Scarborough Muay Thai fighter promises knock-out performance in Las Vegas

A Scarborough Muay Thai fighter promises to give a knock-out performance to humble his opponent at the end of the month.

The main event between Scarborough’s own 25-year-old Markus Simon and United States fighter, Joe Schilling, has generated a lot of buzz on the Internet since Simon challenged his opponent for an “all or nothing” Muay Thai match.

Schilling is one of the top contenders in Simon’s weight class (light-heavyweight) in the United States, and has been taunting Simon online.

“He likes to talk a lot before his opponents, but most of his opponents don’t say anything,” Simon said. “He’s not so good, I am gonna expose him in the fight.”

Shilling is the current title holder of the World Boxing Council (WBC) Interim Light Heavyweight championship. During the match, however, the title won’t be on the line, yet the winner will take all the prize money while the loser gets nothing.

Simon is confident in his abilities for his upcoming fight in Las Vegas and believes that he has more experience than Schilling. He trains twice a day all week with his 52-year-old coach, Suchrt Yodkerepauprai and 23-year-old World Muay Thai Council (WMC) champion Matt Embree.

Yodkerepauprai has been a practitioner of Muay Thai since he was eight years old. He began teaching Muay Thai after moving to Toronto from Thailand. When Simon walked in the Siam No. 1 Muay Thai gym, he was impressed by Simon’s fights and began training him.

“I saw him fight a few fights at first, so then he came back to train,” Yodkerepauprai said. “It was the end of 2006 where he started to become serious about it.”

He mostly helps Simon with the technical aspect of the training, which includes pad work, form and clinching. Yodkerepauprai expects all his fighters, including Simon, to be responsible and disciplined in what they do.

“I used to train them twice a day but now I have kids so I expect them to be responsible for their training so when I arrive at the gym they are at 110 per cent performance,” he said.

Embree helps Simon prepare for his competitions by keeping a close eye on how the competition is performing.

“We are always talking about the fights,” Embree said. “We study religiously, every single fight we have; we go over our strategy with each other.”

Simon’s game plan for the event will be to relax and be in the moment while he fights. He looks to use his technique and knowledge to his advantage.

“When I throw my weapons in the ring it’s not just to hurt the person,” Simon said. “But you want to land correctly and you tend to knock them out.”

Simon and Embree will be fighting in Las Vegas on Feb. 25 under the Lion Fighting promotion.

Markus Simon practising his kicks on the heavy bag.

Simon’s training usually starts with light jump rope exercises.

As time passes by, Simon’s jump rope exercises become more intense.

Simon cooling down before his pad work session.

Matt Embree is also preparing for a big fight at Lion Fights and he shares a very similar routine as Simon.

The team of all the advanced fighters of this Muay Thai gym. The gym will be celebrating its 20-year-anniversary this March.

Matt Embree cooking a meal after a long training session to recover. Fighters who are scheduled for tournaments live in the Siam No. 1 gym for about a month prior to their big fights. The gym is capable of accommodating the fighters for that period of time before their fights.