"The music comes up, and we begin our walk. I move around the ring counterclockwise, with my inside fist up and outside fist on the top rope. This is a way to learn the ring, to feel it. I bow and say a prayer in each corner, ostensibly to placate the spirits of the corners." (Sheridan, 29)

Apidej Sit-Hirun

Fairtex - Bangplee, Thailand

About the book...

"In 1999, after a series of adventurous jobs...Sam Sheridan found himself in Australia, loaded with cash and intent on not working until he'd spent it all. He quit smoking and began working out at a local gym, where it slowly occurred to him that now, without distractions, he could finally indulge a long-dormant obsession: fighting. Within a year, Sheridan landed in Bangkok to train at the legendary Fairtex gym with Apidej Sit-Hirun, the greatest fighter in Thai kickboxing history...A Fighter's Heart is the dazzling chronicle of Sheridan's quest. It's an insightful look at violence as a career and as a spectator sport, a behind-the-pageantry glimpse of athletes at the top of their terrifying game, and a dizzying firsthand account of what it's like to reach the peak of finely disciplined aggression, to hit - and be hit." (A Fighter's Heart, Inside flap)

Why is it important?

Sam Sheridan may not have been the first American to travel to Thailand to study Muay Thai fighting, but he was the first one to adapt his experiences in an authentic Thai fighting camp into a best selling book. As the sport of Muay Thai fighting becomes more popular in the United States, especially given its heavy influence of new forms of martial arts such as Mixed Martial Arts, Sheridan's book is a well timed ethnographic account of a tradition much older than his own home, the United States.

Return to Wai Khru and Ram Muay Index

Kris Noteboom.
Copyright © 2001 by University of North Texas. All rights reserved.
Revised: 05 Dec 2007 15:00:14 -0600