Kickboxing Champ Striving For World's Top Fitness Franchise

During a Sunday church service, he and other children were standing at the front of the Methodist church to hear a lesson from the teacher.

They were asked, "Do you know what a prophet is?" Hudson raised his hand and answered, "It's the money you've got left over after you pay your bills, right?" Laughter erupted in the congregation, but Hudson said his parents knew then that their youngest son was going to be "a money and a business guy." The 33-year-old Duncan native is the founder and CEO of 9Round, one of the top 500 kickboxing and fitness center franchises in the world, according to Entrepreneur magazine.

Founded in Greenville in 2007, 9Round now has nearly 60 centers in 23 states. Hudson's goal is to have 100 centers around the world by 2014 and more than 1,000 by the end of 2017.

It's one of the goals listed in the journal he keeps on the nightstand by his bed. Many of those goals have been checked off as achieved.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who knows him who doubts that Hudson will achieve this goal. He is, after all, the current IKF Light Middleweight Kickboxing Champion of the World.

Hudson's wife and business partner, Heather, also calls him a visionary.

"He's always about 10 steps and years away in his mind," she said. "He's naturally always ahead of the game, which is why I really admire his business sense." Hudson gets inspiration from reading business books and biographies detailing the successes of folks like Donald Trump, Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas and countless others.

9Round, which is headquartered on East Butler Road, is a culmination of Hudson's life experiences, he said, from martial arts, to fighting and winning the world title, to working with his dad, and running three karate schools with his older brother, Kevin.

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