Wrestling is a one-on-one experience and if something goes wrong you can't point a finger and blame somebody else. What you do is up to you. And yet it's a team sport, because whether your team wins or loses is a result of the cumulative effect of the matches. Wrestling is a great confidence builder because it's not all about strength. You have to use your balance and skill and technique and if you do, you can overcome a lot of muscle and bulk guys, and even those who have natural ability. Basically, you can out-technique an opponent.
When I first got into the sport it was all about who could cut the most weight, who could be the biggest on fight night. That's the same era when you're sparring 10 five minute rounds, new partner every two and a half minutes, that era of just really hard weight cutting and really hard full contact training.
When you fight, if it is a real fight, use every tool that you have, use your whole body. Use your fists, your legs, your fingers, your head if you have to, and hit them in every vulnerable spot, the balls, the eyes etc. to win.
I'm told that I look like a nice girl. But, yes, I do a full contact sport, and when people ask what I do, they are a bit surprised when I say, 'A martial art, a full contact sport.'
I've seen the consequences of what can happen when you're unprepared for a fight, or not as prepared as your opponent.I can't let anything like that happen to me, I've got too many goals, too much ambition in the sport. We're looking to fight for a world title this year.
I think the kicks in Wing Chun are enough. It´s much easier to use your hands than to use your feet. Your hand is able to reach your opponent long before your foot. Why take the long way to attack (circle), when there is a much more direct method of attack? If you are using your hands, then your opponent can´t see a kick coming if you have to use it. When you teach Kung Fu, you can fool a lot of people, but not yourself. You can make like a movie and do many complicated movements and kicks, but you only fool yourself as to whether that would work in a real situation of life and death.
I was just glad I've got an opponent, to be honest. This is my third opponent for this fight prep. [I'm over the moon] to be fighting in my hometown and I just didn't want that taken away. The fact that they've got me a new opponent, I'm not bothered who it is. I just focus on what I can control in my preparation and that's all I've got to worry about. My opponent changes but they're all great fighters in the UFC. Doesn't matter who you step in there with, it's going to be a tough fight.
For fear, real fear such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.
I sometimes look on YouTube and see people label videos 'Anthony Yarde sparring his trainer Ade' but that is not sparring, that's just practice. We practice getting attacked, countering and attacking your opponent back, in intelligent ways.
Look, there’s no rule in soccer against biting your opponent. There’s not even a rule against eating your opponent. The only rule in soccer is that you can’t use your hands.
If your opponent is tapping, your technique is good. If he is not tapping, your technique sucks.
Even when you spar for real and fight with full contact in training, you get hurt or you hurt someone and you see them trying to fight back. I want to inject as much reality as possible into fight scenes, even if some of the moves are slightly larger than life, if the emotion is there you'll then still be able to buy it. I recall seeing some films where people perform an acrobatic flip mid-fight and land with graceful precision and it's almost like watching Zorro... it's almost whimsical but you're no longer engaged.
The top fighters spar hard. They're really sparring for two reasons: One is to improve their technique, but the other, which is just as important, is to build endurance, toughness, and courage. They want to practice as realistically as possible so that when they go into a real fight, the transition isn't as jarring.
Fight one more round. When your arms are so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round. When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired that you wish your opponent would crack you one on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round - remembering that the man who always fights one more round is never whipped.
President Obama has been attacking relentlessly. In 2008 he said that if you're out of fresh ideas you use stale tactics against your opponent - you try and make your opponent unacceptable and that's what he is trying to do.
Wars are fought to gain a certain objective. War itself is not the objective; victory is not the objective; you fight to remove the obstruction that comes in the way of your objective. If you let victory become the end in itself then you've gone astray and forgotten what you were originally fighting about.