Already boasting an expansive 88,000 square feet of training space, AKA Thailand will soon get a massive new addition.
Already boasting an expansive 88,000 square feet of training space, AKA Thailand will soon get a massive new addition.
Under the watchful eye of UFC veteran and “The Ultimate Fighter 1” cast member [autotag]Mike Swick[/autotag], AKA Thailand in Phuket aims to be “the world’s premier luxury training resort.”
“It’s been a long road, but we are good, and I’m excited,” Swick told MMA Junkie. “We’re about to start the second phase, so the next expansion, and it’s going to be one-of-a-kind. It’s going to be something to really be proud of.
“This is the part that I’ve been waiting to get to for the last eight years and the most excited I’ve been about anything, any endeavor, any part of my career or life, professionally. I’m pumped. It puts me in Thailand, but at least I’m on an island, and it’s nice. There are worse place to be.”
A 15-time UFC veteran, Swick retired following a 2015 loss to Alex Garcia and then turned his full-time attention to the gym. Now he’s adding to the facility in hopes of eventually bringing it to be “biggest combat sport facility on Earth.”
The AKA Thailand MMA team will remain a central focus, but the facility also caters to muay Thai fighters, local civilians looking to stay in shape and also people seeking a unique vacation experience in an exotic locale.
“It’s going to be 100 percent unique,” Swick said. “I didn’t come here to a developing country to try and build a fight-only gym and cater just to fighters. There’s no reason not to cater to fighters and everyone else, give everyone an opportunity to train in muay Thai, MMA, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, yoga, strength and conditioning – all these different elements.
“My dream was to build a dream gym, like the Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood of gyms. Growing up, every restaurant was a restaurant. There were good ones, there were bad ones, and then there was Planet Hollywood. That was the place you had to go. They had celebrities and the it factor, and it was cool. I wanted to build a gym that was basically going to put me on the map as doing something that’s never before been done.”
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While Swick said he’s happy his master business plan has proven effective, he readily admits his passion will remain with the fighters who come to Phuket. He points to homegrown talent such as Rizin bantamweight champ Manel Kape and rising prospects Amir Aliakbari and Anastasia Yankova as proof of the work that’s being done.
“My passion is fighters, obviously,” Swick said. “So we just crowned Manel Kape a world champion in Rizin. I cornered him for that fight. He’s our first homegrown world champion at AKA Thailand. We have a couple of other guys coming up that are doing good. Tyron Woodley was just here doing his camp, killing it. He picked up so much stuff, trained like a beast. H’s going to have a crazy fight coming up against Leon Edwards. He’s made AKA Thailand his start camp for all of his fights now. It’s exciting.”
Swick came within one fight of competing for a UFC title during his octagon run, but at 40, he’s happy to admit those days are behind him. Still, he plans in being involved in the sport for the foreseeable future, and he believes AKA Thailand will continue to develop into not only a flagship facility in Southeast Asia but for the world, as well.
“I didn’t give up 10 years of my life to come here and build just a gym,” Swick said. “It was optimistic and it was bold, and I failed miserably a couple of times, lost a ton of money, had to regroup and start over, but I just stubbornly kept going after it, and now we’re well on our way, and we’re about to start this expansion that’s going to really put us over.
“To be able to build something where you can be successful and make money and have fun doing it, and what you’re providing is actually helping create success, not just in fighters, which we’re doing but in everyone one – accountants, executives, celebrities, like Dan Bilzerian, who comes here all the time with his crew, like everybody achieving something and having fun. I’m not ripping people off on the stock market. I’m not selling insurance. I feel really good about what I’m dong, and I can be successful at it and have fun and enjoy freedom.
“For a post-fight career, in my opinion, I set myself up in kind of the best predicament that I could imagine, like what I would want to be doing, where I would want to be and what kind of business I would want to be in vs. being stuck being somewhere in a rut of something I don’t want. So it was worth all the falling and the tumbling and the downsides to get to this point, and I’m glad I stuck it out.”
