Participants at Thurston September 2009

3 victories, 1 draw and just one loss is an amazing result for the 5 fighters that entered yesterday the tournament in Bury St. Edmund:

• Heley Matthews (20), a 1^st Dan black belt instructor for CARISMA and coach for the Varsity Team of the Cambridge University Kickboxing Society, managed to dominate her opponents during all of the 3 rounds.
• Andrew Gilham (26), a green second belt with several years of experience and a number of successful fights and victories in his past, managed to easily dominate his opponent on both technique and ring strategy.
• Andrea Cristofaro (37), a martial artist with many years of experience that started kick boxing early last year, also managed to impose his own technical expertise onto a less technical opponent; Andrea was at his second official fight.
• Georgios Evangelinos (30), a blue belt with less than 3 years experience,  managed very well his skills and energies controlling a technically less capable but more aggressive opponent, finishing his first official fight in a draw.
• Nas Salmi (39), a green belt with 15 months experience, was fighting his second tournament although he recently suffered an injury and he was surely not at his best.

Once more an obvious observation should be made: apart from very few exceptions the average technical skill from other clubs is pretty low and CARISMA’s members even when beaten because of other reasons, always demonstrate superior technique, posture, guard and repertoire.

We would like to thank all fighters for their committment and dedication in representing CARISMA in such a tournament, Robin Turner for his precious assistance and for coaching Andrea to his victory and Linda Silvestri for her help in filming the event.   We are missing Andrea’s video because of technical difficulties (two fights happening at the same time and just one camera) but please have a look at the others and leave a comment: