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.

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Fighting for Fun and for Life... Wednesday, October 9

Every once in awhile, upon telling someone that both my husband and I do professional boxing, someone asks me "When you guys have a couple fight, to you battle it out in the ring?" 

Do I box my husband?!  No.

... I shoot him instead, well now I do.

Today, while out trying to figure out party decorations, we came across a cap gun at a local popular store.  It sat next to some Transformer robots and a beach ball, the kid's section.  Next thing I knew it not only were we buying it but we were also buying as much ammunition as we could pack in our pockets. 

I made Snickers pinky-swear me that he'd refrain from taking this out to tease his buddies with and warned him that I'd head kick him if he did.  Our pinky-swears are pretty legit and though I'd never head kick him, I would overdose his ears with complaining if he did.  We stuck to playing with the cap gun at home but we headed out to a coffee shop out in the country where we thought it funny to throw snappers at each other's feet out on the patio.

It was while we were having fun and filling our bodies with caffeine where I was able to put together a series of text messages between me and one of our club members and two phone calls.  One phone call later and then we dropped everything.  Everything seemed to become instantly insignificant and unimportant.  One of our club members has been MIA at training for a bit because they tried to commit suicide.  This unfortunately isn't the first member of ours that has been in a similar situation; it's actually our second.  Our first encounter of it presented itself in the form of a young person who joined our club shortly after their failed attempt.  They had entered the club bearing obvious wounds on their body to which many members have commented to me about.  This particular person no longer trains at our club but their close relative to which initially called us to discuss their situation still updates us and is hoping their relative returns.  I really do hope they do too and not just because of knowing their personal situation but because they're a great kid and they really took well to our advice and guidance.  As for this second individual, I was really shocked to figure out what had happened because it seemed so randomly out of the blue.  They've changed so much since they first started training with us at Hulk's.  I remember the first time I tried to talk to them, they reacted like an abused animal.  

My whole evening was quick to become all about this particular member and I took it really personal that they had been involved in such a situation.  It's not like there were any signs foreshadowing this because anyone who has met them at the club knows what a complete turn around they have done.  They have really become a new person but it scared me today to know that their past wasn't completely in their past -- they're still very much a hurting soul.  I won't go into the details of what became of my evening but will say I am overly grateful to those friends of mine who I called upon and asked to join me in an intervention.    

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