#48 Dieselnoi Chor. Thanasukarn 2 - Jam Session (80 min)

With a legitimate claim to being the GOAT, Fighter of the Year Dieselnoi was forced to retire his 135 lb Lumpinee belt, after going down in weight in a huge cut and beating Samart Payakaroon, and then going up in weight and fighting Sagat Petchyindee (twice), cementing his superiority over the best of his generation. The consummate knee fighter, in this session you get to see his style, extemporaneously showing itself in instruction. 

above, Dieselnoi vs Samart

This is a unique session and I love that it exists. I’ve been meaning to add another session to the Library with Dieselnoi, but I’ve been hesitant to do so because of his health. We raised money for him when he faced serious heart issues not that long ago - thank you to everyone who helped. And though he's recovered to some degree, he still is not in a good place, and he just doesn’t have a “moderate” setting in his energy spectrum. When training me or in the Preserve The Legacy 4 Legends seminar he took part in, his lips would turn blue, and he'd have to take repeated breaks. So as a solution I asked him this time to bring a padman so that he could instruct and be able to take frequent breaks without necessarily stopping. 

When I showed up at the New Lumpinee Stadium to train at the ring on the top floor of the parking garage in the back - yeah, there's a gym in the parking structure of Lumpinee Stadium! - the padman Dieselnoi had brought with him was Nopidej Sor. Reodi, a Rajadanmern Featherweight Champion of the later years of the Golden Age. This shouldn’t actually surprise me, Dieslnoi knows everyone and is incredibly popular in the Muay Thai community… but still, I was picturing one of the teenagers who was working the front desk when I made the suggestion. The very cool thing about having Dieselnoi teach with Nop holding pads is that it created two very unique opportunities for this session: 1) Dieselnoi never had to stop being Dieselnoi to show me something; when it’s just him and me, he has to take on the role of the opponent at times, so that I can come forward and counter and hem him into the ropes. But he has to play the role of a retreating, kicking fighter – that’s not Dieselnoi at all. With Nop to hold pads and play the role of my opponent, Dieselnoi got to stay in character the whole time, stepping in to show me how better to eat space, block, counter, and damage the opponent with blocks and checks. 2) Nop is also a knee fighter, but he’s not the same as Dieslnoi (nobody is the same as Dieselnoi), so rather than a teenager diligently holding pads and keeping his mouth shut, as I was imagining, this became a kind of Muay Khao Jam Session with Nop offering points, suggestions, or alternate explanations for what Dieselnoi was saying. The techniques between the two are slightly different, but the ethic of Muay Khao fighting is standard across the board: come forward, block, counter, hem in and kill. You also get to see Dieselnoi’s personality really strongly in this session. He’s an absolutely larger-than-life man and he’s hard to describe. Even if you don’t speak Thai, when he guides me over to the ropes for a break and kind of wraps my arms around the top rope to give me an animated talk on the finer points of drowning your opponent’s will in fatigue and taking their heart in round 3, you can see who he is, how he thinks, and what made him such a formidable force in his reign at the top, beating the best of 3 weight classes. Funnily enough, it’s usually me trying to keep Dieselnoi calm and relaxed in our sessions, but this time, because I was fighting in a couple days, he’s the one having me take a break, giving me a massage and wagging his finger at Nop to keep his power down. These small details of pressing the stomach, the massage on the floor, arms up and breathing – all of these things are methods you’ll find in Muay Thai fights here in Thailand, but they’re also fundamental aspects of how legends of the Golden Age were training. They trained hard – much harder than anyone trains today – and the fact that Dieselnoi utilized these practices in a session with me means that they’re considered part of the process. So is sitting against the ropes, covered in sweat, discussing tactics as we do. I can’t tell you how familiar it has become to see the padmen at my gym finish their rounds and then just lie on the canvas to have one of the kids walk on their legs and back, or just sit and chat to the other trainers, fighters, and fathers. It’s part of training. Things to look for in this session:

1. Don’t be afraid of getting hit – Dieselnoi reiterates this all the time. For the first two rounds, he says it doesn’t matter at all how much you get hit as you close distance and cut off the ring to get your opponent into the ropes. In the very first part of the video he tells me that you just try to keep the opponent’s kicks from hitting (“entering”) your body, so getting kicked on the arms or checking with your legs is fine. 
2. Don’t bring your weapons out first – I get yelled at for this a few times in the session. Dieselnoi is definitely not alone in the strategy of making your opponent “go first” so that you can counter, but in this session he demonstrates how he uses blocks, parries, and kind of swatting away of strikes in order to then take the moment after that strike to close in and land his own. The reason you don’t go first is because your opponent can do the same: if you teep and they sweep it and kick your back, you’re not able to quickly and convincingly get that point back. Once they’re on the ropes though, it’s open season for knees and punches. 
3. Blocks should hurt – There’s a somewhat Old School branch of blocks that look a little less dynamic because the movements aren’t as big, but you’re bending your knee to intercept the opponent’s kick right on your kneecap and it hurts – them, it hurts them. Or you can block by driving that knee into the fleshy part of their thigh on a kick (or wide knee), or under the kick on the hamstring (Dieselnoi loves that one and he’s so long, I guarantee that sucked for his opponents). He says that while your opponent is dealing with the shocking pain of your knee in their thigh on the block, then you can hit them while they’re still stunned and that strike lands or “enters” clean.
4. The bouncing front foot – Dieselnoi keeps is weight on his back foot and bounces his front foot, to hide his teeps or front-side kicks (he doesn’t switch to kick from the front leg, he just fires it), but he’s also ready to block from either side with that front leg. If he happens to have his weight on the front leg, he’s ready to cross block with that back leg, too. His defense is moving forward. His defense hurts.
5. Fatiguing your opponent – a big part of Dieselnoi’s game plan is wearing down the opponent. By letting them kick and run away all they want in the early rounds, they tire themselves out. But he also doesn’t change what he’s doing, so the overall storyline is that he steadily came forward, the opponent tried to evade, and he eventually catches them. It’s not a “dance around looking relaxed for 2 rounds, score in rounds 3 and 4, then dance around for round 5 again,” which is pretty common now. It’s steady, thresher moving over a field until it cuts all the wheat, consistent kind of deal. He says to punch the chest, just under the pecks or at the solar plexus, because it takes someone’s breath more than a stomach punch does. You don’t have muscles to flex on your ribs. He also shows where to hit with your knee to do the most damage.   Mai yoke – this point on the knee is one that Langsuan focused on, too, but described differently. Dieselnoi grabs my leg and collapses it into itself several times, showing me how tight he wants the leg folded when you hit with the knee. Your heel is right up against your butt. He also shows that the point of contact is actually the lower part of the knee cap. The reason this is important, and why these two elements go together to make a clear technical point, is that if you fold your leg tight like that the knee swings up from the power of the hip. Dieselnoi literally tells me a few times not to “lift” (yoke) my knee at all, as there’s no power in it. You fold the leg and drive forward with the hip, which swings the knee up like one of those Indiana Jones, pendulum blades that he has to duck under or around. It makes a huge difference for power in the knee to swing it like that, but it also comes up from below rather than spearing “out,” which is easier to block or see or counter.  

a still from the famous Thai pad session from Dieselnoi's glory days: watch that here 

There are a lot of great session in the Library, but this one is different, and precious. As I often repeat, the point of the Library is not only to preserve techniques, but also to capture the men who fought with them, because at the highest level the man can't be separated out from the technique. It expresses him, and perhaps there is no better case of that than Dieselnoi. In this session with a 2nd man holding Dieselnoi gets to completely improvise and react to everything he sees. There is very little footage from his days fighting the best in Thailand - here is a rare clip of him vs Sagat, for instance - so if his Muay Thai is going to be preserved it's going to be in sessions like this, where he can just express himself, freely. Thank you to everyone who supports the Library and allows documentation like this to develop. 

above, Dieselnoi at the airport read to fly to Brazil for a seminar this month. By bringing present day exposure to these legends and krus the Preserve The Legacy project I believe is creating opportunities. 

If you enjoyed this session you may also like these other Muay Khao master sessions:

#3 Dieselnoi  Chor Thanasukarn  - The King of Knees (54 min) - watch it here 

Dieselnoi is the greatest knee fighter who ever lived, and it just wasn't because of his height. Spending this hour with him lets you feel how much love and energy he pours into his Muay Thai, even at this age, the real secret to what make him dominant in the Golden Age of the sport. There is nobody like Dieselnoi. Nobody.

#30 Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn 2 - Muay Khao Craft  (42 min) watch it here 

The greatest knee fighter who ever lived not only shares his secrets in ring tactics - how to draw out your opponent and then ultimately hem them in - and various closing and tripping techniques, he also shows his amazing heart. He's a Legend among Legends, the fighter without equal in the history of the sport.

4 Legends Seminar - Bangkok April 2018 (1 hr 20 min)

Muay Thai Library legends Karuhat, Chatchai, Namkabuan and Dieselnoi were in seminar on two days instructing students from around the world. This is an hour and twenty minute video edit of a first-of-its-kind seminar in Bangkok. watch it here 

#41  Samson Isaan - The Art of Dern Fighting (64 min) watch it here 

To "dern" in Thai is to "walk", which means basically to just come forward no matter what, to create a relentlessness. Voted Fighter of the Year in 1991, Samson Isaan was one of the great Dern Fighters of the Golden Age, and in this session he shows his forward pulsing techniques which are meant to just overwhelm his opponent. Also a great session for pressure Southpaw fighters. 

#45 Langsuan Panyutapum - Monster Muay Khao Training (66 min) watch it here 

One of the greatest knee fighters who ever fought, 1987 Fighter of the Year Langsuan shows how an elite Muay Khao fighter of his day trained. This session is powerful on the basics that elevate the body and mind, at high repetition, allowing the relentless, pressing style that made Langsuan the fighter nobody wanted to fight.

#23 Boraphet Pinsinchai - Muay Khao Mastery (64 min) watch it here 

Kru Ten (Boraphet Pinsinchai) lives and breathes the Muay Khao fight style, and in this session just unfolds a treasure of interlocking techniques, all of which express what I would call his "sticky" style. Trips, counters, locks, elbows the list is extensive, almost too much to fit into an hour.

#2 Joe Hongthong - Developing Muay Khao Style (87 min) - watch it here 

This is nearly an hour and a half of straight on Muay Khao instruction. Joe was a top stadium fighter and he's watched me fight for several years, so this is Advanced Level tweaking, as he teaches how to bring elbows and knees together, discussing the ways that dragging back can work for a forward fighter, and the differences with more technical (femur) approaches. Muay Khao is a technique unto itself.