First off I have to say that taking part in the IFL seminar was not my idea. The IFL’s marketing director, by name of Marie Camaya’s, idea. She’s a very nice and pretty girl who conned me into getting my ass kicked by professional fighters for two hours while someone took pictures. Secondly, keep in mind that I’m not a fighter. I have been studying martial arts for awhile, but MMA is far from what I’ve been doing and I was just not ready for the IFL level. Fortunately for me, neither were the seven other poor saps that were also taking the seminar.
The seminar was held partially in one of the many conference rooms at Wizard World Chicago and part on the convention floor. Both had been outfitted with a mat as to not injure ourselves when we fell, or were thrown down. Notice I wrote “injure” and not”hurt”, because when Carlos Newton decides to drop you…it hurts. Which brings to just who was running this show.
First was Carlos “The Ronin” Newton who has created his own style of jiu-jitsu, which he calls “Dragon Ball Jiu-Jitsu” and is not only one of the top grapplers in the world, but has also taught linguistics at Toronto’s York University, and is a student of Japanese culture. He’s also the one who beat up on me the most.
Then there was Gideon Ray, who is has eight years and over 40 fights to his name. The man knows what he’s doing and, in my opinion as a professional educator, was an excellent teacher. Gideon is exactly the kind of guy you want to learn from.
There’s the staff, now back to the seminar. We started with some very simple step moves (e.g. how to move from a punch) and steadily moved to more complex grappling moves. We did standing choke holds, take downs,knee submissions, ankle submissions, and an elbow submission. All of which were very fun to learn, but not so fun to be a victim of, but I was often the demonstration guy, hooray for me. Luckily for me, the guy I was partnered with was not very good and by the time he got to the point when the maneuver hurt, time was up and we moved on. The highlight for me was more the lecture portion of the the seminar. Gideon let everyone know that a large part of fighting knowing your body position compared to your opponent.
The most impressive physical display was when Carlos decided to give us a lesson on using the body’s powerline (creating a straight line from your arm to your leg) to life a guy by the neck and holding him there. Everyone had to get lifted, and yes, it hurt.
All sarcasm and and joking aside, it was a great time and I learned a few things that took my martial arts instructor by surprise. The IFL can my seen on regular broadcast television on every Monday on MyNetworkTV from 8-10 pm. Thank-you to Marie Camaya, Carlos Newton, and Gideon Ray for the great time.
Check out The Pullbox MySpace page for all out convention pictures
