Our 4th Awakening Spotlight brings you Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu. We’re really pleased to introduce you to this wonderful lady as she has recently agreed to write the occasional article for the website. Sylvie’s discipline is Muay Thai and she’s one of the queens of social media in our eyes, which is one of the reasons we approached her. The other reason is because her attitude and persona reflect the very essence of Muay Thai and is a constant source of inspiration.
Let’s take a quick look at her record. At the time of writing she’s had 34 fights in total, and her pro record stands at 16-6-2. Interestingly, she only started training at the age of 24, with her first fight a year later in 2009. These days it seems as though she is fighting almost every week – keeping her Awakening Profile up to date is a tough job – thanks Sylvie!
Sylvie confesses that she and siblings are all uniquely weird. Being born and raised in Colorado, a State full of free spirited people, you wouldn’t expect anything less. After attending college in New York, she met her husband Kevin who subjected her to endless Kung Fu movies. Sylvie had had enough and told Kevin that she couldn’t do it any more. In a quirk of fate she relented to one final movie after he promised this one would be unlike any of the other. The movie was Ong Bak, and it is here that Sylvie’s life path changed. She was fascinated by the beauty of Muay Thai movements. In 2008 she began training under Kumron Vaitayanon (Master K) in New Jersey.
It was not long after she began training that she decided she needed to start filming her sessions because they were so full of detail, she did not want to miss or forget a thing. This documenting of the sessions soon turned into compulsion. She felt it was her responsibility to preserve Master K’s legacy and teachings, and she created the Master K Youtube Channel. This was her first step into social media. The channel is packed with information and techniques and we advise you to go check it out. Of course, by the time she started fighting she was posting video blogs of her experiences and unwittingly proving herself to be wonderfully inspiring lady. It are these videos that compelled Awakening to contact her.
In 2009 Sylvie and Kevin travelled to Thailand for the first time to train. Thailand opened her mind even further to the possibilities of Muay Thai. After a while, due to typical financial reasons, the couple came back to New York – with the intention of making it back out to Thailand at some point.
Back in New York, Sylvie returned to training with Master K, and also took on Kru Nat Fuz, her first female trainer, as her fight coach. She enjoyed the new experience and remained with her for six fights. Most of her losses come from this brief period of her career fought in New York. Master K then introduced her to trainer Kaensak Sor. Ploenjit – someone she speaks extremely high of on her blog 8Limbs.
In April 2012, Sylvie returned to Thailand where she remains at the time of writing. She fights as often as her body allows her, which seems like once a week most of the time! Each fight is documented with a blog post of her experience, and a video of the entire fight. Witnessing the fight by fight growth of this lady is definitely inspiring. We urge you to check out her blog, we’ve spent hours on there. Here at Awakening, we consider it to be the best Muay Thai blog we have come across.
While you are at it, make sure to “Like” her Facebook athlete page. We can not sing the praises highly enough of this young lady, she represents female martial artists perfectly. We are delighted that she has agreed to write occasional articles for us.
Photo #1: Jérémy Pilain
Other Photos: Kevin & Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu
• Awakening Profile: Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu
• Sylvie’s 8Limbs Blog
• Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu’s Facebook Athlete Page
• MasterKMuayThai Youtube Channel
