Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

There is also an aspect of the article which should probably be read polemically, as there is some inconsistency in his examples. He complains about a very low weight fight with Nokweed Davy (sub 100 lbs), but Nokweed Davy was already fighting in the 130 lb weight class (since 1985) at the time of the writing. He is complaining less about size in this example, than about age, perhaps fighting in the late 1970s as a youth (?, how old would he be if he couldn't make 100 lbs?). And in using the example of Oley at the time of this writing he was already on his way up to fight for the 122 lb Lumpinee belt, eventually to be vying at 126 lbs. In other words will be reaching weights he finds more acceptable. Again, a question perhaps more of age, or fame acquired at a young age? Karuhat has told us that something that made you a superstar in the Golden Age was that you were a star all the while you were developing. Fans followed your rise. You were famous as you passed through the weight classes. Perhaps this was much more the case during the shift towards lower weight classes the author is protesting, shining a light not only on smaller fighters (like Hippy, who remained small), but also on younger fighters. This could add to the man's man picture of an older 135-145 lb Nak Muay.

When investigating the example of Western Boxing as a possible influence upon body size, one has to include the counter example of Pone Kingpetch, Thailand's first boxing world champion at 112 lbs in 1960s. He achieved immortal fame as a Thai in this, but why did his example not exert a pressure on Thailand's Muay Thai? Was the body-model already firmly established, and his achievement regarded separately? Or, perhaps he did exert some media-driven inspiration upon smaller Muay Thai fighters of the 1960s. Was some of the body-size bias something endemic to a developing nation, that may regard its rural population lessor tiered by type?

Some speculative thoughts. The first thing that really stands out is body-type. Today, and even since the 1990s, larger weight class Thais mostly became known for their fights with farang. The common sense one has gotten is that Thais just are on average smaller bodied than Western fighters, so it makes good sense that the majority of Thailand's Muay Thai excellence would be found along that bell curve, in the smaller weight classes. The piece draws our attention to the fact that for decades preceding the Golden Age this simply was not the case for the most famed fighters in Bangkok. In fact, he argues that the renowned Golden Age fighters such as Karuhat, Kaensak and Hippy would not even have been able to fight in the National Stadia in the 1960s, and may have at best been able to fight in the suburb stadia of Bangkok in the 1970s. They would never headline a National Stadia card in the past. In terms of my interest, this presents a very interesting picture of the history of Muay Thai as a practice, sport and art in Thailand, principally in that the core of the bell curve of Thai-bodied fighters may not have been very represented by fighting in the capital for much of Muay Thai's modern, 20th century history. This invites us to imagine - and this is something to research - that there has been perhaps a century-long history of elite Muay Thai skills that developed in provincial fight betting circuits (he mentions renowned fighters of low weights), that was seldom if ever recorded in Capital history...until the National Stadia started to open up to the average bodied fighter in the 1980s (?). This is to say, the elite idolized small-bodied fighters of Thailand's Golden Age may have had historical counterparts that have been lost to provincial and suburb lore throughout the century. The greater question may be: Why did the Capital form an ideal type in the higher weight classes (135-145 lbs), if there simply were fewer fighters in the talent pool? My own quite vague suspicion is that this had to do with the exemplar of Western Boxing, whose own weight classes skew esteem higher and higher by weight. Was the Capital form of stadium Muay Thai reflecting the international fame of Western Boxers? And, post-World War 2, did the increasing influence of American military also bring added emphasis on larger bodied Thai fighters? Western Boxing's influence on Thailand's Muay Thai, and in particular Bangkok Muay Thai goes back to the 1920s. The British Colonial form had imported boxing throughout Southeast Asia, and Siamese/Thai boxers would become prominent in the circuit. You can read about this influence as seen in the 1930s here: What Was Early Modern Muay Thai Like? New Film Evidence (1936): Samarn Dilokvilas vs Somphong Vejasidh. Famed fighters of the 1940s were big powerful men like Sagat's grandfather Suk, a feared convicted murderer. Below, famed American boxer Rocky Marciano refereed a boxing fight at Rajadamnern in 1969, said to have begun the tradition of a boxing fight on every Rajadamnern stadium card from that point forward. By the time of the Golden Age every card in the National Stadia - at both Rajadamnern and Lumpinee - would feature at least one Western Boxing fight. It does not seem a stretch to imagine that the Western Boxing example (at first by the British in the 1920s and 30s, and by the Americans in the 1950s-60s) provided a template which pushed the model for Thailand's Muay Thai excellence in the Capital towards the larger weight classes. When talking to Dieselnoi about his legendary fight vs Samart, The Holy Grail fight, two GOATs, Samart a 126 lber fighting up and Dieselnoi a 135 lber fighting down at 130 lbs, he definitely spoke about this picture of size, quality and reputation. He echoed the attitude of the op-ed piece at top, saying something along the lines of: The "real" fighters were at 135 (his weight class). You can see this in Western boxing of course, as the greatest fighters are often the Heavy Weights - though aficionados will argue for lighter weight greatness. He seemed to give off somewhat the opinion "how could he complete with me, he wasn't even in a real weight class", a skewing which we find fully expressed in the 1991 piece (though it names Samart at 126 among the properly weighted Yodmuay). The writer is mortified that fighters in the 108-118 lb weight classes are even considered "yodmuay", calling the designation fabricated...presumably fabricated by the business of the sport which had fallen to the smaller fighter initially because they were so cheap (and plentiful). If these suspicions are true one cannot help but see that for many of the decades of Bangkok Muay Thai the actual greatness of Thailand's Muay Thai may not have been represented, but rather skewed towards a Western or Internationalized image. There may have been two "Muay Thais", that of the Capital, and that of the provinces. Without a historical record of provincial fighting though, we would have to rely on still-living oral histories of Thailand's provincial fighting past, histories that may very well also be colored by the bias toward the Capital as the rightful standard-setter of values. There is in the piece as a related rhetoric towards the lower weight fighter, which he sees now (1991) overrunning Bangkok fighting. This is found in the way he pushes the weights he objects to into the 80-90 lb range, and how he talks about diet and strength. The new low-weight fighter of the Golden Age seems to embody conflicting images of both weak (needing to eat-up before a weigh-in to qualify, really almost a child (who else would be 85 lbs?), but also powerful (95% of Golden Age fighters being just artless power fighters)...not to mention deceptive (an "actor" deserving of awards...note: the fighter Inseenoi literally presented as, or was a Leekay actor). These very well be stereotypes of the provincial Thai, who is both scrawny, young and undeveloped, but contradictorially also rural, farm-strong (artless) and powerful...all the while being only 112 lbs. There are some aspects of his rhetoric which give the feeling that the provincial riff-Raff have been let into the esteemed Capital stages, initially because their labor is so cheap for promoters. This indeed paralleled the influx of provincial workers which poured into the city during the economic boom of the 1980s-90s for jobs, a huge populace wave of prosperity which actually buoyed Bangkok Muay Thai, filling the stadia with passionate, knowledgeable gamblers, fueling Thailand's Golden Age of Muay Thai. Not only were provincial, smaller-bodied fighters suddenly represented in the National Stadia, a provincial working class was filling the stadia and buying its magazines. This is the "Hi-Tech" era. It is difficult to parse out his picture of these low-weight fighters from the socio-economic picture of what was happening in Bangkok at the time. Also comes to mind his uses of "nic" (a slang for electronic) which seems to embody concepts like "modern", "computer or calculation" (finance), maybe coolness or small and cute. Keeping in mind that in 1991 at the time of this writing Kaensak, a 115 lb champion, was about to be awarded an unprecedented second FOTY award, and many of the fighters the writer holds objection to were opponents of Kaensak. After Kaensak would win, the FOTY following year would be Samson Isaan (quintessentially provincial, Isaan even in his name), an 118 lb fighter. Chamuakpet held the fighter nickname "Mr. Computer Knee", and other fighters had computer-related chaiyas in the era. The author seems to be pushing against the very economic boom itself, and its sociological implications, yearning for a more large-bodied (Western-influenced?) standard of the great Yodmuay. These are only speculative thoughts. Also worth thinking about is the picture of gambling in this protest. So many of the complaints today we can see be the same in 1991, right as the sport was peaking (in retrospect). Gambling indeed has been woven into Bangkok Muay Thai (and likely all of Siam/Thailand's Muay Thai perhaps centuries. When King Vajiravudh in the 1920s took increasing steps to outlaw gambling which at the time was a major source of State revenue (tax farms), in order to rebalance the economic power held by the Chinese and Sino-Siamese, he was forced to backtrack and make an exception for Muay Thai in the capital. Gambling drove the sport and the art even in the 1920s, so thoroughly, it could not be removed. This exception is the origin of the gambling exception granted to the National Stadia that exist today (recently renounced by Lumpinee Stadia). The story of gambling's cultural-economic importance and presence, and Chinese business goes back quite far in Siamese history, so it is no coincidence that it features in this complaint as well. It is part of a larger moralizing politics. It suffices to point out that the author saw the prominence of the Chinese promoters (to this day Sino-Thai promoters form a backbone to Bangkok's Muay Thai), with their emphasis on financial gain, and the image of the "calculator" ("nics") as part of the loss of the true yodmuay of the sport, forming a very complex picture of judgements. This is maybe the most interesting, suggestive line for me: "Fighters who are below 100 lbs like the top and famous 80-90-95 lbs fighters that are renowned throughout the country, they would never get the opportunity to fight in the Bangkok stadiums a decade ago". It is suggestive an an entire network of fame and achievement that existed outside of Bangkok, even below 100 lbs. These could only be very young fighters of course, but it builds up an idea that indeed there had existed a complex proving ground and system of lore-building even back in the 1960s-70s. The author looks at the skill sets of Hippy, Kaensak and Karuhat and he sees a quality of fighter who simply would likely be unheard of on the Capital stage, though known across the country? If even somewhat the case, this would really be an incredible untold history. He talks about Orachunnoi Or. Mahachai, a small-bodied fighter of the 1970s who was forced to fight up (not unlike Karuhat) if he was to make a bigger name for himself, the first sub-110 lb fighter to gain a kadua of 10,000 baht. Nicknamed "the poor man's champion", Lao-born, raised in Ubon, he perhaps embodied the otherwise unrecorded history of average-bodied great Thai fighters of the past. Instead of taking the author's bias that small-bodied fighters are simply unqualifying, perhaps we see it a differently. Perhaps it was not until the Golden Age and the economic boom that it rode, that the Thai fighter finally got the representation on the Bangkok stage that had been so long delayed? Starting in the first decade of the 1900s when the railroad first connected the Siamese/Thai provinces to the Capital in all modernity, mixing the muay of the provinces with the Capital aesthetic, it may have taken 80 years before the provincial fighter finally became fully represented in the Yodmuay of that age. It is perhaps without irony that "Mr. Computer Knee" Chamuakpet Hapalang placed Orachunnoi Or. Mahachai in his Top 5 Muay Thai fighters of all time: Now as Entertainment Muay Thai has brought back the Western model of fighting to Thailand, this time in the form of less-developed International Kickboxing and MMA, and not that of century-old Western Boxing, there is new economic pressure to find the larger-bodied Thai Muay Thai fighter, and the Thai fighter who can fight up. In a curious bend to history, the big fighting Thai is returning, but almost solely in the context of fighting the foreigner. Perhaps in the long shadow of Thailand's peak Muay Thai in its 1980s-90s Bangkok gambling form, the return of the larger bodied Muay Thai fighter becomes more exposed in the model from which was originally taken, the model that had possibly kept many talents of Thailand from reaching the National Stadia stage in the past -- if we are to take the article at its insight. Wherein lies the standard of the Yodmuay?

Above, the yodmuay fighter photographs in the article identified. Below, the cover of the magazine the piece was in:

The below is a beautiful op-ed style article, written in a free-wheeling, sometimes sarcastic style in 1991. We are accustomed to thinking of the great yodmuay of the Golden Age (Hippy, Karuhat, Langsuan, Samson, etc), as the cream of the crop of Thailand's historical Muay Thai, fighters who embodied speed, technique, timing and power. This piece which we've had translated shows us that at the time this was not universally thought the case. Some older fans of the sport felt that he had been overrun by smaller bodied fighters, a fighter who never was embraced before, and yearned for the return of the bigger yodmuay of the 1960s and 70s. It's a marvelous window into the changing historical perspectives on the sport within Thailand, and invites study of how smaller bodied fighters like the greats came to take center stage in the Golden Age, and why in the decades before these much more plentiful fighters were pushed to the margins in the Capital. The Future of the “Hi-Tech” Yodmuay Since 1967, never has a Thai fighter who weighs below the Bantamweight or Junior Bantamweight division (115-118 lbs) been hailed as a “Yodmuay” before. No matter if it was “The Young Bull” Pon Prapadang, “The Fog Colored Horse” Prayut Udomsak, “Diamond Crowned Champion” Adul Srisothorn, “The Bang Nok Khwaek Kicker” Apidej Sithirun, “The Immortal Yodmuay” Winchannoi , “The Southern Kid” Poot Lorlek up until the days of “The Sky Piercing Knee Fighter” Dieselnoi Chor. Thanasukarn and “The Jade-faced Tiger” Samart Payakaroon. The age of Apidej Sithirun – Kongdej Lookbangplasoi – Dejrit Ittianuchit – Payup Sakulsuek – Huasai Singmuangnakorn etc., those days were when the art of Muay Thai flourished the most and then was the transitional phase between the old age (old-tech) and the new age (hi-tech). I would like to speak of the old days of Muay Thai when the people who made fighters or the gym owners did it for the serious love in the martial art. They did it for the honor and fame of their gym. The fighters fought with aptitude, talent, ability, skills, class and competed to see who is better and the one who knows Muay (Thai) more would get the win. This is different than the “hi-tech” generation where the leaders (of everything) lead towards “nics” [abbreviated from electronics, as in how things are more computed]. Were you to look at it in terms of percentages, 95% only have raw power and strength mostly to just clinch and throw each other. The fighter who is more conditioned and with a better diet will more likely win as we all can see from fighters these days that the “withered” [looks less strong and fresh] fighter will most definitely lose in the eyes of the judges. Therefore, fighters today know how to hide the signs of hurt well. Actually, if there was a Golden Doll Award [famous award for actors in Thailand] in Muay Thai nearly every fighter would win it… ha. The age of Muay Thai that will lead us to the “nics” we all know is a “business” that rides on the “art”. Promoters and gym owners mostly have a Chinese surname [Chinese people are stigmatized as businessmen in Thai culture]. They make business their career so the art is not needed! The Chinese executives can only teach fighters to know the words “Keep your hands high!” “Long right kicks!” “Walk forward and knee!” “Probe, right kick, left teep, then circle away!”, etc. Just a few phrases qualifies them to be able to boldly say that they are Muay Thai krus… sigh! Even in the music industry they preserve old song lyrics of the old musicians to sing as “classic songs” [as in it’s still sort of a genre people enjoy] that are catchy with Thai people today. Then why does no one dig through the old treatises of the arts of Muay Thai to teach their students? We all know that the fight purse of fighters is getting higher and higher with no limits due to the economy and living costs that are going through the roof. If the olds fans that have stopped following the sport for many years hear that some of the fighters today are earning almost 350k Baht I believe they’d be shocked. On the contrary, as fight purses rise the skill and enjoyment in fighting diminishes. Even though there’s a movement and improvements for preserving the arts for an extensive amount of time. The important factor as to why fighters are all from the same mold is that as stated before, all the gym owners mostly aren’t krus with real knowledge in Muay Thai. Mostly they instruct in the form of gambling that has taken hold on the circuit until it became a big business that we can’t abandon. Running away, teep and step back, lean on the ropes and do nothing in the first two rounds. It’s no surprise that some fights end with the referee banishing both fighters from the ring such as the fight between Nuengthoranee Petchyindee and Deenueng Tor. Patanakit or the fight between Pone Naluepai and Ngern Sasiprapa Gym or the fight between Rernglit Sor. Rachen and Kaopong Pinsinchai. May I close my eyes and think of “The Bang Nok Khwaek Kicker” Apidej Sithirun again when back in his day, the 135-145 lbs divisions were the most popular amongst the fans. We would see multiple Yodmuays at the same time around same weight no matter if it was Adul Srisothon, Thongbai Jaroenmuang, Payup Sakulsuek, Rawee Dechachai, Khieowan Yonkit and many others. These fighters got 20,000-40,000 Baht per fight which was a lot back then, leading the young promoter “Kru Tao” Chana Supkaew the promoter of Suek TaharnEk to begin making fights between smaller fighters, the ones others don’t care about, for only 5,000-6,000 thousand Baht per fighter. When we think about it, Suek TaharnEk gained popularity to the level of Suek Onesongchai of today. The level where no matter what fights you make people will watch. When big fighters are expensive then Kru Tao knew better to not touch them, he’d rather work with the ones no one cared about. Small young fighters then emerged no matter if it was Denthoraneenoi Lueadtaksin, Seri Looknhongjok, Kotchasarnnoi Poncharoen, Poot Lorlek, Inseenoi Looknhonggaikun, Saknarongnoi Chor. Chootirat, etc. The fighters themselves, once they can get fights regularly have a willingness to train which leads to the fights being enjoyable. The fans are able to bet [the fights are tight enough for good gambling] and the fights are back-and-forth all the time. The popularity of smaller fighters then increases and multiplies. The fighter’s purses followed the popularity like a shadow. From 5,000-6,000 Baht, it move to the 10,000s, Like “Bukmiang” Orachunnoi Or. Mahachai, the first fighter under 110 lbs in Muay Thai to receive over a 10,000 Baht for his fight purse [a Lumpinee 108 lb champion 1974, 76]. I remember when he fought “The Little Giant” [lit: Dwarf Giant] Glairoong Lookjaomaesaithong. “Bukmiang” moving up in weight which resulted in him succumbing to the punches of “The Little Giant” striking his solar plexis and knocking him out in just the second round. As the Middle Age has ended [Silver Age]: Wichannoi Porntawee, Pudpadnoi Worawut, Poot Lorlek, Saensak Muangsurin, Padejsuek Pitsanurachun, Narongnoi Kiatbandit, Dieselnoi Chor. Tanasukan etc, there are barely any 135 lbs Yodmuays. With the likes of Payup Premchai, Samart Pasarnmit, Sagat Petchyindee, Krongsak Sitkasem, Nokweed Devy even if they are great they are too late because in the big divisions there are no opponents for them. We can say they are so good they have to retire or find other opportunities abroad. As we all know, every promoter today turns to host only fighters in the small weight classes. The big fighters are all ignored. Only the 100-120 lbs fighters get to fight. Some fighters are only 90-95 lbs so the showrunners would send them to eat in the morning of fight day so their weight reaches 100 lbs, reaching the limits that the Bangkok stadiums allow. Fighters who are below 100 lbs like the top and famous 80-90-95 lbs fighters that are renowned throughout the country, they would never get the opportunity to fight in the Bangkok stadiums a decade ago. They’d have to fight in the suburbs. Like the top small fighters that were famous back then such as Dekwat Lookprabat, Mawaenoi Sitmahamad, Srichol Sityongyut, Noppachai Lookmingkwan, Pichitsuek Sakudom, Banluesak Wor.Tangjitjaroen, Koingo Sitsao, Yokkieow Lertmongkol, Paryinya Sitmahamat, Tik Lookprabat etc. There small fighters didn’t have a shot to fight in the Bangkok stadiums 10 years ago [1981]. Or we can say, if they are below 100 lbs on the morning of fight day they would never be allowed to fight. The officials were very strict back then. Like Pichisuek Sakudom (Nokweed Devy) was below 100 lbs. Once he was booked to fight in Bangkok the staff and police had to come check, not to cheer for him, but to see if he really fought they would arrest him immediately (and arrest the promoters alongside with him) as the age and weight of the fighter wasn’t allowed by the rules of the Ministry of Interior. It was famous news at the time (some fighters back then would put coins in their mouth or put metal into the edge of their shorts during the weigh in). Today, promoters are hosting only small fighters, causing fight purses for small fighters to grow rapidly. The yodmuays that everyone fabricated in the last 3-4 years are all below 122 lbs no matter if it’s Langsuan, Kaensak, Oley, Karuhat, Hippy, Nopadej, Suwitlek, Santos etc. All of those who were mentioned were all fabricated as yodmuays. Furthermore, people make nicknames for them referring to past fighters such as “The All-timer [Thongbai’s nickname] 2”, “Samart 2”, “Pudpadnoi 2”, “Apidej 2”, “Poot 2” etc. As a matter of fact the number 2 is correct, but they just need to add the number 0 after it to make it 20. Ha, I am not looking down on the fighters mentioned but they are not that better than Orachunnoi, Denthoranee, Poot (compared pound-for-pound). They’d all have had 6-figure purses but 2 decades ago fighters at this level of skill would at most get to fight before the show starts [like a prelim] or they’d be the last fight to get rid of the crowd. Their fight purse would be 7,000-8000 thousand Baht at most. If we let fighters and gym owners of small weight fighters’ bargain for expensive fight purses and the promoters like to book them to fight so much as today, then one day I hope the bigger fighters will come back to being popular with the fans of the “Hi-tech era”, truly so. Now the promoters who are the main actors need to take action, turning the tables and bring popularity back to the bigger fighters just as “Kro Taoh” Chanasapkaew brought popularity to the smaller fighters. Hope that the future of yodmuay is not the Hi-Tech era, becoming "nic", as there probably won't be any yodmuay at 100 lbs! wonderfully translated by @muaythaitestament on Instagram, with the support of our patrons. Some of the translation has been augmented. from Fighter magazine, March 15 1991:

(back cover)

page 27

Pudpadnoi vs Ruengsak

page 2

Gila Muay Thai May 8, 1975 quality jpegs of the edition from Sylvie's beginning collection, if anyone can translate (machine or otherwise), comments welcome on content. Insight into the era. You can follow this sub-forum and get email alerts for any new postings. If you share images from these captures please credit the Muay Thai Library Preserve The Legacy project and this forum. Any support for the project by subscription is seriously appreciated. You can comment on individual pages by using the Quote function, as a reply. front cover (Pudpadnoi, possibly winning the King's Fighter of the Year?) Inside there is photospread coverage of his 1975 win over Ruengsak on May 2nd.

escriures - etchings, strokes, inscriptions, grooves & sweeps, impressions, trace, arcings, adumbration, articulation. Above is a photo of a fighter from Chatchai's shadowboxing with his hands on the hip bones, the most extensive writing strokes taken out. The body itself becomes a gesture of gestures, the feet and torso moves toward the visual language, developing the sense of the roots of writing.

This. Another form of writing.

Violence and Muay Thai "violence does not participate in any order of reasons, nor any set of forces oriented towards results. It denatures, wrecks, and massacres that which it assaults. Violence does not transform what it assaults; rather, it takes away its form and meaning’" Think about this in terms of Thailand's Muay Thai and fighting. The purpose of the rite and practice is not to denature the other.

Notes on a Theory of Writing A theory of writing. Writing composed of strokes, escriures, lines passing through space. escriures in expressive, non-representational clusters. Asemantic gestures, intentions. This would make shadowboxing, poetry (in brief), and drawing (in sketch) a comparable, single thing. The ontology of a mark, a signature, a sign. A differential, as a presence. It has been said that violence is a form of writing, as it leaves a mark. This note reflecting back upon the one above it. Reading as a form of writing, as its the eyes that also make strokes, escriures. .

Jean-Luc Nancy (to turn to him again) gives what he claims to be an illustration of violence: the extraction of a screw with a pair of pliers rather than a screwdriver. How are we to understand violence from this example? Using pliers is not the proper way to extract a screw. It is the wrong way – the disorderly way – to do it. The screw is extracted, the goal is achieved, but the means are violent. - Violence, Image and Victim in Bataille, Agamben and Girard (16) On Muay Thai and Violence Lechte cites a very productive line of analysis of the ethical picture of Muay Thai, this is to say, a picture of Thailand's Muay Thai that assays its worth by what it says and does with violence. It's been my argument for some time that Thailand's Muay Thai has something to teach the Global West - perhaps the world - something significant about violence, and the agonistic affects of violence: anger, rage, pride, vengeance, frustration, etc, a large measure of this due to its cultural braiding with Buddhism. Here (Jean-Luc Nancy), such a picture. The use of the "wrong" tool produces violence in the (needless?) damage it does, its sheer ineffectiveness. It very well gets the job done, but brutishly. The screw itself suffers....and the pliers as well. We have a great deal of correspondence to this within the conceptual framework of Thailand's Muay Thai, at least in so far as it developed a femeu (artful) dimension. The femeu tool is the "right" tool, the tool for the moment. The technical elegance (and prowess) that articulates and imposes force or direction. We can see this. A femeu victory as such really in its acme ideal would do no damage. There would be pure submission (I've written about this), even without bending the will of the other. One thinks as well about the more brute versions of the sport that are rising up, many of them focused much more on "damage". Bonuses for damage, technique clusters meant only for damage. A thought process of damage. In this way we have left the land of the screw driver and its screw. At least in this sense, we have joined Thailand's Muay Thai to violence, rather than being an art of (about) violence. Violence, Image and Victim in Bataille, Agamben and Girard -- John Lechte.pdf

Agamben expansive on habit in his work on the poet Holderlin: Since the ‘original’ can only appear in a state of weakness, it can only be achieved through a round-trip journey that must first have ventured out into the foreign. One can only turn towards the origin—one returns to it without ever having been there before. The free use of the proper is the most difficult thing because what we are born with is not something that can be possessed once and for all, as a given; it can only be experienced as weakness and deprivation. It necessarily assumes the form of a habit, in the sense in which Aristotle defined it in a passage of Metaphysics that Hölderlin might well have known: as the hexis, from echein, ‘to have’—literally the act or state of ‘having’, just as from ‘to be’ the word ‘being’ was formed, or, to give an example from Latin, the verb esse (‘to be’) led to the analogical formation essentia (‘essence’ and also ‘being’). Aristotle used hexis first and foremost in relation to deprivation, as something that cannot under any circumstances be had (‘it is impossible to have a “having” [echein hexin] in this sense; for there will be an infinite series if we can have the having of what we have’— Metaphysics 1022b, 25). In other words, possession of one’s origin is possible only in the ‘habitual’ sense, and only through the dispossession of a habitation and a habit: it cannot be had, one can only become used to it, accustomed to it, habituated to it. To have a having is, in the final analysis, only a way or mode [modo] of being, a form of life. In an exemplary book on Indo-European languages, Émile Benveniste distinguished between two ways of forming nouns that indicate an action: on the one hand, nouns expressing an attitude or possibility (ending in - tu in Indo-Iranian, - tys in Greek, and - tus in Latin) and, on the other hand, nouns expressing a performed action (- ti in Indo-Iranian, - sis in Greek, - tio in Latin). Thus, in Latin actus means the state or manner in which someone or something moves or can move, actio the concrete action; ductus the manner in which something is or can be led, ductio the action of pulling or leading; gestus a way of behaving, gestio, the performance of an action. Similarly, the supine, which is formed by adding the - tu suffix, ‘expresses potential: cubitum ire, “to go to sleep”, does not indicate a concrete, completed action, but rather a possibility’. The Aristotelian distinction between potential or possibility (dynamis) and concrete act (energeia) is easy to recognize in these examples, but further elaborating on Benveniste’s considerations might help us gain a better understanding of the relationship between the two categories. Take the Latin term habitus, for instance: as a noun ending in - tus, it expresses an attitude or a possibility—or, more precisely, the way in which a power or possibility is had; not its objective exercise or concrete practice (which would be hexis in Greek; the Latin habitio developed relatively late). It becomes clear why Aristotle, who tried to think through his idea using the term hexis (which, as a noun ending in - sis, expresses a performed action) as a middle ground between mere potential and concrete act, encountered a challenge that proved quite difficult to overcome. Potential, expressed in the way language presents it, isn’t something not real that precedes the act in which it is realized: it is, on the contrary, the only way in which we can have what we do. That is, we can ‘have’ actions insofar as we consider them real possibilities for us: the moment they are performed, these actions become so separated from their subjects that they must be ascribed or attributed (to their actors, or the people who carry them out—hence the notion of guilt, upon which both law and tragedy are based). Custom or habit [l’abito o l’abitudine]—the inhabiting, dwelling life we are attempting to define—neutralize the dynamis/energeia opposition, rendering it inoperative. In keeping with a Hölderlinian penchant which should be familiar by now, they consider opposites in their inseparable coinciding. In 1838, when Hölderlin was still living in his tower on the Neckar, the French philosopher Félix Ravaisson, who had studied with Schelling in Munich, wrote a treatise titled De l’habitude (Of Habit). In dizzying pages that gained the admiration of Bergson and Heidegger, 25-year-old Ravaisson approaches habit as one of life’s ultimate secrets. He describes with meticulous precision the ways in which habit almost imperceptibly causes one’s will to morph into inclination and instinct, in a progressive degradation of effort and intention that, just as in Hölderlin’s work, is both passive and active: ‘The law of habit can be explained only by the development of a Spontaneity that is at once active and passive, equally opposed to mechanical Fatality and to reflective Freedom.’ In the case of conscious reflection and will, which we generally consider higher-level human functions, the end is an idea that does not yet exist and must therefore be brought about through action or movement; in the case of habit, however, the end is confused with the very action or movement that would bring it about, hence the subject and object become indeterminate: The interval that the understanding represents between the movement and its goal gradually diminishes; the distinction is effaced; the end whose idea gave rise to the inclination comes closer to it, touches it and becomes fused with it. An immediate intelligence, in which nothing separates the subject and object of thought, gradually replaces the reflection that traverses and measures distances between contraries, the middle ground between opposing terms. In 1838, when Hölderlin was still living in his tower on the Neckar, the French philosopher Félix Ravaisson, who had studied with Schelling in Munich, wrote a treatise titled De l’habitude (Of Habit). In dizzying pages that gained the admiration of Bergson and Heidegger, 25-year-old Ravaisson approaches habit as one of life’s ultimate secrets. He describes with meticulous precision the ways in which habit almost imperceptibly causes one’s will to morph into inclination and instinct, in a progressive degradation of effort and intention that, just as in Hölderlin’s work, is both passive and active: ‘The law of habit can be explained only by the development of a Spontaneity that is at once active and passive, equally opposed to mechanical Fatality and to reflective Freedom.’69 In the case of conscious reflection and will, which we generally consider higher-level human functions, the end is an idea that does not yet exist and must therefore be brought about through action or movement; in the case of habit, however, the end is confused with the very action or movement that would bring it about, hence the subject and object become indeterminate: The interval that the understanding represents between the movement and its goal gradually diminishes; the distinction is effaced; the end whose idea gave rise to the inclination comes closer to it, touches it and becomes fused with it. An immediate intelligence, in which nothing separates the subject and object of thought, gradually replaces the reflection that traverses and measures distances between contraries, the middle ground between opposing terms. A sort of ‘dark intelligence’ is at work here, in which not only the real and the ideal coincide, but even one’s individual will and nature tend to infinitely coincide: ‘Habit is thus, so to speak, the infinitesimal differential, or, the dynamic fluxion from Will to Nature.’ As in Hölderlin’s dwelling, inhabiting life, which abdicates both name and identity, ‘the progression of habit leads consciousness, by an uninterrupted degradation, from will to instinct, and from the accomplished unity of the person to the extreme diffusion of impersonality’. The unprecedented culmination of Ravaisson’s thesis—or, if you will, of his philosophical poem—is when habit turns out to provide the key to understanding the most basic functions of life: The most elementary mode of existence, with the most perfect organization, is like the final moment of habit, realized and substantiated in space in a physical form. The analogy of habit penetrates its secret and delivers its sense over to us. All the way down to the confused and multiple life of the zoophyte, down to plants, even down to crystals, it is thus possible to trace, in this light, the last rays of thought and activity as they are dispersed and dissolved without yet being extinguished, far from any possible reflection, in the vague desires of the most obscure instincts. The whole series of beings is therefore only the continuous progression of the successive powers of one and the same principle, powers enveloping one another in the hierarchy of the forms of life, powers which develop in the opposite direction within the progression of habit. The lower limit is necessity—Destiny, as might be said, but in the spontaneity of Nature; the higher limit is the Freedom of the understanding. Habit descends from the one to the other; it brings these contraries together, and in doing so reveals their intimate essence and their necessary connection. Seen from this perspective, even love—whereby individual will gives way to nature and desire—is akin to habit, which becomes something like the ultimate basis of life, its deepest core, which we cannot grasp rationally: ‘It is God within us, God hidden solely by being so far within us in this intimate source of ourselves, to whose depths we do not descend.’75 Ultimately, in the book’s supreme ontological conclusion, habit is identified as the very essence of substance according to Spinoza: ‘Finally, the disposition of which habit consists, and the principle engendering it, are one and the same thing: this is the primordial law and the most general form of being, the tendency to persevere in the very actuality that constitutes being.’76 The conatus, the tension through which each thing perseveres in its being, cannot be an act of the will, nor can it be an arbitrary decision: it can only be a habit, a dwelling life. - Holderlin's Madness: Chronicle of a Dwelling Life (Agamben)

Consider not turnover over the kick, and instead working on the classic more upright Golden Kick: You can read more about it here: https://8limbsus.com/muay-thai-thailand/golden-kick-how-to-improve-your-thai-kick The turn over aspect of the kick is often over emphasized by non-Thai krus who don't really see all the connective tissue in the Thai Kick (generally). Most of the classic kicks turn very late in the arc, because they want to keep the opponent centered, and they don't want to be out of position for more continuous offensive flow. You can see more about Karuhat's kick here: #111 The Karuhat Rosetta Stone 7 - The Secrets of the Matador (83 min) watch it here Karuhat is the most documented Golden Age legend in history, thanks to the sum of all the filming and commentary we've been able to do with him. This session though provide the key to understanding all the other sessions. And there is a very special focus on his particular Golden Kick. An alternate kicking style: #143 Takrowlek Dejrat - Master of the Low Kick (90 min) watch it here One of the great low kicking fighters of the Golden Age teaches his squared up, pressuring, Muay Beuk fight philosophy which uses an extremely fast, vertical low kicking technique that keeps the opponent exactly where you want them. This punishing style, built on defense and ring control is extremely effective, using techniques that are not often taught. Study the low kick in a way you haven't seen before.

I the bone curvature contains marrow as the teapot carefully painted in lacquer dragons coiled holds its tea. a flame underneath bringing steam and fragrance to a mad boil til a careful liquid harrows still in its cup. *operative ontological concepts: the material, organic substance, vessel, decoration, heat, spiritualization, affect, cup

You may look into Takrowlek's close quarters kicking style. A lot of Japanese Kickboxing seems to have adopted this Thai style of fighting. Takrowlek was a very short fighter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/96897418?pr=true In the above link its is taught for an hour or so. In the video below you can see a segment of this:

Kem's Gym near Khorat is very close to nature and highly technical with clinch emphasis. FA Group is extremely popular among Westerners, that can be a bad or a good thing, depending on what you are looking for. No gym is going to perfectly suit your vision of what you want, its probably best to just focus on what feels like the MOST important for you, plan to spend a week or so with the intention of moving on unless it feels great and you just don't want to leave.

Karuhat is not a tall fighter, and usually fought opponents much bigger, taller than him. He's a difficult fighter to emulate because his eyes were so good, and his timing impeccable, but his muay is full of great qualities.

A form of life that keeps itself in relation to a poetic practice, however that might be, is always in the studio, always in its studio. Its—but in what way do that place and practice belong to it? Isn’t the opposite true—that this form of life is at the mercy of its studio? *** In the mess of papers and books, open or piled upon one another, in the disordered scene of brushes and paints, canvases leaning against the wall, the studio preserves the rough drafts of creation; it records the traces of the arduous process leading from potentiality to act, from the hand that writes to the written page, from the palette to the painting. The studio is the image of potentiality—of the writer’s potentiality to write, of the painter’s or sculptor’s potentiality to paint or sculpt. Attempting to describe one’s own studio thus means attempting to describe the modes and forms of one’s own potentiality—a task that is, at least on first glance, impossible. *** How does one have a potentiality? One cannot have a potentiality; one can only inhabit it. Habito is a frequentative of habeo: to inhabit is a special mode of having, a having so intense that it is no longer possession at all. By dint of having something, we inhabit it, we belong to it. *** from an excerpt from the coming Self-Portrait in the Studio, Agamben Agamben is a compelling philosopher, in that he reads like a worm, chewing through dusty pages, hunting for words. And he chews down into their etymologies, their occasions, their reasons-for-being. He does not present the Grand View. Especially dear, and perhaps not so apparent, is how much he makes from Wittgenstein's concept of a Form of Life, something he alternately traces down to Franciscan Forms of Life (The Highest Poverty), small, local circles of practices that form their own island States, whether they be 13th century monks or players of chess. He is interested in these privacies that are profoundly social. The above passage is from an autobiography - which he approaches as an autoheterogeny - a looking back on his life through the imprint of its having been lived, through the studios of his writing. Like a fossil that leaves the veins of a plant matter, the minute details of a vital living thing, he imagines the studio to be a certain kind of impression, where all the practices of the writer (the painter, the sculptor) have recorded themselves, as lived, inhabited things. He is in this 80s, and he is looking back through this impression, this studio/s, like a photographic negative. He wants us to see, to have lived, is to habituated it. One never possesses life or a life. One can only carve the grooves that remain over time. And he wants to look at his life, by examining its grooves. As a writer of history, as that book worm chewing through words, wriggling back through time, he is just following the runnels and rivulets in the wood. He sees it like this. We film a lot in these kinds of studio spaces in Thailand, gyms that once were heart-beats throbbing with kicked bags, dripping with briney body water, but now are covered with photographs burned by even decades of sunlight, their reputations and their ways of life baked in, and even no longer function, only testifying...an immortal, vital testament, but still only testifying. above, Dejrat home gym, Bangkok And then many of these houses of Muay still are beating out the rhythms, driven by the ardor of the man that leads them, even into old age. Furnaces of agonism and Buddhistic peace, hierarchies of selves stacked in simple geometries, like that of Dejat gym, but upon what-already-has-been, with that eternal sense of the Past holding much more than a Future. This is an illusion. This is something Westerners face when they first come to Thailand, open-eyed. Everything - every surface - is brimming with the new, the unexpected, one cannot see the what-already-has-been which sinks down into sedimented layers of granite & limestone selves. Yes, the age of things is seen, but not the already-has-been completed, the lost-to-the-past, just yet. Instead the present moment seems to be breaking like the bow of a boat, cresting the waters. This is where you are becoming. Agamben invites us to understand - to see - that where we have entered is already a studio of what-already-has-been, we are working within a fossil. Lives have already passed through, lives have already been. You are standing in the bones of memory. You are in an architecture of things that have past, crystalized intentions and aches pressed through an art and a way of Life. So much of what you are standing in is what-already-has-been. It's done. It's over. We are reading an article written in a Thai boxing magazine in the early 1990s - having it translated, will post it - that bemoans the present era then (1990s), the time of Karuhats, Hippys and Oleys, the Age we now call "Golden". It stands on the ruins of the true Muay Thai of the 1960s and 1970s, the Age of Men...it says. As we age and mature we come to feel more and more of what has past, of things having-been, but what truly is widening is our gaze. We have always been standing in those bones, what Agamben wants us to see as our habits, the repetitions of having lived, the carved-out. Even in our most pristinely new moment, we were in those bones of it all, with blinders on. All that has happened in that our vision has widened to see it. Instead what this vision should call us to see is not the widening gaze of what-has-been, but rather the consumate gaze back down into what we are creating now, what carvings, what habituations of Selves that we are inhabiting. Inhabiting - Agamben likes this word, this Heideggerian word, I do not. It makes too much of us a Spirit, a ghosting thing, like we are haunting our lives. It is not like that. I'm writing about the ambitions of those that come to Thailand to beat out a new and authentic self, to expose themselves to new condition, to habituate in a new way, to manifest differently, and what it means to stand in the bones of an art, and a history. And even more readily, to stand in the bones of a house, a gym, a studio, which has made many men, and is always brimming with the what's already-has-been, almost cluttered with it. The hunt of the foreigner in the country: Where do I find the "authentic"? Where do I find that which isn't the already-has-been? Where do I find the "studio"? Again and again the more experienced foreigner, the one who has gained eyes to see beyond the initial innocence of the projected exotic - will be disappointed. They will travel from gym to gym and find the already-has-been. Because this is the natural state. This is the life and state of the artist. Nothing has changed. Only your eyes. Let them change again. A page from Nicola Chiaromonte’s notebooks contains an extraordinary meditation on what remains of a life. For him the essential issue is not what we have or have not had—the true question is, rather, “what remains? . . . what remains of all the days and years that we lived as we could, that is, lived according to a necessity whose law we cannot even now decipher, but at the same time lived as it happened, which is to say, by chance?” The answer is that what remains, if it remains, is “that which one is, that which one was: the memory of having been ‘beautiful,’ as Plotinus would say, and the ability to keep it alive even now. Love remains, if one felt it, the enthusiasm for noble actions, for the traces of nobility and valor found in the dross of life. What remains, if it remains, is the ability to hold that what was good was good, what was bad was bad, and that nothing one might do can change that. What remains is what was, what deserves to continue and last, what stays.” The answer seems so clear and forthright that the words that conclude the brief meditation pass unobserved: “And of us, of that Ego from which we can never detach ourselves and which we can never abjure, nothing remains.” And yet, I believe that these final, quiet words lend sense to the answer that precedes them. The good—even if Chiaromonte insists on its “staying” and “lasting”—is not a substance with no relation to our witnessing of it—rather, only this “of us nothing remains” guarantees that something good remains. The good is somehow indiscernible from our cancelling ourselves in it; it lives only by the seal and arabesque that our disappearance marks upon it. This is why we cannot detach ourselves from ourselves or abjure ourselves. Who is “I”? Who are “we”? Only this vanishing, this holding our breath for something higher that, nevertheless, draws life and inspiration from our bated breath. And nothing says more, nothing is more unmistakably unique than that tacit vanishing, nothing more moving than that adventurous disappearance. - Agamben I think of foreign fighters and ardent students that travel to Nungubon's gym in Ubon. A small studio of a space that is made from his home. It is in the model of a home kaimuay that has made so many fighters of Thailand's Muay Thai. And it is a museum of a space, filled with the pieces of his life and career, just as kaimuay have always been. You are in the bones of it, but still it is what already-has-been. We are standing with a man who has lived the art, in the ring, in the gym. The carved man, but you will also know that it already has passed. This is not an error. This is not flawed. This is the natural state of things. All things already-have-been. Put down the chalice of The Authentic. Everything is already heavily allowed with the past, with the done. It is only you who pulls the thread forward. You and those you metronome with. The above section from Agamben (bolded) is quite beautiful. It is a subtle drawing out of a Spinoza maxim, like a silken thread from the side of an Idea that is usually taken in a very different way. Spinoza held that there is some portion of the Mind that is Eternal. The Truth within the Mind - not our ego, not our feelings or personal ideas or intents - remains for all eternity. As Agamben draws it out he evokes the ephemera of The Ego in Buddhism, that illusive dimension of ourselves organized around everything that is supposed to matter. Of that, nothing will remain. Why? Because only the Good will remain. Agamben's invocation of the studio, the physical space of the practice, all the materiality of that practice, a sum of those real repetitions that reflect our burning fires, our furnaces, but also the Form of Life that is the art into which we are pressed, suggest that this is more of what is the Good, more of what remains. He wants us to see that all the while when our heart has been beating, we've been carving. What is it that you are carving? What of it will remain? What is the Good. As fighters this comes into deeper question, for the fight is among the most thin and veiled of performances, best witnessed in person by the ropes. It can be photographed, it can be written about, but what it truly is vanishes like the midnight bloom of a cragged flower, for only the few. And, the endless poundings of the bag, the light-footed shadowboxings? What is to be of that Good, washing into inarticulate neutrality by the Sea? We meet these incredible men, these spiritual athletes, and what has been made by them? Where does it reside? Where is the studio of their permanence? above, Nungubon's home gym, Ubon above, Takrowlek's home gym garden, Bangkok One knows something only if one loves it—or as Elsa would say, “only one who loves knows.” The Indo-European root that means “to know” is a homonym for the one that means “to be born.” To know [conoscere] means to be born together, to be generated or regenerated by the thing known. This, and nothing but this, is the meaning of loving. And yet, it is precisely this type of love that is so difficult to find among those who believe they know. In fact, the opposite often occurs—that those who dedicate themselves to the study of a writer or an object end up developing a feeling of superiority towards them, almost a sort of contempt. This is why it is best to expunge from the verb “to know” all merely cognitive claims (cognitio in Latin is originally a legal term meaning the procedures for a judge’s inquiry). For my own part, I do not think we can pick up a book we love without feeling our heart racing, or truly know a creature or thing without being reborn in them and with them. - Agamben As we come to study we violate ourselves, our boundaries. We break apart what has been. A new concresence. In this falls the onus on the artist, on the fighter, in this it is all of us. In many ways we are all nomads without a studio, in that we are ever stepping into the ruins of what already-has-been. The bones of it are already stacked around us, even when in youth you do not see them in your tunneling desire. We travel about like a potter who may find a kiln here or there, and we are made hybrid, cyborg to the matter of which it is made. We throw our clay as we might, and at many times we have to build the kiln ourselves, through an art of kiln-making which we have divined from lore & other practices we intuit. We inhabit houses of the art's keeping at times, but again and again The Good must only be the habits we keep as we build, and the respect we pay to what others have etched and thrown, in their kilns, in the kilns that have been. The Ego will not remain, it will vanish. Instead as we bend ourselves toward a Form of Life, and our respect for it. This is a form of cooking. We are cooked by our knowing. By our doing. A medieval legend about Virgil, whom popular tradition had turned into a magician, relates that upon realizing he was old he employed his arts to regain his youth. After having given the necessary instructions to a faithful servant, he had himself cut up into pieces, salted, and cooked in a pot, warning that no one should look inside the pot before it was time. But the servant—or, according to another version, the emperor—opened the pot too soon. “At the point,” the legend recounts, “there was seen an entirely naked child who circled three times around the tub containing the meat of Virgil and then vanished and of the poet nothing remained.” Recalling this legend in the Diaspalmata, Kierkegaard bitterly comments, “I dare say that I also peered too soon into the cauldron, into the cauldron of life and the historical process, and most likely will never manage to become more than a child.” Maturing is letting oneself be cooked by life, letting oneself blindly fall—like a fruit—wherever. Remaining an infant is wanting to open the pot, wanting to see immediately even what you are not supposed to look at. But how can one not feel sympathy for those people in the fables who recklessly open the forbidden door. We are all as it cooks tempting to look in the pot, we think it is over. The process close to being done. The practices, our inhabitations surely have done the cooking they are supposed to have done. There's been enough heat, enough time, one senses. Maybe its not completely done, but a little peek won't hurt. But its exactly that. You cannot look. It's not for you to see. above, Jaroensap's home gym, Bangkok The above is Baramajanmuay Ket Sriyapai, ปรมาจารย์มวย เขตร์ ศรียาภัย, the Muay Chaiya master of Arjan Surat, a portrait photo that hangs on the wall of the Dejrat gym in Bangkok. In some material sense this is all that remains of him. Arjan Surat, who still runs this hallowed personal space where hanging bags drape in a garage where he literally parks his car, talks about other Muay Boran manifestations in Thailand, lineages that purports ancient knowledge or ways of fighting. He laughs in his gruff and dismissive gravel voice pointing at the portrait "How can they know, if he didn't know?" But the habits, the inhabitance as Agamben would have it, of Baramajanmuay Ket Sriyapai also live remaining in Arjan Surat himself. The carvings of life, his studio, his life, made by the beating heart of Baramajanmuay Ket Sriyapai have also carved upon Arjan Surat who is now in his 70s, bent on holding daily pads for stadium fighters until 80. "Eeeevery-day" he says in English, drawing out the words to indicate time, the length of it. You do this eeeevery-day. You carve. You are standing in the bones of it, no matter where you are. It all, it all has already past. It's over. It's done. And you pull out this silken thread, weaving it forward, in the very thing you are carving. It looks like it is all finished, but it is barely there.