“Did you see what he just did?”

“Who did what?”

Patrick replied to Rod, who was looking at his computer.

“It’s Sayar Win. Have you seen what he did?” repeated Rod, pointing at the screen. 

Patrick peered over to look at what Rod was watching. It was a Lethwei fight video sent to them as an example of the ‘special rest rule’ in Lethwei. The quality of the recording was quite poor, and the fight video was quite old. Both Patrick and Rod were by now quite familiar with such recordings of Lethwei fights, as Sayar Win had shared numerous videos for them to study.

“No… what did he do?” said Patrick, squinting his eyes as he studied the screen. The video was paused on what looked like a break in the fight, but was in fact during the ‘special rest’.

“Look. Watch carefully.” Rod said while he rewound the video a few moments and played it again.

The video showed a fighter in red shorts standing off to the side, retreating to his corner. A fighter in white shorts was lying on his back on the ground. His team approached quickly and carried him to his corner. The fighter in white, barely conscious and physically limp, was seated in his corner, while his corner team scrambled around him – one assistant flapped a towel like a fan to begin to cool the fighter down, while another assistant soaked the fighter’s head with water, and another fed ice. A typical scene found in Lethwei fights.

This was the kind of scene that had become familiar to Patrick and Rod since they had started studying Lethwei with Sayar Win. He recognized that the fighter in white shorts was knocked out by his opponent, and the fighter’s team had called for the ‘special rest’, and they were now trying to revive him. If the fighter was successfully brought back to consciousness, then he gets a chance to continue fighting. If not, the opponent will win by knockout.

The video was fascinating for Patrick, but he was still not sure what Rod was trying to point out.

“Look at Sayar Win. He’s the one feeding ice to the fighter,” said Rod.

Patrick leaned closer.
Feeding ice, or applying any kind of cooling material to a fighter, was normal procedure in combat sports. It was important to cool down the fighter and help them recover, regaining stamina after their body had become exhausted over the course of the match. He was not certain why Rod would pay any special attention to Sayar Win feeding his fighter ice.

Then Patrick’s head snaps back, his eyes wide open. He turned to Rod in surprise.

“What the hell? …
Did Sayar Win just chew that ice into pieces and put them into his fighter’s mouth??!”

Sayar Win laughed out loud after hearing Patrick and Rod recount the experience. The two Americans, during one of their Zoom calls with Sayar Win, expressed their utter befuddlement at what he did to revive his fighter during the match. 

Patrick and Rod were long-time martial arts practitioners and combat sports athletes before meeting and beginning to study under Sayar Win. They were well-versed in combat sports practices and techniques before their Lethwei training began. They had been studying Lethwei with Sayar Win for quite a while by then, not only its fighting techniques but also the wider Lethwei and Myanmar history, culture, and traditions. They were quite aware of the traditional Lethwei rules, procedures, and customs. But this particular moment seemed to have caught them totally off guard.  

For Sayar Win, though, biting down on ice to feed the pieces to his fighter was nothing of note that was of special interest.

The fight in question was held in 1998 in Sagaing, Myanmar, between his fighter, Eh Htee Kaw, and the opponent, Nay Thurein.

The fight was remarkable because Eh Htee Kaw was knocked out early and had to be revived with the special rest, but after being revived went on to win the bout. 

When Sayar Win sent the video to Patrick and Rod, he simply thought it would be a good example of how Lethwei fights can be unpredictable and how the tide of a fight can turn. Never would Sayar Win have thought that Patrick and Rod would have focused on him crushing ice in his own mouth and feeding it to Eh Htee Kaw.

“I am not sure if during one of my fights, I would have ever let our kickboxing coach, Sayar Jon, put ice he had just chewed up in his mouth into mine. …That’s just plain nasty,” Patrick said, laughing out loud with Rod.

“Well, that’s just how things were, especially back in the day. I am certain I was not the only trainer who had to do that,” Sayar Win explained. 
“Back then, when fighting in rural areas, it was very difficult to find ice, even water bottles. Forget the ice packs that we have nowadays, we were very fortunate to find any ice at all. The kind of ice we could get were these huge blocks. The weather was very hot and humid, the crowd was enormous, and because we were worried about the ice melting, we had to keep the large blocks around.
Then when our fighter gets knocked out, we get only 2 minutes to revive him. We all scramble, and he must be given ice to be revived. There were no tools for that. At the end, with no other option, I had to break the big ice chunks into pieces by biting them down, and feed him.”

Patrick said, “Well, kudos to Eh Htee Kaw, Sayar Win. But, if I was in his place, I wouldn’t retire from Lethwei because of my opponent punching me. But I would quit being a Lethwei fighter if my coach fed me the ice he broke with his teeth.” 

Everyone laughed.

For Patrick and Rod, the most memorable part of the video had been Sayar Win chewing ice and placing it into his fighter’s mouth. For Sayar Win, that detail was so unremarkable that he barely remembered doing it.

That difference in perspective revealed something neither of them had considered before.

When people watch old Lethwei footage, they often focus on the punches, headbutts, knockouts, and dramatic comebacks. Yet hidden in the background are small details that tell another story. They speak of a time when fighters traveled to remote towns, competed with limited resources, and relied on improvisation, experience, and whatever help was available.

To Patrick and Rod, the ice-chewing incident was strange, shocking, and unforgettable.

To Sayar Win, it was simply what needed to be done to help his fighter continue.

And perhaps that was the most authentic lesson the old video had to offer – Lethwei lived and even thrived on people surviving through limitations and doing what it takes for the fight.