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This is just a crazy example of persistence hunting. Chamuakpet hunting down Oley, one of the most underrated fighters of his era. Very difficult to make Oley look bad, and in fact Oley looks imperturbable. Chamuakpet circling, circling, pressuring, almost losing ringcraft. Knees and hands, knees and hands, lots of hands, everything is about staying in the distance, creating that pressure, that bubble, until it pops. A really incredible fight.

I don't mind them. They came in handy when I really started to get into Muay Thai - gave me suggestions on some legendary fighters I could look up.

Interesting, I didn't know the fight was at 126 lb. Boonlai won his first Lumpinee belt the following year, 1992, at 115 lb. So probably an even bigger step up in weight for him. He won his 122 lb Lumpinee belt in 1994. One of my go to videos on Muay Thai Scholar Somrak was incredible of course. If only they'd given him a title shot...

I have been to Charnchai two times; for 6 weeks and 6 months. It has a very friendly atmosphere, and a very physically intense training program even for the non-fighting/casual falangs. Mr Bee (the owner) personally helps even the beginners with their technique for standing, throwing kicks etc... They have numerous active Thai's at the gym who train and hold pads, fight in local stadiums and festivals. Nice place to run (lots of mountains and rivers around), good training and can organise fights ranging from local low-level fights to televised shows in Bangkok and in the big Bangkok stadiums. They are extremely accommodating of women, both Thai and foreign, and the women I train alongside have noted that it is significantly better to other gyms they have trained at with regards to how seriously the trainers put effort into your technique and how well they treat you. Hope this helps :)

I'm 261 fights in and still not seeing what I do in training manifest in the ring. It takes a long time, if it happens at all. Some things will come, some will come after a long time, and some never will (I suspect), but that's okay. The way to improve "Fight IQ" is to fight more, and really more even than that is to spar as much as possible. Kevin and I call it "growing eyes," it's learning to see and feel under the pressure. You do stuff on the pads that you can't do in the context of having an opponent because padwork and "going live" (as they call it in wrestling) are totally different feelings. You stop breathing under pressure. You get tense under pressure. You try to think in a fight and nobody tries to think too much in padwork. You have to learn to feel, and feeling comes from just spending more and more time in as close to that context as possible. I have really good kicks against a bag or my trainer on pads when he's holding for them. But if I pivot off or try to kick him by surprise, my kicks go to hell. They're terribly light or weird angled. He yells at me, "just kick me hard! You won't hurt me!" So, I actually have to focus now on kicking him with the intention of hurting him, knowing that it's a problem for me. So take whatever you had in your fight, punches not being as hard, and try to bring pressure that you felt or being too far away and work on that with your trainer.