Phanuwat “Coke” Chun­hawat takes on Matt Embree in a Rub­ber Match at “Bat­tle in the Desert 5″ on Feb­ru­ary 25th, 2012 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, NV

Fol­low­ing his hard-fought, major­ity deci­sion vic­tory over Rami Ibrahim on Nov. 19, WBC national cham­pion Phanuwat “Coke” Chun­hawat (146–24-1, 24 KO’s) of Oak­land, Calif. via Thai­land will return to the squared cir­cle an attempt to avenge a June 2011 defeat when he bat­tles 21-year-old young gun Matt Embree (19–3, 9 KO’s) of Toronto, Ontario, Canada with the vacant WBC inter­na­tional light­weight (135 pounds) cham­pi­onship at stake.  

The matchup between Chun­hawat and Embree will serve as a rub­ber match.  In Sept. 2010, Chun­hawat edged out a split deci­sion over Embree, who returned the favor by win­ning in the same fash­ion in the sec­ond meet­ing. Let’s take a peek into the life of this hum­ble warrior.

Now cur­rently resid­ing in Oak­land, CA, Coke is orig­i­nally from the Ratch­aburi Province, which is one of the Cen­tral Provinces of Thai­land. It’s also the same home town of Two Time Lumpi­nee Cham­pion Matee Jedeepitak.

At the age of three, Coke left Ratch­aburi with his Grand­fa­ther & ended up in the town of Buri­ram. Coke’s Grand­fa­ther left him there in search for work, and Coke ended up liv­ing with the monks at the Bud­dhist Tem­ple, help­ing out so they would send him to school, and pro­vide him with food.

Coke’s first fight was at the age of eleven. A monk asked him if he wanted to fight at the town tem­ple for a New Year Cel­e­bra­tion. Coke agreed, and hav­ing never trained before still won the fight. He made 200 baht for his first fight which is the equiv­a­lent to $5 US Dol­lars. Coke con­tin­ued to fight at the tem­ples to earn money to live and at the age of thir­teen he jour­neyed to Bangkok look­ing for work. He strug­gled in Bangkok, and didn’t have any money. Luck­ily, a friend asked Coke if he wanted to train, & live at the Fair­tex Bang­plee Camp. Luck­ily for Coke, his first trainer was the great Jongsanan Fair­tex. Coke remained at that camp for almost four­teen years.

Coke fought for the Fair­tex Camp all through­out Thai­land where gam­bling plays a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor. “Some­times the spec­ta­tors watch­ing the fight will come up to your cor­ner between rounds & offer you some of their win­nings if you come back strong,” says Coke. “Some peo­ple want to make money more than they want to win, and the fight can be fixed before.”

The four­teen years Coke stayed at the Fair­tex Camp was like liv­ing with a fam­ily. He trained, slept, and ate with the other fight­ers, & train­ers. “Train­ing is harder in Thai­land. We wake up early, and run seven mile in the morn­ing. Come back, and train for four to five hours. Eat, sleep, and train again in the after­noon for another three hours. We do this every­day,” says Coke.

“In the US some peo­ple train to make a liv­ing and train for the love of Muay Thai but not the same as in Thai­land. Your whole life is Muay Thai in Thai­land but here most fight­ers need another job to make enough money. Train­ing in the US is dif­fer­ent because fight­ers have to take care of their fam­ily, work, and then train after their jobs. It is more tir­ing because you have to take care of other things here, not just eat, sleep and train.”

Coke has fought sev­eral Lumpi­nee Cham­pi­ons in the past, and has also fought and defeated Buakaw. He reg­u­larly fought at Lumpi­nee and Rajadamn­ern Sta­dium, and in many tele­vised bouts. With almost two hun­dred pro­fes­sional fights under his belt Coke has no plans of slow­ing down. “I love Muay Thai. It is what I know, and has been my life for the last twenty years.”

Phanuwat “Coke” Chunhawat