On August 1st, 2003 MuayThai Kickboxing Champion Alex " F-14 " Gong, of San Francisco, California, USA was shot to death. ( Story Below ) Although he never held an IKF Title, we here at the IKF had been friends with Alex a long time. To us, titles and sanctioning body letters don't make friends, individuals do. For this reason, Alex will always be an IKF Champion in our hearts as wll as a leader and friend in the sport. He will always be remembered as a Champion to all of us in MuayThai and Kickboxing. Rest in Peace Alex. You Are Gods Champion Forever... October 14, 1970 - August 1, 2003 Fight Record: 27-2, 13 KO's 5'10", 155, 32 years old.



SATURDAY, August 2nd, 2003, AT 12:15 PM, PT



The Sad as Well as Shocking Truth Is...

Alex Took The Bullet For All Of Us

Steve Fossum Earlier today I sent an e-mail out to associates in Kickboxing as well as Martial Arts about the loss of Alex Gong (See story below) and the senseless shock of his death. Several of those who received it called me and said it made them think about the tragedy in a different way and requested I post it on the news page for all to read. So I made a few changes and here are the thoughts... What hits home is the fact that Alex did what any of us would have done, chase after a guy for harming our property. And I stress again, ANY of us would have, under the same circumstances, done exactly what he did... That could be any of us laying under that yellow blanket, ANY of us! However it's not. It is someone else. But not a stranger to us, not some random shooting, not a gang related killing. This was someone we all knew, which brings the circumstances of this story close to our hearts and forces us to reconsider our future actions more than we did a few days ago. It makes you think deeply about letting things such as this go, something none of us would have thought to do before... A Terrible but convincing way to learn a valued lesson for all of us, but a different lesson than most would think. You see, to many of us, Alex did not do anything "Wrong", and I will never agree with those who claim this to be an act of "Road Rage". This was very different. I mean where is the line drawn as to "Protecting what is ours" and "Acting upon something that will result in our death?" What a hard line to determine. This was just a reaction of a man. As a martial artist we are taught to "React" upon an "Action". We are also taught to determine in a split second in our minds the consequences of our reaction and conclude before we react that we will be justified as well as content with the outcome. Those of us who have trained in Martial Arts learned this in our training and I am sure many, if not all of us continue this same thought process in our daily lives in other areas, not just fighting. However, I honestly cannot believe that any of us, especially in our field of work and more so, our skill of mental and physical self, would have come to the conclusion in our minds that we would, or could, be shot to death by this guy. Instead, we all would have been thinking instead, how well prepared we felt we were as we reacted to the situation. Alex, as all of us would have, just reacted upon his conclusion (Mentally) of his self judgement of the circumstance. He felt he needed to stop this guy rather than let him get away. If someone broke into our home, it would have been no different. We would have tried to stop the guy from getting away. It's hard to accept what has happened here to Alex but an even bigger picture has been drawn here for all in the Martial Arts. Does this tragedy now give us all the message that when faced with such a situation, to now stop and do nothing? Sure, we are taught that if we have to use our hands and feet, we didn't use our head. HOWEVER, from what we have been told, Alex wasn't "Attacking" the guy. Sources have told us that he was trying to stop him from getting away. Some have said he was shot through the guys window while another story says he was reaching in the window for the guys keys. Time will tell soon which is correct. ALL of us know Alex was taught to control a situation as others have who have Martial Arts training and this appears to be what he was doing. Sure, "HINDSIGHT" is 20/20. Anyone can say he should have just got the guys license plate. But those saying this, I would bet money on, that in the heat of the moment, they would have done exactly what Alex did. Chased the guy to try and control the situation, to stop him now so the police would not be looking for him as they still are today. One witness had a camera, yet he was in such shock, he couldn't snap a picture. Is this a mistake of his or a reaction? Didn't he too react upon the situation? Hindsight says "Why didn't the guy snap a quick photo of the guys car?" But we were not there, it didn't happen to us, and these things all happen so fast, as did Alex's reaction to it all. A picture would have been helpful now, but in the moment, he choose to try and save Alex's life instead. Something all of us would have chosen to do. In the heat of the moment, things change inside us. The moment has a way of changing our mind on the street far more than a prepared ring fight where we expect what could happen and know the limits of what will not, such as a gun in our face. The reality of all this is Alex made a logical as well as justified decision that under normal circumstances, (If there is such a thing) would have been the rational and expected thing to do. The outcome here has left us all forever questioning our future decisions... This tragedy has made us all stop to think about the world around us. Strange how tragedy has a way to bring us all together in our line of work and in our sport. Let us all never forget this.

Let us never forget Alex.

For all of us are related to each other as martial artists.

Rest In Peace Alex, As someone has already said... "You are Gods Champion Now!"

sf@ikfkickboxing.com For More Stories on This Tragedy Click:

www.sfgate.com

www.sfgate.com/chronicle



Slain Kickboxer

Led An Amazing Life

From 'orphan' in India to World Champion

C.W. Nevius, Chronicle Staff Writer

Alex Gong was always a story just waiting to be told, but no one expected that story would end with him dead on the street at 32.

Starting at age 9, he spent almost three years in an orphanage in India. He was an Asian kid who grew up in New Hampshire, a high school dropout who went back to school and earned a business degree from San Francisco State.

At 23, on a whim, he flew to Chandler, Ariz., to devote himself to a form of Thai kickboxing called Muay Thai. Five years later, at 6 feet and 160 chiseled pounds, he was the world middleweight Muay Thai champion and appeared on ESPN, HBO and the television show "Walker, Texas Ranger" with Chuck Norris. He was also a notorious prankster. "When you walked into this gym," said one regular yesterday, "you were either going to get sprayed with a lot of water or get your shorts pulled down." And he was a devoted role model and surrogate parent to CJ, the son of his girlfriend, Mai Tran.

It was easy for everyone who knew him to believe all of those things about Alex Gong. What they can't believe is that he was slain Friday. "When Mai (his girlfriend) called me, she said there had been an accident," Gong's mother, Nita Tomaszewski, said Monday, eyes welling up once again. "I thought he might be hurt. And I said I could deal with that. Because I knew he was indestructible."

They keep trying to explain it to CJ in a way that makes sense when you are 9 years old and have modeled everything -- your haircut, your walk, your gym shorts -- on your buddy Alex.

"CJ keeps asking why," said Tran, who had been Gong's girlfriend for five years. "He wants to know how did he shoot him? And why did he have to shoot him there (pointing to her heart)? He says, if he shot him here (pointing to her stomach) he could have been revived. I just never, ever figured he wouldn't be part of our life." EASYGOING FRIDAY

Things were slow and lazy Friday afternoon at the clean, well-lighted gym just off Fifth Street. Instructor and fighter Linda Loyce had just finished her work on the heavy bag and "was putting off doing my pull-ups. I was talking to one of the trainers' wives, getting ready to help her get the babies out of her car." That was when a Jeep Cherokee came up Clementina Street, a narrow little alley just north of the Fifth Street entrance to the Bay Bridge, stopped and then backed right into Gong's Jeep with a resounding crash. Loyce remembers looking the driver dead in the eyes and getting an uneasy feeling. "He just pulled away really slowly," she said, "no hurry at all." Wearing boxing gloves and trunks, Gong chased the Jeep down the street. Loyce is sure he was just trying to get some information, not start a fight. When Gong caught up with the car at a red light, he reached for the driver, who pushed him away, then fired a shot into Gong. He died almost immediately. TRUTH, JUSTICE THING

"Alex always had that 'Truth, Justice and the American Way' thing," his mother said. "I remember he called me once and said he came out of his apartment in the Richmond District, and this guy was beating a woman up. He said, 'Mom, people were just standing there not doing anything.' Alex did a technique and took his feet out from under him. The guy said, 'You hurt me.' Alex said, 'What do you think you were doing to her?'" Everyone had an image of Alex Gong yesterday, from the publicity shot on the gym wall, the attack fighter nicknamed "F-14," to the old softie who just bought CJ a new bike.

"When he'd see CJ," said Tran, "he'd drop to one knee, and his face would just light up. He wasn't his biological father, but he always said, 'That's my son.' "

"When I got married again five years ago,"' said Tomaszewski, who lives in New Hampshire, "Alex gave me away at the wedding. He said to my husband (Lee Hammond), 'You know it is a family tradition that you have to fight me for my mother.' " Hammond's response: "I said 'Really? Do I have to last a long time? Can you make it quick so it won't hurt so much?' " Loyce remembers Gong's playfulness. "He was like the dorky brother I never had," Loyce said. "There was a lot of little kid humor, like burping. Somewhere, I know Alex is looking down, happy that I told everyone he was burping at workouts." A TOUGH CHILDHOOD

It was remarkable that Gong held on to his sense of playfulness, considering the trauma he went through when he was about CJ's age. Tomaszewski and her then-husband, James Gong, went through an acrimonious divorce when Alex was 8 years old. In a dispute over the child's custody, Tomaszewski said, her ex-husband took the boy overseas to India and Tibet. In India, Alex was enrolled in Children's Village, a boarding school in Dharamsala. Three years later, Alex turned up, alone, at the U.S. Embassy at Kathmandu, Nepal. He couldn't be traced to his mother because she'd gone back to using her maiden name, and Alex couldn't remember "Tomaszewski."

"I guess (his father) got tired of being a single parent," said Tomaszewski, "because he dropped him off at an orphanage. For 2 1/2 years, he really had no parents."

"I know he said it was a very difficult time for him," Loyce said. "I know he said he had to fight a lot as a kid. He always said it made him stronger, but I know it was very hard."

And for his mother, who didn't know where in the world her only son had gone. "I spent all my resources looking for him," she said. And then, like a miracle, he suddenly appeared again. She said Monday that she was reliving that sense of loss again. She didn't want to complain, she said. She understood budget cutbacks had hit hard everywhere, but she was waiting to get her son out of the morgue. "I'm from New Hampshire," she said. "I thought, this is a big city. Maybe this happens all the time. But this is my baby." As it happened, Tran and Gong's mother came back to San Francisco together.

Tran was in Miami when Gong was killed and asked that CJ's biological father keep the boy away from the news reports so that she could tell him herself. CJ kept turning it over in his mind, mostly silently, until yesterday when they were at the mortuary, planning the service. Someone asked the family what Gong would like to have them say. CJ's hand went up. "I know," he said quietly. "The family that kicks together -- sticks together."

Alex Gong said that all the time, and the boy remembered.

