Lee has been running classes down at BKK every Friday for the past few months now (whereas Tuesday evenings are taught by Braulio Estima purple belt Steve Wright), and has attracted more students as the weeks have passed by and improved everyone's game (mine included) ten fold.
The general focus of BKK Fighters tends to be Muay Thai and MMA, but that is changing, because the 'thinking man's combat sport' is drawing the interest of this club's eclectic group of members. Not to say that the BJJ class is stealing students from the strikers at BKK, but it is obviously intriguing enough to catch their interest and give them a chance to complete their overall fighting game.
I describe 'the gentle art' as the 'thinking man's combat sport,' because there is a certain amount of complexity in this martial art that the striking arts just don't have. Don't get me wrong - I have a HUGE appreciation for Muay Thai, boxing and the like - the thrill of a seeing or throwing a punch that connects 'just right' is hard to top, whether spectating, or if you're fortunate enough, the 'offending' participant. Mike Tyson, Mohamed Ali, Roberto Duran, Manny Pacquiao and many more besides showed how sweet the 'sweet science' could be.
But the striking arts have a limited number of techniques and combinations. In boxing, you have your straights, crosses, hooks and uppercuts, your rolls and footwork, orthodox stance and southpaw, and variations of those. But that's about the extent of a boxer's vocabulary. This is in no way an insult to those that follow and participate in boxing - I LOVE boxing and grew up watching the likes of Barry McGuigan, Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank (and many more) entertaining the masses with their extraordinary talent on ITV's Big Fight Live. And despite the limited number of strikes and parries, the years of work that go into improving the technique to the level of the aforementioned athletes is truly inspirational, and unlikely to be achieved by us 'mere mortals.'
But with BJJ, a fighter's vocabulary is almost endless. You can work from the closed guard, open guard, half guard, spider guard, the mount, the back, butterfly guard, x guard, De la Riva guard... You can go for arm bars, oma platas, gogo platas, americanas, kimuras, triangles, reverse triangles, triangles from the mount, wrist locks, leg locks, heel hooks... You can pull off flower sweeps, up n' overs, scissor sweeps, De la Riva sweeps, helicopter sweeps... And then you have all the variations and transitions as well. And beyond all this, the sport is still evolving, EVERY DAY. And that's just without the gi. Rolling in the traditional Japanese pyjamas is a whole new world as well...
On the way home from class, I was discussing with a friend who generally trains in MMA, but whom tonight finally wore a gi kimono, the difference between gi and no-gi grappling. Being someone who fight's in the cage, this gentleman had focused purely on grappling without a kimono, precipitated I'm sure by the obvious absence of upper body clothing in MMA. Why train with a gi when you'll never wear one in the cage?
I used the analogy of the games of chess and checkers. No-gi would be akin to playing checkers: as board games go, it's fast and fun (okay, maybe Hungry Hippos would be a better example). But grappling with the gi is comparatively like chess: the game is far longer and more complex, with more playing pieces and moves at your disposal. And in my humble opinion, a far more cerebral way to fight.
No-gi is fast and fluid, but rolling in the gi provides the participants with more 'handles' to take a grip on, lapels one can use to wrap up your opponent's arms, and a collar to CHOKE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM! The gi opens up a whole new world to a grappler or 'cage fighter.' Lee Catling himself put it very succinctly during the class: "Saying a gi is of no use to a fighter is like saying a punchbag is of no use to a boxer."
The gi is an optional extra in jiu jitsu, but it's a luxury I wouldn't want to live without.
For a full timetable of classes, please visit BKK Fighter's website at http://www.bkkfighters.com/ and Ministry of Martial Art's site at http://www.ministryofmartialarts.com/index.php
The Fat Flamingo
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