[TRAVELS] The Day I Met Buakaw, and Lived Happily Ever After

The Idea

The thought of training in Thailand, even for an afternoon, has lurked in my mind for a while. The thought grew stronger with each of the frequent trips I have had to make to Bangkok for a live deal in recent months. A full slate of Friday meetings and the chance to have the wif swing by after some business of her own made the prospect ineluctable.

And if you were to do it -- to put yourself through the hell and toughness and above all the lack of air conditioning -- why settle for just any of the many, quality Muay Thai gyms sprawling across Bangkok and the rest of the country? Why not make sure you can witness one of your real heroes in action as a result?

So we arranged for transportation, a guide-slash-translator, and confirmed that Buakaw would be training at the Por Pramuk Gym that particular Saturday.

The Trip

Chachoengsao Province, Bang Khla, the Bang Pakong River, all exactly as they have appeared in K-1 promotion videos preceding Buakaw's appearances.

Not much can be said about the journey. Endless highway. Then some not-so-highway, narrower streets through town. A small sign indicating the turn-off for the gym which the unacquainted would surely miss, followed by some dirt roads. Then fresh-water shrimp farms. No gas station, no food stall, no 7-Eleven, just fresh-water shrimp farms.

A few kilometers on the backroads before reaching the gym, we ran into Buakaw and the team running. They were already halfway through their afternoon warm-up run. Chai, our go-between, asked if I wanted to join them. I demurred, thinking (i) it to be excessively awkward for a first encounter, (ii) I was not yet appropriately dressed for the activity, and (iii) it might wear me out a precious little too much before whatever else it was the trainers had in store for me. Wimp.

The Gym

Gym training with Nis. Six pad rounds.

Nis -- whose name is apparently Sanit; go figure -- taught me quite a bit about technique in a short while. Along the way, I had some horribly embarrassing bouts of stage fright, such as dropping the wrong hand on front kicks more than once.

Knee strike: worked on left knee only. Left hand on opponent's head, right on his clavicle. Push down as you strike. Knee comes up, hip juts forward, but head and shoulders arch backward. Plant left foot forward. Always move forward. Use your hands to push opponent backward at the same time to set up the next strike.

Right hook: never used, according to Nis. When striking with the right hand, use cross only. Perhaps because a right-handed opponent will always be able to see the right hook coming?

Power-side mid kick: don't throw too high. Lean head into your blocking arm, which should be straight up and perpendicular to the ground. Teaches approach of throwing the kick-side hand away.

Keep chin tucked always. Including when throwing the elbow. With the right elbow, your elbow points should end up in line with your chin and nose. Throwing the elbow any further exposes your right side to a counter. Chin tucked inside your shoulder, inside the opening of the V made by your right arm.

For a right-hander, stepping forward always means moving the left foot first. Stepping backwards always means stepping backward with the right foot first. Never forget. Drill drill drill.

Nis didn't seem to mind the switching rather than stepping before left kicks. I wasn't quite sure whether he similarly approved of the cross check (e.g., left shin to block opponent's left kick) but I think it was OK.



After 5 pad rounds -- consisting of 2 pad rounds, a break to let Miyuki work out, 2 more and another Miyuki break, and 1 more round -- Nis asked me, "Tired?"

"One more," I responded, pantingly.

"You like Muay Thai?"

"Yes. But I'm no good."

"Nah, you not too bad. You come here train. One week, two week. You get better."

That was heart-warming. And then we set off into our last round.

Obviously, Nis probably just wants my money. That's his job after all. But part of me thinks that, maybe if I were so bad that it wouldn't be worth it to be stuck teaching me again in exchange for my small amount of marginal income to the gym, he would never have said those kind words.




The Man

It's like you can see Buakaw's bricks in 3-D. His hits -- repeated middle kicks and knees on a bag and punches against swinging spare tires -- sound and feel incredibly sharp and painful in live 3-D as well, even when half a gym away.

The downside of working out was having relatively little time to watch Buakaw himself train. We had only a few minutes after we were done to watch him wail interminable, rapid-fire punches into some swinging spare tires.

After his training, Buakaw graciously came by to join us for some pictures. While we waited for the photos to come out of the gym's digital photo printer (the only 21st century convenience we noticed on the entire premises), we chatted.

His English was quite good. Much better than his Japanese, of which he said he could speak "only leeeee-tle bit." We could carry on a pleasant conversation among the three of us, to the exclusion of our guide and go-between Chai.

I think the first thing I said to him was that he had a good fight against Warren Stevelmans in Los Angeles, just a week or two prior for Muay Thai Premier League. He responded with a question in some unprecedented combination of English words (and maybe a hand-and-finger gesture) which somehow indubitably meant, "Did you watch it in person?", to which I had to reply that I saw it on Youtube.

I confess to and professed much bro-love for Buakaw. "To me, even the Andy Souwer fights -- you won all of them." He thanked me a couple of times for that statement.

We also talked haltingly about the movie "Yamada." None of us could figure out whether it had been released yet in Japan on top of Thailand, but Buakaw said that they promoted it in the arena in August when he took on Makino at Thai Fight in Japan.

I asked him twice about how long more he plans to fight. I think he understood the question but chose to ignore it. Just in case it really was a language issue, I asked the question of Chai in Japanese. Rather than translate, Chai responded himself, saying that Buakaw was close to retirement, that he was tired of the training and the grind.

Buakaw's minimum purse, I'm told, is 2 million yen (roughly US$25,000 at current exchange rates). So he can't fight in Thailand anymore; no stadium or local show could possibly pay him that.

According to Chai, for his first fight as a single-digit-years-old child, Buakaw made about 200 yen. And half went to the gym owner.



Buakaw's reticence on the previous query meant I never got the chance to ask my money question: What do you feel that you still need to do, i.e., who do you think you need to fight, in the rest of your career?

Filippo from Yokkao, who was visiting the gym that day and with whom the wif and I chatted before our training session, was not optimistic that his promotion could piece together Buakaw vs Giorgio Petrosyan II. He mumbled that one of them wanted only K-1 rules. I would have to imagine that's Petrosyan; after all, it is Buakaw who left K-1.



Though yet unmarried, his love was of the more typical variety. He made a laughter-filled remark about "1 . . . 2 . . . 3!" Japanese women in response to my wife's question about the presence of any girlfriend, which provoked her equally light-hearted admonishment.




The Future

We also met the future of the gym, in Buabarn Por Pramuk. He sat next to Buakaw, who said he was already "Baby Champion" of Thailand. Miyuki found him to be absolutely adorable. Now she wants to sponsor him.

He trained longer than everyone else that day, the last training day of the week. After Por Pramuk Gym has produced fighters like Namsaknoi, Chokdee, Buakaw, and Ponsawan, it will be worth watching little Buabarn.