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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.

Speculatively, it seems likely that the real "warfare roots" of ring Muay Thai goes back to all the downtime during siege encampment, (and peacetime) Ayutthaya's across the river outer quarters. One of the earliest historical accounts of Siamese ring fighting is of the "Tiger King" disguising himself and participating in plebeian ring fighting. This is not "warfare fighting" and goes back several hundred years. One can imagine that such fighting would share some fighting principles with what occurred on the battlefield, but as it was unarmed and likely a gambling driven sport it - at least to me - likely seems like it has had its very own lineage of development. Less was the case that people were bringing battlefield lessons into the ring, and more that gambled on fighting skills developed ring-to-ring. In such cases of course, developing balance and defensive prowess would be important. Incidentally, any such Ayutthaya ring-to-ring developments hold the historical potential for lots of cross-pollination from other fighting arts, as Ayutthaya maintained huge mercenary forces, not only from Malaysia and the cusp of islands, but even an entire Japanese quarter, not to mention a strong commercially minded Chinese presence. These may have been years of truly "mixing" fighting arts in the gambling rings of the city (it is unknown just how separatist each culture was in this melting pot, perhaps each kept to their own in ring fighting).

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

In one almost categorical sense, nothing is more Colonialist in sport than changing the rules of another people's sport so that you can win.

Red Gloves Meant over 126 lbs Karuhat let out this little piece of knowledge today at lunch. If you fought in red gloves at Luminee in the Golden Age it meant that the fight was over 126 lbs. Hence, red gloves in Samart's fight vs Jaroentong:

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.

got curious so started making a list Only 4 Fighters have 10 more Lumpinee and/or Rajadamnern Stadium belts and defenses... Chamuekpet 9+3 Kongtoranee 5+7 Jongrak (Lukprabaht/Kaiadisorn) 3+8 Wichannoi 3+7 and only a few more with 6 or more: Paruhatlek 5+4 Robert 3+6 Petchboonchu 6+3 Sam-A 3+6 Namsaknoi 3+5 Saenchai 6+2 Thongchai 5+3 Saenklai 2+6 Lamnammoon 4+3 Apidej 4+3 Den Srisothon 5+2 Anuwat 5+2 Nong-O 4+3 Mufuang 2+4 Singdam 4+2 Samart 4+2 Nongkai 2+4 Sagat 4+2 Namkabuan 1+5 Sagetdao 4+2 Lev helped me with the compilation. Everything pre-COVID (when things changed), probably incomplete

It was just a perfect storm of a very deep talent pool, in the provinces, a huge economic boom in Bangkok with lots of money to invest, and the provincial (boxing educated) workers flowing into the city. The influx of workers was likely a significant factor. It created a hungry, educated and impassioned fan base. writing about Dieselnoi and Samart The so-called Golden Age of Muay Thai in the late 1980s and 1990s was driven by the economic boom of those years. Not only was there heaps of money to invest in gyms and fighters, flowing to enlarged fighter pay and sidebets, but it was the provincial man, the workers, who swarmed to Bangkok to find employment in the suddenly burgeoning, cosmopolitan economy. It was they that filled the stands with their wages in their hands, betting them. It was they who bought the newspapers and magazines. You have to add in things like the particular brilliance of the promoter OneSongChai who was expert at staging drama, pitting particular styles against other styles, and nurturing the talent of fighters without owning a gym himself. Another hidden factor could be that the influence of Western Boxing on Thailand may have also been its peak (there were boxing fights on each and every card, both at Rajadamern and Lumpinee, 9 cards a week - that's almost 500 boxing fights a year at the National Stadia). The mix with Western boxing may have even further expanded the fight skills of the talent pool. Amateur boxing was a very big deal in Thailand, especially after the King built provincial stadia across Thailand in 1979. These hubs of stadia likely anchored provincial fighting. Also, just structurally, the Muay Thai of then was not dominated by only a handful of gyms that simply bought talent up, as it is today. There was greater variety of BKK gyms, drawing from many more gyms in the ecosystem of the provinces. Even to get to Bangkok, it is said, required a great number of fights and proven skill. There was also great regional pride, and identity in the growth of fighters. Karuhat told us that every fight he had in Bangkok, when he was good, would pull 4 bus loads of fans from Khon Kaen in Isaan (his home town). This deep regionalism just doesn't exist in the same way now. The 1980s/1990s was a period of growing National connectivity, in the context of still powerful regional identities, expressed through the fight scene. The above is from a Reddit comment I made a few years ago. It seemed best to anchor it in my sub forum somewhere so as to not get lost as its a pretty decent, short summation. A few things that changed TLTR The economic boom in Thailand ended in 1995. In the 2000s there was also a rule change allowing sweeps and trips that were illegal in the Golden Age. This ended up radically altering the clinch fighting & grappling that arguably fueled much of the the complexity of Golden Age fighting styles. Boxing gradually started losing its influence on Muay Thai, until today there is next to none. Along with socio-economic, demographic shifts (changing the talent pool and the fan base) pedagogy & training methods seem to have also gradually changed as well, eventually accelerating the decline.

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

Yodkhunpon visits PK Saenchai every Thursday, so you could be connected to him there, but I suspect the work you could do with him is much more thorough in private sessions in Pattaya, where he lives. Clinch is gyms is very hard to assess, because opportunity can depend on what size you are. If you are large bodied probably clinching with other Westerners would be what you require (but you'll not be training as much against skilled Thais, who know the art at a deeper level, which is important because a lot of clinch learning is through osmosis). We haven't been up to the (new) Lanna yet, but it does seem fighter-centric.

It's hard to assess these things because Muay Thai is so fragmented, but I think Ronachai may be the best Muay Thai fighter in Thailand.

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

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

Hi, i have a general question concerning Muay-Thai training camps, are there any serious ones in Europe at all? I know there are some for kickboxing in the Netherlands, but that's not interesting to me or what i aim for. I have found some regarding Muay-Thai in google searches, but what iv'e found seem to be only "retreats" with Muay-Thai on a level compareable to fitness-boxing, yoga or mindfullness.. So what i look for, but can't seem to find anywhere, are camps similar to those in Thailand. Grueling, high-intensity workouts with trainers who have actually fought and don't just do this as a hobby/fitness regime. A place where you can actually grow, improve technique and build strength and gas-tank with high intensity, not a vacation... No hate whatsoever to those who do fitness-boxing and attend retreats like these, i just find it VERY ODD that there ain't any training camps like those in Thailand out there, or perhaps i haven't looked good enough?.. Appericiate all responses, thank you!

Watched this fight yesterday, and was really moved by Devy. Looking back at Bill's skills he's everything Entertainment Muay Thai dreams of for a fighter, mixing combinations with Thai techniques, eyes and timing. Beautiful stuff. But Devy is incredible...in such a subtle way. He's like: I'm take your pyrotechniques and just hold position and cover, then move the set, take, hold blast a lowkick to your back thigh. It's like watching a chef cook a masterpiece with 3 ingredients. It really doesn't matter who won this fight, its up over 150 lbs, its the art of this cloistered, minimalist fighting, and his shrug-offs of the aggression and attempts to intimidate. Bill probably the most skilled Western fighter in history, but something deeper and older going on here with Devy. Something that is almost painful to receive beamed across the decades to here and now, as everyone is trying to push Muay Thai into Entertainment and Westernization, Globalization.

Some of my thoughts on the weigh-in change, and how it reflects back onto deeper aspects of how Thailand's Muay Thai is fought, in this Reddit thread: Recently announced. This should produce much bigger weight differences in the ring, move towards even more power and forward aggression combination fighting, and the diminishment of skilled (femeu) fighting (the longtime hallmark of Thailand's art and sport), and should favor farang who are larger bodied and often more versed in Western style day-before, deeper cut weight drops. It also seems like it will put a greater burden on small kaimuay and provincial fighters, as they would have to come to Bangkok the day before a fight, increasing fight expenses when often its hard to even break even on fights (perhaps there will be some support?). For the longest time day-of weigh-ins were the standard of legit matchup Thai trad fighting. Silently this change could have long lasting effects. and As I mention above (here) there are some aspects about Thai traditional scoring that also keep deep weight cutting in check (these are things people are also trying to change to a more Western style). Thais can cut the way that they do, same day, in part because of how the sport is fought and judged. You just can't cut too deep and still win. Also, Thai trad weight cutting is very different. It's not about making huge plunges close to the fight. It's incrementally getting closer to the weight, with its own science and knowledge. and It's a National PAT (SAT) rule change. It's supposed to cover all Muay Thai, part of a "Grassroots to International" effort. Entertainment Muay Thai was already headed there, or there, so this most dramatically effects traditional stadium Muay Thai in Bangkok I imagine, and major trad promotions. Enforcement of rules in Thailand is quite varied, so I imagine it pragmatically has little to do with trad fighting in the provinces (?) unless a part of the new gov outreach there. (just guessing). Have no idea what it means for fighting in tourist centers like Phuket or Chiang Mai. and Some of deep weight cutting was constrained by two things in trad day-of fighting. The first was because you were fighting later that day you were really limited in how far you could effectively go...but the second hidden aspect is that because trad scoring aesthetics have of a lot of subtle by important aspects to them (ie, they aren't entirely about "points" or "damage" but involve things like "ruup" [posture] and balance), you couldn't really go into the ring very depleted...your ruup and just your substance as a fighter would be down-scored. This was even more reinforced by Thai narrative scoring aesthetics (which a lot of Westerners get upset about). If you FADE in a fight you are penalized, because the fight has an arc to it. You have to be strong in round 4 or you just won't win. This, combined with the same day weigh-in, created a natural barrier for how low you could go. You have to have stamina. You can't artificially pad your lead with early rounds point wins, and coast in the 4th. One of things people don't realize is that if you chop away at the narrative scoring structure (the new rules start heading in this direction), and at trad scoring aesthetics AND add deeper weight cuts, this produces a huge swing which could be dangerous. They are mixing Thai and Western protocols and also Thai and Western fighting aesthetics in ways that I think haven't been completely thought about. Thai practices developed over many decades within their own sport. and Longtime Thais have a very precise understanding of how to cut weight in the trad scene, day-of weigh-in, trad scoring aesthetics. Western weight cutting, and weight cutting competition trends will start to seep in. This is pretty dangerous in my view, because knowledge of how to do the deeper cuts will communicate itself very unevenly. Already there is a lot of pseudo "Sports Science" stuff floating around Thailand, often via lightly qualified farang who offer themselves as advisors or coaches. Lots of Thais will end up having partial or just plain mis- information about how to cut in a Western fashion. Add in the common use of diuretics which amplifies issues. The Western cut is very different than the Thai cut. And mixing the two, or moving back and forth between them could be dangerous. Doing a Thai cut with a Water loading cut or a sodium loading cut, or deep Albolene sweat, who knows what can happen. At least IVs (which are very popular in Thailand) are plentiful, but still, there is danger here. Once pieces of information start entering the culture they can become a game of telephone. Spread this out over an entire sport and its asking for risks. and I suspect that one of the main reasons for this is actually economic...that is as Thailand's labor pool for fighters shrinks its harder to fill the many cards. This rule change means that a wider group of fighters are available for any particular match. Matchmakers are less constrained. Also, it happens to serve folding larger-bodied Westerners into the trad market...ie, they can fight much smaller Thais. This helps with the labor market some (more fighters to choose from), and also helps with Soft Power (selling the sport abroad). More Westerners fighting, and more Western winners (probably more Westerner belt holders as well). It really addresses in the short term several pragmatic issues, and it seems like its a government ambition to kind of codify all of Muay Thai, so that it can export the sport more readily, which is unfortunate because much of the sport's uniqueness and ultimate marketability in a deeper sense, relies on its uncodified, un-rationalized nature. I also am not sure if it just leads to everyone then using the same weight cutting practices, as for instance happens in Internationalized sports, because as I have mentioned in other comments, Thai cuts are very different than Western cuts, and the way that knowledge and practices disseminate in Thailand really is uneven. It's much more likely that Westerners will just hold a significant advantage, as will big Westernized or Western-informed Thai gyms (who already have large political advantages in the sport), and the smaller gyms and provincial fighters will not be able to play the same weight cutting game, and may even be led into dangerous hybrid or misinformed practices.

Sylvie faced an undersized opponent yesterday in a Boxing match, beyond her control, so on the way home we counted up the number of times in her 280 plus times she's faced someone smaller than her, and it is now 6. And each time it was a no contest bad match. Size differences do really matter. Firstly, it is absolute remarkable that Sylvie's only faced 6 opponents smaller than her, this is a just a very common and in fact pretty pursued advantage for Westerners. Some Westerners are in fact hard to match because they are big, but also gyms that represent Westerners also leverage for size advantage as well. This is something Sylvie just never has engaged in, its an advantage she NEVER wants...in part because she knows what its like to be the smaller fighter, having fought vastly up for most of her career. (This is one reason, among many, that Sylvie has never hooked herself up to a powerful gym or promoter trying to advance her, its the form of the sport to try and find and push for as many advantages as possible in Thailand, this is just how its done...this is often done with the aim of just declaring your fighter unfightable, and retiring, a career arc Sylvie has wanted nothing to do with. The other thing is that size f-in matters. Give Sylvie a few pounds and its an incredible problem. Which means her victories fighting way, way up, often multiple weight classes, just shows how unique and incredible fighter she really is. She overcomes the single most determinative factor in fighting, weight, regularly. Be that as it may, it also was a good opportunity to fight with some size, even a little bit, because fighting up so much really constricts what you are even able to do, or build confidence in. She was able to bring her power down and increase accuracy, hold more relaxation in her ruup, free up her feet instead of having to brace for large bodied strikes.

Muay Thai, Colonialism and "Techniques" not a competition, its a celebration There is a lot that is culturally complex in how the West (and others) interact with the traditional Muay Thai of Thailand, and honestly it is worth of analysis and thinking about. It's likely full of contradictions, and doesn't present only a single picture of motivations, but...there is one thing that is pretty common place and intense, and that is the way that fighters, coaches and various purveyors of information on Muay Thai to the West, usually in the form of demo'd techniques, simply present themselves as "experts", as if their knowledge, what they came to is simply something OF them. It becomes the signature of their authority and value, especially in social media contexts where a lot of platform reach comes from "demos" of one kind or another. This is just a serious trend, a pattern. But really it is almost inexcusable when sharing or teaching others not to share where and even more importantly WHO learned something you are demoing from. Almost uniformly, it wasn't something you learned from yourself. This means, with every share you are actively erasing the past, the actual lineage of that knowledge, you are erasing the people who actually knew something more than you, and you are removing their importance for anyone who might be interested in what you are sharing. This is pretty extreme, in that it is quite widespread. One of the biggest problems Muay Thai has right now is that as it internationizes, as it reaches for more commercial markets, so many of its roots are being erased...it has less and less concrete rootedness. And while this may help it spread quickly, charged up by the popularity of influencers and such, soil without roots will just wash away when there is a change in season. The roots are what holds everything together. Further of course, if you aren't naming teachers, krus, padmen and coaches that gave you that bit of information you are undermining the entire hope of Thailand in sharing Muay Thai in the world. You are erasing the very thought that you have to go to Thailand to learn specific things (or, in other countries well educated krus and gyms), the notion that to learn something better or more completely you should go further down the coaching tree, further into the roots. This was a huge motivation for pretty much everything Sylvie has done. Her path started learning kind of psuedo-Muay Thai from a strip mall gym that had a lot of TDK in the mix, but there was the photo of a guy on the wall who had taught the head coach of the gym his Muay Thai. This was "Master K", Sylvie's first Thai teacher. What do we do? We go to the teacher of the teacher. And this is exactly what lead us to Thailand, eventually to the Muay Thai Library documentary project itself. It's been an instinct from the beginning, but also a motivating value. Shine the light backwards. The teacher always will know some things the student will not. Because the teacher's knowledge comes from something very complex, a lived experience that is full of details and reasons and contexts that don't get filtered down into the particular technique. The teacher is full of richness and intensity...and its our job to raise up and preserve the teacher, to pull them into the present, and thus into the future. And this should be done with every share of technique possible. It should be just regular, not only etiquette, but also passion to bring the sources of what you know forward with you, and build a picture of knowledge that immediately causes people to look past you, before you, when they learn something. The krus, coaches and padmen need to be known. If you've been to Thailand and trained seriously you already know that many Thai padmen in gyms in some ways know more much more about Muay Thai than you'll ever know, even if you are a very experienced fighter. Muay Thai needs for us not to erase its own past, it needs to stop cutting off the vines below the flower. It is just amazing to me that so many shares of technique do not automatically tell of where it came from...who it came from. This doesn't mean you have to authorize your knowledge, because you got it from someone more famous, or more esteemed than someone else. As I said, there are so, so many in Thailand who are just brimming with knowledge who are almost completely unknown to but a few. Common padmen just walking experts of Muay Thai, padmen who don't have even much social standing in their own gym. Lift these names. Inspire people to connect to your own knowledge tree. It's not a competition, its a celebration. There are many krus that we've documented in the Muay Thai Library who are not or were not social important krus or padmen, but they are full incredible knowledge and wisdom. Raising their names, and sharing their muay is absolutely vital, and can change their lives as well. There are so many example of this, even very famous names now. Sharing can be something as simple as: "Point your toes up on checked kicks, this is something learned from Kru Big at Sinbi [made up name] and a few other places as well" or, "Hook-lowkick is a great go-to combo, this is a mainstay of the Sitmonchai style started with Kru Dam" or, "Kru Toi always told me to use the teep more in fights, and its something I've had success in when I did it". It's just a way of talking about advice or demonstrated knowledge. Also, if this became more regular it would undercut just people cribbing demo advice from other content sharers, other influencers or breakdownists of varying quality, something that thins out the knowledge base. There isn't much wrong with learning from other sharers, but maybe just mention that you have? Create and build lineages, and inspire others to do the same. Muay Thai itself needs this.

Not to make a religious point, but rather a cultural one, this picture of "Buakieow" Jalili Barnes in victory is also an interesting instance of cross-cultural expression and value ideal. Jalill I believe is a fundamentalist Christian of some kind (sorry to be vague, it's only something I have cursory knowledge of, and I'm not sure how these denominations refer to themselves) and is known for his adherence to a much more "traditional" Muay Thai path as a farang, mostly shunning entertainment Muay Thai promotion and instead testing his metal in the trad stadium circuit. He just fought for, but did not yet attain the Omnoi belt. Muay Thai itself, in Thailand is cross-cultural, or mixed cultural on the religious front as the South features prominent Muslim fighters through out much of Thailand's history, and who have signaled their faith in the ring ceremonially.

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

In making this graphic I place the silhouette of a boxer in the middle zone to illustrate how Boxing's fully developed "in pocket" fighting relates to the other zones of trad Muay Thai (and was integrated into it through 4 decades of influence from the 1950s-1980s), but the graphic is much more about thinking about Muay Thai in terms of these three zones, and how not only length of weapon, but also techniques of defense shape control over these 3 zones. In its contemporary trad versions Muay Thai has someone split into exaggerations, Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao, leaving the middle zone much less developed. I believe this is in part due to Boxing's eroding influence upon trad Muay Thai. (Importantly, "Boxing" here is not represented by combo training, which largely consists in biting down and throwing strikes that have been memorized. Boxing is a very defensive, position oriented high-level art which is about controlling middle zone...not just chopping through it, as combo fighting would have it.) Because the higher level control over the middle Blue Zone has eroded, more and more Thai fighters either defend with distance in a femeu manner, or crash through into the close proximity Red Zone, where stand up grappling can take over. This is not to say that there is no Blue Zone skills of entry, defense and attack, its just that they have eroded, there are far less "eyes" in the Blue Zone now. In the Golden Age fighters, even fighters that really favored either extreme of these zones, were also quite capable in the Blue Zone, in both defense and offense, which made the fights between shifting zones complex and compelling. Now, instead, combo-ing is filling in the Blue Zone, really antithetical to the higher level of trad Muay Thai which was founded on defense, vision and improvisational attack. When watching a trad fight now, but really any fight, I mostly watch how fighters handle these three zones, which is to say fights are about the control of space to me. The graphic isn't meant to be exhaustive of course, but just to draw attention to these zones, and thinking about how the borders between them are managed. The emphasis though is on defense in these zones, because defense is a scoring priority in trad Muay Thai (as much as we love to look at the striking), in part because defense is much more difficult to develop, and often reflects the much more complete fighter. Keep in mind, clinch in Muay Thai is heavily a defensive sub-art. What is beautiful about Muay Thai, especially in its Golden Age versions, but also elsewhere, is that it is about the control of all 3 Zones, especially with a defensive emphasis. We look at the striking, for which trad Muay Thai is renown, but the striking is made possible because paths are already conditioned by defensive shaping of the zone, and the borders of the zone. It's a high art of control, and therefore dominance, and not of aggression, though aggression at select times plays a role. I should also add, because of the nature of the 3 Zones how you move through zones becomes really important. This means your tempo, your footwork, and your defensive composition all have a hidden impact on one's success in a fight...and it means that if you can prevent your opponent from moving through the zones with control - one reason why the teep is so powerful in trad Muay Thai - this can overcome all kinds of other disadvantages you might have. Zone transition is at times more important than you "techniques" even though lots of non-Thais train "techniques" endlessly, trying to perfect them. Very good padwork, in the Thai style, is actually about transitioning between zones, managing zones in terms of control, and attack. It's not about the strikes, though it seems to be. This is why it is sometimes hard for non-Thais to achieve as padholders what the best Thais are doing. Because Thai padmen are often ex-fighters who have absorbed sensitivity to the 3 zones, they instinctively are working training fighters through each of these zones, its within the nature of their footwork, even as padmen. When non-Thais approximate Thai padwork everyone's eyes on the strikes. It should be on the feet, and on the spatial changes...when the padman is engaged. This is a kind of internal secret to some of Thai style padholding. Because zones matter, where you "set up" can also be extremely important and have a hidden impact on the shape of a fight. Are you setting up "in a zone" (that you prefer)? Are you setting up on the edge of a zone that your opponent does not prefer? Watching where a fighter sets up, at what distance, and even seeing how it changes over the course of a fight can be an barometer of how the fight may go.

To the above I would add, this is the enormous difference between transmitting the form of the ring sport, that is the living practices of (actual) training and (actual) fighting, including so much of its embedded social context...and simply trying to transmit its "techniques", as if a dead script of a forgotten language. The more we move towards the transmission of "techniques", the more we are heading towards the ossification (and likely ideologically, and unrealistically imbued "construction") of an art. Not "techniques".

1. how you work lifts others - its not about you 2. respect = energy 3. train even when you aren't training 4. the nakmuay are a part of history

Here is some private discussion traditional Muay Thai description which helped develop this parable of the Guitar. The challenge, from a philosphical sense, but also from an ethnographic sense, is to explain the diversity and sophistication of technique and style that arises in the Thai kaimuay, without much Top Down instruction. Here appealing to Simondon's theory of Individuation. But...in the Muay Thai (traditional) example, you actually are learning through a communal resonance with your peers, everyone else in the camp. Through a group memesis. It's not a direct relationship to the "music" per se, between you as an individual and an "experience" It's horizontal... how the person next to you is experiencing/expressing the music and relating to the authority and the work. I've compared it to syncing metronomes. youtu.be/Aaxw4zbULMs?... the communal form of the kaimuay (camp) brings together a communication of aesthetic, technical excellence, in which there is very little or NO top down direct control or shaping. young fighters sync up with the communal form, which actually also involves an incredible amount of diversity. Everyone kicking on a bag in a traditional setting has a DIFFERENT kick, because they haven't been "corrected" from the top down... But all the kicks in the gym have a kind of sync'd up quality, something that goes beyond a biomechanical consistency. There is a tremendous Virtual / Actual individuation dynamic that I think you would vibe on. This is what gives trad Muay Thai so much of its diversity. So much of its expression. It's because of its horizontal, communal learning through mimesis and a kind of perspective-ism If you go into a Western Muay Thai gym all the kicks on the bag, from all the students/fighters will be the SAME kick. With some doing it better or worse, with more "error" or less than others. In a trad Thai gym all the kicks are different. ...but, its hard to describe...because they all express some "inner" thing that holds them together. Maybe the same thing can be seen in other sports, like inner city basketball or favela football/soccer, things that have a kind of "organic" lineage. They hold together because they are a cultural form that is developed in horizontal context and comparisons with peers (not Top Down), but everyone has their own "game". It is very diverse. When people try to "export" knowledge from these, let's call them "organic", contexts, processes, not only are things "abstracted" (often biomechanically, traced into fixed patterns), but they are also exported with Top Down authority which channels and exacts "faithfullness" to some isolate quality. I think this is Deleuze's main issue with Platonism. The idea that there is a "form" and then "copies" which are more or less faithful. This, I'd argue, is actually something that prevails in "export" (outside of a developmental milieu), under conditions of abstraction (and perhaps exploitation). This is the "cut". 6:29 PM Here is a video where we slow motion filmed the kick of Karuhat, one of the greatest kickers in Thai history. We not only filmed him, but also Sylvie trying to learn through imitation. He is the only person who has this kick, in all its individuation. You cannot get this kick by just imitating it...(in person, Sylvie) or as a user practicing it from the video. It was developed in a virtuality of the kaimuay, by him. But, in documenting it...some (SOME!) aspects of it are transmitted forward. ...its a kick that is very different than many Western versions of the "Thai Kick" The keys to it are about a feeling, an affect array perhaps, and its uniqueness came out of the shared "metronome" of the traditional gym, the horizontal community of training, which also produced other kicks of the same "family of resemblance" (as Wittgenstein would say) Ultimately, its preservation is about returning to the instruction of a "feeling"...but also highlighting that the kick itself came out of a mutuality of feeling, and not a Top Down instruction. It's much closer to something like all the diversity of qualities of different pro surfers, who learned to surf not only one-to-one on individual waves, but in communities of surfers who would all go to one spot, and kind of cross-pollinate, compete in a mutuality (non-formally), steal and borrow from each other, a milieu. Not because there was some kind of Top Down authority of "how to surf" or "what exact techniques to use", or because there was an ideal "form" and a lot of error'd versions of it copying it. Almost everything that Sylvie produces is Sylvie learning through imitation and FAILING before the living example, because what we are actually documenting is not the Ideal vs the bad copy...but rather the actual, embodied, lived relationship that integrates oneself with another, converging in communication. She is "copying", but that's not really it. It's about syncing up, and the material/psychological relationship between two people, which smooths over the biomechanical "copy", and fills in some of the affects. But...this mutuality is really also artificial, because its one-to-one, and this isn't how Muay Thai technique is transmitted. It's developed in community. One-to-many. Many-to-one.

5. I think you'd figure out why they named him "Robert" Panniwat Muay Thai

3. Yodteepop Tongsaipriw only started Muay Thai because he was fat and his dad's a former fighter. They say he had like 15 fights (I don't buy it) but because he's so talented at it it became a full career

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

Some beautiful examples from the Contax 645, from Rambaa's festival card this week, where you can feel both the space AND the details, more than I even intuited. This to my eye is very close to a "natural" view, with just a little artifice to give it that oneiric feeling, which is related to my larger Noir sensibilities.

I'm not sure which video you watched but Sylvie has a whole clinch playlist Hop In Clinch Entry Getting in & Staying In Clinch Basics Seminar

Here are some thoughts I had today regarding padwork which made me think about your question. It doesn't connect directly to your question, but it does open up thinking about padwork in different ways. (Also, thank you for your kind words - I realize that I neglected thanking you as it means a lot when people learn these deeper qualities, can feel that "language" element, and its bothered me that I didn't respond to what you said). If you click the top banner of the below you'll be taken to it. It is somewhat advanced stuff though, not easy to do or get to, but it does open up different ideas about what padwork is for, and what you can get out of it.

Lessons in Narrative I love this fight from January New Power soooo much. It explains why in trad scoring you can't just add up "points" or count "damage". It's almost entirely symbolic control. Dodo starts telling his "story" right away, and its the same story the whole fight: "Your strikes don't matter, they have no effect on me, I'm coming". He doesn't rush, he only ups the metronome in a few decisive points in the fight, he is entirely dictating, and it doesn't stop. And the fight is very easy to follow in terms of dramatic narrative: Will he break through? Will he do "enough"? When he reversed direction (after getting his head snapped back by a punch in the 5th and giving a bit of a humorous head shake), after so much stalking...and Blue follows giving chase, his few moments of femeu slipperiness swing the scoring hard. After landing endless strikes Blue is suddenly out of it. There's no "KO", there's no highlight reel moment. He's taking head kicks glancing off the dome and high scoring mid-kicks. It's all tempo and imposition. Dodo Kor. Sakpairin (red) vs Liam Petch Captain Ken Boxing Gym (blue) watch it here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/muaythaiphotolifeideas/posts/3432943350176138/

Defense Even the best intentioned don't train actual Muay Thai, the Muay Thai of Thailand. The foreigner, even quite knowing ones, train 90%-95% offense, when in fact Muay Thai is probably about 70% defense. There is a reason why in Thailand when you have the lead you defend the lead. This is the position of the superior. Every fighter who gains the lead learns how to defend it. This is what distinguishes it - in skill, in spirit. The foreigner only SEES offense. Trains its words and vocabulary, missing the entire thing. Even the high-so Thai, quite-Americanized, sought to take out as much defense as possible, every drop and drip of it, because even Thais can be very far from the root and tree of their sport, separated by class and commerce.

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 shot close to the floor as is often suggested on ultrawide, and I've had very dramatic shots from below with the lens in the past, but honestly I prefer the straight on tableau effect. Though, one of the benefits of being low is that architectural elements can really pop an give that Escher like effect (like here). I do like these photos, a lot, but I'm drawn to the wide lens I think much more in terms of that tableau 1960s cinema effect.

Sometimes I muse that Muay Thai, Thailand's Muay Thai is like the elephant. One time integrated within the society, at the village shore at the forest for instance in Surin (a folding of the human & the elephant culture), and then become the tank of the military empire, then the diesel truck of the lumber and other industry, now almost entirely existing within the country for the tourist, a bend of fate I do not want for Muay Thai...but today, visiting this one who lives near our house, I feel the depression, the majestic depression of her. Today I feel her. A short film study I made.

I allways hit the pads full power to completely exhaust myself unless my coach tells me to take the power out and focus on technique! Sometimes if I’m doing something like teeps and knees we will switch to the bag and he will hold it instead of me smashing him full blast in the belly pad loads of times

escriures - etchings, strokes, inscriptions, grooves & sweeps, impressions, trace, arcings, adumbration, articulation. Above is a photo of a fighter from Chatchai's shadowboxing with his hands on the hip bones, the most extensive writing strokes taken out. The body itself becomes a gesture of gestures, the feet and torso moves toward the visual language, developing the sense of the roots of writing.

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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.