Every afternoon, for a brief moment, a young Jonathan Haggerty would stand outside the school gates, hoping and praying his dad’s van wouldn't come careering round the corner to pick him up.
As his mates raced off into the distance, football in hand and teenage mischief on their mind, Haggerty would sit and cry, pleading with his dad not to make him get in the ring to fight.
Despite the swelling and the scars that would come to characterise a career in the hurt locker, his dad’s commitment to keeping him off the streets would ultimately save Haggerty from a path of self-destruction.
“I'm grateful the gym came along. Otherwise, I'm not sure where I would be,” Haggerty, now 29, reflects as we sit in the basement of his dad’s gym on the Old Kent Road.
Haggerty Sr. was an MMA and Thai boxing fighter but retired from his own professional career to help his son forge a life that, while constricted by the four corners of the ring, was unconstrained by possibility.
The first step on that journey was to open the Team-Underground MMA gym to give Haggerty a place to go after school, away from the temptations of life on the Aylesbury Estate.
“It was just a rough estate, if I'm honest. It was fun. It was scary. Everything all in one,” Haggerty candidly admits. It is obvious he remains grateful to his dad for seeing the bigger picture.
Battle scars: Jonathan Haggerty has come through a lot to reach the upper echelons of Muay Thai
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“He only wanted the best for me. Even though today he goes to me, ‘I'm still waiting for you to pay me back for taking me training’.”
In the gym, Haggerty developed discipline and focus but, above all else, a burning desire to prove himself in an environment where “the toughest of toughest people” sacrifice heart and soul in search of an escape.
“We brought a lot of them off the estate to here (the gym), gave them somewhere to be. Some of them have grown up to be champions. World champions, European champions, and it's given them that sort of purpose.
“But at the same time, we've lost a few of them. We've lost the most talented ones to prison, to the street. It's hard, really, because there's not a lot of money in Thai boxing.”
Money was never the motivation for Haggerty. Simply put, he just “wanted to give it some”, and as a novice with only a handful of fights to his name, he was unafraid to face up against fighters from Thailand with as many as 300 bouts under their belt.
“I think for me, what it was is just to get in there and fight the best. That is all I ever wanted to do. All I wanted to do was fight the best.”
Disqualified from his first kickboxing fight in Crystal Palace for hitting too hard, he took up Muay Thai, where his innate aggression and intensity gave him an unpredictable edge.
That fearlessness even extended to lying about his age in order to get a professional fight as a 17-year-old, beating Anthony Edwards by a fourth-round technical knockout (TKO) on his professional Muay Thai debut.
“Jumping in there with someone with 300 fights, I think that gave me the most experience rather than just going in there and knocking everybody out.”
Nothing comes easy in Muay Thai. This is not a sport many make a living from, and it was not until Haggerty was signed to a professional contract by ONE Championship that he was able to throw off the financial shackles and embrace his love for fighting.
“Once I got signed by them, it took the weight off my shoulders. I was able to commit myself to what I love, and fight all over the world, and do what I love. That is the main thing.”
Haggerty, by his own admission, has always been a “workhorse”, but it is clear that with age and experience his personality is starting to mellow even if his work rate shows no signs of slowing.
‘The General’ is a self-described “workhorse”
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Six major world and international titles also help. But from the pulsing aggression of drill artists 67 and Loski, Haggerty now turns to country anthems to get him in the rhythm for training. It is less ‘Money and Beef’ and more ‘Ring of Fire’ these days.
“Now I've got older, I'm more wise,” Haggerty jokes.
“Do you know what I'm liking now? Akon. I'm taking it back to smack that all on the floor.”
Haggerty is laid-back and personable - we chat about everything from playing football with good mate and former Arsenal winger Reiss Nelson - “we had to be separated because it wouldn't be fair if we were both on the same team” - to the “weird” origins of his nickname ‘The General’.
“On Facebook, you could put your name, a middle name, a second name, or you could do a nickname. I just put the General for some reason.
“Then I put it on my Facebook, and when I got announced in the ring once, the guy must have been on my Facebook and seen the General.
“So, when I fought, and he announced me as the General, I went, where did he get that from? He told me after the fight, ‘I saw it on your Facebook. You called yourself the General.’
“Then I started knocking everyone out, and I thought, 'do you know what? This could stick.’”
Currently the reigning ONE Bantamweight Kickboxing World Champion, Haggerty is comfortable and confident ahead of his upcoming title defence against Hiroki Akimoto.
He is not complacent, however, and even offers to take me to Greenwich Park to endure one of his gruelling weekly hill sprints. I suggest the Bikram yoga sessions he attends might be more my pace.
“I've been doing it (hill sprints) for 15 years, and it doesn't get easier. But it's brilliant. When you get to the top of the hill, you are fatigued, and you have got to get your breath back. It's like getting off the stool in the fight. You have got to go again.”
Haggerty, undefeated since September 2024, is at the top of the hill right now, but he is certainly not looking back down, nor trying to catch his breath.
A transition to MMA and a world title fight figure firmly in his thinking, though the focus for now is domination across the divisions in Muay Thai and leaving a legacy in a sport where he has gone from outsider to undisputed in a little over a decade.
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