Koh Phi Phi...

A cocktail of sweat, water and spit whipped its way through the sticky air. A foot hinged on a tightly coiled spring created a blurred motion of movement as it traveled towards its programmed target. Each movement provoking a response, each response a complex computation of the mind deciphering the level of threat or window of opportunity and then working in tandem with body to act in a split second before the next movement is required.

An hour before this, an hour after the advertised start time, the crowd was impatient for the opportunity to see two athletes kicking and boxing seven shades of dog mess out of each other. Ja Rule growled his way between the baseline from the speakers creating an atmosphere of illicit activity the likes of which can only be found at a shady spot of common land in the company of Stanley Colleymore.

The drink of choice that evening was buckets of fiery liquor tempered with a narrow choice of mixer. The inevitable buy one get one free offer accelerated the level of drinking to near Stag Do proportions. It was threatening to boil over but luckily a member of the crowd, still with his marbles intact, pointed out that we were all drinking from sand castle buckets. This reduced some people to smiles, whilst a couple of large groups of men cowered back to their seats to sip patiently through their straws.

Suddenly the back to back tunes of Axel F and Real to Real's "I Like To Move It Move It" was replaced by the night's signature tune. Eye Of The Tiger stopped people in mid sentence, buckets crashed to the floor, peoples pupils dilated with anticipation of a bloody fight. All eyes were on the ring.

A stout pot-bellied pig of a Thai man clambered into the ring with all the grace of someone trying take off wellies. Once in the ring he suddenly grew three feet (maybe that was the ring) and commanded immediate respect from the wild, wild audience. He was the only one in the seedy fighting den who could supply the violent drug of amateur kick boxing. He delivered. With each bout between two dangerously miss-matched fighters the crowds thirst was slowly quenched. Respectful clapping, banging fists on tables, mirrored punches, shouts of "kill him", tracks by Sean Paul and P Diddy and sympathetic ooohs and ouches created an excitement that made time disappear like ice-cubes in crap liquor.

The entertainment over people drifted out into the calm night air. All the way home people fantasised of taking glory from the bloody defeat of a 10 minute enemy. Others vowed to watch all of the Kickboxer films back to back. Some twitched during dreams of themselves fighting with giant buckets of vodka and redbull, waking in a cold fearful sweat which subsided after realising that it was just a nightmare and tomorrow would make things a whole lot better.