Peter Graham
Peter Graham is among Australia’s outstanding combat sports athletes. He has reached the highest echelons of competition in full-contact karate, K1 kickboxing and mixed martial arts. Most recently, he became the World Boxing Federation’s World Heavyweight Boxing Champion.
I met Jarrod five years ago. I was cornering his opponent that night – Jarrod knocked him straight out with an awesome head kick. He has written a number of magazine articles about me since and I invited him to train and travel with me last year.
He accompanied me to Poland as a sparring partner and pad holder, where I fought on the biggest cage show in Europe, KSW. He was also my corner-man in the UK when I fought there on a KSW show six months later.
I enjoy training with him. There’s nothing like training with someone who knows [the sport] from both inside and outside the ring – he knows it from a technical standpoint as well. I also like training with him because he’s big!
The pad sessions at my gym in Sydney were some of the best pad-holding sessions I’ve had in twenty years of over one-hundred fights across the disciplines of boxing, kick boxing and mixed martial arts.
Richard Walsh
Richard Walsh, head-trainer at Urban Fight Gym on the Gold Coast, Queensland, is one of Australia’s best Muay Thai trainers. The most famous of his charges was Nathan ‘Carnage’ Corbett, holder of world Muay Thai championship titles at 79, 83 and 86 kilograms.
Jarrod came to the gym to do a story on my number-one fighter at that time, Nathan ‘Carnage’ Corbett. Nathan held multiple world titles – at 79, 83 and 86 kilos – and struggled to maintain sparring partners.
Jarrod did some training and after watching him hit the bag, we invited him to spar with Nathan. He was quick to learn – most of all because he listened! We invited him back to become a regular sparring partner. He also wrote a couple of good articles about Nathan, too.
Tim Boyle
Tim Boyle played AFL football for Hawthorn and now writes a sports column published in The Age Newspaper that is syndicated nationwide.
As a former professional athlete, I wouldn’t pay to be trained by someone who’s never done anything serious, or taken any risks, to better understand their own physical limits. Jarrod’s time in combat sports is a very serious thing, and it’s given him an authority of experience that he transfers to clients with confidence.
With Jarrod, the physical realities of martial arts are complimented by his intelligence, and clear ideas about well-being. He is adept at challenging a person of any fitness level to focus and improve. He’ll be patient, but also tell you when it’s time to get better. That’s exactly what you need in a trainer.