For a short guy, sparring or fighting against someone with a height and reach advantage can be a real pain in the ass. The best way to train for taller opponents is to have tall sparring partners…but if you preparing to fight a giant and don’t know of anyone who’s tall as Giant Silva…well…here’s an idea…

PRIDEFC Official Website

On March 24th, Ikuhisa Minowa held a public training session at the PRIDE Dojo in Tokyo. Minowa devised an amazing training strategy for his opponent, Giant Silva, in the upcoming April 2nd PRIDE BUSHIDO 10, to be held at Tokyo’s Ariake Coliseum.

Before the training began, the DSE Public Relations officer announced that “today’s public training session will be one round of one minute.” Now matter how much you may not want to show your training, one round of one minute is unusually short. While the gathered reporters were still scratching their heads, Minowa arrived at the Dojo with his sparring partners, Yasuhito Namekawa and Henry “Sentoryu” Miller.

Minowa put on his open-finger gloves and began to prepare for his training but for some reason, Namekawa picked up two bamboo swords and Miller lifted him up on his shoulders. Minowa’s training strategy was to spar again Namekawa, as he holds two bamboo swords and rides on Miller’s shoulders. The reason that the round was only one minute long is because that was as long as Miller could hold up Namekawa and move around at the same time. As the sparring session began in front of the stunned reporters, Minowa ducked as Namekawa swung the swords and stepped in sharply to give body punches.

Check out the rest here.

I mentioned earlier that I was thinking of purchasing a pair of Hawks MMA gloves, but I think I’ll wait until the “the Commission” releases a list of approved gloves before I make an investment:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2006
CONTACT: Armando Garcia, Executive Officer (916) 263-2195

SACRAMENTO – In its continued effort to provide the safest competition environment possible in the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), the Commission is inviting all MMA glove manufacturers to an open meeting that is to be held on Monday April 10, 2006 at 10:00 AM at the Junipera Serra State Office Building located at 320 West Fourth Street, Conference Room, 1st Floor in downtown Los Angeles.

The purpose of this meeting is to have each interested glove manufacturer demonstrate their brand of gloves and give reason why the Commission should approve them for competition.

The meeting will begin with an open forum that will detail the Commission’s goals. Upon conclusion, each manufacturer is to conduct a private presentation to the Executive Officer and other Commission delegates. Private meetings will be held by appointment only.

All interested parties should submit a letter for consideration of their brand to the:

CALIFORNIA STATE ATHLETIC COMMISSION
Armando Garcia, Executive Officer
1424 Howe Avenue Suite 33
Sacramento, California 95825

If you have any questions please contact the Commission office at 916-263-2195.

Those bastards.  Found out about this at Bullshido.

EDMONTON SUN: Machete madman stopped – Martial Arts Experts Helps Police

A martial arts expert helped avert a potentially deadly tragedy when a machete-wielding man charged at a city cop in a crowded West Edmonton Mall food court.

Michael Jerace, who competes in mixed-martial arts King of the Cage fights, said he was standing in the Phase 3 food court Sunday when he heard a “ruckus” and shouts of, “Drop it!”

A man was darting around the food court brandishing a 12-inch machete in a frantic attempt to shake the pack of cops and mall security guards pursuing him.

“It was like a pinball machine, how he was running and jumping on tables,” Jerace, 32, told the Sun yesterday.

Jerace said a female police officer told him to get out of the way, but then “dove out of the way” herself as the man confronted her.

Jerace said the man was then coming straight for him. Luckily for Jerace and the rest of the food-court patrons, his martial arts instincts kicked in.

“I kind of side-stepped him and right-kicked him above the knees and he went down. He went flying and the knife went flying.”

The man got on his hands and knees and grabbed the machete, Jerace said, but the tumble had given police time to catch up to him.

“The cops started hitting him with their batons, so I just stood there and watched the festivities,” said Jerace. “He wouldn’t let go of that knife.”

Police spokesman Karen Carlson said police responded to the mall food court just after 5 p.m. after getting a report that someone was selling drugs and might have a machete.

When the man charged at the female cop with the machete, she made the split-second decision to “back away” instead of drawing her gun, said Carlson.

“The main factor in why she didn’t pull the firearm out is because of the number of people that were there.”

Carlson said the man was arrested after he was “tripped” by an unidentified mall patron.

Jerace said he was baffled that no police or security staff spoke to him after the takedown. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t even get a ‘thank you’ from that woman cop,” he said.

I’m just kidding…I’m pretty sure it wasn’t created to combat the growing popularity of mixed martial arts, but, believe or not, Chess Boxing is REAL.

Here’s a description of Chessboxing from Wikipedia:

Chess boxing is a hybrid sport which combines the sports of chess and boxing. One of the goals of this new sport is the old ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body: mens sana in corpore sano…

…A match between two opponents consists of up to eleven alternating rounds of boxing and chess sessions, starting with a four-minute chess round followed by two minutes of boxing and so on. Between rounds there is a 1 minute pause, during which competitors change their gear. The form of chess played is “blitz chess” in which competitors have a total of twelve minutes. Competitors may win by knockout, checkmate, a judge’s decision or if their opponent’s twelve minutes of chess time elapses.

Here are some sites with more information about chessboxing:

• http://www.chessboxing.com – “The Thinking Man’s Contact Sport”

• http://www.wcbo.org – World Chess Boxing Organization

• http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1348 – Article that talks about Chessboxing, including pictures of a fight/chess match

And check out this blog about someone who is training to be a ChessBoxer. The author of this blog has aspirations to be:

Not just any Chess Boxer, but The Chess Boxer. The greatest of all time.

My name is Toby and this blog is dedicated to my quest to become ChessBoxing Champion of the World. I will be documenting my methodologies, training progress and ideas about the sport of ChessBoxing.

I wish Toby the best in his endeavor.

But what a crazy concept. It certainly takes the boredom out of watching people play chess, and it makes boxing look a little less barbaric…even nerdy.

I wonder if they’re going to come up with Chess-MMA next (where you can win by knockout, submission, OR by checkmate!)…if anything, it’ll happen in Japan if it hasn’t already.

Don’t mess with chess boxers!

I’ve been wondering for a while what’s been going on with Kevin Randleman, and I found out from MMAWeekly.com that he’s been going through a hell of a time fighting off:

• A lung infection
• Torn tendon in his shoulder
• Kidney stone
• Torn bicep
• Shingles
• Fevers
• Collapsed lung

The article also says that “The Monster” Kevin Randleman almost lost his lung too! But Randleman’s a fighter. Here’s what he had to say about that:

The surgery was a success and Kevin has made a full recovery. Discussing the procedure, Kevin said, “They went in and they took four big, huge layers of skin off of my lung. – It all came so fast I didn’t get the chance to even have a pity party about it. I was like, do it. But when they said they were going to take my lung and they might need to take it, I was just like, dude, if you don’t give me my f#%king lung back I’m going to fight anyways.”

Now that’s fighting spirit.

He was previously in a car accident and had to get 180+ stitches, and now this! Throw Kevin Randleman in a car accident, split open his head, collapse his lung, and give him a multitude of injuries and he still keeps coming back. Awesomeness.

I’m glad he’s recovering, and hopefully he’ll make his way back to the ring soon.

Check out MMAWeekly for the rest