This fight was frustrating. I’d just lost in a similar way to my previous opponent, with her backing up and me unable to close the distance for my strikes to land. The similarity between my previous opponent and this one demonstrated to me that this style of defense, backing up and attacking with either long kicks, teeps or the clinch is how a lot of Thai women will fight me.
What’s interesting about this fight (and the third fight I had in Thailand in 2010) is that it looks different to Thais and westerners. In the west I might have won this fight, but in Thai scoring her straight knees (while not strong) were scoring high, while my aggression was not awarded because it wasn’t decisive.
Brooks Miller, a former student of Master K, was kind enough to score this fight for me so I could get a better grasp of Thai scoring here. See his analysis. My trainers in my corner seemed to feel that if I had pushed harder in the 5th I would have won this fight. A big thing I learned in this fight aside from wanting to push hard in the early rounds to take advantage of my cardio advantage was that I really have to learn to close distance which involves stepping hard and deep, something I have been working on since.
Whole fight:
