I heard about this fight for the bronze in Olympic Tae Kwon Do and found lots of articles about this. Apparently this guy hurt his foot and called a timeout.  Angel was ahead 3 to 2 prior to the time out. Check out the video link below but I saw the guy took over the allotted one minute break. The referee disqualified the Cuban (Angel) and awarded the bronze to Arman Chilmanov (from Kazahkstan).

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I have been watching some Olympics off and on during the last week an even caught some fighting! I was watching some wrestling the other morning before work and I saw this guy (Adam Wheeler) from Lancaster, CA win the Bronze metal! That was cool as I understand because it is the only wrestling win for the U.S. so far. I reviewed a match a while back where a girl beat a boy to win the title. I can only guess that the Olympics is every wrestlers dream. This picture of a 3rd century B.C. Pankratiasten fight was taken by Matthias Kabel.

 I will review the fighting sports that are in the Olympics and how they might be applied to self defense situations. I will also touch on why my favorite sport, karate is not in the Olympics. Let me say in this day and age of mixed martial arts, each of these Olympic fighting sports are important components of many great fighters! Even though there are so many rules (which you need in an effort to make things truly fair), the true competitors still excel!

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I found a some stories about kid abduction attempts and how they got away. The common thread (as I suspected) was the girls and boys did not calmly go along with the abductors! They ran, fought back and escaped with their wits! I have long been an advocate for teaching children the basics on how to avoid bad situations and what to do if they have to fight back.  

I will start out with a video from Erin Weed of GirlsFightBack.org. Erin became an advocate for women after her friend was killed. I think this will set the right tone for this serious topic. I will then talk about the news story’s I found and comment on each. I will follow up with some good tips for children in similar situations so you can hopefully give your children some tips! Here is an Fox News interview with Erin Weed.

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Many of you have heard me talk about self defense and some strategies you can use. But what would you do if armed robbers broke in while you were taking a shower? Well one Bronx boy reasoned he could not fight them and dove out the window to go for help here!

Often times when bad stuff happens, you don’t really have a chance to think things out so doing whatever it takes to have the best result is important! In this case there were armed men doing a home invasion robbery (where the crooks take over a family to get whatever they want). If you have multiple family members around, you generally cannot fight armed men easily without someone (maybe your family) getting hurt. In a situation like this – going for help is the smarter thing to do!

I am going to discuss what to do when robbers attempt to invade your home and give a couple of real life stories that happened to my wife! Here is a Las Vegas police force video on some precautionary measures you can take to minimize your risk.

Click here to Watch the Las Vegas Police Home Invasion Video (sorry they are not allowing embedding videos for some reason).

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I guess no matter how I frame this new karate league entitled the, “World Combat League” (WCL) my bias is going to be apparent. So off with the perverbal gloves and here goes. I found some of this type of fighting on VS TV the other day and I had a hard time figuring out what was going on. At first I thought I had found some type of wrestling or such because the two participants were just meeting in the middle of the stage and going at it. The strikes and kicks seemed real enough but there was not anything thrown below the belt. There did not seem to be much tactics other than just slugging!

I looked this up on google and found these were team competitions that were scored on how many kicks and punches landed in a round (rules). You could not clinch, hold, or do any take downs. I did not see any rules against leg kicks, groin shots but I assume those are not legal (groin shots are not normally legal in MMA). Here is a quick clip Chuck Norris’s World Combat League.

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Every parents worst nightmare happened to me a couple of months back – My oldest son called me to tell me my youngest son had just been mugged! He did not have many details other than my son was walking for exercise (as he often does) and these three guys jumped him! I was also told he was bruised but ok.

Let me tell you I had so many emotions running through my head but I was also trying to use my experience to tell my oldest son that the police should handle the matter. I felt like hunting for some street toughs but that could rapidly digress into something I would end up regretting. I’m happy to say I opted for finding some more information. More on my son’s situation in a minute but while searching robbery youtube videos, I found this of some courageous beauty school women that took matters into their own hands to deal some hurt to a robber.

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A Well now I have just been reviewing mixed martial arts and happened to find this video of a rising MMA star, “Killer Willard,” the Boxing Kangaroo teaching his trainers the fine points of Outback Kangaroo kicks and punches. The funny thing about this to me (other than a giant rat-like boxer) was the kangaroo was actually pretty good. I had to try and work this video in somewhere and it seemed to fit nicely with MMA

I watched the International Fight League (IFL) on TV last night and was entertained by the heavyweight match featuring Roy Nelson vs. Brad Imes. I did not know either fighter but heard that Imes used to play football and was in the WEC and UFC. I was expecting the chubby (ok - fat) Roy "Big Country" Nelson, 6' 1", to be dodging punches from the 6' 7" Imes. Take a gander at this fight - I think you will enjoy this.

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Are you a woman that has noticed how much stronger men are than you? Do you have the mind set that anything a man can do, I (the woman) can do better! Well then, I commend your spirit! The first part of part of doing is believing… let me say that again… The first part of doing IS BELIEVING!!!

I am not one of those men that believe I can take any woman in a fight. Huh… many of my male friends are thinking??? Yes… I think women are quite capable of defending their honor if ever put to the test but a woman has to believe she is capable of such a thing. This post will focus on helping woman believe they are powerful in self-defense situations. I will talk about fighting muscle with one’s wit and not fighting the man’s fight. I’ll have each woman reading this post echoing that old Helen Reddy song, “… I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar…”!!! I will also show some common eye, ear, throat, nose and chin strikes. Here is a quick video of one type of eye strike that would devastate a man in an altercation.

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