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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.

Sylvie’s advice on under-recovery is still the gold standard for anyone heading to Thailand in 2026. The "don't prepay" rule is especially relevant now since trainer lineups at gyms change so fast you really want to test the vibe first. Starting with one solid session a day to build a streak is way smarter than burning out on doubles and hitting a wall by week two. Even if these tips have been around since last year, the reality of Thai training culture hasn't changed.

I'm more of a grappler too. It took me about three years to adjust my mind to Muay Thai. It's easier to feel swamped in something unfamiliar, plus large gloves feel all wrong when I parry or trap. I also found that I'd sink my weight when I should go light as an opponent gets close. Initially, I was only happy clinching or going for sweeps and trips. My style is still pretty unconventional but I can go a round with a smaller or less trained opponent and not get hit once now and then. Set up strikes with shovel kicks and low kicks, sweeps, and grabbing their guard. Glove blocks use your grappling skills too. Grabbing someones guard and using your knees is good too.

Sylvie's trained a lot with Namsaknoi over the last few months at Singmawin, and even sparred and clinched with Jongangdam a bit. It was very cool to watch Jongangdam's style in the fight, never having seen him fight. He fought with great timing, and managed distance in ways that Namsaknoi (who instructs at Singmawin) teaches, with rhythm and off-beats and lowish power accuracy, adding in teeps and jabs. It's a great fight because he's forced to adjust when Kom (red) smartly decided to refuse to fight in space where he's at a disadvantage. I love how Jongangdam does not trade bite-down combo for combo, against the Muay Maat attack, but is constantly using his eyes. I also kinda love his slurvy left hook in the first few rounds which looks like it has both quickness and hidden weight. link timestamped to 36:21

Welcome to the dark side. Honestly, the "blue belt" equivalent in Muay Thai is when you stop flinching during sparring and actually land a clean teep. If you're training 2-3 times a week, you'll probably reach that "competent" level in about 18 months. Striking is weird because a lucky punch from an untrained giant can still suck, but by then you'll have the footwork to make them look silly.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DNJE3xmsiks/ This is how far Entertainment has pervaded. Tapaokaew vs Nuenglanlek. Nuenglanlek losing the fight in the clinch asks Tapaokaew to go toe to toe for the end of the 5th round so fighters can get the bonus. This is basically...let's stop fighting a "real" fight, you know, one fighter out-skilling another, and instead let's "put on a show" for the Entertainment bonus. That RWS itself posts this, selling the action, just is a deeper dive into building a "content" generator sport. This is just the shaping of the sport by commerce and moving to online content and in-person tourism, away from in-person passionate, knowledgeable fandom...which I suspect isn't sustainable as a business model, and certainly won't develop the highest level skills (building the sport long term). It's also an interesting reversal of the supposedly "fake" dance offs in the 5th round, now there is a "show" of action. This likely will become a trend as fighters learn new ways to play the 5th round out. RWS has a tough line to ride, as the nexus space, the limnal space between pure Aggro ONE marketing and gambled traditional stadium Muay Thai. These are nuances and changes in that space.

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

I am 5’8 155 lbs. pk Saenchai seemed like a gym I would go to after years of training which I have not had. By the time I go to Thailand I will have 6 months of solid training. (About 13 hours a week soon to be 18.) I am visiting Thailand first, and then planning on finding where I want to make my home base after about 6 months. I have little experience in the clinch, but I know that I want to be a heavy clinch and elbow fighter, as watching yodkhunpon inspired me. I have never seen a fighter that made me want to copy them before. Thank you for the reply and all you guys do.

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.

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.

Yodpetch, a FOTY worthy run in 1994. Impressive opponent list:

Another use of the Contax 645 35mm wideview, shots up into the ceiling generate tremendous aura of movement.

The question of a pursuit of authenticity in Muay Thai by adventure tourists is different than other pursuits of cultural authenticity by tourism, I believe, in the sense that the coming demand for "authentic" experiences from MT tourism isn't the same for instance as tourist seeking "authentic" Thai cuisine. There may be some overlap, but due to the nature of fighting and the deeper motivations to travel to train and fight, there is more at stake than a sort of connoisseurship, or exploratory, learning experiences of "the foreign". Fighting involves another layer of personal identity and challenges core affects which lie beyond other legitimate travel transformations.

On another level this kind of foreign influence on Thai culture is itself woven into Thai culture. A prime example is that the gendered particles that end sentences, "ka" and "crop" are a modern invention and not "traditionally" Thai, despite feeling VERY Thai. They were part of the gender edicts of the Thai dictator Plaek Phibunsongkhram who was attempting to pull Thai culture into line with Western gender values, edicts which also included legislating clothing differences between men and women. So, the very idea of "Thainess" itself is quite interwoven.

Here is a very small example of altered Muay Thai culture in Thailand that I sometimes think about...some gyms have "classes", in fact a LOT of gyms are starting to have "classes" and this just isn't a thing in Thailand's trad Muay Thai, and after the class participants all get in a line and "wai" to each other in different ways, sometimes like a soccer line. This is something I'd never seen or even heard about in a gym pre-COVID (I had seen it in Western gyms, if I recall). What is interesting is that if you've traveled thousands of miles and encountered this ritual you would really feel like you've come upon an authentic, perhaps old and common Thai gym custom...and would even perhaps bring it back to your home country. I'm not even completely sure of the recent origin of this. It seems to have come out of the new idea of "classes" in a gym. There may be antecedents of import from Westerners in gyms who have helped shape those classes, or perhaps this is something that happens in Thai schools with kids (?), or it may come from Thais increasingly going to China as trainers, training lots of non-fighters, and then returning to Thailand. There does seem to be a lot of cross-pollination going on.

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.

There is one small passage in Deng's article that really comes forward to me. It cracks open into a possible very powerful critique and analysis of what is occurring. It's this line, in the following context: "...this imagined Thai masculinity erases Indigenous conception of the man fighting body as a coarse ‘hunting dog’ tethered in communal ties" What stands out is the use of this term, course. The courseness of the Thai body as nak muay as presented by Pattana back in his famous "hunting dog" analogy in the early 2000s. What Deng is drawing forth is that the courseness of the Thai body, which importantly was tethered "in communal ties" (not just tethered, but also constructed by, composed of those ties), is being erased and replaced by an emulative body. This, I would argue, is a transmutation....and significantly, an enormous disruption in the gaze economy which made up the traditional kaimuay. Because I am most interested in locating and when possible preserving the form of traditional Muay Thai, I want to talk about it in those terms, and not really in terms of political or rightful judgement (at least at this point). I want to think about how the radical nature of this change points us in both directions, back towards the gaze economies of the traditional kaimuay, that of the "course" body, and towards the coming "emulative" body of the Thai nak muay in Western training contexts...and think how this relates to Muay Thai itself, in the ring, as well as a cultural form of expression. If we imagine the traditional Thai kaimuay (and, there are so numerous kinds of this we really have to idealize and even fantasize about it to bring this point), the Thai body especially as a youth is never looked at emulatively. In fact as early youth likely most of the work and effort is either unseen, or under control of judgement following the hierarchy of the gym. Thai fighters, especially as youth, but also through out are quite low socially, and the gaze economy would position them as such. They also would be judged just physically, in terms of their physiognomy, or their capacity to perform tasks, techniques, endurance. Noticing how young nak muay would often in photos pose in this (seemingly unfighterly) way, he told us: its so you can see their chest. Promoters and others want to see the state of physical development: above, Karuhat maybe at 16. We are not far from Pattana's notion of hunting dogs (by which he's attempting to draw a picture of huge social disparity with extreme comparison), or of racing horses, or of any other physical capacity driven contest. Leaving aside Pattana's likely ideological aims, point taken. The gaze to the young fighter in the economy of the kaimuay is largely not emulative. If we look at this clip of 1988 kaimuay shadowboxing and think about the gaze economy - who is looked at and why - we can see we are quite far from the gaze dynamics Deng is locating in traveling fighter gyms (though, what should be lost is that there IS a camera here, I believe the camera of a Westerner, so already we are not really looking at the gaze economy of the kaimuay uninterrupted...they would be shadowboxing different). Thai boys in a kaimuay, but also the maturing fighters are socially quite low, as are even the older padmen and krus, under the hierarchy of the gym, all of them stacked and ordered by a gaze economy. This is what Deng is referring to as the "course" body of the Nak Muay. All of them are de facto "workers", though not "laborers" in the theoretical sense. Workers in the cultural sense of meaning producers within the culture, structured in part by a stacked hierarchical gaze. I would put forth, the economy of this gaze is inseparable from the pedagogy of the nak muay as fighter, and this is especially so because Muay Thai itself is a performance of Thai hypermasculinity. It literally is a performance on a stage, and the development of the Thai nak muay cannot help but be centered on the economy of gaze. Who gets looked at, and why? I remember, we were at Lanna which at the time was a fairly "authentic" amalgam of adventure Thai tourism fighting and a real kaimuay. It had a kind of "secret" Thai kaimuay that was inside the gym, Thai fighters raised since kids, traditional training etc. Occasionally another kru outside the gym would come and bring his kid fighter for sparring or such. He became years later, sold to another gym, a powerful military gym, the Bangkok fighter Tanadet. At the time he was just "Poda". Sylvie and I watched with some amazement when his kru just put him on the bag and left, and Poda just went at knees on the bag endlessly. Nobody was looking at him (overtly). This wasn't this gym, he didn't train there. He was just put on the bag. It seemed that unseen by anyone (again, overtly) he would tirelessly go like this on the bag until he was stopped. He would never stop himself. He was very unlike the Thai boys, the fighters of the gym that we had come to know, who were in their own gaze economy (which involved serious Western traveling fighters). There was nothing of the emulative Body in what he was doing. It was the course Body. But, truthfully, it was not that he was unseen in doing this. Both Sylvie and I saw him, and we both will not forget it. His body, and he likely was not aware of it because this was not his space, and we were far on the other side of the gym, went from course Body to emulative Body. And, his example likely influenced Sylvie to train at even higher levels of commitment throughout the years. The above is just an anecdote of the tension between kinds of gaze economies in the Thai-Western gym training spaces, something that Deng uncovers in his article. Much can be made of who affluent Westerners are who travel across the globe to come and train and learn from Thais, many of whom could never afford such a trip in their lives, either financially or as an idea. There can be no doubt that the disparity of Western economies entering the low-economies of Muay Thai subclass feeds that economy, but also seriously distorts it, if even as a differential of power, a differential outside of the differentials of power which organize traditional Muay Thai, the wealth and status ladders which make Muay Thai happen, and develop nak muay. This is true. And, I have seen and even talked about how Western traveling fighters bring into Thai training spaces their own cultural habitus, their own conditioned management and performances of affects that are quite alien, and even counter to traditional affect habitus - for instance displays of fatigue, exaggerated signaling of effort, which in the West can be valorized signals of commitment, big sighs, or collapsing to the ground, etc - and that these affect signals can pervade and even overwrite traditional codes in hybrid spaces. This is another sort of incursion. I never really thought about who the very gaze of Western traveling fighters is itself a disruption of the traditional gaze economy of the kaimuay, and then the Thai "gym". The very vital distribution of "who gets looked at, and why" is what conditions the values of training, it is training. When Western eyes enter Thai training spaces, even if nothing is said, even if comportment follows customary values, the very distribution of gaze (and the intent in looking) creates an entirely different kind of "Body" (in the sense that Deng is talking about). And kinds of bodies are very important to Muay Thai, because ruup (posture, form, outline) is a significant scoring factor. The body matters. Bodies are constructed not only by effort and trained capacities, its constructed by gaze. Gaze socially rewards behaviors or comportment. It can also punish the same. And removing gaze can be a powerful feature of shaping capacities. In some substantive sense, entering the financial economy of a gym and spreading around $100s of dollars is disruptive, but also entering the gaze economy of a gym and spreading around gaze, especially in a restrictive gaze economy in a kaimuay, could be just as disruptive. And, as the number of Western eyes increase in a training space the gaze economy we become further and further skewed towards Western values. This is where Deng's observation of emulation because very significant. This, culturally, is the transmutation of the course Body into the emulative Body, especially along Western valuation. Who gets looked at, and why? There is an allure of the Thai nak muay Body for the Western traveling fighter not only because the sport is theirs (it is), or even because most of those in a training space have been training and fighting since childhood (many have). It comes also from the affect values that are embodied in Thailand's Muay Thai, the way that it is an achievement of ruup (form) and importantly ease (ning) - as well as values like sanae (charm) and otton (endurance, showing no symptoms). It is especially the cherished quality of ning (being at ease, natural, undisturbed) which is in direct contrast with the Western affect trait of tensing up for both effort and also in the face of duress, which gives the Thai Body of the nak muay an "aura". When training with (and against) Thai nak muay, or even with Thai krus/pad men, there are "how did you do thats?" and "how do you move like thats", but also there can be that "aura" which as Deng points out can be racially, or at least ideologically charged, an exoticization of the Other. The gaze upon this Other is often the gaze of emulation. It transmutes the socially low "course" Thai Body into an emulative one. And...without too much irony Deng points out, Western traveling fighters are not only emulating the Thai Body, they are emulating it to attempt to defeat and dominate it...in the ring, as part of their own transmutation...an effort which certainly would yield to some Colonialist criticism. The power of the gaze as such is worth considering, especially as it featured in the kaimuay gaze economy. It is quite common to attribute the great grace and performative capacities of Thai fighters to how young they started training and fighting in the sport. There is a sense in which all that experience is already baked-in and become second nature by the time they reached Bangkok rings in the past. And we can regard this as true. But, I would offer with a focus on the gaze economy in the role of pedagogy, and the development of the very identities of fighters that it may be even less how young they started fighting (Karuhat, for instance started at 15, comparatively late), so much as how they have been shaped by the gaze economies of their culture and sub-cultures, the who and whys of getting looked at, and importantly, that by the time nak muay are becoming rising stars in the rings of Bangkok (at least in the Golden Age of the sport) they are passing through adolescence into young adulthood, exactly when gaze can matter most in identity formation. Because Thai nak muay were suddenly gaining cosmopolitan gaze attention, they also were hitting 16, 17, 18, notably after a rather restricted gaze economy of the kaimuay, and the gazes of local festival fighting. It is likely that the sequestering of gaze played a vital, formative role in the sudden bursting on the scenes of Bangkok, Thai fighters dramatically displaying hypermasculine performances under duress, in the aesthetics of the sport, as an expression of identity itself. It is enough to say, these economies of gaze are changed in our day, and in mixed cultural training circumstances with Westerners, radically changed. Different things get you looked at. A 14-15 year old Thai boy sparring a Westerner in a training ring while 3 Westerners look on at the rope is just a very different set of gaze criteria today than if sparring a gym mate in a corner of the gym rather unseen in 1988. (As just a sidenote: I have seen Thai fighters who have trained around Westerners, even in fairly traditional contexts, fight with a sort of early fight peacocking that seems new to the sport, a peacocking that could not be backed up, perhaps a product of the new gaze training economies.) This is also to leave out a completely separate and quite different gaze economy of the nak muay which certainly did not exist 35 years ago, the gaze economy of social media, being looked at through video and photographs by numerous, faceless others. Training kaimuay of the past were very cloistered environment, not only in terms of outside influence, but in terms of highly restrictive gaze dynamics. Now Thai nak muay gaze economies are spread throughout the world in social media channels, not only to Thais, but to Westerners and everyone else. It likely is unmeasurable how much of a change this has brought to the culture, let alone Muay Thai and the development of the fighter as hypermasculine performer. Deng brings in the very significant factor of the Western traveling gaze in the tourist gym, in tourist centers like Phuket or Chiangmai. Socially low Thai bodies of nak muay and ex-fighters are being looked at with emulation by social high (affluent) Westerners. Among the higher, cosmopolitan classes of first Siam, and then Thailand have held the Western gaze with great esteem (even if problematized, or mixed esteem). It should not be overlooked at that in these training spaces lower status Thais are receiving the emulative gaze of the Westerner. This cannot help but be a status transmutation, in even a historic sense, if even in part, of no small order. And the kinds of valorizations that occur at the level of gaze and imitation are of a very different value economy of those that traditionally produced Muay Thai (even if the things valued, like ning, or balance, or sanae are the same). Their production is different. And, there is the power differential that these are larger bodied, economically affluent (often) men who are looking through emulation to defeat and dominate the Thai Body in the ring. The cross-signs of power, especially at the ideological level, are contradictory and complex. Deng also eludes to but does not state outright that in adventure fight tourism there is another alluring Thai Body in tourist destinations, that of the bar girl and prostitute. In a strange pair, there is a male and female counterpart (leaving aside trans-gender, and queerness for a moment) both forming a Thai Body Other, often both partaken from by Western fight tourism. The homosocial fighter and the emulative nak muay, and the alluring, receptive Thai bar girl. I do not have another perspective on this because I know these mostly just through stereotypes because I haven't spent time in these kinds of more tourism-oriented training spaces or around bar culture, but it cannot be without comparison at least in terms of critique. What is interesting is that if the Thai kaimuay gaze economies are radically and utterly undermined - I remember filming at a Bangkok kaimuay that still is almost entirely Thai and regularly provides fighters for all the stadium shows, and we asked if they are interested in Westerners training there, and at first they said "no", and then a short time later came back and said "They can, but if they train here they can never leave", meaning, you are on lockdown at the camp, you don't leave its walls, the gaze economy is in tact - and certainly they are undermined if only at the level of social media, what is to become of the Thai nak muay and the magical fighter camps would produce? Long now have we said this fighter no longer exists, Saenchai being the last of them. We see them in videos, and we have documented them as a generation or two, in the Muay Thai Library project. Could it be that the training capacities are falling not only because the talent pool is diminishing, or that the small kaimuay is being lost to Thailand, or that the camera and video have changed what is wanted from a fighter, but also that the gaze economy of instruction and development has been broken open. Who is looked at, and what for? I was wrong, or at least incomplete to say that in the kaimuay the lower-status nak muay did not have a emulative body. I delayed this because I didn't want to complexify the contrast too much in the above. Indeed there is an emulative body of the nak muay that develops in the very maturation within the kaimuay, as younger boys become stronger, more accomplished fighters, and start receiving more of the gaze economy. Older fighters, even by one year, just as in any school or family, are emulative to the younger, but as Deng points out, this emulation is quite personal. It is tied to the "community", in really in a much smaller community than that, the family of the kaimuay. Status is increased with age, and younger fighters emulate older fighters in their own small gym. This is one of the destructive elements of big Bangkok gyms when they take fighters of any success from smaller kaimuay. They are removing the emulative body from the de facto "family" of the gym, the practice and identity which draws the lower status fighters up. This emulation and status change though happens within closed, traditional gaze economy of the kaimuay. It develops. It is quite different than the allure of the Thai Body nak muay or trainers may be assigned by a Western traveling fighter. The distribution of the gaze and the values of that distribution are radically different and altering.

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.

Recently really feeling the pain of the reality that Muay Thai is washing away. There are just waves and waves of shallow commentary and sharing, content hypes, and mostly just an incredible forgetfulness in our highly digitized culture of imitation and wasting. Do think we have done something with the Muay Thai Library documentation, and are doing something. It's an edifice, a seed bank of knowledge, but I honestly don't even know if what it is will last even 10 years from now, as the sport careers off into the service of the Westerner. Do people not even know that they changed all the rules to let you win???? And that Thailand itself is no longer producing the same highly skilled, deeply founded fighters? Today just bummed by it all. Definitely Benjamin's Angel of History bending down, grasping at windblown scraps. All I can comfort myself is with the fact that Thailand's Muay Thai has been incredibly resistant and resilient to incursion and outside influence, for centuries really. And it will last through this. But, we have Karuhat today sleeping in the extra bedroom, his knee recovering from ACL reconstruction, maybe with ten years of free movement left in the joint, and my heart is breaking because he is the GOAT in his own way, and people just aren't going to know him. And there are layers and layers of such memory, and capacity.

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.

Ran into this fight researching Lakhin for the upcoming MTL session. Somehow I didn't realize he had an entire boxing career after his Golden Age run at FOTY (parallel somewhat to how Muay Thai Samson his nemesis went into pro boxing), and THEN came back to Muay Thai and fought top guys, even giving up weight. I'm impressed. In 2005 Yodsanklai wins the 147 lb Lumpinee belt, Lakhin would box again at 126 lbs. Lakhin finished his boxing career at 27-0-2 with 18 KOs. Lakhin had an extraordinary fight path, nearly winning a Golden Age FOTY in 1992 (probably missing out by losing the Samson Isaan trilogy that year). A very small bodied Muay Maat, its kind of amazing that he came back giving up weight in Muay Thai in his 30s, and even winning a WMC title vs Jaroenchai Kesagym (2005). It's a great, illustrative fight on a classic Southpaw counter to a Muay Maat orthodox aggressor. Yodsanklai isn't throwing his big left kick as we would do so much in later years, but his knees are beautiful on the opens side, submarining the pocket, and the fight essentially comes down to Lakhin just being very tough and refusing to stop with the hooks and the body crosses, just trusting that they will eventually break through Yodsanklai's interference, and Lakhin definitely has his moments in the fight where it looks like he's going to get that ball rolling, a few landed punches ring Yodsanklai. Gamblers are cheering every punch at one point, but it just isn't enough. The cagey, small, heavy handed veteran vs the young rising star who would have a big future Internationally, fighting farang at higher weight classes.

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?

Watched this fight today. Kongtoranee with a valiant effort attempting to solve very similar spatial problems that Wichannoi struggled with for much of his fighting-up career, as a short armed, hands heavy fighter. And using the low kick and body shots in similar ways to chop into the pocket bubble, before he really has to fight in there. Petchdam just too big, his knees under punches just to massive. But same calculus. you can see my Wichannoi notes:

The TAT in Thailand put forth its huge marketing strategy for tourism investment, detailing a budget of about $140,000,000 USD, but notably Muay Thai is almost entirely absent of mention (other than the large scale Wai Kru Ceremony which I believe is aligned with the Amazing Muay Thai campaign. read it here: https://www.tatnews.org/2025/07/thailand-launches-the-new-thailand-vision-to-redefine-tourism-in-2026/ Most notably is ONE's absence, especially in the list of the kinds of international sport events that its trying to be included in, "...marquee events such as the Amazing Thailand Marathon 2025, the 33rd SEA Games, and Honda LPGA Thailand will reinforce Thailand’s status as a premier sport tourism hub" A lot of ONE's argument has been how it is radically separated itself out from Thailand's Muay Thai, as part of a larger internationalist sport and martial art entity, in a way that traditional stadium Muay Thai is not. Instead it seems that the overall strategy of the TAT - which I was pretty impressed with, especially went it got down into the segmentations in the lower half of the article - has turned against the very exaggerative metrics that ONE likes to generate and turn to. It wants more meaningful tourism experiences, culturally and locally defined, anchors of attachment, not pushing big numbers which can vacillate and change at the drop of a hat or an investment rate. This is one of the problems with chasing the algorithm and turning traditional Muay Thai into a digital content (knockout) machine. You just become another piece of entertainment whose attention can slosh towards you or radically away from you. The TAT seems to see these and has turned against just number chasing. The kinds of values being put forth actually seem to mirror some of traditional Muay Thai's greatest strengths, the way it is culturally bound, locally defined and experienced, sewing itself into the very fabric and geography of the country. While Rajadamnern's efforts at Entertainment transformation also are not included, it and traditional Muay Thai in general, seems much better positioned to enter into the kinds of expenditures and themes the TAT is taking on. Thailand wants meaningful experiences, cultural attachment and identity, uniqueness, impassioned connection (not social media arguments and memes), it wants travelers who will return and return, who will spend lengthy time, this is traditional Muay Thai, and the Muay Thai of Kaimuay Culture.

Download the hi-res pdf here: Muay Magazine - November 8th, 1976? pdf download We're not sure about the year, but it looks like 1976. These files sent to us by a supporter collector to share with others. Any comment or translation below is much appreciated.

The full hi-res PDF download here: Muay Magazine - Sept 9th, 1977 pdf download A supporter collector sent these pdfs so that we can share them with others, thank you

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Wichannoi Porntawee is a fighter like no other in the history of Thailand's Muay Thai. While many in Anglophone Muay Thai conversations had hardly heard of him, when legends put him at the top of their picks for the greatest Muay Thai fighters in history we picked up our ears. He fought with a very boxing based, combination heavy foundation at close range, but had a highly developed style for controlling all ranges, often facing powerful fighters much bigger than himself, which for me is always a key to measuring greatness. He was nicknamed The Immortal Yodmuay (legendary nakmuay), and Dieselinoi, himself a GOAT candidate, called him "my teacher in the ring", Wichannoi the man who stopped Dieselnoi's 20+ fight win streak and meteoric rise to stardom, with back to back wins against the much taller fighter who was wrecking everyone. Watching his fights one night, one after the other, all 11 which exist, was an extraordinary experience, I think the most intense and education video watching experience I've had in my study of the art and sport. Below are my watching notes and each of the fights in chronological order. You can find Wichannoi's complete record on Wikipedia thanks to the great work Muay Thai wikipedia has been doing giving us all a foothold in history. This is a very good breakdown of the weapons and tendencies of Wichannoi by Ryan. It's excellent. Its well worth the time even though the illustrative gifs no longer exist. A summary of his style objectives: Some of what follows stems from my philosophy that fighting is a struggle over time and space, and less really a question of technical striking which is usually overemphasized when discussing the aims of a fighter. For me fighters are usually trying to get to the right space and at the right tempo where they hold superiority, and conversely preventing their opponent from doing the same. It's more of a temporal-cartographic concept of fighting. I usually watch with two questions: where do they want to get? What tempo do they want to be at? This is just what I see from a close watch of all 11 of Wichannoi's fights. It's not necessarily correct, just a sharing of what I saw and noted for myself. The notes weren't really for anyone else, but I share them because you might write your own when you watch. Wichannoi's primary objective in a fight is to get to a sweet spot, which is pretty deep in the pocket. Ideally he wants to stand there with his hands at ready, in a state of measuring. Normally a Muay Maat fighter would be punching their way into the pocket to get to this spot, but he's very different. He wants to stand there and measure, and the means by which he does this often with lots of low kicks, and mid- kicks at close range. He does this to stabilize the striking zone, and its really extraordinary to see it unfold. He wants to be the eye of the storm, and leave you standing in the storm. When he gets there like in the first Naraongnoi fight, he can be devastating. Of course his opponent isn't going to cooperate most of the time, so a lot of the early portions of fights are feel out rounds where he starts working on the legs from distance, with quick timed slapping kicks (you find this lineage of Muay Maat in Golden Age fighters like Takrowlek or Thongchai but in those cases hands and kicks are more joined together, Rambaa also deploys some of this outside fighting). These are all small bodied Muay Maat fighters. With Wichannoi its not really in-and-out fighting so much as that he's wearing down the edges of the pocket he wants to stand in later. He's taking down the outer walls of the citadel. On top of this quick kicking game he also can deploy a beautiful use of body jabs (highly unusual in the sport) and at times lots of boxing jab work to the head to compliment. These are part of his tempoing up. When he enters he wants the tempo going. In Wichannoi's case the fight has an arc and he is using all these weapons to get into a calm pocket - he actually wants to get to his sweetspot in a state of survey. Once he gets there he is using low kicks largely to freeze his opponent so he can measure, his hands waiting. But, what makes it so instructive is that many of these preserved fights he is fighting much larger, highly skilled fighters, so he can't really get to or stay in the spot. Against the giant Saensak Muangsurin he absolutely could not get there at all, and as soon as he was close enough he was smashed. Against Padejsuek, again too much power and size in front of him, he ended up having to manufacture a lead with backwards jabbing and body attacks, just to control Padejsuek enough to get to some state of equilibrium. He wants that equilibrium up close, he believes he can win it. And...he wants that tempo climbing up when he gets there (the lack of this tempoing was a fatal error in his 3rd fight vs Narongnoi who simply allowed him his spot, but at stagnant energy, and defended). As opponents that prevent him from achieving that sweetspot, in that failing you can see all the diverse skills he used to still try and get there, all the ways he tried to solve the problem. You see a great fighter exploring solutions - he isn't just doing one thing, like a cartoon of just lowkicking to get in and punch. And you learn a lot about other Silver Age fighters who are very adept at denying what a fighter wants to do. It is said of today's trad Muay Thai that nobody "solves" anything anymore. They have their specialty and they can either impose it or not. There is very little shifting of approaches. These fights contain so much solving and counter solving, especially from round to round, they are an education in themselves. Because Wichannoi is smaller in stature and relies heavily on his hands in combination if he can't get to his sweet spot he often has very few chances to win, especially against the top tier talent he was facing. So the joy is watching him invent solutions, even when they fail. He's a bit like a great clinch fighter who has to get to the clinch, the lock, the swim, and if he can't get there he may not win, but instead Wichannoi's an in-the-pocket equilibrium fighter, who wants to deploy his hands...on his time, under his terms. He's willing to trade, but that's not what he wants to do. He wants to stand there and look, up close, while whacking you with his lower body, and then get the ball rolling with his hands. And once its rolling, to keep it rolling hard imposing intimidation if he can. So many of his fights are filled with compromises with this, but that is where we get to see his extraordinary skill and improvisation. For me, once I realized the goal of it all, then all the pathways to that goal suddenly stood out. Everything he's doing from the outside isn't really to win the fight, and he's very skilled there. It's to prepare the ground for where he wants to be. Sometimes he can only be there for a second, like when he knocks out Pudpadnoi in their first match, sometimes its almost an entire round like with Narongnoi. Fights I'd say to watch as Don't Miss are that first Narongnoi fight, the fight vs Padejsuek which is a fight of incredible compromise and recalibration. His fight vs Sirimongkol is beautiful because he's facing a bigger boxer who is slick and long, and just refuses his spot. They are all actually really good at teaching the use of tempoing, of spatial goal setting, of combining level change and use of angle taking. He's just really a profound fighter who was regularly struggling vs size disparities. The Fights and Notes The notes that follow below are varied. Some of them were just personal notations so that I can recall later what were essential characteristics or turning points in a fight, so that I can recall them more easily. And some are quite lengthy moment to moment perceptions, where my understanding of Wichannoi is really expanding in real time. The watch started out as mostly the attempt to recall a particular fight that I enjoyed, but became a full blown fight after fight watch study attempting to assess and record just what was so special/unique about Wichannoi. What was he about? As notes I tried to clean them up but typos may be plentiful. vs Pudpadnoi Worawut 1st of 3 (1971-12-17) - southpaw, win a very femeu fight vs one of the great femeu fighters in history. Lots of quick low kicks and pivots, lots of positioning. Then in the 4th Wichannoi uncorks a quick 2 punch combo that lays Pudpadnoi out. The only time Wichannoi would beat Pudpadnoi in their 3 match ups. the fight: Huasai Sitthiboonlert (139 lbs, 1973-06-22) - orthodox, win fight waaay up, you can see the visible size difference. Early Wichannoi is just picking at the legs. Huasai look like a ponderous boxer with power. Huasai starts bringing the fight to him, a deep pivot out by Huasai puts him against the ropes. Wichannoi measures and puts him out with a powerful right hand just as Huasai opens up to punch, and even rips an elbow or a tight hook, just missing the falling Huasai. Huasai looks done laying their motionless, and then suddenly springs up energetically to life. Wichannoi pressures and pounces, never snuffing his punches, always liquid in range, landing combinations and putting Huasai down again. He's up again on the count the giant who cannot be killed. Wichannoi catches him on a dive out next, landing a hook and declared the winner with 3 knockdowns in the round. Does several somersaults in celebration. vs Sirimonkol Looksiripat 2nd of 2 (134 lbs vs 136 lbs, 1973-10-26) - southpaw, loss giving up two pounds vs a the future FOTY (1973), a legend of the sport. Early on big weapons are out. Sirimongkok is openside southpaw kick blasting and throwing his straight, Wichannoi knocks him down (no count) with a right straight of his own. Sirimongkol's big kick and boxing keep Wichannoi waiting, and he even rips a kickout trip on Wichannoi. He has more weapons with force. Against the added size Wichannoi can't intimidate with his own power. 3rd round Wichannoi has decided to chop the lead leg down, a favorite against southpaw. Quick inside and outside kicks. Sirimongkok adjust, keeping things long, and teeping with his lead leg to avoid it being excessively targeted. Wichannoi heats up his boxing combinations closing the space, but Sirimongkol has boxing himself, and keeps it long with jabs, slipping Wichannoi's best punches, jabbing and pivoting out. He also answers Wichannoi's tough leg kicks with powerful leg kicks of his own, giving him game to game. 4th round you can just feel that Wichannoi wants to land powerful hand combinations, and he's holding them in wait, only throwing them occasionally. Sirimongkol is still keeping it long with his boxing and a few openside kicks, its mostly about distance. He's also added a left knee in space this round, which is a weapon tailored to beat a boxer. Sirimongkol uses his size and maybe even strength advantage to just deal back Wichannoi whatever he offers, even winning at trading punches. Again, game on game. Wichannoi just can't get to his sweetspot with his hands, and even when he does Sirimongkol just fights him out of it. 5th round Wichannoi is just determined to get to his spot and stay there. He pressures and buckles Sirimongkol some with low kicks. Sirimongkol is doing everything to get him off his spot. Jabbing out, trading low kick for low kick, Wichannoi is staying where he needs and is waiting for his big punch to land. The battle of distance and Wichannoi finally planting his flag is what this fight is about. Sirimongkol finally grabs him to stall it out, but after the break Wichannoi lands a painful low kick and a heavy cross. Sirimongkol grabs to stall, but then shoves off. Wichannoi wades in with pseudo clinch, and then kicks out Sirimongkol's ankle dropping him to the ground. Wichannoi is bringing his legendary toughness, he feels he has a window late. He's trying to kill that leg, staying in. Sirimonkol's deep boxing pivots to the left save him. Wichannoi started too late, and in the end Sirimongkol's size and boxing was enough. vs Saensak Muangsurin 3rd of 3 (1974-08-22) - southpaw, loss Fighting way up vs the 140 lb Lumpinee champion. This fight is a difficult and indeed dangerous fight stylistically. Saensak's known for just sitting on his huge left hand. He has tremendous power. Wichannoi likes to encroach with kicks, eventually stand in and keep his right hand there loaded with power...but he almost always throws his right in combinations. To sit in the pocket though, while Saensak who is two weight classes bigger trains his .44 magnum at him is just asking for pain, and Wichannoi starts this fight tentatively at distance, holding his right glove like a trainers mitt. It's purely devoided to defense. There is some hand fighting as Saensak's .44 is pointed at Wichannoi's smaller caliber with a kick, Saensak crashes in with a straight and its a lot. Wichannoi shifts at the angles, pings at the legs, but its very unclear what he can do. That big left is staring at him. He lands an off-rhythm straight, no combination, and it does nothing. In the 2nd round Saensak realizes that he has control over both range and power and fights passively, backing up, just letting his left wait for Wichannoi to come in. He has to come in, there is no way else to win this fight. Wichannoi starts bouncing around to bring rhythm, this is kind of one of his triggers, and Saensak follows him in it, bringing more life to his own feet. Saensak has long, slow openside kicks that land because Wichannoi is seriously worried about that left. His lead growing. 3rd round Wichannoi has turned the knuckles of his right hand a little bit more forward, its no longer just a trainer's mitt. He's creeping in as he likes to do, usually he wants to plant that flag and punish with lowkicks, but Saensak is beast and even his misses are frightening. Wichannoi tries with lead hand to hand pressure with then his right, or a short body kick. Somehow he needs to get to his spot, he's standing in. Saensak throws an absolutely blazingly fast 2-5-2 combination where the first 2 isn't even a complete punch. It's just a gesture which opens up the guard, the 5 and the next 2 knocking Wichannoi out. wow. Saensak doesn't throw a lot of combinations but this one is just incredibly fast and accurate, and it delivers the left hand bomb. Because Wichannoi is so wary of that left hand that 2 to start just opens him up. He walked into the exact buzzsaw he feared, but some craft with it. They fought 3x, Wichannoi had beaten him 2 years before (I can't imagine how). Saensak: King's Fighter of the Year in 1973, WBC World Boxing Champion vs Pudpadnoi 3rd of 3 (1976-05-27) - southpaw, loss the fight starts out with a bit of range-finding but it becomes clear that the range that Wichannoi is looking for his Muay Maat punching range. He's pressuring, differently than in fight 1. Lots of powerful (rather than flicking) lowkicks early. Round 4 Wichannoi's power kicking game is turned up. Not only kicks to the legs but also to the open side, always measuring for a big right hand. Pudpadnoi is just slippery enough and lands two big kicks with his famous left leg, but Wichannoi had him flinching on low kicks too. He couldn't land his right though. In the 5th Wichannoi still kicking but you can feel he wants to land his heavy hands, the fight is staked on it. He is waiting, but the Golden Leg of Pudpadnoi holds the fort.

One of the effects of deteriorating defense in Muay Thai is that sub-optimal offenses will become more effective. Which is to say, they will no longer appear sub-optimal (based on flawed principles). The lack of eyes, or distance control, or sound principles on defense will elevate certain offensive trends which would never fly in the past...one of the subtle ways deskilling is happening. Basic combo-ing sudden is proven effective. Blind pocket trading, effective. Spamming elbows, effective. And with that effectiveness the loss of skill.

ONE didn't invent giving bonuses on top of fight pay in Thailand. In fact it took a long tradition of gamblers providing injections during fights to inspire fighters. When you hear about traditional fight pay you are missing out on the "injection" bonuses which can be substantial. Here today a fighter winning 500,000 injection bonus ($15,000+ USD) and being guided into the stands to thank the gamblers (who are often portrayed in simplistic caricatured ways). It's an ecosystem out of balance, but its still an ecosystem, in which parts support parts. Instead in ONE this bonus tradition has been transferred to only ONE big boss, being handed out on the preference of a single man, who is attempting to steer the aesthetic of Muay Thai itself...away from tradition. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=791304983340912&rdid=mUWvMklDzJ4i3xa6

Saenchai with another KO win on Entertainment Thai Fight. He's the last magical fighter of Thailand, that last of Thailand's greatness, and we are all blessed as he continues in the ring. I don't watch it much (or any of Thai Fight), but still consider it a blessing. When he stops it will all be gone, even though this is kind of half-fighting, and surely he'll do show fights after his retirement. What I love about this photo - and the first thing is that it suddenly feels like Saenchai has aged, and this happens - but what I love about this photo is that you can see his "coal eyes", which is what I call them. There was an old trainer at Lanna named Nok, who when you trained with him his eyes, if you got any advantage or edge, would just turn black. You could see, he just went into that state. And you knew, stop fucking around. Saenchai has always had such a joyful, playful visage, and a charm of handsomeness that he carried everywhere, even into intense battles. But every great, experienced fighter, even Saenchai, has "coal eyes" inside of him, they have to or they couldn't do it the way that they have. And, in my poetic view, it feels like in this slightly aged photo you can see his coal eyes come out. And its really beautiful.

I thing that many people miss in assessing ONE's future, or even capacity to do anything, is that almost everything you know about ONE (aside from financial declartive documents, and the few voices that escape NDAs and non-disparagement agreements), has been told to you by ONE. So every concept of "reach" or success that is measurable or on a scale comes from the ONE picture building. And...its a bit like asking Trump how his Casinos and buildings are doing. A good, if small, example of this is how RWS is far exceeding ONE Thailand in revenue, by a factor of about 6. source It just shows a very different concept of business. RWS actually wants to generate revenue at the gate, ONE much rather would pack houses with loads of given away tickets and project massive success through its social media agreements and message control. ONE is trying to generate (one might even say "fake") the feeling of a massive moment...because everything is basically a commercial for the next investor round. They much less want actual fans, so much as the vast impression of fans, and spending everything they can to create the impression is a priority...because the "real" revenue" is a massive investment round, unfortunately something that seems to be drying up. They aren't selling the sport to fans, they are selling it to investors. Sizzle, not steak. So any kind of picture we draw from is already part of this enormous Image creation, which it was hoped would bootstrap itself through dramatic gestures of largess. Flaunting huge payment numbers, etc. A form of "Mystery"... Which isn't to say that none of this is good. The world, and especially the "good" of Capitalism, is made from ostentatious pretension. There is in the world the whole "escape velocity" theory, the fake it until you make it, and when fueled by more than half a billion dollars there is a lot one can fake, in fact the faking becomes quite real, affects real lives, turns into power, creating new capacities and opportunities. So, one of the most compelling questions about what comes now is that the actual question of revenue and profit making, peeled away from the presentation of profit-making, gets put up against other forms of Thailand Muay Thai that are pulling revenue. And, because so much of what has come to us has come through the filter of ONE's image making its very hard to know where anything is at all. Everything is bigger, better, about to break through. It's the Golden Rule of Trump-like positive image driving, which when looking at the world does lead to power itself. Invest now! Buy now! You don't want to miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity! A certain kind of power. We of course should not be lead astray into thinking that Thailand's Muay Thai does not develop and express itself through all kinds of power relations, many of them institutional, many strongly divided by class differences and entrenched hierarchies, There is no "innocent" Muay Thai in the sense of a Muay Thai without efforts of domination and control, in fact the art and sport arguably is the ritualized performance of such. It's more though that maybe this form of economic magical portrayal, as it is so globalized, so hyperstated, so flowing from that which is outside and beyond Thailand, feels like it could be destructive. Too much sizzle...too little steak?

It's pretty amazing that ONE has under contract the woman who at least as an argument for being the greatest female Muay Thai fighter of all time -- but hasn't fought a "real" full rules Muay Thai fight for maybe 7 years now -- and they don't even have her fighting their version of "Muay Thai", or have her face their own very qualified female Muay Thai champion...who is having trouble finding opponents. Phetjee Jaa was a VERY good, multi-skilled, every distance Muay Thai fighter before she became an amateur boxer, and then an Entertainment Thai Fight fighter...now in the service of Kickboxing. Properly, Phetjee Jaa should be representing female Muay Thai to the world. It was her true art, that which she was raised in...until she ran out of opponents. Female Muay Thai has historically missed out through her absence. She's not really a Kickboxer, though she can handle the sport and ruleset. She's a Muay Thai fighter.

Was thinking about a commenter telling another redittor that they were "elitist" for not liking ONE FC, and preferring trad Muay Thai, the absolute irony of them thinking that a new globalized version of the traditional form of the sport (a sport which has been practiced and fought by the working poor throughout Thailand for at least a century, in some ways MADE by the rural nakmuay), a new commodity version which has been invented by hi-so wealthy, "elite" Thais, wealthy sons who went to school in very expensive schools in the United States, a new sport modeled in the Thai high-brow love of MMA (MMA is a Thai hi-so taste in Thailand, because originally you needed a satellite dish to watch it, so only rich young people watched it back in the day), so completely born of Thai elite taste making, and then funded massively, to the tune of more than a Half a BILLION dollars, by wealthy Arab investment and other very elite Venture Capital investment groups, some of the most powerful investment sources in the world...all of that, absolutely about as elitist as you can get, reinventing the traditional sport, inverting pretty much all of its values, in the image of wealth itself, so that affluent tourists and consumers will buy it...but, if you don't like it...you are elitist. The whole thing is about as posh as you can get.

from Reddit discussing shin pain and toughening of the shins: There are several factors, and people create theories on this based on pictures of Muay Thai, but honestly from my wife's direct experience they go some what numb and hard from lots of kicking bags and pads, and fighting (in Thailand some bags could get quite hard, almost cement like in places). Within a year in Thailand Sylvie was fighting every 10 or 12 days and it really was not a problem, seldom feeling much pain, especially if you treat them properly after damage, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztzTmHfae-k and then more advanced, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcWtd00U7oQ And they keep getting harder. After a few years or so Sylvie felt like she would win any shin clash in any fight, they just became incredible hard. In this video she is talking about 2 years in about how and why she thought her shins had gotten so hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFXCmZVXeGE she shows in the vid how her shins became kind of permanently serrated, with divots and dings. As she discusses only 2 years in (now she's 13 years of fighting in) very experienced Thais have incredibly hard shins, like iron. Yes, there are ideas about fighting hard or not, but that really isn't the determining factor from our experience with Sylvie coming up on 300 fights and being around a lot of old fighters. They just can get incredibly tough. The cycles of damage and repair just really change the shin (people in the internet like to talk about microfractures and whatnot). Over time Sylvie eventually didn't really need the heat treatment anymore after fights, now she seldom uses it. She's even has several times in the last couple of years split her skin open on checks without even feeling much contact. Just looked down and there was blood.

Thats so upsetting. Whats worse is that its a conscious action for them to have go about fighting like this. While for lots of us in the states or Europe where fighting is just like this anyway its just how you do it, we dont even make the conscious action of how much power you're putting into something, what follows after, and our own composure. It shifts energy away from ones self which is why it seems to muster up so much of the ego in the first place. Self attachment through the reaction of others and the materiality of power is really self degradation.

"I don't know anything about tennis, but the one hitting the ball harder is clearly winning." Sylvie's brilliant encapsulation of Western advisements of how trad Muay Thai should be fought.

Well that was quite a noble effort from Mongkutpet, defending her Raja belt with extreme vigor. I love how amped she was by the entire fight, no "performance". And forcing the clinch in a low-clinch promotion. Just force the break over and over and over. Steer the fight. Very nice stuff.

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.

A little bit more on the gentrification of American Basketball, with the emphasis on drilling and trainers, and not on expressive play-based development. Muay Thai as well is going through a gentrification, both internally and externally.

Honestly, I'm watching Karuhat reconstruct his movement heritage as he is gaining more capacity in his ACL'd up knee (3 weeks now maybe), and sometime shadows just the gesture of his right kick, lancing forward on his left, recovering knee, and he laughs,, because he knows that this little movement, this little lance, is like nobody else in the world. It's incredible. This micro movement, not even healthy, and he's already expressing in himself something nobody else can reach. and...he's standing in my livingroom.

I remember - I've probably written it somewhere else - driving to Phetjeejaa's family gym, which was up a few lanes and a dirt road, when she was the best female Muay Thai fighter in the world, at only 13 years of age, something we did everyday so Sylvie could train with her. And to get there we motorbiked up Khao Talo road, a pretty active road, and would pass by a Taekwondo studio with a large plate glass window showing the training mat inside, where numerous kids around Phetjeejaa's age all glowed in their starched white Gis, Ha-ai-ing in their moves. And I thought to myself...we are driving to where the best female fighter in the world trains and all these kids, the parents of these kids, don't even know she's there...up the road. And even if they did, they wouldn't train with her at her gym, because Muay Thai is low class, its dirty, nothing like the promise of a clean white Gi. The story of Muay Thai cannot be told without this strong division of class.

As Thailand's Muay Thai Turns Itself Toward the Westerner more and more, people are going to yearn for "authentic" Muay Thai This is one of the great ironic consequences of Thailand attempting to change its Muay Thai into a Western-oriented sport, not only changing the rules of its fights for them, and their presentation, but also changing the training, the very "form" of Muay Thai itself...this is going to increase the demand and desire for "authentic" Muay Thai. Yes, increasing numbers of people will be drawn to the made-for-me Muay Thai, because that's a wide-lane highway...but of those numbers a small subset is going to more intensely feel: Nope, that stuff is not for me. In this counterintuitive way, tourism and soft power which is radically altering Muay Thai, it also is creating a foreign desire for the very thing that is being altered and lost. The traveler, in the sense of the person who wants to get away from themselves, their culture, the things they already know, to find what is different than them, is going to be drawn to what hasn't been shaped for them. This is complicated though, because this is also linked to a romanticization, and exoticization sometimes which can be problematic, and because this then pushes the tourism (first as "adventure tourism") halo out further and further, eventually commodifying, altering more of what "isn't shaped for them". This is the great contradiction. There has to be interest and value in preserving what has been, but then if that interest is grown in the foreigner, this will lead to more alteration...especially if there is a power imbalance. So we walk a fine line in valuing that which is not-like-us. What is hopeful and interesting is that Thailand, and Siam before it, has spent centuries absorbing the shaping powers of foreign trade, even intense colonization, and its culture has developed great resistance to these constant interactions. It, and therefore Muay Thai itself, arguably has woven into itself the capacity to hold its character when when pressed. This is really what probably makes Thailand's Muay Thai so special, so unique in the world...the way it has survived as not only some kind of martial antecedent from centuries ago (under the influence of many international fighting influences), but also how it negotiated the full 100 years of "modernity" in the 20th century, including decades and decades in dialogue with Western Boxing (first from the British, then from America). The only really worrisome aspect of this latest colonization, if we can call it that, is that the imposing forces brought to Muay Thai through globalization are not those of a complex fighting art, developed through its own its own lineage in foreign lands. It's that mostly what is shaping Muay Thai now is a very pale version of itself, a Muay Thai that was imitated by the Japanese in the 1970s, in a new made up sport "Kickboxing", which bent back through Europe in the 1980s, and now is finding its way back to Thailand, fueled by Western and international interest. Thailand's Muay Thai is facing being shaped by a shadow of itself, an echo, a devolvment of skills and meaningfulness. On trusts though that it can absorb this and move on. some of the history of Japanese Kickboxing:

This kid was on like a 17 fight winning streak after winning this fight from behind. Lost the streak now though

This one way kid got screwed over a bit

2. The star boy right now for Petchyindee's Muay Dek is Petch25 T.N.DiamondHome. Khunsueklek is his idol, as he's Khon Kaen as well

Wayfinding vs transportation or navigation. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/tp9wr_v4