A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting (4 page)

We went back to Kum’s house and then wandered down through the one-road village to the square and grabbed some folding chairs. We sat there for a parade of elephants, all dressed out in finery and ridden by monks and children. Some of the elephants were walking billboards for Red Bull and Coca-Cola. There were a few hundred people in the square, mostly children running and shrieking and carrying on. Several columns of dancers in traditional costume came through. Although we were all exhausted from the unfamiliar sun—living at the camp, we never got any sun, as we were training under cover and resting through the days—we sat stoically through it.

After the parade was finished, we wandered back down to Kum’s house. On the way there I saw an elephant handler, a big, heavily muscled, tattooed guy punch his wife, hard, in the stomach, and Johnny saw it, too. I thought we should do something, but Johnny, from inner-city Montreal, said to just stay out of it. I looked around for Kum, but he was far behind us. The moment passed, and I did nothing. So much for the tough fighters.

Then there was the participatory parade around the village that we joined in—strangely crowded for such a small village—an endless line of trucks and vans and people. There was music, and we danced as we walked, and people sprayed us with water, which was welcome in the stifling heat. The Thais seemed happy to have us there, and we were happy to be there, willing to enjoy ourselves.

That night we caught the rickety old run-down bus that passed through town. It was full of people and children and chickens, so we clambered up onto the luggage rack and prostrated ourselves on the bags and baskets. The night air was thick with fat white locusts. We stayed as flat as possible, with our mouths clamped shut, watching the stars roll by. It was a mad, dreamlike ride, and I kept eyeballing the cheap, shitty welds that held the rack to the bus and thinking that we might go around a corner and the rack would shear off, that this is how tourists die in Southeast Asia, but the night was shimmering and the magic of travel and silence took away my free will.

Back in camp, time stretched on and on, but things were changing. The trainers began to notice me. Yaquit, a big, handsome Thai who looked a little like Elvis, would sometimes train me, and he would kick the crap out of me and chuckle with delight. Kum would watch me kick the bag and frown and shake his head, then demonstrate a fuller extension or a thrust of the hips. Slowly, Apidej took more and more of an interest in me, and when I started doing whatever he told me without question—like eating a raw egg in the morning with a Sprite—he decided that I was his property.

Anthony would at times come and lean on the ropes and watch us train. We’d chat and he’d ask me if I was ready to fight. At Fairtex, the
farang
could fight when they felt they were ready, but I’d put him off for two months while I was still getting my bearings. Then one day, as I was unwrapping my hands and covered in a cool film of sweat, Anthony, dressed in his usual black, sidled up to the ring. We bullshitted about training for a few minutes, and then he raised his eyebrows and asked again if I wanted a fight. “Sure, why not?” I said. He nodded, satisfied, and walked away. I hung up my wraps to dry in the afternoon breeze and realized that I had just committed to stepping into the ring for a professional muay Thai fight. Just like that.

Once a month the Lumpini fighters from Fairtex would go to Lumpini stadium, and two or more would have fights. These were big-money fights—career fights—with purses of eighty thousand
baht
(around two thousand dollars U.S.), which is serious money in Thailand. A large part of the camp would go with them, a retinue of trainers and observers and fighters dressed in their Sunday best. We would leave in a parade of vehicles, from tricked-out, low-slung pickups (Yaquit used to drag-race his) to a decrepit old van.

Lumpini stadium was what I came to Thailand for. It epitomizes the romantic lure of Southeast Asia: the heat, the noise, the adrenaline, the betting, and the wildness. On a big night, Lumpini feels full of possibilities, with a dark and bloodstained edge. The concrete amphitheater probably holds anywhere from four to ten thousand people. There are three main sections of seats: The uppermost section consists of benches; it’s where seats are the cheapest and also where the gambling is the heaviest. The middle section has folding chairs that waitresses navigate to bring beer and food. Ringside seats are the most expensive, about twenty dollars U.S. There can be anywhere from nine to twelve fights in a night, with the main-draw fights scheduled about three-quarters of the way through the evening.

Although my fight was not likely to happen for at least another several months—and when it did, it was not going to be in front of four to six thousand people in the Lumpini stadium—Philip wanted me to be a cornerman for Neungsiam’s comeback fight. He wanted me to get used to being in the ring in front of people, to confront that stage fright. The cornermen in muay Thai are directly involved with the fighters during the fight, much more than they are in Western boxing. When a round ends, both cornermen dart from outside the ropes and set up a stool and begin vigorously massaging and rubbing the fighter’s arms and legs. The previous week, Neungsiam had shown me what he wanted.

In the back room there was an assembly line processing the fighters: A fighter stripped down for a vigorous massage with hot liniment, which had the effect of warming him, fully, without him having to waste a drop of energy. He then had Vaseline smeared on his face and chest so that the gloves would slide off his skin and not cut him. When his massage was finished, the fighter got off the table and the next one took his place, with his trainer as his masseur. After the oil massage, the fighter got his cup tied on and put on his fight shorts, emblazoned with his name and the name of his trainer or gym. He warmed up a bit, but not too hard, with a few minutes of shadowboxing. His trainer tied his armbands on, recited short Buddhist or Catholic prayers, and then the
mongkol
—a headdress that used to be made from rolled-up Buddhist scrolls but is now made of decorative plastic—was placed on his head. The mongkol, usually blessed by a priest, helped protect the fighter from harm. Fighters sported different styles of mongkols, some with tassels, some without, many with a Las Vegas garishness. While all this was happening, you could hear the pipes and drums tinking and plinking in their dissonant way, and the crowd outside shouting “
Oh-way!
” in response to a fighter’s good technique or solid hit.

I watched Neungsiam get lubed and then start his warm-up, marching up and down the alleys in the backstage room, throwing a few punches. He seemed extremely confident and calm, even eager. He received his blessings and had his robe threaded onto him, and then Kum and I went out in our traditional red vests and took up position behind Neungsiam’s corner. Although I knew what to do, and it wasn’t that complicated, I was still a little nervous.

Neungsiam’s bout was one of the main events of the evening, and a key step in his comeback. The Thais called him “Mr. Smart,” and if you watched him fight, you knew exactly what they were talking about: He was cold and calculating and explosive. Above all, he was patient, his dark eyes missing nothing, blocking everything, and he loved to punch. A fight was just finishing and Neungsiam was up next.

A typical muay Thai fight starts out slowly. The trainers or promoters are good at matching fighters, and there are few knockouts. The fighters begin by feeling each other out, probing for an obvious weakness. The first round or two might see just a few kicks and blocks per round; the fighters are aware that they must carefully conserve energy for the ordeal of the rounds deeper into the fight. The later rounds, the third and fourth, are where the fights are usually decided. The fighters often go straight into the clinch as they tire, looking to land knees for the most points. The pace quickens, and there is no way to communicate how strenuous this is. Going twelve rounds in Western boxing is a breeze compared to going five in muay Thai—at least, that’s according to Apidej, who had boxed professionally as well.

Neungsiam’s opponent was a current top fighter, higher ranked, and the betting favorite. He was younger and leaner, but he seemed quickly intimidated by Neungsiam’s calm hostility and heavy touch. Neungsiam had power as well as speed, and his careful thinking and reasoning were apparent from ringside. I was too focused on the match to feel any stage fright when Kum and I leapt into the ring to massage Neungsiam between rounds; I just didn’t want to screw up my tiny part of the whole effort. In the corner between rounds, I filled my mouth with water and sprayed it onto Neungsiam’s legs and then roughly and vigorously massaged him, while Kum did the same to his upper body. The crowd breathed like the sea around us.

The fight turned into a muay Thai clinic: Neungsiam took his opponent apart. He checked the kicks and counter-kicked with devastating power, and he punished his man whenever he tried something. Muay Thai matches are very much about composure: breathing through the nose, appearing unwinded and unhurt. Neungsiam’s calm, utterly hostile gaze cut through his man and everyone could see it. He hit too hard and his defense was too complete for his opponent; the man couldn’t find a rhythm and looked more and more ill at ease while trying to appear calm and collected. In the middle of the third round, Neungsiam chased him down in a flurry of pinpoint hard punches—you almost never jab in muay Thai—and knocked him out. He strode coolly away, shaking his right fist in triumph. It was awesome. His opponent left in a wheelchair.

One day when I was in the office, e-mailing my mom, Anthony strode in and said he’d found an opponent for me. I finished the e-mail without mentioning it. The fight was set for July 14, nearly two months away, and I would be facing a heavyweight Japanese fighter who was also new to muay Thai. Anthony was relieved to have found an opponent for me; there were maybe only two Thais fighting near my weight (around 185 pounds) in the whole country, and they both would have obliterated me.

Once my fight was scheduled, it loomed like a long, dark cloud on the horizon. I trained as hard as I could each day, full out. I joined the long morning runs with the Lumpini fighters who were about to fight, out in the dark before anyone else would go. I was discovering the key to building endurance: Push on when you feel you can’t, and next time that moment will come later. I had to push hard, because the fight was a “professional” fight, meaning five rounds.

I had some doubts that would eat into my heart late at night, or when waking from an afternoon nap, but strangely enough my confidence seemed boundless; I couldn’t really imagine a bad outcome. But the fight drew closer and closer, and I began to feel that maybe I was overtraining, or getting sick, and the fears would plague me like a swarm of gnats.

I stayed at it, training hard, and the days crept by until suddenly I was a week away. When gearing up for a fight, the fighter takes two or three days off from training immediately before the event, to allow his now rapacious stamina to rebuild and his body to heal. There were always little things: blisters, cuts, bruises. For my last morning run, I went out with Johann, a bald Belgian fighter with a scorpion tattooed on his ribs (clearly scorpions were a popular motif with the muay Thai crowd), and we went farther than usual. We turned around after five miles and noticed that a dark and dirty monsoon had been sneaking up on us the whole time. Big drops began to sizzle and splatter on the pavement like bleeding flies. In Thailand, for a fighter, the rain is death. The added stress of cold water on a fighter’s already maxed-out immune system almost guarantees sickness, and a sick fighter in a fight has about a third of his normal stamina, sometimes less.

The rain was coming down so hard it misted off the ground up past my knees—a real tropical deluge—and it stripped the humidity out of the air, leaving a chill. About halfway back, Johann stopped to relieve himself; I decided to push on through the red mud and deepening puddles. My socks turned crimson and my calves were coated. When I finally got back to the camp, Apidej was worried, warming up the van to come find me. He hustled me into the hot tub and we skipped training that morning. Luckily, I didn’t get sick.

The next day, Anthony and I received a startling fax from the Japanese promoter of my fight. The other fighter was going to try to make 203 pounds but would probably be over; he was thirty-eight years old; and here was the kicker: He was the 1994 Western Osaka heavyweight karate champion. It was my first fight ever and I weighed 187 pounds. Sometimes a professional fighter gives up two or three pounds. Sixteen pounds would be considered suicide. A larger man hits harder with more weight behind his blows. He also just takes up more space; he can do so much more, he can control the ring. When I sparred with Johnny, who weighs about 140 pounds, we were both surprised; he had better technique and moved well, but I was so much bigger, I could dominate him. I stumbled back to my room, thinking,
How many fights did my opponent have to fight to become a champion? Fifteen? Twenty?
Full-contact karate wasn’t muay Thai, but it was definitely full contact.

A German guy named Bippo, who at twenty-eight had spent a lot of time in Thailand studying muay Thai, had helped me during my training. When I told him about the fax, he looked worried and made no effort to hide it. “You should cancel the fight,” he said. “This is a setup.” He talked about ax-kicks and other bone-breaking karate techniques that I would be completely unprepared for and might walk into blindly. Mostly, though, he talked about experience. “In my first fight, I was so nervous I couldn’t punch,” he told me.

I left Bippo and went upstairs to my room. I thought about his advice. I could quit. I could get out of this! I felt the lure of escape, of dodging responsibility. When I was in junior high school, I loathed the pressure of football games and had a few times faked illness to get out of practice, though I always went to the games. Here was an excuse, an escape hatch. I sat on my dingy bed and stared at the fax. I realized that the guy was trying to psych me out. It enraged me, the idea that this guy thought he could play mind games with me.