Yothin:

Kicking into Elbows

Sometimes in studying the principles of fighting, it begins to seem as though everything favours a person who is precisely not you. Think of the enormous advantage that left handers have in boxing whether they fight southpaw (exotic) or orthodox (a passive buff on all those left-handed techniques that build the scientific boxing game.) And when it comes to kicking, a dexterous left leg and a mobile left hip are priceless assets. All those attacks to the open side that are unlocked by having a great switch kick and the ability to turn it over in a short space. Yet the majority of the population, when they take up boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai or mixed martial arts, are stiff hipped, right-handed, right-legged schlubs.

For those who cannot comfortably throw up a left high without a forty-five minute yoga session to ease into it, I present Yothin. Yothin FA Group is the current Rajadamnern featherweight champion. He is known for his rushes to the clinch and his elbows and knees from there. Yet those moments in the trenches are short, violent bursts of activity in fights that are often fought mostly out at kickboxing range. To this writer, Yothin is notable for getting good work done out at kicking range while throwing perhaps two kicks off his left side in a three-round fight.

The general rule of kicking is: kick above the waist on the open side, and below the waist on the closed side. So against an orthodox fighter you throw your left leg to their body, arm and head, and your right leg at their lead leg. Kicking inside the lead leg has a lower reward—because it doesn’t buckle the knee in the same way—and a higher risk, because it is an easier, shorter movement to check. Kicking above the waist on the closed side often means kicking the back, or serving up an easy catch.

The Yothin Double Attack

Yothin establishes his stand-alone right low kick as a weapon immediately. His first strike in almost every fight is a right low kick, thrown with spite, as if to alert the opponent that low kicking will continue until they do something about it. Just as the essence of scientific boxing is “jab until they make you do something else,” Yothin will low kick until the opponent shows themselves competent and ready to check it. Then Yothin can get to work manipulating rhythm and anticipation.

One of Yothin’s best tactics is a simple technique you will see in most Muay Thai gyms, but he has it down to an art. Yothin will hip fake the right low kick, his opponent will pick their lead leg up to check, and Yothin will pause before throwing a right kick to the body. There are two factors that make this a terrific little trick—balance in the check and the opponent’s desire to throw back fast.

There is a difference in balance between quickly checking, and checking with the intention of staying on one leg. If you watch Khunseklek’s fight with Kumandoi earlier this year, he throws kicks and checks immediately off the kick, staying on one leg and maintaining his balance beautifully. But most fighters, most of the time, are checking straight from their stance, and trying to get back in on the opponent as fast as possible. So they pick up the check and then—whether the kick comes or not—they are already returning to their stance with hopes of swinging back.

In this instance, a slight pause on the part of the attacker can be the difference between kicking an impenetrable wall of bone, and sneaking the shin under the opponent’s arm and onto their ribcage.  

Yothin’s second fight with Ayad Albadr from 2022 is an example of an opponent who never adapted to this stage of the fight. Albadr was not even trying to check every time: he would attempt to land a good low kick of his own when Yothin paused off the hip feint, or come back with a counter punch, but these reactions left his right side open and kept him in front of Yothin.

The “feint, pause, body kick” is part of a two-pronged attack off the feigned right low kick, the other part being a shift to the clinch. There are going to be other variations and techniques discussed, but these two tactics playing off each other really make Yothin who he is on the outside.

Here is an example of his shift to the clinch against Andres Unzu from Yothin’s most recent fight. Yothin performs his right hip feint and steps all the way through, reaching for Unzu’s head and drawing him into the clinch. Seconds later he hits Unzu with one of those four inch elbows that sends Unzu to the mat. He finished Unzu with another elbow moments later.

The Unzu fight is a very dramatic example though. His hip fakes against Unzu were not even drawing checks, just big swings. Yothin was also lunging for this clinch entries from the opening bell with reckless abandon.

More commonly, Yothin’s clinch entrances look like those below.

Surusak is checking in response to the right low kicks Yothin keeps hitting him with. Yothin steps through and as he reaches forward he is met with Surusak’s hands. He settles for an elbow and outside position in a the clinch along the ropes, rather than being able to reach out and grab Surusak’s head.

Between the naked right low kick, the fake to body kick, and the fake to clinch rush, Yothin is already a handful. Like any good system of attack it can flow forwards or backwards. Here he tries the clinch rush against Petchrungruang, gets halted with a short teep and Petchrungruang’s active hands, and pushes off for that right body kick instead.

After Yothin started landing those elbows against Surusak, he took a step back and hammered the leg again to remind Surusak why he was standing on one leg in the first place.

Yothin’s boxing is not much to write home about, but lingering in boxing range is antithetical to his goal of walloping his opponent with elbows. The one punch that consistently lands for him is built off that right low kick again. Rocking onto his front foot as if to throw the low kick, he darts forward on an angle behind a long right hand.

This combines with another weapon commonly used to attack the check: the cut kick. Yothin will dart in and to the left with his right straight and let the cut kick trail him like an afterthought.

And a final weapon for attacking the check is Yothin’s rear leg push kick. This is one I have jokingly called the croissant kick over the years. Yothin picks his foot up across his centreline to make sure that he can sneak it through to the opponent’s gut without clashing shin to shin en route. It results in a loss of horsepower, but moving the opponent is more important to both forcing the clinch and scoring with the judges.

Muay Thai is entertaining because of the variety of fighting styles and how they interact. Today we have examined one aspect of Yothin’s game, for when he is trying to get in on a particular type of fighter to operate his own preferred methods. You can pick a Yothin fight at random and see none of the aforementioned techniques based on the stylistic match up.

For instance against southpaws, all of this is out the window and Yothin goes southpaw. Instead of simply operating this same gameplan as a southpaw though, he still only really kicks with his right leg! Or he might meet an ultra-aggressive fighter like Petchatchai. In that fight, Yothin was on the back foot the entire time so he did not have the time to establish the right low kick, or the space to build off the fake. He did, however, have an opponent who was willingly marching forwards onto his knees and elbows, no trickery needed.

There is much more to discuss with Yothin because the stuff we examined today is not his ideal style of fighting. But this is what sneaks him in when others don’t want to engage him, and it is all built off the one technique everyone can do, and works just as well against those disgusting, gifted people who can kick powerfully and dexterously with their left leg.