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I Am Oum Ry: A Champion Kickboxer's Story of Surviving the Cambodian Genocide and Discovering Peace
I Am Oum Ry A Champion Kickboxer's Story of Surviving the Cambodian Genocide and Discovering Peace Author:Zochada Tat, Addi Somekh Oum Ry is a former international champion kickboxer who first brought the Cambodian martial art Pradal Serey to the United States. He was a small kid who lived with monks until seeking out Pradal Serey masters, soon becoming national champion at twenty-three years old. For fifteen years, he toured Southeast Asia and without ever suffering a knoc... more »k-out won more than two hundred and fifty fights. One of the most famous fighters in the region, he had the status of someone like Muhammad Ali or Manny Pacquiao for his generation. After a young man's dream-life of stardom, parties, and girls, his new wife gave birth to a child in 1975; yet two months later, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and threw the country into the chaos of civil war, where starvation, disease, and mass executions were common.
Kickboxing is the thread linking Oum Ry's survival of this genocide to his talent, his pain and his resilience. He was miraculously saved many times from death in Cambodia but suffered a life-threatening attack during Southern California's epic gang violence of the 1990s. Earlier, as a refugee with his young family in Chicago, Oum Ry learned English while working cleaning hotels. But within a few years, he had an investor in Long Beach, California and opened one of the first kickboxing gyms in the United States. This is his life story, which is propelled by his highly anticipated return home in 2022. « less