In Praise of the Muay Thai Gambler

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

 

above is my photo essay on the Muay Thai Gambler, meant as a commentary on some of the gentrifying, tourism-oriented transformations that Thailand's traditional Muay Thai has been undergoing, particularly since COVID put such a dent in its tourism economy. As various Entertainment versions of the sport have adjusted the rules to favor foreign tastes - and to produce Western winners - one of the more substantive but also hidden aspects of these changes is the marginalization, if not outright removal of the Muay Thai gambler. As I've discussed elsewhere, the Muay Thai gambler arguably has been a core engine of developing traditional Muay Thai's complex and varied fighting style, and as the in-person (and this is important, because online gambling has a very different impact on the aesthetics of the sport) is sidelined if not banished in the sport, it risks shaping itself in a quite deskilling way, more and more meant for unknowledgable, uninvested consumption. To take an example from American sports. Can you imagine if 1950s baseball was redesigned not to appeal to baseball's fanatic fanbase, and instead was meant for the Japanese or Chinese tour groups? Fans, especially in-person fans, collectively shape what a sport is. How it is trained and how it is fought/performed. In sidelining the in-person gambler - this goes from ruling them out by law, to putting them in one location, in darkness, and turning the sport's face toward the unknowledgeable and uninvested, the very anchor of the sport is at risk of being lost. 

In the theater of the sport, at the ring, the fighter - and the fight - is constantly emitting signs. The signs of their training, the etched hours and years at the bag, on the pads, which customarily reflect the style of the gym, its status and honor, and the individual style of the fighter as it has developed, in the language of the Muay of its time. They are radiating off of the fighter - and the fight; and, the gambler is receiving them, interpreting them, detecting them like the detective in a show, uncovering their rapidly evolving mystery, and himself then emits signs to other gamblers, in a social field of communication which makes up the state-of-the-fight, changing the "price" as it goes. This film short concentrates on the intermediate relay, how the signs of the fight, emitted, enter the gambler's body, causing the body itself to start emitting signs, as unconscious signals. Signals that we all can humanly read. It is this human layer, through which every fight pours, upon which its radiated signals land and reflect, which invigorates, stimulates and steers the fight and the sport itself. These photos, and the film, cut a very thin slice from that living fire.

I'm here to present the OTHER side of the story, as complaints about gambling in Muay Thai - by both Thais, and in echo by Westerners - with strong associations with corruption and undue power, are quite common online. These are definite problems, and political pictures of corruption are very important in Thai history, going all the way back to the 1920s when King Vajiravuhd first outlawed gambling in Bangkok, only to eventually rescind it with an exception for Muay Thai because of how damaging it's removal was to the sport. Yes, the shrunken gambling pool has given rise to very powerful gambling whales that have outsized control over fight decision outcomes, which exacerbate the small kaimuay crisis of the sport (small gyms cannot "win" dependably in Bangkok, and eventually have to surrender all their home-grown talent to mega gyms). This is only to argue that some of these trends against the in-person gambler, some of the gentrification of a sport which at root is very working class, provincial and agrarian, some of the tourism reformation, risks undercutting the very substance of who is watching the sport itself. This is what is at risk when a sport and art is made primarily for export. When you watch in-person gamblers in the provinces, ringside, you are looking at the very weave of fighting itself, as it is reflected across their impassioned and knowledgeable investment. To sever this connection, especially in the name of globalization, is to radically change the sport itself. 

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

This is the related article theorizing how how local Muay Thai gambling created a complex ecosystem laboratory of fighting skills:

 

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

A discussion of the form of the photographic (film) essay, and how it answers some of the problems facing Muay Thai photography today: