Leaderboard

Yesterday we put up a few rounds that I randomly filmed with the work that Yodkhunpon is doing with Sylvie. I just was sitting at the edge of the ring and was enjoyed the energy of what was going on, so rolled the camera a bit. We stitched the together and posted them on YouTube (above). I've watched these rounds a few times, each time seeing something different, new, but today I'm seeing more deeply into them. If you called these rounds "sparring" they would be very different than what westerners think of sparring as. "How come Yodkhunpon isn't hitting her! (for 20, 30 seconds at a time)". We expect "sparring" to be two fighters "going at it" (lightly, or more full on) in a constant intensity of back and forth. Each trying to "get" the other. This corresponds to also how we tend to see fighting itself. Two fighters going at it, 5 rounds, add up the damage points. Some of these thoughts flow out of yesterdays: "The Stupifying of Scoring: How Duration Creates Meaning Through Narration", check that out at the bottom of this post below. When you watch what Yodkhunpon is doing - he's not always all padded up, but on this day he was - is that he's walking...really dancing...Sylvie through the forms of fighting that express his era, the Golden Age of Muay Thai. When he is retreating, or floating, he's not taking it easy. He's posing a situational problem in a hypothetical narrative. He fade back, bouncing his lead leg. This is a fighter who has a touch of the lead. How do you solve not only that fade, but also the position of the leg bounce (a very common defensive tactic). Sylvie's talked about how Karuhat, more than maybe any legend we have worked with, teaches "how to read" an opponent. She compares this "reading" to literal reading, where the position of the opponent - which leg they are on, the shifting of their weight, where the open side is, where the guard is - is like a letter, or a word. Once you know that "word" you know how to read it. You know it's (limited) possibilities of attack, and its inherent weaknesses. As your opponent moves through their "vocabulary" you literally are reading them, like words or letters. Your reecognize and see, perhaps even using the same part of the brain that reads words and letters. Sylvie learned of this in her 30 days with Karuhat which you can see in the Sylvie Intensive Series, you can watch that here. We've never seen anyone who can read quite like Karuhat, but great fighters of his day were readers. What Yodkhunpon is doing is moving Sylvie through words, and positioning her in Narrative sequences. In the West we learn and rehearse "combos" and "tactics". Counters, Attacks and Defense. This is very different stuff. Yodkhunpon, because he has the music of the Golden Age in him, is instead like a dancer who takes the lead, and waltzes his partner through Narrative shapes, posing puzzles of words to sound out and solve. Sometimes it's a position, like the anti-clinch arches he takes, or the bouncing leg, sometimes it's situational, like being overcome by repeated and repeated knees in dominance (a huge score in Thailand). He is guiding really melodies of fighting, and building word-solving. Importantly, these are not memorized & repeated reactions and solves. These are extended out (it's 10 rounds of work), pulled into themes and varying psychological states and degrees of fatigue. These are stories. This goes to the more profound differences between combo-centered western style kickboxing fighting - and their formats of mandatory aggression - and the Narrative fighting of Thailand's tradition (linked below). Ultimately, of course, if you master reading and narrative you should be able to fight free and dominant in any fight aesthetic, but until you do, you are just feeling your way forward. Memorized combos and bull-rushes will definitely win in promotional fighting that urges & rewards these tactics. Very much so. But, its a beautiful thing to seek a layer below those approaches, into the older sense of Time and agonistic struggle. That's what I see here, when I watch Yodkhunpon move and set puzzles. These puzzles are of position, and of dramatic form. These are not mechanics. My related piece from yesterday:

Love seeing everyone's training space! Here mine. It's not much, but grateful to have anything at all.

I am still struggling with flared elbows leaving my sides open losing power in the punch. Recently I got a great advice from a teacher with a karate/mma/lethwei/muay thai background. In his karate gym, they taught students how to use straight punches and hip power by telling them that the ends of their belt should sway/dance from side to side. This means their hips (rather than their shoulders) are involved in the punch, transmitting the power. This kind of visualisation of an invisible belt has helped me.

There's a fighter out here in Pattaya named "Big Mike," occasionally just Mike. He's over 250 lbs, definitely a "heavyweight" not just in Thailand but anywhere. He can move, man. He usually fights on a more local circuit because at that size it's very hard to find opponents in Thailand, but he's had some big side-bet fights at Lumpinee as well. He's awesome. I'm including some short video of his sparring, just to give a flavor for how he goes about it with someone much smaller. Keeping in mind that this is likely for the benefit of the smaller guy, who definitely doesn't share Mike's skill or experience, but Mike is still getting something out of it himself and his fakes, feints, blocks, snuffing and closing of distance is, to me, quite beautiful and looks good for anyone sparring.

Kevin and I were talking about this over breakfast this morning and I noted that the narrative form of scoring in Western sport certainly used to be more present. There's no way a 25 round boxing match was a round-by-round mathematical tabulation of points. Bullshit. But as the narrative disappeared, fights became shorter, sportsman became spokesman, the narrative was extracted. So you get things like WWE, contemporary boxing beefs, MMA, all the shit-talking that's outside of the ring, outside the fight, prior to the event in order to give it structure and context within the fight itself. There's no narrative within the ropes, so it's constructed outside of it instead. Aside from scoring, apart from scoring, but rather how the audience will be divided to cheer one way or the other - not based on what they're looking at, but WHO they're looking at. Thailand's Muay Thai has Legends, heroes, icons, playboys... all of it. But it's not part of the narrative of the fights, almost ever. There are grudge matches, rematches, etc. But it's not at all the same as these examples in Western sport; the narrative is within the fight itself. They're fucking amazing story-tellers, back in the day. Less so now.