Thai Boxing: The story of two student fighters

The world of combat sports can be a harsh and unforgiving environment for the athletes who find themselves within it. Amateurs & professionals are constantly in a state of loneliness and dejection due to the rigorous training, frequent injuries, and pain of loss, which at times can leave them questioning if it’s all worth it.

One thing is for certain, not everyone is cut out for a sport with such high demands, however for others, the opposite is true.

 “It sounds a bit crazy, but I love the brutalness of the sport, I think it’s a bit awesome, I just love training, and I love how every time I train, I feel good about myself.”

These were the words of Leeds Beckett student & Thai boxer, Huseyin Yahya, upon being asked what is it that made him continue taking part in the sport after trying out for the club. “I got into Thai boxing because my friend that I go to Uni with actually told me about the society in Leeds, and I’ve always been a fan of boxing, MMA, stuff like that. And I thought it might be time for me to get into something like this and I love it. It sounds a bit crazy, but I love the brutalness of the sport, I think it’s a bit awesome, I just love training, and I love how every time I train, I feel good about myself,” Huseyin said.

Huseyin has been doing Thai boxing for one and a half to two years now and whilst this may seem like a long time, in the grand scheme of things it’s still a relatively short amount of time, as a fighter but says he’s noticed positive changes because of the sport.

“I wasn’t really that aware of Thai boxing for a while. I was aware of MMA and everything, but I didn’t really know about Thai boxing until like four-five years ago, and when I first brought it up, my mum obviously gave the cliché answer, like no don’t do it, I don’t want you to get hurt and all that, and my dad encouraged it, he was like yeah do it, do it, all that stuff.

But I think that they see that I enjoy it now, and they see that I’m getting in better shape and everything and they’re happy that I’m doing it I suppose,” he explained.

Balancing the Grind: Fight preparation amid work overload

The majority of fighters in the Thai boxing club at Beckett will have relatively simple schedules, with only training sessions held during the week. However, a select few who are judged to be experienced enough will participate in exhibition fights, where they will square off against opponents from the University of Leeds.

Huseyin was selected as one of the fighters despite having little experience in real combat in the ring and he was aware of the significant progress he had made from the beginning of his journey to this point, largely because of the university’s support, which he acknowledges.

“If it weren’t for the uni I might’ve not even started Thai boxing, so they’ve played a pivotal role in helping me get to where I am now.

 I’ve always been into boxing, and I’ve been doing boxing for a little bit, but I don’t think I would’ve started Thai boxing potentially if it wasn’t for the Uni,” Huseyin said.

With fights on the horizon for these young fighters, they would commence preparations immediately, which brought about it’s own set of problems and challenges and one student who fell victim to this is, Matis Green, another student fighter who would be representing Beckett University come fight night.

“It can be difficult to balance uni with training, as in order to keep up with both to a satisfactory level, it doesn’t feel like you get much downtime, which can be draining. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a great job of this and fell behind with my uni work during fight camp.  Also, as keen as I am to fight again, I can’t risk not balancing my uni work during exam season, so I likely won’t fight again now until the next uni year starts,” Matis said.

For Matis, his Thai boxing journey involves going through a similar set of experiences to what Huseyin went through, in that he was referred to the sport through a friend and is very thankful to the university for the progress he’s made during the many months of training.

“I’ve been interested in watching MMA for around 8 years, so I went to a Muay Thai session with my friend who did it at the time. I carried on because it was so much fun, and I was instantly obsessed with it.

Obviously, I’m still relatively new having only done it for around 10 months, so l can still see myself constantly improving. If I fought myself from 10 months ago I’d back myself to win with a hand tied behind my back,” Matis said.

The uni has been genuinely amazing and crucial in my development, the training is more affordable than going to a regular gym, our coaches are brilliant and doing it at uni is what made me want to have an actual Muay Thai fight,” he added.

Despite positive signs being shown by those involved in the club, the sport deeply loved by these two students in particular was proving to take a toll on their university life, nevertheless, they managed to endure the struggle, no matter how bad it got.

“I suppose coming up to fight month, it’s quite hectic because I work as well. I work at Wagamama’s and I need money obviously, but I’ve got a couple of assignments coming up and they are quite big assignments, so it’s quite hard finding the balance of the physical work, uni work and then paid work, but I’m managing quite well, I like to go bed early, wake up early, get exercise in early if I can and just make sure I can do whatever I can to improve,” Huseyin said.

“And with a fight in three weeks, what I’m doing to prepare for that is, I’m cutting out drinking, all of the bad stuff, I’ve got to cut weight, got to cut a few kilos. In December I was 92, and right now I’m sitting on about 84 so I’m just taking out all the bad stuff, training really hard and just making sure that after the final bell goes, that I can say I left everything out on the ring, win, lose or draw, as long as I put my heart into it then I’m happy,” he added.

Matis, like every other fighter, will have to prepare for fight night in the same way: they have to work extremely hard in the last two weeks before, weigh themselves regularly (based on their weight class, they may need to gain or lose weight), and follow a rigorous training schedule that is only meant to make sure they are physically and psychologically ready.

“I’ve only had the one fight, and to prepare for it I completely cut out alcohol and stopped eating junk food, and instead ate really healthy food throughout. Also, I did weight training 4 times a week along with training Muay Thai 4 times a week,” Matis explained.

A night to remember

The Leodis Fighting Championship 23/24 event, held at Leeds Beckett University would prove to be a success in every way and was only made possible because of the enormous crowd of parents, family members, all the extra staff and most importantly the fighters who made it all happen.

Events like this are important as they offer these fighters the way to showcase their talent and play a crucial role in their development as they’ll gain real-world experience and career progression by familiarising themselves with what goes on in the professional side of things and no doubt that this will be engrained as a great experience to live and be part of for these fighters.

There were an incredible eleven athletes from Beckett University, seven of whom won and took home gold medals, and four of whom secured their second-place finish with competitors coming from all over the country. 

Despite displaying remarkable skill and tenacity throughout the rounds, Matis and Huseyin finished in second place.
Even though Matis remained composed and easy-going during the first part of the battle, he acknowledges that losing the fight was his undoing, saying that he needs to do better at keeping his cool in future bouts.

“The day of the fight I was extremely calm and felt very good. It wasn’t until walking out to the ring that the nerves started to set in, but when your opponent is gaining the edge over you, it’s extremely difficult to stay calm. You are aware it’s happening when they start to gain momentum and so you feel like you need to do something to stop it but it’s a lot easier said than done and can lead to being more sloppy,” he said.

“Unfortunately, my game plan essentially went straight out the window as I didn’t do a great job of controlling the adrenaline and nerves while I was in there, so l basically fought off instinct.

However, I think I did a good job of moving forward, anticipating and catching his kicks, but I need to improve my ability to keep my composure so that I can be more effective in my attack, which I wasn’t on the night,” Matis added.

On fight day, Huseyin also felt mentally prepared, but he was defeated by his opponent’s modest height advantage as well as his struggles with a minor injury.

“Mentally for the fight I was feeling pretty prepared, but physically maybe a little bit under because I felt like I had a small injury that stopped me from training as much as I should’ve, before the fight as well. But mentally I felt like I was prepared to fight.

It was tricky to stick to my game plan because he was a lot taller than me, so I knew I had to be very defensive at the same time like I had to come in close as well, I had to close the gap between us and get him close and make him feel uncomfortable because he was just a lot taller than me so he could hit me with his legs & arms much easier than I could hit him,” Huseyin said.

“When your opponent is applying pressure it is quite difficult to maintain focus, obviously if he was to kick me in the head or something like that, then I’d just have to shake it off and gage eye contact again and make sure I’m focused on the matter at hand.

Even with all the hardships that come from Thai boxing, many fighters will continue to train and devote their life to a sport such as this one because they love the sport, want to better themselves and their family, and want to grow personally. The challenges are frequently worth it because of the sense of camaraderie, the discipline acquired, and the individual victories in the ring.

For these student fighters, this current period is now a time of rest, reflection and analysis, where they’ll be able to recover and analyse these recent fights to improve the negatives and better themselves for future fights & events.

For Matis, despite only being in the Thai boxing world for a short time, he’s already made his intentions clear on continuing the sport after university.

“I absolutely plan on continuing after university. I love the sport and would like it to be a part of my life indefinitely,” he said.

As for Huseyin, he was very critical of his overall thoughts on his fight and knows what he needs to work on.

“Looking back at the fight I think I need to work on things like flexibility, and applying more pressure to taller opponents because he was a lot taller. I shouldn’t been giving him the space that I was, and I should’ve just got in more,” he explained.