DREAM matches!

I’ve just cast my votes over at the DREAM website for who I think should fight next in the middle and lightweight GPS.

You can do the same!

Head here for the middleweight matchups, and here for the lightweights.

It’s really easy, the fighters’ names appear in the dropdown menu in the same order that they appear in the picture above. You will see the fighter’s picture once you select him, anyway.

Once you are done, press the big blue button at the bottom.

Here are my pics.

Middleweight:

I have Kin Taei-whatsisname against Mousasi. I think this could be a good fight and hope that Mousasi get’s through it.

Then the Dongbar against Zelg Galesic, who I think is awesome and showed much improved ground skills in his last outing. I think the Dongbar will take it though, as Galesic is too green to be winning any GPs just yet.

I’ve got Sakuraba against Mayhem, because I think that would be an awesome fight and I think there would be some lovely-jubbly jiu jitsu on display there.

And Jacare vs. Tamura, which I think will be a great fight, and will test Jacare.

I hope that the next round will have Mousasi, Dongbar, Sakuraba or Miller, and Jacare.

Lightweight:

I quite like Caoru Uno, and was very impressed by his handling of Ishida, but I personally don’t think he has enough star quality to win something like this. Eddie Alvarez is on a tear and this could be his breakout performance. These two will show a good fight.

The other dude I don’t really care about, but I hope Aoki gets through and the final will be Aoki / Alvarez.

Head over and cast your votes, let me know how you chose!

TUF Shit… Series 7, episode 1,00,6,4999.1b

In a radical change of pace for the series, the show opens with a montage. First, the screen is black. Hard rock musics plays hard, most likely Aerosmith. A bald eagle smashes through the screen sending shards of glass into your eyes. The image explodes to reveal Dana White wearing a stars and stripes unitard with a flying-V guitar in his hand. The camera zooms in on his face and he winks, then his mouth moves with Big John McCarthy’s voice overdubbed yelling “Let’s get it on!”

Octagon girls start can-canning across the screen and Dana White shoots them all with a machine gun. A quick fade to black then back up to show some fights. Fists slam into noses. Elbows crush windpipes. Shin-bones mangle neck-bones. A guitar wails HARD. Heels crumple stomachs. All the while there will be rapid cuts of Dana White in a giant throne made out of the bones of TUF washouts, completely naked, cackling maniacally and stroking Tito Ortiz’s monstrous head. (Tito is on a leash at his feet.)

A shot of Forrest Griffin yelling so hard his windpipe flies out of his nostrils, and Rampage reading a book (”How to talk like black folk”), then two TUF idiots headbutting each other. A dinosaur foot stomps on the screen with a farting noise and then lifts up to reveal THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER branded onto a cow’s arse.

There is a brief recap of last week’s fight, which ended somewhat surprisingly with Matt Brown ripping out Jeremy May’s entrails and force-feeding them to the judges at ringside with a strangely reassuring voice. Back at the house, all hell is breaking loose as the producers of the show have decided to periodically release noxious and deadly gas into certain rooms of the house. A few cast members die but they have received no air-time and nobody knew they were there anyway, plus they quit their jobs and left their girlfriends so nobody is going to miss them.

Meanwhile, in the pool outside, Grody O’Brady has decided to get completely shitfaced. He drinks so much neat vodka that he hallucinates, imagining the pool is a pit of bubbling lava and he can’t escape. The camera zooms in on his drunken face as he squeals “I’m melting I’m melting heeeeeeeelp me!” Johnny Martinz hears the screams from inside the house and runs outside but trips up on one of the camera cables and ends up impaling himself on a rake.

Dana White arrives on a personal jetpack, melting the toes off the crowd of fighters that has gathered in the garden.

“Fucking shit, assholes. What the fuck is going on here? Do you want to be a fucking fighter or should I shove this jetpack up your asses and fry your pancreases? Huh? Fucking shit fucks. Christ. I don’t need this shit. Me and Lorenzo are supposed to be having a fucking champagne bubble bath in Urijah Faber’s face-ass crevice in three minutes, and I gotta deal with this shit.” Then he flicks the switch on the jetpack and flies away into the night.

The producers release a troupe of rabid kangaroos into the house just as a stage emerges from a secret compartment revealing Alice Cooper and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, who begin rocking out hard. Some quick cuts of the kangaroos stalking their prey in the house, a random shot of an egg frying, then the credits roll.

That’s a rap!

Prognosis: Suckitude!

So I went to the doctors today because my foot was really sore. I got an x-ray, which came up negative… so no large bones broken. But apparently small breaks don’t show up on x-rays. You need an MRI for that. So I will wait until Friday and if it still hurts, get one of those.

I believe the doctor’s complete prognosis was “what a load of fucking shit” with the recommendation to “be really pissed off and headbutt stuff pretty hard.”

So that’s what I’ll be doing.

Hopping around Elementary Schools teaching English is not fun on those metal leg thingamyjingies. I thought I could be all cyborgy and awesome but I was just crap at moving and stuff.

I will use this opportunity to do some “mental training” (of what that will consist I am not entirely sure yet) as well as some upper body and core strength work. Fancy names for pullups and situps.

Arse cocks!

Kick him when he’s down!

Sheesh. I went to training today with a fresh, positive outlook.

Jiu jitsu is a game and I was ready to play it more enthusiastically than anyone.

Had a good warmup. There are a few coloured belts there so sensei decides to stage a mini tournament, as practice. I’m paired up with a purple belt.

We square off and I shoot in, get the single leg and the takedown. Two points. There is some scrambling and stuff,  I stand up, and his spider guard is too good for me so I decide to sit down sharpish before I lose my balance.

Wham, I land weirdly on my foot, crushing it under my weight. Something goes pocky.

I hold on for the rest of the fight, wondering whether to quit and see to my throbbing foot, but decide to grit it out, Japanese-spirit stylee. I lose 11 points to 5 then crawl to the corner to inspect the damage… not good. Foot is buggered. Swollen, with a dark blotch on it. I can’t put any weight on it at all.

Training is a half an hour cycle from my house. I had to come back on the bike which was probably not a good idea either.

So now I’m nursing a mangled foot and a severely dampened spirit! When it happened there was a cloud so black it was almost visible over me. I was seriously pissed off. I really don’t need this at the moment.

Still, I managed to snap myself out of the funk and now I’m just hoping it’s not too serious and after a night of icing and shippu-ing this inteeeeeense pain will have subsided.

Shit burgers.

June 22nd - Kyushu Open BJJ tournament

I’m putting the last competition behind me and looking to the next one.

It’s pretty close.

On the off chance that there are any foreigners in Kyushu who are interested in entering but can’t find the details online, here they are.

Unfortunately you need to be a member of the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation of Japan to enter.

Kyushu Open Tournament 2008
Date: June 22
Venue: Kasuya Dome
Price: 5,000 yen before June 6th, 6,000 after

Entry form PDF for “Adult” class here.

I’m hoping I’ll have more luck here. This is the venue where I won my first and only gold medal, at the Ground Impact Grappling tourney last year.

BJJ May 9, and a minor crisis.

Went to BJJ last night, the first class after the competition.

Usually I feel good after a comp, win or lose. I have always felt that competing is like firing clay… you’ve been moulding and pushing and prodding, then when you compete, it hardens, and you reach a new level, then you start moulding again.

Skill-wise I felt good still, but I was feeling good before the competition and I lost, when I probably should have won.

Here the crisis starts. This may be somewhat of a disorganised rant, but try to bear with me.

Up until the competition, I felt things had been going well. Very well, in fact. I had chosen a mode of training and thinking, and it was working for me, I was improving. I was not bothered by small questions or self-doubt. Now, I have reached one of those times in training where you feel like you know nothing and you don’t know how to proceed.

The Brazilians, the world champions, all say that you should be tapping all the time in training. You should have no ego. Training is not a competition.

But if I spend all my training sessions tapping and never fighting with my partners, how will I ever develop the fighting skill, the mental toughness, the grit, that you need to succeed in BJJ? And the next question, is winning medals all that’s important to me?

I’d like to say no but there is no denying that winning is much more satisfying and confidence-boosting than losing. I can’t lie… I want to win. I want to have shiny medals hanging on my wall that my future son can point at and say “Tell me how you won those, Dad.”

I’d like to teach jiu jitsu one day. Having a few gold medals to your name helps that.

For example, last night, my coach was pwnz0r11ings me on the mat. He had a kind of uncomfortable smile on his face and after the roll told me that I needed more “mental training.” I didn’t really know what he meant, and sometimes having a coach that you can’t converse with freely can be really frustrating.

Did he mean I was mentally weak? I don’t think so. I have a reputation at training for always being ready to go for every spar when a lot of people fall back to the side.

Perhaps he meant I was not aggressive enough? That could very much be it. I am not an aggressive person at all. But according to the Brazilians, you don’t need to be aggressive, especially in training… should I be launching myself at every sparring partner with teeth bared and eyeballs bulging?

That comment really stuck with me. So for the next spar I hunted down the biggest, strongest blue belt in the room and we started sparring pretty hard. He got my back and sunk in a body triangle, then started working for a collar choke. It was hell. My body was twisted, my stomach and ribs compressed, and my gi shearing across my neck as he worked for the choke. I could only think of my coach saying that I needed mental training, so I steeled myself not to give up. I lasted for four minutes and then he managed to sink in the choke, I felt myself going all tingly and had to tap. I came out feeling battered and bruised but satisfied that I had done my best. Nobody can ask any more of me.

I’ve been racking my brains and this is what I can come up with. I should tap whenever I am in danger in training. The training part comes with recognising much earlier when danger is coming, and avoiding it. If I manage to do that, I won’t be tapping all the time. When I’m rolling with my coach, he always pauses before he submits me, as if to say “look, you left your arm/neck sticking out again”. I realise, but a second too late.

So here’s how I will be going forward. Here are the things I am sure about.

1) I need to be more “aggressive” (in quotation marks because I’m not going to be out to hurt everybody, but I am going to be the one who makes the first move; doesn’t settle for bottom; breaks grips immediately; etc etc.)

2) I can tap whenever I want, but learn afterwards what mistake I made to get tapped and try to recognise it earlier next time.

3) Feel danger coming and do something about it early.

The more I write the more I think it is about my mindset. My coach said last night, I should always be thinking of attack, and if I make a mistake or my opponent does a good move, then I should think about defense but only long enough to get back on the attack. Quite often when I am rolling I do go into defensive mode to “see what the other guy gives me”. This is my undoing, I think. Even my missus says to me “why do you always flop on your back… why do you never go on top?” And no, that is not prison lingo you perverts. Stop giggling.

I am going to have to remind myself before every roll… maybe I should come up with some funky ryhme to remember.

Be first, be fast, be… um… win.

And I suppose the important thing to do at this stage is not to stress about it too much and just keep training.

It’s true though, you learn so much more from the fights you lose. If I had won that last comp, I would have kept on going without thinking. Now, I hope I can get through this period and grow.

My coach is going to America for the Mundials, and asked me to teach quite a few classes, which was a nice confidence booster. I will be teaching on Friday nights from 8p.m. to 11:30p.m. … that’s two classes each time. Quite a long night, but it will be good training for me and a good opportunity to solidify my understanding of some basics.

Any advice you guys have on the mental game and how to approach training would be much appreciated.

TUF Shit Episode 6

The episode opens with a cat being flayed alive and nailed to a wall. No, wait, sorry. That didn’t happen.

The guys in the car on the way back from the fight pick make some actually rather amusing gags about Matt Brown.

Then the show is in danger of showing too much normal activity and interesting dialogue from the fighters so that scene quickly switches to muscled, tattooed guys with their caps on backwards knocking back shots of liquor. Phew!

After every shot the boys say “woo” and look around at each other, pleased as little kids who have just laid a turd on the kitchen floor and are waiting for their mums to come home and see it. Tim Credeur breaks the unwritten rule by talking to the camera man. They let it slip this time because he is badmouthing some idiot but I know that Dana White later inserted a screwdriver into Tim’s rectum while whispering “Will you ever speak to the cameraman again big man?” in his ear.

Jeremy May makes out that he was only pretending to be doing shots and was really doing water, but I don’t believe him because his face is so disgusting greasy and his eyelids so puffy that he has to be hungover.

Jeremy May says that “in a good Christian way, he is going to beat his (Matt Brown’s) face in.” If there’s anything I like more than an annoying twat, it’s an annoying religious twat. He claims to be training Jeremy Jitsu. I can’t even begin to describe how lame this is.

Lots of shots of Matt Brown looking moody and be-goateed. He says some things about prison and drugs and alcohol. He doesn’t say “warrior” which is strange, but I commend him for resisting the urge.

The Excite-O-Pumpometer vagely flickers between “Huh? What?” and “Ooh I found a toenail” as Matt Brown and Jeremy May do the weird posing-for-non-existant-photographs thing.

Jeremy May says that he has been faking a knee injury because he has to do “what works for him.” So what works for him is not training hard for a fight? This Jeremy Jitsu is sounding shittier by the second.

The fight starts and Jeremy May throws punches so wide that I think he brushed the gums of the audience with them. I’m waiting for Brown to unleash the kind of attack that will have May’s grandchildren pre-emptively retroactively crapping in their pants in the future. It doesn’t come.

I feel Forrest’s frustration as he yells “RELEASE THE ANIMAL ALREADY BROWN!” again and again, so loud that he loses his voice. I mean, Brown was made out to be some kind of dangerous killing machine that could flip out at any moment and start tearing people’s ears off at the breakfast table, but in the fight he looks about as aggressive as a neutered koala. Who is asleep.

Jeremy May shows the most advanced technique of Jeremy Jitsu, called “gasping for air and flailing around”, but luckily Brown is able to capitalise on it and counter by kicking him in the face.

There is another fight between two people that I didn’t even realise were on the show until now. Way to go, idiot editors.

They have a pretty good fight and exchange a whole bunch of headbutts. The handsome guy wins one for team Rampage, which has Rampage happier than a pig in shit.

Fade to black with the SAME FUCKING MUSIC AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN.

PS Here is last week’s wrapup. Show me some comment love assfaces!