Early Life
Collins was born in 1949 in Mountain Ash, Wales, around 20 miles from Cardiff. His father died when he was eight years old. As a schoolboy, Collins played rugby and trained in athletics. He began training in Kyokushin karate at the age of 15, at the Cardiff School of Budo. It was around this time that he first read about Masutatsu Oyama and decided that he would eventually travel to Japan to train.
In 1967, Collins decided to join the London Metropolitan Police—but only three weeks after he had set off on this endeavour, his mother died. He worked in London for two years before joining the merchant navy, with the aim of working his way to Japan. Collins was 21 when he eventually left for Japan.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)