ATTENTION ALL READERS!!! Blog is moving!

Rather large news.

The fantastically awesome pod-casting, gut-crampingly hilarious post-writing, Canada-living folks over at Fightlinker offered to raise my lowly status from “Just another WordPress.com blog” to “A totally awesome blog hosted by Fightlinker.”

That means that all my shit is moved over to a new address:

http://martialfarts.fightlinker.com

So either copy paste that address, or click here to be taken to the site, and please update your bookmarks. If you are feeling particularly thorough and you have linked here in the past you might want to update those links, too.

But most importantly of all, keep reading! This upgrade may just be the kick in the pants I need to level-up my writing from “random nonsense that makes me spray milk and/or melted cheese out of my nose and eyes” to “holy wow crap this is the funniest thing I have ever read or had read to me by a man in a rubber suit kapow”

Video: me being beaten up

As I said in this post, it’s good to get beaten up.

Here’s me doing my absolute best against my instructor, who weighs at least ten kilos less than me.

I really went all out which is why it looks a little scrappy. I think I was doing some things right, it’s just that he does them twenty times better than me. I can’t remember the last time I spent more than about three seconds in the top position with him, his top control is amazing, especially considering how much smaller he is than me.

MURASAKI BJJ

MURASAKI BJJ

Just wanna give a shoutout to my buddy Patrick and his blog. He’s been on a roll lately churning out some quality posts.

If all goes well, hopefully we will meet in some kind of foreigner-in-Japan blogging and doing BJJ mega awesome coincidence explosion in May, at the Copa South BJJ tournament. I’ve competed twice, and got bronzes both times there, so it’s time to move it up a level!

Bookmark his blog or die, morans!

DREAM: Post-fight interviews 1

-+ Suki MMA +-: DREAM: After the fight interviews 1

Thanks to Suki at Suki MMA.

Bob Sapp – Body of a Silverback, Heart of a Hampster

Bob Sapp… wrestling superstar, mixed martial arts legend, former NFL powerhouse, and… ah, who am I kidding.

Bob Sapp… a really, really big black guy whose head looks like a brain when it gets squeezed!

Elite XC recently paid a basquillon dollars for him to get his ass unceremoniously kicked by some random South African guy (probably). K1 literally falls over itself backwards to book him for their big events. And it looks like the new promotion DREAM is interested in him, too.

But why?

Zach over at Fight Opinion compares him to Kimbo Slice. I’d say that’s like comparing a slice of processed cheese to a sharpened, well oiled yellow chainsaw with rusty nails glued on the side in terms of killing/maiming power. They are both the same colour, but that’s about it. Sapp doesn’t even have a beard.

Bob Sapp is the biggest flop in MMA. He has absolutely no spirit. Watch! As he cries when he gets punched. Glare! As he gets knocked down and will do anything to prevent being stood up to continue fighting. Cringe! When the only fights he wins are against very tiny people!

Without further ado, I bring you… Bob Sapp…. Body of a Silverback, Heart of a Hampster.

Bob Sapp vs. Cro Cop

The beast’s strength begins to be “sapped” at about 5 minutes, when Cro Cop starts to land some strikes. Until that point, Sapp had survived mostly by breathing very heavily, bullrushing Cro Cop, and grabbing onto him and shoving him around a bit. Then the strange girly-steps-with-the-guard-up commences, as Sapp tries to inch his way towards Mirko without getting hit. A few seconds later, Cro Cop lands what looks suspiciously like a kick and then a punch. Well, somebody should have told Bob Sapp what this K1 lark was all about because he crumples in surprise and then sits down, whimpering, on the floor where he stays for a while, trying to figure out why the nasty white man is trying to hurt him. (As a side note, Mirko is about as pumped as I’ve ever seen him winning that fight…)

Bob Sapp vs. Peter Aerts

More vintage Sapp. The big man takes on the Dutch Lumberjack, a man who seems to get harder with age. This is a very special Sapp moment. There’s a huge build up. Aerts’ home crowd is P-U-M-P-E-D. The fighters glare at each other. Sapp’s got this glaring business down, I tell you. The match starts. Bob throws all semblance of a gameplan out the window and does his customary over-excited autistic elephant smash brainfart. Aerts falls over, and Sapp returns to his corner, ready for another run. He crashes in, goes for the double leg takedown (not always the best idea in a kickboxing match), and then calls it quits. That’s it, fight over. After a few replays, I realise that Aerts did somewhat graze Sapp’s gigantic chest with his knobbly little knees. The Beast lies on the floor, gasping and crying as per usual, waiting until his count is almost up, then makes a show of attempting to stand up, all the while dreaming of the large paycheck from K1 that he’s going to cash just for falling on the floor. Awesome.

Bob Sapp vs. Cyril Abidi

Here’s Bobby wining the only way he knows how… by fighting a smaller guy, and by cheating horribly! He fights Abidi, everybody’s favourite smelly French kickboxer (as christened by Rampage Jackson), and basically gorilla pounds the back of his head and neck with giant, clubbing blows until Abidi’s balance is so impaired–possibly permanently–he can barely stand. Abidi never gets knocked out, by the way… ever. Where most people fall down, Abidi gets KO’d but stays standing. His brain just goes on holiday out his ear. Like the way owls can sleep on branches and not fall off, that’s Cyril.

Bob Sapp vs. Kazuyuki Fujita

Worst nightmare for the Wet Blanket… someone nearly his size, who actually has some skill! Gasp! Groan! Ironhead makes short work of Weird Brain Head. Enjoy!

Bob Sapp vs. Jan Nortje

From this last weekend. Same old same old… Sapp rushes at his opponent. Everything is going swimmingly until his Nortje throws, and lands, a punch. The Giant follows that up with a few more tasty wallops that old Brain Head eats directly in the face. As he crumbles to the floor in a shower of wasted Elite XC dollars, his leg buckles slightly. The ref calls the fight. Sapp protests, strongly enough to save some face (LOL) but weakly enough that the ref doesn’t actually listen to him. Sapp later blames the loss of the fight on his hamstring giving out. That’s a little like blaming a car accident on the dog that came and took a dump on the smoking, twisted wreckage of your car after you’ve smashed it. In otherwords, completely irrelevant.
Here’s to you, Bob. Take those suckers for every penny you can!

Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou vs Karo Parisyan

These two guys are UFC fighters now. Interesting to see their old judo days… Hardcore. You can see how strong judo makes you. I’d hate to grapple with Karo Parisyan, it must be like grappling someone made out of oak.

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 the greats, of the Leo Vieiras, the Naoya Uematsus, the Genki Sudos, the Rickson Gracies, the Andre Galvaos, the Eddie Bravos, the dude in the purple belt test, and it makes me a little sad, because I know I’ll probably never be that good.

Rickson Gracie will never give me a nickname. Marcelo Garcia will never ask to borrow my taping. Royler Gracie will never get my armpit in his face.

Faced with this thought, this idea that I’m 99% guaranteed a jiu jitsu career that involves pottering about at local competitions and clawing my way through each belt, I have three choices.

1) Cry. Give up. Realise it’s all hopeless. Some part of me, when I do something, always wants to be really, really good at it. Not just a little good, but to be really fantastic. I’m like the world’s laziest perfectionist. I’m a half-arsed obsessive compulsive. When I do something, I like to do it the same way every time. But that never actually happens because I’m too lazy and forgetful. When I enter into some field of endeavour, I’d like to do it to the best of my abilities and really make something of it, but that rarely happens because life always gets in the way. And I’m lazy. Sometimes when things are going really good at training, I imagine that I could enter the worlds one far, far off day. Then I get another cold, take a week off training, and return to suckitude.

2) Be a real American hero and yell “Fuck you!” in the face of insurmountable odds. In other words, delude myself that I will be the greatest in the world one day, and train with that lofty goal in mind. Pros: Looking totally awesome while being really aggressive in sparring and grunting a lot when performing moves; pumping my fist in the air while stirring rock music plays; wiping sweat and blood from my brow and taking a deep breath then plunging back into the fray. Cons: Requires too much energy; lifetime of minor disappointments followed by major disappointment when I fail miserably on the world stage and / or never even reach said stage.

3) Accept my lowly status and continue pottering. Now, this is more like it. You could even say it’s zen. Or Krishnamurtian. Or just lazy. But it basically means accepting my place in the grand scheme of things, and just getting on with it.

There’s a very cheesy and over-used saying which I’m going to use here again, with some cheese, delivered in in the form of a commandment.

Thou shalt not compare thyself to thy peers. Thou shall only comparest thyself to thy previous self.

It’s an oldy but a goody. It really is true. You can only compare yourself to how you were yesterday, and if you improved, you’re doing good.

Even the best out there are not the best for long.

My good friend Theo used to have a saying. “There’s always someone bigger and badder than you out there.” One night we were cruising along and we saw a guy prancing down the street, chest puffed out, looking like Captain I’m a Right Hard Bastard, giving everyone the stink eye. Theo pointed at him and said to me, “There’s always someone bigger and badder than you out there.”

Later that night, a friend of mine was drunk and tried to tackle Theo. Theo is a master ninja, and he stepped out of the way and redirected him into a wall. He split his head right open, so we took him to the hospital. Who did we see getting brought into the emergency room beaten to a bloody pulp? None other than Captain I’m a Right Hard Bastard. No word of a lie. Looks like he ran into someone bigger and badder and suffered the consequences.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes. You suck, the sooner you realise that, the sooner we can get on with our lives.