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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For anyone who follows my writings I do not argue for any sense of a "pure" Muay Thai, or even Siamese fighting art history. Quite different than such I take one of Siam and Thai strengths is just how integrative they have been over centuries of development (while, importantly, preserving its core identity). For instance Western Boxing has had a powerful influence upon the form and development of Muay Thai for well over 100 years, and helped make it perhaps the premiere ring fighting art in the world, but Western Boxing itself was a very deep, complexly developed art which mapped quite well upon traditional Muay Thai in many areas, allowing it to flourish. This is quite different than the de-skilling that is happening in the sport right now, where instead the sport is being turned towards a less-skilled development, for really commercial reasons. The story of whether the influx of attention, branding, not to mention the very important monetary investment that Entertainment Muay Thai has brought will actually help "save" traditional Muay Thai is yet to be written. It very well might, as the sport was reaching some important demographic and cultural dead-ends, and it needed an infusion. But, let's not have it be lost, what itself is being lost, which is the actual very high level of skill Thailand had produced...and how it had developed it. Let's keep our eye on the de-skilling.

I'm creating a separate thread post for the pdf of this article and bookmarking its discussion. The pdf is attached, but you can currently find it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2025.2523893#abstract I beat a Thai performing white masculinity in Thailand s Muay Thai fighting tourism.pdf << There have been a fair amount of ethnographic papers on Muay Thai, often organized around an academic or student's lengthy stay in Thailand, training and sometimes fighting, and honestly this it by far the best I've read. It's kind of two papers in one. There is the philosophical framework of the introduction and the conclusion, that is absolute excellent and a bit conceptually ground breaking, and then there is the "field study" which for those of us who have been around Thailand's Muay Thai for a long time may read less interestingly, even if they make up much the substance of the study. The views of traveling fighters compose the mixed-culture subject matter. But this is my personal sense, and is just the manner of this kind of paper and follows with this kind of field work observation. For me the paper really soars when its at its most philosophical. screen caps like this are great: and and When the author brings together race and gender together with Colonialism it is really driving hard on the right line of inquiry (I would say). An important thing that is missing is that Thailand's Muay Thai is itself a hypermasculinity performance, which you can find in this section of Peter Vail's dissertation, so really what we have is the differential of at least TWO hypermasculinities coming into contact. The author is great at pointing out how emulation is the process of becoming, as well as the process of sought for (racial) domination. A very slippery Colonialist slope indeed. The author's instincts are so strong here I really wish they had teased out their intuited arguments further (maybe there is another paper for this), because this is a much needed discourse in Thailand's tourism Muay Thai, and in fact traditional Muay Thai itself. But I'm dropping this article here because I hope to return to its framing philosophical picture and perhaps write deeper into it.

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

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

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.

As Thailand's Muay Thai travels toward pure commerce and its consumption, it should be remembered that the Thai fight for the dead, before the dead...to the honor of the dead. In funeral rites for fallen fighters and figures of the sport it is customary, in these days, to perform a traditional fighting wai kru and to put on a theatrical display, a show fight (though even further back, and at times, it can be a real fight a reality marked often marked by wagers taken). There is a celebration of the art, the sport and mostly of the community of people within it, all present in the memory of the past nakmuay or figure of the sport, who is no longer with us, and certainly a kind of joy when it comes to the spectacle of the sparing fight itself. When people argue that Muay Thai is just a sport, they do not realize that Thais in the sport have the custom of putting on show fights for the dead who have left. It is far, far more than a sport. It is the weaving of meaningful violence, transformed into spirit and its dignified glory. Each and every fight, and each and every ceremonial spar and wai kru. Below three videos of ceremonial fights. The second one is part of a longer short film on the passing of the legend Sirimongkol. Dieselnoi and Pudpadnoi for Namkabuan Sagat and Pudpadnoi for Sirimongkol Yodkhunpon and Chatkating for the head of the Sittraipom Gym's passing Samart and Weerapol (not sure which passing)

Never sure about provenance, but below is a photograph marked as a Funeral Fight for Marupongsiripat (1898). This custom reaches back well over 100 years, and to Thai royalty. The establishment of the 3 Schools of Muay Boran (just before the decade when Muay Thai would be modernized on the model of British Boxing) also occurred through funeral matches.

Updated graphic for the above, some corrections. It was enjoyable digging around in the records, creating a new nice of achievement and talent. Jongrak Lukprabaht is the one figure up there with Kongtoranee and Chamuekpet with 12, a Golden Age fighter who fought on the Rajadamnern side of promotions. Notable perhaps that the elite Golden Age legends of Lumpinee and OneSongChai are largely absent. Either the belts were just to competitive on that side, or not fought frequently enough in that time frame (I assume). Probably a few names missing. Edit in, a new record found by Lev, Songkram Porpaoin with 5+8. He's just fighting for the same low-weight Rajadamnern title over and over, but it is still historic.

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.

Two Points of Contact I'm excited about this coming piece in the MTL. Something we discovered in Karuhat's frame control. His use of two points of contact, opened up by the turn of the hand.

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.

Note to self...want to write of the female fighter as axis mundi, the christological (in Simone Weil sense of bridging sacrifice) pinning of the body down the in the turpitude of struggle, eliciting the sparks of the divine. Soliciting the female as artist, who builds the ladder to Heaven of oneself. see Possession (1981). What do I mean by this? Some of it is in relationship to my overall theory of ring fighting in Thailand as a rite, and I think my short film was tapping into this intuition:

You won't find thai style camps in Europe, because very few people can actually fight full time, especially in muay thai. As a pro you just train at a regular gym, mornings and evenings, sometimes daytime if you don't have a job or one that allows it. Best you can hope for is a gym with pro fighters in it and maybe some structured invite-only fighters classes. Even that is a big ask, most of Europe is gonna be k1 rather than muay thai. A lot of gyms claim to offer muay thai, but in reality only teach kickboxing. I think Sweden has some muay thai gyms and shows, but it seems to be an exception. I'm interested in finding a high-level muay thai gym in Europe myself, I want to go back, but it seems to me that for as long as I want to fight I'm stuck in the UK, unless I switch to k1 or MMA which I don't want to do.

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.

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?

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.

Well, the PAT announced 24-30 hr weigh-in, a huge change the sport. Get ready for tons of weight bullying (including bigger farang fighting small Thais in trad stadium fights). Basically for all practical reasons all weight classes have been expanded. This is in part in relationship to the labor crisis mentioned above, the capacity to draw from a wider range of fighters to fill cards. Trad Muay Thai will likely have greater skill disparities (shrinking talent pools) and now more massive size differences, as well as drawing in more farang who will become part of this solution. This will also likely mean more farang stadium/promotion belts in trad fighting. Of course laws in Thailand are unevenly forced, so there could be major hiccups in implementation, including a significant problem that fighters now have to come to Bangkok the day before, which means even greater costs to fight...which could ALSO shrink the fighter pool. Already many gyms, small kaimuay, have difficulty even breaking even in Bangkok fighting expenses. Will outlying fighters be able to regularly afford to come to fight in Bangkok, especially in a scene that favors the political power of major Bangkok gyms (they can't dependably recoup their expense by betting on their fighters). These changes could have a massive stylistic impact on Thailand's trad Muay Thai over time, as it gives even more advantage to size and power. Saenchai was famous for his criticism of the loss of femeu fighting after he left the trad stadium scene, because large-bodied power clinch fighters (who he had some trouble with) had become the gambler's favorite. With the even greater increase in size differential now, and the influence of more smashing and clashing fighting styles of Entertainment Muay Thai, it stands to reason that power will become even more effective over femeu skill than ever before. In the Golden Age there were fairly substantial size differences, but the technical skill level of fighters was such - and the trad artful scoring bias in favor of - that small fighters like Karuhat and many others could handle 2 or more weight class (in the ring) differences. This high level of the art just really is missing in this era, and scoring biases are shifting toward the power aesthetic. Trad Muay Thai may become much more combo-heavy smashy with the big man coming out on top.

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.

One of the most interesting mysteries of the evolution of Thai clinch is how stadium Muay Thai in not more than 10 years after the legalization of trips and various sweeps (early 2000s) suddenly flourished with a complete art form of these techniques, when in fact none of them were prevalent in the decades before (the Golden Age), so much so they became signature of Thailand Muay Thai's unparalleled fighting style. The only answer to "why" or "how" is that these movements were already implicit, were already within the "adjacent possibles" of highly developed Golden Age Muay Thai, because Thailand's Muay Thai operated at such a deep level of attunement to balance and timing, and thus it was only a short path between almost no trips and sweeps to suddenly dominant tripping and sweeping...in a few short years.

What many do not appreciate is that much of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai is really a Shield and Sword style of fighting, because of its inherent priority of defense. Offense largely is built off of the dexterous use of "shield". Entertainment Muay Thai is essentially turning to Muay Thai's Shield and Sword and saying: "Hey, fight without a Shield!"...but still make it "Muay Thai". You can't really. It's Shield and Sword.

The Deskilling of Muay Thai Through Combo-Fighting Discussing again the deskilling of Muay Thai in the ONE promotion (and to a lessor degree, other Entertainment forms of Muay Thai): To be quite broad about it ONE is just bite-down combo fighting turned into a sport so larger bodied, less-skilled farang can win endless pocket trading (which is seriously up regulated by bonuses and hidden penalties), so the (new, invented) sport can be promoted to non-Thais. It has nothing to do with the history of Muay Thai. It has to do with trying to create a product that will sell through Knockout highlights on Instagram. It also has almost nothing to do with Boxing. The impression it does is just the rather vast conflation thinking "combos" = Boxing. It, in my opinion, is contributing to the accelerated deskilling of the art and sport, rather than introducing important new skills, or returning it to past sophistication. Boxing is NOT "combos". 3 Zones of Fighting Here is a graphic to help explain: Over-simplistically there are 3 Zones of Fighting: ONE has effectively removed the importance of 2 of the 3 zones (because they take the most skill development, and Thais have been much better at those 2 down regulated zones). This is a deskilling of the sport: And, in the zone that remains (Zone 2), by removing defensive distance taking (the Thai emphasis on retreat and counter-fighting, and clinch, the traditional counter to a hands-heavy striker) they have made Zone 2 a haven for bite-down combo fighting (and NOT Boxing proper). That is to say, you can succeed by combo-ing through this zone, especially if you are larger bodied. On the other hand, if you look at the top graphic with all Three Zones, you can see how Boxing proficiency connects up, or fills in the high level development of zones 1 and 2 in Muay Thai. When all three Zones are in play bite-down comboing through the pocket doesn't actually do this, because it lacks the timing, vision and control over position that Muay Thai deploys in Zones 1 and 2. Boxing, on the other hand, because its so highly developed as a mid-distance art developed over centuries really, like Muay Thai, adds great complexity to the management of the 3 zones. A Historical Example: If you want to see what combo-ing does against a 3 Zone fighter the classic example would be Ramon Dekkers vs the 19 year old Sakmongkol: Sakmongkol simply refused to trade in Zone 2 and completely controlled Dekkers. ONE is basically the complete inversion of the Dekkers vs Sakmongkol fight. It removes Zones 1 & 3, and ostensibly would have forced Sakmongkol to trade with Dekkers, if we reimagine it. Eventually Sakmongkol, if he was forced to trade would have probably gotten caught...but not because Dekkers was a high level "boxer". It's because he combos through Zone 2, and the traditional control of that kind of fighter is dominating Zones 1 and 3. This is why Dekkers struggled when fighting Thais in Thailand, despite usually having a pronounced weight advantage. ONE is basically a "reversal" of the imagined injustice Dekkers losing to Sakmongkol and so many other Thais, changing all the rules to down regulate everything the Thais did better than anyone else in the world. But, this has nothing really to do with Boxing. Thailand was plentiful with Muay Thai fighters who were better actual Boxers than Ramon Dekkers. It has to do with the role of combo-fighting. asked to "define Boxing" (ie, its not "combo fighting): It's pretty hard to define a sport or art in a few sentences - or even paragraphs! - but what I would say is that Boxing has always been a sort of parallel in principle to Thailand's "Muay Thai", if you could somehow extract all the Boxing influence (which you can't). This is to say that "Muay Thai" excels at controlling the fighting space that lies outside of the boxing "pocket", through timing, the capacities of strikes to relate to each other at that increased distance (improvisationally), and very importantly, through defense. Boxing (abstracted) compliments this with a priority over the control of the space of the pocket, through the same. And, Muay Thai clinch then takes back over at the closest proximity, as a stand up grappling art (though Boxing too has its own lineages of very close-pressed fighting and even grappling). Training bite-down combos is really the opposite of all of this. It's just firing of memorized movement patterns and using them to blast or chop through the fight space. Combo fighting is not about controlling space at all, but rather dealing with the fact that you can't control it.

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.

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:

I'm not sure where Fani Peloumpi trains nowadays - might be that she still gives privates at MTA academy which is quite central. I would contact her on facebook, as we did. We enjoyed our privates with her. Luckily, in my experience in Thailand, the pads are held by Thai trainers who have control and no need to use strength to show off, so my main worry would be rather to avoid touristy gyms near where half the people training there are mainly concerned with getting the right shots for their social media. If you stay for one month, i would try out different gyms and see which fits best. Getting different experiences and approaches would be a plus, in my opinion, and Bangkok is like a candy store in that regard. Add to that a few privates e.g. with Namsaknoi, or any trainers at established gyms such as Sasiprapa, Petchyindee, Kaewsamrit, Eminent Air, Luktupfah.

I'd add to the list The TDet99 gym in Bangkok which we recently film in for the Muay Thai Library (Kru Hem), watch that here: It's a Bangkok kaimuay, a gambling stadium trad gym, with not a lot of Westerners (last we checked), and a top kru. A Walk Through of the Gym: Map link to their location

As Thailand's Muay Thai more and more turns its face toward the World and the West increasingly those coming to Thailand to seek out, experience, train in, fight in, even commit to and honor authentic Muay Thai will have a hard time finding it. In this brief article I want to point out the two biggest areas of difficulty. Keep in mind, I'm writing this from the perspective of having witnessed my wife who has fought more times in Thailand than any non-Thai in history, coming up on 300 times, as a fighter who has steered as clear as possible from aspects of the sport which are arranged or made for you, and become perhaps the foremost documentarian of the sport and art. Everything I describe is from often repeated things we've encountered, found ourselves in, worked through, and what we've learned from the experiences of others. Importantly, pretty much everyone who has been in the country a long time has their own experience and understanding of authenticity, and this is just ours. Thai culture, and Muay Thai culture is also a very complex and woven thing, it is not homogeneous or made in one way, so these are benchmark ideas and there are many exceptions. Authenticity, that which is not made for us. 1. Increasingly Thailand's Muay Thai is made FOR you One of the first challenges is honestly that of recognition. Because Thailand is so culturally different, and Thailand gym training not that of than Western and international gyms, whatever you are experiencing is going to feel authentic. Its authenticity will come through in everything that is different. It must be authentic because I'm not used to this. And because we can only judge from our own experiences, and from what we see and read, this is difficult to overcome. After 3 months in the country you are going to feel like you have really penetrated to the heart of something really new. After a year, you really will feel like you know what's going on, and if you have gravitated toward "authenticity" you'll probably feel like you are in a pretty "real" place. My caution is: Nope. You probably don't realize how much of Muay Thai has been turned toward YOU. And if it wasn't turned towards you, you wouldn't be participating in it. This is going to sound harsh, but pretty much ALL Western/International Muay Thai experiences are something like an elephant ride. The elephant (Muay Thai) is very real, and there is great privilege and beauty in being on an elephant. You're touching a living, breathing, REAL elephant...but you are on an elephant ride, made FOR you. Now, there are all sorts of elephant rides. There is the one where they walk in a circle and you get off, and another where you bathe and then bareback like a "real mahout" would, and then maybe all the way up to 10 day safaris, trekking on elephant back (is there such a thing?). But it's still an elephant ride. You get in the ring, its real...even if its arranged for you, its intense and real. You hit the bag, you burn the kilometers in road work, its real. This isn't to say anything is inauthentic. All of Muay Thai in Thailand will change you. This is about reaching, as passionate people will, those aspects of the sport and art that are unique to Thailand itself, that may fall from view as Thailand turns its face toward you. The Rules, For You How do I mean this? The rules of the sport have been changed so that you (in a less skilled way) will win fights, or perform well in fights you might not otherwise in the traditional Thai version of the sport (there is a full spectrum of this, stretching from RWS entertainment Muay Thai to ONE smash and clash). This is a fairly recent transformation, covering perhaps the last 10 years. The sport itself has been altered for you...and, as it has been altered for you, this also has washed back onto trad Bangkok stadium Muay Thai, which has absorbed many of the entertainment qualities which are pervading social media and gambling sites. In some sense the "authentic" traditional Muay Thai of Thailand doesn't really exist in promotional fight form anywhere in the halo that tourist and adventure tourist has reached. It's just a question of degree. The issues and influences behind this in trad stadium Muay Thai are more complex than this, but it too has turned its face towards "the foreigner". Some of this is just what people like to call "progress" or "the force of the market place" or others might call the "deskilling of Capitalism", but just know that in the fights themselves, they are by degrees turned towards YOU. It really might only be in the festival fight circuits of the provinces where you will still will find the culture and aesthetics of the sport and art FOR Thais. To be sure in festival fights there can be matchups that favor a larger foreign student of a local gym, which has relationship ties with the local promoter, especially if there is no sidebet. But the EVENT isn't for you, designed around you, catering to you or people like you. You're the oddity, and the rulesets and aesthetics have been less altered if at all. The Training, For You On a deeper level, the training in gyms is also made FOR you. The traditional pedagogy of Muay Thai, the manner in which it was developed through youthful circuit sidebet fighting, the kaimuay culture of non-correction and group dynamic sharing of a grown aesthetic, has been seriously eroded, supplemented and sometimes just outright replaced. You are (likely) not learning in the manner of the Thais that produced such acute excellence so many decades ago. Yes, there will be obvious things like farang krus and padmen in some gyms (many of them quite devoted to Muay Thai, but not produced by the subculture), something that is increasing in the sport, but, subtly, even if your padman is Thai, he may not even be an experienced ex-fighter, as mid-so Thais are holding pads now in the growing commercialization. Muay Thai is experiencing a gentrification and an internationalization at the gym level. Beyond padmen, the very manner of instruction and fighter development will have been changed in some sense for you. For one, increasingly you'll notice "combo" training, memorized strike patterns, which is both a deskilling of the sport (making it easier to teach, replicate and export), but also is training that is geared towards the new Entertainment trade-in-the-pocket patterns and aesthetics, made for tourists and online fandom. The change in the rules of the sport over the last 7 years or so, also is reflected in a change in how the sport is actually taught...even in spaces that feel VERY Thai. The sport is bending to the "combo" because it is signature to Western and international fighting aesthetics, and it can be taught by less skilled/experienced coaches. Fighters did not train like that, nor did they fight like that. As the sport has become deskilled the combo has taken an increasingly important role. Added to this, gyms have had to accommodate the expectations of Westerners and other non-Thais, as the weakening of the sport economically has turned almost every gym in the tourism halo towards at least a hybrid relationship to tourism...it needs to give the Westerner something they recognize and expect...and, because tourists and adventure tourist come with all sorts of investments and motivations, on different timescales, a lower common denominator works itself into the equation. Group "classes", organized drilling of groups, increased conceptualization and rationalization of techniques involving verbal correction and demonstration, even foreign coaching, these are FOR YOU changes in the sport. Sometimes these trends and aspects will only be subtly present, sometimes they will characterize the entire process. This is an elephant ride. And often it is difficult to distinguish where the elephant ends and the ride begins. Even "Fighter Training" Isn't The Process Along these lines of hunting the "authentic" training in gyms you'll run into this difficulty. You may be in a gym full of Thai fighters, even very active Thai fighters. There aren't many combos being held for. No real "group classes". A lot of Thai culture is going on, or seems to be. You are doing the work of fighters, real fighters, right there next to you. It's by Thais its for Thais and its pretty authentic...but for these things. For one, this gym if it's not a kaimuay in the more grassroots sense, all these fighters were made somewhere else. They were bought and brought into the gym, to be part of a stable. So what you likely are seeing, and doing, isn't actually how they became what they are. They are in the polishing, or add-a-level stage. The heartbeat of what made them is elsewhere. Even if you are a developed, accomplished fighter, and you too are in the "polishing" stage, you don't have what they have, which is a very different history of training, fighting and development. They are made of a different material, so to speak, and in truth that "material" is the actual "stuff" that everyone comes to Thailand looking for, that is where the "authenticity" is in their movements, vision, rhythms, stylistics. You can do all the padwork, all the clinch rounds, all the runs, all the bagwork, all the sparring, and you'll get better, in fact a LOT better...but, you'll be missing that "authentic" piece, the thing they got before they came to this gym. To add to this, if you did seek out the kaimuay that grows fighters in the principles of the sport, and their fighting circuits, these are not economically robust spaces, they are no longer teeming with fighters, and they're not focused on the tourist. They are part of a fragmenting economy of largely provincial fighting, and in which is difficult to find one's place, especially as an adult, as they are made for youth. The best you might find are hybrid spaces, kaimuay on the low ebb, which also are run by a great kru, making room for non-Thais, but even these spaces are a kind of bricolage of culture, knowledge and practice. There is no pristine location for the "authentic". "Treated Like a Thai" A layer even further down in terms of authenticity, it's not uncommon to feel that if you've stayed a lot, trained a lot, fought a lot, that you are being (more or less) "treated like a Thai". This is a big desire in the reach for "authenticity", and that experience of being "treated like a Thai" is therefore quite meaningful. But you aren't. You are still likely on an elephant ride, in a certain regard. And that's become Thailand's traditional Muay Thai is culturally founded on intense social power disparity. It is strongly hierarchized, and hierarchies vie against other hierarchies constantly in a political struggle that the Westerner, even the Thai-speaking Westerner, largely cannot see...and if they see them, they cannot care about them in the same way a Thai does and would. This is a continuous struggle for social "position" in which the Thai fighter has almost always has almost zero power. They are bound not only by contract obligation (contract), but more significantly by strong mores of social debt and shame, and the networks of hierarchy which make up gyms, community and promotion. They are in a web with constant top-down and lateral pressures, with very limited choice, you are not. You do NOT want to be treated "just like a Thai"...and honestly, you probably can't be, even if you want to be brought into the same workouts or expectations of a fighter. The reason this is important is the almost all of the motivations you have as a fighter, to become better, to win, to be acknowledged are very, very VERY different than the Thai fighter kicking the bag right next to you...and their motivations are actually the "authentic" part of Thailand's Muay Thai. Stadium Muay Thai is not the free agent professionalism that non-Thais aspire to. It is intense social stigma straining under a culture of obligation. You can do all the work, mirror it beat for beat, but you are not in the affective position of Thai fighters, and so in some sense cannot fight like them, for their alliances and values, the things which bring the strikes out, are largely invisible to the Westerner. All these things: that they've changed the rules so Westerners can win or perform well, and will enjoy watching, that they've changed the way Muay Thai is trained, that you aren't likely exposed to the actual processes that made stadium fighters who they are today, and even that you cannot experience the disempowerment, position and dignity of Thai fighters themselves, all cut off aspects of "authenticity", much sought by those that travel in earnest. This is leaving behind all those more common internet concerns like fake fights, dives, bad match making. It's in the actual fabric of the sport itself, as Westerners reach for it, and as it has turned its face toward the Westerner, making itself for the Westerner...and others. 2. The Fighters Aren't the Same The second difficulty in reaching for "authenticity" is that even if you get through all those layers. If you shun the rehearsed combo, you identify living threads of kaimuay culture and its values and ways of life as much as possible, if you fight five round trad Muay Thai fights, don't take weight advantages when you can, if you emotionally connect with the low social position of the Thai fighter, all the things, and then make it to the ring where "authentic" Muay Thai is "happening"...it's not even happening there. I mean this in this sense. Aside from the erosion and deskilling of the sport due to new promotional motivations, tourism and market pressures, Muay Thai itself has been eroding on its own within the country. The rising economic standard out of the classes of people who traditionally fought it have changed many of the motivations and commitments of the fighters themselves, and the talent pool of fighters has dramatically decreased. I'm going to throw a wild number out, but I'm just guessing in an educated way...maybe the talent pool is 10x smaller. Leaving aside that combos and entertainment aesthetics are now working their way into more or less "Thai" gym spaces, the fighters themselves just are not that good, not as developed, complex or accomplished by the time they are in Bangkok rings. Big name gyms grab up local kaimuay talent earlier and earlier (green fruit off the tree before ripe), the developmental fighter classes (informal groups within gyms) that grow the skills are seriously on the decline. A kaimuay may have had 20 fighting boys, now may have 3? Traditionally there was a stirring of the pot that was cooking a very deep stew of skills, more and more its a process just a few ingredients heated over a short time. This is to say, even if you can get all the way to the "authentic" rings, the quality and sophistication of the Muay Thai you will be facing will lack something that "authentic" dimension that characterized the freedom and expressiveness of skill of past generations. You may in fact fight a Thai who will fight quite like a farang (as far as it goes). They may end combos with a body shot, or throw endless elbows, be unable to defend well in retreat, have a muay of one or two weapons, or be limited and simplistic in the clinch. Not only is the skillset diminished, but in new generation fighters the rhythms and shapes of fighting that are "authentic" may not be there in full force. In some ways the Westerner may encounter a dim mirror of themselves. I'm writing this because this quest for authenticity is seriously meaningful. It's meaningful to us, those of the West who love Thailand's Muay Thai, and it's also meaningful to Thais as well, who have great esteem for its legacy. The only way to significantly engage in the question of authenticity is to acknowledge that it is already substantively hybridized. You and everyone else may be on elephant rides. It's only by identifying the aspects of Muay Thai that are not made for the tourist and adventure tourist, the threads of culture and practice that developed without your presence, or others like you, and nurturing with respect those aspects, that will the authentic journey begin. You may be in a very commercial gym, full of combos and group classes, but your padman probably grew up in kaimuay culture. It's in him. It's what made him. Find ways to connect to that. There are also at times "Thai gyms" (mini-kaimuay) inside commercial gyms, which operates under a different code than the gym for customers. You may be in an Entertainment fight promotion, fight in the traditional style, try to win in the traditional style, even if the ruleset doesn't favor it. Push back against what has been made for you. Learn and identity the lineages of cultural practice that have defined Muay Thai, and connect to those purposely. In a sense, if we all realize we are on elephant rides, at a certain point you have have to love and care for the elephant itself, which is the beautiful, mysterious, almost-like-us, powerful, magical creature. This is the art of Muay Thai. And even if you aren't on the best ride, you are on a mother-effin elephant. Find the culture of the elephant. Find the elephant's history among the people. Find what the elephant needs. Find what is natural to the elephant. Protect and honor the elephant. we wrote a manifest of our values here

This is a line of reasoning I'd like to pursue, that global Capitalism is deskilling Muay Thai fighters, but changing the rules and aesthetics to breakdown complex fighting knowledge to repetitive tasks, like throwing memorized combos, in order to increase the labor force, making individual fighters less unique and more replaceable, and transfer the knowledge core to promotional and media oriented marketing. the chat gpt summary of deskilling: The argument that capitalism induces deskilling comes primarily from Marxist and critical labor theorists, particularly Harry Braverman, who expanded on this in his influential 1974 book Labor and Monopoly Capital. Here's a breakdown of the argument: What is Deskilling? Deskilling is the process by which skilled labor is replaced with less skilled or unskilled labor—often through: Technology or automation Standardization of work tasks Fragmentation of complex jobs into simpler, repetitive tasks Why Would Capitalism Encourage Deskilling? 1. Profit Maximization Capitalist firms aim to maximize profits. One way to do this is to: Replace skilled workers (who are more expensive) with less skilled workers or machines Simplify tasks so they require minimal training, which reduces labor costs 2. Managerial Control Simplifying jobs increases management’s control over the labor process: Skilled workers often have more autonomy and bargaining power Deskilling reduces workers' independence and makes them easier to supervise, replace, and discipline 3. Increased Productivity Deskilled labor allows for: Mass production techniques (think Ford’s assembly line) Faster and more consistent output Easily interchangeable workers, which supports scalability Theoretical Roots Karl Marx: Believed capitalism alienates workers from the labor process, reducing their work to mere repetitive actions Harry Braverman: Argued that capitalist development deliberately strips away workers’ skill and knowledge to concentrate power and expertise in management

Think of the highest level of Muay Thai fighting 30 years ago, in the Golden Age, in terms of Dynamic Range, as its applied to photography or sound recording. Fighters were able to perform skillfully at an intense range of distances. It wasn't just a matter of styles, it was that every distance was within the spectrum of competence or even excellence. With the advent of Entertainment Muay Thai, as Thailand seeks to fashion its sport towards the less skillful foreigner, the real aim is to reduce the dynamic range of fighting to only "the pocket" as much as possible, to generate clashes, because that's where memorized combinations favored by Western and other nationalities are the most effective, and that is where large bodied fighters will win exchanges. The entire spectrum, the Dynamic Range of fighting is to be shrunk. And the ranges were Thais especially held court, too-far (counter kicking defense) and too-close (clinch dominance) have been clipped out.

I've been exploring ultrawides for a while, though basically drawn to them since I started shooting Muay Thai though I didn't know how to use them. There was always the sense that I wanted to weave together very different focal lengths. Since shooting with the Contax which I really love, on a bigger sensor format I've been drawn further in. So here is an experiment, using keyframes, big contrast video and telephoto images, to capture the mood and energy of a training session with Chatchai. This is was just a sketch from a single very quick shoot (I think 3 very short videos, maybe 100 still frames shot), maybe 5 minutes of photography altogether. I wanted it to be very bare bones to see if I could whip up an energy and feeling that I could maybe use on a larger project. The short is much aided by the music by Anand who I'm working with on a big, experimental writing project. wh

We've been watching a lot of David Lynch since he passed. Rewatches of Lost Highways, Wild At Heart, Blue Velvet, Inland Empire...and now working through Twin Peaks. I talk about it a lot. One of the things coming through is the way that he works with melodrama, and in Twin Peaks the soap opera tv form of it. It allows archetypal (in fact at times wooden) characters who are moving through scripts they repeat, stories that are told about these kinds of characters. As the actors say in Inland Empire (paraphrased), "I thought we were doing an original script, I wouldn't agree to do a remake". IN this sense Lynch is saying we are all doing "remakes" as we repeat the scripts we have inherited. But the characters are experiencing very real, intense emotions in these scenes, just like we do in our "real" lives. We are acting in scripts, doing "remakes", but living with tremendous pathos within them. Lynch, I imagine, is making two points about our pathos. There are two doors. The first is akin to Buddhistic (un)attachment. The only reason we are suffering (or enjoying) intensely is because we are attached to these wooden characters, the "remake" we are making. If we saw that these are just recycled characters the grip of our emotions would lessen. But, there is within his films & show another door. Sometimes characters suffer or intensify their experiences so thoroughly they transcend it, they are transformed, in a passion-of-Christ (archetype) type intensification, often it is female characters who pass through this door, with a sort of glowing, mixed divinity. As such with the Muay Thai fighter who is a woman, in a certain way. Female fighters especially are putting on the "clothes" of the fighter, because the fighter is a model of hypermasculinity in many cultural traditions.

People think its the padman's job (in Thailand) to make you tired. No...its your job to make your padman tired, especially if you are a dern fighter. But this does NOT mean go harder. It may mean that, but it does not principally that. Understand, you are learning when you do padwork, and if what you are learning is "This guy makes me tired", that is one of the last things you want to learn. Instead, use padwork to find the inner-patterns of rest, both physically and psychologically, the quiet ways experienced padmen work to recover, breathe, pace, control the tempo. And learn to take these, quietly, away. If you can do it to your experienced padman, you can do it to your opponent.

Watching yet another very skilled Japanese Muay Thai fighter on Phetyindee the other day, I remain convinced - very broadly - that though Japanese fighters definitely hold the Thais, in fact Thailand's Muay Thai, in allure, they principally train in the aesthetic of Anime. This is to say, they are guided by a visual aesthetic that almost entirely forgets the art of Time, which is where almost all the art of Muay Thai is. They honestly, at some very deep level, "doing" Anime, which isn't Muay Thai at all.

Caring for Arjan Gimyu Sylvie did a very good deed today. Arjan Gimyu in his 80s, 2x Coach of the Year, kru of Kaensak and so many other champions, has been somewhat confined to his room because of the air quality and his asthma. He lives a very spar life on a government check, just really a room and a radio and a fan. He usually drives over to Rambaa's gym in the afternoons so he can be in a kaimuay, the real form of the sport where kids are developing, pads and bags popping everywhere, but he's had to stay home lately. Sylvie bought a good Hepa airfilter he can run at night to clean the rooms air, dropping it off, plugging it in and showing him how to use it. She texts with him regularly when he can't make it to the gym, talking about how fighters did and such, keeping in contact. Just knowing that someone cares just a little bit more than expected goes a very long way.

I don't mate, sorry. Only thing I could suggest is asking some locals once you're there

Here some of the drama and architectural effects, an elephant from the other day, on the very nice and simple Laowa 10mm (15mm ff) f/4 Ultra Wide.

And at 8mm (12mm) you can get some almost operatic shots, like this one where she is practically coming out of the ground, an illusion that is pulled out of all those ceiling spaces, the lens distortion, creating almost a vertigo of isolated figure movement.

I've written before about my theory that Phra Pirap arguably is the god of Muay Thai. There is no such officially designated god, but there is no doubt to me that this deity figure powerfully combines the elements that distinguish Muay Thai from many contemporary forms of combat sport fighting, and is in that way a protector for a call to preserve those precious elements that may very well be lost to globalizing modernity. What I wrote a few years ago: "There is a small holy statuette that sits on a mantel in our apartment. It is a bronze-looking figure of a man, a warrior, posed with a spear pointed upward at a diagonal across his body, and with the other hand near the spearpoint he holds a bouquet of green. His face is that of a demon. His body that of an athlete. He is a little known god, much debated in niche circles, Phra Pirap. He as I understand it is a kind of god of war and battle, but mostly is known as the god of dance, the one that leads the arts. At his left hand come together both the spear point and the bouquet. This the unfathomable combination of what makes up Muay Thai in Thailand. For us in the west there is a fundamental division in how we parse the world. There is the "real" and the "unreal". In Thailand these two things come together to braid into something else. People looking at fights want to say "that's a fake fight!" or "that's a 'real' fight!". What makes them real or unreal are supposedly the intention of the actors. But because Muay Thai is an art, and not only a sport, these things come together. It is ultimately both dance and violence. The reason for this is timing. Phra Pirap happens also to be the god of timing. Of finding the perfect moment. Nietzche made a big deal of this in Beyond Good and Evil. In Greek there are two important fundamental kinds of Time. Chronos is circular time, the time of the seasons. Kairos is the time of the moment, the perfect moment to act. Kairos makes an incision in Chronos. Phra Pirap is the god of Kairos. This is why he is god of the dance. This is why the Muay Thai of Thailand is both real and unreal. It carries the power of artifice into the world of the "real" of violence, to steer it. It recognizes the moment of change, and therefore may spend much of its time in the realm of the fake, the performed. It is steering the cooling schedule of the steel, when all the molecules are afloat and changing their positions. In the west we only think of linear time. For us the "real" of fighting is merely the degree of "heat" in a fight, and the application of force of one body against other bodies. In Muay Thai, for Phra Pirap, it is the point in the circle when real change can happen, it is the art of taking hold of that change and shaping it to a valued outcome. It is where the spearpoint and the bouquet come together." - original context here Some years on I reflect back upon how much I've come to believe this. It's why Muay Thai krus will urge you over and over "timing", "timing", "timing". Or, why legends will praise Samart's genius as found in his "eyes". The god itself appears to be a syncretic fusion of two gods, one related to the destructive powers of Shiva (hence the spear, perhaps), an emanation of Shiva, the other is the presiding god of Dance and Music, of performance. One of the conundrums that westerners face when trying to really delve into the intensity of Thai Muay Thai is how much the aesthetics of scoring in face relate to performing postures, senses of timing, playing narrative themes in a round or across rounds. These are the art of the sport. We in the west, especially the era of MMA's demystification of Kung-Fu and Karate bullshido, versions, experience the term "art" much in the vain of artifice. Something unreal. Something just surface. What traditional ring Muay Thai embodied though, I believe, are the affective potentials of performance, the unconscious fathoms of what a fighter can draw out far, far beyond "perfect" technique, or practices patterns. This, I sense, is the power of where Phra Pirap reigns.