Street cleaner packs a punch

By Jung Min-ho

The first thing Choi Jong-chan does when he wakes up at 5 a.m. every day is get himself ready to clean the streets, which is his job that usually ends at 3 p.m.

Then he spends at least four hours to improve his punching and ground skills for his second profession: mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting.

“I’m not one of those fighters who dreams of becoming a champion one day,” he said in an interview. “But I do take my fighting career seriously, which has brought great joy and change to my life.”

So far, his career as a fighter has been bumpy ― just like his life. After losing to Son Jin-ho in his debut fight in May 2015, Choi lost two more fights in a row and thought about quitting. So it was more than thrilling to finally get his first victory over Yibugele of China in December that year.

“I cried a lot that day, thinking about the hard times I had gone through,” he said. “It felt like all my hard work and failures had been compensated for.”

As a boy, he was a talented athlete. He joined a judo team at Kyodong Elementary School in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, and won a bronze medal in a national competition when he was in the sixth grade.

But a path to joining the national Olympic team was never going to be easy. Outperformed by judokas such as Lee Won-hee and Kim Jae-bum, who later won Olympic medals, Choi did not shine during his middle and high school years.

While studying Social Physical Education at Chung Cheong University, he worked as a dancer at a private academy and spent much time in dance clubs.

After graduating from the university in 2006, he started selling accessories in the streets of Myeong-dong in Seoul and in his hometown, Cheongju. But this didn’t last long.

So he started to work at a hotel in Cheongju as security guard before getting an accounting job in a small company.

He started his own business after his father died suddenly of cancer. He sold women’s clothes online but went bankrupt after losing about 100 million won ($90,000) in the first year.

“I tried to get a job to bounce back, but I could not get it anywhere anymore. I was lost,” he said. “That was when I found out about the street cleaning job at the regional government.”

It has been a rewarding job he can do well. But when he watched the TV show, “Crying Fist,” he realized fighting was still his passion.

Over the past few months, he has been busy preparing for his fifth bout against Cho Kyung-hee, which is scheduled for April 15 at Jangchung Gymnasium in Seoul.

“I want to win. But more than that, I want to continue to fight and I want to do it as long as I can,” he said.