Awakening is an organisation that is doing amazing things for women in martial arts right now. Founded in 2012, it hasn’t been around for all that long, but it has already put itself firmly at the forefront of the female fight community and is campaigning for change in the way that it’s viewed by the general public. Thanks to Awakening, women in martial arts have something that they’ve always hoped for. We now a platform from which to promote ourselves and a network through which to find and support each other. One of the ways that they’ve provided this is with the Global Female Martial Arts Register, where athletes can submit all their information for Awakening to build them their very own profile. They’ve now taken a step further with the Awakening Female Muay Thai Awards 2013.

The nominations were put forward by the public rather than being chosen by Awakening. This gave the female fight community even further opportunity to promote women who may have been previously unknown. I love how Awakening is driving growth in female martial arts by allowing us to have control in that way. Those nominations were then put into the categories you see now, some of them having to be excluded due to a lack of information available. This is an unfortunate issue, but something that Awakening are working to change. As they reach out to more and more women, it will be easier to discover new or previously unknown athletes. I am confident that with everything Awakening is doing, it will be a different story for their 2014 awards, this is just the start. The categories include Female Fighter of the Year, Amateur Female Fighter of the Year, KO of the Year, Journalist of the Year and more. There is also a Gym of the Year award, for which Master Toddy’s Bangkok Gym has been nominated.

Voting will close on January 1st, so please get your votes in as soon as possible and show your support for not only Awakening, but the women it is striving to empower and promote. This is an exciting time for female Muay Thai.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE RESULTS OF THE AWARDS.

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