I lost by decision.  I was able to handle my opponent standing, but he had good wrestling and took me down pretty consistently.  I had opportunties for submissions, but failed to execute them as well as I had like. 

For now, I am going to be leaving this blog alone. I apologize for not giving a detailed synopsis of the event, but this was started to serve as a commitment device; as such, it has fulfilled its purpose. Eventually, I’ll give the details; trust me, however, when I say that it was not quite as eventful as I had expected.

I can be contacted at cronks at northwood dot edu.  Thank you for reading.

“I have no emotional stake in Panda fucking.”

Well said, Mr. Carlin.  Well said.

I wish I had something to say. 

One more day.

Tomorrow night, I’ll be fighting in the cage.

I should have something profound to say here, but I don’t. My training this week has been solid.  My conditioning is right where it needs to be.  I’ve got that nervous twinge that always precedes an awesome challenge.

I started cutting water weight this morning by running on a treadmill for about 10 minutes with heavy clothes on.  I lost about a pound doing this, so I figure a decent grappling workout tonight, followed by some light jogging and a trip to the sauna tomorrow morning should cut the remaining 3 pounds without much of a problem.

My opponent is 0-0, which is good.  What’s not good is that I had completely forgotten to get a cornerman.  I’m just going to use Mike’s, and Mike will corner me as well if he fights before me.

I’m excited.  More than excited, thrilled. Pumped. Ready.  Prepared.  I can’t wait to step into the arena, get punched in the face, then return the blow. 

Full updates will come after I fight.

Here goes nothing.

1 Day Until the Cage

 Failure is not the worst thing in the world. The very worst thing not to try.

Beyond a deluge of facebook comments, my birthday has been pretty uneventful.  Unable to get into the high school wrestling room, Mike and I went for a 20 minute run down the backroads by his house.  I haven’t been doing this type of longer conditioning work, so the last 10 minutes were pretty rough.  I’ve always struggled with endurance running; the problem is that I get bored before I get fatigued.  My new mp3 player, purchased dirt cheap at Meijer (without the “s”, god damnit), helped tremendously.

After running, we hit the heavy bag for a while.  To be honest, it wasn’t that intense because was tried from running beforehand.  Still, I got to work on my striking techniques. 

Weight is 161 with sweatpants and a sweatshirt on, which isn’t bad.  I tried calling the event organizer to see if I could find some information on my opponent, but only got voicemail.

Also, I’ve stopped mentioning it because it was starting to get redundant, but I’m still getting annoyed by the “you’re going to get your ass kicked” crowd that feels the need to inform me that I’m going to die in the cage.  Friends, family, and people I barely know have all implied this in one form or another in the last week. 

Seriously, I know I am going to get hit in the face.  I know I am going to feel pain.  I don’t expect to be able to just walk in there and demolish anybody that gets in my way.  It’s a challenge, an attempt to learn more about myself and to improve my threshold for pain and risk.  I know it’s going to be hard, but you can stop telling me about it.  I want it to be hard. 

For most people, the idea of something being difficult, painful, and worth must be impossible to fathom.

Today is exactly one week from the fight.  I am going to begin my weight cutting.  Here is the strategy:

Saturday (today):
Drink one gallon of water
Eat a large breakfast with small meals throughout the rest of the days
Workout (Heavy bag striking and carrying)

Day 2:
Drink one gallon of water
Eat a large breakfast with small meals throughout the rest of the days
Workout (Heavy bag striking and carrying)

Day 3:
Drink two gallons of water
Eat a large breakfast with small meals throughout the rest of the day
No carbs after noon
Workout (Grappling/Sparring)

Day 4:
Drink two gallons of water
Eat a large breakfast with small meals throughout the rest of the day
No carbs after noon
Workout (Running)

Day 5:
Drink two gallons of water
Eat a large breakfast with small meals throughout the rest of the day
No carbs after noon, as little sodium as possible
Workout (Grappling/Sparring)

Day 6:
Drink two gallons of water before 5:00 pm
Eat a large breakfast with small meals throughout the rest of the days
No carbs except for veggies, as little sodium as possible
Workout (Grappling/Sparring)

Day 7:
Before Weigh-In
Drink no water
Eat a small breakfast consisting of green beans and a chicken breast
If necessary, spend an hour in the sauna
After Weigh-In
Drink Power Drive shake
Drink two bottles of water
Eat a banana and a steak sandwich from subway
       

 Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from

The fight is 10 days away.

What more is there to say?

In case you were wondering, the nice little training plan that you see in the right column was thrown out about three weeks ago in favor of “train as much as possible, whenever possible.”  Today, Mike and I rolled with the local high school wrestling coach for about an hour, then spent the next hour working on striking. Up to this point, almost all of my striking has been against a heavy bag or focus mitts, so we put on some boxing gloves and went balls-out against each other. I’ve got to say, it felt pretty good to be back in my element after spending the last few months being thrown around by great wrestlers.

Mike decided that he can’t strike well enough, and said, “Win or lose, this fight is going to the ground.  I don’t care if he’s a 5-foot-tall blackbelt in jiu-jitsu with a 24 inch reach, I am not going to be standing.”

He’s got a point.  When our sparring developed into a full-on MMA match with boxing gloves, he moved extremely well on the ground and had good striking when he wasn’t on his feet.  Personally, ground and pound seems pretty intuitive: hold the guy down, punch him in the face, repeat until stopped by referee.  Good stuff.

As a personal recommendation, don’t try to pull off armbars with 16 ounce gloves on your hands.  Your grip will slip, then Mike will climb on your back and pummel your head against the mat until he realizes you’re barely conscious.

Trust me on this one.

10 Days Until the Cage

Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy. The Buddha gave up the pleasures of life because they had become painful to him.

Only two weeks remain.  The nerves are finally starting to set it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a nervous wreck; for the first time, though, I think it has really dawned on me that I will be stepping into the cage in only 15 days, and that I really don’t know what to expect.  I mean, I’ve trained my grappling, trained my striking, did my endurance work, yet I still haven’t been punched in the face by a trained fighter with 4 ounce gloves on.  Hell, I’m not even sure what the canvas floor of the cage will feel like.

However, this is probably a good thing.  I’ve always performed best when backed against a wall, and discomfort can be a great motivator.  Like Cortez sinking his own ships, success often comes from knowing that the only way out is forward.  In my case, the ships are the friends and family that know about my fight.  It’s not a choice anymore.  I am going to have to face something that causes me, and every other fighter, discomfort. 

Bring it on.

I still do not know who my opponent will be.  I really wish I could tailor a bit of training toward the type of opponent I’ll be facing, but I guess this is just the reality of amateur MMA: train hard, show up, try to beat the shit out of whoever is across from you.

Something I forgot to consider before committing to fight:  Since I was about 15 years old, I planned to spend my 19th birthday getting shitfaced in Canada.  However, that’s probably not going to happen, since my birthday is 5 days before my fight.

Oh, the sacrifices we make.

15 Days Until the Cage

 Success begets success

Despite going to work at 5:00 this morning, today I enjoyed the best workout I’ve had in a long time.  I lifted hard without completely exhausting my muscles to failure, then agreed with Mike’s idea that we should do some live wrestling - like, college style, pin-your-opponent wrestling - in order to work on endurance.  We originally planned on two rounds that would last the length of two songs (there was no stopwatch available).  Once the competitive juices kicked in, though, neither of us was willing to be the one to suggest we stop.  After six songs, roughly 20 minutes later, Mike finally relented. 

As you should probably assumed, I definitely lost the wrestling match.  Most of the time was spent on my stomach trying to resist the pressure on my head and arms.  However, I did manage to pull a reversal out of nowhere and pin Mike one time, to which he responded with a barely-audible, “The fuck was that?”  I also got a few takedowns from moves that I’ve never been too confident about, and even threw a great head triangle out of instinct; it’s too bad I pinned myself in the process.

The best part happened after the wrestling, though.  After 20 minutes of non-stop action, I would normally be about ready fall asleep at the mat.  However, after a quick drink, I was rearing and ready to get some submission grappling work in.  I didn’t feel fatigued at all; it was as if it was a whole new day, not 3 minutes later.  We grappled with intensity, starting in each other’s guard until someone tapped or the guard was broken, the switched positions.  I submitted Mike multiple times, and for the first time we each executed an equal amount of submissions on each other.  I kept constant head pressure, was able to control his arm enough to get postion for triangles and arm bars, and managed some great escapes from moves that he normally submits me with. 

After 30 minutes of this, I still felt relatively fresh; my conditioning is improving by leaps and bounds, and I appear to be peaking at exactly the right time.

It’s workouts like this that cause excercise addiction.

19 Days Until the Cage

The event I’ll be competing in on the 29th has weigh-ins a couple hours before the event starts.  I guess since I’m only 3 weeks out, I should start planning how I’m going to cut weight and fight so soon afterwords.   I’d hate to make weight just to pass out after 30 seconds of fighting.  Plus, I’ve never actually cut weight before.

Right now I’m sitting around 160.  If anybody has experience with cutting the same day as an event or knows of a good article/resource on the topic, feel free to leave me a comment.

My training is going well, and both Mike and I are getting much stronger with our grappling.  My lifts are increasing slowly but surely, which is good considering I can’t afford to add much weight.  I box squatted 225 for 5 sets of 5 today, and my bench press finally made a bit of progress as well.

Also worth noting is that, since this post, the search keyword that has lead to the most traffic to my website is no longer “mixed martial arts”, “cage fighter”, or even “Cage Bound.” 

It’s “pussy.” 

Accordingly, I’ve decided my next post will be titled, “Porn Naked Girls Titties Huge Interracial Cock I Want to See My Neighbor’s Boobs.”

21 Days Until the Cage

The galleries are full of critics. They play no ball, they fight no fights. They make no mistakes because they attempt nothing. Down in the arena are the doers. They make mistakes because they try many things. The man who makes no mistakes lacks bold.

I was speaking with a guy, who we’ll call Roy, a couple years older than I am in the weight room the other day.  He asked me if I was “scared” to be fighting at 155; the implication being that because I am tall and wirey, I will be dominated by shorter, stronger guys.  By the way, Roy’s about 5′7”, 155 pounds.

On one hand, it’s a good question.  I have trouble with Mike on the ground because of his strength advantage, but my striking benefits greatly from the increased reach.  I’m not sure which I’d prefer; strength or height.  Sean Sherk or Kenny Florian.  Urijah Faber or Corey Hill.

However, the real reason he probably asked, with his eyes kind of squinted and his voice almost mocking, had nothing to do with  the strategic merit of reach versus strength.  He said, “Dude, I’m like 155 pounds.”  The implication was obviously that I obviously wouldn’t be able to beat him, let alone someone like him that actually trained mixed martial arts.

Even what seems to be the most petite ego will grow into a giant pretentious monster once fighting becomes the issue. 

For example:

“You’ve never played basketball, I played for a couple years on my high school team.  This means that I would probably beat you in basketball,” is a very logical statement that would probably be met with indifference.

“You’ve never trained fighting, I’ve been training for a couple years now for a mixed martial arts event.  This means that I would probably beat you in a fight,” is met with, “Fuck you dude, you wanna go right now!?”

It’s the reason people say things like this:

“The fighting is pretty good,” observed Breece, 35, who has been watching UFC for about 12 years. “The crap they do on TV to add drama the shows about who’s saying what thats too much. But this is pretty real here. This is fun.”

Breece, a confessed street-fighter, was mulling participation as he analyzed the action.

“To me, its a common sense knowing the human body and what joints to lock, what its going to take,” he said. “I’m out of shape, but if I could keep up with these guys, I could definitely keep up with any knowledge thats in this ring tonight.

If MMA is going to become respected as a mainstream sport, this crap needs to be corrected.  It has been nearly 15 years since 185 pound Royce Gracie became, for a moment, the best fighter in the world, yet the majority of people still believe that bar fights and big muscles are the most important indicators of a fighter’s skill.  The problem here is ego; until the average untrained male can be convinced that he is almost certainly not a badass fighter, MMA will struggle to gain acceptance.

Yeah, it’s going to be a while.

By the way, I asked Roy if he ever considered stepping into the cage.

“No way man, I don’t like getting hit.”

 Neither do I.

24 Days Until the Cage

To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

I went back to the public health center to get my bloodwork done; they got the job done, but not without a problem.

After receiving a 15 minute lecture on the dangers of HIV (which, again, I do not have), they agreed to draw a bit of blood from me.  I’m not afraid of needles.  I have absolutely no problem with blood, doctors, or even pain.

I have no idea why I passed out.

But I did.  I remember matter-of-factly telling my nurse that I was getting “uh, really dizzy”, and her responding, “Damnit, this is the second time today.”

She called in another nurse, an older man that would have been absolutely hilarious had I been a bit more conscious.  Some gems include, “Don’t pussy out on me,” “We really should start using different needles for each person,” and “You, me, and her (the other nurse) are going to have a threesome, but I get to go first.  I hate going second.”

Goddamned public health center.

But in a week I should for certain that I don’t have HIV or Hepatitis B or C, which is good.

After leaving the health center, I made the logical decision that any person who had just passed out would make: I lifted weights.  I took some Power Drive and got to work.  Surprisingly, I got a pretty good workout in.  Beforehand, I weighed myself at 161 with shoes on.  I’m going to start tightening up my diet a bit more, as I want to walk around at 157 at the most so I’m not cutting a lot of weight, since I have to weigh in the day of the fight.

Unfortunately, some freak waterline malfunction means that there needs to be some work in the wrestling room that Mike and I roll in, so I wasn’t able to work my biggest weakness.  Hopefully it will be corrected today, since I’m on spring break and planned on making the most of my free time.

I still haven’t received the call from the event manager telling me who I’m going to be fighting.  I’d imagine it will be coming pretty soon.

The countdown continues.

25 Days Until the Cage