The most dangerous man in Muay Thai these days may well be a legend on the way out. Ask Liam Harrison, who surrendered a knee to Nong-O Hama and with it a year of his career. Ask Felipe Lobo, whose consciousness departed like a morning train, precisely on schedule, when Nong-O deemed it time to go.
But February brought a new subplot to the old warrior’s story — one that reads like the cautionary tale of a king who wandered too far from his castle. Stepping down to flyweight after years of terrorizing bantamweights, Nong-O found the scale more forgiving but the opposition less accommodating in the form of Kongthoranee Sor Sommai, a young lion with ambitions unimpressed by fading royalty.
Stripped of his customary size advantage, Nong-O discovered that legends don’t travel well across weight classes. The scorecards said “split decision,” but that’s merely accountant’s language for Nong-O’s coronation as a man confronting his mortality in 4-ounce gloves.
Now comes the inevitable second act, as ONE Championship returns to Lumpinee Stadium on May 3 with what the promotion is calling a “rematch,” but what history suggests might more accurately be termed an “encore.” Fighters with Nong-O’s pedigree don’t typically require multiple attempts to solve opponents who haven’t yet earned their own Wikipedia pages.
The oddsmakers haven’t yet decided whether to believe what their eyes told them in February or what a decade of Nong-O’s dominance suggested was a temporary glitch in the matrix. Meanwhile, Kongthoranee strides toward this confrontation with the particular confidence of a man who has already seen the bogeyman in daylight and found him merely human.
Kongthoranee’s three consecutive wins have him perched at number three in a division where the top runs through Rodtang and Superlek, names that sound more like Norse gods than athletes. Nong-O, now fighting on the wrong side of 37, seeks only to prove that rumors of his competitive demise have been somewhat exaggerated.
When the bell rings on May 3, Bangkok’s faithful will be witnessing more than just another fight. They’ll be watching a referendum on time itself, that undefeated opponent with whom every fighter eventually makes his peace. For Nong-O, the bell tolls with particular urgency.