Staff writer Thomas Noonan recaps a tale of hard-fought wins and controversial losses at the 2025 Muay Thai Varsity.
After a highly anticipated showdown to settle our universities’ rivalry in the ring, UCL took home the win with a hotly contested 3-2 for this year’s Muay Thai fixture in the London Varsity Series. Although this is an improvement on last year’s 4-1, KCL supporters and the Muay Thai team are still disappointed.
Particularly, the second decision fight was judged a UCL win after what seemed like the KCL fighter, Denise Spigler, dominating through all rounds of this match. The judge’s decision was incomprehensible in the eyes of ROAR reporter Thomas Noonan.
Nonetheless, the atmosphere was friendly, fun, and electric throughout the afternoon. Starting off strong was the non-decision fight between KCL’s Samuel Ogbole and UCL’s Seiya Chung where Samuel’s high-energy fighting style allowed him to dominate over his very skilled and technical opponent.
The competition heated up with the first decision fight of the afternoon, where KCL’s Rachel Walker beat UCL’s Sonya Nikiforova in only two rounds with her very aggressive style which put Sonya on the backfoot and losing energy. By the second round it was clear that KCL was taking home this win. Rachel stated that she felt confident before her first ever decision fight: “I trained to win. I trained for 6 months”. After the fight, she told Roar: “I won in round 2 – pretty happy that I didn’t have to go to round three because I’m pretty tired.”
After a beautifully technical non-decision fight between UCL veteran Rian Wilson and KCL’s Aryan Rao, where the two showcased their technicality in all aspects of Muay Thai, it was time for the controversial second decision fight.
KCL’s Denise Spigler stated before the fight: “Right now I’m feeling good, should be an easy KCL victory. I’ve trained really hard, I don’t think I could’ve done anything else. I’ve been training for months, put blood sweat and tears into this, I’m hoping this goes down well.” However, her first-ever decision fight after exactly 6 months of training did not go down as expected.
Despite having seemingly dominated her opponent with her aggressive style and better cardio, the judge ruled the fight as a UCL victory.
Confronted by the KCL Muay Thai president, he explained his decision as a lack of technique from Denise, who he claims lacked in her kicks. “I don’t count punches that land but are sloppy, I only count clean” explained the judge. ROAR reporter Thomas Noonan does not understand this decision given that UCL’s Luisa Hardman was swept three times during the fight, a rare situation in Muay Thai and a bad sign in any martial art. One angry KCL supporter shouted to the judge: “Get a pair of glasses!”
After a five minute break, the afternoon resumed with a non-decision match between KCL’s Charlie Taggart and UCL’s Wana Pichpongsa, an oppourtunity for the two fighters to demonstrate their power and technique, with exceptional kicks from Charlie.
Decision fights resumed with KCL’s Ayiana Maitim dominating UCL’s Carlotta Ceccarelli with excellent knees and dangerously accurate punches through the first and third rounds although Carlotta seemed to take advantage of Ayiana’s weaknesses in round two.
To build up anticipation for the two headline events of the afternoon, KCL’s Sean Gubatanga and UCL’s Lorenzo Aragon faced off in a brutal, fast-paced non-decision match so intense that the referee intervened multiple times to instruct the figthers to de-escalate.
Finally, the women’s main event pitched KCL’s Rebecca Walangitang against UCL’s Jannelle Ofrin, and although Rebecca started off strong with an aggressive first round, she eventually lost steam after a clean punch in the face. Jannelle was then able to take the win for UCL, raising the stakes for the next fight to decide on which team would take home the win for Varsity.
In the final fight of the afternoon, KCL’s champion Oscar Yammine faced off UCL’s Josemi Campillo in a hotly anticipated tiebreaker match that could actually result in a KCL win to settle the score between the two teams. Even someone with no understanding of Muay Thai could tell how high the stakes were when Oscar, draped in the Lebanese flag, was cheered on by a crowd wearing t-shirts in his image.
Oscar delivered clean, powerful strikes throughout the first round, maintaining his distance with jabby kicks and wearing down his opponent by catching his powerful roundhouse kicks to sweep him on the floor. However, Josemi proved more resilient than Oscar anticipated, and capitalised on Oscar’s exhaustion to deliver a devastating strike and sweep in the third round, giving UCL the victory in the 2025 edition of the London Varsity Muay Thai.
