Young Women Get a Kick Out of Sport

The crowd roars in delight when the two fighters go into a clinch and then crash to the floor, dragging down the referee as he tries to pull them apart.

Scrambling back up, the two 17-year-old girls lash out with arms and legs, trying to pummel each other into submission in front of 300 spectators and TV cameras broadcasting the 15-minute fight live from a plaza normally used for rock concerts outside the municipal television station.

“They were quite good and did really do their utmost,” said Lep Savoeun, 24, a male spectator. “I wouldn’t dare take on either of them because I don’t have the kind of skills they have.”

In a country where women are traditionally viewed as homemakers, a few women like these are elbowing their way into the world of kickboxing.

A dozen women are among the 1,200 or so kickboxers training at 57 clubs across Cambodia, said Mel Kado, secretary general of the Cambodia Amateur Boxing Assn.

Although a small number, he believes it’s an indicator of a revival of female interest in martial arts. Many female kickboxers competed in Cambodia’s rural areas before 1975, when the communist Khmer Rouge seized power and virtually eliminated sports and all other forms of recreation.

Traditional activities like kickboxing began to resurface after ouster of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese army in 1979.

The sport recaptured its popularity over the last decade and is still growing, with help from sponsored matches televised from Phnom Penh, the capital.

Neighboring Thailand is better known worldwide for kickboxing, which it calls “muay Thai,” and it lays claim to being the sport’s birthplace.

But the Cambodia Amateur Boxing Assn. disputes that, arguing that kickboxing dates from Cambodia’s Khmer kingdoms of the 9th to 13th centuries, which encompassed parts of present-day southern Thailand. It is among the fighting arts depicted in carvings on a wall of the Bayon temple in the famous Angkor complex, the group says.

At Troeung Sos Say’s boxing club in downtown Phnom Penh, 20 male trainees exercise their leg muscles and practice footwork by rapidly stepping in and out of old truck tires spread on the concrete floor. Two young women learn to kick and punch on two hanging workout bags stuffed with scraps of cloth.

Mam Chanra, 23, a garment factory worker, says she is passionate about the sport, but adds that she also wants to be able to protect herself after reading frequent newspaper reports on rapes.

“This is a man’s game, but a woman like me can also play. We are equal like men,” she said, her white jersey and blue trunks soaked in sweat.

At the bout in front of the TV station, Ngeam Sarim, a 5-foot-tall deaf-and-mute orphan, fights Sok Srei Touch, a 4-foot-10 vegetable seller’s daughter.

Sok Srei Touch, in red trunks and T-shirt, manages to land some kicks on her larger rival, dressed in dark blue trunks and light blue T-shirt.

As the young women whirl and kick, ponytails swinging, spectators lay bets frantically. But when the five rounds of two minutes each are over, the referee calls the match a draw.

“My student should have won on points because she landed a lot of knees on the other girl,” said Ngeam Sarim’s coach, Sao Thin.

Later, in a wooden changing room where female and male boxers mix freely, Sok Srei Touch isn’t complaining.

“I’m so happy,” she said, clutching $31.25 in prize money and $13.75 in tips collected from fans and admirers, more than three times what she got for a fight in her home province of Kampong Speu, 30 miles west of Phnom Penh.

It’s a heady sum in a country where low-level government officials earn about $17 a month and the average garment factory worker makes no more than $45 a month.

“My hands are kind of shaking. This is the first time I have gotten a lot of money,” said Sok Srei Touch, none of whose five siblings, including three brothers, shares her fighting skills. “I will give it to my mother to buy rice.”