20 year old Kickboxer from Middle island NY Wins fight and many new Fans in China !

Hey Guys, Results from China.

John Gilliam did a great Job fighting in China, winning his first fight by 2nd round TKO against a National champion from China.

We saw that this fighter was very aggressive and looking to land strong low kicks in round 1. John stayed cool and fought back hard beginning to back his fighter up by end of the round. We noticed that he had a tall stance and new that a spinning back fist was called for. John threw it and landed very hard opening a cut on his opponents head. After they worked on it and the doctor checked it out they let the fight continue with John attacking very strong and again landing another clean spinning back fist which opened the cut more, they stopped the fight and John was a new star in China.

This entire event was on Live TV and was covered by all the press. John was on the front page of the newspaper in the morning and was a definite target of Team China which John was likely to fight again in his next match.

There was still another elimination in John's weight class with the A from China fighting a fighter from Romania. The Romanian fighter was a strong boxer and landed some hard punches but by the end of round 1 was caught with a high round kick to the head which made for a head kick KO.

Now we knew for sure that John was fighting a fighter from China in the next round and he had very good kicks.

The only KO's in the tournament were by John and his Chinese opponent which he fought for the title.

This fight was for the Kung Fu King tournament 75 kg title and the winner would go on to challenge for the overall KFK title.

Our plan was to get inside of his kicks and his was to keep us outside. Well it was another great fight with the fighter from China winning on points with him sticking to his game plan and staying calm and outside for the entire fight. John landed some good blows and also had a great suplex overhead throw in round 2.

John Gilliam gained the respect of many new Chinese fans as he was the only foreign fighter to Win in the first round and go to the final for the KFK title.

There were fighters from 5 countries: Russia, Romania, Iran, USA, and China.

Congratulations John on a great job representing Team USA in China in this great Sanda tournament!

WORLD KICKBOXING CHAMPION
TOMMY "BEE" BOTTONE
ringoffirekickboxing.com
myspace.com/tommythebee

Note: Bowery Martial Arts is no more!

You might notice that the listing for Bowery Martial Arts supply store is now gone. That's because it's no longer there! The number that was listed for that store is no longer valid... luckily there are lots of other stores still around.

Official Pictograms for Beijing Olympic Games

Beijing 2008 approaches... are you going? I am!

Practice in Prospect Park

For the last three days I've been practicing Chen style taijiquan in Prospect Park. On the first day I went to the top of the hill overlooking the lake (which I've named Tai Ji Hill) early in the morning, around 6:30 a.m. What do you know, the old Chinese people were there to greet me. (Why are old Chinese people so active?? It's great! We should all get in the habit of practicing early in the morning. If you think you can't do it, just ask yourself, who's tougher, you or a 65-year-old Chinese grandma? Actually forget it, the Chinese grandma will kick your ass any day.)

The next day was on the baseball infields around 10 a.m. If you've never done it, do yourself the favor of practicing martial arts on a baseball infield, or any bit of packed red earth. It's solid yet much more forgiving than wood or concrete, and the dust swirls satisfyingly around your feet as you practice.

Today it was raining, so I went to the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, which is housed in Tai Ji Pavilion West (as I've named it) inside Prospect Park, a few blocks from the 7th Avenue F train station. It's a marble structure that looks like some sort of Roman temple. The windowless offices are at either end, leaving me the middle for practice. As I started my second set, two women came out of the offices. One was a young asian woman, and the other was an older black woman. The younger woman was upset about something and burst into tears as she tried to explain something to the other woman, who I'm guessing was her supervisor. I did my best to ignore them.