Helping Tommy Become the "King of Abs"

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of helping my best friend here Tommy, win the title of "Best Abs over 35" in a really big Japanese magazine. Tommy ( a nickname derived from his last name, Tomioka) is the person who first got me into bodyguarding, taught me most everything I know about it, introduced me to MMA, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Krav Maga, and countless other cool things here in Japan.

I met him because when I first came to Japan 9 years ago, he was a student at the Aeon English school I taught at. He was at my welcome party, and when he found out that I was a Taekwondo guy (although from a different style) he suggested that we get together to fight, and the rest was history. I worked with Tommy on countless (and sometimes exhausting) security jobs, and through him had the chance to work for everyone from Sylvester Stallone and Jackie Chan Jessica Alba and Orlando Bloom. While I moved away from ring fighting and security work to do action, I watched him stick to his guns and put his body through hell to become a Japanese national ITF taekwondo champion... 4 times, as well as learning and fighting in every other kind of fight sport he could get his hands on. (A lot of which he brought me along for). Eventually even though he was just a bodyguard, he went on to become somewhat of a celebrity himself. He was featured on a really big TV show as "Tokyo's most handsome bodyguard.", (and he asked me to make a cameo on that show as well to show that he could speak English well)


This abs contest was his most recent endeavor. The contest had 3 parts:
1) Popularity on the website's blog
2) a sit-up contest and
3) a performance piece on stage.

During the weeks leading up to the contest, Tommy hadn't done badly on the blog, but was only in 6th place. Nowhere near where he needed to be take the competition. That meant that he would have to outdo everyone else in the sit-up contest, and performance piece. In the sit-up contest he came in 2nd (which he says was due to a mishap on the counter- he should have gotten first- so it all came down to his performance piece. It was something that we had planned as a surprise for the audience and judges, but we only had one chance to correograph it and practice it before the big day came. Although it wasn't a perfect execution, for the most part, it went off without a hitch and everyone loved it. (To see a video of the actual "fight" click here. Our part starts at 51:12)

I had to leave as soon as it was finished, so I didn't get to hear the result, but I was very pleasantly surprised when he called me afterwards to thank me for helping him to win the competition. Living life as a foreigner is never really easy (particularly when you don't speak the language fluently) so you can't help but have a lot of love for those local people who take you under their wing and help you to find your way. For me, helping Tommy to win this was a chance to finally give back, and the fact that we pulled it off just couldn't have made me happier.