After three hundred and sixty five fights, the great Yothin is going to hang up his gloves. At least that is the plan that the former Rajadamnern featherweight champion laid out, following his victory over Fairang in his three hundred and sixty fourth fight last weekend. This marked a rebound from Yothin losing his belt five months ago, and lines up a rematch with Chiabkard, the man who took it. That Chiabkard already lost the belt to Narak in a great fight we examined a few weeks ago is neither here nor there, the Yothin – Chiabkard rematch is the finale that Yothin has chosen.

Fairang is not a huge name in Muay Thai, and this was his first appearance in RWS. But the 17-year-old was riding an eight fight winning streak in the stadiums, and this fight alone was enough to demonstrate that he has plenty of talent. We have covered Yothin a couple of times before because he is a fighter who does effective work with a limited, unusual, and dare I say “simple” skillset. A right kick and a shifting elbow are the meat and potatoes of Yothin’s game, and then he adds herbs and spice to tailor the dish to whoever he is facing. The ways in which he adapted his game to Fairang were curious, and they afforded him the chance at a number of kick catches into damaging counters.

Yothin 101

One of the staples of Yothin’s game is the calf kick. Against the southpaw Chaila, he even went as far as kicking almost along the floor to the inside of the ankle. But anyone worth a damn is going to begin picking their lead leg up and getting it out of the way. That is step one of the system.

Step two is to begin capitalizing the time that the opponent is on one leg. The two main ways that Yothin does that are the hip fake to body kick, and the shifting elbow.

The hip fake to body kick is a fantastic point scorer, and allows Yothin to win long range kickboxing matches despite not being, at heart, a clinch fighter. The beauty of this technique is that once the opponent begins checking the calf kick, the whole exchange is on rails. The hip fake draws the check, the opponent immediately returns their leg to the floor to regain their ability to fight and move, but Yothin only takes a beat between the fake and the body kick, so the body kick easily slips in through the hole that the check coming down creates.

The shifting elbow is often the difference maker. Elbows score fantastically well in Muay Thai, and the damage they inflict often outweighs all the other action in a competitive round. As Yothin takes a small step with his left foot, as if to throw the low kick, his opponent begins to check. Yothin instead steps all the way through to southpaw and essentially runs in to elbow his opponent. Half of them see it coming but once they have committed to standing on one leg to check they just cannot get out of the way or counter meaningfully.

The Fairang Strategy

The curious part of this fight was that Yothin did not do much to establish his low kick at all. Instead he came out showing the hip fake to body kick, without the initial threat of the low kick. Sometimes skilled fighters get so tied up in their secondary attacks that they forget how long it can take to establish the initial attack, but on closer viewing it seemed as though Yothin was hunting for something.

Fairang was not standing still and checking. Every time Yothin showed him a fake or a legitimate kick, he gave ground. He looked to glide back and return with his own right kick. This creates an interesting comparison with Narak’s performance against Chiabkard the other week, where he scored fade-away high kicks by sliding back as Chiabkard advanced. Yothin was on the receiving end of a dangerous kick that caught him over the back of the head in the style of pro wrestling’s enzuigiri in round one.

Pretty quickly, Yothin’s hip fake to body kick turned into a hip fake into a check against the expected counter kick.

In this manner Yothin was able to chew up some distance and get Fairang towards the ropes, where Yothin could step in with a good shot at an elbow.

Fairang’s tactics changed only slightly through the fight. In the early going he gave ground to try to sneak in kicks as Yothin advanced. In rounds two and three he spent more time standing his ground and firing the same right kick back in response to Yothin’s.

Yothin is a “big moments” fighter whose fights are usually defined by a handful of good elbow or knee connections. The two ways that he manufactured his big moments in this fight were to push Fairang back to the ropes, and to utilize the catch.

When advancing and trying to check Fairang’s counter kick, he was occasionally able to reach down and salvage a catch Fairang’s foot straight off his ankle. Here he pushes to the ropes and lands a good knee.

This fight was a brilliant showing for the traditional Muay Thai body kick catch. This is taught in every gym from day one, but always with the understanding that you can get yourself into a lot of trouble overusing it. The lazier you get with your feet, the more you stray from the belt-and-braces effect of blocking with your cross hand, the more likely you are to get winded by a kick you are looking right at.

Figure x shows the sequence that played out repeatedly through the second and third rounds. Yothin throws his body kick, Fairang returns, and Yothin catches the kick under his left arm. In catching a kick, the fighter opens his elbow—and this creates vulnerability in almost all combat sports. So the fighter’s job is to mitigate the risk of exposing his body by:

1) Stepping away from the kick.

2) Taking the kick on his back more than his side.

3) Bringing the free hand across the body to meet the kick and take some heat off it.

In a rapid fire kicking exchange, one of these will almost always suffer. In this example Yothin is not able to get much of a step away from the kick, but takes the brunt of it on his back and uses his right glove to block as well.

Yothin’s position after the catch is also textbook. In his kicking game the idea isn’t “if the opponent checks,” he assumes that any opponent of decent skill will check. Similarly, he catches the kick and it is not a case of keeping a guard up in case the opponent punches, the opponent at this level will invariably punch. When Fairang fired straight punches on one leg, Yothin used his free hand to shield them in the same manner than Zab Judah used to in his southpaw shoulder roll.

Once Yothin had the catch, he could create moments of all-out offence. While “ploughing the fields” has