This is like something out of a cheesy Hong Kong kung fu flick. Phra Kru Ba Neua Chai is a former Muay Thai champ with three losses in a 15-year career. Now he’s become an ordained monk who takes in abandoned children. He teaches them reading, writing, buddhist precepts, and Muay Thai out of his monastery in Thailand. Interestingly, he also studied law and was married before he went monk.

Full story here via TheStar.com

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VBS is the video broadcasting arm of Vice Magazine, one of my favorite publications. They’re known for their fearless assault on dicey content and a no-holds-barred-keep-it-real journalism style.

They’re doing a show called Balls Deep in which they throw their waify host Thomas “Baby Balls” Morton into foreign experiences to get a personal dose of what it’s like. Currently they’re doing a bit on MMA where Baby Balls follows an amateur fighter Matthew Ruskin around and tries to keep up with the training. The series leads up to Ruskin’s real fight in Atlanta.

What I really enjoy from this so far is that although Morton is no physical specimen, he throws himself fully into the lifestyle and delivers a perspective that the average person can relate to. This is one of the more honest and unbiased pieces on MMA I’ve seen.

Balls Deep - Ultimate Fighting - 9 Parts
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

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Move over, BJ Penn, here comes Nainoa Dung. 8 years old and weighing in at probably about 60lbs, Nainoa fights out of Wahiawa, HI. Man, if I could do this when I was in second grade I’m sure the other kids would’ve been a lot nicer to me. I bet none of the kids mess with him even though his last name is Dung. Here’s a writeup on Nainoa at MMA Hawaii. And now a video with Nainoa demonstrating “MMA, his favorite of all the martial art”. Yes, there’s only one.

I’m not exactly sure how I feel about 8 year olds doing MMA. On the one hand it’s good because it teaches kids to really understand what violence is at an early age. My personal belief is that understanding violence is the means to avoiding it. On the other hand, kids may not be able to really exhibit the control that in most cases comes from experience.

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