Tawanchai: The Southpaw Who Kicked His Way to the Top of ONE

The first time I saw Tawanchai throw his left kick at full speed, I was on a couch at six in the morning with cold coffee, and I put the cup down without deciding to. The sound came through a cheap laptop speaker like somebody dropping a baseball bat on a gym floor. That was the moment the kid from Pattaya stopped being a prospect in my head and became a problem for everybody at 155 pounds.

Tawanchai P.K. Saenchai is a lot of things at once: a tall, patient southpaw, a former ONE Featherweight Muay Thai World Champion, a student of the most famous gym name in the sport, and, as of September 2026, a man rebuilding himself after a broken shin. What follows is how he got there and why the division still bends around him.

Who He Is, in Plain Numbers

His real name is Narongsak Kaewmala. He was born on April 7, 1999, in Pattaya, and he fights out of P.K. Saenchai Muaythaigym in Bangkok, the camp built around the legend Saenchai. He stands about 5 feet 11 inches, which is tall for a Thai featherweight, and he fights from the southpaw stance.

Before ONE, he did the stadium grind the way Thai fighters always have: dozens of fights a year, a national title at 126 pounds in 2017, and the 2018 Fighter of the Year award from the Sports Authority of Thailand. His overall record sits well past 130 wins. Nobody outside a Thai promoter’s filing cabinet can vouch for every one of those, so treat it as a rough measure of mileage rather than gospel.

What matters more is the stretch below.

Tawanchai’s key ONE fights

Nine straight wins between the Sitthichai loss and the Noiri fight. Four title defenses. Two of the best kickboxers alive beaten in their own sport or his. Then two losses in nine months, both under kickboxing rules. Hold on to that last detail, because it explains most of what came after.

The Left Kick, and Everything Hung on It

People talk about Tawanchai’s style as if it were complicated. Not really. The complication is in the timing.

He stands long and relaxed, rear foot turned out a little, lead hand pawing at the other man’s guard. He does not rush. He leans back from punches rather than covering up, which is a very Saenchai-gym habit, and he waits for his opponent to put weight on the wrong foot. When that happens the left kick comes, to the body or the arm or the thigh, and it lands with the whole hip behind it.

Here is what his game is actually built on:

1. The southpaw left body kick. Against an orthodox fighter it lands on the open side, under the right elbow, where the liver lives. Opponents know it is coming and still can’t stop it.
2. The teep as a wall. He uses the push kick to keep pressure fighters at the end of his leg, which buys him time to set up the next heavy strike.
3. The straight left. The one people forget. Niclas Larsen went down to it in 2022, and Superbon went down three times to hands in their 2025 rematch.
4. Composure in the clinch exits. He won’t live in the clinch the way old-school Lumpinee knee fighters do, but he rarely gets pinned there either.

The Davit Kiria fight in August 2023 is the one people show their friends. Kiria, a Georgian veteran with a hard head and a harder guard, blocked a left kick with his right forearm, and the forearm broke. Tawanchai said afterward he didn’t realize it until later, and that he went over to apologize. I believe him. On the broadcast he looked more puzzled than pleased, like a man who had knocked on a door and watched it fall off its hinges.

Compare that to Rodtang’s pressure style, the forward-marching chaos of the other great Thai star in ONE. Rodtang eats shots to deliver them. Tawanchai prefers not to get hit at all, and for four years that preference held up.

Why Tawanchai Mattered So Much to ONE

Every promotion needs a champion who makes the division look like a ladder with a locked door at the top. From September 2022, when he outpointed Petchmorakot for the belt, Tawanchai was that door.

His two wins over Superbon did the heavy lifting. Superbon was the former kickboxing king and one of the most feared kickers on the planet, and their first meeting in December 2023 was close enough that fans still argue about it in comment sections. The rematch at ONE 170 in Bangkok, on January 24, 2025, ended the argument. Tawanchai dropped him three times and the referee stopped it in the second round. I remember the arena noise on that stream was so loud the commentary disappeared for a few seconds, which in my experience is the most honest review a fight can get.

The small gloves matter here too. ONE’s Muay Thai bouts use smaller gloves and three rounds, and if you’re coming from stadium Muay Thai the four-ounce glove format is worth reading up on, because it changes how fighters pace themselves. There’s no slow feeling-out first round like at Rajadamnern. A fighter with Tawanchai’s kicking power becomes more dangerous in that setting, since every clean kick carries a real chance of ending things early.

Kickboxing: The Door He Kept Opening

Tawanchai could have stayed in Muay Thai and collected paychecks against challengers. He kept crossing over to kickboxing instead, where there is no catching kicks for sweeps, far less clinch time, and a heavier reward for fast combinations with the hands.

For a while he made it look easy. Kiria, then Jo Nattawut in October 2023, both under kickboxing rules. Then Saitama.

On March 23, 2025, at ONE 172 inside Saitama Super Arena, Masaaki Noiri of Japan took the interim featherweight kickboxing title from him. Noiri was a heavy underdog. He ate kicks for two rounds and kept countering, and in the third a short left hook put Tawanchai down. The stoppage came at 1:55 of the round, and the nine-fight streak was over.

Then came December 2025 and ONE Friday Fights 137. China’s Liu Mengyang, another kickboxing bout, a calf kick 52 seconds in, and Tawanchai’s shin was broken. Surgery followed, then a long rehab.

Two losses, both in the other sport, both to fighters who made him pay for staying in the pocket longer than Muay Thai rules would ever ask him to. Here sits the most useful lesson in his whole career for anyone studying the game. Kickboxing punishes the lean-back defense that Muay Thai rewards, and the calf kick has turned into a weapon that tall kickers with a long, planted lead leg have to respect.

The Vacated Belt and Where He Stands in 2026

On July 21, 2026, at a press conference at the P.K. Saenchai gym, Tawanchai gave up the ONE Featherweight Muay Thai World Title while he kept recovering from the broken shin. ONE elevated interim champion Nico Carrillo, the Scottish power puncher who had won the interim belt earlier in 2026, to undisputed champion.

Plenty of fighters would have held the belt hostage and let the division freeze. Tawanchai said he was stepping down out of respect for the organization and the fans, and the division moved on without a months-long logjam. It cost him the strap. It didn’t cost him his standing, and I suspect his next title fight will draw more attention because of how he handled it.

Where does he rank historically? Too early to say. He is 27 and hasn’t yet built the decades-long body of work you see in any serious all-time greatest list. But in the ONE era specifically, at featherweight, nobody else beat Superbon twice and Jo Nattawut under two rule sets.

What to Watch When He Comes Back

When Tawanchai gets cleared and booked again, and there was no confirmed return date when I last checked, these are the tells I’ll be watching from the couch:

My own advice for anyone who trains: pull up the Kiria and Superbon rematch tapes, then the Noiri fight, and watch only Tawanchai’s feet. The same stance that made him champion is the stance two kickboxers found a way through. Seeing both halves of that story, back to back, teaches more about distance than a month of drills.