Saturday, August 18, 2007

Gracie Jiu Jitsu

Martial Arts in America come and go like waves on a beach (deep). First America just had it's boxing, and boxing was great (and effective) and was popular for so long because there was no other alternative. (I mean, maybe wrestling, but wrestling hadn't been properly adapted to deal with real street self defense yet.) Soon Asian martial arts came along, and starting with Karate, each of them had their 15 mins of fame. Of course Bruce Lee helped this along with his seemingly invincible style. Even at the present time, if you ask any random person on the street which martial art is the most deadly or most effective, they will probably say Karate or Tae Kwon Do or some other Eastern martial art. Once UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) first started, there was another "fad" that came and went fairly quickly, but I feel it didn't get it's full 15 mins. Most people probably haven't heard of it, which is a terrible shame, especially because I feel it deserves MORE than 15 mins. Gracie Style Brazillian Jiu Jitsu.

You see, the purpose of the UFC's were to test the mettle of all martial arts - and it was a success. One outshone the rest. Karate masters, and ninja fighters, and street brawlers all were put to shame by the Gracie Family from Brazil. It all started at the turn of the last century when a Judo master traveled to Brazil and was put up and taken care of by a local business man there. As a repayment, the master trained his son in his martial art (is this a fucking movie or what?). That man was Carlos Gracie. He taught his brother who then taught their children and so fourth and so on. Eventually the style took on a more streetfighting feel and what eventually came out at the end was what exists now: Brazillian Jiu Jitsu or Gracie Jiu Jitsu. So confident were they (the whole family of men) that their style was the best, they established a knock on door challenge policy. Anyone - any master of any martial art - or any tough guy, no matter how big or strong can challenge them to a fight and they must accept. LET THE ASS-WHOOPINGS BEGIN!

Kung Fu

Judo

Tae Kwon Do

Hapkido

Karate

Karate

Kenpo Karate

Sumo Wrestling

Capoeira


Do you see? 1 on 1? A really good Gracie BJJ fighter will inflict fantastic pain. THAT is where I believe a rub comes in. If it was a fight with more than one person... I would rather use practically ANY martial art OTHER than BJJ. How effective would that style be - you rolling around with someone - when there is someone else kicking your back, or worse, stabbing it.

Well, I must be off, but let me say that I certainly do wish I had trained in BJJ for longer than 3 months, and anyone who's anyone should make it their damn business to train in BJJ for a while. It's a fantastic direction on the road to being a superhero, and isn't that what we are ALL after? You guys?

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Thursday, August 9, 2007

A Womans Duty to Herself


So I made my girlfriend read "The Watchmen" and in return she wanted me to read "The Beauty Myth." It's one of the more difficult reads I have ever read, and not because it uses large words or is terribly deep or anything, it's just that the entire book reads like a pamphlet of some sort and after a few pages I want to throw it and yell "I GET it, your oppressed, I GET it!" So I put it in the bathroom and a read it every time I take a dump, which is JUST enough. Any longer and I start turning pages just to get to the next fucking chapter, hoping that I don't have to skip too much, which is intensely futile as it's a long book with very few chapters and the next chapter is always - ALWAYS a thousand pages away. Despite all that, it's a depressing and sobering book. Sometimes things leap out at me and stick in my head which is a good thing.

For instance, during todays dump a certain numerical figure staggered me. Forty four percent of women at some point in their life are a victim of attempted rape. About 1/3 of those women will be raped while the other 2/3 will escape somehow. Rape. 44 percent. Nearly half of all women. That's madness.

Do You Understand?

It is a womans duty to know how to break skulls. There's a part of me that thinks that a year of martial arts should be mandatory for women living in a city. Mandatory. If they haven't studied a martial art, the government should pay for a years worth of basic self defense training.

The figure of 44% has remained essentially the same for many many years. How fast and how far do you think that figure would drop if all women knew wrist locks, nerve pinches, and how to shrug off a punch? Pretty fucking fast. I think horny fuckers would think twice about raping a woman if it meant a potential broken arm... either that or they would use date rape drugs more often... but probably not even that, because they would be scared of what happens when the girl wakes up and finds out what went on and who did it.

COME ON! It's fucking bullshit. Learning how to defend yourself is one of the most empowering feelings in the world. It's great to walk down the street and see large people who you know earlier you would have been afraid of, but then realizing that just a few days ago you were sparring with someone even bigger and you broke their fucking head. It's fantastic to walk up to your apartment when it's dark out and there's nobody around and to know that if someone were to jump out at you, that kick that you have been practicing for the past few months would cripple them.

Some people say "I'd rather carry around a gun or a knife." You lazy blubbery fuckers. You know when you will get your comeuppance? When you pull your gun and it doesn't work, or it mis/backfires, or you realize you forgot to load it. Losers. You know the worst part about a knife? When it gets taken from you. Then what do you do? What was once an unarmed bully is now a bully with a knife. Rise and Shine. A kick doesn't run out of bullets and nobody will take your hands and feet away from you, which by all rights should have the potential to be used as the deadly weapons they are.

The Coffee.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Gov'nor

Alright Ladies and Gentleman, it's time for me to introduce you to someone you might already know, though probably not in the manner in which you should.


This man's name is Lenny McLean, and you may have seen him in such films as "The Fifth Element" in which he played the Chief of Police, or in "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" in which he played the big tough guy who's name I forget. None of the above is important in comparison to who he really was, which is the King of Underground Bare-knuckle Boxing.

If you thought Pikeys were tough, then you are in for a treat. This man was nothing short of a monster - nothing short of a Spartan. I believe that if any of us were to choose nine of the toughest people we knew and have a fight with Lenny, us 10 vs himself alone, Lenny would come out on top. It is estimated that he has been in over 3000 fights in his entire life, including ones on the streets or "Cobbles" as he calls them, and ones in the ring. Admittedly he has lost 2 - 3 fights in his entire life, but I believe that those 2 - 3 times were because either someone fucking cheated, or he wasn't in his prime or something. He was a MONSTER! Besides being incredibly skilled, he was mindblowingly strong - routinely bench pressing upwards of 500 lbs. He started off as a bouncer, and quickly got into underground boxing. He rose to the top of that faster than backwards lightning, and sought better competition. He challenged the likes of Mr. T and Mohammad Ali, all of whom turned him down, because they didn't want to get their asses handed to them in a union jack package.

One of his greatest credits I believe is when he was flown to New York City to fight the Mafia's top choice boxer. The poor fucker didn't last three minutes with the guv'nor. One of his famous tactics involved walking into his opponents with his arms down smiling while they tried to affect him with their punches. Fat chance - he was invincible. He would take the blows and then when he got bored he would knock them into SSSPPPAAAACCEEEE!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FUcFx-PEiTg

There aren't many video's of Lenny in action, and the ones that exist look like they were filmed on my ass, but this one isn't bad. This is a perfect example of how the best tactic to fight Lenny would be to grab your ankles, smile and wait for it all to be over. As famous as he is for winning his fights, he is also famous for hitting his opponent after they have been knocked out. Ho shit.

Sadly there aren't any bare knuckle boxers right now that would give Lenny a run for his money - mind you there are some really good ones right now like Kimbo Slice ( I will talk of him later), but nobody that would come close to doing him in. In the martial arts world, however, I imagine there would be a few exceptional fighters who might be able to bring him down - Bas Rutten or some BJJ masters and such.

All of that I will talk about later, but for the now you should research a bit on your own about Lenny McLean - The Gov'nor, and tell me if you would use any tactics in particular to lose less harshly to one of the scariest people the world has ever known.

all the best,
Alex

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

An Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog. Allow me to introduce myself - my name is Alex and I am an actor. Besides being an actor I am also a battle enthusiast. What this means is I have devoted a great deal of my life to studying all kinds of battles and battle tactics. Do not let me confuse you when I say battle - I do not mean boring war shit. War battle tactics and that kind of stuff drive me to drink. I once bought the Braveheart computer game because the screenshots of it made it look like you were a guy on the battlefield and you got to run around chopping people up. That's more like the battle I'm talking about. Instead it was this huge strategic piece of fucking shit where I had to decide how much rations I gave my troops and what they were to be working on and making peace treaties and all the other of the top most awful things people could put in a computer game. I always ended up rushing things just to get to the part where my army battles. And I usually lost. If I could have done something worse to the game other than throw it away, I would have.

There will be none of that shit here. Here I will talk about battles and battle tactics revolving mostly around martial arts. I am sure other things will creep in every now and again, but this will probably be all about the aforementioned subject most of the time. Boring? Fuck no, I'll make it interesting. No doubt I will often be posting interesting things I find on youtube and other video websites. Because nothing says something like a great video of two or more people in battle.

The first subject which I would like to begin with is Bare Knuckle Boxing as seen in the smash hit film "Snatch." Pikey bare knuckle boxing is actually a really huge thing I found out. When I was in Ireland for a short while I went to this great big pikey horse-fair where knackers from all over England and Ireland come to sell their horses and ponies. It's called The Ballinasloe Horse Fair I believe. One of the big things is to find out who the "king" of Ballinasloe is. How this works is somebody at some point will say "I'm the king of Ballinasloe." Eventually, depending on how big that person is or how crazy someone else is, someone else will say "No, I'm the king of Ballinasloe." At this point the two "kings" will go into a field and knock pieces of flesh from off each others faces. Once one of the two have had enough, you have found your "King of Ballinasloe." Until the next day when this will happen again, because I believe you are only allowed one fight a day.

Let me just say right off the bat that these pikey's are fucking TOUGH as NAILS. Most of them have gold/missing teeth. 98% of them are terribly ugly (which means they have nothing to lose), and all of them, I repeat - ALL of them are fighters of one sort. In pikeyland, just about everything can be settled with a battle, and maybe 2 things ever can be solved with talking and thinking. I don't mean to generalize here, but they are all, each and every one of them a mindless brute. I saw one of the pikey's horses start to get jittery, a big fucking horse it was too, and I shit you not, his pikey owner walked up to this horse and fucking PUNCHED it in the mouth. I'm not telling lies I swear I saw this amongst a few other things. Have a look here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlubu5UZwp0

So this is a video of two characters. The first one is affectionately known throughout the Internet as "The Big Shite." You can distinguish him by his disgusting folds of clammy smegma skin. To give him credit, he has lost weight over the last few years. When I first saw him he was maybe, I shit you not, 150 lbs heavier than you see him there. He is one of the more famous pikey bare knuckle boxers right now. I don't know who the other guy is. Now one of the first things you might notice is how ugly everyone is, but I already discussed that. One of the second things you might notice is how neither of the fighters are very skilled, but don't be fooled - what "The Big Shite" lacks in skill he makes up for in folds of clammy smegma skin. Ah but to be fare, I'm sure he can really take a punch, otherwise he wouldn't be very famous. He sure can't throw one. His tactic is clear if you watch the movie close. He advances and simply puts his arms out over yours, which is easy for him to do as he is such a big shite. You end up having no choice but to throw punches into his endless folds of clammy smegma skin, whilst he either punches you around your head or grabs at your neck to break your skull even worse. Very basic, simple, and effective. I can't imagine I would do much better than the poor guy who, I imagine, ends up biting the fat fuckers nipple at the end of the video. That's probably not what really happened, but I don't understand a thing he is saying, so I bet it's along the lines of "arrgh moy nipple, dat fockers buyting moy nipple, deesqalifuy hem!"

From what I have learned from boxing, which I admit is not a lot - I have only boxed for two years and am fully aware of people who would destroy me without sweating a drop - I believe the thing to do here is to really keep your hands tight by your face and let the big fucker pull your into him, just make sure his arms stay outside of yours - keep your elbows in and your hands close to the side of your face. Once your in, and he's grabbing at you with his porkey pie fingers, really do your best to lean back and throw in quick small uppercuts - if you do not lean back, he will keep you in close and your uppercuts will land harmlessly against his pillow tits. I would lean back once your in close and get him with quick uppercuts - quick so you don't have to take TOO many of his cow punches which I'm sure are really clammy. Of course whenever you go into a match with a plan, you just get punched and end up forgetting anything about it, but that's my two cents on the subject anyways. Have any other idea's on how you would box "The Big Shite?" Tell me about them and we can discuss.

All the best,
Alex