Born Warriors: Bare-Knuckle Evolution

Written by James Barnes

“In Burma, the rules of boxing are somewhat different from those drawn up by the Marquis of Queensbury. Burmese Boxing has a tradition extending almost as far back as the Burmese people.”

Helen G. Trager, We the Burmese

Lethwei, also known as Burmese Boxing and Myanmar Traditional Boxing, is an indigenous bare-knuckle fighting sport that has seen its currency rise and fall during the decades of tough military rule that kept Myanmar closed off to the outside world. In 2011, a startling transformation in the country began to take place when the military junta was dissolved and the promise of economic and political reform was introduced.

Lethwei

Director Vincent Giordano, who has been documenting and training in the sport of Lethwei for over ten years, saw the changes happening directly. “There was a rapid shift as businessmen both local and from abroad came swarming in looking for anything to sell or grab onto as a commodity. Lethwei got swept up into the net,” explains Giordano. In this new burgeoning landscape, modern training camps and large scale tournaments were held in Yangon that were broadcast live by Sky TV. These broadcasts began to give the sport a new lifeline and the luster it lost years ago.

The award winning Born Warriors documentaries capture these changes in intimate detail through the voices of the actual people who loved and tried to maintain the sport for decades. It is a fascinating trilogy that was personally financed by the director and crafted more as a personal labor of love than a large scale commercial undertaking. It follows the changes in Lethwei while exploring the ancient traditional roots and cultural heritage that give the art a much deeper meaning and significance.

Lethwei

Born Warriors (Part One) is special because it shows us a world and a sport before the opening of the country. The struggles of the fighters, trainers, promoters, and the absolute poverty of the camps are clearly on display. But there is a deep love and unbridled passion for what they do that is infectious and buoyant.

This is followed by Born Warriors Redux, which drops the viewer straight into the modern landscape as many new faces in the sport appear attempting to sell the sport as a commodity to the outside world. The parallels between the first documentary and the second are startling. The poverty is still there and many of the new fighters and camps now seem to have a bit more opportunity while sponsorship creates newer more modern camps and bigger tournaments.

The final stand alone piece is called Born Warriors Redux: Bound Fists, which is a special director’s cut that brings in much more detail especially in regards to the cultural traditions in the rural communities while updating the second documentary. Each documentary has their own set of unique bonus material that further extends the material covered in the documentaries. The bonus material is as good as the main body of the documentaries taking on themes like training and training methods by showing how it was done before the opening of the country and again after.

Lethwei

“The documentaries were originally set up like chapters in a book. I wanted to explore the sport and the fighters in the main documentaries while taking the viewer into separate aspects I found fascinating in the bonus material,” explains the director. “The project was made with virtually no money, it mirrored the very survival of the sport, it was just a group of us who wanted to get it done. It was through their dedication as much as mine that we finally finished it. It’s my hope that it leads to a deeper more fulfilling understanding of the sport of Lethwei.”

Born Warriors is a unique testament to a world rarely explored or seen in such intimate detail. It demonstrates that Lethwei has long been an active part of Myanmar’s cultural heritage that is well known within the country and maybe one day outside of it.

Born Warriors is scheduled for late 2016 release. Visit the documentary’s official website and Facebook page.

Watch the trailer for Born Warriors Redux: Bound Fists

Watch more video on the Born Warrior YouTube channel.

Author V.M. Simandan

is a Beijing-based Romanian-born counsellor, coach, psychology teacher, and former competitive archer

More posts by V.M. Simandan

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V.M. Simandan