# hello from wales



## Paul-M (Jan 12, 2008)

Hey, I'm from Wales in the UK, currently training in Shaoling Kung Fu but looking to train in something more practical such as MMA and Muay Thai while continuing in Shaolin. I'm 17 years old and don't have a job yet .


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## Kacey (Jan 12, 2008)

Welcome, and happy posting!  :wavey:

And good luck finding a job.


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## Brian R. VanCise (Jan 12, 2008)

Welcome to MartialTalk!


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## MBuzzy (Jan 12, 2008)

Welcome!  I've always wanted to visit Wales - there is a woman there who has tracked the Geneology of my family back a few hundred years and publishes a book on it every few years.


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## tshadowchaser (Jan 12, 2008)

welcome to mt
may I ask if there are many schools/styles of Martial Arts in Wales? 
Always nice to have someone from across the big pond here


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## exile (Jan 12, 2008)

Greetings, Paul, good to have you with us!

I _love_ Waleshave spent time in the North, in the area around Snowden; friends of mine now in England used to teach at UCardiff.

For what it's worth, I think that Shaolin KF could probably be _extremely_ practical if you train the techs specifically for SD applications. This kind of question is a hot issue on MT, as you'll discover!


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## Sukerkin (Jan 12, 2008)

Shwmai, *Paul*, sut da chi?

Many moons ago I used to go out with a Welsh girl and took on a deeper appreciation of the country than is normally gleaned merely from holidays in Rhyl .

*Exile* beat me to it with the note on the practicality of kung fu.  I trained in it for twelve years and can tell you from personal experience that it does not come up lacking when you need it to defend yourself.  Don't be sucked in by the current mania for allthings MMA and 'str33t'.  Such fads are always passing and cycling through and none of them change the fundamental truths of the martial arts.

Browse around, read the threads on styles and training methods.  Get your feet under the table and let us know what you think.


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## SFC JeffJ (Jan 12, 2008)

Welcome to MT and enjoy!


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## Whitebelt (Jan 12, 2008)

This is unbeleivable! A world wide forum and someone from my own kwoon joins, what are the ods. If you've just stated you won't know me because I've been out of training for a long time due to a knee injury.

I'm looking foreward to training with you, give my regards to the club.
Josh


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## arnisador (Jan 12, 2008)

Welcome!


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## IcemanSK (Jan 12, 2008)

Hello & welcome to MT, from Los Angeles, CA, Paul!


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## stone_dragone (Jan 12, 2008)

Greetings and welcome to MT!


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## exile (Jan 12, 2008)

Whitebelt said:


> This is unbeleivable! A world wide forum and someone from my own kwoon joins, what are the ods. If you've just stated you won't know me because I've been out of training for a long time due to a knee injury.
> 
> I'm looking foreward to training with you, give my regards to the club.
> Josh



Don't you just _love_ MartialTalk?!!  :cheers:


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## morph4me (Jan 12, 2008)

Hello Paul, welcome to MT


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## Ping898 (Jan 12, 2008)

welcome to MT  :wavey:


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## Tez3 (Jan 12, 2008)

Sukerkin said:


> Shwmai, *Paul*, sut da chi?
> 
> Many moons ago I used to go out with a Welsh girl and took on a deeper appreciation of the country than is normally gleaned merely from holidays in Rhyl .
> 
> ...


 
Oi! don't you be knocking MMA LOL!! We had a fight night in Cardiff and there were more fights outside the Coal Exchange than in!!
Welcome Paul and DO listen to Sukerkin and Exile, they are the good guys! :wavey:
Seriously though I know a lot of MMA fighters from Wales and can recommend some good training places if you do fancy MMA.


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## Sukerkin (Jan 12, 2008)

Sorry, *Tez*, I should've thought more about how that read on the page than what I meant in my head :O.

Glad you took it the right way and knew I wasn't bad-mouthing the art but referencing the hyper-hype that's bandied around by those that do not practice it :tup:.

Also, in reciprocal advice to our new OP, if you want to know what's what with regard to MMA, *Paul*, then *Tez* is the lass to talk to.  Until I talked with her I had a real bad attitude towards the 'new' art that involved what I considered just to be a brutal form of wrestling.  She helped me see behind the Magicians Curtain to what actually goes on.  Same sort of thing with *Exile* for TKD and *Brian* for Ninjutsu.

Those aren't meant to be exclusive recommendations, for there are a great number of eloquent and experienced members here at MT who can help you if you listen.  Some are 'art' specific and some, like my friend *Kidswarrior*, have a lot of wisdom across the martial arts spectrum (*Kds* is off-line at present due to Real Life but a post search on his username will bring up all kinds of good insights).


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## Paul-M (Jan 12, 2008)

Thanks for the help guys, yeah Josh I do know that's ****ing crazy lol, hows the knee? Thanks for the information everyone, yeah I know Kung Fu is good practically but I wanna do something else because the class is only twice a week and I'm obsessive at training lmao.


Tez seriously I've been searching for some good MMA places for weeks! I found two in Newport that I'm gonna try tomorrow but it's too far to travel like every day, are there any in Cardiff? I found one on Ocean Way that was apparently getting huge but then the instructor got injured and they shut down? Are there any more in Cardiff? Particularly open gyms as opposed to timetabled sessions.


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## Paul-M (Jan 12, 2008)

sorry mbuzzy, exile and tsshadowchaser, forgot to answer you.....
Buzzy wow that's awesome, he have a lot of stuff like that around here, there was a show recently when Donny Osmond tracked his family history to Wales, and a lot of people here are interested in ancestry, I'm not surprised the woman you're talking about was welsh..

tsshadowchaser yeah theres a lot of martial arts here, but mainly boxercise, aerobics based, and McDojo's you have to search to find a really good club but they're here too, guess that's like anywhere though.

and wow exile that's cool, I'm gonna be going to UCardiff  and it's nice to speak to americans who actually know Wales exists, when I was in New York and told a cab driver I was welsh he asked me where in England that was :\ haha


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## Sukerkin (Jan 12, 2008)

Paul-M said:


> and wow exile that's cool, I'm gonna be going to UCardiff  and it's nice to speak to americans who actually know Wales exists, when I was in New York and told a cab driver I was welsh he asked me where in England that was :\ haha


 
Ouch!  That last part must've smarted a little.

Don't worry, many of the Americans here are much more worldly wise than that ... they can even point to their own State on a map of the World ... sorry, I meant Map of America there, of course; that goes without saying :lol:.

{runs and hides behind a solid object }.


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## Paul-M (Jan 12, 2008)

hahahaha, careful man


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## exile (Jan 12, 2008)

Paul-M said:


> I'm gonna be going to UCardiff  and it's nice to speak to americans who actually know Wales exists, when I was in New York and told a cab driver I was welsh he asked me where in England that was :\ haha



At least he knew it was in the UK... that's something!

I've always been a big fan of Welsh mythology: when I was younger than you I was seriously 'into' the Mabinogion and a lot of stuff about pre-Roman Celtic Britain. And believe it or not, here in central Ohio I'm always seeing automobiles with Welsh dragon logos and the slogan _Cymru am byth_ on them, so you _know_ this is some chap whose grandparents or great-grandparents came from Cardiff or Bangor or Swansea. Wales has always been magic, for me, and my 10 year old son has the same sense of the place.

Must be weird to hear an American/Canadian living in central Ohio saying stuff like this, I guess...


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## Sukerkin (Jan 13, 2008)

"Wales forever" indeed :tup:.  

I too have ever had a fascination with the history and mythology of the Celts, the Welsh in particular.  I've always felt somewhat ashamed of how the Welsh were treated by the English medieval monarchies too - that was one 'police action' that went well beyond it's original scope .

*Ex*, your comments on the Welsh contingent in Ohio are a surprise to me.  Could you elaborate some on what pattern of immigration occurred to cause that?  I have some vague stirrings of recall on the matter but I think that the knowledge I once had on this has been consumed by one of the memory black-holes caused by my bike accident :blush:.


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## Drac (Jan 13, 2008)

Welcome....


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## exile (Jan 13, 2008)

Sukerkin said:


> "Wales forever" indeed :tup:.
> 
> I too have ever had a fascination with the history and mythology of the Celts, the Welsh in particular.  I've always felt somewhat ashamed of how the Welsh were treated by the English medieval monarchies too - that was one 'police action' that went well beyond it's original scope .
> 
> *Ex*, your comments on the Welsh contingent in Ohio are a surprise to me.  Could you elaborate some on what pattern of immigration occurred to cause that?  I have some vague stirrings of recall on the matter but I think that the knowledge I once had on this has been consumed by one of the memory black-holes caused by my bike accident :blush:.



I was actually curious about this myself after my post; it's one of those cases where you say something that's been lurking in your mind somewhere as an oddity and articulating it brings it to the top of your consciousness as a problem to pursue. There turns out to be a _lot_ to this story. One dimension is given here; the information contains the remark that


_Like numerous other nationalities, ethnic Welsh Americans viewed Ohio as a land of opportunity during the early 1800s.  They viewed the abundance of land as a godsend and hoped to make a stable life for themselves on the frontier.  The first Welsh migrants in Ohio traveled down the Ohio River from Pennsylvania.  Upon reaching the mouth of the Muskingum River, they traveled northward to Zanesville.  Numerous other Welsh Americans followed them.  Future migrants usually came along Zane&#8217;s Trace.  Eventually these people moved to present-day Licking County.  Theophilus Rees and Thomas Phillips led these people to Ohio.  These men had purchased nearly 1,800 acres in Licking County and founded the settlement of Welsh Hills._​
And then we have, as one example of these Welsh settlements, the following charming place (see here):

_Venedocia (latitude 40.78N, longitude -84.44W) is located along state route 116 in Van Wert County of Northwest Ohio about 10 miles southeast of the city of Van Wert. The village occupies an area of about 1/4 square mile. Its year 2000 population was 160. Here is the U.S. Census Fact Sheet for Venedocia.

Venedocia was first settled around 1848 and was incorporated in 1897 by immigrants from Wales. Some current residents still remember when the Welsh language was spoken in village homes and businesses._​
A little Welsh village in Ohio!...


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## Tez3 (Jan 13, 2008)

Sukerkin bless you I wouldn't take anything you said astray! I've been away for a week in sunny Essex ( haha it rained all week! as usual when I go) and I'm catching up on everything I've missed here.
Paul, I've replied to your PM with a couple of places to train, one's with a UK MMA legend Paul Jenkins which does concern me with you being so young lol! http://www.sherdog.com/fightfinder/fightfinder.asp?FighterID=3567

Jenkins has been known to make his entrance in an emu suit and also a Borat suit (the swimsuit...no don't even go there lol) he is also a top fighter and one of the hardest doormen around!


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## Paul-M (Jan 13, 2008)

Tez3 said:


> Jenkins has been known to make his entrance in an emu suit and also a Borat suit (the swimsuit...no don't even go there lol) he is also a top fighter and one of the hardest doormen around!


****ing awesome I'm there lol.


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## 14 Kempo (Jan 15, 2008)

Hello and welcome to MartialTalk ... enjoy!


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## KempoGuy06 (Jan 15, 2008)

Welcome to MT

B


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## Steel Tiger (Jan 15, 2008)

Hello and welcome to MT.


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