A true Champion: Sensei Nadine beat cancer with 10 seconds of courage

UFC trainer and undefeated ring star Nadine Champion is one of Australia’s toughest women. But one very personal fight almost broke her.

MARTIAL arts star Nadine Champion reached her lowest ebb during her treatment for lymphoma.

Despair was a rare sensation for one of Australia’s toughest women, a black belt with 30 years experience and an undefeated fight record.

“I’m not a quitter, so to have a moment where I wanted to give up, I was almost disappointed in myself,” the UFC gym high performance coach toldnews.com.au.

“I physically walked out of that hospital room. I was shattered.”

But facing her demons is something the sensei has spent her career learning to do.

Nadine’s study of mixed martial arts system Ukidokan taught her that to beat your fears, you don’t think about the entire challenge.

“It doesn’t hurt any less if you close your eyes. All you need is ten seconds of courage,” she said.

She summoned those ten seconds, picked herself up off the floor, and walked back in.

Nadine knew she wanted to fight when she was ten years old.

“Figure out what you’re afraid of, that thing that you feel sick when you think about, and then move even one millimetre towards facing it,” said the former Thai boxing and kickboxing world titleholder.

The 39-year-old brought down the house at TEDxSydney, when she spoke of how she beat cancer a year ago.

With no rehearsal, Nadine karate-chopped a thick block of wood in half, warning the audience first that she had not practised and had not tried the stunt since before her diagnosis.

“I was afraid, because I didn’t know I could do it,” she told news.com.au afterwards, eyes glowing and a thin trickle of blood visible on her forearm.

“It felt amazing, like a fight. Before the day, you get very serious and nervous, the whole day before is torture.

“You take confidence from the fact that you’re well-prepared. I went away for a few days, centred myself, trained. I listened to my fight music backstage [Kanye West’s Champion and Macklemore’s Can’t Hold Us], did a little dance, shadow-boxed.

“Then you turn the volume down on the nerves and up on the excitement.”

Her sensei Benny Urquidez.

The road to strength.

Noticing a splinter in her hand, she adds: “This is exactly like a fight, you’re doing an interview afterwards and you’re like, ‘Oh look, my arm fell off!’”

Sydneysider Nadine, whose surname really is Champion, knew she wanted to fight from the age of ten. Her parents sent her brother to martial arts lessons because he was being bullied at school, but he didn’t enjoy it.

Nadine begged to have a go, and eventually her parents said yes. She knew immediately it was what she wanted to do with her life.

“The instructor couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it before.”

It was after her eyes were gouged by a drunk man while she was working as security at a bar that she had her “Karate Kid” moment, and decided to seek out a better life, training her mind and her heart as well as her body.

She started training intensively with her sensei, world champion Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, in Los Angeles. He taught her to change her thinking, she said.

Benny put her in fights with a man who mocked her to the point of tears, and then asked if that was all it took to break her.

Today, she passes on this wisdom to students at the UFC Gym in Alexandria, and now to an audience at the Sydney Opera House.

Nadine won world titles in Thai boxing and kickboxing.

There have, of course, been roadblocks for the slim, 5ft 6in blonde woman. Boxing and kickboxing for women was illegal in NSW for 25 years until 2008, and UFC only crowned its first female champion — bantamweight Rhonda Rousey — in 2012.

Nadine told Sunday Style magazine Rousey’s title heralded “a new age of legitimacy for female fighters.”

The female side of the sport is still “somewhat taboo”, she admitted last night, but it’s changing. “People don’t like seeing women being hit or hitting others, and I understand that, but some women need an outlet to experience range of things they want to feel.

“It’s good to see in the media that skinny isn’t cool any more, it’s cool to be strong. Women are looking for examples of strength, some don’t relate to being treated like a delicate flower.”

Nadine cites her degree in criminology and “not dying” as some of her greatest achievements, along with her black belt and titles.

Her holistic teaching methods take in mental and emotional health as well as physical, transforming how people think and feel about themselves.

Her unrehearsed breaking of a block of wood. Picture: JJ Halans/TEDxSydney

“You have to be who you are,” she said. “If you acknowledge that you’re scared, then it can’t control you. You can take it and put it aside.”

Her methods include counting down from 100 to 1, focusing on breathing and slowly touching the ground to centre yourself. During fights, after the stare down with her opponent, Nadine would wipe her feet on the mat to make herself fully present and “put myself in my body instead of my head.”

She’s been able to beat men, she says, by “hitting well, not hard”.

Nadine hopes that sharing her experiences will help other sports people. “When I was sick, nothing that I found in the bookstore or on the internet spoke to me as an athlete. You don’t have control over your body, you feel very vulnerable.”

She believes strength is a learned skill and that people can practice to move through pain, as she did. Finding you we are on a deeper level and “turning yourself inside out” is something anyone can strive for. That’s what this Champion has done.