Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Hey, thanks for that! The forum is nice because it gives everyone room to think and go on about things, and to cover topics that might not fit in a Facebook post, or even a blog post. Very cool that you enjoy it all!

Sikak Phya Sri crossing on Charoen Krung Road - Bangkok in 1912. This is the year Prince Wibulya returned from study in London and began teaching others the Judo he learned.

Yes, definitely. And in fights. It is unclear if judges will simply ignore the point on throws and trips that technically break the rules (the rules on this are not something Thai fighters ever see printed out), or, if the gray area, or out-right flagrant fouls will even be awarded some sort of credit, if done with panache, if the ref in the ring doesn't warn. I've seen a lot of questionable back of the calf trips that can be done with flourish, and in fact one female gym in Chiang Mai regularly does them in fights. I think to pull these off you have to really dominate with them, and have style, at least outside the National Stadia. I don't watch enough National Stadia fights to see if fighters there get away with them. A notable gray area, as well, is not tripping with the inside of the foot (must be top of the foot). In training everyone uses the inside of the foot because it's not painful to you or your partner. I imagine that there are more than a few inside of the foot trips in fights, simply out of habit. One element of the flair that Thais have learned to use is that the flair really takes these kind of moves, stylistically, away from the aesthetics of Judo, so it could be that that sense of style helps blur the line.

I think it's really instructive when thinking about the rules of Muay Thai to consider the influence of Judo, and the Nationalistic identities involved between the two sports. It's important to see that as Thailand moved toward modernity after the turn of the 1900s, just as "Boran" schools of Muay Thai were formalized by King Chulalongkorn (1910), Thailand was also encountering Judo which was being spread and internationalized out of Japan, as an act of modernity as well. (Judo's founder Kano Jigoro was a moral Educator, and was influenced by American and European philosophies of education.) Two years after Boran styles were official recognized, and teaching masters designated, royalty returned from study abroad in London, where Prince Wibulya learned Judo. He began teaching Judo to interested parties in Bangkok. By 1919 civil servants and officers were being taught both British Boxing ("civilized" fighting, as the world would see it) and Muay Boran, under a single discipline which is best broadly termed muay, they were also taught Judo. This is the cadre of a class of the modernizing, many would say, westernizing forces in Thailand, transforming its governance, and making itself open to the world. Read the Modernization of Muay Thai Timeline for more details. In 1921 the first permanent Muay Thai ring was set up in Thailand, at the same Suan Kulap College, for not only Muay Thai matches, but British Boxing matches as well. You can picture the cadet, civil servant, internationalist feel it must have had. Before this time all rings were festival rings, set up just for events, the biggest ones staged at the Bangkok city pillar. To give an idea of historical perspective, This ring predates the introduction of Karate to Japan from Okinawa. That's right. A Siam prince was teaching Judo in Bangkok, and western boxing fights were being held in a fixed ring in the Capitol, even before Japan had received Karate. In fact, Judo arrived in Thailand a few years before it reached Brazil, where it would eventually grow into its own powerful tradition. Not Judo - Why Some Throws Are Illegal All this is prelude to say that that these euphoric, modernizing trends did not last in Thailand. Over the next decade Western Boxing would have a lasting impact on Muay Boran, for instance the civilizing adoption of gloves (formally, 1928), and it seems that Judo would also grow in this early time period, the Ministry of Education established inter-school Judo competitions (1927), but at a certain point while western boxing continued to influence Muay Thai all the way until this day (Thailand's biggest stars have been western boxing stars, not Muay Thai stars, one could argue), it became aesthetically paramount to make clear that Muay Thai is NOT Japanese, and therefore anything that gave a whiff of Judo in the ring was formally made illegal. Restrictions On Foot Sweeps This I believe is the key to understanding the meaning of the written prohibitions against certain moves that are found in the few written rule books available. The somewhat vague rule is no "leg sweeping the opponent using the calf or inside of the foot". What is this inside of the foot? To really understand what is being talked about you have to look at actual Judo foot sweeps. The "inside of the foot" is connected up with the use of the bottom of the foot. This also illuminates the prohibition against "tripping the opponent with the ankle". If this isn't clear, it isn't any part of the ankle, its those Judo trips that use the back of the ankle. Thai officials and probably fighters - and I suspect this developed after the resented Japanese occupation of Thailand in World War II, which corresponds to the opening of Rajadamnern stadium (1945), and then Lumpinee (1956) - came to distinguish Muay Thai from Japanese Judo. There was a history of Judo in Siam, reaching back decades, but after Thailand was occupied by ultra nationalist forces, and used as a staging area for it's Greater Asian conquest, as an ally, ended up producing a chill between the two countries. At some point you did not want to "look Japanese" in any way, at least this is something I suspect from where we have gotten to today. You can read an enumeration of illegal moves in Muay Thai here. When you look at the Judo sweeps below you can see exactly what the later written rules were trying to bar. These rules were likely not written rules for decades, but an unstated shunning of all things Japanese in the self-identity of Muay Thai as essentially a Siam, and then Thai fighting art. I can remember Master K admonishing Sylvie - Master K was in his 70s at the time, had fought in the 1960s, and older generation - "Do not be a shrimp (curled in posture), you are not Japanese". And even to this day when Sylvie was learning a borderline illegal throw if you do it incorrectly (it isn't technically illegal, but it has an unexpected force of a Judo like move, invented by Karuhat as far as I can tell), I heard a Thai yell out that it was "Japanese!" with some disdain. I've written about some of the tensions between Japan and Thailand, as Japan tried to assert it's martial, Karate-based fighting efficacy vs Muay Thai. It feels like even since World War II there is still a Thai combat self-identity that distinguishes itself from Judo. There is another prohibition in the written rules that isn't completely clear, which involve locking an opponent's arm, (Sport Authority of Thailand, 2002) rule 16.2 (English translation) states that, “throwing, back breaking, locking opponent’s arms, using Judo and wrestling techniques” Using the same interpretative framework, it is actual locking of the arm as in a Judo "lock", and not just immobilizing an arm as you often have in Muay Thai clinch. Again, nothing Judo! Nothing Japanese. Gradual Change in the Rules Note: all the technical descriptions on the illegality of trips and throws can be bent, in practical terms, if a fighter is very artful about the trip, and distinctly gives the impression it was not a foul. There is an element of deception in real ring scoring. I'm not quite sure when it was, but sometime around the early 2000s maybe National Stadium Muay Thai started to accept artful foot trips as long as the did not violate the kind of physical descriptions found below. I strongly suspect that the original prohibitions were not ever written down, but everyone understood and wanted nothing that even remotely felt Japanese (Judo-ish). For this reason there likely developed just an aesthetic prohibition against any foot-trips or sweeps, if only because they were ugly or low...not-Muay-Thai. This probably contributed to clinch attacks being much more continuous and fluid in style in the Golden Age. As fighters started to explore the legal and aesthetic lines with trips and throws, it seems that a much more grounded, strength-based and locking clinch style also co-evolved, something that a lot of people who love Thailand's Muay Thai bemoan. Foot sweeps came in (still technically not Judo-esque) and the clinchers became locking clinch fighters. Artful Ways Around "Not Judo" - Developing Muay Thai It isn't only clever but still legal sweeps, throws and trips that have developed inside the rule set, ex-fighters like Karuhat and Rambaa I've seen work out edge attack throws that remain legal, and skirt the "no hip throws" prohibition. You can see Karuhat's beautiful throw here: And there is this total improvisation by Karuhat, which I filmed in real time of his wheels turning. You can see him develop the counter to the wall of china, moving it away from a waist grab tackle (which can be illegal), to his preferred attack of tipping the opponent, using the thigh as a fulcrum: And Rambaa's trip/throw designs can be found below. Interestingly Rambaa is a Thai MMA World Champion who trained and fought in Japan, and perhaps was exposed to Judo, so his Muay Thai application may have come from inventively exploring that line between Judo and Muay Thai [update 2020, since writing this I've seen this trip from several fighters, including Luktum in the Muay Thai Library as well]. Here is a graphic I made for Sylvie's post on illegal moves in Muay Thai, which you can read here, Muay Thai Illegal Moves: The above narrative holds my conjecture, combined with facts I've researched over the years. Nothing authoritative.

All reasonable thoughts, I just don't happen to agree with them But it's just a matter of maybe what we can call disposition. But I would say the idea that the Japanese don't still do some pretty funky fights presented as "real" we always have the incredible Floyd Mayweather vs Tension Nasukawa fight to admire which matches up nicely with the best of the 1970s and 1980s.

oh, that is very, very cool.

We'll be in Bangkok on maybe the 1st or 2nd, if he's available. Would love to film with him.

I don't really find the notion of the gap or the null in either of the links you provide, in fact kokoro feels very different. It feels like it's the beating core of ourselves, the wholeness or force. This is what is often experienced as threatened by the fighting gap in front of us, and why we take distance, from all things. But...I will say that it makes sense that if you dive deep into kokoro you might discover the keys to the void, or that the void and fear in front of you is a key to your heart or consciousness. But I think maybe this is kind of an extrapolation of the concept? Not something that people mean by it? It would be like saying that the English word "heart" implies "nothingness"...well, maybe, in a very profound way, but only to very few people. Would that be fair? What I find interesting about the gap, the fear-space, is that you don't even have to be profound to think about it. Everyone understands what this is. In fact I assume every organism has some experience of this, somehow. If someone stands too close to you when they are talking, you can feel "the gap". Is this kokoro? Maybe in a very philosophical way?

Where is he located? Bangkok? Would love to have him.

He was an ok fighter, he fought Sirimongkol and didn't collapse, but he was not awesome. Stiff, predictable. But come on, a running tackle? It's not dirty, it's just incredibly unskilled. Saenchai KO'd Kem with a spectacular sweep. It's possible, of course, but also a tackle is a pretty good way to present the opportunity to take the dive. Fujiwara had a (quite literally) unbelievable 99 KOs in 126 wins. I think it is fair to say all 99 of those KOs were not likely, well, real. All of these Japanese belt fights are extremely dubious in my book, including recent ones. There is no way to tell, but the propensity for fake Japanese fighting and nationalism is quite high and well known. They have been run out of the country, by some report, attempting to buy off refs in Thailand (for instance in the 1982 Martial Arts World Championships when the only Japanese fighter who won was by disqualification). Flying out refs means pretty much zero, unfortunately, if a fighter is KOd. It's still likely going on today, this Japanes show. The 105 lb Lumpinee AND Rajadamnern champion, at this moment, simultaneously (wow, he must really be good!), is a Japanese fighter from a very connected gym. The only fight video I can find of him is him looking like just a run of a mill Thai stadium fighter could walk right through him...the Thai in the fight just falls down...several seconds after a body shot. Honestly it looks like Sylvie could beat him. Maybe just highly, highly favorable opponent choices? Who knows, but something isn't right. It's just that the entire history of money and corruption in the Japanese fight game problemizes every decision, and makes it so you can only guess. You say legit! I say hmmm? Who knows? Thais go over to lose in China as well, it isn't just Japan. And with growing Chinese influence there will likely be many more Chinese victories coming in the next 5 years. I'm sure stadium champions are not far behind.

Could be, but some "tradtional" martial artists were literal artists, such as in the Sword and The Brush philosophy, and the warrior/poet traditions, where the refinement of the warrior included the refinement of the man, not to mention the rise of the Budo philosophy (self-cultivation) in early 20th century Japan. If it was a mis-translation it fit with many Japanese ideas about what we call martial arts.

Sylvie has long talked about forming a single thing with her opponent, Spinoza - my favorite philosopher - would advocate for that.

The Psychology of the Space I've had some people tell me that they don't quite understand what I mean by "fight space" or the gap. If you position the two fighters it's simply the space that falls between them. In a sculpture it could be called the negative space, the space where no material is, the hollow space between them. But, visually what it is and its psychological import comes out of how the brain represents the body to itself, in a kind of virtual space. It's what allows us to complete physical tasks without looking, or be able to feel the end of a point of a pencil, as if it is an extension of your fingers. It's our mapping of space, and ourselves in it. In the sci-fi movie Dune there is a great little fight scene which depicts elements of this physio-psychological space, as in this sci-fi world there are protective force fields in hand to hand combat. These force field zones invoke our own zone of protective sensitivity, the dangers we feel instinctively when too close. Interestingly, in the scene, the way the shield is defeated is by moving the blade slowly. This can be related to the use of tempo in fighting, and in really high level fighting the delay, moving off-beat, which is something I'd love to explore a little in a future post. This matches up with the metrical meanings of how caesura is used in poetry, coincidentally enough, the way caesura, or gaps work against anticipated rhythm: watch it here Here there are two envelopes, the proximities that surround a single body. The gap or fight space is composed, in a way, in the area where these envelopes overlap. The movie scene maybe allows us to think about our heightened sense of space, around our selves, and how when moving through the gap it isn't just bodies clashing, but it is also the virtual efference copy of our motor actions, and a kind of halo body of that sensitive space that surrounds us, as both social and predatory beings in the world.

IFMA is quite different than Thailand's Muay Thai, so much so that Thai athletes were regularly befuddled by the scoring. I guess the way to say it is IFMA is kind of a compromise between Thailand's Muay Thai and International Kickboxing aesthetics, designed to invite International participation and ultimately success. Even wearing headgear changes the fight space, but the differences are numerous. It would be almost impossible to export Thailand's Muay Thai to the rest of the world and have it be comprehensible. I think IFMA did a pretty good job translating it all so it can graft onto western participation, but its a very different thing, imo.

It's not so much TKD, but in that book tracing the history of Karate itself, and how far it came from it's actual martial roots. It passed through a bottleneck in which almost all of its fighting context was removed, compressed into kata and Budo practices. It became quite rarified. And then modern Karate all descended from that bottleneck. I have some problems with this Ur-sourcing, this abstraction in its DNA. Then, it developed along various lines, each of them incorporating varying aspects of fighting, but each of those aspects also quite codified and restricted. For me this heritage of development means that there is a highly mediated relationship to the full contact fighting space that arts like Thailand's Muay Thai or western boxing were shaped by much more directly, as they developed through 10,000s and 10,000s of iterations of fighting in a very challenged fighting space. Altering the fighting space, the fear zone, providing safe passage or landing spots, really changes the metaphysical quality of what it means to relate to and stay in that space. This is just my opinion of course, but I find these difference qualitative.

It think for me almost all rule-cushions that cordon off the space and give "safe zones" all work to reduce what I am now calling the "heroic value" of fighting, which is to say, the metaphysical component of working on the substance of fear. All these fighting practices, as they have moved away from fear-fabric, certainly are admirable, but they lack the great substance which I feel has given fighting its value in culture throughout the ages. That isn't to say that they lack value, but they lack that particular value, at least by degree. I have the same feeling with IFMA Muay Thai, or Kickboxing (with its rule cushions). In a sense it's a little like watching a high-wire act, and a low-wire act, for me. Or, that the degree-of-difficulty, the degree of calm, required and performed is just at a different threshold. I know this will sound like I'm putting certain fight forms down, but I choose not really to look at and criticize those things I find to be lessor, rather than, it's more that I'm trying to celebrate the thing, the quality, I find greater. Part of the reason I am enamored with the notion of the fear-gap is that I think it can tap into so much of how we experience ourselves in the world, both physically and emotionally. So trials by fear-gap, for instance in full contact fighting, make very interesting acme case-studies.

wow, interesting. Do you have any kind of links to where I can look through that word? I did a quick Google and wasn't sure if I was finding the right stuff. I'd love to follow that path a bit.

I don't follow Karate, but I assume you cannot punch the head with the fists. This is huge change in spatial and fear dynamics. If you can't strike me in the head with your hand (or even elbows) as I move through the fighting space, this is a vast difference in how I will move through that zone.

It's definitely an artform, as are all fighting sports. The problem with Karate (at least point fighting Karate) is that without blows to the head you are changing the intensity of the gap, the fear-space. Part of what elevates fighting is that fighting triggers some of our most primal, defensive reactions and instincts. Protecting the head when moving through the space, the centering of the perceptive self in the head is a large part of what gives charge to the negative space. When this charge is lowered, or alleviated in someway, the heroic quality, the poetic value falls, just as a mater of course. Of course there are things that happen in that space which are full of fear. You can still be hurt, and still be humiliated. But, with the head off limits it is just a very different thing, making it hard to compare to fighting sports/arts where the head is at risk.

So, in a sense you are presenting the alter of the motherly, nurturing essence of women (feminism)? But in a more complete picture of, yes, violence. But also in the martial sense of a respectful, bound practice. Does that get close to the kind of message of women fighting in a gallery might have?

Yes, these are not "opposites" in Thailand's culture, I think I've come to understand, therefore in fight culture here as well. Westerners are somewhat obsessed with the "real" fight, and paint Thailand sometimes, maybe Phuket fights in particular, as potentially dubious and fake. You have the "tuk-tuk driver fights" and always the fear that if you come here, especially short term you will be caught in a fake fight. Westerners long for the "real" fight. It's part of the fantasy (ironically enough). But, as I said, these are not opposites to Thais. Instead fake (performed, staged, theatricized) and real exist in a kind of continuum. The presence of one does not cancel out or negate the other. A single fight can have both, performed elements and what others might call "real" elements. Is the Ram Muay real? Or is it fake? Well, its performed. Is a fighter's nobility after being hit real? or fake? I think this comes down to that performed elements, for instance public face, are very real things in the culture. Appearances have a weight to them. They aren't just thin veils to be torn down, revealing what is real underneath. People, families, communities work hard to create appearances. Fighters work hard to create them. How could this all be "fake"? It's no more fake than a painting is fake. (sorry to go off on this, but I find this cultural difference, and the mis-understanding from westerners really interesting)

I also have to say, this is incredible. I love, love, love that the performed nature of fights is inviting into an artistic space. I think this is something that Thailand already appreciates at a certain level, that the difference between the "real" and the "artifice" is not a logical dividing line. I also have to say that bringing fighting to art falls in with the things that I was trying to talk about in my metaphysics of Muay Thai. The idea that what fighters are doing is close to what artists are doing.