Kickboxing or Muay Thai should in theory be more popular than MMA and Boxing? Why is it not?

[Memeojima]

Oh God... You guys make things way to complicated.

Kickboxing lacks two important things: promotion and stars.

& bareknuckle is the closest thing to a real world scenario.

If anything there's too many promotions and that's part of the problem.

 

[Kanka]

Neither MMA, Muay Thai nor Boxing is necessarily close to a "real world scenario". They all could be, but real life ranges from stabbings, to sloppy bar fights, sucker punches out of nowhere, and one guy being jumped by many. But I agree people are willing to watch anything as long as there are stars, and especially today even Youtubers can have big fights.

 

[Dessyboy]

Muay Thai / Kickboxing rules in a cage with mma gloves is i think the ultimate, but everything needs proper promotion

 

[Loriquero]

#Cagesareforanimals

For the gloves: Don't bring one of the worst things of MMA to striking only sports (eyepokes)

 

[Snubnoze707]

Muay Thai / Kickboxing rules in a cage with mma gloves is i think the ultimate, but everything needs proper promotion

ONE Championship has been doing this already for years...

It hasn't made much of a difference. The rules aren't the problem the promotions and their ability to market stars is the problem.

 

[Memeojima]

#Cagesareforanimals

For the gloves: Don't bring one of the worst things of MMA to striking only sports (eyepokes)

The only problem with small MMA gloves is the sudden death of it all. Pure strikers hit way harder than your average MMA guy and fights end early with them. Other than that I say

 

[Tayski]

#Cagesareforanimals

For the gloves: Don't bring one of the worst things of MMA to striking only sports (eyepokes)

It doesn't take much to adapt the gloves to avoid eye pokes, for exampleThai Fight uses MMA gloves with wrapping on top and it works fine without eye pokes.

 

[MT5]

The genius of MMA is that the fight never stops. Yeah there's the occasional eye poke or crotch strike or situations where one guy's caught on the floor and the other standing, etc.. where the referee has to stop action. But those are relatively rare. Boxing and kickboxing can have endless referee clinch breakups which I think can turn off the casual fan. Boxing is kind of grandfathered in in the Western World and its losing to MMA anyway. My feeling is there's a niche for muay thai type fights without clinch breakups but where throws to the ground (or some multiple of that) in the clinch result in TKO's or something like that. In any case I think the issue is the clinch slowing down the action.