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Fabio Leopoldo, a Renzo Gracie Fighter, a 3-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champion, and an IFL professional MMA fighter, will be coming to Evolve to train Muay Thai under the Sityodtong team. Fabio holds a 2nd Degree Black Belt under Carlos Gracie Jr.
Who: BJJ World Champion Fabio Leopoldo
Where: Evolve Mixed Martial Arts
Date: Saturday July 18
Time: 1230pm to 330pm
It will be $40 for Evolve members and $80 for non-Evolve members.
Muay Thai. The Art of Eight Limbs. Somehow i never think of Muay Thai as something that i would learn. It is such a graceful art, i see my instructors, Nuengpichit Sityodtong, Chatri Sityodtong, Daorung Sityodtong, and Yoddecha Sityodtong throw kicks, elbows, punches and knees and i am in awe. I ask myself, “would i ever be able to do this?” Clearly not as i have no body coordination whatsoever! I can’t even skip rope!
About 2 weeks ago, i went for submission grappling training and within minutes i was gassed out! Then i remember one of the instructors, Chatri telling me that Muay Thai is good for cardio. With that in mind, i went for my first Muay Thai session last week. I went in with a heavy heart.. well.. i can’t skip rope and my cardio is at an all time low but surprisingly it is not as bad as i think it would be. Our instructors for that session, Nueng, Yoddecha and “Papa” Daorung made the session fun.. yes. FUN. We started with a 20 minutes plus warm up, running, stretching, skipping rope (though i do have a little problem with that). Then it’s off to light shadow boxing and kicks followed by pairing up to train on light boxing and kicking. I pair up with Marc; my buddy. The instructors walk around, making sure that we got our posture and technique right.
After the light training session, Nueng ask us to line up and this is the part i love! We line up to deliver a series of low kicks to the paddings held by the instructors, even our two Korean MMA instructors also joined in, helping with the paddings. We are suppose to deliver low kicks to the paddings, then to the heavy bags for push kicks, low kicks, middle kicks and high kicks. Then suddenly Nueng switches and ask those at the heavy bags to do a series of 50 knees to the heavy bags! It was cardio packed and the thing is with everyone going at it. You don’t even notice that you are tired! I left that Muay Thai session, muscles aching but in a strange way felt energised!
Today’s session was even better, the usual warm up session and Nueng taught us to do the Wai khru ram muay after which we learn how to do a simple left jab, right cross followed by the elbows and knee strikes.. and then the fun part starts! I don’t know what the instructors call it but it is definitely good. We started off with push kicks on the heavy bags and then move on to the instructors who are holding paddings, ready for action! Marc and myself got teamed up with “Papa”. A little bout “Papa”; when i first saw “Papa” at Evolve, my first thought was uncle.. but “Papa” is no ordinary uncle, this is an uncle with a record of over 100 professional Muay Thai fights and “Papa” is really tough. Despite the language barrier, “Papa” never fails to interact with us whenever we drop by the gym. I have nothing but respect for “Papa” and the respect i had for him goes up to another level after today’s session. He guided us, shouting out moves, “Punch! Elbow! Knee! Kick! Kick!” Even though at times our kicks don’t connect, “Papa” simply held the padding up again and motions for us to go again! It is such a wonderful feeling training with such professionals.
No doubt there may be other Muay Thai gyms in Singapore but for me, Evolve is the first MMA gym i’ve joined in my life. I enjoyed my submission grappling experience at Evolve and right now i am enjoying my first Muay Thai experience. I might never have a chance to put what i’ve learnt to use but i do learn more than just Muay Thai. I learnt that the art of fighting transcends everything, including the language barrier. I also learn to control my breathing and work more on my cardio. It is definitely an experience i will remember. All i can say is i can’t wait for my next Muay Thai lesson. So what are you waiting for? If you have yet to try out Muay Thai, do so now!
The recent Super Hulk Tournament at DREAM.9 last month brought a lotta attention and raised a few eyebrows when the event took place.
For a normal MMA enthusiast, the Super Hulk Tournament can be seen as an absolute joke, that despite having top-caliber fighters such as Ikuhisa Minowa, Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, Mark Hunt and Gegard Mousasi take part in the tournament. This is due to gargantuan fighters such as Bob Sapp, Hong Man Choi and Jan “The Giant” Nortje taking part in it.
Oh. And did I mention that former Major League Baseball MVP Jose Canseco was a participant as well?
Freak show fights doesn’t necesarrily mean huge behemoths competing in MMA fights. Rather freak show fights also can mean fights that involve celebrities who have no proper MMA training (with possibly the exception of popular Japanese actor Ken Kaneko who was trained by Kazushi Sakuraba and Masato prior to his fights against Hideo Tokoro and Andy Ologun in 2006).
As a strong enthusiast in MMA, it is rather saddening when you see fighters get into the ring, but know nothing much about the sport or don’t even know how to throw a decent punch. Over the years, we cringed as Akebono continues to lose match after match and somehow at times, can’t help but pity the 64th Yokozuna for trying as hard as he could to win an MMA fight. I remembered watching in horror when popular Nigerian comedian Bobby Ologun competed in a K-1 World GP match against Yusuke Fujimoto back in 2006 and was constantly throwing his opponent down, despite the match being contested under K-1 rules. When Bob Sapp was knee-ed in the gut several seconds into their fight by Peter Aerts in 2007, it proved that no matter how intimidating and charismatic Sapp is, he is just another freak show attraction.
The sad thing is that the Japanese love matches involving larger-than-life (literally) fighters. To be fair to them, they do have fighters they fully support, such as Norifumi “KID” Yamamoto who stands at 5′4″ tall and lightweight ace Shinya Aoki, but it is the big men and the celebrities that would constantly get the fans’ attention everytime their names are up on the marquee.
Bob Sapp is probably the best example I could give and trust me, a lot of MMA columnists would probably feel the same way. Standing 6′4″ and weighing in at 320 lbs., Sapp is a mountain of a man, a powerful physical specimen and very charismatic, be it in the ring or out of the ring. In the early 2000s, Sapp was a major draw. Here is a fighter with a truly larger-than-life persona. He was very popular among Japanese fans who constantly watch and attend his fights, making him a huge draw in the country. His mug was all over Japan, be it on variety TV programmes or billboard ads. He even released a mini-album dubbed SAPP TIME!! as if that wasn’t enough.
But what is Sapp like as a fighter? He is reckless and clumsy (very evident in his fights with Remy Bonjasky where he ground and pounded the three-time K-1 World GP Champion when he was down and when he smacked Musashi with punishing haymakers to the head when Musashi had his back turned) and relies heavily on his power to get the win. Obviously since he doesn’t have the technical game, he often goes around saying that he will knock his opponents out rather than going for submissions. This of course would allow his opponents to exploit his weakness on the ground and as we saw in Sapp’s recent fight with Ikuhisa Minowa, Minowaman easily submitted Sapp with a kneebar, a move which Sapp could’ve escaped from had he been smart enough coming into the fight. It was also the same in his famous battle against Antonio Rodrigo Nogeuira back in 2002. Despite piledriving Minotauro to the mat twice, Nogueira preservered and used his fantastic Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu skills to capitalize on Sapp’s weakness to grappling and submit him with an armbar for the win.
Hong Man Choi is another example. A former ssireum wrestler, Choi stands 7′2″ tall, quite possibly the tallest fighter in the world and he weighs in at 326 lbs. Intially, Choi was looked at as just another freak show talent as he used his size and girth to gaina huge advantage over his opponents. As he continued competing, his skills as a kickboxer gradually improving as the Techno Goliath was able to put on competitive fights against the likes of Semmy Schilt, Mighty Mo and especially Jerome LeBanner, whom he was able to put on thrilling encounters against. Choi himself is another charismatic personality, a popular figure in his native country, South Korea, appearing on TV ads and variety shows and even releasing a rap single featuring model and singer So Hee Kang (the duo performed at K-1 Premium 2006 Dynamite!! and also the K-1 World GP 2007 in Yokohama event), whom he is also reportedly dating. In recent times after removing a tumor from his brain, Choi has lost an incredible amount of weight and has slowed down a lot in his fights, which was evident in his K-1 fights against Badr Hari and Ray Sefo and also his MMA fight at Dynamite!! 2008 against Mirko Filipovic. Despite that, he remains a populer figure amongst Japanese and Korean MMA fans.
Probably the best example of a freak show appeal that just doesn’t gel well with MMA is Taro Akebono. Akebono, at 500 lbs., was one of the heaviest fighters to ever compete in MMA (the largest fighter remains to be Emmanuel Yarborough, who stands 6′8″ and has once weighed in at 800+ lbs.). Believe it or not, Akebono’s fight against Bob Sapp as the main event of K-1 Premium 2003 Dynamite!! remains one of the highest-rated MMA events of all time in Japan. Despite the drawing appeal he has, Akebono is a terrible fighter. He has constantly lost many K-1 fights against the likes of Musashi, Remy Bonjasky and Hong Man Choi and has also lost MMA fights against fighters such as Giant Silva, Don Frye and sadly, Bobby Ologun. Akebono only managed one win in his career, against the retired Nobuaki Kakuda in Korea back in 2005. Over the years, many MMA purists have heavily criticized Akebono for his efforts in the ring. In fact, Akebono has not return to MMA ever since his submission loss to Giant Silva at K-1 Premium 2006 Dynamite!!. While he still helps out FEG in their promotion (especially when he helped to promote the K-1 World GP 2008 in Hawaii event), Akebono has been very active in the Japanese pro-wrestling circuit, competing for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, All Japan Pro-Wrestling and HUSTLE, where he seems to be getting some measures of success at with several wins under his belt.
Then there are personalities that just don’t seem to be tailor-made for the MMA ring. Bobby Ologun is a very good example. Here is a man who is a popular comedian, known for his facial contortions taken from “darkie” iconography and his blunders in pronouncing certain words, giving them an entirely different meaning. He made his MMA debut with much fanfare, defeating K-1 World GP fighter Cyril Abidi and defeating him. He continued to become a staple for FEG’s K-1 Premium Dynamite!! events, defeating Akebono in 2005 and losing in 2006 and 2007 to Hong Man Choi and Bob Sapp respectively. His younger brother, Andy Ologun, is currently a competitor in the K-1 World Max brand and is a much more talented fighter than his older brother, both as a kickboxer and as a mixed martial artist. Bobby has not been in any MMA fights since his loss to Sapp and it is not known whether or not he’ll be in any MMA fights in the future.
And finally, we have Jose Canseco. Fans were simply irate and disgusted when it was announced hat Canseco would take part in DREAM’s Super Hulk Tournament. Not only was he a former baseball player, not only had he lost in a match against Vai Sikahema and drew in a celebrity boxing match against Danny Bonaduce, Canseco was a steroid user and could possibly bring bad reputation to MMA. Furthermore, despite claiming to having black belts in taekwondo and kung fu, Canseco had no MMA training prior to his debut against Hong Man Choi and it was very evident that he looked out of place when they both eventually fought. After losing via ground and pound to Choi, it seemed that Canseco’s MMA career has come to a screeching halt, despite only competing once.
Yet he along with many celebrities and huge behemoths continue to be seen in MMA fights. Why is that?
DREAM Producer Keichi Sasahara explained his reasoning behind the Super Hulk Tournament during an interview to hype the tournament. Sasahara said that despite a fight card loaded with amazing matches, he feels that he needed more drawing appeal for the event and decided to rope in these freak show fighters to compete at DREAM.9 in the tournament in order to draw more casual fans not just to the Yokohama Arena where DREAM.9 took place, but more importantly, generating strong PPV revenue and high ratings on television. This was due to the terribly low ratings for DREAM’s events last year, which put the brand in danger of not being able to secure television deals, but thankfully, TBS Japan, who broadcast all of DREAM’s events (as well as the K-1 World Max and Dynamite!! events) were able to sign a new TV deal with DREAM to air their events this year. Not only that, with DREAM now airing on HDNet in the United States, the popular MMA brand will only become bigger than ever.
Obviously, we have to look at something that has been prevalent in our societies, especially here in Malaysia and Singapore. Wrestling or sports entertainment whichever way you look at it, is very popular due to physically imposing and larger-than life wrestlers, such as the Big Show, The Undertaker, The Great Khali, Triple H, John Cena and many more popular superstars. People love to see the big boys go at it rather than smaller wrestlers (I’m referring to middleweights, welterweights, lightweights and featherweights) as they are the main draws. This was also the mentality that Eric Bischoff used when he ran WCW in the past, using the big stars (physically and on a drawing level) to draw many fans to watch his programmes. After all, WCW was “where the big boys play”.
This seems to be the case over in Japan as well. An MMA enthusiast would believe that DREAM.9 was already a great, stacked card without the need for the Super Hulk Tournament, but no matter how many MMA enthusiasts there are in Japan and around the world, we have to ask the question, would it be enough to draw many fans to watching DREAM.9? We’re talking about introducing people to MMA if they have never watched or followed the sport before and usually, it would be good to start with the heavyweights. Sure it would be a whole lot better to show these same people fighters who can actually throw a kick and a punch and know the difference between the kimura submission hold and Takuya Kimura of the popular boy band SMAP, but the conclusion that people would often jump at is that fights, especially in combat sports, should be reserved for bigger fighters or another way of saying it, tough guys. This is why heavyweight boxers such as Muhammad Ali, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson are more well-known than smaller boxers such as Ricky Hatton, Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather Jr. It’s the same even in the UFC. Randy Couture’s fight against Brock Lesnar drew bigger PPV buyrates than events which were headlined by the likes of Georges St-Pierre, B.J. Penn and Anderson Silva.
Whiel I’m not trying to sound very shallow, but the sad fact is that whether or not you can fight and win matches, so long as you’re a big fighter with tremendous amount of charisma, you will be more well aware amongst fans, especially amongst those who do not know anything about MMA. Due to Kimbo Slice’s popularity as a YouTube sensation and his association with MMA, ESPN once got him mixed up thinking that he was a UFC fighter as one of the representatives was said to have called up UFC President Dana White and requested pictures from Slice’s “recent UFC fight”. The representative actually meant EliteXC’s final event where Slice lost embarassingly to Seth Petruzelli in a matter of seconds into the first round of their fight.
So do the Japanese love their freak show fights? Yes they do. Is there anything we can do to change their mindset? Perhaps, but it won’t be very easy. Even I admitted that I wasn’t interested in seeing the smaller guys compete in MMA fights, but after hearing about Masato and seeing what a great K-1 fighter he is, I decided to follow the K-1 World Max brand. I also became a Norifumi “KID” Yamamoto fan due to his sheer power for a fighter of his physical stature. Needless to say, it would be a whole lot better to start watching fighters like Yamamoto, Gegard Mousasi, Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva rather than the big boys (unless it’s Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Frank Mir, Randy Couture or Josh Barnett), but by the end of the day, it is up to you, the individual, regardless of where you come from, to make your choice on which you would rather prefer to watch for starters if you’re just about to get into MMA.
May 23rd will be a night fans will not be able to forget in a long while.
For years, many have wondered whether Lyoto Machida would become a champion. Machida’s elusive fighting style can either be a nightmare for fans watching this unique, unorthodox fighter in action or a joy for those who love watching the technical aspects of his game.
Machida is for one not a knockout machine like Anderson Silva or Chuck Liddell, but in his last two fights, he proved that he can knock even some of the toughest knockout artists in the UFC today. His stunning knockout of Thiago Silva at UFC 94 had MMA fans talking and of course, his undefeated run coupled by demands from fans that he deserves a shot at the UFC Light Heavyweight Title led him to an eventual title shot.
And it was then at UFC 98 where he fully seized the much-needed opportunity.
In what many considered one of the most anticipated fights of the year, Machida went one on one with another fighter who is undefeated in the UFC, the reigning UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Rashad Evans. Fans have often asked who would win if these two were to ever meet in the ring. They asked whether Machida’s elusive style would stand a chance against Evans’s explosive striking and excellent wrestling.
Many have said that it is so hard to prepare for a fight against Machida because of how difficult it is to simulate his style during training. What makes Machida so unique is his Shotokan karate style, which he used to great effects in all of his fights which has left him undefeated in his MMA career. Add to his mastery in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, his mastery in the art of sumo and some Muay Thai background and you got yourself a fighter who is simply impossible to beat.
So when Machida eventually fought Evans, it seemed that Machida’s strategy would be to either have the fight go the distance or submit him. After all, trading strikes against a fighter known for his knockout power would be suicidal.
But Machida didn’t seem to care. A fight is a fight. Plus, the UFC Light Heavyweight Title was at stake. A barrage of punches was able to stagger and eventually knock out the champion and seconds later, the dream was finally realized and Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida has finally ascended to the top of the Light Heavyweight Division as the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion.
On a personal level, it was really exciting for me to watch as Machida celebrates his huge title win. Six years ago, I remembered sitting up on the stands at the Tokyo Dome, one of the 55,000+ fans on hand watching a hybrid wrestling and MMA PPV event ran by New Japan Pro-Wrestling. It was on that very night where Machida made his MMA debut against Pancrase’s Kengo Watanabe. Seeing that it was his debut and that he was Antonio Inoki’s protege, he made a grand entrance flanked by a traditional Brazilian percussion band to hype him up as he made his way to the ring in a traditional Brazilian warrior’s attire. His fight however was boring to me at that time. It was my first live exposure to MMA and I wouldn’t say it was the best first impression I had of Machida despite him winning the match by decision.
I was one who was critical of Machida’s fighting style in the past, but at that point, I had not fully understood the logic behind his fighting style. About four years later, I watched his fight against Rameau Theirry Sokoudjou at UFC 97 and found that he had improved a lot. At the same time, as I continued watching his fights, I realized the beauty of his unique fighting style. He may not be the most exciting fighter to watch, but he is one to observe carefully, one to analyze well with each movement he makes. In a way, it is like watching a pro-wrestling match in Japan back during the All Japan Pro-Wrestling days with Mitsuharu Misawa and Toshiaki Kawada taking charge. These fighters may not have flashy wrestling styles, neither were they larger-than-life characters you would see in the WWE, but they constantly put on five star matches against each other and their fellow top-level peers such as Kenta Kobashi and Akira Taue. One way to appreciate their matches is to observe and analyze the way they wrestle, what moves they used, how their ring psychology plays out etc. In a way, you have to think well when watching a 90s All Japan match as opposed to watching a WWE match where you don’t necassarily have to think to enjoy a match.
It’s the same with watching a MMA fight especially when Machida is in it. That’s what made him a fighter who has mixed reactions in regards to the way he fights, be it positive or negative. It really depends on what you have in mind when you’re watching a Machida fight. Should you watch it with the mindset of a casual MMA fan or as an MMA analyst? If you really want to appreciate his style, the latter would always be the better choice.
Now that Machida is on top of the world as the Number One Light Heavyweight Fighter in the world, it is pretty certain that he would stay on top for a very long time to come. Unless someone is smart enough to break him down physically and mentally during a fight, it will be a tough task to take the UFC Light Heavyweight Title away from The Dragon. For now, The Dragon continues to rise into the horizon as the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion and the top fighter at 205 pounds.
