Thompson's Grappling Club

08/26/2026

Hand fight x a million part 2

08/26/2026

Hand fight x a million part 1

08/26/2026

08/26/2026

We gonna be wrestling heavy for a while.

08/20/2026

Vale Tudo season is over at TGC. If you missed it, you suck.

I’ve trained at several different gyms before I found Sabens. ALL of them offered some form of MMA or striking. Some had some good dude partners and some solid guys leading the class. Some of them were largely bunk and majority of the dudes acted like fools. But at the time that’s what my life would allow me to make. (Sam at Arsenal in Benton does great. RIP Diamond MMA, (Keith Perkins- not dead) in marion 100 years ago did solid the few times I popped in.) So I made the best of it. I’m not gonna name the bad places I traveled or was a guest in on here, come to class and I’ll tell all kinds of wild stories.

Sabens style fit me best. I modeled our striking off his blueprint. If you want to train feet and floor 12 months a year, go there.

I heard him say a million times the minute you call a class MMA or tell people you teach MMA you invite a crowd you don’t want. I agree. (Let’s be honest, if you are advertising or teling people you teach MMA, you are the crowd I don’t want to hang with and you likely full of p**p.) That’s why I’ll never teach or offer MMA. Vale Tudo is a confusing name to people. Especially goofy ass people wanting to just punch your lights out. That’s why we did Vale Tudo.

These dudes (and dudetts) (unfortunately not eveyone made picture nights) came all summer to mix jiu jitsu with wrestling with striking in the smoothest TGC way possible. Learning, flowing, and having fun. We had no injuries. No one died. We had everything from never thrown a punch to a handful of ammy fights. A few of them had won some of those fights, not me. Everyone got better at something. That’s what matters most to me.

Last night we ended the season as smooth as possible in the most TGC way possible.

On to a new season…

PS…I stole everything Black Belt Bob showed me about pressure on top and being safe on bottom when strikes were involved. If you ain’t never rolled with him you suck and you’ve never felt a game like that before.

08/19/2026

Nothing going on in Herrin on a Monday.