The Barbarian Brothers Fight MMA

My how the worm turns.

For those of you who have been following our saga of the Barbarian Brothers, our buds from the Mainland that we have been training - here's an update.

These guys joined our little Dojo a while ago, mainly because they were refered by a Tai Chi friend of ours. Little did we know, they had their sights set on MMA - something I have mixed feelings about.
But here's the story:

These guys were raw green recruits. They are big, atheletic and work hard. But they never had any Martial training, except the older Bro wrestled in High School.
The younger bro actually fought an MMA fight about two months ago, and lost. He hung low for a while, and his older brother stayed consistant in his training.
Tom worked them hard on boxing, Corey has the most ring experience (semi-pro) and I filled in with some stuff I have learned from Tim Cartmell. We are in no means the kind of guys that train MMA fighters, but we were just in that position when these guys committed to the fights.
Both brothers had fights Saturday night. The location was an old fish canning warehouse in Anacortes Washington, their hometown (it was billed as "The Shred in the Shed"). Anacortes fielded at least four fighters out of eight fights, all amateur.
The building was very cold, with scant overhead infrared heaters. There were only two restrooms (one toilet each) for five hundred people. You know what that means, people pissed outside. Hey, it's the Pacific Northwest.
Most of the fighters were light or middle-weight. The promoter did a good job matching fighters, and about half the fighters had talent.
Lots of hot chicks everywhere, Beer and whiskey served. Only one fight in the crowd that I saw.
Our guys were very "green". Young Bro had lost his first fight before, and older Bro fought the same guy. But let's start with Young Bro.
He had a guy that outweighed him by thirty pounds. Young Bro landed a few lucky punches and got a reversal to top mount on the ground. Both fighters were out of steam at the end of round one. Young Bro won because his opponent stayed on all fours barfing into a bucket in his corner, and could not continue.
Older Bro was scheduled for the main event, even though it was his first fight. His opponent had beat his younger brother a couple of months ago, he was bigger and had some good background training. He was tough.
Older Bro did very, very well. He went all three (three minute) rounds and lost by two to four point margin (Something like 28-32) from the ring judges.
He was terribly disappointed, and took it pretty hard in private.
But he fought very well, and looked good on his feet.

I went to the after fight party where everyone was shitfaced. Met some of the fighters, promoters, trainers, and wanna-bees. All these guys were gentlemen and their trainers were very open and friendly. We drank heavy.

What did I learn?

Conditioning is king.
All these guys were good sportsmen, no temper-tantrums or problems.
I've had a bad taste in my mouth about MMA in the past, and this went a long way to changing my attitude.

Am I going to restructure my martial training?
No. I prefer "Art" over "pugilism".

But the Barbarian Brothers needed us to get them up to speed, and we did that.
Now I need to send them to BJJ ground school training with my guys in Seattle, where they will really get it together.

Al-in-all, a good report.