Hello everyone! I just wanted to let everyone know my journey into martial arts which is mostly due to jiu jitsu. I want to become an active member of the 10th planet community and plan on devoting a lot of my development to the system. Sorry I have not posted earlier because I have been reading posts and studying a lot of 10th planet on my own, but I think I screwed up my old account because it didn't have any subscriptions available when I wanted to pay for the pro membership over time. I finally broke down and made a new account, which worked as you can see :)
I am from Swartz Creek, Michigan. It is a small town right next to Flint. My last year of middle school, my parents bought a punching bag and 2 pairs of boxing gloves. All my friends and I thought it would be a fun idea to box each other like most guys would. Out of all my friends, I was the one who seemed to be the best at it because I was using something I would later know as "head movement." It was not the best head movement because it was pretty much ducking under their wild punches and popping them. However ever 1 little bit of technique helps against someone who doesn't have that bit.
Then the same group of friends brought a new guy along. I didn't know him, but apparently he was a boxer. I figured my duck and counter maneuver would work fine against even a boxer. I mean real boxers do that shit, right? Well, it turned into duck, then eat an uppercut. After getting my ass beat left and right for about a minute I was ready to quit. I knew my duck wasn't working so I had to mix it up if I didn't want to get blasted. He came at me with the meanest right he threw all night and instead of ducking, I leaned back and literally watched his punch fly by an inch away from my face and I leaned in and hit him with the only solid punch I landed, but we had to stop because he thought he was going to have a bloody nose (let me remind you, its middle school rules; if you bleed you lose and its done.) He didn't have a bloody nose so I forfeited after saying i was too tired to go another round, but I just didn't want another round of getting my beat up.
Most people would be discouraged by such a defeat. Instead I found beauty in the way he picked my apart with boxing. I was a boxer from there on out. I studied boxing and I trained myself for boxing. I was boxing with everyone to get better and had a couple of sparring partners that did real boxing. My parents never approved or let me do any of my boxing or martial arts so I had to backyard brawl and ronin my way around to learn technique. I had one friend that was really into UFC and we became best friends after a while. He didn't believe my boxing would beat his street fighting experience because he has been in so many and I have been in one or two of them. After boxing with him and putting him in his place striking wise, he wanted to start grappling. He just watched UFC, he did not train or anything. We were pretty even, but I would start getting the advantage because I was more conditioned and could outwork him. However, I started studying jiu jitsu on my own through books and videos. I started to catch him in submissions and eventually dominate him. After watching UFC I was still adamant on becoming a boxer, but I realized if I got in a real fight, I'm going to need to know jiu jitsu and get good at grappling because the ground is where you want a boxer. I had a falling out with this friend because he made up a lot of stories that were obvious lies (Like the marines advancing him to a special forces program and getting to skip the regular boot camp because he's just that important they picked him straight out of the small town of Swartz Creek for no reason at all.)
The guy that beat my ass in boxing (Marco) has been my friend since then. He even started to come over my house in the summer after I got into grappling. It made my confidence much better. We had a fight night every friday night and he would always bring a different person or two to either spar or drill. I was the only one who wanted to drill and practice a lot, but even my buddy Marco wanted to go straight to the sparring most of the time. It sort of gave me an advantage though because I was the only one who wanted to commit to learning and technique instead of just dropping the hammer. We did boxing rounds, grappling rounds, and even MMA sometimes. I was around 160, and Marco was 210. His friends varied from a little smaller than me to even bigger than him!
When I boxed Marco I was able to hit him and avoid most of his punches. It was intimidating going against him when I knew what he did to me last summer, but everything was backwards. I didn't hurt him much because he is one of the toughest guys I know, but just the fact I could land a lot of my strikes and not get hit back most of the time was awesome. We even did an MMA round and he was on top of me asking "Are you sure you want to do punches?" After assuring him, I broke him down and was actually giving him more trouble than he was to me by covering up and rabbit punching him. Our fight nights went on for a while and I had some nasty foes that were "top of the line" street fighters, but I realized being better than a bunch of street fighters doesn't really prove my skill as a martial artist.
I wanted to train jiu jitsu and was close to getting my parents to let me sign up to box and try the junior olympics since I was getting as good as my real boxing friends. I started running a lot and started to outwork my boxing partners, even my friend that weighed 130! There really wasn't anywhere I knew of for jiu jitsu, so I started to befriend the wrestlers and try to get them to come over and do submissions with me. This is also when I bought MASTERING THE RUBBER GUARD by Master Eddie Bravo and other various books. I had to develop a good bottom game and start learning how to grapple real grapplers if I wanted improvement in my jiu jitsu. I ended up joining the wrestling team just because of it. I was prepared to whatever I could to improve myself. I wanted to box ultimately, but I was always interested in combatives period.
I was close to joining Thread Creek Boxing since I had a couple buddies there. Unfortunately, a month into wrestling practice, the wild kid came to his first practice. He figured I would be a fish since I was new and he wanted to be my partner. After starting up our live grappling I went to single leg him and nearly finished, but we ran into another group of wrestlers and I was on his leg and he was unable to sprawl all the way while I wanted able to finish through the other wrestlers. I said "hey man, that messed up our session, let's start over and reset" ...... I took his silence as compliance. As I let go, he shoved me down and said,
"No man let's go." Slightly bothered by this, I figured oh well, I guess I will just do a stand up. As I went to stand, he locked an illegal body lock on me (still on the ground) and when I got up he grapevined my leg and attempted a german suplex (illegal move on top of illegal lockup.) I remember feeling his boney ass sit right on my ankle and the sound of velco ripping as soon as both our weight came down on my ankle. Everyone stopped because they heard a loud pop and a lot of swearing.
I ended up having 3 ankle surgeries due to this injury and a staph infection. It was the most devastating after attempting to get back in shape between surgery not realizing I need more treatment because of a staph infection. To this day I have not achieved the fitness I had, but I am working on it still. While my boxing dreams started to die out, my interest in jiu jitsu was so intense I was even trying to show people mastering the rubber guard moves while I still had a cast on.
When I healed, I trained at a place for a month called Ultimate Fighting Academy ran by Andre Garcia. If you went to his website you would think he is Rickson Gracie, but he runs a mcdojo. He doesn't teach people right so that way he is always the top dog. He was good until he decided to be the top dog and not train with anyone better than him nor does he want to see anyone improve too much. I rolled with him for 15 mins and he could not tap me until I was out of gas and I asked him for advice afterwards and he said "Don't worry, your good. Your good bro. Your good." Well give me something because you rolled with me for a while and I can improve something! I could tap most of his "top" guys and only a couple of people could compete with my skill (some people could beat me but they had to smash and muscle me.)
I almost gave up looking for a place to train, but then the gym I work at now opened up and they also have a purple belt from warrior way named Don Hobson opened up an affiliate named Loyalty jiu Jitsu. I went there and I saw immediate improvement. I knew so many complex things from my studying and learning that he had to teach me in reverse. He established a traditional and basic jiu jitsu element to my game that made my jiu jitsu start to shoot off in a whole new way. This is my instructor now and I became one of his top students. I want to be his right hand man and instruct for a living.
I want to open up a hotbox for 10th planet in Flint Michigan when I meet the requirements. I am not ready yet, but when I am I have already told my instructor and he was very cool about it. He realizes I want to teach with him, but also start on my own path and over time I hope to have my own affiliate school and we would have a personal affiliation where people from my school would slap a gi on and go to Loyalty and then his guys would come for some no-gi at my place.
