The origin story of David “Hello Japan” Gardner.
One of the first lessons they teach in week one of grappling class is that back control is a position of death. That earns you four points if you get it in a tournament, but as the person on the receiving end, don’t look forward to a nice time.
Naturally, you’d expect a 26-fight veteran like David Gardner to have this concept hardwired in his system. But for some reason, he abandoned all of that when he fought Shinya Aoki at Dream 7 in Saitama, Japan in 2009.
You’ve probably seen clips of that fabled moment. Aoki had Gardner’s back, and all that’s left for him to do was to get that forearm under the chin. To his credit, Gardner was doing OK for himself with the hand fighting… until he decided to show some love for the home crowd amidst the chaos.
Aoki sank his right forearm in, finished the choke, and shot Gardner up to infamy with a new nickname. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I’m not so sure about this one.
Ultimately, this should be a valuable lesson for you kids: while a little show of courtesy does go a long way, that, too, needs the right timing.
Viral snippets aside, this is how the entire thing went down: