After some time off, North Dakota State Athletic Commissioner Chad Kurle is back to fill us in on his training and the results of his first Mixed Martial Arts fight.
Where to begin. First, apologies to anyone who was reading my blog for the first 10 weeks. I could try to come up with a myriad of excuses as to why I stopped, but at the end of the day, it was getting more and more difficult to write anything that even I thought was interesting. My weeks consisted of essentially the same thing: train 3-4 days at the gym, about 5 days at Crossfit and continue to struggle with my diet.
Highlights Leading Up to the Fight
We had a couple of guys at the gym that were getting ready for professional fights. When we have fights coming up, the whole gym rallies around that guy and really pushes to prepare him for the fight. I was able to get some sparring in with the pro fighters. How well I did was directly related to how late in the round I got to spar with them. I did a good job of keeping my weight down. The season of Lent helped. I am not Catholic, but my wife is and in an effort to be supportive I too gave up drinking for Lent.
At the end of March we had a MMA event at Dakota Magic Casino, a small tribal casino down in South Eastern North Dakota. In conjunction with the event there was a grappling tournament the day of the show. I decided to use that as my opportunity to try to cut down to 185lbs. and get some grappling in with different people. The cut wasn’t too bad. In fact, I overshot it by a few pounds and weighed in at 183.
Due to some flooding in the area, the turnout for the event was not as good as anticipated. Most divisions did not have many competitors, with the exception of the 185lb no-gi beginners. So while every other division was double elimination, mine was single. My match was against a BJJ white belt from Fargo BJJ. I had trained with the guys at Fargo BJJ a couple of times. We met on the mat and butted heads for 3 ½ minutes before I decided to try to push the action. I shot a double leg to the side I am not used to shooting on, it was an OK shot, but I didn’t turn the corner and finish. He quickly wrapped up my neck and fell to guard. That quickly, I was tapping out to a guillotine. The guillotine choke is my kryptonite. It seems that every time I shoot I end up getting caught.
After the grappling tournament, I took a week off from my diet and let my weight get up as high as 199lbs. I also started training consistently four days a week. The volume of training was starting to wear on my body. My neck was out of place and my shoulder started giving me problems. The whole joint didn’t want to stay in place. It made it difficult to punch and even harder to keep a good guard.
Practices were now concluding with me being in the middle to work rounds. Three minutes is a lifetime when there is a fresh guy coming at you every 60 seconds. Working the rounds worked. It got me in better shape. The hard thing about not having much experience is that the guy with the experience can put you into his environment at will. When I sparred with another 185lb guy, he would use his Judo to put me down at will. We have a 140lb sophomore in high school who was able to use his wrestling to keep me from taking him down so he could pound on my face with his superior hand speed.
One week out from the fight I had a black eye, a nose that was covered in a huge bruise and the start of cauliflower ear on both ears. My shoulder didn’t seem to want to stay in place and my neck was constantly out of place, but I really felt ready for the fight.
