I have a mild concussion, I feel spacey and I can’t see very well, now I know what it feels like to get punched properly. It was during sparring I got caught with a thudding right hook to the cheek bone. It was sweet, the kid hits hard. I was at about 40%, he was at 90% and he could hit my head, I couldn’t hit his. Still shows how much I need to work on my defence. I’m getting really confident with my kicks and my leg kick defence is really coming on. It’s just my boxing, I’m actually scared of throwing with anything like full power, so I can’t really develop past a certain point point without putting what I learn into practise in the sparring.

Anyhow good news I’ve got a new fight date 29th of April I think. Sounds pretty legit so I’ll keep you up-to date with my progress.

Stay strong amigos

Andy 

ps. biggest female fight ever from last weekend, still not sure if I’m cool with it, amazing technique though:

http://www.pancrase.org/miesha-tate-vs-ronda-rousey-strikeforce/03-04-2012/

crazy awesome fight between the best two tiny people in the ufc

http://www.pancrase.org/demetrious-johnson-vs-ian-mccall-ufc-on-fx-2/03-03-2012/

Booo-yah!

I got 2 extra stripes on my white belt! That makes it 4 now, the next step is a blue belt, should have one of those before 2013 at this rate. Maybe. Hopefully.

So with third cancellation of an amateur MMA fight, I’ll probably wind this blog back a bit. I need to get experienced and Good enough to fight a semi-pro bout. Obviously a UK promoter is more likely to have a semi-pro fight on his card with head-shots and blood, than a boring amateur one. Not sure how I’m going to go about getting one of those, but It’ll probably be quite a while so I don’t want to clog the internet up until then. Let me know what you think, if you have any ideas.

Lots of love and bjj hugs, Andrew.

PS here’s where I keep the music I make: http://andrewtregoning.moonfruit.com/

it’s actually not rubbish, I know right?!

Hmm, ..hmm. Looks like this fight on March the 3rd is not happening. It’s only open to semi-pros and pros, and also it’s moved provisionally to the end of march. *Big Internet Sigh*

So if any of you guys knows of any amateur mma action anywhere in the UK anywhere mma uk anywhere.. Then please let me know.

I’m going to have an internet session soon to try and find some events myself and bombard some promoters. I might make a training showreel or something.

This weeks training was really good, we learnt some defences to key locks and kimura’s from mount and side control - a really common submission http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZbm9UOkDLI

At MMA we had Dan again teaching us a million Muay Thai things. I love sparring. Things are starting to link together and make sense now, my striking defence still sucks although I can feel my hooks getting meatier.

Anywho.. stay strong and follow your heart, that’s what I do..

Lots of Love - Trigger Happy.

Compound bruises on my shins, something you just need to get used to apparently. Bruises on bruises, after a while the body adapts with tougher skin, calcification of the bone and even deadening of the nerves. Which is cool.

Jitz this week contained the armbar- triangle - omoplata chain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWxRG6396B8.

I realised I’d never been taught the armbar from guard, which is weird. Anyway, drilling this chain trains your muscle memory and means you’ll be able to instinctively switch to a different technique if the previous one isn’t working out.

Then in the intermediate class we drilled some more advanced omoplata techniques. Which was cool.

At MMA on Tuesday we warmed up with some football, it was Freezing, then drilled the single leg take-down. Then onto sparring; both stand-up and grappling. I absolutely love sparring. You get to test yourself against lots of different levels of fighters, bigger guys and short guys, people who have been doing it longer than you and not as long. It gives you a great picture of what you need to work on and what you need to focus on when fighting different styles and weights etc. Turns out my striking is coming on quite well, one of the main things I need to work on is angles; moving out of the way of attacks and attacking from different angles, rather than just straight on. I also need to work on counter striking; I tend to just wade in with whatever combo I can think of, rather than reading my opponent. I’m always the aggressor in my fights, I doesn’t help that I don’t really mind getting punched in head.

I did this in sparring:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMfXyPI76vM&hl

I also did this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqWXicKJ-cw

Sick training week, 2hrs of Jitz drilling half-guard sweeps. Then Muay Thai on the Tuesday, took my best mate along and we punched and kicked each other for 2hrs, learning some counters and clinch work. Rapidly becoming a well-rounded MMA beast.

Watch this sick knock-out, he’s a karate guy and the combo he uses is a left-right-right; jab cross right high kick. Which goes against what you usually have to defend (usually left-right-left-right etc), and if you watch the opponent he is completely blind to the strike. Great technique. 

http://www.pancrase.org/stephen-thompson-vs-dan-stittgen-ufc-143/02-05-2012/

the wicker gym (although it was full of hanging bags when i went there)

wicker camp reception

Had an awesome week of training but the fight today is officially not happening. Well there’s always the 3rd of March! There’s an event on the 3rd of March that I can apparently fight at, so I’ll look forward to that.

Went to jitz on Monday, did some basement boxing on Tues during the day and then mma in the evening. We did some serious muay thai for 2 hrs, where I had the pleasure of partnering up with John and we kicked and punched each other with gusto. Learned a ton of new techniques; leg and body kicks off both legs, punch and kick combos, catching body kicks, trips and also attacks when you’ve caught the kick, or your kick has been caught. I then did some sparring with no pads or gloves on with James, he nearly got me with a Barboza kick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJxgXWgHAAI and I nearly caught him with my Royce Gracie front foot ground stomp. It ended up going to the figurative judges, he figuratively won because he kicked me really hard in the side of the head at one point, cheat.

The next day I popped into the Wicker Camp - one of the UK’s top Thai boxing gyms. This place reeks of history, everything in there is colourful and wooden and worn down. It’s amazing. We did 10 rounds of bag work with exercises in between instead of rests, and the head coach Mick gave me some pointers on my guard, he actually said “you’ve got great technique”, would it be disrespectful to call him a liar? Anyway I left with my guard tightened up and my shins bruised as all hell. And I’m not going to lie, it felt good, real good.

Here’s to the 3rd of March, stay strong, Andy

watch these:

(amazing build-up videos for the fight tonight UFC on Fox 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSDZTNsjF68

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5LdzmmyqOk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0bDcU6-iIA

What’s up no0bs? How are you? I’m great! Just had an amazing MMA session at the gym. We’ve got a new striking coach Dan Hudson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg4bI4cJ2bU, yeah he’s a world class Thai boxer, stud beast freak etc. He ran us through an incredibly well structured 2 hour crash course in the basics of Maui Thai and I learnt a lot! We went over the technique of the jab, cross, two leg kicks, leg kick check and counter, cross parry and clinch and trip. Badass.

No news about the fight on the 28th, and I don’t have a good feeling about this. Not sure if it’s actually happening. I’m enjoying the hell out of training anyways.

Check out the best MMA forum on the internet: http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/