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Recent review of Kem's Muay Thai Gym in Khao Yai Tiang: "The training is mind blowing. All three Krus are different but they’re not jusy chasing your endorphin high for you by letting you smash pads and feel the rush. There is so much technique work. I haven’t spent much time in classes in other gyms just mainly one on Ones as I’ve torn my ACL and didn’t fancy big classes injured but we are just a handful here so I know if he’s not training me Kem is watching me all the time. And so hands on in terms of the accommodation and other care eg he’s driving a student to Cambodia today for a visa run. Such lovely people. I’m humbled. And I can hear the call to prayer which is important to me. Thanks again for the recco." Naadia

Hey just wanted to say some stuff about the thread. First of all, it took me about a year and a half to two years plus several discussions with you Kevin before I even began to understand what Muay Thai (was) about. But I had a desire to actually understand it. I wanted to know how the fighters were moving and why the fighters were doing exactly what they were doing. The average Western fight fan watches fighting to see someone get hurt or knocked out. They have zero desire to even attempt to understand how Muay Thai was done and scored. Second of all, I see the general trend of what’s happening with Muay Thai now as a direct response to Muay Thai techniques being adapted to MMA and specifically in the UFC. You had guys like Joe Rogan talking about how brutal the sport is (which it can be) but I think Rogan+the UFC are more or less directly responsible for Entertainment Muay Thai. It’s sad to see it go, I have zero hope that it will survive. The value system of Western Countries just directly contrasts with how the Thais viewed fighting in Muay Thai. In the end, I think skills of all combat sports is on a downward trajectory. More and more, I think coaches look for superior athletes and don’t want to invest the time in t takes to grow a truly high skilled individual. Thus all the old knowledge and wisdom gets lost as coaches attempt to simply make bulls that can succeed on pure aggression and physicality. To be fair there will be some exceptions but by and large I see us worldwide going into a sort of “dark age” of combat sports across the board. The only exception to this seems to be sport BJJ but that will always be hindered by the fact that it’s objectively boring as a spectator sport. And even that is straying far and away from its roots of actual combat effectiveness as you’ll notice in MMA high level BJJ is becoming more and more rare because the sport version isn’t applicable anymore to MMA.