Dieselnoi is the unappreciated Muay Thai GOAT, but why do fans choose not to see it. Today we take a brief look into the career of skypiercer
Dieselnoi is the very fighter who inspired the name of Diesel Gym. Somewhere in Diesel’s vault we even have the signed shorts from him. Yet we’ve never actually spoken about Dieselnoi in our magazine. Dieselnoi is the most dominant Muay Thai fighter of all time, and it can be argued that he is the best of all time.
Throughout his career, Dieselnoi was only beaten a handful of times, and the great Vicharrnoi Porntawee was the only fighter to beat him twice. There are a few myths about Dieselnoi’s career, that stem from how poorly documented golden era Muay Thai was. The vast majority of Dieselnoi’s career was not on video. One persistent myth is that the only fighter to ever beat Dieselnoi was the legendary Sagat Petchyindee, who held two victories over the giant. In reality Dieselnoi won both encounters. This myth is so wildly believed and uncontested that even Evolve MMA put it in their articles despite it being untrue.
Dieselnoi was known as the greatest knee fighter in the sport, although it’s more accurate to say Dieselnoi is the greatest knee fighter inany combat sport. Standing at a ridiculous 6’2 while fighting around 140lbs, Dieselnoi was nothing but bone and fast twitch muscle fibres, which he used to explode into the most ferocious knee strikes you will ever see.
Dieselnoi’s knee strikes are horrifying for two major reasons. The first is that he doesn’t lift his leg in order to knee. Usually when a fighter knees they raise their knee as they strike. This is a completely logical thing to do as, surely, that is how you get your strike to reach the target. Dieselnoi doesn’t do that however. His knee reaches the target because he puts so much energy into an explosive thrust forward that the knee HAS to come up.
The second and more overlooked reason, is that Dieselnoi knees almost straight up. At first when you see Dieselnoi knee, it would be easy to assume he just lifts his leg up and doesn’t put any hip into the knee strike at all. This actually isn’t true. He knees towards the would-be centreline of the opponent.
When you see Dieselnoi demonstrate his technique against Samart Payakaroon and Namkabuan, you immediately see just how tall he was. It was this height that unfortunately caused Dieselnoi such problems in his career, and forced him into retirement. He was such a risky fight for an opponent to take, and by the time he had beaten both Samart Payakaroon and Sagat, no one wanted to take the chance of fighting him.
This left Dieselnoi a warrior with no war to fight. Causing him to fall into deep depression and attempt suicide in a particularly dark point of his life. He is perhaps the greatest victim of ‘the giants curse’. In combat sports, we will always frame a size difference as the tale of David and Goliath, and in that tale, David is supposed to win. The smaller man is meant to overcome the giant. Nobody sees the giant as a fighter worthy of appreciation and praise in their own right, they are seen as the obstacle to be overcame.
We see it even today, when people argue that Dieselnoi shouldn’t be considered the greatest fighter of all time, because he had a ‘height advantage’ over his opponents, as though that is somehow unfair, vs the power advantage of Sagat, or the advantage Samart Payakaroon has of simply being himself. Much like Semmy Schilt is objectively, the greatest heavyweight kickboxer to compete, by any margin, Dieselnoi has a resume that it’s very hard to argue against. It would be nice, if in the future, fight fans stopped using his height against him.
