Sick boy

I get sick a lot. I have messed up sinus. Genetic, not from getting punched.

I'm right on the cusp of affording to have it corrected. The surgery is scary, but the prospect of actually getting to breathe through my nose unimpeded and the prospect of not getting sick every six weeks have me excited to be on the other side of it.

Hopefully no one from my insurance company will find a way to fuck this up for me, even though they're trying as hard as they can.

YOU'RE GOING DOWN

We have a new guy.

New guy is a wrestling jock.

New guy has an issue.

We square off for grappling. He looks at me, and says his first words to me, ever:

"You're going down."

"Well, I've done grappling maybe 6 months, so that shouldn't be too hard for you"

"Well, I'm new too," he says "I've only had one fight."

The guy is wearing a t-shirt that proclaims him to be the assistaint wrestling coach at a local HS.

I roll my eyes inwardly.

Wrestling jocks all come on pretty much the same three ways. Sadly, they're the best three ways, and this guy does dump me, and I land hard with all of our weight on my hands and knees.

"YOU BETTER DO SOMETHING FAST OR I'M GOING TO CHOKE YOU OUT" the guy says in my ear.

I tap out.

He's looking at me, confused, as we stand up. He throws me again. This time he lands in side control, crossfaces with his elbow as hard as he can. I tap out.

"You're tapping out just from that?"

"Yep," I say, "you win. Good job"

We stand back up.


"I'm a wrestler," he says, "I don't give easy sympathy, dude."

OK, this guy, I'm thinking, this guy is something special. 30+ year old guy, works with children, has an outlook/attitude like this.

Fine. I stifle the urge to ask him to box, where I could return the one-sided work, and proceed to show him every clinch stall I learned in my short time in judo, tapping whenever we hit the ground. Whatever. I'm not going to give practice to a guy if he's going to come on like that, and I'm not going to trust him to apply a sub until I understand his personality better.

I call it the Great Wall because Chinese Food played a big part

I'm going to talk for a minute about The Wall.

Not the Floyd album.

The Wall is what you hit when your muscles just run out of ATP in mid motion. If you've got enough food and water in your system, you can avoid the wall for a little bit if your breathing is well synched to your motions.

I'm far better at doing this in stand up fighting. On the ground, I forget that being rolled is a transition that requires breathing and land flat on my back with empty lungs and a guy on top of me. When this happens, your body can run out of fuel in seconds, at least until you can take a deep breath.

It's a terrible feeling, to know that you're paralyzed for a few seconds, that your opponent can rear up and hit you at will.

Relaxation and good breathing come in time, but that doesn't make right now less frustrating.

Maybe I should tout MMA

Hey, I went 7 for 9 in straight picks not bad.

I really, really didn't think Bonner would look that bad. To his credit, dude is made out of concrete and took several shots that would have ended most fights. Jones defiantly beat the odds that made him out to be a feeder and took the spotlight, and I liked watching it far too much to be pissed about my pick.

Parysian vs Kim, well, that one was up in the air really due to their similar games, so I went with the bigger, younger guy figuring all else being equal he'd land on top on the ground a little more, but Parysian did, once again, just enough good things to eke out a decision. Parysian is a hard fighter to like - I personally understand that getting hit sucks and he's found a way to win fights while minimilizing damage, and that is, in a literal sense, the goal of the sport. I try not to come down on good defensive fighters because that's behavior I associate with drunken, annoying brosephs in the ufc audience - the same guys who hoot "knees knees knees" and "Stand'em up" at innappropriate times.

Karo, though, he clearly isn't even working to close - his top ride is a true lay and pray, not something analogous to the unconventional grappling of, say, Guida or Jones that we saw on the same card. Nor is his defense based on baiting and controlling the opponent like Machida. He just surfs, then, in the last half of his last round, you see him come alive and quickly demonstrate some activity to make it clear to the judges he was the slightly busier fighter. If he'd disciplene himself to the pace he sets in the end of the fight, he'd wouldn't be the magnet for criticism he is. It pisses me off when a guy could be so much better.

Its too bad it wasn't a no-gi judo demo, though - several of those throws by both men were really pretty.

Machida looked like a goddamn god, like always, and it's real nice to see him get some spotlight at last for the way he systematically disassembles people in the ring - he's the 206 division right now if you ask me. Some people say he runs away in the ring, but they don't understand the difference between a great outside fighter and someone who just doesn't want to engage - watch Machida wave the red flag at his opponents by dashing in with a hard knee or a quick flurry when the start to tire of following him, or watch him capitalize on countering opportunities. The guy is clearly the dude who should be in the ring with Evans and the Jackson/Jardine fight doesn't really matter - Machida will run through either man if White sticks them between him and the belt.

(Also, in other news, OF COURSE THEY WON THEY'RE THE FUCKING STEELERS ... life is not a fairy story, children)