This fight is special to me because I stumbled on it very early in my travels with Muay Thai. It shows what very good technical, powerful, and elegant Muay Thai could look like.
Yoddecha Sityodtong is a former champion at Lumpini, likely at 147 lb, the heaviest category there until 154 lb was introduced this year. He was trained at the Sityodtong camp by Kru Yodtong, like Samart. Currently he teaches at Evolve-MMA in Singapore and is, by all accounts, a very nice person. As a child, he actually lived on the streets as an orphan and was taken in by the Sityodtong camp.
You may remember him from the Muay Thai/ Muay Boran episode of Human Weapon in which he sparred Jason Chambers.
Watch for his beautiful high kicks. He fights in white trunks in this bout.
Shannon Forrester is an Aussie Muay Thai fighter. The Australian Muay Thai scene is thriving and produces some very good fighters. I am not sure if Forrester is still active, but even since 2007, Australian Muay Thai has advanced a long way and produced excellent fighters like Dane "Daddy Kool" Beauchamp/Beecham (according the the commentators), Eli "Mad Dog" Madigan, Michael "Tomahawk" Thompson, and Eugene "Boom Boom" Ekkelboom. Of course, John Wayne Parr, Bruce McFie, and Soren Mongkongtong are still around, though I believe Soren has semi-retired from fighting.
Australian Muay Thai is more faithful to Thai Muay Thai than most other international scenes. Full rules are the norm and most fighters choose to do the Wai Kru and Ram Muay. The general style produces a lot of knockouts with strong punches and elbows. There is not so much clinching as in Thailand and punches score significantly more. International fighters compete there with good frequency.
Forrester seems experienced in the different aspects of Muay Thai. Most of his offense comes by way of punching. He also looks to be a little heavier than Yoddecha, though Yoddecha has an edge in experience. Forrester wears the red shorts.
The uploader took the liberty of replaying two critical junctures in the fight, but it's done in a way that can help viewers parse the action, especially for those new to Muay Thai.
Part 1
Part 2
Props to nlegallo for the uploads. I'd known about this fight for years before I looked for interviews of Yoddecha Sityodtong. This interview from SG Pro actually has Yoddecha doing word associations with names. SG Pro asks: "And it’s time for our little word association again! This is how it works, [I]’ll name someone and you will have to describe that person in just seven words or less. Here goes nothing, Shannon Forrester," to which Yoddecha replies: "Nice gentleman with a warrior heart."
Combat sports are often riddled with associations to greed and unethical business practices, but I find that often the fighters are model human beings. If you read the interview, Yoddecha says things that come from a genuinely happy, content, and gentle worldview. There are many examples of fighters who do not fit this mold, but I think for every Mike Tyson or Josh Koscheck, you get many tens of GSPs, Fitches, Overeems, and reformed Tysons.
This fight opened my eyes to the properly applied spinning back elbow. Until watching this, that somewhat flashy technique had seemed impractical and overly risky. Yoddecha's first knockdown with it could have been a KO in many cases, though the quite blatantly biased referee gave Forrester a very long count and extra time to recover on top of that. I do not agree with that type of officiating if a fighter is getting far outclassed, as was the case here. Forrester only gets set up to take more damage. The high left kick to end the bout was not a shot worn lightly.
Yoddecha impresses me with his ability to not only string up fluid power shots almost effortlessly, but to evade damage himself. His control of Forrester in punching range was excellent and Forrester offered little offense in kicking range or the clinch. I will post more on Yoddecha and Aussie Muay Thai later.
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