The Return – Wargods 5

Whoa it’s been awhile.  So two weeks ago I made my return fight in the states after almost a one and a half years absence.  I really would have posted more about it if I knew earlier there was going to be a match, but it came about pretty suddenly.   Luckily I’d been training well and so when the opportunity came my way I was happy to take it. 

The match wasn’t without it’s drama though.  A day before the fight my opponent pulled out, leaving me kind of just twiddling my thumbs in the air and thinking to myself, God must really have it out for me or something, ha.  There had been some miscomunication from what I understand, but I don’t completely know so I won’t go into it.   Anyway, I hate disappointing people, friends and family especially. 

Luckily, Carlos Garces stepped up and gave me a good fight.  Funny, I saw he fought the very week after and won.  That’s a fighter.   I really didn’t know what to expect from him, since he was pretty much an unknown element to me and sometimes that’s the worst kind.  If possible I usually watch tapes and try to figure out some strategy tailored to my opponent.  As you can guess, that wasn’t the case this time.  I pretty much just relied on my skills that I’ve honed since I was a kid and they pulled me out okay this time around.  r1 3:30 arm-bar finish.

The best thing out of all of this was that I fought again.  Training day in and day out for so long with no fights coming up kind of eats away at you, so this was really a blessing.   Just feeling that rush and just doing what you train for everyday was great.  The actual competition is the best feeling.  So anyway, I was pretty happy with this and I don’t ever want to have that long a break between fights again.  Thanks to my sponsors, MMA Pro Sports, Nevertap, and especially my coach, Vladimir Matyushenko over at VMAT.   Anyone reading this, cheering me on, I hope to never disappoint you guys. Thanks!

Steve Magdaleno

“The best kind of fire is the one that burns through adversity”

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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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