Rob Cox
Somluck Kamsing, right, fought Jomhod Kiatadisak last month in Bangkok as part of a string of comeback fights there.
BANGKOK — Before his Olympic gold medal, before his sponsorship deals, his movies and his music, Somluck Kamsing was one of thousands of young muay Thai fighters from Isan, Thailand’s poorest region.
“My family worked all day to be able to eat at night,” he said.
At a temple fair in their village, there was a small ring for muay Thai fights. Like many Isan men, Somluck’s father had been a fighter when he was young.
“My father put me in the ring, but I didn’t want to do it,” said Somluck, who was 7 or 8 at the time. “He hit me, so I had to fight.”
He won money, a trophy and his first fans. When Somluck walked around the village, people complimented his skill.
“I had a natural talent,” he said through an interpreter. “A gift from heaven.”
Local notice led to regional fame for the charismatic Somluck.
“I was a bet hunter,” he said. “I’d go from village to village fighting to earn money.”
Muay Thai is sustained by gamblers, who contribute to the atmosphere at matches but are more concerned with results than artistry. For others, muay Thai is a spectacle, and for a select few like Somluck, it is a way to a better life.
When he reached 15 and the minimum fighting weight, 100 pounds, he made his debut at the prestigious Lumpini Stadium here. As usual, the second and third tiers of the stadium, which holds 9,500 spectators, were full of bettors wiggling their raised fingers throughout the fights, indicating the changing odds of wagers among themselves.
Muay Thai, a sport closely linked to kickboxing that was adapted from hand-to-hand combat, is as known for intricate rituals like the prefight dance wai kru ram muay as for devastating elbow and knee strikes.
“Such a mixture of gentleness and violence is characteristic of the Thai people and their culture,” the Thai poet Montri Umavijani wrote.
Virat Vacirarattanawong, a Lumpini Stadium promoter, remembered watching the 15-year-old Somluck. “He was shining,” he said through an interpreter. “He had a kind of glamour about him. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that he was not an ordinary boy.”
Thai fighters compete so frequently that they are usually considered veterans by age 27. But Kamsing, now 40, returned to the ring last fall and won. On Saturday, an American audience will get a chance to take the measure of Somluck when he faces Chike Lindsay in Pomona, Calif.
By the time Somluck was 18, he had competed in more than 200 bouts. Despite his ability, he never became a champion at Lumpini or at the smaller Rajadamnern Stadium, the nation’s other storied muay Thai arena. Somluck was considered such a prohibitive favorite that the big gamblers lost interest and the promoters did not want to risk their best prospects against him.
“I was out of a job,” he said. “I could not support myself.”
So Somluck switched to amateur boxing by refining the four striking tools of muay Thai — fists, feet, elbows and knees — into one. He approached matches the way he always did: before each fight, he paid respect to his amulet, which he believes protects him, and thought about his deceased father.
“The most important thing is I trust in myself,” he said. “I am a boxer. I have to believe that I can beat my opponent. For some of them I have to train, for some don’t. It is easy for me to read fighters.”
He was a success as a featherweight boxer. At 19, Somluck represented Thailand at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and he won his nation’s first Olympic gold medal four years later. Some may remember Somluck as the boxer who bowed to each compass direction before his bouts at the 1996 Atlanta Games. In the final, he outpunched the Bulgarian Serafim Todorov, who had beaten 19-year-old Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the semifinals.
Somluck, then 23, returned from the Olympics a national hero. He had an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej. He received more than $1 million in bonuses from the government and his sponsors. “My life went from the earth to the stars,” he said. “I was famous. I was able to do advertising, movies, music, you name it. Everything changed.”
Muay Thai Fighter Somluck Kamsing Returns to Home Ring
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Muay Thai Fighter Somluck Kamsing Returns to Home Ring
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Muay Thai Fighter Somluck Kamsing Returns to Home Ring
