I watched the Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight today and I wanted to summarise my thoughts here. This fight will go down as one of the most anticipated and biggest fights in my lifetime. Here’s my Mayweather vs Pacquiao fight review.
tl;dr Floyd Mayweather won the fight but Manny Pacquiao won the crowd.
Watching the announcement of Muru-d’s top 10 startups live. Stoked that LimeRocket and Pixcapp got in!
watching superbowl in berkley
home made cornbread. this was awesome!
Americans don’t seem to like Vegemite for some reason….
vegemite sandwich
Served at Australian kids parties and berkley superbowl parties
But they like fairy bread…
odwalla fruit smoothie. tastes amazing!
chairman bao food truck
I went to level LL
This is what I found…..
Cain vs JDS
I love the confidence of Javier Mendez, Cain Velasquez’s MMA Coach on the upcoming JDS vs Cain fight:
“I see the fight playing out more or less like that last one; different type of scenario but same type of thing. The pressure is on and Junior is doing his best to try and finish Cain. That’s the only way Junior can win is to try to finish him. He’s not going to win a decision; he’s not going to win a round.“
via UFC 166: Velasquez Coach Says JDS Will Not Win A Single Round Tonight In Main Event MMA News
Wow, killer quote! I’ve highlighted the part in bold that I really like. Boxing and MMA are those sports where you need supreme confidence in yourself. Its a one on one battle. Its as much about mental strength as physical strength. Anderson Silva used to defeat opponents before they even stepped into the ring. Same with the great Ali as well.
Cain & JDS throwdown
I heard about one basketball game where Michael Jordan started counting down from the number 40 every time he scored. He’d score one basket and say “38” to his opponent. Scored again and said “36”, “34” and continued. Then his opponents figured it out. It showed the level of confidence he had in himself. Even though his opponents knew what he wanted to do, there was nothing you could do to stop him. He ended up with 42 points that night.
If you read this blog, you’ll probably know that I’m a huge Chicago Bulls fan. I saw this quote today from the Pacers vs Bulls preseason game and a quote from Tom Thibodeau really struck a chord with me:
“We have the capability to be an excellent rebounding team, but we need everybody to rebound. You have to hit, you have to fight, you have to pursue, and that takes work and multiple effort and it takes heart. And when you play this game you have to play with an edge.”
A lot of these quotes remind me of startups, but also of life. If you want to do anything well and be successful, you have to fight for it. You have to pursue it. The times you see success, its only 1% of the time. People don’t realise the other 99% of the time was spent struggling, training, and working your butt off when no one was watching. Very few startups hit it out of the park immediately. Just like no boxer is punching out people on the way to the top and not putting in work. I was talking to some people at my church yesterday, and they were saying that the top high school swim squads will wake up at 5am daily, and train 7 times a week.
Even though boxing is a puglistic sport, I remember watching an interview with Mike Tyson. The interviewer said “you had a powerful punch, you could knock people out with one punch”. But Mike corrected him and said “In my younger days, I was trying to knock everyone out. But its not the strongest fighter that wins. Its the smartest fighter.“.
Mike Tyson – more than punching power!
Even if you watch his earliest fights, Mike was a very technical fighter. It wasn’t just about power and strength. The combination of hand speed, power, footwork, movement, technique and aggression was unmatched. It requires talent but also training, hard work and smarts. Obviously, the smart thinking and training went out the window when he took that bite.
Btw I’m rooting for Cain to win! I saw him fight at my first live UFC event in Sydney, Australia. It only lasted one minute but I still saw the current Heavyweight Champion fight and win 🙂
I’m out like TKO’s
Matt Ho
Startup life isn’t easy.
I’ve only done it for 3 months so I’m still pretty new at it. I never figured it would be easy, but every day is an uphill battle.
You gotta be prepared to scramble.
By that I mean, able to address some glaring task that suddenly needs your immediate attention. Ability to hit deadlines. Do some things you’ve never done before. Quickly switch between tasks and juggle a bunch of things going on at the same time. But always keep on moving forward. It’s like you gotta be the king of scrambles*.
I feel like my startup has momentum and that’s part of the reason I decided to do it full-time. There’s no way that we could have gotten this far by doing it part time. It requires a lot of effort to get an idea off the ground. Much more than I realised.
I also have a lot more respect now for people that who run their own business whether its big or small. Whether its company with 15 staff to the owner of the local fruit store. Its actually a lot of hard work.
In the last few days, I’ve been working on product, reviewing designs, testing, talking to a lawyer, fixing our content, experimenting with Facebook ads, and organising translations of our app store descriptions. We’re now on the Korean and German Android market in those respective languages, with more to come. I also dedicate some time to finance and capital raising.
We’ve done some important things and hit some milestones. We launched a lite version, exhibited at Techcrunch Disrupt Beijing in October and now at 600 users.
I just gotta keep scrambling =)
————-
*Brazilian jiu-jitsu grappler Marcelo Garcia is known as “king of the scrambles”. He’s a 4 time world champ and 3 time ADCC champion. Garcia often competed and won in the absolute division which is a pound for pound competition with no weight class limitations and could be giving up 20-30 kilos to larger competitors. He simply had an ability to win against larger opponents with superior technique and an advanced understanding of leverage. In startup life, you have to be prepared to move and dance against much larger opponents, be nimble and agile, take their back and execute ruthlessly =)
This is a cool upcoming doco about Air Force 1’s, probably the most famous sneaker out there, along with Chuck Taylors, Jordans, Nike Air Max and Tigers!
I must admit I have a pair of Cloverdale Park 25th Anniversary Edition Air Force 1’s. They are actually a bit tight, making them a bit uncomfortable and they are kinda heavy. But that’s more a sizing issue as they only had limited sizes when I bought them at the Nike Factory.
There’s a lot of documentaries about Nike Air Force 1. This particular documentary is part of WBF (World Basketball Festival) in New York which is sponsored by Nike. This looks like an awesome 4 days of celebrating the best sport in the world (MMA/UFC is second).
Nike also created this series of online docos called 1Love, which highlights the 5 boroughs in New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx, Manhattan). They also have a video for Harlem, but I don’t think Harlem is a borough, and there’s no video for Manhattan. But enjoy nonetheless!
If you want to check more video’s look here:
Air Force 1, Part 1
Air Force 1, part 2
Top 100 Air Force 1 (Prolly my most favourite video, especially part 2)
I will never understand why people do sports like this….it must the rush, the adrenalin, overcoming your fears and the risk involved. I cringed when I saw some of those injuries.
Anyhow, this is pure co-incidence – but at work we did a creative exercise where we created online display ads for a fictious energy drink, Fuqu. Then I came across the new Redbull website. I really like what Redbull is doing with its video content. They are positioning it with an adventure / extreme sport image. Redbull is associated with skateboarding, BMX riding, flying planes etc… It’s very cool.
I don’t really drink redbull these days (as they are bad for your health!). However, their videos are very slick and their marketing strategy is very good, particularly with social media. Check out their facebook page and integration with twitter. Redbull sponsored athletes provide Twitter updates and the feed is aggregated onto the facebook page.
I’m out like major wipeouts,
Matt
NRL has started and is now in round 2, and the AFL is about to kick off. What better way than to show case both season launch ads. Now I’m not an AFL fan, other than a Sydney Swans supporter by virtue of being from Sydney. However, I do think that the AFL ad is better. C’mon NRL, step yo game up!
AFL Season Launch Ad
NRL Season Launch Ad
I’m out like the offseason,
Matthew Ho
