Lisa King
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Lisa King
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This EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW is an expanded version of a special Q & A featured in the Black Belt Buyer's Guide 2008, which went on sale November 6, 2007. CLICK HERE TO ORDER! ___________________________________________
Recent Black Belt Hall of Fame inductee Lisa King is a master of time management. When she’s not training for an upcoming muay Thai match or starring in Oxygen channel’s Fight Girls, you can find her performing color commentary ringside, overseeing her marketing company, providing VIP protection or teaching firearms and self-defense. Throughout it all, she somehow manages to maintain her smile, which is usually the last thing her opponents see before she delivers a vicious right cross or roundhouse kick.
I love the full-contact aspect of it. When I started my research, I went to a lot of schools and saw the different styles. I liked things such as capoeira because of how it looked. I like not having to do a lot of forms, which [you find a lot in] taekwondo. I liked that [muay Thai] was full contact and could be used on the street. In muay Thai, why boxing gloves but no elbow pads? I have no idea. (laughs) To me, the elbow is a million times more dangerous than even a fist. If it’s delivered right, you’re immediately cut and the fight’s over. To me it doesn’t make sense, but I’m not complaining. What’s your favorite way to mess with your opponent’s head? [With] my confidence. I have gotten a chance to know my opponents after the fight, and the one thing that they say is, “You were so confident going in there. That was pretty intimidating.” The other thing is I smile a lot while I fight, and that plays with them as well. “Is she crazy, is she having fun? Because this isn’t normal.” I have an appreciation for it. You can tell when you’ve got a good flow going and [when it’s] going to be a great exchange. You get in the ring to test your skills. Unfortunately, I’m a happy person generally, so when I smile it’s something that really messes with them. So it’s not something you do consciously? No. It’s something I totally don’t think about t, and I think I’d be [freaked] out if I was beat up and someone was smiling at me the entire time. There’s something not right about it. How do you see the explosion of mixed martial arts affecting muay Thai? I love the explosion of mixed martial arts. I think what we’re learning is that in order to have a phenomenal standup game, you have to muay Thai. There are a lot of disciplines, but no matter what someone started with, they eventually have to learn muay Thai in order to be an exceptional standup striking fighter. Women who are doing muay Thai are being offered a lot more opportunities for publicity on TV, and hopefully that will open movies and other opportunities. What problems do you currently see in women’s fightsports? I commentate a fight card called Fatal Femmes Fighting, and they don’t allow the same amount of minutes as the men’s cards. To me, that’s absolutely ludicrous. We train like men, we do the same thing that men do. In muay Thai, we’re allowed to have the same amount of minutes per round. I [don’t understand] why we’re not allowed the same rights to fighting as men. Where do you see muay Thai in 20 years? MMA is pushing all martial arts to the forefront, where people now have an appreciation for them. I think muay Thai is one of the most effective forms of self-defense and street fighting. Twenty years from now, it’s going to be [a given that] everyone understands what it is. I think it’s definitely going to be a household name. Did you try any other martial arts before you became a student of Master Toddy? None. I went to his gym after I went to several other dojo and schools. Once I went into Master Toddy’s [school] and I saw the energy, the students and the interaction with the instructors, I just knew that was the style for me and knew that was the school. How did you decide to start fighting competitively? Well, it was a long, drawn-out process. I was a late bloomer. I did muay Thai and went to the belt system first, and I had no aspirations to fight. I loved sparring and loved helping the fighters get ready for fights. I was just concerned with going into a fight and getting hurt and not being able to work. And Master Toddy and Master Chan, who was my other trainer, sat down with me and convinced me that I had a strong enough offense and defense [to not] walk away in a body bag. They were confident in me [but understood] I needed to work and they were never going to try to jeopardize my health or well-being. When I finally agreed on my first fight, it was with the clause that if I hated the experience [they couldn’t] ask [to fight] me anymore. No peer pressure, no nothing. So they said, “OK, give us one fight. If you hate it, we’ll never ask you again.” My first experience was phenomenal and it was one of my harder fights to date. I won by unanimous decision and I’ve never looked back. It’s very addicting. What’s your training regimen like leading up to a fight? In a perfect world, I would train steady for 12 weeks prior to getting in the ring. However, I’ve taken fights on two weeks notice. Eight weeks is a good amount of time, [but] 12 weeks is a phenomenal amount of time for me to get ready. What I like to do is get my cardio where it needs to be, and generally that’s running three miles a day. I like to do an hour of pad work a day and then two hours of sparring and bag work. That’s pretty much a good regimen without me having to go to any further extreme. As soon as I start training three hours a day and running that much, my weight starts dropping, everything falls into place and by the time I get into the ring I’m on autopilot because I’ve been doing same repetition over and over again. How do you balance training with everything else in your life? Time management is absolutely key. I schedule [training] in just as I would anything else. I know that if I want to have time to do it, I have to start my day a little earlier, so my running is done even before I get the kids up and out and ready for school. I usually do that at about 5:30 in the morning. I go to work, then train an hour during my lunch break. I go back to work, finish out my day, and then I go back for another two hours. Everybody knows that when it comes fight time, that’s my schedule. I don’t have time for TV. I don’t have time to go to the movies. I don’t have time for anything, but that’s the sacrifice I have to make when looking at the bigger picture. I don’t care to ever get in the ring and get slaughtered. I love it and it’s just a good test of myself. That’s pretty much what I do. I cut out all the non-essentials to get the training I need. Does lack of sleep ever become an issue while training? Sometimes I’m going on four-and-a-half to five hours of sleep. If you would have told me 10 years ago that you could on that amount of time, I would have told you that you’re crazy because I like to have eight hours of sleep like the rest of the world. You do what you have to do and somehow your body acclimates to it when you’re taking the right vitamins and eating the right food. By the time you go to sleep, you pretty much drop into a coma anyway. It’s probably the best sleep you’ll ever have. You’ve got that three months of craziness and pushing yourself to the extreme, but when it’s all said and done and you end up with the end result you’re looking for, it’s completely worth it. There must be a lot of downtime while working as a bodyguard. How do you remain focused? They refer to it as an executive-protection agent because there’s a myth that a bodyguard is 500 pounds and 6 feet 10 inches, and that’s not me. There’s tons of downtime. Basically, you have to know that there’s a person who’s retained your services for a reason, and there’s obviously a threat of some sort. Just like having children, when you know you have a responsibility you’re more alert. You’ve been resolved, your time has been contracted out, and certainly you don’t want anything to happen on your watch. A lot of times you’re working with a team. The less people you have, the more focused you have to be. A lot of times there isn’t a lot of downtime. It’s when you have a team of eight to 10 people or maybe you’re an advance car driver and you’re going to venues beforehand—that’s when you have to be on the lookout for potential threats. If you’re working as an agent in charge, then your time is constantly going, going, going because you’re solely responsible for the well being of that one person. What’s next for you? Right now [in addition to commentating and self-defense classes for women and teenagers], I’m working on wfighter.com. It’s a resource center for female fighters and fans because a lot of people have questions about fight venues or places to train for fitness or martial arts and they don’t know where to go and how to find it. Schools will be able to upload their information, promoters will be able to upload their fight cards, fighters can network with fighters from different disciplines, and fans can learn [about] and interact with their favorite fighters. I think it’s going to be really fun because I love martial arts, I have a desire to help female fighters grow in the sport, and I enjoy helping people simplify their lives and make their dreams come true. So, for me, this is a resource center and I see it as a way to help everyone in the long run. Any closing thoughts? I’m really happy for all the opportunities I’ve been given and all the support from fellow fighters and the fans. Without them standing behind [me], a lot of these opportunities would have never come to fruition. I’m just excited to be maybe five years down the road talking about all of the successes we’ve experienced. I think this is a phenomenal time for us as martial artists in general, not just female martial artists. I think we need to take every opportunity as it presents itself and represent ourselves in the best way possible and watch the sport grow. About the interviewer: Jon Sattler is the assistant editor for Black Belt. He can be reached at jsattler@aimmedia.com. |
