Glenn Coxon has been practising martial arts for 52 years. During his long career, he’s been State and Australian champion many times over and has trained in China, Japan and the US with some of the top names in martial arts. As a practitioner at the top of his game he has trained actors in Hollywood for roles with martial arts action including Kylie Minogue, Raul Julia, Brian Dennehy, John Cusack and Micky Rourke. Most exciting for Glenn was when he got the chance to be Chuck Norris’s training partner. Glenn recounts the first time they met: “I’m standing opposite him and I’ve got this grin from ear-to-ear and he asks me what I’m grinning about.” Glenn’s response was: “I know it sounds really corny but I’ve followed your career all my life and I can’t believe I’m standing opposite you to train. I’m just blown away.”

Glenn is 59 and married with three grown-up children and one grandchild. He’s not the only member of the family bitten by the martial arts bug. His daughter Summerly holds the women’s record for the most amount of boards broken in one minute. It was at that event that a seed was sown. The adjudicator showed Glenn an advance copy of the 2016 Guinness World Record book. He was reading the smashing and breaking section and came across the world record for fastest to break 1,000 boards. The time was 20 minutes and 33 seconds. His response was: “Are you kidding? My record is 359 in one minute. Did he stop for lunch?” That’s when he decided it was time to attempt a new world record.



In 2014 Glenn was preparing for another world record attempt when he went to the doctor with a sore throat. His doctor noticed a cyst on his neck. Glenn was sent for a scan, the result being that he found himself in a room with six professors, associate professors and doctors, all with their arms crossed. “They didn’t need to say anything. I found out it was stage 4 cancer of the neck.” The cancer was very advanced and the doctors told Glenn that they needed to hit it with absolutely everything they had. His only hope was a very aggressive approach. He underwent two rounds of surgery. His tonsils, some teeth, part of the tongue and part of the throat were removed in a bid to find the origin of the cancer. It turned out to be a neck cancer of unknown origin. Meanwhile, it was metastasising. It was heading out of the neck and down to the shoulder towards the aorta, and up into the neck towards the brain.