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Max Metino: A fighter, flowing like water
(JP/Banyubening Prieta)Max Metino is ruthless when he talks about winning in mixed martial arts (MMA)
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(JP/Banyubening Prieta) (JP/Banyubening Prieta)
(JP/Banyubening Prieta)
Max Metino is ruthless when he talks about winning in mixed martial arts (MMA).
'Every time my opponent tries to get up, I attack again straight away with another submission movement, like a triangle choke, side choke or guillotine choke,' he says.
Defying those who claimed that a 38-year-old could not compete in a full-contact combat sport, Max amazed everyone when he came out on top in his first performance at the ONE Fighting Championship (ONE FC) at the Istora Bung Karno sports hall in Senayan, South Jakarta, in September.
Naysayers should not be surprised: Max has powered his way through 29 bouts in his career, winning the gold at the International Submission Grappling Championships for four years between 2005 and 2009.
Max, renowned for favoring the choke submission, was given the nickname ombak, which means ocean tide, by one his students in jiu-jitsu, the Brazilian martial art.
His student said that fighting Max, who has a purple belt, made him feel like he was suffocating while drowning, hence the nickname.
Before Max made his bow at the Istora, he was typically involved in mixed martial arts as a judge, coach, referee and promoter ' in part due to difficulty in finding support from his family.
Max said that growing up in North Jakarta had not been easy. Local thugs used to mug him after school, he recalls, describing his neighborhood as tense in the aftermath of the Tanjung Priok massacre in 1984.
'I used to hire bodyguards and paid them Rp 100 a day to protect me from thugs when I was in
elementary school,' Max said.
The amount is around 10 US cents.
An interest in martial arts that developed after watching Mike Tyson and Mohammad Ali on television led Max to teach himself how to box when in junior high school.
By the time he entered high school, Max was learning kick boxing. He then learned north shaolin-style kung fu after 7 years of practice with the United Indonesian Shaolin association.
Max has also mastered wushu sanshou, judo and taekwondo ' and has been a vegetarian for the last 15 years.
While he keeps in practice as a MME combatant by working as a teacher and coach for mixed martial arts and jiu jitsu, Max's road as a martial artist has not always been clear.
For example, he made a go as an interior and furniture designer after receiving a bachelor's degree in design and visual communications from Trisakti University.
'I did it so I could get a degree,' Max says. 'But then I realized what my call was.' Max is not overwhelmed by the inherent threats to life and limb in the sport.
'Most people, including my family, think that MMA is perilous. But, from the first tournament in 93', there have been no fatalities, because we have fixed rules,' Max said. 'No fighter ever focuses attacking on one area.'
Like every warrior, Max recalls his losses ' and what he's learned from them. 'The two [defeats] were very memorable ['¦.] I realized my weaknesses: I wasn't very patient in my first battle and underestimated my rival in the second.'
People, he says, should be adaptable to any circumstance, seeing opposite things as complementary, like yin and yang. 'My life has been like ombak, and this name also relates to my life philosophy: 'to flow like water'.'
Martial art has hard and soft sides that are evident in every conflict. Recalling a ONE FC bout with Long Sophy, Max said that he realized that the young Cambodian Khmer-boxing champion was very intense.
He countered by keeping calm and confident to find a chance to show his exceptional ground fighting styles.
'I applied the philosophy,' Max said. 'Sometimes I was soft, so I could neutralize my energy and relax, while I became hard when I used my focus to employ speed and concentration to attack.'
'It is basically practicing the balance of nature,' he adds.
For the ONE FC competition, Max said that he practiced for three months with respected jiu-jitsu black belt Niko Han from Bali and MMA fighter Fransino Tirta, an expert in two varities of jiu-jitsu, boxing, and wushu sanshou. 'In MMA, the first priority is technique, second is stamina, then strategy. The more variation we have, the better,' he says.
Technique variation is vital, as the sport flows between stand fighting and ground fighting, according to Max.
Young fighters have stamina ' an advantage that makes Max think of retiring to full-time coaching in three years, but only after he can finish five more battles for the ONE FC. 'I'd have loved to start earlier, but this sport came to Indonesia in 2001, and the submission grappling championship was established in 2005.' On the unpredictability within the ring, Max is phlegmatic. Winning or losing, he says, is the result of long and hard preparations. 'When a fighter gets into the cage, he has already won the process,' Max says. 'The rest is only to prove how good your practice was.'
The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post.
