Blake Tomlinson of Dunedin remembers as a youngster hearing of his father's dabbling in boxing and this may well been what sparked his interest in the fight game. Blake was born in 1981 at Dunedin and attended Kings High School.

He began his training in martial arts initially at age 15 in the style of tae kwon do.

Blake trained with South Pacific tae kwon do staying there until he achieved his first dan black belt. He trained in tae kwon do to be the very best he could be enjoying the training but not the politics and the lack of competition back then. He found himself frustrated when he was cautioned for sparring too hard and knew it was time to look for a style that would more suit him and this was around the time that South Pacific tae kwon do folded up.

The next style Blake tried was white crane kung fu under Norman Chin, but soon found this was not what he was looking either and after eight months of training when time permitted he gave kung fu away in pursuit of a style more fitting to his desires.

Blake previously met a visitor to the kung fu club when he was there by the name of James Musen who had told him that he was practicing Thai boxing.

By chance Blake ran into him again in the street one day and told him he was looking at taking up kickboxing, James suggested he come and check out their Thai boxing gym. Blake did so and was immediately hooked on Thai boxing with all the pad work and practical conditioning. The club was Dynamite Thai boxing, part of Zen Do Kai, and the head coach was René Dejoux.

Initially when Blake joined up they were training out of Les Mills gymnasium but later moved to the Otago University clubs and societies facility. René moved to Christchurch about a year later and James took over the head coach role.

Blake had one fight representing Dynamite and that was in Christchurch and the result was a controversial loss in Blake's opinion at the time. Blake now had the hunger for Thai boxing and was actively looking at top gyms and coaches around New Zealand. He felt he was somewhat dormant in his desire for more knowledge and not getting the progression he so dearly desired in Dunedin. He had previously seen a website for Thai boxing training in Thailand at the Lanna Muay Thai gym in Chang Mai.

Lanna Muay Thai is the English name for the gym and the Thai name is KiatBusaba. So he emailed Lanna gym. Blake also e-mailed other Muay Thai gyms in the Northeast but did not hear back from them. However Andy from Lanna replied overnight and before Blake knew it he was in Thailand where he stayed and trained for two months on this his first trip. Blake had two fights on his first stay in Thailand and although he did not win them they were good fights and great learning curves.

In his first fight he was doing well and landing good shots including dishing out a good black eye to the opposition by means of a sound elbow before falling victim to a knockout.

In the second fight Blake received a major head cut from an elbow ending his chances of victory in this encounter.

At last Blake felt he had found the style he was looking for and the training was good and tough. When Blake returned to New Zealand he went and trained under New Zealand's legendary trainer Lollo Heimuli at Balmoral LeeGar for the next two months.

Blake had one fight for Balmoral LeeGar in his short stay there stopping his opponent in 31 seconds by means of a front kick to his opponent’s liver countering the high kick his opponent was in the process of throwing at him. This proved to Blake the value of the training he had received in Thailand. Blake holds Lollo in the highest regard as a trainer and considers him a real gentleman as well.

In Auckland Blake was having difficulty finding work and settling back into the New Zealand way of life. He dearly missed Thailand and the way of life there and needed to be where his heart was so he contacted Andy and arranged to return to the Lanna camp and live there for free. He was provided with free accommodation free food and training and shared a room with a fellow Thai boxer from China who did not speak any English.

Blake spent the next two years at Lana Camp fighting fortnightly or at least monthly. Blake broke his arm twice in the ring in Thailand the first coming in his 15th fight in the first round.

Blake threw a kick at his southpaw opponent and missed and he replied with a hard left kick connecting with Blake's right arm while it was still in the down position and breaking his ulna bone. He'd never broken a bone before and didn't know what it felt like but knew something was wrong, as it was painful and hard to hold his arm up.

In the second round he knew he had to knock his opponent out or he was going to get knocked out himself. His opponent had good kicks but Blake managed to get him on the back foot with punches of his own and then unleash a barrage of elbows and knees knocking his opponent out.

After the fight he told his trainer of the pain in his arm and they told him it was not broken and all he needed was a massage from the massage ladies at the camp. He ended up going to hospital where they x-rayed it finding it was broken and it was in a cast for the next two months and he could not fight for another four months after that.

He thought it was fine and had healed and returned to the ring and re-broke the arm in the first round going five rounds and losing on points. His opponent in this fight later became a trainer at Lanna and a good friend of Blake's.

After this fight Blake returned home to Dunedin to make sure his arm healed well. After around 15 months of recovery in New Zealand Blake returned to Thailand and fought for another year.

He then returned to New Zealand and trained at Rex Reddens gym in Porirua having three fights there and taking the WMC NZ light middleweight title defeating Joshua Tai.

Blake was known in NZ by his fight name Blake the Snake and this was decided only 30 minutes before he fought by Rex Redden for Combat Video purposes. In Thailand usually fighters use their Christian name and the name of the gym for their sir name like Blake Lanna Boxing, or Blake Kiatbusaba.

Following this Blake fought for the Thai boxing New Zealand super welterweight title against Edwin Sami. Blake lost what he considered a controversial decision and although there was talk of a rematch it never materialized and since Blake and Edwin have become good friends.

The same year Blake fought on the Oceania S1 card right at the bottom of the weight, which was a big ask against heavier stronger fighters but a challenge willingly accepted.

From here it was back to Thailand in 2008 and the first gym he trained at was the Suwit gym in the South, which was a really good gym, they specialized in clinching and heavily promoted using the knees.

To finish a training session it was 500 to a thousand repetitions with the knees on the heavy bag at the Suwit gym.

The first time Blake was made to do this he could not believe it as previously he thought 300 or 400 repetitions were a lot but now the effects were well felt getting up around the six hundred mark.

Blake has clocked up close to 40 fights now and although he has retired from the ring he is actively involved as the head trainer of Thai boxing at the Todd Group facility in Dunedin.

Most of Blake's fights were in Thailand with the remainder in New Zealand and one in Kazakhstan where at short notice he fought for 2003 IFMA amateur world championships. He took this fight at short notice after winning a fight five days before in Thailand and with his legs not in ideal shape to enter the ring again. His leg gave out while clinching with his South African opponent in Kazakhstan.

I asked Blake who his favorite trainers were and he explained gyms like Lanna had up to 12 trainers and Suwit as many as eight trainers. In New Zealand he said definitely Lollo and René and while Lollo is obviously far more technical and knowledgeable than René they were both great guys.

In Thailand a fighter with the ring name Supot Rakkiet from the Northeast had shown Blake a lot even though he was quite a lazy fellow. Blake said he was very knowledgeable and taught him a lot of his clinching techniques.

In the last two trips for Blake to Thailand at the Lanna gym Supot Rakkiet was no longer a trainer there so Blake worked with another Thai called Taywin Boontham. He looks like Johnny Dept out of pirates of the Caribbean and that is where Blake got a lot of his front kick and round kick skills. Taywin’s Style is very fluid and technical rather than walk up crash and bash.

I asked Blake what his favorite techniques were and he said they changed over time from his early days when he liked to throw a lot of elbows and knees going forward fighting that way.

After breaking his arm his outlook changed and made him more of a patient fighter and after such an injury when you are somewhat gun shy as Blake put it you become more careful and evaluate your style and compensate as such.

Blake found he was throwing more front kick's straight punches and then quickly getting in and tying up in the clinch reducing the chance of his arm being kicked.

He developed in the clinch better knees and elbows and throws at a range where he could shut them down from kicking his arm.

He developed the tricks in the clinch to deliver knees and elbows to the head and he found because of his height he was more likely to connect with the knees than the elbows.

I asked Blake what he considers his greatest achievement in Muay Thai and he said fighting on with his broken arm as he fought through the pain barrier and won.

He also fought once in Bangkok on TV and also 2 to 3 times on TV at local Loi-Katong Festivals, which were good experiences.

When Blake first fought in Thailand most of the fights were at provincial fairs and later as he built up as a fighter he fought at Gawilla Stadium the main stadium in Chiang Mai with Chiang Mai being the second largest city in Thailand after Bangkok.

He also fought on TV at outdoor events in Bangkok and also fought at Rangsit Stadium in Bangkok.

I asked him who his toughest opponent was and without hesitation he come back Kongrit, Who broke his arm the second time.

He may not have been physically toughest but he was very technical and no matter what Blake gave him he came back for more.

Blake always wanted to train and fight in Asia and in fact completed a teaching degree with the intent to teach English in Asia.

He has the degree but as he put it has never gone teaching.

Blake’s wife Ning is a Thai national who he met in Chiang Mai in July 2004 where she was a student at the time at Payap University where she graduated with a bachelor degree in hotel tourism management.

Blake on his training regime while in Thailand.

Wake-up time 6 a.m. with the morning starting with usually a long run of 6 km or more up a mean mountain and some days 8 or 12 kilometers plus sprints and then returned to the gym and knee then bag 200 or more times followed by 10 to 15 minutes of shadowboxing.

Next were rounds on the bags consisting of between three to eight rounds before working the pads with a trainer going as many rounds as you can, at least 3 but preferably 5.

The session would end with chin-ups, push-ups, dips, sit-ups and other conditioning and weight training exercises including neck bridging exercises to maintain a strong neck.

The morning session would last from 6:30 a.m. until 9.30am so you would get out three good hours of training.

Immediately after this you would return home shower, eat breakfast and go back to bed as you would be physically exhausted.

You would then have lunch and return for the afternoon session, which starts at 4 p.m. with a 3 to 5 km run depending on the day and sometimes including hill sprints.

It would then be back to the gym and skip the heavy rope for 15 to 20 minutes followed by shadowboxing in basically the same routine as in the morning. The afternoon session could include boxing sparring depending on how close you were to a fight.

The session would finish with 20 to 30 minutes of clinching plus the standard mandatory sit-ups as well.

I asked Blake regarding his sparring in Thailand and he replied.

There is a general misconception that Thai’s will spar really hard every day but it depends on the mood in the gym and what fights are coming up.

If you have notice and build up before the fight of a month or more then boxing sparring could be as many as three days a week on alternate days with 16 ounce gloves and in these sessions it can be very much hard out and trying to take your head off.

In terms of actual kick sparring with shin protection on its usually very controlled because if a shin hits a knee or elbow it can cause a lot of damage.

The last thing you want come fight time is to get in the ring with a bruised leg and get kicked there and it end the fight for you simply due to prior injury.

Even the clinching is done in a relaxed manner in training over full on and is more leverage and balance maintenance orientated.

Kick sparring if your fighting regularly is not an everyday practice and it’s not uncommon to go two months without kick sparring if your fight active.

The fighting in the ring is considered like a sparring where you learn a lot from competing in the ring and I think this is one of the reasons the Thai’s are so good.

The clinching would be every day, the boxing 2-3 days a week and the kick sparring a lot less seldom.

They not only get to train a lot more than we do here but being able to fight every two weeks from the age of 8 or 10 years old by the time they reach 18 they have had between 100 and 150 plus fights compared to some one over here that usually starts training at age 18 and gain all there ring experience from then on, and usually only having a few fights a year.

I asked Blake about the stories of the Thai’s brutally conditioning their shins and he replied it’s a myth and a load of rubbish.

He has never seen anyone kicking banana trees or using a rolling pin on their shins.

Kicking the heavy bag and the pads does the job and eventually you learn to kick better avoid your opponents blocks and learn when to kick and not to kick.

Blake said he only ever seen one-person kick down a banana tree and that was a friend of his.

Funnily enough he got sick after his tree felling and when his trainer asked him what was wrong with him he told him of kicking down the banana tree.

His trainer told him the spirits of the land were angry because he didn't ask permission from the owner.

He was told to go there and make an offering to one of the little spirit houses and he did and remarkably enough he got better.

I asked Blake if he has any other goals in martial arts or styles he had or would like to train in and he replied apart from his Thai boxing and his early days in tae kwon do he had done a little Brazilian jujitsu and wing Chun and at the moment even though he's no longer fighting he's concentrating on anaerobic fitness and conditioning as he likes to stay in shape and hopefully increase a bit of muscle mass.

Blake believes he must not only keep training but also keep learning and for him to stop learning boredom would set in quickly.

Now that Blake is focusing on Thai boxing coaching he is finding satisfaction from the enjoyment and achievement of others.

He is happy to say that Thai boxing is popular at the Todd Group’s combat sports school and there are several lads keen to fight they have the right attitude and no ego problems.

They put a lot of effort in and listen to his instructions, which paid off recently when two of them had their first novice fights faring well.

Blake is all too aware that many that are keen to fight but after the first real-life ring experience give it away.

The novice fights they have here in New Zealand are very different to the realities of competing in Thailand where it's from the age of eight years upwards five rounds under full-Thai rules with knees and elbows and everything.

Blake thinks novice fights may be good for New Zealand where a fighter takes it up as a hobby and simply wants to experience limited fights in the ring but in Thailand where many people are poor and come from poor families in a country where there is no welfare system fighting is a way of making money for their families.

They may come from a hill tribe or farming family and be the family’s only source of income, taking care of the members of their family financially that are too old to work.

Even children as young as five years will fight 3 rounder’s with full Thai rules and Blake remembers seeing a five-year-old boy at Suwit gym and his dad in the gym making sure he was training and made him do 100 knees on the pads to finish off hard training.

He was told to do 100 knees and the young boy replied in Thai he could not count to 100.

On another occasion the 5 year old was not getting his technique right so his dad was whipping his leg with an extended out coat hanger and that is how serious they are even with the young children simply because it a survival thing.

Blake's training diet in Thailand when he lived in the gym was good but there were days when it was very much a case of a broth with a little tomato skin and some chicken which was not always the best after you had trained hard for three hours plus or you may get sticky rice.

There was often a lack of consistency and meals sometimes lacked the carbohydrates and protein etc required when you are in full fight training.

Thais have the tendency to have just two big meals a day one after morning training like a big breakfast and one after the evening training and in between only a little bread or fruit as a snack.

Blake on his last visit to Thailand experimented trying to eat every two hours and as long as he timed it right so he wasn't bloated when he went into the gym he found he felt much better and performed much better.

Some of the conditioning exercises Blake remembers doing include old-style sit-ups on the incline board or with your feet up on the ring anything from 300 to 500 plus as well as running dragging a car tire or with a rope around your waist with your partner holding it resisting you while you try to sprint. Bouncing on an old truck tire was another way to build up the leg and calve strength, but you don’t see many fighters in the west do this type of training.

They also use a piece of PVC tube or rope connected to a weight plate that they clench their teeth around and do neck exercises moving their head back and forward. These are very Thai style exercises.

I’m sure readers have heard of the many myths re female Thai women and their involvement in Muay Thai so I asked Blake about this.

He replied that the standard of female Thai boxing in Thailand is no where near the men’s as it is a male dominated sport and the women fighting in the ring is something that was not common before the 1980s.

Most of them are fifteen or sixteen years of age.

There were in times gone by rules where females could not even enter the training camp and at the stadiums they won’t even let women touch the ropes or ring apron let alone enter the ring and at Lanna camp they had a men’s and a women’s ring.

Men can train in the women’s ring but women can’t train in the men’s ring and women are not permitted to go over the top rope of the ring as men do.

Blake can remember a VIP visitor getting in the ring and being told to get out and then a monk being summoned to cleanse the ring once she left.

Muay Thai for the Thais is both very competitive and spiritual with the spiritual aspect being very evident with performing of the pre-fight Wai Kru ritual and the wearing of the Mongkon on the head and the Praciat armbands.

Some fighters get magical tattoo’s to protect them against being cut that are blessed by a monk and have special herbs rubbed into them. They are very spiritual and superstitious in everything to do with Muay Thai, especially in the more rural provinces.

Westerners more treat the Wai Kru before a fight as a final warm up but to the Thai fighter it has significance spiritually.

Medical treatment for fight injuries can be very low standard and at some fights at villages you may get stitched up in a rice paddy by a vet or as Blake found out after winning a fight in Phuket but getting a nasty head cut he was stitched up by a doctor that had been on the whisky at the fight.

There is no anesthetic and the most you can expect is rubber gloves and the same levels of hygiene go for fighter blood testing before fighting, they are not tested and could well be HIV positive or have hepatitis, although Blake has not heard of anyone being infected this way.

Blake said you learn what to eat and what not to eat very quickly to avoid the jelly belly like not eating the raw pork dishes.

Blake currently works with people with intellectual disabilities and with cool calm demeanor that saw him achieve under adversity in the ring as well as his degree in teaching and his excellent coaching abilities anyone in his care is truly in good hands.

The Todd Group has and 82-year history of being a private school of committed instructors and coaches and Blake truly fits in well and is admired and respected by his peers and understudies alike.

The Todd Group has an atmosphere that is hard to beat with its old school feel built on over 80 years of sweat blood and guts. This gym produced many champions in the ring in boxing, kickboxing, wrestling and MMA and leads the way in unarmed combat and self-defense.

Blake has settled in well to the group where instructors and coaches are encouraged but left to conduct their training in their own way but with full support when required and are provided with all the required equipment and resources.