I used to play Basketball in Junior High, though I wasn't very good on a team, I rocked some streetball, and often. I play best one on one or in three on three games, so full team just wasn't my thing. It lost the fun once referrees were brought into it, so I stopped playing on teams after my first time.
I also wrestled for a year in high school, my senior year, because I had moved to my school at the end of the prior school year. My older school didn't have a team and didn't offer the chance to wrestle. I only wrestled one real match (For JV no less) and won, but the coaches weren't grooming me for anything because I didn't have a future on the team, so I was kind of ignored. But I enjoyed it still, and learned as much as I could.
Apart from those, I've been a martial artist for five years now. I started with Tae Kwon Do, which I earned a black belt in, and competed in one tournament (for sparring and kata) which I won first place in both in my division. Before I earned my black belt, an assistant guest instructor came to town for a few months (a former student and resident of said town) and got me started in my first instruction of mixed martial arts fighting. In particular, he gave me my first taste of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai kickboxing. He worked me out hard, taught me alot, and gave me a taste of real fighting. He left shortly before my black belt test in TKD, but me and my friends (fellow training partners in the TKD school) kept practicing what he taught us.
Shortly after recieving my Tae Kwon Do black belt, I moved to a new town. There, I bummed around, catching the odd free MMA class wherever I could (I think I bummed something like three four-hour long traininig sessions from one MMA gym because the owner liked me), and absorbed as much as I could.
I attended a local gym where a small Karate class was held, and I began to particpate with them in sparring, and learned a few odd Karate moves that I didn't much care for. I admittedly, just used the class' students as a group of moving punching bags. The only person there whom I think could have ever given me a real fight was the instructor, whom I never sparred (mostly out of my own respect for him, and the fact that he never challenged me). Apart from that I demolished everyone else except one kid (whom I would later find out was a wrestler on my high school team, he was in really good shape). Eventually I got bored with the easy competition, and started to feel that I was tarnishing the instructor's teachings (as well as being made very uncomfortable during his Christian sermons about the uses of martial arts, later finding out that he was the youth pastor to almost the entire class) so I stopped attending.
After that I spent some time assistant instructing a Tae Kwon Do class for children with an assosciate of my father's who had his own school. He also helped me with the more intense side of traditional sparring. His miliary carreer, however, caused him to give up his school and our training sessions, unfortunately. He was a real tough guy, real nice, even though I think he almost broke my nose during one sparring session.
After that, I started to concentrate on my future wrestling for my high school and had a friend I had made, a two year prior wrestler and MMA fan, start attending them gym with me. We'd use the same room used for the Karate classes (from the youth pastor's class) and teach one another everything we knew about our different disciplines. He gave me a crash course on folk-style wrestling and I taught him everything I knew about BJJ and striking. He absorbed the BJJ like a sponge, but he never acclimated to striking. It just didn't come naturally to him.
Then came the wrestling season, where I learned more grappling techniques. I'd challenge some of the wrestlers during our down time to submission rounds, where I would defeat them with BJJ techniques (they didn't know what to do with me after pinning me, and I knew exactly what to do). I learned as much wrestling as I could, and focused on perfecting my sprawl and back control because they would serve me most I felt in my own fighting style. Again, I wrestled only one match, won it, and then the season ended for me shortly after.
In the past few months, I've been in a slump. My friend no longer wants to train and spar with me anymore, so I've just been doing the odd punching bag workout from time to time to keep my striking sharp. But I'm waning and I know it. However, I've joined the Army National Guard, and I will be leaving to basic training on October 8th. There, I'll be put into fighting shape, given extra training in Combatives grappling, and after the whole ordeal, I'll be given $20,000, which I will be using to pay for a year or two's worth of MMA training at a local gym after scouting around.
I want to hurry it get it over with so I can get back to it. Martial arts is my passion,and the more I think about it, the more I want to try and get an amateur MMA fight... just to see how things go.
After that, I'm hoping maybe I can get my MMA to pay for itself, maybe get a gig being an assistant instructor or trainer... I hope. Cuz I hate paying or this stuff, haha. It gets expensive.
Edit: God DAMN thats a long ass post.
