MMA Hardknocks – A Look Back
Hey all! It’s been awhile, huh? One thing you’ll come to find out is that I tend to procrastinate when it comes to things such as these…apologies. Um, anyway quick recap of what is going on in the world of yours truly, currently not too much, unfortunately. I messed up my knee almost a month ago now, and have been on the sidelines since. Didn’t think it was anything at first, but God really stuck it to me good this time and I’ll be going under the knife pretty soon. Nothing too bad, but it will keep me out of training and such for awhile. Short detour is all. Fully intend to be back in the gym as soon as I’m properly healed up. Your love and support is much appreciated during these trying times, ha-ha!!
Now onto the pic above. As I’m suddenly with all this extra time, forgive me for being a little introspective. Here I’m standing next to my good friends, current Pancrase Champ Kengo Ura and Andy Wang. These guys really showed me the ropes coming up in my MMA career. They were two of the first guys I trained with getting into MMA and I owe a lot of who I am to both of them…the good parts I mean, ha.
At the beginning of starting MMA I really was a pretty bad striker. My wrestling was pretty good, my jiu-jitsu was kinda slick too….but my hands were terrible, and my training partners let me know that each time we sparred. The beginning for me was just kind of like jumping into the deep end.
One thing you realize soon in MMA is that things change really quick when striking comes into play. You have set up your takedowns differently; the guard in itself becomes an entirely different beast all together. You really have to be active a lot more, or lest you get your face smashed. It’s not as laid back as jiu-jitsu where you can sit and wait a little and it isn’t a full sprint like a lot of wrestling matches turn out to be. It’s like you would expect, a combination of everything and a pretty tiring combination at that.
My time remembering back to those early days, there’s a lot of things that stick out. One of them is being dropped with a crazy body shot during one practice. After nursing a bad rib and training cautiously to protect it for a couple weeks, one day a friend that shall remain nameless, forgot about said injury. The “body shot from hell” as it shall now be known happened soon afterward. After awhile of writhing in agony on the floor, screaming a good amount of obscenities, Andy would come to check on me. He later told me, he thought I was dying. …Well, it felt like I was dying at the time, ha-ha! It’s funny that these people that would do me harm in training everyday are some of the closest people I know. Well, it’s a fun life is all I can say.
I had a whole year training MMA religiously at R1 (Formerly RAW training center) that first year, before I had my first official match. I believe I was 22 at the time. I would only have one smoker match before I took the plunge into my first official match. I made a dramatic come back win in my debut against a two-time state wrestling champ. As it turned out, I would be walking back to the locker room away from the cage after my win, when a random super cute blond came running up to me with a hug telling me she loved me, and right then I knew… I had found my calling in life:), ha-ha!!
What was the point of this….?? …beats me!
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To San Diego and Beyond!
Alright so it’s already almost been a week now but none the less, last Sunday I travelled down to San Diego. My good friend, Andy Wang had helped put on this tournament, Choke (The Quickening-2) over at an Undisputed Gym that he teaches at in San Diego. Apparently there’s four Undisputed Gyms in San Diego. I never knew there were so many, whoa! In anycase, the gym was pretty cool, a boxing ring, a large mat area, workout equipment, and even a cool tatoo parlor! ….Now if only I had tatoos.
The tournament seemed to go off without a hitch. It was cheap, competition fee only being 20 bucks. A lot of the winners got free prizes from sponsors which included the likes of gift certificates, suppliments, training gear and I might be missing more. There was even plaques and medals for the winners. So all in all a pretty cool little tournament I must say. In this day and age where it’s the norm to sometimes pay upwards of 100 just to compete, it’s nice to know that there are still some people that will put on tournaments for the sole sake of the sport.
yours truly competed as well. I just had one match in my division against a good guy and friend, Adam Lynn. I think our wrestling was matched up pretty evenly so the sole points scored were a weird little takedown I was able to pull off in the last couple seconds. It was good to compete again for me personally since training alone can get kind of tiresome when you have nothing to train for coming up. Competing is really the end result of the training so when you don’t have that it can get a little frustrating as you can possibly imagine.
Cool Weekend in San Diego, saw some buds, competed, ate, awesome!
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UFC and training with Caol Uno
So…pretty eventful day. I started off the way I usually do on a Saturday with training over at VMAT. Good stuff, we did some striking drills and then some grappling sparring to finish it off. I came home feeling a little worse for wear so I decided on a nap, it was probably the body more than me deciding though.
Hung out with the fam to watch the ufc and then finished with some kanji studying since I’m cool like that! ha! The UFC was really good I thought this time around. Good matches all in all, the only thing that bugged was that they all seemed to go the distance almost so we didn’t get to see any of the preliminary fights. Still, the fights we did see were pretty good so I digress.
Things I learned from todays show. First off, Machida may truly be unbeatable, awesome win. Secondly, size really does matter as BJ and GSP faced off for a second time. I was really pulling for BJ in this one since he’s just plain awesome, but it was not to be. GSP is as good of an athlete as you can ask for, with great technique to boot.
In other news I got to train with one of my idols growing up this week, Caol Uno. He stopped by VMAT one day this week and I was lucky enough to train with him. It was great because myself being a fight fanatic I had seen a lot of his fights growing up, so to get the chance to actually train with him was just too good to be true. We started off the class with kickboxing, then some wrestling, and finally some rolling. Caol Uno was super cool and even gave me a key chain. I’ll have to upload a pic soon. I’m happy I’ve kept up with my Japanese in addition to my training schedule, still not perfect but always improving.
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Testing Testing One..Two..One..Two
On To The Next World
January-11-2008
So this is how this thing works huh….hahaha! Alright enough maniacal laughter. Time for introductions I guess. My story isn’t too different I guess. My name is Steve Magdaleno and I am currently chasing the dream of my life. I’m a pro MMA fighter with a record of 5-0 and I’m determined with every fiber of my being to see just how far I can go, how far this heart will carry me.
If you look at my last name you may wonder to yourself, “I wonder what kind of last name magdaleno is?”. Well, it’s spanish and I’m very proud of it. Both of my parents originally came to the U.S. from mexico and met here in the states. They always taught me to work hard and to not give up on my dreams. I’ve had the very best of teachers.
I’m an accomplished martial artist and a top level grappler having won many jiu jitsu competitions, along with my pro record. I lived in Japan for almost two years where I worked to become a more complete mixed martial artist. I won three pro mma matches my time there and was the 2008 Pancrase Neo Blood Champion, even was lucky enough to get the MVP award. That was a feeling like no other.
More importantly I met great training partners, great friends, friends I wouldn’t give up for the world. ….so I think that’s about up to date with me now. Don’t worry there’s more to come but you better have the common courtesy to buy me dinner first, ha!
I train at VMAT in El Segundo, California with a great coach/great friend, Vladimir Matyushenko. I treasure my friends, my family, and I promise even greater things are yet to come. I’m definitely on a road but to exactly where is yet to be seen. I can only do my best, but I promise you nothing less than absolutely that.
Steve Magdaleno
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