Canadian Open Martial Arts Championships
11:01PM, April 10, 2007 - [ Permalink]
A few of weekends ago, I went to my first martial arts event - the Canadian Open Martial Arts Championships (COPAC) - just so I could see what the community was like.
COPAC was held over in Hull at the Palais des Congres at 200 Promenade du Portage which I did not bother to Google Map or otherwise look up. I took a guess and headed off.
The walk over was pretty nice, actually - through the market - stopping at Planet Coffee for a cup of apple cider and a cookie, then down Wellington to the Portage bridge, and into Hull, taking a few photos on the way. I wandered around until I found a street number (they don't seem to use those much in Hull), and headed to the Palais des Congres. Of course, the complex is so large, the first few people I asked about where the event was had never even heard of it. Goes to show, I suppose. I wandered around a bit until I spotted a child dressed in a Karate uniform. I asked his parents where the event was (up two escalators), thanked them and was on my way.
My first impression was that it wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but there were *lots* of people.
There was a large stage, and then a whole bunch of smaller "rings" set out on the floor.
Sifu Hum (my Kung Fu instructor) and some of his crew were there, so I wandered over to say hello.
I think this was mostly a karate event - from my limited knowledge of martial arts - it can certainly be hard to tell as fists and legs are flying all over the place.
Watching the fights (for points) was rather eye-opening for me - these fighters will expose themselves in ways that in a real fight could result in serious ouch.
They had children duking it out, teens, and adults. I wasn't really surprised to see that the most predatory of the bunch were the teenage girls. Vicious creatures. ;-)
Moving from ring to ring to see the different ages groups/sizes/styles/sexes was fascinating. Light-weights and heavy-weights fight very differently.
One heavy weight fight I watched featured a rather short, but very stocky fellow fighting a taller opponent. At one point the shorter man leaped up, performing an impressive roundhouse kick that wowed the spectators.
Over at the main stage, there were ongoing matches there pretty much all day long. On three occasions, one of the combatants fell/jumped off the stage, at one point, knocking down a section of the large backdrop they had set up.
I took a number of photos throughout the day, and to get anything really reasonable looking, I had to use my flash, which initially, I was hesitant in firing off, because I was worried about blinding people in the rings. Then I saw that everyone was taking pictures almost all the time, so I decided that one more flash going off probably wouldn't bother anyone.
Near the end of the day, there was one fellow who was consistently winning fights - I wish I could remember his name, but he was very, very fast - one of his matches he won without any points being scored on him, which must have been frustrating as all hell for his opponent.
I talked to many people while I was there - one of the referees explained the whole point fighting system to me - 1 point for hand or foot to the centre torso, 1 point for hand to head, or two for foot to head. Speaking of which, some of the referees are more entertaining to watch than the fighters, they are so charismatic and entertaining.
Everyone was friendly, and pretty good sports considering some of the beatings that were handed out. I don't think I would ever participate, except maybe in forms or weapons, but at this point in time, I'm not particularly handy with either, although you should witness the death and destruction I can dish out with a PlayStation2 controller.
Maybe in a year or two. We'll see.
