Archive for June, 2008

When I was knee high to a grasshopper, I remember my mom telling me that, “sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you!” That was in an attempt to lessen the impact of the mean kids on my block that used to make fun of me (for what I don’t remember). The idea that was, and is, still valid today, is that sticks and stones are readily available weapons! Bruce Lee once said in one of his movies (paraphrasing), anything can be used as a weapon.  The sticks and stones you find on the ground are legal weapons if the intent is to use them for self defense when you need them. Did you catch that nuance?

My mom made a sheath for a club I had whittled when I was about 12 years old. I used to travel through the woods (imagining I was an explorer) with the club strapped to my belt and almost had to defend a couple of damsels in distress. I happened on a bunch of guys surrounding a couple of girls I knew from school. I said hi and the girls who looked really worried, saw me and were elated! One of the girls said I was her brother and I played along. The guys looked at me and my club and soon took off. That was my first experience of my Teddy Roosevelt defense, you know… talk softly and carry a big stick! Here is a 1912 story of a girl fighting off muggers with a night stick and saving her fiance here!

Lets examine legal fighting methods with sticks and stones. We will also look at some good usages and why you might want to use weapons. I have always been fond of stick fighting. Here is a video of some Portuguese stick fighting called Jogo Do Pau.

 
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People have become more civilized in the last thousand years but we really should learn some lessons from the past. The reason I say this is people should still be at the top of the food chain! We (speaking for all humanity here) are smarter than any animal but in today’s society – using our native smarts have not been cultivated in cities.

I reviewed this video about two women that were attacked by a Pitt Bull dog and were taking on lots of bites. I would first like to say that an animal owner should not own a dog he or she cannot control and I would also like to point out that these women were scared and they probably had never had to fight for their lives. Review this video and then I will talk about strategy.

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As you probably know by know from reading this blog, I enjoy a good contest. I stumbled upon some kick boxing from Eurosport Fight Club on Youtube.com that featured a match from Eurosport’s Netherlands vs Thailand Kickboxing Series. I’m not sure exactly when this fight took place but it was uploaded to Youtube.com on January 31, 2008.

The series seems to be a national team competition featuring some really great fighters. For the Netherlands, Jimmy Eimmers is fighting and Hansuk is representing Thailand. Take a look at this video below.

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Aloha! One of my first karate exposures was from Hal Edwards Lima Lama and the NAS Miramar base in San Diego. When I was a teenager we (fellow military brats) would go to the base karate program and learn Lima Lama. Hal was a black belt from Saul Esquivel. I met Saul Esquivel at the base karate club once and later met the founder of Lima Lama, Tino Tuiolosega at a seminar in Escondido, CA as I recall.

One of the things I heard about Lima Lama was it was composed of old island martial arts that the head hunters used to practice (Lua) and many of the moves were part of the traditional island dances called hula. Hal was big on pointing out the benefits of using short circular wrist moves to block and fingers or back knuckles as a quick counter. I looked for some hula on youtube.com but found modern dances for the tourists but here is one hula that seemed to be telling a story (I am not an expert in hula).

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Wow… what a fight! I just saw five rounds of exciting action and found out that Urijah Faber can strike! In this first defense of Urijah’s belt that went the five rounds, he had a worthy opponent. Jens Pulver was able to escape the ground and pound game by sitting up early in the match. Faber was able to cancel out Pulver’s striking with fast lunge/counter punches and hooks. I’ve never seen Faber strike so much and found he could hang with Pulver. Jens was in trouble in the second round but came out of it and took the fight back to Faber, who in turn had to go to the ground to recover.

The last three rounds were marked by some ground work but mainly striking where Pulver was attempting to pick some shots and then was beat to the punch most of the time. You could tell these fighters really respected each other’s fight skills after the bout.

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