It’s always training with my teammates, now more than ever. Boxing is an individual sport, fair enough, but here at UP Boxing Club we’ve got a tight little group going on and almost everyone in this elite group are professional boxers or at least aspiring professional boxers.
Our team numbers are dwindling though. With teammates getting older and taking on additional roles in their personal lives – husband, father, sole breadwinner, and so on – our once very active team that dominated UP Boxing Club and was always present at training is now not so. Boxing in Korea is a young man’s sport and already in my four years here at UP Boxing Club I’ve had a couple of my teammates retire, like Panty Boy Jr., Handsome Boy and Milk Dud. The Heavy Hitter and Snickers have been added to the team in the past couple of years, but Black Skinny remains the strong captain of us all. He is the heart of the team but with the shocking unexpected loss in his last fight, questions about whether or not that was his last fight still are brought up at UP.
Tonight I walked into UP and there before me was Black Skinny. Black Skinny had brought his son, Little Skinny Mini, to training so I joked around with him, asking him if Little Skinny Mini would be carrying on his name in the ring.
“Yes, I want” was his response.
Little Skinny Mini was very curious with his father’s training, insisting that I give him a skipping rope so that he can try to skip. Of course the club doesn’t have a skipping rope short enough for knee high mini-Koreans but he tried hard with the rope I gave him. When he continually stumbled with the skipping and once too many times accidently stepped into someone else’s skipping rope, Black Skinny stepped in and insisted he watch ringside. So for the rest of his father’s training Little Skinny Mini sat ringside and watched his father train.
When I was done my training I joined Little Skinny Mini, slipped on my boxing gloves onto his itsy-bitsy hands. The gloves swallowed up his hands and went well past his elbows. And just when I was about to blurt out “You’re so cute” he jumped forward and gave me a good hook. His hook didn’t hit me in the head like a hook should but then again he barely comes to my waist, so I took a good hook to the hip bone… and it didn’t stop there. He bounced back with a 1-2-hook combo and then a head butting that pretty much took me out considering where it landed, need I say more.
“Minus point!” I yelled out.
Little Skinny Mini may be but only knee high and weigh in well under the weight of one of my legs but this mini Korean can pack a punch and he knows how to do a 1-2-hook combo… pretty impressive. And as for the shots he gave below the belt… yup, he may be a dirty fighter but he’s definitely got fighter in him. Must be those genes Black Skinny gave him!!!
As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).
After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.
Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.
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