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.

Thursday, November 08, 2018

Happy to Help... Thursday, November 8

I've been training, coaching and working on a limited night's worth of sleep and today it finally caught up on me.  Coach Marcelo killed me at boxing and I couldn't, for the life of me, get up enough strength to go to rugby training.  I was exhausted -- next level exhausted!!!

By 9pm, I was in bed.

Great news, Coach Marcelo has a fight coming up.

Bad news though, he doesn't have any proper gear to train or even fight in.

Both myself and Skittles have decided to sponsor him.

I can't afford to buy him gear BUT I do have gear of my own that I could give him.  I have gear that resulted from my design prototypes so I'm going to give him a pair of my 14oz gloves.  He needs new gloves for sparring so viola.  I've already have given him a free pair of my 12oz Exclusive Slay gloves that my company Empowered sells and I've also given him handwraps.  

He also needs boxing boots. 

Boxing boots tend to be both hard to find and super expensive to purchase.

Skittles has decided to sponsor him via The Refined and I'm absolutely so proud that he's doing this because it's way beyond what I'd ever expect from him.  Coach Marcelo is an amazing coach and he's a super talented fighter, but he doesn't exactly make minimum wage.  He doesn't complain about it though because he's a simple guy.  He loves his job, loves his girlfriend, and as long as he has his job and his girl he's happy.  Honestly, if my company wasn't women-only, I'd hire him in a second.  I'd hire him and Coach Bogs from Elite Boxing, Makati.  Both coaches are amazing and they both go way beyond what's expected from them as coaches.  

To hear that Coach Marcelo has a fight is awesome but to hear that he doesn't have proper gear was rather heartbreaking.  I spent a chunk of my evening looking up boxing boots online and going to the one sports store I know in BGC that sells boxing boots.  I'm not sure when Skittles will be presenting Coach Marcelo with his boxing boots but tomorrow I'm bringing him a pair of 14oz sparring gloves and some BCAAs.  I figure it's the very least I can do to help him and, honestly, what's the point of having so much boxing equipment if it's not being used.  

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