Thursday, December 20, 2007

Everybody knows girls can't fight.......

But apparently Jiu Jitsu isn't fighting, cause I got ownaged by a 115lb girl at class today. Most of the guys were doing standup for the first part of open mats, but I did roll with a guy named Jeff who murdered me for about 15 minutes or so. Then I rolled with a girl who I think is named Nicki. She's 115lbs, about 5'6", and at least as strong as I am. She omoplataed me, and armbarred me a couple of times, I caught her with Pinky's Crush when she turtled up in my guard, and I caught her with a knee crank when she started using the body triangle guard on me. Other than that we pretty much spent the whole time grip fighting and trying to break each others guard. Rolling with experienced people who are my size is a little weird, we seem to be trying to play the same kind of game and it turns in to a big stalemate. It was fun though, and I learned a few things about the way I play my top game.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Did anyone get the number of that truck...?

Woohoo! More open mats last night so another solid hour of pain. I rolled first with a newer guy who was very strong, and had a fairly advanced bottom game with a lot of the same habits as some of the more experienced guys. His weakness was that he had no top game to speak of. I passed his guard pretty much at will, spent a while in mount working armbars, and triangled him a couple of times. It was exhausting, but fun and we must have rolled for 25-30 minutes straight. Next I got tooled by one of the bigger more experienced guys for a couple of minutes then took a break.Then I got tooled by one of the smaller more experienced guys for a while. This guy was maybe an inch shorter than me and 20lbs heavier, very blocky looking, but faster than hell. I told him to just murder me, so he did. Knee Bars, Arm Bars, all kinds of good stuff. Next I got to play with Chad who is one of the grappling instructors. He was kind enough to dial it down to where he was just one step ahead of me the whole time. He played catch and release with the subs and let me work out of them and gave me some tips and let me know when I was about to be in trouble. It was extremely informative and a great experience. I'm actually very confident that I can win my division at Super Slam in February.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Merry Christmas to Me...

So my Christmas present this year is $3000 in car repairs. After the fiasco with my car my fiance's car threw the timing belt and bent some valves. So huge repair bill there. It'll all get taken care of though.
On to the good news! The TUF finale was last weekend and there were a couple of very impressive match. The important thing is that my predictions about Danzig were born out completely. He put on a clinic in assbeatery against Tommy 'Farmboy' Speers. The Ragin' Vegan has a long career ahead of him and I expect him to spend a lot of it with a belt around his waist after he drops down to 155.
In other most excellent news the WEC had an event last night that Brian Bowles from Hardcore Gym fought in. If you read any of my previous entries you'll recognize him as the guy that kept catching me in "Some crazy neck crank" which turned out to be a Darce/Brabo. He fights at my weight, 135, but he must walk around at 150 cause he looks huge compared to me. His opponent was Marcus Galvao, considered to be one of the top bantamweights in the world. Brian was considered to be an underdog in this matchup. Obviously I picked him to win it, and win it he did. Brian was a wrecking machine from opening to closing. He hammered Galvao with rights through the entire first round and almost ended it there. The story stayed the same for 2 minutes of the second round before a couple of big rights ended the match. WAR BOWLES!!
I'm expecting Bowles to be the WEC champ at 135 within a year. He's that damn good.

Aaaaand more good news. I made it back to class last night. It's open mats until HC closes for christmas, so I got to roll for an hour. I started out by picking the biggest guy in the gym to play with and had a good roll, I couldn't finish anything against him. But I did well positionally. After that I stepped down in weight a bit and managed to catch a guy with the Darce from halfguard, but again he was a bigger guy and I actually hurt my wrist trying to lock the darce in because his shoulders/chest/neck were so big. Then I rolled with this kid named Ryan who is 18 and apparently has been doing this for a while. He's a wrestler and has a good deal of grappling experience. It was a very fun roll. Ended up being reasonably back and forth considering he had a strength and experience advantage. I got subbed a couple of times but generally was able to defend and keep position. I managed to take the back of everyone I rolled with, but I couldn't finish anything. That's what I get for rolling with all of the advanced guys... I'm still working on my strength and endurance, but I'm looking forward to Feb 10th and Superslam.

Oh, and starting in January I'm going to be working out on fridays with a friend of mines TKD school. Just a little more cardio work to help me get goin.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Ultimate Fighter 12/5

So my boy Danzig put on yet another clinic in ass kickery and Tommy "Farmboy" Speers managed to berserk his way to another victory. So despite 6 initial victories team Serra has no fighters in the final. That's some suckage. Danzig is gonna steamroll Speers, so no more needs to be said about that.

My car exploded, so it's in the shop. I've now missed training for over a month. I'll be getting the bad news on my car some time today and should know how much it will cost to get it fixed. I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be in the 500$ range and I can have it done this weekend and be back in business on monday.

In the meantime here is a great thread with some input from Aesopian on some of his halfguard work from a seminar he did. Enjoy.