BTG 83 - Is the Pit the Future of Combat Sports?

Hello and welcome to Breaking the Guard. Today I'm just going to talk about one thing, which is Karate Combat. I sat down and watched Karate Combat 45, which to me is crazy that it's already that high in the numbers. Obviously, I I haven't really followed any of it to be honest. I know it's been going on for uh a year or so and I see particularly when they start doing like the grappling matches, they're getting some high-profile guys and now on this card for example, Karate Combat 45, they had Joe Schilling versus Luke Rockhold uh as the main event. So, I decided, okay, let me sit down and watch this. They apparently they've been showing them for free on YouTube. There's just so much MMA content going out there right now that it's hard to follow everything. Uh, so I watched all the prelims, which were what they called pit grappling. And if you're not familiar with karate combat, they don't use a cage. They basically have a sunken in pit that is ba uh I guess it would be kind of like damn that trapezoid, right? where it's flat or pyramid rather. There you go. It's like an inverted pyramid. So, it's four corners and they all invert inwards. The wall is not flat. It's at an angle, right? So, you're allowed to use a wall as you want. Whether you want to attack from the wall there or you want to climb the wall, you can even climb it up. So, it does create a unique uh strategic element for the grappling. I think it definitely helps as a spectator experience, right? Uh I think cages are very useful and they're a bit more realistic for like and what I mean realistic for like self-defense scenarios. You usually if there's a wall, it's straight up. It's not at an angle, right? Um however, it sucks as a spectator, right? If you're sitting even in floor seats, you have to look through the cage, you're looking through mesh, there's the posts that can block your vision. kind of sucks. With this uh pit design, everyone's elevated over the pit. So, most people have a pretty good angle to be able to see through. And actually, the higher up you are, like if you're in the cheap seats, you have the best view compared to someone who's pretty close to the the pit, but floor level might be obscured a little bit at the in the near side of their of the pit. So, from a spectator view, I think it's better. Um, and I think from the competitor view, it is better than having refs intervene, right? I watched uh I think there's like three or four pit grappling matches and they moved pretty well. What I loved about it, there was no referee intervention whatsoever. Only when there's a tap out and the grappling match pretty much works the same as everything else, but there's no pulling the guys into the center or whatnot. And some people like Craig Jones uh used the pit to set up their submissions. He set up a flying triangle off uh the pit wall by jumping on it. So, I mean, it adds that element to it. So, I think it's very clever. Uh so, I like the the pit grappling over just about all the other stuff, you know, especially if we talk about like IBJGF or ADCC or, you know, every other rule set who's number one, which people are just spilling out out of bounds all the time. the less the referees are involved, the better it is. So, I'll give pig grappling a thumbs up. I think it's fine. They also do a long round. I think it was like a 12minute one round. A bit in the longer side for matches that are not that um competitive, but better than like a 4-minute round where nothing really happens. That being said, uh they did have uh Kenyan Dwarte, a high level guy grappling there against um somebody that I've never heard of who I assume was like a Russian wrestler. And he ended up losing just by executing the most boring game plan, which was just closed guard and knee shield guard, never really going for a sweep, never really going for a submission. And I mean, to be fair, the other guy didn't really do much either, but he was on top. He did press the action a couple times which gave him the nod which I thought was justly so. Um but that was a really boring match. Uh and I hope they didn't pay much to bring those guys over there because yeah that that was not a great match. The first match even though it went to the decision it was actually strategic. There was good action. Both guys were going for submissions. uh a couple sweep attempts, back exposures, but uh Darte as a really high level BJJ guy really didn't show any highle jiu-jitsu at all. Uh so that was disappointing. Craig Jones obviously uh did show up and he did a great job. He actually submitted the guy twice like he made a joke saying that he hasn't finished twice in an hour since he was a young man. So I thought that was funny. But um he ended up getting the guy in a triangle choke and I saw the guy tap like very light baby tap and then it looked like he kind of went out and Craig called it. The ref stopped the guy looked like he was out came to acted like he was fine and then they restarted and Craig almost instantly put him to sleep and then the ref stopped it. So that was really bizarre. I think the guy obviously was out and just between consciousness and probably that's why it took so little to put him out immediately again. Um but again interesting match up by Craig there u it was like the last minute of the match so the guy did survive quite a few attempts. He had him in some closedged guard buggy chokes which was also interesting. You don't really see that too much but the guy was able to eat those closedguard buggy chokes. Actually, now that I remember, I think it was the second one that scored him a sweep to the mount, which I believe ultimately led because the guy reversed from the mount and Craig used that opportunity to set up his triangle. But that was a nice match. So, overall, I think the pig grappling is a nice format. Uh, and mainly because again, as a spectator, if you were there live, you're not getting uh bad view angles. You're probably getting better than you would really any other contest. And as a competitor, you don't have to worry about the referees, right? You just have to be judicious in your use of the walls. Now, when it came to actual karate combat, that was a little weird for me. So, you can kick below the knee and above the hips, but you can't kick the thighs. I have no idea why. That is a weird arbitrary rule. I mean, if you're going to kick shins, right, or especially kicking the calf, why not you're going to be allowed to kick the cal the the thigh, which is usually a big target for most people doing leg kicks. That didn't make much sense to me. All the other kicks uh seem to be allowed. You can knee to the head, knee to the body. Uh all the strikes were allowed. You can do takedowns. However, this is another part that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, which is sometimes they seem to let go a lot of ground and pound and other times they stop the match immediately when they get taken down. I believe they considered it whenever the people are clinched. So, if the bottom guy grabs the top guy uh somehow, they stop it. But if I took you down and I'm standing over you, they'll let the match continue and I can start ground and pounding. But the moment I'm able to secure some type of grip on the upper body, they seem to stop it immediately. So again, it does allow for some benefit to scoring the taked down other than just throwing the guy. You can actually strike and work from top. Uh and it does seem to be a factor when matches are finished by TKO. It's by ground and pound. The guy drops him with a hook and then runs up to him and the TKO finish. Um, but and they also do clinch striking, so you can clinch and throw knees, but they will stop the match if it's in a clinch without any strikes pretty quickly as well. So, kind of like kickboxing mixed with a little bit of MMA. Uh, it is entertaining. the the main event. I saw a few of the prelim fights, some of the main event fights, and then I obviously watched Luke Rockhold's fight. Uh there were quite a few knockouts, uh some good action going on. So, it's definitely actionoriented. It seems the pace is pretty fast because they're three minute, it's three threem minute rounds. I think the main event was five three-minute rounds. So, it is fast-paced allowing for a lot more blitz. Just as a guy who's an MMA purist who loves seeing like real street fights, the amount of referee intervention is super high. Uh referees were stepping in pretty often because a lot of people were trying to throw kicks and they end up landing on the thighs and then that's a warning. Uh every time they clinch there's a you know the referee breaks him apart. Uh every time the guy gets taken down the referee breaks him apart. And that uh it's funny because what I loved about the pit grappling is what I hate about the karate combat. The referee's in there all the time. Like he's working hard because he's asking him to to come in constantly and I I just hate that because it breaks the the realism and the immersion for me. Every every second that the referee's in there is just killing my interest. Uh so uh be if MMA didn't exist, this would be amazing. But we do have MMA. So then the question for me is why am I watching this? I don't know. Uh like I said there if we existed in a place where like you would have a UFC once a year or twice a year like it used to be, I could see. Yeah, we we can definitely add this karate combat so that I have something to hold me over, right? But nowadays, there's so much MMA going on. I mean, there's a few fights every week. I don't personally had the appetite like, okay, I need to watch this also, right? And I watched this in particular because I I saw Luke Rockhold was in there. So, okay, I'm curious to see how he does. He had a good fight with Joe Schilling. He controlled most of the action, although Joe Schillings did break his nose with a good straight right. and they got into the fourth round or I think it was late in the third where they both are starting to fatigue a bit. Luke caught him with a big wide right hook that dropped them and then the TKO finish uh for Luke Rockhole. So, it was a good matchup. Uh but like I said, we're so saturated with content right now that I don't know if I would go out of my way to watch this unless there's a big name, right? Like I saw Luke Rockold and I heard Craig Jones. I'm like I want to see these guys go and then just for the sake of being open-minded. I'm like all right let me just start from the beginning and just watch all the and it's a long card. I think it was like four and a half hours. So I judiciously used a skip and speed played a lot of it like four or five times just to try to get through the parts where I see a lot of action happening. But uh definitely I don't see this as a UFC competitor, a Bellator, PFL competitor, anything like that. This is kind of its own market. Um and because I'm not too familiar with the karate world, I don't know if any of these guys that were fighting were stars or champions. It's just random dudes that are fighting in my from my view. So it'll be I mean obviously they've done some good things if they got into 45 events and they did this last event in Dubai. Uh they've been getting some bigger names to fight in there. So it'll be curious to see how it grows. Uh and apparently they have a very flexible rule structure where people can vote to change the rules. So maybe they add the thigh kicks. They were talking about that like adding thigh kicks again. I think that would be a little bit better. And the more they take the referees away the better. I understand it's karate combat so it's not going to be MMA but um I don't know for my taste as MMA fan like this is good. I feel like if it was M it could be better but that's just my take on it. I and then just to recap I do like the pit grappling concept. I think it is a very solid concept. I always love the idea of not having the referees involved constantly. So, uh, allowing that to take place is much better than when people are just going out of bounds the whole time because now that becomes part of the strategy. Uh, so I mean, Submission Underground when Chaos Sunny was running it was also a great show. Uh, and people utilize the cage to benefit as well. I think that's great. Uh, again, less action the referee has to do, the better. you know, my opinion at least. I hate the referee stepping in there. So, anyways, that's my take on the what I've seen with the submission underground there. I mean, I'm sorry, uh, Karate Combat. I'll probably tune in, like I said, whenever they have uh, you know, big names that I'm interested in in seeing, whether they're from MMA, from whatever combat sport, I'll definitely take a look at it. especially since they're putting it out for free or for the moment seems like a no-brainer and if you're more into the karate side of things and it looks like like I said they good production value uh I mean they had basin in there and they had GSP so it's good to and these are karate guys traditionally as well so it's good to see them u chipping in there and doing the commentary uh so yeah and um another news there I'll just follow up with my personal take on carnivore diet. Now, I've been doing it now like 45 days or so, so about like a month and a half. Still losing weight. Uh, still feel great. I have made some significant changes though after the 30 days. As I told you guys previously, I started adding in food items, you know, every so often and seeing how they interact. The first one I added was cheese. Uh, and I take took about four days or so and I never had an issue with it. So then I I added spices um just so I can make things more flavorful. Again, didn't seem to have an issue at all with that. I then added uh well I added bacon too. I guess bacon is technically added in there but during the diet I had bacon one day didn't feel good. I stopped eating it entirely and then so then after the 30 days I tried it again then I was fine. I think it was just I my body wasn't used to eating that much fat uh in one sitting and the bacon just threw it over the top. Now I've been eating like 80 grams of fat in one meal and it's no issue anymore for me. So, the bacon seems to go fine. Thank God that makes things easier. Like I said, like one of the issues I felt that I needed to address was the caloric deficit that I had. I needed to close that up. So, I'm eating when I was doing the 30 days strict. I was closer to like 1,700 calories a day. And before I was eating about 2,600. And a guy my uh size um my lean mass as well as the amount of exercise I do should probably be somewhere in the 2,800 plus range. So uh adding cheese, bacon, um definitely adds a good amount of fat content to the diet so that uh I can up those numbers. So I've been now closer to like 23 to 2400 a day. Uh so that's good. I also added a sweet treat which is the first one I did which was ice cream. I found a brand of ice cream which I posted on my Instagram. It's called ice cream for bears. I thought was hilarious because I a lot of people call me a bear uh because of how hairy I am and my habit of staying somewhat indoors for the most part. Uh so it just has eggs, milk, cream, and honey. So the first three ingredients are actually fine for most carnivores. And the honey is a little bit of a departure, but people who do what they call animal-based diet, which is just carnivore, but people who eat fruits and stuff like that, honey is like the most accepted form of sugars for people who are like carnivore or I guess carnivore adjacent. So that ingredient list is basically it was just four ingredients. Uh oh, and it had vanilla extract, which is negligible really. So I started having that and I would have half a serving a day and four or five days no effect. So now I include that as my sweet treat. And then I've also found a thing of cacao honey which is basically just raw honey mixed with organic cacao. So it's like chocolate honey. It's delicious. So, another thing and a half. Now, I'm keeping the carbs very low, uh, under 25 30 grams a day and no difference in how I feel, right? Uh, so all good news really for me. Uh, my weight I on now on the low end of 195. I was like 195.2 the other day, 185.8 yesterday. Uh, so my weight's still going down, but it's definitely slowed quite a bit. And I'm not sure it's because my body's kind of adapted now. And maybe my metabolism slowed a little bit from cutting uh my caloric intake for so long or just because I'm starting obviously eating a little bit more calories now. So that's definitely going to slow things down. I also have had to travel quite a bit and haven't done as much physical activity as I usually do. So, that could be a factor as well, but still losing weight. And at 195, I feel great right now. So, I'm not really complaining. I would like to be a little leaner, like one uh 192ish, just for aesthetic reasons, if I'm being honest. Uh, I want to try to match what I had when I was cutting really hard where I got to I was actually heavier. I was 187, but I got to uh 11.9% body fat. And I'm probably somewhere around 13 right now. Maybe a little lower, maybe a little higher. Uh, but purely aesthetic, just I can do uh the picture and say, "Look, doing carnivore, eating what I want, and I can get under there." But functionally, I feel great. Uh, still have all the performance uh, benefits and health benefits that I've been doing from carnivore. And I've been able to open up the diet a little bit, but I really don't have too much desire at this point to try to add anything else. And remember, I was talking about kombucha a lot, how I want to add kombucha, and I've kind of forgotten about it. Don't really care anymore. Uh the ice cream and the honey kind of filled up a void of wanting to try a sweet thing. And I could honestly go without it either. I was just curious if I could do it. But it's not like I live or die by that, right? It's it's just an extra thing to have. I I don't want to be so strict where it's restrictive, especially like this is going to be uh my last week here in Vegas and then I'm going to be flying out to Iceland. I'll be there for two weeks just vacationing with my wife and hiking all over the place. So, uh, food options might be limited for me and I don't want to be stuck where I can't eat anything good. So, now I'm going to suffer or just completely break the diet and then, you know, fall off the deep end. So, I wanted to introduce some different things that I could have that have no ill effects, but well, have give me some flexibility when I could choose to eat, especially when I'm on the road. Uh, I have things that I can incorporate. There's a company that's called Carnivore Snacks with a X instead of a CKS. That's fantastic. And I haven't eaten any of their things since I started this diet actually because they had sold out and they were out for a while. But I just got a shipment now. So I got like 30 or so bags of that. So I'm bringing just about all of them with me cuz that'll probably be like my hiking snack if I need it. Uh I want to stick to what I've been doing, which is only eating twice a day. Once around noon and once around 8. But uh just being realistic, I might need extra. So, I'm going to have those carnivore snacks. It's kind of like a meat uh a beef jerky type thing, but much better. Different texture entirely. I They call it like a meat pastry type thing, which I think is more accurate because it doesn't taste like jerky. Uh but and it's just meat and salt. So, very clean ingredient wise. Very friendly for carnivores in the name obviously. Uh I do have some standard beef jerky, which is salt and pepper that I'll bring with me as well. Um, and oh, I have been taking a hydration supplement. It's called Hydrant. And if you guys follow me before, I've been taking this for now, like a couple years now. But they they have a version now that has no carbs. It's just the the minerals and electrolytes. So, it's just four ingredients. I think it's the magnesium, the salt, calcium, and zinc in their proprietary mix. It tastes absolutely horrible. It's definitely not tasty. Uh and you definitely want to chase it down with water. Uh but I just take that uh one serving in the morning. Uh and I found I guess they say it's for the best absorption, just put it under your tongue, let it dissolve, and then just wash it out with water. Uh it's not that bad when you wash it out with water, but if you just try to dry scoop it, uh it's pretty terrible. Um but I've been using that. And I'll tell you why. I found that the first week of doing carnivore, I did have like a metallic taste in my mouth. Uh and I read that was pretty normal. People call it keto breath. and and it typically happens as you're making that change to ketosis, it kind of went away and then on the very last week, like I think after the 30 days or so, I started getting a return of that and my throat started getting sore and it was weird because it wasn't like I had fleg or I was sick. It was just I had a very metallic taste in my mouth and uh my throat would be sore in the mornings. Turns out that it's also uh what they call keto breath. But particularly what I understood the mechanism was was dehydration where you're not getting enough the electrolytes in your diet. And I was using salt judiciously. So I don't think it was obviously just salt or sodium. But you also need again the calcium which they say there is a you know trace amounts in meat which can be sufficient magnesium and zinc which are a little bit harder to find. I started incorporating organ meats into the diet just by doing a ground liver, ground heart with ground uh bison all mixed together and having that uh once a week just to help because uh liver does I believe have some zinc and magnesium. It has the most uh nutrients you're going to get from meat is going to be in an organ meat like liver. But to help get me back on track, I started taking the hydrant. And after 3 days, all those issues went away. So, seemed like it was pretty clearly a dehydration thing. So, I had that version in. I would ideally like like not to take it. I believe there's another factor as well, which I didn't address was the salt that I was using. I've been using kosher salt for years because I've always heard that's the best salt for cooking. However, kosher salt is just sodium chloride. It's 100% sodium chloride, which doesn't have trace elements and minerals that are beneficial. So, I started taking a a salt from a company called Salt of Life, which is like 89% sodium chloride, but then it has magnesium. It has u I think trace amounts of calcium and zinc. So, it's a more healthy salt. So, I replaced I threw out all my kosher salt and just used that salt exclusively now. So, um hopefully if I take out the hydrant, I won't really need it anymore because I have this other salt helping to fill in the gaps as well as the organ meats that I'm adding. But for the moment, I I'll just stick with the hydrant and just to see how it feels. Like I said, it's been good for me. uh after I started taking it, like I said, 3 days afterwards, all of the sore throat, all the metallic taste left. So, I'm pretty happy with that. And again, I guess technically carnivore. I mean, now I think about it, animals will lick, you know, you know, they have salt licks where they're just licking areas of salt for a reason, right? They we all need those electrolytes. And I think particularly in my case, I'm in Vegas in the desert. It's super dry here, so it's a bit more demanding. I believe on being hydrated. So, uh that's just something else I want to be transparent with just in case anybody else is doing this and they run into that issue. Uh get a hydration mix. Uh that definitely helped me out quite a bit because that was kind of annoying. I even had to change my water filters because I thought it was just the water that was funny. But my wife had no issue with it. It was it was just me having this, you know, keto breath dehydration thing. Uh other than that, that's only been the only real issue I've had u doing carnivore. So, and it's been gotten easier over time um and much more enjoyable. Uh I started adding other meats. So, I started eating like I this weekend I did pulled pork because I've been doing almost all bison, very little beef. Uh, I started doing pulled pork and I've been loving that cuz again, high fat, high fat content, so easier to get those calories in and very delicious as well. And one thing also that people don't realize is that pork fat is the richest fat nutritionally. Has lots of different minerals in it. Even has vitamin D in it. Uh, so if you were going to choose to eat a fat, it would be pork fat, which is why lard was such a big deal back in the day. Lard comes from rendered pig fat. Okay? Much like beef tallow, you know, is from cows. Lard would be the equivalent uh that they usually use from pork belly, melted down, strained. Exactly the same thing as beef tallow, but it's with pork. But pork is more nutritionally dense. But uh we were tricked into thinking that lard was bad for you and they switched it out with butter and then margarine and then all these seed oils and stuff like that. But the OG fat lard is definitely the the king from what I've read uh from its nutritional content. So I think that's another thing. I have a bunch of bison beef tallow. I also want to start doing that for pork as well u just to have some extra sources of fat. uh and different ways of using meat because beef tallow is is fine. It's not the greatest flavor-wise if I'm being honest. Sometimes it's kind of like it smells like you're burning a candle because it's very waxy. And again, a lot of candles are made with animal fats. Uh but it doesn't impart flavor quite like let's say butter would or even like olive oil does. Pork fat is very flavorful. Uh, and it does add a little kick. So, I think I would like to have the option of two. So, that's where I'm thinking from that. Anyhow, that's just my little aside there. Uh, in case anybody who's following my carnivore progress and wanted to see some of the changes, I I know some of you have been emailing me about or messaging me on Instagram about uh my blood tests. I did take a blood test, but I guess they didn't factor to take my cholesterol, which I don't know why they didn't. So, I had to go and do another blood test then to get the cholesterol levels. Uh, but everything else is fine, uh, healthy. So, I I'm pretty confident I'll be good all around. But in any case, how I feel physically, great. Uh, definitely feel much lighter on my feet now. Joints feel great. Uh, not that I don't have any soreness. Like when I do a lot of heavy wrestling, my back will still be sore. Uh, sometimes my hips from the the squats, but overall definitely improved um from before the diet. I can't say it isn't because weight loss, right? Like I did lose uh 16 pounds now. So that obviously has an effect on how you feel mobility wise, but I can't say for sure certain things I know were because of carnivore diet. Like I believe I wrote it down and maybe I mentioned it, but I've had a cyst uh for like over two decades that has completely vanished since I did this diet. U so to me that is and I've lost weight plenty of times and that thing never went away. So that has definitely helped and so that's very promising, right? I I know I followed Chad Mendes who who had bad psoriasis and then he went carnivore and then he lost all the psoriasis and he's also the one that got me to do some other items like he I believe now is like animal based because he eats honey and I think he eats fruits as well. Um, and he says that the only things that really get him are uh refined sugars and oh, seed oils. That's is what he said, right? Uh, so again, for people who have some type of chronic long-term health thing, it seems like particularly skin related, uh, this might be an answer for you. Again, this is anecdotal, but if you've tried everything else and nothing else has helped, why not do this? And it's, like I said, the easiest diet to do in my opinion. Anyhow, that's all I have for you guys. Like I said, I'm going to be going to Iceland in the next uh on Thursday. So, I pre-taped a couple episodes. I have lots of content on the website and David MMA already in there. So, uh the schedule will keep on rolling. But if you have any questions or anything like that, go ahead, shoot me an email and I'll try to get back to you while I'm on the road. And if any of you are watching from Iceland, uh, let me know. Uh, I'm going to be doing the ring road, so I'm going from the southwest all the way around and touring the whole island. Trying to do a lot of hikes, see a lot of waterfalls, get on some glaciers and uh, caves. So, uh, hopefully I'll have a great time and I don't get consumed by a volcano. And uh otherwise uh I'll see you guys in a couple weeks.