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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.

When I've come out to Thailand to train (and holiday!), I've always trained just once a week for the first one. It takes a while for the body to adjust, especially with the heat and/ or humidity, and gives me a chance to recover and explore. After that, it depends on how I feel/ what my goals are. Sometimes I've switched to twice a day, other times I haven't. If you're coming out to fight, you might want to. If it's just to train, improve and enjoy your stay, sometimes twice a day is a slog. Your decision... Chok dee.

This is the difficult thing, as Muay Thai shifts to a tourism economy. Things like defense and balance development (along with timing) are very hard to develop in fighters. It takes years, and in Thailand much of it comes out of the kaimuay tradition of fighters raised and fighting since boys. Fights traditionally were scored to favor these things and the training reflected their higher-level maturation. They became embedded in the culture, and the significance of Muay Thai in Thailand, part of its "Form of Life". Teaching them required a rich subculture (which today is highly eroded), and knowledge was passed down in a non-instructive way. As Muay Thai becomes turned towards "action" moments, and incorporates the lessor-skilled non-Thai, defensive and balance roots are increasingly not fed, and will starve. Non-Thais become trainers, not developed in the kaimuay tradition, favoring things they can teach well, especially memorized offensive combos (the new signature of Entertainment sport). The deeper enrichments of balance, control and defense pass away, and notably, as fighters are discouraged from displaying these things offense-first, trade-oriented attacks actually become MORE successful. It becomes a self-feeding system of entertainment.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuuXPkmp-SK/?igsh=MW1wcW1oZDZtMzgybg%3D%3D A great little clip of legends Yodkhunpon and Samson clinching back in Roi Et where they were upcoming Isaan fighters. Notably, you see ZERO "pretzel" (the pretzel discussed here at some length: https://www.patreon.com/posts/130545342/ ); also Samson clearly the stronger clinch fighter technically, see how everything is wrists and hands and neck, whereas Yodkhunpon avoids any of those leverages, which Samson sews together somewhat relentlessly. Also, those two nice rips. Yodkhunpon a different sort of clincher, and Sylvie and I joke today that a reason why Yodkhunpon is so anti-clinch in their sparring is that he had to suffer through clinching with Samson on the comeup, a fighter here likely at least a weight class lower. Namkabuan used to talk about how having to train against his Muay Khao brother Namphon really shaped him.

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.

Khaosai Galaxy told us he had over 100 Muay Thai fights before going into boxing, not a lot of them in Bangkok, but I've never seen any images of his Muay Thai. from Reddit our conversation with him

The Holy Grail Quest of the Classic Thai Style Three of the hardest characteristics of Thai style to achieve in a unity. ruup - posture, form, impression, the line you cut sanae - charm, aura, charisma, almost with magical properties ning - being at ease, unaffected, unmoved, undisturbed, relaxed *also, not without irony or comment that this is a Crusades related image

I'm not sure which entry or post you are responding to, but I'm glad to hear there is resonance between the things you believe and the things I write about. This is going to be a struggle, but as Muay Thai turns harder and harder towards Western values, altering its training and how fights are fought, scored, etc, in an attempt to drive tourism numbers, I believe the lasting and passionate Western tourist will end up yearning for a Muay Thai that is not made in their image. They didn't come 8,000 miles to see and know what they already know and feel. I believe Thailand's Muay Thai has something very important to teach the West, especially on the nature of violence, as it is addressed in the sport (and art). I believe things will bend back...but not before a lot of damage is done, and not before many things will be lost. We just have to do the best we can.

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.

If you love clinch watch rounds 3-5 of Petchboonchu vs Yodwicha. It's three rounds of glory. It's amazing that in 10 short years this kind of performance and even fighting has been removed from the sport. Pure human art.

Geez. I spent the whole night watching all 11 of the existing fights of Wichannoi Pontawee, who many legends named as the GOAT. I've watched his fights before and have enjoyed them, and a few times wowed, but I felt like he's just too important a fighter to be only "somewhat" familiar with him. I had crisp idea of how he fought, and I saw him have some spectacular moments. But its an entire different thing to sit down and watch all the fights - taking lots of notes - back to back, one after another. I don't think I've learned as much watching any other fighter. It's remarkable. Hopefully I can put these notes together for others.

One of the great ethical difficulties to the above is: Do you want to make visible what is currently invisible to the cartographic appropriations of colonial capital? Or, just let them sit safely out of range, in their unseen character? On one hand it feels like you must make them visible so to marshall forces to protect and safeguard, and even possibly restore; on the other hand by mapping the invisible then you just set the conditions for appropriation and distortion, and eventual elimination. One of the aspects which I believe kept Thailand's Muay Thai so resilient, despite so many international influences (probably for 500 years even), is a certain kind of hermetic quality to provincial Siam/Thailand, the way that there are cultural dividing lines, which provincial ways of life and culture exist in their own right, than you are passing into another "land".

ONE didn't invent giving bonuses on top of fight pay in Thailand. In fact it took a long tradition of gamblers providing injections during fights to inspire fighters. When you hear about traditional fight pay you are missing out on the "injection" bonuses which can be substantial. Here today a fighter winning 500,000 injection bonus ($15,000+ USD) and being guided into the stands to thank the gamblers (who are often portrayed in simplistic caricatured ways). It's an ecosystem out of balance, but its still an ecosystem, in which parts support parts. Instead in ONE this bonus tradition has been transferred to only ONE big boss, being handed out on the preference of a single man, who is attempting to steer the aesthetic of Muay Thai itself...away from tradition. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=791304983340912&rdid=mUWvMklDzJ4i3xa6

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.

I think people don't even understand what it was that ONE did. It had almost nothing to do with small gloves, or rulesets or aggression or any of that. It bought up the most developed Thai talent (which was quite cheap, and many past prime) and then poured massive amounts of marketing dollars into taking over comms, and absolutely controlling messaging in very small information ecosystems, squeezing out almost all other content...and used this to create a constant "commercial" of how massive a success it was. They could have done comm control with a totally different combat sport product and have had the very same, if not even better success. It was about manufactured digital footprint. So when Entertainment Muay Thai tries to model itself on ONE promotional rulesets and styles its actually copying the wrong thing. There is some benefit to mirroring the style and ethos that ONE already seeded the ecosystems with, because all that groundwork has been done, and it changed consumption...but it actually wasn't all the aggression, or the scoring kind or even the knockouts. It was much much more about the sizzle and not much to do about the steak. Its actually the systematic control over messaging, from SEO link farming and story planting, to buying up social media sharing circles and influencers, all the narrative shaping. Traditional Muay Thai as a product is probably even MORE amenable as a product than the made up sport that ONE created. It has massive valuation in terms of depth of complexity (deeper retention investment), historical material (narratives to be driven), and overall skill level. Trad Muay Thai as it bent toward Entertainment versions has copied the wrong thing.

from Reddit discussing shin pain and toughening of the shins: There are several factors, and people create theories on this based on pictures of Muay Thai, but honestly from my wife's direct experience they go some what numb and hard from lots of kicking bags and pads, and fighting (in Thailand some bags could get quite hard, almost cement like in places). Within a year in Thailand Sylvie was fighting every 10 or 12 days and it really was not a problem, seldom feeling much pain, especially if you treat them properly after damage, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztzTmHfae-k and then more advanced, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcWtd00U7oQ And they keep getting harder. After a few years or so Sylvie felt like she would win any shin clash in any fight, they just became incredible hard. In this video she is talking about 2 years in about how and why she thought her shins had gotten so hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFXCmZVXeGE she shows in the vid how her shins became kind of permanently serrated, with divots and dings. As she discusses only 2 years in (now she's 13 years of fighting in) very experienced Thais have incredibly hard shins, like iron. Yes, there are ideas about fighting hard or not, but that really isn't the determining factor from our experience with Sylvie coming up on 300 fights and being around a lot of old fighters. They just can get incredibly tough. The cycles of damage and repair just really change the shin (people in the internet like to talk about microfractures and whatnot). Over time Sylvie eventually didn't really need the heat treatment anymore after fights, now she seldom uses it. She's even has several times in the last couple of years split her skin open on checks without even feeling much contact. Just looked down and there was blood.

Some of my comments in reply to The Pretzel clinch position that is increasingly common in Muay Thai. You can see this discussion the comment section of Yodkhunpon's Fast, Trapping Anti-Clinch Reversal from Outside Position - (8 min, public) The proliferation of inside elbows in today's Muay Thai is part of the erosion of soundness. Against skilled opponents you really don't want to be approaching them and grabbing double wide as a habit. You are cleanly open. It's much more sound to regularly control the middle in principle if you are worried about inside attacks. Once you have the elbow from the inside part of that technique is leveraging it so doesn't get high (you can see that in the photo with Karuhat), and using your weight to steer. Additionally, if that elbow does get high this opens them up very easily to a quick pass under the arm to the edge and a very strong side control position if not just taking their back. A lot of the time you actually WANT that elbow high, and you even force it high (Sylvie does this pass a lot). But hey, I'm sure that people teach the pretzel now, its extremely common in Thailand among Thais. It just my view is that clinch is highly degraded in Thailand, among Thais, and not really as complex or technically sound as it once was in the Golden Age. Even fighters like Karuhat, who seldom clinched in his fights today are pretty profound clinchers, even decades removed from their fighting days. They just understood the grappling element at a higher level. A lot of the Muay Thai Library is about documenting the disappearing Golden Age techniques and principles, and this is one of those. and... (Kevin commenting) Yes, if I'm reading you right, I think the theory is in agreement with what you are saying. The point being, when you see habitually double outside position...this is born out of a gym with poor clinch training habits...it starts with poor inside control by one partner (high up on the bicep, near the shoulder, and not down by the elbow). This is just a weak inside position. Given that position in a partner it is perfectly reasonable to fold your arm(s) down over that over that arm to control the intside elbow, but the deeper point is that this produces in real terms bad habits between BOTH training partners, especially when two partners train together a lot as they often do in Thailand. The first partner shouldn't be automatically slapping their hands down at the shoulder, they should be controlling the frame on first move (generally), and the second partner shouldn't really just take an inferior position as a default response...the receving fighter honestly shouldn't be just giving up inside position on a default either. What happens in real life, is that two partners end up just "taking" these relatively poor positions, neither of which are fighting for inside control, for long periods of time, just to waste away chunks of training time, just so they can look like they are clinching - these are teen to young teen boys. Neither fighter is actually trying to control and dominate the frame in these instances, because it's tiring. In the Rambaa video too, he is not at the elbow, and honestly this isn't ideal (small inches or angles can made a big difference), but it is part of a swim he is teaching and constant fighting for inside position. This struggle over position and the frame is the essential part of clinch dominance. You take the outside position in order to GET back to the inside. What I'm speaking to is a kind of weakness in Thai clinch training over all, which involves kids learning how to burn hours NOT fighting for inside position. I'm not saying you should never braid your arm over, I'm speaking particularly to the lasting double outside pretzel, as a "default" start position. When I see Thai fighters in the ring default to this double outside position in fights the first thing I think is "This person doesn't really know how to clinch", and even some by reputation high level Thai clinch fighters do this a lot. The reason why I say this to myself isn't because they are making a technical mistake. It's that taking this position somewhat by habit tells me that when they clinch in the gym this is a common default between partners. It means that regularly BOTH partners are taking weaker positions repeatedly (there is no correction). It means that the training itself is not about the struggle over positional dominance. It's the signature of a lack of rigor, and kind of a baked in laziness. Clinch is actually a very fragile art, and bad habits can creep in quickly even in experienced fighters, and lack of clinch in training can erode even spectacular clinch fighters over a very short period of time. Honestly though, gyms now are no longer kaimuay in the general sense, and Thais have changing motivations for training. And the authority or rigor of a gym has shifted in how it is exercized. Some of the study of traditional Muay Thai is about tracing these changes in training (and even socio-economics) and how it is altering, or even eroding, techniques. I do also think that there is a tendency to just feel that if Thais are doing something a lot this is automatically high level, especially in something like clinch which has been their specialty, but often there is degradation in technique as training changes, and with clinch being less and less emphasized in Thailand rings there is likely to be even further erosion of Thai clinch habits and techniques. --- I was really struck when I watch Karuhat (one of the least clinch oriented fighters of the Golden Age) clinch up with Samson (one of the great clinch fighters of the Golden Age)...I believe its in the most recent Karuhat MTL session. Karuhat completely neutralized Samson in the clinch...through inside control. It was kind of amazing to see. He just was technically superior. Small things matter. Samson's relentless swims and Muay Khao assault maybe wins the day given enough time, Samson said as much, but on grab or just after Karuhat won the position, because he is VERY sound. Maybe he had to be sound like that because he was small and fought up against strong clinch fighters, I don't know, but it was and is a little startling. It opened my eyes even more to these kinds of principles that are buried in training habits. A lot of Thai fighters on entry do not take dominant, or fight for dominant position these days. They often take weak positions...and THEN fight for dominance...or not, sometimes they just take neutral positions and wait for trips, or attempt knees. (That's where Yodkhunpon's reversal is helpful, its a move like that from a weak position.) --- sorry to on about this, but your comments allowed me room to go at length on something I find really intersting, and in terms of clinch success really imporant. To share a little about our process and thinking: Sylvie is an amazing clinch fighter, perhaps the best clinch female clinch fighter in Muay Thai history, if only in terms of the size of fighters she's been able to beat almost entirely through Muay Khao clinch styles, but we are constantly aware that training conditions (wrong sized partners, lack of correction) can produce serious degradation of techniques, and honestly bad habits. And one of those bad habits can be just flopping down over in a pretzel. As a smaller, physically weaker training partner (Sylvie for years has trained against partners with 10 kg or more on her) this becomes really easy to become accustom to doing, because you are just trying to neutralize greater strength and size, like you say, control that elbow from the outside, but this leads to some serious problems in actual fights. It develops a habit of taking outside control and resting in it, or kind of "losing" the initial grab because you are used to giving up inside position vs bigger training partners. This has consequences in fights where refs are making quick clinch breaks (sometimes because of the promotion, sometimes because of the ref). If you are taking outside, weaker positions on entry, this means you spend the first movements just trying to improve your position. By the time you have struggled to swim inside and frame up the ref is breaking the clinch. This is a huge problem in todays Muay Thai if you are Muay Khao fighter. You have to get to the dominant position quickly because they won't give you time to work the position and develop it. In clinch training you have long stretches, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes...but in a fight you have 3-7 seconds to get to a dominant position before the ref comes. If you aren't used to taking a dominant position quickly, and you rely on clinch as a major part of your game, you lose. You simply will lose the fight. Clinch training for you has to be about fighting for the inside more or less continually, and winning inside position on entry, so you can keep the ref off of you, and part of that is making sure that you take the right angles on grab, you get at and dig in at that elbow.

For just individual fights, number 2 and 7 were close ones with bug side-bet This one the loser's stock went up in the matchmaker's eyes

6. I'm very femue-leaning when it comes to preferences, but this is like the strongest kid I'd ever seen in my life. Ferrari Banktongtaipetchburi

I am going to Bangkok in a few weeks and plan to stay there for one month, working remotely. I'm coming off a 1-year hiatus and will need to slowly ramp up my training again, so looking for a place that I can pop into 2-3x per week to start, and then slowly progress. I am a casual student so don't think training camps are for me right now. I also want something in between traditional and Westernized - just a gym culture that is welcoming to intermediate women, and makes sure that egos are checked at the door (I've been to way too many gyms holding pads for large, powerful dudes with egos that went unchecked, which led to a lot of unnecessary injuries for me - part of why I took a hiatus). Given this, I wonder if taking just private classes is better, until I "sniff out" the vibes of the other students, before holding pads with them.. I've been looking through lists on here and quite frankly, overwhelmed by the choice. Budget-wise, id like to keep the privates down to less than 40/hr Anyone have recommendations?

Zooming out my kind of rough-sketch evolutionary dynamics of Siam/Thai Muay Thai, over the last maybe 500 years. One of the factors of Siam/Thailand is that land worked something like "sea". There was a LOT of it (much more than population which was sparse) and it was hard to traverse (other than waterways). This set up Galapagos-like islandings of local market dynamics, around festival fight rings. But, through seasonal population capture and relocation, and then corvee labor cycles, these festival islands were continually churned back toward city (trade) centers, and martial service (structuring)...which in turn was exposed to quite vast international influence/cross-pollination. You had flows of trade from across the civilized world, cosmopolitanism, martial service, and then constant cyclical return to village micro market ring dynamics, a return to Galapagos variability and selection creation.

I watched Sylvie's clinch video. I think I can relate to what you're saying. I'll practice and see if I can figure how to execute it.

There is a compelling line of development in my thought, a new/different way to relate to the past which is not reactionary. More in the piece on Bergson. This joins together the psychodynamics of our personal history to even thoughts about Muay Thai's past, the relevance of the Golden Age and it's own past, a fundament of how we perceive the value and resource of the past. When we have championed the Golden Age of Muay Thai for instance a few have pushed strongly back seeing this as "nostalgic" (refusing "growth" or "modernization"), even some intelligent ones pointing out that we don't want to return to a time of repressive social structures, power-abuse, deep income disparities across the nation. All worthy ideas of critique. But what fails to come across is that the past has deposits of tremendous knowledge which was born out of the distress, just as experiences of personal trauma produce lessons and guidance, capacities. It does not mean that one should live in constant distress. It is rather that the richness of experience, the attainment of new capacities (in the past), may powerfully inform the present.

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.

Well then, after a rewatch its really clear what the difference was. The first fight was reffed with a VERY "entertainment" ref style, the clinch broken almost immediately about 80% of the time. Reffing is huge shaper of Muay Thai fights for clinch fighters and the ref just took the clinch off the table. The belt fight reffed in a very different, traditional way (thank goodness). Also, Barbara didn't sink her head in at all in the August fight, which also added to the reffing issue, because Marie could get a handle for her various cross-faces and stalls, giving the ref something to respond to in his breaks. Barbara wasn't allowed to work out of those positions. In the title fight she sank her head in so beautifully, so adeptly on the grab, it completely eliminated the cross-faces and stalls. So, much more traditional reffing, and much better (in fact beautiful) entry techniques, and a hugely different result. I'd also say that Marie was much more forward in the August fight, especially the first rounds, which kept Barbara a little off balance, instead of just seeking the rope with her back. It prevented, or at least deflected Barbara's stalking, where she's in charge of the timing of exchanges. Also, Barbara was much more proactive with her hands earlier, in the title fight, incorporating them into her stalking, which complexified the pocket. But really none of these things were more important than the reffing, and the sink on the lock. Those differences completely transformed the result.

Thanks alot! Very thorough and informative article, great read. Now off to buy Lewis Pugh's book! It's always great to read Sylvie's insights and experiences in Muay-Thai, i had missed this one, so thanks again!

Campagna on Time leads into the idea that we are all producing Time (what he calls "Worlding") in each of our days, our existence, and that we also live in "a Time", a shape of things. This makes of Muay Thai's trad "Art of Producing Time" a certain marvelous imperative. I regularly emphasize the temporal nature of Golden Age fighting, that in a certain sense these were Time Battles between two elevated agonistic arts-of-time. In this sense, in the Campagna sense, the (rite-oriented) aspect of ring Muay Thai captures pure elements of Time creation. As he forwards the idea, the facticity of events in Time, in the past, are not what matter. You can get everything "wrong" about past events, even inverting outcomes or perhaps to some degree values, but the core of what "was" is its particular "art of producing Time", which is to say its unique, substantive way of placing events in relationship to each other, the qualitative expression of those events in narrative, the temporal changes and internal relations of those facts/events, basically...their "unfolding". The nature of their time. In this way, by analogy, in Golden Age fighting it is not the strikes, it is not the techniques, as isolated elements, that need to be passed on, it is their art of producing Time...because the art of producing Time is the fundamental fabric of our reality. How things unfold, much less than "what" is unfolded (though certainly there is some relation). * * * There was a minor event in the stadia last night where Naksu, Sylvie's training partner at Rambaa's, was knocked out (rather spectacularly) be a bicycle knee right up the middle. The immediate temptation is to "solve" this problem at the technical level. What was his guard like? What was his strike-choice? "How did that get through?" --- but the problem happened at the temporal level. The pace and rhythm with which Naksu was fighting, and the way that he would stall on the porch, resetting some, before an "attack"...lacking in Doh, created this knockout, a 15 year old against a seasoned 25 year old. Before the knockout you could see that the distances were all wrong, that his opponent was fighting in "his Time". In the battle of Times, Naksu was losing. The fight was early, the odds were mostly even, but Naksu was in a bad spot...in regards to Time. Its not always or even often that the mismatch of Time dominance results in such a clear and decisive blow. He could have easily missed and the fight could have gone onto a more complex femeu control, largely uneventful...or Naksu may have recovered his sense of Time, and begun imposing it upon his opponent in later rounds...but this knockout came almost entirely out of Time. The opponent was given their own temporality, and out of that they were able to draw out one of their more rare techniques...perfectly timed. The agonism of Time.

Watched Sylvie's padwork today, something new I really have encouraged to happen and that she has been doing daily for a few weeks (?). Tons of in-the-pocket rhythms and improvisations, space management. I can see lots of growth, creativity, enjoyment. Good, good stuff. Unfortunately just like everyone else who has trained her for maybe 4 years now, they all want to take away her clinch. Nobody likes her clinch because it feels reductive. Hey, nobody respected the muay of Samson, Langsuan, even Dieselnoi either, this is a long story with the style. They don't care that she can beat 60 kg girls with it, and is hell for pretty much anyone to face, and has won nearly 200 fights with it (almost every win a direct result of her clinch), its an anti-style especially to the contemporary eye (which has been shaped by Entertainment Muay Thai). This is really good work, but its been years since she's trained with anyone who loved her Muay Khao stalking style and developed her into a clinch demon. All of her clinch dominance in the last several years, pretty much since COVID, has been pretty much kept on life-support by her alone, every clinch partner much bigger than her, stronger, Thai, so she just is managing controls, never being able to experience dominance in the grab, that taste of blood in the water with the lock, every kru in their own way discouraging her from the one thing she has been the best in the world among female fighters at. This is just the morphing of the opportunities of muay in Thailand, and something that has to be lived through. I'm excited for the in-the-pocket work, it fits nicely with what she's been developing with Chatchai. It's very good stuff. But ideally, all that pocket work should be used to pressure and punish the pocket so her clinch is even more unstoppable. Not sure how to get there, giving the state of Muay Thai and the place clinch has within it now. It's been sheer willpower from Sylvie that she is even the clinch fighter she has been over the last several years. Clinch is a vulnerable skill, it erodes quickly, and true clinch requires all kinds of rhythms and set ups to make it effective in the later rounds. It's a very complex, systematic approach to fighting. It's not just about winning clinch positions. It's the culminating persistence of them, using fatigue as a weapon so mistakes get made, positions neutralized too slowly, a bit late, windows getting bigger and bigger. I'm hoping this all comes together. If it does, and Sylvie can regain that late locking effectiveness, watch out. It will be quite a combination. This difficulty though, in the wide view, is that proper Muay Khao training likely does not exist as a whole any longer in Thailand, and that we've had to piece together elements of it even to get this far. There is an incredible bricolage to training in Thailand if you want to reach back into what the Golden Age was, because so much of the methods of muay have changed. Not only is the sport fought differently, and trained differently, its also thought differently even among Thais.

Sylvie tells me that Arjan Gimyu called her to say that last night was the first time in the last month that he was able to sleep at night, because he could breathe.

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

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

Some of this upward, drifting weightlessness in the photo above, the way that a training fighter is caught up in the vacuum of a gym itself, isolated as a figure, place somewhat to the way that Kubrick isolated the human figure in Space in 2001. There is some play there, with the ultrawide.

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And here dramatic action, Chatchai instructing with his inimitable simplicity of directional force, a Socrates of movement...

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.

Sylvie uses a wonderful term to describe the Westernization of Thailand's Muay Thai, through its Entertainment commodification. She says the West is terraforming Thai Muay Thai, and then taking glory for beating Thais in the new, terraformed world. It's a powerful analogy.

I've felt some pretty strong disillusionment as a photographer, which pretty much comes in line with the overall dilution of meaningfulness in digital communications, as everything gets stretched out into endless (truly endless) digital series, consumed in scrolls, catching affect-torquing algorithm effects (or not), much of it aligned to dopamine hits, which stresses us out into over-stimmed depression beasts. We take photos because this little fragment of reality...matters. And the art of the camera, its alchemy, is applying rites, practices and crafts to that image to bring that meaningfulness forth. To just dump that carved piece of the REAL into a knowledge mill, into a vast encryption pulverization is just fundamentally wrong, and deprives the photograph of the very sort of sacred (yes, sacred) life it was given. This is a fundamental crisis...and deeply affects even how I relate to my own images, or even the desire to take them. I've always felt that this problem is one of occasional aesthetics, that there must be forms out there, waiting to be created, which deny some aspects of this digital pulverization. (This I suppose are what galleries are for, or printed prints on walls in homes...to forestall the profanation.) This problem is absolutely unresolved, but... This morning I began editing my photographs of Kru Hem at TDet99 from yesterday and the first two photographs really spoke to me. They spoke to me as a pair. Together, they held a symbolic form, I might say. So I asked myself, how in this digital time (I refuse Instagram...actually since my Instagram account suddenly vanished several years ago, for no reason at all, but also because its form for photographs is dead wrong), could I even present them as a Symbolic Form, as a Two? What would be in some sense homological to how it might be if they hung on a wall, framed, side by side? The question was a very simple one, one that instinctively felt had an answer...at least a partial answer. I imagined, just place them in relationship to themselves in video (video holding its own very serious, de-aestheticizing problems in the scroll), but do so using a feature that I believe is what made large screen cinema different. The secret to cinema's magic was that the size of the screen cannot be taken in in a single glance. The action may occur here or there, but there are always areas of the screen to explore, at any given moment in the flow of time. The viewing eye sculpts, as it selects attention, in the narrative. (This is something, a magic, that no longer operates within our world of small screens.) I just entered one of these photos and selected out frames within the frame, and placed them in tempo with the overall frame, mimicking in part some of the nature of cinematic magic. I have no idea how or if this changes how the images may be received and experienced in various digital flows and scroll/refreshes, within the pulverization mill which grinds our attention, packaged for exchange in markets, but it DID change how I related to my photographs themselves. The process pulled me into them, and brought the pleasure of the large files I'm able to shoot with. I love exploring the worlds and pieces of worlds within a single frame, so it made me happy with my art, it changed the possible within it, rather than de-spiriting it.

You asked simple, so the answer is simple, but can be very effective. Just kick under it to the open side. You can even be late on this kick. There are probably a few reasons why there isn't a lot of jabbing in Thailand's Muay Thai, but this is one of them. A kick to the open side is a very significant score, one of the few strikes that doesn't even have to have effect. The jab is almost a non-score. So trading these is pure win. But, in same stance this would require you learning a quick, lead-side kick. It's a very good kick to have, so no loss there. Key though is to not rely on point-fighting. If you can develop this to have some pace (preferably with no "step" in the kick) it can become a serious deterrent, not only to the jab, but also to the straight. And, because you are tall, if you turned this also into a long knee, this could be a significant problem for opponents. These are very simple, high scoring, maybe a bit difficult to develop power in, (but you can do it), answers.

The above is the fight from ringside, without commentary, just a great clear feed of the action. This is just a special fight. A lot was going into this, not the least of which that Sylvie would be facing a Western fighter, something she'd had the occasion to do very infrequently in her voluminous fighting career which has been focused on Thailand, and a very skilled Westerner at that. And, adding to the challenge is the fact that the WBC World Title is probably the most present day prestigious belt, given how rigorously they attempt to adhere to Thailand's scoring principles, and the effort and care that they take to keep their female Muay Thai rankings up to date (something that is incredibly difficult to do); this put added pressure on the fight. Sylvie had come off a very significant back injury in August, something at the time really put a scare into us, immobilizing her for weeks - horse, fence - and though had fought well in her return, once, had not been training rigorously in clinch - her meat, bread and butter - for honestly, a couple of years. Much of the conditions of training that had made her so unbeatable had been wrecked by COVID in the Pattaya local Muay Thai scene, and we just didn't know how that would show in a fight this demanding. In video we had seen that Elisabetta Solinas had some clinch strengths, some of which would show in this fight. The real challenge, I imagined, would be that of rhythm and pattern. Many fights are decided at the level of rhythm and pattern, and much less so at the level of tactics and techniques (where many place their analysis). This is just my personal belief, I'm sure others would disagree. If you imagine a fighter's strengths as a wave pattern, with troughs and valleys, how that wave pattern intersects with their opponents wave pattern really can be unpredictable, when fighters are unfamiliar with each other, especially when fighting out of genre. above, wave interference (but in this imperfect analogy fighting opponent peaks would be expressed as toughs, etc). The idea is that strength points, whether they be offensive or defensive, have their rhythm and patterns, and strength points interfere with strength points, weaknesss moments can amplify opponent strength moments. This creates fight rhythm. The pattern is the tempo & amplitude of a fighter's style. And in this poor analogy, a fighter's wave is not a symmetrical series of peaks & toughs. It is shaped with varying oscillations like the EEG of a heart beat, or brain waves. Sylvie's Muay Khao fighting style, its wave pattern, had been developed fighting against the (mostly) Muay Femeu Thai female fighting style, mostly against physically much larger opponents, within the traditional, narrative scoring aesthetic. WBC rules would weight all rounds evenly - though the traditional, Thai stadium judges may score early rounds with a tendency toward the draw, one doesn't know - so there was an imperative in this fight that the shape of the fight, and interactions with Solina's wave pattern was largely unknown. How were these waves going to interact? Would peaks cancel each other out? What valleys would amplify the other's peaks? Until you get in the ring you just won't know. And the fight was a beautiful fight. What the fight became was actually a classic Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao battle. And it's a beautiful thing that the WBC rule set, and the promotion itself which involved high-level Thai judges, and not the least of which, Elisabetta's very skilled femeu style, all made happen (read the WBC Muay Thai rule set; its the best English language rule set I've ever come across). You can feel the work that was put into it). Solinas fought with a great, super balanced (important), retreating, countering, teeping, scoring, pivoting, and also very high-tempo style, which set the stage perfectly for the Muay Khao question mark. Can the Muay Khao fighter catch her? This is the traditional, persistence hunting fight arc was in play. The equation was even further complicated by Solinas's very strong trip game in the clinch. Sylvie has a sailor's balance, developed through the years, which saved her several times, and even allowed her to reverse important positions, but that high level tripping was going to complicate the Muay Khao story. It wasn't necessarily so that when Sylvie caught her that she'd be able to become dominant. Several times in the fight she had clinch positions which stalled, or were slow to develop for the simple fact that she had to stabilize and read possible trips. And, this was even further complicated by the clinch breaks by the ref. Early clinch breaks are sometimes to be expected, as it can be part of trying to create the narrative challenge for later rounds...but there were also clinch breaks when Sylvie achieved very dominant positions, with the head quite down. Perhaps these were for the protection of the opponent, as a female fighter. It happens. But it was not possible to know how these breaks were being scored by judges. These were moments when fight ending, or fight changing strikes could land. This had the remarkable effect of making the fight incredibly exciting at ringside, because Sylvie just could not pull away, and in a way showed that the ref had expertly sculpted a perfect fight. He kept asking Sylvie to do more...and she did more. The result was a near perfect fight of slowly increasing escalation. I think it's pretty clear that the first two rounds went to Solinas (although you might imagine a 10-10 round from a Thai judge?). Going into the third the assumption had to be "You can't lose another round". Solinas had brought out her trips and her gorgeous retreating counter fighting, had cut Sylvie behind the ear, and seemed to be hitting on all cylinders. And that is what you want, in a way. You want fighters being able to express who they are. As the wave patterns had come to meet it didn't seem that Sylvie's wave was interfering much with Solinas's. Yes, in clinch Sylvie showed promise. And Sylvie secret (because people don't pay much attention to it) teep game may have put some snags into the overall freedom of Solinas, but she had plenty to overcome it, it appeared. But this is where the fight gets interesting. In wave patterns there is not only the shape of the wave (where the peaks and valleys fall, like notes in music), there is also amplitude and tempo (frequency). And the Muay Khao fighting style relies on amplitude (& tempo)...a gentle and yet relentless increase in amplitude & tempo started in rounds 3, and the 4. Its the same wave, but with rising amplitude & tempo. Now, this is dangerous under international WBC rules, because Thai style narrative scoring puts scoring emphasis on rounds 3 and 4, and emphasis on who is increasing in effectiveness as the fight goes on. In a more natural Thai setting the fight would have been more or less tied, or slightly in Solina's favor going into round 3. Yes there was a cut, but it was behind the ear and early in the fight. It would be a score that would fade. Under international WBC rules Sylvie could very well be one round away from losing, a kind of sudden death. These are very different states in a fight. What is interesting is that the traditional Muay Khao fighting style which focuses its increase on the scoring rounds 3, 4 and then 5 is best prepared for this position in a fight. That's what its for. Everything you've done up to this point is to prepare the ground for the upped intensity, the rising amplitude of your wave pattern. And its just remarkable to see it unfold in this fight, against a high quality fighter fighting under a different aesthetic. You see the purpose of Muay Khao, what its meant to do and how it does it. And it is really something that this kind of fight can happen in International Muay Thai contexts. We are getting narrative Muay Thai. In terms of the fight itself, at that point, you just see Sylvie become more and more effective, especially in the clinch...(but also in stalking). She's absorbed much of the danger of the trips, having learned the first two rounds, and as fatigue and instincts take over she's more and more able to scramble to dominant positions. And though Solinas admirably commits to the teep as almost a pure signature of femeu muay, with incredible and skilled insistence, the teep itself became less and less effective, as Sylvie teeped through it, interfered, disrupted and muddied it (clashing wave patterns again). The teep is an interesting classic weapon. In some regard it doesn't even actually score, or score much, but the patterns you make with it, and the increasing ways it can disrupt, can make it one of the great weapons of Muay Thai (maybe how the jab in boxing should be regarded). The story of the teep in this fight, both Solinas's and Sylvie's is a very interesting one, and helps explain the dynamics of Sylvie's stalking in the latter rounds. Basically the defensive teep is the perfect counter weapon to the dern fighter, and Solinas pulled out the best weapon...but the teep has to show an increase of effectiveness. And the stalking teep is a, less flashy, secret disruptor. The battle of the teep is actually a hidden inner battle within this fight, aside from the more obvious clinch dominance Sylvie was able to attain. When I came home I honestly watched the last 3 rounds over and over...perhaps 25 times. I wasn't looking for good or bad techniques, mistakes or advantages. The more I watched them they just read like music to me. They were these beautiful, rising tempos and amplitudes created by BOTH fighters. Both fighters made this fight. And the way the WBC promotion presented the fight also made this fight. There is music in those 3 rounds, Muay Khao music, but really the music of Golden Age Muay Thai, the Muay Thai of clashing styles and skill sets, the music of narrative scoring arcs, orchestra of two fighters climbing up over peaks and valleys of increasing amplitude. Yes, Sylvie came out on top. Yes the fight was precipitous to start the 3rd. But Muay Thai is about these kinds of soul to soul evolutions within the fight, where the art of each fighter gets to show itself. That's what fighting is about. That's what makes it more than just entertainment.