Day 75

I really want to get a countdown timer until the worlds. But I have not found a simple, easy method to do it and I'm not spending two or three evenings learning how to insert one using geeky programming. Essentially though at the time you are reading this its 68 days 14 hours 17 minutes 3.28 seconds, until the start of the IBJJF world championships. Even if you come back later it will still be that long, website based countdown timer not in my skill set, creating a hole is fabric of space and time, easy.

So I've kept this very much on the down low, but I didn't even go to the Abu Dhabi trials in London (even though I entered) as my arm was still injured. My elbow is still hurting, it's been 3 weeks now without training. I didn't decide until Friday, but I really hope to compete at the British open (you will notice they have a cool countdown timer, making two things clear, 1. I'm a blatant idea thief, 2. I'm not very good at it) and I knew my chances of winning the absolute and getting a ticket to Abu Dhabi were very low, conversely my chances of re-injuring my still frail elbow in the first round of my division were extremely high, so I sacked it off. Interested to see the results. Watched a bit of the free Pan-Am's. I would say the commentary was a bit dull. I think they assumed that everyone who had bothered to sign up and watch the feed was already familiar with BJJ, which was probably true BUT I think intelligent and interesting commentary is essential to any sport. Take football, for vast periods it is just 11 men trying to kick a ball to one another while another 11 men try and steal the ball, this is interspersed with moments of interest (not a great foot the ball fan but will watch highlights) and good commentary will keep the non-hardcore fan interested while the action has lulled. Now I think we will all agree that BJJ matches can re-define 'lull', in fact some are positively becalmed, with very little noteworthy action from start to finish. Regularly there was just silence as we watched two Black belts recover breath and consider pass/sweeps/submissions, but essentially not do anything. It would be good at this point to analyse what has just happening, what the competitors are both aiming to do. I'm not suggesting a Joe Rogan (I love rubber guard and Eddie Bravo) / Mike Goldberg (I still don't know what BJJ is) watered down explanations of a guard pass to UFC fans. But a good explanation of some techniques, where probably a white/blue/purple will understand the principle but not catch the details. In fact I think Joe Rogan would probably be better because at least he will explain what he thinks the fighter is trying to do rather than just sitting in silence. Errr, but THANKS budovidoes.com for putting Saturday on for free. I appreciated it.

This weekend I managed to get two Gi's! One was a replacement for my Tatami Nova (cheap 'n shit as they call it on the mats) Gi. While it was very easily ripped, they were aware of this issue with the weave, have changed old weave and are offering free exchanges for people who had the old Nova Gi the new Nova goes by the name cheap 'n not so shit). Unfortunately I noticed that for some reason I got an A2 when really, yes A2 is the perfect size for me to show off the guns? But with shrinkage I should be getting an A3, so my old Nova looked ridiculous on me. I asked for them to exchange it for an A3, which they didn't (and I don't blame them for this), so now I'm trying to sell this gi (A2 black £55 incredible discount).
And the other Gi was the old Black Eagle Predator, that I managed to get cheaply in their last stock sale. This Gi was A3.5 because they didn't have A3 left, so it's incredibly baggy, people will laugh at me, and I'm not even sure if I'll get away with the Gi checks, but I'm going to wash it and hope it shrinks. I have now, by pure chance, only really owned Gi's made by British firms (2x Black Eagle, 1x Tatami) and I'm going to pretend from this point forward that this was a concious decision from the get go and will now only buy British Gi's, as they are all bloody made in Pakistan anyway!
Interestingly, I received a free gift with my Gi from Black Eagle. The gift is not interesting, I don't even know what it is, that's the most interesting thing about it... if you follow. So I present to you the free gift!

So I'm open to suggestions but please no one say a key ring, I have eyes. I thought it might have something to do with Gi checks, my girlfriend has suggested a dipstick for... well I won't go into that. Maybe some sort of miniature nun-chuck? It has Taiwan engraved on the centre. Well I would say thank you for the free gift, but really I would quite like to know what it is, how much it cost, and surely they could have made something worth while, like a key ring saying black eagle or jiu-jitsu or literally anything other than a metallic golden rod with circumferential grooves in it.

After much delay here is my final against Morritz, mark two. My penultimate fight for March 2011.
I'm just going to have to link it. Please don't go there if you are trying to get a competitive edge over Morritz. (If you're trying to get a competitive edge over me just play deep half guard)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clhjfg9zsMs