July 3, 2009

Steve Brawner
Special to Rivals High

This Daniel is the real karate kid.

Daniel Mizufuka, a 16-year-old third-degree black belt, won two world championships at the American Taekwondo Association's 2009 Songahm World Championships in Little Rock, Ark., last week. The event drew 5,000 competitors from 17 countries competing in various age groups and skill levels.

Competing with second- and third-degree black belts in the boys' 14-16 age group, Mizufuka entered the tournament ranked No. 1 in the world in four categories: traditional forms, where competitors perform a standard routine of individual moves; traditional weapons, where they use weapons as part of the routine; and extreme versions of both events, where they create their own routines.

The junior from Palo Verde High School in Las Vegas, who trains at Pino and Bantum Black Belt Academy, had won a world championship in 2006 but struggled through two disappointing years at the competition. That changed Thursday in the traditional weapons category. His high-energy nunchucks routine was good enough to land him in a four-way tie, but it wasn't clear who had won after the tiebreaking routines. He shed tears when the head judge called for scores and the three judges pointed to him as the winner.

"I put in hours and hours, and I train constantly just for this moment," he said afterward.

Mizufuka didn't fare as well in his next competition, extreme weapons. After dropping his nunchucks early in the routine, he had no chance of defeating a savage sword routine by Drew Wall from Jackson, Tenn., and finished fourth.

"You can't change what happened," Mizufuka said. "You can only develop on that, so it's just going to make me train harder for next year."

Training harder means increasing a regimen that already takes up two to three hours a day, five days a week ? a regimen shared by others ranked in the top 10 in various categories.

Jessica Chin, a third-degree black belt and a junior who attends Notre Dame Academy in Los Angeles, won the girls' ages 14-16 competition in the traditional weapons category with a nearly flawless bow staff routine ? the result of practicing three times a day with the weapon.

On Friday, Mizufuka won the extreme forms and came in second in the traditional forms competition to Drew Hayward of Jacksonville, Fla.

Curtis Fulks, a third-degree black belt from Marietta, Ga., who has been practicing taekwondo for 11 years, won the free-sparring championship, defeating Billy Wallis of Hialeah, Fla., in the final.

For Fulks, it was his fourth world championship, all in free-sparring ? the one category that involves actual hand-to-hand combat. Unlike the competitors in the fictional "Karate Kid" movies, players wear protective equipment over their heads and torsos, with points scored for clean kicks and punches. Judges try to determine who makes first contact during action that can be lightning-fast.

Fulks said that every taekwondo artist should develop his or her own style, but that he tries to base his on the kinds of simple moves he learned at the beginning of his training.

"I don't really do anything special ? like, I rarely jump or spin-kick," he said. "I used to, but my philosophy is, you come up, you have to come down, and you're not going to be on balance when you land. So I just stick with the basics."

No crane technique, in other words.

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