Type “did Superbon beat Buakaw” into a search bar and you get a pile of confident answers. Most of them are wrong, or at least half wrong. Superbon Singha Mawynn, born Suppachai Muensang in Phatthalung province on August 16, 1990, never beat Buakaw Banchamek in a sanctioned professional fight. The two men were teacher and student. For years Superbon fought under the name Superbon Banchamek, which tells you whose gym he walked out of.
So why does the phrase stick? The answer says something about how fighters get remembered, and about what it actually takes to surpass the person who made you.
The Night the Student Stood Across the Ring
There was a meeting, just not the one people imagine. In July 2025, at the first CISM Military Muaythai Challenge in Bangkok, Buakaw and Superbon faced each other in a special exhibition bout. The crowd loved it. Nobody lost a belt, nobody’s record changed, and the result mattered roughly as much as the result of a father and son playing one-on-one in the driveway.
Still, that clip travels. Someone watches a 34-year-old champion trading kicks with a 43-year-old legend and the story writes itself: the new guy beat the old guy. The internet prefers a clean succession narrative to a complicated one.
The complicated one is better.
What Buakaw Built, and What the Student Did With It
To understand Superbon you have to start with the man he trained under. Buakaw won the K-1 World MAX tournament in 2004 and again in 2006, and in doing so he became the face that Western audiences attached to Thai fighting. If you want that full story, the night Buakaw sold Muay Thai to the rest of the world is worth reading on its own.
Here’s the part that gets overlooked. Buakaw’s great problem in K-1 was that the rules took away much of what made him Thai. Clinching was restricted. Elbows were gone. Judges rewarded volume and damage over the balance and composure that stadium judges in Bangkok prized. Buakaw adapted by leaning on the round kick and relentless pressure, and it worked brilliantly.
Superbon inherited the adapted version. He was raised in the Thai ring, he won a PAT lightweight title in 2010, and he fought at Lumpinee, but his real career took off in kickboxing, where Buakaw had already drawn the map. The student didn’t have to invent the translation from Muay Thai to kickboxing. He got it handed to him, and then he refined it.
Being second has a quiet advantage. Pioneers pay for every mistake themselves.
A Career in Six Fights
A fighter with 117 wins across Muay Thai and kickboxing (per his Wikipedia record) can’t be summarized fight by fight. These six tell the story that matters.
| Date | Event | Opponent | Result | Why it matters |
| Jan 1, 2017 | Kunlun Fight, Sanya | Jomthong Chuwattana | Win, KO | Won the 2016 Kunlun Fight World MAX tournament |
| Feb 4, 2018 | Kunlun Fight 69 | Marat Grigorian | Loss, KO at 0:29 of R1 | The fastest, most humbling loss of his career |
| Oct 15, 2021 | ONE: First Strike | Giorgio Petrosyan | Win, KO (head kick) R2 | Became the first ONE featherweight kickboxing champion |
| Jan 14, 2023 | ONE Fight Night 6 | Chingiz Allazov | Loss, KO R2 | Lost the belt |
| Apr 5, 2024 | ONE Friday Fights 58 | Marat Grigorian | Win, unanimous decision | Took the interim title |
| Nov 16, 2025 | ONE 173, Tokyo | Masaaki Noiri | Win, unanimous decision | Unified the featherweight kickboxing title |
Look at that table for a second. Two of the six are knockout losses. I didn’t pick them to make a point. Superbon’s career makes more sense when you read it through the defeats.
The 29 Seconds That Built a Champion
In February 2018, Grigorian knocked Superbon out in 29 seconds. For most fighters, a loss like that becomes a ceiling. Promoters stop calling, and the fighter starts protecting his chin instead of using his weapons.
Superbon did something less common. He kept the weapons and fixed the gaps around them. By the time the two met again in ONE, Superbon beat Grigorian on the cards, and he did it twice. The April 2024 win for the interim belt was built on knees and cleaner boxing, which was exactly the part of his game that looked thin back in China.
There’s a principle buried in here that coaches talk about constantly and fans rarely notice. Talent gets you to the top ten. What gets you past it is how you respond to the fighter who solves you. Superbon got solved by Grigorian, by Allazov, and later by Tawanchai. Each time, the next version of him was harder to crack.
Why Superbon’s Kicks Land When Others Don’t
Ask a casual fan what makes Superbon special and they’ll say “the kicks.” True, but incomplete. Plenty of Thai fighters throw a hard round kick. Very few land the high kick on elite kickboxers who spend their whole camp preparing for it.
The Petrosyan knockout is the lesson. Petrosyan, the Italian-Armenian with the best defense of his generation, had spent a decade making great strikers look ordinary. Superbon didn’t try to outthink him with something exotic. He went to the body with his right leg, over and over, and trained Petrosyan’s eyes and arms to drop to that line. Then, in the second round, the same kick came up the high line instead. Petrosyan’s guard was where it had learned to be, and the fight ended there.
So what makes it work? A few things:
- The same chamber for body and head. From the start of the kick, the body and head versions look identical, so the opponent has to guess.
- Hip turnover, not leg speed. The power comes from the pivot on the standing foot and the rotation of the hip, which is why the kick still hurts at the end of five rounds.
- Patience with the setup. He will throw the body kick for rounds before the head kick shows up once.
- Balance after the kick. Thai training drills you to finish the kick in a stance you can defend from, so a missed kick doesn’t leave you open.
If you want to build the base version of that weapon yourself, this guide to roundhouse kick technique and reps breaks the movement into drills you can do in a month. None of it will make you Superbon. It will show you why his version looks effortless: every piece is doing its job.
Two Rulebooks, One Fighter
The strangest chapter of his recent career came in Muay Thai, not kickboxing. Superbon went after Tawanchai P.K. Saenchai’s ONE featherweight Muay Thai belt twice. He lost the first fight on the cards in December 2023. In the rematch at ONE 170 in Bangkok on January 24, 2025, Tawanchai stopped him with punches at 1:10 of the second round.
Here is the counterintuitive bit. Superbon is a product of Thai gyms, and yet the ruleset he was born into is the one where he’s struggled most at the very top. Under kickboxing rules, with no elbows and limited clinch, his rangy kicking game and improved hands are close to perfect. Under Muay Thai rules, a younger Thai who grew up specializing in exactly that format found the answers. Buakaw himself said afterward that Superbon could have beaten Tawanchai under kickboxing rules, and he was probably right.
That split between rulebooks has a long history. The Dutch kickboxing and Muay Thai rivalry shaped modern striking, and Superbon sits right in the middle of it: a Thai who fights best in a Western format, trained by the man who first made that crossover famous.
Where Superbon Stands in 2026
As of late September 2026, Superbon holds the undisputed ONE featherweight kickboxing title. ONE elevated him from interim to full champion in January 2025, and he unified the belt by beating interim champion Masaaki Noiri over five rounds at ONE 173 in November 2025. His next challenger is coming out of the ONE SAMURAI tournament, whose semifinals are set for October 17, 2026 at Ariake Arena in Tokyo: Marat Grigorian against Luo Chao, and Noiri against Mohammad Siasarani. A fourth fight with Grigorian is a real possibility.
Now go back to the question from the top. Did Superbon beat Buakaw? Not in any fight that counts. But measure it another way. Buakaw never knocked out Giorgio Petrosyan, and he never unified a ONE world title. His student did both, using a kicking game that started in Buakaw’s gym. For a teacher, no defeat feels better than that one.
FAQ
Did Superbon ever fight Buakaw for real?
No sanctioned professional fight exists between them. They met in an exhibition at the CISM Military Muaythai Challenge in Bangkok in July 2025. Buakaw was Superbon’s trainer, and Superbon fought for years as Superbon Banchamek.
How did Superbon knock out Giorgio Petrosyan?
With a right head kick in the second round at ONE: First Strike on October 15, 2021. He spent the early part of the fight kicking the body, then threw the same kick high once Petrosyan’s guard had dropped.
Is Superbon still a champion?
Yes. As of September 2026 he is the ONE featherweight kickboxing world champion, having unified the title against Masaaki Noiri at ONE 173.
What is Superbon’s real name?
Suppachai Muensang. He has also competed as Superbon Lookjaomaesaivare and Superbon Banchamek before taking the Singha Mawynn name.
How tall is Superbon?
He stands about 177 cm (5 feet 10 inches) with a reach of around 182 cm, which gives his kicks unusual range for a featherweight.
