International Kickboxer Magazine, Vol.17, No.2

The front kick, or push kick is a unique weapon in the skilful kickboxer’s arsenal. It has a smaller contact area than the round kick, which allows as much of the shin as you decide to use. With a push kick, the sole of the foot, its most pronounced areas being the heel and the ball, will focus most or all of the impact. To use it more as a strike, you have to fully flex the ankle joint and pull the toes back in order to contact with the ball. It is essential to keep the spine straight and the weight centered, moving it forward with the extension of the leg. If the back is bent or the hips are back, the kick will effectively push you away from your target, rather than the other way around. This is counter-productive and, in a fight, can be embarrassing!

As I wrote in ‘Fighting as a Taller Fighter’ in the last issue, a push differs from a strike because it has contact before it has velocity. This means it isn’t as useful for smashing and shattering as the round kick. It does, however, have specific uses for positioning an opponent similar to a jab. Use the push kick to control the distance, and follow it up with a more devastating secondary attack.

Starting at the canvas and working up the body, we have the push kick to the thigh. Push kicking to the thigh is especially prevalent in Thai boxing, but the great example that springs to my mind is when Peter Graham fought Badr Hari in New Zealand in the 2007 K1 WGP Qualifier. Hari is very much a fighter in the Thai style, right down to the rhythmic stepping from foot to foot – it’s the click track he times his jab by. As Hari lines up, Graham reaches out intermittently to push kick Hari’s thigh just above the knee. By doing this, Graham prevents him from being able to find his rhythm, which means all of his attacks are frustrated before they come out. Similarly, it can be used to block the leg as it is lifted to kick, but this requires many hours of drilling before you can rely on it for anything other than breaking your toes!

The fundamental use all kickboxers should understand is the push kick to the torso for positioning an opponent. This has levels of its own. An inexperienced fighter, when confident with his legs, will use it to simply push the opponent away. This isn’t much use, outside of establishing dominance. A more sophisticated use is to halt your opponent’s advance and keep them at a length where you can subject them to other intentions. Semmy Schilt is a master of this. He will push kick his opponents as his principal means of keeping them out at the end of his reach. Any smaller fighter will want to get inside to escape the most severe harm, as well as having access to weaknesses and targets. Semmy starts many of his attacks with a heavy push kick to put his opponent where he wants them, frequently against the ropes, and follows up with a thunderous jab. He has used this very combination, both techniques off the left side, to send Peter Aerts to the canvas.

Different targets on the torso will produce different results. A trick popular with Kyokushin Karate fighters is kicking to the hip. Pushing the hips so that they rotate backwards will force an opponent onto their heels and simultaneously bring their head down. It makes the head easier to attack and, of course, once a fighter is on his heels, it is very difficult for him to move out of harm’s way. Push kicking to the upper chest will tip a person off balance, back over their feet and away from you. Buakaw is the master of the push kick. It is lightning fast and he uses it with varying intensities to manipulate his opponents the way a master pianist plays the piano. He uses the full length of the leg and seems to be able to tilt his torso slightly backwards, recruiting all of the leg and hip for maximum extension and power. He digs in with the ball and while primarily controlling the distance, his opponent’s body always caves slightly from the intensity of the strike.

While on the subject of the greatness of Buakaw, one of his great signature techniques is certainly the push kick to the face. Here it is a real front kick in that it figures as a strike which does real damage. It’s the same kick with the same freaky extension, but he keeps his upper body in much the same position, so as to prevent a different posture from telegraphing a different angle. One of the great and frightening moments (most probably for our own John Wayne Parr) in the National Geographic documentary, Kickfighters, is when Buakaw KOs his padholder with just such a front kick. Tyrone Spong possesses a similar kick, which is not quite as awesome. 

One of the most exciting things about standup, whether it be K1, kickboxing or Full Thai, is that different rulesets allow for different possibilities.  These are limited only by the imagination of fighters and trainers. Watch your favourite fighters and by playing around in sparring and training, find out what possibilities are provided by your physique and the physique of your opponent. All really great fighters have their own ways of doing things. They develop these methods and techniques through experience and being aware of what they can do differently. After all, the strike that knocks you out is the one you don’t see, or don’t recognise because you haven’t seen it before. Develop your own techniques and your own ways of using them to develop these advantages.

This is the 11th hour knockout from when Peter Graham fought Badr Hari at the K1 WGP in New Zealand, 2006. I had originally provided a link to the entire fight, but the file has since expired, or disappeared, or whatever. Regardless, I was sitting ringside for this – one of the best fights I have ever seen.

International Kickboxer Magazine, Vol.18, No.2

“Each of us has his cowardice. Each of us is afraid to lose, afraid to die. But hanging back is the way to remain a coward for life. The Way to find courage is to seek it on the field of conflict.”
~Mas Oyama~

Peter Graham was big as a teenager, but not the biggest. He was also tall, but not the tallest. In fact, other than some experience playing Rugby League as a kid growing up on the North Shore of Sydney, he’d done very little in the way of athletics by the age of eighteen. There was no history of outstanding sporting performance to let anyone, much less the young Peter Graham, know exactly what was in store when he finally walked into the Kyokushin Karate dojo near his home.     

“There was this Kyokushin Karate school near where I lived,” he explains. “I used to walk past it all the time. One day, I decided to go in and give it a shot. I wanted to make something of my life; I wanted to do something with myself.” Kyokushin spoke to Peter on many levels. It gave him more than an outlet; it provided a direct focus for his energies. He quickly distinguished himself as an upcoming prospect when he won his first tournament; the under yellow belt division of the New South Wales Full Contact Karate championships. This was the first of a number of wins which built not only Peter’s confidence, but his reputation.

Kyokushin, at that time, was almost unique amongst martial arts; it was an international amateur organisation that was presided over by its founder; the Korean-born Masutatsu Oyama. Peter believes that ‘Mas’ Oyama, possibly the most famous martial artist since Bruce Lee, was the prototypical MMA fighter. “Oyama travelled the world, fighting all kinds of people, boxers, whoever, to find out who was the best and to truly test out the style he had developed.” This willingness to risk his reputation and the style he had invented defined Mas Oyama as a “man’s man”; the kind of figure Peter sought to emulate. Oyama died in 1994 and the style that was his legacy was soon riven by politics. These issues would come to effect and define the careers of many martial artists, Peter among them.

As Peter’s success continued, opportunity followed. He won the Australian Open-Weight Full Contact Karate championship in 1999 and shortly after, became the South Pacific champion. He then moved to Ikebukuro in Tokyo, Japan, to undertake the ultimate challenge for any karateka, the Uchi Deshi program. ‘Uchi deshi’, literally ‘inside student’, live in the dojo and are subjected to as much karate as they can take, and then some. “We trained three times a day,” remembers Peter. “The first session was at about 6, then we would eat and rest, and then have a second session at about midday. After that, we had another meal and another rest and at night, we’d train again, with everyone in the normal class. About the only thing we did, other than train, was sleep. We were just too exhausted to do anything else.”

At around this time, Peter met Nicholas Pettas. Pettas, a Greek-Danish karateka and hugely successful martial artist in his own right, would prove to be a great influence on Peter. However, Peter only completed three months of his time at Kyokushin’s Honbu headquarters before having to return to Australia because of the death of his brother, Matthew.

Peter had earned his black belt in the space of five years, which is quick in a style which is as eager to impede its students as much as push them forward. A Kyokushin black belt is not to be taken lightly, and is therefore earned with great difficulty. By this time, Peter was well-known in the upper echelons of Kyokushin, and had developed relationships with many of its stars. They were all looking in the same direction; towards the newly-minted K1 organisation.

The ‘K’ in K1 stands for ‘Kakutogi’, a Japanese word which, loosely defined, refers to any fighting style which is ‘stand-up’. The goal of its founder, Mr Ishii, was to create a competition with standardised rules under which all stand-up martial arts – Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Kickboxing, Muay Thai – could compete for the purpose of finding out which was the strongest. The idea captured the imaginations of fight fans around the world; it was an extension of Oyama’s quest of years previous. “Some of the top Kyokushin guys, like Filho, Pettas and Feitosa were looking at K1 and they were talking about going. So it was definitely at the forefront of my mind.”

Peter made the shift into kickboxing at the age of 21. By his own admission, to begin with, he “kicked and punched,” rather than kicked and boxed. It seemed to be enough, however; he won the WKBF world amateur kickboxing title with a record of 17-0. He turned pro after that with spectacular success. His winning streak remained uninterrupted for another 3 fights, until the inevitable happened. “My first loss was to Stan the Man Longinidis, on points,” he says.

Undeterred, Peter fully shifted focus from Karate and into Kickboxing, pouring all his energies into becoming the best kickboxer he could be. He kept winning and soon found himself keeping company with the best fighters in the world. His second career loss was to Mark Hunt in the final of the 2001 K1 preliminary tournament in Melbourne. The year finished well for him, however, as his reputation was reaching the right people; he was invited to take part in the K1 WGP in Osaka. He had a first round win again the South African Jan Nortje, while losing in the semis to fellow Australian, Adam Watt. While he lost those contests, names like Mark Hunt and Adam Watt adequately illustrate the kind of company Peter’s success had propelled him into.

He continued to make an impression on the international stage while racking up the wins on the domestic front. In 2002, however, he met Jason Suttie for the first time. “Jason’s never an easy fight,” says Peter. “Every time, he looks like he’s come there to kill you.” Suttie brought that fight to a draw and, next time they met, took the decision for a win. So began one of the greatest rivalries in Australian Kickboxing. They would fight another 3 times over the coming years, with two wins apiece and a draw between them.

Peter came off his end-of-year loss to Jason in 2002 with another seven fights throughout 2003. This was his most visibly successful year; he defeated Sam Greco at Final Elimination and earned his place in the K1 Final 8. It was there he met little-known Dutch fighter, Remy Bonjasky. “I saw him for the first time at the draw; he chose me. My plan was to jump on him early and try to scare him. Make him sloppy.”

The tournament was a huge affair at the Tokyo Dome; the venue so large that the competitors had to be ferried to the ring in modified golf buggies. As is often the case in K1, it’s a long and difficult road to the top, where your stay can be brief. Bonjasky introduced Peter to his flying knee, and simultaneously the world was introduced to one of the most spectacular heavyweight fighters ever. Peter’s campaign was finished by TKO a few seconds short of the end of the first round and Bonjasky went on to win the first of his three K1 championships. “[Bonjasky] is an incredibly skilled athlete. I just wasn’t prepared for his jumping knees and finesse.”

Peter’s consequent appearances in K1 were few and far between. The reasons for this are shrouded in mystery and Peter makes no attempt to explain it. “K1 are a very professional organisation” he says. Fight-fans the world over wonder as to its credibility, however, on a number of fronts; the host of gift decisions made to journeyman Japanese heavyweight Musashi, for example, and the mysterious decision win awarded to Remy Bonjasky after the summary flogging Jerome Le Banner handed him at the 2006 K1 WGP in Amsterdam.

Whatever the reason, Peter didn’t maintain circulation with the other fighters who had made the Final 16. The majority of Peter’s subsequent fights were back in Australia, where he remained dominant. Peter significantly fought and defeated Alexei Ignashov in 2005. “Ignashov said it was his hardest fight ever.” Peter suffered only two losses, one to old rival Jason Suttie and another to Doug Viney, another fighter to go on to big things in the global K1 arena. One of his most famous fights, and arguably one of the most exciting K1 fights ever, was a narrow win over rising Dutch Wunderkind, Badr Hari.

Hari had brutally KOed the German K1 regular Stefan Leko with a jaw-breaking spinning kick and was becoming as famous for his obnoxious antics as he was for his extraordinary style. In 2006, New Zealand secured a major coup; K1 consented to hold one leg of its WGP in Auckland and the strong Oceania contingent was balanced against some of the biggest names in the sport. Hari was a late inclusion in the draw and Graham was pitted against him. Things almost got off to an early start at the weigh-in when Hari told Graham he was too old and kissed him. Peter took him down, exercising some of his new MMA training and everyone on-hand got involved in prising the two apart. “I’ve never had so many people ask me to kill an opponent before a fight. Normally, people just encourage you to knock them out!”

Come fight day, the aggression from the weigh-in had taken root and both fighters bought it to the ring. Peter hammered Hari, who miraculously stood up to the pounding and dished out plenty of his own. It was a close three-rounder that, in its dying seconds, looked like it might go the Dutchman’s way. Until, Peter pulled out his jumping spinning kick dubbed the ‘rolling thunder’. It caught Hari on the jaw and sent him off to sleep for so long his seconds had to carry him from the ring.

2006 was a busy year, culminating in one of Peter’s most significant achievements; bringing Semmy Schilt to a five round decision at ‘Dynamite!!’, the K1 New Year’s Eve show. “I took it on two days’ notice,” says Peter. “If there’s one thing I’d like to do in kickboxing, it’s rematch Schilt with a decent amount of time to prepare.”

For a while, it looked like Hari might become Graham’s ticket back into the big time. After a lengthy recovery, Hari returned to the ring and a revenge match was scheduled for the Hong Kong K1 in 2007. Both men fought a cagey fight and the contest failed to generate as much of the risky excitement of its predecessor. Hari took the decision win.

Peter shifted his focus into other quarters from this time. Japanese MMA organisation Sengoku decided to capitalise on Peter’s celebrity and the curiosity factor of seeing how well a lauded striker could perform under a set of almost ‘anything goes’ rules. “They asked me how much for me to fight, I thought of a ridiculous number and said, ‘How about this?’ and they agreed!”

In his first MMA contest, Peter found himself opposite Kazuyuki Fujita. Fujita is a MMA fighter with a background in wrestling who had met most of the significant heavyweights passing through the competition; Fedor, Mirko Crocop and Mark Kerr among them. Peter made a strong start but seemed at sea under the unfamiliar rules; Fujita won by submission part-way into the first round.

Peter’s performance in MMA hasn’t been as strong as his stand-up pedigree might suggest. He suffered another defeat at the hands of Frenchman Moise Rimbon and then again to Rolles Gracie late last year. “MMA is hard,” Peter says, shaking his head. He has been diligent in his training, however, having moved to Marta Grosa dos Sol in Brazil to earn his blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

In recent times, Peter met and married his wife, Sylvia. They now have a baby girl, Nicole. “Getting married is awesome, man. It improved my whole quality of life. If I’d known, I would have done it ten years ago!” Peter continues to teach and train out of the BoxingWorks Gym in Darlinghust, Sydney. He has also begun to distinguish himself as a trainer, with rising star Steve Moxon among his charges. He continues to study MMA diligently. It has become the next mountain to climb.

In a sport seemingly dominated by violence and distinctly ‘American’ displays of bravado and bad sportsmanship, fighters like Lyoto Machida, George Saint Pierre and Peter Graham bring a traditional martial style. These are fighters who define themselves both through their ability and their willingness to test themselves. Like Mas Oyama, they demonstrate and further the proud tradition of Budo, the warrior’s way.

Photo courtesy of Terry Vorg

https://lifestyletrainers.com.au/blog/2010/12/in-the-spotlight-jarrod-boyle.html

This is a link to an interview for the Lifestyle Trainers website. I got the opportunity to dilate on my philosophy about life and fighting.

Lucy Tui and I commentating for 'Eruption' in 2010

International Kickboxer Magazine Vol.18, No.6

For Lucy Sassen Tui, fighting was in her blood; her father had been the New Zealand heavyweight amateur boxing champion in 1954. She was one of nine children, closest in age to her brother, so she found herself joining in with the boys at playtime. “I was very sporty,” she remembers. “I did a lot of athletics while I was at school, and I held the record for the 100-yard dash as a teenager.” This was an excellent base for her martial arts training, which began like so many other kickboxers – in Kyokushin karate.

“I trained for three years in the seventies. After that, I went on to Kung Fu for another two years. I visited Australia for the first time in 1979, and returned to live in Sydney the following year in 1980. I started kickboxing that same year.”

Even for a woman as talented and dedicated as Lucy, there was little opportunity for her to show it. “Kickboxing – any contact fighting sport – was banned in New South Wales for women right up until 2009. I had a few tournament fights, but other than that, there was nothing happening. I had trained for eight years and not even been able to have a fight! Then, a friend of mine, Penny Gulliver, came back from a trip around Europe. She said that if I wanted to fight, I should go to the Netherlands.”

It turns out that Chakuriki, home of the legendary Peter Aerts, was the first gym she walked into. “While I was in Vienna, Austria, I met a guy who told me that Chakuriki was the place to go. When I arrived, I was overwhelmed by how many classes they ran – classes for children as young as six, and classes for women with at least twenty people in a class! After I had been there for a week, Thom Harinck asked if my friend and I would like to stay at his gym and train. I lived in the gym and slept on the changing room floor.

“Thom invited me back to compete in the first all Women World Muaythai tournament, held on June 9, 1990. I fought an Englishwoman and won. It was amazing – Thom in my corner and everything! I was the first person – male or female – to represent Australia in Europe in the sport of Muay Thai.”

When asked about the nature of training under Thom Harinck, Lucy says that “There was lots of repetition – he was really strict; it was intense and very technical. I learnt so much in four months about how to knee and grapple. The sparring was the hardest because it was as if you were in a real fight. We wore headgear and thick shin guards so we didn’t get injured. I remember it was the first time I ever saw anyone lifting weights with a collar around their neck. I used to run through Amsterdam every morning at six am. I wish I had been younger when I did it!”

When I asked what made Lucy shift from fighting to judging, she’s quick to correct me. “I started judging because I wasn’t allowed to fight myself. I started off as the secretary and the treasurer for the New South Wales kickboxing federation, and from there, went on to judge over 3000 fights. Over the last thirty years, I have been both a national and international judge for all sanctioning bodies; A1, WKA, ISKA, WMTA, WMC, WKBF and also K1.” 

“In 1994, I was invited to attend a meeting for the WMTA at Chakuriki gym, Amsterdam, by Thom Harinck. There were 40 countries in attendance. I was the representative for Muay Thai in Australia, and the only women at the meeting. I felt like a fish out of water, because Muay Thai wasn’t allowed in New South Wales at the time. It wasn’t popular in Australia; most gyms were still training kickboxing!”

When asked which comes first, fighting or judging, Lucy’s answer is surprising. “If you become a judge first, you have a better eye for it. After all, the judge is telling the fighters how to do it. One thing I would like to do is start running seminars for judges, referees and officials, to make sure they stay on top of their game. We need to rebuild the standard of judging in New South Wales.”

Lucy has also been responsible for managing some of the Oceania region’s best fighters, including its most successful heavyweights. When I asked who was the most talented fighter she has known, she answered Alex Tui.

“I knew Alex his whole career. He was a smart guy, too – he worked as a geologist, but he threw it all over to become a fighter and then a trainer. In fact, I think one of the highlights of my career was seeing Alex fight Kash Gill at Homebush stadium, Sydney, 1991. Kash was an Englishman; Alex had fought him previously in the UK and lost. So, we organised a rematch and brought Gill out here. It was one of the best fights I’ve seen. Alex knocked him out in the 9^th round – it was like a David and Goliath, with Kash Gill a full foot taller!

“Alex and I were a genuine partnership. I was the manager, Alex was the trainer and Tarik [Solak] was the promoter. Between the three of us, we made things happen.” Speaking of her most famous charge, she remembers;

“I first met Mark Hunt when he was training with Alex at the Redfern gym. I saw him fight and I was really impressed. He was a genuine natural. He wasn’t very disciplined, and he used to drink and smoke and what-have-you, but when it came time to fight, he always had what it took. I saw him fight another couple of times, and every time, he won. So I kept watching. He was a good boxer, and a good rugby league player, too. To start with, he used to come to shows with me and help set up. He’d put out the chairs, tables, that sort of thing, and I used to give him a bit of money for helping.

“There was no doubt in my mind that he had outstanding ability but lacked discipline, so I decided it was necessary to have a talk to him. At the time, he was living in a boarding house in Sydney. I picked him up one morning, sat him down and gave him a talking-to. Instead of borrowing money for rent, I offered to organise fights for him and then take it out of his pay. I had a room in my house as well, and I offered that to him, also. But I couldn’t do everything – I had to delegate. I told him he had to go back and train with Alex. So back he went and Alex started training him from then on.

“He was going well, and then he won the K1 Oceania. I told him that I felt if he worked hard and dedicated himself, he might very well go all the way. He hardly believed me. But then, he went to Japan and fought Jerome Le Banner. It was quite overwhelming for him. Things really changed after he won the World GP in 2001. After that, he started to see some real money.”

Lucy counts seeing Mark Hunt win the 2001 K1 GP from ringside as one of the highlights of her long, illustrious career. “The Japanese were difficult to deal with,” says Lucy. “They didn’t like dealing with a woman, so Tarik pretty much took over.” Lucy had established her reputation as an ace manager, however, and became involved with many other fighters. She was also, for a time, managing Peter Graham and Nelson Taione.

Lucy remains active as a judge in kickboxing, although she isn’t managing any fighters at present. “I’ve had a fantastic career,” she remembers. “I think if I had to nominate the top five things, they’d be;

1. Mark winning the 2001 K1GP,
2. Alex Tui fighting for a world title against Kash Gill at Homebush stadium, Sydney, in 1991, 
3. Judging Stan the Man versus Maurice Smith at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney. That was my first time judging a WKA world title.
4. Travelling to Turkey for Tarik Solak’s A1 tournament in 2006 as both a judge and team manager.
5. Training at Chakuriki with Thom Harinck and participating in the first all-women’s Muay Thai tournament.
6. Jason Suttie winning the heavyweight and John Halford winning the middleweight division on KB4, which was my first Foxtel promotion. 

The hardest fight of Lucy’s life was just around the corner, however, when she discovered she had breast cancer. “I was diagnosed in February this year” she says. “I had a thrombosis in my leg, and the doctors wanted to put me through some scans. That’s how they found the lump, and it turned out to be cancerous.” Cancer is a distressing discovery for any person, but Lucy dealt with it in her characteristic no-nonsense manner. “I had surgery to have it removed. I’m on tablets now to keep the cancer under control, and I’ll have a CAT scan at the end of the year. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

“I believe that kickboxing, martial arts generally, is all about respect. In my career, I need to pay respect to the people who got me to where I am. Those people are Alex Tui, Dana Goodson, Thom Harinck, Stan Longinidis, Tarik Solak, Jason Suttie, Glen and Jackie Bargary, Paul Demicoli, Mark Hunt, Ernesto Hoost, Michael McDonald, Mick Spinks, Chan Cheuk Fai, Rick Kulu, John Halford, and Joe Nader. I also want to thank all the people who wished me well during my breast cancer scare – that was my biggest fight ever.”

Mark Castagnini is one of the key players in Australian Thai boxing. Beginning his career as a fighter, he went through traditional martial arts before taking up Thai boxing almost by accident and discovering that it bought him to the ultimate test of his training. From there, he has been involved with developing and disseminating the sport at every level, editing International Kickboxer Magazine, working as a commentator alongside Michael Schiavello on Foxsports, promoting events and running his own martial arts academy, Hammer’s Gym. Mark spends a little time telling us about his passion for the sport, what its Australian roots are and the directions the branches are moving in.

What got you involved in Thai Boxing?

Breaking my knuckle in a Kyokushin karate competition! At that time, I was training under Eddie Emin. I fought regularly, in anything going around. I loved [Kyokushin] as a martial art; it was my lifestyle. I found it as young man, and it let me vent my frustrations with the world at the time.

I had a lot of challenges growing up; low self-esteem, I contemplated suicide as teenager. My real father died when I was five, and my mother remarried a former soldier who was very tough. I had issues to work through; my confidence very low. I enjoyed the physical pain. It made me feel alive, in contrast with my emotional pain.

I worked in antique restoration as an upholsterer in the family business, twelve hours a day, six days a week. There was a second-hand bookshop next door to where I lived. I went in one day and came across Mas Oyama’s book, Vital Karate.

I trained at home, following what I read in the book. I was told that if I ever left home, I’d be without a job. One day I decided I’d had enough, so I moved out, left the business and was out of work, all at same time! I read another book called The Plus Factor, which changed my mindset. It was all about not letting negative thought from other people determine what you can and can’t do.

I got a job laboring, and started hitting the gym with blokes I knew. One day, I saw what turned out to be a Kyokushin karate class going on next door. I didn’t know it at the time but they had a Japanese Uchi Deshi in there; I saw him demonstrate a side-kick, and balance his extended foot on top of the door-frame.

I spoke to the instructor after class. He asked where I lived and told me to go see Eddie Emin, in Elwood. One day in class, he jumped on my stomach. I remember seeing him jump up into the air, and there was this crazy guy positioned above me. He landed on my stomach with both feet. I was fine, and he went on to the next person. It showed me what I could take was far beyond what I would have thought. I was never so confident, before or since. It was good for me as martial artist, but also good for life.

I ended up fighting in the Victorian Kyokushin championships in Bendigo. It was a great day. I fought in the final, and that’s when I broke my knuckle. I had started working security around that time, and I saw a flyer for a BJC (Bob Jones Corporation) Muay Thai tournament, which was open to all. You could wear gloves, which meant I could cover my broken knuckle. I came runner-up in the heavyweight division. I could kick – I’d learned that in Kyokushin – but I had no boxing.

Bob Jones approached me after, asked what I’d done, and invited me to go train with Steve Nedelkos and Paul Danaludi. Sean Steinford ended up being my first instructor. That was in a school hall in Church St, Doncaster. I went back to the start of their grading system. Around that time, I started working for Blitz Magazine. I was living the dream!

My first fight was under the stage of South Melbourne town hall. I fought one of Johnny Scida’s fighters. He broke my nose, but I won.

Interestingly, my last fight was in Thailand and that night, I had Nick Kara, John Scida and Daniel Dawson in my corner. I had trained at Sityodtong in Pattaya. My opponent was very strong in the grapple. Johnny told me to stay away! I did, and I won.

You held an Australian title. Who did you fight? How did it go down?

That was a WKA cruiserweight title. I had stopped training for a year when the opportunity presented itself. I’d met my first wife, and we were moving house. I was asked if I wanted to fight, but I couldn’t afford to take the night off work. The promoter offered the money to cover it, and I was rapt. I fought Romolo ‘The Wild Samoan’ Pio. I stopped him in the 3^rd round with knees. It was under full Thai rules.

I had a good career; I fought on the undercards of both ‘Tosca’ Petrides’ and Ian Jacobs’ world title fights.

How did you get involved in the promotional side of things?

Through the magazine. I promoted with Silvio [Morelli, CEO of Blitz Publications]. The opportunity was there, so we took it. I met him while doing security for Stan ‘the Man’ Longinides.

What do you think about the state of kickboxing in Australia and internationally? Why do you think it has been eclipsed by MMA?

Kickboxing is to MMA what boxing is to kickboxing. There’s a rivalry. They are two different forms of combat, with a mutual respect between them. In Australia, both shows will pull about the same numbers. Realistically, UFC is MMA. No one else is doing it. I think that UFC today is what wrestling was ten years ago; people are following the brand, not the martial art. Lots of people who are following it have only ever seen a punch in the head on t.v. – they don’t understand that fighting is the ultimate test of your training. I think it will hit critical mass and then slightly decline until it finds its niche.

How do you feel about the oft-reported links between kickboxing and organized crime in Australia, in light of the fact the Mayor of Amsterdam has banned kickboxing in Amsterdam and all the major promotions have been moved to Belgium?

There’s always going to be people from organized crime [involved in fightsports]. For a criminal, the agenda is to try and make themselves as fortified as possible. They want weapons, soldiers, defences. They want fighters. You find a lot of guys from hard backgrounds in fighting gyms. There’s also a stigma; is it fair to judge 200,000 people on 6?

Tell us about your gym. When did you start it? What do you do there?

Blitz Thai kickboxing started in 1995 in my garage. My first students were Michael Schiavello and my ex-wife. From there, I was invited to start teaching at Blitz. I started up Hammer’s Gym, in 2008. Some of the trainers used to mock me, because I had everyone doing line work. I found from my own experience that the repetition paid off when I was working on the door.

When I set it up as a teaching style, I wrote a syllabus so everyone knew what was expected at every grading. I maintained the hierarchy and levels [of traditional martial arts, as well as] adding some of the Kyokushin technique into curriculum.

Why do you think Queensland has overtaken Victoria as the premier Muay Thai/kickboxing state?

1. They have been at it longer,
2. Queensland produced those very early, very influential fighters like Paul Briggs, Nugget, JWP and Mark Pease,
3. Thai is more marketable. It’s what people want to see.

How did you get started as a commentator? What do you enjoy about it? What is it like working with Schiavello?

I started on a Paul Demicoli and John Scida promotion. They made the offer when the show was filmed. Later, Dave Hedgecock introduced me at FoxSports, and they gave Michael and I a test. We did it and shared a microphone, and away we went. Fox decided to invest in the sport and grow it. Now, I enjoy it more than almost anything else.

What is it like running ‘International Kickboxer’ magazine? How did you get involved with it?

We used to have a section called ‘Ring Talk’ in Blitz, which covered all the kickboxing going on at the time. It became so popular, we eventually decided it was time to start its own magazine.

It’s been great. It’s given me the opportunity to be creative and give accolades and recognition when normally they’d get none. Our sport rarely makes the papers. It’s also good because of the in-depth information you can get. Who are the fighters, where did they start, how do they train, what are their challenges? These days, there’s more competition from the ‘net.

Will you do another ‘Evolution’ show down here? Tell us about your current series of promotions.

Never say never. Really, who cares what it’s called, as long as it has the key players. When you’re doing a promotion, you want to make sure the fights are first-class and the production is up there with what people want and expect.

Elite Boxing in Thailand, their website is streaming Glory Live. The new thing is to be able to watch fights live, on-line from anywhere in the world.

Blitz Magazine, December 2012

The day I talked to Peter, he was managing multiple tasks and unsure I’d be able to get any sense out of him.

“I’ve just come from ten rounds of sparring!”

At 106 kilograms, he’s slimmed down considerably from his near-120 kilograms of days previous. When asked why, he gives a simple answer – Paul Slowinski.

“Being beaten by Paul Slowinski, anyway. He did what he had to do [to improve after our last contest]; he did all the things he could do, and he was the better man on the day.” Accordingly, Peter has chosen to take a leaf out of Slowinski’s book. “I never paid too much attention to my diet; now I’m careful about what I eat. I’m the fittest I’ve ever been.”

In the twelve months since the most anticipated Australian heavyweight clash since Greco and Longinidis, Peter has been a very busy man. Some might say that at thirty-six, a fighter is moving toward the end of his or her career. This may well be the case, but you’d best not say it to Peter. Peter has a professional boxing word-title fight coming up, still competes as a kickboxer, is extending his reach as a mixed martial artist and has even undertaken a new style of karate. “Once you stop learning and developing as a martial artist, you stop moving forward,” he says.

Peter began is career in the martial arts when he first entered a Kyokushin karate school near his home on the north shore of Sydney. He had played a bit of Rugby league at school, but was yet to really test himself as an athlete.

“I used to walk past it [the karate school] all the time,” he says. “One day, I decided to go in and give it a shot. I wanted to make something of my life; I wanted to do something with myself.” It worked; Peter won his first tournament, the under-yellow belt division of the New South Wales Full Contact Karate championships.

At that time, Kyokushin was an international amateur organisation that was presided over by its founder; the Korean-born Masutatsu Oyama. Peter says that ‘Mas’ Oyama, possibly the most famous martial artist since Bruce Lee, was the prototypical MMA fighter.

“Oyama travelled the world, fighting all kinds of people; boxers, whoever, to find out who was the best and to truly test out the style he had developed.” This willingness to risk his reputation and the style he had invented defined Mas Oyama as a “man’s man”; the kind of figure Peter sought to emulate. Oyama died in 1994 and Kyokushin was soon divided by politics. These issues would come to affect and define the careers of many martial artists, Peter among them.

As Peter’s success continued, opportunity followed. He won the Australian Open-Weight Full Contact Karate championship in 1999 and shortly after, became the South Pacific champion. He then moved to Ikebukuro in Tokyo, Japan, to undertake the ultimate challenge for any karateka, the Uchi Deshi program. ‘Uchi deshi’, literally ‘inside student’, live in the dojo and are subjected to as much karate as they can take, and then some.

“We trained three times a day,” remembers Peter. “The first session was at about 6, then we would eat and rest, and then have a second session at about midday. After that, we had another meal and another rest and at night, we’d train again, with everyone in the normal class. About the only thing we did, other than train, was sleep. We were just too exhausted to do anything else.” Unfortunately, Peter only completed three months of his time at Kyokushin’s Honbu headquarters before having to return to Australia due of the death of his brother, Matthew.Regardless, Peter earned his black belt in the space of five years. A Kyokushin black belt is not a common thing, and is earned with great difficulty. By this time, Peter was well-known in the upper echelons of Kyokushin, and had developed relationships with many of its stars, including Nicholas Pettas, who he had trained with at the Honbu dojo. Around this tine, a new challenge appeared on the horizon.

The ‘K’ in K1 stands for ‘Kakutogi’, a Japanese word which, loosely defined, refers to any fighting style which is ‘stand-up’. Its founder, Mr Ishii, intended to create a competition with standardised rules under which all stand-up martial artists – Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Kickboxing, Muay Thai – could compete to discover which style was the strongest. The idea captured the imaginations of fight fans around the world; it was an extension of Oyama’s quest of years previous. “Some of the top Kyokushin guys, like Filho, Pettas and Feitosa were looking at K1 and they were talking about going. So it was definitely at the forefront of my mind.”

Peter began competing as a kickboxer at twenty-one. To begin with, he says, he “kicked and punched,” rather than kicked and boxed. It seemed to be enough, however; he won the WKBF world amateur kickboxing title with a record of 17-0. He turned pro after that with spectacular success. His winning record remained untainted for another three fights, until the inevitable happened.

“My first loss was to Stan ‘the Man’ Longinidis, on points,” he says.

Undeterred, Peter poured all his energies into becoming the best kickboxer he could be and soon found himself keeping company with the best fighters in the world. His second career loss was to Mark Hunt in the final of the 2001 K1 preliminary tournament in Melbourne. The year finished well for him, however; he was invited to take part in the K1 WGP in Osaka. He had a first round win again the South African Jan Nortje, while losing in the semi-finals to fellow Australian, Adam Watt. While he lost those contests, names like Mark Hunt and Adam Watt adequately illustrate the kind of company Peter’s success had propelled him into.

He continued to make an impression on the international stage while racking up the wins at home. In 2002, however, he met Jason Suttie for the first time.

“Jason’s never an easy fight,” says Peter. “Every time, he looks like he’s come there to kill you.” That fight was awarded a draw and, next time they met, Jason took the win. So began one of the greatest rivalries in Australian Kickboxing. They would fight another three times over the coming years, with two wins each and a draw between them.

Peter came off his end-of-year loss to Jason in 2002 with another seven fights throughout 2003. This was his most visibly successful year; he defeated Sam Greco at Final Elimination and earned his place in the K1 Final 8. It was there he met little-known Dutch fighter, Remy Bonjasky. “I saw him for the first time at the draw; he chose me. My plan was to jump on him early and try to scare him. Make him sloppy.”

The Tokyo Dome was so large that the competitors had to be ferried to the ring in golf buggies. As is often the case in K1, it’s a long and difficult road to the top, where your stay can be brief. Bonjasky introduced Peter to his flying knee, and simultaneously the world was introduced to one of the most spectacular heavyweight fighters ever. Bonjasky went on to win the first of his three K1 championships. “[Bonjasky] is an incredibly skilled athlete. I just wasn’t prepared for his jumping knees and finesse.”

Peter’s consequent appearances in K1 were few. The reasons for this are shrouded in mystery and Peter makes no attempt to explain it. “K1 is a very professional organization,” he says. Whatever the reason, Peter didn’t maintain circulation with the other fighters who had made the Final 16. The majority of his subsequent fights were back in Australia. One of his most significant wins was over Alexei Ignashov in 2005.

“Ignashov said it was his hardest fight ever.” Peter suffered only two losses, one to old rival Jason Suttie and another to Doug Viney, another fighter to go on to big things in the global K1 arena. One of his most famous fights, and arguably one of the most exciting K1 fights ever, was a narrow win over Dutch bad-boy, Badr Hari.

In 2005, Hari had brutally KOed Stefan Leko with a jaw-breaking spinning kick and was becoming as famous for his obnoxious antics as he was for his skills. In 2006, K1 held one leg of its WGP in Auckland and Oceania fighters faced off against some of the biggest names in the sport. Hari was a late inclusion; Graham was pitted against him. Things almost got off to an early start at the weigh-in when Hari told Graham he was too old – and kissed him. Peter took him down, exercising some of his new MMA training and everyone present got involved in prising the two apart. “I’ve never had so many people ask me to kill an opponent before a fight. Normally, people just encourage you to knock them out!”

Come fight day, resentment from the weigh-in had taken root and both fighters bought it to the ring. Peter hammered Hari, who miraculously stood up to the pounding and dished out plenty of his own. It was a close contest that, in its dying seconds, looked like it might go the Dutchman’s way. Until Peter caught Hari on the jaw with his spinning hook kick, ‘Rolling Thunder’ and sent him off to sleep for so long his seconds had to carry him from the ring.

2006 finished when Peter fought the best in the sport, Semmy Schilt, over five rounds at ‘Dynamite!!’ the K1 New Year’s Eve show. Peter bought the contest to a decision. “I took it on two days’ notice,” he says. “If there’s one thing I’d like to do in kickboxing, it’s rematch Schilt with a decent amount of time to prepare.”

After a lengthy recovery, Hari returned to the ring and a revenge match was scheduled for the Hong Kong K1 in 2007. Both men fought a cagey fight and the contest failed to generate as much of the risky excitement of its predecessor. Hari took the decision win.

Peter shifted his focus into other quarters from this time. Japanese MMA organisation Sengoku decided to capitalise on Peter’s celebrity and the curiosity of seeing how well a striker could perform under a set of almost ‘anything goes’ rules.

“They asked me how much for me to fight, I thought of a ridiculous number and said, ‘How about this?’ and they agreed!”

In his first MMA contest, Peter found himself opposite Kazuyuki Fujita. Fujita is a MMA fighter with a background in wrestling who had fought most of the significant heavyweights in the competition; Fedor, Mirko Crocop and Mark Kerr among them. Peter made a strong start but seemed at sea under the unfamiliar rules; Fujita won by submission in the first round. He suffered another defeat at the hands of Frenchman Moise Rimbon and then again to Rolles Gracie late in 2009.

“MMA is hard,” Peter says, shaking his head. He has been diligent in his training, however, having moved to Marta Grosa dos Sol in Brazil to earn his blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

In recent times, Peter met and married his wife, Sylvia. They now have a baby girl, Nicole. “Getting married is awesome, man. It improved my whole quality of life. If I’d known, I would have done it ten years ago!”

Part of the evolution has been to open a new gym. “It’s called Peter Graham’s IMC – which stands for International Martial Arts Centre. It’s clean, it’s new, and the instructors are champions.” The gym is located in Prospect, which is in the Western suburbs of Sydney. “My family and I live upstairs, with the gym downstairs. I work at Boxing Works in the morning and then IMC at night. My wife, Sylvia, does the desk.

“We’ve got a fantastic Muay Thai coach, Apidech Moekunthod. He’s had about two hundred and fifty fights, with thirty of those being pro boxing. He’s originally from the ISS gym in Pattaya; he was Nick Kara and Daniel Dawson’s coach. Most importantly, he understands the difference between boxing, kickboxing and K1. We’re also working on a BJJ coach; he’s a former training partner of Wanderlei Silva. Currently at IMC we offer kickboxing, Muay Thai, Kempo Karate and combat grappling. BJJ and Boxing are coming.”

Interestingly, Peter has gone full circle and started doing Karate again. “I bought a Kempo Karate school, so I figured I’d better learn it if I’m going to teach it. It’s similar [to Kyokushin], but has a different curriculum and kata.”

Peter has become the image of the international martial artist, having fought and trained around the globe. “I’m working to set up my gym for the moment, so I won’t be going anywhere for a while. I’m always trying to improve my base knowledge when I got to Brazil, with my wife. Sylvia is Brazilian, which helps! Sometimes I’ll go train in Russia, or go train with my friends in the US, at Team Quest. Wherever I’m going, I always try to learn new stuff. I guess you could say I’m a martial arts enthusiast. An aficionado.”

‘International’ is a good way to describe Graham as a fighter. He has a kickboxing fight booked in Japan the weekend after this interview, and will follow it with a pro boxing heavyweight title fight against Hunter Sam at the Croatian Club, in Sydney. “Hunter Sam is a big hitter. He comes from a family of boxers. His father was a champion boxer. He’s not to be taken lightly.”

After that, Peter will be fighting In Russia for the Draka world heavyweight title. “M1 was the name of the MMA competition on one side of Russia; the other side is Draka.” Peter remains philosophical about his opponents. “I’ll fight anyone in front of me. It’s never a personal thing; it’s all about getting me where I want to go.”

Peter’s plans are simply summarized; “I want to be the best combat athlete the country has seen; maybe the first person to hold a world title in all three disciplines; boxing, kickboxing and MMA. Basically, I just want to fight and win and then provide the best things through the gym. Stretch it out as long as I can.”

Fights fans hope so, too.

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.

International Kickboxer Magazine, May/June 2013

Ramon Dekkers was the most significant Western fighter to wear the Mongkon. In fact, he and Rob Kaman can be credited with re-inventing Muay Thai in Thailand, its country of origin. He racked up a string of wins against the best Thais in the business and carved out an indisputable reputation in the process. The decision was unanimous; Dekkers was the first non-Thai to be recognized by the Thai press as ‘Fighter of the Year’ in 1992.

That achievement was topped earlier this year when the Thai Royal Family recognized him with an award for services to the sport, as well as appointing him the ambassador for all foreign fighters in Thailand. Again, on February 27 this year the world took notice. 43-year old Ramon died as a result of heart failure while riding his bike.

He is credited with 221 fights throughout the duration of a stellar career, winning 186 of them. In fairness, it must be remembered that his retirement was an on-again, off-again affair, and many of his losses occurred during that period. Toward the end of his career Ramon was so injured he couldn’t train, his left ankle having been surgically fused because of repeated breakages. He would hit the pads a couple of times to get his eye in and then fight.

Ramon had a date with destiny the day he walked into Cor Hemmer’s ‘Meang Ho’ gym in Breda, Holland. Dekkers was thirteen and had some experience with Martial Arts, having trained in judo and boxing. The instructor, Cor Hemmers, was teaching Muay Thai.

Hemmers himself had been a successful martial artist. He had trained and fought in both boxing and Kyokushin karate, eventually progressing to Muay Thai. In Thai Boxing, he had found an opportunity to bring both of those skills together. Hemmers had had 29 fights for 25 wins and, as a result of his experience, had developed a somewhat unique method of training and fighting. Ramon was perfectly suited to it.

Dekkers on left, Hemmers on right

According to Hemmers, boxing was the cornerstone of an effective Muay Thai or kickboxing style. The hands set the optimal distance to work at; from that distance, all other weapons will work effectively – that and the fact it becomes easier to land powerful kicks once your opponent is busy coping with your punches. This approach was the direct opposite of the traditional Thai style. Thai orthodoxy was built around kicking because the kick is a long-range, high-scoring weapon that allows you to inflict maximum damage from a safer distance.

Ramon made his debut at sixteen years of age, winning in trademark knockout style against a much older, more experienced boxer. He continued to build his reputation on the back of a spotless record. He won his first title at age 18; the MTBN Dutch Championship on 15 November 1987.

From there, made his way onto the world stage, meeting – and defeating – the best the sport had to offer. In Amsterdam, he defeated Namphon, the reigning Lumpinee champion, by points decision. From there, he found himself rematching Namphon at Lumpini stadium in Thailand. He couldn’t repeat the feat, however, and lost on points.

As many will know, the scoring system for Muay Thai is difficult for a Western audience to understand. The highest-scoring technique is dumping the other fighter on the canvas. Kicks and knees also score highly, while punches, unless they visibly injure the opponent, won’t score at all. Ramon struggled with the rules, but made up for it with his trademark combination of technique, power and aggression.

Thai fighters of that era had rudimentary hand skills at best. They were far more inclined to punch rather than box and generally didn’t waste much time at punching range. They were more interested in using punches to transition from long distance (kicking) to short (grappling, knees and elbows). This was all very well; Ramon proved the idea that if a man was powerful and skilled enough, he could knock you out in that dangerous middle ground. It is, after all, hard to argue with the judges’ decision when you’re lying on your back.

Watching highlight reels of Ramon makes the reasons for his dominance immediately apparent. His hyper-aggressive style and extraordinary power meant that his best opponents, such as Saengtiennoi ‘The Deadly Kisser’, were forced to match his awesome power and technique against their own durability. “He was a machine,” Ramon said of Noi. “He just kept on coming.”

Ramon met Coban ‘The Cruncher’ Lookchaomaesaitong on April 21, 1991. Ramon was knocked out by way of left hook, but was soon to avenge the loss when the two fought again. Between 1991 and 1993 Ramon fought Coban a total of four times, producing four fights which aficionados rate as the very best engagements in the history of the sport.

On the eighteenth of March 2001, Ramon fought Marino Deflorin in Amsterdam. It was an even contest until Ramon caught Deflorin and knocked him out with a left hook. Afterwards, he announced his retirement. As with most fighters it didn’t stick, however, and Ramon returned to the ring in 2005.

He took an MMA fight on a few days’ notice and lost by heel hook. From there, he participated in a number of K1 fights, notably tearing his right shoulder and being unable to punch before he fought Duane Ludwig. That aside, he still managed to floor Ludwig every round and walk out with a decision win, carrying his trophy with the only hand he could use.

Ramon busied himself after retirement by putting his formidable knowledge and experience to work as a trainer for both Team Dekkers and Golden Glory. He made his mark on fighters from around the world.

Paul Briggs, world Muay Thai champion and eventual world light-heavyweight contender was coached by his father, who went to great trouble to mail-order videotapes of both Dekkers and Kaman. Watching those tapes became both the basis of Briggs’ style and his approach to training. “Ramon had incredible technique and was strong, both mentally and physically. He didn’t flinch; he just absorbed all the punishment. Dekkers bought his own version of Muay Thai, rather than trying to be Thai himself. In doing that, he changed the sport.”

Ramon once fought in Australia, at Festival Hall in 1995. On the undercard was an up-and-coming champion, Anthony Vella. “He was the greatest ever,” says Anthony. “He took the sport to the next level, and inspired a lot of people. As far as Westerners fighting Thais, the Dutch did it first. They led the way. [Ramon] forced the Thais to change their game plan. Before that, they pretty much just kicked.”

Anthony counts meeting Ramon as one of the highlights of his career. “He came and congratulated me after my win. It was really inspiring.”

Ramon also had great impact on other trainers. Marcel Dragan first met Ramon at the Golden Glory gym in Breda in 2008 when he bought with him his talented heavyweight prospect, the shy but intimidating Raul Catinas.

“The morning training was over and Cor Hemmers introduced us to [Gokhan] Saki, [Alistair] Overeem, [Nicky] Holzken and [Errol] Zimmerman, who were drinking a cold juice at the bar. We talked for a while; Cor told us about the training schedule and then he left.

“I stepped into the gym with the feeling that I was in a temple where the Gods of War were worshipped. There was only one man, wearing a cotton anorak with hood, collecting the pads and shields left on the floor by the fighters. ‘Where can Ramon be?’ I asked myself, impatient to meet the European who defeated the best Muay Thai fighters in their own territory. While I was thinking about this, I collided with the shoulder of the man who was gathering the gear and whom I considered to be just an employee. The man apologized and turned around: it was Ramon Dekkers.”

Dekkers was the ideal coach. Not only did have knowledge and experience, his character meant that he was capable of being both tough when necessary and tender, also. One of his amateur fighters, Frank Van Der Korput, remembers him thus:

“My most fond memory of Ramon is when he tried to glue up my cut eyebrow. From quiet tough guy he instantly went into sort of a father-mode when he saw my bloodied face and guided me to a chair.

“I remember walking into his gym in the Pelmolenstreet for the first time, impressed by all the tough guys hanging around; the smell of stale sweat and Thai oil, and by how short Ramon actually was. He was always a bit quiet; he almost seemed too shy to talk about anything else than technique or training methods.

“Just being in his presence was a huge motivation to train harder though, to take more punishment and to dish out even more. I became a reasonably skilled amateur fighter and developed a passion for the sport. I got the confidence and felt I had the right to walk into dirty backstreet gyms all over the world.”

Frank attended Ramon’s funeral in his hometown of Breda, on March 7.

“I took the afternoon off work to attend. So did about 2000 other people. Quite a crowd at the funeral place; people from all walks of life came to pay their respect, people in shell suits next to people wearing Saville Row’s finest. A lot of prominent figures; Peter Aerts, Marloes Coenen, and other fighters. There was an airplane dragging a banner with a diamond on it circling the city that read ‘The Diamond 4Ever, Rest in Peace.’

“The ceremony itself was a sober event. The undertaker talked about Ramon’s life, achievements and death. In between some relatives spoke, also. When Ramon’s youngest daughter, Quinty, stood up and read out a last message for her father, the distinct sound of hearths breaking was clearly audible. Ramon’s brothers, Nicky and Carlo, also gave a brief talk about what their brother meant to them.

“Cor Hemmers, looking older and fragile, told the story about how he met Ramon’s mother, what it was like training young Ramon, what they achieved over the years, first in Thailand, later in the Netherlands and all over the world. Despite his fragile appearance, Cor made a strong impression. He was stoic in restraining his emotion.”

I had the honour of being trained by Ramon in 2008. I had great trouble concentrating and often frustrated him because I was suffering from a bad case of being star-struck. I had similar problems with Stefan Leko and Chalid ‘Die Faust’ Arrab, but with Dekkers, it was different. He was the sport; both his mode of training and because of the way his performances in the ring had changed it. It was as if he had re-created Muay Thai around him and the world had taken notice.

The first, most striking feature was his power. When I trained with him, he had been enjoying the good life and had probably weighed about eighty kilos. He punched and kicked as hard as some of the Golden Glory heavyweights and every time he hit me, I couldn’t even cover or check properly, let alone remember the combination. All I could think was, “Wow! I’ve just been hit by Ramon Dekkers!”

One night, we had to essentially cross Holland to attend a ‘Kickbox Gala’ to see Gokhan Saki and Errol Zimmerman fight. Ramon drove; I sat in the passenger seat and his step-brother, Nicky Hemmers, sat in the back. The Volkswagen GTI has a reputation for being a fast car; that night, Ramon proved it.

We overtook most of the traffic as if it was parked as Ramon wove his little white lightning bolt in and out of traffic. I sat very still and watched the speedometer. Nicky probably took note of how stiff and still I was, and, laughing, he explained that Dutch speeding tickets were a lot cheaper than Australian ones, and this was the way Ramon normally drove.

It seemed to me that you saw the essence of Ramon the man both when he was fighting, and when he driving. He was in control, and it wasn’t in his nature to worry. When we got to the fights, I got out of the car and had to prevent myself from kissing the bitumen.

“See? Safe and sound,” he said. “No problem.” That was Ramon. Faster and faster and faster.

Thanks to Mark Van Hogeloon, long-time Dekkers Sportschool member, for fact-checking and advice.

International Kickboxer Magazine, May/June 2013

Semmy Schilt is one of the most dominant champions in the history of fightsports. Standing at two-meters-twelve-centimeters and weighing somewhere in the vicinity of one-hundred-and-thirty kilos, he towers over not only his opponents, but also, the history of the sport itself. JARROD BOYLE goes to the mountain and comes back with the news.

How many fights have you had now, Semmy?

Fifty kickboxing fights and forty MMA.

How did you become involved in the martial arts? I believe both of your parents are involved in martial arts?

I did Kyokushin Karate when I was younger. Both my parents were doing it, but just for recreation, not competition. I started when I was eight.

Were you bigger than the other kids at that age?

Not so much. I was probably a little bit bigger. When I went through puberty, I became a lot bigger. Then, later, I grew again. But at eight, I was not particularly big for my age.

Are both your parents tall people?

No.

What did they think about your fighting?

They always supported me, but mum doesn’t like it too much! Dad watches. He’s always at big tournaments. Since I went onto K1, I’ve involved my father a lot.

It is said that height and reach is a great advantage, but it is not easy to learn how to use them. Did you struggle to learn to properly use your size?

With karate, it was okay. But when I started boxing at eighteen, it was difficult to use my distance. They always come close, when they fight. You just do it and concentrate on keeping distance.

You seem to have the hang of that with your push kicks.

I started a little bit late with push kicks. When I was free-fighting, I did not use much push kicks. I started to use them in Pancrase, and then in kickboxing I used them more.

How did Karate provide a grounding for you as a fighter?

Basically, it’s the mental discipline. It 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.

Did it develop your sense of sportsmanship?

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.

Do you still wear the gi and run through the forest barefoot, like in the K1 pre-fight footage?

The Japanese love that! When I train kickboxing, I wear shorts. It’s not important to wear the gi. My style is karate; it’s in my heart.

How did you become involved in MMA?

Actually, I did a karate tournament. The style of karate – Gai Do Yuko – fights on the ground, also. You wear helmets and fight on the ground. That’s how I got ground techniques. When I was twenty-one, I did some judo. I won the Japanese tournament and became champion in that style. I was the first non-Japanese to win in eighteen years. From there, Yamata was in the audience. At that time, he was fighting for Pancrase. He said he couldn’t fight me because I wasn’t MMA. From that moment, I went into MMA.

Why did you return to ‘pure’ kickboxing?

Before K1, I never kickboxed. I didn’t like it too much, either. I preferred groundwork. At that time, K1 had problems with Pride. They did an exchange, so I could fight in either. Then, they had a conflict, and I couldn’t do either. My management said they thought it was better to do kickboxing, back in 2002. I only had a few MMA fights.

You had a successful career in MMA, but weren’t as dominant as you were in kickboxing. Why do you think that is?

My body is made for kickboxing and karate. I have an athletic build. A wrestler needs to be more compact. There was a time when I wished I was about 198 centimeters and 130 kilograms! All my kickboxing strategy is built on my size.

Have you done much boxing?

No. Never competed. I did not have the opportunity to do so. In karate, then kickboxing; boxing was not a logical step. I did some training when I was 19, but never to fight.

When did you begin training with Golden Glory?

I think I started at Golden Glory in 2000. I started with Dave [Jonkers] when I was 19. They contacted me, because they were establishing a team. They said, ‘You’re going to earn five times as much money as you do now.’ I wasn’t sure I liked that.

Why not?

I don’t like people who talk about money; I try to keep distance from those guys. Rolexes and gold chains. Then, they persuade me, you know? I was ‘King of Pancrase’ and found I was stuck. My management transferred me to the UFC.

You have had a long and successful relationship with Dave Jonkers. What is it that makes him such a good trainer?

I believe he is excellent at analyzing my opponents. When I have to go for a fight, I know my opponent. The game plan is always in place. He’s never got it wrong. In the last three years, it’s become more routine. ‘You know what to do,’ he says. Before that, Dave analyzed and predicted everything.

How do you structure your training? Do you train twice a day? How do you achieve such an exceptional level of fitness?

I used to train twice. I train only in the morning now. Before the K1 GP I would train twice a day. The last four or five weeks I’ve been training twice a day. In the morning I eat and go to gym for kickbox training. Bags, pads, drills with partners for one hour. After that, I do weight training. I stick to what’s traditional and basic. Sometimes I also take the cardio after that. Then, in the afternoon, only cardio.

What was your experience of K1 management? What were they like to deal with as a corporation?

Very difficult for me, I think. They could have built me much more than they did. They held onto Aerts, Hoost, Bonjansky; old champions. When I first came, it was Pride vs. K1. [They] never took me into the family. Also, they never contacted me after FEG went broke. They could have said something, I think.

What was it like fighting Errol Zimmerman, as your team-mate? You must have known him from a very young man.  

I never made a lot of contact with the Golden Glory team. I knew they were heavyweights and I’d have to fight them, so I didn’t want to get to close to them. It makes it harder to fight them if you like them.

I notice that Alexei Ignashov was your first loss. What was the fight like? What is your opinion of him as a fighter?

That fight was also in Holland. I didn’t want to fight that time. He was known for his knees. I had to fight in the ‘It’s Showtime’ organization, which was the same [problem] as before. I didn’t connect so well with Showtime. A lot of bad influences. I was really pissed off about that; that I lost.

I have pity for him; he is such a great fighter, but he has bad people around him. I think he’s in the wrong environment. He was a great talent; he could have been a really great fighter. His manager let him fight two times a month! The day after he fought me, he had to go fight in Pride

You have had an enormously successful career. Are there any other goals for you to still attain?

Yeah, of course! I want to be as successful an actor or a businessman. There are many ways to be successful. I want to be a good father for my son; a good husband to my wife.

Schilt goes period

Who has been your toughest opponent to date?

Myself. I’m the opponent. Before the fight, getting nervous, I’m the worst opponent. Once the fight arrives, it’s okay. But before that, I am hard on myself.

What are your plans for after kickboxing?

I hope I can do some movie things. Like Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Of course, the gym, also. I want the gym to be successful.

How did Ramon’s death affect you?

Me personally, it affected me a bit. I got to know him after his career. During it, I didn’t know him. In 2000, when I got into Golden Glory, I got to know him. I wanted to take an example from him and the things that he did. He always did seminars; talked about how he did what he did. I think me and Ramon connected. He was a bit like an invisible man; he is there, but he stays in the background.

The funeral was massive. It really touched me. At that moment, you feel vulnerable. You imagine, ‘It could have been me’.

Have the UFC come knocking?

It’s a very big organization. I have not had an offer as yet. People are talking, though. Dana White has not contacted my management. I think he thinks I’m a little bit too heavy for the UFC!

International Kickboxer Magazine, Nov/Dec 2014

Peter Aerts, like all ‘great’ athletes, is most often defined in terms of the length of his career and the titles he’s won. True definition, however, is a matter of establishing something in comparison with its contemporaries which, for a fighter, is in terms of their opponents.

The K-1 was the first successful tournament of its kind, part of the necessary evolution of combat sports away from styles like karate and taekwondo which are as much cultural artifacts as they are modes of combat. Few include ‘realistic’ combat as part of the syllabus, with Kyokushin karate being the most modern of them, primarily because all technique and training is channeled toward the ultimate test; full-contact fighting.

Even Kyokushin, however, is resolutely amateur and as a result, does not provide the true acid-test for stand-up fightsports. As with all things in a commercial era, the dollars of a curious public, that ultimately led to the phenomenon of the UFC, began with Kancho Ishii’s K-1.

Sam Greco, like Aerts, was one of the early stars of K-1. Sam fought Masaki Sataake as his first opponent, winning that fight by decisive knockout.

“Then the fun and games began with Mr Ishii,” says Sam. “He said he wanted me to fight Peter Aerts for my next fight. ‘Who’s he?’ I asked. I looked him up and discovered who he was. It was around that time that the t-shirts were coming out.”

Aerts made himself known to Sam in the clearest terms. Their first clash ended with Aerts taking the win by decision and their subsequent contest was decided by knockout.

Ernesto Hoost is hailed as the greatest champion of classic K-1, but for my money, that’s only because Aerts’ career had a shorter peak. Between the years 1991 to 1996, Aerts was the Michael Jordan of kickboxing. So dominant was Peter through these years that the K-1 advertising slogan became, ‘Who can Destroy Peter Aerts?’

He was not distinguished by great natural advantages, as many of the dominant fighters of the later era, nor was he an elegant technician the likes of Remy Bonjasky. He carved out his reputation with a seemingly supernatural acumen and a high kick that suddenly appeared to opponents like a bad dream.

Peter destroyed three of the world’s most dangerous opponents – Sataaki, Bernardo and Hug – in the course of a total six minutes and forty-three seconds of actual fighting in the 1998 K-1 GP.

Aerts and Hoost have fought on five occasions, with Hoost also claiming the extra win. That win was decided under highly unusual circumstances.

At the K-1 World GP in Amsterdam in 2006, Bob Sapp was to fight Ernesto Hoost, but ran out of the Amsterdam Arena. Aerts was present as a television commentator but agreed to stand in for Sapp at the last moment, despite not having trained.

He stepped into the ring in shorts borrowed from Semmy Schilt and managed to hammer his way through all three rounds, eventually losing by decision. While immensely entertaining, it was hardly a fitting closure to a long-standing rivalry between two of the greatest champions of the sport.

That rivalry is soon to be resurrected in Japan on the WKO ‘Kumite Energy’ show. With five fights between them, and three wins going the way of Hoost, we’re going to get to witness one of the greatest heavyweight kickboxing rivalries of all time, reinvigorated just one more time.

**

How many fights have you had now?

I don’t know; I’ve had so many.

What titles do you hold? What have you held?

I was World Champion in Kickboxing and Thai Boxing and I was K-1 Champion 3 times.

How did you become involved in the martial arts?

I wanted to be a Boxer when I was young but my mother didn’t want that. So I went to taekwondo when I was 12 and later I went to Kickboxing but my mother didn’t know what that was.

When did you start kickboxing? Was it a transition?

I went to Kickboxing when I was 14. I went from taekwondo to kickboxing.

Did you play any other sports at school?

I did a lot of sports when I was young, especially I played a lot of soccer.

What did your parents think about you fighting?

My father loves it and my mother want me to quit for many years already.

How did you end up at Chakuriki with Thom Harinck?

I wanted to become bigger in Kickboxing that’s why I went to Chakuriki.

How was it training with a former rival, Andre Manaart, at Meijiro?

Training with Andre Manaart was good, he’s a great trainer.

Who christened you ‘The Lumberjack’?

I was fighting in Aruba and won by K.O. and my opponent’s trainer called me Lumberjack and my fathers profession was a Lumberjack so that’s why I chose the name

Did you do much training with Bas Rutten? What was he like? He seems like a pretty crazy guy.

I trained with Bas Rutten when I was young but I was hanging around with him a long time. He’s a nice guy, a little crazy but we had a lot of fun.

Watersports with Bas and Peter… must be a Dutch thing.

How did K1 come to your attention? Where was your career at that time?

I was already fighting for Kancho Ishii before K-1 started

You were a big part of the golden age of K-1. Who were the memorable fights – and opponents?

I have a lot of memories about the old K-1, for me it was the greatest time of my life.

Did you know Mike Bernardo well?

Sure I remember Mike Bernardo; I fought him many times. He was a very dangerous boxer in the old time.

What are your memories of Andy Hug?

Andy Hug was a great person and a great fighter, it’s a shame it ended like this.

How do you recall your two fights against Sam Greco?

Sam Greco is a very strong guy. You always have to be sharp when you fight him because he always go all or nothing.

Is there anyone you wish you had fought?

Not anymore – I fought everybody.

Why do you think the Dutch have been so dominant in kickboxing?

Because we have many good gyms, and there’s a lot of competition in Holland with many galas.

How do you structure your training? Do you train twice a day? How do you achieve such an exceptional level of fitness?

I train 1 time a day because my recovery is not so good like the old times but I train shorter but very explosive.

How is your body? Do you have to cope with many injuries? Have you had much surgery?

In all these years I had so many fights, so my body got some damage left but with good doctors and training, I’m still in a good shape.

You once spoke out about fighters like Bob Sapp and their inclusion in the open weight tournament. What are your thoughts on it now?

It’s a shame those kind of fighters came in because they had nothing to do with kickboxing.

What made you stick it out after regulars like Greco, Bernardo, and the rest retired?

I love the game and nowadays, I don’t fight with the top anymore.

How did Ramon Dekkers’ death affect you?

It’s a big loss for the sport. He was a big champion and a friend of mine.

You have had an enormously successful career. Are there any other goals for you to still attain?

I want to stay busy with the sport; I got a lot of experience and knowledge.

Who has been your toughest opponent to date?

I had many hard fights and some fights i didn’t fight smart.

Cyril Abidi must have driven you nuts. What was it that made him such a strong opponent for you?

I fought with my heart and not with my brain.

What are your plans for after kickboxing?

Good things in the Kickboxing sport.

Blitz Magazine, January 2015

After a serious accident that nearly claimed his life, Sydney-based Kyokushin Karate sensei Daniel Trifu not only regained his full health, but returned to fight bare-knuckle, full-contact karate and win world-championship silver. Here, JARROD BOYLE tracks the karate journey of the archetypical Kyokushin warrior.

“[Daniel’s] mother called a gypsy woman, who was a friend of the family, who came and did incantations over Daniel’s body to get the evil spirits out,” says Lynne O’Brien, partner of Kyokushin karate master, Daniel Trifu.

“Did it help?” I asked. It seemed the obvious question.

“I think it did,” Lynne replied. “The alcohol she put on his chest helped to keep his temperature down. I think it also gave you hope. Just watching him lying there and doing absolutely nothing would have felt worse.”

This occurred in Romania, after Daniel suffered the most crucial knockdown of his first forty years. In his career, Daniel has amassed the greatest number of showings in international full-contact Kyokushin karate events.

His life in martial arts has turned a circle so broad that it encompasses Eastern Europe, Asia and his adopted homeland of Australia.

“I arrived in Australia exactly on my nineteenth birthday,” says Daniel. “That was in 1993. I arrived at Bondi Beach. Bang! It was beautiful. Blue sky like I’d never seen before. It was just an amazing, amazing place.”

Daniel had spent the first nineteen years of his life growing up in Bucharest, Romania, as the son of diplomatic parents. Life in a communist country, ruled by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was in stark contrast to life in Australia.

“It was tough,” he remembers. “Food was heavily rationed. You got one kilogram of meat a month; ten eggs a month. No one was starving; you could buy as much bread and potatoes as you liked, but meat and cooking oil were rationed.

“You got television for about two hours a day. And that was all propaganda. People didn’t smile on the street. They put their heads down. Everyone was oppressed. There was a craving for western movies.”

These movies gave Daniel his first taste of the martial arts and the promise they held for a teenaged boy was exciting.

“I remember watching Kickboxer with Jean Claude Van Damme – do you remember Tong Po? I remember the toughness of [those characters]. Around about that time, The Terminator came out. These guys were tough. It was all about coming forward, copping punishment.”

American films made a potent impression on a young man growing up on the mean streets of Communist Bucharest.

“The reason I started [training was that] Bucharest was quite violent. There were situations when I had to defend myself, and I didn’t know how to do it properly. I needed to learn. Other kids would take your money and bash you.

“Bucharest was a different place; you had to deal with [problems] yourself. I remember the school bully used to make me jump to see if there were coins in my pocket. One day, I refused. Guess what happened? After that, ‘No more taxes from you!’

Fighting was a constant necessity.

“There was another occasion when four of them attacked me. I eventually got them on their own. I waited for an opportunity to get them by themselves. We became friends after that.”

Daniel’s mode of conflict resolution has formed his opinions on bullying.

“People have to solve their own problems. Sometimes, you have to train yourself. Some kids have to move schools, [but] I prefer to deal with those problems the old-fashioned way.”

Kyokushin, while a relatively modern style of karate, has strong appeal for people seeking the old-fashioned way.

“I went to a Kyokushin dojo and saw them training and thought, ‘This is good – these guys are tough. These guys take punishment. Other [styles of martial arts are] trying to avoid pain.”

The basic shin on shin, knuckle on bone reality of full-contact karate spoke to him.

“It was a big part of it,” Daniel enthuses. “Their attitude was, ‘What are you scared of? Copping one or two kicks?’ It was also a little bit crazy. I chose a style that I thought was going to make me tough.

“A style where nothing was going to get to me. In defense, you’re always going to get hit. If you have a strong body, you can take punishment. Why would I be worried?”

Martial arts training was forbidden in Romania under Ceausescu’s rule, which added something to its appeal.

“You weren’t supposed to participate, “ he says. “The message of martial arts is ‘be yourself, be free.’ Ceausescu’s regime didn’t like that mentality.”

In addition to preventing people from arming themselves in any way, the government had forbidden any activity in which people could congregate freely.

“The government didn’t want people to congregate and talk. It was word-of-mouth to get there. Then, when you arrived at training, there were hundreds of people doing it. Amazing.”

Daniel experimented with a few styles before finding his way to Kyokushin.

“I started with Wushu kung fu and Shotokan karate. I thought it was a bit scrambled in Romania.”

“I started training in December, 1989. It was hard to find a school to take me. They’d ask you questions to find out about you. ‘Where are your parents working?’ When they found out my parents were working for the government, they were like, “Get out of here!”

Daniel doesn’t have any difficulty explaining the popularity of martial arts in Romania at that time.

“People loved training. It was a kind of rebellion. I’m surprised I didn’t get in any trouble.”

Once he arrived in Australia, Daniel continued training in Kyokushin.

“I started training in 1993 with John Taylor in Bondi junction. Then, in 1994, Toku Jun Ishi opened a dojo in Paramatta. Myself and a few others that were fighters moved to continue to train with him. We had to travel quite a bit to get there.

“I was living in Mackay, so it was a bus, two trains and a fifteen-minute walk. All up, it took an hour and a half each way. I could have stayed [training] with John Taylor, but I knew that if I travelled, I’d have the best chance.”

It sounds as if just getting to training would have required a great deal of motivation.

“Toku Jun Ishi was a really good instructor, probably the best I’ve seen. He is a genius, really. He was also very Western – a real people-person. People loved him, and his knowledge was amazing.”

Around that time, Daniel had begun to make a living as a bouncer.

“I worked as a bouncer in King’s Cross. It was a tough way to make a living. I was earning between ten and twelve dollars an hour, working four or five hour shifts.”

Daniel credits his work as a doorman as developing a host of qualities, not least of all his skills with the English language.

“Being a bouncer was good for me; originally, my English was sketchy. [Working doors] improved my English, but it also developed my negotiation skills, so that I didn’t need to fight anymore. One day, a bikie gang comes in, and before you know it, they’re walking away, because of my verbal jiu-jitsu.”

That experience of working doors – in addition to growing up in Bucharest – did a lot to inform his attitude to self-defence.

“[Kyokushin] has the elements [of self-defense] in it; it was originally punch to the face and everything. You kick to the nuts; you do what you have to do. People become confused with Kyokushin in terms of fighting and kumite. They are different. I don’t completely agree with the [tournament] rules; you can’t punch to the face.

“Security work is pretty rough and I do the exact opposite of what I do in a tournament – I go for the head. I’d use the techniques prohibited in competition. A lot of instructors miss the point.

“You start with the art generally, and then work within the tournament rules. The best way [to deal with conflict] is to walk away, of course. But that depends on the student.”

Developing a student’s willingness to engage is the most difficult part of teaching self-defense.

“I tell my students, it’s a slap in the face. That’s how the fight starts. You take it from there. He [the assailant] has one million options in how he’s going to start the fight. So many things can happen; will he grab a weapon, will it go to the ground?

“You have to be reactive, and the only way to do that is by having experience and a lot of exposure to the real situation. Most people are not ready for eye-gouging. To survive, I’ll bite if I have to.”

Don’t mess with the dude in the hat.

Developing students requires perceptive analysis from the outset of training.

“Everyone’s got an amazing talent at something,” says Daniel. “All of us. There’s a couple of things we’re the best at in the world, but never had the chance to discover.

“Everyone has their own skill. [As an instructor,] you have to find what those skills are. You have to find them and work around that. Make the talent the focus and build them around that.”

Oftentimes, that’s a matter of keeping things simple.

“Everybody wants to be flash. It’s great to have flashy kicks, but you have to have your bread and butter. A samurai uses what is good; he doesn’t try to find something else once he’s bored with it. He uses simple, effective skills.”

Daniel draws on his own example to paint the picture.

“I had an effective low kick. People thought it was boring, so I stopped using it. Then, I lost it. What you have, what you don’t have, you have to work hard on your assets. I have identical twins training at the dojo, and even they are different.

“You have to look for what every single person can do. What are they like mentally? Can you push them? Some people aren’t prepared to take the pressure. You can win tournaments with simple things, but they have to be really sharp and really good.

“We keep pressing fitness, but we don’t all fight the same. Recognizing individual ability for every single person is what makes good fighters.”

Fighting, then, is the clear basis of Daniel’s martial journey.

“I’ve competed in eleven international events; that’s the record. I started in my twenties. I’ve competed in every one since [Kenji] Midori won [the fifth Kyokushin Karate World Tournament] in 1991. In my last one, I came second.

“I’m talking world cups, too. They are every four years, so you get one every two. Sometimes, you lose a very close decision. You train so hard, go there, do one round and win, then in the second round you lose; it’s quite depressing. You just have to jump back on the horse and do the next one.”

It’s difficult for most people to understand what makes a person persevere under that kind of dispiriting circumstance.

“I knew I could do it,” says Daniel, “I enjoyed the journey. Every time it’s a new challenge. It’s difficult to be selected. You go, do everything you can and don’t do very well. Two years [between events] sounds like a long time, but time flies.

Next thing, it’s upon you. I’d been going and not getting any major result until the Kyokushin World Federation World Championship in Japan last year. I just kept thinking to myself, ‘I can do this, I can do this.

“I saw all these massive guys at weigh in, and thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here? I’m forty years old. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. I can’t just KO them. I have to play the game to win.

“And that’s different to looking good. Some people don’t care how they win. If the fight is ugly, they get the decision, and that’s what matters most.

“I was the smallest guy there, weighing in at ninety-five kilograms, at about six feet tall. There were a number of massive Bulgarians. One guy weighed in at one hundred and twenty-two kilograms. I basically walked through them.

I took the punishment, gave it back, and found they couldn’t take it. When I fought in the final, the decision was so close it was like flipping a coin. My opponent was the same size as me.”

Twenty years of tournament experience has given Daniel a strong sense of how to approach the competition.

“I don’t care how; I just want to win. You have to be a good tactician to win like that. I’ve got a basic style and I use that to get the win. The guys in the final and semi-final were very good.

“They put everyone away. I cut their weapons off, made them uncomfortable; made them look ugly and stupid and frustrated them.”

Daniel credits the experience of working as a doorman with developing a significant part of his strategy.

“With working doors, part of the skill is understanding people’s psychology. If you see their eyes, they’re actually scared. In the fight, that guy will crack. Some guys [however], you can’t tell. They have a very good poker face.”

After his outstanding showing in the World Tournament, Daniel decided to undertake one of the toughest tests of Kyokushin Karate; the Fifty-Man Kumite, in which a karateka has fifty fights in a row, each fight facing a fresh opponent.

“I did the Fifty-Man Kumite after the world tournament. From the sidelines, people were yelling out, ‘Move! Move!’ I just stood there and wore it. I was injured afterwards, don’t get me wrong. It was my pain threshold that took me through, not the toughness.”

Daniel’s physical condition after the fight also drew a few comments from those involved from the medical profession.

“The doctor from the Polish team said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that outside a car crash’. I was so bruised I couldn’t walk. Afterwards, I went to train at the famous Mount Mitsumine. I trained and moved like an eighty year old, but I got through it.”

The day after…

If Daniel’s example is anything to go by, kumite is less a matter of what his opponent can do to him, and more a matter of what he is willing to deem dangerous.

“I’ve never been dropped by anything below the waist,” he says. “The last time I was dropped by a head kick was in 1997. I had two broken ribs in the semi-final of my last tournament, but I got through it.

“Body shots? You go down and stay down and wait for the referee to save you? You’re a pussy! Get up!’ When you fight, you fight like a samurai. You fight to the death.”

Daniel reduces fighting to a kind of personal decision making under extreme duress.

“People have to brave; they have to want to fight and to dig deep. You can’t hold back. Once that happens, you’re not there to win anymore, you’re there to survive and go home safe.

“Most of the time, it’s just a case of ‘dig a little deeper; ten more seconds, three more punches and you’ll win the fight.”

Daniel has managed to escape serious hits to the head in karate competition since 1997, but a nasty encounter with a kerb in a Russian street found him fighting for his life.

“I was getting out of a taxi and I blacked out, fell down and hit my head,” he says. “The ambulance came and picked me up, but after taking my wallet and my watch, they threw me out into the street.

“My friends carried me to the hotel. The next day, I thought I had woken up with a hangover, but it was actually a brain hemorrhage.”

The head injury was so severe, Daniel recalls little of the incident – the impact scrubbed his memory for hours of both before and after. His partner, Lynne O’Brien, was with him at the time and recalls the events better.

“We’d been having drinks at the sayonara party. I thought it was a hangover. Three days later [we were back in Romania] – you’re not supposed to fly with a head injury like that – and the pressure was causing excruciating pain. His mother rang for an ambulance but in Bucharest, the ambulance doesn’t come for a headache.”

It was at this point that things became so dire his family were willing to try anything.

“That was when the Gypsy woman came and did incantations over his body to get the evil spirits out. Daniel couldn’t speak, he was in so much pain. All he could do was to utter numbers for pass-codes for anything he might need. He looked like he was drifting out of consciousness, so we called for the ambulance again.”

Daniel is also an equal-opportunity employer.

Things didn’t improve at the hospital.

“No one spoke English – not even the doctors. His mother had to bribe everyone to get an MRI. Eventually, the doctor came back to us and said he had to operate, by drilling a hole into his skull to release the pressure. I said, ‘Over my dead body! I’m getting the Australian embassy involved. Luckily, we had health insurance.”

After speaking to an Australian doctor, drugs were proscribed which made Daniel hallucinate. “He was seeing crazy things,” says Lynne. “It was like Mickey Mouse on LSD. Cartoon characters with a martial arts feel.”

“I was discharged after a week,” Daniel says. “I didn’t have any sense of taste or smell. I was a bit of a mess. It took about two years to get better. I fought in Japan about ten months after [the accident].”

I’m no expert in head injury, but surely full-contact karate can’t have been high on the list of the doctor’s priorities.

“Every time I’d spar, even from chest punches, I got profuse nose bleeds.”

Even so, Daniel was not to be deterred.

“I fought in the All-Japan Championships ten or eleven months after, and lost in the fourth round against the eventual winner. It was a very close fight to miss the decision.

“The Karate World Challenge was held in Sydney the next year and was televised in Japan. I fought there, too. It was a selection for the World Tournament. I was determined not to let the accident get in the way.”

“I knew there was no holding him back,” says Lynne, “Fighting is his life. If it was taken away… He enjoyed teaching, but the life of a martial artist, the only true way in Kyokushin is through fighting. I knew that – I knew it all along.”

These certainties didn’t provide much in the way of security, however.

“I was scared when he started sparring, ‘No head kicks!’ I used to say. I think he went back too early, but then, no one waits the required amount of time. He was unsteady on his feet for a while, but when you’ve been damaged like that, you’re hesitant for everything.

“He crept into it as slowly as he possibly could. That first World Tournament [back] – I was petrified.”

Lyn achieved her first Dan black belt last year and now they work together as partners in running their own Kyokushin Karate schools.

Now I’m running my own dojo,” says Daniel, “And I make my living teaching people. We’ve got three hundred and fifty members at nine locations and growing.”

“We’re both teaching and training six days a week,” says Lyn.

“I got involved in Kyokushin purely through Daniel,” she continues. “Originally, I was living in Queensland. I moved down here [to Sydney] and did lots of gym and long-distance running, until I had to slow down after I did some damage to my back.

“I decided that I didn’t see enough of him, so I got involved that way. Now, my biggest battle is with Dan so I can go and do a tournament.”

Daniel Trifu far right, Peter Graham center and some idiot on the left.

Fight! Magazine, July 2015

Peter Graham has had more than one hundred fights – full-contact karate, kickboxing, boxing and mixed martial arts – and never broken a bone.

“I went and had a bone scan at a clinic once,” he says. It’s eight p.m. on Sunday night and we’re doing the second top-to-bottom clean of the dojo for the week. He’s pushing a mop at one end, I’m down the other and our conversation carries across the middle. If you can know a man by his habits, then Peter Graham is both meticulous and disciplined.

“Anyway, they did the bone scan and when they gave me the results, they said, ‘here’s the distribution of everyone we’ve ever scanned, and you’re here. ‘So I’m at the top end of the curve?’ ‘No, you are the top of the curve’. Apparently, I had the hardest, strongest bones they’d scanned.”

It’s easy to believe; from all the way across the dojo, it’s clear to see that Peter has joints like a horse.

Peter Graham’s IMC, or International Martial Arts Center, is located in Prospect, in the outer suburbs of Sydney. I’ve flown up from Melbourne to stay with him for a week to watch him train. At the end of that week we will depart for Gdansk, Poland, where he will take on Karol Bedorf on KSW 31.

KSW is the Polish MMA promotion known for the largest, grandest shows in Europe. Peter quickly became a fan-favorite after demolishing tattooed behemoth Marcin Różalski on KSW 30.

Rozalski, six and a half feet tall with more tattoos than available skin, would frighten the blanket off your bed. Bedorf is a step up from Rozalski, however; Bedorf hasn’t lost a fight in three years.

“It’ll be the biggest show you’ve been to,” says Peter.

***

The next morning is an early start. Peter has a mix of training partners that come in to help out. Boxing trainer Barry Raff is holding focus mitts, I’m on the Thai pads and Daniel Trifu, Kyokushin karate ace has come down to move around, as well.

Both Peter and Daniel do three five-minute rounds with Barry and myself – in line with the duration of the KSW rounds – and then Daniel, Peter and myself pad up for sparring.

I don’t become frightened when sparring people of Peter’s caliber. To begin with, throwing anything at all is a win in itself. And my strategy for the morning consists of keeping my hands up in front of my chin. That’s about as sophisticated as it gets.

Daniel and I did a few rounds to begin with. He’s what you’d expect from a Kyokushin fighter of his pedigree; strong, hard, and straight. All three of us are ex-Kyokushin fighters that have moved into kickboxing, so we’re working off the same basis with varying degrees of sophistication.

While I didn’t enjoy boxing, it improved my kickboxing almost immeasurably, and the golden rule that I learned is, ‘keep your hands up’. I repeated that to myself like a mantra as Peter climbed through the ropes.

I find Peter difficult to spar because his pedigree is overwhelming. He has fought – and prevailed against – most of the K1 stalwarts. I sat ringside in New Zealand and watched him defeat Badr Hari, as well as his five-round fight against the most fearsome kickboxer ever, Semmy Schilt. Most people were lucky to survive three rounds; on New Year’s Eve 2006, after five rounds, Peter took Schilt all the way to decision.

Watching Pete while we spar is a remarkable thing. He’s one big dude, his weight sitting naturally around 115kilograms. Yet, for all that size, he’s remarkably agile. His footwork is precise and elegant, and always allows him to transition gracefully from one posture to the next.

He works his levels; I get hit on the thigh, then the head and then the stomach and straight after, up comes the high kick. I’m three inches taller than Pete, but his hips open and the kick is not a reach; the leg comes through, carrying the hip behind it and I lift my hands and lower my head to let it pass over and do my best to hit him back.

Part of the difficulty with sparring him is that his form is so developed and refined after close to twenty years of fighting at the highest level, you want to watch; there is no better position to see form of that quality.

You can’t afford to watch as a spectator when you’re an opponent, or you don’t see the things you should. As they say, ‘The one you don’t see is the one that knocks you out’. We get to the end of the round and I’m happy I’m shaking hands, rather than lying on the canvas, wondering how I came to be staring at the ceiling.

The author, Peter Graham (center) and Daniel Trifu (right).

***

Coming into summer, Warsaw is brisk, rather than cold. From the window in Peter’s suite at the Warsaw Marriott Hotel, the city is laid out beneath in all its motley, post-communist glory. Clearly visible from his window are the sea-green undulating sheets of glass that comprise the appropriately named ‘Modern Building’, alongside Stalin’s gift to the people of Poland; ‘The Palace of Culture and Science.’

It turns out that the ‘media training’ is to be held in Stalin’s building. The building bespeaks its history as a monument to a despot; soaring halls of marble are lit by chandeliers of oak leaves and wall sconces in a peculiar Baltic rendition of the art-deco style.

I wondered what Stalin would make of the legacy of communism in Poland had he been in attendance. The banners at the front of the room bore looming images of each of the current KSW champions: lightweight Maciej Jewtuszko, middleweight Michal Materla and heavyweight Karol Bedorf, Peter’s opponent. All three fighters are Polish.

Peter is a big man, but Bedorf is bigger again, carrying a lot of suspiciously bulbous muscle mass around his shoulder girdle. Peter shakes his hand and jokes with the younger fighter as well as he can over the high fence of the language barrier.

Peter’s reputation as a striker casts a long shadow of its own and Bedorf seems uncomfortable, standing as he does in the eddies of its reach.

The media training is soon to begin, so the fighters file backstage, behind the banners. Peter changes into his fighting trunks and puts his hands against the wall while he does some dynamic stretching. He is silent and focused, careful not to look at Bedorf, so their eye-contact doesn’t create a flashpoint.

Bedorf sits and resolutely stares straight ahead. His sparring partner, Jedrzej Mackowlak, is even more outsized. His head looks like a box. His nose is fixed on the front corner edge while his little ears, closer to the top of his head than his mother would have put them, make every other aspect of his six and a half foot, 117kg frame even more cartoonish in contrast.

The fighters are instructed that they have five minutes to show their quality to a media scrum that bristles with microphones and cameras. They come out with partners and trainers and move through a haphazard selection of padwork and partner drills. The displays are largely sketchy, and the fighters often miss their marks and misstep.

An experienced observer understands this isn’t because of a lack of quality; it’s due to a lack of warm up, followed by a combination of unfamiliarity and nerves.

When a fighter has someone opposite them trying to knock them out, it forces them to abandon their distractions and focus on their job – and the pain. With no such incentive, the fighters are clearly distracted by how they look.

Peter and his trainer, Larry Papadopoulos emerge for their five minutes and while Larry inspects the equipment, deciding what to do, Peter loosens up with some shadow. It’s just a warm up, but to a crowd, shadow is the best way to see a fighter’s quality.

Peter’s co-ordination, balance, footwork, technique and the ability to let it flow as a natural expression is as plain to see as the fluid, cursive shadow that rolls across the floor. The photographers sense their moment and start working. The rhythm of the shutters increases with the speed of Peter’s movement.

Peter trips on a join in the mats and says something to the press. Because the great marble hall gathers all sounds into a rolling echo, I can’t hear what Peter has said. But the press assembly laughs as a group, effectively catalyzing the tension into laughter.

Peter’s training session proceeds as a workout in structure, during which he demonstrates each aspect of his game. At the end he bows to the press and with a smile and a wave, he and Larry return backstage. Many of them applaud, and you can their hear appreciation for making their job easy, as much as for the display itself.

When Bedorf and Mackowlak emerge wearing sixteen-ounce gloves and shin guards, they perform a partner session of striking drills, along the lines of Dutch kickboxing. Bedorf is silent and determined and from the sounds, not to mention the expression on Mackowlak’s face, he is hitting hard. There is no talking or joking; their interaction remains closed.

***

While the pre-fight interviews and media duties are performed in Warsaw, the show itself is to be held in Gdansk, down the bottom the country. Both Peter’s crew and Rolles Gracie’s are ferried down to Gdansk via minibus, which is a six-hour drive.

Few of the fighters can effectively fit in the seats, given that the bulk of the crew is well over six feet tall.

Peter doesn’t talk about his nerves; in fact, as the fight gets closer, he becomes increasingly taciturn. Some afternoons we go on long walks. The crew has been joined by a number of Peter’s friends from Australia. They come rushing into his hotel room the afternoon of the fight, full of excitement and enthusiasm after the mates-on-holiday triathlon of drinking, carousing and very little sleep.

Pete is glad to see them and they him, but they don’t see what he’s doing, standing on the other side of the room, focused on the calm, methodical activity of folding his t-shirts. I take a photo; him on one side, them on the other, and the divide of blank space between. The noise of the iPhone shutter causes him to look up. He smiles.

***

Peter was right; I haven’t been to a show of this size; not a fight show, anyway. The lights, sound and wall of visuals projected onto the screens that line the walls of the Ergo Arena make it feel more like a Pink Floyd concert. Local rapper Mr Zoob opens the show and the seats fill quickly, the stadium soon filled with its capacity crowd of fifty-thousand spectators.

The monolithic Jedrzej Mackowlak is one of the undercard fights. His opponent is three or four inches shorter, and when the referee stands between them and gives his instructions, Mackowlak’s face darkens and his eyes draw down, like a shark’s.

He hands his opponent a summary beating in little less than a round, leaving a single smear of blood on the white canvas, like a signature.

MMA is an unpredictable sport – possibly the least predictable – and for this reason, you can’t relax as a spectator. Given that things can turn in a split-second you have to remain attentive, or the climax of the fight may elude you.

Further, the sport takes place on multiple battlefields, both vertical and horizontal, and you need to go from watching the live action to watching the screen to properly absorb the intricacies of the contest.

Pete, as the semi-main event, is near the top of the card. He emerges to the sound of ACDC’s ‘Thunderstruck’, his entrance music for over a decade. Pete descends the gantry to a moving platform; he tells me later that it was a struggle to see it in the dark and he very nearly fell.

Bedorf emerges shortly after to the more reflective, lyric strains of electro pop artist Bonobo. The referee gives his instructions as the two fighters stand close, eye to eye. The stare is the point of ignition, something both fighters have avoided all the days prior to now.

The bell goes and they circle. Pete catches Karol with a couple of inside thigh kicks; the timing is dead-on and Bedorf goes straight for the take-down, pinning Peter on his back and trying to use a forearm wedged under his jaw to iron his body out straight.

From where I sit, I can see Pete’s eyes on the overhead screen. He’s concentrating, working by feel to employ a counter. Again, the interface has returned to the impersonal.

The round finishes with Bedorf on top, but unable to land a telling blow or take effective control. The second round starts out in similar fashion to the first. Karol wants to test his striking, and he soon finds himself catching a number of Peter’s hooks with his face. Peter finishes with a knee strike, which Bedorf turns into an opportunity for a takedown.

Bedorf has a number of assets and great strength is clearly one of them; he patiently moves from side control and transitions to full mount. Once his hips are positioned on top of Peter’s chest, he opens up into ground and pound.

It doesn’t look good, but Peter manages to shut him down and the rest of the round is spent in similar fashion to the first with Bedorf looking to establish control while Peter works from his back to foil it.

The final round began standing. Peter landed a number of effective punch and kick combos and when Karol went in for the takedown, Peter timed his sprawl a little earlier and came down on top. Smelling victory, he held Bedorf in position and rained down hammerfists on his head.

Karol was not in a good position, holding up one hand in what looked like near-supplication. All of us sensed the referee’s intervention; the cheering of the crowd rose in intensity, as did the clatter of keyboards in the media seating. When Peter’s hand-speed began to diminish, Bedorf flipped Peter onto his back and spread out his immense bulk, smothering him.

Bedorf kept the fight on the canvas for the remainder of the round, maintaining position, but seemingly unable to exploit it to force a conclusion. After the final bell, a clear decision was made in Bedorf’s favor by all three judges.

***

Next I saw Peter, I was milling around the media address area when each of the fighters came out for post-fight interviews. Some of them, particularly Tomasz Drwal, looked as if he’d spent his three rounds as a crash-test dummy flying through windscreens.

“There you are,” said Peter, coming up behind me and slapping me on the shoulder. Aside from a bruise on one side of his face, he appeared unscathed.

“What did you think?” I asked, and he shrugged his shoulders.

Each fighter performed a short interview. My Polish is not particularly good, but the interviews with the younger fighters were simple Q&A. Peter knew his interviewer from his previous appearance, and they quickly settled into their established dynamic, with many of Peter’s answers coming as a kind of comedy.

After the cameras were turned off, the interviewer shook Peter’s hand, and laughing, said, “When I interview you, the interview always goes by itself.”

***

The day after, Peter returned to Australia. We shook hands in the driveway of the Novotel Marina hotel, before he got in a cab and drove away. I walked through the hotel grounds, out the back gate and down along the promenade that wound through the forest parallel to the seaside, considering my own profession; thinking of what it was I had to say.

Steven ‘Steamrolla’ Kennedy steps into the octagonal circle on November 14  for UFC 193, the inaugural event for the world’s biggest fightsports organization. His name is currently up in lights at Theme Park at its Darkest.

How old are you, Steven?

I’m 32.

What’s your record?

22 and 7.

What titles have you held?

I have been Australian champion for K-OZ at light-heavyweight, middleweight and welterweight, as well as SFA middleweight, AFC middleweight and Roshambo welterweight. I have also been Australian freestyle wrestling champion at 96kg, and Pan-Pacific BJJ champion at 85kg.

Did you play other sports growing up?

Plenty, but none that I was any good at!

How did you become involved in martial arts?

I was watching Van Damme movies [as a kid] and I remember one day, my dad came home with a karate suit! He got me and my brother doing it and was super-encouraging.

What styles have you trained in?

All of them, literally. I’ve tried everything…

Why did you settle on MMA? What’s the attraction?

MMA is the coolest version of what is [essentially] a nerdy past time.

What do your parents/family/partner think?

My wife trains harder than I do and nowadays, my family is definitely proud of me. My older brother has been one of the driving forces since the beginning and my little bro has fought heaps and trains with me still!

What’s the Aussie MMA scene like?

Good enough to breed good talent, but fighters need to stop trying to be a big fish in a small pond.

Who was your toughest opponent to date?

The scales! My training partners are much tougher than my opponents, but my hardest fight would be a toss-up between Perth heavyweight Dean Roberts, and New Zealand fighter Sam ‘Striker’ Brown.

Have you competed in other styles, like Muay Thai or straight Jiu Jitsu?

Yeah. I’ve entered lots of grappling comps, wrestling matches, pro and amateur Muay Thai and boxing. [I’ve also done some] weird stuff like Pancrase Elite Striking in South Africa, ‘Combat 8’, K1, judo and Kyokoshin karate.

How did you become involved with the UFC?

Beating people up! I had a good record and they needed a replacement fighter on short notice – I was the right guy at the right time. Suckerpunch Management played a huge part.

Do you have a certain number of fights to your contract, or is it on a fight-by-fight basis?

It’s a four-fight contract. I’m one fight down but it doesn’t mean anything unless I perform.

What do you expect of your opponent, Richard Walsh?

He’s a tough, dumb fighter.

Fighting in front of a full-house at Etihad stadium is a huge thing. What do you think it’s going to be like, fighting in front of so many people?

Louder than usual, but still the same old, same old [thing].

Are you a full-time pro fighter? Do you have to work? What do you do?

I was courier driving up until 6 weeks out for ‘Total Supplies and Stationery’ (plug plug). I run a gym called ‘Kickass MMA’, which is the greatest place in the world. I also do selective personal training and stereotypical bouncer work on the weekends.

Tell us about your ‘gofundme’ project.

I ran out of money during fight camp. [Unfortunately] I don’t have any million dollar endorsement deals just yet. One of the guys from the gym set it up and promotes it for me. It literally saved my life!

You can help Steven by making a donation to his gofundme project here.

Thanks to William Luu at WL Fight Photography for the use of his excellent images.

International Kickboxer Magazine, March/April 2016

Glory 26 was held on December the fourth of last year in Amsterdam, the unofficial capital of European kickboxing. The two biggest draw-cards of the event were respective world champions at both welterweight and superheavyweight; Nieky Holzken and Rico Verhoeven.

Both fighters carry the torch of Dutch ascendancy on the world stage for a new generation. Both Verhoeven and Holzken spoke to JARROD BOYLE about world champion status, Glory and all the things that make the Dutch great.

Rico Verhoeven holds five Glory world titles at the age of twenty-six. Standing at six-foot-five inches tall and weighing one-hundred-and-fourteen kilograms, he is as gifted a physical specimen as any successful super-heavyweight must.

He also embodies the proverb that you have to ‘train until your idols become your rivals’. In Rico’s case, the climb to heavyweight gold has come over one of the most auspicious champions in the sport.

“I decided [to be a professional fighter] when I was eight or nine,” says Rico. “I saw Peter Aerts become K1 world champ in ‘98 for the second time.”

Peter Aerts’ 1998 K1 win was one of the fastest paths to victory in the history of the organization: he defeated three separate opponents for a total fight time of six minutes and forty-three seconds.

“I thought, ‘This is amazing; I want this.’ That was the goal. As a kid you have a dream, but you have to see what happens.”

The dream became reality in 2013 when Rico met his former hero in center ring.

“It was a really big honour.” That said, Rico didn’t allow Aerts’ reputation to dazzle him. “When there’s an opponent in front of me, he is in the way of me providing for my family, so he needed to take one step to the side.”

The young Rico had plenty of support where it counted. His father, Jos, had been a Kyokushin karateka most of his life and introduced his son to karate at the tender age of six. Verhoeven senior had taken up boxing after suffering a knee injury and, when asked by friends if he would train them, opened his own gym.

“I was about six; from that moment he bought me to the gym. That’s when it started.”

Shortly after, Rico had his first fight.

“I had my first demo fight at seven. It might be a demo, but you’re a kid. You know, you can’t hold back.”

Rico was big for his age and had no option but to fight grown men at the age of sixteen.

“I had to fight adults,” he says: “there’s not a lot of sixteen year olds that weigh over one-hundred kilos.”

It was a blessing and a curse.

“There were two sides to it. On one hand, it was really cool to be knocking guys out that were twice my age. On the other side, [the promoter] said my opponent would be twenty-two or twenty-three. Then, he’s twenty-five.

“Then, he’s twenty-eight. ‘Wait a minute – this is a grown man!’ I’d think to myself. But you know, you focus, do what you need to do, and I KOed him in the second round.”

That fight was a turning point in Rico’s professional career.

“I did my second adult fight on the ‘It’s Showtime!’ promotion and they showed interest and signed me. They saw some talent, [and I thought] ‘Maybe my dream isn’t that crazy.”

After a series of outstanding performances, Rico found himself on the threshold of making his dream into a reality; a superfight in Hawaii for the prestigious K1 organization.

“I didn’t really have too much experience at that time, but it went really good. My first dream was to become a K1 fighter. That dream came true at eighteen in Hawaii. Gokhan Saki won the tournament itself.”

Rico had a brief showing in the K1, mainly because the Japanese run-and-owned promotion was running out of steam. When it finally hit the skids, a large number of highly skilled, professional stand-up fighters were left without a stage on which to play.

Into that void came Glory Promotions International, an organization that aimed to present kickboxing at its best. They began by securing a roster that included the best fighters in the world.

The young Verhoeven was signed and soon began to make his way up the rankings, growing into a heavyweight champion as Glory grew into the world’s pre-eminent kickboxing competition.

Rico won his first Heavyweight title at the tender age of twenty-four when he defeated both Gokhan Saki and Daniel Ghita in the Heavyweight World Championship Tournament in 2013. In addition to the distinction, there was a lot of bad blood to come out of it. Saki was most upset by the decision; the normally calm and collected fighter took to social media to make his displeasure known.

“For me, it was a clear fight, says Rico. “The eight-count wasn’t fair, but the ref calls it, and that’s what happened. Even without it, he would have lost.”

His opponent in the final, Daniel Ghita, was a former training partner. Verhoeven took the win, but the relationship between the two has since dissolved.

“I don’t like that guy, man. If you can say so many bad things about someone you trained with, you’re just a bad person. He talked a lot of shit. ‘Rico doesn’t knock people out; he’s the princess of kickboxing.”

Regardless, Verhoeven has followed up that win with three successful title defenses and retains the title – and status – today. In the range of his experience, he nominates his toughest opponent as the man who has cast the largest shadow over the heavyweight division, both literally and figuratively.

“I fought Semmy Schilt in 2012. He was a big guy! His strongest hand is his jab, and he punches down. Sometimes, you say, ‘I’ll take one punch and I’ll step in,’ but with this man, it isn’t possible.

“His fucking annoying push kick straight to my liver felt like he was kicking my liver out of my body. I learned a lot mentally from that [fight]. ‘If he doesn’t KO me, who will?’ I thought. I started my win streak after that.”

Rico has recently made a much-publicised shift into mixed martial arts, winning his first contest in Romania by way of knock out in the first round.

“I’m just trying it out [at the moment]: I’m on the experimental route. I’ll see where it takes me. I’ve had one pro fight, and it was fun. Let’s see what the second fight brings. Glory can only give me three fights a year, and I wanted to stay active, so that was the agreement we made.”

Rico found the transition from kickboxing to MMA one thing in the gym, and an entirely different matter once he was in the cage.

“In training it was ok, but in the ring, it’s a lot different. This guy started to attack me, and I’m thinking, ‘What do I want to do with this guy? Should I give him a chance of hitting me? What should I do?”

The first-round knockout indicated that Rico resolved the question easily enough.

“I’m training at Kops Gym, which is known as the best wrestling gym in Amsterdam,” he says, “I’m sparring with Gegard Mousasi. [I’m] trying to focus more on wrestling and grappling and staying out of submissions.”

Nieky Holzken, Glory welterweight world champion, is sticking to the more traditional route.

“I like to watch MMA and I follow it, but my heart remains with kickboxing. If they give me really good money, then I’ll think about it a little further.”

Nieky began kickboxing at the age of ten. He had wanted to start earlier, inspired by the usual sources: martial arts movies.

“I was watching Van Damme and Rocky and I knew it was what I wanted to do. In the Netherlands, though, you can’t start until ten [years of age], so it was off to play soccer.”

Once Nieky began training as a kickboxer, he didn’t look back. The Netherlands has a strong kickboxing culture, the strongest in the world outside of Thailand, and the competition is structured into ‘Newling’, ‘C’, ‘B’ and ‘A’ classes so fighters can get the appropriate level of experience to progress through the rankings.

By 2006, Nieky was ready for the K1 and already had amassed more than fifty professional fights by the age of twenty-two. His first event was the K1 World Max Northern European Qualification Tournament.

“It was. I won three fights with three KOs; that was my ticket to Japan.”

Unfortunately for Nieky, the most difficult opponent at the final was the weight cut.

“I had to go lose ten kilograms in six weeks. I walk around at eighty-two. I fought Buakaw [for my] last fight [at the Max final]. I made weight, but felt bad. I went back to the hotel with my wife; I was dizzy and I fell down. I lost [the fight] on points. That was key for me to stop fighting at that weight. I returned to seventy-six.”

Notwithstanding problems with the weight cut, K1 was a positive experience.

“I had to fight with less power, but I made a name there. From that name, I built my career.”

Although K1 dissolved shortly after, with the advent of Glory, Nieky swiftly found himself back in a job. Holland’s pre-eminent kickboxing team, Golden Glory, became the basis of the Glory roster. Cor Hemmers, long the trainer for and step-father of Ramon Dekkers, became ‘Head of Talent Operations’ and naturally, Nieky was well-described as talent.

He has always been an exciting fighter who has won the majority of his contests, however, his appearance in Glory co-incided with him hitting his straps. He seems to have matured as a fighter in that his style has become fully coherent.

Much like his mentor Dekkers, Holzken is a skilful technician whose hands are the cornerstone of his approach. So auspicious is his ability that Joe Rogan recently made the comment that Holzken is very possibly the best striker in the world.

“I learned a lot from Ramon; he was one of my favorite fighters. I trained for six years with him and then started with Cor [Hemmers]. We trained a lot. It’s too bad he’s gone. His death came as a big surprise. He was healthy and trained a lot. He died in training.”

Since the death of Ramon and Cor’s ascent into a corporate role within the Glory organization, Nieky has taken his training into his own hands.

“My father-in-law, Sgaf Weber, is training me. He was also training me when Ramon was training me; he is a famous boxer in Holland. We learned a lot from Ramon and started our own gym, ‘Team Holzken.’

Nieky isn’t strictly bound to Glory, and will fight for other organizations when opportunities emerge.

“I’m not exclusively a Glory fighter, but I try to do kickboxing with Glory and boxing with other companies.”

His experience of Glory has been a positive one, but he observes room for improvement.

“There’s a lot of good fighters [but] also there can be a lot of things done better. Promoting events, for instance; I heard in February that [Gokhan] Saki is [scheduled] to fight someone but there are no posters, commercials, or media. So, those things can be better.”

That said, some of the best fights to take place on the Glory canvas have featured Holzken. In recent memory, his two fights against American Wunderkind Raymond Daniels are a standout.

“In our first fight, I was very confident. I had come back from injury, and Glory put me in the [Four Man Elimination] tournament for the [welterweight] title. I did what I had to do; go to him and try to KO him.”

Daniels showed huge promise as a kickboxer and if any part of his game is lacking, it’s in terms of his experience. That said, when the rematch was announced, Holzken went back to the drawing board and put together the necessary blueprint for a repeat performance.

“For our second fight, he was very well-prepared. It was my plan to start slow, because I felt I could win by conditioning. [Daniels] is like a jumping machine; he will fly all around the ring, and that takes energy.

“My plan was to punch his liver and run him flat. In the third round, he couldn’t run anymore, he gets caught in corner and I gave the flying knee. Daniels was finished, so I stopped the fight myself.”

Holzken’s record is not without blemishes, however. The Moroccan fighter, L’houcine Ouzgni fought Nieky and defeated him not once, but twice.

“Yeah, I’d like to rematch him. The first fight was bad luck; I walked into a punch. I knocked him down with a spinning backfist [in the second fight] and he went down. The referee didn’t count; it was about sixteen seconds.

“A long count. I lost focus. Then in the extra round, I think they want to help him.” The rematch is unlikely, due to the fact that Ouzgni seems to have retired.

“I don’t think he is active at this moment.”

Kickboxing in Holland has been through a difficult period, after the mayor of Amsterdam cracked down on local crime and forced Glory to shift their locus of production to Belgium. Things have improved however, in no small part due to reality television.

“It’s been a difficult time the last three years because of people shot and killed at events. Now, kickboxing is growing again. There are lots of gyms, and it is very popular among the children. Older people do it just to get healthy.

“I have my own reality show on national TV. It shows that kickboxing is not about criminality. [The sport is full of] normal guys like me who has two children and does it for his work. It’s fifty per-cent because of me that the government permitted Glory to have their big event in Amsterdam.

Boxing is the way forward for the thirty-two year old welterweight champ.

“The dream is to stop with kickboxing and go further with boxing. I’ve had nine fights for eight KOs so far. My next fight scheduled for February 20 in Helmond, Holland. Then, on January 17, I go to Las Vegas to train for two weeks with Floyd Mayweather and his team.”

Having begun boxing at the same age he began kickboxing, both skill-sets are a natural fit.

“It’s a different stance, but I’ve always trained, so it’s natural. In kickboxing, the left shoulder is more to the center and the toes of the left foot are off on an angle. When you’re boxing, you’re leaning more behind the shoulder. You have to lower your hand and you can do it better.”

How much better, only time will tell.

Shihan Cameron Quinn is, by the standards of ‘Theme Park…’, a luminary. He began training in Kyokushin Karate in 1971 and lived in Japan in 1976, studying Japanese and training at the Kyokushin Honbu dojo in Tokyo under Kyokushin founder, Mas Oyama.

From 1978 until 1987, he competed in full contact karate tournaments, placing and winning in numerous state, national and international competitions. He represented Australia in the Fourth Open World Tournament in 1987, finishing in the top 32 contestants, and in the over forty World Open Weight Championships in 2001, where he finished fourth. He was a finalist in the world Kata Championships that same year.

He holds a BA from the University of Queensland, with a major in Japanese Language and Culture Studies. He is also fluent in Japanese and served as translator and interpreter for Mas Oyama from 1976 until Oyama’s passing in 1994, as well as other senior Kyokushin figures.

Cameron has trained extensively in boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, kendo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. As a referee, he has regulated bouts in Kyokushin Karate, boxing, shootboxing, kickboxing, shooto, MMA and Muay Thai.

He was awarded his seventh dan by Hanshi Oishi Daigo in 2020 and instructs at his Queensland dojos while continuing to lecture and teach.

I read his book The Budo Karate of Mas Oyama as a nineteen year old when I began Kyokushin Karate and was overcome by it; twenty years later, I was assigned to interview him for Blitz Magazine. It was a great honour, to come back and be able to personally thank the person whose hand had instigated my arc.

I found him to be immensely literate, and the kind of martial artist I had always hoped to find; someone who is walking the martial path with the intention of making it back, as Rumi says, to discover themselves at the end of it. I am very pleased that he answers the phone when I call him with a question. I am always very conscious of making it a good one.

**

When did you first come into contact with ‘A Book of Five Rings’?

Around 1977-78, when I was between nineteen and twenty years old. I was transferred to Townsville, which wasn’t considered to be the most attractive place to live. I was there for work as a customs officer.

It turned out to be a particularly transformative 12 months. I found Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi and met a number of people who became very important. Then, after I’d done these things, as if on cue, I got transferred away again.

I was introduced to A Book of Five Rings by a Zen Do Kai instructor named Gavin Scott. When I landed in Townsville, I was looking for somewhere to train, but there was no Kyokushin. I tried all the different martial arts schools I could find.

The Zen Do Kai school run by Gavin Scott was the best of them. Scott is a very interesting fellow; a real deep thinker. His reflections of what he had read got me interested.

I thought to myself, having been to and from Japan, how had I not seen this book before? And it was a bit like Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri’s The Holy Science. That book is about 150 years old and I’d never seen it. The first time I read that, I had no idea what it meant, so I left it there. Then, five years later, it made perfect sense.

It was the same with ‘…Five Rings’. At first, a lot of it didn’t seem relevant. Then I began comparing different translations to the original Japanese or different modern Japanese commentaries. I find the best translations are written by academics.

…And there are horrible versions of it where someone in a publishing house knows it’s popular and produces a glossy edition to make some cash. It’s beautifully presented, but no balls. No feeling for the Musashi mindset.

I’m thinking of doing my own translation, from the martial artist’s perspective. Musashi wrote ‘…5 Rings’ as a swordsman, a martial artist.  Now, when I read certain paragraphs, they mean more and more because of the experiences I’ve had.

For example, in the best-known translation, done by Victor Harris, the word ‘choshi’ is given to mean timing, but it can also mean rhythm. I thought about this in terms of my own experience of martial arts, and knowing how the word ‘choshi’ is used in Japanese, I drew the conclusion that rhythm is internal, while timing is external.

So, developing good technique is, in one respect, a matter of developing perfect rhythm. And getting that well-trained technique to work against a non-compliant opponent is a matter of timing. So, translating ‘choshi’ as rhythm is very accurate, but for a martial artist, a little more clarification helps. 

Mas Oyama’s compendiums of karate technique, This is Karate and What is Karate? were translated by an American named Richard Gage. He had no precedent. He translated ‘newaza’ as, ‘lying down techniques’. As an academic, he was not wrong.

Later, newaza was more suitably translated by someone as ‘ground work.’ So that is an example of the difference between an accurate academic translation and a translation more suitable to a martial artist. 

2.

What are your thoughts on M as a mythological figure?

History does that to larger than life characters. I’ve watched films about Mas Oyama, and they are ridiculous. It’s similar to what has become of a bodhisattva. Essentially, folklore turns extraordinary people into demi-gods.

Musashi, for all his refinement and culture, was quite brutish as well. He’d enter a dojo, kill the instructor and leave, saying, ‘Thanks for the lesson’. He sounds like a sociopath, but that’s not unusual for that era. That was how you demonstrated courage; you never said no to a challenge.

What are your thoughts on Musashi as the integration of a renaissance man and a killer?

In Japan, there is a phrase, ‘Bun-bu ryodo’. It basically translates to mean that the way of the martial artist and the way of the scholar are one. Learning how to use a sword is one thing, but learning the [calligraphy] brush is another. It’s very easy to become imbalanced if you don’t have the yin, along with the yang. One of the signs of an advanced culture, of course, is the quality of its art.

As much as Musashi is known as a swordsman, he is also recognised as a master calligrapher and an artist. Maybe that was his way of quelling the demons of his violent life.

What do you think ‘A Book of Five Rings’ has to offer?

A lot of martial artists exaggerate their understanding of it. The only way to get real value out of it is if you’re training. For me, sometimes I’d read a passage, then close my eyes and try to feel its message in my body. ‘Strike like tut-tut’, for example.

I’ve started to see it with new eyes since I began grappling. For instance, in the ‘Water Book’, Musashi writes, ‘Stick to enemy and do not separate.’ This makes so much sense from a grappling perspective. The more of my body I can ‘stick’ to your body, the better control of you I have.

If I simply grab your wrist with one hand, that’s no good. Two hands is a bit better. And then, if I can get an arm underhook, with my shoulder close to you and my hands and arms both sticking to your arm, then it becomes very strong. My definition of leverage is using  more and more of my body against less and less of yours.   

That whole, ‘Book of 5 Rings for business’ trend – what does that even mean? I tend to think it’s somewhat overrated. Parts of [the book] mean absolutely nothing to anyone, except a martial artist, and some is specific to a swordsman; it’s not useful or relevant for the empty hand even, let alone a business meeting.

However, there may be more to it… I need to read it again, in other words.