Jason High News and Updates

Recently I’ve allowed myself to read all the preview and prediction information on all m favorite MMA websites. There’s a reason I don’t read this stuff before fights. Mostly I give the benefit of the doubt and think that these reporters and columnists are vastly experienced, unbiased and informed members of the MMA community. But the more I read; especially about myself, the more I realize the truth. How can they be? MMA is a young sport, its not as if we’re football, baseball or any other sport that’s been around for a good number of years. For the most part, these people that we rely on for an objective view of our sport have been involved with it only a handful of years. In short, they’re outside observers to a sport that, at this time, only its athletes know intimately. People involved intimately with MMA could know that a motivated wrestler has more than a 3-1 chance of winning against a one dimensional world class BJJ player. Intimate MMArtists also might know that, maybe, the wrestler has been working on other things than just wrestling. That just because the wrestler has no formal “belt” in jiu-jitsu, just because he’s only had a handful of formal BJJ classes 4 years back doesn’t mean he hasn’t been grappling most of his life. All this doesn’t mean the wrestler hasn’t learned to arm and defend himself against jiu-jitsu…..

So it’s with this knowledge that I tackled the world champion jiu-jitsu player. Don’t get me wrong. The only other person that has EVER controlled me ad had me that near submitting on the ground is Antonio Mckee, the only difference is, much to my chagrin, Antonio submits me regularly (also a motivated wrestler by the way). I wonder to myself what basis, if any, these MMA writers have to declare that “Once the fight hits the mat, it will only be a matter of time before High finds himself in a move so simple yet so effective — the straight armbar. Watch for Galvao to win via first-round submission in less than five minutes and head into the final relatively fresh.” Like I haven’t seen a fucking arm-bar before, or that we didn’t know that Andre Galvao (who by the way, I have immense respect for) was 3-0 with 3 armbars. Or how bout this one, let me paraphrase…Andre Galvao has already beaten John Alessio, who surpasses High in every aspect of the game…I may be ranting a bit but shit!

And there I sat, with a world champion on my back. I had already escaped a deep knee-bar where I thought, “no shame in the MMA community tapping to this, guys a world champion. But what about that asshole that handicapped you at a 3-1 dog, and all those haters that said, Jason has no chance whatsoever; he’ll be submitted in the first…” I did an inventory on my body, “the knee-bar was stretching, and it hurt, but there was nothing popping and after all, I have another, perfectly good knee that Mr. Galvao does not have ahold of, so I said fuck all you hatin’, handicapping assholes. Then he took my back. I was reminded of the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou” where George Clooney’s character says multiple times “Damn! We’re in a tight spot!” Seriously that’s all I could think of. Then I thought, this isn’t a bad spot to go out…I could tap out, or I’m sure he could punch me to death. Then I thought of my team, I thought of all the people watching me from home and how giving up, really, is for pussies. I thought of how much work my friends and I put in at the Bodyshop, how they didn’t give up on me when I was having a shitty day. I thought of how my girlfriend had sacrificed so much to give me a chance to be here tonight. I said to myself, I’d rather pass the fuck out than let those hatin’ bastards be right. And with that I made it to the second round. I got to the corner and nobody had written me off. The message was simple; wrestle in reverse, punch and kick him as many times as you can in five minutes.

So I guess what I’m saying is thank you. Thank you to all you handicappers, keyboard warriors, uneducated reporters and critics. I guess I owe you some of my purse (NOT) or at least dinner and a movie. I’m not a fan of your comments or opinions but you people always put things in perspective for a guy.

I’m going to take a bit of a new direction with this blog. Recently there have been a collection of things that have bothered me a little. Bear in mind please that all of this is my opinion, if you agree sound off! If you disagree feel free to discuss as well. I’ll outline 5 issues to start…

Number 1-Skinny Jeans…
…On men. Can someone please explain this to me? I just don’t get it. How do you get up one morning and say, “I think these jeans that hug my balls are cool”? In my youth I wore jeans that were excessivly baggy and big but never skin tight. Notice you never see anybody in skinny jeans sitting down, possibly because you can’t sit in skinny jeans without squeezing your balls into submission. What do I know, maybe I’m getting old.

Number 2-Wearing sunglasses inside.
Again, maybe I’m getting old but what is the point of this? Generally, I consider myself to be pretty cool. BUT, I don’t think I’m quite as cool as people who wear sunglasses inside. Wearing sunglasses inside, to me, is sort of like wearing snowboots in the summer. Normally its not sunny inside so sunglasses are not needed.

Number 3-Excessive Fight Brands
Last night I attended a fight show here in California and began to grow a little tired of all these fight brands. More and more it seems that they all look the same. “Something” fight gear is the common tagline. Now, it seems to me that if you didn’t put “fight gear” at the end of your brand you could market it to a wider audience. But really, what do I know. Tapout opened the floodgates. Perhaps I should be grateful that our sport has blown up to the level that everyone and their mother wants to be involved with it.

Number 4-Basketball
In most cases I’m annoyed by any sport in which you can’t shut your opponent out and, a little slap on the wrist is a foul. I can’t stand it. Basketball would be a lot cooler if they took some cues from hockey and allowed a little contact. Let ’em play dammit! Maybe the problem is that basketball players are pussies and that’s why they began to play basketball in the first place. I can hear basketball fans now…”A black guy that doesn’t like basketball?” But really its not like that, I think golf and bowling are for pussies too.

Number 5-Drugs and Violence in Hip Hop

First off let me say, I love hip hop music. Love it, I grew up listening to it and it has served as the soundtrack to my life. That said, recently I’ve grown disappointed with it. It seems to me that every artist is a reformed drug dealer. The content of our music has been limited to drugs and violence. To a certain extent, this paradigm shift can be attributed back to earlier hip hop artists. Its gotten so bad that artists feel they have to be involved with, or talk about drugs and violence to be credible. They feel they have to fabricate details of their pasts that include these things (i.e. Rick Ross). So, to all you current and aspiring hip hop artists out there, please, for our future generations let’s stop this cycle.

I’m done ranting for now. But I’m sure sometime soon there’ll be 5 more things that bother me.

“That’ll never be me, cause I’m leaving the past, like an abused wife with the kids leaving your ass”
 -Immortal Technique

It wasn’t that long ago that I was slumped against a turnbuckle. I remember everything before the right hand that put me down and everything after about ten minutes later. I pretended it didn’t bother me much with comments like “If I don’t remember it, it didn’t happen”. The sting of getting knocked out in front of your mother, ooouuuch! How embarrassing. I wanted to crawl under the Honda center and spend the rest of my life there. Then I realized something. I realized that my girlfriend still loves me, my mom still loves me. My friends are still my friends and I’m still the same person. This is something I’d been struggling with since college, where my wrestling career suffered due to my overactive imagination. I’d lose one match somewhere and imagine my friends laughing, my mom shunning me, every girl I knew crossing the street when I walked by. Which, in reality, was completly unrealistic because none of these things ever happened, even though I lost almost as much as I won in college. Even my teammates that continually saw me perform below my potential still liked me afterwards. I remember having a conversation with Shawn Charles, he said:

“You know what man, all this shit really doesn’t matter. Really, what’s the worst that’s gonna happen, you lose? I’m the grand scheme of things its not that big a deal. Even if you lose a match you’ll be the same person afterwards. ”

In that instance it was difficult to understand what he meant. But now I get it. Am I fucking crazy? I stress out about fighting, because in some respects man to man combat is extremely intense. But is it really that big a deal? The answer is no, its not.

So with this in mind I went to Japan. Are you kidding me?! Not only do I get paid to fight people, I get to go to Japan for free AND I get to take two friends. I mean, the only thing that wasn’t fun was making 167 pounds . I told Antonio,

“You know what man, I’m just gonna go out there and have fun”

“That’s perfect” he said. “I guarantee if you go out there and just act like you’re in the gym its gonna be a good fight, just have fun man!”

So that’s what I did. Warm up, crack jokes, make fun of Brett, try to figure out what exactly is wrong with Brett, discuss Antonio’s uuuuh, special “extra-curricular” activities, inquire about Ray Sefo’s “extra-curricular” activities, ask Mac Danzig about being a vegan, figure out everybody’s Japanese nickname (The Black Panther is mine), loan Jeff Monson my cup cause he forgot his, watch Roy Nelson wash Monson’s ball sweat off my cup before he gives it back to me, do stupid shit for the camera man who’s been following me, yell at Brett for eating every last piece of anything edible in the locker room(for real, dude can eat I think he has a tapeworm) , laugh at the Japanese guys’ entrance music (Ne-Yo, really?), warm up some more, try and escape the Japanese watch dog that won’t let us leave the locker room, quote Ronnie Coleman (“light weight baaaaybaaaaaaaaay”), call ourselves “Cocojin Yakuza” (which means ‘Black Gangsters’ or something like that), put the bandana and hat on, cue Young Jeezy, walk down the stage and get busy. Seriously, I had a great time.

So I’m gonna make my New Year’s resolution in April. I resolve to have more fun competing. I resolve to relish less in the result and more in the process, because life is too important to be taken seriously.

The death of my Grandmother recently brought me back to Kansas City and served as a mini-reunion of sorts for my dad’s side of the family. I say “mini-reunion” because really, I’m the only one that isn’t seen often. Through all this I noticed not only that, of course, life has gone on while I’ve been MIA and people have grown up, but also there’s a certain theme that permeates this side of my family–fatherly absence. I have three brothers, two older and one younger, and for all the time my father insists that he loves us, he hasn’t been there in abundance for any of us. And for the most part I’ve gotten over it, forgiven him. I mean really, what good does it do to stay mad? Anyways, I realized while I was back that though he was mostly absent in my life and that of my brothers that he still commands an almost mystic respect from us.

For most things my Dad is late. And while he wasn’t “late” by definition to his mother’s viewing, he was later than everyone else. As I sat with my youngest brother, I marveled at how excited I was to see this man who I insisted most of the time I didn’t really like that much. In he walked, at which point my brother and I both rose to greet him. It was then that I realized that really, we didn’t rise for a greeting, we rose for his evaluation. There we stood, like military cadets while he told us how nice we looked, how good it was to see us, how handsome his boys are. He introduced us around…

“This is Tookum, my youngest boy, Daddy’s baby.”

My brother pretends not to like this shit but I see him smile.

Then, “This is Jason, he’s got a college degree, lives in California. He’s a professional fighter, he’s got a baby on the way.”

I pretend not to like this shit either, but I can’t help but smile. It feels good to hear your Dad brag about you. So while I was soaking this all in and feeling good about the relationship my dad and I share, I suddenly remembered all the times he said he would pick me up and didn’t. Or the letters he wrote that said we would spend more time together. I remembered my baseball games where everybody else’s Dad was there but mine wasn’t, all the times I insisted to my Mom that this time was different, that he might be there. I remembered all these things and suddenly I was no longer content, I was angry. Where was this fatherly action when I really needed it, when I was growing up? And while it feels good to hear him rant and rave now, it’s bittersweet, as it also reminds me of times when he was painfully absent.

So, back to my story. I’m standing in the pews with my little brother being evaluated and marveled at by our father and I made a decision. I’ve already fathered Jaelyn Leslie. She’s due in May and I couldn’t be more excited. Not only do I get a turn to brag about someone, but I get to go right everywhere my Dad went wrong. I get to be not only the father, but a Dad and I get to stop the cycle of absent fathers that has plagued my family. So to my Dad, I say thanks. I’m no longer angry at you, I thank you for making the mistakes so that I don’t have to.

“I didn’t realize he hit you so many times after you were down, that was f***ed up” 

My training partner’s words after we all saw the fight on TV. I think about that fight, my first loss, also my first time being knocked out and I tell Brett… 

“Nah man, I would have done the same thing to him. And you’d do the same to somebody else.” 

Brett nods in agreement, and that’s the nature of the sport we’ve chosen. Its not, and shouldn’t be, a fighter’s resposibility to worry about the safety of his opponent during the fight. I’ve spent the week relaxing and answering questions of concerned fans, sponsors, friends and others. I’ve been largely unavailable to most people, and for that I apologize. Yes, I’m ok. Yes I’m going to fight again. Few people in this sport remain undefeated. My coach, Antonio Mckee, who’s always upbeat and positive keeps telling me two things. Number one, its not this loss that’s so important, but how I come back from it, I agree. And number two, that all the pressure is gone and we can just go out and fight with nothing to worry about. Honestly I don’t really remember feeling pressure from being undefeated but I suppose its one less thing to worry about. 

If it were up to me I’d be fighting again as soon as possible. But I guess time for reflection and evaluation is good. I made some obvious mistakes in that fight and the place to fix those mistakes is in the gym. So that’s where I’ll be, patching the holes in my game and repairing my ego. Stay tuned! It’s been a strange trip so far, but whatever, you only live once.