ONE Championship’s Tharoth Sam is from Cambodia, a traditional nation, where femininity is prized. A female MMA fighter doesn’t fit the mold, so Tharoth is casting a new one.
Her nic is Little Frog from her fondness for catching little frogs as food when she was young. Unlike the common bases of MMA like folkstyle wrestling, Muay Thai, or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Sam’s background in in Bokator.
Bokator is a Cambodian martial arts style that tradition indicates was the close quarter combat system used by the armies in the region some 1700 years ago. The word itself means “pounding a lion” (bok = pound + tor = lion). It involves the use of weapons, as well as empty hand techniques.
Sam is also an actress in Cambodian television and cinema. And she has a big role in Angelina Jolie’s next film, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia. That begins filming next month.
But first, she fights India’s Jeet Toshi at Tharoth will be competing again in Asia’s largest MMA promotion, ONE Championship next Saturday in ‘ONE Championship 34: Kingdom of Khmer’ vs India’s Jeet Toshi on Dec. 5 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
It was the gender barrier here in Cambodia that I was determined to break,” she told Carlos Cinco for the Phnom Penh Post. “I want to show the world and my country what Khmer women are capable of, and how powerful they can be. I wanted to prove that women can be just as strong and competitive as men, Sam Tharoth said.
At the beginning, my parents were not very supportive because Cambodian women aren’t suppose do anything remotely close to [MMA]. So I constantly competed in sport, especially in martial arts.
I won a lot gold medals in national and international games and, after a while, my family saw my success in the sport and figured that they can’t stop me doing what I love to do, and so they started supporting me.
Then I got into professional fighting, which I hid from my family for many years for fear of their disapproval. But soon they found out and gave me their full support, Sam said when asked about her family’s perception of her getting involved in MMA.
Besides competing in MMA, I love performing arts. I sing, dance and act when I am not in the cage. It is difficult to juggle all three sometimes.
“For example, in December alone I will need to be ready for my ONE Championship fight and then straight after that go on set to start filming. I don’t complain as I am grateful for all the opportunities, and I have a great support system around me that helps me push through.”
Her opponent is the sole world-ranked female Indian kickboxer in a country of 1.4 billion. But that is another story …
ONE: Kingdom of Khmer is headlined by Hawaiia’s Lowen Tynanes vs. Russia’s Rasul Yakhyaev.
