The Dying Art of the Clinch
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The Crucible — Post No. 5
"The Dying Art of the Clinch" What Entertainment Muay Thai Is Taking From Us — And Why It Matters
There is a moment in every Muay Thai fight that casual viewers don't understand.
Two fighters step close. Their arms lock. Their bodies press together. The crowd in Bangkok grows quiet — not bored, but intensely focused. What happens next is invisible to the untrained eye. But to those who know, it is chess at full speed. It is where the art lives most completely.
It is the clinch. And it is disappearing.
In the eye of the clinch, two fighters become one — the swirl of energy, the dance between fire and water. Breath as the wind. A tornado of eight limbs. Crashing, throwing. But in the eye...Zen.
What the Clinch Actually Is
The clinch — known in Thai as dtae khao — is not a stall. It is not a rest. It is not two tired fighters holding each other up. It is one of the most technically demanding aspects of any combat sport on earth.
In the clinch, a fighter must simultaneously control their opponent's posture, manage balance, generate leverage for knee strikes, defend against sweeps, and look for openings for elbows — all while their opponent is doing the same thing from centimeters away. A master clinch fighter can break an opponent's spirit without throwing a single long-range strike. They can drain energy, damage the body with knees, and use sweeps to score points and demoralize — all from the inside.
The clinch is where experience defeats athleticism. Where years of mat time matter more than youth. Where the old Krus hold their deepest knowledge.
It is, in many ways, the soul of traditional Muay Thai.
The Legends Who Built It
To understand what is being lost, you must first understand what was built.
Dieselnoi Chor Thanasukarn — known as "The Sky-Piercing Knee" — stands as the greatest clinch fighter in Muay Thai history. Standing taller than most of his opponents, Dieselnoi weaponized his height into the most feared knee strikes the art has ever seen, earning him the Lumpinee Stadium lightweight title, which he held for four years without a single challenger daring to face him. His dominance was so complete that officials stripped him of the belt and forced him to retire — not because he lost, but because no one would fight him. He was retired undefeated at 25 years old. That is the clinch at its most devastating. (Watch his legendary 1982 fight with Samart Payakaroon — considered one of the greatest fights in Muay Thai history.)
Namsaknoi Yudthagarngamtorn — "The Emperor" — brought a different dimension to the clinch. He holds the longest undefeated reign as a Lumpinee Stadium champion in history — six years undefeated at 135 lbs. Where Dieselnoi was a force of nature, Namsaknoi was a surgeon — using the clinch to read, control, and dismantle opponents with a fight IQ that remains the standard by which all technical fighters are measured. He finished his career with 285 victories out of 300 fights. (His highlight reel is a masterclass in what ring intelligence looks like.)
Petchboonchu FA Group — "Deadly Knee of the Mekong" — the modern era's standard bearer and the most decorated fighter in Muay Thai history. Fourteen titles across multiple weight classes. A clinch so dominant that the FA Group camp became known specifically for producing the best clinchers in the sport — dedicating up to one hour of every training session exclusively to the clinch. He proved that the tradition was still alive and still dominant deep into the modern era. (Watch 10 of his best clinch sweeps — pure Muay Khao mastery.)
What Entertainment Muay Thai Is Doing
Now consider what is happening in 2026.
Max Muay Thai, one of Thailand's leading Muay Thai promotions outside of Bangkok, has announced a major programming revamp. The promotion pioneered the three-round "entertainment Muay Thai" format, where judges reward forward pressure, aggression, and visible damage.
The key phrase is visible damage. And the key omission is the clinch.
Entertainment Muay Thai formats — designed to deliver faster pace and more excitement for casual audiences — routinely penalize or eliminate clinch work entirely. Fighters are broken apart quickly. Knees in the clinch are restricted or banned in some rulesets. The slow, grinding, chess-like interior game that Dieselnoi mastered is replaced with a highlight-reel format optimized for social media clips and first-time viewers.
The result is exciting. The result is also incomplete.
What is being optimized away is not just a technique. It is an entire dimension of the art. When you remove the clinch from Muay Thai, you remove the part where experience matters most — where a 35-year-old Kru with superior knowledge can defeat a 22-year-old athlete with superior physical gifts. You remove the part where the art rewards wisdom.
You make it younger. You make it faster. You make it easier to sell.
And you make it smaller.
The clinch has become like the wise and strong grandfather. The one who knows the ways of old. Who knows the stories, speaks to the ancestors and the spirits. Whose hands produced the life we live. Whose love allowed us opportunity. But we — with our gadgets and fast pace — forget him. Our cornerstone.
I hope it doesn't take for him to pass before we remember what he meant.
Why This Is A Preservation Problem
We have written in The Crucible about the collision between ancient warrior culture and modern corporate sports machinery. The Rodtang situation was one visible expression of that collision — a fighter, a contract, a legal battle.
The disappearing clinch is a quieter version of the same story. There is no lawsuit here. No single villain. Just the slow, market-driven erosion of the parts of the art that don't photograph well, don't clip well, don't sell well to audiences who have never spent time on a mat.
This is why the Muay Thai Library Project matters. This is why the Krus matter. This is why preserving access to the full, unedited, five-round traditional Muay Thai — with all its clinch work and patience and interior chess — is an act of cultural stewardship, not nostalgia.
What Dieselnoi knew is not available on YouTube highlights. It lives in the gyms, in the old footage, in the teachers who were there.
Once it is gone, it does not come back.
A Note From The Mat
I teach both Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai. And what I know from the mat is this — the clinch in Muay Thai and the guard in BJJ share the same essential truth. They are both positions that casual observers want to escape from and that masters have learned to live in completely.
The clinch is where Muay Thai becomes grappling. Where it reveals its deepest roots. Where it proves that it has always been more than striking — it has always been a complete system for controlling another human being.
To teach Muay Thai without teaching the clinch is to teach a language while removing half the vocabulary.
We owe the art more than that.
The great work never stops.
— Apparatus
Further Reading & Watching: