George Hickman talks new gym and his coaching career
George Hickman has gone from a college wrestler in the only true town in the state of Pennsylvania to coaching some of the worlds greatest talent in MMA.
Following Hickman’s college wrestling career at Bloomsburg University, he decided he was going to become a fighter so he moved back to his home state of North Carolina and began training.
After having two amateur fights, he was accepted into Tiger Muay Thai in Thailand and began training at the gym along side current UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski.
While spending time at Tiger Muay Thai, Hickman and his younger brother Frank began coaching at the gym and the two have become great coaches in the sport and have worked with some of the best fighters in the world like Volkanovski and fellow UFC champions Israel Adesanya and Petr Yan.
Another fighter who Hickman has spent a lot of time with has been rising star Casey O’Neill, who both George and Frank coached when O’Neill was 19-years-old and was training at Tiger Muay Thai. O’Neill’s fast rise hasn’t shocked Hickman at all has he calls her one of the hardest workers he’s ever coached and believes that one day she’ll be a champion in the UFC.
Recently, Hickman decided to open his own gym in Thailand called Bangtao Muay Thai & MMA. The gym is planning to hold its grand opening soon and in the meantime they are finishing the construction of the gym while he coaches the next wave of big talent. Once the facility is up and running, Hickman plans on having some of the bigger named talent he’s worked with make appearances at the gym to train and teach seminars.
Hickman talked with MyMMANews about earlier today to discuss his new gym, coaching some of the best fighters in the world and his college days at Bloomsburg. You can hear everything he had to say by watching the his full interview in the video above.
