> One rules I feel encourages more brawling and repeated punches to the face because blood and damage draws a crowd.
One could also say the encourage to have excellent boxing, offense and defense rather then putting a premium on everything else giving the defender pads to hid behind. You actually have to be good at dynamic defense, using head movement, footwork, clinching, hand fighting, distance and so on.
Combine that with the large ring and you have a more dynamic fighting sport. I do wish they would not separate clinches so fast as that is a vital element that makes MT different and interesting. But generally they have been striking a decent balance there, it depends a lot on the ref.
A lot of traditional MT is just two guys hiding behind gloves while spamming low kicks against each other while standing in the middle of the ring.
Its just a reality of the world that in actual fights punching people in the head is effective, so by that measure One MT looks more like an actual fight rather then ceremonial combat sport.
I do agree that the gloves protect the face, but mostly because you can use them defensively, not because of the actual padding on the hands itself.
Of course, one can have preferences what is more enjoyable to watch. I think One MT is a amazing striking competition.
> They are trying to draw an MMA crowd and often even pass out KO bonuses to encourage that style.
I am not disagreeing that, that is what they are doing. Having a promotion that deals in many different fighting styles they also have to differentiate, where the retained the large gloves and MT where they have the small gloves.
Bonus for KO are a pretty logical intensive, to make sure fighters want to win, rather then run out the clock when they are ahead in points. Also it makes it hard to do lots of illegal things regarding buying or influencing the refs. Something that we know was common in lots of combat sports for the last couple 1000 years and in MT too. Of course that has a lot of issues too.