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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 need of Sato Daisuke to step in and show a brother how to edit a promo video. That video had oodles of potential to be gut-bustingly awesomely pumperific. But instead it was flat and uninspiring.

Check out some of Mr. Sato’s work to see how it should be done:

My all-time favourites, the Pride GP 2004 Final Round opening and the promo for Cro Cop vs. Fedor… Brings a tear to the eye, spelling mistakes and all…

PRIDE 2004 GP opening movie

Uploaded by torihada

Fedor Emelianenko vs Mirko Crocop

Uploaded by torihada

Yarennoka 2007 opening

Uploaded by torihada_man

Fedor vs Nogueira ×1 OP

Uploaded by torihada_man

Wicked new t-shirts have arrived!

A design that I worked on a while ago, and kind of forgot about, and got a few orders for, arrived by post today and I am seriously pleased with them.

They look wicked, if I do say so myself.

I only ordered 11 this time, as I didn’t have enough time or drive to do loads of sales to get people to buy them, but it has inspired me to keep working on my t-shirts.

I changed the shirt itself from the last one I made, and I much prefer the material this time. They feel solid. 6.5oz.

I used a company in Osaka called Sweatshop Union, who I can’t recommend highly enough. They deliver quality merchandise in good time, and the customer service is fantastic. I have emailed them at all hours of the day or night, and weekends, and almost always got a prompt and friendly reply.

If you are in Japan and want some t-shirts done for your dojo, event, band, etc… and want to deal with someone in English who can make exactly what you want, I recommend these guys.

I will be wearing this with pride when I compete in a couple of weeks!

When I designed them I imagined I was a Japanese person using English, so there is a big idiom on the back and a random phrase chucked in for good measure (“The only competition is with yourself”). Actually I think the message on the back is a pretty good one…

Click the picture to get a medium sized one, click againt to see full size. You can see the Cro Cop I sketched in the background, too…

BJJ April 26 & 27

My cough/cold/allergy/plague thing threatened to resurface during the last week, plus my ear felt like if you so much as breathed on it it would pop and shower your face with blood and gore, so I didn’t train. I went back last night with some mild trepidation but everything was still in order. My small measure of skill had not disappeared into the ether and I still feel ready for the competition.

There is something… I don’t know. Wholesome? Satisfying? Supremely geeky? About training late into the night on a Saturday with a group of people who share your love for your sport. While most young men and women are out pickling their livers with multicoloured, overpriced drinks, we were in a sweaty little dojo training our underpants off.

The black night outside the windows, the occasional drunken reveller on his way home weaving to the window and then weaving away again, mystified, with 1970s punk blaring out of the stereo, we trained hard. There was a blue, a purple, a couple of whites, and our coach the black belt. I worked on my takedowns for the competition, with some success.

I’ve christened my first move the Cross Pick. I have no idea if it is a real move, being out here in the bubble, but basically I armdrag across my body. This brings my opponent closer to me, hopefully planting their foot in front of me. Then I drop down and across and pick the leg and work the single leg. I was actually able to do it on my instructor last night, but he does weight 20 kilos less than me. My backup plan, kind of like a suicide move, is the uchi mata, a judo flip basically, which leaves my back exposed but if I commit to it hard enough, and follow up with something else, it shouldn’t be too high risk. They will have to work on defending it before they can counter it.

I was able to collar choke a purple belt but he is quite a laid back kind of guy who has “retired” from competition so I don’t think he was too bothered.

That was last night, and I decided to go today, too, as I had been slack the week preceding. Today was much more laid back. I rolled with two young kids who I think enjoy rolling with me, basically because I am a foreigner. They are fun to roll with. A brother and sister. The sister is actually tougher than the brother and moves really well. She will be good when her body develops and she has some strength to add to her technique.

My instructor leant me his earguard because my ear is really painful. I figured I would be safe with the little girl and not need it.

Big mistake. At the end of rolling, I was moving into side control and she suddenly sat up and headbutted me square in the fucking ear. I can’t tell you how excruciating it was. Imagine having an ear that feels like it has been inflated to bursting point and that the slightest breeze wiffling over it causes your nerves to spasm like so many retarded jellyfish (?). Now imagine someone headbutting the crap out of that ear. OUCH. I tried to laugh it off, I think she felt pretty bad, but it was incredibly painful. Suffice to say I used the headguard after that which turned out to be pretty useful.

The ear may be a problem in competition though… I had to tap out to the Whitebelt Headlock (TM) today because my ear hurt too much. Hmm.

Just found out that Ao-san will also be entering the competition in May. It’s great to have another person from the dojo coming. Not so great is that he is seriously good and competing in the same category as me! Shit-flaps! Maybe we can meet in the finals…

Sengoku

Saw a Sengoku poster randomly today… Wonder how many people are going to see that and say, “Ooh! An MMA show in a far away city that is really expensive. I will definitely buy a ticket for that right the hell now!”

Still, kind of cool.

TUF Shit: An Ultimate Fighter Blog Ep: 4

Jesse, the guy who won last week’s fight, looks like the kind of guy who walks into the bathroom with a bottle of ketchup in his hand and then stops and goes “Huh?” and looks at the ketchup, then the toilet, then the ketchup again, and then headbutts a hole in the door and eats the whole ketchup container. He seems to use words to express himself in much the same way as a monkey might use a big stick to pry sweet, sweet ants from a tree… clumsily. No offense to him.

Matthew Riddle does that annoying finger clicking thing which makes me instantly want to see his face being pulver-smasholated.

Rampage riffs with his team and they respond with nervous laughter and white-boy mumbling. I’m reminded of all the times a black person has made me feel spectacularly uncool. A guy once bumped into me on the street here in Japan and was all “Hey wassup yo, where the party at, yo? Where the weed at?” and I was all, “Ah! Hello! Yes. The party, hey? Hmm, well… I believe there was a party… over there somewhere, and… perhaps… you could go there… I gave up smoking pot, though, so…” and then the guy kind of slunk off with a pitying smile on his face.

The characters on this season do seem to be trying quite hard to make things interesting but I’m finding it very difficult to give a shit about anyone. Riddle is a young, annoying man. Tim Credeur is an older and slightly less annoying person, another one of those “got the Hagakure in the post this morning. Samurais RULE.” kind of guy.

To be fair, I loved the fight. It was a lot of fun. Very back and forth, with both fighters showing heart and skill. Credeur’s experience proved to be the deciding factor in the end, though.

Rampage looks very annoyed in the next episode. Perhaps a certain bald tourettes sufferer elbowed him softly in the ribs and whispered “Quinton, darling, nothing much is happening so far. Be a doll and start fucking tearing stuff up, would you? Fucking shit bitch cocks.”

Night of the Running Man and other such nonsense

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I won’t bore you with the same tripe being regurgitated by ten million other blogs out there, and just say a few things that I felt watching the card.

I really enjoyed it. The only fight I skipped through was Kalib Starnes vs. Nate Quarry, and then in the end I had to go back and watch it because of the controversy. Thank you, Nate Quarry, for providing some entertainment in what would have otherwise been a ridiculously boring fight. Here’s one of the better videos (jeez you guys are fast, it takes me about three days to export anything from Premiere… piece of shit!)

Quarry came across as a really top bloke. He was funny and well-spoken, and probably scared shitless of the godless killing machine cult that is ATT. How the fuck Starnes is still in ATT, which makes you swear some kind of blood allegiance to honour and awesomeness, is beyond me.

I actually got just as excited for Bisping vs. McCarthy as I did for Serra vs. St. Pierre, just because Bisping is a Brit. He looked pretty mean out there and successfully ignored McCarthy’s antics. Who the fuck is captain miserable anyway? I have never, ever heard his name mentioned as anybody worth watching at all. He is a mosquito bite on the arse of the UFC and how they managed to drum up any kind of hype for him to fight Bisping is beyond me. Luckily, The Count tore him a new one and did so in style. I’m looking forward to his next test at 185.

Franklin / Lutter was pretty good, although Lutter looked like he had spent about half the preceding months training jiu jitsu and the other half eating double cheeseburgers and watching Family Guy. What the fuck? He was exhausted after about four minutes. Franklin and his strangely circular arms looked pretty good, although what is his reward, another merciless drubbing from Anderson Silva? No thanks.

I generally tend to avoid jokes as simple as pointing at someone and yelling “GAY” but Rich Franklin, You Are A Gay. *points*

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And, naturally, GSP de-pulverated Matt Serra. Everybody is being too nice to throw the word “fluke” around when talking about Serra’s original win over GSP, but I’m flinging it with extra gusto directly at your face. It was a fluke (much as I love Matt Serra), and GSP righted the universe the other night.

I’m still pumped for Hughes / Serra, though I need a few cheesy UFC hype videos to remind me about the bad blood between these two warriors who will leave it all in the octagon and warrior with blood and spirit warrior.

Overall, a very entertaining card.

Is it typical at Canadian events to have such a vocal crowd singing songs? Or was it the English contingent there for Bisping? Either way it sounded like a football (soccer) stadium, it was great.