Neil Adams
speaker
376 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2024
last heard Apr 2024
Neil Adams’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Never lost an Olympic fight. So there's nobody. Right? Yeah. Nobody ever done that. You know what I mean? So that's got to be, it has to stand. He took two years off in between every Olympic Games and came back, did the right amount of events to qualify for. Not only did he having to qualify, he had to qualify through Japan. Now, Japan, remember, have got the greatest depth.
So they got people coming through all the time, you know, and then he had to win the Japanese trials. I mean, we had a four-time world champion from Japan. This is when world championships was every other year. And this is Shozo Fuji. And he was the greatest middleweight of all time and never got to participate in the Olympics because he lost the Japanese trials.
Twice in two Olympic, you know, possibilities. So, you know, he had to qualify for Japan and then go to the Olympic Games and then do it there, you know. So sometimes some of the best people in Japan can't get outside of Japan. Look at the situation they had with Abe and then they had Mariama. Manayama was, you know, and Abe were both the best by far in the under 66 kilos category.
This is for the last Olympic Games. And they sent one to the World Championships, one to the Olympic Games, and they both won gold medals, you know.
Well, Abe and Mariama, they had a trials in the Kodokan. It was 26 minutes. I think it was 26 minutes it went. They were battling it out for 26 minutes.
I touched on the danger, that danger of being thrown when you get hold of somebody or somebody gets hold of you. And I often reflect, I often talk about it when I'm commentating, you know, because I can see immediately. You know, it's easy, isn't it?
You know, if we're in the commentary chair or if you're in the coach's chair and you don't really understand totally, absolutely what's going on when you're being, somebody's being outgripped.
And when they're in danger of being thrown, I mean, you know, if you're in danger of being thrown, the first thing you do is stick your backside out and defend by not being in the position they want you to be in. All right. And so that's danger. You know, you feel the danger. And so in Japan, that was the place I used to go to train because I felt the danger.
And so my defenses would be heightened. Yeah. And so somebody that was, I went two years, one Olympic cycle, I went two years, two months without having a score on me in any competition. And then I went to one competition in the European Championships, which I won, and I was struggling all the way through it and got scored on three times in my pool of, you know, like my first pool of fights.
Mm-hmm. And I was devastated. And I actually nearly lost the whole competition because I was more mortified about being scored on three times when I hadn't been scored on for two and a half years. I had this thing in my head about two and a half years. You know, and then all of a sudden, right, I'm not unbeatable. And then you just, and you go, and I was almost lost it, completely lost it.
just so fortunate a couple of things went my way and just came out and i scraped and scratched my way to the final and won the final well all right but that was my best match but uh i almost lost it well what do you do with the fact that if you go to japan and you're getting you're saying danger like you're probably getting thrown getting thrown yeah man what's that do to your ego well again it's my you know that that was a winning ego that had to adapt
I remember we went to the Case Joe, which police dojo one time, and they wanted to see, they created this groundwork competition because they wanted to see me do the juji, like how I went in and how I, yeah, the armbar, right? They wanted to see how I did it from underneath or over the top. And you just, they created this event. So yeah, they started it.
So, and then winner stays on competition was happening at the case, Joe. So I did about seven, I think it was seven in. And then my coach came in and said, no, it's finished. That's it now. It's finished. You know, suddenly we realized what was going on. And I was going, no, no, no, no. Don't stop it like that, you know.
And it was one of those moments where, you know, the boot was on my foot, you could say, you know, rather than the other side, the other way. Because I had been to Japan in situations. I remember as a 16-year-old, I got such a drumming from one of the Japanese guys, older students. And he had a gold tooth. And so he was gold tooth to me, you know, and he was my nightmare.
And I remember I kept coming out to fight him because he kept throwing me and I was crying and I was upset. And I was like, and then that was another occasion where I got dragged away. And I said, no. So I wanted to go back and fight him. And I went back to the same dojo every year to fight him. He was on my mind. Mm-hmm. Morning, noon, night, he was on my mind.
Gold tooth was on my mind, you know. Did you ever get him? Two years later, I was, two years to me from 16 to 18 was totally different. 18 years of age, I was pretty competitive with him. And it was like, you know, I was standing up with him. 19, he was in the groundwork competition.
Switch happened, you know, because I just... Well, because I remember getting the arm lock and... He didn't put it on immediately. I needed it to last. It had to last. So I spread it. The whole thing lasted as long as I could possibly get it. And it was a long memory as I was looking down at him.
I don't know. I'm hoping that he remembers me. He has a photo of you. He probably doesn't say a thing about it.
I think it is just something that doesn't happen at this level. We were talking about levels. And then at this level, it never happened. And then I went out in my first European cadet. And all of a sudden, I wasn't this top guy. I was in the mix. And then I had to work myself to the top of that mix. And then...
To the top of the next one, you know, because I went to the European Senior Championships and, you know, again, you're not the top and, you know, you work your way to the top of that. And I think it is a frustration, you know, but I think it's that kind of hatred of losing and also... Um, being out of control.
Showing 221–240 of 376 · page 12 of 19
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