Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Nungubon's is always a trusted destination. He's wonderful. You can see how he is, some of his Muay Thai, and what the gym is like in the Muay Thai Library session: https://www.patreon.com/posts/106709775?pr=true

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.

above, the cut back stem of our Adenium obesum "Desert Rose" and the bloom that came from the cutting, photo taken this morning Karuhat's Flower September 24th, 2024 - In the development of skills in Muay Thai everyone is trying to "add" things. New techniques, new training, new moves, new tricks. This is a desert Rose we bought when traveling with Karuhat in Isaan. We saw the unusual plant at a rest stop, it reminded me of the bulbous, massive trees in The Little Prince, so we bought one. He told us that in Thai it's called "The Show Stopper", or some rough equivalent to that, because its flowers were so stunning people walking by just have to stop and look. If you know Karuhat's Muay Thai, perhaps the most beautiful that's ever been, it seemed very fitting that we bought this plant with him. We're not gardeners, we keep a yard somewhat inexpertly. And we read up on the plant, how it has growing seasons, its general needs. But no matter what it did the flowers wouldn't come. Little proto-buds would show, and then die and drop off, even when the branches were verdant. He knows how to care for them, and would visit us and help steer us the right way. Here is an early visit when the plant was quite bare. It wouldn't flower for a year. He visited again and told us "You have to cut it back", and then told us about something you paint onto the cutting end to seal it, to force the lift energies into a bloom. Before Sylvie left to travel a week ago she cut it back here. A week later this bloom at photo top. This is the thing about Thailand's Muay Thai. It seems like when you come here its just this incredibly verdant fight culture. There are techniques and beautiful fighters, and gyms and krus everywhere. It feels like all this is quite natural, like it just spontaneously grew here, and as a fighter a lot of the times it feels like you are just walking around and picking wonderful fruits that you put in your fighter basket. You want this elbow here, and this guard over here. And this "combo" (there really aren't combos in Thailand's Muay Thai, but we turn it into combos so they can be exported). And, if you are Instagram and watching demos, you are collecting these techniques, some of them quite far removed from their source. The Secret of Restraint, of Cutting Away This is the secret about Thailand's Muay Thai. Once you have the plant well soiled, watered and fertilized, all those "flowers" that are loved come from pruning, from "cutting back". You cut back on the branch to produce the bloom. It's not an additive process. And this is the part of the art that simply isn't known much at all throughout the rest of the world...how to garden the muay of a fighter. Everyone is copying flowers, picking them off branches, mixing them with aggression, trying to change the rules of the sport to force more and more flowers (knockouts, etc)...but the actual gardening of the art is dying. Which branches need to be cut back and when? This is one of the concerns with the new commercialized much more aggressive versions of Entertainment Muay Thai. Some of most important cutting backs and prunings of Muay Thai occur at the emotional level, almost a spiritual level. It grows at the root of many of our impulses toward violence. Feelings of anger, even rage, are intentionally prune back. They are not the emotions of action (like they are often in the West). The pruning back of these feelings and their display is one of the most important aspects of Thailand's Muay Thai, and is probably quite close to the reason why it produces such beautiful blooms, blooms that are the envy of the world. It's because, even though being one of the most violent combat sports (at times), it is traditionally powerfully cut back at the emotional level. The Technical and Psychological An example of the unpruned emotion can be seen in Namkabuan's fights vs Matee. There is this highlight below where he somewhat spectacularly falls out of the ring and just jumps back in attacking, not even waiting for the ref to reset the fight. There is another when he unleashes wild elbows that make highlight reels, falling off balance but it all feeling like an onslaught. As mentioned below, for Namkabuan the whole thing felt very unpruned and wasn't something to be praised for. These are events that in Entertainment versions would be cheered on by shouting announcers and bounced all over IG streams...these moments of loss of control are almost the purpose of the new versions of Muay Thai, quietly undermining the life force art that gives Muay Thai its technical brilliance and even more so the sublime fights of the past. Namkabuan is now past, Rest in Power glorious legend. It is the control, but even more so, the pruning back of the plant that is the soul, if you want the bloom. When I see foreign fighters, who clearly train very, very hard in their techniques, unleashing high volume strikes, one after the other after the other after the other, often in memorized combinations they've learned on the pads and on the bag, their is a very real sense that this is a plant that is incredibly overgrown. There are leaves and leaves, but no blooms. They were like our plant, before Karuhat told us that it needs to be cut back. Unfortunately though, this is an art, and an aesthetic that isn't easily passed onto others, especially to non-Thais. That's because it comes from the Form of Life that is Thailand's Muay Thai, grown in its small kaimuay across the whole country, in its festivals and local stadia. In its urban gyms, its traditional stadia, within the gambers and their aesthetics. It's a cultural expression, but it is founded upon a sense of pruning back. Of gardening. When I saw this flower today I took a picture of it and sent it to Sylvie who as I mentioned is in Italy. I was just astounded at how fast and strong the bloom had come after we had been waiting for it for a year or more, simply by cutting it back (and knowing to paint the cutting over with a special mixture). The parallels to Muay Thai seemed so plentiful, for fighters very often try to develop certain techniques or qualities, often for years, but that "bloom" never comes, or only comes palely. I wanted to know how she saw process of pruning in Muay Thai, as she is a fighter who has engaged in the sport in Thailand like no other, just massive amounts of fights, the most prolific Western Muay Thai fighter in history, an unparalleled study with legends, and endless hours in the training ring. Here is he secret for blooms that are slow to come. Prune back. This is some of our conversation: vocabulary: Jangwah (จังหวะ) = rhythm, timing, Tammachat (ธรรมชาติ) = natural, indicated by being smooth & at ease, Ning (นิ่ง) = being at ease & unaffected, Mua (มัว) = obscure, clouded, confused Perspectives on Growth and Pruning There at least two very distinct but related levels to thinking about this. As a fighter, struggling to improve in the art, best is not to think primarily of additive processes. The pruning back of oneself, both at the level of techniques, tactics and strategy, but also at the emotional level very well may be the path to much strained for growth. To cut back isn't to "do less", its actually cutting off a living branch, sealing it off, so that its vital force will force itself out into bloom, further down, closer to the main stem. Technically, the main stems are the foundational principles and movements of the sport...which is why some of the most spectacular Muay Thai fighters of Thailand actually are fighting from place of basics. The second level of thinking about this is about the sport itself. We are told "Muay Thai has to grow!" or, "It's great that the sport is growing!" in its various new hybrid incarnations, many of them adopting Western or Internalized emotional pictures of fighting. Additive growth does not necessarily produce the flowers. And the tourism of Muay Thai is founded on the fact that it produces so many show stopping blooms, unparalleled skills and a form of fighting that exists nowhere else in the world. Right now, in this generation, we still have men who know how to prune in the art. They were raised in the kaimuay of traditional Muay Thai, they fought in its rings, and they understand the process of cutting back, the aesthetics of control. But this generation of knowledge is vulnerable. They are at an age already when maybe 10 more years and they'll no longer be shaping fighters. The processes of Muay Thai's creation lies withing their knowledge of its creation. It isn't in the "techniques". It isn't bio-mechanical. It's a spirit of understanding the flower of violence, and what it means for the human being...distilled into a craft, a craft of pruned-back fighting. btw, as a note, this is Arjan Surat who we mention in our texts. He is perhaps among the oldest of this last gen, holding pads every day in his 70s.

This is an important historical perspective on the nature of gambling in Siam (Thailand) and Southeast Asia, which helps explain the way in which gambling on Muay Thai also includes betting on, predicting other minds (other gamblers). And its relationship to social status, and concepts of unseen (even magical) influence.

"What if "market forces" has always been a democracy of forces, in dialectic with State / Chiefdom symbolism (processes of adjudication, idealized wealth accumulation, rites of expiation), with the proviso that markets also have been regularly manipulated." In Thailand's Muay Thai this makes for a very robust framework, as in the history of Siam there are very strong (symbolic) traditional hierarchies (which themselves may be agonistic, see: Toward a Theory of the Spirituality of Thailand's Muay Thai), but there are also arguably free-floating movements of peoples, and local market economies (even liquidities like Deleuze & Guattari theories of War Machine). Festival, gambled fighting may present the combination of hierarchical symbolism and market creation of an art, embodying that dialectic. At the very least the art of fighting should read as an amalgam expression of market (crowd) and symbolic adjudication. "

Related notes on Eugene Holland's Nomad Markets resource: "Is not a provincial festival Muay Thai betting market expressive of the "wisdom of crowds", a collective price movement based on valuations (cultural aesthetics, knowledges), as described by Eugene Holland in his Nomad Market conception? The local gambled market is not reduced to price. It's (if anything) reduced to status. The gambled market is in the service of a communally developed aesthetic, played against the Reality Principle of bodies in conflict. The invisibles made visible." source and... from Nomad Citizenship (2011)

Sounds great! We recently spent some time filming in Ubon (not Udon) at a legit kaimuay: #149 Provincial Kaimuay Knowledge | Santi Ubon Muay Thai (85 min) it would just be great to have insight into your arc of personal experiences at another kaimuay.

Long has been my thesis that Thailand's Muay Thai developed principally through its vast array of provincial fight networks and the communal wisdom of those gambling markets, which makes of it not so much a sport as a cultural expression of the Thai people, self-organized through the centuries (with some evidence going back to as early as the 17th c), and less a codified, rule-governed artifact of centralized power. Below are some thoughts on the "wisdom of markets" dynamic which presents a much more complex picture of fighting aesthetics and the adjudication of fights. In Thailand's Muay Thai bets are taken throughout the fight, and the shifting of odds operates as a kind of scorecard reflecting the collective opinion of its audience (much of which is gambling). This telling explores the aspect of spontaneous order creation argued to be possessed by markets, understanding ring-side gambling as exactly that kind of spontaneous creation and social steering, summarized most broadly: Gambling And The Development of Thailand's Muay Thai Thailand's provincial Muay Thai may, in brief, display a basic logic of the self-organizing market creation of aesthetic judgements, as communal gambling shaped the form of Thailand's Muay Thai as an art and as a sport. One of the most interesting theoretical potentials of Thailand's provincial ring fighting is that fights by definition are events of adjudication. And, that they possess not one, but (at least) two different processes of adjudication. There is the formal one (conducted by officials) and the implied adjudication of a localized market, the odds (price) which shift throughout the fight, which may or may not agree with the formal judgement. What is compelling - and there are a few things - is that there is an element of the adjudicating nature of markets here, a fundamental aspect of Capitalist ideology (but not reducible to Capitalism itself, for markets have functioned and co-organized culture for a long portion of human history). Sidenote: My thesis is that Thailand's Muay Thai developed out of Southeast Asian rites of sacrifice, as understood thru the theories of Rene Girard (an argument which may be extended into other forms of ring fighting), tentatively outlined here (if you want to go through a theoretical side path, click this here, or just skip below): The Judgement of Markets The adjudicating nature of ring sport, and its tractioned, symbolic meaning, may stem from the notion of the sacrificial act, a judgement passed on an innocent (sometimes "perfect") animal. What distinguishes Thailand's Muay Thai (& perhaps other forms of Southeast Asian ring sport combat) is the degree to which it developed along side, co-evolving with a local market of forces (a gambling audience), whose price shifts over time not only reflected communal understanding of the art/sport (a collective wisdom), they also exerted judgement pressures upon the formal judgements of the public event, creating a dialectic of judgements, and forming the custom of the aesthetics of the art/sport. If communal gambling can be seen as collective market judgement, the locus of the wisdom of the sport falls in part within a "democracy" that self-organized the aesthetics of the art, simply through the shifting anticipation of wins or losses, according to how fighters were performing. The prescriptive force of the price of prescience within a group, over time, quantitatively exchanged. *note, Westerners have a hard time thinking about the sport of Muay Thai because it is not governed by explicit "rules" to be found in a rulebook. The expectation is that the sport have officials who basically execute a written law through judgements. The rule & custom of Thailand's Muay Thai - and therefore its somewhat unique historical creation - is far more complex, and therefore gives insight into the possible productive, generative relationships between local market dynamics, communal wisdom & formal adjudication. This complexity of judgements, the communal nature of its co-determination, is what makes it - in essence - a cultural product, woven of the values & the aesthetics of the Thai people (however regionally distinct), in 100,000s of adjudicated, public events. It is "Thai". To appreciate the shaping of market dynamics in village Muay Thai, the communal aesthetic judgements (the shifting price throughout the fight) are in communication with the performance throughout, thru the corners but also as if a Greek Chorus, in atmospheric commentary. Fighters are not just fighting to a rule set or even an aesthetic picture of the art, they are fighting to the live aesthetic judgements of the crowd...as they (their team) too are gamblers. This is a living feedback loop of pricing, which composes the fight. The agonistic market dynamics of the crowd are the quantitative "scoreboard" of who is winning the fight at any particular time. The *functional* score is not hidden on the scorecards of judges...and the fighters are fighting TO the shifting-price market dynamic scorecard. This is one reason why narrative structure is so integral in traditional Muay Thai, and develops even higher levels of skill. In a Western fight the fighter is just trying to control his opponent and influence the judgement of judges, the Thai fighter is seeking to be ABOVE even the fight itself, and control the tide of odds, the shifting market of prices, because the fighter is a gambler (his team). This means its not about winning every round, but telling a story which may involve purposive the fluctuation of price. When we traveled provincially with Phetjeejaa when she was a girl, she was expert at this. She sandbagged early rounds because her reputation was so large. She'd also take weight disadvantages, so some of the market would bet against her. She was "above" the fight, shaping it. This tidal control is part of what makes the fight so compelling to audience...not sure of how to read the performances early in the fight, which clues were being put out there. The fighter ideally controls the opponent, the judges, but mostly the audience. It's a very complex art, learned from a young age. It isn't just beating another fighter who is in front of you, as difficult as that might be. Further complexifying the fight is that audience members (gamblers) are themselves in an agonism of social hierarchies, each is trying to display their prescience (knowledge) over others, indicating prowess, some actually also directing the fighters themselves. The fighters are thus mirroring the social capital battles that are occurring in the audience, (quantifiably) expressed in the shifting of price. Gamblers are displaying & proving their prowess thru bets...but also (problematically) may prove their prowess through illicit manipulation (of fighters or refs). The shifting price is not only reflecting the relative powers of the fighters, but it also reflects beliefs in the ability of gamblers themselves to put a thumb on the scale in the decision. This could be thru anything between having deep knowledge (that is an imparting connection to the fighter, from the corner), to injecting financial incentive to the fighter mid-fight, to having social status that influences a close decision, all the way to suspected subterfuge (real or imagined). There is a degree of detective work in gambling itself, which also the fighters performances reflects as prices change. It is not simply a local free market that is shaping the aesthetics of performance, but also a market full of suspicion & postured powers, everyone reading the direction of the wind. In this way the official are the keepers of the accumulation of 1,000s of past local market adjudications, the aesthetic...and ideally act as a corrective to specific market manipulation (within the collective creation of the sport/art). But, they are also within the social fabric themselves, hold their own place within the social capital, so individual fight adjudications can be highly contested. Is the local market (price) being distorted by undue influence (deviating from the aesthetic), or are officials being manipulated or socially coaxed? But between these two aspects of adjudication, shuttling like on a loom, is the weaving of the aesthetics of the sport and art, conditioned specifically by market forces of shifting price. It is only when individual influence grows too large (distorts the market, or official adjudication) that the creative process of the aesthetic begins to collapse. Importantly, it is not all a question of aesthetics, throughout the 100,000s of 100,000s of fights (if we count the centuries) there is a Reality Principle of bodies applying force on other bodies, in the framework of prices. These are real full contact fights, with real forces and limitations at work. In this sense Muay Thai over the eras is a composite of THREE adjudications, that of the crowd (the wisdom of markets), that of officials (who keep and reflect the history of market adjudications) and that of the bodies of fighters. While much has been made of the difficulties of the influence of gambling on fight decisions in Bangkok, especially as crowds and commercial fortunes have shrunk, this is likely more the case of particular factions becoming too strong in the matrix of judgements that makes up Thailand's Muay Thai. It is likely less that the gamblers (the markets that adjudicate) broadly have grown too strong - for it is my argument that Muay Thai has been born from self-organizing market decision-making, fashioning a true product of a culture over centuries - but more that in smaller crowds individuals have gained too much power, too much of a thumb on the scales, uncorrected by other factors which have historically help steer the sport and art. But the complexity of the sport and of its fighting remains of the same fabric that generated it, and that still generates it in the provinces and stadia. It's very unlike Western sport. One can't just fabricate new rules, specify enforcement, and employ fighters like actors or laborers in a commercial product and still have Thailand's Muay Thai...a Muay Thai that is full of subtleties and very high skill levels, the skills to control tides. The skills of Muay Thai come from its social fabric, the woven way that a knowledgeable and invested audience generates the Muay itself, and the dialogue fighters have with that audience through the symbolic language of their bodies, amid the real limits of physical force.

I think, unconsciously, Sylvie tapped into this spirit of universal agonism that is at the heart of Thailand's cultural Muay Thai, very early on. From almost the start she took on the huge goal of fighting 50 times, a number that seemed out of reach for someone like her just beginning. She instinctively threw off the symbolism of achievement or greatness, various Belts that other fighters were measured by. Instead it was the actual process - the repeated process - of fighting itself which made Muay Thai almost spiritual. Each time you stepped into the ring you were made different. You changed. You transformed...as you pursued your own dignity, and acknowledged the dignity of your opponent. Each time. So the quest came rather quickly to just throw off all of the external trappings and to just fight, to dive again and again into that stream of renewal and discovery, as incredibly painful and taxing as it may be. It really erases boundaries...while each time redrawing them, more subtly. And she's fought professionally more than any woman in documented history, regardless of sport, nearly 300 times now. She - instead of taking a position politically, or abstractly, she took it personally and artistically - is living the path of this assembled, contested of dignities, repeatedly changed by it.

In Sylvie's person - her remarkable lived path, following the art and Sport of Muay Thai - and the nature of Muay Thai itself, and Thailand's culture of fight agonism I do believe there are principled, philosophical solutions to be taken up, aspects of understanding tradition and progress that do not entail outright opposition, but also are not forced into a (Hegel-like) logic of opposition. This seems paramount as our social media communication systems are more and more driven by algorithms of outrage, attempting to polarize us further and further, just to feed off the heat of it all (a fairly dangerous, purposeful trend). Key in this thinking for me is the way that Beetle Fighting culturally expresses many of the same dynamics as fighting between humans does. There is a continuum of performed agonism in Thai culture that reaches below the human, and puts everyone within a single process. It in customary sense is perhaps seen in gradations: beetle > chicken > children > women > men, these hierarchies built into the sense-making of the culture as well, but the example of beetle fighting, the "lowest" example allows us to view what is happening on all levels of the strata, across them. You can read this two part article Sylvie and I did on Beetle fighting some years ago: Importantly, even holding to traditional categories of insect, animal, child, woman, man, none of these categories are in opposition to each other. In fact each are seen as participant in the same processes, the same struggle for dignity, which is mirroring, or illuminating the human struggle itself. The art of Muay Thai is about the aestheticized process of that struggle, combined with the real "Reality Principle" of actual fighting efficacy, a search for fighting prowess in the absolute sense. This efficacy ballast, this thing that grounds all of these fights, the application of force upon force, is also what unites them. A woman (or even a child, Sangamnee was 15 when he made his legendary FOTY run) if they can beat a man is partaking in and exemplifying the deeper principle, beyond those categories. If you want to look at where the Beetle Fighting example may take us socially or even politically (towards an ecology of persons), this post heads in that direction:

Just to give an idea of the spectrum of care and passion that Sylvie exhibits, including her sense of histories some interviews she's done: Here is Sylvie interviewing Angie, the first trans (presenting) fighter at Lumpinee Stadium (at a time when the gender line at Lumpinee was very hard), before her first fight ever. And here Sylvie interviewing Angie after she fought at Lumpinee: Angie would become a very close friend, and even has said that early on Sylvie as a hard-working woman in the gym was an inspiration for her to even believe she could become a fighter. Sylvie's passionate reaction haven't JUST watched Angie fight: But here is Sylvie interview the absolute legend Karuhat, who also has become a close friend, about how much Muay Thai has changed: And here interviewing Dieselnoi, a very good friend, going over the State of Muay Thai a few years ago: These are just two very brief examples, her historical work bringing to light the lives, techniques, Muay, histories of the legends of Muay Thai is unparalleled. You can see the Muay Thai Library for much of it.

An interesting aspect of Sylvie's perspective on Thailand's Muay Thai is that she's a devoted traditionalist "just fight, get in the ring", "celebrate & study legends", "learn Thai language & culture", "archive Muay Thai history" "fight in a traditional style"...but very progressive as a person. She celebrates dignity. She's a devoted feminist who is actually also a traditionalist...because both require the raising up of the dignity of others, a dignity that has been marginalized. In the case of the men of Muay Thai tradition by the march of globalization & in the case of gender by the march of judgements. She has a very unique amphibious (even seemingly contradictory) relationship to these two poles that in a time of global social media polarization is quite meaningful. It's not common to bring these two together. Everything is about splitting the spectrum...but she's actually lived its confluence. It means many who love and follow her might not agree with each other. It's a really interesting synthesis, because it wasn't achieved at the intellectual/philosophical level. She wasn't working something out abstractly. It's something that occurred by just following her passion for Muay Thai and the dignity that it symbolized, enacted, afforded as she has studied, trained and fought at historic levels. I write this as I'm continuously re-struck by her uniqueness. She's telling me this morning about a Karuhat vs Weerapol fight she may have found to be previously misdocumented, while looking through old Muay Thai magazines (very fine detail stuff) while passionately a defender of trans- and women's opportunities and rights. The dignity of both. Some of this is that Thailand's Muay Thai is shot through with VERY Patriarchal values, composed of hierarchies that are both entrenched but also constantly contested...yet also Thai fight culture possesses a unitarian view of struggle itself, a spirit of agonism that reads dignity in fights of every kind. Even down to the insect level, between beetles, there are contests of dignity...which a struggle which founds dignity itself. So, as long as the struggle and battle is "fair", there is dignity to be discovered & revealed. No matter where you find yourself in the imposed hierarchy. Yes, there are continuous (traditional-minded) reterritorializations which code over those battles, and the struggle over "fair" is its own agonism, part of the Muay, but beneath it all is an almost Spinozist sense of personal dignity being cultivated & exemplified simply as force vs force. Anything and anyone can fight. This is the (hidden) Joy of Thailand's fight culture, a Buddhistic churn of organized & aestheticized agonism, but really of soul against soul. It's in this way Sylvie can be a devout traditionalist (of a kind), but also a feminist progressive...on the issue of dignities. I suspect this is the "something" that draws people, seemingly very different people, people of countervailing values, to Thailand and its extraordinary Muay Thai. This is the heart of what makes Thailand's Muay Thai like no other fighting art & sport. This is really the softest of Muay Thai's power, and its greatest Reality.

Well, this is really interesting. We sent this little stub article to Dieselnoi and he said the whole thing is just made up (and that writers back then would make up a lot of things). He'd never seen this, and its very, very far from the truth. He mentioned that 2 years after retirement he went to help out Wanpadej in clinch (one of the fighters mentioned in the article) and Wanpadej definitely could not stand up to him at the time. And none of the other fighters mentioned as well. As to the 108 lb Hapalang fighter that he appears to praise here, he had a fight coming up in this magazine, so maybe this was a way of hyping him? In any case, even turning to the articles of the day there might be an entire additional layer of suspicion or interpretation necessary. Magazines themselves creating their own narratives.

This is one of my favorite fights of the Silver Age, Wichannoi vs Narongnoi, just for a little more late 1970s skills context among these fighters:

Narongnoi also fought Benny Urquidez in March of 1977 (Los Angeles, California), a fight that ended in a riot. You can see that fight here: Just a little more history context, here is a 1977 card from Sylvie's archiving: "In 1977 Dieselnoi, still 15 yrs old, fought Paruhat at 118 lbs. On the same card the Wichannoi fought Narongnoi at 135 lbs. 10 ms later Dieselnoi faced the legend Wichannoi & got his first loss, jumping from 118 to whatever weight. "