Sparring isn’t that bad with my current training squad. The group that broke off from this gym did more intense sparring sessions. I do understand the risks, but feel it is best for me right now. If I had a wife/children, things would be different. They would be my heart and passion. For a single guy like me, I still like to get pretty rowdy and have fun. Sparring is that medium.
I was in the ring today and my head coach and boxing coach were watching. I was sparring with a pro fighter a bit lighter than me, but much better. I started switching stances and my boxing coach yelled out ‘stop switching stances’. I have been told by my head coach to obey every word of my boxing coach. I kind of just really lost it emotionally and the pro fighter saw it and we had to stop and talk theory mid-round in front of the two coaches and some other people. Then, I was somewhat ok, but this route is going to be very by the book now and I was used to kind of a quick and loose style with my striking, less foot work and more impact when you see the opening. I guess this is ok, it is extremely frustrating for me to adapt my style to the book. I’m going to do my best though.
Also, though sparring is only dangerous when you get hit. So - don’t get hit. If you’ve never sparred with a pro fighter before, its tough to imagine what that means, but when I initially started sparring I couldn’t find any openings. I thought it was an opening, and the pro would dodge it or limit impact. You can train as heavy or light as you want in sparring. Light sparring isn’t dangerous at all. If you don’t want to go heavy, just say ‘go light’ before the round clock and the other person will mainly work on technique, etc.
I did take a heavy hit on my right leg below the knee (on right side of leg) today in Muay Thai sparring. I don’t really remember the hit specifically, but it didn’t feel great when I went cycling tonight.
yeah i hear you - going 20% is likely fine and you should be able to maintain technical sparring with a pro as opposed an amateur that isnt able to control themselves. That said, from my experience the most damage I took was when I would spar pro boxers. Boxing has a different mentality that full martial arts - some form of compensation mechanism - in which the art needs to show its equal/superior to all other forms including mixed forms. Countless times I gave pro boxers 3-5 rounds before their fights and I would say im not a pro boxer, my stance is completely different, let’s go 50% and use this more for conditioning. I remember tagging this guy with an overhand right - still 50% but a solid connection - and a light switch went off in his head to kill me, i saw red haha. He went from 0 to 60 instantly and went out for blood. I warned him multiple times - “listen man, 50%, I’m not a boxer. If you want to up the intensity i may leave that front leg of yours dead within a few leg kicks…” I ended up having to take him down and mounting him to show how certain martial arts can render someone harmless and, to a lesser extent, that’s how i felt limiting myself to just boxing. Nonetheless, be care with those savages, boxers tend not to understand “technical sparring”.
Yeah definitely. It does vary gym to gym, but at my current place, they are very respectful to going light. I’ve heard lot of Thai fighters in Thailand go pretty light because getting injured hurts their pay, so they want to get paid (for being able to fight and fighting without an injury).
The dynamic in striking kind of sucks now. There are only two groups left:
a) beginners b) MMA fighters
The whole Muay Thai team is gone and I really miss them. I was planning on going to the other gym today, but I can’t handle a lot of drama right now, thinking of this 70.3 race. I’m going to go back to training with them eventually somehow. I have made that clear to everyone that I am at least considering that as an option (which means I’ll be a member at 5 gyms - ridic), but honestly after I said I wanted to fight, I got thrown into sparring the other day without too much prep, but maybe that was intentional (I’ve basically been cycling every night before this week). I felt ok in the ring again. In general though my body is different now and I am getting used to it. Also though, I made a big fuss about not getting any fight cards in front of a lot of key people in the gym and it kind of made me look gaudy and I know my technicals are not shiny and polished like a lot of the other people and pros, but I don’t think they ever will be and seem to be the ‘rudy’ of this gym. Its ok though, that fuss made me get on all the advanced special invite MMA sparring sessions (again - I was on them before for a while).
I’m starting training at another gym tomorrow. 5 gym memberships.
MMA was intense tonight. We did ground and pound with 14oz and 4oz gloves. I got really knocked a few times.
I honestly hope no one is out for blood tomorrow at the other kickboxing gym. Not sure if I’m going to wear my other gyms colors but if I do 1-2 might be out for blood.
I bought fucking pretzels and white cheddar cheese it’s tonight. I need some comfort food.
I got knocked real real hard in boxing earlier in sparring. I showed up and it was basically 2 hrs of sparring tonight.
There was this one skinny dude I don’t see often that kept fucking rocking me with kicks and head shots at probably 80% when we started light and initially I thought ok - I’ll go light and work on my defense, then he did a hard ass spinning kick to my abs and I almost had to dive over this brown belt in a Gi but then decided to take it and got the air knocked out of me bad - 30 sec left in round - my coach said I could take a break and I said no - went back in slugging —- yeahhhhhh
Like if I came back at 80% at that guy, I’d look like an asshole as the heavier dude. But also didn’t want to tell him to ‘go light’.
I got him back later — on ground and pound and takedowns. I had so many takedowns on that guy that the head coach told him he needed to go to remedial wrestling class, lol
Another round, I was on the ground and not on stomach or back but on the side taking hits from this pro. It really sucks being in a precarious position on the ground. My coach would tell me to make a move and I’d take my hand off my face so it wasn’t blocking my face anymore and have to take hard head shots just to try to get out of that position. Not only that, but this pro is really good at using his elbows to hit your kidneys and my kidneys were getting jammed and since I’m training to be an amateur, its less of a move for me to do, just one for me to take in these rounds.
lol
What do you reckon lads, can Conor do the business this weekend?
hahaha
The style clash is very interesting. I recently re-watched the Mendes fight, and my initial thought was it didn’t look good for the notorious one. Then again, this was ages ago in mma years, Connor wasn’t training for a grappler (Chad was a late replacement for Aldo), he presumably was injured, and he was nearly killing himself to make that weight class.
John Danaher had a great breakdown of the fight on JRE, in looking at the different phases of combat. Each of these guys is highly skilled in the phase where the other is relatively weak. I now think it’s a toss up, and you might see either Connor or Khabib make it look real easy even as you have 2 championship caliber fighters competing. Color me intrigued.
Little documentary some people at my gym put together.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_FqrZcBZDk&feature=youtu.be]
nice
well produced
dude last night I was slightly bitter as my whole squad lined up fights, even the ‘old guy’ at 32 for this weekend in a kickboxing tournament and here I am, split between two gyms, waiting for a fucking MMA fight for ever … and held tight to my MMA gym for weeks after the split to see everyone on the Muay Thai team get fights ---- grrrrrrrr grrrrr grrrrrrrr
fuckkkkkkkkkk I honestly hate all of the politics about all of this and have thought about possibly starting a third LLC, based upon amateur fighting tournaments (I can’t find any). I’m honestly talking about like 8 cage fights in a day for the winner - crazy ass mortal kombat style tournaments. I see nothing like this in the US and if I can’t get a fight next year, I’m going to form a company around a fight for me, so that I can compete in my company’s fight, legally. In a tournament, if I can get through the 1st fight, I think I have a major advantage over everyone except the people that had like a 18sec KO or something and are not tired. Endurance and endurance capacity is my strength and I need to exploit it. I sent a message about a possible Thai event to a person on my team helping me through this and have possibly thought it might be better to do MMA amateur in the US as I really need the support of those close to me and think that psychologically, it would be difficult for me to go alone to Thailand without a corner to get a video of a fight for my head coach to see, off my record, but with full body risk to me. I’m doing a BJJ tourney on 10/27 (new breed)
cycle to low leg kicks tonight + jump rope + weights thats the plan
maybe 26 mi cycling and an hour or two of bag work
man, I honestly can’t stand the fight promoter in my region… ughhhhhh I’m friends with a good amount of the competitors though, so might be able to work them into PR if I can figure out a way to start a tournament LLC — I know I need a lot of judges to sign the papers