Kyusho practitioner eliminated from grappling competition:

“It wasn’t that kind of tap!”

Sifu Oliver Young says it was all a big mistake. “I had him right where I wanted him,” he shouted, after he’d been thoroughly revived from the triangle choke that ended the match, “It wasn’t that kind of tap!”

Young was heard continuing his diatribe with a few onlookers just outside the spectator’s gates. “I was letting him do all the work,” he said. “That was part of my plan.” When several of the crowd that had gathered out of concern began to disperse, he shouted after them, “They made me compete at white belt,” he said, “With a more skilled competitor it never would have taken thirty or forty seconds to get myself into that triangle.”

Sifu Young considers himself an adept practitioner of the ancient art of Dim Mak pressure point striking as handed down through Kyusho Jujitsu at seminars in hotel conference rooms all over the country. “It’s amazing what a high level practitioner can do,” he says. He reports watching a youtube video of a Kyusho master lightly tapping on the ribs of another practitioner who was controlling him in a position common in grappling arts. “He went out like a light,” he says. Young made a slicing motion with his hand across his neck and added, “Never knew what hit him.”

According to Young, Dim Mak strikes “are pretty much jiu jitsu’s kryptonite.” As he sees it, the rules by which two light taps on an opponent signal surrender and end the match are there to protect competitors from the deadly art of Kyusho. “That third tap is lights out,” he said.

Sifu Young admits he anticipated taking the Black Belt division by storm, being himself a fifth degree black belt in Kyusho and having a black sash he wears for Shaolin Kung Fu classes. “Most of these students have teachers with maybe three or four stripes on their black belt, but my teacher has a red belt with ten stripes and three gold stars,” he said.

Young says he was surprised when he was told to compete as a white belt, but now he understands—it was just another way to cripple his deadly technique. “The way that guy set up the triangle was a little low level. That’s why my taps were closer to his shoulder than his neck. It made it hard to reverse his blood flow and paralyze his diaphragm. It’s a good thing they ended the match when they did,” he added, “because the third tap could’ve had some unforeseen effects.” Refusing to elaborate on this any further, Sifu Young would only say, “I’ve seen some strange things. Let’s just leave it there.”

While Sifu Young was still nodding his head a friend of his opponent’s brought a video over to review. It didn’t take long. The video showed Young waving his hands around as the match began. This briefly confused his opponent who was looking for the traditional slap and bump handshake to show respect. In the next few seconds Young’s opponent jumped into the guard position, pulled Young to the ground, and swung one leg over his neck for a triangle choke. The onlookers who Young had been conversing with couldn’t help but point out that Young seemed to pass into unconsciousness before he had a chance to tap at all.

For his part, Young was unfazed, “I was playing possum,” he said, “I don’t even want to tell you what comes after that.”

Disclaimer: Distributed for comic purposes only. No ‘My art is better than your art’ argument is intended or implied. If you train hard, I respect you, and I lampoon myself as much as anyone else. I was, after all, young once too.