Be An Ultimate Fighter

Prior to switching schools, I met a really nice guy named Antoni Hardonk – a giant of a man from Holland. Hardonk was a professional kick boxer with insane leg kicks. He was in the United States to learn some grappling prior to fighting in the UFC. He won his first match without ever going to the ground, and then last week fought again on UFC’s fight night on Spike TV.

I laughed when, in his corner, I saw that asshole black belt instructor I talked about last week – a guy so full of himself that he refused to demonstrate a move for me after class. I laughed again when the announcer claimed that Antoni was a Rickson Gracie blue belt.

The “manager” of that school gave me a hard time over not having an official Rickson Gracie blue belt after I had been training there for five months after training Brazilian Ju Jitsu for four years, after receiving my blue belt from a black belt under Rickson, and yet they handed one of their prestigious blue belts to this kickboxer from Holland after a few months of training to get themselves a few seconds of publicity. Whores! Fucking whores!

This time, the guy fighting Antoni had a style suited to neutralize the kickboxer. Antoni got taken down easily, and had obviously learned nothing about take down defense, and while Antoni had opportunity after opportunity to win the fight with Ju Jitsu 101, his lack of ground experience prevented him from coming close to submitting his opponent. When Joe Rogan, the color commentator, suggested Antoni get a new training camp, I schadenfreuded all over my pants.

Poor bastard! Nice guy, hell of an athlete, thought he was training with some of the best ground fighters in the United States only to find out the hard way that the sport of grappling has changed a lot in the past ten years, and Rickson’s school, while very good at sport ju Jitsu, is no place to be an Ultimate Figher, despite what their google ads say.

(Rickson showed up once in the five months I was there. He sat in during warm ups and criticized the way we were doing forward rolls, then left - Thanks, man!)