Abe-Ani Is for the Children
by Chris Nelson on Aug 19, 2009 10:01 PM EDT
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If you've ever checked out Megumi Fujii's blog, you've seen -- scattered amongst the myriad food- and kitty-related posts -- photos of the youngsters with whom "Mega Megu" works as part of the staff at Tokyo's Abe-Ani Combat Club. As one might imagine, AACC doesn't exactly do the run-of-the-mill juniors self-defense program (with an emphasis on heel hooks). No, Fujii and head trainer Hiroyuki Abe are committed to molding their little grapplers into respectable citizens as well as great athletes.
In his new piece, "Abe-Ani's Army," Tony Loiseleur finds out just what drives the kids of AACC:
Notable of these many children is Ryuto Sawada, who at age 14 takes on the unspoken role of the team captain under Abe-sensei. A gold medalist in Japan’s national children’s wrestling competitions, the young Ryu looks forward to expanding beyond wrestling in adulthood.
"I started wrestling at age four. Around the same time, I saw MMA," recounts the shy Ryuto of his formative first impression of the sport, and how it pushed him toward wrestling. "It was when I saw [Kazushi] Sakuraba versus Royce Gracie in Pride. It was then that I decided I wanted to do MMA someday."
. . .
"Abe-san not only teaches the techniques of wrestling, but he also teaches children how to be considerate to each other’s feelings and respect one another. There are also things that he teaches, like Japanese budo, which I think is good," says Akira Sawada, proud father of Ryuto and Chihiro.
Be sure to read the full article over at Sherdog, accompanied by some great photos from Daniel Herbertson.
Video by Tony Loiseleur
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this seems like something that would get no end of bad news coverage in the U.S.
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Actually, this is part of the reason why I wanted to do the article in the first place—like, whether the fact that it was done in Japan and had very explicit social goals to achieve made it somehow more permissible to people back home was something that I was wondering about.
Although, since it would mostly be hardcore MMA fans reading it, I’m not sure it’d elicit the same kind of moral outrage a thirty second clip on nighttime news would. :^P
Funny – to me, this is such an obviously positive thing, the fact it could upset anyone didn’t even cross my mind.
by Chris Nelson on Aug 19, 2009 10:42 PM EDT up reply actions
I totally agree, but I figured with all the noise that “kids’ MMA” had kicked up a while back, I wondered if anyone would even try to make the argument that “training kids to fight is evil”—particularly since so many children now are growing up with MMA being a big part of their lives.
I know that Abe isn’t putting these kids in full-on MMA fights (since there really isn’t any of that to be had down here), but I was still wondering if some righteous crusader might not come out of the woodwork and try to assert that this is one step before full on Roman gladiatorial spectacles or something.
What few emails I have received in my inbox however has all been positive, thankfully!
The fact that this could upset people just shows the strange dichotomy in attitude that exists between MMA and other more traditional sports or martial arts.
There are kids karate dojos all over the country that do live sparring and similarl types of training. There are also a decent number of kids who taking boxing lessons, although to be fair that is much less common.
Heck, even regular contact sports like football can get pretty rough and injuries are a regular occurrence, yet no one so much as raises an eyebrow. Seems like a pretty obvious double standard; just people being afraid of something they don’t care to understand.
by CasualMMAFan on Aug 20, 2009 12:54 PM EDT up reply actions
Good Job Chris,
I was glad you wrote on this subject. It was a great article on Sherdog and shows you how nuts the next generation of fighters will be in Japan.
Busted.
This was all a flimsy pretext for a Wu-Tang reference.
(I’m glad someone got it, though.)
by Chris Nelson on Aug 19, 2009 9:23 PM EDT up reply actions
No wonder ODB came to mind when I read the title LOL.
"He built his whole reputation (as a) waffle house chef. They've been serving him up ham and eggs with a side of canned tomatoes." - Don Frye on Fedor Emelianenko
Hopefullly, there's more video to follow...
Now that the feature article is up, I think a longer video feature on the AACC Kids Wrestling team will soon follow it.
I actually took a lot of video of them (like over an hour and a half), and assuming that there’s room and interest for it, it’ll go up in Sherdog’s video section soon. Fingers crossed… (^_^)
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