About Us

Tiger Eye MMA was started by Bashir Ahmad, a ONE Championship veteran, together with two of his oldest friends, Niran Wisetsang and Panop ‘Note’ Udomkaewkanjana. They wanted a gym they would actually want to train at, so they went and built one.

They found just under a rai of land in Ari, five minutes from the BTS and one of the easiest neighborhoods in Bangkok to live in. Instead of boxing it in, they left it open air. The training areas sit under shade, permaculture beds run around the edges, and there is still room to grow into.

The people who train here are a real mix. Fighters getting ready for a bout, travelers in Bangkok for a week, families from a few streets away, and people with day jobs who want proper coaching and none of the ego that usually comes with it. We are serious about the martial arts. We are a lot more relaxed about everything else.

Bashir fought for ONE Championship and later worked as an executive there. Back home in Pakistan, he is the person usually credited with bringing mixed martial arts to the country, and people there tend to call him the ‘Godfather of MMA’.

Before any of that, he served as a combat medic with the U.S. Army in Iraq. He founded Shaheen Academy, an NGO that grows martial arts in Pakistan, and he holds a bachelor’s degree in Global Affairs and a master’s in Exercise Science. TIME and CNN have both covered his work.

Fighter, medic, executive, coach. All of it shows up in the way the gym is run. The coaching is exacting, nobody gets lost at the back of the room, and anyone willing to put the work in is welcome here.

Tiger Eye is a fight camp. It has always been a few other things at the same time, and here is what those look like.

Photos of the gym, the grounds, and the urban farm we are growing in the middle of Bangkok.