Moe Kyoe (Burmese: မိုးကြိုး; MLCTS: mui:krui:; IPA: [mód͡ʑó]) (born November 6, 1947) is a retired Burmese lethwei fighter and first class flag champion, known for his endurance[4] and speed. He was a key figure in changing the match format and kickstart in the national champions era. After his career as a Burmese boxer he entered monkhood in 1998.[5]
| Moe Kyoe | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 6, 1947 Kyon Paik village, Hpa-an Township, Hpa-an District, Kayin State, British Burma |
| Native name | မိုးကြိုး |
| Other names | Mya Shein (မြရှိန်) Maw Tot (မော်တော့) King of Lethwei (လက်ဝှေ့ဘုရင်) |
| Nationality | Burmese |
| Height | 168 cm (5 ft 6 in) |
| Weight | 63 kg (139 lb; 9.9 st) |
| Style | Lethwei |
| Stance | Orthodox |
| Fighting out of | Thaton, Mon State[1] |
| Teacher(s) | Ko Maung Aye[2] |
| Rank | First class |
| Years active | 1957-1982 (initial) |
| Personal | |
| Religion | Buddhism |
| School | Theravada |
| Monastic name | U Pyinnyasara (ဦးပညာစာရ) |
| Occupation | Buddhist monk |
| Organization | |
| Temple | Aung Taw Mu Labamuni Pagoda[3] |
| Senior posting | |
| Based in | Hpa-an Township, Hpa-an District, Kayin State |
Early life
editMoe Kyoe was born on November 6, 1947, son of U Ngwe Thaung and Daw Ngwe Yin. In a family with seven siblings, he was the fifth after three sisters and one brother. His father, uncle and three of his brothers were or became boxers as well. As a child he followed his brother around to local pagoda festivals and monks funerals to join the kids matches. He grew up on the west side of the Thanlyin river in Hpa-an but due to the Karen conflict his family was forced to relocate across the Mon State border where they settled near Bin Hlaing along the state border, not far from Thaton. His father who had stayed behind was later killed. Thaton was a hotbed and great stomping ground for many traditional boxers in the area and Moe Kyoe's love for the sport only grew stronger.[3][5]
Lethwei career
editThe journey to first class started in Mon State, in particular Thaton, Kyaikto and Sit Taung.[5] For a short period of time he also fought Thais in Myawaddy in the mid-60's. It was actually in Kyaikto where he received his nickname of Moe Kyoe (meaning thunderbolt/lightning), when a travelling circus shared the festival grounds with the boxing ring and an attending member of the circus noted his swiftness in the ring. Ringside judge and announcer U Sein Tin Maung overheard this and promptly presented the boxer with his new name.[3] By 1969 Moe Kyoe was ranked as a second class boxer[6] and hailed as a promising new star.[7]
In the 70's he became a leading and pivotal figure in the sport, winning first class flags against some of the strongest opposition available.[3][8] His battles with one of the most famous boxers in the person of Tha Mann Kyar are remembered by many.[9] Although no titles were exchanged, his losses to Tha Mann Kyar were used to premiere a national champion over that of a traditional flag champion. Moe Kyoe continued his career for a few more years, into the 80's, until he took a brief hiatus both due to a shortage of competition and the rising economic crisis in the country.[10][11] After a few years of illegal work importing bicycle tires, car tires and cloth he came back and had one of his last fights against Shwe War Tun, a future long-time national champion and son of the equally imposing Phyu Gyi.
A high fighting spirit was the most important. It was a desire. A desire to win, that's all.
— Moe Kyoe (MLC, Nov. 2020)[5]
Format changes
editAfter organisers and promoters started noticing imbalanced competitions in regards to how intensely competitors fought if they were in the same tournament as Moe Kyoe, the trio of him, Kyar Ba Nyein (Myanmar Boxing Federation) and U Bo Sein (Burmese boxer) polished up some of the rules and created a new type of challenge fight. This meant initially that matches would not surpass 15 rounds and that in case of a title challenge judges would score the contest at ringside. These changes gradually led to the naming of a single champion, national or global. And although Moe Kyoe certainly had an equal status to those who succeeded him, he did not carry the title on paper.[5]
Personal life
editMoe Kyoe married once at age 20 but continued his boxing career. He currently lives a solitary life as a monk in the forest near Myaing Ka Lay where he resides alongside the small stupa that carries his name. In his journey to escape from Samsara, after his life as a boxer, he became a vegetarian to comfort his aching body.[3]
Titles and accomplishments
edit- Tournaments
- First class flag champion; Mon Shwe Hinthar, 33rd Mon National Day (February 1980)
- Second class flag champion; Man Thida Park, Mandalay (February 1970)
- Special flag champion (Second class); Independence Day (January 1970)
- Perseverance award (Third class); Shwe Maw Daw Pagoda Festival (April 1968)[12]
Lethwei record
edit| Date | Result | Opponent | Event | Location | Method | Round | Time | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980-07-05 | Loss |  Thaton Ba Hnit |
Malun Stadium[13] | Mandalay, Myanmar | TKO | 4[14] | ||
| 1980-02-05 | Win | Yangon Aung Din |
33rd Mon National Day, Thein Phyu Stadium | Rangoon, Burma | KO | 13[15] | ||
| 1979-03-19 | Loss | Tha Mann Kyar[9] |
32nd Mon National Day | Mon State, Myanmar | Decision | 15 | 3:00 | |
| 1978-11-06 | Loss | Tha Mann Kyar[9] |
23rd Kayin State Day | Kayin State, Myanmar | TKO | |||
| Lost Openweight Lethwei Golden Belt | ||||||||
| 1977-02-03 | Draw | Tha Mann Kyar[16] |
30th Mon National Day | Mawlamyine, Mon State, Myanmar | Draw | 11 | 3:00 | |
| Match halted by Kyar Ba Nyein after both competitors were deemed too bloody | ||||||||
| 1973-01-09 | Win |  Sakkaw Ma[17][18] |
Kyaikkasan Stadium | Rangoon, Burma | KO | 1 | ||
| 1970-02-14 | Win | Tun Tin (Hpa-an) |
Finals, Flag Tournament Man Thida Park | Mandalay, Burma | KO | 4 | ||
| 1970-01-11 | Win | Shwegun Daung (Mottama) |
Independence Day, Kennedy Island | Rangoon, Burma | KO | 3 | ||
| Legend: Win Loss Draw/No contest Notes | ||||||||
References
edit- ^ Htut, Dr. Zaw Linn (14 May 2018). "ဒုတိယအ ကြိမ် အမျိုးသားလွှတ်ထတာ် အဋ္ဌမပုံမှန်အစည်းအထေး". Amyotha Hluttaw (House of Nationalities) (in Burmese). p. 12. Retrieved 29 August 2021.
တစ်ခေတ်တစ်ခါက သမန်းကျား၊ မိုးကြိုး၊ ရွှေဝါထွန်း၊ ဘနှစ် တို့ကဲ့သို့ နိုင်ငံကျော် မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာ လက်ဝှေ့ပညာရှင်များ
- ^ Myint Aung, Aung (4 December 2014). "တစ်ချိန်က မြန်မာ့ရိုးရာလက်ဝှေ့အကျော်အမော်များ". Sports View Journal (in Burmese). 3 (48): 8.
- ^ a b c d e Htunn, Zin Lin (10 December 2017). "လက်သီးဘုရင် မိုးကြိုးကိုရှာပုံတော်ဖွင့်ခဲ့ရာဝယ်" (PDF). Kyemone (The Mirror) (in Burmese). p. 13. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
- ^ Nway Aung, Saw (November 1995). "လက်သီးသံမဏိထိလိုက်တိုင်းကွဲ". Nat Kha Ta Yaung Che (Starlight) Magazine (in Burmese). p. 123.
- ^ a b c d e Schroeder, Mark (1 July 2020). "Thaton Moe Kyoe, the King of Lethwei". The Fight Site. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
- ^ "မြန်မာလက်ဝှေ့မတိမ်မြုပ်ရန်း ငွေရရေးထက် မူမပျက် ရေး". Myanma Alinn (in Burmese). 4 January 1970. p. 35 (of 245). Retrieved 26 August 2021.
- ^ Ba Nyein, Kyar (15 April 1970). "တိမ်ယံကထွက်လာသော ဗမာ့လက်ဝှေ့" [Forward]. ရှေ့သို့ (in Burmese). Retrieved 26 August 2021.
- ^ Rebac, Zoran (2003). Traditional Burmese Boxing; Ancient and Modern Methods from Burma's Training Camps. Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press. pp. 12, 17. ISBN 1-58160-395-9.
- ^ a b c Schroeder, Mark (15 September 2020). "Tha Mann Kyar: Spinning Elbow Master". The Fight Site. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
- ^ Schroeder, Mark (28 April 2021). "Rage Against the Regime". The Fight Site. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
- ^ "ROT AND DESPAIR VISIBLE IN BURMA". New York Times. 28 December 1969. p. 8. Retrieved 6 December 2021.
These conditions have created a black market, which offers almost everything at three to four times the regular price
- ^ "ပဲခူးဘုရားပွဲလက်ဝှေ့ဆုနှင်း". Working People's Daily (in Burmese). Ministry of Information. 18 April 1968.
ဇွဲဆုကိုမိုးကြိုးနှင့်တင်အောင်တိုကရရှိကြ၏။
- ^ Giordano, Vincent (Director) (2017). Born Warriors: Deluxe Edition (DVD). Cinejutsu Entertainment. Event occurs at 6m47s (disc 2).
- ^ Oscar, U (13 August 2018). "မိမိနှင့်ဦးစိုးမင်း (Me & U Soe Min)". Playmaker (in Burmese) (512): 17. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
- ^ Nway Aung, Saw (September 1995). "တို့အမျိုးလက်သီးထိုးကောင်းတယ်". Nat Kha Ta Yaung Che (Starlight) Magazine (in Burmese). pp. 89–94.
- ^ Htunn, Zin Lin (January 2016). "ဆရာကောင်းတပည့် ပန်းကောင်းပန် (သို့မဟုတ်) သမန်းကျားကို မွေးဖွားခဲ့သူ၏ မှတ်တမ်း - ၁". Myanmar Ring Magazine (in Burmese).
- ^ Sein Than, Kyaw (1973). "ရိုးရာအစစ်ချစ်စရာလက်ဝှေ့" [Forward]. ရှေ့သို့ (in Burmese): 48. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
- ^ Ba Nyein, Kyar (1973). "ကျိုက္ကဆံကွင်းမှ ဗိန်းမောင်းသံများ". Arr/Kar (in Burmese) (5 (vol.2)): 5–6. Retrieved 26 August 2021.