Profile
Name:
Tony
Channel Views:
6,355
Total Upload Views:
120,236
Style:
VLogging
Age:
27
Joined:
Jul 18, 2006
Latest Activity:
5 years ago
Subscribers:
93
Website:
About Me:
I am born and raised in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada and I've been a fan of martial arts for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I was weaned on watching HK movies with the likes of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Bruce Lee, as well as American action movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Chuck Norris...oh and can't forget Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. (oh and WMAC Masters! lol, anyone ever watch that?)
I formally started training in Karate at the age of 9, and have been dedicated to the art ever since. I earned a Shodan (1st degree black belt) in Goju-Ryu Karate-Do (Canadian style) and I've been training in traditional Okinawan Meibukan Goju for the past few years. During my Karate training, I also did a little bit of Muay Thai, Judo/Jujitsu, Wrestling, etc... I've competed in sport karate competitions/point sparring when I was younger with not a whole lot of success (mainly because of being DQ'd for excessive contact) but have always been interested in full contact fighting and MMA.
I got my first taste of MMA competition at a amateur Pankration tournament back in 2000 and did pretty well (two gold medals at the CFPA Canadian National Pankration Championships). It was awesome, super fun, and I wanted more. I came to compete at the same competition again in 2002, but it was shut down by the Sports Commissioner of Ontario (Ken Hayashi) and we were threatened with criminal charges for prize fighting if we continued. So, ever since then, I thought, while living in Ontario, there wouldn't be any good chances of getting good MMA training or fighting experience.
I was reduced to being just a hardcore MMA fan watching fights from Pride, UFC, K-1, etc. and scrounging around for fight vids and news on P2P programs and sites like Sherdog.com and recently YouTube.
So for the past four years I haven't done any serious martial arts training besides some MA tricks (fancy acrobatic stuff), fight choregraphy, stunts, etc. (I've had some experience in amateur film-making), a handful of sparring/grappling sessions with friends, heavybag workouts and a little bit of kata training now and then. I've basically been a lazy bastard, and it didn't help much when I started culinary school and worked as an apprentice chef...so all I've really been doing is eating the past couple of years...lol, so I'm at least 20lbs over my usual weight and I have absolutely no cardio/stamina/endurance...
Things have started to change though since yesterday (it's July 18, 2006 as I type this), I found on a blog (mmatoronto.blogspot.com) that there is gonna be a free MMA tryout for fight promoters and managers around Canada can find up and coming fighters for their upcoming shows and events. I registered right away (at www.gtamma.com) and told my old buddy Adam about it on MSN. He's been boxing for the past year or two on and off at the Whip Gym (with former WBF Super Welterweight World Champion, Fitz Vanderpool) and just started a little bit of Muay Thai (he also did some TKD as a teen). He's been getting interested in MMA because of the TUF series the past little while so he was up for registering for the tryout too and just today we met up for the first time to train...
This blog is going to be used as a reference source for our training and will allow ourselves to monitor our progression, and analyze/critique our technique. It's also for other martial artist and MMA fans to enjoy watching us learn and progress, critique us, and maybe even learn something themselves, or help us out in our training...also, it's for a little bit of advertising to find more fighters in our area who are interested in MMA that would like to train with us.
We're not looking to get famous or anything here, though that would be cool, but we really just enjoy martial arts, combat sports, MMA, as well as competition. I hope you all will enjoy this blog and please comment as much as you can...don't be too harsh on us :( ...lol, but we can take honest contructive critisism though. :)
- Tony Banh, July 18th, 2006
www.tonybanh.tk
www.openyourmind.tk
www.youtube.com/user/openminde
www.youtube.com/user/mmablog
ps. anyone in the Waterloo Region (ie., Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo, etc.) that would like to train with us, so we can help each other out, please email me and/or add me to MSN at tonybanh@hotmail.com
Hometown:
Cambridge, Ontario
Country:
Canada
Occupation:
Martial Artist, Film-maker, Apprentice Chef
Companies:
Openminded Productions at www.openyourmind.tk
Schools:
The School of Hard Knocks
Interests:
Martial arts, combat sports, full contact fighting, MMA, grappling, etc...
Movies:
The Ultimate Fighter and anything that has to do with martial arts and MMA.
Music:
Anything good...
Books:
Too many good books to list right now...I'll do it later.
:D
Great vids.
Just wanted to let everyone know that yes, we stopped training...once the summer was over and we started school, work, etc. Things never got started back up again (yes, I'm a lazy bastard still). I still have a few videos that have been in a long awaited process of being edited, but I've been lazy of course and haven't been up to doing the audio commentary for it. But these few videos will be uploaded sometime in the future...and when I start training again (I will again someday) then I'll most likely start this video blog up again. Thanks for all the support and everyone that has given some constructive criticisms and some awesome tips to help in our training. Please continue to comment more, I still enjoy reading them and learning from them.
Thanks,
Tony Banh, of YouTube.com's MMAblog