ONRA:january13th,2010

Hafa adai.

It looks like the 155-pound title is up for grabs and that we will finally get to see the year’s anticipated bout where Roque Martinez gets to defend his PXC Heavyweight Championship title against Saipan’s Kelvin Fitial with Premeiere XTreme Combat 22 scheduled for next Friday

Purebred/Lloyd Irvin Guam is counting at least 14 students that will be competing in the Pan American Juvenile Brazilian Jiujitsu Championships on Feb. 20.

Although UFC and Strikeforce veterans are nothing new to the island, the island of Guam is proud to have hosted part of the Fighters For Fighters Tour that took place at the .Charles King Fitness Center at Naval Base Guam and at the Coral Reef Fitness Center at Andersen Air Force Base

Though the seminars may have been tailored for members of the armed forces, with a few days on our 32-mile long island, it was inevitable that our traveling visitors would cross paths with some of our many fighting islanders.

It’s pretty amazing how the sport and pursuit of knowledge in martial arts and professional fighting has forged significant alliances between our local athletes and those from far away places. It seems that Guam’s outreach in competitive world martial arts has created many icebreakers with traveling professionals, visiting instructors, and aspiring students to provide a healthy exchange of information and fruitful ground between backgrounds of different ethnicities, genders and ages.

Keeping everything in sight for 2011 — one topic of note is: What role will martial arts and mixed martial arts play in the figurative screenplay of the military buildup?

With 10,000-plus Marines chased out of Okinawa, trained to kill, and in every situation ready for battle, already, without ever meeting them many of us, have established our own personal reserves of what we will be dealing with.

Should we be anticipating violence, the rape of our women and the pillage of our land? Should we envision hostile encounters and disoriented, drunken troublemakers carving the path for the disintegration of our home and paradise, not because of ethnic reservations, but due, in large, to repeated testimonies from Okinawans that gave them reason to invest billions of dollars in this relocation?

The reality of it is that though as Marines, our soldiers are empowered as moving weapons — however they will find that any percieved passivity is surely not to be mistakened for weakness. Skilled fighters are easier to be found on the island these days but it isn’t the martial arts fist that will serve us best here as much it will be the martial arts mind.

 Of course Guam martial arts isn’t aspiring to be the golden savior or the only solution but, at best, we definitely don’t want to be a part of the problem. 

 With this buildup, we have every reason to be enraged, to feel disrespected. We are being told what to do in our own house and there seems to be little that we can do to effectively motivate otherwise. We have to accept the fact that the Marines are coming and with them thousands will follow family and chasers of opportunity. Though the battle to keep them out has been lost, a new challenge has presented itself for us to be on top of this situation, to not only see this for what it is negatively, but for what it can be positively. 

 Incorporating martial arts into the military buildup equation is above the details of how will our academies make money more money? It’s beyond the techniques we might use to defeat them in a fight. And it’s so much more than how many more shirts or tickets we might sell with the potential of a fluorishing industry. 

 It’s really about incorporating the etiquette of martial arts, the spirit of athletics, and the military code of conduct to work effortlessly towards some type of harmony between the irresistible force and the immovable object so that in the beginning and end of it all we move forward shapeless and conforming with the home-court advantage to enter every opportunity towards positivity and yet be powerful and transparent for mutual clarity and perspective-appreciation; to find a way at best … to be like water.

Easier said than done but hopefully forever trying …

Thanks for dropping by.

Roman Dela Cruz is a mixed martial arts super-fan, and a representative for Fury MMA