Find a way

Photo by Grace_mac, used under Creative Commons licence.

So here’s a true story, about me when I was a fighter and a champion. It’s about what happened when things didn’t go right.

When I walked into a tournament believing I’d won, and already having seen myself win, I walked in with a huge advantage. I’d seen myself with my hands raised and the gold medal going around my neck. I’d seen it happen already. I’d imagined it. It was real to me. Then I went in there and executed it. That worked – a lot of the time.

But not always. Sometimes things didn’t always go so smoothly.

My last international fight before retirement was the French Open Championship in 1989. The end of my international career was a very big deal to me, and made me more nervous before the fight than I would otherwise have been. So I trained very, very hard, and even invited my great friend and mentor, Master Kim Koren, who was based in Belgium, to come to France to train with me. I worked and worked in the week leading up to the tournament, But I was still extremely nervous.

There was no stepping down from this tournament

Somehow, during that week, in all my nervous anticipation, I kicked Kim’s elbow and ended up with a haematoma on my foot (that means there was a collection of blood outside the blood vessels). It was very painful and it made it hard for me to train. But there was no stepping down from this tournament.  

The fight seemed to begin well. Then – I caught my opponent’s elbow with my injured foot. The swelling began to increase and suddenly I was in agony. I knew I was in trouble.

But I’d got two arms and another foot.

So using the parts of my body which still remained ready to fight, I decided to approach this fight another way: instead of going for a knock-out, I would aim to win on points. I’d attack to get a point, then fight defensively to block his retaliation and try to close him down (this is called ‘smothering’).

I stayed positive. I found a way.

So I scored a point, then smothered him, scored again, smothered again, over and over – until I won on points.

About an hour later, when the elation of my victory subsided, very bad pain did kick in again, and I realised I’d have to go to hospital. It turned out I had a cracked bone in my instep.

I’m not recommending that you injure yourself. But I did stay positive – and I found a way.

Training isn’t just about training your body, making your muscles stronger, developing your skills. It’s about attitude.