Q: At what age did you begin martial arts training?

Kru Nick: I started my martial arts training in the arts of Taekwondo and Tang So Do at the age of 3.

Q: Isn’t that a little young?

Nick: Yes, I guess so, but I was very fortunate the martial arts training was part of the school curriculum at the private military school I went to, so three times a week I got the training whether I liked it or not, which personally I think was great, as by the time I was 8 years old and really old enough to decide for myself I had already achieved junior black belts in both martial arts and it was something that I did automatically. That’s not to say that I was a natural, I think that’s what makes me a good instructor in that I had to work really hard to achieve the skills I now possess and therefore understand the difficulties that my students go through in whichever art I’m teaching.

Q: What are your martial arts credentials?

Nick: Together with holding black belts in a total of 14 martial arts including Tae Kwon Do, various Karate and Kung Fu styles. I also hold instructors certificates in Kali and Escrima together with many Muay Thai instructors certificates from various Thai boxing organizations and well known Thai boxing camps throughout the world together being one of the few westerners to be certified in Burmese Bando boxing.

Q: Do you consider yourself a master in all of these arts that you’ve studied?

Nick: Unfortunately not, I have over the last 37 years studied a great deal of martial arts as my record shows but there is so much specialization in these arts that you cannot hope to master all of them, I can say that at specific times in my life I was as good as anyone else of the same level would be in those styles. I truthfully cannot remember half the katas, forms or patterns that I’ve performed over the years, and there is no need to because these were studied as a learning process; the more you know the more you understand and the better you become. I would say I still have a rudimentary understanding of all of these arts and I’m sure that if I ever needed to go back and study them again, that it would quickly click back into place.

Q: What prompted you to study so many martial arts?

Nick: I have always loved martial arts and therefore it has given me pleasure to try out new arts and styles whenever I get the opportunity, and though there was no real plan to the styles I have studied, there definitely appears to be a trend towards the striking arts. I’m also one of these people who will stick with something until I have mastered what I’m being shown, so whereas most people would have become bored and dropped out, I stuck with the training.

Q: What have you been able to extract from studying and practicing so many martial arts?

Nick: I guess with regard to the striking arts I have a much better understanding about the underlying principles of the arts, for example each art has its own distinct range with regard to fighting, Escrima has a fighting distance approximately 18 inches from the persons hand, in kicking arts that distance depending on the kick is usually 6-8 inches beyond the reach of there hand, a boxer distance is exactly there reach when at full extension, a Kali or Silat practitioner fighting with a knife would have a fighting distance either 3-4 inches beyond their reach or 3-4 inches short of their reach depending on whether the knife is palmed or protruding from there hand. Therefore understanding these distances allows a person to defend him or herself by manipulating these distances so as to quell the effectiveness of these techniques or arts. Fighting a boxer you would want to move out of his reach and destroy him with your kicks. Likewise when faced with a knife you want to keep a good distance between you and your attacker. Against an Aikido guy you would get in close and use short strikes like elbows or short punches from Wing Chun so limiting there ability to use your momentum against you.

Q: What is the value of a black belt?

Nick: A black belt represents that you have become technically proficient in a particular martial arts discipline. It doesn’t however signify that you’re a great fighter, however a black belt should at least be able to minimize the effectiveness of a lower grade student who can fight, simply because their knowledge and skills base should allow them to circumvent their abilities in a manner similar to that mentioned previously, but on an even playing field a black belt fighter will usually beat the technically proficient black belt. I have many students who have trained with me for many years, they are young and fitter and none of them think for a minute that they could beat me regardless of the poor physical shape I might be in, simply because they know I know everything they know, every trick, every counter and more besides, and just like every other instructor in the world that’s what gives us the edge, otherwise it would be common for younger fitter senior students to challenge there instructor for their class.

Q: Which martial arts do you like best and least?

Nick: Thai boxing without a doubt is my favorite. It just has everything going for it, physically, mentally, spiritually, not to mention occasional gratuitous violence, and without meaning to be disrespectful to all the other martial arts, its basically the best of the best, which is why it has never been beaten by any other style.

Q: After discovering Muay Thai, did Taekwondo lose its appeal to you?

Nick: No. The Eagle Taekwondo system, as I discovered later was something of a hybrid system, and so fitted well with the other arts I was studying at the time. In fact the system shared a great number of similar techniques to Thai boxing, and in the way the power is generated in the techniques, it too was a full contact art and therefore mistakes tended to prove painful. Also by being one of the few instructors in Europe trained in this system put me in great demand with a number of military and governmental departments who were using this as part of there training.

Q: When did you first start competing in Muay Thai?

Nick: I had my first Muay Thai fight at the age of 15 against an ex-boxer 10 years older than myself, I know it sounds hard to believe but because of my height, people had always thought me older than I infact was. And being in great shape I wasn’t particularly concerned. With all the work I had done on my legs and shins I knew that I had a really powerful kick and so every time he tried to throw a punch I just picked him off with leg kicks and combinations of roundhouse kicks to the head and body. During the second round I took a kick to the chest which broke two of my ribs, the pain was so intense that my guard came down to cover them and so my opponent stepped across and caught me with a hook to the jaw. I don’t know how I managed to stay on my feet and get through the remainder of the round but luckily for me I did. As we came out for the third round he came out swinging. I managed to keep him away using my front kick and counter punches. Then as he stepped across, in order to throw a big right hand, connected with my roundhouse kick square on his jaw, almost lifting him off his feet.

Q: Did that spur you on to fight more?

Nick: After leaving school I was studying at college full time and having little money, my entire focus became the martial arts, I was training 6 to 8 hours every day, I read every book I could get my hands on about the martial arts, together with going to every club I could find. And during that time studied Kempo Karate to brown belt, and Goju Ryu and Nambudo Karate to black belt. It was only towards the end of my college time before going to university that I had opportunity to compete but I made the most of it taking part in every competition going. I fought in Taekwondo, Karate, Thai boxing, Kick Boxing, full contact Karate and Kung Fu.

Q: What motivated you to fight?

Nick: The fighting was more an assessment of how my skills were developing. The studying and the gradings only really go so far. The only way to know if a technique works is to try it and see, so although I was passing the gradings in the various styles it was the competition that was proving their worth.

Q: So can you tell us more about your fight career?

Nick: I had always fought from about the age of seven, particularly in the Korean and Japanese arts, though since the age of about fourteen it became relentless. I have had in total over fifteen hundred bouts. That includes Taekwondo, Tang So Do, Kung Fu, full contact Karate, Kick Boxing and over one hundred and twenty fights in Muay Thai.

Q: That’s quite a record, so why aren’t you better known?

Nick: In particular martial art circles I am very well known, particularly more overseas as that was where most of my fights or competitions took place. In the Eagle Taekwondo system I held the British title undefeated for over twelve years, and the European title for ten consecutive years. I also held several major titles in South East Asia, including, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos. The majority of my early Muay Thai fights were held in the UK, but from about age of nineteen or twenty they were either held in Europe as Thai boxing was much more established there and so I could fight much more often, and once again the Far East mainly Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan. It also didn’t help my notoriety that I would get very get nervous before a fight and a little anti-social and so didn’t really talk or mix with people before a fight. After all I was there to do a job, and anything else was simply a distraction that could only hinder my preparation. Because of my predominance to knock my opponents out, my fights tended not to last very long, so unless the photographer was ready from the opening moment of the fight, it could well be over too quickly, also not being particularly stylish or photogenic pictures were more usually showing my opponent throwing a technique, the bulk of mine would be holding up the trophy or the belt at the end of the fight. I did have several hundred pictures from my fights in Thailand and the Far East, along with newspaper clipping unfortunately they got lost during a house move years ago. My instructor has videos of almost every fight I had but he has been trying to get around to doing me copies for over ten years and he is unwilling to give them to me to copy, so I just have to wait I guess, though it is more for my students and my families interest than mine, as I can recall most of the details of the fights in my head, though it’s always cool to see yourself when you were young and in peak physical shape.

Q: Please describe your most difficult fight. Who was your toughest opponent?

Nick: I think that would have to be when I fought for the world title in Hong Kong. I had been preparing for this fight for almost 9 months, and about 3 weeks before the fight my manager approached me and asked me if I wanted to drop the fight. He had been told that my opponents previous opponent had died as a result of the injuries he had sustained in the ring, and because of the way I fight, my manager was concerned that if I fought toe to toe with this guy that I would get seriously injured if not killed. So I was instructed that if the fight started to get to rough, to go down and stay down, though I knew my pride wouldn’t let me do it, so the fight got started and though the champion threw some really good hard shots, I didn’t get hit any harder than I’d been hit in the past and then towards the later part of the 1st round I connected with a right cross to his jaw, that I could tell really hurt him, and once I knew that I could hurt this guy, any advantage he had just evaporated and so I went to work on him, eventually winning unanimously. With regard to my toughest opponent its very difficult to say as during my fight career I fought some incredibly tough opponents, and it was not uncommon for me to finish a fight with a couple of broken ribs. I was very lucky that I had been taught the importance of keeping my guard high and my head away from the fight action, therefore only getting hit with head shots very, very rarely, therefore allowing me to keep my looks or at least my face symmetrical. Once or twice I had been in such tough fights that my legs would be literally black with bruising, but these would not come out on the surface for sometimes up to a couple of weeks. It was only due to the excellent conditioning that my body had gone through that saved me from obviously very serious injury. One of the first lessons I learnt during my Thai training was that the harder (or more brutal) the training you go through in the preparation to a fight the easier the actual fight is, as your opponent is never going to put you through what you have put yourself through day after day round after round in the gym. In fact the fight itself was usually a merciful rest in comparison, it also allowed you to make your opponent pay for your suffering.

Q: Do you still compete?

Nick: Since being involved in a major car crash in 1995 my body has been to seriously damaged to think about competing at the same kind of level that it used to, and if you’re not going to challenge yourself by fighting at the highest level you can, then its not really worth doing, besides the fact that I’m just too old these days and having had my time I think it better to put my efforts into bringing on the new talent.

Q: Have you ever had to use your skills out side of the ring?

Nick: Yes, since the age of 18 I have worked on and off as a doorman / bouncer both here in the UK and also in Europe, and so have had many instances when I have pitted my skills and experience against much bigger guys, sometimes out numbered 5 or 6 to one. I’ve had to disarm people with knives, guns, broken bottles, even the occasional claw hammer, and this done not in a well lit dojo, but a dark, cramped crowded nightclub with loud music and flashing lights or some lonely corridor or back staircase dressed in street clothes. In fact a couple of years ago I was involved in a incident whilst at a martial arts convention in Annecy in France. I had been there with a large group of my students from the UK, both teaching and studying. We had all gone out as a group for a meal and a few drinks on the last night, eventually going back to the hotel at about 2 a.m., so while most of my students went up to bed, I stayed downstairs in the foyer talking to some of the other delegates and having my last coffee of the day. When Soke Richard Morris and Guro Jun De Leon (both fantastic people) returned to the hotel, a little the worst for wear, and so Soke Morris asked if I would take Guro Leon back to his hotel as he had to leave early the next morning, so we left the hotel and walked back through the narrow alleyways back to Guro Leon’s hotel, talking about the seminars we had taught and our mutual friends in the martial arts community. As we stood outside his hotel finishing off our conversation a group of four very loud French guys came past where we were standing. They garbled something offensive sounding towards us, but we just carried on our conversation. They then stopped and once again started shouting at us in French. At first I thought that this might get nasty having spent six hours training in Kuntao with him the day before, particularly due to his somewhat relaxed alcoholic state but instead Guro Leon said in English that we didn’t speak French, so they once again shouted something in French and walked away. So we finished our chat and said our goodbyes and I started to walk back to my hotel. I had managed to walk about two streets away when I heard the sound of running footsteps behind me. I looked round to see the same group of four men come running towards me out of a shop doorway in which they had been hiding. As soon as the first one got close enough, I threw a roundhouse kick catching him under the ribs, the kick lifted him off his feet and caused him to fly though the air eventually landing in a heap by the curb, as I turned back the next one was on top of me, already throwing a punch, he was too close to kick so I slipped inside his punch grabbing him round the neck in a clinch and twisted my body sending him to flying through the air and landing on a cars bonnet. By this time the other two had stopped in their tracks and were starting to run the opposite direction, so I left my two would-be assailants lying on the ground and walked back to my hotel.

Q: Have you ever been hurt?

Nick: Because of the way I fought and the frequency of my fights or competitions I would always be getting either my ribs cracked or broken, though thanks to the wonders of pain killers and masking tape it never stopped me from training, and broken fingers or toes though a nuisance once again didn’t hinder either my training or fighting, though not taking better care of myself then has led to one or two medical problems in my later life.

Q: What do you think of Thai boxing in the UK?

Nick: In some ways it makes me very proud and happy, because of some of the great instructors, fighters and students that we have in the UK, but in others it’s a shame that there is so much division between the various Thai boxing groups. I realize that a lot of this is to do with money, but if the martial arts commission issued all Thai boxing licenses like the ABA and organized or compiled the rankings, selected the British team etc I’m sure it would improve matters, the license could be bought through your current organization, association or council who could charge a fee on top for administering them. Everyone would have the same insurance cover, officials, instructors courses, etc and discussions about rules would could be formalized, (i.e.) national sport of Thailand, therefore official amateur rules as per world Thai boxing council, professional rules as per, world Thai boxing council or professional rules per the Lumpinee Stadium.

Q: Can you please comment of Muay Thai as the art, versus Muay Thai the sport?

Nick: Most people don’t really understand that there is a difference between the two. Most people only see Muay Thai the sport, two guys kicking and punching each other while weird music plays in the background. This is probably the greatest part of Muay Thai, but it is also a somewhat limited part, as the professional Thai fighters rather than learning the whole art of Muay Thai will simply be drilled using an arsenal of 20-30 techniques which they will do day after day until they become second nature, so that they can throw them with devastating power from 101 different positions, rather than learning the art which may have 30 different ways of dealing with a front kick, or a roundhouse kick or different types of clinch attack or defense, different types or styles of punching methods etc. Thai boxing doesn’t have to mean stepping into the ring and fighting, in fact the training my students undergo is more towards learning the whole art. However if their focus is more towards competing, then there training is modified, putting less emphasis on the variation of technique and more on ring craft and conditioning aspects of the art, after all what is the good of fighting if you know every technique going but you can’t actually withstand any sort of blow for your opponent. But by the same token you don’t want to be able to withstand every blow but not know enough to fight without putting you in the situation where your getting hit unnecessarily. Of course the best way is to train for long enough that you learn the art first and then condition your body to withstand the techniques incase you make a mistake, however the more knowledge you have the less mistakes you make.

Q: Is Thai boxing good for women and children as a martial art?

Nick: I personally think that Thai boxing is an ideal martial art for women and children, as the techniques do not rely on physical strength or size. Men occasionally tell me that Thai boxing is too physically demanding for women or children. I don’t personally think that is the case, as most Thai people are the same size if not smaller than western women. However I think that teaching children should be taught differently to the way that adults are taught. There should be more emphasis on control, fitness and discipline and less on the fighting aspects, as children don’t always have the ability to assess the consequences of their own actions. In fact my three-year-old son has been training in Thai boxing for almost a year now, though his concentration isn’t that great being so young. He can get the gist of what I show him. I get him punching the focus mitts and kicking small kick pads. In fact he is already starting to develop some power in his front kick and is able to execute a spinning kick, which I think is unbelievable as children’s balance isn’t usually near that good at his age.

With regard to the training of women I think they should train alongside the men and be expected to do everything that the men can do, to hit as hard and to last as long. If you treat the sexes differently then you will make them weak both physically and mentally. Everyone should strive to be the best that they can. A female student of mine many years ago, was attacked by a group of six men in an under path. She had trained for about eighteen months. The result of the attack was that she was ok, but five of the six attackers were put in hospital with broken legs, arms, eye injuries and breathing difficulties, my student suffered some scrapes and bruises but apart from that was unhurt.

She told me later that had she not been toughened up and trained through the Thai boxing, she was sure that she would have been gang raped and beaten. And because of the realistic way in which we train, she wasn’t as scared and the techniques were so familiar that she didn’t need to think what to do, but just simply reacted to the attack. She also said that being used to training with men she wasn’t intimidated by her attackers’ size or strength.

Q: How is Thai boxing training different from other martial arts?

Nick: I personally feel that Thai boxing is much more realistic than most, if not all, other martial art systems. That is not to say that individual instructors or schools or even particular systems within styles aren’t realistic in their training. However generally Thai boxing is the real deal. A good example of what I mean is a Karate guy or a Kung Fu guy saying they could kick them across the room if they wanted, but they won’t. A Thai boxer would say ok lets get the pads and I’ll show you. Because the techniques aren’t particularly pulled in the art, the students get used to kicking, punching, kneeing and elbowing with full force against the pads, bags or solid objects of some description. The students know that the techniques work, that they can actually move a 150kg man across a room with a kick because they have moved a 150kg man with a kick during training. Also the conditioning techniques which are a standard part of the Thai boxing develops a mind set, to question the realism of techniques, so if in an arm lock or strangle hold they will test how much they can withstand or how they can get out of a technique. Coming from varied martial arts background I have been taught hundreds of techniques, which are ineffective outside of that particular art. For example the x-block or upper rising block within Karate or Taekwondo are used to block against kicks, however I know that if these blocks were used against a Thai roundhouse kick, then the forearms of the blocker would be shattered, because the blocks are designed to block flick or semi contact kicks. I know this to be true, as I have fractured the forearms of experienced pad men, who are holding specially designed high impact Thai kicking pads. Therefore it teaches Thai students which techniques work and which don’t. Also because Thai boxing is a ring-based art, techniques that don’t work are very quickly dropped from a fighters arsenal.

Q: How can one condition themselves to absorb some of the devastating Muay Thai strikes?

Nick: Firstly I would say that the conditioning to any strike or impact is more mental than physical. If you tell yourself it doesn’t hurt then I doesn’t hurt. Most people don’t really understand pain. In most people’s cases they mistake minor discomfort with pain. When you get someone to do thousands of sit ups, you will hear them say they can’t go on its to painful, but in fact this is a simple muscle cramp. A few seconds rest or an increase in oxygen can have this so-called pain disappear in seconds and be forgotten seconds after that. However what pain actually is, is a automatic defense mechanism which the body introduces to protect itself from harm. If you touch something hot, your body triggers pain receptors to take your hand away and stop further damage. It is the same with strikes. If your body receives a blow where the body doesn’t expect it or hasn’t felt it before, your body will initiate the pain receptor to switch off that limb or extremities so stopping further harm. Therefore if your strike causes confusion in your opponent’s nervous system it will cause paralysis of the effected area or knock them out. The knock out is basically where the body receives massive stimulus that it can’t process fast enough and therefore switches off everything while it figures out what’s happening to it. A coma is an extension of the same principle. If you were involved in a horrific crash, the pain receptors throughout your body are all triggered at the same time. This basically overloads your central nervous system and the failsafe shuts everything down. Then while you are lying there in your hospital bed, your mind is trying to piece together what happened, however if you have undergone surgery the stimuli has once again changed and this leads to the mind asking further questions, which is why most coma patients are almost fully healed when they come out of a long coma, because it takes that long for their mind to put everything back into order. Therefore getting back to the original question of how to condition your body to withstand strikes you simple teach yourself that what these pain sensations are and to disregard them, sometimes this is done through physical means, sometimes through mental or visualization methods. Of course I’m not going to give these secrets away to anyone but my students and to coin a phrase “don’t try this at home”. As the saying goes, “pain is your body’s way of telling you you’re doing something wrong.”

Q: I understand that you caused quite a few serious injuries during your time fighting in the Far East?

Nick: Yes, during my time in Japan I had a number of fights with Japanese kick boxers using oriental rules which allow for leg kicks and during a number of those fights I ended up breaking several of my opponents femur’s from leg kicks, and two opponent’s shins from blocking there kicks with my shin. Though it isn’t something that I’m proud of, as my intention wasn’t to destroy my opponent, in fact because of the breaking and carcass training that I have done over the years I was, if anything, moderate with my techniques, as I didn’t want to risk killing someone by hitting them too hard. After all this is a sport. I wasn’t fighting for my life.

Q: What are your thoughts on the evolution of mixed martial arts?

Nick: in some ways I think it’s good in that it gives people an idea of what combat is actually like, but it is at a very base level. I have watched several of the recent UFC fights on TV and it doesn’t particularly show a great deal of finesse, which is what the early ones did when Royce Gracie etc, were doing their thing, it was more thought out. Now it appears to be more shoot in, work to a guard position and then go for an arm bar or just try and slap each other silly. This is more like a scuffle than a martial art. It is being done in such a way that great arts are being cheapened by people treating techniques like jigsaw pieces. You take some pieces from your wrestling or ju-jitsu picture, and then some from Karate, Kung Fu, Kali, Muay Thai and somehow think there are magically going to fit, well they don’t. I also realize that the grappling and wrestling are now being marketed as the best or the most realistic form of combat, which I think is false. Yes, most fights quickly end up on the ground, however they all start standing up and if you are both good in your delivery of a striking technique and confident in its correct application, you will never have to go to the floor. However, saying that, most people usually aren’t.

Q: What role do you think that Thai boxing has in mixed martial arts?

Nick: You can do what is called cross training, which is where you have a core art like Gracie ju-jitsu and once you have mastered that style you train in Thai boxing to try to improve your kicking or striking skills. This is an add on, and it can only be done to a very slight degree, for the characteristics of each art and style are different. The foot work, balance, fighting range are all key characteristics of each art. In the Jeet Kune Do system, from what I have seen and read, Bruce lee started with a core system (Wing Chun) which is a close range striking art, he then added western boxing (intermediate range) and eventually Kali (also close range), then Thai boxing elements for the kicking elements and then the Korean arts to give the long range and in the case of jumping or spinning techniques the very long range techniques. His system was able to do it because of starting with a close range system and then working ever more outwards, and as they moved to longer reaching techniques so there stance, position and balance changed and evolved. In Thai boxing everything is thrown from one position or stance. If therefore we were to try and do a technique from a huddled or a crouched position the effectiveness of some or all of our techniques would be lost. In the self-protection arena that I have worked in I have ended up occasionally on the ground, wrestling with someone who is out to hurt or kill me. At the end of the conflict we won’t be hugging each other and saying good fight. One of us will get up and leave and the other will lie there and bleed. There are no rules. If someone is trying to arm bar me I will bite, tear, poke, elbow and snap whatever I have to do to survive. If someone shoots in to grab my legs, I’ll drop my elbow on the top of their spine. If I find myself wrestling on the floor with someone who has friends they are likely to come over and try to the kick the stuffing out of me, even if I am in a guard position on top of my opponent. If however I have destroyed my opponent by systematically smashing and damaging every body part of theirs that I have come in contact with, the fight is over and I can move on to dealing with there friends.