I first saw Muay Thai on Euro Sport. What I saw was amazing; a full contact ring sport that incorporated boxing with knees, shin kicks, elbows, and defensive work.

The next day I found a Muay Thai club at the Rainbow Leisure Centre in Epsom. The club was called Jakapong, and was run by a Thai man who called himself Master Boon. He claimed that he had left Thailand and set up the Jakapong club fifteen years before, describing himself as the number three Thai trainer in the whole of Thailand and chief instructor to the Thai army. Being completely new and inexperienced in Muay Thai at this stage, I was immediately impressed with Master Boon, and felt lucky to have found such a famous Master only a mile from my own home.

Within six months of training at Jakapong, I became the best Thai boxer in the club, and within two years he had promoted me to a red Khan instructor, claiming that the reason for this was my previous martial arts experience. Still lacking in Muay Thai knowledge at this point, my suspicions of Boon were still dormant.

On 7th June 1992, Boon had me entered into a fight. The night before, however, he showed up at my house and took me to the Gas Club in Epsom, persuading me that a drink would help me to relax as well as make me stronger for the fight the next day. I did not question my instructor and had one drink, but Boon continued to consistently bring me drink after drink until I was completely inebriated. This is the point where alarm bells began to ring.

After waking up the next day suffering from a terrible hangover, I boarded a coach in Epsom heading for Maxim’s Nightclub in Wigan, Manchester, where the fight was being held. My opponent was Shawn Johnson, an experienced fighter with some of the greatest Thai trainers in this country in his corner; Master Toddy, Master A and Master Pices. As I went to get ready, Boon alleged that he had forgotten to bring bandages, proceeding to improvise by wrapping my hands with two rags, securing them with brown box tape.

When the fight started, I suddenly realised that I did not know the first thing about competing in Muay Thai. I could strike a pad, but lacked Thai style and body conditioning, nor was I ever taught to grapple. I was about to face the worst nightmare of my life.

Every knee that Johnson threw elevated me from the canvas, and every kick he threw landed on the head, jaw or thighs. I was lucky to see it through two rounds with only two broken ribs, ripped thighs, a black eye, a bruised jaw and a headache that lasted around eight weeks. Despite this devastation, the hardest thing to come to terms with was the realisation that I had just wasted three years of dedicated training with one of the worst cowboys in Muay Thai that this country has ever seen.

After the healing was over, I began training at the Thai temples in Wimbledon and Manchester, where one Sunday I met Sammit Murnramon. I spent some time speaking to him about Muay Thai, and he invited me to start training with him at his Bangrajan camp in Kent. That very evening, I began my training there. After telling Sammit that I was supposedly a red Khan who had been training for three years, he requested that I showed and told him everything I knew. I did, and he responded with a laugh, stating that I would now start again from the beginning.

I started training with Sammit for three group classes per week, as well as private training in the daytime. Within only two months of this level of training, I had learnt more than I had learnt in all my years of other martial arts training, and the improvement was not stopping. Sammit brought his brother over from Thailand to train us, as well as his visiting friends who were Thai boxers. I soon became so confident that I started to fight again. After training with Sammit and his brother, I never got beaten again; as a Thai boxer or a doorman working some rough nightclubs. In fact, I then only lost one fight in the UK upon a controversial decision.

Just when I started to feel content with my training and thought that my career could be nearing an end, Sammit brought over Bonart Krongsak, six-times Lumpini Stadium champion and three-times world champion, who had defeated much heavier opponents such as Rob Kaman. Sammit arranged private lessons between us, where Krongsak truly delivered a champion’s knowledge and training.

I was then asked to represent England as the light heavyweight in the 1998 King’s Cup in Thailand. Although I knocked my first opponent out in the second round, I sustained a couple of injuries from the fight. When I entered my second fight with Holms, a double silver medalist from Sweden with over two hundred fights, I broke my foot in the second round and carried on fighting until the end of the fourth round when the referee stopped the fight after seeing the horrific damage to my toes.

Despite the fact that I did not win the fight with Holms, it brought more enjoyment than the fights in which I was victorious, delivering an incredible rush from the skill and power that I had demonstrated.

After returning from Thailand, the students from my own club asked me to start training them five nights a week to prepare them for their own fight careers, so I decided to give up my fight training in order to fulfill this request.

I will always remember Jan Hart, Sammit Murnramon and his brother, Bonart Krongsak and the Bangrajan camp for teaching me the true meaning and spirit of Muay Thai, and I will never forget that the success of Scorpions is an extension of Sammit’s own success.

Anybody reading this that has trained with and gotten hurt by a cowboy of our fantastic sport should always remember that is no such thing as a bad student, only a bad instructor. This is not to say that fighting is for everyone, but an instructor’s job is to train his or her students until they are ready for the fight in hand, so even if the result does not go their way, at least they were given a fair chance and had an enjoyable experience, something that everyone deserves.

Kru Mark Wakeling