Austin is one of my favorite cities to travel to for competition. The city is a vibrant hub of technology, history and beautiful people. I always enjoy traveling there for tournaments several times a year for great martial arts competitions. My favorite part is being with friends and the opportunity to challenge myself, to push the envelope of human endurance and feel the exhilaration and excitement from the results of endless hours of training. I believe training in martial arts improves your mental, physical and spiritual strength.
The Gipsy Open tournament is one of Austin’s prime martial arts events in the TKO Karate Organization not just because of its size but because it is attended by some of the best martial artists in the country. Team Gipsy has always been one of the top sport karate teams in the USA rivaling the legendary Team Paul Mitchel and the best sport karate teams in the in the world. Only the top competitors in Texas are accepted by Team Gipsy. Thanks to the financial support of its founder Gil Urias who has enabled many of the best competitors to make Texas stand at the top and be examples to other up-and-coming martial artists.
The great and legendary sparring world champion Raymond Danials and his legendary world champion wife, Colby Daniels, sister of UFC champion Sage Northcutt, were in attendance along with their magnificent Team Evolution who proceeded to make their mark in Sport karate with a string of well-earned victories. Raymond and Colby now reside in Georgetown Texas. For those of you who don’t know Raymond and Colby have won more world titles than anyone else in sport karate history in sparring,
weapons and kata.
This year on July 26 th , 2025, Gipsy Open was once again held at the LBJ High School in Austin Texas. A large crowd of competitors and their families filled the main gym complex and proceeded to prepare for competition. The tournament started after the initial preliminary opening exercises and the usual demo and starter divisions. The usual children’s, junior divisions and adult under black belt divisions were ran consecutively along with the junior black belt kata, kickboxing, grappling and other specialty divisions.
Then most of the junior and under black belt sparring was finalized.
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The adult black belt kata divisions were also run consecutively with the junior black belt divisions and after they were completed the adult black belt sparring proceeded. Ralph Urias of team Gipsy won big in the Black Belt senior 60 plus division and Michael Young, a special guest fighter all the way from Colorado Spring’s Colorado won the 50 plus black belt sparring division. Daygan Talbott won the adult men’s black belt Sparring grand championship and the amazing Christine Subonj also known as Spongy, was a dual women’s grand champion in both the adult women’s Kata grand championship and the adult women’s sparring grand championship.
In the final grand championships of the day Michael Brumme won the adult black belt traditional forms grand championship and his brother Sam Brumme pulled out an amazing win over his brother who is the unbelievable Phillip Brumme also a member of the top world Team Paul Mitchel. Both were awesome but, in the end, it was a slippery outer foam matt the did Phillip in and gave the victory to his brother Sam Brumme. Now I thought I’d seen it all but, in the Junior, creative forms grand championship a group of five junior black belts went at it with Michael Moline and sister Kozi Moline in a showdown with both running what I can only call fantastic forms. Michael did triple rotations while throwing a spinning staff 15 feet in the air and catching it. Not to be outdone his sister performed some of the greatest ariel acrobatic techniques that I haven’t seen since the 2002 NBL world games. Kozi ended up being the judges pick for
the Grand champion.
Other Grand champions were Mercy Juarez – junior Traditional black belt grand champion, Jonny Campos – Adult under belt forms grand champion, Manasaa Padmanabhan – junior beginner grand champion, Ace Dhanani – junior advanced grand champion and Gwendolyn Guerra was the winner of the intermediate form’s grand championship. Congratulations to Gil Urias, Wayne Nguyen and the hard-working judges and volunteers for making this tournament a big success.
