58 Fun Facts About Muay Thai

Muay Thai is famously nicknamed the "Art of" how many "Limbs"?

Eight: fists, elbows, knees and legs, two of each, where a boxer has only two fists to strike with and most kickboxing rules bar the elbows.

A Thai boxer is known in Thai by what two-word term?

Nak Muay: so many Westerners now move to Bangkok's gyms to train and fight that they have a label of their own, nak muay farang, 'foreign boxers'.

What is the name of the headband a Muay Thai fighter wears into the ring before a bout?

Mongkhon: a monk blesses it and only the trainer handles it, lifting it from the fighter's head once the pre-fight ritual ends, and it must never touch the ground.

The armbands worn by Muay Thai fighters are called what?

Pra jiad: worn for luck, it must never touch the ground or be stepped over, and unlike the headband, which is lifted off before the first bell, it stays on the arm through the fight.

In which Jean-Claude Van Damme film does his character learn Muay Thai to avenge his brother against Tong Po?

Kickboxer: the fearsome Thai champion Tong Po was played under heavy make-up by the Moroccan-born Michel Qissi, who had joined the 1989 film as a fight adviser.

Which part of the leg are Thai boxers trained to always kick with?

The shin: the foot is a cluster of small bones that break easily, while the shinbone lands as one solid block, and fighters toughen it for years on pads and heavy bags.

The pre-fight ritual dance performed in the ring to honour a fighter's teacher is called what?

Wai khru ram muay: before the dance begins, the fighter walks the edge of the ring and bows at each corner, a circuit known as sealing the ring.

What traditionally accompanies a Muay Thai bout in Thailand, from the opening ritual to the final bell?

A live ringside band: a reed pipe, two drums and finger cymbals play slow and stately through the ritual, then pick up speed as the fighting intensifies.

What is the name of the umbrella term for the ancient, pre-1930s unarmed martial arts of Thailand?

Muay Boran means 'ancient boxing', yet the label itself is modern: it was coined only after gloves, timed rounds and ring rules had reshaped the old styles into today's sport.

Before clocks reached the ring, how were rounds timed in old Siamese boxing?

By a sinking coconut shell: a pierced shell was floated on water, and when it filled and went under, a drum was beaten to end the round.

Each March, Muay Thai fighters from around the world gather to honour their teachers in which ruined former capital of Siam?

Ayutthaya: the mass ceremony falls around 17 March, the day Thailand honours a legendary boxer said to have been carried off as a prisoner when the city fell to Burma in 1767.

Two boxing brothers from which country, later the home of savate, lost to Siam's royal guardsmen before King Rama I?

France: one brother could not catch the back-pedalling guardsman Muen Phlan, and when the other stepped in to help, the Siamese court's men piled in and beat them both.

Sak yant, which many Thai fighters carry into the ring for protection, is a sacred form of what?

Tattoo: the designs are tapped into the skin by hand with a long needle and blessed by a monk, and each is said to bring its wearer a particular protection or piece of luck.

The 18th-century Siamese king said to have boxed in disguise at temple fairs is nicknamed after which animal?

Tiger: Sanphet VIII, the Tiger King, is remembered as a boxing monarch, and Thailand's National Muay Thai Day, 6 February, was fixed in his honour.

Before gloves arrived in the 1920s, Thai boxers fought 'khat chueak', with their fists bound in what?

Hemp rope: knotted over the knuckles, it cut as well as bruised, and after a fighter died in a rope-fisted bout in Bangkok in 1928 the government made gloves compulsory.

In which Ryan Gosling film does his character run a Bangkok Thai boxing club as a front for drug dealing?

Only God Forgives: when Gosling's Julian finally challenges a Bangkok policeman to a fight at the club, he is beaten without landing a single blow.

The 2003 film Beautiful Boxer tells the true story of the Thai fighter Nong Toom, who fought to pay for what?

Gender-affirming surgery: Nong Toom fought in make-up at 16, kissed the men she had just beaten, and retired in 1999 to have the operation.

Rajadamnern Stadium opened in 1945 without which feature, added six years later?

A roof: a wartime shortage of building materials stalled the work, which took only four months to finish once it resumed in August 1945, and the arena stayed open to the sky until 1951.

Lumpinee Boxing Stadium is run by which organisation?

The Royal Thai Army: its welfare department runs the venue and takes the gate, and when the stadium became a COVID-19 cluster in March 2020, the general in charge of it was among those infected.

Lumpinee Stadium's name comes from Lumbini, the birthplace of whom?

The Buddha: Lumbini gave its name first to Bangkok's Lumphini Park and then to the stadium, which has kept it even though it moved away from the park to a new site in 2014.

Which Street Fighter boss, a towering one-eyed champion from Thailand, fights in the Muay Thai style?

Sagat: the eyepatched final boss of the 1987 original shares his name with a real Bangkok champion of that era, Sagat Petchyindee, though Capcom has never confirmed it borrowed it.

Until 2021, who had never been allowed to fight in the ring at Bangkok's Lumpinee Stadium?

Women: a superstition held that menstruation would pollute the sacred ring, so they could not even touch it until the stadium dropped its ban in 2021.

Which Dutch fighter, nicknamed 'The Diamond', became a star in Thailand in the 1990s without ever winning a Lumpinee belt?

Ramon Dekkers: he beat the reigning Lumpinee champion Namphon in Amsterdam in 1990, lost the rematch in Bangkok, then fought the Thai star Coban four times and won two of them.

Dieselnoi, the towering 1980s Lumpinee champion who ran out of challengers, was feared above all for which weapon?

Knees: at about 188 cm he could drive them into the head of a man his own weight, which earned him the name Sky-Piercing Knee and four years as a champion nobody wanted to face.

Which fighter, the "Muhammad Ali of Muay Thai", also won a world super bantamweight boxing title in 1986?

Samart Payakaroon: he knocked out Mexico's Lupe Pintor in Bangkok for the belt, lost it to Jeff Fenech in Sydney the following year, and built a second career as a pop singer and film actor.

Which Thai fighter, famous for dancing her way to the ring, has held world titles in Muay Thai, kickboxing and MMA?

Stamp Fairtex: she won the Muay Thai and kickboxing belts first, then switched to MMA and took that title in 2023, becoming her promotion's first champion in three sports.

Buakaw Banchamek's ring name means what in Thai?

White lotus: in 2012 he walked out on the camp that had managed him since his teens, saying its bosses had insulted him, and opened one of his own the same year.

Buakaw became internationally famous by winning which Japanese kickboxing tournament in 2004 and 2006?

K-1 World MAX: he lost the 2005 final to Andy Souwer by split decision after an extra round, then beat the Dutchman in the 2006 final to become its first two-time champion.

Lethwei, a bare-knuckle cousin of Muay Thai in which headbutts are legal, comes from which neighbouring country?

Myanmar: lethwei counts the head as a ninth weapon, fists are wrapped in nothing but tape and gauze, and under traditional rules a bout with no knockout is declared a draw.

Which 2017 film tells the true story of Billy Moore, an English boxer who fought Muay Thai to survive a Thai prison?

A Prayer Before Dawn: it was shot inside a real Thai prison with a cast made up largely of actual inmates, and follows Moore as he earns a place in the prison's boxing tournaments.

Rodtang's ring name is the everyday Thai word for which military vehicle?

Tank: rot means 'vehicle' and thang 'drum' or 'tank'; he began training at seven and was soon fighting to bring money home to his family.

Saenchai fought as Sor.Kingstar and later Sor.Khamsing, following a Thai custom of taking a ring surname from what?

Their gym: Saenchai became Sor.Khamsing on joining the camp of the Olympic boxing champion Somluck Kamsing, and has been renamed with almost every move since.

Rodtang lost a 2018 kickboxing bout in an extra round to which Japanese star?

Tenshin Nasukawa: the judges scored the five rounds a draw and gave him the decider, and with it the first RISE featherweight world title.

ONE Championship was founded in 2011 by Victor Cui and which entrepreneur?

Chatri Sityodtong: the Thai-born Harvard MBA, himself a certified Muay Thai instructor, launched it as a mixed martial arts promotion and added Muay Thai bouts only in 2018.

Who became ONE Championship's first Muay Thai world champion in any division, crowned in 2018?

Sam-A Gaiyanghadao: he won the flyweight belt by knockout, lost it a year later, then dropped a division and became the first strawweight champion in both Muay Thai and kickboxing.

In Tony Jaa's 2005 film The Protector, his character fights his way across Sydney to recover which stolen animals?

Elephants: Jaa's Kham follows a stolen bull and its calf abroad, and the film's showpiece is a four-minute fight up several flights of stairs, filmed in one unbroken take.

In Ong-Bak, Tony Jaa's character Ting travels to Bangkok to recover what stolen object?

The head of a Buddha statue: thieves from Bangkok take it from the village's ancient image, called Ong-Bak, and in the finale a far larger stone head topples onto the crime lord Komtuan.

Before Ong-Bak made him a star, Tony Jaa had spent years working as what?

A stuntman: he doubled for Robin Shou in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, and Ong-Bak won its cult following because he did its stunts without wires or computer effects.

Which 2015 blockbuster gave Tony Jaa his first acting role in a Hollywood film?

Furious 7: he plays the enforcer Kiet, who trades blows with Paul Walker's character, in a film that became a farewell to Walker after the actor died during production.

Which UFC strawweight champion had earlier won five world titles in amateur Muay Thai?

Joanna Jędrzejczyk: the Pole fought Muay Thai for ten years before switching to mixed martial arts, then made five successful defences of the UFC strawweight belt.

Which body's Executive Board granted Muaythai provisional recognition in December 2016?

The IOC: recognition let the sport's federation draw on Olympic funding and development programmes, but it does not by itself put a sport on the programme of the Games.

Which Brazilian used the Muay Thai clinch and knees to take the UFC middleweight title from Rich Franklin in 2006?

Anderson Silva: he locked Franklin in the clinch, drove knees into his body and then broke his nose with one to the face, ending the fight inside three minutes.

Valentina Shevchenko, a multiple-time amateur Muay Thai world champion, became the first UFC champion from which Central Asian country?

Kyrgyzstan: born in Bishkek, she was fighting at 12, when a knockout of a much older opponent is said to have earned her the nickname 'Bullet'.

Under what name did the 2023 SEA Games stage their Muay Thai event, prompting a Thai boycott?

Kun Khmer: the hosts, Cambodia, said the sport began in Khmer culture and renamed the event, Thailand withdrew its fighters, and Cambodia vowed to send none to Thailand's 2025 Games in return.

In Muay Thai terminology, the straight push kick used to control distance is called what?

Thip: fighters use it to keep an opponent at range, but aimed at the face it is taken as an insult, in a culture that treats the feet as the lowest part of the body.

Blocking a roundhouse kick with the outside of the raised lower leg is known by what one-word term?

Check: at UFC 261 in 2021 Chris Weidman's leg snapped on Uriah Hall's check 17 seconds into the fight, before Hall had thrown a single strike.

John Wayne Parr, 'The Gunslinger', who moved to Thailand at 19 to live in its fight camps, comes from which country?

Australia: born plain Wayne Parr, he trained in Thailand under the champion Sangtiennoi and went on to fight the best of his era, Buakaw and Yodsanklai among them.

In Muay Thai, 'khao loi' is the Thai name for which spectacular strike?

Flying knee: the fighter leaps forward and drives a knee home, the strike Jorge Masvidal used to knock out Ben Askren in a UFC-record five seconds in 2019.

Which Muay Thai strike is prized for slicing open cuts above the eye that can force a stoppage?

The elbow: fighters aim it just above the brow so that blood runs into the eye, blinding the opponent and often forcing the referee to stop the bout.

'Chap kho', the Thai name for the Muay Thai clinch, literally describes grabbing which part of the body?

The neck: where a boxing referee breaks a clinch at once, Thai fighters are left to lock their hands behind the opponent's head and work there with knees and elbows.

Which boxing body, known for its green belt, also crowns Muay Thai world champions through an affiliate?

The WBC: the Mexico City-based council launched its Muay Thai arm at a convention on the Thai island of Phuket in 2004, to rank fighters and sanction title bouts.

At Rajadamnern Stadium, legal gambling on the second level is conducted by what method?

Hand signals: the big stadiums hold a special licence in a country where most betting is banned, and the regulars upstairs flash their bets across the stands like traders on an exchange floor.

Which Thai weapons art, Muay Thai's armed sibling, takes its name from the sword and the staff?

Krabi-krabong: one of its heroes is a Siamese general remembered as 'the Broken Sword', said to have fought on after one of his twin blades broke in battle.

Thai boxing was once just 'muay'; 'Thai' was added in the early 1900s to tell it apart from what?

Western boxing: once British-style boxing entered a Bangkok college curriculum in 1913, teachers needed two labels, muay sakon for the international sport and muay Thai for the home-grown one.

Under IFMA rules, what do judges count first to split two fighters who finish level on points?

Scoring strikes landed: a winner must be named, so judges recount clean techniques over the whole bout, then weigh their force, and only after that fatigue, aggression, defence and fouls.

Muay Thai was included at the 2023 European Games held in which Polish city?

Krakow: the Games were shared with the surrounding Malopolska region, and the Muaythai bouts were fought not in the city but in the town of Myslenice.

A much-shared training video shows the Thai star Buakaw kicking down what?

A banana tree: its trunk is fibrous and spongy rather than woody, closer to a dense heavy bag than to timber, though Buakaw had been conditioning his legs since childhood.

Thai fighters' armbands are said to have begun as strips torn from a mother's what?

Sarong: warriors are said to have tied the strip round an arm before leaving for battle, a piece of home blessed by monks to bring them luck and see them safely back.