I wrote this story up in response to a post on MMA.tv, but I like this story so much I decided to repost it on the Blog. Please note that this is a few years ago when we were all single men.

I had a friend -ah hell, I’ll just tell you his name- Dean Lister and one of his buddies come over to my house as they had a long lay over in my area en route to Japan. A group of us go out bar hopping in Palo Alto when we come across a pair of nurses. It works out that Dean goes after one and I go after the other, and the others are doing a good job of playing wingman because they are chatting the girls up and feeding them alcohol.

My girl is totally into me, and then Dean’s girl comes up to me and says “you know, I got a fiancee in Ohio so I’m not going to do anything with your friend, but I’m going to take you back home and watch you do my friend, and maybe participate in that.”

Ka-ching! Sorry Dean, but that very moment may rank among the very greatest in my life.

We (that being the girls and myself, minus Dean) get in a cab to make it to the girls’ apartment and we’re making out when my girl asks if we could pull over for a second. She then begins projectile vomiting out of the cab! The other girl gets a whiff of it, and then begins to vomit also! Not as bad as my girl, who literally has to stop every hundred yard or so to get sick again. Bastards had fed them way too much alcohol!

We get to their apartment, and I have to say, the mood was totally killed for me. The first girl kept on insisting she’d be ready and coming to bed in between violent bouts of dry heaving into the toilet, and the other one crashed out in bed. I thought about crawling in with one or the other, thought the better of it and wound up passing out on their living room couch.

If you’ve been logging on here for the latest from myself, I apologize. Between Thanksgiving, plenty of work on the main website, car trouble, and the release of the latest Castlevania game I’ve ignored this blog as of late. I’ll write some more later on today.

If you want to check out some Blogs by people that actually update on a regular basis, let me recommend the following:

Adisa Banjoko’s Lyrical Swords
Adisa is a good friend and a long time contributer to OntheMat. He’s also one of the most respected Hip Hop journalists in the game, and as a matter of fact has been instrumental in getting signed and unsigned acts to particpate in the 101 Submissions series of DVDs, among other things. Adisa writes -a lot, and his favorite subjects are “Hip Hop, Politics, Islam, Chess and Martial Arts”.

Mayhem Miller’s MySpeace

I didn’t even know Mayhem could read, much less write so well. Pow! I always get the best zingers in on Mayhem for some reason! Mayhem’s one of the most entertaining personalities in the sport, both for his technical abilities and for his mouth (he pretty much says whatever comes to his mind, and seems to lack an inner monolouge). He invited me to check out his website when I saw him at Grappler’s Quest in Vegas, and I’ve got to say, not not only can he write well, he’s hands down got the most entertaining fighter’s website out there.

I was going to post Andrew “JudoGoat” Smith’s blog. Andrew, of BJJNews is one of the sports most prolific travelers and had a great journal of his training and competing, which seems to be down at the moment -if anyone has the link, be sure to send it to me!

In my opinion the best pound for pound MMA fighter in the world today has resigned with the UFC, and the Welterweight division looks like the toughest in the world right now. The UFC’s announcements caught me completely by surprise. Later I was completely stoked to see BJ in the stands sporting an OTM shirt! (You can get your own OTM shirt here: http://onthemat.com/xcart/customer/home.php?cat=18

Kudos to Dana White and the UFC. What a lot of people aren’t talking about (yet) is that in one fell swoop they managed to sign away the main draws of the two promotions which had the greatest ability to counter the UFC’s dominance in North America: Rumble on the Rock and the ressurected WFA. Rumble on the Rock has already topped any live attendence records the UFC has managed to put up with BJ Penn as a headliner. The WFA was definitely looking to make an impact by basically involving Showtime’s people (the ones who work with Don King) and the mayor of Las Vegas’ son with Tito Ortiz as a headliner. For good measure, they signed one of their biggest ratings draws in Ken Shamrock. No wonder why Dana was smiling so widely during one of the worst UFC PPV’s in recent memory -no one is even talking about the card they saw last night.

Here’s a weird rumor that’s makin the rounds, in that Wesley Snipes approached the UFC for a possible match. Joe Rogan has confirmed that he has agreed to be an opponent for Wesley and said the ball is now in Snipes court. I am not sure who suggested Joe Rogan as the opponent (I have the feeling if it was Joe’s idea he’d be fighting Carlos Mencia as they are feuding at the moment). Wesley Snipes feels an UFC appearance will help boost his action movie career (hey, I’d go see Blade 4 anyway, if it does threaten to suck) and their are rumors he has some debts to the IRS to pay. Snipes has also been long associated with the TMA (Traditional Martial Arts) and has hosted a number of specials on them, and his rumored art of choice is said to be Escrima. No wondering about Joe’s abilities, he was a Tae Kwon Do champion well before he became a comedian, and has been a long time student under good friend Eddie Bravo and Jean Jacques Machado. As a long time fan of the sport, Joe would at least know what he’s getting intto and I’d have to say he’d definitely be the favorite in this match up. I’m less sure what Snipes thinks he can do in the UFC; and I’ve never even heard any sort of buzz in his involvement or training in any sort of MMA related activity. How bad would your action career tank if you got your ass handed to you by a comedien? Or maybe, Joe Rogan uses this to launch his own movie career and become the next XXX. At any rate, the MMA sites are buzzing with this news, and if there is any truth to all of this, pretty soon the mainstream news should as well, which should be good for the sport.

I personally believe this will be a great thing, and I actively encourage more celebriities to enter the Octagon. May I suggest Paris Hilton, Tara Reid and the cast of Will and Grace? Please?

What happens in Vegas, stay in Vegas, but some people are going to be hearing about it for a long time.

Grappler’s Quest West was one of the most insane events I’ve been to yet. Just the sheer volume of people was staggering. Just cramming that many people in that venue definitely created a number of issues, but I think people will be happy to know that as of Monday morning the promoters were already looking at solutions and alternative so the next event will be the most exciting (and well run) yet.

Blew a flat tire on the way home. Also sucks to be stranded on the I-15 without a carjack. Brobra did a good job of getting us home however, so hats off to him. (Brobra = Ryan Gregg).

Right now I’m in Los Angeles, at the OTM warehouse. May have some huge news to announce in a few days, at least from a personal standpoint, could be nothing….

You know what drives me nuts?

A lot of time in class and someone will ask me to show them a technique, (like a good upper belt I’m always willing to help out the lower belts). So I carefully explain the technique. I demonstrate the technique. Maybe I tell a little ancedote about when this technique might come in handy. I supervise the person who asked the question perform the technique.

Most of the time it’s an absolutely rewarding experience. I’ve given them a little insight to improving their game, and I’ve gained a better understanding on why certain things work. Everyone wins. Later on when I see them using the technique I get a feeling of satisfaction that I helped them with it.

Sometimes you have that stubborn person who won’t try the technique they just asked about. They might try it once, get some detail completely wrong and fail miserably, ignore your coaching suggestion and go back to practicing a technique you know is completely worthless and ask you to supervise that. It drives me crazy enough to see someone on my home turf doing something I blatanly know is wrong. But why ask for my help in the first place?

What drives me even more crazy is when I see the same person rolling with another newer student, and they are trying to explain a technique that you just told them was wrong, and of course because they don’t have the technique down right it can’t be explained properly and you just have another confused person on the mat. Gawd I hate that!

I can think of one particular person in class a few years ago that was notorious for that. After awhile, we started calling him “Sifu”. He hated that nickname, but he never understood why we kept calling him that.

So this is my plea, if you’re going to ask for someone’s help, even if you don’t think the advice is good, at least humor them a little by trying what they tried to explain, would ya?

I had a revelation while watching the Ultimate Fighter Finale Saturday night (great show, by the way, minus the seemingly endless commercials.) There has been a lot of debate about the relative merits of training with or without the gi, and if people could develop as an effective game with or without it. I’ve always felt that those who train predominantly with a gi have fundamental differences from those who don’t, but I’ve never been able to place my finger on exactly what. Then watching Diego Sanchez versus Nick Diaz it all came together for me. A very tell tale difference in the philosophies and actions of a gi fighter and a no gi fighter is directly related to the ability and willingness to posture in the closed guard.

A basic principle in BJJ is the necessity of proper posture when inside of someone’s closed guard. Hips forward, back straight, never letting your shoulders come to far past your waist, and maintaining distance from your opponent. There are some very definite reasons for assuming a proper posture while wearing a gi, firstly because failure to assume a certain type of posture usually leads to disaster (a sweep or submission) and because of the wearing of the gi itself lends to many more handles and levers and submission opportunities. Lean too far forward on in BJJ, and you’re likely to get choked with either your own lapel or your opponent’s sleeves in some Ezekiel choke variation.

When grappling without a gi, the handles and many of the submission dangers disappear, so the importance of maintaining a proper posture within the closed guard is diminished. As a matter of fact, remaining in very close contact with your opponent (i.e. lying on their chest) is actually a very defensive position to take because it makes it more difficult for your opponent to get an armbar, or to create enough leverage for a sweep.

So you could argue that a high posture is most effective for gi grappling and a low posture is more effective for no gi grappling. Therefore, you might infer that people who train primarily in the gi tend to adopt a high posture, and those who train primarily without the gi tend to adopt a low posture. I would even go as far to say that these people tend to keep the posture they are used to whether they are grappling in the gi or not. However, I am going to argue that in actuality taking a high posture is actually the superior position in both cases. However, I am not going to lay out the details of that point right now, but instead I’m going to make a leap and make an even more startling revelation, in that the high posture is the more effective posture even within MMA.

Why? In a proper high posture one can deliver more effective strikes because it creates the distance needed to create a proper amount of force behind the blow and secondly by maintaining a proper high posture one is set up to deliver the next strike. In a low posture one is only able to use elbows and can strike with much less efficiency, and furthermore a lot of energy is wasted when attempting to create distance for the “big shot” because after that strike is delivered (whether it connects or not), you have to create that distance again.

Let’s go back to the Diego Sanchez vs Nick Diaz fight. Diego has primarily been a no gi grappler his entire career, and thus tends to adopt a low posture. Each time he wanted to deliver a strike, he had to stand up, put himself in an awkward position then would come back down to deliver the blow. When he wanted to strike again, he had to put a lot of energy into just getting back to a position where the blow would do some damage, and he had to do this every time. Nick Diaz, who happens to be a very talented gi fighter, was able to avoid many of the most punishing blows Diego looked to deliver. (However, Diego most certainly deserved the decision in that match and this definitely ranked as one of the most exciting fights I’ve seen).

And who has used a high posture to effective strike from within the guard? Pride heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianeko is probably the best example today, and he is described as a judo/sambo player. I’ll assume this means he was a gi grappler, but for a concrete example, let’s look at a group of fighters that definitely have a long history in Gi Grappling, the Brazilian Top Team. I think it was AKA jiujitsu instructor Dave Camarillo who first remarked to me how impressed he was with Murilo Bustamante’s ability to strike from the guard, because he was able to establish a proper posture first, and then was able to land multiple effective strikes.

So does this mean that gi grappling can actually lead to an improved MMA game? Well this would be one example that would certainly suggest that at least one particular habit gained from gi grappling would make someone a more effective MMA fighter. There are of course many other aspects and factors to the MMA game to consider.

Tomorrow on SpikeTV is the live finale of the Ultimate Fighter. Naturally you’re not seeing a whole lot of hype on it because of the UFC MMA media ban, but that doesn’t mean a lot of us aren’t going to be watching it.

I had picked Joe Stevenson from day 1 to win the whole thing. As a character I’ve grown to like Luke Cummo a lot as a character on the show, and I like that the nerdy kid who was picked last is going to the finals, but I still see this as a one sided fight for Joe.

I was completely off on the heavyweights. Rashad Evans managed to take out both of my picks for the finals (Keith Jardine and Mike Whitehead, although Whitehead took himself out as much as anything else), so I’m leaning on him over Imes in the finals. Then watch Rashad move down to light-heavyweight in the future.

Go Kenny Florian! Finally one fight I’m absolutely not ambiguous about.

I don’t think I’ve been looking forward to a fight more than Diego Sanchez vs Nick Diaz in a long time, and it should be one for the ages. I’m loathe to make a prediction however, as I know and like both fighters pretty well. In another time, another situation I think that Diego and Nick would get along pretty well, in my estimation they’re really a lot more alike than not. About this business of a nasty e-mail sent from Nick to Diego I believe both sides. Huh? Both are definitely the type to say something to someone’s face, and not play games, and both have struck me as honest individuals. So I don’t see Diego making this e-mail thing up, and I don’t see Nick Diaz sending it. What I might guess is that someone (from Diaz’s camp or not) sent a letter to Sanchez and signed Nick’s name. It’s happened plenty of times on the forums and the like where some people get a perverse thrill out of decieving people. It’s happened to me once from a member of Diaz’s camp (I don’t want to elaborate on the situation, other than to say that I don’t find Diego’s story so far fetched, but I get along great with most everyone at the Cesar Gracie camp and consider plenty of them to be friends and to be high caliber people). Enough with the interviews for these guys however, it’s totally obvious that they are fighters and not public speakers!

I think the key to this battle is Diaz is probably more well rounded and overall skilled. Everytime I see him or read of another of his accomplishments I’m always amazed by something new he shows. Boxing ring, BJJ gi match, triatholon? It’s no problem for Nick! Diego Sanchez, on the other hand, is probably the most focused and ferocious fighter I’ve ever seen, and he can bring the thunder like no one else I’ve seen. They’re both young and talented and I’m positive that each has improved GREATLY since even the last time we saw them fight. This makes it really hard to make a predicition, and since I suck at MMA predicitions, I’m just going to enjoy the fight.

Yup, the same Takada from Pride. The girl to the left is called “Yinling the Erotic Terrorist”, which is a pretty cool title. What more can I say? I just wish I could find that picture of Mark Coleman riding a banana so I make a crack about a superhero fight.

So, who’s up for a 12 hour Star Wars marathon today? I know I can’t be the only person thinking of this….

Of course, after 12 hours in front of the screen, my girlfriend just may dump me. I’m okay with that*, I’ve already found a replacement:

My Theracane came in the mail yesterday and has been on my person ever since. Josh Griffiths introduced me to the Theracane some time ago and proceeded to monopolize it for like 4 hours straight, but it wasn’t until last week that I finally got around to ordering one online (should cost you under $30 bucks). What the heck is the Theracane you ask? It’s a fiberglass device that allows you to massage yourself, and is particularly effective in working out the knots in your back and neck. You hold the straight portion, and the curved section goes around your back and the little knob works its magic. Ahhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhhh. You can completely regulate the pressure and duration yourself.

This is especially great for people like myself who have girlfriends with very small, weak hands and who will only give up very brief, unenthusiastic massages after much prodding and begging even though they work at an office job and you’ve had Batata cranking on your neck and back every day as he prepares for the upcoming
Grappler’s Quest West Lightweight tournament. Now with the Theracane I can work out those aches and pains myself**.

I’m telling you, the Theracane plus a hot shower and I’m ready again for training the next day.

*Just kidding sweetheart! I wuv you bewy bewy much.

** You, know, if the Theracane could cook, maybe I would trade it for my girlfriend.