When Dave Leduc walked into the December 2016 Golden Belt rematch with Tun Tun Min, he was coming off a draw against the champion two months earlier — a result treated in Yangon as a moral victory for the Canadian challenger, but few took seriously the idea that a foreigner would walk out of that ring as Openweight Champion. Leduc targeted Tun Tun Min's leg with push kicks through the fight; in round 3 he caught a high kick, Tun Tun Min twisted his knee on the landing, and after another throw he forfeited. The result made Leduc the first non-Myanmar Openweight Golden Belt champion in the sport's recorded history.
Over his career, Leduc held six recognised world championships across two organisations. The Golden Belt was the headline; the WLC Cruiserweight title, won by stopping UFC veteran Seth Baczynski in round 2 at WLC 9 in August 2019, gave him a sanctioned platform to defend internationally. He fought a trilogy against Tun Tun Min between 2016 and 2018.
What Leduc did off the canvas matters as much as what he did on it. He married Moldovan model Irina Terehova in a traditional Burmese wedding ceremony in Yangon that was broadcast nationally, and was outspoken about treating the sport as more than a curiosity. International media covering Lethwei have often turned to Leduc, and he was widely described as an ambassador for the sport during his active career.
There were critics. Some Myanmar trainers argued that the WLC's willingness to feature Leduc in headline slots over Myanmar-born fighters with stronger active records reflected a commercial logic, not a sporting one. The argument is not unreasonable; international names sell tickets, and the WLC depended on broadcast revenue. Others noted that Leduc's openweight championship reigns were not tested against the deepest available Myanmar fields. These criticisms were aired, were sometimes fair, and did not appear to bother Leduc in any visible way. He continued to do the work and let the results speak.
The question of what comes next has an answer now. Leduc announced his retirement in August 2023 and closed his career with a publicly billed retirement fight against Prom Samnang under Kun Khmer rules on 5 November 2023 in Phnom Penh, which ended in a draw.
The legacy question is easier to settle. The first generation of Lethwei fans who came to the sport because of Leduc are now training, coaching, and bringing students into the ring. The fighter database now includes international competitors across multiple weight classes who came to the sport in part because of the exposure Leduc's career generated. The simplest measure of what Leduc did is the depth of the fighter database itself.
With his career now closed, the historical position is settled. Lethwei before Leduc was a mostly Myanmar sport that occasionally hosted foreigners. Lethwei after Leduc is an international sport with a Myanmar core. That transition was not single-handed, but it would not have happened on the timeline it did without him.