Fighter in title test as SMTC members battle toughest opponents

Last month the club travelled up to East Kilbride to take part in the SMTC Christmas cracker, which was being held in the Greenhill Community Centre, and Raymond Woodcock took on Tam McCourt for a British title in Linwood. The club had five fighters competing at the East Kilbride event. There was one adult, Chris Vize, and four juniors — Davy McIntyre junior, Lewis Matlock, Aidan Power and Jamie Harrison junior. The juniors were up first and it was young Aidan who was up against a fighter from the Beastmasters Gym in Manchester.

This was a very fast-paced fight and saw Aidan’s opponent coming forward fast and hitting the young man with big front kicks and putting him to the canvas.

It was clear this was a mismatch as Aidan was put on the canvas a few times and took some strong blows to the body.

His corner quickly brought this fight to an end for the safety of their fighter. An unfortunate match-up for young Aidan but he showed a lot of heart against a better skilled opponent.

Up next for the juniors was Jamie Harrison Junior, again matched against another fighter from the Beastmasters Gym.

Fighting over three two-minute rounds, this was a high-paced contest from the get-go from two very young men showing not only great skill but brilliant athleticism way beyond their years.

As the fight progressed it could be seen in the final round that both fighters were starting to tire due to the initial fast pace in the first two rounds.

But both pushed on, going from the clinch to striking range to the clinch. It was an excellent round of Thai boxing and for such three hard rounds none of the judges could give a winning fighter, making this fight as a draw.

Unfortunately young Lewis didn’t have a match, however, young Blair Gillan, a junior fighter from SMTC Gorgie Gym, went in and gave him a demo match allowing Lewis his first ever Muay Thai fight experience and his first encounter with the ring.

Although Blair was the more experienced fighter, with Lewis only being in training for just over five months, he was doing extremely well against Blair’s lunging attacks, using his footwork to get out of the way and counter well with some nice low kicks and the odd body kick to the back as well.

The fight was to go three rounds but Lewis picked up an injury in the second and was unable to continue.

This was a great opportunity for Lewis, giving him his first experience of hopefully many more fights to come.

Finally up for the juniors was young Davy McIntyre, contesting his last junior fight before moving up to adult C class fights.

He was matched with another Beastmaster fighter who was slightly more experienced than Davy.

He would make up for this in his level of aggression and rate of attack which could be seen from the start.

This would keep his opponent on the back foot for the first round — but come the second his opponent was able to use his experience and technical ability to counter the forward fighter.

With the final round and both boys having a round each, this was the decider and they would push until the final bell.

Some lovely kicking from both boys and countering.

It would be hard for the judges to decide a winner, however, in this instance it was his opponent that would be awarded the win.

The last fight of the evening saw Chris Vize up against Derek Barnett from the SMTC Gym in Gorgie, Edinburgh.

This was by far the best fight of the evening and, even though it was only a C class fight, it had the whole crowd on the edge of their seats. A full five rounds of thrilling action saw the SMTC Greenock man rely on his boxing to score, with Derek scoring well using the low kick counter. As the rounds continued, Chris landed some big shots to off balance Derek and have him chasing after the big knockout, however, Derek was able to counter and score with the body kicks which ultimately would lead to Derek winning the fight. Although Chris never got the win, he took away another lesson in his journey as a Muay Thai fighter and got his first five rounds under his belt.

The club travelled to Linwood to support their instructor Raymond ‘Mondo’ Woodcock in his fight against Tam McCourt for the vacant WBC British 57.1 kg title.

Not only was the title up for grabs but Raymond’s number three spot in the UK rankings was also on the line.

This was the main event on the MTB 11 and the second WBC fight of the evening and was a highly anticipated battle in the Scottish Muay Thai scene. The first round saw both trading shots trying to gather the range and abilities.

This wouldn’t last long as the pace escalated and saw round one become an all-out clinch war, with Tam scoring some lovely knees and the Greenock fighter countering back and delivering some vicious elbows. The second round saw the fight move to striking distance and was even.

In the third Tam started to gain some momentum, scoring well with some nice sweeps and big teeps. Raymond came back into it in the fourth, using his footwork and low kicks to score and damage the thighs of his opponent, hoping to slow him down. It was all down to the fifth round and both boys came out firing, knowing that all was on the line.

This round saw the fighters go from the clinch several times and Tam did his best to tie Raymond up to stop elbows coming.

When on the outside the strikes were continuous from both parties.

Despite his magnificent performance, Raymond was unsuccessful, even though he and his corner team thought he had won three out of the five rounds.

With many disagreeing with the result, it looks like a rematch could be on this year. This fight has been put forward on Bash TV for fight of the year and no wonder, as it had Scottish Muay Thai fans on the edge of their seats.

Last but not least for the year was a trip to East Kilbride, with five of the juniors from the club travelling up to the head gym to be graded by head coach John Craig.

All five would be judged and carefully watched over for any small mistakes when performing their ritual dance, self defence techniques, boxing, elbows, knee and kicking technique and also SMTC rules and pledges.

Sixteen kids were training for this over the last six weeks in class, learning everything they could so that they could meet the high expectations that were required of them.

John Craig wouldn’t only be looking for everything that is on the grading sheets, as the correct use of power, balance, discipline and proper technique would just be some of the other aspects that he would be looking for. Although 16 trained for the grading, only five would take part. Their instructor Raymond could be seen to be more nervous than how he was the weekend before at his fight. But his young students showed all their hard work had paid off.

All five passed with all A marks on their grade sheets and passed their grading with flying colours.

Three were graded to white/yellow band — Kaiden, Aiden and James — while Lewis and Aiden were graded to yellow band.

A brilliant effort by all five and hopefully in the next year the other 11 will do their grading as well.

It was a brilliant way to finish the year off for the club to see five young dedicated students progressing in what they love.

All classes resumed for the new year yesterday.

Classes take place at 7pm (kids class for five-year-olds and over) with the adults straight after at 8pm. Training for the club’s home show will start as well, with the local show being on 1 March in Port Glasgow Town Hall. Anyone interested in Thai boxing or wanting to try a new way to get fit and lose weight then contact Raymond on 07860 467856 or via the SMTC Greenock Facebook page.