One person clearly enjoyed seeing Saturday’s kickboxing fight between Buakaw Banchamek and Yasuhiro Kido ruled a no contest. Dave Leduc described the outcome as ‘delightful’ when the fight was called off due to an accidental headbutt.
Leduc is known as ‘King of Lethwei’ after enjoying success in the relatively obscure Burmese sport. He has repeatedly taunted several Muay Thai fighters, including Buakaw, and challenged them to fight him.
Seeing Kido unable to continue after the accidental Buakaw headbutt clearly made Leduc’s day. He wrote on Instagram that,
“You can’t escape headbutts, you can’t escape the art of the eight limb, it’s the style that is closest to nature.”
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Totally unintentional
Leduc might have a point here. The headbutt from Buakaw was totally unintentional but did so much damage that the fight had to be called off immediately and declared a no contest.
Leduc, who weighs around 185lbs, says that the reason he and Buakaw never got to fight is that the Thai was scared,
“Buakaw was scared to fight me under Lethwei rules.”
Leduc’s feud with Muay Thai has escalated in recent months. He announced he was banned from entering the country and recently accused a Thai restaurant in Turkey of trying to poison him.
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Final fight
The final fight of Dave Leduc’s career will take place in Phnom Penh on November 5th. He will be travelling to Cambodia to take on Prom Samnang in a fight that will have a slightly unusual ruleset.
Leduc will retire immediately after the fight with Samnang. They will not be fighting under either Lethwei or Kun Khmer rules. Instead the bout will consist of a single nine minute round with both mean wearing ropes on their fists.
Leduc has amassed a huge fan following in Lethwei and has helped to raise global awareness of a sport which doesn’t have much of a following outside of Myanmar. He might be retiring from active competition but we suspect that won’t deter him from sharing his incendiary opinions about Muay Thai.
