It’s not often I get asked to be interviewed. The guys over at EFN Sports (also known the The European Fight Network) kindly asked me to do a voxpop style interview, to which I gladly agreed. Check it out here!
Not the greatest of TV spots, but my good mate and FO contributor Peter Irving gets some good airtime in this mini-doc that featured on a regional BBC news magazine show.
Pity the reporter put so much of his own opinion into an otherwise rather complimentary piece. I suppose when the facts and popular opinion all weigh in favour of the sport, someone has to play the opposing side.
Also check out this vid of Pete in training; pads, grappling and floorbag work. Tough stuff.
You stay classy, MMA
I don’t like TV much. The shining beacon of untruth that rules over people’s lives is one of the few forms of entertainment I don’t enjoy. That’s not to say I don’t like some TV shows, because I do. If I owned a TV channel, it would play Family Guy, My Name is Earl, Blackadder, South Park and random documentaries about snow leopards and stuff 24 hours a day. Read more »
…are made up on the spot. Everyone knows that.
I’m not a huge fan of statistics, preferring things such as experience, first hand reports and more human sources from which to draw my information. The scientist in me never progressed past the age of 13, and his knowledge extends to what he has learnt from William Gibson and Jon Courtenay Grimwood novels, National Geographic and Google. I don’t do numbers very well.
Still, I couldn’t help but take note when FightMetric started offering a Compubox-type system of analysing fights and reporting their data in the form of quite complicated (to me, baffling) charts and a strange points system based on ‘effectiveness’. Read more »
Check this awesome vid of my good friend, Fighters Only contributor and professional fighter Peter Irving (and chums) training on a beach.
Pete is the one with the GSP headband on. Looks awesome. I wish I lived near a beach.
Be sure to check out Pete’s blog over at Knuckle Draggers Survival Program.
Image credit: Sarah Mae (That’s not me in the pic by the way)
Bastard. I’ve got ringworm. Ah well - it’s part and parcel of sharing your personal space with dirty sweaty people I guess…
The vicious fists of the awesome Melvin Manhoef
The first time I saw Melvin Manhoef in action was back in February 2005 on Cage Rage 10. I had heard of him only by reputation, knowing he was, like many Dutch fighters, a great kickboxer. No-one was really prepared for what we saw though. Manhoef’s explosiveness is well known nowadays, with his appearances in K-1 HERO’s and DREAM. Read more »
Unprofessional behaviour aside, bitterness isn’t such a bad thing, especially when it drives traffic to your site.
Some people are never happy. Oh well.
Image © Speedo, photographer unknown
I forgot how much I liked swimming. I used to swim a lot, but stopped and never really got back into it. I was too sore from a jits session on Monday to train last night, and even though I spent plenty of time on my new foam roller (oh god how I love this invention) I was still a bit banged up and decided to give them gym a miss tonight. Not wanting to stay home and do nothing two nights in a row I headed to the pool, a 50m Olympic standard pool that thankfully was split into two 25m lengths.
It’s a well known truism that swimming is very similar to grappling - the way you need to move as efficiently as possible, the control of your breath, the coordination between limbs, the relaxed tension… And the zen-like state you hit after 30 or 40 lengths where all you think is “breathe, stroke, kick, breath, stroke, kick…” Read more »
Some toys
“He who dies with the most toys, wins”. I love that quote.
