A dad walked away from a fight with a broken eye socket, broken cheekbone and a hairline fracture in his jaw.
Dean Robinson, 41, won the first British Lethwei title in 2019 when he landed one blow after another on the head of his cornered rival.
Knocking out your rival is one of the only ways to win one of these brutal bare-knuckle boxing fights that originated in Myanmar over 1,000 years ago.
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Dad-of-one Dean told the ECHO: "The last Lethwei fight I went to, everyone thought I'd been in a car crash."
He added: "The specialist who was going to reconstruct my face, he said, ''Look, I'll reconstruct your face, but there's no point in reconstructing it if you're going to carry on fighting'."
"I was buzzing. I was thinking after that Lethwei fight, 'No, I'm retired now, I'm finished, I'm definitely finished', and went, 'Okay, I'll build it up for you'.
"And now here I am going back in for a title."
Dean retired himself six times as he got married, had a baby and grew older.
But the bug returns every time, drawing Dean back to the adrenaline kick of Lethwei, one of the only combat sports that allows headbutts.
After three decades of martial arts, including the Lethwai-related Muay Thai, he remembers walking into a gym at an interclub event where he sparred in front of spectators for the first time at 15 years of age.
Dean told the ECHO: "They never leave you, the butterflies.
"Even now, I'm fighting for this world title and it's exactly the same butterflies.
"They're always there, but it's that inside of you that helps you.
"You know when you get that nervous energy? You know that adrenaline pump you get when you're just about to get in the ring?"
Dean was a quiet kid when he arrived back in Merseyside after his family spent time in Harlow, Essex for his dad's work.
He'd get some stick as a kid with a Cockney accent living in Fazakerley and attending Kirkby's All Saints Catholic High School when it was still St Gregory's.
But Dean said he fast acquired the nickname, 'The Cockney Kickboxer', as an 11-year-old after knocking down a would-be bully with moves he'd picked up from martial arts classes.
The on-screen wheel kicks of actor Jean-Claude Van Damme caught Dean's eye and he started practicing his moves at home before he every visited a gym.
Dean told the ECHO: "I could just mimic Van Damme basically, and that's when I got started trying to do the Thai boxing.
"After a few sessions in, I just didn't look back then."
Back in the 1990s, he often wore mismatching shin pads that didn't fit and boxing gloves borrowed from the gym, a far-cry from the equipment available to many kids today, or even the sometimes bloody hand wraps he wears for Lethwei.
Training and fighting saved Dean from the pull of gangs as a kid hanging with friends on street corners while his dad was off drinking and his mum managed the household alone.
Dean said: "It kept me from being that type of person, and I teach my own students - I do the classes, I do the one-to-one just to try and get the kids to turn to fighting rather than being street punks.
"It's a good feeling to know that you're doing that for a community and yourself.
"And I know through past experience what it does for them discipline-wise, education-wise, physical-wise."
He added: "You get to meet new friends and you get to intermingle, and the most important thing of all for kids is confidence.
"When you go to a gym or a class and you do stuff that other kids aren't doing, that gives you the confidence to know that you can take care of yourself, you're fit, you're strong.
"It just boosts everything."
Now Dean is getting to a point where his age really is catching up with him after years of broken toes and ribs.
He's starting to feel it in his back when he's training for the fights.
Dean hopes to win one last title when he comes up against Gaz Corran in Wolverhampton on Saturday, February 26, before bowing out for good.
He said: "I'm sort of at the end of my career now because I'm 41.
"Doing that type of fighting, it's a young man's sport. I've just kept on a little bit.
"But the fire's still going in my belly."
