Rambaa Somdet - Clinch Throws & Trips | (34 min) (Patreon)

Rambaa is an incredible character. Pretty much every former Thai fighter I’ve ever met still carries who he was as a fighter - the way he was in the ring - long after they stop fighting, but with Rambaa it’s something unique. Part of that, surely, is that he was such a unique fighter in his youth. If you picture the kid in your family or who you grew up with who just had endless energy and never calmed down, that’s Rambaa. Watch his old fights, the way he dances into and out of the ring, doing flips when he wins, screaming at the camera… that’s all semi-familiar because of these ‘roided out WWE and UFC fighters who do things like this, but in Thailand, to Thai culture and from a Thai kid, honestly I can’t even imagine what that looked like to the audience watching Rambaa 20 years ago. He has settled down, or come to a simmer in his early 40’s, but that energy is still in there. 

One of the things I love about him, and what makes it quite challenging to work with him, is that he trains with this energy. He gives you a technique, lets you try it out at half-speed once or twice, and then Bam! it’s time to go live. Everything is put immediately into fight energy and fight context. He takes the power down and he doesn’t actually knock you out, but the Adrenaline rush and fear and being overwhelmed is all real-time; it’s not simulated. And that’s one aspect of these clinch throws that really stood out to me, was how they make you feel as the opponent being subjected to them over and over again. They make you hesitant; they tighten you up; they get in your head and heart because you’re having to pull yourself up off the canvas over and over again. But from the other side of it, when you’re the one tripping and throwing, it makes you look invincible. I’m not sure because I never got the hang of it, but it likely makes you feel invincible, too.

Rambaa’s style is definitely the busy, high-volume striker. But not tappy tappy - his shit hurts. He’s like a wasp, just stinging and stinging while blitzing around to attack from different angles. He told me very early on, in one of our first training sessions together, that he didn’t like clinch because he’s short, so it made him tired to struggle against taller opponents. So it makes sense that his clinch techniques are, more or less, how to disengage from the clinch in a spectacular, soul-stealing fashion. They can be used the moment someone grabs you (which is great if you’re a K1 fighter or if clinch is not favored in the scoring system you use), or midway through a clinch exchange when your opponent is shifting to a better position. None of these moves come out of a super dominant position, which means you don’t have to work towards one in order to use them but rather can focus on timing if you have an active opponent. An exception is that for the moves where you shove your opponent back, you need to have an inside position to get your power onto their shoulders. But then you only need that position for a moment and you don’t have to maintain it. It’s very cool to learn these techniques from Rambaa, because his style was so sensational as a striker you might never know that he had all these clinch techniques in his bag (and maybe he didn’t as a young Muay Thai fighter, but he sure as Hell does now after becoming Thailand’s first World Champion in MMA).

Some things to look out for in the video:

1. Hand position on the underarm/shoulder and ribs for his “pop off” moves, but the lift or turn is very moderate whereas the position of your foot as a stop on your opponent’s foot is paramount
2. The shove back: watch how Rambaa shadows the shove, how it’s basically like a pushup where your opponent’s shoulders are the floor. I put my butt back and kind of lean forward on it, which isn’t right - you want to stand upright and use your shoulders to pop the shove as an explosive movement.
3. This upright position is clarified at the very end of the video when Rambaa puffs his chest to show his general body position, in direct contrast to the curled, crunched “goom” position I was favoring. One of my favorite moments in the whole lesson is him puffing his chest up like a cartoon character at Muscle Beach.
4. The hook of the standing leg is a foul, no question. The technique uses a dramatic upper-body shove to hide the hook of the leg and you pull back against their standing leg enough that when the opponent goes flying it’s easy to pull your offending leg back to hide the initial hook as well. So, basically it’s one of those “it’s only a foul if it’s called” kinds of moves.
5. On the move where Rambaa steps behind me and just basically walks over me, you have to turn your knee as you step behind. Almost stop down on it and turn the knee in, which buckles the back of your opponent’s knee and you can walk them down or turn with a hand on the neck. The bend of the knee is the whole secret of this move.
6. Rambaa uses upper-body contact as a weapon, basically allowing that contact (peck to peck, more or less) to bring his whole body weight forward and walks through the opponent. You don’t do this perfectly squared up, it’s when the line of your body from shoulder, chest, hip and leg is on the same line of your opponent’s shoulder, chest, hip and leg so you can step past them. Picture a car slamming into another car head-on so that their headlights line up on one side. Like that.

TIP BOX: if you are inspired by what you see and want to show added appreciation you can send gratuity directly to Rambaa. Just message $5 or more via PayPal to the address sylvie@8limbs.us, please in the "add a note" section specify "for Rambaa". I will transfer the funds.

KRU FUND: additionally, 5% of all Patreon pledges go into my Kru Fund, and is directed back to the Krus and ex-fighters who have helped make this documentary Library possible: http://8limbs.us/muay-thai-thailand/starting-the-kru-fund