ritualThe dance before the fight

ไหว้ครูรำมวย · wai khru ram muay

Four minutes of not fighting, and it is not a warm-up.

Kru Tony Moore · CC BY-SA 4.0

What it is

Two halves. Wai khru is paying respect to the teacher — kneeling, bowing three times toward the corner. Ram muay is the dance that follows, which is the fighter's own and belongs to his gym.

The long version

Wai khru is not a boxing ritual. The Thai article on it lists the same ceremony for school teachers, for shadow puppetry, for krabi-krabong, and for writing poetry: the form belongs to apprenticeship in general, and boxing is one of its borrowers.

What the fighter is doing in the second half is more specific. A ram muay is taught, it is a gym's signature, and a Thai watching can often name the camp from it. It also tells the other corner something: a man who takes his time in the dance is making a statement about his own composure while the other man stands there in the cold.

Inference — the reason the ceremony survived professionalisation intact, when the rope, the bare feet and the open-weight matchmaking all went, is that it costs the promoter nothing and fills four minutes of a television slot.

Connected to

• The mongkhon Worn through it, and taken off at the end.
• The band What is played under it.
• The armbands The other thing tied on.
• Reading a ram muay How to read one from the seats.

Named here by

• Fon jerng The other dance, and a different relationship.
• The rules that come with it The same two words, in the ring.
• The mongkhon When it comes off.
• The band What it opens under.
• What an evening is shaped like The four minutes.
• khru The ceremony.
• Reading a ram muay The ceremony.

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