How To Be An Axe Murderer… Wanderlei Style – (Seminar Review)

Since Sunday was my only free day between the Expo and Training, I was looking for a gym that was open so I could squeeze an extra bit of training in during this trip. I had looked at going to Xtreme Couture’s (I still might if I can swing it) and I had also checked out some BJJ schools online, but all of them are closed on Sundays. I was lucky to find out a little piece of information while I was at the UFC Expo, and that was that UFC Star Wanderlei Silva has recently opened a top of the line MMA gym in Las Vegas. To top it off, he was having a special 3 hour Seminar on Sunday. So After I moved to my new accomodations here at Master Toddy’s dorms, I packed my backpack full of my MMA gear and called up Albert (my guide/taxi driver while I am in town) and headed out to his gym.

When I arrived at the gym, I was greeted by two very nice and attractive Brazilian woman, one who is actually Wanderlei’s wife. I told them I was there for the seminar, filled out the paperwork and I was all set to go. Since I had showed up a half hour early, I got to walk around the gym a bit and scope it out. Man, is this place nice. If I ever open a gym, I want it to be set up like this place. To be honest, I am not sure what the square footage of the gym is, but it’s big enough to hold a full sized cage, a weight area, a full sized training floor with about 15 or so heavy bags, a pro shop, a kids playground area, bathrooms, some offices and a nice front desk area. Point being, this place is pimping! I am actually going to include some photos in this blog.


As it was getting closer to the start of the seminar, I was looking around the room which was starting to fill up a bit. I reckon there was about 12 guys in all. The seminar started with a bunch of standard MMA warm up conditioning drills such as running, side shuffle, knee high run, heel slap run, jumping jacks, etc. We followed that with a brief stretching session. Finally after that was all done and we were good and warm, we got to the bulk of the training session. Wanderlei started off the session focusing on striking, and he was accompanied by his two BJJ Coaches at the gym, Vitor and Sidney. Wanderlei showed us some cool techniques, some that were basic and some that were unconventional, which I suppose is his fortey as a striker. We even covered a bit of takedown during the first hour. It was basic seminar format, where they would show a technique and then you practice it with a partner back and forth, with the coaches coming around to correct you. It was pretty cool to demonstrate the techniques for Wanderlei and get his seal of approval on my application and form. That was definitely a good feeling.

Speaking of partners, I was pretty happy to be paired up with a nice guy named Joy who was from Austraila, but I believe he was of Indian ethnicity. He flew all the way out from Austraila just for the Expo and to attend UFC 100. Joy has a strong kickboxing background, but didn’t have much ground game, so i helped him through a lot of that stuff. I was glad he was my partner, because he was a really nice guy.

During hour two, Wanderlei pretty much handed off the session to his two BJJ coaches to cover some ground stuff. We learned a couple pretty cool and effective guard passes, some good sweeps from Side Control, and a few different leg locks, most of which I hadn’t seen before, but I was able to pick up quickly. Oh yeah, we also learned an arm bar setup which was pretty cool. I have actually had it done to me a couple times before, so now I am glad that I know how to do it, as I will know what I was doing wrong to end up in that position and also how to apply it myself. I am not going to discuss the setup details right now, because I want to surprise my training buddy Chris down the road.

Hour three was a cross between MMA and sparring. We started off with just kicking sparring, then moved into hands and feet combos, and finally into MMA with takedowns. This was my only bad experience part of the seminar. For the first “light sparring” round, I was with Joy and me and him had a decent sparring session going back and forth. However, we then switched partners and we were suppose to have another round of “light sparring” I ended up getting paired up with a guy about my size and height, who is in town for a week or so training for an MMA fight. If you have ever heard the term “training dick” well that just about describs this guy. He is one of those guys who only has 1 speed hard and fast.

The round started off ok, with us kind of trading off blows back and forth. I was tagging him lightly, while he kept chopping away at my left leg with leg kicks. Even when you are wearing shin pads those things fucking hurt. I started to notice that every time he went to kick, he would drop his hands, and whenever he did that, I would tag him. Even though I wanted to, I wasn’t tagging him hard, because I did not want to be disrespectful. Well, that must have just pissed him off, because he start to really whale away on my leg. At one point I had to stop and tell him to take it easy, basically because I didn’t want one training dick to ruin my entire time here in Vegas and be too sore to train. That worked for about 10 seconds, and then he started lighting me up again. At that point, I should have either elbowed him in the nose or given him a strong knee to the face but I just sucked it up and made it through the round. I’m not too happy about the fact that my left leg is all bruised up now. Man, I hope that fucking guy gets pounded worse than Bisping and Mir combined in his fight.

During the final round of sparring we switched partners again, and I went with a guy named Walter who trains at the gym. This round included takedowns and strikes. It was pretty cool, because my takedowns suck, but at one point I shot in on Walter, he defended and we ended up in the clinch, but eventually I scored the takedown, which made me think maybe my takedowns are getting better. We ended up on the ground with me on top and I was able to pass his half guard into side control. Instead of going for a submission, I decided to try to pin his hands and just strike. From there he tried to escape to my back, but I blocked it and we ended up with me back in his guard. As I passed, Walter went for an arm bar, but missed and I made it back to side control when the time was up. I was happy with my performance and gave me a lot of confidence to try my hand at more MMA sparring.

At that point, the seminar was over and we all got the chance to take a lot of photos with Wanderlei. We all also got a nice gift of a brand new autographed T shirt personally made out to each of us, and a little supply of Xyience supplements. That alone was easily worth the cost of the seminar.

Since this is a review, and not just a recap, I am going to give this some grades for the following cateogories.

Facilities = A+
Techniques = A
Conditioning = B+
Personal Attention = A
Extras (Photo Ops, etc.) = A+
Overall Experience = A
Would I Recommend This Seminar = Yes

My only complaint is I would have liked a little bit more technique directly from Wanderlei, but I really can’t complain about his BJJ Coaches Vitor and Sindey, because they were also top notch. If you guys are ever in Vegas you should definitely stop by the gym. The website is www.wandfightteam.com

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