Training with a Legend

The amazing thing about Tiger Muay Thai is the mix of different people that you get here. Today for example I had breakfast with an American pro MMA fighter, Lunch with a southerner and dinner with a Lebanese and a Canadian guy. Everyone is here for their own little reason, be it a short break from the trouble of the world or 3 months to get ready for the next big fight. Everyone has a story to tell and a unique angle on the training and all of that comes together to form Tiger Muay Thai.

Every now and then the harmony of our little rabble gets broken by something new and today that was TV camera’s and photographers. During this mornings BJJ No-Gi session the doors suddenly opened and in started piling loads of people looking like journalists along with video cameras and photographers. No one was really too sure what was going on but we were told by our instructor to keep drilling what we had been shown and he would explain it all later. It seemed that they were all there to take pictures and video of the training of one guy, an unassuming member of our group who turned out to be a bit more of a celebrity in the fighting world than most of us had realised.

The man that they had all come to see goes by the name of Jomhod “King of the Ring” Kiatadisak and is a Muay Thai legend. He has been fighting and winning titles since the late 80’s and is credited with a record of 276 wins to 24 losses in his 25+ year career. That is over a 10:1 ratio which puts him as one of the all time greatest Muay Thai fighters of all time. Even at 44 years old he still doesn’t look like a man to me messed with and is probably in the best shape of anyone in the class by a long shot. The reason for all the interest in him was that he is currently in training for his MMA fighting debut in Bangkok in a few days time and this is a guy who hits the mats and rolls around like the rest of us.

Without the media intervention today I would never have known who this guy was, what his record was or how much of a machine he is inside a Muay Thai ring. To me he was just another dude in class, learning some moves and figuring it out as he goes. Our trainer said something which did make everyone feel kind of proud and that was that no matter how good anyone is or what level of experience they have at the end of the day we are all a class together. No matter who a person is outside the class when we are on the mats we are all students and without the rest of the class, new and experienced alike, there would not be a class for the professionals to train in.

It just goes to show. A little over a week in Thailand and already I’m rolling with the Pros!