THE FIRST LESSONS HURT THE MOST

 From Muay Thai Guy

I first heard of Muay Thai during the summer of 2004. It was a couple of the months before my senior year of high school, and friends and I were playing Mortal Kombat: Armageddon.

We were creating custom characters and choosing their fighting styles, and as I looked over the various styles my friend urged me to choose Muay Thai.

When I asked why, he said “It’s supposed to be this bad ass martial art from Thailand.”

I had never heard of Muay Thai, and I remember choosing something else to his disappointment. Looking back at this I chuckle because the stances and moves are not like the martial arts they claim to represent, they’re just generic combos that they added to make us believe that the game had a sort of martial arts spirit as opposed to wanton blood lust that the Mortal Kombat series is.

Being raised in a Mexican-American family, I grew up watching boxing. My grandfather had been a...