Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

I think there is a fundamental moral divide between Thai fighting and Western fighting. 1. It's undignified to chase. 2. We want to see lots of chasing. This is probably buried within the social forms of governance, ideologies of "self" and "individual", mythologies of freedom. In some sense, this is at core why Thailand's traditional Muay Thai is often unreadable and incomprehensible to the West...and why when reformulating it for Western consumption you are cutting to the very bone of the culture that produced it, and which it expresses. The moments of "violence" are very readable, especially when cut into highlights. It is visually one of the more violent appearing combat sports out there, but the very grammar of "chasing" (between the cultures), which makes up the majority of a fight, is radically different. This actually drills down into ideas about social liberty. In traditional culture you don't really have much social mobility. You are more or less confined to your station. Social power consists in creating positive relations to those in local power, not "moving up" radically. In Western Capitalism there is a glorification of the individual. "You could be anything!" "If you try really hard the market will reward you". There is the (illusion/real promise) that "chasing" will be rewarded. So, in Thailand fighting is "positioning" for control, in the West its a passion play of committed chasing and "striking it rich". There are of course significant Capitalist forces within Thailand, & there have been for some time. These forces are in tension with traditional forms. Traditional stadium Muay Thai, as a hybrid between Capitalism and Tradition, plays out its "dialectic" (not a fan of that word, but, maybe its interface). Tradition (positioning) in some regard holds the Capitalism at bay. The West of course also has traditional forms, which explains why traditional Thailand has meaning to some of the West, but the dramaturgy of a fight, "why we watch", is at least in this core way, antithetical. The appeal to new Entertainment models though, within the country, amid younger demographics, is signaling a new relationship to Capitalism, social mobility and chasing itself. When Westerners bend back toward traditional Muay Thai, they (and I'm one of them, being self-critical) it is to some degree in response to seeing how the "chase" principle of (Western) Capitalism, esp fueled by pictures of anger, frustration or rage, is not only one of self-determination. The lack of control, as when viewed from traditional postures, ultimately undermines liberty itself. In the fighting ring itself -- and this is the rub -- the lack of control actually makes you a less effective (and skilled) fighter. Fighting becomes a kind of "reality principle" in the struggle of ideologies. This of course does not prove one ideology right or wrong, each surely is seeded with great flaws. What it takes to successful win fights may not be what it takes to successfully live life, or organize lives. But it does go to the ways in which combat fighting meaningfully speaks to us, critiques our own lives, and expresses our (unconscious and often inculcated) values. This binocular vision, to chase or not to chase, plays out in the incomprehensibility of the 5th round dance off (to many). Within Thai traditional culture this is just understanding the chess match. When very behind its like a chess player conceding when they comprehend a positional surety. They see the mate, or see the material/positional situation and acknowledge that there is no win. They demonstrate their awareness by conceding. To the Westerner, guided by ideologies of "you can strike it rich!", it makes no sense. You can ALWAYS win. There are two ways of viewing this. Either the Capitalist chasing subject is relatively blind to his own checkmate, deluded by a sense of control and rage-yness, or the traditional subject is made blind to his own agency, and he really COULD knockout the opponent, but instead gives up. One can see how the affects of "chasing" and the social valuation of chasing (it is undignified vs it is freedom & vital) is played out differently for Western vs (traditional) Thai eyes.

Re-linking this thread which is a reading list of citations building out the picture of the Kingdom of Ayutthaya as cosmopolitan center of trade and mercenary forces. The Kingdom of Ayutthaya, as is presented here, was actually a Maritime Empire (despite its inland location). This thread draws out the possible influences from the South through trade, and the international presences around the city and court of Ayutthaya:

The Warfare of the Rural The above article is found in the book Warring Societies in Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia. The picture of an agonistic rural culture under a pressure of slave-taking (capture, rather than defeat) is an important step in imagining the kinds of martial pressure which may have helped developing the fighting style of the Siamese, especially as it may have developed aspects of Muay Thai (Boran). It is my thesis that Muay Thai itself likely developed as a ring betting sport rite/custom, among rural settlements and villages and in parallel to Kingdom martial centers, and less as a direct translation of large scale Kingdom battle. Yet, however you you assess a projected history, understanding the actual warfare being conducted by the large majority of Siamese beyond the narrow window of Kingdom historical record is an important piece of the developmental puzzle. Michael Charney, an editor of Warring Societies, wrote an important article in this direction (link-posted in full at the bottom of this page). He points out just how thin the details are that we have of even large scale Kingdom conflicts, but more significantly, because nearly all our historical record is composed of the royal point of view, these records distort our even-sketched-out picture of what warfare and conflict was like. Here is a screencap of his introductory thoughts. If Muay Thai or a generalized Siamese fighting style was born from warfare and conflict the great preponderance of that conflict and its nature is hidden from us by the simple fact that it was not written about and little of it made it to murals. And that's because most of the population of Siam was rural. The thumb on the scale of history is that of Kingdom centers which compose almost all our received history. His article attempts to see through that filter, just a bit, using a window in the record after the fall of the Burmese palace to the British, but before the British had taken colonial control of Burma. This is a glimpse into the kinds of warfare that may have been prevalent outside of a royal perspective - a warfare type that may have reached back for centuries, in kind. This is only to say that the palace perspective, though essential and foundational in history, is only part of Siamese warfare culture, and history maybe be enriched by the wider view. Painted panels, by an indigenous Burmese eye, depict raid fighting, from which Charney extracts significant features which he feels could speak to the non-standing army conflicts that make up "rural folk" and their warrior culture. This is the late 19th century. (Analogies between Burma and Siam also should be understood as also limited.) His four aspects are: raiding for resources (here cattle), the presence of firearms (as well as the ubiquity of sword, the burning of villages, and the killing/torture of non-combatants. The panels: I draw a few more aspects out from these panels. For one, I'm not quite sure that's a depiction of the killing/torture of a non-combatant. Perhaps there are written descriptions that confirm that it was, but Charney doesn't reference them. Instead it looks like the staying of the killing or attack of a woman, and what may be branding her (as a possible slave?), and not torture. This would give all the figures in that panel a great deal more meaning, and would make the illustration itself have more purposeful content (all the figures are doing different things). I can't rule out his reading, but under this interpretation it would be showing capture and enslavement. One man is putting his hand out. Other aspects of interest is that the burning of village also depicts the fleeing of the village (with possessions packed). This would be in agreement with Anthony Reid's descriptions of Southeast Asia warfare much further up in this thread: that a great deal of warfare involved fleeing and hiding, and that houses were built of wood making them much more transitory than how we today think of homes or territory. One was always ready to give ground, or simply leave, with one's possessions on one's back. Also of note, the attackers are all tatttooed, the attacked not. I'm not quite sure what this means sociologically, but at least in this Burmese setting, it seems significant. The ubiquity of sword (though its lack in the fleeing villagers) is important. It is my hypothesis that all farmers would be armed and skilled with blades, if only because of the nature of farming itself. Muay Thai's hand-to-hand, weaponless nature would suggest that it did not grow directly out of organized warfare itself, at least on this one point (one reason why I suspect it has its own, ring sport heredity). He also draws focus to the presence of firearms (in his article he brings forth that these are fairly crude match-lock firearms). It's difficult to know if this would reflect the state of armed conflict in Siam, but its worth noting. He also talks about the use of bamboo and hedging to form defensive perimeters around a settlement or property, and the tactic of asymmetrical ambush. note: Charney also in his article focuses on the head-taking in Burmese warfare (something even Indian mercenaries for the British which problematically adopted). Charney is often at tension with Anthony Reid and others who carry the thesis that Southeast Asian warfare tended to be less bloody than European expectations. It's helpful to note that Charney wants to de-emphasize the highland vs lowland dichotomy in his study of Burma, but that along this sociological in Siam, the head hunting practice seems to be divided. It seems it was a practice of highlanders and hill tribes in the North, Northwest of Siam (if I recall). Positioning Muay Thai (Boran) Through its Origins Suriyenthrathibodi - King of Ayutthaya (1703-1709) There are larger picture contexts brought out in Charney's article that also have bearing on the stories we build of Muay Thai (Boran) antecedence. The demographic make up of Kingdom armies themselves, and how they fought is of central importance. One of the questions of today's Muay Thai is the struggle over its origins in ideological terms. You can see this play out in the tug-of-war around the figure of Nai Khanomtom, who had been presented to Westerners as a father of Muay Thai, the story of his mesmerizing defeat of Burmese fighters before the Burmese King emblematic of Muay Thai superiority. The (Thai) tension with this picture is that Nai Khanomtom was a commoner. This would put the root of Muay Thai shaded toward common culture. Thailand throughout its political history has shifted between emphasizing its royal or more common roots (for instance the rise of fighters like a convicted murderer like Suk, who broke with the matinee image of the Bangkok fighter in the 1940s was thought to be been in part an attempt to move away from royal priority by the Phibunsongkhram dictatorship.) Suk "The Giant Ghost" Prasarthinpimai - the menacing, fierce-some fighter of the late 1940s For this reason, and perhaps many others, International Muay Thai Day (Feb 6th) was recently created in distinction from Nai Khanomtom Day (March 17th). International Muay Thai Day celebrates the "Tiger King" HM Suriyenthrathibodi who was recorded as an active practitioner of ring Muay Thai (the oldest historical record of it in Siam, I believe) in the first decade of the 1700s. (This of note gives us at least 325+ years of ring fighting in Siam.) It was written that he cloaked his royalty and went out to fight beyond the palace among more common people, testing his skills in the ring, interestingly enacting the very royal vs commoner divide in the history, coming out the victor through skill alone). The creation of the celebrated origin of Muay Thai further back in time before the defeat of Ayutthaya also anchors it within the historical glory of Siam (rather than after its Burmese capture), is an important shift in presentation. Today this tension between Kingdom origins and commoner origins can be seen in modern bifurcations in Muay Thai: the Muay Thai of the capital (stadium Muay Thai) and the Muay Thai of the provinces (festival Muay Thai), in which cosmopolitan fighting always holds the aesthetic priority. Salient in Charney's presentation, and we find evidence of this in other treatments of Siamese history, is that the standing armies of Burmese Kings were made up regiments of foreigners. Many enslaved, many mercenary. Regiments of foreign musketeers or cavalry preponderantly made up the specialized standing army of Burma, an army which was then supplemented with rural warriors (who were not specially trained) and who made up the majority of forces. Charney's point is that the Burmese armies, when they marched in large scale, mostly fought like "rural warriors" because it was made up mostly of (untrained) folk whose knowledge of fighting was grown within themselves and their lives. You see evidence of this specialization of trained foreign forces in Ayutthaya history as well, perhaps no more starkly in King Narai of Ayutthaya holding a personal guard of 200 Indo-Persian warriors in the 1670s. Some of this preference is that specialized local forces could not be trusted (the ever present possibility of a coup), foreign regiments were perhaps dependable and better to be closer to the palace. And surely there was specialized hand-to-hand, weaponless fighting within the palace, as even attested to by the Tiger King's own prowess in ring Muay Muay (Boran). But if there is a centuries-long heritage of Muay Thai (Boran) born out of the marital pressures of Siam, a large degree of it probably would have been found in rural life and smaller contested polities as these made up the constant and pervasive patterns over a large preponderance of the population. That rural population was levied, conscripted, or enslaved at various points to perform militarily, but was not folded into specialized training. It fought as it knew, out of its own history, which likely involved local polities of levy and seasonal cycles of raid and enslavement. To generalize over-broadly: every Siamese rural farmer knew how to defend themselves (and attack), because they had to. The likely picture of any fighting style's martial evolution through conflict is that it was one of dialogue between Kingdom forces and their large scale events, and wide-scale rural warfare (with festival, entertainment, rite ring fighting developing parallel to that context). The specialization of the palace would hone and concretize combat, to be sure, but one of the most salient aspects of standing or at least at-ready Kingdom forces is that they were international. At one point the Kingdom of Ayutthaya was described as being able to fight with 1,000,000 men (quite an exaggeration, to be sure), but its standing army was filled with regiments of foreign fighters, mercenaries and captured Malay, Japanese, Portuguese, Persian, etc. The King's military arm of the historical dialogue was cosmopolitan. One imagines that the other side of this dialogue reaches into provincial, rural, polity Siam, far beyond the King's direct, continuous reach for many centuries, but also that the dialogue may have developed in the sub-urban encampments around the Ayutthaya place itself, in the various quarters (Portuguese, Japanese, Siamese, etc), which formed a littorial band of mixed-martial fighting, in betting rings. It was not just when rural warrior folk were levied for seasonal battles, but also in the halo of the palace itself, where ring fighting surely went on (attested to as early as the first of the 1700s, when the King went out in disguise to test his skills in the betting ring of the people). This picture makes a complex braid of history when thinking about the likely martial pressures that may have informed Muay Thai (Boran)'s development. Everything from international mercenary forces, highly skilled palace Arjan, betting rings in outlying "suburbs" of the palace, and the rural histories of centuries of warfare and slave-taking, themselves conditioned by local chieftain power struggles, structuring alliances, protections and raids in halos of authority, a rural warrior culture which may have had its own festival driven, seasonal rites of ring fighting (as they presently do). And, one is not to leave out the role of the Siamese Wat, and its own halos of regional authority (and Wat magical practices -- outlawed in the 1902 religious reforms -- which feature in the history of Siam combat techniques). Siamese temples were keepers of a large portion of the able bodied male population, and were even refuge from early 20th century royal military conscription efforts, and were keepers of Muay Thai (Boran) fighting knowledge. In this way Siamese temples were set up for at least some Shaolin style specialization of fighting knowledge or aspects of its trained pedagogy and preservation. (When I say Shaolin-style, I don't mean Kung Fu. I mean a home for organized, disciplined able bodied men, which may have formed their own fighting prowess through teaching (we see something of this mythos in the framing of Ong Bak and the passing of Muay Boran forms). Siamese temples, architecturally, likely were the most fortified structures in a region, and operated with it own political power.) In the broad brush, the martial history of Thailand's Muay Thai (Boran) likely is composed of all three, a trinity of Royal, Rural and Wat realities, with centuries of festival (betting) ring Muay Thai operating as the living thread through all three. above, the Ong Bak (2003) mythos of the rural Thai Wat as the (secret) keeper of Muay Boran art form This is the full text of the Charney article:

I'm going to post a copy of Michael Charney's excellent article here as it is hard to find, and is an important piece in the history of Thailand's Muay Thai, in so far as it can be conceived in the context of mainland Southeast Asian warfare. It drives the the heart of the difficulty we have of even picturing the preponderance of warfare there may have been, as our record is powerfully overbalanced by Kingdom chronicle and its perspective. In fact, the vast majority of organized conflict likely was rural and between settlements and smaller polities. It's important to see this, as it was likely martial pressure that was most operative in developing a mode of fighting. (My own hypothesis has been that Muay Thai (Boran), likely developed less out of battle and conflict itself, and more out of a parallel line of (betting) ring fighting rites and custom. This text is found in "WARRING SOCIETIES OF PRECOLONIAL SOUTHEAST ASIA". This article is posted in reference to the much wider thesis of Thailand's defensive fighting style here:

Just speaking very broadly on much of the added material in this thread, one can see that there is a continuous enslavement martial pressure at all border-regions of Siam. There is not only the famous threat of invasion from Burma to the Northwest (not a land-capture invasion, an enslavement invasion which ultimately would result in the fall of Ayutthaya, and the establishment of Bangkok as the Capital), the martial enslavement of the Hill Tribes to the North, and the systematic martial enslavement of the trans-Mekong region to the Northeast, likely operated on a very generalized culture of constant agonism, where in farmer and warrior were joined as one. This likely went well beyond the large scale state-like clashes that are found in histories, but made up a matrix of martial agonism, including the threat of enslavement and/or the incorporation of the enslaved (as wealth).

"Warfare and Depopulation of the Trans-Mekong Basin and the Revival of Siam’s Economy"Puangthong R. Pawakapan This thread holds notes and screen caps from the above article, detailing the repopulation (enslavement) efforts in the Northeast of Siam: Important for conceptualizing the way in which warfare (and even village festival ring fighting) may have shaped Muay Thai is understanding the agonistic milieu of village life itself. Farmers were conscripted in seasonal warfare campaigns, to capture slaves who themselves would become farmers and warriors. At a fundamental level to be a farmer was to be a (conscripted) warrior, as part of enslaving (and incorporating) the "other". This became accelerated and systematized after the defeat of Ayutthaya by the Burmese, as Siam looked to recover the great loss of labor wealth (which may have topped 100,000 Siamese captured). For 100 years the Northeast developed muang along these newly, increasingly systematized lines. Martial pressures involved fighting within these regular capture campaigns, but also, one would imagine, in the ability to fight off or escape capture as well. (My thesis is that "Muay Thai" grew not only out of this agonistic culture of capture, but also in parallel, as a betting ring sport in the perennial festivals of provincial life, organized around these martial campaigns. It developed its own aesthetic (and set of techniques) in the context of this kind of warfare. Attached here are screencaps found in the Twitter thread: and, Then... then...

An important historical context to discussions of a possible spirituality of Thailand's Muay Thai is the way in which warfare likely developed in the region, and the principles of fighting that came out of that. This article thread on why Thailand's Muay Thai expresses emphasis on defensive fighting excellence gives some of that context. This context involves very important differences with many Western martial concepts, such as the preference of domination and control over outright defeat and killing (related to the relative scarcity of land or labor), notions of representative (King) charisma in battle, and an overall difference in the use of violence.

Here is a provisional graphic sketch of 6 logics of the spirituality of Soul Stuff, as expressed in Thai culture and Muay Thai. These logics, by my thinking, lie beneath or within the Buddhistic nature of the culture.

If you would like to read more on the aspects of Muay Thai's theatrical nature, and its relationship to large, hyper-capitalist, globalizing forces, check out this. Heads up, this is more of a Philosophical take on the pornification of enjoyment, changing our concept of time, and how Muay Thai is scored:

In small circles I've been noted as a critic of ONE Championship, and Entertainment Muay Thai in general, mostly on the grounds that I have real concerns that the market forces at play are going to erase some very hard-won qualities of Thailand's Muay Thai, and the fighters of Thailand, that made it and them unlike any fighters in the world. In fact, the best fighters in the world. As market forces come to bear - whether it be the declining demographics of stadium Muay Thai enthusiasm within the country (crushed by the popularity of football/soccer for instance, or the pressing need for new modes of fight entertainment content, throughout the world - it may very well be that all the things that made the "magical", "untouchable" Thai fighter possible, will fade and eventually be extinguished. The market may make Thai fighters like all the other fighters in the world. And, in the longterm...the longterm, this may undercut not only the specialness of Thailand's Muay Thai, but also its real economic value. That uniqueness is the thing that brings tourists from all over the world...to Thailand. Thais train like nobody else, they fight like nobody else, they perform like nobody else. That's my general position of concern. But in this piece I'd like to offer arguments on why ONE actually deserves recognition. In part I want to do this because I see this question as complex, and some see my thinking on this as simplistic. As maybe nostalgic. Or idealistic. The problems of Thailand's traditional, stadium Muay Thai have felt intractable, and in some sense doomed to gradual decline that cannot be slowed. In many respects ONE's entrance into Thailand is perhaps the only thing that could have interrupted this erosion. It may have negative unintended consequences, but the insertion of big, organized, global-eyed investment is very significant. Big Bosses Part of how I come to see this is just in regards to how power is organized in Thailand, in a systematic sense. What follows is just very broad brush, and not meant to be a reduction of sociability in Thailand. It's a kind of internal logic though, I believe. From street corners, to neighborhoods, to local industries up to governance there is a Big Boss structure to things. A Big Boss is someone who has social alliance formed of a network of people, often tied by deep cultural custom or more, a person with social gravity, but who also takes care of those below him (her). A Big Boss can show his affluence and his blessedness (his due position) through his generosity, or at the very least his capacity to create stability and opportunity. Within their field or sphere Big Bosses are respected by culture. Big Bosses stack all the way down. There are bosses below bosses, and bosses above bosses, and there is a kind agonistic struggle over social territory between bosses, which holds the whole thing together, but also generates innovation or activity. In this sense, the various Big Bosses of Thailand's stadium Muay Thai, as it presently was constituted, as they struggled over the decreasing scraps of Thailand's Muay Thai - with a shrinking demographic and talent pool of fighters - were never going to actually solve the problem of erosion. They instead were going to struggle for position over a declining resource. It was only from outside this agonism that any possibility would come. And that meant the insertion of a VERY Big Boss. That's what ONE has done. It's entered the Big Boss arena with a very big economic stick. Not only did ONE wrap itself with the signatures of Big Boss-ism (important value declarations: we are just trying to take care of poor, neglected fighters; we are just trying to save Muay Thai) it came with an open checkbook. It could pay enormous bonuses, inflated fight pay, and hook fighters up to an already matured advertisement hype machine. It was a very Big boss. It's much more complicated that this, as the State (the military) already had made moves to change Muay Thai by extracting Lumpinee Stadium from Muay Thai promotional culture, with visions of it becoming an international sports venue, and because the State has a powerful mission to develop the "soft power" of Thailand through the celebration of its national sport, I'm leaving that aside. At a certain level what is happening in just an International Big Boss has entered into the local Big Boss fray, and we are seeing an enormous social and political reaction to this. But my view is, it had to happen in this way. The Bosses of Muay Thai would never have been motivated enough to bring the kinds of changes that were necessary to more or less "save" a dwindling resource. A big, deep pockets Boss had to make a splash. Small Screens But, there is a much more significant thing happening with ONE that Thailand's Muay Thai was going to have a hard time dealing with, no matter its possible future. And this regards Muay Thai consumption itself. One of the big struggles with trying to preserve Thailand's Muay Thai excellence, its peak beauty (and rarity) is that Muay Thai essentially, is an in-person theatrical event. If you want to create an analogy, historically like a "play" and not like a movie or a tv show. The excellence of the sport, the very high skill-levels that Thai fighters have reached, in particular of the Golden Age, came out of its "theatrical play" nature. And the audience of this play is deeply invested in what the actors of the play are doing because they are betting. And betting, in the history of the culture, goes beyond just trying to get money. It has expressed social bonds and commitments, can have karmic interpretations, can be used to display social power, or personal gravity. It, at least historically, is a rich bond. So, when festival fights are going on, and betters/audience is pressing up against the apron and shouting, this is a full and powerful social dynamic. And the fight itself is an in-person theatrical performance (of skill, qualities, knowledge). A play is going on. Muay Thai excellence, all of its techniques and qualities grew out of this matrix of live (bet-on) performance, from the smallest ring in Isaan all the way up to Lumpinee Stadium in the 1990s. It's all live theatre. Thais were fans of Dieselnoi in the 1980s having never seen him fight, and only having read about him. Everything was a theatrical play you had to come to see. And the fighters developed advanced skills and qualities for that live audience. Like in theatrical acting you needed to be visually distinct, you needed to project and reach the back row with dramatic expression. Principles of ruup, the development of a fighter's silhouette (see Sylvie on the Silhouette Test), a narrative control over oneself and the fight, all of it exacted certain demands upon the skill of the fighter which actually produced excellence. The very theatrical form, in the tug and sway of in-person betters with communal stakes in the polities of the ring produced fighters of immense technique and persona, rich in diversity and uniqueness, the best fighters in the world. Let's skip through the rise of television, and people in villages gathering to watch fights on a single TV, through the expanding broadcast reach, and to the arrival of the mobile phone. In broadcast Muay Thai, what we are dealing with, is taking a theatrical form and turning it into a tv show...but not only that. It's a show that people no longer sit in front of, they watch it on their mobile phones on screens, maybe jumping in and out of tabs. Something that once was in front of you, and part of a knit sea of betters now is something in your palm, and even as its going on is competing with Facebook messages, or a cat meme. The visual fragmentation of its consumption is radical and profound. Traditional ring Muay Thai is not just rulesets. It was (is?) the actual stage, consumption and participation of performance. So, when new promotions promote endless clashes between fighters (speaking broadly) and pressing for knockouts, it is producing content for the palm of the hand. In a certain sense, it HAS to. It may not even be for people who watch the fight, but who see a clip while they are scrolling. This is just a massive recontextualization of what fighting is. Yes, passionate, knowledgeable but niche followers may still watch a fight in a theatrical performance way, noting how it unfolds, like a play, but the market, the actual meat and potatoes of its consumption is in the palm of the hand, between screens. And, live audience, is no longer socially bonded betters, but rather ir's tourists, who themselves are probably looking down on their own phones as they sit there at the event. It has become a performance for foreigners, something which has significant importance because of tourism's place in Thailand's economy. This is to say, in the paragraph above, ONE directly has answered the consumption problem, at least at the level of reach and more casual audience. (Mobile phone online betting in traditional stadium fighting solves the consumption problem another way.) At the very least, Muay Thai is going to be torn away from its theatrical play roots, the very thing that gave its form of excellence to begin with. It's going to be pushed through smaller and smaller screens, smaller and smaller attention spans. And ONE has a vision for how to do that. In this sense it should praised. So Muay Thai has an origin problem. What was once a sport that passed through numerous layers of live performance ascension, performance that grow out of betting and in-person, extremely knowledgeable investment, until it reached the 6,000 better's arena of Lumpinee stadium, and grand live displays of fighting excellence were put on, now will economically be for the casual phone scroller, or perhaps an audience largely made up of bussed-in Chinese tourists (this is a model that has worked very well in Pattaya, for instance, entire stadiums of tour-groups). The reasons for the performance, and the content it is producing are just radically different. So in a certain sense all that quality that was produced, year upon year, decade upon decade, is at risk. Right now Muay Thai is in a suspended state. We can take fighters who have developed more or less in the in-person bettor's "play" culture, and still have very unusual, even elite skills that have come from it, and we can put them into these other kinds of performances, for other kinds of content and consumption...but the very fabric of Muay Thai as a rich, fighting art and sport is strained and is tearing under these market pressures.

Very cool! We'd love to film with him when he comes to visit Thailand again.

This is an important follow up post on the primary source for the Soul Stuff concept:

The Farangification of Muay Thai This is just a little personal journaling. Usually I like to write on History or Philosophy but today it's just a sense of relief that I unexpectedly experienced over the last few days, filming with Sylvie for our documentary project. This strange sense of ease that came over me made me realize just how much a tension had filled my Muay Thai mind over the last several years, as I watched rather quiet changes creep across the landscape of Thailand's Muay Thai, most of the time with rather small, innocuous steps, but then also suddenly with vast lunges (like for instance the utter change of Lumpinee itself from National Stadium and the acme symbol of Thai excellence, to really a commercial space for Muay Thai tourism, not much different in philosophy than stadia found on the Southern islands or peninsulas). There just has been a rather powerful change in Thailand's Muay Thai, in that so much of it now is "for us" (that is to say, the "us" of Westerners, of which I'm a part). It's now been - slowly, or quickly - redesigned for "us" to watch, and maybe more importantly, for "us" to participate in (and win in). The rare spectacle of the 1990s, during the Golden Age, where hyper aggressive Western Kickboxers would face off against outsized Thais, just for the circus of it, while Lumpinee and Rajadamnern put on the highest combat sport fights on the planet, Thais against Thais, that circus now has become the standard...the norm. (And, a new generation of Thai audience before a buffet of entertainment options has embraced it, for excitement sake.) And, it's not only in the stadia, it's quietly in the gyms. Thai gyms, even high levels, or the highest level (ie, most politically powerful) have had their gym cultures impacted by the Westerner. They are more and more catered to the Western (and non-Thai) fighter, bending their sense of self toward its gaze, changing their training methods, their reason for being, toward the Globe. Large gyms now, gyms that shape Bangkok promotions, are run by Westerners, and Westerners are holding pads, guiding fighter development. The entire edifice is now leaning West. Of course Westerners who come to Thailand to seriously train and fight often love it, because the Thai gaze is turned to them, and when they arrive they find things that are familiar, more of who they already are (as opposed to, for example, fighters like Anne Quinlan and John Wayne Parr in the 90s who had to conform themselves to very unfamiliar spaces in order to work into gyms). And, when you fight you have a much better chance of winning, because the Entertainment rules have been bent toward you, toward your skills, and more importantly toward your aesthetics...what you think fighting is. More and more the sense of the foreign, the sense that you have come to a place where everything you thought was implied by fighting was perhaps wrong, is being weeded out. This is the Globalization of the sport. It's Thainess is starting to vanish. A great deal of this was accelerated by the COVID epidemic. As much as 20% of the Thai economy is tied to Tourism and all the connectivity between world-bound humans that facilitated the spread tourism also facilitated the spread of an epidemic. Thailand was put into a potential economic shock, and in coming out of the COVID lockdowns Thailand found itself in a difficult place. They either needed to lean away from, or lean into, tourism on the rebound. Thailand leaned hard into it. Many of the changes to Thailand's Muay Thai in the last couple of years, including the Internationalization of Lumpinee stadium (the loss of its prestigious ranking system and belts) has been an all out effort to recapture the Western tourist (and eventually the Chinese tourist - most of the Max Muay Thai influence comes from the promotional redesign of the sport around bussed-in Chinese tourism, a standard component of pre-paid tours). It could be said that Lumpinee has become something like a highly developed, richly promoted version of Bangla Stadium, with almost every fight between a Thai and a non-Thai. This is in keeping with just the brute reality that the appeal of Thailand to foreigners is vital. Muay Thai is for foreigners, it's tourism rather than culture. Over the last several years, as training methods have changed in gyms, with more and more memorized "combos" being held for fighters, even as non-Thais have taken over training itself, acquiring places of authority within the culture, the gym has become a less-Thai space, often in hidden, not-easy to see ways. Very often as the foreigner we can't actually "see" when a culture bends itself toward us, because it's "for" us. We assume that this is either just "natural", or as it is bending towards us over time, our ease with it comes with just acclimation. I remember a few years ago when a Westerner asked the lead kru of a family gym "What is your favorite combination?" This question was nearly untranslatable into Thai at the time...because the idea of a rehearsed and repetitively trained "combination" as a core of training wasn't in the Thai landscape, at least in this gym. (There will be Westerners who read this and be mystified by the idea that there could be training without "combos". I talked once with a very successful Western coach who relies on them heavily and he was incredulous that there was such a thing.) It would be like asking someone who speaks English "What are some of your favorite phrases?" This compartmentalized, mechanized concept of fight fluency was still foreign, at least at this gym. Muay Thai was more like a language, and taught like a language through immersion. This is just to say, as the Western student has become embraced in the wave of reclaimed Tourism, the very concept of training and its pedagogy has changed, very often in a spirit of accommodation (more correction, more mechanics), but also sometimes in a spirit if imitation and "improvement". There has always been in the back of the mind of Thai culture that it could be bettered by more "modern" (ie, historically Westernized) ways, this suspicion has lasted for more than 150 years, so this transition towards Western concepts of training is not without willing Thai ascent. Protein powders and mythically powerful supplements are also involved in this modernization toward the Western eye and mind. There is always an element within the culture which will feel that turning toward the West is a sign of improvement (the presence of Treadmills, heart rate monitors, or other equipment is a common symbol or statement of "modern" training...you could find such signatures of "modernity" all the way back to Thanikul gym in the Golden Age), and leaving behind the provincial or superstitious, the "backward", even though so many of the Thai ways that make up the process and history of Muay Thai are the very things that made it the best fighting art in the world, and their fighters the best fighters in the world as well. Those of the West that come to Thailand to witness the Muay Thai of Thailand often do so because they do "fighting" like nobody else, with the sense that all of the modernization that the West pats itself on the back for isn't really the path to elite skill sets. That this battle between cultures plays out now on promotional stages which have been skewed to actually produce Western (and other non-Thai) wins, is just the change of the measure. All this is to say, there has been buried within me a kind of abiding sadness, I think, something I was not completely aware of in its depth. A pessimism. We experience a lot of different Muay Thai spaces and many of them read as very "Thai". We hang out with legends of its past greatness. We go and visit Rambaa's gym full of kids. Sylvie trains in small gyms...but all of these experiences are also shot through with transformations toward the West. Legends now not only teach their own Muay, learned from decades at or in the ring, but also teach things they've picked up from licensing seminars they've taken, or from watching successful other Thai instructors doing seminars. (I remember very accomplished Thai ex-fighters watching Saenchai giving a seminar, taking notes. When you train with a Thai great they may be teaching you something they learned THIS year.) Rambaa's little kaimuay plays UFC fights on a flat screen and has a cage. The little Thai gyms Sylvie trains at are also impacted by Westerners, both in culture and in method. This week's experience just made me terribly aware of how few "non-Western" Thai spaces there are that we run into now, a change in the decade that we've been here. But the reason for hope came because on a single day we ran into two completely different Thai spaces which had almost no Western fingerprint. And, because these spaces did not feel rare. They did not feel like a vanishing species. Instead they just felt like a layer of Muay Thai culture that exists just beyond the curtain which has been drawn to keep in all the Western or International attention. The first of these was Chor. Hapayak gym, North of Bangkok. You encounter these gyms which have a kind of citadel'd, "keep out" nature. Paranchai in the South is a bit like this, or Pinsinchai gym in Bangkok. The Muay Thai can feel very cloistered, in a closed social system governed by a single head man. This gym had that feel. A big, extremely muscular pit bull galloped hard after a small truck down the one dusty lane that lead to the gym, barking hard. He was a unit. When he came to sniff at us a Thai boy was sent to grab and fence him, put with a bitey Rotty who was already on lock down (who honestly looked very sweet). I mention this because the dog's response to even an ice-cream cart coming showed how infrequent outside visits are - his robust guardianship was sidelined in accomodation.) Mostly though this hidden away feeling came to me in the way that all the Thai boys jumped rope together, and then sat altogether in the ring after training in a very small circle. It just was very clear that all they had was each other. This boundness comes out of the social condition of the kaimuay, and out of perhaps aspects of more traditional culture which would draw critique from a concept of personal liberty and free agency. The Muay Thai of Thailand though comes out of these social forms. When Sylvie asked kru Bangsaen if Westerners would be welcome to train there he said "Yes"...but then he added "But they can't leave."...which meant that you couldn't come and go as you will, as if you are are on an adventure tourism vacation. I'm not even sure what entirely was entailed in "They can't leave." but it was strongly connected to this sense of boundness, and ultimately a family of a kind. The freedoms of fighters are tightly monitored. This just wasn't a gym space that was YET bent toward the Westerner. They had the legendary fighter Wangchannoi helping out, but he did not appear to hold high status in the gym. He was just helping out with the flow of bound work. But...there were still signs that the West was coming. Fighters were encouraged to come and shake hands with us (beyond the Thai wai). One kid showed his cultural fluency by giving me a bro handshake and hug. And, when we came the next day the kru had changed his mind and told Sylvie that Westerners were wanted at the gym, that they could come and go as they pleased, could stay at this hotel or such, after 24 hrs of thought. Already the boundness of the gym was eroded, in a single day. There is also some sense in which Westerners might hear of such a place and be excited by it. Where is the next "unspoiled" beach!?...so we can go and start its spoiling. A large part of the urge to travel is to find what you are not. In the West we want to find unpolluted beaches because all our beaches are grimy and polluted. Sitting in an emerald bay with blemishless sand is what we cannot have on our own. So, for some, there is a sense in which the traditional ways of Muay Thai may hold not only technical secrets, but also emotional secrets to what fighting is. Coming to a place which does not reflect your own Western face back to you, as if in a mirror, provides a sense of relief, and even can be a path to transformation, or healing from the wounds or pressures that being a Westerner incurs. And, it should be noted that a great deal of what Sylvie and I do is opening keyholes into people & knowledge that cannot be easily found. And each time we keyhole there is a risk of its transformation. Now, for instance, Chor Hapayak gym is open to Westerner fighters (students?) when before it seemed like it wasn't something they had ever thought much about. The ethical reef I find myself drawn to in these questions is that of ecology. If you want to find pristine beaches then work to keep them pristine. If you want to find "authentic" Muay Thai gyms, then work to keep them that way, which means maybe taking stances on larger commercial and economic trends in the sport in Thailand. Be aware of what you are changing it when you touch something. And, it is not without merit to note that as women have experienced more freedom of opportunity in Thailand, not only in terms of fighting, but much more notably in terms of training, along has come with this many of these other globalizing changes. That, as well pull more traditional forms of being toward an international scale of gendered equality and freedom, other aspects of the culture may be attached to those threads. The much more aggro-fighting aesthetics of the West are coupled to, let's say, MMA's embrace of the marketing of female fighters. It is not easy to parse these differences. At Chor. Hapayak gym Sylvie was asked not to train in the rings, as a woman, governed by the same beliefs that kept her out of the clinch ring of Lanna Muay Thai so many years ago, in Chiang Mai, and that barred women from even touching the ring of Lumpinee. With the sweeping embrace of Western (and International) values of equality, so too have come other somewhat incipient value changes towards fighting itself: Its promotional violence, it's aggression scoring, its lack of control aesthetics. These are not disconnected, though their relationship to each other is not directly causal either. In some odd sense, the dream of some women to eventually fight and compete at a high level at Lumpinee Stadium (a dream that Sylvie had once) actually in a monkey's paw way involved the absolute erasure of what Lumpinee was as an ideal stage of hypermasculine, control Muay Thai). The other experience of relief and hope was a very different experience. We had trained and filmed with the former Fighter of the Year Jaroensap (he won in 1993) at his small but active gym in Bangkok some years ago. I'm not entirely sure why he moved locations. My guess is that it too had to do with the ways that COVID impacted the sport of Muay Thai, shrinking the sport as many fighters prematurely retired, returning to the provinces to more modest, more economically sustainable oriented ways of life. In any case Jaroensap had moved his gym from in the city to high above Rangsit, to be found now at his family home where he had built a substantial ring and hung a few bags. It was as if he had reshored himself within the local community and created a Muay Thai anchorage. When we trained and filmed with him this time he said he had 3 fighters on cards the next day, so he had plenty of time to train...the gym is quite small. But it is filled with his personality, and his elite knowledge of the sport. How to make a fighter...how to fight. His work with Sylvie consisted of padwork, followed by sparring, and it was evident to her that he works personally with his students, on a daily basis, in just this way. Something that didn't feel as proximate at the old location, the first time we filmed with him. We brought Karuhat with us (who had fought with Jaroensap in their primes) and as Sylvie trained in the ring the grandma, the wife, a cousin (who Karuhat said was a gambler) all ate toothsome snacks and talked with animation about things we could not hear. Bright sunlight and what looked like sugar cane much taller than a man waved in a continuous, running breeze. There was a legend of the sport who trains his son and a few local boys in the ring he built, in bright sunlight, passing on his personal, body-earned knowledge, as the family sits below the ring and talks vibrantly about the day. All of this was just Thai Muay Thai. There was no mirror to look into and see one's own face reflected back. Sylvie was just a very odd anomaly there, a 100 lb woman being tossed around the ring, trying to learn and respect Jaroensap's knowledge, his joy for the sport's form...and the grandma laughed loudly every time Sylvie fell. Next door a few young children lounged as the heat of the day faded, and some men sat and carefully washed the fighting roosters under their care as they watched Sylvie and Jaroensap in the ring; quietly, some curiosity, but only long enough to finish their tasks. I wanted to write more in journaling way, because it really was how I was impacted by these gym experiences. We've been in a lot of gyms, trained and Syvie's fought in incredible variety, but this was the first time I've just had a sense of hope wash over me after filming. It made me realize just how much I was holding a pessimism in my heart because of just how farangified everything seems to have become. And even with the sense that we've been a part of it, as we hope to make people aware of vanishing aspects of Muay Thai that are at risk of being lost and are worth saving, worth respecting. I was very surprised by this sense of relief, because I had always had the sense that Muay Thai doesn't really belong to the big stadia in the Capital, but more that it belongs to the people of Thailand, to the provinces, and the fighters of yore, to the customs and ways of thinking about what fighting could mean, in a positive way, in a way far beyond "entertainment". We left the day, driving home in the fatigue of Bangkok traffic snarls and a haze of pollution which could be industrial smog or smoke from burning farmer fields, with a sense that the Muay Thai of Thailand still exists in resilience, in resistance to even the transformation of Lumpinee Stadium into a venue, and the endless farang vs Thai matches that fill television and mobile phone screens. For more than 150 years of Siamese & Thai "civilization" in its imitation and absorption of the West Thailand's Muay Thai has persisted, through its own kernel, and there was this sense in me that it's still here, living, thriving, just beyond the Globalizing reach of the Western and non-Thai hand. Muay Thai, like any expression of a culture, is a Way of Life. We should have an ecological view towards the ways of life that hold special knowledge and meaning, even as we criticize or attempt to improve them. I actually believe that Thailand's Muay Thai, in so far as it is a cultural expression of a people, connects us to some of the most meaningful and even rite-driven aspects of what fighting and combat sports may mean. It is far more than "entertainment" and insofar as it should be a tourism draw that could best be founded on its exceptionalism, which includes the cultural values it has come to embody over the last century if not quite a bit more.

I'm sorry about this! The host server was under maintenance and for about 12 hrs there was an issue. This should not happen again (we've taken added precautions), it was just a bad coincidence of things. But, anytime I write something really important of length, even on Facebook or whatever I always take the precaution of copying it before I hit submit. So many times I've lost inspired stuff just because connections go down. I'm very sorry you had to go through that though, as I'm really interested in what you had written.

@iiaks re Kongtoranee Gym, I may have been wrong about their status. We just went to a local Pattaya show and several of the young Thai fighters were said to be from Kongtoranee Gym...so maybe it is doing well on the young fighter local circuit?

@iiaks we contacted them on FB a bit back, and they did not speak English. Didn't get the feeling that they were very active (COVID wiped out a lot of smaller gyms in Pattaya). Kongtoranee himself though is at his brother Samart's gym in Bangkok.

Right now I think the difficult is, in this equation, "fight frequently" (which may depend on your size too). It may be that Chiang Mai (and Phuket) are the most likely places. Hongthong is very popular in Chaingmai. Kru Thailand's gym is more "authentic" in terms of it being more of a kaimuay. Kru Manop's gym will give you personal attention. And maybe the new Manasak gym would be eager to devote attention to a new longer timer? I would suggest going to all the gyms you have in mind before settling onto one. Feel the vibe. Not every gym is right for every person. @samelsby

One of the things to notice when you are in the gym, and I know you are a keen observer, is how Thais train. They DO train very, very hard, but it is different from how Westerners train hard. Westerners when trying to imitate Thais or get on their beat "go hard", but sometimes they fail to see all the micro ways that they rest IN training. It's the states of relaxation they can achieve on the bag between strikes. It's the ease they fold into the patterns of padwork, or the ways in which very long bouts of clinching can contain lots of positions of relaxation. And there are other times of rest IN training. This is not only really important and good for fighting, but its also good for overall endurance when training frequently. Just as an idea, the next few times when in the gym don't just look at what the fighters are doing, actively, but look also for the ease they are able to achieve, the patterns with which they are able to pace themselves, recover, etc. That at least is one of the hidden aspects of "Thai style" training that Sylvie discovered, and it took her many years to really see it, and reach for it.

Sometimes. When I really want to look at video I scrub through it back and forth, using a playback cursor, feeling the rhythm that way. Karuhat Sor. Supawan. In my mind the GOAT, an absolute legend of the sport. Watch his fights, they are amazing. It's an overstatement to put this on gambling. It goes much, much deeper. It's a narrative concept of performance. I go into the nature of this in my piece on the 6 core aspects of Muay Thai: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/essence-muay-thai-6-core-aspects-make Gambling practices reflect and grow on this narrative picture.

It really is a bottomless archive. Many of these sessions, as they come from absolute legends of the sport who developed in kaimuay and circumstances that no longer exist, are just stuff with details. Some can be watched 10s of times, as each fighter has their muay, and things are being show and communicated beyond even what is being instructed. I'm glad you are getting so much out of the documentation.

Damn, just looking at his record now. Very impressive. Some serious heavy hitters. Does he come and go as a trainer there?

btw, I ran into this very good podcast on the Khmer Empire which had a significant influence on the Siam Kingdoms that followed, and Thai practices to this day. Highly recommended for giving background on what is discussed by me above. And, for those interested in a deeper analysis of the possible reasons for post-Khmer change in the region, this is a very good blog post summation of a hard to find article by Richard A. O'Conner arguing that it was the wet-rice irrigation cultural complex, coming upland from the valleys, that supplanted the farming garden and flood management society of the lowlands, somewhat in line with the podcast's account of the drought and flood patternings that may have brought the Khmer Empire down. Arguments go that wet-rice irrigation creates more communal, shared-space social bonds, which may have bearing on discussions of any fundamental social/spiritual logic of Siam/Thailand.

Love your descriptions. You're telling a great story and having experiences lots of people just dream about. It's a very special relationship to Muay Thai to be in a small kaimuay that produces active stadium fighters. You get to feel how much of Muay Thai is handmade, and woven out of very local community. This stuff is the heartbeat of Thailand's Muay Thai, its real heartbeat. How did you find your apartment, if you don't mind me asking? And what is your apartment like? (Any photos of the gym, or your apartment?)

Walters returning to the cultural matrix later in the text, adding details:

Here are screen shots and a Google zoom in for everyone to give a sense of where it is in relation to Bangkok and Chiang Mai: