What's in a name?

Tonight, two of my friends are fighting in an MMA event co-promoted by my former jiu-jitsu coach. I helped train them for this fight and I think I did the best that I could considering the short amount of time I had to work with them (2 months).

I had the offer to stay and train BJJ in Saipan at Gracie Barra as long as I helped coach the classes. My only rebuttal was that I felt unworthy of coaching. Who am I to teach BJJ basics at a Gracie Barra School? I would have stayed if only my coach 1) didn't have me focus on MMA coaching so much 2) he didn't have to leave Saipan for Guam.

Now I am coaching at a gym my friend opened and I feel at odds with it. At first I felt fine with the predetermined criteria. The gym was to teach non-fighters a mixed style of martial arts influenced heavily from my time at the IMB academy in Torrance, Ca. But now some of those non-fighters are not going to practice tonight so they can "support" the guys fighting.

Geeze, I trained those guys myself and even I am not going to miss practice, you know what I mean?

I never in my wildest dreams would I take off from practice on a friend's fight night unless I were helping corner - which is a whole other can of worms I really don't want to open right now.

I can't help it!!!

Why does everybody want to be a part of the entourage making his or her way to the ring and be in the corner for a fighter for the fight? I have one question to pose about cornering - what makes you qualified to corner? Get it? I know the real motivation behind it - people want to be associated with the fighter in front of a crowd. It's a selfish and dishonest way to get respect from the crowd without having to earn it.

I didn't want the co-owner of the Koru Gym to corner tonight, because I saw him fight last year at the shoyoroll jiu-jitsu tournament in Guam. When it came down to fight, he choked - pure and simple. Yeah I fought and lost there too, but I fought the whole 5 minutes - the whole round - never quit - didn't surrender - I was outclassed and outweighed twice my weight - but I fought to the end.

I'm not superstitious, but I think the ring is a place of honesty where when things get tough you can't fake your way to a win. I didn’t want a guy who chokes to be in my corner and I sure didn't want him to corner for my friends.

I would probably go watch after practice, but not take off practice completely. That's a side of non-fighters that I didn't expect - the lack of selfish commitment to the training. That's not to say that fighters aren't unfocused sometimes, but fighters usually have a love and deeper commitment to improving their game that non-fighters have. It's a strange contradiction. I mean, if you were no good at fighting, wouldn't you spend as much time with a good coach in practice so you can get the necessary feedback from training in order to be less terrible at fighting?

The other, more terminal, part of it is that I think I honestly would never go to the Koru Gym if I weren't the one coaching.

I thought about this while driving to work this morning. What if I came to Saipan yesterday, and I were looking for a gym to train in? I see there's Trench Tech that offers no-gi submission, boxing/kickboxing, wrestling classes and the opportunity to train with professional fighter Tetsuji Kato. Then there is Gracie Barra that offers gi-centric traditional Brazilian jiu-jitsu and competitive judo. There's Choke Chain that offers - I don't really know what they have to offer. Then there's the Koru Gym that offers a weak and non-threatening approach to MMA catered for non-athletic people.

My question is... If I dropped off the airplane yesterday, where would I train sighting the available coaches - not including myself? Much to my surprise, I find that the last gym I would train in would be the Koru Gym - the gym I currently coach and train in.

I wasn't a great fighter. I wasn't some champion. Nevertheless, I am a trained fighter and those many years of commitment and experience I have had with world champion fighters and coaches will forever be the gauge from where I will always evaluate my decisions in training and coaching.

So here I am, really trying to re-evaluate what it is I am doing. It's not about the money or reward - if that were so I would be begging my jiu-jitsu coach to come back to Gracie Barra.

So what is it all about?

It's about honesty. It's about owning up to mistakes. It's about not taking good hard earned money from people if you honestly cannot provide them the very best you have to offer. I wasn't a great fighter, but I am a fighter - all I have to offer is fighting. I don't see the point in watering down the training so that people can pretend to do MMA.

I think that in the near future an aerobic workout based on Mixed Martial Arts movements will become a fad in the USA. A taebo for MMA will probably come out soon and it will gain popularity as most people can't honestly see the value in 'going hard' in training.

I am 38 years old and I'm addicted to this stuff - training and the competition. Even if it's not publicly, I love getting on the mat and competing against a fully resisting opponent. It's like someone said, "It's not being the 'hardest' that matters, it's going your 'hardest' that makes it all worth while."

So what's in a name? Take the Koru Gym for example. I can critique it, because I created it. I didn't create it out of nothing; I just put 2 words together "koru" and "gym".

What's in the value of the name "Koru Gym"? Is it because it sounds catchy? It sounds Island-y and we're here on an island? The whole "growth, strength, peace" motto is somewhat marketable for it's Zen-like allusion to David Carridine's philosophy in the Kung-Fu T.V. show? [I friggn' HATED that stupid show!]

So what's in a name? Absolutely nothing. The name is not the object it symbolizes and the description of that object is not the actual thing itself.

I have a lot of thinking to do about where I am going with this gym thing. Part of me wants to just find some strong, athletic, good friends to spar and roll with at someone's garage. That may seem smalltime to some people, but it would be more honest than what I am doing now.