Vacation is so great! Better yet, vacation in Korea as an English teacher is REALLY great! Several weeks of down time twice a year. Looking for ways to spend some of it, I finally decided to take a trip up to Seoul. It was my first time there and I took the KTX high-speed rail to get there. That’s definitely the way to go. I made a video of what it’s like to travel on the KTX.
I came this particular weekend because there were two big martial arts tournaments happening. The first event, ADCC (Abu Dhabi Combat Club) Korea was a qualifying event in preparation for competing in Japan. The all famous Kim Dong Hyun was in the house competing. He is one of the top fighters in the UFC today. It was great to meet him as he is a fellow judoka who trained at Korea’s national judo college, Yong-in University. The core team and trainers from Busan Team MAD were there as well.
The second event will be tomorrow, the King of Grapplers tournament. It’s a BJJ tournament, but the main event has a series of matches pitting MMA fighters against BJJ practioners in a grappling match. Should be interesting to say the least.
The event was held at Korean Top Team.
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| Kim Dong Hyun (far left), Kang Kyung-ho (far right), Team MAD owner (middle) |
The event was held on a single, regulation mat area where the grapplers came to get their rassle on. Kim Dong Hyun didn’t come to disappoint. Here are two videos of a preliminary fight and final match.
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| Kim Dong Hyun – still the man |
Not as bloody as Im used to seeing in MMA.
Very true – lol
There were now two sides of the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Family, students under Helio and students under Carlson. Helio’s side would argue that Carlson’s style of Jiu-Jitsu involved too much strength and that it was Helio who developed the technique further due to the fact that he was much smaller than his brother Carlos, who taught it to him. BJJ T shirt