Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

But this is the whole fantasy about Asian martial arts anyways though, isn't it? They contain a kind of "magic" of moves, or knowledge that allows the weaker person to be victorious. It isn't the man who is victorious, so much as the art. At least in some versions of the fantasy. Muay Thai differs in some respects in that it is "hard", "direct" in many ways, but there still is an element of Asian magic in how western people think about it, I think.

Hey, well all have our biases. As for my position about Fallon Fox I really don't know where I stand at all. It's a gray, precarious area in an evolving sport that almost didn't exist 10 years ago. I think there are lots of interesting discussions to have about the inclusion or exclusion, discussions that should begin with the communities with the most at stake. I'm just very wary of when arguments are made with appeal to "science" or "medical" facts, as if these aren't essentially ethical decisions. By my experience strong appeals to science are usually used to end discussion, not develop it. The bigger problem with Ronda Rousey on this seems to be that her attitude towards Fallon Fox, who some think is a man no matter what, feel quite similar to her attitude towards Cris Cyborg, who everyone agrees is a woman. She seems have something of a normative gender issue, and it doesn't have much to do with science. It is painful to hear her talk about Chris Cyborg as if she is a "he". Come on Ronda, I'm pulling for you. Why throw that shit in there? No amount of appeals to science, or hormones, or muscle mass will disguise what is being said there. It's just something meant to slur and hurt. And in so doing she throws stones at every woman out there with masculine looking traits. My own feeling is that Ronda is over-concerned with her undefeated record. I think in her book she talks about how everything hinges on being undefeated. She bravely fights frequently, risking what she thinks is the whole ball of wax. And she is relentless in her attack on Cyborg because Cyborg is physically HUGE. As much as she believes in her Judo, I think it does scare her to fight someone so large. I even think she was concerned about Cat Zingano's strength and size. She is fighting for every advantage - emotional, physical. But the methods of attack are doing damage which will last. Don't be Mike Tyson Ronda. Be Muhammad Ali. Ali lost several times. It made him even greater.

Emma Thomas found an interesting article by Sarah George. It's not long, only 12 pages: Dancing Under the Mongkhon: How Thailand's National Sport a Distinctive Moral Code (PDF) It presents ethical arguments and a framework for understanding how the violence and practice of Muay Thai indeed corresponds to, and even exemplifies Buddhist ethics. Scholar Peter Vail already had written how in Thai Society the Muay Thai fighter falls between the monk and the gangster, something Sylvie wrote about here: Thai Masculinity: Positioning Nak Muay Between Monkhood and Nak Leng, and George takes up some of the monk-like comparisons Vail talks about, as well as some others (including forms of breathing meditation). Most interesting in the article is a quote by a western photographer: ‘Despite the perceived violence of MT (it is very powerful and arguably the most effective system of stand-up fighting on the planet) there is another aspect to it that is internal. How the fighters approach the sport and their training offers glimpses into the personal, internal quest that could be seen as very similar to a monk's quest for enlightenment. They understand they have to endure the suffering of themselves to reach a goal (I personally believe that the goal is deeper than the promise of riches and escaping their plight - it's an internal struggle to better themselves continually)…This internal struggle of the fighter might have something to do with why many temples will host MT events (obviously it's to raise money too) but seeing the appreciation on the faces of some of the monks when the fights are on, you can tell that they're recognizing one of their own in the ring’ I have to say that having been to lots of festival fights with monks present - they are often out at the edges smoking like teenagers under the bleachers - this projection of them seeing fighters as "one of their own" seems pretty exaggerated as a proof of Muay Thai spirituality. Many monks seem pretty mundane at these events. But that doesn't eliminate the overall point that indeed Muay Thai as a way of life is a method and means of self-control and discovery, and that this process fits neatly into the aims and ways of life of Buddhism. I see this even in how Pi Nu teaches at Petchrungruang. I can see in his eyes that there is always something to benefit someone in them learning proper Muay Thai. There is a kind of ethical ballast to the calm aesthetic of what he sees as beautiful. And this goes from beginner on up. You can see the same in these opening scenes involving Kru Bah who ethically instructs children using Muay Thai (Kru Bah is referenced in the essay): George's technical arguments about non-violence and Buddhist ethics seem less convincing to me, though you may be more persuaded than me. At most she seems to argue that because Muay Thai violence is non-life threatening it does not violate Buddhist principles. This does not quite measure up though to the idea that it exemplifies them. But perhaps it does, in a way that George does not fully draw out. By the practice of equipoise, the exertion of what she calls "force" (morally neutral) in the artifice of combat Muay Thai's version of non-violence is simply not descending into the emotions of violence. And this is instructive. She also references Buddhist mediation techniques which she connects to Muay Thai breathing, and the reception of a student ceremony Yok Kru, which no longer really exists as prevalent in commercial Muay Thai as far as I know. These two feel like stretches to me, but still are interesting ethical orbits around Muay Thai and its heritage. Arguments about how camp Muay Thai improves the lives of children, seem to be on good footing, and go towards her larger view that Muay Thai itself, especially in its more traditional form, is somehow essentially good for the health of a Nation. Bottom line: there isn't a lot written about the ethics of Buddhism and Muay Thai and at the very least this seems like a great starting point for conversations about the moral force of Muay Thai as a heritage. for a collection of academic articles on Muay Thai see here

Gavin, I have to say I find this "bone structure" argument really frustrating. So Fallon Fox has a "Q Angle" that gives her an unfair advantage in the cage? You say yourself that you don't now what the impact is in MMA, and that you don't know if it has been researched (I would doubt it), but you still conclude that this issue has been dismissed "incorrectly". If there is no research, and no measurable means by which to assess the impact then indeed you dismiss it. You don't just assume that there is an advantage that is necessarily unfair. The truth is that there are all sorts of skeletal, hormonal and other differences between women. Nobody is talking about the "Q angle" of the hips of different female fighters and saying things like "Ronda has a Q angle that gives her an advantage!" Some women have more testosterone naturally, this gives them an advantage. It is only sexist perceptions in our culture that allows us to very vague group a group of people together and say "female" and imagine that they are all somehow "equal". They aren't. There are hoards of differences between members of a group. The "bone structure" argument is very similar to the "bone density" argument (which was the first version of it put out there). But check it out. Black Women tend to have a Bone Density almost equal to White Men source Does this mean that Black women should be segregated out from White Women in regards to the cage? Of course not. There may be real issues of fairness, and interesting questions about how we define gender, but honestly the people who actively complain about this are not other female fighters. They are not the ones that make this a running issue. It's mostly white men on the Internet (hey, I'm a white male on the Internet!) who are disturbed by what they see as a "fake" woman. My proof to myself that the "bone density" argument is just a cover for other, more personal concerns is that very few people who read the bone density argument as important (or alternately: the "bone structure", or the "Q angle" argument, etc) would change their position even if bone density, structure, etc were proven to be a negligible, or non-determinative factor in MMA fights. There is no amount of evidence that would change most protesting people's minds. It starts and ends with "That's a dude". The rest is just looking for stuff to support one's feeling. The opponent is always going to have advantages. Some of them are going to be physical. Some pedagogic. Some emotional. The fight is about overcoming them.

From what I saw you made her pretty uncomfortable in the early rounds just by taking up that extra half-step of space. Everytime you were at that distance she didn't seem to have options. And it was just her squeezing out the 5th round with tiny things that come with experience. Sylvie has had a bad string of dominant 4th rounds against world class opponents, and then 5th round escapes by them, just by knowing what to do to hold off the momentum. It's nothing to bad about in the least. I think it is pretty damn cool that you get another shot at her so fast! Will be pulling for you Gemma.

I had heard that Caley wasn't super satisfied with her performance in this fight, she holds high standards for herself to be sure. I thought she looked great, especially in how she controlled the space. She basically fought where she wanted to fight, and this is where experience and comfort level really shows. Almost nothing occurred where she didn't want it to happen, which is a sign of real control. Styles make fights and Caley's probably a very style tough matchup for Martyna. I would have anticipated for Caley to be more dominant in the clinch, where she does her work much of the time. But Martyna is tall and strong and the angle change makes a difference. I imagine Caley thought she would do more there but she had great position usually and I thought won those exchanges with accurate point of the knee strikes. It might not look like much of a fight in terms of action, but for some reason elements of this fight keep playing in my mind since I saw it. There were so many small things that Caley did so well, things that are the mark of real achievement - not only in a fight, but in a career. She looked crisp, smart and strong. I really liked this fight. I'm still crossing my fingers that Caley comes out of retirement and fights one more time. :)

Nice to hear you talk about your experiences Andrew. I really liked the edit of the preview on this too.

Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Caley looking fast and strong.

Wow. What a cool story. This is how things change.

Personally I don't think either Thai Fight or Max Muay Thai is designed to promote Muay Thai to the world, at least as a priority. My sense is that these kinds of shows are really for Thai (television) audiences, and have something of a conservative feel. I think Thais more or less enjoy the contrast between the fluid Thai fighter and the (often) hyper-aggressive, sometimes off-balance western fighter. There are exceptions, but it seems in keeping with much of the lore of Muay Thai, that it is distinctly "Thai", that the Thai people are born to it, it is natural to them, and that it allows a smaller opponent to defeat a larger, perhaps more physically imposing one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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