July 24 2010 Yoshukai Tournament Report
from Sempai Clint Smith

I drove Sempai Zachary to his third Yoshukai SuperFights Tournament in Oxford, Alabama that Saturday morning.  This year we were joined by our fellow Chelsea students, Connor and Ben, for the semi-knockdown portion of the tournament.  I asked S Zachary about his goals for this tournament.  He said he wanted good opponents and he wanted to return to basics — knee kicks, punches, and low roundhouse kicks.  These have always been his favorite techniques, but he wanted to do less of the fancy techniques that have a low success rate and sometimes had left him off-balance and vulnerable.

We saw many different types of dogi's from 8 or more different styles.  Yoshukai, Shotokan, XMA (Xtreme Martial Arts), several others.  One man in the point fighting wore red denim pants and a white dogi shirt.

S Zachary decisively won the 15-17-year-old advanced semi-knockdown division the last 2 years when he was age 13 and 14.  His opponents then were Yoshukai black belt boys who were a year older than him.  The Yoshukai sempai's and shihans we see in Oxford know that S Zachary trains with Sensei Tetsu and they remember how he finished his fights at the Oyama and Yoshukai tournaments.

After all the divisions completed the morning point fighting and trophies were awarded, 2 padded mats were set up and the semi-knockdown fighters were organized into divisions.  Connor was in the 7-8-year-old division with 4 other kids.  I had a sense that Connor would do well with the other kids in his group.  Ben was in the men's intermediate division (green & blue belts; Yoshukai has a different belt progression than we use).  3 other men were in Ben's division; I had a good sense about his chances also.  S Zachary stood up when they called for ages 15-17, but he was clearly out of place.  The Yoshokai people remember him from the last 2 years and he ended up in the men's advanced division (black and brown belts).

Connor was the first of the Oyama fighters to see action.  His parents seemed more nervous than Connor.  The 7-8-year-olds were all fitted with chest protectors at this tournament.  Connor told his coach (his dad) that he would probably have to try more head kicks since he wouldn't be able to land hard punches through the chest protector.  He punched hard and often during his 3 fights and mixed in lots of mawashi geri.  I noticed that he seemed tired a couple of times and was moving backwards, but he found his chi again each time and began moving forward so that he finished his fights on the attack.  He won one fight by decision and finished the other 2 fights when the other kids didn't want to continue.  I was proud of Connor.  His love of the competition and his serious attitude remind me of S Zachary when he was younger.

Ben was next to fight over on the adult mat.  S Zachary had been warming up with Ben while I watched Connor's fights, so he followed Ben to the ring and coached him for his 2 fights.  I sat in the front row of the bleachers and shouted a few suggestions (mainly to use more gedan mawashi geri).  Ben used his size advantage, his strong front foot mae geri and strong gedan mawashi geri to win both of his fights.  After several strong leg kicks in the first fight, he scored a wazari with a jodan mawashi geri.  S Zachary was proud of himself for suggesting this combination.  I can see a lot of progress in Ben's karate the last year.  He is learning and getting better each time.

The advanced men's division was last.  The 2 Yoshukai brown belts fought first.  They went into an overtime round where the stronger fighter won by decision.  S Zachary and I watched the fight and noticed that they both tended to drop their hands (maybe a jodan mawashi geri would work) and seemed to be very tired after the fight.  They also did not move side-to-side much, so a technique like ushiro geri might be effective.  The winner was the older, but stronger man.  He was a little shorter than S Zachary, but probably 40 pounds heavier.  We later learned that he was 42 years old.

S Zachary's fight was with the Shotokan black belt, who appeared to be around 25-30 and in good condition.  Maybe 30 pounds heavier than S Zachary.  His Sensei knew S Zachary from 2 Oyama tournaments, where S Zachary had defeated his teenage fighter twice.  We guessed that the sensei was giving his adult fighter pointers on what to expect.  This fight was 90% infighting.  Lots of punching and knee kicks.  Lots of pushing and jostling for position.  The Shotokan sempai liked mae geri and yoko geri, and liked catching S Zachary's kicks and pushing him down.  S Zachary landed many brutal knee kicks - sometimes 3 or 4 or 5 in a row.  He mixed in a couple of high kicks, but they were easily blocked.  One beautiful kaiten uchi mawashi drew ooh's and aah's from the crowd, but the kick only hit air.  S Zachary appeared to land more hard techniques, but the judges sent the fight to 1 overtime round, then another.  One of the judges later told S Zachary that he didn't give him an earlier round because he was doing too much pushing and not enough striking.  S Zachary won a unanimous decision after the second overtime.

The championship fight was similar to the first fight — lots of infighting, punching, pushing, knee kicks, and leg kicks.  S Zachary had speed and flexibility advantages in this fight and his techniques were sharper.  One second after the center judge said "fight" at the beginning of the overtime round, he landed a solid jodan mawashi geri.  The brown belt stumbled sideways and waved his hands to indicate that that he had had enough.

S Zachary wanted to fight in tournaments since he was 8 and saw his first one at Chelsea Elementary School.  He had been studying karate only 2-3 weeks.  I've seen him develop as a fighter and a person through his tournament experiences.  He faced an experienced rival in several tournaments: he won some and lost some.  He learned from his failures and from his successes and changed his fighting to improve with each tournament.  The last time he faced his rival, he finished the fight with knee kicks.  Karate tournament fighting has been a great experience for how to set a goal and then to fight through adversity, through pain, and through doubt to reach that goal.  He has also learned that losing a fight can be a good experience.  These are lessons I hope he will absorb and apply to other aspects of life.

We learned later that Senpapi Karl Julian won the men's lightweight knockdown division (again) after 2 fights with black belts, and Karry Wright, a green belt, won the heavyweight division (again) after defeating 2 black belts.  So World Oyama Karate was 5-0 at the Yoshukai tournament.  5 fighters, 5 champions.

Osu!