What Discipline Looks Like
After the Applause

I am going to let you do the explaining — you have a few roles. Go ahead and take it from the top.

Okay, so let's start by clearing something up — I am not the predator. Not in the way you might think. Hi, I am Theeban, most people know me as Theeban G. And everything started with fighting. I began karate when I was five years old. My parents put us into it — and let us be honest, it was also the cheapest sport around at the time.

From there, I became National Karate Champion, and then moved into MMA, which is where I really built my name as a fighter here in Malaysia. And somewhere along the way I started dabbling in movies. That has grown a lot since. And then there is the tech side — I have been building something called Hara Fitness, which is something my brother and I have been dreaming about for a long time.

I love that combination — fighter, actor, founder. Let us go back to the beginning. Karate at five years old. What was that whole experience actually like? You are earning what, three hundred ringgit an allowance as a national athlete — that is clearly not the point. What was the point?

In hindsight — and hindsight is always twenty-twenty — the point is very clear now. But at the time, it did not feel like a grand plan. It was just the natural progression. You finish primary school, you go to secondary school, and then what? I got into the sports school because of karate. And from there I ended up at UPM, Universiti Putra Malaysia.

So I was sixteen, seventeen, representing the country. You have your teammates, you are travelling overseas, you are competing. The three-hundred-ringgit allowance — they do not even call it a salary, they call it an allowance. And at first that is fine. You are young, you are among friends, you are living this life.

Then a few years pass and you are now in your early twenties. And one day during training, I am walking and I ask myself — what next? After the Sea Games in 2013, I left the national team. Not because I could not fight anymore. I had two knee injuries that would need full reconstruction eventually, but I was still fit. I just could not see myself there any longer. So I moved forward.

And you moved toward MMA — which is not exactly moving toward an easier life. People normally run away from pain. You ran straight at more of it. What was going through your mind?

The first time I ended up in an MMA fight, I was already a seven-time National Karate Champion. I stumbled across a selection event happening in a mall — Paradigm Mall. I was too late to enter that year, so I told myself, next year. And next year came, 2014, and I signed up.

Here is the thing though — I had never once stepped foot inside an MMA gym at that point. Zero experience. But I had fight experience from karate, so I thought, I know how to fight, how different can this be?

Selection day arrives. There is pad work and all the standard things — I do fine. Then they put me in the ring to spar. I go in thinking this is my element. Big guy comes in — a boxer called Steven On. He gets close. Gets a choke on. My karate brain has absolutely no idea what to do. I tapped out.

You tapped out — and then what?

I loved it. I absolutely loved the adrenaline. That was it. That was the moment I knew I had to pursue this.

Around that same period you also ended up in the entertainment industry. How did that begin? Because it was not exactly planned, was it?

Complete fluke. My karate master, back when we were still with the national team, told me he wanted to produce a movie and wanted me to act in it. And I want to be honest — at that time I did not think of it as an opportunity. It felt more like something being imposed on me. Because in martial arts, hierarchy is real. Your master says something, you do not say no.

So there I am, twenty-three years old, playing the lead character in a movie about karate. My Tamil was not great. I did not see myself as an actor at all. I came out of that experience thinking — I am never doing this again.

And then PASKAL happened.

Then PASKAL happened. It is now 2018. I am back into fighting. And the producers of PASKAL — the film about Malaysia's Navy Special Forces, very loosely based on a true story — they call me. They saw that earlier movie. They want me to come in for an audition.

I did not show up. Honestly, I thought it was one of those calls that go out to everyone. Just fishing. So I ignored it.

The next day — a Sunday — they call again. They say, you did not come yesterday. I felt terrible. I apologised immediately. They asked if I could come in that same day. I went. I got the part.

And for those who have not seen it — who have not yet seen PASKAL, which I find hard to believe — what was the film about and what was your role?

PASKAL is about Malaysia's naval special operations force. The film centres on five men — the main character played by Hairul Azreen, and then his loyal battalion. I was one of those guys in the battalion. It is a story of loyalty, courage, and what it costs to serve at that level. And because I had a real martial arts background, I also handled some of the stunt coordination for the fight sequences. That is where having a genuine fighting background actually added something.

You have gone from karate to MMA to acting to now building a tech platform in fitness. Each of those transitions required a complete reinvention. And in my experience talking with high performers, the reinvention part is always presented as exciting — but it is rarely experienced that way. What has the inside of reinvention actually felt like for you?

It feels like losing your old identity first. That is the honest answer. Reinvention sounds exciting from the outside. You say to someone, I am transitioning from fighter to actor to founder, and they think — wow, what a journey. But from the inside? Every transition, at least in the early stages, feels like you have lost what made you, you.

When I left karate, I had this very clear identity. I was the fighter. That is who I was in the room, what I was good at, where I belonged. When I moved into MMA, I was starting from the bottom again. When I moved into acting, I was starting from the bottom again. When I am now building Hara Technologies, I am starting from the bottom again.

And in those beginning moments, motivation is unreliable. It comes and goes. You get excited, the excitement fades, the work is still there. The only thing that has consistently carried me through every transition is not motivation — it is discipline. The decision to do the work even when the feeling is gone.

Motivation is unreliable. That is a profound statement. Where did that come from for you — was it fighting that taught you that?

Fighting taught me almost everything I know about discipline. Because in combat sports, there is no shortcut and there is no hiding. You cannot pretend to have done the training. On the day of the fight, the preparation either shows or it does not. And you cannot manufacture that in the last week before the fight. It is built over months, in the training sessions when nobody is there, when you do not feel like it, when you are tired and the gym is empty and the smart decision would be to go home.

But you stay. Not because it feels good — because you made a decision. That habit of deciding — not feeling, deciding — is the most transferable skill I have. It works in fighting. It works in acting, in the auditions where nothing is guaranteed. It works in building a startup where everything is uncertain and progress is invisible for long stretches.

Tell us about Hara Fitness. What is it, what are you building, and why does it matter to you?

Technology has always been a part of my thinking — my brother and I have talked about it since we were kids. There was this thing he used to do where he would wire speakers to his chair, and this whole elaborate setup. That was the early two-thousands. Now you can just get a portable Bluetooth speaker. But that instinct — what if we built something? — was always there.

Hara is a social media platform for fitness. Think Instagram or TikTok, but everything is structured around fitness content. Anyone can create and upload — a strength workout, a calisthenics session, yoga, whatever your category is. And everything is structured so people can follow coaches, join programs, and track their progress inside the same environment.

The core insight is this: most people go to the gym and they are kind of guessing. They track in a notebook, they follow some routine they found online, and when they are not sure what to do that day, they end up doing nothing or doing something ineffective. We want to change that. Give people a system they can follow, programs built by people who actually know what they are doing, and a community around it.

And you are building this from the position of someone who has lived this — you are not a tech person who built a fitness app. You are a fitness person who is building tech.

Exactly. And that difference matters. Because I know what it actually takes to build a body and sustain it. I know what the mistakes are. I know what the shortcuts people try look like — the four-egg diets, the extreme cutting — and I know why they do not work over time. The weight comes off but the person hates the process and never goes back.

What I want to build is a system that makes the lifestyle change feel sustainable. Because that is the whole thing — it is a lifestyle, not a phase. You have to be able to look back on your routine and think, I want to do that again. Not, I am never doing that again.

Let me ask you something more personal. You have this profile — fighter, actor, founder. Public sees strength, discipline, success. But I know from my own experience and from many of the conversations I have had on this podcast that the inside of that image is almost always more complicated. What has been the hardest part of who you are — the part that is not visible?

The hardest part is the uncertainty in the transition. When you leave one identity and you have not fully built the next one yet. That period in the middle is genuinely difficult. Because you are not the fighter anymore, you are not yet the established actor, you are not yet the proven founder. You are in the middle of becoming something you cannot fully articulate yet.

And people around you — not maliciously — will still see you as the old thing. Oh, Theeban the fighter. Or oh, Theeban from PASKAL. And you are trying to be something new, and the social mirror is not reflecting it back yet. That gap between who you are becoming and how the world still sees you is where a lot of the psychological work happens.

That is the part nobody talks about. The reinvention content people make it look very clean. I pivoted, I transitioned, I found my next thing. The truth is messier. There is a period where you do not fully know who you are anymore, and the only thing keeping you going is exactly what I said before — discipline. Not feeling, deciding.

We are coming to the end of the hour, and I have so many more things I want to explore with you — the acting side, the Hara journey, a lot more. So we are going to have to do a part two, and if you are in Hollywood by then, I expect you to fly back to KL for it.

Absolutely. I will be on that flight.

Before we wrap, the question I ask every guest — if you had one wish to make the planet a better place, what would it be?

This might sound simple, but I think it goes deeper than it seems. My wish would be for people to really listen when someone is talking.

There are so many times in conversations — personal conversations, professional conversations, all kinds — where I am speaking and the other person is already thinking about what they are going to say next. Or they have already decided what category to put me in, and they are just waiting for me to confirm it. There is no actual presence in the room. There is just noise.

If we could genuinely listen — not strategically, not politely, but actually — I think so many of the misunderstandings that create conflict, that slow things down, that damage relationships — they dissolve. Be kind. And listen. Those two things together can do an enormous amount of good.

Be kind and listen. What a note to close on. Thank you, Theeban. This was a genuine pleasure.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate the conversation.