Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

We just had our dog over at Lanna, it's very dog friendly as a place as the original owner Andy had lots of dogs, but you never know how the resident dogs will take to yours. Usually these things tend to work out, but you know your dog best. There are about 3 full grown dogs there, and a older pup, by my memory. As to socialization, we just kept ours on the leash. It can be pretty hard to find apartments around Lanna (and in fact Chiang Mai) that allow dogs, but the hotel across the road does, but it's pricey. Don't know much about dogs and Santai. Lanna's going through a transition phase right now too, with their head trainer heading to Scotland at the beginning of August, so its really hard to say what the state of the gym will be. ...so sad to hear about your girl. Must have been terrible.

For example, there is bad blood between California’s Combat Sports Academy (CSA) who happen to be very capable and effective self promoters, and the Chasteen/Earley brothers of Best Muay Thai in Arizona that went 100% ignored by anyone with a voice to speak to the casual fan. From a marketing standpoint, TALK about a missed opportunity! At Lion Fight 18, CSA’s Eddie Abasolo fought Best Muay Thai’s Damien Earley and was disqualified after an [accidental or intentional depending on who you love more] illegal elbow to the back of the head. From there trash talking ensued on social media between both camps. It was a decently interesting affair; nothing earth shattering but it had potential to pay-off later. I can't think of anything more boring this this. Squabbling gyms? Ugh. People bitching in social media? If this is what "saves" Muay Thai in the West, let it die.

You can try this little trick. I'm not a morning person either, but part of that may be a blood sugar issue. Try setting an alarm for 4 am and taking a small snack (not high in sugar/carbs) and then going back to sleep, then see how you feel at 7:30. If you feel more energized you may consider being able to get up for a small run in the am, even 15 minutes. Just an idea. It's something I've done in the past the worked.

Some discussion on Reddit got me thinking about location searches of Muay Thai which lead me to take a look at how Muay Thai is faring in Thailand itself. This produced a pretty interesting world wide graph: "Muay Thai" in Thai has pretty much exploded as a world wide search, in fact so strongly that it now approaches index level that the anglo "Muay Thai" itself has. This surely has to do with the rapid increase in internet and mobile ability in Thailand (the preponderance of these searches occur in Thailand...and notably Laos). So while Muay Thai may have slumped a little in world wide growth, it has reached a whole new level of digital dissemination among Thai speakers. This would suggest the groundwork for growth of the sport in Thailand, at least in terms of interaction, where it has been notoriously ailing and otherwise locked into an aging demographic.

Someone on Facebook suggested that this data is misleading because it does not include alternate language terms of "Muay Thai", and at the face of it it does seem like a good point. This is what they said, in part: This doesn't represents reality. Here's why :1. no matter which country you're in mma is always called "mma "whereas people looking for muay thai will search for thai boxing translated into their language ( for example in france people say "boxe thai " or "boxe thailandaise " as much or more than " muay thai " The truth is that I did some cross-checking of alternate language terms and found the very same patterns of diminishment, but did not include them in the post because it would all get too technical. Here for instance though is the search data for alternate French terminology: My thought is that even if this wasn't the case (and it is) in many ways "Muay Thai" is an excellent temperature taking term because it represents the official term of the Internationalization of the sport, and thus it's largest curve of potential growth. The point is somewhat moot though because alternate language terms - at least those I checked - show the same slow down. The poster also suggests that the data is incomplete because it does not involve other search engines like Russia's Yandex and China's Baidu, or even things like the West's Yahoo/Bing, etc. Very true. We can only talk about Google data. But given that the countries discussed here are not Russia or China, and that Google is dominant in search in the West, these are still very valid data pictures of what might be taken to be a general trend of interest in a term or concept.

Two more relevant search pictures: In terms of iconic personae who represent Muay Thai world wide: Saenchai is dwarfed by Buakaw, Buakaw dwarfed by Tony Jaa: And speaking of iconic brands or figures: Fairtex (yellow) is on the decline since 2009 and Lumpinee (blue) fairs a little better than Saenchai (red). Buakaw in green. The dotted graph lines below are "topic" data and not search terms.

As a digital marketer and consultant I deal with broad data pictures a lot. I'm attracted to these things. I wrote a post a while ago about how Ronda Rousey had indeed passed Serena Williams as the "most talked about female athlete" if you use Google Trends as a measure. The MTG Charlie Hustle article on the importance of the "casual fan", discussed on the Roundtable here, got me thinking about the current state of Muay Thai in terms of reach and whether or not it is actually growing. Is it? So I thought I'd run some Google Trends for search related search terms and get rough data pictures for how much these keyword concepts are at the fingertips of internet users. Now, keep in mind, things like Google Trends are very broad data pictures. They do present valid data, but the challenge is in how to interpret it. From the looks of it though, Muay Thai is not growing in popularity. Muay Thai as Parasitic on MMA To start off with I ran world wide data for the search terms "Muay Thai", "MMA" and "UFC". It is generally assumed that Muay Thai's popularity has been strongly parasitic on the popularity of both MMA and UFC, and one can see here just how flat Muay Thai interest has been compared to these dominant terms: The potentially alarming thing here is that both MMA and UFC have already peaked (2009-2012) in general popularity as a search term. If indeed the fate of Muay Thai relevance is depended on both MMA and UFC interest, Muay Thai has something of a problem here. A note on the data: my guess is that because search terms like these are often more widely used in times of discovery, searches like "What is MMA?" or "UFC fighters" may flourish when a sport is growing and new people are exploring it. The widest band of growth indeed occurred between 2009-2012. Of the demographic which fighting arts may more naturally find appeal, these kinds of searches are no longer happening as frequently. This isn't to say that once converted MMA or the UFC isn't bringing in more dollars than ever, or that marketing of them to the coverted isn't thriving. But what it does suggest is that the bubble of growth may have already occurred. Now MMA/UFC interests are more focused on maturing its audience, and less able to grow it. Short term this may be great. Long term, though non-ideal. If MMA/UFC is not steadily growing in its sphere of influence, and Muay Thai is truly parasitic on these, Muay Thai has a natural ceiling here. And in fact it seems that Muay Thai world wide has already experienced it's own bubble of discovery interest and now is somewhat on the decline. For those of us who love Muay Thai, we may be experiencing Muay Thai as growing, because the viewership is maturing. But, at least by these data pictures, the discovery of Muay Thai is slowed. Muay Thai and Kickboxing There is a secondary avenue toward Muay Thai and that is interest in Martial Arts, as a somewhat exotic self-development discipline. There has always been the possibility that Muay Thai could flourish much in the way that Kung Fu (and then TKD) did through martial art interest, particularly through the influence of film. In terms of film exposure movie's like Ong Bak (and sadly much earlier, Kickboxer) have helped expose Muay Thai to the world, and now you have everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Jason Statham teeping and elbowing their way through fight scenes, showing that Muay Thai has incorporated itself into the vocabulary of cinema violence. But (above, blue) the keyword/concept of "martial arts" has been on the fast decline since 2004, world wide. In the world "muay thai" has crept above "kickboxing", but this remains incremental really ("kickboxing" does not include "kick boxing" a substantial variation). The decline of "martial arts" as a search interest suggests that the secondary avenue for Muay Thai popularity, that of Asian martial self-improvement is somewhat on the wane. In the United States (above), "kickboxing" (yellow) has a stronger presence than "muay thai" (blue) and "MMA" (red) has been on the decline since 2008. Country By Country Muay Thai Popularity Below are the search term popularity indices by country. As can be seen only Brazil shows a strong increase in the popularity of the term quite apart from the general 2009-2013 MMA bell...slightly so in Italy. Every other country shows the index of the term in decline: The most optimistic way to read this data is that indeed Muay Thai has flourished under a parasitic relationship to MMA and the UFC. And as those elements grew so did Muay Thai. As each of these larger phenomena decline in terms of growth rate (which I suspect is what is expressed in discovery uses of Search), Muay Thai also has suffered. For those of us who are the converted we are experiencing an increase in Muay Thai relevance. The relationship between itself and it's small western demographic is maturing. There is greater understanding of the sport and its scoring, more reach of its Thai stars and their fights, but there remains a very difficult growth curve problem - for those of us cheering it on. I suspect that the real avenues for Muay Thai growth do not remain with MMA and the UFC who themselves are undergoing their own growth issues, and whose current WWE style story lines do not seem amenable to Muay Thai discovery anyways (see the kind of non-coverage of Muay Thai legend Jongsanan in TUF 20 for instance). Instead Muay Thai must fight for it's own branding, something that emphasizes its Thai-ness to the west. Muay Thai cannot just be: left-right-lowkick, or "the Thai plumb" two-hands-locked-behind-the-neck. We say this as Thailand tries to export its stars to non-Thai rule events, and tries to internationalize its sport (un-Thai it) so that the IOC will find it acceptable for the Olympics. Long term though, the "Thai" of Muay Thai is what gives it its unique character and expression, the strength of its adherence. Ultimately, the future of Muay Thai resides in Thailand itself, and with how effectively Thailand can communicate that Thainess to the west. An interesting anecdotal picture perhaps comes from the search popularity pictures of "muay thai" and "BJJ" in the United States. BJJ, I think it fair to say, has certainly grown out of the popularity of MMA, but it also has managed to maintain its own identity to some degree, an art quite apart from MMA, an art that needs to be learned in depth if it is to be of use. In the United States, and the UK as well, "BJJ" has surpassed "Muay Thai" and does not bear the same discovery arc pattern that MMA/UFC shows (below). Brazilian jiu-jitsu is both for the serious MMA fan and practitioner, and composes an art of it's own. Of course these are just wide-view concepts drawing on search behavior phenomena which may have very diverse influences. This is something like a measurement of memes. I do think though that there are worthy, prospective conclusions to be drawn, but real marketing aims of real events, cultural campaigns and real fighters must take a great deal into consideration. Just something to think about. Now that Muay Thai has received it's one-time bump from MMA and the UFC (2009-2012) I do think it must set its own unique course.

Yeah, this is what we noticed about Sakmongkol - don't know if you read Sylvie's post. When he trained Sylvie in clinch in Colorado we were really surprised that there were zero issues about clinch instruction. Everything was free and easy. But when he then trained Sylvie in Thailand, even in an empty gym, everything changed. If there had been Thais around it would have been very problematic. There are all sorts of hierarchy and gender elements going in Thai gyms. This isn't to say that they aren't workable, but they are there. Many times Sylvie has been told "no problem" by Thais, and genuinely so, but still even in gyms where she is well-established she has to fight and strain for both clinch and sparring, as a woman. These things do tend to show themselves more over time though, and maybe less in the short term. It's just that this gym from the clip feels VERY Thai, which is great. In many ways though stepping into a more traditional Thai gym can be like stepping into the 1950s. But hey, these issues can show themselves in different ways in western friendly gyms too. Sounds like you've got a nice set up with a personal connection. That's a great start. Can't wait to hear about your experience there.

I think Charlie Hustle got this right, and he got it wrong. The UFC took off because it tapped into both the absurdist passion of Pro Wrestling and the toe-to-toe tough man combat of western boxing. Muay Thai really has none of that. Muay Thai can't become the standup version of the UFC. It isn't what it is. I do think though that it won't grow if you don't know the fighters. Too many fighters hide their tape, hide their personalities, let gyms and promotions do their speaking for them. The one thing that always sells is human stories, people doing something they dream. But western Muay Thai fighters are too busy...more or less...pecking at other fighters and gyms on Facebook and elsewhere, hiding their tape so they can boast about unseen accomplishments, or inflate minor records by not being studied. They should be busy telling their story, and telling the story of other fighters too. The pie is WAY too small to be fighting over the tiny pieces of attention that anyone is getting. Grow the pie. There is no other way. Promotionally Muay Thai should be emphasizing it's Thai-ness (yes, it's exotic qualities, that's how "Kung Fu" grew in popular culture) and extolling the lives of western Muay Thai fighters.

These are really good questions Gavin. Maybe Sylvie can hop in and answer from her own perspective, but from what I see, yes, generally you can build a higher body any number of ways...but, in instances of where your body was broken through violence the fighting arts (and fighting) seems to have a very privileged place. The reason for this is - at least how I intuit it - that the arena of the art, and not just the ring, but the very "stuff" of the art, is composed of the "stuff" that wounded you. If you nearly drowned, learning to breath underwater might have a special place for you. That is what the fighting arts are for some. They teach freedom of movement under the pressures and states that are likely deeply associated with what broke you. Of course each person is on a different path, but generally I feel that this is what is at play. It takes the stuff of wounding and weaves a new cloth. As to "when" the higher body is completed, I'm not sure at all. But when I ran these ideas past Sylvie she responded strongly to the fact that Ganesha could not stop until all the verses were written. There is a driving duty almost to see the task through. One assumes that when the verses are written one knows. Whether this is an act of destruction or not, I think the fighter can feel that. Sylvie is, from my view, after 111 fights in Thailand, much less destroyed, much more free than before. Things break, but the arc is upward. The art, and the fighting is elevating. You can feel the liberty and growth as it is happening, even as you become more critical of what you want to accomplish. But I am sure that there are ballet dancers who have composed a higher body for themselves, and writers, and poets, and skateboarders. musicians, photographers, mountaineers. In a certain sense I think for some fighters fighting has chosen them, it is not something they would ever have chosen fighting. Sylvie never wanted to fight. Then once fighting, even though she loved it she never imagined to fight a great deal. But then the fire took hold, a fire of transformation I think. It is very hard to judge the burning of the fire from the outside, other than to say that something is definitely burning there, and it is making such a beautiful light.

Hey Kaitlin, things can be very different for females than they are for males in more Thai-oriented gyms. A western male might not even think about or realize how different it could be for a serious female. Anything from lack of clinching opportunities, non-clinching, or inappropriate clinching, to getting less padwork, or just not being taken seriously as a fighter (not given fight opportunities), or less sparring can happen. Not say that any of this will happen, but the more "Thai" or "authentic" a gym is, the more unknown a female training experience might be. The gym could be great for you, just like it was for your trainer. Just keep an open mind that you won't know until you get there and see for yourself. Even the experience of another western woman at such a gym, might not be telling, if they don't share your same aims or personal qualities.

I wanted to post my guest post here: Broken Tusk: Breaking the Body and the Art of Fighting because I think this is a really deep topic and possibly there is a lot to be talked about here. The idea is that the fighting arts compose a kind of graphic system that can be used to express an inherent beauty in violence, and that the pursuit of fighting arts, in that they are arts, and in that they verge towards a real violence, can be used to restore bodies and spirits that have been broken. In fact, through fighting the body can be built as a "higher" body, and higher house, a higher vehicle, by analogy. An excerpt: ...Sylvie’s “house of the spirit” doesn’t really exist any longer, not in any sense that we often assume someone to have one. Her house of the spirit, her body, was broken that day of multiple violations. Her spirit has no dependable house, no real protective shell. Since she was 11 she has been living in the ruins of her body-house, and as the human spirit is both beautiful and adaptable she has learned to live in those ruins. She can hide in them, in the broken pieces, use the shadows, the crevices, the places people don’t think to look. She learned since that young age to be in the ruins, of a kind. What Sylvie is doing in Thailand – for all those who don’t get (or worse, approve of) what she is doing – is building a higher house, or one can just as easily say, a higher body to replace the broken house/body she has had for all these years. This is why she strains and breaks herself over and over and over, reaching up to the promise of calm in the onslaught of violence. And like Genesha she cannot stop until the epic is written. This is why the Art of Muay Thai is a salvation and even a duty, the calm she sees in the bodies and faces of so many Thais that have fought since a young age – the poise, the balance, the grace, the ease – it calls her. This attempt is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I'd love to hear the experiences and thoughts of others. So many focus on the violence of the real fighting arts and imagine a motive of something between aggression and rage. But to me the fighting arts, when pursued, are something so different. They compose a base language, and a writing system that uses the broken edges of the body as its instrument. In the article I draw the analogy of the myth of Ganesha, and his broken tusk:

We have had no experience with gyms in Hua Hin, but since you are down there (are you there yet?) have you looked at Por Promin? Sylvie fought a girl from Por Promin, and one of the owners of the gym is a western woman, Miriam. Because you are a woman it seems to have some qualities that would produce positives for women, and I've seen lots of females training there in photos on Facebook. Miriam was very nice, and we could put you in touch with her. By and large though, if you are having doubts about a gym you are at in Thailand you should I think move on and try something different. There are so many. If you haven't gotten to Thailand yet, if you do go to Hua Hin there seem to be several gyms to try out.

It was great to see those clips of the fight. Looks like Duangdaonoi wasn't physically very strong, and out-weighed by a significant amount though too. She probably is a 100 lb fighter, not 105 lb (which doesn't help). And nice to see Haru as a teacher and see a little of her fight style. Great share Charlie.

I know Sylvie takes BCAAs, and has had varying experiences with them. At some point a huge difference. She said when first taking them last year "This is the first time I'm not sore in two years". Trying to get her to write about them. Hopefully she'll jump on this thread.

Brilliant. Love these.

I'm realizing that now. Pretty impressive! Must go to every show. Is he a sports journalist?

Did not even realize that LadyGo was a photographer. I thought a blogger.

This would be highly unusual from what little I've seen. But Thailand is also pretty unexpected. You can always ask.

Fair enough, my bad. I was just surprised that you felt that what Thais say out loud to you somehow would reflect their feelings about race. I've never heard any Thais talk about the skin color of well-known people - other than Master K making a joke about Buakaw's name - but I didn't think that was weird. I just assumed that because I don't speak Thai and don't engage in long conversations it was never something that would come up. And more than this, when I think about it, I'm not even sure I've heard Americans judge Michael Jordan for being black, and I'm American, which is really the point I should have done a better job expressing. I do wonder how he is viewed, and in fact how all people of some celebrity from Isaan are viewed.

I do wonder what Buakaw's image is among the core Thai Muay Thai community. He's a huge name in the west because of his K-1 success, and much of his media seems very western oriented - the face grimace, etc. Though he also puts up a lot of nationalist imagery too (flags, military). He hasn't fought a Thai in almost a decade, and I've been told by at least one person close to the fight game that if he fought a real Thai fighter now he wouldn't stand a chance. He's such an interesting case because of how he broke from his gym, isn't a Muay Thai fighter proper, and is ethnically so dark. Maybe he is like a kind of movie star, who doesn't make movies.

That would be like saying that America isn't racist because Michael Jordan and so many other major sports heroes are black. Or even because whites were pulling for Joe Louis against Max Schmeling in 1938.

To me it is done in the aesthetic of political cartoons. But I also think it has a political tinge in that westerners, and I am one, see all those constants and just give up, but it's asking for kind of humanization, treating her as a person. What is ironic about it is that she's depicted as a non-person, a robot, which is how UFC fans try to depict her, describing her in extra-human or sub-human terms: a force of nature, a beast, so technical, a machine. Fight fantasy has a whole sci-fi, geekdom feel about it, nerdy dudes buying PPV, and in video game mode mentally. It's funny, and meaningful, to ask that people spell your name right. But hey, that's what came to mind for me. I think it's brilliant.

A few western oriented gyms have Kru (trainer) certification, like Master Toddy's, but 99.999% of trainers in Thailand are not certified, and they aren't called Kru typically. "Kru" just means "teacher" in Thai, it isn't a special title like in other martial arts. It can be used, but in most circumstances it isn't. There are traditions and Kru formalities in older, Boran-type, circumstances, but gyms aren't really like that now, at least in the way that people think. I have no idea what your Italian friend did, but this isn't really the way that most of Thai gyms operate at all. Trainers are just ex-fighters, or Thai people with passion about the sport. There is nothing formal about it. They are paid a pretty low wage.

I've never seen someone train and also be paid to be a trainer, and I've seen both Petchruangrung and WKO. The first difficulty would be that pad holders aren't paid a lot of money generally, and tend to work long hours. But the bigger difficulty is that the few times I have seen westerners hold and train these were people who had been with the gym for very long time. They were part of the gym family. This takes a while. That being said, Master Toddy's in Bangkok does have a trainers program, and I do know that he was looking for trainers at one point for a new gym that he had opened. Maybe contact Emma at Under the Ropes for more on that?