Profession: boxer – Part 2/2

Before Christmas, we discovered Thai boxe, as a sport but also as a business. Will 5 years old Mai Mai bring prestige and money to his family? By Jean-Matthieu Gautier. Originally published in French in Enfants du Mekong Magazine n°159. Translated by Marcia Bravard, Boulderwords.

Mai Mai is five years old.  He is not yet totally a boxer—understand:  he does not yet fight for real in the ring and in the stadiums—but will be soon.

His parents have decided this as well.  It’s for this purpose that he trains hard, pumps, lifts the dumbbells, follows avidly the exercises of his elders whom he tries sometimes to go up against —who laugh and answer him with modified blows—and that when he’s asked if he loves boxing and if he sees himself becoming a great champion, he answers yes.  In reality, most children launched into boxing are “entrusted” to the camp by their family.  Poor families for the most part, who see in this sport a way for their son to leave his social condition.  A lure which has a hard life.

A history of “face”

“The other parameter, stresses Stéphane Rennesson, Southeast Asian anthropology specialist, is “face”, that is, the prestige that the Muay thaï are going to be able to bring to the children and to their family ….”  This idea of face, essential in Asia, is deeply tied to Muay thaï.  In Thaïland, the nak muay automatically gain prestige by the simple fact that they are boxers, where success is never denied from this … sport which counts more than 100,000 practitioners in Thaïland.  And they will gain advantage in it if they display better than their opponents, without methodically beating them fiercely while they see him at their mercy, in short, if they fight him without making him lose face.  But the prestige will come back as well to the family and, evidently, to the training camp.  “Boxing matches do not bring in as much money as one might believe if one sets aside the system of gambling that’s associated with it.  The owners of the camps profit in large part from the prestige—face—that will bring them the fighting boxers …  In organizing galas, these financiers or these senior officials for the most part among them, will be able to invite their friends, their partners, their clients, and thus exploit their influence …”.

Thaï boxing would thus appear to be in many respects a field of possibilities in which the only big winners are in reality the owners of the camps.  They earn so much and on the level of what a boxer must make at the end of his career, at around 24 or 25 years, it’s very often that he will go beg for a job with them.  “If for example an owner of a camp owns a bus company, he can perfectly “reward” one of his old boxers by offering him a post as chauffeur.  He can also allow him to become a trainer in one of his camps”.  The sad reality is old boxers have very little forms of retraining:  physically, they have given so much that they’re no longer at the level (at 25 years!).  Mentally, their studies totally bungled do not leave them much of anything.  As to saving for a rainy day:  “The little money that they could earn from their matches, they “blew” on cars, drugs or women.  Rare are those who thought to keep a little nest egg on the side.”

Find more about Children of the Mekong’s work in Thailand on www.childrenofthemekong.org