Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

It is going well. There are several levels to this. On one level we are just looking for sponsors for a year long monthly show. The sponsorship is important because the whole point is to infuse an already existing scene with structured financial incentive. At another level those there are more comprehensive plans that I believe can change the fate of female Muay Thai in Thailand, and possibly the world. Because we are looking for biggest impact this would require greater cooperation and just getting a few sponsors together. I have a plan that really could radically change things. At that level I think we really need a single, far visioned sponsor, rather than a handful. So I really looking for the right fit. There have been several businesses and people who have said they want to be involved, but not at the visionary level we need. So, right now we're holding out for the ideas that really might change everything. I really believe this could alter the fate of female Muay Thai, and maybe Muay Thai itself. I think this is the answer. The buy in to this would be a drop in the bucket for most advertising budgets of international brands, and the incentives huge. But getting these facts to the right ears is pretty hard to do. These are visionary ideas. Not leverage, but they are important parts of a growing narrative.

The short answer to this is yes. In fact, not training. Training and fighting. These fighters are ultra elite because they fought, and fought a lot when young. I don't know enough about the sidebet sub-system that feeds and grows this top tier talent pool to know if something is fundamentally wrong, and it's not producing the same level of experience and talent. Maybe Muay Thai is just decaying countrywide at that level. I'm not sure. But the solution is just the kinds of female promotions we are trying to create in Chiang Mai. The sport has a still large amount of female participation, well above anywhere else in the world, but it is desperately in need of a secondary financial tier, the chance for Thai female fighters to raise their level. That's behind our efforts in Queens of the North for instance, which we are still working on, a regular, lucrative monthly promotion raising an entire fight scene like that if Chiang Mai, which does not rely as heavily on side bets. The other dramatic change would be to open the National Stadia to women. Fighters like Phetjee Jaa, Loma, Lommanee, Sawsing are absolutely capable of fighting at that level, and would dream of fighting there. Female Muay Thai in Thailand, for women, is decapitated in almost every way by this prohibition. Sylvie is also working to change this. There is almost no connection to the masters, though we have thought about doing something systematically, in Queens of the North can be put into action.

The Loss of Greatness? As an addendum, there really is a kind of possible harbinger to the future of female Muay Thai in Thailand, it could be argued that of the 8 great female Muay Thai fighters in the list, only 2 of these are currently fighting top talent AND had become part of the "unfightable" through the sidebet process of producing the countries elite fighters. Stamp, for instance, was not one of the top fighters at her weight in the country before moving to Fairtex, and despite ONE's hype, even today is likely not near the best in Thailand. She would very likely lose in a full rules match to Loma, Lommanee, Phetjee Jaa and Amp, and Thanonchanok would be interesting. Of the rest only Sawsing and Thanonchanok are fairly regularly training, and facing somewhat stiff competition. Lommanee hasn't fought an elite opponent in full rules for maybe 5 years (that I know of). Loma has moved on from full rules Muay Thai, as has Amp. Chommanee hasn't trained regularly at a high level for several years, and is not at her peak. Phetjee Jaa has left full rules Muay Thai for boxing. The best female Muay Thai fighters of Thailand are not really fighting in Muay Thai. Further, aside from Stamp who wasn't part of the pattern of development, all these fighters were elite when they were 16 or 17, that was when they reached "unbeatable" in the sidebet sense, when they were fighting the most frequently and training most regularly. What is a little worrisome is that despite seemingly better opportunities for Thai female fighters in the country there does not seem to be a current crop of elite Thai female fighters now at 16 years of age. The only one I can think of is Nong Biew who came out of nowhere to take World Titles when she was 15. She became something of a star in the country. But almost everyone on this list is in their 20s. They are beyond their peak Muay Thai years, in terms of the regular Thai development. It could be that the process that developed the brilliance of Loma's clinch or of Chommanee's herky-jerk switching has been disrupted, and that Thailand is moving to an different era. I hope this is not the case, but who are the "unfightable" ones of Thailand now, the 16 to 17 year olds who cannot be beat? There is a very good young fighter that Dejrat gym was training who fought at the larger weight classes on Thai Fight, I've forgotten her name [I'll edit it in when Sylvie gets home - Mongonkaw 《《 edit in]. But I can only think of her and Nong Biew. It means that the next generation of greatness, the next group of 20-24 year olds who then will be no longer at their peak may be greatly reduced. Where is the next Sawsing?

Not to get too much into this, but this is something that happened to Stamp in her last fight, vs Janet Todd, in the 5th round. She was kind of broken by Janet, but she already had too big of a lead in that fight, so survived it. You could see it in the ring when they were waiting for the decision - Stamp looked defeated, Janet not - I discussed it on the Muay Thai Bones podcast. But in this fight it happened in the 4th round, and it was way, way more apparent. It was very evident. I give her credit, she didn't completely collapse, she stood resilient in the 5th throwing get-off-me counters (but hey, that didn't make up for what happened in the 4th. not by a mile for me). This is just an emotional flaw she has as a fighter, and the pressure of fights is bringing it out. All fighters have them, when they come out you can work on them, I hope she will! I've written elsewhere, I think Stamps clinch has been somewhat overrated, I've even overrated her. I think in the media it's maybe because of Loma's incredible skills in the clinch. Stamp is nowhere near Loma, like not even in the same world, in terms of clinch, and truthfully almost zero women, Thai or otherwise, are either. Maybe it's just fashionable to ascribe Loma-like qualities to Thai female fighters? Or, the way the highlights looked from Stamp's first fight for a title in ONE, when she faced someone who looked like they had never clinched in their life, maybe that's where it took root? (When you are ok in clinch, and you face a novice you can look like a magician.) In any case, Janet Todd who doesn't count clinch as a strength (I believe) completely neutralized Stamp, and then Alma did the something close to same, also someone who isn't a big fan of the clinch. That's two moderately skilled clinch fighters who stood up to her in the clinch. I will say that this neutralization, especially in the Alma fight, was GREATLY aided by incredibly fast clinch breaks by the ref. It was K1 style, nearly. The fight was basically kickboxing with elbows. If Alma had been forced to defend in the clinch for longer periods of time as she would have to in a normal Muay Thai fight in Thailand she probably would have gotten into some pretty big trouble. She was taking positions (partially turning herself to her opponent) that are serious no-nos in clinch. (Humorously, the announcers were praising Alma for this.) This alone showed that Stamp is really not an elite clinch fighter in that she was not able to take advantage of this, it's a very bad position. I do believe though that with extended clinch time, without the breaks, it would have eventually have spelled doom for Alma.

Yolanda is seriously underrated, she's beaten both Chommanee and Saifaa 2x. The problem is, these fighters are nowhere near their peak shape or skill-set. I don't think Chommanee trains much at all, to be honest. It's one of the big problems trying to assess the skills of the Thais, they are usually far removed from their best, most focused fighting years when they were much younger, and are not in life situations where they are motivated to get back to them. It's a great accomplishment to beat Chommanee, but she also isn't really "Chommanee" any longer, I fear.

That was a very painful fight to watch, at a personal level, because I do pull for Stamp and cheer for her. You can make all sorts of technical arguments for who added up the most rounds (points) for either fighter, but a fighter should not win a close fight with the kind of emotional performance Stamp had in that 4th round. She was not gassed, she was defeated and showed it, not even returning to her corner. That was a serious dis-qualifier to me, not her best performance. Hopefully it makes her stronger and she grew from it. Alma won that fight in my book, mostly due to that 4th round, and I suspect that Stamp also felt that in her heart as well. But, unusual decisions is kind of par for the course in the world of fighting. What can you say.

If interested in this topic you can read my p4p Best Female Fighters in the World Top 10 List made last August, due to be updated. P4P Top Ten Female Muay Thai Fighters in the World

With Stamp Fairtex about to fight probably the hardest fight of her career since she fought Loma years ago and bumped her head on the ceiling of "unfightable", it seems like a good time to just take stock in the elite female Muay Thai fighters of Thailand and the orbits in which they are stalled. These are female fighters with hoards of experience, fighting since they were very young, and now find themselves packed with all the things that could make them the best fighters in the world, if they were swept up into elite training programs and promotions. Watching Stamp ascend from what she was, maybe 2 or 3 years ago, maybe a B/B+ local fighter in Chonburi, to a celebrated, and somewhat transformed star by ONE, really calls back to all her sisters in Thailand who indeed were much more celebrated, much more unbeatable than she. There is a sense that the immense talent of female Muay Thai fighters is languishing. Lommanee - One of the most intriguing talents in all of Thailand. A surreal sense of space and distance, she basically Cadillacs through fights (a complement in Thailand), finishing of rounds and score cards, her talents topped with a sweet lead arm elbow. She trains out of Santai Gym now in Chiang Mai, but really her fame came years ago before her current situation when she reached the ranks of the "unfightable". She's fought nobody of elite talent for many years, with fights falling through, or opponents supposedly ducking. As with many top, top Thai females at this stage of their career one never knows how fight ready they are at any particular time. They've been training and fighting since they were kids, developing skills like nowhere else on the planet, but without regular fights or even daily training challenges it can all stagnate dramatically. One of the best female Muay Thai fighters in the world, just sitting there on the shelf. Probably the only person in the world with a winning record against Loma in Muay Thai, who is also on this list. Sawsing - Could be the most weaponed, and charsimatic fighter of the list. She can fight and dominate at any distance, but above her skill she possesses a kind of fight nobility, a pride and ascendant spirit that is like no other. This is a superstar in waiting, ready to burst onto the world scene, who has been an emblematic star in Thailand since she was maybe 12. She's been shaped by the hardcore Bangkok gym Dejrat and the Old School values of Arjan Surat, there is no female fighter in all the world like her. But, as a mother, and an owner of a gym her attention is divided, and her progress as a fighter in terms of opportunity and training in doubt. a photo montage of one of Sawsing's 2019 fights, above Loma - can lay claim to perhaps the best female clinch fighter in the world. She has been a fighting star out of Isaan since a little girl, and she shut the door on Stamp's ascent years ago, defeating her in a big showdown of the "unfightable" ones. Nobody has her sense of timing in the clinch, developed at a very early age. She is on her own level in this. She is now at Tiger Muay Thai in Phuket who took up her sponsorship maybe a year ago (?) helping her transition to MMA where here clinch awareness and sense of counter fighting space pay off dividends, especially against opponents who are not ready for it, and are expecting a Muay Thai star to be a big, powerful "striker". That isn't really her game. She's an elite, elite grappler. Unleashing her on an unsuspecting western talent pool is a little like introducing someone to a fighter with an arm bar game that nobody has really seen. Loma is climbing the ranks at Invicta, and has largely moved out of and away from Muay Thai (I heard she is skipping the IFMAs this year, where she has rung up Gold many times). Loma, as an Invicta MMA fighter, above Amp - Amp is maybe best described as The Best Female Fighter in the World that nobody knows. She used to fight Muay Thai under the name "Pizza", finishing up her career with an absolutely dominant performance against much hyped Japanese champion Little Tiger, taking the WPMF World Title (seen below). She then dropped out of Muay Thai (often this is due to contract disputes, but I really don't know) and has been training in BJJ and MMA seriously in the last few years. She blasted back onto the fight scene, for those who were paying attention, by a very unexpected win vs Loma in MMA, beating her at every distance in a rather short fight. While Loma's clinch is a hot knife through butter against most, Amp's solid base and own high-level clinch (not the same skills, but still, accomplished and uncommon) allowed her to neutralize Loma's confident move toward where she expects to rule. I'm sure pretty much everyone who didn't know her was surprised by just how good Amp was. And she might be as good as any female fighter in Thailand, still in her native art of Muay Thai. She also possesses an incredible outward magnetism of confidence that you don't often seen from Thai female fighters, check out the Thai language interview of hers below - you watch her talk, and you just want to see her fight. She's over at Phuket Top Team when she trains, though I'm not really sure there is a promotional avenue equal to her talents immediately apparent. watch this interview with Amp, above watch Amp vs Loma, above watch Amp's world tile fight vs Little Tiger, above *I include the fights and interview because of everyone Amp is the most little known in the west, though she very well may be as good or better than anyone on this list Chommanee - For some time could lay claim to being the best female Muay Thai fighter in the world. She has a beautiful. unorthodox switching style that makes her very hard to read, a master of distance and tempo-change, there is maybe nobody more beautiful to watch when she is on top of her game. Unfortunately she does not train very often (I believe) or maybe very hard. She is almost the epitome of the wasted talent of Muay Thai, just unimaginably loaded with instincts and knowledge, but with no career path forward there is no real program for her to develop her talents further, or even maintain them at the razor sharp level that made her a nightmare to face. She's had several losses on big stages over the last few years, and you can't help but think that this is really due to inactivity, . By the time of their early 20s elite female fighters are often losing or dimming their skills due to inactivity and loss of focus, just when western fighters are finding their feet. Chommanee, as talented as any female Muay Thai fighter anywhere, anytime - above Thanonchanok - Like Chommanee an extremely talented fighter, but unlike Chommanee her connections to famed Kaewsamrit gym and the the WPMF organization has kept her fighting for world titles and facing relatively high level talent throughout. She's very likely the most decorated female Muay Thai fighter ever in Thailand, a perennial holder of the WPMF belt through weight classes as she grew. She has great hand, is an artist at managing rounds, and a beautiful demeanor that is tough, stylish and intelligent. Because of her belt opportunities she does regularly cycle back into shape, but there is also is the sense that she is always almost-out-of-shape at any particular time, so you never quite know which fighter you are getting. When at the top of her game as good as any fighter in the world at her weight. Thanonchanok, perennial WPMF World Title Holder, above Phetjee Jaa - The great Phetjee Jaa who has faded largely from view. She gained fame fighting and beating boys on television until the government cracked down on those shows calling them inappropriate. Her clinch game, when she was fighting regularly, is the only clinch game that I've ever seen that might be equal to Loma's. But unlike Loma who was largely a counter kick scorer in Muay Thai, she had a complete striking arsenal to go with that clinch attack. Samart told us that she was pretty much the only female fighter he knew of who could really fight. Her family managed her career in maybe something of traveling sideshow way, putting her in show fights with her brother, I'm not even sure of the full nature of some of her wins, and ended up demanding unreasonable fight purse sums when she gained fame. There were accusations that she backed out of proposed Loma showdown fights a few times when both seemed the best at that weight, and then she moved out of Muay Thai and to the Thai National Boxing Team, I suspect motivated to go for the big financial payoff of Olympic Gold. She owned almost all the opponents she faced, many of them ridiculously. She beat Stamp pretty definitively, giving up weight. In fact she would fight up in weight regularly (something not all top fighters would do), but as she bumped her head against opportunity at 16 or 17 it pretty much pushed her out of Muay Thai. Now that she's been developing as a boxer for a few years it might really be that she's the best fighter of the bunch. Combine Olympic hands with a mad teep game, and some of the best clinch fighting females have ever shown, and that may be something like no other...but we may never know. above, Phetjee Jaa amateur boxer Stamp - Stamp is the only fighter of the list who wasn't an elite fighter in Thailand itself, when at the height of her Muay Thai development. She was maybe a B/B+ level fighter in Chonburi before Fairtex picked her up, and it was looking meager before joining Fairtex's brand new MMA fighter program. She had lost to Phetnaree (a solid, rising fighter at the time), and to Phetjee Jaa (who beat Phetnaree for a WPFM title), and it was very unclear where she could go. The reason she is on the list is because more than any other female fighter she received the training and fight promotion opportunity that could expand what she was as a fighter. She was given the space to grow. She gained confidence, aggression, extended the length and ferocity of her combinations, and grew to a new level. It's not really sure how high of a level that is because her ONE victories were not really against elite world talent. Her fight vs Alma is the first step into that proving ground. No matter how it turns out, Stamp is feasting on the kinds of stimulation and growth that one would wish so many other Thai female fighters could see. The fascinating thing about Stamp is that there are 100s of female fighters in Thailand, right now, about at the skill level she was at before taken up by Fairtex. In a way she represents the whole of Thailand potential. You can watch one of the best Muay Thai documentaries ever made, Todd Kellstein's "Buffalo Girls" which followed Stamp as a young stadium fighter, above Stamp Fairtex, above These are really the top tier of great Thai female fighters right now, in varying degrees of semi- or soft-retirement, or inactivity, or passing onto other sports and opportunity. There are others who are just below this tier, fighters like Buakaw (I could have easily replaced Stamp with her as Buakaw indeed passed into "unfightable" status like the others on the Thailand circuit, while Stamp did not, but it felt important to include Stamp, and limit it to 8), Saifaa, Dokmaibaa, Mesa, Nong Biew, Faaseethong, Faa Chiangrai sitting there full of mad talents and skills found nowhere else in the world. The difficulty with almost any fight vs the elite of Thailand is that one is never quite sure how honed the blade is when it enters the ring. In terms of skill-set, fight intuitions and hard-fought ring experience there are no fighters like them on the planet. I'll probably be editing in and updating this post over time, adding information.

I hardly train at all right now, but I just love my Thaismai Gecko gloves. Everytime I see them, or even think of them, they make me happy.

Attempting to bend the thread back to it's general theme a bit, for those reading across the posts, the concept or critique of patterned training in the west is perhaps, from the position of Self Organized Criticality, one in which the notion of error and correction produces a real ceiling on development. It causes us to view errors as broken pieces of a machine of techniques to be repaired or replaced. I've elsewhere made the connection between patterned fighting, and the more broad commercial requirement that patterns facilitate promulgation. Meme-ishness below. In many ways this isn't really something so much to blame, as to simply recognize as a phenomena. For things of one culture to promulgate in another culture there has to be some sort of grafting of the one onto the other, very often including extreme translation. People are going to experience this as a bastardization, or a distortion. Perhaps, but it is almost an necessary one. In the widest view we just need to recognize it. On a more personal level, when dealing with one's own Muay, and thinking about the patterns within it, this thread is about maybe thinking about one's progress not in terms of Bell Curves, but instead in terms of possible Power Laws, where exceptional leaps are expected as part of the process.

It's actually a pretty crappy term. It immediately positions the problem, and more importantly its solution as academic, the discourse (hahahaha, yeah, "discourse") on it and its reality at a very rarefied level of class. And it isn't even rule by the father. It's really rule by all the sons of the father...perhaps filiiarchy.

We were talking to Chatchai Sasakul, a fighter who fought so many of the greats in the Golden Age in Muay Thai, and then came into fame winning the WBC World Championship western boxing belt. He's in the Library here, and we are about to add another session with him. We were asking him why in his fight style back in the day he wasn't doing many of the things that he was advocating now. He said, "back then I didn't know". He looked at us like we were crazy, like "what do you think I've been doing for 20 years since I retired" or "of course I didn't know, I was young". It brought home for me one of the most special things about the Library. We talk about it as if it is preserving the literal techniques of the Golden Age, but it is much more than that. It's preserving those techniques AS they have undergone a period of reflection and refinement. If you talked to an active fighter you may very well get some very noteworthy pointers on how to fight. But if you talk to that fighter 15 or 20 years later you get something very different. You get those elements having passed through a very long stage of reflection. You get to see those elements, very often, taken up as craft. Sometimes, if that fighter has fallen out from the fight game entirely, like maybe someone like Samson Isaan (in the Library here), and who is a taxi driver, this is mostly the craft of recollection, of memory. What he knows and thinks about are all the things that worked for him, and probably some of the things that didn't work for him, things that had success against him. The whole thing goes into a process of memory's slow boil, low and slow, and what you get is a condensed essence of fight knowledge, his style, under refinement. Even if he isn't actively working on improving on or conveying his fighting style, it has been worked on by memory and reflection. It is the art of his style, his knowledge. On the other hand when you have someone like Sagat - you can find him in the Library here - this is someone who has been teaching Muay Thai for probably three decades. Not only is he bringing his fight style, the one he once had, but he has become a craftman about it. What he is teaching is a rarified, purified form of his fighting style, something that has been honed and polished over decades of communication and thought. What he is showing you in the ring today is very different than what he would have showed you 30 years ago. It is enhanced, has been worked on endlessly. Not in the "I've got to be a better teacher" way, but rather that each time you try to convey something you touch it a little, you change it, you add reflection on it. Sagat teaches a great deal of precision and correction on his strikes, as does Chatchai, who also has been teaching for years. Chatchai as a fighter would drift away on his jab. Today he insists, do not do this, this is stupid. I've seen Sagat incorporate things into his teaching that I know he recently has experienced - for instance he has been helping General Tunwakom teach Muay Lertrit lately. These internal elbows are now in his mind, as he teaches movements. Sagat is 60 years old, and his Muay is still evolving. I've watch Karuhat come up with brilliant throws, things he is simply inventing on the spot, feeling his way on, things I've never seen before, because Karuhat when he was a fighter in his gym would always be experimenting, stealing things from others, dreaming up new wrinkles. When we look back in time, through our telescope of the Library it isn't like how starlight is reaching us from far away, how it was years ago. It's instead coming to us with immediacy, having passed through the reflections of these men, as they have become craftsmen, working on the raw materials of their fight days, lifting it to art. Perhaps nobody is more like this than Master K, Sylvie's first instructor back in America. He's 80 years old now, and his Muay Thai is this incredible time capsule of Muay Thai before the Golden Age, the Muay Thai of the late 1960s 1970s. But...it also is filtered and hand sanded by the mind of a Thai man who was no longer in Thailand, reflected on, improved and dreamed up through watching the great boxers of the decades, long ruminations in his own basement kicking the bag until 2 AM, the result of a craft-work of elaboration and self-creation. I think that is what a lot of us miss. These men, all of these men, are producing the work of their mind, as artists, as creators, bringing to life and carrying forward a new thing. It isn't just their techniques, or even their fighting styles. It's the fecundity of the years since they stopped fighting. It is their meditation. What is also kind of incredible is that these ruminations, these craft-works, have been documented and continue to be documented. And that Sylvie has first hand seen them. You can see the full library here.

Maybe I can add this too, as a point of detail. There are really two important factors in one's experience in a Thai gym in Thailand. There is the general culture of the gym, which is the overall vibe of what is happening all around. Are the trainers lazy and not into the work? Is there a general sense of "This is happening, dive in"? Do you feel included or excluded? What are the qualities being expressed by everyone, the Thais, the farang, etc. This is like the high or low tide of the ocean, it floats or sinks all boats. It's hard to get a feel for this at a distance. It's going to impact people different, but more so because the feeling in a gym changes all the time. It depends on how crowded it is, which trainers are there, how much time the "boss" spends in the gym. The energy in the gym might be great one month, but then a top trainer goes back to his village and the gym is overbooked...then, not so great. That's why you have to go and see. The second part is which trainer are you put with? By most of our experience longer term farang will usually end up paired with a particular trainer, at least somewhat. This has a huge impact on your experience. You can be in the shittiest gym in Thailand and if you connect with your trainer, and get a relationship where he wants to improve you, this can be an amazing experience. On the other hand, you can be in the best vibe gym in Thailand, but if you somehow find yourself regularly with a trainer who is reluctant or dismissive, or whatever, it doesn't make up for all the wonderfulness of the gym. You don't have a lot of control over this aspect of a gym. You can try and steer this, somewhat, but it's kind of a roll of the dice. That's why you want to be in gyms that generally have pretty good trainers all around. But, no matter the gym you find yourself in, working on your relationship with a regular kru or padman is the surest way of having a positive experience. You just need that one. That's why I mentioned Kru Daeng at Lanna. I know for sure this is a very fight oriented, excellent, fair trainer. If you go there, b-line to him, and tell him Sylvie suggested him. Budgeting a few privates with a trainer is also a good strategy if you see someone you really want be guided by. So, whatever gym you are talking about, spend 2 days there and just take the temperature of the space. Then when you pick one, work hard on your relationship with your kru or krus.

The above illustrates what proponents of Self-Organizing Criticality imagine. Since the invention of statistical mathematics our vision of the world has become very Bell Curved in expectation. That is to say, wee "see" in averages. Things that fall far outside of averages are seen as anomalies, and largely are excluded from much consideration. The L Curve of Power Law distribution (shown here as the related Exceedience Probability) is a very different world view, and brings out the connectivity between those out-lying properties, and the overall system. These are the avalanches, the cascades that are rare, are built into the system itself. They aren't exceptions, they are part of the patterns. This is a world view shift if we think about the kinds of productivity, and exceptionalness we want to build in new skills or new traits. The Bell Curve of Averages causes us to see our present averages - let's say of skill level - as essential and relatively "stuck". If a beautiful kick suddenly comes out, it's just an anomaly. Our kick, fundamentally, is an "average". Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, mostly meh. The Sandpile conception of complex systems positions supposed anomalies on a scale. When the entire system cascades, it's just a sandpile having an avalanche of connectivity. We set about making the sandpile more prone to these events, of the quality searched for. graphic from: Bak's Sand Pile: Strategies for a Catastrophic World ($9.99 Kindle)

This is a very cool nutshell which probably speaks to the motivations of each. I know we are talking extremely broadly, there are lots of men who feel insecure about their power, and maybe drawn to Muay Thai for that reason, but it seems that there still, even for them, is a general tide, a fabric in the culture that reflects an experience of powerlessness for women, and powerfulness for men. Sylvie may not be indicative of all women, or even most women, but I remember when she was taking Nihi Sobo's mental training course and one of the first mental exercises was to just unchain your mind and think of the most absurdly satisfying fantasy of what your life could be like. Like, off the charts "dream come true, beyond all dreams", no judgements. And honestly, Sylvie just couldn't access any of those ridiculously blown out visions the guys found so easy to dream up. As a woman - and probably for other reasons too - all these super-visioned, jacked up thoughts were like a different language. Of course thinking in those ways may not be the right or best way to go, but the very fact that they can sometimes be cut off from some women, that it's a mode of thought that is maybe discouraged, really has a discrete impact on female fighting.

One of the most powerful and probably meaningful aspects of fighting as an entertainment form, but also an art, is that fighters do something that is a "peak experience" in most lives. Most of the fans in an audience have had very few purposive fights, and if they had them there were under extreme conditions. What fighters do the "normal" person will rarely do. It makes fighters kind of emotional astronauts, having to live in spaces - to perform in front of audiences - over and over in peak states. I think it can really be a struggle in how to manage going into those states, or at the very least exposing yourself to that kind of duress.

Sylvie and I haven't been around either gym, in an active way, for a while, and never trained more than in a private session under the existing management at either. Maybe someone can hop on who has been around these gyms recently. Both seem to be supportive of female students, both have top notch head trainers (Joe Hongthong at Hongthong, Kru Daeng at Lanna), and both encourage fighting and are well connected. The right thing to do, to be honest, is to go and train at one for two or 3 days and just feel the vibe, and then go and train at the other for 2 or 3 days, and feel the same. A big part of all this, especially between two gyms that are thought to be somewhat comparable, is just the feeling of the space, the feeling you get off of the krus, how they conduct training. By our experience you can feel pretty quickly whether you want to spend a month or two in a place or not. And sometimes you can walk in a place and get a big "get me the hell out of here" inner voice. A mistake many people make is paying for gyms in in advance. I know that some gyms try to get this to happen, and there may even be gyms that require it, but it's just not a good long term strategy. You just have to go and feel your way. Even if you hear great reviews from people who are even IN the gym right now, they may be very different kinds of people than you. Nothing replaces intuition. We've sent a lot of people to both these gym, in a general sense, just because they have pretty nice reps, and support female fighters, but really it's how you feel when there. There is always the small chance that you wouldn't like either of them, for whatever reason. You could still pop over to Manop's gym, which is much smaller, or a more westernized gym. In Thailand it's almost always best to keep your options open.

What is this were the motto for our Muay, or, alternately, for our living...which is the same thing: - Per Bak This is very close to a poetic, quasi-conceptual unraveling of Sylvie's motto: "Live the question."

Detouring back to the original theme, here's a citation from a secondary essay I'm reading on Self Organized Criticality "Society as a Self-Organized Criticality" (I have the PDF if anyone is interested, message me on the forum message system) This essay takes up the thesis: What if society were organized like Bak's Sandpiles (mentioned at the top of this thread). Now, a few translations have to take place to appreciate the possible impact on this passage on Muay Thai. In particular, the author is interested in how "catastrophic" or "revolutionary" events happen in societies, for instance the outbreaks of war, or scientific paradigm shifts. But let's not be mislead. The theory really is that systems near the edge of chaos, near a tipping point, are complexly organized toward what we might call "avalanches". Avalanches, like on sandpiles upon which individual sand grains fall, are sudden shifts of coordination from many parts of the system. Whether this be an outbreak of war in a society, or a perfectly timed Mike Tyson punch full of power and accuracy, the avalanche is when disparate parts all flow and work together. In the rat brain study cited at this thread's beginning, it's how the brains of rats slowly wake up from sleep. There are small, unpredictable waking actions (tiny avalanches), and over time eventually the large system-wide avalanche, the rat wakes up. This is what I find incredibly interesting. One of the great frustrations of training, and trying to change oneself in Muay Thai, is about trying to bring all the parts of the system (your body) together in a desired way. Your muay is, perhaps like a sandpile, and training is about getting it into these criticality states, when suddenly, but perhaps not predictably, it will avalanche in concerted ways. What is very cool is that this could mean that your muay, and all your practice to hone it, is more precarious toward sudden efficaciousness than you think. In the cited passage above, any influence can set off an avalanche who's size (degree of coordination) cannot be predicted. You do not even know the state of your own muay. Key of course, is to regard, and really assemble your self into a criticality state, one prone to the right kinds of productive avalanches, the right awakenings. Easier said than done. But "error" (or really null values) sits in a very different place in these models. Error is waiting for the avalanche of coordination. Key to this coordination possibility is for the system (your self) to have a certain amount of play in it...and by play I mean both the unpredictability of outcome, but also maybe actually "play". This is one reason why too rigid, or too stable of training system will not produce the criticality that will bring diverse parts together. Consider this passage in the same essay: Heavy pattern repetitions, overt control over diverse parts or actions, may produce just too stable or shift a system. Instead you want one which has parts that interact a lot (as they do in play), capable of sudden shifts (as they do in play), with a certain unpredictable nature (success or "failure"). You want a sandpile that might, at any point, cascade. If you are training much of the time in states far from this, you are maybe spending too much time in non-criticality.

Yes. 100%, but it is also that you have to use the language - albeit full of errors and inexactness - all the time, you fumble your way through, often without any correction, but just through living use, you somehow find a way, you find correct. If it was just being IN the culture, a lot more long term westerners in Thailand would speak Thai. A large number of them do not. In fact, I don't at all, I've been here 7 years. Sylvie is almost fluent, or at least getting there pretty quickly. The difference between us is that she fumbled and bumbled through uses of it, to do real things, to interact, shape things, get things done. I didn't. Andy Thomson, the amazing coach I mentioned above, didn't really speak Thai after 25 years here. But, I totally agree that if you have the opportunity to USE the language repeatedly in the culture you get all kinds of rich clues about the uses of it. This is one of the beautiful, kind of amazing things about real Thai gyms like the one Sylvie finds herself in, there is just a tapestry of Thai "Muay Thai" culture everywhere, and that whole culture of behavior and values - how you hold your body, how you hold aggression, or exhaustion, or respect...- molds all the techniques you are trying to use. That's the super difficult thing about teaching Muay Thai in western contexts, the "culture" of Muay Thai (in the Thai sense) is missing, all the rich, tiny stuff. You can try and duplicate certain aspects. You can wai when you come in, you can adopt Thai attitudes in techniques, but it's just really an absolute shadow of a Thai gym, and kind of feel just like imitation and in some cases caricature...so, maybe that's why instead you need structure, for the absence of "culture".

I think I see where you are going with this... (I hope you don't mind my humor! I just couldn't help it, just love the Hulk too much...)

My real analogy, the one I always turn to, is the learning of language. Do we really crave structure in learning a language? I kind of think not. I guess I can only speak for my own experience, but structure when learning a language always feels like something getting in the way. Just a bunch of stuff to be memorized, tested on and then filed away. When learning a language you immediate, more or less, want to know how to use it. Right away. How do I say "cat"? How do I swear? And, as everyone knows, the most direct path to fluency is immersion. Which means using it, using it, using (for a very long time wrong). Muay Thai, at its real level, is like a language. Which is why it's pretty much taught like a language in Thailand. You learn a couple of words, and then you just start using them. Then you learn some more, and you use them. You are not taught structurally. Now, I understand that teaching a class of 30 people, of differing levels, in an unstructured way is not easy. And indeed for many it might be impossible. But it does happen in Thailand, only it's not a class. I think the real reason why something like Muay Thai is taught in a structured way, so much, is because of the demands on teaching itself, which is not easy. Not really because people crave structure. I was always struck by watching Andy Thomson teach beginners (a westerner who taught in Thailand for 2 decades). He would start them out with. Stand naturally. Now take one step forward. There, that's your stance. And he would proceed like that, and in 30 minutes - I swear - you were "doing" Muay Thai. Like...pretty damn good Muay Thai, considering. He put them on the bike immediately, and he was like: pedal. I don't think this kind of training or teaching style is easy. It takes a certain perspective. But one of the coolest things about Muay Thai is just how simple it is, at the bottom of it all.

It truly means a lot to hear that others are sparked by my thoughts and my words. As you can tell my mind is ever expanding in its search for implication, and I truly believe that Muay Thai is the great arts in the world, period. And I mean any art. The plastic arts, the literary arts, all of the performed arts. There is nothing that pulls on so many strings, and has the potential to reconcile the traditional and (hyper)modern worlds as much as Muay Thai, that is, the Muay Thai of Thailand.