MONDAY PROFILE: Former brutal thug found freedom in cell

ANENDRA SINGH
It's hard to imagine that former three-time kung fu world champion Tony Anthony could lose his temper, let alone beat someone senseless.
I expect a vice-like grip as he greets me at the foyer of the Napier Christian Centre in Taradale, Napier, but a softly spoken Anthony disappoints with a warm, gentle handshake before ushering me indoors for an interview inside an empty hall while his entourage unloads luggage from a hired trailer.
Standing about 157cm, the stocky 37-year-old Englishman from Essex is curious to know how SportToday got on his scent. Dressed in black and sporting a twitch, he makes it clear he doesn't want any "negative" journalism.
The reason becomes apparent during the interview when Anthony recounts a past so juicy that it's had Hollywood scriptwriters frothing at the mouth. Ben Montgomery, from Los Angeles, has won the scramble to the laptop to bring to celluloid the story of a martial arts champ who ends up in a Cypriot prison after a tumultuous life. While serving a three-year term behind bars he discovers God. Fast forward and today he spreads the gospel as an evangelist.
A book, Taming the Tiger, has been written about him in 19 languages, TV documentaries have been made and a $35 million budget movie is in the pipeline, says Anthony, who started a seven-week New Zealand tour on August 22.
He was born Antonio Anthony, the son of Chinese Janet and Italian Andrew. Aged four, he ended up with his maternal grandfather, Chong Ng So, in Guangzhou, China, after his father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
"My parents found it difficult to raise me, so they sent me to my grandfather, a Buddhist monk and kung fu grandmaster who trained other monks in martial arts at Shaolin temples," explains Anthony.
More than 150 styles of kung fu exist. His discipline was tai chi quan.
"Don't think that getting my world titles is a major deal because it's not. There are many people who are doing better," he says of the three consecutive belts he went on to win on the world stage from 1987-89.
Grandmasters, he says, prefer not to fight. The combat aspect appeals to the younger exponents in search of fame and glory.
At the age of 12, Antonio returned to live in a council flat in Fitchley, north London, after his parents had saved some money.
"I tried to settle into this new culture in England and it was very hard because I was coming from immense discipline in China to no discipline virtually at home and in school.
"I was a quiet kid but there were racists who'd pick on black and Indian kids and on me because of my language - I only spoke Cantonese. All I could understand were English swear words."
One day, a schoolboy abused his mother and assaulted him, tipping him over the edge and elevating his status in school as a brutal enforcer through kung fu.
"I really beat the hell out of him and everyone was scared of me after that, so I became the school bully myself."
Eventually, he linked up with the International Kung Fu Federation base in Geneva, who sponsored him to train in London, paying for his travel to compete in Pakistan, Thailand and China.
Anthony thrived in the no-holds-barred, dog-eat-dog competitions akin to street fights but held under the facade of an unprofessionally organised indoors event entrenched in gambling.
"There's no boundaries and it's a little more underground and organised than a street fight, where sometimes people get very badly injured."
Anthony rose to the ranks of an instructor, travelling the world to observe and accredit students and instructors.He joined the federation's security division, to train bodyguards.
The next step was becoming a "gofer" for the rich and famous, running errands.
But his life took another major turn when he foiled a kidnapping in Switzerland, raising his profile with the company. His reward was to become a bodyguard for diplomats, mainly a Saudi Arabian ambassador, Faisal Amin, based in England and Cyprus.
With a fistful of dollars and a "nice motorbike", Anthony's life was complete when he was engaged to a Swedish law student, Aiya, in London.
But mentally he had a meltdown when his fiancee of three years was killed in a car crash.
"I didn't handle it very well and everything I learned as a child went out of the window," says Anthony, who as a Buddhist found an escape through meditation but couldn't draw from it in a crisis.
Instead, his anger took control and his fists did the talking.
He took that attitude along with him when collecting debts for his gambling boss in Cyprus, Italy and the Middle East.
"I could have disarmed people by shooting them in the shoulder but I shot them in the face. I just lost the value of life. I was doing my job but I didn't have to do that," he says, gaze lowered to the carpeted floor.
Having lent money to his parents for his father's surgery, he resorted to hotel robberies to recoup the cash but police nabbed him in Nicosia.
The "corrupt" police handcuffed and shackled him because he had kicked one in retaliation for a slap.
"They beat me and beat me until I confessed to some crimes I had done and some that I hadn't."
Ironically it is to those brutal cops that he owes his new take on life. When they finished rearranging him, he was dragged away to a hellhole of a prison, behind whose forbidding walls he experienced true freedom for the first time.