COMBAT SPORT
Michael Corley trains youth to become competitive muay thai fighters
Ask Michael “Chase” Corley to describe his teenage self and he’ll readily admit, “I was a serious kid. Definitely.”
That’s what attracted him to boxing — and later muay thai, the national sport and cultural martial art of Thailand — in the first place. The discipline of it all.
Corley, 34, owns Heritage Muay Thai, a training academy in Garden Oaks that caters to all ages and skill levels. His oldest student is 66. The youngest is 5.
He’s blond, boyish and soft-spoken, but don’t be fooled. That shy smile is reserved mainly for pint-size pupils.
Laser focus and a commitment to excellence is what he expects from his competitive athletes, especially the ones who dream of becoming worldclass fighters.
Corley was 16 when he discovered the sport that would become his obsession. “My dad was a police officer with HPD, and a fellow cop from New York always watched boxing fights at his house. It changed my whole life.”
Then a junior who played baseball and basketball for Spring High School, he immediately quit both teams.
Solo sports better suited his style. “In boxing, you control everything. You don’t have teammate drama. Or parents. Or goofiness.”
So while his peers spent their afternoons roaming the mall, Corley put his newly obtained driver’s license to use. Four times a week, after his last class of the day, he’d race across town to condition and train at Savannah Boxing Club in southwest Houston. Sometimes, he’d make the 62-mile round trip on Saturdays, too.
“I usually missed the runs — everyone runs together — (but) I would make it in time to jump rope or shadow box. Then a trainer would have us do some bag work with pads,” Corley says of those first days in the gym. “I liked training. I liked fighting. I liked all of it.”
He learned the ropes by practicing against other kids in his weight and height class; back then, he clocked in at 6 feet and a lean 150 pounds.
“I was just a tall and scrawny kid,” Corley recalls with a laugh.
Tall and scrawny, though plenty scrappy. After four short months of sparring, the determined young athlete was ready to compete.
Amateur boxing bouts move pretty fast. A victor is crowned after three 3-minute rounds in the ring. Still, even Corley was surprised by how quickly he triumphed.
“I think I won in the first round, in the first eight count,” he says, citing the mandatory eight-count rule that requires a referee to allow a fighter eight seconds once they’ve been knocked down by their opponent. “Which was a good thing because I told my friends to come. I don’t usually care about people coming to watch me fight.”
It’s true. His mother has never seen him in action. “I didn’t allow my mom to go. I don’t want her seeing me fighting. She’s only watched on TV.”
The televised stuff came later. Corley competed in another dozen or so amateur boxing matches before slightly changing course.
“I met mixed martial arts fighting pioneer Yves Edwards, and he introduced me to muay thai,” Corley says. “I liked that the best. It’s the most exciting of combat sports. You have to be really strong, both mentally and physically.”
It’s also more dangerous. There’s a reason why muay thai is called the “art of eight limbs,” because fighters can utilize their fists, elbows, knees and shins to try to defeat their opponent. The sport gained popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries when practitioners from Thailand started competing in kickboxing and mixed-rules matches.
Corley’s break into the muay thai ring would have to wait. He pumped the breaks on competing after his high school graduation to attend college and stay close to Houston.
Training options are better here than anywhere in Texas, he says.
The Texas A&M University sports management major tried to start a boxing club in College Station, but it didn’t take. “Most of the time, I was driving home on the weekends to train. It was just like high school; I was spread thin, trying to juggle muay thai and boxing.”
Things improved after he earned his degree in 2007. Ambitious as ever, Corley submitted an application to the USA Muaythai Federation team and got selected. He was invited to fight at the International Federation of Muaythai Amateur World Championships in Korea — that was a reality check he didn’t see coming.
“It woke up me to international levels (of competition).”
So he moved to Thailand to rededicate himself and train in the place where the sport originated. Then he hit another road block and struggled to book matches.
That’s what happens to most fighters, Corley explains. As they get older and more experienced, people either go professional or drop out.
A full year passed before he rejoined the USMF team in 2009. His sophomore attempt fared better. He landed marquee matches at the Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok and competed all over Malaysia, Cambodia and China. Between fights, he also worked as manager of the Fairtex Bangplee Muay Thai Camp.
“Being in Thailand for those two years opened up lots of doors,” Corley says. “I got on a muay thai reality show. Even though I got kicked off on the first episode because I had to fight someone really hard, the producers brought me back, so I fought him again in the finale.”
Spoiler alert: Corley lost the rematch, too.
No hard feelings. The itch to open his own training facility back home had set in. Houston had just one stand-alone muay thai gym at the time. So he subleased a space within Main Street Boxing & Muay Thai and Savarese Fight Fit downtown.
That was in 2014. Two years later, Corley was elected president of USMF and muay thai became provisionally recognized by the International Olympic Committee.
For the first time in Corley’s life, there was too much on his plate. “My last fight was in 2017 in Thailand. I’ve done everything you can in the sport: fought, coached and refereed. I was never a world champion, but I got to compete against world champions. Now I’m passing on the things I’ve learned to my students and watching them get better than me.”
That’s why Oliver Jimenez, 25, joined Heritage Muay Thai in 2013: to train at the highest level.
“You have to do what others aren’t willing to do,” says Jimenez, who’s won every tournament in his A-class division. “That means wake up at 5 a.m., run a couple of miles, do the conditioning and still work a regular job.”
His goal is to sign a promotion contract so he can focus on fighting full time. For now, Jimenez is a contractor for Harris County by day and in Corley’s gym most nights.
It’s one of the reasons why Corley split from Main Street Boxing 16 months ago, to invest in Heritage Muay Thai’s youth programs, which are strategically located in the suburbs so that more kids have access to them.
He wants to create a family atmosphere, where parents can work out at the same time as their little ones. “Adults have bad habits from playing other sports, but you can mold kids when they’re young,” he says.
One of his most promising students is only 7 years old. Like Corley, she takes her craft very seriously.
“Whether it’s putting together combinations or blocking, when I call something out, she can do it,” he says. “A lot of kids, it overwhelms them. But she’s really good, aware of her body and already wants to compete.”
Game recognize game.
“It’s the most exciting of combat sports. You have to be really strong, both mentally and physically.”
Michael Corley, talking about being introduced to the sport of muay thai