Photos by Matthew Yarbrough
On a warm, breezy day this last spring, a young foreign fighter approached Kru Lop, a trainer at Santai Gym in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
“Here,” he said, and held out his room keys. “I’m leaving today. Can I turn these in to you?”
Lop accepted the keys and wished the Muay Thai student a safe journey home.
A few minutes later, the student bade farewell to Ood, gym owner and manager. She asked about the keys, and the student said he’d given them to Kru Phon. Ood looked around. Phon was nowhere in sight, but Lop was by the ring, a few yards away. “Did you give the keys to him?” she asked, pointing at Lop.
“Yeah, him. Kru Phon.”
Ood laughed. Students were always mistaking Lop and Phon, the twin trainers, for one another.
Nik Hjalmarsson, Ood’s husband and co-owner of the gym, lauds the twins as some of the best fighters he’s ever known. Reverently, he shows foreign students videos of the twins’ Bangkok glory days, almost as if he’s letting them in on a secret.
The brothers’ Golden-Era fight names, Phon Narupai and Vanlop Narupai, are known to this day, though neither has titles to show for it. “They never got title shots because they made everyone look stupid,” Nik says, “so no one wanted to put their big fighters against them for a belt.” Nik heard the story it straight from Pinsinchai Gym’s famous trainer Pichit, the twins’ old coach, himself. “No one wanted to fight them because they were impossible to touch. They made superstars look like beginners, so the promoters never gave them a shot.”
