Documenting my journey as a female Muay Thai fighter in Thailand, sharing techniques, culture and personal perspective - over 250 fights fought

I certainly don’t expect that there are many sports, arts, or even personal relationships that are entirely open to a student splitting themselves between two places.  To the most obvious point, the relationship between teacher and student, master and apprentice is an A-B conversation, so to speak.  In the most ideal situations, a student learns a style or system from their teacher and employs it, giving the student the pride of carrying on the system and the teacher the pride of passing it on, as well as “bringing up”...

June 13, 2014 – Thepprasit Stadium, Pattaya Back in the Saddle My last fight in Chiang Mai was unfortunately my 79th and I missed the chance to have one more before moving down to Pattaya on June 1st.  I received six stitches in my forehead from an elbow cut and that prevented me from fighting again right away and then a military coup and subsequent curfew made fights difficult to schedule.  All this is to say that my last fight was quite some time ago and I was eager...

We drove down to Pattaya from Chiang Mai with my trainer Daeng and a large portion of his family.  We’d initially asked Daeng to drive us in his truck (and we’d pay him, obviously; it’s a long drive) so that we could move our motorbike down to Pattaya with us.  He said it was too far for him but nominated his brother-in-law.  This was a small bummer because part of our initiative for asking Daeng in the first...

Having learned from our experiences from our first trip down to Pattaya three months ago, Kevin and I decided that we’d have our main focus for training at Petchrungruang Gym and supplement that with the invaluable lessons from working with Sakmongkol.  Incidentally, the distribution of hours between the gyms is actually the same as it was the first time around, although we’ve discontinued the private sessions with Mong that we’d attempted our first trip down.  Mostly...

A couple people have asked me to describe what the warmup process before a fight is and what I do and don’t like about it.  I was asked about my experience, so that’s what this is.  I’ll start by saying that the warmup in Thailand is almost not even a warmup.  The oil massage is with a mentholated liniment that is thermogenic, so the body temperature rises and the muscles warm without moving around very much.  So the oil massage kind of is the warmup for most Thais, although...

The responses to my latest article The Fragility of Western Masculinity has been very interesting and somewhat unexpected. It has been, already, my most widely read article, and surprisingly has been embraced by a lot of men, a group that I’d anticipated would take offense. There have been the usual “shut up! you don’t know what your talking about!” comments with more or less expletives to add flavor, but they’ve been largely drowned out by sincere male fighters who recognize something in both kinds of masculinity examined in the...

Here is a video from tonight at the Kalare Night Market, just after picking up some custom shorts I had made for PhetJee Jaa as a gift (sorry a little problem with the mic for a few seconds), who I hope to see in just a little over a week. I had heard from her mom that she is a touch obsessed with camo wear so I thought it would be cool to give her some shorts to train in, in camo, with her name in Thai and English,...

May 18th, 2014 – Thapae Stadium, Chiang Mai – I actually set this fight up on my own, which is a first and hopefully unusual – if not last – for me.  Since Den has gone to Scotland it has proved difficult to get a fight scheduled because he’s the manager with all the contacts and even though Daeng can contact all the same people he’s not accustomed to, or perhaps interested in, doing so.  Daeng did set me up a fight but it wasn’t until the 30th, which...

Some of the questions raised by this article were followed up here: Do Women have a Commitment Advantage in Muay Thai This post also lead to me writing about the Myth of Overtraining and how Endurance is a Skill. There’s a type of dude who frequently appears in the gym in Thailand, looking to fight in Muay Thai.  Usually these guys already have a few fights under their belts and are in close-to-fighting-shape.  I specify that they’re “close to” fighting shape because these guys rarely identify themselves as being...

This is just a short post to direct your attention to a great article that includes a great little interview with Sakmongkol, and an even better highlighting of his wonderful career. I really look forward to spending a year learning under him. He already expanded my fight and training awareness a great deal in two months. There isn’t a lot written about his career on the Internet, so definitely check this out. Read the Siamfightmag.com article here. There are tons of photos from his storied past against both Thai...

In the photo above are all cousins, at the center is Bam (6-7 years old, Den’s nephew); left is Den’s son Dtong (3 years old) and right is Badt (8-9 years old, Den’s nephew). As I strode into the gym this morning there was nothing unusual going on.  It was largely empty, the trainers kind of milling around before any of the westerners were ready for padwork and the main thing of note being that the number of little gromit kids running around was about half of what it’s...

May 5, 2014 – Thapae Stadium, Chiang Mai – I had to wait for one stitch to come out of my head from my fight before this, so there were about two weeks between them.  I showed up at the venue with no idea who I would be fighting and upon looking at the program I still didn’t recognize the name.  I looked around at the other fighters and couldn’t see anyone who would be reasonable.  I didn’t feel that it mattered.  I was a bit nervous because it...

Leaving Lanna We’ve made the decision to leave Lanna and Chiang Mai in order to head back down to Pattaya, to train again at WKO with Sakmongkol and at Petchrungruang Gym; we’re moving.  I announced it on YouTube and Facebook a few days ago, but this post is about the decision, what means to me. Actually making this decision has a kind of heart-stopping effect of causing me to feel panicked because change can be difficult, but it’s also freeing.  Any kind of big move does cause one to...

above video: my thoughts on just coming out from the 2 hrs of tattooing my sak yant. As one can see, I was significantly affected by the experience, but was in good spirits. It is a lot to digest. What This Sak Yant Meant to Me People may not realize it from the fact that I post online and blog, and even sometimes write about very personal things, but I’m an extremely private person....

Thapae Stadium, Chiang Mai – April 21, 2014 This was my first fight back at Thapae Stadium in many months.  I’d asked Den for a fight here and it took a while to actually get one booked, although not really because of any difficulty in scheduling a fight for me, just the promoter at Loi Khro being who Den generally works with and that promoter continually wanting me for his shows. It felt really nice to be at Thapae.  It’s a cool venue and I like it.  Where we...

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but this recent article on Ronda Rousey’s exceptionally crass criticisms and shit-talking of Cris “Cyborg” Justino paints a perfect picture for why shit-talking among female fighters has more pitfalls than for male fighters. Rousey has openly criticized Cyborg for her failing a drug test and the subsequent one year suspension from competition.  There has been mud slung in both directions, to be sure, but Rousey’s most recent attack is out of line and attacks Cyborg on the basis of “femininity,” or...

 Daeng – My Trainer at Lanna Daeng is one of my trainers at Lanna Muay Thai.  He doesn’t work with me regularly,  although every time we do work together I am very happy to learn something new from him.  He’s by far the most fight-oriented trainer at the camp and he has on a few occasions introduced specific, technical elements into my training with the intention of tactically entering a fight.  Blocking kicks, for example, or how I execute knees in the clinch. Daeng is the father of one...

April 17, 2014 – Loi Khro Stadium, Chiang Mai – 5 x 2.5 minute rounds Just after my last fight Den let me know that Nong Ploy wanted a rematch with me and asked if I could fight on the 17th.  That would give me exactly one week.  Seemed reasonable.  Although I did have to laugh.  I highly doubted that she personally wanted a rematch with me, since fighters don’t tend to have much say in who they fight and our first two fights together were neither the kind...

Update on the Documentary Project please help pass word of this project around Niramon Ross finished her exploratory shooting of PhetJee Jaa and her family in Pattaya, and even traveled with them to Siracha for her first fight against a boy since the official ban of such fights. From what I understand the fight was labeled an “exhibition” to circumvent the ban. I haven’t heard exactly what that entails, but I suspect it was a full fledged fight in every way. PhetJee Jaa won against what seemed a larger...

subscribe to our PhetJee Jaa Documentary Newsletter – get the latest on this project I’ve been thinking for some time now that a documentary about PhetJee Jaa seems like a very worthy project. For those that don’t know already, Phetjee Jaa is my favorite Muay Thai fighter; she happens to be 12 years old and absolutely amazing.  I loved watching her fight on Thai TV when she would be featured on an Aswindum Stadium card on some Sundays and following her...

Just recently the Muay Thai Classic in the US announced a change to their annual Muay Thai tournament in that competitors will weigh in twice, once before commencing the first round of the eliminations and then again prior to the finals.  This decision came from the Thai Boxing Association – Sanctioning Authority and the association cited fighters’ safety and competition fairness as their main incentives for the change: To confirm: YES, we are having two weigh ins this year. All fighters who will compete in the Championship bouts on...