What a view | Netflix documentary Hurts Like Hell examines Muay Thai and the corruption that runs rampant through the sport
- Hurts Like Hell on Netflix is a four-part dive into Muay Thai, a sport plagued by match fixing and gambling and where ‘deals and profit can be made everywhere’
- The second season of Physical sees Rose Byrne’s Sheila Rubin struggle with her morals, while D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?! dives into an enduring hijack mystery
Boxing, even where stringently regulated, has never been the most honest of sports – not with so much money procured by sometimes rigged results.
Less than shattering, then, is the realisation that Muay Thai is endemically corrupt, with fighters, referees, judges, promoters, gym owners and so-called boxing gurus all susceptible to the siren call of easy money. The baht is much better than the bite of struggling to survive in a country mid-table in the rich-and-poor league.
The heat and noise generated by demonstrations of Thailand’s “national martial art” at Bangkok’s old Lumpinee Stadium, brought to mind here, could suck anyone into the betting racket.
But Hurts Like Hell, which asserts that gambling keeps the industry going, suggests that money will also kill a sport in which “referees are individually recruited by promoters”.
