Win for Team Kugtar

I first joined Kugtar back in January. Kugtar is a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) gym. It's what was called a fight gym back in the day, but is now called a Martial Arts Academy. The main facility is located in Salinas, but they have opened a second facility in Watsonville, located within a couple of miles from my home.

The people at Kugtar are great. The coaches are fantastic, and everyone is extremely patient with the old guy. :-) The workouts are unbelievable. I literally can wring my t-shirt out after every single workout. This is definitely stuff that I could never have done prior to my Weight Loss Surgery (WLS).

What is cool about MMA is that it combines boxing, wrestling, ju-jitsu, kickboxing, and muy-thai. Some of the guys working out here have aspirations to be professional cage fighters, while some of the guys just want a hard workout and like to punch stuff. Gee.... guess which group I fall into?

A short time after joining Kugtar, we got a new Striking Coach, a guy named Pat Castillo. Pat is an awesome coach. He has fought professionally and done pretty well. He is very motivating, a great teacher, very patient, and an all around straight up guy.

One day, he tells the class that one of our students, Mike, is going to have his first official fight. The California State Athletic Commission was going to sanction their first ever amateur MMA fight, and it was going to be held in Salinas. This was exciting news. Pat then went and explained how as a team, we would help Mike prepare for his fight. He said that each of us have specific strengths that can help Mike train.

Pat said my strength was my right hand. He said that I didn't have any form, style or rhythm, but that I was super strong, and I put everything I have into every punch. Each punch has the kitchen sink behind it, and that I had true knockout power. He then said if he could teach me some things, I would be making people go to sleep. He also said that if he was ever in a bar room fight, he wanted me on his side.

At first I thought wow, that was kind of cool. Then I thought about it. Hmmm, does that mean I'm just a big, dumb brawler? Well.... I do throw every punch about as hard as I can, I do drop my hands when I get tired, my footwork is awkward, and my ju-jitsu is terrible. Hmmmm, ok maybe he was right.

Over the next few weeks we worked on drills to prepare Mike for his fight. One drill put mike in the middle of the ring. For 30 seconds, Mike would take us down. We would stand back up, and do it again for the full 30 seconds. Then we would switch. For 30 seconds we would keep taking him down. When the buzzer rang, a new guy would come in to face Mike and it would start all over again. We would do a similar drill with all out sparring. Mike would get in the middle and every 30 seconds or a minute, a new fresh guy would come in to spar. Not only was this really good for Mike, it also gave us the benefit of some very intense training.

I think the drills did the trick. Mike went out and won his first fight in about 94 seconds. The fight started off with his opponent taking him down hard and really beating him up. Mike kept his composure and put on an arm-bar forcing the guy to tap.

Check out the video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcIyf0wWpsg

Due to the limitations of Blogger, you will have to cut and paste the address into your browser to see the fight.

Congratulations Mike!