Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Micc, do I see in your signature that you are starting (started?) a Muay Thai blog?

I've never formally published Philosophy or criticism in print, but I wrote a Philo/critical blog for a while called Frame /sing which was loosely devoted to my personal research into the optical practices and ideas of Spinoza, and what impact they may have had on his Philosophy, presented here Spinoza's Foci. But here is a list of maybe my most wide-ranging thoughts and observations. most of them apart from that study of optics and Spinoza: Favorite Posts.

Very heavy background in Philosophy. Quote away. I've studied western Philosophy my whole life, it's a lens I see everything through, including my work and Muay Thai. I do think there is something very productive to be had in seeing this along side Plato's Cave allegory, and the Greek (and feminist) concept of Khora.

With this I'll whole-heartedly agree. But I'm still exploring the value of the measure: authentic. "Most authentic" doesn't seem very useful at all, but there are experiences of authenticity (and inauthenticity) that seem informing. I've seen Muay Thai gyms in the west where people bow at the waist (something people do not do in Thailand), and use a host of other Japanese style dojo behaviors in order to, I assume, be more authentically Thai. Is it really just a free-for-all where pursuit of authenticity has no grounding? No compass point? It's just whatever ideas and practices we make up? Pursuit of authenticity I think really comes down to affects, ways of feeling. We believe that if we hold similar ideas, and physically follow similar rites we connect ourselves to others, contemporary others, but also especially others of the past. If you are practicing a very old Wai Kru/Ram Muay for instance, this has promises of experience which are very different than one you just made up yourself. And if you come to think about the forms you are invoking in each of your actions, this too would have promises of experiences that are different from a made up ceremony, even if there are Thais that may do similar actions without really understanding or thinking about them much -- there have been Thais who did perform and think of them, it is those you are attempting to draw closer to, I think. Of course these promises of experiences that connect you to others and to those in the past may be impotent - just fantasy we make up in our head, but it does seem like the continuity is important, that it creates something of that momentum that you talked about. The unconscious momentum of a culture doesn't just seem like empty action, but rather the rich, very condensed transport of beliefs and affects, even if they occur below the threshold of awareness. "That's just how it is done" does imply "That's just not how it is done" too. A small example may be how to wai in Thailand. I'm not sure that asking who has the most authentic wai is meaningful at all. But for those who want to wai "how it is done" would want to be authentic about it, in the sense of having the right movements, but also the right (or more appropriate) states of mind that align their actions with the millions of wais going on in Thailand all the time, because you are trying to connect to those people. You want to communicate authentic feelings through your wai. You don't want to accidentally communicate things you didn't realize - I remember when Sylvie was scolded by a Thai woman that she did not wai like a woman - it was because she had copied the extremely informal, and even ugly wai of her male trainers of the camp, basically a nose-blow of a wai, like a dude. When you grasp what the wai is, and why it is the way it is (a foreigner has to sometimes think about concepts because they were not raised in a thing), you then can start communicating and expressing yourself through it. Though they are different, I think that the Ram Muay is a little like this for the westerner. It's the desire to connect to a state of being, and to be able to express yourself through that state of being. Really the same ambition that many have for Muay Thai itself. Somehow this 9 month old from the gym, Nadt, upon just learning the wai can wai more authentically than I can after 3 years here. I find this fascinating. Sylvie has performed her Wai Kru/Ram Muay over 100 times in the ring, and there are still parts of it that she is trying to make more "authentic" in the sense of "true to the form" of what Ram Muay is, the state you want your body, mind and spirit to be in. Ram Muay as a process.

Such a good post James. What exactly is the 'authenticity trap'? The idea that you will be accepted if you get close enough to authentic traditions? Or, the belief that there even are authentic performances of traditions?

I put the vid in here. I really love how you write your fight posts Gemma. Very clear, concrete, but with great context. Good stuff! And wow, Farida is one of the best of the best, almost took Sawsing out. This is an amazing thing about Thailand which is just so incredible. You can more or less accidentally/casually fight the best in the world. It happened the first time for us when Sylvie faced someone she'd never heard of in a festival fight, got her butt beat, and later found out she was Tanonchanok the standing WPMF world champ 2 weight classes up. And then again last month, same day offer to go fight an unknown fighter on Songkran and it turns out to be another world champ under an alias. lol. These same kinds of match ups are almost impossible to have in the west, and if you had them there would be months and months lead up, crazy fight promotion, etc. Here it is just fighting, nothing more. Such a path to get better. I know you're on a losing streak, but keep fighting patiently through. You are getting better and better, but few are going to see it because of the quality of your opponents. Then, suddenly, people will say: "Whoa, how did Gemma get so good all of a sudden!"

Butch/femme, and maybe even 2nd wave vs 3rd wave feminism? What is kind of interesting is, responding very abstractly, the feminine is often seen as the passive space, the empty room/womb (the Khora). You've created such an interesting femin/ist Plato's Cave here, where the female agonist forms are projected as surface around a Khora in which the spectator stands, and in which there are no real objects (but for the observers). What does it mean to have femme/butch, (or even younger/older) striving as the simulacra in this Plato's Cave? Is this the unwritten underpinning of patriarchy or even perception itself? Really fascinating construct!

Wow, that's an awesome clip! You can feel it.

Seems very likely a completely set up video, including all participants. The same fighter was involved in fake purse robbery video. You can see the article here. Just an attempt to make a viral video.

Dana, can you tell us anything more about the exhibit? Are the projected video samples available online (for our imaginations)? What is it that you are trying to accomplish in that ring space?

Hi. I don't have personal, technical answers that you are looking for, but when we originally planned to come to Thailand we were thinking very seriously about bringing our Cattle Dog with us. We Googled and Googled and just never got good information about how to do it and ran into the occasional nightmare story of someone being denied at airport immigration with their dog in the crate (possibly looking for a bribe?). What we thought was best was to come first, get everything settled, and then send the dog - it was just too much to have to figure out everything with the dog there too. In the end Sylvie's parents kept our dog for us and it wasn't until we got to Pattaya that we just spontaneously adopted a soi dog we found that a dog was finally in our life - and it makes a huge difference. I don't know about Pit Bulls being illegal in Thailand, but we've seen plenty of them. In fact we saw a gorgeous puppy being carried around just two days ago at a rest stop we were at. Down the street from our old gym in Chiang Mai there was an enormous pit called "Knock Out" who was constantly chained, and Sylvie played with a pit puppy at the gym, back in the day, that we think was named after her: This isn't to say that it isn't illegal to bring them in the country, but one would think that paperwork would be all that is needed. Thais love paperwork. As long as there are documents then Thais (generally) feel that their decisions are backed up. There needs to be a chain of documentation. Something to keep in mind when bringing dogs over, or trying to adopt dogs, is that can be VERY difficult to find an apartment that allows them. Dogs are seen as unclean, street animals, and fears of their barking unattended pretty much rule out the average building allowing them. Our apartment in Pattaya only takes them by a sheer coincidence of a change of management when we started bringing him home. Thais have been surprised that we found such an apartment. People do have dogs though, so situations must exist, but they are hard to find, especially if you don't speak Thai. We started with the notion of finding a small house to rent, but the thing we had in mind in Chiang Mai, despite long searches, didn't seem to exist. Perhaps you have your living conditions set up, but if you don't this could be a big problem. On the other hand, because dogs are everywhere in Thailand they can go places you wouldn't expect. We've seen people bring them to wats, inside the temple where they were giving blessings, and Jai Dee (our dog) has come to every one of Sylvie's fights. One person to possibly check with is the owner of Baan Sakorn TDK. They have been breeding and exporting Thai Ridgebacks for years in Chiang Mai (incredibly beautiful dogs, btw), and even though that's going the other way (export), they probably know more about dealing with paperwork, government rules, Chiang Mai and dogs in a general sense, more than anyone. At the very least they may point you in the right direction to other web sources. We were seriously considering getting a TDK from them at one point, contacted them, and they were very friendly. They responded quickly to the email on the site and the owner, Jack Sterling, has a Google Plus Page.

I love your updates Gavin. You've got a great attitude. Pretty cool.

Sylvie wrote an article about the neurological reasons why people may hit harder than they think in sparring. Brain Science: Why Sparring Gets Out of Control.

This is interesting and perhaps is more functional in pro-boxing, but part of the problem is that accurate and up to date public rankings don't exist for WBC Muay Thai, so it is impossible to tell if someone is in the top 10 or not? Am I maybe missing where the public WBC Muay Thai world rankings of female fighters are kept? As far as I could find the WBC Muay Thai site only shows the ranking of men . The only other source I could find was the WBC Muay Thai wikipedia page which anyone can add to or change, which lists only the champions (no rankings) with most of the weight classes empty: The most up to date rankings seem to be kept by the WPMF - they've even (recently?) tried to keep track of Interim titles - but these are pretty much significantly out of date as lists, often containing retired or nonactive fighters. I follow the WPMF closely, much less the WBC (mostly because I can't find their active rankings, and their titles seem less frequently fought for in Thailand), and interim titles in the WPMF can seem almost randomly created for events, sometimes even with the weights of fighters not made public. "Interim" becomes a title ex nihilo (albeit between good fighters). On the other hand I also seem to remember the WBC "creating" a World Title fight in the 100 lb division, a division I don't even think existed. And then, if I'm not wrong, another "International Belt" title last August between fighters I don't think are ranked by them (at least one I suspect wasn't). The bottom line is that if rankings are not kept up to date and made public it is really hard to even know who is fighting and why? The WMC website also does not keep female fighter rankings, or up to date champions. I agree with Emma that this isn't the faults of fighters in the least. You fight on a card, you are told it is for a title. All you can do is enthusiastically fight. I do feel for these organizations because they are political bodies and keeping up websites is probably low on their list of priorities. But it would make a world of difference to the growth of the sport and their organizations as well if we could follow along with how they rank fighters.

It's funny, it isn't even just western cultures that do this. One of Sylvie and my favorite Japanese animes is called Blue Exorcist. See the trailer below: It completely exotifies the Catholic traditions of the west. Japanese kids go to "exorcist" school to learn how to cast out/destroy demons. Catholicism basically stands in the place of exotic Other in Japan (in this show) as Buddhism can in the west. It's the religion that is not "ours". So it isn't even what the west does, so much as any appropriation. I wrote about this a little in my Slow Cook vs the Hack guest post though, in terms of the west. The west, probably because it does so much appropriating, does exotify what it takes from a great deal. Really, really good point about Poland and Catholicism, something I would never think of or imagine. I'm sure that Thais feel the same way about westerners who are drawn to the traditional elements of Thai society and do not see their use as ideological at all. I am convinced that the show "Thai Fight" is ideological, but western eyes don't see it, the coded messages aren't for them. Another example is that Sylvie and I both have a very strong instinctual feelings of respect towards the King of Thailand, even though this is a hot-button political issue in Thailand. But it isn't just that the foreigner is clueless, and the people in society see clearly. A foreign gaze for instance can also restore innocence and purity to something that has lost it's glow. Thais are not only bemused by Sylvie's Ram Muay (she fights before Thai only crowds mostly), many of them are excited and perhaps even moved by it. To use an analogy, I remember how Ying (who is a big filmmaker in Thailand, and a friend) talked about New York City where she lives part time, about how free artists were there to express themselves, not at all like Bangkok she felt. There was a radical freedom. A another filmmaker friend of mine from Denmark felt the same. To me NYC was an extremely jaded, at times soulless place filled with competition, but these foreigners saw through the "reality" of NYC to something pure, something real. I think that in misunderstanding a tradition (or a city, or a way of life) just as we do when we try to grasp the traditions of Thailand, we can also renew the tradition somehow. And this is probably something that has happened to traditions over the centuries in cultures everywhere. A tradition becomes old, unused, or even misused, but then it become exotified by outsiders and can be reborn. This isn't without dangers of course. There are all sorts of fantasies about the Other that go into this kind of exotification, and many of them are not about the liberty of those we are drawn to. It's a careful line to walk.

Sylvie may have performed one of the last amateur Ram Muay's in NY, if I recall. She went ahead and did it after the main promotion decided to bar them...maybe Sylvie can correct me. I think this is something of a marketing mistake, though I certainly understand it and it is probably irreversible now. If Muay Thai only is marketed and understood as "stand up MMA" it will gradually just become K-1 (Glory, etc). Muay Thai, in my opinion as a marketer, needed to take both routes, the exotic Ram Muay "unique marital art" route and the brutal K-1 route. The reason why the Ram Muay is/was boring is because audience members (and fighters often) didn't understand what it was, what was happening. An informed audience - it wouldn't take much - would find Muay Thai more special, more unique. If Muay Thai is to be saved it can't just be stand up MMA.

This is one of the most interesting things about the Ram Muay. It IS magic, or at the very least derived from magic. It's incantational. It isn't just "Thai", but it is Thai from the old world. Most of the beliefs surrounding the Ram Muay aren't even believed anymore. I'm pretty sure Master K does not actively believe them - he felt ashamed, he told us, about his sak yant for instance, done in sesame oil in his youth. But as with all matters of faith and a people's past you don't have to believe to BELIEVE. We were astonished to find that many Thais don't perform a Ram Muay, especially at festival fights, but sometimes at stadia too. These were often very experienced fighters who were foregoing a fancy formality and just were ready to fight. They had a distancing towards the heritage, and perhaps were even bemused at Sylvie's foreign respect paid to their own Thai past. It's so compelling to me that foreigners often are in the position of preserving or respecting aspects of Muay Thai that the Thai people themselves have an almost nostalgic connection to.

In this article Clarissa talks about her very difficult childhood and ultimately about her repeated abuse: "A turning point came when she spent a week at her Aunt Mary's home. When it was time to go home, Shields pleaded not to be made to go. Her aunt asked what was wrong. Shields was reluctant to say because if her own mother didn't believe her, why would anyone else? She just wanted to stay where it was safe. Her aunt knew something was seriously wrong, so she gently quizzed her niece. And slowly, Claressa let it slip. She couldn't vocalize exactly what it was, but made her points when Aunt Mary handed her a baby doll and asked her to show her what the men did to her. Her aunt told her mother, but Shields said it still didn't resonate with her mother. Before long, Shields was shipped off to live with her grandmother. In her grandmother, she found a friend, a confidante, a sympathetic ear." also about how she took custody of her cousin's baby after the 2012 Olympics: "Her cousin, whom she refers to as "Remmi Savage," had two children when she became pregnant with a third. But she didn't want the baby. She was trying to have an abortion. She needed roughly $500, but didn't have it. She approached Shields. "I told her I didn't believe in abortion and so I wasn't giving her any money to do that," Shields said. The cousin, though, didn't give up. She cobbled together $400 and met with Shields one more time, pleading for the final $100. At that point, Shields made her a proposition. "I really wanted a baby myself and I wanted to have one when I turned 18 right after I won the Olympics [in 2012]," she said. "But if it would have happened, it would have messed up my body going into the 2016 Olympics. I couldn't get pregnant because of that. So I said to her, 'You have the baby, and I'll adopt her.' " Shockingly, her cousin agreed. Shields took custody of the child and began raising her as her own. She said she's in the process of a formal adoption, though she hasn't completed the process yet. But she has had Klaressa living with her, and on days when she couldn't find a baby sitter, she’s skipped going to the gym to train and worked out in her home. "I'd shadow box for an hour-and-a-half with the baby right there," she said. Being responsible for a young life gave Shields an epiphany of sorts. She thought of the woman she'd heard speak at the University of Michigan-Flint. She recalled her own difficult childhood. She looked at her baby. And she knew more than anything that she didn't want what happened to her to ever happen to anyone else. Shields knew she couldn't completely prevent that, but she also knew that her story could serve as motivation for others who might feel trapped, helpless and have nowhere to turn. She decided to present her story to the world."

I think Micc was saying that because she's in Poland and does not get paid in US currency $16 is a lot of money. Something comparable to $60. Looks like there is a way to loan a book to someone else: Kindle loaning. Maybe we can loan Micc a copy?

Hi Freddy, Sorry you have been feeling low about your work. I've watched Sylvie closely for not only the three years here, but all her years in Muay Thai and I've come to think that the fighter's burden, the fighter's path is all about confidence, feeling it, displaying it, recovering from its loss. How to build genuine confidence and maintain it? Even fighters who exude confidence I think often have precarious confidence, something a losing streak or a bad loss can easily shake. Fighters are always walking such a line, pushing themselves to fatigue, paying so close attention to their imperfections, experiencing make-or-break events (fights). I'll tell you everything changed for Sylvie after a really bad loss and she decided to start mental training. She bought tapes. Listened to them. Did the work, and the results were pretty amazing. One of the things it made her aware of was how often she was negatively tearing herself down, in private, and how to work to change that. I will say that getting with a coach who wants to change your fighting style, and rebuild everything can be really problematic, especially when that style may not suit you. Many coaches will teach what they themselves know, or think in cookie-cutter shapes. Sylvie was pushed into a fighting style that just didn't suit her over and over by many people because she is small and female, and it resulted in her beating herself up, very concerned with trying to please people, over-sensitive to her failings. It wasn't until we identified her fighting style, and that there was such a style in Muay Thai (things she naturally did well and excelled in) and then even made the location move to get instruction that supported that style, did we get on a more positive path. Before that it always felt we were working against the grain. It's good of course to expand yourself, explore techniques or elements that are not natural to your comfort zone, but its a fine line. So I'm not saying that if a coach wants to change your fighting style its a bad thing. But I do think that when it comes to strengths and weaknesses some people are better suited for certain ways of fighting, and others not. And because fighting styles are very deep arts - you can train in a style for a very long time and not have really bottomed out on what it can teach - it seems best to stick with the vocabulary of an approach you feel that expresses YOU. She wrote this post when we finally realized she had to pursue a different style, something that led us to move to Pattaya.

Thanks for the good words Michelle. I've heard several women say this about not liking her. And we know that there are certainly men who just don't like her. I'm eager to read the book because it sounds like she didn't just have a ghost written fluff piece produced, but that there are real things in there. I'm probably on the other side where I can say: "Well, I just like her", though I think I was pulling for Cat Zingano in the last fight because I like her too (and Sylvie trained at her gym a bit before we came out here). The thing that just makes such a huge difference for me is that she really went through hell long before she was known, was at the fringe of falling out of a fighting art that she had devoted life to, and somehow leveraged up a future for herself - I want to read about those things. Also, one of the things I DON'T like about MMA is how it has become a mishmash of martial arts and the top fighters are now not really great at any of them. Ronda kind of represents male MMA years ago, when you came in AS a particular artist, as someone with a very strong background of that art, which you built around. These two things, her throwback nature, and the way she wears her toil on her sleeve really made me satisfied with her. I'll also add that there are a lot of people who just don't like Sylvie. They don't know much about her at all, and what they do know is probably pretty distorted. The way people filter through media is complicated, and a lot of it has to do with pre-existing bias and values in the media that receives her. Women suffer when they are poured across media, especially when that media is conditioned to and by men. It seems pretty clear that Ronda took on the villain persona as a strategy, in really a WWE kind of way. And from what I read it matches up with her own mental game where she always felt disrespected as an American female Judo player on the International scene. Most of the things she says seem well-thought out when I hear them, she seems to think about where she stands. I have to say though that every time she talks about gender it is horribly grating to my ears. Fallon Fox, and now Cyborg. It's painful to hear, and honestly I don't even know where she is coming from. It threatens a lot of credit I've built up for her, but I give her begrudging leeway. I imagine that she's under incredible strain given her position. She basically has two jobs now, full time female fighter - I love that she fights a lot and doesn't stay out of the octagon to protect herself - and as a media marketer for herself and the UFC. The mental skills that make you a great fighter don't necessarily make you able to handle all the aspects of the other. Mostly though I feel like we are all missing how unbelievable this is. As in, 10 years ago nobody would believe it. 5 years ago even. In our day and age we lose a sense of time, we lack perspective. We can't even remember that Facebook didn't exist a decade ago. It feels kinda normal for there to be a female athlete who has so much air time, whether we like her or not. This just was not even remotely imaginable a short time ago. It was science fiction. I remember when CBS (I think it was CBS) was debating about whether to have Gina Carano fight on national television. Would it even be a real fight - can women fight? Would there be blood which would suddenly shock the nation? What does it mean for a woman who is a fighter to be a media superstar? It means at the very least this: little girls growing up now see a woman who is KNOWN for her fighting. Not for her beauty. Not for any number of qualities or achievements. Even her Olympic achievements are largely un-thought-about. She is known as a fighter. This creates a huge resonance in the possible lives of young girls everywhere. For almost everyone you have to see an example before you can know it is possible. And, of course, the phenomena of Ronda also normalizes the fighting of women everywhere now. The bigger the image grows, the more normal it is for a woman to be a fighter, or, for that matter for women to train in fighting arts. Of course it stands to follow though that the choices she makes also cast a very long shadow, or a very bright light, each of which will endure. Who she is will shape who other people can be. I think she has a terrible burden being in that place.

In Ronda Rousey's book tour a lot of interesting things are coming out. One of these is an article about the specialness of Ronda's Sports Illustrated cover, only the 2nd time a UFC fighter has made the cover. And as is pointed out, it is really only the first time that they have done so AS the story. One of the notable things is where the author mentions that Ronda Rousey threatens to take over Serena Williams as the most talked about female athlete in the world: The former Olympic judoka now duels tennis star Serena Williams as the most-talked about female athlete in the country. As far as domination, her last three title defenses, against Sara McMann, Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano, have lasted a total of 96 seconds. and it goes on... With the exception of iconic boxing figures, a Sports Illustrated cover is a rarity for combat sports athletes. Rousey would be the first judoka ever to make the cover. Nobody from the jiu-jitsu world has ever made a cover, and the lone amateur wrestler, Danny Hodge, did so back in 1957. Still, the other part of the cover is the jinx. The lone female combat sport athlete to make the cover was boxer Christy Martin in 1996. While Martin didn't lose a fight until 1998, her career never really advanced past that point. Martin is best known as a nostalgia figure from the 90s when for a brief period of time, people talked about women boxing. Like Huerta, she is probably best known as the answer to a trivia question about the cover. As a sports figure, Rousey is almost assuredly going to be remembered as something far more significant. read the rest of the article here Personally, I was intrigued about this battle between Serena Williams and Ronda, as I don't follow tennis much and I wasn't aware of just how much Serena has been in the public conversation over the years - it's a great deal. I'm a numbers and graphs guy, and an analyst of digital footprints, so I thought I'd turn to the Google Trends tool and see what the was case. If you are not a numbers person you'll find this boring, no doubt, but maybe the conclusions of interest. Google Trends reports an index of presence of a search term compared to total searches, something that makes it easy to see a rough picture of how much a topic is on the public's finger tips. So I ran a few trend pictures of four different female athletes to see where Ronda has stacked up: 2005 - 2015 - Index of Google Searches above, Ronda Rousey (blue), Serene Williams (red), Gina Carano (yellow) and Danica Patrick (green) since 2005 - you can see that Serena (red) has had a very strong footing for almost 10 years. below the same selections since Ronda came on the scene in 2011. 2011-2015 Index of Google Searches Jan 2013 - May 2015 - Index of Google Searches and then above, the same selection since January 2013. In the last year and a half Serena (red) and Ronda (blue) have been searched roughly at about the same frequency. This is worldwide Google data. If you run this for just searches done in the United States Ronda has indeed passed Serena as the most talked about female athlete in the country. As a point of comparison I also ran the trends of Ronda Rousey and Jon Jones as search terms since Ronda came into the UFC. As Jon Jones has had his share of controversies, this too has stimulated searches. It is just amazing that the budding male star vying for the title of the "best fighter in the world" or Best MMA fighter ever, has caught the public eye perhaps to a lesser degree that Ronda has: 2011-2015 Index of Google Searches Now of course this data is snap-shot, and if we were really to break it down we would provide more caveats and analysis. All these numbers are telling us is that Ronda is really standing somewhere special in terms of reach and public consciousness, both among female athletes and in her own sport as well. This is something we already knew, right? But seeing the numbers puts things into a certain perspective. Why? Because these kinds of numbers are the things that money looks to, the things that drive decisions. The important thing is that in our fast changing world we really forget that there was a time when things we take for granted today were unthinkable a short time ago. 10-11 years ago there was no such thing as YouTube or Facebook. They were a murmur. Now we can't imagine a world without them. And before Ronda it was simply unimaginable that a female FIGHTER, could outstrip male fighters in one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Evey single thing that Ronda does. Every image the media takes up of her. Every motif and story arc is a new thing. Something that never existed before. It is cutting forth a path for female fighting that will shape the fighting imaginations and expectations of both men and women for decades, if not longer.

Only $12 on Kindle, not bad at all.

Also this story out from the book, how under the fear of an ex posting photos she decided to pose for ESPN, a preemptive defense she also adopted in playing the villain: Out promoting her new book Monday in New York, the UFC women's bantamweight champion explained how a creepy ex-boyfriend helped her transform herself into a villain. "It's more of a defensive thing," Rousey told the 'Opie Radio' show on SiriusXM. "Writing the book, the whole, 'My Fight, Your Fight' thing has really forced me to be introspective and figure out why I do things the way I do. It was because of that one ex, we called him 'Snappers McCreepy,' because we caught him taking naked pictures of me. The first thing I did was take naked pictures for ESPN. "If it's going to get out there, then I want it to get out there on my terms. The same thing with playing the heel. If people are going to dislike me it's because I sought for it to be that way." the article

There are two places where Thais teep which would be hard to catch an elbow from a beginner. Up higher above the solar plexis, and also very low on the abdomen. This lower teep can be very fatiguing. When Sylvie's been shown this low teep they usually use the ball of the foot, or sometimes even the toes. Also, practicing accuracy, instead of just a general mid-teep, could be more fun or challenging. Maybe Sylvie can hop on and talk about this lower teep. It's very effective.