An Australian In Thailand: A Conversation With the Owner of Phuket Top Team

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An Australian In Thailand: A Conversation With the Owner of Phuket Top Team

We sat down with Boyd Clarke, the owner of Phuket Top Team, to talk about how to get the most out of training in Thailand, the culture of "bargirls," and building a Muay Thai family business.

Photos by Matthew Yarbrough

Boyd Clarke didn't come to Thailand to open a gym. Like thousands of other martial artists who descend on Thai soil every year, Boyd came to Thailand to train and fight. In 2009, he left his native Australia on a one-way ticket to Thailand, with another ticket onward to Brazil and then to the United States.

He never made it past Thailand. In 2010, just a year after arriving, Boyd became the owner of a growing retail business in Phuket. By 2012, Boyd and his Thai wife opened their own gym, Phuket Top Team.

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None of it was part of the plan. Boyd had intended to ratchet up his Muay Thai skills in Thailand, then move to Brazil to focus on Brazilian jiu jitsu, with the United States and its burgeoning professional fight circuit as his final destination. But during his first year in the country, a personal crisis struck. Boyd visited his doctor, complaining of chronic fatigue and the feeling of torn abdominal muscles. The doctor inspected his swollen abdomen and studied his yellowed eyes. "Jaundice," he said at first, then amended the diagnosis to Hepatitis A, a highly contagious disease communicable by something as innocuous as contaminated food or water.

Boyd was surprised, but the diagnosis made sense. He'd gotten one round of vaccinations before leaving Australia the year before, but failed to show up for secondary booster shots. "I figured I've been immune to almost everything in my life, so I'd never get something like that," he says now with a shrug. "I had one shot, right? What do I need a Booster for? So I did it that way. Wasn't the best idea." The doctor forbade him from training, though at that point Boyd barely had enough energy to walk.

With his Muay Thai plans postponed indefinitely, Boyd found another channel for his energies. He and his then-girlfriend Kannika opened a small store in Phuket, selling wholesale Muay Thai gear to international buyers. Soon, local fighters and hobbyists looking for a good deal were knocking on their door—literally—and the couple turned their house into a shop. Phuket Fight Store was born. Boyd remembers it as Phuket's first independent gear shop, unattached to any gym and able to offer cheaper prices. "We were ordering in larger quantities, and I didn't have any overhead because it was my house," Boyd says.

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It was an unexpected success. "It took off way beyond what I thought it would," he says. "Every now and then we'd make a huge sale, like five or six thousand dollars in one sale, purely because a gym in Belgium wanted this much to order, and when they [tried contacting] the factories, they're all Thai so it's hard [to communicate], so we'd just do it all for them. Worked out really well. From there it spawned, man, like, you don't even need a business degree." Boyd openly admits he never even completed high school. He attended "a nice, good private school," but dropped out shortly before graduation. "Schooling just wasn't my thing. It wasn't the way I learned."

Despite not completing his degree, his mere attendance at a highly regarded private school in Australia was enough to assist the high-school dropout in securing employment in the country's construction, oil, and mining sectors. Boyd entered the construction industry in the middle of an economic boom. "The boom hit when I had only three months of experience, but I had a good education, so I was instantly earning what some people had to have five or six years of on-site knowledge to do, not because I knew it all but because the timing was good."

Job opportunities moved Boyd from his native Adelaide across the country to the western city of Perth. For a year and a half, Boyd worked a schedule of 12 hours a day with only one day off every two weeks, in six-week blocks. They money was good, but the lifestyle was, "soul-crushing. I felt trapped; all these people content to do this slave thing 12 hours a day and get money."

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Boyd cut his expenses and started saving, still dreaming of a future in martial arts. "Most [of my colleagues] were buying boats and yachts and second houses, but my thing was travel, so I never even rented a place. I had no costs. The food was free."

Eventually, he saved enough to take the leap to Thailand. Within a few short years, Boyd would put his dreams of fighting aside and, together with his wife Kannika, open a new gym in Chalong, Phuket, on a street growing rapidly with the relentless influx of fighters and fitness tourists. They named it Phuket Top Team, Boyd's way of "paying homage to two of the biggest, most successful and long-standing gyms, American Top Team and Brazilian Top Team."

From his office at Phuket Top Team, Boyd Clarke tells Fightland about doing business in Phuket and how foreign fighters can make the most of their training in Thailand.

Fightland: How was it first getting into business in Phuket?
Boyd Clarke: In Phuket, I met tons of traveling entrepreneurs and social media bugs. Picked a lot of brains as well as listened to a lot of people telling you how to make a lot of money when they don't have [any themselves]—there's a lot of that kind of thing. I picked through a lot of that and was like, eh, I think I can do this because I have a creative approach to marketing and sales. Honestly, it sounds corny, but just put a passion into something, and if you just show your passion without fear of what anyone else thinks, then it kind of comes through.

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How did you decide to build a gym specifically?
[My wife and I] rented the land together on one of those big 10-plus-year lease things that could always go sideways. The person who owned this land had someone in severe trouble in her family and wanted money quickly. We took out a big bank loan and made it happen, which was the right move because four years on now, purely on the block of land we have, we can break even. If my business flopped, I could break even and walk away. Crazy, definitely didn't expect that.

This street just went bonkers. All these shops started to pop up a year after I had the [gear] shop. That's when I was like, then what's our move? And it was either [build] a three-story fight shop central or look at this gym, [which was] just a blank plot of land at the time.

We wanted to move down the path of offering all the martial arts, but I didn't want to bastardize Muay Thai. That's been a process to this day and it'll be to the end, because I don't want my gym to be so full of MMA enthusiasts that there's that ego-trip thing. Our slogan is "No Egos, Only Dedication." So I figured just by saying, "No egos, only dedication," would limit [that]. You feel like a dick if you're going to bring ego. So it kind of weeds out some of that. Every now and then it pops up, but they're not as welcome. It just doesn't flow.

And my whole thing was, and it sounds corny and anyone can say it, but I never had expectations of earning a lot of money because I left school before [graduating] high school, so it was always just like, get a house and we're winning. That was the plan. Then I've earned so much money in what seems so easy with the mines, that I didn't even value it. It was just a number. Lucky that [my wife] Kan has value for money, being Thai. I just don't value it much. As long as I've got certain things, I'm good.

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Do you plan to move back to Australia?
No. I haven't been back. My family all comes to visit me here.

In Australia, I had one tattoo on my rib and that was it, nothing visible because I always took lots of different jobs before I moved into construction when the boom happened. I was always doing selling, marketing. Once I started to do well in business in Thailand, the decision to put even the names of my two kids on my neck was almost symbolic of me saying I'm not part of any other system now other than my own, earning and working for myself and just making it work. Like, if I put that there, I can't go back to Australia and get a job in a bank. So I kind of closed doors, forced myself into one direction, and it's been good.

What are your goals, both personal and for the gym?
Now that I have two kids, my goal is to be able to leave my kids something so that [regardless of hether] they want to work here at [the family business or not], either way it's going to be an investment or equity in itself. For equity, it will always be here for them. But I want the name to be strong, so it always has to be good quality and I always have to be involved.

Your gym gets serious fighters from all around the world. Do you find it difficult to match larger, heavier foreign fighters in a place like Thailand?
Sometimes we suggest more kickboxing, or more Muay Thai. MMA is such a different beast altogether that it's a harder crossover. You can cross over with MMA and kickboxing, but with MMA and Muay Thai, they're detrimental to each other. If you train so much Muay Thai and then go to MMA, you've got to unlearn so many things, and vice versa. There are techniques you can use, but on the whole… Sometimes kickboxing is the way. Like [Phuket Top Team fighter] Jonathan Tuhu, both the money and his is more suited for three-round fights because he's explosive, just bang, it's the spinning kicks, jumping, just so much happening with his style. So the kickboxing world then demands of him. Like, China [says], "We want that guy! We want that guy!" They contact me about him. And then if they want you, the numbers increase.

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Kunlun?
Yeah, Kunlun, but since he fought in Kunlun, another promotion—I don't even know how they got my WhatsApp—was like, "How much they pay him? We pay more." China is crazy. China is mental!

What advice would you give people who want to start a gym?
It depends on their goals for growth. I would say most importantly, do your research. Find gyms anywhere in the world that are doing roughly what you want to do, [and doing it] successfully. Research them, figure out what they are doing and how they are [growing] or have grown. Also write out a short list of what your gym stands for—what values, what motivations, what you want people to say about your gym. Remind yourself regularly to stay true to what you started it all for.

What advice would you have for foreigners who are training in their home country, dreaming of coming to train in Thailand?
It's easier than you think it is to come out here and train. There are so many people who can be catered to in Muay Thai. You can go to the far country[side], like Isaan, and be taken in as part of the family—kids running around barefoot, 10km barefoot, [training] in an old gym, worn down but there's a good soul to it—and that's an amazing experience. I'd say if you really weren't just wanting to train but thought this might be it, and you're looking at a year here or something, then I'd say move around. Have a look in Chiang Mai, have a look in Isaan, Phuket, Bangkok. And then see what you like. Because each of them is a crazy experience. There's so much to learn in all those places.

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The argument will always be that the home of Muay Thai is Bangkok. Agreed; there are more champions in Bangkok. There's a filthy grind in Bangkok, everyone grinding for a dollar, so there's that feeling you get there. But there's staph infections… and anyone can get it anywhere, but it's more likely in gyms that are rundown, not earning as much and therefore not cleaning as much, just a whole bunch of things. Then as a foreigner, if you're sponsored by a real traditional Thai gym—this is why I like Sitmonchai, they actually started to market their foreigners a bit and mention them. Other gyms don't [market their foreign fighters]. You take their name [as your fight surname] and away you go. You pay your fifty percent [but] they're not really investing in you. [Some gyms do] but there are not many that do. They just feel like foreigners are far too ic and probably short-term.

Would you say it's because foreigners are erratic? Sure, some stay long-term, but I remember one man came to my home gym, said he was going to stay eight months but left after two weeks.
We get that all the time. It's the one thing that I've done were you could argue, "Oh, see? He cares about money a lot." It's the no-refund policy. But we have given refunds, depends on the scenario, but it's up to our judgment. Too many people say, "I want to be here three months or six months," and then don't stay. And their reason [for leaving] is not because of something here. It's because they're in love with a bar girl, or—

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Does that happen a lot? Running off with bar girls?
The bar girl thing happens all the time, [but] not very often [for people at Phuket Top Team] and I think that's because of the way we promote the gym for "No Egos" and those more dedicated in Muay Thai and martial arts. The #Hashtag-Beastmode squad may be more likely to take that path. Of course, anyone is capable of enjoying freedoms they have not seen before.

Have you ever heard of bar girls or prostitutes of any kind who specifically target foreign men, or even Thai men, who are Muay Thai fighters or into combat sports?
Bar girls for sure target foreign men. I would say, speaking for the bar girl community, that the number one [target] they look for is over 35 and hopefully divorced. That's the demographic because [the man] should have saved money in the bank by then, and they're less likely to go and find another woman because they're going to be more content; they're already halfway or three-quarters through their life. Then what you've got to do is feed them tons of fatty food and make sure they're well liquored. Then they're just going to get more docile. The fatter and more useless they get to society, the more reliant they'll be on that girl. I've seen that kind of thing play out.

Fighters can be targets but [the women] don't come door-knocking; you have to go to areas that are known for bar girls. If people want to go to those areas, that's absolutely a freedom they have. Luckily those spots are all fifteen to twenty minutes away from Phuket Top Team, far enough that you have to really make that decision to end up there. With the Muay Thai guys, it's always a shorter thing, so [the bar girls] want to get something out of them quickly, in a month. It's a quicker, more erratic process.

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Do bar girls ever hang out on this street?
Not unless someone brings a girl here. At the gym and onsite rooms, we have a no-bar girls policy. We prefer people stay dedicated and remember why they are here. It doesn't mean they can't go to those spots and do what they want, just not at the gym or onsite rooms.

Is it common knowledge that certain fighters patronize bar girls? Is it something people are fairly open about?
Yeah, sure. It's a freedom of choice in Thailand. Some are open, some more discreet. I don't care what anyone wants to do as long as they remember why they are here and what their goals are. Enjoy Thailand; enjoy the freedoms this country has.

[Some Western men] are more likely to [patronize sex workers] here than anywhere else in the Western world, for multiple reasons. There are more [opportunities] here, the price is different, but the number one reason is because the system that is set up here doesn't feel like a system of prostitution. It feels mutual—like, the girls are not on drugs or looking sad. Generally, outside of any sexual act, [the women] just want to have a good night. They don't want to sit there and be dormant. Like, "You want to catch a movie? I'll take you to my favorite restaurant."

Sounds like a "holiday girlfriend."
Yeah, exactly. For some guys, it's like a tour guide. So it's like, "Why not pay her a little bit? She's taking me to the best restaurants; she's telling me the nice, hidden beaches."

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The issue is that the terminology of "bar girl" is such a large one. Because there are the girls where that's their hustle and grind: find that dude and leech him and maybe find another one. Then there is the girl who has had a lot of boyfriends because they're in and out, and sometimes she'll ask if they can help her with money and sometimes she won't.

So along the lines of the original question, what advice would you give to foreign fighters first coming to Thailand?
Move around and sample some places. I would even suggest starting in Bangkok because it's like going to the army. Boot camp. And there are a lot of benefits to be had, but you don't want to be boot camped your whole career. Especially if you're trying to be more independent than some of the orphanage-style kids at the Thai gyms. So go there, try it, move around.

I just like Phuket because I can get my trainers that I go and find and scout—and that's a hard as hell project in and of itself, scouting trainers. You want drug free, you want not drinking too much. You can't say, "Don't drink," because that won't work, so you just say, "Don't be drunk at work."

How do you find new trainers? Through referrals?
Yes. You get one or two good ones and you're like, "Let's grow from here. I put it on you to help that process." One or two of our trainers have helped bring in like-minded trainers.

If you hear of someone you're interested in and they're working at another gym, do you physically go to and watch them train?
Yes, but you can't poach someone from another gym. I can't be involved in that. It just looks bad and I don't even want it. Not my intention. So a lot of it is like, I had a guy who recently came here whom I've known four or five years now, since I myself was fighting. And I said, "Man, if you're ever out of a job or looking for something, I would be honored to have you at the gym." And six months ago he contacted me, said, "Now I don't work. Maybe I come see you on Monday." I said, "For sure." But he didn't [show up], and I saw on his Facebook that he was fishing. But at some point he goes, "Now's the time," and he contacted me [again], and I said, "For sure, of course." And now he's here full-time.

So it's a lot of patience. If you went aggressive, like aggressive business like how a lot of Westerners try to do in Thailand, it's not for everyone.

You were saying earlier that you thought going to Isaan could be a really interesting experience for foreigners. How would a foreigner find a gym in Isaan if they don't speak Thai?
Word-of-mouth is good. Forums online, websites. You'll always be able to find someone from your country who has been there before.

But Isaan can be hard. Once you know a gym that you're looking at, you're going to Google the area. Half the map doesn't exist. No one at the gym's probably got English for you. [The gym] doesn't have a Facebook. There might be one foreigner hopefully Instagramming for them, but generally not. So you've just got to hop on the bus, doesn't cost you much. At worst you don't like the gym, don't like the vibe. You spend three days there and then move on. But you've got to try it. It's worth it. Most of the champions will come from there because the same in boxing in America, the Bronx and Philly were where most guys came from because life was hard, so you've got to make the most of it there.

But the learning process there is entirely different to what it will be here [in a place like Phuket]. In Isaan, you don't go to the class and say, "Hey, what do I do?" You grab a rope watch. They're skipping? Okay, cool. He's using a bag? Okay. And every now and then somebody will say, "No, not like that. Like this." Oh, okay. There's not a lot of one-on-one. It's more just prove yourself that you'll come in everyday and train first. Most importantly, make sure you do that 10km run. If you're not going to do that, then you're lazy anyway so you're never going to succeed.

But the 10km run isn't for everyone. You've got to remember, these [Thai] guys are like 50 to 60 kilos. You get a hundred-kilo guy, he can't run 10km a day. But Thais don't always accept that.

Also I would think it would be much harder to find opponents for big guys out in Isaan.
Oh for sure. But again, it's more just about being there, and absorbing this, "Oh shit, this is how hard it can get. This is where the grind is." And then you push on a couple days as much as they do, and then when you take that to a place like Bangkok or Phuket, you can always remember, "That's where I was able to push through there. Now I have to bring that work ethic to where most of my trainers are speaking clear, fluent English and will break down a technique for me." And you can say to them, "Hey, you know that sweep you did? I don't understand where you put your left arm." And they go, "Oh, you put your left arm…" They're explaining it to you in a way you can absorb a lot easier than just being a part of a gym moving.

But sometimes having that experience [in Isaan] makes you realize the grind and how to work. [For example], you ever get tired [during pad rounds] and just ask a question? A lot of people do that to slow the pace a bit. But if you've been in Isaan, where there ain't no slowing the pace, then you remember that mentality. You bring it in, so that when you do ask a question, it's going to be at the right time. That's the big one, I think, why people should move around and have a look. I [moved around], trained a little bit in Isaan, little bit in Bangkok, and then came to Phuket. I really did like Phuket.

The other thing is, say you've got 20 trainers at a gym, or 10 or whatever. For ninety percent of people, and especially for someone who wants a shot at fighting, their whole experience will probably be with one trainer. They'll connect. After a week or two, once you say, "I'm interested in fighting," one trainer's ears will prick up. He'll pick you or you'll pick him or mutually. But most of the time you'll have a relationship with one person who's going to try to coach you. Sometimes it's not about how many champions a gym has, but about that one guy you connect with.