Mr. Ekarat Chaichotchuang

M.B.A. Program Sport Management,

Chandrakasem Rajabhat University, Thailand

Introduction

International boxing enter to Thailand after King Rama V visited the European Country and came back in 1897. In 1898, King Rama V had the policy to teach international sports in school, including croquet, badminton, lawn tennis, football and international boxing.  In 1917, there are international boxing competitions among the school of Thailand. Amateur boxing association of Thailand has happened since 1953 to promote Thai people to learn and to enjoy boxing. We used boxing hereby as the professional boxing.

Championship in Professional Boxing

The first international boxing organization in Asia is the Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation (OPBF) and Thai come to be the member of OPBF in 1952. The first Thai international champion is  Jamroen Songkittirat in lightweight division in 1952. Jamroen Songkittirat is the first challenger of  world boxing championship in 1954 in Thailand and lost by point to Jimmy Carruthers from Australia in Bantamweight. During the fight, it had the raining and this ring is open air. That is only first fight and last in world boxing history that both boxer take off the shoes to fight in the boxing ring because of the raining.

First Thai boxer to acquire a world title in 1960 was the graceful Pone Kingpetch , who was to win and lose the flyweight championship three times in a memorable career.  Thai world recognized boxing champion have 38  champion and the latest champion is Oleydong Sithsamerchai who won WBC strawweight title on November 29,2007.

The Changes in Boxing in Thailand

            In the past, it is very hard to make the profit in boxing because the selling of the ticket is hard to cover all expense mainly the purse of world champion.  The government or high ranking officials play a main sponsor role to support the boxing fight by influence the selling of tickets or ask for the donation to each boxing events.  The television era bring the advertising revenue for the boxing fight. The politician see the benefit of boxing to bring the attention and appreciation of their voters. Therefore, politician do the support of boxing fight by buying the boxing tickets and give to their voter to attend the fight for free.

In 1989, the free ticket happen by the politician to support the free boxing show to public when Kaosai Galaxy defended his 9^th of World Boxing Association (WBA) Bantamweight title. This is first free ticket boxing events in history and start to make Thailand as the only country in the world to see the free boxing fight. The boxing promoter satisfy with the politician support as the site fee to compensate the selling of the tickets and to avoid the risk. Since television boom, the promoter also make a lot of revenue from the advertising by bought the air time and selling the advertising commercials.  Both politician support and advertising in television influence the free tickets of boxing show happen in Thailand since 1989 to present 2007.

An Expectation of Boxing Development

          Boxing have many competitive sports especially in a favorite of soccer in middle class and teakwondo in youth. Boxing is not teaching at present in school unless in sport school compare with soccer which is a requirement course in general. It looks like next generations would be lack of interested in boxing.  In the present, promoters seem to receive a less budget from politician whoever compensate the huge budget to the free ticket.  The economic crisis caused many products to reduce the expense including the spending of advertising in boxing while many men products tend to shift their new target in middle class.  Therefore, the free admission in boxing would tend to be change to traditional era of selling ticket in the near feature.

Conclusion

            There are 38 world champions from Thailand in major boxing organization since 1960 . The main sponsors in boxing is the advertising in television and the support of politician. The free ticket  in boxing show the popular of boxing in Thailand and make only country in the world to do the free tickets. However, the changing in Thai political and the economic crisis should  effect the boxing industry in the near future.