Respect amongst street-fighters

In my earlier days I considered myself rather the roughneck. Real typical juvenile fearless crap machismo. I had been in my share of altercations in the street and always walked out looking good and feeling great. There was one guy who I never fought, although we always wanted to. Long story short, if had met under different circumstances we probably would have gotten along just fine, but as it was, we were enemies for years - but we never fought. Of course as years go by, tempers die, (some) maturity sets in, and all beef is squashed. I ran into him last night, and we had a good talk, and he confided to me that the main reason he wanted to fight me was because he knew I was good. He said he only wanted to fight the best fighters, and for that, even though he didn't care so much for me at the time, he respected me. I thought that was awesome. I make my friends the hard way.

1,000 Punches

One of my teachers is a young man named Joe Stores. His martial arts background includes Boxing, Kali, Silat, Jun Fan Boxing and Muay Thai Kickboxing. Yesterday he called me up to see if I wanted to work out and I agreed. He showed up and we started on his daily routine: 1,000 punches. First we did the jab, then jab-cross, then jab-cross-hook-cross-uppercut-cross, then jab, then jab-cross to finish, totally 1,000 punches. I thought back to my training in Aikido, and it occured to me that other than my suburi, I never done 1,000 of anything in Aikido as a route drill. It was a nice change of pace. People talk about cross-training and using atemi, but no one is practicing atemi like boxers. When we sparred afterwards I noticed some things about how Aikido might work against a kickboxer/boxer. Boxers naturally retract their limbs to cover and strike in rapid succession. It would not be easy to catch an arm for an Aikido technique. While punching with total body weight fo maximum damage, he was never off balance, and the footwork and distancing he used was near expert. Also, boxers are more than used to getting hit and are rather fearless of it. It was his willingness to clinch and infight that I felt gave me the most opportune moments to safely apply Aikido techniques. When we were clinched and his limbs were safely controlled, I was able to apply kuzushi. At one point, from a clinch, I threw him in koshinage, and he caught himself with his hands, and while he was half standing, I punched him in his stomach and face a few times. It was a great time and an awesome learning experience.