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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).

One of the more slippery aspects of this change is that in its more extreme versions Entertainment Muay Thai was a redesign to actually produce Western (and other non-Thai) winners. It involved de-skilling the Thai sport simply because Thais were just too good at the more complex things. Yes, it was meant to appeal to International eyes, both in the crowd (tourist shows) and on streams, but the satisfying international element was actually Western (often White) winners of fights, and ultimately championship belts. The de-skilling of the sport and art was about tipping the playing field hard (involving also weigh-in changes that would favor larger bodied international fighters). Thais had to learn - and still have to learn - how to fight like the less skilled Westerners (and others). In some sense its a crazy, upside-down presentation of foreign "superiority", yes driven by hyper Capitalism and digital entertainment, but also one which harkens back to Colonialism where the Western power teaches the "native" "how its really done", and is assumed to just be superior in Nature. The point of fact is that Thais have been arguably the best combat sport fighters in the world over the last 50 years, and it is not without irony that the form of their skill degradation is sometimes framed as a return to Siam/Thai warfare roots. It's not. Its a simplification of ring fighting for the purpose of international appeal.

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

Wow, just had an amazing conversation with Karuhat, him telling us about a Saturday Boxing show put on by OneSongChai which featured lots of Thai Muay Thai stars, in which he fought twice, losing to Nungubon and to a Muangsurin fighter whose name escapes me. Most amazing is that he said that he had no special boxing training, in terms of kru, just mixing up boxing imitation training in his small Sor. Supawan gym, and Thai principles (he's not a bad boxer even today). He lost both fights, but he also said he WANTED to lose, because if you showed promise you would be drafted onto the Thai National team at the time (he even DID get drafted onto the team, it seems, fighting on am boxing fight on the King's Birthday vs a Cuban who was incredibly fast). Amateur boxing meant lots of hard training, but not a lot of fighting, and the pay was horrible. It was the last thing he wanted. He was a star in Muay Thai, had great kaduas, fought every month, honed his femeu style. Even pro boxing wasn't that lucrative because fighters only kept 30% of the purse (in Muay Thai it was 50%), and usually didn't fight that much. He said in one of his boxing fights he even stuck his head out of the ropes, he wanted so not to do this. I asked him who was on the Thai National team the brief time he was there and he said Sittichai, Jongsanan and Coban came to mind. I also asked why it was that fighters like him could just kind of develop boxing skills without specific boxing instruction, but Thai fighters today can have all kinds of boxing instruction, even from legends, and not develop the same level of boxing skills. He said "electronics"...all the distractions. The phones, etc. He said that you used to really pay attention, go to fights and emulate fighters, really absorb their powers and ways, imitate them in the gym, steal from everywhere, now Thai fighters are just doing what they are told and going to their phones. There is no attentiveness. I asked about Namkabuan (who is in one of these SongChai boxing fights below vs Chatchai), and his "nongki bounce" footwork which seemed unusual for Muay Thai, if that came from boxing. And he said that this is just normal Muay Thai to him. You can see some of that in this clip (really, look to the Muay Thai Library session to see so much more). When asked about where Namkabuan got his boxing (in the video below) he said Nongkipahayuth probably (Karuhat spent time up there because he was friends with Namphon). Maybe some from Muangsurin (a big boxing gym the brothers sometimes trained at), but he really didn't think knowing boxing as Namkabuan did was the result of special training.

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

As a side thought to the above, this short article talks a little about the history of Red Sonja's vow of chastity and her powers. One of the things that is brought up in this discussion is that for a woman to succeed in a men's space she often has to perform the kind of split personality contradiction of Red Sonja, either being visibly appealing, or de-sexualzing herself, and sometimes both at the same time (ie, the vow of chastity). She has talked about having to de-sexualize herself in Thai traditional gym spaces, and how that has negatively impacted her Muay.

Red Sonja, Female Badassery and Liberty Just finished Red Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone and was pretty blown away by it, much of it probably because I didn't know the character and was just looking for some light adventure reading somewhere near "pulp". I need to relax my mind, and have had a hard time finding the right language for it all, so I thought this would be a vacation and a chance to just enjoy a hardcover book after all the pdfs I plough through. And well, it surprised me a great deal, and in fact it seriously impacted me. Some of this is likely because I have a warrior wife who in real life overcame some pretty serious childhood trauma and violence, and just became an insanely voracious fighter, fighting more pro fights than any woman on documented record, so already I have lived as an intimate witness of the very subject that is being taken on fictitiously, mythographically...and for that reason it cut to the core of many things I feel and even sense from all these years with Sylvie. And, I happened also to be reading Simone Weil's essay on the Iliad in overlap at one point, you can read that here "Poem of Force". The Iliad is one of my favorite works of all literature and Simone Weil cuts the core of what makes it like no other work. Reading the two at the same time, Red Sonja and Simone Weil's essay, actually allowed me to see a great deal of parallel between the novel and the ancient poem of war, and it just took the novel to another level for me. You can see some of my thought on Red Sonja as novel in this Reddit post and in comments. But now I'm reading back into her character (following the line of fan complaints that rejected Gail Simone's Red Sonja which had removed her chastity vow and her rape origin), and find myself thinking again about the Badass Female Fighter archetype, as it plays within (patriarchial, commercialized) society, something the female professional fighter is always dialogue with. I ran into these feminist objections to the Classic Red Sonja, who was rape and vow defined, in a very good counter argument essay on female Badassery: What is also interesting is that Gail Simone's Red Sonja: Consumed addresses and resolves each of the feminist objections to the Class Sonja, placing her within a different (likely feminist?) response to patriarchial desire. Classic Sonja seems born of First Wave feminism with at Paladin like knightly quality of fighting capacity and the renouncing, at some level, sexual desire - the supernatural key to her martial power. Simone's Sonja, at least in the novel, seems more a 3rd wave resolution where liberty consists of being able to follow desire without judgement. The novel also critiques social "masking", and in its materiality seems to lean into a liberty of action close to what Simone Weil describes of the Iliadic world, a world of dehumanizing forces.

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.

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.

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

The cover is above, you can download the full magazine in hi-res pdf: Muay Magazine - Nov. 8, 1968 ? - pdf download here Not sure about the year, inside there are cards posted from the year 1968 it seems. These magazines were sent to us by a supporting collector so we can share with others. Any informative comment or translation below is much appreciated.

Sylvie politely and obliquely pointing out how insane the brutal knockout bonus is, with illustration of one of the great fighters of Thailand's past:

Just published a rough copy of my watching notes for all 11 of Wichannoi's fights:

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

In thinking about Muay Thai training techniques, and the deploy of techniques in fighting, I always turn to a chess analogy. There are "bad" moves one can make against mediocre players, that are in fact "good" moves in terms of results. But, it feels questionable to learn and train "bad" moves of this kind, not only because you might run into a strong player - you might, or you might not - but also because when you learn bad moves, and don't see "why" they are bad or weak, you just don't understand the game at a necessary level. The whole point of looking at moves and thinking about this is understanding the underlying principles that make moves (or tactics, or strategies) good or bad, so that in thinking at that level, you can creatively and spontaneously create novel moves for a given situation. There is an interesting sub-example of this floating out there, the "don't turn your lead foot on a hook in Muay Thai because you'll get kicked". There are layers to this idea. The first is the idea that "sure, you can get away with this against a poor opponent, but if you fight a good one, you'll get kicked". Sounds good, sound penetrating, along the lines which are above. But, not the case. There are any number of ways that this isn't really a readymade practical danger, no matter the skill quality of an opponent. Strikes always exposed oneself to counters. The efficacy or dangers of strikes relies very heavily on set up and situation. What is your range? What comes before and after? A 100 questions that matter. There isn't really just a "if you do x, y will happen", and a lot of the discussion of techniques falls into this error. You can't boxing slip or you'll get kneed. You can't body punch or you'll get elbowed. There are always trade-offs, and its important to see potential weaknesses, but honestly getting calf kicked with a turned foot (which isn't likely to happen at the right distance in most effective hook throwing scenarios) isn't that much different than getting your calf kicked without your foot being turned, in fact if you are weight transferring to your back foot its probably not a major problem...and if its a problem, you adjust. Is your foot outside the stance of your opponent? How far are you, what is the distance? Are you proximate enough? What did you just throw? What are the trade-offs? Inotherwords you need to look at all the pieces on the board. Instead you just get meme'd wisdom. If you do x, y will happen. This is the layering of the chess analogy. This is when we think about the larger picture, the larger principles. In some cases turning your foot may not be optimal, but in others it may give you several trade-off advantages. Some of this goes to the philosophy of the hook itself, why you are using it and how are you generating power? In general though, its worthy to move past the "it works it must be good!" assumption, because there may be larger principle reasons why it will not work against a better opponent, or, the success of the technique may mislead you into thinking a whole class of approaches are fundamentally sound. But, on another level, any question of soundness because of reason "x" also has to be put in larger context of how it matters how a strike is executed, how strikes work in concert, and the trade-offs of offense and defense.

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.

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.

Heard backstage at a trad promotion in Bangkok, Dieselnoi loudly complaining that Thais don't know how to knee anymore, nobody even knees to hurt. Just kneeing for show and points. *This isn't a question of intensity (how hard), its one of technique, and continuity. The knee techniques of Hapalang gym have just been largely lost.

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.

I have to say the whole "Sport's Science" invasion of Thailand's Muay Thai, including both the real and psuedo-real, as well as outright con manifestations, as it comments on Thailand's Muay Thai, situating it as somehow primitive in its knowledge of itself, less efficient, or non-ideal...just strikes me as a vast colonialization. A lot of this in the Strength and Conditioning market place of internet ideas. Experts of every kind who are detached from the very notion of craft and artisan knowing get not only lost in the abstraction of their principles, but also in the commerce of their identities a lot of the time. And, quite often, they do not even understand the principles or dynamics that actually win Muay Thai fights...they have instead a kind of two fold assumption: The faster, stronger more enduring athlete will just tend to win...and, secondly, the cartoon (and often dead wrong) understanding of the actual physical characteristics that trad Muay Thai draws upon, then shapes that overall imaginary picture of physical superiority. To indicate just how far off this whole approach is - and I don't think this is an exaggeration - probably being strong, fast or enduring, each of which is less important than being relaxed (which actually makes you performatively more of each of these), which is essential to trad scoring and superiority. And, the usual S&C approaches to each of those tend to actually produce the opposite of relaxation.

In the aftermath of the Muangkutpet vs Duangdaonoi belt fight interestingly on a page that feeds a lot of ONE viewership comment, you get a negative comment on Duangdaonoi for continuously retreating back to the rope: This is one of the subtle sadnesses of the ONE influence on trad Muay Thai. Duangdaonoi actually was a pretty high level fast-twitch femeu female trad fighter (Sylvie fought her many years ago and got bloodied quite badly). Her skill set trended towards accurate, fast femeu counters and the management of distance. One of the telling changes in her style is the attempt to visually sell-out on every single strike, to throw it as hard as possible, even with some dramatic "umph" to it. One suspects the reason behind this really is likely the entire aggro affect change that ONE has brought to the sport that has rung out across the rings and promotions of Thailand. You want this kind of aesthetic "violence" being expressed (which is really quite contrary to the trad rhythmed expression of control and SOME punctuated violence or explosion at the right time). She seems to have changed her muay to fit the aesthetic (and in throwing with so much intensity over and over, probably lost a lot of accuracy). But...this is the thing...its not enough for the Thai ONE fandom crowd. They want not only fulltime 120% striking, they want you to continuously coming forward. They want trade, trade, trade. It's actually amazing how much Duangdaonoi has modified her style to fit into the new highlight-driven versions of the sport, and least to my eye. She used to feature a few explosive reverse elbows in a fight, but the majority of her style was distance control and fight management, a careful art of space, coupled with a very difficult to defend lead (openside) kick, which she would double or even triple up on. Now we get a fighter who could possibly throw 20 elbows. She seems to be trying to give the new fans what they want. She was in the lowest weight class so she wasn't going to be a "power" fighter in style, but clearly she's made herself physically much stronger. Big, full-bodied clinch throws. But its never enough for Thai ONE-inspired fans. They want that red meat. Mongkutpet on the other hand had brilliant, old school approach that was distinctly ANTI trade. Don't trade at any cost. She basically fought with the old Dieselnoi approach, in long guard and bouncing, teeping lead leg. Long I've argued that the way that Thais can beat "Entertainment" ONE style fighters, especially foreign ones, is to just refuse to trade. Mongkutpet just marched Duangdaonoi to the ropes...and then ground out a win with her height and some knees. This is the perfect anti-trading approach to opponents. Fight the fight where you have your advantages. But really I'm posting here about how its never enough for the new Muay Thai fan. It wasn't enough that Duangdaonoi threw everything with all her might. She has to march forward and trade. She has to fight "like a foreigner". This is just more combo-itis that is spreading like an invasive species. Duangdaonoi fought with tremendous heart, and to the best of her abilities threw with as much Entertainment style as she could. She put all of it out there. Back To the Ropes Art I should of course also add, retreating back to the rope is the Hallmark of Thai combat sport superiority. The greatest fighters in Thai history did much of their work back at the rope. If you want a prime example, check my notes on Somrak vs Boonlai:

Here is something else I wrote that could help with understanding the notion of authenticity in Thailand: How Traditional Muay Thai is Taught Much Differently Than in the West There is a bit of Philosophy in this, it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Posting these ideas here if only for diversity in the way Thailand's Muay Thai can be discussed and appreciated. Traditional Muay Thai (as practiced in Thai camps, kaimuay) is probably best understood as developed through a horizontal, communal process rather than top-down instruction. Instead of rigidly copying an ideal form, developing fighters sync with the group — a kind of shared rhythm or “group mimesis”— which allows for individual expression within collective coherence. Everyone’s technique (like a kick) is different but still resonates with the camp's shared feeling or aesthetic, a pulling toward a social gravity like synchronizing metronomes (video linked below). This more organic, culturally embedded process contrasts with many Western pedagogies, where fighters often perform near-identical techniques due to top-down coach correction, emphasizing biomechanical uniformity. In contrast, Thai camps foster diverse, but affectively aligned, and culturally embedded technical expression—a development perhaps more akin to inner-city basketball or favela soccer, where skills develop in peer-based, play-oriented ecosystems. To be sure kaimuay are very hierarchized status environments, something visiting Westerners may not notice, but a peer and play based dynamic is essential. The nature of this more organic quality poses resistance to the exportation of traditional techniques into abstracted, idealized biomechanical forms governed by a correcting authority. (In Philosophy this critique is mirrored by Gilles Deleuze's rejection of Platonism—opposing the notion of a perfect form with imperfect copies.) Instead, trad kaimuay Muay Thai preserves a virtual/actual dynamic where technique emerges from shared affects and a communal environment, not a replication of a form. Karuhat’s unique kick that we filmed in slow motion is a good case study—its essence can’t be reproduced by biomechanical mimicry alone, as it developed through years of communal, affective practice, as well as extensive development in rings. Our video documentation may transmit aspects of it, but its soul lies in communal resonance, not biomechanical approximation. So, the only way into this kick is through feeling. you can click through to the notes on this, which includes some of the video reference. These points were made through ongoing conversations I'm having with a biologist/philosopher who studies biology through Deleuze and Simondon.

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

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".

Imagine there is a guitar school, where boys come to live at a pre-teen age, that has something of a feel of a family. None of them know how to play a guitar. They are given guitars and given very basic drills to practice each day. They may be taught how to basically hold the guitar, or hold strings, but there isn't much technical instruction. They can see from older boys who have been at the school how it is done, and there is a lot of imitation. The drilling is fatiguing. Everyone drills together, playing scales or basic chord series over and over, and everyone is doing it together. They can see each other, and even the most experienced players in the school are sitting with the most inexperienced. Some may struggle, they push through. There is a strong sense of obligation, and the dynamics of the group hold everything together. Sometimes this drilling is grueling. Experienced student players are so adept at the drills they can do them in a very lazy fashion, or they can do them with flair and personal small variation. Sometimes they can find themselves "competing" with others in the group, just in a sort of expressiveness, because the drills are so boring. The fatigue units everyone. Younger boys watch the older boys add small qualities to their drills. Aside from drilling like this, there battling. This is almost always quite playful...though there is always a dimension of dominance, of agonism. In pairs students "battle each other" in back and forth exchanges of aspects of music, much of it drawn from the skills in the drills, but the battles are musical, and expressive. Communally there develops an aesthetic where one knows if they are losing a battle at any point, mostly from watching the playful battles of older guitar students. The younger students battle in a rather simplistic way. There is a kind of metronome of music as everyone is battling at the same time. There is almost no "instruction" given in these battles, no correction. In the drills there may be some correction, but the correction is toward the intensity and focus given. Most of the correction comes organically from the group, and the lead examples of developed players. Because fatigue is involved in these sessions, playful guitar battles, which last in rounds everyone follows, may by quite lowkey. Students that know each other well may just used them to rest, in only a gentle back and forth, together "mock" battling. And then other playful battles may really escalate, because social hierarchy in the school, where everyone lives together, is always contested. Winning at any one time feels substantive. So, in these sessions of fatiguing drilling together (drills which develop personally expressiveness, and extraordinary endurance) and playful battles (which vary in intensity from sleepwalking imitative back and forth, to outright contests of superiority, and sometimes passing between the two intensities in alternation), make up the conditions for skill development, not only at the technical level, but also the level of styles. At a fairly young age the students of the school also participate in public guitar battles versus other guitar students of their own approximate skill...as do the more experienced students. Everyone attends these, and guitarists in these battles win money, some of it for themselves, some for the families they don't live with, some for the school. Gambling abounds in these public battles, so guitarists on stage can always tell if the battle is close, who is winning, from audience bets and their shouts and energies. The battles have a strong aesthetic shape, composed of 5 rounds. In the aesthetics of music, as the battle builds the most intense back and forths occur in rounds 3 and 4, when the music is really building. Wins and losses in these public battles raise or lower the social standing of the students when they go back to the home school. And the display of creative skills in play is fed back into their play battles and drilling back in school. Sometimes they are corrected, often they are urged to be more of a certain way, a way they would have won, but there is a cycling dynamic between the public battles, and the playful battles back in the school. Everyone in the school is watching everyone. Student learn from imitating the better, older, more developed students, but also from others that are their own peers. Because everyone of a certain age and experience is sharing the fatigue, and the struggle, how others your age are doing things affects and inspires you. The environment is incredibly mimetic. Identities and skills are developed in the context of others. The host of schools in a region, and their 100s of local public battles, collectively create the styles of the music of that region. Certain techniques or tempos fall out of favor, others rise, according to the gambling values. Much of this is shaped by the underlying culture, and the cumulative history of the music, generations of public battles, and even famous musicians that grew out of these battles. It is an agonistic aesthetics of music, full of styles and localized techniques that have developed in diversity, but it holds together as a single "music". If you hear this music being played, you recognize it right away.

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

This one way kid got screwed over a bit

from my reddit share of the above graphic: This map provides a speculative zoomed-out view of how provincial village Muay Thai gambling markets, which were something like a Galapagos of localized market selections, connected up to some very large global trade influences in Siam and then Thailand. The great cultures of India and China (and others) were intimately connected to Siam through cosmopolitan centers (like Ayutthaya), and rural populations regularly (seasonally so) cycled through these city and town centers. You can read about the logic of local gambling markets and their (possible) creation of the Muay Thai aesthetics here. The idea in this graphic is to position those "islanded", somewhat isolated processes to the churn of population movement, and wider international trade. This is to say, Thailand's Muay Thai likely has long been at the shoreline of internationalism, but also has retained an isolated, generative rural "reserve" that anchored its identity and insulated it from change. This is leaving aside (due to space on the graphic, but also to emphasize what is often missed) the more common explanations of source and influence, the Khmer Empire (which was an Indianized culture), and the Burmese, Lao, etc. This is represented instead by the "permeable" boundaries arrows.

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

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 about Sylvies approach to this, and can't really relate since i ain't that short, but i might have a small tip on closing the distance relatively safely in order to use knees.. It might be a bit clumsy to explain this in text, but i'll try. Try to push your opponent away with a teep, then follow up with a jab, you don't have to hit them with the jab, this is mainly to measure distance and maybe make them shell up a bit, then close the distance with a knee feint with your left knee, use the movement as you put your left foot on the ground again, step to the right of your opponent and try to grab them. Left hand upside down behind their neck, right arm on the outside of their bicep, use your strength to push their head downwards as you would in a normal clinch. If you do this fast enough, you will have very good controll of their body and they are in a pretty vulnerable position to take left knees in the stomach. When they try to push you away, you are also in a pretty good position to follow of with a sweep with your right leg as they step back, you will have maybe a second or so to do this as they gain their composure again, and you are still in the dominant position. I don't know how much you will understand of this as it is in text, but this has worked pretty good for me against taller opponents. But it is of course not withouts it's risks, every move is possible to counter. You might want to try this in a shadowbox routine before you apply it to sparring.

We were up in Khorat last night, 9 hours of driving round trip, just to see two quick fights (maybe 20 minutes), and it was totally worth it. After watching Rambaa's festival fight card the night before. #muayThai There was something about spending the hours standing in the crowds til 11 pm in Pattaya, to watch the temple fights, and then the next day to drive out to Khorat to see these little daughters fight, the overall keeping of the flame of the birth of Muay Thai, attending to that, that filled us with meaning. It's like you are watching Muay Thai's heartbeat, when you watch the Muay that isn't made for export, and you see it living and breathing in families, in heritage...in this case from Khaosai Galaxy (famed as a boxer) now in his 60s, now in his little daughters.

If you wanted to avoid tourist areas in the south then you could look at Nakhon Si Thammarat or Phatthalung. I haven't visited either, so can't recommend any gyms, but Nakhon Si Thammarat city is supposed to be nice and there's meant to be nice beaches up the coast

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/

The Muay Thai Library is so incredible. Today I was realizing how many men we have filmed with who have passed. This is a generational greatness, and it is an honor to have met these men, and in some cases to have come to have known them. Taking a moment to think of them and feel them. Each of these men a universe of a muay within them, of which we have touched just a teaspoon. Andy Thompson Morakot Sor. Tammarangsi Sangtiennoi Sor Rungroj Namkabuan Nongkipahuyut Sirimonkol Looksiripat Kaisuwit Sungila Nongki

Here the isolation and luminosity of the figures. Giving a psychology of study.

I think there is way too much emphasis on technique in most commercial gyms. You just don't see that in trad Muay Thai gyms. Most of it is: here are the basics, work on getting comfortable, be aware of defense, relaxation. Spar and clinch. Technique focus can do the opposite. Make you really tense, overly critical. Combos encourage you to use your eyes much less, and just bite down on offense. Just some thoughts.

Just throwing this out there: an interesting thing would be to build a criteria list for judging/recommending gyms, maybe something like: Active Young Thai Fighters - young, developing Thai fighters are a sign that the gym is a living Thai-focused gym that does not only prioritize western tourist, commercial interests Active of Top Stadia Thai Fighters - some people find this to be important. It's great to have high level examples to look at and imitate. Convenience of Location - how hard is it to get to? Surrounding Location - what is the surrounding location like? Is it hospitable? Enjoyable to live around? Gym Atmosphere - what does the gym feel like, it's tone? Food - If food is served (or local food options) what is it like? Fight Opportunities - how easily can you get fights, and what kinds of fights? And how invested is the gym in finding you fights, and why? Female Safety and Respect - is there is history of respecting female fighters and students? are there reports of unwanted advances? are females given top training and enough fight opportunities? Ownership - Management - sometimes management/ownership can be a big positive for a gym. It speaks to the gym's motivations. It can also help smooth difficulties. Language - How much Thai do you need to know? Is English spoken? Are there other western language connections? (Some gyms have specific ties to other countries...Sweden, Italy, etc) Trainer Stability/Turnover - this can go two ways. Sometimes trainers never turnover, and become really entrenched in negatives or lack of caring. too much turnover can suggest unstable management. Quality of Equipment/Facility - some people find new equipment important. Cleanliness - gym cleanliness can reflect the quality of care invested by owners/management. Some people also find this to be very important. Clinch Training - does the gym provide substantial clinch training, practice? Pad Work Training - what is padwork like? Is it consistent? Between different trainers? Technical Instruction - is there much technical instruction or correction? some people really value and look for this. Privates - Are privates offered worth the cost? And do you have to pay for privates in order to get good instruction/training? Training Partners - Are there training partners for your size? Are they Thai? Affordability - How does the gym compare in price to others of its kind and location, short term, long term. Long Term Stay Opportunities - If you want to stay longer term, are there benefits? Discounts, sponsorship? Living Quarters/Options - Is there onsite lodging, if so what is it like? What are nearby apartment options like, cost and quality? Farang Gym Culture - Is there a long term western gym culture? If so, what is it like? Off-Time Entertainment Options - What are the things to do on off-days? Maybe add any aspects you find important if I missed any?