Issue 102

June 2013

I didn’t really take the passing of Ramon Dekkers very well. It’s not like I was good friends with him, but I knew him. For me, he represented a huge era in my life because he was one of the guys that I followed into Thai boxing and Muay Thai.

Duke Roufus

One of MMA’s leading coaches laments the passing of kickboxing legend Ramon Dekkers

He was one of the reasons I went to Thailand and trained at Sityodtong and the reason I did a lot of the things I wanted to do. We were the same age too, so his passing definitely made things hard. It’s been a tough time recently, but the hardest thing is that the older you get the more friends die. Four of the guys I fought in K-1 are dead now.

I remember being in Thailand with my shorts on and I had a rehydration drink in my hand and a Thai guy came up to me and said: “Hey, you boxing? You wanna be like Ramon Dekker?” [sic] It made me laugh. Everybody in Thailand knew who Ramon Dekkers was, especially there, where Muay Thai, K-1 and kickboxing are so big.

I feel like an era of my life ended when he passed, especially since we’re the same age. He definitely had an impact on the sport, especially on a lot of my Thai friends. 

They all consider him to be one of the best and one of the strongest non-Thai fighters ever, but the sad thing is that I wish people would’ve known how good he was in his prime. If the sport was as big then as it is now then he’d be rewarded with the accolades that fighters are given today. 

My dad was a big part of the Professional Karate Association, and he trained fighters, was a judge, a referee, a promoter – he even had fights on TV back when I was little. Later in life, when I was watching these guys fight, I had a calling to go into Muay Thai and people thought I was crazy, especially my family. So the huge connection for me with guys like Ramon is that they were like my role models. 

I never reached the heights of a fighter like him, but thank God there was someone like him who I could follow into that sport. The guy inspired me to get into Muay Thai and he’s inspired me now to get involved with the Glory guys and I’m hosting the ‘Road to Glory’ tournament here in the States. 

He’s going to inspire me with 

his death because I’m back into Muay Thai and kickboxing, not as a fighter, but as a coach. I’m really going to be strong with promoting the sport here, especially since the last eight years I’ve really been focusing on MMA. I’ve been inspired by his greatness, so I’m back in the striking business.

DEDICATION IS KEY

I don’t get to tell my fighters this enough, but I love them. They work hard and they follow my programme and my programme is anything but easy, but being a champion isn’t easy either and that’s what I learned from being around all these great guys in the sport. 

If you work hard, great things happen, you just need to dedicate yourself – and that’s the hardest thing to do in this sport. I’m really thankful with my fighters. 

I’ve got Pascal Krauss from Germany and he’s here full-time now and you could see in his last performance that he’s getting used to the system. I always tell people that you can go train some Muay Thai in Thailand and that’s cool, or you can really live the lifestyle like the good fighters have done in the past. 

What I did to get really good at Muay Thai was that I brought four Thai guys to come and live with me, and two of them were stadium champions. It’s the same philosophy with MMA, you can’t just visit here and expect to get good, you’ve got 

to come here and live the lifestyle for a while, and then it will make sense to you.