Damn, 20 years. Good opportunity to have a little reflection.
As the new millennium kicked off we decided to start an entirely new team, was criticised often for that decision but we saw what was available to us affiliation wise and decided that wasn’t for us, I’m not having anyone telling me what to do.
On a side note, we actually formed Combat Base on 17th January which was the same date that years earlier one of my all time favourite bands, Mötley Crüe, were actually formed, how cool is that!! Seems fitting that Haueter said that Combat Base were “a loose collection of misfits who decline to participate in the common regimented structures found in affiliations" Sounds like a motley crew to me.
We didn’t want titles, didn’t want uniforms and certainly didn’t want to be bowing to photographs of people. It was never the plan to have anything than more than a gym free of bullshit and some people to train with so when we grew organically to have 100s of members across a bunch of like minded clubs, it exceeded all expectations. My original vision of us both getting promoted to blue belt, having 8 training partners, getting them to blue belt and a regular base to train at was met early.
So, what do you do when you have achieved your goals? Keep going I guess.
Then the higher belts came, Helen being the first female black belt in the UK and being one of the UK ‘dirty dozen’. I think I was black belt #22. Not bad for a little gym in the middle of nowhere, figuring stuff out as we went along. We then had black belts promoted through us then in turn they had black belts promoted through them so we already have 3rd generation black belts.
Turning away as many affiliation applications as we accepted has kept the quantity manageable and the quality high. Combat Base jiu jitsu is definitely not for everyone so we obviously lost some guys along the way with our attitude but I guess that is just natural selection.
I was told a while ago that we are victims of our own success, we train people to such a high standard that they are inspired to do what we did and start their own teams, if that’s being a victim then that’s pretty damn cool.
Don’t know how much longer I’m going to be involved in jiu jitsu so I’d like to take this opportunity to say to everyone that has helped Combat Base over the years, that had any part of helping and supporting us, I salute you. I’ll leave you with this quote:
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
And to the naysayers, the ones that criticised, the ones that didn't believe, here's a photo just for you.
