Muay Thai gym to hold fight night for new talents

Merican Muay Thai Gym will be holding its first amateur Muay Thai competition this September, after recognising a need for a grassroots level competition.

Dubbed 'Merican Fight Night', the event will be held at its recently opened second branch gym in Section 17, Petaling Jaya on September 27.

The gym was founded by professional Muay Thai fighter, Saiful 'The Vampire' Merican and his wife, Dzianti Merican.

Saiful when contact by Astro AWANI said the competition is aimed at seeking new talents as there are not many opportunities out there for students to be exposed to tournaments.

"Every professional fighter has to start as an amateur. If there's no place to start, how can they turn professional?" he asked.

He said the competition is also a good platform to find 'replacements' for professionals like himself whom he feels might not be qualified to enter professional tournaments anymore in five years time.

"So I wish to seek new talents to replace people my age. So far, many have sent their profiles and we will match them up with the other contestants," explained Saiful who is also a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter at ONE FC.

Meanwhile, in a statement, Dzianti said the event will feature students from various Muay Thai gyms in Malaysia who are interested in competing.

“We are looking for Muay Thai practitioners with no previous fight experience at all. The response has been good and we have received over 50 profiles so far.

"We hope this competition will encourage more fighters to compete and be better prepared for professional tournaments in the future," she said.

With Muay Thai in SUKMA and SEA Games, she said the competition will be able to identify the new fighters and their talent and will feature 10 bouts of various weight classes.

She said women and children are also encouraged to participate and each bout will consist of three rounds of three minutes with a two minute break.

She said for the competition, all fighters are required to wear gloves, shinguards, mouthguard and groin guard. The event is open to the public and will have a ticket charge of RM10 including refreshments.

Updates can be obtained at their Instagram and Twitter at @mericanmuaythai, as well as Facebook at www.facebook.com/mericanmuaythaigym.