Yodkhunpon "The Elbow Hunter" pt 1 | Slicing Elbow 37 min (Patreon)

Yodkhunpon "The Elbow Hunter of 100 Stitches",  simultaneously held the Lumpinee and Rajadamnern 118 lb belts, a rare feat in the annals of Muay Thai history. 
The Petchrungruang gym where I train is encircled by small, one-room apartments. To the back is a chicken farm, where you can hear the roosters crowing at all hours and on weekends men will walk through the gym area holding fighting chickens under their arms. These things were noteable (and still are) when I first arrived, but they’ve become familiar. So, too, is the completely remarkable fact that a Muay Thai legend, Yodkhunpon, lives in one of these little one-room apartments with his brother on the other side of the gym wall. He isn’t really part of the gym, so much as adjunct to it, part of a loose circle of Thais that orbit a Thai family gym. Sometimes he just appears at the side of the ring and watches me on the bag or asks me about my upcoming fights, like he’s just anybody, or like I’m somebody. It’s awesome. 
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Khun, as he goes by, is very soft-spoken. His voice is quiet and everything he says is measured, as though he’s thinking as he speaks. In a conversation, there are longish pauses when he’s considering his answer or what he wants to ask next. And he’s quite small, a slim build and his head is always kind of bowed forward, although his back is upright and connotes a proud posture. It’s when he starts throwing his elbows, or demonstrating a knee, that you see the violence in him erupt. In training he doesn’t throw hard, but it’s scary as hell to be on the receiving end of his movements. Khun moves quickly, with a kind of looseness that’s incredible, he locks the top of your head and you feel like a fish caught on a hook, and his face (which you won’t see, but in video you can) is a perfect expression of his muscle memory of fighting. His technique isn’t because it looks good on a bag or is theoretically efficient; it’s practical, it’s meant for impact and maximum damage. In the way I described Karuhat’s tactic as creating tension in his opponent in order to be able to read them, everything Yodkhunpon does is creating fear in his opponents. His footwork is flawless as he moves through empty space, but he moves through you when he’s striking. It takes your breath away, even when you know he won’t hurt you.
Many of the top fighters have secondary nicknames, something like a “catchphrase” to describe their style. Yodkhunpon, whose fight name means the “ultimate warlord”, was known as the “elbow hunter of 100 stitches,” because he sliced up so many of his opponents. Watch any of his highlights and you’ll see lots of blood. Watch even a single elbow of his in shadow and you’ll see how. It’s like his limbs are butterfly knives - he’s the Edward Scissorhands of Muay Thai.
I personally really like Khun. I love his quiet disposition and his equally quiet, but potent, violence in all his moves. Part of what first drew me to Muay Thai was the notion that every single move is designed to end the fight. It’s not a tap-tap, point scoring ethic, although certainly that has become a style in much of modern sport Muay. Not at its heart though. Yodkhunpon speaks from the heart of Muay Thai. He has stillness, which is his quiet self, and explosion, which is his forward-driving and terrific intention. Champions don’t always make good teachers and the best teachers often weren’t the most praised fighters. It’s just ability to break down and explain, to diagnose and care enough to build up a fighter. Khun is a rare example of a fighter who held the 118 lbs title at both Rajadamnern and Lumpinee at the same time, which is an incredibly rare feat… and he’s also an exceptionally good teacher. You can see in the video how he watches me, pauses and considers what it is that is mechanically flawed, or where he wants the technique to expand. I get the impression that he’s not adamant about a style of technique because that’s the “right way” according to anything other than his own experience of that movement doing damage a million times. As someone who has trained with a lot of different teachers, I acknowledge the benefit of every movement I’m shown but may not adopt them for myself. Sometimes I’ll adjust the move when that trainer is looking at me, but I don’t keep it for myself. With Yodkhunpon’s style, I take it with me. I practice it on the bag when he’s not around. I self-correct in shadow for weeks between sightings of him. I didn’t see him for a couple months (he doesn’t train regularly at the gym, even though he’s just over the other side of the wall and I could go find him anytime), and one morning he had a client. As his student was warming up in the ring, Khun watched me from over the ropes as I hit the bag. I’d been practicing his lead elbow for all this time, but it hadn’t been a focus, so it just came out as part of the combinations I was throwing at the heavybag. Khun smiled and said my elbows were beautiful. I know, because they’re inspired by his elbows… and now I’m working on that beautiful violence.
In this video are some really unique strikes, two that I love. 
* His lead, slicing elbow is trademark. He works a lot on spacing and looseness which is very important because he gets very little extension in his whip across. You have to close the distance with body position.
* I'm obsessed with his "don't lean back!" knee. Because he's an in close Muay Khao fighter, setting up his elbows, he sees the traditional lean back as not only vulnerable, but also ineffective. He is all about delivering blows in fight position, and his knees have a stand in, puncturing trajectory. He was a Petchyindee promotion fighter, and I see similarity between his knees and Petchyindee's Sagat, but he disposes of all lean back and magnifies the crossing action. 
This is just Part 1. Another 45 minutes will be published for my supporters further down the line. There is so much to absorb I wanted to make sure it was digestable so I broke it into two parts.
You can see a playlist of Yodkhunpon's fights here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFIbj6VvBW006Cwf6kV6w3ddnIjmaj8Hx
About 9 months ago I had my first session with Yodkhunpon, some of which is filmed here. The full hour is on Nak Muay Nation, there are some very good GIFs in the post:
http://8limbs.us/muay-thai-technique/subtle-elbow-techniques-one-hour-with-the-elbow-hunter-yodkhunpon