Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

a photo of statue of Phra Pirap, taken and stylized by Sylvie:

I am not versed in BJJ or its history and development, but I am drawn to the debate between Gi and No Gi training. Why train in a Gi, when (in MMA) you will have no Gi? Not to dive into this, invested people have their memorized arguments for one or the other. But what is interesting is the ways in which proponents of the Gi suggest that the Gi forces you to develop techniques and principles (on the broad scale: using less explosive strength, practicing more patience) that one would otherwise have a harder time developing. I suggest that the artifice of Thai Muay Thai, classically, is something like that. It is a kind of scaffolding that encourages the development of skills and tempos that, when they reach the highest levels, become extremely effective, even if the scaffolding is no longer there. It is a composite training. This is the value of performance.

I've written before about my theory that Phra Pirap arguably is the god of Muay Thai. There is no such officially designated god, but there is no doubt to me that this deity figure powerfully combines the elements that distinguish Muay Thai from many contemporary forms of combat sport fighting, and is in that way a protector for a call to preserve those precious elements that may very well be lost to globalizing modernity. What I wrote a few years ago: "There is a small holy statuette that sits on a mantel in our apartment. It is a bronze-looking figure of a man, a warrior, posed with a spear pointed upward at a diagonal across his body, and with the other hand near the spearpoint he holds a bouquet of green. His face is that of a demon. His body that of an athlete. He is a little known god, much debated in niche circles, Phra Pirap. He as I understand it is a kind of god of war and battle, but mostly is known as the god of dance, the one that leads the arts. At his left hand come together both the spear point and the bouquet. This the unfathomable combination of what makes up Muay Thai in Thailand. For us in the west there is a fundamental division in how we parse the world. There is the "real" and the "unreal". In Thailand these two things come together to braid into something else. People looking at fights want to say "that's a fake fight!" or "that's a 'real' fight!". What makes them real or unreal are supposedly the intention of the actors. But because Muay Thai is an art, and not only a sport, these things come together. It is ultimately both dance and violence. The reason for this is timing. Phra Pirap happens also to be the god of timing. Of finding the perfect moment. Nietzche made a big deal of this in Beyond Good and Evil. In Greek there are two important fundamental kinds of Time. Chronos is circular time, the time of the seasons. Kairos is the time of the moment, the perfect moment to act. Kairos makes an incision in Chronos. Phra Pirap is the god of Kairos. This is why he is god of the dance. This is why the Muay Thai of Thailand is both real and unreal. It carries the power of artifice into the world of the "real" of violence, to steer it. It recognizes the moment of change, and therefore may spend much of its time in the realm of the fake, the performed. It is steering the cooling schedule of the steel, when all the molecules are afloat and changing their positions. In the west we only think of linear time. For us the "real" of fighting is merely the degree of "heat" in a fight, and the application of force of one body against other bodies. In Muay Thai, for Phra Pirap, it is the point in the circle when real change can happen, it is the art of taking hold of that change and shaping it to a valued outcome. It is where the spearpoint and the bouquet come together." - original context here Some years on I reflect back upon how much I've come to believe this. It's why Muay Thai krus will urge you over and over "timing", "timing", "timing". Or, why legends will praise Samart's genius as found in his "eyes". The god itself appears to be a syncretic fusion of two gods, one related to the destructive powers of Shiva (hence the spear, perhaps), an emanation of Shiva, the other is the presiding god of Dance and Music, of performance. One of the conundrums that westerners face when trying to really delve into the intensity of Thai Muay Thai is how much the aesthetics of scoring in face relate to performing postures, senses of timing, playing narrative themes in a round or across rounds. These are the art of the sport. We in the west, especially the era of MMA's demystification of Kung-Fu and Karate bullshido, versions, experience the term "art" much in the vain of artifice. Something unreal. Something just surface. What traditional ring Muay Thai embodied though, I believe, are the affective potentials of performance, the unconscious fathoms of what a fighter can draw out far, far beyond "perfect" technique, or practices patterns. This, I sense, is the power of where Phra Pirap reigns.

We've heard from different people with varying success in trying to order the book through email from them (some complaining that there was no response). But I suspect that they have improved their process over the last couple of years since we first brought this book to everyone's attention. If it arrives safely please update us so everyone can know!

If you'd like to support our work on the behalf of the memory of legends, and the preservation of their techniques, consider becoming a patron: https://www.patreon.com/sylviemuay

Each photo should be enlargeable. Do consider finding a way to purchase the hard copy, if you have a way to get to the Thaismai store in Bangok. Here are our two walk throughs. We brought some copies of the book up to Chaing Mai to be sold at Pi Boy's Thaikla shop, which sold out pretty quickly. And this was a previous walk through visit:

Each photo page can be clicked on and zoomed into read the English section on each fighter

You can purchase this book at the Thaismai store in Bangkok.

Some follow up on one of the matches from Samart's career, his first boxing fight just before his match vs Dieselnoi. Netrnoi Sor Vorasingh vs Samart Payakaroon Netrnoi in his better days: YouTube notes on the fight:

If you want to understand the performative, operatic qualities and meanings of Muay Thai, consider the powerful role of performed "fights" at cremation funeral ceremonies. Here are legends Sagat and Pudpadnoi "fighting" at the cremation of the legend Sirimonkol: In world of Muay Thai as mashemup, as brought on by hybrid shows designed to appeal to younger, more internationalized Thai audiences, and to westerners as well, such performances would become meaningless displays...because "display" in Muay Thai would have lost its meaning, at least in its deeper context. Read about this funeral here.

A decent summary of the Ramakien here

I've always been fascinated by the performative dimension of Muay Thai. Of course there is the strictly danced portions of a fight, the Wai Kru/Ram Muay (in which deities are actually embodied), but also more subtly the role that posture, (Ruup), balance, (Ning) play in not only its aesthetics, but it's scoring. From the mechanical Force = Mass x Acceleration calculative brain, all these dance dimensions are read as artificial, ineffective, or even "fake", but for Thais instead they affectively tap into the deeper potentials of fighting, drawing on principles that make the fighting of Thailand ascend. In reading about the history of Muay Thai and it's role in the royal court, the way that it was presented to early foreigners, it seems like it was very closely related to traditional Thai Dance. You can read this article about a farang studying Khon Dance to give a sense of what Khon is. This is likely why Hanuman, the Monkey King, is read as a definitive Muay Thai fighter in prowess. above, Ravana, the demon king, fighting the white monkey Hanuman, in khon masked pantomime. I've long thought that Vishnu's ethereal archer's repose helps explain just how beloved Samart's disinterested Muay touches a loyal, aesthetic nerve in Thai audience. Samart, I contend, is read - perhaps unconsciously - as Vishnu/Prince Prah Rama (in the Thai version of the Hindu epic, some sources say Ram is a reincarnation of Buddha, and not Vishnu). And this means something. Muay Thai, ultimately, at its root, is operatic. This is much of what is at risk of being lost as it careens towards western Maul Ball, and mash-em-ups. It isn't just that the fighters and fights are becoming more unskilled, but also the sport and art is becoming unmoored from the deeper potentials of what it has been and what it is.

I don't really know costs around Santai. Maybe contact their Facebook page and ask them what a suitable budget would be?

I don't know about your gym and travel choices, but you should not budget in money you expect to earn fighting. In terms of budgeting I would consider any money you might earn from fighting as bonus.

The Intensive videos are here: Patrons get a discount, though 100% of the net profit during the covid crisis goes to the legends in the series, Karuhat and Yodkhunpon: As a patron, depending on your tier you can be eligible for discounts on these purchases. $5 patrons get 15% (link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17837199 ) of these purchases, and $15 patrons get 50% (link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/17837342 ) of of these purchases. The intensive series is supported by patrons.

Of course these can be used as a training tool, perhaps an ideal training tool. One of the problems of training in a single gym is that you can be exposed to a pretty narrow set of techniques (whatever a coach knows). What the Library does is show how much high level technical variety there is, and many of the reasons why. These are real sessions of instruction, many by legends. But...how you use that tool is really what matters. Do you seek out styles and techniques that appeal to you? How do you bring them into your own training. That's a question of your own creativity. But this is really going to the source. The Sylvie Intensive videos are more indepth, and probably something to explore after you are acquainted with the Library, I would say.

Here's a lot more, written in Thai (which I don't read, but I'll probably Google translate and bug Sylvie about), about the Reiban "Karate Master" connection, with Japanese language shots of Sagat Petchyindee and Dieselnoi (the publication of which, I believe, some of which of this kind preceded the release of the game), and cells from the Karate Master manga which show Reiban to be very tall indeed, some of the images reproduced below: It's quite interesting, for our theory, that in this manual above you have Sagat and Dieselnoi sitting on opposite pages - the author uses this photo to support the possible influence of Sagat Petchyindee on the character, but does not seem to be aware of their fight history, or consider the impact Dieselnoi may have had on the Japanese fight imagination up to that point.