Fight 9 - Yodsaenklai vs Naruepol

Submitted by hansen on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 22:13

Round 1

Yod starts the round with two of his trademark left kicks. His kicks are seemingly less powerful as compared to the ones that he unleashed against McFie. Naruepol seems distracted as he replies halfheartedly with a low kick followed by a midsection kick. A fifteen year old has got more power behind his kicks! What’s with Naruepol? There is no fight in him at all.

The pace slows down even further. Yodsanklai steps in with an occasional midsection punch and slaps in a hook at the one-minute mark. Naruepol again taps Yodsanklai with another half hearted kick. He has got reluctance tattooed on his face. This is a pain to watch! His heart is definitely not in this one. Yod slips and falls as he attempts another left kick with a minute left. 30 seconds left into the round and Yod closes in with his fists as Naruepol stands motionless with his guard up to protect himself. 

The crowd is left dumbfounded as the round ends. Those who expecting a Thai on Thai, power on power fight are clearly disappointed. This two are close friends and both fight out of the Fairtex stable. They should never have met at this stage of the competition!

Round 2

Yod again unleashes his left kicks to get the second round going. Those expecting the pace to pick up are clearly disappointed as Naruepol again taps Yod with a halfhearted kick. Yod steps in with a one-two followed by hooks. Naruepol crumbles to the ground!  A KO 20 seconds into the second round!

Naruepol conveniently backs off into the ropes to support his imminent fall and he started falling even before Yod connected with the final hook!

An extremely disappointing and lackluster affair. He definitely had his gym’s interest at heart, rather than his own tonight.
 

Topic: 
episode 9

Comments

Submitted by bryanpzw on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 22:24.

yeah i thought naru placed frienship over himself tonight. like soren said "like fighting your big brother" it was very disappointing for naru. i bet yod must have felt the same way. hope if yod wins he'll give half of the 150 k to naru. haha i'd do that if i was either and won.

Submitted by mojo on Wed, 03/12/2008 - 22:26.

 Yup, yod did say: he (yod) used his full weapons, but narupoel did not. it was definitely an emotional fight. as a viewer, it was good to have this insight, put the fight in a whole different perspective. respect to both fighters!!

Submitted by sam on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 01:17.

I wanted to see something else....

Submitted by geo on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 01:20.

bambilici

Submitted by MuayThaiDoc on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 13:35.

I think this fight should definitely have occurred later in the competition. I think it must be incredibly difficult to fight a friend, but especially one from the same camp. It may have been better to have brought two Thai fighters from rival camps so this could have been avoided. I know there are training camps which will not let fighters compete against each other -Chute Boxe in Brazil for one - to avoid this exact situation.

I agree that Naruepol did not seem to try to offer much resistance to Yodsaenklai, and it was a difficult outcome to watch.

I believe Yodsaenklai will continue his dominance for the rest of the competition, and perhaps it will be him against JWP or Soren in the finale.

Submitted by sok on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 14:03.

Actually, Thai fighters who know each other (and others for that matter) rarely ever try to KO in the first two rounds. They will just throw things lightly. The first two rounds are NOT scored in Thailand. Third round they would open up for points and power and round 4, if there is a clear points victor they will not fight in round 5.

That's how it is in Thailand. And that is what Nar was more than likely thinking to do. YOu forgot to mention that he timed low kicks to knock Yod off his feet--using great timing to do so.

 

Submitted by fabiotan on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 17:31.

Please vote for Naruepol to come back.........please .............please.........

Submitted by Reyes_USN on Fri, 03/14/2008 - 06:35.

nooooooo I wanted Naruepol to win! =(

Submitted by fabiotan on Fri, 03/14/2008 - 14:28.

Same here........ i also wanted Naruepol to win too...... =(.  

Naruepol being too gentleman.........( that's my point of view  as i'm really new to muay thai, please correct me if i'm wrong)

Submitted by cheesydog on Fri, 03/14/2008 - 15:03.

it really is bad luck they drew each other, what are the odds?? The absolute worst choice for this stage of the comp, but I guess thats the nature of the show.

From watching the fight it appeared Naruepol had already decided to ease the way for his older stablemate. He very clearly not look like he wanted to win the fight..

Submitted by haruraja on Sun, 03/16/2008 - 16:19.

i dunno i kinda think this wuz rigged...wat betta way to give others a chance than to take the 2 best fighters and pit em against eachother to eliminate one no?

Submitted by melbourne_zoo on Mon, 03/17/2008 - 00:04.

I haven't seen the full episode yet, but I hope to god this is not rigged - if it is, its an extremely unscrupulous and low move on the part of the program's mangement. It's heartbreaking to see a fight like this. It is so obvious that Naruepol gave the match away. And this selfless act makes him definitely one of my very favourite fighters from now on.

Submitted by geo on Mon, 03/17/2008 - 01:24.

play the KO part slowmo...

Submitted by Reyes_USN on Tue, 03/18/2008 - 08:22.

why they had two fighters from the same camp rather than one fairtex fighter (either Yod or Naruepol) take on another Thai camp like Sityodtong or another.

Submitted by hansen on Tue, 03/18/2008 - 10:45.

[quote=sok]

Actually, Thai fighters who know each other (and others for that matter) rarely ever try to KO in the first two rounds. They will just throw things lightly. The first two rounds are NOT scored in Thailand. Third round they would open up for points and power and round 4, if there is a clear points victor they will not fight in round 5.

That's how it is in Thailand. And that is what Nar was more than likely thinking to do. YOu forgot to mention that he timed low kicks to knock Yod off his feet--using great timing to do so.

 

[/quote]

 

The 1st 2 rounds are not scored in Thailand? I understand that the Thais tend to take it easy during the first 2 rounds...Can someone find out if this is true? enquiring minds wanna know...

Submitted by fafarrahzzi on Tue, 03/18/2008 - 20:53.

maybe he didn't necessarily give it away, but i think in the moments leading to the actual fight, he was unable to firm up his resolve to win and maintain a no-holds-barred mindset. you could see that he kept saying "i really don't wanna fight yod" all the way till the end, whereas yod was able to move past that mental pre-fight barrier and was in warrior mode already. after all, a large part of winning starts from mental conditioning. and you could see naruepol could still have gotten up when he got knocked down (but not totally out), but he just stayed there. (no disrespect to yod, coz obviously the "kid" totally rocks it out in the ring).. it was heartbreaking, all right. but coz of the way he went, well, win or lose, naruepol deserves nothing less than respect.

Submitted by sok on Thu, 03/20/2008 - 00:11.

Well since I have fought over 20 times in Thailand you can either believe me or go to Thailand fight for yourself and find out.