"T
he techniques aren’t designed to
hurt, they’re meant to kill,” Chan
Rathana warns us as he binds
hemp rope tightly around his
clenched fists. Dressed in tight black shorts with
red silk cords, or
sangvar day
, wrapped around
his waist, head and bulging biceps, he strikes a
pose and prepares to fight.
These days,
yutakhun khom
practitioners like
Chan don’t leave a trail of corpses in their wake.
However, at the time of the martial art’s creation
in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, during
the reign of King Jayavarman VII – a martial
arts expert in his own right – it was a different
story. “There were no guns in the days of
Angkor,” says Chan, 28, known in the ring as
the “flying feet and fists”. “It was all close-
contact fighting, so the martial art was designed
to be very efficient in protecting the kingdom
from invading enemies.”
Yutakhun khom, which means “martial art of
the moon”, is made up of thousands of techniques
that are akin to animal-hunting moves. Its three
pillars encompass kicks and punches, wrestling
and weapons, with each move carefully designed
to have deadly effects.
➦
STOPOVER
sport
FAHTHAI
25
M A R T I A L A R T S
Steeped in a thousand years of
tradition,
yutakhun khom
– the
martial art of the moon – is on
the comeback trail, fast earning
a following among young
Cambodians
TEXT: MARISSA CARRUTHERS; PHOTO: THOMAS CRISTOFOLETTI
Shoot
for the
moon
