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Based on an ethnographic survey carried out from 1999 to 2005 this paper analyzes risk taking in Thai boxing, muay thai, a violent sport, as it is practiced today in its country of origin and in France. Considering the benefit that this sport provides to boxers as well as to the muay thai world, the author shows that risk inherent to this activity is not only physical. What is at stake indeed is not so much the valorization of physical self-control and violence as the social insertion where the fact of losing face compromises the image of a whole group and even the fortune of betters. Risk taking does not lie therefore where one expects it.