Punching their way out of poverty

Nutthapol (right), who started boxing when he was three, training at a gym near Bangkok that produces champions in Muay thai. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

SHE was boxing for money. Even at 13 years old, she knew that.

Why else, said Janjaem Suwannapheng, would she commit to a sport in which a boy smashed her nose in, back when she was shorter than the stalks of rice in the fields near home?