Photo by Ida Braatan, used under Creative Commons licence.

We’ve been talking a lot about winning. But my fighting career wasn’t all winning. I can still remember my first – and worst – knock out.

My first time at the French Open Championship, I won the first round – got through quite easily, in fact. Then I was facing my second opponent. I knew he had a very fast spinning kick in his repetoire. He’d knocked a few people out that way.

My coach advised me to go forward in the match – but watch out for that kick. So I started attacking not defending, watching carefully…and the next thing I knew,I was down.  It happened so suddenly. It felt as if I was at the bottom of a swimming pool.

The kick had landed so fast that I hadn’t seen it coming. I was down and the referee was counting.

I looked to my corner for advice, so I looked. I saw that I was being motioned to take my time and recover before I got to my feet. So I stayed down and tried to listen to the referee’s count.

1, 2, 3… then somehow he seemed to miss out 6 and 7 and 8… and now he was saying 9, then 10.. and I had been counted out.

Everything still seemed to be underwater. Somehow I struggled to my feet and said to to ref, “I’m ok”. But the ref had different ideas: he said to me firmly, “not you’re not, you’re out”.

I was so completely dazed that I’d not heard the count properly. I really couldn’t continue, even if I’d wanted to.

I’d received a hard spinning kick to the side of my head. To get knocked out in a tournament like that set me back mentally. I’d never been wiped out before and it was hard to deal with.

I discussed what had happened with my father. I even said I was thought of stopping. But Dad just said to me: “great is not the man who stands firm and never gets knocked down. Great is the man who is knocked down and rises again”  He told me to stand up and get back in the next competition.

And of course, dad was right, I trained harder after that. I trained to do flash spins before attacking, to make myself harder to see. I knew that I needed to be sharper and faster than the guy I was fighting.  

I learned that failing gives us the tools we need to succeed. Above all, I learned to Never Quit