Armegeddon FC recap

Last night I went and watched the first edition of Armegeddon Fighting Championships. Two guys from my gym fought on the card (although we were supposed to have about 4). Both Gavin Niel and Nick Driedger won their respective fights. Gavin won a one sided decision and Nick finished his opponent by ground and pound in the first round. Zuma was well represented in the crowd as both fighters probably got the biggest appaulse of the event.

We had 12 fights with only one going the distance so it was a very large card. Fighters ranged from first fighter newbies to journeymen fighters and there was decent action from start to finish. There was only one disappointment. The teammates of Duncan Wilson, embarassed him with their actions. In the section next too me there was a whole row of people wearing "Team Wilson" shirts. When Duncan Wilson was stopped after a valiant effort against a larger man, his team took acception with the call. The Ref was John Alessio and very, very experienced fighter who knows a thing or two about the fight game but they didn't like it. They threw their beer at the security gaurds and one guy jumped the glass the seperated his section from the floor seats and then tussled with the security guards. The ones that stayed the rest of the guard continued to make asses of themselves. I feel bad for Duncan Wilson because not only did he lose but that kind of action from your team will not help you get more fights.

For a fight by fight recap of the event check out MMARingReport (that is where I got the photos).

It has been so long!!!

God it has been so long since I posted anything because frankly, I wasn't training. I re-injured my shoulder and the rehab has been brutal. I had blown my rotator cuff about two years ago and it was not diagnosed so when I re-injured it they had to fix all that damage as well.

So I got back to training at Zuma last night. I got say, I love that gym. Between my injury and my military training I had been there once in 10 months. But I walked in and it was like coming home. A great enviroment to go along with Adam's top notch instruction. The fighters at the gym have been doing awesome, Sarah Kaufmann has had two fights for strikeforce and won both. There is talk of a 135 women's title in the works for her. She also got her Purple belt from Marcus Soares. Alot of the other guys have been doing well in MMA, Diego Wilson is currently 4-0, Gavin niel is still doing well as are a bunch of others.

So I doubled up on my first day back. I did some Muay thai prior to BJJ. The main focus was on a lead hook, cross combo. From an othrodox stance, you stepped to you right, dug a lead shovel hook hard in to the belly and followed with the right cross. The step put you at an angle that let you hit hard from a position where he couldn't hit you. For me because I fight southy it didn't work as well, I ended up stepping into a right handers power. I think i will work it stepping to the right (my lead leg) and digging the shovel hook into the kidney's and then follow up with the straight left.

I also had a chance to spar which I haven't done in a long time. It went well. I have been working on fighting from a Crazy monkey Defense structure. I found I had good succes with it when I stayed focused on keeping the hands high and moving, staying in the hunch back posture and keeping my elbows on my ribs. More time under pressure will help but it was a positive first experience.

The BJJ clas was pretty relaxed, we worked on a couple of half guard sweeps that I have talked about before in this blog, then just shot the shit for awhile before rolling.

Rolling went well, I was obviously out of practice and you could see it in my movement. I was slow moving my hips and I had trouble with some sweeps. My opponent was bigger than me and had good posture. I found him leaning way back a few times so I used one of my old standbys and used my feet on his hips to push him back then scramble to a double leg and take side control. I haven't used that in a while so it was good to see it was still there. Got mount fairly easily as usual but still have trouble finishing. I find with the bigger guys, when I try to hard to finish I get rolled.

More work for me.