Christmas is over

Xmas is dusted. Get your arses back to the gym. New years eve session is being held earlier, 1 o'clock, to accomodate those of you who, unlike me, have social lives.

Magpie Grappler

Sherdog sports reporter Tim Leidecker seems to have taken a bit of a shine to me, having featured my bout against Weichel in his September article about 10 fights not to miss in October. Obviously he followed the result and has kindly predicted I may be the U.K.'s next big thing. I'll endeavour not to disappoint.

Taken from Sherdog.com - read full article here

Irving -- the Next UK Star?

The arrival of the UFC on British soil has invigorated the UK fight scene and motivated fighters across the country to train even harder, with UFC stars Michael Bisping and Dan Hardy leading the way. But also emerging are young talents like Terry Etim and Jim Wallhead.

Another fast-rising UK welterweight is Newcastle’s Peter Irving. Despite a mixed professional record, the magpie grappler is currently on a hot streak in his home promotion Strike & Submit, where he is the European champion. In his last two bouts, he won a decision over tough-as-nails Swedish wrestler Reza Madadi and Germany’s once most promising prospect Daniel Weichel.

The stream of tough challenges for the blonde-haired Brazilian jiu-jitsu player from northeastern England will not let up as he defends his title for the third time in just eight months taking on “Brazilian Bad Boy” Igor Araujo at Strike & Submit 9 on Feb. 8 in Newcastle, England.

Araujo, a Caveirinha black belt himself, recently bounced back from a short-notice loss in his UK debut against Jim Wallhead with an under-a-minute armbar victory over extremely experienced Russian fighter Vener Galiev in the Russian’s hometown. The Brazilian will certainly give Irving’s submission defense a stern test.


A stern test is precisely what I anticipate, take a look at Araujo's skills -

This last year has been another strong one for the gym, many fights, many wins, few defeats. But in the age of hundreds of plastic titles held by plastic champions and agents obsessed with win/loss ratios without any qualification of those details; and a public in love with the idea of an undefeated fighter, confusing undefeated with undefeatable, enamoured with the fantasy of the invincible man, it's sometimes easy to forget that fighting is above all about fighting, not winning. Winning is the objective, and though inseperable from, still not necessarily the point. Everybody likes victory, everyone wants to win a fight, but how many "fighters" really, genuinely love fighting? Not the conclusion, the actual fight? A real fighter should be disappointed by an easy fight, the way a real fight fan is disappointed after observing a one sided encounter.

Paul Jenkins told me his favourite ever fight was his bout against Arni Isaakson, a bout which Jenkins lost, and was at points really up against it. But still, even though he'd won titles galore and fought in huge arenas, his favourite fight was from a minor untelevised event with a couple of hundred spectators - and he lost. What does that tell you?

Crezio wears a piece of custom jewelery sometimes on a chain around his neck, depicting him fighting Alan Carvalho, and there he is, immortalised in Silver, stuck on the bottom, getting smashed to bits. I've asked him a lot about his bouts, and the one he speaks most proudly of was the loss against Carvalho.

Tiarks is always keen to remind us that the Champion makes the title not the other way around. "It's about who you fought and when you fought them." Names mean much more than numbers.

Having said all that, I plan to pass 2009 in the same fashion as 2008, and never put my hands on a runner up trophy.

Northern fight league

Chris Mason did it again. Great momemts documented in black and white, more on his facebook account, but here's a sample.




Saturday was a big night for us, with our squad practically making up the entire home corner.
Dangerous Dan,Franky and Simon totally overwhelmed their opponents, all finishing their fights in the first minute.
Yves had a good battle, but stuck to the gameplan and out positioned his opponent until he found the choke.
Rob was handed his first MMA loss by the Dinky Ninjas Alan Love, knocking him off a winning streak of 7 first round stoppages. Love came in looking enormous, and implemented an excellent strategy to take Rob away from his strengths. He took some hard shots, but never deviated from his gameplan, credit to him. We'll be working hard in the gym to make sure February is another clean slate for us. Christmas is cancelled. Prepare for hell.

www.freeufc.info

Cool site

www.freeufc.info

Cool site

Newcastle Olympic wrestling club

Our wrestling coach Kev took gold in Manchester last week.
Well done coach!

Next year I'll take gold too.

52

Fightmatrix.com seems to fucking love me for some reason, having assigned numeric values to all my past opposition and calculated that I am the 52nd best Welterweight in the world. Who'd have thought mathematics would one day be my friend, not my teachers.

4 in a row

Chris Mason caught some great moments again, I love his Black and white pictures.

Back from Brazil

I've been away for a while, and training and working has left me with no time to update my blog. I've given %100 every day to this fight with Weichel, I'm in superb shape and I'm on weight. I'm fully confident of a win, and given the proverbial face for radio that I took to the TUF auditions, it appears I may just have to make my way to the UFC based purely on the merits of my fighting ability.

Brazil was a great experience, but one of those you are able to enjoy only once the experience is over. Training was sickening, down time was devoid of distraction. I'm writing about my experience for Fighters Only so keep buying the mag in anticipation of a write up of my adventures.

Thanks to Tenth legion fightwear, Fighters Only and Blue Velvet for sponsoring my trip.

I'm not impressed

boomp3.com

Back to Brazil!

I'm going back to Rio to prepare for Daniel Weichel with Crezio, thanks to the generosity of my sponsors - Blue Velvet Gentlemen's club and GT Security. For those of you who don't know of Crezio, check out some of his old fights on Youtube from back in the days of headbutts and openweights -

Crezio X Johil De Oliveira

This fight is heavily edited, maybe the tape was damaged, I don't know, so you miss the speed of his takedowns, but just look at how he transitions, so fast and effortless.



Crezio X Indio Rachkal

Indio was the reigning Brazilian heavyweight MuayThai champion at the time - Crezio was about 77kg, making this suplex and mount all the more impressive. Look how he uses the grapevines.

Irving vs. Weichel at S+S 8, Oct 26th

It's on! I'm taking on Germany's finest, Daniel Weichel, on October 26th. Although Weichel is coming off a loss, it was to Dan Hardy, and he boasts an 18-5-0 record so he's a top challenger for the European title.

Check him out here in a bout from German TUF style reality show MAX -



and another from some other show -



I reckon it'll be another stormer.

Notes from ringside

Recommended reading if you have a minute or two to kill and you'd prefer something thought provoking/inspiring/interesting to browsing the gossip column of Heat magazine.
Hywel's blog is well worth checking up on.

Crazy 88

http://www.fightmatrix.com/mma-ranks/welterweight/

Fightmatrix.com has me in at number 88 in their World rankings, a couple of slots above Phil Baroni. Up yours Cage Rage!

Downtime = down time?

Shark or sheep?

You train, 8 weeks of pain, denial, sacrifice, anxiety, intensity, boredom, excitement, more boredom, more pain, repeat and repeat; nerves, fatigue and an unerring sense of purpose.
Then what happens? 17 minutes maximum and it's all over. The punch you threw a thousand times on the pads, a thousand times in the air, a thousand times in your mind; maybe it came out once, twice even, or maybe not at all. You win, you lose maybe, but regardless of the outcome it's in the books. Once it's gone, it's gone, and with it your raison d'etre.

Are you a shark or a sheep? Shark's have to keep their constant forward momentum, or drown in the lack of progress. Losing the impetus to move onwards, even for a short time is fatal.
So what next?

I need a name, I need to know someone is out there training to hurt me. Counting down the days, then hours, and finally the minutes till we face off. To have a perfect stranger picturing my face on the pads his coach is holding up and for me to do the same.

Chris Mason photos - S+S 7

I really love the pictures Chris Mason has taken at the last couple of shows. He's captured some great little moments, after the action shots, or before in the corner, when the other sports photographers have stopped looking. I think in years to come when I look back at my career as a fighter and as coach, I'll be glad to have these shots most of all. The excitement of the fighting itself overshadows some of the other things that are going on; and it's great to have those little moments of celebration, quiet contemplation, pride and love and caring documented, because they so often slip by unnoticed in the fracas surrounding the violence.

Strike and Submit 7, Pete Irving - European Champion

All photos by Ian Malone

Knackered

Knackered-er

Victory

defeat

Cornered by David Bielkheden

Back control

The "smell my feet" submission hold

The Schultz headlock

To the body

No closing the guard on me

Come on....

Get up!

Holding

Who wears short shorts?

Backing him up

When Abdul says sprawl, sprawl.

Nice shorts from Made4fighters.com

Madadi's jab was strong

Slip and kick

Always after the single