(Props: YouTube.com/CagePotato)
CagePotato was in Chicago Thursday afternoon for the Glory 11 open workouts. We saw main eventers Tyrone Spong and Nathan Corbett murder some pads as well as a number of other world-class kickboxers in the Glory heavyweight tournament and on the undercard work out.
Unfortunately for this writer, I forgot to bring donuts in to the CagePotato office on my designated day last month so our leader Ben Goldstein had to think of a fitting punishment. Sparring with a pro kickboxer was what he came up with.
Originally Glory’s PR team said they’d try to get newly crowned middleweight champ and KO artist Joe Schilling to knock me around for a bit, but he was still a bit sore from his last win in late September. Kru Paul Mihas out of Toronto’s Ultimate Martial Arts was in the house because he has two fighters on the Glory 11 card and he offered to let another of his guys punch me for a round.
Matt Speciale took a break from warming up his two teammates who are fighting today to school me during some “timing sparring.” The idea behind timing sparring is to throw shots at well under half power just to be able to work on distance and timing without banging up one another too badly.
In this particular case, the idea was for me to survive more than sixty seconds with my head still attached to my body. So, Speciale went at about 10% power and…his shots still hurt. Once nice straight left from the south paw followed by a body shot were all I needed to say, ‘thank you and good day.’
So, check out the video above and watch me get hit a couple times — if you’re into that type of thing. This, is what happens when you piss off your boss at CP.