It’s always nice to be on a road trip amongst a bunch of unfamiliar and possibly adversarial fighters and run into someone you haven’t seen in awhile. This morning as i was making my way down to breakfast alone i ran into Tyron Woodley. Many of you may know him as one of the best up and coming welterweights in MMA today, i know him as a guy I’ve grown up wrestling with. Some history….Tyron and I first met, I’d guess, around 1997 or 98. Me being from Kansas City and him from St Louis we say each other frequently at a lot of wrestling tournaments. I can still remember the wars between him and one of my best friends in high school (who later wrestled at Northern Iowa) on the wrestling mat. From high school I went to STLCC at Meramec and later, to the University of Nebraska. Tyron ended up at the University of Missouri where he would, again, participate in some classic matches with another close friend of mine. Later he would end up a 3 time all American for the University of Missouri.

It’s funny to me how we ended up at breakfast this morning, talking about everything from our kids to MMA organizations. It occurred to me that him and i have taken a somewhat similar path to this place. From wrestling to MMA. I’ve always thought very highly of Tyron and it was gratifying to know that he thinks the same of me. I realized, sitting with him this morning, that we are in similar spots in our career, both trying to take care of our families and make ourselves a name while doing what we love. And then i realized that one day, i may stand across the cage from Tyron. When and if that day comes, i know I’ll probably be in for one of the toughest fights of my life. But for now, it’s just good to share the spotlight and catch up with an old friend.

Before i begin these reviews I’d like to first apologize to the three companies that supplied me with their products for review. I wasn’t getting quite as much training time with the gi as i would have liked, therefore it took me a little longer to get a feel for each one.

The three companies in question are Vulkan, Ouano and Gracie Barra. I’ll be reviewing them all independently in three separate entries. I hope you gain some insight into which gi may be better for your needs.

-Vulkan Ultra Light
The first gi that i received was from Matheus at Vulkan. I asked all the jiu jitsu players around the gym about the quality of Vulkan’s products and received rave reviews about Vulkan’s quality, weight and durability. I received the gi and the first thing i noticed was how light it was, like, really light. This would be a great gi for training in the summer and also competition. I’ve never done a gi jiu jitsu tournament but from what i understand you must weigh in your uniform right before you compete. The Vulkan weighs in at just under 3lbs, about 2.7. The fit of the Vulkan is ideal, i wear an A-2 but my legs are a little bigger than normal so i was worried that the pants wouldn’t be big enough. Fortunately the pants fit very well with plenty of room for my thunder thighs to breathe. I was worried that the gi would shrink when i washed and be too small afterward but Vulkan’s claim that their gi’s are “pre shrunk” held up, i hung dry the uniform and the fit was the same as pre wash. I also noticed that the Vulkan dried a bit quicker than the other two, i presume because it’s lighter and is made of less material. Overall this is an outstanding gi that i think is perfect for summer training as well as competition. It’s light, durable and stays true to size. For more information about Vulkan and their products check them out here:

It’s been quite awhile since i’ve written a blog entry and for that i apologize. Initially i promised a new entry every three weeks or so but recently i’ve felt that i haven’t had much to write about. So i thought to get started again i might leave it up to you all. Right now i’m on a plane to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to corner Jesse Juarez and Emmanuel Newton for MFC 23. I foresee an ample amount of free time so after i post this “entry” along with requests for topics on Twitter i’m going to try to knock out the next entry. I’ll also be working on the long over-due gi reviews for the three companies (Vulkan, Ouano and Gracie Barra) that sent me gi’s.

I always thought it’d be cool to have a blog and let everyone know what i think, but once i got one i realized that it’s very difficult to keep up. Partly because i wanted to write something engaging and interesting and not just , “well, i went to wal-mart today”…I’ve got Twitter for that kind of stuff. Every time i started writing one i scrapped it because i thought it sucked. I started one defending Mirko Cro Cop after his last fight, but it didn’t make the cut. Then i started another one about my training partner, Emmanuel Newton, and his last fight (a loss). I began writing about my frustrations with Emmanuel, his level of talent, some bad decisions he’s made blah blah blah. The problem with this was, not only was i rambling, but i felt like this wasn’t the kind of thing that needed to be talked about on my blog, but with Emmanuel personally. It wasn’t meant to be insulting to him, but if one read it without explanation it would’ve seemed that i didn’t care for Emmanuel, which isn’t the case.

So, I’ll post this and if you have ideas either leave comments on the blog, or if you’re on Twitter shoot me an @ message (@kcbandit) with you’re idea. There’s really no prize for getting picked…except that you get to hear me ramble about your choice of topic.

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.