Column: Fighting Irish Jono Bracken

Irish national Muay Thai champion Jono Bracken has shipped out to Thailand and is fighting on the country’s professional Thaiboxing circuit. He’s also the newest JOE columnist.

 

Dubliner Jono Bracken currently holds two Irish national titles in Muay Thai – the grueling Southeast Asian fight sport in which competitors kick, punch, elbow, knee and grapple with each other over five rounds – if both last that long. Jono also made history by becoming the first Irishman to win a fight in Bangkok's legendary Lumpinee Stadium – the venue that for decades has represented the pinnacle of Muay Thai.

After securing the Irish titles, Jono flew back to Thailand, where the Muay Thai is the national sport, to spend a year training and fighting on the country’s professional Thaiboxing circuit. In the first edition of his exclusive JOE.ie column, he talks about what brought him to Thailand, his fights so far and how things are sometimes done that bit differently in the homeland of his sport:

I came to Thailand last April, but I had quite a good run before I left Ireland. I’d had three or four wins one after the other with three knockouts. My most recent fight in Ireland was in February 2010, that won me my second Irish title.

This is my fourth trip to Thailand but this time around I decided to take the plunge and come over for a full year. The longest I had stayed in Thailand prior to this was a month, but having more time means I’m getting a lot out of this trip.

I’ve had five fights in Thailand since arriving in April, I’ve lost two and won three. I actually lost the first two and I think on reflection that I was still adjusting to the scoring system here. I thought I had won my second fight here but the decision went against me.

I lost because the scoring criteria is a little bit more tailored towards clinch and knees – I was beating the guy with kicks and punches but he scored well with a few knees in the fourth round and he won.

Although I thought at the time that I had done enough to take it, since then I’ve really worked on adjusting to the scoring system here and I’ve won my last three fights.

My last fight was in Lumpinee stadium, I fought at 71kg. It was against another European, he was either Swedish or Swiss, I’m not sure, but it was a good fight. In the end I won it fairly easily on points. It’s very rare that the judges would score the second round but one of the Thai trainers told me afterwards that they gave the first round as a draw and I won all four rounds remaining rounds. I was delighted with that.

Unfortunately I had to pull out of a fight last month, just because I’ve had so many fights and I’ve been training so much. I’ve bangs and bumps and knocks on the body and with continuous training it does take a toll. You do need a full week to recover. The nature of the sport means your shins are always going to need rest at times but my elbows have been quite sore too. I’ve cut a few guys with elbows here in recent fights, so the joint itself is quite painful.

The Thais have a different approach to training and injuries that has a lot to do with their religion. Because they’re Buddhists they believe that Buddha will keep them safe during the fight. They believe that you will be fine once you get in there and that the outcome of the fight will have been already decided by Buddha. They’re very spiritual in that sense.

I’ve picked up a little bit of the language; I should probably know more than I do given the length of time I’ve been here, but I have enough to get by. It’s a tonal language – you can have a word that has completely different meanings depending on the tone you say it in – so it’s a bit of a tongue twister.

Bangkok

There are a few Irish guys training in Muay Thai in Bangkok and I’m here with one, Stephen Meleady. He’s training hard, getting fights and doing well. Then there’s a good few English lads I know through the sport who are training in the same gym (Jitti Gym Bangkok) as me at the moment.

Andy Thrasher is here, he’s a WMC world champion from England and another well-known fighter called Liam Harrison comes here on a regular basis. It means I get good sparring from the foreigners as well as the Thais.

I’m fighting on the 29th of this month in Lumpinee (the most famous Muay Thai stadium in the country) so I’m starting to pick up in training for that. I’m not sure who I will be fighting as yet. In Thailand you don’t really know who you’re going to be fighting until the day you get into the ring.

When you’re fighting in the stadiums you weigh in at 6am on the morning of the fight and you meet your opponent then. The next time you see them is in the ring that evening.

In Thailand you will mostly fight foreigners, but you do get to fight Thais once in a blue moon. I got the chance to fight a Thai at the start of November. Thinking back, I was quite cautious in the first round because I knew he would be more experienced than me and of course it’s his sport.

As it happened I went out in the second round and knocked him out with a left hook. I was delighted to beat a Thai at his own sport in his own country.

He was very technical and had really fast kicks. But as it happened I went out in the second round and knocked him out with a left hook. I was delighted to beat a Thai at his own sport in his own country. The feeling I had when I beat him was indescribable.

It’s been said a lot that if you’re going to beat a Thai in Thailand then you will have to knock him out because you won’t win a decision on points, and I used to believe that myself. But having been here a while now I think it’s more to do with the scoring system here. A lot of foreigners don’t understand how critical and how precise the scoring is in Thailand.

In Europe it’s more about who beats the other guy up but in Thailand, and to use my previous fight as an example, I beat the guy with punches and kicks and moved him all around the ring but because the scoring system was more tailored to his fighting style - they love clinch work and knees, he took the decision.

Another good example would be Ramon Dekkers. When he was here he really beat up the guys he fought, punching and kicking them, but with the scoring he was often on the wrong side of a decision.

There are other aspects of life here that you need to adjust too, food being one of them. I’m kind of sick of rice to be honest, they eat rice with everything. I don’t want to see rice for a long time when I get home but other than that the food is fine. When I first got here I was getting upset stomachs, but once I had a chance to adjust my stomach has been fine. I can eat anything now and it won’t bother me whatsoever.

There is a list as long as my arm of foods I’m looking forward to eating when I get home. I’m not a huge fan of Thai food, but it will do for now.