Leaderboard

That might be it. If the farang name is Rafael and is from NY that would be him. He does go to Hongthong sometimes and knows the two brothers I was talking about. The other gym I was talking about was Lamnammoon Muay Thai, but it was not him who was there, though he did come once and elbows me in the face while holding pads (I mean by that just slightly touched to make me realize my guard was down, fucking scary but effective). I actually had the privilege to be elbowed by both him and Yodkhunpon which I am kind of happy about ahahah. The trainer taking care of the gym was Nuengtrakan Por Muangubon cause Lamnammoon was mostly in Singapour I think. Anyways, Joe from Hongthong had arranged for me to train there, he told me a bit about growing there and stuff. I think Hongthong is like a neighborhood in Ubon or something like this. I've been wanting to write a review of all the gyms I've trained at in my trips, but I have not yet. Keep doing your great work Kevin. You and Sylvie have had such an impact. I hope one day soon, Thailand offers you honorary citizenship. You guys deserve this.

Kevin — this is beautifully written and profoundly resonates with what we are trying to protect. At our gym in Pai, Thailand — led by Kru Sittiphong (Eminent Air, Bangkok) — we often find ourselves discussing this exact tension. The split you describe between aggression as war and tradition as festival maps directly onto the current shift happening in Muay Thai today, especially in the growing clash between Muay Farang and traditional Muay Femur. So many Westerners arrive here asking for two sessions a day, intense sparring, and "hard training" to burn through their fire. They believe output equals progress — but they miss that in Thai Muay Thai, form comes before fire. As Kru says, “If no one corrects your technique, you're just burning energy and money.” You can train for years and still lack timing, balance, and control if no one slows you down. He calls this rush-to-power style "Muay Farang." Not in judgment — but as a cultural observation. It’s mechanical. It’s linear. It seeks transformation through depletion, rather than refinement. It forgets the smile in the sparring ring. The mutual game. The moment when two fighters laugh and say, “You got me.” That ease is the solarity. That’s the festival. Lerdsilla, Saenchai — we show students how they move not to win but to shine. Their movement is gift, not dominance. We see this in our students too — that knife’s edge between aggression and release. Some say they want to spar to “let out the fire.” But this isn’t the Thai way. Not really. Not the artful way. Real Thai Muay Thai is not made in war. It’s made in play, in rhythm, in control, in beauty. Muay Thai was born out of community, not conquest. The rings were surrounded by farmers, not fighters. And even now, the countryside promotions like Pai Fight Night are pushing back against the gambling, the scoring controversies, the drift toward aggressive spectacle. They are preserving Muay Thai as cultural heritage — as festival, as you so eloquently say. Even the structure of Thai training reflects this longevity: one thoughtful session a day, not burnout. Recovery built in. Years spent mastering balance before layering in power. It's a slow art. A patient art. It cannot be "hacked." And it cannot be copied in systems that don't understand its roots. So yes — we’re witnessing a shift. And some, like Samart Payakaroon, are trying to protect the tradition. Others, like the Muay Femur stylist who left ONE Championship, are quietly walking away from the pressure to perform brutality over brilliance. We believe this conversation matters deeply — and must continue. Thank you for holding space for it, — Jennifer & Kru Sittiphong Sittiphong Muay Thai - Technical Muay Femur Training Pai, Thailand

What many do not realize is that ONE has so thoroughly commandeered the social media ecosystem of Muay Thai in Thailand (quite consciously, as part of its marketing approach, absorbing trad social media accounts, controlling messaging across all platforms through various systematically means...and quite brilliantly I would say), that many, many New Gen Muay Thai fans in Thailand, who speak no English at all, now have bought 100% into the ONE Entertainment full power smash aesthetic. Demographically much of it is somewhat a new fan base for Muay Thai, but its very vocal in SoMe post comments, and has influenced the older online gen as well. What we in the West are drawn to in traditional Muay Thai is now is ardently being pushed against by a segment of Thai fandom now, even in the trad ruleset. There is a kind of tug-of-war now between the traditional values of superior fighting and the new International smash values, and hybrid promotions like RWS are kind of caught right in the middle, but seemingly for now siding with trad values for the most part. It does mean though that some trad fighters are just going to go in there and smash on trad cards, which is kind of amazing because this change has occurred in only a few short years.

A Battle of Affects I've argued that the highly Westernized (Globalized) affect expression in ONE and other Entertainment Muay Thai, typified in the Scream face you'll see in fight posters (which sometimes ironically looks like a yawn) and in post fight celebration, expressing aggro values that work against the traditional affects of Thailand's trad Muay Thai, a fighting art that comes out of Buddhistic culture largely organized around self-control...(that's a mouthful!) is attempting to invert Muay Thai's relationship to violence itself. It is interesting that spreading in the trad circuit is this mindfulness/meditative post-fight victory pose, an example of which is here, the young fighter with his trainer. This is no small thing because arguably culture is made up of prescriptions of "how you should feel", largely expressed in idealized body language and facial expression. When you change that prescription, in fact inverting, you are challenging the main messages of culture itself. One of the gifts of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, I have discussed, is that it provides a different affectual understanding of violence itself, which then cashes out in simply more effective fighting in the ring. Something of a gift to a world that is more and more oriented toward rage and outrage.

above, festival fight in Pattaya Just some thoughts and observations on the overall state of Thailand's Muay Thai. Not an expert opinion, just an informed perspective. The title of this piece may sound absurd, or maybe for some just an exaggeration, but there is among some long time fans who have watched a lot of Muay Thai in Thailand the sense that the only Muay Thai worth watching in Thailand now, in terms of actual skill, is Muay Dek, the Muay Thai of Thai youth. This piece about why that may be so. There is a sense that Muay Thai has been stretched now in two directions. You have Bangkok stadia, gambling driven traditional Muay Thai, supposedly the acme of the country's traditional talent, and you have Entertainment Muay Thai (with various versions of itself), a Muay Thai that is bent towards - and in many cases just FOR - the foreigner. If I was to really generalize between the two, one line of Muay Thai heads toward more "technical" point fighting and fight management (trad stadium Muay Thai), fights where fighters and corners are always responding to shifting gambling odds, and on the other hand a Muay Thai (in the extreme case of ONE) which is all about combos, aggression and offensive risk taking, emphasizing trades in the pocket and knockouts. The problem is, neither trajectory is very skilled (at least in the historical sense of Thailand's greatly skilled fighters). Muay Thai has become increasingly deskilled, along these two trending branches. And, if you mostly watch one of the two, you might not have noticed the deskilled aspects, because this is just the "new normal", and competition always produces winners who seem in comparison to others, quite skilled. It's only when you take the wider view, not only of the history and greatness of the sport, but also of the present state of Muay Thai itself, importantly including Muay Dek, do you see the drop in skill in adult fighting...as each promotional style squeezes out certain qualities from their fighters, cutting off their full, expressive development. Even with big sidebets on fights (gambling), and seemingly lots of pressure, Muay Dek fighters fight with great freedom. Some of this is a mystery why this is lost, but what follows is a sketch of how Muay Dek fighters change and become limited once they reach a certain age. Why Are the Muay Dek Fighters the Best Muay Thai Fighters in Thailand? If you just watch a few fights, and you have an eye for it, you'll see it. In a word, freedom. In another word, expressiveness. And still an third, sanae (charm, charisma, a key component in Thai traditional scoring). The Muay Thai of the Golden Age (1980s-1997) was filled with highly skilled, very well-rounded, but importantly very expressive fighters, fighters who fought with experimentation who were constantly adjusting to their opponent, drawing on styles and tactics that could in shifts change the outcomes of fights. And in fighting in that way that exuded personality, uniqueness and charm...aura. Much of this quality, and flexibility is gone from Thailand's Muay Thai, but in today's Muay Dek some of it is really still there. Its only when these fighters get to a certain age...maybe 15-16, that it starts to become squeezed out. In the Muay Dek even of today you get fighters who are regulating their energies with great subtitle, not swinging between overt passivity or over-aggression, fighters engage more continuously in the classic style, with fewer ref breaks, less stalling, fighters drawing out extended phrasing and highly technical defensive stretches that endure. A greater variety of weapons, and even transitions between fighting styles or a shifting of tactics, to solve what is happening in the fight, a kind of cerebral aesthetic that older fighters seem to have lost the capacity for. At the highest levels of Muay Dek youth fighting you see dimensionality...and personality. There is much less nibbling at leads. Instead one sees that leads are vied for more or less continually, and expanded when achieved, without devolving into hyper-aggressive mashing. I'm going to leave Entertainment Muay Thai to the side for now, especially ONE which is its own particular excessive exaggeration, mostly because its kind of obvious how promotional hype, booking dynamics, rule-sets and bonuses shape fighters to fight in a certain more limited way. What many may not realize is that trad Muay Thai in the stadia also forces fighters to fight in a certain way, in many cases simplifying or pairing down what they had been capable of when developing as youths. I'm going to say "gambling" here, but gambling is not the boogieman monster that a lot of online commentary makes it out to be. Gambling in Muay Thai is essential to its form, in fact I don't think Thailand's Muay Thai would have reached the complexity of its art without ubiquitous gambling, all the way down to the 1,000s and 1,000s of villages and provincial fight cards, its ecosystem of fighting, which have gone on for maybe centuries. Some of the discussion of the importance of gambling I discuss speculatively here: above, festival fight in Buriram The problem isn't "gambling" per se, but rather that in the larger venues in Bangkok because of the changing (eroding) demographics of Muay Thai the shift of economic power to big gyms, and the dwindling talent pool, the powerful forces of gambling interests have lost proportion, and now have outsized impact. There are not enough counter-balancing forces to keep gambling's historically important role in Muay Thai's creativity, in check. These have worn away, leaving gambling as too prominent. But, I'm not talking about corruption here (which everyone loves to turn to with an infinite finger of blame). I'm actually talking about the way in which Muay Thai is traditionally fought with fighters responding in a live sense to the shifting odds of the audience. Online gambling has complicated this more human, social dimension of the sport, abstracting it to 1,000s or 10,000s of people of varying interests and even knowledge, on their mobile phones. The demographic of "who" gambles has changed, and increasingly people are gambling who have less knowledge about the sport. They'll place a bet on Muay Thai just as they'll place a bet on a football game. Again, let's bracket, let's put the online nature of gambling to the side, and just talk about the traditional relationship between live fighting and live in-person gambling in the stadia. The fighters are fighting TO the odds. The odds are the "score" of the fight, just like in basketball you could look up to a scoreboard and see the score of the game, in Muay Thai you can look to the odds and (roughly!) know the score of the fight. There may be distortion in the odds, whales and their factions of one sort of another may be putting their thumb on the scale, but there is a symbiotic discourse happening between live gambling and the fighters (and their corners). Some of this traditionally has produced great complexity of skills, the ability of fighters to not just "win" the fight in terms of points, but also manage the fight, in stretches, shaping narratives. But today, the exact opposite is happening. Gambling is deskilling traditional Muay Thai, in large part because the small gyms of Thailand - the gyms that actually grow all the fighters, feeding the talent of Bangkok - have been eroding. Not only have they been disappearing (there are far, far fewer of them), those that exist still have no political power in the socio-economics of the sport. When fighters of small gyms enter the gambling rings of Bangkok, not only are they doing so on a very fragile line of income, often losing money to even bring their fighters down, they can no longer bet big on their fighters to supplement fight pay. Betting on your own fighter was once an entire secondary economy which grew small gyms and encouraged them to create superior talents. If you had a top fighter he could be a big earner not only for the gym, but also all the padmen krus in it, aside from fight pay. Because small gyms have lost power overall, political power, they have to live at the margins, which means their fighters have to fight extremely conservatively so as to not be blamed if their fighter loses. They need the backing of the social circles of gamblers. If you lost, it can't be because you took a risk. And because big gyms are going to win (force through political weight) close fights, small gyms have to practically walk on egg-shells in the way that their fighters fight. Generally: get a small lead...and once you have that lead protect it at all costs. Don't do anything risky to expand the lead. And, because small leads are easily lost, fights often turn into a series of nibblings, with both fighters protecting their tiny leads, back and forth. They aren't trying to win, they are trying not to lose. This form of fighting has transmitted itself to big gyms, is the new traditional form of fighting. Don't risk blame. This aspect of "not my fault", "defend a small lead, take it to the end of the fight if you can (5th round), make it close enough and then blame politics or corruption if you lose" has become a normalized style of traditional fighting, across venues among adults. Some of this is because the current state is an out of proportion exaggeration of the truth that traditional Muay Thai fighting always has been expressive of political powers and social capital struggle in hierarchies outside of the ring. Fighters ARE part of and in the ring express social networks. This is part of Muay Thai's social dimension and cultural anchoring. It's just that with the erosion of the powers of small gyms, the dilution of the talent pool, the hoarding of limited talent, has pushed this aspect too hard, and distorted the sport, draining it of skills and its renown complexity. To give a small anecdotal example of how this deskilling works, I remember when a smallish gym was training a fighter, and in padwork the fighter switched to southpaw, just experimentally. No! The answer came back from the kru, and they related a story from the past when one of the gym's fighters had switched to southpaw in a fight and lost. The gamblers who bet on him were furious. He had "blown" the fight. The gym had lost face. From this single event, probably a fight not of much consequence, the gym now forbade switching. It could cost you a fight. An entire branch of Muay Thai (that of switching) was cut off from that gym's fighters...forever. Not only in terms of that technical branch of development, the whole spirit of experimentation and creativity was closed off. The goal was: get a lead...keep it. Don't develop a style that is complex, or varied. Don't do anything in a fight that IF you lose, the gamblers who backed you will blame you and the gym for. This is deskilling. one reason why Thai fighters have been the best in the world isn't just that they have trained and fought young. It's also that they have been at the apron of fights, watched the shape of the traditional aesthetic, socially absorbing a great deal of fight knowledge. At the rope, even as cornermen or impromtu coaches. Its not just the doing, its the participation in the Form of Life that is traditional Muay Thai, bringing a depth of IQ. As small gyms and kaimuay across the country lose power in Bangkok, social power, they have to exist in very narrow economic margins, which means that technique wise their fighters have to fight in very narrow lanes. The spontaneous and the creative is too risky, because gyms don't want to be blamed. Fighters cannot explore or develop new ways of winning fights. There is a secondary dimension in this, as the downfall of the Thai kaimuay is told, which is IF a small gym does produce a particularly strong talent, this talent will not become a resource for the gym, adding honors to the gym (championship belts, etc), growing the gym through his presence. Instead, if you produce a talent this talent will be ostensibly stolen from you. Not outright stolen, but you will be pressured to "sell" their contract to a big Bangkok gym. This pressure will usually come from the fighter's parents, who want success and fame for their son, and the esteem of a bigger name, and it will come from within the hierarchies of the sport. The sale will happen. Instead of a developed talent adding to the richness of a gym's culture and growing their talent own pool of younger fighters who want to share in the glow of gym success, instead you'll be financially compensated with a contract sale. Some money in the pocket, to the gym owner, but not the kind of verdant growth a talent would have brought in the past, something that would shine across all the krus and padmen, and younger fighters in the kaimuay. And, fighters now are being extracted from small gyms younger and younger. The comparison is fruit being picked from trees more and more less ripe. Not only are fighters in general entering the Bangkok stadia with far less experience and development in the past, fighters are also being swept up by big gyms at a much higher rate, at an earlier state of their development. The ecosystem of the small gym, 100,000s of them, is being starved out. And its that ecosystem that historically had produced so much of the foundational complexity that gave Bangkok fighting so much of its renown diversity. Fighters that entered Bangkok stadia used to be much more complex and experienced, and then once they got there the complexity and experience of that scene increased and amplified them, spurred them to greater growth. Now, its the opposite. Arriving in a Bangkok stable may very well nullify your potential. We might add to this that the large big name gym stables of Bangkok today, that have swept up much of Thailand's diminishing promising talent, concentrating it, have become more like holding houses of that talent, and fighter factories for promotions, and less like developmental houses as old Bangkok gyms like Muangsurin, Thanikul, Pinsinchai, Dejrat, Sor Ploenjit had been, promotion favorites which maintained not only a kaimuay developmental creativity, but also more lasting connection with provincial sources. Muay Dek and Facing Power So, the good news is, despite all these forces against creativity, against small gym development, Thailand is still producing very high level Thai fighters from youth. These fighters fight with complexity and freedom, full of sanae, technical excellence, narrative control, quite different than their older counterparts who have learned to strip away their individuality attempting to preserve leads in gambling's stadium Muay Thai. I'm not sure what to account for this other than to believe that Thailand in its heart still maintains the aesthetics and richness that created the acme of the sport in the Golden Age, these qualities haven't been stamped out yet...it is only when fighters get to a certain maturity, when they are fighting for gamblers without a lot of social power themselves, protecting tiny leads, that they lose these qualities. They become deskilled. There is another element to the mystery of why these Muay Dek fighters lose their skills when they age. Kru Gai at Silk tells Sylvie: It's easier to be femeu when everyone is low weight, and nobody has power. Muay Dek fighters develop all this complexity because there is no "power" consequence for their experimentation at low weights. And one can see how this makes a serious amount of intuitional sense. Gamblers today favor more "power" in Muay Thai, so femeu fighters enter contexts where suddenly there are consequences that limit what you can do. But, if you take a moment to think about it, femeu fighting youth of the Golden Age also once they hit a certain age encountered "power" in opponents. But, instead of losing their skill sets at maturity, they actually grew as fighters, became more complex, more creative, more effective...against power. Someone like Karuhat was fighting up two weight classes in the 1990s, a very femeu fighter, against very powerful opponents. It's can't be that encountering the maturation of "power" is the thing that is shutting down the development of the youth, who have already developed so much prior. In fact, there seems a rough parallel between artful youth fighters of the Golden Age and now. Both of them hit this "wall" at a certain age. But in the Golden Age this accelerated their growth, today it stunts it, and even regresses it. I suspect it has to do with the overall conservative form of stadium gambling Muay Thai, the entire incentive and punishment system that produces a lot of tiny-lead chasing...and this goes back to the dis-empowerment and erosion of the small gyms that feed the sport, developing the fighters. The best fighters in all of Thailand are the Muay Dek fighters. It is the closest thing to a natural lineage with the greatness of the past. But right now...there is no way forward for them. No way for them to allow their expressiveness of character and technique to expand and not be disciplined into submission, dulled. They have to face the trad conservative ecosystem, or have to turn to the hyper-aggression of entertainment promotions, each of which robs them of a vocabulary of control and expression.

A lot of these thoughts of several years came together for me in side conversation with Arm of Muay Thai Testament Instagram who is looking to perhaps put together a project around Muay Dek fighters of today. I asked him if he could link some present Muay Dek fighters on the rise. This is what he wrote, posted with permission, posted in a series of replies: Strong Muay Dek Fighters Today 1. I was rewatching one kid this morning, as I do with all the kid fights that gets good reception, and this kid from some gym I've never heard of is so good femue. I think the gym is a new addition to Petchyindee's roster now. His name is Kaona Jor. Nopparat The part about Femue being easier to execute at lower weight is so true. Regarding the examples, I only really know the Petchyindee ones but here goes. In no particular order: 1. I was rewatching one kid this morning, as I do with all the kid fights that gets good reception, and this kid from some gym I've never heard of is so good femue. I think the gym is a new addition to Petchyindee's roster now. His name is Kaona Jor. Nopparat

This perspective is related to our manifesto of values and a priority on provincial fighting in Thailand.

The first fight between Poot Lorlek and Posai Sittiboonlert was recently uploaded to youtube. Posai is one of the earliest great Muay Khao fighters and influential to Dieselnoi, but there's very little footage of him. Poot is one of the GOATs and one of Posai's best wins, it's really cool to see how Posai's style looked against another elite fighter.

The championship fight was such a perfect illustration of "basics make champions." Not fancy, not showy, just incredibly solid foundations.

This was their fight back in August, where Marie pulled out the upset. I believe Marie was a last minute replacement in that fight. Useful to compare the fights.

This was just a really wonderful performance by Barbara, on so many levels, for the RWS Raja belt. You could feel her training in her fight, the way she stays within herself, at surface a very basic approach in terms of weapons/style, but underneath it all is a very important thing that not a lot of Westerns understand. You fight WITH Space. And she persistently denies Marie the space she wants, it ends up blowing up the fight, especially because she brought with her a beautiful very deep, head-sink clinch lock that Marie had no answer at all for (and that Raja let her work from, thank goodness). I have to watch the 2024 fight where Marie upset her in the clinch, but in this one Barbara was loaded for bear. This is the same recipe Sylvie used to beat so many, especially bigger opponents. You fight the Space, not the opponent. And you fight your fight with the belief "If I fight my fight, my way, the right way, you are going to have a very difficult time". I also loved Barbara's 20% - 40% power hands, just using them to touch and semi-pop Marie, to stress the space. No mindless, 100% power combos, actually seeing one's way in the space, and touching the opponent. This is just glorious controlled dern Muay Thai. Barbara's lock was so pure, so good - with a very deep head sink. She also had something that a lot of locking fighters fail to do. Once locked you walk your opponent. Not only do you pivot, or pull, you drag and also literally walk them so that their feet cannot set, so you tangle them, breaking the line of counter control. This is advanced, developed stuff and great to see. A lot of Thai stadium fighters of today don't even do this, its part of the eroding art of clinch. She also was very aware to drag Marie off the ropes so the ref break doesn't come and she could paint longer pictures of her lock dominance. Small touch with big awareness and effect. I don't really understand why Marie decided to fight this fight as a pure femeu fighter, back to the rope. I have to watch their first fight, but this plays exactly into Barbara's closing style. I imagine this is something trainers have been moving her toward? I'm not sure. A very cool, very worthy victory.

You could just pick a high-level gym in a European city, just live and train there for however long you want (a month?). Lots of gyms have morning and evening classes.

Muay Khao in Padwork - note a little bit advanced stuff Talking a little more about Muay Khao training (and padwork), beyond some basic things like the padman doing rounds of "latched on" work where you trailer hitch and continuously knee or work into knees, there is a shape to Muay Khao that involves building up the fatigue in your opponent, which involves continuous pressuring and tempoing early on, nothing rushed, importantly with the mentality of depositing fatigue. Even if you don't have a padman aware of this, you can do this on your own, of your own device. People do not think much of manipulating or effecting your padman, but taking cue from David Goggins trying to mentally break his SEAL Team trainers, you can use your padman's energy managements to become aware of their fatigue, tempoing up or displacing them when they start to manage. This builds up your own sense of perception, becoming acutely aware of its signs, and developing responses, things that will serve you well in fights. This doesn't mean going HARD, like 200%. It means managing your own fatigue while you work that edge and tax your padman. The purpose of this is to slow reaction times and decision quality in later rounds in fights. You don't win fights early in Muay Khao work, you prepare the material so you can work late. A great padman will see and help you train this shape of the rounds, even as they manage their own fatigue. It goes without saying this involves not just "following along" with called strikes, which I believe is detrimental on a deeper level, because what you are training in those cases is "being dictated to". Lots of fighters have this problem, they have spent countless hours of (unconsciously) learning to be steered, so when their opponent looks to dictate timing, space or rhythm they have years of being comfortable being dictated to. This though is a subtle line to walk, and it depends a great deal on the experience of the fighter and the quality of the padman. Ideally, you want padwork to gravitate towards a dialogue, a back and forth, which mirrors the dialogue of fighting, accepting dictated tempos and spacing, modifying them, shaping them in return. Good padmen (who aren't just burning you out with kicks or holding combos over and over, largely ex-experienced fighters) will recognize this dialogue dimension, and you'll bring out more of their "fighter energy" and creativity, which is Golden stuff. Lesser experienced padman, or padmen who are just grinding, may not respond well, but you want to get into that zone of your 5 rounds being shaped like a fight...and for a Muay Khao fighter that means depositing fatigue in your padman early, if you can. Even if you can't, the aim of recognizing stalls, energy management, gatherings, and working on them yourself (not being passive) is a perceptual skill set you want to develop. For Muay Khao fighters though, you want to get to that clinch, or those finishing frames in the later rounds. You have to feel those angles of dominance, the cherry of what you built in previous rounds. Great padman know this, and develop pathways later where your body can sense, can experience those finishing elements. Femeu fighters, other style fighters, have other shapes in their fights. This is specific to Muay Khao.

I've recently been contacted by the head of a small gym in Samut Prakan (below Bangkok). The gym is small, mostly kids, but he's inviting westerners (both female/male) to come train with him and fight out of his gym. If you are in Thailand and wanting an experience of a local, small gym that isn't geared toward commercial training, maybe give this a try. No English, so just use a translator on your phone. Contact on FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61571372517312&mibextid=ZbWKwL https://maps.app.goo.gl/ELoJohV8qcGSSydd6

Some thoughts on women fighter's bodies and inevitable changes between childhood and adolescence, as well as a changing landscape for Thai women fighters: this age range where female fighters hit their peak and are more or less forced to slow down due to that success (because it's harder to get fights, the side bet becomes enormous, etc) is right around when male fighters hit a rough spot as well. I can't count the number of times I've remarked on how promising some 11-14 year old boy looks and his trainer will wave his hand and say, "let's see if he can make it through motorbikes and girls," which is at around 15-18 years old, when the majority of male fighters also drop off and either become undisciplined or take on salaried jobs. Romantic relationships, increased importance of friend groups outside of the gym, and changes to the body all account for why both male and female fighters have a steep hill as they hit adolescence. Boys have a better incentive to keep fighting, as they might belong to bigger gyms or have better opportunities; girls might be pressured by family to focus on school, or the consequences of romantic (sexual) heterosexual relationships might take them out of fighting, which it doesn't do for boys in the same way. Dangkongfah and Nong Biew are an interesting pair, both listed in Kevin's write up. Nong Biew was kind of this rising star, getting a lot of notoriety and attention as this relentless Muay Khao teenager who could pull in wins with big side bets. Dangkongfah was that, but without any of the social hype; kind of the mavric version of the prize fighter. She could get backers to put money on her and she could win these big fights, but she wasn't taken seriously in the way that other "dao rung" teenage stars are (Nong Biew, Thanonchanok, Sanaejahn, Pornpan, Sawsing, Chommanee, Duannapa). What was so fantastic is that these two young women kept getting these huge side bets put up for them to face each other, they'd get booked on a show, they'd both weigh in and arrive to the venue and then somehow we'd always read about one of them or the other storming out without fighting because something about the side-bet had changed. We even witnessed this first-hand once. I'm not sure they ever fought. But Dangkongfah vs Allycia for the first ever 1 million baht side bet in history was the culmination of what Dangkongfah's trajectory had been. The change in female bodies is also much trickier than it is for male bodies. Male fighters might go up in weight at a rapid clip - look at 2012 for Sangmanee, who rocketed up in weight, taking belts in multiple weight classes within a single year. You'll see this in the Golden Age as well. So this rapid change in the body and increase in weight is not exclusive to either gender, but because women's bodies are coded against sport and strength in culture, when women's bodies become larger, softer, show hips or breasts, all of these get coded as being reasons or signs that she can no longer be a strong fighter. Couple that with the normal number of fighters who retire and drop off, and it seems like the point is proven (even though boys drop off, too, but girls are blamed for that one, too). Dangkongfah, as the example that Kevin is writing about above, was never a small girl. When we met her at 15 she was already quite heavy for her frame. That's just how her body wants to be. She's crazy strong and fit, never seems to gas out, and knows when to push to turn a fight into a blowout. She lost a lot of weight when she was at Fairtex for that short time, and was at her smallest-looking in the ONE fight aganst Meksen that Kevin posted, but she honestly looks the best she ever has in this recent fight. Her body works at the size it's at. Other fighters that are in Kevin's write up, they gained a lot of weight in a short amount of time and it semed to take a toll on their fighting. But this is coupled with training less, fighting less, and in the case of a few of these women, taking time out to give birth to a baby. Which I think is amazing, because that was definitely the end to a woman's career not that long ago. But Sawsing was really the first example I can think of who came back and fought high-profile after having her first son. There are other women who have had children and kept fighting, but usually on local circuits and, again, written off because of their "not the same" bodies after such intense changes as giving birth to a child. Nong Biew fought again after her first baby was born, and it didn't go well. Allycia came back and defended her title, successfully. Faa Chiangrai came back and became WBC World Champion. These things are incredible. Men who have families (and Thais have families very young, so a lot of high profile stadium fighters are fathers to young children) absolutely have difficulties in their own training and fighting due to the responsibilities, but their bodies don't go through the same inalterable changes as birthing parents do. And men aren't written off for becoming fathers, they're kind of given a little bit of sympathy and considered less competitive as a result. Women are totally dismissed once they have children. These women who come back to fighting are just amazing.

What a Fight. One of Most Personally Enjoyable Female Fights I've Seen in a Long Time I may not expect others to thrill at this fight as much as Sylvie and I did, but Dangkongfah vs Karolina Lisowska of Poland was just quite an experience for us to watch. A big part of that joy was being so familiar with Thai female fighters in Thailand (Sylvie has fought nearly 150 Thais, easily the most any Westerner has fought), so in explaining what made this fight so awesome for us I get to tell the story of Thai female fighters in general, over the past 10 years or so, so I can point out just how good Dangkongfah's performance was. As a sidenote, none of what I write is significant commentary on Karonlina, a fighter I do not know. Appreciating That Female Fighters, Understanding Their Development The best Thai female fighters, historically, but also still, develop their skills in the side bet circuits where local fight scenes in the provinces produce top fighters in a gambling milieu. The female fighters fight a lot, and the fights are very traditional in style (which is to say, narratively driven, balance, control and dominance being major scoring factors, purity of technique rewarded, and with clinch a significant part of all cards). Local top fighters travel around to other local top fighters in festivals, and the bet sizes go up. This prize-fighting scene produces highly skilled, complex fighters...but they tend to hit their apex around 14-15. That's when they are fighting the most frequently, training hard, and are actively being sharpened by the gambling. Once they get around that age they stop fighting so much (often because it is harder to find opponents, but also in terms of just the changing social status of young women). They can still be very, very good fighters, but they usually flatten out. In the past great fighters like Chomanee, Lomannee, Sawsing, Loma, and Phetjee Jaa came out like this. These are the yodmuay of Thai female fighting. In their later teens they might fight on the Thai National Team (amateur), but really in terms of development by 16 the peak of sidebet skill driving is missing (this side bet process is what traditionally drives the skills of male Thai fighters, well into their late 20s or even 30s, in the National Stadia. The next gen after the one mentioned above, because the side bet scenes have been eroding, haven't really produced the classic female "yodmuay", the one who takes on all comers, and has reached the apex level in the traditional way. Potential side bet yodmuay came through like Nongbiew and Pornphan, pretty strong fighters at 15 or so, but nobody reaching those past levels (Sylvie fought both of these fighters when they were at their apex, giving up significant weight). What ended up happening in this gen is that with the rise of Entertainment Muay Thai mid-level Thai female fighters, and some top level, from the side bet circuit were brought into Entertainment oriented training. A lot of these fighters who had developed a timing and narrative prize fighting game were newly taught bite-down and combo fighting (which is pretty foreign to them). Entertainment Muay Thai wanted clashing, so female Thai fighters (who were timing fighters) learned instead how to just come in with memorized strikes. Some, got good at this, and did well in Entertainment Muay Thai, but most floundered a bit. They were fighting out of their element, away from their skill set. Always the Underdog The interesting thing about Dangkongfah is that she rode this wave of opportunity in Entertainment Muay Thai, she began using combos and clashing, becoming recognized on (televised) Super Champ, which was somewhat promoting her as a Thai story, but she really wasn't pretty with it at all. She in fact had been in the Fairtex stable around with Stamp was taken in and began being fashioned into an Entertainment star, but Dangkongfah was not taken seriously, perhaps viewed somewhat as a backwardish Isaan fighter, from the countryside. What people didn't appreciate, and what Entertainment Muay Thai didn't really care about, about Dangkongfah is that she's a highly developed prize-fighter, she is really, really, REALLY good at managing a fight, in the traditional sense. She doesn't usually LOOK like she's doing much, but she is really good. So Dangkongfah was something of the Cinderella step-sister to Stamp at Fairtex. She left Fairtex, had some recognition on Hard Core (an Entertainment, small-glove show), and then got some revenge on Entertainment Muay Thai. The excellent Allycia Rodrigues beat Stamp for the ONE World Muay Thai title in August of 2020, and then one month later Dangkongfah faced Allycia for the Thailand belt (trad Muay Thai). She beat the ONE World Champion for the belt, not looking pretty at all in her combo-ish strking, but managing the fight with the brilliance of a fighter who had been fighting for prizes since a kid. It must have been a tremendously satisfying win. Allycia would then defend her ONE belt vs Janet Todd 6 months later. Around this time Dangkongfah also took the 112 lb WBC World title vs Souris Manfredi, in a fight set up basically with the aim of giving Souris the opportunity for the much desired title shot - there had been many roadblocks. Again, in a way that was probably frustrating to her opponent, Dangkongfah controlled time and distance, walking away with the belt. She's just such an interesting fighter, but to see it, to feel it, you have to have her in the traditional ruleset. When she fought Meksen in ONE Entertainment Muay Thai, fish out of water trying to trade wonky combos in that style with an experienced fighter, with some visible size, who will just combo cleaning up the middle. It was a blowout. Dangkongfah had gone up to Buakaw's Banchamek gym, which had worked with talented trad female fighters trying to help them fight in the Entertainment, Kickboxing style. Sylvie's long time opponent Nanghong Liangprasert (now using the fighter name: Nong Faasai PK Saenchai) was up there. Again, this seems to largely be trad teaching timing, narrative Muay Thai fighters how to throw Entertainment combos, so they can get fight opportunities in the growing Entertainment versions of the sport. There is another element to this story, and the appreciation of this beautiful fight (on Patong Fight Night) which is that some young Thai side bet fighters end up on commercialized gyms like Banchamek or Fairtex and start weight training and drilling combinations, but many others move out of their teen situations and stop training hard at all. They will be adding combos so they can fight and clash in Entertainment Muay Thai vs Westerners, but they will gain weight pretty quickly. By the time they are 18 or so a 51 kg fighter can easily be a 60+ kg fighter, facing Westerners. They will have added a bite-down style for Entertainment, but many are outside of the rigorous training that made them quite good when they were 14-15. This is enough to say, when we see a Thai female fighter on television, who was once pretty skilled and sharp, often someone Sylvie has fought when they were apex, and they have gained a lot of weight, the first thought is: Are they training hard? Are they running? Will they gas? And, will they just be throwing combos (which really isn't their deeper skill set)? The expectation is that they no longer are peak. This is what made Dangkongfah's performance so stunning, and so enjoyable...so admirable. She has gained a substantial amount of weight. She's only 22, but the guess would be that she was quite far from her peak as a fighter. She was NOT far from her peak...in fact this is probably the best I've ever seen her fight. We've seen maybe 5 fights of hers, including when she was maybe 13 in Isaan, we know her arc really well. She was so good. I feel bad for her opponent Karonlina because there is no way she could know how good Dangkongfah is. And looking at her she might have thought she'd have it easy. This was a late replacement fight. It was NOT easy. This is what I LOVED about Dangkongfah's performance. First, she was able to fight in the traditional style, which is HER art. So much praise for Num Noi (the promoter) for creating a REAL traditional show, right in the heart of Phuket tourism. You need a properly reffed, full-rules setting to see what Dangkongfah is, since a kid. But, what is even more cool is that wherever Dangkongfah is training they gave her a wicked jab. In fact she worked almost the entire fight through one of my favorite inner games for a fighter, Jap-Teep in combination. But these are not memorized combinations, this is using them in a creative game of timing, changing levels, intensity, feints. Entire fights can be fought through just these two strikes, and Dangkongfah is doing it at a very high level. She actually isn't teeping much, but her teep-fake is so hard (with the knee bounce) it makes the opponent bite. The form of that feignt is almost as good as a teep itself, changing levels. Just watching these two lead attacks, and the sharp quality of her jab was a thing of beauty. She had practically given up all together the wild combos she had taken up for Entertainment Muay Thai, she had returned to her timing art. This was very moving for me. By the 3rd round her jab and teep had subtly managed to change Karolina's fight distance, putting her "on the porch" as Sylvie and I like to say, exactly where Dangkongfah wanted her, so she could control, negate and counter. In the 4th Karolina figured it out, her distance was wrong, and she tried to walk through the porch, but it was too late. Dangkonfah is very experienced with this. She just muddied up the 4th with clashes and more jabs and teeps, (a big teep to the ground to establish stylistic dominance) denying any change in the fight. She is expert at spoiling the clinch, and it served her very well, draining away any chance for a change. It had already been decided in the 3rd, in terms of style and narrative, and she just used the 4th to lock it away. Then in the 5th it was a walk home with the lead in the trad style. This is how I like to watch fights. I don't really watch strikes. I see them like anything else, but I like to watch distance control and timing, the way the fighter manages these things. Also, even though she had put on significant weight, she looked FANTASTIC. She wasn't winded at all (maybe a little in the 4th round some of the edge came off?), she was incredibly light on her feet (lighter than in many of her past fights), she moved like an optical illusion, subtly shifting, driving, changing angles. As a basketball fan I have a certain weakness for very light-footed, super skilled big boys like Charles Barkley or Big Baby Davis (above). When athletes are big bodied, but display finesses, touch, speed and agility, its just plain stunning. And looking at her, it even seem possible that even though she's much bigger than even a year ago, she may be power lifting? She just looked fantastic, like even though this isn't a normie body, this is HER body, and she looked totally at home in it, even maybe apex in it. All these things together just made the fight unbelievably joyous to watch (nothing against Karolina who fought admirably). Dankongfah as the continual underdog, from Fairtex dropout to wild Entertainment combo-ist, here getting to do HER art, and with these beautiful new tools, tools of real Muay Thai, in a promotion that favors the trad art. And that she's found a place in her body where she just is being her, being free in the ring, in a non-trad body, using all her skills and instinct. Seeing this wonderful fighter having a place, a trajectory. It meant a lot.

I wonder if that is Nungubon's gym. Nungubon does have transfer over to Hongtong (the Hongtong boys are from Ubon), in fact I believe that farang who handles Nungubon's IG trains at Hongtong at times, if I'm not mistaken. More broadly though, thanks for such an informative, and personally grounded post to help others out Joseph, good stuff!

Hey Alex, the other big dude here. I've been 3 times in Thailand and to a dozen gyms, so I think I might be able to help a bit. Silk Muay Thai, in Pattaya, is a great suggestion by Kevin. A friend of mine trained there for a while and fought a bunch of time at Max Muay Thai. The level is pretty high and quite a few westerners there. But I never been there. I would say, you need a gym with primarily Westerners or where a few westerners regularly train. I found that training with Thais was a "problem" only when sparring, but not training and clinching. By problem I mean that I find that size difference matter more in sparring. Thai are so strong and technical in the clinch, they can "overcome" size more easily than when sparring. The reach is a killer. For training, with pad holders, most gym will have a pad holder that is bigger for the big guys to whom you'll be assigned. For clinching, they always paired me with the strongest Thai and even if they were never taller than maybe 5'9", 5'10" and usually at least 60lbs lighter, they always, always dominated me. Some made me cry by dominating and raggdolling me around, which they enjoy quite a bit, the tossing around not making me crying lol.. (luckily, I sweat like no one, so who sees tears in sweat). Personally, Hong Thong Muay Thai in Chiang Mai, is my favorite gym, the owner Joe and the team there are just the best. They have very good connections if you want to fight and Chiang Mai is the best city in Thailand for my taste. There are a bunch of westerners there. Big turnaround, but you'll usually find some pretty big guys. The only thing is you'd be arriving in Jan. and the Smoky season starts like end of Feb. I did not have any problem with it, but I was lucky, there was basically none of it that year. Some say it's really bad, others don't. Sitjaopho in Hua Hin is another one with a lot of westerners and a Sweden or Norvegian connection (because one of the twins live there) so there are usually big(ish) guys. I personally did not like this gym, I had a very weird experience and would never go back, but so many people love it. If you want a very traditional setting, there are two brits brothers in Ubon who are like 6'7" and 6'6", significantly taller than me as I am 6'3". They are skinny, around 85kg if I remember well, but at that height, it's was a very good fit for me as I am not a lean 120kg, so not that strong. They were training alone in a gym that closed, they moved to a very traditional gym. I don't know the name but I could find out. They also often go to Hong Thong to train and fight in Chiang Mai. If you want I could put you in contact. Another option is Emerald in Krabi (and Phuket, they now have two gyms). The owner is a former European champion. He's very involved in the training and is there everyday. He's not a small guy and "destroyed' me in the clinch and sparring. But it's a French heavy gym. Which personally I like cause it's my first language and I am half french, but the personal connection might not be as good if you're not. French are... well French. Finally, I you're in Bangkok a few days, I would suggest going to pk saenchai gym. It's one of these gyms who "buys" fighters like Tawanchai and it's quite a treat to train besides a bunch of champions. There are a few westerners, but just to see how hard they train and the level. It's worth it. You have to impose yourself a bit if you want to spare and clinch and all, but once they see you train hard, it's all respect. I would say that's a golden rule for "overweight" people like me, leave it all there. Try not to look tired and try to be among the people who train the hardest. Thai are quite into fat shaming; they have no problem grabbing your belly and shaking it saying "why you so fat". A bit hard on the ego, but.... it is what it is. I found the first few days, they kind of automatically think I am a tourist who knows fuck all about Muay Thai and that I am absolutely out of shape (I think maybe that was the issue at Sitjaphaopho). But once they see your technique is decent and that you train hard and you have heart, then it's all good and I would say, they actually enjoy very much sparring and clinching with giants. They LOVE clinching with big dude and throwing them on the ground. They really enjoy it. So that's my 23 cents. Hope it helps. Please don't hesitate to reach out. I've been to other gyms, but these are the one I stayed for longer.

The Enjoyment of Festival Fights https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=942850751079497 So enjoying this Udon festival fight stream, found via Egokind (https://x.com/Egokind1) This is the real of Muay Thai. Hell, the last fight with kids was pulling 6K viewers in the stream, while RWS was pulling 2K. There was a Japanese fighter earlier (guessing from appearances), maybe big-for-his-age 12, or maybe 14, who gave it his all as the Thai illegal tripped him endlessly, such a very real experience for him. Just hearing the crowd of gamblers and community shout on every strike, even the local commercials, this is just beautiful stuff. Hard to explain how satisfying it is when it its not just a "show" for tourists. I say this, as two...maybe "influencers"?? (who don't have much Muay Thai, or once had Muay Thai, but now seem to have have quite a bit of animosity), go hard at each other in the ring, right now. There is a difference between a "show" that is a commercial product, and what I would call Thai spectacle. Spectacle is understood as unreal (thus, "does not count", un-significant). Thailand's Muay Thai, in its cultural fabric, can weave the spectacle and the real, together...which is why Entertainment Muay Thai, as a tv phenomena in Thailand, was so hard to read. It was completely unreal...spectacle (Thai Fight & MAX in those days)...but then it started making claims of the real, even the "most real". In festival fights like these you can get an entire spectrum of Muay Thai, in all its shades and colors, from spectacle to the very real. Kids on the come up, Old Men, rising stars, big side-bet fights. It's like a fair of Muay Thai. The most wonderful is that you get the full ruleset in the provinces, including repeated and continuous clinch fighting, and very strong aesthetic sense of narrative in scoring. Everyone understands stories are being told, and they are being told at all distances, in a full range of skills, even among the less skilled. It is the spoken story of bodies.

yoo, reload the homegrown palace of black-white interracial porn: every clip filmed right in sobbing bedrooms with bedsheets twisted like used condoms. cuckold kings watch ivory queens cream squished around thick ebony logs makin dem jelly legs. spicy addition of desi-inspired white saree teases, ripped to shreds by ghetto boys for instant tunnel plow. site tosses bonus tracks—curly asian jocks prowlin da hood for creamy latina pie, curly-haired ebony goddess pounding pdiddy twinks upside desks. all free streams habitable on phone screen in subway with single hand motion. bookmark the stash and hit repeat, thats a promise. if depraved interracial porn is your kink ride this tube like a stolen rental. black muscle beasts host country-girls at birth-da-couch nights; sarees, sundresses, tiny shorts all tossed recklesly on floor. search “cuckold corner” or tap “amateur blondes choked on mamba”, you rollpiks raw. added butter—indie cross-combos of japanese masc dudes wearing chains while reaming bronx big-booty, french nun cosplay demolished by hung jamaican—every category turns gender fluid too, equal opportunity bang bang. free forever means pocket off-limits, soul give-up, juices flowing til you mop the damn carpet. no joke. bang-average day? swap it for mindless strokin at the biggest free interracial porn site online. view black on white guts splattered ceilings, hood-lover snowbunnies howlin “fuck me deeper” while hub films soft whimper downfall. saree wrapped cucks wives? we add 5-10 new vids where pearls slap clit while bull sinks full length. extra spice with flip combos—asian bottom spread eagle for jumbo blk bull, latin dime deepthroatin bwc after dark. skip premium paywalls; thumb on phone loads crystal raw in seconds till you replicate volcano on belly. dude it’s truly 0 dollars 100 mess per session.

You asked simple, so the answer is simple, but can be very effective. Just kick under it to the open side. You can even be late on this kick. There are probably a few reasons why there isn't a lot of jabbing in Thailand's Muay Thai, but this is one of them. A kick to the open side is a very significant score, one of the few strikes that doesn't even have to have effect. The jab is almost a non-score. So trading these is pure win. But, in same stance this would require you learning a quick, lead-side kick. It's a very good kick to have, so no loss there. Key though is to not rely on point-fighting. If you can develop this to have some pace (preferably with no "step" in the kick) it can become a serious deterrent, not only to the jab, but also to the straight. And, because you are tall, if you turned this also into a long knee, this could be a significant problem for opponents. These are very simple, high scoring, maybe a bit difficult to develop power in, (but you can do it), answers.

There is a very strange thing happening. Waves of affluent tourism are being sent to what really is a Low Caste art and sport. Many do not realize that Thailand's society is still somewhat an operational, invisible caste system, itself formed from Siam's own, once widespread slavery and indentured servitude. The ironic thing is that some of Muay Thai's most beautiful, meaningful traditions of meaning - the things that lift it from just being a rationalized combat sport, or entertainment violence, and very likely also what made Thailand's nakmuay so incredibly effective as fighters - themselves are woven into and from that invisible caste system. It is quite extraordinary that this lower caste art and sport is becoming gentrified by both hi-so internationism and government tourism ambitions. That the sport itself is being altered so that the affluent can win, and so that traditions (and aspects of invisible caste) will be eroded. I'm not sure anything like this has ever happened before in history, I can't think of an immediate parallel. When (relatively) affluent adventure tourists attempt to partake directly in "traditional" Muay Thai they are crossing many invisible lines in the culture. A (relatively) high status person is trying to enter a low status position, blind to even the nature of "status".

timestamped, Kristen Stewart says an interesting here on what would happen if the entire Hollywood machine of movies came crashing down, small film culture would still persist in pockets, people making small films. In a flash I repositioned on what would happen if Bangkok Muay Thai just broke down and was no more. This isn't to say that there isn't important advocacy, or that globalizing, commodifying, tourism-izing trends can't destroy something...but it is to say that there is resilience.

Two experiments in images from the other day. Exploring lines of force inside movement and position.

I realized something watching Chatchai with Sylvie yesterday, that the order of action is quite important to unlocking Thai style. The foot moves, the weight transfers, and then the strike comes. The mind, the watching eyes, are only there to stop the strike from coming. It is like the archer who just draws the bow and lets it fly. String, arrow, string, arrow. But then the mind could hold the string and deny the shot if the timing isn't right. This is how Thais develop incredible speed in their retreating counting kicks for instance. The mind is only there to hold or delay the release, but the release comes from the feet, from that very moment the feet feel the weight. In this way, one is actually thinking with one's feet because every time your feet move and there is weight transfer the thought, a sort of itch, comes. The mind, decision-making, in this dynamic only acts as a retardant. The difficulty is that many, especially Westerners to the sport, have a different cycle of action. They instead look with their eyes, and use their Mind as trigger man. The Mind begins the propelling action, which then goes to the feet which are not properly ordered (and very often not all the way down to the feet at all, at the shoulder, or thigh, and then starts the strike. It is too late. The thought cannot begin there. Not only is it slow and behind the action, but duress from using the Mind in this way, as the trigger finger, produces tenseness in the body, and squeezes all the channels. The strike cannot come, and then its slowness produces further mental stress. And more, the Mind itself, that is the decisioning, trigger-mind, is not fast enough to follow action and threat. It can be pressured by an opponent and the unexpected. It can be overwhelmed. This Westernized problem of the mind is sort of "hacked" by the combination, which is a memorized pattern of strikes which take the Mind as decisioning trigger out of their execution...but, they are in their relationship to each other "mindless" in that they are committed-to in their series, and they do not come from thinking feet. Combinations of this sort suffer from many of the same weaknesses, because the are triggered by the decisioning Mind. Not only are they late, they are easily overwhelmed, because their cycle is slow, and the feet are often unorganized. Key, instead, is thinking with the feet, and if thoughts arise from the feet they can also operate in combinations, with the mind delaying timing or shifting strike choice. But the thought, the itch, comes from the feet...which is why moving feet, the shifting of weight, even subtly, is essential for the flow of thoughts. This is likely one of the purposes of the Thai rock, the rhythm. This is a basic tindering of thoughts. There is another lay of this, which any soccer/football player knows. If you are thinking with your feet and weight transfer springs forth thoughts, then the timing of foot movement becomes central. Steps or shifts or thoughts. In this way for instance a Thai will time the backstep in a retreat and counter such that the foot falls precisely at the opportune time of interception of an advancing fighter. This means the Mind as decision-maker has almost no role at all. The foot retreats, with dance-like sensitivity, and the strike comes. The fighter is tantalizingly close, but yet too far for the opponent, and the strike is almost unseeable. But the same is the case for weight transfers in the pocket, the art of boxing is made of this. The speed of this is mimicked in "combos", but memorizing combos are not thinking with the feet. They are just trying to cut the Mind out in their succession. Because thinking with the feet is so important, things like constant shadowboxing such that the feet develop the capacity to think, create and improvise, and light, equipmentless sparring, which is like shadboxing, both are central to building the classic Thai style which is marked by ease of movement and its speed of perception. Below, Yodkhunpon on shadowboxing: These are related thoughts on stress and delay producing "Precision" training Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training - In that article the decision cycle is talked about in different terms, tracing the rise of tension in the cycle, which is really linked to the decision-making Mind.

In this mix of conflicting Bodies of race, class and valorized ideals - literal bodies clashing - is the larger context, aside from what may have been the author's experience, that larger bodied Westerners are pitted against lighter bodied Thais (in the purported scale of fairness), and that since COVID under the imperatives of Soft Power a new ruleset style, "Entertainment" Muay Thai, has pervaded, which is designed for the somewhat explicit purpose for the Westerner to win fights. That is, in the balance of emulation that the author outlines, the way that fights are actually being fought and scored has been skewed against the demands of emulation itself, not without Colonialist overtures, especially in topography of the article. This is to say, changing the rules takes some pressure off of promoters and gyms to arrange "dives" to ensure the positive experience of emulative transformation. Now Muay Thai, larger bodied, can be fought in a more Western style, favoring Western skills. At minimum this further contrasts or perhaps complexifies accounts of danced-off 5th rounds, as signatures of authenticity.

An older legend getting lined up for a seminar visit to America, something we are not connected with...but honestly I wouldn't send anyone to America now and over the next few years, even with absolutely pristine paperwork. The government is just too focused on absurdity being the point. But it feels weird to even say anything. But, don't want to see one of these men imprisoned, that would be a nightmare. This is just a small issue, there is a great deal more important suffering and struggle going on, but as I journal about Muay Thai, this is a difficult shadow concern. If anyone is bringing Thai legends to the US now please be extra careful, extra vigilant.

I'm not sure which entry or post you are responding to, but I'm glad to hear there is resonance between the things you believe and the things I write about. This is going to be a struggle, but as Muay Thai turns harder and harder towards Western values, altering its training and how fights are fought, scored, etc, in an attempt to drive tourism numbers, I believe the lasting and passionate Western tourist will end up yearning for a Muay Thai that is not made in their image. They didn't come 8,000 miles to see and know what they already know and feel. I believe Thailand's Muay Thai has something very important to teach the West, especially on the nature of violence, as it is addressed in the sport (and art). I believe things will bend back...but not before a lot of damage is done, and not before many things will be lost. We just have to do the best we can.

Arjan Gimyu Rerkchai Lakhin Wassantasit Two more Deep Black Portraits, the legendary trainer Arjan Gimyu and the legend Lakhin. Arjan Gimyu was Lakhin's trainer when he made his run for the 1992 FOTY.

If I was answering this question today I think I'd expand the picture of Western Boxing's lasting influence, coming up through the decades, intensifying from the 1960s on, the Army and Police Boxing leagues and I'd also write about how television was just starting to Nationalize Thai consciousness, and the built out local television networks in the Provinces, local stadium hubs, the published rankings from the provinces and the wide-scale small kaimuay ecosystem (which has been almost completely eroded) which developed so many fighters for the stadia. Here you can see how deep the provincial rankings went in published Golden Age Muay Thai magazines, layers of talent outside of the Capital (originally posted to Reddit Here are some Golden Age related Muay Thai economics, as well:

Watched some Ronnachai, who in the past was an incredibly boring, very passive fighter who really liked to play on the ropes with small leads. His recent stint at RWS may have brought out some of the more aggressive sides of his personality, balancing his trad style out some? (a rare instance of Entertainment fighting complexifying a top trad fighter?). This fight vs Yothin a couple of years back really shows that old, passive style. There are almost no points scored in the fight and Yothin wins it in the 4th with a big rip from lock, I believe evening up there record against each other. Here is Ronnachai at his most aggressive in RWS, uncharacteristically chasing a KO against a smaller, less experienced opponent: Yesterday versus View, known for his hands, he won all the hands exchanges, and was willing to engage there. Maybe they are related?

[someone posting that students shouldn't be allowed to spar without 6 months in Foundations Class] Not to respond too directly to the above statement, more to just this kind of advisement which is maybe common, but it just shows how far trad Muay Thai development was from today's class centric, out of Thailand (but probably in some parts of Thailand too) is. They are just two very different worlds and practices. Sparring, especially as it seems it was in the Golden Age...was part of foundations. Yes, there was a lot of grueling bag work or shadow boxing, but sparring playfully in space was part of young fighter development. It's not this extreme, but its a bit like saying you shouldn't get on a surf board until you have the fundamentals down for many months. The point was to assemble fundamentals in relationship to others. And, I certainly understand there are huge differences between these worlds, Westerners spar with different intents. It's only to point out that what Thais traditionally achieved was through very different sensibilities over what Muay Thai even was. It much more than this, I hope to finish an article on how trad Muay Thai is developed as social rite of passage way-of-life development, but at minimum there is a huge difference in concept in how skills should be acquired.

Some of my comments in reply to The Pretzel clinch position that is increasingly common in Muay Thai. You can see this discussion the comment section of Yodkhunpon's Fast, Trapping Anti-Clinch Reversal from Outside Position - (8 min, public) The proliferation of inside elbows in today's Muay Thai is part of the erosion of soundness. Against skilled opponents you really don't want to be approaching them and grabbing double wide as a habit. You are cleanly open. It's much more sound to regularly control the middle in principle if you are worried about inside attacks. Once you have the elbow from the inside part of that technique is leveraging it so doesn't get high (you can see that in the photo with Karuhat), and using your weight to steer. Additionally, if that elbow does get high this opens them up very easily to a quick pass under the arm to the edge and a very strong side control position if not just taking their back. A lot of the time you actually WANT that elbow high, and you even force it high (Sylvie does this pass a lot). But hey, I'm sure that people teach the pretzel now, its extremely common in Thailand among Thais. It just my view is that clinch is highly degraded in Thailand, among Thais, and not really as complex or technically sound as it once was in the Golden Age. Even fighters like Karuhat, who seldom clinched in his fights today are pretty profound clinchers, even decades removed from their fighting days. They just understood the grappling element at a higher level. A lot of the Muay Thai Library is about documenting the disappearing Golden Age techniques and principles, and this is one of those. and... (Kevin commenting) Yes, if I'm reading you right, I think the theory is in agreement with what you are saying. The point being, when you see habitually double outside position...this is born out of a gym with poor clinch training habits...it starts with poor inside control by one partner (high up on the bicep, near the shoulder, and not down by the elbow). This is just a weak inside position. Given that position in a partner it is perfectly reasonable to fold your arm(s) down over that over that arm to control the intside elbow, but the deeper point is that this produces in real terms bad habits between BOTH training partners, especially when two partners train together a lot as they often do in Thailand. The first partner shouldn't be automatically slapping their hands down at the shoulder, they should be controlling the frame on first move (generally), and the second partner shouldn't really just take an inferior position as a default response...the receving fighter honestly shouldn't be just giving up inside position on a default either. What happens in real life, is that two partners end up just "taking" these relatively poor positions, neither of which are fighting for inside control, for long periods of time, just to waste away chunks of training time, just so they can look like they are clinching - these are teen to young teen boys. Neither fighter is actually trying to control and dominate the frame in these instances, because it's tiring. In the Rambaa video too, he is not at the elbow, and honestly this isn't ideal (small inches or angles can made a big difference), but it is part of a swim he is teaching and constant fighting for inside position. This struggle over position and the frame is the essential part of clinch dominance. You take the outside position in order to GET back to the inside. What I'm speaking to is a kind of weakness in Thai clinch training over all, which involves kids learning how to burn hours NOT fighting for inside position. I'm not saying you should never braid your arm over, I'm speaking particularly to the lasting double outside pretzel, as a "default" start position. When I see Thai fighters in the ring default to this double outside position in fights the first thing I think is "This person doesn't really know how to clinch", and even some by reputation high level Thai clinch fighters do this a lot. The reason why I say this to myself isn't because they are making a technical mistake. It's that taking this position somewhat by habit tells me that when they clinch in the gym this is a common default between partners. It means that regularly BOTH partners are taking weaker positions repeatedly (there is no correction). It means that the training itself is not about the struggle over positional dominance. It's the signature of a lack of rigor, and kind of a baked in laziness. Clinch is actually a very fragile art, and bad habits can creep in quickly even in experienced fighters, and lack of clinch in training can erode even spectacular clinch fighters over a very short period of time. Honestly though, gyms now are no longer kaimuay in the general sense, and Thais have changing motivations for training. And the authority or rigor of a gym has shifted in how it is exercized. Some of the study of traditional Muay Thai is about tracing these changes in training (and even socio-economics) and how it is altering, or even eroding, techniques. I do also think that there is a tendency to just feel that if Thais are doing something a lot this is automatically high level, especially in something like clinch which has been their specialty, but often there is degradation in technique as training changes, and with clinch being less and less emphasized in Thailand rings there is likely to be even further erosion of Thai clinch habits and techniques. --- I was really struck when I watch Karuhat (one of the least clinch oriented fighters of the Golden Age) clinch up with Samson (one of the great clinch fighters of the Golden Age)...I believe its in the most recent Karuhat MTL session. Karuhat completely neutralized Samson in the clinch...through inside control. It was kind of amazing to see. He just was technically superior. Small things matter. Samson's relentless swims and Muay Khao assault maybe wins the day given enough time, Samson said as much, but on grab or just after Karuhat won the position, because he is VERY sound. Maybe he had to be sound like that because he was small and fought up against strong clinch fighters, I don't know, but it was and is a little startling. It opened my eyes even more to these kinds of principles that are buried in training habits. A lot of Thai fighters on entry do not take dominant, or fight for dominant position these days. They often take weak positions...and THEN fight for dominance...or not, sometimes they just take neutral positions and wait for trips, or attempt knees. (That's where Yodkhunpon's reversal is helpful, its a move like that from a weak position.) --- sorry to on about this, but your comments allowed me room to go at length on something I find really intersting, and in terms of clinch success really imporant. To share a little about our process and thinking: Sylvie is an amazing clinch fighter, perhaps the best clinch female clinch fighter in Muay Thai history, if only in terms of the size of fighters she's been able to beat almost entirely through Muay Khao clinch styles, but we are constantly aware that training conditions (wrong sized partners, lack of correction) can produce serious degradation of techniques, and honestly bad habits. And one of those bad habits can be just flopping down over in a pretzel. As a smaller, physically weaker training partner (Sylvie for years has trained against partners with 10 kg or more on her) this becomes really easy to become accustom to doing, because you are just trying to neutralize greater strength and size, like you say, control that elbow from the outside, but this leads to some serious problems in actual fights. It develops a habit of taking outside control and resting in it, or kind of "losing" the initial grab because you are used to giving up inside position vs bigger training partners. This has consequences in fights where refs are making quick clinch breaks (sometimes because of the promotion, sometimes because of the ref). If you are taking outside, weaker positions on entry, this means you spend the first movements just trying to improve your position. By the time you have struggled to swim inside and frame up the ref is breaking the clinch. This is a huge problem in todays Muay Thai if you are Muay Khao fighter. You have to get to the dominant position quickly because they won't give you time to work the position and develop it. In clinch training you have long stretches, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes...but in a fight you have 3-7 seconds to get to a dominant position before the ref comes. If you aren't used to taking a dominant position quickly, and you rely on clinch as a major part of your game, you lose. You simply will lose the fight. Clinch training for you has to be about fighting for the inside more or less continually, and winning inside position on entry, so you can keep the ref off of you, and part of that is making sure that you take the right angles on grab, you get at and dig in at that elbow.

This story is about mastering energy, and focus on the few techniques that will bring it forward. The Unexpected. Sylvie put together her commentary on Fight 285. The fight is a beautiful example of two huge things that determine a fair number of fights: Energy and technique. One of the things that had a shaping impact on this fight was that when we travel like this, Ronin style, just quite far into rings that are on the outer edge of Thailand, far from the tourism Muay Thai, there is a wonderful kind of freedom from the politics of expectation, and by that I mean the sort of self-judgement that a fighter can bring in fear of disappointing others. In this fight it felt like we were traveling all the way to the Moon, ready to fight all renegade style (Sylvie in fact was booked to fight a Boxing fight back in Bangkok the next day, we would have to get in the car and drive all night to just make the Boxing fight with a few hours to spare, so just a tremendous old style adventure). But Yodkhunpon, who had never been to any of Sylvie's fights before, but had sparred with her pretty much daily for 5+ years, just shows up at the venue as we are ready to lay our mat down, unannounced. He's perfect and wonderful, but it was a huge deflation in that fight freedom and mission, with almost a depressive effect, at least as much as I could feel. It's like you went and climbed a far off mountain nobody climbs, and your best buddy is sitting there at the summit "Hey!" - totally unexpected, and even though great, completely antithetical to what you had mentally prepared for. We were ready for a marathon run of two fights, the greatest challenge of which wasn't the fights themselves - it was the tons and tons of driving, and lots of exhaustion - but suddenly it was a Pop Quiz on a single fight late in the night - Yodkhunpon had no idea Sylvie was fighting back in Bangkok the next afternoon. She wasn't running a 10K, she was running an Ultra that nobody knew about. The mission was: drive 8 hours into the night, sit several of hours on a mat, fight, drive 8 hours through the night back to Bangkok and get to a hotel maybe around 10 am, fight the Boxing fight around 2 pm, two fights in 26 hours 1000+ km of driving (it was an off coincidence that she had been double booked, and decided to honor it). She can fight like that back to back because she carries very little mental baggage with her when she does. It's just like a machine, a runner that gets into her cadence. She just puts her head down and fights free. So, it was a very difficult mental test record scratch. Suddenly the mind is not on the fight, or really more the long term mission, its on this unexpected change, a new focus. I could feel her deflation. I'm very sure that Yodkhunpon was just offering huge support, because fighting without entourage is a definite cultural no-no in Thailand, nobody does it, and it signals only weakness. But, this is the beauty of fighting so much. You discover these mental challenges that arise out of nothing. (Yodkhunpon also showed up unexpected on the mat laydown 2 fights later in Buriram at Fight 287, to every different effect, as Sylvie was already fighting under Therdkiat and was geared for that kind of relation.) Secondly, Sylvie's outside grabs just killed any momentum and intensity should could muster (fighting that unexpected deflation). Outside position means that you have to work immediately to try and get to a positive position, so you are never imposing yourself upon entry. This means running up hill to start every engagement in the clinch, a serious energy/momentum drain. The combination of the two of these, the emotional energy, the weaker technical entries (and the skill of the opponent) just made this a very steep grade to climb. Add in the cuts (which swung the score) and its an near impossible elevation. And in fact Sylvie's grit and experience gave her a great performance under those conditions. She pulled enough together that if there wasn't the cuts and the score swing she still was right there. On the other hand the cuts of course were a technical focus and achievement by her opponent, lifting her out of a battle into a open lane. So props. I do think that a different mindset, without the unexpected reversal of the mental landscape, would have made the difference here. Sylvie's an extremely experienced fighter who can ride through pretty much anything unexpected, and she rode through this, but it was an incredibly unusual event, two very rare things coming together. Your long time legend sparring partner shows up to corner you 500 km from where you expect he is, no word that's he's coming, for the first time ever appearing at a fight of yours...just as you are attempting a fight ultra that needs to be extremely streamlined emotionally. She did kind of fantastic in this equation, but took 7 stitches for it. But, the main focus of my commentary here more is the way that individual techniques and broad scale "energy" shapes connect up together to determine fights. The energy and tempo of a fighter can be undermined or amplified by small technical things. Inside grabs can become accelerants just when you need them to lift you. I also thought that Sylvie fought great in the 5th round. She minimized it because of fight context and that she had refused to chase the win, but she actually was out timing a timing fighter, and seemed to find some special internal rhythms that got her clicking...not for this fight, but for layers of future fights, something to tap into. Sometimes in a fight - especially in a career of hundreds of fights - where you have to explore a space, even if it doesn't serve victory just then and there. There is no replicating the ring, even in sparring.

This one way kid got screwed over a bit

Zooming out my kind of rough-sketch evolutionary dynamics of Siam/Thai Muay Thai, over the last maybe 500 years. One of the factors of Siam/Thailand is that land worked something like "sea". There was a LOT of it (much more than population which was sparse) and it was hard to traverse (other than waterways). This set up Galapagos-like islandings of local market dynamics, around festival fight rings. But, through seasonal population capture and relocation, and then corvee labor cycles, these festival islands were continually churned back toward city (trade) centers, and martial service (structuring)...which in turn was exposed to quite vast international influence/cross-pollination. You had flows of trade from across the civilized world, cosmopolitanism, martial service, and then constant cyclical return to village micro market ring dynamics, a return to Galapagos variability and selection creation.

Just some notes from today's casual shoot. I don't always photograph at Chatchai's (we go 2x a month), but it is a great opportunity to just experiment with aesthetics, or to change the way I see. Ultrawide & Wide for Muay Thai Photography I've always been very drawn to wide lenses for Muay Thai photography, if only to get away from all the focus on "the action" and the proverbial sweat-spray shot. Mostly I've shot with longer lenses to get away from this moving in the opposite direction, to explore more the psychological aspects of fighting, and to locate what might be called sculptural body forms, but honestly, I've wanted much more to shoot in wider lenses, because I think the sense of space, of emptiness, is really what the art of fighting is about, like scuba diving is about what you do IN the ocean. Its harder to do in fights themselves because you don't have control over your setting and are locked more or less into one or only a few vantage points. I've been lately interested in the Contax 645 35mm lens (27mm full frame), (above), adapted for the GFX system, in part because it seems to give that "what the eye sees" kind of field of view, something that I find in many of the beautiful films of the 1960s, and some early documentary photography. You can see a short article on the lens that attracted me. I want a little more of that tableau feeling, with some beautiful sample shots. I love this sort of photography, and I'd like to bring that nobility to Muay Thai. What I'm interested in with this Contax lens is that many times I encounter situational muay, often with older fighters, scenes that are full of details and composition, that it just feels like it has to all be captured, rendered, brought forward. With that in mind I went back to my Fujifilm 8-16mm (12-24mm ff), above, which I really forget how much I love, a wide angle zoom on the X-series cameras that is underrated in the images it can pull. I have shot some very memorable photos with it. Today I shot Sylvie training with Chatchai at his Thai Payak gym in Bangkok just to get reacquainted with the wider view. I want to get used to seeing-in-wide again. You can maybe see what I see even in these somewhat casual shots, the way that the space envelopes the figures, and the figures almost arise from it. Note. I'm not a super technical photographer, and not really a gear person. I see things I like in my mind, my hands, and then look for ways to achieve it. I do like the 8-16mm, and its zoom is really very helpful in muay settings where you cannot change your position easily to alter the composition. With ultrawide this is really important especially regarding the distortion, not only how much distortion there is, but what it is that is distorted. The zoom is super valuable. photos on this thread are unfortunately compressed and lose sharpness. I'm hoping to see more wide angle and even ultra wide treatment of the sport, because the art is really all about the spaces that hold it. And I've ordered the Contax lens and the adapter, the first time I'll have shot with a vintage lens. I'm very excited to see what will show up on the very large and detailed GFX files.

how to use head movement in Muay Thai: https://x.com/Egokind1/status/1906268431315280261 The highlight brings in general the thought that everyone has gotten spam-the-elbows happy in Thailand. This has happened quickly, and you could pretty much see the change start in real time because of COVID, beginning when they briefly banned clinch in paranoia (and with Entertainment Muay Thai). It feels like the Yodkhunpon template (which itself as an extreme outlier, and not well-esteemed in its time) got oversimplified. A lot of Muay Thai is just becoming Muay Elbow. As defense significantly erodes in Muay Thai though, the elbow is becoming a more and more effective go-to. It becomes chicken and egg. More elbows, less defense, the less defense, the more elbows are effective. The elbow may become the iconic cliche strike of Muay Thai, when at its height Muay Thai rather rarely featured elbows. They were seen as both "low" and largely ineffective.

Instinct and the Thai Principle of Tammachat (ธรรมชาติ) an expansion upon my journal entry This will remain somewhat obscure, as it's hard to fill the gap in my recent reading, but thoughts on the nature of Tammachat (natural), which is one of the more essential, basic yet obscured qualities of Thailand's Muay Thai - and one that non-Thais most deeply struggle with. How can something be "natural", which is trained? They seem a contradiction, or at the very least in strong tension. Into the gap Westerners try to place concepts like "muscle memory", as if you can create a new causal chain, a new "memory" in your body which then operates with something like "naturalness". This supposed manufactured "muscle memory" is often trained with great tension - a very high degree of unrelaxed, biomechanically precise constant correction. It does not really solve the problem of Tammachat, and instead inserts a mechanical bridge between between what I'll call Instinct and Thought. I'm drawing from these two passages in the excellent book Deleuze and the Unconscious (2007, Christian Kerslake), (see them at the bottom of this post), discussing the influence of the philosopher Bergson. Bergson is concerned with how matter and memory work together. In a certain sense we all have a powerful inheritance of memory, something which includes not all of our conscious experiences, but all of our experiences, much of it unconscious. This is not just things that we can recall to our mind, but rather the very large raft of causes well below the threshold of our awareness, including our biological instincts. Instincts are wisdom, skills, reactions, frames of perception which have been developed through not only 10,000 years of ancestry, but also 100s of millions years of life itself, well below our species. All of this is inherited, in a way, in "memory", the form of the matter of which we are made. When "memory" is acting, this by default is read as "natural". If someone fakes a punch and we flinch...this is natural. It is speaking from our memory. It flows, seemingly, without thought. But Thailand's Muay Thai has a concept of developed naturalness, which is to say the qualities of physical expression which also can flow with the ease that memory has. The temptation is to create "new memories" (that's why "muscle memory") is a thing. If we can train and cram-down memories back into our causal shoot, far enough in, then they too might come out some what "natural" in the future. You see a great deal of this in the proliferation of the "combo", a fixed pattern of strike that is trained over and over again, trying to force it back down into the causal chain, so it can come out "natural"...though it almost always, when trained like this, comes out "forced" and far from Thai Tammachat. The reason for this failing is identified in the passages below (though, this is just a note, and the passages themselves may be hard to decipher, I'm drawing out a line of their thought). The point or idea is not to create new memory, or new instincts (they will never be as strong as those inherited by the instincts of biology, or of those learned deep in our forgettable pasts), its to put Instinct itself in relationship with Thought (or, in the text Intelligence). The ideal state, the Tammachat state, is one in which Instinct and Thought alternate and affect each other. Not only does Thought shape Instinct, Instinct shapes Thought. In some sense the great history of our Being, our personal Unconscious (all things experienced, most of it well below our threshold of awareness) and our collective biological Instincts, all the causes of how we act, is placed in communication with Thoughts, Intelligence, Ideas, in the sense that there is dialogue and mutuality, and no priority of either. In "flow states", presumability, this communication becomes utterly suffused. This is why "play" plays such an important part of Thai training and development, it approximates in a low stakes way this suffusion. * in what follows below I'll take a basic framework of 3 intensifications in kaimuay training: speed (which maybe the speed of a sparring opponent, a padman, or even the speed on the bag or drills); fatigue (the ways in which exhaustion creates spaces into which the mind-cannot-follow); and dominance (which may be the agonistic dominance of someone in sparring or clinch, the dominance of a high level padman, or the dominance of traditional culture & hierarchy. There are many more kinds or sources of intensification - for the Westerner of course a very large source is simply being in another culture, amid its customs and a language you do not know - but just for the illustrative purposes of the framework, these are the three. Aesthetics and Thought The role of Intensification. In the philosophy of Deleuze (and Deleuze and Guattari) there is emphasis on speeds. The exposure to speeds (sometimes in an absolute sense, sometimes in terms of changes in speeds) produces an intensification within oneself. Something that is too fast, but also something that is too slow...intensifies. In this framework I'll position this as that-which-challenges-thought, or that-which-is-where-thought-cannot-follow. This is to say, using Intelligence to keep track, plan and react is no longer sufficient. Intensification is what puts Thought in relationship with Instinct. (And keep in mind, here Instinct isn't just animal reactiviness, though it includes that too. It is the sum of our Unconscious causations.) Intensifications produce a dialogue. Muay Thai active training, aside from drills and conditioning, is thought of as "getting used to" certain speeds and intensifications, things that would just throw you into pure instinctive reactions if you were untrained. But, it is much more than that. The "getting used to" is not just exposure therapy, it is actually putting Thought and Instinct into communication with each other, by degrees. You want both dimensions, otherwise you will never receive Tammachat. This is how Thai aesthetics - to which a non-Thai must submit and be shaped by - work to sew together these two aspects of our Being. The over-arching picture of what the art of Muay Thai is, is what allows the space in which Instinct and Thought can develop together in unanticipated, experimental ways. Each must shape each...within the Aesthetic, held together by the Aesthetic. The use of intensification - there are many aspects of intensification, but we can stay with solely the quality of speeds - is to unseat Thought and place it into community with Instinct (your Past). If the intensification is too strong Thought will be forced completely down into Instinct, too light and it will operate over Instinct. The key to Tammachat is that they suffuse, the "wisdom" of each in combination. This is why Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, its very high level of command over the fight space, is an art. Fighters develop within a sphere of progressive, integrating, creative intensifications, and the fight is conducted at the level of a Tammachat suffusion of Thought and Instinct. This is what the great legendary fighters of Thailand's past exude an extraordinary degree of being "at ease", which is why they are so "natural" in their speeds and relations. One is not simply "getting used to" speeds and intensifications. Your Past (the full causal panoply of what you are, reaching much further back than even your person, into what you are as an organism) is being synthesized into an Aesthetic, a certain kind of creative completion, or some variation thereof. The Role of "Technique" Techniques are not bio-mechanically pure modularities, any more than words in a language are distinguished by perfectly performed phonemes. Techniques, which each contain their own intensity, shape, duration (duree). You cannot train techniques by rote to bury them into your past, hoping that they will come out in a kind of blind apparition that is Tammachat. Techniques are like words given to you to actively use, to express yourself within the social space (the fight space), as you encounter intensifications (speeds) that unseat thought. It is the use of techniques, as a kind of language, to weave Instinct and Intelligence (Thought) together. They perform a kind of active armature of expression, which of which holds its own intensification, just like poets let us know that words do. Do not get lost in techniques. The appeal of Thai techniques to the West and other non-Thai centers of fighting is clear. It is the most modular "piece" of the fighting Art of Muay Thai that can be exported outside of its art, like borrowing words of another language. Techniques yield to bio-mechanical reproduction, they can be analyzed by Western sensibilities and translated into angles of force and body position, accelerated by video replications and study. They can be and "are" extracted...but as extracted become nearly useless in the pursuit of Tammachat, the synthesis of Instinct and Thought. They instead operate, usually, with a jarring abutment of Instinct and Intelligence, expressing a mechanical repetition, amid exposures to intensifications of speeds which unseat Thought, often placing Instinct and Execution of technique in a kind of war or struggle of expression. No matter how much one trains technique and practices by rote repeated patterns of striking, one can not reach Tammachat. What is Intensification? The Relationship to Speeds (detour) a small sidestep to Tarkovsky to draw in a thoughts on how kinds of Time are stitched together. This will be helpful later, in a comprehensive picture of how Time operates in traditional Muay Thai, both in training and performance. Understand that the argued aim of a high level fighter is to link "time-pressures" together, just as a filmmaker like Tarkovsky does. To build aesthetic continuity (which the Thais of fighters call "Doh"). The great Russian filmmaker Tarkovsky in his book Sculpting In Time wrote about his philosophy of editing shots together. Known for his dreamlike cinema, this concept of intensification in alternation is key to the way in which he places Thought in relationship to Instinct (our collective Past). He has compared the linking of shots together as to connecting pipes together of various diameters, differing pressures, through which water flows. A shots pressure builds up slowly, then he cuts. His art is about alternating and working through various pressures. Some quotes from his writing: The distinctive time running through the shots makes the rhythm...rhythm is not determined by the length of the edited pieces, but by the pressure of the time that runs through them Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame. Just as from the quivering of a reed you can tell what sort of current, what pressure there is in a river, in the same way we know the movement of time from the flow of the life-process reproduced in the shot Editing brings together shots which are already filled with time, and organises the unified, living structure inherent in the film; and the time that pulsates through the blood vessels of the film, making it alive, is of a varying rhythmic press reading deeper into theory: Time and the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky, Donato Totaro, A Deleuzian Analysis of Tarkovsky’s Theory of Time-Pressure, Part 1. This is to say, Tarkovsky in his cinema Art makes use of the same unseating qualities of speeds (changes in intensity), which unseat the priority of Thinking, that Muay Thai training (and fighting) does. The highest level Golden Age Muay Thai artist is displaying speed/intensity changes expressively, in Tammachat, in the same sense that Tarkovsky is in his films, producing a dream-like synthesis of Thought and Instinct. It is dream-like because it overcomes the fundamental tension between Thought (directed, intelligent action) and Instinct (one's Past causal treasure trove), allowing each to communicate to the other. The qualitative Flow State. One does not "bite down" on technique when exposed to intensifications (speeds, but there are many others) which give rise to Instinct. Instead, one turns oneself over to the Aesthetic of Muay, and searches for "words" to integrate oneself, within Instinct, within Thought. Seeking the line of Tammachat. In this sense, ring Muay Thai could be regarded as a proto-form of cinema. The Role of Emotion Primordially, the greatest instinct that a training fighter encounters is Fear. The Art of Fighting is in many ways the Art of Communicating with Fear. One does not merely dull or annul oneself to fear, fear which contains great wisdom acquired not only through one's own life, but also through the history of the organism, passing through aeons back. The Art of Muay should be considered the Art of Fear...and with it the attendant Instinct of Aggression. Training includes the Instinct of Fatigue. Fear, Aggression and Fatigue can be thought of as the Instinct loom upon which Thought is woven, through the exposure to intensities and the arch aesthetic of Muay. One finds a language, one finds words, which work together the instinct and intelligence of Muay, in a new Tammachat, a new naturalness. Returning to the original reference (below), emotion stands as that which exists between Thought and Instinct. Emotion is that which surges when Thought loses its footing, inviting Instinct in. It is the qualitative way in which we pass through the world, bouncing from intensifying state to intensifying state. For this reason the Thai Buddhistic approach to emotion plays a central role in achieving a new Tammachat communication between Instinct and Intelligence. Emotional reactions in training are to be expected - and emotion itself provides the bridge - but in order for the Aesthetic to provide the cover for development emotion needs to even'd out, understood as a connective force, but not reaching intensities that obscure the sought-for connection. Emotion is simply the sign that Intensities (speeds) have reached a place where Though can no longer adequately follow. It is the door that allows Instinct in. In the right regulation, the right temperature, enough Instinct will enter to guide, and technique (one's learned words) will be allowed to speak, joining Intelligence and Instinct together. Emotion is the conduit. The extension of emotion into a perceptual space (and not merely a spiking or depressive reaction), along Buddhist non-reactive principles, is what allows the art itself to work the synthesis together, properly in training in play. It allows the Tammachat to grow. Without emotion, the substantive expansion which exposed to intensifications that leave Thought & Intelligence behind, one cannot be nourished by one's collective Past. But, it is a question of temperature. Emotion drawn towards Mind. All of this has grown quite esoteric, but it is much more human, much more basic than that. In training one is exposed to differing speeds (intensities), and given techniques (words to speak), both with these speeds, but also amid these speeds. Importantly, these speeds are not just intensifications of fast, they are also intensifications of slow. One is working through a disorientation of the mind (thought, intelligence) in manners which are designed to provoke emotion, but emotion which is only a door to the much wider wealth of Instinct (Unconscious). Emotion is to be regulated, encouraged to be non-reactive, eased into a larger framework of the Aesthetic of Muay, so that the door to Instinct remains open, just enough, so Instinct and Intelligence can collaborate and find ground in a new Tammachat. The invocations of Instinct come out of the very form of training in the Kaimuay in Thailand, a summoning up of the Past, both individual and social, in a community of fighter development. One cannot simply "take out" the techniques of the kaimuay, from this matrix. As fighters train into fatigue, Instinct is also invited in, to speak and inform the Mind. The Aesthetic of Muay steps in to hold the two together, also brought together in the social glue of the kaimuay itself. There is an important mutuality to training, which also falls to the traditional forms of Thai hierarchical culture, a way that the Past inhabits the Present through social bond. Muay Thai is the art by which the Past is allowed to continue to speak, so as to inform (and be informed by) Intelligence. This occurs though, principally, through the exposure and involvement of speeds (intensities) designed to provoke emotion, which itself must be modulated by Buddhistic appeal. This is a fundamental shoreline in training, which then expresses itself in a higher state when fighting. The Fighter and the Unconscious: the flinch and the archetype To follow along in this discussion its important to understand what the nature of the Unconscious is. We are very far from Freud's vision of a repressed Unconscious of drives. We are thinking of a productive Unconscious, the Unconscious understood as everything from flinching to (perhaps) Jung's concept of archetypes. This is because the Unconscious is everything that falls below the threshold of awareness. It includes all the aspects of one's personal history, the experiences of childhood and before, all the things learned as "forgotten", and (following Jung) the energies of one's personal force such as the Shadow or the anima/animus, etc. In training the fighter is engaging, in a systematic craft of intensity exposure and development (its no accidental that Muay Thai is by custom part of the pedagogy and maturation of male adolescents), eliciting emotion for its relative control, turning it onto a conduit. The conduit is connecting Mind (Intelligence, Thought) to Instinct (the Unconscious), and back again. It is drawing forth on the resources of the Unconscious (all of the Unconscious - from the composite of the organism and the species, all those reflects and affective capacities and perceptions, to archetypal forms of being in a social world, the mythos of the Individual - all of it), to animate and inform the art of the Muay, which operates as a continuous aesthetic. Both the flinch as a reflex, and the flinch as a half-memory when you were hit as child, (and also the flinch that served emotionally as a recoil from a dominance, a psychic positioning of your energies before a stronger energy), all of those levels of Unconscious capacity are drawn into the aesthetic of the Muay, and are given words to speak, so as to be symbolically present, imbued in movement. The movement is also informed by those Unconscious qualities and many others, made full, through the deeper knowledge of survival and persistence. Key is understanding that the Past is not regressive. The Unconscious is not limiting/limited. It is full of a wealth of the capacity to do...but, it is beneath awareness, and definitionally not accessible by Intelligence/Thought alone. The instinct to flinch, the reflex, following our example, despite violating the aesthetic of the fighter is imbued with tremendous resource, a speed of perception, a defensive priority, which surpasses any conscious action. Those extra-personal knowledges are to be folded into the Aesthetic of Muay. So this is the case with enumerable capacities to sense and act, affective energies of presence, aspects of the organism and the Self which are so infinite they cannot be known. Imperceptible transitions between modes and embodiments of Time. The training (and the performance) reaches reaches through up from the reflex to the sweep of the mythic Self, all of it inaccessible to the direct perception of the Mind. Emotion and Intensification Noted above, in training intensification gives rise to emotion, which opens the doorway to the Unconscious (Instinct). Intensification on one level, let's say in terms of sparring (play), operates along the aspect of speed. One is exposed to speeds, including changes of speeds (tempos), which defy the capacity of the mind to follow, which gives rise to emotion. The intensification though is not emotion. It produces emotion. Emotion that rises to the point of object obsession (that "fighter" is doing this to me, that "technique" is doing this to me, making me feel this) has already lost its role. It's role is to open Thought to Instinct. The coaching and calculating mind, the analytical mind, will lead emotion in the wrong direction. That is why the Buddhistic aspect of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai works to solve the mis-steps of emotion. The Buddhistic aspects of Muay Thai are embedded in its aesthetic form. One doesn't have to think of emotion in terms of Buddhism, but it can help. This is to say, the directionality of the rise of emotion is toward Instinct. One wants to open a two-way door toward the Unconscious. Because Muay Thai is trained also through fatigue and an aesthetic of dominance, intensification (and its attendant rise of emotion) can also occur through fatigue or dominance. Together they can create a very large doorway, weaving together both the materiality of the Body (fatigue) and the psychodynamics of personhood and social status (hierarchies). Turning to the aesthetic of Muay, its conditioning of Ruup (body posture and form), its characteristic display of presence and being at ease (physically), its flattening of emotion, allows the doorways of intensification/emotion to remain open, productive and expressive. Ideally perhaps, emotion per se is stretched out toward Mind, experienced more so as direct intensification alone, a portal to Unconscious Instinct, and the formative powers of what one is. prospective graphic The Mythos of the Self and the Fighter Thailand's Muay Thai is culture bound, which means that its figures of significance and valorization are drawn from the culture itself. It operates within a Thai-Siamese mythos. For this reason great legends of Thailand's Muay Thai past, let's say of the Golden Age of the sport or before, stand in the same light as the gods that are performed and invoked in the Ram Muay. In my discussion of the 10 Principles of Muay Thai I call this "be the god". The meaning of this is to be understood within the mythos of the Unconscious, both at a personal level, but also at the collective level of a people. The fighter in the ring draws up from the Past (the Unconscious) the supra-personal forces that go beyond their mere ego (constructed identity), so that they can assume a symbolic capacity within the ring, making of the art a collective rite. This occurs through the aesthetics of the sport, and the ways in which the fighter has attained the capacity to transmute intensifications into Instinct and Thought syntheses. In this sense fighters can become embodiments of a collective, mythic past, drawing on the forms of what anchors a people, but remain inaccessible to Intelligence alone. The openness of this capacity is achieved in the openness of training, through play and the aesthetics of Muay. Time and the Nature of Muay (the Natural) Bergson's concept of Duration (la durée) is an important building block for understanding what is happening in traditional training and in fighting. A duration for Bergson is an unbreakable envelope of Time. Returning to the example of cinema, a shot holds a certain complete shape to itself. If you edited it in any way you would break what it is. Bergson describes duration as Time what is "swollen with its past". Just as a story is told in a narration, the ending of the story is swollen with its history, the telling of it from the beginning. A duration is anything that cannot be broken, in terms of Time. There may be durations within a duration, unbreakable envelopes within the duration, this does not disturb its wholeness. The image is given of music where one has the musical piece (a duration), and individual notes played (a duration), as well as refrains, phrasings, melodies, etc. Our lives are durations, our days, our thoughts, our bodies, anything that swells with its past, with the passing of time, so to complete it. When one enters a Thai kaimuay to train, or enters a ring to fight, one is entering as a duration (in fact a duration made up of many durations). And one is joining a duration, the event. The rhythms and shapes of the event envelop your duration hold you in concert with other durations you will encounter. In a kaimuay these are the patterns of training, the aesthetics and customs of the art as trained; in the ring it is the aesthetics of Muay as it is fought. This is the set-up. As you train your duration, what is the you of you, your temporal wholeness will be challenged by intensities of speed, fatigue and dominance. This will lead to intensification, and usually emotion. As Thought ceases to be able to manage one's place, one's wholeness, one opens up the the Unconscious/Instinct, to draw on resources that allow your duration, your rhythm, your wholeness to persist. The Time of which you are made (your duration) is enriched by the rise and integration of Instinct, and that which usually falls below consciousness. Your duration is expanded. Fighting is the art of breaking another's duration, their rhythm and tempo which makes them whole. This is why Muay Thai is principally a Time War, and why it occurs under an aesthetic of narration (the scoring is narratively anchored, and not abstract point counting). The techniques of engagement are temporal battles, strikes holding their own duration within the larger duration, attempts to break the unbreakable coherence of the duration of the other. This is why Ruup and continuity play such a large role in Muay Thai aesthetics and skill building. The Natural, the Tammachat, comes from the presence and integration of Instinct, the presence of the Unconscious, which is engendered to flow with Thought. This is achieved in training, through the application of intensities and the invitation of modulated emotion/affect. The Gross and The Subtle: drawing up the Past When I say above: "Fighting is the art of breaking another's duration, their rhythm and tempo which makes them whole." its important to track the layers of duration. There is the duration of the human body that remains composite, which if broken would result in severe injury or death, and then there is the duration of a performance's artifice, the wholeness of their techniques, presentational command over space (which is why things like balance, rhythm and ruup factor in significantly in scoring). Under a Western conception of fighting one might imagine that the purpose of fighting is to break the duration of other person's body, to in a sense decompose them (for instance, perhaps idealized in the Knockout, which signifies a kind of "death", the ending of consciousness). But in the art of Muay Thai the battle is within the performed duration, the ways in which one deplays one's material, bodily duration as a person, within a style, an aesthetics of dominance and endurance. This is why the sport is scored, and not just until the loss of consciousness or even death (as it once reportedly was). This, arguably, is how it rose to an art, an art which raises the level of efficacy of fighters, the development of skills and capacities that result in the control over Time (and Space), a control which would substantially result in the capacity to break the duration of a person. This is why Knockouts traditionally, around the middle to late 20th century, were not favored in Muay Thai, it was about skill development, but skills that are quite subtle, the skill to battle in Time. Key to this development is the principle of Tammachat, the subject of this piece. As I've argued, Tammachat naturalness is only developed through Instinct and the capacities of the Unconscious, which is to say you cannot leave Instinct and the Unconscious behind. Instead, the Instinct/Unconscious is invited to enter into the present and take up the techniques, aesthetic forms (rhythms and ruups), and use them perhaps like words. To speak anew, because the words are anew, and developed through the art and execution of the sport, now at least well over the last century in the country...and perhaps for 100s upon 100s of years, in various versions. This returns us to the thought of a basic Buddhistic approach to the affects of training (and of fighting), that spikes and surges of emotion are seriously discouraged (until recently, with the globalizing of the sport, attempting to make it join the Rage Fighting of the combat entertainment world, satisfying consumers in increasingly small bits and chunks - Instagram posts, endless highlights, scream-faced promos, etc). The reason why principle of Tammachat (natural) and Ning (being at ease) are prized and essential to the development of the sport is that, as explained above, intensification and emotion opens the doorway to the Unconscious and Instinct. They invite Instinct into the process, and it is very important that the doorway be moderated, in fact even artfully controlled (this is why in a traditional Kaimuay the quality of the head kru and gym head is very significant, the training controls flow through them). The larger the emotional-intensification gate, the more course, the more gross the instinctive entry into the present. This is why lots of very hard sparring or anger surges, or wild swings of emotion will produce only the most reactive contributions to training and skillsets. Fight or flight, adrenaline rushes (and depressive purges) will push their way forward, through into the present to solve the problem. Only their very primitive hands will pick up techniques, if at all. And techniques may even battle against the instinctive, as fighters try to "bite down" and overcome the instinctive response. Lost is any sense that the Past, the Unconscious, is filled with wisdom and capacities that the Conscious mind could never know, specific know-hows of how to control Time (and Space), manipulating reactions, bending possibilities, things not only inherited from our personal past, but from the millions of organisms that survived spatial and temporal struggles to eventual rise to you. These are the virtual simulations of contest which create a composite of what a fighter is capable of, almost all of them well below the level of awareness. As the emotional door becomes narrower, the Instinctive Unconscious is invited to enter the present in subtler and subtler ways. No longer will they be emergency solutions, gross motor contractions or compellings, sheer spikings of intensity, instead the spread out web of temporal and spatial understandings, the ways the body can move and perceive, when in flow, are invited in. The more subtly the Instinctive and the Unconscious enters in, the more likely it is to pick up the new "words" of techniques and the Thai aesthetic altogether, and think through them, express itself through them...in other words...be Natural. Natural is experiential clarity and fluidity. Taken to the extreme one might venture that the meditating Buddhist monk is producing the lightest of all intensifications, like the thinnest rumbles on a drum skin, without emotion altogether, to draw up the most subtle web of the Unconscious, increasingly subtle, increasingly spread wide. Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, in its training and performance, makes use of this principle at a more directly intensive level, to develop the Tammachat of Thai fighting, inviting the Past and the great well-spring within us to speak, with new words. the above graphic loosely presents the more "course" Instinctive responses to solve present problems, fear, anger, freezing, which pass through the wide door, and the much more subtle complexities and patterns/connectivities that come from Unconscious knowing, passing through the narrowed window, coming in contact with technique/aesthetics. Muay Thai at its richest is the development of Instinct and the Unconscious in increasingly complex techniques and styles, in dialogue with each other, carefully increasing the passage of Unconscious capacities - in their sophistication - into the present moment, the speed, perceptions & anticipations and adroitness of what lies well below the thresholds of conscious attention. This cannot be achieved biomechanically, through rote repetitions and imitative perfectioning, nor by "biting down" as intensification rises. It is achieved through the durational experience of Time, and the art of shaping Time(s), bringing the fullness of what is Unconscious in us, to speak, to the fore...the Natural. Bergson on Instinct and Thought, from Deleuze and the Unconscious (2007): This is the original passage set that began these thoughts; one can leave aside the direction of this argument toward frenzy and the mystic. Important is the relational dichotomy of Instinct and Intelligence.

You get some of this in the somewhat wide shot of Ali's famous "What's My Name?" photo vs Ernie Terrell (1967). You need the rest of the "world" to feel the meaning of this moment. You need the composition including the white faces of photographers, you need the darkness of the crowd. The eye does go immediately to his asserting face, but it also swims around, settling on the prone opponent. It's hard to get these kinds of shots (and this one is once in a 100 years). But cameras in the day forced a development of compositional focus. Thinking and seeing in wide requires using wide.

Awesome I didn’t know about that page I only knew about his fb page where he sings and plays guitar I’ll send them a message! just out of interest do you know any gyms or trainers that do privates near prachinburi it’s my Mrs home town apparently the gym that used to be there closed which is a shame can’t find anything online only places that are too far away

Low resolution copies of two ultrawide photos of the great Sawsing in the past, capturing that drama. These both look like they were at 8mm (12mm ff).

Just to hold, when held down.

Sylvie uses a wonderful term to describe the Westernization of Thailand's Muay Thai, through its Entertainment commodification. She says the West is terraforming Thai Muay Thai, and then taking glory for beating Thais in the new, terraformed world. It's a powerful analogy.

I'm an 18 year old taking a gap year before college, and i'd love to go to Thailand for a month or more this spring for Muay Thai. I've been kickboxing for 2 years and doing MMA for 1, and really enjoying those. I had an opportunity recently to do a month of Muay Thai as well while traveling and it was awesome, but now I want more. If the "fanciness" (staying in a resort, nice facilities, etc.) isn't important to me, does anyone have any recommendations for good gyms? I have the experience and conditioning to go somewhere a little more intense, which is what i'm really looking for. I'd really appreciate any help and/or suggestions y'all have!

In some sense this is like asking MCU or DC Universe films, and thinking Marvel is good "cinema" just because it's not DC. RWS is better, in fact much better, but its still the same kind of thing, both of them trying to cast as many "traditional" fighters (actors) as possible, to give that authentic cinema feel.

It was a pretty beautiful thing to watch Sylvie box yesterday, learning how to chase the Thai femeu fighter (something she's mastered in Muay Thai), at a completely different distance, under different rules. Unable to close and clinch she actually ended up getting caught in a defensive clinch, not having the Duran techniques of punching with arm control, it was just such a special thing. When you isolate like this, holes come to the fore. Everything is that 6-18 inches that pretty much every female (and many male) Muay Thai fighters ignore. Some combo through them, but its just a huge blindspot in everyone. Boxing happens in that blindspot, which is why (if you aren't just memorized combo-ing), you need eyes, and feeling feet. Sylvie has spent so much time fighting huge opponents, multiple weight classes up, she has a very strong instinct to brace for shots, to freeze. Boxing does not allow this, which is beautiful. The sport opens up, like an analytic, upon female Muay Thai, and for Sylvie origami unfolds a huge potential of being able to see and feel in those 6'-18", unlike almost every other fighter. It was very cool to see up on the rope. And, it was very cool to see her putting it on her in the 3rd and 4th rounds, her fighter's instinct coming on.

How to Judge a Long Term Muay Thai Gym in Thailand A perspective of Muay Thai gyms in Thailand, from someone who has seen a few (usually with an eye towards: would this be a good place to train for Sylvie?) I've already written at length on the Authenticity of Muay Thai gyms, this is something else. This is something else. It's just a basic conception we've relied on in judging gyms. I see them something like production lines in a factory, maybe like a cupcake factory. This is not to say that the workings of a Muay Thai gym in Thailand are mechanistic, but rather that the dynamics of the gym may be occluded from view. You have all these gears and mechanisms, many of them you might not even understand or appreciate. Ways of training, reputation, social hierarchies & politics in the gym, the personality of the owner, fight promotion alliances, its a whole living thing in Thailand. But, what you want to look at...what I look at, is "what does it produce?" What cupcakes come down the conveyor belt? That's what the whole process is doing. Now, this is a little complicated in Thailand because in terms of Thais bigger name gyms actually buy their cupcakes already made. They buy them baked. They might put them through an additional process, develop them some, but mostly they were made elsewhere, by other processes. Their core skill sets, sense of timing, eyes, defensive prowess have already been "made". If its an Entertainment Muay Thai oriented gym they may now be training combos much more (added on top of their core skills), or hitting the gym for strength. If in trad shows the fighters may just be more tuning up and staying in shape and sharp. As someone coming long term to Thailand you probably, on the other hand, really want to get into the deeper processes themselves, which may not be where big name fighters are. There could be very good training around big name fighters, but it isn't likely developmental training, the thing that makes the cupcakes. For that you need to see Thai kids and teens. On another level though, many gyms have long term Westerners (and others). Pay less attention to the supposed training and trying to judge that from afar, and more paying attention to the way farang fight that have gone through that process over time. See what foreign cupcakes are coming down the conveyor belt. What do they fight like in the ring? What skills or styles do they show? Look for the kinds of cupcakes being made that you want to be like. Long-term farang usually settle into a training culture of their own in a gym, and may be even more important than the training prescription itself when it comes down to what the gym is going to make of you, because one is always taking cues from those to the left and right of you. It's one of the beautiful things about Thailand. Things like: how fast do you wrap your hands, how much do you chit-chat, do you do full rounds on the pads, do you do shadowboxing, or finish the run will be shaped by your co-fighters (students). I remember in our first year of Lanna 30 minute hand wrapping in the morning was kind of a thing, a thing Sylvie had to consciously fight against, because its was the gym tempo. Gyms might have reputations, good or bad, but look at what they actually make. That way you can align your desires to commitment. I want to undergo that. And...if the kinds of fighters coming out of a gym, made by that gym, both Thai and farang, aren't the kind of things you like, perhaps move away from that gym, because if you undergo those processes you too will look like that, those cupcakes. This isn't to criticize gyms, there are all kinds of cupcakes. This is actually one of our ways of thinking about gyms, for Sylvie (and sometimes others). To see the value of the forces that are at play, see what they do, and think: do I want some of that? Now for Sylvie who is intensely experienced (and pretty much fluent in Thai), and who has unusual requirements in Thailand (her size, her desire to be near Thai culture & training ethics, some freedom from Thai politics), things are a bit more complex. We think about this in layers. We look at gyms and see what cupcakes they make, and take from that a certain education about what the processes will do to you. Sometimes the cupcakes that are coming out of a gym might not be all that awesome, in terms of what you want to be, but you can still learn valuably from what is produced. Sometimes you can be: I want to train at this gym for this reason, or that (but I have to be careful because I don't want to be turned into that kind of fighter, the kind that this gym's processes tend to produce). With this you can ward off, or look for those things that make that kind of fighter, or...take precautions to look for these things in oneself. A great deal of training in a gym is unconscious. You become shaped by people training beside you, for better or worse. That's why the cupcake example is important. You don't necessarily have to identity what is producing quality x or y...you just have to be aware that this is what tends to happen. Sometimes its as simple as: This gym produces lazy fighters, this gym produces very tough fighters. Even broadbrush things like this come out of the culture of a gym and its practices. The way that authority and values are exercised, the aesthetics of its muay. This alone might be a reason to train at a gym, or avoid one. The vibe is contagious, and shaping, even if you are experienced. For Sylvie she build-a-bear's her training, from different gyms, and private training, because its hard to find a gym that has "everything" so to speak. You look at certain things different gyms do well, and try to weave them. This though, is incredibly difficult in Thailand politically, and isn't advised. I mention it only to expand on the cupcake factory idea, that gyms can tend to produce qualities, qualities that draw your eye. To return to more regular examples, if you are drawn to technical training don't just think about whether there is correction in training. Look at how long term farang fighters fight, coming out of that gym. If you are looking for Muay Khao training, do the long term farang from that gym fight as strong Muay Khao and clinch fighters? Look at Instagram and Facebook pages and watch some fights, if you are researching seriously. Off the top of my head if you want an example from female fighting I'd take a look at Alycia and Barbara at Phuket Fight Club, something I've thought about. I haven't a clue what their training is like, and I really don't care that they are on big name promotions. If you look at the two fighters you can see what they train. They are both intensely driven, have sound principles, fight within themselves (what they know they do well), have a core, effective forward style, are tough minded with a technical dimension and are open to clinch. There are many important things that could probably be said in much more detail by people in the ground, but you can see what the gym has made, its processes. Jalill Barnes who also trains there, much of the same qualities. I'm not even recommending the gym (I don't know much about it), I'm just using the example to show how you can see the process in fighters. I don't mean to single it out, but I needed an example to keep the whole thing from being too abstract. It's not that everyone fights the same, or even that a gym has a style (some might). It's that certain qualities get disseminated through the process of training, and a gym's support or allowance of those qualities. Sometimes this is expressed in style, sometimes in other things. But, largely when positive qualities show themselves, things you are looking for, this is a good thing. It means that there is a consistent way.

Consider not turnover over the kick, and instead working on the classic more upright Golden Kick: You can read more about it here: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/golden-kick-how-to-improve-your-thai-kick The turn over aspect of the kick is often over emphasized by non-Thai krus who don't really see all the connective tissue in the Thai Kick (generally). Most of the classic kicks turn very late in the arc, because they want to keep the opponent centered, and they don't want to be out of position for more continuous offensive flow. You can see more about Karuhat's kick here: #111 The Karuhat Rosetta Stone 7 - The Secrets of the Matador (83 min) watch it here Karuhat is the most documented Golden Age legend in history, thanks to the sum of all the filming and commentary we've been able to do with him. This session though provide the key to understanding all the other sessions. And there is a very special focus on his particular Golden Kick. An alternate kicking style: #143 Takrowlek Dejrat - Master of the Low Kick (90 min) watch it here One of the great low kicking fighters of the Golden Age teaches his squared up, pressuring, Muay Beuk fight philosophy which uses an extremely fast, vertical low kicking technique that keeps the opponent exactly where you want them. This punishing style, built on defense and ring control is extremely effective, using techniques that are not often taught. Study the low kick in a way you haven't seen before.

The above is the fight from ringside, without commentary, just a great clear feed of the action. This is just a special fight. A lot was going into this, not the least of which that Sylvie would be facing a Western fighter, something she'd had the occasion to do very infrequently in her voluminous fighting career which has been focused on Thailand, and a very skilled Westerner at that. And, adding to the challenge is the fact that the WBC World Title is probably the most present day prestigious belt, given how rigorously they attempt to adhere to Thailand's scoring principles, and the effort and care that they take to keep their female Muay Thai rankings up to date (something that is incredibly difficult to do); this put added pressure on the fight. Sylvie had come off a very significant back injury in August, something at the time really put a scare into us, immobilizing her for weeks - horse, fence - and though had fought well in her return, once, had not been training rigorously in clinch - her meat, bread and butter - for honestly, a couple of years. Much of the conditions of training that had made her so unbeatable had been wrecked by COVID in the Pattaya local Muay Thai scene, and we just didn't know how that would show in a fight this demanding. In video we had seen that Elisabetta Solinas had some clinch strengths, some of which would show in this fight. The real challenge, I imagined, would be that of rhythm and pattern. Many fights are decided at the level of rhythm and pattern, and much less so at the level of tactics and techniques (where many place their analysis). This is just my personal belief, I'm sure others would disagree. If you imagine a fighter's strengths as a wave pattern, with troughs and valleys, how that wave pattern intersects with their opponents wave pattern really can be unpredictable, when fighters are unfamiliar with each other, especially when fighting out of genre. above, wave interference (but in this imperfect analogy fighting opponent peaks would be expressed as toughs, etc). The idea is that strength points, whether they be offensive or defensive, have their rhythm and patterns, and strength points interfere with strength points, weaknesss moments can amplify opponent strength moments. This creates fight rhythm. The pattern is the tempo & amplitude of a fighter's style. And in this poor analogy, a fighter's wave is not a symmetrical series of peaks & toughs. It is shaped with varying oscillations like the EEG of a heart beat, or brain waves. Sylvie's Muay Khao fighting style, its wave pattern, had been developed fighting against the (mostly) Muay Femeu Thai female fighting style, mostly against physically much larger opponents, within the traditional, narrative scoring aesthetic. WBC rules would weight all rounds evenly - though the traditional, Thai stadium judges may score early rounds with a tendency toward the draw, one doesn't know - so there was an imperative in this fight that the shape of the fight, and interactions with Solina's wave pattern was largely unknown. How were these waves going to interact? Would peaks cancel each other out? What valleys would amplify the other's peaks? Until you get in the ring you just won't know. And the fight was a beautiful fight. What the fight became was actually a classic Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao battle. And it's a beautiful thing that the WBC rule set, and the promotion itself which involved high-level Thai judges, and not the least of which, Elisabetta's very skilled femeu style, all made happen (read the WBC Muay Thai rule set; its the best English language rule set I've ever come across). You can feel the work that was put into it). Solinas fought with a great, super balanced (important), retreating, countering, teeping, scoring, pivoting, and also very high-tempo style, which set the stage perfectly for the Muay Khao question mark. Can the Muay Khao fighter catch her? This is the traditional, persistence hunting fight arc was in play. The equation was even further complicated by Solinas's very strong trip game in the clinch. Sylvie has a sailor's balance, developed through the years, which saved her several times, and even allowed her to reverse important positions, but that high level tripping was going to complicate the Muay Khao story. It wasn't necessarily so that when Sylvie caught her that she'd be able to become dominant. Several times in the fight she had clinch positions which stalled, or were slow to develop for the simple fact that she had to stabilize and read possible trips. And, this was even further complicated by the clinch breaks by the ref. Early clinch breaks are sometimes to be expected, as it can be part of trying to create the narrative challenge for later rounds...but there were also clinch breaks when Sylvie achieved very dominant positions, with the head quite down. Perhaps these were for the protection of the opponent, as a female fighter. It happens. But it was not possible to know how these breaks were being scored by judges. These were moments when fight ending, or fight changing strikes could land. This had the remarkable effect of making the fight incredibly exciting at ringside, because Sylvie just could not pull away, and in a way showed that the ref had expertly sculpted a perfect fight. He kept asking Sylvie to do more...and she did more. The result was a near perfect fight of slowly increasing escalation. I think it's pretty clear that the first two rounds went to Solinas (although you might imagine a 10-10 round from a Thai judge?). Going into the third the assumption had to be "You can't lose another round". Solinas had brought out her trips and her gorgeous retreating counter fighting, had cut Sylvie behind the ear, and seemed to be hitting on all cylinders. And that is what you want, in a way. You want fighters being able to express who they are. As the wave patterns had come to meet it didn't seem that Sylvie's wave was interfering much with Solinas's. Yes, in clinch Sylvie showed promise. And Sylvie secret (because people don't pay much attention to it) teep game may have put some snags into the overall freedom of Solinas, but she had plenty to overcome it, it appeared. But this is where the fight gets interesting. In wave patterns there is not only the shape of the wave (where the peaks and valleys fall, like notes in music), there is also amplitude and tempo (frequency). And the Muay Khao fighting style relies on amplitude (& tempo)...a gentle and yet relentless increase in amplitude & tempo started in rounds 3, and the 4. Its the same wave, but with rising amplitude & tempo. Now, this is dangerous under international WBC rules, because Thai style narrative scoring puts scoring emphasis on rounds 3 and 4, and emphasis on who is increasing in effectiveness as the fight goes on. In a more natural Thai setting the fight would have been more or less tied, or slightly in Solina's favor going into round 3. Yes there was a cut, but it was behind the ear and early in the fight. It would be a score that would fade. Under international WBC rules Sylvie could very well be one round away from losing, a kind of sudden death. These are very different states in a fight. What is interesting is that the traditional Muay Khao fighting style which focuses its increase on the scoring rounds 3, 4 and then 5 is best prepared for this position in a fight. That's what its for. Everything you've done up to this point is to prepare the ground for the upped intensity, the rising amplitude of your wave pattern. And its just remarkable to see it unfold in this fight, against a high quality fighter fighting under a different aesthetic. You see the purpose of Muay Khao, what its meant to do and how it does it. And it is really something that this kind of fight can happen in International Muay Thai contexts. We are getting narrative Muay Thai. In terms of the fight itself, at that point, you just see Sylvie become more and more effective, especially in the clinch...(but also in stalking). She's absorbed much of the danger of the trips, having learned the first two rounds, and as fatigue and instincts take over she's more and more able to scramble to dominant positions. And though Solinas admirably commits to the teep as almost a pure signature of femeu muay, with incredible and skilled insistence, the teep itself became less and less effective, as Sylvie teeped through it, interfered, disrupted and muddied it (clashing wave patterns again). The teep is an interesting classic weapon. In some regard it doesn't even actually score, or score much, but the patterns you make with it, and the increasing ways it can disrupt, can make it one of the great weapons of Muay Thai (maybe how the jab in boxing should be regarded). The story of the teep in this fight, both Solinas's and Sylvie's is a very interesting one, and helps explain the dynamics of Sylvie's stalking in the latter rounds. Basically the defensive teep is the perfect counter weapon to the dern fighter, and Solinas pulled out the best weapon...but the teep has to show an increase of effectiveness. And the stalking teep is a, less flashy, secret disruptor. The battle of the teep is actually a hidden inner battle within this fight, aside from the more obvious clinch dominance Sylvie was able to attain. When I came home I honestly watched the last 3 rounds over and over...perhaps 25 times. I wasn't looking for good or bad techniques, mistakes or advantages. The more I watched them they just read like music to me. They were these beautiful, rising tempos and amplitudes created by BOTH fighters. Both fighters made this fight. And the way the WBC promotion presented the fight also made this fight. There is music in those 3 rounds, Muay Khao music, but really the music of Golden Age Muay Thai, the Muay Thai of clashing styles and skill sets, the music of narrative scoring arcs, orchestra of two fighters climbing up over peaks and valleys of increasing amplitude. Yes, Sylvie came out on top. Yes the fight was precipitous to start the 3rd. But Muay Thai is about these kinds of soul to soul evolutions within the fight, where the art of each fighter gets to show itself. That's what fighting is about. That's what makes it more than just entertainment.