He is tall because he is short

June 16, Kunming, the ring.

He is 1.55 meters tall and weighs less than 49 kilograms. Standing in the ring, his fierce eyes always send out a kind of domineering. That kind of swagger scares opponents. A few hours later, when he was held aloft in a silver sash, he seemed to have lived a different life.

That year, he was 17. That was also the year he dropped out of high school. Little did he dream that he would one day become the first Chinese boxer to challenge for the world professional title.

More than 100 miles from home, in a black mine, the 17-year-old began his post-school life. I would work 10 hours a day and earn 10 yuan. Bending his body in the black mine to push the car, the car also has a lamp, with his pace swinging. In this place, danger came at any time, and his fate swayed like a lamp, but he did not know how to avoid it, let alone think about his future until his cousin returned to his hometown from Kunming in 2000.

In this Miao village on the border of China and Vietnam, my cousin, who had learned fighting and boxing, set up the first boxing team in the stockade and directed them to find available wood and build a ring on the spot. Every day after work, he would follow his cousin here to learn boxing. In addition to pulling coal, he also planted bananas with his cousin, also did other work, but not long, also can not earn money, because of his short stature.

The body is given by his parents, but his fate is his own. He wants to make his life better, for his family and himself. In the days when he learned boxing, he felt his love for the sport, and he could not forget the first punch he threw when he quietly saved a dream in the eyes of the public unreachable.

The ring at the edge of the village became the place where he dreamed to start. The life of practicing boxing while working as a laborer was like running water. Without training equipment, he made it by himself. The hard conditions did not affect his enthusiasm for martial arts, but the village gossip made him embarrassed for a while. "You ARE NOT EVERYDAY FIGHT AGAIN, PRACTICE THIS ALSO NOT TOP MEAL TO EAT, HAVE WHAT MEANING?" The talk of the elders in the stockade made him hesitate.

In 2006, while wandering around the Xinhua bookstore in Magan County, he came across a magazine called Boxing and Fighting. An article about Xu Congliang, a fighter from Chuxiong in Yunnan Province, was a treasure to him. He felt that his situation was similar to Xu Congliang's, and he seemed to see hope through Xu Congliang's experience. If he can, so can I.

When he was sweating in a wooden ring, his family didn't interfere much with his idleness. The only indulgence his poor, hard-working parents gave to their child later made his seemingly impossible dream come true. With more than 1,800 yuan raised by his cousin and parents, and a passion for boxing, he moved to Kunming and began his boxing career.

That day, when the coach Liu Gang saw a skinny young man come in as if a gust of wind can blow away his appearance, can not help but curl his mouth. But soon the skinny young man changed Liu Gang's opinion: "He has inexhaustible strength. He should benefit from mining and drudgery. He jumped rope for an hour without resting."

For the first few years of his life, he suffered in silence because of his different approach to the system, but the joy of boxing gave him hope for the future. Even when he walked, he made a fist gesture.

The bitter side knows sweet, from the initial ignorant to the boxing ring in the future. A wooden battle by a river in a mountain village eventually led to this stubborn young man of the Miao ethnic group. An untrained young man who made his debut at the age of 23 has become a star in the world boxing circles in a few years. His international ranking has risen rapidly, and he is thus called "China's Little Tyson".

His name is Xiong Chaozhong, a poor boy from the world boxing champion.

He smiled as he stood tall in the ring of the world. Small as he was, he was always tall in the eyes of boxing fans. His life story is such an inspirational one that he has even attracted the attention of film companies, who are planning to make films based on him.

Now he has realized his dream, once out of reach is in the bag. In Shanzhai, he became the hero of the whole village. Because of the competition, the parents were taken to the provincial capital for the first time. The mother is pure Hmong and doesn't even speak Chinese. Standing at the door of the star-rated hotel, she showed little interest in boxing. Instead, she looked at the cars on the street ahead with interest. "A lot of cars," she said, as the Miao people say.

The June 16 fight earns him a chance to challenge for the WBC WORLD title in Las Vegas later this year. Despite becoming the highest-ranked Chinese professional boxer in the world, he still lives in a rental house, wears a ten-yuan T-shirt, and walks the streets looking like a lot of diminutive workers, and no one cares if he has just passed the world champion.