BTG 73 - Looking for a Beating

Hey guys, what's going on? Welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. Let's get to the news. We had a UFC fight night that just uh passed. Again, spoiler alert. If you want to watch it, better go now. Don't listen to anymore, otherwise. Um, as far as results, I didn't watch too many of the matches. I only saw a few of them. Uh, one I pay attention to because Dan Eay trains with us at Extreme Couture. He punched his ticket with a brutal knockout. One punch KO followed up by one shot on the ground for good measure and then walk off. Uh, congrats to him. And he got his 50k like his name. So, uh, good on him. I also saw Robocop Gregory Rodriguez versus Bradaris. And, uh, Robocop once again shows he's a bad dude. you know, he just guys got heavy hands. And credit to Brad because Brad didn't drop. He ate all the shots standing and they it was a standing TKO and it made sense because Brad's chin made of granite because Rebel Cop throws heat, you know, and he took it. So, uh, credit to him. We also had Rulo Vieiraa against Armen Petrosian. And uh no surprise, Vieiraa got a submission, worked into his ground game pretty quickly, got an arm triangle, and that was all she wrote. Uh so congrats to him. Jiu-jitsu is doing alive and well in MMA. Those are the only fights I really cared uh about to be honest. So I'm going to skip through the the rest of it. We also had a who's number one uh on the the weekend as well and uh there are some big matchups there. So again, this is who's number 122. Same thing. Spoiler alert incoming there. Here there was actually some really good matchups that I did enjoy watching. Uh I started from Elijah Dorsy versus Ivan Herrera. And it's interesting because the results that I'm seeing here is not what happened. They said he won defeated him through positional dominance dominance. It's like no he submitted him. He actually got him with a very unique submission u which uh he learned from Lloyd Irvin uh and I believe they were calling it big breakfast lock and then someone said Dorsy lock. Uh but this is something that was really cool to me because I hadn't seen someone do this before. or it's a shoulder lock from the back mount. And it happens quite a bit and I'm even guilty of defending this way where when someone's behind you and you're trying to defend the choke, you know, you start putting your arm behind here essentially like to block them from being able to get, you know, cuz if I have my my bicep on my ear, there's no way you're going to get your arm inside, you know. And uh what he did was when the guy put his arm here, he actually controlled the wrist and then brought this wrist back. So basically pulling the elbow all the way over like this, right? As he's like twisting the arm a little bit. And the guy tapped right there. I think it was a verbal tap, but he definitely tapped and you could see his he probably popped his shoulder in the process. So uh these guys got to get up to date, right? So it was like a Dorsy log from Elijah Dorsy. really unique submission and it caught my attention cuz I'm like, man, I got to try this out. You know, it's a shoulder lock from the back mount. That's very unorthodox against what most people would consider a viable defense. You know, like I said, I've used that before. Uh so, very interesting. Uh Jacob Couch against Sebastian Rodriguez won by Twister. Again, Jacob Couch is, you know, proving to be a bigger problem every time. And I know now he's calling for a title fight, which I think is welld deserved. He was saying that he has more who's number one matches than anybody in the promotion which makes sense. So, uh yeah, it would be good to see him there. Now, another one I saw that was interesting was Adele for Areno versus Tubby Amanda Allequin. I had met Adele I think back in 2017 or 2018. I did a seminar tour in Australia at and she trains at Ad Dominus MMA and I guess that was seven years ago. So she would have been a teenager. I remember she looked like a little kid, right? So but she was already like one of the the top students there and I was doing a Kimmora trap system seminar and she was a last minute replacement here. Uh I think Fion Davies was supposed to be the one competing and uh she couldn't make it for whatever reason. So Adele came in and won her match in 20 seconds with Aayoki lock. So amazing performance by her. She just pulled guard went into like a single leg X and then switched out to an AIO lock and she had it locked her Tubby was standing over her. So she had it locked on standing and I think Tubby tried to turn and spin with it but it just made it a lot worse. Looks like she got hurt. So unfortunately uh hopefully she recovers quickly from that. That was a nasty hold. Uh then Tynan Dapra versus Oliver Taza. Dapra won with a a judges decision. Pretty dominant match for him. Looked like more for the same that we saw from the last whose number one performance he did where he was able to secure takedowns, get guard passes. Um I don't recall any real strong submission attempts. I know he had a couple guillotines, but it didn't look like anything serious. But just positionally was, you know, all over him. Now, to be fair, he I think had like 12 pounds on um Taza had a so a big size disadvantage, but again, he's showing his nogi game is is legit and uh he could do well with the upper tier guys. So, it' be interesting to see as he progresses. Uh, a one that surprised me uh was Diego Pat Olivera versus Was it Dante Leon? You know, if I I'm kind of a fan of uh Dante Leon's style of jiu-jitsu because he could pretty much fight everywhere. Strong top positioning, but he's also good off his back, but he looked lost when he was fighting Pau because Pau was pulled guard and worked purely off his back, but very aggressive with the foot locks as you would expect. But it seemed even though I've seen Dante work with a lot of people who do leg locks, he didn't seem to have a good answer for any of Pa's leg locks. And he would just a lot of just regular Ashigarami heel hooks and straight ankle locks, mostly heel hooks that he was throwing at him. But uh P was doing a really good job of staying tight with him. So like if normally when you see people do these, they just spin and step out if they read it. But Dante had to fight for each escape. And towards the end of the match, he just got him with a heel hook and that was all she wrote. So Pa ends up becoming the who's number one champ. So congrats to him. That's a big win. U definitely uh have to study that again because maybe I was looking at it too. To me it just seemed like regular Ashami foot locks. But if he was able to catch someone like Dante, like there's probably a little bit more there that I wasn't paying close enough attention to. So, I'm going to have to rewatch and see those setups and the way he's holding it because u yeah, that was a phenomenal win. And then there was Mika Gava versus Kenta Iwamoto. Um and uh this one I expected Mika to dominate and that seemed to be the case. He ended up winning by submission. Uh and then the last one was Victor Hugo versus Nick Rodriguez. This was Nick Rodriguez's debut as a black belt and didn't go to plan. He ended up losing by decision to Victor Hugo. Victor played off his back the entire match for the mo well almost the entire match. And he was doing a much better job of attacking off his back. Now, uh Nick wasn't, you know, doing like very he was in his guard. he was playing with him, but didn't seem to really have any substantial offense until the later part of the match. So, it was a 15-minute match. 10 minutes in, it was all Victor Hugo. And those last five minutes, Nick started to score some points, right? Like, he did get a guard pass and then it seemed like he was getting closer and closer to getting more and more guard passes. It was clear that Victor was starting to get tired. And uh it also seemed that Nick was getting tired, but it looked like it was favoring Nick. But with about a minute left, there wasn't enough. I think uh Victor Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that Victor had one really deep armbar, but of course Rodriguez brothers don't really respect arm bars. He managed to get out of it, but it was an arm bar from the off uh Victor's guard made uh Nick Rodriguez roll through and escape. So pretty much even though uh Hugo wouldn't have scored any points in the jiu-jitsu tournament in who's number one rules, the person closer to submission will win. So like he had one really strong submission attempt and Nick only had one guard pass. That didn't really amount to much. He just got the pass and then Victor recovered. So Nick started really putting a lot more pressure, starting taking a lot more chances. Tried to go for a toll hold but couldn't control it. And around the end, I forget the scramble, but Nick ended up giving up his back. Hugo didn't get the hooks, but it was a bad optic, you know, because it looked like, okay, Nick was starting to take control of the match at the end, maybe you could sway the judges, but then when the reversal of position happened, that, you know, definitely made him lose the match for sure if he hadn't already. In other news, there is a UFC Fight Pass Invitational number six coming uh in March 3rd. And I'm bummed because it's going to be here in Vegas again, but I'm going to be in Honduras when this is going down. So, it's like, ah, it's the second one I miss in a row. And some really good uh fights here or or matches, I should say. The main events, Craig Jones versus Rafelato. Very interesting style matchup. You have Craig Jones is very unorthodox and plays a really loosey goosey type guard, but very tricky and very dangerous, of course. And then you have Lovado who plays a very traditional pressure style game. U so a good contrast of styles that I would definitely be interested in watching. And then on the co-main you have Nikki Rodriguez versus Roberto Himenez. Uh again another very interesting matchup. In the past Jimenez was usually undersized. Now he's put on a significant amount of mass. You know the the natural has. Uh, so they should be pretty close to weight, I would imagine. Uh, and again, two very good, uh, again, Roberto is a has a very good style, very, very aggressive, a lot of back takes, you know, very dangerous off his back versus Nicki Rodriguez, who's also very dangerous at the back, but he's also very good at escaping the back. So, again, two very interesting matchups. That's the only ones that I feel like they've announced so far, but just off those two, I would definitely watch it. I'm going to have to stream this one, unfortunately. Uh that that's another good card that's on the way. Uh last up here, if you guys have been on social media, you probably saw uh Sean Strickland beating up on Sneo. It's funny because I was actually there at Cage side because I was there to train with Sean Strickland. And apparently um I guess Nico a lot of people are here in Vegas of course because it's Super Bowl Sunday. So all sorts of celebrities and influencers and whatnot. And I guess Nico is some type of influencer. I don't know much about him besides the whole drama he had with Mikey Musi and whatnot, but he was here and he told uh Jake Shields that he wanted to spar with Sean Strickland. And Jake Shields told him that would be a bad idea. Sean Strickland doesn't play games. He's gonna try to take your head off. But Sneo knew what it was about. And I guess whether he wanted to prove himself or he thought that he could do some damage or he was just doing it for the gram. Either way, he stepped in there full well knowing Sean didn't make any illusions that uh he was going to go easy on him. What he did when he stepped in, he said, "I'm going to give you three minutes to do whatever you want." And Sean Strickland with his weird, you know, stand up style, like straight up, most of the time, not even guarding punches, letting Sneo hit him and just talking crap the whole time. And once the three minutes went up, he just went full blitz and try to put him down. Now, to his credit, Sneo stayed up. Uh, he didn't get dropped. He didn't run away from him. He's just put up his guard and try to weather the storm. you know, I think Strickland's probably like 210, 220, you know, whereas Sneo is probably like 160 soaking wet. So, obviously a huge weight disadvantage besides the skill disadvantage. I think Sneo's just a casual uh enthusiast of boxing. He's not really a hardcore guy. He's probably does maybe sparred a handful of times. So, a huge undertaking to try to step in there with a savage like Sean. So, uh, well, I I'm not a big fan of all the antics, and that's what Strickland has said as well. He hates the influ he posts about all the time how he hates influencers. He thinks these are people who contribute nothing to society, and uh, they're just, you know, attention farming and all that, which is true. He did tip his hat to sneak over for actually stepping in there and taking some shots and not folding like a chair. And afterwards, he was actually training some grappling as well with uh with Jake. So, uh again, you know, I wouldn't mind so much if everybody who talked a lot of would actually step in there and, you know, take an ass beating here and there like, okay, the price was paid. You know, I have a more of a problem with people who talk crap but never want to back it up. You know, if you talk crap and you try to back it up and you get beat up, hey, you gave it a shot, you know. Uh, and I feel that way you'll learn some humility and you might learn something from the beating. Maybe you don't, but maybe you will. Any case, uh, that that was funny to watch from backstage. Moving on to the topic of the day, seeking knowledge. If you're going to be somebody who wants to excel, whether it's in the martial arts and business and love or whatever pursuit that you're endeavoring to achieve, you have to seek knowledge. You can't just work with what you got. It's going to be very unlikely that you at the beginning of your journey possess all the tools needed or all the information needed to accomplish a job. And even if you did, there's probably some information out there that will accelerate your path and make it easier or make you more fruitful, if you will. So, I believe it's good practice to constantly seek out knowledge. When I was coming up, I guess this would have been the '9s, when I started really training martial arts and combat sports, there was no internet to the extent like it is today. Like if you wanted to download a picture, you would be seeing line by line a picture coming through, right? We were dealing with 24 kilobytes per second versus, you know, that nowadays people are like one gigabyte per second, right? So you couldn't really get video. Uh so most of your information you were getting was from training with other people, taking seminars, reviewing VHS tapes or um magazines and books. And my brother and I, we used all those things. I would go, we would go to seminars whenever we could. Um we would get VHS tapes. we would tape oursel a lot like uh I was actually telling somebody this the other day which is if you want to take your training seriously film yourself sparring right while it's very valuable obviously to look at other people's tape right like whether it's your opponent or maybe someone you admire that you want to see their style and break down what they're doing in matches there's also a lot to be learned by watching yourself because there's things that you're doing that you don't realize that you're doing and some of it's good and some of it's bad. And you can learn from both of them. I know I think I told this the other day, but uh I used to do well I still do. There's double leg variation that I used to take down guys like Jeffson and all that. And in my head I was just shooting a regular double leg. But I didn't realize until I watched tape that it wasn't a regular double leg. I was shooting uh if Jeff was a left lead. Yes. And I was a right lead. I was shooting a double leg, but I was starting from my right lead, which if you understand the mechanics, it wouldn't make sense. Normally, you would shoot a double leg on somebody who has the same lead as you. So, your head would be in the right position and their legs would be both reachable. But I would end up doing this what I call like a double knee slide where basically our lead legs were on the same side. So my right leg to his left leg and I would slide my right knee to the outside which is again normally for a double leg your penetration leg would go in between the legs. Mine was going to the outside and I would slide to both knees and what would end up happening is that they would see what they perceived was like some type of shot like a head inside single which is normally how your right lead would go on the outside. So they would sprawl square and I would end up sliding off to the side. So I would end up getting behind them and then I would get a good angle to run a double. I never knew I was doing this until I actually watched tape. And then when I watched tape, I understood how it worked and I was able to like tweak it to make it better. But otherwise, if I had never watched tape, I wouldn't be able to really teach that technique because I would just I would have to do it in a live go, right? So I had what I would call subconscious knowledge. I knew how to do a move, but I couldn't explain it, right? And I didn't even know I knew how to do it. So this is the value of studying tape, particularly on yourself, right? So besides studying tape and other people and watching instructionals and stuff like that, the very lowhanging fruit that everybody skips by is just study yourself. There's uh especially if you're seasoned, you probably have lots of things that you're doing that you don't even realize that you're doing. Maybe some of them are good habits that you could accentuate more and get more out of them and some of them are bad habits that we should be trying to replace with better uh habits. So, for me, like I said, you don't have to do this daily, but if you do a sparring session, you know, like once a week or twice a week, I would film those and then, you know, in between training sessions when you're resting, I would just watch that video. Or instead of doom scrolling on Instagram or whatever, just watch your own video. You know, I'm a if you guys watch my social media, uh lately all my stories are just me lifting and I post them just so I have something to post there. But really, I film these videos for myself because I watch my technique. I'm crucial on the way I I lift as well. I try to treat everything like I do the martial arts. So, when I'm lifting, I'm trying to lift with as clean as technique as possible. So, I film myself in the profile so I can see if I'm going vertically, up and down, how deep I'm going in the squat. And you might see also that when I'm lifting, I do use a tether. It's called a rep one device where basically it's a little gadget that has a string that attaches to the barbell. So, as a barbell moves up and down, it can measure the distance that the barbell is moving, how fast it's moving, the acceleration, the force being generated, and it gives you all this little empirical data. And they can also measure the bar path. So I can see on the output of the program how I'm doing and I know if I'm doing better or worse, not by feel, but by numbers, by science, right? I can look at the the data and see, okay, last lift I lifted I did this bench press at 34 meters per second. This time I did 37. So I've gotten a little extra speed behind that bar, which means I'm producing more force. yada yada yada. And I use this in a v variety of ways. One of them is to eliminate injury. If I see I'm going slower, I know then, okay, I'm probably not going to lift as good as I want to. I'll adjust the weights accordingly so that I can lift optimally. Or if I'm seeing I'm moving faster, I can progress more. I could add more weight because I'm incrementing every week. Um, but with the real data and I could also see form which is also important and it could actually trace the bar path. So I can see uh, you know, like on one rep I I commented on my I went a little bit I lost balance and I regained it but like okay that was an ugly rep and I could see why it happened. I was trying to move out too quickly, right? But all these things I wouldn't capture if I was just going by feel. If I I'm able to observe myself by filming myself, then I get that much more out of it. So, like I said, I recommend people do this on anything they're trying to improve. You know, I've the the there's a great saying, which is what isn't measured isn't improved, right? And I've talked about this before as well, so I don't want to sound like a broken record, but you're your own greatest tool of measurement, right? film yourself when you're gonna lift, when you're going to train martial arts, when you're practicing techniques, right? Anything that you're doing, if you study yourself, you'll be able to figure out things that you're doing right and wrong and improve accordingly. And the more tools that you have to objectively measure yourself, the better. But this just is a greater point on seeking knowledge, right? If you don't I mean nowadays, I don't think anybody has a real excuse for not seeking knowledge. We have the internet. We can access everything that's ever been published in history by just going online. So if you're on YouTube, you could be studying all sorts of different techniques and positions and athletes and watching matches and studying tape. You have uh pretty much infinite source of knowledge. And if you're just using it to look at kitten videos and stuff like that, you're wasting valuable time, right? go on there, find something to work on and improve on it and you can study it, right? And if you find that that's not bearing a lot of fruit, then you might want to look first at yourself, right? So that's why I put this emphasis in studying your your own tape, right? I do it all the time. I watch what I'm doing so I understand things I'm doing, the good things and the bad things, so I can improve upon it. I find there's a lot of value in that. But even if you don't find that, at the very least, study tape online, right? Always be seeking knowledge. And whenever you get the opportunity to train with somebody in person, I would take advantage of it. When I'm fortunate now here in Vegas where there's lots of talent coming through, you know, I try to learn from everybody that I can. When I heard Lovado was coming into town, I went to train, you know, with him there. if I see other people like now I've been getting the opportunity to train with guys like Sean Strickland and some of the crew like Jason Manley and all there's a good group of middle weights to light heavy weights that I started training with again more uh bodies to to study more styles more techniques I think it's very useful for you to always be on the lookout for new sources of knowledge I'm not saying that you have to constantly like rotate and every day do something different. I I think that would be a little counterproductive. But every so often putting yourself in a new uh exposing yourself to a new source of knowledge and then really letting that soak in. All right. So, if I'm using a a sponge, I don't just want to drop the sponge, put it away, and then put it somewhere else. I'll let that sponge sit in that puddle of water until all that water soaked up and then I can go somewhere else. Right? So, uh, I tend to do that. If you've heard me talk about specialization, that's usually how I work where I pick an area that I want to work on a lot and then I just hyperexpose myself to it. Like I told you guys for the New Year's resolution, one of the things I want to do is working back escapes and then working back attacks. That's what I've been doing. And fortunately, it just so happened in this uh new group that they do a lot of back uh positional starts. So, I'm like, great. this is exactly what I wanted to work on. So, uh, that's only going to happen though if you're actively seeking knowledge. If you just show up to training just to be told what to do and don't have a a mind that's seeking things, you're probably not going to absorb as much, right? So, go in there with a mind that's hungry. All right? uh so that you can grab more from your classes, more from your training, more from whenever you're studying. You want to have a mind that's receptive. If you're tired and you're bored and then you're trying to force yourself to read through a book or to listen through a video, you're going to have a harder time retaining that knowledge because you're not really engaged. You're like forcing yourself in there. Find a good reason to be motivated to make you hungry where you're the first thing you do when you wake up is, "Oh, I I get to do this now. I'm going to get to study this. I'm going to learn this. I'm going to get better at this." That is somebody who's going to pick up faster. You don't find the people that absorb information like a sponge that are bored or that are uninterested in what they're studying. The people who absorb things like a sponge are hungry. They can't wait to see something new, to practice, to get better. And if you want to be somebody who adapts quickly, you have to have that appetite, right? So again, appetite to seek knowledge. So go out there, get I mean, if you're watching this, you're already doing something, right? You're already seeking out some information here. So I assume you're already on the path, right? So I'm just preaching to the masses here but to the choir rather but uh just to drive into that point home where maybe you find that you do struggle a little bit. It might just be the motivation right think you you want to put yourself in a state of mind where you're excited right that for you being able to learn something from somebody or something is a privilege that you take very sincerely as a honor. Right? When you have that state of mind, you're going to pick up things much faster because you're very interested. If you're not interested, your brain kind of shuts off, right? It's kind of like when you have the the old lady talking and you're, you know, you're doing something else and she's giving you all sorts of chores or or things that she wants to do and you're not really paying attention. When you have that state of mind of being disinterested, you're not picking up on things and you end up taking a beating later, right? You want to be focused. You want to give things your attention and you want to be genuinely interested and that's what's going to be able to get you more results when you're actively learning or seeking knowledge. So hopefully this was insightful for you guys. Again, always let me know. You can leave likes, comments, and all that good stuff and share this uh with your friends. I'll see you guys next