Why start martial arts?
As a kid, you first get introduced through the media of course, TV and other sources of information, and of course movies at that time when we’re kids are a really big part of out lives and were inspiring to us. One of the things that inspired me was movies about martial arts and so I started to develop a love for those sports and I believe that those people who used to make those movies in the early days did a really good job in encouraging people because they were presenting it in a way which was appealing, which actually does contribute to the sport, so I do give them credit for their work. That was a big part of my motivation. Then later as I was growing up I actually started quite early training karate, although it was kickboxing which had really inspired me, karate was the only thing available at the time because in the early days combat sports weren’t something like going to the shop and buying bread. It was very hard to gain access to it, so although it wasn’t my first choice, I had to start with karate. Even though I performed well and had good results, I didn’t have a true passion for it, I didn’t find myself in that sport. Many benefits from karate would however transfer later on to kickboxing and when I started boxing, but I simply didn’t have the passion for it which I had for kickboxing. That was my start – first through movies and then through people who were promoted in the local media about their achievements. So I was looking at them training, achieving results, been seen and recognized for what they did as a contribution to society and as a people who were driving people off the street at that time, quite a lot into the gyms and guiding them in the right way. They did a pretty good job in that way because their achievements were inspiring people but also the people who were inspired by them, quite a few of them were guided away from certain negative influences on their lives.
Was there a lot of negative influences around where you lived at that time?
From combat sports or…?
From general society for young people on the streets.
Yeah, quite a lot. At that time in my country it was the 1990s and there were a lot of political problems, and as society deteriorates other things get pulled along with it. A lot of people turn to crime and other activities which are not really something which a decent person likes to see around in their neighbourhood or general society. On the other side of people being inspired by martial arts, unfortunately sometimes people involved in the sport unfortunately go across and send the wrong message. Even though they usually end up being the ones who fall out very quickly, unfortunately because of their personalities and reputation they get a lot of media attention and they manage to send much more negative information around about the sport than the ones who work a hundred times harder than them to promote the sport in a positive way – those people don’t get exposure. The media is sometimes responsible for that, even though they sometimes do a good job, but sometimes a very negative job. Sometimes they will go and straightaway put something bad in a headline as soon as it’s attached to a sport, but if it’s good you really need to achieve very high results in order to gain attention. From that point of view, the media could do a better job.