Self-Defense goobers. These guys are ridiculous. When they shadowbox they throw all these half-assed elbows and shit (along with other illegal nonsense; eye gouges, etc.) and their footwork is retarded. They're not interested in boxing so much as for preparing themselves for "the street." They tend to look like they come from neighbourhoods a lot nicer than mine so I don't know what they're so afraid of but apparently any of these guys could be attacked at any given time and need to be vigilant and ready to defend themselves with a whole lot of dirty tricks because, you know, proper punches are never enough, are they? Every punch these guys throw is meant to take someone's head off and they tend to get tired faster than anyone else. They never get in the ring because all the rules in there would hinder them in all their seriousness. If any of these clowns ever do get into a fight outside of the club, be it in a bar, parking lot, water cooler or just over the hedge with one of their fellow middle-class, corporate cocksucker neighbours, the first punch to the face they take is going to have them frozen with fear. All that streetfighting preparation is bullshit and it's all in their imaginations. It's funny to watch them anyway.
Then you've got the MMA wannabe retards. Tap Out T-shirts and tribal tattoos. They can also be identified by their overly expensive and always brand new training gear. Nothing but the best for these guys. I like listening to them bullshit each other during warmups.
"Who would you rather fight? Mike Tyson in his prime or Brock Lesnar?"
"Oh, Brock Lesnar for sure, bro! All you gotta do is take him down!"
And you can substitute any two names up there. The answer will always the same. All you've got to do is take them down, apparently. They tend not to get in the ring either but love to talk about what they did earlier in the day or week at any of the other gyms they go to. They hit the bag with all kinds of fancy fucktardedness that looks almost like they just tripped over something and are trying to use the bag to keep from falling down.
I don't know what the people from either of these groups are actually looking for but it can't be boxing. Maybe they just train where they do because it's cheap and what they'd rather be doing is too expensive. Or maybe they just like the air of superiority they think they're feeling when surrounded by a bunch of mere boxers from the ghetto. I do know that these guys are clowns and if they made use of the training that they have right there at their fingertips it would do them a lot more good than what they're pretending to do. They're kind of like Happy Gilmore in that they deny the sport that they're in so they can entertain fantasies about being something they're not.
He's not a golfer. He's a hockey player!
Ha ha, very enjoyable article Glen. Tap Out T-shirts and tribal tattoos - you see lots of that over here in the UK too, just walking around shopping centres. Fucking wankers. I wish i'd done boxing as a kid. Back in the 80's everyone was into Kung Fu films and The Karate Kid, so I took up Shotokan karate. Got to 2nd dan, and back then it was tough getting that (I say that, because my old instructor, now in his 70's at least, still teaches a class at the swimming baths my kids go to. Some of the sad looking fat fucks that walk out of the changing rooms with black belts on make me despair). But there can't be much more a realistic and practical art than boxing, or wrestling come to that.
ReplyDeleteNo-one usues the uppercut enough these days. The classic straight-up under the chin. He's in the air and his shoes are spinning. KAPOW BABY! Yeah. The headbutt also gets overlooked and if it does get used it's bastardized into a kind of grinding of foreheads as the retards that are basically kissing with their eyebrows mutter nonsense to each other. A great English custom that - the headbutt. There was a Canadian in a bar I used to work at once who saw a bloke headbutt someone and he cried out: "Did you see that? That guy's crazy! He just hit someone with HIS FACE!"
ReplyDeleteHeadbutts do happen here but yeah, they're pretty much always get that same reaction. Uppercuts need to be set up for them to really do much so it doesn't surprise me that they don't get used much. Since less and less people are learning to box these days and more and more are just wailing away on bags at home, no one is learning them either. You can't really practice an uppercut on a heavy bag.
ReplyDeleteI like Shotokan karate in theory. I'm a fan of Gichin Funakoshi's writing. I like the kamikaze philosophy of it. It's more of a self-defense style than a fighting style though. Great for giving a quick cheap shot to somebody who might be getting in your face but not so good for a fight. It seems to work for Lyoto Machida though so it's very possible that most of us are just missing something. I think karate relies very much on the element of surprise. A guy's running his mouth and you blast him in the jaw without any warning; that sort of thing. When it's two people squaring off with their hands up though I don't know that it's the style I'd want to go with. That being said, it's all in what you as an individual do with it.
Quick factoid. Bob Barker was a student of Chuck Norris.
ReplyDeleteLyoto gets the authentic stuff from his father. Much more effective than that weak stuff that's being promoted as karate these days.
ReplyDeleteThere are some dojo's in the world (mostly run by guys who trained in Okinawa during the days America was stationed there) that are still pretty hardcore. And by that I mean, "get dirty and fuck someone up if he fucks with you" hardcore.
Matter of fact is, if it's only trained once or twice a week, no way that you'll get what you need from it. Kata needs to be drilled daily, so that you can move without thinking. The early stages of karaté only had up to 3 different kata. These days, all the 'jammies think they invented a new kata when they fart.
Up to some of us to bring hardcore back!
Boxing is not much different. You need to shadowbox so much that you shadowbox in your sleep if you want to be even half-decent at it. Techniques need to be so ingrained that you can develop power without putting a lot of muscle into it. Power that comes just from muscle strength fades quickly. Power that comes from technique, timing and placement should last until the last round, assuming you've got the stamina to make it that long. So you need to do your roadwork. There's a lot of homework in boxing. A few nights a week in the gym aren't nearly enough.
ReplyDeleteOne aspect of taekwondo that I didn't like was that the poomse require way to much space. naihanchi and sanchin (two of the original kata) can be done in a jail cell if necessary.
To be honest, i'd imagine now Shotokan, and most traditional karate is taught as a watered down version of what it was. A bit like boxercise compared to boxing. Instructors don't want to get sued. The way I remember it 20 years ago, is more black eyes, split lips, cracked ribs etc. And practiced more like in this clip i just quickly found (and i trained with several of the people in it):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=292RJFjGCKA
I've seen that clip before. I like that one. See how they turn their backs though when they take a hit? You can't afford to do that outside of a karate tournament. That's not a fault of karate itself but the way that it's practiced.
ReplyDeleteIn a fight you have to be prepared to get hit. Karate is great for giving somebody a few quick cheap shots, maybe even smashing his teeth or rupturing his spleen, and then fucking off but what if you can't fuck off? If you've got your wife or your kids with you then you can't run away. Thinking about it though, boxing isn't going to help you there either.
In any case, once you've been hit a few times and realise that you're not made out of glass you won't panic anymore when you get punched in the face. Believe it or not, after a while you can learn to not even blink. Better than that, you might even learn to move out of the way and fire back. Those karate guys who go at each other with what they think is reckless abandon are targets at the same time because their heads tend not to be protected and not moving either. Not that I'm some amazing boxer or anything because I'm not but I like the philosophy of constant movement within boxing much better than the kamikaze, one shot, one kill philosophy of karate. I do like karate though.
Hehe, it all comes down to personal choice (however the better taught student always tends to win/survive).
ReplyDeleteI had the privilege to study two years of authentic Japanese Martial Arts. Looks less like American Karaté that in the end gave birth to kickboxing. It's all about the nasty things that shut down opponents as fast as possible. Hip throws landing the enemy in his head, super efficient throat strikes, eye gouging, breaking bones and so on.
Yeah, with the contemporary boom of MMA gyms across the globe, most people tend to forget that they need to drill themselves in the techniques. And less rhetoric tough guy talk ala "mang, I'm gonna go for the jab, jab, cross and follow up with a take down".
I actually enjoy this clip of Chris Crudelli, even though he comes off as a gibberish fool, he's facing someone who's ingrained in karaté to the bone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLUn49eYZH4
Relating to your earlier MT post, Burmese boxing is more entertaining than Thai boxing:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GapoONBsVEY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxEMQJZ5I7A&feature=related
(headbutt finishes are relatively common)
Chris Crudelli IS a gibbering fool.
ReplyDeleteSo anyway, Glen, you're boxing now? Where do you find the time for all this badassery? Right now I'm lucky to be able to sit down for the time it takes to eat a decent meal and I don't even have kids.
Because of the shifts I work I can only train in the boxing gym twice a week every two weeks, which is not much. So most of my boxing training is homework. Homework is important in boxing but no amount of it can ever compare to what someone else is doing with regular access to a gym. So I tend to eat a lot of punches in the ring.
ReplyDelete