Letter to Cyan

Cyan, like me you trained in some form of functional Aikido and were no stranger to brutal self defense situations. You wanted to show the world that some Aikidoka were not above sparring serious fighters. You heard about the "Gracie Challenge" and started calling MMA gyms, and to your credit the outcome was pretty much what you expected. I have two points of this letter:

1. You should be proud of this accomplishment.
2. This is an opportunity.

Be Proud

There is no shame in having your ass handed to you, especially if you were pretty sure that was going to happen already going into it, and you were. You didn't do as well as you thought you would, but you had an idea you might not make it through round 1. You called it.

You knew when to quit. Some jerks like me go in over my head, and then don't know when to stop. You noticed right away that the MMA fighter you were up against had different expectations than you did. When you thought you might be too injured to go on, you put an end to it. This kind of humility is a very admirable trait in a martial artist in today's world.

Twice I have gotten into dangerously stupid martial arts fights, on a par with a Jackass The Movie stunt, where I learned extremely valuable lessons. In the 90's when training in kickboxing, I weighed about 130 pounds, and recruited a 350 pound brawler friend of mine to join the classes. I was one of the better students in class, and after about 3 months I figured he was ready to face me in the ring.

He proceeded to beat me bloody for 3 rounds. His every jab knocked my rear foot back about 6 inches. My shin guarded leg kicks had no physical impact on him, and he barely noticed any strike I threw except an occasional over hand right to his jaw, which still did not slow him down. When I tried to clinch to work my knee strikes into his thigh or drag his head into a knee strike, he dribbled my head on the floor of the ring.

8 Ibuprofen, an ice pack and 4 hours later I still had the worst headache of my life and my 350 lb friend was trying to get me in the car go to the emergency room. But in the months that followed I focused on my footwork, and learned side stepping, the most useful self defense skill I have employed over the years since that time... like this:

The second worst beating of my life was at a in-house Tai Chi push hands tournament with the Wudang Dan Pai, which they have in the spring every year at a Park in Seattle. (I had a silver medal in forms and a bronze metal in push hands from competing in Tai Chi in Canada. I had failed to get a yellow belt in Judo through the world's worst attendance record for about 5 years. I had a few years of Aikido and the clinching from a few years of kickboxing.) If you count the final match this in house event had 4 rounds of elimination. The first fighter I went up against had a similar background to me, which was heavy in kickboxing and Tai Chi. Out of 10 points, I beat him with about a 4 point lead, relying heavily on a parting-the-horse's-mane type of trip.

But in the 2nd round of elimination, I was up against someone with about a 50 lb weight advantage, and who had wrestled in high school. I figured out later he had something against me personally for doing Yang style international competition. The first bad sign was when I sprawled using a kickboxing clinch, they mentioned this was against the rules in their style of push hands. My technical stationary and fixed step Yang style push hands was no match for the no-Gi Chinese Wrestling type of push hands practiced by the Wudang Dan Pai. Not only did I suffer the worst defeat of the event (10 to 0,) but I was picked up and slammed like you were in the above video at least 3 times, leaving me wondering if I was seriously injured.

But I learned an important lesson: I needed to take my grappling a lot more seriously in order to be a good Tai Chi fighter. Since then I have dabbled far more seriously in MMA and BJJ than I ever did before in Judo, and it has made very significant improvements in my over all martial arts skills. In the 2019 Pacific North West Warrior Tipon Tipon I even pulled off a (left handed) Tai Chi single-handed push takedown in a knife fight against someone known to do very well against me, something I would never have been able to do if it hadn't been for the beating I took at the hands of the Wudang Dan Pai:

Fighting an opponent who is tough enough to take you out takes real courage and humility, and has taught me the most important martial arts lessons of my life. You should be proud of your experience Cyan, even if it is only in a Jackass The Movie "lol I can't believe I did something that stupid" sort of way. I am proud of you for it.

Opportunity Knocks

Celebrities are starting to take notice of what happened, you have been posted by Dana White, one of the most influential martial arts people in the world:

Like it or not, this is your opportunity Cyan. I am not the only one in the Martial Arts Journey facebook group who thinks you try to use a crowd funding source of some kind (Patreon maybe) to pull together resources to train under a well known martial arts master. Use your public defeat and now famous story to get funding to take your martial arts to the next level...

If you wanted to go pure Aikido, in my view you have four options: 1 - Lenny Sly - the downside being that his "aikigrappling" is still in development, but in the USA he is at the forefront of the functional Aikido movement. 2 - Tomiki Aikido - You don't have to  go to Japan for this, there appears to be clusters of Tomiki Aikido schools in Ohio and North Carolina. 3 - There is actually something called "Shoot Aikido," but you would probably have to go to Japan for that...

4 - If you are going to go all the way to Japan, the most exotic and least accessible to Americans type of Aikido is Hatenkai:

I think the best Aikido that has been going on globally since the 90's has been happening in the Thai Boxing ring. You speak openly about being trans, and the need for self defense skills in the LGBT community. Muay Thai is probably the fastest martial art to learn, and has effective techniques that work against larger or multiple opponents. Muay Thai has a unique history with the trans community specifically, and the Thai experience regarding trans identity may be something American culture could learn from:

But back to the best Aikido happening in Muay Thai, consider Muay Thai legend Oley Kiatoneway. He would pull stunts like using an opponent's force against them to put them over the top rope of the ring - not in a scripted pro wrestling match but in the middle of an actual fight... consider also his clever use of side stepping, "enter and blending," distance and takedowns:

Thailand is a popular destination for martial arts tourism, and the cost of living there historically has been low. You going to Thailand to train, after taking the public flogging that you did, would be a very compelling story. But like me you have family obligations and may not be available for over seas adventure. No matter, Muay Thai is trained in throughout the USA, and there are even numerous YouTube personalities you might be able to train with.