Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Pretty cool you see this clearly. Not everyone does because Muay Thai in the west can come filtered through very narrow technical pathways, and it is natural to want to emulate your trainer. But in Thailand this is really a big truth. Sylvie's first trainer in Chiang Mai, a westerner Andy Thomson who has been training Thais for 20 years, told her "There is not 1 Muay Thai, there are 1,000s. Each person has their own Muay Thai." And Den, her Thai trainer some years later told Sylvie "Everyone learns the same Muay Thai, up to you to put it together". At Sylvie's current gym, Petchrungruang, the trainer has a very distinct style that he likes, but he is so open minded no Thai fighter comes out of the gym looking like any other. It's kind of amazing. His own son fights very unlike how he would like. Big clinch fighters, or very artful defensive fighters all come out of the gym. You can feel that the gym just feels that everyone has their Nature, and this nature just comes through. Once you figure out a kid's nature you try to find the techniques that compliment and express it. I know I'm just saying what you have said above, but this is a really exciting part of Muay Thai. And it is exactly as you say, it's because it's a fighting art, proven and evolving in 1,000s and 1,000s of fights all over the country every year.

I was thinking the same thing, in reverse. I can watch good clinch all day long. Hop in, hop out striking, unless at a really elite level, is boring. I will say though, I would like to see the Meksen KO fight of Iman Barlow. Iman's such a nice pressure fighter, that must of been something.

No, I mean I've never seen her in a fight that I've enjoyed. She's very athletic, very skilled. But not interesting to me. I feel guilty to admit it. Just me.

This is really a great breakdown of the rules of Glory and the Sittichai fight. I don't follow Kunlun, so I have no idea really. Maybe someone here does.

I know you are talking about energy and fitness levels here, but I see it in your fight style too. One of the more interesting questions facing a fighter in development is: how much to I go with what I feel is my "nature" and how much to I work very hard to change it? This can be really complicated when trainers have a vision with how you "should" fight based on either what has been successful for them, or on your body type (Sylvie had long struggles with this). Some things are worth changing through hard work, some things that really are you should be embraced, because ultimately fighting is an expression of you. It's the fighter's path to figure out which is which. In watching the fight I really could see your "slow and steady" nature, though it wasn't that slow at all, you had a nice pace. It was more that you had a uniformity to your striking, in terms of tempo and power. Something that might be very interesting for you is to really work on your teep with your length. Teep to the high torso, the low torso, the thighs. If you got good lean back on this it would make you very hard to deal with, and it would compliment your nice round kicks. But mostly why I recommend it is because a good stiff teep could compliment your "slow but steady" comfort level. It works like a great jab in boxing. It would allow your medium tempo, strike, strike, strike comfort, but because it is read as a defensive strike, it would make your more aggressive round kicks and combinations feel more explosive, in contrast. Anyone can have suggestions of course, but it is something I thought about during your rounds. Throwing it out there. :)

Great first performance Yuki, first fights can be a huge blur and your wasn't. You were very present in this fight. Your head was still, you stayed so nicely engaged in the eyes. Pretty awesome. The small thing that really stuck out to me, technically, was in the first round in the Thai plumb. This was were you could have finished the fight. But your hands were not locked, and there was not enough draw back or turn to make space for yourself, pulling her forward. If you clinch with bare hands in practice the lock on the Thai plumb can sometimes be a problem with gloves on. At the earlier stages of development it is best is to try to cross palm to palm or at the wrist, and dig the elbows in for leverage. Look at the palm to palm gripped showed here: The above is not exactly the Thai Plumb, and it's part of a system involving the head and a squeeze, one that Sylvie uses a lot, but you can see how the palms/wrists lock - they can't slip. You can move from palm to wrist if you need. If you try to lock how you did in this fight it can be hard to hold the grip in gloves. Going wrist to wrist or open palm to open palm is more stable. Cupping back of the hand, which feels natural in bare hands, is more difficult - advanced Thais can plumb this way with the cupped hand because they are not so much using the hands to control the head and neck, as the pinch of the arms, and their body frame. At your height, at this level of fighting, such a good lock would be a definite fight finisher. (oh, and p.s. I jumped in and edited your fight video in. On the forum if you just put the normal YouTube url in the post, the video automatically is embedded).

I feel terrible saying it, because she is probably one of the best female kickboxers in the world, but I find her fighting style incredibly boring to look at. I couldn't even finish watching the fight. I guess I'm just not a visual fan of savate.

Nice post! I still can't get over the Sittichai loss. Glory loses Spike TV, and then suffers that debacle. It is sinking itself. It was a very promising show.

See the fight here (tried to embed, it Daily Motion doesn't embed): http://dai.ly/x3d8wk7

This sounds over-broad. This is a problem with Overtaining talk, it becomes incredibly vague and yet prescriptive.

Do you run as a significant part of your training? There are three basic things that Thais use to develop power, or "charge the battery". Regular running, padwork and extended clinch sessions.

I thought it was pretty cool to see the breakdown that they offer, and the reasoning behind their motivations. We don't get to hear these voices from gyms very often. Lynne seemed to be responding to Siam Scholar's pretty cynical blog posts about the Muay Thai gyms and sponsorships.

You say the most amazing things. I can say that as your husband, because they still strike me from afar, like an arrow.

Bizarrely, she seems to have fought THIS fight, in Bangkok, for a European title earlier in the year. Comes to Thailand and does not fight a top Thai (as well).

Good stuff. Is this K-1 style rules? Would love to see Meksen fight full rules versus a Thai like Chommanee (if she could get down to 54 kg) or someone like Farida Okiko.

I think one of the more interesting aspects of Sylvie's early videos with Master K was that these videos did not just have a "perfect technique" examples in the "teacher", but they also showed a student struggling with and being corrected in the techniques. There was a dimension of learning which sometimes helps a viewer digest and grow towards a perfect example. Maybe one of the hardest things from learning from a video example is finding the bridge towards the technique.

Visas are pretty much a hassle to deal with, and since the military take over they have gotten more strict in many ways, but it seems that the serious drop in tourism - not only because of change in country image, but also things like Russian currency collapse - has initiated a more friendly approach. A new 6 month multiple entry visa, with 60 day border runs, starting in November. "The visa, costing 5,000 baht (US$139), will be available from November 13 this year. “It will grant travelers multiple entries during a 6-month period, for up to 60 days per entry. All foreign nationals are eligible to apply for METV,” the statement said. The new visa will allow visitors to enter and leave the country as often as they want over the six-month period. It also means tourists can effectively stay in Thailand for six months with the visa, though they will have to leave the country every 60 days to keep the visa valid. In/out ‘border hops’ are a fact of life for many people residing in Thailand, even those with valid, long-term visas."

Don't know how any of that worked out of you, but there is a new 6 month multiple entry visa being offered starting November 13th.

Hey TZ, Sylvie's husband here, a few off the cuff suggestions for a 2nd gym, if you end up going that way. When we first came we were in the same boat, and we split the time between 2 Chiang Mai and Bangkok gyms. The difference itself was a good experience, but the Bangkok gym did not produce a good fight experience, and the urban area all around the gym felt really harsh. Maybe something interesting would be Sitmonchai? They are pretty technique oriented (specialize in low-kick and striking combinations), in a rural-like context, and seem like the kind of gym which would get you a fight. You could ask blogger/fighter Kelly Creegan about them. They also have a female westerner, Abigail, who acts as a go-between, managing the gym. They do not emphasize clinch though. Or you could try Hong Tong gym in Chiang Mai, they seem fight oriented. Melissa Reaume is a fighter who lived there for a year, she could shed some light. My own sense is that after a session or two you get a "gut feeling" about a place, and it's best to listen to it. But hey, if you are open to a change in your second gym, you could also come down to Pattaya and train with Sylvie too. There isn't a lot of instruction (most Thai gyms don't do a lot of correction) but the padwork is great and the work should be good. Michelle wrote about her experience of doing so for a few days.

I'm just going to jump in here, I'm definitely no expert on visas, but we do have our own experience. When we got our first Thai visa (in the USA) it definitely started on the day it was issued, in the USA. Not on entry. So each day spent not in Thailand was coming off your visa length. Ours though was an ED visa of a kind that does not really exist any longer, but I suspect that this is the case for all visas issued by Thai embassies or consulates.

What a find that is! Can't wait watch it. Sylvie's faced Loma twice and she's been a real puzzle, very underrated as a fighter. Maybe the best 45 kg fighter in Thailand. [edit: what dominance. Shows that you can can be a complete, explosive kickboxer, but if you don't understand clinch at all in Muay Thai you stand very little chance. Really interesting fight.]

Wow great topic. This is such a big one, and so hard to negotiate. Hopefully Sylvie jumps in, but these are my thoughts based on what I witnessed, and a little how we tried to use these kinds of internal politics to our advantage. At the heart of it though is that there are two "gyms" in Thailand, when farang are a focus. There is the "Thai" gym where questions of hierarchy and respect are central, and there is the commercial "farang" gym which operates as a business, with money paid and services given. Westerners tend to live in the commercial gym, in terms of expectation, but the trainers actually live in the Thai gym. And when you stay long enough as a farang you come to realize that you are in both gyms. At Lanna Sylvie was originally "given" to a particular trainer, one who usually trained women (for obvious reasons - loved women, didn't want to work hard). Pretty much a bad match for Sylvie, though technically very sound. It took her a while to work her way off of this trainer. Once she did this she became basically the student of Den, the head trainer, who was excellent, but who also got frustrated with Sylvie (not fighting how she trained, etc). This resulted in Sylvie trying to get supplementary training from Daeng (a very fight oriented trainer) and also boxing training from Neung (a socially "low" trainer who happened also to be a former WBC western boxing champion, in private lessons). So, so complicated. It was a daily ballroom dance trying to keep all these trainers feeling good about the work that was happening. Luckily Lanna trainers were not very competitive, and generally got along. They even collaborated on how to bring out better performance, but it doesn't mean that there were not question of face saving all the time. Sylvie did great in a fight, who gets credit? Sylvie did bad in a fight, whose fault is it? There was always a push and pull. I think Sylvie did best when, aware of it all, did what she could to make sure she connected to whichever trainer was being left out at any one period of time. She kind of had 3 at a time. As long as she kept everyone involved, asking for padwork (not easy for her, she's quiet) from particular trainers, or asking for technical advice, it seemed pretty good. Also when winning fights it helped. Complicating to all this was that she was paying one for private lessons. Add money to any "respect" issue and it really is too much. I think in the end that fact that Sylvie felt loyal and genuinely cared for all 3 trainers, and worked her butt off trying to adopt what each was teaching, made everything okay. At her current gyms it works the same way, across gyms. O. Meekhun is the most sensitive. If you don't win, or if it feels like Petchrungruang is getting too much credit they can really sour on the relationship. They are the small gym. It's really about going out of your way to pay respect to whomever feels like they might be offended, constantly working to repair relationships that become eroded. As much as it would be great if "commercial" gym Muay Thai mapped perfectly onto traditional Thai relationships, it really seldom does. Money and monetary exchange mean very different things to the west and in traditional Thailand. In fact in many ways they mean the opposite. In the west if you give money to someone in exchange for something it basically means: We are even, I don't owe you anything. In Thailand it means: I'm invested in you, our bonds should grow more dependent (and hierarchical) - we owe each other.

Gemma, I thought this was one of the best fight posts I've ever read. You are so very clear-headed about what was going wrong, and giving insight to all the pressures that a fighter can face. It was kinda incredible. This is just very private stuff. Not that nobody should know about it, but rather than people just don't realize that you can really want to do something, keep telling yourself to do it, but the whole thing can be undermined. Fighters are warriors of the mind, even more than they are of the body. Just a very brilliant and honest telling. It amazes me that the mind can trick us into feeling that we have NO advantages, when in fact we may be brimming with them. I think this has been a very brave year for you, an amazing year.

Hopefully Sylvie will hop on and give her view, but to offer my thoughts, it seems pretty clear that nobody at the top in this weight class really wants to fight Sylvie. It's maybe not that Sylvie is some incredible fighter, really it's just that her fighting style is very hard to deal with and there is no upside. She is extremely strong, and she's a clinch fighter, so a lot of things that work in normal fights don't work against her. She's beaten Muangsingjiew twice this year (#2) and Muangsingjiew cancelled at the last minute of the last two times they were supposed to rematch. We're told that Faa Chiang Rai (#3) doesn't want to fight Sylvie either, ever since she lost to her. Little Tiger on the other hand has been accused of picking her fights carefully. Sylvie inquired about fighting her through a female Thai fighter friend and she said she only wants to fight Thais. This is what Saya Ito is saying when she calls her out. What is a little funny about this fight here is that it seems like she was targeting in a low-key way what she may have thought was an easy, small Thai girl. When she fought Jee Jaa I think she was at 44 kg. She's not ranked by the WPMF, as far as I can see. But it wasn't easy at all, she took it to her. The same thing seemed to happen last year when she fought Faa Chiang Rai. The biggest weaknesses Japanese fighters can have is as clinch fighters, they just don't have that dimension to their training. What's so crazy is that Sylvie beat Saya Ito in clinch, and now Saya is coming to Thailand to train clinch with Jee Jaa and Sylvie. Sylvie was helping her with technical things Thais won't explain. Basically Sylvie is helping Saya Ito beat Little Tiger. But that pretty much leaves Sylvie out of the picture, because Saya now is not only a part time teammate, but she also knows first hand how strong Sylvie is now, though Sylvie has held back some in training. Sylvie more or less is left fighting 50+ kg girls now because they are the only fights she can regularly find. Ito vs Phetjee Jaa on the other hand, I can see it happening, simply because she is a big name, and represents Thailand. Plus, whenever she does fight for the belt she'll probably be several kilos lighter than whomever she fights. It looks like she could beat Little Tiger right now, honestly.

One of the interesting things about the mythos of Muay Thai is that the Thais enjoy the thought that it's a martial art that allows someone to make up big differences in physical size. It's one reason, I suspect, that nationalistic shows like Thai Fight, which often feature larger, less-skilled farang fighters against smaller top Thai talents are popular. Long into Thai history, Muay Thai is seen as an equalizer of western "muscle mass" and aggression, accounts going back to the 18th century, if I recall. Lawrence's own treatment of Muay Thai talks about technical advantages in clinch which can make up for huge differences in size and strength: There are no mentions of determinative muscle mass in the video above, even though the difference is far more profound than anything Lucia Rijker may have faced. Not to jump on Lawrence here, I think he does an insanely good job of bringing out interesting features in anything he touches on, but I think the muscle mass story is just too easy to fall back on in male vs female fight debates. Clearly if a "Rijker" had the skills of Kaoklai (training, life opportunity) nobody would be talking about her muscle mass, as she would have cleaned her opponent up. But the truth is, as good as Lucia Rijker was, and she was good in so many ways, she was never as good as top male Thai fighters...and this is really an issue of training and life experience. Yes, physiological differences may be a factor, but Muay Thai is really designed to be the art of the smaller person.