Dog Brothers Public Forum

At first I was wondering if the professor had a flail left arm...presumably from a prior live blade match.  At 3:00 he does a little shuck with his left hand to allow a spinning slash, but overall looked like a sabre fencing variant.  I was disappointed that the video ended when big blue showed.  I wanted him and the professor to give us a full speed demo.
Paul

I think I've only ever seen one draw in the UFC . . .

The Matt Hughes - Carlos Newton fight should have been a draw by dko.

As far as the refs go, I guess you get what you pay for.  Seems like a sport with this high a PPV gross could afford some full time guys. 

From the Washington Post (the rest of the article is pretty informative)

Today Yamasaki does about 15 events a year for various state athletic commissions, two or three fights each card. (Referees do not work for the UFC or other promotions.) He makes $1,000 per event in Nevada, a couple hundred more in California and New Jersey. The perks are few: a nice hotel; UFC swag; low-watt, pay-per-view celebrity. Mostly, his reward is to get splattered with blood, yelled at by drunks and bashed on fanboy Web sites. On the forums of Sherdog.com, a popular MMA site, Yamasaki can't ever seem to win -- he is described as both the "early stoppage king" and the guy who needs a "near-death KO for him to stop a fight."

"You've got two guys' lives in your hands," UFC president Dana White says about being an MMA ref. "It's the hardest job in sports."

Yamasaki doesn't care. "I'd do it for free," he says. "That's how much I love it."

Other than John McCarthy, MMA's longest-tenured ref and one of Yamasaki's close friends, Yamasaki has more experience than any ref in the sport. That doesn't stop controversy from finding him. In 2005, Yamasaki reffed a UFC fight between Phil "the New York Badass" Baroni and Pete "Drago" Sell. In the third round, Sell caught Baroni in a guillotine choke, basically a reverse headlock. A guillotine can put someone out quickly, and Sell had the choke sunk in for about 40 seconds. Because of Baroni's position -- facedown in a corner of the cage -- Yamasaki couldn't see that the fighter had passed out. He couldn't check Baroni's hands to see if they were limp or twitching. "The worst thing for an MMA ref is when a fighter's being choked and he's facedown and you can't see," McCarthy says.

Sell says Baroni was unconscious for much of the 40 seconds. Baroni declined to comment for this story, citing his concern that it might anger Yamasaki. But David Watson, the chief ringside physician for the Nevada Athletic Commission, didn't have the same compunction.

"I had a clear view," Watson says. "It felt to me like eight or 10 seconds longer than I would have liked. But I don't think it hurt Phil in the slightest."

When Sell flipped over, Baroni regained consciousness and tapped out. According to Watson, it wasn't a perilous amount of time to be out. But it looked frightening to spectators, and Yamasaki came under fire. It wasn't the first time. He missed an illegal blow to the groin in a championship fight between Matt Hughes and Frank Trigg. It almost cost Hughes the fight, and Yamasaki was excoriated on Internet forums. Yamasaki admits making mistakes but defends his overall record. "Out of 100 fights, I have maybe three or four questionable calls," he says. "I see things other people don't. I can see when a guy doesn't want to fight."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/10/AR2007071001618.html

My money is on the Dean of Mean.  I think he will take Rampage out with a liver shot (kick) in the third.

Dean
I understand the CYA deletion all too well.  You are essentially going through a divorce.  You should talk to a VA advocate and consider legal counsel.  Otherwise it's like trusting your ex's lawyer to hand you a fair deal.  My hope is that you will get a great result from surgery, get an RN degree, and hire on to Corrections or DMH and make the 100K a year that nurses are making these days.  Talk to Dog Pound about this.  Feel free to PM me if you want more on this topic.

Hey Crafty
The flattening of the spinal curve is indeed palliative, decreasing range of motion and opening the foramen to take the pressure off the spinal nerves. Good stuff in an acute injury...or chronic injuries associated with athletics.  Dean's post also lists spinal stenosis.  In lumbar spinal stenosis confort and exercise tolerance is increased by forward bending/flexion. 

I think that we are slicing the same pie, just in different dimensions.  Osteopaths, kinesiologists, chiropractors and PM&R docs all use different nomenclature. The glute maneuver you described in most situations will also be accompanied by a stabilizing contraction of the lumbar paraspinal muscles and a reflex inhibition of the psoas complex, unless an assistant isolates that area via positioning and bracing.  Very effective in restoring muscle balance and normalizing pelvic tilt.  In my experience this is best instituted after relaxing the lumbar paravertebrals and decompressing via axial traction.  Increased psoas tenson may indeed contribute to disc induced symptoms, its just addressing that is usually third in my approach.

Hey Dean

I'm glad you are documenting everything.  Too many of my patients at the VA kept their symptoms to themselves, self medicated and then faced an almost insurmountable task of appeals and legal challenges in getting the benefits due to them as a result of their service to our nation. 

Best wishes,

Paul

... I feel i have to say however, that in my experience, most mild to moderate cases of spinal stenosis  and disk disease can be effectively managed with non- invasive means. surgery should be a last resort and as a clinical therapist i see people all the time who have had some form of back surgery and continue to have back pain, sometimes worse than before the surgery. 

No argument here, and I suspect that Dean has seen some failed back surgeries in his work at the rehab center. 

http://www.painphysicianjournal.com/2008/may/2008;11;333-338.pdf?PHPSESSID=7ee05aef2de968a9fbcf6c0d0cf8f83f

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X2006000500011&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en

http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/22/1/69

And unless Dean got blown up over there I am wondering if his S1 fracture might actually be a congenital abnormanity...


http://www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/paleopathology/crowcreek/congenital/cxcv.jpg

woodcarvers.org says:
The following woods are soft and easy to carve, with basswood the preferred wood for beginners: basswood, aspen and butternut.  Basswood and aspen are white and butternut is brown.  Simple basswood cutouts are available at most craft stores and would be a good "first" project. After that you will probably want to go on to something a little more complex.  As you move on you will want to find a source to buy basswood. Carving supply stores and specialty wood stores sell carving wood.  There are many supply catalogs available for free from some of our links.  Don't start carving on an old piece of lumber from the garage or other "found" wood as you will probably just get discouraged and I would also suggest that you don't start with a hardwood, such as walnut. Wood has a grain which runs vertical up the tree. When you carve you need to know which way the grain runs.  If you are carving an animal the grain should run up and down on the fragile parts (like animal legs).  On a picture (relief carving) the grain should run vertically.

reel wood in riverside has a nice selection. if he is a "cub" then he must have a whittlin' chip and understand the blood circle i presume.

I remember watching that front stick choke with some concern...glad to hear that arkangel is doing better though a trip to the ENT and an xray may still be in order.  ER docs have always been leery of blunt laryngeal trauma, and for good reason...

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1407123&pageindex=1

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1518062&pageindex=1

I looked into the literature and didn't find any martial arts specific cases, but this football case is similar...

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16558234

I was wondering if this choke might be something that participants would want to agree not to use, in the same vein as the groin kick and the eye gouge.  A friendly submission attempt allows the recipient to throw in the towel due to pain before real damage is done.  My fear is that even in a well controlled setting the cartilage and the hyoid bone may be too fragile in some individuals and fracture prematurely.  Throw in a bucking recipient, or one that cannot release his opponents stick in order to tap and the situation becomes more dangerous.  This choke might be too effective for use in a tribal setting.

I'm glad Dean is on hand in case things get sketchy...

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=18427086

[quote author=Jonobos link=
Maybe he was harmless? What became very clear was that everyone else was very uncomfortable, and they were not going to do anything about it. They did something completely illogical. They all did their best to ignore him and focus their attention somewhere else. Everytime the "crazy guy" had some sort of outburst they would all cringe and look away, and pretend it didn't happen!
[/quote

Well, that situation raises a lot of issues...free speech is probably the first.  In our Republic even the most disabled among us is entitled to their say.  And most mentally ill folks are no more violent than the general population.  As long as there is no direct threat being made the avoid direct eye contact/keep 'em in your peripheral vision thing is probably the best approach IMHO.  A person who is that impaired would probably escalate with any intervention and (unless I was the bus driver with the authority to eject him) when the situation went south and there was a bloody disabled man on the floor I'm afraid that the constables would be less than sympathetic to my explanation.  I remember a similar situation in San Francisco about 25 years ago.  I got on a bus  and a few stops later an old toothless Black man walked up the isle and said something to me which was totally unintelligible.  I had to ask him to repeat it several times until I finally deciphered his dialect/accent.  He was saying "this bus ain't big enough for the both of us honkey."  I smiled, thanked him for the advice and stepped off the bus.  The next muni was along in a few minutes and I still made it to Dim Sum on time.  Maybe I've watched too many Kung Fu  episodes, but I side with the restrained passive approach which can diffuse most situations.  Of course if a 2 year old is being kicked to death I would probably go straight for the hyoid bone.

This link to the Loyola Law Review gives a nice 23 page overview of California's law and case law on "justifiable murder", including the presumption of reasonable fear if defending one's residence from intruders...

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:EYsXDKE2pkYJ:llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue4/documents/9selfdefense.pdf+california+self-defense+law&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

California Penal Code section 197 states, “Homicide is . . .
justifiable when committed by any person . . . [who is] resisting any
attempt to murder any person . . . .” This definition does not fully
reflect the complexities involved in deciding when self-defense is a
legally permissible justification for murder in California.
Self-defense consists of two elements: (1) an “honest” belief in
the need to defend; and (2) a “reasonable” belief in the need to
defend. The defendant must subjectively or actually believe in the
need to defend against imminent harm. In addition, the defendant’s
belief must be objectively reasonable. If a defendant had an honest but unreasonable belief in the need
to defend against imminent harm, the result is imperfect self-defense.
In cases of imperfect self-defense, a defendant can be convicted of
manslaughter, but not murder. Thus, a defendant will only be
completely exonerated if there is both a subjective and objective
belief in the need to defend. Recent developments in the law of self-defense focus on several
areas...

CAL Penal Code197. Homicide is also justifiable when committed by any person in any of the following cases: 1. When resisting any attempt to murder any person, or to commit a felony, or to do some great bodily injury upon any person; or, 2. When committed in defense of habitation, property, or person, against one who manifestly intends or endeavors, by violence or surprise, to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends and endeavors, in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, to enter the habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence to any person therein; or, 3. When committed in the lawful defense of such person, or of a wife or husband, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant of such person, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony or to do some great bodily injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished; but such person, or the person in whose behalf the defense was made, if he was the assailant or engaged in mutual combat, must really and in good faith have endeavored to decline any further struggle before the homicide was committed; or, 4. When necessarily committed in attempting, by lawful ways and means, to apprehend any person for any felony committed, or in lawfully suppressing any riot, or in lawfully keeping and preserving the peace. 198. A bare fear of the commission of any of the offenses mentioned in subdivisions 2 and 3 of Section 197, to prevent which homicide may be lawfully committed, is not sufficient to justify it. But the circumstances must be sufficient to excite the fears of a reasonable person, and the party killing must have acted under the influence of such fears alone. 198.5. Any person using force intended or likely to cause death or great bodily injury within his or her residence shall be presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily injury to self, family, or a member of the household when that force is used against another person, not a member of the family or household, who unlawfully and forcibly enters or has unlawfully and forcibly entered the residence and the person using the force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry occurred. As used in this section, great bodily injury means a significant or substantial physical injury. 199. The homicide appearing to be justifiable or excusable, the person indicted must, upon his trial, be fully acquitted and discharged.

the 2 main ingredients are frankinscense and myrhh, 2 very potent and healing herbs,also prophectic if you look deep enpough.

I too have long been a fan of boswellia (frankincense)*.  For unbroken skin a menthol/boswellin cream carried by most health food stores works well on muscle strains or contusions.  The oral capsulse is an excellent anti-inflammatory for acute injuries, arthritis and even perhaps asthma.  I actually was going to start a thread/poll on anti-inflammatories, but I might as well ask the question here.  I was wondering, do most of stickfighters stop aspirin/ibuprofen/etc. a week or two prior to combat in order to decrease the risk of hematomas?  Especially those pesky intracranial or subdural hematomas...as Woody Allen put it, "Damage my brain? But that's my second favorite organ!

*From Wikipedia...
Boswellia is a genus of trees known for their fragrant resin which has many pharmacological uses particularly as anti-inflammatories. The Biblical incense frankincense was probably an extract from the resin of the tree, Boswellia sacra.
There are four main species of Boswellia which produce true Frankincense and each type of resin is available in various grades. The grades depend on the time of harvesting, and the resin is hand sorted for quality. Anyone interested in frankincense would be well advised to first obtain a small sample of each type from a reputable dealer in order to ascertain the difference between each resin.
[edit] Medicinal uses
Boswellia has long been used in Ayurvedic medicine. Recently, the boswellic acids that are a component of the resin it produces have shown some promise as a treatment for asthma and various inflammatory conditions (Gupta I, Gupta V, Parihar A, et al. Effects of Boswellia serrata gum resin in patients with bronchial asthma: results of a double-blind, placebo-controlled, 6-week clinical study. European Journal of Herbal Medicine 1998; 3:511-14.) In West Africa, the bark of Boswellia dalzielii is used to treat fever, rheumatism and gastro-intestinal problems (Arbonnier 2002. Arbres, arbustes et lianes des zones sèches de l'Afrique de l'Ouest)
This Sapindales-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boswellia"

I hope those two guys make it through the season.  They sure have taken some abuse thus far.  I think that one of them was not too far off the mark on the Kali episode when he began wondering it his instructors were softening him up for the marines.  I was hoping to see some techniques as well, but in both episodes thus far it's been mostly cardio/bag work.  I was also disappointed that one of the marines in the stick fight portion went into the "I'll take a strike to my fencing mask to get in a shin shot" mode.  As I saw at the June Gathering, even a pulled shot to the temple drops you like a sack of...

Paul

Only five fighters for Nov. 2007?  I was thinking about registering if there were going to be some 50+ folks around...if my vasectomy heals up in time.  Remember...SPAY OR NEUTER YER PETS!!

i sure am looking forward to this gathering.  it will be my fifth, and every one so far has been exciting and educational.  while i doubt that i will ever fight myself, it is extremely useful to see the stick fighting i've practiced three times a week for the past few years used in a realistic context.  i have a few humble opinions on the points raised in this thread.

Cameras---i have found that flash cameras have been distracting at the gatherings and impart a carnival/paparazzi atmosphere.  modern electronics certainly allow flash free photos and this should be considered.

Pad Boys---While this might increase safety a bit i think that it would detract from the ambiance.  And in some ways they might increase the risk of injuries as well meaning security security guards do in concerts.  Best to banish those 18 and under from the first 2 rows.

Realistic Fights---I like the idea of chalking the blades, and the electronic knives are even better.  At one previous gathering i saw the most unrealistic situation in the stick fights rather than the knives.  some fighters were taking a stick strike to their helmeted head in order to deliver a strike to an opponent's unprotected shin/foot.  seemed unsporting.

The Wall---Pink Floyd would make excellent background music, IMHO.

Female Fighters---seem to lack opponents.  so nobody is willing to channel Andy Kaufman?


"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."---HST