Baok Chambab (Khmer Traditional Wrestling)
Cambodian traditional wrestling over three rounds, with a greeting dance and drum music; attested on the Angkor reliefs.
Quick Facts
CambodiaCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Baok Chambab (Khmer Traditional Wrestling)
About Baok Chambab (Khmer Traditional Wrestling)
Baok chambab is the traditional wrestling of Cambodia; the Khmer name means, literally, to throw down. Bouts are held in the open, usually on sand or beaten earth, and consist of three rounds; whoever wins two of them wins the match. A round ends the moment one wrestler puts his opponent on his back, and between rounds the loser decides for himself whether to go on. The ceremonial side carries as much weight as the grappling. Before the meeting both men perform a greeting dance accompanied by two drums, the female skor ngey and the male chhmol, and by the sralai oboe; the music continues during the bout and quickens with it. Depictions of wrestlers survive on the reliefs of the Angkor temples, among them a scene with women wrestlers at Banteay Srei, which shows that women once competed as well. Tradition puts the beginning of the discipline in the eighth century and links it to an older form called maloyuth; no written evidence for that dating is available, so this page gives no year of origin. Today baok chambab is held at the Khmer New Year and at other festivals, and it is strongest in the provinces of Pursat and Kampong Chhnang, though interest in it is waning.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.