A few weeks earlier at Christmas time some of my young thai colleagues asked me why the day after Christmas was called “Boxing Day”. I explained that after Christmas day, people were always hungover, tired, irritable and easy to anger when fighting over the leftover christmas ham, which often led to family feuds and fisticuffs. Some of my more naive staff members swallowed the story and are probably still quite confused about our strange western customs to this day.

Getting back to the story… it wasn’t quite Tina Turner wearing a silver chain mail outfit in Mad Max 3:The ThunderDome, but Friday night saw Your Man on The Ground and The Bermanator at Lumpini Stadium for the weekly Muay Thai Boxing bouts.

The venue itself does loosely resemble a dirty, ramshackle version of the Thunderdome from the movie more than it does an actual sports stadium, but it’s definitely not without its own charm. If you can define charm as run down, sweaty, and smelling of cheap booze, then Lumpini Stadium has it in spades. A bit like Your Man On The Ground on Friday night perhaps.

Walking up the entrance steps you find yourself staring down into the boxing ring and surrounding stalls for the punters. The atmosphere is electric as hundreds of working class Thais with a few Changs under their belt boisterously goad the fighters on and gamble with the local police and army officers who are there to supposedly keep the peace should things get out of hand in the stalls.

In all there were about a dozen fights on the program, with the main event coming on about half way through the night. Almost without exception the fighters were very evenly matched, extremely fit, and despite probably weighing on average less than 50 kilos are definitely the kind of guys you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. Lean, fast, and highly effective with their elbows and knees, Muay Thai boxers are highly entertaining to watch so long as you’re on the right side of the ring.

”...action replays do not happen in meatspace.”

As the evening wore on, the quality of the fights got better and better. The funniest moment of the evening occurred at the culmination of the title fight when one boxer knocked out the other with a lightning-fast front kick to his opponents’ head, and the loser crumpled to the floor where he was stretchered off. It happened so fast that Andrew and I stopped our conversation mid sentence as we both subconsciously stood there for at least ten seconds waiting for the live action replay to happen, which of course it didn’t. Action replays do not happen in meatspace.

I think us IT guys seriously need to unplug a bit more often…