kidspatula's competition thread

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 3/15/2009 9:52pm

War of Heroes 2 in Santa Clara California, February 21st 2009

Round 1 YouTube - Jen rnd 1

Round 2 YouTube - Jen rnd 2

Round 3 YouTube - Jen rnd 3

**Whacker** · Posted On: 5/08/2009 8:06pm

Cool, good fight! I'm guessing you won? I've got about 70-80 lbs on you and I bet you'd beat my butt. Only thing that kinda caught my eye is your balance could use some attention. It's not bad but I did see some spots where your body position was significantly off center. Is this "Jen" the #13 Jennifer Nguyen on the WIKBA site? Also, where the hell did you get the nickname "kid spatula?"

**Kintanon** · Posted On: 5/08/2009 9:13pm

Yes, that is Jen Nguyen that KidS is splattering all over the ring in a 3 round massacre.

Didn't you have some other comp vids Kid?

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 5/17/2009 2:11pm

Originally Posted by Whacker

Cool, good fight! I'm guessing you won? I've got about 70-80 lbs on you and I bet you'd beat my butt. Only thing that kinda caught my eye is your balance could use some attention. It's not bad but I did see some spots where your body position was significantly off center. Is this "Jen" the #13 Jennifer Nguyen on the WIKBA site? Also, where the hell did you get the nickname "kid spatula?"

Yeah, I got overly excited so my feet were kinda all over the place. I've got quite a few gripes about things I did during this fight. July 25th-27th I'll be trying to show some improvement over this fight :) And yeah, that's Jennifer Nguyen.

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 5/17/2009 2:13pm

Originally Posted by Kintanon

Didn't you have some other comp vids Kid?

Yeah but they're old and I sucked more back then so I don't care to post them :P I'll be making a bunch of new competition videos this summer though.

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 7/27/2009 8:54am

2009 IKF WC Prelim bout vs Tecia Torres

YouTube - Ash IKF 01

edit: it seems that the embedded video is at a much crappier frame rate than the video on youtube (at least it is for me) so to watch it in higher quality, click on the video and watch it at youtube.

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 7/27/2009 9:05am

Interesting fight. Bad decision IMO.

Comments:

Your composure is looking great... you are relaxed and present which is teh g00d. That girl was obviously not a Thaiboxer. She fights like a Tiger Schulmann fighter. I would have been much more aggressive about the clinch. That type of fighter tends to have a gaping hole in their game in that dept.

What gym was she fighting out of? Her side kick SUCKS. Weak.

I would have given it to you, but its on you to stop your man (girl).

Good job :)

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 7/27/2009 9:50am

Thanks WW!

There are a lot of things I wish I'd done differently with this both leading up to and during the fight. I didn't eat properly the day of and I think the 4lb water weight cut which I'm not used to probably contributed to my low energy levels.

Because of this I felt very slow and lacked any of the usual explosiveness I have during sparring. Right off the bat I got over eager, thew some off balanced shots which she evaded easily and that set the tone for the rest of my striking through out the fight. I took a few counter side kicks and missed some with some ugly punches which really wrecked my confidence and my legs felt weak and thus I had no real footwork and found myself slowly plodding around the ring.

She was quick and active and an evasive southpaw, which I had a hard time adjusting to. I found myself too wary to engage as actively as I wanted to because of the problems I had early on and spent too much time stalking her around the ring.

Reviewing the video I see lots of things that I could have done differently to solidify the decision in my favor, so it's a learning experience either way. I'm really just disappointed I wasn't able to continue and fight 2 more times that weekend to get all the ring time this weekend that I was planning on getting.

Next time I need to spar more leading up to my fights. I've been doing a fair amount of cardio work, and so I had no real trouble with my cardio, but I've been doing virtually no sparring in the past bunch of weeks. I'd actually gotten pretty good at dealing with side kickers (side kicks have always been a weakness of mine) since I was sparring regularly against TKD and karate background people, but now it's been almost a month since I've sparred with any of them and about a month since I've done any real ring sparring.

Also next time I will make sure to eat properly leading up to my fight. For my fight in California I was making sure to be consistently eating throughout the day (granola, nuts, dried banana) and all the way leading up to about 30 minutes before my fight (where I ate a Cliff bar) and my energy levels were right on. This time I had a granola bar early in the morning around 6:30am, then half a PB&J sandwich about an hour before my fight which I think was some time around noon. The morning of my fight I felt strong and confident, but the warm up pad work I did maybe 10 minutes out I felt weak and had a hard time focusing.

I also am planning on doing practice weight cuts on a regular basis, maybe once a month, to get used to dropping water weight so that an improper cut, or my body simply not used to the cut, doesn't have an effect on my performance next time I do it.

In any case, I have some chances to show improvement relatively soon so I can take this experience and apply it to make sure I do better.

**Matt Phillips** · Posted On: 7/27/2009 10:10am

Do you remember which gym she was fighting out of? Her mobility was great, I bet her straight boxing is decent too. I was not overly impressed with her side kick. Did they have any zip on them? She was landing them, but as I said before, they looked weak IMO.

Next time you fight, you should come to Cambridge and train at Redline again. There are a few girls here who would be excellent sparing partners for ya.

Props again :)

**Torakaka** · Posted On: 7/27/2009 11:42am

Originally Posted by War Wheel

Do you remember which gym she was fighting out of? Her mobility was great, I bet her straight boxing is decent too. I was not overly impressed with her side kick. Did they have any zip on them? She was landing them, but as I said before, they looked weak IMO.

Next time you fight, you should come to Cambridge and train at Redline again. There are a few girls here who would be excellent sparing partners for ya.

Props again :)

Don't know what gym she trains out of. He actually came and talked to me after Tecia's second fight to tell me I was the toughest opponent she's fought, which was pretty cool.

Her side kicks were enough to stop my forward motion, though they didn't have any real drive through so pretty un-damaging. Her combinations looked pretty sharp when I watched her hit pads and she landed some decent combos on her other two opponents.

If I'm ever in the area again I'll definitely see about hooking up with you guys for some sparring :)