The TMT camp in Phuket, Thailand recently hosted a seminar by 2nd degree BJJ Black-Belt Jerry Laurita this past week. Prof. Laurita is a black-belt under Joe Moreira. For more photos, check out:

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On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman begins by explaining how the lords of boxing completely blew an opportunity this past weekend to showcase a number of top fights and fighters to large audiences on free television, while another event, the UFC, was having another expensive pay-per-view. If you were one of the few to have viewed the Brian Viloria-Jesus Iribe fight, for example, you were in select company, although for now this fight is available on YouTube.

The battle for boxing to maintain whatever little credibility it has left by having a rematch between Paulie Malignaggi and Juan Diaz, in New York, and with neutral officials, continues. While the lords of boxing are trying to salvage business models based on obsolete technology, the real boxing fans are utilizing current mass technology to organize against the injustice which occurred August 22 when Diaz was awarded a lopsided unanimous decision over Malignaggi in a fight which the vast majority of observers thought that Malignaggi had comfortably won. You can now make your voice publicly heard by signing an online petition demanding a Malignaggi-Diaz rematch.

We discussed this fight, and what we can do to fight for a rematch, with Paulie Malignaggi this past Wednesday night, when he was attending the latest Broadway Boxing card at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York, where he also was a television announcer.

On this card, 23-year-old super featherweight prospect Argenis Mendez (14-1, 9 KOs) looked impressive in his first Broadway Boxing main event by scoring a fifth-round TKO over veteran Anthony Napunyi (14-7, 7 KOs). We spoke with him right after his fight, along with his training partner, unbeaten lightweight and former WBO super featherweight and super bantamweight champion Joan Guzman (29-0, 17 KOs). And we also spoke with promoter Lou DiBella about what he is doing to secure a rematch for his fighter, Paulie Malignaggi, with Juan Diaz, who is promoted by Golden Boy Promotions.

You can also order tickets for the 2009 ADCC World Championship, which will be held September 26-27 in Barcelona, Spain, through Ticketmaster.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called “The Heist”, by Ian Carpenter.

Make sure to visit the official boxing forum for No Holds Barred, the MySpace Boxing Forum.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

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Thanks, Eddie Goldman
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Last night about 15 or so ladies and gents from the team (I love being able to say LADIES) met up at Bailey’s in Arlington for the UFC. I’m disappointed about Demian’s match but there were a lot of good fights last night and Randy and Noguiera (sp?) definitely stole the show. Randy gets crazy props for stepping in there and giving it what he did at his age – he’d smash most of the guys out there today still, but Noguiera is a damn good all around fighter and clearly won all 3 rounds with more than one near submission and a couple close knockouts. I’m happy to see his old self show back up and I hope to see him get a couple more good fights before he turns it in.

Paul Schreiner will be back at Fifty/50 for a seminar this Monday night and I am so excited because I was deathly ill last time he was here after Worlds and I missed all the cool stuff he taught.

Then Val Worthington is coming out from Cali as well to teach a seminar on Sept 21! Yay for awesome female grapplers giving seminars!

AND we have 8 women training right now and are expecting maybe up to 3 more soon, some of who have trained before like one of the last ladies who joined. Woohoo!!!! (We need to ramp up our numbers because 2 of our ladies recently moved out of the area.) We hope to add a night class for the ladies soon. (Fingers crossed!)

Wow. Wow. Wow. Talk about some exciting fights. Of course I was really bummed about Maia’s stunning loss to Nate Marquardt. I was impressed with Todd Duffee’s fastest-ever 7-second knockout and thought Jake Rosholt missed several submission opportunities before getting his pillow choke (and it seemed like Leben did tap before he was knocked out cold.) I picked Thiago and Minotauro to win, and Gonzaga (whose fight wasn’t televised, alas) but I was very impressed with Randy’s demeanor and performance.

Speaking of Minotauro, I had to youtube his match against Ricco Rodriguez, who kneebarred two of my friends Scott and Richard here in Austin at our last tournament. Here’s the Minotauro-Ricco match at Abu Dhabi 2000. Pretty sweet!

I am often asked about techniques from the Head to Head position. I always begin by explaining that there are basically three categories of Head to Head:
1. H2H Nuetral – where there is distance between ourselves and our opponent, and neither has the advantage
2. H2H Bottom – where we are underneath and our opponent on top
3. H2H Top – where we are on top (sprawling) and our opponent is underneath

The first is pretty much an artificial position in that it mostly occurs only at the beginning of a match-fight – it hardly ever occurs in real fights and doesn’t occur much even in match fights other than at the beginning of the match.

The second occurs mostly when we have escaped from our opponent’s side control and are on our knees but he is still in dominant position on top. here we have to focus on either sit-outs, fading back to guard or various leg shooting strategies.

The third occurs when our opponent has successfully escaped to his knees but we have maintained top position or when our opponent has taken a shot at our legs and we have successfully sprawled.

For a couple of simple and fast turnovers that will put us in a more dominant position and ready to attack – JUST CLICK HERE.
JBW

I arrived at Maxercise secure in the knowledge that I had taken a magical little yellow pill to control my vertigo. While it does wonders for walking around, standing up, and other activities of daily living, the quick side-to-side and sometimes upsidedown motions of BJJ really aggravate it.

Saturday training turned out to be an open mat. Rodrigo got an opportunity to go to Portland to see UFC 102, so he had Pete open up the academy for about seven or eight of us who showed up to train.I spent almost the entire time rolling with Ro. It w…

OMG I just realized that I haven’t posted in almost a month!

I worked over 50 hours last week and almost 60 hrs this week (16 hrs just in one day). Especially this week, I’ve been so tired by the time I got home, the boys (Darren U was out from Cali helping Ryan train for ADCC) were lucky I cooked dinner, no way could I have physically trained (other than Monday before it got really bad at work).

Although I still feel drained, I am looking forward to teaching the women’s class today and training some. Ugh my lungs are probably shot too – and they were just getting back into shape before shit hit the fan at work. Time to begin gearing up for GQ in Sept.

I forgot to give a wrap up of ADCC Northeast Regionals, I’ve been so busy. Well, I’m going to Nationals next year but only because no one my weight class (or the one above me) showed up. I had to jump up to Under 145lbs, giving up 30lbs. Then in the absolute my first fight was against a chick who’s probably close to 160lbs. When I had her in an armbar, she stood, lifted me up above her waist and intentionally slammed me into the mat. Oops, forgot that was legal in ADCC.

Thanks to tons of breakfall practicing over the years, I kept my head from hitting the mat on the first hit (although it bounced after that, the damage had been mitigated). My arm/elbow seemed to take the brunt of it. I thought it might be broken at first it hurt so bad but turns out it was just mat burn so bad that two weeks later it still hasn’t healed (but the monster bruise finally did) AND I was wearing a long sleeve rash guard. How do you get mat burn through a long sleeve rash guard and not from being dragged, but from an impact?

Anyway, I guess it worked out okay that I was so busy at work since my arm took so long to heal. The mat burn is still there but now I can put my elbow down on a surface without searing pain. It was very strange, I’ve had mat burn tons of times, but this last one was the worst. It was big around and must’ve cut deeper than it appeared.

New ladies are training at the gym now! All 3 that I hoped would sign up when I was writing my last post, did. Woohoo!!!

Off to grab some coffee now before the women’s class today. =)

Our competition class, run by Donald Park, has been focusing lately on the importance of chaining attacks. The smooth flow from one to the next to the next makes it inevitable that you’ll get them somewhere, because ideally your reaction time is less than theirs.

I have been delighted with some of my rolls lately, because I’m not always on the defense any more– just mostly. Tom calls it “lay and pray” when I’m grappling someone 200+ lbs but it’s just damn hard to stay on top, to reverse, to sweep, even to close my guard around them. I’m getting better at defense and people are telling me they’re having to intentionally bring their weight or strength into it to force a submission or force me to expose soemthing. This is good news. When I do get to roll with someone closer to my size (and bonus if they’re a whitebelt) then I find myself more able to move my hips, more focused on getting position, and more willing to let position and submission go to move on to the next. Donald calls it “machine gun jiu jitsu” and I see it all the time from other people against me. A classic example is Americana to armbar to Brabo from top side mount.

The other day I rolled with a good friend, a whitebelt who’s probably 180. It was a couple days ago, but what I do remember is feeling like I was succeeding at the grip battle, playing a good open guard, managing to keep him from passing, doing well at threatening lapel chokes, and in the end, I got him with an armbar from guard. I think he lightened up a bit at the end, maybe from fatigue or maybe from generosity, but either way I was happy. Happy because I identified why it wasn’t working and fixed the problem in what felt like a split second… and because in my head I was saying “oh, no, even that won’t work, he’s just going to pull out like a greased pig” but I was wrong, he was tapping.

Rolled nogi with another whitebelt who’s been away for a while.. I ended up bailing from sheer fatigue after about 10 minutes solid. I was extremely frustrated because I had maintained almost constant positional dominance the whole time, but couldn’t submit him… it’s like a lightbulb went off in my head (thanks Mike G!) that when they’re about to escape side mount, don’t sit there like a lump and get put back into guard! go to N/S! go to the other side! Sometimes I’m fairly dense, you see. Anyway– I was doing well at giving up losing positions and moving on, and uncharacteristically for me, I wasn’t hesitating about smashing him in north-south. I kind of figured I had to use some of my weight to hold him still and I didn’t want him escaping, so sorry about the sweat-soaked rashie plastered on your face.

But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get his arm without letting him go. I had the arm isolated several times but the americanas got muscled out of, the kimuras flew out the window because I was not well based, and the armbars were abandoned because I felt like he was defending very effectively and sitting up into me. More practice with smaller (still bigger) people and less experienced people so I can be in a more offensive stance more frequently is what the doctor ordered.

We went to a wedding last night at a lovely outdoor venue on a hill– lots of great breeze thank goodness– and had a good time. Elegant decor with crystals, candles, pink roses, and lovely water fountains and waterfalls in the outdoor gardens. Hit or miss food– good chicken piccata and roasted tomatoes, but undercooked potato gratin… bride’s cake was pink in color and orange in flavor (dry) and groom’s cake was standard chocolate (dry too.)

Nothing like a wedding to bring out the crazy in people. There were several costume changes, each resulting in more skin showing than the last time… the bride’s bum was hanging out of the last version I saw. She’s in great shape so it wasn’t unappreciated, but I did think it a little risque for a family affair. Keep in mind this was a black-tie-invited wedding; I wore a nearly-floor-length linen sheath with my hair up and long pearl earrings, Mitch wore his barong (the Filipino equivalent to a tux)…

… yet one guest wore a green seersucker strapless minidress poofed out with a crinoline and I swear it was a dead ringer for the Sexy Little Bo Peep costume at Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds (you Austinites will recognize the name of our famous costume store on S. Congress.) Her hair was that messy bedhead-ratty-updo thing, with a headband that had an enormous ivory bow made of burlap, kind of half veiling her face. Her purse was a canvas cloth grocery bag. Nice. The bridesmaids (twelve!) all wore lovely tasteful black long dresses, until the reception really got going, when most of them changed to uber-tight, uber-short (I could tell two went commando, that’s how short) black spandex dresses. They had great legs, great bums, and a very L.A. style and attitude.

UFC tonight! Maia! Silva! Nogueira!

And now, off to breffus.

Choreographed Aikido
I am well aware of the knocks against Aikido training, and trust me, I’ve said my share. I can’t stand watching choreographed movements where the uke is doing more technique then the tore. Last night we did our black belt aiki-jutsu charts. My fingers to my shoulder are still “tweaked” due [...]