Closing the site down
Thanks to everyone who has read the site or send me information to put on the site. Little of the content posted was original, but was often rewritten by me because of the number of posts or emails typed as they would be spoken. Other things had to be reformatted for a text only site (such as from pdf’s or tables in Word documents). These things are standard fare for anyone running a website based on submissions or external content and are pretty much what I expected to do when I started this site as a blog almost two years ago.
The one thing I didn’t expect, and the main reason I am now shutting down the site was the reliance on word of mouth to promote shows and the reluctance to co-operate with me. The reason I started this site was because I am a fan of the sport and of the Scottish fighters but there was very little information available online for me to find out who fought who, who had a good record, where the next fights were and who was fighting on it. I thought that this wasn’t available because nobody had stepped up and offered to collate it all in one place but I was wrong. Duncan Ireland set up a fantastic website which showed all Muay Thai shows for the coming year. It was a fantastic resource which only required promoters to email him with their planned schedule of shows and he would do the rest. Duncan unfortunately shutdown the site due to lack of support.
This site has gone the same way. I’ve had a small number of promoters who have (fairly) regularly sent me information to put on my site, because they realised that having their show promoted in more places was a good thing for them and a good thing for the fighters on their shows. Not only that, but they knew that having all of this information in one place was better than having it on various Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts, AX Forum posts, e-mails, letters and having to speak to multiple people at shows. There is a reason you have generally only heard from a small number of the shows put on in Scotland over the last few years; these are the only promoters who e-mail me information or post up to date information on AX Forum or Facebook, which is where I got the majority of my information.
Promoters out there who did not regularly or reliably send me information might think they didn’t need to because they almost always sold out their shows and maybe they would be right if their only aim was to make money. The main thing that Muay Thai in Scotland needs right now is positive press and plenty of it. This is the only way to show people how brilliant the sport and the art of Muay Thai is and to grow the numbers of participants in this country. It is something any business graduate would know, or anyone working in the public sector but something that a large number of Scottish Muay Thai coaches and promoters simply ignore.
Going forwards, I’d love to see the results from every show in the local papers, submitted with accurate results, times and records for all fighters by the promoter (or one of the promotion team). I’d love to see someone else give this thing a bash and make a good go of it by convincing promoters and coaches to submit regular information. If anyone is interested I’ll happily hand over the domain name and my archives and transfer the social media to them). Most of all, I’d love to see the people who have read articles on my site to be more interested in the WHOLE of Scotland, not just shows that their fighters or mates are fighting on. I can look at Google Analytics and see where my traffic comes from, both online (Facebook generates the most views) and geographically. The stuff that gets the most views are the articles retweeted and shared on Facebook by the Griphouse and Caledonian Muay Thai, and they do this with articles featuring their fighters. Paradoxically, if everyone did this, information about the whole of Scotland would reach a much wider audience since many more people are friends with gyms on facebook than those gyms have members.
Special thanks go to John O’Brien, Vinny McWilliams, Keith Middleton, Mescho Dunko, Colin Anderson, Guy Ramsay and Brian Calder for inviting me to their gyms, offering me free tickets or admission to their shows and generally being super sound, inviting and warm gentlemen who are a credit to their gyms and the art of Muay Thai.
There are a number of people who helped me out with a number of things online and in person and I apologise because I know I’ll forget names but Brent who has been writing the ‘best of Thailand’ articles has offered me great support simply by agreeing to write, as has founder of Liverkick.com, Dave Walsh who previously also founded HeadKickLegend.com. Both of these sites have been known as the biggest and best sources for Kick Fighting news, which includes Muay Thai news and Dave has been very helpful, offering advice on the site and my writing as well as letting me post content directly to Liverkick such as last November’s Super Show Down show and offering me a regular place to post stuff about SCOTISH MUAY THAI to a specialised audience ALL OVER THE WORLD. This is one of the many great opportunities that the whole Scottish Muay Thai scene could have had if they had cooperated more.
Guys like Mark Bryson and John Paul Gallagher offered a lot of support and encouragement for the site and Mark even met me in Glasgow, gave me a lift to a show in Grangemouth then offered to corner me for a fight I took on 6 days notice. Sorry I got KO’d buddy! Thanks most of all to the small but dedicated number of people who read articles I often spent a long time writing. There were around 300 unique visitors every month to the site. This is a number I could have increased myself by making it to more shows and handing out my business cards and flyers to, to increase awareness of the site but it’s very hard for me to make it to shows with any regularity because of my location and because I can’t drive.
To everyone, chok dee.
