Yodtong Senanan was born 73 years ago in Ban Pong province, two hundred and fifty kilometers south of Bangkok. From a young age, Yodtong had a passion for all forms of martial arts.
He is considered the best Muay Thai teacher, not only in Thailand, but also abroad. This is true. Yodtong Senanan is one of the people who made Muay Thai popular all over the world.
All the big names in Muay Thai, including Rob Kaman and Ramon Dekkers, have attended Yodtong's training camp called Sityodtong and trained personally with the master himself. But this is more than a regular training camp, it is a kind of rite of passage for foreign fighters, symbolizing their transition into the world of Muay Thai.
Yodtong regards all forms of fighting as “a science that needs to be studied and mastered in it.” His camp is located 150 km south of Bangkok, on the outskirts of Pattaya.
Training students are provided with everything they need, including food, housing, clothing and training. Even though some fighters never make it in Muay Thai, Yodtong still allows them to stay and continues to look after them. He considers it his duty to help children who have no one else to turn to.
When Yodtong was still a boy, Muay Thai was much more dangerous. Children were not allowed to participate in fights until they were 15 years old. So for many years, Yodtong simply wandered from camp to camp, standing and patiently watching other children train.
Only after he was 15 years old did he approach training thoroughly and, shortly after his fifteenth birthday, he had his first fight. He fought under the name Erawan Detprasit Banpra (his real name was Erawan Sriwaralak, Detrprasit was the name of his training camp, and Banpra was the name of the stadium where the fights were held).
He fought in the professional ring until he was 21, after which he was already considered semi-retired, but if he wanted, he could continue to fight for money. In total, Yodtong fought 49 fights, but it must be taken into account that fights were not fought very often at that time, therefore, taking into account modern standards, 49 fights can be equated to approximately 100 fights.
At the age of 17, Yodtong changed camps and took the new name Senanan (the name of the new camp). In it, he first began instructing other fighters in Muay Thai. It became obvious that Yodtong had an innate gift for teaching the art of Muay Thai.
After training several champions, Yodtong realized that working for a manager was not for him, and he needed to open his own gym, which he eventually did. He built it in 1960 in Mabtaput, in Rayong province south of Pattaya. After almost 15 years spent in Mabtaput, he decided to move to Nakla and create a larger camp.
Then, due to the large number of fighters training, Yodtong had to change camp again. This time he bought several acres of land in Banglamung province, a few kilometers from Pattaya, and built a new camp called Sityodtong, where he trains fighters to this day.
Sityodtong became the envy of other managers and fighters from all over Thailand. The fighters living and training in Sityodtong had everything they needed and were not distracted by external factors like other fighters in Bangkok. Here they lived either in common premises or in separate houses, depending on personal success in the ring. The soldiers were also provided with specially designed food. They didn't have to worry about anything other than grueling training and winning fights.
In Thailand, Muay Thai is not just a sport, it is a science, and Yodtong believes that it is simply impossible to study it thoroughly in a short time, it requires years of intense training and complete dedication. Most likely, it was the idea of whole dedication to the art of Muay Thai that became the key to the extraordinary success of the fighters of Sityodtong, the most famous training camp in Thailand, which became the cradle of 22 champions of Lumpini, the most prestigious Thai Muay Thai competition.
Author: Damien Mayer
Translation: EvilDollaR
PS Those who watched "Ong-Bak", should remember him in the role of a cigarette seller, who said after the blow Tony Jaa the phrase "Hanuman visited Lanka." He also made a cameo appearance in the new version of Born to Fight with Dan Chupong.
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