Wow what an amazing feeling! I had the opportunity to fight one of Australia’s toughest fighters for the prestigious WMC AUSTRALIAN TITLE in Sydney. Leonie is a strong and experienced fighter and it was an honour to step into the ring with her.
This was my first fight back in almost 12 months and it felt awesome to be in there again! I loved every minute of this fight! Check it out here…
Watch my fight here:
Opponent: Leonie Macks (Sitshoothon) Weight: 61kgs – weighed in at 60.4kgs Show: Siam 2 Sydney | WMC Australian Title Fight Date: September, 2016 Result: Loss – UPD
This fight is by far one of my favourite fights to date. Not just because of the outcome, but also because of how it made me feel afterwards. WATCH FIGHT HERE
Prelude:
After my previous fight, I took a few months off from fighting as I had quit my full time IT job after being with my employer for a total of 9 years (in between travelling the world), I had also started focusing on building my own business called Nationally Registered Fighters (Australia) which I was really excited to get off the ground, at the same time I was also studying part time in a Business Management Course so I really needed to find a job that would allow me to do all of this, plus force me to train. I was offered some Part Time work to help out my friends at Urban Fight Gym. I was finding it hard to motivate myself to turn up for training at 350 Fitness, as I kept filling in all my time with working and studying. So to force myself to get back to fight training, I made the very tough decision to move from 350 Fitness Boxing & Muay Thai Gym over to Urban Fight Gym.
It was quite an emotional time as my trainer is such a good friend of mine, but what made it that little bit easier was the fact I was going to both our good mates gym. Urban Fight Gym is a “sister” gym to 350, this being because the owner and head trainer of Urban Richard Walsh was Claytons trainer when he was a fighter growing up. They are not just friends but more like brothers to one another, so the fact that I was staying “in the family” was a bit easier to transition across. I also now had NO excuse for missing training because I was now there for work so couldn’t make up any reasons for why I was “too busy working” to make it to training!
I had already trained at Urban in the past, when my gym old closed down and while Clayton was in the process of opening 350 Fitness, not to mention I had known Richie & Melissa Walsh for almost 10 years by that stage, and the fact that I now worked there, it meant that I was instantly comfortable training there full time.
World Champions Nathan “Carnage Corbett” & Caley Reece (on right) at the NRF Stall with me & my bestie
This brings us to April 2013, I got started in to my new fight training regime with Richie. By September a fight had come up on a bigger show, No Surrender. It was a bit daunting knowing the size of the crowds that No Surrender get, so I was excited to be on a show like this. I had also agreed to have my Business (NRF) have a stall at the show, which in hindsight was silly to commit to working at the same show I was fighting on!
World Champions Nathan “Carnage Corbett” & Caley Reece signing at the NRF Stall
I got to the show early to set up my stall, I’d also organised to have Caley Reece & Nathan “Carnage” Corbett signing posters for their fans at the NRF stall as well so I made sure I had everything organised for them. Once I’d set everything up, Caley and Nathan were awesome enough to keep an eye on my stall while I went out the back to start to prepare for my fight.
Going into this fight I felts so confident and comfortable. After the fight I honestly didn’t even feel like it was me in there fighting, it literally felt like I was being remote controlled by Richie. He has such an amazing eye in the corner and just as I was about to step in to the ring, Melissa Walsh (who is a former champion and Richies Wife) said to me “Just listen to Richie, whatever he tells you to throw, do it as soon as he says it”. So that was the last thing I heard before I got in there and boy did it work a treat. I didn’t have to worry about anything else in this fight, other than listening, this made it so much easier to concentrate on my breathing and moving around because Richie literally did all the rest with his instructions!
After this fight I was so blown away with the support I received and the best part of it all was I was offered Sponsorship by PUNISH FIGHT GEAR. I couldn’t believe it! The only other Female Fighter they sponsor is Caley Reece and they have been long time sponsors of 11 x World Champion Nathan “Carnage Corbett”, as you can imagine I was absolutely over the moon to have the support of such an awesome company who had the belief in me that I could go far in this sport.
Also listening back to the commentary in this fight (see video below) really opened my eyes to the potential I had, I hadn’t really heard anyone say anything about my fighting so everything that happened in this fight just made me want to try and push myself further in Muay Thai! So thank you commentators Richard Jensen & Brad Hull on your kind words (and funny comments!)
This fight is definitely one that I will always cherish. Massive thank you to everyone who was involved, before, during and after. You guys helped me in ways you can’t even imagine!
Watch my fight here:
Opponent: Laura Kanerva (Nukzu Gym) Weight: 60kgs – weighed in at 59.5kgs Show: No Surrender 5 | Brisbane Date: September, 2013 Result: Win – UPD
My fourth fight was at the end of 2012, in Brisbane, I was training and fighting out of 350 Fitness – Boxing & Muay Thai Gym with Clayton Collyer.
As this was only my 4th time in the ring, I was still very new to everything, what I learnt from this fight was I really needed to work on getting my range right. I spent the majority of this fight beating up the air around me, instead of my opponent…and boy did i get that air good!
My opponent & I at weigh in
I weighed in at 62.2 with my opponent weighing in at 63.1. I was so excited to have actually weighed in way under this time. It was all with the help of my good friend Melissa Walsh, who is a qualified Nutritionist and Naturopath. Melissa helped me with a great weight cutting nutrition plan, which was easy to follow and got me awesome results!
After 2 losses in a row it felt great to get my 2nd win! So much for having thought I was only going to have 1 fight, then I changed my mind and thought i’d have 3 fights, but after coming away with losses for my 2nd and 3rd fights it made me want to learn more and try again for the win. So reaching my new goal was great. However, it also only made me hungrier for more fights!
Sept 2012: For this fight our game plan was to kick more and move. In my previous fights I probably punched a lot more, but we knew my opponent was big on the hands, so we thought to counter that, I should not try to stand and trade, but instead use my legs more and move. But being that this was only my third time in the ring, it hadn’t yet occurred to me, that when your trainers says to do more of something, it doesn’t mean don’t do other things as well haha…so I spent a lot of this fight trying to stop myself from wanting to punch instead of letting my hands go and then following with kicks…. lesson learnt as this turned out to be my first (and so far only) 8 count i’ve had put on me.
Bridie hit me flush hard in the face with a right in the 3rd round. It was a clean and hard punch by Bridie. This was the first time i’ve experienced a concussion in a fight. I couldn’t work out why the ref (Brad Vocale) was standing in front of me….he was putting a count on me and I was thinking, why are you over here? what happened?
I couldn’t work it out. I got back to my feet and continued the fight. I couldn’t hear anything and I was seeing stars – like lots of little white light spots and everything was blurry. I continued to fight the rest of the round as if I was extremely drunk. I kept moving, but my legs kept giving way on me each time I moved. I couldn’t seem to get my feet back under me.
It’s strange what goes through your head at times like this…all I was thinking was “oh wow, this is what it feels like” I wasn’t focused on anything except being amazed and interested in what this was feeling like!
As soon as the bell rang at the end the fight, the first thing that immediately came out of my mouth, I said to Bridie…”what was that? What did you get me with?” I had no idea what had happened still. It’s a really weird feeling.
Apologies the sound doesn’t work on this video, so it’s kind of like a mime fight? Maybe make your own background noises while I get punched in the face and show my terrible fighting skills! haha
My second Muay Thai fight was in May 2012. This was almost 2 and a half years after my first fight. The big gap in between was due to me being a clutz and continually injuring myself! Firstly in 2010 I sprained my ankle out one night, really badly, so much so, that I couldn’t walk on it for almost a month and had to get crutches. Me, being me, didn’t seek any sort of rehabilitation, just continued to try to limp around on it for a few months (including me squeezing my swollen foot into heels and going out dancing still!). By the time I finally saw a Physio, he told me if I had of come in 3 months earlier, I would have had a quicker recovery. So on went the long haul of trying to get movement in my ankle again. Then the next injury was my lower back…I did a “scorpion” whilst doing a cartwheel one night being stupid with my friends (for those who don’t know what a scorpion is, its when you have an accident, almost into a reverse somersault and your feet touch your head – looking much like a Scorpion). Again, I did nothing to aid recovery just continued to act like I didn’t have an injury, then I did the same thing when I fell off my board surfing (well trying to surf anyway) – Double Scorpion! Ow!
Finally in 2011 I was on the road to recovery and started training again. By this time my Gym Masa/Miami Fight Centre had closed it’s doors and one of the trainers, Clayton Collyer went out on his own and formed 350 Fitness. So training begun once again and by May 2012 Clayton had a fight lined up for me on the Gold Coast.
There are 2 fights, so far, that are my favourites. This was one of them. I learned SO much from this fight with Kat, she was super strong and fit…where as my fitness was lacking. Part way through the second round I had used all my energy and was so exhausted. By the 3rd round I had nothing, Kat was so fit and just fighting really strong the whole time. All I can remember thinking in that last round was “WHEN THE HELL IS THAT BELL GOING TO RING” it felt like forever and I was so tired, I wasn’t even really thinking much by the end just wishing for the bell to ring so I could breathe again….this fight also made me realise how important breathing is! I looked like a puffer fish! I pretty much held my breathe the entire fight!
The reason why I loved this fight so much was because of my opponent. Kat fought really well and she taught me so much that night. Not to mention the leg chops on this girl killed my leg. I couldn’t even walk out of the ring on my own and had to get a “Man Chariot” out the back to get around.
My Man Chariot…
Watch my fight here:
Opponent: Kat Simpson (Boonchu Gym) Weight: 63kgs (weighed in at 62.65kg) Show: JWP Tomorrow’s Champions | Gold Coast Date: May 2012 Result: Loss
Finally in 2011 I was on the road to recovery and started training again. By this time my Gym Masa/Miami Fight Centre had closed it’s doors and one of the trainers, Clayton Collyer went out on his own and formed 350 Fitness. So training begun once again and by May 2012 Clayton had a fight lined up for me on the Gold Coast.
