COME TO THE “CHURCH SESSION” WITH OUR OWN FEMALE NSW CHAMPION LARA AHOLA. ALL WELCOME.

The first time in the ring is the defining moment for a high percentage of fighters as this is the one that can make or break them, turn them away for good or turn them into fighting machines, for me to let a fighter into the ring is a bit of a long drawn out process, if done right will work well to give the fighter the confidence, and fitness to do a good job.

First of all the student has to do the required amount of training to get too the fitness required to fight, I used to ask the students if they wanted to fight or rather tell them its “time” to have a go but I realized this backed them into a bit of a corner and sometimes I lost good students who deep down were not fighters, so now I wait until they ask me if I think they are ready to fight so its their choice not mine and this works,

If the students have completed their gradings they would have already wrote down on paper their version of how they should get ready for a fight so they have gone over it properly in their head and put it on paper, things like goals, why do I want to fight? How do I prepare for the fight? This helps them conquer a lot of bad feelings in their mind and that’s part of the battle to overcome the pre fight nerves and everyone’s different and they all tackle it in different ways.

All this goes along way to improve the students fight prep ie: going over the fight in his head, sparring, going onto “live sparring” using 10 oz gloves so he’s getting close to the feeling of a real fight, also going to other gyms to spar unknown students and attending semi contact or sparring days which are getting very popular now when a gym hosts a day of sparring inviting others to their gym to compete for trophies and using judges etc

Utilizing most of these techniques work well on today’s students who with the proper training and prep and nutrition advise go on to a lasting injury free fight career.

The guvnor. Nick Stone

Is the rising tide of global muay thai the death knell for kickboxers??

Certainly in Australia over the past ten to fifteen years the emergence of muay Thai to this country has put kickboxing as a sport on the back foot, it seems as promotions go to be still pretty even, although the old style of “full contact” as we used to call it above the waist kicking with 8 kicks per round has totally died out.

I feel without doubt May Thai will be the number one contact sport here in oz, but now with the UFC style of fights growing in this country this will also take over, in Holland well known as the Mecca of combat sports split shows of half kickboxing and half MMA are the go.

To get the Dutch angle on this question of whether or not the sport of kickboxing is dying I asked my friend Dutchman Dirk Stal who is well known for his knowledge of contact sports in Holland.

No, here in Holland kickboxing is not dying, it is very popular as in the old days, we have k1 champion Semmy Schilt and also k1 max champion Andy Souwer, at the heavyweights we still have the two legends fighting , Ernesto Hoost (4 times k1 winner) and Peter Aerts (3 times k1 winner) also Chalid Arrab who won the las vegas k1.

In the lighter weights we have a great talent Tyrone Sprong a fighter who will become very big! And in the middleweights we have champions such as Joeri Mes, Rayen Simpson and the legendery Ramon Dekkers whos back in the ring, in the k1 max of course we have Albert Kraus and Gado Drago a man who will win the hearts of kickboxing fans in Japan, no, kickboxing is alive and well here in Holland!

So, it seems in the Mecca of fighting sports kickboxing is alive and well, a lot of Dutch gyms now I know fight all rules, Thai, MMA, boxing and kickboxing also.

To get a Europe overview I next asked my mate who runs bulldog uk, who has over 20 years experience and has trained many world class champions head trainer Carl Sams, first question, full contact? Is it dead??

Well, yes and no, there can be no doubt that thai boxing rules the roost in Britain, Europe and USA, in the USA it has developed to such a point over the last 7 or 8 years that “full contact” has been relegated to 3rd behind Muay Thai and k1.

Are the yanks any good? Probably by and large as good as the brits- only we took 30 fucking years to get that good when they did it in 7.

I think that we are starting to turn out some genuine world class thai boxers but we are still behind mainland Europe in general.

The Dutch as always are excellent, as are the French and some eastern bloc countries. Most mainland Europe fights are split between Muay Thai, k1 super league and mix fight, but full contact is all but dead there.

However, the full contact scene is similar all over with each country having pockets of full contact success, for instance, with regards to Europe when I am looking for full contact fighters I can normally get plenty, but often these are camps that would normally fight K1, Thai or Super league.

The Germans fight full contact and low kicks but I struggle to get Thai fighters from there. The Hungarians have pure full contact pockets which are just ok as their Thai Boxing is a bit poor. The French are as they have always been adaptable to any rules if the money is right. The Dutch are the same, just stronger.

The Belgians have good, pure full contact. Most of the Thai fighters seem to cross the border to go to Deckkers gym in Breda. There are strange places such as Spain and Portugal who seem to knock out the odd high profile Thai Boxer, but in my experience the scene is limited and quite full contact orientated.

The Norwegians are full contact strong, their government restrictions see too that. Before Trevor Ambrose moved there from UK they were still in amateur WAKO type scenario that we all fought in the 80,s .

The fins are Thai boxing , no full contact there,

The eastern bloc countries such as Belarus, Latvia, Moldova, Poland etc are all Thai with the exception of Czech Republic which are semi and full contact inclined, most of the eastern bloc fighters are here in Britain illegally now anyway so that's boosted Thai here.

So that sums up the scene in most of the world, it seems that in general most fighting disciplines are on the up and up which is good for all of us.

Nick Stone.

Born in Britain, Nick fell in love with Australia, with kickboxing, and eventually with his lovely wife Denuta (pictured above). This month though he talks about the early days - growing up in London, coming to Oz, and having his first fight:

Dave: I'm here with Nick Stone on Monday the 13th of March, and Nick's got no idea what I'm going to ask him about.

Well, we wanna talk a little just about being a fight champion, particularly from your angle and your expertise as a fight trainer, but I'd also like to know a little about your fight history, which I've got to admit I know almost nothing about! I mean, when did you get into the fighting game yourself?

Nick: Well, my fight history really it's quite sort of varied and went a long course cause I got a bit injured in the middle of it but, i gotta stress, I wasn't really what I'd call myself much of a fighter. I liked to fight, I enjoyed it, but I look back on some of my fights and I never would have made world champion or anything like that, but I just enjoyed the actual spirit of the combat. And I fought above the waist rules, Thai boxing rules, kickboxing with leg kicks and i fought semi-contact and Kyokashin kind of style rules, and a lot of street rules as well ... being a bouncer for 8 years.

Dave: So did you start fighting here or did you start back in Britain?

Nick: No, I had my first fight here in Australia. My first experience with Australia when I first come to Australia when I was twenty or so, you know, twenty-three years ago now. I was on a holiday with a friend and I was going through a bit of a hard time in England. I come from North London - quite a rough area of London.

I was just having a hard time. I don't want to go into that, but just life was crap at the time and I came on a six-month holiday to Australia, and I just absolutely thought it was fantastic. The country was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I had my 21st birthday here and I just fell in love with the place.

I was training a little bit when I was twenty, but only sort of a little bit because there was nothing around in London.

I very first saw Thai boxing when I was probably about twenty and a guy called Steve Morris, who is very, very well known in karate circles, as being one of the hard men of karate and other styles of martial arts. He's a very well respected man, Steve Morris. And a friend took me up to Leicester Square to see his Thai boxing. He called it 'Thai boxing' or it might have been 'Goju-Ryu'. It might just have been 'fight school', I think, but i was totally in awe of what they were doing. They were kicking each other in the groin and knocking each other out and it was full on. It was really scary, and I thought, 'I'm not into that', and I said 'I'm not doing it!'

So I went back there once and trained, and it was pretty hard, but I was just starting out, you see. But we used to train together - a group of lads - and we used to call it 'Saturday morning club' in Borehanwood, where I came from, in London.

And we used to get together - it was like 2 boxers, a jow-ga kung-fu guy, a couple of Win Chun guys, a guy who done White crane and just a couple of street fighters, and a lot of the other guys there were just football hooligans who used to train together but weren't interested in sport and fighting. Of course, the more they got into it, the less they'd be street-fighting - that's always the way.

And I'd go there and train with them with an interest, you know. It was kind of the Bruce Lee era and all that as well about 23 years ago. And thats when I really liked the idea of it, you know. And I saw an advert in a Fighter's magazine. It was called 'Fighters'. It's an English magazine for Thai boxing (with a video or something) and I saw these ripped guys like, you know, kicking each other, and I thought, 'that's for me', cause just the body image. They looked stronger and more powerful then anything else.

So I went along to this club. Master Bunraing ran his Karna Sutra club in ... where was it ... it was in Edgeware, just a few miles away from me. So we went there and started training with Master Boon just once a week. Then I'd come back to Australia. I think it was around 85-86 maybe, and I was living in the Northern beaches and I was going to the PCYC North Sydney to do a bit of boxing, and i was kicking the bags, but they don't like you kicking the bags there.

And I read about Rick Kulu's gym and I went up to Narabeen ... not Narabeen sorry. It was in Mona Vale - that area anyway. It wasn't too far and I went up to Rick Kulu's gym, met Rick Kulu and we got along really, really well, and I started training with him and that was above-the-waist kind of style fighting in early kickboxing days in Sydney and 80's. The mid 80's was above the waist.

Dave: Still called 'Full-Contact-Karate'.

Nick: 'Full-contact Karate' yeah. We used to wear the long pants, though I had a pair of shorts. I hadn't been to Thailand then..

Dave: Black-belt round your waist ...

Nick: Yeah, that's right, but I liked Rick and we got on really, really well and I started training with him and I had my first fight on one of his shows, which looking back on it was a bit of a joke really. I fought Grant Barker who'd become world champion.

Dave: For goodness sake! You fought Grant Barker!

Nick: His first fight, my first fight. And I really liked it a lot. I lost on points and, you know, I got a black eye and a bloody nose, and I thought I'd actually won cause I kicked him more, cause that's eight kicks per round then, you know, and I thought I was ripped off, as you always do.

And then I had another fight. My girlfriend was over from England then and we travelled around a bit but I was as keen as mustard to get back and have another fight against a guy from Gosford - some advanced Tae Kwon Do chap. And I knocked him out in the first round. Then I really got the bug.

Next month: Nick travels to 'Thailand and falls in love with the Thai training routine

Nick Stone

One of Australia's foremost Kickboxing and Muay Thai instructors. Nick has been senior trainer at the Bulldog Gym in Balgowlah since 1989.