Gong Sau Extravaganza 2013: Sirc vs. 3moose

[Lebell]

ORLY?!

ya really. ;-)

Now look, I haven't been the most calm collected I can be on this thread. But brother Lebell, you've done a lot of bitching.

Yeah, whats up with you man?
Got some **** going on?
Nothing too serious I hope.

That's not bitching, that was me being surprised, amazed, irritated and eventually reaching acceptance.
I do appreciate the effort you put into this though.

[Lebell]

I know I'm not an advanced player, and always engage qualified people when I'm looking at footage for skill level.

I hope you wont mistake my tone for an unfriendly one but:you shouldnt look at footage for skilllevel, instead train some more.
Do you understand what I mean?


Let me also ad this: you got my respect for going out there and train at 46, hell im 33 and im having huge trouble.
(just finished one hour of yoga bitches!)

Rivington doesn't train combat sports, but is qualified to judge who can offer critiques.
Rivington hasn't done any investigations, but is qualified to judge who does it well
Rivington doesn't fight, but is qualified to draw conclusions from the fights of others
He doesn't spar, he doesn't roll, he doesn't organize or attend TD's, he doesn't meet with other Bullies, or train with any. He doesn't do anything at all except hone this particular posting style.

In a way he is giving you a taste of your own medicine.
For example, you needn't be an expert to see you were outclassed by kintanon on every level.(on that particular occasion)
Rivington described it in a mean manner to rile you up ofcourse, yet anyone could see Kintanon was simply a better performer during that match.
Now you try to say: yeah but at least I train cmbat sports and Rivington doesnt, it doesnt negate the fact that someone can state the obvious.

That's what this place is about. DO IT. Don't talk about me; do it.

Look, sometimes I really get the impression you're the type of person who likes to think in ranks.
Sorta box people in in levels: you're noob/mediocre/expert, or you're tma/mma/larper/non training, etc.
You would do wise to let that kinda **** go cos most people will really...REALLY dislike you for that.

Again, not sure if thats the case, but i sometimes get that impression.

[Rivington]

Anyone wondering why I think Bullshido has **** the bed should read this post.

They should. I identify some of the problems with bullshido, in it—fanboys and Punch Bowl Monitor syndrome.

People do not keep training logs,

Yes, I'm sure tons of people come to bullshido to read training logs. See, here's what you don't get, fanboy—I don't need the hosannas of high school students to train. I don't need to be the hero of some story—Old Fart Vs Young Brat: Gong Sau for the Soul of Bullshido—to put down a cigarette (I've never smoked) and lose some weight. I don't need to clutch some extremely minor compliment from an experienced martial artist to my bosom and then announce it publicly to keep going.

attend TD's,

Who does attend TDs? Were there, what, eight people at the last mega?

fight,

Given your gong sau, that makes two of us.

show video

Actually, I have shown video. Hilarious video, exfiltrated from the bottom barrel of the push-hands tournament circuit.

or even pictures of training...

Surely you can find jerk-off material without my assistance.

and then spend years developing and refining the ability to generate internet smackdown out of anything.

Are you familiar with the psychological term "projection"?

I have sparred with, trained with, trained under or fought literally dozens of people from this site

So, you don't know the difference between sparring and fighting, eh? This is hilarious though—you're an Apex Fanboy. You met this guy, that guy, trained with that one and this one, played here and sparred there! I'm a Big Deal! And...to what end, fanny?

It's not hard to find people to train with or under—provided one isn't doing some obscure art. It's not hard to spar with people. Gosh, I've pushed with champions, high-level disciples, United States Marines, strangers wandering by who wanted to see what we were doing, old ladies who like to pinch, homeless drug-dealers, etc. If I wanted to try rolling with a low-level BJJ guy I'd go to my friend Will and say, "Let's try some of that rolling again." If I wanted to roll with a high-level BJJ guy I'd go to the Gracie gym a mile from my house and say, "Hello, can I join the open mat?" These are trivial things. Only a fanboy would think that merely training with some people or sparring with them is a big deal in and of itself.

That's why I responded, God knows how many pages ago, with something like "Just like an enthusiastic old lady in the park who'll push hands with anyone!" when you proclaimed that you'd roll with anyone. Well, if someone is practicing an art in which the sparring platform is called rolling, why not? Who, exactly, wouldn't take the opportunity to roll/push/box/spar/whatever with a high-level person? It's not like high-level people go around routinely grievously injuring people in a spar. Who would take the opportunity: serious players, hobbyists, and fanboys looking to fill the pages of their mental scrapbooks. Guess which category you're in?

Speaking of a record of training, I had you pegged as a fanboy ages ago, thanks to this little hissy fit:
http://www.bullshido.net/forums/arch.../t-106166.html

You know, I used to suck monkey balls at front rolls too! Now I only suck turtle balls! You know what I do to suck less? I practice front rolls every day. You know what you did? Whined publicly about how unfairly you were treated by some crude ethnic stereotype who didn't want you to break your fat neck.

; I've been filmed, photographed and critiqued; I maintain a detailed log showing every thing I have done and not done, and I get called "fanboy" by someone who hides behind a keyboard day after day refining this cherished style of smackdown.

Yup. Truth hurts, don't it? I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm hiding though. Damn son, I train outside. I attend two different push-hands clubs, both freely open to anyone who wanders by. I've given out the phone number to the gym I go to by my workplace for lunch five days a week—find it, come on by, and join me in deadlifts and p'eng drills and somersaults any time, fanny!

What I haven't done is use Bullshido as a support group and a way to get fancy martial artists to talk to me! To meee!

If I am a fanboy then what does that make Rivington? For all this exquisite arguing over my qualification to critique others, I made sure to double check my assessment with qualified people like Sambosteve, and every single person that viewed the footage in question had essentially the same assessment as my own.

Oh, is this the bit where the fanboy namedrops an advanced martial artist member in the hope that he'll swoop in and flex a muscle or two on fanny's behalf? Well gosh, it is!

Anyway, re: sambosteve and what he might have been told by you or told you-quote or STFU.

The entire argument is moot. Not only did numerous qualified individuals all reach the same conclusion I did, but Steve posted his assessment numerous times all over that thread.

Quote or STFU.

Even if I am not competent, he is, and the critique loses no validity. I ALWAYS check my skills assessments against Sambosteve's expert eye. That is how I trained myself to spot this stuff in the first place. I know I'm not an advanced player, and always engage qualified people when I'm looking at footage for skill level.

The difference is, of course, that you can't tell the difference between someone who was simply bad (Zendo) and someone who was some sort of lying snake in the grass who had something to hide (Imaginary Zendo). Saying that sambosteve or some grandmaster on Facebook also said Zendo was bad has nothing to do with your quasi-investigation of Zendo, your inability to keep what he actually said about his training straight, and your puffed-up vision of yourself as an investigator neck-deep in a hard-assed investigator culture mere mortals like me can't possibly understand. You occasionally run gifs of diplomas through a filter, fanny, we're not talking about your experience in 'Nam here.

For those in the peanut gallery, see if you can follow this:

Nice selectivity. You forgot the bit where you tried to change your MMA gong sau into a grappling match (because you wandered in to grappling range three seconds in) and then tried to say that I used your grappling to critique your ability to judge kickboxing.

In fact, what happened, is that I pointed out you had insufficient training to determine what someone with 600 hours of training—in, as I already listed before, both grappling and kickboxing styles—looks like. And you do. Had you sufficient training, you'd realize that a) people progress at different rates, and b) someone whose training is striking in a semi-dicey martial art that ended in, say, 2004, ain't gonna look too good in 2009.

Everyone makes mistakes; when I make them I apologize.

I'm still waiting for my apology re: the 600 hours thing, which you insisted you never mentioned, and which I then pointed to. Twice.

I do owe Riv an apology though, I did not read the relevant threads manually looking for things like "600+"; I just searched for "600" and found a single post (the same one he found). Proving a negative (ie: I never posted X) can only be accomplished by completing an exhaustive search, and the positioning of Zendo's thread in VIP makes that difficult. Still, I was wrong and he was right.

Good, so we're agreed that you owe me an apology. Where is it? See, that's the other thing: you do often say that you owe someone an apology, and you do often say that you have apologized, but the actual apology often gets lost in the middle.

If Rivington really believes MABS is full of type I error, he should speak up; that's serious.

I did just this this week and thanks to my ability to, you know, read English, managed to get a poorly placed MABS thread moved to YMAS.

You're welcome.

Rivington doesn't train combat sports

Yes I do.

but is qualified to judge who can offer critiques.

Does it take a lot of expertise to even identify an expert?

Rivington hasn't done any investigations, but is qualified to judge who does it well

Correct. An investigation done well should be held to the same standard, as say, basic investigative journalism as far as sourcing, reasoning, etc. One need not be a journalist to tell the difference between propaganda and actual journalism. Literacy and reasoning ability should be sufficient. Indeed, if only expert investigators can determine the credibility of an investigation thread, then investigations are by definition not a public service.

Rivington doesn't fight, but is qualified to draw conclusions from the fights of others

Yeah, when the fight's eighteen seconds long and comes at the end of nine months of semi-intense bragging, uh, I mean training, pretty much anyone who can count to nineteen is qualified.

He doesn't spar

Yes I do.

, he doesn't roll

Indeed. Does that mean boxers on this site should STFU too?

, he doesn't organize or attend TD's

Who does?

he doesn't meet with other Bullies, or train with any.

This is a bboard, dude. Not a dating site.

He doesn't do anything at all except hone this particular posting style.

False.

I'm 46 years old and I rolled with a BJJ brown for an hour yesterday and got subbed over and over. That's what this place is about.

No, see, there's where you are wrong. This site actually isn't about you, or anything you do. That's the basis of your narcissistic delusion.

[bobyclumsyninja]

At least with the black background, it doesn't kill my phone baytery to read all this walloftext exchange.

I think Sirc starts these so he'll have something to read at work.

[slamdunc]

I think Sirc starts these so he'll have something to read at work.

At least it gives ME something to read at work LOL.

[Tranquil Suit]

HEY RAFE

Remeber when you said:

However, I am not willing to do that in a hostile environment, or against an opponent I can not trust to behave like an adult when it comes to questions of safety. Which was a fairly big issue this year already, by the way.

Could you explain

WTf happened?

You've alluded several times to an issue that happened on the last EuroTD. Why don't you just come out and say what's on your mind. We're all friends here.

[Tranquil Suit]

Like anything, it all depends on how you use it.

Don't be too impressed with this new smackdown-tool you've become so fond of, it's just 1's and 0's.

How condescending.

I hope we can all agree that this is a great skill to master.

We're fighting over whether or not people should be focused on improving their martial arts lives; "winning" the argument in favor of not doing so would be a pyrrhic victory at best.

Lol, that's not what you're fighting over AT ALL.

[Vieux Normand]

Riv:

Is the push-hands tourney circuit a FUN thing to participate in?

I might be looking for some new...fun...thing.

Is it...fun?

[Matt Phillips]

I hope you wont mistake my tone for an unfriendly one but:you shouldnt look at footage for skilllevel, instead train some more.
Do you understand what I mean?

I do understand, and your point about training is well taken. Still, didn't you just do this exact thing to me here:

in a way he is giving you a taste of your own medicine.
For example, you needn't be an expert to see you were outclassed by kintanon on every level.(on that particular occasion)
Rivington described it in a mean manner to rile you up ofcourse, yet anyone could see Kintanon was simply a better performer during that match.

Do you or don't you think it's OK to look at footage for skilllevel?

Let me also ad this: you got my respect for going out there and train at 46, hell im 33 and im having huge trouble.
(just finished one hour of yoga bitches!)

Cheers. I know you've been having serious trouble with your back, and props back at you for training when you can, and for what you accomplished when you were younger.

Look, sometimes I really get the impression you're the type of person who likes to think in ranks.
Sorta box people in in levels: you're noob/mediocre/expert, or you're tma/mma/larper/non training, etc.
You would do wise to let that kinda **** go cos most people will really...REALLY dislike you for that.

I think that the people on the Weight Watchers forums should be people doing Weight Watchers, not a bunch of people eating potato chips and laughing at the people who post fatpics. If I've misunderstood your point, please help me out and explain it again.

I don't think this post is unfriendly at all; you can say anything you like to me and I will listen... you've trained and your opinion is valuable to me.

Let me ask you to do one thing: Look at the standing portion of my GS, brief that it is, and tell me if my stance, footwork, hand position etc. are consistent with someone who has been training kickboxing, or if it doesn't seem that way to you. I will accept whatever you say.

[hpr]

Damnit. My prediction that Rudy bullshit (especially after a wild Padinha appeared) would keep this megathread going to the next thousand was short by more than 800.

That philosophy smackdown challenge thingy a few pages ago was pretty cool though.