#122 Tappaya Sit Or. - Muay Khao Strength In Femeu (82 min) (Patreon)

Tappaya is the owner and head of the Sor. Klinmee Gym in Pattaya, where he brought up his cousins, Sudsakorn (THAI FIGHT) and Sinsamut (ONE) Sor. Klinmee; his nephew (on source said uncle, despite age) is Somdet "Rambaa" Sit Or.; his older brother now teaches in Japan and was both a Muay Thai fighter and had a successful western boxing career, Yoktai Sit Or.; and I don't know what you call the uncle of your uncle, but Tepniramit is also in the Muay Thai Library with his Old School style. It's a whole family history of Muay Thai.

Tappaya is arguably Pattaya's most successful local hero (excluding Samart and Kongtoranee, neither of whom were born in Pattaya but trained at Sityodtong), as he was a Channel 7 fighter, as well as holding the 135 lb Rajadamnern title for 3 years (1997-2000), and a WMC champion. Tappaya was a Femeu fighter himself, but he trains his fighters in more of a Muay Khao ethic, to be very strong and very adroit in clinching.

What to Look Out For:

1) How to Train Knees on the Bag: this is right at the start of the session and I really appreciate when teachers explain how to train. I think it's taken for granted that you just tell someone to go knee the bag 500 times and usually kids learn from watching and copying each other (or their seniors, really), but I remember the first time I came to Thailand I didn't even know how to use a heavy bag. Yes, anyone can hit a bag. But understanding not only what to do to fill the rounds in, and furthermore what anything is for, that's something I really appreciate learning. Tappaya showed me a little bit of a progression. First it's just the regular skip knees on the bag, the kind they tell you to do hundreds and hundreds of and then walk away. Then he demonstrated how to knee if you aren't yet coordinated enough to skip (you can also do this when you're injured), and from that how to push, swing, and twist the bag to simulate clinching. This kind of play on the bag is so, so helpful.

2) Timing in the Clinch/ Sweeps: I group these together even though they aren't taught simultaneously, because it's the same technique. For the turn on the knee, the key points for me were: a) work to make the correlation between which hand is gripping and which knee is what you're timing automatic; if you have to think, you're already too slow; b) on the knees, turn your hip toward the kneeing leg to kind of twist into it, bringing your foot with you so you're stepping (like a waltz) toward the kneeing leg, while pulling the neck with the hand that's on the standing leg's side; c) for the kick and the jumping knee, you're either sweeping or pulling as the opponent's weight is lifting off the ground.

3) Kick to Knee Bar: this is a pretty classic Femeu technique, to kick and then kind of bend your knee so that your shin bars the opponent from kicking back or coming forward. But Tappaya has a twist on it, which is that he angles his heel up and his knee down (rather than the shin horizontal) so that the attempted counter kick or knee gets the point of your knee in the fleshy bit of the thigh. That hurts.

4) The Contender to Open Side Attack: once I'd learned the concept of Open Side from Karuhat, it changed and improved my understanding of scoring and strategy immensely. Tappaya has a great reason for not following the Open Side is paramount model, because he's a counter fighter. He throws his back kick to catch an approaching opponent and then uses the knee bar/ block to the closed side because the most natural weapon from an opponent with the same stance as you will be to use their back leg as a counter. Nothing in Muay Thai is this way, all the time, every time; nothing. There are benefits and trade-offs to everything and choosing what to use mostly has to do with context and you're own style.

5) Clinch Escape: Kevin loved this move so much and I've never seen it anywhere else. Tappaya shows how to punish your opponent when they grab your waist by shoving their head toward your armpit and then basically under it. If you had an underside grab and they're wrecking your position, you can use a cross-face escape that was also favored by Sangtiennoi to twist the opponent's arm off.

6) Missed Kicks and Floating Blocks: Tappaya showed a few techniques that are for show, but that doesn't mean they're only flair. Missing a kick when an opponent dodges back on it makes you look inferior, so he shows two ways of handling an opponent who likes to dodge. He also uses the floating block technique to be faster than your opponent's counter if you are also facing a kicker.

Tappaya's Top 5 All-Time Greatest Yodmuay watch here it joins our series where we ask great fighters who were the greatest fighters ever. See all those here.

You can see lots of the gym in the filmed session, but I also shot this walk through video of the Sor. Klinmee gym:

Photos from Tappaya's career:

Tappaya in an advertisement for an engine.

Tappaya with his Rajadamnern belt

Tappaya with his WMC title belt

Tappaya (blue) fighting Robert Kaennorasing (#4 on Tappaya's Top 5 All-Time Greatest list)

Tappaya (blue) planting a nice face teep

Other Sessions Referenced in this Voiceover. Dig into them for further study:

#15 Yodkhunpon Sittraipum "The Elbow Hunter" 2 - Escapes  (48 min) watch it here 

#11 Karuhat Sor. Supawan 2 - Float and Shock (82 min) watch it here 

#65 Namsaknoi Yudthagarngamtorn - Sharking The Angles (67 min) watch it here 

#99 Yodwicha Por Boonsit 3 - Spearing the Middle, Fighting With Rhythm (66 min) watch it here 

#82 Chanchai Sor. Tummarungsri - The King of Teeps (54 min) watch it here 

Part of the Klinmee clan:

#100 Tepniramit Sitsamnao | Defend and Punish: Old School Pattaya Muay (75 min) watch it here 

#21 Rambaa Somdet M16 1 - Clinch Trips & Throws (34 min) watch it here 

#62 Rambaa Somdet M16 2 - His Stinging Attack (83 min) watch it here

#86 Rambaa Somdet M16 3  - The Art of the Stinging Attack (67 min) watch it here

Some of Kevin's photos from the session (here see Kevin's full photo essay on Tappaya's Muay Thai, including thoughts on his mid-clinch counter):

see Kevin's full photo essay on Tappaya's Muay Thai