The year was 2015 and to be more precise, it was the 6th of May 2015. On this day we welcomed Maksak Patsanon aka Deaw, as one of the SRG instructors.

Deaw is what we call the “big boss” of our Thai team, the oldest one not always the wisest but certainly one of the most charismatic people you will find on the mats.

Since he arrived in Australia he had one goal, become a permanent resident.After a long wait, Deaw has now officially become a permanent resident in Australia.

This is not only great for our students but great for the Muay Thai community in Sydney and Australia. It’s great seeing people who devoted their whole life to a sport and managed to get something out of it. You might not know, but there isn’t much money in our favourite martial art and differently than most of us, who love Muay Thai and train for fun, Thai people quite often devote their whole lifes for it, first as fighters and then as trainers.

We are happy for Deaw. We are happy for Ching, who’s now an Australian citizen. We are happy for being able to help them through the whole visa application in any necessary means. We are happy to have them as part of the SRG family.

We know Thai trainers don’t always have it easy in Australia and end up living with the bare minimum just because sometimes it’s still better than Thailand but we hope that in the future, Thai trainers in Australia could be less disposable. We hope that gym’s could have a better understanding and respect for them and be more interested in keeping trainers for a long period of time.

If we learnt something through the years, it was that keeping our trainers together for a long period of time has improved their happiness and made adaption to Australia easier. We hope to keep our team together for many years to come.

Once again, congratulation on this big achievement pi Deaw.

SOOT RAAENG GEERT