The Family That Helped Build Tiger Eye

Some stories start in places you would never expect.

The story of how the Azimi brothers became part of Tiger Eye starts with me looking for a Sufi meditation center in Bangkok.

Looking for Sufism in Bangkok

This was 2017. I had recently moved to Bangkok and, completely unrelated to Muay Thai, I was interested in finding somewhere I could learn more about Sufism, the mystical tradition within Islam, and practice Sufi meditation.

To my surprise, I found a Sufi center in Bangkok.

I reached out, visited, and met a Pakistani man who had been living in Thailand for many years. We got along well. Every once in a while, I would visit him, drink tea and talk. Sometimes we discussed Sufi meditation and spiritual topics. Sometimes we just talked about life.

Through those conversations, I learned a little about his family. He had a brother whose wife was Thai. At the time, this was nothing more than small talk.

Remember, this was 2017.

Tiger Eye didn’t exist.

I knew that someday I wanted to open a Muay Thai gym in Thailand, but there was no concrete plan for what would eventually become Tiger Eye.

Then, quite a few years later, I received a message from him.

“My Son Wants to Fight”

His son, Kashif, was back in Thailand and wanted to learn Muay Thai.

Kashif had been raised in Thailand and spoke Thai, but both of his parents were Pakistani. His father believed he had potential and wanted him to train seriously.

At the time, I was teaching Muay Thai about twice a week at Ari Fit, a CrossFit gym here in Ari.

And I basically told his father: don’t send him to me.

If your son seriously wants to fight, I said, there are many proper Muay Thai gyms in Thailand. What I was doing at Ari Fit wasn’t designed to develop professional fighters.

His father insisted.

I think part of it was trust. He wanted Kashif around somebody from the same background, somebody he could speak Urdu with, and somebody he believed would be a positive influence.

So eventually I said okay.

Kashif started training with me. He became friends with everyone, and eventually we went with him to his first amateur Muay Thai fight at Luk Tup Fah.

That’s where I met his cousins.

There were quite a few of them, and honestly, at the time I couldn’t keep track of who was who.

Some of them were fighting that day too.

One of those kids was Haseen.

The crazy thing was that Haseen hadn’t really trained.

I helped warm him up before his fight, and as I remember it, that was basically the first time anyone had ever held pads for him.

And then he went and fought.

At the time, I didn’t think much more about it.

Building Tiger Eye

Fast-forward again.

Eventually, I decided to build what would become the real Tiger Eye in Ari, the gym at our current location.

In the beginning, we weren’t trying to build some enormous facility. We needed something much more basic: essentially a shed that could protect us from Bangkok’s sun and rain so people could train underneath it, similar to the simple structures you see at traditional Muay Thai camps all over Thailand.

I needed somebody who could build it.

I contacted Kashif.

Because he spoke Thai fluently, I thought perhaps he could help me find somebody.

Kashif told me that his uncle, his cousins’ father, worked in construction. He showed me some pictures and videos of things he had built.

It looked like exactly what we needed.

So I said, “All right. Let’s do it.”

His uncle came to help build the gym.

And with him came one of his sons.

Haseen.

The same kid I had helped warm up for a fight when he had barely trained.

Suddenly, We Had Fighters

What I hadn’t realized was how interested this entire family was becoming in Muay Thai.

Haseen’s father had done some martial arts himself when he was younger and was very enthusiastic about getting his sons involved.

There are nine siblings in the family, six brothers and three sisters, and the brothers increasingly found their own places within Muay Thai.

Suddenly, while I was trying to build a gym, I had something resembling a ready-made fight team.

And they have been part of Tiger Eye ever since.

Today, two of the brothers are registered fighters representing Tiger Eye. Zen Azeemi, who has been fighting with us since our early days, recently scored a knockout at Jitmuangnon Stadium in Nonthaburi. Read about Zen’s fight and my experience at Jitmuangnon Stadium here.

Another brother has gone in a different direction. He is now working as a promoter and managing fighters, putting together fights at Lumpinee and Rajadamnern on some of the smaller shows and gradually working his way deeper into Bangkok’s Muay Thai circuit.

And Haseen?

He’s still here.

He has helped physically build Tiger Eye, works with us at the gym, and has also worked backstage at Lumpinee Stadium.

Providence

I don’t know how this sounds to everybody.

You can call it coincidence. You can call it cliché. Maybe to some people it sounds a little too mystical.

But I believe there are moments in life when you’re pursuing something that feels like a calling, and things begin lining up in ways you could never have planned.

Sometimes it feels like a sign that you’re walking in the right direction.

I went looking for a Sufi meditation center in Bangkok.

That led to tea and conversations with a Pakistani man.

Years later, his son started training with me despite me initially telling him he should go somewhere else.

That led me to his cousins.

And when I finally decided to build Tiger Eye, those same connections helped me find someone to physically build the gym and brought some of our first fighters through its doors.

There is another part of this that makes it particularly meaningful to me.

Much of my own martial arts story is tied to Pakistan. Read more about my journey building MMA in Pakistan here. Somehow, years later in Bangkok, some of the first fighters representing my Muay Thai gym would be Thai-raised kids from a Pakistani family who I could speak Urdu with.

I could never have planned that.

Coincidence, maybe.

I prefer providence.