http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/may/03/jeff-hanneman-slayer

I am turning my back on the UFC. And it’s George Saint-Pierre’s fault.

The main event at UFC 158 was a title clash between Nick Diaz and GSP. The pre-fight weigh-in and press conference devolved into name calling, pushing and shoving. The sport of Mixed Martial Arts has developed a reputation as a carnival of violent cruelty amongst its circle of detractors, and understandably so.

When I first heard about Pride, I declined watching it for a long time, even at the repeated recommendations of people I knew in the fightsports community. John McCain, certainly no coward or stranger to bloodshed for that matter, was instrumental in banning the sport from cable television, denouncing it as ‘human cockfighting’. Given the spectacle’s reputation for no rules and no time limits and the success of the brawler, I had no interest. Even the thought was sickening.

However, ‘Ultimate Fighting’ (a brand name) underwent a significant metamorphosis, not least of all evident in the fact it became broadly known as mixed martial arts, or MMA (genuine nomenclature). It had shifted from spectacle to sport, showcasing one the most technically and strategically sophisticated physical contests on offer.

When I finally began to watch, I recognized an immensely intricate and sophisticated pursuit which had multiple planes of engagement – ground and stand-up – and made me feel, as a committed Thai boxer, that the sport I had given my life and body to had been usurped in popular consciousness in the way jazz was relegated to the oldies upon the arrival of Elvis Presley.

As a traditional martial artist, however, I had come to understand fighting as more than a sport; it’s a ritual. The Japanese use the word ‘budo’ to describe martial arts, which, loosely translated, means ‘warrior’s path’. Fighting is the crucible in which your training – and your character – ultimately coheres.

I have recently begun writing for Blitz Martial Arts Magazine, which has bought me into contact with a number of traditional martial artists. Last month, I wrote about – and interviewed – three of the world’s best fighters. Sadly, one of those articles was a retrospective of the great Thai boxer, Ramon Dekkers. The other two were interviews with five-time heavyweight world champion kickboxer Semmy Schilt, and Kyokushin Karate luminary, Tony Bowden.

Bowden was a hero of mine when I began training in Kyokushin Karate, almost twenty years ago (!) He was a great full-contact fighter; he won the National Full-Contact Heavyweight title four years consecutively and often competed in the Full-Contact Karate World Tournament. On the basis of his achievements, he ascended into the personal circle of Kyokushin’s founder, Mas Oyama. Tony was even among the three-hundred people invited to attend Oyama’s funeral.

Tony told a story about his toughest fight, which I consider to be definitive.

“When we were lined up ready to march on I remember saying to myself, ‘This guy is only small; he shouldn’t be too bad.’ How wrong I was! Sensei Kawabata was one of the toughest customers I had fought in a long time. At the end of the first round it was a draw, so it went to boards and we had broken the same amount (in those days you had to break a minimum of three, twenty-five millimeter boards before each round), so we fought again and again fought to a draw.

At the end of this round it was decided by weight; he was only about sixty kilograms and I was over a hundred. I didn’t even worry about the scales; I just raised his hand as the winner. I had hit him with everything that I could and still could not put him down. Then, following the bout, he ran off the stage and vomited out the side!”

“That fight was said to be one of the best fights of that World Tournament. On my last visit to Japan for last years World Tournament, someone came up to me and asked if I would sign a book that was put out at the time of the tournament when I fought Kawabata.

“I learned a valuable lesson from that match. Sometimes in losing, you can win more than if you had won. By this I mean that even though I lost the fight, because it was so tough and the sportsmanship that was shown made it… a great bout. It proved what [Oyama] always said about a good small man is just as good as a good big man. That’s why the World Tournament is an open-weight tournament.”

The victory is inconsequential. The true, lasting effect is in the way Bowden demonstrated true character.

Kyokushin is avowedly amateur; something I admired when I was nineteen, having been raised in a household where everything was geared toward worship of the almighty dollar. The problem with professional sports is paradoxical because the true motive for competing becomes lost. Then, you end up with men like Wayne Carey and Lance Armstrong (both former subjects of this blog) who are successful athletes in the sense of win or lose, but massive failures as men. Both are now fighting to construct identities at-odds with the news reports that appear outside the sports pages, detailing stories of domestic violence and drug abuse. Fifty years ago, an athlete who transcended the sports pages to appear somewhere in the rest of the paper did so as a statesman.

Semmy Schilt is a fascinating character; a true anomaly. He stands at two meters thirteen centimeters, or seven-feet-two-inches. His parents weren’t especially tall, he says. He also came from traditional karate, having spent his formative years training in Kyokushin, a style both his parents were active in.

I asked about the K1 pre-fight footage of him running through the forest in training, dressed in his gi.

“The Japanese love that! When I train kickboxing, I wear shorts. It’s not important to wear the gi.

“Basically, it’s the mental discipline. [Karate] makes you the fighter that you are. I got my black belt when I was eighteen, back in 1993. I don’t practice so much, but I still teach. My style is karate; it’s in my heart.”

Cor Hemmers once said to me, “Sem Schilt, now he is something else.” He meant that when you looked at the skill and ability of that very top echelon of fighters, Schilt was a literal head-and-shoulders above that again. For this reason, his very rare losses are exceptional. His only KO loss (other than a loss to Alexei Ignashov, very early in his career) was to Badr Hari, whose genius as a professional kickboxer seems inversely paralleled by his misadventures as an amateur idiot. After the decision of that fight, Schilt applauded Hari and shook his hand. A champion of his stature was again defined through defeat. When asked, Sem explained:

“In my opinion, you have to have respect for your opponent. Without a good opponent, you cannot win. He has to respect you, because he cannot win without you.”

It might seem like an odd place to find it, but that essential symbiosis of combatants is best explained in Genesis, chapter thirty-five, versus twenty to twenty-nine:

“And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.

²³ And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had.

²⁴ And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

²⁵ And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.

²⁶ And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

²⁷ And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

²⁸ And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

²⁹ And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.”

Later, in the book of Hosea, the man that wrestled Jacob is described as an angel.

***

Diaz is just an idiot. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination or inquiry to see that an ‘extreme’ sport like MMA – at least socially and culturally extreme – will feature such characters. But the fact that a man like Pierre, who not only wears a gi into the ring as proof of his affiliation with traditional martial arts and their values, but goes so far to explain his links to Kyokushin at the post-fight press-conference to that venal whore Dana White, should be ashamed. Because I was, and I was only watching at home.

GSP has lowered himself to either combat as an expression of anger and resentment, or a marketing exercise, both of which should be beneath him.

Unfortunately, both GSP and Diaz seem unaware that a dickhead wearing a title belt is still a dickhead. In fact, he is most conspicuously a dickhead when he takes it off.

Or it is taken from him.

One of the high points of my kickboxing career was walking out to the song ‘Dissident Aggressor’ from South of Heaven.

I trained to it this morning.

This week, at the urging of David Foster Wallace, I read two stories by Jorge Luis Borges: ‘The God’s Script’ and ‘The Immortal’. In the same way I will always remember where I was and what I was doing when Princess Diana was killed, I will always remember sitting at that Glenferrie Road café, killing time in between clients on a grey mid-morning when I read those two stories.

I have read a great many things which have astonished me with their beauty, insight or their ability to instantaneously fling open doors to entire dimensions of my psyche, but never before have I felt as if my head had been physically split open by what was inside of it. I was unable to speak, or perhaps it is better to say, unwilling. I texted a friend of mine, a great reader who had probably read them, also: “I have just read two stories by Borges. I am literally struck dumb with amazement’. What I wanted to do was rush out of the café into the street and howl at the top of my lungs; “All of you must immediately stop what you’re doing because it does not matter! You must read this NOW!”

Both stories are very short; one is five pages’ long, and the other is ten. I am embarrassed to admit that I have had these stories in my possession now for eighteen years; I was assigned to read the collection Labyrinths in first-year literature, but I didn’t. I think I read the first one and, having failed to understand it, resentfully tossed the book aside and went to the pub.

David Foster Wallace wrote a review of Borges: A Life by Edwin Williamson for the New York Times. He hated the book, complaining that Williamson had sought to reduce Borges’ project to a personal agenda driven by a number of failed romances that had eventually blossomed into the stories he wrote. Wallace argued this was absolutely not the case. Borges sought to create stories that would be ‘incorporated, like the fables of Theseus or Ahaseurus, into the general memory of the species and even transcend the fame of their creator or the extinction of the language in which they were written.” (Borges’ words). Wallace goes on to say that, “Borges is a mystic… human thought, behaviour and history are all the product of one big mind… elements of an immense kabbalistic Book that includes its own decoding.” (Both Flesh and Not, p.288)

I write about the experience of reading these stories not to provide insight, but to encourage you to read them, too. The sensation of reading them, in many ways, is like traversing a mobius strip; you think you’re right side up, but then you discover that through some trick of perspective (in which your eyes have been participating), you’re actually hanging upside down. And then, at the last page, the whole thing snaps like an elastic band and flings you not into free-fall, but into orbit.

The effect of speechlessness in the Glenferrie Road cafe, if ‘The God’s Script’ is any indication, would have pleased Borges immensely.

“In life, one must be the hammer or the anvil.”

- Goethe, as quoted in Venus in Furs.

I am convinced that Pride and Prejudice should be on the reading list of every teen-aged boy. I loved the book when I read it; I thought to myself, ‘I should have read this twenty years ago! This explains exactly what’s wrong with them!’

I have recently read Venus in Furs and this book should also be added to the adolescent male list of required reading. 

Venus in Furs was written by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch and published in 1870. Simply put, it tells the story of an anonymous man who dreams about discussing the nature of love with Venus while she reclines on a couch, dressed in furs. She is aloof, cold, cruel and ultra-desirable. He wakes from his dream and is later speaking with a friend who suggests he read a book entitled ‘Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man.’ It details the story of Severin von K., who has a passionate love affair with a woman who is the physical image of his ideal. He too would like nothing better than for her to abuse and degrade him while she is dressed in fur.

According to the memoir, Wanda thinks the whole thing a bit odd but as she begins to play along, she discovers a taste for the cruelty. Their relationship takes on a formal structure, like a marriage, in which they both sign a contract. He agrees to submit himself to any torment he decrees and she agrees to administer it – while dressed in fur.

My other adventures in literary pornography, Justine by the Marquis De Sade (chosen because it was the shortest of his novels) and Story of O (a terrifying work of genius), are entirely different to Venus in Furs, not least of all because Venus… is lit with a very lively sense of humor which casts the protagonist as the butt of the joke.

Right from the outset, the book alerts us to the fact that it is hearkening back to a classical model of love. The Greek myths do not tell tales of moderate, enduring love; they are stories of passion, fury and indulgence. By celebrating and invoking these models, Severin von Kusiemski and his Venus are responding to incarnations of their truer selves.

In a strange way, in wanting to be abused by a woman he adores, Severin has found a way to make romantic love ‘work’. I find myself in a similar bind when I observe the relationships among my homosexual chums; lots of sex, no guilt or jealousy; basically, everything an imaginative man could want. The only problem is getting past the taste. Similarly, I’m not convinced I could actually accept that kind of degradation. There is a marvelous scene when Wanda ties Severin up and is about to administer the whipping when she pulls back the curtain and her lover, a virile young cavalryman, bounds into the room to do the work for her.

“The situation was dreadfully funny – I would have laughed had it not been so degrading for me.”

-p. 114.

Shortly after, Severin is overcome by delight at the experience.

Personally (and this may be a reflection of the fact that I believe that I appear more like a cavalry officer than a bootlicker), I find that if a woman doesn’t respect me, then she isn’t attracted to me. Experience has taught that I have to be cold and superior or the ladies pass me by. I have no doubt that Severin’s approach to love and passion works for him, but I think it’s a function of his situation.

Then again, Wanda leaves him for the cavalry officer and Severin ends the novel alone.

And so did I.

On Saturday May 26, the Cindarella of fightsports will strike out in pursuit of the UFC Heavyweight title. We love and respect Junior Dos Santos as one of the few gentlemen remaining in what has increasingly become a thug sport (see the woeful weigh-in shaenanigans of Diaz and St-Pierre), but my money is on the great Antipodean.

I salute Dos Santos, but Mark Hunt is in my heart.

All hail the Super Samoan!!!

Revenge of the beard!

International Kickboxer Magazine, March/April 2013

In Queensland, people grow all kinds of crazy things in their backyards. At Jamie Stamp’s house in Ormeau, it happens to be a kickboxing gym.

“It started off as a small shed down the back of the house,” says Jamie. “Since Anthony [Vella] has come along, the place has grown in leaps and bounds. It’s getting bigger and bigger! We’ve already got six of our regular fighters matched for February, and there’s fifteen or so fighters down there altogether.”

Jamie Stamp’s reputation has been growing in step with his gym. He won the Evolution title belt at Evolution 26 last year, stopping his opponent, Elliot Compton, in the first round.

“I caught him with an overhand right and knocked him out cold. It was the last fight before all the ruckus started, which was just as well, because I had about a hundred people come down to see me. If the fight hadn’t happened, they would have been very pissed off!”

Jamie made his way into his first Muay Thai gym back in 2006, just before he turned eighteen.

“I was a small kid and I got picked on a lot. One day, my brother said, ‘Come on, let’s go try out Muay Thai.’ But I wasn’t serious until I met Anthony Vella.”

Vella, a former Melbournian, was one of the stars of Australian Muay Thai in the early nineties. He won nineteen of his twenty career fights, losing only to eventual world Thai Boxing champion and Boxing world-champion contender, Paul Briggs. He is probably best remembered for his win over Louie Isofidis, arguably the best pure kickboxer of that era. He carved out that win in the fashion of so many of his others; a grapple like a bear trap and surgical knees, all backed up by a cast-iron chin.

“Early on, [Anthony] sat me down and told me I had to keep the partying and drinking in-check if I wanted the talent to come out. I had to choose one or the other. After that, he trained me to fight on Paul Demicoli’s Eruption show. I won that fight and five years later, I was the main event.”

Anthony is more than just a trainer to Jamie, he’s a mentor as well.

“He’s a hard trainer who doesn’t give compliments, so when you do [get them], you appreciate it. In the corner, he gives you confidence. You feel as if he’s in there with you. If I lose a fight, I feel like he’s lost it, too. If I win, I’m over the moon.”

The reason for that may be because Anthony’s dedication matches that of his fighters.

“He’s working in the mines now, so he’s 4 days on, 3 days off. When he’s back in Ormeau, he always comes down to the gym as much as possible and holds pads for me. Before the Compton fight, I flew up to the mines in Moranbah to be there with him in the last 2 weeks. In the morning I’d do all my cardio, like swimming and running, and after he finished work, we’d go into this little shed and train every night. After pads, we’d do a half-hour of clinching to finish. Anthony weighs eighty-two kilos. He’s much heavier than me, so he worked me hard. In fact, I did all my grappling with him. His knees are devastating. After that, I came back down, cut the weight and fought at Evo.

“I really like Anthony’s style of pad holding,” says Jamie. “He works me at a very high intensity. I prefer that. I’m not really big on that laid-back, technical style the Thais favor. I want to work hard on the pads so my fitness is really strong. I come out hard from the bell and work to overwhelm you.”

Jamie has used this approach to great effect, especially in is most recent fights.

“I think the turning point for me was when I fought Beniah Douma on Eruption 23. He’s had a lot of fights. He fought Michael Tomahawk and beat him; he fought Daddy Kool and beat him, too. He’s got a reputation for being really tough. I went into that fight as the underdog. To tell you the truth, I was scared. As it went on though, I became more and more confident and then I stopped him, in the fourth round.

“Before that, I was definitely a points fighter; I’d rely on a high work rate to win. Fighting Beniah made me realize I had real power in my hands. It not only changed my style, it also gave me confidence. In fact, I think the strongest part of my style is my boxing, and it’s the confidence I have gained that has made it happen.”

While Jamie isn’t especially fond of the Thai approach, he has made good use of it to develop his skills.

“I’ve trained in Thailand three times,” he says. “The first time, I went and trained at Saenchai’s gym, Thirteen Coins. I met this terrific American guy, Joel Bowen. He started up Team Quest Thailand [which is a sister gym to Team Quest in the US]. The second and third times I went to Thailand, I went and trained there.”

It’s more than just the standard of instruction that impressed Jamie.

“I love the city of Chiang Mai. My original trainer from Thirteen Coins moved up there, as well. I really like his style of pad holding; it’s high intensity, like Anthony’s.”

That intense, aggressive style worked to his advantage when fighting in Thailand. It was there that he met his toughest opponent to date.

“I came out hard and so did he, but I wore him down throughout the course of the fight. I would have been behind on the cards to that point. I was really banged up. He’d broken my nose; I had two black eyes and a huge cut on my forehead. I was ready to call it quits. My Thai trainer told me to keep going, though, and then I caught him in the fourth [round]. I’d caught a lot of big hits – kicks, punches, elbows – and after the fight it was straight to the hospital to get stitched up!”

Jamie’s success over the last two years has come as he has discovered his real strengths, which have become the real basis of his style. Now he is in possession of them, he has the ability to see his way to an ultimate destination.

“I want to fight biggest names in Australia at sixty-three kilograms. I’m not so fussed about fighting in Bangkok and Lumpini; I would like to have a few more fights over there and then make my mark here in Australia. There have been a couple of eight-man tournaments on the cards for a while; I want to give that a go. I think it will determine who the best in Australia really is.”

It’s a contest and an outcome that fight fans await every bit as eagerly. No matter who those names are, Jamie is in with more than just a fighting chance.

International Kickboxer Magazine, March/April 2013

The Full-Force Gym in Blacktown in Sydney’s western suburbs is a family affair. JARROD BOYLE talks to MICHAEL BADATO and JOE CONCHA, two of its brightest stars.

Michael Badato, younger brother of Rinehard, bears of the standard of one of Australian kickboxing’s outstanding families. The responsibility fits him well; he has distinguished himself by claiming both IKBF and WKBF world titles, as well as the WBC Australian title at seventy-five kilograms.

“I’ve always been training in Muay Thai,” he says. “When I was a teenager, I did a little bit of skating, but nothing serious. The only sport I’ve ever really been into is Muay Thai. Having said that, I only started fighting with elbows in the last five years. It changed everything for me; once I started using elbows, there was no going back. I loved it. Especially my right overhand elbow.”

Michael is trained by his older brother, Reinhard, who is the founder of Full Force.

“He’s a very tough trainer,” says Michael. “Family or not, he doesn’t do me any favors. I don’t think I’ve ever done a session on the pads without him killing me. It’s as if he’s training me for a world title every time we’re going to fight. In saying that, he doesn’t go from zero to hero. We have a structured training program and he builds us, but in the last two weeks, it’s like training to the death.”

It would be one thing to train your brother, but something else entirely to do his corner.

“[Reinhard] get even more nervous than me! As a fighter, you can’t show it, but he does. He’s my brother, my manager, my trainer and my promoter. I just show up and fight; he does everything else. He makes it all much easier.”

Michael describes his fighting style succinctly. “I’m a brawler; I love my power shots. If I can end it straight away, I leap at the chance. I’ve got a reputation as an exciting fighter for that reason. Once we touch gloves, it’s one hundred per cent.”

Of all Michael’s achievements, he ranks his WBC Australian title as the pinnacle.

“That was a really hard fight,” he remembers, “That was a war. The reason being was that I was cut in the first round with an elbow. I’ve had a massive scar ever since. His name was Brett Whitton, and he came from Urban Fight Gym on the Gold Coast.

“Everyone thought I was going to lose the whole time. There was blood everywhere, dripping down the side of my face. The doctor could see it was near my eye, not in it, so he let me continue. I had to fight through it, and I managed to KO him in the third.

“Other than that, I think Shaggy [from NTG] would have been my hardest; he was my first opponent as a professional. I lost, but I leaned a lot from him. He is very much ‘go for the KO’ – you’re not in there to try and survive. He actually KOed me with a body punch. It was a hard lesson to learn, but now I know how much a good body punch will hurt, I use it myself!”

As far as 2013 is concerned, Michael’s plan is to continue fighting and win more titles.

“I never thought 2012 would be such a big year,” he enthuses. “I didn’t plan to have this many fights. We took it a step at a time, and I’ve had all these wins. I actually proposed to my wife after my WKBF world title win. I called her up into the ring and everything; it was in the paper, on the news, the whole lot. Reinhard also had his second son, so I became an uncle for the second time.”

It appears the Badato clan is expanding in both number and reputation.

Joe Concha found his way into the Full-Force gym in 2005. He came down with a friend and trained and, after some “Umming and Ahhing”, decided to join. It was a fortuitous decision for both Joe and Full-Force.

“I joined and I never looked back,” says Joe. That is for good reason; he has had twenty-three wins out of thirty-four fights, and lays claim to a world title win amongst them. If a world title in kickboxing is defined in terms of the opponent, Joe can claim his against one of the country’s outstanding fighters, Dane ‘Daddy Kool’ Beauchamp.

“The first time I fought him, it was on Total Carnage, on the Gold Coast. I think that until the last round, I was losing the fight. I’d say that out of four rounds, he’d won three and I’d won one. He was without doubt the best I’d fought; very aggressive, coming forward the whole time. He had good combinations and lots of tricks, and it was a high work rate, right from the start. He’s very powerful, also, especially his right hook! I actually knocked him out in the final round to win, with about ten seconds left until the bell. He gave that impression; I’d have to knock him out to win.

“The second time we fought was in Orange, in New South Wales. That was for the MASA world title. I stopped him in the second [round] that time with a cross, followed by two elbows.  As I remember, he’d had about twenty fights when I started Muay Thai. It would have been an honor just to fight him for a title, let alone come home with the win. He has won all his rematches, too, as I understand.”

It appears that Joe has been a perfect fit with the Full Force family. Reinhard has been training him since he was a teenager. “When I was younger, he was very much one way: ‘my way or the highway.’ Now I’m an adult – and a fighter – I know what I need more and we compromise about some things. It’s more of a partnership. That said, he’s always right behind me, kicking my arse!”

Reinhard has done a lot to shape Joe’s style.

“I started off really heavy-handed, with lots of boxing. Then I loved to kick, and didn’t care so much about my hands. Now, as my understanding of Muay Thai improves, I’m starting to fall in love with the clinch and elbows. I probably favor [my] hands, but I guess I’m becoming an all-rounder. I try to be adaptable.”

Joe began training at fifteen and while he has been training for 10 years, he didn’t have his first fight until he turned eighteen. He was a kickboxer until he travelled to Thailand and stayed at the WMC camp on Koh Samui.

“The trainers at the WMC camp taught me that you have to work hard for what you want. Those trainers knew I wanted it, and they gave me a flogging! I trained for a month and at the end of it, I had my first full Thai rules fight after about eight kickboxing fights. I only fight full Thai rules now; it’s too much fun to not fight with knees and elbows!”

That fight in Thailand introduced Joe to the magic of elbows

“I got caught in the first round with one, and it woke me up! I’d never been elbowed before, and I was impressed. You can’t see it coming. It’s highly technical and amazing to watch.”

Michael Badato is also a major part of Joe’s success.

“I spar with Michael. There’s a big weight difference and his skill and confidence have increased so much; he’s also quick and works at a longer range. I know that if I can do a good round with him, week-in, week-out, then I’m doing alright.”

“On March 8, I’ve got my first big promotion. I’ve had my nice holiday break, and started back training already. Most of my fights organized by Reinhard; he lets me know a month or two in advance. Most of time, it’s not a question of whether I want to fight or not, it’s just that the opportunity appears. I had six fights last year; my biggest year was nine. I’m hoping for six or more this year. I want to stay active on the best shows, fighting the best opponents. I’m on the eight-man Rebellion Muay Thai eliminator down in Melbourne. That’s going to feature Joel Fisher, Ghot Seur Noi and a few internationals. I’m really happy that promoters are starting to see I’m worth putting on.”

2013 holds a lot of promise for the Full Force gym, generally speaking.

Ricky Nixon has fronted court to answer charges of assaulting his former fiancée, Tegan Gould. I expect this will force him to put his career as a stand-up comic on hold.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/ricky-nixon-sentenced-to-200-hours-of-community-work-over-fiancee-assault/story-e6frg6nf-1226605349925

I am lucky enough to have Christian Ennor holding pads for me. He is among the best pad holders I have worked with; he is systematic and understands not only how fights work, but how to train for them.

One of the things I admire most about him – other than his insight into the intricacies of fighting – is his physical courage. He always positions himself in such a way that I can get maximum leverage and power into my strikes, which is always at his expense. That kind of self-sacrifice is emblematic of the very best trainers.

He is also proof that a great trainer needs intelligence and insight, much more than experience.    

How old are you, mate?

36

How long have you been involved in boxing/martial arts?

I became interested when I was about nine or ten years old. I sat and watched movies of people like Jackie Chan; old Chinese ones with Bruce Lee,Van Damme. I loved it!

I probably started [training] with Tae Kwon Do and then Kung Fu, which I did for between eight and nine years. Eventually, I went to the Bob Jones Corporation and began training in Zen Do Kai and Muay Thai at 14. I stuck with that for about three years. I was still doing Kung Fu as well. At nineteen, I won the Australian All-Styles Championships in semi-contact at welterweight, which was 70kg.

After that, I started training with Sam Soliman at Underworld, and he asked me to become his full-time training partner. I was working at Underworld, too, doing personal training and taking classes.

Did you have any boxing fights?

Nope. No boxing fights! I just sparred with Sam and whoever else.

What’s your current involvement with Fightsports?

I used to be in charge of Sam’s strength and conditioning. I learned about it by doing courses; MMA strength and conditioning courses, as well as training with all different people.

What do you do now with fighters?

I work with boxers and kickboxers and specialize in their strength and conditioning. I help some of Paul Fyfield’s fighters, and I’m still involved with Sam, doing his strength and conditioning and some padwork.

Who else are you working with?

Mehmet Ceyan, Robbie Jankovski (Australian middleweight champ), and Eric Diamandstein.

What attracts you to it?

I love thinking, ‘How do I make this guy better?’ I can’t do it myself, but I know they can. I can see what they need. Becoming a boxing trainer wasn’t my plan – I thought I’d just be a PT. Then I started with Sam, and it just went from there.

Where do you think you’ll take it?

I have got to get my own gym. It’s hard in my current position; I have to earn money and fighters are the worst paying! Once I get a gym, I can start a fighter’s time to come and train. From there, I can organize classes and p.t. around that.

In 2008, I went to ‘Wildcard Gym’, which is Freddy Roach’s gym in Hollywood, California. I trained Sam there for the first 5 weeks; Dave [Hedgecock] did the rest. I saw Roach every day, and sat on the edge of the ring and watched and listened like a little boy taking lollies.

He was in there every day from 10am until 7pm. Most of all, I was impressed by the toughness of the fighters. Sparring was on every day at 11am; they’d turn up with kids, mothers, wives, etcetera and they would go to war. It was as good as watching a full pro card where every fight is the main event. My advice would be to tell any good young fighter to move to the U.S. You can make money fighting so you don’t have to work, which means you get good enough to make a career out of it. You just can’t match the quality of sparring, the amount of fights they’ll get, and the money that goes with it.