Part Two:  System Normal, All Fowled Up 

Saturday, July 28 2007

The next morning Joel was awake at 0700 when Tosh interrupted his slumber to wrestle, play shoot-‘em-up and most importantly, cuddle on the couch with his dad to watch cartoons.  “Bat Fink” and his mother’s banana pancakes couldn’t hold his attention like his world champion father could, and for Tosh, lying lazily next to his dad on the couch was probably the pinnacle of every Saturday.  The time was probably the most precious because it was also so paltry when you consider the schedule of a world champion athlete of a sport that has no fixed, definitive season.  Joel is in a constant state of readiness for waves and weather and contest wins.  If the stars are aligned and all the requirements can be met, one gets the feeling that somehow Joel will find a way to make it happen.  French Riviera? Hawaii? Australia?  Japan? Fiji? Canary Islands?  All those locations are no problem for a man that has traversed the globe, and won, in many of those places and more.  Right now though, Joel was only interested in Tosh who would only drift away from the couch to run around the living room table, lap-wise, and bob up and down to the reggae coming through the house system speakers.

As soon as he gets out of the terrible-two’s, I am certain that Tosh will be the coolest toddler in the world but right now when he demands attention his dad gives in every time.  The boy named after Peter Tosh has it all set with a father that dotes on him even though his schedule doesn’t seem to permit it.  I can see that when your work takes you away a lot of the time, you can afford to be generous to deepen the bond with your offspring.  I wonder if all famous professional athletes make these concessions for their children as well, but already the answer pops in my head: probably not.  I was in the same school and class with Julius Erving’s son and I remember thinking that it was hard even way back then, but at least Dr. J had a fixed number of games to play every year.  Surfing pops-off when the conditions are good.  Some contests aren’t even held every year due to the weather permitting clause and the good sense that if the waves aren’t acting like they are supposed to then it is better to postpone it for another year.  Joel does a good job of rolling with the punches and getting in wherever he can fit.  He is only one of thirty-two people to ever be inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame as his proof, and he did it in the first year that they inducted anybody.

Jah Rib and I were outside smoking and eating the banana pancakes on Joel’s deck overlooking the guest house in the backyard, so as not to disturb too much family time.  Papa Joe and Joel’s brother, Josh, are in charge of building the incomplete house –and the two veterans from the construction industry have every intention of building it right.  I guess this means that they won’t build it too quickly so that the local hangers-on won’t become too encouraged that they will be able to stay there anytime soon.  Wicked Halloween parties and general longboard reverence have solidified Joel’s house as an awesome destination for those who don’t have to make too long of a pilgrimage to get there.  Those who can’t or don’t make the hajj try to call instead.  The house phone rings intermittently with the surf report for San Diego’s native son as soon as the sun comes up, sometimes sooner.  The routine of it all was an astoundingly scripted rundown of beach breaks from just about everybody that has Joel’s number and his surfing knowledge respect. 

Andy “The Tuna” is another Southern California transplant from Long Island, New York and is one of Joel’s minions that easily fits into the categories of knowledgeable caller and bicoastal hipster.  Joel’s mimicking of a Brooklyn accent gives away exactly who is he is talking to, even through the French doors that separated he and Tosh from what was a promising cipher on his patio.  Andy lives right by the beach in La Jolla so he can work at The Factory, the place where all of Joel’s surfboards are manufactured from blanks.  Plans come into focus rather quickly for the business side of his operation largely because of his entire family chipping in, and guys like Andy that hold it down and guide creations of fiber glass from concept to finish.  I suppose at this moment Andy could not be more valuable: he was providing the surf reports for the region as well as promising to take Jah Rib back to The Factory to work on The Marley Board while we would be at the World Championship of Grappling later in the afternoon.

In between puffs with Jah Rib I heard something about “egg whites for more energy” and “Cardiff Beach,” Joel’s favorite and home break.  There really weren’t all that many places to choose from to surf in Southern California and the rare occasion of summer flats saw that I was in the only place that would have decent waves.  The verdict was indeed in; it was a virtual Lake Pacific from Malibu to Mexico except for those special places that the waves just don’t seem to miss.  I had my wish: another surfing adventure with a living legend on his home court.  I suppose the equivalent is shooting hoops with Michael Jordan in his Brooklyn backyard, or getting a chance to toss the football with Jim Brown in Manhasset (shout outs to Strong Island) but those guys are way past their primes.  The very first time that the invitation was extended to me some two years ago I couldn’t contain my excitement and had to go into the water early to disguise the fact that I was on the verge of wetting Joel’s borrowed Sector Nine board shorts.  I remember the feeling well, sports fans, and I never gave those trunks back.  Small or not the waves at Cardiff would be just manageable enough for me to get a chance to see Joel at play from the best possible vantage point: in the water with him.

We loaded up Joel’s surfer truck after breakfast and headed straight to Cardiff beach near the northernmost outskirts of San Diego, proper.  Joel explained to Jah Rib and I that Cardiff was “like a magnet” for all of the waves in the area and that even though other places were reportedly flat, he was confident that we would be in for a fun, albeit short, time.  He then tried to sell us on the “thirty minute surf session” which had me taken aback at first, but then I thought about the possibility of what I could do to help my tennis game in thirty minutes with say, Serena Williams.  (Even if we never even spoke about tennis the whole time, I think that I would be a little better.)  No matter the time limits imposed to meet other obligations, I was down like four flat tires and was grateful for all of it.  (Besides the fact that getting Joel to enforce a limit is like asking a crack head to smoke half a rock, I’m pretty sure only Tosh could impose a boundary on Joel’s surfing time.)  This Long Island kid is accustomed to taking it however he can get it, provided I don’t have to wear a cold-weather dry suit.  My surfing has definitely gotten better since moving to the West Coast in general, but ever since Joel’s wedding in Hawaii, I have been chasing the feeling of continued progress that comes from constant practice in the presence of others better than you.  Jah Rib passed on the idea entirely because the pain in his side hadn’t really subsided and he was going to do what he did best from the beach.

Thirty minutes turned into an hour because the man known as Tinkerbelle in the surf community is a master at riding small waves as well as large.  As a testament to his adept ability, he can ride them equally well and do things on either size that would make most people, even other professionals, do a double-take.  I was certain that Jah Rib got some great photos of Joel walking effortlessly to the nose of his board while catching little peelers as I was also certain that he didn’t get any footage of me at all.  Surfing for the rest of us that aren’t so blessed to be in tune with the water and all of the types waves that can be ridden on a particular board can take a little longer than half-hour.  I suppose the real difference was that Joel could paddle out in five minutes and catch wave after wave for hours on end, contest style.  Well I guess there is that and the whole balance a grace thing together with the stamina that comes from competing your entire adult life.  I on the other hand had just smoked several blunts, a couple of Al Capone Slim cognac-dipped cigars, and don’t surf with nearly enough intensity or as often as someone getting paid.  I am still the Glen Cove kid that is just happy to be there, in awe of my hero who always appears to walking on water even as I am taking breakers on my mini-afro.  I think that it took me ten minutes to paddle out to where the wave was actually breaking and another forty minutes to pry my eyes away from Joel in order to catch one wave in to a smile greeting from Jah Rib who was shooting Joel faithfully from the sand.

Joel came in slightly after he saw me go down near the end of my sole, short ride.  It must be nice to be able to catch whatever wave that comes along, like a bus to the park, and have that wave appear to steer you to the destination of your choosing.  That is exactly what he did, even beating me to the truck.  I have a long way to go in surfing, but I’m going to have fun figuring it all out, hopefully safely and in good company.  When Joel Tudor steps off of the beach, even at his home break, people notice and offer their takes on what they just saw.  Some shake his hand and others just clapped like they were witnessing a free concert or something.  Today, he didn’t linger too long and indulge the audience as he sensed his momentary escape into the blue-green abyss was over almost as soon as it began.  Instead we loaded up the car and headed back to the house to split up and prepare for the afternoon events.  The short session actually agreed with me and I started thinking that if only I had been more aggressive from the outset that I would have caught more waves.  Maybe it was the blunt that I was smoking while waiting for Joel’s other jiu-jitsu coach to arrive, but I might have just gained a little more confidence despite having gleaned no new ability from watching.

Part Three:  Winning Is His Only Constant 

“We reign all year 'round from June to June.” -GZA on “Shadowboxin” from the RZA album Liquid Swords

1130 Joel’s House

As I sat on the back patio, again, this time in deep recuperation from the early morning jaunt a car pulled up on the steep hill and Joel’s real jiu-jitsu brown belt contemporary and coach, Alfredo, stepped out of it.  Alfredo seemed to be holding some sort of coconut in his hand as he walked right into the house through the heavy wooden doors.  After all of the necessary greetings, Tosh included, it became apparent that we were going to take a little while longer to depart for the tournament.  Perhaps we weren’t waiting for Alfredo at all, I pondered in between clouds of smoke emanating from my overworked lungs; Joel was in his bedroom packing his bag and mentally preparing.  The longer this process of leaving took the better chance I had of becoming a vegetable in the hour and half car ride was my rationale.  I wasn’t really all that beat up as much as I was just tired from the night before.  Jah Rib was still nursing his sore namesake but even he had the energy to continue building the Marley board and taking pictures of every stage of development at The Factory.  I know because he showed me and everybody else like a proud father.  Andy had already picked him up and whisked him away because the artist wasn’t exactly happy with being away from his masterpiece for so long.  We were all somewhat grateful because Jah Rib has a meddlesome temperament and can be pesky at times.  Joel finally came out of his bedroom and greeted Alfredo with a mock flurry of Thai kicks, a shadow punch and probably his best judo throw, Uchimata. 

Multiple martial art disciplines meshing together is a blatant sign that someone is really interested in the new sport of Ultimate Fighting.  Alfredo was used to the outbreak and didn’t even flinch as none of the moves that Joel was performing resulted in contact.   The play fight concluded when Alfredo held up the coconut-looking thing and said he only needed some hot water before we finally left.  While Joel obliged him and also loaded bags in the car, I got a closer inspection of what he was holding on the front porch.  Alfredo explained to me in great detail that the wooden chalice was a part of a traditionally Brazilian drink made from herba mattẽ called chimarraỏ.  Alfredo is from Riogrande do Sul, the place where the drink originated and he claimed that the properties were similar to coffee even though the herba mattẽ looked like marijuana, but smelled bitter.  On general appearances alone, I was willing to try it.  A silver and gold straw with over one thousand miniscule holes in it called a bomba was used to sip the hot drink leaving the herba mattẽ in the cup.  The ritual apparently called for Alfredo to drink two cups and pass it to whoever wanted to partake next.  This was entirely familiar to me and before we even got in the Audi I had already finished four of them in rotation with Alfredo.

The best part about the chimarraỏ, pronounced like she-may-how, was that the herba mattẽ could be recycled again and again with more hot water added to replenish the drink.  It tasted as bitter as it smelled, but overall, the drink wasn’t bad and it may have snapped Joel out of his haze of procrastination long enough to get him moving.  Oh the things that you can learn about when you hang out with enough people with open minds and diverse friends!  We piled in the Audi and broke North on the freeway so as not to be too late for the event.  I drove to give the competitor a chance to rest without worrying about the traffic that is omnipresent in Southern California and Alfredo sat in the back seat pushing the herba mattẽ on us while we listened to “Soul Rebel.”  I was feeling great and that strange, new tea with the expensive straw probably had a lot to do with it.  The “small amount of caffeine” that Alfredo said it contained gave me just enough focus to manage the traffic as well as carry on a conversation fit for a short road trip from Del Mar to Long Beach.

Before Joel drifted off to sleep in the passenger’s side of his car he dropped a gem on me.  Apparently the weekend before he was in New York City and hanging outside of a downtown hotspot, La Esquina, and a friend noticed Stephon Marbury and decided that the two should be introduced.  While I was trying to figure out why a world champion surfer would want to be introduced to a perennial franchise killer in the NBA, Joel confessed that he had no idea who Stephon Marbury was, let alone what he did for a living.  As a New York Knick fan, I was astounded by Joel’s remark because how could you not hold a man up in disdain and infamy after your city paid him millions of dollars to come in at twelve out of a possible fifteen in the Eastern Conference?  (Well Joel is from San Diego and a recent seasonal New Yorker, after all.)  Despite Joel’s lack of professional basketball knowledge the introduction took place and a conversation ensued whereby a bullying Stephon Marbury aggressively inquired about the details of Joel’s Vans shoe deal.  (Note to so called ballers: if you have to ask then Nike is obviously gypping you.)  Of course Joel was a little cagey in his answers because he mistakenly thought Stephon Marbury must be a drug dealer due to his unrefined mannerisms, heavy jewelry, and otherwise tacky behavior.  Well there is that and the fact that Joel earned his shoe deal by actually trailblazing and winning while Stephon has a shoe deal based on street credentials not-worth-a-damn and a career generally centered on losing.  I laughed myself silly on the inside the rest of the trip.

1400 Long Beach Convention Center

Once we arrived and checked in at the Long Beach Convention Center Joel was on auto pilot.  He made the rounds like a professional fighter and began checking out other competitors to see whom he might be facing.  As for me, I was more inclined to check the plethora of hot chicks that apparently go to these events looking for boyfriends whose ass nobody can kick.  I walked around looking for a sandwich while catching an eyeful without drawing too much attention just in case I was staring at someone already attached to someone else and just waiting to try to put me in some sort of submission hold in between his scheduled bouts.  As far as jiu-jitsu submissions go there are some pretty painful varieties.  You have your arm bars that basically try to get your elbow to bend in the other direction and the submissions that focus on the lower joints of the body.  For someone that has studied judo it is a pretty pathetic way for a man to win a fight.  After all, if you are lucky enough to break someone’s arm or leg in a hold there is still a chance that the person could get up and attack you again if he is just that diesel.  This is why I have always been a fan of the choke, which the two sports have in common, and an ardent judo advocate for self defense.

Jiu-jitsu is supposed to be the martial art of choice for street fighting but when is the last time that you saw someone instigate a fight and sit down on the ground in front of you?  Believe it or not, this is a common tactic among the fighters at the tournament that I was watching and I couldn’t believe my eyes.  In most cases, however, the matches start from the standing position and points are awarded for take downs while the actual submissions are used to end fights.  If a fighter isn’t all that good at the standing position he could easily go straight to the ground to eliminate the possibility of losing points however in real life, this would lead to what is referred to in Brooklyn as a stomping.  The good part was we weren’t in Brooklyn although the chaos of the arena, coupled with the violence, was all too familiar.  A week long martial arts tournament of all kinds left the Convention Center with the air of an Ultimate Fighting event with tables set up all along the perimeter to hawk martial arts gear of all kinds.  Swords, uniforms, hats and trinkets could be purchased just steps away from the mats where people were grappling.

Joel had some time before his first match and I took that as my cue to let Alfredo warm up with Joel properly while I went to that cheeseburger place deep in the corner of the basement of the Convention Center.  I was starving and the surfing had taken up most of my energy for the day.  I wondered how Joel was actually going to do it because he only ate two pancakes and some “egg whites for energy,” whatever that means.  Either I was eating wrong or a semi-vegetarian weighing about 156 lbs was just plain tougher than I was.  No way some skinny little surfer boy would kick my ass is what I consoled myself with as I chomped on a bacon double cheeseburger.  I train on little chocolate doughnuts, sandwiches and blunts: a real black man doesn’t need gimmicky diets or practice in order to win some grappling tournament.  For the briefest of moments, I considered actually registering for the tournament citing my black belt in judo as a qualification.  Then I remembered something that my sensei told me a long time ago: overconfidence is a recipe for failure.  I looked in the direction of the fighters warming up and thought about the state of mind that Joel must be in right now.  Here was a man that has made a living doing the same thing that he has been the best at since he was fourteen years old.  Joel was willing to risk all of it and severe bodily harm for a hobby that he only took up five years ago.  Was he overconfident in his ability in surfing or in his ability in jiu-jitsu?

My answer came after I polished off the sandwich and sauntered over to the mats just in time to watch Joel in his first fight of the afternoon.  Joel versus unnamed assailant lasted little over a minute.  No points were awarded on the takedown and I don’t even think that there were points awarded at all before Joel went into his signature jiu-jitsu move: the triangle choke.  I watched Joel almost on his back in a half sit-up with the unnamed assailant between his legs.  “Oh he’s good,” one person in the audience remarked.  At first the unnamed assailant seemed to be attacking and then all of sudden it looked as if he changed his mind and was trying to withdraw.  “Yeah, he’s really good,” was the reply from another onlooker.  Witnessing Joel in competition with my own eyes for the first time I had to concur.  A long, lanky, flexible frame suckered some poor sap into thinking that Joel could be bowled over or plowed through.  Joel’s legs were in a figure four behind his opponent’s head when he tapped on the mat signaling to the referee that he had given up so soon after the match had started.  A familiar smile spread across Joel’s face as his arm was raised in victory.  If this guy is overconfident, I just didn’t see it: he’s just plain good.

With just one other match to fight in the Master’s division for us geezers over the age of thirty and still seeking thrills from wrestling, Joel took a seat Indian style on the mat and awaited the next challenger.  Alfredo went over some pointers but I just stared in awe.  It was starting to sink in that Joel could potentially win this thing.  Why not?  He was already guaranteed a silver medal after that last performance, in part because there isn’t a tremendous turn-out for the Master’s division and also because his ability is at a much higher level than his usual rivals.  This man is a professional of great leisure.  It just so happens that his hobby can be practiced in virtually every city in the world and that it coincides seamlessly with his “job.”  Joel will surf whenever he feels like it but he will also train in jiu-jitsu up to two times a day.  Waves aren’t good?  Go to the mats.  Daytime in New York City?  Go to the mats.  This never ending cycle of waves and wrestling is complimentary, athletically too.  Think of the benefits of cross training for surfing alone.  Perhaps it is just another legacy of another extraordinary athlete named Bo Jackson that used the training from one sport to springboard him in an entirely different sport?  After the article on his jiu-jitsu prowess that appeared sometime last year in Surfer Magazine entitled “Joel-Jitsu” I am pretty sure that nobody is going to try to put him in a headlock and shave his head when they get rowdy on the Big Island.  Certainly Danny Fuller won’t try it again, case closed, benefits realized.

Joel’s gold medal fight started out like the first bout earlier in the afternoon.  Both fighters were wary and cagey at first that the other would try a serious takedown.  Joel actually succeeded in making this concern come true by getting low enough to the ground and kicking one leg in between those of his competitor with his back turned in a wheeling motion.  His opponent recovered slightly but points were awarded even though the slightly flawed technique of Uchimata resulted in a half-fall.  I was proud.  With both opponents facing each other on the mat, however the advantage was clearly Joel’s.  Again, Joel went to work quickly and dispatched his opponent when he attempted to get a foot lock on him.  In a fifty-fifty chance, the opponent couldn’t make good on the odds as every second spent on trying to secure the foot submission was used by Joel to attempt the same maneuver on an equally vulnerable opponent.  Today Joel was quicker and perhaps more flexible than the other competitor because shortly after arriving in this predicament he was tapping out.  Joel Tudor just won the brown belt Masters gi portion of the World Grappling Championships.  Winning seems to be his only constant between two uncommon sports with many athletes choosing to practice both.

One other member of the school that Joel trains at in San Diego competed in the gi portion and managed to come away with a gold medal in the blue belt Masters division.  His name was Ox and he was 215 pounds of muscle and a spitting image of the European depiction of Jesus Christ, together with a massive beard and hair to match.  After looking at him I decided that it was probably for the best that I didn’t do anything stupid like submit my name for entry into a tournament that could contain the likes of him.  That is the thing with these open tournaments: you never know who could show up.  The structure of judo is more like professional boxing in that athletes are required to register with their state and national organizations.  The ranking system in judo, as well as other Japanese martial arts, is designed to allow competitors the best chance to advance themselves by selecting the tournaments or fights that will provide the right kind of exposure.  Jiu-jitsu on the other hand is a free-for-all.  The supremely recognized school is Gracie Jiu-jitsu located in Rio de Janeiro however there are plenty of other factions splintered off for United States consumption.  The sport of Ultimate Fighting has definitely contributed to the booming popularity of jiu-jitsu because it is widely recognized as a feeder sport into the bigger league of professional prize fighting.

Ox, despite a gentle personality, is one of those competitors actively pursuing his career in ultimate prize fighting and using jiu-jitsu as a vehicle.  Southern California is even more of a bourgeoning place for the sport because of the proximity to Tijuana, Mexico and laxer laws for gaming commissions.  All of the factors add up to guys like Ox gradually getting better at the sport of jiu-jitsu in the hopes of eventually making the leap to cashing in with a PRIDE or UFC contract.  After the tournament Ox, Alfredo, Joel and I went to Island Burger to discuss the day’s events and I flatly asked Joel if he had the same intentions as Ox.  I wasn’t surprised when Joel didn’t entirely rule it out.  At thirty-one years of age Joel still has the audacity to consider UFC as a possibility even if time isn’t entirely on his side.  Ox is even older, but without the steady income of a professional surfing career, the pressure to kick enough people’s ass to eventually earn money for it is even greater for him.  The popularity of the sport is overwhelming and the conventional wisdom that would tell normal people that thirty-plus is too old to take the severe punishment that the sport has to offer is often discarded.  1978 Olympic Gold Medalist Howard Davis Jr., a relative of mine, had a career that summed up this empirical fact.  After being named the most outstanding boxer in the Rome games that also included Boxing Hall of Fames Sugar Ray Leonard, Michael Spinks and Leon Spinks the twenty year old Howard Davis Jr. went pro compiling a record of 29 wins and only 3 losses before thirty.

Close to his thirtieth birthday he had a shot a title against Hector Camacho and lost in a unanimous decision.  To this day he remains the only American gold-medal-winning boxer on the 1976 Olympic Team to not win a world championship as a professional.  He would later remark that he just lost interest in the sport due to the punishment, and who could blame him with examples of others that tarried too long like Muhammad Ali?  While there is not much comparison from boxing to jiu-jitsu in the realm of brain punishment, one has to wonder if Joel and Ox have seriously considered the ramifications of  embarking on a journey towards a UFC which is widely considered as the most dangerous of all.   (My father told me that boxing was a young man’s sport as he steered me away.)  All of this after the age of thirty when even the most dedicated of pugilists has considering hanging up the gloves for good.  There is one other thing.  There are no gloves in UFC to hang up which is another reason why my hat is off to those blokes who get into the octagon or cage.  I like watching from home with a blunt in hand sipping beer and commenting about my own good-old-days because I can still remember them. 

We left Long Beach soon after Joel finished his tofu burger or whatever vegetarian substitute that sustains him.  Joel happily drove and talked of tomorrow’s no-gi competition and the fact that Alfredo was ready to come out of an injury-forced semi-retirement in order to compete with Joel.  This was starting to get interesting.  Two guys from the same school, in the same weight class were going to attempt to run the table and finish 1 and 2 in their division.  Who would win?  A waxing moon over the Laguna Hills suggested anything was a possibility.  The chimarraỏ kept me alert and talkative while I rolled down the window in order to smoke myself into oblivion to make me less so.  It was a full day the likes of which I probably hadn’t seen since my days in officer candidate school at the beginning of my military career.  I likened training in two sports constantly to the rigors of attending leadership classes and simultaneously proving your mettle in mandatory physical activity that included running and swimming six miles a day.  The sea going services have it hard and there are plenty of people in excellent condition that just cant take it because it is asking a lot of people to excel in two or more areas at once, every day.  From that analogy I was able to understand Joel a little better.  The true test wasn’t whether or not you could do all the activity in just one day, but if you could string those days together for four months.  Joel has spent roughly the last five years running like a marathon man habituated to first place.

Any grandparent will tell you that life is not a sprint; it is more like a marathon.  After today’s segment we were all headed for the sheets because another full day loomed tomorrow.  Grandma Denise was patient with Tosh all day and by the time he got the house even he was out like a light.

Part Four:  Training Like Mad for the Asylum

Sunday 0900

Joel, Alfredo, Ox and I are in the car again headed North with the chimarraỏ being passed between us.  Joel doesn’t mind driving this time and I make good use of two free hands and I rolled my own blunts in the passenger seat listening to the others talk about their upbringings.  What unbelievable circumstances brought us together?  Alfredo came to San Diego to help out relatives with their jiu-jitsu school in search of a better life that could be found in his native Brazil.  Ox was desperately trying to make a way for himself in a new sport with dollar signs on the horizon if he could gain the necessary skill.  Joel was bored out of his mind and tired of getting picked on.  I was an observer.

The no-gi competition was supposedly grappling at its finest.  The absence of the clothing worn by martial artists of judo and jiu-jitsu made grips and throws more risky and tenuous.  American freestyle wrestlers have a supreme advantage in that they are familiar with the holds and tactics used to compensate for the lack of clothing.  I had never witnessed a no-gi grappling match in my life and now I had the task of lending at least moral support to three guys about to throw their hats into the arena, so to speak.  On the way up to Long Beach the conversation drifted back to Ox and Joel’s similar San Diego backgrounds and both of their knacks for getting kicked out of the city’s school system.  As you may recall Joel failed to graduate from high school due to his frustration with teachers that didn’t allow him to make up missed work after his surf trips.  At first, Joel would just skip that particular teacher’s class, which was English, and later –perhaps after realizing that he would never receive a diploma missing English credits, he stopped going to University City High School altogether.  He was offered a second chance at a continuation at nearby Garfield High School but he couldn’t take the remedial nature of the classes and burned out on the tediousness of it all, again.  (Besides pro surfer Rob Machado didn’t seem to have any problems at his high school even after a surf magazine posted his modified schedule that included surfing for the first three hours of everyday.)  All this genuine gentleman’s effort exhibited by Joel was in stark contrast to Ox’s story that wove on and on through every school that Joel mentioned including four more.

Ox, the gentle giant, attended six high schools in part because he was a football phenomenon and also because his mother was a teacher in the school system.  Both of their stories reminded me of the ways in which public schools usually wind up failing the black community but their tales are white middle class abnormalities.  In Joel’s case it is easy to see how his mother made the leap from encouraging education to promulgating his spectacular earning potential by allowing him to accept sponsorship and compete on a pro circuit that left him in Amsterdam for months at a time and on his own, at the tender age of sixteen.  But the lesson that I took away from Ox’s story is that even though you may have a nickname derived from your ability to lift a v-8 engine block with chains it doesn’t guarantee that you will be able to apply it usefully without the proper direction and focus.  Some guys just don’t fit into any box that you try to put them in.  All of these guys were characters, which is the norm for the sport that we have all chosen.  Men that wrestle, in all of its many forms, are sort of weird anyway.  The car ride flew by because we were all in good company and soon we arrived at our destination for the second day of action. 

With three fighters to look after, I didn’t dare go towards the sandwich booths in the back of the Convention Center.  Instead, on this day of no-gi competitions, I fit right in with my lack of real uniform in the participants’ warm-up area.  Alfredo stretched.  Ox paced.  Joel put on a red judges shirt and entered the arena as a referee.  This sport is a mad house!  I suppose that I should have been sufficiently warned from the previous day’s proceedings as to the chaotic nature of the grappling community as a whole.  Wasn’t I just permitted to be named a coach and given unchecked access to the arena?  Event organizers are partly to blame for the less than stellar adherence to order, I mean even the major commissioners of the sport have had their share of headlines and accusations.  People say that the best fighters in the sport use steroids.  People say that the governing body of the sport is not organized properly.  Who knows if it is all true, but in the words of Marlow from HBO series The Wire “that’s what they saying…”  None of these indictments on no-gi grappling have enough weight behind them to warrant further investigation because the sport of grappling has very little earning potential.  The jackpot is in Ultimate Fighting, however.  Financial gains are only realized if a player is able to use his grappling experience as a facilitator to make the transition to UFC.

Just because this isn’t the UFC though doesn’t mean that the level of competitiveness isn’t high enough to provide incentive for cheaters.  Because the sport of grappling is taking off perhaps one of the biggest challenges is that they need to create a greater separation between the players and the judges. The guy that Joel submitted in a foot lock to win the gold in the gi tournament yesterday was actively involved in the registration process, pitting fighters against each other in seeding arrangements, as an administrator and referee.  It is not uncommon to see a fellow fight in one match and referee another.  Often there are fourteen year old kids working at the manual scorers tables.  You get the feeling that anything can happen at these events which move so quickly that it renders a blur in the memory.  One minute we were all together in the warm-up area and the next moment we were marching to the mats to watch Joel and Alfredo in their weight class that included all ages.  Without uniforms there is no measuring of ability and no-gi grapplers are lumped together by size rather than experience.  Neither Joel nor Alfredo seemed to be all that worried about it though, so I took it as a sign that I shouldn’t either.

Joel’s first match was against someone that was seriously pushing the limits of what could have been considered his weight class.  A light-skinned black man wearing only tiny black shorts and what appeared to be baby oil glistened with rippling muscles across from Joel on the mat before his first fight.  This guy looked impressive, and he won a previous match before this by arm bar, illegal lubrication aside.  “Watch out for the triangle,” came the cry from behind me.  I guess the word was out on Joel and his favorite submission.  He didn’t look worried at all, though.  When the match started the muscle-bound man came right after Joel.  Both men went to the mat at almost as soon as the match began and Joel pulled guard.  The technique of pulling guard is essential grabbing your opponent and sitting down on the ground, or in this case sitting down on the mat first.  No points for the takedown are awarded to either contestant but it allows for expeditious way to commence ground fighting.  Once on the ground though all of the advantage that the bigger man had didn’t account for much.

Joel went to work on him meticulously.  He trapped his arm and his head in between his legs and was working toward locking his foot underneath his adjacent knee in the figure four that was the cornerstone of his favorite submission.  Thirty seconds later it was over when the big guy couldn’t effectively withdraw from the hold and his oxygen supply was cut-off to the point that he was in danger of passing out.  Before that happened though, the bigger man tapped on the mat indicating that he had enough.  Wow.  Joel just beat some guy that looked like twice his size of with pure technique, albeit raw technique.  His unrefined mastery is very much a part of natural ability and a burning desire to win at whatever the cost.  After his hand was raised in victory, and the familiar sly smile faded, Joel sat down for what would be Alfredo’s first competition of the day.

Alfredo was a whirlwind of a fighter.  It seemed like his boundless energy could have been similar to the effects of the chimarraỏ that he sipped incessantly.  Short work wasn’t in the cards for his opponent, however.  Alfredo used the entire time amassing a ridiculous disparity in points by winning 26 to 2 on reversals and attempting a rear naked choke.  The poor guy couldn’t get Alfredo off of his back no matter how hard he tried and when the time expired the dejected contestant sulked off the mat embarrassed.  Joel’s training partner and rival exhibited the highest skill by dominating in his match from start to finish.  Alfredo did all of this without breaking a sweat and watching the match made me think that Joel was definitely getting a run for his money every time that the two faced each other in practice.  In order to be the best, you have to train with the best.  In an area with so many watered-down schools splintered off from the main Gracie school in Brazil, Alfredo’s link to his country’s pastime is California gold in the sport of jiu-jitsu.  It became clear at that moment that he shouldn’t be donning a brown belt and that it was probably a result of Alfredo having trained in Brazil for many years without a ranking system and taking significant time off rather than a lack of determination.

In Brazil, athletes train in judo at an early age and graduate to training in jiu-jitsu without the benefit of belts because of contempt for formalities.  “Badges?  We don’t need no stinking badges,” is what came to my mind although I think that the Portuguese and Mexicans are different.  Alfredo fit right in and was perfectly at home in the no-gi tournament whereas it was a new area entirely for Joel.  Joel recently decided that he needed the experience of no-gi grappling to make him a better rounded fighter.  He also took up Thai boxing and basic boxing for the same reason.  While we were waiting for the next fight to begin a curious fight broke out on the mat next to us.  One of the coaches became slightly entangled with the competitors, both minors, that he was intensely watching and shouting advice at in a heavy Brazilian accent.  The fact of the matter is that this “coach” was way too close to the events in which he was purportedly offering his expertise and he was none other than Rani Yahya, the 2007, 66 kg Champion at Abu Dhabi.  You would think that a guy that has won a major event like the Grappling World Championships would know the rules of engagement at such events but you would be wrong.  Rather than shake of the slight contact that was made, Rani sprung to his feet and walked on the already occupied mat and proceeded to stare down the opposing competitor and the referee judging the match.  When the referee attempted to remove Rani, he lashed out in a high arcing roundhouse kick that found its mark square on the opposing fighter’s jaw.  A grown man kicked an unsuspecting kid in the face.

Let us assume for a minute that there is kicking in jiu-jitsu or grappling, when there is none.  Let us assume that a coach of any kind could walk on the playing field of any sport and inflict bodily harm on contestants.  Let us assume that...  You know what?  That is already way too much to assume.  A brawl ensued.  The referee pushed Rani and managed to move him away from the fighters.  The crowd basically did the rest.  There were several punches thrown and perhaps a chair or two was swung as Rani ran for the escalators and safety outside.  This, more than anything that I saw the previous day, sums up the sport of grappling in the United States at this moment: unruly.  If Rani Yahya was in the corner of a boxing match and climbed into the ring with the same antics you can bet that he would be banned from the sport for life.  In this case though, I bet he never even got a stiff talking to.  Whom would he get it from?  Unless the kid who got kicked filed charges I bet there was no other recourse of action for him.  Even more unsettling than a grown man kicking some kid who was beating his protégé in a fair match was the fact that after the brawl, which lasted several minutes, operations resumed as if nothing had transpired.

After the commotion settled down Joel was pitted against Ryan Hall of famed, Lloyd Irving jiu-jitsu in Maryland.  This would prove to be the match of the day and the crowd, no longer fascinated by a lunatic’s antics, focused their attention on the match about to begin.  Ryan Hall came all the way from the east coast to participate in a tournament that would pay him absolutely no money if he were to win it all just for the love of the sport.  Much like Joel he was a jiu-jitsu student turned no-gi grappler at the behest of what could be a promising UFC career.  Ryan Hall stood a good four inches shorter than Joel but had the thicker frame of a freestyle wrestler and the cockiness of youth.  He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five with a baby face that belied dangerous ability.  A greater challenge for both contestants was not in the Convention Center this afternoon.   When the fight commenced both Joel and Ryan respected each other so much that they both immediately sat down to avoid a potential deciding point exchange on the takedowns.  Two fighters sat on their asses and smiled at one another less than two seconds after the referee said “fight!”  Ryan was first to the mat and, according to the rules, had the advantage of fighting from the guard with Joel as the pursuant attacker. 

The unfamiliar position may have thrown Joel off at first as he struggled to get past Ryan’s guard by just running past it.  After about a minute of these attempts with no points awarded to either player, Joel tried the daring move of jumping the guard but was unsuccessful.  The resulting entanglement left them both on the mat grasping each others’ foot for a submission.  The fifty-fifty split of foot locking is still a puzzle to me.  In order to gain the advantage of the secure hold a grappler must essentially give up his own foot for the potential counter move.  Both Ryan and Joel writhed on the ground for every amount of leverage while holding on to the extreme lower limbs.  All of a sudden though, Joel’s face appeared to grimace and he quickly tapped on Ryan’s leg in order to release the hold.  If Joel could have held on for another ten seconds he may have secured the victory for himself by applying the painful foot lock first.  If Ryan hadn’t released it when he had, however, we may never be able to watch one of the greatest surfers of all time ply his trade.  You need two feet to surf like Joel Tudor and foot locks are made for breaking feet.

After Ryan’s hand was raised triumphantly Joel reached across and gave him a handshake while wishing him the best of luck.  A class act from start to finish, Joel felt like he had accomplished what he came to do without risking too much of the career that puts Keith Haring painting on Tosh’s walls and rare surfboards hanging from the rafters.  I reminded him that most people in his position wouldn’t even be out there, but I know that didn’t affect him in the slightest.  Joel is a different sort of fellow.  Maybe the sport of grappling needs Joel like surfing seemed to need Joel so many years ago.  In a sport a little short on sportsmanship his laid back excellence could be just what the doctor ordered.  The sport of grappling needs someone to rescue it just like surfing did before Joel arrived on the scene so many years ago.  Time will tell because Joel is tickled pink to be a part of it all, for all of the faults associated with grappling.  When sitting on the mat next to me after it was all over he said, “That kid Ryan Hall is pretty good.  I’ll see him again pretty soon.” 

Joel would spend the rest of the time at the tournament coaching Ox in a heated match that saw him go down on a rear naked choke.  Joel was so frustrated at Ox ignoring his technical advice from the side of the mat that he eventually just got up and walked away from it all.  “It was too unbearable to watch,” he said.  Alfredo wound up taking the silver medal in the same division after losing on points to Ryan Hall, ending the duo’s bid to go 1 and 2 in the division.  Instead they would have to settle for what would have been 2 and 3 had Joel not abandoned the third place match to race home for an afternoon session of waves.  I guess there was no need to fight someone that he already beat for third place when he could be entertaining the likes of me.  Besides, his mom had dinner plans for all of us and I heard that Papa Joe and Josh speared a big one on their morning dive.