Founder and head coach, PLP Fight Club
Phoe La Pyae
2017 Golden Belt champion · 67 kg
A Yangon Lethwei fighter who started at sixteen with no family behind him, at a time when Lethwei classes were rare, fought his way from pagoda-festival cards to the World Lethwei Championship main card, and now makes it easy for young people to get the chance he never had.
To anyone starting
Fix the mind first. Once the mind is right, the body follows it.
Don't carry around the thought that you know nothing, that you've never played a sport, that Lethwei is a world away from you. Come with the belief that you can. The rest follows.
How people see Lethwei now
It used to be that no parent would accept it. Too rough, you'll break something, that's what thugs do.
He has watched that change first-hand — people now accept Lethwei as something done for physical health and for the mind.
On teaching
I'll share the experience, and I'll teach the skill.
He is a professional Myanmar Lethwei instructor. Experience that sits unused is a waste, he says — which is why he teaches it here.
Women and men, younger people and adults — anyone who wants to start can come.
Lethwei and Kickboxing together: the nine weapons — fists, feet, knees, elbows and head — and the rest of the Lethwei fundamentals, thrown from the right position.
Train with him
He coaches at PLP Fight Club in Hlaing, Yangon.
How it started
Neither parent had anything to do with Lethwei. As a boy he played chinlone and football. Martial arts came later, after watching Jackie Chan and Jet Li films. While still in school he fell in with people from the Lethwei world, and at sixteen he began to train.
His parents objected. They kept objecting until they ran out of ways to say it, and once he was fighting cards in Yangon and out in the regions under his own name, they came round and backed him. His mother watched his fights through her fingers.
How he learned
There were no clubs and no courses then, nothing you could enrol in — you went to where the fighters were, watched, and ran whatever errands the seniors needed until somebody showed you something. He trained in whatever he had on, a pasoe hitched up at the waist.
His first teachers were Sayar U Maung Kyaw, Sayar U Tin Oo, and Sayar Saw Nga Man, with senior fighters he trained alongside, Sayar Win Htun among them, teaching him along the way.
For his whole fighting career he trained at one club only: EverGreen. The club was later renamed Shwe Phoo Club. Every bout he took was fought out of that club.
The lineage
He also trained under Sayar Saw Nga Man, the former Openweight Myanmar Lethwei Golden Belt champion. That belt is the highest honour in Myanmar Lethwei. The techniques he learned there are what he now teaches at PLP Fight Club.
He is from Yangon, but through his fighting years he was never based in one place: spells in Yangon alternating with spells in Hpa-An, Kayin State, where Sayar Saw Nga Man was.
The name
"Phoe La Pyae" is not the name he was born with. It is a fighting name, given to him by his first teacher, Sayar Maung Kyaw.
What it cost
An eye injury that needed surgery and six months out. A broken hand, another six months. He spent that second lay-off with no interest in doing anything else, and went straight back to fighting.
Stopping, and coming back
He married, then fought perhaps four or five more times. Family responsibility came first, and Covid ended the cards altogether, which is why he rested. He is now back as a coach.
On coaching
As a fighter, training and the next fight came first. My time went on the gym and the ring. There was little chance to meet people outside it.
Coaching put him in front of every kind of person, and he says his world widened because of it. Asked which is harder, he does not pick one: as a fighter you drive yourself, and as a teacher you never stop having to learn.
In Myanmar Lethwei he competed up to the second class — the second tier of the national grading, as the sport names it. He also took gold at state and regional cards.
He fought on WLC cards, and against professionals from France, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines.
Fight record
Well over a hundred fights across village and pagoda-festival cards, township, regional and state competition — a stretch of it at up to five fights a month. Fights of that era were not systematically recorded, so what follows is only the fights that still have a record online, as far as we can currently reach.
2017 Lethwei Golden Belt champion, 67 kg
The Golden Belt is Myanmar's national Lethwei championship, and it has only been staged eleven times since 1996. He took the 67 kg belt in 2017, beating Shwe Min Yarza in the final, fighting out of Shwe Phoo.
- First fight at
- Sixteen years old
- Time in the ring
- Over a decade — he fought from 2010 to 2023
Documented results
WLC 2: Ancient Warriors
Win · KO/TKO R2 1:482017-06-10 · Thuwunna, Yangon · 67 kg
Opponent: Sein Myo Aung (Myanmar)
WLC 3: Legendary Champions
Win · KO/TKO R3 1:102017-11-04 · Thuwunna, Yangon · 71 kg
Opponent: Rin Saroth (Cambodia)
WLC 5: Knockout War
Loss · KO/TKO R2 0:462018-06-02 · Wunna Theikdi, Nay Pyi Taw · 67 kg
Opponent: Tha Pyay Nyo (Myanmar)
Most recent documented bout
The latest fight with a date behind it. Nobody has published its result, so it is listed on its own rather than among the documented results above.
THE GREAT LETHWEI #4
2023-06-25 · MRTV-4 Theater, Yangon
Opponent: Super Ye Chan (Myanmar)
7 more documented bouts
Power of LETWHAY
2014-11-30 · Woodlands Sports Hall, Singapore · 64 kg
Opponent: Guzman Pia-yas Jr (Philippines)
ULC — Ultimate Letwhay Championship
2014-12-14 · Singapore
Opponent: Jessie Salvador (Philippines)
Surachet Duanglom
2015
Opponent: Surachet Duanglom (Thailand)
2016
Opponent: Thway Thit Win Hlaing (Myanmar)
2016
Opponent: Saw Min Aung (Myanmar)
Date not documented
Opponent: Kyal Sin Phyo (Myanmar)
Bo Soe Aung
Date not documented
Opponent: Bo Soe Aung (Myanmar)
From the fight years
These are from the fight years.
Asked for his read
Years after his last fight, he was still asked for his read on a card.
Train with him
He coaches at PLP Fight Club in Hlaing, Yangon.
See the timetable →