Job Done

Leicester Shoot Crew, from third from front left: John, me, Rob, Nayan, Levo, Daywalker

And so the journey comes to an end.

Last Sunday I was part of a four man team from Leicester Shootfighters that competed in the Combudo Amateur MMA tournament in Milton Keynes. Those of you who've followed the blog up to this point will know that this is the culmination of seventeen months of training, the last two being significantly tougher through the addition of sparring sessions in to my training schedule.

The fight itself seemed to be over in a flash and conducted at a lightning pace, though how much of that was due to my emotional/mental state – I don't remember much of it in any detail - and how much to the actual pace of the fight... In one light it seems crazy to have trained for even the last two months for 3 minutes of scrapping but in hindsight I know that I would have liked to have done more rolling, sparring and conditioning work in preparation to compete, that it would've made me able to do better than I did. Ah, hindsight, the only truly exact science...

The Friday two days prior to Combudo I weighed just under 96kg on the scales that I have been using since January. On the day of the competition I weighed in at 98kg. I knew I was pretty much bang in the middle of the 90 – 100kg with little chance of being over or under so I didn't attempt to cut any weight and ate pretty much whatever I felt like. I was far more concerned with running out of energy due to getting my diet wrong than with hitting any target weight.

As is the norm for me, my opponent was at least four inches taller than me and went off at a blistering pace utilising his reach advantage to land what felt like plenty of strikes. I was struggling to get my punches and kicks off first and grabbed a knee on a couple of occasions without managing to finish a takedown. Finally, realising that I wasn't going to win the fight standing I fully committed to a shot and a (single? Double-leg?) takedown. Rather than try to finish it by pivoting or going to the corner, I drove through taking him to the mat on his back. It's difficult to recall much detail but essentially I passed guard to the side and, despite Leicester Shoot Head Coach Nathan Leverton telling me to improve my position, maintained side control in spite of my opponent's best efforts to escape, and laid in to some ground 'n' pound. Not pretty, but it got the job done and got my the decision win. Looking back I would've liked to have moved to mount but on the couple of occasions that I tried I felt like I was losing the dominant position. As it was I moved between north-south and side control as well as switching hand positions to maintain control. If I showed any grappling skill it was through the maintenance of the dominant position.

As an aside, as I was working to stay in side control a female supporter of my opponent was shouting 'he's got nothing!'. This riled me a bit and I have to admit put a bit of spite behind my punches as well as drawing a little chat from me to my opponent(!).

The whole experience taught me a lot and in the next post I'll reflect on what I learnt. One thing I do know, this part of the journey may be over but I think there's further I'd like to travel....