This place has hit an all-time low. It’s not worth my words.
There is something about the morning air at the gym, even for Bangkok, a city of smog and pollution. There is an honesty and purity about it. While the morning rays of the sun are busy cutting through it and across it, piercing the awnings and openings, casting its light upon every crack and crevice, [...]
They sit, patiently, quietly. The vaseline shines their faces which bring life to the worn out boxing robes, the old, drab muaythai regalia that covers their battle-ready bodies like a piece of armor. The monkon sits atop their heads pushing their ears down; it’s a relic, a sacred amulet in a new world. Tradition. Superstition. [...]
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Just hours ago he had been hanging out in the back alley of the gym, swigging whiskey from a glass half-filled with ice. Now he was warming up to step into the ring at one of Bangkok’s most premiere stadiums. At one time he was one of [...]
One uses muaythai to escape a familiar world. The other uses muaythai to enter an unfamiliar world. The native Thai boxer. The foreign fighter. They embrace a centuries old tradition and carry forth the customs of ancient ways into a new world, a new era. In a time when the rite of passage for humankind [...]
Muaythai is devastating. It demands the utmost physical conditioning and uses the sharpest parts of the body to dismantle an opponent’s arsenal. It’s ring war. It’s a testament to what one is willing to sacrifice. Muaythai is brutal. But somewhere nestled in between the damaging strike of an elbow and the crippling blow of a [...]