The Slaughterhouse

This is a story about how the author of this article started an MMA club. This happened in winter of 2008 and should serve as a reminder to anyone that there is no such thing as an excuse if you are set in achieving a said goal. There is no reason why a story like this could not be replicated all over Pakistan.

I needed a place to teach. I was tired of training in park areas and sports grounds. I needed mat space, I needed a heavy bag, I needed light. After 2-3 weeks of searching, I got word that a restaurant in the town’s market area had an extra floor that they were willing to rent out. The restaurant was a 3 story “hotel.” I had actually eaten here before. The food was good, and it would be great to have fresh tikke with naan right after training. Seemed like a good fit.

SnapShot(6)The area itself was two rooms, and alongside it a full kitchen, filthy, with a greasy floor covered with an inch of ghee and dirt and a pervasive smell of cooking gas and masala. The rooms next to the kitchen where the training was to take place was not much better. It could definitely use some cleaning but I had no time to be choosy. I was itching to really start training hard with my students.

I asked about the rent which turned out to be very reasonable and the “slaughterhouse” was born. Why the “slaughterhouse?” A mixture of two things. One, the absolute filth of the place coupled with piles of butchered meat laying 2 feet from the training area. Two, my nostalgia for G.I Joe, where one of the characters “Sgt. Slaughter” actually had his little gang training out in the middle of the desert in what was called the “slaughterhouse.”

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The next step was finding something that could be used as Mats for the ground fighting. Finding a fully stocked martial arts store in rural Punjab was not going to happen and so like everything in Pakistan, it was time to improvise. I headed to a store that sold plastic sheeting and foam and found a foam that would be suitable to grapple on. I ordered enough material to cover one of the 15 square meter room and loaded it up on a passing donkey cart to be taken to the “slaughterhouse.” On top of the foam, which we glued to the floor, I lay down a canvas cloth or as it is known in urdu a “tarpal.” The grappling area was now complete. In the other room was to be the striking area and that is where I hung a 6 foot heavy bag.  The floor in that room was just slightly better than the foul kitchen and five minutes after using the bag your feet would be caked in the nasty slime on the floor. If you started sweating, the mix of ghee, dirt and sweat would cause some serious traction issues.

The last thing to be needed was something very particular to the conditions of Pakistan. A gas lamp, so we had light during load shedding. For those who do not live in Pakistan electricity is quite the luxury. During this time it was going out for about 12 hours a day, so having a gas lamp was very important. We must have been the only gym in the entire planet that was training MMA to the light of a gas lantern. Probably not the healthiest thing to train in a closed room with a gas lamp! But you gotta do what you gotta do.

Here is a video of the place.

You can see some of the students getting their reward of garam tikke for setting the place up. Unfortunately you don’t get a shot of the repulsive kitchen next door. That might be in the readers best interests anyway. The background voice you hear is a commentator for a Muay Thai fight that was playing in the background.

Untitled-13As you can see the gym isn’t fancy but people were pushed to their limit inside their. This is just to show for those who are dedicated there is no need to whine about not having a gym in your area.

No gym? MAKE ONE.

The moral of the story is that MMA Pakistan is going to be grassroots. There are going to be no masters with fake degrees selling hocus pocus techniques  to scam students out of their money.  Just as the people of Pakistan have at times stood up to their politicians and said “Enough!”  so shall Martial Artists and combat sportsmen work together to bring Pakistan to the forefront of the Combat Sports.

Be the change you want to see.

If you are interested to write for Pak MMA blog, please send your article to info@pak-mma.com

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