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2800 Read Muay Thai in UK 25 : CANCELLATION = FRUSTRATION
CANCELLATION = FRUSTRATION
There are many reasons, some of them very good, why fights are cancelled at short notice and also why some fighters are difficult to match. To take the most obvious, training injuries can occur a few days before the fight as easily as three weeks before and trainers are sometimes naturally reluctant to put their fighters in with dangerous opponents.
However, it takes a strong character to train for weeks for a fight, find it’s cancelled at 24 hours notice and then go back into training for the next one – whenever that may be! I guess many fighters, particularly those with other teenage distractions, drift out of Muay Thai because of this. Fortunately, as I’ve found recently, there are plenty who stick with it.
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Jake Jenks
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Billionmore is particularly keen on encouraging youngsters of real promise even if they’ve achieved little so far and last June I picked out Laurene Tue who, as a senior, had achieved precisely nothing – she hadn’t had a fight, though a couple had been planned, then fallen through. I wrote a piece which built up to her first fight – which was cancelled by her opponent on the day! |
I guess it was foolish to try the same thing with Jake Jenks, the brilliant Salford teenager who has achieved more than Laurene had, but is still in his very early days as a senior. When I first saw him, he was on the wrong end of a painful defeat. What a good idea, I thought, to interview him, see him in training, then see how well he came back in his next fight!
So this is what I wrote in January:
There are many ways in which a fighter can impress you even in defeat and at Sandy Holt’s Bolton show in December 2010 Jake Jenks made a great impression on me while losing very clearly on points – and, as he admitted himself, being all but beaten from the end of the first round. His style, confidence and athleticism – and his popularity with the crowd – marked him down as someone to watch whilst Manuel Bloome, who dominated young Jake, just looked a very capable fighter! |
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Rather to my surprise I found that my judgement on Jake was pretty accurate as it turned out that he had been a very successful junior. By his own account he had just over 20 fights, won maybe 18, picked up one or two titles, nothing very big. (His vagueness about his junior career is oddly impressive, proving he’s concentrating on the future, not the past.) As a senior he got off to a dramatic start, with two 1st minute victories. Clearly, after that, he must have been surprised when Manuel didn’t follow the script and go down – and by the end of the 1st round Jake was so exhausted by his efforts to finish the bout that he kept in the fight only on courage, determination and conditioning, and never threatened to win.
I was interested in how Jake would react to the setback, so on the evening of January 18th I found myself in a gym next to a snooker club on the Manchester Road in Walkden watching Salford Muay Thai train. It’s certainly a great place for a serious and dedicated young man like Jake to learn his trade. Darren Morris tells me that, in just over two years of existence, the gym has produced seven champions, with such names as Daitan Jackson and Cassie Robinson on the list. On this Tuesday night Darren had two training sessions one after the other and joining Jake in an exhausting second-session warmup were some 20 fighters, including the likes of Tommy Turbine, Mark Skeer and outstanding junior Hayden Wheeldon. In addition Darren was working with big-name MMA fighters Mike Bisping and Ross Pearson.
Jake proved to be a self-possessed, intelligent and very polite 17-year-old, a student at Eccles College taking AS Levels in Business, PE and Drama, level-headed enough to know what he did wrong in his last fight, seriously claiming he would rather win his next over five rounds in order to get the experience (though I guess he would find another 1st minute knockout exciting enough). He’s ambitious to go to university and to become a World Champion at Muay Thai. This is not said out of arrogance, but because ‘there’s no point in doing something unless you aim to be the best’. In Jake’s case, this means matching the standards of the likes of Jordan Watson, Liam Harrison and – from his own gym – Daitan Jackson.
Jake’s commitment to Muay Thai is impressive. In answer to a question about whether he trains three times a week, he finds it much easier to tot up the days when he doesn’t – Fridays he rests – and sometimes Sundays! And when does he do his AS Level coursework? ‘Well, you have to fit it in’ – and I bet he does. His fourth senior bout is due on the support card for the 8-man show at Sheffield United FC on January 30th. I’d noticed that all the publicity centres wholly on the 8-man, including controversy, real and contrived. At this stage Jake doesn’t even know his opponent less than two weeks before the show. So how does it feel to be ignored?
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 | ‘I’ve got plenty of time to be noticed. For now the objective is to win fights and earn the right to be noticed.’
Jake goes on to point out that any publicity for the 8-man will bring in the crowds, they’ll see him and, if he does well, then they’ll remember his name. I am impressed by everything Jake says and does, but the proof of whether I was right to pick him out at Bolton will come with his January 30th fight.
What fight? Very controversially the whole show was cancelled at a few days’ notice because of a double booking according to the promoters, but not according to hosts Sheffield United. There was so much malicious comment about the promoters that many people (myself included) began to have some sympathy with them – but not nearly as much as for the fighters on the bill who had trained through Christmas! Jake now has only a possible April fight to look forward to.
So I thought I would try to do a column on two young fighters, one of them Jake, and how they were taking to life as seniors. Ryan Coley of Pythons Gym, Birmingham, a Billionmore Hall of Famer, won everything going as a junior, including a WKA World title, but has not found things straightforward as a senior. He won his first fight, but on a disqualification, and suffered a painful shoulder injury. Then he was invited to the Baltic Open Junior championships – and disaster. Looking fit, confident and stylish, Ryan was suddenly caught by his aggressive Latvian opponent and comprehensively knocked out. It’s much to his credit is that the reason I’ve seen this is that Ryan posted it on his facebook page together with a message that he’s looking for a re-match. In fact, as anybody who sees his frantic messages knows, he’s looking for a match of any sort – Ryan is starved of fights!
When Ryan was matched in a show at Benn Hall, Rugby, on February 19th, I decided to make that the conclusion of the article. You can guess what comes next: it’s February 18th and Ryan has just found out that his opponent has pulled out. And, just like Jake, he has the possibility of a fight in April!
Laurene went to Thailand to train in fight in Autumn 2010 and has no plans to return to the UK for several months yet. Her UK senior debut may still be in the future, but she has been generally successful in several fights in Phuket. Not everyone can afford to take a year out (or even wants to), so what next for Jake and Ryan? For now both seem remarkably patient; I just hope their patience is rewarded.
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Ryan Coley
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Laurene Tue
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'Fight photographs by muaythaiphotos.com' |
Last modified : 25 Mar 2011 - 07:25 PM (GMT+7:00) |
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