Hi everyone, welcome to our latest newsletter. We are here to fill you in on what has been going on and what we having coming up at the Den. Im going to skip around a bit here as we have a lot going on so bear with me. Over the past few months the den has been growing. We have a bunch of new members and with that comes added classes. We now have BJJ for adults 7 days a week here at the Den and have added more wrestling classes as well. We now have 5 wrestling classes per week. We also just added a new MMA class which is held on Sundays at 11am. The next classes scheduled to be added to our schedule are Daytime Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes which begin on July 6'th and will be every Monday and Weds at 11am. We also have a youth Muay Thai class which will be Fridays at 5pm beginning in September.
The Den has been busy and we just got done competing at the Naga event held in Albany NY. Naga is an international competition held for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. They hold tournaments every weekend around the world and come right here to Albany once a year. We have come in 1'st place in the kids and Teens division ever since we have been open and our kids did not disappoint again this time. We again came in 1'st place as a team out of the 28 teams who competed. Our adults came in 2nd place of all schools. I am super proud of all of our students for competing. These matches are not just about winning and more about growth.
Some highlights from this tournament were El Sheddai whom competed in 4 divisions and came in 1'st place in all 4!! Also Kaitlyn whom faced a bigger/heavier opponent in one of her divisions which she won and then went against a 4 stripe blue belt in her other division which she also won!!! Very Impressive and pictured below .
Some other things that stood out were both Brody and Carter in our kids division. These guys both moved up in weight/ Age to face kids who traveled to the area and did not have an opponent in their divisions . These kids would have went home and traveled for nothing if we didn't step up and Im proud of these kids for doing it. Great job guys!! Im sure we had a few other kids who did this as well that I didn't catch . We had a couple of our best kids not be able to compete as they didn't have opponents and we don't want to have that happen to anyone else if we can help it. Our next Naga competitions that we are setting our sights on as a team will be on August in Wildwood NJ and then in September in Springfield Mass.
(Pictured below are Jaden whom won his divisions in both Gi and no Gi advanced , El Sheddai whom won all 4 of his divisions and Terry whom won both of his Blue belt divisions!)
The next Naga we plan to attend is in Wildwood NJ. The event spans over 2 days with kids competing on Saturday and teens and adults on Sunday. We have a bunch of families who come down for this event and we usually spend a day together on the beach , time in the pool and last year we went out to dinner one night and did an evening on the boardwalk with the kids. The tournament is held at the Wildwood convention center right on the boardwalk itself which is overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It really is an awesome setting. You can weigh in on Friday August 7'th or the day you compete on either the 8'th or the 9'th. More event details can be found on our website. So far we have about 10 people competing already.
This weekend on the 18'th and 19'th we have the UFC's Mike Davis in teaching our students! Mike was one of my first students and together we won a bunch of amateur titles. Upon going Pro Mike moved down to Florida and has since been training hard. He is now in the UFC and won his last 2 fights and while doing so has gotten 1 Knockout of the night award and another Performance of the night award. Mike is coming to us before he begins training for his next fight which should be in the next 2 months. He is training with some top pros and legends of the UFC and is sure to bring some great things to teach this weekend. He will be putting on seminars for kids in BJJ and BJJ and Muay Thai for adults. Get signed up at the desk! He is one of the top up n coming UFC fighters today!
( pictured to the left, coach Terry tapping out an opponent at last weeks Naga)
PROMOTIONS!!
We have 2 promotions scheduled for August. On August 14'th we are headed to Matt Secor BJJ for a special promotion. Matt will be promoting Coaches Tom and Trent to black belt as well as some of his other students. Coach Tom will also be promoting Kaitlyn and Brad to Blue belt and Kathleen to purple. Matt also has some other promotions in store for his students. On August 24'th we will have a promotion at the Den for our youth students!Bring your pot luck dishes and make em good!! Students going to Matt's promotion on the 14'th should also bring a dish and ALL students are invited!!!!
August 26 & 27!! UFC Hall of Fame weekend
On August 26'th we will have UFC hall of fame Dan " The Beast" Severn in for seminars and on the 27'th Mark "The Hammer" Coleman will be in teaching seminars at the Den. These are not only 2 UFC hall of famers but these guys were both UFC Champions who paved the way for Martial Artists everywhere. They will be teaching seminars both days and you do not want to miss this once in a lifetime chance to learn from them. Get signed up at the desk.
That is about it for the next few months. We have some great classes being added , some fun tournaments coming up and 3 awesome seminars with UFC fighters. Unfortunately coaches Trent and Caleb have been called back to the University of Buffalo with the rest of the Buffalo wrestling team for the month of July to prepare for the next season. This put a damper on plans they had to fight in MMA in July. They will be back with us in August though and it looks like Trent will have a fight lined up before the end of the Summer!!!!! We can also look forward to seeing El Sheddai in the cage this summer as well as he is preparing for his debut. Stay tuned!!
See you on the mats!
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