In this episode, I sit down with a man who is a pioneer in the kickboxing and martial arts community. He is a man of many talents, but I think the most important thing to remember about him is that he is a father, a husband, a grandfather, a father-in-law, a brother, a son, a friend, and a husband. He has been through a lot in his life, and I think it's important for people to recognize him as one of the pioneers of the martial arts scene.
00:01:22.000Well, tell the story about your son and how that whole thing started.
00:01:25.000Well, you know, unfortunately in some communities, drive-bys aren't uncommon.
00:01:32.000And so when it becomes a generational curse, you know, and kids are getting killed sometimes randomly, that happened to me.
00:01:42.000It came knocking on my door in a valley that's got two million people.
00:01:47.000It knocked on my door, and I was just, I was, I'm going to put it this way, I had a calling on my life to do something about it because it became a situation where families and community was like, well, yeah, well, that's what happens in our community.
00:02:05.000And I was saying, that is not what happens in our community.
00:02:41.000Still going 36 years later, put an organization together and some with real lived experience, others with degrees, and really put together a whole nonprofit that speaks directly to it where it's at.
00:02:56.000And so at the end of the day, yeah, it's over when we say it's over.
00:03:40.000So to this day, I still continue to press in with a whole different, how would I say, integrated service delivery, but keeping violence in the middle of it and dealing with it.
00:03:56.000And it's awesome that you brought them to a place like the Jet Center where they can learn discipline, learn how to fight, build real confidence, learn real martial arts skills, and also real martial arts mentality, especially when it's coming from guys like you.
00:04:11.000I mean, I remember when you knocked out Jean Yves Terrio.
00:06:55.000That's so crazy that you didn't even know what you were in for.
00:06:59.000Like, who was the promoter that set that up?
00:07:02.000You know, actually, believe it or not, my brother, Arnold, was asked, you know, he says, he was calling me the world champion because in 73 it was called Full Contact Karate.
00:07:14.000And Blinky and I, you know, we went to Hawaii and no rules, no weight divisions, no nothing.
00:11:00.000So when you trained in this, like when, so after the first fight, did you bring in a Muay Thai guy to train with and explain you elbows and show you how they're throwing their techniques?
00:11:10.000Or how did you learn how to deal with these guys?
00:11:13.000Basically, somebody had black and white was filming.
00:11:18.000And I kind of looked at it and I went to an old gentleman that used to actually do clothing and shoes and so forth in this leather shop.
00:11:30.000And I asked him, I said, I want to protect my shins.
00:13:38.000And he says, once you break, you know, you tear all the tissues and the nerves of your shin.
00:13:45.000He said, later on, it will affect you.
00:13:47.000This is the reason why I started designing.
00:13:51.000So we can, and I mean, these were like homemade shin guards.
00:13:57.000So did you ever work out with a Thai man, like a Muay Thai fighter who was showing you how they do the techniques, or did you only learn it from film?
00:16:04.000You know, I was going to say, you know, there was a phase there, because you mentioned Chuck Norris earlier, that he raised some money in Detroit, and he had done Into the Dragon.
00:16:14.000So he had that notoriety, and he had a cattle call.
00:16:18.000So fighters came from all over Southern Cal to his dojo in Santa Monica, and it was single eliminations to the knockout to see which five guys would represent LA.
00:16:29.000And the same was going on in New York, the New York Dragons, Detroit, the Detroit Dragons, D.C., the D.C. Dynamos, and then the Texas Gladiators.
00:16:41.000Those were the teams people were vying for.
00:16:50.000And then Steve Sanders, who was the old name in traditional karate, three of his guys from the Black Karate Federation, Ernest Madman Russell, Danny Ferguson, Sugar Bear, we were the LA team.
00:17:02.000And what's crazy is that you won as a team.
00:17:05.000If you went out there and knocked the guy out or you got knocked out, they got 25 points.
00:17:12.000And so it was an accumulation of points that you would get $1,500, but the losers got $700.
00:17:22.000So that took off, and the last tournament or fight show that they had was in Detroit.
00:17:31.000And after that, that's when things started going another direction.
00:17:35.000But it's just interesting the way that it evolved.
00:19:36.000So you want to stop somebody that was dancing, you go right for the calf and they become flat-footed.
00:19:41.000But if you had some people that had good right hands, you kick them in the thighs, they couldn't lean on that front leg to hit with the right cross.
00:19:50.000So there was a really method of combat, of warriorship in there that we developed over the years that we knew how to take power from our opponent.
00:20:03.000It's just crazy that it took so long for MMA to recognize the potency of the calf kick.
00:20:09.000Because, you know, I talked to Daniel Cormier, who was a two-division world champion.
00:20:15.000Michael Bisping became a middleweight world champion, never got calf kicked his entire career because the calf kick kind of emerged after he became a champion.
00:20:24.000Now, what's really interesting is what's happening right now.
00:20:27.000So in kickboxing and in Muay Thai, people thought, oh, the calf kick doesn't work there because the Thais know how to block it.
00:20:35.000Well, the Japanese fighters, the Kyokushin guys, are now dominating some of the Thai guys because they kick calves.
00:20:43.000There's this bad motherfucker from Japan named Yuki Yoza.
00:20:48.000That dude is lighting these people on fire because he's constant combinations and chopping at the calves and chopping from the inside and the outside with every combination.
00:20:58.000He needs crippling Thais to the point where they can't move and they're getting beat up and knocked out.
00:21:04.000There's another guy, Masaki Nori, and he's doing the same thing.
00:21:08.000And he just beat Tawenchai, who's like one of the best Thai guys.
00:21:11.000And the way he beat him was brutalizing his calves.
00:21:14.000Just kicking the inside of the calf, the outside of the calf, stopped all the movement, and then caught him with a left hook.
00:21:21.000And that's why, for me, at least, going into that fight with Bill Wallace, it was like, if you're not kicking calf thigh, body and head, it's not international.
00:23:00.000Well, we got to see some glimpses of guys who were skillful with leg kicks, fight guys who didn't know what to do with them, and then their progression.
00:23:08.000Because a good example is Don the Dragon Wilson when he fought Dennis Alexio.
00:24:37.000So Stan the Man came to stay at the JIT Center for a while.
00:24:40.000So he lived in town with us for quite a while.
00:24:45.000Yeah, my friend Shuki Ron from Majiro Gym said that he was training with Stan Longitas, and he said he got a hip replacement because Stan Longides was kicking his leg so hard with the pads on, you know, where they hold the shield.
00:25:00.000He said he had to get a hip replacement from getting kicked that hard.
00:25:31.000I mean, it's, but the thing is, unfortunately, what happened was PKA karate became a thing was, remember, you had to get a minimum amount of kicks on the ground.
00:25:55.000And so it lost a lot of the appeal to the American public, which was unfortunate because if they just allowed low kicks from the beginning and we got to see the guys from Japan, we got to see the guys from Thailand, we got to see you guys do all your thing, it would have probably flourished in America and been as big as MMA.
00:26:15.000Because this is something that I've been trying to push with the UFC.
00:26:18.000Because, you know, one championship fight, they do a real good job with it where they'll have Muay Thai fights, they'll have kickboxing fights, and they also have MMA, and they also even have grappling competitions.
00:26:29.000But I've been trying to say to the UFC, like if you, like, a lot of times people boo when people go to the ground.
00:26:34.000Well, here's the solution: have some fights where it's just stand-up fights.
00:26:39.000Have some fights, MMA gloves, Muay Thai rules, you know, where you don't go to the ground.
00:27:50.000And so my brother and Howard Hansen started the WKA World Karate.
00:27:55.000And that's when we went to Japan and we started saying everything went because in Japan, elbows and knees and so forth, because they're Muay Thai fighters over there.
00:28:21.000But, you know, the really purpose of that is because, you know, the insurance behind it, I mean, people were getting, I mean, I'm talking about just their lips opened up across their eyebrows.
00:28:34.000And I mean, they were getting from the elbows like they were like axes going across your face, you know, with elbows and so forth.
00:32:11.000One of the cool things about combat sports is that you see a new person rise doing something different, and when they do, everybody else has to sort of catch up.
00:32:20.000And then the techniques evolve, and you see everybody rise to the level of whatever this person's at and recognize that there's new techniques that people are using.
00:32:29.000Because, you know, martial arts has evolved more since 1993 to 2026 than it did in the last 10,000 years.
00:32:36.000And it's really because of exposure and because people like you guys went out there in the early, early days and laid it all out on the line to find out.
00:32:45.000Because when I started doing martial arts, it was 82, 81, or 82.
00:32:53.000And back then, no matter what you, 81, no matter what you did, you thought your style was the best.
00:33:00.000You know, if you did karate, you thought karate was the best.
00:33:03.000If you did taekwondo, that was the best.
00:33:05.000And there was no competition where everybody went together that we knew of, other than we heard about your fights that you guys had in Hawaii.
00:33:58.000And so a lot of people were thinking it's boring, but they didn't realize there was a skill on the ground, but nobody's seen it and it looked boring.
00:34:09.000But when you got up, so they were paying some of the fighters to stop the opponent standing instead of going to the ground.
00:34:17.000Well, there's a lot of promoters that definitely encourage fighters to not go to the ground and discourage them when they did go to the ground because they knew they could take a guy down and just hold him down and beat him up a little bit and win.
00:34:27.000And the promoters are like, we're not interested in you.
00:34:29.000Which I think is not fair because it's all about fighting.
00:34:33.000And if a guy can hold you down, you have to figure out how to get up.
00:34:39.000We're pretending these techniques work.
00:34:41.000Because if a guy is like a world-class wrestler, some Division I all-American, he takes you down, holds you down, you got to figure out how to handle that.
00:35:24.000I think that the crowd, you know, they want to see action and they can't see it on the ground, but they don't realize there's a lot of action going on on the ground.
00:36:42.000Well, it was my job in the early days of the UFC when it first got on television to explain to people what's going on when it hits the ground.
00:36:49.000So it was my job, you know, back in, I started working for the UFC in 2001.
00:36:54.000Well, I started in 97, then I started again in 2001.
00:36:57.000And very few people other than martial artists understood jiu-jitsu.
00:37:00.000You know, I had been training at Carlson Gracie's, and then by the time 98 came around, I was training at John Jacques Machado.
00:37:56.000And so the early days was a lot of it for me was about kind of explaining to me, to people that are at home what was happening and talking them through it.
00:38:05.000Like that was the main part of my job once the fight got to the ground.
00:39:26.000Once people, like you said, understood the damage that's going on and the need to know the technique in that art form makes you the winner.
00:39:37.000At the end of the day, who's getting their hand raised?
00:40:30.000So then that's the part, at least I'm like, wow, man, you want to make sure he don't get up, but at the end of the day, those couple of extra shots can create the damage.
00:40:57.000So yeah, I mean, so that whole Buddha heart, the tradition, that atmosphere, that spirit, little by little started dissipating.
00:41:07.000And then the new era starts coming in.
00:41:11.000I believe the injuries that end the ground and pound or whatever, but the injury, even standing up, getting knocked out, standing, and hitting the mat.
00:41:57.000But by the time they finish, it's hard for them to make a living.
00:42:02.000Especially if they're married and so forth.
00:42:06.000I mean, you've got to continue on life.
00:42:08.000So they try to make it safe enough, but at the same time, when it comes down to the art of war, it's mental warfare, it's physical warfare, it's even spiritual warfare, the energies, man, that are coming at you.
00:42:22.000So educating the public to what it really takes and what it is that we're doing in the ring, in the cage, what is exactly, okay, it's entertainment, but there's a skill.
00:42:36.000There's a skill that we're using to be able to go in there and stop an opponent without getting hit.
00:42:42.000Yeah, it really is a test of your spirit because it's a test of your spirit just to be able to discipline yourself, to get in condition and train properly.
00:42:50.000It's a test of your spirit to be able to fight at the level of your actual abilities under pressure.
00:42:56.000And when I describe martial arts competition, I say it's high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.
00:43:05.000It's just like that's what you're going against a skilled guy who's trying to do something to you and he's moving and you're trying to do something to him and any mistake, boom.
00:43:15.000And then the referees got a light in your face, and the next thing you know, you're like, oh my God, you don't know what happened.
00:43:21.000I mean, you have two types of fighters.
00:43:23.000You have a checker player who take two hits to give one that don't care.
00:43:27.000And then you have a chess player that don't like to take any and give the four, five, and six.
00:43:33.000They're the ones that are doing combinations.
00:43:35.000Well, that's why it's important where you train.
00:43:37.000You know, and the gym that you guys had set up, the Jet Center, was legendary for developing champions and legendary for teaching proper technique and showing you the consequence of the moves and also teaching people that you don't have to spar to try to kill each other all the time.
00:43:52.000You know, you could spar, like some of the best sparring I ever got was at the Jet Center because the place when I this is after I've been done fighting.
00:44:00.000When I lived in Boston, when we trained, it was war.
00:44:04.000Every time you sparred, you were just fighting.
00:45:32.000And, you know, there's like, there's a time and place for hard sparring because I think you have to have some hard sparring to sparring to understand that, hey, you can't just block something like that.
00:45:42.000You're going to get your arm fucked up.
00:45:44.000You can't just have your, you're going to have to deal with the fact that hard shots are coming your way.
00:45:49.000So sometimes you're going to have to spar hard.
00:45:51.000But technique sparring is so important too.
00:45:54.000One of the reasons why the ties are so successful is they play spar.
00:47:43.000I mean, there's so much gambling going on.
00:47:45.000When you go to a Muay Thai fight in Thailand, in the beginning of the fight, you see everybody waving money around and pointing to people, and everybody's like setting bets.
00:47:54.000So the first round, those fighters are just kind of like setting the pace and just experiencing each other's timing.
00:48:01.000And then the second round comes in, all the bets are in, they start ramping it up, and then they start really fighting, which is alien to a lot of foreigners.
00:48:09.000They go over there and they try to go wild in the first round.
00:49:07.000They just train, they go upstairs, they do it, and the next day they do the repeating, and then they go to the fights.
00:49:15.000It is crazy because the money from the gambling is what led the sport to be so huge, and the sport becoming so huge over there is what led them to be so good.
00:49:25.000And all that money and gambling led it to be one of the most fierce fighting styles on earth.
00:49:30.000Because while the rest of the world hadn't figured out the knees and the elbows and the clinch and the leg kicks, the Thais had been doing it forever.
00:49:39.000They had already been doing it for a long time.
00:49:41.000It took a long time for the rest of the world to catch up to what Thailand had figured out just from allowing people to fight for money.
00:49:50.000I mean, you're talking about in 75 just understanding the word Muay Thai.
00:50:04.000And then, of course, the leg checks, counters, and you start, we started getting the idea, okay, well, okay, this is how you fight them.
00:50:12.000And then you have other styles for American bread fighters that didn't have part of that game in their repertoire of arsenal, you know what I'm saying?
00:51:06.000Like if it was around today, I genuinely believe it would, like, if kickboxing had gotten the same sort of promotional push that the UFC got way back in 2001, I think it would be just as big as boxing, just as big as MMA.
00:52:14.000It's interesting that people don't see that.
00:52:17.000Even coaches don't see that sometimes.
00:52:19.000You know, Terrence Crawford learned how to switch hit, you know, because Terrence Crawford is one of the best switch dance fighters ever since Marvin Hagler.
00:52:29.000And one of the reasons why he did it is because his coach told him he can't do that.
00:53:36.000It was also the benefit of that is you had a lethal left-hand kick.
00:53:39.000So your left side kick, that front kick, the side kick from the left side, and the front round kick from the left side was fast as fuck because you're a naturally left-sided fighter.
00:53:51.000You know, I think that it's just each decade as we go.
00:53:56.000You know, as Blinky was talking about, the Bursciuta way, you know, there was a, you know, you had honor, there was an honor system and all that.
00:54:05.000And then in the 70s, it started to change when full contact karate came in.
00:54:42.000The I am concept for what you tell yourself with that, you know, and there was an honor system going on and there was a code of honor between warriors.
00:56:00.000Fought Madison Square Garden in 1978, you know, also.
00:56:04.000And just paying homage, you know, because she also pioneered and was taking the forefront, you know, fighting at the Olympic, fighting at the Forum, fighting Japan, traveled the war and fought, and represented well and trained hard.
00:58:15.000Just the love of the sport building it.
00:58:19.000Well, I don't think you guys get enough credit.
00:58:21.000And it's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you on to talk about it because I think the sport needs to recognize the pioneers that blazed the trail.
00:58:31.000And you two are one of the most important pioneers that blazed the trail in martial arts in this country.
00:58:36.000And you did it back when no one knew what was going on.
00:59:57.000I got a chance to meet him because one of the guys that I first trained jiu-jitsu under, I took private lessons from this guy, Silvio Pimento.
01:05:08.000And for a guy who relies on his legs as much as Ali did, that's a crazy fight to take because if he got sidekicked and hyperextended his knee and it was never the same, it would compromise his movement.
01:09:32.000And Carl Gotch was one of the beginning guys that came over to Japan and taught a lot of those Japanese pro wrestlers a lot of the different submission holds of catch wrestling.
01:09:44.000Carl Gotch is a legendary strength and conditioning guy.
01:09:47.000Like his routine was absolutely brutal.
01:09:50.000In order to be able to train with him, before you could train with him, he had to know that you were in physical condition.
01:09:57.000So you had to go through this program to get yourself up to, I forget what the requirement was, but it was some insane requirement of physical conditioning before he would even teach you anything.
01:11:40.000Lily's the one that actually, a bunch of girls got together and Lily's the one that actually started boxing because they were saying women can't box.
01:12:34.000It's like Christy Martin was the first one in America that really broke through and became a famous female boxer.
01:12:41.000But before her, and then there was, of course, Leila Li, and there's been a few other ones, Clarissa Shields, right now, who's the greatest woman of all time.
01:12:49.000And it's like, there's, you know, it's those people, they owe it to Lily in a lot of ways.
01:12:55.000And just like martial arts fighters owe it to you guys.
01:12:59.000If someone didn't step in in the very early days and blaze that trail, no one's going to find out what's on the other side of the woods.
01:13:06.000Hey, Joe, but after you saying that, you know, Sensei Ben's going to be inducted this coming Saturday at the martial arts museum.
01:13:19.000So it's going to be, it's going to become, he's going to be inducted to the Muslim Museum.
01:14:00.000Because you could still grapple, no problem.
01:14:02.000It's like if you've got padding over the knuckles, just extend the leather over the tips of the fingers, make it like a mitten, put it under the hand like this, so your hand will slide into it the same way.
01:14:14.000So you still have, unfortunately, you'll still have some pokes from the thumbs, but way less when you don't have eight other things to poke with.
01:15:56.000They were fighting with eight-ounce gloves, but there were horsehair in it.
01:16:00.000And a lot of them were putting their glove in the spit bucket.
01:16:04.000So making the horsehair wet so it would get real solid and you start to.
01:16:08.000Guys would cut a hole in it and take their squeezy bottle, their water bottle, take that little straw part and stick it in there and squirt water into the horse hair and pat it down.
01:16:23.000Yeah, he got caught using plaster of Paris inside of his, or whatever it was, something that when it got wet would harden up like a rock inside of his hand wraps.
01:16:59.000I mean, you know, it's, again, when you call it a sport, there's got to be, there's got to be the prosciutto way of honor system and respect and so forth when you're talking about a sport.
01:17:51.000And you would also develop a lot better human beings.
01:17:54.000Because instead of a bunch of kids imitating people talking trash, what you would have is a bunch of kids that imitate very respectful martial arts people.
01:18:25.000I was like, if you could get great at martial arts, you could get great at anything, at anything.
01:18:30.000It's really just a matter of taking that knowledge that you learned about yourself and going through the fire and learning how to be a great martial artist.
01:18:48.000That's basically what it was all about.
01:18:50.000Yeah, that's what it's supposed to be about.
01:18:52.000Yeah, and even though it's about defending, self-defense is defending, instead of, you know, being a striker, it's learning how to defend it, sleeping and moving and defending.
01:19:04.000But it got turned around and it became striking, you know, instead of learning how to, because I would put my money on a good defensive fighter than a striker, because it's easy to go out there and strike, but if you don't know how to defend, striking back at you.
01:19:25.000Well, one of the most humiliating things for a fighter is they think they're a good striker, and then they get in there with someone who has impeccable defense, and they can't hit him at all.
01:19:37.000And, you know, it's also what caliber of fighter are you training with, which is probably one of the most important things for young fighters to understand.
01:19:46.000You will imitate the atmosphere of your gym, period.
01:19:50.000And the level that is the top guy at your gym, that is the level that everybody aspires to.
01:19:55.000If you are training with a bunch of champions, you're training with a bunch of high-level guys, you will aspire to be at that high level.
01:20:02.000If you are the toughest guy in your gym, if you're the best guy in your gym and you're not a world champion, you're not the best in the world, you're just pretty good, like you're not going to grow in that gym.
01:20:14.000You got to go find people that are going to test you and put you in danger and put you in a position where you're going to have to learn and grow.
01:20:52.000And like I said, like when I was living in Boston and when I was kickboxing in Boston, people would talk about the jet center with like hushed tones, like, you got to get to the jet center.
01:21:02.000Because I was telling people I was moving to L.A. They're like, oh, you're going to move to L.A. You've got to go to the Jet Center.
01:22:28.000It's like they're just human beings, just like you're a human being, and it's way better for them to be your friend than for them to be your enemy.
01:22:34.000There's no need to have enemies like that for no reason whatsoever other than tribal gang bullshit.
01:22:59.000So you have to like posture and be louder than everybody else.
01:23:03.000And martial arts teaches you, like, man, your battle is in the gym tomorrow.
01:23:08.000Like, you could get back in there tomorrow and get better.
01:23:12.000And then learn why you got hit and then get better.
01:23:14.000And learn why you're throwing your left hook wrong or why you're throwing your round kick wrong and train it and work on the bag and put in your time.
01:24:43.000But he lost to Teofilo Stevenson from Cuba, and he wins the silver medal, and he's the first in the Hispanic community, Mexican-American, to win a medal or to fight in even that category.
01:24:58.000I remember I was just talking to my friend Joey Diaz, who's Cuban, and we were talking about Teofilo Stevenson, that that was the guy that they were trying to get to fight Muhammad Ali when he was in his prime because they were like, you know, Muhammad Ali might be the best in the world, but he might be the second best.
01:25:12.000Because this is this cat in Cuba that is a bad man.
01:25:39.000I mean, there was a lot of talk about it.
01:25:40.000I remember in the 70s and the 80s, there was a lot of talk about that, about him fighting, you know, and then him, you know, him eventually defecting and coming over to America, but it never happened.
01:25:51.000But the thing with Alex, that showed somebody that's gone away and come back home can make it.
01:25:58.000If he could win the silver medal for the United States of America in the World Games when we had boycott at the Olympics, that was just part of the proof.
01:26:09.000And so now when you're getting guys into union jobs, you're getting guys with tattoo removal that's going on.
01:26:16.000You're doing advocacy in the courtrooms and you're just being able to roll out, there's education going on, and there's a response to yellow tape, the CVI, the community violence intervention programs that are now nationwide.
01:26:43.000Yeah, so now There's another thing that's going on with tattoos, you know, where it's a no-laser removal.
01:26:51.000There's some new technology and stuff that I'm talking to people about that you don't have to go through to get in laser and ow and ooh, and you can hear that laser going off.
01:27:50.000Now, I'm a, I could tell people I'm a black belt.
01:27:53.000Like, like, I did something, I accomplished something.
01:27:56.000And I think that's one of the great things about belt systems in traditional martial arts is it gives you a sense that you've got a.
01:28:02.000There's a rite of passage like you've made, you've gone through this thing and now you've moved to another level and now you you're supposed to behave like you are at a different level.
01:28:11.000Now you're a senior student, now you know, now you're one of the elite students in the gym, you're held to a different standard.
01:28:18.000It's very important for people you know, absolutely a lot of times what happens is a lot of a lot of them come in with a lot of emotions anger fear, frustration and especially at the JET, with the JETS gym, we were able to tap in and put fear to them in a in a sparring way that it will bring up all that emotion up.
01:28:40.000And then we had a chance to reprogram that.
01:28:44.000That was the best part about the gym is to bring up what everybody hides until you're threatened.
01:28:51.000Right hey, once you're threatened, I don't care what you hide under your bed in your closet will come up, and then you get a chance to reprogram the way you're perceiving it, the way you're looking at it, and help them to uh heal, not not uh, pat it or forget it or act like it doesn't heal it, so that it doesn't stop them on their journey.
01:29:14.000And that's what the JET Center was all about is being able to bring that up, mirror their truth, help them look at their really uh, what they're really all about, and continue, let them go on their journey.
01:29:29.000And that's why the JET Center was so successful, because we had a chance to really mirror their truth and bring all that that they hide and bring it forward.
01:29:39.000And they felt safe enough, they felt to actually go there.
01:29:45.000Yeah, and you get to see them go through that and develop real confidence.
01:29:49.000Yes, instead of this bravado, this false confidence trying to make people feel like you're confident and scare them off, you develop silent confidence where you really know how to fight.
01:30:01.000That's what makes the art you know so unique but so needed.
01:30:09.000And in the art, it gives you a foundation to build on and in your life and no matter what and we've had all walks of life that come through the JET Center, all walks I mean.
01:30:24.000And the ones that I mean, we had so many different attorneys coming in and we used to call them the fighting attorneys, but there were six, seven of them and they would, you know, in the gym.
01:30:37.000They were so humble to each other, they love each other.
01:30:39.000They go outside, all of a sudden, they don't know, they don't know each other.
01:30:49.000I said, And but it was uh, it was, it brought character out of them, it brought their heart and let them mirror the really truth on their journey and what they were where they were going.
01:31:01.000It's special for an attorney to step into that world and be around both these young gang members that are learning a new path and then professional fighters.
01:31:10.000And, like, you know, you're in a different world of discipline and willpower and focus that will help you in everything you do.
01:31:21.000Will help you as an attorney, will help you as a doctor, will help you in anything you do.
01:31:25.000And certainly help you as a human, as a human, just get through life.
01:31:30.000There's nothing that's going to be harder in life than other than the loss of a loved one.
01:31:35.000Nothing going to be harder than your hardest training session at a real fight gym.
01:31:39.000It's just that is that makes the rest of the world easy because your hardest thing you volunteered to do and you look forward to doing it again.
01:32:33.000Hey, Joe, so you know, you may mention right now one of the hardest things to do is lose someone.
01:32:40.000And so for me, I wanted to share a little bit that in 2023, I got a phone call that was something that I could never anticipate.
01:32:50.000It was January of 2023, and it was a call that was made.
01:32:55.000One of my sons called to tell me that he had talked to a friend of ours that does a lot of work with the prisons, has a lot of entrees on big-time boards.
01:33:05.000And that he was at one of the prisons.
01:33:08.000And an inmate walked up to him and asked him if he knew me.
01:33:13.000So he said, you know, do you know Blinky?
01:39:07.000And it's incredibly powerful of you to forgive that man and to be able to recognize that he made a horrible, horrible decision that affected your life and everyone around you.
01:39:21.000And we're all capable of doing something terrible if we're in the wrong environment with the wrong people around us and the wrong lifestyle, wrong decisions.
01:40:34.000I love being able to get somebody and turn them inside out so they may look at their truth and see that we all have talent and we all have a gift.
01:40:45.000It's just giving a chance to see that.
01:40:48.000You know, I really take a lot of pride in seeing somebody that I can see that they doubt themselves, they hesitate about, and to go out there and really look at themselves and start to love themselves.
01:41:04.000There's no better feeling to see somebody come up from being very meek and weak to something just so strong and doing something great for society and for that's amazing.
01:41:18.000Do you ever get any professional mixed martial arts fighters that reach out to you for training?
01:43:00.000It's an amazing time because what we're seeing now is these kids that are in their 20s that, you know, the UFC really became popular in 2005 from the Ultimate Fighter.
01:43:11.000So you're seeing kids that were really young when that was happening.
01:43:17.000And they grew up watching Anderson Silva, John Jones, Vitor Belford.
01:43:22.000They've grew up watching these elite fight Connor McGregor.
01:43:26.000And now they are the newest version of that.
01:43:30.000And the thing about martial arts that's so different is we really didn't have a chance to see mixed martial arts on television at all until 1993.
01:44:48.000And that's the mirroring of your truth.
01:44:51.000What is it like for you two men as pioneers, like real true pioneers in the earliest days of martial arts in this country to see where it is today and to know that you started those first steps?
01:45:06.000You know, it's for me to start something, but in the way of the Bushuda way, of the code of honor and respect and so forth, this is what I felt that we were doing, building up a way of life where warriors will fight with dignity and honor and respect.
01:45:31.000And along the line, when actually my last fight was in 95, 94, I got my last fight.
01:45:41.000And then it started to change because the Gracies came in in 90 and 195.
01:45:50.000It started mixed martial arts all the way up to 2000.
01:46:10.000And because when I saw some of these guys were on the ground, just pounding this guy on the ground, I thought, wow, was that me in the street once upon a time when I was young?
01:46:26.000And I said, so a lot of it that I didn't want to take their livelihood from them because I didn't want to hurt them to the point where they couldn't make a living if they were married, if they were sick, you know.
01:46:42.000So I always had that in my mind, in my heart, that to me it was a sport.
01:46:49.000When somebody hit the ground, I said, get back up.
01:46:52.000I pinned a lot of people, but to hit them on the ground, I just said, get back up.
01:46:58.000Yeah, but it's an important part of fighting.
01:47:02.000But again, you know, the fight game, again, there's a difference between the fight and the art of sport.
01:47:08.000Because in the art of sport, I mean, you do a lot of that on concrete and wood, a whole different ball game on the mats, because there's two different flavors of understanding.
01:47:21.000One protecting in the street and hitting that kind of ground and so forth.
01:47:25.000Because a lot of times at the internationals, it was concrete.
01:47:29.000That was in 64, 65, how we fought on concrete, taking down sweeps, but letting them back up.
01:47:36.000There was a coat of honor, even though we swept and took them to the ground.
01:47:43.000And some will reverse punch to the ground and then let them back up.
01:47:48.000But again, I just think that sometimes when you're on the ground and there's somebody's livelihood, you know, you're thrashing.
01:48:01.000And the idea, okay, I understand what it takes, you know, to hold that hand up as a winner and what it takes of the rules.
01:48:10.000But I've always turned around when I see somebody jumping on something.
01:48:16.000Yeah, that's understandable, considering in your day that was frowned upon.
01:48:48.000You know, first it was the trip to Hawaii where we end up in a semi-comedy thing where if you don't knock them out, you're not going to win.
01:48:57.000Well, by the way, when we got to the airport, Dana Goodson was caddying there.
01:49:02.000He was taking the luggage and he seen us.
01:51:57.000And when you guys are seeing the sport, the crazy thing about your time was that there was no other motivation other than the journey because there was no money, there was no fame.
01:52:10.000I mean, you obviously got a lot of notoriety and respect amongst martial artists and amongst people like me.
01:52:16.000But the general public, you know, if I say, you don't know who Blinky Rodriguez and Benny the Jet are, they're like, what?
01:54:48.000Yeah, I didn't get too nervous entering the fight gyms, but that gym I got nervous because it's like the legendary history of it.
01:54:55.000You guys really did something very, very special.
01:54:57.000I was real sad when the roof got damaged and it went under.
01:55:01.000I was like, man, this is the end of an era.
01:55:03.000But to answer your question, I've been doodling again.
01:55:09.000Oh, but I'm talking about a gym that will be a safe haven where people will come to learn their truth.
01:55:19.000Learning defense, self-defense, but learning about themselves, mirroring their own truth, that they will be able to feel safe and to be able to release all that people or they've been taught these emotions of anger, fear, and frustration.
01:55:38.000They get a chance to release it and feel comfortable and feel safe enough to do it, that they may go on their journey.
01:55:44.000This is the next gym that I already started doodling on.
01:55:48.000I didn't do it on point of toilet paper, but.
01:57:30.000And you with your outreach, you have a lot to teach people.
01:57:33.000We've actually talked at one point about us buying a huge building and having a gym there, but also servicing people there, right out of there.
01:57:47.000The people that come to our office for tattoo removal or moving their lives up the road a little bit.
01:57:54.000All that comes with the programming of the different services.
01:57:57.000I'm not going to inundate this broadcast with this, Joe.
01:58:01.000But at the same time, we've had that conversation.
01:58:11.000And they came from all over the world.
01:58:13.000When they get a chance to hear something like this, they will come from all over the world to mirror their truth, to look at themselves, their purpose and reason why they exist, why they're here, what are they doing.
01:58:25.000That's the kind of place, in my mind, is what I've designed in.
01:58:31.000That's why I designed equipment and all that for this place.
01:58:37.000Well, that makes me very happy that you're considering doing that.