This weekend at kickboxing class we did a bit of fight practice, with a small square of mats, and two of us at a time going in to do some light-touch sparring while the others watched, with a few competition rules in mind for the hell of it. Me, I got myself schooled by two of the senior students in a row: fighters who are really good at timing and combinations, and who I really need to learn from. But that's not the thing. The thing was when my friend Robyn, who's also in my judo club, went up against another woman, who I'll call TKD.
TKD, as the name implies, studied taekwondo when she was a teenager. I paired up with her a couple of weeks ago, and yeah, she still kicks like it: high, fast, accurate, and powerful. When we sparred, she was throwing double kicks at my head, and she's a little thing: several inches shorter than I am, I think.
We'd done some work on throws earlier in the class, and obviously Robyn and I are both a lot more comfortable with takedowns and falling than most of the rest of the class. TKD in particular seemed sketched out by it, having apparently never done breakfalls before. I gave her some tips when we were practicing breakfalls just prior to learning the throw, and in the drills I had to work around her unconsciously edging away from me, and make sure to just let her down gently onto the mat instead of actually flipping her. But then it was time to spar, and she and Robyn got matched up. And Sonia had said takedowns were in (because we had mats for once).
It was fascinating to watch. Robyn's fight all comes from solid legs: her most powerful punch is her uppercut, and she puts her thighs into that thing. In judo she's a talented grappler; in standing fighting she's very grounded and hard to throw for her size. I knew she was going to try closing and going for a sweep, since we'd been given permission - it's actually fairly easy to go in for a leg sweep against a relatively new kickboxer, I've done it while sparring when I spot a big Popeye haymaker coming in. (They do not expect you to move in on them, grab for the swinging arm and nape of the neck, and kick a leg out from under them.)
But the real beauty of this match was watching the range game. TKD started the match out bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet, and you could see as soon as the bell went that she was keeping her distance. Robyn stayed more grounded, and you could see she was trying to figure out how to close.
TKD had a trained-in range that was much further out than Robyn's - and she maintained it with rapid long-range kicks, really demonstrating what you can do with the reach your legs give you. But a couple of times, when Robyn could get inside her defenses, she'd go for the judo leg sweeps - at least twice she went for an o-soto gari that I think just needed conviction (we were doing light sparring, so it's hard to fully go for a throw while trying to hold back - and she also knew TKD wasn't comfortable with the potential fall).
The match only lasted a minute but it was really fun to watch - one fighter aiming her feet at the other's head, while her opponent aimed her feet at. . . well, the other's feet. Both doing kickboxing, but you could see their other training influencing their styles so clearly. It was super cool.
