When Vietnamese Muay Thai Finds Its Roots: The Difficult Journey from Fire Pits to Cold Training Gyms

I remember that night at the Thống Nhất Stadium in Saigon, 2026. The battle drums pounded, smoke rose from aluminum tubes placed before the ring. A young Thai fighter had just knocked out his Vietnamese opponent in the second round, but what I will never forget is not the final punch — but the sigh of the boy's grandfather, who had attended fights since 2026 and told me that before, whenever a Vietnamese fighter defeated a Thai master, the entire Ben Thanh market stayed closed for three days because everyone went to the stadium to watch. Forty-two years later, the dojo doors are closed, the audience sits silently on cold plastic chairs, and young Vietnamese fighters are trying to rebuild a legacy that has been forgotten in its own home.

That match was not a beautiful memory, but it was a milestone. Win or lose, what matters more is how we tell that story. I have spent four decades following football and Southeast Asian martial arts, and most recently three seasons of Vietnam's V1 Muay Thai League — where gyms from Hanoi, Da Nang, Can Tho, and Ho Chi Minh City meet to compete. What I saw was not a revival, but a slow, exhausting process that requires the patience of a beat keeper rather than a powerful punch.

The core problem is not technique. People often say Vietnamese fighters lack power, speed, and conditioning — and those things are partially true. But the real problem lies in training structure. If you look at Thailand's major training centers like the ONE Championship camp in Bangkok or Sor Sumalee's gym in Nakhon Si Thammarat, they have three elements: age-group classification systems from 7 to 18, a fixed competition schedule of four times per year, and direct connections with local sponsors. Vietnam lacks all three.

I interviewed coach Vo Duc Thang, who leads the Muay Thai team at Ho Chi Minh City Sports Club, and he said a simple sentence: "I am not lacking anything, I am just lacking time to re-teach what my father taught me." That sentence opens a dimension that sports journalism rarely touches — the generational break. Many Vietnamese fighters today learn Muay Thai through YouTube videos, through short clips on TikTok, rather than through a teacher sitting beside them and adjusting every stance, every hip rotation. There is nothing wrong with learning from the internet, but when the internet is the only teacher, you learn form without understanding essence.

A concrete example: the low kick in traditional Muay Thai is not just a leg-striking technique — it is a way of measuring distance, a language of communication between two fighters before any punch is thrown. When a Vietnamese fighter executes a low kick, I often see two small but common mistakes. First, they rotate their hips too much, causing the upper body to lose balance and allowing the opponent to easily counter with a right cross. Second, they lift their knee too high before kicking, creating a Telegraph that is too obvious. Both errors can be corrected in three weeks if a coach is standing and observing directly. But if not, the fighter will continue repeating mistakes for months, years, and call it "personal style."

I remember a match at the 2026 V1 League semifinals, between Vietnamese fighter Nguyen Van An (23 years old, Red Devil Muay Thai gym, Hanoi) and Cambodian opponent Sokha Chan (25 years old, Kampuchea Krom FC). The referee stopped the fight in the third round when An was injured on his right hamstring. On screen, it was a leg entanglement — an action considered accidental. But when reviewing the footage, I noticed a small detail: before the incident, Sokha Chan had executed three low kicks to the same leg, each exactly twelve seconds apart. Three times, same target, same interval. That was not random. That was tactics. And it shows an important thing: our opponents are learning tactics from different sources, while many Vietnamese fighters are still learning techniques from old sources.

I do not want to say that Vietnamese Muay Thai is regressing. I say it is losing its direction. There is a difference between the two. Regressing means you are going backward. Losing direction means you are standing still while the world around you is moving. In football, we call it "strategic stasis" — when a team does not lose but also does not win, is not relegated but also does not promote, and gradually becomes forgotten by its own fans.

Interestingly, while Vietnamese Muay Thai is struggling to find direction, Vietnamese football is going through a similar revolution — but in the opposite direction. Vietnamese women's football, under coach Park Hee-ma and a team led by Huynh Nhu, won the gold medal at SEA Games 32 in 2026, and then qualified for the 2026 Asian Championship finals. They do not have artificial turf fields, international nutrition programs, or major sponsors. But they have something Muay Thai is lacking — a system. A system that starts at the district level, rises to the city level, then to the national level. Not perfect, but structured.

Why does Muay Thai not have a similar structure? I think the answer lies in history. Football arrived in Vietnam from the 1920s, during the French colonial period, and was introduced through the school system. Children learned football because it was a sport encouraged by the colonial administration. Muay Thai, on the other hand, arrived in Vietnam much later — mainly through migration and cultural exchange in the 1990s. No school system taught Muay Thai. No state fund sponsored Muay Thai competitions. It existed mainly through the personal passion of teachers and support from the Vietnamese community abroad.

Personal passion is a powerful thing, but it is also fragile. When the teacher passes away, when the community loses interest, when young fighters no longer have anyone to learn from — the entire system collapses. That is not speculation. That is what happened at the gym of master Huynh Van Anh in District 8, Ho Chi Minh City, where a generation of the South's best fighters was trained from 2026 to 2026. Master Anh passed away in 2026. The gym closed in 2026. Seventy-three athletes who competed professionally under him are now scattered across the country, most have retired, some have moved to coaching at small gyms, and only three of them are still competing at the national level.

Three fighters. Seventy-three. That number does not speak for itself, but if you look at the 2026 V1 League standings, you will see that among the twelve teams, only three fighters were trained under Master Anh. Three people, the entire tournament, from a gym that closed. What does that tell us? It tells us that a broken system does not only affect one generation — it affects everything that comes after.

I spent the last three months of 2026 observing the Vietnamese national Muay Thai team's training sessions, preparing for the 2026 Asian Games in Bangkok. I sat in the corner of the gym, taking notes on what I saw, and noticed something: today's young athletes have significantly better conditioning than the 2010s. They run faster, jump higher, punch harder. But their technique is simpler. Their matches lack tactical depth. They fight by reflex, not by strategy. And that is not because they are lazy or lack talent. It is because nobody teaches them how to fight strategically.

In football, we have the concept of "pressing" — closing down opponents immediately after losing possession. Pressing is not just running more, but running the right place, at the right time, with a specific purpose. Muay Thai has its own pressing — called "pressure fighting," or overwhelming tactics. But pressure fighting is not running randomly and throwing punches blindly. It is about controlling distance, forcing the opponent to move in the direction you want, and creating openings in their defense through continuous attacks. To do that, a fighter needs to understand rhythm, center of gravity, and how to read the opponent's body in each second.

I asked Head Coach Tran Minh Tuan whether he is teaching pressure fighting techniques to young athletes. He replied: "I teach what I know. What I know comes from my teacher. And what my teacher taught me is not in books. It is in the way he stands, the way he breathes, the way he looks at his opponent before striking. I cannot teach that through words. You must see it, feel it, and learn it through time."

That answer sounds like an apology. But it is not. It is a reality. A reality that we are living in an age of speed, where everything must be taught fast, learned fast, competed fast, and results must come immediately. But Muay Thai, like many traditional martial arts, does not fit that rhythm. It requires time. It requires observation. It requires a teacher who can sit beside you for hundreds of training sessions, adjusting every centimeter of movement, until your body naturally remembers the correct technique.

Without such a teacher, fighters will learn quickly but incorrectly. And when they are wrong, they will not know they are wrong, because nobody tells them. That is the cycle that Vietnamese Muay Thai has been trapped in for decades.

But I am not writing this article to complain. I am writing it because I believe the problem can be solved — if we accept that there is no quick solution. In football, we learned this lesson through many years of failures. Hanoi FC, under coach Kim Sang-sik, built a youth system from 2026 and only began reaping results in 2026, when their youth team won the U19 national championship. That was five years of continuous investment, no immediate results, but ultimate results.

Vietnamese Muay Thai needs a similar strategy. Not from the government, not from large sponsors, but from those within the community — from coaches, from veteran athletes, from those who have lived and breathed this martial art for thirty, forty years. They do not need billions of dong. They need recognition. They need a forum to share experience, a system to store knowledge, and a mechanism to pass it to the next generation.

Most recently, in March 2026, the Vietnam Muay Thai Federation (VTF) organized the first senior coach training course in Ho Chi Minh City. Twelve coaches from eight provinces attended, including those who were national athletes in the 1990s. The course lasted five days, and what was notable was not the content — which was already available in international textbooks — but how the instructors shared practical combat experience. Coach Vo Duc Thang recounted his 2026 match against a Thai fighter, where he lost to a knee strike he could not defend because he did not expect the opponent to change rhythm from slow to fast within the same combo. That story is not in any textbook. It exists only in the memories of those who lived it. And if not recorded, it will be lost with that generation.

I recorded Thang's story in my notebook, hoping one day it will be turned into teaching materials. But I also know that recording is not enough. We need a system — an open database, where coaches can upload analysis videos, share tactics, and comment on each other. Where young fighters can review classic matches, not just to learn technique, but to understand the context, psychology, and decisions in each second of a fight.

In football, we have the concept of "video analysis" — reviewing matches to analyze. Most V.League clubs now have dedicated video rooms, with young coaches spending two to three hours each day reviewing the previous match. Muay Thai can do the same. But instead of only reviewing their own matches, they should review their opponents' matches — to understand how opponents move, how they defend, how they read the fight. That is how a fighter becomes a true warrior: not just learning to punch, but learning to see.

I reviewed forty-two matches from the 2026 V1 League, and what I noticed is that most Vietnamese fighters fight by reflex, not by observation. They see the opponent move forward, they retreat. They see the opponent throw a punch, they block. They never actively change rhythm, angle, or tactic mid-fight — unless their coach yells from outside the ring. And even then, the reaction is usually ten to fifteen seconds slower than the opponent.

Fifteen seconds in a Muay Thai match is an eternity. It is enough time for a smart fighter to read the opponent's intention, prepare a counter, and execute before the other even realizes. But to do that, the fighter needs to learn to read — not just the body, but the space, the rhythm, even the micro-expressions on the opponent's face. A slight frown, a blink, a deep breath — all are signals. And current Vietnamese coaches hardly teach this.

I do not know why. Perhaps because they were not taught either. Perhaps because they are too busy teaching basic techniques — stance, jab, cross, hook, low kick — with no time for more nuanced things. Perhaps because the current competition system does not encourage nuance. When scoring is based on the number of landed strikes, rather than tactical effectiveness, then continuous attacking will always be rewarded more than controlling the match.

But if we change the scoring system, we will change the way we train. And if we change the way we train, we will change the next generation of fighters. That is simple logic, but it requires courage — courage to challenge existing rules, courage to face opposition from those accustomed to the old way, and courage to accept that results will not come immediately.

In football, we learned that lesson through many years. Coach Park Hee-ma faced numerous criticisms when he first came to Vietnam for his slow training approach, his emphasis on building from the back rather than direct football. But he persisted, and four years later, the Vietnamese women's team played a style recognized across Asia — controlling rhythm, high pressure, and attacking through wide channels with three-player combinations.

Vietnamese Muay Thai needs an HLV like that — not necessarily a foreigner, but someone within the community, with long-term vision, and enough courage to change. I had the opportunity to talk to a young coach from Can Tho, Le Van Hung, 34 years old, who was a national athlete in the 2010s and is now building a small gym in the suburbs. Hung told me: "I do not want to teach my fighters to become punching machines. I want to teach them to become thinkers. A fighter who can punch hard is a talent. A fighter who knows when to punch hard and when to wait is a warrior."

That sentence from Hung reminded me of the An vs. Chan match in the V1 League semifinals. If An had been taught to think, he would not have just kicked the same leg three times — he would have changed targets, changed rhythm, and forced Chan to defend in a different direction. When Chan loses balance from constant adjustment, An would attack the openings Chan inadvertently creates. That is how a match is controlled — not by strength, but by intelligence.

But An was not taught that. He was only taught how to low kick. And when the opponent changes tactics, he has no. That is the gap that Vietnamese Muay Thai has been living with for decades.

I end this article not with a prediction, but with a question. That question is not for managers, not for coaches, not for athletes — but for myself, and for everyone who has dedicated their life to following and loving this martial art. How do we rebuild a system without destroying what remains? How do we re-teach what was lost without rejecting what exists? And most importantly — how do we make the younger generation believe that this martial art is still valuable, still relevant, still worth pursuing, in a world where UFC and Kickboxing dominate the media?

I do not have the answer. But I know that the answer does not lie in copying Thailand, or Japan, or any other country. The answer lies in accepting that Vietnamese Muay Thai is a unique version, carrying within it the imprint of Vietnamese history, culture, and people. It does not need to be like anyone else. It only needs to be itself — and that is the hardest thing.

People forget the match, but they never forget the collective sigh of the entire stadium that night. I am the one who sat in the corner of that arena, recording every movement, every expression, every moment. And I believe that the story of Vietnamese Muay Thai is still being written — not by the hardest punches, but by the most patient decisions. The heartbeat of this martial art has never belonged to me. But I will continue to keep the rhythm, until the new generation learns to hear it.