#35 Yodsanan Sityodtong - Southpaw Tactics & Power (86 min)

You can also listen to this session as a podcast on iTunes

Yodsanan Sor Nanthachai (Sityodtong) is from Sisaket province in Isaan and started fighting Muay Thai before he ever really had learned any of it. “I had no one to teach me,” he says. But he just loves Muay Thai and he loves training, which at 44 years old you can still see in the way he moves around the ring. At about 15 years old he moved to Pattaya, about 1.5 hours south of Bangkok, to the renouned Sityodthong camp. At the time, this was a hard-training camp and it produced the most champions from a single gym in Thai history (filling their stable with fighters contracted to a variety of other gyms, so their names don’t reflect training all together at the Sityodthong camp), including Samart and Kongthoranee Payakaroon, and Wangchannoi Sor. Palangchai. As Yodsanan tells it, he just loved learning. If he didn’t train hard, he’d feel bad in his heart and think all night about how he could be better the next day. If he trained well, he’d sleep well but he’d still be digesting everything from the work he’d put in. 

When he was still a young fighter at the gym, a teammate who was his same size had to pull out of a fight with only 3 days’ notice due to injury or sickness, so Yodsanan filled his spot. Yodsanan knocked the opponent out in the first round with a hook that, when he tells this story, he emphasizes by looking at his own fist with shock, like “what the hell?” As a result of this impressive KO, the head of the gym encouraged him to change to western boxing. The gym had successful western boxing champions and was well-equipped for this training, but Yodsanan loved Muay Thai. The head of the gym said it was up to Yodsanan, but explained that the possibilities for great success in Muay Thai are short-lived, whereas the successes of boxing - which at the time was more international opportunity - took longer, but were a better payoff. So Yodsanan became a boxer. He ended up defending his PABA title 19 times before taking the WBA Super Flyweight title, which he defended several times  And he took that devastating hook with him all along the way (57-3-1 with a blistering 46 KOs). He’s a Southpaw fighter and is called, at least locally here in Pattaya, “mini Mike Tyson,” due to his power.

Incredibly, at 44 years old Yodsanan is still fighting. He won with his beautiful hook at the ONE Championships in Bangkok last year, an MMA promotion out of Singapore. I watched him train for that fight at WKO here in Pattaya, where I took this private with him and which is owned by Sifu McInnes, who instructed and held pads for Yodsanan when he was still a teenager. There are photos of his come-up all over the walls here. Watching Yodsanan train, you can witness quite easily how much he loves the feeling of these movements in his body. He expresses his joy in the way he moves and he trains hard. So, I was excited to film him for the Muay Thai Library - Preserve the Legacy Project to archive his slick collection of skills. Even though his greatest success was in western boxing, his Muay Thai is beautiful, fast, slick and powerful. He transitions between distances for each with a kind of bilingual fluency. 

What to look out for:

1. The footwork and balance on a jab is very stabby and fast, with a lunge in and snap back that leaves the rear foot in place. You don’t lose distance as you snap back, so you can immediately lunge forward again with another strike.
2. The jab and teep work together to annoy your opponent and keep them off-balance, as well as constantly having to restart their process of finding distance and posting for strikes. Just jab and teep forever; the teep can go to the leg, the body, the chest… anywhere.
3. Yodsanan really wants you to be sure before throwing a kick, which is something I’ve heard from a number of fighters. I liked how he explained it, though, which is that if you feel like the kick might need a bit of reaching to land, take the step anyway. When in doubt, step. When not in doubt, kick already.
4. He has this awesome step outside of the lead arm of the opponent, which is for Orthodox vs. Southpaw, when your front sides match up. You can still do this if you’re both the same stance, but you have to switch your own stance as you parry over, like how Pornsanae does. But, unlike Karuhat, who barely has you touch the opponent’s guard as you step over, Yodsanan slaps the lead arm down to further off-balance the opponent as you step behind them. Then kick.
5. He shows a pop-over from the clinch and then you squeeze the opponent’s upper body while their arm is across their neck, which makes them pretty defenseless and easy to move around. He emphasizes that, if you have a dominant position like this, you must juice it for all it’s worth and keep kneeing, pulling, etc.
6. Muay Thai is a visual sport. I loved how a few times he emphasized the importance of the impact of a strike being visible to all judges. People forget that Muay Thai is judged and the winner is determined by people outside of the ring. So being aware of how demonstrative your dominance is should not be a minimal consideration. It’s a great one.
7. Yodsanan made a big deal about elbows being like knives. He actually grabs my arm and has me “thud” his face with the flatter part above the bone, then grazes his eyebrows and jaw with just the bone and my GOD, I can feel what he’s talking about. It’s not power, it’s grazing. *snickt*
8. When Yodsanan breaks down the power of the cross and the turn of the hook, he demonstrates how the points of the foot, knee, hip, shoulder and arm all have to work together to get the mechanics and power into the punch. His cross is insane. His hook is scary. And he says that you have to relax in order to hide it, so your opponent thinks, “ah, no problem,” rather than if they see you gearing up or tensing to throw with power. Relaxed is fast, hard to see, and powerful.