Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Sounds like an incredible, personal experience. What size are the fighters out there? Do you feel like your training with them is productive for you at 70 kg? I see you mentioned 15 minutes of clinch, what is the clinch training like for you?

I'm drawn more and more to the idea that it is the fighters who have built a fighting sport, its art. Yes, arts & sports do not rise unless they are pulled into circles of power and epic centers of cultural focus - just as the great variations of provincial Muay Thai of Thailand were drawn into Bangkok in the early part of the 20th century, with the arrival of railroads (Khorat 1900, Southern Rail 1907, Lampang 1916, Chiang Mai 1921) - and if not shaped by commercial powers, the brilliance of promoters, the patronage of the King or the State - but amid these forces it's the wills of the fighters who performed in the magic squared circle, and their bodies which built it. This is where the bricks are laid...and not just the bricks. It's the living force of these men (and some women), their creative force, which largely gave shape and complexity to a sport, gave it its fabric. It is much less like an architect who tells workers where to put blocks of stone, and much more like an array of weavers who, on looms of the Self, pull strands through and through to create a pattern. I am well-known as someone who has dug his heels in the sand as Muay Thai is being dragged forward into new, radically different, highly commercialized (and I believe much less capable, more physically illiterate) zones. I was struck by a very fine argument that was sent my way, as I urged Thailand's Muay Thai not to let go of the complexity and immense competency it had developed over the last century, when taking this commercial turn. It was said that I advocate for a distant Muay Thai where fighters are so little paid for their work, harkening back to when fighters were more or less controlled and owned, and fought for so very little. This is a really good point. There are some problems with it, for instance top stars of Thailand's Golden Age Muay Thai, adjusted for the economy, actually were paid quite a bit more money than those of today (in general), and had a stardom in the country that shaped generations. But still, there is a very good point. Ignoring the top earners of the 1990s, there is a real sense in which the Golden Age drew in countless fighters many of which trained and fought in onerous conditions. There is a real sense in which Muay Thai broke backs, and the blood, sweat and tears of the sport did not pay in a way that feels equitable, for the average, hard fighting circuit fighter. The word floating behind this is exploitation. I think it's a complicated word, because it involves us considering what fair recompense is, and recompense is not just baht; but its an important thing to think about. Is someone like me who holds firm to what Muay Thai has been arguing that we should return to the systems of the past where big promoters steered the sport and gave fighters life or death in the sport in their powerful networks and decision making, often with very little lasting financial reward? Are we to roll the clock back to patronage of OneSongchai and Klaew? Of unbreakable long contracts and the tight networks of gym owners? I think this is a really good thing to think about when we make decisions on where we stand on the Muay Thai that is being fought. Where are the power centers? And what are the lower-level, circuit fighters experiencing? What is the compensation for their labor? This is what I'm thinking about. Let's grant that the Muay Thai of the past was in some significant degree exploitative, in the sense that workers were laboring often under great distress to produce a product the windfall of which largely went to promoters and gym owners. If we want to think just in terms of financial reward and labor/cost analysis we can see that. But this is the powerful aspect that is missing from that world view. Firstly, meaning in life does not reduce to income. In fact there are many things much more meaningful to people than the number of zeros in a bank account (though for some this is paramount). When Dieselnoi tells the story of when he was knocked out by lead-handed Kaopong in his lone boxing fight, and how he bounced from rope to rope, staggering to stand before he finally fell, he talks about the fact that the Prince was in attendance. "I could not even stand for the Prince." As he tried with his gigantic heart to straighten up, and failed, he was not thinking of his kadua (fighter pay), or who bet on him. He was thinking of his dignity. His place. The traditional elements of Thailand's Muay Thai have a great deal to do with "place", and much of the reward, in that there was one, is about "place". Many of these fighters came from places in society without much standing, and fought and trained in the sport to gain that standing. And place is not fame. It's related, but it's not. You cannot not forage it. This is what I'm saying. If we are to mourn the fact that the fighters of the past were not fairly compensated we have to expand our vision to fully see what they were actually compensated with. And a great deal of what they were compensated with was the tremendous and enormous edifice of Muay Thai that they had built. THEY built it, round by round, bell by bell, cut by cut, hand raised by hand raised. It did not stop. It is THEIR artform. They made it. It's like a pyramid made from 100,000 hands. That it stands and that it lasts is part of their compensation, the part they didn't get when the baht was put in their hand. It belongs to them. This is the fundamental problem with the efforts to radically reduce the complexity, skill sets, traditions and aesthetics of Muay Thai of Thailand. Yes, there might be very good, sensible commercial reasons to do so, especially as market demands have shifted. Yes, it may very well benefit some wonderful fighters who never would have gotten the eye-ball recognition and the financial boon if they had simply stayed in stadium Muay Thai, or just retired as many, many have done. There are good reasons for this, ethical reasons. But as you erase the edifice of Thailand's Muay Thai, to make it more marketable, more readable on the scroll of mobile phones and tiny screens, as you pull into new mechanisms of possible resource extraction, you are actually destroying the one thing all those fighters were paid with, the legacy of the sport itself, as the greatest fighting art on earth. They made that. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu talks about not only financial Capital, but also social Capital, which is your place in a culture, but what I'm talking about goes much deeper than even social Capital. It's about the craftsmanship of 100,000 hands to make something, and for it to have reached a level of incredible capacity. One of the very special things about Thailand's Muay Thai is that it was born both out the cultural traditions & practices which give it a profound (non-commercial) substance, but it was also forged out of probably more than 1,000,000 full contact fights over the last century. In regions styles developed, gym to gym grew specific techniques that won under the aesthetics of the sport, krus, gym owners, fighters all mixed to create an immense vocabulary of fight knowledge - and Amazon-like train forest diversity of it - which made it the most capable fighting art in the world. The fighting IQ and skill display was just eye-wateringly good. This came out of ALL the fighters. Countless fighters you've never heard of. The creation of this was the legacy of all of them. Every run-down village festival ring with gamblers pressed against the apron, every (old) Lumpinee clash of titans. All these fighters had a piece of this, because they made it. It was theirs. If you take out all those musical notes - too many notes! - change the rules and the scoring (which is the DNA of the living animal of it) and make it something unrecognizable you are erasing their legacy, the one thing they had in compensation beyond the baht put in their hand. When you remove clinch for instance, and your version of the sport comes to supplant the very picture of what Muay Thai is in the eyes of the many, you actively erase Langsuan, Samson, Panomtuanlek, Dieselnoi, Namkabuan and Chamuakpet. You not only will erase their memory (which may exist in nostalgic highlight clips), but you, more painfully so, erase their knowledge, the very thing they put their bodies to work in building, fight by fight, years in the kaimuay. They were technicians, they built something. And, it is not only them. You are erasing the great anti-clincher, the femeu masters like Samart, Silapathai, Hippy, Somrak, Karuhat and Burklerk. The entire vocabulary, a whole species of fight knowledge that has been developed through their contest, and to some degree passed on, is wiped out. It's gone. Not unlike mono-cropping where a old wood forest once stood. And this is just speaking of clinch fighting in the sport. So much more can be said of narrative fight control, contests of ruup signature, dern vs matador dynamics. The elite capacities of Thailand's Muay Thai were not earned by the promoters, or even the gym owners. They were earned by the fighters. They were earned out of the bodies, as artists put to endeavor. I just think we should think long and hard before we erase these kinds of very sophisticated, hard-won, achievements of knowledge, the legacy of which within the living culture, within the living sport is their reward. It's not just a question of: "How should fighters fight today...to make the most money?" As with all things in life, even things of commercial value, it's about meaningfulness, and in some sense it feels as if we are digging into the cultural pensions of the men who made this sport. The new forms are literally unrecognizable to many of them. They don't even know what they are looking at, so they seldom look...or if they look they look in terms merely as spectacle. There is some element in which we owe these fighters for what they made...even if you want to take what they made and turn it into something else for consumption. We owe them that they can look at the sport, the art, and SEE themselves in it. We owe it to them to to preserve something of the pyramid that has been built by hand. We cannot pull the foundation stones out of what it is and still respect the great feats of knowledge and transformation they created.

This is great stuff. I really appreciate the writing. Can you screen shot Google Map locations? Post Google Map links?

The head of the WBC Muaythai said this man could help you: https://web.facebook.com/hadj.wbcmuaythaieurope

You may try and get in touch with WBC Muaythai who has efforts in Africa and the Middle East. They express a Muay Thai rule set that is perhaps the closest of all Thailand's traditional stadium Muay Thai.

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

In the next post I'd like to address the specifics of Thailand's Muay Thai which reflect this spiritual endeavor. You can follow this thread.

One of the first things to appreciate when thinking about how Thailand's Muay Thai fighting itself expresses, or involves spiritual values is that in the history of Southeast Asian warfare war was seen as a cosmic battle. And the King in battle was regarded as possessing not only physical prowess, but also spiritual prowess. Cosmic forces, "soul stuff" was in conflict on the battle field, and the King, or which ever champion of a martial force was the acme of that side's soul-power. Historians Michael Charney and Anthony Reid tell it that the fall of the leader could end the conflict altogether. First Charney on Southeast Asian warfare: And Reid in his study of Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce: Just as the kings of mainland southeast Asia held "soul power" charisma due their martial prowess and their earned spiritual prowess, and used that charisma to create far reaching alliances, strengthening his mandala of power, battle itself was lead by the charismatic leader who melded physical prowess and spiritual prowess together, and brought them to what was a battle of cosmic (read "soul stuff") forces. This singular champion logic of charisma is not only found in Southeast Asia, for instance we see it in Homer's Iliad in various figures, but especially in Achilles, who was not only a formidable martial force, but also was a poet, musician and elegant speaker, not to mention spiritually half divine due to his mother. citation for previous comparison photo Above King Narsuan's famous elephant duel and Achilles' duel vs Hector. (As a note, these were both trade-oriented maritime cultures whose wealth was depended on a slave economy. There may be a socio-economic relationship.) In any case, because battle was seen as expressive of spiritual prowess it is simply wrong to put fighting in the category of physical prowess, in some kind of antithesis to the spiritual. It can be argued to be fundamentally the meeting of charimatically imbued champions, who posses both physical and spiritual prowess, the results of which lie with forces beyond the ring (battle field) itself. And, these charismatic figures represent and express the "soul stuff" of their affiliations and attachments. When they win, something much larger wins. When Karuhat tells us that 2 busloads of fans and supporters would drive down from his hometown Khon Kaen in Isaan for each fight of his, loaded with gambling interests, monies pulled together from communities, he in a certain sense spiritually (at least in terms of "soul stuff") represented them in the ring. His soul stuff was added to by their presence, and his victories flowed down threw and into them. We can see this very same logic of representation in the West, for instance in Nationalism in combat sports, or in terms of race or ethnicity, or other subset groups, but in Thailand it becomes much more sharpened, and pervasive, because of how they regard power relations themselves, in a world of "unequal souls" and of transmittable "soul stuff". We start though with the notion in Thailand that fighting is necessarily to some degree spiritual. And thus, training for fighting involves spiritual training. Not only are there magico-religious practices that surround and structure training (& fighting), the training itself focuses on the disciplining of many affects & dispositions which have qualities which are in concert with more overt traditional spiritual training by monks & holy men in the culture. However small a fight may be in Thailand, one's training consists of rigorously learning how to properly take that place of spiritual (soul stuff) champion. What differs from similar imperatives in other fight cultures elsewhere in the world is the degree to watch this still is thought of in spiritual (even if unconsciously spiritual) terms.

The above is a far-ranging, quite theoretical take on the spiritual foundations of not only Thai culture, but also Muay Thai, and its claims to a kind of underlying metaphysics of power, and a practice of power to some degree remain opaque. The thinking is imagined to be continuous in mainland Southeast Asia from long before the rise of Khmer power in the 9th century, covering belief systems sometimes called Animism. Let me bring things back to earth with a very mundane example. When we first visited Thailand we found ourselves living along a market street near the Chiang Mai university, near Lanna Muay Thai camp where Sylvie trained morning and afternoon. We lived in a kind of inexpensive hotel with floors dedicated to foreigners and other floors to University students, and we were but a 5 minutes walk to the camp. Every morning we would walk to the camp and pass a fruit truck which had parked at the mouth of the market row, where other various businesses sold fruit, flowers, meat, prepared snacks and desserts. The street was a kind of cornucopia of things to buy and sample. Every morning we would pass the fruit truck and the kind older lady in the back of the pick up, where she did business, would cheerfully smile at as as went. And when training was done each morning, on the way home we would load up on delicious cold pineapple (and watermelon), neatly sliced into bags. It was so nice to see her smile on the way to the gym, and to get that fruit on the way home. After several days of the habit we decided to be more adventurous and try a few other things on the market row. It seemed so full of life, and there appeared such a sense of community among everyone. I'm not sure what we got to snack on, but we ate in on the way the hotel and didn't think much of it. It was just more of bountiful Thailand. When we got up the next morning and began our walk to the gym we passed our cheerful older lady in the back of her fruit truck and she completely iced us out with the coldest of shoulders. We had, accidentally, broken our alliance. This is soul stuff. Our patronage, our community of commerce, our money, her preparation, all of it increased her soul stuff, the soul stuff of her family...however slightly. When we took our business, however mindlessly, to another fruit vendor deeper into the market row we gave soul stuff to them, and not her. This is part of what I mean when I talk about the essential logic of soul stuff pervading Thai culture. As Westerners who are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as consumers with the power of choice we view our choices outside of consequence to a large degree. We pay for services or products and we consider the relationship "even" to a large degree. If something more appealing comes along the next day, or the next month, we make a different purchase. In the conception of soul stuff, soul stuff is always being portioned and passed around, and soul stuff is also always under contest. It is agonistic. When historians describe the orbs of power that defined great empires of mainland Southeast Asia they specifically do not speak of territories. Rather kings exerted influence over others through charismatic (& sometimes martial) power, expressed through networks of alliance. Very large palace structures, solemn religious rites and royal displays would anchor the charisma of a king, giving them aura to stabilize those networks (which historians call mandalas), but a king's sphere of influence was made up of other smaller spheres of influence (mandalas of other smaller polities and their rulers), many of which would overlap. There were zones of overlapping sovereignty, as shown in this graphic: What I suggest is that this concept of overlapping of zones of sovereignty, mandalas made up of other smaller mandalas, which are made up of the same, is the fundamental struggle of contested, agonistic "soul stuff" that makes up the social world. It describes how Kingdom power operated in the 16th century Siam, and it describes how street vendor power operates in Chiang Mai in 2010. It is the ability to exercise influence and grow alliances, and to do so in ways that you signify your sphere of power to others. And, those within your sphere of influence are themselves seeking to grow their own networks of alliances, express their own acquired soul stuff, so the fabric of alliance is always tensioned. This is something that Westerners who stay some time in Thailand within a Muay Thai community in a city, or even a district will come to realize. Like politics of the fruit truck, each commercial Muay Thai gym exists within a sphere of influence which is larger than itself. It's part of a series of alliances with promoters, its own fighters, with other gyms, and at the same time is in struggle against other gyms who also have spheres of power. It's not that it is one gym vs another gym. It's that there is an entire fabric of power relations, networks and alliances, that is always in tension. And any one move or shift in alliance in that network has an invisible domino effect. Fighting at one promotion, training at one gym, these are "soul stuff" alliances. Western fighters who have chosen to move to another gym within the mandala sphere of the influence of their own gym may very soon discover that they are caught within a power-web. You are affecting the "soul stuff" of the gym you are attempting to leave, you could be changing very delicate balances of power, however innocently or blindly. This is because power is a function of "unequal souls", and each person is continually acquiring the signatures of "soul stuff", the ability influence, the capacity to charismatically attract others into their network, and gaining "soul stuff" through the alliance with more powerful figures beyond their own sphere. This interwoven, overlapping, sphere upon smaller sphere fabric is how much of Thai cultural social power expresses itself, and that is arguably due to the deep spiritual conception of soul stuff itself, something at least 2,000 years old. I suspect that this fundamental agonism between spheres of influence is what gives Muay Thai its special societal relevance as an art and sport. It acts out in a bold, theatrical way the more widespread agonisms of authority and influence, and it taps back down into the original union of spiritual and martial power, as it was expressed in political charisma. When fighters are fighting they are assembling and putting at risk the "soul stuff" of themselves, their families, their gym, and in some cases their community, in a wager hopeful of increasing that soul stuff through not only victory, but also through their physical display of that shine in the ring, through the language of muay.

A question that sometimes is raised is: What is the religion of Muay Thai? Or probably better put: Is there religious meaning in Muay Thai? Sometimes behind this question are the pictures of spirituality within traditional martial arts like Kung Fu or Karate, an idea of self-perfection which is grounded in a deeper spiritual belief. The martial artist is perfecting themselves both physically and spiritually at the highest levels. Many answer this question in the negative, in a way that seems quite accurate at first. "There is no spiritual meaning to Thailand's Muay Thai." It is a fighting art, a sport, its meaning is in its efficacy. Looking for religious or spiritual beliefs in it would be like looking for them in Western Boxing. Yes, there are important cultural rites & practices which derive from Buddhism and the older form of Brahminism, and even the animism before that, but one does not have to be a Buddhist, let's say, to practice Muay Thai - and often these rites & practices are treated as cultural trappings by observers, a kind of respect paid to the past that could easily be shed without missing a beat. They aren't necessarily active religious practices, some say, while for others within the sport & art they treat these as highly meaningful, without which Muay Thai would lose its footing. If one had to give a single religion to Muay Thai it would be its Buddhism, in the sense that it grew out of a culture of Buddhism for the last 800 years, and in many respects has the qualities that it has because of Siam & then Thailand's Buddhism. It's traditional treatment of aggression, the way in which its scoring and overall style of fighting is classically handled with emphasis on ruup (posture), balance & self control, its treatment of the affects of anger and fear are quite Buddhistic. And notably within the culture there have been cultural parallels between between novice monkhood and the path of the young nak muay. You can read about some of those here: Thai Masculinity: Postioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail. When we see Thailand's Muay Thai through the lens of Buddhism not only do certain aspects of its scoring and presentation make more sense to foreign eyes, also questions as to how could such a violent sport be religious at all finds some resolution. There is an undeniable fabric to Thailand's Muay Thai which seems quite Buddhist, as it has been the dominant religion in the region within which it grew. And this is not to minimize that Muay Thai was also fed, perhaps for centuries, by the very high level Muay Thai of the South which has a significant Muslim population. Muay Thai is actually much more of a tapestry than many assume. There are threads in the fabric. We are left somehow with an unsatisfying answer. Yes, Thailand's Muay Thai expresses and comes out of a (largely) Buddhistic culture and holds several rites and practices which are religious in nature - the treatment of the mongkol, the pre-fight Wai Kru/Ram Muay are the most obvious ones - and even we might grant that in the cultural maturation of boys the kaimuay (boxing camp) has stood as an alternative to the maturation in the wat (temple). Or, we might even imaginatively acknowledge that in its history temples were likely houses that kept Muay Thai and transmitted its form, for centuries (perhaps even in some modest Shaolin, temple-kept, non-government sense), a magic-imbued Muay Thai that is likely lost to today (practices outlawed in 1902). But still, what is its religion? Are Muay Thai fighters doing anything religious that is intimately connected to their performance? Is the arduous and obedient training in Muay Thai in any sense a spiritual practice? I believe they are, and there is. "Soul Stuff" and Muay Thai Anthropologists and historians who have studied the history of Siam (Thailand), and Southeast Asian culture in general, have wrestled with thinking about the fundamental nature of its social organization, as it is has appeared throughout the centuries. Mainland Southeast Asia from about the 1st century AD went from small settlements and polities to eventual powerful trade centers and then empires, a transformation likely fueled by a connection to India. The great temples of the Khmer, the religious cults to Shiva, the establishment of potent royal figures has largely been credited to what is called "Indianization". The culture of India pervaded Southeast Asia in a manner some compare to how Roman culture passed over Europe. The presence of statues to Ganesh, the identification of Thai royalty with Vishnu, even the invocation of the Ramayana in the Muay Thai Ram Muay are all expression of this period of "Indianization" begun nearly 1,700 years ago. This is a very long lineage. Atop this layer of pronounced Hindu/Brahminist influence sits Buddhism itself, which transformed the politically Indianized culture further. It's important to realize that these two very strong influences are not (fundamentally) in conflict. The spiritualities expressed in Hindu form, especially in political contexts, were even furthered in Buddhist devotion. The forms of its expression are different, but the fundamentals of power and spirituality remained the same. And this is important to understand. Power and spirituality are bound together. We can see that even at a basic level questions about identifiable religion likely have braided answers. For historians the answer to why Hinduism, and then Buddhism, were able to powerfully graft onto Southeast Asian culture lies within the supposition of an older belief, something that lies below these historical sedimentations - why the receipt of salvation religions which gave voice and form to this older belief. It is this older belief (some have called it a "cultural matrix") which in a sense glues together the practices, and informs sociability itself, even the secular sociability of today. And this is the belief of "soul stuff". This belief interpretation was first put forward by the preeminent historian of Southeast Asia O. W. Wolters (link at the bottom of this post), but for our purposes this summation of it by Michael Charney in his book Southeast Asian Warfare: 1300-1900 (2004) is a very good entry point Everything in the world has a certain amount of stuff. A potency. And they do not have it in equal portions. Rocks have it, but a particular rock might have a great deal of it. Humans have it, but particular humans may have much more of it than others. Importantly, this is something you can acquire. You can have more soul stuff than you were born with, and it is something that can be transmitted between persons & objects. This can happen through association, physical touch, and a host of magical-religious practices. You can read into Wolter's original discussion of soul stuff here. Because he is investigating the origins of the Indianization of mainland Southeast Asia he is looking at the role of kings, and rulers of polities. For him it was the de-emphasis on lineage, the generational demand for personal performance, proving and acquiring "soul stuff", which kept Southeast Asia from adopting some of the more rigid social forms of Indian culture. Instead, because of the very nature of soul stuff in Southeast Asia political power had a fundamental agonistic quality to it, generation to generation, locality to locality, and (very importantly for our purposes), martial power and spiritual power were expressive of a single thing...soul stuff. He accounts how early kings were defined by their "prowess" and this prowess was expressed into only in terms of martial force, but through religious, aesthetic devotion. Within this under-fabric of Southeast Asian culture was a strong, bonded identity between physical prowess and spiritual prowess...and, the braiding of these two was expressed through "charisma". As Wolters writes: In the beliefs, the under-beliefs of Siam, the "priest" and the "warrior" were not separate. They were brought together in single personage, and this personage could be recognized by their charisma, their aura, which drew people to them. I think its important to realize that this isn't just a description of the rulers of polities. It actually describes how power ("soul stuff") is distributed throughout the entire lived world. Kings are said by historians to have mandala power, which is to say a certain sphere of influence which flowed out like candle-light in a circle. The further away from the center of this mandala power, the less it exerted itself. But lessor nobles, lessor polities also had spheres of power, a function of their charisma. In fact arguably, everything with soul stuff had circles of charismatic power. Some with very little, some with much more. The religious development of Siam can be thought of as expressing this much deeper, older sensibility toward the world and others, something that still persists (quite strongly) even today. It, in a sense, may animate present day Hinduistic and Buddhist beliefs with a particular logic of personal potency. Conquerous kings were also ascetic spiritual achievers who used the charisma of their personal achievement - the sign of their "soul stuff" - to glue kingdoms together. Here Wolters outlines how the much more ancient belief of soul stuff expressed itself in Buddhism through the personal spiritual achievement of Kings. The transmittability of soul stuff found firm expression in the Buddhist principle of merit (edit in: in later posts to this thread hpon, punna and merit are shown in the Thai concept of barami). I'm now going to race ahead to the subject of Muay Thai and religiosity, in this context, and work backwards from there. When one is training in Muay Thai in Thailand one is training in soul stuff. If you are not from the culture you might not realize or recognized why you are being trained a certain way, or even what qualities are being instilled in you, but if you undergo the process you are training in the acquisition and signification of soul stuff. And this is to some degree a spiritual ascetic practice, even if you approach it from a completely secularized place, and even if your trainers are not consciously expressing religious beliefs. This is the older form of the marriage of the martial and the spiritual, as it has been inherited, and to some degree sublimated, by the culture. And Thais who train in Muay Thai, who are part of the culture, are training in "soul stuff". The art of Muay Thai is developing the "prowess" which will eventually be expressed as a charisma (as it is culturally defined). One of the most subtly cutting criticisms of contemporary Muay Thai that we've heard was in a casual conversation between the legend Karuhat Sor. Supawan and WBC World Boxing Champion Chatchai Sasakul, both prolific fighters in Thailand Muay Thai's Golden Age. "Fighters no longer have charisma (sanae) today" they mourned. This wasn't a complaint about marketing, it was about the nature of the fighting itself. Fighting does not express the charisma that it once did. The reason why this criticism silently cut so deep is that the development of charisma was actually the point of Muay Thai fighting itself. Charisma is the aura one has, the capacity somehow (magically) draw people to you. It is a certain kind of personal gravity, which directly exudes your "soul stuff". It is your ittiphon, your power to influence. And it can be shown or lies in parallel to your ittirüt, which is your invulnerability. The connection between charisma and invulnerability is what lies beneath classic Muay Thai forms. The emphasis on ruup (posture, visible form), balance, freedom, control, and the fighterly aim of not necessarily "damaging" your opponent, as so much as dominating your opponent in a great variety of ways, including physical damage, is about the cultivation of charisma. This literally is the same kind of charisma of ancient kings, within the same scope of connective beliefs, trained for performance in the ring. Because Thailand is predominantly a Buddhist culture - and has been for much more than 1,000 years, the cultural form of that charisma has Buddhistic expression. In the same way that Buddhist novice monks seek to discipline their bodies, temper the hotter emotions, cultivate a kind of stoicism under travail, the young nak muay seeks to do the same. And great monks, through their ascetic practices, acquire great charisma revealing their "soul stuff". In some sense Thailand's Muay Thai has split off from many of the religious forms of charismatic development, but still expresses the same spiritual reality, even if in practice if falls into a broken, or and much less unreadable state. The ascetic practice, and the hierarchies of respect and rite in the gym are cultural pathways of "soul stuff" development. And arguably, anything you are learning in a Thai gym, whether it's the ability to endless do knees on the bag, or how to stay calm under sparring pressure, or how to properly block, or how to compose yourself under the exhaustion of padwork, are all actually about charisma, a projected invulnerability and magnetic aura, each fighter of which would have their own version. As Wolters emphasized, it is both a physical prowess and a spiritual prowess. Soul Stuff and the Magical Policeman The role of magical beliefs in the history of Muay Thai development is likely quite pronounced. If you would like to read an account which exemplifies the parallels between combat prowess and magical capacities, read the biography of the southern Thai policeman, Khun Phantharakratchadet (1898–2006) whose prowess occurred in the decades of Muay Thai modernization, and Thailand's rise as a modern Nation. It is important to understand that the development of fighting techniques (the knowledge of them, wicha) were historically not divorced from the development of magical techniques (that protected or aided you). Wats, traditionally, were likely a home for both. The tale of Khun Phan, a legendary real figure of Thai early modern 20th century history, recounts his advance as a physically small man who was a fierce fighter, taking on the nakleng gangs of the Sangkla area, and eventually other regions of Thailand, armed with his knowledge of the fighting arts, as well as study of the magical arts at the foot of the famed monks of Wat Khao Aor Or. in Phattalung. He even became proficient in Western Boxing (& perhaps Judo) studying at a wat in Bangkok, as part of his advancement as a policemen. He was a man of a remarkable amount of "soul stuff", much of it acquired through rigorous study and practice. The magical arts of Amulet protection, and sak yant are expressive of this spiritual under-logic of soul stuff. Everything has soul stuff, but pieces of material can be imbued with soul stuff, and because soul stuff is transmittable, it can be conferred to you through proximity or practice. Holy men, through rite and ritual can transfer soul stuff to you, and through spiritual practice you can hold it. Sak yant (sacred tattooing) are often devices of "soul stuff" transmission. They are thought to express/transfer the soul stuff of animals (tigers for instance) or gods, or heroic figures. They are thought to bring powerful energies, and often sak yant specifically bestow powers of charm or charisma (the ability to influence), or the power to command (amnat). In some cases creating invulnerability. Today, in their more commercial form they may be more thought of as one-way transmissions, but originally they involved spiritual devotion and self-transformation through practice. You achieved their powers through a growth in personal "prowess". It's enough to say that in the body of magical beliefs in Thailand we can see the nexus between martial prowess, spiritual power and charisma. These beliefs and practices, based in the logic of soul stuff, developed in parallel to the fighting arts of Thailand. Khun Phan at the age of 90 commissioned a Jatukam Rammathep amulet, believing that the spirit of Jatukam Rammathep had helped him solve a difficult murder case. The creation of this amulet by such an auspicious person, under the blessings of the Holy Pillar of Nakhon Si Thammarat, thought to be invoking spirits of great personage and Buddhistic merit created incredible demand. The substance of the Holy Pillar, the legendary policeman Khun Phan, and the proposed spirits Jatukam Rammathep, were put into physical objects, which then could transmit soul stuff to you. This is a logic of soul stuff. My brief detour into the magical arts is not to ascribe them or their complex beliefs to the spirituality of Muay Thai in particular. One is not to exclude them either, as still there are amulet practices of blessing and transmitted soul stuff, including those of the mongkol and prajet, or the invocation of dieties in the Ram Muay to begin every fight. More important is not to locate any set of beliefs and practices as necessarily religious, but rather to look at these beliefs and practices to understand how the logic of soul stuff transmittability expresses itself in Thai culture...and in Muay Thai itself. Magic is part of its heritage, but that heritage is founded on much deeper, metaphysical ideas on how power works in the world, and between humans. And this belief, I would suggest, is embedded to this day in even the most secular-seeming aspects of Thai life. There is a Buddhist perspective which may say that because of karma and reincarnation everything we do is spiritual practice. Everything we do is an attempt to alleviate or ease the suffering of existence. In this spiritualization of the world and culture, the belief in the transmittability of "soul stuff", of unequal souls, also can be seen as universal and pervading every practice. Much as a Western philosopher like Foucault may see all our interactions transpierced with discourses of power, all sociability in Thai culture can be seen as practices of soul stuff. It's development, its preservation, its signification, and the ways in which everyone takes position in society in relationship to powerful personages (whether they be local persons of aura, or National) who exhibit soul stuff. It is a kind of religion of existence. Soul Stuff and Muay Thai We can leave aside magical practices for now, and think about how soul stuff and Muay Thai relate. The first and obvious way is that because Muay Thai is a public performance the job of the fighter is to express "soul stuff". That means knowing the cultural signatures of "soul stuff", being practiced in displaying them, including aspects of command and control, invulnerability and of course charisma. Perhaps no fighter in history displayed soul stuff more than Samart, who expressed a very Rama/Vishnu quality, a potent equipoise. You cannot thoroughly understand Samart's greatness without seeing just how much (read here:) he signified "soul stuff" within the culture. This photo of him with the vanquished and bloody (aggressive, Muay Khao great) Namphon, gives some sense of it. But the signatures of soul stuff in Thailand's Muay Thai, and even kinds of personal charisma are not only of one kind. A great, unrelenting knee fighter like Dieselnoi will have tremendous soul stuff. A great pressure fighter like Samson, or a complex style fighter like Chamuakpet (naming legends of the Golden Age). There are various expressions of soul stuff. And, unlike in Western conceptions of "great fighters", soul stuff includes many things beyond the fighter. Samart for instance did not fight up very much in his career. In a Western mind this may be something of a demerit when compared to other great fighters who did. But because soul stuff is transmittable, and governed by association, the fact that Sityodtong gym was so powerful to be able to dictate favorable matchups (or at least avoid unfavorable ones) actually goes to Samart's soul stuff. He is part of a local nexus of power. Sityodtong has soul stuff. Master Tui has lots of soul stuff. Samart has soul stuff. As much as we want to think about fights as being between two isolated fighters in the ring, the truth is that there is much more in the ring than that. All the soul stuff that brought these fighters into being, that is poured into these fighters, is in combat. (This is a big reason why many Westerners do not fully grasp the role of gambling in Muay Thai. It seems to them to be just a corrupt interference in "pure sport". But in fact it is a layering of the contest of competing powers, men with soul stuff outside the ring...for better or worse. Under the spiritual logic of soul stuff fighters are never just "them". They literally invoke deities with their Ram Muay. In their Wai Kru they evoke their teachers. All of their skills and ascetic practice in training is summoned, publicly, into the ring. Fighters represent and embody.) This is not fundamentally different than the spirit-logic of cosmic battle that governed warfare in the great Ayutthayian Empire 500 years ago. What has changed is "who" is seen to have soul stuff, fundamentally a question of changing culture and values. As to the practice of Muay Thai itself, in the training kaimuay, and in the ring, one has to grasp that the fighting art and the fighting sport cannot be completely separated. Traditional kaimuay are technical houses of the inculcation in soul stuff. One is learning the practices which will give you power in a physical contest, but a contest which ultimately is also a spiritual contest. The techniques of a particular kru, the styles of a particular gym name, are a practical knowledge of Thai combat power. And the conditions of its practice are necessarily those of discipline and ascetic self control. The fundamentals of posture (ruup), timing and balance are meant to create liberty in the fighter, and its presentation to the judges and audience. Specific techniques, ways of blocking, attacking, avoiding, punishing or damaging, controlling, frustrating, overwhelming, are a kind of complex grammar of soul stuff. You display that you have more, and in defeating your opponent, in some sense you take some of their soul stuff as your own. And, as fighters share the ring with you, they too can gain soul stuff through proximate association (if you have a great deal). For deeper dives into this here I write in some detail about the social conditions of Thai training practices through the thinking of the sociologist Bourdieu: Trans-Freedoms Through Authentic Muay Thai Training in Thailand Understood Through Bourdieu's Habitus, Doxa and Hexis, and here I write about how the philosopher Agamben's study of 13th century Franciscan monastic practices help explain the rule-following power of Thai gym training for Westerners: Thailand's Muay Thai Gym, Authenticity and the Escape from Capitalism | Agamben on The Highest Poverty The importance of this insight into soul stuff and its transmittability is I believe that it unlocks much of the question about the religiosity (or spirituality) behind Thailand's Muay Thai. Often it is simply dismissed altogether because it does not seem reducible to the few obvious, formal rites that surround Muay Thai fighting. And, the magical practices of its past do not seem to embody most, or even much of any of Thailand's Muay Thai as non-Thais experience it. I suggest that the logic of soul stuff is so prevalent, so shoots-through Thailand's Muay Thai, even in its most secular and commercialized expressions, its so omnipresent it is almost impossible to see by Westerners (and others) who can carry a different cultural view of power. It though is something that is much closer to a Chinese metaphysical concept of Yin and Yang, a base assumption which explains many diverse practices, whether they be spiritual or quite secular, woven into the perspective of a culture and how it bonds together. And, as the historian O. W. Wolters argued, these beliefs lay at root beneath very diverse cultures all across Southeast Asia, spilling well over any particular country's barriers. And...if you kept the logic of "soul stuff" in mind you would get a better sense of what the difficult training in Muay Thai is truly focused on...the melding of the spiritual and the martial going back perhaps 2,000 years, as it is expressed and conceived in today's contemporary culture, and as the art of Muay Thai itself has come to embody it over the past 100 years or so. For a the primary source on O. W. Wolter's concept of "soul stuff" read here:

This idea of "soul stuff" (from Wolters) is summarized by Michael Charney in his book on Southeast Asian Warfare, woven together with his own thesis from the historical record, that in warfare "soul stuff" could be captured, as expressed in the old cultures of headhunting.

adding my commentary notes: On pages 17-19 he introduces the concept of "soul stuff", specifically in the context of the "cognatic kinship" of the lowland regions of Mainland Southeast Asia: This kinship is one in which inheritance and conceptual descent passes equally from males and females. Importantly, powers (rights and otherwise) are not confined by particular gender. These are not family trees of continuous energetic progeny, of men or women, but rather individuals are emphasized by in the genealogy, by their performance. What he is breaking away from is the idea that "power" (however it is conceived, is much less structured by institutional positioning, and not even by lines of familial descent, than by the idea that through performance one can acquire, and also signify personal power..."soul stuff". You didn't get it from your "title" or your father, per se. If you've been in Thailand long you'll recognize the "big men" of political or social power. He though places this within a larger idea of "prowess", which some sense of martial performance. (In the appendix in the post above emphasis is on spiritual performance, even to the degree of asceticism, in Balinese and Javanese cultures which perhaps DO place more emphasis on direct lineage). The idea he's forwarding though is one of almost spiritual (or even charismatic) social mobility, as endemic to mainland Southeast Asia, achieved through performance, read as "prowess". You can see this social/spiritual mobility expressed in O. W. Wolter's summation: Cognatic kinship, an indifference to lineage descent, and a preoccupation with the present that came from the need to identify in one's own generation those with abnormal spiritual qualities are, in my opinion, three widely represented cultural features in many parts of early Southeast Asia. (p. 21) He views power to be, comparatively, performatively competitive, less restricted by bestowing institution or lineage. "Soul stuff" and the capacity to have it, or more importantly perhaps acquire it and display it, creates an under-logic of a certain mobility through achievement.

This is a transcription of Appendix A of the preeminent historian O. W. Wolters' History Culture and Religion in Southeast Asian Perspectives (1982, 1999/2004), covering a very significant principle of his interpretation of early Southeast Asian beliefs. It is for him an essential under-belief which animates meaningful social structures within different SEA cultures, and for the study of the history and meaning of Siam/Thailand's Muay Thai it can be particularly illuminating. It's not a text I could find online, so I put it here. For larger context on how the concept of "Soul Stuff" may be used to illuminate the spiritual nature of Thailand's Muay Thai, read: Toward a Theory of the Spirituality of Thailand's Muay Thai Miscellaneous Notes On "Soul Stuff" and "Prowess" by O.W. Wolters I became interested in the phenomena of "Soul Stuff" when I was studying the "Hinduism" of seventh-century Cambodia and suspected that Hindu devotionalism (bhakti) made sense to the Khmers by a process of self-Hinduization generated by their own notions of what Thomas A. Kirsch, writing about the hill tribes of mainland Southeast Asia, calls "inequality of souls". Among the hill tribes, a person's "soul stuff" can be distinguished from his personal "fate" and the spirit attached to him at birth. "Both the internal quality and the external forces are evidence of his social status." The notion of inequality of souls seems to be reflected in the way Khmer chiefs equate political status with differing levels of devotional capacity. I then began to observe that scholars sometimes found it necessary to call attention to cultural elements in different parts of the lowlands of Southeast Asia which seemed to be connected with the belief that personal success was attributable to an abnormal endowment of spiritual quality. For example, Shelly Errington in her forthcoming book, Memory in Luwu, chapter 1, sumange is the primary source for animating health and effective action in the world, and kerre ("effect") is the visible sign of a dense concentration of sumange. Potent humans and also potent rocks, for example, are said to be in "the state of kerre (makerre)". Sumange is associated with descent from the Creator God and signified by white blood, but this is not always so. Individuals with remarkable prowess can suddenly appear from nowhere, and the explanation is that they are makerre. Kerre is not invariably contingent on white blood. In Bali the Sanskrit word sakti ("spiritual energy") is associated with Vishnu. Vishnu represents sakti engaged in the world, and a well-formed ancestor group is the social form required to actualize sakti. But sakti is Bali is not related to immobile social situations, for Vishnu's preferred vehicle is "an ascendant, expanding ancestor group." Such a group is led by someone of remarkable prowess. Benedict Anderson in his essay on "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture," does not refer to "soul stuff"; his focus is on Power, or the divine energy which animates the universe. The quantum of Power is constant, but its distribution may vary. All rule is based on the belief in energetic Power at the center, and a ruler, often for concentrating or preserving cosmic Power by, for example, ascetic practices. His feat would then be accompanied by other visible signs such as a "divine radiance". The Javanese notion of the absorption of cosmic Power by one person presupposes that only a person of innate quality could set in motion the processes for concentrating cosmic Power by personal effort. On the other hand, the Power this person could deploy in his lifetime inevitably tended to become diffused over the generations unless it was renewed and reinvigorated by the personal efforts of a particular descendant. Anderson's analysis may recall the situation I seemed to detect in seventh-century Cambodia. In both instances ascetic performance distinguished outstanding men from their fellows, and in Luwu as well as in Java visible signs revealed men of prowess and marked them out as leaders of their generation. Again, according to Vietnamese folklore, the effect of a personal spiritual quality is suggested by the automatic response of local tutelary spirits to a ruler's presence, provided that the ruler had already shown signs of achievement and leadership. A local spirit is expected to recognize and be attracted by a ruler's superior quality and compelled to put himself at such a ruler's disposal. I have introduced the topics of "soul stuff" and "prowess" in a discussion of the cultural matrix, and we can suppose that these and other indigenous beliefs remained dominant in the protohistoric period in spite of the appearance of "Hindu" features in documentary evidence. I take the view that leadership in the so called "Hinduized" countries continued to depend on the attribution of personalized spiritual prowess. Signs of a spiritual quality would have been a more effective source of leadership than institutional support. The "Hinduized" polities were elaborations or amplifications of the pre- "Hindu' ones. Did the appearance of Theraveda Buddhism on mainland Southeast Asia make a difference? Historians and anthropologists with special knowledge must address this question. I shall content myself with noting a piece of evidence brought to my attention by U Tun Aung Chain which refers to the Buddhist concept of "merit". The Burman ruler Alaungmintaya of the second half of the eighteenth century is recorded as having said to the Ayudhya ruler: "My hpon (derived from punna, or "merit") is clearly not on the same level as yours. It would be like comparing a garuda with a dragon-fly, a naga with an earthworm, or the Sun with a fire-fly." Addressing local chiefs he said: "When a man of hpon comes, the man without hpon disappears." [my bold] Here is Buddhist rendering of superior performance in terms of merit-earning in previous lives and the present one, and we are again dealing with the tradition of inequality of spiritual prowess and political status. Are we far removed from other instances of spiritual inequality noted above? The king's accumulated merit had been earned by ascetic performance; the self had to be mastered by steadfastness, mindfulness, and right effort, and only persons of unusual capacity were believed to be able to follow the Path consistently and successfully during their past and present lives. Such a person in Thailand would be hailed for his parami, or possession of the ten transcendent virtues of Buddhism. A Thai friend tells me that parami evokes bhakti ("devotion"), and the linguistic association suggests a rapport comparable with what is indicated in the seventh-century Cambodia and Vietnamese folklore about the tutelary spirits. In all the instances I have sketched, beliefs associated with an individual's spiritual quality rather than with institutional props seem to be responsible for success. Perhaps de la Loubere sensed that same situation in Ayudhya at the end of the seventeenth century when he remarked: "the scepter of this country soon falls from hands that need a support to sustain it." His observation is similar to that of Francisco Colin in the Philippines in the seventeenth century: "honored parents or relatives" were of no avail to an undistinguished son. Others may wish to develop or modify the basis I have proposed for studying leadership in early societies of Southeast Asia. Explanations of personal performance, achievement, and leadership are required to reify the cultural background reflected in historical records, and in this turn requires study by historians and anthropologists, working in concert, of the indigenous beliefs behind foreign religious terminology. pages 93-95

I don't really remember their English because Sylvie spoke to them in Thai. I believe Kongtoranee though was a trainer in Singapore for some time, which usually means workable English. Cool that you did research and you feel good about it. Let us know how it turns out. Also, if you are there for a while consider taking a private with Chatchai Sasakul whose gym is not that far (a taxi ride). Former WBC boxing champion and one of the best boxing coaches in all of Thailand. There is tons of his stuff in the Muay Thai Library:

Adding in another connection between Greek Antiquity and the combat of Siam. Both were slave cultures, and the aim of warfare often consisted of the taking of slaves. This made the regard of an enemy quite different from that of the West where the aim was, often, the capture of (scarce) land with less regard for the enemy. The knockout, in some sense, may reflect this underlogic of Western land grab warfare, where the killing of the enemy may be a primary goal, whereas capture and control may be aims of slave warfare cultures because the captured enemy became your wealth. More on this as it relates to Thailand:

You'd have to hear from someone who has trained there recently, but an option to think about is Samart's gym in northern Bangkok. It's not going to be crowded like the most hyped gyms. It has the benefit of being run by Samart, perhaps the greatest Muay Thai fighter of all time, and a WBC World boxing champion (going with your background). I'm not sure how much Samart does in the training, but his brother Kongtoraneee was perhaps an even more accomplished MT fighter, and also fought for a WBC boxing championship is there. So you have a proper fusion of boxing and Muay Thai. Again, you would have to hear from someone who has trained there recently, gyms change all the time. It's kind of an off-the-circuit, but still reputable gym. https://web.facebook.com/samartpayakaroongym

Sorry, I didn't get to see your post in time before you editing it. First posts always need approval, I missed it.

Sylvie's made a very good comparison to food, to a nation's cuisine. You come to other cultures to eat their food. You don't come to eat your food. Yes, big business tourism will rely on giving visitors the food they are accustomed to, in hotels, in busy streets even. Hell, I am happy to find a good Hamburger after 10 years here, to be sure. But to have the cuisine literally be replaced, so that it no longer exists, so that it fits the tastes of foreigners feels like quite a loss, and actually undermines the long term potential of the culture, as an invested tourism destination. You can get that food in any country. The comparison to fighting styles is not out of place. I remember some fighters who have come to Thailand to learn "real", "authentic" Muay Thai, so to speak. They wanted to get away from the Muay Thai of their countries, where promotions are just "brawling". There was a kind of snobbery (in a good way) about coming to Thailand to fight...and then a few years on I see those very same fighters fighting almost exclusively on shows like Super Champ which are basically Western style shows. They came all the way to Thailand to escape brawl, only to find brawl. It's the same sort of thing. We bring with us our culture, often unconsciously. And we are comfortable with it, just as we are with the foods we like. I've seen this importation of Western training mindset not only in promotional rings, but in gyms too. Gyms as they hybrid between being commercial tourism houses, and as places that train Thai fighters end up absorbing some of the Western oriented training patterns and values. Thai fighters literally end up being trained more like Westerners. The entire fabric of Muay Thai becoming strained.

There is another suggestive productive branch to the Free Energy Principle application to Fight Theory in John Boyd's military thinking about combat and his model of the OODA loop. If combat is a form of information warfare, seeking to stress the opponent with information overload, John Boyd's fighter pilot derived theory may provide rich resource for thinking about where information entropy can occur. wikipedia on the OODA Loop.

This is a really interesting point. As Westerners (and other non-Thai cultures) import their values into fighting promotions, the kinds of things they want to see expressed and embodied by fighters, then I think it does also stand to reason that meaning of the training and fighting of children and young fighters also changes. The point of Muay Thai, traditionally, is not violence. It's not even aggression. It could be said to be about self-control, and the control over your opponent. If you change the point of fighting, then you have to ask whether this legit is something you would even want children to learn. You don't want to train children or even young fighters to be violent. Right? This is really the source of a lot of the Western misunderstanding of young fighting in Thailand. They've assumed that the purpose of fighting is what fighting is like in their culture. They miss the value-system of Thai fighting. In many ways its the opposite of what they assume. But, once they succeed in changing the Thai value system, so that fighters express different values...then their criticisms start to have more traction. They've turned fighting into what they believe fighting should be.

I think CTE is going to go way up, due to the influence of these promotions. Way up. A few reasons why: 1. Defensive excellence is being downgraded in terms of score, so fighters literally will not learn it. 2. There is going to be a lot more head hunting, which isn't the traditional form of fighting. 3. Thais learn to fight at a younger age. To some degree this is mitigated by the strong emphasis on control and defense oriented scoring, the lack of head hunting. But put 1 and 2 together, and bring it to younger fighters, its going to be epidemic. It's really hard to speak now about "Muay Thai" because even within 5 years the sport has significantly changed, and maybe more than once. Fighter skills have devolved, generally, over the past 15-20 years, but now with Entertainment Muay Thai driving the sport you are seeing very different fighting skill sets (less fluent). And, one imagines its just going to get worse, unless there is a backlash in Thailand. Traditionally though, the knockout wasn't chased in the sport, and the defensive awareness and boxing acumen of most fighters kept everyone pretty safe. We've met and known many, many high fight veterans and legends of the sport and almost none of them exhibit obvious signs of CTE. And most of those that do, that I've thought to take note of, have also fought in other combat sports after their career.

You might find this Thai training vocabulary list by Sylvie also helpful: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/muay-thai-vocabulary-understanding-thai-trainer

These are really great observations. Perfectly said.

Nice idea. I'm not sure how many there will be, but here is Chatchai Sasakul vs Manny Pacquiao. Manny wins his very first world title:

I think that with first fights its important to just lower expectations. They are a mental blur. It will be very hard to execute what you feel you know, and because first time fighters tend to hold their breath under the stress they gas out quicker than they think they should or realize. I think just get your cardio up to give you a bit of a buffer, spar as much as you can with an emphasis on relaxation, and go into the fight expecting it to be more out of your control than you think. If you can relax, have solid defense, and enjoy the first fight experience, you've already won. The whole point of first fights is so you can get to your second fight.