Another Buakaw Banchamek fight ended in unsatisfactory fashion last weekend. The Thai superstar had travelled to China to take on Wang Yanlong who was billed as being a ‘Kung Fu master’.
While it isn’t clear quite what Wang Yanglon’s actual competitive experience is Buakaw is a veteran of around 300 fights who has beaten some of China’s best kickboxers. The two were matched together at something called the Grandview International Fight Super Competition in Guangzhou.
Buakaw is coming off a no contest at Rajdamnern earlier this month. And ss you can see from the footage below the fight didn’t exactly go to plan either:
In case you didn’t see Buakaw’s fight in China today…. 🎪https://t.co/4Yqd0N1AsO
— Muay Thai Chai (@muaythaichai) September 24, 2023
Refusing to fight
Yanglon immediately targets Buakaw’s shins with spinning back kicks. It is an unusual tactic but one that seems to be quite effective in stalling the experienced Thai fighter.
Yanglon gets hist first warning from the Thai referee within ten seconds of the fight starting although it isn’t clear exactly why. A spinning back kick lands in Buakaw’s upper thigh area and the Thai fighter asks for time to recover.
After a brief period the fight resumes but the Chinese fighter once again throws a spinning back kick to the groin. The referee pauses the action again but this time Buakaw chooses to continue almost immediately.
Yanglon throws two more spinning back kicks to the groin and this time Buakaw decides to just get on with it. The Thai fighter is starting to pressurize his opponent now, constantly backing him up.
Buakaw then lands a knee from the clinch and Yanglon protests. The referee pauses the fight but once the action resumes he lands another knee and this time the Chinese fighter refuses to continue fighting.
Afterwards Buakaw’s manager commented on the controversy:
Confusion about rules
The result will go down on both men’s record as No Contest (Confusion about rules) which is clearly an unusual result. Having refused to continue with the fight and conducted an in ring protest Yanglon then supposedly demanded that Buakaw fight him under MMA rules.
Afterwards the Chinese fighter claimed on Weibo that his shots were all legal and Buakaw had cheated by using his knees. He showed a replay of one spinning back kick which connected somewhere in the upper thigh area and claimed this proved conclusively that all his strikes had been legal.
It seems like the movie star was looking for excuses not to fight Buakaw. He didn’t even pretend to be in pain after the knees, Yanglon was just too outraged to continue.
Yanglon will be able to tell movie produces in China that he once fought Buakaw, although he will have to hope that they don’t view the actual footage. The Thai fighter totally ignored this event on his social media and didn’t promote it at all, perhaps he knew what was coming?
