Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

She talks about this in her book as well. It makes sense to me, how "everything came from this," so everything goes away when the shine goes. And part of me really admires her obsession and single-minded approach; but God... I just wouldn't want to have that same mindset. It's the same as how "championship thinking" requires that every loss has some kind of external explanation and that's how champions think - you can see it in how Iman Barlow talks about her few losses; same with Phetjee Jaa's parents; every loss in Rousey's Judo days was "bullshit" judging. I know that kind of mindset actually benefits the fighter in a lot of ways. But I don't want it for myself, even though I see how it's beneficial. Like this:

Hahaha, that second photo is the best.

This is the promo for the May 31st 105 lb WPMF championship fight between current champion Duangdaonoi (Thai) and the Japanese challenger Tajima. Duangdaonoi only recent won the WPFM belt which was held for a very long time by Erika Kamimura who retired. Duangdaonoi is from a huge family of Thai fighters, most of them sisters (photo below). It's a shame she has to defend her title so quickly while other champions hold their belts for a long stretches without fighting. I'm pulling for her to win.

Something that really struck me an has stuck with me since reading it, is when Vail posits that the self-control within the "violence" of ring Muay Thai is the crux of the whole thing. A kid who flails wildly is acting out jai rohn violence, whereas the kid who can maintain composure while striking and being struck in return is jai dee. There is a lot of oi! oi! with clean strikes, powerful strikes, devastating strikes, all of which are the aesthetic violence of Muay Thai, but it's the fighter's balance and self-control and awareness that really sets the Thai aesthetic apart from the western fighters' aesthetic. And that ethic/aesthetic, to me, exemplifies the same values of Theravada Buddhism that is primary to a lot of "Thainess." Honestly, I've never seen a contradiction between Thai Buddhism and Thai boxing.

Flexibility is an interesting point because it's indirect. I never see Thais stretching. Even though Pi Nu tells westerners to "go stretch" and I've learned at several camps how to use the ring to learn how to open your hip for kicks (so it must be something Thais learn too at some point), I still never see them doing it. Sometimes Thais will come in for their very first session, whether kids or teens or adults, and within 20 minutes their kicks are awesome. It's incredible because it takes westerners years sometimes. But I reckon the flexibility in the hips comes from cultural differences like how squatting is still very common. In the west we start sitting in chairs from the moment we can sit up on our own and we rarely sit otherwise, so our hips develop an inflexibility that's not great for kicking. We have to "undo" something whereas cultures that still squat with some regularity don't have to "undo" anything. I have a super hard time with the chess game, strategic part of Muay Thai. I'm a "dumb" fighter. A few of the guys who are holding pads for me lately are trying to get me to anticipate the next move, block because I know someone's going to kick back, etc. I'm just no there yet. Yesterday I was clinching with a kid who is very new. He's basically rocketed forward in his progress in a very short amount of time, but he's still very basic in everything. I was letting him knee me then I'd knee him back, over and over again. I figured out a while back how to jerk on the neck of the person I'm clinching every time they try to knee, which shuts down the strike. I know when the knee is coming - I don't know when distance strikes are coming. Anyway, I was telling this kid that he could anticipate my return knee because it happened every time after he kneed, and to shove me instead of letting me knee him. He tried it and was just beside himself at this new trick. He wouldn't have thought of it on his own - at least not for a long time; I only came up with it after a billion attempts at clinching - but he was receptive. A few other things I showed him he wasn't receptive; he wasn't "ready" for those yet. That's what's hard about teaching Muay Thai, you try to shortcut everything by giving techniques and tricks before the basics are in there. So the student learns them as intellectual knowledge, but isn't ready to apply them yet as experiential knowledge. That right there is the whole story of everything I learned with Master K and am only now starting to be able to actually do. That's why little kids learning from such an early age, through play, is just light years beyond what we learn in classes. That's why your native language, learned naturally, is always going to be so much better ingrained than a second language that you learn through study. I have all this experience in my body but I never learned how to play so I can't access it. Then these little kids who basically mess around for an hour every afternoon are doing, like, spinning and flying moves out of nowhere. They've done that a hundred times already. It's not "a move," it's a game. And yeah, I absolutely see this in Phetjee Jaa and her brother Mawin.

Hill repeats, stairs and sprints are all great to work into training. I've only ever seen it applied here in Thailand in the lead up to a "big fight," rather than part of maintenance training. I've read the articles and arguments and all that on how HIIT is better than distance for explosive blah blah blah. But I don't think that the 10 km runs that NakMuay are pounding out twice per day are necessarily only meant for cardio. It's mental training as well.

The policing of femininity based on crude science of "how much Testosterone is acceptable in women?" by Olympic committees and then the lay public is absurd. The first time I read about this was in Anne Fausto-Sterling's book Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. It's a great read. Fausto-Sterling's ongoing thesis in most of her published writing on gender is "“the two-sex system embedded in our society is not adequate to encompass the full spectrum of human sexuality.” I, like Kevin, am not sitting in a comfortable or clear position on the political and ethical question of Fallon Fox competing with Cis Women in MMA. I don't think that the most important questions revolve around bone-density, hip width, center of gravity, etc. To me, the question of "how much Testosterone is too much?" smacks of outdated, Aristotelian model science wherein "male" is at the center and anything else is "other." When reading Aristotle, the "stuff" of the soul and life and biology creates the male and the absence of that "stuff" is the deformed, malformed, insufficient female. There's not a "you've got too little Testosterone so you can't compete with the men" involved when athletes who have a penis want to compete. It's lazily and inconsistently applied science. What it boils down to in the rhetoric that's bouncing around the internet from people like us - non-doctors, philosophers, biologists, ethicist, et al - is that there is a pervasive and ongoing belief, whether conscious or unconscious, stated or tacit, that females are "naturally" and inarguably inferior. For Fallon Fox to claim differently, for her to openly claim that it's "fair" for her to fight women comes off as abusive and as cheating. A female-to-male transsexual wanting to compete in the male division would not garner the same arguments or protests, calling for the protection of the unsuspecting athletes within that division. It would be centered on whether or not that trans athlete was consenting to his own disadvantage. And likely, any Cis Male athlete open to fighting this trans athlete would be labeled in the same way Fox is being labeled now.

I have 12 oz Fairtex for sparring. I'm small, so 12 oz is generally okay for me but sometimes trainers put the Mickey Mouse gloves on me that are 16 oz. Those aren't common out here though; each of my gyms only has two pair of 16 oz. I own bag gloves that are 4 oz, I forget the brand. I used them for bagwork when I was at Lanna because the owner told me to but I didn't see a big difference in the toughness of my hands or strength of my shoulders, which is what he said they were good for. Then a different trainer told me to wear heavier gloves on the bag because the weight of the gloves would make me stronger. So, now I just use my regular 6 oz gloves (ThaiSmai - my favorite brand) for padwork and bagwork. I have two pair but they're exactly the same other than color - one is for AM, one is for PM. Bag gloves are great for actually feeling exactly how you're hitting and getting your knuckles into it. But there's very little support so you have to wrap your hands well. I like hitting the bag with the little gloves but I can't attest as to whether or not it does anything. It just feels good.

Sunlight is amazing at helping avoid swamp gloves. If you have lace ups, open up the laces and let them sit in the sun. If you have Velcro (booooooooo Velcro!) try to keep them open somehow. Ceder chips are a great idea. I also buy Dr. Scholl's inserts that are for stinky feet and stick those suckers inside gloves when they're not in use. (Golden, CO eh? I'm from Boulder.)

These four video parts make up part 1 of my Conversation with Kelly Creegan. You can check out the blog post article for part 1 here. It's the the camera rolling as we sit and have a chat. The 2nd part of the Interview should be up next week. Kelly is a member of our forum here and it was great to finally meet her. She's been at Sitmonchai Gym for a while now, a quiet, family-like gym a couple of hours out of Bangkok, and is moving to Eminent Air in Bangkok later this summer. Kelly, sorry for that still on the 2nd video, YouTube just does what it wants!

There is something about the "authenticity trap" that jumped out to me that kind of falls in line with the concept of "passing" in the trans vernacular. I've often said that my struggle is being respectful in a culture that isn't respectful to me. That's a hard line; it's a bitter pill to swallow. But in the same way that in art you have to know the rules first and then break them on purpose, there's something about the parameters of authenticity that are more limiting to the "other," or the foreigner who is imitating it. For example the wai as Kevin mentioned. When I was chided by this woman for "wai-ing like a dude," it was because it's not beautiful. I was coming off as impolite and potentially disrespectful, while performing a gesture that very literally means "to give respect." As a foreigner, I do have a slight buffer in that it's assumed I just don't know what I'm doing. These trainers at my gym could use this nose-blow wai all day long and 1) I'm not picking up the nuances as to why they wai to one person that way and absolutely wouldn't dare do it that way to someone of higher rank; and 2) it's their culture so they can be more loose in it. They can improvise. It's like a kathoey, or the "ladyboy" of Thailand. Every movement is hyper-feminine, every piece of clothing and makeup is constructing the message of being a woman. As a Cis woman, I have more freedom; I'm not trying to "pass," so I can burp or wear a T-shirt that's soaked in sweat without true fear of being mistaken for a man. But for someone who is constructing the female (which Cis women are, too, just to a much less fine-tuned degree), a slip up is like letting the curtains fall. As an outsider to the culture, my lazy wai is "inauthentic." The exact same lazy wai by a Thai dude to a younger, lower-status kid from the gym is hyper-authentic. It's "street."

At one of my gyms, Petchrungruang, the owner and my coach said that he used to have women go under the bottom rope but now they don't care how people get in. Not because they've changed their attitudes about women or tradition, but because they just decided to stop blessing the ring... so it's not a problem, exactly like the difference between the "men's ring" and "women's ring" at Lanna. One is blessed, one isn't. A blessing by monks is pretty involved and also pretty expensive, so I can see why gyms don't like to do it more often than every year or every few years. At this gym they have shrines way, way up above the rings where there are images of the Buddha, candles, flowers, incense, red fanta, etc. It's so high up that nobody's head could possibly go above it. Problem solved, I guess. It's interesting, too, your argument with your trainer. A long time ago I got a comment from a guy who is outside of Thailand and he has his female fighters go under the rope as a way to "embrace their own traditions." I felt like his heart as in the right place, but if you're going to do it as a way to honor the "female method" then you must also honor the traditions that make that the female method, which is after all what makes it demeaning. But I do acknowledge that all traditions are easier kept when they are convenient and easier called "outdated" when they are inconvenient. It's convenient for your coach to train women, it is inconvenient to take sides on the controversial issue of the rope when it is seen by so many as being "traditional" while still being blind as to why that is a tradition at all. This is why I got so pissed up in Chiang Mai when I had to fight in an MMA cage while a bunch of keyboard warriors were yapping at me about how I was threatening Thai tradition. I posted an instagram with the words, "how do crawl under the fence of a cage?"

No, I think he actually brings them along, hiring them for the night. Who knows how much he's paying them, probably not a lot, but it's cool. In the case of the "Small Man," (as Pi Nu calls him; he's still bigger than I am) he just makes his daughter do it. Phetjee Jaa has to do my massage when I'm with that gym, too.

Lion Fight is probably the biggest in the US, although it's still very young and has practically no competition in terms of similar shows. Glory has appeared in the US a few times with some cross-over fighters from Lion Fight's roster, but they're K-1 and tend to pull from and show to a European pool. Yokkao is trying to gain momentum with their shows - they're still quite new as a promotion and make most of their money through equipment and apparel, as well as seminars where they cart Saenchai and company around to the UK, Italy and now the East Coast of the US. Thai Fight and Max are both pretty unwatchable for me. They're a carnival show as far as matchups go. World Muay Thai Angels is the only all-female show, also jumping on the Thai vs. Westerner bandwagon of Max and Thai Fight and Yokkao. They've only been around for about 2 years and are still working to get their footing, but it's absolutely the biggest all-female promotion I've ever seen. Their first champion, Chommanee Sit. Taehiran won a million Baht upon winning the finale last year! There are Toyota and Isuzu "marathons" here in Thailand fairly regularly. They're big shows, big names, you can watch them on TV. But not really for international audiences unless they go up on YouTube later. Channel 7 is the best televised show here, in my opinion, and it's a pity Raja and Lumpinee don't televise their shows more often. Enfusion is pretty popular, as far as my Facebook feed tells me, but I don't know how to watch it and it's K-1 or S-1, so not full Muay Thai. That's also more of a European scene.

In western boxing they have the "boxer" vs. the "puncher," which is supposed to be the difference between someone who is very technical and cereberal and someone who hits to hurt, but not quite a "brawler" In Muay Thai I've seen "inside fighters"; "knee fighters"; "counter strikers"; "boxers" (Pornsenae and Pakorn); "defensive" (Sam A); Saenchai is often called "feemeur" but I don't fully agree because he stays in the pocket even though he's evasive; "counter fighter"; "tricky fighter" (that's Saenchai to me); "cocky" is what I'd call Kaensak's style, in a good way; "book" is like a forward pressure fighter, like Thanonchai (my favorite); I'd call Sangmanee "feemeur"...

Hahaha, I thought your style was "Irish." :)

Yeah, I've had those times when you're whacked and pretty useless in the ring and on the bag but the run is like butter. It's zone out time. I just read Ronda Rousey's book in the van for this Laos visa run and she said that when she starts her training camps for fights she actually focuses more on resting. She trains all the time regardless of whether she's fighting, so her "fight camps" are 6 weeks of adjusted training, which she breaks down by week in the book. But I definitely noted that while she's turning things "up" in a sense in terms of her training and focus, she's also diligently resting as part of that training. I think that's the part a lot of people don't do for themselves. And when you can't sleep it's really hard to get the rest that's needed for how hard you're working.

Yeah, you're probably going to want to find a house in Chiang Mai in order to be able to have dogs. There were some really simple stand-alone houses that you can rent, usually in neighborhoods in the outerskirts of the city but not easy to find (at least anywhere near our budget). Here in Pattaya dogs do live in the connected housing that make up whole streets, but not in apartments which are much more plentiful. These row houses are like two level apartments, all attached with a front "yard" that's basically a parking spot and a gate. Because it's a house with separate entrances the pet issue seems open, from what I've seen in the row that is near our apartment building. Dogs live in those front "yards" of these houses. These kinds of row houses were much less common in Chiang Mai, by what I saw. As far as getting them to Thailand, you'll need vaccination records. Probably once you arrive and get settled you can find a good vet clinic and work through them to get all the paperwork and documentation required to bring the dogs over.

Hey, I actually happened to run into Kelly on a visa run to Laos and we got to chat for a moment outside 7-11 about this. I do believe there's a subconscious tendency to "save" for the later fights, either not wanting to get hurt or hoping you won't be too tired for the others, etc. I definitely have a "just don't get cut," mantra going on in my head when I have fights scheduled close together. It's interesting because my attitude toward the frequent (like, days apart) fights became "just knock her out," which seems reasonable enough but as Kelly points out, it kind of leads to doing nothing. You can't look for the KO because it becomes evasive. You have to just relax and set everything up and the KO will come. I fought a really good opponent recently, whom I'd lost to before, and did much better the second time around. I was hurting her with my hands but then I decided I wanted to really whack her, which resulted in my waiting for the right moment and basically loading up for these power punches that never got thrown. I threw, like, two punches in three rounds because I was trying to land something to rock her, rather than just punching and letting the power come through on the 3rd or 4th shot in a combination. Worthless. I lost again. I think when you fight close together and look for a quick fight or to not get hurt, you end up doing something similar to loading up. You get passive, in a way. From my experience, fighting a few days apart, or even fighting 15 hours apart, you don't feel the previous fights very much. You might have a sore shin or bruises or be a bit tired with muscle aches, but you don't care about any of that stuff in the fight. You may be focused on it in a bad way leading up to the fight, like "what if I feel this in the fight," but in my experience even if you feel it, you don't care. It doesn't matter. Once you've done it, you'll have better internal or subconscious understanding of what it is for you. It becomes easier as you continue to do it, same as when you train through something and realize it wasn't a big deal at all. I feel like I fight better when I fight frequently, so I reckon I'm not so anomalous that others don't also end up feeling this way - you'll probably feel really good if you work on your mental side to let go and fight every fight like it's the only one. You don't have to "save" anything.

Thanks SO MUCH for weighing in on this Brooks. Your perspective as a fighter, coach, promoter, lover of the sport and guy to whom I personally go for insight is so valuable for this topic. And being "coachable".... man, do I ever see the precious gift of that every damn day out here.

Got any video or images of this stretch? (Maybe a link to how it's done or even just a description?)

Kevin and I were talking about this yesterday morning. I get upset by her remarks regarding Cyborg and Fox as well, so much so that we actually tweeted her mom and asked what the hell was up with that. Her mom's response was kind of a mix between a non-response and a "I didn't know she was saying that" response. I suspect that her opposition to Fallon Fox is actually very similar to her opposition to Cyborg, which is that she's "cheating" by having gone through puberty as a male and now wanting to fight women. Cyborg literally was cheating with her PED use, was suspended for it, etc. Because it's hormonal, I see the similarity to what Rousey's issue with Fallon Fox seems to be. All this said, fuck everything that Rousey has said about these women and especially how she's framed it. If you're calling out cheating, then call out cheating and leave the bullshit narrow gender definition shit out of it entirely. I feel for Fox; it's going to be a tough ride for trans fighters for a long, long time and being at the front of it is just a rain of bullets.

Sounds like you're on your way to being a counter striker.

Yeah, like Master K's robot arm, where you just swing the whole body around and the fist torpedos! He'd lightly nudge me with his knuckles when he demonstrated and even that made me want to cry... so powerful. The push-down on the Wall of China is with the hand, very fast, hips in first to create pressure, then relaxed at that moment - followed by an immediate knee. It is very effective. There are other counters but I'm trying to minimize my options so that I don't get caught thinking so much.

I need to be more aggressive, too. I don't know you, but I'll tell you that 99% of the time the reason you "let go" or stop or don't keep on the attack in a fight is because you practice that in training. In clinch training you get dominant position, throw a couple knees and then let go, because you're just training and there's no need to KO someone. But you have to train not letting go, not jumping back out, etc. I do this. I land a knee and jump out for no f****ing reason at all, other than that I do it to "reset" in training. So now I stay on someone in training - not hurting them, but I have to learn how to be aggressive, keep going, smell the blood, etc. You don't KO your training partners, you keep it light, but you keep the energy high.