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Today’s chalkboard (7/14/08)
By Zach Arnold | July 14, 2008
- Gumby (On the Mat): What drives me crazy (BJJ class)
- The San Diego Union-Tribune (CA): Brandon Vera’s skills start with wrestling
- The Baltimore Sun: Q & A with Brandon Vera
- The Des Moines Register (IA): Muay Thai’s popularity surges with MMA
- Sportsnet (Canada): Mark Pavelich Q & A
- Gregg Doyel (CBS Sports): Don’t let size deter you on this Top 25 MMA list
- The South Florida Sun-Sentinel: UFC faces a challenge from Affliction
- Franklin McNeil (Newark Star-Ledger): MMA fighters working to become standup guys
- Fighters Only Magazine (UK): Phil Baroni will not be pressing criminal charges
- MMA California: Rebel Fighter – a night of champions event results
- K-1 HP: Remy Bonjasky wins in Taipei
Topics: Affliction, Canada, K-1, Media, MMA, UFC, UK, Zach Arnold | 5 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Nice anti-boxing statement in the Vera article. “Boxing is way more brutal than MMA…”
Right from the mouth of Brandon Vera, who has apparently done some boxing.
Brandon Vera is usually a big moron, so that isn’t much of a suprise.
MMA fighters that have boxing experience, overwhelmingly, say that MMA is safer. Vera is not the only one making this claim (and it’s a legitimate one).
Virtually everyone in the media that I’ve heard call MMA ‘barbaric’ usually follows up their statement with “How can we allow a sport with no rules and no gloves?”, or “There shouldn’t be a sport where you can bite people!”
Brandon Vera has never boxed outside a gym, fwiw.
I read Gumby’s article a couple days ago and left this comment, but got no response. This forum is much larger so I am posting the same comment here in hope that instructors read it and leave me a response. I am a H.S. special ed. teacher who sees martial art training as one of the last fontiers that can be used to modify dispicable behavior from today’s youth. I just hope the instructors are up to the task.
I agree with you about the lack of discipline in classes. However, there is a flipside to that coin, it is also a disturbing trend that I see on the instructors part. Instructors feel that they are above discipline. Numerous times have I heard an instructor say,”I don’t discipline, that is your responsibility.” I totally disagree with that statement. The instructor is there to do two things instruct and keep their students as a whole focused. If one or two people are disrupting a class than it is the instuctor’s responsibility to set those people right. If not, the entire class suffers. That is 100% the instructor’s responsibility.
The second disturbing trend that I see is instructors who each time the class is interupted they make a broad statement directed at the whole class about discipline. I see it as poor leadership skills and a lack of discipline on the instructor’s part. Address the source of the problem not the symtoms of it. I say if you have the ability and skill to instruct a Martial Arts Class, then have the intestinal fortitude to lay down your law in the class and the backbone to inforce that law. I have left two gyms in as many years for the simple fact that the instructor did not have the ability to control the class.