DREAM 2 Video, plus more

Found at Nightmare of Battle, a great place to stop by for up to date Japanese MMA news.

NOB said it was a “great” video. I agree with him (or her?) to a point. It’s good because it has a bunch of famous fighters in it. But man, DREAM is in dire [...]

Jiu jitsu in daily life.

I’m not a big believer in “Martial arts makes you a better person”, a theory that many martial artists subscribe to.
Funnily enough, most of the people that espouse this idea are arsehole kung fu nerds who turn out to be two-faced wankers without the faintest idea of what respect and loyalty actually is.
Case in point: [...]

Fall down, get up

Romaji: Nana korobi, ya oki
Literally: Seven falls, eight getting up
Meaning: Fall down seven times, get up eight times. An encouragement to persevere (ganbaru)
Notes: From the verbs korobu and okiru respectively
Source
Basically, fall down seven times, get up eight.
It’s a saying I hear in judo sometimes, and I really like it.
What is it about sayings that [...]

Recognising I’ll never be a world champion

It’s difficult, but it’s true.
Only a very, very small percentage of people will ever be truly, truly great. You and I are most probably not in that percentage.
I’ve recently been thinking a lot about my position in the jiu jitsu world. About how utterly, completely and terribly, abysmally, anonymously low it is.
I see videos of [...]

Ganbarimasu…

I’ve been checking out Adam Adshead’s Conceptual BJJ blog lately, which is a great read. On his “About me” page, he says:
I’m officially the worst person to have ever taken up Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (please don’t try and contest this, as you will fail)
Never one to pass up a challenge, I thought I’d have a [...]

Stuff

Judo is great. After training the other night, the black belts sat down and gave a speech. This is after we’ve done the communist-style communal exercise complete with ritualistic chanting, and bowing to about ten different places.
One guy, Maraiga-san (who is also a BJJ blue belt) gave an excellent speech about how a kid’s work [...]

Pride is Dead. Join me in mourning.

According to Zach Arnold over at Fight Opinion (and he speaks the truth), Pride is dead.
After having been bought by the UFC, we were all looking forward to the Superbowl of MMA, with champions from each organisation fighting each other to discover who was the best in the world.
Unfortunately Pride ended up being rotten to [...]