New York Post

FIST A THING OF BEAUTY

SIS model’s also a martial arts fighter

- By CHRISTIAN GOLLAYAN

Not long ago, Mia Kang was a commoditie­s trader. Now she’s a profession­al knockout. Kang (left), who won the most recent Sports Illustrate­d’s Swimsuit Model Search contest and snagged a high-profile spot in the magazine’s February bikinibabe issue (below), is also getting ready for her first profession­al Muay Thai fight. Not bad for a girl who’s been in New York a little over a year. “I’m a very lucky girl since I moved here and started at the top with Sports Illustrate­d,” Kang, 28, told The Post. “That being said, I’m here to win.” But her life hasn’t always been a victory march. Kang, who grew up in Hong Kong, said she was an overweight kid and bullied in elementary school. That is, until puberty hit and she dropped half her body weight. “The boys in my class who bullied me asked me out to prom,” Kang said. “From a very young age I saw an ugly side of people.” Modeling scouts took note, too, and Kang walked the runways of Paris and Milan at age 17. But she listened to her father, who advised her to put her fashion dreams on hold and go to college.

“With modeling there’s this huge pressure that your time is now and [it can be] such a short-lived career. I remember [my father, a physicist] saying, ‘Do you want to be in a university when you’re 28 years old and you’re in a classroom full of 18-year-olds?’” Kang recalled. She added that getting her master’s in finance and financial law from the University of London was the best decision of her life.

“I urge girls to prioritize their education — no one can take that away from you,” she said.

But Kang felt stifled by the buttoned-up culture of commoditie­s trading in Hong Kong. In 2015, she took a 10-day vacation in Thailand to unwind. She ended up staying for six months in a Muay Thai compound, training to fight.

“I have the utmost respect for fighters,” she said. “Going in every single day and getting your ass handed to you in front of people and standing back up and shaking [your opponent’s] hand saying, ‘Thank you, you’re better than me’ . . . it’s so good for your soul.”

She decided to leave Hong Kong for New York, both to pursue competitiv­e Muay Thai fighting and to give modeling a real go.

Now she juggles her role as a Guess girl — her third campaign with the fashion company is out now — and training three hours a day, six days a week for her first pro fight, scheduled for May in Thailand. It doesn’t leave time for romance, but Kang hasn’t been impressed with the city dating scene anyway. “It’s tough to meet people,” she said. “And [when you do] they have a little bit of an ego.”

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