BIO

Roberto Flamingo was born in 1967 in Paramaribo, Surinam. When he was 13 years old he moved to the Netherlands to start a new life in Amsterdam. At a young age he developed a love for sports in general and played soccer on a pretty high level, some of his former teammates made it to Ajax, which is one of the best clubs in Europe that time. When he was 17 years old he also got interested in thaiboxing and started to train with the legendary coach and fighter Lucien Carbin at his gym Sityotong. He managed to combine both sports but at the age of 34 he stopped playing soccer and focused himself on thaiboxing only. Roberto has compete himself in 30 professional fights and 5 M.M.A. fights, he last fight was in May 2006 at the age of 39. 

Lucien Carbin managed to create several champions and because Roberto was one of the pionieers in the gym he helped Carbin train future champions like; Gilbert Yvel, Valentijn Overeem, Alistair Overeem and Tyrone Spong. He became the assistant of Lucien and learned first-hand how to train fighters at the highest level.

In 2007 Alistair Overeem and Lucien parted ways and he left the gym. Roberto always kept a good training relationship with Alistair and he asked him to still train him as a personal striking coach. Together they had great success as Alistair became the Strikeforce Heavyweight Champion in 2007, K-1 Heavyweight Champion in 2010 and Dream Heavyweight Champion in the same year.