What follows is a historical discussion of why Western female fighters have turned to Muay Khao and clinch fighting in Thailand, and how it reflects the nature of Golden Age Muay Khao, with some discussion of the changes brought by Entertainment Muay Thai. This comes from our experience, Sylvie being the most prolific female Muay Khao fighter in history coming upon 300 fights in the country – Kevin writing, edited by Sylvie
The story of contemporary Muay Thai history, along with its Entertainment, Soft Power off-shoot, is given light when we look to how Western Muay Thai fighters – and in particular female Western Muay Thai fighters – have turned to the Muay Khao style (knee fighting, and clinch) to have fighting success in the country. One of the benefits of looking at female Muay Thai fighting when discussion general principles is that, because the fighting pool is diminished, and much less emphasized historically within the country, you can see broader strokes of themes and lines of development over time, giving insight into the nature of Muay Thai as an art and a sport practice. The bones of it show through.
As Western female fighting rose up in popularity and opportunity in Thailand, in the 2010s or so, Western female fighters encountered a fundamental problem when facing Thai female fighters. Raised in the sport as they were, often since a young age, and given that Thai culture itself is expressed in the aesthetics of the art and sport, Thai female fighters were significantly – and even dramatically – better in space than Western fighters. They were faster, had better eyes and reflexes, and the emphasized Thai style of retreat and counter, especially with high-scoring kicks, made Thai opponents fundamentally difficult to defeat. These difficulties were surmounted at times through size and weight advantages given to Westerners, and there were some significant skill on skill clashes (such as the youthful Sawsing vs Iman Barlow fight), but there remained across the country a kind of force-field barrier, which kept Western female fighters at distinct disadvantage. Male Westerners for decades had tried to more or less punch their way across this force-field of advantage, Ramon Dekkers being the most memorable and influential; they too aided most often by big size advantages, and there were mixed results, yet Thais again and again proved just better in space, with better eyes, better timing, superior as fighters. The retreat and counter style coupled with the scoring bias, which rewarded defense and spatial superiority was very difficult to overcome, even with size given.
In Western female Muay Thai in the country this force-field of the fight space, in theme, came to be overcome by the adoption of the Muay Khao style. Instead of trying to combo their way across the fight space like the men, more and more women turned to the Muay Khao kneeing and clinch style as the answer to this problem. None have been more prolific, if not more successful in this than Sylvie (who has fought nearly 300 times in the country, and regularly faced skilled opponents with significant weight advantages – over 100 fights vs stadium champions or internationally ranked Thai fighters) but this fight-space crossing approach already was in place before she arrived in the country. Pioneering fighters like Teressa Wintermyr, Chantal Ughi, Sylvie Charbonneau all had significant success crossing the fight space in the Muay Khao, clinch-oriented fashion, before Sylvie had prolifically risen up.
*regarding the “fight-space” here a graphic I made of the 3 Zones of Traditional Muay Thai fighting, for a brief discussion on Reddit, which you can find here
**if you would like a VERY abstract and theoretical take on Muay Khao, probability and the fight-space: The Free Energy Principle and Styles of Muay Thai Fighting: How Muay Khao Shrinks Surprisal and Controls the Fight Space
The benefits of fighting as a Muay Khao fighter were many. For one, you were fighting well within the tradition, as the Muay Femeu vs Muay Khao fighter had become classic by the Golden Age. This meant that what you were doing in the ring was very recognizable to Thais, and judged accordingly. There were clean aesthetic lines on how to win as a Muay Khao fighter, and one could follow these, in your own development. Sylvie in her documentation of the sport actually has done a tremendous amount to make these stylistic and judging aspects clearer, even in the great variety of their detail – over the last 10 years – but even from the start, attempting to beat a Muay Femeu fighter through advancing knee fighting was very recognizable to the Thais themselves.
Further, some natural advantages came to Western women adopting the Muay Khao style. The first is that if you had size on your opponent the style easily emphasized that advantage. The second is that the style is classically built on physical conditioning, so things that Westerners were very attracted to, training in a grueling style (coming to Thailand with a bootcamp romance) only enhanced your effectiveness. Many Thai female fighters are also students in school, from youth to University, so hours of training can be constricted when compared to fully devoted Westerners crossing the planet to only train in the imitation of legends and arduous aura of the sport. Additionally, Muay Femeu fighters, both men and women, can gravitate to a much more at ease presentation and the higher levels of conditioning are not always chased (famed Muay Femeus of the past will talk of their avoidance of the hardest of conditioning, because the whole style is principled on controlling the fight with Ning – ease). This meant that the goal of the Muay Khao fighter, to cross the fight space and to break the illusion of control by the countering fighter met well with both physical size and conditioning, two things Westerners were given to.
And, most importantly, under a Muay Khao approach the fight was not going to occur “in space”, where Thais have all the advantages. They, in this sense, were just better fighters.
There were other advantages awarded to female Western Muay Khao fighters. They could focus on clinch training, which in Thai female fighters is oftentimes underdeveloped. If Western women could successfully cross the fight-space they’d find purchase on the other side. Gendered divisions in Thai culture often would deprive Thai female fighters of elite clinch skills simply because the constant physical contact with young Thais, required for developing those skills, held (and still holds) gendered prohibition, unless they were raised and trained within family, like for instance Phetjee Jaa and Loma. Jee Jaa and Loma were two of the very best Thai female fighters in history in part due to their mastery of clinch which they combined with Thai fight-space superiority. (Note, there have been also successful Champion Thai female “knee fighters”, often tall, who have fought with prominent knee attacks, but with less complex clinch position-taking skills, fighters like Nongbiew and Somrasamee come to mind.)
Western female fighters also faced significant cultural challenges in the gender-divided training space. (Sylvie in her first few years at Lanna was not even allowed to train in the clinch ring, something no male Westerner training there was really even aware of.) Even for Western female fighters it could be difficult to get male fighters to clinch with, and training could become fraught, but because they were foreigners they were not constrained by custom as much as their Thai counterparts. Western male fighters would have no problem finding clinch training, but their clinch skills proved no advantage in the fight ring. Male Thai opponents were flat out superior in the clinch. Westerners would lose in the clinch among men, often dramatically. Among Western women on the other hand, if you were very persistent in finding and committing to the proper training – aided by being a more progressive Thai training space as Muay Thai tourism expanded – Western women could win fights in the clinch, especially as many Thai female fighters were more drawn to the retreating counter style…as perhaps more feminine. (It should be said, speaking of the gender coding of fight styles in Thailand, among female fighters, that there were and are also a group of Thai female fighters who identify as “Tom” – only roughly parallel perhaps to Western “butch” – and these fighters moved towards more a masculine, aggressive aesthetic, some of them the best of Thailand, Thanonchanok and Lomannee come to mind.) In any case, there was in Muay Khao a solution for Western Muay Thai female fighters, for the problem of Thai superiority in the fight space, a solution that was both within the tradition of the sport, and open to Western strengths.
Significantly, the very Muay Khao vs Muay Femeu Golden Age dyad was itself shot through with lots of ideological/cultural significance, well before Western fighters came on the scene. The Femeu fighter was widely regarded as of the Capital, where the “art” and technique of the sport was presumed to be taught – you’ll hear many fighters of the Golden Age say that they didn’t even really know how to fight until they got to Bangkok – this, despite the country-side being full of art and technical knowledge, dispersed through countless small and medium sized gyms. The Muay Khao fighter, on the other hand, was coded as unartful, only “strong” (Power!), come out of the natural, unevolved strength of the rural and provincial seeds of Muay Thai. There was a countryside strength sigma that Muay Khao carried, a cultural taint, that Muay Khao fighters were often at pains to distance themselves from, claiming femeu qualities for themselves…the art…not the “dumb” country fighter who just knees (or punches). This cultural picture – and it is just a picture, because the reality of excellence really didn’t break that way – actually placed the 21st century Western female Muay Khao fighter, as foreigner, in the same part of the outsider map, as the provincial Thai Muay Khao fighter. They graft, loosely, onto each other, each solving the problem of Muay Femeu fight supremacy.
This is very important – the aesthetics and therefore the scoring of the art and sport of Muay Thai favored the Femeu fighter, it did in the Golden Age, and it did for the generation of female fighters the 2010s-2020s (pre-Covid). This is the most beautiful thing. The retreating, countering, and indeed superior fighter held the Gold Standard in scoring, and if a Westerner was going to take up the Muay Khao gauntlet, they inherited that traditional scoring burden. They had to do more. They didn’t have to just prove more impactful, they had to overcome the opponent’s illusion of defense and fight-space superiority, in order to win fights.
During Sylvie’s most prolific time of fighting (she was fighting 30+ times a year for a long stretch) many women had taken up the Muay Khao solution to the fight space problem in Thailand. Maggie, Angela for a time, pre-Fairtex Celeste, Smilla (early, and some late), Calista, originally Marie, Barbara (now), and many others made getting to the clinch a significant part of their advantage, taking up that solution of the problem of the fight-space. Just don’t fight where the opponent is superior.
And then Entertainment Muay Thai happened. Entertainment Muay Thai, which is principled on trying to produce Western winners (for various reasons, many of them related to Soft Power and tourism), changed the rules. Now, there are numerous versions of Entertainment Muay Thai, so these observations are broadbrush, but the problem of the Thai superiority in the fight-space was addressed at the level of rules, and not within the art and sport itself.
I recall when MAX Muay Thai, a pioneer in Entertainment Muay Thai in Thailand, in its first months at its new stadium in Pattaya, placed in the written rules – in Thai, meant only for Thai eyes – “if you back up you will lose”. We were living in Pattaya at the time, and watched first hand as Thais who usually fought on the local shows struggled to adjust. This at the time was nearly incomprehensible to Thais…because in traditional Muay Thai, if we can loosely call it that, when you were ahead you would most often back up, to both signal your lead, and to defend your lead, showing superior defense and expert counter-fighting. (This is one reason why even very aggressive Thai fighters still held very high level defensive skills, they grew up learning how to defend their leads, and that required eyes, reflexes and positional prowess, difficult things to develop. This also is what made Thai female fighters so difficult to fight, because they were elite at this.) In one fell swoop the entire fight-space problem for Westerners was solved for them. Instead, Thais were forced to do the very opposite of what they learned to do when they had leads, they were forced to come forward…and as the Entertainment style developed over time, to abandon any pretense of defense, and to just trade, seeking knockouts. It’s hard to describe just how Opposite World this is to someone like us, who really spent 10+ years trying to solve the fight-space problem from within the tools and aesthetics of the sport. Instead, it felt like Thais were forced to abandon their sport, and their superiority in the fight space, and just trade with larger, often physically stronger Westerners, the sport turning more towards a roulette, where the Western squares were all weighted, often literally. It feels very strange, given how complex the puzzle of the fight-space and Thai superiority is and has been. As Sylvie is fond of saying, in traditional Muay Thai there are a 100 ways to lose…and each way of losing teaches you something important.
Sylvie herself had found a vein in the tradition which was incredibly lush. Drawn to the great Muay Khao fighters of Thai history, Dieselnoi, Chamuakphet, Panomtuanlek (The Three Kings of Muay Khao), Lamnammoon, Langsuan, Samson, she studied – and filmed and documented – their styles, and discovered that though they were anchored in physical toughness, they were filled with complexity and nuance, a “lessor” or “minor” art of itself, that ran like a ribbon throughout the Golden Age of the sport. They were solving the very same problems she was trying to solve through her hundreds of fights, the problem of the fight-space, that little territory where both fighters are in reach, and of femeu superiority…that you could not easily fight in that space and win against the quickness, positioning and counter striking of the femeu fighter. And, she has done this almost always as the dramatically smaller fighter, usually giving up two weight classes (really putting to the test the efficacy of the Muay Khao solution). It seems very odd, indeed almost sacrilegious, to actually solve the fight-space problem, the problem of Thai superiority, by changing the rules and reversing the scoring bias in favor of Western fighters and its cultural attraction to aggression in fighting. It seems wrong to make the culture and its sport to bend to you, to throw off the scoring burden and turn it instead into a scoring advantage.
And, what’s more, the very home of Thai superiority, all those skills accumulated through the Muay Femeu style, its great, legendary fighters and their heritage, the very thing developed out of a fighting sport principled on defensive prowess, positioning, counter fighting and ease of movement, achieved though that bias, feels suddenly very at risk. In changing the rules to suit Western fighters and confer new advantages, for the sake of tourism and Soft Power, threatens to erase – or allow to erode – the gifts of Karuhat, Samart, Silapathai, Hippy, Oley and endless others, the very things that make up the “magical fighter” aura of Muay Thai. It is to instead homogenize Muay Thai with the rest of the world. It is to deny the puzzle of the fight-space, the puzzle of Thai superiority.
The Other Dimension: Narrative
the below link continues in a more fine-grained way for patron supporters, discussing the Narrative Advantage in Muay Khao fight style, as Sylvie learned to deploy it, and some of how Muay Khao and Western Boxing can compliment each other. Thank you for supporting all this content!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/146284068
