Fighter at heart

Vincent Soberano owns the Black Tiger Fight Club in Beijing, which offers training in muay Thai, boxing and mixed martial arts. Wang Jing / China Daily

From star student to Shanghai Citizen

Journey of a lifetime

He boasts an upper body with corded shoulders and arms, a muscular chest, a trim stomach, as well as strong legs and quick feet. Most people think Soberano is in his 30s, when he's actually 50.

The Filipino-American, who hails from California, owns the Black Tiger Fight Club in Beijing, which offers training in muay Thai, boxing and mixed martial arts. He teaches some of the daily classes in his two gyms, alongside four instructors.

His dozens of wins at US and other international muay Thai and kickboxing events haven't hurt in attracting students either.

"I haven't done any martial arts since I was young, so it was an opportunity to train again and learn new styles," says Ben Penna, 39, an Australian who has been attending Black Tiger over the past six months. "When you look at who he is and what he's done, it's a good choice."

The majority of Soberano's students are foreigners, a growing client market that propelled him to leave a software executive job in the United States and move to Beijing in 2006. But during Black Tiger's first year, to make ends meet, he had to take a part-time job teaching computer science at Tianjin University. He thought the business was worth the risks and sacrifices.

"I saw that there was a really, really big potential to pioneer the sport of MMA in China," Soberano says while waiting for a boxing class to start. "Here in China it was, like, nonexistent."

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