ALL Saints School pupil Matthew Maton, 11, finished third in the Dragon Tang Soo Do Open Championship near Bristol.

The Weymouth youngster, was competing in the 11 to 16-year-old black belt sparring category.

Having won his first two fights, his third bout was against a 16-year-old 2nd Dan, who was five inches taller than Maton.

The older boy won the fight with three kicks to Maton’s head and face.

Despite the pain this caused, he then only had a couple of minutes to recover before his fourth fight to decide third and fourth place.

He rose to the challenge and after extra time, won the bronze trophy.

Shortly afterwards Chris Bradford, the author of the highly successful Young Samurai series of books, ran a competition for one of his fans to be his guest at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

Maton is a big fan of the adventures of Jack Fletcher in the Young Samurai series and has read all the books.

Maton’s dad Nick, entered him into the competition, based on his son’s performance at the Dragon Tang Soo Do competition and including a copy of a photograph of the winners receiving their trophies to show the difference in height between Matthew and the boy who beat him.

Bradford was very impressed and invited Matthew and his dad to be his special guests at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, including a personal meeting with him before the event and free tickets to the show.

At Cheltenham, during the course of his performance in front of a paying audience, Bradford called Matthew and his father to the stage to perform a fight routine with their wooden swords (bokkens).

Afterwards, Bradford kept the youngster on the stage to explain how he had won the competition by his performance at the Dragon Tang Soo Do Competition, which in Chris’ view, exhibited the characteristics of a true Young Samurai.

Maton is a black belt student in taekwondo with Nick Bale of the Martial Arts Network UK and undertakes traditional Japanese weapons training under the instruction of Sensei King of the British Fudoshin Association.