Champion profiles: Thailand

YODSANKLAI FAIRTEX

*Lumpinee Stadium Flyweight champion
*Lumpinee Stadium Welterweight champion
*(WMC) The Contender Asia champion
*(WMC) Kings Cup tournament champion 2010
*WMC Middleweight world champion
*WBC Muay Thai World Super-Welterweight champion
*Toyota Marathon Tournament winner

Yodsanklai Fairtex was named “The Boxing Computer” for his perfect technique. He is a multiple time Lumpinee Stadium champion at two weights, a Toyota tournament winner and has held the internationally known, respected world titles of the WMC and the WBC alike.

Yodsanklai kicks with phenomenal force, and delivers every strike not with wildness, but the exactness of properly applied and well honed technique. As well as his famous fights with fellow Thai champions and legends, such as Samkor, Pornsaneh and controversially, his Fairtex Gym teammate Naruepol Fairtex (it is said that the result was pre-arranged) he is also known internationally for beating the likes of John Wayne Parr, Jordan Watson, Vuyisille Colossa (thrice), Cosmo Alexandre (twice), Artem Levin, and Antuan Pinto.

SAENCHAI

*Lumpinee Stadium Super-Flyweight champion
*Lumpinee Stadium Bantamweight champion
*Lumpinee Stadium Super-Featherweight champion
*Lumpinee Stadium Lightweight champion
*WMC Lightweight world champion
*WBC Lightweight “Diamond world champion”
*Toyota Cup winner 2010
*WPMF Lightweight world champion
*MTAA Lightweight world champion

Perhaps the best p4p fighter from the last 20yrs, Saenchai made 13 Coins and then Sinbi MuayThai gyms universally known and respected just by virtue of representing them. A mercurial talent, Saenchai has fought well above his natural weight class for a number of years now, and rarely fails to make his opponent look like a rank amateur in comparison.

With Lumpinee Stadium titles at four weight classes, four major sanctioning body world titles, a Toyota Cup win, and recognition as the 1999 and 2008 Muay Thai fighter of the year, this lovable, playful, legendary fighter will go down in the annals of Muay Thai as one of – if not THE – greatest fighters ever.

SAMART PAYAKAROON

*Lumpinee Stadium 105lbs champion
*Lumpinee Stadium 108lbs champion
*Lumpinee Stadium 115lbs champion
*Lumpinee Stadium 126lbs champion
*WBA World Super-Bantamweight champion (boxing)

Often regarded as the greatest ever Nak Muay (an honour also oft-bestowed on Saenchai and Dieselnoi) Samart Payakaroon has made history in the annals of combat sport to a perhaps unsurpassed degree, in that along with his FOUR Lumpinee divisional titles, he also won a major world boxing championship with the World Boxing Association’s Super-Bantamweight belt, the world’s oldest current major world boxing sanctioning body.

Samart was the man who stepped into his conqueror Dieselnoi’s footsteps when the latter retired from the sport, and his run through the early 1980′s is still spoken of with reverence by Bangkok fans of Muay Thai, as is his switch to boxing and the world title he won. Regardless of the loss to Diesel, many consider him to have grown into just as good a fighter, bearing in mind the size and reach advantage Diesel held.

DIESELNOI

*Lumpinee Lightweight Champion 1981-1985
*Record 50-4
*Undefeated as champion
*Forced to retire after cleaning out the division

Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn is a legendary Muay Thai boxer. Even Samart, often referred to as the greatest and whom Dieselnoi beat, was neither undefeated, nor forced to retire after cleaning out the division. Dieselnoi did both. Albeit he was the larger man than Payakaroon, a multi-weight class champion who stepped up to lightweight, but still, it is telling that there has not been another champion at either the Lumpinee or Rajadamnern stadiums that managed to clean out their division so thoroughly over the space of four years that the stadium promoters literally forced the fighter to retire in the interests of maintaining interest in the divisional title.

Dieselnoi did lose four fights earlier in his career, but once the man known as “The Sky Piercing Knee Kicker” – catchy or what – entered the national stadiums stage and began his tear, there was no going back. By his fifth year as champion, the promoters had had enough of their prized contenders being decimated with knee strikes, and made a forced retirement. Regardless, no fan in Thailand will ever forget Dieselnoi, the tall, rangy “knee kicker” with brutal clinchwork, most likely the greatest lightweight in the sport’s history, if not its greatest fighter ever.

SAIYOK

*Rajadamnern Stadium super-lightweight champion
*Lumpinee Stadium super-welterweight champion
*WMC Welterweight world champion
*WMC 4-man 72kg Grand Prix tournament winner

Saiyok is a monster. A truly frightening force cutting a swathe through the Muay Thai world, at time of writing (April 2012) Saiyok is five-years-unbeaten, having not lost since an April 2007 bout in the Rajadamnern Stadium. His 31-and-counting win streak subsequent to that loss includes Lumpinee Stadium title bouts, competition under the Thai Fights banner, and scraps in such diverse countries as Cambodia and Italy. The fact is, he is Muay Thai’s equivalent to Fedor Emelianenko in the noughties; he is devastating, has a huge win streak, and unlike Bill Goldberg’s, his is legitimate.

His most recent triumph was to defeat Vuyisille Colossa and later the same night in a minor classic, Jordan Watson, to take the WMC 4-man 72kg Grand Prix tournament. This was staged for the benefit of the Olympic committee, as the World Muay Thai Council (WMC) look to earn official recognition for Muay Thai and a spot at the Olympics, so Saiyok’s victory could very well go down in legend for the sport itself. For now, though, let’s forget talk of his legacy and just enjoy his streak while it lasts.

JOMHOD

*Lumpinee Stadium super-lightweight champion 1989
*Rajadamnern Stadium super-lightweight champion 1994
*Rajadamnern Stadium welterweight champion 1995
*WMTA welterweight world champion 1996
*IKBF welterweight world champion 1996
*WKA welterweight world champion 1998
*ISKA welterweight world champion 1998
*Muay Thai Champions League 70kg Tournament Champion (2000)
*WMC jr.middleweight world champion 2000
*WPKL jr.middleweight world champion 2000
*WKN middleweight world champion 2000
*WPKA jr.middleweight world champion 2001
*ISKA jr.middeweight world champion 2002
*WPKL jr.middleweight world champion 2002
*ISKA jr.middleweight world champion 2003
*WMC middleweight world champion 2004
*WMC super-middleweight world champion 2011

What can you say about Jomhod’s record? After winning the Lumpinee Stadium championship in 1989 (when yours truly was one-year-old) and following it up with Rajadamnern Stadium titles in 1994 and 1995, Jomhod went on a tear against international competition with a string of international “world titles”, including the WMC as far apart as in 2004, and seven years later in 2011.
Jomhod competes in and around Phuket to this day, and successfully.

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