Combat Sports Historian and Martial Artist
Posts about martial arts concepts and history.
Anderson Silva, widely recognized as the greatest mixed martial artist of all time, lost his rematch with Chris Wiedman for the UFC Middleweight Title on December 28, 2013. Wiedman had defeated Silva for the title on July 6, 2013. It was Silva’s first loss in seven years with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He was the middleweight champion for over 6
Georges St-Pierre has been the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) Welterweight Champion since 2007 and has been fighting for the title since 2005. While he is only 32 years of age, the grind of being world champion has caused him to relinquish the belt and step away from the sport for the time being. Some pundits have speculated that he is
A common myth in martial arts is that a master studies for 40 years, develops an almost superhuman understanding of self-defense, creates the perfect system and turns out generations of unbeatable fighters. Prior to the popularity of mixed martial arts, many of the magazines such as Black Belt were full of stories about which martial art was the best. If you polled
I was watching the UFC Fight Night prelims on Facebook Saturday night. The fights all ended in before time expired. One ended in the third round, one in the second round and three in the first round. One of the things that I notice was that none of the fighters in the first four fights were attacking from guard. They
3 times over the last 150 years, martial artists created more modern versions of older martial arts. Unlike many prior systems, the innovators of these modern martial arts chose to share this information with outsiders and spread their arts around the world. Jigoro Kano’s dissemination of Judo is the best case study for how to develop and spread a martial
I have spent a lot of time studying different rank systems. The rank system seems to be a modern concept started by Dr. Jigaro Kano, an educator, who wanted a system of grading to separate students. Over the next century, numerous styles adopted the belt rank system but the only commonality was the belt systems meant what the creator decided
One of the things that always impressed me about the Gracies is how they were able to turn out generation after generation of top-notch instructors. After reading a number of articles about their original belt system, etc., I started to adapt some of their methods with our own students. Once the student reaches Green Belt, we allow them to start
While watching the Facebook Prelims for UFC 161, I observed a trend that happens often in mixed martial arts competition. One of the competitors would get a dominant position but would sacrifice it to chase a submission. He caught the other competitor in close to ten submissions but the other man escaped all ten and one a close split decision.
A couple of years ago, I decided to stay at the rank of brown belt in Judo for a while. As a black belt in Taekwondo, I always assume that you keep going until you reach black belt in the art you are practicing. However, I began to change my mind about continuously trying to obtain a black belt
On April 27, 2013, on what would have been his grandfather and namesake’s 71st birthday, Ken “Trey” Zimmerman III became the first black belt in the Zimmerman Self-Defense System under his father Ken Zimmerman Jr. “Trey” began studying martial arts shortly before his fifth birthday. “Trey” has trained in Taekwondo, Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Gojo Shroei Weapons System. His goals