I've been reflecting on the untouchable aura of Samart, on what made him like no other fighter, & I return to something Yodkhunpon said. He was talking about the fighters b4 the Golden Age. The Silver Age, or what might be called Cowboy Time. We showed him a fight between Thongbai & Adul. Thongbai was ripping low kicks endlessly. He said: In that Time u could fight like that. In my time the fighters would move [and he gestured that they would move like the wind, they would just be gone]. He then showed how the men of the past were HARD The Time before the Golden Age was Cowboy Time. The men had a made-in-stone toughness, I suspect. In the way that you might talk about your grandfather who had brick hands. This is just my working theory, but I think what made Samart like no other wasn't only his muay, but it was his time in history. He actually fought his last stadium fight before the 1990s, when the Golden Age wld b peaking. But, what he did was he bridged Cowboy Time with the Age of Femeu. He was the first to move like that, to dance, coming out of the Time of Hard Men. Perhaps just as Babe Ruth was the greatest Home run hitter of All Time because he was the first to really hit them monstrously, inventing the home run, maybe Samart holds an incredibly special place because he was the 1st to really float & move like that among the time of hard men, bridging Cowboy Time. And, he did this in parallel to the Hardest Man, Dieselnoi. The great Age of Femeu followed him, maybe flowed from him. Perhaps how the Age of the Dunk flowed from Dr. J in basketball. He was a transcendent fighter This is still just guessing, from afar, but it's something I've gleaned from looking back on eras and talking to greats. Yes, u can appreciate and swoon over his muay in retrospect, comparing techniques, but unless you include the time & men he fought in you can't quite grasp What it was like to see him move and hit like that. The hardness of the men he came into, that is what gives context to the freedom of the movements, their creativity and contrasted liberation. After him there were so many femeu and fluid fighters, the early to mid 90s were filled w/ them. But Samart was the 1 who danced among the men of stone. There is a place special and reserved for those who create a style so different from those around them. It's not just honorary, these fighters possess a quality in their muay that is unparalleled & unique. Began as a Twitter thread here.