Growing up I was the weakest one in the room. Unsure of my ability to protect myself if the need ever arose. Under-confident, awkward and unable to have a powerful presence. This failure to be able to shine and be my best version led to a whole bunch of problems – social isolation, drug abuse, depression and more.

There were many things I did to pull myself out of that hell hole and become the man I am today, one of them that stands out is Martial Arts training. I started by searching for academies close to me because I wanted to get over my fear of fighting, I wanted to have the confidence of knowing I can handle a situation even if there are 3-4 people against me. 

But I was heavily disappointed with what I experienced. People were teaching fancy moves and traditional katas in the name of real world fighting. That’s when I decided I am going to have to take matters into my own hands.

Around the same time, MMA had just started becoming popular in India. Movies like never back down had come out. Its almost like a divine plan that unfolded, I created an MMA school with some of the best teachers I could find. We didn’t have any MMA teachers in India back then so I found boxers, wushu fighters, wrestlers etc. and merged their styles together

The last piece of the puzzle was sports psychology and criminal psychology. Once I added the mental element to Knockout’s training that’s when the results exploded. People started to quickly overcome their fear of violence and our athletes started winning one championship after the other

When I started all this, little did I know how big this would become and how many lives Knockout would touch. Since our inception in 2012, have grown into a wonderful family of students, teachers, fighters and international level champions.

And this is still the beginning, there is a long way to go.