Hi, my name is Peter. Peter Skyballs, and I was grandfathered into MMA.
What do I mean by the term "grandfathered"?
Well you see I started training MMA in the late 90's and started fighting in the early 00's. This is back when the guys who won the fights were guys who actually trained and the guys who lost were the street corner heros and the slightly mentally delusional.
I of course got to be 5-0 by fighting absolute cans and then won one halfway legit fight. Then I got to fight in a VERY high profile fight and two KINDA high profile fights. All because I beat up a bunch of cans.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a halfway decent fighter, but I couldn't compete these days, I would be average at best. However, I would still whoop 90% of you that will be talking smack on this thread.
When I turned 30 my body completely fell apart. How dare you guys rip on Fedor. I know how he feels. When I was 26 I was a killing machine. Now that I"m in my early 30's I'm not even a shadow of what I used to be. Its the mileage.
High Mileage will take an A level fighter to the level of a C level fighter, but they still make these A level fighters fight up and coming A level fighters. The best examples of these are Chuck Lidell and Wand Silva.
By the way, I"m not using my real name because you guys are ruthless, mean spirited, and uneducated for the most part. When in Rome...
Mr Skyballs...
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I'm in the 10%, FYI. 
Great name BTW... thanks for sharing
I am very similar. I won Monte's national tourney in 1999, but I was smart enough to stop there. I got away with being a good athlete in great shape that was good at no gi bjj, but had zero stand up skills.
In 
kostakio with the i'm in the 10%
that made my day
laughed out loud
RickStorm -Mr Skyballs...
Please check your PM's
Thank you
Something about this phrase is gold
when you're body falls apart trt and hgh... it's working for Mel:
MMALOGIC -when you're body falls apart trt and hgh... it's working for Mel:
Sly bro. Sly.
Dude I know exactly what you're talking about. In '95 I got in with this group of crazy guys, ex-wrestlers mostly (like myself) but there were TMAers and ammy boxers in the mix.
Our 'teacher' was a short Mexican dude with a black belt in Judo who'd been out to California to train with the Gracies and Machados. He was also a helluva a boxer in his day and oddly enough was really good with a pair of batons (though he never taught that - we were all about sport fighting).
We trained in a big non-profit gym (used to be a bingo parlor and night club at various times) that was primarily a Judo club (but had weights and several different TMA classes). We'd wrap hands, box for 45 minutes, then go pull stanky gis off a rack, tie them on over our shorts and work on TDs and subs. We'd get the olympic-style TKD club guys to come punch and kick us just so we could practice getting the TDs. We constantly broke down tape. Instructional vids, fights from Japan, taped seminars, whatever we could get our hands on.
Then every now and then we'd get in a van and truck it down to Amarillo (from Oklahoma) to fight open-hand Texas rules in the USWF. You weren't allowed to wear gloves so all strikes to the head were open handed but you could knee to the face... something about shootfighting falling under the jurisdiction of pro wrasslin rather than boxing.
For free of course. Hell we were lucky to get a tape of the event. One time they dropped the ring right on top of the rodeo dirt from the night before.
The headliner fights were always fixed too. So the guys getting paid were actually working their boughts but all us dumbass ammys were really getting after it. Also you were allowed to wear your gi if you liked (we never did).
They sold gallons of beer and the fights in the stands were epic. As a team we did really well for exactly what you're talking about; we trained, we had game plans, we used sound wrestling and basic jiu-jitsu and tapped out local toughguys.
In fairness that league did produce Evan Tanner, Heath Herring and Paul Jones. But yeah it was nuts. We were nuts for doing it, no money, no medical, nada.
Good times.
In