K1 IN GREECE  - BEING A CHAMPION By RON SIMPSON

It’s a great thing being a World Champion: no doubt you can zoom around in a smart new sports car and take your leisure by the pool whenever your training permits. Maria won the WKA K1 World title at 60 kg in March, but it’s not like that at all. She alone knows the secret of how to coax her battered Peugeot into life, and its dented door from two years ago remains unhealed. In between her own training sessions, Maria is constantly on the road teaching lessons, often until 10 or 11 at night. I suspect that no Muay Thai or K1 champion will be much surprised at this: title success often has little effect on the pocket.

Maria’s opponent on Iron Challenge was Rossella Setti, a young Italian whom Maria was definitely favourite to beat, but no easy opponent. In December Maria, adopting over-cautious tactics, lost to Rossella. Though the result was widely thought by the audience (including myself) to be a wrong decision, it had been a close enough contest to make that decision possible. Now world champion, Maria felt pressure to avenge this defeat: more than once our conversation consisted of Maria saying anxiously, ‘I must win on Saturday’ and me, sounding calmer than I felt, agreeing, but turning ‘must’ into ‘will’.

However, it’s not so easy concentrating on your training when there’s a living to earn. I guess those champions who combine careers as professional kickboxers or Muay Thai fighters with full-time employment may have it even worse, but spending time with Maria in the week before the fight made two things clear: rest time doesn’t exist until the day of the fight and Maria knows exactly what is demanded of a champion. There are so many sets of initials awarding titles (and sometimes at odd weights) that it’s impossible to say who is the best fighter in the world, but I have no doubt that nobody takes on the role of champion with more charm, intelligence, seriousness and warmth than Maria Pantazi.

Even going to the Greek National Opera on a Saturday night saw us rushing in at the last minute because of Maria’s work commitments and a glorious family celebration of St. George’s Day (a day early on Sunday) finished early for Maria before a gruelling training session with her excellent and demanding coach, George Tselis, was followed at 8.30 by a two-hour Yoga lesson with a private pupil! (Maria teaches Yoga and Pilates as well as kickboxing.)

Operating without a full-time job in the perpetual financial crisis that is Greece is not easy, but Maria has gained some security by working frequently at the Zambidis Club. This is the newly opened gym run by and for Iron Mike Zambidis, promoter of the Iron Challenge and the only Greek kickboxer to be a national celebrity. The splendidly equipped gym in the North of the city at Halandri makes much of his celebrity with its huge trophy cabinet full of his belts and cups and on Monday, after a full day of training and lessons, Maria returned there to start an equally full evening. I don’t know how Maria would rate working with professional fighters, but as a coach of beginners she is outstanding. In a private lesson with four tired businessmen (well, they were tired after an hour of this!), she was demanding, inventive, encouraging and amusing – ‘I am always acting when I am teaching’, she says – and she does it very well.

Maria also takes seriously her responsibility to her sponsors, Team Iron Barbie and what may be called ‘the Pantazi Brand’. From the Zambidis Club she headed to a shopping mall to spend her money on personalising t-shirts for herself and George, plus the cute white satin robe provided by her Greek sponsors, Top Ten – keeping the name ‘Pantazi’ and the nickname ‘Iron Barbie’ before the public is not vanity, but sound common sense. Her attitude to her glamorous pink sequinned shorts from Billionmore was equally sensible: privately she thought they were a bit over the top for Iron Barbie (though she changed her mind after the fight when everyone told her how beautiful she looked – and she did!), but she described them as ‘perfect television shorts’! And then it was time (nearing 10 o’clock) to help Billionmore by fixing an interview for Hall of Fame with her friend, boxer Jenny Tasidoy – who, incidentally, was still at work in an Athens beauty parlour! – and arranging an excellent interpreter/scribe Dionnisis Nomikos. How strange that so many young men (and some old ones such as myself!) are delighted to help Maria – I wonder why!

Maria claimed that she was stopping lessons a few days before the fight, but there was little evidence of this – and, when she did, it was to attend a Press Conference where she was elegance itself and charmed the television interviewer! But none of this counts for anything unless she can produce the goods in the ring.   So to Saturday night at a basketball stadium by the sea at Glyfada for Iron Challenge 3, with Iron Mike Zambidis winning the top-of-the-bill fight against Fadi Merza in a dominating performance. Maria put the December defeat behind her with a superb points win, flooring Rossella shortly before the final bell to emphasise her victory. Her Greek patriotism in these hard times, wrapping herself in the flag, was another sign of how seriously she takes her position. Even better was her attitude to the public: long after the tournament was over, fans and friends clustered round to be photographed with Maria who happily obliged them all, posing sweetly or comically, smiling and hugging, as the situation demanded.

It is obviously very difficult to become a World Champion. It is also pretty hard to be a World Champion. Maria Pantazi, the perfect role model, knows how to do it – and Greece should be very proud of her!