Tawanchai's Power Femeu Style
I break down Tawanchai's unique brand of hard-hitting Femeu craft, going over his body kicks and teep in detail, as well as the footwork that ties his game together.
Muay Thai can be difficult for fans of other combat sports to get into due to its peculiar pacing. Fights typically start slow and end slow, with most of the action taking place in the middle rounds. Momentum shifts often aren’t as dramatic either, largely due to the focus on kicks and knees as the highest-scoring weapons. A punch square in the jaw can turn the tide of a fight instantaneously, but being really good at landing body kicks behind an opponent’s check doesn’t exactly lend itself to breathtaking comebacks.
But Tawanchai P.K. Saenchai isn’t your typical Muay Thai fighter. He’s a well-rounded Femeu who sticks to the adage of “all the way out or all the way in,” using kicks and footwork to avoid the pocket. But he’s also a strong, fast, and athletic fighter who packs a wallop in each of his strikes. Even from a very young age, Tawanchai demonstrated the dynamism lacking in many of today’s Muay Thai fighters.
One of Tawanchai’s first big fights came at the ripe old age of 17 against current Rajdamnern 126lbs champion, Chaila Por.Lakboon. Chaila lead throughout most of the fight before stunning Tawanchai with a left hand in the fourth round. But as Chaila pursued, Tawanchai smoothly skipped out to an angle and knocked Chaila out cold with a headkick. A Tawanchai fight can turn on a dime just like that, whether he’s coming back from a deficit or shocking his opponent with power early to build an insurmountable lead.
Tawanchai was marked for an international transition early on, as he quickly outgrew Muay Thai’s competitive weight classes of 112-135lbs. His shocking power and athleticism lead him to stardom and a handful of brutal finishes in ONE Championship, and recently he’s made his hay snapping the limbs of old kickboxers. But competition has been sparse as there just aren’t very many good Muay Thai fighters up at 155lbs. Instead, Tawanchai is looking to follow in the footsteps of his fellow southpaws Sitthichai and Petchpanomrung, who became some of the world’s best kickboxers after their time in Muay Thai wrapped up.
The Left Kick
The southpaw body kick is in many ways Muay Thai’s quintessential weapon. Many coaches will even convert students into southpaws to open up the kick. It has a number of advantages over its orthodox counterpart - the southpaw kick targets the squishy bits of the tummy and the internal organs it protects, while kicks to the closed side of the body run into the harder back muscles. The southpaw kick also makes it much easier to control distance and positioning.
In an open-stance matchup between an orthodox and southpaw fighter, the lead hands and feet clash, extending the distance and making it more natural to operate at kicking range. A southpaw finds it easier to enforce that distance, as they can push off with the lead hand and threaten the rear to keep their man out of the pocket. The body kick itself is also a crucial tool for controlling distance and position in an open-stance matchup however, as it naturally creates a barrier that is difficult to step past.
A weak plane in one’s stance is open in whatever direction they don’t have a foot planted to catch their weight. If you’re standing completely square and someone shoves you backwards, you’ll stumble, but if they shove you from the side, you can simply adjust your far foot to catch your weight. A body kick on the closed side kicks right into a strong plane, where the rear foot is poised to catch the fighter’s weight as his momentum begins going backwards. The southpaw body kick, however, transfers momentum across a weak plane in the orthodox stance. Figure 1 demonstrates.
A southpaw kicker will generally circle toward the open side, encouraging the opponent to step onto their kick. In order to cut them off and get close enough to punch, the opponent has to step nearer their center-line, but the body kick can be used to constantly juggle them, preventing them from occupying the center line and ensuring the southpaw has an angle to circle out as they near the ropes. In comparison, the rear-leg kick in a closed stance matchup lacks the off-balancing and angle-enforcing power of the open-stance kick.
Tawanchai makes great use of the body kick to enforce distance and intercept opponents as they step onto him. He operates best moving backwards, circling toward the open side to lead opponents into the kick and cutting them off with it as they step toward his center.
Rather than setting the kick up with punches, Tawanchai relies on his timing to ensure his kick lands when his opponent is not ready to defend, either while they’re punching, stepping into him, or reacting to another threat. One of the classic ways to do that is by varying the target on the kicks, mixing up leg, head, and body so the opponent never knows what to expect.
Tawanchai uses his body kick to condition opponents to react low, before going up to the head often. But he adds additional depth to the mixups by using his kicks to turn opponents into the next one. After throwing the body kick, instead of stepping his kicking leg directly backwards into his stance, he’ll step outward in a 90 degree turn as in Figure 2. His opponent, who is usually on one leg attempting to check the kick, has to stop and turn on the spot to face him, making the next kick even more difficult to predict.