ASU Football Player Turns MMA Fighter

Reviews, Videos, and Everything Else Martial Arts in the News
1

Says that striking is the hardest thing to learn.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/sports/articles/0929rage0929.html

Martial arts all the rage for ex-ASU walk-on
Mesa cage fighting event another big test for Kingsbury

Jim Gintonio
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 29, 2006 12:00 AM

Kyle Kingsbury never had much trouble throwing nasty characters out of bars when he was a bouncer.

The former Arizona State football walk-on is now taking on a tougher brand of competition in the early stages of his career as a mixed martial-arts fighter. He’ll put his three-match unbeaten Rage in the Cage streak on the line tonight in Mesa.

Kingsbury, 6 feet 4 and 230 pounds, saw the move to this brand of fighting as a natural transition from his days as both a high school wrestler in California and a defensive tackle at ASU. advertisement

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I’m surprised that he says that striking is hard for him in the same story that says his strategy is to knock people out and use wrestling as a “last resort.”

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Striking is harder for most people.

3

Its something you need to put into perspective. Striking is somewhat hard for me, simply because all the philosophies I know come from a grappling standpoint. As far as picking it up, I would say that grappling is much more difficult to learn than is striking.

Coming from a wrestling and football background, I’d assume hes acustomed to grabbing people to smash them. Its hard to go from that mindset to a strikers mindset.

4

Well, wrestling+football and now MMA, the poor guy’s probably had a few knocks around the general skull area, so cut him some slack.

I got some 'ol buddies at ASU.

5

Imagine the power that he can generate in a small distance. Just think about it. You’re going for the clinch, and from a foot away he drops slightly and slams into you.