Bareknuckle on the Border
2006. The genesis: an exhibition at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Bangkok, magazine articles, a commendation in Paris. Migrants, boxers, the Thai-Myanmar border: a brutal, bizarre and ever raw world. The beginning of the story. Welcome to Migrant Warriors.
The whining notes of an amplified oboe, pounding drums, the distinctive smell of boxing liniment and whisky, four dangling 800-watt globes hanging from poles under a tree in a monastery, bandaged fists, blood, guns, money, and an audience of Burmese, Thai, Karen, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, soldiers, monks, migrant labourers and refugees. Welcome to bare knuckle boxing on the border, an intense sporting spectacle and a bizarre insight into the maelstrom that is the Thailand-Burma border.
A boxer fights in Bangkok taking a 50,000 baht (USD $1,250) payout to lose. He flees fearing the ramifications. Where does he continue his career? Where else: the Thailand-Burma border.
But here it is not muay thai, muay thai is a name reserved for Thai kick-boxing with its tradition, ceremony, and … gloves. In muay thai boxers dance in the ring before the fight, respect is shown for opposition, trainers and referees, and ring-side judges watch and award points for skill, throws and blows landed and blocked.
No, this is not muay thai. It is something different, an unruly, bawdy, brawling cousin twice removed (and 500 kilometres away). This is boxing katchii, boxing without gloves, on the Thai-Burma border. It is the way Thai boxing used to be a hundred years ago and it is the way that traditional Burmese boxing still is.
Crepe bandage wraps cover knuckles, not to soften blows but to bind hands together and stop them from breaking on impact. The rules are simple if not obvious: no gouging, head butting, hair pulling, blows to the groin, or blows to a fallen opponent. No judges to award points, and victory is by knockout or (in)voluntary submission. Fights are an often brutal spectacle. Knees crunch into kidneys, elbows into ears, feet into ribs and fists into faces as blood splatters the canvas and fighters with sculpted, muscular bodies collapse like rag dolls.
Compared to the weekly and even nightly bouts of muay thai scheduled in Thailand’s large urban centres, boxing along the Thai-Burma border is infrequent, traditionally scheduled in the dry months from November to May. Events spanning four or five consecutive days or nights are, somewhat incongruously, scheduled for Loi Krathong and Songkran, the large Buddhist holidays shared by both Thai and Burmese. There is also fighting at the King’s and Queen’s Birthdays but these boast primarily traditional muay thai boxing. And then there are the irregularly scheduled bouts in the small rural towns and villages on both sides of the border. Fights in the grounds of temples, fights at night with dangling lights, fights under makeshift bamboo thatched roofs through which shafts of hot summer light beam, and fights to celebrate national days of Burmese insurgent armies.
At Loi Krathong after the fourth fight on the first night, the boxing ring is thrown open and forty eager pugilists pile into the ring, Thais lining up on one side, Burmese on the other, all wanting an opponent for tomorrow night’s fighting. The methodology in match-making is simple: Thai against Burmese, boxers measured shoulder to shoulder, bicep and abdominals to bicep and abdominals, and then boxers, trainers, and a Karen referee respected for his knowledge and experience regarding border boxers shake or nod their heads thereby sanctioning or dismissing bouts.
“I am a little scared when I fight without gloves,” says Li Hti Dhet, a fourteen year old who dreams of one day representing Thailand as a boxer in the Olympics. “It is dangerous but it is exciting, like a thrill.”
An illegal immigrant, in Thailand for only two months, works in a furniture factory for ninety baht a day (less than $3). “When I hear the sound of the Burmese crowd, I am excited and it makes me want to fight. I have Burmese blood,” he says. He fights the following night, the fight lasting all of the three rounds for which the Loi Krathong bouts are scheduled. It is a draw and he receives 300 baht. Had he won it would have been 600 baht, an economic as well as a patriotic incentive to fight.
On another night the boxers from Thailand knock down their Burmese opponents one after another. One fighter breaks the ribs of his opponent within the first minute. In a show of arrogance he raises his arms above his head calling for any Burmese to step in to fight. A Burmese behemoth enters the ring, towering over his would be opponent. He moves to the centre and begins a slow-motion dance, an intimidating mixture of power and grace. The Thai fighter is shaken and departs leaving the Burmese audience incensed and howling derision at the Thais. “Kill the Thais. Break their bodies.” Centuries of Burmese-Thai animosity and prejudice erupt to the fore fuelled by alcohol, fuelled by 100-baht-a-day-for-the-rest-of-your-factory-working-life oppression and fuelled also by the intensity of the spectacle that they have been watching. Ever present Thai military armed with shot guns rapidly intervene.
“This is why I like to come to the boxing. Here we do not have slave’s morale, here we have master’s morale,” says Aung Naing who has fled the Burmese military regime and is now a refugee in a border camp.
A bemused friend asks me why boxing has become the focus of my work. I answer, “It is basic, sometimes horrifyingly compelling, and the atmosphere can be so intense that it borders on a surreal insanity. Why? Because this is boxing on the border, Thailand against Burma, boxing katchii, boxing in the raw.”