This past weekend was a busy and successful one for many of the students and coaches from Hellfish Mixed Martial Arts. Saturday afternoon was The Goodfight Submission only pan ams that featured 3 Hellfish students competing and Saturday night was a USKA Muay Thai event that featured 2 Hellfish students making their Muay Thai debuts.
At the Goodfight tournament, 2 of the kids from our kids program showed up and fought their butts off bringing home 2 silver medals and 1 bronze. Mackenzie took home a bronze medal in the gi division and a silver medal in nogi
while Bennett took home a silver medal in his Gi divison.
This was the Goodfights annual pan am tournament which features a higher level of competition than you will find at a normal tournament. Kyle Murphy who won double gold in gi and nogi divisions in his first competition a few months ago decided that 2 golds was not enough and ended up taking home 4 gold medals in gi and nogi weight class and absolute divisions in his 2nd ever bjj competition.
Saturday night was USKA’s knockout cancer event. We had 2 of our Muay Thai students make their debuts and both came away victorious. In the 2nd fight of the night, Jessica Amend fought a 3 round war and got her hand raised in victory after making excellent use of her kicks at distance and knees in the clinch.
Next up was Trey Hoffner. Trey had been training for this fight for several months and came into the fight in tremendous shape after having his opponents drop out and change several times leading up to the fight. Trey came out fast starting the fight off with a cross, hook, leg kick combo and 1 minute and 43 seconds later after knocking down his opponent twice in that time finished the fight with the same cross, hook, leg kick combo with some follow up punches that forced his opponents corner to throw in the towel.
We are all proud of the students whenever they go out and test their skills in competition whether they win or lose, but it is important to know that competition is not the goal of a martial artist, but rather a powerful tool used to test the skills they have developed in class. While I do recommend that anyone who has the desire to test themselves in competition should definitely go for it, most of the students do not compete or fight and can build and test their skills everyday on the mats of Hellfish Mixed Martial Arts. Martial arts is a lifestyle and not about competing but more so a lifelong pursuit of constant self improvement through training.