On July 28th, 2019, I fought my very first full contact fight. The video is posted below, which you can skip to by clicking here; however, I do recommend you read through the entire post to get the full context.

The United States Kuo Shu Federation (USKSF) hosts a tournament the last weekend of July every year. This tournament consists of many different events, including the demonstration of forms, point sparring, empty hand sets, light contact sparring, and full contact fighting called Lei Tai. I had already been training at Grant’s Kung Fu Academy for a number of years, so I decided fighting Lei Tai would be the way to go for me.

The Lei Tai is a platform raised approximately three feet off the ground.

That’s a pretty significant drop, especially if you’re thrown off the platform. Luckily, the border was matted.

To fight Lei Tai, you had to get a blood test, a physical, and you had to choose which of the following weight classes you wished to fight in:

• Light: under 132.3 lbs
• Middle C: 132.4lbs to 143.3lbs
• Middle B: 143.5lbs to 154.3lbs
• Middle A: 154.54lbs to 165.3lbs
• Heavy C: 165.56 to 176.3lbs
• Heavy B: 176.59lbs to 189.6lbs
• Heavy A: 189.8lbs to 202.8lbs
• Super Heavy: 203.04lbs to 216lbs
• Infinite: over 216lbs

In 2017, I weighed 223.9lbs at my highest. Had I still weighed that amount, I would have had to have fought in the infinite division. That would have been disastrous, to say the least. This fight wasn’t what initially motivated me to lose weight- 2 years ago, I had no idea that I would be fighting full contact in the future; regardless, with hard work, I managed to drop down to 161lbs the day of the fight, putting me into Middle A. I’ll talk about my journey to weight loss in another post.

Since this was a tournament, I had no idea who I would be fighting. I just knew I had to train hard.

The diet leading up to the fight was very strict, going to the point where two days before weighing in (Friday, July 26th), I greatly reduced water and food intake. I must have had only two cups of water during those 48 hours, I still ran, I went to the gym, I went to my Kung Fu classes, and I only had a few hundred calories during both days. This was tough, incredibly tough. The months leading up to the fight, I even made it so that I would fast 18-20 hours a day and eat only during a four hour window. This habit has stuck with me, as it makes me more efficient. After I made weight (161lbs) on Friday, I broke my fast with a big helping of fruit.

And that was shortly followed up with food from the Outback Steakhouse with Khiem Le, who also fought.

I ended up being matched with Dominic Ferland of the Chan Family Choy Lee Fut in Montreal, Québec, Canada.

A lot went into this fight, but when it was over, I felt like I had checked off a bucket list item. I told myself that I would never need to fight again because I had already done something most people never will do. I stood on a platform and fought someone who didn’t hold back. I could have been seriously injured, I could have lost some teeth, I could have been knocked out, my bones could have broken, and I could have sustained other injuries; however, none of that happened. I walked away from the fight unscathed. The only injuries I had were the injuries I brought into the tournament.

A week prior to the fight, I injured my eye during a grappling session. We were at Grant’s Kung Fu Academy, and three of my Kung Fu brothers were tasked with the mission of bringing me down to the matt one at a time. While they took breaks between rounds, I was supposed to keep going. During the 20 rounds of grappling, I was taken down only four times. In one of those sessions, one of my training partner’s fingers scratched my eye so badly that even though I was able to finish my rounds and drive home, I needed to see the eye doctor the following morning. I’ll talk more about that in another post, but the short story is that I am fine now and I can see 100% clearly; however, there was a time even after the fight that things were blurry in my right eye.

I took a healed eye with blurred vision into that fight, but I lost because I just wasn’t as skilled as Dominic. I’m going to train even harder this time around to be prepared for next year.

Here are some more photos from the tournament. This is Kelly Crofts-Johnson who fought in the Lei Tai elimination match #7 in the Middle A weight division. He was in my weight class, but we didn’t fight each other.

This is Austin Brown, and he also fought full contact.

And, of course, where would I be without my Kung Fu family?

Grant’s Kung Fu Academy

Grant’s Kung Fu Academy

Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please subscribe for update and share with friends and family.