sparred a goju ryu guy

as some of you guys know im an avid fan of trying out other arts, so i was quite pleased to find a little sheet asking for sparring partners in my local gym the other day. we set up to meet today for some sparring out in the park. Guy was pretty cool, I was afraid it would be either some complete dweeb or some big macho idiot looking for someone to thump.

tale of the tape:

me-
5'8
63kg
MEANINGFUL martial arts experience- about 3 years of muay thai and some boxing on the side.

him-
about 6'1
around 80kg (guesstimate)
martial arts- 3 years of Goju Ryu, I think a brown belt? didnt mention any other martial arts experience.

pretty lax rules, no groundfighting. MMA gloves, about 4oz or something. probably went about 70% to the legs and body, bit less to the head because he didnt have a mouthguard. he had a pretty obvious size and reach advantage but im fairly used to that. I dont know how goju ryu spars but he was very open to leg kicks and we had to take a break a couple of times when i scored him on the thigh real hard. we werent going balls to the floor but he did knock my head back a few times (i really need to buy some new contact lenses ) with some nice straight punches. im more of a hook guy myself ;P

we went over clinch sparring too. its always surprising when you clinch spar with someone who hasnt done it before and you can get away with crap you wouldnt even TRY in training but he was real keen to try new stuff which was cool.

overall it was a fun experience, its a bit of a different experience fighting with someone who uses more exotic kicks like hook kicks. ive sparred bareknuckle before so that wasnt really new but its still good to have a refresher course in it (wasnt strictly bareknuckle but with the size of the gloves we used it might as well of been) i was a bit dissapointed that yet again i was fighting someone sizably bigger than me, but such is life when you are a wee white boy.

 

Sounds awesome. You don't happen to have a vid do you?

Try the cloth version of the MMA grappling gloves sometimes, forgot if they're 4 oz. or 2, but its even worse than the regular 4 oz. gloves.

Anyway, I'm seriously jealous, sparring other arts is always great.

 

na no vid... wouldnt be anywhere to put it really in a park, plus some bum would probably run past and steal it

 

If he was Goju Ryu, he probably wasn't used to you trying to kick him in the thighs either (like me). And yeah, cloth gloves are pretty silly. Anyways, was that the guy who put the note up in the boxing studio? I took his number aswell.

P.S-Did you see the nottice for Uni fight club? Could be entertaining.

 

That would be 'Blue Jacket Man', recognisable by his blue jacket. He specialises in digital video cameras, and cigarettes right out of people's mouths.

 

That would be one pretty bold bum, running by and stealing a camera from two guys in the park who are sparring . . . . . . :woo:

 

i saw that. got the vibe it was some meat head collection and i dont really have time for that sort of stuff anyway, but might be worth swinging by. if you want why dont you txt the dude and we could do some sparring, we might have another crack at it on friday.

 

So how did he get the name?

 

Sounds pretty sweet Ikken.

 

That will be the entertaining bit. I just wanna go along to see the first person get hospitalised, and the second person get arrested, coz thats whats gonna happen. And they're gonna deserve it, because you would have to be thick as bricks to actually participate in something like that.

 

His unique aroma.

 

was he very difficult to spar sgainst?? because goju-ryu is is one of the karate styles that your biasedness disreguards as "that point sparring crap" but other than that, good on you. i'm glad you had fun.

 

I didn't know that was what Ikken thought of Goju Ryu, but nonetheless I'm curious as to what he thought of the guys techniques.

 

get your facts right before you put words in my mouth buddy. i said the crap tournaments that YOU compete in are tippy tap sparring BS. I know this guy doesnt roll that way- he was sporting a few bruises from the bareknuckle fighting they do at his school. i do not put down styles in general (well except for WTF TKD )

 

Karate has leg kicks, it just doesn't tend to endorse them or make use of them for fear that parents will complain about their children being good fighters. When I returned to wado after reading stuff on the forums and a few books it was a laugh. Some person came in close so I grabbed their arm and dropped them into a strait arm lock. Another I booted them in the leg and they didn't know what had hit them. Was rather amusing. Their punch to the head wa rather pathetic too :|

 

wish i had chance to sparr more me and 3 of me mates all take WC so we spar each other as much as poss , there aint a great diff between sum of us ( non are pro ) but u soon get used to how sum 1 fights . guess just wud be good sparring random ppl

 

Yeah, it's definitely a good thing to spar a lot of different people. It's especially good to spar people from other arts. When I was in Kuk Sool, the sparring I did with other people after practice didn't really prepare me for what to expect when I started MMA.

After a few months of MMA, when I was back home for Christmas break, I went to finish off the couple weeks that I had left on my Shorei Ryu contract. We sparred for thefirst time since I had joined, which was light, a lot of off target areas, but mostly continuous. Even at that, the experience was reasonably valuable, because I got to practice defending against karate style punches and kicks.

 

Yeah, aside from the different clubs every friday me and a mate (2nd dan shotokan as well as Aikido, Mok Gar KF, Thai boxing and aspiring to MMA) have a good traing session/scrap. :woo:

Every so often we have other mates come along including other Mok Gar, boxers and even a tai chi practitioner.

If i were to just stick with TKD sparring for example I would have a pretty messed fighting style, but now in training i have a closer guard, lighter feet etc and am expectng to be taken to the ground or be swung at with knees and elbows. :Angel:

 

Sounds like a good time. I dunno if I would spar in the park around here for fear of someone calling the cops, but recently I have been sparring more at my club because of the upcoming tourny.

Sparring with fairly hard contact is great! Me and another guy Pete who is the same belt as me (but years more martial arts experiance) sparred for over and hour last week, good stuff, he hits hard enough to teach me things like keep your hands up (I only had to have my bell rung once to get that one) and move faster! lol

 

I think it's cool that he was willing to learn from you, because I hate it when "TMA" people get their weaknesses pointed out (often the "hard way") and then run off to hide in a hole where their previous training is still working, and they don't have to fight any of you neanderthal muay thai folks.

His style seems a lot different to what I do though, we never do exotic kicks, and do quite a lot of clinch work (although not quite to the level of muay thai ) and a lot of grappling techniques.