Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

I do appreciate the How To Save Muay Thai Through Marketing ideas, there are a lot of good points to be thought about. Just to confess, because I'm not connected to the realm of an Elon Musk or even a Chartri and unlikely to be involved in any kind of coordinated marketing initiative I am more interested in the idea that perhaps there is a clash of cultures here, that involves us all, and that some of the threatened aspects of Thailand's Muay Thai may be expressive of some very old differences. The Art of the Retreating Fighter I suspect not only unlocks entirely different levels of fight skill, but also speaks to a different way of fighting, fighting from a different place. The reason why I'm interested in this is that it involves a sense of personal attachment, the ways in which we each, directly, connect up to what we are watching. It's how we view and value things. If we are thinking to ourselves that even today's stadium Muay Thai - an admittedly diluted version of what Muay Thai has been - is still expressing some of these perhaps profound differences in culture and meaningful skill, the way that we watch these fights changes. We are possibly watching the slow extinction of vital differences, and rooting for their survival. And there is also a kind of ethical dimension to it all, if we appeal to analogies of biodiversity. I've made the argument before that the great fighters of Thailand are something like Old Growth forest. They are produced in an ecosystem whose complexity runs out in every direction. Yes, we can chop down Old Growth trees and use them in all sorts of ways. It's marvelous wood. It's grown in ecosystems that exist nowhere else in the world. But...if we just start growing a different sort of tree, we don't tend the Old Growth forest and replant those slow growth trees and nurture the forest, if the market harvests the hardwood and does not regrow it (ONE right now is harvesting the evolved skillsets and reputations of fighters ONE could not produce itself, for instance, to soup up the quality of its product), then we are wading into thoughts and concerns over the preservation of culture, culture through the art of fighting. Is Thailand's Muay Thai slowly being monocropped a bit? Is the brother in the ring? These questions kind of condition our own attachment to the art and sport. Is there something of a cultural struggle going on here? Something that has gone on for 200 years? To me that's a fascinating question. To return to analogies of botany: Is aggro-fighting something of an invasive species? Does backwards, timing-oriented counter-fighting represent a line in the sand?

What are things you are already thinking about as substantial changes? As this comes from your experience it would be interesting to hear what you are already envisioning.

I don't think there is any chance at all that Thailand's Muay Thai will ever appeal to the majority, even if it radically changed into kickboxing...which itself is a very minor sport. I think its survivability will always depend on passionate enthusiasts. So the question is: how do we get more enthusiasts with greater passion. If it fundamentally changes what it is, its unique qualities, skill sets and history, the chance of having passionate enthusiasts over time will I suspect will drop. "Just like kickboxing, but with elbows!" isn't going to get Muay Thai very far in this world.

I do see that there is a broad-base smash-em fight audience, but one of the most entrenched and celebrated combat sports is western boxing, and western boxing has had many stars of the sport appreciated for their defense, their style, their superiority over the space (and not just sheer aggression). In fact, western boxing can mirror the same Muay Femeu preference over Muay Khao (forward fighting). Ali, both Sugar Rays, Mayweather, Lomachenko, even Roy Jone Jr, these are not smashers. At the very least western boxing provides a model for this kind of appreciation, it's not like this is some alien planet stuff. Also, BJJ has been pretty widely embraced by the UFC crowd, one of the least "immediately comprehensible" arts there is. Instead, everyone got into understanding it, training in it, learning the chess of it. Sure people complained about lay-and-pray, but the context of Western fight entertainment isn't ALL Rollerball. There are past and present histories of comprehension of many of the things that make the Muay Thai of Thailand special.

The problem is, much more money is (potentially) made through gambling, than through fighter pay. Not only is there a social obligation to those who gamble on you, which is more important than a fight purse, the money involved is also greater. And, your gym itself is likely gambling. You fight for your gym, not for individual gain. If a fighter is dancing off it's because their gym has signaled for them to do so. It isn't an individual decision. For instance we were told that a recent kid fight resulted in 100,000 baht tip out for the win.

Yes, there are arguments for the foward-ization of Thailand's Muay Thai that involve urging that it takes its place in the broader spectrum of what the world wants, commercially. As an art and sport it benefits being loved and appreciated internationally, and to a great degree that does involve becoming readable by those who do not necessarily understand it. Recent unifying responses to Phuket's tourism difficulties during COVID understandably involve the call to make fights much more enjoyable to people who do not know anything about Muay Thai. And this readability is no doubt an essential part of the wider trend to present Muay Thai much more in the vein of International Kickboxing, whether that be IFMA's internationalization of the sport in hope for Olympic inclusion (which would be a huge development it Muay Thai's history) or ONE Championship's powerful marketing of Thai superstars under largely kickboxing aesthetics. The readability of the sport and art indeed is essential to its survive-ability, one would have to embrace. And this necessarily involves to some degree turning it into the familiar, ie, the less sophisticated. This is perhaps the world we live in, the facts on the ground. But, there is also a much longer view in terms of Muay Thai economics which involves cultural heritage. People come to Thailand because the training and the fighting is like nowhere else in the world. That difference, the ability of others to come to Thailand and experience THAT difference, is a very deep reservoir of cultural importance. It's what brings people from all over the world here. Sylvie writes in "The Art and Psychology of the 5th Round in Thailand" that it took her over 100 fights in the country to even understand how to fight a 5th round properly. This is a historic number of fights in Thailand for a westerner, an almost unheard of 100 fights in the country perhaps achieved by only one other westerner. 100 times, and she was just coming to understand it in all its complexities and skill sets. This sophistication is quite far from a sport that maximizes entertainment value to a tourist who has bought a local stadium ticket because they had heard that Thailand has something called "Muay Thai" and it would be fun to see it. (There is another commercial argument that Muay Thai's differences could present a tourism draw if made readable.) Western fighters have passionately traveled to train and live in Thailand to encounter the very foreignness of Thailand's Muay Thai, but increasingly actually encounter promotions of fighting very much like those they left back home, as Thais are asked to fight in an un-Thai way, shelving skill sets they have developed under a richer grammar and tradition of fighting. If we are talking about the survive-ability of Muay Thai as an economic entity the urge for readability must also be balanced by the deep value of its otherness. It's un-readability: That you encounter things in Thailand that you cannot encounter anywhere else in the world; that you come in contact with ways of doing things, learning things, and fighting, that exist nowhere else; that the passionate commitment of Westerners who have fallen in love with the uniqueness of Thailand's fighting history carries with it also a powerful incentive towards economic value, regarding Thailand as special. It cannot just be that "eyeballs" in a media entertainment space rife with competition constitute the measure of viability and value. Might it be that in five years time when a Westerner comes to train and fight in Thailand for 6 months or a year they only can find 3 round fights which deny retreat and counter tactics, and the full stand up grappling art of clinch? Is not that Westerner coming to Thailand seeing in the mirror him or herself? Is not their brother in the ring?

Woven Into The History - from 1788, the first account of a westerner fighting a Siamese (Thai) above, the earliest recorded fight between a Westerner and a Thai (Siamese) - from Peter Vail's work Over the last few years I've posted the above account sporadically, musing about just how far back the backwards, counter-fighting ethic of Thailand's Muay Thai may go. It's a remarkable keyhole into a time of Muay Thai (then the Boran of Siam) that has very little historical record, so it it tempting to savor every element, every detail, as if a perfectly preserved skeleton of an extinct animal has been found. We just don't know what fighting styles were like back then. This is an event that takes place in 1788, more than 230 years ago. French brothers visit the court and are involved in the very first recorded sport combat fight between farang (farang originally referred to the French) and Thai (Siamese). Engagements - and even influences - with foreign fighters must have been quite regular throughout the previous centuries, going back to when the Kingdom Ayutthaya was a powerful "Venice of the East" trade center in South East Asia (1350 to 1767), filled with mercenary forces rumored to reach even 1,000,000 men, and even before that when mercantile Siam interacted with the 600 year Srivijaya "thalassocratic empire" which spread marital knowledge throughout the trading South reaching all the way back to the 7th century see this thread here: Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian fighting styles surely wove themselves into the development of Thailand's combat treasure chest. The account at top though is our fallen dinosaur bit of directly attested report. What may be so interesting about this 1788 account is that it isn't so much an account of a fight as it seems to be of a fundamental misunderstanding and confusion between cultures. It's a likely confusion about what proven masculinity and manhood is. And beneath that, it's a confusion over what retreat and dis-engagement signifies between combatants. The reason the French brother jumps into the ring to stop the retreat of the (likely smaller bodied) Siamese fighter is the feeling that the fight just wasn't fair, or being conducted under the unwritten rules of just what "fighting" is. Looking through our telescope back in time it's hard for me to not feel that today's promotional demand "Just stand and bang!" is not very far from what brought the fighter's brother into the ring. Perhaps he felt the Siamese fighter was somehow clowning his brother, retreating and counter-striking him, elusively evading what perhaps sound like grappling attempts by a large man (intent to break the collarbone in a single smashing blow suggests a size difference). All hell breaks loose as the French brothers seek to rectify their honor and have a proper fight, and the Siamese guards jump in and give a beat down at the loss of man-on-man decorum. But, it's just fascinating that many of the same forces at work today, attempting to bend Thailand's Muay Thai into a much more aggressive, much more clashing "stand and bang" combat style (for commercial and new generation popularity reasons), were right there when that brother jumped into the ring. When MAX Muay Thai brought the new "entertainment Muay Thai" to Thailand they wrote into the actual fighter instructions in Thai "if you go backwards you will lose" (by my recollection), simply because retreat when you have the lead has been endemic to the grammar of Thailand's Muay Thai for decades now --- and as this historical account temptingly suggests --- perhaps has roots that go back for centuries. The "if you go backwards you will lose" is programmatically the brother jumping into the ring to save the honor of his brother. The MAX Muay Thai entertainment program, which has been copied in new forms in other promotions, was admittedly designed to level the playing field vs Westerners and produce wins by Westerners. It is the brother in the ring, standing behind the retreating fighter. I've seen Thai fighters that we know well with a deft style of retreat and counter struggle both mentally and physically under the new form of entertainment fighting. It's startling to see the same basic misunderstanding of what a fight is, between two cultures, play out 230 years apart. The Counter In Retreat We are in a different combat sport world now than in 1788. Instead of Westerners coming to the South East Asian court attempting to establish trade relations and test out fighting skills, the Western (and really Internationalist/globalist) view of fighting has grown into a vast commercial enterprise, and a dominant cultural art form. MMA - and small in its shadow, Kickboxing - has established "what a fight is" largely under the come-forward model. Thailand's traditional counter-fighting, retreating excellence falls outside of that model. When talking to Arjan Surat of the Thai National Team about the new 3 round entertainment fighting the Old School legendary trainer complained. "There is no timing". It is what Thais call muaymua, confused or clouded fighting. Little is distinct other than the clash. I've written about how the Thai narratively scored shape of the fight involves actually a different Sense of Time, agrarian Time, but what Arjan Surat is of course talking about the much more universally lauded timing of strikes, and the ability to play with and manipulate the fight space. In Thailand when the fighter is retreating, often with the lead, he/she is stretching out the time windows, he/she is playing with the space. Delay is being created and being woven into the tempo of the fight. Delay is the silence between notes (to quote Lisa Simpson). This is part of a much more nuanced and rich awareness of fighting, almost a musicality of striking tempos. Because Thailand's Muay Thai traditionally, as a Buddhistically informed art, is about dominance over the fight space and much less about sheer displays of aggression, the quality of fight awareness, the sophistication of strikes rises amid forced lulls and displacement through defensive tactics drawing time out, so there is room for them to unfold. Retreating and countering makes up a constitutive element in the very grammar of Thailand's Muay Thai. If you take retreat and countering out, as a form of dominance, you might as well also remove adjectives and adverbs from the language of English. It is the texture and quality of the fighting itself, what it is capable of expressing, at least historically so. Go no further than imagining how the much acclaimed GOAT Samart Payakaroon would struggle and show less of himself if he wasn't able to retreat, by rule. If you want a real sense of the sophistication of this look at my study of his defeat of the forward fighting Namphon, a dominance composed almost entirely of knee-shields. This isn't so much a piece against the new entertainment forms of Muay Thai which bend it toward forward fighting arts. These pressures and changes may very well be necessary to the survival of Muay Thai in the scheme of commercial fighting business in a global market. It's instead to say that as we change elements of Thailand's Muay Thai in this particular direction we are purpose tugging on a rope of struggle that perhaps goes back over 200 years, fundamentally how The West and Thailand perceive what fighting is. The frustration of Westerners in the ring vs retreating Thais has a record that goes that far back. As we change the very form of fighting in contests between Westerners (and others) and Thais, as we put the proverbial brother in the ring and prevent retreat, we should at least be aware that we are touching upon essential elements of what fighting is to Thailand. This isn't to say that Thai fighters only retreat. In fact they have had some of the greatest stalking pressure fighters in the world. (More on this: Why You Can't Take the Boring Out of Muay Thai). The reason why Thai fighters are so very good at stalking and pressuring is because the retreating, countering fighters they have honed their skills against actually have a scorecard advantage. Retreating and countering, clinch (the "boring" parts) make up the vocabulary of its excellence. It's an arms race. In some ways Thai aggression is second to none, but it grows in a context. And yes, past generations of the sport have been more aggressive through rounds, to be sure, and this is something the sport indeed needs to rectify, but it is to at least say, in a broad way, that there is a cultural tug-of-war going on here that goes down into the roots of what Thai fighting is, and has been for perhaps centuries. And if we collapse that timing, we smash those interaction windows of engagement, and place that brother in the ring, we might be unraveling some of the most significant differences that Thailand's Muay Thai presents to the world, as an art of value.

I'm not sure how those cheering on the "throw them out" rule don't see that the rule actually can create even LESS engagement. Maybe there is a missing piece of information, but if I'm a fighter going into the 5th round and down big in the odds, there is almost every incentive not to engage and purposively try to get the fight called off, especially if there is sizeable money bet on me. Everyone who bet on me, including my own gym, would keep their money. The losing fighter wins when a fight is called off. This puts the fighter with a big lead in a very difficult position as well.

You made a very powerful and inspiring presentation of Muay Thai. The combination of performance/example, the ability to present so much of what makes Muay Thai unique among fighting arts, from the ground up to an audience that does not know it, and the great broad brushes of Philosophical thought all came together in just a beautiful public expression of Muay Thai. You should be really proud of everything you pulled off. It was really cool.

Related news, Lumpinee opening up its stadium to younger/smaller fighters in an attempt foster greater awareness and skill in the young fighters of Thailand:

There are probably two things that are the hope for Thailand's traditional form of Muay Thai as many promotions bend toward "entertainment" and tourist-oriented fighting. The first is higher level provincial fighting which is usually fought under and older, more traditional aesthetic involving long clinch exchanges, old school scoring, and (usually) even matched opponents. The second is young Thai fighters, coming up. If young Thai fighters aren't invested in and systematically supported, if we lose a half generation or more of Muay Thai excellence the Muay Thai of Thailand itself is at risk. As complex as questions of child fighting are - and they are - the reason why Thailand has the best fighters in the world is because they have the best young fighters in the world. Cards like this under traditional rules are what that is made of. This fight featured two gyms that are part of that old world. Arjan Surat runs an extremely Old School gym in Bangkok and does everything the old way. It's kaimuay Muay Thai. His name in building champions is legendary and spans decades. Rambaa is just an ex-fighter who runs a small gym in Pattaya, training almost entirely kids on a very slim budget, most of them without charging. Big gyms and powers come and sweep up his fighters once they show promise. He just keeps building more great fighters. It feels special to have Arjan Surat and Rambaa's fighters face each other.

I also think that we may run into some problems if we just define Thai hypermasculinity by the appeal to violence. In the West hypermasculinity is often strongly coded by shows of violence. I imagine you've read it but Sylvie's and my article Thai Masculinity: Postioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail is really good on this, taking the start from Peter Vail's chapter. We have to say that not only is the "nak leng" (prone to violence gangster tough) Thai hypermasculinity, but also so is the "monk". Both are exaggerated masculine ideals. And that's where the Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu battle plays out. Two models of hypermasculinity. I think the difficulty comes when we try to graft that historical duality onto let's say Greek mythology and Apollo & Dionysus, or even (Western) ideals of male and female. The graphic we made from that article:

I think a really interesting place to start, and the metaphysically strongest foothold is your original appeal to Apollo as distinct, and the sense that (his/the) figure involves the movement from the inchoate (which in at least many societies is chthonic with female associations, though not categorically so). In at least the traditional aesthetics of Golden Age Muay Thai there is a powerful emphasis on distinction, readability, visibility, and even in contemporary Muay Thai you find the criticism of a fighter as muaymua which means indistinct, clouded. A very aggressive, flailing or windmilling fighter is fighting in an unreadable way. Muaymua. You find this in the importance of ruup, which you mentioned, which is ultimately taking the body as a sign, displaying posture, physical control, dignity, etc. A fighter who is off-balance, or who is bent over, or generally lacks readability has lost their ruup. This runs parallel to Buddhistic ideals of self-control. A fighter who cannot control their emotions also can't control their body-signification. This plays into your appeals to Heidegger's truth-event, art as visibility - though I personally feel that Heidegger got alethea somewhat wrong - which helps us understand that in a Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu (metaphysical) battle, both fighters are seeking to make themselves visible & readable. Distinct. I do think it is fair to say that Muay Femeu is further along the distinction spectrum, at least it does not risk lack of clarity quite as much in its style, as it often pays more attention to rhythm and timing (musical aspects of distinction and readability). And the burden falls upon the Muay Khao fighter to show distinction in his/her pressure fighting. Muay Khao legends are very insistent on this with Sylvie when they have instructed her. Do not rush. Find the rhythm, the beat. Make your strikes (which often are at close range) readable. Also, in this battle, the warfare that the Muay Khao fighter brings is to break the illusions of the Muay Femeu fighter's clarity and signified composure. You see this, for instance, in the two big fights that Samart lost (Dieselnoi and Wangchannoi). Once the spell is broken there is very little left. The Muay Khao fighter seeks to break ruup. But, I think it's a very complex thing to attempt to graft historical male and female expressions onto the inchoate>distinctness metaphysical spectrum, and arrive some beyond-history place. Yes, males (Patriarchy) have been placed at the top of most symbolic hierarchies, but Thailand itself in the 1920s-1950s adopted Western modes of gender distinction, specifically to appear more civilized, less deserving of colonization, more in step with "modernity". Siam was known to commonly not have strong visual distinctions between the genders. Westerners found this inchoate. You can see how historically contingent the application of distinction and gender may be. Also involved in Thailand is the basic tension between cosmopolitan (royal) distinction along those adopted and developed lines, and rural, provincial distinction which may have run along very different tastes and aesthetics. A male body of Bangkok princely signification may vie semiotically with the male body of Buriram signification. It's no easy thing to try and isolate some historical, yet transcendent "female" in this mixed history. In fact it seems like it is probably wrong to do so, or at least highly projective of one's own cultural history and presumptions. The "ontology" that you appeal to in traditional Muay Thai, which is to say the ontology of win and loss, itself is conditioned and constructed historically. It relies on culturally developed aesthetics. Even if we grant that these aesthetics developed to reward distinctness over incoherence, the significations of that distinctness, what counts for distinctness, is to a large degree historically contingent. Thais say standing up straight is clear ruup, in Caipoeira it's the crouch. Also complexifying the distinctness measure, even or especially a great Muay Femeu fighter fights with deception and incoherence as a tool. Obscurity isn't only a weakness, it cloaks sudden readability. In some regard both Muay Khao and Muay Femeu are aesthetically mixing incoherence and clarity for effectiveness under that culturally expressive rule set.

Okay. But you are the one who included "female" on one half of the bracket. It was your schema. You may be saying that this dichotomy cannot hold, but even at the level of description it doesn't seem to describe the cultural facts on the ground, to start with. But maybe I'm not following you. I just don't see why a starting place would be Muay Khao = female, unless one is just trying to set up a dichotomy that will then be deconstructed. Are we starting with something like: Muay Khao is rural, rural is of the land, the land is often seen as female in cultures? Or, why isn't Samart "Dionysian"? He is ornate. He is gender fluid (in some ways), He is theatrical. I guess I'm just having trouble with the starting point, which is a male vs female division. But I will admit I might not be following it clearly. I do really enjoy and even love the broad strokes of your thought. And the presentation with all the performance/example is really beautiful stuff. So good. I do love the way you have brought diverse ideas and theories together. It's very good.

[again, I see you have responded to the above while writing, I'll just post this blind.] I should say, I think that these contradictions in representation, the difficulty in just popping most Muay Femeu fighters into a "male" box, and Muay Khao fighters into a "female" box, actually comes from the attempt to move from what maybe we'd call ethnography (?) to metaphysics. The contradictions actually, don't mean that it's wrong to attempt the theorizing, but rather than that politics and ideology complexify the entire problem. You touch on this in your presentation when you suggest that provincial males might see the aristocratic boys as sissies (ie, unmanly). That entire inversion of what is manly is at tension here. But, being very broad about it...the "critique" of urban sophistication is that it is "feminine" and the critique of rural strength is that it is "animalistic" or "stupid" (not that it is feminine). Any approach would have to incorporate these poles I think.

Just to respond in pieces, even this I don't completely follow. Apollo had the epithet "The far-shooter" referring to not only his attack from distance (with the bow), but also as the god of plagues. You could not see where the arrow of his violence was striking from. It would just be on you. When attempting to separate out halve (or poles), it works much better if they are clear and distinct. Also, there is a lot of Dionysus that wasn't violent. Dionysus was merry, he was ornate. I honestly think he would. This is the regular "critique" of Muay Femeu from Muay Khao. You've heard fighters lose fights and complain that the opponent didn't even hurt them. Having been around Dieselnoi this is definitely something he would have said (joking), and in fact probably has said of other Samart victorious performances. The feeling can be that the performative bias in aesthetics, from the Muay Khao perspective, actually tips the scales TOO far. Chamuakphet (a Muay Khao fighter) who beat Samart, answered the question of how he lost to him in a later fight when Samart was bigger "I just couldn't catch him" smiling, showing with his hand how Samart moved this way and that. It was honest praise, but it also probably also meant "He just ran from me" (with all the associations that running has). I do think there is a sense that Samart can (unfairly or unmanishly?) run due to the rules, from the Muay Khao perspective. This isn't to say that he isn't lauded and glorified for his smooth beautiful Muay, even by those that lost to him. Just that this "unmanly" dimension is something that haunts all Muay Femeu fighters, as a critique within the subculture, just as all Muay Khao fighters are haunted by the accusation that they are "low IQ" or "just strength". That's a very flimsy bridge to lay all of the gendered dimension we are working with here, I would say. I mean the entire import of the analysis is "masculinity". It feels like a very fast move to go from "animality of man" to "female". I mean, one can make the argument, but if one did, you'd have to account for the very powerful ways in which the "animality of man" is actually experienced as male in the culture, and expresses masculinity. You can't just say Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator is "female" because "nature is often gendered". I mean, these are icons of masculinity in the culture. At least a mode of masculinity.

[while writing this I got a notification that you posted in answer to what I've written above, so maybe you've addressed some of these thoughts. I'll post them just the same, as the path of my thought.] To add...I do think some of the things you are saying about Apollonian clarity, or manifestation DO map onto really important visual principles of clear and distinct strikes, or ruup. For sure. This is really good stuff. But, I just can't get over the inner-contradiction of adding that final male/female dichotomy to your schema. There are just so many instances were the Muay Femeu fighter fighter has strong Dionysian overtones of the "female", at least in terms of hypermasculnity as feminine...and, so many instances where Thais experience Muay Khao fighters as quite manly. Which is to say, the way the gender is read in the culture doesn't seem to map well, or perhaps cleanly, onto a basic male vs female divide. Here are some photographic evidence. Samson Isaan in some ways is a prototypical Muay Khao fighter (which you would argue is fundamentally, dichotimously "female". He's named after the region of rural Muay Khao and after a Western tradition strong man. He basically is "He-man farmboy". But you would place him on the female side of the ledger. A lot of classic Muay Khao fighters have just this kind of image, as seen above. On the other hand many Muay Femeu fighters have the opposite image. Perhaps none personified it more than Samart. The (dangerous) pretty boy. He launched a music career after his boxing career that was keeping with his model good looks: Samart you would have as dichtotimously "male" as opposed to Samson's "female". It feels like there is a pretty big stretch here, taking us far from how masculine and feminine is read in the culture itself. I can see how one can theorize oneself in this direction, defining "male" and "female" in terms that differ from how they are culturally expressed, but it does feel like something really important - and probably layered and complex - is at stake here. This photo (above) is my the quintessential Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao dichotomy. Samart (the matador) putting his fraternal arm around Namphon (the bull) who he has bloodied. Who is the "male" and who the "female" in this photo? It feels like the categories would be forced. Instead of a gender dynamic (pretty boy vs the bloodied ruffian), this seems much more readable along the dichtomy I proposed, and I think you read, which creates a spectrum of human<<>>animal. Here is another interesting photo which places Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu side by side. Dieselnoi and Samart (with Jackie Chan in between). It seems strained to put female on the left, and male on the right.

Thanks for posting this, and all the work you put into it, and the English subs. So good, full of thought and the presentation is awesome. My very first response would be that I don't really follow why "Muay Khao" would iconically, or symbollicaly represent the female/feminine in your dichotomy (other than grouping it together with Western equations of Nature with Mother). The reason I raise this question is that in many respects Muay Khao is regarded as more "masculine" or at least manly, in the rugged/tough stereotype. It's the cowboy or rural toughman. On the other hand Muay Femeu stereotypes bend toward the feminine. As Muay Khao Dieselnoi has joked of his femeu friend Samart, "he hits like a girl" (if I recall). The femeu fighter in Thailand, when pushed to the extreme, can be seen as ornate (stylized, almost feminized) and lacking in substance, with many qualities that have been attributed to Dionysus. Not a "real man", if we are really speaking in broad terms, merely performing. Whereas many of the great Muay Khao fighters of Thailand have been some of the most masculine, he-man, hard-hitting/kneeing figures of the sport. Maybe I'm not reading your basic dichotomy clearly, but that would be my first question. It feels like you are grafting across cultures and contexts in way that may not fit Thai context?

Two things may have persisted through all these years. Sylvie just has always patchworked her training approach. At the time of the the first video she's taking the train down from Fort Montgomery where we lived in a little rented house next to a National Park, to train in Manhattan. We were just piecing training together because there was no real path to where she wanted to get as a fighter, no "Point A to point B, just do all the work, listen to all the right people and you'll get there" path. 11 years on we are in the exact same place. There is no point A to point B path. She's much, much further down a path of her own invention, to be sure, tinkering steps forward up a rock wall, but everything unstable that she faced 11 years ago is still right there. She's training sometimes at her old gym, sometimes alone working on self-curation, daily in sparring at another gym, privately with Yodkhunpon, and all the intermittent training in filming legends and great krus in the Library. But, from at least my perception, nothing has changed at all in this. She is not being carried by a process, or by powerful others, and in this sense is exposed. There is no safe port. And because her process involves sharing her flaws with others - unlike every other fighter I've ever seen, where it is regular to hide your flaw and amplify your best qualities - this exposure is hard to carry. The other aspect that has persisted is that because she's a true disruptor in the sport, doing things outside of the expectations and ways of others who are invested quite differently, there is a constant social current she is swimming against. In the first video she's talking about YouTube criticism, but more this is just push back against who she is. So many have come to support her over the last decade, and lent their voices & resources to make the path possible, but still there is, and may always be a detractor audience, which in part comes from the fact that she's still doing things that nobody else does. In the second vlog she's matured into her place in the sport, taken root in herself...to some small degree, but personally the same pressures of resistance press upon her. The road is no easier at this point, than it was 11 years ago. In fact in many ways its even more difficult...but, what has changed and deepened is the richness of what she has built up inside, with 268 fights and a decade of sharing her flaws with others for over a decade. She has more substance and standing and belief in what she is doing. This is what I see.

The above video is from almost 11 years ago. Sylvie is up the Hudson River where we lived, taking the train down to NYC to train in a Muay Thai gym in the city, more than an hour away from the small town we made our home. This video just gives me quiet tears, hearing her sincerity in response to some pretty harsh commentary coming through YouTube. One of the things Sylvie was exposed to was, from the beginning, being an outsider to "Muay Thai" proper. She was training with a 70 year old man in his basement in New Jersey, an hour and a half's drive away. She was putting up videos of her training because there was nobody like Master K, her first instructor, online anywhere. There was pretty much nothing of "Thai" Muay Thai online. A small community of interested people grew around her channel, but also came the criticism. From the beginning there was a who-do-you-think-you-are tone from many. You can hear it in her voice. She doesn't think she is anyone. She just loves Muay Thai. She's the girl who loves Muay Thai. I cry in part because many of the themes in this video are actually still operating today. She's a huge name in the sport, but personally she is really still just the girl who loves Muay Thai, who takes the alternate path, doesn't ride with gyms, doesn't care about belts, doesn't want to fight Westernized Muay Thai. She's burned a path into Thailand's Muay Thai for many, but she's just replaced Master K - who to this day loves Muay Thai as much as anyone we've ever, ever met, with the possible exception of Dieselnoi - with legends of the sport. Karuhat, Dieselnoi, Yodkhunpon, Samson, Sagat. These are her fight family. And the same quiver is in her voice when she thinks about, actually yearns for, their muay. Wanting to be a part of it, to express it. From someone on the inside, it's just striking how little of this has changed, though like a spiral it has been every climbing higher, towards more ratified and accomplished feat, many of them feats that nobody will duplicate...simply because she's just The Girl Who Loves Muay Thai, and is taking the alternate path. She's running through the foothills of Thailand's greatness. And like then, when people in Muay Thai criticized her, today she has the same. The same unbelievers. And it's as pained today as it was on this day in the video. What's remarkable about her journey is that it necessarily has involved sharing, exposing, all of her flaws to everyone. She's likely the most documented fighter in history. We've put up video of every single fight and probably a 1,000 of hours of training. She has lived herself as exposed to everyone, as much as a fighter can be. What I'm amazed by, watching this 11 years on, is her equipoise, her balance in holding the harshness of others, and her lack of ego in all that she was doing. One of the most difficult things she's encountered in developing as a fighter, reaching for the muay of yodmuay, is actually developing an ego, a pride or dignity, which is defended not only in the ring, but also in Life. How does one get from the above, to where one needs to be as a fighter? What internal transformations have to occur? I happened upon the above video today, the same day Sylvie posted a new vlog talking about her experiences in training with some IFMA team teens at her gym. She was reflecting on how many of the lessons of growth she had not been ready for as a person years ago, especially lessons about frustration and even anger. You can hear the frustration in the video at the top. Mostly it falls behind a "I mean no harm" confession. She's just loving Muay Thai and sharing it. The impulse of those shared early videos of Master K eventually became the Muay Thai Library documentary project, likely the largest, most thorough documentation archive of a fighting art in history of the world. It's the same person doing the same thing. Even to this day, nothing of this has changed. But, what has changed is the depth of her experience, in over a decade of love for the sport, and in fighting an incredible 268 fights, and counting. Take a look at the vlog she put up today, and see what has changed. From the above has come one of the most impactful western Muay Thai fighters in history, both as a person and as a fighter. And the mountain is still being climbed:

What is interesting about this is that it is one of the few steps taken at the New New Lumpinee which doesn't seem like a bend toward Western (or Internationalist) ideas and instead is broadly in support of the ecosystem which has produced Thailand kaimuay Muay Thai superiority for decades. Modernist views are against children or early youth full contact fighting, but in this case Lumpinee is lending its name to younger fighters, in hopes of developing stars and their following much earlier in their lives. No matter what one thinks of child fighting in Thailand its a fundamental part of why Thais fight like no other people in the world, just in terms of skill. Interesting to see Lumpinee leaning into something there has been pushback on.

This is our latest Muay Thai Bones podcast where we discuss MMA coming to Lumpinee stadium:

I found Peter Vail's dissertation again. Unfortunately, he does not cite the Burmese Chronicle: Vail repeats the omission in his article: MODERN "MUAI THAI" MYTHOLOGY.

Seeing the Ungendered Body As Lines of Force quoting to begin... The above are the concluding thoughts of the excellent short article: Fight like a girl! An investigation into female martial practices in European Fight Books from the 14th to the 20th century by Daniel Jaquet. It presents in brief the basis of a coherent argument that though there are physiological differences between the sexes, distributed over a population, martial arts are about developing the advantages you can have that overcome any physical differences that might weigh against you. I present this argument about Muay Thai and women more at length in: The “Natural” Inferiority of Women and The Art of Muay Thai. Just as shorter fighters can fight (and beat) taller fighters, smaller fighters can beat heavier fighters and slower fighters can beat faster fighters, whatever projected or real physiological differences between women and men there may be, they can be overcome. That is the entire point of a fighting art, especially any art stemming from combat contexts. Interestingly enough, Daniel Jaquet actually points to modern "institutional competition" as over-informing the way we think about the capacities of a fighting female. We think in terms of classified differences (weight classes, and even rulesets, etc), and one of these classifications is simply gender. Fight Like a Girl.pdf The article documents a conspicuous absence of women regarded as (possibly) equal combatants for nearly 700 years in combat literature, as gender became more codified in the European tradition. Jaquet marks a foothold in the timeline with this sword and shield technical manual in 1305 (Liber de arte dimicatoria), one of the last documentations of an assumed and illustrated gendered equivalence, at least for purposes of instruction. There is a great deal to think about in this topic at large, but here I'm most interested in the effects modernization, or rationalization of a fighting art can lead to ideas of gender equality, under fighting arts. And some of the ways modernization can push against it was well. Jaquet's finishing remarks (above) speak to this basic, rationalizing idea. Bodies are all different, they are all capable of differing physical actions, amounts of force being applied, speed of reaction times, etc. It follows, just as physical weaponry like swords or shields are force amplifiers, so too are the analogical "weapons and shields" (techniques) when practiced in a fighting art. If you know how to throw (or slip) a punch, you are within a force amplifier. The rationalization of fighting arts is a modernizing concept of extracting aspects of a traditional process of embodied knowledge practice, and classifying it, for pedagogic reasons, analysis, or commercial use. Seeing gendered bodies as force equations is rationalization. If you follow my writings you know that I have a great deal of hesitance regarding the eroding forces involved in the rationalization of fighting arts, both in terms of teaching and commercial performance (we can lose valuable and hidden habitus as we re-contextualize practices), but this does not mean that I wholesale resist rationalization/modernization. Instead it can act as a scissor, weaving and unweaving as it goes. As Jaquet points out, modernization itself also brings forth conventions which can regard important, liberating rationalizations of a fighting art. How Rationalized Jui-jitsu Changed the Early 20th Century Fight World What I'm really interested in is something that Jaquet does not pursue, and it's something that I have only touched on in my reading. What follows therefore is going to be only a broad sketch of intuitions that would be interesting areas of study. I was particularly struck by this 1905 photo included in his article: And the note tells us, this is the Duchess of Bedford training in Jiu-jitsu in England. I have not dug deeply into the history of Jiu-jitsu's immigration to England through Japanese masters, as well as other countries all over the world, but I assume this is part of a powerful rationalization impulse found in Japanese martial arts, much of it typified by Kanō Jigorō and his invention of Judo. Influenced by Western ideas of rational education and theories of utilitarianism Kano had the dream of modernizing traditional Jiu-jitsu along educational and health lines, and spreading this modernized version all over the world, eventually making it an Olympic sport. Judo and other forms of modern-leaning Jiu-jitsu spread internationally at this time, and the Duchess of Bedford's Jiu-jitsu no doubt was a part of this diaspora of the fighting art. Famously, it reached all the way down to Brazil, eventually becoming today's Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, but at this time it it also reached Siam (Thailand). King Vajiravudh of Siam (reign 1910-1925) was actually raised and educated in England in his youth and young adulthood, for nearly a decade before taking the throne. He brought with him not only an appreciation for British Boxing (which would deeply shape the development of Siam's Muay Thai), but also, one might expect, Judo/Jiu-jitsu which had growing presence in Britain. In 1907, two years after the photo of Mary Russell the Japanese community in Bangkok is recorded as teaching Jui-jitsu, in 1912 Prince Wabulya returns from study abroad in London having learned Judo, and teaches it to enthusiasts and in 1919 Judo is taught at the very important Suan Kulap College, along side British Boxing and the newly named "Muay Thai". It is enough to say that the modernization of Muay Boran into Muay Thai in the 1920s, in the image of Western Boxing (at the time Siam is making efforts to appear civilized in the eyes of the West), was part of an even larger, in fact world wide rationalization effort lead by Judo/Jui-jitsu. When we see this photo of Mary Russell in England, this is part of the one-and-the-same British movements of influence that created modern Muay Thai over the next decades (gloved, weight class, fixed stadium, rounds). Rationalization is happening. Notably, this unfolds it is in the context of King Chulalonkorn's previous religious reformation of Siam which would have lasting impact on the seats of Siam's Muay Thai, moving it away from temple teachings and magical practices. Siam is becoming a modern Nation, and the reformation of Buddhism (along with Muay Thai) is a significant part of that process: from The Modernization of Muay Thai – A Timeline Returning to the rationalizing efforts of British Jui-jitsu which will almost necessarily un-moor rooted gender bias, with even political consequences. As Jaquet writes, the medical/physical perspective of empowerment and health ended up expressing itself in the Suffragettes Self-Defense Club, to aid in physical confrontations with police: purportedly, the first photographically documented female fight in Siam (1929) image here Women would be granted the right to vote in Thailand in 1932 (the first of Asia's countries, not far behind the UK's 1918. But, this rationalizing equality would not progress. In fact Siam/Thailand over the next decades would become busy "civilizing" itself in the eyes of the West by importing the strong Victorian-inspired views of powerful visual differences between genders. Modes of dress, differentiating the sexes, were even at one point legally mandated by the government in the 1940s. What we today read as quintessentially "Thai" traditional attitudes towards the differences between the sexes though complex is actually, perhaps best explained as a Western value and practice importation during the first half of the 20th century. The visual differentiation of the sexes in dress: Thai cultural mandate #10 (1941): Polite international-style attire Civilizing the Savage and Savagizing the Civil What I'm interested in is the connection between the early 20th century rationalization/modernization of Jui-Juitsu in Britain, and today's rationalization-modernization of Muay Thai in Thailand. The schism between Thailand and Britain in terms of gender, under the guise of "civilization" recently and long last was symbolically bridged when women were finally integrated into Lumpinee Stadium promotion: The First Female Fight In Lumpinee Stadium Breaking the Prohibition. Note: the strong division between the genders of the late 1930s and 1940s in the "international-style" of work and dress is also in the context of the construction of Rajadamnern Stadium (1945) and Lumpinee Stadium (1956) under Thai fascism and Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram (Prime Minister 1938-1944 and 1948-1957). It is unknown what gendered Muay Thai practices may have developed without this heritage of an imitation of the West. As an contemporary outsider we tend to assume these "traditional" gendered differences as purely and essentially "Thai" and not a product of Western example or influence. Seeing these two photos, well over 100 years apart, in relationship to each other under the view of Internationalized Rationalization of fighting arts is fecund to examination. There is no clean line that leads between rationalization of the art and sport and the equality of the genders. Importantly, and not without irony, when King Vajiravudh modernized Muay Boran in imitation of British Boxing he was attempting to purge Siam and its fighting art of the impression of savageness. Contestants did die in the Kard Chuek ring (probably rarely) with rope-bound hands, but more importantly the use of feet and elbows of Siamese fighting was seen as primitive by British report. Codifying Muay Thai in the 1920s was no simple desire to just imitate the West as superior, as the West used the motive of civilizing "primitive" people to justify the colonization of peoples, including all the countries in Siam's orbit. No doubt King Vajiravudh had adopted many British aesthetics during his decade in British schooling, but there also something prophylactic to the transformation of Muay Thai before the eyes in the West. Now though, with some irony, Thailand is bending its fighting art to the Internationalist tastes of greater violence, more aggression, as part of a vision that is pushing it to join what might be seen as a globalized Combat Sports Industrial Complex, battling for eyeballs. And, as I say ironically enough, with this comes the rising commercial viability of women seen as equals. As Lumpinee Stadium seeks to Internationalize itself it brings in women, and also it brings in the "savagery" for which Siam's fighting was (politically and colonially) stigmatized over 100 years ago, as MMA comes to its storied name. The "Be more civilized!" and "Distinguish the genders!" that was once demanded by the colonizing West has become "Be more violent!" and "Equalize the genders!" by the globalizing West...a globalization that is actually now an Internationalist vision. What is missing from this story perhaps is the equivalence of Britain's Suffragettes Self-Defense Club, which is to say the way in which equality under a martial arts rationalization is connected to a broader political fight for women's equalities. From my view I suspect that the growing importance of respected female fighting in combat sports is an expression of the increased social and economic capital women have come to have in a globalized world. Women as having real and imagined physical prowess in the traditionally male-coded ring (and cage) symbolically manifests actual changes in female powers in society. Women in rings has grown out of the Suffragettes Self-Defense Club, not now equalizing themselves with embodied knowledge in the streets against police, but rather signifying their political and socio-economic heft to a globalized world. Yet, as all things bend back, the commercialized capture of symbolized female power in the ring is part of its re-domestication, as women's bodies become sites of judgement and eroticized re-packaging, problemizing any overriding narrative of liberty. As women are called to the ring under the auspices of aggression-first promotional fight theater in the double-bind navigation of globalized freedoms, the role of rationalization remains circumspect. Rationalization can and does lead to the re-codification of the genders, as we see with the conventions of institutional competition, as well as within the commodification of the female person and body by combat sport entertainment, yet it also holds the power to un-moor entrenched sexism and bias which work to restrict the possibilities of women as fighter who stands as proxy to the power of women in general.

A worthwhile gym to look at is Fight House in Singburi, where Kru Diesel has taken up shop after years of running FA Group. One of the best Muay Khao krus in Thailand. I don't know their roster right now, but he's a great trainer and sending Thai fighters to stadium fights.