Chai Sirisute: The Man Who Brought Muay Thai to America

I am not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance. This is the story of Ajarn Chai Sirisute (born October 16, 1948, Bangkok): the Thai fighter who started Muay Thai at four, earned a karate black belt at twelve, fought more than seventy-two bouts in the ring, and in 1968 walked into America with an art nobody had ever seen — and built it from nothing. We trace the Hells Angels he trained by accident and the FBI agents he volunteered to teach, the colleges and backyard schools of the seventies, the challengers who kept coming and kept losing, and the most important student he ever took: Guru Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee's heir, training in Chai's backyard in 1977. From there the art flowed into Jeet Kune Do — into the Dallas Cowboys' pre-season camps, onto the first American team at the Muay Thai World Championships, and down a line that reaches our listener: Chai to Guru Dan, Guru Dan's academy to Sifu Bill, who trained Muay Thai under Master Chai himself, and Bill to twenty-five years on the mat. Chapters: 0:00 — Intro: the man who brought the eight limbs 1:57 — Bangkok: the fighter 3:50 — America: nineteen sixty-eight 5:57 — The student in the backyard 7:27 — Legacy: the line "Masters of Fighting" is a series on the great martial artists and the ideas they left behind — told by people who live in their lineage. #ChaiSirisute #MuayThai #GuruDan #BruceLee #IpMan #ErikPaulson #SalemAssli #FrancisFong #LarryHartsell #MikeLee #JesseGlover #WongShunLeung #TakyKimura #TedWong #RichardBustillo #JamesLee #WongFeiHung #MiyamotoMusashi #MasOyama #HelioGracie #ChuckNorris #MastersOfFighting