I ran into good friend Daren Uyenoyama outside of the San Jose Area Friday night.  BC was there to corner Chris Cariosa en route to his win at Strikeforce.  I had not seen him since his first at Dream 4 against Tokoro which his lost by a thin margin, but honestly put on one of the best fights I’ve seen this year.  Tokoro is a guy who knocked out Royler Gracie and gave Royce all he could handle, and BC took the fight on short notice.

BC informed me that Dream is planning a Banatamweight Tournament (138 pounds) in October or so.  The plan is to have four Japanese and four foreigners on the card, including BC, Tokoro and Kid Yamamoto!  How much of a dream line up is that!  BC is busy opening up a school in Daly City, Fog Town Jiu Jitsu in additon to getting ready for the tournament (which he would have to bulk up for!)

At the start of Strikeforce I sat down and hung out with Marcelo Garcia and Paul Schriener. Paul was there to corner a few fighters, and Marcelo was in town for a seminar.  I took the opportunity to catch up with Marcelo, whom I haven’t seen since ADCC 07 I believe.  To summarize, he’s happy in Florida, he misses New York and pending contract negotiations you should be seeing him fight MMA in Japan soon.  I asked about his chances of participating in a future Dream Lightweight tournament (an MMA match between Marcelo and Aoki is every grappling fan’s wet dream right now), but he commented he doesn’t think he could ever make that weight (160 pounds).  And here I was thinking Marcelo looked trimmer than the last time I saw him, but he insisted he was heavier.

Marcelo is among the nicest and most genuine people in this sport.  We chatted a little bit about the level of fighters entering MMA now, and we were in agreement that at one point (in our mindset) it would take years and years to acquire the skills to be proficient in MMA, and nowadays people are very quick to enter the cage (or ring).  As I said that a match was finished in front of us by armbar from the guard, but the person on the bottom was crossing his legs in a manner that you would teach a new student to avoid, and the person on the top stood straight up, extending his own arm.   You obviously need to know a few things in order to win a fight in addition to Jiu Jitsu, but you’ve also got to have your fundamentals down folks.

I’m in shock and disbelief as I type this, but the sad news was confirmed to me personally by Rob Khan that our friend Nathan “Groundhog” Warner is no longer with us.

After a hiatus of about a year he had just e-mailed me last week and we re-exchanged numbers and made plans to have a long conversation. I have no idea what to say right now, I literally feel naseous.

RIP my friend

It’s been awhile since I’ve done any writing in this space.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  Firstly, I’m lazy and after spending most of my time updating the regular site (www.onthemat.com  duh)  I don’t have a lot in the creative gas tank by the time it came to update the blog.

Secondly, I always struggled with what exactly to put in this blog.  Event reports?  Personal training tips.  Techniques?  Opinion pieces?  I was never sure exactly what to write here.  Again, it goes with the aforementioned running of the main site, which is supposed to cover all of those topics.  The blog felt redundant.

I thought I had hit upon the best solution, in that I would create a setup where EVERYONE could have a blog, and move my writing over there.  A great idea in theory (actually, the task of passing the buck is hardly a new one), but the response has been lukewarm there at best.  Quite frankly, instead of leading the way, I tended to fade in the background.

Over the last few months, a lot of people have told me in various ways that they missed the blog.  Some of you have even gone as far to tell me that they HATE the new blogs.  Over the last few months of not writing as much as I used to, I’ve been slowly recharging the batteries.   I have to: there’s a new version of OTM online coming up that’s going to require a ton more writing.  That version is still a few weeks away at least.  But like a damn of ideas ready to burst, I’ve got to get some of this writing out of the way before it all washes away.  So far now, by popular demand, I’ve decided to resurrect the old blog.

You’ll have to let me know whether or not this was a good idea, and I have no idea how long this will last.