Wim Demeere's Blog

Martial Arts, Self Defense and a Whole Lot More.

Cocky MMA fighter gets knocked out

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When I competed in Sanshou, I wasn’t the flashiest of fighters, nor was I the best. There was a lot I could have done better but I did have a good guard. It saved my bacon numerous times, both on the lei tai and in training. Also, to the best of my recollection, I never taunted opponents like this guy does. I’ve seen this kind of thing many times and always have to chuckle. I’ll explain in a bit but first, take a look at how this cocky MMA fighter gets knocked out:

As you can see, he didn’t get to enjoy his cocky attitude for very long.

If you regularly watch MMA, muay Thai or boxing matches, you’ve no doubt seen this before: a guy gets hit, he make a big production out of not being hurt and then he eats leather while he’s putting on that show. I’m sure that guy has seen this backfire for other fighters before, it’s not anything new. So the question is then: why do fighters pull these antics?

There are a couple of reasons: [Read more…]

Fear of fighting in MMA and boxing

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A couple days after I wrote my How to conquer your fear of fighting post, I saw this video of Mike Tyson and Ronda Rousey on Good Day LA. They discuss fear of fighting in MMA and boxing. This ties in well with what I wrote in that post so I wanted to share it with you here.

Here’ the interview:

The hosts weren’t all that great in my opinion. They could have gotten an awesome interview out of both champions but they stuck to pre-chewed questions. Regardless, the answers they got were pretty interesting. Some of the things I’d like to highlight: [Read more…]

How to conquer your fear of fighting

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Ross posted this video of Chael Sonnon on his blog recently. I liked it a lot. Chael talks about something that is still taboo for most fighters: how to conquer your fear of fighting. Given his usual loudmouth antics, this is pretty surprising coming from Chael and I have nothing but respect for him for stating this publicly. It takes a lot of maturity for a fighter to admit to being afraid; not everybody gets there eventually.

I’m going to approach this article with the viewpoint of MMA and other combat sports but there is overlap for self-defense too. The differences are important though, so please keep that in mind as you read on.

Before I go on, here’s the video:

I can imagine a young fighter like Uriah Hall looking at Chael Sonnen and thinking he’s fearless. I’m pretty sure most MMA enthusiasts who want to compete professionally would think the same thing:

This guy is utterly ferocious in the Octagon. He can’t possibly be afraid.

And then Chael just flat out admits to being afraid, filled with self-doubt and negative voices. Even more, he mentions being in the same spot as Uriah and talking to perhaps the biggest legend in MMA, Randy Couture, about being afraid. Guess what, Randy says he struggles with it constantly and it never goes away.

For the vast majority of people, that’s simply how it is.

I know for a fact that’s how it has always been for me. I’ve never had a fight, inside or outside of the ring, that I didn’t feel fear.

When I was younger and just starting out, I was very much ashamed of this. I thought I was a coward. It took a long time and many fights to eventually understand I wasn’t. It also took a lot of training and studying to figure out how I could conquer my fear of fighting. A huge part of it was realizing there was absolutely nothing wrong with that fear of fighting. It’s nothing but a natural reaction of your body and mind to the potential harm that may come your way once the punches start flying.

Fighting is scary.

It can end with you getting seriously injured, crippled or even a trip to the morgue. That’s just the reality of violence. It’s only normal to understand and recognize that an activity is inherently dangerous. It’s shying away from it when it is necessary that makes you a coward.

The fear, in and of itself, is neutral. It’s what you do with it that makes it positive or negative.

Which is fine and dandy to say but it doesn’t help you one bit right now. So let’s look at how we can go out and conquer it. [Read more…]

Roots of fight

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I just stumbled on this cool website called Roots of Fight. It looks like it’s a blend between documentary videos and an on-line gear shop. It mixes the two quite nicely so don’t be surprised you end up buying some of their T-shirts. That said, the videos are well worth watching because they feature a bunch of well known fighters in a range of sports: muay Thai, MMA, boxing and more.

Click on this link to see a bunch of them but also take a look at their blog.

 

Here are a couple of videos I enjoyed the most:

First one is of course the incomparable Bas Rutten, explaining how he ended up breaking the shin bone of an opponent in a leg lock:

 

But my favorite is of course this one on Mike Tyson with comments by Randy Couture, Forrest Griffin and Ray Mancini: [Read more…]

How to train for MMA

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Though this post covers how to train for MMA, it is applicable to all combat sports and to a degree for self-defense. So please keep that in mind as you read the rest.

Before we get into that part, take a look at this video. It features Pat Barry and Coach Greg Nelson, who’s style of teaching I like a lot. Coach Nelson starts talking at 7min40:

Before I get started on the meat of this post, here’s how it came about:

In my Sanshou class, I have a bunch of new students. They’ve only been learning the basic curriculum so far, which includes basic punches, kicks, knee strikes, throws and take downs. The other part they’re learning about is how to train. My lesson plan is such that they learn specific ways of training with their partners so they get the most out of it. This is something they’ll need later on, when they join the more advanced students in class and it’s expected of them to know those things. One of those concepts is knowing the difference between training and fighting.

When you start out, this is usually the most difficult part to understand and watch out for. Simply because you lack the framework to distinguish between both of these. But if you mess things up on that front, you learn the wrong things at the wrong time, resulting in errors that cost you later on. And then you have to re-learn all the basics, which is way harder than learning them the first time. So I pay particular attention to certain errors my students make at that stage of their training. One of these errors is going off-script. Here’s what that means: [Read more…]

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