i'm right here where the whole story started at bangla station where we took a look in part one at the early years of a fighter's life in today's video we're gonna fast forward to the professional years i'm heading to the biggest fight in thailand tonight a boat that's going to be broadcast on national tv but i'm not just going to show up and get some stock footage from the stands i've been invited to take you behind the scenes i'll take you deep on a journey of what it's like before during and after a professional muay thai fight the story starts at this training camp where one of the boxers is preparing for tonight's fight what's your name sam nice to meet you too [Music] so i just talked to him so he finished went in in the morning he with 60 kilo yeah right now he's 64.
After finishing his pre-fight meal he lights some incense and praise to the god of muay thai for good luck in his bout that's only two hours away there's only a few other people here and meeting one of them introduced me to a side of muay thai that's as important to ties as the fighting itself so the the main reason he comes because he want to know what is the condition of the boxer before he gambling yeah he's like a scout in the in the in the nfl when you're looking at the boxers what are you looking for what do you see on when the the boxer train how fatty they are for example if the if they finally train like three minutes and they feel like i mean uh drain a lot so he will not be confident in that boxer he will saw the he will see the muscle the muscles tone the line the face so you will see everything even even the tactic after some last minute instruction from his coaches and trainers they pack up and head to the arena [Music] so i've been invited to be part of the fighters corner tonight so i'm pretty excited about that i don't know if you can see the orange bucket but connect was telling me that this is basically the fighter's water the fighters food because they don't want anyone tampering with it and potentially poisoning it and some saying the fighter will only drink from the protected water and eat from the protected food it's about an hour before the fights begin and we're just outside the gate in america they call this tailgating [Music] the right hand side is for the general audience this is for the team of the boxers so this is backstage the locker room and you can see the boxers all getting taped up everybody gets a little stall here and back over here they get a little rub down everyone's getting warmed up as samsung gets taped up in a stall beside him separated by just this metal girder we get a first look at his opponent [Music] as samsung settles in for his rub down the other fighters who are up first start to make final preparations to head to the ring each with their own entourage connect took me into the stadium to show me in action something that he explained on the car ride over he was just telling me about these guys who you'll see shouting through rolled up paper yes they will cover them up with paper and then they will give a live live commentary to that audience yeah so so there's a whole group of people that give live commentary through facebook live or or some other digital means and they make money by having subscribers who pay them 300 a month for a subscription to get information live from the fights to help them with the betting exactly as this guy updates his subscribers on the condition of samsung our scout from back at the camp feverishly gets all the information he can before laying his final bet how does it work the camp owners place bets on the fight tonight so normally when we he go to the fight normally he will not lose he will get 28 000 but the time owners they place back on him against or against the opponent and if he win the camera will get 200 000 and if he loses if you lose it the fighter get the same they've only lost 200 000.
Okay so the owner bets 200 000 baht on tonight's fight he's like 7 000 u.s dollar how do people place bets so there's two way the first way is that on the website but normally they will show some fee maybe 10 or 15 percent so for the the the gambler with the huge amount of money they go to the stadium and that leaves the opponent there's no fee so is there people taking bets in the stands yes they were taking that taking money cash understand and and how do they keep track of all this do they have tickets is there is it like horse racing where they have tickets and they get a ticket or is it just done like a stock trading floor they have the live stock they call it trading so you bet on this guy you remember it there is no proof of gambling just trust me and you will see the hand signal that's 10 thousand baht 100 you said this how much is that 500 as the final bets get laid samsung gets his rub down and enters the final preparation for his upcoming fight [Music] and as he does so a stark reminder of the dangers he faced roll right by him [Music] or minutes before the fight here i just wanted to ask you something if you win tonight what are you going to do with the prize money okay i think and get some money to for his food yeah so please personally if you get it it will be the money that you can invest in the future okay and how are you feeling [Music] foreign [Music] muay thais fought over five rounds the first round fighters just feel each other out the real actions in the crowd where they're not even watching the fight they're focusing on getting the bets laid [Applause] [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] whoever wins gets an extra 20 000 baht just the bullseye as the fights go deeper people in the crowd shout out offers a bonus money to the fighter that they place their bet on we're in the third round and samsung's currently losing the fight so these bonus offers start coming from all areas of the stands [Applause] oh it's the fourth round in muay thai where fights are won and lost and with so much money on the line from his trainers to the camp owner to the people in the stands this kid's got to be feeling some pressure [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] so we're going into the fifth and final round samsung needs a knockout here and you're going to hear a lot a lot of bonus sense coming from the crowd if you can get a knockout what i learned from kunak earlier is that by the fifth round everybody already knows who's won the fight and the winner just holds on and plays pure defense all the bets that have happened throughout the fight are actually settled during the fifth round before the judges come out of their boxes hand their cards into the referee and unfortunately lost his chance at the bonus money the gambler that bet on him explains to me why he thinks samsung lost the fight and so what now where when do you start training again for the next fight [Music] he's now enrolled in enrolling in uh spa science in the university ah nice well i wish you nothing but the best man thanks for letting us come out tonight i'd like to give you this to help with your internship yeah thanks it was good man yeah good luck with school i wish you nothing but the best in the future i think the difference between pro boxing in the western world versus here in thailand is that in the western world a pro boxer lives to fight and here in the world of muay thai they fight to live [Music] [Music] you
