A couple of weekends ago, I had a ton of fun at a “Modified MMA” tournament hosted by the good people of Warrior-One, an MMA retailer and training center just north of Seattle. The event offered an opportunity for a hopeful fighter to begin to bridge the gap between jiu-jitsu matches and MMA, by beginning to mix strikes with grappling in a controlled setting. It’s the kind of community event that I hope to see more of.
While at Warrior-One, I picked up our sport’s newest full-length documentary, Renzo Gracie: Legacy. Similarly, Legacy attempts to bridge that gap between the personal side of one of our greatest figures, and his achievements in the sport.
Yeah, I know we say it a lot, but it’s still amazing how far this sport has come.
Many of us here in the Pacific Northwest remember the days when Randy Couture & Maurice Smith (and later, Couture & Josh Barnett) were fighting each other for the UFC title while training out of our local gyms. It was a source of pride for us that many of the biggest names in this sport made our area their home. Unfortunately, our local media totally ignored the phenomenon.
Times have changed. This week, the story of Cindy Hales, the local BJJ phenom who fought Megumi Fujii in MMA last year, made the front page of Seattle Weekly. This is a story that sadly flies under the radar of even most MMA fans here, and yet it becomes a cover story for one of our better outlets. Now, that’s more like it. In Spoiling For a Fight, Hales expounds on her triumphs in jiu jitsu and MMA — and her struggles. She has sustained knee injuries which her boxing coach Mike Gavronski thinks have ended her fighting career, and suffered through a massive same day weight cut against Fujii.
Whether or not Hales gets the rematch with Fujii that she seeks, there’s no doubt the attention she gets from this article is well deserved. Whatever happens next, kudos are in order for Hales on her fine career, and respect goes to Seattle Weekly for recognizing it.
Today, Tatame Magazine reported the 95th birthday festivities for the legend himself, Grandmaster Hélio Gracie. Wow. I hope I see the day.
Following an auotgraph session with fans, several members of his family’s jiu-jitsu royalty, including Rickson, Royler, and Kyra Gracie, presented the patriarch a red belt embroidered in ten gold stripes. Total-MMA can’t offer any such honor, but we can offer you a few links to learn about the man who helped build MMA with his legendary vale tudo bouts of the 1950’s:
Anyone sick of Olympic judo (etc) coverage around here? Yeah, me neither.
In fact, whenever I feel like I’m burning out on MMA (like lately), I try and catch some jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai (etc.), and I would encourage anyone to do the same.
The cold fact is that fighters in MMA’s shallow talent pool are all trying to learn a variety of techniques, leading to more and more amatuerish fights making TV, and sometimes you end up feeling like you’re watching the same sloppy stalemate fight over and again. Sloppy boxing. Clinch. Knees to the body. Someone gets tripped. Groundwork that goes nowhere. Standup. Zzzzzzz… been there?
Of course, now and then an MMA bout seems to have it all… and as you can see from this video, it appears that they have been happening for more than 50 years. This is one of six fights between Carlson Gracie and Waldemar Santana which took place in the 1950’s. Props to Andreh Anderson( himself a Carlson Gracie black belt) for posting this to Underground Forum. What I’d give for the full version!
As you know, Dave Meltzer covers the business of mixed martial arts better than anyone. But, as you might also know, his technical knowledge of the sport is very much a work in progress. This is true of all of us, of course, whether we’re casual fans, devotees, or martial artists who train in grappling or striking arts ourselves. Mixed martial arts is a sport marked by such rapid technical innovation and evolution that we’ve all found ourselves behind the curve at one time or another. We’ve all had our, “wait, what on earth was that?” moments as we’ve been exposed to techniques for the first time. But unlike most of us, Dave Meltzer unfortunately has his “wait, what?” moments recorded for posterity. And the June 23rd edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has a real doozy.
Recapping the June 15th Dream 4 event, Meltzer offers this somewhat baffling analysis of the finish to the Shinya Aoki / Katsuhiko Nagata Lightweight Grand Prix match: “[Aoki] remained on top, doing very little until using what was called a gogoplata from the mount, but really wasn’t, as it was more of a forearm choke except using the shinbone instead of the forearm.”
Highlight videos from the 2008 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Championships are dropping like flies, so catch this one before Carlos Gracie Jr. does. It details the best performances from Team Brasa, including Andre Galvao, who took home the gold at the under 194.5 lb division.
BJJ highlights can be a little odd — it’s a groundfighter’s game, so there’s lots of little jostles for position to set up a sweep or triangle have to replace high impact strikes and takedowns which aren’t going to mean much of anything to someone without a lot of training. They’re a ton of fun but I’m always reminded how, for better or worse, we’ll probably never see our brand of jiu-jitsu join Kano’s in the Olympics.
On that subject, it’s nice to see some good throws tossed into the mix of BJJ competition, something that seems to be on the rise. Between 00:38 and 00:59 there’s three particularly nasty ones, which is actually more than the entire 2004 Pan-American championships DVD I own.
Also, watch for Galvao’s match with Roger Gracie at the end — you can also turn the volume back up at that point.
Inoue and Sotiropoulos both begin and end their seminar with classic jiu-jitsu escapes. Among the simple and fundamental movements that every black belt masters, escapes are especially valuable to the beginners in attendance who often find themselves in bad positions.
Inoue remembers when he learned how important it is to win the battle for positional dominance, and how it led to one of the most controversial moments of his fighting career.
The first bout between Enson Inoue and Joe Estes took place twelve years ago in Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall, but Inoue laughs, “I remember it like it was last month.”
The PRIDE & Shooto legend and the budding UFC & TUF6 star talk to Total-MMA about their different martial arts paths and fighting spirit they share
“We always say, we’re cut from the same cloth,” Enson Inoue says with a smile. The pioneering MMA legend is about to begin conducting a jiu-jitsu seminar with current UFC star George Sotiropoulos at Fisticuffs Gym in Vancouver, WA. The two are friends from the days when Sotiropoulos was cutting his teeth in Guam, fighting MMA at a show promoted by an old friend of Inoue.
“When I first met George, I looked at him,” Enson begins. “He was to fight this guy Sergio, this famous jiu-jitsu guy. And look at George, he doesn’t look like this mean dude. He looks like a nice guy, you know. I mean, he’s not a nice guy.”
“Hey! Come on now!” Sotiropoulos yells in a sarcastic protest.
Enson continues, mimicking George’s Australian accent: “‘Hey! I know you, Rites of Passages! Yeah!’ He wants to shake my hand… and I think, oh my God, this guy’s gonna get his ass kicked.”
In all my years of training there is one glaringly bad habit that I have noticed many people have. People fall in love with their training partners and they end up training almost exclusively with that one person on a regular basis. It’s not the worst habit in the world and it won’t have that much of a negative effect on you, but by not diversifying your training partners you are seriously inhibiting your growth as an athlete. I try to switch training partners all the time, and especially in Brazilian jiu-jitsu where you need a well rounded game right from the get go. To this end I am going to give you a quick look at a single rolling session, where we worked on the guard game (someone pulls guard and then the contest goes on until the bottom man either sweeps/submits the top guy or the top guys passes guard) and the different guys that I make sure to grapple with in order to help my game.
Rickson Gracie in Choke: it’s the much loved (and much hated) 1999 documentary which spotlighted the Gracie family champion’s preparation and participation in the 1995 Japan Vale Tudo. What brought this DVD back into my player? Was it all the recent excitement about his 19 year old son Kron Gracie and his gold medal winning performance at the 2008 Pan American games? Was it Rickson’ recent appearance in the (excellent) jiu-jitsu episode of Fight Quest? I don’t know, but like YAMMA it happened… and sadly, I ended up enjoying it a little less than I thought I would…
