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Hello all, I did my second fight last night and now have soooo many questions. Would be grateful for any insight from you (and hopefully Sylvie will be able to respond too!) The fight didn’t go quite well in that for whatever reasons I couldn’t translate what I’ve been working on into the fight. I know I’ve physically and mentally grown since my last fight, but that didn’t seem to be manifested in the ring. I think I was taken aback by how different her style was than my first opponent. In my first fight there were a lot of clinching and knees, but in the second one my opponent was very evasive and I was left puzzled the whole time on how to get into the pocket. I couldn’t adapt to my opponent’s style quickly. Does this something that just come with experience? Does this have something to do with fight IQ? If so, any advice on how to improve my fight IQ? Another question: why is it when I’m in the ring I don’t hit as hard as when I train in the bag, pads, or sparring? I have strong crosses, hooks, and over hands, but these didn’t make any appearance during the fights!!! When this happened in the first fight I thought it was because the opponent was taller and I couldn’t reach her. But the opponent in the second fight was also tall but I realized even when I was in the pocket I didn’t hit hard. I didn’t feel like I gassed out in both fights. So what is it? Was I nervous? I don't think I was. Was it a mental block? I’m still trying to understand myself when I’m in the ring and I would be grateful if anyone can share their thoughts!!! Thanks so much in advance!!

Really well said. This was really even much more the case in the Golden Age because fighters could do everything. There were very few successful one-dimensional fighters. These days you get much more singular fighting dimensions, it seems. Back in the day all the top fighters had all the skills. You couldn't just take their weapon away and win. I can never get out of my head the fight between Boonlai (a kicker) and Somrak (a few years before he won Gold as an Olympic boxer). Somrak wins without throwing a single meaningful punch (maybe not even a single punch, I can't recall). It's pretty amazing: But so many of the top fighters had just capacities across styles. Chamuekphet was a relentless knee fighter, but could kick with anyone. Weeapol had very heavy hands, but could kick with everyone.

You kind of tend to have two kinds of kickers, if you want to be really generalized. You have southpaw kickers who tend to have big, thunderous kicks (because their kick goes right into the power side of the orthodox fighter), like Yodsanklai and Samkor that you mention, and then you have orthodox fighters who are really more Muay Femeu, artful in scoring points and taking angles. Silapathai was unearthly in this. Check out his fight versus Karuhat were Karuhat, one of the most Muay Femeu fighters ever elected to kick with him: Very few fighters ever could out kick Karuhat. It's best to keep in mind that these "styles" are all just descriptors. If you said someone was Muay Tae, it isn't some kind of club he belongs to, you're mostly just saying "that guy kicks a lot". It's not purely that, but we tend to make a bigger deal of these style types than Thais do. Most kickers of the Golden Age though would consider themselves Muay Femeu. Femeu fighting just means "skilled" and "artful", something pretty much any fighter wouldn't mind being said about themselves. The torso kick was the most dependable highest scoring strike in Muay Thai, so the "art" of the kick was using it repeatedly to just rack up the points and demonstrate your control over the space.