Fight #1: Where it all began…

My First Fight – Dec 2009

Melina YungThis is where it all started. My very first fight. It was a few weeks before my 30th Birthday, I had been training for fun on and off for around 5 years. I had not even considered there was the whole competitive fighting aspect to Muaythai.

I first started doing martial arts when I was 18. I did boxing for a short while, which I really enjoyed. My young party life got in the way, so I didn’t stick it out for long. When I was 24 I decided to get back into Martial Arts. I had a friend who was a Ninjtisu Sensei, so I went along to one of his classes. It wasn’t for me, I had no patience for the learning aspect of it, I just wanted to get in there and start sweating it out. I checked out Capoeira, but again it wasn’t my “thing”. I tried a couple boxing circuit classes and again felt like I wasn’t getting much out of it. I really wanted to learn technique at the same time as getting a good work out. So toward the end of 2004 I walked into my first Muaythai Gym. As soon as I walked in I felt this was more my “thing”. My first instructor was Adam “Aggressor” Houlahan. I’ll always remember the first question he asked me was “Why do you want to do Muaythai”, without thinking my first response was “Because I like hittin’ S#!$”. So for about the next 7 months I loved it, I quickly became good mates with the guys at the gym. Back then the gym was Boonchu and was in Mermaid on the Gold Coast.

By mid 2005 I had already planned a trip backpacking around the world so headed off and did a few random classes overseas here and there. I came back briefly in 2007 and by then Boonchu had moved to Miami, I came back for about 4 months where I trained under John Wayne Parr and Angie Parr, before heading back off overseas again.

Jason Hawker, Melina Yung & Clayton Collyer
Jason Hawker, Melina Yung & Clayton Collyer

When I returned from overseas in 2008 Boonchu had moved to Burleigh and the Miami premises became Masa Gym (later known as Miami Fight Centre) where I then trained under Jason Hawker and helped closely by Danny Maksacheff and Clayton Collyer. In 2009 Jason had asked me if I would be keen to have a fight. I hadn’t even thought this was something I could do, I figured, why not test myself with everything I had learned over the years. So with the guidance of Jason and Clayton I made the decision just to have 1 fight as a challenge and that was as far as I thought I would go.


Watch my fight here:

Opponent: Elisha (First Strike Gym)
Weight: 63kgs (aprox)
Show: Heat in the Hills | Brisbane
Result: Win

  2 comments for “Fight #1: Where it all began…

Leave a Reply to Best Friend Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *