Good Fights vs. Exciting Fight

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

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.

Why Do we Fight (or... Why Fighting is Important)

People often ask me why I fight.  There's a hundred reasons, and I could talk about each of them for hours.  I could talk about the evolutionary or anthropological reasons that people fight; the reasons that the fight or flight response is hardwired into our brains to facilitate human survival.  I could talk about growing up in a family where stories of warriors, be they athletes, schoolyard scrappers or decorated WWI and WWII veterans figured prominently into family history.  I could talk about the need to test my limits and challenge myself both physically and mentally.  I could talk about the purity of combat sports; no balls, nets, hoops or equipment. Just you, your opponent and all of the skill and preparation you could both muster.  I've heard a lot of different fighters explain why they fight a lot of different ways.  I ran across this video recently and enjoyed a slight twist on the overcooked question of "Why do you fight?" Instead of dealing with the question the speaker in the video discusses why fighting is important. 

King of the Cage: Underground 69

 Fight night is about a week away and I've done most of the hard work.  it's time to let me body heal, finalize some gameplan ideas, sharpen a few technical skills and make sure that my weight is good.  I'm looking forward to getting back in the cage, even though it's always a bit of  a crazy feeling.  People who tel you they don;t get nervous are either lying or stupid.  That nervous feeling is your body preparing itself to do something it doesn't normally do.  If that's not happening, something's wrong. I've fought 10 or 11 times now and I still get those feelings.  The only real difference is now I expect them and they don't really bother me.











Steel City MMA

Steel City MMA is opening it's doors on Sept. 1st 2011.  You can now register online for Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Wrestling, MMA or any combination of the above. Check out the on-line registration page.  Click on the "Steel City MMA tab, change the date to September and select the class or classes you'd like to enroll in.  Also, join our facebook page and check out our website for prices, schedule and other info.

Ontario Couch Surfing Tour 2011 Wrap Up.

Best dressed guy in the room!

Is it lame to have a signature shirt when you aren't even remotely famous? Probably. Can you turn someone down if they offer to make you a signature t shirt? Nope. That's why you won't catch me wearing my shirt except on fight day. I did however spot my buddy Adrian Vilaca wearing my shirt in his facebook profile picture while training in Ottawa.

Adrian is a good dude to have around for mma training camps. Always ready to help, able to push people in all aspects of the game and knowledgeable about sport specific training methods. Check out his training and coaching blog here.  Turnaround is fair play so here's me wearing my "Vengeance" Vilaca shirt training with Jesse Ronson and Chris Clements at Adrenaline Training Center. Both guys have fights coming up so I trained with them for a a few days while I was in London.   An ex- wrestling teammate by the name of Andrew Elliot is helping both guys get ready for their fights so we spent a few days together training in the cage and on the mats, working on a few specific situations and sharing knowledge.


Chris Clements is the Ringside welterweight champ and actually has the record for the fastest KO in MMA history.

 


The Life of a Drifter.
On my trip I was lucky enough to train with some great fighters and people at Xtreme Couture, Bruckman's Martial Arts, MECCA Jiu Jitsu/MMA and Adrenaline Training Center.  Another great thing about couch surfung my way through Southern Ontario was catching up with family, friends and teammates, some of whom I hadn't seen in a long time.   Big thanks to Andy, Andrew, Andy (yes, two Andy's) Katie, Puds, Dee and aunt Mary for the hospitality, couches, pools, barbeques and meals. It was great to see everyone and catch up.

On the Road, Training and Visiting

I had a great day of training yesterday.  In the morning I went to Extreme Couture and did some no gi jiu jitsu with Micha Circunov and Darson Hemmings and did some bag work.  In the evening I went to Bruckman's Martial Arts in Oshawa where I did some wrestling, some light sparring and some pad work with Antonio Carvalho.  Carvalho is coming off a big win and recently signed with the UFC.  He made a name for himself fighting in Japan and beating some of the top featherweights in the world like Rumina Sato and Hatsu Hioki.  When I fought in Japan he helped me a out a lot by hooking me up with some great people that helped me find my way through Tokyo and even ended up cornering me.  Definitely one of the most solid and genuine guys I've met in the sport.  Check out one of his recent fights back in Canada.  


Today I'm off to Train at MECCA in downtown Toronto and tomorrow I'm headed to London to train at Adrenaline Training Center for a few days.

Thanks to Andrew and Andy for letting me crash at their house while in Toronto.

The Pofessor vs. Scrapyard

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.

Finally, News.

Well I have a few pieces of news that I've been holding on to for a while and can now let out.  First, the small stuff.  I'll be fighting on King of the Cage on July 16th at Kewedin Casino in Sault Ste. Marie Michigan.  My opponent is a tough dude with a pro record of 3-1 with 3 Knock outs and a solid wrestling background.  He'll be the toughest guy I've faced in King of the Cage yet, and I'm excited for the challenge.  This event will also air on television in Canada and the U.S.A., which is pretty cool.  I'll post more details about that when I get them.

  I had another fight lined up for a big event in Ontario and then it got cancelled. Then it was on again.  And then off.   There was lots of playing games from the opponent I was supposed to fight, but in the end he declined to fight me.  Such is life.  I think I'll run into him somewhere along the line. 

And now the bigger news.  For a little less than a month I haven't been training at Ho Shin Sool.  Nothing personal, just a difference of opinion about the direction that our fighters should be going and what they should be doing.  In that time I've gone back to fundamentals.  I wrestle with wrestlers, I do jiu jitsu with jiu jitsu players and I box with boxers.  It's felt good to work on these skills again in isolation. In addition to training, I've been working on opening my own MMA club.  Things have moved really quickly and I signed the lease papers this past weekend.  So with little fanfare and without further ado I give you...

 

We don't open our doors until September, but the website is up here with info, schedules, prices etc... Check it out.

Travelling to Train

I have a disease.  An affliction, if you will. No, not the tacky MMA Tshirt kind of affliction.  I simply cannot go somewhere, whether it be to visit friends, or on vacation, without checking out places to train in the area.  My personal motto could easily be " Training gear.  Don't leave home without it." or "Got gear, Will travel."  It drives my fiance nuts when we talk about going on a trip and I immediately google what MMA or Jiu Jitsu clubs are in the area.   Last year when we were in the middle of a legal battle with our boss we took a 10 day vacation to the Philippines.  It was what I imagine heaven looks like.  We stayed on the Island of Borocay, named one of the top 10 beaches in the WORLD, in a hut for eleven dollars a night.  During the day we drank 25 cent beers and highballs all day long.  When we were sober enough we would go snorkeling or on a boat ride with one of the local operators.  Apparently that wasn't enough for me.  I needed to get punched in the face or have my arm torqued by some local fighters to feel like I really understood the place.

Fighter entrance at the MMA event in Manilla

Luckily for me I did some research and made some contacts before we got to Manilla.  As luck would have it the night that we flew into Manilla was also the night of the biggest MMA event of the year in the Philippines.  I made plans to meet up with a few local fighters at the event.  The event itself was pretty cool, and the fighters hooked me up with some places to train boxing and jiu jitsu for the next few days.  It was pretty sweet.  Check out the pics.

One of the things I am looking forward to this summer is the opportunity to take a few road trips and do some training.  I'll probably hit Adrenaline Training Center in London, Xtreme Couture in Toronto, visit my buddy Adrian who is spending the summer in Ottawa and train with OAMA or FIT MMA and I'd like to take a trip back to my old stomping grounds in Thunder Bay and train with the boys at Leading Edge. 

Throwing an omoplata in the Philippines.  I know, I know... My hips should be facing the other way.

Super Kid Smashes Some Other Korean Guy.

A while ago I posted a video of one of the "Super babies" that train at Daegu MMA in Korea.  I told you to keep an eye on some of them and that you'd probably be hearing their names at some point.  Well one of those kids that we often called "Monkey" (His real name is Sang Yeon Kim) turned 16 recently and had his first pro fight.  That's right.  First pro fight at 16 years old.  He absolutely dominated and stopped the guy on strikes from mount in under a minute.  You can see the video here  but be warned, the video loads really slowly.



Hanging out with Aoki and Imanari.  No big deal.

Speaking of travelling for MMA, I ran across a few pics from my trip to Japan the other day.   There were two back to back pics of Mazakazu Imanari and Shinya Aoki, two of the best grapplers in the MMA game, that I thought were pretty funny.  I was trying to act nonchalant at the weigh-ins for DEEP.  You know, act like you've been there before type of thing.  I couldn't resist taking a few snaps of these guys though.  Funny thing is every time I took a picture they happened to be looking right at the camera with a "why is this other fighter taking pictures of me?" look on their face.

That's my Korean buddy Dong Hyun in the foreground and Aoki peering over the table in the background.  What're you staring at Shinya?  You need a knuckle sandwich?

You too Imanari?  You eyeballing me?  Yeah, I didn't think so.

NEWS! (nope, just kidding, still can't say anything)
Lots of people have been asking about my "news".  I really thought I'd be able to let it out by now, but that is not the case.  I've had a few fights tentatively booked and fall through and there are a few more options on the table.  As soon as I know anything for sure I'll post it here.  Some of you have sen my face on the poster for a upcoming King of the Cage event.  That fight is not confirmed yet, although it is a possibility.  The Ontario MMA scene is still new and growing.  Here's hoping tings settle down and become a little more predictable over the next year.

NEWS!... sorta

Here's a Teaser... Stay Tuned!

I have at least three separate pieces of news that I am itching to break. But I can't.  Yet.   I CAN tell you that I have some fight announcements coming up and that one of the fights will be televised in Canada and the USA.  How sweet is that?  I last fought about 6 months ago so I am really looking forward to getting back in there soon.

The Canada/Korea/USA Connection
Ever since I've returned to Canada I've had a fair bit of contact with the fellas at Daegu MMA in Korea.   I muddle throught the Korean Language website to post stuff and they always get one of their English speaking members to translate and post a reply.
It turns out that I've also become a bit of an English speaking contact for Daegu MMA.  When a foreigner in Korea is interested in training they usually Google "MMA in Daegu", or something similar.  My blog is usually the first English language result for that search.  Because of this, I've had lots of people look me up on Facebook for information regarding the club.  I point them in the right direction and wish them luck in their training.  Recently a Facebook contact filmed a bit of a Sambo seminar that was happening at Daegu MMA.   Here are some vids from the seminar.  There are some great techniques here that are a little different from your traditional Jiu Jitsu style, but look quite effective.  I can't wait to try them out.  **Note** I'm proud to be a part of the team from Daegu MMA that won the 2010 East Asian Sambo Championships, beating several Sambo schools along the way.  On the day of the tournament I had 7 or 8 matches. (Can't remember for sure. Let's say eight, just to increase the level of my awesomeness in the minds of both people who read this blog).  I lost one match and won the rest; it was a  grueling day.



The guy is the video is Ron Dayley, an American/Korean who has family in Daegu.  he also owns and runs his own gym in Clarksville, TN.  Some of his fighters have competed in the UFC and Strikeforce.



Real Life Humour For The Week.
The following story was relayed to me from my fiance.  A friend of hers was visiting the doctor, who happened to be an elderly east Indian man.  he asked if she was pregnant.  She said "No".  He asked if she had ever been pregnant.  She said "No".  Asked if what she method of birth control she was using.  She said "Homosexuality".  
When the doctor regained his breath after choking on his water he said something about that being a pretty effective method.

Tough guys don't act tough. Strung out, scrawny drunks do.

While writing a code of conduct for members at our MMA club a friend of mine wrote this:
"Tough guys don't act tough, they do tough things"
That couldn't be more true.  Being involved in combat sports at a relatively high level for most of my life, I've been around some tough dudes.  I mean REALLY tough dudes.  These guys come from all different places, and have all kinds of different stories.  The one thing they have in common is that the really tough guys don't act tough.  They know they are and they don't have to prove it.  Don't get me wrong, most of these guys aren't going to tuck their tail between their legs and run from a situation, but they aren't going to start one either.
There's a whole other league of guys out there though, that some people think are tough.  They're the guys who haven't really accomplished much.  Maybe they got in a fight with another drunk moron who has no actual combat skills and won, fueling their belief that they are in fact tough.  These are the guys who go around posturing, talking tough and mean mugging people all the time.  Sometimes they're big guys, all juiced up to help their insecurity, sometimes they're little guys who feel like they have something to prove.  Some people actually believe that these guys are tough because no one ever calls them on their BS.

A little while ago I was out watching a friends band and I ran into a guy like this.  He was a guy that I knew from around town.  He was about the same height as me and about twenty pounds lighter, meaning that he was so small there wouldn't even be a weight class for him in MMA.  He was a drunk and  had never done anything to prove that he was tough in any way but had a mouth that well overshot his tough-guy experience.  This particular night I had already separated myself from the fella in question because I couldn't stand to listen to him talk any more.  I had run into another guy that wrestled for a cross-town highschool at the same time I wrestled.  We were talking about the good old days and how awesome we used to be when douchy mcdouche strolled up and started instigating.  He was saying stuff like "wrestling's for fags and hommos.  A bunch of guys rolling around grabbing each other's dicks.  If anyone ever touched me like that I'd kick their ass".  Those last words left me with only one thing to do.
I poked him in the dick.
He didn't like that.  I don't think that he was used to being called on his false bravado.
He imediately got flustered, puffed out his chest and in his best angry-man voice said something along the lines of "I'm not kidding, if you do that again I'll kill you!"
So I poked him in the dick again.
Needless to say, he didn't kill me. He didn't even make a move.  I rolled the dice on the fact that he was "all show, no go" and I was right.  He didn't have a clue what to do when someone stepped up to call his BS.  His friends, some of whom I know, came over soon and ushered him away, apologizing the whole time. 
Once again, tough guys don't act tough.


Six months seems like a reasonable amount of time to put together a story about an event, no?
The last time I fought was in November for King of the Cage.  After the fight I did a video interview with a local reporter, which never aired.  Somebody recently clued me in to the fact that this video was just posted on the local news site this week.  Better late than never I guess.  Here's the video.  Go to 4:35 for my section.


Updates!
Last week I wrote a blog about Karlin Armstrong; a guy I thought was a bit of a poser in the MMA community.  I mentioned that the only thing that gave him any credibility whatsoever was that he trained at a respected MMA club called BDB martial arts in Calgary and had some reputable fighters, including UFC Nick Ring, participating in seminars he was helping to organize.  Well, it turns out neither of things hold any water.  Brad Cardinal, the new Wreck MMA lightweight Champion responded to a post I made about the guy.  Here's what he said.

"I was part of the seminar from the link above that was organized by Karlin Armstrong. I'm not going to get into details, as I don't want to contribute negatively in any way to Canadian MMA, but in the future neither Nick Ring or myself will be having anything to do with Karlin.

Also, I read in the blog linked above that he claims to have been training at BDB Martial Arts in Calgary. I don't think I've seen him on the mats there more than a few hours, and I'm there everyday."  - Brad Cardinal

On the charges of being an MMA poser/wannabe and vastly overstating his influence, participation and involvement in the MMA community I find Karlin Armstrong guilty.


I also blogged about having a matchmaker put my name on an event that I had not agreed to fight on.  It seems that once my manager made this information public the floodgates opened.  There's been roughly 50 comments on the story, most by other managers, matchmakers, fighters and coaches who have had problems with the matchmaker in question.  You can read what people are saying about him here.
It's also interesting that my name is still listed on the fight card, even though I was never remotely interested in this fight and there have been requests to remove my name from the website. There are also rumours going around that the matchmaker is now offering a lot of money for fighters on this card because it is only a few weeks away and they only have 5 fights booked.  Panic time?  Hopefully this organization will get with a legit matchmaker for their next fights and make a successful run at MMA in Ontario after a rough start.

That's News to Me

Yesterday I was reading a press release for an MMA event that had a very interesting main event. Tim Wadsworth,a very good wrestler that I had competed against in the past and undefeated in MMA at 145 was going to fight Shigeki Osawa, a very tough Japanese fighter that wrestled in the Olympics and is know for suplexing people on their heads. Like this.

Anyways, as I was reading the press release I noticed a name I recognized. Brent Fryia vs. Jason Sampson. Hey! That's me! Too bad this fight is less than four weeks away and I never agreed to it. This was a fight that I was offered, but turned down because I felt like the promoter was seriously trying to undersell the opponent to get me to fight. They told me that he was 4-0 with some college wrestling experience. A quick google search told me that he was actually 7-0, a div. I All American wrestler, 2-0 as a pro boxer, had won the Pan-Am championships in Jiu-Jitsu as well as placing second at the IBJJF World Championships. I got in touch with my manager who asked the website to remove my name from the post. That started a storm of conversation about the matchmaker on the same website. It turns out that this organization had posted the names of several fighters that were unconfirmed and had never agreed to fight on this event. It turns out that even Tim Wadsworth, one of the main event fighters, is not even fighting on this card. Interesting. Here's a link to the press release (with my name now removed). Press Release If you scroll down you can see all of the discussion that takes place about the event and the promoter/matchmaker.

P.S. Please go follow me on Twitter here: Twitter me!

P.P.S. Please go vote. Some people are cheesed that we're having another election and think it's a bad thing. The fact that when our leader doesn't have the support of the people we can kick him out and try again is a GREAT thing. Let's get this guy outta here.

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.

An Up and Down Day, But More Up Than Down

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.

Our team with some hardware

It's Not Mother's Day But... 

It's my mom's birthday!  Happy Birthday Mom!

Konglish n' Korean Kids

Konglish
here are four good examples of Engrish that I found on one ten minute walk to a restaurant in my neighborhood the other day.

This is one of my favourites. It's actually in a restaurant called "New York, New York".  Someone should tell them that Google translator is not 100% accurate. Click on the picture for a bigger view.

So close... So close.

The best thing about this is that it's a big chain.

Chicken in the home?  Chick in the home? Chick and the home?  I have no idea.

Kids

I haven't posted or talked much about my school or the kids I teach so I thought I'd give you guys a little view of what I do everyday. The kids I teach are pretty much awesome.  Teaching kindergarten has been a lot of fun and obviously very different from teaching highschool.  One thing that is undeniable is that these kids are deathly cute.  Here's a few pictures and a video as proof. 

7b class.  Pretty Awesome.  They speak enough English that we can have a lot of fun. 

7a class.  Yes, the girl on the right (Catherine) is wearing an "Extreme Couture" shirt. How wild is that? 

Yeah, I taught my kids how to "high five and pound it" and yeah, I have a kid in that class who's name is "Lion"

MMA Update

I'll be travelling to Seoul for a Jiu Jitsu tournament next weekend. I told the guys from my club that I only wanted to do the no-gi division.  With a fight coming up i've only been doing about one day of gi training per week, and even then I try to stick to techniques that will work without the gi and not rely on the grips and cloth too much in sparring.  My idea of competing in only the no-gi division was duly noted before they registered me in the gi, no-gi, gi absolute and no-gi absolute divisions.  Might be a long day.

Training has been going very well lately.  I'm still doing mostly general training as far as technical work but we are starting to work out a basic game plan and isolate some situations that I can exploit and some that I should avoid.  the intensity and volume of my training has been much higher over the last 6 weeks and with a little over 10 weeks until fight time I feel god about where I am physically, technically and mentally.  Having a focus and goal for my training has done wonders for my training.  the increased volume and intensity of training coupled with better attention to nutrition has seen my weight come down a lot.  I am walking around leaner and meaner than I have in a long time.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to my dad.  When I was younger lots of people used to tell me how much I was like my dad and it used to drive me crazy.  It's easy to see now that that's one of the biggest compliments I could get.  I've been lucky to have lots of positive influences in my life but without a doubt my dad taught me the most about... everything.  I couldn't ask for a better dad.

Monsoon Season is here. It's Raining Fights.

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.

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.