The Tony Sewell Taekwondo story

Tony Sewell 3 times unbeaten World Champion, and numerous European and British titleholder is considered by many (martial artists) (and spectators) to have been the greatest tournament fighter the Martial Arts world has ever seen.  Stories have emerged about this incredible fighter from those who were lucky enough to have seen him in action that will live on as almost legendary in the history books.

Tony Sewell first started training in Taekwondo aged 16 in 1976. He had previously trained in Karate for a few years under his uncle, but being about 8 or 9 at the time, travelling from Derby to Birmingham became a bit too much. Tony was first introduced to Taekwondo through his older brothers Howard and Michael who had begun training in Derby.  One evening after watching his brothers in action at the club Tony found himself impressed both by their abilities and the kicking techniques of the art, and made the decision to start training soon after. Tony’s first instructor was Bob Harvey who was a 3^rd Dan at the time.  He took Tony through the basics of Taekwondo in the ITF style and helped shape the young Tony into the Martial Artist he is today.  From there Tony began to develop the art in his own unique way through watching and learning from his two brothers who had the amazing ability to dissect and perfect each and every technique.

Tony’s brothers were instrumental in refining his dedication and determination, as well as his sparring skills and his unique kicking style. “My brothers were higher grades than me so for the first few years of my training they were always a step ahead of me, they’d developed a style and analysed their training. I remember going to Howard and Michael as a white belt wanting to train with them, but they refused because they thought I was just another shooting star.  They wanted me to show dedication and commitment before they would take me seriously”. This pushed Tony to practice even harder.

Tony remembers being encouraged to enter his first tournament as a green belt (the minimum entry status for competition at that time) by his friends at the club who thought he was their best fighter at that grade.  Tony won his section.  Impressed with his achievements and kicking ability, he asked his brother Michael what he thought, “he just said my kicks were rubbish and I had a lot to learn.  The fact is that although my kicks were good for the grade I was at that particular time, they were technically imperfect.  I was devastated, but when they explained it made sense, I was leaning back, I was off balance.  Soon after my brothers let me start training with them, and I set about training hard and working on specific things.  Thanks to Michael I radically changed my kicking style, developing my own by taking a bit of his technique and a bit of Howard’s.  This helped me to develop speed, power, and much improved accuracy.” (Tony changed his kicking technique from the traditional leaning method and developed an upright kicking style for which he is so well known).

1977 the year that Tony won his first ever title as a green belt, was also the year Howard went to the World Championships in Oklahoma USA and came away with a silver medal (after being disqualified in the final).  Tony started to think that him too could be world champion, and although only a 6^th Kup at the time, he set his sights on the next world championships in Argentina in 1981.  Tony knew that if he trained solidly and took his gradings he could be a black belt by then, and if he was good enough he could be selected to compete.

With his goal in mind Tony dedicated himself to Taekwondo.  Training with his brothers helped him to push himself to the limits and perfect all of his techniques.  By ripping his techniques to pieces, Tony had to reassess everything he had learnt and thought he knew about sparring.  Hard training, constant competition and brutal self-analysis followed.  Tony remembers well:

“Even when we won we weren’t happy because we felt there were flaws in our style and technique.  We watched each other and criticised everything, but it was never about putting each other down.  If I wanted to be world champion, if I wanted to be the best, I had to be honest with myself in order to be able to improve”.

Tony set a plan for himself to train hard, pass his black belt grading, and then win the British Championships so he would be in contention for the Europeans.  Tony new that he would have to work intensely and focus all his energy to achieve this, and win the Europeans so that he could go to World Championships in Argentina.

Coming up to Tony’s black belt grading there was doubts voiced over both his ability to pass the grading, and his capability to be a leading and accomplished fighter at black belt level.  The established black belts and current national squad at time recognised Tony’s talent (and acknowledged that he was good), however they did not believe he was ready or good enough to be a serious competitor at black belt and international level.

This put a lot of pressure on Tony, this grading was at a key point for him.  If he didn’t pass and achieve his black belt that would be the end of his plan, all these tournaments were in the next year and a half.

Tony did pass, and went on to fight in the 1980 British Championships.  At the time there were rumours again circulating that Tony would get annihilated by the black belts, that he would be unable to be able to cope, that he lacked the skill and ability to fight at this level.  However quite the opposite occurred and Tony won.

British Heavyweight Champion was a good title to have to your name and even though Tony had sailed through the tournament, Tony’s critics still said it was a fluke.  There was serious doubts over this young 20 year old fighter being able to hack it on the international circuit with established fighters such the current heavyweight World ITF and WTF Champion Hank Meijer, who was already world champion when Tony had just started training / was a white belt.

Being young at the time, Tony felt aggrieved (annoyed) at the lack of respect he was getting from his own association.  He wanted to fight in Europeans, he thought he was good enough.  On account of the doubt and criticism of his ability, Tony decided not to attend National Squad Training.  Attendance at these sessions was essential if you wanted to stand a chance of being picked for the National Team and gain entry to the European Championships.  As the European Championships were to be held in Crystal Palace London, Tony made a decision to pay his own way, enter himself as an outside competitor, and to just represent himself.

The European Championships was an important means of entry onto world Martial Arts scene.  Tony sailed through and made the semi-final easily.  His 2 round semi-final opponent was set with a well known fighter Hank Meijer who was the current world ITF and WFT champion and considered to be the best heavyweight in the world.

The first round sparring got underway, Hank Meijer came forward towards Tony with a huge axe kick.  Tony just moved out of the way.  Hank came in again and double punched, catching Tony in the face.  Tony paused, picked himself up, and knew he had to move himself up a couple of gears.  Tony’s explosive performance kicked in.  He pinned Hank Meijer to the edge of the matt and overpowered him for the remainder of the first and the entire second round.  At the Time the name of his opponent meant nothing to Tony, he didn’t know who Hank Meijer was, but the watching spectators knew and couldn’t believe it, no one had thought he would ever be beaten.  They had just witnessed this young 20 year old called Tony Sewell completely take apart, wipe the floor with, and beat the current World Champion. The crowd was going mad.  Those who had doubted Tony were running up to him, congratulating him, picking him up and carrying him. Tony was confused, he didn’t know what had happened, he thought he’d won the final. When the excitement finally calmed down Tony went on to fight and win the formality of the final.

Up until this point there had been talk in the Martial Arts would about Tony as a promising coloured belt.  But it was at this point that he truly exploded onto the world scene and made his first mark on everyone’s mind. Now everyone was talking about Tony and there was much interest and excitement surrounding him.  The squad welcomed him, everyone wanted to know who he was, where he trained, what his plans were, what he was going to do.

Although happy and excited Tony hadn’t completed his plan.  The pinnacle of  his goal was to win this upcoming World Championships in Argentina. Tony had patched up his differences with the National Squad and was selected to go to Argentina in 1981.

When the event began everyone was overwhelmed by the size of the arena, the area around the ring having a crowd of 10,000 people.  As with the Europeans each fight was again divided over two rounds.  Tony remembers his first round fight against an Argentinean opponent in this tournament as his worst ever competition fight. Tony put it down to feeling the pressure, this was the moment of truth, the pinnacle of his ambitions.

Tony’s opponent wasn’t very good but he found himself drawn down to his level.  The fight was scrappy and Tony wasn’t fighting with his usual kicking ability and accuracy.  During the break between the rounds he thought to himself “what am I doing, I’m going to lose this”.  Tony knew he was fighting terrible.  Deep down he knew he knew he was good enough to win this fight, he wasn’t tired, and though to himself “this guy shouldn’t be getting near me.  Tony managed to re-focus himself mentally and when returned for the second round Tony got to work, not giving his opponent a chance to touch him, and won the bout easily.

After overcoming this stumbling block, the rest of the tournament was not a problem for Tony and he won his first title of World Heavyweight Champion. Tony returned to England elated, and remembers getting back to his home in Derby just as the local news was reporting of his achievements, making him feel very proud.

As a result of Tony’s achievements and the interest surrounding his abilities, he received an invitation to the BBC sports personality of the year 1981, a remarkable achievement for a Martial Artist.  Tony went along to the awards and was touched by the experience, he said it was “an experience (day) he would never forget”.

After winning the World Championships Tony was confident about his abilities to win the coming British Championships and decided to tone down his training and train just twice a week at the club. The tournament came around, Tony won but felt tired and said he made hard work of what should have been easy for him.  He made a mental note to himself never to be so over confident again and resolved to always train hard and prepare for any tournament, whatever it was. The next significant milestone in Tony’s career was when he beat 5 times USA and World grand champion Steve ‘Nasty’ Anderson, who was unbeaten by any European fighter, until Tony Sewell came along.

In 1989  Tony signed a contract to fight another well known heavyweight fighter of the day Kevin Brewerton in a publicised ‘Clash of the Titans’ event to be staged at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre.  Full contact World Champion Brewerton’s favourite technique was a rush in back fist reverse punch technique.  Preparing for the fight Tony worked on steps to counter this and others of Brewerton’s techniques, he worked specifically on his sidekick, developing power and speed.

The night of the ‘Clash of the Titans’ was a big event with lots of demonstrations and team sparring leading up to the headline ‘Sewell V Brewerton’ fight.  When Tony and Brewerton finally made it into the ring, they bowed, touched gloves, and took their marks.  The referee shouted “fight”.  Brewerton rushed in immediately with a trademark back fist reverse punch.  He got as far as the back fist and was hit by Tony’s sidekick, one of the hardest kicks in martial arts, with such force that he flew to the other side of the mat.  Brewerton fell over, got up, and fell over again.

Tony comments: “For that fight I trained very hard specifically on my sidekick. I had watched videos of him using rushing in tactics. So I developed a strong sidekick to hit him down the middle when he rushed in with his back fist reverse punch. The sidekick would give the technique more momentum because he would be running on to it, and on the night that’s basically what he did. He went down, then got up, then fell back down.  I thought that be had felt the force of the kick as it cleaved into him, got back up as a reaction, then again felt the force reverberating around his body from the kick which put him back down again”.

Brewerton was injured, he couldn’t continue.  There were doubts whether it was the damage to his ribs or his legs which suffered when he fell over.  Either way the fight was over.  Tony had won, although with the fight over literally in seconds, not the manner in which he expected.

Although happy to win, Tony wasn’t satisfied.  He has wanted to give more of a show to the crowd.  In addition Brewerton felt that he didn’t have a chance to fight properly with Tony.  So all parties involved agreed to a rematch. The rematch was another fight remembered, but this time for different reasons.

Brewerton came to the rematch psyched up, ready to avenge his defeat, and ready for action.  From the moment the contest began punches and kicks were flying in hard, fast, and furious from both sides.  Tony hit Brewerton with a back fist so hard that his eye started to swell immediately.  Tony expected Brewerton to stop and catch breath, but Brewerton barely flinched.  Tony knew in his mind that this was going to be a hard fight.

At one point both fighters there were on the edge of the ring.  Such was the intensity of the fight that they went over the line and into the crowd, taking the ref  by surprise.  Sewell and Brewerton carried on fighting and the supporters that they fell into decided to join in.  Eventually the ref managed to prize them apart and pulled them back into the ring.  Tony wasn’t fazed by the heavy contact and the ferociousness of the bout and went on to win the fight for the second time.  Afterwards Tony commented that he quite enjoyed the rematch, saying it was really a fight to win.

By the time Tony entered his second world championships in 1988 in Leicester, he was already in marital arts terms a household name, and many felt at the peak of his career.  The crowds hearing of his reputation, achievements, and stories of his performances flocked to see him and they weren’t disappointed.

A review of the 1988 World Championships  published in Combat Magazine  concluded it’s review of the tournament with the following words:

“There were many displays of excellence at this event.  There was Kim Stones, who suffered a nose injury but fought on regardless, protecting his face with a white ice-hockey mask.  There was the calm response of John McDonald, another bright star to enter the TAGB constellation, to a decidedly dodgy victory by Dutchman Chris Hoeman.  Despite this, I suspect that ninety percent of the audience went away with the name ‘Tony Sewell’ on their lips.  The man was awesome!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so far ahead of all this competition, and in this I include the likes of Frank Brennan and Vic Charles”.  “…….any doubts about the reality of his comeback were dispelled by the display he put on as he battled his way to the Men’s Heavyweight gold.  Icy cool as ever, Sewell made each bout seem like a demonstration of his skills, with the opponent only a prop in the performance.  The crowds flocked, much to the annoyance of the seated spectators, to surround whichever area he was fighting on.  What impressed me the most about him was his extraordinary sense of balance and timing.  I never saw him unbalance once, no matter how high or difficult his kicks, or how clumsy his opponent.  I was amazed at the speed and accuracy with which Sewell snapped out a jumping back kick to catch the pursuing opponent.  Like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson before him, Tony has realised that the opponent is usually least prepared for a strike when HE is moving forward and YOU are moving back, and he used this knowledge to good effect throughout the tournament.  The guy’s a prodigy.  See him next time he fights.”

Tony continued to enter many national, regional and open tournaments throughout his career to add many more titles to his name.

1988 was the year that Taekwondo was to be first introduced to the Olympics.

Before his second World Championship Title, Tony entered the qualifying tournaments for Olympic selection and beat every fighter in his division.  Tony said that he found it one of the easiest tournaments he’d ever fought in.  The nature of Olympic WTF style Taekwondo makes it difficult for fighters to block.  The combination of this and Tony’s speed, power and kicking ability made it easy for him to hit his opponents, knocking out some fighters.

As Tony had won the qualifying tournament he thought this would mean he would be going to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.  However despite having won, the selectors for the team told Tony that he was required to attend training sessions with the coach before the final selection

There was an opinion that Tony’s style of kicking wasn’t reflective of WTF style Taekwondo, and did not fit their format. From Tony’s point of view he was very disappointed and felt it unfair to deny him a place and a chance to win an Olympic medal for his country.  Many felt that it was a huge waste of talent, especially as Tony’s form at the time and his record of wins in every tournament he entered including that in WFT style Taekwondo, was unsurpassed.  After watching the Olympic tournament, viewing the standard of competition against his own abilities, Tony felt that if he’s been given the opportunity, he would come away with at least a medal.

This event in Tony’s life made him more aware of the politics within Taekwondo.  Tony said he made a conscious decision that within his own world he would never let politics affect how he dealt with Martial Arts.

Tony won his third World Championship title in 1991.  Despite having pulled a muscle early in the 1^st round, Tony continued through the rest of the competition with a groin strain.  Even though he couldn’t really kick properly, Tony still went on to win the tournament.  Partly because he had trained his hands as hard as his legs, however not many people being able to get round Tony’s legs meant that not many had seen this side of him as a fighter.

Shortly after his 3^rd World Championships Tony decided to retire from competition.  He felt that he had won everything there was to win and could go no further without repetition.  At this point in his life Tony had two young sons and wanted to focus on building a future for himself and his family.  Much to the disappointment of his many legions of fans Tony retired from active competition.

When he retired Tony’s main focus was going to be his club and his students.  It was going to be his livelihood:

“I began to look around at past champions, the great fighters that had gone before me, and what were they doing now? Half of them were not running clubs, or anything else for that matter, and suddenly my head went into business mode, because at the end of the day if you don’t work you don’t eat. That’s a pretty simple life equation. For years I had been competing and fighting challenge matches. Most simply because so and so had said he could beat me, or said he was better than me. You can go on forever doing that”.

Tony still today remains focused on teaching and on his students, and to this day he was trained and supported well over 80 black belts, most with national and some with international titles to their name.  His sheer wealth of talent, his technical excellence and fighting prowess now lives on in the many that are his students.

He still trains every day, and has more to offers than any other instructor I know.

As well as being a full time instructor, he is also Vice-Chairman of  Global Taekwondo International, Regional Coordinator for the North Midlands and also a grading examiner and regularly carries out seminars, both of which are available to book .  You can contact Master Sewell through the details in the contact page.