Journaling - Readings, Muay Thai, Concepts and Articulations

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

timestamped, Kristen Stewart says an interesting here on what would happen if the entire Hollywood machine of movies came crashing down, small film culture would still persist in pockets, people making small films. In a flash I repositioned on what would happen if Bangkok Muay Thai just broke down and was no more. This isn't to say that there isn't important advocacy, or that globalizing, commodifying, tourism-izing trends can't destroy something...but it is to say that there is resilience. 

 

 

 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DNJE3xmsiks/

This is how far Entertainment has pervaded. Tapaokaew vs Nuenglanlek. Nuenglanlek losing the fight in the clinch asks Tapaokaew to go toe to toe for the end of the 5th round so fighters can get the bonus. This is basically...let's stop fighting a "real" fight, you know, one fighter out-skilling another, and instead let's "put on a show" for the Entertainment bonus. That RWS itself posts this, selling the action, just is a deeper dive into building a "content" generator sport. This is just the shaping of the sport by commerce and moving to online content and in-person tourism, away from in-person passionate, knowledgeable fandom...which I suspect isn't sustainable as a business model, and certainly won't develop the highest level skills (building the sport long term). It's also an interesting reversal of the supposedly "fake" dance offs in the 5th round, now there is a "show" of action. This likely will become a trend as fighters learn new ways to play the 5th round out. RWS has a tough line to ride, as the nexus space, the limnal space between pure Aggro ONE marketing and gambled traditional stadium Muay Thai. These are nuances and changes in that space.

 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

 

αἰσθητικῶς ἔχειν

to hold perception (from which we get aesthetics), meaning "to be quick to sense" (Aristotle, Arist.EN1098a2). Aesthetics in this sense is developing the hair-triggers of perceptive experience, to attune. Animals are very quick to perceive, attuned by evolutionary pressures, through aesthetics humans attain something of the animal, in the intensity and the speed. 

When one changes the aesthetics of the sport, its rule set, its judgements, one is changing the speeds of perception, and to what one is attuned. But, culturally, deeper aesthetics develop over time, are embedded in layers, in sediments of perception, in habitus, so external imposition of aesthetics, for instance Westernized or Internationalized fighting aesthetics, messes with perceptual DNA, and with the very experiences of watching. 

In this way the learning of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai is not learning "techniques", or even principles of action. It's learning to sense, to perceive. It is for this reason that proprioceptive things like "balance" and ease (ning) as well as external signatures of each, as well as "ruup" (form) are hidden decisive elements in traditional scoring (and important aspects of training, well beyond things like technical precision). 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Was talking to Sylvie about this very interesting historical cycle involving gambling in Siam and then Thailand. To be very cartoonish about it, provincial farmers would sell their crop and put the money in the ground, literally burying it. This would take the money out of the economy. Gambling worked as a counter to this trend, recirculating currency...but, when they would come to the capital to sell their crops in the 1900s this worked too much to the extreme. Chinese mafia and dens of gambling would drain them of their payouts, leaving them and their families enslaved (servitude). So, capital Chinese mafia gambling, which was very pronounced (gambling at one point in the early 20th century accounting for more than a quarter of the government's income through tax farms) developed a strong moral taint, farmers would loose their livelihood and fall into servitude in dramatic, destructive trends. King Vajirivudh ended up outlawing gambling in the 1920s. But, there is a kind of moral-economic tension or spectrum, between the money that stays in the ground (a traditional picture), and money that circulates in the wider, urban economy, with corrosive effects. And even to this day you have this pattern in Muay Thai, with Chinese ancestry Bangkok promoters who have been aligned with mafia and gambling (scene as a moral vice still), and the provincial fighter, who comes to the capital, looking to win big. There is a tension between tradition and custom in the land, and the (International) urban Casino. What is interesting though, the custom of local market gambling also is that which shaped provincial Muay Thai itself, which I detail here:

 

On the history and psychology of gambling, I wrote about this here (there you can find the pdf of Gambling, the State and Society in Siam, c. 1880-1945 by James Alastair Warren which is very, very good):

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Wow, just had an amazing conversation with Karuhat, him telling us about a Saturday Boxing show put on by OneSongChai which featured lots of Thai Muay Thai stars, in which he fought twice, losing to Nungubon and to a Muangsurin fighter whose name escapes me. Most amazing is that he said that he had no special boxing training, in terms of kru, just mixing up boxing imitation training in his small Sor. Supawan gym, and Thai principles (he's not a bad boxer even today). He lost both fights, but he also said he WANTED to lose, because if you showed promise you would be drafted onto the Thai National team at the time (he even DID get drafted onto the team, it seems, fighting on am boxing fight on the King's Birthday vs a Cuban who was incredibly fast). Amateur boxing meant lots of hard training, but not a lot of fighting, and the pay was horrible. It was the last thing he wanted. He was a star in Muay Thai, had great kaduas, fought every month, honed his femeu style. Even pro boxing wasn't that lucrative because fighters only kept 30% of the purse (in Muay Thai it was 50%), and usually didn't fight that much. He said in one of his boxing fights he even stuck his head out of the ropes, he wanted so not to do this. 

I asked him who was on the Thai National team the brief time he was there and he said Sittichai, Jongsanan and Coban came to mind. 

I also asked why it was that fighters like him could just kind of develop boxing skills without specific boxing instruction, but Thai fighters today can have all kinds of boxing instruction, even from legends, and not develop the same level of boxing skills. He said "electronics"...all the distractions. The phones, etc. He said that you used to really pay attention, go to fights and emulate fighters, really absorb their powers and ways, imitate them in the gym, steal from everywhere, now Thai fighters are just doing what they are told and going to their phones. There is no attentiveness. 

I asked about Namkabuan (who is in one of these SongChai boxing fights below vs Chatchai), and his "nongki bounce" footwork which seemed unusual for Muay Thai, if that came from boxing. And he said that this is just normal Muay Thai to him. You can see some of that in this clip (really, look to the Muay Thai Library session to see so much more).

 

When asked about where Namkabuan got his boxing (in the video below) he said Nongkipahayuth probably (Karuhat spent time up there because he was friends with Namphon). Maybe some from Muangsurin (a big boxing gym the brothers sometimes trained at), but he really didn't think knowing boxing as Namkabuan did was the result of special training. 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

There is a mode of perception that developing Thais have less of today. Ever notice how your Thai trainer can humorously imitated exactly what you are doing wrong in an exaggerated way? How they can cartoonize the body. This likely comes out of the mode of learning itself back in the day, the way that "ruup" (form) was a mode of education and emulation. Intelligent, affective projection and modeling, in play, was how the art was communicated. With today's attention spans, difference in motivations, and really radically different Gaze Economies in gyms, this channel of development is highly diminished. It's a lost skill of perception. 

The rationalization of the sport, the mechanization and abstraction of the sport certainly doesn't help in this, because the sense of embodied "aura" has been lost. And Westerners enter the sport largely from this other direction, meeting the new gen of Thais in the middle, far from where the sport and art developed and was passed between persons. 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Saw a note on Reddit that Samart beat Netrnoi Sor Vorasingh, a former WBC world champion, in his first boxing match. But then...I looked at what weight Netrnoi Sor Vorasingh fought at.

 

It just shows you have to look beyond headlines.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CuuXPkmp-SK/?igsh=MW1wcW1oZDZtMzgybg%3D%3D

A great little clip of legends Yodkhunpon and Samson clinching back in Roi Et where they were upcoming Isaan fighters. Notably, you see ZERO "pretzel" (the pretzel discussed here at some length: https://www.patreon.com/posts/130545342/ ); also Samson clearly the stronger clinch fighter technically, see how everything is wrists and hands and neck, whereas Yodkhunpon avoids any of those leverages, which Samson sews together somewhat relentlessly. Also, those two nice rips. Yodkhunpon a different sort of clincher, and Sylvie and I joke today that a reason why Yodkhunpon is so anti-clinch in their sparring is that he had to suffer through clinching with Samson on the comeup, a fighter here likely at least a weight class lower. Namkabuan used to talk about how having to train against his Muay Khao brother Namphon really shaped him. 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

What we are witnessing is really a kind of gentrification of Muay Thai. 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

There is a very strange thing happening. Waves of affluent tourism are being sent to what really is a Low Caste art and sport. Many do not realize that Thailand's society is still somewhat an operational, invisible caste system, itself formed from Siam's own, once widespread slavery and indentured servitude. The ironic thing is that some of Muay Thai's most beautiful, meaningful traditions of meaning - the things that lift it from just being a rationalized combat sport, or entertainment violence, and very likely also what made Thailand's nakmuay so incredibly effective as fighters - themselves are woven into and from that invisible caste system. It is quite extraordinary that this lower caste art and sport is becoming gentrified by both hi-so internationism and government tourism ambitions. That the sport itself is being altered so that the affluent can win, and so that traditions (and aspects of invisible caste) will be eroded. I'm not sure anything like this has ever happened before in history, I can't think of an immediate parallel.

 

When (relatively) affluent adventure tourists attempt to partake directly in "traditional" Muay Thai they are crossing many invisible lines in the culture. A (relatively) high status person is trying to enter a low status position, blind to even the nature of "status".