Owner and head instructor, Darcy Sullivan, and his partner, Tegan Taylor, were both scheduled to fight on the fifth annual Muscle Up for Muscular Dystrophy fight night card, but things didn't go according to plan.

Early in the afternoon, Sullivan's boxing match was cancelled, a turn of events which he described as "disappointing."

"I felt like something had been stolen from me," he said.

"There was a lot of disappointment, I was feeling really down about it."

But Sullivan soon refocused his energy on coaching Taylor ahead of her kickboxing bout against Zoe Whitehouse.

The pair have been sparring partners in the past, a relationship which Sullivan said it is often difficult to put aside when they meet as competitors inside the ring for the first time.

"It's a hard thing to get used to, when you're sparring all the time then come into an event like this," he said.

"Especially when it's someone that you've sparred before. Having to get beyond that and try and get in there and still hurt them, it's a bit of a tough task."

It was a task that proved insurmountable for Taylor, who fell to a nailbiting split decision loss.

Having been confident of a win, Taylor was disappointed by the result and said that she was surprised by how much Whitehouse had improved in recent months.

"She's improved a lot since last time," Taylor said.

"I spar with her sometimes, and she's fought another girl from our gym, and in that time she's just improved immensely."

The focus for Taylor going forward, Sullivan said, will be ensuring that she is more aggressive from the outset.

"She needed to push it a little bit more," he said.

Despite the adverse result, Taylor and Whitehouse's match was given the Kickboxing Fight of the Night award.

To fight in front of a crowd which was roughly 300-strong was also a new challenge for the Mulwaree Muay Thai fighters.

"Even just coming out in the corner for Tegan, I was nervous just doing that. There's a lot of pressure," Sullivan said.

Nervousness is nothing new for Taylor, who, despite her experience, still struggles to overcome it.

"[Nerves] always do [play into it], I never get over it. This is my 16^th fight," she said.

Saturday's fight was Taylor's second in the last fortnight, and much like her coach, she is aiming for her third in three weeks this weekend, with a muay thai bout scheduled.

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