How I judge,battle tactics, and how to deal with callouts
Everyone has a different view on breaking and how to judge. So
as a judge I am naturally going to get called out for making
a "bad decision." When getting called out it starts off as a
verbal argument- usually like fuck you your wack my crew deserved
to win. And here's my response
"Listen, first off your always going to feel your crew won because,
its YOUR crew." I then go on to say this "I'm down to throw down
but first I'm going to tell you why I voted the way I did." Then
after that if they still feel the need to throw down to see if
I'm qualified then I'm down by all means. I feel if the occasion
Is correct- proving yourself as a good bboy (good enough to judge
others) is a must. If some scrub comes up to me bitching and
complaining- I'm prolly not going to battle him, reason being-
he doesn't understand breaking well enough yet, so regardless
of you winning or losing the callout they'll still call you wack.
So in this instance I tell them to hang around till the end,
after its all said and done we'll get down.
Before I get into how I judge I'm going to go over my call out strategy.
If I'm calling out someone,
I start off with a super explosive quick set (I mean 5-10 seconds,
skipping major toprock, I mean a cross step at most. Then 1-3
rds of footwork ending with a basic baby or chair freeze) reason
being I want to gauge them before things get underway. I want to
see if they're going to throw long sets, if it has mostly power,
mostly footwork, or a good mixture. This determines how I'm going
to attack them.if they're highly aggressive I'm going to attack
them calmly and pick them apart with flow. If they have decent sets
mixing in and out of power my goal is to do the same and beat them
major move for major move. These callout battles are not usually
1-5 rds. The are 10-20 or more. You haven't won until you destroyed
your opp and they have nothing to come back at you with OR
your beating them so bad and they just can't handle the heat.
The goal of these callouts is generally to prove a point as well
as gain the respect of your peers/judges OR to give respect to the
judge. If you feel they wronged you do your thing and at the end
say your peace, win OR lose, give them respect even if its a
headnod and a pound. They deserve it for going the rounds with
you regardless of who "wins." Because there's so many people who
will say you won and others will say the other guy won
If someone is calling me out.
I let them start it because they're calling me out. Again letting
them set the pace for the battles, i will usually let them win
the first 1-3 rds just so they use up their moves and give me
a few rounds to feel out their style. I want to start out weak
and end assaulting them. I will start off super mellow and as
they get more hype and talk shit get more aggressive. The trick
is to NOT let the words get to you. My wrestling coach always
used to tell me " don't let the other ref tell you how to wrestle.
You do what I taught you to do and you'll win, I promise you"
and this is the most influential quote that stays with me
from wrestling. DON'T let OTHER PEOPLE tell you how to break
and don't let them change your game plan. I've beat much better
bboys because they were powerheads or trickers and it was
soooo easy to get in their head. If you can get in their head
(verbally or not) you've already won. All I said is "where's
the footworkl? Where's your foundation? What the fuck were
those tops? That's not dancing, THIS is dancing." Usually if
you got in their head with that, they'll try to top or do
more footwork which just played into your hand. Note-if your
saying these things-Make sure its your strong point. Don't
call out a powerhead on footwork and then have shitty footwork
yourself.
Coincidentally, if someones saying these things to you, just
smile at them and do your thing. By not playing into their mouth
your winning. It'll get into their head that you just fucked
up their game plan.they'll start panicking and do whatever they
can to get into your head by being more explosive or mouthy.
All you have to do at this point is say "clearly your not good
enough to let your moves do the talking, so while you talk,
I'll dance." This usually gets the crowd (if there is one) on
your side of "oooooh shit did you just hear that-he just schooooled
him"
War is all about strategy. Example- for a 2v2, recently I
had a battle and it was me (I'd like to say I'm mostly a
powerhead because a lot of people say that's all I can do-
which is why I'm doing less and less power to show I can
top,footwork,and freeze well, showing my originality instead
of some pretty power.- which I now get called a biter for
because this wasn't stuff I used to do. But that's a whole nother
discussion) and my boy. He's a stylehead for sure with some flips.
we vs'd a powerhead and ablowup guy. (Regardless of the outcome)
we decided to set up the stylehead vs the power head and the
blowup guy vs me. Reason being when it comes to style vs power
it comes down to who's doing their art best. So often times
it'll come to a tie or go towards the stylehead-reason being a
powerhead has to do dope ILL power that has a higher risk of
crashing where as style you just need to do footwork, make it
flashy, and throw some techs in there. And we didn't want my
power that I was throwing against the blowup guy to be judged
against the other power head because his power was superior to
mine. We also both decided to throw power just to show we have
it as well and it worked out well for us and it was a close
battle.I feel the best way to start off is tops (do more then
the power step and cross step- its a very easy portion of our
dance to lose points for your round right off the get go)
NOW ONTO HOW I JUDGE- this isn't for calling other people out
on how they judge, because just like different styles of
dancing there's different styles of judging and everyone judges
differently. If you don't like how the judges judged then YOU
shouldn't have played it so close to the cuff and made it so
blatantly obvious you won, the judges have no choice but to
choose you. Just like boxing "if you leave it to the judges
then you have given up your decision"
I judge on multiple things
1- toprock
Are you dancing on beat,are you hitting major and minor beats,
are you doing different tops/techs or is it the same
crossstep/power step. Are you using the right kind of tops for
the music (you can't use heavy house steps to a metal breakbeat)
2-drops
Are you using different drops or dropping at all
3-footwork
Variation in footwork, is it all foundation or is there techs
in there, is it generic
4-freezes
How many are you doing, what's the level of difficulty these
freezes are, do you hold them/(did you crash it or did you
hit it)
5-power/tricks (this includes blowups)
Are you doing power, is it clean, are there variations, how
long are you doing it for (72 munchmills or 20 flare mill
airflare combos does nothing for me, I got the point after
3-you have tricks cool) the difficulty of them, and again
IS IT CLEAN. I have super beef with people doing tons of
power and it being ugly and getting moved onto the next round
because they did super sloppy power.
6-transitions
Do you move from one thing to another clean, is it awkward,
are you doing the same transition from everything
7-originality
This goes without saying- have I seen the same set 1000 times
from tons of other people. Are you doing someone elses moves or
your own (this comes down to where did you come up with this
from-many people can comeup with the same move-there's only so
many moves out there)
8-crowd/personality
Is the crowd feeling you/can I feel your soul while your dancing.
If I can't feel your soul in your dancing or your personality
shining through I have to assume your not being yourself or your
doing carbon sets that you do because they're pretty or something
to that reason. Don't fake the funk my friends- and if you do
fake it, MAKE IT. Make me feel like your not faking it.this also
accounts for your battle attitude to me.I personally don't care
for douchebags so if I feel your a total tool I'll actually vote
against you more for being a douche rather then having no soul-
odd right?
9- overall
How much did you put into your set vs your opponent. If your opp
did 30 moves and you did 3. Even if those 3 were dope I more
than likely am going to give it to your opp or call it a tie-
being- to me it says I'm giving up. It may not say that to the
judge next to me but it says "I'm not even going to try this
round" unless its some super fuckin crazy 3 moves, 1 handed
flares> elbow tracks>elbow spin. Something crazy as hell like
that,that the WORLD has never seen that makes the crowd jump
into the battle and basically put it on hold will beat those 30
moves.
10-lastly resets
If your doing a set, stop stand up and start again, I take
off points usually because it breaks up the flow, unless
you do a power set>reset>style set, or vice versa.there's always
exceptions to every rule as well you can do a set reset, lookl
around or point someone out and do a move or series of moves, it
adds in a new dynamic factor of originality or battle tactics
Then after that I go rd for rd. We'll do a 1v1 scenario and
a 2v2
1v1
John vs mike
John starts out first, he starts off with the win for rd 1.
(Inbetween rd 1 is now J-1, M-0)
To win rd 1 mike has to beat johns rd.(And he doesn't)
(Inbetween rds- J-1,M-0)
John goes out, again wins his rd
Mike goes out and beats Johns round
(End of battle J-1,M-1)
Now I look at the overall battle and see how they did, if I
feel 1 person did better they get the win.
Final decision-John wins.
If I feel they both did equally good and it was honestly 1rd
each and no one won their rd by that much more
-example
Johns 1st rd gets a 6.5
Mikes 1st rd gets a 6.0
John's 2nd rd gets a 5.0
Mikes 2nd rd gets a 5.5
There wasn't a significant winning round so a tie they'll get
tied. Then going into a tiebreaker which will be judged only
for their tiebreaker rd. I count it as a whole new battle
2v2 scenario
I'll use A,B,C,D for names because this shit takes forever to
type on a blackberry lol. For 2v2's or crew battles I also
factor in routines and commandos. They have to be legit or else
I don't count them. If 2 people do a forward roll and then a
backwords roll and a 3rd guy just walks out-thats lame. Or
after a commando/routine the guy brought in stops and walks in
a circle before their set (to me the com/rou. Was their entrance
A/C are teamed up and B/D are teamed up
A- starts out, rd 1
(Just like above, they start off with a win because there's
nothing to judge them against)
B- goes out, and wins the rd
A/C-0 vs B/D-1
Now here's where it gets weird because there's 2 different ways
of judging and every one who judges will go back and fourth
between these 2 ways)
Way 1- 1st person to go is battling the 2nd person to go. Then
3rd battles 4th.
How person 2 does, doesn't get judged against how person 3 does.
Way 2-
Person 1 goes, then person 2 is battling 1 and 3's set. Then person
3 is battling person 2 and 4's set. And person 4 is battling person
3 and 1st set. Sounds complicated but its not
(For this purpose since the 1v1 was done by way 1, the 2ve will be
done with way 2)
So for review
A/C-0 vs B/D-1
C goes out and beats B's rd
A/C-1 vs B/D-1
D goes out and loses to C's rd (so B/D doesn't get any points for
D's rd)
A/C-1 vs B/D-1
A goes out and does wack, so then b goes out and wrecks shit
A/C-1 vs B/D-2
C goes out and does ok but doesn't beat B's rd.
A/C-1 vs B/D-2
D goes out and does terrible! Poor guy, because of that terrible
round C still gets a rd victory because his set was still better
then D's rd
A/C-2 vs B/D-2
I think that's about it. Any questions feel free to hit me up
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