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Before all the people on this list who are not into karate in the slightest stop reading, let me just mention a feature of this tournament which reminded me of the body image and weight and femininity issues which have been cropping up on my friendslist recently: martial artists come in all shapes and sizes. Good martial artists-- serious athletes, serious competitors-- come in all shapes and sizes. I'd say 30 to 40 % of the competitors were women, and what I'm about to say about them goes for men too, of course, corrected for proper gender terminology.
I saw tall lanky women. I saw short fat women. I saw tiny light-boned women. I saw great big Amazonian women. I saw medium-sized chubby women, and stocky muscular women, little wiry women, and voluptous women, and slim women, and gaunt older women, and adorable little girls with chipmunk cheeks and better form than I'll ever have. I saw women from Serbia, Canada, Ilinois, Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Chula Vista, Stockton, Chihuahua, Mexicali, and Tokyo. I saw women of all races, though perhaps because of the location, there were really a lot of Hispanic women. There were even a handful of female sensei, coaches, and referees, which is rare. And women of all types won at kata and sparring and team kata and sparring, and when there wasn't an even division of competitors by gender in the under-fifteen-year-old sparring division, there were two matches where girls sparred with boys. The girls won both of them.
This was completely worth the long drive to Vegas. It was great to watch, and I got absolutely terrific material. Turns out that all the stuff that I had wanted to put into fiction but wasn't sure if it was plausible-- competitors getting into grudge matches, national rivalries, competitors getting injured and continuing with the match-- really happens. And Las Vegas is a fabulous setting.
The legendary Kanazawa and Mikami were in attendence, and both of them were called up to referee at the black belt finals. They're in their seventies and probably nearsighted-- at one point Mikami put a pair of reading glasses on atop his regular glasses-- so they followed the competitors around quite closely. I bet everyone who had Kanazawa or Mikami referee their match, especially if he spoke to them, remembers it forever. For me, although I didn't talk to either of them, it's like being an average player on a neighborhood basketball team, and getting to see Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sitting right there in front of you. A few times people were injured, and once a judge tried to stop a match. Kanazawa waved the judge off, asked the bleeding guy if he wanted to go on, and when he said yes, gestured at them to resume. That guy got huge points in Kanazawa's book, I'm sure. (It was Kevin, of whom I will write more later.)
A few memorable moments:
An overhead light exploded in a shower of sparks and glass directly above the stage during a sparring match. The competitors didn't even blink-- the referee stopped the match until the glass was swept up.
One of the individual competitors was a guy from Nepal who looked like a cross between Tony Jaa from Ong Bak and a karate guy I knew, Jarno. He was a smallish wiry guy, which was the most common men's body type at the tournament, with lovely floppy hair parted in the middle and a terrific chiseled profile. Um, good technique too. He won a men's individual division.
Two of the young men got in a grudge match where it really looked like one of them was willing to throw the match just to get in another punch to his opponent's face. He lost by cumulative penalties for excessive contact. The winner was later seen on the sidelines, holding an ice pack to his face and with cotton stuffed up both his nostrils.
The most exciting kumite matches were the teams-- they don't fight as a team, but three people from each dojo are matched with each other one by one, so everyone gets to spar with everyone. Teams from Serbia, Mexico, England, and several from America made it into the black belt finals. At one point the Serbian sensei (who was a woman) was yelling advice in Serbian, and the Mexican sensei was yelling in Spanish, and the spectators were screaming in English and Japanese, until the referee told them all, in English, to shut up. The Serbian woman either ignored him or didn't speak English or pretended not to, because she kept right on coaching. The Serbian team-- men, women, and girls-- was formidable. Sempai remarked that the men on the team were probably the only competitors who had actually killed people.
The Mexican team had great spirit and a kamikaze willingness to charge in and take punishment, but the Serbs and the English team were tougher, and the American team was savvier. Though the Mexicans had the loudest spectators, they came in fourth.
The English team had one guy with spiked hair who bounced around and flung himself about in a rather spastic manner, making intimidating faces. He met his match against an American competitor, a medium-sized Japanese-American guy named Kevin, who was virtually the only competitor who stood still for long periods. Kevin waited, and waited, and let his opponents whirl and bounce and make threatening gestures, and moved just out of range if they actually tried to attack. (He was one of the few people who really used distancing to his advantage.) Then, at the perfect moment, he would suddenly charge them, chase them across the stage, and score. Kevin was great.
Also on Kevin's team was a big heavy guy who looked unimpressive, but turned out to be much faster than he looked. He also generally let his opponents fling themselves on him, then scored off them. The third person on that team was a tall, big-boned young Chinese-American man, Michael Young, whose demeanor was also deceiving. That was the theme for that team: they didn't look like much and they didn't do anything flashy right out of the gate, but sat back and observed and sized up their opponents, and then took them out. Michael helds his hands ridiculously low and floppy. First I thought there was no way he could protect his face. Then I thought he was doing it to taunt his oppenents. Eventually I realized that was just his style. He played it cool, but he didn't let anyone push him around: when another big guy took him down and scored off him on the ground, Michael got up and picked the guy up-- not a scoring technique, but thoroughly intimidating. He won best overall for men, and his team won for the best men's team.
A sensei from California had his two teenage sons and teenage daughter compete as a team. They did a terrific demonstration of kata with applications, performing the kata as they attacked each other in turns. When the judge presented them with a team medal at the end of the day, he mentioned that they were siblings and said, "There is no fighting allowed in their house."
I saw tall lanky women. I saw short fat women. I saw tiny light-boned women. I saw great big Amazonian women. I saw medium-sized chubby women, and stocky muscular women, little wiry women, and voluptous women, and slim women, and gaunt older women, and adorable little girls with chipmunk cheeks and better form than I'll ever have. I saw women from Serbia, Canada, Ilinois, Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Chula Vista, Stockton, Chihuahua, Mexicali, and Tokyo. I saw women of all races, though perhaps because of the location, there were really a lot of Hispanic women. There were even a handful of female sensei, coaches, and referees, which is rare. And women of all types won at kata and sparring and team kata and sparring, and when there wasn't an even division of competitors by gender in the under-fifteen-year-old sparring division, there were two matches where girls sparred with boys. The girls won both of them.
This was completely worth the long drive to Vegas. It was great to watch, and I got absolutely terrific material. Turns out that all the stuff that I had wanted to put into fiction but wasn't sure if it was plausible-- competitors getting into grudge matches, national rivalries, competitors getting injured and continuing with the match-- really happens. And Las Vegas is a fabulous setting.
The legendary Kanazawa and Mikami were in attendence, and both of them were called up to referee at the black belt finals. They're in their seventies and probably nearsighted-- at one point Mikami put a pair of reading glasses on atop his regular glasses-- so they followed the competitors around quite closely. I bet everyone who had Kanazawa or Mikami referee their match, especially if he spoke to them, remembers it forever. For me, although I didn't talk to either of them, it's like being an average player on a neighborhood basketball team, and getting to see Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sitting right there in front of you. A few times people were injured, and once a judge tried to stop a match. Kanazawa waved the judge off, asked the bleeding guy if he wanted to go on, and when he said yes, gestured at them to resume. That guy got huge points in Kanazawa's book, I'm sure. (It was Kevin, of whom I will write more later.)
A few memorable moments:
An overhead light exploded in a shower of sparks and glass directly above the stage during a sparring match. The competitors didn't even blink-- the referee stopped the match until the glass was swept up.
One of the individual competitors was a guy from Nepal who looked like a cross between Tony Jaa from Ong Bak and a karate guy I knew, Jarno. He was a smallish wiry guy, which was the most common men's body type at the tournament, with lovely floppy hair parted in the middle and a terrific chiseled profile. Um, good technique too. He won a men's individual division.
Two of the young men got in a grudge match where it really looked like one of them was willing to throw the match just to get in another punch to his opponent's face. He lost by cumulative penalties for excessive contact. The winner was later seen on the sidelines, holding an ice pack to his face and with cotton stuffed up both his nostrils.
The most exciting kumite matches were the teams-- they don't fight as a team, but three people from each dojo are matched with each other one by one, so everyone gets to spar with everyone. Teams from Serbia, Mexico, England, and several from America made it into the black belt finals. At one point the Serbian sensei (who was a woman) was yelling advice in Serbian, and the Mexican sensei was yelling in Spanish, and the spectators were screaming in English and Japanese, until the referee told them all, in English, to shut up. The Serbian woman either ignored him or didn't speak English or pretended not to, because she kept right on coaching. The Serbian team-- men, women, and girls-- was formidable. Sempai remarked that the men on the team were probably the only competitors who had actually killed people.
The Mexican team had great spirit and a kamikaze willingness to charge in and take punishment, but the Serbs and the English team were tougher, and the American team was savvier. Though the Mexicans had the loudest spectators, they came in fourth.
The English team had one guy with spiked hair who bounced around and flung himself about in a rather spastic manner, making intimidating faces. He met his match against an American competitor, a medium-sized Japanese-American guy named Kevin, who was virtually the only competitor who stood still for long periods. Kevin waited, and waited, and let his opponents whirl and bounce and make threatening gestures, and moved just out of range if they actually tried to attack. (He was one of the few people who really used distancing to his advantage.) Then, at the perfect moment, he would suddenly charge them, chase them across the stage, and score. Kevin was great.
Also on Kevin's team was a big heavy guy who looked unimpressive, but turned out to be much faster than he looked. He also generally let his opponents fling themselves on him, then scored off them. The third person on that team was a tall, big-boned young Chinese-American man, Michael Young, whose demeanor was also deceiving. That was the theme for that team: they didn't look like much and they didn't do anything flashy right out of the gate, but sat back and observed and sized up their opponents, and then took them out. Michael helds his hands ridiculously low and floppy. First I thought there was no way he could protect his face. Then I thought he was doing it to taunt his oppenents. Eventually I realized that was just his style. He played it cool, but he didn't let anyone push him around: when another big guy took him down and scored off him on the ground, Michael got up and picked the guy up-- not a scoring technique, but thoroughly intimidating. He won best overall for men, and his team won for the best men's team.
A sensei from California had his two teenage sons and teenage daughter compete as a team. They did a terrific demonstration of kata with applications, performing the kata as they attacked each other in turns. When the judge presented them with a team medal at the end of the day, he mentioned that they were siblings and said, "There is no fighting allowed in their house."
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