Olympic bronze medalist "Rowdy" Ronda Rousey puts on a demo at the opening of a new gym.
I'm pretty sure the assembled crowd are from Brazilian JuJitsu.



The weigh in for strikeforce challengers, girls feature at 8 min 40. Julia Budd - champion kick boxer looks like a beast!



The fight last night. First 5 seconds are missing, Julia lands some punches as Ronda advances to the clinch.
The strange looking dude in pink at the end is "Judo" Gene Labell - you may have seen him in films.

I want to follow the womens stuff a bit more. They mention it alot on MMA Live, but i keep missing the fights. Always like Cris Cyborg's fights anytime i catch them on Youtube.

Can never find Strikeforce showing on Sky. Loosing interest in the majority of the UFC stuff, same ole overhyped fights and 2nd rate UK events when they come over.

Love seeing footage of the training camps etc. I've do a kinda hybrid bastardised Crossfit'y type training so it's always good to pick up technique's from their vids.

Unless things have changed in the last 10/15 years Gene La Bell was never much thought of in Judo. He was more of a gimick merchant and self promotor, think Jimmy Saville as a wrestler.

It would be easy to argue he set American judo back a lot of years which I suspect is why the US could field very few Judoka ( I can only think of Michael Swain) at Olympic and World level when I was involved. Most of the top level Japanese coaches werent interested in teaching in the US as they felt the sport was trivialised by such antics.

He may have some huge number of dans in US judo now but most are probably self awarded or came from mergers of clubs and associations. Basically if you hang around the sport long enough you get awarded grades. Brian Jacks is the only guy I am aware of that fought for a 5th Dan, certainly he was the only non Japanese.

I guess he gets a lot of his status from Brazilian Ju Jitsu which is a bastardisation of Japanese Ju Jitsu with added nasty stuff, and like any bastard is desperately seeking any forebear. So in the US at least the black sheep sport has found the black sheep predecessor.

I don't think american judo ever got off the ground in the US mainly because there was no money in it. Many Japanese shoot fighters transitioned from Judo to catch wrestling because it's more effective than judo in that type of environment. Sakuraba the "Gracie Hunter" was a shootfighter/catch wrestler, I don't think he has any traditional judo championships. Personally, I view BJJ as an extreme refinement of the ground game, were Judo is a refinement of the throwing game. Catch wrestling is a refinement of the torture game.

Nice post Pete.

I dont mean to demean her fighting skills....awesome as they appear to be.....but she really is one hell of a woman!! Dangerous and hot. LOVELY!

This is an interesting video on what Judo moves have been banned over the years due to safety concerns.

Nice video. A lot of those throws were still permitted when I was competing. Kani basame was banned for obvious reasons but I have seen contests won with most of the others. A lot of the Korean and Russians used to do morote dori and suki nage as they were similar techiniques to those they knew from in Sombo wrestling.

Quite suprised to see Te Garuma banned as tori retains a lot of control of uke in that one. I guess the danger is that it may become a piledriver and land uke on his head at the halfway stage. It is still my favorite technique for fighting with my kids though, they have grown up watching the world turn upside down when they wont go to bed

Back in 84 I trained a fair bit with Kashiwazaki who was 81 (i think) world champion. If he were still fighting today that video would have robbed him of 80% of his throwing techniques. I reckon he would still have got by on the other 20% and the ne waza though.

GOOD video Count Zero!! Nice to see those moves, very impressive. I've seen some of them in MMA a couple of times but I dont know if they knew they were Judo moves or not. Thanks for posting that up!

And yes Luke...the opportunity for a Piledriver was noticed

I was watching an interview with Rousey and she said that she felt the arm come apart "like a turkey leg popping out of a cooked turkey, only in a sickening kind of way" or words to that effect. She said she was telling the ref that the arm was out but was scolded and told not to talk to the opponent. So she had to roll over to show it to the ref. Thereby causing even more damage I would suspect.

That armlock is really horrible for both parties. If the arm is straight it gets broken on the elbow joint. If the receipient can keep a slight bend in it it ends in a dislocation and a lot of ligament damage. I had my left elbow dislocated, just like that in the 1982 European Team championships and I can still feel it now sometimes ; mostly on cold mornings and sometimes I get a kind of arm pump at that elbow when training.

Even when you are the one with the armlock on it is a pretty unpleasant way to break someones arm as you really feel it give. Not a great feeling, or an enjoyable way to win but nothing else you can do if they dont tap out. Despite that it was a favorite of Neil Adams.

Nice video count, and very informative post Luke.

When I returned to Judo at the start of the year it took a few sessions to get away from the single / double leg attacks, sometimes it just seemed natural.

There is still a Kneeling wheel attack around. I help one of our youngsters with it before being Uke for his blue belt grading.

There's still plenty of stuff to get hurt by left in though!

Luke will know this already.
Another big change in modern Judo is the time allowed for newaza (groundwork). Now in competition if you haven't got a hold or submission in 5 or 10 seconds the fight is stopped and stood up.

This is why Ronda -who was a submission specialist - has such fast transitions. BJJ is much more methodical in approach, control, move to mount, look for submission. Ronda is from such a high level of Judo she is one step ahead.

She has also figured out that if she throws punches from mount her opponent will give her a arm while protecting themselves.

That said, I love watching the Diaz brothers work from their backs. They are both top notch BJJ guys and their submission attempts are seemless.

Viking, thanks for your reply.

I will try and put links up for interesting matches in the womens division if I know someone has interest.

Regarding that clip and the point Luke made.....you can see the other girl tapping out quite a few seconds before but the crappy ref isnt able to see it and clearly the tap is a bit weak.


Its the ref's fault imo....it should have been spotted as a tap cos t was teh only arm she could have used so SHOULD have been watched!!

I agree with you Shade.

If you could see the state of me after 1.5 to 2 hours training!

My Gi is like a wet rag.