MY THOUGHTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND FIGHTING, WELL LETS JUST SAY THEY ARE EXTENSIVE SO THIS IS GOING TO BE A TWO PART WRITE UP. HERE IS PART ONE AND A REMINDER IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED, THEN IT’S PROBABLY BECAUSE I AM TALKING ABOUT YOU SO GO READ SOMETHING ELSE.

You fight because you love to fight, at the end of the day it is hand to hand combat. You are trying to scalp another man and he is trying to scalp you. That is the beauty of Muay Thai, your interpretation versus his and someone walks away with a scalp because their interpretation will be better than the others. To me fighting should have nothing to do with social media. You don’t do it to post stuff on facebook, youtube, or any other social platform.

The facebook fighters today are killing the sport. They go fight and post a picture and then what I call their “jerk off crew” gets on there and tells them they’re the best. Of course you should be proud of your work, nothing wrong with compliments, but if the only reason they fight is for attention instead of the love of combat then there is an issue. Muay Thai isn’t about ego, it’s about respect, tradition, honor.

We not only have facebook fighters, but facebook coaches. They basically tell you to go train with them and they know enough people to get you a title fight for a bullshit belt. They are Cracker Jack coaches, it’s like they get to the bottom of a Cracker Jack box and all of a sudden instead of a toy they find their Muay Thai certificate and now they are certified.

The only championships that matter if you’re a Nak Muay and are light enough are Lumpinee Stadium, Radjamnern Stadium, Omnoi Stadium or Channel 7. Obviously if you can’t make those weights it’s different, but there are other certain belts that carry prestige. We live in an age where it is cool to fake and front. Doesn’t matter if you are a coach or a fighter, but the martial art spirit is dead with a lot of fighters and coaches. I see it all the time, people go to Thailand and register more time under the Sak Yant tattoo needle than they do kicking pads, or more hours taking selfies than logging in road time. If I have energy to take crazy selfies after training all the time then I didn’t work hard enough. I want to be barely able to stand cause as a foreigner I’m playing catch up with regards to the Thais. Being older I have to work three times as hard as them. I can’t wrap my head around the social media era where it is cool to be a phony.

People nowadays seem more concerned with everything like learning to speak the language, getting the sak yants, etc, basically everything outside of the hard work of the daily grind of training then fighting. To be a champion is earned, to be called a Kru is earned, but on social media that is all you see. People calling themselves Kru this, Arajan that. You can’t give yourself a title, it’s earned. Now you can lie because you’re behind the computer screen and you can be a keyboard warrior.

When I got started you couldn’t do that because forums hadn’t become popular. You had to go to people’s face and let them know what you thought or talk behind their back, but hell there wasn’t a screen name so if you went behind someone’s back they could trace that shit talking back to you. Then they could find you and punch your teeth down your throat, so less honorable people were a little more cautious. Cowards and keyboard warriors had to duck and hide and now they are at the forefront because of social media. I run my mouth, but I will tell it to your face. Anyone is welcome to try and punch my teeth down my throat. Shit I’m a fighter I’ve had an ass whooping’ in my life. I know where I stand, I don’t pretend. I’m no world champion, I’m no great Muay Thai fighter, I am a guy that loves Muay Thai and am willing to put my time and when I get a chance I swing my tomahawk and scalp or be scalped. Muay Thai needs to do something like Jiu Jitsu has started. They need to start going out and calling out the fake ass coaches and fighters. Look up the videos on online and you see black belts calling out fake coaches and fighters.

You’re also going to have those guys that say that you don’t need to fight to coach, but I think you do. Why must we as Americans fast track it? In Thailand how many gyms do you run across where the pad holder or head trainer has never fought? Or has only had amateur fights? I have been to a lot of gyms and I have never seen it. How the F you going to be able to truly talk me down from my level of fear if I’m a first-time fighter getting ready to step in there with the possibility of having elbows slice me up like I’ve been smacked by Freddy Krueger. If I am in a fight and I’m in the third round and I am getting my ass whooped then I come back to the corner and you are telling me how to act. If you’ve never fought I am going to turn around to you and say, “wait a minute, get the hell out of here you’ve never been under this pressure so you don’t know what I’m going through. You’re no different than the guy in row 3 seat A.”

Do you have to be a former fighter to teach regular people? Absolutely not, my thing is to be true to yourself and don’t false advertise if you only fought with pads, then cool. Too often you see people in profile pics holding belts and claiming they are such and such multi-time undefeated Muay Thai world champ and Kru this, but they never had a pro fight. Belts as amateurs are cool, being undefeated is cool, but taking one pro fight then saying you are 20–0 multi-time world champ and certified Kru isn’t cool. You’re a 1–0 pro with no pro belts, the end.

Check back next week for part two.

This article was originally published on muaythaiauthority.com

If you enjoyed this piece, please share the love. ❤