In response to my posting yesterday, a fellow foreign pro boxer here in Korea wrote the following:
"...why does such situation persist???" Because it makes almost everyone happy. The Korean fighter gets a 'W' and a payday, the visiting fighter (usually from a less-fortunate country) gets a payday, the Korean audience gets to see a Korean fighter win, the sponsors get a happy audience, the promoter gets $, and the sanctioning body gets its sanctioning fee. The only people that don't like it are the fight fans, and we're in the minority. All those people watching the fights at the venue, and at home on TV? They're not "fight fans". They're "Korea fans".
He hit the nail right on the head; he was definitely right. They are Korea fans, not fight fans, and that's the problem. I am a fight fan. I ended up getting into quite the lengthy conversation about yesterday's fight with a fellow boxer owner here in Cheonan. It was really interesting to get his perspective because he is a Korean but he too agreed and he ended the conversation by summing it up and saying, "This is Korea, they are Korean and they have Korean pride." Yes, Korean pride... exactly.
I actually met with this specific person to discuss other business today and not just boxing business. There are nine boxing clubs here in Cheonan, so eight others besides Hulk's, and four of them are owned and operated by good friends of ours. We are friends but we're also business associates and a means of contacts for each other. Back in our renovation days, one of them taught us how to build our own boxing ring while another bought us our boxing round bell. The group of us are rather tight considering, and anytime any foreigner walks into one of the four clubs, word gets back to me. I really don't know why they always tell me but I do get a good kick out of it. Last week some random foreigner walked into a boxing club in Ssangyong-Dong and my manager friend called me up. "Amy, there's a foreigner here, what do I do?!" he asked and then just like that the phone got passed to the foreigner. Turns out the foreigner didn't actually speak much English, he was from South-Central Asia, so I ended up speaking Korean with him.
Today we had a couple of business things to discuss, one being the need for some foreign teachers and the other being the up coming Day At the Races, Round Three (the Cheonan Sanglok Marathon). I'm trying to get one of my good friends/fellow Cheonan boxing coach to join us at the event and bring some of his boxers with him. It'd be a lot of fun for us two boxing clubs to do the event together because they have been with us since the start of Hulk's, supporting us and helping our dream become a reality.
Recently we've been approached by an outside company that is interested in joining forces and have their group of runners join our Hulk runners at the event hosted by the city of Cheonan. At first we simply giggled at their suggestion, not knowing that they were actually serious about it and would become quite persistent. The company is like us in that they too are also in the fitness and health industry but they are more so directed towards dieting. I'm all for clean eating but I don't support dieting. Dieting is a short term fix with short terms goals, where as clean eating is a change in lifestyle that looks at long term goals and maintaining a new mentality associated with eating -- eating healthy. A few months ago this particular company walked into Hulk's and asked if we wanted to partner up with them. They'd deal with the eating part of the equation if we took care of the training component. This would mean an automatic clientele, with them directing many their clients to our club. However, it also would mean we wouldn't exactly be supporting the mentality we support -- the connection between clean eating and training as keys to a healthy active lifestyle. The responsibility of teaching clean eating awareness to our members would be taken out of our hands and handed over to them to bombard members with their over dependency on juicing, prepackaged controlled meals, and questionable dieting. It was an easy decision for me with deciding to not go with them, for the simple fact that I refuse to support anything I don't agree with, even if it'd pay our bills nicely. At the end of the day I have to be proud of what I'm doing and right now being able to do what I'm passionate about and believe in is worth a hell of a lot more than someone paying me to sell their idea.
But now they're back....
They heard that we're taking a large group of runners to the Cheonan Sanglok Marathon and so they've asked if our group could join theirs. At first we simply said no but they came back with some nice bribes -- a rented bus to take our runners to the race location, free t-shirts for our runners, and free full tracksuits for those who are volunteering and for us coaches. Additional bonuses were brought up, money-related perks, and I must admit it did cause my eyebrow to raise. We are still a new business and the extra bonuses would really help us out, a lot. It would mean we would finally get us those second-skin long sleeve tops that we keep on meaning to buy but just don't have the extra cash to purchase.
If I'm going to wear anyone's name on my back it's going to be that of my own -- Hulk's. And just like it was hard to say no to Adidas after all the years of them sponsoring me, I just had to. They wanted to paint their stripes all over our club and give our own name second priority. But wearing someone else's name was never in my dream. It was never "big them" plus "little us". It was always just "us". If there's anyone's name that I'd be proud and willing to put with mine it'd be that of WOW Motors and not because he's our financial sponsor but because he's become our more involved mentor, beyond that of business. So no, we're not going to be having their business join ours. If they weren't there helping us literally scoop poop off our dirty club floors back in our renovation days then they've got no business jumping in on our success. WOW was there and he still is here, that's why I our club wears his name proudly.
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