Wan Chai (fighter)

Wan Chai
BornSaw Han Thein
(1972-01-24) January 24, 1972 (age 52)
Kawt Nwe village, Kawkareik Township, Myawaddy District, Kayin State, Burma
Native nameစောဟန်သိန်း
Other namesA Lwan (အလွမ်း)
NationalityMyanmar Myanmar
Height165 cm (5 ft 5 in)
Weight71 kg (157 lb; 11.2 st)
StyleLethwei
StanceOrthodox
TeamHERO, KLN, Kywe Min, Aung Myanmar, Adventure, Royal D Wan Chai
TrainerMyawaddy U Than Shwe,[1] Panudej Petchkasem,[2] U A Nwe, U Min Oo[3]
Years active1989–2012
Other information
Children1
Notable relativesLwann Chai (son)[4]
You may need rendering support to display the Burmese script in this article correctly.

Wan Chai (Burmese: ဝမ်ချိုင်း) (born January 24, 1972) is a former Burmese Lethwei fighter and Openweight Lethwei World Champion in 1998 and 1999.[5]

Early life

Wan Chai was born in 1972 to father U Pan Nyunt and mother Daw Khin May in Kawt Nwe, a village east of Kawkareik city in Kayin State.[6] He started his training initially with Myawaddy U Than Shwe, a former boxer well known with the arts in both Myanmar and Thailand himself.[7]

Lethwei career

Before his fame in Myanmar lethwei Wan Chai was already a veteran of the fight game with great experiences gained in Thailand.[8] In 1996, the Myanmar Traditional Lethwei Federation (MTLF), a branch of the Myanmar's Ministry of Health and Sports, created the Golden Belt Championship for rising talents which uses the tournament Lethwei rules, unlike the traditional Golden Belt.[9][10]

After returning to Myanmar, Wan Chai burst onto the scene and competed at the inaugural Golden Belt Championship which he won by defeating Aung Aung Tun.[11][12] In 1998, he challenged the reigning Myanmar Lethwei World Champion Shwe Du Wun. Wan Chai took the Openweight Lethwei Golden Belt title away from the champion within three rounds.[13] Wan Chai lost the title to Shan La Tway in a year later. After his retirement, Wan Chai made a commitment to support the Aung Myanmar lethwei club in 2016, which trained Daung Thi Chay, Lwann Chai, Saw George, Yan Linn Aung and Daung Phyu Lay at the time.[14] He transferred to several clubs but eventually ended up with the one carrying his own name. His most notable students are his son Lwann Chai and Thway Thit Win Hlaing.

Myanmar vs USA challenge

In June 2001, Wan Chai was matched with American UFC veteran Doug Evans at the "International Myanmar traditional boxing challenge & Myanmar-Australia talent testing boxing competition" in Yangon, Myanmar. In the first round, Evans was dropped to the floor with a knee strike to the lower abdomen while clinching[15] and lost by referee stoppage (TKO).[16][17] Evans later claimed he was kneed in the groin by Wan Chai, however the official did not see the strike and the referee stoppage remained.[18]

Titles and accomplishments

  • Championships
    • Myanmar National Champion (1998, 1999)
    • Golden Belt Champion (1996)
  • Other championships
    • 2001 challenge fight belt holder

Lethwei record

Professional Lethwei record
69 wins, 3 losses, 8 draws
Date Result Opponent Event Location Method Round Time
2012-01-08 Draw Myanmar Shwe War Tun Dagon Shwe Aung Lan 2012 Yangon, Myanmar Draw 3 3:00
2009-04-04 Draw Myanmar Zarni Sin Yine Dagon Shwe Aung Lan 2009 Yangon, Myanmar Draw 3 3:00
2009-02-06 Draw Myanmar Shwe War Tun Myaw Sin Island Challenge Fights Yangon, Myanmar Draw 3 3:00
2009-00-00 Draw Myanmar Saw Thae Aung Lethwei Challenge Fights Myanmar Draw 5 3:00
2006-01-26 Loss Myanmar Lone Chaw Myeik city Lethwei Challenge Fights Myeik, Myanmar TKO 3
2005-04-03 Draw Myanmar Lone Chaw City F.M Aung Lan Tournament, Myanmar Convention Center Yangon, Myanmar Draw 5 3:00[19]
2004-06-13 Loss Myanmar Shwe Sai Challenge Fights, Thuwunna Stadium Yangon, Myanmar TKO 3 2:52[20]
2004-06-05 Win Myanmar Lone Chaw Myeik city Lethwei Challenge Fights Myeik, Myanmar KO 3 2:50
2003-06-01 Draw Myanmar Shan Lay Thway Challenge Fights, Thuwunna Stadium Yangon, Myanmar Draw 5 3:00
2001-06-09 Win United States Doug Evans International Challenge Fights, Thuwunna Stadium Yangon, Myanmar TKO 1
Wins challenge fight belt
2001-04-30 Draw Myanmar Shan Lay Thway Challenge Fights, Ba Htoo Football field Mandalay, Myanmar Draw 5 3:00
1999-00-00 Loss Myanmar Shan Lay Thway Champions Challenge, Thuwunna Stadium Yangon, Myanmar TKO 1
Lost Openweight Lethwei World Title - Wan Chai contracted malaria shortly before the fight
1998-00-00 Win Myanmar Win Naing Tun Challenge Fights, Ba Htoo Football field Mandalay, Myanmar KO 2
1998-00-00 Win Myanmar Shwe Du Wun Hpayarkone village Challenge Fights Hpa-an Township, Myanmar KO
1998-04-01 Win Myanmar Shwe Du Wun 51st Mon National Day, Aung San Indoor Stadium Yangon, Myanmar KO 3 1:04[21]
Wins Openweight Lethwei World Title
1997-11-06 Draw Myanmar Shwe Du Wun Challenge Fights, Ba Htoo Football field Mandalay, Myanmar Draw 5 3:00
1997-07-09 Draw Myanmar Shwe Du Wun Challenge Fights, Ba Htoo Football field Mandalay, Myanmar Draw 12 3:00
1997-05-05 Draw Myanmar Aung Aung Tun (52nd) Armed Forces Day Challenge Fights, Ba Htoo Football field Mandalay, Myanmar Draw 7 3:00
1997-00-00 Win Myanmar Moe Palae Lethwei Challenge Fights Hpa-an Township, Myanmar KO 6
1997-02-25 Win Myanmar Shwe War Tun Kawt Gun village Challenge Fights Hlaingbwe Township, Myanmar KO 4
1997-02-03 Win Myanmar (Thar Si) Maung Maung Gyi Lethwei Challenge Fights, Aung San Indoor Stadium Yangon, Myanmar KO 4
1997-02-02 Win Myanmar Aung Aung Tun Golden Belt Championship, Aung San Indoor Stadium Yangon, Myanmar KO 4 [22]
Wins Golden Belt Championship
1997-01-09 Win Thailand Kittichai Kiatbusaba International Challenge Fights Chiang Mai, Thailand TKO 4
1995-00-00 Loss Thailand Somdang Nongkhai International Challenge Fights Thailand TKO
1995-00-00 Draw Thailand Kolalek Lookphrayapichai Burma-Thai Challenge Fights Thailand Draw 5

References

  1. ^ Tint Oo, Win (August 1999). "မြဝတီဦးသန်းရွှေ၏ ကိုယ်တွေ့ ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ပညာနယ်မှ အစွမ်းထက် ဂါထာများ(၂)". Nat Kha Ta Yaung Che (Starlight) Magazine. pp. 193–195.
  2. ^ Oo Naing, Thet (October 1997). "မြန်မာ့လက်ဝှေ့ လောကကြီးကို ကိုင်လှုပ်မည့် ကရင်ပြည်နယ်မြဝတီမြို့မှ လက်ဝှေ့ကျော် ဝမ်ချိုင်း". New Style Magazine No.55. pp. 46–51.
  3. ^ Win Lay, Thein (28 May 2004). "နိုင်ငံတကာပြိုင်ပွဲအတွက် မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့သမားဗျား လေ့ကျင့်လျက်ရှို" (PDF). Myanma Alinn Daily. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  4. ^ Sein Lwin, Maung (21 February 2016). "အောင်မြန်မာရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ကလပ်မှ အနာဂတ်မျိုးဆက်သစ်လက်ဝှေ့ကြယ်ပွင့်များကို မွေးထုတ်သွားမည်း" (PDF). Myanma Alinn Daily.
  5. ^ Sein Lwin, Maung (21 February 2016). "အောင်မြန်မာရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ကလပ်မှ အနာဂတ်မျိုးဆက်သစ်လက်ဝှေ့ကြယ်ပွင့်များကို မွေးထုတ်သွားမည်း" (PDF). Myanma Alinn Daily.
  6. ^ Oo Naing, Thet (October 1997). "မြန်မာ့လက်ဝှေ့ လောကကြီးကို ကိုင်လှုပ်မည့် ကရင်ပြည်နယ်မြဝတီမြို့မှ လက်ဝှေ့ကျော် ဝမ်ချိုင်း". New Style Magazine No.55. pp. 46–51.
  7. ^ Tint Oo, Win (July 1999). "မြဝတီဦးသန်းရွှေ၏ကိုယ်တွေ့ ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့နယ်မှဂမ္ဘီရပညာ". Nat Kha Ta Yaung Che (Starlight) Magazine. pp. 217–219.
  8. ^ Oo Naing, Thet (October 1997). "မြန်မာ့လက်ဝှေ့ လောကကြီးကို ကိုင်လှုပ်မည့် ကရင်ပြည်နယ်မြဝတီမြို့မှ လက်ဝှေ့ကျော် ဝမ်ချိုင်း". New Style Magazine No.55. pp. 46–51.
  9. ^ "Tun Tun Min wins Myanmar Lethwei World Championship". Myanmar Daily News. 19 August 2019.
  10. ^ Goyder, James (17 December 2014). "The Burmese Kickboxing Style of Lethwei Expands Into Singapore". VICE Fightland.
  11. ^ Khin Win, Khin (14 May 1997). "ဝမ်ချိုင်းနှင့် အောင်အောင်ထွန်း စိတ်မကျေပွဲ နွှဲသော်လည်း အရှံးအနိုင်မပေါ်". Sports Journal. p. 3.
  12. ^ Khin Win, Khin (4 May 1997). "အောင်အောင်ထွန်းနှင့် ဝမ်ချိုင် စိတ်မကျေပွဲ နွှဲတော့မည်". Sports Journal. p. 8.
  13. ^ "Traditional boxing challenges conclude". The New Light of Myanmar. 2 April 1998. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
  14. ^ Sein Lwin, Maung (21 February 2016). "အောင်မြန်မာရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ကလပ်မှ အနာဂတ်မျိုးဆက်သစ်လက်ဝှေ့ကြယ်ပွင့်များကို မွေးထုတ်သွားမည်း" (PDF). Myanma Alinn Daily.
  15. ^ "Wan Chai vs Doug Evans - Lethwei fight". YouTube. 3 October 2006.
  16. ^ "Myanmar Traditional Boxing... An Experience To Remember". International Kickboxing Federation. 2001. Retrieved 6 December 2020.
  17. ^ "Wan Chai knocks out Doug Evans". [[[New Light of Myanmar|The New Light of Myanmar]]. 11 June 2001.
  18. ^ "ပဝါမကူ ရေမရှူစတမ်း ယှဥ်ပြိုင်ထိုးသတ်ကြမည့် မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ ရွှေခါးပတ် ချန်ပီယံလုပွဲး" (PDF). Kyemone. 2 April 2006.
  19. ^ Win Lay, Thein (4 April 2005). "ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့စိန်ခေါ်ပွဲ နာမည်ကြီးဝမ်ချိုင်းနှင့် လုံးချောသရေကျ" (PDF). Myanma Alinn Daily.
  20. ^ Win Lay, Thein (14 June 2004). "ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့လက်ရည်စစ်လူရွေးပွဲနောက်ဆုံပွဲစဥ် ဝမ်ချိုင်းကိုရွှေဆိုင်းအလဲထိုးပြီးချန်ပီယံဘွဲ့ဆက်ထိန်း" (PDF). Myanma Alinn Daily.
  21. ^ "Traditional boxing challenges conclude". The New Light of Myanmar. 2 April 1998.
  22. ^ "ပဝါမကူ ရေမရှူစတမ်း ယှဥ်ပြိုင်ထိုးသတ်ကြမည့် မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့ ရွှေခါးပတ် ချန်ပီယံလုပွဲး" (PDF). Kyemone. 2 April 2006.
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Openweight Lethwei World Champion
April 1, 1998 – 1999 		Succeeded by