Theme Park at its Darkest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhZeu2J8ci4

I have written three articles about Nathan ‘Carnage’ Corbett for International Kickboxer Magazine. The first was a preview of his clash against Tyrone Spong, who was widely considered at that time to be the best pound-for-pound kickboxer in the world. After Carnage knocked him well into the middle of the week after, contest or no-contest, I think it is fair to say that the mantle for that particular accolade has passed. Nathan, at age 30, is well on the way to asserting himself as the best kickboxer on the planet.

I recently travelled to the Gold Coast to interview a number of fighters and check out their gyms. My favorite, by far, was Urban Fight Gym. Nathan’s trainer, Richard Walsh, is the epitome of the man who speaks softly but carries a big stick. He has a gentle, easygoing manner, but consistently turns out fighters of the highest calibre. One of the things I learned in Holland is that skill is contagious; you catch it from the people you train with. If this is true, it makes both Corbett and Walsh all the more remarkable as they do their thing in isolation.

Nathan was slated to fight Ukranian Pavel Zhurilov for a world title two weeks after my visit and was looking for some extra sparring with people silly enough to get in the ring. Having been hammered by many of the best fighters in the world, I felt that I should give it a go. Here’s what happened over the course of three rounds (please excuse the varying quality of footage – had to merge separate files).

This entry was posted on December 16, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under Kickboxing with tags Nathan 'Carnage' Corbett, Pavel Zhurilov, Richard Walsh, Urban Fight Gym. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.