Namsaknoi Back in the Ring
November 4, 2009 by nopstar
Just came across of this clip from Rawai MuayThai of the “The Empower” Namsaknoi in action.
For those of you who don’t know who Namsaknoi is, he’s the original star of the Por.Pramuk camp. He’s one of the most decorated nakmuays from back in the day. You can read more about him here.
Looks like he’s a trainer at Rawai these days. I was just chatting with Nathan a week ago and I was shocked at the number of gyms that have sprung up in Phuket in the past couple of years.
He thinks he’s able to name a dozen or so camps just off the top of his head. I know larger camps like Tiger have 10 or so rings with up to 150 or so people training. That’s kind of ridonkulous…
I think Phuket could be the capital of MuayThai… can anyone think of any place that has more people training MuayThai per capita?
Anyway, it’s good to see Namsaknoi back in action even though the footage has been butchered. A word of advice to the Rawai folks. Nobody likes to watch edited footage, you can’t get a fair picture of how the fighters performed. If you worried about the length then split it, or move to vimeo.
I’m not sure who the other fighter is, I gathered from the comments his name is Robert. The fight kind of get’s nasty, with teeps to the grill…
Have any of you trained with Namsaknoi?
I agree that the edited footage makes this one hard to watch. Man this one was nasty. Fun to watch, even with the editing.
does anyone know if there are any other thai muslim fighters out there?
I seem to recall reading something about Namsaknoi in connection with Robert Lek (if I recall correctly, the post referred to him as “Kru Robert Lek, formerly of Tiger Muay Thai”), so maybe that’s him in the clip? (I also seem to remember Rawai being mentioned)
Like I said, I’m nowhere near 100% sure on this, more like 60% – 70%
Robert Lek is the younger one at Tiger Muay Thai…this guy in the video is the Big Robert, the Terminator. I trained with him when I was at TMT a few years ago. Really cool guy, has one bad eye probably due to Muay Thai damage. Nice guy tho, held pads for me. I accidentally kicked him in the jaw which he took like a champ and he didn’t even get mad with me!
Celtic – dont know about the big scene in BKK but Iv seen quite a few thai muslims fighting in Samui?A guy who teaches at Pinyo gym down there is muslim by heritage and was fighting in BKK when he was a kid.Although he was a pretty lapse Muslim!Also A guy called Spicy Mongkonton (or something like that) fights on Samui regularly and fought the Uk’s Andy Howson in Leeds last year.He’s defo a muslim.And I trained at Hlukin’s gym briefly on Koh Yao Noi (an island halfway between Krabi and Phuket) and he had half a dozen kids training there some of which fought both locally and in Bangkok and I imagine they all muslim cause Its a Muslim island.
Can anybody post an uncut version?
Celtic – Kaolan and Attachai are muslim, cant think of any others off the top of my head.
manant and megastar,
thx for info :) seeing rawai representing (in a good way) made me think of it…
Islam is the predominant religion through the peninsula. I am sure there are a good number of Muslim fighters from down south.
Gotta admire this war.
LOL @ the pushups at the end.
Celtic,
Like what others said, the Southern part of Thailand is where most Muslims are located. There are many Southern fighters from regions of Surat, Krabi, Trang, etc. that are Muslim in BKK. Keatkhamtorn Gym has a good number of muslim fighters with Detsuriya Sittiprasert, Laemthong Thor Ponchai, Laempet Thor Ponchai, and Sakuntong Keatkhamtorn off the top of my head.
jason, i.e., hwarang,
thx for your input also…i guess islam and thailand are two words i don’t usually put together…i know there’s been problems in the south…bbc had a story other day about the gov’t arming civilians on both sides to protect from vigilantes, a novel idea !
in any event, an interesting angle…and i think illustrative of how sports give insights into society….
btw, the general who was the “public face” of the ‘96 coup was muslim…which was my first awareness of their presence in thai society…