Oumry Ban, a former Khmer kickboxing champion poses next to a projected photograph of himself taken soon after being severely beaten outside a Anaheim Street restaurant in 2006. (Kevin Chang / Press-Telegram)
Oumry Ban, 63, a former Khmer kickboxing champion and Cambodian genocide survivor, moved to Long Beach to start a new life in 1986 and then had to start again in November of last year, when a street attack nearly took his life. (Kevin Chang / Press-Telegram)A Cambodian champion keeps battling for a better life
06/30/2007
By Greg Mellen, Staff writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (Long Beach, Calif., USA)
This truth a fighter knows: Sometimes the psychological scars are the worst. Bruises subside, cuts close, broken bones heal. But memories, pride, honor - those are things less easily salved.
When one is blind-sided and savagely beaten on the streets of Long Beach, that's tough to reconcile.
When Oumry Ban arises in the hours before dawn, as he does each day, the 63-year-old former Khmer kickboxing champion and Cambodian genocide survivor stares into the bathroom mirror. He traces his hand along his face and feels nothing - literally.
A champion battles long odds
A numbness remains there from the November beating that matches an inner hollowness. And so, although the marks of the attack have disappeared, it is what he can't see, or feel - an absence - that troubles his sleep.
"Every night, I remember," Ban says. "In Cambodia, people after Pol Pot at night they remember (the genocide). Sometimes, I remember that too. And now I remember this."
At 5-foot-6 and maybe 140 pounds, Ban looks like anything but a former fighter. His facial features are soft, almost delicate, and his manner is even less imposing.
But Ban took a beating in November that left his face a mask of gore and pulp. His jaw fractured. The imprint of a shoe visible on his left cheek. Bruises all over his body. Rope burns on his neck.
To this day, the questions still remain. Eight months later, he is no closer to a resolution.
However, the courts may soon provide a legal resolution. Than Kim and Chan Um await a trial that is scheduled to begin in Long Beach Superior Court within two weeks. They face two charges each of assault and assault with the intent to cause great bodily injury.
Kim faces 25 years to life in prison on a third strike offense if convicted. Um faces up to 10 years.
Survivor's tale
Ban is a survivor. He was born into conflict in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Cambodia in World War II.
He lived through the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge that claimed 1.7 million of his countrymen, including his mother, two brothers and a sister.
Ban weathered a 13-year professional kickboxing career, winning Cambodian and international title belts.
He arrived in the United States as a refugee, raised four children to adulthood and has a 7-year-old daughter with his girlfriend and a 13-year-old stepdaughter. Ban has run a modest fight studio for 20 years and struggles to make ends meet.
All this, just to be taken down on the streets of Long Beach.
Fistic memories
Ban took beatings in the ring. But those were different. That was the fare for being a prizefighter. The battles were honorable, face-to-face, one-on-one.
The old fighter will regale friends with tales from the ring.
He recalls the punch that obliterated the cartilage in his nose.
"Look, no bone," Ban says, wiggling a fleshy area at the top of his nose.
He lets you know he rallied to win the bout. "Knock him out, round four," Ban says.
Ban remembers a shoulder dislocation, teeth knocked out, the blow that cracked his sternum.
"Here, right here, feel," he says, placing an onlooker's hand near the heart where the bone healed unevenly.
Ban lost the decision but went the distance. Then he went to the hospital.
In a movie, Ban would have fought off his attackers on the Long Beach street, unleashing devastating knees and elbows for which he was renowned.
Reality isn't so neatly scripted.
Marom May, a student Ban is training, has heard the snickers from the community.
"It was an embarrassing moment," May says. "People in the community were saying, 'I can't believe a kickboxing instructor got beat like that.' But they don't understand. The whole idea about being a master is not just fighting and fighting back."
Ban says he never raised a fist. Never blocked a punch, though it would have been easy enough. He was confused, surprised, maybe even a little scared. He is alternately ashamed that he, the great kickboxer, didn't defend himself, but proud he resisted violence.
"The whole thing is about respect, and that shouldn't have happened," May says. "Everyone in our community says the same thing, it's outrageous."
Ban is beginning to understand he likely will never know why he was singled out. And that gnaws at him. The why of it. It always comes back to that.
A relic recovered
Ban's gym at 223 W. Anaheim St. is like many of its kind, a former launderette located next to a hair salon and clothes store.
Near the entrance of the 2,000-square-foot space is an elevated fighting ring. Along the edges are speed bags, gloves and blocking pads. The walls are decorated with fight posters, pictures of former champs who trained at the gym and newspaper spreads.
In a back corner above a juice vending machine, almost lost amid the clutter, is a 6-by-8-inch framed black-and-white photograph of two young fighters exchanging kicks.
It is like any other photo. A little blurred, perhaps, faces obscured.
Then you learn one of the combatants is Ban. He is fighting Thailand's Mideth Noy in a 1972 Southeast Asian title bout. It was the height of Ban's career.
The photo is the only memento Ban has, the only evidence of his star power.
When the Khmer Rouge rose to power, Ban had to abandon all his possessions. Records of personal feats were destroyed. Most of what remains are what Ban remembers and what is passed on orally by those who saw his bouts.
The photo was found in 1986 when Ban's friend, Sarith Ban, was sifting through old Cambodian newspapers and magazines.
"We were shocked when we saw that," recalls Paline Soth, another friend who helped Ban establish his gym.
Soth saw Ban fight and describes him as the Sugar Ray Robinson of Khmer kickboxing.
"Knees and elbows, that was his strength," Soth says. "If he got inside, he would jump on you like a monkey and hit you with those knees and elbows and get a knockout. He was very fast."
In the beginning
The legend of Ban begins with a 14-year-old running home from school. He stops to watch men practicing and asks to try.
"They said, 'Oh, no, you too small,'" Ban recalls. "I said, 'No, I want to try.'"
As is tradition in Cambodia, Ban's initial fight training was free. After two days of training, Ban declared he was ready to spar with experienced fighters.
On the third day, the trainers let him learn his lesson. An experienced fighter beat the youngster around the ring, busting up his nose, lips and eye.
But Ban came back to the gym the next day, and the next. It would become emblematic of his fighting style - always coming forward, always pressing the action.
At 16, Ban fought his first bout, taking on a dockworker who was in his 30s.
Again he was beaten around the ring until his handlers threw in the towel.
"Oh, I break everything," Ban says with a laugh. "Then I quit."
Several days later, the master at Ban's gym visited.
"He says 'You come back, you be a champion,'" Ban says.
Ban struggled in his second fight, but "then I win, win, win. Win all the time."
Fighting at least once a month and often weekly, even two or three days back-to-back, Ban blossomed.
In 1964, he won his first national title at 61 kilograms, or 135 pounds.
According to his recollection, which Ban admits isn't perfect, between 1962 and 1975 he fought 309 times with a 278-31 record and 200 knockouts.
His secret was his inside technique, which earned him nicknames such as "The Atomic Knee."
"My knee was so fast. I surprised myself," Ban says. "I got famous, like Mike Tyson. I beat all Cambodian fighters."
Free-wheeling days
After a while, smaller fighters would no longer challenge Ban and he faced bigger men.
Ban remembers several classic encounters with the renowned Chea Sarak, who weighed more than 160 pounds.
The two fought before packed houses at Phnom Pehn's outdoor National Olympic Stadium.
"The people, they want to see me, because I'm small and he's big," Ban says.
After fights, the party was on and drinks were on Ban.
"I'd spend all the money, all the money," Ban recalls. "I go to dinner and maybe 100 people follow me." And he would pay.
Even today, his generosity persists. Ban is the first to pick up a check. He allows several fighters to train for free and others to pay when they can. When he leaves for lunch, he always slips some money to Richard, a homeless man who will watch over the gym. Ban also cares for Sothy Son, a homeless, mentally disabled friend from Cambodia.
The war begins
In 1970, as his country slipped into civil war between the American-backed Khmer Republic and communist Khmer Rouge guerillas, Ban enlisted in the armed forces.
He saw armed action and remembers several bloody battles. Every night he prayed to survive just one more day.
Eventually, the army realized Ban's celebrity and sent him back to Phnom Penh. He was airlifted to the capital by helicopter, sharing the space with slain soldiers.
He remembers seeing Phnom Penh from the air at nightfall.
"I was so happy. I think I have a new life," Ban says. "I see the lights, it's like Las Vegas or something."
Ban was given the rank of adjutant and paid a salary in addition to the 300 to 500 rial ($20 to $30) he generally made per bout.
It was during this time that Ban defeated Noy and several other Thai fighters, although he says he didn't like the Thai style.
"When I get close, I win," Ban says. "Thai, they run away."
The fight with Noy in Phnom Penh was a classic. Ban says he was knocked down early. Eventually, he was able to lock up Noy. Then Ban unleashed a volley of knees to the Thai's midsection.
"When I let him go, all the food come out his mouth," Ban says. "It smell very bad. They stop the fight."
Darkness descends
Although injuries began to slow Ban down, he remained immensely popular. As his star reached its zenith, his country was slipping into darkness.
The Khmer Rouge turned the tide in the war. Its leader, Pol Pot, talked of writing a new history that would begin, he said, with "year zero."
Ban's last fights before the Khmer Rouge conquest were in late March 1975, in Pailin, on the Thai border.
Ban says in back-to-back days he beat two fighters. In the second bout, Ban recovered from a cut above his eye to record a knockout. Fittingly, he ended it with a knee to his opponent's midsection.
Ban was scheduled to fight in Thailand in mid-April. He hoped for a tune-up in Pailin, but when it fell through he flew home to Phnom Penh.
A couple of days later, the siege of Phnom Penh began and residents were trapped.
Yet few if any foresaw the horrors that would become forever known as the killing fields.
Ban says city dwellers were weary of the five-year war and thought the Khmer Rouge would bring stability and end the bloodshed.
"Everybody thinks peace is coming," Ban says. "They thought the Khmer Rouge is coming, so peace is coming."
On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Penh uncontested.
In one of its first acts, the new regime evacuated the city. Ban made it to the outskirts on his motorcycle before it was confiscated by a soldier. After that, Ban walked.
Just as suddenly, the legend of Oumry Ban became just that - legend, memory, a vapor. Year zero had arrived.
Bitter memories
Overnight, the art of surviving a punch was replaced by the art of surviving madness.
Renowned because of his champion fighter status, Ban says he could not hide his identity. So he swallowed his pride and adopted the mien of the peasant with interrogators.
"I would say, 'Oh, no, I am poor. Only fight for money, feed my family,'" Ban recalls as he pantomimes bowing and steepling his fingers in the Cambodian show of respect.
Ban's life was spared and he settled into the bare existence of life under the Khmer Rouge, surviving on a bowl of rice per day.
"I pray every day," Ban said. "I think maybe the next day they kill me. I think maybe I was lucky."
In November 1978, Ban fled his commune in Battambang province after hearing a cadre of more vicious Khmer Rouge soldiers was arriving.
Ban made his way into the desolate backwoods of Kravang mountain, where he survived by coming down at night to steal food.
Last fight
In May 1979, Ban stumbled upon a Vietnamese soldier who told him Vietnam had occupied the country and he could go home.
It was bittersweet. Ban returned to a barren Phnom Penh made more desolate by the news of the deaths in his family.
Ban made his way back toward Battambang. On the way, he met Yany Sin, who would become his companion and the mother to his first four children.
Widowed by the war, Sin, like Ban, was adrift. Ban said with so many families ripped apart it wasn't unusual for travelers to bond and become families.
While in camp in Thailand, Ban was reunited with Mideth Noy, who was now a truck driver in Thailand. Noy asked Ban if he was still interested in fighting.
Ban was 36 and hadn't fought or trained in five years.
He was offered 1,000 baht (about $30) to challenge a Thai fighter. With Sin expecting the couple's first child, Ban took the bout.
"I bought a lot of food," Ban says with a laugh.
He lost after two rounds. It was his last fight. A month later, Narin, the couple's first son, was born.
A new life
Eventually, Ban and his family made it to the U.S. via the Philippines, where daughter Manila, named after the country's capital city, was born in 1980.
Life in the U.S. presented different and more subtle challenges. Although Ban no longer had to fear for his life or fight for his livelihood, he and his family had to meld into a mystifying new culture. They had to learn a new language, raise children, learn new skills.
Ban worked as a dishwasher and housekeeper. A son, United, named in honor of the United States, was born in 1986, and daughter Calina in 1987.
Ban and Sin split in 1995 after Ban met his current girlfriend, Mony Tat. She had a child from a previous relationship and the couple have a daughter together, Sochada, born in 2000.
When Ban moved to Long Beach in 1986, he was presented with a seemingly golden opportunity to go into business and build on his celebrity.
Paline Soth, like virtually all refugees of that era, knew of the great Oumry Ban. Soth spent $20,000 to create the Long Beach Kickboxing Center.
The idea was to create a gym for emerging Cambodian fighters and promote shows. Soth's plan never panned out, and he left the gym to Ban.
For all his celebrity, Ban found it hard to build a clientele among a Cambodian community that was drifting from the old ways.
The gym life
As evening descends on Long Beach, Ban's world constricts.
It tightens into the 130-by-65-foot confines of the gym. Then smaller still into the 25-foot ring.
It's here where Ban's learning and knowledge are distilled. Here there is something as pure as combat. As elemental as master and pupil. An essence.
When everything else out there unravels and ceases to make sense - relationships, life choices, money woes - here in the ring there is truth. In here there is simplicity. Expressed, perhaps, in the perfect jab-elbow-knee combination. Passed on from master to student in a timeless procession.
This is the rhythm of the gym, the constant in Ban's life. It is the place where he is truly at home.
While the gym is Ban's sanctuary, it is also his burden.
The business is unpredictable. Some months Ban clears more than $1,000 in profit, others he barely meets expenses.
Each time rent jumps, Ban considers leaving the business, but invariably he keeps it open.
Even in 1992, when riots broke out along Anaheim Street, Ban kept his doors open, only closing when customers didn't come.
After the November attack, the gym stayed open, as friends ran the place while Ban healed.
Financial struggle
Keeping the gym has caused financial hardship, strained family relationships and is beginning to affect Ban's health. But still he moves on, a fighter forever pressing the action.
Ban has had to take a part-time job that requires him to be up at 4 a.m. After he finishes that job, Ban hurries to open the gym, where he'll be until 9:30 or 10 p.m. If he gets to sleep by 11 p.m., he's lucky.
Ban's financial struggles at the gym caused stress with Sin, who urged him to find other work.
For five years, Ban worked full-time and kept the gym open. He delivered phone books as far away as El Cajon and Arizona, then rushed back daily to open the gym, he says.
He maxed out credit cards and once had to file for bankruptcy.
Ban, his girlfriend and two daughters share a one-bedroom apartment on the Westside. They suspend clothes on rods above the living-room bed because there are no closets.
Although Ban dotes on his young daughters, picking them up after school each day, feeding them, and teaching them at the gym, he wishes he could better provide for them.
In his lowest moments, Ban wishes he had never started the gym. Wishes he had learned a skill. Slipped into anonymity. Let his pride and fame dissipate in the ether of another lifetime.
"Oh, yes, I wish that 100 percent," Ban says.
But now, he fears he is too old to do anything else.
"I only have one skill - kickboxing," he says.
Keeping art alive
And yet, Ban can't imagine life without the gym.
"This is the art of the Cambodian people," Ban says of the sport, which traces its roots more than 600 years.
While the sport of Muay Thai has flourished, Khmer kickboxing, which may be the original form of the sport, is almost unknown. Ban's gym is the only one of its kind in Long Beach.
Running the gym had earned Ban respect if not riches in his community. This year, the kickboxer and his students were invited and took part in the annual Cambodian New Year parade along Anaheim Street.
Ban has turned down offers to sell the gym and turn it into a Muay Thai studio.
"Sometimes in the newspapers I read how Khmer people sell their culture to other people," Ban says. "I don't want to be like that. If I sell, this place become Muay Thai. It's like I sell my culture."
Echoes from the gym
On an average night, the gym is alive with percussive sounds: the rat-a-tat of a speed bag, pops of gloved fists colliding and the loud retorts of shins and feet smacking heavy bags.
The fighters are a kaleidoscope of races, ages and sizes. They come because of Ban's reputation and his personality.
"He's like a living legend," Justice Smith, a muscular 290-pounder, says during a break in his workout. "It's a privilege to work out in this gym. It gives me the heart to fight hard. This gym is very well known."
Smith says fighters at the gym are known for having the best leg training and knees in the game.
The whole building shudders when Smith slams a leg into one of the heavy bags.
James Beasley of Compton picked Ban's gym because of its comfortable, friendly atmosphere.
"It's like home," Beasley says.
When Ban demonstrates a kick or block technique, students can see the form that made him famous.
"His form is very technical and I visualize what it was like when he was young and I could see how he could be destructive," says May.
November beating
For all his prowess as a fighter, Ban is now best known for the beating he suffered.
According to pretrial testimony by Ban and Gary Ung, the owner of Bamboo Island, the restaurant where the altercation occurred, the fight began when Kim allegedly struck Ban in the face on the night of Nov. 6.
Ung testified that Ban said, "I have no idea why you hitting me."
A woman companion of Kim and Um also allegedly threw an object at Ban.
Ban said he knew Kim only from having trained his brother. In testimony, Ban said he asked why he had been struck and was told "go ask your bitchy wife."
Ban insists he doesn't know what that meant.
During the skirmish inside, Nan Meas, a companion of Ban, was allegedly struck as well.
Ban testified Ung told the group not to make trouble inside and urged them to go outside.
Ban says when he exited he was hit from behind by a heavy object, possibly a tire iron.
After that he remembers seeing a shoe coming toward his face and he blacked out.
The news of the beating was met with horror in the Cambodian community. While Ban was in the hospital, hundreds of visitors brought wishes and money.
Ban collected more money for a fight in which he never threw a punch than for any bout in his professional career.
"I didn't think people like me like that," Ban says. "I think maybe God bless me because I'm good people. I love my people."
When he talks about the attack, all the bravado, all the in-the-ring confidence dissipates. And he seems old, even fragile.
Then an emotion wells from within - indignation.
Ban says before the assault, he was thinking he'd celebrate 20 years with the gym and then sell it and look for a steady job.
But not now.
"If I close, it's like they beat me," Ban says.
This fighter is not ready to be counted out.
"I'm keep going," Ban says.
Greg Mellen can be reached at greg.mellen@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1291.
------
Long Beach Kickboxing Center
Where: 223 W. Anaheim St., Long Beach
Phone: (562) 591-0533
Classes:
1944: Born in Cambodia
1958: Begins training with kickboxing club
1960: First pro fight, 4th round TKO loss to Sin Kim
1964: Wins first Cambodian kickboxing title
1970: Joins Khmer National Armed Forces
1972: Wins international kickboxing title
1975: Phnom Penh falls to Khmer Rouge
1978: Escapes to Kravanh mountain
1979: Learns of deaths of two brothers, sister and mother in Cambodian genocide
1979: Enters Cambodian 007 Camp
1980: Fights last bout, loses in third round
1981: Moves to Philippines, then Chicago
1986: Moves to Long Beach
1987: Opens kickboxing gym
1987-2001: Trains 15 champion kickboxers
2006: Suffers beating in Long Beach
When one is blind-sided and savagely beaten on the streets of Long Beach, that's tough to reconcile.
When Oumry Ban arises in the hours before dawn, as he does each day, the 63-year-old former Khmer kickboxing champion and Cambodian genocide survivor stares into the bathroom mirror. He traces his hand along his face and feels nothing - literally.
A champion battles long odds
A numbness remains there from the November beating that matches an inner hollowness. And so, although the marks of the attack have disappeared, it is what he can't see, or feel - an absence - that troubles his sleep.
"Every night, I remember," Ban says. "In Cambodia, people after Pol Pot at night they remember (the genocide). Sometimes, I remember that too. And now I remember this."
At 5-foot-6 and maybe 140 pounds, Ban looks like anything but a former fighter. His facial features are soft, almost delicate, and his manner is even less imposing.
But Ban took a beating in November that left his face a mask of gore and pulp. His jaw fractured. The imprint of a shoe visible on his left cheek. Bruises all over his body. Rope burns on his neck.
To this day, the questions still remain. Eight months later, he is no closer to a resolution.
However, the courts may soon provide a legal resolution. Than Kim and Chan Um await a trial that is scheduled to begin in Long Beach Superior Court within two weeks. They face two charges each of assault and assault with the intent to cause great bodily injury.
Kim faces 25 years to life in prison on a third strike offense if convicted. Um faces up to 10 years.
Survivor's tale
Ban is a survivor. He was born into conflict in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Cambodia in World War II.
He lived through the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge that claimed 1.7 million of his countrymen, including his mother, two brothers and a sister.
Ban weathered a 13-year professional kickboxing career, winning Cambodian and international title belts.
He arrived in the United States as a refugee, raised four children to adulthood and has a 7-year-old daughter with his girlfriend and a 13-year-old stepdaughter. Ban has run a modest fight studio for 20 years and struggles to make ends meet.
All this, just to be taken down on the streets of Long Beach.
Fistic memories
Ban took beatings in the ring. But those were different. That was the fare for being a prizefighter. The battles were honorable, face-to-face, one-on-one.
The old fighter will regale friends with tales from the ring.
He recalls the punch that obliterated the cartilage in his nose.
"Look, no bone," Ban says, wiggling a fleshy area at the top of his nose.
He lets you know he rallied to win the bout. "Knock him out, round four," Ban says.
Ban remembers a shoulder dislocation, teeth knocked out, the blow that cracked his sternum.
"Here, right here, feel," he says, placing an onlooker's hand near the heart where the bone healed unevenly.
Ban lost the decision but went the distance. Then he went to the hospital.
In a movie, Ban would have fought off his attackers on the Long Beach street, unleashing devastating knees and elbows for which he was renowned.
Reality isn't so neatly scripted.
Marom May, a student Ban is training, has heard the snickers from the community.
"It was an embarrassing moment," May says. "People in the community were saying, 'I can't believe a kickboxing instructor got beat like that.' But they don't understand. The whole idea about being a master is not just fighting and fighting back."
Ban says he never raised a fist. Never blocked a punch, though it would have been easy enough. He was confused, surprised, maybe even a little scared. He is alternately ashamed that he, the great kickboxer, didn't defend himself, but proud he resisted violence.
"The whole thing is about respect, and that shouldn't have happened," May says. "Everyone in our community says the same thing, it's outrageous."
Ban is beginning to understand he likely will never know why he was singled out. And that gnaws at him. The why of it. It always comes back to that.
A relic recovered
Ban's gym at 223 W. Anaheim St. is like many of its kind, a former launderette located next to a hair salon and clothes store.
Near the entrance of the 2,000-square-foot space is an elevated fighting ring. Along the edges are speed bags, gloves and blocking pads. The walls are decorated with fight posters, pictures of former champs who trained at the gym and newspaper spreads.
In a back corner above a juice vending machine, almost lost amid the clutter, is a 6-by-8-inch framed black-and-white photograph of two young fighters exchanging kicks.
It is like any other photo. A little blurred, perhaps, faces obscured.
Then you learn one of the combatants is Ban. He is fighting Thailand's Mideth Noy in a 1972 Southeast Asian title bout. It was the height of Ban's career.
The photo is the only memento Ban has, the only evidence of his star power.
When the Khmer Rouge rose to power, Ban had to abandon all his possessions. Records of personal feats were destroyed. Most of what remains are what Ban remembers and what is passed on orally by those who saw his bouts.
The photo was found in 1986 when Ban's friend, Sarith Ban, was sifting through old Cambodian newspapers and magazines.
"We were shocked when we saw that," recalls Paline Soth, another friend who helped Ban establish his gym.
Soth saw Ban fight and describes him as the Sugar Ray Robinson of Khmer kickboxing.
"Knees and elbows, that was his strength," Soth says. "If he got inside, he would jump on you like a monkey and hit you with those knees and elbows and get a knockout. He was very fast."
In the beginning
The legend of Ban begins with a 14-year-old running home from school. He stops to watch men practicing and asks to try.
"They said, 'Oh, no, you too small,'" Ban recalls. "I said, 'No, I want to try.'"
As is tradition in Cambodia, Ban's initial fight training was free. After two days of training, Ban declared he was ready to spar with experienced fighters.
On the third day, the trainers let him learn his lesson. An experienced fighter beat the youngster around the ring, busting up his nose, lips and eye.
But Ban came back to the gym the next day, and the next. It would become emblematic of his fighting style - always coming forward, always pressing the action.
At 16, Ban fought his first bout, taking on a dockworker who was in his 30s.
Again he was beaten around the ring until his handlers threw in the towel.
"Oh, I break everything," Ban says with a laugh. "Then I quit."
Several days later, the master at Ban's gym visited.
"He says 'You come back, you be a champion,'" Ban says.
Ban struggled in his second fight, but "then I win, win, win. Win all the time."
Fighting at least once a month and often weekly, even two or three days back-to-back, Ban blossomed.
In 1964, he won his first national title at 61 kilograms, or 135 pounds.
According to his recollection, which Ban admits isn't perfect, between 1962 and 1975 he fought 309 times with a 278-31 record and 200 knockouts.
His secret was his inside technique, which earned him nicknames such as "The Atomic Knee."
"My knee was so fast. I surprised myself," Ban says. "I got famous, like Mike Tyson. I beat all Cambodian fighters."
Free-wheeling days
After a while, smaller fighters would no longer challenge Ban and he faced bigger men.
Ban remembers several classic encounters with the renowned Chea Sarak, who weighed more than 160 pounds.
The two fought before packed houses at Phnom Pehn's outdoor National Olympic Stadium.
"The people, they want to see me, because I'm small and he's big," Ban says.
After fights, the party was on and drinks were on Ban.
"I'd spend all the money, all the money," Ban recalls. "I go to dinner and maybe 100 people follow me." And he would pay.
Even today, his generosity persists. Ban is the first to pick up a check. He allows several fighters to train for free and others to pay when they can. When he leaves for lunch, he always slips some money to Richard, a homeless man who will watch over the gym. Ban also cares for Sothy Son, a homeless, mentally disabled friend from Cambodia.
The war begins
In 1970, as his country slipped into civil war between the American-backed Khmer Republic and communist Khmer Rouge guerillas, Ban enlisted in the armed forces.
He saw armed action and remembers several bloody battles. Every night he prayed to survive just one more day.
Eventually, the army realized Ban's celebrity and sent him back to Phnom Penh. He was airlifted to the capital by helicopter, sharing the space with slain soldiers.
He remembers seeing Phnom Penh from the air at nightfall.
"I was so happy. I think I have a new life," Ban says. "I see the lights, it's like Las Vegas or something."
Ban was given the rank of adjutant and paid a salary in addition to the 300 to 500 rial ($20 to $30) he generally made per bout.
It was during this time that Ban defeated Noy and several other Thai fighters, although he says he didn't like the Thai style.
"When I get close, I win," Ban says. "Thai, they run away."
The fight with Noy in Phnom Penh was a classic. Ban says he was knocked down early. Eventually, he was able to lock up Noy. Then Ban unleashed a volley of knees to the Thai's midsection.
"When I let him go, all the food come out his mouth," Ban says. "It smell very bad. They stop the fight."
Darkness descends
Although injuries began to slow Ban down, he remained immensely popular. As his star reached its zenith, his country was slipping into darkness.
The Khmer Rouge turned the tide in the war. Its leader, Pol Pot, talked of writing a new history that would begin, he said, with "year zero."
Ban's last fights before the Khmer Rouge conquest were in late March 1975, in Pailin, on the Thai border.
Ban says in back-to-back days he beat two fighters. In the second bout, Ban recovered from a cut above his eye to record a knockout. Fittingly, he ended it with a knee to his opponent's midsection.
Ban was scheduled to fight in Thailand in mid-April. He hoped for a tune-up in Pailin, but when it fell through he flew home to Phnom Penh.
A couple of days later, the siege of Phnom Penh began and residents were trapped.
Yet few if any foresaw the horrors that would become forever known as the killing fields.
Ban says city dwellers were weary of the five-year war and thought the Khmer Rouge would bring stability and end the bloodshed.
"Everybody thinks peace is coming," Ban says. "They thought the Khmer Rouge is coming, so peace is coming."
On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Penh uncontested.
In one of its first acts, the new regime evacuated the city. Ban made it to the outskirts on his motorcycle before it was confiscated by a soldier. After that, Ban walked.
Just as suddenly, the legend of Oumry Ban became just that - legend, memory, a vapor. Year zero had arrived.
Bitter memories
Overnight, the art of surviving a punch was replaced by the art of surviving madness.
Renowned because of his champion fighter status, Ban says he could not hide his identity. So he swallowed his pride and adopted the mien of the peasant with interrogators.
"I would say, 'Oh, no, I am poor. Only fight for money, feed my family,'" Ban recalls as he pantomimes bowing and steepling his fingers in the Cambodian show of respect.
Ban's life was spared and he settled into the bare existence of life under the Khmer Rouge, surviving on a bowl of rice per day.
"I pray every day," Ban said. "I think maybe the next day they kill me. I think maybe I was lucky."
In November 1978, Ban fled his commune in Battambang province after hearing a cadre of more vicious Khmer Rouge soldiers was arriving.
Ban made his way into the desolate backwoods of Kravang mountain, where he survived by coming down at night to steal food.
Last fight
In May 1979, Ban stumbled upon a Vietnamese soldier who told him Vietnam had occupied the country and he could go home.
It was bittersweet. Ban returned to a barren Phnom Penh made more desolate by the news of the deaths in his family.
Ban made his way back toward Battambang. On the way, he met Yany Sin, who would become his companion and the mother to his first four children.
Widowed by the war, Sin, like Ban, was adrift. Ban said with so many families ripped apart it wasn't unusual for travelers to bond and become families.
While in camp in Thailand, Ban was reunited with Mideth Noy, who was now a truck driver in Thailand. Noy asked Ban if he was still interested in fighting.
Ban was 36 and hadn't fought or trained in five years.
He was offered 1,000 baht (about $30) to challenge a Thai fighter. With Sin expecting the couple's first child, Ban took the bout.
"I bought a lot of food," Ban says with a laugh.
He lost after two rounds. It was his last fight. A month later, Narin, the couple's first son, was born.
A new life
Eventually, Ban and his family made it to the U.S. via the Philippines, where daughter Manila, named after the country's capital city, was born in 1980.
Life in the U.S. presented different and more subtle challenges. Although Ban no longer had to fear for his life or fight for his livelihood, he and his family had to meld into a mystifying new culture. They had to learn a new language, raise children, learn new skills.
Ban worked as a dishwasher and housekeeper. A son, United, named in honor of the United States, was born in 1986, and daughter Calina in 1987.
Ban and Sin split in 1995 after Ban met his current girlfriend, Mony Tat. She had a child from a previous relationship and the couple have a daughter together, Sochada, born in 2000.
When Ban moved to Long Beach in 1986, he was presented with a seemingly golden opportunity to go into business and build on his celebrity.
Paline Soth, like virtually all refugees of that era, knew of the great Oumry Ban. Soth spent $20,000 to create the Long Beach Kickboxing Center.
The idea was to create a gym for emerging Cambodian fighters and promote shows. Soth's plan never panned out, and he left the gym to Ban.
For all his celebrity, Ban found it hard to build a clientele among a Cambodian community that was drifting from the old ways.
The gym life
As evening descends on Long Beach, Ban's world constricts.
It tightens into the 130-by-65-foot confines of the gym. Then smaller still into the 25-foot ring.
It's here where Ban's learning and knowledge are distilled. Here there is something as pure as combat. As elemental as master and pupil. An essence.
When everything else out there unravels and ceases to make sense - relationships, life choices, money woes - here in the ring there is truth. In here there is simplicity. Expressed, perhaps, in the perfect jab-elbow-knee combination. Passed on from master to student in a timeless procession.
This is the rhythm of the gym, the constant in Ban's life. It is the place where he is truly at home.
While the gym is Ban's sanctuary, it is also his burden.
The business is unpredictable. Some months Ban clears more than $1,000 in profit, others he barely meets expenses.
Each time rent jumps, Ban considers leaving the business, but invariably he keeps it open.
Even in 1992, when riots broke out along Anaheim Street, Ban kept his doors open, only closing when customers didn't come.
After the November attack, the gym stayed open, as friends ran the place while Ban healed.
Financial struggle
Keeping the gym has caused financial hardship, strained family relationships and is beginning to affect Ban's health. But still he moves on, a fighter forever pressing the action.
Ban has had to take a part-time job that requires him to be up at 4 a.m. After he finishes that job, Ban hurries to open the gym, where he'll be until 9:30 or 10 p.m. If he gets to sleep by 11 p.m., he's lucky.
Ban's financial struggles at the gym caused stress with Sin, who urged him to find other work.
For five years, Ban worked full-time and kept the gym open. He delivered phone books as far away as El Cajon and Arizona, then rushed back daily to open the gym, he says.
He maxed out credit cards and once had to file for bankruptcy.
Ban, his girlfriend and two daughters share a one-bedroom apartment on the Westside. They suspend clothes on rods above the living-room bed because there are no closets.
Although Ban dotes on his young daughters, picking them up after school each day, feeding them, and teaching them at the gym, he wishes he could better provide for them.
In his lowest moments, Ban wishes he had never started the gym. Wishes he had learned a skill. Slipped into anonymity. Let his pride and fame dissipate in the ether of another lifetime.
"Oh, yes, I wish that 100 percent," Ban says.
But now, he fears he is too old to do anything else.
"I only have one skill - kickboxing," he says.
Keeping art alive
And yet, Ban can't imagine life without the gym.
"This is the art of the Cambodian people," Ban says of the sport, which traces its roots more than 600 years.
While the sport of Muay Thai has flourished, Khmer kickboxing, which may be the original form of the sport, is almost unknown. Ban's gym is the only one of its kind in Long Beach.
Running the gym had earned Ban respect if not riches in his community. This year, the kickboxer and his students were invited and took part in the annual Cambodian New Year parade along Anaheim Street.
Ban has turned down offers to sell the gym and turn it into a Muay Thai studio.
"Sometimes in the newspapers I read how Khmer people sell their culture to other people," Ban says. "I don't want to be like that. If I sell, this place become Muay Thai. It's like I sell my culture."
Echoes from the gym
On an average night, the gym is alive with percussive sounds: the rat-a-tat of a speed bag, pops of gloved fists colliding and the loud retorts of shins and feet smacking heavy bags.
The fighters are a kaleidoscope of races, ages and sizes. They come because of Ban's reputation and his personality.
"He's like a living legend," Justice Smith, a muscular 290-pounder, says during a break in his workout. "It's a privilege to work out in this gym. It gives me the heart to fight hard. This gym is very well known."
Smith says fighters at the gym are known for having the best leg training and knees in the game.
The whole building shudders when Smith slams a leg into one of the heavy bags.
James Beasley of Compton picked Ban's gym because of its comfortable, friendly atmosphere.
"It's like home," Beasley says.
When Ban demonstrates a kick or block technique, students can see the form that made him famous.
"His form is very technical and I visualize what it was like when he was young and I could see how he could be destructive," says May.
November beating
For all his prowess as a fighter, Ban is now best known for the beating he suffered.
According to pretrial testimony by Ban and Gary Ung, the owner of Bamboo Island, the restaurant where the altercation occurred, the fight began when Kim allegedly struck Ban in the face on the night of Nov. 6.
Ung testified that Ban said, "I have no idea why you hitting me."
A woman companion of Kim and Um also allegedly threw an object at Ban.
Ban said he knew Kim only from having trained his brother. In testimony, Ban said he asked why he had been struck and was told "go ask your bitchy wife."
Ban insists he doesn't know what that meant.
During the skirmish inside, Nan Meas, a companion of Ban, was allegedly struck as well.
Ban testified Ung told the group not to make trouble inside and urged them to go outside.
Ban says when he exited he was hit from behind by a heavy object, possibly a tire iron.
After that he remembers seeing a shoe coming toward his face and he blacked out.
The news of the beating was met with horror in the Cambodian community. While Ban was in the hospital, hundreds of visitors brought wishes and money.
Ban collected more money for a fight in which he never threw a punch than for any bout in his professional career.
"I didn't think people like me like that," Ban says. "I think maybe God bless me because I'm good people. I love my people."
When he talks about the attack, all the bravado, all the in-the-ring confidence dissipates. And he seems old, even fragile.
Then an emotion wells from within - indignation.
Ban says before the assault, he was thinking he'd celebrate 20 years with the gym and then sell it and look for a steady job.
But not now.
"If I close, it's like they beat me," Ban says.
This fighter is not ready to be counted out.
"I'm keep going," Ban says.
Greg Mellen can be reached at greg.mellen@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1291.
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Long Beach Kickboxing Center
Where: 223 W. Anaheim St., Long Beach
Phone: (562) 591-0533
Classes:
Children: M-F 5-6:30 p.m.Rates:
Teens: M-F 6:30-8 p.m.
Adults: M-F 8-9:30 p.m.
Children: $50 month,Timeline of Oumry Ban's life
Teens: $70 month,
Adults: $100 month.
Private lessons: 90 minutes once a week, $120 month; 90 minutes twice a week, $200 month.
1944: Born in Cambodia
1958: Begins training with kickboxing club
1960: First pro fight, 4th round TKO loss to Sin Kim
1964: Wins first Cambodian kickboxing title
1970: Joins Khmer National Armed Forces
1972: Wins international kickboxing title
1975: Phnom Penh falls to Khmer Rouge
1978: Escapes to Kravanh mountain
1979: Learns of deaths of two brothers, sister and mother in Cambodian genocide
1979: Enters Cambodian 007 Camp
1980: Fights last bout, loses in third round
1981: Moves to Philippines, then Chicago
1986: Moves to Long Beach
1987: Opens kickboxing gym
1987-2001: Trains 15 champion kickboxers
2006: Suffers beating in Long Beach
2 comments:
Many thanks to KI to let us know that at least one of the icons of Cambodia is still alive, and I am talking about: Oumry. I am very glad to hear that the one and only Oumry is still alive. Who does not know Oumry, does not know Khmer boxing in the sixties and seventies. I remember all the girls that I know of, used to secretly fall in love with Oumry. Long live the champion, please go back home and train a few more youngsters to be as good as you.
You are the very best Pradal Serei that Cambodia ever had, please resurrect our national sports heritage.
Oumry knew that his hands and feet were weapons already and it is against the law to use them! He can be convicted of felony by law for using his hands and feet to beat up the two low lives!
Oumry lead a life of a fighter and soon or later someone will always come up to him trying to challenge him. I mean Oumry is in his 60 years old and why would any low life want to challenge an old man like him?
Only death will end everything!
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