The reasons why that never happened are many and show how difficult it is to have a continuous career from early teenager years through to adulthood and the great news, of course, is that in Christi’s case a major talent wasn’t permanently lost to Muay Thai. Two fights after her Bangkok debut she broke to concentrate on her GCSEs and, like many teenagers, the combined pressures of education and enjoying herself took her away from the gym:

‘I wanted a break. I had come to the point where I had trained so much that I was bored with it. Muay Thai had become a chore, I needed to be a teen, go out with friends, etc. When I think back, what I did was a great achievement, but I did it all too soon.’

However, no longer with Saints gym (was a desire for independence another factor in temporarily abandoning Muay Thai?), Christi was back in Muay Thai within a year, though her progress was erratic and unsettled. She was still passionate about Muay Thai, but to begin with became a Muay Thai tourist, visiting different clubs in the North and meeting different people. I can remember possibly four years ago being told that, after a spell out of training, she had joined a Manchester gym – which didn’t seem the best idea for a resident of Devon! Christi’s version of this phase is suitably wry:

  ‘I had a couple of sessions here and there, nothing serious. I had some good and some odd experiences – and some of them I’ve learnt from!’

  
Then followed a big step forward – a unanimous points win over Carla Sullivan of Semtex in a professional Class B fight – before the real knock-back came, in a most unexpected form. Christi, feeling ‘on top of the game’, was training to fight the impressive Alexis Rufus – despite the breaks and interruptions Christi was still operating at a very high level – when the next blow fell:

   ‘The day before the fight I’d come out of the sauna to reach my fight weight when I heard the fight had been called off due to new rules and regulations that I shouldn’t have been fighting professionally until I turned 18. And I was banned and stopped from fighting on any shows.’

   Unfortunately it’s quite typical of some elements of the organisation of Muay Thai in
the UK (and, I suspect, other countries) that such a severe measure should have been in operation without its being generally known – and that, once a victim was found, she should have been so harshly treated, four years after nobody turned a hair at her actual professional debut!

    The final obstacle to Christi’s return to the ring was much more pleasant. In 2011 she and Steve founded the Chaos Club, originally teaching classes in local villages, later found
a converted shed near to where they live and setting up a Thai boxing gym, the Chaos Muay Thai & Fitness Competition Training Centre. But by now Steve and Christi were a couple – and she was pregnant. In its first year Chaos has proved very successful, with an excellent team of junior fighters training up to 5 or 6 days a week. Chaos members hold 17 national junior titles and three of them were picked to represent Great Britain in Latvia in April.  Junior champion Sammy Jo Luxton recently claimed her biggest victim by defeating Amber Kitchen of Touchgloves.