Rick Hawn Profile & TMA Friday

With "Rowdy" Ronda Rousey making waves for both women's MMA and Judo in MMA, there's so much press I'm working on a longer post about her for later.

In the meantime, with all the coverage in MMA magazines about the Olympics, former Olympians in MMA and future potential-MMA fighters coming from this years Olympics, Rick Hawn deserves a full fledged profile.

In 2004, Hawn placed 9th in the Olympics. He came away dissatisfied, moved to train with Jimmy Pedro, and made a run at the 2008 team but missed out due to the selection process. He doesn't elaborate, but blamed the politics of Judo for his not being selected. Rousey has had similar things to say about the politics and the money behind USJA as far as how much goes to athletes (according her the amount is next to nothing) and how much goes to the travel expenses, food budget, and lodgings of those who are basically administrative staff for the USJA on trips abroad as opposed to athletes.

At any rate, Hawn moved over to MMA, quickly racking up an impressive record before moving to the big show.
His first big splash on the national scene was a shoulder throw to hammerfist TKO win in Bellator:

Hawn opened his MMA career at Delagrotte's Sityodong gym but has since made his way to GSP's home away from home, Tristar in Montreal. Hawn recently walked away with Bellator's 155/Lightweight tournament title and will now face Michael Chandler for the belt Chandler himself recently won via finish/upset over Eddie Alvarez.

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TMA Friday:
I've made jokes in the past about TMA (traditional martial arts) as so much of it is based on theory rather than application. I do this, in part, b/c I went through the tough but necessary realization that what I had learned in Wing Chun Kung-Fu (how I got started in Martial Arts FYI) left quite a bit to be desired in fighting other trained fighters. If I had to pick a martial art to teach someone who was fighting other "street fighters" and non-trained fighters, Wing Chun is actually not bad. It's against trained fighters that I found Wing Chun started to have some holes. That being said, my biggest beef with traditional martial arts is the lack of full-scale sparring (or close to it) and the belief that you can simply know how to do something rather than train your body by doing it thousands and thousands of times.

That being said, it's hilarious to see there's nothing wrong with a look into what those wacky TMA guys are inventing as of late.

Takedown Defense (I guess against someone with no wrestling experience but who tries to grab your legs?)