✔️ 2022-07-16 05:30:00 – Paris/France.
Considered by some experts to be the most dangerous form of combat, every martial arts enthusiast is shocked when they discover the Muay Thai due to the high degree of contact it exhibits. The use of knees and elbows, which can hit the skull, has earned him, not in vain, that he is known as "the art of the eight extremities". As in Japan with sumo, the plastic beauty associated with the clashes (with long rituals prior to the fights rooted, in this case, in Thai folklore) also makes the Muay Thai something as deeply linked to its place of origin as it is exportable because of the interest of its cultural power and the lethality of the set of techniques it encompasses. However, viewers more addicted to this art will not find much entertainment in the series. Muaythai: extreme sportwhich was just released by Netflix.
Although with very neat fights (the rare ones that appear) and a quality production, the docufiction of four episodes, which alternates dramatized intrigues and talking heads, focuses its attention above all on the approaches to this philosophy of combat and sport in Thailand, from the world of betting and match fixing, through collaborationist corruption, to the situation of poverty and desperation which, at times, acts as the sole motivation of suitors. The diagnosis could not be darker: if the situation does not change, this martial art with a millennial history risks disappearing.
Despite the slogan "Dedicated to the courage and passion of the Muay Thai community" with which the series ends, Muaythai: extreme sport adopts an ambiguous posture, where the sordid seems to be the common thread of the story. Thus, as soon as we witness the practices of the great betting gurus, whose choices are shown to us essentially determine the course of the fights, we find a recreation of the story of the 13-year-old boy who died of a cranial hemorrhage in a fight in Thailand, which went around the world in 2018. The basis of the story is mainly real events, with archival footage of boxers who were drugged to lose or data such as, at over the past 10 years, at least 30 matches have been proven to have been settled fraudulently.
A Muay Thai fighter receives a pre-fight massage in Kota Bharu, Malaysia in May 2022. MOHD RASFAN (AFP via Getty Images)
Born as a form of combat by the ancient Tai peoples, "forced to continually fight for their right to exist", as former Italian wrestler Marco de Cesaris explains in his book Thai Boxing: Muay Thai (1995, published in Spain in 2000 by Ediciones Tutor), muay thai has known a long evolution until today. from Muay Boranan ancient martial art for which there are archaeological records dating back to the 2nd century BC, Muay Thai appears as an unarmed side (as opposed to krabi krabong, who has one) designed from the idea that the body is the only tool always permanently available to the warrior. Its practice in times of peace and the fans of the various kings ended up making it the favorite sport of the population. But their long ceremonial rituals, which incorporate music, highly stylized movements, gestures and invocations of a spiritual nature, have retained the competitive dynamics still linked to their identity traits. In the meantime, from its international export, children like the kick boxinga version without nudges or knees to the head developed in Holland, or the more continuous versions from France and England.
“When a Westerner attends for the first time a meeting of Muay Thai, still describes it as the demonstration of the toughest and most dangerous contact sport practiced in the world. But if you talk to a real master (…), he will certainly smile and remember how the boxing [tailandés] of today has become much softer, if we compare it to what was practiced in the past”, comments De Cesaris in Thai Boxing, discussing the successive changes in regulations and movement bans that have been put in place. However, the best-known iconography of the Muay Thai seems, for the moment, inseparable from the rawest notions of violence, either because of the force of its circular kicks, or because of the myth that cinema has helped to build: impossible to forget, in this meaning, the final climax of the film kickboxer (1989), where the character of Jean-Claude Van Damme confronts a Thai fighter in revenge for having left his brother a quadriplegic and, before fighting, both bathe the bandages of their hands, without gloves, in crushed glass to hit with more pain.
Adrenaline that calms the pain
“These films are not rigorous at all, the thing with the crystals no longer exists! Francisco Villalba, president of the Spanish Muay Thai Federation, professional world champion and teacher, warns ICON. or ajar of this martial art, one of the highest qualifications outside of Thailand. For Villalba, the idea of the foreigner who arrives in the country for the first time and triumphs in the Muay Thaiexplored up to three times in Van Damme's filmography (in addition to Kick boxingalso in bloody contactfrom 1988, and in The Quest: In Search of the Lost City, from 1996), is essentially whimsical. "Either you've been training there since you were little, fighting in a field that has a big name and beating the best, or you don't stand a chance," he said. In his book, Marco de Cesaris also discusses how the power of the Thai fighters posed a problem for a European public who quickly grew tired of this inequality, which led to organizing fights with more unknown, physically inferior and evil Eastern fighters. trained. .
Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 1991 film "Kickboxer." Hulton Archive (Getty Images)
Villalba, 53, has kinder words for the films of another actor, Thai Tony Jaa, who stars in titles such as Ong-Bak: The Muay Thai Warrior (2003) et thai dragon (2005), who knows the ancestral heritage muay borang. And he admits that he actually came to martial arts through movies; specifically, for Bruce Lee movies. “My whole fifth went through this. I started out doing kung fu and ended up doing Muay Thai by chance, because I met a Finnish boy in Malaga who had been to Thailand and I started training with him,” he says. A competitor both amateur and professional in Thailand itself since 1996, he was the introducer of this martial art in Spain, where the competition, he says, enjoys a much greater prestige than then. Although without point of comparison with the euphoria which is unleashed in South-East Asia. “For them, it's the national sport, like bullfighting for us or football for Brazil. Many stadiums are dedicated seven days a week to Muay Thai“, explains the professional from Cordoba. In the same way, he dissociates the betting fever in Thailand from the more modest Spanish reality.
Despite what he says Muaythai: extreme sport, Villalba does not consider that the martial art has a dangerous component in its sporting incarnation, both because of the security measures and the technical knowledge of those who practice it. “I had my gym open for 23 years and I could have had three or four injuries. Any little boy who plays football, on the other hand, it is not uncommon for him to injure his knee, his calf…”, he argues. From the Federation, the champion promoted that the Muay Thai that practical Spain is "as similar as possible" to the original, with the initial rites of Wai Khruu and Ram Muay (a tribute to the master and a dance) included and, of course, elbows and knees at the head allowed. "If we do Muay Thaiwe do Muay Thai“, he condemns, while specifying that at the amateur level there are breastplates, helmets and other protections, and that among children the blows are much more restricted. The President, for his part, is not in favor of the Muay Thai become an Olympic sport, as other international federations have promoted: “Olympism corrupts and heavily vetoes the essence of the martial art. Look at what happened with judo or karate, which have nothing to do with what they were in Japan”.
The only thing that separates Villalba from absolute purism is not having led the monastic life that some Thai fighters have had since they were children (literally, among Buddhist monks), with education costs covered by the Kai Muay [campos] and the salaries attributed to the family. The ex-combatant admits that the training he has been undergoing in Thailand for three decades is difficult, with the added bonus of the weather: "It's relatively warm there and I'm from Córdoba, so imagine how that will affect me ! The worst is the humidity, the first few times I was out of breath”.
A Muay Thai match in the UK in 1974.P. Shirley (Getty Images)
Master Woody, president of the Kru Muay Thai association, which supports the Spanish Federation, is his teacher. Of the fights, which he says he no longer considers due to age, he recalls the shock of reality when they ended as the hardest blow. “When you walk out of the ring you think the fight went well, you won or you lost, you didn't hurt yourself much… But then you realize your leg or your rib is hurting you. badly, or that you have been affected in such and such a way which site. With adrenaline and liniment nothing hurts, it hurts when you go down. And you fit in barrels with ice, like those in American football, to reduce the bruises,” he recalls.
“I was hooked not only by the sport and the culture as such, but also by the Thais, because they are very similar to the Andalusians. They are open people, who like the street and have fun, ”says the Cordouan, who also underlines the exciting atmosphere of the fights in the stadiums, “to crack”. About betting he says that "all sports have this hindsight" and notes that in Spain there is nothing similar to this market within the Muay Thai. If the darkest predictions of Muaythai: extreme sport on the degenerative coexistence in Thailand with bets held, the most jealous fans of the tradition can rest assured that, in another region of southern Europe, a guardian of the essences continues to do everything according to the instructions.
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SOURCE: Reviews News
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