The Journey Begins

Imagine a mummer's parade of excessive proportions and with better behaved drunks, and it will resemble the August drum and dance festival in Koenji, a neighborhood near the famous Shinjuku train station in Tokyo. Nobody seemed to know what or why they were having the festival. Apparently, these events are such long-held traditions that even the locals forget their origins sometimes.




The streets were packed on both sides and the spectators retained their trademark Japanese politeness as they silently pushed their way through the clusters of bodies to get a better view of the action. The most effective infiltration techniques came from the older Japanese women, who, in their wizened years of experience with foreign "gaijin" must have realized that we claustrophobic Americans have much different personal space, and would walk into foreigners like me, knowing we would move to accommodate them rather than feel awkward.

It would be just a taste of the madness to come. As my group of friends and I left midway and headed for the subway, the rest of Japan was still arriving in unrelenting thousand-person waves from the station. Police and subway workers cordoned off most of the station to accommodate the masses as they exited the subway and entered the streets of Koenji. There was a smaller but still dense crowd packed like gumballs all vying to pass through three or four ticket entry points. Boarding the subway took a while.

I arrived in Tokyo on Thursday afternoon, excited but delirious from a restless thirteen-hour plane ride. Our living quarters is in the financial district of Minato city known as Akasaka, a strip of bright lights, with tight streets shared by people in business attire and Mercedes'. A big hobby for Japanese business men and women visiting Akasaka video games known as Kochinko. They are a mix of pinball and electronic slots, and the massive arcades that house the machines, said to be ran by the Korean mob, are filled with locals staring intently into the flashing colors and jarring noises.


The best way to eat cheap in Tokyo, the world's most expensive city, is to become quick friends with ramen. Even ritzy places like Akasaka have noodles restaurants that sell succulent, filling meals for a reasonable $3-$6. One such bar caught my attention because the prices were cheap and all of its patrons were locals, so I knew it had to be a bargain. I ate beef broth with a raw egg and soba (buckwheat) noodles. Microwavable noodle meals sold at convenience stores are also palatable and a better alternative than some of their attempts at fusing Asian cuisine with staples of the west, like the Lo Mein sandwich.



Roppongi is a ten minute walk from Akasaka and is packed with hundreds of bars, night clubs, and the probably the highest concentration of foreigners in the country. Thus, it also has a reputation for all kinds of Russian, Chinese, Nigerian and Japanese mob activities. Many new arrivals in Tokyo who hang out in Roppongi without researching legitimate establishments are prey for being lured by promises of free drinks and happy endings into seedy clubs and bars only to wake up a few hours with a traces of dissociative drugs in their system and empty wallets and bank accounts. But Roppongi's negative connotations have not dissuaded the locals from parking their bikes on the sidewalks without locks.



I did my homework on Roppongi and spent my first full night out on the town in a dive known as the Mistral Bar. It is also called the train bar because it is styled after a subway car, but the interior is truthfully more like a crawlspace. Crammed inside were foreigners and a few local girls rocking out to the AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Megadeth songs playing on the sound system. Everyone was quick to laugh at the space constraints at the with one another and tip their glass, so there was an air of closeness and camaraderie. The bar really showed how Tokyoites make the most out of minimal space. Every inch wall space save for the bar counter and the liquor shelf lining was scrawled in tipsy signatures and pictures of patrons from over years.

Across the street from the Mistral Bar was Gaspanic, a dance club with a ton of local girls and enough fog machines and strobe lights to induce an epileptic fit. Japanese youth are into American hip hop, even the outdated kind. It was an unexpected flashback to the frat parties of my freshman year of college to hear disposable rap anthems like "Ballin'!" once again booming from the speakers of the DJ booth.

By midnight I was quite worn from representing USA boogie woogie on the dance floor and the jet lag so I left the club and walked home with a friend. It is a fifteen minute walk from Roppongi to my hotel room. It took us over an hour to make it back, and we were sober. Tokyo can be extremely confusing for those unfamiliar with the language and the land marks. Along the way we spoke to a convenient store attendant, a tipsy business man, two police officers, a parking attendant at the Ritz Carlton whose property we somehow stumbled through and an old drunk enjoying a Heinekin in one of the many shrines dotting the city.

Being lost is one of my biggest fears, but in Tokyo it is an exercise in Zen.

Molten Minds

Fighting at the Front Street Gym

Here is an article that is supposedly printed in the Fishtown Star.



Youngsters are finding refuge from the rough streets and stifling summer heat at the Front Street Gym.

During summer afternoons in Kensington the sun is reflects so brightly off the concrete that one could squint his or her eyes at the beige and pink colored cement and see the blurry illusion of a sand on a beach, one that has been smashed by wave upon wave of crime and poverty that have hit the area hard over the years.

“Before, it was a poor neighborhood with good people. Now it’s becoming worse than a ghetto,” said Frank Kubach, 68, director of the Front Street. One of the largest and oldest gyms, with the most speed bags in the city, Kubach has ran the gym for over twenty years at its current location on east Clearfield street off of Frankford avenue. Before that, the gym ran under a five or six different owners dating back over fifty years ago.

“We try to look out for the good people in the neighborhood,” Kubach said. “We keep people who do drugs off the street. It keeps the good kids off the street.”

The walls of Kubach’s office are covered with posters and artwork of famous boxers like Jake Lamotta and Mike Tyson, as well as fight flyers spanning the careers of the many pro boxers who have fought and won world titles out of Kubach’s gym, like Monty Sherrick and Anthony Boyle. The influence of the Front Street Gym bridges sports as well. Eddie Alvarez, a Kensington native and top-ranked lightweight mixed martial arts who fights out of the Philadelphia Fight Factory, got his start at Front Street Gym. He still visits the gym every week to hone his boxing technique.

The reputation Kubach’s gym has gained in its twenty-year tenure at Kensington has proven a better recruitment tool than any advertising or website. The Front Street Gym has 15 professional fighters, around 75 kids and eight trainers. A summer day in the front street gym almost looks like an after-school program. Nine year-old students laugh as they practice their foot work.

But Kubach, a former pro-boxer, doesn’t run the business for personal recognition. He simply wishes more people applauded the young students who train every day, and in that, forgo a life of crime on the streets.

Those who make a commitment to train quickly learn a disciple never taught in the streets never taught. From the disciple comes respect. Young students duck into the Frank’s office to shake hands with their trainers and bid farewell for the day, only to return the next.
“At first boxing is boring,” Kubach said. Street brawlers who step into the Front Street Gym hoping for a quick scrap are disappointed when they are first drilled on jumping rope and forming their hooks, sometimes up to a year before they ever step in the ring to spar. But patience is a key to the science of boxing, for fighters and trainers.


“I’ve got more patience than Job, and you know how much patience he needed to deal with what the good lord put him through,” said Sonny McCord, 78, the eldest member of the gym who trains the trainers. McCord took up boxing in the 1940’s. He used to work in Kensington with the department of sanitation, when Kensington’s population consisted of mostly Polish immigrants and horses and buggies were used to collect trash instead of garbage trucks

Not everyone stays, of course. Boxing is a transient sport by nature, said Joe Black, 59, a former retired professional boxer who has been a trainer at Front Street Gym for eight years.

“It happens to a lot of fighters,” said Joe Black, 59, a trainer. “Very few can come in and stay and stick with it like a job. They have work, families, and it puts a strain on training and fights.”

Black grew up in north Philly. He learned to fight a necessity to ward off the petty crime gangs in the neighborhood that conscripted other kids.

“You didn’t want to be a chump,” he said. “Those gangs would enlist you if you wanted to join or not, but I could stand up to a gang and ask for their toughest guy and beat them.” Back then, the extent of gang activities was stealing and petty crime. Not even the trouble makers wanted to be locked away in jail or turn to drugs. But things have changed now.

Eric Gonzalez, 18 lives down the street from the Front Street Gym in Kensington, where has trained since he was nine. As a child, he punched his father’s hands for practice until his knuckles bled. Now he is looking to turn professional in the 119-pound weight class in a year. Most of his friends in the neighborhood are in prison or into drugs.

“I used to hang with the wrong people,” Gonzalez said. “When I saw them going to prison I knew something was going to happen to me sooner or later.”

Adam Bassal, 17, of Northeast Philadelphia, was planning on embarking on a career in music, having studied violin at the Creative High School for Performing Arts in city, but resolved to learn boxing after watching Rocky.

“My neighborhood is pretty much the opposite of dangerous,” Bassal said. Born of Irish and Egyptian descent, Bassal looks like an olive-skinned James Franco with his a smile that his hardly containable and a deceptively lean-looking 195-pound frame.
More kids flock to the gym during summer, when school is out. The gym hosts boxing events beginning in the fall. Kubach hosts the Turkey Bowl every year. The event pits former professional boxers who have fought at Kubach’s gym against each other in exhibitions to raise money for public school students in need. The gym also puts on amateur boxing shows in the winter sanctioned by USA Boxing in the winter. Come spring, Kubach said he hopes to be approved as a host for the diamond belt and golden gloves competitions.
“I wasn’t a great boxer,” Kubach said. “I took up training to help out the kids.”

UFC 101 Predictions

Josh Neer (25-7-1) versus Kurt Pellegrino(13-4)
Nicknamed “the dentist” for his penchant of rearranging the teeth of his opponents, Josh Neer is a hulking lightweight who with all the trademark ruggedness, durability and conditioning of Militech Fighting Systems products. He is the bigger and more versatile fighter over Pellegrino, a grappling virtuoso. Neer’s most recent victory over Mac Danzig was one of his most technical performances to date, as he showcased his striking, wrestling, and finally his guard control from the bottom by submitting Danzig with a triangle choke. Considering that Neer came in an underdog and put away guys like Melvin Guillard and Joe Stevenson as a welterweight, he should have no problem shutting down Pellegrino’s submission attempts with his strength. Neer takes the win via TKO in a bloody and fast-paced battle.


Ricardo Almeida (10-3) Versus Kendall Grove (10-5)
In a battle of two jiu-jitsu aces, striking and conditioning will dictate the victor. Almeida is a better jiu-jitsu tactician, but Grove demonstrated against Evan Tanner and Chris Price he can bombard his opponents with fist, feet, knees and elbows standing up just as easily as he can choke them unconscious out on the ground. At six-foot-six, Grove also has a reach advantage and will use his lanky frame to smother and tire out Almeida from the clinch. Grove win by unanimous decision.


Amir Sadollah (1-0) Versus Johny Hendricks (5-0)
Injuries have plagued Sadollah since he won the Ultimate Fighter season seven last June. He finally makes his return against Johny Hendricks, an accomplished wrestler coming off a two-fight winning spree in the UFC’s blue canvas colored counterpart, the WEC. Hendricks has more experience and his wrestling core can dictate whether the fight stays standing up or on the ground. It will be a harsh welcoming committee for Sadollah. Hendricks wins by decision.


Forrest Griffin (16-5)Versus Anderson Silva (24-4)
Like the alpha male in a pack of lions drunk on his superiority, Silva is dangerously close to letting his winning streak slip away to hungrier challengers. His performances against Patrick Cote and Thales Leites were uninspired, as if he was unwilling to expend the energy to finish off a harmless opponent. It is as if Silva rises to meet and destroy his opposition only when they pose a legitimate threat to his reign, as he did with by the pulverizing of Dan Henderson, Rich Franklin (twice) and Nate Marquardt. Forrest Griffin, who the short-lived merit as the first Ultimate Fighter winner and former light heavyweight champion, falls into the latter category. He’s fought his share of wars, and he seems to excel as an underdog. Silva may be the better striker, but Griffin has no qualms about sacrificing his good looks to secure a win. Rather, he smiles every time he is hit like he enjoys the pain.

Griffin wore down and choked out Mauricio Rua in what was supposed to be the Brazilian’s coming out party. Against Quinton Jackson, he won a relentless stand-up battle over five rounds. Griffin has the edge in enduring grueling wars, and as a fighter who normally walks around at over 220 pounds, holds a significant weight advantage over Silva. Unlike the Brazilian, Forrest has proven that he can go the distance, whether it be three or five rounds, without getting lazy.

To win, Griffin must bring the fight to Silva head on, but also play it smart, lest his sometimes reckless striking leave him victim to Silva’s pinpoint counter-punches. Griffin will be smart in forgoing his low kicks at Silva’s legs. While they worked against Quinton Jackson, Anderson Silva proved against James Irvin that he can catch a kick in mid-air and follow up with a knockout punch to the chin.
Both Silva and Griffin have jiu-jitsu that is under rated, but has also shown flaws. In Silva, he was taken down easily by Travis Lutter and Dan Henderson, and although he reversed positions and won both fights by submission, Forrest is a heavier fighter and his training with Randy Couture has taught him a thing or two about top control, but while his defense from the guard is solid, his loss to Rashad Evans was a remainder that it only takes one punch to break through from the top to end a fight.

As Forrest always seems to win as an underdog, I see him taking the fight to Silva and finding away to grind down the middleweight champion for the win.


B.J. Penn (13-5-1) versus Kenny Florian
Sometimes natural talent can only take one so far. For Penn, his prodigal jiu-jitsu skills can be the stuff of nightmares. His striking has almost knocked out Matt Hughes and reduced George St. Pierre’s face to a swollen red mess. But in Florian he will face an opponent with the same submission skills and killer instinct, more fluid foot work and muay Thai. Since losing his first title fight to Sean Sherk in 2006, Florian has tore through the 155-pound division in a six fight winning-spree, and laid waste to promising lightweights like Joe Stevenson, Joe Lauzon and Roger Huerta. If he avoids being taken down by Penn, he will have the stamina advantage and hurt Penn standing up with his elusive movement and crisp striking. I predict Florian winning the lightweight championship by knockout.

Kenny Florian Interview for City Paper

From City Paper




Ultimate Fighting Championship Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu specialist Kenny "Kenflo" Florian will be tested against current lightweight champ B.J. Penn at UFC 101 next Saturday, Aug. 8, at the Wachovia Center. It marks the UFC's first event in Philadelphia, and Florian's second run for the lightweight title. The 33-year old, who was thrust into the spotlight as a finalist on the first season of Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter, failed to capture lightweight gold in 2006, when lost a five-round decision to Sean Sherk. Florian emerged a wiser fighter and rebounded with a six-fight winning spree. With one week left until his title bout, City Paper spoke with Florian about the art of fighting.

What inspired you to become a professional fighter full-time?

I think it was when I had my fall in Brazil [in 2002]. I was in Brazil and I fell off the cliffs, and that was my near-death experience. After, I said to myself, "Here I am working full-time doing something else, when I love Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I'm going to dedicate my life to it. I'm not sure what it's going to lead to, but I'm going to teach and train and see what happens." I never thought I would be a mixed martial arts fighter in the UFC, but this is what happened.

How did the accident happen?

I was working for a full-time translation company. I was [in Brazil] on a training trip in 2002. I was with some friends of mine, and we kind of did a climbing and running workout. We were descending down from a waterfall area. My buddy slipped in front of me and sort of took me with him. I ended up slipping down the mountain feet-first and my buddy grabbed me, turned me around, lost his grip and then I was falling headfirst. I fell 20 feet onto a rock. But if I didn’t fall on that rock, I would have fallen 100 feet after that.

Who are your favorite fighters to watch at the moment?

Anderson Silva, Georges St. Pierre, Fedor Emelianenko, Lyoto Machida . I see them all as martial artists and guys who are super well-rounded, super-technical and great human beings, as well.


How do you think Fedor Emelianenko would measure up against new UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar?

It's tough to see anyone beating Brock Lesnar right now but Fedor. Lesnar’s size would be an obstacle to overcome and also his wrestling skills and his speed and power. Plus, wrestling has always given Fedor some trouble. He's had problems with wrestlers in the past. He's beaten them, but you see the weakness in his game, and having a huge guy like Lesnar who is getting more and more skilled all the time would definitely make him an underdog.

Middleweight champion Anderson Silva is stepping up to the light heavyweight class to fight Forrest Griffin at UFC 101. Who do see winning?

You have got to have Silva as the top dog. Forrest Griffin is a friend of mine. I think he is the underdog, but he always performs very well as an underdog. When he is performing with no pressure is when Forrest is the most dangerous fighter ever. He trains as hard as anyone else out there, so he'll be very prepared. Anderson Silva’s skills are probably at a higher level right now, but never count out Forrest.

Since your loss to Sherk, you mentioned that you now train consistently. How do you balance training every day without taking too much of a toll on your body?

I take a Saturday off and sometimes I'll take a few days off. I train five to six days a week year-round. That way, I can definitely build my new skills and get better. Besides training, I really don't do much. For the last three years I haven’t really done anything but things that are MMA-related. I’m always doing something work-related. I have a job that I do for ESPN, or I'll go into a seminar where I’m teaching or training. Everything revolves around the sport, which is what I enjoy.

What sort of books do you read?

I just finished a book by Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning. I like reading Krishnamurti's stuff. He's an Indian philosopher. I like reading about the current real world in military books, things that are happening right now in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm not a big fiction guy.

What does your daily training regimen consist of?

I'm in the final stages right now. As I get closer to a fight, there is more intensity and there's definitely more sparring, whereas when I'm training year-round and I have a big gap between my next fight, I'm not going crazy full-time. My strength and conditioning routines are more strength-based and not too intense. I train every week, six times a week, two times a day, sometimes three. Morning and afternoon will be either a technical training session or sparring. Night will be for strength and conditioning and another technical session.

You've mentioned before that you consider yourself a martial artist and not a fighter. Why is it important to make that distinction?

I really don't do it for the rush. I don't love to fight. I don't want to go out there and just brawl. Some guys are just brawlers. I have no interest in that. I just want to have the best technique in the world. I want to out-think the other guy. I see the beauty in the mixed martial arts. I'm trying to seek for that perfection in the technical sense, [which] is more important than anything else. The belt is for coaches, family and friends. The challenge of B.J. Penn is going technique-to-technique and seeing who is better.

How do you evaluate your performance after each fight?

The Sherk loss was a wake-up call for me. I had to be honest with myself and re-evaluate my strengths and weaknesses as a fighter. I hired a full-time strength and conditioning coach. Now I'm on a six-fight winning streak. I'm the worst coach you can have. I'll look at fights and see what I did wrong and be disgusted by my performance. I've done that and I have never been satisfied with the wins. The win or loss is irrelevant — it's about the technique. That's why I'm never satisfied. I think the key is really being honest.

Can you recall any crazy happenings backstage at a UFC card?

[Laughs] Well, this is sort of making fun of me. Before [my fight with Roger Huerta], I was pretty sick. I had something wrong with my stomach. I had to run to the bathroom a few times before my fight in between warm-ups. That was pretty scary and nerve-racking before a fight. I've never been in that position before. I had to do my best to control myself. The first two rounds, it felt like I had to save my energy and not exert myself or I would lose control of my stomach. Then in the third round, I started to relax and it was my strongest round.

People still joke about Tim Sylvia admitting to soiling himself when he fought Assuerio Silva.

[Laughs] Yeah. I definitely did not want that to happen.

Philly Fight Factory's Eddie Alvarez is considered to the top lightweights outside of the UFC. How does he measure up?

He's a little guy with a big heart. I think skill-wise he has weaknesses to expose like all of us, but he has heart and the work ethic to be one of the top fighters in the world. And I want to fight all the top fighters.