Videos » Muay Thai Boxing
Muay Thai Boxing
October 5, 2008 - Chiang Mai, Thailand
This was the first fight out of 10. Each fight is 5 rounds of 3 minutes each. The weight of the fighters goes up each fight, so these little boys were about 42 kilos. The heaviest fighters were about 58 kilos. Those fights are considered the "Big Fights". They train from childhood on, and it is seriously brutal.
Everything is legal except head butting. You can elbow the face, knee the face, kick the face, just about anything. The kicks are the craziest to watch. The knees to the sides are very common, as well as high kicks to the face. Most of the hits end up being body hits. Blood, knockouts, you name it...these guys are TOUGH.
The Thais bet on the fights and watch ringside yelling and motioning to the fighters the whole time. The farangs are separated, unfortunately, but we still got really good seats. These is a 3 piece band playing the whole time. As the last round starts to get close to the end they speed up the beat and get twice as fast. It makes for super intense moments because the fighters start getting really hard core at the end. The instruments are two types of drums and some kind of very foreign sounding reed instrument. The fighters also do some kind of ritual dance thing at the beginning before fighting each time...no idea what it all means but fun to watch.
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