World Lethwei Championship: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 11:17, 10 October 2022
Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Lethwei promotion |
Founded | August 2015 |
Headquarters | , |
Key people | Erik Alonso (CEO)[1] Zay Thiha (Chairman)[2] Sein Phyo Hlaing (Executive Director)[3] |
Owner | Myanmar Lekkha Moun Co Ltd[4] |
Website | www |
World Lethwei Championship (also known as WLC) is a Lethwei promotion based in Yangon, Myanmar.[5] The promotion brought to the millennia-old Burmese martial of Lethwei to UFC Fight Pass and showcased it to the world.[6][7] The WLC events combined the historic traditions of Lethwei with modern entertainment.[8]
History
Formation
The success of ONE Championship's mixed martial arts events in Myanmar caught the eye of Zaykabar Company Vice-Chairman Zay Thiha, who decided to bring world-class Lethwei events the world.[9][10] The businessman started Lekkha Moun Co in 2015 and the World Lethwei Championship was officially founded in August 2017 by Zay Thiha and investors, as a subsidiary of Lekkha Moun Co.[2][11]
Inaugural event
In 2017, WLC signed Myanmar's top Lethwei fighters Tun Tun Min & Too Too.[12] The first WLC event, titled WLC 1: The Great Beginning, was held on 3 March 2017 at Mingalardon Event Zone in Mingaladon Township, Yangon, Myanmar.[13][14]
Signing Dave Leduc
In March 2019, the promotion announced that it had signed Lethwei superstar Dave Leducto an exclusive contract.[15] The exclusive contract would made it impossible for him to defend his various titles from other promotions.[16] Leduc held a press conference at the Karaweik Palace in Yangon to announce that he was vacating three of his four Lethwei world titles.[17][18]
For Leduc's promotional debut at WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs, the WLC signed former UFC welterweight Seth Baczynski.[19] Leduc knocked out Baczynski with punches to win the inaugural WLC Cruiserweight Championship.[20] The event received a significant viewership success on UFC Fight Pass and won multiple awards in Asia such as the 2019 Best Sport Program at The Asian Academy Awards.[21] Leduc received a $50,000 bonus for his performance and marketing efforts.[22]
International expansion
In October 2019, while on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Dave Leduc announced that the organization had plans to host an historical event in the United States.[23] At the pre-fight press conference for WLC 11: Battlebones, WLC executive director Sein Phyo Hlaing revealed plans to expand globally in 2020,[3] beginning with Cambodia,[24] Thailand, Japan and the United States.[25][26] As the promotion expands internationally, it plans to sign even more free-agents with recognizable names to compete in Lethwei.[27]
ONE Championship partnership
In 2017, showed interest in co-promoting events in order to expand globally and there was rumours the organization could co-promote with the US-based Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC).[28] However, the WLC officially entered into a partnership to share fighters with the mixed martial arts promotion ONE Championship.[10] Both parties agreed on sending athletes to fight in each other's organization.[29][1]
On June 30, 2017, in a collaboration between ONE and WLC, the organizations held a Lethwei dark match at ONE Championship: Light of a Nation, a contest between Soe Htet Oo and Thway Thit Win Hlaing. Soe Htet Oo would end up losing a decision according to WLC point system where a winner must be chosen by judges decision if the fight goes there is no stoppage.[30] As of 2022, there has been rumours of WLC Champion Dave Leduc crossing over to ONE Championship under Lethwei rules.[31][32]
Women division
Cambodia's Nou Srey Pov became the first female winner in World Lethwei Championship, defeating Shwe Sin Min and Shwe Nadi in 2018. [33]
In 2019, WLC announced it will commit to the female Lethwei division with a dedicated female match at every event. It held its first female fight after the announcement featuring France's Souris Manfredi and Eh Yanut from Cambodia at WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs on 2 August in Mandalay, Myanmar. Manfredi became the first winner of the newly created women’s division by defeating Yanut.[34]
Broadcast
Myanmar
Sky Net was the first television channel to broadcast the WLC events live in Myanmar and were then delayed telecast in over 40 countries worldwide.[35]
In 2018, WLC signed a broadcasting deal with international broadcaster Canal+ for exclusive broadcasting rights in Myanmar.[36][37]
Outside Myanmar
The end of 2018, the WLC marked Lethwei history by signing a deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship[38] and having its first Lethwei event broadcast live on UFC Fight Pass.[39][40] World Lethwei Championship is also available in over 100 countries through broadcast deals with Fight Network,[41] Arena Sport, Fox Sports, Star Sports, Bayon Television, Titan Channel, Sport Extra and StarTimes.
Sponsorship
- Fuso
- AGD Bank
- UFC Fight Pass
- Canal+
- SPEED Energy Drink
- 5BB Broadband
- Max Myanmar Group and Consumer Goods Myanmar Co.[2][42]
- Fightbro
- Sogo Plastics
Events
Champions
World Champions
Division | Champion | Since | Defenses |
---|---|---|---|
Cruiserweight | August 2, 2019 (WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs) | 0 | |
Middleweight | January 31, 2020 (WLC 11: Battlebones) | 0 | |
Light Middleweight | August 2, 2019 (WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs) | 0 | |
Light Welterweight | February 22, 2019 (WLC 7: Mighty Warriors) | 1 | |
Women's Bantamweight | August 28, 2020 (WLC 12: Hideout Battle) | 0 |
Myanmar National Champion
Division | Champion | Since | Defenses |
---|---|---|---|
Light Welterweight | September 29, 2018 (WLC 6: Heartless Tigers) | 0 |
World championship history
Cruiserweight Championship
- Weight limit: 79 kg (174.2 lb) to 83 kg (183.0 lb)
No. | Name | Event | Date | Reign | Defenses |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | def. Seth Baczynski |
WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs Mandalay, Myanmar |
August 2, 2019 | 1848 days (incumbent) |
Middleweight Championship
- Weight limit: 71 kg (156.5 lb) to 75 kg (165.3 lb)
No. | Name | Event | Date | Reign | Defenses |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | def. Michael Badato |
WLC 3: Legendary Champions Yangon, Myanmar |
November 4, 2017 | 818 days | 1. def. Vasyl Sorokin at WLC 4 on February 17, 2018 |
2 | def. Too Too |
WLC 11: Battlebones Yangon, Myanmar |
January 31, 2020 | 1666 days (incumbent) |
Light Middleweight Championship
- Weight limit: 67 kg (147.7 lb) to71 kg (156.5 lb)
No. | Name | Event | Date | Reign | Defenses |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | def. Saw Ba Oo |
WLC 5: Knockout War Naypitaw, Myanmar |
June 2, 2018 | 426 days | |
2 | def. Artur Saladiak |
WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs Mandalay, Myanmar |
August 2, 2019 | 1848 days (incumbent) |
Light Welterweight Championship
- Weight limit: 60 kg (132.3 lb) to 63.5 kg (140.0 lb)
No. | Name | Event | Date | Reign | Defenses |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | def. Saw Htoo Aung |
WLC 7: Mighty Warriors Mandalay, Myanmar |
February 22, 2019 | 2009 days (incumbent) |
1. def. Francisco Vinuelas at WLC 14 on September 25, 2020 |
Women's Bantamweight Championship
- Weight limit: 51 kg (112.4 lb) to 54 kg (119.0 lb)
No. | Name | Event | Date | Reign | Defenses |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | def. Maisha Katz |
WLC 12: Hideout Battle Undisclosed location |
August 28, 2020 | 1456 days (incumbent) |
Rules
The WLC uses the modern Lethwei rules also known as tournament rules first established in 1996 by the Myanmar Lethwei Federation.
Rounds
Each bout can be booked as a 3, 4 or 5 round fight with 3 minutes per round and a 2-minute break in between rounds. Championship bouts are 5 round fights with 3 minutes per round and a 2-minute break between rounds.
Judging
In the event that a bout goes the distance, it will go to the judges decision. The 3 judges will score the bout based on number of strikes per round. Fighters have a maximum of 3 knockdowns per round and 4 knockdowns in the entire fight before the fight is ruled a knockout.
Weight classes
Weight class name | Upper limit | Gender | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
in pounds (lb) | in kilograms (kg) | in stone (st) | ||
Light Flyweight | 105 | 48 | 7.6 | Female |
Flyweight | 112 | 51 | 8 | Male / Female |
Bantamweight | 119 | 54 | 8.5 | Male / Female |
Featherweight | 126 | 57 | 9 | Male / Female |
Lightweight | 132 | 60 | 9.5 | Male / Female |
Light Welterweight | 140 | 63.5 | 10 | Male / Female |
Welterweight | 148 | 67 | 10.5 | Male |
Light Middleweight | 157 | 71 | 11.1 | Male |
Middleweight | 165 | 75 | 11.8 | Male |
Super Middleweight | 174 | 79 | 12.4 | Male |
Cruiserweight | 183 | 83 | 13 | Male |
Awards
- Lethwei World
- Spia Asia Awards
- Asian Academy Awards
Notable fighters
See also
References
- ^ a b James Rees (22 August 2022). "Interview With WLC CEO Erik Alonso". Lethwei World.
- ^ a b c Kang Wan Chern (25 May 2018). "The economics behind World Lethwei Championship". Myanmar Times.
- ^ a b Leon Jennings (31 January 2020). "The World Lethwei Championship Plans to Go Global in 2020". APMMA.
- ^ "Local Company List For Registration On (22-6-2016)In Yangon Region" (PDF). DICA. 16 May 2017.
- ^ "World's Largest Bareknuckle Fighting Organization Sets Event for 10,000 Seat Indoor Stadium". MyMMANews. 23 May 2017.
- ^ Eric Kowal. "World's largest bareknuckle fighting organization sets event for 10,000 seat indoor stadium". MyMMANews. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
- ^ Ismail Vorajee (28 September 2018). "Cambodians test Lethwei mettle". Khmer Times.
- ^ Matt Eaton (16 May 2017). "World Lethwei Championship 1: The Great Beginning". The Fight Nation.
- ^ "Zay Thiha: Bringing Lethwei to the World". Rough Magazine. 11 August 2017.
- ^ a b "World Lethwei championship to be held in Myanmar". Sport 360. 16 February 2017.
- ^ "World Lethwei Championship: Biggest Int'l. Lethwei Competition in Myanmar". Myanmaritv. 25 May 2017.
- ^ "၂၀၁၇ တြင္ က်င္းပမည့္ ျမန္မာ့႐ိုးရာ လက္ေ၀ွ႔ပြဲတြင္ ထိုးသတ္ရန္ ႏိုင္ငံျခားသားႏွစ္ဦးႏွင့္ စာခ်ဳပ္". DVB.com. Retrieved 16 May 2017.
- ^ "World Lethwei championship to be held in Myanmar". sports360. Retrieved 16 May 2017.
- ^ "ကမာၻ႕ခ်န္ပီယံရွစ္ ရိုးရာလက္ေ၀ွ႕ၿပိဳင္ပြဲ အဓိကတြဲဆိုင္းတြင္ ျမန္မာျပည္ခ်န္ပီယံထြန္းထြန္းမင္း အဂၤလန္ ႏိုင္ငံသား နီကိုးလက္စ္ကာတာကို အလဲထိုးအႏိုင္ရ (ရုပ္သံ)". Eleven Broadcasting. Retrieved 16 May 2017.
- ^ "Dave Leduc signs with WLC: "I want all the belts"". The Fight Nation. 18 May 2019. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019.
- ^ Thiha (25 March 2019). "မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ချန်ပီယံ ဒေ့ဗ် (Dave Leduc) နဲ့ စာနယ်ဇင်းမီဒီယာများတွေ့ဆုံပွဲ". Yoyarlay.
- ^ Eaton, Matt (26 March 2019). "Dave Leduc Clears the Decks for WLC". The Fight Nation. Archived from the original on 13 April 2019.
- ^ Rae, Steven (28 March 2019). "Dave Leduc vacates three Lethwei titles: will fight exclusively for World Lethwei Championship". The Body Lock.
- ^ Jason Burgos (2 May 2019). "UFC Veteran Seth Baczynski Signs Multi-Fight Deal With World Lethwei Championship". Sherdog.
- TFN Staff (18 May 2019). "DAVE LEDUC TO FACE SETH BACZYNSKI IN WLC DEBUT". The Fight Nation. Archived from the original on 30 August 2019.
- John Morgan (1 August 2019). "Bare-knuckle kickboxing with headbutts? 11-time UFC veteran Seth Baczynski gunning for title". MMA Junkie.
- "MULTIPLE-TIME LETHWEI CHAMPION DAVE LEDUC TO FACE UFC VETERAN SETH BACZYNSKI FOR CRUISERWEIGHT WORLD LETHWEI CHAMPIONSHIP". Fight Book MMA. 5 May 2019.
- Michael Clifton (30 July 2019). "Exclusive: Headbutts & Bare Knuckles, Seth Baczynski Talks Upcoming Lethwei Debut". Low Kick MMA.
- Sithu Aung Myo Kyaw (3 July 2019). "'King of Nine Limbs' lethwei event set to storm Mandalay". Myanmar Times.
- ^ Matthew Carter (29 August 2019). "Dave Leduc Stops Seth Baczynski In Round 2". Lethwei World.
- Lucas Bourdon (1 August 2019). "Lethwei champion Dave Leduc: 'I didn't like Muay Thai, because there were gloves'". Bloody Elbow.
- ^ a b "National Winners 2020" (PDF). Asian Academy Awards. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
- ^ Matthew Carter (2 January 2020). "WLC 9 Bonus : Dave Leduc Scores Belated $50,000". Lethwei World.
- ^ Matt Eaton (29 October 2019). "Dave Leduc Says Lethwei Is Coming to the USA". The Fight Nation. Archived from the original on 2 February 2020.
{{cite web}}
:|archive-date=
/|archive-url=
timestamp mismatch; 27 December 2019 suggested (help) - ^ Steven Rae (13 June 2019). "The WLC is looking to expand its horizons, and Cambodia may be the first stop". The Body Lock.
- ^ Nyi Min Han (15 May 2020). "The Next Four Countries to Host World Lethwei Championship". Combat Overload.
- ^ Matt Eaton (30 January 2020). "World Lethwei Championship Is Going Global in 2020". The Fight Nation.
- ^ John Morgan (31 January 2020). "World Lethwei Championship plans 2020 debut in U.S., eyes free-agent signings". MMA Junkie.
- ^ Alan Dawson (4 June 2020). "World Lethwei Championship is open to a co-promotion in order to expand". Business Insider.
- ^ Alan Dawson (4 June 2020). "MMA firm One Championship and the World Lethwei Championship are in talks to cross-pollinate each other's organizations". Business Insider India.
- ^ "ONE Championship: Light of a Nation". Tapology. Retrieved 4 September 2022.
- ^ "Lethwei (Burmese Boxing) In ONE Championship?". Fight Sports. Retrieved 5 September 2022.
- ^ Alan Dawson (28 April 2020). "Asia's biggest MMA firm would love to recruit head-butting Lethwei 'monster' Dave Leduc once the coronavirus pandemic slows". Business Insider.
- ^ "Srey Pov wins again in Burmese Lethwei". Khmer Times. 4 June 2018.
- ^ "Yanut comes up short in WLC debut". Khmer Times. 4 August 2019.
- ^ "WLC Lethwei Challenge In Naypyidaw To Be Broadcast Live". Myanmar Digital News. 1 June 2018.
- ^ "WLC-7: "Mighty Warriors" to take place in Mandalay". Myanmar Digital News. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
- ^ Eric Kowal (11 August 2017). "Middleweight World Lethwei Champion Too Too to defend against Ukrainian star Vasyl Sorokin". MyMMANews.
- ^ TFN Staff (4 January 2019). "Lethwei Is Coming To UFC Fight Pass". The Fight Nation.
- ^ "2019 UFC Fight Pass schedule includes PPV prelims, boxing, Lethwei". MMA Fighting. 31 December 2018.
- ^ "World Lethwei Championship Lines Up Big Card for UFC Fight Pass Debut". The Fight Nation. 31 January 2019. Archived from the original on 2 February 2020.
{{cite news}}
:|archive-date=
/|archive-url=
timestamp mismatch; 5 April 2019 suggested (help) - ^ "[World Lethwei Championship] Anthem Sports Entertainments Fight Network inks distribution in middle east", Media Play News, retrieved 17 September 2020
- ^ Callum McCarthy, Europe office (15 October 2019). "Lethwei, Myanmar's best-kept secret, is preparing for the global stage". Sports Business.
- ^ a b Matthew Carter (2 January 2020). "2019 Lethwei World Awards". Lethwei World.
- ^ "SPIA Asia 2019 Winners". Spia Asia. Retrieved 2 January 2020.