It’s not the right way to prepare for a fight and on paper, it even looks like a mismatch.
One one corner, there’s me, a full-time business executive in Ortigas and part-time muay thai fighter, who has a tendency to over-intellectualize things (heck, I’m formulating an application of Game Theory to muay thai matches). Then there’s my opponent, a national Tae Kwon Do Champion, Gym Instructor and MMA fighter, 6 years younger and 2 kilograms heavier. What are my chances?
Actually, having more ring experience (in muay thai), I will have a very good chance of overcoming my opponent. But I am already defeated even before I stepped onto the ring.
I could come up with a thousand reasons…or excuses why I lost. I can tell that April and May was a crazy month at the office for me and because of this, I wasn’t able to train well. I can say that normally, I will be training for no less than 600 2-minute rounds preparing for a fight and for this match I was only able to log in around 440 training rounds (like I said, April and May was a crazy month at work. I keep training logs to analyze my performance…see I told you, I tend to over intellectualize things). Or I can point to the fact that I once again over-estimated my capacity to multi-task and divide my remaining time away from the office to my role as an officer of MAP and to my other pursuits, which again took time away from training. Or about the day of the tournament itself, I wished I had Nightcrawler’s (of X-men) teleportation ability and could travel to two different parts of the Metro in a second (I have an important business meeting on the morning of May 16, so what I did is I went to Ynares Center in Antipolo before 8a.m. for the weigh-in, went back to Shangrila-Makati for the meeting and then go back to Ynares Center for the tournament. I have to change my clothes inside the van twice, one is for the business attire that I have to be in for the meeting and the other for the casual wear for the tournament). I could also point to the fact that the night before the tournament, my colleague from India arrived and we have to treat him out for dinner which resulted in my failure to qualify to my usual weight division and have to compete in a heavier weight division. I could write a novel as long as Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past to come up with a justification for the loss. But it will boil down to one thing, that during that match, my opponent is the better fighter and I have to shake his hand and congratulate him.
I am not sure who said this first but they say,”after a defeat, you’ll become a philosopher”. And I learned one very valuable lesson that I hope I will not repeat and that could also help my fellow nak muays in NCR.
That is, The Law of the Farm strictly applies to muay thai, and perhaps to all sports. In his book First Things First, Stephen Covey mentioned about the Law of the Farm. In a farm, you have to prepare the ground, cultivate the seeds, water the plants and nurture them during summer…so that you can have a harvest in autumn. In a farm, one can’t slack during the summer, then during autumn, you must do all of the above so that you can have some harvest before winter. There are no magic quick fixes in a farm. The same thing in muay thai. You must train way in advance before the tournament. You can’t expect to give a good performance/fight if you have not paid your dues in training.
During the tournament, I tried to make up for my lack of training by visualizing my fight and try to be “in the zone” early. So for almost the entire duration of the tournament, I was in one corner visualizing my fight. That’s why I didn’t took a lot of pictures during this tournament. I erroneously think that by doing this, I will have a magic quick fix way to continuing my winning streak.
About the fight itself, my gameplan is to defend from high kicks and counter by punches or sweeps. I have to engage my opponent in close quarter to prevent him from doing his TKD moves. During the first round I was able to execute my counterattacking gameplan seamlessly. One the second round, I got my opponent in a clinch and I got the dominant position and successively unleashed several knees to his body. My opponent doesn’t know how to defend from the clinch, from an inferior position (I was on a dominant clinch position, delivering some knees) he would just counter by doing over hand punches. Sensing that the clinch is the best way to fight this match, I again engaged my opponent in a clinch but I have done this a little bit too early. My opponent was able to sneak in an upper cut that landed on my nose. I was again delivering some knee strikes when the referee halted the match. That’s when I noticed that blood is dripping from my nose.
The ring doctor checked my nose and tried to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, the blood would still drip from my nose. The referee asked if I want to continue fighting. Of course, I want to continue, I know I’m ahead on points. But each time the doctor would remove the pressure from my nose, the bleeding would continue.
Knowing that the referee will stop the fight if I waited for the bleeding to stop, so I have to signal the referee to continue the fight. With a sense of urgency, I thought of initiating the attack to put the pressure on my opponent. Perhaps my opponent expected that I will be on the offensive, he executed a perfect teep that landed on my chin. The referee has to stop the fight to prevent any further injury that I may suffer. The official announcement is I lost via injury. When I stepped down from the ring, a fellow muay thai brother said that my mistake is, “Masyado akong natuwa sa clinch” (I got to excited about the clinch that I became reckless). I have to say, he is correct.
After the fight I asked the judges and the jury and they told me another heartbreaker. I was indeed ahead on points during the first round and will be ahead on the second round if not for the nose bleed. My opponent is not doing muay thai techniques and is relying more on strength than strategy. But I have to accept the loss, its part of the sport and it is part of my growth as a martial artist and as a nak muay. Now, it is up to me to train harder and not repeat my mistakes so that by the next time that I will meet my respectable opponent from Antipolo, the result will be different.
On of my favorite movie quotes is from the movie The Siege of Firebase Gloria. In the movie, the commanding officer of the Viet Cong force praised the US Marines that they are fighting by saying “The courage of your enemy does you honor”. Stepping into the ring with this guy and never backed down from the fight is already an honor for me.
( This is my opponent. This was taken during one of his MMA match. I think I have to apologize to him. I “stole” this picture from his Friendster account without any permission).
