REPO ACTION IN BETHEL, ALASKA!!!

MY FRIEND, "BURRITO KIM CHI" DOES "REPO JOBS" AS A SIDE JOB TO MAKE EXTRA CASH ON THE SIDE BECAUSE HE SUCKS AT "POKER".  ANYWAYS, I'VE HEARD THAT HE HAS RECENTLY "REPO" SOME 8 WHEELER WITH TANK TREADS VEHICLE DURING THE WINTER AND NOW THAT SPRING IS HERE, HE HAS TO TRANSPORT IT TO THE AIRPORT FOR DELIVERY.

THIS WAS FUNNY AS HECK BUT FUN TO RIDE TOO.

"MAHALO" BURRITO KIM CHI!!!

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

KAHEALANI'S TRIP TO ANCHORAGE, ALASKA (MAY 2010)

KAHEALANI AND I WENT TO ANCHORAGE, ALASKA JUST TO SPEND SOME "1 ON1" TIME WITH EACH OTHER.  IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE TRIP.  WATCHING MY LITTLE GIRL GROWING BY THE DAY AS HER DAYS IN ALASKA ARE DISAPPEARING BECAUSE BY THE END OF THIS SUMMER, SHE WILL BE MOVING TO HILO, HAWAI'I AND ATTEND SCHOOL AT A "HAWAIIAN IMMERSION SCHOOL" WHICH I AM VERY EXCITED FOR HER TO GO TO.  ALTHOUGH I'LL BE MISSING HER WHEN SHE LEAVES, IT WILL BE ONLY A MATTER OF TIME THAT I WILL ALSO MOVE TO HILO, HAWAI'I A PLACE I CALL, "HOME".

BIG "MAHALOS" GOES OUT TO DENISE, VANG, TWITCHMEISTER, AND BUNNICK FOR MAKING KAHEALANI'S TRIP A VERY FUN ONE.  FROM EATING AMAZING HOMEMADE WAFFLES WITH "REAL MAPLE SYRUP", WATCHING 3-D MOVIES, JUMPING CRAZY AT "BOUNCY BEARS", EATING AN OUTRAGEOUS DESSERT AT TEXAS LONGHORN STEAKHOUSE, GO JOYRIDING ALL OVER THE TOWN, KAHEALANI IS VERY THANKFUL.

AND I WANT TO EXTEND ANOTHER EXPRESS OF "THANKS" FOR MY SISTER DENISE AND MOMMY VANG FOR ALL THE "HOME COOKED VIETNAMESE FOODS" THAT YOU'VE FED ME.  I AM STILL HUNGRY!!!

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA & KAHEALANI 

ALL THAT JABS!!!

ANOTHER NEW VIDEO OF KAHEALANI WORKING ON HER JABS WITH TIMING AND HEAD MOVEMENTS.  THE MORE SHE TRAINS THE BETTER SHE GETS!!!

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

KAHEALANI'S 1ST WORKOUT VIDEO - DEDICATED TO BJ PENN!!!

ALOHA EVERYONE!!!

KAHEALANI AND I WORKED TOGETHER ON HER "1ST WORKOUT VIDEO" AND SHE DEDICATES THIS VIDEO TO HER FAVORITE MMA FIGHTER, "BJ PENN".

IT TOOK 2 DAYS TO FILM AND SEVERAL HOURS TO LEARN THE TRICKS AND TRADES OF VIDEO EDITING.  SO CUT ME SOME SLACK.

I AM VERY PROUD OF KAHEALANI FOR THE HARD WORK SHE HAS PUT INTO THIS AND I AM TRULY AMAZED HOW STRONG AND TOUGH SHE IS.  

KAHEALANI'S DREAM IS TO MEET "THE PRODIGY, BJ PENN" IN PERSON AND HOPEFULLY TRAIN WITH HIM IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

AS HER FATHER, I WILL ALWAYS SUPPORT HER DREAM!!!

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

KAHEALANI vs ELMO

KAHEALANI GIVING THE "PUNISHMENT" TO ELMO!!!

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

THE BOOK HAS ARRIVED ...

THE BOOK ARRIVED TODAY IN THE MAIL, AS YOU CAN SEE KAHEALANI WAS ITCHING TO GET HER HANDS ON THIS BOOK. NOW THIS WILL PUT HER READING SKILLS TO THE TEST.

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

ANOTHER GOOD ARTICLE ON "BJ PENN"

AS THE UKULELE PLAYS ...

You know the feeling.

That giddiness we get when that moment approaches, our stomachs' wrenched with excruciating excitement. The lights in the arena dim and, but for a brief moment, thousands stand hushed. The palpable silence passes with a breath. In darkness, they begin to roar with anticipation. The notes of the ukulele waft through the stadium like a cooling breeze - the champion is coming...

BJ Penn walks to the cage with the unintended strut of a street-fighter, his eyes ablaze with a fury and focus one cannot fake. It's as if he's possessed - perhaps by the spirits of warriors past, perhaps merely by the intensity of his purpose. When BJ Penn is walking to war, it's as if the world slows a bit. My heart rate increases, the leg begins to bounce......

You know the feeling.

I've felt it since Spring 2001. That's when this "Prodigy" burst onto the scene knocking people out rather than stretching their limbs, as advertised. His early fights were a visceral frenzy - for the few moments they lasted. This guy that everyone kept calling "the most decorated Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner in America" apparently preferred punching faces - and I was hooked. And between devastating knockouts, there were moments of otherworldly agility and flexibility - showcases of a seemingly bottomless well of yet-to-be tapped talent. So yeah, many of us became fans. But, soon, BJ would help to redefine what being a fan actually meant.....

It turned out BJ was more than a fighter - he was a visionary. He realized early on the importance of the internet in promoting mixed martial arts and, more importantly, bringing it to the masses. Before Twitter, before many of the staple MMA websites of today existed, there was BJPenn.com. What began as a simple website slowly began to morph with time, eventually evolving into the social community it is today. And throughout that evolution, BJ Penn began to slowly reveal more and more of himself to his fans. Not only did he demonstrate techniques in his ambitious My Gym show, he began showing us more of his world - his friends, his family, his favorite places, and lots of loco mocos. Soon, it became harder to define the man by the stoic stare he wore when walking toward the cage. We'd seen him smiling and laughing so much while "cruising" it was as if the fighter and the man were two different people all together. That he would allow his fans these glimpses into his life, to allow them to watch him live and grow as a fighter, a man and, most recently, a father - is truly unprecedented.

You see, that's why being a BJ Penn fan is unlike being a fan of any other fighter, or athlete, for that matter. Our investment is an emotional one. BJ's unwavering commitment to his fans over the years - evidenced by his opening his very life up to them in many ways - is rewarded with an unshakable dedication from those who cheer his name.

And here I sit, Spring 2010. Nine years after I first saw this man sprint into the octagon. "And what's changed?" I ask myself, still reeling from Saturday's decision.

Nothing. Nothing has changed. Some trophies and trinkets have come and gone (some to be reclaimed soon) but nothing is different. I'm still anxiously awaiting the next opportunity I'll have to throw down $50 on any PPV he appears on. I'll sit waiting for that moment when I'll feel that familiar giddiness in my gut; when the masses fall silent and the stadium goes black. And as the notes of the ukulele trickle in gently over the roaring crowd I'll have the same familar thought - the champion is coming........

You know the feeling.- By BJPENN.COM Guest Blogger, Troy Hopson (aka Melbert)

KAHEALANI BACK TO WORKING OUT!!!

KAHEALANI BACK TO WORKING OUT AGAIN, WINTER HIS NEARLY OVER.  ONE OF HER FAVORITE THING TO DO IS PUTTING ON THE GLOVES AND START SWINGING!!!

NEED I SAY MORE???

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

MERRIE MONARCH 2010 WINNERS!!!

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH HILO, HAWAI'I ANNUAL "MERRIE MONARCH" EVENT.  THE MERRIE MONARCH FESTIVAL IS A WEEK-LONG CULTURAL FESTIVAL THAT TAKES PLACE ANNUALLY IN HILO HAWAI'I.  IT HONORS THE KING DAVID KALAKAUA, WHO WAS CALLED THE "MERRIE MONARCH" FOR HIS PATRONAGE OF THE ARTS.  HE IS CREDITED WITH RESTORING MANY HAWAIIAN CULTURAL TRADITIONS DURING HIS REIGN, INCLUDING THE HULA.  MANY "HALAU HULA" (SCHOOLS), INCLUDING SOME FROM THE U.S. MAINLAND AND JAPAN, ATTEND THE FESTIVAL EACH YEAR TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FESTIVAL EXHIBITIONS AND COMPETITIONS, WHICH ARE CONSIDERED THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS OF ALL HULA CONTESTS.  SIMPLY PUT, THE "OLYMPICS" OF HULA COMPETITIONS.

IF YOU EVER HAVE A CHANCE TO ATTEND THIS EVENT YOU MUST PLAN VERY EARLY AS TICKETS WILL SELL OUT WITHIN HOURS AFTER IT GOES PUBLIC.

HERE ARE THE "MERRIE MONARCH 2010 WINNERS" IN EACH DIVISION:

NOTE:  THE HULA DANCES ARE JUDGES IN 2 DIFFERENT CATAGORIES:

KAHIKO - ANCIENT HAWAIIAN TRADITIONAL DANCE
'AUANA - MODERN HAWAIIAN DANCE

KANE KAHIKO (ANCIENT): Ke Kai O Kahiki



KANE 'AUANA (MODERN): Ke Kai O Kahiki


WAHINE KAHIKO (ANCIENT): Halau Kealaokamaile



WAHINE 'AUANA (MODERN): Halau Kealaokamaile


MISS ALOHA HULA KAHIKO (ANCIENT):
Mahealani Mika Hirao-Solem


MISS ALOHA HULA 'AUANA (MODERN):
Mahealani Mika Hirao-Solem



I HOPE YOU ALL ENJOYED THESE PERFORMANCES ON VIDEOS.

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

UFC 112 IN BETHEL, ALASKA ON APRIL 10TH AT 0900 IN THE MORNING!!!

AFTER WORKING A GRAVESHIFT FROM 0000 - 0800, I WENT STRAIGHT HOME AND STARTED PREPARING BREAKFAST FOR MY OHANA & FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ALL GETTING READY TO SEE "BJ PENN" SCRAP!!! WELL LET ME TELL YOU, SEVERAL UNEXPLAINED OCCURENCES STARTED TO HAPPEN AS WE WERE GETTING CLOSE TO BJ'S FIGHT, AND UNBELIEVABLY, MY CABLE TV STARTED TO GET FUZZY AND THE PICTURES AND SOUND WAS ALL DISTORTED!!! NOW I GOT AROUND 13 PEOPLE HANGING AT MY PLACE AND THIS "BOGUS THING" HAS TO HAPPEN!!! NOW IT GETS EVEN BETTER, FOR NEALRY 30 MINUTES, I'M ON THE PHONE WITH "GCI TECH SUPPORT" AND OF COURSE THEY REALLY CAN'T DO ANYTHING BUT SAY, "WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVIENCES, SIR, WE'D BE HAPPY TO TAKE THE EVENT OFF YOUR BILLING AND NOT CHARGE YOU". YEAH RIGHT TELL THAT TO MY GUESTS!!! IT GETS EVEN MORE INTERESTING, MY CABLE SERVICES SUDDENLY GETS RECEPTIONS AND SOUND AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, IT'S ALL BACK UP AND RUNNING, BUT THE "BJ PENN VS FRANKIE EDGAR FIGHT" IS OVER AND SHOCKINGLY, WE'RE ALL WATCHING FRANKIE EDGAR WEARING THE BELT!!! HOW SAD IS THAT???!!! I FELT LIKE ALL "BJ PENN HATERZ" WERE ALL DOING WEIRD RITUALS JUST TO SABOTAGE "BJ PENN'S LEGACY"

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT??? BRADA GOIN' COMEBACK AND GIVE FRANKIE THE BEATING OF HIS LIFE WHEN THE REMATCH HAPPENS. A DAY AFTER THE EVENT, IT WAS REVELAED THAT BJ PENN SUFFERED A FEVER AND SINUS INFECTION AND WAS UNDER ANTIBIOTICS ALL TOGETHER. IF YOU ASK ME, FRANKIE DID NOT FIGHT AGAINST A 100% BJ PENN AS HE WE WERE ABLE TO SEE THE REPLAY AND IT WAS VERY OBVIOUS THAT BJ WAS NOT HIMSELF AND INDEED HE LOOKED "ILL" AND "UNFOCUSED" AS THIS WAS NEVER THE CASE IN THE PAST. BUT LIKE I SAID BEFORE, HE' GOIN' COMEBACK AND SHOW THE WORLD AGAIN, WHO "BJ PENN" IS AND ALL ABOUT!!!

BUT ALL IN ALL EVERYONE HAD A WONDERFUL TIME AT MY PLACE AND ENJOYED EACH OTHER'S COMPANY AND MORE TO COME IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

DA ALEXIE OHANA MEETS DA WAIPA OHANA...

MAHALO TO GIFF, ROY, AND SUNNY FOR MAKING THE TIME TO STOP IN HILO, HAWAI'I TO MEET MY DAD. A MESSAGE FROM MY DAD TO YOU 3, SHOULD YOU DECIDE TO COME BACK TO HILO, HAWAI'I, HIS HOME IS OPEN TO YOU FOLKS AND PLAN ON STAYING FOR AT LEAST WEEK NEXT TIME.

AWWWRITE!!!

WAIPA

"The best fighter in the world competes Saturday, April 10th, 2010...

Lately, the pound-for-pound debate has been taking a three-way split: Anderson Silva, Georges St. Pierre, and Fedor Emelianenko. B.J. Penn’s suffocation at the hands of St. Pierre over a year ago has polluted his participation. And it’s a shame. Of the four men mentioned, it’s Penn who has done the most to convince me his abilities deserve discussion of transcending the sport.


What other 155-pound athlete could ever survive in a ring against the current 205-pound champion? (Penn did, against Lyoto Machida in 2005.) Who else could have moved up to 170 to obliterate Matt Hughes at a time when Hughes was driving a steamroller over contenders? (St. Pierre hasn’t budged from 170; Anderson Silva went to 205 for fights against Forrest Griffin and James Irvin.)


Penn takes chances. While they’re not always successful, he shouldn’t be penalized for leaving his ego near the apron.


If he beats Frankie Edgar Saturday, Penn tells MMAWeekly.com that he might consider another, proper run at the welterweight title. “I think a fighter has to stay true to himself and what his goals and accomplishments are, what really motivates him,” he said. “…I really wouldn’t mind being the welterweight champion again.”


Previously, Penn’s conditioning didn’t match his ambitions: he showed up underweight and overmatched for the Hughes and St. Pierre sequels. What he needs is quality weight, not the garbage pounds he piled on during a run in Japan. Mackie Shilstone, who stuffed Michael Spinks with 4,000 calories a day and successfully helped him challenge for Larry Holmes’ heavyweight title, met with Penn once; he’s now hooked up with notorious fitness guru Marv Marinovich, who has fueled Penn’s long-distance efforts at 155 over the past two years. (Marv and his brother Gary, Penn told ESPN the Magazine, “turned me back into a 22-year-old.”)


Performance is relative to environment. Penn finishes fights; St. Pierre does not. Penn moves up; St. Pierre remains stationary. Penn pursues the best; Silva says he can’t fight his friends. The best fighter in the world competes Saturday, and his name is B.J. Penn.


-By Jake Rossen of sherdog.com

Marv Marinovich In-Depth - Past, Present and Future

If the man sought a place with no past, he did well. He stands inside a trucking warehouse at the end of a potholed drive near the port of Hilo. The Hawaiian sun reflects off the windows of a gigantic cruise ship docked a few hundred yards away.


A section of the dank, windowless building has been transformed into a training center for UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn, whose local celebrity mandates a secret compound. Here, in this sport, in this
warehouse, untethered by judgment and unencumbered by history, Marv Marinovich does the one thing he has always believed is his destiny: He strives to create athletic perfection.


There are Marv Marinovich stories and then there is the Marv story, which is really the Marv and Todd story, with all its ominous details -- Baby Todd teething on frozen kidney beans, hamstrings stretched in the crib, pull-ups by age 3 -- that forebode disaster, the son's promising career inexorably derailed by drug addiction and arrests.


But consider some other chapters of Marv's story. He was one of the NFL's first strength and conditioning coaches, the godfather of the NFL combine format, a forerunner of the movement to pair strength with
flexibility. His unconventional methods are only now gaining traction as he enters his eighth decade. He is not much of an MMA fan -- "I don't like that you can elbow a guy in the head," he says -- but he and his brother Gary have tunneled deep inside the sport to redirect the 31-year-old Penn's career and, in the fighter's words, "turn me back into a 22-year-old."


The convergence of Penn and Marinovich is fortuitous. Mixed martial arts is young and non-traditional, free of institutional training ideas, maybe the last outpost of sledgehammer swinging, tire throwing and car pushing. It is also nearly context free, open to people and ways that have trouble finding credence elsewhere. Here, Marinovich is not the tyrant who turned his son Todd's childhood into a laboratory experiment, or the ultimate cautionary tale of sports parenting. Here, not many know that when young Todd was a month old, Marv introduced him to push-ups, or that on Todd's fourth birthday, Marv took him on a four-mile jog (Todd ran it in 32 minutes). Nobody mentions that Todd -- anointed the first test-tube athlete in 1988, the first All-Pac-10 freshman quarterback in 1989 and an NFL first-rounder in 1991 -- ended up with as many arrests as pro games played with the Raiders (eight).
Here, he is simply Marv, a soft-spoken senior with a savant's knowledge of the body and its possibilities.


He works, too. Oh, how he works. It's all he and Gary do. They're obsessed with working harder, smarter and better, searching for some kinetic secret that will make a body as explosive as -- yes -- a laboratory creation. "Marv's a mad scientist and an artist," Penn says. "When you're around him, you feel you're in the presence of greatness. There's an aura about him."


Marv and Gary arrive at the warehouse before 9 a.m. each day to put Penn and some other fighters through a grueling two-hour regimen: cone drills, box jumps and less conventional exercises such as walking around on footlong sections of four-inch PVC pipe. The Marinoviches are big proponents of light weights, intense stretching and a crushing pace: Much of Penn's workout revolves around rapid repetitions on a leg-and-torso machine called The Bear. "You can't train slow and expect to compete fast," Marv says. His workouts, all Spartan equipment and
furious pace, look like some sort of advanced medievalism.


The brothers return in the evening for a 90-minute session of speed and strength work, including sets of sprints that last 25 solid minutes, the length of a five-round UFC bout. "There are times when I'm completely exhausted and he'll tell me to do something, and I'll think, You're not really going to ask me to do that now, are you?" Penn says. "If it was someone else asking, I might not."


The brothers are quite a pair. Marv is shy, self-conscious, understandably wary of media attention. He doesn't say much, unless the topic is training, physiology or training and physiology, in which case he will talk all day. He is a grizzly of a man, thick chested and especially sturdy for 70. Gary is 16 months younger but could pass for a prematurely silver 50. He is in infomercial shape, preposterously fit. This cannot be overstated. Gary Marinovich's body is yoked. He is also more talkative and animated than his brother. With a face unlined beneath a bright curtain of hair, he seems less scarred by life.


Between sets, Marv and Gary often step aside to huddle, like a pitcher and a catcher on the mound, to discuss the progress or direction of a session. They stand upright, noses inches apart, emerging only when a consensus is reached. "They never let us hear what they're saying,"Penn says. "Sometimes they'll talk for a while and Marv will say, 'Okay, one more set.' And you're thinking, That's what they were talking about all this time?"


The Marinoviches' working relationship appears seamless. Marv is the big-picture guy, Gary sweats the details. He is also his brother's unofficial translator, turning Marv's esoterica into concepts Penn can understand. Penn's wrestling coach, Kenny Johnson, an eclectic sort who once wrote a 90-page poem, says, "Those guys could talk for five hours on the position of a kneecap. It's awesome how obsessed they are."


Maybe it was inevitable that Marv would find his way to mixed martial arts. Its multidiscipline format is a daily Mardi Gras for a guy whose preferred language is bundled in terms like "elastic movement," "force production" and "speed of muscular contraction." To him, Penn's body is a science project. The first task: Determine its weaknesses and resolve them through what Marv calls "nervous-system training." On this day, eight weeks before Penn's April 10 title fight against No. 1 contender Frankie Edgar, the trainer sounds distressed when he says there is a hip-flexion issue that remains unresolved.


Penn and the Marinovich brothers met after the fighter's Jan. 31, 2009, loss to Georges St-Pierre, just as the whispers about Penn's conditioning began to be spoken in an outside voice. The UFC legend was on the verge of being forever known as a supremely gifted athlete -- hence the nickname The Prodigy -- who taunted his potential with a haphazard work ethic and the particularly Hawaiian notion that training and partying aren't mutually exclusive.


So J.D. Penn, B.J.'s older brother and business manager, set up auditions for trainers who might rectify B.J.'s fitness issues. When the Penns flew to San Diego to meet one candidate, they were greeted by two quirky old brothers ready to go to work. On equipment they brought in for the occasion, the Marinoviches put Penn through a quick workout before taking him to a pool, where he endured Marv's specialty: a relfex-based program that includes a lot of hand-tapping and standing on one foot. Penn thought it was silly, mostly because he felt off balance much of the session.


The Penns flew back to Hawaii. Two days later B.J. was grappling when he realized he'd just made two moves he hadn't attempted in years. He quickly made the connection with the water workout and told J.D., "Get those guys out here."


He hasn't lost since, and his reputation as an MMA immortal is assured. (Not for nothing, Penn's legend has been enhanced by a freakish YouTube clip of him jumping clear out of the three-foot end of a filled pool and landing on his feet on the pool deck; it's about to pass four million views.) He used to take chances early in fights because he was afraid of gassing out, or conserve energy to have something left for the later rounds - no more. In his most recent fight, a five-round beatdown of No. 1 contender Diego Sanchez, Penn declined when his cornermen offered him a stool between rounds. " When I look at the difference, it's got to be Marv and Gary," Penn says. "Same boxing coach, same wrestling coach. They're the only thing I changed."

-By Frank W. Ockenfels of ESPN The Magazine available on News Stands March 5th 2010.