Toughman Competition, March 2004

Budo Karate House is NOT a boxing school. BKH residents do, however, often participate in local toughman competions in order to gain experience and feel the rigors of full contact competion. We have been to a total of 9 toughman competitions (in two years) and have acheived 3 first-place wins. Toughman competitions, rigorously regulated by the State Boxing Commission, follow strict boxing rules for only 3 1-minute rounds. Perhaps the most important rule for the toughman (other than that only punches are permitted) is that professional boxers are not allowed. Even though BKH residents are not trained in boxing -- except for a bare minimum of drills designed to keep them safe in toughman competitions -- they tend to fair fairly well because they are so strong and because they spend so much of thier life training for full-contact competition. We do toughman competitions to gain experience, and they are by-comparison easy to win, compared to the international full-contact karate competitions in which we participate.

Here 3 BKH residents warm up for competition.

After only 4 months in the program, MY (22, Ohio), does a beautiful job in his first round in the heavyweigh division.

Unfortunately, it doesn't go well for him in the second round and he is cought with a lucky punch to the headgear. Loss by knock out! We'll post the results here of his next competition.

After winning his first fight and getting a buy into the semi-finals, JW looses a fight that he probably should have won. He's definately stronger than his opponent, but he makes a bad decision of how to fight in is final round and loses by one point. Judges score 29 to 28!

But look! BKH's newest member, 6'2" 213 lb. CY (19, Texas) wins his first fight in the heavyweight division and gets a chance to fight the guy who knocked-out his roomate a few hours earlier.

CY, just 87 days into the BKH program -- 87 days of training 5-6 hours per day -- WINS his first ever toughman competition in the heavy weight division, joining DL, BKH senior student who's won first place in two earlier toughman competitions (lightweight).

We were honored to have Sensei Rose James of Brooklyn (women's full-contact heavyweight karate champion) as our honored guest for the evening.