#Diary In the Shadow of Langsuan - For the Love of Muay Khao (Patreon)

While driving up to a fight with Karuhat one time, I asked him who his favorite opponent was. He thought for a while, then said it was Kaensak, because they're styles are similar enough to make the fight fun and they've been friends since forever. Imagine that: you'd RATHER fight your friend. I asked him who he didn't like to fight and without even letting me finish my question he said, "Langsuan. He is exhausting." This is also why I love knee fighters, which Langsuan (fighter of the year 1987) is... we aren't fun to fight. So, then a few weeks later I saw a post on Facebook that was a fight between Kaensak and Langsuan. Under the video, Kaensak had posted, "fighting Langsuan is exhausting."

A couple weeks ago, I trained with Silapathai for the Preserve the Legacy project. Afterward, my phone dinged and when I checked the LINE message, it was Karuhat saying that Silapathai had told him he had to go home and sleep, because I made him so tired in our lesson. Karuhat was laughing, telling him, "that's what you get for playing with MY student!" So, I'm exhausting, too. Yesterday, driving up to Phayao to train with Langsuan himself, I was determined to make him tired. Like, as some kind of vicarious payback for Karuhat and Kaensak from the Golden Age. 

Here's the thing about Muay Khao, guys, and you'll hear this from Dieselnoi all the time: it's about doing more than anyone else. It's about sobbing while you knee the bag at the end of training, when everyone else has gone home already and you're smashing out more knees. Langsuan told me to do 1,000 knees, morning and night, every day. So I will. He told me match that with teeps, so you can breathe. So I will.

In our session, Langsuan had the owner of the gym keep time for our rounds, 5 minutes each. They were a steady pace and simple enough, perfectly fight-focused, but at the end when we had to just burn on knees I was struggling. I have habits of breaking to breathe; real Muay Khao - Golden Age Muay Khao, which doesn't exist anymore - breathes while still kneeing. I have to do a lot of work from where I am to get to where they were, to resurrect that legacy. It was going to be f***ing hard to make Langsuan tired with how f***ing hard these rounds were for me. 

But you know what? For our last round Langsuan had the owner of the gym come in and hold for me, so he could just demonstrate a bit and yell corrections. I'm telling you, I made him tired! But he's Muay Khao - real Muay Khao - so he didn't really show it. I'm going to have to learn to be better at that, too. So, my goal of tiring out the indefatigable knee monster was kind of half-and-half, because I'm a monster and I got tired, too. 

On the drive back home I sent a photo of me with Langsuan to my trainer, Kru Nu. He just wrote back "ขุนเข่าไร้น้ำใจ", Langsuan's nickname, which is basically "Mr. Merciless Knee." You earn your name, you keep your name forever - it's YOU. Today was Miss Gangster Knee vs. Mr. Merciless Knee and the beauty of it is that he gave me the recipe for his relentlessness: thousands of knees, beyond fatigue. And so I begin. Thank you, Sir.

I started my 1000 knees and 1,000 teeps today.

This Muay Thai Library session will be added to the library in the coming month or so. In the meantime, watch me do ALL THE KNEES.

This was just a little Diary Entry, as a patron you can read my articles on my Muay Thai and my experience.

 ARTICLES - Patreon Magazine

• Patron Only Articles - These articles are written specially for my patrons and are my attempts to expand as a writer. They are full of richer descriptions, and take on themes not always talked about in the experience of being a fighter. At least one is published a month, if not two.

Alley Tears: The First Time I Cried After a Fight In a Long While - it had been years since I had cried after a fight, maybe even ever, but something in me broke down after a loss to a World Champion several weight classes above me. read it here 

The Storm That Overtakes The Boy - Giving In | The storm within us, the storm outside of us. It is our choice. Or, this could be called "Learning to ride the donkey, and not look for the donkey." read it here 

Insisting On Left - The Space Between Pi and Kru | The story of how it is a delicate balance with my Kru when insisting on changing my stance to southpaw read it here 

Arjan Surat: The Unbreakable Breaker of Bangkok | Maybe the toughest, hardest man in Thailand. Arjan Surat is 63 and made of the stuff that feels like it's from 100 years ago. The unbreakable breaker. read it here 

When I First Met Dieselnoi: A Giant in my Soul | The powerful impression the legendary Dieselnoi made on me right from the start, a resonating impact that has made on me as a person. read it here 

The Perfection of Festival Fights in Thailand | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 

Cheet Yaa - "if there were no cuts it wouldn't be Sylvie" | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 

The Hurting Game - The Psychology of Hurt | Even though I've fought over 200 times being the one who hurts others, that the game is hurting, is still a psychology I need to embrace. read it here 

A Girl and Her Bag - the Intimacy of Work | Every fighter who has spent a long amount of time in the gym has to fall in love with their bag - how bagwork contains its own beauty. read it here 

Jai Rohn - My Story of Blood, My Pride and Stitches | My heart was racing, I was upset at my performance, and then there was the pain of stitches, more painful than any stitches I've had before. read it here 

You can see all the exclusive content available to patrons here: Table of Contents 

And the full Muay Thai Library archive of sessions here