Xiong Chaozhong – the coal miner turned pro boxer who became China’s first world champion
- ‘Pulling coal carts was about technique, not strength. Boxing is the same,’ recalls Xiong, who once laboured for just 10 yuan a day
- ‘Everything in my life changed. It took me six years to become world champion – not many people can do that’
Most boxers who turn professional have already spent years sharpening their skills on the amateur scene. Not China’s Xiong Chaozhong.
When Xiong turned pro at the age of 23, the only grind he had been doing was pushing carts out of the coal mines for 10 yuan a day, working 10-hour shifts. From the Miao (Hmong) ethnic minority, he started labouring at 17, having dropped out of school to help support his family who lived in the countryside of Wenshan, in the south of Yunnan province.
But it did teach him something that helped prepare him for the rigours of the ring.
“Pulling coal carts was about technique, not strength. Boxing is the same,” said Xiong, who stands exactly five feet (1.52 metres) tall, in the documentary From Coal Mine to Boxing Champion.
Indeed, Xiong was often found brawling with his fellow coal miners, and onlookers commented that he “did not rely on brute force” but used skill and proficiency.
“I told the boys from our village that champions like Mike Tyson could earn tens of millions in a few seconds,” Xiong’s cousin Tao Weizhong, who introduced him to the sport, says in the documentary.
“You can say Mike Tyson was my idol. I started training because of him,” Xiong told the Post. He is now retired with a record of 27 wins (14 KOs), eight losses and one draw, and coaches aspiring professional boxers at a gym he has opened in Wenshan.
In 2005, Xiong left the mines and went to Kunming, the provincial capital, to join China’s first professional boxing gym.
While China’s female amateur boxers lead the world, and the country has produced two Olympic champions in men’s amateur boxing, professional boxing is a completely different story. When Xiong started out, Chinese coaches and fighters were learning from scratch, and Xiong’s weight categories were dominated by fighters from some of professional boxing’s superpowers, such as Mexico, Japan and Thailand.
Liu Gang, Xiong’s first coach, did not think much of him when Xiong turned up at his gym. He had short arms and had never been in a sanctioned fight.
Yet he was an extremely hard worker and “astonishingly strong”, said Liu, who credited Xiong’s strength to all those years of pulling coal carts.
Xiong drew his first official fight, but then won 11 in a row, eight of them by stoppage. Short but muscular like his idol Tyson, Xiong was often dwarfed by taller opponents. But again, like Tyson, he adopted an attacking style, often leaping at his opponent with powerful hooks.
In 2008, he took the World Boxing Council-Asian Boxing Council (WBC-ABC) continental light flyweight title. He knocked out Thailand’s Khamhaeng Phanmee in the first round, winning 3,000 yuan (US$425). He lost the belt in his first defence, against the Philippines’ Julius Alcos, by unanimous decision.
In 2009, Xiong was awarded a world title shot against Japan’s WBC flyweight king, Daisuke Naito. Fighting in Japan, Xiong knocked Naito down, but lost on points. Chinese media complained of hometown bias, but Xiong said at the time: “He is a world champion. Experience, technique – he should be better than me in all aspects. Losing is learning.”
A second consecutive loss to another Japanese fighter, Takuya Kogawa, saw Xiong’s income start to plummet. He thought of calling it a day – nearing 30, time was not on his side. But he fought on. “If I don’t become a world champion, I then become a complete nothing,” he said.
In 2012, he got another world title opportunity – at mimimumweight, under 48 kilograms, boxing’s lightest weight category, for the WBC belt. Xiong won a 12-round decision against Mexico’s Javier Martinez Resendiz and became China’s first professional boxing world champion.
“When I was announced as the winner, I felt empty inside. I did not know what to think,” Xiong said. “It took a while to get myself together. After the press conference I thought it was so hard to become world champion.
“It was a dream come true, everything in my life changed. It took me six years to become world champion – this is considered quick in boxing, not many people can do that. You need to work hard, but also to be lucky.”
His first title defence, in 2013, was a majority decision win in Dubai against Filipino Denver Cuello. “That was my hardest fight,” he said. “I was knocked down in the second round, but I won and defended my title.”
He made another successful defence later that year against Thai Lookrak Kiatmungmee, but then lost his belt to Mexican Oswaldo Novoa, stopped by TKO in the fifth round.
He continued fighting, winning a couple of Asia-Pacific titles and in 2014 got another world title shot, but lost by unanimous decision against WBA minimumweight champ Hekkie Budler, of South Africa, in Monaco. He retired in 2017.
Xiong came out of retirement in 2018, at the age of 35, challenging rising Thai star Knockout CP Freshmart for the WBA world title again. Xiong lost a heavy unanimous decision, with two scorecards of 118-110, and retired for good.
He didn’t stay inactive for long – the same year, Xiong opened his boxing gym. Now several of his students have the potential to be professionals, Xiong told the Post.
Four years after Xiong, and fighting against similar opposition at flyweight, Zou Shiming would become China’s second world champion in professional boxing. Like Xiong, Zou won his world title at the second attempt.
Zou, however, turned professional as China’s most successful amateur boxer of all time – a double Olympic and three-time world amateur champion. Not as a coal mine labourer – and for that, Xiong deserves his own little piece of history.
