styleMuay Chaiya

มวยไชยา · muay chaiya

Good form. A tight guard, and footwork taught before anything else.

Unknown photographer · Public domain

What it is

The southern line, from Chaiya district in what is now Surat Thani. Known for defence: elbows in, shoulders up, and a triangle of footwork underneath.

The long version

The Thai account starts with a man nobody has a full name for. Pho Than Ma — Father Ma — was a boxing teacher from Bangkok who left the capital for reasons the sources do not give, ended up abbot of a forest temple outside Chaiya, and taught the town to fight.

It was then adopted upward. Phraya Wachi Sattayarak, governor of Chaiya, became a patron and a teacher himself; his son Khet Sriyaphai wrote the book that carried the style into print.

The fights happened at Sala Kao Hong, the nine-room pavilion at Phumriang, at the Chak Phra festival in the eleventh lunar month: a dirt floor, four posts, hemp rope for the ropes, no weigh-in — two men who looked about the same size were a match. Raw cotton thread on the hands instead of gloves, a prajiat tied around the head for the whole fight.

The format was yok wian, the rotating round. Every pair fought round one, then every pair fought round two, and so on to five. Any pair that could not finish five dropped out.

Inference — that format explains the style. A man fighting five rounds interleaved with everybody else's five rounds cannot afford to be hit, and defence stops being a preference.

Connected to

• The four lines, and the rhyme that ranks them One of the four.
• The three-pit step What it teaches first.
• Khet Sriyaphai Who wrote it down.
• The armbands Worn through the fight, not just into the ring.
• The rope Thread, in this case, rather than rope.

Named here by

• The three-pit step The school that teaches it.
• The four lines, and the rhyme that ranks them Good form.
• The armbands Where it went round the head.
• Khet Sriyaphai The school he carried.
• A camp is not a school A line with a school.
• The rope Where it was thread rather than rope.
• Chaiya The style.
• yok Where yok wian was fought.

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