Binh Duong Traditional Martial Arts: The Fights That Don’t Show on the Scoreboard

At 6:45 in the morning, the Binh Duong provincial gymnasium was still empty of spectators. On the mat, martial artist Tran Minh Quan (20 years old, 65 kg category) turned his back to the door and repeated a basic strike sequence. His clothes were soaked, but no coach stood beyond the ropes. Every now and then he paused and looked at the ceiling, as if counting his own breathing. That scene explained why traditional martial arts tournaments rarely attract football-sized crowds—and yet they pulled me in with a different kind of rhythm. I came here not to score goals, but to record the people who score them. For me, a match does not begin with an opening drumbeat. It begins earlier, in an empty corridor, in the way a fighter wraps his own hand wraps because nobody is there to wrap them for him. On official competition days, the Binh Duong Open Traditional Martial Arts Championship ran for three days at the end of May, gathering 214 martial artists from 32 teams nationwide. Organizers reported 124 bouts held under the traditional combat format. The audience was larger than expected, but most spectators appeared only in the afternoon. In the morning, more than 40 percent of the seats remained empty. The early bouts often showed noticeably lower technical quality. Many argued that young martial artists simply lacked competitive experience. But when I read the refereeing roster and duty schedule, I realized that 70 percent of the referees had more than ten years of experience. The problem was not the athletes’ average level. It was that they were not properly guided during the morning rounds. I recorded every detail: the number of judges per bout, the stoppages due to injuries, and the way coaches behaved at ringside. The data showed that 68 percent of participating martial artists did not have a dedicated coach for their weight category. Of the 214 fighters, only 17 had individual sponsorship contracts—less than 8 percent. The rest came to Binh Duong on their own budget, sharing hotel rooms. One team brought six athletes but sent only one coach who also served as medic. Another team let athletes travel by bus from remote provinces. I met a fighter sitting in the corner of the changing room, his leg wrapped in old tape. He said, “I don’t have money for new tape, but if I reach the final, I will borrow from my teammate.” He smiled, without sadness. That smile confused me. It pushed me to dig deeper into the stories behind every strike. The 65 kg semifinal took place on Saturday afternoon. Tran Minh Quan faced a veteran from Khanh Hoa. In the first round, Quan chose to defend more, but his counter-strikes were sharp. Sitting close to ringside, I noticed that every time he stepped back, he glanced toward the empty stands. Nobody shouted his name, nobody clapped in rhythm. Yet he kept his movement cadence steady. There are applauses that nobody hears, but the fight still needs to be told. Tran Minh Quan won the semifinal by narrow scores: 18.6 to 18.2. He did not celebrate. He bowed to the referee and walked straight to the corridor. There was no towel handler, no water bottle waiting. He unlocked his suitcase by himself, changed his shirt, and sat down to stretch. The final that night was better attended. But what I remember most was not the decisive kick. It was a small detail: a woman around fifty years old sitting at the top row, holding a plastic bag with bread. She was Quan’s mother. She had traveled five hours by bus from her hometown. She did not understand scoring rules or why her son received half a point. She just sat there, not yelling, not cheering, gripping the bag with both hands. Quan lost the final 18.9–19.3. He stood on the mat for a few seconds and looked up at the stands where his mother was sitting. She did not know how to clap. She only nodded. He bent down, tied his shoelaces again, and stepped off. No coach consoled him. No teammate patted his shoulder. I walked closer and heard him say a sentence that kept me writing all night: “I lost because I was not fierce enough. But my mother saw me fight my last match.” Quan’s story is not unique. Across this tournament, I followed more than thirty bouts and found a pattern: fighters who had a coach close to the ringside won about 23 percent more often than those who trained alone. High-level technique is not about difficult movements alone. It depends on someone reminding the athlete to breathe at the right time. In traditional martial arts, judges score structure, power, speed, and consistency. But those criteria are hard to reach when fighters must manage accommodation, travel, and mental focus all by themselves. Data from 124 bouts showed that 87 bouts ended by judge decision, about 70 percent. Only 37 bouts ended by decisive strike or knockout. Outsiders often use that number to criticize traditional martial arts for lacking fight intensity. But from inside, I saw a different truth: scores were high not because fighters were weak, but because they had been trained to hit scoring zones accurately, rhythmically, and at the right distance. The problem is that not every athlete has an instructor to teach that kind of precision. After the tournament, I read the referees’ reports. One note struck me: in the women’s 60 kg bout, action was interrupted three times because the opponent’s hand wrap was loose. Le Thi Anh Tuyet had no sports doctor. She tightened the tape herself, without complaining, and continued. She won by a leg sweep in the final round. On the scoreboard, it was an ordinary victory. But for me, it was the fight of someone battling against being left behind. Two days later, I visited Martial Arts Master Tran Van Hoang, who has taught in Binh Duong for more than forty years. He said, “Students come to learn techniques, but what we need to pass on is rhythm. A strike without rhythm is like a sentence that stammers.” He said many talented students quit because they could not afford to continue. Technique can be taught in a lesson plan, but honor and patience only grow in an environment where a teacher walks alongside the student. What the press usually misses is the group of nameless people behind every medal. There is the mother who sells lottery tickets so her child can train. There is the uncle who carries young fighters to tournaments on an old motorbike. There is the police officer who rearranges his shift to take his cousin to practice. None of them appears on television, but they are the only reason these matches happen at all. From the perspective of someone who once fell on a football field and understood the feeling of not being able to stand on his own legs, I know that injury can take away the legs, but it cannot take away the heartbeat of the match. Tran Minh Quan lost the final, but he did not lose belief. He told me he would keep competing, not for medals, but so his mother could sit closer to the mat. Tactically, this tournament revealed a major gap in the training system. Based on my experience following more than forty provincial and national tournaments, teams with dedicated training centers advanced significantly deeper into the elimination rounds. Binh Duong, Ho Chi Minh City, and Can Tho all have proper centers, and all topped the team rankings. That is not coincidence. The irony is that those centers serve only a small group of provincial selections. The majority still train in private martial arts clubs with unlicensed curricula. Organizers reported that 10 of 32 teams had no sports doctor. In combat sports, the absence of a doctor increases injury risk and affects referee decisions. When an athlete is hit, the referee must balance safety against the flow of the match. Without independent medical advice, referees tend to stop the bout. Many people think traditional martial arts need more technology, extra cameras, video replays, or electronic scoring. I do not deny that technology helps. But looking at the data, the biggest problem is not technology. This tournament had only two referee protests, just 1.6 percent of all bouts. So little controversy suggests that judges are performing fairly. The real issue is the system that develops fighters from the grassroots level. Consider a modern training center in Ho Chi Minh City. It has movement-analysis cameras, data boards on strike angles, and nutritionists. But in Binh Duong, a martial artist may have only one breathing exercise and one volunteer teacher standing outside the fence. A judge can see a technical error, but he cannot see why the fighter made that error. The difference is not in the fighter’s arms. It is in the ecosystem around them. From a counter-intuitive perspective, I believe spending a fortune on new scoring devices will not improve traditional martial arts without investment in people. A good training system needs one dedicated coach, one sports doctor, one psychologist, and one competition manager. These four roles are beyond the reach of a small club. But they can be organized as a shared network between provinces, where one doctor serves three teams, and one psychologist supports several units. The problem is not producing a few more talented fighters. The problem is building a support network before they step onto the mat. I think back to Tran Minh Quan alone on the first morning. He trained without a coach, without a doctor, without anyone counting rhythm. That is not a story of individual bad luck. It is a story of a system running on the sacrifice of silent people. The final of this championship was not broadcast live. The mainstream sports dailies also did not cover it. But the mothers, teachers, and fighters there sent a clear message: they need to be recognized before they are compared by scores. I left Binh Duong with an open question: if no one comes forward to build a real support system for traditional martial arts, how much longer will beautiful fights like these remain in the dark? Next season, Binh Duong plans to pilot dedicated coaches for five key weight categories. That is a small but significant signal. The ball rolls over everyone; only the storyteller stays. I will return next season, not to see who wins, but to see whether the applause that no one hears has finally been replaced by the footsteps of a waking system.