BOOKS: "The Principles of Unarmed Combat" by Mark Jacobs

At last month's The Vanishing Flame:  Burma event, I had the privilege and honor of meeting Mark Jacobs. Mark currently is a contributing editor as well as writing the monthly column "Far East" for Black Belt magazine. He had no ride to Connecticut and I volunteered to drive him.


Prior to our face-to-face meeting, we had exchanged a few emails when he was researching Phil Dunlap for his column. He came across my old archives in his internet searches and got some background on Phil. After his initial email, I thought his name rang a bell and I wasn't sure if he was the author of an article that appeared in the magazine Men's Fitness about the Dog Brothers. I asked him about it and it turns out that was his article.


Mark has a new book out, The Principles of Unarmed Combat. Copying the description from the publisher's site:

In The Principles of Unarmed Combat, Black Belt Magazine columnist Mark Jacobs breaks down the essential skills of empty-handed martial arts. Whether you train to win in the ring or survive on the street, this book will show you why some fighting skills work and why some don’t. Plus you’ll learn how to troubleshoot problem areas in your training, no matter what style you practice. 

Mark Jacobs has interviewed doctors and physicists, analyzed key scientific studies and synthesized the best available information about how to make martial arts work better. The result is a comprehensive, heavily researched guide to everything you should know about striking and grappling, offense and defense, and even the mental aspects of training. 

The Principles of Unarmed Combat is made up of over 50 chapters, organized into 10 information packed sections. You’ll get all of the topics you’d expect to find in a comprehensive guide to the fighting arts: posture, footwork, positioning, striking, kicking, takedowns and groundfighting. But unlike most how-to books, you’ll also get hard-to-find insider information on advanced topics like transitioning, fighting from the clinch, pain compliance, fight psychology, real world defense strategies and the dark side of sport fighting.

Mark Jacobs has combined his decades in the martial arts with his skills as a professional journalist to create one of the most comprehensive books ever written on the skills, techniques, strategies and tactics of unarmed combat. 

On the drive down, my training partner was napping as the event finished at 12 midnight, and his car was at my house and he would have to be awake to drive home. As a precaution, I drank a Red Bull AND a Coke Zero prior to the drive home. I was pretty sure I would not fall asleep at the wheel, but you never know. Thank goodness Mark was awake and in a chatty mood. There was one stretch where there were no lamps and it was raining pretty hard. We chatted on various topics including MMA and but of course martial arts. Everyone made it home safe. 


He offered to pay for gas and I could not and would not accept his kind offer. He had his publisher send me a review copy of his book. The book finally arrived and I will start reading it tomorrow. My review is forthcoming. Although I consider Mark a friend, my review will be objective. At a little over 350 pages and 50 chapters or so, I don't know when I will finish reading and post a review LOL.




Ordering Info


http://www.turtlepress.com/The_Principles_of_Unarmed_Combat_p/342.html

Check the link out for some sample pages as well as a Table of Contents and brief bio on Mark. Looks like Turtle has free shipping! 

Rickson Gracie: "You have to be able to live in your worst nightmare."

In the current issue of Black Belt magazine, I read an article on Rickson Gracie and his combat psychology. I typed up one part of the article for my personal notes and also to share with you. IMO, this quote is very powerful and pure gold!

I liked the writing style of the author and cannot wait for the book to be published. Although I have many books on my To Read list, when this book is available, it will jump to the top of my list! In all likelihood, I won't have a chance to train with Rickson Gracie, let alone the other 9 masters in the book, but from the article, it is clear that the author was able to get into the minds of the masters. Rickson IMO is a throwback to the warriors of old... part warrior and part philosopher. Showing my age here, but to paraphrase the old E.F. Hutton commercial, "When Rickson Gracie speaks, I listen!"

How many of us are mentally tough enough to put ourselves in a place/situation that we know will test and challenge us? It is easy to be complacent and always look to do what you are strongest or feel the most comfortable doing, but can you do as Rickson advises? Is your ego/confidence fragile? Are you mentally tough?

... Gracie talked about the importance of regular jiu-jitsu training and being put in uncomfortable situations.

"Where there's discomfort, there's fear," he said. "In these very tough positions, you're in a little piece of hell. And through this daily suffering, you learn to survive in these situations. You have to find comfort in uncomfortable situations. You have to be able to live in your worst nightmare. Jiu-jitsu puts you completely in the moment where you must have complete focus on finding a solution to the problem. This trains the mind to build that focus, to increase your awareness, your capacity to solve problems. Sometimes, you don't have to win. You cannot win. But that has nothing to do with losing."

Source
"Live In Your Worst Nightmare - The Fighting Wisdom of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu Master Rickson Gracie"
by Steven Abood
Black Belt
January 2012
pg 65


Note

Rickson is one of 10 masters author Steven Abood interviewed and is writing about in his upcoming book "Ten Jiu-jitsu Masters". It's a book that chronicles the life stories and life lessons he learned form a decade of training under the greatest masters of our time. Abood posts as "FatBuddha" on http://www.mixedmartialarts.com.

11/11/11 11:11pm/Happy Veteran's Day/Jan 2012 Black Belt magazine heads-up

Just missed posting on this magical date and time. LOL @ me

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To all veterans, Happy Veteran's Day!

This one is for you Grandpa. He served America during World War 2.


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Check out the Jan 2012 Black Belt magazine, there's an interesting column by Mark Jacobs called Far East... this month's profile/column is on Master Zulfi Ahmed. He learned bando from a Pakistani master as well as Dr. Gyi. Talks about his childhood and traveling all over learning many other styles including Kushti.

This issue of Black Belt Magazine also contains:

 - 2 MMA Champions...2 MMA Organizations...1 Exclusive Interview (UFC Lightweight champion Frankie Edgar and Bellator Lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez)

 - Go Inside the Mind of BJJ Legend Rickson Gracie - article by Steven Abood - this was pretty interesting. Love these types of articles where the author/interviewer are able to get into the minds of their subjects, in this specific instance, the great Rickson Gracie!

 - Learn to Develop More Explosive Karate Kicks and Punches - Live In Training: Chinese Martial Arts Done Right in Northern California - about Dr. Yang Jwing-ming.


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For more information on Master Zulfi, please check out his site:

http://bushiban.com/

IN MEMORY OF: Smokin' Joe Frazier (January 12, 1944 – November 7, 2011)

Copied and pasted from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/sports/joe-frazier-ex-heavyweight-champ-dies-at-67.html:

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November 7, 2011

Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Joe Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century.

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Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion whose furious and intensely personal fights with a taunting Muhammad Ali endure as an epic rivalry in boxing history, died Monday night at his home in Philadelphia. He was 67.

His business representative, Leslie Wolff, said the cause was liver cancer. An announcement over the weekend that Frazier had received the diagnosis in late September and had been moved to hospice care early this month prompted an outpouring of tributes and messages of support.

Known as Smokin’ Joe, Frazier stalked his opponents around the ring with a crouching, relentless attack — his head low and bobbing, his broad, powerful shoulders hunched — as he bore down on them with an onslaught of withering jabs and crushing body blows, setting them up for his devastating left hook.

It was an overpowering modus operandi that led to versions of the heavyweight crown from 1968 to 1973. Frazier won 32 fights in all, 27 by knockouts, losing four times — twice to Ali in furious bouts and twice to George Foreman. He also recorded one draw.

A slugger who weathered repeated blows to the head while he delivered punishment, Frazier proved a formidable figure. But his career was defined by his rivalry with Ali, who ridiculed him as a black man in the guise of a Great White Hope. Frazier detested him.

Ali vs. Frazier was a study in contrasts. Ali: tall and handsome, a wit given to spouting poetry, a magnetic figure who drew adulation and denigration alike, the one for his prowess and outsize personality, the other for his antiwar views and Black Power embrace of Islam. Frazier: a bull-like man of few words with a blue-collar image and a glowering visage who in so many ways could be on an equal footing with his rival only in the ring.

Ali proclaimed, “I am the greatest” and he preened how he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Frazier had no inclination for oratorical bravado. “Work is the only meanin’ I’ve ever known,” he told Playboy in 1973. “Like the man in the song says, I just gotta keep on keepin’ on.”

Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century. Ali scored a 12-round decision over Frazier at the Garden in a nontitle bout in January 1974. Then came the Thrilla in Manila championship bout, in October 1975, regarded as one of the greatest fights in boxing history. It ended when a battered Frazier, one eye swollen shut, did not come out to face Ali for the 15th round.

The Ali-Frazier battles played out at a time when the heavyweight boxing champion was far more celebrated than he is today, a figure who could stand alone in the spotlight a decade before an alphabet soup of boxing sanctioning bodies arose, making it difficult for the average fan to figure out just who held what title.

The rivalry was also given a political and social cast. Many viewed the Ali-Frazier matches as a snapshot of the struggles of the 1960s. Ali, an adherent of the Nation of Islam who had changed his name from Cassius Clay, came to represent rising black anger in America and opposition to the Vietnam War. Frazier voiced no political views, but he was nonetheless depicted, to his consternation, as the favorite of the establishment. Ali called him ignorant, likened him to a gorilla and said his black supporters were Uncle Toms.

“Frazier had become the white man’s fighter, Mr. Charley was rooting for Frazier, and that meant blacks were boycotting him in their heart,” Norman Mailer wrote in Life magazine after the first Ali-Frazier bout.

Frazier, wrote Mailer, was “twice as black as Clay and half as handsome,” with “the rugged decent life-worked face of a man who had labored in the pits all his life.”

Frazier could never match Ali’s charisma or his gift for the provocative quote. He was essentially a man devoted to a brutal craft, willing to give countless hours to his spartan training-camp routine and unsparing of his body inside the ring.

“The way I fight, it’s not me beatin’ the man: I make the man whip himself,” Frazier told Playboy. “Because I stay close to him. He can’t get out the way.” He added: “Before he knows it — whew! — he’s tired. And he can’t pick up his second wind because I’m right back on him again.”

In his autobiography, “Smokin’ Joe,” written with Phil Berger, Frazier said his first trainer, Yank Durham, had given him his nickname. It was, he said, “a name that had come from what Yank used to say in the dressing room before sending me out to fight: ‘Go out there, goddammit, and make smoke come from those gloves.’ “

Foreman knocked out Frazier twice but said he had never lost his respect for him. “Joe Frazier would come out smoking,” Foreman told ESPN. “If you hit him, he liked it. If you knocked him down, you only made him mad.”

Durham said he saw a fire always smoldering in Frazier. “I’ve had plenty of other boxers with more raw talent,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 1970, “but none with more dedication and strength.”
Ali himself was conciliatory when Frazier’s battle with cancer became publicly known. “My family and I are keeping Joe and his family in our daily prayers,” Ali said in his statement over the weekend. “Joe has a lot of friends pulling for him, and I’m one of them.”

And when word reached him that Frazier had died, Ali, in another statement, said: “The world has lost a great champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration.”

Billy Joe Frazier was born on Jan. 12, 1944, in Laurel Bay, S.C., the youngest of 12 children. His father, Rubin, and his mother, Dolly, worked in the fields, and the youngster known as Billy Boy dropped out of school at 13. He dreamed of becoming a boxing champion, throwing his first punches at burlap sacks he stuffed with moss and leaves, pretending to be Joe Louis or Ezzard Charles or Archie Moore.

At 15, Frazier went to New York to live with a brother. A year later he moved to Philadelphia, taking a job in a slaughterhouse. At times he battered sides of beef, using them as a punching bag to work out, the kind of scene used by Slyvester Stallone in the film “Rocky,” though Stallone said that he drew on the life of the heavyweight contender Chuck Wepner in developing the Rocky character.

Durham discovered Frazier boxing to lose weight at a Police Athletic League gym in Philadelphia. Under Durham’s guidance, Frazier captured a Golden Gloves championship and won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

He turned pro in August 1965, with financial backing from businessmen calling themselves the Cloverlay Group (from cloverleaf, for good luck, and overlay, a betting term signifying good odds). He won his first 11 bouts by knockouts. By winter 1968, his record was 21-0.

A year before Frazier’s pro debut, Cassius Clay won the heavyweight championship in a huge upset of Sonny Liston. Soon afterward, affirming his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam, he became Muhammad Ali. In April 1967, having proclaimed, “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong,” Ali refused to be drafted, claiming conscientious objector status. Boxing commissions stripped him of his title, and he was convicted of evading the draft.

An eight-man elimination tournament was held to determine a World Boxing Association champion to replace Ali. Frazier refused to participate when his financial backers objected to the contract terms for the tournament, and Jimmy Ellis took the crown.

But in March 1968, Frazier won the version of the heavyweight title recognized by New York and a few other states, defeating Buster Mathis with an 11th-round technical knockout. He took the W.B.A. title in February 1970, stopping Ellis, who did not come out for the fifth round.

In the summer of 1970, Ali won a court battle to regain his boxing license, then knocked out the contenders Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena. The stage was set for an Ali-Frazier showdown, a matchup of unbeaten fighters, on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden.

Each man was guaranteed $2.5 million, the biggest boxing payday ever. Frank Sinatra was at ringside taking photos for Life magazine. The former heavyweight champion Joe Louis received a huge ovation. Hubert H. Humphrey, back in the Senate after serving as vice president, sat two rows in front of the Irish political activist Bernadette Devlin, who shouted, “Ali, Ali,” her left fist held high. An estimated 300 million watched on television worldwide, and the gate of $1.35 million set a record for an indoor bout.

Frazier, at 5 feet 11 1/2 inches and 205 pounds, gave up three inches in height and nearly seven inches in reach to Ali, but he was a 6-to-5 betting favorite. Just before the fighters received their instructions from the referee, Ali, displaying his arrogance of old, twice touched Frazier’s shoulders as he whirled around the ring. Frazier just glared at him.

Frazier wore Ali down with blows to the body while moving underneath Ali’s jabs. In the 15th round, Frazier unleashed his famed left hook, catching Ali on the jaw and flooring him for a count of 4, only the third time Ali had been knocked down. Ali held on, but Frazier won a unanimous decision.

Frazier declared, “I always knew who the champ was.”

Frazier continued to bristle over Ali’s taunting. “I’ve seen pictures of him in cars with white guys, huggin’ ‘em and havin’ fun,” Frazier told Sport magazine two months after the fight. “Then he go call me an Uncle Tom. Don’t say, ‘I hate the white man,’ then go to the white man for help.”

For Frazier, 1971 was truly triumphant. He bought a 368-acre estate called Brewton Plantation near his boyhood home and became the first black man since Reconstruction to address the South Carolina Legislature. Ali gained vindication in June 1971 when the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction for draft evasion.

Frazier defended his title against two journeymen, Terry Daniels and Ron Stander, but Foreman took his championship away on Jan. 22, 1973, knocking him down six times in their bout in Kingston, Jamaica, before the referee stopped the fight in the second round.

Frazier met Ali again in a nontitle bout at the Garden on Jan. 28, 1974. Frazier kept boring in and complained that Ali was holding in the clinches, but Ali scored with flurries of punches and won a unanimous 12-round decision.

Ali won back the heavyweight title in October 1974, knocking out Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire — the celebrated Rumble in the Jungle. Frazier went on to knock out Quarry and Ellis, setting up his third match, and second title fight, with Ali: the Thrilla in Manila, on Oct. 1, 1975.

In what became the most brutal Ali-Frazier battle, the fight was held at the Philippine Coliseum at Quezon City, outside the country’s capital, Manila. The conditions were sweltering, with hot lights overpowering the air-conditioning.

Ali, almost a 2-to-1 betting favorite in the United States, won the early rounds, largely remaining flat-footed in place of his familiar dancing style. Before Round 3 he blew kisses to President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, in the crowd of about 25,000.

But in the fourth round, Ali’s pace slowed while Frazier began to gain momentum. Chants of “Frazier, Frazier” filled the arena by the fifth round, and the crowd seemed to favor him as the fight moved along, a contrast to Ali’s usually enjoying the fans’ plaudits.

Frazier took command in the middle rounds. Then Ali came back on weary legs, unleashing a flurry of punches to Frazier’s face in the 12th round. He knocked out Frazier’s mouthpiece in the 13th round, then sent him stumbling backward with a straight right hand.

Ali jolted Frazier with left-right combinations late in the 14th round. Frazier had already lost most of the vision in his left eye from a cataract, and his right eye was puffed and shut from Ali’s blows.
Eddie Futch, a renowned trainer working Frazier’s corner, asked the referee to end the bout. When it was stopped, Ali was ahead on the scorecards of the referee and two judges. “It’s the closest I’ve come to death,” Ali said.

Frazier returned to the ring nine months later, in June 1976, to face Foreman at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Foreman stopped him on a technical knockout in the fifth round. Frazier then announced his retirement. He was 32.

He later managed his eldest son, Marvis, a heavyweight. In December 1981 he returned to the ring to fight a journeyman named Jumbo Cummings, fought to a draw, then retired for good, tending to investments from his home in Philadelphia.

Both Frazier and Ali had daughters who took up boxing, and in June 2001 it was Ali-Frazier IV when Frazier’s daughter Jacqui Frazier-Lyde fought Ali’s daughter Laila Ali at a casino in Vernon, N.Y. Like their fathers in their first fight, both were unbeaten. Laila Ali won on a decision. Joe Frazier was in the crowd of 6,500, but Muhammad Ali, impaired by Parkinson’s syndrome, was not.

In addition to his son Marvis and his daughter Jacqui, Frazier is survived by his sons Hector, Joseph Rubin, Joseph Jordan, Brandon Marcus and Derek Dennis; his daughters Weatta, Jo-Netta, Renae and Natasha, and a sister. His marriage to his wife, Florence, ended in divorce.

Long after his fighting days were over, Frazier retained his enmity for Ali. But in March 2001, the 30th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier bout, Ali told The New York Times: “I said a lot of things in the heat of the moment that I shouldn’t have said. Called him names I shouldn’t have called him. I apologize for that. I’m sorry. It was all meant to promote the fight.”

Asked for a response, Frazier said: “We have to embrace each other. It’s time to talk and get together. Life’s too short.”

Fascination with the Ali-Frazier saga has endured.

After a 2008 presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, the Republican media consultant Stuart Stevens said that McCain should concentrate on selling himself to America rather than criticizing Obama. Stevens’s prescription: “More Ali and less Joe Frazier.”

Frazier’s true feelings toward Ali in his final years seemed murky.

The 2009 British documentary “Thrilla in Manila,” shown in the United States on HBO, depicted Frazier watching a film of the fight from his apartment above the gym he ran in Philadelphia.

“He’s a good-time guy,” John Dower, the director of “Thrilla in Manila,” told The Times. “But he’s angry about Ali.”

In March 2011, however, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the first Ali-Frazier fight, Frazier said he was willing to put the enmity behind him.

“I forgave him for all the accusations he made over the years,” The Daily News quoted Frazier as saying. “I hope he’s doing fine. I’d love to see him.”

But as Frazier once told The Times: “Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But who would he have been without me?”

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Some links:

• Official site
• Boxing record at BoxRec
• Wiki page

RIP Champ

The Vanishing Flame: Burma - Saturday, October 1, 2011

Been jammed at home, been wanting to put this up earlier...

Copied from Real Art's The Vanishing Flame: Burma Facebook page:

One Night only, Saturday, October 1, 2011

RAW Teaser from Vanishing Flame on Vimeo.

... The Vanishing Flame series by filmmaker Vincent Giordano is a twenty-year investigative journey into the hidden martial traditions of Southeast Asia and India. This special presentation focuses on the martial traditions of Burma exploring the rich ethnic diversity and cultural heritage woven within the ancient martial traditions.

The evening will include a series of short films, followed by a live discussion with a panel of experts highlighting not only the physical techniques but also the deeply spiritual roots of the traditional martial arts.

Special Guests:
Burmese Grandmaster Maung Gyi, Ph.D.
Master Zulfi Ahmed
Master Mary Mester
Camus Celli

"Perhaps most interesting was his piece on the rare Tiger Spirit Dancers Of Myanmar (formerly Burma) engaging in a ritual that supposedly infuses them with the spirit of the beast. The practice is becoming increasingly rare because it's frowned on by the country's authoritarian rulers…the footage made for a unique, colorful look into a nearly extinct cultural tradition."- Mark Jacobs, Black Belt Magazine

(2011, Burma/USA, 70 mins)

Please visit Real Art's The Vanishing Flame: Burma Facebook page or http://www.realartways.org/ for directions or more info.

The special guests should make this night an especially memorable event... a Who's Who of Bando and the Martial Arts in general. Couldn't make the previous event, trying to make it to his one. Enjoy!

The Vanishing Flame: A Filmmaker’s Journey to Document the Endangered Martial Arts of Asia

Screening and Live Event hosted by The Museum of the Moving Image

Sunday, March 20, 1:00 p.m.

35 Avenue at 37 Street
Astoria, NY 11106

Over the past two decades, New York filmmaker Vincent Giordano has traveled throughout Southeast Asia documenting martial arts masters whose unique styles and practices are on the verge of extinction. This journey has taken him to India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Giordano will talk about his journey and mission with Warrington Hudlin, Museum trustee and Fist and Sword series curator. The program will include rare public appearances by some very special surprise guests, and the talk will be highlighted by the screening of Giordano’s footage of endangered Asian martial arts and their last master practitioners.

Following the screening, Vincent Giordano will participate in a DVD-signing in the Museum Store.

Free with Museum admission.

This is an exciting opportunity to meet Vincent Giordano and learn more about his research projects into the dying Southeast Asian martial arts. If you are a member of the Vanishing Flame emailing list, you know about the upcoming book, The Vanishing Flame. For those that don't, the book will be about the dying bareknuckle arts of Southeast Asia. Vincent Giordano has shared some of his research via his detailed email accounts of his trips as well as footage of various styles/arts/fights on dvd to list members only. The Village of the Keris dvd which I reviewed here was a commercial dvd. The members only dvd's are not sold as commercial dvd's, therefore, it's usually no-frills but each dvd are nominally priced compared to commercial dvd's.

Wonder who the surprise guests will be? This may be a veritable Who's Who in attendance. I am so psyched! Anyone going?





Copied from http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2011/03/20/detail/the-vanishing-flame-a-filmmakers-journey-to-document-the-endangered-martial-arts-of-asia

REVIEW: “Village of the Keris” DVD

When I think “Thailand martial arts”, Muay Thai, Krabi Krabong and the various bareknuckle styles comes to mind. Little did I know that in the Southern region of Thailand, Silat is practiced instead of the indigenous Thai arts. In the “Village of the Keris” DVD, some of the Sila (Thai Silat) as practiced in Southern Thailand are demonstrated from the various lineages.

The meat of the DVD has Guru Atabu instructing on the making of the Keris as well as a form and application. Like Muay Thai’s 1-2-Round Kick, the “Village of the Keris” DVD is a good combination of overview, history, and technique. Excellent production values and good information makes this a good DVD. I highly recommend the “Village of the Keris” DVD to anyone with interest in Silat, Keris, Thai arts, as well as to any martial artists who contemplate travelling to different countries to train from the source.

For ordering, please go to http://www.thaikris.com/.