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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.

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".

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

I realized something watching Chatchai with Sylvie yesterday, that the order of action is quite important to unlocking Thai style. The foot moves, the weight transfers, and then the strike comes. The mind, the watching eyes, are only there to stop the strike from coming. It is like the archer who just draws the bow and lets it fly. String, arrow, string, arrow. But then the mind could hold the string and deny the shot if the timing isn't right. This is how Thais develop incredible speed in their retreating counting kicks for instance. The mind is only there to hold or delay the release, but the release comes from the feet, from that very moment the feet feel the weight. In this way, one is actually thinking with one's feet because every time your feet move and there is weight transfer the thought, a sort of itch, comes. The mind, decision-making, in this dynamic only acts as a retardant. The difficulty is that many, especially Westerners to the sport, have a different cycle of action. They instead look with their eyes, and use their Mind as trigger man. The Mind begins the propelling action, which then goes to the feet which are not properly ordered (and very often not all the way down to the feet at all, at the shoulder, or thigh, and then starts the strike. It is too late. The thought cannot begin there. Not only is it slow and behind the action, but duress from using the Mind in this way, as the trigger finger, produces tenseness in the body, and squeezes all the channels. The strike cannot come, and then its slowness produces further mental stress. And more, the Mind itself, that is the decisioning, trigger-mind, is not fast enough to follow action and threat. It can be pressured by an opponent and the unexpected. It can be overwhelmed. This Westernized problem of the mind is sort of "hacked" by the combination, which is a memorized pattern of strikes which take the Mind as decisioning trigger out of their execution...but, they are in their relationship to each other "mindless" in that they are committed-to in their series, and they do not come from thinking feet. Combinations of this sort suffer from many of the same weaknesses, because the are triggered by the decisioning Mind. Not only are they late, they are easily overwhelmed, because their cycle is slow, and the feet are often unorganized. Key, instead, is thinking with the feet, and if thoughts arise from the feet they can also operate in combinations, with the mind delaying timing or shifting strike choice. But the thought, the itch, comes from the feet...which is why moving feet, the shifting of weight, even subtly, is essential for the flow of thoughts. This is likely one of the purposes of the Thai rock, the rhythm. This is a basic tindering of thoughts. There is another lay of this, which any soccer/football player knows. If you are thinking with your feet and weight transfer springs forth thoughts, then the timing of foot movement becomes central. Steps or shifts or thoughts. In this way for instance a Thai will time the backstep in a retreat and counter such that the foot falls precisely at the opportune time of interception of an advancing fighter. This means the Mind as decision-maker has almost no role at all. The foot retreats, with dance-like sensitivity, and the strike comes. The fighter is tantalizingly close, but yet too far for the opponent, and the strike is almost unseeable. But the same is the case for weight transfers in the pocket, the art of boxing is made of this. The speed of this is mimicked in "combos", but memorizing combos are not thinking with the feet. They are just trying to cut the Mind out in their succession. Because thinking with the feet is so important, things like constant shadowboxing such that the feet develop the capacity to think, create and improvise, and light, equipmentless sparring, which is like shadboxing, both are central to building the classic Thai style which is marked by ease of movement and its speed of perception. Below, Yodkhunpon on shadowboxing: These are related thoughts on stress and delay producing "Precision" training Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training - In that article the decision cycle is talked about in different terms, tracing the rise of tension in the cycle, which is really linked to the decision-making Mind.

a short piece I wrote in my hand-written diary The art of running in Muay Thai is mostly misunderstood. The probably child of military training, first of the influence of the British in the early 20th century and then from the United States in the mid-century, as it filtered through the Civil Service education, the standing armed forces and then the Police, the development of the long-running Thai fighter likely is akin to the combat solider on the march. Historically, Siamese warfare indeed involved long marches, often followed by siege. But this would not explain its persistent form as it relates to the 5 round ring. As military and police practices cycled through the provinces - brought home after and between service - and men trained and fighting in Bangkok rings in both Muay Thai and prevalent sponsored Western Boxing, the Long Run likely came to pervade the Muay Thai form throughout Thailand. But this regime of training came to match something more important and inimitable to Thailand's fighting art, and that is the long wave of attack. Perhaps this length-of-wave comes from Siam's own full martial history where engagement were pronounced and lengthy, or it comes from Thailand's Buddhistic core which prescribes equanimity in all things, and active encirclement of punctuated affects of every kind. In a sport of violence the Buddhistic prescription expresses itself vitally, flattening peaks and valleys. This is to say that in the art of 5 round ring fights the long run, likely of military and field training, also drew upon the very fabric of Buddhist culture as it played out pragmatically in more than a century of ring experiments. What many mistake when questioning the optimality of long running, is that first and foremost it is not a physical conditioning. Yes, it creates a firm foundation upon which explosive training may rest, an anchorage of recovery which can be vital in fights - the recovery of wind. But it is foremost a training of energy management, lengthening the wave, and the Mind, in particular to an engagement which most pointedly steers toward escalatory peaks and their troughs. It is about extending the Mind (and the energy) in the love wave, the wave that ultimately beats punctuated forms, breaking them down.

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

The three legends of Hapalang gym, 3 photos:

The way the power is generated, the relationship of the shin to the arc, the point of the knee in sympathy to the overall movement, the hip drive. I've been meaning to write a short entry on Kerner and the Golden Age knees of the Hapalang gym. As we've documented in the Muay Thai Library project, and in our conversations in doing that documentation, Thailand today has pretty much LOST the Hapalang knee technique. The greatest Muay Khao gym in the history of Thailand featuring 3 absolute legends of the Knee Dieselnoi, Chamuakpet and Panomtuanlek, had an expertise of kneeing that has largely gone extinct. I've mentioned it several times, watching Dieselnoi knee Kru Gai with his belly pad on, at the age of near 60 then, and blasting the pad so hard it actually stunned Kru Gai, an experienced stadium fighter kru. They were like shotgun blasts. The legends of the Golden Age and other fighters of that age have told us that today Thais knee without damage, they knee largely to score, or set up another knee, which is fine, but they have largely lost the power and precision of the Hapalang knee (and likely of many other less famous gyms of the Silver Age and Golden Age era). It's very cool that we have documented these techniques for coming generations, but the video above is also a wonderful piece of history. The French fighter Guillaume Kerner, whose original Thai teacher was the legendary Pudpadnoi, spent a year at Hapalang gym in 1985 when he was 17 years old. Dieselnoi was already retired and a said (pi) trainer, but Chamuakpet and Panomtuanlek were there ascending, peaking into their FOTY performances. He was in the middle of the greatest Muay Khao space in Thailand, right in the heart of the Golden Age, and if you watch his highlights above it shows. No farang I've ever seen knees like Kerner because he was tapped into the source, and Thais today really don't knee how he did, because so far removed from the training conditions and pedagogy that develops this kind of technique. And, his case is a beautiful one because sometimes in "convert" coming to a technique can kind of over-sharpen it, which causes aspects of it to become even more clear, and I think that's the case with Kerner's kneeing. I assume his foundations were developed with Pudpadnoi, but the art of the power, sharpness and freedom of the knee in space bears the Hapalang mark. He also trained at other notable gyms in the Golden Age, (read up on his bio here) for us like a time traveler deposited where we imagined no farang were. As someone who has studied the knee styles of the 3 Hapalang legends, and other kneeing techniques of Thailand, and watched Sylvie develop her own versions of these, in her journey as a prolific, undersized Muay Khao fighter, its actually quite beautiful to see this video. Each time I watch it I'm amazed at how much of Hapalang got transferred to him, the traces and arcs and ethic of kneeing that even Thailand today no longer really has. You can study the Hapalang 3 legends in the MTL here: Dieselnoi (1982): #48 Dieselnoi Chor. Thanasukarn - Jam Session (80 min) watch it here AND #30 Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn 2 - Muay Khao Craft (42 min) watch it here AND #3 Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn - The King of Knees (54 min) - watch it here #76 Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn 4 - How to Fight Tall (69 min) watch it here Chamuakphet (1985): #49 Chamuakpet Hapalang - Devastating Knee in Combination (66 min) watch it here #81 Chamuakpet Hapalang 2 - Muay Khao Internal Attacks (65 min) watch it here Panomtuanlek (1986): #131 Panomtuanlek Hapalang - The Secret of Tidal Knees (100 min) watch it here Of course there still remain in Thailand many beautiful knee styles, many of them quite effective in their own right, there have been legends and great fighters who have carried the art of the knee fighter on. But, as knee fighting has been downgraded in the sport, and in some versions outright suppressed, there is reason to fear that even more branches of the rich pedagogic tree of knowledge will be severed, as legends and great krus start to age out.

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

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.

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

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

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

The race for cheaper "grassroots" labor to fill Entertainment Muay Thai cards is on. Rajadamnern vs Lumpinee, trad Muay Thai vs Entertainment Muay Thai. This is the next economic challenge for the sport. Who can tap the rural fighter labor source better, as the trad festival fight culture that has feed the sport for over a century is quickly eroding.

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.

This was all in answer to someone asking if learning Boxing would improve one's Muay Thai, my thoughts on that: Thailand's traditional Muay Thai was developed through a century-long dialogue with Western boxing - first through the influence of the British in the early 20th century, then the influence of American boxing in the mid-century. A great deal of this simply never "got into" Westernized versions of Muay Thai, mostly because it was exporting specific techniques, and was focused on all the ways Muay Thai was NOT like boxing. It has, historically, a lot of boxing reference and influence, at least in strains. This if further complicated by the fact that Boxing's influence on TODAY's Muay Thai in Thailand has dramatically dropped off. Arguably the deep fall in skill level (eyes, timing, defense, improvisation, variety of techniques, etc) across the board in Muay Thai among Thais can in part be laid at the loss of this past relationship. So yes, I would say training and maybe even more importantly fighting in Boxing probably gets you closer to the highest levels of Thailand's Muay Thai as it was in the its past (for instance the Golden Age 1980s-1990s). Aside from countless insight into technical aspects of the sport, footwork, a feeling for the control of distance and continuity, just being able to become comfortable in the pocket and defend yourself there will keep you from having to defend yourself by taking distance, a common "hack" of defense itself. But also..."training combos" isn't really what I would mean by "Boxing"...something some people mistake. It's almost the opposite of Boxing proper. [edit in for context: a look at the two top Muay Thai fighters in Thailand in the 1930s who also were top boxers in the SEA boxing circuit: What Was Early Modern Muay Thai Like? New Film Evidence (1936): Samarn Dilokvilas vs Somphong Vejasidh

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

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

This is just a very detailed collection that gives overview of the scene of Muay Dek, something very few non-Thais even know much about. If anyone finds other Muay Dek fights to share we'd love to have them in the thread.

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

This one way kid got screwed over a bit

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

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

more on Noir aesthetics...

No worries! If you are unsure of the hand positioning in the clinch with this move, i can try to find some or maybe take a picture of it, it is a bit difficult to explain and understand movement correctly through text.

how to use head movement in Muay Thai: https://x.com/Egokind1/status/1906268431315280261 The highlight brings in general the thought that everyone has gotten spam-the-elbows happy in Thailand. This has happened quickly, and you could pretty much see the change start in real time because of COVID, beginning when they briefly banned clinch in paranoia (and with Entertainment Muay Thai). It feels like the Yodkhunpon template (which itself as an extreme outlier, and not well-esteemed in its time) got oversimplified. A lot of Muay Thai is just becoming Muay Elbow. As defense significantly erodes in Muay Thai though, the elbow is becoming a more and more effective go-to. It becomes chicken and egg. More elbows, less defense, the less defense, the more elbows are effective. The elbow may become the iconic cliche strike of Muay Thai, when at its height Muay Thai rather rarely featured elbows. They were seen as both "low" and largely ineffective.

Instinct and the Thai Principle of Tammachat (ธรรมชาติ) an expansion upon my journal entry This will remain somewhat obscure, as it's hard to fill the gap in my recent reading, but thoughts on the nature of Tammachat (natural), which is one of the more essential, basic yet obscured qualities of Thailand's Muay Thai - and one that non-Thais most deeply struggle with. How can something be "natural", which is trained? They seem a contradiction, or at the very least in strong tension. Into the gap Westerners try to place concepts like "muscle memory", as if you can create a new causal chain, a new "memory" in your body which then operates with something like "naturalness". This supposed manufactured "muscle memory" is often trained with great tension - a very high degree of unrelaxed, biomechanically precise constant correction. It does not really solve the problem of Tammachat, and instead inserts a mechanical bridge between between what I'll call Instinct and Thought. I'm drawing from these two passages in the excellent book Deleuze and the Unconscious (2007, Christian Kerslake), (see them at the bottom of this post), discussing the influence of the philosopher Bergson. Bergson is concerned with how matter and memory work together. In a certain sense we all have a powerful inheritance of memory, something which includes not all of our conscious experiences, but all of our experiences, much of it unconscious. This is not just things that we can recall to our mind, but rather the very large raft of causes well below the threshold of our awareness, including our biological instincts. Instincts are wisdom, skills, reactions, frames of perception which have been developed through not only 10,000 years of ancestry, but also 100s of millions years of life itself, well below our species. All of this is inherited, in a way, in "memory", the form of the matter of which we are made. When "memory" is acting, this by default is read as "natural". If someone fakes a punch and we flinch...this is natural. It is speaking from our memory. It flows, seemingly, without thought. But Thailand's Muay Thai has a concept of developed naturalness, which is to say the qualities of physical expression which also can flow with the ease that memory has. The temptation is to create "new memories" (that's why "muscle memory") is a thing. If we can train and cram-down memories back into our causal shoot, far enough in, then they too might come out some what "natural" in the future. You see a great deal of this in the proliferation of the "combo", a fixed pattern of strike that is trained over and over again, trying to force it back down into the causal chain, so it can come out "natural"...though it almost always, when trained like this, comes out "forced" and far from Thai Tammachat. The reason for this failing is identified in the passages below (though, this is just a note, and the passages themselves may be hard to decipher, I'm drawing out a line of their thought). The point or idea is not to create new memory, or new instincts (they will never be as strong as those inherited by the instincts of biology, or of those learned deep in our forgettable pasts), its to put Instinct itself in relationship with Thought (or, in the text Intelligence). The ideal state, the Tammachat state, is one in which Instinct and Thought alternate and affect each other. Not only does Thought shape Instinct, Instinct shapes Thought. In some sense the great history of our Being, our personal Unconscious (all things experienced, most of it well below our threshold of awareness) and our collective biological Instincts, all the causes of how we act, is placed in communication with Thoughts, Intelligence, Ideas, in the sense that there is dialogue and mutuality, and no priority of either. In "flow states", presumability, this communication becomes utterly suffused. This is why "play" plays such an important part of Thai training and development, it approximates in a low stakes way this suffusion. * in what follows below I'll take a basic framework of 3 intensifications in kaimuay training: speed (which maybe the speed of a sparring opponent, a padman, or even the speed on the bag or drills); fatigue (the ways in which exhaustion creates spaces into which the mind-cannot-follow); and dominance (which may be the agonistic dominance of someone in sparring or clinch, the dominance of a high level padman, or the dominance of traditional culture & hierarchy. There are many more kinds or sources of intensification - for the Westerner of course a very large source is simply being in another culture, amid its customs and a language you do not know - but just for the illustrative purposes of the framework, these are the three. Aesthetics and Thought The role of Intensification. In the philosophy of Deleuze (and Deleuze and Guattari) there is emphasis on speeds. The exposure to speeds (sometimes in an absolute sense, sometimes in terms of changes in speeds) produces an intensification within oneself. Something that is too fast, but also something that is too slow...intensifies. In this framework I'll position this as that-which-challenges-thought, or that-which-is-where-thought-cannot-follow. This is to say, using Intelligence to keep track, plan and react is no longer sufficient. Intensification is what puts Thought in relationship with Instinct. (And keep in mind, here Instinct isn't just animal reactiviness, though it includes that too. It is the sum of our Unconscious causations.) Intensifications produce a dialogue. Muay Thai active training, aside from drills and conditioning, is thought of as "getting used to" certain speeds and intensifications, things that would just throw you into pure instinctive reactions if you were untrained. But, it is much more than that. The "getting used to" is not just exposure therapy, it is actually putting Thought and Instinct into communication with each other, by degrees. You want both dimensions, otherwise you will never receive Tammachat. This is how Thai aesthetics - to which a non-Thai must submit and be shaped by - work to sew together these two aspects of our Being. The over-arching picture of what the art of Muay Thai is, is what allows the space in which Instinct and Thought can develop together in unanticipated, experimental ways. Each must shape each...within the Aesthetic, held together by the Aesthetic. The use of intensification - there are many aspects of intensification, but we can stay with solely the quality of speeds - is to unseat Thought and place it into community with Instinct (your Past). If the intensification is too strong Thought will be forced completely down into Instinct, too light and it will operate over Instinct. The key to Tammachat is that they suffuse, the "wisdom" of each in combination. This is why Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, its very high level of command over the fight space, is an art. Fighters develop within a sphere of progressive, integrating, creative intensifications, and the fight is conducted at the level of a Tammachat suffusion of Thought and Instinct. This is what the great legendary fighters of Thailand's past exude an extraordinary degree of being "at ease", which is why they are so "natural" in their speeds and relations. One is not simply "getting used to" speeds and intensifications. Your Past (the full causal panoply of what you are, reaching much further back than even your person, into what you are as an organism) is being synthesized into an Aesthetic, a certain kind of creative completion, or some variation thereof. The Role of "Technique" Techniques are not bio-mechanically pure modularities, any more than words in a language are distinguished by perfectly performed phonemes. Techniques, which each contain their own intensity, shape, duration (duree). You cannot train techniques by rote to bury them into your past, hoping that they will come out in a kind of blind apparition that is Tammachat. Techniques are like words given to you to actively use, to express yourself within the social space (the fight space), as you encounter intensifications (speeds) that unseat thought. It is the use of techniques, as a kind of language, to weave Instinct and Intelligence (Thought) together. They perform a kind of active armature of expression, which of which holds its own intensification, just like poets let us know that words do. Do not get lost in techniques. The appeal of Thai techniques to the West and other non-Thai centers of fighting is clear. It is the most modular "piece" of the fighting Art of Muay Thai that can be exported outside of its art, like borrowing words of another language. Techniques yield to bio-mechanical reproduction, they can be analyzed by Western sensibilities and translated into angles of force and body position, accelerated by video replications and study. They can be and "are" extracted...but as extracted become nearly useless in the pursuit of Tammachat, the synthesis of Instinct and Thought. They instead operate, usually, with a jarring abutment of Instinct and Intelligence, expressing a mechanical repetition, amid exposures to intensifications of speeds which unseat Thought, often placing Instinct and Execution of technique in a kind of war or struggle of expression. No matter how much one trains technique and practices by rote repeated patterns of striking, one can not reach Tammachat. What is Intensification? The Relationship to Speeds (detour) a small sidestep to Tarkovsky to draw in a thoughts on how kinds of Time are stitched together. This will be helpful later, in a comprehensive picture of how Time operates in traditional Muay Thai, both in training and performance. Understand that the argued aim of a high level fighter is to link "time-pressures" together, just as a filmmaker like Tarkovsky does. To build aesthetic continuity (which the Thais of fighters call "Doh"). The great Russian filmmaker Tarkovsky in his book Sculpting In Time wrote about his philosophy of editing shots together. Known for his dreamlike cinema, this concept of intensification in alternation is key to the way in which he places Thought in relationship to Instinct (our collective Past). He has compared the linking of shots together as to connecting pipes together of various diameters, differing pressures, through which water flows. A shots pressure builds up slowly, then he cuts. His art is about alternating and working through various pressures. Some quotes from his writing: The distinctive time running through the shots makes the rhythm...rhythm is not determined by the length of the edited pieces, but by the pressure of the time that runs through them Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame. Just as from the quivering of a reed you can tell what sort of current, what pressure there is in a river, in the same way we know the movement of time from the flow of the life-process reproduced in the shot Editing brings together shots which are already filled with time, and organises the unified, living structure inherent in the film; and the time that pulsates through the blood vessels of the film, making it alive, is of a varying rhythmic press reading deeper into theory: Time and the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky, Donato Totaro, A Deleuzian Analysis of Tarkovsky’s Theory of Time-Pressure, Part 1. This is to say, Tarkovsky in his cinema Art makes use of the same unseating qualities of speeds (changes in intensity), which unseat the priority of Thinking, that Muay Thai training (and fighting) does. The highest level Golden Age Muay Thai artist is displaying speed/intensity changes expressively, in Tammachat, in the same sense that Tarkovsky is in his films, producing a dream-like synthesis of Thought and Instinct. It is dream-like because it overcomes the fundamental tension between Thought (directed, intelligent action) and Instinct (one's Past causal treasure trove), allowing each to communicate to the other. The qualitative Flow State. One does not "bite down" on technique when exposed to intensifications (speeds, but there are many others) which give rise to Instinct. Instead, one turns oneself over to the Aesthetic of Muay, and searches for "words" to integrate oneself, within Instinct, within Thought. Seeking the line of Tammachat. In this sense, ring Muay Thai could be regarded as a proto-form of cinema. The Role of Emotion Primordially, the greatest instinct that a training fighter encounters is Fear. The Art of Fighting is in many ways the Art of Communicating with Fear. One does not merely dull or annul oneself to fear, fear which contains great wisdom acquired not only through one's own life, but also through the history of the organism, passing through aeons back. The Art of Muay should be considered the Art of Fear...and with it the attendant Instinct of Aggression. Training includes the Instinct of Fatigue. Fear, Aggression and Fatigue can be thought of as the Instinct loom upon which Thought is woven, through the exposure to intensities and the arch aesthetic of Muay. One finds a language, one finds words, which work together the instinct and intelligence of Muay, in a new Tammachat, a new naturalness. Returning to the original reference (below), emotion stands as that which exists between Thought and Instinct. Emotion is that which surges when Thought loses its footing, inviting Instinct in. It is the qualitative way in which we pass through the world, bouncing from intensifying state to intensifying state. For this reason the Thai Buddhistic approach to emotion plays a central role in achieving a new Tammachat communication between Instinct and Intelligence. Emotional reactions in training are to be expected - and emotion itself provides the bridge - but in order for the Aesthetic to provide the cover for development emotion needs to even'd out, understood as a connective force, but not reaching intensities that obscure the sought-for connection. Emotion is simply the sign that Intensities (speeds) have reached a place where Though can no longer adequately follow. It is the door that allows Instinct in. In the right regulation, the right temperature, enough Instinct will enter to guide, and technique (one's learned words) will be allowed to speak, joining Intelligence and Instinct together. Emotion is the conduit. The extension of emotion into a perceptual space (and not merely a spiking or depressive reaction), along Buddhist non-reactive principles, is what allows the art itself to work the synthesis together, properly in training in play. It allows the Tammachat to grow. Without emotion, the substantive expansion which exposed to intensifications that leave Thought & Intelligence behind, one cannot be nourished by one's collective Past. But, it is a question of temperature. Emotion drawn towards Mind. All of this has grown quite esoteric, but it is much more human, much more basic than that. In training one is exposed to differing speeds (intensities), and given techniques (words to speak), both with these speeds, but also amid these speeds. Importantly, these speeds are not just intensifications of fast, they are also intensifications of slow. One is working through a disorientation of the mind (thought, intelligence) in manners which are designed to provoke emotion, but emotion which is only a door to the much wider wealth of Instinct (Unconscious). Emotion is to be regulated, encouraged to be non-reactive, eased into a larger framework of the Aesthetic of Muay, so that the door to Instinct remains open, just enough, so Instinct and Intelligence can collaborate and find ground in a new Tammachat. The invocations of Instinct come out of the very form of training in the Kaimuay in Thailand, a summoning up of the Past, both individual and social, in a community of fighter development. One cannot simply "take out" the techniques of the kaimuay, from this matrix. As fighters train into fatigue, Instinct is also invited in, to speak and inform the Mind. The Aesthetic of Muay steps in to hold the two together, also brought together in the social glue of the kaimuay itself. There is an important mutuality to training, which also falls to the traditional forms of Thai hierarchical culture, a way that the Past inhabits the Present through social bond. Muay Thai is the art by which the Past is allowed to continue to speak, so as to inform (and be informed by) Intelligence. This occurs though, principally, through the exposure and involvement of speeds (intensities) designed to provoke emotion, which itself must be modulated by Buddhistic appeal. This is a fundamental shoreline in training, which then expresses itself in a higher state when fighting. The Fighter and the Unconscious: the flinch and the archetype To follow along in this discussion its important to understand what the nature of the Unconscious is. We are very far from Freud's vision of a repressed Unconscious of drives. We are thinking of a productive Unconscious, the Unconscious understood as everything from flinching to (perhaps) Jung's concept of archetypes. This is because the Unconscious is everything that falls below the threshold of awareness. It includes all the aspects of one's personal history, the experiences of childhood and before, all the things learned as "forgotten", and (following Jung) the energies of one's personal force such as the Shadow or the anima/animus, etc. In training the fighter is engaging, in a systematic craft of intensity exposure and development (its no accidental that Muay Thai is by custom part of the pedagogy and maturation of male adolescents), eliciting emotion for its relative control, turning it onto a conduit. The conduit is connecting Mind (Intelligence, Thought) to Instinct (the Unconscious), and back again. It is drawing forth on the resources of the Unconscious (all of the Unconscious - from the composite of the organism and the species, all those reflects and affective capacities and perceptions, to archetypal forms of being in a social world, the mythos of the Individual - all of it), to animate and inform the art of the Muay, which operates as a continuous aesthetic. Both the flinch as a reflex, and the flinch as a half-memory when you were hit as child, (and also the flinch that served emotionally as a recoil from a dominance, a psychic positioning of your energies before a stronger energy), all of those levels of Unconscious capacity are drawn into the aesthetic of the Muay, and are given words to speak, so as to be symbolically present, imbued in movement. The movement is also informed by those Unconscious qualities and many others, made full, through the deeper knowledge of survival and persistence. Key is understanding that the Past is not regressive. The Unconscious is not limiting/limited. It is full of a wealth of the capacity to do...but, it is beneath awareness, and definitionally not accessible by Intelligence/Thought alone. The instinct to flinch, the reflex, following our example, despite violating the aesthetic of the fighter is imbued with tremendous resource, a speed of perception, a defensive priority, which surpasses any conscious action. Those extra-personal knowledges are to be folded into the Aesthetic of Muay. So this is the case with enumerable capacities to sense and act, affective energies of presence, aspects of the organism and the Self which are so infinite they cannot be known. Imperceptible transitions between modes and embodiments of Time. The training (and the performance) reaches reaches through up from the reflex to the sweep of the mythic Self, all of it inaccessible to the direct perception of the Mind. Emotion and Intensification Noted above, in training intensification gives rise to emotion, which opens the doorway to the Unconscious (Instinct). Intensification on one level, let's say in terms of sparring (play), operates along the aspect of speed. One is exposed to speeds, including changes of speeds (tempos), which defy the capacity of the mind to follow, which gives rise to emotion. The intensification though is not emotion. It produces emotion. Emotion that rises to the point of object obsession (that "fighter" is doing this to me, that "technique" is doing this to me, making me feel this) has already lost its role. It's role is to open Thought to Instinct. The coaching and calculating mind, the analytical mind, will lead emotion in the wrong direction. That is why the Buddhistic aspect of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai works to solve the mis-steps of emotion. The Buddhistic aspects of Muay Thai are embedded in its aesthetic form. One doesn't have to think of emotion in terms of Buddhism, but it can help. This is to say, the directionality of the rise of emotion is toward Instinct. One wants to open a two-way door toward the Unconscious. Because Muay Thai is trained also through fatigue and an aesthetic of dominance, intensification (and its attendant rise of emotion) can also occur through fatigue or dominance. Together they can create a very large doorway, weaving together both the materiality of the Body (fatigue) and the psychodynamics of personhood and social status (hierarchies). Turning to the aesthetic of Muay, its conditioning of Ruup (body posture and form), its characteristic display of presence and being at ease (physically), its flattening of emotion, allows the doorways of intensification/emotion to remain open, productive and expressive. Ideally perhaps, emotion per se is stretched out toward Mind, experienced more so as direct intensification alone, a portal to Unconscious Instinct, and the formative powers of what one is. prospective graphic The Mythos of the Self and the Fighter Thailand's Muay Thai is culture bound, which means that its figures of significance and valorization are drawn from the culture itself. It operates within a Thai-Siamese mythos. For this reason great legends of Thailand's Muay Thai past, let's say of the Golden Age of the sport or before, stand in the same light as the gods that are performed and invoked in the Ram Muay. In my discussion of the 10 Principles of Muay Thai I call this "be the god". The meaning of this is to be understood within the mythos of the Unconscious, both at a personal level, but also at the collective level of a people. The fighter in the ring draws up from the Past (the Unconscious) the supra-personal forces that go beyond their mere ego (constructed identity), so that they can assume a symbolic capacity within the ring, making of the art a collective rite. This occurs through the aesthetics of the sport, and the ways in which the fighter has attained the capacity to transmute intensifications into Instinct and Thought syntheses. In this sense fighters can become embodiments of a collective, mythic past, drawing on the forms of what anchors a people, but remain inaccessible to Intelligence alone. The openness of this capacity is achieved in the openness of training, through play and the aesthetics of Muay. Time and the Nature of Muay (the Natural) Bergson's concept of Duration (la durée) is an important building block for understanding what is happening in traditional training and in fighting. A duration for Bergson is an unbreakable envelope of Time. Returning to the example of cinema, a shot holds a certain complete shape to itself. If you edited it in any way you would break what it is. Bergson describes duration as Time what is "swollen with its past". Just as a story is told in a narration, the ending of the story is swollen with its history, the telling of it from the beginning. A duration is anything that cannot be broken, in terms of Time. There may be durations within a duration, unbreakable envelopes within the duration, this does not disturb its wholeness. The image is given of music where one has the musical piece (a duration), and individual notes played (a duration), as well as refrains, phrasings, melodies, etc. Our lives are durations, our days, our thoughts, our bodies, anything that swells with its past, with the passing of time, so to complete it. When one enters a Thai kaimuay to train, or enters a ring to fight, one is entering as a duration (in fact a duration made up of many durations). And one is joining a duration, the event. The rhythms and shapes of the event envelop your duration hold you in concert with other durations you will encounter. In a kaimuay these are the patterns of training, the aesthetics and customs of the art as trained; in the ring it is the aesthetics of Muay as it is fought. This is the set-up. As you train your duration, what is the you of you, your temporal wholeness will be challenged by intensities of speed, fatigue and dominance. This will lead to intensification, and usually emotion. As Thought ceases to be able to manage one's place, one's wholeness, one opens up the the Unconscious/Instinct, to draw on resources that allow your duration, your rhythm, your wholeness to persist. The Time of which you are made (your duration) is enriched by the rise and integration of Instinct, and that which usually falls below consciousness. Your duration is expanded. Fighting is the art of breaking another's duration, their rhythm and tempo which makes them whole. This is why Muay Thai is principally a Time War, and why it occurs under an aesthetic of narration (the scoring is narratively anchored, and not abstract point counting). The techniques of engagement are temporal battles, strikes holding their own duration within the larger duration, attempts to break the unbreakable coherence of the duration of the other. This is why Ruup and continuity play such a large role in Muay Thai aesthetics and skill building. The Natural, the Tammachat, comes from the presence and integration of Instinct, the presence of the Unconscious, which is engendered to flow with Thought. This is achieved in training, through the application of intensities and the invitation of modulated emotion/affect. The Gross and The Subtle: drawing up the Past When I say above: "Fighting is the art of breaking another's duration, their rhythm and tempo which makes them whole." its important to track the layers of duration. There is the duration of the human body that remains composite, which if broken would result in severe injury or death, and then there is the duration of a performance's artifice, the wholeness of their techniques, presentational command over space (which is why things like balance, rhythm and ruup factor in significantly in scoring). Under a Western conception of fighting one might imagine that the purpose of fighting is to break the duration of other person's body, to in a sense decompose them (for instance, perhaps idealized in the Knockout, which signifies a kind of "death", the ending of consciousness). But in the art of Muay Thai the battle is within the performed duration, the ways in which one deplays one's material, bodily duration as a person, within a style, an aesthetics of dominance and endurance. This is why the sport is scored, and not just until the loss of consciousness or even death (as it once reportedly was). This, arguably, is how it rose to an art, an art which raises the level of efficacy of fighters, the development of skills and capacities that result in the control over Time (and Space), a control which would substantially result in the capacity to break the duration of a person. This is why Knockouts traditionally, around the middle to late 20th century, were not favored in Muay Thai, it was about skill development, but skills that are quite subtle, the skill to battle in Time. Key to this development is the principle of Tammachat, the subject of this piece. As I've argued, Tammachat naturalness is only developed through Instinct and the capacities of the Unconscious, which is to say you cannot leave Instinct and the Unconscious behind. Instead, the Instinct/Unconscious is invited to enter into the present and take up the techniques, aesthetic forms (rhythms and ruups), and use them perhaps like words. To speak anew, because the words are anew, and developed through the art and execution of the sport, now at least well over the last century in the country...and perhaps for 100s upon 100s of years, in various versions. This returns us to the thought of a basic Buddhistic approach to the affects of training (and of fighting), that spikes and surges of emotion are seriously discouraged (until recently, with the globalizing of the sport, attempting to make it join the Rage Fighting of the combat entertainment world, satisfying consumers in increasingly small bits and chunks - Instagram posts, endless highlights, scream-faced promos, etc). The reason why principle of Tammachat (natural) and Ning (being at ease) are prized and essential to the development of the sport is that, as explained above, intensification and emotion opens the doorway to the Unconscious and Instinct. They invite Instinct into the process, and it is very important that the doorway be moderated, in fact even artfully controlled (this is why in a traditional Kaimuay the quality of the head kru and gym head is very significant, the training controls flow through them). The larger the emotional-intensification gate, the more course, the more gross the instinctive entry into the present. This is why lots of very hard sparring or anger surges, or wild swings of emotion will produce only the most reactive contributions to training and skillsets. Fight or flight, adrenaline rushes (and depressive purges) will push their way forward, through into the present to solve the problem. Only their very primitive hands will pick up techniques, if at all. And techniques may even battle against the instinctive, as fighters try to "bite down" and overcome the instinctive response. Lost is any sense that the Past, the Unconscious, is filled with wisdom and capacities that the Conscious mind could never know, specific know-hows of how to control Time (and Space), manipulating reactions, bending possibilities, things not only inherited from our personal past, but from the millions of organisms that survived spatial and temporal struggles to eventual rise to you. These are the virtual simulations of contest which create a composite of what a fighter is capable of, almost all of them well below the level of awareness. As the emotional door becomes narrower, the Instinctive Unconscious is invited to enter the present in subtler and subtler ways. No longer will they be emergency solutions, gross motor contractions or compellings, sheer spikings of intensity, instead the spread out web of temporal and spatial understandings, the ways the body can move and perceive, when in flow, are invited in. The more subtly the Instinctive and the Unconscious enters in, the more likely it is to pick up the new "words" of techniques and the Thai aesthetic altogether, and think through them, express itself through them...in other words...be Natural. Natural is experiential clarity and fluidity. Taken to the extreme one might venture that the meditating Buddhist monk is producing the lightest of all intensifications, like the thinnest rumbles on a drum skin, without emotion altogether, to draw up the most subtle web of the Unconscious, increasingly subtle, increasingly spread wide. Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, in its training and performance, makes use of this principle at a more directly intensive level, to develop the Tammachat of Thai fighting, inviting the Past and the great well-spring within us to speak, with new words. the above graphic loosely presents the more "course" Instinctive responses to solve present problems, fear, anger, freezing, which pass through the wide door, and the much more subtle complexities and patterns/connectivities that come from Unconscious knowing, passing through the narrowed window, coming in contact with technique/aesthetics. Muay Thai at its richest is the development of Instinct and the Unconscious in increasingly complex techniques and styles, in dialogue with each other, carefully increasing the passage of Unconscious capacities - in their sophistication - into the present moment, the speed, perceptions & anticipations and adroitness of what lies well below the thresholds of conscious attention. This cannot be achieved biomechanically, through rote repetitions and imitative perfectioning, nor by "biting down" as intensification rises. It is achieved through the durational experience of Time, and the art of shaping Time(s), bringing the fullness of what is Unconscious in us, to speak, to the fore...the Natural. Bergson on Instinct and Thought, from Deleuze and the Unconscious (2007): This is the original passage set that began these thoughts; one can leave aside the direction of this argument toward frenzy and the mystic. Important is the relational dichotomy of Instinct and Intelligence.

Sylvie and I talking today about the 20 minute adrenaline arc, and how that plays out in fight experiences, and fighting style. And why boxers fight the way they do over many rounds, the narrative structure to Thailand's trad Muay Thai.

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

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

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

What's nice is that the lens distortion which sometimes might be seen as a drawback can actually bring forth the actual form of strikes and movements, extending lines and speaking the truth about the moment in a way that a visually "accurate" lens would not, as in this shot where the wide stance, and the rotation coming out up from the floor has a kind of lyrical quality. You can see the communication through lines of force.

There a beautiful story here, back in 2016. Sylvie was given a chance to win the Northern 105 Muay Siam belt, but she would have to beat Faa Chiang Rai, one of the best female fighters in Thailand for the 3rd time in a row in a month...and do it in her home province of Chiang Rai. We really thought that there was no way that they would give Sylvie the win on points, just because of circumstances, but Sylvie somehow pulled it out. She was awarded the belt, but then within the week (I believe) that she was stripped of it because farang could not hold the belt. It was given back to Faa. Sylvie wrote about the fight here. It was just such an incredible moment, being able to fight for a prestigious belt, a belt hermetic to Thailand itself, and even winning it, and then having it stripped, that in-between time before Thai name belts were starting to be made for Westerners, both in terms of audience and victory, the changing of rules, the opening up of the stadia. This was another time. But the beautiful part of it all is that even though Sylvie took Faa's belt in her home province, one way or another, 8 years later Sylvie arranged for Faa to fight for (and win for herself), the WBC World Title (I think at 105 lbs), I believe a title she still holds. This is the curious, beautiful gift of Sylvie, she weaves together Muay. Faa went from a Northern Muay Siam title to a WBC World Title, through Sylvie.

Violence and Muay Thai "violence does not participate in any order of reasons, nor any set of forces oriented towards results. It denatures, wrecks, and massacres that which it assaults. Violence does not transform what it assaults; rather, it takes away its form and meaning’" Think about this in terms of Thailand's Muay Thai and fighting. The purpose of the rite and practice is not to denature the other.

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.