Terry Hill is a New Zealand martial arts legend with over 40 years of experience, spanning various combat sports and disciplines. His journey began in the 70s with Kyokushinkai Karate, before mastering Goju Ryu Karate, boxing, and kickboxing. He went on to achieve numerous national and international titles, including the 1st World Full Contact Goju Ryu Karate Championship in Okinawa in 1991. Throughout his career, Terry has trained and produced many champion fighters across multiple martial arts disciplines, including Karate, Kickboxing, and Sanda (Chinese full-contact fighting). Terry’s contributions to martial arts extend beyond the dojo. He is a certified international Sanda judge and has officiated numerous events, including refereeing high-profile UFC bouts in Manila. His leadership in New Zealand's martial arts scene is undeniable, serving as President of the New Zealand Mixed Martial Arts Federation (NZMMAF) and being inducted into the NZ MMA Hall of Fame for his pioneering work in the sport. With decades of competition, coaching, and officiating experience, Terry Hill continues to shape the martial arts community both in New Zealand and internationally, making him a revered figure in combat sports. _____________________________
Thanks to the team at Punish Fight Gear https://punish.com.au/
Find Terry's Gym San Bu Kai Hamilton https://www.sanbukai.com/
____________________________
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Shannon (00:00)
Hi, welcome to Fight Scene with F16, an online mentoring space where we talk real life with fighters and coaches to help you become a better person in and out of the ring.
Okay. well, viewers, thanks for joining us. Today I'm delighted and honoured to have special guest Terry Hill. Terry is a kaumatua, chief, kaichou, daihyou, whatever terminology you want to use for the combat sports, kickboxing, martial arts in New Zealand. So I'm very honoured to have Terry on today's program. Yeah, Terry, I guess where I'd like to start, just a bit of a a personal thing. And I, I came over to New Zealand. I can't remember what the year was. It have been 2010, might have been 2006. I can't remember. I fought for a version of a World Title up in Auckland. I fought a Thai, Thai guy and, I got stopped in the fourth round. you know, I, I, see my opponent afterwards and he's trying to give me advice and that just rubbed salt in the wound even more. I'm like oh, grr, I'll get you one day, but, but something that I remember from that is when I was fighting, I heard this voice, give me some advice.
Yeah. And later on, I come to come to hear that it was Terry Hill. that was giving me a bit of advice from the crowd. and I'll always remember that, you know, because being an Australian coming over here, you know, like the love hate thing that, that we've got going on and all that sort of stuff. I didn't know anyone and, and everything, but yeah, just, I thought, wow. Like I'll always remember that. And then when I, I moved to Hamilton five, six years ago. and I got a job, got a job at, I can't remember the name of the place. I didn't last long. I had to count thousands and thousands of little rubber, rubber things, and I kept making mistakes. but my boss had trained with you. we got talking and I said, you know, I was, I used to be into the kickboxing and everything. And he was a really lovely bloke and, and he said, oh yeah. Do you know Terry Hill? I used to train with him and, and he just spoke so highly of you. and being around sort of back in the scene here in Hamilton. yeah, I've come to just see like, he's just a top bloke, a really good, really good person. So I'm honoured to have you on today.
Terry (02:49)
Thanks mate, it's certainly a pleasure for me to be here with you guys, so thank you.
Shannon (02:55)
So Terry, where did it all start for you? Martial arts journey. What year? How old were you?
Terry (03:03)
I was 16 years old and the exact date was the 10th of December 1974. And how can I remember that? Because it's the same day I got my driver's licence. This was sort of the carry on from the Bruce Lee era. And it just so happened that the night before I was my girlfriend at the time, later on my first wife, she rang me up and she said, uhh do you wanna come to see that movie that her brother-in-law was telling us about, Way of the Dragon, the Bruce Lee movie. And I said, I got my driving test tomorrow and I've got a school C exam as well and blah, blah, blah. And then she said, oh mum will come and pick you up in the Charger. So they had a Hemi Pacer Charger and it had a big racing stripe down it. And I thought, yeah, hell, I'll go to the movies and see that get out of this flash car in the main street and have everybody looking at me. What a great idea. So I went to Way of the Dragon and just came out a different person. It was like that changed my life, that one movie on that date. At the end of that year, I finished school And then when I got back home, back to New Plymouth and started training, or started working, sorry. And the first thing I did was try and look up a karate school. And that was it. It all kicked off from there. And then from the karate reading a lot of the Bruce Lee material, and he's saying that martial artists should train like boxers So the next thing I'm down at a boxing gym and had a fairly good career, it wasn't huge and I won a provincial title but really enjoyed it and then moved up to Hamilton. And of course exposure there they had the what Philip Lam called his Full Contact Martial Arts Tournament and then the Thai boxing came into it after that Philip was the one that bought the Thais over and we fought them and had varying degrees of success with it. And yeah, it all, it all just kicked off from there,
Shannon F16 Forrester (05:24)
So, alright, you've been in it a while Terry. I've come and gone. You know, I've just, just popped my head back in and in the last few years. But you've been, consistent all that time. What's a couple of things that have kept you in the game, like doing the mahi, coming to the gym, you know, afterwards, after work when you're buggered and putting your time and energy into it. What's kept you in it?
Terry (05:55)
Yeah, it really is a love, a passion, an obsession, my ex-wives call it. It's just what I do, it's me. And I can honestly say that I don't know what else I'd be doing if I wasn't involved in some way in some area of martial arts. We still run a karate school. We've got the kickboxing, the boxing, the stand-up for the MMA. We've got jiu-jitsu classes in there now as well. the kōbudo. Martial arts is holistic. It's not just one thing. It's not just Thai boxing. It encompasses a whole area and the study and research is really interesting and it certainly puts things in perspective. I mean the Thai boxing, which isn't the originating art actually, the Kun Khmer is the Cambodian stuff documented through Angkor Wat, which was the largest area in Southeast Asia. So the Northern Chinese migrated down into the what we today call Southeast Asia basin, and they all gravitated towards Angkor Wat because it was a center, a capital. But at the time the Angkor Wat had a million inhabitants, London only had 50,000. That's how big this place was. Anyway, something happened and a lot of the people disappeared. They migrated down south, which is we know today as Cambodia to the left, Thailand, further, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, et cetera, etc. But their roots and origins are all from Angkor Wat. So the traditional martial art that the Khmer people taught was Bokator but there was a weapon system like Krabi Krabong in Thailand. And then from there, getting rid of the weapons and having it as a training drill, and the traditional was Prado Saree, where you have Muay Boran in Thailand, and then Kun Khmer which is just boxing of the Khmer and Muay Thai, boxing of the Thai people. So again, on all these levels, everything was sort of even with the basic ingredient for the development of it.
And the reason why the Thais were so good early on in the piece and still are 100 % is that they actually had exposure to a lot of Western ideology, consequently a ring, boxing gloves, et cetera, et cetera, because they had the Port areas. Cambodia was pushed away. I mean, they had ports too, just the control that we, yeah, exactly.
Shannon (08:46)
stuck up in the hills.
Terry (09:04)
and the control that the governments put over the people and their interaction with foreigners. And this was a universal thing back in those days. But Thailand was open, or Siam as it was at the time, was open, was open to foreigners coming in. And it's even believed that some of the Thai boxing and some of the weapons that they used with the Krabi Krabong was introduced into Okinawa because they were seafarers, which is the karate connection and etc. So yeah, there's some very interesting sort of study around that and when you look at the fighting systems, there's a lot of similarities. There's more similarities than there are dissimilarities. Thai boxing's moved more into a sport. mean, karate has too, but you still have a very traditional format, but you have that also with with Krabi Krabong with Kun Khmer with Bokator etc. Unfortunately, today, the mass media and you know, everything's open and exposed to everybody. You've got a lot of people just making a lot of stuff up purely for their personal financial gain or whatever. But I mean, you you can normally take things from... everybody, even the bullshit artists and grow and develop it.
Shannon (10:33)
Yeah. I guess, you know, like nowadays, like with, with MMA and the UFC, you know, like the Americans have, you know, have made it huge, made it huge now. And it's, know, bits of an any martial arts, aye So, people are making different things work. All right. Terry,
Shannon (11:01)
Sort of going on the personal side. What's one challenge that you've had in life, like a really hard situation Something that you've learned being a fighter, being trained in the martial arts that's helped you in life.
Terry (11:17)
Actually, there's many, especially a job that I had a decade ago was repossessing cars. And and having to go and confront people and talk to people. Because We could turn up to somebody's place, get the car keys and drive the car away. Obviously after the negotiation, etc I wouldn't have to wait for an hour for a tow truck to turn up. And then of course, be the target of abuse because you're sitting on somebody's driveway, etc waiting for the tow truck. And it's just the communication level. You treat everybody the same as you'd like to be treated. So when I go up and talk to these guys I'm doing it from a level of composure and confidence that they're probably not used to encountering from an old guy like me. And, you know, it really comes down to the communication level. My brother said to me he said, how do you get those guys to wave out to you when you're driving away in their car? And I said, look, I've got to go back and see them again. I've got to go back and take them the legal document. I said, I'm keeping this on a very, you know, I don't really know them, but I'll listen to their story and try and work around their hardship. I'm being nice to them, I'm not being an arsehole. Because that just leads to more and more problems.
Shannon (12:54)
Yeah. All right. So on another one, what's a, what's a loss or, a setback that you've experienced, in your career. and how has training and martial arts helped you with that?
Terry (13:10)
It makes you reflect on things, I think more than anything else. I mean after my losses, you know, nobody's happy after a loss. And like you said before, you know, it's like, I'll get you one day, you prick. But I would literally go and sit down by myself in a quiet place and reflect on the whole thing. What did I do? What did I do wrong? What did I do right? How can I adjust this? How are we going to handle this? What are we going to do comeback wise, et cetera, et cetera. But it really, I mean fighting, there's two sides to that coin. There's winning and losing, and losing is part of it. There are no fighters that have ever gone out there and won everything. There just aren't, even in the amateur ranks. a good example is Rocky Marciano. So he retires 49 and no 1 World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, he lost his first amateur fight. A lot of people wouldn't know that, but as an amateur, he had a couple of defeats, but he lost his first one because he gassed out and he was so disgusted with himself afterwards. By the time, you know, it was all over, he ran home, he ran 10 K's home and swore he would never ever finish or be finished in a fight because of a lack of fitness and he was you know trainer that was possessed with the physical fitness thing and yeah you look at some of his fights I mean well behind on points they're going into the 13th and 14th rounds there's a man who could still put them away
Shannon (14:42)
Yeah. That's, that's so important for, for some of the younger ones you know, facing losing. like you say, you know, everyone's lost or is going to lose at some stage and, yeah, to come back, come back through it stronger. Yeah.
Terry (15:13)
That's it.
Yeah, you treat it as an education. It's like anything. It's like falling off your bike. I mean, nobody wants to fall off the bike on the road because it hurts. All right. But you quickly analyze it and work out what you did wrong. You know, not looking where you're going or hitting the gutter or whatever. And you don't do it again or you try not to do it again anyway. So again, it's all it's a learning curve. And, you know, I like that saying "You either Win or you Learn".
It's not losing. You're going to grow from the experience and that's the important thing.
END PART 1
Comments