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
Yeah, I mean, he was no mug either. I think he just got third place in the All Japan Championships, which is all weight categories. So he wasn't a mug, you know, he was strong. And I'd fought him once before, and I knew he was a lefty as well, which was really awkward for me.
Better for me than him. It did. It felt amazing, you know, because it was almost like all these things, disappointments and everything had kind of come to this one point where I was at last kind of champion of the world. It's everything I said as a kid that I had no idea how difficult it was going to be. So as a kid, as a 14-year-old kid, I remember saying, I'm going to be world champion.
I'm going to be the best in the world. I had no idea how difficult that was going to be.
I like that.
Yeah. Well, I mean, you see it a lot with parents as well. You know, parents, you know, our little Johnny is, you know, he's amazing and he's this, that and the other. And they have no idea what's, you know, out there. I remember the very first time I stepped out in 1974 into the European cadets. And I remember that we were fighting. I'd only ever fought in Great Britain.
I was the top, you know, I was unbeaten in the juniors, kids. And went out there and there were these different fighters out there that were treating me with total disdain. And I remember thinking... How dare they? You know, and I realized when I came back from that event, there's other people out there.
There's just a whole, you know, and there are different levels of, you know, the majority of people are just not informed as to what's out there and the different levels that there are out there.
Ezio was one of them. And I fought him, you know, and I beat him in the European Championships. I beat him in, you know, two times and then lost to him in the Olympic Games two months after I'd beaten him in the European Championship. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't, that made it even more difficult, right?
So that made it more difficult. And so he, Ezio was one and getting hold of, I remember getting hold of Nishida of Japan and he had me going up and down. And I just, I thought, wow, this guy is amazing, you know, and I'd never fought, first time I ever fought Japanese. in a major tournament, you know, and, um, I felt the danger.
I always talk about the danger when we go out to Japan to train, uh, I could go probably, uh, months without getting thrown in training here in Europe. And, and I go to Japan and, you know, everybody's throwing you, you know, and that's difficult to accept. And the reason that that kind of danger and that kind of, um, um, A feeling of danger is something that puts a real edge on, you know.
And so that was the first time when I got a hold of Nishida, I thought, oh, my God, you know, this guy, you know, it didn't matter which way he was turning like that. He stretched out and I thought this, I want to do this, you know. And then I ended up fighting him again in Japan.
It's a different... It's a different thing, isn't it?
So, I mean, mine was kind of a mixture. I liked it to be a mixture because there was... The gripping is definitely the key point. So if you get high-level guys that are gripping up, and I always used to put this to the referees when we were doing referee seminars when we first started them. And I'd say, how many... Because they would referee to their understanding of the match. Mm-hmm.
So they were penalizing for certain grips that were, you know, and actually, so. As an ex-athlete, high level, I would say, have you ever gripped up with high level?
All right, because if you haven't, you need to do it because then you will understand why they do certain things with the grips because these guys are like, you know, when somebody grips you and you think, you know you're going to go. When Iliadis puts his arm over your back, all right, and you know you're going to go up and over. You know you're going to go over. You know, that's it.
Not for me.
It's a mix of everything.
When I was 84 Olympics, but I'm just going to go there now just quickly. But there was, we had a freestyle wrestler. He's American, actually, but he had English nationality. So he competed for Noel Loban, his name is, and he competed for Great Britain. He got third place at the Olympics in 84. But he was training. We were training at Budokai, and he was training.
He came to do some judo and put jacket on. And, of course, he was training with some of the lower levels, and he was really handling himself well there. And then he said, I need to feel, you know, when we did randery, you know, so he did some randery with me. And I immediately thought, I got to catch it. I got to stop single leg and double leg because he was really quick, right? So strong as well.
90 something kilos. He was like, you know, he's a big guy. So I caught a sleeve, immediately caught and controlled him. And then he couldn't start, right? So he said, I needed to feel the difference. So then I thought, I better reciprocate this. So I said, well, you know, so we did the Rando and I throw him a couple of times. He said, I'm really glad we did that.
Showing 81–100 of 376 · page 5 of 19
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