Kevin FitzpatrickNorth West
A teenager who was encouraged to try Muay Thai boxing as part of a crime reduction scheme said taking up the sport has transformed his life.
Two years ago Divine Aikbekean, from Heywood, Greater Manchester, was getting into trouble in and out of school.
Now 17, he has just won a British heavyweight belt after four fights and has been invited to travel to Thailand for training with the England squad.
Divine said his new passion has given a “purpose to everything”.
Divine was just 15 when he began receiving support from Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit, after concerns he was at risk of heading down a destructive path.
He said: “I was doing stuff that I shouldn’t be doing, hanging with the wrong people.
“The school referred me to Your Trust [a charity that works with the unit] and they messaged me saying, would you like to have a go at doing Muay Thai?
“I said, yeah, why not.”
At 6ft 5in and weighing in at 17 stone (108kg), the teenager certainly has the physique to make his way in the heavyweight category.
In early December, he became the adult British Muay Thai Nai Khanom Tom Heavyweight Champion.
He’s now practicing most days of the week and helps coach other youngsters at the Middleton Martial Arts Academy, where he trains.
He said: “I had one session and I thought, I like this, I want to keep on going.
“If you’d asked me two years ago what my purpose was in life, I’d tell you I don’t know. I’m just coasting through life.
“But if you ask me now, I have things to do.
“I actually have something on that I have to commit to.”
‘What if I never said yes?’
Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit carried out more than 40,000 interventions similar to Divine’s in the year ending March 2025.
The scheme has been credited with contributing to a 13% year on year reduction in police-recorded knife crime in the area.
Gareth Chambers from Your Trust, the charity which is working with Divine, said: “I think he’s just turned into a real role model now and I don’t really know anybody who’s put that time and effort in like that.
“Greg, his coach, keeps telling me he just get him out of the gym!
“He’s been really inspirational. I know that he’s desperate to pass that knowledge and that message on to groups of kids to try and help them stop going down the wrong path as well.”
Divine now has ambitions to become a world champion and turn professional.
He said: “I always think, what if I never said yes to the session?
“Like, what would I have been doing now?
“Some people I know are in prison now, some people that I used to hang about with are dead.
“So now I think, what if I went that way?”