Ok, here are my thoughts on UFC 100.

First of all, to those claiming that this is not a great card...what on earth do you want? Two titles, GSP, Mir, Alves, Lesnar, Henderson, Bonner, Colemen, Jones (wow!), Fitch...what else do you want? About all that's missing is Fedor (which you'll never see), Randy (fighting soon), Silva (fighting soon), Penn (fighting soon), Griffin (fighting soon) and Royce himself. They can't throw every single fighter in the cage in one night, what would they do for 101? Is it the best card ever? Probably not, but we can't know 'til the fights are over. Quite belly aching and enjoy it.

Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir (chapter 2)



Yes, Lesnar is a freaking huge man. Yes, he is an incredibly fast learner. Yes, he has a very good chance of keeping that belt. But my money on Mir. In the UFC, Lesnar has defeated Herring, who isn't exactly a standout and Randy Courture. Randy is an amazing man, no doubt, but he's no heavy weight. And Randy was beating him until that one shot landed. While I think Lesnar will be in MMA for a while and will soon be an amazing fighter, I don't see that he's had the time to come up to the level he needs to for a fighter like Mir. A couple years of BJJ defense training aren't going to cut it against somebody like Mir. On top of that, Mir actually does have the strength to withstand Lesnar. No, he won't over power him, but if he fights smart and uses his strength correctly, he can keep the fight from turning into what we saw with Randy.

I'm hoping they decide to stand and we get to see Mir display more of that boxing we saw against Nogueira. But I am predicting a second or third round sub due to a heal hook. I hope Lesnar doesn't get hurt, because he honestly has incredible potential.

Random fact: Herring is the dude who knocked out that guy for kissing him during the pre-fight stare down in K-1. That's like my favorite MMA clip of all time. check it out

Georges St-Pierre vs. Thiago Alves

GSP by 4th round stoppage. It's very difficult to beat a guy who trains like GSP. But Alves has a pretty darned good chance.

Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping
Henderson by early third round KO. Bisping drops to feather weight. Fast forward six months: Silva again destroys Henderson.

Yoshihiro Akiyama vs. Alan Belcher
Don't know enough about these fighters to call it. From what I hear it will be a great fight.

Jon Fitch vs. Paulo Thiago
Fitch. The guy is tough.

Mark Coleman vs. Stephan Bonnar
Ok, I see why this fight is happening...you've got to make a nod to the past during UFC 100. So if you're going to throw in an old man with only half a lung...why not let some of the younger blood use him as a stepping stone? Bonnar was totally unable to handle Jon Jones (wow!) in his last fight, but nobody wants to see the other half of Griffin/Bonner to leave. So this should work well for him. If only Bonnar would show improvement in his fighting like Griffin has done.

Jon Jones (wow!) vs. Jake O'Brien
Yes, in my mind the "(wow!)" is part of the guy's name. The fight against Bonnar was unreal. From what I've read, O'Brien is simply a wrestler...and Jones (wow!) is a better wrestler. The only problem I have with Jones (wow!) is he seemed to tire a bit in the Bonnar fight. He needs to be sure to work on his cardio a TON. With his fighting style, he'll need it.

Oh, and btw...I'm seriously hoping and praying that Florien takes the belt. Then Penn will lay on the mat and throw a kicking, screaming fit until his mother comes and takes him off to bed, promising to call her lawyer in the morning. Then maybe White will be so embarressed he'll never let him step foot a UFC cage again.

Well, I am long over due for a real post. I've been enjoying playing around with my flickr page so much lately that I haven't taken the time to blog. Shame, shame, shame!

This week has been a total blast. Wednesday we spent the afternoon and evening swimming and cooking out with the Teague family. The general consensus was that we are really, really bad at volleyball, but it is fun nonetheless. We swam until about 10...which is waaaaay too late, I know, but it was still a lot of fun.

Thursday Ethan and I went back out to Eastwood dojo to learn some more grappling. I've learned two things in the past week: I have almost no clue what to do on the ground, and I'm loving working on it. This week Mike Suggs ran us through some different stand-up and strength drills...I about died. But I did learn a bit about passing guard and how to hold a guy still during an arm bar. Good stuff.

Last night was very interesting. The Teagues invited us to join them for a "poetry reading". Everybody had to dress up in a costume of some sort and bring a few poems to read. We decided to have it at our house 'cause we have more room and everybody brought finger food. The costumes were a blast...Stokton and Joshua both came as punks, Naomi and Anna were gypsies, BJ was a hobbit, Ethan was a menacing figure (and he was too!), Tolkien was a wood nymph and Phoenix was Hans Solo. I got some amazing shots of folks in costume and I'll be posting some of those soon to flickr. I dressed as a political prisoner...I wore a large, dark over coat and tattered clothes. Mom did her make-up magic and made my face look gaunt and hollow. It actually was pretty convincing...I couldn't stop eating! ;-)

Now we're about to leave for Michelle's house to celebrate the Fourth of July. Fun fun fun!

Ready To Dive! (29/30)

Ready To Dive! (29/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with water splashing off of stuff in our sink. This little dude was on the floor in our room and I figured he'd make an interesting subject. I like this one because it looks like he is about to dive into a pool.

BTW, if you leave comments, please leave them on the flickr page (click on the picture and use your Yahoo! id) so I can have all the comments together in one place.

Ah-ha! (23/30)

Ah-ha! (23/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

Mom at Wal Mart. And you wonder why I am the way I am.

So, last week we took a van full of Bavidos and Teagues into Tulsa to watch UP. Several of the family had already seen it, but it was the first time for me. Here are my thoughts.

First, the previews. It seems pretty obvious from watching the trailers on this movie and Night at the Museum 2 that the summer is looking pretty slim in the family features department. I must say I was very interested by the trailer for The Princess and the Frog. Doing a Cajun fairy tale with voodoo practicing bad guys, frogs and gators is an excellent idea. I hope they do a good job of it.

Next, the short. I love the fact that Pixar puts these before their films. Ethan had told me he didn't like the short. Having seen "Partly Cloudy", I have decided that Ethan is a nincompoop. This can easily rival "For the Birds". I'm not going to give anything away (it's hard to talk about a three minute short without giving something away) so I'll just say that it was excellent and will be enjoyed for many years to come.

Ever since seeing the trailer, I have known that UP was going to be the movie of the year. Easily. Only Pixar has the bravery to use an elderly man as the main character. Had any other studio made this movie they would have made the old man crass and rude, but instead Pixar created an amazingly complex character with strengths and weaknesses. His love story is wonderfully, and touchingly, told.

UP contains some of the truest comedic moments in recent memory. Kevin and Doug, a large bird and a bird dog, are wonderful. Kevin is an expanded version of the awkward bird in For the Birds and Doug is a typical loving, stupid bird dog.

What has really surprised people is that, while UP can certainly be enjoyed by kids, it is not a kids movie. It is a very serious study in the topic of death and aging. It carries much more meaning for aging Baby Boomers than 7 year old kids. Nobody seems quite sure what to do about it. When we saw it there were a lot of couples with young children in the theater, and very few, if any, adults without kids. It is going to take a while for people to get used to the idea of animation as medium, rather than animation as genre. If Pixar continues to make films like this, I think people will soon be convinced.

Up until this point, my favorite Pixar movie has been Monsters, Inc. And with every Pixar film since then, I have used Monsters as my measuring stick. So the burning question I tried to answer for a couple days after seeign the movie was, "Is this a better film than Monsters?" And I couldn't answer. I finally decided that they are both wonderful films, but too different to really compare. Pete Docter has given us two of the greatest films of the decade. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Isaac (19/30)

Isaac (19/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

Have you ever placed your hands on the keyboard and started typing away, only to look at the screen and realize that one of your hands was just a little bit off center and hyomh zdifrm;u nrvs,,;u trs;;u dytsmhr N fpm
y eptfu snpiy oy nrvsidr yjrm upi trs;oxr yjsy mpnpfu od hpomh yp trsf oy smuesu/?

I have not coached gymnastics camps for about four years. I've been spending my summers in Taiwan, and didn't have the chance to do much coaching. So this is my first summer in quite some time to coach. I'm loving it.

For years I have wanted to be the TAG level four coach. For various reasons, I have never been able to have that job. Now, the last summer that I work at Gymnastics City, I finally get that job. I have a group of level threes who want to move to level four, plus a couple level fives that I work with each day. In just the week and a half of camp so far I've seen some good improvements. On top of that, I've been working with the higher level gymnasts a fair amount on bars, and I'm really enjoying that.

Another thing I am enjoying very much is posting a new picture every day on my newly created flickr page. It's certainly challenging me to find and take interesting pictures that are worthy of posting.

And now I need to go to bed.

Balance (12/30)

Balance (12/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

Spoon (13/30)

Spoon (13/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

Swirl (6/30)

Swirl (6/30)
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

As you type a querry into the Google page, it tries to guess what you are searching for. For example, if I begin to type in "juggling", a small pop-down menu gives me the options of "juggling balls", "juggling clubs", or "juggling tricks." I just now began typing in "how to make a boomerang" and when I got has far as "how to make a bo" it suggested "how to make a bomb."

I've been looking forward to this summer for some time now, but now that it's actually here I find that I'm having trouble enjoying it because I haven't gotten a teaching job yet. I've put out way too many applications to keep track of and I've had a couple interviews (one of which seemed very promising, but I still haven't heard back from them) but nothing beyond that. I know that many schools don't have the funding in place yet to see about hiring new teachers and it's not at all unusual to get hired in August or even September. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm about to go crazy without a job.

In less frustrating news: Monday night we went to the under belt tournament that Christa Bailey put together and had a blast. Caleb wasn't sure he wanted to fight, but after some talk he decided he would. He fought three fights and took first place! His sidekick did most of the work. Fighting with the bigger guys at home gives him a real advantage when he faces people his size and belt level.

BonnieJean also fought and did very well. She fought Christina Luna, a green belt who has trained a lot with Jason and done very well at tournaments in the past. BonnieJean hasn't really kept up with karate during college, but she decided to jump back in with both feet and fight. It was a great fight. BJ kept hitting Christina in the face (which is not allowed until brown belt) but I told her it'd probably be easier to just get to brown belt instead of trying to train that out of her! ;) Christina won the fight by a couple points, but I was very happy with how they both fought.

At the end I did an exhibition fight with Jeff Logsdon (sp?). It was a lot of fun. Jeff is an amazing fighter and I was actually fairly happy with how well I did against him. I only lost by six points! *grin* Most of the time I was just a split second behind him on scoring the point.

Six Flags is awesome. And I always enjoy hanging out with Uncle Kent's family.

I would post pictures from graduation but I've lost my camera. So once I find that I'll post them.

For the month of June I have decided to challenge myself to post one interesting picture per day on my flickr page. So hop on over to my flickr page and enjoy the show!

In other news, I think I'm going to go crazy until such time as I get a job. Honestly, the last time I was looking for a job it only took me about one week. Now that I'm looking at a much longer job search I find myself getting more and more antsy as the days go by. So please pray I find a job quickly.

What makes Machida so great?

Last week Lyoto Machida knocked out Rashad Evans to become the new UFC Light Heavy Weight Champion. And within just a few minutes, every commentator and analyst in the business began trying to explain (or explain away) the phenomenon that is Machida. The main ideas they present are thus:

1--It's not because he's a karate fighter; he's trained Mai Thai and boxing. He just happens to be a really good fighter. Karate is not back. Karate is old and out of date.

The problem with this idea is that is doesn't reflect reality. Machida is not a boxer or kick boxer. He style is entirely different. His stance may as well be from another planet, his kicks don't look anything like Mai Thai (am I spelling that right?) and when he clinches he doesn't try for Anderson Silva style knees--he takes people down with beautiful ankle sweeps instead. If you want to see what a really good Mai Thai fighter looks like, look at Anderson Silva. He looks nothing at all like Machida.

2--He is great because he's studied karate, but there's no way anybody else can copy him. Stick with Mai Thai and BJJ. You can almost hear these people pleading with you: "Don't study karate! Please! Machida is great, but we haven't the faintest clue why...we know that Mai Thai works, so please, for the love of all things good, don't study karate!"

Yes, he has been studying karate since he was 5. Yes, he has reached a level of skill that you cannot reach or copy in a few short years. But is that a good reason not to follow in his foot steps? These people are saying that because he is highly skilled nobody should try to reach a similar level of skill...that you would be better off getting your face beat in practicing Mai Thai for a couple years, enjoy a short, glorious career and end it like Chuck Liddell: unable to take even a slight shot without going out.

Yet in all this discussion it seems that nobody is discussing exactly what it is that makes Machida so great at what he does. You can say it's because of "karate", but what does that mean?

I would like to submit that Machida is great because of point fighting. Now, I realize that point fighting has it's problems, and I have often felt the need to get away from it myself. But what is it that Machida does so well? He avoids getting hit, it seems like he's never there, but when he decides to attack, he suddenly is there. His opponent eats a fist and then all of a sudden he's not there anymore. It's like fighting smoke. This is classic point fighting. Machida has trained for years to avoid getting hit, get in his quick shot and then get out of the way of a counter attack. He throws almost nothing except straight shots. He knows that a straight punch will always beat a round punch, so he uses the faster technique.

His stance is classic point fighting stance. It's the traditional karate backward leaning stance: the same stance my instructor uses, that I use and that we train our students to use. With that stance he is able to keep his body away from his opponent, yet can still spring in with a strike at any moment.

Machida will remain champion as long as the other fighters continue to train in the school of "take one to give one". Because Machida is simply in the business of giving...after all, it is better to give than to recieve.

I have been thinking about the type of blogs that I enjoy reading. I find Chera's blog in particular to be an enjoyable read. And if I approach things from a somewhat unbiased perspective, it seems hers is more interesting than mine (even when I do update regularly). So what is the difference?

It seems Chera is not tied to the idea that her blog must contain details on all major events of the week. Often she will post an interesting musing, a funny story or a cool picture with no thought towards updating us on exactly what was covered in class or what happened at work.

So I'm going to try and update more along those lines, at least for the next few weeks. Just to try it out.

I had an interview yesterday with Jenks Freshmen Academy and it went very well. Perhaps I am reading them entirely wrong but it certainly seemed that they liked me and my ideas. I'm very hopeful. Jenks is a good district by all accounts (it's certainly a wealthy district, at any rate) and all their classrooms are well equipped. The only thing I don't like about it is the fact that it's a 40 minute drive from our house. I'd rather get a job closer to home.

I find myself to be really interesting at times. I did something the other day that I've been thinking about quite a bit since then. There is a lady who has been coming to our karate class for a few months now who has been working very hard and often asks for further instruction before or after class. This is great. I'm always happy to see students who are willing to come up to brown and black belts and ask for help. So as we're driving home from karate and I turn to Anna and say, "Hey, would you mind taking her under your wing? I think she's needing help with some different stuff but I'd rather you do it, since we're so close in age."

Now why on earth would I decide to do that? This lady has never acted inappropriately or given me reason to want to avoid her...yet my first reaction is something along the lines of, "WARNING! Eligible female!" Why? It's not like I'm afraid of girls. I think perhaps I have taken a lot of the "guard your heart" teachings a little too far.

Right now I'm in a new stage of life, and I'm having to make some changes in my thinking because of that. Up until a few months ago I never gave much thought to winning a girl because I knew I was in no position to support one. Now that is no longer the case. Suddenly I am faced with the fact that if I ever want to get married I must, at some point, make the decision to become serious about a girl. At the moment I don't really have any particular girl in mind, but it is still a somewhat frightening prospect.

I need to go do some other stuff now...next time I update I'm going to give my thoughts on the meaning of Lyoto Machida.

I'm not even sure if this will count as an update but...

--I'm still alive.

--I'm graduating tomorrow night.

--I have a job interview this Wednesday.

--I finished my internship about a week ago.

--I passed my English portfolio and my education portfolio.

--I'm excited about VBS this year.

--Ethan did an amazing job at his black belt test.

--School lets out in one week.

--Chera is coming to see us soon.

--Mayfest is really fun.

--I'll post pictures soon.

--I love my church.

--I got a lot more money than I expected for graduation.

--I spent some of it today to buy some dragon balls and socket my super boots...+15% on all attacks now!

--I'm a level 130 (and it only took me about four years...)

--I'm going to bed.

I think I'm going to die. I just hope I die soon, because what's the point of finishing the portfolio and then dieing?

We're off to Ethan's black belt test!!!!!

This is a picture of me as a blue belt. I'm in the white gi. That's a pretty impressive low block, isn't it?

I don't actually have time to update...so instead, here is a bit of 55 fiction I wrote over spring break. This one is actually 46 words long, so any suggestions for added words would be appreciated. This is a true story from my time in Taiwan.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


“Cabbage.” He pointed to make himself clear.

She served him quickly. He was a good customer, even if his Chinese was poor.

“Carrots.”

Scoop. Splat.

“Pork.”

She hesitated, looking at the incense in front of the meat. He was a good customer, but would grandma understand?