Uk Throwdown: Videos and Feedback

**your next** · Posted On: 2/05/2008 9:56am

Ok Cuchulain you just jumped the queue mate, straight to the top (unless your bigger and harder than me anyway)

**Boyd** · Posted On: 2/05/2008 2:37pm

Originally Posted by The Question

How exactly did this event change Bullshido history?

WARNING: I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE INTERNET FOR A WHILE
Throughout its tumultuous formative years, Bullshido/McDojo.com was a chaotic, disorganized ideological mess predominantly overrun by trolls and loudmouthed braggarts touting one of two very distinct party lines: TMA or MMA. In the early days, Bullshido didn't have go-to arguments the way it does now, it didn't have cute maxims like "train with Aliveness" or "stop crappling and seek a qualified instructor". Instead, the board was marked by a characteristic weekly deluge of threads by anonymous and high-profile posters alike, sharing piercing insight into the differences between fighting for sport and fighting for survival, and even though pretty much everyone on the board was sick of having the same weekly arguement, there was one thing we could all agree on: everyone knew what they were talking about. Even if someone was wrong in the grand scheme of things, they were assumed to be proficient in their given field. Miguksaram, a TKD/TSD instructor, may have been a terrible fighter, but at least he knew TKD. You dig?

With both feet planted heavily in the MMA camp, Blad3 Windu amassed over 4,000 posts--virtually all of them pertaining to watching MMA, or MMA vs. TMA flame threads--and was seen as one of the most prolific posters on Bullshido. Now, keep in mind that prior to the UK Throwdown there had only been a small handful of Throwdowns, and given that the attendees consisted of Bullshido All-Stars like Osiris, Wastrel, Omega, Asia, Deus, Deadpan, And Many More they were considered to be successful, and even in the absence of talent there was a definite sense of heart.

And by "heart", I mean Osiris headbutting someone in the stomach to try and crack open their guard. God bless that poor kid.

When word first came back to the board about the UK Throwdown, everyone seemed generally optimistic and pumped from a friendly meetup and exchange of skills. That is, until video started trickling out.

The first moment one loads up video of Blad3 sparring, the viewer is immediately struck by now...stereotypical Blad3 looks. He's just a pale, lanky British teenager with a shock of bright blonde hair and light freckles peppering his boyish face. He doesn't look like an MMA fighter, but in his Hunter board shorts and arbitrary MMA gloves, he looks like he spent a lot of money on his Halloween costume. And yet part of you wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, assume no one could have the audacity to go through all this trouble and not train.

Yet the video of Blad3 Windu MMA sparring part-time Aikidoka, full-time swell guy Sam Harber is universally regarded as the worst performance in any Throwdown, past, present, or future, and the fact that the video has been completely lost to the ages only adds to its sexy aura. Could Blad3 have really been that terrible? Have our memories distorted the reality of his performance?

To be honest, I personally don't remember much about the actual fight. Certain memories, like Blad3 wearing MMA gloves to what he claims was supposed to be a straight grappling match, or the Hunter shorts on a negative white belt, are particularly offputting. And I remember Blad3 shooting for a single with the same intent and ferocity of Austin Powers pretending to walk downstairs behind a couch. I remember Blad3 then sort of crawling into a crucifix like a lost kitten searching for a ripe teat from which to suckle. I remember Sam letting it go, because he did not know what a crucifix was, allowing Blad3 to lie on top of him, not guard or half guard or side control, because the position of these two bodies relative to one another did not fall under any of those categories. Blad3 grabbed Sam's body and just sort of shot his ass way up in the air, leaving at least a foot of space for Sam to reguard him. Sam does not know how to use a guard. Blad3 tries for an Americana, which he calls a "kimura", from grossly inappropriate phrases. He mounts Sam by sort of getting up and crawling on top of him. He has seen this position in UFC.

As a technical display it was laughable, but as a fight it was inexcuably bad. These weren't martial artists experiencing the thrill of combat, they were two frightened Internet nerds mutually terrified of hitting and being hit.

The fallout exploded across the thread, but as luck would have it, immediately after the Blad3 Windu fiasco the Throwdown concept exploded, and as Throwdowns began emerging all over the country, even all over the world, more and more posters previously believed to be competent were humiliating themselves on camera. Anyone here remember J-Kid? A carbon copy of Blad3. Nihilanthic? Pretty much everyone at the early Chicago Throwdowns?

The reason I've kept coming to Bullshido all these years in spite of the fact that I know I'm better than 90% of the people here is that I honestly beleive it's home to the best drama on the Internet. In the aftermath of the Blad3 Windu debacle, concerned citizens Aesopian and Shumagorath composed an essay outlining the specific problems with Bullshido's emergent "poser" culture. For the first time Bullshido saw itself as one of the problems in martial arts, the proliferation of keyboard warriors, and now the site's mission was no longer as simple as "us vs. them", but rather "consistent Alive training under a qualified instructor in all three ranges of combat vs. everything else".

Things got complicated. It wasn't just about busting obvious, high-profile guys like Ashida Kim and Frank Dux anymore. We had to keep an eye on our own ranks now, and in doing so had to establish increasingly specifc guidelines to form a concensus on what constituted a keyboard warriory and what did not. From this necessity sprang a lot of the psuedo-Thornton dogma we use today.

But there's more. Aesopian became disenchanted with the site's mission after the lukewarm response to his paper and turned into an insane troll. Shum became Gravedigger. I became LAVATORR. Semirelated drama pertaining to the Rep system caused Deadpan to give me and Shum (sorry, Shum and I) his Admin keys, letting us wreak havoc on the site. Shum and Tim were banned, I was kicked out of my account and had the password changed. Deus and Wastrel left. The site was in chaos.

Eventually Phrost stepped in and offered some carrots. Aesopian's brillaint negotiating strategy, which he relayed to me as "make a lot of outrageous demands and watch Neal fill them" lead to the creation of the DHS, and shortly thereafter, Gitmo. And though I'm not positive on this, I THINK the first divisions between "General Bullshido" and "YMAS: The Comedy Forum" were created to reinvigorate a sense of purpose back into the site.

Short version: Blad3 Windu gave us the site's dogma, inspired a trend of mocking poor performance at Throwdowns, made us question ourselves, lead to the ban/voluntary exile of several top posters, lead to the creation of the DHS and Gitmo, and it pretty much the defining moment between early and late Bullshido.

Now Jesus you fuckers it took me forty minutes to type all that out you better read it all I swear to God.

**Abusivemelon** · Posted On: 2/05/2008 3:11pm

Originally Posted by Boyd

WARNING: I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE INTERNET FOR A WHILE
Throughout its tumultuous formative years, Bullshido/McDojo.com was a chaotic, disorganized ideological mess predominantly overrun by trolls and loudmouthed braggarts touting one of two very distinct party lines: TMA or MMA. In the early days, Bullshido didn't have go-to arguments the way it does now, it didn't have cute maxims like "train with Aliveness" or "stop crappling and seek a qualified instructor". Instead, the board was marked by a characteristic weekly deluge of threads by anonymous and high-profile posters alike, sharing piercing insight into the differences between fighting for sport and fighting for survival, and even though pretty much everyone on the board was sick of having the same weekly arguement, there was one thing we could all agree on: everyone knew what they were talking about. Even if someone was wrong in the grand scheme of things, they were assumed to be proficient in their given field. Miguksaram, a TKD/TSD instructor, may have been a terrible fighter, but at least he knew TKD. You dig?

With both feet planted heavily in the MMA camp, Blad3 Windu amassed over 4,000 posts--virtually all of them pertaining to watching MMA, or MMA vs. TMA flame threads--and was seen as one of the most prolific posters on Bullshido. Now, keep in mind that prior to the UK Throwdown there had only been a small handful of Throwdowns, and given that the attendees consisted of Bullshido All-Stars like Osiris, Wastrel, Omega, Asia, Deus, Deadpan, And Many More they were considered to be successful, and even in the absence of talent there was a definite sense of heart.

And by "heart", I mean Osiris headbutting someone in the stomach to try and crack open their guard. God bless that poor kid.

When word first came back to the board about the UK Throwdown, everyone seemed generally optimistic and pumped from a friendly meetup and exchange of skills. That is, until video started trickling out.

The first moment one loads up video of Blad3 sparring, the viewer is immediately struck by now...stereotypical Blad3 looks. He's just a pale, lanky British teenager with a shock of bright blonde hair and light freckles peppering his boyish face. He doesn't look like an MMA fighter, but in his Hunter board shorts and arbitrary MMA gloves, he looks like he spent a lot of money on his Halloween costume. And yet part of you wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, assume no one could have the audacity to go through all this trouble and not train.

Yet the video of Blad3 Windu MMA sparring part-time Aikidoka, full-time swell guy Sam Harber is universally regarded as the worst performance in any Throwdown, past, present, or future, and the fact that the video has been completely lost to the ages only adds to its sexy aura. Could Blad3 have really been that terrible? Have our memories distorted the reality of his performance?

To be honest, I personally don't remember much about the actual fight. Certain memories, like Blad3 wearing MMA gloves to what he claims was supposed to be a straight grappling match, or the Hunter shorts on a negative white belt, are particularly offputting. And I remember Blad3 shooting for a single with the same intent and ferocity of Austin Powers pretending to walk downstairs behind a couch. I remember Blad3 then sort of crawling into a crucifix like a lost kitten searching for a ripe teat from which to suckle. I remember Sam letting it go, because he did not know what a crucifix was, allowing Blad3 to lie on top of him, not guard or half guard or side control, because the position of these two bodies relative to one another did not fall under any of those categories. Blad3 grabbed Sam's body and just sort of shot his ass way up in the air, leaving at least a foot of space for Sam to reguard him. Sam does not know how to use a guard. Blad3 tries for an Americana, which he calls a "kimura", from grossly inappropriate phrases. He mounts Sam by sort of getting up and crawling on top of him. He has seen this position in UFC.

As a technical display it was laughable, but as a fight it was inexcuably bad. These weren't martial artists experiencing the thrill of combat, they were two frightened Internet nerds mutually terrified of hitting and being hit.

The fallout exploded across the thread, but as luck would have it, immediately after the Blad3 Windu fiasco the Throwdown concept exploded, and as Throwdowns began emerging all over the country, even all over the world, more and more posters previously believed to be competent were humiliating themselves on camera. Anyone here remember J-Kid? A carbon copy of Blad3. Nihilanthic? Pretty much everyone at the early Chicago Throwdowns?

The reason I've kept coming to Bullshido all these years in spite of the fact that I know I'm better than 90% of the people here is that I honestly beleive it's home to the best drama on the Internet. In the aftermath of the Blad3 Windu debacle, concerned citizens Aesopian and Shumagorath composed an essay outlining the specific problems with Bullshido's emergent "poser" culture. For the first time Bullshido saw itself as one of the problems in martial arts, the proliferation of keyboard warriors, and now the site's mission was no longer as simple as "us vs. them", but rather "consistent Alive training under a qualified instructor in all three ranges of combat vs. everything else".

Things got complicated. It wasn't just about busting obvious, high-profile guys like Ashida Kim and Frank Dux anymore. We had to keep an eye on our own ranks now, and in doing so had to establish increasingly specifc guidelines to form a concensus on what constituted a keyboard warriory and what did not. From this necessity sprang a lot of the psuedo-Thornton dogma we use today.

But there's more. Aesopian became disenchanted with the site's mission after the lukewarm response to his paper and turned into an insane troll. Shum became Gravedigger. I became LAVATORR. Semirelated drama pertaining to the Rep system caused Deadpan to give me and Shum (sorry, Shum and I) his Admin keys, letting us wreak havoc on the site. Shum and Tim were banned, I was kicked out of my account and had the password changed. Deus and Wastrel left. The site was in chaos.

Eventually Phrost stepped in and offered some carrots. Aesopian's brillaint negotiating strategy, which he relayed to me as "make a lot of outrageous demands and watch Neal fill them" lead to the creation of the DHS, and shortly thereafter, Gitmo. And though I'm not positive on this, I THINK the first divisions between "General Bullshido" and "YMAS: The Comedy Forum" were created to reinvigorate a sense of purpose back into the site.

Short version: Blad3 Windu gave us the site's dogma, inspired a trend of mocking poor performance at Throwdowns, made us question ourselves, lead to the ban/voluntary exile of several top posters, lead to the creation of the DHS and Gitmo, and it pretty much the defining moment between early and late Bullshido.

Now Jesus you fuckers it took me forty minutes to type all that out you better read it all I swear to God.

tl;dr

On another note, interesting post. Can someone make with the videos now? What with them being Bullshido history and all.

**GraveDigger** · Posted On: 2/07/2008 4:49pm

Originally Posted by Boyd

WARNING: I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE INTERNET FOR A WHILE
Throughout its tumultuous formative years, Bullshido/McDojo.com was a chaotic, disorganized ideological mess predominantly overrun by trolls and loudmouthed braggarts touting one of two very distinct party lines: TMA or MMA. In the early days, Bullshido didn't have go-to arguments the way it does now, it didn't have cute maxims like "train with Aliveness" or "stop crappling and seek a qualified instructor". Instead, the board was marked by a characteristic weekly deluge of threads by anonymous and high-profile posters alike, sharing piercing insight into the differences between fighting for sport and fighting for survival, and even though pretty much everyone on the board was sick of having the same weekly arguement, there was one thing we could all agree on: everyone knew what they were talking about. Even if someone was wrong in the grand scheme of things, they were assumed to be proficient in their given field. Miguksaram, a TKD/TSD instructor, may have been a terrible fighter, but at least he knew TKD. You dig?

With both feet planted heavily in the MMA camp, Blad3 Windu amassed over 4,000 posts--virtually all of them pertaining to watching MMA, or MMA vs. TMA flame threads--and was seen as one of the most prolific posters on Bullshido. Now, keep in mind that prior to the UK Throwdown there had only been a small handful of Throwdowns, and given that the attendees consisted of Bullshido All-Stars like Osiris, Wastrel, Omega, Asia, Deus, Deadpan, And Many More they were considered to be successful, and even in the absence of talent there was a definite sense of heart.

And by "heart", I mean Osiris headbutting someone in the stomach to try and crack open their guard. God bless that poor kid.

When word first came back to the board about the UK Throwdown, everyone seemed generally optimistic and pumped from a friendly meetup and exchange of skills. That is, until video started trickling out.

The first moment one loads up video of Blad3 sparring, the viewer is immediately struck by now...stereotypical Blad3 looks. He's just a pale, lanky British teenager with a shock of bright blonde hair and light freckles peppering his boyish face. He doesn't look like an MMA fighter, but in his Hunter board shorts and arbitrary MMA gloves, he looks like he spent a lot of money on his Halloween costume. And yet part of you wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, assume no one could have the audacity to go through all this trouble and not train.

Yet the video of Blad3 Windu MMA sparring part-time Aikidoka, full-time swell guy Sam Harber is universally regarded as the worst performance in any Throwdown, past, present, or future, and the fact that the video has been completely lost to the ages only adds to its sexy aura. Could Blad3 have really been that terrible? Have our memories distorted the reality of his performance?

To be honest, I personally don't remember much about the actual fight. Certain memories, like Blad3 wearing MMA gloves to what he claims was supposed to be a straight grappling match, or the Hunter shorts on a negative white belt, are particularly offputting. And I remember Blad3 shooting for a single with the same intent and ferocity of Austin Powers pretending to walk downstairs behind a couch. I remember Blad3 then sort of crawling into a crucifix like a lost kitten searching for a ripe teat from which to suckle. I remember Sam letting it go, because he did not know what a crucifix was, allowing Blad3 to lie on top of him, not guard or half guard or side control, because the position of these two bodies relative to one another did not fall under any of those categories. Blad3 grabbed Sam's body and just sort of shot his ass way up in the air, leaving at least a foot of space for Sam to reguard him. Sam does not know how to use a guard. Blad3 tries for an Americana, which he calls a "kimura", from grossly inappropriate phrases. He mounts Sam by sort of getting up and crawling on top of him. He has seen this position in UFC.

As a technical display it was laughable, but as a fight it was inexcuably bad. These weren't martial artists experiencing the thrill of combat, they were two frightened Internet nerds mutually terrified of hitting and being hit.

The fallout exploded across the thread, but as luck would have it, immediately after the Blad3 Windu fiasco the Throwdown concept exploded, and as Throwdowns began emerging all over the country, even all over the world, more and more posters previously believed to be competent were humiliating themselves on camera. Anyone here remember J-Kid? A carbon copy of Blad3. Nihilanthic? Pretty much everyone at the early Chicago Throwdowns?

The reason I've kept coming to Bullshido all these years in spite of the fact that I know I'm better than 90% of the people here is that I honestly beleive it's home to the best drama on the Internet. In the aftermath of the Blad3 Windu debacle, concerned citizens Aesopian and Shumagorath composed an essay outlining the specific problems with Bullshido's emergent "poser" culture. For the first time Bullshido saw itself as one of the problems in martial arts, the proliferation of keyboard warriors, and now the site's mission was no longer as simple as "us vs. them", but rather "consistent Alive training under a qualified instructor in all three ranges of combat vs. everything else".

Things got complicated. It wasn't just about busting obvious, high-profile guys like Ashida Kim and Frank Dux anymore. We had to keep an eye on our own ranks now, and in doing so had to establish increasingly specifc guidelines to form a concensus on what constituted a keyboard warriory and what did not. From this necessity sprang a lot of the psuedo-Thornton dogma we use today.

But there's more. Aesopian became disenchanted with the site's mission after the lukewarm response to his paper and turned into an insane troll. Shum became Gravedigger. I became LAVATORR. Semirelated drama pertaining to the Rep system caused Deadpan to give me and Shum (sorry, Shum and I) his Admin keys, letting us wreak havoc on the site. Shum and Tim were banned, I was kicked out of my account and had the password changed. Deus and Wastrel left. The site was in chaos.

Eventually Phrost stepped in and offered some carrots. Aesopian's brillaint negotiating strategy, which he relayed to me as "make a lot of outrageous demands and watch Neal fill them" lead to the creation of the DHS, and shortly thereafter, Gitmo. And though I'm not positive on this, I THINK the first divisions between "General Bullshido" and "YMAS: The Comedy Forum" were created to reinvigorate a sense of purpose back into the site.

Short version: Blad3 Windu gave us the site's dogma, inspired a trend of mocking poor performance at Throwdowns, made us question ourselves, lead to the ban/voluntary exile of several top posters, lead to the creation of the DHS and Gitmo, and it pretty much the defining moment between early and late Bullshido.

Now Jesus you fuckers it took me forty minutes to type all that out you better read it all I swear to God.

now see hear mr. galt i did not jsut reed ur 100-paeg speech for nuthin now wher si teh raep :5squeeze: