My wife and I are on the first full day of our honeymoon, and in true selfish fashion, I decided to take my wife to check out some fights. After having to mitigate the myriad travel agencies in the lobby of the hotel that were trying to push me to attend events in affiliate stadiums on different days, we got the concierge to reserve two VIP tickets to the event tonight in the brand new Chalong Boxing Stadium. As with everything else here in Thailand, tickets were cheap. For front row VIP tickets in a nice, swanky stadium by Thai standards, I paid a price less than some General Admission tickets for the worst US amateur MMA shows I’ve ever attended.

Once we got to the area around the stadium after about an hour in rush hour traffic, we got to the stadium as they were still setting up, telling us to give them another hour. We walked around, eventually settling on a Thai/Italian restaurant across the street from the stadium, where I actually had one of the better pizzas I’ve had in a long time, and my wife had some good Pad Thai.

Once we walked back across the street to the stadium, I checked out their Pro shop, which was full of snazzy gear for cheaper prices than anything I’ve ever seen in the US in an actual brick and mortar setting. There were all kinds of different patterns of gloves that made me seriously ponder going H.A.M and showing back up to the gym with my “glove swag” on a level of general swag unseen except for being in the presence of my good friend, Terrell “The Hollywood Hobbit” Hobbs, who happens to be one of the most “swagged out” fighters on the East Coast, at least.

But I digress.

The fights themselves were great. While snacking on fried chicken, popcorn, Coca Cola, and a single Singha (Thai Beer)…my wife and I were treated to a card of great fights. As you’ll see from some of the attached pictures, there were a few fights that featured kids/teenagers. There were no elbows allowed in these bouts with children, and two were stopped by the referees due to kids not defending themselves quite as much as they’d need to..so the referees waved those bouts off for fighter safety purposes.

I watched an Israeli fighter devastate his Russian opponent with leg kicks, obliterating his right leg. If that fight had gone another round or two instead of just 5 rounds, the Russian guy would have lost just from leg kicks alone, as he was barely able to walk by the end of the 5th, and had to be helped out of the stadium.

I watched a fight between a shorter Brazilian and a taller, heavily tattooed Chinese guy. The Chinese fighter owned the first 1.5 rounds, picking apart his opponent at range. But after that, the Brazilian started to tee off on the Chinese fighter, deftly entering into the clinch and then landing countless knees and elbows, constantly winning the important positional battles in the clinch in order to further facilitate the barrages of punches, elbows, and knees he was throwing. The Brazilian fighter won a very convincing decision.

I also saw a fight between a Japanese fighter and a local Thai native. While his Thai opponent looked to work a lot of straight kicks, the Japanese fighter was constantly able to get inside and light his opponent up with nice punching combinations and elbows once the distance allowed. Halfway through the third round, after blocking a kick, the Japanese fighter got inside and absolutely flattened his opponent with a straight right, knocking him out cold for quite some time.

Overall, the fights were all quite entertaining. It was interesting to think about the fact that some of the fighters, who were still teenagers, could come to America and absolutely devastate grown men in the standup department. It was pretty nuts to see a level of expertise and fluidity of striking in minors that far exceeds some Professional Muay Thai fighters, and especially a fair amount of Professional MMA fighters that I’ve seen in the United States.

The atmosphere was pretty awesome as well, with traditional Thai music playing during the rounds, juxtaposed with all kinds of rap, dance music, Thai power ballads, and the finest of Linkin Park jams in between various rounds and bouts. The local Thai crowd was very into the show, with a level of cheering for strikes that is oft unseen in America, whereas most of the foreigners just sat and enjoyed the fights a lot more quietly. I also noticed a guy constantly running around taking bets as well as yelling/getting yelled at by various people…but more on him later!

As the show came to a close, we walked outside, saw a few cabs in the parking lot, briefly walked out to the street to see almost all the shops and restaurants closed, then walked back into the parking lot only to find all of the cabs had departed. After the stadium staff had no luck in calling us a cab, the aforementioned bookie came back up to us and offered to take us back to our hotel for considerably cheaper than your average cab here. While part of me was a bit worried about the possibility of being robbed or worse, he was quite small, and I felt confident in my various forms of training and life experiences to disarm and/or physically overpower him and take his SUV and keep on driving to the nearest police station if necessary…so I said ok, much to the chagrin of my wife. As it turns out, among all the hats this guy wore, he actually walked us to his SUV, which was actually a licensed cab! You never know, but I do believe he is my first cab driver/bookie that I’ve encountered! Haha

The ride home was akin to what I’d imagine riding in the back of a grand prix style race car would be. This dude never ceased to drive his SUV less than 2-3 times the posted speed limit. If hitting curbs was scored, he’d have scored a decent number of points. While he was most definitely, in retrospect, under the influence of alcohol or some other illicit substance, this guy got us back to our hotel in record time. I just felt a bit bad, as while I was smiling and laughing about the experience on the way home, I looked over and saw that my wife was a bit distraught. I guess if I haven’t experienced much gnarlier situations in my life, I may have been a bit more disconcerted as well. This bookie/cab driver drove in a way that make Ricky Bobby from the movie Talladega Nights seem like a slow driving, bespectacled septuagenarian.

My wife made me promise to arrange better and more professional transportation if we would attend further Muay Thai events throughout our honeymoon, a demand to which I will most definitely acquiesce to.

All in all, I’m pretty stoked to have caught some awesome Muay Thai fights this early into my honeymoon. My wife is awesome!