This essays opens up the artistic value of Thailand's Muay Thai, and really all combat sports and martial arts, in the context of the Fine Arts like poetry, painting and music. Is it possible that Thailand's Muay Thai captures something of artistic value we often over look?

 One of the most interesting things that has developed through all our filming and review of the styles of legends of the sport, studying tape of their actual fights, and watching them correct Sylvie in live time, has been a sensitivity toward what I call the Fight Space. It feels like a very productive concept when thinking about fighting styles and energies, an order quite different than what often gets much more attention: techniques. The Fight Space for me is an imaginary bubble which exists between opponents, sometimes roughly equivalent to "the pocket", but not always. It's a kind of psychic space - without getting too woo about it - in that a lot of what fighting is about is body mapping, and the virtual way we project our body into the forward space, in the view of physical and emotional threat. A great deal of time is spent perfecting or regulating strikes (techniques), but sometimes less focus is on the Fight Space itself, and the fighter's relationship to it. read the rest here, watch the video

Samson Isaan is one of the best fighters Thailand ever produced, winning the Fighter of the Year in 1991. Onyx MMA does great edits of the Muay Thai Library, this 4 minute video gives a great sense of his forward fighting. You can see the full Samson Isaan hour sessions here: Session 1, Session 2

This is a 51 minute excerpt from episode 6 of the Muay Thai Bones podcast. We talk about a point where I experienced a sudden growth in clinch vocabulary and how important clinch transitions are.

Gyms change all the time in Thailand, so a gym that might have been great a few years ago might be going through a down time, and new gyms with great energy might open and be on the rise. This my revised list of recommended gyms. If you've had a great experience at one yourself consider sharing your experience on the forum.

 I've known Poda (his play name), now fighting under the name Sirichai Klong Suan Plu Resort, since he was just a little teenager. He was from a small gym in Chiang Mai and he's ethnically Hill Tribe, a minority in Northern Thailand, which makes his success a pretty big deal. He would come to the gym I trained at, Lanna Muay Thai, to clinch with our Thai fighters prior to his fights in Bangkok. He was so disciplined that his trainer, Oley, would just tell him to do x number of knees on the bag and then he'd leave, knowing Poda would do it. I remember my trainer at the time Den, watching him and saying, "I want a gym of my own but I need boys like this. Hard working." At that time, Poda was sold to a gym in Siracha, down below Bangkok, and he changed his fight name to Tanadet Tor. Pran49...read the whole story here

Dokmaibaa Kietpomphet, one of the best, experienced female fighters in Thailand, a strong southpaw who can fight from distance but has a wicked and aggressive elbow game, has moved to Pattaya and joined team Fairtex. She's one of our favorite Thai female fighters & under Fairtex style training which favors more aggression, could become the best female MT fighter in the world. She won her first fight under Fairtex on Channel 8 just recently.

" While some coverage of the Sanaejan vs Buakaw fight expressed the idea that it was the first time women had fought "at" Lumpinee stadium, it unfortunately due to COVID restrictions at the time did not occur "in" the stadium, and even more importantly IN the ring of Lumpinee... case, when female fighters actually ENTER the ring, this is the historic moment. This moment confronts the very well-defined and belief bound line that separated the genders. This fight, between Celest Hansen (AUS) vs Nongnook R. R. Gila Khorat (THAI), is the anticipation of that crossing. Read the rest on this event here

We re-created Karuhat's pink 1993 Lamnamoon shorts a while ago and everyone loved them. We've now made them in black and yellow-gold. Read about these shorts and shop them here. 100% of the earned profits go to support Karuhat. You can see video of them for details here.

This gym made 3 FOTY fighters in legends Dieselinoi, Chamuakphet and Panomtuanlek, but it was not an easy life. read more here

I'm doing new commentaries to my 2017 fight videos, which never got commentary when they were published. Kevin writes about the last two fights I've voiced, including the 118 lb Northern Champion Sudsiam and the 112 lb WPMF World Champion Thanonchanok.

For those that follow the Muay Thai Library you'll know that the fighter Tanadet is a master of the Long Clinch, you can see his session here. Fighting in the Bangkok stadia he had big wars with Satanmuanglek. He retired from fighting more than 3 years ago, but has come back as Sirichai under Kru Diesel. We actually have known him since he was a kid, and filmed this great rounds of him at a festival fight. Cool

In our Newsletter we like to recommend things that might not directly seem to be about Muay Thai, but to use they are. This series first episode is about the transformation of food in a tech/modern society, which has interesting parallels with how the art of Muay Thai is facing modernizing pressures. Traditions seek to be preserved in a consumerist world. And like how COVID has threatened the future of Thailand's grassroots Muay Thai, this series as it unfolds discusses how the restaurant business model has been threatened by the pandemic. My follow up thoughts on food & traditional fight appreciation.