Boxing Ring to OR: MMA Promoter’s Heart Story Pulse Ablation.
They don’t teach you how to take a knee when your own ticker starts throwing haymakers. As a famous MMA and kickboxing promoter, I’ve lived in rings, signed fighters, schmoozed billionaires, and survived more drama than a three-round main event. I’ve been on Interpol lists and had my shop raided by police with too many badges and too little sense. I dodged hit lists and kissed disaster more times than I can count. Still — nothing in fight promotion school prepared me for this one: the heaviest fight of my life, From Boxing Ring to OR — MMA Promoter’s Heart Story — Pulse Ablation.
Lifestyle? Clean. No booze, no drugs, resting pulse like a Greek statue (42–55). I worked like a dog, partied like a retired philosopher, and earned exotic scars in boardrooms, gyms, and airport lounges. I wrote books (Bloodsport Syndicate: The Mafia MMA Chronicles, on Amazon) and bedazzled promoters. Of course I dated too many gorgeous disasters to list. Then life did what life does, it swapped crowd noise for beep‑beep‑beep and told me the main event had changed venues.
COVID shuffled me from Pattaya to the Isan. I started pig farms — because why not — and closed the Pirate Bay café and gym. While the world paused, my heart quietly filed grievances. I’d had an irregular beat and a dodgy left artery for years, but it was background noise — like a bad hype-man — until it wasn’t.
MMA Promoter: From the Boxing Ring Straight to the OR
Domestic chaos made the body listen; the road from the boxing ring to the OR began when the mother of my kids fell into a gambling hole so deep it started swallowing our lives. School money, peace of mind — plucked. Loan sharks with bad manners hung around my house. Desperate photos from nieces arrived on my phone. I called my lawyer, put the fight on paper, and won full custody. Six months later, the kids were mine again. That should have been the knockout. Instead, my heart clocked a TKO.
Hospitals became my second home: wires, heart monitors, a parade of meds. Sleep apnea turned my nights into a series of stops and starts — more dramatic than any corner break. My Apple Watch went from a promoter tool to a panic button, announcing heart rates that looked like they’d been training for the 150–210 range. I learned to cry behind sunglasses while driving three kids around on adrenaline and guilt. Parenting while your heart’s staging a mutiny will humble any macho promoter.
Promoter in the ER: Heart Rates, Monitors, Madness
Cue the medical plot twist: a new heart specialist at Bangkok Hospital told me about a bulletproof-sounding solution — Pulse Ablation. Originating in Boston University research and available in Holland, Singapore, and Thailand, “pulse ablation” sounded like sci‑fi and a medical mic‑drop to this MMA promoter who’d spent his life in the boxing ring and now faced the OR. I said yes.
Cost? About €30,000 — because apparently, surviving is not covered by charm or a celebrity resume. Insurance? Forget it. Once you’re labeled “heart case” in Thailand, insurers treat you like a spicy dish nobody wants to touch.
The operation was billed as 45–90 minutes. Mine took three hours — a bonus round for the saga because surprise: I also had a leaking valve and both upper and lower AFib. The med team fought like a championship corner. The ablation? They used the pulse ablation technique to zap the bad circuits and reset my rhythm. I woke up sore-throated (apparently the anesthesia got chatty), then endured two weeks of what felt like the flu from hell, followed by glorious food poisoning and digestive rebellion caused by the meds. Romantic, right?
Recovery was a lesson in humility and gratitude. I shuffled like an old fighter between hospital beds and playgrounds, watching my little warriors — Conan, Kato, Ken — hold my hand through the rounds. My friend Frederico’s girlfriend, a Hollywood heart specialist, told me to ditch half the pills. Two weeks later, I walked like a man who’d been given his legs back. Three weeks and I felt almost human. That’s the weird math of pulse ablation: small entry, huge exit.
Knocked Down, Not Out: The Recovery Round
Life after pulse ablation wasn’t an instant miracle. It was steady reclamation. Sleep apnea still lurked, but a tiny anti‑snoring device I found on social media worked like a charm. I could sleep on my back again without sounding like a dying chainsaw. I felt alive in a way only the truly terrified understand: grateful, fierce, and unwilling to waste a single sunrise. Like an MMA promoter/boxer who’s taken two TKOs, I scrambled to my feet and kept fighting.
And the lessons? Health is the one luxury you can’t buy back with contracts or charisma. No matter how many fighters you manage, how many promotions you front, or how many enemies you outrun, if your heart quits, the promoter’s chair is empty. Pulse ablation gave me my rhythm back — literal and metaphorical. From Ring to OR: MMA Promoter’s Heart Story — Pulse Ablation. This is proof that sometimes the toughest opponent is the one inside your chest. The best corner is the one that believes you can win.
Guard Your Greatest Asset: Health First
A final note to every fighter, promoter, parent, and idiot who thinks they’re invincible! Keep your appointments, take your sleep apnea seriously, and don’t ignore the little skips. Tech and medicine keep inventing miracles — pulse ablation being one of them — but you’ve still got to show up and punch life back.
So I celebrated: the three boys, the nanny, my niece, and I worshiped Krabi’s sun and ate the ocean for breakfast. I’m fixed, I’m thankful, and I’m stupid enough to keep promoting fights — because some habits are beautiful.
Bas Boon’s last word on this chapter:
“You can sell out stadiums and still be broke of one thing — health. Guard it like it’s your main event.”
Hospital Staff Knows Us By Name Now | Boon Family Reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n1U8ZoCbS0&t=136s
(C) Bas Boon www.basboon.com