Matt Thornton
Amateur Fighter
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2004
- Messages
- 1,890
- Reaction score
- 1
This story is kind of long, but I'd really appreciate it if you guys read it. It's really more MMA, but I think the grappling forum has probably the best crowd in it.
Yesterday I was sparring with the Boneyard fight team. Two of my coaches/teachers were training, and another guy also jumped in with us. We were all rotating in and out for standup for about 30-45 minutes, and then we put on the MMA gloves to roll on the ground.
Keep in mind, we all have the Combat Sports set of MMA training gloves and shinguards.
Anyways, Mike Littlefield (my coach, owner of the Boneyard, possible UFC prospect) says the rules before we start; begin from the clinch with no strikes, but striking on the ground. I do fairly well from the clinch, but all 3 guys I'm with are a little bigger than me and have more experience. On the ground I also do alright, but again, I'm a little outmatched.
All in all, the sparring session is going great, until the final round comes up. The guy (I'll leave him unnamed in case he comes on here) who was not a coach or trainer guillotined me several times, after I got tired and took some sloppy shots. At one point he ended up in sidemount on me, and as I got double underhooks to escape out the back door, he mounted me (I hate when this happens!).
I start to work out of mount as my coaches are telling me I have 30 seconds left. My go-to escape isn't working because I'm completely gassed. I shoot for an old escape I used to use; pushing him over the top and escaping by doing a backwards roll. He spins out of the leglock attempts, and here's where the shit hit the fan.
I'm exhausted at this point. I'm very serious about being the best at MMA I can be, and I've been getting beat for a whole session. I have maybe 15 seconds left, and it's the end of the sparring session, and I HATE being guillotined.
So as he spins around into open guard (him on his back, me on top), the second he faces me, I come down with a Fedor-style overhand shot from open guard. Think Fedor vs. Nog, when Nog had his feet on Fedor's hips, and Fedor was leaning his bodyweight into the punches. I throw it with probably 80% power; something I shouldn't have been doing. I was wearing the big soft training gloves, and I've been hit real hard with them, so I sort of assumed it would be fine.
Somehow, the angle and time I hit him at, was pretty devastating. He was definitely hurt; we stopped the round. There was a cut under his eye, and he complained that his eye was killing him. His eyesight was fine, but it hurt to move the eye.
I feel bad about this, since I really never spar that hard. I'm not the kind of meathead who thinks a sparring session is a fight, and I ALWAYS view it as a training tool and not a competition. For once I got a little too rough during sparring, and happened to have poor luck like this.
The guy who I hit was lurking around the gym. He was acting really strange for the next hour. Usually he's pretty social, and an easygoing guy, but for an hour he looked like he was depressed and deep in thought. When I went to take a shower, he was sitting on the mats in the dark.
After coming out of the shower, I was talking with my other coach Bobby, when the guy I hit comes in. He tells us he just threw up, had nausea, and complained that it was really cold. He was shivering like crazy. Bobby and I agreed he needed to go to the emergency room.
We drive him down there, and stop him from going to sleep a bunch of times while waiting for his turn. At this point we think it's definitely a concussion. When it's finally his turn, we get to his room, and he starts vomiting blood into the sink.
From 9 p.m. to 12 a.m., Bobby and I wait with him. He gets a CAT scan, which actually went pretty well. It was a concussion, but with no further brain damage, so they let him go home last night (which is when it happened). He's still freezing and has on and off nausea, but I think those were just symptoms of the concussion.
I had to leave at 12, because I'm 17 and by law my curfew is 12:30. As I was leaving, they were X-Raying him, to check on the orbital bone above his left eye. Last I heard, they thought it was broken. I'm kind of hoping it wasn't.
Anyways, kind of a long story, but it just really sucks. I'm hoping he'll heal up quickly, and that there won't be any hard feelings. He's really a good training partner and was going to be fighting probably this year. Still, I was a little surprised at what I can actually do. He said he's been hit harder than that, but it was just the timing and angle of the shot that did the damage.
Now if only I can keep that out of training and do that when I fight!
Yesterday I was sparring with the Boneyard fight team. Two of my coaches/teachers were training, and another guy also jumped in with us. We were all rotating in and out for standup for about 30-45 minutes, and then we put on the MMA gloves to roll on the ground.
Keep in mind, we all have the Combat Sports set of MMA training gloves and shinguards.
Anyways, Mike Littlefield (my coach, owner of the Boneyard, possible UFC prospect) says the rules before we start; begin from the clinch with no strikes, but striking on the ground. I do fairly well from the clinch, but all 3 guys I'm with are a little bigger than me and have more experience. On the ground I also do alright, but again, I'm a little outmatched.
All in all, the sparring session is going great, until the final round comes up. The guy (I'll leave him unnamed in case he comes on here) who was not a coach or trainer guillotined me several times, after I got tired and took some sloppy shots. At one point he ended up in sidemount on me, and as I got double underhooks to escape out the back door, he mounted me (I hate when this happens!).
I start to work out of mount as my coaches are telling me I have 30 seconds left. My go-to escape isn't working because I'm completely gassed. I shoot for an old escape I used to use; pushing him over the top and escaping by doing a backwards roll. He spins out of the leglock attempts, and here's where the shit hit the fan.
I'm exhausted at this point. I'm very serious about being the best at MMA I can be, and I've been getting beat for a whole session. I have maybe 15 seconds left, and it's the end of the sparring session, and I HATE being guillotined.
So as he spins around into open guard (him on his back, me on top), the second he faces me, I come down with a Fedor-style overhand shot from open guard. Think Fedor vs. Nog, when Nog had his feet on Fedor's hips, and Fedor was leaning his bodyweight into the punches. I throw it with probably 80% power; something I shouldn't have been doing. I was wearing the big soft training gloves, and I've been hit real hard with them, so I sort of assumed it would be fine.
Somehow, the angle and time I hit him at, was pretty devastating. He was definitely hurt; we stopped the round. There was a cut under his eye, and he complained that his eye was killing him. His eyesight was fine, but it hurt to move the eye.
I feel bad about this, since I really never spar that hard. I'm not the kind of meathead who thinks a sparring session is a fight, and I ALWAYS view it as a training tool and not a competition. For once I got a little too rough during sparring, and happened to have poor luck like this.
The guy who I hit was lurking around the gym. He was acting really strange for the next hour. Usually he's pretty social, and an easygoing guy, but for an hour he looked like he was depressed and deep in thought. When I went to take a shower, he was sitting on the mats in the dark.
After coming out of the shower, I was talking with my other coach Bobby, when the guy I hit comes in. He tells us he just threw up, had nausea, and complained that it was really cold. He was shivering like crazy. Bobby and I agreed he needed to go to the emergency room.
We drive him down there, and stop him from going to sleep a bunch of times while waiting for his turn. At this point we think it's definitely a concussion. When it's finally his turn, we get to his room, and he starts vomiting blood into the sink.
From 9 p.m. to 12 a.m., Bobby and I wait with him. He gets a CAT scan, which actually went pretty well. It was a concussion, but with no further brain damage, so they let him go home last night (which is when it happened). He's still freezing and has on and off nausea, but I think those were just symptoms of the concussion.
I had to leave at 12, because I'm 17 and by law my curfew is 12:30. As I was leaving, they were X-Raying him, to check on the orbital bone above his left eye. Last I heard, they thought it was broken. I'm kind of hoping it wasn't.
Anyways, kind of a long story, but it just really sucks. I'm hoping he'll heal up quickly, and that there won't be any hard feelings. He's really a good training partner and was going to be fighting probably this year. Still, I was a little surprised at what I can actually do. He said he's been hit harder than that, but it was just the timing and angle of the shot that did the damage.
Now if only I can keep that out of training and do that when I fight!
