Special mention! Bowwannida or Bow for short!

Manager of Patong Boxing Gym and only female fight promoter in Phuket.
Bow is one of the most interesting and colorful personalities in the Phuket’s boxing community! She is a multi-linguist! She speaks English, Mandarin, Japanese and even Hokkien and a dash of Malay! She is an astute businesswoman who is currently busy with plans to set up another gym in Bangkok with a French sponsor who hopes to train fighters to compete in K-1. She is an extremely jovial and helpful to tourists too! But do not offend her…she is not someone to be trifled with in Phuket!!! Singaporeans are not her favourite tourists though...she sometimes refers to them as Fuckaporeans! Hehee…

Patong Boxing Gym June 2005

I managed to squeeze two weeks during the June school vacation to return to Phuket to train. Much to my surprise, Bangmart Boxing Gym was closed and Bang went missing! There were at least 3 different theories pertaining to the closure of the gym and his strange disappearance.
Word on the street was that he had to close the gym after the Tsunami and got into trouble while working as a bouncer. Was paid to beat up some foreigners and to return back to his hometown in Songkla.
When I finally found him in December, he told me that he closed down his gym and went back to his hometown for a break.

Anyways, I visited a few other gyms and decided to continue my training at Patong Boxing Gym with a new trainer-Sritongchai or Si for short. He spent most of his professional career in Bangkok and went to Phuket to work as a trainer after he injured his wrist badly during a fight. Even injured, he fought epic battles at the Patong Boxing Stadium against Russian Muay Thai greats- Mohamed Megomedov and his cousin Ramazan. He managed to beat Mohamed on points but was knocked out by Ramazan who came to Phuket to revenge his cousin’s defeat. Both Russians were more than 10 kilos heavier than Si. Under Si, I learnt some new techniques, which you can see in the videos.



Techniques from the clinch with Si

The training here is more tourist friendly. The trainer gives you regular massages and you can request to just work on techniques on days when you were tired. It was pretty different from training at Bangmart where every training was hell! During this time, Bow (I have dedicated a section of this blog to her), the gym manager and fight promoter told me that I will be good enough for a fight if I stayed on for a month to train. Unfortunately again, I had to return to Singapore to work when the school term started.



Myself with Bow and Si