Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Kru Thailand in Chiang Mai is very sound defensively. You can see his training style in the Muay Thai Library sessions: https://www.patreon.com/posts/muay-thai-uncut-7058199 Also Kem Muay Thai just below Khorat. You can see his sessions in the Library as well.

Treat yourself to one of the greatest battles ever in Thailand. Here is a playlist of the 3 fights all of which happened in 1992 after Samson had won FOTY in 1991: Samson vs Lakhin Trilogy (playlist). Samson was known for his unparalleled toughness, both a Muay Maat fighter and a Muay Khao clinch fighter, a relentless force. Lakhin was nicknamed "Thai Tyson" for hitting way above his weight, a ferocious puncher to held the Rajadamnern belt at this weight. Fight 1 Fight 2 Fight 3 You can study both fighters here: #41 Samson Isaan 1 - The Art of Dern Fighting (64 min) watch it here #74 Samson Isaan 2 - Muay Khao & Western Boxing Excellence (59 min) watch it here #116 Samson Isaan 3 - Dern Pressure Fighting & Defense (44 min) watch it here #123 Samson Isaan 4 - Secrets Of His Pressure Fighting (122 min) watch it here and #75 Lakhin Wasantasit - Boxing & Muay Thai Organized Destruction (76 min) watch it here

Here's a follow up review by the guy currently at KeatKhomtorn:

This is something you really don't have to worry about. Thailand training is not super-pressure training. Basically, you can sit down at any point and ask out, or come and leave at any time. Plus, I have a very strong feeling that the 3 hrs is simply the window in which you can train in, how much you train is up to you. You can come at the beginning of the 3 hrs, or in the middle, or towards the end. It's more like: We are open and training is happening during these hours. You can make use of all of it, or only a little. That is my guess, given how training is usually the case. As for what that training is, I know it's a hard training gym, but we've only been there in off-hours taking privates. Best is just to ask that fellow on Reddit who is there right now. We were there many years ago when it opened. It honestly isn't a "real" Thai gym, in the sense that the way it is set up seems catered to tourists or somewhat affluent Thais? This is just my impression from years ago. It doesn't mean that it doesn't provide good very training (that usually just depends on the quality of padman, and I would imagine that they have good, solid padmen given the connections of the owner). We are usually partial to more organic, Thai style gyms that produce Thai stadium fighters, just so you have a more cultural feel of Thailand's Muay Thai. On the other hand, Kongsittha might be a very good gym if it's your first time in Thailand and you don't feel like roughing it. Rambaa's for instance, would be roughing it, for sure.

A fellow on Reddit asked about what he called "passive" Thai fighters, by which he meant relaxed, defensive, countering styles. I put together this list of Muay Thai Library sessions which really bring out that very difficult style, as we've been able to document it, including some of the context that I wrote in answer: There are several top Golden Age fighters (and post-Golden Age) who we have documented in the Muay Thai Library project with styles that are similar to those you describe. I'll link them here. These are hour long documentary videos with commentary, of them showing their style. In terms of study it this format is many ways better than watching them fight in old video (though watch their fights too), because it starts from the ground up, and focuses on their particularly loved techniques or tactics: #111 The Karuhat Rosetta Stone 7 - The Secrets of the Matador (83 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/56179745 #89 Arjan Pipa JockyGym - The Roots of Femeu (77 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/39307538 #118 Phettho Sitjaopho - Muay Femeu Excellence (70 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/63701377 #82 Chanchai Sor. Tummarungsri - The King of Teeps (54 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/35660908 #72 YodPitak Cho. Nateetong 1 - Art of Femeu Interruptions and Balance (73 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/30870395 #55 Manop Manop Gym 1 - The Art of the Teep (90 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/24379228 #47 Silapathai Jockygym - Master of Teep Distance (64 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/21484000 #40 Gen Hongthonglek - Muay Femeu Tactics & Mindset (70min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/19092801 #11 Karuhat Sor. Supawan 2 - Float and Shock (82 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/karuhat-sor-and-8329146 #7 Karuhat Sor. Supawan 1 - Be Like Sand (62 min) https://www.patreon.com/posts/karuhat-sor-be-7348562 You can see the full Library here, but above are probably the most femeu in the way that you described: https://www.patreon.com/posts/muay-thai-uncut-7058199 Of those above, Karuhat and Silapathai are absolutely the elite, Google their fights. Karuhat in my mind is probably the most skilled stylistic fighter in Thai history. Silapathai is just bonkers smooth. Arjan Pipa, above, isn't a top ex-fighter, but he was a lead trainer at Jocky Gym which produced some of the greatest femeu fighters in history. Fighters like Saenchai, Somrak, Silapathai, Lerdsila and others. He holds the blueprint for much of their styles. Chanchai was a beautiful teeper, and may have had the most revered teep game, second to Samart. Manop was Saenchai's padman for a long time at Yokkao, and is one of the best, most technical teachers. Gen Hongthonglek is a newer fighter and talks a lot about the femeu psychological game. The femeu style is one of the most difficult to learn - for that reason it's the most prized in Thailand historically - because it relies on timing and eyes, and a true sense of relaxation. In our documentation it allows us to dig into the hidden parts of the more passive femeu, what makes it happen. Highlights To Study Other great highlight sources are Muay Thai Scholar's Karuhat switching edit, one of my favorite breakdown edits ever produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9X6N2DmYbc Here is Muay Thai Scholar's Silapathai edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR13BDVMU7s Here is Muay Thai Scholar's Charnchai edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMrauD0Pow Here is Muay Thai Scholar's edit on how Silapathai defeated heavy punchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hshDy7g1xY8 1 Reply Share SaveEditFollow

Not easy. Popular BKK gyms at the moment are PK Saenchai and FA Group. A really interesting gym, outside of Bangkok, would be Ramba Somdet's gym in Pattaya, or Sor. Klinmee Gym which is 50 meters next door. If you took privates from Rambaa you would learn a very hardened, counter-striking, stand-in style. Both are small, family style gyms. Sor. Klinmee would have larger fighters if you are bigger bodied. Edit in: Just ran into this post on Reddit. Keatkomtorn gym is historically very solid. We've been there several times. The hardest thing about finding gyms is getting in-time reports because gyms change so often. Maybe you can ask them about the training. Keatkomtorn is traditionally a pressure fighting gym with strong clinchers:

I should add, thinking about this over time, that there were femeu fighters in the Silver Age. Pudpadnoi is just considered incredible by Golden Age fighters, for just how femeu he was, perhaps in the very same way that I'm talking about here with Samart, but further back in time. And, there were very femeu fighters contemporary to Samart, for instance Samingnoom who fought and lost to him twice. Identifiable though, Samart perhaps was the first one to float, in that disinterested way of his. The one to push it all to another place. And then, to ascend after fighting, to the place of entertainment star, an idol that rode the Golden Age enthusiasm that flowed after his retirement. A perfect storm.

This short essay series also confronts the aesthetics of Muay Thai, as a practice. Arguments that Westerners often come to train in Thailand as a matter of a project of aesthetics.

I'm just going to respond generally here. I think at 70 kg your best bet would be a gym in Phuket, because I'm not sure it would be easy to get a fight with a Thai in other parts of the country? Perhaps there are really experienced Thai female fighters in Chiang Mai who fight at 60? At least in Phuket you'd have a better chance of being matched up against another larger westerner as well? We're a little blind on the state of fighting promotions in Chiang Mai and Phuket, in the COVID era, but it seems that Phuket is having more regular shows than Chiang Mai at this point. In terms of gym recommendations though, we really don't know Phuket gyms, personally. Phuket Fight Club is a very powerful gym in Phuket that features a lot of Brazilian fighters on shows, that seems to teach a very disciplined, kick-oriented, balanced attack (based on how they seem to fight). At least with the good sized gym like that you'd have suitable training partners, and they should be able to get you fights...but this is just a view from afar.

More Resources and Video Discussion on Ruup Here is Sylvie's video discussion of what Ruup is, and how to train it in a Technique Vlog (you can get the full length technique vlog as a patron: Training Ruup : Here is a video compilation of the discussion of the Thai principle of Ruup:

Dutch style is a kickboxing style that took its origin from Japanese Kickboxing with Kyokushin karate influence. Kickboxing isn't really Muay Thai. Doesn't mean it is garbage, or whatnot. It's just a different thing.

Yodwicha's in Buriram, which is about 3 hours due East from Kem's gym. Other than Yodwicha I don't know of other privates though.

Ruup and Fatigue A previous post on Ruup and the Thai training style. It takes as reference cutting edge NBA performance science, how coaches basically can statistically detect what may be categorized as a breakdown of Ruup, which leads to ineffective play and also injury:

The Western preoccupation with "techniques" of Thailand, the unique geometries and bio-mechanics of a wide variety of elbows, knees, kicks, clinch locks & trips, etc, through which it largely appropriates the art, exporting it piece by mechanical piece does contain some elements of ruup. Which is to say that the mechanical mindset of "parts" does have a very strong attachment to "form"...and ruup is form. (I wrote about this some in 2016, in Precision – A Basic Motivation Mistake in Some Western Training.) As elbows are learned, weight transfers approximated with careful attention, limb and joint arcs traced in the air, kicks analyzed, trips executed, sometimes reconstructed from video examples, there is great focus on something like ruup (form). But, as the West sees something technical in form - and that is the word they use, really aesthetically - in Thailand its seen as a living thing, and importantly, as part of an overall composite expression of Self. The forms of techniques only make expressive sense in the context of a much more holistic, full-body form. And here form includes rhythmic as well as postural aspects in space. And these too in the West there are some aspects of attention: for instance the Muay Thai "rock"; or, the Muay Thai "stance". But, what appears to be missing, or lost in translation, is that the ruup of Thailand's Muay Thai comes from a feeling. It is not a tracing. This is why training in Thailand has a very particular advantage. While this feeling-born ruup of Muay Thai is seldom seen outside of the country, it can be found in practically any gym, and being in the presence of such ruup, as a matter of mirror neurons and the efference copy of our body in building motor skills, one gains a subterranean access to the development of Thai ruup, at the level of feeling...if one can put it that way. This is also one of the reasons why we elected to film informally, but at length, for the Muay Thai Library documentary project. We wanted to document, as much as possible, the full range of the ruup of great ex-fighters, living krus, and legends of the sport. It's because the art and understanding of any techniques that are captured only really gain their meaning in the overall dispositional nature of their ruup, as men. Among these are some of the greatest poets of Muay Thai Golden Age, people's whose ruup approached something special, unique, and meaningful. The secrets of techniques are found in the broader contexts of disposition and physical comportment, and it is this which really shouldn't be lost. This is also the invitation to look to the ruup of fighters and teachers, and not only to their techniques. Invitations to feel what it is like to be them.

This is an as-yet-unfinished post series on the deeper ideas of fighting as rite and ritual. This series speaks to the cultural, sociological value of fighting in Thailand, beyond its Entertainment Value:

I wonder why this statue spoke to me so strongly at this moment in time. There is something generous in its formalism, open and free even though stylized. There is something unexpected. The fighter trains, ultimately or at least principally, to hold themselves together under great duress, under all the signs of violence. And in the public arena of shame. We tell the fighter that there is no shame in losing, but in a very real sense that is a lie. The shame of a loss is what puts value and risk into a fight. It's not a question of damage. In a loss one leaves the ring feeling lessor, no matter how valiantly, or expertly one has fought. It is the shame of the social dimension of a fight, and it likely goes back to some very old human experience of rite and ritual. It is because fighting is the theater of this shame - as much as we throw light beams upon the winner - that fighting acquires a near-metaphysical meaning. Or perhaps I could say theological. This is the nature of ruup in a fight. It is the hand-craved expression of Self, cut right out of the heart of a person as if they were both the sculptor and the stone, put on display under the threat of its disintegration. It is the self-assembly of dignity, substance really, not only under physical assault, but under mental, emotional and even spiritual erosion. There is a firm line that runs down from a fighter's present moment of ruup - exactly as it is presenting itself, in this fight - to the histories of shame and loss of dignity they have endured as a human being. It is a living nerve-line. This is why how all the parts communicate amongst themselves, the continuity of their being and expression, matters. There are indeed culturally shaped armatures for this sculptural expression of the Self, a grammar of cohesion and dignity as it is read to be free, and there are real-world physical boundaries, a physics of how the body moves, and compositions under which it can defend itself and attack. These make up the art of the sport (art). One builds oneself according to these grammars, and this physics, to be assembled when under the duress of what ultimately is the ring's shame. There is something about this challenge, and the juxtaposition of this particular Walking Buddha that unlocks, for me, a kind of acme of what a fighter is doing, at the deepest level. This is why matrix-like analogies of certain fighters like Karuhat, Saenchai or Samart feel so apt, or Roy Jone Jr., Leonard, Ali. And this is also why the tough, enduring men of the ring, who seem to undergo the worse of it, survive and then thrive, also communicate a liberating ruup. And everything in between. The fighter makes a physical poem of themselves under the most tested of media, the heart sinews under the shadow of shame and fear. And its true, even (or especially) the losers have nothing to be ashamed of, noble is their submission to the contest, they carry the shame of loss and dissolution, as an extra burden. This is the blessing of the ring.

Grace Even Amid The Most Violent I came across this statue of the Buddha (photo at top) from the Sukhothai Kingdom and like electric lines of force it came to me just how important ruup is in Thailand's traditional Muay Thai. Ruup is the quality of one's posture, the very visible form that one presents to the world, attached to idea of public expression. One's ruup is a veritable visual signal to your inner states, and in a wider sense, one's character - what one is. For many who come to Muay Thai, or perhaps consume it, this is incomprehensible. How one stands, or moves, or expresses oneself physically, aesthetically, must be secondary to things like "effectiveness", or worse "damage done". It is not understood why things like balance - perhaps falling off a strike - or, more subtly physical stiffness would much matter. But it does. There are pragmatic reasons why a fighter would need balance, would need a certain physical limpidity without which her or his capabilities would be diminished. But why, if in the happenstance of the fight there is no deficit exposed by actual damage, by the failures of the opponent or the randomness of the clash, should it matter? To me this walking Buddha, returning to Earth from a Heaven, seemed to fill in the gap in explanation. Perhaps you too will see what came to me in electric lines of visual jolt when I saw this Buddha, full of upright grace, nothing and everything in surplus. Perhaps it is that the Buddha is in motion, whereas he is usually still. Somehow this communicates itself to the image of a fighter. But it is the sense that the human being, the fighter under duress can be a visual poem. It is the dimension of fighting that supersedes the Entertainment Value of a fight. It is the dimension of meaning. Why does a fighter's posture, a fighter's tempo matter? Like Rilke's Apollo's Torso, there is in a fighter a composition, that goes well beyond intent, and thus is displayed in ruup. It is the sum total of their endless hours of training, their conflicts in the training ring, their meditations on their selves, and all of their fights. It goes to the root of them, deeply burrowed into the Past, but it is not anchored there. It is also the line of the arrow that is shot from from that flesh, and that stack of thoughts that make up their lives, into a continuity of what they will be, and in that sense what will be. The clash of the fight, the terrible flame of suffering that sparks again and again as fear mounts and turns training dumb, the clash is only there to expose the ruup of what is. The performance of duress is for that purpose, and x-ray into the unseen. This is why the fighter's ruup, the poem of the human being, is so beautiful. This is why we visit the epic men men of the past and ache toward their impossible physical poetry. Because the flint of fighting exposes the shape of a Soul, and much like the form of the Buddha, says something that cannot be said. Something unspeakable. In the line of the shoulders, in the sway of arms, in the dignity of standing, the fighter's ruup speaks. It invokes a future. In a more Western conception: Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared. Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt, darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber, in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt, sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug. Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle; und brächte nicht aus allen seinen Rändern aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle, die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern. I'm writing more often by hand lately. Perhaps you'll get a different feeling about my words if you watch them in time.

I know these are stressful decisions, and you feel like you don't have enough information to choose wisely, but the truth is that its very hard to get real time accuracy of what is happening in a gym, and even if you did, the source of that report could very well be someone very unlike you, either in fighter needs, or personality. The truth is, whatever you choose you'll be having experiences unlike anything you'll have outside of Thailand. Kem's going to give you an up-on-the-mountain, beautiful gym, hard training which may feel kind of isolated. He's an incredibly good teacher, and privates with him would be so good (as with the other 3). Its isolation can cut both ways. It can give you a once-in-lifetime experience, especially if you don't know if you'll return to Thailand again. If you are very unsure, then going to Chiang Mai may be best because you won't be stuck where you are. You could go to Thailand's gym for a day or two, and then go to Manop's gym for a day or two, and FEEL which one fits you, and then dive into that one (or, even have the option of other Chiang Mai gyms). Thailand's gym is going to be much more of a local fighters gym, with Thai boys, Manop's is going to be more western, but still small and personal, with a great technical teacher. But, if you go to Chiang Mai you'll have the city to visit and motorbike around, which might really add to your experience. In the end though nobody can really take away the risk of the choice.

For background on the nature and use of Japanese mercenaries in Southeast Asia during this period, merchant and mercenary fused together Book Chapter 7 ‘Great help from Japan’: The Dutch East India Company’s experiment with Japanese soldiers excerpts, download below AND From the Book The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia download the full chapter here

Japanese Presence and Influence In Ayutthaya Reproducing a the chapter on Japan and Siam from the book MULTICULTURAL JAPAN Palaeolithic to Postmodern EDITED BY DONALD DENOON, MARK HUDSON, GAVAN McCORMACK, AND TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI This is a very succinct, but detailed telling of the history Japanese in the city of Ayutthaya, and their possible influence on the Kingdom, including the telling of the story of Yamada Nagamasa which sometimes is a bit embellished. It does set up the context for martial influence on Ayutthaya, including the import of valued swords, prized Japanese mercenaries, the problem of Japanese pirates, and contact with Ryukyu Island (Okinawan) culture.

At the confluence of 3 rivers, an annotated map of the capital Ayutthaya in 1687. French hydrographer Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772). He published in l’Abbé Prévost's "Histoire Générale des Voyages" of 1751 a map of Ayutthaya named “Plan de la Ville de Siam, Capitale du Royaume de ce Nom; Levé par un Ingénieur François en 1687” based on sketches made probably by the French engineer M. de La Mare

Buakaw's gym Banchamek gym (https://web.facebook.com/Banchamekgymtraining/) is probably the foremost kickboxing gym in the country, in that Buakaw himself is a kickboxing promoter and leading the way toward non-traditional K1 like fighting in Thailand. I know a few Thai female fighters have gone there to train in kickboxing to fight internationally. Also Venum gym in Pattaya seems to have kickboxing type influence (though I'm not completely sure.) A lot of Iranian fighters fight out of Venum and then seem to have Karate-type backgrounds.

Keep in mind, this is not a thesis or even a theory. This is just a re-framing I've experienced as a result of my research and reading, sharing sources. The historical record around Muay Thai before 1900 is very thin, so the degree to which we can project things back into that absence can be quite large. This is just bringing in new elements of context filling in some of the borders of that aporia with historical evidence and perspective. There is no attempt of proving something here, so much as maybe re-orienting the compass work of our projections.

Looking back to Ayutthaya in an attempt to discern individual styles or even techniques, as found in the historical record, runs straight into sheer projection, as there is almost no historical trace of fighting styles of the time. And the effort to ground regional Boran fighting styles with particular teaching lineages is fraught with mythologization and sometimes commercial interests, as if "true" lines of fighting techniques have been preserved and need to be defended through teaching trees for group identity reasons. Muay Boran is an ideologically intense and historically thin area of study and performance, frustrated by how shallow the existing historical roots are. As the legendary Arjan Surat once told us, speaking of the Muay Boran revival in Thailand, pointing to his own Chaiya teacher "If he didn't know, how do they know?" Arjan Surat (who you can study here), unlike many makes very little show about his teacher (below is a portrait he hangs of the training ring), instead he's been training ring-legends for 40 years. Attempting to reconstruct to preserve has its limits. Arjan Surat's Chaiya teacher: Bramajarn Khet Sriyaphai ปรมาจารย์มวย เขตร์ ศรียาภัย But taking up the notion of regional development of distinctive Muay Boran styles, and that there has been a cultural localization that comes from geographic isolation, we recognize the ways in which the geographically isolated Boran of rice-fields and Lao-decedent (Khmer) villages in the Northeast would have had distinctively different influences than say the Boran of the Southern peninsula (Chiaya), amid a littoral culture of trade which had been exposed to Malay, Javan & Indo-Persian (as well as later Chinese influences) for perhaps more than 1,000 years. That's 1,000 years of raid-and-trade culture, in the South. All these peninsula towns of the South were part of the substantial land-portage passage to India and Persia, a bridge between Persia-India and China. You can see Chaiya there. Perhaps more importantly, the entire peninsula was under the control of the 600 year thalassocratic Srivijaya empire (650–1275). You can see Chaiya listed below as a center of Srivijaya power. There is an 8th century Buddhist inscription in Ligor, among the earliest known on the peninsula. You can read a general summary of the Srivijaya empire here: The Srivijaya Empire: trade and culture in the Indian Ocean. It's influence on art, religion (bringing Buddhism and Brahministic practices) for centuries was likely immense on the peninsula. The Chaiya of Muay Chaiya came out of this history, a history of what has been called the "Mediterranean Sea" of the East, which positions the peninsula culture in the pathways of trade (and its warfare) itself, long after the Srivijaya had fallen. The Sukhothai Kingdom (previous to the Ayutthaya Kingdom, and upriver from it), sent as many as a 100 boats to exact tribute on the peninsula in the 1300s. Would it be too far afield to imagine that the very grounded, switching, torso rotations of present day Muay Chaiya dynamics (as taught for instance by Kru Lek in Bangkok) were also amenable to close-quarter maritime fighting, even aboard boats? If we are anchoring fighting styles in their regions, and real fighting contexts, the mixed cultures of port life, littoral culture and international trade as far as India and China, which extends back more than 1,000 years, do seem like candidates for influence. If Buddhism and temple architecture can be brought by a sea empire, one assumes that real-world fighting techniques also would cross-pollinate. While there is no direct connection of Srivijaya fighting techniques and Siam Southern styles, quite common and sought after in the 19th and early 20th centuries were practices in (religious) Magical arts. These were Brahman yants, rituals and potions said to imbue a fighter with impervious skin. Bandits and local chieftain authorities regarded these as essential fighting powers. These were reported of the Srivijaya warriors nearly 700 years before (in the year 1178, cited above source here). These practices were famous in the Wat Khao Aor in the South (Phatthalung), a historic center of the wicca of fighting magic built around a sacred cave thought to have been a place of worship for 1,000 years. It is not a stretch to imagine that these magical warfare practices, in part, came from the Srivijaya era and influence (Vajrayana Buddhism), woven together with Buddhism and Brahmanism that also was spread through the sea-faring Empire, distinct from the saiyasat magical practices of the Khmer Empire to the Northeast. (For more on the unique Brahman religious history of the mid-South.) If techniques of magical warfare practice can be transmitted, so too could fighting techniques and styles. You can read more about these magical practices in the biography of the famed early 20th century Southern policeman Khun Phantharakratchadet (1898–2006) (see the link at the bottom of this post). These are my photos of Wat Khao Aor, a kind of 19th century southern "Vedic" Magical University in terms of the fighting arts, still a very sacred place. On Khun Phantharakratchadet (1898–2006): read it online here Also as part of this thread:

a link to my map on Google Earth - in this graphic you can see the southern Siamese portage peninsula cities (yellow), the northern Siamese kingdoms (blue), western Indo-Persian trade centers (orange, to the left), the Malay archipelago cities (bottom, purple), and the eastern city centers on the way to China (purple left). It gives a sense of how vast the reach of cultures was in the Kingdom of Ayutthaya. You need to read the articles in the first post to specify it. In many respects this is about how to deal with historical fable. In saying that the lore of Muay Thai history is composed of fable does nothing to minimize it. In fact the stories of the roots of the art and sport go a long way towards orienting ourselves to its value, and in Thailand how Muay Thai is anchored can be of extreme importance. Peter Vail's article on the National symbology of Muay Thai is a good discussion of this: Muay Thai – Inventing Tradition for a National Symbol – Peter Vail PDF (full article) For me, as a Westerner coming to Thailand's Muay Thai I did so with a degree of naivete. Only very broad, perhaps exoticized pictures of the antiquity of the art, home-grown in the wars and battles of a faraway land - battle tested if you will - populated my conception. Visiting the ruins of Ayutthaya, or even seeing the brick reconstructed walls of Chiang Mai's inner city only gave more reality to what really were fable-istic ideas of Siam history. But, what persisted through it all was the idea that Muay Thai (and its Muay Boran antecedents) where uniquely Thai, and had developed in something of a cultural test tube, cut off from the outside world. This involved very broad notions that even things like Western Boxing were not really known to Muay Thai until fairly recently, or the idea that when Westerners came to fight in Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s this was some sort of breaking of the seal, on an otherwise closed evolution of the fighting art. Or the idea that today's pressures for Muay Thai to change under Western and globalized commodified forms were the first real radical disturbances of what Muay Thai was. Forgive the simplicity of these pictures. I do feel they are fairly common for people unconnected to a culture that is not their own. As I read I came into contact with theories of Muay Thai's origin in migrations from the North, and the similarities that are found in Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia (Khmer) and Laos. But Thailand's Muay Thai held a certain distinctness, a kind of bold relief, that seemed to cut it out away from those lineage connections. And, I was always aware that when other, culturally competing countries proclaimed their originality of Thailand's Muay Thai there was always a sort of ideologically game going on. They nearly always contain a kind of "Who's your daddy?" rhetorical force which is Asian culture is substantial. Finding and revering the root of something is of great importance, in terms of its meaning. That being said, the Kingdom of Ayutthaya features prominently in anchoring the very Thai-ness of Muay Thai's history. It was a rich, long standing Kingdom of much renown, and when the Chakri Dynasty founded itself in the new capital of Bangkok it took great care to actually build the royal edifices out of the very bricks and materials of fallen Ayutthaya. The name "Ayutthaya" was even put in the formal name of Bangkok itself. Bangkok was a New Ayutthaya, the unbroken lineage to Ayutthaya was extremely important. And even today there are Muay Thai/Muay Boran celebrations in the city of Ayutthaya on Muay Thai day. Ayutthaya is the ballast which allows the Muay Thai ship to sail, historically and ideologically speaking. It was for this reason why reading these essays were eye-opening for me. They pealed back the photos of the ruins of Ayutthaya and opened a window into just what Ayutthaya was. I've read them several times, pulling from them the brief first-person descriptions, and authorial summations which made Ayutthaya vivid. It was very different than anything I had half-conjured in my mind in the first years of my love for Muay Thai and living in Thailand. Instead of august ruins and fallen temples I saw a rich port city that was home to an incredible array of the worlds cultures. It was called "The Venice of the East" in its time, and like powerful trading ports presented a confluence of influences. And...importantly did so for 100s of years, longer than the existence of my own country the United States. If Ayutthaya in some way - symbolically, ideologically, and culturally - anchored what Muay Thai was, this was quite an anchor. Japanese mercenaries and pirates who brought their own fighting styles, fought along side Siamese warriors, and lived in the city for centuries came in contact with 1,000s Chinese junk traders and their families, who also lived in the city, in their own quarters. Indo-Persian troops who guarded the King in the 17th century, with their own warfare styles, no doubt in contact with Siamese fighters. And this is just in terms of martial events such as raiding, warring, suppressing pirates, exacting tributes, in which company was no doubt mixed. If one draws to mind the realities of what port-city life is like: gambling districts, gang crime, syndicates, drinking houses over 100s of years there must have been group on group, man on man agonism, where fighting techniques played out against each other. Even if peoples kept to their own kind in a highly structured society - and we know there were quarters for every culture - over centuries the cross-pollination in lived struggle, in back alleys and on docks had to have a certain cumulative effect of knowledge sharing. Even in the most ideologically restrained contexts when actual fighting is happening, what works is what is valued. Whether this is in raiding parties or in settling unpaid gambling debts there is little room for show. What is fascinating is that Muay Boran (Muay Thai) grew in part out of this melting pot of fighting style reality, the actual docks and floating gambling houses, as well as mercenary-enriched martial battles and skirmishes, but also retained its distinctness, and regional character. I suspect that this is something that Muay Thai (and perhaps even Siamese / Thailand) possessed, the ability to always incorporate the foreign, but to quite strongly mold it back into a very Siamese identity. To make it its own. To absorb and revalue. It does not really copy. It integrates. When Muay Boran was ostensibly "created", that is to say officially recognized by King Chulalongkorn in 1909-1910, and demarcated into 4 regional types, it actually was on it way out, so to speak. The recognition of the art was at the historical precipice of its modernity. By 1928 gloved fighting would become mandatory and Muay Thai would be reborn in the image of British Boxing, with weight classes, padded and roped rings, and fixed stadia. You can see a timeline of these events here. It was a time of a great modernization (and Westernization) of Bangkok as a cosmopolitan city of the world. In the year 1900 there were 3,000 British nationals working in the Bangkok police force. When you read about the modernizing years of 1900-1932, under the dialogue with the culture of foreign Nations from far across the world, and you read about the great trading power of the cosmopolitan city of Ayutthaya, you realize that this wasn't the first time for such a cross-pollination. New Ayutthaya was in the model of Old Ayutthaya, at the center of a great confluence of culture. There can be no doubt that in Muay Thai's history there are distinct regional styles of Muay Boran that grew out of geographic isolation. Muay Khorat (from the Northeast) was different than Muay Chaiya (from the south), and it is a suspicion that it was the building of railroad lines connecting Bangkok to Khorat (1900), the South (1907), Lampang (1916) and Chiangmai (1921) that produced an enormous flowering in Muay Thai, as styles that grew regionally, in 1,000s of festival fights came in contact with each other in the new rings and then stadia of Bangkok. Part of what is beautiful about Muay Thai, even today's Muay Thai, is that it has grown out of regional branches, branches of which experienced relative independent growth and stabilization within the cultures and customs of that province, and that these branches have periodically been brought together at various times and ways in history. The building of the railroads in the early part of the 20th century and the formalizing of the sport in the early part of the 20th century was one, the great economic boom of the 1980s and 1990s, and promotional Muay Thai of the Golden Age, another. These regionalizations of Muay Thai I believe were very important to its distinctive and rich character, the times that it did develop in isolation, in niches, in festivals. It gives it great particularity and definition. But, I think what the character of the Ayutthaya Kingdom also tells us is that these distinctive isolations also, for centuries upon centuries came in contact with other modes of warfare, other fighting styles, not in terms of adversaries (though that is no-doubt true), but in terms of cohabitation and mercenary/martial mixing. It is likely just an incredible mixed and mixing martial art. And has been for maybe 800 years.