‘Good’ Thai girls enter the boxing ring

Posted on September 13, 2007 by admin
'Good' Thai girls enter the boxing ring - IHT, September 13, 2007
...Until recently, it was considered very bad luck for a girl or a woman to enter the boxing ring. Muay Thai is a sport steeped in superstition, where gold and silver talismans, blessed by Buddhist monks and engraved with words and symbols, are sometimes imbedded under the fighter's skin. The presence of a woman, especially if she was  menstruating, was thought to cancel the invulnerability conferred by these and other charms and blessings.
"Each boxer has magic words to protect himself," said Amnart Saichalard, a former fighter who now teaches muay Thai at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. He has gold talismans buried under his skin near his Adam's apple and in his biceps.
"The belief was that if a woman came too close to the charm you would bleed more during a match," Amnart said.
As a concession to tradition, girls these days enter the ring by crawling under the bottom of four ropes. Boys can climb through the ropes any way they want...
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