Aha Aina Features Martial Arts

By Ms. Vickey Mouze (USAG Hawaii)

Army vet­er­ans shared their knowl­edge and skill of an ancient Hawai­ian mar­tial art here, April 27.

Thomas Kaulukukui Jr. and Jerry Walker taught Sol­diers and their fam­i­lies about lua at the Aha Aina, or ban­quet, lec­ture series, hosted by U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii’s Native Hawai­ian Liai­son Office, founded to build rela­tion­ships between Sol­diers and their fam­i­lies with the Native Hawai­ian community.

“Lua comes from a time when men grap­pled with each other and beat each other with clubs; this was before firearms,” said Kaulukukui, who served in Viet­nam as a para­trooper from 1968–1970.

Soldiers Put Skills to Test in Combatives Tournament

by Sgt. Steven Peter­son
10th Moun­tain Divi­sion Journalist

Sol­diers sta­tioned on Fort Drum par­tic­i­pated in the 10th Moun­tain Divi­sion Com­bat­ives Tour­na­ment held April 25 and 26 at Magrath Sports Complex.

The tour­na­ment was open to all active-duty and reserve Sol­diers in the area. It pit­ted all who came to com­pete within the instal­la­tion against each other.

Before the matches began, instruc­tors from Fort Drum’s Light Fighter School gave a Mod­ern Army Com­bat­ives demon­stra­tion, explain­ing some of the main rules and the pur­pose of the technique.

Marine Corps Fight Club 29

By Lance Cpl. D. J. Wu

It was another early morn­ing. It was cold. I knew there were going to be nine fight­ers in the tour­na­ment but I didn’t know what to expect.

I went to the meet up spot a lit­tle early as usual, just so I wouldn’t miss anything.

The first two peo­ple I met were a cou­ple of guys I’ve never seen before. It turned out that one of them was a vis­it­ing coach from Marine Corps Air Sta­tion Cherry Point, N.C., and the other was a stu­dent from the Marine Corps Communication-Electronics School and new to the team.

Three Soldiers Make U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team

By Tim Hipps

Three Greco-Roman wrestlers in the U.S. Army World Class Ath­lete Pro­gram earned Olympic berths at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Tri­als for Wrestling, April 21–22.

Sgt. 1st Class Dremiel Byers, Sgt. Spenser Mango and Spc. Justin Lester won their weight classes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena to earn spots on Team USA for the 2012 Olympic Games, sched­uled to run from July 27 to Aug. 12, in Lon­don. All three Sol­diers are sta­tioned at Fort Car­son, Colo.

Two-time Olympian Byers won the 120-kilogram/264.5-pound divi­sion in two straight matches of a best-of-three final series against Michi­gan Wrestling Club’s Steve Andrus of Man­hat­tan, Kan., by scores of 1–0, 1–0 and 2–0, 2–0.

Judo Instructor Honored for 15 Years of Teaching

By Lance Cpl. Kasey Peacock

For the first time on Oki­nawa, an Amer­i­can was rec­og­nized by the Oki­nawan Judo Asso­ci­a­tion with an award for instruc­tor of the year at the Oki­nawa Budokan in Naha April 7.

Paul E. New­man, the deputy camp com­man­der on Camp Kinser, received the award for his more than 15 years of expe­ri­ence as a Judo instruc­tor on Oki­nawa. New­man instructs four days-a-week at the Kadena Air Base Judo Club and co-instructs a Sat­ur­day and Sun­day class at the Koza Ath­letic Park.

“Teach­ing Judo is all I have ever wanted to do,” said New­man. “It was some­thing that I excelled at, and I devel­oped a really strong pas­sion to want to teach it.”

Langley Hosts Krav Maga Training

by Senior Air­man Jason J. Brown

More than 20 mil­i­tary and civil­ian police offi­cers from the Hamp­ton Roads com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pated in a Krav Maga train­ing course at Lan­g­ley Air Force Base, Va., April 2–8.

The class, held in the base sta­tic dis­play hangar, trained par­tic­i­pants in the art of Krav Maga, a form of non­com­pet­i­tive self-defense focus­ing on strik­ing, wrestling and grap­pling techniques.

Krav Maga was cre­ated in the late 1930s by Imre Licht­en­feld, an Israeli mar­tial artist who devel­oped the prac­tice to defend his Jew­ish neigh­bor­hood against anti-Semitic gang vio­lence in Bratislava. Cur­rently, all Israeli sol­diers, includ­ing Spe­cial Forces units, learn Krav Maga as part of their basic mil­i­tary training.

Interview with Rhonda McGee, Boxing Champion

The Pen­ta­gon Channel’s full inter­view with the The Navy Box­ing Team’s Master-at-Arms 3rd Class Rhonda McGee from their cov­er­age of the 2012 Armed Forces Box­ing Cham­pi­onship at Camp Pendle­ton, Calif.

This is their third year cov­er­ing Armed Forces Box­ing. This year, they’ll run nine hour-long episodes, covering each weight class, female exhi­bi­tions and con­so­la­tion bouts. They’ll also fea­ture pro­file pack­ages on box­ers, scor­ing and rules and much more. Episodes will begin releas­ing every Fri­day, start­ing March 9.  

The Power of Randori

RANDORI is a term used in the Japan­ese Mar­tial Arts (JMA) to describe free fight­ing train­ing. The term lit­er­ally means “Choas Taking” or “Grasp­ing Free­dom,” imply­ing a free­dom from the struc­tured prac­tice of KIHON WAZA “Essen­tial Tech­niques” or KATA “Two per­son self defense pat­terns.” Ran­dori may be con­trasted with Kihon Waza and Kata, as three poten­tially com­ple­men­tary types of training.

MMA Coming to Shaw AFB

by Air­man Daniel B. Blackwell

Com­pet­i­tive mix mar­tial arts has swept the nation in a craze of blood, sweat and steel. Com­bat­ants are pit­ted against one another in a bat­tle of strength, skill, endurance and men­tal fortitude.

Shaw Air Force Base is no excep­tion to this phe­nom­e­non and Capt. Anthony Geno­chio, 20th Fighter Wing man­power and per­son­nel flight com­man­der, knows this to be true and is the dri­ving force behind Shaw’s upcom­ing endeavor.

Reserve Soldier Wins 2012 Armed Forces Boxing Championship

Pvt. Mar­quis Moore, of Mar­low Heights, Md., and sol­dier with the 978th Quar­ter­mas­ter Com­pany, recently won the 165-pound divi­sion of the 2012 Armed Forces Box­ing Cham­pi­onships, at Camp Pendle­ton, Calif., Feb. 8–10.

Moore defeated Marines Lance Cpl. Felix Mag­a­l­lanez after the ref­eree stopped their con­test at 2 min­utes, 27 sec­onds of the sec­ond round

“Moore was very impres­sive,” said U.S. Army World Class Ath­lete Pro­gram and Olympic coach Basheer Abdul­lah. “He impressed me the most tonight. He was explo­sive. He demon­strated good defense. He was slip­ping and coun­ter­ing right off the defense. He was very excit­ing to watch. I think he has what it takes to com­pete at the elite level.”