Archive for the 'Reviews' Category

You may have missed their name, as there’s a lot of competition out there — but Black Eagle has been an online distributor for martial arts gear for the UK and beyond since 2005. If you check out their website, you’ll find they a variety of products for your Mixed Martial Arts and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu needs, whether it’s Gi or No Gi — including rash guards and grappling pants. I’ll admit, I can’t say I’ve tried any of their products before this one.

But, after checking out their Black Eagle Raptor Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gi, I can say they’ve got a new loyal customer.

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Pictured: The DVD cover to Javier “Showtime” Vazquez’s “Mastering Grappling” instructional, volume one.

Are you a jiu-jitsu player interested in some different approaches to your no-gi game? Maybe you want to get some help getting your wrestling fundamentals down, or figuring out ways to apply those skills to your jiu-jitsu? If so, and actually – and maybe if you’re someone else — Javier “Showtime” Vazquez has a product in Mastering Grappling catered to you.

A bit about Javier, for the uninformed: he’s among the top lightweights in MMA, but more important to this set, he is a well respected Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt under Rodrigo Medeiros who also wrestled for years — so this product represents a look at how he fuses the two disciplines.

Me? Well, I don’t have either discipline down. I’ve never wrestled and I’m a novice in jiu-jitsu. I also did a judo class in college, and spent my evenings in and out of a boxing gym for a few years. But essentially, I’m still gravitating to the fundamentals of grappling, and spend most of the time in the kimono — just a little no-gi here and there. I’ve used a bit of instructional material from BJJ guys like Cesar Gracie, Stephan Kesting, and Saulo Ribeiro to help iron out the basics.

I came to own this set when nice fellow from the MixedMartialArts.com Atama BJJ Forum kindly offered a copy in exchange for a review. A more experienced grappler by the name of Hunter has also has an extensive review of a Vasquez instructional on that forum, if you think you’ll find that more relevant to you. But I think it’s also useful to see how clear and useful Javier’s instruction can be to a relative newcomer as well. So here’s my take:

It’s damned good.

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Pictured: A Screenshot from WMMA 2. So, You Wanna Be A Fighter Promoter?

The popularity of mixed martial arts is exploding, with TV shows, books and films springing up all around the sport, along with the newest of mediums, video games.

Most notably, a great deal of media attention was placed on ZUFFA’s release of UFC Undisputed last year. The game had flaws, and many hardcore MMA fans complained that it failed to capture the styles of the fighters. But it seperated itself by capturing the ebb and flow of the fight on the ground, and the deadly “puncher’s chance” that is so widely renowned in our sport. Overall, it give us a reasonably accurate representation of the sport, and easily the best representation of said sport on console today.

Or is it?

World of Mixed Martial Arts II offers a very different option for gamers; and it’s one that I highly recommend.

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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.

It’s mainly successful, although it also left me wanting more. Read the rest of this entry »

This MMA documentary came out a few years back to a hint of fanfare, reportedly having a nice showing at some domestic film festivals. My hope watching it was to catch a bit of quality film making and maybe a bit of quality MMA action, or behind the scenes footage, along the way.

Sadly, I didn’t get much of either. Read the rest of this entry »

And B-shows, and mid-tier promotions. The WECs, Strikeforces, and Cage Forces of the world. Basically any set of fights that is high profile enough to filter out tomato cans (for the most part, at least), but far enough away from the big time that great fights can still be made and fighters will be at their most motivated. IFL was my favorite promotion before it’s untimely death for exactly that reason; the matchmakers booked action fights with up-and-comers who understood that they were in striving distance of the promised land of sold out arenas and big live TV audiences in PRIDE (later DREAM) or the UFC.

Also there’s the issue of jumping at the chance to say “I told you so.” MMA is great on its own, but being able to claim that you saw big things in the future of a successful fighter before anyone else is icing on the cake. What can I say? I like to act like I know things other people don’t. And UFC prelims? The last place to jump on a fighter’s bandwagon before they break through. It’s perfect.

So, explanations out of the way, let’s talk about fighting. The last Ultimate Fight Night pretty much what I look for in a night of fights, full stop, but more eloquent men than I have (probably) already commented on the televised portion, so I’ll take the rest. It’s good stuff. Read the rest of this entry »