Kit Dale interview with Submission Radio

Article by: Denis Shkuratov

Australian BJJ legend Kit Dale sat down for a chat with Submission Radio. Kit spoke about a possible rematch with Garry Tonon at Metamoris and his thoughts on the impact PED’s have on the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Plus Kit reveals his grappling methodology which helped him earn his black belt in four and a half years.

Full Interview- http://bit.ly/YcVlyD

Interview Transcript:

Kit’s thoughts On PED’s in BJJ and if they matter

“Man I think it matters, because if it didn’t matter, not many people would be using it, and as far as I know, a lot of people use that kind of stuff. I wish it was gone, you know because it gives people a big advantage, and I’ve trained with people that had been on and off different types of steroids and you can tell the difference. Man, you can tell. Like, they are a lot stronger when they’re on it, they work a lot harder. So for me, I would prefer for it to be gone. Unfortunately it’s riddled everywhere in Jiu Jitsu, so I don’t think about it too much, I just try and accept it. I’ve never used it. I get accused of it all the time, but I mean I’m lucky with genetics. My family’s very strong and big, everyone (is big) in there. I don’t even have protein powder. So I’d prefer it be gone. There’s not much you can do. Everyone’s using it, 95 percent of people are using it. It’s something we’ve just gotta deal with”

On a rematch with Garry Tonon

“First thing I did, was I went to Garry and I asked if he’d be interested in doing a rematch in a Gi, and Garry’s really cool and a really good friend of mine, and he’s willing to fight anyone, anywhere, and as long as it’s worth his time and he gets looked after well. So he was just straight away like ‘Kit, you fought me in the No-Gi, for sure I’ll fight you in the Gi’, which was cool. And then I also mentioned to Ralek and a few others and they were very positive in getting me back on.”

“I’d think definitely you’ll see us back on there.”

On Garry Tonon loss at Metamoris 4

“It was just a really tough situation. The fight with Garry, I mean Garry I think is five time No-Gi world champion. He’s unbelievable in No-Gi and he’s one of those guys at the moment, like (he could) probably beat anyone in his weight division at No-Gi. My game isn’t No-Gi, my game is Gi. Everyone that knows me knows that, but I would never say no to an opportunity like this. Originally, early on I thought it was Gi and then it ended up being changed to No-Gi. So I was a little bit behind the eight ball with that, plus I’d organized seminars. I had two interstate seminars in Sydney and Brisbane, I also had a three week camp in Turkey with Caio Terra and Yuri Simoes. So I knew it was going to be hard to get the training in to, like get super fit for this, to prepare for someone like Garry, so I did the best with what I could. So going into the match, I knew I didn’t have the fitness to match his. I knew he was going to come out really intensely, so what I wanted to do is spend the first five minutes allowing him room to attack, but doing enough to make sure that I didn’t get submitted of course. And then after the five minutes I was hoping he would be fairly tired by then and it would even it out a lot more and then I could really start working my game and open up a lot more. I was worried that if I went too hard from the start – which he’s very difficult to submit. I’d barely ever seen him get submitted – I could easily have had an adrenalin dump and run out of gas and burnt out at the end and got submitted just from exhaustion. So my game plan was to last the five minutes and then start opening up and put on a good show then. Unfortunately I made a few calculated errors, and to his part he did really well and he ended up catching me with a guillotine early. I’m not upset that I lost the match. I’ve lost many matches and most of my losses have attributed to most of my followers because they’ve been good fights. This one disappointed me more than any loss I ever had because I lost before I had even got a chance to really start going.”

“My main focus is to put on good fights and to leave it all out there, and when you lose like that you sort of get off there and you feel just empty inside. I really feel like I let a lot of people down by not putting on a good show and myself down.”

On the secret behind how he got so good so quickly and got his black belt in 4 and a half years

“The reason why I got so good so quick would be mostly because like I approached it intelligently from the start. I knew that if I did what everyone else was doing, I’d just be following everyone else. And at that time it was like 11 years to Black belt for most people, and it still is for a lot of people as well. So I started looking outside the box and thinking, ‘how can I take all Jiu Jitsu and simplify it and internalize some concepts and fundamentals and pretty much just train and learn, rather than trying to learn a thousand different techniques and like perfecting those techniques?’ So what I started doing is, I started looking at like techniques from different areas, finding like the core elements that make those things work, and internalizing them and then just rolling and trying to use that as a base for innovating, experimenting and problem solving and just learning from my mistakes. But a lot of what my learning is attributed to just having the people to train with and just training. I didn’t like, want to overcomplicate it. I didn’t want to learn a thousand different moves from side control. I didn’t want to spend time practicing it, I just wanted to train with people and learn from it. Just like babies learn how to speak a language, they speak to professional speakers and they learn. They’re encouraged to make mistakes and that’s the way I looked at Jiu Jitsu. I wanted to make as many mistakes as I could, but learn from that as well.”

Article by: Denis Shkuratov

Submission Radio Australia
W: submissionradio.com

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