Muay Thai Stuff’s Blog

We had many of posts and discussions about Muay Thai fighters, promoters, organisers, coaches, etc. But I forget to mention to those who are also very important in Muay Thai competition, the referee. Who can be a referee? Why they want to be a referee? Is there any specific requirements to become a Muay thai referee? Do need to have previous of being Muay Thai fighters in order to be a good referee? Is referee get good pay for their job? There are so many questions ask about Muay Thai referee and in fact, they all are very interesting to find out. I personally may not have a chance to make a close interview and shooting such a massive questions, but when I had the opportunity to talk with my high school teacher, who also doing a part time job as a Muay Thai referee for weekly fight in the Lumphini stadium, he told me some good things and experience about being Muay Thai referee, the know ledge I got from him may not answer all of the questions above, but I believe that they may be useful for some of you.

There are two types of Muay Thai referee, the one who on the stage and ones who scoring fighters and usually sit near the ring side. My teacher was the referee on the stage so I think it is good to share some knowledge that I got from him in this post.

A person who wants to become a referee is not necessary to do the job as a full time job, anyone can do the job if you have time. My teacher told me that the most important ability that referee must have is the ability to oversee all aspect of the fight and also how to give the right first aid procedure for different injury situation.

As mentioned earlier in the previous article that it is really interesting for Thai fighters who finished their career a professional fighters and they seem not even have better live as when they are fighter, so it is interesting to discover why this happen and here are other job that they do after the retirement.

Business Jobs
This is very common type of career that many of fighters do when they retired. Even though it is really rare to see those who are very success but generally they spend some money on small family business. I can see the very interesting example of this case a bout one fighter who received more than 100,000 Baht per fight ($3,300) and he fought as closely as 100 fights throughout his Muay Thai life but he eventually just have a little money left when he was retired and had small business with his family.

Other jobs in Muay Thai
There are also some fighters who still involve in Muay Thai industry after retirement apart from being a coach such as announcer, commentator, second, referee and so on. But these kind of job still very low pay and they just have to struggle to make money for this.

The story behind this is what I have been told is that Muay Thai professional in Thailand is, in fact, about to make money for camps/promoters not fighters. There are more than 50 percent of the money that camps and promoter take out from the money that fighter received for his fight. Sometimes, the money left for him was as too little as lower than 40 per cent. However, this may not apply to a whole case, there are some camps who pay more to its fighters.

This may not a very important issue for you who do not intend to be trained as a professional fighters. But for Professional Thai fighters, who fight almost entire of their live and what interesting to me is what do they do when they become a retired fighters. What interest me the most is what happening here in Thailand is that no matter how much money they earned during the time he was a fighter, but when he retired, I could not see anyone who have become rich or happy with the money that they earned. I personally do not know the reason why they have come like this so this what I mean it is really interesting to me. Now let’s see what usually happen to them after the retirement.

Dead, Disable
This is sad but true. Muay Thai gave them a lot of money when they fight, the more reputable they are, the more money they gain. But the fact is that more fights they have, the more usage and destruction of the body they will get. Many of famous Muay Thai fighter just died or disable by the disease that due to the severe of the body, especially the brain, what found in most case is brain cancer.

Coach
I personally do not know many of fighters who finally turned to coach when they retired. It is also really surprise to me because I should see very good fighters are also capable to be a good coach too. However, in fact, there are still some of them who work for many Muay Thai gym, but only being coach, not the gym owner.

Many of you may already know that there are some more variations of Muay Thai but the most common that we know are Muay Chaiya, Muay Boran. Basically, No matter what kind of variations are, I believe that the “root” of Muay Thai still be the same. The variations of Muay Thai (such as those two examples) were invented, only in my opinion, because the different of culture and region where they live. However, Muay Boran may be different from other, because many people think that they can go to the real original of Muay Thai if they practice Muay Boran. I could tell that it is still possible to learn other type of Muay but they are not compulsory. But these two variations will give you more ideas about how to apply the art of self defense to use in the real situation, not for the fight for competition. So there are two different purpose, for the one who want to develop martial art skills, learning other types of Muay may be a lot of help but for competition fight, these should not be a compulsory, but any one still be able to learn if they want to.

Unfortunately, these variations, even though in Thailand, almost never exist, since the new era of “business” Muay Thai have arrived and we can see the real art of defense in the performance show. Apart from the camps that provide comprehensive lessons, there is very least chance too see these invaluable ancient Thai martial arts. However, there are some of real masters who live overseas and open for training Muay Boran and Muay Chaiya.

Story Told by Kru Brooks Miller

All I can say is “WOW!” The new facility is great!
I did not have the chance to volunteer during the build and move as it was the holiday season and my wife and I were entertaining family that was visiting from out of town, so I had no idea what to expect when I pulled up out front for the very first time. I remembered what the original plans had been when we first began planning this relocation, but I also remember that these plans had fallen through.

When I first arrived and saw the front of the gym, all I could think was, “Wow… this is small.” After parking and walking in the front door, I was immediately impressed with the lobby. It was very nicely laid out… ‘simple elegance’ comes to mind. The training area looked to be a decent size, but considering the amount of mat space the gym originally had at our previous location, I was a bit dubious whether or not this would be suitable to our needs.

Then I noticed the doorway, which opened into another set of rooms, each with matted floor space and training equipment! At present, there are two large matted training rooms, and a third room for weights and exercise equipment. There are also bathrooms, a storage area, and an office.

Even better, the gym is expected to expand into the location that is currently next door at the beginning of this next month. The shop located right next door will be vacating soon, and we are expected to take over that area as well. That means we will have room for a boxing ring, a partial MMA cage, and a variety of hanging training bags, such as heavy bags and speed bags! I am especially anxious to expand into this new training area as many of the classes and skills that I hope to teach will be best suited to the way this room will be equipped.

It’s great to have a home for the gym again!

Story told by, Kru Brooks Miller

I enjoy coaching, but as with any job, you go through ‘down’ periods. Over the course of late November and the entire month of December, my training classes had increasingly become deserted. For example, during the entire month of December, I believe I only actually coached 1 or 2 times in total. I would arrive to coach the fight team, but no one showed up to train. To tell the truth, it was a bit depressing. I was actually thinking about cancelling my classes.

Fortunately, now that we’ve relocated to the new gym, my classes are beginning to pick up again. While I’m not enjoying the same attendance I did this last Spring, where my class typically had up to 20 students, I am no longer left twiddling my thumbs during my training session.

Originally, my Friday night training sessions were “Fight Team Training & Sparring”. However, I quickly found that many of those who attended my class were recently ‘promoted’ in rank and allowed to participate in sparring classes. So while they had proven that they had mastered their basic skills, they had little to no understanding of how to fit it all together and fight with it. Rather than throw these Fight Team novices to the wolves, I quickly altered my approach. My class rarely allows MuayThai “free sparring”. Instead, my class focuses on strategy and contact drills designed to build the skills for use in the ring. When they do spar, it is with limited tools. They may be allowed to only Box or only Kick. Sometimes they are to fight only from the clinch.

Last night, one of the students was participating in my class for the first time. We only had 3 students attend class, so I stepped in as his training partner for the drills. Our focus was the Push Kick, or Teep. As I pointed out to the class, the Teep is really one of MuayThai’s underappreciated techniques in International competition. It is rare that you see anyone outside of Thailand use this tool effectively. Hence, it is one of the areas that I focus on when I coach.

At first, our new member wasn’t getting it. His push kicks were mis-timed, and mis-aimed. I noticed that he was using MuayThai’s “boxing” stance, as taught by Matee Jedeepitak, who has taught seminars at our gym in the past. I had him try a different variation of the stance, with his weight to the rear, and advised him of how to alter the delivery of his kick. We then practiced a number of different ways to use the technique throughout the training class.

All in all, it was a good class and I really enjoyed myself, but the real moment of satisfaction arrived in my email INBOX today. The new student had emailed the owner of our gym raving about my class, claiming that it was the most enjoyable training experience he’s had since becoming a member of the gym. The gym owner forwarded me this email along with his own “Thank You and Good Job”.

These are the moments that make all the blood, sweat, and tears worthwhile!

This article may be not the fact but mainly about personal attitude towards Mauy Thai and other kind of martial arts, please fell free to shre you experience and opinion to this blog if you want to.

I personally unhappy when I was asked “is Muay Thai the best among all kind of martial arts” or “do you think Muay Thai can beat Judo, Jujitsu etc. I also usually avoid to answer this kind of question in many forums or personally. I don’t mean that the person who asked was wrong but it may be due to my personal attitude towards this kind of question. Many times that Muay Thai fighter is brought to fight with another martial art fighter, just because they want to see which one better than which one. It may be a kind of activity to proof something that not needs to be proofed.

When talking about martial arts, one thing I only think about the art that we use to protect ourselves while in danger. Each one of them should not be compared to the other in terms of effectiveness and how each one be able to overcome other one. That’s not make sense at all for me. And when these martial arts become sports, then it become more sensible to talk and we also see the tournament like K-1 which fighters allowed to use their own fighting arts to fight with others.

Imagine that there is one guy who search and ask around that “I am still searching for which type of martial is the best and then I will start to practice on that”

I am not really surprise as the fact that there are a lot of opinion like this and I will never blame them or offend, because it just a thought, but let’s share how you think on what I have mentioned and let’s share idea on this.

This may not familiar words for you because they are Thai words but written in English. The words “Cherng” when refers the fighter, its an adjective to describe the characteristic of the fighter that he has “intelligent” fighting style. There are variation of the definition of “intelligent” which depends on individual, but for myself it should describes the fighters who use least power at the maximum effective to beat the opponent. By using speed and the ability to foresee the situation, he should also control his opponent throughout the fight, on the other hand the another word to call this kind of fighter is “fight by heart” or “thinker”. Mean while, the word “Boo” refers to the fighters who has characteristic of focusing to use “power” rather than “intelligent” to beat the opponent, they are also called “fighter”.

Even though it looks like Muay Cherng is good and Muay Boo looks like fight by brainless but the fact is both types of fighter has their own unique capability. Even though, in my eyes, it is very rare to see fighters who are Muay Cherng in nature, and a lot of Muay Boo all around. But in the past there were so many of both “thinker” and “fighter”. The good example for thinker is Samart Payak Arun and for fighter is Somdej Sit Or.

As I can see, even in Thailand now we have a lot more fighters than “thinker” but sometimes this is what to market and Muay Thai business wants. As long as the result of the fight is less important than the fighting style that many of Muay Thai fans want too see. When promoter and organiser realise that they have to match fighters who perform very exciting and use “power” to fight and attractive for audience, that is good for both of the fans and their business.

Yes of course the definite answer is the “proper mixture of both”. However, I can see many of Muay Thai fighters who have very unique capability of using speed or power alone to beat the opponent. The word “speed” seem not to have much meaning to me, I don’t really know how fighters are trained to improve speed because I am not a fighter, but “speed” for me is definitely not about “moving quickly” but it, for me, refers to ability of the fighter to foresee the situation such as what is going to happen or what his opponent is going to do and response to the attack very quickly. Meanwhile the term “power” is quite obvious in meaning, which could be ability of the fighter to attack very hardly and difficult to defense.

According to the fact that even though the good answer is the perfect combination of speed and power will help fighters to win the fight, but I still believe that not many of them could do perfectly. In stead, some one only just sit and think about discover which type of skill that he will be good at, speed or power, and then focus on the skill that suitable and “possible” for him the most.

However, to clarify my statement above is that this should also be aware of that the fighter, nevertheless, should develop of both skills in order to have both of the skill and to win the fight. I encourage them to find what they can do the best, “speed” or “ power” and focus on one of them in order to create unique advantage over the opponent but lack of other skill may not enough to win the fight.

One fighter who has excellent speed but he will not win if he has no power of attack at all. Also, the fighter who is very strong may be waste of his power if he can not even make single attack to the opponent.

I could not say that the quality of Muay Thai equipment has no direct impact to the achievement of the training or the competition result, because it does!! (at least in some ways, that will be described later in this article). The quality of equipment is the key element for learners and teachers to pay attention to. Some arguments have been mentioned is if I said so, why fighters in ancient time were so expert and acquired very high skills of Muay Thai even though there were no modern equipment at all. I would also agree with this objection because in the past, the purpose of Muay Thai is purely for martial arts as well as the art of killing when soldiers had to use the arts of Muay Thai to kill enemies. So the training in the past was completely about using weapons together with Muay Thai and also the format of training is completely different.

When the modern era of Muay Thai has arrived. It’s not for the battle anymore, but instead, it a kind of sport martial art. So what all people concern is about safety and this brings the public attention of the importance of Muay Thai equipment. Just like any other kind of sports that there must be some kind of equipments to maintain safety and Muay Thai is also one of them. Why we have to do hand wrapping, why we have to wear gloves etc. It is really obvious that using equipment concerns abut safety. But how this equipment related to the achievement of the training. This is quite simple and logical to answer that would you want to take any kind of sport training if you feel it is not safe for you? These equipments keep you be safe and be able to continue practice without severe injuries during the training and that’s why you have to focus on the quality of the equipment that you use as well.