NAGA Miami - Results/Review

**GoldenJonas** · Posted On: 10/28/2006 11:40pm

Ok, I didn't win a friggen sword, but I'm hooked on competing.

Five fights in total. I took third in No-Gi (beginner heavy weight) and fourth in Gi (white belt heavy weight).

My wife managed to get my no-gi matches on tape and once I figure out how to put them on youtube I'll post the links here for dissection.

I will rip apart my fights, some good, some bad, a lot to work on, in my log. However, for this general post, I would like to say that for a martial arts tournament, NAGA, and I'd be willing to say grappling tournaments in general, are FAR better for the state of martial arts than your typical point sparring form LARPing tourney.

This is my first "grappling" tournament. I have been to a total of 4 point sparring, musical weapons forms, etc...tournaments. Here is what I noticed. At the latter, there is always a handful of "sensie/shihans/soke/sifu", whatever, who dawn their respective "pimped out" gi's with their obnoxiously stripped belts and fat bodies who walk around like they are the toughest sons-a-bitches on the planet. At the former, you have a large group of athletes, ATHLETES, who respect each other for having the BALLS to put it on the line and get on the mat, and whose respective instructors ALSO GET ON THE MAT and let it hang. Win or lose, the matches end with a hand shake and you make acquaintances who often sit ringside and cheer you on and try to help coach you through your other matches.

In the latter, you always have a handful of guy and girl "upper" belts listening to their respective MP3 players throwing chain side kicks in the air like they are bad asses and generally walk around with their chests puffed out like they are the second coming of Ernie Reyes. At the former, your get more experienced purple, brown, and even black belts, who will come up to you after a match and say "good job, man", "I noticed you where trying to do an XYZ, next time try this set-up for it."

Granted, each of these types of MA tournaments have some good participants and some bad. However, while I know there MUST be some assholes (assholes are everywhere) at grappling tourneys, I didn't notice any today.

Grappling, Judo, MMA, Muay Thai, Boxing, etc...any live fully resistant competition or tournament is far better to show the effectiveness of what you sweat every day as opposed to performing a back flip spinning kick in the air with a silver bow staff to "Eye of the Tiger". Needless to say, I'm hooked, and I WILL be competing again...as soon as I make a few adjustments to my game.

NAGA runs a top notch tournament. There were 10 rings with matches going on throughout the day from 11:30am through approximately 5:30pm. The kids divisions were amazing to watch. Some of these kids, AS YOUNG AS 4 YEARS OLD, got on the mat and threw down. The real young kids were "non submission" matches, understandably so. The superfights were awesome and the advanced (brown/black) matches were technical wonders to watch.

You get a spattering of MMA celebs that come and go. I got my pic taken with Jeff Monson and saw one of the guys from this seasons TUF there.

The worst part is the waiting. I weighted in at 10:00am (204lbs DAMNIT!!!) and then sat until about 3:00pm until my no-gi division went off. However, given that there were over 700 competitors the wait was probably unaviodable. Once your division starts you may have about 5-10 minutes between matches to recover if you advance. My gi division went off at about 4:45pm.

Overall it was a GREAT experience and I learned a lot. I will be back after I make my adjustments.

**CanucKyokushin** · Posted On: 10/28/2006 11:49pm

Did you give yourself a break and go to the can?

**GoldenJonas** · Posted On: 10/29/2006 12:23am

no, I peed in my empty poweraid bottles.

**Pandinha** · Posted On: 10/29/2006 1:09am

Sorry I couldn't get down there, sounds like you got an awesome experience from it.

I'm looking forward to joining in next year.

**weechey** · Posted On: 10/29/2006 2:43am

In some of the TKD tournaments I went to it wasn't unusual to weigh in at 8am and not fight until 6pm or later. What you describe sounds infinitely better. Oh, and TKD tournaments are full of people who think they're badasses when they probably wouldn't last more than a minute against a junior grappler. Hence no more TKD tournaments for me...but I can't wait to go to my first grappling tournament.

**Teh El Macho** · Posted On: 10/29/2006 9:21am

I had to leave before GJ started his fights, but I had a chance to hang around a little bit. It was a nice event, and even more of a motivation to get ready in a year so that I can compete as well :)

Too bad I couldn't take a clip of your fights man. Fortunately you wife filmed them.
Golden, BTW, you can create a youtube group specific to your clips. Then you can give a link to the group containing the clips rather than handing out separate links to each clip. It's a lot easier (shoot me a PM if you have any questions on this.)

I took several clips, but unfortunately, I didn't get the chance take more as I forgot to bring an additional flash card for my camera. In fact, I ended up having to delete some of the clips. I focused on keeping clips from the kiddie's divisions (since I want to write something about this - MA and kids you know). However, I did keep two adult contests, one of which was very good and entertaining to watch IMO.

You can watch them all by checking my NAGA Miami 2006 youtube group, courtesy of El Macho :P

Plus I took a few pics as well, but not that many since I ran out of memory in my camera (next time I'll bring plenty of flash cards.) In essence, this was a nice event. Except for the random asshole here and there, everyone else was very jovial, professional and courteuos. I hope I can participate next year as well.

**pauli** · Posted On: 10/29/2006 10:18am

so you went to naga just to take pictures of young children? <_< >_>

oh, any sign of captain NEEBAAAH?

**Teh El Macho** · Posted On: 10/29/2006 10:42am

I knew at least one of you will make that joke. Perps!!! :tongue6:

Who's captain neebaaah???? (*** I have a deep filling a missing a insider's joke here ***)