Tags: Bangkok, fighting, kickboxing, Thailand
November 20, 2009 | Sports
Fighters perform the pre fight Buddhist ritual, Wai khru ram muay (Thai: ไหว้ครูรำมวย). Photo by C. Lombardo
One of us has started training Muay Thai— unfortunately not the one who resides in Bangkok, the sport’s epicenter. That being said, with the explosion of MMA in North America, it’s easier to train Muay Thai on these shores than if, say, the other Shark Guy were to introduce the finer points of Slap Shot and the game of hockey to the Thais.
Speaking of emergency dental-work, the one time we were both in Siam, we took in a fight card in Chiang Mai and were amazed by the similarities between Thai kickboxing and the traditional Marquess of Queensbury—which included organized crime, insane betting, heavy presence of prostitutes, Hawaiian shirts and rampant corruption.
Thailand’s rock ‘em sock ‘em national sport is an amazing spectacle to watch, though the tomato can representing Westerners on the day we went — the Farang Nak Muay (foreign fighter) who we took great care to ostentatiously wager against using the basic boxing principle ‘never bet on the white guy’, took a dive worthy of any Olympic-size pool.
We were seated ringside in the VIP section, which might have featured bottle service from either Siegfried or Roy if we were in Las Vegas, but in the Chiang Mai red light district featured a dilapidated sofa seat that looked like something discarded from a frat house on garbage day.
It was, we should say, impossible to turn our eyes away from the action, and not only to make sure at several points during the fight that the various bodily fluids splashing out from the ring didn’t land in our food — though it must be said that while Thailand offers arguably the most diversely flavorful cuisine in the world, ringside is not exactly ground zero for fine dining.
Thereafter, one of us was hooked on the sport and began training to add to an already less than ass-kicking repertoire of 2 hours of Brazilian Ju-jitsu, 4 months of Aikido, one hour of Chute Boxe and several years of sporadic, boxing mediocrity, which culminated in losing several rounds of sparring to someone better trained, and possibly mentally deranged.
In a recent class, a bit of Muay Thai lore was described. The story is no doubt apocryphal, but with our earlier blog on Maxim’ s “The Last Days of David Carradine” we figured it a good time to recount a tale of what might be even more Thailand-based fiction.
THE ART OF EIGHT LIMBS: The Muay Thai Uppercut Elbow’s Odd History
Thai fighter (left) remembers the key pointer: put that flower behind your ear!
A young Muay Thai fighter of yore hoping to earn the affection of his inamorata, presented her with a flower and, like any horndog in any other country would, went in for the kiss. He was greeted by something even less pleasant than the cheek and/or recriminations of how she had told him she just wanted to be friends. As he was leaning in, she was reaching up to place the flower behind her ear and, in a maneuver more unbelievable than anything paunchy, poncho-clad Steven Seagal has brought straight to DVD in the last decade, she knocked out her suitor with the uppercut elbow.
When the fighter came to he added this technique, a combination of delicacy and force, to the Thai kickboxing arsenal. (The teller did not say what happened to the relationship or what an intergender record 0f 0-1 did to the boxer’s fight career).
Christopher Lombardo, Toronto
Christopher Lombardo has written about MMA for the Toronto Star and has interviewed famed boxing trainer Manny Steward among others.
Lmao, just goes to show not to jump to conclusions especially when the woman knows her stuff!
waitin’ on the flower…