startin' early

Author Comments
young gun Newbie 3 posts
Well, I'm new to this forum and MMA. Im not new to martial arts, having studied an internatoinal form of...I guess Id call it upright fighting. The form was called Soo Bahk Do.

The name is not important, I did this form for 4 years and stopped for a year. I recently came back and trained for a month to take 2nd place at the national competion for free sparring. At this point an instructor approached me asking if I had any interest in becoming more expirienced in MMA.

Well yes actually, my dream is to become a UFC champion. I look up to Andrei as a fighter. I feel I would have fun. I already have some expirience (ok so it doesnt really count but it was waaay funny you should have seen somelittle kid I thought I would break killing me!) after having gotten into a fist fight with a brazilian Jujitsu fighter who was fairly good at it. It started with my getting my butt thrown down and him scrambling all over me! I got mad and ended up flipping him over with superior strength and size. Then he got me in something called a guotine I think it was (spelling?). Any way I lost miserbaly, but I thought his style was cool.

What would it take to study to become a well rounded MMA fighter? I got plenty of time being 14 (be 15 in a month). I don;t know if size is important but Im over 6 feet tall and am in no way small. I get compared to a fridge most.

Ideas as to what I should do or be working on?
Look for me in a few years...t
Mk2Adam Newbie 4 posts
if you seriously want to move onto this sortof thing in the future then i'd definetly reccomend joining a jujitsu/grappling or maybe an MMA class.

you won't get far in the UFC if you can't avoid a guilotine choke let alone know what one is :-)

i currently train jujitsu but i'm thinking about cross-training with a MMA class that's just opened near me, just to try it out really.

just rememeber i gave you this advice though when i come calling for UFC 85 tickets :-))
young gun Newbie 3 posts
Im looking for a MMA school near me but the closest one is a little distance.

Yea I know what you mean, but seriously I'd never even seen jujitsu before and this was a little kid I wasnt really making an attempt to aoid anything! Now I know that size doesnt matter if youve got the skills.

Now Im pretty well versed in terms and techniques. I know what they are and their names. But learning to use them will be my real challenge. Well I'm in Fla. and I noticed a differance in Brazillian Jujitsu and regular jujitsu. Im leaning a bit more tword the Brazilian style, any major differances?
Look for me in a few years...t
Mk2Adam Newbie 4 posts
Brazilian juijitsu would maybe better compliment your skills (if you can find a school) as it's all grappling, majority ground fighting with no strikes so with your striking background that would work well, traditional jujitsu is more of a self defence art with strikes too so it would definetly round your game more but arguably not as much as the BJJ.

most of the UFC guys would train in everything although predominantly i think you'll find the main arts they draw from are BJJ, Wrestling and kickboxing type styles ;-)
young gun Newbie 3 posts
I also heard Submision Wrestling was good. But I won most of my fights through hand strikes and offensive blocks. Id like to give voxing some ahrd work and BJJ good work. That will mainly cover upright striking and the BJJ will get submissions and gorund striking.

And what about take downs? I understand Judo is a varient of JJ created by the Japanese enporer at the end of the samurai era? I heard it deals heavily in take downs and how to handel a take down?
Look for me in a few years...t
spider Regular 235 posts
Judo starts standing, and anytime players are on the ground and not working on a submission, the ref stands them up. BJJ is a fight to submission.
Points are scored in Judo for throws and pins, the impact and area scoring different amounts of points, the length of pin scoring different points.
A fast hard throw onto your back and it's a knockout, a submission is a knockout, a 30 second pin is a knockout.
Leg locks and neck cranks are legal in the UFC but illegal in Judo, and Judo relies heavily on the gi.
If I were you, I'd travel the extra distance to the MMA or a shootfighting club, which also seem to be sprouting up recently.

However, if this is not an option, I do see a lot of UFC fighters not throwing from the under over clinch, which is the basis for a handful of Judo throw. Karo 'The Heat' Parisyan has made his base of Judo get him a lot of success in the Octogon.