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Sponsored Muay Thai Fighters: Exploitation or Mutually Beneficial?

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Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu Fellow Traveler

Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu

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SPONSORED MUAY THAI FIGHTERS: EXPLOITATION OR MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL?

Article from Sumalee Boxing Gym's blog talking about their criteria for sponsoring a fighter and what benefits the gym and the fighter receive from the sponsorship.

I like that, from the gym's perspective, it becomes more clear that sponsoring fighters is an investment with unknown returns. This is talking about western fighters, which is a different game than taking on Thai kids. It's a shorter-term investment and because of the interest in putting westerners on cards to sell tickets, less-experienced westerners are able to be presented on bigger shows in a shorter period of time. So investing in an 18-24 year old western guy for two years is reasonable, whereas investing in a Thai kid is generally starting much younger and waiting much longer before he's on the same type of shows, due to what's expected of Thais vs. expectations for westerners.

So, the western mentality of business relationships and sponsorship/support from a gym is influenced by this "growing up at the camp" romance that we envision about Thai culture, without really touching on the realities of those relationships. There is a MUCH bigger investment in Thai kids who may or may not become great fighters, versus the investment in westerners who may or may not become great fighters and then go home.

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    • Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu
      Entertainment Muay Thai isn't really like Warfare at all

      By Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu · Posted

      Speculatively, it seems likely that the real "warfare roots" of ring Muay Thai goes back to all the downtime during siege encampment, (and peacetime) Ayutthaya's across the river outer quarters. One of the earliest historical accounts of Siamese ring fighting is of the "Tiger King" disguising himself and participating in plebeian ring fighting. This is not "warfare fighting" and goes back several hundred years. One can imagine that such fighting would share some fighting principles with what occurred on the battlefield, but as it was unarmed and likely a gambling driven sport it - at least to me - likely seems like it has had its very own lineage of development. Less was the case that people were bringing battlefield lessons into the ring, and more that gambled on fighting skills developed ring-to-ring. In such cases of course, developing balance and defensive prowess would be important.  Incidentally, any such Ayutthaya ring-to-ring developments hold the historical potential for lots of cross-pollination from other fighting arts, as Ayutthaya maintained huge mercenary forces, not only from Malaysia and the cusp of islands, but even an entire Japanese quarter, not to mention a strong commercially minded Chinese presence. These may have been years of truly "mixing" fighting arts in the gambling rings of the city (it is unknown just how separatist each culture was in this melting pot, perhaps each kept to their own in ring fighting).
    • Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu
      Entertainment Muay Thai isn't really like Warfare at all

      By Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu · Posted

      For anyone who follows my writings I do not argue for any sense of a "pure" Muay Thai, or even Siamese fighting art history. Quite different than such I take one of Siam and Thai strengths is just how integrative they have been over centuries of development (while, importantly, preserving its core identity). For instance Western Boxing has had a powerful influence upon the form and development of Muay Thai for well over 100 years, and helped make it perhaps the premiere ring fighting art in the world, but Western Boxing itself was a very deep, complexly developed art which mapped quite well upon traditional Muay Thai in many areas, allowing it to flourish. This is quite different than the de-skilling that is happening in the sport right now, where instead the sport is being turned towards a less-skilled development, for really commercial reasons.  The story of whether the influx of attention, branding, not to mention the very important monetary investment that Entertainment Muay Thai has brought will actually help "save" traditional Muay Thai is yet to be written. It very well might, as the sport was reaching some important demographic and cultural dead-ends, and it needed an infusion. But, let's not have it be lost, what itself is being lost, which is the actual very high level of skill Thailand had produced...and how it had developed it. Let's keep our eye on the de-skilling.
    • Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu
      Entertainment Muay Thai isn't really like Warfare at all

      By Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu · Posted

      One of the more slippery aspects of this change is that in its more extreme versions Entertainment Muay Thai was a redesign to actually produce Western (and other non-Thai) winners. It involved de-skilling the Thai sport simply because Thais were just too good at the more complex things. Yes, it was meant to appeal to International eyes, both in the crowd (tourist shows) and on streams, but the satisfying international element was actually Western (often White) winners of fights, and ultimately championship belts. The de-skilling of the sport and art was about tipping the playing field hard (involving also weigh-in changes that would favor larger bodied international fighters). Thais had to learn - and still have to learn - how to fight like the less skilled Westerners (and others). In some sense its a crazy, upside-down presentation of foreign "superiority", yes driven by hyper Capitalism and digital entertainment, but also one which harkens back to Colonialism where the Western power teaches the "native" "how its really done", and is assumed to just be superior in Nature. The point of fact is that Thais have been arguably the best combat sport fighters in the world over the last 50 years, and it is not without irony that the form of their skill degradation is sometimes framed as a return to Siam/Thai warfare roots. It's not. Its a simplification of ring fighting for the purpose of international appeal. 

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