Good Thursday to you. Another week has passed very quickly once again and now we are down to the final 4 weeks. It's been an emotional week as it's been filled with goodbye's to our new found friends and preparing for the fight tomorrow night. 

So Friday night we decided to grab a few of the lads and head over to an empty part of the camp and have a spar for a bit. It was suppose to be a friendly light spar as Deano, James and myself have fights coming up. Dave The Grenade also joined us for a bit of light sparring...he just forgot the light part. He caught Matt with a knee to the nose and made him bleed. Matt was very proud of his war wounds and actually took the time to pose for the camera. The Grenade did feel quite bad for about 10 minutes. Also Captain Jack aquired some blood from somewhere, who knows how that got there. After some good rounds of sparring we all went over the road for some much deserved grub and brag about our injuries. 

Saturday was the BBQ Beatdown so as normal the day starts off with a beach session. We decided not to join in but we did enjoy a splash in the sea, even though it was trying to drown us and take us out to the deep depths. Jack joined in with a little race that all tiger guests take part in to end the beach session. He was attatched to Ritt and another trainer. They ended up being responsable for the team loss as jack took a dive in the sand. As we were swimming in the sea Jacks toe hit dave in the foot and he squeeled like a little girl as he thought he was being eaten by a full sized great white shark. Sorry Dave but for such a manly man that we have all been saying you are, you don't half scream like a fairy. After this scary encounter we headed back to Tiger to go get ready for the Football game between trainers and students. Again, we just watched. This time the students played like a team and beat the trainers. Eat that trainers. I went to relax after by having a massage to help my neck loosen up. James went back to prepare for his fight at the BBQ Beatdown. As I returned home I found James and Danny (crazy frog, Nick Frost) listening to metal music trying to hype James up. We headed over to the camp for food and fight prep. Nic (Aussie chick who is one of the lads really) was also fighting that night against one of the Americans family spawn, the loud mouth attituded thing. James was up first and Just Matt was the cornerman for both Jims and Nics fights. The guy he was up against was no one we had seen around the camp before and we have actually only seen him once since. He came out swinging and kept moving forward. James kept his range the whole fight and just picked the guy off until landing a head kick in the 3rd round which nearly finished the fight but the guy wobbled back up and James then went on to finish the fight by refs stoppage. He was over the moon and everyone was happy to see him win. Up next was Nic and Miss Attitude. These girls have a bit of tension between them anyway and it was made very obvious in the fight. Both girls came out swinging but Miss Attitude was trying to put a hole in Nics head I think. At some points I thought Nic was going to hit the mat but to her credit she must have a cast iron chin. It was a messy aggressive first round but Nic seemed to have a lot more composure than our friend from across the pond. The 2nd and 3rd were very much the same, a few knees to the lady parts, a few wild haymakers and Miss Attitude wanting to give up, her cornermen were not having any of it though. It ended up going to Nic and she took the win. It was a crowd pleaser for sure. There were a few more fights after, one being the young Norwegian I have been training with. He is 16 and fought someone who is a lot heavier than him and also has experience. He did an amazing job and showed great skill for such a young lad. He will go far for sure. After the fights had finished we all jumped in a pick up and headed for Karon Beach where they were holding a big beach music festival. It was crazy. A massive stage on the beach with loads of people dancing. All the tiger group stayed together and danced like fools. Woody and myself started to have a dance off which ended up turning into a big circle and anyone had a dance in the center. A chair got involved thanks to Just Matt. Was a great night and so nice to hear some loud music again. I stayed away from drink that night but there was plenty buckets and random drinks going around. Buckets are little hand held buckets filled with alchol, normally very strong too. So as you can imagine, people were getting very smashed. Woody was quite jolly it must be said. Dave got attacked by a mad girl. She gave him a knee in the gut and to be honest, for a crack head skank, it was not a bad knee at all. He escaped this life threatening incident without injury, he is a man after all. Headed home at about 5am and enjoyed the comfort of my bed until Sunday arvo.

Since then it has all been a bit of a blur to be honest. I've been getting into fight mode mentally and normally that means I don't think about anything else but the fight. I will break it down very quickly for once.....it's rained alot, I've trained hard, it's rained, I've trained, rained, trained, found out Dave can play the guitar and sing (can he be anymore manly?), rained, watched movies at the cinema and ate a lot of food....oh and it's rained. We have had to say goodbye to 3 people from our close group of mates though. Yesterday we lost Will Smith (sorry Rigo) and Captain Jack and today we lost Just Matt. It's been awesome spending time with them all and hearing about there adventures and travels. Would love to see them all again for sure. I know we will be seeing Jack again as he is only in Newcastle. Tomorrow we say goodbye to Nic, the only chick in the group. Will be a quite few weeks towards the end of the trip. 

Today I headed down for a massage at Ritt's family massage place. I had a herbal sauna followed by a shower then a nice 2 hour oil massage in a nice garden. Peaceful and relaxing I actually fell asleep during the massage. Then after she got rid of the knots I hit the sauna once more followed another shower. It only cost me £10. Then as I was about to get on the bike the heavens opened on cue so I ended up sitting in a liitle wooden hut with 2 Thai guys and we watched the Thai news whilst they tried to explain what was going on. Problem was they didn't speak any English and I speak no Thai. So for 15 mins it was a very interesting conversation. Headed back for are farewell lunch for Just Matt and said our goodbyes. As I've been doing this blog, Woody has bought me the poster for my fight. Just as I expected my name is spelt Stuard!!!! I'm also transparent and a bit of my head is missing so I look like a cone head, it's really quite amusing to be honest. They didn't even spell Match right. I will take a picture of it and post it up so you can all have a giggle at it after my fight. 

I'm sorry if this blog has been all over the place, like I said, I'm in fight mode. Just want to step through those ropes and do some damage to someone now. Put all that hard training into practice. The next blog might be a long one, depends how I get on. Peace out peeps, much love. Stu