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Demian Maia does it again! Watch the video below:

UFC 95 Chael Sonnen vs Demian Maia

MMA Fighter Mike Easton: “All D.C.’d Up”

(Read the Washington Post Story here :http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2009/02/mma_fighter_mike_easton_all_dc.html#more)

I don’t usually write about MMA fighters in this space. But I’ll make an exception for a guy who lives about two miles from my house; who trains to go-go music (Rare Essence and Junkyard Band!), roots for the Caps and D.C. United and met his trainer at a Cluck-U Chicken in P.G. County; whose father went to Howard and teaches visual art at Duke Ellington; and who plans to enter his fight this weekend to the strains of “Bustin’ Loose.”

“It’s Chuck Brown, baby,” Mike Easton explained to me over the phone. “It’s the Godfather of Go-Go. Since we’re fighting in D.C., I had to give the fans some Chuck Brown. Had to.”

The fight isn’t technically in D.C., but it’s close enough. Easton’s biggest opportunity to date will happen Saturday night at the Patriot Center, a meeting with former World Extreme Cagefighting bantamweight champion Chase Beebe. Easton, 5-1 as a pro, will be introduced out of Temple Hills, but he’s “all D.C.’ed up,” as he put it, from growing up in Anacostia to moving near H.D. Woodson to childhood boxing lessons with his father at Orr Elementary.

“Every time I dropped my hands, he would slap me in the face; not a hard slap, but a little slap,” said Easton, whose fight headlines the 10-fight Ultimate Warrior Challenge card. “I remember crying and boo-hooing. He was like, ‘Regardless of what’s going on around you, if you stay calm you can see your way out of any situation.’…I liked that feeling.”

Easton spent years learning Tae Kwon Do, but that, he said, “was like playing tag. It wasn’t no real contact. And I like contact.”

Then he met Master Lloyd Irvin in that P.G. chicken shop, noticed Irvin’s cauliflower ears, and began talking about mixed martial arts. Easton visited Irvin’s gym and was hooked, went 5-0-1 as an amateur and didn’t lose as a pro until a 2007 fight against Reynaldo Duarte. The Brazilian threw a kick, which Easton thought was heading toward his ribs; he misjudged the angle and Duarte’s shin crashed into his elbow. As both men went to the ground, Easton realized something was wrong.

“My arm just flopped backward,” Easton remembered. “I’m having a full-blown conversation with my coach while this guy’s trying to punch me in the face. I’m like, ‘Man, my arm’s not working. What’s going on with my arm?’ This guy’s just hitting me in the face….I wasn’t worried about him. I don’t fear no man.”

Irvin threw in the towel, and the fighter headed to the hospital to get a titanium plate and five screws in his broken arm. So sure, he has to get a special pass to get through metal detectors now, but he said the pain of the break didn’t particularly bother him; “I have a pretty high pain tolerance, except for like a little paper cut,” he told me. “That always hurts me for some strange reason.”

What else do you need to know? Easton compares the feeling of landing a perfect punch to the vibration in a batter’s arms upon hitting a baseball with a bat; “you can feel the vibration through your whole body, and it’s perfect, and the person just drops, just goes nighty-night,” he explained.

He wears Speedos in the ring, because he wants to “keep it old school,” and because it prevents opponents from finding any fabric to grab when he’s using his knees. “And the ladies love it,” he added.

He was raised on Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk, loves classical ballet and the District, considers MMA “beautiful,” has previously used Mambo Sauce’s “Welcome to D.C.” as his entrance music, is a “Washington Redskins fan to the fullest,” and fights under the name “The Hulk,” because, he said, his body somehow swells up before fights.

“Everybody says it,” he told me. “I don’t know what it is, my legs and muscles get all big. My dad explains it really well, he says, ‘Man I look at you before the fight, yeah you’re looking all slim cut and ready, but then fight night you walk in there and you’re huge. Just swollen, like an over-sized pit bull or something.’ It’s wild.”

In the previous blog entry we spoke about how many schools are not legit and how confusing it can be for a new person interested in learning MMA or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to find the right place. In the United States if you want to become the next UFC star there are simply not that many places to do so. Just watch the UFC and look at the teams producing competitors, then look at those producing winning records, then look at those producing title contenders, and then look at those producing title holders. You will see a lot of the team names repeat. When Brandon Vera from Team Lloyd Irvin fought Tim Silva and lost that was a win for Team Lloyd Irvin. It put the team in a very select group of true MMA academies in the USA and in the World that have produced a title contender.

Brandon Vera from Team Lloyd Irvin goes on to become Title Contender

 There are so many places these days which advertise them selves as MMA schools, or make similar claims. Most of it is marketing and business, Karate schools changing their signs to MMA training centers. The truth is, most places out there claiming to be a MMA school are either lying to you, or lying to themselves.
The one thing that separates Team Lloyd Irvin from a lot of other programs is that we home grow our talent. We have one of the most loyal systems in the industry. The few teams in the USA that produce good MMA fighters will allow regular people from the street to train as a hobby, for fun, or so that you can say that you do MMA, but won’t take you in to their pro-practices unless you have above average experience and/or area of expertise they can use. A lot of the big name MMA schools are notoriously known at times for recruiting talent/students from smaller schools that can’t pay them a salary to train full time. Money wins over loyalty in those cases, and also works as an amnesia pill for the student to quickly forget who brought them up. At Lloyd we show you a way in which you can make it to the top. We give you the chance to make the sacrifices and start from scratch without previous experience. It will be very hard, but if you have the motivation and determination, even if you do not have the natural talent, we will open our doors. This is the story of Mike Easton, a home-grown talent.
Third Law is “Third Law Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu,” not “Third Law MMA,” because we pride ourselves in teaching people World Class Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. We have a track record of success developing local, national, and international champions at levels that are sufficient for professional MMA training. We are not in the business of deceiving people. When someone tells me they want to be the next MMA star. I ask how many times you want to train a week. They usually say 3 times. I then proceed to mention how 3 times a week will get him to a respectable blue belt level in 2 years at best.
Being good at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu requires commitment and lots of training and the right program. There are also things to consider when thinking MMA. If you have zero athletic experience at the high school or college level, it will take longer. If you are not in good shape, it will take longer. Team Lloyd Irvin is not interested in developing the so-called “MMA Fighters” at the small-town events level who holds a whitebelt in jiu-jitsu. The long-term MMA goal of Team Lloyd Irvin is to have students in the UFC, DREAM or some high-caliber event like the UWC where Mike Easton will be fighting February 21st, 2009. At that level you better make sure your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is on point( by the way Mike Easton is a brown belt multiple times international level medalist in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu).There is no better place to do this in Collier and Lee County than at our school. As a matter of fact we form part of a handful of schools in Florida that teach BJJ at a high level. This is not marketing cliché, but facts. Look at our tournaments results and compare it to other teams in Florida. While we do not send millions of competitors to events and play a low-efficiency big numbers game, we send our most motivated group of competitors which producing high-efficiency results (i.e. more medals achieved than competitors sent at ranked or rated events).
Finally here is the clip of my friend and teammate Mike Easton as he prepares to fight Chase Beebe (ranked in the top 10 in the World).There is small Coach Roberto Torralbas training with Lloyd Irvin at the 0:29 minute mark and the 3:09 in the video.

UWC 5: Man O’ War Mike Easton vs. Chase Beebe

UWC 5: Man O’ War - John Dodson vs. Jose Villarisco

As always leave your comments to interact with us. They are greatly appreciated!

We found this article on FIGHT! Magazine. The author is a Lloyd Irvin student and does a great job of explaining how many schools ( karate / taekwondo) are now becoming MMA schools without having the credentials to teach.  Its a though world out there as almost anyone is can find a shortcut to claiming to have a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The author gives you common things to look out for. One of the main issues is that the people that started the whole bjj and mma revolution are selling out by offering fake certification camps and seminars. There are so many sketchy things schools and instructors are doing, you have to really do research. Back a year ago the thing to do was to quickly search their names in Google and see some of their credentials. Your best bet now is to search names in google and follow their credentials to find out how legit they are. Its getting more and more difficult.

For example, some schools throw in-house tournaments just so that they can say well we had 15 students competing we won 7 golds 3 silver, but they will leave out that only 100 people in total competed.  Say there are some weight classes and some skill level. That is almost 1 fight. Do your research and do not make distance and money the number one factors,  because at the end of two years you will loose more money and time overall than the person that was not cheap and lazy about their investment.  DO YOUR RESEARCH. Some times the instructors will list that they are Black Belts (find out who gave it to them and who has that person developed)  and in their competition credentials will list 4 championships but will left out at which belt this was acquired. Ooh I am a so an so champion. If they don’t specify the belt there might be something sketchy going on. For Example:

Being a Blue Belt Adult World Champion is a great accomplishment but being a Black Belt Adult World Champion is completely different. Only two Americans have done it . It gets even crazier. You may have to find out how many fights they had to win it to get a better perspective. A middleweight to win the Worlds will have 5-6 fights while the lightest and heaviest division will have 1-2 and at most 3. This shouldn’t be a deal breaker as at least the person is doing more than most, but get a good perspective on the issue.

Even more now different organizations like Grappler’s Quest, NAGA, offer the “Naga World Championships” and the “Grappler’s Quest World Championships”.  Who is the undisputed World Champion?

Well in BJJ the best black belts compete at the World Championships run by the IBJJF.   Naga and Grappler’s Quest are good tournaments to win, but they are on a different level. Its all relative:

IBJJF/ADCC

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Naga/Grappler’s Quest

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Ranked/Rated Tournaments

Tournaments that offer big $ incentives ($1000 or more to have the  best grappler’s participate) 200+ Divisions 1000+ Competitors plus tournaments not including kids.

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Small Local Tournamanets

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Inner School Tournaments

The list above should give you some perspective. If the person list that they are a World Champion, but doesn’t list some details? Then it is time to do some research, because anyone  who wan the Black Belt Adult World Championships will let you know what weight class, year, division, etc… The best have nothing to hide, its what I am trying to say.

 PART 1- Click to Expand.

  PART 2- Click to Expand.

  PART 3- Click to Expand.

Congratulations to our our teammate Mike Fowler who won the Silver Medal at 77Kg and won Open Weight Class and Asian Jiu-Jitsu Chamiponship November 29th , 2008. Mike is who is one of the United States premier black belts and recognized globaly was featured also on Graciemag this January ( issue #142). Congrats on that too!

Make sure you enrolled in our school newsletter or the newsletter for bjjengineer.com as Master Lloyd Irvin  gives us a lot of insights about the things that has made him successful on the mats and off the mats.

Can Team Third Law BJJ catch up to Mike Fowler’s 12 muscle-ups. Mike is trying to do 15 in a row, and we are trying to beat him. Check him out right here:
http://bjjengineer.com/?p=76

A 9-year-old Bakersfield boy is being called a hero after he saved a girl and her dog from a pit bull attack.

Drew Heredia said he and a friend were walking a small dog Dec. 30 when a pit bull jumped on the dog. The unidentified 12-year-old girl reportedly tried to save her dog, prompting the pit bull to turn on her.

Heredia said he jumped on the pit bull and applied a choke hold that he learned while taking classes at a Brazilian jiujitsu studio in southwest Bakersfield.

“It was kind of a heart-pounding moment,” Heredia said. “It was very scary.”

He said he held the dog for 20 minutes until an animal control officer arrived.

“At first, I wanted to kick it, but then I thought it’s not a good idea, because it could get my leg,” Heredia said.

The girl was taken to Mercy Southwest Hospital where she was treated for puncture wounds.

The pit bull was quarantined at the animal control office, where it will be euthanized after 10 days. No one has claimed the dog.

The girl’s dog was injured, but it’s expected to survive. The dog ran away during the attack but returned home Friday afternoon.

To watch the young hero Drew’s account of the episode on video and read the complete story on BakersfieldNow.com,   

Click here for full story!

August 10, 2008 Naples, Florida

Well Damian Maia does it again. Damian this time got himself in the main show (after winning his last 2 matches and awarders “Submission of the Night” both times). Jason MacDonald was though and fought with heart but Demian Maia Jiu-Jitsu seemed to bee to much for him to handle. Its sad that probably 90% out of the audience will believe he escaped out of the guillotine by just scrambling, or luck.

Demian Maia dominated Round 1 by almost finishing a triangle. I was very surprised that he decided to punch Jason instead of getting the arm and shoulder closer to his neck to strengthen the choke. Maybe Jason felt strong and Demian Maia thought he would stand up when he transitioned. Jason got out and took his back in the scramble while Damian defended well and escaped. Damian then took Jason’s back and it was very obvious he couldn’t finish because of the size of the gloves!

Round 2 Demian Maia displayed his Muay Thai skills with a set of knees (not super effective or impressive but sure to score points with the judges). The he proceeded to take Jason down mounted and deliver punches with not a lot of weight in them for almost the entire round. They traveled across the mat while Maia held the mount and Jason tried to escape. It was kind of funny.

Round 3 Damian once again displaying his over hook butterfly/half- guard very nicely, takes Jason back and finished with the RNC.

Damian looked gassed again despite the win. I wonder why because I have heard he trains like a monster but his cardio seems to be a factor in every fight! One of the most fun display of Jiu-Jitsu I have seen in the UFC!

Here are the videos:

Part 1

Part 2

Videos from Another Source: