GFC are a force to be reckoned with in the Muay Thai world and the club’s pedigree dates back to 1983 when Darren Phillips started training with Sandy Holt and Master Sken. Darren went on to teach for Sandy and one was one of his main instructors through this golden period. Darren started the Heywood Thai boxing Club in 1994, renting a room in Heywood and then three years later moved to a full Time gym in Bury. “When I left Sitnarong around about 2000 I changed the name to GFC. Not many people know what this means, but it’s basically a Mickey-take of me!”
The Philosophy behind the gym is very simple, as GFC endeavour to teach anyone, regardless of their background, to the best of their ability. Darren strongly believes in the ability of Muay Thai to change and enrich people’s lives, “and this is why I am still in the sport despite the lack of financial rewards for anyone involved in it.” Key to their success is the GFC approach, which is to teach people and not just train them. Darren points out that he has never stopped learning and is quite prepared to change the way he does things if it works better. “I have no ego and it’s easy for me to say “okay I think the way we did this was wrong so now I want to try it this way”.
The proof of this philosophy is the way Darren has changed the way the club trains and teaches over the last five years, a result of the learning of the correct scoring of Muay Thai which he feels necessitated a change in the way things were done. He believes that this forward-thinking strategy culminated in the terrific technical performance of Andy Thrasher when he recently stopped Dave Newbrook to win the WKA World Title. That said, Darren admits that “I’m never content and very rarely happy with anyone’s performance, I always think there is more to do and we never sit back on our laurels.”
In this respect, Darren is happy simply to see his peers acknowledging GFC as a technical and improving gym, stating that recognition from your peers is always good. The gym teaches a lot of kids and Darren’s enthusiasm is charged through seeing transformation in some of them, from shy, perhaps bullied, perhaps overweight kids to gifted fighters and nice people. “It makes it all worthwhile!” Darren acknowledges that he has some great juniors in the gym but doesn’t want to put pressure on them (and also make it even more difficult to get matches) by naming them. “I’ve never shot my mouth off about anyone. I’ll let other people do that for me!”
If anything, Darren actually feels that he holds back fighters too long, grounding basics from the start but as he doesn’t like to see faults in anyone, he quite often loses fighters before they actually get in the ring! “If I wasn’t so picky we’d probably have a lot more.” That said, Darren wants to keep doing what the gym is doing now - improving and putting out quality fighters whilst helping other people who may never get into the ring. To this end the gym will take another transformation soon, when he takes over a new 7,000 square foot unit -“in this day and age I must be mad to undertake such an ambitious expansion, but if you don’t try.........”
Talking of this day and age, Darren sees Muay Thai at a crossroads in this country at the moment. There is a movement to more widely adopt correct scoring methods and compete in this manner, especially from a lot of the younger gyms on the circuit. Whilst he believes a lot of people come up with reasons why we should not adopt correct scoring, he is strongly in favour of doing so stating that “most of the reasons people give actually hide an inability of some people to adapt. We have great talent in this country, both fighters and trainers and I just hope it goes the right way.”
Darren’s own great fighter, Andy Thrasher, will be matched on Grandmaster Sken’s “MSA Muay Thai Premier League” show on November 7th 2009 and Darren is quick to give Grandmaster Sken credit where it is due. “Master Sken has been at the forefront of promoting shows since Muay Thai first came here. He always puts his heart into everything he does. I believe this (show) will be the start of another great chapter for UK Muay Thai.”
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