Photos by Lindsey Newhall

The young man stared unseeingly out the window of the air conditioning cleaning and repair shop where he worked. He was thinking about his father again. The shop owners knew his father had died only a few months before, and that he was working slowly through his grief. They had offered him a job cleaning AC units. What the shop owners only vaguely knew was that their fit, young employee, only in his early 20s, was an up-and-coming contender in Thailand's OneSongchai Muay Thai promotions.

Jun, known in the ring as Thepnimit Sitmonchai, had been an up-and-coming contender, but that was before he quit Muay Thai. The death of his father had shaken him hard. His father had been the one to introduce him to Muay Thai when Jun was a boy of eight. It was as if his father had been an embodiment of Jun's Muay Thai inspiration. He had faithfully attended each of Jun's fights. Without his father, Jun's passion for fighting faded and with it, the future he had once seen in Muay Thai.

Photo courtesy of Abigail McCullough

Jun was born in January 1986 into a family of farmers in Isaan, Thailand's largely agrarian northeastern region. The family bought their own land in Nakhon Phanom province when Jun was a small child. Living was basic—they tended fields, kept chickens, and used fire in lieu of electricity. Occasionally Jun's parents left home for month-long jobs at construction sites, leaving Jun and his sister, only two years older than he, at home to fend for themselves. Each time before the parents left, they would tell their young children to call on their neighbors for help, but that it was their own responsibility to provide for themselves. With the parents gone, Jun and his sister subsisted on their chickens, wild birds, and fish they caught.

Despite (or perhaps due to) his rural background, Jun did well in school. He was a dedicated student, walking the long way to school in his very early years before his parents could afford to buy him shoes, behaving well in class, turning in assignments on time. Regardless of their unstable income, his parents made education a priority and used incentives to motivate their children. Jun's father promised him a new bike if he brought home good marks. His father began saving, and by the time Jun was eight, he'd earned his bike.

That same year, Jun's father introduced his eight-year-old son into the world of Muay Thai. With no gyms in the area, Jun trained in the rice fields. His warmup runs were shoeless jaunts through the paddies. A sack of rice was his punching bag. His sparring buddies were other local kids and his instructor a friend of his father's.

At his first fight, Jun weighed only 18kg (about 40 pounds). His opponent was older and heavier, a nine-year-old whose two extra kilos was a substantial power difference at that size. On the lead up to the fight, Jun's mother could see her son was sick. She discouraged him from fighting. "You're sick," she said. "You don't have to fight. You can rest and then try again." But eight-year-old Jun insisted. He was too excited not to fight.

Sick little Jun lost his first fight on points after three rounds. His mother gathered him up and brought him to the hospital, where her fears were confirmed. Jun was diagnosed with malaria.

A resilient child, Jun was back in the ring for his second fight within a few months. This time, the opponents were evenly matched, and Jun won by knockout, a kick to the ribs. He was elated and so was his father. Jun loved the approval and attention he received from his father in the context of Muay Thai. The sport became an arena in which the two could connect. His father was supportive, encouraging, and most importantly, he was present—he always made it a point to attend each of Jun's fights. To Jun, he was a good father and a good man, hardworking and reliable despite his alcohol problems.

By age 12, Jun was making a name for himself in Isaan. He fought for three regional Isaan titles, a hefty accomplishment in a part of the world saturated with talented and driven Thai boxers. Despite losing the title fights, his name was out there. A family friend recommended he leave rural Isaan and focus on developing into a professional fighter at a gym across the country. That's when Jun first heard the name of Sitmonchai Gym.

The gym was all the way in Kanchanaburi Province, to the west of Bangkok. The Sitmonchai Gym of 20 years ago was modest and tiny compared to its current state, but to then-12-year-old Jun, it was enormous, especially for a boy used to clinching with his father and sparring with a couple local kids in the middle of a rice paddy. Sitmonchai was a real gym with real punching bags and a couple dozen real training partners, including the rising star Pornsanae Sitmonchai.

But Jun missed his family in Isaan. For the first few weeks at Sitmonchai, he stole away to the washroom everyday and tried to stifle his tears. The older boys didn't make it easier, especially not Pornsanae. Sixteen at the time, Pornsanae was the gym's local Kanchanaburi boy who grew up nearby and pushed the little newcomers around. Jun remembers how Pornsanae would follow him into the washroom and pick on him, make him cry. It always happened in the washroom; Pornsanae knew he'd be reprimanded if anyone else witnessed the bullying.

Now nearly 20 years later, Jun and Pornsanae are as close as brothers. They laugh about it now. "P'Nae was a real shit talker," Jun recalls with a smile. "He was a trouble maker, and he wanted all the little kids to be scared of him."

After the initial period of adjustment, Jun began to enjoy life at Sitmonchai. Away from his busy former life on the farm in rural Isaan, Jun was able to invest all his time into schoolwork and Muay Thai training in his new Kanchanaburi home. Educational opportunities in Kanchanaburi were superior to Isaan. Jun's father was pleased his son was far from the drug and alcohol problems so prevalent in their Isaan home province. The gym family loved him, especially gym mama Sriprasert. He was her golden boy for ages.

Jun's Muay Thai career progressed steadily. He came into his own as a fighter in his late teens, after a few rocky years of multiple loses as a new Sitmonchai fighter. His parents were proud of his fight career and doubly proud of the educational level he was pursuing—a bachelor's degree in university. They told him to consider government work in the future, suggested military or law enforcement. Jun stayed faithful to Muay Thai, though. He enjoyed the freedom of being a fighter, told his parents there might be a potential future in the sport, even after his retirement from the ring.

Then his father died. Heart attack. He was only 59. It happened when Jun was 22, on the rise in the OneSongchai promotion. He heard the news while cutting weight a few days prior to a fight at Rajadamnern Stadium. Sitmonchai Gym owner P' Ae canceled the fight. Jun went home to Isaan immediately.

Like many children do for the death of a parent or close relative, Jun ordained as a monk for three days while the funeral was taking place. In 2011, he ordained again for a month in Isaan for his father's memory, and retreated into a quiet melancholy. When he reemerged, fighting and training stopped mattering. Practicing Muay Thai became too painful, reminding Jun of the time he'd spent as a young boy training with his father in the rice fields, or how he used to see his father in the crowd cheering him on during every fight. Jun left Sitmonchai Gym, left Muay Thai altogether, and ended up at an air conditioning service shop somewhere in Kanchanaburi.

The AC shop wasn't as fulfilling as he'd hoped, and it wasn't enough to put his father or Muay Thai out of his mind. Working in a new field gave Jun a renewed appreciation for the role the sport had always played in his life. He felt lost without his father, and further lost without Muay Thai. After a year of grieving, Jun approached the owners of Sitmonchai and asked if he could come home. They welcomed him without hesitation.

Soon after returning to Sitmonchai, Jun became one of the few Thai boxers in Thailand to earn a college degree. His was in public administration. After earning his degree, he faced a choice of career paths. Again, he chose Muay Thai.

The decision to remain steadfast to his athletic career proved lucrative. In addition to fighting, he landed a gig in Boxing Boys, a Muay Thai-meets-breakdancing stage show. More importantly, he began teaching others how to fight.

When Sitmonchai opened to foreigners about five years ago, Jun helped train the gym's new international fighters. Turns out he was a natural at teaching. Foreign customers regularly approached Abigail McCullough, Sitmonchai's foreign liaison and Jun's longtime girlfriend, to tell her how much they enjoyed training with him and to inquire if he was available for private coaching.

This sort of long-term career in Muay Thai has only recently become a possibility for fighters, and it owes itself largely to the influx of foreigners into Thailand's Muay Thai landscape. In the past, few boxers were able to find reliable salaries as coaches after retiring from fighting; there just isn't enough money in raising fighters to provide a livelihood for most trainers. Even today, many young fighters in rural Thailand are trained by older family members or other adults in the community, and the vast majority of those trainers have primary jobs outside Muay Thai. With the increase of foreigners hungry to learn Muay Thai in its country of origin, however, stable employment as a full-time trainer has become a reality for many retired boxers.

Foreign interest in Muay Thai has also opened doors for Thai trainers to travel internationally. Sitmonchai's Thai boxers have found temporary and long-term employment all over the world, including Australia, Europe, and North America. Still an active fighter, Jun has taught a number of seminars in England and Italy. Muay Thai has taken him abroad, has given him a foundation for a lifelong career. He credits Muay Thai with giving him the means to put himself through school all the way through college, a rare accomplishment for a Thai boxer. It's not just financial or career help from Thai boxing that Jun acknowledges, but the personal qualities the Muay Thai lifestyle develops. "What I love about Muay Thai is the opposition," Jun says. "And the heart. And the fight."

Jun is now approaching 30, classically a time of transition from fighter to coach. Looking back, he chalks up his success largely to his father's influence. His father started him into Muay Thai, trained him, attended all his fights. Jun refrained from drugs and alcohol because of his father's expectations. He worked hard in school and earned his bachelor's degree because of his father's hopes. After his father died and his world fell apart, he slowly picked up the pieces and continued building on the success he'd already achieved as a fighter. He says he did it to make his father proud, wherever his father was.

Jun continues to work at Sitmonchai Gym and abroad, both as a trainer and fighter. He has worked in Europe is looking to break into the American Muay Thai scene. In the meantime, when an AC unit needs cleaning at Sitmonchai, the gym owners know whom to call.

Special thanks to Frances Watthanaya and Abigail McCullough for Thai-English interpretation.

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