aware of how important composure is. The Thais fight with epic, steely composure, never showing pain or emotion—unless it’s to try and sway the judges. They act with their faces about how they feel the fight is going. It’s almost like soccer players when teams try and draw a foul, or the B-movie acting in the NBA. I asked Jongsanan about it.
“Use face, it comes to the judge—you kick me hard, but I show it’s okay, maybelai [the ubiquitous Thai word for “never mind”]. The judge say oh, he’s okay. For the judge, for the system, for the crowd, for you, for the gambling guy.”
“John” Wayne Parr is an Australian muay Thai legend, and he provided more insight into the Thai appreciation for composure. Wayne lived and fought in Thailand from 1996 to 2000, and has since continued his professional muay Thai career. He’s been fighting the best in the world for nine years in Japanese megaevents such as the K-1 Dynamite show. In 1999 he was a rising star, featured in the first kickboxing magazine I ever saw, “on the beach” in Darwin, Australia. I remember the Thai publicity shots of him posing with six-guns, like a cowboy. That same magazine had the advertisement for the Fairtex muay Thai camp, which looked pretty good to me after sailing across the Pacific. He and I discovered each other on Myspace as I was finishing this book, and I asked him about the mental game he’d learned in Thailand.
“The first lesson I learned is never show any emotion while fighting,” he wrote me from Australia. “And if you want respect from the Thai fans, you never give up until the final bell. I’ve seen some Thai boys fight their heart out, for four and a half rounds, getting a sound beating. Then, for last half of the the last round, they stopped fighting and waited till the clock ran out. When we got back to the camp the boys would cop an ear full from the trainers, till the point where they would start to cry. They would be ordered, even though they were busted up, to run and train the next day—because they didn’t deserve a day off until they learned to fight till the end.”
He continued, “If you fight with all your heart, take punishment, get cut yet still manage to wipe the blood out of your eye and keep walking forward, the Thais will accept you as a warrior. It might sound strange, but to have the respect of the Thais is just as important as a win, because they have a very high standard. If they give you the thumbs up you’re halfway there to becoming a champion.”
Wayne told stories of seeing other Westerners come in to Thailand to fight but quail at the first sight of their own blood. Muay Thai utilizes the elbows to attack, and the tip of the elbow can cut like a knife. Many foreigners would fold up their tents when they got cut, but not Wayne.
“I would rather go out with half my face missing, losing the fight, but still getting a pat on the back from the Thais. They would say, Jai Dee, or good heart. If you can prove yourself in Thailand, then once you come back home fighting other Westerners feels easy; you have already faced the scariest of scary. There is nothing that they can do that the Thais haven’t done. I fought an English guy in 1998, he cut me five times in five rounds, I ended up with fifty-four stitches after the fight. Not once did I think about giving up; I kept walking forward, applying pressure. I lost the fight but even now I have people coming up to me, saying how they love to play that fight in front of their friends who have never seen muay Thai, to show them what being a warrior is all about.”
Back in Boston, Mark and I talked about Thailand. Years ago, I spent six months training in Thailand, and by the end I felt the disconnect between Thai trainers and Westerners. It goes deeper than just language, although that’s a big part of it. The foreigner coming in has a hard time understanding the system, who’s in charge, what it all means. The Thai trainer can’t
“Use face, it comes to the judge—you kick me hard, but I show it’s okay, maybelai [the ubiquitous Thai word for “never mind”]. The judge say oh, he’s okay. For the judge, for the system, for the crowd, for you, for the gambling guy.”
“John” Wayne Parr is an Australian muay Thai legend, and he provided more insight into the Thai appreciation for composure. Wayne lived and fought in Thailand from 1996 to 2000, and has since continued his professional muay Thai career. He’s been fighting the best in the world for nine years in Japanese megaevents such as the K-1 Dynamite show. In 1999 he was a rising star, featured in the first kickboxing magazine I ever saw, “on the beach” in Darwin, Australia. I remember the Thai publicity shots of him posing with six-guns, like a cowboy. That same magazine had the advertisement for the Fairtex muay Thai camp, which looked pretty good to me after sailing across the Pacific. He and I discovered each other on Myspace as I was finishing this book, and I asked him about the mental game he’d learned in Thailand.
“The first lesson I learned is never show any emotion while fighting,” he wrote me from Australia. “And if you want respect from the Thai fans, you never give up until the final bell. I’ve seen some Thai boys fight their heart out, for four and a half rounds, getting a sound beating. Then, for last half of the the last round, they stopped fighting and waited till the clock ran out. When we got back to the camp the boys would cop an ear full from the trainers, till the point where they would start to cry. They would be ordered, even though they were busted up, to run and train the next day—because they didn’t deserve a day off until they learned to fight till the end.”
He continued, “If you fight with all your heart, take punishment, get cut yet still manage to wipe the blood out of your eye and keep walking forward, the Thais will accept you as a warrior. It might sound strange, but to have the respect of the Thais is just as important as a win, because they have a very high standard. If they give you the thumbs up you’re halfway there to becoming a champion.”
Wayne told stories of seeing other Westerners come in to Thailand to fight but quail at the first sight of their own blood. Muay Thai utilizes the elbows to attack, and the tip of the elbow can cut like a knife. Many foreigners would fold up their tents when they got cut, but not Wayne.
“I would rather go out with half my face missing, losing the fight, but still getting a pat on the back from the Thais. They would say, Jai Dee, or good heart. If you can prove yourself in Thailand, then once you come back home fighting other Westerners feels easy; you have already faced the scariest of scary. There is nothing that they can do that the Thais haven’t done. I fought an English guy in 1998, he cut me five times in five rounds, I ended up with fifty-four stitches after the fight. Not once did I think about giving up; I kept walking forward, applying pressure. I lost the fight but even now I have people coming up to me, saying how they love to play that fight in front of their friends who have never seen muay Thai, to show them what being a warrior is all about.”
Back in Boston, Mark and I talked about Thailand. Years ago, I spent six months training in Thailand, and by the end I felt the disconnect between Thai trainers and Westerners. It goes deeper than just language, although that’s a big part of it. The foreigner coming in has a hard time understanding the system, who’s in charge, what it all means. The Thai trainer can’t
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