My Youtube feed is organized crime show clips, baseball, and standup comedy right now. Then on Friday, something that might combine all three shows up.
Now this is retelling of a pretty well known sequence where Greg Maddux hits Jose Canseco in 2000. It’s not even that new. Pretty good stuff, though. Then Chipper Jones hits us with a nugget that “Walt Weiss, who would tie anybody from their team up in a pretzel in about 20 seconds. He’s one of those MMA guys.” Umm, excuse me?
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My understanding is that mixed martial arts wasn’t really a phrase in 2000. Typically, fighters in what would become mixed martial arts started in some martial arts discipline or maybe boxing or kickboxing. And that’s exactly Walt Weiss’ story.
To stay in shape, Weiss, a black belt in taekwondo, lifted weights and continued studying martial arts for discipline. He also trained with Clarence Thatch, a legendary mixed martial arts fighter, and his stable of scrappers, at the 3D Martial Arts gym downtown. Weiss tried his hand at cage fighting (“It was MMA before MMA,” he says), but never engaged in full-on competitions.
I have so many questions. First question, how am I just finding out about this? Is this something that he still participates in? Is this an offseason activity or something that he practices on the road? How come he hasn’t backed Don Mattingly into a corner? I tried to get Demetrius to ask Weiss some questions about it at some point. He didn’t say no, so stay tuned.
