“Little Neung” Kiat Busaba 1st Round KO | Following Through on Strikes

  August 12, 2013 – Kalare Stadium, Chiang Mai – First rounds in Thailand are very different than in the West.  Many times fighters use the round to “feel...

 

August 12, 2013 – Kalare Stadium, Chiang Mai – First rounds in Thailand are very different than in the West.  Many times fighters use the round to “feel out” an opponent, displaying speed and skill at half-strength as a kind of promise to the audience (and their opponent) of the tricks or power to come.  However, sometimes this light display will erupt into the power and aggressiveness of a sudden knock out.  Neung has a nice left hook to right cross combination that he used several times in this first round, fairly non-aggressively, but it set him up for the perfect left knee KO when his opponent leans back from the punches, and is caught by the right hand.  This is a danger when trying to be an evasive fighter whose main trick is backing straight up.

You have to watch the whole round to see just how beautiful the suddenness is; it isn’t just a cool knock out, it’s a beautiful and illustrative example of Muay Thai – relaxed, controlled, calm, then explosive, then relaxed again.  Like fighting fish floating in a little water globe.

After the fight Andy wanted me to make sure I understood through this example how important it is to follow up on strikes and combinations.  If you back someone up and then don’t follow through, you’ve gotten nowhere; if you back someone up like this and keep going it’s a very different story.  You can also see in the footwork just a very basic, natural “walking forward” step, almost identical to walking down the street: step (hop) left (jab, cross – but the right foot stays in place), then right, left: something I’ve been working on.

Neung was so stoked after this fight.  He’s won by KO in the past few fights I’ve witnessed and every time he seems surprised by himself, even though he’s always totally controlled in his finishes.  And then he struts.

2yloy

 

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A 100 lb. (46 kg) female Muay Thai fighter. Originally I trained under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) and Kaensak sor. Ploenjit in New Jersey. I then moved to Thailand to train and fight full time in April of 2012, devoting myself to fighting 100 Thai fights, as well as blogging full time. Having surpassed 100, and then 200, becoming the westerner with the most fights in Thailand, in history, my new goal is to fight an impossible 471 times, the historical record for the greatest number of documented professional fights (see western boxer Len Wickwar, circa 1940), and along the way to continue documenting the Muay Thai of Thailand in the Muay Thai Library project: see patreon.com/sylviemuay

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