JONATHAN MILLMOW
Wimbledon was strolling through Courtenay Place with friends one night when a large, aggressive man demanded his glasses.
Instead of rendering him useless with one blow, Wimbledon reached into his pocket and handed him his business card.
It's lunchtime at the inner city JAI Thai boxing gym and office workers and fighters belt bags with their shins and elbows.
Wimbledon is at reception with a cup of tea for me and a story to tell.
He's 31 and living in a flat in Te Aro with three other Thai boxing trainers.
He came to Wellington five years ago to train Muay Thai fighters, leaving behind his son Champions League.
Wimbledon's English is good at first but less coherent when he gets excited. He is modest about his impressive fighting record that includes more than 200 pro bouts.
He has a couple of scars around his eyes where an elbow or a shin has caught him flush but nothing that suggests he fought for 16 years and was a national hero.
I arrived at this interview believing Wimbledon came from a tennis mad family.
It just happens that Wimbledon is his fight name, one given him by his former boss who is a football fanatic. Wimbledon has carried on the football tradition, calling his best friend Chelsea, his brother Milan, not to mention Champions League 'or champ for short'.
Wimbledon has turned a difficult life into a triumph.
He had his first professional fight at the age of seven where he made the equivalent of $5, which he gave to his family.
By the age of 10 he was in a fighters camp in Bangkok where 30 young men slept in one room, the 'top' fighters getting a mattress, the others on the floor. He only saw his mother once a year.
'It was hard, but it was OK,' he says.
Wimbledon became self-sufficient. He fished in his spare time and became camp cook for the older fighters.
He left school at 12, something he now regrets, but five years later he exploded on the pro scene, fighting throughout Asia, often to packed stadiums and some times on national television.
He has never tallied up his career earnings but once fought for about $40,000. A lot of his money was injected back into his family.
We talk about corruption. Wimbledon says he was only ever asked to throw two fights, one by his trainer.
He mocks a gun and points it towards his temple to signal the pressure that was placed on him by, presumably, underground gambling syndicates.
Wimbledon's career has other strands. He cut back on the fighting in 2002 and went to China for four years to work as a bodyguard for Hong Kong casino bosses.
He was for show. If debts needed to be chased up then Chinese triad members were called in.
In 2008 Leong Su-Lin came knocking. She is a former journalist who now managers JAI gym in Wellington. Su-Lin took a shine to Muay Thai when doing a project for Cleo magazine on the most 50 eligible bachelors, one of whom was a fighter.
To cut a long story short she scouted Wimbledon to give Muay Thai a real kick in New Zealand. She plans to open another gym in Auckland soon, maybe twice the size of her small premises in Victoria St .
There is a real Buzz at JAI today. A pro fight night is only days away (October 11 at the ASB Sports Centre in Kilbirnie) and with the feature bout between Thai star Kru Chain (500 fights) and Chris Wells from New Zealand.
Wimbledon will watch his young charges from the corner. His fighting days are behind him.
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