The World Martial Arts Masterships are underway in the South Korean city of Chungju, bringing together thousands of athletes from more than 100 nations and regions to compete in 20 different combat sports. The list includes the ancient Chinese discipline of Wushu for the first time, which is what attracted British actor and stuntman Steve Coleman, and he talked about his experiences with CGTN.

My name is Steve Coleman, I am 38 years old and I'm from Kettering, Northamptonshire. I've been doing Wushu for 30 years and actually my older brother Andrew, he's half Chinese, he started doing Kung Fu when he was living in Hong Kong and I grew up watching him do martial arts, which got me into martial arts and then I found myself in Wushu, which is quite rare in England because Wushu is quite a small martial art over there. But when I got into it, I just couldn't get off it. I couldn't do anything else, I was training Wushu all the time, all throughout my teenage years and I eventually moved to London and started training in London. And I've travelled around Asia as well, training in Malaysia a lot and China.

STEVE COLEMAN BRITISH WUSHU COMPETITOR "Really, I probably should have retired ten years ago, the usual retirement age for Wushu is around the mid to late twenties. But I've been fortunate enough to keep going, to keep training, to keep competing."

I won't lie it is a struggle now. The gap between amateur and professional athletes is huge, the top eight or nine athletes today are all scoring in the mid to high nines. They're all professional athletes and it's very difficult because I am only an amateur athlete, to keep up pace with them, especially with the age gap now. But I still feel I can bring a good performance to the competition and I think that's the most important thing.

STEVE COLEMAN BRITISH WUSHU COMPETITOR "If we had an Olympic sized event for martial arts, I think the exposure that we would get internationally, not just for Wushu, but all the other martial arts you don't see in the Olympics, would massively popularize these sports and martial arts."

I think it would do a great thing for the world in general in terms of health, fitness, self-discipline, all the extra things that come with learning a martial art regardless of the discipline. This event really is one of a kind. As far as I'm aware is not any other grand international martial arts event where they bring in all the martial arts, or as many martial arts as they can together. It is the first time I have seen Wushu involved in a grand championships, or a masterships as they call it here, alongside other martial arts disciplines. It is really interesting to see actually all the other athletes training and competing, though within their respective disciplines and alongside other disciplines, it's really really good. If that could be widened to the Olympic Games or the Commonwealth Games or something like that, then we would see some great exposure for martial arts as a whole.