Gold Coast gym owner, 10-time combat sports World Champion reveals harrowing ordeal of deportation

A Gold Coast combat gym owner who holds 10 World Champion titles has detailed the harrowing ordeal of being deported from the United States with nothing more than $500 to his name and forced to leave behind his heavily pregnant wife. Full story:

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A Gold Coast combat gym owner who holds 10 world champion titles has detailed the harrowing ordeal of being deported from the United States with nothing more than $500 to his name and forced to leave behind his heavily pregnant wife.

John Wayne “The Gunslinger” Parr, also known as JWP, recalled the testing time as part of his book new The Fighter: The Legendary Life of an Australian Champion.

Ahead of his book release on December 3, JWP spoke to this masthead about how the tribulation went on to shape his and his wife’s lives for the better.

The Fighter: The Legendary Life of an Australian Champion by ‘John’ Wayne Parr, with Jarrod Boyle

In 2002, Parr received a call from Tarik Solak, a Turkish-Australian kickboxing promoter, to compete in a fight against Victorian Jenk Behic back home in Australia with the potential to win $5000 AUD.

It was a tempting offer, the pair having lived paycheck to paycheck in the month prior.

Money was going nowhere beyond fuel, groceries and rent.

“It’s terrifying because you’ve got no insurance, you can’t get sick and because I didn’t have the right visas it was a little bit illegal … doing the dodgies and getting paid in cash,” Parr admitted.

“My wage was $3000 (USD) a month, but rent was $1500, so we’d have to survive on $1500 for four weeks.

“It was the good old days of just trying to survive.”

Living in San Diego for the past six months, Parr discussed the offer with his wife Angela and ultimately packed his bags and flew to the Gold Coast.

Angela was seven months pregnant when he boarded the plane.

“The opportunity to make $5000 (AUD) was a big deal back in the day, plus the opportunity to come home,” he said.

“She was very supportive, said ‘you go’.”

Parr won the fight in five rounds and took the $5000 on his way out the door to fly back to San Diego.

That’s where the problems began: he’d left his return flight ticket (San Diego to Brisbane) back in the United States – given the plan was to stay with his wife past that flight and for the birth of his first child.

However he would not be able to fly without showing that return ticket.

After some pleading, the flight agent gave Parr the only valid option: he could purchase a return flight then and there for $4500 and have it refunded once he landed in San Diego.

It seemed perfectly logical – and in all fairness – was the only way.

Communication – back and forth – with Air New Zealand began, followed by 27 hours of waiting in three detention facilities surrounding LAX while Angie was forced to drive a total nine hours just to bring the original return flight ticket to a waiting Parr.

With the ticket in hand, he boarded the flight back to Brisbane Airport, a security detail in-tow just like the movies, and the orders ‘don’t come back for five years’ barked firmly at him. Message received.

Parr recalled the moment he landed in Australia, alone with $500 and nothing else. No car, no house, no job and no wife.

“It was the worst time of my life,” he said.

The refund on his place ticket would take up to six weeks to land in his bank account.

Parr stayed with a good friend, Paul Briggs, and began building a new life in Australia while Angie sold everything she could to purchase a flight to Brisbane before she was too far long in the pregnancy to fly.

Things began falling into place after that.

The pair were reunited, and alongside working at Boonchu Gym which Parr himself established in 1996, the father-to-be was able to squeeze in two more fights before 2002 – the worst year of his life – came to a close.

The 13 years after that were littered with world titles, and by his official retirement in 2022, JWP boasted a 99-36 win record with 46 knockout wins.

“This sounds weird, and my wife says exactly the same thing, but we’re so grateful that it happened,” Parr said of the deportation that forced him to live in Australia.

“We moved back here, we’ve got the gym in Burleigh Heads, healthcare, no guns, three children.

“Children … in America that would have crippled us.”
Nothing has come close to his ordeal in 2002, but likewise, nothing has had a greater impact on his life – both professionally and personally.

Originally published as Gold Coast gym owner, 10-time combat sports World Champion reveals harrowing ordeal of deportation