Sep 27 Muay Thai – Interview with Kru Chris Rawlings

Over the years the national sport of Thailand Muay Thai has grown hugely in popularity and is now practiced all over the world and for me the go to guy for tuition has always been my good friend Kru Chris Rawlings – he has fought and taught in Thailand, has produced an impressive stable of fighters and runs the busy Munkorn Dam Gym in Westclif-on-Sea in Essex.

I met Chris through my Dad and by making use of his gym.  We also worked on the Door together and collaborated with to take one of my old students into his first MMA match.  Chris is an unassuming, humble and very quiet man who’s knowledge of Muay Thai and coaching skills are in high demand amongst many top level Muay Thai and MMA fighters wanting to improve their standup ‘game’.   As well as being extremely skilled in the physical aspects of the art Chris also has a deep understanding of its cultural and historic elements as well and always makes for fascinating conversation.

Recently I was fortunate enough to catch up with Chris and chat with him about his journey through the Martial Arts that took him all the way to Thailand and back…

GK Hi Chris, could we start by finding out a bit about yourself and how you found your way into the Martial Arts.

CR Well I was born in Wickford, Essex in 1965 so I’m becoming an old man now!  I’ve always been into sports and I played squash for Essex when I was 14 and starting to get into weight training in my mid-teens.  I picked up an injury through the weights that actually lead me into Martial Arts.  The injury meant that I couldn’t lift heavy weights anymore so I started to do more circuit training and eventually got into Karate.

GK How old were you when you started Karate?

CR I started in 1988 at 23 going to the Goju Kai dojo studying under Andy Tunnick and also Ian McGarrity before he left for America.  I stayed there for about two years but we didn’t really do enough sparring so I started Kick Boxing under a guy called Chris Williams.

GK How did you find the move from Karate into Kick Boxing?

CR When I started Kick Boxing I couldn’t understand why I was getting so much and soon realised that it was because the Karate I was doing was very ‘stop-start’ and the Kick Boxing was continuous – meaning that you always had to think two moves in advance which was the aspect of it I really enjoyed.

GK So how did you move from Kick Boxing into Muay Thai?

CR Well I was enjoying the Kick Boxing classes but Chris Williams moved away and the new instructor, Danny Haywood had also done Thai Boxing so I started to get into it and stayed with him for about a year but unfortunately he left the area also so I found my way back into Kick Boxing again.  I fought in a few shows and then started training with another guy in Southend who was teaching Muay Thai.  I got chatting with him and he agreed that if I taught his lads all the spinning kicks and fitness stuff he’d teach me about the history of Muay Thai and show me the elbows, knees and clinch work it used.

At the time I was really into my fitness training so it seemed like a great exchange.   After about a year I went up to a Martial Arts show in Birmingham at the NEC that had top guys from loads of different Martial Arts including  a guy called Tony Moore who is the head of the British Muay Thai Council.  Tony done a demonstration with the weapons we use in Muay Thai.  I really enjoyed the weapons demonstration so I asked my instructor if I could learn it – he gave me gave me the number of a guy who he said could show me and it turned out to be Tony Moore!

GK So it was fate?

CR Yeah… I phoned Tony up and booked a lesson with him in Manchester.  I had a two-hour lesson booked and in the first hour he looked at my stuff and the taught me the weapons work in the second hour. 

GK How was the lesson?

CR Fantastic and I learnt more about Muay Thai in two hours with Tony than I had in the previous year.   I found that in the gym we were doing things all back to front!  Like the Mongkol (the headband worn by Muay Thai fighters – Editor) that I thought was something that all fighters got after they’d trained at the gym for a certain period of time – because in our gym that was the way we done things. There was a little ceremony, someone said something in Thai and then you got you Mongkol.  Tony explained to me that the Mongkol is given to you by your instructor when you’re ready to go off and start your own school.  Then you when your fighters fight they where the gyms Mongkol.  Once you have a student that is ready to teach you then continue the line by giving them their own Mongkol that their fighters can wear.  So it is something very important which all the fighters wear when they represent the gym… not something everyone is given just to for turning up.  After that I became a student of Tony and I’ve yet to meet anyone who knows more about their art than him!

GK When did you receive your Mongkol?

CR Well it’s not a set exam it’s something that’s evaluated over time and in 1997 I went up for a regular training session and instead of training I was made into an Instructor and there was a ceremony – which was a bit of a shock.  In 1998 I went out to Thailand and Tony told me that if I saw a Mongkol that I liked to buy it and bring it back to him.  I bought one in Thailand and we had the ceremony in which it was blessed with holy water.  Tony also wrote a Thai prayer (as he speaks and writes Thai fluently) on a piece of paper that was wrapped around the Mongkol and has never been taken off since.  Everyone who has ever fought for the gym has worn it.

GK Is there a lot of religious emphasis in Muay Thai?

CR The Thai’s are a very superstitious people and that comes though in the Muay Thai a lot.  Many of the old Boxers had big tatoo’s on their backs…

GK … you’ve actually got a few tattoos yourself! (laughs)

CR …. Yes the two on my legs represent the battle between good and evil and the one on my back is a Thai spell for protection and good luck.  Most of the tattoos represent stories or are prays and spells for good luck and protection. Quite a lot of the fighters in Thailand actually have tattoos done using holy water instead on ink so that they are purely spiritual rather than done to enhance the looks of the body.  They endure the pain of the tattoo but have nothing ‘outwardly’ visible to show for it.  Also when they go to the monks to have a tattoo done they don’t get to choose where it will go – instead the monk will look into their aura and decide what tattoo the fighter needs and where it will go.  It’s a very different manner to having a tattoo done in the west.

GK Did you have any of your tattoos done in Thailand?

CR The one on my back was done in Thailand by a practising monk for good luck and protection.

GK How many fights have you had?

CR I’ve had 13 fights; unfortunately I started a bit late in life to be fighting every month like some of my lads do now!  My first fight was about two years into my Kick Boxing training and I ended up fighting twice on the same day which I won one and drew one.  The second guy I ended up fighting as a stand in because his opponent didn’t turn up and has was actually from a Muay Thai gym.  He kept kicking me in the same spot on the leg all the way through the fight and I could hardly walk the next day.  At the time I hadn’t really experienced leg kicks and didn’t know how to position the to take some of the sting out of the kick so it really messed my legs up.  I went on to fight for and win the Combat Sports title which is an organisation that has now disbanded, but that was back in 1995.  I was then invited to go and fight in Thailand but I went out there and hurt my hand.  Thinking that this was going to be the fight of my career I said that I’d go away, heal and come back.  I came back to the UK and trained for six months and went back out there.

GK How did fighting in Thailand compare to over here?

It was quite scary.  I trained out of the Sityodtong gym in Pattaya, which is quite a famous gym and was one of the first to open its doors to foreigners.  I went out there in 1998 where Tony introduced me to the people I needed to talk to train at the gym – at the time you couldn’t just turn up at a gym and everything had to be done via a formal introduction.  It’s a great gym and I’ve been back every year since which is why they invited me to fight for them.  To start off with most of the trainers there didn’t speak any English so they’d teach you by drawing circles on the floor where your feet needed to be, but nowadays they get a lot of westerners, Dutch, Italian and English so they speak much better English now which makes it a lot easier.

Whilst waiting for my fight I went down to one of the main stadiums and the very first fight I saw one guy got knocked clean out with an elbow which caused me to start thinking what the hell I’d got myself into.  I was 37 at the time and really didn’t want to get my face cut to pieces and end up being stitched badly at some seedy backstreet hospital.  So I waited a week and went to a few different stadiums and watched the fights and it didn’t seem as bad.  Come the night of my fight I just thought to myself that I was in the best condition of my life and it was now or never.

The warm-up area was this small hut with two beds in it, my opponent on one and me on the other getting massaged up ready for the fight.  It was disgusting, stunk of urine and was so filthy my trainers ended up sweeping out the back of a pick up truck, sticking some towels and that’s where I got my pre-fight massage!  I warmed up kicking pads in a gravel car park with trainers on before being led through the stadium into the ring.  My opponent didn’t speak any English but shook my hand and got on his knees and bowed to me and I did the same, so it was friendly and respectful – which was nice.

My fight was scheduled for five rounds and I was dreading clinching up with him because I knew being a westerner that he’d constantly be trying to land elbows, but come the fight he was actually trying to get away from me.  Because westerners tend to have good boxing skills the Thai’s tend to keep away and fight more with their legs and that actually suited me better.   Throughout the fight I managed to keep getting him in the corner but he kept on getting out.  In the third round though I got him in the corner again, noticed he was tired and thought, “this is it!” so went for it.  I landed a knee to the body that dropped his guard and then caught him with a knee to the head which knocked him out – that was a great way to win the fight.

GK Did you fight again after that?

CR No… I hadn’t fought 7 or 8 years prior to that and came out of retirement at 37 to do this mad fight in Thailand which was something in itself.  I thought I’d end on a high, I’d trained really hard for it and thought I was in the best condition of my life having Tony tell me how to prepare for the fight and being beaten up by your Dad every Sunday morning (laughs) so I decided it was time to concentrate on developing own up and coming fighters. I’d also met and leant from some great people like Tony, Master Sken and the trainers at the Sityodtong gym, so it was time to pass on that experience.

GK You mentioned Master Sken, have you trained with him?

CR My instructor was one of Master Sken’s first students when he came over to the UK.  Tony had been out to Thailand and in the bars they would take on any fighters, Tony had a Black Belt in Karate and decided to give it a go and lost to this little Thai guy.  He couldn’t understand why such a little bloke could do that to him so when he got back to the UK he trained with Master Sken went then back to Thailand to fight and won.  Came back and trained again with Master Sken and then lived in Thailand for five years and ended up becoming one the first westerners to be listed in the Thai Martial Arts hall of fame.  He gained a lot of respect for using Muay Thai techniques and scored a lot of points using skilful techniques rather than just being a big westerner using his size advantage like the Squadies were doing at the time.

GK How long have you been running your own gym?

CR I’ve been running the gym now for about 16 years!  The gym started off as a Kick Boxing gym and I joined the British Thai Boxing council as a Kick Boxing instructor whilst learning Muay Thai under Tony.  I was teaching Kick Boxing and slipping Muay Thai into some of the lessons as well as training with my own lads so that I could get it into my head.  At the time was only teaching part time and teaching in three evenings a week and then we decided that we had enough students and we’d take it full time and that was 10 years ago now.  Once I become a qualified Muay Thai instructor we become a full time Thai boxing camp.

GK How many fighters do you have out on the circuit now?

At the moment I’ve got eight fighters out fighting under full Muay Thai rules, which are full contact bouts and about another eight who are fighting in gym shows.  Gym shows are a great way to ease people into fights because they fight padded up and there is no winner or loser, but they still get to experience being weighed in, checked over by the Doctor and begin to get a feel for the whole fight experience. 

In the gym shows the fighters also learn how to listen to and take instruction from their corners that something some lads have real problem with – they just want to get into the ring and have a tear up.  In gym shows we can teach them to listen to that one voice of the corner man and drown out all the other noise.  In between rounds its really important that they listen to you because you’ve only got one minute to calm them down and tell them exactly what they need to do – so they really have to learn to focus!

After the gym shows guys then start fighting under ‘C’ class rules, which are no pads, no knees to the head or elbows at all and are over three two minute rounds.  Once they’ve won a few fights they then move onto ‘B’ class rules which are over five two minute rounds and then after that is ‘A’ class which is full Muay Thai rules with elbows and knees to the head.

GK How do fighters prepare for the different rule classes?

CR You prepare in a similar way for all the classes with some additional training with elbows for ‘A’ class fighters.  Generally students start preparing for a fight three months before it.  They’ll up their general training by running three or four times a week, staying later after classes to work on stuff and sparring with as many people as possible.  Over the three months as we progress the training gets harder as we approach the fight.  For novices we stop full sparring to avoid injuries and just do hands only sparring and clinch work a month before the fight.   For the more experienced guys we’ll usually stop sparring about a week or so before the fight because they know how to block properly and are less likely to injure themselves.  If it’s a big fight then I’ll usually stop them sparring two weeks prior because you don’t want to have to drop out because of a stupid injury – it only takes a toe being bent back the wrong way to call off an entire fight and waste three months of hard work.  About midway through the preparation the guys stick the head guards on and do some heavy sparring to get them used to taking shots and we’ll ease off again as they get closer to the fight.

GK What’s your average training week?

CR Errr… at the moment I’m teaching a lot so what I tend to do is pick on one student a day and pick on them them – I’ll do everything they do – other than that just a bit of running and some weights and conditioning on top of that.

GK That’s a lot more training than most people do so I don’t think you’ve got a lot to be too worried about under training!  How does the fight scene in the UK compare to the one in Thailand?

CR There was a famous Thai who came over called Panya Kraitus with Tony Moore and I trained with him. After two weeks of seeing the shows in the UK he was asked what he thought of Muay Thai in the UK and he laughed and said, “There’s too many world champions!” which really sums it up – every association has a ‘world champion’.  Panya Kraitus wrote the only Muay Thai book to be translated into English called “The Muay Thai Textbook” which contains all of the techniques of Muay Thai and is our ‘bible’.  It’s a bit outdated now being a typical ‘old’ Martial Arts book with black and white photos with arrows pointing where to go (laughs) but its still a fantastic book!  He’s a really nice fella and speaks English very well.

Panya Kraitus said that he thought the standard of Muay Thai was very good in this country but we got left behind a little.  A lot of the Thais moved to countries like Holland and Russia and they really started to produce some good fighters.  I think over the past couple of years the quality of the fighters in the UK has improved as a lot more people are going out to Thailand to train – so we’re now getting the ‘authentic’ stuff rather than people just thinking they know what they are doing.

One of the major differences over here is that we have the different rule classes whereas in Thailand everyone fights under full Muay Thai rules whether they’re 5 or 35 – same gloves, same ring, same everything.  Over here the kids fight with head guards and up to 12 or 13 there is no head contact – in Thailand they train everything as soon as they start and because of that they train appropriately and know how to fight and train safely.  They are a very ‘hard’ people and they say that westerners have ‘weak stomachs’ because when they get hit in the stomach they tend to quit.  For them though it’s a job and the will to earn a living is a lot stronger than just doing it as a hobby – when you hit a Thai he thinks you’re taking food out of his families mouths and digs deeper, whereas a westerner thinks, “well I’ve got to go to work in the morning that’s enough for me!” – it’s a totally different mentality which is why they train so hard.  They’ll train three hours in the morning and three more in the evening every day of the week apart from Sunday which is a day off.

In the Thai gyms they have dedicated padmen who are there specifically for two or three fighters and that’s all they do – that is their living.  The gyms actually buy and sell their padmen and good gym is made on the quality of its padmen.  Every year I take as many of my lads out there as possible and when they walk into the gym and see eight and nine year olds hitting pads harder than them their jaws drop!  So the training is hard, very very hard and they are a very tough people.  Taking my lads out there is a great way to give them a real taste of Muay Thai.

GK Do you try to bring much of the Thai experience back to the UK for your fighters?

CR The Thai’s are a very traditional and superstitious people and I’m quite a believer in trying to keep it authentic.  In Thailand they believe that the evil spirits live from the waist down so when you get into the ring you always go over the top rope so you don’t drag them in with you which is supposed to bring bad luck.  Once you’re in the ring you do the pre-fight ritual dance that drives out any evil spirits that maybe in the ring.  All the lads do this before their fights and I’m very in to all that.

GK I think it shows respect for the tradition…

CR Yeah, the Thai’s are very big on that and I think that tradition helps keep them very humble.  In Thailand when you train in the camps all the champions train in the gym just like everyone else.  About two years ago we were training at the Kaewsamrit gym in Bangkok alongside a fighter called Anuwat Kaewsamrit who at the time was the best fighter in Thailand.  There are nine different associations and he held the titles in all of them but he was just training alongside us in the gym.  Later in the day we even clinched up with him and he was throwing us all over the place and giving us tips – no ego what so ever, you wouldn’t be able to play football with David Beckham, but there we was training with the best guy in Thailand.  Even when I had my fight the champion of the gym came over and asked if I was fighting that night and actually turned up with his wife to wearing a new pair of trainers and a nice watch and he was standing on the ringside giving me water and telling me what to do – and this was on his night out! 

They are such a kind and caring people, but a lot of people worry about going out there to train thinking that being westerners they’ll get knocked about but they have a huge respect for us for travelling all that way to take part in their national support so they really do look after you.  Actually they think we’re a bit mad actually paying all that money and travelling so far to do what they think is a job.  They find it quite amusing that a westerner will spend all day working and then go to the gym to get beaten up – that’s how they earn a living so they do find it a bit strange!

GK I suppose its like them travelling thousands of miles and paying to work in an office?

CR (Laughs) Exactly, but they are a wonderful people and really respect the fact that we do go out there to train!

GK So what are your plans for the future?

CR To keep doing what I’m doing really.  I’d like to get to spend a bit more time with my fighters, at the moment everyone trains in the same classes together and then the fighters stay on for extra training so I’m hoping to start some separate fighters classes for the up and coming lads – but apart from that to really just keep on going.

GK Well, best of luck with that and thanks for taking the time to speak to us!

CR Pleasure, thanks for popping in!

 Chris Rawlings runs the Munkorn Muay Thai Gym in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex and can be contacted on 01702 346376 or 07889 969136 and via his website http://www.mungkorndamthaiboxing.co.uk/

Gavin King

Gavin King is a Shiatsu practitioner, writer and Martial Arts instructor from Essex in the United Kingdom. He runs a full time Martial Arts centre in Hockley, Essex teaching Tai Chi and Kung Fu. You can contact him via Facebook or Twitter!

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