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UFC Fighter Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady is Unbreakable | Iman Cave
How do we foster resilience when things get tough? Sh. Abdullah Oduro leaves the Iman Cave to exchange knowledge and punches with UFC Fighter Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady in this Iman Cave monthly special.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. You don't lose if you get knocked down. You lose if you stay down. Failure is a part of fortification. It's getting up and continuing forward is what makes the man. Learning how to take those hits, take the pain, and push through it. That is what makes us stronger and more honorable. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. How's everyone doing? I'm Abdullah Oduro. Yes, I'm outside. I'm not in the cave, but I still have the cave vibes talking about male excellence. Stay tuned. Every month we're going to have action-based episodes on a particular subject matter that deals with male excellence. As all of us want to embody masculine excellence for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And with that being the case, this episode is something special. It's something that is very, very important to all of us as we want to understand what does it mean to be a male and particular issues that men face. Oh, lo and behold, as you see who I was waiting for is draped up, draped up. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Here he is, the pride of Palestine. None other than Abdul Kareem Selwadi. How you doing? How you doing? We are going to be here. You're in for a treat. We're going to go into his home gym where he does personal training. Abdul Kareem Selwadi is an MMA fighter. He's been doing this for a long time. There's going to be a number of stories and insights that he is going to share with us. It is very important that you stay tuned for this beautiful interview. We're going to go inside his beautiful gym and see what's in store, inshallah. Let's go.
Pleasure to be here again. I got the blue form, inshallah, the same bag and the shelf, inshallah. May Allah bless you. I see you got the nice pick here. So what have you, what are you doing right now with fighting? What were your previous fights and what are your current fights coming up? So, you know, I'm always looking to train and learn. I don't look at training for fights as just like a routine that you do the same every day. I'm always trying to develop, like getting better, my skills, my techniques because, you know, fighting is a world that changes as well. It evolves. So you have to evolve with it. Alhamdulillah, I have a really good setup going on and training four to six hours a day, six days a week. And then they'll have a day where I just do full recovery. So I always try to have some type of competition or fight scheduled. And that just keeps me sharp. It keeps me going. Like I just finished for my fight in ADXC in Paris a couple of weeks ago. And now I'm fighting in Abu Dhabi, August 3rd for UFC. And it's just, and inshallah, after that, I'm healthy and I'm good. And I'll do the ADXC Jiu Jitsu again before I get my other third UFC fight. So just trying to stay sharp, stay busy. Interesting story is when I was younger, even in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I was always getting in trouble in school just by being like, you know, really energetic and rough and always like rough housing, wrestling, you know, even in the masjid, we used to love those Friday nights wrestling. Yeah. I was never a bully and I was never bullied, but it was, my father was very strict on me. And it was one of the reasons why I wasn't allowed to do martial arts as a kid is because I was just so aggressive. And he's like, if you do martial arts, you're going to even be more aggressive, which later turned out to be the complete opposite. You know, martial arts actually humbles you and keeps you disciplined. My dad taught me very well that
to never be a bully with the strength that you have and to stand up for others. So that was actually my excuse of how to get in fights in school was I was always fighting the bullies. Every single time I got in trouble for hitting someone, it was never actually my fight. I just stood up for someone else. And, you know, teachers were like, you can't just do that. But Alhamdulillah, as soon as I got into MMA at the age of 15, it was the last time I've ever gotten into a fight with anyone. And that doesn't mean I stopped being confronted. No, it actually became even more when people find out that you fight and you train, they want to test it. But, you know, I guess your confidence levels go up or you're more disciplined and you have a better character. And you could just smile at someone that's trying to, you know, say things to you, trying to get under your skin. You smile and you say, you know, if you're not going to walk away, I'm going to walk away. And that's it. But in the back of your mind, you know what you could do. I already saw. I saw everything. I saw everything. I saw what I could do to him, him and him. And I'm just like, I love it. I love it. That's what's so beautiful. And that's why I want to interject here. I mean, I want to make a point is that parents, there's nothing wrong with your child being aggressive. You know, my master, the kids run around. I said, there's a time to play and there's a time to pray. Go play, run around. That's nothing wrong with it. That's how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is creating us. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam has said, you should jump on him while he was praying. Right. So there's nothing wrong with that aggression. It's just how you channel it. As his father, may Allah preserve him, knew exactly what to do with his son. But you notice he spent time with him. So that aggression that is there, it's just how you channel it. And then on top of that, he was selfless being someone we talked about our earlier episodes of bravery and bravery is someone that it helps people that they may not even know even. Right. That helps and protects them. Alhamdulillah, there's no AC, no fans. Alhamdulillah, we're about to get it in. And those of you that are watching young guys, older guys with some of these moves, practice it while we're doing it, practice it and have the dialogue with us. And join us in
this dialogue. And if you want to comment, so you're going to show us a couple of moves. I think the first one, as we talked about resilience, it's getting up after falling down. So how does one fall? Is there a certain way to fall when fighting? Yes. So one of the first things you're usually ever going to learn when you enter an MMA gym is how to fall because everyone's going to fall. So we call it break fall. And it's basically bracing your body to like brace the impact when you fall. And basically, as you're falling, you don't want to fall straight back and you're going to hurt your head. You want to pick a side. So if you're falling more to your left, as you fall, you're going to hit the ground and we go here and you want to tuck your chin into your chest. Because if your head is loose, it's just going to bang on the ground and that's going to maybe give you a concussion or something. So we're going to lean on the shoulder on the side and we're falling like hips down. You want it to be gradual, not just one time where basically you knock the wind out of your chest. So you're going to fall down and brace and right there. Exactly. Just like that. Right back up. Okay. And you fall and you brace. Prepare yourself. There you go. So even when you're falling, it's okay. Like I said, you're always, you're going to find you're going to fall. Just brace yourself as much as you can. So you don't hurt yourself. Yeah. Some common mistakes would be to, you know, naturally you're falling to try to put your hand out and that's going to dislocate your, your shoulder or break your elbow because all that impact someone's coming on top of you. But with that way, it's going to be safer to fall. So it's, it's, it's, it's interesting because you got to brace yourself in order to prepare for something that's inevitable. Yes. Like when you're facing a challenge, you have to brace yourself. You have to be ready. Yes. At all times. And even like you mentioned mentally, you have to be ready even when you go
out and that fall will teach you something, but you still have to wait. You still have to get back up. Get back up. Okay. Yeah. So how about getting up? So say, say you fall, let's say you fall and then I try to come and attack you. So say I push you down. I'm right here. Now, the first thing I want to do is keep some distance between me and you. Okay. If you're trying to attack me, I want you either very close to me or very far, not just in the middle where I can get hit. So right here, I'm using my legs. Like I would use my hands trying to control your hips and keep a good distance right here. Just like that. So even if you move right or left, I'm following you. But let's say I found the time to get up. I'm going to create some distance first. If I could touch you, that means you're, we're too close. So what I'm going to do is get ready, get ready. If you come close, I'm going to push you away in that time with my hand. I'm going to bring it up just in case if you come close or just to protect my face and with my hand on the ground, I'm going to brace and then I'm going to get up. Now of how you are, if you're coming that close, then I wouldn't use that time to get up. I'd only get up when I feel like there's enough space. So in real time, it would look something like this. We're here. You get, you move back and I'm here ready to strike. So if I felt like I didn't kick enough or as I'm getting up, you're too close. I'll just go right back down. Like if I'm trying to get up and you're coming, I'll go right back down because I don't want to give you my back and turn away. And at the same time, as long as I can see you, I can still assess the situation and block and move and come back to here. Or like if you get too close, I can like grab the legs or something, but I want to always see you. If we're fighting, I want to always see you. I don't want to, you know, turn around, give you my back to get up because then you might grab my waist or go for a choke and I won't be able to see you. The biggest issue right there is not being able to see the
danger that's coming to you because, you know, even with a knockout or a punch, it hurts more when you don't see it coming. At least when I see the punch coming, I can block, I can bite, I can brace for it a little bit. You know, I'm talking about even getting hit, but as long as you see the danger coming, it's going to be easier to deal with than not seeing the punch coming. That's interesting because when you turn away from your problems, it's always going to come back in, but it's going to catch up to you eventually. Like if I'm down here, right? And I'm, you know, I see you coming. If I'm first practicing right now and you come up to me, is it okay for me to be scared? Is it normal? Is it natural? It's very normal to feel scared, but it's how you deal with it is what makes it good or bad. I could be so scared to get hit that it makes me so focused and locked in on my opponent that it makes me avoid every shot or it makes me attack better. I could be so scared of losing that it makes me train so hard and be so prepared for this fight. So it's okay to be scared, but if I'm scared and I get very emotional and it makes me forget on what to do, then that's where being scared is not a good thing. Are there times where like you're hitting on the bag or you're training with someone and you thought you were going to do better? Like you, because the next day you got to come back. Yes. You could have just said, man, I'm done with this, man. Like you lost in a spar, for example, have you ever lost in a spar? 100%. So what goes through your mind when you lose in that spar to someone that's a lesser belt or spent lesser time in the gym or has been lesser time, hasn't fought as long as you have? At this level, I always, whether something is good or bad, I try to be very honest and assess the situation of why this happened. And it's very normal to feel that way. And that's why I love fighting so much because it's not just easy. It's not made for everyone. Not everyone that starts it could continue doing it. Not everyone can handle
the physical and mental stress that comes with it. Some people see like Mashallah Habib, Islam, these guys, they go out there, they destroy their opponents, make it look easy. Oh, let me go do MMA. Well, they make it look easy because of how hard they train and how many bad days they have to go through and push through. You think Islam and Habib are winning every round in the gym? Absolutely not. Every time you have a bad day at the gym, it's like having a bad day at work. You have to assess the situation. Was it my fault? Where did I do a mistake? Did I not sleep enough? Did I not eat good? Or did more of my hands down? Was I being lazy? Was I being too cocky? I could go on and on and on of why you could have a good or bad performance at the gym. But the most important thing is to not let that tell you who you are. You just got to shake it off and work on whatever issue you found was the problem. All right, so what's the next move you have for us here? All right, so something very common outside of fighting, we call it the neighborhood choke. When someone just like, you're wrestling and they grab the head and they start squeezing and they think that they have a choke or a squeeze or something, which you'll never see an actual fighter do that move because there's nothing that that move could actually do to the person you're trying to hold. Really? Okay. We have a guillotine choke and a rear naked choke, but those are actual blood chokes where you cut the oxygen coming to the brain. But, you know, this does nothing to you other than maybe give you a stinger where you can't look. So let's say you just grab my neck. I get you. You're wrestling and you have that very common. Now, first thing you have to do in fighting is no matter what situation you get in, whether it's a good or bad one, you have to relax so you can use your brain. If I'm just freaking out over here, most likely I wouldn't react the right way. Right. So first thing you
have to know is that, okay, I'm safe. I'm not going to get choked out because you're not cutting off the blood supply. This is just going to hurt my neck. But if I react quickly, we can get this over with pretty quick. Okay. I'm just going to grab your hips right here. All right. When you're grabbing my head, I'm going to put my leg right behind your far leg right there. And then I'm going to turn to the side and fall to the ground right here. Now let's turn to the camera here. Now if I landed and you still had that grip, what I can do with this forearm is put pressure on the face. And if you don't let go, I'm just going to push down until I get my head out. So the more stubborn you will be with squeezing my head, the more pressure is going to go down as I do the cross face. Okay. So it's very easy, very basic. You know, like we said, just this is how it's going to look in real time. Right here. And then if I'm here, I put my forearm on the face just to push, push, push to get my head out. Okay. Nice, nice, nice. That's very common. That's very common. We're going to get you in a headlock, especially in the master, the kids playing around. Also, one thing we say in jujitsu is the easiest defense is to not get caught in the beginning. So like just before getting your head caught, just always keep your head away and try to hand fight and not get caught. That's just something like, you know, don't fall down. But if you fall down, you break fall. Same thing with the submission. Don't get caught in a submission, but if you do, you have to react quick before the, you know, it gets deeper. So it's so beautiful how combat sports is so, it's so in synchrony with life in general. And
then we're talking about a man because the roughness and toughness that is required in order to get somewhere. Oh, you don't have the cauliflower here? I got a little, I try to take care of them. You know, that's just a sign and it's stripes to show, okay, I've been there, done that. So there's a lot of trial that I've, that I've been through. Right. What's another move that you have? So we can show, I show you the basic jab cross, which are straight punches. So the jab would be your straight lead hand, which in my stance right now would be my left. So that's a straight jab. And the cross would be the straight backhand, which is my right hand right now. So jab cross. So if you were to throw that, you throw jab, left hand first, and then cross right there. And then you want to generate the power using your hips, legs, and shoulders. We're not throwing hand punches. We're throwing punches using our full body. So jab cross. Yes. You want to keep your knuckles facing straight to your opponent. Boom, boom, just like that. Boom, boom. Because we see very common in the street, people throwing like overhands and just wild punches. It's faster and more accurate to just come straight down. So even if you were to throw an overhand at the same time, I could reach your face faster throwing the straight punches than that. Those are so easy to defend. You just go under the punch and it could leave you off balance so much. Whereas when I throw a tight jab cross, then even if I miss, I'm not falling off balance, if that makes sense. So you're staying tight and you're staying firm and ready. Staying tight with your body. Stay firm. And you just go right, right down the middle where they say, you might hear a coach say, tighten up your punches or go right down the middle, which means like, don't be afraid. If you see a lot of danger coming from the side, just beat him to it. Yes. And that's important too, because like you mentioned in the headlock, it's maintaining your composure. Yes. You got to keep your frame. You got to stay focused. In the middle of the fire, in the middle of the fight,
you got to be calm, but also ready to fire at any time. You know, you see some fighters that get in there very hyped and you see some that get in there like they're getting ready to sleep. They're just relaxing their mind, but they're ready to fire and throw punches at any moment that's needed. So give me an example of, if you don't mind and we can cut this, your first loss, what mistake did you make, bro? My first loss was possibly like one of my biggest lessons. You know, I was, I was young. I was on a four fight winning streak. This is like when I started MMA, everything was happening very quick. And I fought someone that I really was like, maybe three times better than him. Everyone I fought until that fight was considered better than me. And I don't know if I got a little bit cocky or I just got, I was like in such a hurry to beat him that I just like dug a hole and trapped myself in it. And I lost that fight and it was very depressing. It was so depressing. Like I never even thought or knew that, you know, I could recover from it. Like, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, I never ever was even close to even thinking suicidal thoughts. Like that wasn't even something that ever crossed my mind. But at some point I was like, people that commit suicide because of depression, I kind of understand why they would do it. Like it wasn't ever crossing my mind, but I was like, I kind of get where they're coming from because I just felt I was, I got really famous really quick when I was young. And that fight, everyone watched it. Like I'd go to the masjid, people would talk about it. I'd go to school, people would talk about it. Everywhere I went, people would talk about it and ask me questions. People thought I even sold the fight off and got paid because of how much they didn't
expect me to lose that fight. And it's beautiful how you said, I understand what people that commits. I understand what world they were in. I see it, but I choose not to. So did you have people around you that were like in your corner, literally and metaphorically? So that's what helped me really bounce back was my dad was always in my corner. He was with me in the fights and training camp at the fights. And then I was just, I was just feeling so upset. And Alhamdulillah, my dad's also an imam. So he's an imam and he's also an MMA trainer. So, you know, I would, sometimes I just tell him like, well, dad, you know, why? Like, why? You know, like, why did I lose? Like I did everything I trained. So, and I'm a better Muslim than that guy. I'm a better fighter. Like, you know, I said everything. I was like, so why did Allah choose me to lose? Like, why, why me? Not, why didn't he lose? You know? And then my dad started telling me like, okay, calm down. Don't say anything that, you know, this is a little dangerous. Now you're, now you're on the lines of, of like, you know, saying things that are wrong. So he humbled me real quick, got me to calm down. Then he said, you're a fighter, right? You fight, you fight. That doesn't mean you're winning every, every second of every day. It means you fight. So whether you, you have an opponent and you beat him, you won the fight. If you lost, then you have to fight back. And if it's not that same opponent, you fight back within yourself. Like that, that, that. It's on in the loss itself. And, and now you're being tested and that's really it. You know, he always told me, like, even when I won big fights, you know, we'd celebrate, we'd be so happy. He was like, by the way, this could still be a test. Like, it's still part of that test. You know, how when you lost, you were tested. This win could also be a test. So use it, use it to the, for the good. And Alhamdulillah, I, you know, I still have my mom. I still have my dad. They're always there to like, just humble me and keep me in check no matter what. But that, that lesson that my dad, father gave me was to always fight back, no matter what.
Like, I mean, you could be in rock bottom, just fight back, rise up, and always try to find a way. Tougher things that you go through in life. And then you're like, complaining isn't gonna do anything. Let me just fight back. And that's where I start to think, what are the steps that I'm going to do to fight back? SubhanAllah. What's another move that you got for us? So if we're striking right now and we did the jab cross, another move would be right now, let's say let's utilize our legs. We're gonna do a roundhouse kick. The roundhouse kick could be to the leg, to the body, or to the head. But for just making that a little simple, we're going to kick the leg. When we're kicking, we're rotating our hips all the way. And the point of contact I'm doing with is the shin. So I'm kicking with the shin right there on the thigh, just right above the knee, right there. So kick right here and then you'll kick me also right there. Right there. You wanna turn your hips a little bit more. That's where you generate your power from. So we go one kick here and one kick there. And we kick and we kick. And sometimes we'll do this for conditioning our legs because as you could feel, it's getting a little tender. And we just start to go hard and hard and we kick. And at the same time, when you're kicking, you wanna keep your hand up. That's one thing, which is your technique. And number two is the tactic of when you throw the kick, we don't just throw a naked kick alone in front of our opponent. We set it up. So right now, let's say we're throwing the jab, just that punch to set it up. And then we throw the kick. So you can throw the left jab that we took and then the kick. So here, jab and kick, jab and kick, jab and kick. This way, you'll have your opponent, either you hit him in the face and his head goes up a little bit, or he just focuses on blocking the punch. And in that time, that's where you kick. So you wanna switch it up.
You don't wanna focus too much up and then too much down. You wanna switch it up on your opponent and hide that into your stance. You want everything you're doing, whether it's shooting a takedown, throwing a punch or a kick, all coming from the same stance, just like that. You don't wanna get too low every time you wanna shoot for a takedown. You don't wanna get too high every time you're trying to punch because then just by doing that, he'll understand and know what to expect from you. Yeah, and that's what's beautiful as well because, SubhanAllah, as you mentioned, I'm coming with the jab up top, but then the kick at the bottom. Yes. And life will come at you up top and it'll come at you at the bottom. You have to be ready and you won't know how to be ready unless you've trained or failed and faced those situations. Many, many times. Many, many times. Many, many times before. Last move you got for us, last move. Let's go. So now we could go down on the ground for a basic rear naked choke. Okay. This is such an effective move because you have full control over your opponent before the choke happens. So right here, this is what we call seatbelt or more like backpack. Wherever you go, right, left, up, down, I'm just gonna be very tight to you. So it's a seatbelt because I have one and two and I'm just tight. No matter what you do or react, I'm here. And then when I'm ready to go for the choke or I see the opening, I go with this hand right here. I wanna cup your shoulder. I wanna grab your shoulder right here. And my elbow should be like right under your chin. If you're right here, it's easier to peel off the hand. So I'm gonna come from right here, go all the way and cup the shoulder because I have this hand under, I let go of that and it goes behind your head and I grab my bicep. And it just comes right here and I squeeze gradually until we get the top or the sleep. So right here, you're fighting, you could be fighting. So why I put this hand over my choking hand
is because you're gonna try to peel my hands and you're gonna peel the hand that's on top and that's where my choking hand goes here. If I put my choking hand first and you start to peel it, then it's gonna be me fighting your strength and most likely not gonna be able to get the choke. So I hide my choking hand with this hand on the bottom. So when you try to peel it, I go in right away. Now this one's easy to take out. And I like to whisper in their ears, like go to sleep or something before. Okay, let me ask you, why are your feet here? What's up with that? So this way, because we said like the backpack, I get to control everywhere you go, I'm with you, whether you go right or left. So even if I roll you over like this, I'll still be behind you wherever you go. If you stand up, if you turn around, I'll be behind you and any moment that you're trying to get up or you're actually up, any moment, I can always get the chokes. But you will never want to put your hands on the mat because that means there's nothing to protect your neck. Right here, you always wanna protect your neck for you to use your hands. But if you put your hands down, then I'm going for the neck, I know that it's open. I got a question. People are probably wondering, is this the hold that Khabib got caught in? Yes, that's the one, the rear naked choke. Yeah, right here. The rear naked choke, so how'd he get it? He had it right here, but they were more on the side and Khabib was behind him more on top. But this is just the basic one from here and if you get that choke, you could land it from anywhere. So actually, if you ask me, what is, from all of MMA, what is one move that I would wanna practice for also self-defense, it would be this, because if I wanna defuse a situation, I can do it safely, like without actually damaging someone permanently, just by choking them out. Like if, let's say there's a robber in the store, someone that's trying to attack me and I don't wanna shoot him, I don't wanna stab him,
I don't wanna punch him, I don't wanna break anything, you can just get him in this choke hold and sleep him, just have him on the side and that's it. Like choke him out unconscious, he'll wake up like 20 seconds later, just confused. He'll be okay to go on with his day. SubhanAllah. So how long have you been in this, been doing MMA? So my first professional MMA fight was in 2012, so 14 years right now, actually 12 years. 14 years, okay, 12 years. So what message would you give to the young men out there, the men out there in regards to, and the moms, man, is combat sports something important in regards to resilience? Like failure, is it something that is important in regards to failure? Like someone gets into it, what will they learn from it when it comes to improving themself in life? And that's a great question because no matter what stage you are in life, whether you're five years old or you're like 50, 40, martial arts will always help you at whatever stage you're at. If you're a young kid, it's gonna help you develop that character, that discipline, and that confidence that's very important to a young man to grow up and have that. You don't have to be a professional fighter. This doesn't have to be your career to do this. You don't even have to compete, but just learning martial arts and going into a gym will always be better for you because a lot of times nothing is gonna be harder outside of this room. So whenever life knocks you down, whenever you have a problem in life, you will just go back to the basics of how you recover from that problem and how you deal with it. That reminds me of Usain Bolt, the beautiful statement, I trained four years for nine seconds. Yes.
That preparation, and that's what I really wanna end on is just the fact that I don't think we understand how he trains and how any fighter you see, how they train, they train months on end for a small moment. And then if you lose at that moment, getting back up is not easy. And we talked about that earlier, how you mentioned entering that realm of those that have done things that are detrimental to them. So keep in mind the importance of being resilient as a man, know that you are going to fail, you're gonna make mistakes, you may feel embarrassed, people may try to embarrass you, but getting up will only make you stronger. The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was after the loss at the Battle of Uhud, many times in the life of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, we've seen. So JazakAllah khair, Abdul Kareem, for your time. Of course. For letting us come to your gym, man. Of course, thank you. Inshallah, I plan to see you again. Inshallah, Abdul Kareem Salawati, pride of Palestine, look him up on Instagram, alhamdulillahil alameen, always in support of our brothers and sisters, for he is from them and we are from them as well. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la bless you all for tuning in, leave your comments, leave any statements that you have, any questions, inshallah, we'll try our best to answer them. May Allah bless you all for tuning in to Man Cave, where we focus on male excellence while being grounded in faith. As-Salaamu Alaikum. As-Salaamu Alaikum.
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