Well, I won! I took home the big bag of rice from the 2025 Vancouver Spring Sumo Basho!
All of my three whole weeks of training paid off! I couldn’t have done it without the help and support of my coach, Sony, over at Praxis Grappling, and the Kensington Judo boys, as well as the loving support of my wonderful wife, and the help and support of my best friend and long-time training partner, Jazz.
My division – the “Heavy Lightweights” – was pretty stacked. I was up against the former champion (who is also head of the Vancouver Sumo Club), a co-facilitator of the sumo club (who is also a skilled judoka), and the wife of the head of the Rain City Sumo Club from Seattle (who was a total powerhouse!!) But I swept the division without a single defeat across multiple matches against each opponent! (although, I had one draw in my very first match, which was against my Seattle opponent, but which resulted in a rematch that I handily won)
Truthfully, I didn’t feel like I had to work very hard. While I competed under the name of “Buff Aunt Bria”, and made a big show of flexing my muscles, I came into this competition not wanting to win by strength, which I don’t think would have even worked against my opponent from Seattle. So I wasn’t charging and pushing super hard the way my opponents were. I focused on using a solid stance and posture, taken largely from the Uechi-ryu Sanchin kata that we teach at Kumakai, and combined it with tai chi push hands skills to neutralize my opponents’ awesome force and keep them from controlling my hips, shoulders, and elbows. In the end, they practically threw themselves by their own efforts to unbalance me. There were a couple of times where I had back to back matches, and I was asked if I needed a moment to catch my breath. I did not, as I wasn’t pushing and struggling the way everyone else was.
Many, many people came up to congratulate me and compliment me on my martial arts skills. My favourite by far was the elderly Japanese woman who emphatically told me she loved watching my “fighting spirit”. So, evidently, my performance seemed impressive to observers. Sweeping a stacked division without a single defeat in a sport I was competing in for the very first time after three weeks of preparation? Not too bad!
And yet, I wasn’t happy.
While I did win all of my matches, I didn’t have the time or wherewithal to use any of the techniques I had been drilling. I had been focusing on hitting single leg takedowns, foot sweeps, using arm drags to get to side control and pick my opponents up, and even fireman’s carry throws – all things that I had hit in sparring against larger, more powerful judoka. But I didn’t get even close to using any of that in the competition, primarily because people were pushing and charging too violently for my competition-noob brain to process how to enact my plan. My mistake was, because I had heard that strong judoka may show up to the competition, I primarily trained against judo. But a judoka wrestles much differently from a sumo specialist. They will be much more technical, trying to get grips and set up takedowns, instead of the power charge of forward momentum that is favoured by the rule-set of sumo.
So, despite my win, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed in myself.
In my melancholy, I was reminded of an episode of the fighting anime, Kengan Ashura. The villain, Kanoh Agito, a musclebound powerhouse who was heavily favoured to win the series’ titular tournament, is as skilled as he is proud, and so he insists that he be capable of beating his opponents at their own game, rather than doing the actual thing you typically must do in fighting, which is to employ a suitable strategy to disrupt your opponent’s strengths and fight them where they are weakest. In his match against the god-like Thai Boxing champion, Kaolan Wongsawat, Agito is unable to out-box his opponent, and is forced to beat him by countering his style with grappling. After his victory against such a legendary opponent, as soon as he is alone, this hard, fearsome man who under most circumstances shows almost no emotion and is regarded as a god of violence by virtually everyone around him, begins to cry. He starts beating up on himself for his inability to win the way he thought he “should have”.
I thought of this big, evil beefus having a little tantrum at himself over such a silly, prideful reason, and my feelings of inadequacy started to melt away. I remembered all of the things I have laid out in this post so far and decided to stop being so hard on myself. As a fortune cookie fortune that I keep on my altar alongside my Tarot cards told me “No one is happy who does not think himself so.” My feelings about my performance are entirely up to me – especially if my misgivings are entirely about not “winning the right way”. I could sit and stew and beat myself up, or I can feel proud of my effort, analyze my performance, and begin work to figure out how to accomplish whatever it is I would like to try doing next time.
Truly, though, in grappling, as in life, you don’t actually get to call the shots. You can’t go into a match and say “I’m going to hit a fireman’s carry throw on this person”. Like, maybe, if the situation arises. Grappling is about receiving an opponent’s energy and taking it where it wants to go. You don’t throw them, they throw themselves. My real failure wasn’t in not being skilled enough to do the techniques I had planned, it was in my hubris of believing that was even in my control in the first place.
I was sore the next day after the tournament, but less so because of the tournament itself, and more because of the workout I did that night after. I immediately began training for the next one! The Powell Street Festival is in August, and they have a sumo tournament there, as well. I’ve heard even stronger opponents often show up to that one! A little over two months of preparation is a lot more than three weeks, and I’m excited to see what I could do if I apply myself over a longer period of time. The only hiccup is that I also must be training for my Shodan (black belt) exam in August as well, which will call for a very different skill-set than sumo. If I want to balance these two somewhat contradictory training protocols, I’m going to have to think about employing a different strategy in the August tournament. Either way, I’m excited to test myself further in competition, and after competing in sumo once more, I would like to try out other competitions, like judo, karate, kickboxing, and eventually, kudo – a full-contact MMA-like competition circuit that primarily consists of a combination of judo and karate (hence the name, kudo) and that our karate club is moving towards being affiliated with.
Finally, of all the things I have to be proud of in my first real tournament experience, I am most proud of this:
I made this art for my coach, Sony, who I had heard is a big fan of 90’s comics. If you ever go train at Kensington Judo (and I highly recommend that you do), you may just see it framed and hanging on the wall. I planned the composition out digitally and then used my new projector I had been gifted to transfer it to paper by tracing the projected image in blue pencil, before finishing the art in ink.
I’m showing this partially because, I gotta be real, I need money.
Training this much has really taken my focus away from work, and I have basically a week to make rent. Yes, you can tip me on Ko-fi, support me on Patreon, or donate directly to my Paypal, but really, what I would like best is to make some more art for people!
Would you like some art from me? Please let me draw something for you!
I can do you something like I did for Coach Sony for $150 (either digital or as physical art). Or a simple headshot for $20. I’ll make more posts about opportunities to get art from me, but if you are interested, please e-mail me at lifeofbria at gmail.com, and we can get going right away!
Please help me keep this Win Train going by helping me find a bit more Work/Training balance in my life!
Life of Bria 
