World Kick Box Champion Trains in Ocean Township

By PAUL BOOTH

He’s a 12-time World Kick Boxing Champion. He has a professional record of 48-0-2 with 48 wins by knockout. And he trains at a gym near you.

Have no fear though. Fred Younossi, who is known as "Ice Man" and trains, among other places, at the Jewish Community Center in Ocean Township, is as calm outside of the ring as he is menacing inside it, nowadays anyway.

For Younossi, an acclaimed K1 style kickboxer who specializes in Muay Thai and has a personal memoir to rival that of Forrest Gump, the comebacks seem too numerous to count. And his victory at a World Kickboxing Association sanctioned bout at New York City’s Webster Hall last month may have been his most personally satisfying comeback to date. The 43 year old Younossi hadn’t fought in nearly six years, and in the interim had undergone five operations to surgically reattach his left foot, which he nearly lost in a motorcycle accident in May of 2006.

"It was the lowest point in my life," he said of his post accident condition. "I was beaten physically and mentally." Like at so many other points in his life though, he would recover.

Younossi has grown accustomed to unexpected setbacks. Born in Afghanistan in 1963 into the Barakzai Dynasty (his real first name if Freidun), the nephew to the ruling king Mohammad Zahir Shah, he knew both privilege and pain.

"When I got up in the morning I just put my arms out like this," he said, standing like a scarecrow, "and servants would come dress me."

At the age of three he was kidnapped and tortured, his assailants quickly apprehended and executed. Younossi’s father, believing the country was no longer safe for a young royal family, sent him to China to study at the Shaolin Monastery, where he stayed for six years. It was there that he learned the lessons and focus that he would use so many years later in the ring.

After a brief return home, where Younossi says he never fit in due to his light skin and dyslexia (the family held education paramount to all other endeavors), he was sent to boarding school in Germany.

"I hated it there," Younossi said, and not being fond of academics, did what many teenagers think to do, he ran away.

Now 16 and no longer an Afghani royal courtesy of the Soviet invasion, Younossi signed a five year contract with the French Foreign Legion, an elite unit of foreign fighters within the French Army, for whom he performed 22 mercenary operations, mostly in African nations. In the east African country of Djibouti, Younossi’s unit was ambushed. While attempting to throw a grenade he was shot in the right forearm, a wound he cauterized himself. "I passed out then," Younossi said. When he woke he was one of only two survivors and a prisoner of war.

"They did anything they wanted to us," Younossi said of his captors, who held him and his unit mate for nine months, torturing them in inconceivable ways; water torture, heat boxes, and buried in feces to name just a few. During one of these torture sessions, Younossi and his fellow captor managed to escape, and though badly wounded made it to safety.

Younossi eventually left the world of mercenary warfare for underground fighting, which allowed him to travel Europe, and eventually brought him to California, and he has been intermittently fighting and training others ever since. He began his professional fighting career in 1982.

"There were many times when I was down and could have given up," Younossi said. "But it’s more fun to fight through it. The curiosity for tomorrow has always kept me going."

Going indeed. Less than a year after reattaching a foot that four doctors recommended he amputate, Younossi’s arm was raised in victory for the 48th time.

Younossi plans to continue to fight and train, and has a website www.fredtheiceman.com.

Copyright 2007 by The Coaster of Asbury Park, NJ. To see the article in its original context, please click here.

Article Copyright 2007 by The Coaster. Reprinted With Permission.

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