The biggest fight Thailand’s female Muay Thai boxers face is the one against sexism
- His daughters have all won Muay Thai championships in their age and weight categories, and Nopparit Yoohanngoh wants them to have the same respect as his sons
- Female fighters believe it’s time they were taken more seriously by local promoters and fans of Thailand’s national sport
Six days a week many of the 16 children of Nopparit Yoohanngoh, a Thai Muslim man, are up and about before sunrise in a leafy, outlying area of Bangkok.
Yawning and bleary-eyed, they head to their father’s gym, which consists of a weathered boxing ring and an adjacent training space under a corrugated iron roof. He built the gym by himself among shady willows beside a scenic canal.
The teenagers do runs on footpaths along the waterway, lift rusty weights, do push-ups on plastic mats and pummel punching bags hung from beams.
Even Nopparit’s youngest child, nine-year-old Mussalin, is at it. An elfin girl with curly black locks, she kicks boxing pads held by an older brother – before sneaking off for some ice cream at a local shack that doubles as a convenience store. After school his children return to their father’s gym and resume training.
For three decades Nopparit, 54, has coached his children – the eldest is 32 – in Thai boxing, or Muay Thai, starting when they were in diapers. His younger ones all compete in the sport and several of his grandchildren are training too.
Soft-spoken and a doting father, Nopparit has steered his children towards Thai boxing to keep them away from drug abuse in their low-income neighbourhood. “It was already a big problem in my youth,” he says. “My friends who became junkies are all dead.”
