The Kicking Machine Returns- And What He Had To Lose To Find Himself
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The Crucible — Post No. 6
"The Kicking Machine Returns — And What He Had To Lose To Find Himself" Superlek Kiatmoo9 | ONE Friday Fights 154 | May 15, 2026
There is a particular kind of destruction that only happens to the gifted.
Someone works diligently and sacrifices everything for the pure sake of art. If they are lucky, they get recognized for it before they die. But when this happens, the person — in the eyes of the public — is elevated and destroyed at the same time. They become a symbol in the minds of the people. A human shaped screen to be projected upon.
Then, to remain in the space where opportunities and resources become more abundant, the pressure arrives — to conform to standards that are beyond human and impossibly not your own. To disregard your process, your roots. To become a corporate vessel.
This becomes the next spiritual challenge. How to keep the self intact while your success — or its trappings — pulls you in every direction.
Superlek Kiatmoo9 knows this challenge intimately.
The Rise
For years, "The Kicking Machine" was the standard by which all Muay Thai strikers were measured. Victories over Jonathan Haggerty, Takeru Segawa, Rodtang Jitmuangnon, and Nabil Anane had cemented him as one of the finest pound-for-pound fighters of his generation. His technique was a masterclass in the muay femur tradition — the thinking fighter's style, built on precision, timing, and the deep intelligence of someone who had spent a lifetime learning to read the human body in motion.
He was not just a champion. He was an expression of everything traditional Muay Thai aspires to be.
The Fall
Then came the injuries. The outside pressures. And something more insidious than either — success itself.
Superlek had achieved enough to open his own gym. A lifelong dream made real. But the weight of management, staff, and responsibility pulled him away from the only thing that had ever made him whole. He stopped being a fighter and started being an institution. And in doing so, he lost the very thing that had built the institution in the first place.
He said it plainly: "I lost my identity. After dealing with injuries and being out of action for so long, I started overthinking. I wanted to try this and that without focusing on the results. I thought so much that I stopped being myself. I forgot that I already have great weapons and tried to do something else instead."
There was another force at work too — the audience. The projection. The human shaped screen. He admitted: "I was conflicted between fighting the way I wanted to and fighting the way people wanted to see me. I cared more about others than myself, and it stopped me from fighting in my own style."
This is what success does to artists when they let it. It turns the internal compass outward. Suddenly the question is no longer who am I — it is who do they need me to be.
The Return
Superlek did something that required a different kind of courage than walking into a ring. He sat across from a psychologist and said — I am not okay. I have lost myself and I need help finding my way back.
He also did something simpler and perhaps more profound. He went home. Back to YOKKAO Training Center in Bangkok. Back to where he was formed. Back to the people who knew him before he became a symbol.
"Now that I'm back here, I don't have to think about management. I just focus on who I'm fighting, plan my strategy, and evaluate myself fully."
The process. The roots. The thing that existed before the recognition arrived and tried to reshape it.
This is the alchemical return — not forward into something new, but backward into something true. The gold was always there. It had simply been covered.
Why This Matters Beyond The Fight
We have been building a thread in The Crucible since our first post. It runs through the Muay Thai Library Project and the knowledge that must be preserved before it disappears. It runs through the Rodtang situation and the contract that tried to make a warrior into a commodity. It runs through the dying clinch and the market forces that reward what looks spectacular over what is most profound.
The thread is this: the art has a soul. And that soul — in the fighter, in the tradition, in the community — must be protected from the machinery that surrounds it. Not with bitterness or resistance. But with clarity, rootedness, and the willingness to return to the beginning when the noise becomes too loud.
Superlek returned to the beginning. On Friday, he shows us what that costs — and what it gives back.
Watch This Friday
ONE Friday Fights 154 — The Inner Circle 📅 Friday, May 15, 2026 🏟 Lumpinee Boxing Stadium — Bangkok, Thailand 🥊 Superlek Kiatmoo9 vs. Abdulla "Smash Boy" Dayakaev — Bantamweight Muay Thai 📺 Live at: live.onefc.com
The Kicking Machine returns. Watch him remember who he is.
The great work never stops.
— Apparatus