Trail of the Lion King

Whilst I’ve been to kick boxing in Bangkok before, I’d not had the opportunity to see an event at the Rajadamnern Stadium as they don’t do Saturday nights. However, they do do Sundays and so a public holiday on the Monday meant that we had a rare chance to pop over to Bangkok for a longer than normal weekend and tick it off my list.

Jen and I landing late on the Friday night at the main airport, not the Don Muang one, and so I booked a hotel not too far away. Big mistake. The roof-top bar shown on the website turned out to be aspirational and as such so did my chances of a convenient drink.

The location was handy for a park though and on the morning of the boxing we had a wander around. Highlights were a few water monitors making their way around the rivers.

Later that day we took a taxi in the general direction of the boxing stadium but got out slightly early for a look around a temple. I can’t remember its name, same as with the airport, park and hotel, but it was just as you’d expect a temple to be and as with most of them not really worth the bother of having to remove your shoes.

It was a further half an hour or so’s walk to the stadium and despite there being more than an hour to go to the first bout there were plenty of people milling around. It was too early to buy tickets though and so we called into a café around the corner for some chicken that looked dangerously under-cooked.

Tickets started at 1,000 baht, which is about twenty-five quid and entitled you to watch from the back of the arena and from behind a mesh fence. Next option was the one that we took, lower down and with no mesh for 1,500 baht. If we’d splashed out an extra 300 we could have had a plastic chair, but I thought that section might be busier. I can’t remember what ringside cost, probably 2,000, but we’ve done that before and it’s a bit low down. I prefer to be above the ring rather than looking up through the ropes.

As with the bouts that we’ve seen elsewhere you get snake charmer music played before the start of each fight. There was a four piece band over to our right that reminded me of the one on those early French and Saunders shows.

The fighters performed a dance to the snake charmer music, weaving their way around the ring. Part of the pre-match arsing about involved them standing in a large metal dish and having water poured over them. I could see the benefit of the dish in keeping the canvas dry but I’d have thought a few drops of water would have satisfied whatever ritual was being carried out.

The first fight appeared to result in a disqualification for the boxer in the blue corner after he wrestled his opponent to the floor and in a move straight out of Freddy Natt playground drop-kicked him in the head. Fair enough. The other fella made the most of the foul, rolling about for a couple of minutes in the forlorn hope that a dinner nanny might turn up.

One of the plus points of our section was a fella scurrying around taking drinks orders. It meant that I never went short of 150 baht Singha beers and didn’t need to leave my patch of concrete to get them.

The interesting thing about the second fight was that both boxers ceased hostilities with about thirty seconds remaining of the final round and just danced around as if they’d suddenly spotted a pair of handbags on the floor. Perhaps the result wasn’t in doubt. It was a bit like in basketball where they don’t bother playing out the time properly at the end if one team is out of sight, choosing instead to just bounce the ball until the hooter goes.

Despite the boxing shorts being the usual length, the fashion among the participants was for wearing them rolled high at the waist and then pulled up high on the thigh like Souness in his pomp. A few of the kicks to the shins that we witnessed were uncannily reminiscent of the King of Ayresome Park too.

None of the boxers were particularly heavy but the final contest was notable for taking place at 96lbs. That’s six stone, twelve pounds if I’ve retained my fourteen times table knowledge. For the size of them it might well have been a couple of eight year olds in there. Sadly the place was just about empty by that point, possibly due to everyone else being uneasy about paying to watch small children boot the shit out of each other. On the basis that it’s nothing I haven’t seen the grandkids get up to and with a Singha to finish, we stuck it out until the final bell.