Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

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.

Just leaving this here, Emma Thomas's rather complete list of Muay Thai documentaries and shows: https://undertheropes.com/2014/07/08/muay-thai-documentaries-and-tv-shows-the-directory/

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance Kindle Edition by Steven Kotler Great book on the development of performance flow. Really changed our thinking, or sharpened our thinking about what to pursue in training and how to get there.

No doubt played into the aesthetic inspiration!

Sylvie makes the interesting point that "Dieselnoi" is not easy to pronounce in Japanese, while Sagat is much more so.

The two fighters facing off before their June bout:

This is not an original observation on my part, but I definitely have been thinking about it and weighing the possibility for some time, gathering evidence. The first time I read the suggestion was in this blog post from 2015, which points out that that in Street Fighter II "Sagat" was much lankier; unfortunately though the author perpetuated the false history that Sagat had beaten Dieselnoi which he takes as a knock against his own suggestion: A graphic from the blog post: