What a week!! It's been an interesting, tough and mentally demanding one for sure. Full of laughs, hard training, pain and watching mates bungee jumping off a crane. It's been so tiring this week I've not even wanted to do the blog but as I know it's BBQ Beatdown tomorrow, I would not have time to do it any other day.

So the Wednesday as usual is boxing in the morning and muay thai in the evening along with a few weights inbetween. Since being told about my upcoming fight the trainers have been working me harder. I have been given a trainer to work with on the pads. His name is Ritt and he is one of the top active fighters from the camp and also one of the maddest people I've met. I swear he is on crack to be honest. He is a tough cookie to say the least. Every session when it comes to pads I have him especially to help me out for the fight. He has given me some good tips and also beaten me up quite a bit. It just reminds you that these guys fight for a living and been doing it since they were 5-6 years of age. Their bodies are conditioned to train 6 hours a day 6 days a week, unlike my body which is use to training 1.5 hours 4 times a week and trust me, you notice the difference. Some of these guys are machines. Wednesday night we got all the boys round and watched a bit of Will Ferrall goodness, Step Brothers. We keep saying quotes from the film so we decided to watch it to refresh our memories on how good it is. 

Thursdays here is just clinch work for both sessions. As my neck and shoulders were pretty destroyed I opted out of both sessions and headed down to a local massage place called Healthy Massage. It was half thai massage then half oil massage. She finished off by cracking my back so good it felt as though I had a new pair of lungs. For the rest of that day I relaxed and let my body repair for the next days hard training. So back to it in the morning and more hard pad work, bag work, technique and sparring. Straight after both sessions I went to the gym for some additional weights. After the session I headed over to see Woody (He-Man) training his last session before his fight on the Monday night in Patong Stadium along with Jimmy the Scotsman. For a big fella he can move quick and actually has technique which is quite rare to see from big guys. He's aiight! (just some woody banter as he would say). That night we all relaxed and watched a DVD followed by another awful England attempt at playing football. Even New Zealand are playing better than us.

Saturday morning we all decided to relax by the pool and grab some rays to help enhance my amazing tan that I'm actually getting.....slowly. Well for me it's good, I still look ill next to the other boys in the pics but I promise you, it's getting there. 2 of the other guys from the group decided to head to a bungee jump in Patong. Deano is from New Zealand and Peter (Viking or mainly known as Beowulf) is from Sweden. Beowulf came up to our table at lunch to say they were ready to leave and get us to follow him when we all said we were not going to go in the end. The saddest face appeared on the Vikings blonde head. I felt so bad as he was walking away as we had all asked him to shout "I am Beowulf" just before he jumps. So after the guilt I felt rushing through we all decided to go and watch the pair of them do the jumps. Also Dave The Grenade (he is actually the manliest man any of us have ever met) decided to do one aswell. We shouted back to Peter and Deano that we were going to join them and that sad frown got turned upside down and he was now a happy Viking once again. First stop off was to see a fallen solider, one of Beowulf's friends had come of his moped so we went down to see if he was ok. He was alive and well but broke his foot in some place and took off skin on his back and arm. As we had all pulled up outside the shop where he was waiting for the ambulance, our bikes were just relaxing in the sun when out of nowhere Woodys bike decided to attack our bike. It just fell straight into it like some pissed old fart would do. As the ambulance was loading him up, out of nowhere tiny tony came from behind the ambulance like he had just been teleported from his resturant. So random, we asked him how he knew about the accident, his reply was amazing yet worrying "I know everything, I am everywhere". It definatly clears up a few suspicions about him. The rider ended up being fine with no real serious injury. We then convoyed over to Patong for the bungee jump. It's a 50 meter jump off a crane with a lake to splash into. So Deano, Beowulf and The Grenade did there thing. Beowulf did as promised and screamed the line "I am Beowulf" which bought laughter to all viewers. He also did it in his White boxer shorts for extra man points. The grenade was reluctant to jump as he reached the top and kept teasing us by looking like he was about to jump but then put his hands back on the rail. Everyone watching was screaming at him to jump, even the Thai kids that were playing around with us were shouting  "Dave" and "jump". He dived like the man he is. Deanos jump was manly and graceful also. The Thai kids continued to play around us and jump over us like play toys. They found some amazement in Woodys big body, at one point he actually had 4 kids hanging of his arms and neck. Was fun to play around with them as they had no care in the world and tough as nails, just climbing trees bare footed and just sliding down them. Like little monkeys, just bounce right back. That night we headed to the cinema and watched The A Team. Enjoyed some grub and good chit chat. Headed to a place to play pool, even though woody smashed everyone it was good fun. A good way to finish the night.

The weather was nice on Sunday so Captain Jack, Grenade and myself headed down to the beach for a swim. On the ride back I accidently ran over a pair of shims (he/she) sunglasses ooops. In the evening we headed over to the night market, straight away we lost Beowulf as he was on a mad shopping spree. As soon as we walked into the food section my stomach turned. All the smells just reminded me of my experience with the mystery meat from my first night market trip. Yum yum. Captain Jack bought a sausage that actually looked like a sausage but I still didn't trust it. I just stick to a good meal from Baan Suan. It's the name of the place we are staying, also it is where the legend Uwee works. She is one funny lady. She speaks good-ish English but is easily influenced. So we have her touching fists with all the group and saying safe. It's highly amusing.

Monday, fight night! Woody and Jimmys night to do there thing. They both have been training hard for these fights. We all went to Baan Suan for a big meal before catching a mini bus to the stadium. Got our seats in the stands of the warm Patong stadium and got ready to enjoy a night of fights. Straight away I had visions of my fight, stood in front of the crowd trying to destroy the guy trying to destroy me. I got pumped thinking about it. Woody was up first. As he took his robe off quite a few people made some interesting noices. I guess it's not so common to see a big muscular guy fighting out here. It was a crowd pleaser I'm sure, i know a couple of girls liked him anyway. He had to fight a very tall Thai guy, 6.3ft. Woody is around 5.11ft so the Thai had some serious reach advantage.  Woody struggled to find his range at first and was getting caught with some elbows. In the 2nd round Woodster came out more aggressive and weathered the lanky guys storm and dropped him with 2 hard body shots. Good effort big man. Jimmys fight was not a long one, went in, took the pace of the fight and then happily drove a solid punch to the guys sternum. He didn't get back up after that one. So 2-0 to the Brits. After the fights all 11 of us hopped in a 4 wheeler tuk tuk for a very amusing, squashed trip home. We ended up celebrating with Woody by inviting him round for a beer and a tin of tuna with an episode of Top Gear in the background. Does it get better than that......I expect so.

Training continued as usual. I had my picture taken for the poster but got a feeling I went cross eyed and I think they might have my name down as Stuard, so I look forward to seeing the poster. James had his name down for his smoker fight on the BBQ beatdown. It's a friendly fight with one of the other camps guests. So you wear shin pads and 18oz gloves for protection so you can really let some leather fly without doing to much damage to the other fighter. So he has been training up for that also. We have been joined in the Fighters ring by 2 guys from Norway. The older fella, Chris owns a gym there and has had many fights and won a few various belts. To say he Is the toughest guy I have sparred with is a bit of a joke really. Nicest guy in the world but dammit he is tough. With him is his 16 year old cousin. I want to know what they feed him as he is a huge boy. I mean in shape huge and also very good at muay thai. So after getting beat up by Chris and getting drilled hard on the pads by Ritt I did feel so ruined and beat up. My brain felt like putty. I also have a staph infection on my arm at the moment which I'm on tablets and cream for. This is the main reason we have not touched the mma side of things whilst we have been here, there are way to many infections going around this place, mainly coming from the mma matts. Just Matt aka Mr Pinky (a very nice New Zealander) picked up Pink Eye which is Staph in the eye basically. Not nice. So sticking to just muay thai. 

Thursday morning a few of us decided to head to the stairs by the beach to do some backwards bear crawls, uphill lunges, uphill frog leaps with a pressu up and some hill sprints (forwards and backwards). We all felt the burn that's for sure. But as I'm training for my fight I tried to push myself that bit harder than normal. The evening session after training we also had to do sprints to help build explosive power for the fights. Found a new place to eat called Fattys and enjoyed a nice mixed grill for a change, I'm bored of rice now. 

This mornings training was good. Started off with a 2k run. Boxing sparring went good. Deano is also has a fight coming up so he's training hard too. My body is starting to crave some rest now but only a few more days of hard training then some rest and a massage to relax me before the Friday night fight. James has now found out who he is up against and itching to get in there and have some fun. Should be a fun filled weekend once again.

These blogs seem to get longer I think, to much going on and the fact I talk alot is not a good mix. At least I will remember everyday from the trip though. Peace and love to you all. Stu