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decreaseBy the time I was suckered into agreeing to fighting a bout by my jovial Muay Thai instructor, I’d trained in Thailand's notoriously brutal fight form on-and-off over the previous couple of years while in Ireland, but I'd never taken it seriously enough to be considered competition material.
Diving in at the deepest of deep ends did have its plus side though; I’d been getting bored with the bar-nightclub-hangover routine I had been hammering solidly since arriving in the country and terror at the thought of being humiliated and permanently injured in front of hundreds of people seemed like a good way of shedding a few vices. And so it proved; once I agreed to fight, I quit smoking, drinking, going out to nightclubs, staying up late and fatty foods. Sadly, my trainer informed me that I must also abstain completely from 'boom boom' of any description until after my fight.
The vast majority of Thais who practice the sport do so on a professional basis and it was one of these pro fighters I was informed I would be going up against. They generally get up at around 6am to run between 10-20km before returning for breakfast. Next, it's a solid two-to-three hours of training before a nap, another jog and an evening training session. More often than not they live, literally, in their gyms. The fact that I was contractually obliged to be in my office from 9am to 6pm meant my preparations couldn't be as thorough, but I was determined to do as much as possible. So, I got up at 6am to do 10km before work, went straight to training after clocking off from Monday to Friday, and trained twice on Saturdays and Sundays.
Unfortunately, things hit a bit of a bump in my gym, Bangkok Fight Club, shortly before I was due to fight. There was a steady parade of new people, more often than not middle-aged and overweight, which led to a drop off in the amount of time I was getting to spend with my over-stretched trainer. I decided to ditch the class when, for the second time, he didn't turn up and it fell to me to coach the band of newbies.
However, the amount of training I had put in meant I still wanted to fight. So, I was left in a situation where I had to find another club complete with a trainer who could arrange a bout for me at short notice. I had been avidly following a show called ‘The Contender Asia’, which brought together the best Muay Thai fighters from around the world and pitched them against each other. As it turned out, a few of the show's stars trained in a club called Rompo Muay Thai which about 10 minutes walk from my Sukhumvit soi 22 rathole. The gym I discovered the following Saturday was quite something. I could hear the cries of determination and anguish from across the underground carpark of the soviet-style apartment complex the club nestles under.
The gym itself had a well-worn boxing ring on each side in which fighters were being put through their paces by grunting Thai trainers wearing battered kick pads. A walkway which ran down the middle of the gym was banked on both sides by a dozen punch bags and columns of car tyres which swung from the ceiling by heavy duty chains. The 10 or so predominantly non-Thai fighters furiously attacking the various pieces of training apparatus were a hungry-looking bunch who roared with every kick, punch, knee and elbow they threw.
A few shot me inquisitive glances, which appeared to be about establishing whether or not I might be edible, but most were too focused on mutilating their chosen piece of training apparatus to pay any mind. I walked towards a older, shirt-wearing man who sat behind a small table at the end of the grotty gym and told him I wanted to train. He relieved me of Bt300 and directed me to a changing/storage room.
None of the fighters from the The Contender Asia were around, but at least there was also a notable absence of overweight menopausal women who had deluded themselves into thinking that Muay Thai, of all things, was the sport for them. I was looking for training that was a bit more challenging, and by Christ I found it.
© Rob Carry. All rights reserved by the author.
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