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.

Friday, March 08, 2013

Packing the Double P and some Ninja Moves... Friday, March 8


I felt like a ninja, seriously, pulling myself up into the ripped out ceiling and then waiting for them to leave.  They never left but instead they found me.  Pulling me down from the ceiling and letting me crash some 8-9 feet, my entire body shook with rage.  And then I laughed.

I laughed at the irony of the whole situation – a boxing club yet to open but already hosting it’s first fight.  I had caught my “opponents” off guard, as did my “teammate” (aka my "tenant").  Each of us not expecting the other to be there that day but there we were, all of us together. 

The scene that played out was like a scene out of some old school Jackie Chan movie or that of a comic book.  Me, assumed to be the damsel in distress, but proving not to be, and my “tenant” proving to be quite the faithful sidekick, with a broken soju bottle as his weapon of choice. 

I can now say I have officially given blood, sweat and tears to my boxing club. I have the three stitches to prove it and one majorly messed up face of my "tenant" to account for it too.  

This all went down earlier this week and by Friday I was still very ticked about it so I showed up late Friday evening, ready to confront who I assumed had sent me my opponents.  I stood there for about 20minutes, on the street corner, feeling like I could breath fire and kill with my death stare.  I didn’t really know what I was going to say to this person but I knew what I was going to do.  I went there with intentions of taking anything and everything that belonged to me and all that had any connection to Snickers and I.  I wanted to rid this person's place of all traces of me.  I wanted to be nothing more than a past memory to them; I wanted to be dead to them. 

I never did go beyond the second floor stairs.

There gets a point where things just click in your head, when you go far and it’s too far.  Where you catch yourself and realize that this is not you.  I caught myself there and told myself that I was no better than them if I were to take it to the next step.

Earlier on in the day I had stepped in to stop a street fight between Snickers and a local shopkeeper.  What started off as a simple argument about a parking spot quickly escalated when the young shopkeeper threw a metal makeshift pylon at our car and swore at Snickers.  Snickers grabbed this guy by the scuff of his collar and smashed him against the shop window.  I ended up separating the two and telling Snickers the guy was just not worth it.  With Snickers and I both holding pro boxing licenses, getting into a street fight could easily land us in jail.  More importantly though, I strongly believe that lowering yourself to someone’s level like that really makes you no better than them, even if you think they are wrong. 

As I stood in the stairwell tonight, I remembered what I had told Snickers earlier today.  “It doesn’t matter who starts and who finishes, you’re both the same – both wrong.”  I wasn’t about to lower myself even if I thought I was in the right to do so, I’ll leave it to karma, and on that note I went home.

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