While many a 14-year-old would be somewhat concerned after watching their 19-year-old opponent drive off in a Golf GTI the day before their very first fight, Liam Harrison wasn’t intimidated — it’s simply not in his nature.
Blessed with thunderous leg kicks and an unrelenting will to win, the Leeds icon has established himself as one of the greatest Muay Thai fighters the sport has ever seen. But before he became ‘The Hitman’ famed around the world for his freakish power, he was just a boy with a dream.
While he wasn’t the most talented, Harrison possessed something much more important — heart. From his very first session in the gym, his coaches cottoned onto his phenomenal work ethic, quickly realising they could take this youngster all the way to the top.
And they were so confident of this, they willingly threw the prospect straight into the deep end with an older opponent. However, they didn’t realise quite how big the age-gap was.
Luckily, Harrison, who was already hitting the town at this point, certainly wasn’t scared of the challenge in front of him, as he later proved in the ring.
In an interview with MMA TV Live, he remembered: “I’d had a couple of junior style fights when I was 13 when I first started, and I hated wearing all the pads. Although I'm quite small at 5’7, I was 5’7 from being 13-years-old. So, I could get away with saying I was 16 when I was 13 or 14. Honestly, I could go out in town, drinking when I was 14.
“No one questioned it. I used to just run riot. After my junior bout, I told Richard, ‘I don’t want to do that again. Please don't make me put all those pads on’. In one fight, I felt like a turtle on its back. I got push-kicked and knocked down and couldn’t get up.
“He said, ‘I’ll keep my ear to the ground, and if anything comes up for someone around 16, we’ll say you’re 16 and you can do it’. Then this kid, we thought was 16, came up, and my coach asked if I wanted to have my first pro fight. I said, ‘Let’s do it’.
“We went to the weigh-in the day before. Then, I watched him get off the scale, walk outside, get his car keys out, jump in his golf and drive off. I was like, ‘How old is this guy’? Turned out he was 19, but I knocked him out in the first round.”
With such an impressive performance, Harrison’s ambitions only grew, with the athlete setting his sights on world honours. However, some of those around him weren’t too convinced, with an ignorant teacher once telling him he’d never make it. But while many a teenager would’ve listened to the negativity, the Muay Thai superstar used it as the fuel to his fire.
The 38-year-old remembered: “I think that’s always been in the back of my mind. I’ve never let go of it. I don’t even know if that teacher is still alive, but if he is, I hope he can see what I’ve made of myself. I’d tell him, ‘Thanks for the motivation’.
“I’ll never forget it. I remember it like it was yesterday; he said, ‘What are you going to do with your life? You wanna be a world champion, but I’ll tell you now, that’s not going to happen’. I thought, ‘Mother f**ker’. It was all the motivation I needed. I don’t know what I had for dinner twenty minutes ago, but that’s always stuck with me and gave me the discipline to push on and prove people wrong. If he’s still knocking about, I hope he watches me this weekend on Sky Sports, getting my hand raised.”
In a testament to his unwavering powers of self belief, Harrison made a mockery of what that supposed educator said and then some. Proving himself as one of the greatest combat sportsman the UK has ever produced, the spartan has won a whopping eight world titles, and his journey isn’t done yet.
From dodging bottles thrown at him by rowdy Italian fans after his first championship victory, to betting on himself in Thailand to make enough money to keep his ambitions alive, Harrison has travelled a crazy road to global superstardom. But perhaps his greatest moment came against Muang Thai, where he overcame two knockdowns to drop his opponent three times in one of the most exhilarating scraps the world has ever seen.
Harrison beamed: “We won ‘Fight of the Year’ and we got a big bonus. It’s just a reason why, in any walk of life, you should always persevere, no matter how hard it gets. If you keep pushing, a little bit of magic can happen, and that’s what happened in that fight. We produced something special for the fans. I got a nice bonus cheque that went towards a new house.”
While the legend could walk away from competition with his head held high, he isn’t done chasing greatness just yet. He returns to action at ONE 167 against Katsuki Kitano, live on Sky Sports in the early hours of Saturday morning.
