Rambaa Somdet Brings the Party
Unusual styles don’t often survive in Muay Thai. The rule set and scoring of the sport demand that competitors generally fall into one of three or four archetypes if they want to win stadium belts. Those styles, broadly speaking, are:
Muay femur, the technicians who fight off the back foot, counter, and neutralize their opponents’ offense. Example: Samart Payakaroon.
Muay khao, the knee fighters who come forward and try to score in the clinch with knees. Example: Lamnammoon Sor Sumalee
Muay mat, the heavy handed punchers who try to deny the clinch and maintain middle distance to launch devastating punching combinations. Example: Anuwat Kaewsamrit.
Muay tae, the big kickers who stay slightly outside punching range and launch hard body kicks on repeat. Example: Samkor Kiatmontep.
While most top fighters, especially in the Golden Age, could fight to some extent in any of those styles as needed, all tend to have stylistic preferences. It’s a rare fighter who does all at a high level (Chamuekpet Hapalang is the only one that comes to mind for this author), and it’s even rarer to see a fighter whose game falls mostly outside of those categorizations. Reason being, it’s very hard to win Muay Thai fights if you’re not scoring consistently with elbows, knees, body or head kicks, or punches that have a noticeable effect on your opposition. And indeed the subject of this article, Rambaa Somdet, was never a truly top rank stadium Muay Thai fighter. He never won a Lumpinee or Rajadamnern title before switching his attention to international kickboxing and MMA. His game in his stadium fights, dancing and mean mugging notwithstanding, was fairly plain vanilla. He did have fairly heavy hands and got a fair number of knockouts against lesser competition, but he didn’t have the sort of well structured boxing style that brings sustained success to Muay mat fighters. He could land heavy combinations and had good timing on counters, but he also had a tendency to swing wildly and rarely jabbed to set up his power. That lack of stylistic cohesion is what cost him against top flight Thais, but it’s also what made him so exciting against lower ranked fighters and international opposition.
When Rambaa did connect, his KOs could come out of nowhere. He was a supremely athletic fighter with explosive power who could cover distance deceptively quickly.
Rambaa’s opponent enters with the jab. Rambaa counters with a jab of his own slipping to his right, and follows with a powerful overhand to put his man on the canvas.
Somdet throws a right backing his opponent into the corner. As he retreats Rambaa throws a hybrid round kick and front kick right up the middle between his gloves to get the KO.
Rambaa’s free swinging was unusual but not unheard among stadium fighters, but it wasn’t until he started fighting more international opposition that some of his odd technical preferences became apparent. The oddest thing about Rambaa’s style was that his favorite move was the skipping lead leg kick to his opponent’s back leg. This is not a high scoring technique, and it’s also one that puts a fighter in significant danger of being countered as it requires the kicker to put himself in punching range to land. Kicking on the outside of punching range is less of an issue if you’re kicking to the body or head as those targets encourage your opponent to keep his hands at home. The back leg however does less to dissuade a punch counter. Likely because of the counter risk Somdet didn’t use this kick much on the Thai domestic scene, but it was a staple of his fights against international opposition.
Rambaa throws repeated naked low kicks. A risky strategy against an opponent who will return fire, but an effective one against a fighter too off balance to do so.
Notice how many naked low kicks Rambaa is throwing. That would be very hard to get away with against better opposition, but if he’s not punished for throwing them they become both irritating and attritive, preventing his opponent from establishing a rhythm.
Rambaa also liked to play fairly explicit mind games against his opponents. His dancing was not confined to before and after fights. He would often throw in little moments of clowning in the middle of a contest to draw a shot to counter or just to demoralize his man.
Throwing up the Thai version of 52 Blocks Rambaa gets a moment of hesitation from his opponent. When the Japanese fighter’s gloves drop Somdet scores easily with a 1-2.
Once he had his opponent off balance, he’d do things like just walk himself to the ropes ala Anderson Silva, coming back off the inevitable attack with winging power combinations.
Backing straight up Rambaa knows an attack is coming. When it does he’s ready to lean into the ropes to dodge the kick coming back with big hooks.
Not only did Rambaa have a slightly offbeat style, he also made some unusual career choices for a nak muay. He was one of the first if not the first upper level Muay Thai fighter to take his chances in MMA, an arena in which he has perhaps surprising success considering his lack of grappling training and relatively advanced age (late 20s, ancient for Thai boxers) when he started. Rambaa won the Shooto flyweight strap and also beat future UFC fighter Ulysses Gomez in the PFC before finally retiring from MMA at the age of 40.
Somdet lands a hard counter right and continues to pour it on as Gomez tries for a desperation takedown. Rambaa almost finished the fight here but would have to settle for a decision win.
While never the a Rajadamnern or Lumpinee champion, Rambaa Somdet Sit Or was certainly an original, a fighter who viewed the fight as entertainment as much as sport and who was never afraid to stretch himself, whether that was fighting bigger foreigners on the international kickboxing circuit or making a very respectable run in MMA. It’s safe to say we’ll never again see a fighter do the running man in Lumpinee stadium and go on to win a legitimate MMA title. Rambaa is one of a kind.