Muay Thai (Thai Boxing)
Friday night and it was off to the Thai boxing taking place in a nearby village. Shoichi, one of our friends here, trains at the local Thai boxing school. There were people everywhere when we arrived, it was more of a festival than purely boxing; there were food stalls, singing and, bizarrely ‘Techno Bingo’ - bingo which seemed to be accompanied with very loud techno music, very strange.
“No one trained in any other martial art has been able to defeat a ranking Thai nak mauy (fighter trained in muay thai) and many martial art aficionados consider the Thai style the ultimate in hand-to-hand fighting. On one famous occasion,
The ring was pretty crazy - it was constructed out of oil drums and sheets of wood with household light bulbs suspended above. So every time fighters were on the ropes the whole thing looked like it was going to collapse. The first couple of fights we watched were pretty tame; the first one was a couple of young kids. The second one started better with ram muay (boxing dance) a series of gestures and movements performed in rhythm to the ringside musical accompaniment of Thai oboe (pii), and percussion.
As the night progressed the fighters level increased, with knockouts the order of the night. Shoichi keeps asking if I would like to train, but the full contact sparring kind of puts me off. I’d end up with a broken nose on my first day.