What I like about it is that you can see the progression in my confidence, technique and form during each of the fights which are by the way in chronological order.
In the first fight, you see me walking into the ring overly confident, thinking it'll be easy. I was wrong, those 5 rounds were the toughest minutes of my life and I wanted out of there. I lost to split decision.
It gave me a reality check and taught me what to focus on. After reviewing the fight tapes over and over I realized that I needed to stop throwing big hooks and to focus on jabs and straights so he wouldn't clinch me every time I missed. I asked for a rematch and fought the same guy "Big Boom" a month later and won by K.O.
On my third fight, I was in great fight shape after a 3 month training camp at Tiger Muay Thai, found a guy who had 25 or so fights, so much more experienced than me but I was about 15 kilos bigger. During this fight, I told myself to focus primary on my kicks and ended up doing well. It gave me a bit too much confidence which I'll pay for in my next fight. I won that fight by T.K.O. after dropping him three times during the first round and finishing with a kick to the body.
During my fourth and most recent fight, I went in a bit too cocky and confident. I was in a good shape after two months of training at Phuket Top Team but ended up fighting a guy with 100+ fights under his belt. I was younger, in better shape, and more aggressive. But he had experience on his side and caught me with five short elbows to my nose and teeth during the fight. You have to watch it in slow motion or pay real close attention or you can't even see him throwing it. I lost my composure and threw all of my technique out the window, started throwing big wild hooks again and body shots, opening me up for additional elbows to the face. It took me two months to recover from that fight, he broke my nose and loosened my upper row of teeth so I couldn't spar. But I learned a lot of valuable lessons from that fight. I ended up winning by K.O. due to a knee to his body.
When i'm not training or fighting, I teach scuba diving professionally for a living. I love the feeling of being weightless underwater, not being able to talk, and seeing the vast wildlife underwater. I really enjoying teaching and traveling around the world in search of the best dive sites.
I don't talk about it much but personally I do not eat seafood including shrimp, lobster, and all shellfish, and try to limit my intake on fish. Vegetarians and PETA seem to care about animals but not give a shit about over fishing. When it comes down to it, we need to take better care of our food and give Cows and Chicken a healthier life but, they will never go extinct. Sharks, turtles, whales, and fish however are going extinct and commercial fishing operations are killing what's left of our coral reefs.
Also as a hobby and as something I really love to do, I give guest lectures and speeches on topics such as that I gave for the Taiwanese Cultural Society at Harvard University. I think the Men's self help movement, and the Women's reclaim the Goddess within movement is something that will be a big part of everyone's lives in the upcoming years. I leave you with one of my favorite quotes.
Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson
Warm Regards,
Johnny
That was a fantastic video Johnny, and a great introduction to what's possible when you figure out your goals and hone in on them with a focus gun.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see more videos like this, and if you can perhaps some more insight into your career as a scuba instructor and how you got into that?
I'm hopefully heading to Chiang Mai in February 2012 to train Muay Thai and get some work done, perhaps I'll get the chance to visit Phuket and say hi
Hey Lewis, scuba diving is pretty easy to get into. Try it out first to see if you like it, and if you do work as a divemaster for at least a year. It's more fun than being an instructor, trust me.
Deletehey johnny, just wondering, did you get your photo put on that poster thingy about the muay thai fights every time or is it just after you have a certain amount under you belts. i imagine it would only happen if you fought in one of the stadiums, and is it possible to keep it afterwards or buy it from the stadium?
ReplyDeleteHey, they make posters whenever you fight at a stadium and you can keep them afterwards if you get to them before someone else does. They are usually posted around town and at the gyms a few days before.
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