Muay Thai Guides

Walk into any Muay Thai gym and you will see the same handful of images on people's shorts. Fanged faces. Tigers. Script nobody in the room can read. Most people buy them because they look good, which is a completely fine reason, but almost all of it means something specific, and some of it means something specific enough that it is worth knowing before you put it on.

Here is what is actually on there.

The Yaksha — the one at the gate

If you have been to Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok, you have walked past a pair of them: five metres tall, fangs out, gold crown, holding a club, standing either side of the doorway. Those are Yaksha, guardian giants.

In Thai and broader Buddhist tradition the Yaksha is not a villain. He is a threshold figure. His whole job is to stand at the boundary between outside and inside and turn back whatever should not cross it. He is terrifying on purpose, and he is terrifying on your side.

That is why he ends up on fight gear so often. The imagery is not "I am a monster." It is "nothing gets past this line."

What you will see: a mask-like face, usually with a tall gold crown, bulging eyes, and fangs. Colours vary by which specific Yaksha is depicted. In the Ramakien, Thailand's national epic, each has a traditional colour and face.

The Oni — the Japanese one

Worth being precise: the Oni is Japanese, not Thai. It has migrated into Muay Thai design through the broader combat-sports aesthetic, and it is now extremely common on Thai shorts made for a global market.

An Oni is a demon or ogre — horns, wild hair, a wide fanged grin, often red or blue skin. Unlike the Yaksha, the Oni is not a guardian by default. He is chaos. In Japanese folklore he is the thing that comes down from the mountain, and the yearly Setsubun festival exists partly to throw beans at him and drive him out.

On fight gear that reads as intent rather than protection. The Yaksha holds the line. The Oni crosses it.

Sak Yant — the tattoo script

The lines of angular script you see on a lot of Thai shorts are drawn from Sak Yant, the sacred tattoo tradition. The writing is usually Khom, an old Khmer script used for Pali religious text in Thailand, and the designs are geometric yantra, each associated with a specific blessing: protection, strength, luck, charisma.

This is the one that carries real weight. Sak Yant are traditionally applied by a monk or an ajarn, come with precepts the wearer is expected to keep, and are a live religious practice rather than a historical one. Printed on shorts it is decorative, but it is worth knowing that the thing being decorated is somebody's active faith, and that attitudes to how it is used vary a lot, including among Thai practitioners.

The common ones you will spot: Hah Taew, five vertical lines and five separate blessings. Gao Yord, nine peaks representing the sacred mountain, the foundational yant. Paed Tidt, eight directions, protection while travelling.

The Mongkol and Pra Jiad

Not on the shorts, but you will see them in the same imagery. The mongkol is the headband a fighter wears during the wai kru ram muay before a bout, traditionally made by the gym, and never placed on the floor. The pra jiad are the armbands. Both are blessing objects, not equipment.

If a design puts a mongkol on the shorts, that is a reference to the ritual, not the ritual itself.

Tigers, nagas, elephants

• Tiger — strength and fearlessness, and a nod to Suea, the tiger yant.
• Naga — the serpent that guards temple staircases. Water, protection, transformation. If you have seen a balustrade that is a long scaled body ending in a many-headed snake, that is a naga.
• Elephant — the national animal. Power, and historically royalty and war.

And the crocodile?

Ours, and not traditional — we will be straight about that. The Crocodile Checkmate design pairs a crocodile crest with a chess board, because a crocodile's whole method is to be completely still until the exact moment it is not, and because a checkerboard is a way of saying the result was decided several moves ago. It is an idea about patience, not a piece of Thai iconography, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

So what should you wear?

Whatever you actually like. Nobody in a Thai gym is going to check your yant credentials.

The one thing worth doing is knowing what is on your leg, particularly with Sak Yant — partly out of respect, and partly because the imagery is genuinely good and it is more fun when you can read it.

If you want the guardian: shop the Yaksha Protector. If you want the one that arrives: shop the Flaming Oni. Not sure on sizing? Read the size guide first.