CARVED INTO THE WALLS OF CAMBODIA’S FAMOUS ANGHOR TEMPLES
are bloody tales of the nation’s martial history. These imposing remnants of the ancient Khmer Empire tell of the principles upon which the edifice of Cambodian culture once stood: valour and honour through combat, adhered to in that near-fanatical way characteristic not just of feudal Japan and China, but of south east Asian martial artists too. In popular cinema, the Samurai may be the more fetishised, but Khmer warriors are equally deadly.
Presently, not 10km away from Angkor Wat, a young Khmer fighter named Sarath is bleeding. Like Rocky, he’s known by his first name only. And with further similarity, he is no stranger to the odd beating. Sarath limps about the ring, shaking his head. He has lost his first bout at the opening of the new Kun Khmer fighting arena in Siem Reap, a historic town now popular with tourists, in the north west of the country. A low-key affair by western standards, the new arena nonetheless offers a place to practise this obscure sport among the pulsating resort town’s neon signs and two-for-one beers.
It’s a far cry from the contests of old, suffused with Eastern mysticism, but fighting in brightly lit tourist traps is now one of few ways the sport can survive. Nevertheless, the sting of defeat is no less harsh in such irreligious surroundings. “I have been training hard, but I lost,” Sarath says despondently as he finds his feet, his wounds as lurid as the incandescent red lights above the door.
It should be of no surprise that defeat weighs heavy. For the Kun Khmer, theirs is an ancestral story carved in stone but written in blood. Also known as Pradal Serey, the martial art utilises fists, feet,
knees and elbows and is today teetering on near obscurity. In fact, in modern Cambodia, few reminders of the nation’s ancient culture exist unmarked by the scars of the Khmer Rouge genocide of the ’70s that left two million Cambodians dead and many thousands victims of forced labour, malnutrition and torture. The national sport is no exception.
Seen as a direct threat to Pol Pot’s totalitarian regime, Kum Khmer warriors were systematically rooted out. Along with doctors, teachers and anyone else seen as representative of the “old society”, practitioners of the art were brutally extirpated under the orders of the dictator. The sport was made contraband and nearly all records of it put to the torch. Along with them disappeared the long-standing traditions of a discipline that can trace its origins back to 800AD.
BLOODIED BUT UNBOWED
It is impossible to say how many of its practitioners endured or fled to avoid meeting a bloody end. But it’s clear that the efforts of a defiant few meant that Kum Khmer was somehow able to survive the count. Through clandestine teachings, underground practice and almost unfathomable bravery, a band of Cambodians managed to find a resistance of their own.
Forty years ago a small group of Kun Khmer fighters toiled to keep the
“Seen as a threat to Pol Pot’s regime, Kum Khmer warriors were rooted out”
teachings of their discipline alive, the perilous threat of discovery being a real and daily struggle. It is thanks to them that Kum Khmer schools survive today. And it is a history too recent to be anywhere but at the forefront of the minds of fighters like the defeated Sarath. His beating wounds all the more because of the sacrifices his forbears made.
A short taxi ride from the gaudiness of Siem Reap is an army camp where local fighters train. A faint vestige of the great combat academies long crumbled to dust, it is here that warriors like Sarath ply their ancient art, practising for hours each day. It is an austere set-up; indeed, the phrase ‘spit and sawdust’ would be overly high praise. Bodyweight exercises are performed on muddy ground. In this outdoor compound, the punchbags hang among scattered detritus, framed by Cambodia’s green foliage. Fighters work with dusty tyres to hone their core muscles, crunching out hundreds of sit-ups to create teak-hard middles. An average day sees them spar, meditate, train strikes, meditate more, then lay into heavy bags, practising hip twists – the mastery of which will later determine their success, or indeed failure, in the ring.
It’s this study of rotational force that allows the ostensibly sinewy fighters – lean frames striated with muscle fibres, five foot nothings – to deliver such devastating finishers. And yet their style is nuanced. Strikes build, crest and wane in the blink of an eye, revealing themselves to be feints too late for the victim to defend the real blow – likely a furtive elbow strike coming from the other direction. The Cambodians are wily, favouring elusive stances to make themselves difficult targets instead of relying on blocking alone. At a glance it’s not dissimilar to Muay Thai. On closer inspection, it is very different indeed.
Even among the martial arts hub of south east Asia, Kun Khmer stands apart. Few sports are such a perfect exhibition of power. Kun Khmer is famed for its kicking technique. Rather than sharp strikes, practitioners utilise a perfect arc of hip rotation, generating speed in a manner more akin to a swinging baseball batsman than Bruce Lee. This results in savage blows with a heavy follow-through. Take an outstretched foot to the face and you’ll be eating canvas before you know what’s hit you.
Such is the beauty of age- old sports like this one. Long before exercise became a science, before researchers and trackables and billion- dollar labs became involved,