Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

The Farangification of Muay Thai This is just a little personal journaling. Usually I like to write on History or Philosophy but today it's just a sense of relief that I unexpectedly experienced over the last few days, filming with Sylvie for our documentary project. This strange sense of ease that came over me made me realize just how much a tension had filled my Muay Thai mind over the last several years, as I watched rather quiet changes creep across the landscape of Thailand's Muay Thai, most of the time with rather small, innocuous steps, but then also suddenly with vast lunges (like for instance the utter change of Lumpinee itself from National Stadium and the acme symbol of Thai excellence, to really a commercial space for Muay Thai tourism, not much different in philosophy than stadia found on the Southern islands or peninsulas). There just has been a rather powerful change in Thailand's Muay Thai, in that so much of it now is "for us" (that is to say, the "us" of Westerners, of which I'm a part). It's now been - slowly, or quickly - redesigned for "us" to watch, and maybe more importantly, for "us" to participate in (and win in). The rare spectacle of the 1990s, during the Golden Age, where hyper aggressive Western Kickboxers would face off against outsized Thais, just for the circus of it, while Lumpinee and Rajadamnern put on the highest combat sport fights on the planet, Thais against Thais, that circus now has become the standard...the norm. (And, a new generation of Thai audience before a buffet of entertainment options has embraced it, for excitement sake.) And, it's not only in the stadia, it's quietly in the gyms. Thai gyms, even high levels, or the highest level (ie, most politically powerful) have had their gym cultures impacted by the Westerner. They are more and more catered to the Western (and non-Thai) fighter, bending their sense of self toward its gaze, changing their training methods, their reason for being, toward the Globe. Large gyms now, gyms that shape Bangkok promotions, are run by Westerners, and Westerners are holding pads, guiding fighter development. The entire edifice is now leaning West. Of course Westerners who come to Thailand to seriously train and fight often love it, because the Thai gaze is turned to them, and when they arrive they find things that are familiar, more of who they already are (as opposed to, for example, fighters like Anne Quinlan and John Wayne Parr in the 90s who had to conform themselves to very unfamiliar spaces in order to work into gyms). And, when you fight you have a much better chance of winning, because the Entertainment rules have been bent toward you, toward your skills, and more importantly toward your aesthetics...what you think fighting is. More and more the sense of the foreign, the sense that you have come to a place where everything you thought was implied by fighting was perhaps wrong, is being weeded out. This is the Globalization of the sport. It's Thainess is starting to vanish. A great deal of this was accelerated by the COVID epidemic. As much as 20% of the Thai economy is tied to Tourism and all the connectivity between world-bound humans that facilitated the spread tourism also facilitated the spread of an epidemic. Thailand was put into a potential economic shock, and in coming out of the COVID lockdowns Thailand found itself in a difficult place. They either needed to lean away from, or lean into, tourism on the rebound. Thailand leaned hard into it. Many of the changes to Thailand's Muay Thai in the last couple of years, including the Internationalization of Lumpinee stadium (the loss of its prestigious ranking system and belts) has been an all out effort to recapture the Western tourist (and eventually the Chinese tourist - most of the Max Muay Thai influence comes from the promotional redesign of the sport around bussed-in Chinese tourism, a standard component of pre-paid tours). It could be said that Lumpinee has become something like a highly developed, richly promoted version of Bangla Stadium, with almost every fight between a Thai and a non-Thai. This is in keeping with just the brute reality that the appeal of Thailand to foreigners is vital. Muay Thai is for foreigners, it's tourism rather than culture. Over the last several years, as training methods have changed in gyms, with more and more memorized "combos" being held for fighters, even as non-Thais have taken over training itself, acquiring places of authority within the culture, the gym has become a less-Thai space, often in hidden, not-easy to see ways. Very often as the foreigner we can't actually "see" when a culture bends itself toward us, because it's "for" us. We assume that this is either just "natural", or as it is bending towards us over time, our ease with it comes with just acclimation. I remember a few years ago when a Westerner asked the lead kru of a family gym "What is your favorite combination?" This question was nearly untranslatable into Thai at the time...because the idea of a rehearsed and repetitively trained "combination" as a core of training wasn't in the Thai landscape, at least in this gym. (There will be Westerners who read this and be mystified by the idea that there could be training without "combos". I talked once with a very successful Western coach who relies on them heavily and he was incredulous that there was such a thing.) It would be like asking someone who speaks English "What are some of your favorite phrases?" This compartmentalized, mechanized concept of fight fluency was still foreign, at least at this gym. Muay Thai was more like a language, and taught like a language through immersion. This is just to say, as the Western student has become embraced in the wave of reclaimed Tourism, the very concept of training and its pedagogy has changed, very often in a spirit of accommodation (more correction, more mechanics), but also sometimes in a spirit if imitation and "improvement". There has always been in the back of the mind of Thai culture that it could be bettered by more "modern" (ie, historically Westernized) ways, this suspicion has lasted for more than 150 years, so this transition towards Western concepts of training is not without willing Thai ascent. Protein powders and mythically powerful supplements are also involved in this modernization toward the Western eye and mind. There is always an element within the culture which will feel that turning toward the West is a sign of improvement (the presence of Treadmills, heart rate monitors, or other equipment is a common symbol or statement of "modern" training...you could find such signatures of "modernity" all the way back to Thanikul gym in the Golden Age), and leaving behind the provincial or superstitious, the "backward", even though so many of the Thai ways that make up the process and history of Muay Thai are the very things that made it the best fighting art in the world, and their fighters the best fighters in the world as well. Those of the West that come to Thailand to witness the Muay Thai of Thailand often do so because they do "fighting" like nobody else, with the sense that all of the modernization that the West pats itself on the back for isn't really the path to elite skill sets. That this battle between cultures plays out now on promotional stages which have been skewed to actually produce Western (and other non-Thai) wins, is just the change of the measure. All this is to say, there has been buried within me a kind of abiding sadness, I think, something I was not completely aware of in its depth. A pessimism. We experience a lot of different Muay Thai spaces and many of them read as very "Thai". We hang out with legends of its past greatness. We go and visit Rambaa's gym full of kids. Sylvie trains in small gyms...but all of these experiences are also shot through with transformations toward the West. Legends now not only teach their own Muay, learned from decades at or in the ring, but also teach things they've picked up from licensing seminars they've taken, or from watching successful other Thai instructors doing seminars. (I remember very accomplished Thai ex-fighters watching Saenchai giving a seminar, taking notes. When you train with a Thai great they may be teaching you something they learned THIS year.) Rambaa's little kaimuay plays UFC fights on a flat screen and has a cage. The little Thai gyms Sylvie trains at are also impacted by Westerners, both in culture and in method. This week's experience just made me terribly aware of how few "non-Western" Thai spaces there are that we run into now, a change in the decade that we've been here. But the reason for hope came because on a single day we ran into two completely different Thai spaces which had almost no Western fingerprint. And, because these spaces did not feel rare. They did not feel like a vanishing species. Instead they just felt like a layer of Muay Thai culture that exists just beyond the curtain which has been drawn to keep in all the Western or International attention. The first of these was Chor. Hapayak gym, North of Bangkok. You encounter these gyms which have a kind of citadel'd, "keep out" nature. Paranchai in the South is a bit like this, or Pinsinchai gym in Bangkok. The Muay Thai can feel very cloistered, in a closed social system governed by a single head man. This gym had that feel. A big, extremely muscular pit bull galloped hard after a small truck down the one dusty lane that lead to the gym, barking hard. He was a unit. When he came to sniff at us a Thai boy was sent to grab and fence him, put with a bitey Rotty who was already on lock down (who honestly looked very sweet). I mention this because the dog's response to even an ice-cream cart coming showed how infrequent outside visits are - his robust guardianship was sidelined in accomodation.) Mostly though this hidden away feeling came to me in the way that all the Thai boys jumped rope together, and then sat altogether in the ring after training in a very small circle. It just was very clear that all they had was each other. This boundness comes out of the social condition of the kaimuay, and out of perhaps aspects of more traditional culture which would draw critique from a concept of personal liberty and free agency. The Muay Thai of Thailand though comes out of these social forms. When Sylvie asked kru Bangsaen if Westerners would be welcome to train there he said "Yes"...but then he added "But they can't leave."...which meant that you couldn't come and go as you will, as if you are are on an adventure tourism vacation. I'm not even sure what entirely was entailed in "They can't leave." but it was strongly connected to this sense of boundness, and ultimately a family of a kind. The freedoms of fighters are tightly monitored. This just wasn't a gym space that was YET bent toward the Westerner. They had the legendary fighter Wangchannoi helping out, but he did not appear to hold high status in the gym. He was just helping out with the flow of bound work. But...there were still signs that the West was coming. Fighters were encouraged to come and shake hands with us (beyond the Thai wai). One kid showed his cultural fluency by giving me a bro handshake and hug. And, when we came the next day the kru had changed his mind and told Sylvie that Westerners were wanted at the gym, that they could come and go as they pleased, could stay at this hotel or such, after 24 hrs of thought. Already the boundness of the gym was eroded, in a single day. There is also some sense in which Westerners might hear of such a place and be excited by it. Where is the next "unspoiled" beach!?...so we can go and start its spoiling. A large part of the urge to travel is to find what you are not. In the West we want to find unpolluted beaches because all our beaches are grimy and polluted. Sitting in an emerald bay with blemishless sand is what we cannot have on our own. So, for some, there is a sense in which the traditional ways of Muay Thai may hold not only technical secrets, but also emotional secrets to what fighting is. Coming to a place which does not reflect your own Western face back to you, as if in a mirror, provides a sense of relief, and even can be a path to transformation, or healing from the wounds or pressures that being a Westerner incurs. And, it should be noted that a great deal of what Sylvie and I do is opening keyholes into people & knowledge that cannot be easily found. And each time we keyhole there is a risk of its transformation. Now, for instance, Chor Hapayak gym is open to Westerner fighters (students?) when before it seemed like it wasn't something they had ever thought much about. The ethical reef I find myself drawn to in these questions is that of ecology. If you want to find pristine beaches then work to keep them pristine. If you want to find "authentic" Muay Thai gyms, then work to keep them that way, which means maybe taking stances on larger commercial and economic trends in the sport in Thailand. Be aware of what you are changing it when you touch something. And, it is not without merit to note that as women have experienced more freedom of opportunity in Thailand, not only in terms of fighting, but much more notably in terms of training, along has come with this many of these other globalizing changes. That, as well pull more traditional forms of being toward an international scale of gendered equality and freedom, other aspects of the culture may be attached to those threads. The much more aggro-fighting aesthetics of the West are coupled to, let's say, MMA's embrace of the marketing of female fighters. It is not easy to parse these differences. At Chor. Hapayak gym Sylvie was asked not to train in the rings, as a woman, governed by the same beliefs that kept her out of the clinch ring of Lanna Muay Thai so many years ago, in Chiang Mai, and that barred women from even touching the ring of Lumpinee. With the sweeping embrace of Western (and International) values of equality, so too have come other somewhat incipient value changes towards fighting itself: Its promotional violence, it's aggression scoring, its lack of control aesthetics. These are not disconnected, though their relationship to each other is not directly causal either. In some odd sense, the dream of some women to eventually fight and compete at a high level at Lumpinee Stadium (a dream that Sylvie had once) actually in a monkey's paw way involved the absolute erasure of what Lumpinee was as an ideal stage of hypermasculine, control Muay Thai). The other experience of relief and hope was a very different experience. We had trained and filmed with the former Fighter of the Year Jaroensap (he won in 1993) at his small but active gym in Bangkok some years ago. I'm not entirely sure why he moved locations. My guess is that it too had to do with the ways that COVID impacted the sport of Muay Thai, shrinking the sport as many fighters prematurely retired, returning to the provinces to more modest, more economically sustainable oriented ways of life. In any case Jaroensap had moved his gym from in the city to high above Rangsit, to be found now at his family home where he had built a substantial ring and hung a few bags. It was as if he had reshored himself within the local community and created a Muay Thai anchorage. When we trained and filmed with him this time he said he had 3 fighters on cards the next day, so he had plenty of time to train...the gym is quite small. But it is filled with his personality, and his elite knowledge of the sport. How to make a fighter...how to fight. His work with Sylvie consisted of padwork, followed by sparring, and it was evident to her that he works personally with his students, on a daily basis, in just this way. Something that didn't feel as proximate at the old location, the first time we filmed with him. We brought Karuhat with us (who had fought with Jaroensap in their primes) and as Sylvie trained in the ring the grandma, the wife, a cousin (who Karuhat said was a gambler) all ate toothsome snacks and talked with animation about things we could not hear. Bright sunlight and what looked like sugar cane much taller than a man waved in a continuous, running breeze. There was a legend of the sport who trains his son and a few local boys in the ring he built, in bright sunlight, passing on his personal, body-earned knowledge, as the family sits below the ring and talks vibrantly about the day. All of this was just Thai Muay Thai. There was no mirror to look into and see one's own face reflected back. Sylvie was just a very odd anomaly there, a 100 lb woman being tossed around the ring, trying to learn and respect Jaroensap's knowledge, his joy for the sport's form...and the grandma laughed loudly every time Sylvie fell. Next door a few young children lounged as the heat of the day faded, and some men sat and carefully washed the fighting roosters under their care as they watched Sylvie and Jaroensap in the ring; quietly, some curiosity, but only long enough to finish their tasks. I wanted to write more in journaling way, because it really was how I was impacted by these gym experiences. We've been in a lot of gyms, trained and Syvie's fought in incredible variety, but this was the first time I've just had a sense of hope wash over me after filming. It made me realize just how much I was holding a pessimism in my heart because of just how farangified everything seems to have become. And even with the sense that we've been a part of it, as we hope to make people aware of vanishing aspects of Muay Thai that are at risk of being lost and are worth saving, worth respecting. I was very surprised by this sense of relief, because I had always had the sense that Muay Thai doesn't really belong to the big stadia in the Capital, but more that it belongs to the people of Thailand, to the provinces, and the fighters of yore, to the customs and ways of thinking about what fighting could mean, in a positive way, in a way far beyond "entertainment". We left the day, driving home in the fatigue of Bangkok traffic snarls and a haze of pollution which could be industrial smog or smoke from burning farmer fields, with a sense that the Muay Thai of Thailand still exists in resilience, in resistance to even the transformation of Lumpinee Stadium into a venue, and the endless farang vs Thai matches that fill television and mobile phone screens. For more than 150 years of Siamese & Thai "civilization" in its imitation and absorption of the West Thailand's Muay Thai has persisted, through its own kernel, and there was this sense in me that it's still here, living, thriving, just beyond the Globalizing reach of the Western and non-Thai hand. Muay Thai, like any expression of a culture, is a Way of Life. We should have an ecological view towards the ways of life that hold special knowledge and meaning, even as we criticize or attempt to improve them. I actually believe that Thailand's Muay Thai, in so far as it is a cultural expression of a people, connects us to some of the most meaningful and even rite-driven aspects of what fighting and combat sports may mean. It is far more than "entertainment" and insofar as it should be a tourism draw that could best be founded on its exceptionalism, which includes the cultural values it has come to embody over the last century if not quite a bit more.

I'm sorry about this! The host server was under maintenance and for about 12 hrs there was an issue. This should not happen again (we've taken added precautions), it was just a bad coincidence of things. But, anytime I write something really important of length, even on Facebook or whatever I always take the precaution of copying it before I hit submit. So many times I've lost inspired stuff just because connections go down. I'm very sorry you had to go through that though, as I'm really interested in what you had written.

@iiaks re Kongtoranee Gym, I may have been wrong about their status. We just went to a local Pattaya show and several of the young Thai fighters were said to be from Kongtoranee Gym...so maybe it is doing well on the young fighter local circuit?

@iiaks we contacted them on FB a bit back, and they did not speak English. Didn't get the feeling that they were very active (COVID wiped out a lot of smaller gyms in Pattaya). Kongtoranee himself though is at his brother Samart's gym in Bangkok.

Right now I think the difficult is, in this equation, "fight frequently" (which may depend on your size too). It may be that Chiang Mai (and Phuket) are the most likely places. Hongthong is very popular in Chaingmai. Kru Thailand's gym is more "authentic" in terms of it being more of a kaimuay. Kru Manop's gym will give you personal attention. And maybe the new Manasak gym would be eager to devote attention to a new longer timer? I would suggest going to all the gyms you have in mind before settling onto one. Feel the vibe. Not every gym is right for every person. @samelsby

One of the things to notice when you are in the gym, and I know you are a keen observer, is how Thais train. They DO train very, very hard, but it is different from how Westerners train hard. Westerners when trying to imitate Thais or get on their beat "go hard", but sometimes they fail to see all the micro ways that they rest IN training. It's the states of relaxation they can achieve on the bag between strikes. It's the ease they fold into the patterns of padwork, or the ways in which very long bouts of clinching can contain lots of positions of relaxation. And there are other times of rest IN training. This is not only really important and good for fighting, but its also good for overall endurance when training frequently. Just as an idea, the next few times when in the gym don't just look at what the fighters are doing, actively, but look also for the ease they are able to achieve, the patterns with which they are able to pace themselves, recover, etc. That at least is one of the hidden aspects of "Thai style" training that Sylvie discovered, and it took her many years to really see it, and reach for it.

Sometimes. When I really want to look at video I scrub through it back and forth, using a playback cursor, feeling the rhythm that way. Karuhat Sor. Supawan. In my mind the GOAT, an absolute legend of the sport. Watch his fights, they are amazing. It's an overstatement to put this on gambling. It goes much, much deeper. It's a narrative concept of performance. I go into the nature of this in my piece on the 6 core aspects of Muay Thai: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/essence-muay-thai-6-core-aspects-make Gambling practices reflect and grow on this narrative picture.

It really is a bottomless archive. Many of these sessions, as they come from absolute legends of the sport who developed in kaimuay and circumstances that no longer exist, are just stuff with details. Some can be watched 10s of times, as each fighter has their muay, and things are being show and communicated beyond even what is being instructed. I'm glad you are getting so much out of the documentation.

Damn, just looking at his record now. Very impressive. Some serious heavy hitters. Does he come and go as a trainer there?

btw, I ran into this very good podcast on the Khmer Empire which had a significant influence on the Siam Kingdoms that followed, and Thai practices to this day. Highly recommended for giving background on what is discussed by me above. And, for those interested in a deeper analysis of the possible reasons for post-Khmer change in the region, this is a very good blog post summation of a hard to find article by Richard A. O'Conner arguing that it was the wet-rice irrigation cultural complex, coming upland from the valleys, that supplanted the farming garden and flood management society of the lowlands, somewhat in line with the podcast's account of the drought and flood patternings that may have brought the Khmer Empire down. Arguments go that wet-rice irrigation creates more communal, shared-space social bonds, which may have bearing on discussions of any fundamental social/spiritual logic of Siam/Thailand.

Love your descriptions. You're telling a great story and having experiences lots of people just dream about. It's a very special relationship to Muay Thai to be in a small kaimuay that produces active stadium fighters. You get to feel how much of Muay Thai is handmade, and woven out of very local community. This stuff is the heartbeat of Thailand's Muay Thai, its real heartbeat. How did you find your apartment, if you don't mind me asking? And what is your apartment like? (Any photos of the gym, or your apartment?)

Walters returning to the cultural matrix later in the text, adding details:

Here are screen shots and a Google zoom in for everyone to give a sense of where it is in relation to Bangkok and Chiang Mai:

Sounds like an incredible, personal experience. What size are the fighters out there? Do you feel like your training with them is productive for you at 70 kg? I see you mentioned 15 minutes of clinch, what is the clinch training like for you?

I'm drawn more and more to the idea that it is the fighters who have built a fighting sport, its art. Yes, arts & sports do not rise unless they are pulled into circles of power and epic centers of cultural focus - just as the great variations of provincial Muay Thai of Thailand were drawn into Bangkok in the early part of the 20th century, with the arrival of railroads (Khorat 1900, Southern Rail 1907, Lampang 1916, Chiang Mai 1921) - and if not shaped by commercial powers, the brilliance of promoters, the patronage of the King or the State - but amid these forces it's the wills of the fighters who performed in the magic squared circle, and their bodies which built it. This is where the bricks are laid...and not just the bricks. It's the living force of these men (and some women), their creative force, which largely gave shape and complexity to a sport, gave it its fabric. It is much less like an architect who tells workers where to put blocks of stone, and much more like an array of weavers who, on looms of the Self, pull strands through and through to create a pattern. I am well-known as someone who has dug his heels in the sand as Muay Thai is being dragged forward into new, radically different, highly commercialized (and I believe much less capable, more physically illiterate) zones. I was struck by a very fine argument that was sent my way, as I urged Thailand's Muay Thai not to let go of the complexity and immense competency it had developed over the last century, when taking this commercial turn. It was said that I advocate for a distant Muay Thai where fighters are so little paid for their work, harkening back to when fighters were more or less controlled and owned, and fought for so very little. This is a really good point. There are some problems with it, for instance top stars of Thailand's Golden Age Muay Thai, adjusted for the economy, actually were paid quite a bit more money than those of today (in general), and had a stardom in the country that shaped generations. But still, there is a very good point. Ignoring the top earners of the 1990s, there is a real sense in which the Golden Age drew in countless fighters many of which trained and fought in onerous conditions. There is a real sense in which Muay Thai broke backs, and the blood, sweat and tears of the sport did not pay in a way that feels equitable, for the average, hard fighting circuit fighter. The word floating behind this is exploitation. I think it's a complicated word, because it involves us considering what fair recompense is, and recompense is not just baht; but its an important thing to think about. Is someone like me who holds firm to what Muay Thai has been arguing that we should return to the systems of the past where big promoters steered the sport and gave fighters life or death in the sport in their powerful networks and decision making, often with very little lasting financial reward? Are we to roll the clock back to patronage of OneSongchai and Klaew? Of unbreakable long contracts and the tight networks of gym owners? I think this is a really good thing to think about when we make decisions on where we stand on the Muay Thai that is being fought. Where are the power centers? And what are the lower-level, circuit fighters experiencing? What is the compensation for their labor? This is what I'm thinking about. Let's grant that the Muay Thai of the past was in some significant degree exploitative, in the sense that workers were laboring often under great distress to produce a product the windfall of which largely went to promoters and gym owners. If we want to think just in terms of financial reward and labor/cost analysis we can see that. But this is the powerful aspect that is missing from that world view. Firstly, meaning in life does not reduce to income. In fact there are many things much more meaningful to people than the number of zeros in a bank account (though for some this is paramount). When Dieselnoi tells the story of when he was knocked out by lead-handed Kaopong in his lone boxing fight, and how he bounced from rope to rope, staggering to stand before he finally fell, he talks about the fact that the Prince was in attendance. "I could not even stand for the Prince." As he tried with his gigantic heart to straighten up, and failed, he was not thinking of his kadua (fighter pay), or who bet on him. He was thinking of his dignity. His place. The traditional elements of Thailand's Muay Thai have a great deal to do with "place", and much of the reward, in that there was one, is about "place". Many of these fighters came from places in society without much standing, and fought and trained in the sport to gain that standing. And place is not fame. It's related, but it's not. You cannot not forage it. This is what I'm saying. If we are to mourn the fact that the fighters of the past were not fairly compensated we have to expand our vision to fully see what they were actually compensated with. And a great deal of what they were compensated with was the tremendous and enormous edifice of Muay Thai that they had built. THEY built it, round by round, bell by bell, cut by cut, hand raised by hand raised. It did not stop. It is THEIR artform. They made it. It's like a pyramid made from 100,000 hands. That it stands and that it lasts is part of their compensation, the part they didn't get when the baht was put in their hand. It belongs to them. This is the fundamental problem with the efforts to radically reduce the complexity, skill sets, traditions and aesthetics of Muay Thai of Thailand. Yes, there might be very good, sensible commercial reasons to do so, especially as market demands have shifted. Yes, it may very well benefit some wonderful fighters who never would have gotten the eye-ball recognition and the financial boon if they had simply stayed in stadium Muay Thai, or just retired as many, many have done. There are good reasons for this, ethical reasons. But as you erase the edifice of Thailand's Muay Thai, to make it more marketable, more readable on the scroll of mobile phones and tiny screens, as you pull into new mechanisms of possible resource extraction, you are actually destroying the one thing all those fighters were paid with, the legacy of the sport itself, as the greatest fighting art on earth. They made that. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu talks about not only financial Capital, but also social Capital, which is your place in a culture, but what I'm talking about goes much deeper than even social Capital. It's about the craftsmanship of 100,000 hands to make something, and for it to have reached a level of incredible capacity. One of the very special things about Thailand's Muay Thai is that it was born both out the cultural traditions & practices which give it a profound (non-commercial) substance, but it was also forged out of probably more than 1,000,000 full contact fights over the last century. In regions styles developed, gym to gym grew specific techniques that won under the aesthetics of the sport, krus, gym owners, fighters all mixed to create an immense vocabulary of fight knowledge - and Amazon-like train forest diversity of it - which made it the most capable fighting art in the world. The fighting IQ and skill display was just eye-wateringly good. This came out of ALL the fighters. Countless fighters you've never heard of. The creation of this was the legacy of all of them. Every run-down village festival ring with gamblers pressed against the apron, every (old) Lumpinee clash of titans. All these fighters had a piece of this, because they made it. It was theirs. If you take out all those musical notes - too many notes! - change the rules and the scoring (which is the DNA of the living animal of it) and make it something unrecognizable you are erasing their legacy, the one thing they had in compensation beyond the baht put in their hand. When you remove clinch for instance, and your version of the sport comes to supplant the very picture of what Muay Thai is in the eyes of the many, you actively erase Langsuan, Samson, Panomtuanlek, Dieselnoi, Namkabuan and Chamuakpet. You not only will erase their memory (which may exist in nostalgic highlight clips), but you, more painfully so, erase their knowledge, the very thing they put their bodies to work in building, fight by fight, years in the kaimuay. They were technicians, they built something. And, it is not only them. You are erasing the great anti-clincher, the femeu masters like Samart, Silapathai, Hippy, Somrak, Karuhat and Burklerk. The entire vocabulary, a whole species of fight knowledge that has been developed through their contest, and to some degree passed on, is wiped out. It's gone. Not unlike mono-cropping where a old wood forest once stood. And this is just speaking of clinch fighting in the sport. So much more can be said of narrative fight control, contests of ruup signature, dern vs matador dynamics. The elite capacities of Thailand's Muay Thai were not earned by the promoters, or even the gym owners. They were earned by the fighters. They were earned out of the bodies, as artists put to endeavor. I just think we should think long and hard before we erase these kinds of very sophisticated, hard-won, achievements of knowledge, the legacy of which within the living culture, within the living sport is their reward. It's not just a question of: "How should fighters fight today...to make the most money?" As with all things in life, even things of commercial value, it's about meaningfulness, and in some sense it feels as if we are digging into the cultural pensions of the men who made this sport. The new forms are literally unrecognizable to many of them. They don't even know what they are looking at, so they seldom look...or if they look they look in terms merely as spectacle. There is some element in which we owe these fighters for what they made...even if you want to take what they made and turn it into something else for consumption. We owe them that they can look at the sport, the art, and SEE themselves in it. We owe it to them to to preserve something of the pyramid that has been built by hand. We cannot pull the foundation stones out of what it is and still respect the great feats of knowledge and transformation they created.

This is great stuff. I really appreciate the writing. Can you screen shot Google Map locations? Post Google Map links?

The head of the WBC Muaythai said this man could help you: https://web.facebook.com/hadj.wbcmuaythaieurope

You may try and get in touch with WBC Muaythai who has efforts in Africa and the Middle East. They express a Muay Thai rule set that is perhaps the closest of all Thailand's traditional stadium Muay Thai.

The above is the fight from ringside, without commentary, just a great clear feed of the action. This is just a special fight. A lot was going into this, not the least of which that Sylvie would be facing a Western fighter, something she'd had the occasion to do very infrequently in her voluminous fighting career which has been focused on Thailand, and a very skilled Westerner at that. And, adding to the challenge is the fact that the WBC World Title is probably the most present day prestigious belt, given how rigorously they attempt to adhere to Thailand's scoring principles, and the effort and care that they take to keep their female Muay Thai rankings up to date (something that is incredibly difficult to do); this put added pressure on the fight. Sylvie had come off a very significant back injury in August, something at the time really put a scare into us, immobilizing her for weeks - horse, fence - and though had fought well in her return, once, had not been training rigorously in clinch - her meat, bread and butter - for honestly, a couple of years. Much of the conditions of training that had made her so unbeatable had been wrecked by COVID in the Pattaya local Muay Thai scene, and we just didn't know how that would show in a fight this demanding. In video we had seen that Elisabetta Solinas had some clinch strengths, some of which would show in this fight. The real challenge, I imagined, would be that of rhythm and pattern. Many fights are decided at the level of rhythm and pattern, and much less so at the level of tactics and techniques (where many place their analysis). This is just my personal belief, I'm sure others would disagree. If you imagine a fighter's strengths as a wave pattern, with troughs and valleys, how that wave pattern intersects with their opponents wave pattern really can be unpredictable, when fighters are unfamiliar with each other, especially when fighting out of genre. above, wave interference (but in this imperfect analogy fighting opponent peaks would be expressed as toughs, etc). The idea is that strength points, whether they be offensive or defensive, have their rhythm and patterns, and strength points interfere with strength points, weaknesss moments can amplify opponent strength moments. This creates fight rhythm. The pattern is the tempo & amplitude of a fighter's style. And in this poor analogy, a fighter's wave is not a symmetrical series of peaks & toughs. It is shaped with varying oscillations like the EEG of a heart beat, or brain waves. Sylvie's Muay Khao fighting style, its wave pattern, had been developed fighting against the (mostly) Muay Femeu Thai female fighting style, mostly against physically much larger opponents, within the traditional, narrative scoring aesthetic. WBC rules would weight all rounds evenly - though the traditional, Thai stadium judges may score early rounds with a tendency toward the draw, one doesn't know - so there was an imperative in this fight that the shape of the fight, and interactions with Solina's wave pattern was largely unknown. How were these waves going to interact? Would peaks cancel each other out? What valleys would amplify the other's peaks? Until you get in the ring you just won't know. And the fight was a beautiful fight. What the fight became was actually a classic Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao battle. And it's a beautiful thing that the WBC rule set, and the promotion itself which involved high-level Thai judges, and not the least of which, Elisabetta's very skilled femeu style, all made happen (read the WBC Muay Thai rule set; its the best English language rule set I've ever come across). You can feel the work that was put into it). Solinas fought with a great, super balanced (important), retreating, countering, teeping, scoring, pivoting, and also very high-tempo style, which set the stage perfectly for the Muay Khao question mark. Can the Muay Khao fighter catch her? This is the traditional, persistence hunting fight arc was in play. The equation was even further complicated by Solinas's very strong trip game in the clinch. Sylvie has a sailor's balance, developed through the years, which saved her several times, and even allowed her to reverse important positions, but that high level tripping was going to complicate the Muay Khao story. It wasn't necessarily so that when Sylvie caught her that she'd be able to become dominant. Several times in the fight she had clinch positions which stalled, or were slow to develop for the simple fact that she had to stabilize and read possible trips. And, this was even further complicated by the clinch breaks by the ref. Early clinch breaks are sometimes to be expected, as it can be part of trying to create the narrative challenge for later rounds...but there were also clinch breaks when Sylvie achieved very dominant positions, with the head quite down. Perhaps these were for the protection of the opponent, as a female fighter. It happens. But it was not possible to know how these breaks were being scored by judges. These were moments when fight ending, or fight changing strikes could land. This had the remarkable effect of making the fight incredibly exciting at ringside, because Sylvie just could not pull away, and in a way showed that the ref had expertly sculpted a perfect fight. He kept asking Sylvie to do more...and she did more. The result was a near perfect fight of slowly increasing escalation. I think it's pretty clear that the first two rounds went to Solinas (although you might imagine a 10-10 round from a Thai judge?). Going into the third the assumption had to be "You can't lose another round". Solinas had brought out her trips and her gorgeous retreating counter fighting, had cut Sylvie behind the ear, and seemed to be hitting on all cylinders. And that is what you want, in a way. You want fighters being able to express who they are. As the wave patterns had come to meet it didn't seem that Sylvie's wave was interfering much with Solinas's. Yes, in clinch Sylvie showed promise. And Sylvie secret (because people don't pay much attention to it) teep game may have put some snags into the overall freedom of Solinas, but she had plenty to overcome it, it appeared. But this is where the fight gets interesting. In wave patterns there is not only the shape of the wave (where the peaks and valleys fall, like notes in music), there is also amplitude and tempo (frequency). And the Muay Khao fighting style relies on amplitude (& tempo)...a gentle and yet relentless increase in amplitude & tempo started in rounds 3, and the 4. Its the same wave, but with rising amplitude & tempo. Now, this is dangerous under international WBC rules, because Thai style narrative scoring puts scoring emphasis on rounds 3 and 4, and emphasis on who is increasing in effectiveness as the fight goes on. In a more natural Thai setting the fight would have been more or less tied, or slightly in Solina's favor going into round 3. Yes there was a cut, but it was behind the ear and early in the fight. It would be a score that would fade. Under international WBC rules Sylvie could very well be one round away from losing, a kind of sudden death. These are very different states in a fight. What is interesting is that the traditional Muay Khao fighting style which focuses its increase on the scoring rounds 3, 4 and then 5 is best prepared for this position in a fight. That's what its for. Everything you've done up to this point is to prepare the ground for the upped intensity, the rising amplitude of your wave pattern. And its just remarkable to see it unfold in this fight, against a high quality fighter fighting under a different aesthetic. You see the purpose of Muay Khao, what its meant to do and how it does it. And it is really something that this kind of fight can happen in International Muay Thai contexts. We are getting narrative Muay Thai. In terms of the fight itself, at that point, you just see Sylvie become more and more effective, especially in the clinch...(but also in stalking). She's absorbed much of the danger of the trips, having learned the first two rounds, and as fatigue and instincts take over she's more and more able to scramble to dominant positions. And though Solinas admirably commits to the teep as almost a pure signature of femeu muay, with incredible and skilled insistence, the teep itself became less and less effective, as Sylvie teeped through it, interfered, disrupted and muddied it (clashing wave patterns again). The teep is an interesting classic weapon. In some regard it doesn't even actually score, or score much, but the patterns you make with it, and the increasing ways it can disrupt, can make it one of the great weapons of Muay Thai (maybe how the jab in boxing should be regarded). The story of the teep in this fight, both Solinas's and Sylvie's is a very interesting one, and helps explain the dynamics of Sylvie's stalking in the latter rounds. Basically the defensive teep is the perfect counter weapon to the dern fighter, and Solinas pulled out the best weapon...but the teep has to show an increase of effectiveness. And the stalking teep is a, less flashy, secret disruptor. The battle of the teep is actually a hidden inner battle within this fight, aside from the more obvious clinch dominance Sylvie was able to attain. When I came home I honestly watched the last 3 rounds over and over...perhaps 25 times. I wasn't looking for good or bad techniques, mistakes or advantages. The more I watched them they just read like music to me. They were these beautiful, rising tempos and amplitudes created by BOTH fighters. Both fighters made this fight. And the way the WBC promotion presented the fight also made this fight. There is music in those 3 rounds, Muay Khao music, but really the music of Golden Age Muay Thai, the Muay Thai of clashing styles and skill sets, the music of narrative scoring arcs, orchestra of two fighters climbing up over peaks and valleys of increasing amplitude. Yes, Sylvie came out on top. Yes the fight was precipitous to start the 3rd. But Muay Thai is about these kinds of soul to soul evolutions within the fight, where the art of each fighter gets to show itself. That's what fighting is about. That's what makes it more than just entertainment.

In the next post I'd like to address the specifics of Thailand's Muay Thai which reflect this spiritual endeavor. You can follow this thread.

One of the first things to appreciate when thinking about how Thailand's Muay Thai fighting itself expresses, or involves spiritual values is that in the history of Southeast Asian warfare war was seen as a cosmic battle. And the King in battle was regarded as possessing not only physical prowess, but also spiritual prowess. Cosmic forces, "soul stuff" was in conflict on the battle field, and the King, or which ever champion of a martial force was the acme of that side's soul-power. Historians Michael Charney and Anthony Reid tell it that the fall of the leader could end the conflict altogether. First Charney on Southeast Asian warfare: And Reid in his study of Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce: Just as the kings of mainland southeast Asia held "soul power" charisma due their martial prowess and their earned spiritual prowess, and used that charisma to create far reaching alliances, strengthening his mandala of power, battle itself was lead by the charismatic leader who melded physical prowess and spiritual prowess together, and brought them to what was a battle of cosmic (read "soul stuff") forces. This singular champion logic of charisma is not only found in Southeast Asia, for instance we see it in Homer's Iliad in various figures, but especially in Achilles, who was not only a formidable martial force, but also was a poet, musician and elegant speaker, not to mention spiritually half divine due to his mother. citation for previous comparison photo Above King Narsuan's famous elephant duel and Achilles' duel vs Hector. (As a note, these were both trade-oriented maritime cultures whose wealth was depended on a slave economy. There may be a socio-economic relationship.) In any case, because battle was seen as expressive of spiritual prowess it is simply wrong to put fighting in the category of physical prowess, in some kind of antithesis to the spiritual. It can be argued to be fundamentally the meeting of charimatically imbued champions, who posses both physical and spiritual prowess, the results of which lie with forces beyond the ring (battle field) itself. And, these charismatic figures represent and express the "soul stuff" of their affiliations and attachments. When they win, something much larger wins. When Karuhat tells us that 2 busloads of fans and supporters would drive down from his hometown Khon Kaen in Isaan for each fight of his, loaded with gambling interests, monies pulled together from communities, he in a certain sense spiritually (at least in terms of "soul stuff") represented them in the ring. His soul stuff was added to by their presence, and his victories flowed down threw and into them. We can see this very same logic of representation in the West, for instance in Nationalism in combat sports, or in terms of race or ethnicity, or other subset groups, but in Thailand it becomes much more sharpened, and pervasive, because of how they regard power relations themselves, in a world of "unequal souls" and of transmittable "soul stuff". We start though with the notion in Thailand that fighting is necessarily to some degree spiritual. And thus, training for fighting involves spiritual training. Not only are there magico-religious practices that surround and structure training (& fighting), the training itself focuses on the disciplining of many affects & dispositions which have qualities which are in concert with more overt traditional spiritual training by monks & holy men in the culture. However small a fight may be in Thailand, one's training consists of rigorously learning how to properly take that place of spiritual (soul stuff) champion. What differs from similar imperatives in other fight cultures elsewhere in the world is the degree to watch this still is thought of in spiritual (even if unconsciously spiritual) terms.

The above is a far-ranging, quite theoretical take on the spiritual foundations of not only Thai culture, but also Muay Thai, and its claims to a kind of underlying metaphysics of power, and a practice of power to some degree remain opaque. The thinking is imagined to be continuous in mainland Southeast Asia from long before the rise of Khmer power in the 9th century, covering belief systems sometimes called Animism. Let me bring things back to earth with a very mundane example. When we first visited Thailand we found ourselves living along a market street near the Chiang Mai university, near Lanna Muay Thai camp where Sylvie trained morning and afternoon. We lived in a kind of inexpensive hotel with floors dedicated to foreigners and other floors to University students, and we were but a 5 minutes walk to the camp. Every morning we would walk to the camp and pass a fruit truck which had parked at the mouth of the market row, where other various businesses sold fruit, flowers, meat, prepared snacks and desserts. The street was a kind of cornucopia of things to buy and sample. Every morning we would pass the fruit truck and the kind older lady in the back of the pick up, where she did business, would cheerfully smile at as as went. And when training was done each morning, on the way home we would load up on delicious cold pineapple (and watermelon), neatly sliced into bags. It was so nice to see her smile on the way to the gym, and to get that fruit on the way home. After several days of the habit we decided to be more adventurous and try a few other things on the market row. It seemed so full of life, and there appeared such a sense of community among everyone. I'm not sure what we got to snack on, but we ate in on the way the hotel and didn't think much of it. It was just more of bountiful Thailand. When we got up the next morning and began our walk to the gym we passed our cheerful older lady in the back of her fruit truck and she completely iced us out with the coldest of shoulders. We had, accidentally, broken our alliance. This is soul stuff. Our patronage, our community of commerce, our money, her preparation, all of it increased her soul stuff, the soul stuff of her family...however slightly. When we took our business, however mindlessly, to another fruit vendor deeper into the market row we gave soul stuff to them, and not her. This is part of what I mean when I talk about the essential logic of soul stuff pervading Thai culture. As Westerners who are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as consumers with the power of choice we view our choices outside of consequence to a large degree. We pay for services or products and we consider the relationship "even" to a large degree. If something more appealing comes along the next day, or the next month, we make a different purchase. In the conception of soul stuff, soul stuff is always being portioned and passed around, and soul stuff is also always under contest. It is agonistic. When historians describe the orbs of power that defined great empires of mainland Southeast Asia they specifically do not speak of territories. Rather kings exerted influence over others through charismatic (& sometimes martial) power, expressed through networks of alliance. Very large palace structures, solemn religious rites and royal displays would anchor the charisma of a king, giving them aura to stabilize those networks (which historians call mandalas), but a king's sphere of influence was made up of other smaller spheres of influence (mandalas of other smaller polities and their rulers), many of which would overlap. There were zones of overlapping sovereignty, as shown in this graphic: What I suggest is that this concept of overlapping of zones of sovereignty, mandalas made up of other smaller mandalas, which are made up of the same, is the fundamental struggle of contested, agonistic "soul stuff" that makes up the social world. It describes how Kingdom power operated in the 16th century Siam, and it describes how street vendor power operates in Chiang Mai in 2010. It is the ability to exercise influence and grow alliances, and to do so in ways that you signify your sphere of power to others. And, those within your sphere of influence are themselves seeking to grow their own networks of alliances, express their own acquired soul stuff, so the fabric of alliance is always tensioned. This is something that Westerners who stay some time in Thailand within a Muay Thai community in a city, or even a district will come to realize. Like politics of the fruit truck, each commercial Muay Thai gym exists within a sphere of influence which is larger than itself. It's part of a series of alliances with promoters, its own fighters, with other gyms, and at the same time is in struggle against other gyms who also have spheres of power. It's not that it is one gym vs another gym. It's that there is an entire fabric of power relations, networks and alliances, that is always in tension. And any one move or shift in alliance in that network has an invisible domino effect. Fighting at one promotion, training at one gym, these are "soul stuff" alliances. Western fighters who have chosen to move to another gym within the mandala sphere of the influence of their own gym may very soon discover that they are caught within a power-web. You are affecting the "soul stuff" of the gym you are attempting to leave, you could be changing very delicate balances of power, however innocently or blindly. This is because power is a function of "unequal souls", and each person is continually acquiring the signatures of "soul stuff", the ability influence, the capacity to charismatically attract others into their network, and gaining "soul stuff" through the alliance with more powerful figures beyond their own sphere. This interwoven, overlapping, sphere upon smaller sphere fabric is how much of Thai cultural social power expresses itself, and that is arguably due to the deep spiritual conception of soul stuff itself, something at least 2,000 years old. I suspect that this fundamental agonism between spheres of influence is what gives Muay Thai its special societal relevance as an art and sport. It acts out in a bold, theatrical way the more widespread agonisms of authority and influence, and it taps back down into the original union of spiritual and martial power, as it was expressed in political charisma. When fighters are fighting they are assembling and putting at risk the "soul stuff" of themselves, their families, their gym, and in some cases their community, in a wager hopeful of increasing that soul stuff through not only victory, but also through their physical display of that shine in the ring, through the language of muay.

A question that sometimes is raised is: What is the religion of Muay Thai? Or probably better put: Is there religious meaning in Muay Thai? Sometimes behind this question are the pictures of spirituality within traditional martial arts like Kung Fu or Karate, an idea of self-perfection which is grounded in a deeper spiritual belief. The martial artist is perfecting themselves both physically and spiritually at the highest levels. Many answer this question in the negative, in a way that seems quite accurate at first. "There is no spiritual meaning to Thailand's Muay Thai." It is a fighting art, a sport, its meaning is in its efficacy. Looking for religious or spiritual beliefs in it would be like looking for them in Western Boxing. Yes, there are important cultural rites & practices which derive from Buddhism and the older form of Brahminism, and even the animism before that, but one does not have to be a Buddhist, let's say, to practice Muay Thai - and often these rites & practices are treated as cultural trappings by observers, a kind of respect paid to the past that could easily be shed without missing a beat. They aren't necessarily active religious practices, some say, while for others within the sport & art they treat these as highly meaningful, without which Muay Thai would lose its footing. If one had to give a single religion to Muay Thai it would be its Buddhism, in the sense that it grew out of a culture of Buddhism for the last 800 years, and in many respects has the qualities that it has because of Siam & then Thailand's Buddhism. It's traditional treatment of aggression, the way in which its scoring and overall style of fighting is classically handled with emphasis on ruup (posture), balance & self control, its treatment of the affects of anger and fear are quite Buddhistic. And notably within the culture there have been cultural parallels between between novice monkhood and the path of the young nak muay. You can read about some of those here: Thai Masculinity: Postioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng – Peter Vail. When we see Thailand's Muay Thai through the lens of Buddhism not only do certain aspects of its scoring and presentation make more sense to foreign eyes, also questions as to how could such a violent sport be religious at all finds some resolution. There is an undeniable fabric to Thailand's Muay Thai which seems quite Buddhist, as it has been the dominant religion in the region within which it grew. And this is not to minimize that Muay Thai was also fed, perhaps for centuries, by the very high level Muay Thai of the South which has a significant Muslim population. Muay Thai is actually much more of a tapestry than many assume. There are threads in the fabric. We are left somehow with an unsatisfying answer. Yes, Thailand's Muay Thai expresses and comes out of a (largely) Buddhistic culture and holds several rites and practices which are religious in nature - the treatment of the mongkol, the pre-fight Wai Kru/Ram Muay are the most obvious ones - and even we might grant that in the cultural maturation of boys the kaimuay (boxing camp) has stood as an alternative to the maturation in the wat (temple). Or, we might even imaginatively acknowledge that in its history temples were likely houses that kept Muay Thai and transmitted its form, for centuries (perhaps even in some modest Shaolin, temple-kept, non-government sense), a magic-imbued Muay Thai that is likely lost to today (practices outlawed in 1902). But still, what is its religion? Are Muay Thai fighters doing anything religious that is intimately connected to their performance? Is the arduous and obedient training in Muay Thai in any sense a spiritual practice? I believe they are, and there is. "Soul Stuff" and Muay Thai Anthropologists and historians who have studied the history of Siam (Thailand), and Southeast Asian culture in general, have wrestled with thinking about the fundamental nature of its social organization, as it is has appeared throughout the centuries. Mainland Southeast Asia from about the 1st century AD went from small settlements and polities to eventual powerful trade centers and then empires, a transformation likely fueled by a connection to India. The great temples of the Khmer, the religious cults to Shiva, the establishment of potent royal figures has largely been credited to what is called "Indianization". The culture of India pervaded Southeast Asia in a manner some compare to how Roman culture passed over Europe. The presence of statues to Ganesh, the identification of Thai royalty with Vishnu, even the invocation of the Ramayana in the Muay Thai Ram Muay are all expression of this period of "Indianization" begun nearly 1,700 years ago. This is a very long lineage. Atop this layer of pronounced Hindu/Brahminist influence sits Buddhism itself, which transformed the politically Indianized culture further. It's important to realize that these two very strong influences are not (fundamentally) in conflict. The spiritualities expressed in Hindu form, especially in political contexts, were even furthered in Buddhist devotion. The forms of its expression are different, but the fundamentals of power and spirituality remained the same. And this is important to understand. Power and spirituality are bound together. We can see that even at a basic level questions about identifiable religion likely have braided answers. For historians the answer to why Hinduism, and then Buddhism, were able to powerfully graft onto Southeast Asian culture lies within the supposition of an older belief, something that lies below these historical sedimentations - why the receipt of salvation religions which gave voice and form to this older belief. It is this older belief (some have called it a "cultural matrix") which in a sense glues together the practices, and informs sociability itself, even the secular sociability of today. And this is the belief of "soul stuff". This belief interpretation was first put forward by the preeminent historian of Southeast Asia O. W. Wolters (link at the bottom of this post), but for our purposes this summation of it by Michael Charney in his book Southeast Asian Warfare: 1300-1900 (2004) is a very good entry point Everything in the world has a certain amount of stuff. A potency. And they do not have it in equal portions. Rocks have it, but a particular rock might have a great deal of it. Humans have it, but particular humans may have much more of it than others. Importantly, this is something you can acquire. You can have more soul stuff than you were born with, and it is something that can be transmitted between persons & objects. This can happen through association, physical touch, and a host of magical-religious practices. You can read into Wolter's original discussion of soul stuff here. Because he is investigating the origins of the Indianization of mainland Southeast Asia he is looking at the role of kings, and rulers of polities. For him it was the de-emphasis on lineage, the generational demand for personal performance, proving and acquiring "soul stuff", which kept Southeast Asia from adopting some of the more rigid social forms of Indian culture. Instead, because of the very nature of soul stuff in Southeast Asia political power had a fundamental agonistic quality to it, generation to generation, locality to locality, and (very importantly for our purposes), martial power and spiritual power were expressive of a single thing...soul stuff. He accounts how early kings were defined by their "prowess" and this prowess was expressed into only in terms of martial force, but through religious, aesthetic devotion. Within this under-fabric of Southeast Asian culture was a strong, bonded identity between physical prowess and spiritual prowess...and, the braiding of these two was expressed through "charisma". As Wolters writes: In the beliefs, the under-beliefs of Siam, the "priest" and the "warrior" were not separate. They were brought together in single personage, and this personage could be recognized by their charisma, their aura, which drew people to them. I think its important to realize that this isn't just a description of the rulers of polities. It actually describes how power ("soul stuff") is distributed throughout the entire lived world. Kings are said by historians to have mandala power, which is to say a certain sphere of influence which flowed out like candle-light in a circle. The further away from the center of this mandala power, the less it exerted itself. But lessor nobles, lessor polities also had spheres of power, a function of their charisma. In fact arguably, everything with soul stuff had circles of charismatic power. Some with very little, some with much more. The religious development of Siam can be thought of as expressing this much deeper, older sensibility toward the world and others, something that still persists (quite strongly) even today. It, in a sense, may animate present day Hinduistic and Buddhist beliefs with a particular logic of personal potency. Conquerous kings were also ascetic spiritual achievers who used the charisma of their personal achievement - the sign of their "soul stuff" - to glue kingdoms together. Here Wolters outlines how the much more ancient belief of soul stuff expressed itself in Buddhism through the personal spiritual achievement of Kings. The transmittability of soul stuff found firm expression in the Buddhist principle of merit (edit in: in later posts to this thread hpon, punna and merit are shown in the Thai concept of barami). I'm now going to race ahead to the subject of Muay Thai and religiosity, in this context, and work backwards from there. When one is training in Muay Thai in Thailand one is training in soul stuff. If you are not from the culture you might not realize or recognized why you are being trained a certain way, or even what qualities are being instilled in you, but if you undergo the process you are training in the acquisition and signification of soul stuff. And this is to some degree a spiritual ascetic practice, even if you approach it from a completely secularized place, and even if your trainers are not consciously expressing religious beliefs. This is the older form of the marriage of the martial and the spiritual, as it has been inherited, and to some degree sublimated, by the culture. And Thais who train in Muay Thai, who are part of the culture, are training in "soul stuff". The art of Muay Thai is developing the "prowess" which will eventually be expressed as a charisma (as it is culturally defined). One of the most subtly cutting criticisms of contemporary Muay Thai that we've heard was in a casual conversation between the legend Karuhat Sor. Supawan and WBC World Boxing Champion Chatchai Sasakul, both prolific fighters in Thailand Muay Thai's Golden Age. "Fighters no longer have charisma (sanae) today" they mourned. This wasn't a complaint about marketing, it was about the nature of the fighting itself. Fighting does not express the charisma that it once did. The reason why this criticism silently cut so deep is that the development of charisma was actually the point of Muay Thai fighting itself. Charisma is the aura one has, the capacity somehow (magically) draw people to you. It is a certain kind of personal gravity, which directly exudes your "soul stuff". It is your ittiphon, your power to influence. And it can be shown or lies in parallel to your ittirüt, which is your invulnerability. The connection between charisma and invulnerability is what lies beneath classic Muay Thai forms. The emphasis on ruup (posture, visible form), balance, freedom, control, and the fighterly aim of not necessarily "damaging" your opponent, as so much as dominating your opponent in a great variety of ways, including physical damage, is about the cultivation of charisma. This literally is the same kind of charisma of ancient kings, within the same scope of connective beliefs, trained for performance in the ring. Because Thailand is predominantly a Buddhist culture - and has been for much more than 1,000 years, the cultural form of that charisma has Buddhistic expression. In the same way that Buddhist novice monks seek to discipline their bodies, temper the hotter emotions, cultivate a kind of stoicism under travail, the young nak muay seeks to do the same. And great monks, through their ascetic practices, acquire great charisma revealing their "soul stuff". In some sense Thailand's Muay Thai has split off from many of the religious forms of charismatic development, but still expresses the same spiritual reality, even if in practice if falls into a broken, or and much less unreadable state. The ascetic practice, and the hierarchies of respect and rite in the gym are cultural pathways of "soul stuff" development. And arguably, anything you are learning in a Thai gym, whether it's the ability to endless do knees on the bag, or how to stay calm under sparring pressure, or how to properly block, or how to compose yourself under the exhaustion of padwork, are all actually about charisma, a projected invulnerability and magnetic aura, each fighter of which would have their own version. As Wolters emphasized, it is both a physical prowess and a spiritual prowess. Soul Stuff and the Magical Policeman The role of magical beliefs in the history of Muay Thai development is likely quite pronounced. If you would like to read an account which exemplifies the parallels between combat prowess and magical capacities, read the biography of the southern Thai policeman, Khun Phantharakratchadet (1898–2006) whose prowess occurred in the decades of Muay Thai modernization, and Thailand's rise as a modern Nation. It is important to understand that the development of fighting techniques (the knowledge of them, wicha) were historically not divorced from the development of magical techniques (that protected or aided you). Wats, traditionally, were likely a home for both. The tale of Khun Phan, a legendary real figure of Thai early modern 20th century history, recounts his advance as a physically small man who was a fierce fighter, taking on the nakleng gangs of the Sangkla area, and eventually other regions of Thailand, armed with his knowledge of the fighting arts, as well as study of the magical arts at the foot of the famed monks of Wat Khao Aor Or. in Phattalung. He even became proficient in Western Boxing (& perhaps Judo) studying at a wat in Bangkok, as part of his advancement as a policemen. He was a man of a remarkable amount of "soul stuff", much of it acquired through rigorous study and practice. The magical arts of Amulet protection, and sak yant are expressive of this spiritual under-logic of soul stuff. Everything has soul stuff, but pieces of material can be imbued with soul stuff, and because soul stuff is transmittable, it can be conferred to you through proximity or practice. Holy men, through rite and ritual can transfer soul stuff to you, and through spiritual practice you can hold it. Sak yant (sacred tattooing) are often devices of "soul stuff" transmission. They are thought to express/transfer the soul stuff of animals (tigers for instance) or gods, or heroic figures. They are thought to bring powerful energies, and often sak yant specifically bestow powers of charm or charisma (the ability to influence), or the power to command (amnat). In some cases creating invulnerability. Today, in their more commercial form they may be more thought of as one-way transmissions, but originally they involved spiritual devotion and self-transformation through practice. You achieved their powers through a growth in personal "prowess". It's enough to say that in the body of magical beliefs in Thailand we can see the nexus between martial prowess, spiritual power and charisma. These beliefs and practices, based in the logic of soul stuff, developed in parallel to the fighting arts of Thailand. Khun Phan at the age of 90 commissioned a Jatukam Rammathep amulet, believing that the spirit of Jatukam Rammathep had helped him solve a difficult murder case. The creation of this amulet by such an auspicious person, under the blessings of the Holy Pillar of Nakhon Si Thammarat, thought to be invoking spirits of great personage and Buddhistic merit created incredible demand. The substance of the Holy Pillar, the legendary policeman Khun Phan, and the proposed spirits Jatukam Rammathep, were put into physical objects, which then could transmit soul stuff to you. This is a logic of soul stuff. My brief detour into the magical arts is not to ascribe them or their complex beliefs to the spirituality of Muay Thai in particular. One is not to exclude them either, as still there are amulet practices of blessing and transmitted soul stuff, including those of the mongkol and prajet, or the invocation of dieties in the Ram Muay to begin every fight. More important is not to locate any set of beliefs and practices as necessarily religious, but rather to look at these beliefs and practices to understand how the logic of soul stuff transmittability expresses itself in Thai culture...and in Muay Thai itself. Magic is part of its heritage, but that heritage is founded on much deeper, metaphysical ideas on how power works in the world, and between humans. And this belief, I would suggest, is embedded to this day in even the most secular-seeming aspects of Thai life. There is a Buddhist perspective which may say that because of karma and reincarnation everything we do is spiritual practice. Everything we do is an attempt to alleviate or ease the suffering of existence. In this spiritualization of the world and culture, the belief in the transmittability of "soul stuff", of unequal souls, also can be seen as universal and pervading every practice. Much as a Western philosopher like Foucault may see all our interactions transpierced with discourses of power, all sociability in Thai culture can be seen as practices of soul stuff. It's development, its preservation, its signification, and the ways in which everyone takes position in society in relationship to powerful personages (whether they be local persons of aura, or National) who exhibit soul stuff. It is a kind of religion of existence. Soul Stuff and Muay Thai We can leave aside magical practices for now, and think about how soul stuff and Muay Thai relate. The first and obvious way is that because Muay Thai is a public performance the job of the fighter is to express "soul stuff". That means knowing the cultural signatures of "soul stuff", being practiced in displaying them, including aspects of command and control, invulnerability and of course charisma. Perhaps no fighter in history displayed soul stuff more than Samart, who expressed a very Rama/Vishnu quality, a potent equipoise. You cannot thoroughly understand Samart's greatness without seeing just how much (read here:) he signified "soul stuff" within the culture. This photo of him with the vanquished and bloody (aggressive, Muay Khao great) Namphon, gives some sense of it. But the signatures of soul stuff in Thailand's Muay Thai, and even kinds of personal charisma are not only of one kind. A great, unrelenting knee fighter like Dieselnoi will have tremendous soul stuff. A great pressure fighter like Samson, or a complex style fighter like Chamuakpet (naming legends of the Golden Age). There are various expressions of soul stuff. And, unlike in Western conceptions of "great fighters", soul stuff includes many things beyond the fighter. Samart for instance did not fight up very much in his career. In a Western mind this may be something of a demerit when compared to other great fighters who did. But because soul stuff is transmittable, and governed by association, the fact that Sityodtong gym was so powerful to be able to dictate favorable matchups (or at least avoid unfavorable ones) actually goes to Samart's soul stuff. He is part of a local nexus of power. Sityodtong has soul stuff. Master Tui has lots of soul stuff. Samart has soul stuff. As much as we want to think about fights as being between two isolated fighters in the ring, the truth is that there is much more in the ring than that. All the soul stuff that brought these fighters into being, that is poured into these fighters, is in combat. (This is a big reason why many Westerners do not fully grasp the role of gambling in Muay Thai. It seems to them to be just a corrupt interference in "pure sport". But in fact it is a layering of the contest of competing powers, men with soul stuff outside the ring...for better or worse. Under the spiritual logic of soul stuff fighters are never just "them". They literally invoke deities with their Ram Muay. In their Wai Kru they evoke their teachers. All of their skills and ascetic practice in training is summoned, publicly, into the ring. Fighters represent and embody.) This is not fundamentally different than the spirit-logic of cosmic battle that governed warfare in the great Ayutthayian Empire 500 years ago. What has changed is "who" is seen to have soul stuff, fundamentally a question of changing culture and values. As to the practice of Muay Thai itself, in the training kaimuay, and in the ring, one has to grasp that the fighting art and the fighting sport cannot be completely separated. Traditional kaimuay are technical houses of the inculcation in soul stuff. One is learning the practices which will give you power in a physical contest, but a contest which ultimately is also a spiritual contest. The techniques of a particular kru, the styles of a particular gym name, are a practical knowledge of Thai combat power. And the conditions of its practice are necessarily those of discipline and ascetic self control. The fundamentals of posture (ruup), timing and balance are meant to create liberty in the fighter, and its presentation to the judges and audience. Specific techniques, ways of blocking, attacking, avoiding, punishing or damaging, controlling, frustrating, overwhelming, are a kind of complex grammar of soul stuff. You display that you have more, and in defeating your opponent, in some sense you take some of their soul stuff as your own. And, as fighters share the ring with you, they too can gain soul stuff through proximate association (if you have a great deal). For deeper dives into this here I write in some detail about the social conditions of Thai training practices through the thinking of the sociologist Bourdieu: Trans-Freedoms Through Authentic Muay Thai Training in Thailand Understood Through Bourdieu's Habitus, Doxa and Hexis, and here I write about how the philosopher Agamben's study of 13th century Franciscan monastic practices help explain the rule-following power of Thai gym training for Westerners: Thailand's Muay Thai Gym, Authenticity and the Escape from Capitalism | Agamben on The Highest Poverty The importance of this insight into soul stuff and its transmittability is I believe that it unlocks much of the question about the religiosity (or spirituality) behind Thailand's Muay Thai. Often it is simply dismissed altogether because it does not seem reducible to the few obvious, formal rites that surround Muay Thai fighting. And, the magical practices of its past do not seem to embody most, or even much of any of Thailand's Muay Thai as non-Thais experience it. I suggest that the logic of soul stuff is so prevalent, so shoots-through Thailand's Muay Thai, even in its most secular and commercialized expressions, its so omnipresent it is almost impossible to see by Westerners (and others) who can carry a different cultural view of power. It though is something that is much closer to a Chinese metaphysical concept of Yin and Yang, a base assumption which explains many diverse practices, whether they be spiritual or quite secular, woven into the perspective of a culture and how it bonds together. And, as the historian O. W. Wolters argued, these beliefs lay at root beneath very diverse cultures all across Southeast Asia, spilling well over any particular country's barriers. And...if you kept the logic of "soul stuff" in mind you would get a better sense of what the difficult training in Muay Thai is truly focused on...the melding of the spiritual and the martial going back perhaps 2,000 years, as it is expressed and conceived in today's contemporary culture, and as the art of Muay Thai itself has come to embody it over the past 100 years or so. For a the primary source on O. W. Wolter's concept of "soul stuff" read here:

This idea of "soul stuff" (from Wolters) is summarized by Michael Charney in his book on Southeast Asian Warfare, woven together with his own thesis from the historical record, that in warfare "soul stuff" could be captured, as expressed in the old cultures of headhunting.

adding my commentary notes: On pages 17-19 he introduces the concept of "soul stuff", specifically in the context of the "cognatic kinship" of the lowland regions of Mainland Southeast Asia: This kinship is one in which inheritance and conceptual descent passes equally from males and females. Importantly, powers (rights and otherwise) are not confined by particular gender. These are not family trees of continuous energetic progeny, of men or women, but rather individuals are emphasized by in the genealogy, by their performance. What he is breaking away from is the idea that "power" (however it is conceived, is much less structured by institutional positioning, and not even by lines of familial descent, than by the idea that through performance one can acquire, and also signify personal power..."soul stuff". You didn't get it from your "title" or your father, per se. If you've been in Thailand long you'll recognize the "big men" of political or social power. He though places this within a larger idea of "prowess", which some sense of martial performance. (In the appendix in the post above emphasis is on spiritual performance, even to the degree of asceticism, in Balinese and Javanese cultures which perhaps DO place more emphasis on direct lineage). The idea he's forwarding though is one of almost spiritual (or even charismatic) social mobility, as endemic to mainland Southeast Asia, achieved through performance, read as "prowess". You can see this social/spiritual mobility expressed in O. W. Wolter's summation: Cognatic kinship, an indifference to lineage descent, and a preoccupation with the present that came from the need to identify in one's own generation those with abnormal spiritual qualities are, in my opinion, three widely represented cultural features in many parts of early Southeast Asia. (p. 21) He views power to be, comparatively, performatively competitive, less restricted by bestowing institution or lineage. "Soul stuff" and the capacity to have it, or more importantly perhaps acquire it and display it, creates an under-logic of a certain mobility through achievement.