YAY + UFC 98

The "Yay" is because I think I found a new fight team.

Here are my pics for UFC 98's main card. The card has been so plauged by injury I'm not going to do much more then a quick look at the main.

Machida, tko, 4th

hughes over serra, boring-ass decision (my heart wants me to be wrong)

sherk over edgar, likewise (Heart also wants me to be wrong)

Fouka-Pokam, tko, rd 3, fight of the night (two strikers, the more developed one ought to come off better)

miller takes an early sub over sonnen. Probably a triangle.

So I showed up for a lunchhour judo class and nobody else was there.

Which means, basically, I get a private for the monthly rate.

This is a very handy thing. Obviously, you have the attention of the instructor, and you set the pace...but more importantly, you get to do two things: Find bad habits and tailor material individually.

These are both kind of big deals for me. I'm a pretty big freakin' guy, and not everything developed by small Japanese men works exactly as planned for me.

The lesson went well, the pace was better for me then the usual MMA class, where I don't usually get in a full complement of drills...

Return

So I went back to the gym on tuesday.

I sucked it up. Still had some fluid in the lungs, had to duck out early, hack it up in the bathroom, then slink home feeling defeated.

That's probably a TMI but welcome to my pretty world.

Yesterday I couldn't get to the gym until halfway through the workout, so I ended up just doing some light weights and some roadwork.

Blah.

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)

UFC 94 Picks

Main Card Bouts:
-Georges St. Pierre vs. B.J. Penn Decision
-Lyoto Machida vs. Thiago Silva Decision
-Karo Parisyan vs. Dong Hyun kim Decision
-Nathan Diaz vs. Clay Guida Decision
-Stephan Bonnar vs. Jon Jones TKO

Preliminary Bouts:
-Jon Fitch vs. Akihiro Gono Decision
-Jake O'Brien vs. Christian Wellisch Decision
-Chris Wilson vs John Howard Submission
-Manny Gamburyan vs. Thiago Tavares Decision
-Matt Arroyo vs. Dan Cramer TKO

Weight Loss

I'm coming back into the sport off a layoff. I was bad sick during that layoff - hospitalized on oxygen for part of it - and I'm way overweight at the moment.

For all the biggest loser fans out there, or all those trying to diet:

I lost 14 pounds in six two hour MMA classes over the last two weeks. That's actually almost scary.

Yesterday in the shower, I felt a bizzare sensation and slapped at my own leg, thinking one of our arachnid or insectoid planetary roommates was running down my leg (I hate bugs, I lived in a buggy, drafty old house as a kid and they just aren't my favorite neighbors)

Turned out it was just water running down the channel between my calf muscles, suddenly exposed by the dehydration of the week's workouts. That's fucked.

Why?

People who watch our workouts tend to roll their eyes or shake their heads.

I've been asked some variant of the question, "Why would you want to do that on a Tuesday night?" more times then I can conveniently count sans mechanical assistance.

Rocky Balboa's famous answer: "Hey, yo, because I can't sing or dance."

It's hard to describe. I guess the rationale of a given fighter, like the proper way to play a pair of nines, depends. For some, believe it or not, it's the scant money: "I'm gonna work out anyway, and if I fight one fight a year for 500 and 500 that pays for the gym, anyway."

500 and 500, by the way, is five hundred dollars that's yours when they lock you in the cage, five hundred more dollars if you win.

1000 clams is not that much for a fight under the NSAC unified rules of mixed martial arts, which require only the use of a thin 4 oz glove and allow full-on elbows and knees as well as punches and kicks. There are guys at this gym that take home $1,500 bucks a month from their day jobs, though, and for them the chance of an extra few thousand a year must seem like a sweet deal.

During the winter, with the patch on ice, this is not too far removed from my reality - but I am not one of these guys.

There are others in the gym who have a burning need to fight - some sort of deep seated external need drives them. These are the once-bullied, the crime victims, the youngest brothers, the sons of single mothers. There were days and weeks in high school when I had a shitty time -I think everyone did - but I am not one of these guys, either.

The only way I can really explain it - why I endure in something that is routinely frustrating, routinely painful, something I get no promises and no reimbursement from, is to say this: In the ring, I completely understand my world. There is no background noise, there is no background thought. I get to feel what it is like to have one purpose and no distractions, and that's priceless to me. Any monetary or physical benefits are cool, of course, but I have to place them secondary.