Kongsamut Sor. Thanikul - Muay Mat Style (76 min)

This was a surprisingly enjoyable, and instructional session for me. When I first got to the gym, Dieselnoi and Kongsamut were hanging out in their “grandpa chairs,” watching Lumpinee fights on TV. Dieselnoi is allergic to shirts, so he wasn’t wearing one, but Kong was expecting me and ready to start. When I asked him to teach me his style, he kind of had this expression of, “oh, you don’t want that,” and said he was Muay Mat (a puncher). My face lit up and I said that was great, which made his face light up a lot – maybe people aren’t into learning his style – and he took me on the pads. It took us a bit of time to warm up to each other, but once I started asking him questions he just unfolded and his true style came out. It’s fucking awesome. He’s so small that he has to stay in really close (I like that, because I have to do the same), so he doesn’t even bother with kicking the middle of the body. It’s all body shots with his fists, headshots, elbows, and kicking the legs from really close. It’s like being attacked by a thorn bush, or trying to attach a thorn bush when he just blocks you. Kongsamut was a great lesson, verbally, as well. He talked about the importance of having a strong base (strong legs) and balance, as well as how to build momentum in a fight by just snuffing your opponent in the early rounds. For a puncher, he said, you can just go ahead and try to knock someone out in the first round, you don’t have to “save” that for a scoring round. But you also don’t want to a) tire yourself out or b) ruin the visual buildup of a fight, so it’s important to have finesse in the soft-soft-hard rhythm of your power, rather than just swinging at the fences all the time. Some things to look out for:

1. His crazy uppercut. Seriously, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever seen. It’s so long and straight and bizarre, kind of like a Three Stooges nose flick. But, in addition to it being so cool just in how he throws it, it’s part of a larger pattern of his technique which is to leverage punches and pressure under the jaw – like, under the tongue, kind of – as a way to really break the opponent’s posture.
2. The “Chaiya” leg kicks. I call them “Chaiya” because the way he twists so hard and keeps his legs so straight on them is reminiscent of the Boran style of Muay Chaiya. You use your elbows and knees as defensive bars, basically, and you twist hard. He turns almost all the way to the side when he throws some of these kicks and, I can assure you, you don’t want them anywhere near you. He emphasized hitting on the sides of the knee joint several times throughout the lesson. This isn’t allowed in the west in some sanctions, so just bring it up onto the IT BAND for your rule sets, but the technique is the same.
3. The long front arm, short back arm defense. This is a pretty standard “long guard,” but the way he catches punches with his back hand against his mouth is very much from western boxing. It’s really cool when he literally catches the punch and then kicks that exposed ribcage.
4. High Low, it’s a bread and butter kind of tactic, but his use of body punches, head punches and tagging the legs is an especially nasty version of a way to disorient and overwhelm an opponent.
5. Sweeping kicks and teeps to come up the middle. His parries aren’t unusual, but it’s worth noting that he pulls the opponent’s leg outside their frame so he can attack straight up the middle. Some fighters pull the leg across the opponent, so that they get turned and closed up. He opens the opponent up.
6. Blocking knees and kicks with his own knees. This is also kind of an Old School feeling technique, even though lots of fighters use a kind of watered down version. In the Golden Age, blocking with your knees and actually kneeing into the opponent seems to be a theme. Dieselnoi and Kongsamut could not be more different in terms of body size, but they both use this. Long or short, it all hurts the opponent.
7. Swinging for body punches and hooks. Kong held for me to just swing left and right hooks and body punches, for full rounds, twice in this lesson. At the beginning and at the end. He’s teaching me how to feel it, how to feel the back and forth of the weight shift as being what sets up and executes the next move. It’s symmetrical, it’s methodical, it’s a good pace, and it’s powerful.

Kongsamut (right), posing off with Samart when they fought for the 102 lb Lumpinee title, Samart winning his first Lumpinee Belt

Samart vs Kongsamut (above)

If you liked this session you might like these Muay Thai Library sessions, which carry similar themes:

#29 Pornsanae Sitmonchai - The Power of Hooks & Low Kicks (74 min) watch it here 

#17 Burklerk PInsinchai - Dynamic Symmetry (82 min) watch it here 

#38 Sagat Petchyindee (part 2) - Maximum Damage (61 min) watch it here 

#26 Sagat Petchyindee - Explosive Power (57 min) watch it here 

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