Everybody with the
Pandeism Anthology Project is devastated to learn of the untimely death of our friend and contributor Jimmy "Ninja" Chaikong. He was like a brother to us (and to me, personally), and a bigger, bolder
heart has never walked the
Earth.
Jimmy "Ninja" Chaikong (c. 1975 – August 24, 2025) was a man who lived in layers, as, a fighter, a musician, a folk philosopher, and a promoter of other people's talents. He was one of those rare people who seemed to live four or five lifetimes in the span of tragically shortened one. By his own autobiographical account, he was born in Nakhon Ratchasima,
Thailand, descended from a
Muay Thai line so storied that his great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather guarded
King Rama V. But Jimmy's childhood would
transplant him from Thailand to
Texas, where he became as much
cowboy and
gymnast as martial artist, growing up in
Abilene with
violence on the streets, violence in the home, and a hunger to transmute those experiences into something better.
And so he did just that, over and over again. In 1991, he won
American Gladiators on national TV, and then from 1992–1996 he went undefeated in NHB (no-holds-barred) fighting, even battling for a world title against
Ali Elias in the old
USWF. Later he squared off against
Hayato Sakurai, who himself went on to face the likes of
Carlos Newton and
Matt Hughes. He fought too light, too heavy, too hurt, and often too soon, and smiled anyway because the point wasn't winning, but proving that fear of violence itself could be beaten back, and maybe even befriended. In 2011, he appeared in two episodes of Season 4 of the TV show
Burn Notice, playing a martial arts-fighting mercenary in the back-to-back episodes "Hard Out" and "Blood Ties."
In his next act in life, Jimmy was a country folk musician, signing briefly with CBS/Epic before founding his own Ninja Cowboy Records, and promoting the Texas State Songwriters Championship. I saw him more than once pick up his
guitar and turn
pain into a
melody, something
funny, something
defiant. He didn't shy away from talking about his earlier years as a party kid diving into the late-90s
ecstasy culture, later finding sobriety and the quiet focus of meditation. He would
joke that he could still
choke you out if you had
doubt in him, but his greatest pride came from
teaching martial arts with a dose of
showmanship: Chaikong Jiu Jitsu, Jimmy Ninja Fight Club, Big Country Wrestling. His "
dojo" was always half-mat, half-stage. He especially loved teachings kids, dressing up in superhero costumes and giving tykes as little as five or six years old lessons in
grappling and
sportsmanship alike.
And then he was a philosopher as well. After publishing his own book containing his thoughts, he wrote for our Pandeism Anthology Project, contributing the essay
Eternal Energy & Information to our second volume,
Pandeism: An Anthology of the Creative Mind. In that very autobiographical piece, he brought together lines of thought from the
pool table to the
cosmos,
synchronicity and
physics,
Muay Thai and
meditation. He wrote candidly of his mother's violent streak, of
phobias and
pathologies to overcome (fear of dogs,
water, even the
ocean itself), of
drug-fueled experiences and
near-death visions, of breaking his back and healing himself through
yoga and
will. He spoke of "
Gawd" (a formulation he intentionally used to put part of the "
awe" back in the
divine), not as a mythic
patriarch in the
sky, but as the
intelligence underlying subatomic particles, the synchronicity that puts the right person in your path at the right moment, the raw being of existence itself. His essay entertained and enlightened enough that we placed it as the
final word of the volume. It was fitting: he was always the kind of thinker you wanted to have the last word.
We were blessed as well to have some deep conversations with him, sometimes about music and martial arts, sometimes about his freewheeling approach to parenting, and often about metaphysics. He was funny, wild, self-deprecating, endlessly curious, and vulnerable in ways that most "fighters" fear to be. He listened as deeply as he spoke. Years later, when the Pandeism Anthology Project did a
Kickstarter for
Essay From Our Universe Experiencing Itself, he recorded a promo for the effort, even though he didn't have a piece in that book.
Jimmy died on August 24, 2025, in a drowning accident at Eagle Mountain Lake, Texas, after his boat overturned. His two young children were rescued alive. Our hearts, though wounded, fully go out to his kids, who he loved more than anything in the world, and to his other friends and family. May his thoughts and his music go on forever.
It is a cruel that a man who learned to
surf to conquer a lifelong fear of water, and who came to describe the ocean as the nearest he had felt to "Gawd's hand pushing me forward into life," should meet his end that way. But it is somehow very much in keeping with his way of living in
contradiction, to
dance with the
danger, to give his all in love and in struggle, leaving behind scars and songs of life.
If you want to understand Jimmy Ninja, read his words: "We are Eternal Energy and Information.... We are light.... We are Gawd, and Gawd is us.... LEAN FORWARD INTO YOUR LIFE."
I, the author of this piece, release it to the public domain.