Jiu Jitsu Jim, He's a Good Guy.
I've got this buddy named Jim Alers, he's a pretty bad dude.  He's a professional 145 lb mma fighter, like me.  We didn't meet fighting though. We met quite a few years ago when we were working at the same summer camp in Pennsylvania.  At the time Jim had recently finished his highschool wrestling career and was starting his journey into Jiu Jitsu.  I had pretty much wrapped up my University wrestling career, but hadn't started training in MMA yet.  Fast forward about five years and we both have 4-1 pro MMA records in the featherweight divisions as well as some victories in assorted grappling competitions. We still talk fairly regularly, especially when one of us has an upcoming fight.
Recently Jim did something spectacular. Fighting as a purple belt and representing Gracie Barra Orlando, Jim won the purple belt division of the Abu Dhabi World Championships qualifier.  Pretty awesome, but not as awesome as what happened after that.  Winning his division earned him an invite into the brown/black belt division, which he proceeded to win.  Winning the brown/black division punched Jim's all expenses paid trip to the World Championships in Abu Dhabi.  WILD!  Now Jim will surely be in deep water when he heads to Abu Dhabi  today but you gotta love his attitude.  Talking to him last week, Jim is pumped about the tournament and is going with a nothing to lose outlook and the intention of giving hell to each of his opponents.  Good luck dude, can't wait to hear about it.  Check out the video below.  It has a few highlights of Jim's last two matches at the trials and some awesome shots of him after his win.
Highlights of Jim Alers at the Abu Dhabi World Cup Trials from Panic Pulse on Vimeo.

 And Now, More About Me.
I haven't written much lately because, to be honest, there hasn't been much to write about.  A little over a month ago I started having some general pain.  I didn't think much of it, sucked it up and kept training. After all, I'm a man, man. After a few weeks the pain started to get a lot worse and I had to drop the training completely.  I went to the hospital and have had appointments with two surgeons.  I have no solid information on the problem, just an educated guess and an appointment booked for a very expensive MRI.  It's been over three weeks of no real training (plus a few weeks of very light training) and it's starting to feel a little bit better, but I still can't do much.
As of right now I'm in the difficult position deciding which course of action to take.  I could get the costly MRI and wait to get surgery at home if needed (as an elective surgery it won't be covered by my insurance here).  I could also skip the MRI altogether and hope the injury heals itself.  If it doesn't get better I can wait to get home and get everything done then.  The obvious drawback to that is the long wait times at home. Decisions, decisions.

On a more positive side, the weather has been starting to warm up and we've been able to get out and travel a bit more.  Every city, town and gas station in Korea seems to have their own festival of some kind so we've started checking a few of them out.  A few weeks ago we went to the Chungdo Bullfighting festival.  This wasn't man vs. bull fighting though, it was two bulls that smashed their heads and horns together until one ran away scared and tired.  Some of the fights went for 15 or 20 minutes with a lot of stalemating.  Some people thought it was lame.  I thought it was fantastic.
On the same trip we also went to an abandoned train tunnel that had been converted into a winery and restaurant/bar.  Not shabby.

A couple of stubborn bulls fighting

A couple of stubborn bulls fighting

Wine tunnel

Last weekend we traveled to Gyeungu to check out the cherry blossom festival.  Lisa and I went with our friends Freddie and Kaelegh and just happened to meet up with two other friends, Tim and Vee, on the bus. When we got to the city we rented some bikes and ripped around town. We saw some cool monuments and temples, but nothing mind blowing. 
 

 Kaelegh, Lisa and Freddie riding under the cherry blossoms

Canadian Wrestling Championships
Special shout out to Reyanna Sangestino who wrestles for the Sault Wrestling Club. For the second year in a row Reyanna advanced to the championship match at the National Wrestling Championships.  This year she one-upped her performance from last season to become the Canadian Champion.  She`s the first national champ from the Sault in a while.  Way to go.

A Couple of old Teammates Squaring off for all the Marbles.
When I was in highschool our wrestling team was one of better girls teams around.  One of my teammates from those days is Amanda Gerhart who recently won the Senior National Championships at the 59 kg weight class.  The tricky thing about the nationals this year is that the women`s national team was competing at the World Cup while the nationals were going on.  This means that there will be a special wrestle off between the national team member and the winner of the National Championships to determine this year`s national team member.  Interestingly enough, the girl that Amanda will be wrestling is Katie Patroch, a teammate of mine from University.  Who to root for?  Nobody and both, I guess.  Both girls have competed internationally at the World Championships, the Pan Ams and the World Cup and are among the toughest people that I know.

Various Assorted Miscelania...

A few months ago someone spilled a drink on my computer and fried it.  We'll call this guy B. Vance.  No, no, that's too obvious, let's call him Brian V.  The computer itself was pretty much garbage but I was bummed out about all the files that were on there that I had lost. I finally brought my computer to the "magic Korean computer man" that runs a shop in our neighbourhood and he lived up to his reputation.  Not only did he recover the files, he also fixed the computer and cleaned it up to make it run way faster.  Total cost?  About $40.  Nobody does service industry like Koreans, that's for sure.  Since I've got all of my files back I've got way more videos and pictures to post.  Like this one.

 

This is a banner that one of my sponsors made from some pictures of some of their fighters.  The cool part isn't that I'm in ad (okay, I thought that was pretty cool too), it's that the guy beside me on the right is Jon Jones.  Yeah, the same Jon Jones that just busted up Brandon Vera and is making a statement as one of the toughest 205 lbers in the UFC.

The Fight Scene
Before last week I had put in real solid few weeks of training.  Good jiu jitsu classes, wrestling and kickboxing with Un Sik and lots of MMA sparring.  Heung Kul is leaving this friday to represent Korea at the Abu Dhabi Asian tournament.  Usually all of good jiu jitsu guys come in at different times, but lately everyone's been in all together to help get Heung Kul ready for the tournament.  The training has been pretty awesome, and I like Heung Kul's chances. 
There has also been a fighter from one of our affiliate clubs in Daejeon up training for the last week.  He has a title fight in a minor Japanese organization next month and has been around to get some good sparring in.  Over the last while I became one of his main training and sparring partners which has been great for me.
Unfortunately all of the training hasn't been great for a nagging injury that just won't go away.  Over the last few weeks it has become worse and worse to the point that walking up stairs is a bit of a challenge.  I'm going to take a little time away from training because I am apparently incapable of going to the club and not getting sucked into a few sparring sessions.  Hopefully it's nothing serious, but we'll have to see how the injury settles down over the next little while.  In the meantime I'll be hitting the local outdoor gym to keep my sanity and to make sure that when I feel good I'll still be ready to go.


Still Konglish
Here are a few pictures of funny Korean signs that I've run across lately.  I wish I had my camera on me all the time, unless you live here it's almost impossible to understand how often you see hilariously misspelled or miss worded signs and advertisements.

  I feel it baby, I feel it.

This one is in every subway station in the city.

I'm glad the Korean toothpaste industry is finally standing up to the evil forces of calculus, algebra and trigonometry.

Ultimate

Our second season of Ultimate Frisbee is underway and the league has a different look than last season.  The league is growing.  We have six teams of 14 or 15 players and there are players that travel from Busan and Deajeon every week just to play in the league. The quality of play is much higher this season and the games are a lot closer than in the past.  There are a lot of really good athletes in the league and some people with some serious disc skills.  Most of our friends play in the league and more than anything it's a great way to get together with a bunch of other foreigners and spend an active Sunday afternoon.  Here are some shots of all the action.

 Daegu Hurricane.  You might notice I'm the captain.  I'm kind of a big deal.  Ha.  I'm actually about the 5th or 6th best player on our team. I just got the job because no one else wanted it.

Freddie and Yeung Min, two of the speediest guys in the league.  I always get matched up on these guys when we play their teams.  Good times.

Edwin, a nice addition to the Hurricanes this season, stretches for a grab.

 This is my teammate Steve after Vance broke his nose.  Yeah, the same Vance that broke my computer.  
That guy is a menace.

By popular demand, 
Other People's Pain: Pt. II
People seemed to really like the story I posted about karma and the guy who got it where it counts.  Everybody loves hearing about other people's pain.  With that thought in mind I'd like to tell you a little story I was recently reminded me of.  Don't worry, it doesn't involve the mutilation of any sexual organs this time.

Me and my brother, Mitch, were born four years apart.  That seems like nothing now that I'm 28 and he's 24.  People who meet us now assume that he's the older one as often as they get it right.  He's a pretty big guy these days and a National Champion as a wrestler.  He can generally handle himself.  That wasn't the case  when I was 10 and he was 6, though.  I was by no means a big kid, but my brother was definitely small at that age.
During these years we took the school bus across town to go to school.  Some of the kids on our bus were less than class acts.  One kid in particular, Tanner was his name, fancied himself a tough guy and was a bit of a bully.  Tanner was right between me and my brother age wise, meaning he wouldn't mess with me but had no problem picking on my younger, smaller brother.  I didn't know this had been going on until my brother said something about it.
The jist of it was that my brother wanted me  to beat up the older kid who was picking on him.  This was something that I wasn't opposed to; my brother and I had been taught, even at this early age, that you always stick up for your family, no mater what.  I told him that I would handle it but he should try sticking up for himself first.  I told him that I would watch and if something happened I'd drop the hammer.
The next day as we got off the bus I hung back but stayed close enough to my brother to see what would happen.  I watched as Tanner walked up behind Mitch and pushed in the back, knocking him down with the palms of his hands skidding on the loose concrete.  As if he was in a movie, Mitch slowly picked himself out of the dust and turned towards his antagonizer.  In one hand he had his backpack that had fallen off his back during the tumble.  In the other he held his marble bag. His 'David's sling', if you will.
It's important to remember that in the year 1991 the best marble player was king of the playground.  By this point in the evolution of competitive marble playing all of the good action was in 'Jumbos' and 'Super Jumbo's' that were about the size of golf balls.
Mitch stood there, hesitating for a few seconds, and let the marble bag slide through his hand until he was holding it by the end of the drawstring; a full two feet of slack holding five or six 'Super Jumbos' at the end.  When Mitch finally swung that marble bag at Tanners head he did so with every ounce of strength his six year old body could muster.  The sound the marble bag made when it hit Tanner in the temple is what I imagine it would sound like if you hit a watermelon with a ball peen hammer.  Tanner dropped like a sack of wet noodles.  If there was a referee hiding in the bushes he would surely have stopped the fight because of the flash KO.  If there was a fight doctor on the scene he would have stopped the fight because of the massive cut on the side of Tanners head.
There was a lot of blood right away.  Tanner was just lying there and Mitch was standing there staring at him, not sure what to do next.  I decided for him.
"Run!" was the only logical thing I could think of.  Mitch came back from whatever place he was mentally visiting and ran home as fast as he could.  Tanner eventually picked himself up and carried himself home, wailing like a banshee the whole way.
I don't remember the exact time frame, but eventually Tanner's mother called our house to raise hell.  Mom was pissed.  Dad was pissed.  Mitch got it pretty good.  Eventually my parents came around to ask me what exactly happened.  I told the whole story, right from the start, and that changed things.  Sticking up for yourself and giving a bully his deservesies was different than smacking some kid in the head with a sack of marbles for no reason.  That was pretty much the end of Tanner picking on Mitch or anyone else for that matter.  Once everyone knew that the bully had been dethroned kids weren't as scared of him anymore. As for Tanner I have no idea what he's up to in life but I know that he has a permanent reminder about the dangers of bullying in the form of a scar from eight stitches in the side of his head.
I guess this could be another story about karma, but I like to think of it in terms of a funny T-shirt I saw once.  "Violence is never the answer, but sometimes it's the solution"
I'm fully against fighting outside of a sanctioned, organized and refereed sports event, but sometimes sticking up for yourself or others trumps that.



Frustration Mounts
I still haven't found a fight in Asia.  I have a line on a few possible events in May, but still nothing solid.  It's frustrating on it's own, but even more so because I just found  out that a guy (Kyung Ho Kang) that I stomped in Combat Sambo not too long ago just fought in Sengoku.  The guy didn't even last three minutes with me and he followed that up by fighting in one of the bigger MMA events in the world.  He lost, but he sure had his moments, almost catching his opponent in an omoplata.  Further investigation reveals that this guy has also fought in DEEP and the Art of War promotions.  Seriously... somebody give me a shot somewhere... please.

Alternative Treatment
I'm not really into holistic medicine as a rule but I'd been having some back pain that was nagging and making it hard to sleep at night.  I'm sure that there are solid physiolog9ical reasons why a lot of eastern remedies work, I could just do without all of the airy fairyness that goes along with it.  A few friends had recommended a local acupuncturist so I figured I'd give it a try, despite not wanting to listen to someone tell me about why my chi is out of alignment, my chakra is all wrong and my aura is suffering. 
I was pleasantly surprised when I got the the office.  Dr. Lim (I know, it would be funnier if it was spelled Limb, but still funny) is a western trained M.D. who happens to have some other certifications including acupuncture.  To boot, the guy spoke great English.  I was in to his office with some needles stuck in various parts of my body within 10 minutes.  I was out the door in 20, feeling amazing and didn't have to listen to anything about my physical/spiritual balance.  The pain isn't completely gone, but there was a definite and immediate improvement.  There are lots of different kinds of acupuncture and I can't say much about  most of them but Intramuscular acupuncture sure has it's place.

DREAMing?
DREAM FC is having their first event outside of Japan in April and luckily for me it's going to be in Seoul.  Daegu MMA is planning a big "family trip" to go watch which should be tons of fun.  No idea yet about who's on the card but hopefully they put some of the big names on it.

Real Korean Dinner
On Friday I stayed and trained at the club pretty late.  As I was leaving some of the Koreans asked if I wanted to go for family dinner with them.  They took me to a little restaurant down the street.  The word restaurant is a bit flattering.  The place had two actual walls while the other two were made from a heavy duty clear plastic tarp.  The tables were old oil drums flipped upside down with a coal burner in the middle.  These places are pretty common in Korea, but it's hard to go in and order if you don;t speak Korean very well.  I like having Korean friends who take me to legitimately Korean places.  I know some people here who pretty much stick to the foreign community and never experience a lot of the cool things Korea has to offer.

Monkey Boy
There are four 15 and 16 year old kids that train at Daegu MMA everyday.  They're pretty damn good.  Before I leave I`ll be writing down their names to keep for future reference; I think we might be hearing from some of them in the future.  One kid in particular cracks me up.  He calls himself `little GSP`.  I call him `monkey boy`.  He loves the UFC more than anything and makes me laugh all the time.  He does some hilarious impressions of some UFC fighters.   I tried to get him to do a few but he was a little camera shy and only did two of them.  Check it out, I think his Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson takes are pretty on point.

Lil' Korean buddy from Brent Fryia on Vimeo.


 
Belt Testing
For the last few months all of the guys from Daegu MMA have been telling me that I should test for my blue belt before I leave to go home.  I thought that would be a great idea and told them that I would do it.  Then they kept hassling me about.  Again.        And again.       And.       Again.     At least once a week someone would remind me about it.  I know there are belt tests every two months so I wasn't too worried about it.  Last Tuesday they told me that there was a test on Sunday that I should go to.  I told them that I didn't think I was ready to test for my blue belt at which point they informed me that I had to test for my FIRST STRIPE on my white belt.  Silly me, I was under the impression that you tested for your blue belt and if you didn't get it you were awarded however many stripes the instructors thought you deserved.  I don't know why I thought that, but i did.  I should have known there was no cutting the line here, especially since there's guys here who have been white belts for over two years.
The belt test was administered by a visiting black belt, Jae Hoon (brown belt) and Un Sik (purple belt).  There were a few guys from our club testing for various stripes and my friend Yeung Sey testing for his blue belt.  there were also 8 or 10 guys from other clubs who were testing for various stripes of white and another guy who was testing for his blue belt.  The group was split into 2.  The first group was for anyone testing for their first or second stripe white belt and everyone else was in the second group.  Each group had about a half hour technique session where they were asked by the upper belts to demonstrate various guard passes, sweeps, submission and proper positional control.  Even thought the test for one stripe was very basic it was actually nice to spend that much time working on some fundamental stuff.
After the technique session each group had a 25 minute sparring session with rotating partners.  This is where Being with the lower level group I felt a little bit like Adam Sandler in 'Billy Madison'.  You know that scene where he says `now you`re all in BIG, BIG trouble!`   That`s how I felt.  When I spar with the younger or less experienced guys I usually give up some positions and work from a disadvantage.  This day was a little different because of the testing. I went pretty hard and didn`t cut anybody any slack.  When my group was finished the evaluators moved me into the more advanced group for sparring.  That was fine by me as I wasn`t too keen to sit around watching for a half hour and I usually spar with the upper level belts anyways.
After the evaluation the instructors conferred for a while while we layed around and stretched out.  Eventually they called everyone t line up for the awarding of belts and stripes.  There was a lot of bowing and traditional stuff going on that I had no idea about.  I did my best to just follow what the guys next to me were doing and not look like a pumpkin in a watermelon patch.  When I was awarded my sad, lonely little stripe on my belt all of the older guys from the club laughed at me.  Fair enough, I think most of the guys that I tested with were more concerned about their 10th grade math test than their jiu jitsu belt test.  When Un Sik gave me the stripe on my belt he said Ì think you four stripes but today one stripe`, which at least let me know were I stood in terms of actual ability.  At least if I test every two months until I leave I`ll have all 4 stripes and will be able to test for my blue belt as soon as I get back to Canada.
It`s interesting to note that not everyone was awarded the rank they were testing for.  Yeung Sey did get his blue belt which was a pretty big deal, but the guy who came from one of the other clubs did not.  It`s nice to know that it isn`t a `pay and get your belt`kind of deal and that everything has to be earned.

Something I love about Korea.
Dedicated space to run and play.  Space is at a premium in Korea.  The country is about the size of southern Ontario, is 70% mountains and has 50 million people.  Needless to say buildings expand vertically, not horizontally.  Despite this, almost every middle and high school has beautiful full sized turf fields and fully rubberized tracks.  When not being used by the schools these playgrounds are a freee for al for anyone to play whatever game or sport they choose.  There are always young kids with their parents playing some games, old folks walking the track and some serious athletes training all in the same place.  it`s pretty cool to see a country recognize the importance of physical activity and set aside space specifically for that purpose, even when it would be wildly profitable to use the space for something else.

 

A typical school field near my house where I occasionally go to run, kick a ball or throw a frisbee.

Something I hate about Korea

Bath towels.  Towels here are about the size of a dollar bill and just as absorbent.  That`s fine if you`re Korean.  Koreans have less body hair as adults than I did  when I was born.  Most of them could probably just dry themselves with a squeegee, so the tiny towels are probably ok.  If, on the other hand, youve ever been mistaken for a throw rug, like I have, these things just don`t cut it.  I`m glad we brought a few regular towels when we came.

Good Action!

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

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

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

My first ever Gi Jiu Jitsu match

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

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

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

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

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


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



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

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

Karma is real and it will get you where it hurts

This post is completely unrelated to MMA, Korea or anything else that I've written about before, but it is kind of funny in an "oh my god, I can't believe that really happened to somebody" kind of way.
To start off, I am far from a religious person.  Some of the coolest people that I've met are religious, but then again, so are some of the biggest slime balls I've ever met.  I do however believe pretty strongly in the idea of Karma.  Not in a Hippy, sarong wearing, yoga practicing kind of way, but more like a "if you do good things for people you will be a happier person and people will be more inclined to help you if you're ever in need" kind of way.  I don't believe that there is some actual sentient, cosmic being that decides who gets what dished out to them based on what they've done previously, but I do remember the first time that something happened that really made me think that karma will get 'ya if you deserve it.

PART I
For those of you who don't know, I used to teach flying trapeze.  Yep.  Flying Trapeze.  Like in the circus.  Don't believe me? Check out the vid at the top right.  That's me, trying to throw a double backflip to my catcher, and good friend, Adam.  As you can see, I missed.
To make a long story short, I used to go to a summer camp where flying trapeze was one of the activities.  I loved the trapeze and caught on pretty quick.  Eventually I ended up working at the camp, teaching trapeze. After my first year of University I got a job as a summer camp counselor in Pennsylvania.  I was hired to teach wrestling and football.  They also had a trapeze at the camp but that wasn't initially on my contract.  When word leaked out hat I had actually worked on a trapeze rig for a few years my job immediately changed to full time trapeze staff.  I worked at the camp for a long time, eventually taking over the trapeze program when my boss moved to Europe.

 

This is a picture of me catching my friend Jay with no safety lines. As you can imagine, having trust in your catcher is pretty important.

In my first year I worked, with 6 other staff, under a great trapeze director and an assistant trapeze director who was not so great.  The assistant director had some experience, but was careless and sloppy.  When you are launching kids off of a 32 foot platform attached to a few safety lines carelessness is not a good quality.  When campers "fly" on the trapeze, they are always hooked into safety lines.  Staff and instructors use the safety lines to practice new tricks and only take them off when they can consistently "catch" the trick.  The person running the safety lines is extremely important.  They can control part of the swing and prevent nasty falls.  The tricky part is keeping the lines tight enough to prevent whiplash, but not too tight that it slows the swing.  The assistant director had a nasty habit of letting the lines run with too much slack.  This can be dangerous if the flyer suddenly falls.  When the flyer catches up to the slack in the lines there is a huge whiplash effect.  The assistant director had been told plenty of times to keep the lines tighter.  He knew what he had to do, but he was a slack-ass and was only paying half attention, half of the time.
On one particular camp day I was working with the assistant director to fly some kids.  The assistant director was on the safety lines and I was the "catcher"; the guy who hangs from his knees and catches the flyer by the wrists after they've done their trick and before they fall to their doom in the pit of alligators, rusty nails and used needles that lay underneath.  Ok, it was a safety net, but I've still seen some nasty injuries from falling into it incorrectly. Regardless, I was catching and he was puling lines.  As one kid swung towards me I felt one of the lines slap me in the face.  That should never happen and meant that the lines were way too loose.  I let him know that the lines were too loose.  He didn't seem to pay much attention.
The next kid flew towards me on the first swing. Normally this swing is used to gauge whether the timing is good or bad and the catcher can adjust their swing accordingly.  The catcher and flyer then swing away from each other before the final swing back towards each other for the "catch".  You can look at the video to get an idea of what I'm talking about.  On this particular occasion though, when the kid swung towards me the safety lines were so loose that they looped around my back.  Then we swung away from each other.  Fast.  The nylon and polyester safety rope (think climbing rope) ripped across my back so hard and so fast that some of the rope melted.  Melted right into my back, in fact.
I didn't know it yet, but I had a burn on my back that went from my left hip diagonally up to my right shoulder and was an inch and a half wide.  All I knew was that I was as much pain as I could ever remember being in.  My brain was trying to sort out the furious rage and excruciating pain that I was feeling at the same time and figure out which was more important.  I dropped down to the net and rolled to the ground with full intentions of administering a savage beating to the guy who was responsible.  As I stormed towards him I could feel the eyes of all of the kids on me.  They knew something was up and wanted to see what I was going to do.  I caved.  When I was five steps from the guy, I turned around and headed straight for the infirmary, which was luckily very close to where the trapeze was.
I couldn't see it yet, but I knew the burn was bad when the nurse took less than half of a second to declare that I had to go to the hospital immediately.  I spent the next two hours on my stomach on a hospital bed while a doctor used a scalpel to remove melted pieces of nylon from my back.  Most of my back had been  frozen, which was good, but made walking afterwards tricky.  With a huge burn on my back the next weeks weren't much fun.  You move and twist your back when you do just about anything, so having a huge scar across your entire back makes things difficult.  Sleeping was the worst.  I couldn't sleep on my back.  Sleeping on my stomach was fine until I budged one inch and the scar cracked and split, waking me up.  I didn't sleep much for a while.
The worst part of all of the whole thing was that it was caused by someones gross incompetence and that he had been told over and over to fix the mistake he was making.  The guy tried to apologize to me once. I made it abundantly clear that his best option was to stay as far away from me as possible, for as long as possible.  I wasn't a fighter yet but had wrestled all my life and this guy liked to wear tights more than I did.  I was pretty sure I could smash him into a new universe if I had to.

Part II:
While I was relegated to office work and other non-physical tasks around camp the assistant trapeze director, let's call him Nathan, because that's his name, continued to fumble his way around the trapeze rig.  For a little while.
The main structure of a trapeze rig is 8 aluminum uprights that are about 32 feet high.  Lots of gear is rigged to the top of these.  When something needs to be fixed you have to climb up to the top to do it.  When you're finished you simply slide down to the ground, like the fireman you always wished you were.  Sometimes the uprights have to be adjusted a couple of inches to make everything line up properly.  To move the uprights you insert a small metal crossbar through two holes near the bottom.  You can then grab either side of the crossbar and use it to lift the upright and move it.  The rule is that you must always take the crossbar out after moving the upright.  Always.
If you've always wanted to be a detective instead of a fireman you might be able to see where this is going.
On one particular day, less than a week after I got back from the hospital, Nathan had been adjusting the uprights and climbing to the top to fix some rigging issues.  On his way down, Nathan forgot that he had not removed the metal crossbar from the upright... as every other half brained staff member could tell you.  Nathan liked to show off a little.  He liked to slide to the bottom as fast as he could...
I'd like to say he remembered about the crossbar in time, but he didn't,  and it would be a lie anyways.  He hit that sucker at full speed.  As luck or fate would have it I had just swung by the trapeze to see what was going on.  When he hit the ground he popped up and immediately pulled out the waistband on his shorts to check the damage.  I've got to hand it to the guy, he was pretty calm.  He just said, "I have to go see the nurse."  Like mine, Nathan's stop at the infirmary was brief before being whisked to the hospital.
Nathan had split himself in one of the most sensitive areas you could imagine.  At the hospital he needed to have one of the marbles put back in the marble sack before being stitched up.  Seven stitches in the burlap is not my idea of a good time, but I didn't feel particularly bad.  His carelessness and incompetence had caused me a great deal of pain, and eventually did the same thing to him.  I'm not a hateful person, but that's called poetic justice as far as I'm concerned.  Nate didn't do a whole lot of work on the trapeze rig for the rest of the summer and it became a safer place to be around.
I guess if this was an Aesop's fable the moral of story would be "Don't be an arrogant show off or you'll get stitches in your jewel case."  Or something like that.



Special Shout Outs:  To all members of the Sault Wrestling Club who will be traveling to the provincial Championships soon.  I hate the term good luck; real athletes want to win because of their skill and preparation, not luck.  Instead I will say 'wrestle hard".  Fight for every inch of mat space and every position. Fight to the whistle each and every time and make the ref peel you off of your opponent. Take the breaks off and go for it.

Just a Shorty

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

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

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

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

Something Awesome about Korea:

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

Something not so Awesome about Korea:

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