Budovideos.com has a live stream of the World Jiu-Jitsu Championships available for free viewing all weekend long and will be featuring all the finals matches. All you have to do is sign up for a free user account and you’re good to go.
The star of Ong Bak Tony Jaa has reportedly become a Buddhist monk. It’s fairly common in Thailand for men to go monastic for brief periods then return to a secular life afterwards. Think of it like a vacation from real life during which time you don’t have to wear underwear. This might be just what the actor/director needs after a tumultuous production of Ong Bak 2.
From Twitch:
The initial footage from that film looked fantastic but it didn’t take long for strange stories to emerge from the set – stories of Jaa sacrificing chickens before shooting for the day could commence – and things rapidly fell behind schedule and way over budget. And then, with pressure mounting and debts adding up, Jaa simply crumbled under the pressure and disappeared.
If you’ve never seen Ong Bak, you’re missing out on one of the greatest martial arts flicks of the decade. Tony Jaa brings it with mind-blowing stunts, unprecedented athleticism, and fight work that would make Bruce himself go: daaaaaayum! The work that Jaa is doing has elevated martial arts movie-making the same way the Hong Kong kung fu flicks did in the early 90′s.
Jaa’s second film Tom Yum Goong features the greatest single-shot (no cuts) fight sequences of all time. In it, Jaa fights his way up several floors of a building… aaah easier to just show you:
Yeeeeaaaaahhh… breakin’ limbs and takin’ names.
Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong are easily top 10 martial arts movies to own for me. Are they available on blu-ray, you ask? Of course! Tom Yum Goong was released stateside as The Protector
Hopefully Jaa will be right again after his time at Club Monk. Hopefully he’s learned from his past experiences and will continue to do his fans right with more movies.
26 year-old MMA fighter Jarrod Wyatt (1-0-0 under Jared Wyatt) murdered his training partner Adam Powell, cut his heart out and cooked it while under the influence of mushrooms. Cops found him naked and covered in Adam’s blood.
From New York Daily News:
Del Norte County Police Sgt. Elwood Lee, who responded to the incident early March 21, said that Wyatt told him at the scene that he saw the devil in Powell’s face and that “‘Satan was in that dude.’” He allegedly cut an 18-inch hole in Powell’s chest, removed his heart, cut his tongue off and removed a majority of Powell’s face.
Here’s Wyatt’s solitary MMA fight:
This was back in March and Wyatt is trying to fight the charges saying that it was the shrooms that made him do it. I’m inclined to say that there might have been an existing level of craziness/stupidity. This horrific incident is unfortunate on so many levels. The guy was clearly unstable to begin with but his actions put both two very misunderstood topics in a bad light. MMA and psychedelic drug use aren’t exactly very popular with the mainstream, but can be profoundly positive experiences for a lot of people who understand them well. If Wyatt’s defense is successful, it sets precedence for other crimes to be hidden under a veil that pushes blame onto the substance rather than the abuser.
I’m interested to see what Joe Rogan has to say about this.
[edit]
The Times Standard has more gruesome detail on the story and also reports that Wyatt will indeed be charged with murder along with aggravated mayhem and torture.
Well if you thought things were tough for you, here’s the story of 19 year old Teslah Bastian. After getting her life back on track with pro MMA as her new focus, she gets dropped on her head accidentally by a friend.
To say her life has slightly changed is an understatement. Bastian was helping with setup at an MMA event at the Stargate Nightclub in Superior on May 3 when she said her friend, Ryan VanPuymbrouck, a Duluth MMA fighter, was drunk, came up behind up her, picked her up by her knees, and accidentally dropped her on her head.
