A few weeks ago on of our team members was involved in one of the most exciting fights that I can remember seeing live or televised. It was an amateur fight between two good amateur fighters,both ready to go pro very soon. The fight featured multiple knock downs, a saved-by-the-bell near submission and a few "asleep on his feet" near KO's. The video of this fight has gone viral. It's been posted on every mma website of note (including bjpenn.com, mixedmartialarts.com and middleeasy.com) and was also featured on Inside MMA with hosts Bas Rutten and Kenny (the living dead) Rice. Seriously have you seen that guy? Somebody get him a vitamin drink. You can watch the fight here.
This was, no doubt, a super exciting fight. Problem is, it wasn't a good fight. Is a hockey game "good" when both teams have shitty defense and a terrible goalie? Nope, it's sloppy, and so was this fight. I've had tons of people in the last few weeks talk to me about what an "awesome" fight it was. I always respond by saying that "it sure was exciting". Unfortunately our fighter, Owen, put on a good show, but didn't show how well he has developed as a fighter over the last little while. He has made a lot of technical improvements in his game and improved his skill set tremendously. All of that went out the window after the first punch landed. He didn't show his improved wrestling, ground game and much more technical and striking. He slung leather with bad intentions. And, while the crowd loved it, he left the cage without the belt he came with, having taken much more punishment than he needed to.
The "be exciting" vs "just win" argument pops up at all levels of mma, and this fight highlights the struggle to find a balance between the two sides. Our fighter got a lot of attention and press for a fight where he didn't perform particularly well and eventually lost. Is that attention and notoriety worth the lost brain cells and a championship belt? I don't think so. As a fighter I believe that job #1 is win. Job #2 is be exciting. Additional Info
Owen Martin is a 7-2 amateur Welterweight from Garden River, Ontario who fights out of Steel City MMA in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario
This event was "Rumble on the Border 2" presented by Big John's MMA and Berserker MMA. It was a pro-am event headlined by former SCMMA fighter Adrian Vilaca who now lives and trains in Toronto, Ontario. Vilcaca improved his pro record to 2-0 (after a 6-0 amateur career) by defeating Extreme Couture Las Vegas fighter Kyosuke Yokoyama.
SCMMA fighter Josh Fryia won his flyweight matchup against Joe Julio by TKO
Independent fighter Dalton Macfarlane, who trained with SCMMA leading up to this fight won his fight via 2nd round KO
What are the chances that one tiny highschool, population 500ish has two teachers that are professional figters? The school I teach at does. Thers' myself, obviously, and another fella named Ray. Ray and I wrestled at the same University (Lakehead Thunderwolves) and train together in MMA. Naturally, kids want to know who would win a fight or wrestling match. Instead of breaking their hearts with the truth that Ray would get twisted up like a pair of hand wraps in the washing machine (kids tend to like him for some reason) I usually just say that it would not be a fight anyone would enjoy. The poor guy is such a head case I don't think he could handle the truth. The only thing in worse shape than his body is his self esteem. That doesn't stop kids from asking though, and we often exchange in smack talk through mutual students. Getting a kid to deliver a well timed chirp to someone on the other side of the school can be very rewarding. We've developed quite a second hand rivalry and kids get more worked up about it than we do. That's why when news leaked out that Ray and I would scrap it out in a wrestling match in front of the school as the entertainment portion of our Intramural awards assembly there was a bit of a buzz aorund the school. Needless to say, people were not expecting us to come out in full sumo suits. I suppose some would say that Ray won the match, but it's only because he's fat.
**disclaimer** I'm now typing and posting from my tablet so I can't embed videos or make secondary titles. I will also blame any spelling or grammar mistakes on this. Any previous spelling mistakes are to be blamed on our education system, especially those dirt-bag English teachers.
Two Weeks Out From Fight Night
Friday was exactly two weeks until weigh in for my fight and I haven't cut weight since November so I decided to do a test weight cut to see how my body handles it. I didn't cut all the way but i felt okay. The full weight cut won't be fun, but it's definitely doable. Instead of going to a gym to do the weight cut I went out to Ray's house because he built a gym and a sauna in his barn (there's a reason his nickname is scrapyard). Check it out.
Traveling and Training
I'm currently on the road in southern Ontario coaching at the Canada Cup of Wrestling and then training at a few different places for my fight coming up. I'll probably post everyday while I'm on the road so hopefully I find my way to a real computer to load some of the vids.
I got back yesterday from a Jiu Jitsu tournament outside of Seoul. In true Korean fashion, I wasn't informed of the tournament until the week before. Also in true Korean fashion I wasn't told that this tournament was the Korean Pro Abu Dhabi qualifier and the biggest BJJ tourny of the year in Korea until I got in the van to go to the tournament. Since I've been focusing on my upcoming fight I haven't really been training in the gi at all and I asked our coach if I could enter the no gi tournament only. He wasn't buying it and entered me into the gi, gi absolute and no gi divisions. Tough luck for me.
The tournament was on Sunday in a city called Bucheon which is about a three and a half hour drive from Daegu. We left from the club at 5:30 am to get there in time to weigh in and start competing at 10:00. Once our team was weighed in I put my gi on for the first time in three weeks and headed down to the mat where I was the second match of the day. My first match was against a guy I had beaten handily at an earlier tournament. I proceeded to get flying armbarred less than 10 seconds into the match. I'm not sure if I've ever been that embarrassed at a tournament before. Not only did I lose, I was out of the tournament and had to watch as a guy I've beat before worked his way through the bracket and won the division. It was frustrating, but I earned that loss. I simply was not ready for that match. Luckily I still had the gi absolute division coming up. What chance would I have against the monsters and winners from all of the other weight classes if I couldn't even last 10 seconds in my own weight class? Plenty it turns out. I think I just needed a good kick in the pants to get going and that first loss was just what the doctor ordered.
In my first absolute match I fought a guy who had competed in the heavyweight (100 kg) division. He smirked at me when the drawmaster put us together, kind of like he thought it was funny. He thought it was a lot less funny when I rolled up an 8-0 lead before submitting him with a north/south choke. If the first guy I fought was big, the next guy was an absolute terror. He was a member of the U.S. Airforce and was a superheavyweight who probably had the same body fat percentage that I did. To say he was intimidating was an understatement. I heard someone refer to him as "Black Hercules". Luckily he was considerably less intimidating when he put his gi on.
I don't think many people gave me much of a chance to beat him (he steamrolled a pretty tough dude in his previous match) but I had a decent game plan. I had watched a few of his matches through out the day. He had pretty much bullied his way through the tournament by using a bull rush double leg, leaning on people until they collapsed and doing nothing on top except not get submitted. I knew that as hard as he pushed on his opponents he would be in trouble if he ever came up against anyone who could throw well. It never occurred to me that it might be me. Sure enough, about a minute into the match I caught him pushing too hard and launched him with a hip toss going out of bounds. He got up, dusted himself off and said "good job". Then he came at me even harder. He blasted me out of bounds and into some spectators 3 or 4 times, but I kept my feet moving and didn't let him in on my legs. At one point he shot a double and had me scrambling. In desperation I turned and threw my hips into a whizzer as hard as I could and threw him onto his back again. This time he did not tell me "good job". He was getting pretty cheezed at losing to a 68 kg. geek. I tried my luck one more time and tried to hit him with a shoulder throw. I was very close to scoring the takedown but we went out of bounds. I thought. You can't see it on the tape, but I landed with both knees and feet completely on the wood floor. Little did I know that one of his feet was still on the edge of the mat, making us still in bounds. I stopped fighting and he took the opportunity to take back mount. We eventually went out of bounds and got re started in the center with him in back mount. I knew if I could sneak my way out of danger and hold him off for under a minute I'd win on points. I managed to do just that.
After that match I had exactly 5 minutes to get ready for the final. In the final I fought one of my teammates who competed at and won the 90kg. division. The match was a little slow but I ended up submitting him with an Americana.
What I Really Came For
After the gi portion was done I suited up for the no gi open division which was what I was really excited for. getting to test myself against the best grapplers in the country in the style that I like best appealed to me. In my first match I submitted a blue belt with a D'arce choke and in my second match I beat a purple belt on points, 10-2. In the final I met a very strong blue belt that sometimes comes to our club to train. I was leading for a good chunk of the match but eventually got my back taken in a scramble and submitted to a choke after fighting it off for what felt like an hour.
A gold in the Gi absolute and a silver in open no-gi was a good way to finish off the day after a tanking out of my first division.
Mfight (a Korean MMA website) was at the event taking video and pictures. They also handed out a "Fighter of the Day" award. They apparently thought that my win in the absolute division was worthy of the award. I was honored to get the award but I know there were lots of better performances and better fighters at the event. For example, my buddy Bo Kue won the Abu Dhabi Trials and the absolute no-gi tournament. In the semi final he got caught in a deep triangle choke that looked like game over. He somehow fought it off for over 2 minutes (he told me later that he was very close to going to sleep) before storming back and wining on points. In the final he dug himself an 11-0 deficit (which I'm sure had something to do with being gassed from his last match) before submitting his opponent with a kimura. To me that kind of fighting spirit is what should earn "Fighter of the Day". But the trophy sure is nice and shiny.
Champions One and All
Daegu MMA won the team title, even without Heung Kul and Un Sik, our two best jiu jitsu players competing. As far as grappling goes, we've won everything in sight this year. Looking at all of the studs in the team picture below makes me realize what a stacked team Daegu MMA actually is. Lots of guys train at different times and you rarely see all of the best guys together in one place, but when you do it's a hell of a team to deal with.
It's Raining men Fights!
Saying "when it rains, it pours" is about as cliched as it gets, but sometimes the cliche fits. The actual monsoon season is approaching in Korea and along with it I've been flooded with fight opportunities. First I was offered a spot in the Sengoku Asian Bantamweight Grand Prix, but was pulled because I wasn't Korean. Then I was offered a very tough fight in DEEP at the end of August which I accepted. Last week I was offered another fight in DEEP: Grachan to fight on the same card as my friend and training partner Un Sik. I had to decline because of previous commitments that couldn't be changed. saturday I was offered a spot as a short notice opponent for Ikuo Usuda on the Sengoku 13 card. The event is this coming Sunday. Even though I initially jumped at the chance to fight in Sengoku the more I thought about this fight, the more I didn't like it. First of all it is a very big fight on very short notice and I have only been training hard again for a little over a month. As much as I'd like to think that my athleticism would carry me through I know that there are lots of things I need to iron out before I fight a high level fight. I fought once on a lot less preparation than I should have had and told myself I would never do it again. The next thing is that the fight is at 65 kg. This is the weight I have fought at before but I am much leaner right now and will be fighting at a lower weight in the future. After practice today I was 66.5 kg. Usuda on the other hand is coming down for his first fight at 65 kgs. after going 6-0 in Shooto and Sengoku as a 70 kg. fighter. He would be a huge 65 kg fighter and I would be pretty small for that weight. This is the kind of fight I am looking for in the future, but I don't think is a good decision for me right now. Coincidentally, Usuda's original opponent was suposed to be a guy I fought and beat at the East Asian Sambo Championships. On the plus side, it's good to know that I am finally on the radar of some of the bigger Asian promotions.
Some things never change. Jim Liguori, who owns and coaches Ho Shin Sool MMA used to go crazy because I would leave my stuff all over the place. I would forget my shirt on the floor, leave my hand-wraps hanging on a doorknob, leave my mouthguard on the windowsill... you name it, I forgot it at the club. Well, Jim will be happy to know that it's just not him, I do it to the coach/owner at Daegu MMA too. Usually it's not a big deal because I can pick it up the next day, but about a month ago I lost my custom fit mouthguard that my dentist friend Riley made for me. I finally found it today and was super pumped; I never knew how much better a custom mouthguard was until I tried one. While I'm on the topic, it's great to have a friend as your dentist. How many times have you wanted to swear at your dentist? I can do it freely. When she says dentist-y things like "Hmmm, your gums are bleeding a little bit." I can say things like "No kidding, you just stabbed them with a sharp metal poker; I'm pretty sure I'd bleed anywhere if you did that."
Where Am I and How Did I Get Here?
After a few amateur MMA fights I decided it was time to step things up and fight as a pro. In two years I racked up a 4-1 record as a pro. I can honestly say that none of the opponents I fought were particular studs, even the one opponent I lost to. All of my wins came via TKO or submission stoppage, with none of my opponents making it past the 3rd minute of the first round. The lone loss on my record was disappointing but I don't think reflects on my skills as a fighter. It was a fight I took unprepared. I went into the fight in not great shape and without having put in the training time I should have. Even still, I was dominating my opponent for most of the fight. I picked him up and took him down with a slam and was delivering some ground and pound. As I was standing in his guard I got sloppy (overconfident?) and hung my head lazily, getting caught in a guillotine in the process. I got back on the winning track shortly after, but promised myself I would never fight unprepared like that again. Regardless of the results, I felt like it was time to step up the level of my competition. I had a tough time doing so, in large part because of the expense of getting me from Sault Ste. Marie to a place where big fights happen. Sault Ste. Marie is not exactly a travel hub and organizations weren't very willing to spend big money to fly me to their fights. That's why I decided to temporarily relocate to a place where bigger fights might come my way. Hence, Korea.
While some people might think I'm jumping into the deep end of the pool with my upcoming fight, that was exactly my goal in coming here. I always felt like I could compete at a much higher level than I was and now I'm getting the chance to prove it. I've always thought that testing your limits is an important part of life. How can you really know who you are if you don't know what you're capable of?
Picnic Time!
The Daegu MMA family often goes on weekend outings together and this weekend I was lucky enough to attend my first team/family outing. We drove a ways out of town and hiked up a mountain towards a stream and some mountain top pools. This place was amazing. There were dozens of pools of crystal clear cold mountain water and you could slide down the rocks into them. Here's some pics of the main pool that we spent most of our time at.
View from above the main pool.
Left to right: Po Kue, Jae Hoon and Me.
At one point Jae Hoon dove down to the bottom of the pool and came up saying "pink hat! pink hat!". I wasn't sure why he was so amazed about a hat at the bottom of a pool of water but he eventually said "I get it!" and dove down to retrieve the object in question. When he came back up he was holding a SEVERED PIG'S HEAD. No joke. "Pig head", not "pink hat". Then he threw it at someone.
After swimming we set up our grill and proceeded to eat ridiculous amounts of samguipsal and galbi. If we had twice as many people as were actually there we still would have had way too much food, but that's pretty typical of eating with Koreans.
Quick Question
Who doesn't have a story that starts with "So I'm juggling cans of paint in class..". I'll let you guess how that turned out.
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.
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.
Increased Training
I've picked up my training again in the last few weeks. I have an injury that limits what I can do in certain situations but certainly does not prevent me from training. I got a little caught up in feeling sorry for myself and was letting the things I couldn't do get in the way of the things I could do, and that should never happen. I'm not sure what shook me out of it but my workouts have been a lot better lately. I've been doing a lot more stand up sparring lately, especially because a lot of the guys have had kickboxing fights to get ready for. There are a lot more opportunities to fight for our club right now and I think that I'll take a fight before I leave. I won't be fighting at 100%, but no one really ever does and I've competed with worse injuries. I think if I went home without fighting at least once I'd be mad at myself for a long time.
Usain Bolt and Company
The World Track and Field Championships are coming to Daegu in 2011 and to lead up to it the venue is hosting a few preparation meets to get the logistics ironed out. The last of these meets is this Wednesday. The lineup for the meet is pretty wild. 4 former Olympic Champions and about a bazillion world champs, olympic medalists and world medalists. Usain Bolt will be here to run the 100m which should be pretty awesome. I'm pretty excited for this. I love track and field and I love watching people who are the best at what they do. Watching the best track athletes in the world is double +++ in my books.
ENGRISHEE! I found a few more good Konglish signs lately. These are two of my favourites.
Man, they recycle everything here.
This is either a place where a dude can get his hair cut by another dude, or one of `those` barbershops.
New club, New Weekend Job
Daegu MMA is moving it's location to an area that is a little more advantageous as far as visibility and passing traffic. Daegu MMA is also starting a weekend kids program for elementary school students. A little bit of wrestling, a little bit of jiu jitsu, and a little bit of kickboxing. In Korea having English speaking instructors is a big deal and a major draw so they asked if I would coach the program. I really like coaching kids, especially in an environment where we can run around, roll around and play combative games. and said yes before I even knew they were going to pay me.
Things Koreans are Awesome at: Parking
Because space is at such a premium in Korea Koreans are amazing at parking. They fit cars vans and trucks ito spaces you would never even attempt in the western world, and they usually do it on the first try.
Today I saw a guy park his van so close to a wall he couldn't even open the sliding door. No joke. Fact is, if you can't park like this, you proabably can't drive in Korea. Things Koreans Suck at: Signaling
Koreans don't feel the need to signal anything. Instead they just fly their car into the smallest opening and lay on the horn if someone looks like they're coming too close or weren't able to telepathically anticipate the lane change or turn. If you see someone with their blinker on it simply means "Hey loser, quit riding my bumper and go around."
