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And, there is one final dimension of "authentic" Muay Thai that deserves focus. That is that Muay Thai is trained in order to be fought, and to be fought frequently. Fighting is a part of training, an important feedback loop that is central to understanding your own growth, and for those who shape you to see how you are doing. It is NOT a test to see "how good you are". It is NOT a test of your worth. NOT something you want to save for a special moment of assessment. It is a very frequent, common, unhyped aspect of Muay Thai itself, and why Thai fighters have 100s of fights. This, perhaps more than any one thing characterizes the unique fight culture and process of Thailand's Muay Thai, not like anything else in the world. And, importantly, fighting is a very significant social event of gyms, a way of experiencing what is culturally unique about Thailand's Muay Thai. This means, if you are training outside of regular fighting (and I do mean very regular) you are missing something quite "authentic" in Muay Thai, even if all the other aspects of authenticity I've talked about previously are more or less on-board. This also means, for many Westerners, the much abhorred (by me and others like me) Entertainment Muay Thai may very well be the ONLY way of experiencing a very close relationship between frequent fighting and training which is core to the traditional form. This may mean, depending on where you are in Thailand, and maybe your size or gender, you might very well find yourself training in memorized combos and fighting on 3 round shows, in order to experience this very important "authentic" relationship between frequent fighting and Muay Thai development. Ideally, you would want to be doing this frequent fighting in traditional formats, with local gambling, which constitutes the more authentic form, but this just may not be possible. And, you may have to choose between in-frequent fighting and more authentic training conditions AND more tourist-oriented frequent fighting Entertainment shows, where can be rewarded for fighting in a non-Thai fashion. This is why some hybrid gyms like Hongtong, Sitjaopho, Silk (in Pattaya), Kem's in Khao Yai may be worthy "authenticity" choices, in that they though geared towards Westerners, they also create churn-like training conditions, and favor frequent fighting, which may involve both (trad) festival and Entertainment options. As might various Phuket gyms (?, sorry I don't know this sector). In a certain sense there is so much variety, and the authentic form of traditional Muay Thai is so fragmented, a serious student or fighter coming to Thailand has an incredible spectrum of choices of just how much, and what kind of "authenticity" they would like in their experience, all of it mixed in degrees. Unfortunately, its very hard to make those kinds of choices from afar, and it is very difficult to depend on the opinions of those already in Thailand, because gyms change quickly, and your own needs may be quite different even than someone who seems like they might be somewhat like you.

For us, for Sylvie, who is incredibly experienced both in Thai style training and in fighting, and who speaks Thai with near fluency, we look for specific aspects of "authenticity" and are willing to sacrifice others. For us, the training in a gym is conditioned by the moral force of the Big Boss, the owner. The owner, if strong in character and motivated, exerts a pressure on the entire gym that not only makes training consistent, but also expressive of their ethos. Who they are, and what Muay Thai means to them permeates everything, transmitting a quality. And, this is expressed stylistically in the fighters they develop. A good, authentic gym will be something like a stew in which the various kru and padmen each contribute their stylistic and technical perspective, but it all becomes folded in under the head of the gym. So the first thing we look for is not a successful "business", but a personal expression, a culture of Muay Thai, under a moral force of character. This will produce a kaimuay churn of work in which styles and techniques become mixed. There is good work to do there. You are nourished by the churn, and someone like Sylvie can add to it, mix in intensities, styles & qualities she's picked up from training with and fighting for legends, and from a vast in-ring experience itself. Importantly, for us, The top-down exercise of stylistic force, the ethos that holds the gym forward and gives it personal direction also needs to be connected to the community, to a continual class of young Thai fighters, a mix of growth that is ever in development. This often breaks into "classes" (fighters of a certain age) that develop in parallel, each fighter sharpening the other. This is the bubbling up of Muay Thai. Without this the vitality of the gym, and of its owner can be lost. Today, as the socio-economic conditions of Muay Thai are either eroding or shifting, the gap between these two is widening. There are fewer and fewer young, local fighters, and Big Bosses become more business men, with Westerners filling in the growing chasm. The cultural dimensions of Muay Thai, its meaning and its most effective training dimensions are splitting apart. And the tourist is making up the difference (with Entertainment Muay Thai in tow). In many ways the traditional form of the kaimuay is now fragmented, gym heads are now running commercial enterprises in which character and ethos are less in play, and the Thai youth are not entering the sport. So we piece things together, finding important, powerful parts of authenticity, training directly (in non-Traditional ways) with men of great character, ethos and skill, shapers of great muay, even if they don't run gyms, and finding streams of youth, where young fighters are still developing in a churn of training, reflective of kaimuay...and imposing Old School training principles on our own, in isolation, kind of cobbling together what was "authentic" in ways that would nourish further growth and discovery. A kind of virtual authenticity...this is some of the ethic behind the Muay Thai Library documentary project, because the character and knowledge of these men will pass away, and in fact the MTL itself was simply the record of Sylvie already piecing together training when we found existing gyms un-ideal, even though living, training and fighting frequently in Thailand.

When we asked the legend Pudpadnoi why he left Muay Thai in the 1970s, one of the very best of the decade, he said "It was worse than the Army" He briefly went to America, and then settled in France, becoming one of the first of elite Thai fighters bringing authentic Muay Thai to Europe, a Muay Thai though that as a fighting knowledge is difficult to separate out the social conditions which generated it, and the fights that produced it.

In thinking through this, this means things like: local, neighborhood development of kid fighters local, festival, gambling driven fighting, where social face is at risk learning directly from great krus & legends who know a Muay Thai that no longer exists, and may ever exist again (even if direct teaching like this is not traditional or "authentic" in its own right). training in the churn of a full gym, preferably predominantly Thais seeking to fight, with a full spectrum of skill levels finding and respecting tradition-rich spaces which hold the unique history of the sport partaking in the culture of respect and hierarchy (which may mean suffering under it, losing autonomy, even losing good training or fight opportunities). For foreign women they can be even more complex & problematic, even dangerous. learning to lose - this means, exposing yourself to largely alien traditional fight aesthetics, learning 1,000 ways to lose refusing common for-Westerner advantages, including weight bullying advantages. In Thai culture, weight bullying usually comes out of political power, the ability to impose disadvantages on the less powerful. do the work, which can be transformative, but understand this is traditionally labor and done through social submission understand that the art of (trad) Muay Thai will challenge your understanding and experience of violence. In general, avoid Entertainment Shows which have been made for the Westerner, and the foreigner in general, both as participant, and as consumer. It's like eating super sweet, peanut-buttery Pad Thai all day. And find excessive combo training (anything pre-patterned that you are supposed to "do" under stress, trained in rote), especially organized around hands, suspect. Muay Thai in its traditional form should be improvisational, perceptive, defense-oriented, and narrative. It's built around display and problem-solving. As Entertainment Muay Thai impacts even traditional shows, the rise of the combo has entered even otherwise "authentic" gyms. Given the low-skill level required from pad holders, and the low level of investment, it is populating the very language of Muay Thai. Add in that Westerners are starting to hold pads in gyms (and what most Westerners know best is combination thinking), the one realizes that the Combo and the Entertainment Show are two powerful currents that move against the transformative authentic experience described above. Combos proliferate because they are easy to teach and do not require the entire social setting of a kaimuay, and because Entertainment Muay Thai is made to reward them. The "authentic" knowledge of the sport is being quickly drained away at both the pedagogic and performative level, through patterned clashing.

Someone like me might see a gym that is now holding for combos when it used to not, or have a combo-holding Westerner on pads, for Muay Thai shows that have become combo-centric and clashy for the enjoyment of the tourist, as deeply inauthentic, almost a cultural colonization of the sport. But because Thailand's Muay Thai largely is an art of social climbing, done through the art of ring fighting and gambling social capital, moving toward a combo-centric teaching and fighting style, with Westerners in the gym, is bringing not only financial affluence, but also is moving away from Muay Thai's lower class (and rural) roots. It's bringing social status, as Thailand bends towards International values and standards. It doesn't matter so much that this is a less effective way of fighting, or that Thais themselves are losing their fighting acumen and art in imitation of the West, because within Thai sensibility has always been a strain that seeks to distance itself from the rural and "uneducated", joining the World in its modernity. Since before the end of the 19th century when Thai elites and royals educated themselves abroad in England, there has always been an aspect of self-renunciation of the provincial other. Bangkok, in its National Stadia traditional fighting in the 1970s-1990s presented a unique amalgam, filled with rural fighters and their arts, gyms of mob bosses and other kinds of bosses, its own kind of rich, a slowly rising economy which would become deeply internationalized by the early 1990s, it was a heady mixture of tradition, class and investment. Through this, including the influence of Western Boxing through those decades, "authentic" Muay Thai was changing. But, for those coming to Thailand from across the world, today, its important to note that the true "soft power" of the sport relies on its unique foundations in the lower classes of the country (as in all fighting arts), the residual knowledge, practices, beliefs, which powered the entire sport and art, as it then was signified, displayed, developed, symbolized in the Capital (this is leaving aside discussion of the specific military - and police - history of Muay Thai). The authenticity, in that there is one that the foreigner is looking for, is the aspect of Muay Thai that cannot be made or invented by anyone else...calling into question the new-style imposition of training and fighting in imitation of the Westerner. With all irony aside, the Westerner comes all the way to Thailand to not find themselves in a mirror. Its to find something they do not understand, something that they intuit is important to them, but which is alien and perhaps unapproachable. Something that will change them. That is the true Soft Power of Muay Thai, that is what the Westerner often means by "authentic".

The way I see it there are several overlapping, and sometimes contradictory processes of gym "authenticity": developing young Thai fighters to fight in the festival circuit and eventually the traditional stadia (not Entertainment Muay Thai shows) disseminating, developing Thai techniques and stylistics through a slow-cook "churn" of training: learning through arduous, play, osmosis and imitation maintaining a traditional authority culture, including the legacy of the gym, its heritage gaining prestige through high-profile fighters in the Bangkok stadia gambling scene the gym, the kaimuay, an expression of the local community, a weave of its people, its location a house - sometimes literally a house - of knowledge, kept within a top kru or boss who productively runs the camp, this knowledge is both political craft and technical fighting craft. a collection of entrepreneurial knowledges within the group, betting padmen, who themselves are jostling for social position a house where chance (gambling) meets technique (knowledge) A lot of this runs counter, or is outright alien to a foreigner (not of the community) paying for (commerce, not alliance) technical knowledge (the structure of the house). So gyms that accept foreigners become hybrid spaces, often with parallel (and contradictory) value systems, or social organization. The more prominent the newer value system, the less "authentic" the gym may be...in this particular description, which imagines that there is something "authentic" to be found and experienced. You can get fragments of this: the experience of kids developing and fighting, the techniques in a lineage, the aura of "respect" and "tradition", the churn of a gym, in mixtures, but almost always in combination with the secondary (usual conflictual) value system that provides admission to the gym. This being said, the two value systems, roughly we can call them Tradition and Consumer Capitalism, are always working upon each other in the culture, and uniquely in every gym, mutating each other, so there are no hard lines between the two. In gyms where there are parallel structures, one for Thais and one for Westerners, the two value systems can become more distinct, if you develop eyes for them, but in terms of the Thais themselves, the meaning within each value system still has to be understood in terms of Thai culture, social class and capital (prestige). In otherwords, even in the values of Consumer Capitalism, everything is still being understood by Thais in terms of traditional hierarchies, position and social contest. Western values like the autonomy of the individual (which often inspires a Westerner to become a fighter), the liberty of choice & service purchase, are really not at play; they are merely tolerated as a means of commerce. This is to say, even supposedly "inauthentic gyms" insofar as they are Thai, are still more traditional than most Westerners may imagine, even if they cater strongly to Westerners and Western style training, because Thai social hierarchies and motivations underlie everything. By analogy, a Thai owned restaurant might make hamburgers and steaks for tourists, but its still very Thai in the kitchen and the back of the house. But...hanging with the Western customers, adopting the signatures of that food's culture, participating in its celebration appeal, may very well change what kind of Thainess there is. And remember, class is a very significant part of Thailand's purported authentic Muay Thai. Nearly all the great fighters of the past were provincial fighters who made it in Bangkok, where powerful elites (Sino-Thai promoters) and underworld bosses held court, and where Muay Thai had an ideological dimension expressed by Thai Nationalism and royalty. All of these classes were "authentic" Muay Thai, but as with most highly developed fighting arts, the core of this authenticity comes out of the lower classes, the rural poor, or the urban working poor. This is where the myriad of small gyms and fighters come out of, the roots of the sport. So, in a sense, the further you move away from this, the further - at least culturally and historically - you are moving away from a kind of resolute authenticity. Today's Muay Thai in the Capital is being redesigned for the Thai hi-so (upper classes), in the inspiration of the next generation of promoter families, some of them educated abroad, often in America. It is being internationalized, as Thailand has always had an internationalizing strain within its culture, which sees social wealth in terms of world standards. Entertainment Muay Thai shows now show inspiration from NBA half-time entertainment, and its not an accident. This is an expression of class. The turn towards tourism aids in this transformation, as the Thai government leans into the tourist sector economy, developing not only economic power, but Soft ideological power. The political elite are expressing themselves, in terms of Muay Thai, in this new way, just as there was a political elite (authentic) expression of Muay Thai 40 years ago, 70 years ago. This stretches Muay Thai away from its lower class root system. And, within gyms, ex-fighters are finding themselves having left the lower classes they came from, at least in terms of opportunity. This is on account of Thailand's rising standards of living, but also part of their own risen status within a sport that is increasingly turning toward the foreigner. Their sons (now of fighting age) are in a different social strata, with opportunities quite different than those that led them into fighting in the first place, and their gyms (or their students when they don't own gyms) increasingly cater to the Westerner, who without irony, holds them in more esteem than perhaps fellow countrymen, who considered Muay Thai low-brow and underclass. In such gyms and training having affluent students is a signature of social climbing, and even having (relatively) affluent Westerners holding pads or teaching weight training, under them, working FOR them, raises their social position...all without regard for the quality of Muay Thai within the house. There is an authentically Thai drive to move up the social ladder, in a sense because that is what Muay Thai itself always was, the agonistic struggle for recognition and accomplishment. Yodkhunon once asked Sylvie, who prolifically fights out of her own value sense "Why do you still fight, you are already famous?" Changes in the sport and art which we might regard as "inauthentic" are authentically Thai.