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I loved watching this fight. More and more female Muay Khao fighters are finding traction in RWS. I think Winnia fought GREAT honestly. Very well rounded, great pace, love the body shot strategy. And Sanengam fought in a very difficult to solve style, a classic Thai retreat and counter to the open side, with great fading distance control, and the use of the Supergirl knee that was very elevated. She was able to solve under pressure, and use either leg counters, from a really skilled, rhythmed, pressuring fighter. This is a stylistic clash, more than even a skills clash.

What is really troubling about the above is how some of the things that really made Thailand's fighters like no other in the world were specific qualities derived from Thai culture. The deft control over the fight space came out of a Thai sensibility of what power in the world actually looked like. By adopting International, globalized concept-pictures of "power" (aggression, volume, math-like-point-adding), the very Gift of Muay Thai to the world, its example, is being erased. Thais themselves will learn to fight like the lessor skilled global fighter...with perhaps long term consequence for Soft Power itself. Primary to Soft Power is the anchorage of the Thai Magic Fighter who has preternatural control over the fight space. That is why ultimately people will come to Thailand and passionately commit themselves to the art. That, ultimately, is the core "attraction" which will build international respect and honorifics. After Lumpinee already has lost the standard bearing status for the art and sport (hopefully, one day to regained), its difficult to see Rajadamnern not lean into the traditional, very Thai aspects of fighting which it has hosted for some 80 years. Sometimes you have to look longer term, than short term gain.

We'll see how these anti-Muay Thai (Kickboxing) rules play out, as Thailand is unpredictable, but down-regulating narrative scoring, and up-regulating aggression and volume over actual skill (and even "balance") is radically swerving the sport, depriving it of its uniqueness and honestly its high-skill ceiling. Take for instance Samart's remarkable dominant win over Namphon. Conceivably what wasn't a close fight at all, under the new ruleset Namphon himself would have won the fight (at least as it was fought): Most of what Samart is doing is controlling Namphon in retreat, not scoring "damage" or volume points. It's pure art.

above is my photo essay on the Muay Thai Gambler, meant as a commentary on some of the gentrifying, tourism-oriented transformations that Thailand's traditional Muay Thai has been undergoing, particularly since COVID put such a dent in its tourism economy. As various Entertainment versions of the sport have adjusted the rules to favor foreign tastes - and to produce Western winners - one of the more substantive but also hidden aspects of these changes is the marginalization, if not outright removal of the Muay Thai gambler. As I've discussed elsewhere, the Muay Thai gambler arguably has been a core engine of developing traditional Muay Thai's complex and varied fighting style, and as the in-person (and this is important, because online gambling has a very different impact on the aesthetics of the sport) is sidelined if not banished in the sport, it risks shaping itself in a quite deskilling way, more and more meant for unknowledgable, uninvested consumption. To take an example from American sports. Can you imagine if 1950s baseball was redesigned not to appeal to baseball's fanatic fanbase, and instead was meant for the Japanese or Chinese tour groups? Fans, especially in-person fans, collectively shape what a sport is. How it is trained and how it is fought/performed. In sidelining the in-person gambler - this goes from ruling them out by law, to putting them in one location, in darkness, and turning the sport's face toward the unknowledgeable and uninvested, the very anchor of the sport is at risk of being lost. In the theater of the sport, at the ring, the fighter - and the fight - is constantly emitting signs. The signs of their training, the etched hours and years at the bag, on the pads, which customarily reflect the style of the gym, its status and honor, and the individual style of the fighter as it has developed, in the language of the Muay of its time. They are radiating off of the fighter - and the fight; and, the gambler is receiving them, interpreting them, detecting them like the detective in a show, uncovering their rapidly evolving mystery, and himself then emits signs to other gamblers, in a social field of communication which makes up the state-of-the-fight, changing the "price" as it goes. This film short concentrates on the intermediate relay, how the signs of the fight, emitted, enter the gambler's body, causing the body itself to start emitting signs, as unconscious signals. Signals that we all can humanly read. It is this human layer, through which every fight pours, upon which its radiated signals land and reflect, which invigorates, stimulates and steers the fight and the sport itself. These photos, and the film, cut a very thin slice from that living fire. I'm here to present the OTHER side of the story, as complaints about gambling in Muay Thai - by both Thais, and in echo by Westerners - with strong associations with corruption and undue power, are quite common online. These are definite problems, and political pictures of corruption are very important in Thai history, going all the way back to the 1920s when King Vajiravuhd first outlawed gambling in Bangkok, only to eventually rescind it with an exception for Muay Thai because of how damaging it's removal was to the sport. Yes, the shrunken gambling pool has given rise to very powerful gambling whales that have outsized control over fight decision outcomes, which exacerbate the small kaimuay crisis of the sport (small gyms cannot "win" dependably in Bangkok, and eventually have to surrender all their home-grown talent to mega gyms). This is only to argue that some of these trends against the in-person gambler, some of the gentrification of a sport which at root is very working class, provincial and agrarian, some of the tourism reformation, risks undercutting the very substance of who is watching the sport itself. This is what is at risk when a sport and art is made primarily for export. When you watch in-person gamblers in the provinces, ringside, you are looking at the very weave of fighting itself, as it is reflected across their impassioned and knowledgeable investment. To sever this connection, especially in the name of globalization, is to radically change the sport itself.

If you mean this: "Thai gyms themselves, will be very willing to make unfair matchups for Westerners", in the local scenes this often will be large size advantages. But, the greater sense is that in the West there is much more of a "fairness in sport" corrective to any natural desire to just have advantages, it pushes back. In Thailand this really isn't there in the same way. It is - and its more complex than this, but - natural for someone above in a hierarchy of power to push DOWN on those below. If you can bully a matchup disadvantage this is actually at least part of a version of a social "good". It's really is gambling that instead works as the corrective (though, this is ideally so). When you don't have gambling, then you are more in the realm of power-flexing. It's important to keep in mind though, advantage taking isn't exclusively a Thai cultural thing of course. I recall private messaging with a Western owner of a big Chiang Mai gym and them saying quite proudly that his gym had won 19 straight fights vs the local Thai competition. My private, to myself response was: This sounds like these aren't well generated matchups. To the guy it was just proof at how good their gym was. The next level of this though is that the Thais running the matchups (in Western owned gyms, its still often the Thais that have all the social power and decision making, Westerners rely on Thai connections) are perfectly happy to dominate the competition, in a cultural sense that is different than some Western mindsets.

There is a cultural dimension worth mentioning here because it goes against a lot of our Western sport assumptions. Because Thailand's society is still largely traditional, and because Muay Thai itself is founded on a certain kind of social capital agonism (which is to say, social standing of gym owners and such is what is actually at stake in variously gambled on fights), "fairness" is not really the goal of much match making in Thailand. That is to say, the Western, somewhat amateur-coded concepts of competition, in the abstract, don't really apply. Instead, putting your thumb on a matchup, forcing disadvantages on your opponent is a sign of your social standing, of your social power. For this reason there is a kind of tidal current in the traditional form of the sport which pushes towards uneven matchups. The disparity goes to the glory of the more powerful agent. Thais - and I don't want to be homegeneous about this, but just being quite general about it - don't really think twice about this kind of top down thumb-on-the-scale, at least not the same terms we in the West do in the light of abstract "equality". It's about hierarchy, and fighters are representing a contested hierarchy of powers. Its for this reason why a gym will be reluctant to take a weight disadvantage, for this can signify a lack of power. Importantly, what corrects this tidal current towards unfairness is gambling itself, at least in principle. If powerful gyms push too hard on the scale, moving towards unfairness, nobody will bet on the fight. Gambling has been a corrective, pushing towards more or less "fair" in matchups. If people are willing to bet, game on. This corrective aspect of gambling though, in trad Bangkok stadia Muay Thai, has been under erosion for some time, as powerful gyms also have aligned with or are powerful gamblers, so the very odds of particular fights can be unduly swayed fight to fight (and again, this thumb on the scale is a signature of social power. It's criticized as "corruption", but it also reads as a respected ability to flex and dominate). The complicated thing is, when dealing with big, powerful gyms in a commercial milieu, without gambling, or at least without it being dominant, in terms of a soft power tourism of Muay Thai, powerful gyms even owned by foreigners (but socially run by Thais), and Thai gyms themselves, will be very willing to make unfair matchups for Westerners. Not only does it help with the overall economy of the sport, a local tourism economy, it actually fits into the traditional hierarchy concept that domination, thumbs on the scales isn't necessarily "bad". It can be a sign of social power in a traditional way. The notion of "fairness" isn't the overriding one in many of these exchanges. This is very hard for Westerners to understand, because it goes somewhat against our framework for sport. You may be given advantages in part because this is a social power flex, if your gym is very powerful in a scene. (Local gambling very well might correct some of this.) This is one reason why Sylvie has steered clear of being represented by big gyms in match-making. What often happens is that once a fighter becomes dominant in a more traditional space, they stop fighting more or less, or fights much less frequently. They will not take on big weight disadvantages to equal match ups because this is a sign of lower social power, and gamblers won't bet on their fights. This is likely why Dieselnoi retired at such an early age, for instance. Not so much that he ran out of all opponents, but because social power displays and gambling interests no longer aligned. The social power of foreign-focused Thai gyms is very hard to gauge. They may have great importance is local Muay Thai scenes. The equality corrective of gambling may not be in full force. It's enough to say that its a complicating aspect of Muay Thai match making. Because Sylvie has wanted to fight as much as possible, she moved away from this complication as much as possible. She didn't want a thumb on the scale if it could be there, and instead took increasingly extreme weight disadvantages that a Thai gym would never really take (due to how it looks). It's not an ideal solution at all, but it was the one we went with. There are all kinds of problems with it, including Sylvie having to become fairly fluent in Thai and building her own fight booking network of friendships and relationships all over the country, in a very idiosyncratic way, and of course at times taking on extreme weight disadvantages. It was our way of avoiding many of the thumb-down power structures in the sport, which can produce wins and some great opportunities but also can be quite imprisoning of opportunity as well after a stretch of success. This relationship to power in-balances in a traditional culture and the idea of fairness we can import into Thailand (to be clear, there are also ideals of fairness as well in Thailand, they are just folded in with older forms of social power expression) makes the question of "authenticity" a very shifting one. A very brief checklist may be: Is social power disparity power involved? What are the weight differences? Is there gambling as a corrective influence? Of course larger bodied fighters can do very little about weight differences often, as the pool is limited, but it is always a factor. They may have to take on those conditions to participate at all, that's how it is. Also, notably, weight advantages often make up for experience or skill level differences in matchups. I only note it as part of the equation.

Not your chosen location, but Pattaya has Rambaa's gym which is famous for its fairly traditional training with lots of Thai boys, and Western fighting kids being folded into it all. He's got a pretty good system developed over time, preserving both the old style gym and welcoming foreign young fighters. Also Silk Muay Thai is a kid adapted gym with much more of a Westernized training style (and much more modern/western accommodations). They also have Thai kids developing out of the gym, and put on trad fight shows, so its a hybrid space. The owner Daniel's kids train and fight there, so the whole thing is very kid conscious, and its well connected in terms of fight opportunities.

Im late to the feast, but reading the starting post and the answer, I do agree. You TS are probably better trained than most debutants I do see in Thailand form the hundreds of videos from there... So dont worry too much... What is the big difference, they dont use protections... And thus, the hits hurts for real... Make sure your belly muscles are super top trained - and be prepared it hurts and thus be prepared to endure sharp pain. Also, to continue to fight althought you got elbow in the head and its bleeding... Essentially, what Kevin talks when he recommends a months preparation to toughen up, to get used to the atmosphere. I have seen more then once decently trained debutant fighters, whom immediately break up as soon they notice it hurts for real. Or they start to bleed... "ref himself did looked and stopped the match" told the otherwise top trained guy... My comment: But the ref didnt stopped the match because it bled, he stopped the match because he saw the foreigner got scared and had enough for today... Ps. Another note: they very seldom use the throw in towel. They KNOW the tradition, but its very seldom used. Most thais do their best to fight into the end... Even if they occasionally dive, ie allow themselves to be KOed. Begging the ref to stop do happens but its most often foreigners whom do so.

This is the problem with assessing if Thai Muay Thai fighters knew how to "box". If you watch their Lumpinee fight in Muay Thai (watch it below), one might think that Dekkers had a big "boxing" advantage, Den Muang hardly really throws his hands, uses a ton of open side kicks, and basically goes back to the ropes and covers when Ramon combos forward. But clearly Den knows how to box, as he outboxes Dekkers in their boxing fight. Muangsurin gym was one of the best boxing gyms in Bangkok at the time. But Golden Age Thais show their boxing acumen in the ring in Muay Thai very differently, not necessarily by "letting their hands go" (other Muangsurin fighters like Saensak and Samransak did throw their hands a lot with power). Somrak, another great Thai boxer, often would seldom punch in the Boxing ring. This goes to the limitation of today regarding forward advancing hand combos as "boxing" in Entertainment shows. Real, deeper boxing skills come from actually training and fighting in boxing, and don't necessarily show up in how much you use your hands. ht to Brian for sending me this fight. at Lumpinee: