Above is two minutes of work with Sylvie and Chatchai this week. He’s teaching her his tiny inner gallop step which triggers on-beat much of his boxing strikes. He is explaining that this tiny step is the same as in Muay Thai, especially when throwing lead side weapons. Chatchai is a world class Boxing Kru but he was also a Golden Age Muay Thai fighter, and he sees Western boxing and Muay Thai not in conflict, but rather as built out of comparable rhythms. What is interesting about this is how that small gallop is in the same beat as say the gallop step Yodkhupon shows (just below), in his Muay Khao stalking. It’s the iambic pentameter, one might say, on a much smaller scale, close space scale.
Once we get below the level of strikes – strikes being a primary preoccupation of Western appropriations and inclusions of Muay Thai “techniques” – we get into a much more important dimension of fighting. Fighting in many ways a battle over space, fighting the fight where you are more comfortable and where your opponent is not (a primary reason why Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao battles are classic), but the battle over space is conducted often through the battle of rhythms. Each fighter is attempting to (somewhat musically) impose their rhythm on the fight, and disrupt the rhythm of the opponent. This is especially important if each fighter has a different rhythm, it becomes a musical duel, but even with similar rhythms you still are trying to get inside the opponent’s “beat”. This is part of the meaning behind the Muay Thai sway or rock, that has become iconic. It’s the beginning of a rhythmic battle, in which a baseline is laid for variance to ensue.
But, what is beautiful about the top video, at least in my mind, is how that it secretly connects up to Yodkhupon’s space-eating gallop, which allows you to quickly cross over distance and suddenly and suffocatingly be on your opponent. What Chatchai’s inner gallop does is allow the gallop to become at any time a trigger for a strike, out of the same rhythm, once you get into the phone booth of the pocket. You don’t change rhythms, you just condense it.
Seven years ago Sylvie put together this video on the Yodkhupon gallop, and how it relates to the Muay Thai sway. You can even see in it her showing Chatchai’s weight transfer rhythm (which he had taught her). But, she had not yet learned Chatchai’s inner gallop step, nor seen how Chatchai’s rhythm could connect up with Yodkhunpon’s gallop…and Yodkhunpon’s gallop had not yet been connected up with Chatchais’s full Boxing vocabulary arsenal.
You can see more on the rhythms of Chatchai Sasakul’s boxing in this film study of Boxing and Takrowlek’s Muay Bouk Style.
You can discuss this topic here in its original Forum Post.
