Mea Motu: World champion boxer receives Māori Sports Award
Mother-of-five Mea Motu became the IBO World Super Bantamweight champion earlier this year, a title she retained by defeating Chandni Mehra from India in Whangārei this month – just days after being recognised in the ACC-supported Māori Sports Awards.
Māori Sports Awards
For almost two decades, ACC has partnered with Te Tohu Trust to support the Annual Māori Sports Awards event and were proud to be supporting this year’s event that was held in Mount Maunganui on Saturday the 25th of November.
ACC presented two awards that night: Individual Māori World Champions and Māori World Champion Team.
One of the recipients of the Individual Māori World Champion award Mea Motu, 33, shared a little a bit of her journey to becoming a world champion.
Mea’s road to glory
Mea’s interest in boxing started at just 13 years old while growing up in Pukepoto Te Tai Tokerau and turned into a very impressive boxing career with 18-0 with 6K0s.
Speaking with ACC, Mea credits boxing with helping her to improve and manage her oranga tinana (physical well-being) and oranga hinengaro (mental well-being)
Boxing has enabled Mea to be disciplined over her oranga tinana from what she eats to all the training she needs to maintain her fitness and overall hauora.
But more impressive, Mea has used boxing to overcome Chronic Asthma with self-taught impressive breathing techniques to help her manage her asthma especially to prevent an asthma attack coming on whilst during a fight.
During fights, Mea explains if she feels like her asthma is starting to play up that she will step away from her opponent, take a pause to regain control over her breathing by summoning positive thoughts of her five beautiful tamariki. This practice helps the world champion refocus and reset, then go again.
Boxing has been a healthy outlet for Mea by balancing and harnessing her energy. She talks about the mentality in boxing and how it allows her to block out any negativity and focus on the positive!
Positive impact on mental health
If her boxing achievements weren’t impressive enough, Mea is a strong advocate for mental health as an ambassador for I Am Hope, promoting inspirational messages of courage and hope to tamariki and rangatahi.
Mea’s courage to speak up about how she has risen to overcome the difficulties and dark parts of her life to encourage others is truly remarkable.
ACC would like to thank Mea and her management team for sharing a small part of her very inspirational journey.
Watch the Māori Sports Awards online
You can watch Te Tohu Tākaro o Aotearoa - Māori Sports Awards 2023 on the Māori Television website:
Te Tohu Tākaro o Aotearoa - Māori Sports Awards 2023 - MĀORI+ | Whakaata Māori (Māori Television) (maoriplus.co.nz)
