Tournaments comming

Its almost time again for the first competitions this year!

And I'm really looking forward to it, especialy because I could not fight in the European Championships.

The first one comming up will be the watterland cup, wich is nothing more then the anual Rickson Gracie Holland tournament, and will be a Poul competition.

Meaning you can always fight atleast 5 matches.

This wil make a great warmup and test for my skills,because the weekend after that on 15 Feb, the Amsterdam open will be held again, and I would like to prolonge my winningstreak at the Amsterdam tournaments.(I won the last 3 championships I fought there.)

Besides that, in March the new Zona no Gi challenge will be held,and I also want to aim my aerows on that prize as well.

Antoni Hardonk, michel verheij and raoul promoted

Antoni, Raoul and Michel where promoted to purple belt all this week by Henry Akins who was here for seminars and private lessons.
Apparently Kron tipped Henry about it being time for Antoni to move up.

Congratulations to them all.

Danny and michel beating Gracie Barra Blackbelt

Damm!!!

Just returned from Ede...
Damm that was a shitty profromance by me.. I weight in at 86kilo's(!) and could not sweat it of in the sauna,only getting my ass to a 84, stil to heavy!
So I fought in the -91 kilo division, a dicision that proved not to be the right one for me before..
I'm rather weak if it comes to pure strenght, and these guys tend to be on my level,but much stronger.. I stil won 3rd place, but I serieusly dont care for 3rd places... And I got Submitted!!! For the first time in Grappling I had to tap...By a god dam north/south power choke..Just brute force and I just could not figure out how to get out of the dam headlock,and when things started to daze..I dicided that it was better to tap out..But shit that made me angry!!
Mostly at myself, I came unprepared to this tournament, and I paid for it.
Very unprofessional...
The other matches I won by RNC, points and I lost an other on points(just on the edge,but a loss is a loss)..Wich pissed me of even more.. A poul of 5 guys, and I win 2 and lose 2..
Thats the score of a biginner..
Wel the positive note is that I know some nice things to work on, and I should focus myself more if I want to win the next one.
Cry in the Dojo, laugh on the battlefield..The last 3 weeks it was the other way around, and i paid for it..

Gracie magazine

From the website of Gracie magazine!!

29.04.2008
Zona No-Gi Cup images
Sunday of submission in Holland
Submission grappling athletes gathered on April 20th, in Amsterdam for the 2008 Zona No-Gi Cup, sponsored by GMA member Zona MMA, online store. The event had a lot of great fights.An excellence note goes to Sebastiaan Mook, who won the advanced -85kg division and the open class division. Among beginners, Achmed Belmadani cameback from a 3rd place in the -91kg division to conquer the absolute. The Zona No-Gi Cup will be featured at the the next GRACIE Magazine issue. For more info, go to zona-mma.com. Promoters has sent some pictures of the event.