50s

The Bellator organization put on a big mma promotion this last weekend.

The main event event featured a man named Kimbo Slice. He was a popular fighter a while back, but never really achieved a lot, and is currently 41 years old.

That's pretty ancient in the combat world, but he was by far the baby in the match.

The other guy was Ken Shamrock, and he's 51. That isn't a typo. This guy fought in the very first UFC event back in 1993. In UFC1 he lost to a guy about 50 pounds smaller, and the rest of his career ran about the same way.

He looked lousy on Saturday. His double-leg takedown attempts looked like he was moving in slow motion, and yet somehow, he managed to catch Kimbo Slice in a rear naked choke. He had the submission imperfectly locked in, and he managed to eventually lose it.

Kimbo got out, and back to his feet. A punch or two later and the referee called a halt to save Shamrock's life.

Sometimes old folks perform feats of magic, but sometimes they just plain fail. Keep in mind that this isn't a story of an old warrior losing to a young buck. It's an old warrior losing to a slightly-less ancient fighter.

How exactly did he fail?

He was moving really, really slowly in his attacks. Surely, if he was doing that during training, it would have been an obvious weakness, and his fight plan would have been modified. What was happening is that he was allowing nerves to cause muscle tension that robbed him of his speed.

That wasn't a failure of age. He just plain did not relax. It's actually a rookie mistake.

So he managed to catch Kimbo in a rear naked choke. I don't mean he had a half-assed choke, it was really, really good. However, again Shamrock didn't relax, and cranked that neck as hard as he could. Another rookie mistake. He should have calmed down, and worked to adjust things the little bit they needed to reach perfection; then he should have applied the pressure, but he didn't.

He yanked and yanked on that neck, and it wasn't working. At that point he should have switched gears, and gone for the readjustment he had foregone earlier, but he didn't. He just kept cranking, even after it was obvious that it wasn't going to work. He kept trying, until his arms couldn't hold on any more, and so Kimbo got away.

Back to their feet, and now Shamrocks arms were so heavy that it made Kimbo's punches much more effective, and Kimbo started to connect. Bang, bang and it was all over.

Old Man Shamrock lost by making stupid rookie errors. He looked so bad that many people are convinced the fight was fixed.

Old guys can't afford to make mistakes like that. I'm 8 years older than Shamrock, but I still roll with people in their teens, and twenties.

Perhaps I am deluding myself, but I don't think so.

Most Jiu-Jitsu schools are full of young people. People in their forties are considered geezers. People even older than that are extremely rare. Our school's advanced class has four members over 50.

One is our instructor, and he beats everybody. I am the oldest, and regularly tap out everybody other than our instructor. Another is perhaps the steadiest person around here, and has first-rate technique. The final one is the smallest person in the class, and yet rolls in the least predictable manner of anybody here.

I roll with everybody, and rate these other geezers are amongst the school's elite. The secret to our over-fifty-group's success is an emphasis on quality of technique.

I do, however, wonder what our upper age limit will be. There are many old folks doing martial arts, but normally they started when much younger. Training has given them bodies moulded over decades. Their skills are likewise conditioned by time.

Our instructor is a Purple Belt, but the rest of our old-folks group are mere Blue Belts. We are still rookies in the Jiu-Jitsu world. Our bodies are not moulded by decades, nor our skills conditioned by time.

Will we still be advancing ten years from now; all in our sixties? Or in twenty years; in our seventies?

It would be nice, and only time will tell.