Thai Women Use Boxing to Punch Their Way Out of Poverty
She was boxing for money. Even at 13 years old, she knew that.
Why else, said Janjaem Suwannapheng, would she commit to a sport in which a boy smashed her nose in, back when she was shorter than the stalks of rice in the fields near home?
“Anyone who becomes a boxer does it because they come from a poor background,” she said. “It hurts, it’s tiring, it’s exhausting.”
Of course, Janjaem is really good at boxing. She was the first girl to train at her local gym in Thailand’s rural northeast. She loves the sport now, she said. At last year’s world championships, she won a silver medal in her welterweight division (66 kg, about 145 pounds). At the Paris Olympics, she is into the round of 16 with a bye.
Even if she goes no further, Janjaem said, boxing has already saved her. Now 24, she has bought land and gold for her parents and a pickup truck for herself. She scored an athletic scholarship to a university. Her older brother, by contrast, left school at 15 to work with their father, a truck driver.
Boxing is a national passion in Thailand, where the confluence of hardscrabble living and a fondness for illegal gambling — on anything from cockfighting and buffalo racing to a fin-snapping standoff between Siamese fighting fish — has made the sport tremendously lucrative. The local variety, muay Thai, or Thai boxing, relies on lightning strikes with legs, knees, elbows and fists first honed by ancient warriors dedicated to the “way of the eight limbs.”
Muay Thai boxers wear no protective gear on their heads. In 2018, a 13-year-old fighter died of a brain hemorrhage after he was knocked out in a bout. Legislators talked about tightening regulations for minors. Not much happened. The sport continues to gird the illegal gambling economy.
In a country with the highest income inequality in East Asia and the Pacific, according to the World Bank, boxing allows young people to vault fast from subsistence farming to the climate-controlled privilege of Bangkok. By winning bouts, Thai prisoners can earn early release, as one flyweight boxer who competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics did after his sentence for robbery was commuted.
Thailand’s impoverished northeast, known as Isaan, cultivates the majority of the country’s boxers. The region’s labor force is scattered around the country and the world because there aren’t enough jobs back home. Last October, about two dozen Isaan workers were kidnapped from Israeli farms near Gaza; more than 40 Thai farmhands have been killed by Hamas.
“From working in the fields, from working in the sun, we get the fighting spirit,” said Thananya Somnuek, who started boxing as a young teenager in Isaan.
Thananya won a national championship at 16 and later a gold medal at the Youth Olympic Games. Her nickname in Thai is Butter, because her mother had a premonition that her daughter would one day go to a foreign country where people ate such foreign ingredients. One of Thananya’s boxing squad teammates, another Isaan native, is nicknamed Cream. Both Butter and Cream made it to Paris.
Officially, children in Thailand can enter the muay Thai ring at age 10. If they are healthy, they can box for money every 21 days. But in Isaan, locals say, standards are more lax. As long as farmhands aren’t needed for the harvest, children can fight every 10 days.
“The strict rules are made by air-conditioned men sitting in air-conditioned rooms,” said Suthep Saengngoen, as he sat in his family’s sweltering muay Thai gym, rubbing his grandson’s body with a cooling mentholated liniment. His six sons all fought, too.
The family is from Isaan, but the gym is in the outskirts of Bangkok, amid industrial warehouses and scraggly fruit farms. Boxing purses in the Thai capital are at least triple those back home.
Suthep’s grandson, Chaichana Saengngoen, was named a muay Thai rookie of the year in 2023. He’s now 16 and, in addition to his earnings in the ring, receives $1,300 in endorsements every month.
“I started boxing because my grandfather forced me to,” Chaichana said. He was 7 when he began.
“I do like it now,” he added.
The children at the gym train from five to seven in the morning, before going to school. Then they return for afternoon practice until the mosquitoes start swarming at dusk. That’s not counting 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of running twice a day to build stamina. By the end of the day, their young arms shiver from smacking the bag — and each other — hundreds of times. Hundreds of roundhouse kicks leave their legs quaking, too. Still, they return for more.
Nutthapol Anuphap, 10, has been boxing since he was 3, he said. At 5 years old, he appeared on a local TV talent show. One of his muay Thai videos has nearly 2 million views. His nickname is Fist.
“I’m going to be rich,” he said.
At the Chaiya District Prison in southern Thailand, in a concrete yard flanked by razor wire, a group of inmates heaved, kicked and punched in the 97-degree heat. One lifted a cement-filled bucket with his teeth, strengthening his jaw and neck with each 22-pound (10 kilogram) rep.
Out of the more than 900 inmates at Chaiya, 15 men and five women have qualified for a prison muay Thai program, one of 10 in the country. They train for eight hours a day and receive extra rations of eggs, meat and milk.
“Muay Thai training gives the prisoners resilience,” said Sathika Samsri, the superintendent of Chaiya. “We want to build them into professional boxers or trainers who will not return to prison.”
The fighters can keep their prize money, and prison officials allow them occasional perks such as KFC spicy chicken wings, a local favorite. Successful bouts at local stadiums, which they attend with prison officials in tow, count as good behavior in parole hearings.
Jomyud Sowangchompu, 21, was sentenced to four years in prison for drug dealing and possession. He left school in sixth grade and could only find a job making less than $15 a week during the fruit harvesting season, he said. In a town match in June, he lost in the first round. Still, he earned $55 for fighting, enough to pay for months of prison necessities: soap, toothpaste, laundry detergent, haircuts.
“I don’t have to ask my parents for money,” he said. “It makes me feel like a better man.”
None of the prison boxers said they have any interest in watching the Paris Olympics, even if the wardens were to allow them screen time At the Bangkok muay Thai gym, the children and coaches seemed mystified by the Olympic boxing rule limiting participation to amateurs.
“What’s the point of boxing if you can’t make lots of money?” said Suthep, the gym family patriarch.
Besides, he said, without the kicks, knees and elbows of muay Thai, Olympic boxing seemed like only half a sport.
Demonstrations of muay Thai are taking place on the sidelines of the Paris Games. But the sport, while gaining in popularity overseas, has nowhere near the profile of international boxing. And for all the money to be made — and gambled — in muay Thai, the professional boxing circuit is far more developed. Many Olympic boxers retire and go pro.
Wijan Ponlid began training in muay Thai at age 9, then won flyweight gold at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. A parade of elephants greeted him upon his return, and he was handed a cushy job as a police officer. Today he’s the coach of the Thai women’s Olympic team. Among his duties: figuring out how to nourish the squad in Paris with their beloved shrimp and chili paste, an Isaan specialty.
“I switched to international boxing because with muay Thai, I got to a point where I was the world champion, but I wanted to be part of a national team with the flag on my chest,” Wijan said.
For Thai women, international boxing offers even more opportunities.
Jutamas Jitpong, the daughter of rubber tappers, started in muay Thai at 9 years old. Within three years, she was a champion, but there were few girls of her caliber with whom to compete. Some muay Thai stadiums, governed by rules loosely affiliated with Buddhism, don’t allow women to enter the ring, much less fight. In three years, she fought three times.
So Jutamas, now 26, switched to boxing. Although women’s boxing became an Olympic sport in 2012, Thailand didn’t send any athletes in the event until four years later.
Jutamas won a flyweight silver at the 2022 world championships and a bronze a year later. She made it to the round of 16 in Paris.
“Maybe people thought, you’re a woman, you really want to box?” Jutamas said. “I want to box. I want to win.”
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