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:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)