From my (online) buddy Denis (bigD),
quick rundown of who he is (by him):
[i]OK here’s a quick rundown of the story. I was doing BJJ, Muay Thai, Boxing and Wrestling in Australia and had just fought pro. My wrestling coach was trying to convince me I could make the Olympics if I concentrated on Wrestling and went overseas to train. I was at the national training camp which was being run by Toshio Asakura (former world champ who’d medaled in both Greco and freestyle at worlds and was Kokushian’s head coach) After training with him for a few days he offerd me a scholarship to his university on the condition that I passed a exam and interview in Japanese. A bit after the camp I won the ADCC South Pacific trials and went off to America to compete in ADCC 2005. When I returned I quit my job with the Australian Federal Police Protective Service to study Japanese. I had 3 months from then till I had to pass my test and interview. So I got a tutor, studied 8 hours a day for 3 months straight, passed my tests and here I am.
I haven’t worked a day since mid 2005. My scholarship provides my school fees, about half my food, and my appartment. I also get a bit of funding from the Aus Olympic and Commonwealth Games comittee.[/i]
Can’t rave enough about the guy he’s cool as balls. Will be a FORCE when he moves into the MMA arena. I’m just thanking god that he’s not in my weight class lol. Hopefully we’ll get to train together next time he makes it to the states.
http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/mma.cfm?go=forum_framed.posts&forum=1&thread=1356202&page=1
[i]
There’s been a bit of talk about Satoshi Ishii deciding to he wants quit Judo and fight MMA, and people found it interesting when I trained subs with Ishii before… so I figured people might find this interesting too.
Yesterday 3 guys from Kokushikan’s Judo team came over and trained with the wrestling team. 130kg guy, a 97kg guy and an 80kg guy. We had a good session and I enjoyed it a lot becuase they were using techniques that I don’t get to see in wrestling much so it made for fun and interesting wrestling. Anyways they invite me to train with the Judo club today… but when I turned up it turns out they were having a day off, watching match footage. So the same 3 guys, plus Satoshi Ishii and a light weight decided to come and do wrestling today.
So yeah we did a bunch of live wrestling. I was really keen to see how Ishii was on his feet without the gi. So I did a bunch of rounds with him. He was pretty strong and had good balance. And as a Judoka was waaaaaaay unorthadox compared to your average wrestler. I couldn’t seem to use a lot of my favourite techniques because of this, but he left himself open to a bunch of other ones instead. All in all I scored a lot of points as he didn’t have much of an idea of leg defence. He kept trying to work foot sweeps, inside trips and uchimatas. But in about 7 minutes of wrestling only scored once when I went for an outside hook from underhook (hard technique to explain) and he countered it well with a nice uchimata. He also tried to do a bunch of singles and doubles, but you could tell he didn’t really know how yet.
Anyways after training he wanted to learn how to shoot a good double, so I and another wrestler took him through it. He was pretty much terrible at first, but I shit you not within like 8 minutes he was doing the most perfect massive powerful doublelegs!!! Fuck!!! Never seen someone pick up a technique so fast and well in my life! Everytime I corrected or added in a detail he picked it up and did it properly from then on. Amazingly talented!
It was great watching him spar with the other guys cos everytime he got a big throw he’d scream like the Judo guys do when they throw for Ippon, which is way out of place on our wrestling mat but he didn’t seem to mind and I thought it was great
Screaming stuff like “AAAIIII!!! SHYAAAAAH!!!” Or “YOISHAAAAAH!!!” And during sparrign with me he kept saying “SHYAAH!!” which is kinda like a fighting cheer of encouragement to yoruself. Good stuff ![]()
Anyways after we were done training we started talking MMA. He wants to do a bunch of MMA training with me which should be heaps cool. He’s already been training at an MMA gym (forget which one) And has been doing BJJ at the same club as me for maybe 6 months now and is a brown belt there (Awarded on his first day I think) He already has boxing gloves, shin guards n stuff, so is keen to get into technique and sparring. So yeah we traded numbers and will start training together sometime soon.
Watching this guy train it’s obvious to see why he’s so good at Judo. He is a coaches dream student. From seeing him in Judo practice and from treaching him a bit tonight, he does anything a coach tells him. Doesn’t complain just does it no questions. And he seems to out train everyone else! I used to hear stories of how he would finish training at Kokushikan for like 3 hours (probably the hardest trainings I’ve ever done in my life) and then head off to another top university and do their full training too.
After training he said I should come to Judo training sometime and he will give me a gi with an Australian emblem embroided on it which was cool. So I said he could have the wrestling shoes I’d lent him (A coach gave them to me new but they were still in a box unworn cos they were too small for me)
Anyways he seems a pretty cool guy and is a super hard worker!!! So I’m really keen to start training with him. Hopefully I can learn some usefull Judo techniques ![]()
I took a bunch of photos so I’ll have to upload them later.
Anyways hope that was interesting to you guys.
PS NOBODY TURN THIS INTO A JUDO VS BJJ/WRESTLING OR WHATEVER THREAD!!! TROLLS BEWARE!!! Although Train Judo, you often crack me up so say what you will ![]()
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