Rick Roufus Vs. Changpuek Kiatsonkrit

Greetings from Bangkok… I really need to get a laptop. Sitting here in a noisy internet cafe at the end of Surawong Rd. I’ve been training here and there. I’m planning on going to the New Years Eve fights at Rajadamnern Stadium. So I hope to have lots of action shots of the happenings. Speaking of fights, I wanted to share this one with you guys…

I really dislike those TKD vs Muay Thai videos, every time I’m on Youtube there seems to be another one. Is there really a question? These Videos seem to be as popular as the “Muay Thai Leg Break” video. Seriously people, why the fuck are you uploading yet another copy of the same identical video? Anyways.. I’m not a big fan of those comparison videos as there never a fair representation. There always a mismatch, the promoters who put those things on are trying to make a point.

That being said I came across this fight between Rick Roufus and Changpuek Kiatsonkrit. Changpuek has to be one of the toughest guys ever. Every clip I see of him, he’s catching a severe beating. He’s like Julio Cesar Chavez except with 3x times more fights. This guy is definitely old school. You might not realize but you’ve probably already seen Changpuek in action. He is the old TKD vs. Muay Thai Clips, There are a few others, where he loses to Andy Hug and Peter Smit. Changpuek has been competing in the original K-1 when it was just “Mixed Styles” going at under Full Contact Karate rules.

So I feel that it’s sort of an decent match because Changpuek isn’t allowed to use knees are elbows in this match. If they wanted to make it 100% fair they should have had him where a pair of booties. I guess it doesn’t matter as the booties won’t cover his shins anyway. I realize it’s sort of on the long side (27 Min.) trust me it’s worth it, these guys battle.

What’s a Muay Thai Smoker?

Last night I was looking at my blog stats, and one of search queries that was driving traffic was “what is a Muay Thai smoker?” I forget sometimes that a lot of people looking at this blog might be new to Muay Thai and Muay Thai Culture. So this is for the new folks.

What is a smoker?

A Smoker is an amateur fighting competition between different schools and gyms. In the early days of boxing these events would be held in men’s social clubs or basements… you get the idea.

Today smokers are a good way for fighters to get some ring time, before going amateur. My Gym Fight and Fitness had our last Smoker of the year a few weeks back. I think there were a total of 35 fights? with fighters from about 10 different schools.

If your looking for smokers, there is a good resource called Smoker Fights. You can post info on your smoker or find one.

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Does VanDamme Hate Thai People?

You must think I’m back smokin rocks… you might be right. However I was thinking about the portrayal of Muay Thai in the Movies. Growing up I would only get glimpses of Muay Thai in other martial arts movies. I wasn’t actually able to recall too many. There was Van Damme’s “Kickboxer” then he had the Muay Thai fighter in “Bloodsport”. Hold up, these bitches aren’t even Asian?

Why don’t you just give him an eye patch and call it a day ?

Soy un muy Tailandés

Tong Po is clearly a white guy in really bad make up. Shit it’s almost as bad as Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of the Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The guy in “Bloodsport”…hispanic? What’s up Jean Claude? Can’t you find one Thai or Asian to play a character in your movies? Ok, I get Tong Po is supposed to be a giant badass. I’ve seen some big Thai dudes. Look at the Royal Body Guards, those guys aren’t small. Ok so you don’t have time for that, did you bother to look to check your local Chinatown? The Chinese can be some big motherfuckers…I know I see them around all the time. Look Jean Claude, if you really need someone to be in your jank ass movies you can always give me a ring.

Attention: Jean Claude is Bringing Sexy Back

This isn’t really relevant to this post, but I just wanted to let you know that Jean Claude is bringing sexy back. Enjoy!

Martial Arts in Commercials

When I was a about 10 I was really into Karate, I was completely obsessed. No Lie I think I watched “Revenge of The Ninja” over 30 times. Not Ninja 3 “The Domination” though…that was a huge piece of crap. Anyway, my Dad was a Physician and went to a lot of medical conferences. I used to tag along whenever I could. One of my favorite things to do when I got to a new city was to look up “Martial Arts” in the Yellow Pages. It was so fascinating to me… “Damn he’s got a 10th degree black belt!” I never did find an ad for a Ninjitsu school though. I’m sure if I did I would have kicked and screamed until one of my parent took me. One could argue I’m still scouring… the world for interesting Martial Arts Schools. So along that vain, I’m attaching footage of Martial Arts commercials I’ve come across.

Here are my nominations for the worst:

“You Have to be Alert at All Times”

I love the big dude doing his “Kung Fu” Deer Boxing punches at his Master. I think he’s actually punching about 2 1/2 feet over his head. The guy does scare the hell out of me though…These guys have a butt load of videos online, I’d include more but I’m afraid of these guys hunting me down.

 

“We all Need an Edge”

What I love about this clip, is that the red neck that comes out of the house never drops his drink! I can’t lie, I would have Read more

Fairtex San Francisco Smoker

This weekend I popped over to the Fairtex San Francisco Smoker. This is the first time I’ve been since it opened. I’ve visited a fair few camps in the States as well as in Bangkok. I have to say as far as Muay Thai camps go, it’s pretty nice. Like many of the Chinese restaurants in my hood, they have the obligatory plasmas screens to class the place up. I thought they were going to be running a live video feed of the action, but instead we were bombarded by Fairtex commercials, and some Tata Young infomercial.

The fights were actually quite good and very entertaining. They alternated between Muay Thai and MMA. In the picture below you can see Gilbert Melendez holding down the ring. (Gilbert is fighting in this years Pride New Years event. Best of luck Gil). I ended up corning 2 of our guys with Jongsanan and Enn, kind of an interesting experience. One of our fighters went up against a kid from World Team USA. Overall it was a decent fight, however it would have been nice if someone would have informed us before the fight, that his opponent only wanted to go 2 rounds. We might not have told our fighter to pace himself in the second round, if we knew it was going to be the last round. Jongsanan turns to me “Who the fuck does two rounds?” classic.

Anyway, the highlight of my day was when Anthony Lin the President of Fairtex was kind enough to let me put my grubby mitts all over the WBC belt.

Radio Interview with Jongsanan and I

I forgot I did this… this was an interview Jongsanan and I did for KQED radio last year. It’s kind of strange but when your being recorded and interviewed for over an hour, you can’t always remember what you talked about? It’s funny to listen to this because I honestly don’t recall saying half of this. This picture was taken a year ago this week at the Fight & Fitness Christmas party. I’m heading out to Bangkok in a few days, so I’m going to be posting sporadically. Anyway I hope everyone has an exceptional holiday and New Years.

 

Jongsanan, Nopstar, Bunkerd Faphimai, Enn Fairtex gettin faded

 

 

[audio:http://www.mymuaythai.com/audio/kqed_interview.mp3]

KQED Radio Interview

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