Khmer Traditional Wrestling
Fighting in the Dirt is a Matter of Preserving Khmer Heritage
Two drums beat. Wrestlers, dressed in colorful
konsain (loin cloths) dance. As they whirl around the mats,
they take the forms of various animals - the monkey, the
crocodile, or the dragon. The dancing, which could last
several minutes, serves the dual purpose of warming up their
muscles and paying respect to their trainers.
When the signal is given, they tear at each
other in a frenzy, trying to throw one another. The drum
beats faster. The men look like two crocodiles locked up
in a battle to the death. Seeing that neither will gain
an advantage, they break off, and resume their dance. The
bout continues in this fashion, with the men alternately
wrestling and dancing. Finally, one manages to throw the
other. There is a scramble on the ground until one opponent
allows either his shoulder blades or chest to touch the
floor. The referee steps in and declares a winner.
After receiving his trophy, the winner dances
again. The Khmer Traditional Wrestling Championships take
place each August in the Olympic stadium along side the
modern Olympic Wrestling Championships. Although held on
the same day, the two sports differ dramatically in both
execution and outcome. Olympic wrestling is a sport, played
by modern athletes wearing singlets made of spandex. The
national team, based in Phnom Penh, is composed of 16 members,
ten men and six women. Naturally, they lead the nation in
the number of medals won. Both of the team’s coaches were
trained abroad, one in Russia and one in North Korea. In
addition to having proper equipment and twice-daily training
sessions, the members of the national team receive a monthly
cash stipend of thirty dollars, which, although a paltry
sum by western standards, is slightly higher than the average
income of $26 in Cambodia. With so many advantages, it is
nearly impossible for provincial teams to compete.
The world of traditional wrestling, on the
other hand, is a level playing field, dominated by the teams
from Pursat and Kandal provinces. According to Vath Chamreun,
a wrestling official and leading trainer in Phnom Penh,
“The best wrestlers are from Pursat Province.” He is quick
to point out that entrants in the Olympic wrestling competition
are barred from participation in the traditional wrestling
competition.
While the sport of Khmer wrestling is dying
out, many see preservation of the sport as a matter of national
pride and culture. “Before the Khmer Rouge, nearly every
village wrestled,” explains Vath Chamreun. “They wrestled
at festivals and on holidays, such as Khmer New Year or
Pchum Benh. But the art was banned during the Khmer Rouge
time and many of the top wrestlers and coaches were killed.”
In the 1980’s, under the Vietnamese, Khmer wrestling was still
banned. “In 1985, Pursat was the first province to have
wrestling again. It was not official, they just started
doing it.” Vath Chamreun laughs and makes it sound as if
some village men, drunk on rice wine, started having a go
at each other. And this was the rebirth of Khmer traditional
wrestling.
After the end of the Vietnamese domination
of Cambodia, some villages resumed wrestling, although most
did not. The first official championships were not held
until 2001. “In some provinces the wrestling has started
up again, but it has been incorporated into Bokator and
other traditional Khmer martial arts. So, it is no longer
pure wrestling. There were many martial arts in Cambodia,
dating back to the Angkorian or pre-Ankorian period,” explains
Vath Chamreun, who is working on a book about Khmer fighting
arts. “Khmer wrestling was just one part of Khmer martial
arts. They used wrestling to choose the strongest men to be
the military leaders. They also incorporated wrestling into
military training. First, the soldiers trained wrestling.
Later, they trained with swords, sticks, and other weapons.”
As historical proof, Vath Chamreun references the bas reliefs
carved on the walls of the ancient temples, such as Angkor
Wat, depicting soldiers in wrestling poses.
“Each year, the king’s representatives called
all the people from the provinces and organized a wrestling
tournament. Anyone could fight. There were no weight divisions.
One person would enter the circle and the official would
say, who will fight him? And, volunteers came. They used
incense sticks, cut in half, to time the rounds.” They fought
three rounds. “If you lost a round they would ask you, are
you strong or do you want to quit?” If you quit, you lost.
If you continued, the first person to get three wins won
the event. A pin was not needed. When you were thrown on
the ground, that was a lose. “There were no technical rules,
just throw the man down,” laughs Vath Chamreun.
“At the time of Angkor, you could also use
some martial arts techniques such as kicks.” Apparently,
if a man was being thrown, he was allowed to kick, but only
when he was in the air. When Vath Chamreun was a child,
some old men told him about the days when you could kick.
“It was very dangerous, since nearly all the kicks were
to the head. People got killed all the time.” As a result,
today, strikes are are not allowed.
Comparing Khmer wrestling with other martial
arts, Vath Chamreun says,“When a wrestler and a martial
artist fight, the wrestler must get very low, so he cannot
be hit.” Demonstrating, Vath Chamreun ducks under my punch
and grabs the nerve beneath my lat muscle. Then he twists
his body and grabs my leg. He lifts and throws me on my
back. “Wrestler against boxer, the wrestler has to be willing
to sacrifice. He will get hit several times. But then he
can throw the boxer.”
He demonstrates another technique where he
grabs me around my middle and turns his knuckles into
the small of my back. When he applies pressure, I can
feel bone grinding on bone. Once again, he lifts and
throws me. He assures me that both moves can be done with
gloves on. “In the old days, Khmer boxing, Pradal Serey,
was done without gloves and no rules. These types of grappling
moves were common.” In another scenario, throwing from the boxing
clinch, Vath Chamreun lands on top of me, head-butting
me in the jaw. Done at full speed, a single head butt to
the jaw can end a fight quickly.
The continued existence
of Khmer wrestling is greatly dependent upon the provincial
people. Unfortunately, resurrecting any cultural asset in
the provinces is problematic. Most provincial families are
subsistence farmers, concerned more with earning a living
and having enough to eat than they are about playing sports.
The poverty also robs them of strength, making it impossible
to train. Even for the national sport, Khmer boxing (Pradal
Serey), it is difficult to keep the tradition alive.
Most provincial boxing coaches say that their
students only train in the dry season, because the roads
are impassable in the rainy season and because the boys
are needed back at their family farms. At least with boxing
there is the chance of someday turning pro and earning an
income. But most provincial families see wrestling and other
sports as a dead end. They would invest a lot of time and
energy for nothing. As a result, traditional wrestling teams
do not have regular practices. Most only prepare for a few
days before the competitions.
For many villages, the only competition they
participate in is the National Championships. The Khmer
Traditional Wrestling Championships are a sterile affair.
To see the real event, practiced as it once was, you need
to visit a village in Kandal Province on Pchum Benh holiday.
The village inhabitants wake up at 5:00 AM and walk to the
Wat, where they toss food offerings on the ground in honor
of their ancestors. Next, they go to the shrine and receive
a blessing from the monks. The first event of the day is
the buffalo racing, which is done in pairs, racing three
hundred to five hundred meters beginning at the temple.
The winner normally receives a small cash prize of about
10,000 Riels ($2.50) provided by the local government.
When everyone has had a chance to race, the
wrestlers change clothes. To form the wrestling ring,
incense sticks are lit at the temple and inserted
into
the ground in a circle. The wrestlers can earn small
sums of money put up by village officials, and sometimes
they also receive tips from visiting dignitaries or tourists.
A small ensemble of two drums play as the men wrestle.
Traditional stick fighting also takes place
at the village. The stick fights, like the wrestling and boxing,
are accompanied by music and preceded by dance. In these
battles, the men fight with long staffs, really striking
at each other. Every time they make contact with their opponent’s
head or body, they earn a point. The one with the most points
wins. The stick fighting is different from other types
of stick fighting I have seen elsewhere in Asia. The men
often hold the stick at its end and swung it like a baseball
bat. Another common technique is thrusting, where the stick
is held like a spear and one opponent stabs at the
other. “This is a real fight,” insists Japleun (Chaploeun), one of
Phnom Penh’s leading wrestlers and a native son of the
Kandal Village. “The men are really fighting, because they
want to win.”
Other than the obvious dangers associated
with hitting each other in the head with a six-foot wooden
pole, it seems that great care was taken to preserve the
health and safety of the village competitors. For example,
when I train with Japleun at the Olympic Stadium, I once saw
him win by suplex, tossing an opponent over his head. But
here in the village, such techniques are banned as they
might cause injury. In most bouts, when one opponent manages
to get into a throwing position, the bout is stopped and
a win is awarded.
The day Japleun takes me to his village,
the rain is pouring, turning the dirt road into a sea of mud.
We swerve to avoid hitting a young boy riding a water
buffalo. Our car skids to a halt in Vihear Sour village,
Kandal province. My companions are Hok Chheang Kim the
head coach of the national wrestling team and Japleun,
the 27-year-old, 73kg Cambodian wrestling champion. In
spite of the heavy rain, the villagers come out in droves
to welcome the hero home.
While Japleum signs autographs, Coach Kim
tells me about the days when he trained in Russia. “I went
there to learn to be a wrestling coach. It was snowing in
September, when I arrived and still snowing six months later
when I left.” The villagers ties a diaper around my waist
and under my legs. All the men in the village are wearing
similar attire. Half wear red and half wear blue, like in
kickboxing. The rules are simple. Place your opponent’s
back on the ground and you get a point. Best out of three
wins, so the fight is over when the score reaches two to zero.
The fights are quick and furious. One wrestler
shoots in but in the muddy, dirty ground, it is hard
to do a controlled slide. The fighters lock up, toss
and roll. Japleun is exceptionally skilled from his years
of experience training in Phnom Penh. He does some complicated
maneuvers, such as lifting and flipping his opponents. When
it is my turn, I find it hard not to let my back touch
the gound.
In freestyle fighting (Mixed Martial Arts),
fighting from your back is perfectly acceptable and even
often advantageous. Several times, my opponent and I lock
up. I am able to get him in a reverse full nelson, then
spin around and take his back. Normally at this point I
would throw my weight backwards pulling him down on top
of me, lock my legs around his (grape hooks) and choke him
out (rear naked choke). In Khmer wrestling, unfortunately
for me, the second my back hits the ground I lose.
Wrestling on a clean mat in Phnom Penh is
one thing, but wrestling barefoot, in the dirt, as it is
traditionally done, is something else entirely. The rain and sweat
make it hard to grab your opponent. The mud is gritty and
grinds into your butt crack and abrases the skin. Wet sand runs into my mouth
and I suddenly knew how an oyster feels. I make a pearl the
size of an orange. My fights have a bit of panache, but I
lose all of my bouts. This is particularly pathetic since
I outweigh most of my opponents by about forty kilos.
Of course, the weight difference is allowed since there
are no weight divisions in Khmer Traditional Wrestling.
Seeing how badly I do, one very old woman
says,“Please come back for Pchum Benh.” I think she is
planning to match me with the smallest guy in the village
and bet against me. Japleun introduces me to the village
wrestling coach, The Thain, who explains that they do
not practice regularly like the team at the Olympic Stadium.
According to him, every man, woman and child in the village
can wrestle. Even the women compete in traditional wrestling.
“They do not need to train,” said The Thain. “When they
bring the buffalo to the rice fields, they wrestle amongst
themselves. Particularly, one month before Pchum Benh, they
wrestle in the fields to prepare for the big day.” The Thain
explains that wrestling is a kind of play for the village
boys who are bored with their farm work. “Some only train
three days or one night before Pchum Benh.”
My wrestling ordeal behind me, all the wrestlers
and I take a shower, Khmer village style. Normally, people
in these kinds of villages do not even have running water,
so they stand outside their house and dump buckets over
their head while wearing a sarong. In this village, however,
one man has a compressor pump. He fires it up, attaches
a fire hose to it, and we all get hosed off like in a prison
movie.
After we change our clothes, Japleun takes
me to the temple, Wat Vihear Sua, where he shows me the
statue of the village patron saint, General Meun Ek. He
is the military commander who defended Cambodia from Thailand.
Before boys from the village go to the army, they first
pray before the statue. They take a small piece of dirt
from behind the statue and carry it with them for protection.
“Every club prays before they wrestle,” says
Japleun. “They have small Hindu statues and give thanks
to the ancestors for creating martial arts. We pray, please
stay in my heart and make me strong.” Inside the temple,
there is yet another live band playing music. “We pray
for the spirit of the Wat,” Japleun says, pointing at a Buddha
statue. “If they play music the spirit will welcome you,”
explains Kimsong, who is an expert on Khmer religion and
culture. “After that, he will recognize you and protect
you wherever you go. In our mind we can say, Buddha please
protect us from enemies and give us success and prosperity.”
Kimsong ends by telling me, “The music is a language for
us to communicate with the spirits of the gods.” Perhaps
playing music at traditional wrestling, boxing, stick fighting
and other events is a way of asking the gods to preserve
the Khmer culture.
by Antonio Graceffo
For more about the author and his travels go to his website
www.speakingadventure.com or contact him directly at
antonio@speakingadventure.com
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