of risk in spite of the especial safety features such as the protective head gear. Nowadays all forms of boxing whether amateur and professional uses a computer generated score that determines the final outcome of the match along with gloves without spikes.

Most boxing matches place together competitors that are within the same level of experience and strength. Boxers are trained in the skilled of combat and this makes a boxing match both fun and exciting to watch as two people battle it out to win the honor of taking home the trophy.

Boxing became popular in North America in the middle of the 19th century. As soon as Americans saw this sport its popularity sky-rocketed. During International competitions, the Americans generally win matches and score the most knockouts.

Men aren't the only competitors in the boxing ring. Women are yet to box in the Olympics, but that day shouldn't be far away. They have become adept and experienced competitors.

There are many professional boxers who started their boxing careers as amateurs. Some of these well known professional boxers include George Foreman, Leon Spinks, Muhammad Ali, Floyd Patterson, and Oscar De La Hoya.

Professional boxing and amateur boxing have some slight differences in the way the boxing match is laid out. Professional boxing consists of four to fifteen rounds, while amateur boxing has only three rounds. The average length of a professional match is twelve rounds.

Boxing winners are announced by the judges who make the final decision as to how many points each competitor has. A knockout, however, will be an automatic win for the boxer who throws the final punch, providing that his opponent is unable to get off the mat after ten seconds.

In the fast paced modern life more and more people are turning towards boxing. People from all ages are becoming its students not only to fight but also to remain fit and healthy and deal with the stress and worries of life.

Men more than women are armchair boxers and continue to make the sport a popular one to watch

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Wai Kru

As mentioned earlier that Wai Kru ceremony and Wai Kru Ram Muay is different in terms of usage and occasion of use. However, it is quite definite understanding of the objective of Wai Kru ceremony, but if we talk about Wai Kru Ram Muay ritual dance, the fundamental knowledge of its objectives that widely recognised is to let boxers have a chance to pay respect to the teacher and bless him a victory before the fight.

Now we are getting to know more about it, of course there are some more objectives of Wai Kru Ram Muay apart from the one mentioned earlier. According to there are other forms of Muay Thai in the past until today, such as Muay Boran, Muay Kad Chuek, Muay Chaiya, or even other regional style of Muay etc. The forms and practice of Wai Kru Ram Muay are also depends on the form of Muay itself and it is also believed that depends on teacher as well.

Although the primary objective of Wai Kru Ram Muay has been widely recognised among western boxers who learn Muay Thai. But there are some other benefits and objectives of Wai Kru Ram Muay, which have been taught over years, especially in Thailand.

During Wai Kru Ram Muay, boxers may use this time to motivate themselves to be courageous and to make emotional preparation for the coming fight.

During Wai Kru Ram Muay, boxers may have opportunity to observe their opponent’s ability, strength and weakness through the Ram Muay postures and form of ritual dance as well as to assess to find out how to beat the opponent. This is actually quite difficult to get the information only from watching the initial ritual dance. But this is only one chance that boxers will have an opportunity to assess their opponent before the fight begins.

Vice versa, if boxer perform a perfect ritual dance, in the way that opponent may assesses that represents aggressiveness, this will bring benefit to the boxer who perform perfect ritual dance that they can psychologically agitate the opponent and make them be frighten.

Ritual dance also benefit boxers in terms of being a kind of warm-up before the fight.

Here above are other benefits of Wai Kru Ram ritual dance. However, for modern Muay Thai, even though the original concept and objectives of Wai Kru Ram Muay still being taught to new generation boxers, but to perform full performance and original ritual dance take quite long time, so it is very rare case to see modern boxers perform original ritual dance today, but the original concept still exist.

There are variety of the form of ritual dance, depends on the form of Muay and teachers. However, there are some ritual dance performance that are widely used. The terminology of Wai Kru Ram Muay postures are Thai words that generally based on the physical dance postures. For example;

Pra Ram Plaeng Sorn
This term use to describe the god Rama is performing archery shooting arrow to opponent.

Pra Ram Plaeng Sorn ritual dance is an aggressive posture, which believed that benefit to the boxer in terms of making their opponent be frighten.

Sod Soi Mala
This term use to describe the action that making a flower garland. This ritual dance posture does not intend to represent the aggressiveness of the boxer but represent the beautifulness of the ritual dance itself.