Planning on joining an MMA tournament in my country

Also worth pointing out ala the skillset thing that, at least judging by the tkd guys and gals I've trained with, they'll want to adjust parts of your style since tkd puts in some habits that don't flow well with muay thai/kickboxing. Having a TKD background will most likely still help you learn, but be ready for them to tell you to change things. I'll send you that plan in a minute as well

 

This has reminded me of when some of the mma guys I know went to another show to compete and there was a "gym" there which was primarily a ninjutsu place but had been convinced by their instructor that he knew mma and they were ready to fight. Apparently they got beaten up so badly no one even felt like taking the mick out of them. Everyone came home just feeling really sad these poor guys had jumped into fights they clearly weren't ready for and all got hurt.

The point of this tale is Fusen's right. A year is enough time to be ready to fight but only if you're training mma with mma guys at a decent gym. Otherwise you run the very real risk of getting hurt. Now I've had a chance to watch some proper videos from Malaysian Invasion those guys are clearly ammy/semi-pro level but they all seem to be mma guys who clearly have the right idea what they're doing and are training to fight.

I don't know how many gyms there are in your area but something else I'd quite recommend throughout this year would be finding interclubs, ideally for mma but if not then kickboxing or grappling, and trying those. They'll give you a decent idea what your level is at.

 

The auditions sounds like a really good system. I like that.

 

The bright side to mma grappling is you don't need to be amazing. If you do a bjj competition above white belt you need to at least be aware of a lot of weird stuff like de la riva guards, inverting, collar chokes and all sorts of fun stuff. For mma, because of the ability to strike, you only really need to know the basics. A couple of guard passes, a side control, mount and back escape you feel good with and defense to basic subs like the armbar, triangle, kimura and arm triangle. You'd need to drill them a lot to be very good at them, but they're simple things to learn and frankly I think you can learn them yourself. You'd need a decent grappler to practice them with but its not like you need a 3 time world champion blackbelt to teach them to you.

Its what I've learnt since I started rolling with the mma guys here: I technically know more than they do and potentially have more tools to catch them with, but they're so damn good at basic stuff that it won't happen. They know how to use and defend the basic subs, and they have a very, very strong base inside guard to make sure they don't get swept as well as strong top pressure from other positions.

From the bottom you could honestly get away with your game being nothing but controlling their posture to limit ground and pound, get back to guard, and then push their head away and stand up. Again, shed load of drilling to be able to do that against a decent grappler, but its not a complex thing to learn how to do. I could teach someone how to do that within a couple hours. They'd just have to put in a lot more hours practicing it to make sure they can do it under pressure.

So what I'm getting at is if you did the audition now you'd likely get tied into knots. But if you have a year before you have to do it then if you focus purely on the basics essentials to survive then you could definitely be ready within a year. You won't be filling your record with submissions, but you won't be losing to them either.

 

Small joint manipulation is generally a foul, you need to be controlling 3 or more fingers for it to be ok. Would quite advise learning the rules