[4 minute read time]
What an exciting week we had out here at Team Quest Thailand. It all started when I flew down to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to meet up with Matt Lindland and his daughter Robin. I was meeting Matt to take him to the ONE FC event in Malaysia and then showing him the Team Quest facility in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
The ONE FC event was a stacked card and I was excited to show Matt what we had going on in Asia. The plan was to meet Matt immediately after his flight at 5:30pm, check into the hotel, clean up and get to the fights. But apparently Matt's plane ran out of fuel so they had to make a pit stop in Singapore. I ended up having to wait for 3 hours while the flight was delayed.
So we were a bit late but we arrived just in time. The fight I was looking forward to the most was Adam Kayoom vs. Gregor Gracie. I was particularly looking forward to it because I got to train under Adam Kayoom a few times while I was staying in Bangkok and the guy has some serious skills. The fight was amazing and he showed a lot of heart. He was put in some bad spots in the first round and dug deep and rallied to come back and take an exciting decision victory. It was a great fight to walk into and Matt was super impressed with Adam's performance.
After the fights I was able to introduce Matt to ONE FC's CEO Victor Cui. Victor had a short time, so we congratulated him on the great card and after went back to our hotel to get ready to leave to Chiang Mai, Thailand the next morning.
So Matt, Robin, and myself flew to Chiang Mai, Thailand the next morning which was on a Sunday. We dropped off Matt's bags at their hotel and I brought them to the Team Quest Thailand facility. I could genuinely feel Matt's approval. He loved it and was really excited about getting some training in. Check out the facility:
The next morning we had David Hulett arrive in Chiang Mai ready to start his training. If you haven't heard of David yet you will soon. David is a veteran of over 30 professional MMA fights. He has spent the majority of his training in Las Vegas, NV under gyms such as Extreme Couture, Wand's gym, and Robert Drysdales Brazilian jiu jitsu. David is coming out to look for opportunities to fight in Asia.
So Tuesday morning Matt came over to the gym and jumped in one of the Muay Thai classes. Everyone was really excited for him to be here including the Muay Thai trainers. Matt had an opportunity to work with Kru Joe one on one. Kru Joe taught Matt a few tricks with some elbows in the clinch that will complement his dirty boxing well.
All of the trainers wanted to spar with Matt since it was the first UFC fighter they had the chance to meet. So we basically ran the gauntlet on him. It was a tough day for Matt. All 4 of our trainers shark tanked him. I know Matt was really impressed with our trainers/fighters skill level because he complimented them. That's something Matt doesn't do unless he means it.
On Wednesday Matt gave a really awesome seminar on Dirty Boxing and ground and pound for MMA. We had a great turnout for it. We had more people attend then I expected. Here is some video from the seminar.
During there time here, Matt and his daughter Robin also got to experience some of the extreme tourists activities including
flight of the gibbon:
Elephant trekking:
The sunday market:
It has been a really awesome experience to build this gym from the ground up and then have Matt come out and get to witness what we have done here. At the end of our trip we finished with a nice Seafood dinner (the food was still moving). The cost of a large lobster was 1/6th the price of what it would cost in the states.
At this point we are just going to continue to build our Muay Thai and MMA team. Our Muay Thai program has exploded. After being open for only 8 months our resident fighter “Hong Tong Lek Team Quest Thailand” is going to be fighting for the Thailand title at Lumpinee stadium on July 13th . Check back soon for updated training videos and sneek peeks into his training camp leading up to the title fight.
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