Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

7-21b There is an intense feature of the Greek epic Iliad, in the telling of what heroism is, that illuminates how karma and performance plays out in the sheen of victory in Muay Thai. The telling of that epic, especially in the action scenes of war, is largely mechanistic. It is of bodyparts moving in conjunction in the theater of war, there is a kind of absence of consciousness, or a disassociation of consciousness that some have made much about. But, what I want to think about here is how the divine impresses itself on a moment, on the battlefield. It shows itself in a glimmer. There is the flash of the eyes that make you realize something divine is happening here, or how holy armor shines on a ridge, catching the light. You see the god out of the corner of your eye, it's not quite a glimpse. It's more a shadow...but a luminous shadow. It is cast from somewhere else, from beyond. But as it falls on a man, on a face, in the midst of epic endeavor, it is startling. It is transcendent. Not as an idea, but as a phenomena. It is oft repeated in these epics that men fight for fame. They fight these terrible wars to be sung by the bard. The body will pass and wither, but if you are sung you have attained a kind of immortality, in that the gods too are sung. You continue to exist in a string of sounds. It is the nature of fight culture, where the body is perishable, and used to exhaustion in agonistic strain that you have this sense of the glimmer, the impression of the divine, as it falls across the body in a moment of victory, or less so, in the sum of one's armor afterwards, the attempt to make an impression of that light. This is something that exists thousands of years apart in the festival fights, in the bug-air swarming in frantic clouds under hanging bare bulbs above rings, as two strive and beat each other, and the gambler's hand is in the air. This is what people may not understand. It is a huge orchestration, a communal ascendency, guided by the gambler's hand, summoning the same sheen that fell across Achilles's arms, the eyes that blazed fire. But whereas those incandescences are reified and frozen into sounds and page-marks, these very same phenomena are summoned fight after fight, ring after ring, odds after odds. It is the pulsebeat of the recreation of the divine, causing it to shine on the body. And after the victor strides out of the ring, pushing through the pressing crowd. People reach out to touch it.

Thanks d. You are a constant positive presence for us. :)

7-21 sylvie is a silver thread. I can't tell you how many times I've seen her glimmer through the light-and-dark of gym spaces, spaces that cut with wide blades of light, young men smashing themselves against the darkness, building sweat. She is faster than all of them, like an element largely unobservable by Muay Thai instruments, a thin, little sliver of metallic ribbon that just cuts and cuts as it sews through the padwork, through the clinch grind, through the heave of diaphrammic desire for air. She is quicksilver. An illusion. It just doesn't stop, just like light doesn't stop. Nothing matters but a supreme arc of desire, an unspoken desire to become. That light at Petchrungruang is incredible. Especially when everything is still, when the boys have long emptied out and gone off to school, and nobody really wants to come to early work in the morning. It comes through enormous slats that are made of the rooves of various levels. This, in Thailand, is tin art. It's a geometry of stabbing incandescence as solar rays cut and cut and cut in huge swathes. It is powerful. You know the nature of the sun in this. Its wisdom is never direct. You can never truly look into the sun, it is always at eclipse. The bag is pounding like a heartbeat. Thud, thud, thud, like an arrhythmia, doctors told her once that she has a hole in her heart, that exercise is a risk, that it can choke on itself. She used to have huge pains that would hit her there, that would cramp her right in the center of her being. She used to run to get aspirin when it happens. It doesn't happen very often anymore. Thud, thud, thud. It's a heartbeat of the gym. The way it knows that it is awake. The wooden post that is made of huge beams that look like they've been hewn for a movie set of the inside of a med-evil boat with oar's men, they shake. The entire space shakes. I used to hear these beats, these incredible thuds, when I would walk down the street up in Chiang Mai, on that little soi that we lived on, when she was early to training. You could hear the heartbeat of the gym right down the street. There is something fantastic about it, like a marriage of mechanism to the organic. Pounding out Spirit. It's enormous. It's very hard to describe if you haven't been here. The way these thuddings of bags cover the whole country, boy after boy after boy, and sometimes a girl, in little makeshift gyms of hanging dust and leather, shake the earth. They have been pounding this way, pounding the Earth, as long as they have been tilling it for rice it seems. There is an incredible humility to it all. Just bodies. No technique. Technique doesn't mean here what it means in the west. Technique just percolates from all the thudding, like an alchemy of what is darkest, most pure. Just bodies. Intent. It's difficult to grasp what the gambler's hand means. To take the gambler's hand. The gambler's hand, half open like a moon, grasps at nothing. It is curled, relaxed, it snatches at nothing. It is covered in darkness...until there are odds. Then it moves. It gestures to the disappearing trace of karma, that golden line that sparkles at the edge of bodies, at the edge of pounding away. The gambler's hand is very patient, like a fish in murky water. It is weightless, and then it snatches at chance. This is the hidden, undefined beauty behind the vast cloth and endeavor of Muay Thai. Each and every fighting body has the gambler's hand lightly brushing at its edge, feeling for the glimmer, the trace of karma, the impression of the divine as it somehow miraculously covers like a dew in beams the aperture of the work...staring at the sun. These are huge machines of effort, the agonistic transformation that comes through the clash with space, and every hand is a gambler's hand, feeling for the edge of the blessed. The Blessed. This is the progeny of the Art. This is the thing that makes its appearance when things are ascending. It comes out of the cataclysm of the effort. It cannot be controlled or even summoned. It can only be stroked by the gambler's hand, as if quietly fanning a flame. This is what Muay Thai is about. And when the shimmer moves off the body that seemed to produce it, catching onto some other darker form, it often leaves the thing where it lived and even seemed to thrive: cold, inert, still-born. It feels capricious. But it isn't. All sorts of mythology arise to explain why it moved, guessing where it might fall again, but these are mythologies, stories. It is not capricious. The gambler's hand knows. The beauty comes from its arc, the way it collaborates with bodies that thud the heartbeats of the spaces. You have to take the wide-view. Muay Thai is enormous. It ascends from the earth and lights upon royal memory. It is a vast tapestry of effort, and the only thing to do is to clan together in its midst, to work in unisons, in walls, in fortified gyms, around the organs of the bags and pads as the dust flies up.

This is going to be a big experiment, but I thought to myself: Isn't this the place to do it? For those that don't know me I kind of keep a low profile. I'm the one holding the camera, the one doing the film editing, or the digital heavylifting so that Sylvie can keep blogging at her crazy rate, and still train and fight full time in Thailand. I'm Sylvie's husband Kevin. I'm 51, and have been living here with my beautiful, brilliant wife in Thailand as she pursues her dream. I do write occasionally for her site, a few articles under A Husband's Point of View, and occasionally I jump into the internet stream to press a point or two on an issue I feel is especially important, but mostly I'm very happy keeping to myself in all this, while I watch with admiration as Sylvie climbs to places nobody really has gone before. But...I am a writer, and in all this time I too have fallen quite in love with the Muay Thai of Thailand. I get to express my thoughts all the time with Sylvie - we think and talk a lot about a number of dimensions of Muay Thai, everything from gender, community, technique, and most importantly it's future. But I don't really give myself permission to just flow in things, to write as I once really did, when I was younger. So, I thought that maybe this is a good space for that, a little corner of this forum where I can journal some of my more loosely connected thoughts, things that arise as I experience this incredible country and culture. Feel free to throw in comments if you like (a comment will automatically subscribe you to the thread, via email - you can all follow this thread by clicking "follow" in the upper right corner), but I'm just going to go ahead without much organization or even intent. You'll see from what follows I write in a unique, not easy to read voice, but hey, that's just me.

Someone sent this to Sylvie this morning, just watched it, so appreciative that the promotion put it up! It's great to see female fighters doing their thing. Sylvie will probably have a post up on this fight today (she's at training, will watch it when she gets home). Must be so frustrating to Kim. Loma fights the fight in a whole different place. Not striking. Space. It's a very simple approach, but not simplistic in the least. Difficult to crack.

That is a really cool pricelist! But wow, 2,000 baht with Manop?! smh. Might be interesting if Nak Muay Nation wants a Saenchai private, maybe they would spring for it.

lol - yes, not Saenchai's daughter. #braincramp - Though Saenchai's daughter is looking pretty badass herself! Interesting that the top Thai fighters spar with all the westerners very cool. If I remember right you said that a private with Saenchai is 5,000 baht?

I know that Emma Thomas just went to Yokkao and had a very good experience, better than she anticipated. I've also off-handedly heard this from several people. I'm guessing that it is a very expensive, western gym, though Manop (Saenchai's daughter who is 17) trains there, and she's said to be a top female Thai fighter. If you are looking for a much more old fashion style gym and willing to travel a bit (it is NOT central) I'd recommend Dejrat Gym, which is the home of the Thai National Team, and is just amazing. Perhaps it would be worth a visit for a day or two. It's a very small gym attached to the house of Arjan Surat, and several top Thai women train there when they are in Bangkok and getting ready for a fight (Loma, Sawsing). There will not a lot of English spoken, but the Muay Thai there is classic in style, and very fight oriented. It's a gym that is largely unknown to westerners. Here is Sylvie's 1 hr private with Arjan Surat. Here is Sylvie clinching with Sawsing there. Here is Sylvie's interview with former MMA fighter Kaitlin Young who spent a month there, along with video walk through of the gym. It's extremely Old School, but the interesting thing about it is that Old School is often not very pro-female. In this case though Thai women train there sometimes, as did Kaitlin who had a wonderful experience.

The first link doesn't work for me, the second one is a 2013 paper but does not seem to be a study that Jiraporn Laothamatas is associated with. I'm really interested in the presentation that looks like it was given in May of this year by Jiraporn Laothamatas: "Advanced Diagnostic Imaging and fMRI of the Brain in Thai Pediatric Boxers". I suspect that that Symposium presentation is what produced the recent surge in articles. This is the link to the brain images. Brain imaging is also found here in this June 16 (2016) presentation abstract which focuses on memory performance, with Laothamatas listed as an author. Here the control sample is simply described as "age matched".

This of course is the crux of the entire ethical question. How much agency does a child have? How much agency does an economically limited child have? And how do we weigh that choice in the context where children work, in fields, in food stands, as part of the family, and can take pride in their contributions to the family.

I completely agree with this possible IQ testing concern, which is why not being able to read the paper itself, especially on the specified nature of the control groups, makes me worry about the broad conclusions that may be drawn, not only from the study but from article headlines like these. From one excerpt I found this is how the subjects were described: "We performed brain MR imaging with 3.0 T scanner in 323 pediatric boxers and 253 age-matched normal control subjects." - age matched? Were the IQ tested subjects only age matched? Also mentioned were memory performance differences, which seems substantive. What we are really left with mostly are these kinds of highly technical pieces of evidence, without qualitative conclusion:

I've been following this study by Jiraporn Laothamatas for a few years now. The original study, about 4 years ago, seemed to have very few examined young Nak Muay (if I recall, maybe 20, working from my memory) so the results seemed inconclusive when compared to a control of over 200 non-Nak Muay, apparently adjusted for age and socio-economic class. Then from reading various new sources in 2014 she seemed to have more results, and updated her study (I believe with around 100 young Nak Muay). And now in May she seems to have presented a new paper, with over 300 young Nak Muay examined. So while I was predisposed to doubt the application of her original findings, she seems to be on very solid ground here. The problem that I have with the study at this point is that as I can't read the paper itself it's very hard to assess just what she's discovered. The only qualitative conclusions that I've seen drawn are related to IQ tests among the longest range sub-sample (fighting for 5 years). I've seen small excerpts which include brain scans which show neurological changes (including the increase spatio-temporal development), but it is difficult for a layman to judge just what risks are involved, at a qualitative level: ie, what is the Quality of Life (QoL) change reflected in young Nak Muay brain scans? This is a really important lack in the studies, though I understand that this may be the hardest to measure. The ethical issues is essentially one that hinges on of QoL,. I think this is an amazing ethical question because it pulls on so many threads of social judgement: how middle and upper class Thais view lower class Thais (Muay Thai is a sport of the lower classes largely), how westerners view Thais, ideals of childhood and development. As a westerner who has seen a lot of cultural good coming out of the very fabric of Muay Thai how does one weigh the development of children in the art vs the value of the art itself? There is no doubt in my mind that Muay Thai holds its very special place as the supreme combat art, a living martial art, because Muay Thai is fought at a young age, and has been for many decades if not centuries. It allows fighters a very early inoculation against the fear of contact, something that just cannot be mimiced. And it allows the sport itself (all the techniques, both in terms of pedagogy and of fighting) to develop in the real context of fights. The fact is: it is dangerous. And the Thais are the best in the world, raising a sport to the level of art - a living art - because they are exposed to danger early. If we took it in another direction, by analogy: If there was a (mythical) country which 200 years ago had the best sailors in the world, and the art of sailing was raised especially here because high-sea sailing began at a very young age, exposing young boys to many potential hardships, injuries and even deaths, the height of the art of sailing achieved in that country would be through the risk to children. Muay Thai reminds me of this. It has the best fighters in the world because and through this reason of risk. How does one balance the QOL of living within an art, a woven piece of your culture, with real, but unqualified diminishments? As a natural bias, I am suspect of much of the Western ideology of the Innocence of Children which has grown out of it's own unease with 19th century industrialization: The Victorian Cult of the Child. <<<< To understand the full scope of the ethical question, and how we have inherited particular perspectives of childhood (and how it relates to Industrialized Capitalism), do read this piece. Which is not to say that motivations for the protection of children are wrong, but insofar as they come out of pictures of childhood like those of Victorian/Industrial motivations, they should at least be critiqued. There is something about how middle classes everywhere project concern for lower class children that gives me pause. The bottom line for me is ultimately found in meaningfulness. How meaningful is Muay Thai? Unlike just blanket poverty, or disease or lack of education (in the general sense) - all of which tend strongly towards meaninglessness, suffering without redemption, arts like the fighting art of Muay Thai feels meaningful. It's an achievement of a people, a culture, embodying high values, praiseworthy states of mind and body. And largely its an achievement by the less economically advantaged of that culture. It's pretty amazing. This isn't to say that there is nothing worth critiquing or plain worrying about when it comes to young Nak Muay. Surely there is. There no doubt are many situations of great risk and injustice within the ad hoc system of youth fighting as it exists today. There are nefarious, cruel realities within the sport at the local and wide-scale levels, but I resist the sense that just because there is risk, or even in this case documented damage, it is simply judged as "brutal" or "bad". I come from a place where I feel that the fighting arts are noble, and their nobility is born of their engagement and ultimate mastery of risk. I do wonder if Muay Thai for Thai children is getting younger (perhaps there is more organized or prevalent gambling opportunity now?). I have no evidence to support this other than it just a question being raised. I see fighters from the Golden Age say that they began fighting when they were 13 (Karuhat) or 11 (Sagat), but I've never heard of legends say that they began fighting at 8, which seems sometimes the case now. This could of course be a difference in description, when people mark the beginning of their fighting, or anecdotal difference. Only people who have lived through it could say. The problem with this issue I think is that most of those who oppose child fighting in Thailand seem to do so from a very powerful, and emotion place. So it is difficult to come to a point of agreement, or a direction forward. I will say this. The sort of motivated resistance to child fighting seems to resemble the long time resistance to females fighting. This is not to equate the two ethically, there are clearly important differences, but only to diagnosis some of the gut-level judgement that may be involved. I'm not a father of a child, and if I was I may be moved to think differently, but I've often thought that if I did have a kid having him/her be raised in a camp like kaimuay I've seen a few western boys experience, seems like an amazing childhood to have, even if there be risks. Of course being able to pick and choose what camp, or which caretakers to watch over a boy (or girl) is not a luxury that many Thai parents have.

Sylvie just asked Loma. She says the fight is at 51, Loma says she's 47 today.

The idea that Loma has fought only 46 times is pretty funny. But recently Phetjeejaa's record showed "30" on a televised fight, when she in fact has probably over 150 fights already. But yeah, probably a pretty big weight difference. Loma just fought at 45 kg at the IFMAs, while Kim's preferred weight is stated at 53 kg. I'd guess that the big question will be how Kim handles Loma's throws, and how throws will be scored. I pray this one will have video, but I'm guessing not. :sad:

It's hard to overstate how sweet the guy is. It's kind of amazing. And as he's gotten older he's developed some movie star looks, so people are clamoring over the rights to him. The film also was shot and made by a Thai which seems to, at least to me, give it a different feel than very similar films made by western eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfnZ-WdK4FI This is just a wonderful short documentary on the Petchrungruang star fighter PTT. It's very hard to encapsulate how sweet and kind a fellow PTT is - hey, he absolutely loves Jaidee - but he has an aura. Sylvie wrote about him and his story that is hinted at in the film - but the film itself in its very simplicity, and in how his words in translation guide the basic themes, I just find very moving. What a cool dude he is. It's only about 8 minutes, give it a watch.

Sounds like such a complete and utter nightmare. Even in just local shows in NY the weirdly cramped aggravations somehow all felt inhuman in fight shows to me - a reason why we really wanted to move to Thailand - this sounds like that x100.

This is it totally. You can be at a crap gym and if you got the right trainer with the right intentions this could be incredible for you. Or you can be at a famous amazing gym, and if you got the wrong trainer, ugh - nightmare. I just talked to Sylvie, we are about to get in the car to drive to a fight up in Chiang Mai, but she said she does know of a woman who went to Samart's gym, and more or less loved it. She'll try to contact her.

The Muay Thai Institute once was a cutting edge gym for women. Sylvie wrote about the history of the gym in this piece on Thai Female Fighters in the 1990s. It was the host of the first Thai female fight team, and the founder built the first and only female oriented stadium in the Bangkok area. Yes, they do offer certificates, but I think that is largely due to its connection to early government efforts, and even present day ones, to formalize Muay Thai. I'm not sure if it is still connected to the IFMA/WMC, but I believe it used to be. Not too long ago it was a destination gym for many. But...who knows what it is like now? Gyms can change dramatically depending on the Krus there, but it is at least worth taking an investigative look at. It has a long history of training women. I seem to remember that someone on this forum was at Samart's gym, I believe it was a woman. I'll see if Sylvie recalls who it was.

The only thing I ever heard about the gym is that Samart isn't very involved with the training (who knows, this may vary). Only reason why I mention it is that he is one of the big reasons why people do go to the gym. This is totally off topic, but as you may be in Rangsit, this is where Sylvie's sak yant Arjan, Arjan Pi, has a home that he works out of. If you are inclined towards such a thing it might be an opportunity that you'd want to take up. He is amazing.

That is absolutely incredible. Organizing an event like that seems like a logistical nightmare, I'd think. But that is way, way out of control. Imagine, walking around with your opponent begging to fight for your championship match. You guys should have gone outside and fought, and filmed it. And awarded yourselves your own belt of some kind to the winner.

So both of your divisions were canceled, one way or another?!

Interesting! Well, how do you feel about it as a feminist? The preservation of the custom, divorced from the beliefs that produced it, in the west is complex. If it becomes gathered together with other things like the Wai Kru/Ram Muay, prajet, mongkol, they potentially just become ornaments of an Asian culture.

Sawsing vs Farida Okiko (WMC and WPMF champ), August 2015

I think some of this can be seen in the overall fight styles of many Thai female fighters, a lack of opportunity of experience, due to cultural beliefs. For instance some female Thai fighters can really struggle with western aggressive, punching attacks, just because they have trained differently, not "trained like a man", so to speak, sparring hard. There could be a valid generalization there. But, where you can really see it is in clinch among Thai female fighters (which parallels your story about wrestling in Poland). There are serious cultural issues with females and males being physically proximate, especially as adolescence sets in, so lots of Thai female fighters are not very strong in clinch, despite being from the land of the best clinch technique in the world. They don't clinch with the boys. And even if they do, it's not the same pedagogy of focus. Sylvie's growth came specifically from that opportunity, clinching like a Thai boy. There are some very good female Thai clinch fighters. Loma (world champ), Phetjee Jaa, have incredible technique and timing. But these are rare exceptions. Usually these are females who found themselves training at an early age among boys - for instance Phetjee Jaa trained right along side her brother, who is a pretty awesome clincher. Now, western female fighters generally aren't very strong in the clinch either, but for different reasons, most of it having to do with the limits of clinch instruction in the west (lack of deep knowledge or practice).