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Those of you who watched the Ultimate Fighter 6 T.V show may be surprised to hear that Danzig is a genuinely nice personality. I was pleasantly surprised by his sincerity and his communications skills, I do not mean this in a disrespectful way to him or any other fighters for that matter but I really didn’t know what to expect from the seminar before I took in the event. He was well-spoken, and articulate. His voice rang through the gym and no one I spoke to after the event had any problems hearing what he had to say.
Danzig was approachable and ready to teach, it seemed to me that if he hadn’t taught MMA seminars before he could have fooled me, as he had a curriculum worked out and weaved his way from technique to technique smoothly. He projected his voice throughout the mat space extremely well and went through his techniques several times over to ensure a fluent understanding. He was open to questions and made sure that the people in attendance completely understood the dynamics of the techniques that they were going though.
He covered a variety of techniques ranging from ground and pound techniques, to takedowns, to difficult submission defenses and escapes. The last 20 minutes of the 3.5 hour seminar, Danzig fielded questions and answered individual questions specific to the attendant’s needs. The 20 minutes eventually stretched into 45 minutes before he closed out the seminar, but not before everyone had their questions answered. He handled all the open questions extremely well and had an answer for every problem the open questions period brought up
If there was one minor gripe about a positive event, it was that it was definitely overcrowded. The owner of Island MMA, Jason Heit, counted out 33 people and the mat space was tight. This was an absolutely full capacity seminar and at times the attendee’s had to trade off with partners in order to get the appropriate mat space to practice through the techniques. This was a small quibble but definitely something worth mentioning.
After the seminar was over there was a group picture and Danzig patiently took a photo with almost every student in the class. He even had 8 x 10 posters of himself that he personalized and autographed and gave to everyone who braved the lineup. MMA is growing in Victoria and Heit’s commitment to bringing more and more quality MMA fighters and instructors to come and teach seminar’s out of his gym showed a humbleness that is sometimes lacking in some martial arts communities and their instructors.
Look for a video clip of some of the techniques from the seminar as well as a video interview with Danzig. For more information on Mac Danzig you can check out www.macdanzig.net and for more on Island MMA their website is www.islandmma.com
The “Sushiboy” gives the Mac Danzig seminar 4.5 Tuna out of a full can of 5.
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