Richard Bath - Notorious - The Maddest and Baddest Sportsmen on the Planet

In particular I’d like to thank Jon Hotten, whose fascination with sport’s macabre twilight zone and whose willingness to give of his time and surprisingly deep well of knowledge was much appreciated. The following colleagues also gave up time and ideas, and deserve acknowledgement for their input: Craig Lord, Dermot Crowe, Jon Rendall, Iain Fletcher, Mark Woods, Martin Gillingham, Jeremy Hart, James Allen, James Eastham, Stuart Weir, James Hipwell, Richard Verrow, Gary Sutherland, Ciaran O’Raillaigh, Rick Weber, Mark Woods, Neil Forsyth, Rob Eyton-Jones, Gulu Ezekiel, Jonathan Dyson, Peter Roebuck, Alix Ramsay, Harry Miltner, Ivan Goldman, Neil Jameson, Phil Ball, Dan Brennan, Richard Fletcher, Stuart Cosgrove, Dominic Calder-Smith, Gregor Paul, Tom English, Alex Massie, Steve Downes, Eamon Lynch, Matt Zeysing, Michele Verroken, Bill Lothian, Alistair Hignell, Lucinda Rivers, John Huggan and Alan Pearey. My apologies to anyone I’ve missed out.

I’d also like to thank my wife Bea and beloved kids Ollie, Ailsa and Lochie,who all displayed characteristic forbearance at my continual absences during this work’s troublesome gestation. This book is for my three little nutcases.

Finally, I’d like to thank my agent Mark Stanton and my publisher Michael Doggart, without whom this book would have remained an argument between two blokes on barstools.

Richard Bath

Edinburgh

May 2006

(richardbbath@yahoo.co.uk)

The Thai people might have an ambivalent attitude towards sexuality, but there’s no doubt that Thai kick boxing, or Muay Thai, is among the world’s hardest—and most masculine—of sports. That makes Parinya something of an oddity because from his first bout as a young boy aged 12 one of the most talented kick boxers in the sport’s history fought solely to get the money for a sex-change operation. As a youthful Parinya said: ‘I’ve set out to master the most masculine and lethal sport to achieve my goal of total femininity’.

As the fourth of five children of itinerant labourers, Parinya was taught to kick box by his father, who feared that his little boy—who favoured girly scrapbooks and painted nails from an early age, and spent much of his spare time with the village transsexual—would be picked upon. Although Parinya says that ‘I don’t equate femininity with weakness’, Thai kick boxing is a stoically masculine world: women are not allowed to enter a kick boxing ring, let alone fight in one.

Life was hard for Parinya, who became a monk for three years from the age of seven when his mother was jailed for illegally collecting firewood. He then survived for twelve months by wandering through villages begging alms. Throughout his youth, kick boxing was a refuge and a defence mechanism, but Parinya made his public debut aged 12 when he entered a fight in a fair because there was 500 Baht (£7.50) on offer to the winner. By the time he was 16 he had gained local notoriety, winning 20 of his 22 fights, most of them by knockout. Over the next four years he became famous for the flamboyant coup de graàce he delivered after each KO, when he would give his defeated opponent a consolation kiss as the audience roared with laughter at the sight of the humiliated loser rubbing away the lipstick. ‘The reason I kissed men after a fight is because it was my way of saying sorry,’ said a deadpan Parinya.

Parinya made his big-time debut in front of 10,000 screaming homophobes in Bangkok’s Lumpini Stadium aged 17. Wearing make-up and pink nail polish, he broke down when asked to strip for the weigh-in to prove he had the usual male accoutrements, although he was eventually allowed to climb aboard the scales wearing just black jockeys. He then promptly went out and pummelled the bejesus out of the over-confident Oven So Boonya—who had made the mistake of mocking Parinya with a camp embrace—for five bloody rounds. The end of the mismatch came when Parinya applied his trademark move, Crushing Medicine, in which he jumped in the air and brought his elbow down onto the head of the unfortunate opponent. Yet that flashy denouement hid the real secret of Parinya’s success: an adherence to the balletic rituals of the ancient sport and a daily nine-hour exercise regime which saw him go for a 10km run at dawn, followed by half an hour of rope skipping, drills of alternate slugs and kicks to a sandbag, all rounded-off by 300 sit-ups during which his coaches would pummel his belly to harden his six-pack.

The low point of Parinya’s career came in 1999, by which stage hormone therapy was beginning to have such a noticeable effect that he asked to be allowed to wear a bra when he fought. That’s when Parinya went to Tokyo and fought Kyoko Inoue, a Japanese female wrestler almost double his size, in a freak-show hybrid brawl in which the kick boxer triumphed. But then triumph was normal for Parinya throughout his five-year career as a professional fighter, a career which ended abruptly in 2000 when he had amassed enough money for an operation in which he had his genitals removed and voicebox modified.

And then he became a she, changing his name to Nong Toom and hanging up the gloves forever. Now one of Thailand’s biggest stars, Parinya/Nong was last seen earning a living as a ‘boxing cabaret artist’ and making Beautiful Boxer ,a film of his/her life. (Don’t laugh, Iron Ladies , a movie about the transvestite volleyball team which won the Thai men’s championship in 1996 is still Thailand’s biggest grossing film of all time).

Mad, bad, or just dangerous to tackle? Australian rugby league hardman John Hopoate merits inclusion thanks to his predilection for slipping a rigid digit up opponents’ arses on the field of play. It happened four times—thrice against Queensland Cowboys and once against St George-Illawarra—leading to his sacking by Wests Tigers after NRL (National Rugby League) commissioner Jim Hall said that ‘in my forty-five years in rugby league, never have I come across a more disgusting act.’

Hopoate, who was caught on film inserting his finger all the way up to the knuckle, thought it was all a bit of a laugh, but then maybe he was just trying to fit in because he was playing against North Queensland Cowboys, an outfit who play in an area of the country Aussies call the Deep North, an agricultural region where men are men and sheep are petrified. Even Hopoate’s team-mates thought it was a riot: Tigers coach Terry Lamb was particularly amused after watching the video tape of the St George game. ‘Everyone had a big laugh,’ said Lamb. ‘We thought it was okay because Hoppa’s good mates with Craig [Smith, the St George captain and a victim]. We thought it was a gee-up.’

His victims, however, weren’t so impressed. ‘I couldn’t believe it. It felt like he made an attempt to stick his hand up my arse. I shit myself,’ said Smith. The Cowboys’ captain Peter Jones was also in no doubt that it wasn’t funny: ‘It wasn’t a wedgie. That’s when your pants are pulled up your arse. I think I know the difference between a wedgie and someone sticking their finger up my arse.’ A third victim, Paul Bowman, said that ‘if Hoppa was a man, he wouldn’t do this’, but Bowman’s coach Terry Hall thought it was all a storm in a teacup: ‘Things were much worse in my day: I’ve had blokes grab my family jewels, blokes gouge me, blokes pull my hair. Hoppa hasn’t hurt a bloke for Christ’s sake.’

One bloke who managed to see the funny side was Ian Roberts, one of Aussie Rugby League’s greats, who withdrew from the disciplinary panel citing ‘a conflict of interests…with three sweaty men and anal penetration it sounded like a gay party to me’. Roberts was, at that time, the League’s only openly gay player.