Tae Kwon Do

This picture, my friend, is the last ever picture that anyone will see me doing Tae Kwon Do. Indeed the contest that was held today did not go as planned at all.

First, I fought against the coach of a friendly school, which always makes me uncomfortable since this is a full-contact sport where you score points by kicking people. Second of all, I might be in good enough shape for the gym, but for the ring, no. The excitement, adrenaline and all quickly spent the limited energy I had in my legs and I gave a pretty poor show.

Third of all, the ending. Second round, I’m loosing 6-2. Not that it’s surprising. I’m so tired that I’ve stopped kicking and because my opponent doesn’t kick that hard, I’m quite happy to stay put and get kicked, only moving for the headshots. When I saw the score at one point, I literally said to myself: “ah..fuck it.. This is actually quite nice, I think I’ll just relax ad try not to get to battered.” But then, we were getting warnings because we were not fighting much (guess my opponent was tired too!) so we had to do something. My opponent decided for a spinning hook kick to my head. I bounced back and went in as he was falling and threw a roundhouse kick. I got him on the head.

End of competition, I’m declared the “winner".
Seeing a father of 2 get carried out on a stretcher with an oxygen mask is not cool. Knowing you did it is even less cool.

Then, the fighter’s dad came in giving me shit because he said that I was having a laugh about his son when I walked out. Actually, what happened was I came out of the ring and stared at a spectator and my lovely wife. The spectator in order to ease the tension said something with a smile so I had a nervous laugh and told my wife: “don’t show this tape to your dad, he’ll think I’m mad!” and had another nervous laugh.

I was so furious that this man might think that I could be disrespectful and take such a serious K.O lightly that I went to see him and he got all agitated and rude to me. To his left, I could see the fighter’s daughter. Cute little 2-3 year old. Looking terrified. She looked like she was probably thinking: “Oh no! The evil man that beat up my dad is now going to attack my grand-dad!” So I just walked away and looked at the last few fights thinking to myself, yup..These are the last fights I’ll ever see.

And it broke my heart.

When I stepped into the car this morning, I thought to myself “This is your last competition, mate” Didn’t’ t tell Nickie or anything.. I was just pleased with the idea. My plan was to not keep stretching all day like a lot of the new lot do. Just relax, encourage the kiddies and hopefully have a nice “relaxed” fight, hopefully win but in either case, walk out with a few applauds and people smiling at me.

Then I’d be back at the club on Tuesday, people smiling saying “good fight” or something and then I could concentrate on simply keeping fit and coaching the younger ones.

But nothing worked as planned and I’m not going back.

And that’s that.

Please, don’t question me anymore on the subject, as I would really not that about it after this blog entry.

Thank you for understanding.
I have enough of a stupid trophy to remind me of that day.
(P.S: just got a phone call. The man is “alright". The doctors told him he could not drive so his wife has brought him back home where he can rest.)