123 All-Time Greatest Muay Thai Fighters of Thailand (1st 10) (Patreon)

There has been widespread interest in the hard-to-find book, 123 All-Time Greatest Muay Thai Fighters of Thailand, which catalogs the legends of the sport throughout the decades. So, I thought I should start sharing it with my patrons and I'm going to post 10 of the profiles at a time as best I can. This is an important a piece of history. And it is indeed very hard to find: Karuhat was just complaining to me that he has no idea where it is, but people keep asking him. The only place I've seen it sold is at the Thaismai shop in Bangkok, which is where I bought multiple copies. I've heard that Thaismai are hard to get hold of online sometimes, but if you'd like to try to get them to send you a copy, here is their website, and here is their Facebook Page. It's a historic brand that was featured in the Golden Age big box office stadium fights, and honestly they make my favorite gloves (I love their lower weight lace-ups); I highly encourage you to visit the shop in Bangkok if you get a chance, and pick up a pair of gloves, or really any of their nicely made, and not expensive, equipment. If anyone has success ordering the book from them let me know, so I can recommend the right messaging process to others.  And, if you happen to be in Chiang Mai I dropped 3 copies of the book off at Pi Boy's Thaikla shop to be sold there, if any of my readers want to try that route. It's a great book. I even signed a couple of those copies myself, just in case that encouraged anyone to pick it up.

This book is going to be a feature in some coming Patreon content, as I use it in interviews with legends of the sport as a way to get them to give their own thoughts on fighters of the past. We've already filmed Dieselnoi going through the book page by page for 45 minutes or so, giving his honest appraisal through Muay Thai history. Once we get that interview translated and edited you are really going to enjoy it! There is also a similar perusal coming with Krongsak. These coming interviews and more are an additional reason why I'm sharing these now, as it will be best for patron readers to have reference material. This is all part of the Preserve The Legacy Project, making sure that the past lives on with all of us.

Sagat's Grandfather Suk

These first ten legendary fighters go pretty far back. As Dieselnoi said, "these were from my father's day." I don't know much about them other than what is written in their bio, other than Suk. Suk is Sagat's Grandfather - how about that for badass lineage? I've also read that Suk was one of the very first "nakleng" (gangster-like) superstars of the sport, made famous through the new print media that helped popularize the sport back in the day. Before Suk, and I'm not sure where I read this, something Kevin showed me, Muay Thai was really celebrated as a Royal sport, in terms of National image. But Suk - and you can see he has a pronounced a sak yant on his chest - was one of the first "everyman" champions to capture the public imagination, maybe representing the provinces. Dieselnoi also told me that he fought into his 50s and was very strong. In Thailand, many fighters have a nickname in the press, and while Sagat is best known to us as the influence for the Street Fighter character of the same name, his "chaiya" nickname in Thailand is "Grandson of the Giant Suk."

More than one person has also contacted me after seeing reference to this book on my pages, asking for particular fighters or information because they are family members of these legends... how incredible is that?! 

(above, Table of Contents)

First 10 All-Time Greatest

(Above) You can see that Pone is wearing boxing shoes, both in his profile and in the fight image they chose for the bottom corner. Muay Thai and Western Boxing grew together in the 1950s and the decades after, so many of these early entries likely had both Muay Thai and Boxing renown. You can read a little bit more about the evolution of modern Muay Thai parallel to boxing in my Modernization of Muay Thai Timeline article on 8limbs.us