Kash Gill

Kash "The Flash" Gill is a retired British professional kickboxer who is a former four-times world champion.

Gill became a world champion in kickboxing at the age of 21. He formally retired from fighting in 2002. In 1991, he won the World Kickboxing Association (WKA) light middleweight and super welterweight full contact titles. The following year he won the WKA middleweight championship. He was the International Sport Karate Association freestyle champion of 1993.

Standing tall at 6 ft 3", Gill has an impressive line-up of British, European and World titles. He is the first UK Asian to be a world champion in a contact sport and became four times World Kickboxing Champion, an achievement that has never been beaten.

Born in 1966 and bought up in inner city Handsworth, Gill had a tough upbringing. His mother died when he was only nine, leaving his father working 18-hour days as a factory worker to support him, his sister and four brothers. Gill discovered kickboxing at the age of 14 when he saw a demo in a local park went down for a trial session and fell in love with the sport.

His speed and athletic ability as well as his flashy showmanship soon earned him the nickname ‘The Flash’. By 1984, having earned his black belt, Gill at the age of 18, had entered and won his first competition in a three-round contest in full-contact karate.

The list of world kickboxing titles that Gill picked up and added to his collection over the next few years was impressive and his rise to fame gathered impetus in 1986 when he won a gold medal at the World PKA Amateur Full Contact Championships. He collected his first Professional world title, the WKA Junior Middleweight in 1991 when he also won the World full contact Karate championships. In the two consecutive years following, he went on to win the WKA World Middleweight kickboxing title and the ISKA World Light Middleweight title.

In December 2011, Kash Gill fought former world kickboxing champion Don "The Dragon" Wilson in a mixed martial arts cage match in Kazakhstan. The bout was originally billed as an exhibition, but Wilson, 57, was awarded the decision at the end of the match.