The Wrong Ruler: Four Gaps in Vietnamese Martial Arts That Never Show Up on the Fight Night

Saturday night, Thanh Tri arena, Hanoi. I sat in the fourth row, notebook open, pen dry by the first round. On the mat, a sanda fighter closed three rounds with a 3-0 decision. He threw no spinning kick. No knockdown made the stands rise. He moved, blocked, countered, and won. The crowd started jeering. "What kind of fighting is that?" someone shouted. The fighter walked off expressionless. The coach beside me said something I have remembered ever since: "If he fought pretty like those clips online, he would have lost in round two." That moment was not really about one bout. It exposed something larger: we are scoring Vietnamese martial arts with the wrong ruler. One night, five different frames of reference Calling "Vietnamese martial arts" a single bloc is wrong from the naming stage. Within one country, at least five frames of reference coexist, and they do not share a definition of the word "win." Traditional and demonstration martial arts — forms, weapons, routines — are scored on technical difficulty, precision of stance, stability of centre of gravity, and flow. No opponent. No rounds. No knockout. Vovinam sits in the middle: it has a forms division and a sparring division, two rulebooks, two scoring systems. Sanda is scored combat allowing punches, kicks and throws. Boxing is pure punching under the ten-point must system. MMA is mixed combat, won by knockout, submission or decision. Each system has its own logic. In forms, 9.2 and 8.8 differ by a hip rotation. In sanda, winning means landing more, cleaner strikes. In MMA, winning can mean making an opponent tap. Vietnamese audiences, and part of the media, tend to apply a single ruler to all of them. That ruler is usually feel — what looks more dangerous, what draws more blood, what produces the fastest viral clip. The consequences do not stop at online arguments. They flow into funding allocation, athlete selection, and how we judge a martial arts scene trying to professionalise. Gap one: applying a combat ruler to a forms routine This is a logic error, not a taste error. When a forms routine is performed at a national traditional martial arts championship, judges do not score who is stronger. They score difficulty, precision, stability. Yet when a sanda fighter steps up, many people immediately compare: "Why doesn't it look as pretty?" Criticising a chess grandmaster for not dancing beautifully makes about as much sense. The reverse is equally wrong. When a vovinam student is compared to an MMA fighter and declared weak, the conclusion applies a combat standard to a system whose competition rules do not include full-contact fighting. That is comparing apples to oranges and declaring oranges losers for not being crunchy. Tran Quang Khai, a sanda fighter who has won SEA Games gold, is the clearest example of this misunderstanding. In his bouts, most of the time is spent controlling distance, choosing the entry, and exiting before the counter. Fans raised on highlight reels do not see that part, so they conclude he "fights boring." Under sanda scoring, that part is the score. Gap two: weight cutting This is the most serious and least discussed problem. In any combat sport with weight classes, fighters must hit a number on the scale before competing. Reaching that number usually means dehydrating over the final 24 to 48 hours. A fighter weighing 77kg can weigh in at 70kg, then rehydrate and refeed over the next 12 hours to walk into the cage near 77kg. The physiology is brutal. When the body loses 5-8% of body weight in water, plasma volume drops, the heart beats faster to maintain blood pressure, the kidneys filter less, and the brain's tolerance for impact falls sharply. The brain is the organ most dependent on stable fluid and electrolyte balance. In other words, in many cases fighters step onto the mat in a state where their own body is a greater threat than their opponent. In Vietnam, this is not tightly regulated. Many national-level events have no pre-weigh-in hydration monitoring, no testing to detect acute dehydration, no clear rule on the gap between weigh-in and competition. Meanwhile, some major international organisations have introduced urine-specific gravity testing, limits on dehydration, and bans on re-weighing too close to fight time. International data on post-weigh-in medical emergencies — seizures, kidney failure, and in rare cases death — is not a scare number. It is a call to act. Nguyen Thi Tam, a female boxer who competed at the Tokyo 2026 Olympics, is one of the few Vietnamese athletes with experience in an international system that demands strict weigh-in procedure. The distance between a fighter whose weight is professionally managed and one improvising at a domestic event is vast. That is not a talent gap. It is an infrastructure gap. Gap three: the economics of the fight game A professional combat athlete in Vietnam can almost never live on fight purses. Purse money for a domestic bout often covers only a few weeks of training costs. Costs arrive early and steadily: gym fees, personal coaching, nutrition, physiotherapy, self-funded health insurance. Global combat sports revenue has a signature shape: most of the money sits at the very top. A handful of stars absorb most gate and broadcast revenue while the undercard splits a small share. In major promotions, the revenue share paid to fighters is often far below team sports leagues, where the figure can reach 50%. In Vietnam there is an extra layer: most fighters have no employment contract in the ordinary sense. No contract means no social insurance, no occupational pension, no long-term medical entitlement after retiring through injury. That is why I always look at purse figures before looking at records. A fighter on a ten-fight win streak against weak opposition may not be a great fighter. He may be a fighter trapped in a loop of fighting for a record to attract sponsorship. The phenomenon has a name worldwide: padding the record. And here is where I have to be blunt. A martial arts scene that does not pay fighters enough that they need not fight for food cannot be called professional, no matter how many international events exist on paper. Gap four: injury management and recovery In combat sports, the brain is the most-hit organ nobody sees. A fighter can win over three rounds, walk out with an unmarked face, and still accumulate neurological damage over years. No trace on the skin. The skull is not a counter. Number of head strikes absorbed, spacing between knockouts, number of knockouts in a short window — those are the meaningful variables. Globally, athletic commissions use them to impose mandatory medical suspensions, ranging from roughly thirty days to one hundred eighty days or more depending on severity. In Vietnam, this process is inconsistent. Some events have ringside physicians, some do not. Some fighters return within weeks of a knockout. That does not come from individual carelessness. It is the consequence of a scene shifting from semi-professional to professional without the medical infrastructure following. I have reviewed footage of many domestic sanda and boxing bouts in recent years. What struck me was not the knockouts. It was the moments referees stopped fights at the right time, and the moments they should have stopped earlier. Beef narratives and the emotional trap One more layer is rarely discussed: how audiences are pulled in by rivalry stories. In professional combat sports, beef is part of the product. Two fighters trade insults before a bout to sell tickets. It is marketing, not motive. But in Vietnam, where the market is young and fans are not used to separating story from ability, beef quickly becomes a scoring criterion. The louder talker is assumed stronger. The quiet one is assumed weaker. A good media narrative can push a mid-tier fighter into a main event while a fighter with a better record but less talk is placed lower. This happens globally, not only in Vietnam. But in a market still forming its norms, the residue lasts longer. So does the crossover bout. A boxer against an MMA fighter generates huge interest, but the ruleset usually favours one side heavily. Fans walk away with the wrong conclusion about both disciplines, because the result reflects the rules more than the ability. Where I could be wrong Now the self-challenge. First, I may be demanding too much too fast. Professionalisation is a long process. Major martial arts scenes took decades to build medical systems, contracts and pensions. In the United States, boxing safety laws were only widely enacted after many decades, and gaps remain. Expecting Vietnam to have everything within a few years is unrealistic. Second, I may be applying international standards to a different economic context. When a domestic event's budget is smaller than one international fight night's revenue, the absence of a hydration testing lab is a resource limit before it is a moral failure. Criticism without a funding proposal is hollow. Third, I may be painting too dark a picture. Real progress exists: domestic professional MMA events have appeared since the early 2020s, Vietnamese athletes have won sanda and boxing medals at SEA Games, and some organisations now sign clearer contracts. That is not small. Between the two poles — acknowledging progress and naming the gaps — there is an empty space. I choose to stand there. Saying everything is fine helps no one, and neither does saying everything is broken. I need you furious before you agree. That is when you actually listen. Predictions to be verified Within three to five years, weight cutting will become a hot topic at at least one major regional combat event, following a publicly recorded serious medical incident. The pressure will come from media, not organisers. At the same time, the flow of Vietnamese fighters into regional and international events will increase. If medical infrastructure and contracts do not keep pace, we will have a generation of better fighters retiring earlier, with no safety net to catch them. A hot take is never the answer. It is a kick to make others want to argue. The answer has to be written by the people sitting in federation meeting rooms, with money and with rules. People remember me for the explosion, but I remember myself for bowing down to write.