Leaderboard

I recently got a concussion from my last fight. It was a really rough fight and I didn’t perform as well as I could have. It’s been a few weeks and I’m still dealing with some emotional and cognitive symptoms from the concussion (memory issues, irritability etc). I am having a tough time getting back into training… it just all feels “off” and I’m not enjoying it the way I used to. Any tips with recovering from a concussion, and how to get my passion for the sport back?

There is really no proven way - that I know of - to rush recovery from concussion, other than getting good sleep, chilling out on secondary jarrings, staying hydrated, eating well. You simply will not fully know how much you are being physically (or even mentally) affected, and you may be feeling the blues because of the vulnerability you experienced in being knocked out. These are not small things. My own thoughts from a distance would be to maybe start building up your training through shadowboxing. Have a whole hour in the Library on shadowboxing as taught by Yodkhunpon. This way you might develop a different feeling for your muay and development, something that isn't jarring you. Everyone is different, and you might still be affected by the concussion, symptoms which can include depression. Here is a long preview of the full MTL session, you can find the whole thing here.

The below is a beautiful op-ed style article, written in a free-wheeling, sometimes sarcastic style in 1991. We are accustomed to thinking of the great yodmuay of the Golden Age (Hippy, Karuhat, Langsuan, Samson, etc), as the cream of the crop of Thailand's historical Muay Thai, fighters who embodied speed, technique, timing and power. This piece which we've had translated shows us that at the time this was not universally thought the case. Some older fans of the sport felt that he had been overrun by smaller bodied fighters, a fighter who never was embraced before, and yearned for the return of the bigger yodmuay of the 1960s and 70s. It's a marvelous window into the changing historical perspectives on the sport within Thailand, and invites study of how smaller bodied fighters like the greats came to take center stage in the Golden Age, and why in the decades before these much more plentiful fighters were pushed to the margins in the Capital. The Future of the “Hi-Tech” Yodmuay Since 1967, never has a Thai fighter who weighs below the Bantamweight or Junior Bantamweight division (115-118 lbs) been hailed as a “Yodmuay” before. No matter if it was “The Young Bull” Pon Prapadang, “The Fog Colored Horse” Prayut Udomsak, “Diamond Crowned Champion” Adul Srisothorn, “The Bang Nok Khwaek Kicker” Apidej Sithirun, “The Immortal Yodmuay” Winchannoi , “The Southern Kid” Poot Lorlek up until the days of “The Sky Piercing Knee Fighter” Dieselnoi Chor. Thanasukarn and “The Jade-faced Tiger” Samart Payakaroon. The age of Apidej Sithirun – Kongdej Lookbangplasoi – Dejrit Ittianuchit – Payup Sakulsuek – Huasai Singmuangnakorn etc., those days were when the art of Muay Thai flourished the most and then was the transitional phase between the old age (old-tech) and the new age (hi-tech). I would like to speak of the old days of Muay Thai when the people who made fighters or the gym owners did it for the serious love in the martial art. They did it for the honor and fame of their gym. The fighters fought with aptitude, talent, ability, skills, class and competed to see who is better and the one who knows Muay (Thai) more would get the win. This is different than the “hi-tech” generation where the leaders (of everything) lead towards “nics” [abbreviated from electronics, as in how things are more computed]. Were you to look at it in terms of percentages, 95% only have raw power and strength mostly to just clinch and throw each other. The fighter who is more conditioned and with a better diet will more likely win as we all can see from fighters these days that the “withered” [looks less strong and fresh] fighter will most definitely lose in the eyes of the judges. Therefore, fighters today know how to hide the signs of hurt well. Actually, if there was a Golden Doll Award [famous award for actors in Thailand] in Muay Thai nearly every fighter would win it… ha. The age of Muay Thai that will lead us to the “nics” we all know is a “business” that rides on the “art”. Promoters and gym owners mostly have a Chinese surname [Chinese people are stigmatized as businessmen in Thai culture]. They make business their career so the art is not needed! The Chinese executives can only teach fighters to know the words “Keep your hands high!” “Long right kicks!” “Walk forward and knee!” “Probe, right kick, left teep, then circle away!”, etc. Just a few phrases qualifies them to be able to boldly say that they are Muay Thai krus… sigh! Even in the music industry they preserve old song lyrics of the old musicians to sing as “classic songs” [as in it’s still sort of a genre people enjoy] that are catchy with Thai people today. Then why does no one dig through the old treatises of the arts of Muay Thai to teach their students? We all know that the fight purse of fighters is getting higher and higher with no limits due to the economy and living costs that are going through the roof. If the olds fans that have stopped following the sport for many years hear that some of the fighters today are earning almost 350k Baht I believe they’d be shocked. On the contrary, as fight purses rise the skill and enjoyment in fighting diminishes. Even though there’s a movement and improvements for preserving the arts for an extensive amount of time. The important factor as to why fighters are all from the same mold is that as stated before, all the gym owners mostly aren’t krus with real knowledge in Muay Thai. Mostly they instruct in the form of gambling that has taken hold on the circuit until it became a big business that we can’t abandon. Running away, teep and step back, lean on the ropes and do nothing in the first two rounds. It’s no surprise that some fights end with the referee banishing both fighters from the ring such as the fight between Nuengthoranee Petchyindee and Deenueng Tor. Patanakit or the fight between Pone Naluepai and Ngern Sasiprapa Gym or the fight between Rernglit Sor. Rachen and Kaopong Pinsinchai. May I close my eyes and think of “The Bang Nok Khwaek Kicker” Apidej Sithirun again when back in his day, the 135-145 lbs divisions were the most popular amongst the fans. We would see multiple Yodmuays at the same time around same weight no matter if it was Adul Srisothon, Thongbai Jaroenmuang, Payup Sakulsuek, Rawee Dechachai, Khieowan Yonkit and many others. These fighters got 20,000-40,000 Baht per fight which was a lot back then, leading the young promoter “Kru Tao” Chana Supkaew the promoter of Suek TaharnEk to begin making fights between smaller fighters, the ones others don’t care about, for only 5,000-6,000 thousand Baht per fighter. When we think about it, Suek TaharnEk gained popularity to the level of Suek Onesongchai of today. The level where no matter what fights you make people will watch. When big fighters are expensive then Kru Tao knew better to not touch them, he’d rather work with the ones no one cared about. Small young fighters then emerged no matter if it was Denthoraneenoi Lueadtaksin, Seri Looknhongjok, Kotchasarnnoi Poncharoen, Poot Lorlek, Inseenoi Looknhonggaikun, Saknarongnoi Chor. Chootirat, etc. The fighters themselves, once they can get fights regularly have a willingness to train which leads to the fights being enjoyable. The fans are able to bet [the fights are tight enough for good gambling] and the fights are back-and-forth all the time. The popularity of smaller fighters then increases and multiplies. The fighter’s purses followed the popularity like a shadow. From 5,000-6,000 Baht, it move to the 10,000s, Like “Bukmiang” Orachunnoi Or. Mahachai, the first fighter under 110 lbs in Muay Thai to receive over a 10,000 Baht for his fight purse [a Lumpinee 108 lb champion 1974, 76]. I remember when he fought “The Little Giant” [lit: Dwarf Giant] Glairoong Lookjaomaesaithong. “Bukmiang” moving up in weight which resulted in him succumbing to the punches of “The Little Giant” striking his solar plexis and knocking him out in just the second round. As the Middle Age has ended [Silver Age]: Wichannoi Porntawee, Pudpadnoi Worawut, Poot Lorlek, Saensak Muangsurin, Padejsuek Pitsanurachun, Narongnoi Kiatbandit, Dieselnoi Chor. Tanasukan etc, there are barely any 135 lbs Yodmuays. With the likes of Payup Premchai, Samart Pasarnmit, Sagat Petchyindee, Krongsak Sitkasem, Nokweed Devy even if they are great they are too late because in the big divisions there are no opponents for them. We can say they are so good they have to retire or find other opportunities abroad. As we all know, every promoter today turns to host only fighters in the small weight classes. The big fighters are all ignored. Only the 100-120 lbs fighters get to fight. Some fighters are only 90-95 lbs so the showrunners would send them to eat in the morning of fight day so their weight reaches 100 lbs, reaching the limits that the Bangkok stadiums allow. Fighters who are below 100 lbs like the top and famous 80-90-95 lbs fighters that are renowned throughout the country, they would never get the opportunity to fight in the Bangkok stadiums a decade ago. They’d have to fight in the suburbs. Like the top small fighters that were famous back then such as Dekwat Lookprabat, Mawaenoi Sitmahamad, Srichol Sityongyut, Noppachai Lookmingkwan, Pichitsuek Sakudom, Banluesak Wor.Tangjitjaroen, Koingo Sitsao, Yokkieow Lertmongkol, Paryinya Sitmahamat, Tik Lookprabat etc. There small fighters didn’t have a shot to fight in the Bangkok stadiums 10 years ago [1981]. Or we can say, if they are below 100 lbs on the morning of fight day they would never be allowed to fight. The officials were very strict back then. Like Pichisuek Sakudom (Nokweed Devy) was below 100 lbs. Once he was booked to fight in Bangkok the staff and police had to come check, not to cheer for him, but to see if he really fought they would arrest him immediately (and arrest the promoters alongside with him) as the age and weight of the fighter wasn’t allowed by the rules of the Ministry of Interior. It was famous news at the time (some fighters back then would put coins in their mouth or put metal into the edge of their shorts during the weigh in). Today, promoters are hosting only small fighters, causing fight purses for small fighters to grow rapidly. The yodmuays that everyone fabricated in the last 3-4 years are all below 122 lbs no matter if it’s Langsuan, Kaensak, Oley, Karuhat, Hippy, Nopadej, Suwitlek, Santos etc. All of those who were mentioned were all fabricated as yodmuays. Furthermore, people make nicknames for them referring to past fighters such as “The All-timer [Thongbai’s nickname] 2”, “Samart 2”, “Pudpadnoi 2”, “Apidej 2”, “Poot 2” etc. As a matter of fact the number 2 is correct, but they just need to add the number 0 after it to make it 20. Ha, I am not looking down on the fighters mentioned but they are not that better than Orachunnoi, Denthoranee, Poot (compared pound-for-pound). They’d all have had 6-figure purses but 2 decades ago fighters at this level of skill would at most get to fight before the show starts [like a prelim] or they’d be the last fight to get rid of the crowd. Their fight purse would be 7,000-8000 thousand Baht at most. If we let fighters and gym owners of small weight fighters’ bargain for expensive fight purses and the promoters like to book them to fight so much as today, then one day I hope the bigger fighters will come back to being popular with the fans of the “Hi-tech era”, truly so. Now the promoters who are the main actors need to take action, turning the tables and bring popularity back to the bigger fighters just as “Kro Taoh” Chanasapkaew brought popularity to the smaller fighters. Hope that the future of yodmuay is not the Hi-Tech era, becoming "nic", as there probably won't be any yodmuay at 100 lbs! wonderfully translated by @muaythaitestament on Instagram, with the support of our patrons. Some of the translation has been augmented. from Fighter magazine, March 15 1991:

escriures - etchings, strokes, inscriptions, grooves & sweeps, impressions, trace, arcings, adumbration, articulation. Above is a photo of a fighter from Chatchai's shadowboxing with his hands on the hip bones, the most extensive writing strokes taken out. The body itself becomes a gesture of gestures, the feet and torso moves toward the visual language, developing the sense of the roots of writing.

A form of life that keeps itself in relation to a poetic practice, however that might be, is always in the studio, always in its studio. Its—but in what way do that place and practice belong to it? Isn’t the opposite true—that this form of life is at the mercy of its studio? *** In the mess of papers and books, open or piled upon one another, in the disordered scene of brushes and paints, canvases leaning against the wall, the studio preserves the rough drafts of creation; it records the traces of the arduous process leading from potentiality to act, from the hand that writes to the written page, from the palette to the painting. The studio is the image of potentiality—of the writer’s potentiality to write, of the painter’s or sculptor’s potentiality to paint or sculpt. Attempting to describe one’s own studio thus means attempting to describe the modes and forms of one’s own potentiality—a task that is, at least on first glance, impossible. *** How does one have a potentiality? One cannot have a potentiality; one can only inhabit it. Habito is a frequentative of habeo: to inhabit is a special mode of having, a having so intense that it is no longer possession at all. By dint of having something, we inhabit it, we belong to it. *** from an excerpt from the coming Self-Portrait in the Studio, Agamben Agamben is a compelling philosopher, in that he reads like a worm, chewing through dusty pages, hunting for words. And he chews down into their etymologies, their occasions, their reasons-for-being. He does not present the Grand View. Especially dear, and perhaps not so apparent, is how much he makes from Wittgenstein's concept of a Form of Life, something he alternately traces down to Franciscan Forms of Life (The Highest Poverty), small, local circles of practices that form their own island States, whether they be 13th century monks or players of chess. He is interested in these privacies that are profoundly social. The above passage is from an autobiography - which he approaches as an autoheterogeny - a looking back on his life through the imprint of its having been lived, through the studios of his writing. Like a fossil that leaves the veins of a plant matter, the minute details of a vital living thing, he imagines the studio to be a certain kind of impression, where all the practices of the writer (the painter, the sculptor) have recorded themselves, as lived, inhabited things. He is in this 80s, and he is looking back through this impression, this studio/s, like a photographic negative. He wants us to see, to have lived, is to habituated it. One never possesses life or a life. One can only carve the grooves that remain over time. And he wants to look at his life, by examining its grooves. As a writer of history, as that book worm chewing through words, wriggling back through time, he is just following the runnels and rivulets in the wood. He sees it like this. We film a lot in these kinds of studio spaces in Thailand, gyms that once were heart-beats throbbing with kicked bags, dripping with briney body water, but now are covered with photographs burned by even decades of sunlight, their reputations and their ways of life baked in, and even no longer function, only testifying...an immortal, vital testament, but still only testifying. above, Dejrat home gym, Bangkok And then many of these houses of Muay still are beating out the rhythms, driven by the ardor of the man that leads them, even into old age. Furnaces of agonism and Buddhistic peace, hierarchies of selves stacked in simple geometries, like that of Dejat gym, but upon what-already-has-been, with that eternal sense of the Past holding much more than a Future. This is an illusion. This is something Westerners face when they first come to Thailand, open-eyed. Everything - every surface - is brimming with the new, the unexpected, one cannot see the what-already-has-been which sinks down into sedimented layers of granite & limestone selves. Yes, the age of things is seen, but not the already-has-been completed, the lost-to-the-past, just yet. Instead the present moment seems to be breaking like the bow of a boat, cresting the waters. This is where you are becoming. Agamben invites us to understand - to see - that where we have entered is already a studio of what-already-has-been, we are working within a fossil. Lives have already passed through, lives have already been. You are standing in the bones of memory. You are in an architecture of things that have past, crystalized intentions and aches pressed through an art and a way of Life. So much of what you are standing in is what-already-has-been. It's done. It's over. We are reading an article written in a Thai boxing magazine in the early 1990s - having it translated, will post it - that bemoans the present era then (1990s), the time of Karuhats, Hippys and Oleys, the Age we now call "Golden". It stands on the ruins of the true Muay Thai of the 1960s and 1970s, the Age of Men...it says. As we age and mature we come to feel more and more of what has past, of things having-been, but what truly is widening is our gaze. We have always been standing in those bones, what Agamben wants us to see as our habits, the repetitions of having lived, the carved-out. Even in our most pristinely new moment, we were in those bones of it all, with blinders on. All that has happened in that our vision has widened to see it. Instead what this vision should call us to see is not the widening gaze of what-has-been, but rather the consumate gaze back down into what we are creating now, what carvings, what habituations of Selves that we are inhabiting. Inhabiting - Agamben likes this word, this Heideggerian word, I do not. It makes too much of us a Spirit, a ghosting thing, like we are haunting our lives. It is not like that. I'm writing about the ambitions of those that come to Thailand to beat out a new and authentic self, to expose themselves to new condition, to habituate in a new way, to manifest differently, and what it means to stand in the bones of an art, and a history. And even more readily, to stand in the bones of a house, a gym, a studio, which has made many men, and is always brimming with the what's already-has-been, almost cluttered with it. The hunt of the foreigner in the country: Where do I find the "authentic"? Where do I find that which isn't the already-has-been? Where do I find the "studio"? Again and again the more experienced foreigner, the one who has gained eyes to see beyond the initial innocence of the projected exotic - will be disappointed. They will travel from gym to gym and find the already-has-been. Because this is the natural state. This is the life and state of the artist. Nothing has changed. Only your eyes. Let them change again. A page from Nicola Chiaromonte’s notebooks contains an extraordinary meditation on what remains of a life. For him the essential issue is not what we have or have not had—the true question is, rather, “what remains? . . . what remains of all the days and years that we lived as we could, that is, lived according to a necessity whose law we cannot even now decipher, but at the same time lived as it happened, which is to say, by chance?” The answer is that what remains, if it remains, is “that which one is, that which one was: the memory of having been ‘beautiful,’ as Plotinus would say, and the ability to keep it alive even now. Love remains, if one felt it, the enthusiasm for noble actions, for the traces of nobility and valor found in the dross of life. What remains, if it remains, is the ability to hold that what was good was good, what was bad was bad, and that nothing one might do can change that. What remains is what was, what deserves to continue and last, what stays.” The answer seems so clear and forthright that the words that conclude the brief meditation pass unobserved: “And of us, of that Ego from which we can never detach ourselves and which we can never abjure, nothing remains.” And yet, I believe that these final, quiet words lend sense to the answer that precedes them. The good—even if Chiaromonte insists on its “staying” and “lasting”—is not a substance with no relation to our witnessing of it—rather, only this “of us nothing remains” guarantees that something good remains. The good is somehow indiscernible from our cancelling ourselves in it; it lives only by the seal and arabesque that our disappearance marks upon it. This is why we cannot detach ourselves from ourselves or abjure ourselves. Who is “I”? Who are “we”? Only this vanishing, this holding our breath for something higher that, nevertheless, draws life and inspiration from our bated breath. And nothing says more, nothing is more unmistakably unique than that tacit vanishing, nothing more moving than that adventurous disappearance. - Agamben I think of foreign fighters and ardent students that travel to Nungubon's gym in Ubon. A small studio of a space that is made from his home. It is in the model of a home kaimuay that has made so many fighters of Thailand's Muay Thai. And it is a museum of a space, filled with the pieces of his life and career, just as kaimuay have always been. You are in the bones of it, but still it is what already-has-been. We are standing with a man who has lived the art, in the ring, in the gym. The carved man, but you will also know that it already has passed. This is not an error. This is not flawed. This is the natural state of things. All things already-have-been. Put down the chalice of The Authentic. Everything is already heavily allowed with the past, with the done. It is only you who pulls the thread forward. You and those you metronome with. The above section from Agamben (bolded) is quite beautiful. It is a subtle drawing out of a Spinoza maxim, like a silken thread from the side of an Idea that is usually taken in a very different way. Spinoza held that there is some portion of the Mind that is Eternal. The Truth within the Mind - not our ego, not our feelings or personal ideas or intents - remains for all eternity. As Agamben draws it out he evokes the ephemera of The Ego in Buddhism, that illusive dimension of ourselves organized around everything that is supposed to matter. Of that, nothing will remain. Why? Because only the Good will remain. Agamben's invocation of the studio, the physical space of the practice, all the materiality of that practice, a sum of those real repetitions that reflect our burning fires, our furnaces, but also the Form of Life that is the art into which we are pressed, suggest that this is more of what is the Good, more of what remains. He wants us to see that all the while when our heart has been beating, we've been carving. What is it that you are carving? What of it will remain? What is the Good. As fighters this comes into deeper question, for the fight is among the most thin and veiled of performances, best witnessed in person by the ropes. It can be photographed, it can be written about, but what it truly is vanishes like the midnight bloom of a cragged flower, for only the few. And, the endless poundings of the bag, the light-footed shadowboxings? What is to be of that Good, washing into inarticulate neutrality by the Sea? We meet these incredible men, these spiritual athletes, and what has been made by them? Where does it reside? Where is the studio of their permanence? above, Nungubon's home gym, Ubon above, Takrowlek's home gym garden, Bangkok One knows something only if one loves it—or as Elsa would say, “only one who loves knows.” The Indo-European root that means “to know” is a homonym for the one that means “to be born.” To know [conoscere] means to be born together, to be generated or regenerated by the thing known. This, and nothing but this, is the meaning of loving. And yet, it is precisely this type of love that is so difficult to find among those who believe they know. In fact, the opposite often occurs—that those who dedicate themselves to the study of a writer or an object end up developing a feeling of superiority towards them, almost a sort of contempt. This is why it is best to expunge from the verb “to know” all merely cognitive claims (cognitio in Latin is originally a legal term meaning the procedures for a judge’s inquiry). For my own part, I do not think we can pick up a book we love without feeling our heart racing, or truly know a creature or thing without being reborn in them and with them. - Agamben As we come to study we violate ourselves, our boundaries. We break apart what has been. A new concresence. In this falls the onus on the artist, on the fighter, in this it is all of us. In many ways we are all nomads without a studio, in that we are ever stepping into the ruins of what already-has-been. The bones of it are already stacked around us, even when in youth you do not see them in your tunneling desire. We travel about like a potter who may find a kiln here or there, and we are made hybrid, cyborg to the matter of which it is made. We throw our clay as we might, and at many times we have to build the kiln ourselves, through an art of kiln-making which we have divined from lore & other practices we intuit. We inhabit houses of the art's keeping at times, but again and again The Good must only be the habits we keep as we build, and the respect we pay to what others have etched and thrown, in their kilns, in the kilns that have been. The Ego will not remain, it will vanish. Instead as we bend ourselves toward a Form of Life, and our respect for it. This is a form of cooking. We are cooked by our knowing. By our doing. A medieval legend about Virgil, whom popular tradition had turned into a magician, relates that upon realizing he was old he employed his arts to regain his youth. After having given the necessary instructions to a faithful servant, he had himself cut up into pieces, salted, and cooked in a pot, warning that no one should look inside the pot before it was time. But the servant—or, according to another version, the emperor—opened the pot too soon. “At the point,” the legend recounts, “there was seen an entirely naked child who circled three times around the tub containing the meat of Virgil and then vanished and of the poet nothing remained.” Recalling this legend in the Diaspalmata, Kierkegaard bitterly comments, “I dare say that I also peered too soon into the cauldron, into the cauldron of life and the historical process, and most likely will never manage to become more than a child.” Maturing is letting oneself be cooked by life, letting oneself blindly fall—like a fruit—wherever. Remaining an infant is wanting to open the pot, wanting to see immediately even what you are not supposed to look at. But how can one not feel sympathy for those people in the fables who recklessly open the forbidden door. We are all as it cooks tempting to look in the pot, we think it is over. The process close to being done. The practices, our inhabitations surely have done the cooking they are supposed to have done. There's been enough heat, enough time, one senses. Maybe its not completely done, but a little peek won't hurt. But its exactly that. You cannot look. It's not for you to see. above, Jaroensap's home gym, Bangkok The above is Baramajanmuay Ket Sriyapai, ปรมาจารย์มวย เขตร์ ศรียาภัย, the Muay Chaiya master of Arjan Surat, a portrait photo that hangs on the wall of the Dejrat gym in Bangkok. In some material sense this is all that remains of him. Arjan Surat, who still runs this hallowed personal space where hanging bags drape in a garage where he literally parks his car, talks about other Muay Boran manifestations in Thailand, lineages that purports ancient knowledge or ways of fighting. He laughs in his gruff and dismissive gravel voice pointing at the portrait "How can they know, if he didn't know?" But the habits, the inhabitance as Agamben would have it, of Baramajanmuay Ket Sriyapai also live remaining in Arjan Surat himself. The carvings of life, his studio, his life, made by the beating heart of Baramajanmuay Ket Sriyapai have also carved upon Arjan Surat who is now in his 70s, bent on holding daily pads for stadium fighters until 80. "Eeeevery-day" he says in English, drawing out the words to indicate time, the length of it. You do this eeeevery-day. You carve. You are standing in the bones of it, no matter where you are. It all, it all has already past. It's over. It's done. And you pull out this silken thread, weaving it forward, in the very thing you are carving. It looks like it is all finished, but it is barely there.

You may look into Takrowlek's close quarters kicking style. A lot of Japanese Kickboxing seems to have adopted this Thai style of fighting. Takrowlek was a very short fighter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/96897418?pr=true In the above link its is taught for an hour or so. In the video below you can see a segment of this:

After a little bit of research, and contemplation, I figured the kyokushin close quarters kicking is the best approach to study.

Karuhat is not a tall fighter, and usually fought opponents much bigger, taller than him. He's a difficult fighter to emulate because his eyes were so good, and his timing impeccable, but his muay is full of great qualities.

And, there is one final dimension of "authentic" Muay Thai that deserves focus. That is that Muay Thai is trained in order to be fought, and to be fought frequently. Fighting is a part of training, an important feedback loop that is central to understanding your own growth, and for those who shape you to see how you are doing. It is NOT a test to see "how good you are". It is NOT a test of your worth. NOT something you want to save for a special moment of assessment. It is a very frequent, common, unhyped aspect of Muay Thai itself, and why Thai fighters have 100s of fights. This, perhaps more than any one thing characterizes the unique fight culture and process of Thailand's Muay Thai, not like anything else in the world. And, importantly, fighting is a very significant social event of gyms, a way of experiencing what is culturally unique about Thailand's Muay Thai. This means, if you are training outside of regular fighting (and I do mean very regular) you are missing something quite "authentic" in Muay Thai, even if all the other aspects of authenticity I've talked about previously are more or less on-board. This also means, for many Westerners, the much abhorred (by me and others like me) Entertainment Muay Thai may very well be the ONLY way of experiencing a very close relationship between frequent fighting and training which is core to the traditional form. This may mean, depending on where you are in Thailand, and maybe your size or gender, you might very well find yourself training in memorized combos and fighting on 3 round shows, in order to experience this very important "authentic" relationship between frequent fighting and Muay Thai development. Ideally, you would want to be doing this frequent fighting in traditional formats, with local gambling, which constitutes the more authentic form, but this just may not be possible. And, you may have to choose between in-frequent fighting and more authentic training conditions AND more tourist-oriented frequent fighting Entertainment shows, where can be rewarded for fighting in a non-Thai fashion. This is why some hybrid gyms like Hongtong, Sitjaopho, Silk (in Pattaya), Kem's in Khao Yai may be worthy "authenticity" choices, in that they though geared towards Westerners, they also create churn-like training conditions, and favor frequent fighting, which may involve both (trad) festival and Entertainment options. As might various Phuket gyms (?, sorry I don't know this sector). In a certain sense there is so much variety, and the authentic form of traditional Muay Thai is so fragmented, a serious student or fighter coming to Thailand has an incredible spectrum of choices of just how much, and what kind of "authenticity" they would like in their experience, all of it mixed in degrees. Unfortunately, its very hard to make those kinds of choices from afar, and it is very difficult to depend on the opinions of those already in Thailand, because gyms change quickly, and your own needs may be quite different even than someone who seems like they might be somewhat like you.

When we asked the legend Pudpadnoi why he left Muay Thai in the 1970s, one of the very best of the decade, he said "It was worse than the Army" He briefly went to America, and then settled in France, becoming one of the first of elite Thai fighters bringing authentic Muay Thai to Europe, a Muay Thai though that as a fighting knowledge is difficult to separate out the social conditions which generated it, and the fights that produced it.

In thinking through this, this means things like: local, neighborhood development of kid fighters local, festival, gambling driven fighting, where social face is at risk learning directly from great krus & legends who know a Muay Thai that no longer exists, and may ever exist again (even if direct teaching like this is not traditional or "authentic" in its own right). training in the churn of a full gym, preferably predominantly Thais seeking to fight, with a full spectrum of skill levels finding and respecting tradition-rich spaces which hold the unique history of the sport partaking in the culture of respect and hierarchy (which may mean suffering under it, losing autonomy, even losing good training or fight opportunities). For foreign women they can be even more complex & problematic, even dangerous. learning to lose - this means, exposing yourself to largely alien traditional fight aesthetics, learning 1,000 ways to lose refusing common for-Westerner advantages, including weight bullying advantages. In Thai culture, weight bullying usually comes out of political power, the ability to impose disadvantages on the less powerful. do the work, which can be transformative, but understand this is traditionally labor and done through social submission understand that the art of (trad) Muay Thai will challenge your understanding and experience of violence. In general, avoid Entertainment Shows which have been made for the Westerner, and the foreigner in general, both as participant, and as consumer. It's like eating super sweet, peanut-buttery Pad Thai all day. And find excessive combo training (anything pre-patterned that you are supposed to "do" under stress, trained in rote), especially organized around hands, suspect. Muay Thai in its traditional form should be improvisational, perceptive, defense-oriented, and narrative. It's built around display and problem-solving. As Entertainment Muay Thai impacts even traditional shows, the rise of the combo has entered even otherwise "authentic" gyms. Given the low-skill level required from pad holders, and the low level of investment, it is populating the very language of Muay Thai. Add in that Westerners are starting to hold pads in gyms (and what most Westerners know best is combination thinking), the one realizes that the Combo and the Entertainment Show are two powerful currents that move against the transformative authentic experience described above. Combos proliferate because they are easy to teach and do not require the entire social setting of a kaimuay, and because Entertainment Muay Thai is made to reward them. The "authentic" knowledge of the sport is being quickly drained away at both the pedagogic and performative level, through patterned clashing.

The way I see it there are several overlapping, and sometimes contradictory processes of gym "authenticity": developing young Thai fighters to fight in the festival circuit and eventually the traditional stadia (not Entertainment Muay Thai shows) disseminating, developing Thai techniques and stylistics through a slow-cook "churn" of training: learning through arduous, play, osmosis and imitation maintaining a traditional authority culture, including the legacy of the gym, its heritage gaining prestige through high-profile fighters in the Bangkok stadia gambling scene the gym, the kaimuay, an expression of the local community, a weave of its people, its location a house - sometimes literally a house - of knowledge, kept within a top kru or boss who productively runs the camp, this knowledge is both political craft and technical fighting craft. a collection of entrepreneurial knowledges within the group, betting padmen, who themselves are jostling for social position a house where chance (gambling) meets technique (knowledge) A lot of this runs counter, or is outright alien to a foreigner (not of the community) paying for (commerce, not alliance) technical knowledge (the structure of the house). So gyms that accept foreigners become hybrid spaces, often with parallel (and contradictory) value systems, or social organization. The more prominent the newer value system, the less "authentic" the gym may be...in this particular description, which imagines that there is something "authentic" to be found and experienced. You can get fragments of this: the experience of kids developing and fighting, the techniques in a lineage, the aura of "respect" and "tradition", the churn of a gym, in mixtures, but almost always in combination with the secondary (usual conflictual) value system that provides admission to the gym. This being said, the two value systems, roughly we can call them Tradition and Consumer Capitalism, are always working upon each other in the culture, and uniquely in every gym, mutating each other, so there are no hard lines between the two. In gyms where there are parallel structures, one for Thais and one for Westerners, the two value systems can become more distinct, if you develop eyes for them, but in terms of the Thais themselves, the meaning within each value system still has to be understood in terms of Thai culture, social class and capital (prestige). In otherwords, even in the values of Consumer Capitalism, everything is still being understood by Thais in terms of traditional hierarchies, position and social contest. Western values like the autonomy of the individual (which often inspires a Westerner to become a fighter), the liberty of choice & service purchase, are really not at play; they are merely tolerated as a means of commerce. This is to say, even supposedly "inauthentic gyms" insofar as they are Thai, are still more traditional than most Westerners may imagine, even if they cater strongly to Westerners and Western style training, because Thai social hierarchies and motivations underlie everything. By analogy, a Thai owned restaurant might make hamburgers and steaks for tourists, but its still very Thai in the kitchen and the back of the house. But...hanging with the Western customers, adopting the signatures of that food's culture, participating in its celebration appeal, may very well change what kind of Thainess there is. And remember, class is a very significant part of Thailand's purported authentic Muay Thai. Nearly all the great fighters of the past were provincial fighters who made it in Bangkok, where powerful elites (Sino-Thai promoters) and underworld bosses held court, and where Muay Thai had an ideological dimension expressed by Thai Nationalism and royalty. All of these classes were "authentic" Muay Thai, but as with most highly developed fighting arts, the core of this authenticity comes out of the lower classes, the rural poor, or the urban working poor. This is where the myriad of small gyms and fighters come out of, the roots of the sport. So, in a sense, the further you move away from this, the further - at least culturally and historically - you are moving away from a kind of resolute authenticity. Today's Muay Thai in the Capital is being redesigned for the Thai hi-so (upper classes), in the inspiration of the next generation of promoter families, some of them educated abroad, often in America. It is being internationalized, as Thailand has always had an internationalizing strain within its culture, which sees social wealth in terms of world standards. Entertainment Muay Thai shows now show inspiration from NBA half-time entertainment, and its not an accident. This is an expression of class. The turn towards tourism aids in this transformation, as the Thai government leans into the tourist sector economy, developing not only economic power, but Soft ideological power. The political elite are expressing themselves, in terms of Muay Thai, in this new way, just as there was a political elite (authentic) expression of Muay Thai 40 years ago, 70 years ago. This stretches Muay Thai away from its lower class root system. And, within gyms, ex-fighters are finding themselves having left the lower classes they came from, at least in terms of opportunity. This is on account of Thailand's rising standards of living, but also part of their own risen status within a sport that is increasingly turning toward the foreigner. Their sons (now of fighting age) are in a different social strata, with opportunities quite different than those that led them into fighting in the first place, and their gyms (or their students when they don't own gyms) increasingly cater to the Westerner, who without irony, holds them in more esteem than perhaps fellow countrymen, who considered Muay Thai low-brow and underclass. In such gyms and training having affluent students is a signature of social climbing, and even having (relatively) affluent Westerners holding pads or teaching weight training, under them, working FOR them, raises their social position...all without regard for the quality of Muay Thai within the house. There is an authentically Thai drive to move up the social ladder, in a sense because that is what Muay Thai itself always was, the agonistic struggle for recognition and accomplishment. Yodkhunon once asked Sylvie, who prolifically fights out of her own value sense "Why do you still fight, you are already famous?" Changes in the sport and art which we might regard as "inauthentic" are authentically Thai.

Thoughts about authenticity: Just to offer something, gyms change all the time, and factors of "authenticity" can also change. And who you are and what you need/desire is probably more important than even the qualities of the gym at times. Dejrat Gym, Bangkok - Arjan Surat is an absolute legend, nobody like him in the entire sport. Gym in his garage (not uncommon in the day), lighter weight stadium fighters even at the champion level come through his gym still. A very tough old school trainer. Pads will shape you. May not be a full gym. Santi Ubon Gym, Ubon - a real provincial kaimuay, full of local kids and teens, some ranked BKK stadium fighters, you'll get the legit culture of provincial Muay Thai here. there's a MTL on this gym: #149 Provincial Kaimuay Knowledge | Santi Ubon Muay Thai (85 min) watch it here Everyone wants to know what "authentic" Muay Thai training is like in Thailand. We visit and document the kaimuay training style of the Santi gym in Ubon (Isaan), the traditional, local community style of training that is core to Thailand's historical style of fighting. Learn the energy of padwork, sparring and clinch, how fighters are shaped from the ground up. Training like there is nowhere else in the world. Sitjaopho Gym, Hua Hin - a very interesting hybrid gym completely organized around Westerners who love technique. Loads of teaching, loads of training, Kru F a great communicator and as nice as you'll find in Thailand. They have a system of teaching that is connected to kaimuay principles in a very devoted way...but its pretty much for Westerners. Some long term Westerners there are also very helpful and knowledgeable, and in fact may be really key to how the whole gym stays in that sweetspot, and gyms can be very affected by who is training. You train here you will learn. Nungubon Gym, Ubon - great legend of the Golden Age, his son a strong stadium fighter now, which really is good to have in a gym. Out of the way so the Westerners who come to this gym have trekked to get there. The gym has real sincerity, Nungubon is wonderful and Old School. Did not see training, but it seemed like maybe not a full gym. That can be good and can be bad, depends on your needs. Samart's Gym, Bangkok - Gyms in the 2010s started informally breaking themselves into two kinds of gyms, which operated side-by-side. There was "Thai gym" (which trains Thais for the stadia in a traditional way), and the Western gym (which trains Westerners, in parallel to the Thais). Often Westerners can't even tell that there are two different gyms operating side-by-side (that's a little how it felt). At Samart's you get to be trained by legends like Kongtoranee and Karuhat, and there are top Thai low-weight stadium champion level fighters like Chalamchon (photo shoot here) developing. The experience is unique because of just how many Golden Age legends are around, including Samart of course, but also Somrak, Dieselnoi will come through, and many others. So it has a mix of authenticities, some of them absolutely unique. Samingnoom Gym Buriram - a great legend of the Golden Age, adept in both boxing and Muay Thai, history of teaching abroad in places like New Zealand and Finland, built his own ring beside his small house which he also built by hand. These little gyms have the heartbeat of traditional Muay Thai. He trains local kids and adventuresome foreigners. Very barebones authentic Muay Thai. Kem Muay Thai Gym, Khao Yai - Kem a great fighter of the 2000s runs a trad camp in maybe the most beautiful location in Thailand, high up in the Khao Yai mountains, overlooking a valley. The training is kaimuay style, mixed in with Western style drilling that Kem feels builds proper principles. Kem is very, very sound in terms of the deeper principles of Muay Thai, not only its beautiful strikes, but its balance and footwork. Most of the gym will be Westerners, but they've come a long way so they are committed. His wife Mo is wonderful, and speaks English, so even though it feels very Thai, she can help out with any issues. Everyone eats together, traditional style, high up above the camp. One of the great privates in Thailand.

I have a little more time, let me offer a more complete response. Some of the difficulty in pursuing "authenticity" in Thai gyms is that non-Thai can tend to have pretty romantic visions of what an authentic gym is like. Or, at the very least incomplete pictures. And, there are versions of imagined authenticity. A great deal of Thailand's Muay Thai of the past came out of the kaimuay (camp) teaching or development method, but there were very different kinds of kaimuay, in some way depending on how close you are to Bangkok's National Stadia, or large city centers where there were scenes of weight class fighting, and thus more money put into the sport. In the outer provinces kaimuay could be just a collection of local boys, in Bangkok a gym that had bought up the contracts of successful provincial fighters, combined with other training/trainer interests. But in these settings there was very little one-on-one instruction, as far as we can tell. Instead, fighters were basically workers, laborers, much as ranch-hands were laborers in the Cattle Ranching of the American West. Fighters were very low status, socially, pad men also usually low status, and the development of fighters was a process, come from mixing all the fighters together, in the work of the kaimuay. There's really no Master & Student dynamic going on, as for instance in Asian Martial Arts, or even like coach-centric Western Boxing traditions. It was largely the churn. Fighters would fall out, or they would rise. There were likely exceptions and unique dynamics in gyms, but this was the "authentic" profile of what was happening. So, if you wanted to be part of a kaimuay, as it was, you would just be in the churn. You wouldn't be getting special instruction. You'd be learning by imitation and repetition, and through lots of sparring and clinch. You would have no authority as a customer (in this fantasy), you wouldn't be allowed to leave the camp and go to another gym if things weren't working out (this problem STILL happens for Westerners in Thailand, believe it or not, because Muay Thai gym are very political). You'd be in a state more or less like indentured work. That kaimuay, as it was, largely doesn't exist anymore. Which is to say Thai camps have vestigial aspects of the kaimuay, and some still train with a focus on the churn (which is the true way), but this is very far from going to a camp and taking private lessons, as a paying customer. Now lots of Muay Thai gyms offer privates, and also have adapted training to Western expectations, involving more correction and attention, and some of those still try to maintain something of the kaimuay ethic. But, we are already outside of "authentic" as it historically was. So when Westerners really long for the authentic experience, they are often caught between kinds of gyms, gyms that maintain SOME dimensions of authenticity (just some of that: train in a kaimuay way, focus on Thai techniques and principles, produce Thai stadium fighters themselves, carry a culture of traditional respect and power), but none of them will have all of that (at least as I've seen). Worse, many (even with some authentic qualities, will have started training in more Western ways, holding for combos, focused on Entertainment Muay Thai (which is basically Muay Thai made for tourists and tourism). So its very hard to pick out WHICH authentic elements you are going to get. You could go to a "traditional style" gym known for Muay Khao and just end up clinching endlessly with Westerners who also came there because its known for clinch training. You could go where a true legend of the sport like Arjan Surat still works fighters for the stadia, but there may be nobody your size to train against and with. You could go up to a REAL provincial kaimuay like Santi Gym in Ubon, and just train in the churn of fighters reaching for the stadia, but they probably wouldn't be giving privates (?), and you might find the work boring or isolating. You could go to a "technique" gym like Sitjaopho, where you'll (probably) be pressed together with lots of other Westerners very interested in technique, but in a hybrid way that has approximated the kaimuay churn, while offering lots of correction and teaching, but you won't likely be training with Thai fighters. You could go to Sit Thailand in Chiang Mai, which seems to have a small kaimuay structure, organized around developing his son and a few other good Thais, and take privates from him (a very good teacher), but are there people to train with (this changes a lot in gyms)? Or, you could go the Samart's gym, and be trained by legends like Kongtoranee or Karuhat, and be near (mixed in? I don't know) the Thai kaimuay like processes of their handful of stadium fighters, in a kind of hybrid space? These are just very broad pictures (every gym changes, we don't really spend time in gyms much). Every gym is going to be missing something, probably a lot of things. This is the fundamental problem for Westerners. Muay Thai has more and more become FOR the Westerner. In fact they've now invented a new version of Muay Thai which is FOR the Westerner, and its becoming dominant. But, if Muay Thai wasn't turning its face to the Westerner there would be little room for the Westerner in traditional spaces...because traditional spaces are not only hierarchical (not commercial for customers), they were also businesses in the way that Cattle Ranches were businesses. You wouldn't come from another country and go to a ranch in 1950 in Texas to "learn how to be a cowboy". Part of the problem is that Muay Thai itself, in its authentic strain, is dying, so you can only capture pieces of it, fragments, at best chunks. I'm not an expert in this, only someone with my own experience, but this perspective comes from documenting the Golden Age of the sport, getting to know the great teachers of the art and sport as they are now, but also continually hunting for the kaimuay qualities of "authenticity" for Sylvie herself, as she trains and fights. It's very difficult to find.

I understand your pursuit of authenticity, but this would not happen in an "authentic" kaimuay gym. Private lessons are kind of a Western thing. Probably the best option would be Nungubon's gym in Isaan, or Kem's Gym below Khorat, which both have kaimuay-type characteristics, but you could still take lots of privates (which are usually a good thing to do).

I've written before about the probablistic nature of fighting and philosophical theories of the control of entropy, if interested in thinking more about this.

Two more photographs in my new, evolving portrait style yesterday, a dark style that seems to create very beautiful, soulful captures of a person. Arjan Surat, Dejrat Gym (Bangkok) Takrowlek Dejrat Gym (Bangkok) I invite you to click on each photo above, on a big screen, and really look at these wonderful men This is the story of this new style of portrait, and observations I've made about shooting Muay Thai in black and white over the last few years. For a while now I've wanted to shoot a different sort of black and white portrait, especially of Muay Thai legends, fighters and krus. It's an extension of my fine art tastes, the way I want to lift the subject to a high (culturally coded) aesthetic, capturing their true dignity as fighters and as men. I purchased some additional equipment, put on a filter I had experimented with in the past, and set to it. It was going to take a while before I zoned in on what I wanted, something rich, soulful, detailed - or so I thought. But practically my first photos taken (of Sylvie, not posted anywhere as yet) were kind of stunning. Among the best portraits I've taken of her. Each frame showed a different quality. Each frame seemed to be pointing to something deep, something that also changed with the edit itself. In any case these are two photos I took yesterday in Bangkok, both noble men of the Dejrat gym, a Golden Age legendary kru and his fighter. For some time was really hoping to photograph Arjan Surat, as he just has so much natural majesty, and I didn't even know what style of photo I wanted to take with him, other than it being an intimate portrait. In the first one of the frames his strong features resisted this Deep Black edit style, other edits were better and more expressive, so I turned back to Takrowlek, and wow, this one (the 2nd above) just sang. It is really a profound photo, among the best I've been able to reach for, yet it feels like it all comes from him. I went back to my Arjan Surat frames and looked for where I could do something in the same spirit. I wanted to see the differences between the men. There is something to this edit in which the eyes just become incredibly expressive, a true individualism. I found the right frame (almost none of the others would work). It's enough to say, I've found an aesthetic vein I really want to run down...but, there is just one significant problem: black and white photographs, especially of people, are strongly coded as photos of death in the culture. I suspect as well that with the advent of more widespread color printing (magazines and such) that followed the economic boom (at least in Muay Thai), color indicated all the good things of life. It was rich, dynamic, "modern", not the pale newsprint of the past (more on this in following posts). Missing, perhaps, are our (Western) strong associations with Classic looks, or fine art, which today's Black and White can exude. Westerners and Thais can see these differently. I wrote a little about this problem as a photographer on Twitter more than a year ago. I want as a photographer, perhaps more than anything, to show a subject themselves in a beautiful way, to lift them up in their eyes...but, my own black and white aesthetics, combined with my American "working man" sensibilities, celebrating the lines of a face, really run hard against widespread Thai aesthetics. Complicating the matter further is that dark skin is considered less desirable and ugly in Thailand, likely with strong ethnic and racial (even racist) overtones. (Emma Thomas wrote about racism in Thailand several years ago.) Aside from the broader themes of lighter skin beauty, in terms of Thailand's Muay Thai the darker complexions of Isaan, for instance, ethnically close to those of Laos & the Khmer, to which the region is connected and woven from, register as socially low. Many of these in history are perhaps read in the context of conquered peoples (the burgeoning Siam/Thai Nation indeed raided to the Northeast and would capture and repopulate areas inland, a practice of capture and indentured slave taking that goes back to before the Ayutthaya period, at least 500 years of not more). Today whiteness is the mark of beauty. Skin whitening products are everywhere. And this whiteness is not merely the Whiteness of the Westerner, it is prominently the Whiteness of Chinese-like, or K-Pop beauty influence. A sign of affluence. Light skin matters. above a skin-whitening product, with a masculinity-type that is quite popular in media in Thailand, far from many Isaan-born Nak Muay. So, when I'm trying to capture the dignity of Thai men, many of them from the lower social classes, my working man aesthetics, and classic fine art sensibilities can run hard against the very cultural picture of beauty, firmly a standard carried by the elite of the country, seen in every television commercial, and every Instagram or phone beautification filter. And, within Thailand as new forms of Muay Thai try to transmute the Muay Thai of the provinces into a Entertainment Bangkok version appealing to hi-so (upper class, high society) Thais, and to Western fighters and their audiences, these lines of color in photography happen to also reflect class and cultural divisions within the sport and art. There is a sort of whitening of Muay Thai that is happening in Thailand. When photographing and preserving the heritage of Muay Thai I am less interested in the dominant history of the Bangkok Capital, as officially recorded, and more looking to the roots of the sport in its fighters, and the practices that anchored that developed it, much of this of rural, lower-class origin. So in some sense I'm going to be working across the overarching aesthetic of the culture which is shaped by the social realities, really the hegemonies of the Capital and its commerce. But, in tension, as a photographer I am also bringing forth Western appeals to classic aesthetics, elevating working and rural classes in the way that Western aesthetics have evolved to do so. These aesthetics are my way, my hands and fingers, of reaching out and touching the dignity of these men, as I am able to see it...and as I want others to be able see it. I briefly wrote about the difficulty of darker toned, black and white photographs more than a year ago here (its fully quoted below, no need to click through): Because the wealthy in the country are increasingly portrayed in smooth-skinned, sometime even face-bloating plastic surgery, blown-out whites, the edged, darkening gritty contrasts above (that I love to see) become unbeautiful. Perhaps like photographs that make you look old, or fat. These are strong, aesthetic reactions, anchored in the culture, part of a much wider culture of whitening in Asia. Below you can see the adjustments the former fighter Morakot made to my photograph of him, passing it through a beautifying filter before posting it on Facebook. He generally though passed all his photos through filters before posting. It isn't just the tone of skin, as mentioned it is also that black and white photographs can be coded as funerary. So, there are two aspects at play: any darkening of the skin tone (and hard contrasts that bring forward hard lines), and then the absence of color itself. It's a complex of aspects of black and white imagery. It just so happens, a few days before taking the two portraits at top I had taken a portrait I really enjoyed of the great coach and former fighter Chatchai Sasakul, a black and white which was best not in the Deep Black style of this post. We sent him the photo privately and he posted it on his Facebook page. It felt good to be embraced. I'm always hesitant to edit and post black and white photographs, even though this aesthetic is properly mine, it's very meaningful to me, and it's central to how I see as a photographer. I do post plenty of black and white photographs, but each and every time I am wary, concerned that the subject just won't like to see themselves that way. One of the worst things happened. A very powerful promoter saw the photograph Chatchai in a post wherein Chatchai had written about how successful his gym has suddenly become and how thankful he is in celebration of the support everyone is giving. He has several champions in his stable now, and he was smiling...the promoter commented: Please don't post black and white photographs, it scared me, I thought you were dead. Surely, just said off-hand, and maybe even light-heartedly, but it had a big effect. Chatchai took the photo down, replaced it with a color one, and it became something of a point of talk. It is true that black and white photography, especially on social media, can be funerary in Thailand. Admittedly, the usual signature for a funeral photo on social media is a color photo turned black and white, and Chatchai's big smile may have made that particular photo more prone to misreading. In any case, when I took the camera out to take Takrowlek's portrait a few days later he mentioned the talk about the photo. I could feel some nervousness as I stood in front of him with my camera, and after only a few frames he looked away. I stopped photographing. Thais are very socially sensitive, and small group opinions matter. He didn't know, perhaps, what kind of photo I would take. And, I wonder if this look in his eyes where he resolved himself to the photo, in the very first frame, is where his wonderful spirit comes through, a kind of defiant spirit. The interesting thing about Takrowlek is that of all Thai in Thailand he actually has reacted most positively to my black and white photographs in the past. He's shared my previous black and white photographs of himself, enthusiastically. And he repeatedly shares the very gritty, high contrast photo I took of his brother, the fellow fighter and kru Chatchainoi (below), someone he deeply loves. above, Chatchainoi And in the aftermath of my taking those previous photos, Takrowlek started taking dark, high contrast black and white photographs self portraits, and posting them on Facebook. He was exploring black and white photography artistically. In fact, when we entered his gym yesterday to shoot he had a very large, chiaroscuro photo of his daughter on the wall, which he seemed to have taken. He enjoys the black and white aesthetic. He's an original, somewhat iconoclastic thinker, strong in his opinion, and he embraced the black and white aesthetic for himself. In fact when we sent him my new portraits, I sent two. The beautiful dark one you see at the top of this post, and a much more neutral color photograph, and told him please don't feel like you have to post any of these, they are just for you. He could pick what he liked. above, the color photo sent along with the Deep Black portrait. Not an edit I would preferably do, but one made to allow more choice. It is a nice photograph, his sweetness comes through, but I would probably push for more out of it. Takrowlek immediately wrote back that between the two he loved the Deep Black portrait, and even gave a description of what he saw in it, the eyes. I was surprised given his hesitance when shooting, given the social spin put on Chatchai's photograph. I had been quite concerned that it may be hard to even get someone to sit for such a portrait after the bias against black and white portraiture had been given so much wind in those sails. How am I even going to take enough photographs to explore this new portrait style? His response lightened my heart, and gave me some hope. I really want to take these Deep Black portraits, of many Muay Thai fighters and krus, and want to show their eyes, their soul, in a dignified way that maybe the overall culture does not appreciate. I want people to be able to see into them and this mode of photography accomplishes that. He responded to my share of his Deep Black portrait with these heartening words: first (machine translate): The picture is ordinary, but what you see, the depth of your eyes, is amazing. Thank you to the photographer. Thank you, thank you. then: Sincerity is always expressed through the eyes, even without words. He understands and feels the power of the style, how it draws out the eyes and communicates the heart of the soul. This is so meaningful to me. The portrait landed. This means that the photograph, these photographs, to some degree transcend cultural bounds. The capacity of them to express the eyes means something in both cultural matrices. In that sense they can be unifying. I'm not sure where this leaves me in my drive to photograph more krus and fighters in my Deep Black portrait style. I'm not sure how readable it is to most of the men I would photograph. I've had very beautiful photographs I took at Rajadamnern in another style, just strong, strong black and whites like no other Muay Thai photographs I've seen, privately be asked to be turned into color by fighters, when I send them to them privately. Their unusual character, something I savor, does not read. And I do not blame them at all, I'm moving against the broad spectrum aesthetic in the culture, and even most sport photography in my own culture. Most Muay Thai photography is hyper colored, very crunchy, almost comic book or digital in style. Very "sweat-spray" and popping. You can see my Rajadamnern photographs here, very moody, sculptural, or psychological, and trending toward fineart (in the West). Shooting Rajadamnern in Black and White This was a huge traditional Muay Thai show, everything about it was about color and pop, trying to compete in a high-productive value space with forward-leaning hype of Entertainment Muay Thai which has been beating down the traditional sport. It was the show of the year, proof that the traditional Muay Thai art, which thrived in the old, dingy but profoundly charactered Lumpinee (now gone) could compete in the newly remodeled, updated Rajadamnern Stadium, full of digital screens, light shows. The show actually was not televised, on purpose, nor streamed, because it wanted to call back the great days of in-person gambling and attendance, and featured the biggest fighters in the sport. I experienced the event very differently, because I was not raised in a developing country, peaking now. I am from a country that largely set the tone for commercial development in the 20th century, with American soft power, and in fact suffered from its excesses and loss of meaning it has brought. In Rajadamnern I found a beautiful, old style theater space, a mix of associations, reminiscent of a town's movie theater where everyone went on a Saturday night, or a small, much respected live theater in New York City where great performances were done but only 500 people saw them, in its past. I felt transported to an intimacy, a theatrical intimacy, that was quite special, one any American would want to feel. It felt like a Hollywood premiere, but in a classic age, so for me the classic, missing-from-my-culture, lost-to-my-culture aspects came out as a photographed. (Note, this rare traditional show, with its glorious wall of gamblers, is quite different than many of the shows that now work out of Rajadamnern, which turn their eye to the entertainment Western and Chinese tourist.) above, three screen caps of photos from the big Rajadamnern Stadium show (see the whole album here) I, with my Westernized aesthetic, see absolute human beauty in those two lower photographs. They feel classic, elevated, but also full of vigor and intensities. The sculptural aspects and the play of light on form (Rajadamnern has spectacular stadium lighting) really come forward for me. This felt like the acme of Muay Thai. The Scorsese film Raging Bull, itself a homage to black and white classics before him, including the boxing film Body and Soul, which in part inspired that film (do see it if you love Boxing and classic film) is evoked, because (unlike much of Thailand) we in American harken back to our own sporting past, much of it from the working class, heroing those great performances with glory. We relate to our past differently. For this reason the history of 1950s boxing in America, and its capture in media, its representation, I think has powerful visual resonance with Thailand's classic age of Muay Thai, at least for Westerners, because its a lens through which we can understand and celebrate the sport...as classic. No doubt American Boxing itself exerted influence on Thailand and its Muay Thai in the middle of the century, and photographing in this way for me connects up with that historical cross-over, and aligns with America's own glorification of the lower class heroes of generational pugilism. This is an honorific aesthetic, with footing in the sport itself. Arguments can be made that Thailand Muay Thai's Golden Age (1980-1994) homologously mirrors to some degree Boxing's mid-Century era. You can read about the significant influence of Western Boxing on Thailand's early century Muay Thai here The State of Early Modern Muay Thai and British Boxing above, Jake LaMatta reffing a boxing match at Rajadamnern Stadium in 1969, an appearance which began new emphasis on boxing in the National Stadia which lasted for decades. This is to say, this kind of Muay Thai photography is readable to the West because of our own retroactive cinematic embrace of American boxing. The aesthetic is readable because it draws on Western conventions and our history. It communicates values that have developed over time, values I champion as an artist. They are not readily readable in Thai culture, even though the culture is internationalizing quickly. (Ironic that I advocate for the non-Internationalization of the traditional sport, as it is fought, bending as it has been to Western fight aesthetics and rules, while as a photographer I bring distinct Western aesthetics, even Americanized aesthetics to the history and preservation of traditional Muay Thai and its men. I realize a tension here.) It's my belief though that there is a the gift that Thailand's traditional Muay Thai has for the West, and to accelerating Globalization. It is the way it embodies many readable classic, lower-class valorizations of ring fighting, yet specifically through its Buddhistic cultural approach to violence itself, in an art that is viewed as quite violent by the West, through aesthetics of calm, control and respect. Thailand, as it is quite busy trying to imitate Western fighting styles, internalizing those aggression-first fighting ethics, trying to draw those dollars and yuan into their economy as an entertainment value, has a much deeper and more profound gift to give to the world...something that is readable in terms of the classic aesthetics of Western fighting traditions. It is the unique way Thais treat the possibles of ring violence, and the notion of dignity within conflict. These irreplaceable values are found in the men who trained and fought, men of color (as it would be qualified in the West), especially in the latter part of the 20th century. In this sense, my black and white photographs work towards a mixed socio-political dimension, in that they run against the Thai upper-class, but also internationalizing aesthetics of whitening in the culture, leaning toward the darker skin-tones of much of the provincial roots of Thailand's Muay Thai, far from the Capital. Many not only ethnically darker, but also darker for working in the Sun. (During Bangkok's economic boom of the 1980s provincial workers of the fields would develop a factory white complexion, now working long hours indoors, perhaps a signature of having modern, gainful, industrial employment or more neutrally just having moved to the city and left the fields. Going to the city was called "going to get your white face". As a foreigner I am interested in the aspects of Muay Thai that are not born from its internationalizing mixtures, those that are most distinctly Thai, and so the greatness of these men pictured outside of the aesthetic whitening of the sport work back toward those rural anchors, anchors that are largely diminished in Thailand's own telling of the sport. But, as a high-brow American aesthetic, an aesthetic capable of Noir nostalgias for lost traditions and classic masculinities, and an Americanized individualism of the elevated working man, and pugalistic character, the potential appeal of this style to Thais is itself internationalizing, introducing concepts of liberty and new value. As I post below subsequently in this thread, affluent photography students may themselves explore the dark moods of strong black and white contrast photography, at least in part influenced by Western fine art and Western cinematic history. This is not a cut and dry, good/bad, authentic/inauthentic situation of judgements, these are braided threads. I myself was very likely invited to see Thailand's Muay Thai in very chiaroscuro Noir terms, because of a Thai photographer more than a decade ago: see those photos here. Aesthetics have their own propagating life. Not Darkening or Lightening Skin, But Changing the Meaning of Light And, any discussion of skin-color and social status (colorism) needs to appreciate that cultures are not a monolith, though its common to treat them that way, and when talking about Western or American culture it too has its colorisms. My aesthetics come out of my class, race and history. Going back to the 2008 Beyonce controversy with L'Oreal and skin tone lightening, up to present day skin-tone accusations in media and presentation, we've learned that lightness or darkness of skin in photography can always be understood as politicized. And one could imagine that my photographic eye is in some sense exoticizing Thai fighters, perhaps seeing in them working man, fighting man valorization, things that map onto American ideologies of gritty cowboys, people of the Land or urban fighters of the past, cast in this case in the Other. In this I carry something of rugged American individualism, the promise of social mobility of determination & character, quite far from most Thai identities which are more filial and group, almost clan oriented. These are fair slices of judgement to take upon my photographs. We are dealing with idealized forms of masculinity, a hypermasculinity as Peter Vail would say. I though point out that I do photograph my wife, as a fighter, often in the same very dark or gritty motifs (some here), such as the one below from a few years ago, one of my favorite portraits of her (perhaps accidentally invoking masculinity-coded Ripley of Alien). This is just how I see a fighter. And as with Thai fighters sometimes my photos do not correspond to her own preferences of how she'd like to be portrayed, too edged (I am forced to draw back); it is something I have to balance. I've as mentioned I also photographed her in my new Deep Black portrait aesthetic (unposted) and they are just incredibly beautiful photographs, some of the best I've ever taken of her. I've had large prints made. Often though I have to temper how gritty or texturally harsh I might capture her, the woman that I love. I would say though that in some arguable sense photography always exoticizes its subject, cutting them/it out from reality's context, lifting up aspects through light, composition and texture, suppressing others, communicating ideal values, many of them subconscious. This is to say, when we create art we will always be importing the collectivity of images we have received, and we are all "taught how to read" images as part of our socialization, imparting values to them of the classes we belong to, and aspire to. From my view I am not darkening or lightening skin in my photographs, I am changing the value of light itself. Sometimes this will leave very dark tones on the skin, but will elevate small details and textures, and let luminosity pinpoint or show through, sometimes skin will become extremely white, bringing forth the form of the body, or compositions. Much of my aim as a photographing artist is to raise of the sport and art of Muay Thai to the Western eye, who is primarily my audience, and in many ways it makes sense that as I seek to reveal the value of its men to the West I turn to the most classic versions of image, I move towards fine art, as I find it. I use expensive, capable lenses and appeal to the history of Film Noir, and overall to cinema, which is my history. And I'll admit that when I started photographing Muay Thai one of my ambitions was to actually change the way Muay Thai was photographed, which I found quite dissatisfying. There was very little Muay Thai black and white photography in the media ecosystem (it was actually a great photograph of Sylvie taken by Lord K2 which might have triggered my photographic path), and my love of classic film has taken over for me in some of my styles. At the bottom of this post I'll link a thread I started discussing why I want to bring the Film Noir aesthetic to Muay Thai, something which goes beyond just aesthetics. It goes into the very world of Noir, and its treatment of urban, or lower status characters, its framing of masculinity. There is a moral universe it builds which comments complexly on Thailand's Muay Thai, its own status in the hierarchies of culture and its masculinity. It could be imagined that my photos have may influenced other Muay Thai photographers to wade black and white aesthetics, which are more common now, just as I was influenced. The Lord K2 photo, a poor copy of which we hang on our wall My new experiments with a Deep Black portrait style indeed grew out of my Film Noir, classics aesthetics, but really are also far from them as they are stereotypically conceived, especially in aspects of softness and how it relates to darkness. These photos more seek a way to isolate the seeds of a person in even the finest flickers of light, especially about the eyes, but also in the expressive feature of the face, which you have to strain for a little bit to discover. It's a bit like seeing in the dark, and letting your eyes adjust maybe. (There are examples of this in Film Noir, in the next post). The darkness is there not in tone, but in order to let the light have its own life, its own small power. They participate in the black and white fine art tradition, but for me texturally at another end of the spectrum from much of stylized Film Noir. But, my question, my hurdle is how to negotiate this strong aesthetic urge to photograph these noble men, thus, so nobly, but within a culture where dark is bad or low. I want to show the shining light, which in a sense needs that darkness all around it. It's how these men shine through. And how the sport and art of Muay Thai shines through, from its place in history. Below, my thread on Film Noir aesthetics and Thailand's Muay Thai:

As a follow up to my Deep Black photos of Takrowlek and Arjan Surat, his embrace of the style made me want to give him something meaningful for his small gym and home in Bangkok, so I sent prints of each, as well as of his brother Chatchanoi. Arjan Surat was his Kru during the Golden Age when he and his brother were fighters.

The Arcane Season 2 Jackpot Arm and Probabilistic Fighting The following may be counterintuitional, because we often imagine fighters in terms of what they are doing, what they are actively controlling, and don't think about them largely being in nebulous, undetermined states, but the truth is that fights are largely on the edge of the chaotic and unpredictability, and while we can characterize most fighting approaches to bringing as much (favorable) predictability as possible, in the higher levels of fighting it is actually the way that fighters engage with unpredictability, and ride it like a wave. In any one engagement only 2 or 3 dimensions of fighting may be on a fighter's mind, their direct awareness, and how these dimensions arise or express themselves also will not be fully in the fighter's control. There is a degree of dice rolling. Part of this randomness is addressed through building deep principles within a style, so that unconsciously dimensions of fighting will loosely take care of themselves (solids of footwork, defensive wholeness, ways of moving), but on another register, the mental part of actually fighting the fight involves how you swim through and navigate the disorder of fighting itself, the variable ways things will present themselves, the limited number of things you can actually choose to exert as dimensions of fighting coming to and passing out of the forefront of your mind in a probabilistic space. Watching the beautifully animated fight scene in season 2, ep 2 where Jinx gives Sevika a new arm, a jackpot arm, which expresses in tech Jinx's own harnessing of randomness, a design of her own creation, makes me think about something I've learned from watching the fights of legends, and Sylvie studying and documenting them. The way that they deal with randomness. The above are screen caps of Sevika being told to pull the lever, and spin the arm's jackpot combination of powers and effects, most of the scene animated in a Spiderverse style can be seen below. It gives me to think about these qualities in Golden Age yodmuay, and their relationship to randomness and disorder. We know the phrase "lucky shot", which describes a somewhat unskilled, somewhat even unplanned, overly successful strike. This is a relationship to disorder that I'm not describing. And, with the advancing popularity of the trading of memorized combos over and over, waiting for one to land is also not what I'm discussing. The jackpot arm in Arcane combines particular effects in changing relationships. In the same way the elevated fighter is fighting with a changing combination of effects, over which she or he does not have full control. Techniques of manipulating space and timing, physical techniques of well thrown strikes, tempo controls, spacing. These are all in a yodmuay combining and recombining as the fight goes on. If you watch closely, yodmuay like Karuhat or Samart (especially in fights they lose, where it becomes more apparent) are constantly finding combinations of principles & execution that aren't lining up perfectly, and so as fighters are constantly only partially effective (Samart vs Wangchannoi is a good one for this, as is his fight vs Dieselnoi...you can see the recombination trying to find a solution in real time). The play with disorder and randomness is not only dealing with the fact that you are not going to be executing everything ideally. Timing, tempo (music), weapon choice, technical execution, defense, positioning (axes), distance (proximity), intensity (power), narrative, are all spinning, and at any particular engagement will line up in an unexpected way (like the jackpot arm). But you keep fighting within your style, applying its principles, and hiding any ill-affects (this is a very important yodmuay skill in Thailand's Muay Thai as well), over time as a good fighter effectiveness will prevail. You don't actually know how or why. It's like the arm, you keep spinning the slots. You aren't comboing over and over, waiting for your opponent to slip and become exposed to a rudimentary shape, its more complex than that. You are applying principles of control, in combination, along with well formed strikes, under the conditions that you cannot fully control how they combine, or how your opponent will be dealing with them. And then, in a round, or in a fight, you may suddenly break through. And when you do it looks like you have been in control most or much of the time. You haven't, but this is the illusion of the yodmuay. And its part of the narrative dimension of Thailand's Muay Thai. A lot of combo Muay Thai is a much more limited game. Timing is rudimentary, there is a lot of biting down, choosing when to "Go!". Distance is usually just in or out of the pocket (commonly defending oneself with space). Strike selection isn't as variable, as alive and perceptual, as strikes are grouped in pre-set bunches. In wider selection fighting a fighter is constantly making decisions along a multitude of aspects. In a single attack perhaps only three (like the arm) come to the fore, and the slots spin. A strike may be well formed, moderately timed, but the distance is wrong. You may have chosen the right strike, but you weren't positioned ideally, and its intensity was down. You may be throwing with power, but in the tempo you're at it isn't effective, even though it was well-formed (executed well). Your positioning may be great, and your technique is on-point, but it was the wrong strike. And then, at a certain point 3 factors come together, and they have great effect. One is using the probablistic nature of fighting, and thinking along these proposed 7 axes or so, rolling through features of an attack, only some of which you can control. The animation brings out this idea some, in part because Jinx is forcing Sevika to fight in Jinx's style, through her tech. Chaotically, to her music. There is something to this in terms of Thai styles and even weapon choices. Thai Techniques have families of variables that surround them, if you use them properly, within their music. You can't just cut out a technique like a body part from a corpse, and Frankenstein it...I mean you can, but you won't be capturing the full family of its effectiveness. When you come to Thai krus in Thailand in a certain regard you are adopting some of their tech, their style. Things they are teaching you involve a collection of elements that allow you to surf the unpredictability of the fight space. They are saying: Be a little like me (like in Let Me In). This is how to get the most out of great fighters and krus you train with in Thailand, learn to be probabilistically a little like them. You can see an edited video of the Arcane fight scene here, unfortunately Twitter cuts a minute out of the scene, so you'll have to watch the show to get the fuller meaning of the arm delivery and the discovery of how it works, etc: See the Scene here

*as a mod I've edited your title to be more informative to readers as to what it's about, its always good to present the topic substance in the title Both gyms are popular with students looking for "technique" and correction. Unless you find someone who has recently been to both (in the last year) and has your overall needs, it will be very hard to be able to gauge was it better for you. We've been to both, but a while ago. Sitjaopho was kind of remarkable in that it does provide a kind of authentic, but still technical environment (partly because all the farang there are themselves very into technique, so it creates a culture) but does this all in a very crowded gym. I don't know how they do it, I've never seen it elsewhere in Thailand. Crowded, but high level, creative and technical. Manop's we haven't been to in a while, but we found it a much smaller gym, so you might (???) get a more one-on-one, or looser feel for training, which might be good for you. But I'm just going off of vibes from a few years ago, and what I saw. If you are only training for a month, Sitjaopho might be best in that there is an entire culture of training there, including the long time students, and it will be easier to slip into a "way of life", because everyone's on that page? It takes about a week or 10 days to even acclimate yourself if you've never trained in Thailand before. But, we haven't really seen Manop's gym in a while. Generally, its very hard to take the advice of people online. They just are different kinds of people, see and experience different things, and gyms change very quickly in Thailand. Even 3 months can change a gym if a trainer leaves, or a group of students come or go.

The Influence of Diego Velázquez' Portrait of Juan de Pareja (1650) I hadn't thought about it while writing this series until now, but I've been surely influenced by Velasquez's incredible painting. In the past I've called it my favorite painting, and I've visited in person more than once, staring at it. Not only does it hold that dark, luminous light, and a red-green fire color palette, the power of the eyes really elevates its accomplishment. I realize now that the painting, from decades ago, has shaped this current experimentation with portraiture, and you can see it in the color edit I did of another frame of Dieselnoi in this shoot, looking to publicly present color for Thai social reasons outlined above. The parallels are unconscious for me, and its been a while since I've thought about this painting, but it always is speaking to me. Side by side you can see the very strong influence. It's kind of remarkable when put together. It isn't just the soulful treatment of the eyes, but also in this case that green to red, the skin tones, and the specular highlights on the face, which also are seen as emphasized in the Deep Black style.

Here is a bit of follow up, and detail, coming from Osamu's Japanese wikipedia page (credit to Lev): The English language report of the event in a 1976 book is here:

4 More Deep Black Portraits in the Series These photos, other than that of Chatchai, have more light than the those of Ajran Surat and Takrowlek, I'd like to keep the style very dark, but I'm just exploring now, and those of Dieselnoi, Karuhat and Kongtoranee are very beautiful. I'm not sure of where I'll go with this, if I want consistent lighting characteristics, or a landscape of differences between men. Chatchai Dieselnoi Kongtoranee Karuhat

The full pdf of this book on Muay Thai written by an American serviceman is found here (pdf attached linked after this paragraph.). Looking forward to reading through this as its probably one of the first at-length English language accounts of the sport and art, and it perhaps sheds light on the era before the Golden Age of Muay Thai, The Silver Age, and perhaps even gives insight into the history of Muay Thai in Chiangmai (as he is writing it from there), provincial fighting always something that falls through the cracks of history. The author claims in 1975 to having seen thousands of fights. You can follow this thread by email as a forum member. Kick boxing Muay-Thai the Art of Siamese Un-armed Combat by Handy Steadmann - 1976.pdf click on the link above, wait for a minute for it to download.

Accounts of Thais vs foreigners in the 70s

Here is a throat choke Dieselnoi said he used on Sagat, which you could do in smaller gloves.

Camp with 50 fighters in Chiang Mai. Looks like it's in a (school?) gymnasium with a basketball court. Seems the author reports mostly? from Chiang Mai experiences?

Hmmm. Interesting stuff...or lore. But we have film of Thai heavy bag traing since the 1930s. Hitting bags of rice has been told as common if heavy bags couldn't be afforded.

This is hard to guess at. He wants to really push the hyper violence for his readers, and claims to have watched thousands of fights...often both covered in blood, and no progressive nature seems quite fantastic. A short while later he emphasizes knockouts, but not sure what the grammar is here? 8, 9, 10 knockouts per card? Or is he imitating a 10 count?

I missed this little bit, higher up. Already the traditional kaimuay as a place that houses its own fighters is seen as disappearing. Who knows what the author is basing this on, in their in person experience (Chiang Mai?), or a complaint of older fighters/krus?

Women in Muay Thai I've read a lot of the history of women fighting in Thailand (there isn't a lot of it on record, but I've probably read everything in English) and this is one of the most substantive reports pre-2000s. There was rumor (reported in a documentary) that women actually briefly fought in a secondary ring in the 80s-1990s (?) at Lumpinee, but I've found no collaboration. This report below seems to be quite from afar (little in person awareness) and combined with varying degrees of sexism you might expect from an American serviceman in Thailand in the 70s. The story of the Ali vs Norton fight is interesting! (1973), but seems also dubious, or only partial in detail. There were, as far as I know, no National televised broadcasts until 1988, so I'm not sure where this was televised...or if it was on tape. And it seems pretty unlikely that someone would follow up the Ali v Norton fight with 5 female bouts (???). But, maybe there is some truth to it, maybe a taped broadcast on a local channel, someone trying to promote female fighting? Also, finally I have the source for the very sexist/racist comment I heard from a well known American Muay Thai coach whose female fighter beat a Thai female fighter, somewhat outrageously claiming that female Thai fighters were just in the ring to avoid prostitution. Well, I guess they read this book. Here though, it comes from a paternalistic Thai who is saying that fighting gives women an alternative to prostitution, trying to make an argument for the moral improvement of Muay Thai, an argument that is made for young male fighters as well (keeping them off drugs, or out of gangs). Who knows about the relevance of this polemical claim, but that fact that it traveled 30 years at least to the mouth of an American Muay Thai coach is disheartening, and just shows how exoticizing and demeaning the picture some Westerners keep of Thailand. Most interesting, perhaps in the broad brush, is the idea that female Muay Thai fighting was popular in local scenes, and that its National interest may have been something that came and went, possibly for decades and decades. But women have been fighting in Thailand, in rings, for over 200 years. It's a shame that so many do not credit them with their own National art and excellence. First recorded female fight 1809 First Photographed Female Muay Thai fight 1929

Already with internationalization efforts underway, the line drawn in the sand then was the name itself. As ONE proved, this is no longer a barrier, the name Muay Thai name liberally applied to very Kickboxing-esque versions and rulechanges for foreigners.

The First Japanese Kickboxing Invasion: Noguchi Gym 1972 This is just one of the most fascinating events in the history of the sport, the father of Japanese Kickboxing driven out of the country, and forced to close his very posh Bangkok Kickboxing/Muay Thai gym in 1972, under threats of violence. It seems that at least some Thais felt like he, or the Japanese were trying to steal Muay Thai from Thailand. At this point, I believe, Japanese Kickboxing already had imitated Muay Thai in Japan and even became a regularly televised show of great popularity. Anti-Japanese sentiments seems to be running high. Also so interesting just how fancy a place the gym was, with serious money behind it. I'm guessing this was maybe the first "hi-so" kind of gym in all of Thailand. What is so extraordinary about it all of course is that Lumpinee (and even Rajadamnern) stadia, the National Stadia, 50 years later have radically altered the rules of Muay Thai to more approximate Kickboxing, and steered promotional Muay Thai to the foreign fighter. Just a month or two ago a Japanese Kickboxer was defending the Rajadamnern title, in Rajadamnern, having never fought in Thailand itself. Noguchi was very far ahead of his time. In a small, but interesting family detail in Japanese vs Thai relations, Osamu's brother was the boxer Kyo Noguchi who fought the great Thai fighter Pone Kingpetch, Thailand's first World Boxing champion for his belt: "On May 30, 1962, Noguchi challenged Pone Kingpetch for the flyweight world championship, but Noguchi lost by unanimous decision."

Very Dark Muay Thai Photography By Thais I'm also not purely directly influenced by Western aesthetics in my quest to capture Muay Thai. More than 10 years ago a Thai Chiangmai University student photographed Sylvie and her fight in an extremely dark, beautiful fine art way. We went to his gallery opening for the photos, and among them is as beautiful a fight photograph I've ever seen, and probably my favorite fight photo - which we titled Resurrection, of Sylvie regardless of photographer. this is just one of the great Muay Thai photos, as far as I'm concerned. This last shot is a portrait of the fighter Neung, all of the photos within that Film Noir style. This Thai photography student, Maestoso Top, no doubt unconsciously influenced my own possibilities of seeing Muay Thai in black and white, as this was before I had begun shooting, and well before I even realized how negatively coded black and white photographs could be. Chiang Mai University students tend to be affluent, and he's clearly working from a fine art sensibility which draws on classic cinema, but this is the artistic expression of a young Thai photographer, how they saw local Muay Thai fighting and the sport itself in 2013. We posted about the opening here.

This thread was inspired by the opportunity think about my new experiment with Deep Black stylistics in Muay Thai portraiture, and much of what followed was my reflection on likely influences, things at play in own own aesthetic choices and the basic techniques I'm using in capture. I want to understand more richly what I'm doing, but also to see why it works, because the images are somewhat startling to me, more than a sum of their parts. Something is happening within them that I can only describe as my sensation that "the camera sees". It sees things that are there, but are often just flitting, as dim reflections of powerful truths. As I edit portraits dimension of personality and character constantly are morphing in varying signatures. In this case, I'm just very, very surprised, recognizing on the faces something I feel in them when in their presence, but something impossible to put words to...but the thread is also about my struggle with black and white photography in Thailand, and feeling my way through mixed ambitions in representing the art. And, these particularly styled photographs, due to being so very dark, and the possible difficulties in their reception, make those long waiting concerns come to the surface even more. They are part of this photographic style. They cannot be separated from them, and in this way address the ways in which I believe that black and white photography (at least to the West) opens doors of rich value, an honoring of a sport and art that is not their own, which points us back into our own history, our own traditions, our own past...but also, Thailand's Muay Thai, because of its Buddhism, cuts through several Western problematics, especially those concerning our relationship to violence, the more reckless affects involving loss of control, and how that relates to entertainment values, and social values, and masculinity itself. And for me, some of this truth is found in the eyes.

New Portrait Style Photographed Arjan Surat and his fighter of the Golden Age Takrowlek yesterday. Incredibly pleased with this new approach. Just on a personal note, I'm quite happy with my new black and white portrait style, only a few attempts into it. The one of Takrowlek is really stunning in a large screen, I think I'll make a print of it for him. It may be the most powerful portrait I've taken so far. This style just penetrates to the soul, the camera capturing so much. It was also satieting to be around these two passionate men of Muay Thai, as Muay Thai is going through so many changes. There is great difficulty in taking black and white photos of Thais though, and I really wrestled with that yesterday, I'll write about this.

above is Sylvie's most recently published commentary video, sharing her fight in Buriram earlier this year. Her 282nd fight, her 272nd in the country. In editing the piece together, which for me just involves syncing her voiced video, inserting some titling, some music, I was just struck by how beautiful the event and experience was...and how much comes through in the film. It came back to me, as I lived it, and photographed it, but also it came anew, in the incredible uniqueness of this kind of fighting as it is, for an experienced Westerner like Sylvie. Away from the tourist venues, most of them now swamped with Entertainment rulesets and fights designed for Western consumption, and to produce Western winners, at a Buriram festival where the Muay still holds cultural meanings, much of that involving local gambling passion, social sharing and the proxy struggle over social hierarchies foreigners can little follow. Therdkiat, a Golden Age legend who has taken a liking to Sylvie in the last year or more, has brought Sylvie up to his home province to fight in festival fights. We cannot really know the ultimate meaning of her victories, her performances, as he finds passion in them, but we can know that this kind of fighting is very close to the fabric of Muay Thai which is not bent toward the Westerner...not made for the Westerner. We - well, Sylvie - have fought more times in Thailand than any other foreign fighter, 17 times on broadcast television, she's fought World Title fights and won them, and I can say without hesitation, this, festival fights, are the best fight experiences in all of Thailand. It's not even close. If you love Muay Thai, this is the real Muay Thai. In this fight the size mis-match is enormous. Probably 10 kgs. Sylvie like no other female fighter in history can handle size disparities, her Muay Khao style is made for it. I believe her record giving up 10 kgs or more in something crazy like 12-2. She has this opponent because she can handle it, and because a rematch was requested. Her opponent trained to counter what beat her in the first fight (you can see that fight here), but it just wasn't enough. She's clinch has even improved, as she's changed her training in it. Her Muay Khao game is tighter than even a few months before. But the point is, this contest really could never happen in any other situation now, in the current state of the sport in the country. It's a beautiful thing, a challenge worthy of the art. Central to the entire fight is that the clinch still lives in provincial fighting, it's an essential part of the sport, and refs shape it wonderfully with experience in the provinces. In tourist stadia, even under 5 round rulesets, the clinch has been gradually eroded. For years in those stadia refs have broken Sylvie quicker and quicker. Opponents literally drag Sylvie back to the ropes, so the ref will break the clinch the moment the ropes are touched. It changes the entire shape of a fight. If you watch this fight, with its enormous size difference, just look at the clinch. You have a very big fighter who has trained up to counter Sylvie's clinch. She is gripping and at times swallowing Sylvie, attempting to force stagnation. She wants clinch breaks. The ref is just artful in how much he allows to develop in each engagement. He sees what is going on. He sees where the battle is. Even though there is very little "action" in the clinch, it is developing, engagement after engagement. He lets it go. And then finally Sylvie gets to a dominant inside position, and breaks the fight open, almost out of nowhere. But it isn't out of nowhere. 15 fast clinch breaks, and none of that happens. There is no evolution. There isn't even much of a fight. It's a 57 kg girl throwing combos, and a 47 kg girl defending against them, nothing else. Instead, its a chess match of distances. This is to say, this is the actual Muay Thai of Thailand, one not made for the Westerner. And Sylvie has devoted years now, learning how to fight in this manner. Size and Fighting There is a question as to how old this style of fighting is, in the provinces. I stumbled upon this account in 1975, where men in the 70s and 80s were already complaining about the degradation of the sport, something they traced even back to the imposition of weight classes and timed rounds. The muay before was known for its endurance, and the capacity of fighters to face very big weight differences: source There is in the root of Thailand's Muay Thai a dimension of gambling and the freedom of the art, wherein the art contains the possibility of beating much larger fighters. And if bets are taken, its because the possibility has meaning. That is something that is beautiful about this fight, and really festival fighting in general. It is the occasion of pure contest in the active interest of the audience, an audience that gives the fight its meaning. It isn't created by a promoter or Instagram posts. It's generated by the actual audience, who is part of the rite of fighting itself. I've seen a lot of fights in Thailand, and I've seen Sylvie fight so numerously - this fight, and this kind of fight is just something different than what is more broadly encountered by most Westerners, and even by ourselves well over 100 times. It's not a technical marvel. It's not an explosive highlight reel. Its a struggle, a struggle that the audience is involved in to some degree. The ref calls it - some would imagine prematurely - but it is because he and her opponent saw what happened. The fight was cracked open. Clinch was allowed to do its eroding work. The one shot, her opponent's path to victory, was closed. Clinch positions were only going to get much worse. Her head was going to be forced down. The rematch was no longer necessary...at least on this occasion. This is knowledgeable Muay Thai. I remember sitting at a table of old timers, including reporters from Muay Siam. They all pretty much agreed, there was no more Muay Thai as it was classically known, in Thailand. But then the Muay Siam reporter said: No, in the provinces there is still Muay Thai. And they nodded their heads. Yes it was true. It's about the culture and shape of the fight. The fight's relationship to the audience. It's about small things, the way even non-ideal matchups like this can still be expressive of the principals and values of a very old sport and art. This is the living Muay Thai of Thailand, where the heart still beats.

The preface paints the historical picture of ethnic Muay Thai, told from the picture of a Thai scholar of the sport. These sorts of stories are probably best seen as an amalgam of historical fact, ideological myth-building and value-setting. They help us see how scholars such as this one pictured the development of the sport, and how that picture also helped them form judgements about its current state...in this case in the 1970s. noting, the notion that wrestling (bplum) is seen as deep to the origins of the art (it may have come during the Indianization of Southeast Asia) is significant in this telling, and the report that the Ram Muay of teachers and camps were once quite distant and coded (perhaps the author is in including this because by 1975 he is already seeing these barriers being broken down by commerce). Also significant is that it seems like this is probably the origin of the widespread belief that the limbs of the body in Muay Thai originally mimic'd the various weapons that would be used, such that if a weapon is lost you could still replace it, the teep the spear, the wide punch the sword. Notice though that there is no mention of the loss of a weapon. By my intuition it makes much more sense to imagine how strikes with limbs would contain the same movements of that of weapons (Boran circle punches do seem to reflect sword movements) not so much for weapon replacement , but rather that in ring fighting in Siam you could practice those applicable movements safely, and develop an art of them. (There is a story told that Siamese fighting didn't really have "straight" punches until the influence of Western Boxing in the early 20th century, due to the way that punches originally reflected swinging sword.) Importantly, the "damage dimension" of fighting is still classically understood as under a form of restraint in 1975, and even within a picture of lesson-giving, or teaching (Dieselnoi call the great Wichannoi his "kru" for the two losses he suffered from him in the late 70's). The commercialization of the sport is decried, even before Muay Thai will enter into its most commercial era in the Golden Age, riding the economic boom in Bangkok in the 1980-90s.

Two caps show that in 1976 Rajadamnern was surging in popularity, and Lumpinee struggling. This post mentions that Lumpinee's prospects should be looking better now that the young promoter SongChai has regularly started promoting there. SongChai would of course end up ushering in the great Golden Age of Muay Thai principally centered around his promotions at Lumpinee in the 1980s and 1990s. thank you to Lev for the call out machine translate: "Chapter 2: “The Rise of Ratchadamnoen” Yes... Now that we've mentioned Lumpini Stadium, we should also talk about Rajadamnern Stadium, especially the "promoters" of Rajadamnern, who were strong and generated the highest income for the stadium in 1975, breaking records from the past to the present. The promoters of Rajadamnern were different from those of Lumpinee. During the time that "Sia Saelee" began to become famous in this industry as an assistant promoter of the Blue Corner fights, almost every promoter of the stadium surrendered under his "paws" because he had many boxers under his control. He invested his money to bring many boxers under his control. Even Napha Nakpathom, the great man of "Lord of the East" at present, had to submit and follow him like he was a subordinate! This is because Sia is a “connector” between the promoters of Rajadamnern Stadium, since many people depend on him for cooperation in organizing boxing matches. Sia’s name is therefore heard throughout the industry, generating a lot of income for Rajadamnern Stadium last year. Rajadamnern Stadium is like a mother stadium because promoters try to find fresh boxers to join the program, trying to find boxers with potential to join (read on page 20)" "• Before leaving, Colonel Uthai predicted that the Lumpini stage was going to start to get better, and it seems to be true because now they have hired a skilled young man, Songchai Ratanasuban, as the new promoter.... As for the secret behind “Ko Hong” Phong Thawornwiwatbut being dragged into refusing to be the Lumpini promoter, Colonel Uthai knows who it is...."

In the issue there is this ranking of Lumpinee in 1971. The lowest weight ranked in 106 lbs, called Light Flyweight (notable because small fighters are being represented, as discussed below). It may be 108 lbs, but it graphically looks like 106. The champion is Daotong Sityodtong. Ranked number 1 is Orachunnoi Hor.Mahachai. Glairung is the 112 lb champion. The highest weight is 126 lb, Featherweight. The champion is Soleman Ittianuchit, Fahsai Taweechai is number 1 rank. Notable that the weights do not reach into the 130-145 lb classes. thank you Lev for the call out of the graphic. It looks like Kru Tao (discussed below), organized the Lumpinee Belt around low weight fighters in the early 70s:

And Sagat vs Jintadet on May 6 1976 (credit Lev)

magazine fragments (some of these issues had very few pages). Two of these pages (lateral) were kind of stuck in between the other pages, so maybe from another issue. quality jpegs of the edition from Sylvie's beginning collection, if anyone can translate (machine or otherwise - you can upload jpegs to Google translate and it will give you English text translation), comments welcome on content. Insight into the era. You can follow this sub-forum and get email alerts for any new postings. If you share images from these captures please credit the Muay Thai Library Preserve The Legacy project and this forum. Any support for the project by subscription is seriously appreciated. cover, page 1

Some speculative thoughts. The first thing that really stands out is body-type. Today, and even since the 1990s, larger weight class Thais mostly became known for their fights with farang. The common sense one has gotten is that Thais just are on average smaller bodied than Western fighters, so it makes good sense that the majority of Thailand's Muay Thai excellence would be found along that bell curve, in the smaller weight classes. The piece draws our attention to the fact that for decades preceding the Golden Age this simply was not the case for the most famed fighters in Bangkok. In fact, he argues that the renowned Golden Age fighters such as Karuhat, Kaensak and Hippy would not even have been able to fight in the National Stadia in the 1960s, and may have at best been able to fight in the suburb stadia of Bangkok in the 1970s. They would never headline a National Stadia card in the past. In terms of my interest, this presents a very interesting picture of the history of Muay Thai as a practice, sport and art in Thailand, principally in that the core of the bell curve of Thai-bodied fighters may not have been very represented by fighting in the capital for much of Muay Thai's modern, 20th century history. This invites us to imagine - and this is something to research - that there has been perhaps a century-long history of elite Muay Thai skills that developed in provincial fight betting circuits (he mentions renowned fighters of low weights), that was seldom if ever recorded in Capital history...until the National Stadia started to open up to the average bodied fighter in the 1980s (?). This is to say, the elite idolized small-bodied fighters of Thailand's Golden Age may have had historical counterparts that have been lost to provincial and suburb lore throughout the century. The greater question may be: Why did the Capital form an ideal type in the higher weight classes (135-145 lbs), if there simply were fewer fighters in the talent pool? My own quite vague suspicion is that this had to do with the exemplar of Western Boxing, whose own weight classes skew esteem higher and higher by weight. Was the Capital form of stadium Muay Thai reflecting the international fame of Western Boxers? And, post-World War 2, did the increasing influence of American military also bring added emphasis on larger bodied Thai fighters? Western Boxing's influence on Thailand's Muay Thai, and in particular Bangkok Muay Thai goes back to the 1920s. The British Colonial form had imported boxing throughout Southeast Asia, and Siamese/Thai boxers would become prominent in the circuit. You can read about this influence as seen in the 1930s here: What Was Early Modern Muay Thai Like? New Film Evidence (1936): Samarn Dilokvilas vs Somphong Vejasidh. Famed fighters of the 1940s were big powerful men like Sagat's grandfather Suk, a feared convicted murderer. Below, famed American boxer Rocky Marciano refereed a boxing fight at Rajadamnern in 1969, said to have begun the tradition of a boxing fight on every Rajadamnern stadium card from that point forward. By the time of the Golden Age every card in the National Stadia - at both Rajadamnern and Lumpinee - would feature at least one Western Boxing fight. It does not seem a stretch to imagine that the Western Boxing example (at first by the British in the 1920s and 30s, and by the Americans in the 1950s-60s) provided a template which pushed the model for Thailand's Muay Thai excellence in the Capital towards the larger weight classes. When talking to Dieselnoi about his legendary fight vs Samart, The Holy Grail fight, two GOATs, Samart a 126 lber fighting up and Dieselnoi a 135 lber fighting down at 130 lbs, he definitely spoke about this picture of size, quality and reputation. He echoed the attitude of the op-ed piece at top, saying something along the lines of: The "real" fighters were at 135 (his weight class). You can see this in Western boxing of course, as the greatest fighters are often the Heavy Weights - though aficionados will argue for lighter weight greatness. He seemed to give off somewhat the opinion "how could he complete with me, he wasn't even in a real weight class", a skewing which we find fully expressed in the 1991 piece (though it names Samart at 126 among the properly weighted Yodmuay). The writer is mortified that fighters in the 108-118 lb weight classes are even considered "yodmuay", calling the designation fabricated...presumably fabricated by the business of the sport which had fallen to the smaller fighter initially because they were so cheap (and plentiful). If these suspicions are true one cannot help but see that for many of the decades of Bangkok Muay Thai the actual greatness of Thailand's Muay Thai may not have been represented, but rather skewed towards a Western or Internationalized image. There may have been two "Muay Thais", that of the Capital, and that of the provinces. Without a historical record of provincial fighting though, we would have to rely on still-living oral histories of Thailand's provincial fighting past, histories that may very well also be colored by the bias toward the Capital as the rightful standard-setter of values. There is in the piece as a related rhetoric towards the lower weight fighter, which he sees now (1991) overrunning Bangkok fighting. This is found in the way he pushes the weights he objects to into the 80-90 lb range, and how he talks about diet and strength. The new low-weight fighter of the Golden Age seems to embody conflicting images of both weak (needing to eat-up before a weigh-in to qualify, really almost a child (who else would be 85 lbs?), but also powerful (95% of Golden Age fighters being just artless power fighters)...not to mention deceptive (an "actor" deserving of awards...note: the fighter Inseenoi literally presented as, or was a Leekay actor). These very well be stereotypes of the provincial Thai, who is both scrawny, young and undeveloped, but contradictorially also rural, farm-strong (artless) and powerful...all the while being only 112 lbs. There are some aspects of his rhetoric which give the feeling that the provincial riff-Raff have been let into the esteemed Capital stages, initially because their labor is so cheap for promoters. This indeed paralleled the influx of provincial workers which poured into the city during the economic boom of the 1980s-90s for jobs, a huge populace wave of prosperity which actually buoyed Bangkok Muay Thai, filling the stadia with passionate, knowledgeable gamblers, fueling Thailand's Golden Age of Muay Thai. Not only were provincial, smaller-bodied fighters suddenly represented in the National Stadia, a provincial working class was filling the stadia and buying its magazines. This is the "Hi-Tech" era. It is difficult to parse out his picture of these low-weight fighters from the socio-economic picture of what was happening in Bangkok at the time. Also comes to mind his uses of "nic" (a slang for electronic) which seems to embody concepts like "modern", "computer or calculation" (finance), maybe coolness or small and cute. Keeping in mind that in 1991 at the time of this writing Kaensak, a 115 lb champion, was about to be awarded an unprecedented second FOTY award, and many of the fighters the writer holds objection to were opponents of Kaensak. After Kaensak would win, the FOTY following year would be Samson Isaan (quintessentially provincial, Isaan even in his name), an 118 lb fighter. Chamuakpet held the fighter nickname "Mr. Computer Knee", and other fighters had computer-related chaiyas in the era. The author seems to be pushing against the very economic boom itself, and its sociological implications, yearning for a more large-bodied (Western-influenced?) standard of the great Yodmuay. These are only speculative thoughts. Also worth thinking about is the picture of gambling in this protest. So many of the complaints today we can see be the same in 1991, right as the sport was peaking (in retrospect). Gambling indeed has been woven into Bangkok Muay Thai (and likely all of Siam/Thailand's Muay Thai perhaps centuries. When King Vajiravudh in the 1920s took increasing steps to outlaw gambling which at the time was a major source of State revenue (tax farms), in order to rebalance the economic power held by the Chinese and Sino-Siamese, he was forced to backtrack and make an exception for Muay Thai in the capital. Gambling drove the sport and the art even in the 1920s, so thoroughly, it could not be removed. This exception is the origin of the gambling exception granted to the National Stadia that exist today (recently renounced by Lumpinee Stadia). The story of gambling's cultural-economic importance and presence, and Chinese business goes back quite far in Siamese history, so it is no coincidence that it features in this complaint as well. It is part of a larger moralizing politics. It suffices to point out that the author saw the prominence of the Chinese promoters (to this day Sino-Thai promoters form a backbone to Bangkok's Muay Thai), with their emphasis on financial gain, and the image of the "calculator" ("nics") as part of the loss of the true yodmuay of the sport, forming a very complex picture of judgements. This is maybe the most interesting, suggestive line for me: "Fighters who are below 100 lbs like the top and famous 80-90-95 lbs fighters that are renowned throughout the country, they would never get the opportunity to fight in the Bangkok stadiums a decade ago". It is suggestive an an entire network of fame and achievement that existed outside of Bangkok, even below 100 lbs. These could only be very young fighters of course, but it builds up an idea that indeed there had existed a complex proving ground and system of lore-building even back in the 1960s-70s. The author looks at the skill sets of Hippy, Kaensak and Karuhat and he sees a quality of fighter who simply would likely be unheard of on the Capital stage, though known across the country? If even somewhat the case, this would really be an incredible untold history. He talks about Orachunnoi Or. Mahachai, a small-bodied fighter of the 1970s who was forced to fight up (not unlike Karuhat) if he was to make a bigger name for himself, the first sub-110 lb fighter to gain a kadua of 10,000 baht. Nicknamed "the poor man's champion", Lao-born, raised in Ubon, he perhaps embodied the otherwise unrecorded history of average-bodied great Thai fighters of the past. Instead of taking the author's bias that small-bodied fighters are simply unqualifying, perhaps we see it a differently. Perhaps it was not until the Golden Age and the economic boom that it rode, that the Thai fighter finally got the representation on the Bangkok stage that had been so long delayed? Starting in the first decade of the 1900s when the railroad first connected the Siamese/Thai provinces to the Capital in all modernity, mixing the muay of the provinces with the Capital aesthetic, it may have taken 80 years before the provincial fighter finally became fully represented in the Yodmuay of that age. It is perhaps without irony that "Mr. Computer Knee" Chamuakpet Hapalang placed Orachunnoi Or. Mahachai in his Top 5 Muay Thai fighters of all time: Now as Entertainment Muay Thai has brought back the Western model of fighting to Thailand, this time in the form of less-developed International Kickboxing and MMA, and not that of century-old Western Boxing, there is new economic pressure to find the larger-bodied Thai Muay Thai fighter, and the Thai fighter who can fight up. In a curious bend to history, the big fighting Thai is returning, but almost solely in the context of fighting the foreigner. Perhaps in the long shadow of Thailand's peak Muay Thai in its 1980s-90s Bangkok gambling form, the return of the larger bodied Muay Thai fighter becomes more exposed in the model from which was originally taken, the model that had possibly kept many talents of Thailand from reaching the National Stadia stage in the past -- if we are to take the article at its insight. Wherein lies the standard of the Yodmuay?

Gila Muay Thai May 8, 1975 quality jpegs of the edition from Sylvie's beginning collection, if anyone can translate (machine or otherwise), comments welcome on content. Insight into the era. You can follow this sub-forum and get email alerts for any new postings. If you share images from these captures please credit the Muay Thai Library Preserve The Legacy project and this forum. Any support for the project by subscription is seriously appreciated. You can comment on individual pages by using the Quote function, as a reply. front cover (Pudpadnoi, possibly winning the King's Fighter of the Year?) Inside there is photospread coverage of his 1975 win over Ruengsak on May 2nd.

This. Another form of writing.

I the bone curvature contains marrow as the teapot carefully painted in lacquer dragons coiled holds its tea. a flame underneath bringing steam and fragrance to a mad boil til a careful liquid harrows still in its cup. *operative ontological concepts: the material, organic substance, vessel, decoration, heat, spiritualization, affect, cup

I'm not very knowledgeable on the physiological side of things, but it seems to me that fighting as a way of life implicates physiological phenomenons with obvious correlations to depression; blows to the head, the extreme fluctuations of the sympathic nervous system, the reciprocity of potential overtraining and malnutrition, the inflammatory injuries etc. What I'm more certain about are the phenomenological aspects of fighting, that as a way of life lends itself to obvious intersections with depressive tendencies - the constant awareness of the upcoming fight, which may cost you your identity, worst case your very life, the constant confrontation with your weaknesses through sparring with better or bigger fighters, the highs of the victory and the lows of the loss, the sacrifice of social life and family time, the relentless grind and repetition in training. As a fighter all aspects of your life converges towards one identity, that of the fighter, and it is an identity that is always to-be-determined in the ring. You can never rest, you are never good enough, you are always fucking fighting. The restlessness of the fighter, the eternal fight within, the making of yourself and your life a fight - that not only means that you either win or lose, it means that you are a winner or a loser, that your life is a victory or it is a loss. And when you lose, which the fighter may do both in sparring, during roadwork or in the ring, how could that look like anything but depression? The human being is not only physiologically not built for fighting (it is built for hunting and warring), but phenomenologically I cannot see how life as a fighter can be anything but temporary, the building of a memory and identity that is the most beautiful but ultimately fleeting, and which leaves a human being broken and in need of healing after the fact.

I absolutely hate this article and, without having known Jordan at all, everything I've heard about him since his passing makes it very clear that he loved Thailand and Thai culture. To write this racist bullshit in his name feels, to me, like something he wouldn't have appreciated. His death is a tragedy and one that his gym is suffering from as well. From what I've heard his gym family loved him a great deal and they are not spared the pain of his death. Having lived here for 5 years, I have met enough expats and read enough online expat threads to know that this is a common theme, mostly among men, to rail against "Thais" as a whole. There is a very strong resentment over being "outsiders" to a rather insular culture. I don't have a sympathetic ear for it. I've met very nasty Thai men, but they're just shitty men and there are shitty men in every culture around the world. Writing about these frustrations, difficulties, being fucked over, the super shady aspects of the fight world - all of that can be informative, cathartic, whatever. But that's not what he's doing.