Saya Win Zin Oo is the Founder and Senior Coach of the Thut Ti Lethwei Club in Yangon. He is a familiar face to our audience, having appeared throughout the Born Warriors trilogy. In this interview, he brings us up to date on his newest projects, and the current state of Lethwei.
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U Sai Zaw Zaw has been Lethwei’s top promoter since he entered the sporting arena close to three decades ago. He gives us an inside look at the business of promoting in a changing Myanmar landscape, his toughest challenges, and his hopes and plans for the future.
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Our newest interview features Soe Than Win, who has been one of the leading Lethwei promoters since the 1990s and is now Vice President of the World Lethwei Championship organization. He discusses the many challenges he faced while promoting Lethwei matches in the past, and what the future holds for the sport.
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Since the opening of the country, Lethwei has grown internationally on the back of newly formatted competitions aimed at a global audience. Its development of the sport has followed a very different trajectory than Thailand with Muay Thai, and Cambodia with Pradal Serey — sports that slowly built up over time to develop into what they are today.
We hope our new Interviews section will introduce readers to a wide variety of people involved in Lethwei throughout the years. The first two interviews feature martial artist and author Zoran Rebac, whose travels to Myanmar began in the early ‘80s, and educator/humanitarian and Japan and Myanmar Lethwei coordinator Takamori Tatsuya, who began his involvement with Lethwei and Myanmar in 1997.
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So much has changed since Born Warriors was released, both in Myanmar and the sport of Lethwei.
We did a poll on our Born Warriors Facebook page on May 27, 2018 to determine if this old footage from 1896 was Lethwei or Naban.
The Thai and Burmese have competed against each other for centuries, both in times of war and times of peace.
Lethwei is a diverse and durable fighting sport that has evolved over the decades. It has slowly risen from the ashes of military control which limited its expansion to global notoriety in the wake of the opening of Myanmar.
Were the ancient Burmese, Thai, Cambodian and Lao bare-knuckle/bound-fist bouts a fight to the death, or were they fought for the most part in a more civilized manner?
We were very saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Saya U Aung Pwe Maung, the leader of the Aphyu Yaung Lethwei club. His considerable knowledge and wealth of experience was a major asset to our project. A wonderful coach, referee, father and former Lethwei competitor. It was always a joy seeing him and being around his fighters.
Moe Thee was a friend who was featured throughout our Born Warriors documentary saga and in our online clips. He adopted the name Moe Thee when he began to compete as a teenager. Moe was a Lethwei competitor, promoter, teacher and went on to become a 2009 48kg Golden Belt champion.
Five lucky winners won a free DVD copy of Born Warriors Redux: Bound Fists during our special giveaway promotion that ended on September 30th.
The brand new Born Warriors Deluxe Edition includes all three award-winning Born Warriors documentaries, plus a bonus disc which features the newly updated Born to Battle: Burma vs. Thailand documentary and the extended edits of Fight Day & Bouts from the Archives V2, which shows rare and unseen archive footage that immerses the viewer into the competitive world of Lethwei. The complete 4 Disc set in limited DVD or Blu-ray editions runs over seven hours.
Our new Wikipedia entry adds additional details and provides an outstanding overview to how the documentaries were made and finally released.
Our Born Warriors Special Edition 3 Disc set was a recent Essential Gear pick for the months of February and March 2017.
We are proud to announce that Born Warriors is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. Please check our Buy page for further information on ordering. More outlets in addition to iTunes and streaming will be added soon.
The article Traditional Burmese Lethwei Lives On! by Vincent Giordano appears in the new issue of Black Belt(Oct/Nov 2016).
We are pleased to announce the addition of two new articles to our website.