Getting in a Few Good Shots Is What Mattered

Yok was once the best fighter, the toughest man in Bangkok, and he stares at the foreigner, the farang. They are seated at an uneven wooden table next to a dirty canvas boxing ring between two concrete supports of the highway that arches over Bangkok's Khlong Toei slum. Beyond one of the supports is a dumping ground for a local trucking company. Beyond the other, the shacks begin. And everywhere there are roosters and dogs, dozens of vomit-colored, fidgety mongrels. The dogs chase everything down.

The Khlong Toei Boxing Camp for Youth is famous the way a local bar...