Matt: A reluctant runner, want-to-be fighter. Part 2: Overcoming fear.
Although this story can be read as a standalone, if you haven’t already we highly recommend reading Part 1 where we talk to Matt about how despite the fact that he is reluctant to run, he makes it his woo. However, this story focuses more on some of his other woo’s - getting people involved in sports, as well as his love and passion for fighting.
Matt, we previously spoke about part of your woo is needing a purpose to fulfil a sporting achievement, and often for you this means supporting other people and taking on the role of a ‘hype squad’. What does that role look like?
I become the unofficial coach you love to hate. I think a lot of the time, despite what someone thinks about whether they can or cannot do something, if they display an interest, there’s usually enough motivation there to do it.
People don’t want to talk about their goals because it makes it real, and then they get scared, and if they don’t accomplish it they feel like a failure. It doesn’t have to be a big scary mountain, we’re not trying to get gold medals, it just has to be fun.
Having someone to do that alongside is part of it. I’m quite goofy with it because ultimately if someone doesn’t want to do something, you can’t make them. And I’m not a coach or their teacher so I’m not calling them asking if they have been on a run or if they are sticking to their training plan. I prefer gentle encouragement - I have a group chat with my friends where someone messages ‘I did my first 5k today’, and we all encourage them and congratulate them. Or if someone says ‘I wasn’t feeling it today, I meant to do an 8k but only managed 7’, I message ‘that’s fine, everyone has bad days in training, sometimes you feel like you’re the best guy in the room, and other days you feel like it’s your first day.’ That’s just something you have to accept with fitness, is these fluctuations.
I literally just wrote in my notes ‘Matt is woo!’. You are, essentially, the community WA group we are trying to build - having your own hype/support group. It’s a cool full circle moment.
You know, a lot of people, not just in sports but in general, get scared to try something because of the element of failure. That little bit of support really can take people a long way. So for me, in sports, that’s just being that person that goes, ‘Ok, I’ll run it with you’.
You’re bang on the money about these sporting achievements don’t have to be scary things. This is part of what we want to show at woowoo, is normal people doing extraordinary things - whatever that looks like to them. For some people it’s a marathon, for some it’s 5km, for some it’s Everest. For us it doesn’t matter - it’s about your own goal, your own woo that deserves to be shouted about.
Talking about scary things… Do you remember your thoughts and feelings going into your first fight?
It’s weird because as much as you train and prepare, you don’t know what a fight is until you’ve been in a fight. You do all the training, you hit the bag and you hit the pads, but the pads don’t hit back. So until you’re actually in the ring and you’ve got someone trying to take your head off, and you’re trying to take their head off, you have no idea what it is actually like. You see all these movies where it looks so effortless, but in reality it’s just not like that. It’s a mess - especially your first fight because you’re so energetic and your technique is just not there.
I remember being nervous and thinking I was going to get knocked out in 10 seconds, that everyone was going to laugh at me and I was going to end up on one of those YouTube highlight clips, ‘loser gets KO in 10 seconds’. But, then my walkout song started playing, the lights came on and the crowd was looking at me - and I went calm. All the worries faded and I zoned out. I didn’t look at the people. I didn’t hear the voices. I told myself ‘it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, I’m here now. This is it.’
Even now before a fight, I still get nervous and there’s definitely fear there. There’s a common misconception that people think ‘oh they must not be scared because they fight regularly’. No, it’s terrifying, it’s absolutely horrifying.
But if you let those fears overcome you, you wouldn’t do anything.
I want to fight, I’m passionate about it. I wouldn’t go through a 10 week training camp or cut weight otherwise. You’ve got to overcome that fear.
It’s the same with running, the moment you come up to the start line for a race, you have to have that moment where the fear and the nerves are there. Then you tell yourself, “I’m here, I’m in it. It’s happening’. Then the gun/whistle goes and you’re off.
So, what is your walkout song?
It’s changed over the years. Often people pick their walkout songs to help them get the energy they need before a fight; some people come out to heavy metal or intense music to hype themselves up into ‘kill mode’, some people choose songs like ‘Sweet Caroline’ to get the crowd going. For me, I don’t need something aggressive, I don’t need interaction with the crowd, I just need something to get me in the zone. For my last fight last month I walked out to ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’ by Johnny Cash. It’s got a really cool beat to it and the lyrics are powerful. I saw another guy use it at a fight card, and I thought ‘yeah, that’s a good one’.
What is a woo moment you’ve had with your fighting career so far?
When I went to uni I noticed that they didn’t have a Muay Thai society. They had karate, they had boxing, and I had joined the martial arts society but Muay Thai was what I was focused on and passionate about. Luckily, my first year housemate, Jozsi, also did Muay Thai so we joined together and decided to make our own society.
We approached the students union who were difficult about it at first - they said we already have Karate and Taekwondo, why do we need Muay Thai? Well that’s like saying, we already have tennis, so why would we need pingpong? Yes, the nature of the sport is the same - you’re hitting a ball over a net, but they are different sports. There’s hundreds of years of history in martial arts, it’s almost insulting to say they are the same. Eventually we got through all the red tape, set it up and 30 people signed up in the first year. It was quite small for a uni society, but we were passionate and enthusiastic about it because it was our project, our society. We were giving people who previously did Muay Thai a space to do it again, and we were getting new people who had never done it before an opportunity to try.
That is for sure a woo moment in itself - what did you enjoy the most about running the society?
We did everything - we were dealing with all the presidential and admin stuff, running social events etc but we were also the trainers. I get very passionate training because you get a lot of people coming in curious but thinking ‘I’m not a fighter, I can’t do this’. Then you see them develop and they realise they don’t need to be some hardened, tattooed thug like the fighters you see in the movies. One girl came from the dance society, her brother had done martial arts but she had never been confident to try it. I asked her to come to the taster lesson - because of her dance background, she could throw head kicks and she had great power. She had the best technique I had seen from anyone.
So yeah, we started with about 30 of us and we just wanted to get people used to fighting. It was never anything too intense, they’d have headguards, it was non decision so there was no winner, but it got people used to it. You can’t throw people in the deep end and be like ‘OK, first one who gets knocked out loses’, because you’re just going to scare people and lose them immediately.
It’s been running for a good five years now and it’s a whole different beast from when we started it. Apparently, it is the biggest Muay Thai society in the country and they now have around 400 members.
It’s great because now people who have never heard of Muay Thai have heard of it, people who never had the opportunity to try it now do. When I tell people I do Muay Thai, they think I’m talking about the cocktail - a lot of people don’t know it’s a sport. Although the sport is growing in popularity, it is still quite niche, so to have been a part of this growth, and to now have 400 people doing it, who are then going to share it with other people is a cool feeling.
Do you think that you are still interested or would be invested into creating something like that again now?
At the moment, I’ve switched over to more traditional boxing. I’ve got a trainer, also called Matt, who is an up and coming boxer and his dream is to build his own gym. There are a lot of good gyms in Newcastle I could go to, but it’s cool to start somewhere small and be part of the story.
A lot of the time your reputation as a boxing trainer is not only based on how skilled you are and what you can do, but also who you have trained and how many matches they are winning. He’s a great trainer, and through putting my trust in him as a trainer, hopefully it will help him build his reputation and get him to where he wants to be. One day, when he’s got his own big gym, we can look back at the early days of it together…
He’ll have a signed photo of you in the gym, along with your boxing gloves…
Yes and all the younger fighters will wonder who I am!
But really, sport is great for your confidence - but I think with fighting in particular, there’s a real feeling you get when you hit the pads, get your aggression out and feel strong. When I tell people I fight, they don’t believe it. You really don’t need to be some big, tough guy. I get a lot of pride from teaching people who don’t think the sport is for them, and quickly you show them that isn’t true and that they can be great at it. For this reason, I love to teach and if I ever get the opportunity to train anyone, I’m always keen to do it.
And lastly, who-woo? Who should we know about from your circle?
I’ve got the perfect person for you. I haven’t mentioned it up until now because I knew this question was coming. I’m surrounded by lots of people who this could fit, but I think for this purpose, it would have to be my sister-in-law, Ros, @swim.bike.run.wine. I’ve never met anyone as athletic as she is, she does triathlons, in September she represented GB in the Aqua Biking event in Vigo, Spain and got silver - all with a full time job! She just got a sponsorship deal with a triathlon clothing company and I think she’d be perfect to talk to.
You bet we’ll be catching up with Matt next year to not only congratulate him on his baby, but of course to see if he follows through on his ‘promise’ of a triathlon!
Didn’t catch Part 1 of this interview? Read it here.