Sami Berik wins over Abdul Mohamed with a TKO (cut eye).
Not the best win but at least we have a (real) tai chi guy in Pro MMA.
(CAGE RAGE 9)
bad link
Mohammed is lucky he didn’t get worse!
Taijiquan is, after all, too deadly for the ring.
Edit - yeah, links not working, and I can’t find too much current info.
Cant make link work, but it was only the results page. If your that interested its cagewarriors.com
Tai Chi
found some bio info but it also shows a strong background in Kickboxing, Wing Chun and Wrestling. so Just how much tai chi??
NAME: Sami Berik
WEIGHT: 75kg (Welterweight)
COUNTRY: Turkey
TEAM REPRESENTS : Tai Chi Renaissance
MMA RECORD: 2-3-0
UC RECORD: 1-3-0
STYLE: San Shou, Tai Chi
Sami Berik has become an Ultimate Combat regular and has appeared on nearly every single Ultimate Combat event since Ultimate Combat 6. Sami has come represent the pure Traditional Martial Artist in MMA. His background consists of an esoteric blend of Wing Chun, San Shou (full contact Kung Fu), stand-up wrestling and Tai Chi. Berik, originally from Turkey , is a San Shou Champion and holds a San Shou record of 10-5-0 . Sami is also an Internationally decorated Tai Chi representative who recently won a Gold Medal in The European Tai Chi Championships. Berik maintains that Tai Chi is a fundamental part of his fighting method as it provides a sensitivity of movement and strong foundation. Berik has improved with every single Ultimate Combat outing and has gained valuable experience by facing top level opponents such as submissions wizard Mark Spencer, the fearsome Vale Tudo master Kevin O’Hagan and hard man Phil MacCall.
Sami Berik has just returned from Greece where he was on holiday. While over there he saw a poster advertising a Greek MMA event. Berik went along to watch and after introducing himself to the promoter as an Ultimate Combat fighter, was asked to fight in an impromptu bout. Even though he had the odds stacked against him which included giving away nearly 10kg in weight to his opponent, the language barrier at the rules reading and thinking it was just an amateur (no head shot) bout. Berik only realised it was a full Professional rules bout once he had been mounted and had punches reigning down on his face. Sami immediately reversed and locked his opponent up with a Kimura. Berik was declared the winner. Clearly a testament to his improved ground game.
Sounds like a pretty typical mix-and-match set of chinese barehand fighting styles - tai chi and wing chun led him to san shou, which helped him pick up some shuai (if not literal shuai chiao), then with some ground skills added he made the jump to MMA. That’s about what I’d expect a CMA guy competing in MMA to have. I guess he emphasises tai chi either because he finds it a valuable skill set, or he’s trying to get his opponents to underestimate him as a silk PJ enthusiast who flaps his arms in the park twice a week. Or maybe even some of each.
Anyway, good on him for racking up a respectable (if not exactly world championship level [YET!]) record.
Yeah, it’s really cool when TMA guy’s step up to the challenge of MMA competition and do well. I was really excited when Jason Delucia brought Aikido to MMA. He’s even got some training videos out that’ve got fight footage on 'em.
Re: Tai Chi
Originally posted by ngokfei
found some bio info but it also shows a strong background in Kickboxing, Wing Chun and Wrestling. so Just how much tai chi??
Sami is also an Internationally decorated Tai Chi representative who recently won a Gold Medal in The European Tai Chi Championships. Berik maintains that Tai Chi is a fundamental part of his fighting method as it provides a sensitivity of movement and strong foundation.
Sure, he uses other things too, but if he makes a point of saying that tai chi is important to him then why second-guess him? What does he have to gain by lying? The hope that lots of other people will take up tai chi so he can beat their weak time-wasting asses?!
Fair play to him.
Samurai Jack
Yeah, it’s really cool when TMA guy’s step up to the challenge of MMA competition and do well.
Joke: How many Ts does it take to be an M?
Yeah it’s cool when TMAs are used in the ring, like tai chi, like jujutsu, like muay thai, like boxing… 
I think more and more tma-ists will step up eventually.
It is getting tiring listening to the dead horse debate.
It is doubly tiring infact.
Please someone end it.
nobody does “(real) Tai Chi” in MMA
I know Sami quite well and as far as I know he is only training in tai chi now. His teacher Neil Rosak (spelling may be wrong) trained with a quite well known MMA guy…ill remember his name later and has aso done some cage fighting. This dosent stop him having some odd ideas about MMA.
What is “real Taiji”?
Taiji is a set of principles, like flying, it can be expressed countless ways … mono-plane, bi-plane, jet plane, helicoper, glider…
Well Evofist, u stick to your ‘bi’ tai chi…ill stick to my hetro tai chi:D
Originally posted by Liokault
This dosent stop him having some odd ideas about MMA.
okay, I’ll bite. what are these odd ideas?
I have been trying to fing the quote from him (to me)on a wudang tai chi forum, but it basicaly went aslong the lines of
“a mma isnt that good at tack downs, a tai chi guy can defend against a mma(ists) takedown in a fight so we dont need to concentraight on ground fighting.”
Suprising from a guy who trained with Lee Hasdell (i finaly rememberd his name but prob spelt it wrong) and who has faught MMA him self.
The guy is 2-3 (1-3 not counting a match at some random Greek show). I wouldn’t point to him as being the proof of anything yet. It’d be interesting to see how he develops though.
A football team can go the whole season without a win, that doesn’t mean the players aren’t NFL caliber.
I would think you’d need some game before you’d willingly put yourself in that situation.
“A football team can go the whole season without a win, that doesn’t mean the players aren’t NFL caliber.”
Horrid anology if you are talking about an NFL team.
- NFL is a team sport. One player can excel while the rest of the team bites, thus negating any chances for a win for that player.
- NFL players excelled most likely in high school and then certainly in college. Div 1 football is hard enough to even make a team nevermind to make it in the pro’s.
- NFL is the top tier of an extremely selective process. Only top athletes with top skills can make it that far.
This guy is 1-3 fighting in what would be considered the minor leagues of pro MMA. That one win being stoppage due to a cut… If a boxer only wins 25% of the time against low-mid level competition, are you going to say he’s any good? If a wrestler only wins 25% of his matches in local & state tournies, how do you think he’d fair regionally, nationally, or globally? Etc
He sounds like he has potential, and I’d like to see him do well and get to a big show against decent competition. It’d be interesting to see the difference in tactics and technique. I was just saying that boasting about a TMA guy winning in MMA when he’s only 1-3 (due to a cut… 2-3 counting a random local greek show/are there even any names or details of that?) is a bit foolish.
Look at the BJJ camp. If a BJJ guy goes 1-3 in comp like that, nobody would be giving him any props. They’d wait until he actually acccomplished something or reserve their enthusiasm for somebody wrecking the competition every time out.
I didn’t really read this thread.
Does what he does look like Tai Chi? Cuz you could be a boxer or shuai jiao guy and say you do Tai Chi but that doesn’t make it Tai Chi.
And don’t start with the “well, what if the boxer uses Tai Chi principles…” If he’s in a boxing stance, throwing boxing punches, he’s using boxing principles. If they happen to coincidentally be the same as Tai Chi principles, that’s great. But if they’re not exclusive to Tai Chi they don’t count as “Tai Chi princples.”