Addi Somekh Author

Oum Ry, born in Central Cambodia in 1944, was an international kickboxing champion for many years. From 1963 to 1975, he fought over 300 times, never getting knocked out and winning 250 matches, and became one of the most famous people in his country. This was all before the Cambodian genocide, of which most of his family were victims. He was persecuted, starved, recruited by rebel factions as a bodyguard, and after the war fled to the border of Thailand, where he lived in the infamous 007 refugee camp. In December 1980, his immigration was sponsored by an American pastor and he came to the Chicago area, where he raised a family and learnt English by working as a janitor in a hotel. In 1987, he founded Long Beach Kickboxing, one of the oldest kickboxing gyms in the United States. His gym has been open 6 days a week for the last 33 years, training several kickboxing champions and keeping countless kids out of gangs.

Zochada Tat is Oum Ry’s daughter, an author, and kickboxing instructor. She took her first steps in the ring at Long Beach Kickboxing and has trained with him throughout her life. She traveled with him to Cambodia in February 2022 and helped translate his oral history.

Addi Somekh is an author and an instructor of critical thinking at University of California Santa Cruz.

Michael G. Vann is a professor of history at California State University, Sacramento, who specializes in Southeast Asia during the era of colonialism and the Cold War. He is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity and his work can be found in Jacobin and The Diplomat.