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The West vs Thailand The more I think about it - and I've thought about it a lot - the huge difference between most combat sport conceptions in the West vs Thailand's Muay Thai is The Burst vs The Continuity. Short Wave vs Long Wave...with the exception perhaps of Western Boxing, which has a tremendous history of long wave fighting. With the advent of the "combo" (which helps people who are not fluent, teach and disseminate) and of the "highlight" (which increasingly becomes the narrative lens through which fighting is digested and understood), The Burst concept has accelerated...to everyone's detriment.

The clinch battle, and the wonderfully reffed rounds, in Chatchainoi's win (on channel 7) gives trad rules hope. https://www.watchlakorn.in/มวยไทย7สีวันที่22ธันวาคม2567-video-445579 I put up the best round here:

The Top 10 Greatest Muay Thai Fighters Updated Saenchai and Samson tied for 10th...

I was legit sad to see Rajadamnern do away with the lighting they had, with the checkerboard, because it allowed me to take some of my best photos ever. I just loved this photoshoot. It gave such a sculptural light. But, this informal shot (sorry I don't know who took it) from the new lighting shows that there can be some very dramatic photography in the stadium. I hope I get to shoot there again with the new lighting. Props to whomever made the bold move, from something that was already a strength of the stadium, pushing for something that might be better.

Some Shocked, Depressed Some shocked the 3x FOTY Panpayak loses on ONE, knocked out. It's funny, you design a sport so that globalizable White Guys will beat Thai guys, and then fans are surprised that happens. It's baked into the DNA of the sport design. Some Reddit comments.

The Chicken Wing Punch in Thailand my answer below to this Reddit question, which the moderators for some reason deleted. Who knows why, maybe some kind of AI filter, etc? This is a very interesting subject though, reflecting on the way techniques get preserved and passed on. Do people who do muay thai punch oddly? The author then went onto describe how they've been told by some that they punch like they are throwing an elbow, but that this is how their coach taught them. I assume you are talking about straights and crosses. In most examples, in Thailand this chicken wing punch honestly is likely just a collective bad habit developed out of bad padholding, often with wider and wider held pads (speculatively, sometimes because Thais hold for very large Westerners and don't want to take the full brunt of power all day long). It also has proliferated because Thailand's Muay Thai has moved further and further away from Western Boxing's influence, which once was quite pronounced (1960s-1990s, but reaching back to the 1920s). Today's Thai fighters really have lost well-formed punching in many cases. It has been put out there that this is the "Thai punch" (sometimes attributing it to some old Boran punching styles, or sometimes theoretically to how kicks have to be checked, etc), but Thais didn't really punch like this much 30 years ago if you watch fights from that time. It's now actually being taught in Thailand though, because patterns proliferate. People learn it from their padmen and krus (I've even heard of Thai krus correcting Westerners towards this), and it gets passed on down the coaching tree. Mostly this is just poorly formed striking that's both inaccurate and lacking in power, and has been spreading across Thailand the last couple of decades. There are Boran-ish punching styles that have the elbow up, but mostly, at least as I suspect, that's not what's happening. We've filmed with maybe (?) 100 legends and top krus of the sport and none of them punch with the "chicken wing" or teach it, as far as I can recall.

The Labor Shortage in Muay Thai As the Thai government is pushing to centralize Muay Thai as a Soft Power feature of tourism, and as Thai kaimuay become rarer and rarer, pushed out by big gyms (scooping up talent, and social demographic changes), there is a labor shortage for all the fights everyone wants to put on. There are two big sources to try and tap. There are all the tourists who can come and fight on Tourism Muay Thai (Entertainment) shows, and there are the provinces. The farang labor issue is taken care of by rule changes and Soft Power investment, but how do the provinces get squeezed in? Well, ONE Lumpinee is headed to the provinces, trying to build that labor stream into its economic model, and cut off the traditional paths from provincial fighting to Bangkok trad stadium fighting, and top BKK trad promoters are focusing more on provincial cards. There is a battle over who can stock their fight cards. ONE needs Thais to come and learn their hyper-aggressive swing hard and get knocked out sport, mostly to lose to non-Thais to grow the sport's name that way, fighting the tourists and adventure tourists, and the trad promoters need to keep the talent growing along traditional cultural lines. As long as the government does not invest in the actual ecosystem of provincial Muay Thai (which doesn't involve doing money handouts, that does not help the ecosystem), the labor stream of fighters will continue to shrink. Which means there is going to be a Rajadamnern vs Lumpinee battle over that diminishing resource. The logical step is for the government to step in and nurture the provincial ecosystem in a wholistic way, increasing the conditions of the seeding, small kaimuay that were once the great fountain for the larger regional scenes and kaimuay. headsup credit to Egokind on Twitter for the graphics. "You can get rich!!!!!!" (paraphrase)

Wow, Dangkongfah "moo deng" (as they call her) won again. It fits a beautiful way. Always enjoy watching her fight. Such an interesting fighter, we know her so well. Her opponent fought valiantly, trying to solve Dangkongfah's frustratingly minimalist style, but it wasn't enough. Dangkongfah won an important, decisive exchange in the 4th that locked up the narrative win, and then coasted to close femeu in the 5th, what she's so good at, retreating and nullifying. It's very nice to see Patong stadium reffing and judging in the traditional style, holding the line against Entertainment Muay Thai. A very well reffed fight. The promotion looks so solid, right in the middle of Phuket's Muay Thai scene. Very cool. This was a great test-case fight for those kinds of differences. Two fights in a row (at least) down in Pkuket, I wonder if Dangkongfah has moved down there to live and train. If so, she'll have a substantive trad promotion to fight on regularly.