Cans, Bottles, Pets.

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."

The Tornado is Back... Big Time
Un Sik "Tornado" Song (8-0) finished his mandatory military service about a month ago.  It didn't take him long to get back in the action. Un Sik fought two weeks ago in DEEP: Grachan against Atsushi Ueda (8-3) and won via unanimous decision.  He said he had his opponent in a deep triangle and an armbar and had the guy fully mounted but couldn't finish him.  He seemed a bit embarassed that he gassed towards the end of the fight, but give the guy a break, he hadn't fought in two years.  Now that he's back to training full time his conditioning shouldn't be a factor for long.  Un Sik isn't working a part time job, and is instead focusing on fighting.  He has set himself a pretty tough schedule for his first months back.  After his last fight he has a pro kickboxing match next month and then another fight in DEEP the month after that.  If he wins that fight it looks like he'll be getting a title shot against Katsunori Kikuno (13-2), who also fights in DREAM.  The return of 'Tornado San" has been getting some decent attention on the interwebs, with articles and people commenting about his fight here, here and here.

Un Sik has really been working on his wrestling a lot lately.  I haven't been able to scrimmage with him lately but we work technique together and then I run him through drills and situational scrimmaging with other guys.  the speed that he picks up techniques is mind blowing.  His kinesthetic memory is probably the best I've ever seen.  He can see a complicated technique once and use it in a live situation almost immediately. Scary.  he's really jacked about the improvement in his wrestling.  Yesterday he told me that in 20 amateur and professional fights he has never scored a takedown on a leg attack and that is going to do it in his next fight.  We've also been doing a lot of pummeling and clinch work, especially against the wall.  His last fight and his next one are in a cage and it's an area of MMA he's never really worked on before.  It seems like more and more Japanese organizations are starting to use cages and Asian fighters definitely need to learn that part of the game.

Here's a video of me, Heung Kol and Un Sik in between matches at a tournament.

Un Sik and John warming up before some kickboxing sparring.

In other Daegu MMA news "Little GSP" as he's known, has his first kcikboxing match coming up next month.  he's been working pretty hard with a lot of the older guys.  It's kind of fun to watch a 16 year old kid go from total goofball to focused fighter training for a fight.  This kid has really stepped up his training in the last while and I'll be keeping my eye on him when I leave Korea.

Engrishee!
I spotted a good piece of Konglish on my drink the other day. Koreans love their vitamin drinks. I don't even know what kind of vitamins are in these drinks but they must be good right?  Even if there's nothing in it at least I'll feel more confident, at least according to the copy on the can.

Ho Shin Sool, KING OF THE CAGE and XCC


The boys are ready to rock again.  Jeff, Ray, Trevor and Johnny are going to represent Ho Shin Sool at King of the Cage on May 8th at the Dreamakes Theater.  Everything I heard about the last event was great, here's hoping this one is just as good and better.  My brother, Mitch, and Adrian Vilaca are also going to be fighting soon in Birch Run, under the MUTT MMA banner.  Here's the poster for the KOTC event, with Trevor and Jeff on it.  I heard that there are some renovations coming up at Ho Shin Sool.  After seeing that poster I hope they put a tanning bed in the basement.





Genki Sudo Appreciation

Living in Asia I've really learned a lot about the Asian MMA scene.  I've learned a lot about a lot of differnt fighters and seen a lot of awesome fights that have never been broadcasted in North America.  One fighterthat I've become a huge fan of is Genki Sudo.  I always knew who he was, but never knew much about him until  recently.  The guy is a phenomenal fighter, carries a positive message with him all the time and is very interesting to listen to in his inerviews.  Sudo started as a wrestler, but developed all around MMA skills so quickly that he was soon taking on and beating World Class kickboxers in Striking only K1 matches.  His fighting style is impossible to pin down.  He might switch from a pure grappling style into drunken boxing before throwing in "the robot" and using his Muay Thai to finish a fight.  That's to say nothing of his ring entrances that make Mayhem Miller look like he's walking in off the street in jeans and a T Shirt. Genki Sudo fought in the UFC three times, going 2-1 but fought most of his fights in Asia, which is too bad for North American fans.  Do yourself a favour and watch the documentary that I posted at the top right.  It's about 40 minutes long and split into 5 parts.  I posted the first two.  It's a cool documentary with good fight highlights and interviews and it's well produced.  I have a tough time imagining that any MMA fan could watch the documentary and not be a fan of the guy.  As a matter of fact I think everyone, fight fan or not, would appreciate a lot of the interview sections.  After all, Sudo mentions that to him MMA was a in many ways just the medium to get his message across to as large an audience as possible.

Daegu, Daegu, FIGHTING!

Daegu MMA in Action
The last week has been pretty empty inside Daegu MMA.  There have still been lots of people training but the studs have either been away fighting or helping to corner the fighters.  The intensity of training has been a little lower this week, but to be honest, I feel like my body needed the rest.  I feel refreshed and ready to get back at it full tilt.

Un Sik "The Tornado" Song won his kickboxing fight at "W" by second round KO.  He scored two knockdowns before putting his guy away for good.  Un Sik's fight was the main event, getting top billing over a fighter who has competed in K1.  It sounds like he was all over his opponent from start to finish.  After watching him train and spar (and getting punched around by him a lot) I'm glad to know that his Kickboxing is as good as I thought.

Un Sik re-aranging some facial features

Across the sea, Heung Gull lost a very tough split decision to Akihiko Mori in Tokyo, Japan.  I haven't talked to him yet but it sounds like he dominated the first round with striking and almost finished the fight from the bottom when he got taken down at the end of the round.  The second round was a toss up and in the third Heung Gull got taken down and couldn't get anything going from the bottom.  He didn't take any real damage but he was down there for the whole round.  Sounds like the fight could have gone either way, but I wish I could have seen it since the only info I have is second hand from some biased sources.  As mainly a Jiu Jitsu practitioner, Heung Gull has different ideas about cutting weight than I do.   His Jiu Jitsu competition weight is 62 kg.  while the fight against Mori was at 70 kg.  I was worried that a weight disadvantage might hurt him in the later rounds if the fight went long... I don't know if this was the case or not but I personally wouldn't fight at 70 kg and I'm a bit bigger than Heung Gull.  The cool thing is that I think Heung Gull fights for fun.  He is first and foremost a Jiu Jitsu player and is now busy preparing for the Asian Abhu Dhabi trials, having already won the Korean trials.

The best thing about Un Sik and Heung Gull is that neither guy missed a single day of training after their fights.  They were both right back at it the day they got back to Daegu.  Tough dudes.


Competition on the Horizon
There's a little more than three weeks until  I compete in my first Jiu Jitsu tournament in Korea.  I don't know if it's a big tournament or a small one, if the divisions are separated by belt or if they lump everyone together.  I do know that the weight class is 68 kg.   This is pretty much my natural weight right now, so that's where I'll compete.. there's no way I'm cutting to 62 kg.  I've picked up the amount of weight training that I've been doing and would like to get back up to a solid 70 kg and cut to 68 for grappling and 66/65 for MMA.  There is also the off chance that I might end up fighting an amateur Kickboxing fight at some point.  When Jae Hoon (The owner and coach at Daegu MMA) talked to me about fighting he said "Amateur Kickboxing, no probrem". I trust him, but I'd still rather fight MMA where I can take I guy down if need be. And get paid.
Over the next few weeks I'll be doing the regular jiu jitsu classes as well as splitting time with Un Sik and Jae Hoon, working on my kickboxing and Un Sik's wrestling.


Unrelated...
Last week I went into my regular coffee shop, the one I stop in at just about every morning on my way to work.  There were some guys there putting in a new, bigger front window.  As I was leaving one of the guys was blocking my way.  I couldn't help but think "Hey buddy, you make a better window than a door...".   Gold!

The Happenings Keep Happening!

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

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

Chuseok Weekend

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














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








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




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

Which Way To Da Beach?

International Relations
In the past 2 weeks I've experienced a few cases of really feeling like an outsider. The mother who stopped her car in the middle of a busy intersection and rolled down her window to point us out to her kids takes the cake. Being a "waygukin" sure gives you a new perspective on what it must like to be an immigrant in Canada.
On the whole, though, Korean hospitality has been outstanding. Last week our landlords (a very old Korean couple) invited us up to their place for birthday cake. It was the Ajima's (old lady, basically) birthday. They didn't speak any English but they had lots of family over and one of their daughters spoke English pretty well. Their hospitality was fantastic and could be best compared to an Italian family (eat, eat!) We also made friends with some Korean swimmers at the beach who fed us watermelon, cake, galbi and kept us stocked with makali, a Korean wine. While sitting outside a corner store having a few drinks some friends were talking about how small of a world it really is. As if on cue an older Korean man came up and asked if we knew David. Sure enough, someone did. It turns out the man is a physics professor at a local University and was meeting some of his students for a social drink. In Korea having a couple of drinks outside of the corner store is normal and they have tables set up for this. The professor and his students sat down at our table and hung out all night. Cool guys.

Busan

Pusan was great last weekend. There were eight of us that were going to go but we almost cancelled the trip because of bad weatehr in the morning. When the skies started to clear in the early afternoon on Saturday we got our act together and headed across town to the train station. We took the high speed train (Korea Transit Xpress or KTX). The train only took an hour and was $17 ROUND TRIP. Amazing. We went to two beaches, both of which were fantastic. Both beaches were on the sea of Japan, although that's not what the Koreans call it. We wanted to give surfing a try since this was the prime area to do it, but there was no surf to speak of this weekend. Apparently last weekend had four foot rollers, which might have been a bit much for me anyways. In the end we just layed in the sun, read some books, walked around to check out the shops and got sunburned. We also met some new friends from "Busan Aquatica", an open water swimming club that seemed to do everything at the beach except swim. We invited them to play frisbee with us which was hilarious. Frisbees are not common in Korea and by the end of an hour only a couple of them were starting to get the hang of it.

The Busan nightlife was great. Without getting into too much detail, we checked out a few restaurants, a few open air bars, a few vendors, a casino and, of course, lit off a ton of fireworks. When we finally hit the sack the night time view from our hotel window was awesome. For $30 we got a 5th floor room with a view of the Sea of Japan and the huge lit up bridge that crosses the bay where we were staying.

On Sunday we went to another beach which was a bit better than the first. Right before we left some of us were going to take one last dip to cool off. As we waded into the water I saw a HUGE jellyfish next to Mitch. We ran like OJ circa 1994. Actually we ran like scared little girls, not a heisman trophy winning tailback. Turns out the jellyfish was dead and ones that big don't usually come to shore. it eventually washed up and we snapped some pics before it got torn apart by the surf.

MMA

Training has been going well, except for the fact that a week of no-gi practice gave me a false sense of ability. Without the gi I've been able to use my wrestling, speed and athleticism to be competitive in sparring with most of the best guys at the club. Last night was the first time we were back in the gi for a week. I think the last time I had my ass handed to me that badly was when I scrimmaged with Gia Sissauori (World Champion, Olympic Silver medalist wrestler) in 2004. Most of the time I can feel myself being set up for something but I don't even know what that something is. The best way to describe it is to say that it feels like you're drowning in the gi and all you can do is try and keep your head above water. At one point I notced there was only 1 minute left in the 5 minute session and I set a mental goal to not get tapped for the last minute. I didn't care if I got totally dominated positionally, I just wanted to survive. I didn't make it.

Saturdays there's a "Fight Club" for foreigners at Daegu MMA. It's pretty low key; a bunch of people who want to get a workout in or give boxing or jiu jitsu a try. Most of the people don't know anything about anything as far as MMA goes and but this week I met two East Coast Canadian guys who are pretty good boxers. One of them has fought ten times and has super fast hands. They're cool guys and were happy that there was another guy around who knew something. I'm glad I found those guys, since my Muay Thai gym didn't pan out.

Turns out the Muay Thai gym owner and the owner of Daegu MMA have some bad blood and I wouldn't be allowed to train at both places. It sounds dumb but gets even dumber when you consider the fact that the two gyms teach completely different styles of fighting. They are not in direct competition with each other and don't take business from each other. Although I was disappointed, I wasn't shocked. This is an all too familiar story in the martial arts community. So and so doesn't like so and so which means none of his guys can go to those tournaments etc, etc... This drives me crazy because I don't care about the issues these guys have, my only interest is in getting better and if both places can make me better at different things then I want to train at both clubs.

This mentality seems even crazier coming from a wrestling background. I wrestled at one of the top Universities in Canada. There were teams we didn't get along with. There were teams we hated, but you can be sure that any wrestler anywhere could walk into any other wrestling room in the world, regardless of affiliation, and be welcomed. The idea is that having a good wrestler and another sparring partner in the room is beneficial to everyone else in the room and that you can always learn something from somebody who has a different style. It's the "steel sharpens steel" idea. In the martial arts community there often seems to be resistance to new people coming in with new ideas, a sort of "our way is the best way" mentality that can only take you so far before you have to branch out.

Misc. I forgot to mention that last week we went to Daegu World Cup Stadium to watch a Daegu FC soccer game. The stadium is amazing. They've hosted the world cup (Duh) in 2002 and the 2003 World University Games. Next year they're hosting the World Track and Field Championships. The game was okay I guess, but a 0-0 tie isn't really my cup of tea. The stadium itself is amazing and set right at the bottom of a mountain which gives you a pretty spectacular view.


Next week the K1 kickboxing World Grand Prix Final 16 is in Seoul. I' hoping I'll make it up there for that one. I'm getting pretty broke as I haven,t been paid yet, but I'll try and make it work. There's also a pre-world championship track and field test meet with a lot of Olympic medalists coming up. Cost? $5. I think I can swing that one.

Shout Outs:
My buddy Wade and the rest of the Sault Steelers for wining the National Football championships. Way to go guys.
All of the Canadian wrestlers at the world championships this week. Special shout out to former Thunderwolves teammate and all around killer Katie Patroch.