Combat Charms

Being in the Marine Corps held for me some of the fondest memories of my life. I learned and did things that I never thought possible. Though it was not always fun in the sun, the positive memories definitely outweighed the negative memories. When I signed up I did not have much of a future and since the rest of my family was part of the military it was only natural for me to follow. Some of my fellow soldiers signed up for many reasons but some forgot what the Marine Corps main’s purpose was. When we were called to deploy to a hostile environment, it was amazing to see how many soldiers would panic and try to come up with all kinds of reasons why we shouldn’t deploy. We even had a soldier’s wife come down to talk to our Commanding Officer the morning we were about to deploy. He did the politically correct thing and took time to try to calm her down and explain to her that combat was our main job and every Marine knows and trains for that. She didn’t was to hear it and ran screaming and crying in front of our bus and laid down in front of the tire refusing to move until her husband was taken off the bus.
I was like every other Marine that was ready to deploy into the unknown -- scared! Yeah, we tried to act like we weren’t and some hid it better than others but you could see it in the mannerism of everyone you talked to that they were all nervous or scared about all the unknown scenarios that could happen. Questions like “Are we ready and prepared for this? Have we trained enough? How will I react if everything hits the fan?”

One of the things that always helped me ease my mind and nerves was my combat charm. It was my Kbar knife that I only brought out when I was going to deploy. Days before I would spend time sharpening it and cleaning it while preparing my mind for the unknown. I would tell myself that if everything else fails I will always have my Kbar. I would keep it on my side the whole time, even sleeping with it. And when we got back I would put it away until the next deployment. It seems silly to think about it now but it really helped me ease my fears and not worry about the unknown.

When I started to compete again in the Martial Arts those same feelings that I got before I deployed in the Corps would come up, so I created some charms that helped me get through it. For my Thai boxing matches I looked at my Thai shorts as my charm. I only wore them during my fights and I never cleaned them after. I left all the sweat and blood stains on the shorts that each fight would leave. You can imagine what they started to smell like after a couple of years but I believed that they held special powers. The shorts were a gift from my original instructor and he had used them in his fights.

When I started competing in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu I made my charm my belt. Each belt I ever wore became my symbol of strength and power. I have never washed any of my belts but every belt looks like it has been washed a thousand times. Through hours of sweat and training the belts would change colors and fray. It helped me compete because it eased the unknown, when I looked at the belt it would calm my nerves because I knew I had trained hard for whatever was about to happen.

It was a nerve racking Pan Ams last year because I was 5 pounds over the day before my matches. The gi I was going to wear was a double weave and if you have ever seen my belt it is a belt that is made for a heavyweight. I have to rap my belt around three times to tie it. Frank Wiot (Evolve Academy’s Manager), who flew out with me, came up with a great suggestion. He got me to buy a lighter gi at the event and a lighter belt. The idea saved me 2 pounds which meant I only had to lose 3 but what I forgot till the next day was that I would be fighting without my charm. I ended up winning without it but I definitely was not at the mental state I would have been if I had my real belt.
I felt better about my charm superstitions after doing a little research on the subject. I found that most athletes use charms or rituals to help them perform better. Do you ever wonder how the length of NBA shorts changed? In order for Michael Jordan to wear his lucky blue North Carolina shorts under his Bulls uniform, he had to wear longer shorts. The power of one superstition changed the style of the uniform.
Even though it is not life and death, I still look at grappling competitions as combat. I have to prepare to go to war, so on October 4th I am going to look to my Combat Charm to keep me calm and help me perform my best.

Posers and MMA and clothing!

It was cool when the sport first started and having a shirt that said Gracie or Tapout was something that was rare. You either had to be training in MMA or had trained. If you saw someone wearing a Gracie or Tapout shirt you immediately walked up to him and started a conversation. It didn’t matter how long he had been training or even how good he was; the main thing was that he trained. If he did train, you had an instant brotherhood formed with the person no matter what team he was from. The Brotherhood was formed because you both had endured countless battles that included a lot of physical, emotional and spiritual pain that daily training gives you. If you had never trained before and happened to be listening to two MMA guys talk, it sounded like they were talking in some kind of coded language.

Our sport was so small back then that at the time there were only 2 degrees of separation from every BJJ and MMA instructor in the USA. It didn’t matter who the Instructor was, you knew someone who had trained with him. There were only a handful of legitimate Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt Instructors when I started. On the East Coast we only had 5 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belts. Gracie was the name in MMA; Royce had shown the world that Gracie or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was superior to all other arts. So if you were an MMA fighter and not training in BJJ you were taking a big risk stepping into the cage.

So you get the idea when I say that seeing a Gracie or Tapout shirt being worn by someone was cool -- there were very few posers! These days, the sport has become so popular that you no longer know if someone is a fan or if he actually trains. Even if the guy doesn’t train but he says he does, it is hard to tell if he is lying or not. If he has watched a few UFCs he has probably picked up on the lingo and can even rattle off some names and training camps. So determining if the guy is a poser is becoming harder and harder.

I think that having posers out there is great. They are supporting our sport and educating more people about it. We should not care if they are walking around with MMA clothing on and acting like they are tough; they are acting like that for the chicks. Most guys become posers because they are not tough or good enough to do whatever they are posing as.

Example-

When I was in the Military and deployed in Arizona, I remember some of my Marines telling some girls we had met that they were Naval Aviators. The girls really dug it and since the Marines had all watched “Top Gun” at least 20 times while we were on deployment they could perpetrate the role. I was a SGT at the time and the Marines were all working for me. When I asked why they didn’t tell them the truth, they said that being an aviator was so much cooler than what they did. Some of the Marines went as far as buying T-shirts with Naval Flight Squadrons on it and wearing the gold Ray Bans that Tom Cruise wore.

It was the chicks’ responsibility to find out if they were pilots or posers. Navy Seal, Delta Force, Marine Recon, SWAT, Sniper are some other occupations that get a lot of posers. So you should feel great that there are guys out there who think the sport you train in is worth the poser status!

Behind the Scenes at Full Throttle

This past weekend the MMA fighters went to Richmond, Virginia to showcase their skills in the CSC 26 Mixed Martial Arts show. The name of the show was Full Throttle which was a fitting name when you think about what happened in the fights. Instructor Orlando is doing a write-up on all the fights that will be sent out on the newsletter but I will give you my views and some behind-the-scene stories.

The first fight of the night for Team Evolve was Israel Flores. Israel had trained a full 2 weeks for this fight. As you already know I would never put any fighter in the cage with just 2 weeks of training but Israel gave me a story about how many times he has missed the window of opportunity to fight. Work always seems to stop him form being able to commit to the training needed. Israel proceeded to tell me how much he had been conditioning on his own and that he had been training in every class he could so he felt his skills were sharp! I told him that I would throw him in the Gauntlet and see how he did. As you already know he did really well.

The fight was awesome and if you missed it I will have it posted on www.evolveacademy.com by the end of this week. You should watch it because if you looked up the definition of tough this fight should be linked to it :). If you have ever listened to his life story it would make you appreciate your life and how easy you have had it. I don’t care if you were raised in a lower, middle, upper, broken, abusive inner city, drug, alcohol etc. family or what the rest of your life story is it will sound like a great life in comparison to Israel’s. There are positive things that come from his type of difficult upbringing and life and he displayed the positive things Sat. night. The word quit is not in his vocabulary and I believe it is because he has had such a rough life that he is so tough!

The 2^nd fight was Jay Mo. He came to the school a year ago at 215 lbs and fought at 145 Sat. night. If you watched his past fights (which are also posted on www.evolveacademy.com) you know that he likes to put on an exciting show. I was on the fence about if I should let him fight because I heard his opponent had weighed in a little over 135 and had been training in his garage. Not sure why they would put this guy in the show but I have seen some tough backyard garage fighters so I really did not want to underestimate him. That was until I saw him warming up in the parking lot. Anyone using a Kata to warm up is either 1. trying to throw me a curve ball or 2. really has no idea what he is about to get into. It was the 2^nd -- he had no idea what he got into.

When I saw him warming up with a Kata and I think it was a Green Belt Kata I was going to switch Al Benjamin in instead of Jay Mo. Chris and I talked about it and we decided that he had cut so much weight and put in so much time that it would be unfair to change it. Giving Jay Mo his pre-fight speech I told him not to play around and finish him as quickly as he can.

The 3^rd fighter was Zach and this was a pro fight and meant that it was a match with 3 rounds of 5 minutes each. This was his 2^nd pro fight and it is always comical when the pros are in a show because the state regulatory commission gets involved. I wish we had filmed that part of the show because it was like a Saturday Night Live skit. It is amazing what a little authority does to people. All the fighters were put into a big room and everyone was hanging and relaxing when one of the commissioner guys starts barking orders for the pros to move to this part of the room and the amateurs to stay where they are. After about 10 minutes another commissioner stands up and says all the pros move to where the amateurs and the amateurs move where the pros are. I really thought they were joking but we all did it. About 30 minutes after that they said that everyone needed to move again because the corners needed to be split up so red corner fighters should be over here and blue corner fighters over there. About 10 minutes after we moved into our areas which are rooms about as big as a garage, the same commissioner guy stood up and said that all the pros and amateurs would have to stay on their sides of this little room! That’s about when Brian Crenshaw stood up and said enough, “no, we are not going to move or split the group anymore.” I guess the guy realized how stupid it was because he listened.

All I kept thinking about is why it always takes a few hours when you have to go to the State Run DMV or MVA (Division of Motor Vehicles or Motor Vehicle Administration). This example explained it all:).

Zach finished his fighter who was a really good wrestler and a seasoned MMA fighter in less than a minute. Zach also picked up a great sponsor http://www.criticalfightgearstore.com/pages/home/.

They sponsor a lot of UFC fighters and are expecting big things from Zach. You can also check out what his manager wrote about him and if you have time leave a comment for Zach. The more fans the more chances he will have to get into the bigger shows!

http://www.suckerpunchent.com/events/4-big-wins-for-suckerpunch/

Al Benjamin and Ben Brophy trained really hard for this fight only to find out the day of the fight that their guys had pulled out. This is the bad thing about amateur fighters; they are not bound by a contract or anything else to show up to fight. The only repercussion you have as a promoter is not letting them fight on any future cards. It is also a small community of promoters so their name gets blackballed. Stay tuned, they will be fighting next month.

Overall it was a great night with some heroes that did not get the spotlight. The main one was Chris Lujan who always goes to the next level to get the W for the fighters. He was up at 5 am before the weigh-ins getting Jay Mo in the sauna and getting him where he needed to be. He also took charge of getting all the fighters to where they needed to be. Chris has become a great coach who knows what it takes because he has been there. He also knows my vision and what I expect and I rarely have to say anything because he basically knows it before I say it. It has turned into a great team with him doing most of the strength and conditioning while I do more of the technique training. If you see Chris this week, give him major props!

I also would like to thank another couple of heroes - Nichole Cassler, MD and Erica Gawrys, RN. They both came down Friday night to make sure the fighters were rehydrated. They were also on hand the fight night in case we needed any more medical attention. They are both in the Military and joined at a time when being sent to combat is almost guaranteed, so they are used to being heroes.

The last heroes of the night were the approximately 75 Evolve students, friends and family that came out to support. It was Labor Day weekend and 3 hours away so I did not expect so many people to show up. Thanks for the support and a great evening:).