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World Lethwei Championship

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World Lethwei Championship
Company typePrivate
IndustryLethwei promotion
FoundedAugust 2015
DefunctFebruary 1st, 2021 Due to 2021 Myanmar coup d'état
Headquarters
Yangon
,
Myanmar
Key people
Zay Thiha (Chairman)[1]
Sein Phyo Hlaing (Executive Director)
Gerald Ng (CEO)[2]
OwnerMyanmar Lekkha Moun Co Ltd[3]
Websitewww.wlc.com.mm Edit this at Wikidata

World Lethwei Championship (also known as WLC) was a Lethwei promotion based in Yangon, Myanmar.[4] The promotion brought the millennia-old Burmese martial of Lethwei to UFC Fight Pass and showcased it to the world.[5][6] The WLC events combined the historic traditions of Lethwei with modern entertainment.[7]

History

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Formation

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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.[8][9] 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.[1][10]

Inaugural event

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In 2017, WLC signed Myanmar's top Lethwei fighters Tun Tun Min & Too Too.[11] 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.[12][13]

Signing Dave Leduc

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In March 2019, the promotion announced that it had signed Lethwei superstar Dave Leduc to an exclusive contract.[14] The exclusive contract would made it impossible for him to defend his various titles from other promotions.[15] Leduc held a press conference at the Karaweik Palace in Yangon to announce that he was vacating three of his four Lethwei world titles.[16][17]

For Leduc's promotional debut at WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs, the WLC signed former UFC welterweight Seth Baczynski.[18] Leduc knocked out Baczynski with punches to win the inaugural WLC Cruiserweight Championship.[19] 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.[20] Leduc received a $50,000 bonus for his performance and marketing efforts.[21]

International expansion

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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.[22] At the pre-fight press conference for WLC 11: Battlebones, WLC executive director Sein Phyo Hlaing revealed plans to expand globally in 2020,[2] beginning with Cambodia,[23] Thailand, Japan and the United States.[24] As the promotion expands internationally, it plans to sign even more free-agents with recognizable names to compete in Lethwei.[25]

ONE Championship partnership

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In October 2016, the WLC became one of ONE Championship’s partners at the occasion ONE: State of Warriors in Yangon, Myanmar. WLC Chairman Zay Thiha was inspired after witnessing the success ONE Championship in Myanmar which held total of three events in Yangon in 2015 and 2016. These events are said to be the inspiration behind WLC’s creation.[26]

“ONE Championship proved that a world-class martial arts event can thrive in the country, and we believe we can replicate that with the national martial art of Lethwei,” "We believe we can elevate the sport and showcase Myanmar as a world-class sporting nation.” said Zay Thiha.[26]

In 2017, the promotion 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).[27] However, the WLC officially entered into a partnership to share fighters with the mixed martial arts promotion ONE Championship.[9] Both parties agreed on sending athletes to fight in each other's organization.[28][29]

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

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In 2018, Cambodia's Nou Srey Pov became the first female winner in World Lethwei Championship, defeating Shwe Sin Min and Shwe Nadi.[33]

In 2019, WLC announced it will commit to the female Lethwei division with a dedicated female match at every event.[34] 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.[35]

Broadcast

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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.[36] In 2018, WLC signed a broadcasting deal with international broadcaster Canal+ for exclusive broadcasting rights in Myanmar.[37][38] The end of 2018, the WLC marked Lethwei history by signing a deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship[39] and having its first Lethwei event broadcast live on UFC Fight Pass.[40][41] World Lethwei Championship was also available in over 100 countries through broadcast deals with Fight Network,[42] Arena Sport, Fox Sports, Star Sports, Bayon Television, Titan Channel, Sport Extra and StarTimes.

Events

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# Event Date Venue Location
13 WLC 14: Lethwei Showcase 25 September 2020 Undisclosed location Undisclosed location
12 WLC 12: Hideout Battle 28 August 2020 Undisclosed location Undisclosed location
11 WLC 11: Battlebones 31 January 2020 Thein Pyu Stadium Myanmar Yangon, Myanmar
10 WLC 10: Fearless Tigers 4 October 2019 Mandalar Thiri Indoor Stadium Myanmar Mandalay, Myanmar
9 WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs 2 August 2019 Mandalar Thiri Indoor Stadium Myanmar Mandalay, Myanmar
8 WLC 8: Karen Spirit 5 May 2019 Chit Tu Myaing Park Myanmar Hpa-an, Myanmar
7 WLC 7: Mighty Warriors 22 February 2019 Mandalar Thiri Indoor Stadium Myanmar Mandalay, Myanmar
6 WLC 6: Heartless Tigers 29 September 2018 Thuwunna National Indoor Stadium Myanmar Yangon, Myanmar
5 WLC 5: Knockout War 2 June 2018 Wunna Theikdi Indoor Stadium Myanmar Naypitaw, Myanmar
4 WLC 4: Bareknuckle-King 17 February 2018 Wunna Theikdi Indoor Stadium Myanmar Naypitaw, Myanmar
3 WLC 3: Legendary Champions 4 November 2017 Thuwunna National Indoor Stadium Myanmar Yangon, Myanmar
2 WLC 2: Ancient Warriors 10 June 2017 Thuwunna National Indoor Stadium Myanmar Yangon, Myanmar
1 WLC 1: The Great Beginning 3 March 2017 Mingalardon Event Zone Myanmar Yangon, Myanmar

Final champions

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World Champions

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Division Champion Event Defenses
Cruiserweight Canada Dave Leduc August 2, 2019 (WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs) 0
Middleweight Uzbekistan Naimjon Tuhtaboyev January 31, 2020 (WLC 11: Battlebones) 0
Light Middleweight Ukraine Sasha Moisa August 2, 2019 (WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs) 0
Light Welterweight Portugal Antonio Faria February 22, 2019 (WLC 7: Mighty Warriors) 1
Women's Bantamweight France Souris Manfredi August 28, 2020 (WLC 12: Hideout Battle) 0

Myanmar National Champion

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Division Champion Event
Light Welterweight Myanmar Saw Htoo Aung September 29, 2018 (WLC 6: Heartless Tigers)

World championship history

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Cruiserweight Championship

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Weight limit: 79 kg (174.2 lb) to 83 kg (183.0 lb)
No. Name Event Date Reign Defenses
1 Canada Dave Leduc
def. Seth Baczynski 		WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs
Mandalay, Myanmar 		August 2, 2019 542 days WLC defuncted February 1, 2021 due to Myanmar coup d'état

Middleweight Championship

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Weight limit: 71 kg (156.5 lb) to 75 kg (165.3 lb)
No. Name Event Date Reign Defenses
1 Myanmar Too Too
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 Uzbekistan Naimjon Tuhtaboyev
def. Too Too 		WLC 11: Battlebones
Yangon, Myanmar 		January 31, 2020 367 days WLC defuncted February 1, 2021 due to Myanmar coup d'état

Light Middleweight Championship

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Weight limit: 67 kg (147.7 lb) to71 kg (156.5 lb)
No. Name Event Date Reign Defenses
1 Poland Artur Saladiak
def. Saw Ba Oo 		WLC 5: Knockout War
Naypitaw, Myanmar 		June 2, 2018 426 days
2 Ukraine Sasha Moisa
def. Artur Saladiak 		WLC 9: King of Nine Limbs
Mandalay, Myanmar 		August 2, 2019 542 days WLC defuncted February 1, 2021 due to Myanmar coup d'état

Light Welterweight Championship

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Weight limit: 60 kg (132.3 lb) to 63.5 kg (140.0 lb)
No. Name Event Date Reign Defenses
1 Portugal Antonio Faria
def. Saw Htoo Aung 		WLC 7: Mighty Warriors
Mandalay, Myanmar 		February 22, 2019 710 days 1. def. Francisco Vinuelas at WLC 14 on September 25, 2020


WLC defuncted February 1, 2021 due to Myanmar coup d'état

Women's Bantamweight Championship

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Weight limit: 51 kg (112.4 lb) to 54 kg (119.0 lb)
No. Name Event Date Reign Defenses
1 France Souris Manfredi
def. Maisha Katz 		WLC 12: Hideout Battle
Undisclosed location 		August 28, 2020 157 days WLC defuncted February 1, 2021 due to Myanmar coup d'état

Rules

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The WLC uses the tournament rules established in 1996 by the MTLF.

Rounds

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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

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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

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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

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Notable fighters

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Kang Wan Chern (25 May 2018). "The economics behind World Lethwei Championship". Myanmar Times.
  2. ^ a b Leon Jennings (31 January 2020). "The World Lethwei Championship Plans to Go Global in 2020". APMMA.
  3. ^ "Local Company List For Registration On (22-6-2016)In Yangon Region" (PDF). DICA. 16 May 2017.
  4. ^ "World's Largest Bareknuckle Fighting Organization Sets Event for 10,000 Seat Indoor Stadium". MyMMANews. 23 May 2017.
  5. ^ Eric Kowal (16 May 2017). "World's largest bareknuckle fighting organization sets event for 10,000 seat indoor stadium". MyMMANews. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  6. ^ Ismail Vorajee (28 September 2018). "Cambodians test Lethwei mettle". Khmer Times.
  7. ^ Matt Eaton (16 May 2017). "World Lethwei Championship 1: The Great Beginning". The Fight Nation.
  8. ^ "Zay Thiha: Bringing Lethwei to the World". Rough Magazine. 11 August 2017.
  9. ^ a b "World Lethwei championship to be held in Myanmar". Sport 360. 16 February 2017.
  10. ^ "World Lethwei Championship: Biggest Int'l. Lethwei Competition in Myanmar". Myanmaritv. 25 May 2017.
  11. ^ "၂၀၁၇ တွင် ကျင်းပမည့် မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာ လက်ဝှေ့ပွဲတွင် ထိုးသတ်ရန် နိုင်ငံခြားသားနှစ်ဦးနှင့် စာချုပ်" (in Burmese). DVB.com. Retrieved 16 May 2017.
  12. ^ "World Lethwei championship to be held in Myanmar". sports360. Retrieved 16 May 2017.
  13. ^ "ကမ္ဘာ့ချန်ပီယံရှစ် ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ပြိုင်ပွဲ အဓိကတွဲဆိုင်းတွင် မြန်မာပြည်ချန်ပီယံထွန်းထွန်းမင်း အင်္ဂလန် နိုင်ငံသား နီကိုးလက်စ်ကာတာကို အလဲထိုးအနိုင်ရ (ရုပ်သံ)" (in Burmese). Eleven Broadcasting. Retrieved 16 May 2017.
  14. ^ "Dave Leduc signs with WLC: "I want all the belts"". The Fight Nation. 18 May 2019. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019.
  15. ^ Thiha (25 March 2019). "မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ချန်ပီယံ ဒေ့ဗ် (Dave Leduc) နဲ့ စာနယ်ဇင်းမီဒီယာများတွေ့ဆုံပွဲ". Yoyarlay.
  16. ^ Eaton, Matt (26 March 2019). "Dave Leduc Clears the Decks for WLC". The Fight Nation. Archived from the original on 13 April 2019.
  17. ^ Rae, Steven (28 March 2019). "Dave Leduc vacates three Lethwei titles: will fight exclusively for World Lethwei Championship". The Body Lock.
  18. ^ Jason Burgos (2 May 2019). "UFC Veteran Seth Baczynski Signs Multi-Fight Deal With World Lethwei Championship". Sherdog.
  19. ^ Matthew Carter (29 August 2019). "Dave Leduc Stops Seth Baczynski In Round 2". Lethwei World.
  20. ^ a b "National Winners 2020" (PDF). Asian Academy Awards. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  21. ^ Matthew Carter (2 January 2020). "WLC 9 Bonus : Dave Leduc Scores Belated $50,000". Lethwei World.
  22. ^ Matt Eaton (29 October 2019). "Dave Leduc Says Lethwei Is Coming to the USA". The Fight Nation. Archived from the original on 27 December 2019.
  23. ^ Steven Rae (13 June 2019). "The WLC is looking to expand its horizons, and Cambodia may be the first stop". The Body Lock.
  24. ^ Alan Dawson (29 May 2020). "The world's most brutal fight firm is bringing its unique brand of violence to the US, and it involves head-butt knockouts". Insider.
  25. ^ John Morgan (31 January 2020). "World Lethwei Championship plans 2020 debut in U.S., eyes free-agent signings". MMA Junkie.
  26. ^ a b "World Lethwei championship to be held in Myanmar". Sports 360. 16 February 2017.
  27. ^ Alan Dawson (4 June 2020). "World Lethwei Championship is open to a co-promotion in order to expand". Business Insider.
  28. ^ 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.
  29. ^ James Rees (22 August 2022). "Interview With WLC CEO Erik Alonso". Lethwei World.
  30. ^ "ONE Championship: Light of a Nation". Tapology. Retrieved 4 September 2022.
  31. ^ "Lethwei (Burmese Boxing) In ONE Championship?". Fight Sports. 30 August 2022. Retrieved 5 September 2022.
  32. ^ 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.
  33. ^ "Srey Pov wins again in Burmese Lethwei". Khmer Times. 4 June 2018.
  34. ^ Mark Jacobs (28 August 2020). "World Lethwei Championship Returns With First Women's Championship". Black belt.
  35. ^ "Yanut comes up short in WLC debut". Khmer Times. 4 August 2019.
  36. ^ "WLC Lethwei Challenge In Naypyidaw To Be Broadcast Live". Myanmar Digital News. 1 June 2018. Archived from the original on 2 February 2020. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  37. ^ "WLC-7: "Mighty Warriors" to take place in Mandalay". Myanmar Digital News. 1 February 2019.
  38. ^ Eric Kowal (11 August 2017). "Middleweight World Lethwei Champion Too Too to defend against Ukrainian star Vasyl Sorokin". MyMMANews.
  39. ^ TFN Staff (4 January 2019). "Lethwei Is Coming To UFC Fight Pass". The Fight Nation.
  40. ^ "2019 UFC Fight Pass schedule includes PPV prelims, boxing, Lethwei". MMA Fighting. 31 December 2018.
  41. ^ "World Lethwei Championship Lines Up Big Card for UFC Fight Pass Debut". The Fight Nation. 31 January 2019. Archived from the original on 5 April 2019.
  42. ^ "[World Lethwei Championship] Anthem Sports Entertainments Fight Network inks distribution in middle east", Media Play News, 27 August 2020, retrieved 17 September 2020
  43. ^ a b Matthew Carter (2 January 2020). "2019 Lethwei World Awards". Lethwei World.
  44. ^ "SPIA Asia 2019 Winners". Spia Asia. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
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