Done and Done.

King of the Cage: Underground 69 is over and it went well.  I won the main event fight via armbar at 1:48 of the first round, even though it seemed a lot longer than that.  More than anything I am relieved to have that fight over with.  While my preparation going into the fight was good, the week before the fight was not.  Almost exactly a week before fight time I injured my back.  I'm not sure how, but I could barely put pants and socks on.  Just getting around and doing everyday activities was tough, never mind fighting.  A few chiropractor and massage appointments helped a little, but I was still in a lot of pain, and not very mobile.  To make things worse, at the same time I got sick and had to go on antibiotics.  Those things really kicked my ass and made me feel sluggish.  Cutting weight while on antibiotics was brutal.  Needless to say, the week leading up to the fight was less than ideal.  Luckily all of the hard work had been done by then anyways.

Sizing up the opponent.

As for the fight, everything went pretty much according to game plan.  My brother Mitch and I had done the scouting report and put together our plan.   It was as if Mitch choreographed the entire fight.    I was able to stay patient and make it through my opponents striking and exploit a few positions we knew I could get to.  I would have liked to pull the trigger a lot more in the striking aspect of the fight as I feel that my striking is much better than I showed in the fight.  The one thing I didn't want to do though, was get in a firefight with a guy who's strongest skill is boxing and who's most dangerous weapon is fast flurries of punches.  With my limited mobility in my back I was much more keen to get my hands on him, control some heavy top positions and take what he would give me, which turned out to be an arm-bar.

Looking to finish.

For those of you that were at the fight and booed my opponents apparent lack of respect in the cage after the fight it's worth noting that I went and talked with him afterwards and he was pretty cool about everything.  For people who've never fought it's tough to describe what happens to you at the end of the fight.  You have so many chemicals being dumped into your system that it's tough to keep your composure, especially after losing a tough fight that you spent countless hours preparing for. trust me, I've been there.

Now I'm looking forward to healing, relaxing a bit and getting ready for my next fight which looks to be not very far away.

Thanks to Trevor Dowhaniuk for the pictures I've used here, he captured some great ones.

No, I Am Not "Getting Jacked" For This Fight.

"Are you jacked?"  "Are you excited?"  "Are you getting pumped?"

Every time I fight I hear these questions at least a bazillion times in the week leading up to the fight.  When I shrug my shoulders and answer with "not really" or "not yet" people seem taken aback.  The truth is I've never been one to get all jazzed up before I fight and there's a few reasons. 

1. It's counter-productive.  Some people think that fighting angry, or "psyched up" is the way to go.  That may be true if you think that overwhelming your opponent is the only way you can win.  If you have faith in your training, your skills and your game-plan though, getting all "psyched up" is a detriment to clear thinking.  
2. When your emotional level gets too high you run the risk of an emotional crash when something doesn't go your way; and in a tough fight there are bound to be moments where not everything is going your way.  In such moments it pays to have a clear mind and be able focus on correcting the situation.
3. Getting psyched up burns a lot of mental energy.  It can zap the system as badly as using up too much physical energy before the fight.  I often chuckle to myself when I see new fighters with their hands taped and mouthguards in, walking around with angry faces several hours before they fight.  Do they know how much work it takes to look that pissed off for that long?
4. This is not new. This will be my 8th professional fight. Before that, I had several amateur fights.  I've fought overseas.  I've wrestled for a National Championship.  This fight is important.  It does not, however, overshadow everything I've done previously.  

   

   This will not be me at weigh-ins.

If you are coming to watch me fight on Saturday you'll probably see my opponent come into the cage yelling, jumping around, gesturing to the crowd and mean mugging.  He might try some of the same stuff at weigh-ins. That's fine.  Maybe, for his own confidence, he feels like he needs to do that, but you won't see any of that from me.  A few hours before the fight you're likely to find me hanging out, playing cards, having a nap or sneaking out to talk to some friends in the crowd.  When it comes time to focus on the task at hand I'll be all business, but there's no sense wasting all of my energy before hand.

I'm not saying that I don't get nervous or scared; I do.  I've said before that anyone who says they don't is either lying or stupid.  You should be nervous or scared.  Those feelings you get is your body preparing itself for battle, pulling out those fight or flight (hopefully fight) responses that have been ingrained in our DNA for millenia.  If you aren't getting those feelings, your body and mind are not properly prepared to do what you are going to do.  I recently heard a quote from Urijah Faber that sums it up nicely.  It went something along the lines of "Yeah, I get butterflies; I just make them fly in formation".
Word.

The Blog is Back!

When I got home from Korea I was so swamped with getting caught up at work that the blog became an afterthought; something I'd get to if I had time.  Considering I was coaching a highschool wrestling team, a club wrestling team, being the convenor for the local wrestling league and trying to find time to train myself there was zero time for anything else.  During this time I often had something happen to me, or witnessed something and thought "that would make a good blog post".  These days I have a little more time on my hands and in the last few weeks a few people have asked about the blog and if it would ever return.  Here it is.  It's kind of like "Return of the Mack", but way better.  What is a "Mack"?


Posers, Cling-Ons and Wannabes 

Poser checklist: 1) Taking pictures of yourself... 2) with no shirt on 3) with all of the UFC and Tap-Out gear you bought from Sport-check 4) in your bedroom with cliche posters in the background 5) mean mugging and/or giving the finger.   **note** This is not the guy that this article is about, just a good example of the type of people that try adopt a tough fighter image without putting in the work to actually be a fighter

Whenever something gets popular there's bound to be some posers (or poseurs, as the French say) hanging around and MMA is no different.  Everyone's seen overweight tattooed thugs who couldn't throw a straight punch if their life depended on it rocking the Tapout sleeveless jersey and straight brimmed hat combo. These are the guys who want to see sloppy slug fests and could care less about the ground game.  Ironic considering the term "Tap Out" comes from the ground game in the first place.  For these guys it's about an image that they can cop, not about the sport.
There's another type of poser and cling on in the MMA game too.  The one's who actually are somewhat involved in the sport but overstate their involvement, talk about themselves a lot and try to convince people that they are big wheels on the MMA machine.  For these guys too, it's about an image. It's about being part of something cool.
A great example of this is a recent article that appeared in my local newspaper.  It was about a fella who sometimes spends time visiting his family in my city.  To listen to him talk the guy is definitely a big deal; involved in every aspect of MMA including fighting, managing, sponsoring, reporting, promoting, owning an MMA clothing line and training fighters. And all of this at the age of 22. Wow.  Here's the article Sault Star Article
There are a few hilarious bits in this article.  The first is that he is sponsoring fighters but can't release their names to the public because of privacy issues.  Hmm.  I have a few sponsors and I'm pretty sure the way it works is they pay you to wear their stuff and in turn they can use your name and image to promote their product.  He also talks about training fighters.  An 0-1 fighter with no previous combat sports credentials training fighters?  Sign me up!  Speaking of his 0-1 record, the guy has every excuse in the book from taking the fight on short notice to citing injuries from an accident 7 years ago! Now I've had some pretty decent injuries (broken neck anyone?) and I understand taking fights that aren't on ideal terms but once you accept to fight under those terms you lose the right to complain or use them as excuses.  When I fought in Japan there was a laundry list of reasons why the fight wasn't great for me but I took it anyways.  I lost.  I didn't lose because of all of the particular details around the fight that I thought were BS.  I lost a winnable fight because the other guy fought better than me that night and planted a right hook on my chin that sent me wobbling to the canvas.  End of story.
When I read the article I wondered how this guy could be doing so much in Canadian MMA without ever having heard of him. I wanted to find out if this guy was a legit or if he was, like lots of other questionable characters involved in MMA, trying to make a name and a few dollars off of the sweat and hard work of fighters and other people who have worked hard to make the sport progress to where it is today.  I took my curiosity to a few well known message boards where lots of pro fighters and well known journalists, managers and commentators post and interact regularly.  I asked if anyone knew him and what their impressions of him were.  Here's a few of the reactions...

"can't help you...but apparently as involved as he is I should've heard of him, no?"

                    - Sean MacManus, editor of TOPmmanews.com

"He probably got excited in the interview and kind of overstated where he's at in the MMA culture, as evidenced by the fact that the biggest MMA nerds in Canada (like the people on the Canadian UG- and I mean 'nerds' in the best sense) don't know who he is.
Sometimes people try to oversell themselves, sometimes cuz, yes, they want the attention, sometimes just cuz they wanna get laid in their hometown, and sometimes just cuz they get wound up while being interviewed."

                      - Robin Black, professional fighter, On-air personality for The Score,  The Fight Network

"Nice enough guy but touts his own horn way too much. In my brief conversation I tried to figure out exactly what he did, he just told me he does "marketing". I asked him what that entails and he says he makes moves, talks to people, gets people's voices heard and names recognized (paraphrasing here but you get the idea)" ...  "His clothing company is "Lights Out Fight Wear" and until recently they only had 2 t-shirts and a hoodie on their website.. there's not much more now (and they claim to have been established since 1982 lol). He probably doesn't talk about the fighters because he only deals with amateur athletes with 1-1 or 0-0 records who swallow everything this guy says."

                 - Anonymous  poster


To be completely fair, I don't think this guy is malicious in any way.  He has some ties to BDB Martial Arts in Calgary which is a very reputable gym so at the very least he sees high level training on a regular basis.  I think he really does love the sport of MMA and wants to be involved.  I just think that he is a little quick to give himself credit and, in this article, has overplayed his involvement in the scene.  I'll let you judge for yourself.



A Few Thoughts on UFC 129

• Great showing by the Canadian contingent. John Makdessi, Jason MacDonald, Claude Patrick, Ivan Menjivar, Rory MacDonald, and GSP all got great wins.  Pierson, Bocek, Jabouin and Hominick will all be back in the big show busting heads soon.
• Speaking of Hominick... what a warrior.  He fought a great fight against one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world and even when he was behind on the score cards and had a hematoma the size of a baseball on his head he turned up the juice and blitzed Jose Aldo for the last 5 minutes of the fight.  Not a lot of people gave him any kind of chance and most didn't think he'd last very long.  I told everyone who would listen that Hominick absolutely belonged with Aldo and could beat him. I was down at his training center in March and trained with him while I was there.  I look forward to training with him again soon.
• I hate watching Randy lose.  Anyone else think that fight was bad matchmaking on the UFC's part from a promotional perspective?  You don;t want one of your heroes going out on a loss but you also want Machida to get back into contention.  Seemed like a lose-lose proposition for the UFC to me.
• Can Steven Segal please drown in wet cement?
• $129 000 in bonus money for winners of Fight of the Night (Aldo/Hominick) Knock out of the night (Machida's karate kid crane kick) and sub of the night (Garza).  Dat's very nice.  I know all of the bonuses from now on won't be that high but I can't see them dropping back to the previous ammounts.

Other Stuff
I'm not sure what the format will be for this blog now that I'm back in Canada but I'm trying to figure it out.  It will definitely be MMA based with some other side-bar type stories and comments but I'm not sure to what degree I'll include other topics.
I noticed that I have a few blogs drafts that I had written while in Korea and Japan that i never got around to publishing.  I think there's some pretty interesting stuff in there that people might like.  I'll have a look at them, add any additional info and post them shortly.

Wow.

SENGOKU, DEEP, DREAM;  It's been a Crazy Ride

For the last three and a half weeks I've been sitting on the knowledge that I would soon be fighting in one of the biggest MMA organizations in the world and competing in their bantamweight Grand Prix.  I had been accepted as one of the participants in the tournament and was set to compete in SENGOKU on July 4th.  I almost spilled the beans last week, but decided to hold off because SENGOKU hadn't officially announced the participant list.  It's a good thing I did hold off because when I got to the club today for training I found out that I was out of the tournament.  Someone somewhere along the line had complained that even though I trained and fought out of a Korean gym I didn't meet the criteria to compete in the Asian Grand Prix.  That thought had crossed my mind but I was reassured that it would be no problem when I brought it up.  Apparently it was a problem.

All is not lost however.  I've been offered a fight with a very good fighter later in the summer. The fight offer is against Daiki Hata, a very good kickboxer with a 11-6-3 MMA record.  He has beaten some big name fighters, but his last two losses came to opponents who were 7-7 and 3-4 at the time of their fights.  He has much more experience than I do, but style wise, the match up is good.  He seems to have trouble with grinding type wrestlers.  He also looks like an anime character from some kind of Japanese neo-samurai cartoon.  The fight will be in late August for the DEEP organization. The bonus is that the winner of the fight earns a spot on the nest DREAM event.  DREAM is arguably the second largest MMA organization in the world.  It's where the big dogs live.  Some people spend their whole careers waiting for an opportunity like this.  It's pretty crazy now that it's here.  TopMMAnews posted a story about the fight on their main page. Go check it out.

Submission of the year?

Some people have been talking about this submission by Dan Hornbuckle at a recent Bellator event as a potential submission of the year. It's a nice Kimura into a modified armbar. Go to the 45 second mark of the video and then...

... look at this picture.

This was one of my matches at the Korea Machado Open. Look familiar? I know, I know, I didn't do it to  professional fighter in a major event... I'm just saying.  What am I saying?  I don't know, probably something about me being awesome.

Un Sik Song
Un Sik lost his fight at DEEP: Cage Impact last night.  He lost what sounds like a boring decision to someone who mostly pressed him against the cage.  I knew that cage skills might be an issue for Un Sik.  His wrestling is getting much better, but there is absolutely nowhere to practice anything against a cage or wall.  We don't even have any padded walls right now.  People have been saying for quite a while but Asian fighters who want to fight in a cage have to practice in a cage.  I think it makes a much bigger impact than people think.  So many techniques change next to the cage, and learning to use it and get off of it is a skill you have to practice, it does happen magically.

New Ho Shin Sool Website
Ray started a new Ho Shin Sool website and it's pretty awesome.  It has lots of cool stuff on it, go check it out.

Squatters, Gymnastics and Tough Training

Gymnastics in Wrestling, MMA, Jiu Jitsu
I stumbled across the video below by chance, but it reinforces what I've always believed.  Athletes with gymnastics backgrounds or skills have an enormous advantage in any sport that requires balance, kinesthethic awareness, agility and explosiveness.  When I run gymnastic type warm ups when I coach wrestling or grappling at home lots of people complain.  Some people cop out and don't even try.  It's frustrating because those people can't see the benefits of these types of skills.  I'm fond of telling those people "If you can't control your own body, how in hell are you going to control your opponents body?"
When people say "Why are we doing this?  We're not going to do a cartwheel or handstand in a match."
I respond with "Why do you lift weights? You're not going to bench press or clean and jerk in a match."  The answer is the same for both activities.  They both develop and enhance physical characteristics that are important to wrestling, jiu jitsu and fighting.  I would go so far as to say that if you had to pick only one, gymnastics training trumps weightlifting.  My girlfriend used to coach at the National Training center for mens gymnastics.  Some of the guys there were the most jacked guys I've ever seen and they never lifted a weight in their life.  
Consider the following

• In Russia and Turkey (where wrestling is the national sport and athletes start in the sport at a very young age) youth programs focus mostly on gymnastics before introducing much actual wrestling technique.  They believe it's important to develop a strong physical foundation before trying to learn things that your body is not prepared to do.
• Most big time BJJ dudes from Brazil practice what they call "gymnastica naturel"  which is basically just tumbling.  They say it gives them a much better awareness of their body.
• The sheer number of high level wrestlers I have met that have some sort of gymnastics background is staggering.  It can't be a coincidence.

A little background... AACC is a wrestling and MMA school.  Lots of top MMA guys (and girls ie. Megumi Fuji) train there.  It's one of the places that lots of pros stop in to train when they are in Jaoan for fights.  The youth wrestling club is also world famous, having produced world and Olympic medalists.



New Gym, Hard Work
The new gym has been up and running for a few weeks now.  It's a smaller space, but there is much less wasted space.  The main mat area is bigger than at the old club, but we don't have a ring at the new location.  We still have a bag area, weight area, an office and (a big improvement) showers with hot water.

View of the new club

Un Sik has a big fight coming up in DEEP against a very tough Yasuaki Kishimoto (10-3) and the two of us have been working out together a lot lately. We've been working on lots of wrestling and lots of situational sparring.  I've been getting as much out of it as he has, which is good as I'm looking to fight sooner than later.  My body is definitely feeling it.  Today is Sunday, and my 7th day in a row of training with Un Sik.  We'll go in tomorrow and do some work and then I'm going to take Tuesday off and try to explain the concept of "tapering" to him.  Hopefully someone with decent English will be there to help translate.
There are a few young guys that train at Daegu MMA that have really enjoy the wrestling training and are getting pretty good.  A few of them heard Un Sik and I were training on the weekend they came in to work on their wrestling too.  The smaller guy in the video is only 15 and has better jiu jitsu technique than I do. When we roll I have to be a bully and muscle him around to avoid getting beat. Add in some solid takedowns and defense and that's a tough kid to beat. The bigger guy is about 20 and has a great single leg.  When we scrimmage he can score if I'm not really focused on defending the leg hard.   I think I've been able to leave a few of the older guys and two or three of the younger kids with some much improved takedowns and takedown defense and I think that makes them a lot more dangerous, whether in Jiu Jitsu or MMA

Korean Crappers
This is a "squatter".  If you can't see why it's called that please use your browser's back button and go back to whatever internet hole you crawled out of, your presence alone is hurting the average IQ of visitors to this blog and I have standards to uphold around here.

Squatters are a bit intimidating at first.  Which direction do you face?  What do you hold on to?  It's a bit like the old "grab a tree in the woods and squat", but with no tree to grab.  For these reasons I was pretty apprehensive of squatters during my first few months in Korea.  Sometimes there just isn't a regular toilet to be found though.  In these cases I usually just take my pants right off to avoid a stain that would be very tough to explain to your friends.  Everyone's heard the story of the guy who answered nature's call in the woods and ended up with a present in the hood of his snow-suit right?  Nobody wants to be that guy.
Despite the awkwardness and potential danger of using a squatter there are some benefits.  My friend Margot mentioned a while ago that there is absolutely no skin to seat contact and you flush with your shoe covered foot, not your bare hand. Hygienic!  I guess if you're a germophobe using a squatter is the way to go, although it definitely takes some getting used to.

Korea vs. Japan(MMA), Korea vs. Europe (Christmas Trees)

Here's the Un Sik Song's first fight after coming back from active military service.  There's a short video profile of him before the fight starts. If anyone out there speaks Japanese let me know what it says. The guy he fights here (Atushi Ueda, 8-3-3) is no bum, although he is obviously not on Un Sik's level.  
As for the fight, Un Sik was really embarrassed about it. He really didn't want me to see the fight on video. It was his first fight in over 2 years and he fought only 2 weeks after being discharged from the Army, so I think everyone would understand the ring rust. Even still he was really mad at himself for gassing and not being able to finish a few of the submission opportunities he had. The fight was probably perfect for what he wanted; shake off some ring rust against an opponent that was game, but didn't pose a major threat.  I think his next fight, in DEEP: Cage Impact, will be much crisper and cleaner.

 Intro and Round 1

Round 2

How the Grinchy Europeans Stole Christmas (Trees)
Koreans are a very proud people. And they should be.  They have managed to accomplish a lot of amazing things without outside help.  There are a lot of things that Korea just does better than the rest of the world (or at least the parts I've been to).  Sometimes though, Korean pride and nationalism can get a little carried away.
Exhibit A:  A few weeks ago I went on a tour of the area surrounding Yeongcheon.  The tour included a hike up a mountain guided by a university biology/horticulture student.  The mountain had some pretty unique flora, but to say it was mildly interesting would be flattering.  The only interesting part was when our guide showed us a tree (looked like a white pine) and told us that 150 years ago Europeans came to Korea and stole this tree.  They took it back to europe where it flourished and eventually led to the creation of the Christmas tree, a symbol which spread around the world, thanks to Korea. 
Think about it for a second.  This guy is saying that there were no pine trees in Europe before 150 years ago and that the Christmas tree is younger than that.  I think these guys would disagree.
Like I said, Koreans have a huge amount of stuff to be proud of, but sometimes they lack a little perspective.  If you move to Korea you may be shocked to discover that Korea created the I Phone and cloned the first human, among other things.  I don't know if it's comforting or scary to know that blind nationalism is a worldwide phenomenon.

The Big MMA Weekend. Plus, Fate is Garbage

Everybody's Kung Fu Fighting.
Last weekend was a big one as far as MMA is concerned.  Most people are well aware of the Machida vs. Shogun results from the UFC event, but there was a lot of stuff going on that hits a lot closer to home.
The Ho Shin Sool boys were in action at King of the Cage on Saturday and didn't disappoint.  The guys went 4-0 with none of their opponents making it out of the first round.

• Trevor Manchester picked up his opponent and slammed him before finishing him with strikes in 24 seconds.
• John Veltri hit his opponent with a straight counter right on the button and dropped him.  He pounced on his opponent and finished with an official TKO in 20 seconds, but the fight was over as soon as the first punch landed.
• Ray Gowlett was just as dominant but wanted to enjoy his time int he spotlight a little bit more than Trevor and Johnny.  He picked up and slammed his opponent, dropped some shots from the top position and took the back of his opponent and almost choked him out.  After a scramble he went back to the feet and dropped his opponent with a four strike combo, finishing with a body shot that crumbled his opponent.  Ray followed him to the ground and dropped some shots for the first round stoppage.
• Jeff Elliot looked good in his second pro fight.  He managed to control his larger opponent in the clinch and score a takedown.  he eventually passed to full mount and started dropping down punches from the top position.  Afte a quick scramble, Jeff found himself on his back where he immediately sunk a triangle choke to get the win.  A good win showing some god wrestling an jiu jitsu to go with is well known striking.

Ho Shin Sool has fought for KOTC 5 times now.  This is the fourth time that the club has gone undefeated, having gone 3-0 and 5-0 twice in addition to this weekends festivities.  We have been set up with tougher and tougher opponents and have responded every time.  You can watch all of the fights on the Ho Shin Sool Facebook page here.
Next up for Ho Shin Sool, Mitch and Adrian fight at XCC:58 Battle at the Border, Canada vs. USA.

 Three guys from Daegu MMA also fought this weekend in kickboxing fights.  Un Sik Song fought his second pro kickboxing fight in the last 4 months and won, although I don't know how because he wasn't at the club last night.  John, a Korean kid who just graduated from highschool fought his first kickboxing fight and won by decision.  "Korean GSP", as he likes to be known, also won his first kickboxing fight.  In his own words he won via "duhty boxshing uppacut, uppacut, uppacut TKO."  He's 16.  Both of these young guys have really slick jiu jitsu and it's fun to watch them expand their arsenals as they work towards becoming MMA fighters.  The next generation of fighters from Daegu MMA looks pretty strong.

Daegu MMA is also moving to a new location this weekend.  I've heard that the new location is not any bigger, but a "better environment".  I'm anxious to see what it's like.



Pulling a Runner

Some people get to Korea and realize it's not for them.  Some get homesick, some can't handle their first real responsibility after University and some can't handle the culture shock.  For whatever reason some people leave in the middle of the night, skipping out on their contract, their students and their coworkers.  I suppose sometimes there are reasons why someone has to leave, even though the life here is pretty easy.  It's one thing to admit to yourself that you can't handle it and you cant stick it out for a year.  What I don't get is bailing on your friends and co-workers and leaving them in the lurch.
Last week it happened to us.  There are only three foreign teachers at our school and the other one bailed on Thursday.  Packed up and left in the middle of the night.  Left us high and dry, short-staffed and having to clean up the mess she left behind.  Didn't even have the courtesy to give us short notice so we could find someone to fill in for her in the short term. Pretty lame.
The only positive side to it is that I got my friend Scott to fill in at our school in the mornings starting this week.  Scott's one of nicest dudes I've ever met  and it's nice to have another guy in the office every now and then.

Destiny, Fate
I hate the idea of Destiny and Fate.  I find the idea that you are not in control of your life stupid.  Fate and Destiny are convenient excuses for people who are too lazy to get up and make something happen.  I'm sure nobody who ever accomplished anything great ever attributed it to Fate or Destiny.  Those people got up and worked their asses off. They earned every bit of their accomplishments.  I saw this commercial on youtube today and loved it for that exact reason.  The commercial is about Destiny and Fate as they relate to sports, but like so many other things in sports it can be applied to the rest of life as well.  Get up and make your own destiny.



Click Here!

Good Action!

After not competing for the first four months of being in Korea I've now competed twice in a month.  It feels good to get back into a competitive environment and let everything fly.
This weekend was the Korean Machado Open. The tournament was mostly the Jiu Jitsu teams affiliated with Team Machado in Korea (there are six) but there was a smattering of guys form other clubs as well.  As a sidebar, the word "Machado" was misspelled on one of the main tournament banners as "Machdo".  I am coming to expect things like this from Korea.   Luckily for me this tournament was in Daegu which meant no late night/early morning weight cutting and no having to pull our coach out of a gentleman's club before the tournament like last time.  It also meant I could get home at a reasonable hour instead of going to bed at 2:30 am after fighting all day and then having to work in the morning.

A little more Konglish.. you can't escape it.

The tournament was held in a large school gym, like most tournaments in North America. One of the big differences is that in Korea they tend not to heat a lot places that we heat at home.  Places like bathrooms, hallways and, you guessed it, school gyms. The tournament was generally well organized but the lack of heat made things tough.  The mats were so hard we might as well have been fighting on the gym floor.  Getting warmed up for a matches was a major challenge.  If you look at the pictures and video you can see that just about everybody is wearing a winter coats in the gym, even the referees and most of the guys warming up.  I'm surprised there weren't more injuries with guys jumping in to action with cold and stiff muscles.
I competed in the gi and no-gi divisions, with this being the first time I ever competed in the gi.   I won my first match by armbar after two quick takedowns for points. That would be the last takedown I scored all day.  It turns out my first opponent had a reputation as being pretty decent in the takedown department.  After my match with him not one single opponent would fight me on the feet.  Every guy "buttflopped' as soon as the ref said "fight"  They just sat right down and tried to pull me into their guard to avoid being taken down and giving up points.  It got so ridiculous at one point that when one of my opponents in no gi sat down I sat down too.  We looked pretty stupid sitting there facing each other.  He stood up, I stood up.  He sat back down, I sat back down.  I was trying to make  a point but I think it got lost in translation.

My first ever Gi Jiu Jitsu match

I won my first two matches in the gi and then lost in the semi final.  The match was very close, but I eventually got caught in a triangle after fending off a half dozen submission attempts.  I wasn't altogether happy with the match as I got caught being a little lazy. I was also rushing things.  Every time I would get an advantage position I was in such a hurry to score that I made careless mistakes and missed my opportunity.  That was the end of my day in the gi.  I was awarded the bronze medal as they simply give bronze medals to the losers of the semi finals.  I would much rather have fought to declare a true bronze medalist.
When the no gi division started I made a conscious effort to try and finish all of my opponents as opposed to try and outwrestle them and hang on for a points victory. I wanted to attack with submissions and really see where I was i that department.  I was at the tournament to test my jiu jitsu after all, not my wrestling.
I won my first no gi match by north-south choke fairly quickly, my second by armbar, and my third by D'arce choke.  I was on a roll.  I was especially happy with my second match.  even thought the score was 0-0 when I submitted him I had threatened with an armbar, triangle and kimura before finishing with an armbar. The video of the match is posted in the top right corner.  You can also see how impressed I was after the guy buttflopped 0.01 seconds into the match.
My third match irked me a little bit. I was winning 5-0 when we got into a scramble.  I ended up on top in half guard.  I set up the D'arce and hit it just the way I wanted to.  I heard the guy say "tap, tap" so I let go and rolled off. When I rolled off of him, the guy tackled me and tried to take me down.  I looked up at the ref with the universal expression for "What the....?". He shrugged his shoulders and gave me the universal look for "What? Keep fighting."  Luckily for me we were right beside the chair judge when the guy verbally submitted.  The chair judge came over and explained to the ref that the other guy definitely submitted. Even though I won I was a little cheezed.  That's dirty pool where I come from, especially at a tournament where all of the teams are loosely affiliated.
Three wins put me in the finals against the same guy who beat me in the gi division.  This time I knew his game a little bit and came with a much better game plan of my own.  I was patient while still pressuring him for most of the match.  When I was able to gain a slight advantage I kept the pressure on without rushing.  I was eventually able to win the match by a score of 6-0 with one solid submission attempt. Sweet redemption.
On the whole I finished the tournament 6-1 with four submissions.  The level of competition wasn't ridiculously high, but I managed to have some good scraps and was pretty happy overall.  Finishing off the day by avenging my loss from earlier was a nice cherry to top it off.

Most of Team Machado Korea (Those who were still around after the awards ceremony).

Tournament notes
It was cool to have some friends come out to watch. I've never been the kind of guy to say "come out and watch me compete" but when people show up it's always nice.

Extra limbs? It's hard not to stereotype physical traits to an ethnic group when every single Korean I've trained with or competed against has a kind of flexibility that boggles my mind.  Sometimes I have an opponent down and think I know exactly what's going on only to have an unaccounted for leg creep around into a dangerous position.  I can clearly remember thinking "where the hell is that leg coming from?"  during a match this weekend.

Team Wayguk.  There are four foreigners (waygukins) who train regularly at Daegu MMA.  All four of us competed.  I think if we would have entered simply as "Team Wayguk" we would have done pretty well in the No Gi division.  We finished with 3 golds and one silver.
There were a couple of other foreigners who came to the tournament from Gwanju.  One of them was a blue belt from the Gracie Orlando school.  I talked to him for a while and was glad to hear him echo my sentiments regarding the quality of competitors in Korea.  He agreed that the standards for advancing in rank here seem very high compared to North America.


Where are the wrestlers?  Jiu Jitsu is a growing sport in Korea.  I wonder when Korean wrestlers are going to start crossing over like they have in North America.  Korean wrestles have a reputation for being as tough as nails, they could do some serious damage in the sport.



Something awesome about Korea:
Sports on TV.  Since I've been here I've watched the World Handball Championships, World Weightlifting (Olympic lifting) Championships, Korean Ssirrum (traditional wrestling) championships, Asian Table Tennis Championships and every major MMA event free on cable TV.  Don't get me wrong, I love watching football and can be convinced to watch playoff hockey, baseball or basketball but the variety of sports that air here is awesome.
Something not awesome about Korea:
My apartment.  Brutally cold, heat and water that breaks in the middle of winter, no air conditioning for the monsoon season and mold on the walls.

Special Shout Out:
To my buddy Jim Alers. Jim and I met when working at Camp Cayuga a few years ago.  Jim is a 4-0 pro fighter and recently won the East Coast Abu Dhabi trials in the purple belt division. Way to go dude, have fun in Dubai.

Just a Shorty

Even tough guys aren't immune to Konglish
Just a quick note today...
After a slow week last week (I took a few days off to heal my body after the Sambo championships) I've been back at it hard this week.  I think I'll be travelling to a jiu jitsu tournament in a few weeks so I'm trying to get as much mat time as possible.

Yesterday "Nuna", the club manager, gave me a bunch of patches to wear on my gi.  I guess I've finally made the cut and can now represent the club with their logo on my back.  One of my other teammates actually asked me a little while ago why I didn't have any Machado Jiu Jitsu or Daegu MMA patches on my gi.  I told him that he would know better that me since I don't speak Korean and had no idea how to get some.  The best part about the patches though is the "Konglish" phrase on one of them.  It's a pretty typical English translation from Korea.  Check it out.

I can see what they're getting at, but I think they were after something like "Those who desire victory must be willing to pay the price."

I'll be heading out of Daegu again for another tournament on Feb. 7th.  After not competing for so long it's nice to get two tournaments in a month.  They are calling this tournament the National Championships, but it's really only the National Championships for jiu jitsu clubs that are affiliated with Machado Jiu Jitsu.  From what I hear, the quality of competition is quite high, as I would imagine. In the gi tournament There are two divisions for white belt (basic and advanced), the blue belts get their own division and purple, brown and black belts all compete together.  In No-Gi there are beginner, intermediate and advanced divisions.  I'll be competing in the advanced white belt (gi) category and making a big jump to the advanced division in no gi.  Even in the white belt division I'm sure to have some trouble. It's possible that I wouldn't even win my weight class if there was a white belt tournament just for Daegu MMA members.  There's a few guys around my weight who give me tons of trouble everyday in training.

Something Awesome about Korea:

The city bus system.  I know I've talked about transit here before but the bus system here puts most North American bus systems to shame.  The buses run every ten minutes, but that's not even the best part. Every bus has 3 identifying numbers.  Each number corresponds to a part of town.  For example: I live in Siji. Siji is #9 on the bus routes. That means I can get on the 459, 938, 129, 396 or any bus that has the #9 anywhere in it's number.  You don;t have to know the bus route or schedules at all.  It's so easy it's almost ridiculous.

Something not so Awesome about Korea:

Sidewalks made of marble and smooth stone.  When it rains the sidewalks are mega slippery.  You know those slippery shoes that curlers wear on one foot to glide down the ice?  Try wearing two of them and then getting to work on an ice rink.  That's what it's like when it rains here.  It's extra dangerous when you are stepping from a surface with good grip to the smooth stone.  You're lucky if your lead foot doesn't go shooting ahead of you and split you in half for your troubles.

My Life is so Cold.

S.. S..S.. So C.. C.. Cold
I've been back to regular training for a little while now.  While it's great being back, the conditions at the club are not ideal for training right now.  The club is extremely cold.  People who are not training are usually wearing coats and tuques and you can see your breath when training.  The temperature makes it really hard to get warmed up and loosened out.  If you do manage to get a good sweat on it takes about one minute of rest for your body to cool down and your muscles tighten up.  This is the kind of environment that leads to injuries pretty easily.  I'm doing my best to stay warm (I wear tights and long sleeves under my gi) but it sure isn't easy. 

It's possible to keep most of your body relatively warm if you keep moving but it's your feet that are the problem.  Everything in Korea is heated with floor heat but because Daegu MMA has mats from wall to wall they can't heat that way.  The heated floors would soften the mats and make them useless and dangerous in a hurry.  Instead of floor heat we've got a big space heater that is about five feet tall and four feet wide.  You'd think it would keep the place warm, but not so.  There's a radius of about 4 feet around the heater that is warm and the rest of the place is freezing.  The mats are so cold that after training last night I had to walk to the subway extra slow because I felt like my feet were going to shatter.  I think it's time to break out the wrestling shoes.  The only cool (pun intended)  thing about the situation is that after a sparring session everyone is steaming and it looks pretty rad.

I`ve been battling a cold the last week or so too.  It`s pretty much done with now but let me tell ya, when your sinuses are congested getting caught in a triangle choke is one of the worst feelings imaginable.  I felt like my head was going to explode like a a green snot bomb.  

Speaking of freezing,  the heat and water in our apartment stopped working on Friday and still isn`t fixed. This has been one of the oldest winters that people in Daegu can remember.  Korea is a lot warmer than Canada but my life here is freezing, I can never get warm. I think I`ll be spending a lot more time at the jimjilbang this week.
  
Seoul and The DMZ
Lisa`s family came for a visit over the holidays which was great.  We spent some time in Daegu, Seoul and went to the DMZ.  The DMZ was awesome. Learned a lot of history and got to see some interesting things.  Our tour guides were American airborn infantry and they were pretty awesome. It`s pretty crazy to stand on the border of two countries that are still at war and have soldiers from the other side watch you with binoculars. Here`s few pictures.

In this picture you can see one of our guides and behind him are South Korean soldiers keeping an eye on the North Korean`s.  You can see the North Koreans shoveling snow in the background.

If you look closely enough in this picture you can see the North Korean guard looking at us with his binoculars.  Intense.

This is a cargo train that got caught in a crossfire during the war.  It has over 1200 bullet holes in it and never reached it`s destination, obviously.  It was stopped on what ended up being the border between North and South Korea and had a memorial built around it.

Things I love about Korea...
History at your fingertips.  Korea has a bunch of UNESCO world heritage sites and all kinds of historic temples and artifacts that are easy to get to.  The history and culture of Korea is very interesting and very accessible to anyone who`s even moderately motivated to check things out.

Things I hate about Korea...
The Anti English Spectrum.  This is a real beauty of an organization who`s goal is to rid Korea of all foreigners.  They like to send press releases to the Korean media with fantastically researched claims.  Here`s a few gems from the spectrum.  The vast majority of foreigners in Korea are HIV positive.  Most foreign men are sexual predators with a particular interest in underage girls.  I know, I know, I was as surprised to learn it as you.  The worst part about it is the Korean media is not real big on fact checking and often runs with these stories.


Misc...
I`ve been contacted to write a column for TopMMANews.com.  They are the biggest Canadian MMA site on the web.    My next article should be up within the next two days.

KOTC and Fighting in Japan.

The last few days have been filled with all kinds of MMA related news for me.  I've been keeping in touch with the boys from Ho Shin Sool about their fights at King of the Cage: Title Defense, I watched UFC 107 and had some exciting MMA news of my own.

Ho Shin Sool MMA Rips it up at "King of the Cage: Title Defense:

Dominant.
What else is there to say?
Ho Shin Sool fighters went 5-0 at King of the Cage for the second time this year. Two KO's, one submission and two unanimous decisions.  That's good fishing. Ray, Adrian, Jeff, Trevor and Dalton all came to fight and showed why we're the first and best MMA club in the area.  Big props to Jeff for ending his pro-debut in under 30 seconds.  Here's a highlight video of the event featuring most of the Ho Shin Sool crew.  You can also read some good newspaper articles about the fights here and here.

Watch live streaming video from soonews at livestream.com

Who's Fighting in Japan? I am.

I've accepted a fight in Japan for January 9th.  I was a little apprehensive about taking the fight because there are lots of things I still don't know about the fight and some things I probably won't find out until I get there.  When you're dealing with two language barriers (Japanese to Korean and Korean to English) it's tough to get accurate info. Here's what I do know.

• The fight will be at 70 kgs.  This is a weight class higher than I normally fight at but weigh ins are the same day and I know that most Japanese fighters don't really cut weight.
• I will fly from Busan to Tokyo with 4 other Korean fighters on Friday January 8th, fight on January 9th just outside of Tokyo and fly home on Sunday the 10th.
• The rules of the fight are slightly modified.  Full MMA rules on the feet, full ground and pound on the ground but no submissions.  I'm not sure if this is good for me or not.  On one hand being able to take someone down without worrying about submissions is awesome, on the other hand my submission game is a lot more dangerous now than it was three months ago.
• The organization does not pay travel.  It's really expensive to fly to and stay in Japan, especially Tokyo.  Luckily I've had a few sponsors step up and it looks like I'll be able to swing the cost of travel. More about that later.
  

Other than that I'm pretty much flying blind.   I don't know much about the guy I'm fighting, but the owner of Daegu MMA seems convinced that this is a fight I should win.  I don't know who will be cornering me.  I'm not sure if anyone from the club will be going.  I know there is a fighter from another Daegu MMA location that is also fighting. Maybe we will corner each other.  Maybe I'll put some feelers out to see if there are any mutual acquaintances in the fight scene in Japan that would be up for it.  I don't know the name of the organization I'm fighting for; it might be an organization I know or it might be a fly-by-night one time promoter tat will never be heard from again.  I don't know how big of an event this is.  I'm prepared for the venue to be a local gym with 30 people watching and I'm also prepared to walk into a big venue with a few thousand spectators.

There were a number of legitimate reasons for me to not take this fight. Wrong weight class, lots of unknowns, bad money etc.. but in the end one of the main reasons I came here was to fight and fighting in Japan is an opportunity that a lot of fighters would kill to have.  I don't want to leave Korea and say, "man, I wish I would have fought in Japan while I was here."

So, as they say, Game On.

Then you really might know what it's like... to fight.

What is it like to fight? I get asked some variation of this question fairly regularly, usually by people that might have plans to step in the cage themselves or sometimes when I have an upcoming fight.  While every fight is different for me and every fighter has different experiences, there are some common threads in what I and other fighters feel in the months, weeks, days, hours and minutes leading up to the fight.  I'll do my best to try and explain the mental, physical and psychological rollercoaster that I go through every time I fight.  Some people might think that writing this down for others to see is allowing others to see my weaknesses, but I don't see it that way.  I'm sure every fighter goes through some version of what I'm writing down.

For me the experience begins when I get an offer for a fight.  Usually the offer arrives via my coach Jim, who usually approaches me walking into the gym for a training session.  There is usually little time to debate on taking a fight or not.  After a few minutes on google doing some preliminary research about the potential opponent a decision is reached.  While the fight is still a long ways off at this point, the moment when I accept a fight is emotionally intense.  It's the moment when things get "real" in a hurry.  Even though you've been training with the intent of fighting, putting a name and face to a person that you know is training to beat you up and putting a date to when it'll happen always triggers an adrenaline dump in my system.

The months and weeks of training leading up to a fight is when the ups and downs of fighting really show.  You have good days and you have bad days.  A lot goes into preparing for a fight.  You need to prepare your body for any conditions it might encounter... a long, drawn out war that will tax your cardiovascular system and muscular endurance or a fast paced fight where you will have to rely on explosiveness, speed and power. Running, intervals, powerlifting and periodized physical training are all part of the prgoram.  You have to make sure that your technical skills and timing are sharp. You drill and work out the details in your kickboxing, wrestling and jiu jitsu and work on smooth transitions and combinations of all three.  You prep your strategy and game plan. You watch tape of your opponent and  work out situations that you can exploit in the fight and how to get to them.  You anticipating and train for bad situations and "worst case" scenarios. You prepare  "Plan B" in case the original game plan goes out the window the first time you get cracked in the melon.
You have days when you feel like you could knock anybody out on the feet and you have days when rookie grapplers are taking you down and submitting you.  This is all normal; It's the nature of physical performance that you can't always be at your best.  Even knowing this, the ups and downs of training coupled with he physical abuse that your body takes can make even the friendliest fighter cranky and moody.  It becomes hard to keep an even keel through practice.  If you push yourself to failure you sometimes feel like you're body isn't ready.  If you don't push yourself to failure you feel like you're not working hard enough.

The physical ups and downs are one thing, but I find the mental rollercoaster can be just as bad. In the extended time leading up to a fight I flip flop from thoughts of being invincible to thoughts of being hopelessly overmatched.  Going from "This guy is a chump, there is no way he can beat be, I'm a better athlete, I'm in better shape, my skills are better in every area, I have a better game plan, I have the better training partners and coaches."  To thoughts like "I'm not ready, I'm not in good enough shape, I can't fight with this ---------- injury, I haven't sparred enough, his jiu jitsu/wrestling/kickboxing is too good, I'm in over my head." and back again is par for the course.  These thoughts will flip flop several times before a fight, sometimes in the matter of a day or even hours. A good training session can leave me feeling invincible and a tough session will often have me leaving the gym with shaken confidence.  Luckily I've experienced these emotions many times and have come to accept and expect them.

The last week of preparation before fight night is time to taper down the training intensity, let your body heal, fine tune some small technical and strategic details and make sure your weight is on point.  This always feels like the longest week; you're used to training and sparring hard and just want to fight.  During this week I always feel like I could fight at the drop of a hat.  Let's do it,  lets' get it over with.   You feel like a wild animal that 's been caged and muzzled.  Because your training volume is lower, there's more time for crazy thoughts to burrow into your head.  You realize the absurdity of what you are about to do and question why you would ever think that it was a good idea.  Around this time my internal monologue always sounds something like this: "I'm going to step into a steel cage with a guy who's only goal is to do physical harm to me.  Why on earth would I do this?  I'm a smart guy, I have a good job, I don't have to do this. I'm never doing this again. This is stupid, this is going to be my last fight."  This happens all the time, but again, it's a lot easier to deal with when you know that it's going to happen.

The night of weigh ins is always a fun night for me.  All the hard work has been done at this point, the journey is almost over.  All there is left to do is step on the scale, flex for the camera and relax until fight time.  This is usually the first time that you see your opponent in person, which is always something that makes my heart jump into my throat a little bit. I find the post weigh-in face-off hard to take, but probably not for the reasons you'd think.  I'm not generally a mean person and standing in front of someone trying to look mean or tough cracks me up.  I can barely keep a smile or laugh in. I usually try to go say hi to my opponent before the weigh ins to make that moment a little less strange.  Some opponents are friendly, some aren't.  I always have to laugh at some of the fighters who try to "walk tough" at the weigh ins.  There's always a few who are posturing and trying to intimidate their opponents. I feel like saying "Guess what guys? Everyone here is a fighter, everyone knows your tough, you can drop the act, we're all going to have a drink together when it's all over."

Some fighters find fight day to be extremely stressful, but not me.  In my mind the outcome of the fight has already been determined by the way you've trained for the fight; all there is left to do is go out, implement the game plan and giv'er hell.  I don't like to think too much about the fight on fight day; I've already done weeks of visualization and mental preparation, nothing I do at this point is going to change much.  Having lots of downtime is when your mind starts to wander and all kinds of  thoughts creep into your head. To avoid this, it's good to have things to do and a good group of people to hang out with.  On fight day I like to sleep in late, get up and have a big breakfast with all of the team members that are at the event.  This is usually followed by a team walk to loosen up the legs a little bit. I'm lucky to have a great group of fighters, trainers ans support guys that travel with us most of the time and make this part of the adventure a lot easier and more fun. Throughout the day I'll probably watch a movie, read the newspaper, wander around the venue and chat with other fighters, spectators or coaches... anything to keep occupied.

I can't speak for every fighter, but for me the emotions really start to get going when the fighters are called to the referee's meeting on fight night.  It's hard to keep an even keel when everywhere you go fighters are warming up, hitting pads, grappling and getting themselves psyched up in their own  way.  Realizing that I'm so close to fight time really gets the juices flowing.  I can feel the knot in my stomach start to grow.  I tell myself that this is normal, dumping adrenaline and other chemicals into the system is the bodies way of preparing for a dangerous situation.  Imagine experiencing every intense emotion you can think of; excitement, hate, fear, anticipation, relief, sadness etc...  Now imagine experiencing every one of those emotions on a constant loop with the intensity dial cranked up to 11 out of 10. Sometimes the things I feel don't even make sense. That's what fight night feels like to me. 

I try to stay as loose and calm for as long as possible.  I listen to some comedy or mellow music that I've loaded onto my Ipod and I find someone to play cards with for a while.  I start warming up with some light shadow boxing/wrestling three fights before mine.  I gradually pick up the pace until I'm in 5th gear with one fight to go before I step into the tunnel.  As I'm in the tunnel I tune down the intensity a half notch and focus on some mental cues and visualization that I've been rehearsing for the last few weeks.  When my name gets announced the adrenaline gates open and I step out towards the cage.  It sounds cliched, but when I climb into to the cage I feel like my senses are heightened.  I feel ultra aware of the physical stimuli that affects me directly.  The lights are extra bright.  I can feel every grain of the canvas under my feet.  I can smell the vinyl of the mats and coated fencing.  Then my opponent climbs into the cage and the world closes in on itself, leaving only the cage.  My vision actually seems to narrow and I can only see my opponent.  I can't hear the crowd anymore, my coaches voices being the only thing getting into my head.

When the bell rings I always have a brief instant of thinking "Holy *%$#, this guy is going to try and punch me!"  That passes quickly and all of the training tunes me into the things I need to be aware of.  Circle away from his power side,  watch his lead leg.  square off the cage,  move your feet, stay engaged...

When the fight is over the rest of the world opens back up with a rush.  I realize how big the venue is, or how loud the crows is, or that I recognize the guys in the front row seats.  The relief that I feel when a fight is over is hard to describe.  There is nothing like standing up and pumping your fists to the crowd in celebration after pouring every ounce of skill and effort you have onto the cage floor. It's the moment that you realize that all of the mental and physical punishment you put yourself through was worth it and all of the self doubt and questioning of yourself was for nothing.  You remember that the fight itself was important because of what you went through to get there.

Some fighters say they aren't scared.  I think those guys are lying, stupid or maybe complacent. If I don't get an emotional rush from fighting, fear included, I don't want to do it.  The intensity of feelings I get from fighting is something a lot of people won't ever get.  I get scared to fight all the time, but I'm not scared of being scared.  I don't let it cripple me.  I like it.  I think that part of the beauty of fighting is that by intentionally putting yourself in harms way you are doing something that goes against some of your deepest instincts.  You are stepping far outside the normal range of the human comfort zone and challenging yourself to do something you weren't sure if you could do, and to me that's what it's all about.  That and I like to win.





**I posted the video of my first amateur MMA fight in the top right corner of the page.  After writing this post it was interesting to watch this fight and think of how far I've come in the physical, mental and technical preparation of fighting.  It's also interesting to watch me as I get into the cage and compete... I look fairly calm and collected but I really can't remember being more scared. Having seen dozens of amateur fights in the last few years I think I can honestly say that this fight was better than 99% of them, but I'd still love to run into this guy as a pro.

Interesting note: This fight was at The Palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit in front of about 6000 fans.  That's still the biggest crowd I've fought in front of, even 6000 people in a facility that holds 25000 feels a bit empty. 



Things Koreans have figured out:  Glasses and Optometry.
I might have a hit put out on me by the eyewear industry bigwigs in North America after posting this.  If you are buying glasses in North America you are getting ripped off.  Today I bought a pair of cool glasses from the local glasses store (they're everywhere here).  They cost $10. That's $10 as in TEN.  That price included the lenses.  I gave them the glasses I was wearing and they matched the prescription and had my new ones finished in 10 minutes. With my purchase I got a coupon for $5 off my next pair. And a complementary gift choice of some socks or a towel.  Oh yeah, and 10% of my purchase price gets added to my membership towards another pair of glasses. Did I mention this wasn't a sale?   Go back and read that all again and try not to get mad about paying $250 for a pair of glasses and waiting 3 days fro them.

Things Koreans don't have figured out: ATM's
In Korea you can stay out all night.  The bars and restaurants don't close as long as there's people in them, and there always is.  Make sure to bring a stash of money though... the ATM's here don't work after midnight.  This makes it tough to catch a cab home when you've turned your pockets into bunny-ears looking for loose change.

Lost in Daegu, Turkey Day and a Bit of Payback Wrestling Style.

There's no 'Bed Bath & Beyond' in Korea... But a nice little Saturday nonetheless.

Saturday I got up early and headed out to meet up with a friend. Armed with the most basic Korean language skills, a couple of dollars in my pocket and some directions written in Korean that I copied off the interent I set out for my rendezvous. If you know me and my sense of direction you probably already know I never found the place or the person I was looking for. No matter though, I decided to cash in the silver lining and explore a cool new part of Daegu that I had never seen. I walked through a lot of interesting traditional shops and found the Daegu music district where I priced out a few guitars for a later date. Eventually I stumbled across a subway station which meant I was home free. Good thing too, 'cause I had no phone, was lost and had apparently copied my directions down wrong. I decided to hit the Seomun Market where you can buy just about anything for really cheap. The place is huge and there are different sections for produce, textiles, shoes, clothing, seafood, housewares, hats, bags and all sorts of other stuff. You could easily spend all day there just walking around, checking out the cool foods and vendors (check out the video of the pig "snack bar"). After a while I made my way back to Daegu MMA where I had a good Saturday workout and then hit the neighbourhood Jimjillbang, something I'm glad to say is becoming a Saturday tradition with some of the boys.



Picking up the pace at Daegu MMA
Everyday at Daegu MMA Heung Gull tests the limits of the connective tissue in my arms, neck and legs. I get submitted a lot. Without the gi I'm happy to keep it even, in the gi I have to set smaller goals such as "don't die". Wednesday was different. Heung Gull is fighting a wrestler soon so we've been doing more wrestling. On Wednesday we scrimmaged. Just the two of us. Ten 3 minute sessions. I beat him like he was the bully who picked on me and stole my lunch money in elementary school and we were meeting 10 years later after I grew two feet, hit the weights and figured out that I was good at inflicting pain on people. I tried to steal his soul. Heung Gull is just good enough at wrestling that I can use some of my really good stuff on him. He reacts properly, which allows me to set up and hit some of my best techniques. I threw everything in my repertoire at him and then some. Doubles, singles, high crotch, shoulder throw, front headlock, stepper, hip toss, whizzer, over under, inside leg trip. I hit them all and I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel gooooooooooood. Unfortunately, as every fighter knows, Some days you're the hammer and some days you're the nail. The next day was back to Gi Jiu Jitsu. With Heung Gull I'm more often the nail than the hammer.
Things have been ramping up at Daegu MMA. Un Sik has a kickboxing fight on Halloween night, Heung Gull is fighting in DEEP in November and there is a Jiu Jitsu tournament in early December. There are a lot more guys training a lot harder these days and more sparring partners to choose from. Wednesdays no gi class has had more of an MMA slant to it lately and people have been doing more MMA based drills and conditioning during open mat. It's a good atmosphere.
Heung Gall's opponent in DEEP is Mori Akihiko. Akihiko's record of 7-6 doesn't tell the whole story. He's fought in Sengoku, DEEP, K1 and many other quality promotions in Asia. He's been in the ring with some some very tough hombres. I've been working on the wresting clinch with Heung Gall quite a bit as Akihiko seems to like to bully people into the corner, tie them up and try to drag them down to the ground. From what I've sen I think Heung Gull's Jiu Jitsu and striking are better than Akihiko's. Even if Heung Gull does get taken down, this might not be a bad thing as long as he doesn't end up mounted or in side control. It's an interesting fight, I hope I can make the trip to watch.



Turkey Day & Pumpkin Carving
Being away from home on the holidays is never great, but lucky for us we have some awesome friends that hosted a Canadian Thanksgiving Day to make everyone feel a little more at home. Karen and Brian prepared a full thanksgiving spread and there were contributions from everyone else as well. There were no turkeys to be found anywhere in the city, but it's just as well, they probably wouldn't have fit in the toaster oven like the chickens did. Ovens don't really exist in Korea.
About 15 people took part in the festivities; most were Canadian but there were a few Americans and an Irishman stirred in for flavour.
The same friends, Karen and Brian, also hosted a pumpkin carving night as a low key alternative to our regular Friday night festivities. Unfortunately the pumpkins were carved pretty quickly and what followed was a 4:00 am Noraebang session. Some people should sing. Some people shouldn't. Sometimes Soju convinces people from group 1 that they belong to group 2.



The Contradictions of Korea

Before I left for Korea I had some friends who had been there tell me that I would run into all sorts of things that just didn't make sense. So True.

Example #1:
Being caught behind a Korean girl on the escalator is awkward; they wear skirts that have shorter inseams than some brief-cut underwear I own. Suffice it to say that girls would not be allowed to wear skirts like that in a Disney film. This seems to be perfectly ok with everybody. On the other hand, Koreans find it absolutely SCANDALOUS for a girl to show her shoulders. How dare they!?

Example #2: Blowing red lights is ok. Driving on the sidewalk is ok. Cutting off cyclists and pedestrians is ok. But don't you dare jaywalk, Koreans will yell at you.

The Happenings Keep Happening!

A new approach, a renewed commitment
(edited, click on the pics for high quality, full size versions)

I had an interesting day at jiu-jisu today. When I walked in, the club manager approached me right away and took me by the arm. I figured she was going to hassle me about club fees since I hadn't paid for this month yet (I had the money in my bag). Instead the conversation went like this.
"There is competition in Japan.. you compete?"
"Yeah, sure."
"It is MMA."
"Oh... when and where is it?"
"November 1st, Tokyo"
This puts me an interesting position. I do want to fight while I'm here and what better place than Tokyo, considered by many to be the mecca of MMA? I'm also honoured that Jae Hoon and the rest of the guys would ask me to represent their club as a pro. There are two problems. Number one is that my current visa is a one entry visa only. If I leave Korea I can't come back. I can get an addendum to my visa to allow me to travel, but I'm not sure how long that would take. To fight in Korea I also need a special "entertainers visa"... my current E2 teaching visa doesn't cut it. A few North Americans have been busted on this in the last year and fined heavily. Korea is also in the middle of a crackdown on foreigners working illegally. I'm assuming there is a similar type of visa that would be needed to fight in Japan.
While these are problems, they are probably solvable. The second problem is the big one. I'm not ready. And that's embarrassing. I've been here for almost a month and a half and while I've picked up my training a bit, and my jiu jitsu is much better already, I am not ready to fight and don't think I could be in less than a month. I discussed my concerns about the visa issues and my preparedness with the guys at the gym and thanked them for the opportunity but declined. I told them that I do not want to represent their club unless I am at my best and can represent them the way they should represented.
There is a jiu jitsu tournament on the first weekend of December. I plan to keep upping my training to compete at this tournament. I also decided on the spot that I wouldn't let a lack of preparation keep me from an opportunity like this again. After this tournament I need to be able to fight at just about any time. I've heard lots of stories about fights being offered on very short notice in Japan. Even in the days of Pride many fighters never found out who their opponents were until two weeks before the event. I need to take better care of my body, do some more MMA specific training each weak and start hitting the weights and conditioning a little harder. Don't get me wrong, I'm in good shape, I'm about 5 lbs. leaner than when I left from Canada. It won't take a lot to get to where I need to be, but I need to start now.
P.S. As I'm writing this I'm watching Dream 11 live on cable TV. All of the UFC and K1 events are also free on cable here. So awesome.

Chuseok Weekend

Last week we had Thursday and Friday off for Chuseok, which is usually called Korean Thanksgiving even though that comparison isn't entirely accurate. Wednesday at school we had some Chuseok celebrations. We got to wear Hamboek, traditional Korean clothing, make songpeon, which I like to think of as a Korean pirogi. We got lots of good pics so here's a few.














There sure is nothing wrong with a four day weekend and we took full advantage of it. Thursday Lisa and I climbed Gatbowi Mountain. It's about 2.5 km up and very steep in for the last half. At the top is an amazing Buddhist sculpture that was carved around the year 620. There is a Buddhist village, lots of monks around and a large prayer area at the top of the mountain. We got some awesome video and pictures and were able to buy some beads from the monks. Probably the highlight (or maybe lowlight) of the trip was when we were buying the beads the monk got a text message on his cellphone. I am not kidding. It kinda ruined the effect for me. I think Korea is probably the most wired country in the entire world. ou gt service everywhere; at the top of the highest mountains, deep underground in the subway and anywhere in rural Korea. Grandmas and Grandpas rock their Ipods on the subway and every six year old has a cell phone and can text faster than you can talk.
Friday afternoon a bunch of us left for Incheon, the second biggest city in Korea. We had booked a deep sea fishing excursion and were pretty stoked. This was our plan. We would leave Daegu at 5:00 pm, and get to Incheon around 9:00. Since the fishing people were picking us up around 4:00 am we would not bother with a hotel, and instead carry our gear around downtown while we explored the nightlife. When the shuttle picked us up we would just get on the boat and start fishing, which would go all day until 6:00 pm the next day. What could go wrong right? Believe it or not, nothing did. We had an awesome time all night (the bus ride could be a separate post in itself) and made our connection with no problem. From there things got a little shaky.
Our driver took us to the wharf which in the middle of the night was one of the sketchiest places I've ever seen. The roads where rough, there was garbage blowing across the streets like tumbleweed and stray dogs were wandering all over the place. The place we stopped at looked like it was once a convenience store but was now half covered with a tarp instead of a roof. The lights that were actually working weren't throwing enough light to see anything, but just enough to make the shadows look extra scary. This is when our guide got out and disappeared. He probably only left for a few minutes, but in a place that looked like the set for a bad horror movie, it felt very, very long. We eventually got down to the boat landing where we had to wait about 20 minutes for a boat. While we were waiting I heard "thump, thump" and looked over to see two south Korean soldiers, fully armed and outfitted for taking care of whoever needed taking care of, crouching down after coming over the wharf fence. Two other soldiers quickly followed and the entire unit came out way. These guys had some serious firepower with them, but turned out to be very friendly. They did not want us to take a picture of the door that they were heading towards though... I guess this is the reality of living so close to the border of two countries that are essentially still at war.
Once we got on the boat we had to motor out of the harbour, a trip that took about an hour and a half. This trip was really representative of Korea for me. Amazing natural beauty scarred by major industrial development and waste. We moved through an entire fleet of rusted out tankers and barges and past shore based refineries that blocked the view of the nearby mountains. It looked like something out of 'Waterwold' or some other cheesy, post-apocalyptic movie.
When we busted out the fishing rods I was pretty jacked. They were heavy duty and were spooled with 30 lb test fishing line. We were going to catch some serious fish here. We thought. About five minutes into fishing I caught what looked a lot like a rock bass and was about the same size. I wished the little fella bon voyage and sent him back from whence he came. About 40 minutes later depression set in as I noticed that the Korean guy with us was keeping all of these fish and that's all we'd be catching. Check out the video above to see what I'm talking about. Overall the trip was great, it's just too bad we paid a bunch of money to catch a couple fish that I wouldn't keep at home.








P.S. Does anyone know who this blond girl is? Every time I mention getting some pics for my blog she jumps right in there. Photo stalker I guess.




P.P.S. Shinya Aoki is an absolute wizard! He just scored full mount with a guillotine, added a top side body triangle and transitioned into an armbar to beat Joachim Hansen with 2 seconds left in the fight to win the Dream light weight title. I think he was losing the fight until that point.