I just got home from the Doral Resort, in Miami. The hotel complex was bigger than Key West.
I was visiting for the weekend with friends competing in the Judo Open. My friends, who flew from New York, are former champion and legendary columnist Taki, coach and practitioner Teimoc, writer and Judo black belt Mark Brennan, and Brian Pereira, the only one of the troupe competing. Brian is the youngest and the newest to the group, and the best looking.
Friday I accompanied my pod to the auditorium where the Judo US Olympic trials were carrying on, on a couple of enormous yellow mats, surrounded by five chairs deep in spectators. The room was generally near capacity with a lot of traipsing to and fro of competitors, coaches, news-camera operators, parents of competitors, and audience. Chances are good I was the only one in there who had never before seen Judo and knew nothing about it.
Watching that first match, Friday, what struck me was how I knew absolutely zero about Judo. To me, Taekwondo, Karate, Jujitsu, Aikido, Judo well they were all that Asian dude slicing through the air and taking down enemies with some chop-chopping with the hands, and back-flipping kick routines.
I continue to know nothing of the nuances of the other disciplines but what I will say for Judo is it is sensational to watch. What looks like a person falling turns into an exact position like a praying mantis, stiff and yet twitteringly poised for movement, defensive or offensive. The athletes are awesome to observe.
I watched a match between a lanky Swede and a gorgeous Argentine, who eventually dominated the tall perfectly formed Swede. The Swede was mighty pissed but under control. I had seen the Swede earlier, in the hotel lobby, with his girlfriend and an old guy, Taki said the old guy was the coach. The match was two men grabbing at each other’s lapels, and sometimes sliding out a foot to topple the opponent. Sometimes this worked and they both crashed to the mat, but instead of hitting the floor feet flicker or legs fly and the two continue to move. It’s a very awesome dance and I was gripped. Taki narrated, telling me the names of the moves, which sounded like Chinese menu items.
Next a couple of ladies, an American who was fierce and tense and a Cubana with a beautiful face and a sneer for a personality. The Cubana demolished the American, but as slowly and impassively as metal corroding to a pile of dust. All the women I saw spent a lot of time fixing their ponytails. La Cubana’s coach is a man so corpulent he leans back so the front of him is leveraged like a prow. Even his oily stringy black hair is sliding off the back of his head, tumbling into a snake pit of wet curls at his collar, around which hangs his credentials and a silver whistle on a rope.
Next some boys, a Russian and a Cuban. The Cuban dominated, but it was grueling. They were even, too even, the Russian was sleek like a bullet, like something designed to withstand endless beatings, and he did. The two were panting at the end. The ref told them both off for wasting time, performing a tumbling move with his arms to exhibit his displeasure, but it seemed to me the boys were not prevaricating so much as they were whipped, they were catching their breaths. Big cats with stomach muscles like I’ve only seen in pictures. They beat they pounded they dragged each other around by the lapels; they stared at each other in utter concentration. Then they might suddenly flip or very quickly move, I could not always make out what was happening, it was mostly too quick.
And sometimes they slam-land their opponent flat on his/her back, making an almighty noise, a thunderous crack, sounding painful. At the end, after the Cuban won, he could not speak, and to answer questions he would smile or shrug or point at things and all the while panting furiously as he made his way out of the exhibition room.
Dinner was steak and grog and fun on open air South Beach, and over early to accommodate Brian. He might be assigned the first match of the day at nine am. He and Teimoc would be getting up early to warm him up.
Saturday morning I got a good seat before start time. I watched eight hours of Judo. I loved it. Sometimes matches are over in a trice and you ache for the defeated and their occasional illegal displays of anguish. The movements, the foot work is all so impressive, so fast and so precise. “It might look like they are falling, but they are not,” said Taki.
Brian had four matches, one was a default in his favor, one he won and two he lost. One of those losses was to the Swede, who did not win a slot on the Olympic team, but went on to win the Open.
Saturday night we ate more steaks and drank more grog. Brian finds it less terrifying to go up against a Judo black belt than to approach a female. After fortifying himself sufficiently he asked a pretty girl to dance.
