Sylvie with Nong Aim, fighting for a Western Regional Belt. Sylvie weighed in at 46 kg, Nong Aim at 52 kg. Nong Aim was the 2014 IFMA Gold Medal winner at the World Championships.

The spell is woven in the penumbra of darkness, that falls beyond the ring, where mats lay in a field, hands are wrapped, oil taken.

In Thailand, Muay Thai is a child. By this I mean, it is born of the youth, it is young in the land. It comes from the vitality of its possibility, its future, its people, growing from thousands of villages and 10,000 family hearths. Those that take Muay Thai to be merely a sport, or even make of it an isolated art, do not see that it is a practice and rite of becoming mature. It is maturing through the ring. It is a limnal practice, even for those who are older and more complete. It begins & ends with what you can be. Each fight is that. Each bet placed at the ring apron. This is difficult for us to see in the West, and may not even be ethically in line with how Globalized ethics work, but it is of its nature. Muay Thai is nascent, even 100 years into its modernity. Even when you are fully adult you are stepping into that when you step into the ring, the challenge of a child.

The legend of the sport Karuhat, taping gloves.