Joey "Bam Bam" Lee
Joey “Bam Bam” Lee is the top female kickboxer in town. The recent World Muaythai Council Intercontinental Champion talks to June Ng about her life as a fighter.
I was born in Taiwan. Then my family moved to Hong Kong and immigrated to Canada when I was five.
I’ve always been athletic. Although I did have some dolls and toy ponies when I was a kid, most of the time I was playing outdoors with my brother, or with his boy toys like GI Joe.
I played basketball as my main sport. I was on the college basketball team for four years. Then I tried kickboxing to help me to stay in shape, and I loved it.
When I graduated from university, I wanted to be a federal police officer but they deferred my application and asked me to reapply a year later, after I got more life experience.
But I haven’t gone back because I didn’t want to wait, and the application took so long. I also lost faith in the justice system in Canada. I went to visit jails when I was doing my criminology degree and I wondered whether the facility turns criminals into better people, or the opposite.
I became a fighter in my gym in Canada, where I was training. When I moved to Hong Kong, Pure Fitness hired me because they thought it was great that an Asian female was bringing kickboxing to the table.
But I trained first in a local gym, and it was pretty funny. My master in Canada is friends with the sifu in an old school gym in Mong Kok, and he referred me there. He never mentioned whether I was a boy or a girl, he just said, “a fighter weighing 130 pounds.”