Real Fighters Gym – Throw Back Thursday
One of my fondest memories to date as a coach was taking Lindsay to her first international tournament. In 2007 Lindsay qualified for the WKA USA Team by winning the WKA North American Championships.
For whatever reason, the WKA USA did not take a team that year so we decided to do it on our own. Booked out flights and hotel and just paid a small registration fee once we got there. We went to Germany early and took the train to Holland to finish training.
We started in Amsterdam, training at Mejiro Gym. Rob Kaman was in Amsterdam so we met up with him to sight see and eat amazing Thai food.
We trained every morning at Mejiro Gym. The gym was empty except for us and Andre Mannaart and Andy Souwer. They were preparing for Andy’s next K-1 MAX bout.
It was awesome to be doing our thing alongside these guys while they did their thing! Four days later we headed to Breda to Ramon Dekkers’ gym.
There we finished up our last bit of training and making sure the weight was on. Ramon was training Mike Zambidis for his next K-1 MAX Bout.
Lindsay was getting quite the introduction to kickboxing at the highest level! What made the timing even more interesting is that Souwer and Zambo were fighting each other! It was an amazing trip full of great memories and the best WKA World Championship I have seen yet. I have been digging through my home videos from many years of amazing trips and came across the video I shot that week while Ramon trained Zambo. I’ve never shared it until now. Have a watch and Im sure you will see the structure that makes our gym what it is today. Enjoy the video and as if you never saw the fight between Andy and Zambo find it on Youtube and have a watch!
Ramon Dekkers training Mike Zambidis in 2007.