The Grapplers Perspective
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The Grapplers Perspective
#90 - Rob Ingram - The McDojo Life: Exposing Martial Arts Scams and Cults
In this hilarious episode, Rob from McDojo Life discusses his mission to expose frauds and cults in martial arts, offering insight into the manipulative tactics used by instructors and how the lack of regulatory oversight enables predatory behaviour.
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Rob, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:How are you. I feel fantastic. I'm better now that I'm here with you. Thank you, I love that.
Speaker 1:So, mate, I think many of our audience will probably recognize you, but obviously you are Rob from the mcdojo life social media platforms. Um, obviously you've got a very big youtube channel, got a very big uh instagram and facebook channel and you entertain many of us by putting out clips and doing breakdowns of all sorts of madness within the martial arts community everything from scandals to fake black belts to horrible injuries to gym fights, the lot. So I'm looking forward to this one. I think it'd be fun yeah man.
Speaker 2:I love my job, dude. I've been doing martial arts for like 28 years and then I think it's been like 13 years now doing McDojo life. And it started off as like expose pieces, like where I do like these long form paragraph after paragraph explanations of issues in the industry, right. And then somewhere along the line that just kind of started blowing up and then people started kind of looking to me to like help them with issues like oh, this person has molested me or this person's defrauding me. And it was to the point where it was like well, well, why didn't you go to the police? And then, whatever the issues are, the police weren't able to help, or it's not worth it.
Speaker 2:One guy did a story about he was defrauding thousands of people for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he was defrauding them on small scales. It wasn't worth each individual person to go to court because it would have cost them more to go to court than it would have to get what they got stolen back. But I do a piece about him and I basically just hit him up on socials and next thing, you know, he's starting to toss money back at these people because they start to realize, oh, there's more of us than we knew, and so it does help. I know people on Instagram see the little clips and they never take the time to go to YouTube, even though I tell them to, and they're missing out on really what the point is, which is to help people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, shit man. So yeah, not just entertaining, but providing a service, uh, to people in some pretty serious situations, then, by the sound of it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Some really weird shit, like I don't know if I can say shit, but I'll. Yeah, you can say shit, man, it's okay. So there's been people who stalked and harassed people, or a guy like Robert LeClaire Sr who still runs Martial Arts Studios today even though he's convicted rapist. There's a lot of this in the industry, not just cults, which is what most people laugh at. You'll see the guy knock the guy out with his mind and you'll be like, oh, that's dumb. And then we all chuckle right because it's dumb. But what we forgive is those people in those cults. They're paying that guy and they're being taken advantage of, and usually it's not just financially. Most cults start off that way, but then they become a whole different beast whenever the cult leader decides that they want to change what they want to get out of this.
Speaker 3:Does it really go that deep in martial arts, does it really get? Obviously you see cults, you know in America, you know killing each other, but in martial arts do they go? Do they really go that deep?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's ridiculous. Like I've been doing again. I've been doing McDojo life for 13 years at least and I've been doing again. I've been doing McDoja life for 13 years at least and I've never run, I've never had a day where I didn't have something to post. I've never had a week that went by where there wasn't multiple sexual assault victims in the martial arts industry. Like you have to figure.
Speaker 2:Like the root word of culture is cult. So, like our culture, our society is made up of a bunch of cults, and not all cults are necessarily bad. Right, we just make a decision that we're going to follow someone. I think that it becomes a bad thing, a bad issue, whenever the cult leader decides that they're going to get more out of this than the followers. That's when you have what we would consider a cult. And now they're being taken advantage of.
Speaker 2:And like any other cult, like martial arts cults, you can have a cult of politics. You like martial arts cults. You can have a cult of politics. You can have a cult of money. You can have a cult of personality. There's cults all over the place. We just don't pay them any attention because our brain automatically goes to religious cults. We forget that there's a cult of money, and so the industry is ripe with it, mostly because in the United States anyway, there's no regulatory body. You need absolutely nothing to start a martial arts school. You need absolutely nothing to start a martial arts school. You need no background checks, no CPR, no first aid, no safe sport.
Speaker 1:You need nothing to start a martial arts studio in the United States. Wow, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy, right the.
Speaker 2:Wild West, yeah Predator, paradise or whatever, and there's also no regulatory body. And when I say that I'm not talking about the sports of People think well, there's USA boxing and there's USA wrestling, yeah, yeah, but you don't have to belong to that to open up a martial arts school. I don't have to have that to start teaching wrestling. I don't have to have that to start teaching boxing. I don't have to be a part of the IBJJF to have a black belt in jiu-jitsu and open up a jiu-jitsu academy. You don't need those things. And so, because there are no standards, there are these tiny regulatory bodies, but martial arts as a whole, it does not exist and there is no universal standard. So really, what we have now is a lot of people just kind of guessing at what martial arts is Like. If I were to ask you guys, what is a black belt? You cannot provide me a legitimate definition of what a black belt is. You can guess, you can say, well, I think, but we don't have a standard definition and that's taken advantage of a lot, along with the hierarchies, right?
Speaker 2:You walk into a martial arts studio, whether their name is Sifu, sensei, professor, coach, they're all the same shit. That's just my teacher, right? But they all have rules and regulations. When you walk into the gym, it could be as easy as bow on and off the mat, like that's fairly harmless, right, but it could also be something like you cannot go to another martial arts school other than ours. Well, that's not harmless, that's bullshit. I'm paying you for a service and then I can do what I want outside of this gym, as long as I'm not wearing your shirt and doing some dubious stuff in the name of your gym. I'm an adult, I can do what I please, and I think that people forget that martial arts is a service. It's traded for money and if you give it away for free, then that's the trade, but still, it's still a service.
Speaker 3:So you're so interested in this stuff, isn't it Because there's so many, so many culty gyms around and we both do jujitsu and you know the amount of gyms that. You know you're not allowed to train at other gyms. You're not allowed to train with certain people because they don't like certain people they're not allowed to. You know the hierarchies within gyms. You know that little things like bowing in and off the mats it's like it feels to me like I come into martial arts a lot later. I've only been doing it like three years and I've said to him for a long time I found it crazy, like I found it crazy that at times I got shit for going to a different gym in training with my friends. Or I found it weird that you know you have to like bow on and off the mats and you know all that sort of stuff and point to a guy on a picture and all this sort of stuff and I'm like it just baffles me. And again, I guess it's because I've come into it later and.
Speaker 3:I'm not used to it. You know I'm not used to it.
Speaker 1:But, mate, I think jiu-jitsu is certainly the experience you've had. In jiu-jitsu it's so much less ridiculous than other more traditional martial arts that you may find as well when I say looking at it.
Speaker 3:I'm looking at other people not like our specific gym.
Speaker 2:Ours is really good.
Speaker 3:We can wear what we want and our coaches are really relaxed and it's really really good. But I've been to other places and I've experienced other things that you just think fuck it, this can't be real.
Speaker 2:Just other martial arts, though they're even worse, man, they're even worse man, if you really want to go down a rabbit hole, that's fun let's do it.
Speaker 2:We were talking about martial arts as a cult, right, and we have different cults right. There's again cults of personality, cults of money, cults of religion, politics, etc. We all know that one guy of a puppy and all of a sudden he turns that into a political post somehow, right. Like that guy is in a cult In his mind. He is involved in a cult, whether he knows it or not. He's put someone on such a high pedestal above his day-to-day actions that he no longer views his actions as important. Like so many people will go out and they'll go like oh well, this president is a piece of shit, right, and they'll say it for every president, right, that guy sucks, this guy sucks that guy in charge. Do you even know your neighbor's name? Like no, probably they don't. They probably never took the time to understand that their day-to-day actions and what cause and effect happens to them is direct reflection of how they treat the world. And if they keep looking at the person above them as, like you're supposed to save us, that's the dude that did. Like that's the dude in the Lord of the Flies that dies first. Like they are going to eat that dude. Why? Because he's looking for someone else to do all the work and like it's like we're all looking for someone else to have empathy, we're all looking for someone else to be kind for us, we want somebody else to do things for us, but what are we doing to save ourselves? Like we're looking at all these people and like, if you look at how ridiculous, like these cults can be, let me just give you an example of martial arts and religion. Right Now, I'm agnostic, right, I believe I don't know that's really what the word faith is anyway, right, faith means I believe something I cannot prove. Right, so I am agnostic. I don't have a clue, right, I won't know until I'm dead, and then I'll find out and hopefully I have made the right decisions along the way. Right, but martial arts and religion are strangely similar.
Speaker 2:Check this out, if you walk into a Catholic mass. Have you ever been to a Catholic mass? No, no, okay, well, I'll give you a breakdown. Right, as soon as you walk in, every Catholic church is a little different. Sometimes there's a bowl of holy water there, and sometimes there's not. Right, and sometimes you walk up you might anoint yourself for lack of better words and then walk forward, right, well, at some martial arts studios, they make you bow in at the door. Some don't, right?
Speaker 2:Well, then we get to the pew, and when I get to the pew I'm going to sit down and I'm going to get ready for my lesson, what I'm going to learn from the preacher or the pastor. And then people take a knee there. Sometimes people take a knee at the pew and they'll do the same thing. They might have done it at the bowl, they might have done it just at the pew, or they might not have done it at all. Well, martial arts is similar, because I might have bowed at the door, I might bow at the mat or, if I go to 10th planet, it's not required at all, right? So, very similar.
Speaker 2:If I sit down, it's it's all of us sitting down listening to one person teach us a lesson. One person is either teaching us a lesson about martial arts or they're teaching a lesson about religion. Behind the person who's teaching you about religion is either a picture, a statue or a photo of Jesus Christ, typically in a Catholic religion, right? So behind the person who's teaching you in a martial arts class, there's usually a photo of the one who came before, which is literally what the word sensei translates to the one who came before. So you're looking at the photos, right, and we bow to this, right.
Speaker 2:Whenever we start a Catholic mass, there's usually some type of start to the Catholic mass, right, it's not just like, oh, we're getting started, right, there's a ritual to start. Well, whenever you start martial arts classes, isn't there some sort of a ritual to get started? Like, we all line up, maybe we all bow in, something like that. Right At the end of a martial arts class, we all walk around and we shake each other's hands. Usually Most classes I've been to good job, awesome. Hey, you're awesome, right, thank you for the role. At somewhere in the middle of a Catholic mass, everybody walks, stands up and you introduce yourself to your neighbor and peace be with you, and peace be with you, peace be with you.
Speaker 2:It's very similar. What's the difference? It's not really much. The only difference is what we're learning, like there's structure, there's hierarchy. What am I learning? Well, I'm learning martial arts from this person or I'm learning religion from this person, but ultimately, there are structures, there are hierarchies, there are people who are in charge, there are rules to what I need to learn and do. So they're really similar. The only difference is what you're being taught and what you're choosing to learn, right?
Speaker 2:Same thing with religion. You can take religion and you can apply it to your day-to-day life. Right? You can learn these lessons from scripture or whatever and apply that to your day-to-day life. With martial arts, some 350-pound dude who eats nothing but steroids and weight lifts for a living is knee-on-belllling your sternum through your spine. You're like you know what? Me? Getting cut off in traffic isn't so bad, right? So you can apply the stuff to your day-to-day life. So there's a lot.
Speaker 2:The only difference to me between religion, martial arts and a cult is that one benefits the students. Religion, the preacher, pastor, is supposed to be helping you. It's all about you. It's supposed to be about saving you. In religious context, right? In martial arts, they're also trying to save you, right? I'm not trying to help you lose weight. I'm trying to get you prepared for that fight that may be the last fight of your life. I'm trying to get you in a position to where you can defend your family or whatever you may need to defend. So I'm also trying to save your life, just in a different way. They're there for you. That's their job. When it switches to become a cult is when it's about them and the moment it's all about them.
Speaker 2:When the instructor tells you you can't go train somewhere else, how does that benefit me? That doesn't benefit me. That benefits you and your ego. When you try to manipulate me into what I can and can't post online, how does that benefit me? Like that doesn't benefit me, unless it does. Sometimes it does, because some people be posting some stupid shit, but most of the time to me, that benefits you. So like that's really where people need to pay attention. And jiu-jitsu, by the way, is no different. No, 100%. The gauntlet have you ever heard of the gauntlet? Oh right, but in martial arts, all of a sudden they're like well, look out, they do well, no, it's not.
Speaker 2:That's fucking stupid. That's the dumbest thing you could ever do. And people are like, well, it's a rite of passage. How about you doing jujitsu where they're choking you and throwing you and slamming you and neon bellying and putting you in horrible positions for hours at a time? That is your rite of passage. Them whipping you does nothing for you. It's a tool of manipulation. Imagine what I can get you to do if I can convince you that it's a good idea that you let me whip you and you're happy I did it. How easy would it be to convince you of anything else?
Speaker 1:It'd be so easy.
Speaker 2:He wasn't happy he wasn't happy when I did it.
Speaker 1:I was fucking fuming mate.
Speaker 3:I was fuming when I was not on board, but you know.
Speaker 1:It was funny because he got his blue belt a couple of years back, whenever it was, and he got it at the end of a competition and he injured himself at the end of the comp so ended up taking I don't know like what was it maybe a month off training or something. So people just kind of forgot about the fact that he uh he hadn't been whipped. And then I got my. I got my brown belt, um, I don't know, maybe three, four months later or so, and I was getting whipped. This fucker got a phone call, come racing down. He wasn't even in the come racing down with his blue belt to whip me, only for me to remind him that he hadn't been whipped and he can do it alongside me.
Speaker 3:Really fucking bad bro. He was fuming. I was fuming because I had a vest on.
Speaker 2:It was bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a no-gi whipping as well.
Speaker 2:The only people who justify it, too, are people who either have already gone through it, right, because we don't want to feel like we were had, or we don't want to feel dumb. So we justify it, right. We're like, yes, it's a rite of passage, I did it, it was harmless, right, but we forget about the people who did it to where it caused serious lacerations on their back. We forget about they're getting whipped with belts that are gross as shit that could cause massive infections into those cuts, are gross as shit that could cause massive infections into those cuts. Like. We don't think about the safety of it all because, well, we had to do it.
Speaker 2:And I think that if you want to look at any ritual ever, you just look at two factors and it'll help save you for whatever it is that you're going to go through, right. One does it make me better if I do it, like for jujitsu? Does this make me better at jujitsu if I do this activity? If, yes, you do that thing right, Like, does it make me better to get knee-on-bellied and does it suck? Yes, but it will make me better, right Me getting whipped? Does that make me better at jiu-jitsu? No, so you shouldn't do that shit right? Does it make me worse if I don't do it? So, if I do not participate in this thing, will it make my jiu-jitsu worse? Well, the answer's still no. It's not going to make you better or worse.
Speaker 2:It's just some stupid-ass ritual that somebody who one of the dirty dozen, the original black belts of jiu-jitsu in the United States decided we're going to do this, and then even he himself has gone publicly to say that it's hazing and that it's ridiculous. He invented it and says it's dumb. But yet people still follow that process because somebody did it before them. I've even seen people paddle students legit, paddle them on the ass when they got promoted. How about? No Like? This is an alpha zeta kappa. I ain't pledging to you Like.
Speaker 3:I'm just putting on my belt. Son man, it's so funny when you say it. To me it just seems like adherence, you're doing it because you're told to do it and the hierarchy wants you to do it, to know that they can control you in that way, and that's what it seems like to me coming into it and it always has kind of seemed a bit like that. But when you say it like that, I feel like a fucking idiot by being like yeah, whip me. Do you know what I mean? Like yeah, fine, just whack me, yeah it's fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if that's your sexual preference, man, don't let me shame you.
Speaker 3:You shamed me brother. You shamed me now.
Speaker 1:You don't need to tell people that you just do it every evening at home with your missus. Now, mate. So that's fine, hey man, whatever you do, on Tuesday night.
Speaker 2:That's on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's wild mate Tuesdays. Yeah, I think for me I've always kind of felt like that was almost like something to do with camaraderie. But I guess you kind of don't really need that because you go for the shared hardship training anyway. So yeah, I guess it does seem a bit stupid. Now you say it like that.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting dynamic and martial arts in itself how traditional is something that is considered traditional? When I think of traditional, I think of from the start, from the very beginning. This is what they did. But even belts did not exist at the start of martial arts. If you look at the founder of karate, if you look at the founder of judo, when they incorporated belts, they incorporated belts because they were friends and that's why you see belts across the board in karate and jiu-jitsu and judo. They all stem from the same two guys who they actually.
Speaker 2:If you ever go to a place called the Martial Arts History Museum, it's fascinating stuff. It's in Burbank, california, and the guy is just like a wealth of knowledge when it comes to stuff like this. But he has some of the original gis and I didn't know this until I went. But apparently the original gis were actually based off of firefighters uniforms at the time and so the material is very similar to like a firefighter's uniform because the traditional kimonos that where they were training in before they were very frail, so like you reach up and grab that kimono and start ripping it when you're trying to do things like judo or jujitsu right, so they actually saw those uniforms and were like those are actually kind of dope, let's go that way. Which, again, if you look at the uniforms between karate, judo, jujitsu very similar uniforms, right, for different purposes. Obviously karate is a little bit more lightweight because it's a primary striking art, but they got the idea from the same place.
Speaker 2:And then they got the belt idea from swim meets. They actually, like, were attending a swim meet, one of them, and they saw, like these people were sectioned off into categories based off of these stripes, like these pieces of cloth that they would have, like, oh, this person is in this division, this person's in this division. So they were like that's actually a genius idea, why don't we do that? And really, at first it was only black and white, and then the old saying was oh well, you're going to have your white belt until it turns black, which was completely not true. That's like some made-up, I do believe a blue belt in between, and then they started incorporating other belts.
Speaker 2:But you know, I do think that jiu-jitsu got it very right and very wrong in so many ways.
Speaker 2:I like how there is a long period of time to master this art, to get your black belt, and then by the time, you're a black belt, there's a reason that holds legitimacy. It's because you've done it forever or you've achieved some sort of skill. But where they got it wrong was there is no standard, and so because of that, it's a roll of the dice in terms of who you get and what they know, because, again, we don't know what a black belt is, other than someone says you're a black belt, now there is no. Like you need to know these things and you need to train this much. It's like you can kind of train for like three years if you're BJ Penn and then get your black belt and no one says anything. But if you do the same thing and you didn't win any tournaments and you're a guy like Moneyberg, then everybody's pissed off, like it's why are we mad? Like we didn't even decide what a black belt was yet.
Speaker 1:Like but they'll be mad. Anyway it at, anyway it's. It's an interesting dynamic. Yeah, it is a funny little thing, man. It cracks me off all this shit. Rob, you obviously have given this a lot of thought and you you're obviously well down the rabbit hole with all this stuff. But we were chatting before we came online. We we're not even fully aware of your own martial arts background. I mean, where did you start with martial arts and like what do you mostly practice these days?
Speaker 2:this is something I get live all the time, which is like my favorite thing to say as fast as humanly possible, but I'll take my time, since we're on the podcast.
Speaker 2:So I'll do it fast, man, it'd be great. I am a third degree black belt in something called american freestyle karate, which is very similar to kickboxing. We didn't do any kata you can similar to like joe lewis bill wallace style of karate, right um. A third degree black belt in something called Lissa's Judo, which is a weapon system not too many people heard of. It basically just means I'm good at nunchucks, which is a fairly useless skill unless I happen to have a pair of nunchucks with me, which no one ever does because that person would be weird and no one wants to buy that guy on the bus. I'm a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu karate tournaments.
Speaker 2:I ran a martial arts school for four years before I got bought out and became a striking coach and a program director for a jiu-jitsu academy. That's where I started jiu-jitsu. At that time they bought out my program, which was fucking dope because I still got to teach martial arts and I didn't have to worry about the paperwork. Then after that I wind up making McDojo Life and then that just blew up. And then, once McDojo Life blew up, I'm doing McDojo Life and martial arts business consulting for schools for about 13 years now I am the vice president of something called Academy State, which our goal is to get martial arts studios to have higher standards, since there are no standards at all in the United States. Also, I just became the head of something called FightCon Expo and, yeah, I think I got about everything.
Speaker 3:That's pretty impressive, mate. Well done yeah.
Speaker 1:Both the resume and the speed in which you presented it. That was very good.
Speaker 2:I've had to say it so much Because it's pretty standard, which is a fair question, right? That's like the martial arts industry, that's how people know who you are Like, what's your resume and when you go. Well, I did this thing this one time and I got a trophy. People are like you're full of shit, get out of here. No one wants to talk to you, right. But if you're like oh, I got my black belt by Henzo, everybody's like tell me more.
Speaker 3:You know, like belts or fake martial arts. Have you got anything in particular that sticks out? That's just outrageous Because I just want to know mate, 13 years of doing this.
Speaker 2:I have so many stories. I wrote a book two years ago about my time fighting in nightclub bars. When I was 14, all the way until I was like 20 something years old, we used to do something called patron boxing, which patron boxing is no longer legal in the United States. But what they would do is they would take a ring and they would put it in the middle of a nightclub and anybody that wanted to fight you would just be like I want to fight.
Speaker 2:You two agree, y'all could just fight and you'd fought for people's entertainment. So, like I started doing that because my mom signed the waiver, um, and my instructor was the promoter. So he was like, well, if your mom signs the waiver, you can do it. And I was like I'll never say yes. And then she did and I was like, oh shit, here we go. First guy ever fought was 35 years old man.
Speaker 3:You were 14. I was 15 years old.
Speaker 2:I remember standing there getting ready I weighed in. Miss Connie was the lady who was doing the weigh-ins. She was my instructor's wife. I was like hey, who do I fight? Because I had to be the first fight Because I was underage. They were going to make me leave as soon as I was done fighting. I was like who's my first guy? Who do I fight? She's like well, fuck you, that's not nice.
Speaker 2:And like he laughed right and there was like a little area like a stairwell in between the green room, the stage, because it was a venue for music, and then there was a pit and that's where they put the ring. So you had to walk through this green room area and then down the stairs into this pit. And I remember warming up in this little area that was like a downstairs, like storage room thing, and I'm warming up, scared, shitless. I'm 15 years old, it's like a big crowd, it's my first like full contact boxing match. And I heard a guy on the phone because he's like in this barrier, sound barrier thing and I can hear him on the phone talking about how he already won his fight and I was like that's bullshit, like whoever that is is lying, because I'm supposed to be the first fight. So I looked up and it's him. It's the guy I'm like, oh really. Like you laughed in my face and now you've already won, okay.
Speaker 2:And like at this time, you know, I started training when I was 12. So I'm like three years in every day training and it's not my first rodeo for competing, it's just my first rodeo for a legit boxing match. So like I have been doing this for a while and I only worked with adults. Like even when I was 12, I was like 5'11" so I was like had to be put in with adults. So then when I wind up getting into the ring, he ran over. He just starts wailing on me. I covered up, I was scared, shitless and then he just got tired.
Speaker 2:Like it was like maybe 10 seconds later I was having this point of heart attack and I'm in like the standing fetal position just covering up and I remember opening my eyes and looking and seeing my one of my instructors was a referee and he's like looking at me like that was weird, and he looks over at the other guy and the he looks over at the other guy and the other guy's got his hands on his knees, gasping for air in the middle of the swing. It was like he was a chain-smoking just terrible shape. And I looked at my instructor and my instructor was just like dude, fight, fight. And so I just balled up my fist and I ran over and I just threw the worst cross I could, and I threw it as hard as I could, though, and he just happened to look up. I was probably going to crack him in the top of the head, but as he looks up, I guess he just noticed or felt the ring, or whatever. I just bomb him right in the nose, and it was like a tomato, it just went.
Speaker 2:So then we wind up finishing the round and he doesn't answer the bell. So, like he doesn't wind up answering the bell for round two, and so, yeah, go me, 15 year old kid, whooped on you in your face, and then he's like in the back fighter's area, like vomiting profusely into like one of those big industrial-sized garbage cans, and I like always wondered whatever happened to that dude, like what was the excuse? Because he told somebody he already won, and now he's clearly won, was he like look, you should see the other guy. You know, like it's always curious how that went, but yeah, that was at least a day.
Speaker 2:That's funny man.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's, that's just like such a good example of of so many people in this world that walk around thinking they can fight when they actually don't have a clue? No clue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that. Uh, I don't know why that, just that as soon as you said like story that was the first thing.
Speaker 3:That is funny, because it's exactly that, though, isn't it? How many people like when I see red bro.
Speaker 1:You know you don't want to see red, but people just forget that fighting isn't is. It is like high intensity exercise, yeah, and most people don't have like the aerobic capacity or the anaerobic capacity to be able to do a high intensity exercise for more than about 5 or 10 seconds.
Speaker 3:We know how, once I get a grappler fit, you know what I mean. It takes a while. If you get ill, you get cold and you come back. It takes you a good week to feel back to kind of normal again, you know.
Speaker 2:And your joints and your limbs have to kind to positions Like I really do, like butterfly guard and like because of that, like it takes a toll on my knees and my hips Right, so I have to like get those warmed back up. And Eddie Bravo literally was just talking about I don't know why this has been a story lately, but Eddie Bravo was like, yeah, my body's kind of beaten up. He's like I think I might be. That was on our podcast. He See, there you go, it was like I was like like that's, that's legit, Like my shit hurts, I'm 40, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, that's blown up a little bit, with him just saying that his body's like breaking. But I'm like he's been doing jujitsu a long time. Man, he's 55 years old, like you, kind of you know, and the people are, like in some of the comments I was reading earlier, like that's why you don't do rubber guard and you don't do this. I'm like, but bro, it's just, jujitsu is hard. Jujitsu is hard. You do it, for like I've been doing it three years. My hands hurt, my back hurts, my hip hurts, like my knee hurts, my shin hurts sometimes just my pride hurts, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's often.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean, though. But it's fun and, like you know, you've got to use your body and it's eventually going to break down a bit and you can obviously do things to extend the time on the mats and you can look after your body by eating right and stretching and doing all that stuff. But you know it's like anything. You know you're eventually going to kind of wear yourself out, you can't. You know it wouldn't be that fun doing jujitsu at 70. Anyway, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:God, no, I want to be done with that shit. Like I love martial arts, right, Like I do love martial arts, I think it's amazing. But Pai Mei is a fake character. Like there is no man on the top of the mountain who's like 90 years old that could beat up the 20-year-old, Like that's a fantasy. You know that that would be cool, but it's not true, right? And I think that we all want something out of this.
Speaker 2:I think that people fail, at least in my opinion. Everybody's going to get whatever they get out of this, but in my opinion, I think people fail in martial arts, not because they're failing at getting better. I don't think that that's top priority. I think that naturally happens. We'll all get better at a certain point, We'll all plateau and then we'll all get better at a certain point, will all plateau and then will all get worse. It's just a fact of life. As you get older, there's going to be a peak, there's going to be a time where you will no longer be better than that moment, and then you'll just plateau and then you'll just fall off and that's okay.
Speaker 2:I think people fail because they forget to set tangible goals. Like what am I trying to get out of this? And if your goal is only to get better at martial arts, eventually you will fail at that goal because you will reach a plateau, you will get older. So, like, what else are you trying to do? Are you trying to help other people with this shit? Are you trying to open a school? Are you trying to be a coach? Like you have to diversify out. If you don't, you're going to fail and you'll just quit. And that's in my mind. That's where the failure is is like failing at most parts is just when you stop.
Speaker 3:I think it's like that, false. It's just a false thing. People say that you know technique beats everything you know and I think that's why people believe even at an older age they're going to continue to get better, because they feel the more time they get on the mats or whatever they're doing, they're going to keep improving their technique, which will counter the physicality, you know, and their body breaking down. But it's just not true. You can get better technically but you can't compete with someone who's physically quicker, faster, stronger and anywhere near your kind of skill level. And then as you get older, you know you might improve a bit. You know you might need to learn your sweeps. You know you might improve a bit. You know you might. You know you sweep.
Speaker 3:So if you go that 25 year old who's just really good, quicker, stronger, faster, thought they're always going to beat you. You know you just can't it just. But I think that's where it comes from. I think it's you know. People do genuinely believe like technique will always beat power and strength and I just don't think it's true it's probably one of those like martial arts tropes that people just believe because other people have said it.
Speaker 2:The reality is so far from that. Dan Inosanto talks about attributes. Right, and like Guru Dan, dan Inosanto's a legend in this industry. Right, he got his black belt in jiu-jitsu very quickly as well, because he just stayed on course and he already had done years of martial arts before that. But he talks about attributes like height, size, weight, timing. Even your attitude is going to have a factor, right, if you're just too nice, sometimes there are fighters out there who are just too nice and that costs them a fight. Sometimes fighters are too aggressive, you know. But like, all of these attributes are what make you a fighter. It goes along that same trope.
Speaker 2:Like what? Would you rather be hit by a bicycle or a bus? Like, well, me a bicycle, because size matters. When people say size doesn't matter, I'm like have you ever been hit by a heavyweight? Have you ever been hit by a child? Size clearly matters, but people want to believe this stupid shit.
Speaker 2:Or my other favorite one is there are no rules in the street. Yes, there are. Yes, there are rules. They're called laws. They operate as rules do in a contest. Like there are no rules. That's so. We have not agreed to what techniques we will or will not throw, but that means we can throw anything because we've gotten into a street fight. I know that I can do anything that I want. I can shoot you if I want, but that would break the rule of the street, which is the law, and now I go to jail. So like, yes, there are rules in the street. Whoever made that shit up has never been into a fistfight and had to talk to a police officer before. Like no rules on the street? Oh damn, the cops showed up. Well, clearly there are rules. Then the cops showed up.
Speaker 3:That's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true, man, I wonder if I've always. I've done a couple of different martial arts over the years and I always liked Jiu Jitsu because of the liveness and the live training of it and the fact that it's quite hard to kind of bullshit people and kind of hide if you're a complete fake martial artist. But I find with a lot of martial arts that have maybe no live training or maybe the black belt doesn't train with the students, that's where you end up with these poor people that feel like they can defend themselves and they really can't and sadly they end up in some of these funny videos you might see on your channel and various other places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's sad because I think that the people who want to learn nine times out of 10 genuinely do want to learn.
Speaker 2:But, it's just like us learning basketball, right? If I want to learn basketball, I can go join a YMCA and maybe there's a little basketball team. There are some after work activity basketball team and you can go to anywhere to learn basketball. Why do you go to this coach instead of that coach? Well, it's because you like them and like people forget how important that is in martial arts. They all think about like I need to be tough, this needs to work in the streets, it needs to be effective. Like, how about? You just need to have a fun.
Speaker 2:Like, unless you're a dickhole and you're out there fist fighting people for fun all the time, 90% of your time with martial arts is going to be you just training martial arts. So like, shouldn't you enjoy that? And like are you going to be more effective if you don't go because you don't like the coach? Like, I don't like that guy, I don't like my people I train with yeah, they make me better. No, they don't. If you're not actively training, you're not getting better. You're resenting your training and you're not enjoying it. You're not going to get better at that thing.
Speaker 2:And so when it comes to like people going to these gurus, I can see exactly why they go? Simply because they like them. That's it. That's what they're getting out of it. They're finding somebody that they enjoy being around, and coaches miss that part so much. Because so many coaches are worried about what are you doing that I want you to do not. What do you want to get out of this? Like, would the world be better if Beethoven did karate instead of music? Like no, he did the thing he liked and that made him better at the thing he liked to do. Like he had a passion for it, even though he couldn't hear shit. Like so he didn't take criticism very well, apparently, but like he still did something that was great because he did it, because he liked it. And I, well, apparently, but he still did something that was great because he did it because he liked it. I think that's an important part that most people miss.
Speaker 3:I don't know. Do you know what some of those other martial arts are? You're talking about Tai Chi or Aikido or some shit. You've got some really funny videos and stuff like that. How do those guys in your experience, how do they how do they go to that martial art realize that their coach or their sensei or whatever isn't even touching someone and they think that they're pushing them back with like wind or force or some shit? Like I can't? It seems to me like it's a mental fucking illness, Like you've got to be mentally ill to believe that. Surely, Like, have you spoke to any of the people like that are in those classes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like it varies depending on who the cult leader is and, like, I say cult leader because we're talking specifically about people who are moving, people with their mind, right, and like when people say Aikido, I will say 90% of the stuff that I post about Aikido is not Aikido. It's people who are wearing Hakama. Of the stuff that I post about Aikido is not Aikido, it's people who are wearing Hakama, which is the traditional Aikido uniform. But really most of those people are doing Aki Jujutsu with J-U, j-u or they're doing Daito-Ru Aki Jujutsu, but they're not really doing traditional Aikido.
Speaker 2:Although I will say the guy who started Aikido, oh Sensei, was batshit crazy by the time he got to the end of his career Because he was moving people with his mind, for sure, and people forget that. You can look up videos of O-Sensei on YouTube. They're still there Of him in black and white when they were first having cameras, and he's just doing this stuff and people are flying all over the place, right, because he was seen out. He's old as shit, Of course he was crazy, and then people were like no, no, no, for real. He's the man, like the stories that came out about him too, of him disarming like 20 guards who had him at gunpoint, like those aren't true, that's not real. But like it depends on the hierarchy. So if you're the bottom of the row student, you don't know what you don't know, right, you just don't know what you don't know. So if you've never done martial arts a day in your life and you're not sure what's going on, you have to understand that they're not starting you off day one class with the no-touch knockout stuff. Like that's not how any cult works. I don't start you drinking the Kool-Aid. I got to get you there, right. So how do I get you there? Well, we got to ease you into this and there are so many manipulative tactics that people just don't understand that. Natural cult leaders just do off the top of the cuff, right?
Speaker 2:Have you ever read a book called how to Win Friends and Influence People? No, it's step one to understanding how to manipulate people. So, like in this book, how to Win Friends and Influence People is gold. It's supposed to be literally. To win friends and influence people is the goal, right? But the entire book is nothing but mentalism. It's helping you understand how you can get somebody to either think or act or understand what you want.
Speaker 2:For instance, as I've been talking, one of the things that I've been doing which you might agree yourself is I've been nodding my head, and every once in a while, you yourself start nodding your head. Why do you do that? Do you do that because it's your idea to nod your head, or is it because you're mimicking what I'm doing and nodding your head because I was doing it? Well, that's the thing about the book. It teaches you these things Like. One of the things I picked up from that book was that the nodding thing, which is fun. Feel free to do that at parties, it's really enjoyable.
Speaker 2:Or you can sit in a doctor's office. While you're in a doctor's office, it's dead silent, usually, right? It's kind of weird for a doctor's office to be real rowdy, so it's pretty quiet. Then a baby comes into the room. Now the baby is in charge of the room. The youngest person in the whole goddamn room, the one who has no say-so in anything that's going to happen around them, is literally in charge of everyone's mood at that time. So when the baby comes into the room, if it's screaming and crying, you all are miserable. If it's laughing and happy, you all are happy. We do the same thing when we enter a room. We just don't think about it that way. If we show up into the room and we're happy and we're having a good time, other people want to be around you. If you show up into a room and you're mad and somber and you're unapproachable, other people feel uncomfortable. We just don't think about it like that, so we do that every time.
Speaker 2:Now imagine a cult leader. We'll go with Jim Jones, probably one of the lowest hanging fruit for cult leaders, right? Everybody knows Jim Jones. He did Jonestown he was the term drank the Kool-Aid, right, because he had all of his congregation drink the Kool-Aid. That was poisoned and killed themselves, and those who didn't he'd gunned down with his people who didn't drink the Kool-Aid. They were like fuck that, I want to have the fucking AK-47. I'll just kill these people and then get paid and leave. Like I don't want to do that, but anyway.
Speaker 2:Like he started off as a child and when he was a kid he would go to all the different denominations of churches in his area. It didn't matter who they were and he would learn how the preachers were preaching. He would just mimic them, right? He would go out into the woods and he would practice to no one. He would just practice tone, inflection, emphasis, pacing, all that. Then he'd go back and he'd listen again. Eventually he becomes old enough to be the cult leader.
Speaker 2:Well, when he decides to start his own congregation, it was primarily African-American during a time where African-Americans weren't even allowed to eat at the restaurants in the area. So what he did to start to get everyone's trust, which actually worked out great, and actually at that time he wasn't a huge piece of shit human being is. He would go to these restaurants after his sermon on a Sunday and say hey, I have like 75 people back here who all want to pay you money and they're all black. So if you don't let them, we're just going to give the money to the guy across the street and we'll go to their restaurant instead. And the restaurant's like no, no, no, come on in, sit down, because their money spends just like everybody else's. So he actually was like one of the forerunners for the civil rights movement.
Speaker 2:And people forget this about Jim Jones all the time, like at first, he wasn't this crazy human being at first, but then, slowly but surely, he discovers cocaine and he could sleep with all the people that were in his congregation and he starts taking advantage of that shit. So then the government starts getting a little wind of this and so they're like, eh, we're not liking what you're doing. So he takes everybody and convinces them on their own to leave the country, right? So why end up doing this? Again? They didn't start drinking the Kool-Aid. He built them there.
Speaker 2:So now look at any martial arts studio, and now look at even something as simple as the gauntlet, which we talked about earlier. Did they whip me when I first walked in the door? No, did they show me technique that are viable? Sure, because if you go to most any martial arts studio, you're probably going to learn something so basic on your first day. A break fall, maybe a technique here or there, right, but then eventually they pull out the whips and the Kool-Aid and you drink it on your own free will, because they have convinced you to do it right. So how do we get there? Or you will, because they have convinced you to do it right. So how do we get there? It's a slow process.
Speaker 3:I feel like I'm being groomed. Mate, To be honest with you, I'm going to go in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very true, mate.
Speaker 1:I've got a friend who fell foul to a fake martial art.
Speaker 1:I've talked about it on the podcast previously, so I won't embarrass him by mentioning his name again, but essentially I saw this guy at an MMA previously, so I won't uh, I won't embarrass him by mentioning his name again, but, but essentially I I saw this guy at a an mma, a pro mma show, probably 15 years ago, and he was fighting one of the mma guys from the gym that I was training at the time and he we we heard that this the the guy that, not the guy that I now know, but the guy that was training at the gym at the time told us that he was fighting a guy who was representing a new style of Kung Fu called Nine Systems Kung Fu and he wanted to basically test it in a real fight environment. So he took an MMA fight and when we got to the event and our fighter got in the cage, the opposing fighter, the guy who I now know, came down to the song Kung Fu Fighter wearing a bandana, like he was from Karate Kid or something, oh that tracks down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and got in the cage, and you'll know that obviously any sort of fighting stance is, you know, something like this. He came in square on like this and then just started shifting left and right looking at, uh, this guy who was fighting. And then when the bell rang, I was expecting him to change into an actual stance and I thought it was some sort of mind games, but he stayed in the stance. Our fighter threw out like a jab. He tried breaking his arm, failed, then got knocked out within about two seconds. He then fought again later on and got guillotined, choked, unconscious.
Speaker 1:And then about six months later, this guy turned up at our gym to actually learn proper fighting and martial arts. And we become friends. And I asked him a while ago you know how, because he's a clever guy as well, he's got a good job, he's very intelligent and I said how did you get duped into doing such a ridiculous martial art? And he said exactly what you said. He walked in, it was the one closest to his door. He went in and the guy seemed friendly and you know, sort of was convincing and everybody else there seemed to be on board with it and over over you know sort of months and years. He believed that what he was training was legit and it would work, and that's why he got into a cage and fought a legit fighter and got knocked out.
Speaker 2:That's a hell of a delusion. There's a book. It's called the True Believers and it was written by a guy named Lewis Martin and it was about him joining a martial arts cult and it gives you the step-by-step of how he got in and got out. And how he got in is always fascinating to me, and when I do business consulting for schools now I bring this up I asked him what made you want to start into this cult? And in the book he talks about it and in real life he talks about it.
Speaker 2:He was like they just picked up the phone. He moved to a new place, he was going to college, he was just calling numbers. He called all kinds of martial arts schools. He just knew he wanted to start martial arts. He didn't know anything about martial arts, so he just starts calling and calling and I think he called five different martial arts academies. None of them answered the phone, but this one did. And when they answered the phone he was like, oh, I'll come in and try a class and it was very organized and it was very clean and it was very friendly and welcoming. But he loved the structure and it was like, okay, well, everybody's looking up to this guy. This guy's got to be legit. Meanwhile he's a fucking shyster.
Speaker 2:But at the same note, like just pick up the phone. Like do you want more students? Pick up your phone. Do you want less people in a cult? Pick up your phone. Just went to the first one that they wanted to go to. It wasn't like a thought process, like oh, I'm going to become a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt because I heard that's it. 90% of people don't do that shit. They go what's closest, what's cheapest, and then they go to that school. You know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it's so true. Have you identified any sort of obvious red flags for people that are maybe walking into a martial arts school for the first time? That might scream cult and stay away to them.
Speaker 2:Maybe not cult, but maybe just like red flags in general. Because, like cult again, our culture is made up of a lot of different cults. Anything can be considered a cult if you really start digging into it, right. But like, one of the biggest red flags that I see is really what happens when you walk into your first free trial or your paid trial. Like it depends.
Speaker 2:I'm not here or there about either one, but you walk into your first trial class and they're obviously going to treat you really well. It's your first day. So they want to sell you, they want to get you signed up for the program. Look at how they treat everyone else. Like don't pay attention to how they're treating you. They're going to treat you like gold. They're going to walk you through it.
Speaker 2:Pay attention to how they're treating everybody else, because once you sign on that dotted line and you become a member, that's how they're going to treat you, not how they're treating you now, because they can't Like when you have like 50 students, 30 students, 40 students on the mat, they can't give you that special one-on-one treatment that they would during your first day. Right, this is not going to happen. But if they're treating everyone with respect, everyone's having a good time. Everyone seems to be having fun. They're treating them like a student and they're helping them. That's a great sign. That's a green flag. But if you look and they're treating you like gold, but they're not paying attention to anybody else on the mat, run, just go somewhere else, because that's where you're going to be next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah, good advice, man. And you mentioned that you're obviously doing a ton of different stuff, so you did say it very quick and I missed most of it. But I know when we came, when we come into the podcast, you were just telling us about your documentary and the FightCon Expo. Obviously the toe wrestling that you've got in the UK coming up soon, which we'll go on to in a bit as well, but but tell us about some of the stuff that you're involved with. We're going to have to start with the toe wrestling. You've just got too many people excited with that foot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I I've always. I always thought it'd be fun to do like a man versus food style show where, like, instead of the dude doing like a food challenge, you just do like a random weird combat sport and I'm pretty game, like I think it'd be fun. Shit, I don't care what it is, let's, let's go. So this toe wrestling thing popped up and I'm like that is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I'm going to do that. And so now I'm on a plane tomorrow to go to london and then I gotta go.
Speaker 2:Like I think it's like an hour maybe two north a pub and apparently it's been going on for like 40, 50 years. It's been going on forever, like last year I think was sponsored by like Ben Jerry's or Baskin Robbins or some ice cream thing, like it's a big deal over there. And so like I'm going to be staying in a hotel, like the apartment above the pub, which is great for me because I like to have a good time. So I'm going to get smashed, go upstairs, sleep it off and then come back the next morning with a proper hangover and then compete in the toe wrestling championships, which is basically just arm wrestling, but you interlock your big toes and your goal is to push the other person's foot onto this, what they call a toedium. You can't make this up, so it's like a foot-shaped board with two walls, and then your feet are in the middle of these walls and you're trying to push their foot to touch the wall, and whoever does that wins.
Speaker 3:Some people got some fucking horrible feet, though. Do you know what I mean? Come on, man, interlocking your toe with some.
Speaker 1:Oh mate, if you've got a bit of fungal nail going on mate.
Speaker 2:A little tough acting. You just hit him with the spray you know right off the bat, and then we can go.
Speaker 1:Is there any sort of pre-match toe medical that? You have to do or anything.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know, but I am fascinated. That'd be amazing, that'd be amazing.
Speaker 3:Let's have your medical, get your feet out. Someone comes up, checks your big toe. You can't do it. He's got a fungal infection. You're gone.
Speaker 2:I was in a kickboxing match one time and like I kicked a dude in the head but I kicked him wrong. So like my middle toe, like the front knuckle, just snapped and it like never really healed like proper. So like I had somebody extra it and like the tip of that toe is just like it's not attached, so it's there but the bone is not attached to the other bone, so it's like a free-floating knuckle of my toe.
Speaker 1:So I'm really hoping they don't jack that up because that shit hurts yeah man, I think a flaccid toe is probably just going to put someone off, if anything, so it could give you an edge. Mate, you don't want to go into the mat.
Speaker 3:You want to be excited to be there. You know, have you grew your toenails out for it like have some fucking talons on you.
Speaker 2:Intimidation factor I am going to get a pedicure. When I get out there, though, and get like some mctojo life, some stuff on my feet, you know, get really into it, because I can't like you know, like fighters braid their hair, you know, I just want to, like, hook my feet up you're gonna give him a shave and that, like it's gonna braid the toe hair that'd be great if I had that much toe hair and terrifying get some extensions.
Speaker 1:Get some extensions on the toe.
Speaker 2:Hair mate now you're tempting me, that is. That is very tempting because I that'd be hilarious. I get some like dreadlocks off my toes yes, uh, that's it Now we're talking.
Speaker 1:But, mate, jokes aside, there's a serious cash prize, though, right 10 grand 10K?
Speaker 2:No way. Yeah, 10 grand no way. The women's champion has been the champion for like eight years in a row or some shit, and men's champion is like a three-year champion, so his name is Total Destruction. His nemesis is a guy named uh the toemanator oh yeah mctojo's coming. I'm not gonna win, but like I'll be there, I'll you don't know that.
Speaker 3:You don't know that, bro, you could have like a secret talent for toe wrestling.
Speaker 2:That would be incredible if I find out that's my superpower, like I could have anything. No, I just got strong ass feet, you know.
Speaker 3:I can't believe it's 10 grand. That's a crazy amount of money. That's ADCC money. I got a comp coming up. I'm going to get batted for five grand, that's if I win. You're doing that for ten to fuck around with your feet yeah, man, I think it's great.
Speaker 2:I think that's also a hilarious selling point. They just dropped a great promo video where they make it so serious, but it's so not, and I think that's the best part of it. After this one, I'm definitely doing more weird ass combat sports. I want to find everyone I can find and do those. The weirder the better. That's where I'm at.
Speaker 3:Oh, mate, I'll tell you what about that. I love the lightsaber ones. You know what I mean. They were, they fucking right into it. They got like a rule set and that keeps popping up on my feed, because I watched a couple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen the dude fighting in the full like knight's armor as well. That looks pretty hardcore.
Speaker 2:That we're doing at a fight con expo. Oh nice, that's fantastic that looks brutal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're, is not them pity patting like they they have like that shield and they just bash a dude in the face with a cross, but that shield hits them. In that armor they come out of that thing looking beat up. It's wild. Yeah, it looks brutal. Could you, um, could you like maybe do like a mace version and maybe sort of use some of your nunchuck skills? Perhaps I'm all about it.
Speaker 2:I'm like I just I like doing shit like that, like why not anything? That's just all. Because I've been doing regular martial arts forever. I did my boxing time, I did my kickboxing time, I got guys ready for an MMA fight. Two of my MMA fights didn't work out, so finally I was like fuck it, I'm not going to do it. I don't care Because I'm 40 now. But I was like weird stuff. I was like I want to do Karjitsu. Karjitsu was on you.
Speaker 1:What's that?
Speaker 3:In it, where you're both strapped into a car and then you've got to undo the belt and fight each other.
Speaker 1:That's it yeah, I thought that was Krav Maga. Is that not Krav Maga?
Speaker 2:Same thing. There's less hits to the groin. Yeah, what else is out there? I've seen the boxing on skates. I would do that, but I can't skate worse shit so that would be very good for me. I've seen the chest boxing. You thought about that? I would love to do that. I actually know the guy who helps run chest boxing and, funny enough, they got on stage for the Olympics so they did a demo at the Olympics last year. Wow, I'm shitting in chest, but hopefully I can just knock the guy out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you should go in some of these weird martial arts like you know all the fake stuff. You should go to like their conventions, mate, and see if they do any sort of like events and just when they try and like fake, push you.
Speaker 2:You just fucking bang see you later, son, I do have. Like you would ask me before if I had a story that stood out about a fraud, and I actually have a good one from our documentary, if you want to hear that. Yeah, 100% yeah. So we brought in a fraud to teach a seminar and we told them the truth, which was that we were doing a documentary about martial arts that we found interesting and we found his fascinating and we would love to take a seminar. It was all very true. Just to be honest, that's how I'm doing it. So the cameras weren't weird to him, but I brought in a bunch of martial artists 16, only 15 showed up, though, which is kind of the best part of the story, but I brought in a bunch of different martial artists from various backgrounds and like it was weird because I had to do a call to action, like on a public platform, and still, hopefully this guy doesn't find out, because there's just so many people that follow McDojo right now there's a possibility that one of his students could hear about it or whatever. So we had to keep it hush-hush, but literally within like eight hours I had the seminar full and I was like delete the post, like no one else is going to know. And so these 15 came in and they all had different backgrounds. There was like like a 4'11 Kravagod chick. That was like a 6'5", 250-pound cap-a-wear instructor, which is a big-ass dude Dude from Matt from Epic Roll. If you guys didn't know Epic Roll jujitsu apparel, he showed up. He's a black belt in jujitsu, one of Andre Galbo's brown belts at the time. Now, black belt pulled up Like it was a variety karate taekwondo. One guy did wrestling in high school one time and then we had to pull one of our guys off the camera because we had an odd number. So we pulled one of the camera guys off. That guy had never done martial arts a day in his life and I was like it's perfect, we got everybody we need this, is it? So then the guy shows up for the first hour. I told everybody before he showed up go along with the first hour, whatever he says, whatever, whatever he does, just go with it. Let's just see what he teaches, I want to see what he says. And so of course it was complete horseshit. Like at one point he's like doing pressure points on our arm and I'm like the guinea pig for him because I'm just trying to ham it up and just keep this going. So like he's poking me in the arm and he's like, now that we've messed up your arm, we're going to wipe the blood and the way that the direction of the blood flows, and in my mind I'm like blood flows both ways you jackass or you die. But like register with him, like in his mind that was logical. So then, like he's doing this thing, but I told him for the second hour, after we got like a water break, let's go ahead and just say whatever you'd say. I'm not going to tell you what to do or how to act, but however you would normally act in this situation which, of course, the people who did sign up clearly wanted to sign up to see a crazy person teach martial arts.
Speaker 2:So after that, Heather, who was one of Andre Galbo's brow belts and Tom Black Belt now she raises her hand she was like how could you teach this to women? Like the most like angry way of saying it and he did Out of nowhere. After an hour, everybody was going along with it and he gets hit with it, and he was wearing a white t-shirt and it was bone dry until he got asked that question and now he's profusely sweating through the shirt, like you could see it. And I was like, oh, this is getting good, let's see what happens. So he was like I do teach women. It's like no, you know. And he was trying to like flounder for a second and I could tell it was like, oh fuck, I'm going to miss the shot that I need. So I was like, well, how about we just get back to the seminar? We can do a Q&A.
Speaker 2:After he was like, yeah, well, now that we rubber train wire and he hands it to the only guy in the room who's never trained, like our camera dude. I was like this is amazing. So he hands it to that guy. He was like well, what kind of technique do you want to see me defend? And someone in the back again goes like what about an upward prison shank? He was like, okay, stab me.
Speaker 2:And so our camera guy goes to stab him and the guy is trying to do this downward X block where he's trying to get his knuckles to hit pressure points to disarm the knife. Well, our guy camera guy he's never held a knife before like other than to cut up chicken in the kitchen, like he doesn't know what to do, but he stabbed him 18 times while the guy's trying to perform the shift. So, like my homie Epic Roll, wouldn't this work better? And does a two-on-one grip on the knife arm? And the guy tries to stab him and can't Clearly the better option.
Speaker 2:But the instructor goes oh no, no, no, no, because where are you going to go from there? And in my head I'm going not get fucking stabbed. The whole point is not get stabbed. He didn't get stabbed, you did. He's better. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2:But he goes, what you want to do? And he bum rushes our camera guy and it scares the shit out of him Because he does it mid-speech. So what you want to do? And he just runs at the fucking guy and I swear he shit his pants Because he freezes right. And I'm like, okay, there's some validity, you've at least gotten to freeze instead of stabbing you in the fucking face with a knife. But go on.
Speaker 2:So he winds up getting a body lock on him. And when he gets the body lock, he gets the far side arm, not the near side arm. Well, the near side arm has the knife. So he's got the far side arm and he's locked him up. So he's monologuing to the class like a super villain. He's like, as you can clearly see, I completely control the assailant.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, our camera guy what our mission is here and he's doing this to his back, not touching him right. As he's monologuing, he gets stabbed in the back. He got stabbed 48 times during that monologue 48 times. So like after that, someone in the back probably the same guy, because the shit was hilarious he goes what happens if you get stabbed in the back? Valid question, right. And so his answer to who he thought was paying customers because he didn't know any of these people had this training he thought they were just regular people looking to take a seminar from him. So his actual answer to that guy was well, if you don't see the blood, it's not that bad. Yes, motherfucker it is it?
Speaker 2:is that bad? You're getting stabbed in the spine 48 times? Yes, it's bad. But the best part to me was we got a gym at last minute's notice because we had such a low budget, and a gym in Compton, la, south Central, with a hood hood in Compton, and it's not marked, there's no signage, it's just blacked out windows, right. So he was kind of terrified to show up in the first place. He thought we were going to mug him, but then there was going to be a class after this was done. So we had to tell the owner hey, like we understand, this guy's going to stay stupid shit, you can't laugh at him and you can't have your students interrupt because it's a documentary. Like we get one shot at this tape. So I was like you cannot mess that up because it's a big part of our budget.
Speaker 2:Well, there was a dude who showed up tall, lanky, black dude, and I shit you, not a Michael Jackson thriller jacket, like the red with the zippers and everything, and his face was so animated that our producer saw it and he was like, hey, get a shot of that guy. So our camera guy every once in a while would pan over to his face like a cartoon character. And when that guy was like, if you don't see the blood, it's not that bad. That dude's face dropped. He was like and you need to make sure other people saw the same shit. That was what he was looking for. Anybody else did y'all? Was that just me? No wild stuff. But yeah, we got that on footage so that's definitely going to be in the documentary for sure.
Speaker 3:So did you like out him at the end did everyone just go?
Speaker 2:you're full of shit, mate, and fuck off no, like what was crazy was he left and like it was so weird, like it was, like it was, like you have like a special friend and your special friend doesn't know that you know. So, like at one point he he was like all right, so how to defend against a double leg takedown was another thing that came up. And so someone's like well, how do you defend against a double leg? Well, the dude who was talking about him doing that had only done wrestling in high school and he hadn't done it since. So maybe 15 years since he'd last done a single or a double leg. And the guy was like what I do is I drop my elbows down on their back like this, like anybody who's ever done any wrestling or grappling. You probably should sprawl, right, just sprawl, just do that right. Because that right, sprawl, just do that right, because that's your best bet. If you're going to try to stay standing, you better know some acrobatic shit, because if not, you're getting taken down. So he was like, can I try it on you? And the guy who was running the class was like, yes, I was like, oh shit, this is going to be so good. So like it actually made it into our trailer for the film.
Speaker 2:The guy does the worst double leg ever because he doesn't drop his front knee and, like in, he drops his back knee. He just kind of falls to the floor, grabs the guy by both legs, picks him up, tabletops him and dumps him in the corner While the guy in the air is trying to pressure point him. People are trying to poke pressure points. He's dumped on his head. I was like Jesus Christ. At this point you have to know there's some cognitive dissonance. You've reached the fork in the road where you've believed something your entire life and then someone says that's not true and you're like well, I can either continue to believe the horseshit or I could like be a different man. He chose to keep believing the horseshit even though time after time again he was proven wrong. It's fascinating shit to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I think some people though, it must just become their whole identity.
Speaker 3:Nah, they've got to have something wrong with them. I'm sorry, mate. You've got to have something wrong with you to believe, even when people are doing that to you, to believe, that it's real. You've got to be, you've got to have some sort of fucking influence.
Speaker 1:I think some people are just such losers. That's the only one thing they've got where they've got a little bit of status, a little bit of power, and they just kind of let go of it.
Speaker 2:There's an old saying which goes it's easier to fool people than convince people they've been fooled, and I think that most people have this mechanism where they don't want to believe they've been fooled by anyone, and so they'll hold that ground for the sake of their ego. The problem is that if you do that enough for a long period of time, you're literally now delusional. You're not just fooled Like you've fooled yourself into believing something that's not even close to true, and I think that that just comes with a little bit of manipulation and a lot of eagerness to please, along with some naivety, and you put a bunch of that into a soup and you have the makings of like a cult or a cult follower. Like there's a great documentary if you get the chance. It's called Wild Wild Country and it's on Netflix and it's about an Indian cult that moved over to the United States and bought a massive plot of land right next to like a retiree community and it was made up of doctors and lawyers and architects.
Speaker 2:Financiers Like these were very highly intelligent people that were a part of this cult. Now I will say this it was a sex cult, so they were just like fuck it right. So it was like why not? Like I'm rich and smart, now I'm going to get laid all the time, but like they ended up poisoning the townspeople. Like, so like it's a fine line between like everything's hunky-dory, I'm having a great time to eh, why don't we make them drink the Kool-Aid this time? You know it's weird yeah, man, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Did you ever see the show that Rokas did the self-defense championships? You ever seen that?
Speaker 2:loved it, yeah so good we had.
Speaker 2:Rok. Oh man, he's gonna be, uh, at the fight con. So he's gonna be at fight con because I've known rocus since they said I see mike, all those influencers, we all work together quite a bit over the years and uh, rocus is going to be there and he's going to be doing like a panel. So he's going to be talking about, uh, his show, so people can go and interact with him at FightCon and just ask him questions about it. And if no one's seen the show, it's phenomenally well put together. It's not a YouTube show, it's a show that happens to be on YouTube and he's actually going to be announcing his next season and showing the trailer for the next season as a premiere at our event.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, awesome. Yeah, that'll be good mirror at our event. Oh, wow, awesome, that would be good, yeah, so, mate. All that sort of stuff, though, is so good, isn't it Because you realize, like against the knife, how defenseless you are? And then, when you see these people saying, do this, do that against the knife, let alone a fucking gun, they're the ones that get me gun defense from a distance.
Speaker 2:It's like what, like how is that a thing, the thing that stood out to me with the Ultimate Self-Dispense Challenger Championship. I can't remember which one, it is off the top of my head, I think it's Championship.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:What stood out to me was I think it was Season 2. Like they had pulled out a knife and that was a scenario. It was like each scenario. Most of the competitors didn't know what was going to happen and when some of the guys got a knife pulled out on them, the guy would be like give me your wallet. And they'd be like, okay, and that was literally it. That was the end of the challenge for them. And then some dudes were like no, and now they're in this like full melee, where they're getting out of the team time and trying to figure out what went wrong with their life. You know, like it's.
Speaker 2:I think that that kind of stuff is great to add that variety and reality to people's training, because as much as people want to train in different martial arts, you believe you have the answer. Right. Martial arts is all about that martial arts. Each one believes they have the answer. What they really have is a piece of the answer based off of distance, like there are ranges of combat that you're more effective in. So like if I don't know how to shoot a gun and someone pulls out a gun, and I have a gun and they know how to shoot a gun and someone pulls out a gun and I have a gun and they know how to shoot a gun. Well, our range of combat now is a firearm. They're going to win, because I didn't learn how to use this tool for the range of combat that I'm in. I might get lucky, but you can get lucky even throwing a punch Like. But each range of combat is important and they all link together.
Speaker 2:People love making fun of Wing Chun Kung Fu. They don't realize how much Wing Chun Kung Fu is in all of their other martial arts. It's like does Wing Chun have the right idea? Fuck, no, there's plenty of things wrong with Wing Chun Kung Fu. But do they have some ideas? Right? Yes, aikido right, everybody makes fun of Aikido. But what happens when we get on the ground and I lock you down in side control and I get a hold of your wrist? Like how many people are doing wrist locks to white belts? And that's a huge joke in jujitsu, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've done a naughty one today, like where did you think all the wrist locks came from?
Speaker 2:Like 90% of those wrist locks are coming from a keto. They just don't work very well standing. But if you isolate the arm now, you got something special right. So like these things blend and they mix so well together. I don't believe there's too many arts, except for a handful, that are just mostly dog shit. Now they might not be as effective, but what is your goal If you go to Aikido and you're doing Aikido and the guy's like well, you're not going to become the greatest fighter as a matter of fact, this shit's not going to work on the street at all. But you'll have a good time. You'll have some camaraderie, and the guy is like well, I was just coming to have a good time. Then who gives a shit? He's getting out of it what he wants you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that was exactly how Rokas, I think, got on his journey with the show, wasn't it? I think he was like a really passionate hardcore Aikido guy for a while and then realized it just didn't work and he thought fuck Did?
Speaker 3:He had a fight and he got beaten up.
Speaker 2:The MMA guy showed up. I think it's the first video on his channel. If I remember correctly, it's one of the most. He was like, yeah, I'm going to show Aikido works. He's got the shit beat out of him. He was like, okay, change of plans.
Speaker 1:I think he told us when we spoke to him that I think he'd had a couple of street altercations before that and was already thinking. And was already thinking fuck, this stuff really doesn't work.
Speaker 3:I've just been beat up twice on the street, but he said he was still going along with it, wasn't?
Speaker 1:he.
Speaker 3:Because he paid so much time into it, believing that it was good and real and true. That must be horrible, though, just realizing. Imagine saying all the time you've put into jiu-jitsu and it just doesn't work. I know, man, You'd be like fuck, I'm an idiot.
Speaker 1:How's Rokas doing with his injury now? I've not really paid attention to how his recovery's gone.
Speaker 2:I know the last time he posted about it he had told I mean he made an announcement that I think he's kind of mostly sidelined because of injury, which sucks. But you know, that's why I think we talked about it earlier. That's why I think it's important to set tangible goals with your martial arts. Like it's okay if you're no longer the best fighter in the world, because eventually that's going to happen even to the best, right, Even Anderson Silva. Towards the end of his career, he was losing. Like it just is what it is. But like does that mean that you're a bad martial artist? No, it just means you need to find something new to do with it.
Speaker 2:Like I love people like Chael Sonnen. He's a very quick-witted individual. Like probably one of the best shit talkers besides Muhammad Ali, in my opinion. Right, Just a great shit talker, and he was able to use that. Now he does what is it like?
Speaker 2:A commentator analyst for the industry. It's a perfect role for him. He's a great shit talker. Let him talk shit publicly, entertain us doing that, but he knows what he's talking about. So it comes in handy that you have somebody like that or you get like a Rokas. Maybe he pivots and maybe he makes, like this show, a real legit show, or it's off of YouTube and he gets it on like something else and now we as fans can watch and go. I've never heard of that guy. I've heard of these two guys, but not that guy. And you realize that guy's a fucking badass, right? I'm so glad that Jeff Chan got a platform like that, because he is such a badass dude Like that dude does not play, he goes into every gym, he spars everybody, he goes hard in the paint every time and somehow he could still speak Like where's your CTE brother? Like join us, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think, I think when the when you were saying about the knife, the knife challenge where they had to hand over the wallet, I think it was Jeff that just cracked the guy straight away but mate that show, imagine that show on Netflix.
Speaker 3:I think it would blow the fuck up. Yeah. I think it would be huge. I think it would be massive. Imagine that everyone would. I think it would be huge. I think it would be massive. Imagine that Everyone would click on it because it's a fascinating subject.
Speaker 1:Do you remember when I first watched it? I think I burst in this studio going man, you've got to fucking see this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's such a good idea and it's so good and the production's good, but if it was on Amazon or Netflix or a major streaming service, I genuinely believe it would be huge, absolutely huge and it would be good for the industry.
Speaker 2:It'd be great for martial arts.
Speaker 3:It'd be great for martial arts.
Speaker 2:We have a gatekeeping thing going on a little bit. I agree with you 100%. It'd be amazing for our industry, because getting good content like that out from the martial arts industry that speaks to the masses it seems fairly difficult to do. Well, and like martial artists might be fans of certain things, like certain documentaries, it doesn't mean the masses are, but something like this is just fascinating shit. When somebody's like the bus thing, when you're like just chill on the bus and all of a sudden like somebody just rushes in and you're sitting down like what would you do?
Speaker 1:I have no fucking idea. Yeah, that happens in London a lot, mate, so watch yourself on those buses.
Speaker 2:I watched for the headbutts. I learned about the headbutts. I was like we're in an argument.
Speaker 1:That's Glasgow. That's Glasgow.
Speaker 2:They call it the butts. They like watch the butts make. And I'm like, what are you talking about? No, you'll see. And then, like you see a guy getting headbutted in a pub, you're like, oh, I see. First time I saw the London Bridge I was in a pub smashed. I stumbled out of the pub and I looked over and I see like the little placard that says London Bridge and it's like little ass bridge. I thought the London Bridge was like the big one on the postcards, but postcards, but apparently that's not it. That's Tower Bridge, yeah, which I didn't know that because I'm a stupid American and, like some dude, is pissing on this little placard that said London Bridge.
Speaker 3:That's very British. Well, yeah, nice I think. Yeah, I think with that show though, I think like a big thing. Like my wife was like totally obsessed with it all the way through and she doesn't give a fuck about martial arts, and I think that's a big indicator that it would be really good. You know, she was like when's the next episode out?
Speaker 3:And we got Roka sent us the episodes for his second season early. Um, and she was like let's watch it straight away. She's like, put it on, put it on. So we binged it that night but again she, she wouldn't, she wouldn't. Uh, you know she has no interest in martial arts. So for her to be like that, it's gotta be a good show and it is a bridge, because it is hard. Even this podcast and you know all the other things that we do and it's it's very niche, isn't it? So you know, it's really appealing to grapplers and into people in the, in the industry, but reaching people outside. You know, we're going to CGI on Thursday in Vegas and some of my friends are into football, soccer and they have no clue what CGI is, but to us it's like the biggest thing ever, amazing.
Speaker 2:Especially because of Craig. If there's no Craig Jones, there's no CGI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, clearly because it's me.
Speaker 2:But still, his personality is what makes it and the fact that he understands how to entertain people naturally, like he's just a natural entertainer, like he's a fascinating dude. He was like making his career off of being number two if anybody remembers him in ABCC days Like he was always number two guy, right. And then you know, with all the drama that goes on between the Death Squad I still call them the death squad as a whole, but they fraction themselves off into these different niches and there's some underlying. I will say this, though I'm curious about what y'all's thoughts are about this Clearly there is something that horrifically happened between all of them and none of them are talking about it and they haven't talked about it.
Speaker 3:They're shaking his head to me. I'm like what we know why.
Speaker 2:You know why.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're telling you off air.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, damn it, you're going to make me wait.
Speaker 3:I was holding confidentiality. But yeah, well, we know why. It's quite well known, but we know exactly why.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like there's been a lot of rumors and conversations that have gone on, but nothing, like no one's given solidified facts and evidence about what's happened with it and, of course, they're not going to tell me which I did. I wouldn't tell me either.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got it from a pretty good source and yeah, it's pretty fucked up, to be honest, yeah, it's a bit weird. It's a bit weird. But, yeah, it's pretty fucked up and uh, yeah yeah, it gets.
Speaker 1:It gets alluded to a fair amount. I believe so. Uh. So yeah, you can probably guess. But yeah, we'll take it off yeah for sure I get it, that's cool tell us, uh, tell us, about your documentary mate, because you obviously mentioned about that particular episode, um, and from what you explained, I can't wait to see it. So is it finished? When's it finished? When's it out? When can we see it?
Speaker 2:So we had like the hell of a time, man, like it's wild how long it's taken. It should not have taken this long. So, like I'm one of those people where if I have an idea, I just talk about it publicly immediately because I'm a moron. So I was like I got an idea, I'm going to do a documentary. So I like literally made a post that day. I was like I'm going to do a documentary because people keep asking me.
Speaker 2:And the first person I reached out to was a master Kent, and I'm sure you guys have seen master Kent, right. Well, he's a legit actor and he actually went to school for film. So, like I reached out to him I was like hey, I'd like you to direct this and I didn't know at the. But he was starting his own film. I think it's called Cops vs Bad Guys or something like that and he made his own film, which is dope. So he couldn't do mine. So I reached out to the guys who did Mexican martial arts, the Vodo Studios guys and they were like, yeah, and then it took us three months to plan how we were going to do the crowdfunding thing, because you have to give out perks and shit. And then after that, it was another three months before we were able to announce it, because we were going to announce it during a friend's live stream that got a bunch of eyeballs and we were going to do it during a Conor McGregor fight which at the time was like fucking, you're going to get every eyeball right. And so then after that, it was another three months before we can actually finish the crowdfunding, because Indiegogo gives you 90 days to film. So from concept all the way to the end, we're talking nine months just to get the crowdfunding taken care of. Then after that, it was another three months before we could film because, like their schedules and my schedules had to line up. So I was going to drive across the country and it was about a month, I think, before I was supposed to start driving that COVID happened, and when COVID happened, everything fucking shut down. And I was like COVID happened, and when COVID happened, everything fucking shut down and I was like shit, like just let us film the damn movie. And so that was two years, I think they told us it was going to be two months to curve and then it wound up being two years and then during that time we were actually able to film for 30 days. After that we were able to edit for another 60 days.
Speaker 2:We realized what we had was not enough for a film, but it was made a dope sizzle reel. So then we moved on, wind up getting a guy named Adam Wood, who's an Emmy nominating director, to make our trailer that we have now and to help us move forward, and he gave us a new budget. He was like look, what you have here is great. You can't stop here. He's like you need to make this. He set the new budget. We wind up getting Jocko Willink as an executive producer of the film. So Jocko was an EP of us, which is so handy and his voice is so powerful. If you listen to him, just speak. It's like oh, tell me more, whatever the fuck he says. And then we wind up getting to the point where we had a production company come across and they said that they would pay for the entire thing, which is like a $700,000 budget. They're like we'll take care of it all.
Speaker 2:Like I was telling you guys before, they wanted full creative control, they wanted full business control and they wanted to fire my entire team. And I was like no, no, that's not going to happen, like these guys have been with me through COVID. They've been with me from the start. It's been years in the making. I'm not just going to kick them to the curb and I've made them part owners of the IP so that way, no one can fire them. No matter where we go, they cannot be fired from my project Because, fuck you, I'm not going to let you fire my team. One of those guys is my entertainment lawyer. You think I'm just going to let you fire my lawyer? Get out of negotiating.
Speaker 2:And they really wanted to just change the film.
Speaker 2:They wanted to make it about absentee fatherism.
Speaker 2:I was like what the hell does that have to do with absentee fatherism?
Speaker 2:They wanted to make it a political movie, driven movie, and I was like it's not a political movie. It has nothing to do with politics, which is why I love martial arts. This should be devoid of politics. This is about something that can help and benefit people, but it's been taken advantage of by people who are pieces of garbage. And so finally, now we're talking to a company called Big Media. Big Media came on board as our production team, so it's a co-pro between a company called Big Media and a company called Grit Productions, so they're pro-collaborating on it to help get this across the finish line and we're 100k shy of getting, uh, the last bit of filming done. Once we get that done, then we can get to the can and edit and then we're off to the races for distribution. So, like after five years of basically having to turn down money from people, having to get almost screwed over by people, hearing every no you can hear, we're almost almost there, nice man, that's some effort, mate, and what's the kind of overall gist of the documentary?
Speaker 1:What can we expect to see?
Speaker 2:Honestly, it's a lot about what I do already with McDoja Life. So we basically are just covering martial arts cults. We've picked one particular centralized bad guy and he is the only fraud I've ever seen in this industry ever, I mean. I've covered thousands of stories. He is the only one to admit he's a fraud and he's actually in a state mental hospital right now Super famous fraud too. You have seen his stuff, I promise you. You've seen his stuff. He was actually called out by the Amazing Randy on live television as well back in the day.
Speaker 2:So he manipulated people. At one point His martial arts studio was so big he had 2,000 active members. His studio, his classes were so full that he had to teach inside an airplane hangar. That's how big his classes were. So it wasn't just like 2,000 people were students, it was like 2,000 people showing up every class. Like it was wild.
Speaker 2:So like this dude manipulated like scientists. He fooled scientists to believe that he had magical abilities MIT, as a matter of fact. He fooled the Prince of Egypt into believing that he had magical abilities. Like he was just that good of a con artist and he was a guy who never actually graduated elementary school. Like he. Just that's how he made do.
Speaker 2:But the guy's fascinating, but he's like a profiler for us. So he's basically telling us very Hannibal Lecter style, with less murder, how to manipulate people and how these frauds do what they do. He's given us a blueprint. It's like listening to somebody who is that smart on how to manipulate people on one hand is terrifying, but on the other hand, that is the dumbest smart person you've ever fucking seen in your life. Like that person could not do anything else with their entire life but manipulate people, and they did it so well that they fooled people so good. It makes you scared. Because that guy didn't have anything other than a fifth grade education. How many people out there are college graduates, people who actually went to school to learn how to manipulate people, like psychologists or mentalism, and studied that their entire life? How many of those are around right now Like this dude didn't graduate fifth grade, Like he was able to fool this man. It's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mate, that's scary, that sounds great man, although victims and we've we talked to about a couple other cults that are going on, and obviously we do experiments. I'm not a big fan of talking head documentaries. I want us to interact and so that experiment that I gave you guys with the fraud, we also did another one where I just made up a martial art, completely made up a new persona, brought in people who had never trained martial arts to see if I could fool them, and fooled every one of them, like just gave them horse shit.
Speaker 2:I just saw a bunch of stuff on movies and I was like, oh well, anybody can just watch this movie and teach it, so let me just teach exactly how they showed it on the movie. And I just did three techniques for movies and they were like this is the best seminar I've ever taken and I was like I'm a piece of garbage?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sounds great, man. Have you got a working title for it?
Speaker 2:yet Right now we're just sticking with McDojo Life because everybody knows the name. So we think that's a great way to start. We actually did Well, I can't talk about it yet. So we have something in the works to piggyback off of another network that has done something extremely similar an episodic series. They did a series about wrestling and they did a series about MMA and they were very episodic and so we're pitching it to them currently with our idea doing the same version, but I can't talk about the production company yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, All right. Well, good luck with that. And just to finish up there, man, tell us about the FightCon Expo and then we'll wrap it up and we can get to bed. It's late for us. Yeah, man.
Speaker 2:I appreciate y'all staying up with me, man.
Speaker 1:It's been a pleasure, man, it's good fun October 3rd and 4th this year.
Speaker 2:Next year event It'll be on the Friday and Saturday, October 3rd and 4th in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the Salt Palace, which is a huge expo center. Out there we have Armored MMA that's going to be out there. We have a full jiu-jitsu tournament that's going on all day. We have a full wrestling tournament that's going on all day. We have arm wrestling that's going on all day. We have seminars from like Rokas is going to be doing a panel. We have the guy, Paul Revellin, who started RevGear. He's actually going to be doing a panel and talking about how people can actually utilize their shops better. So if you're a martial arts school owner who happens to be at those tournaments, you can slide through and learn how to actually sell gear in your school and stay open. And then we have, like, a sports psychologist coming in to teach a little something.
Speaker 2:Out there we have guys on-site filming content all day. So Shane Faison is going to be out there. Shane Faison is a legend when it comes to YouTube martial arts, but he's a legit instructor, a great coach, so he's going to be out there teaching as well. Who else do we have coming out? Man? We have a ton of people coming out. One of One is one of our main sponsors now. Mayweather is one of our main sponsors now. So we have some really big names and we think it's going to be just a good fun time. That's what I'm hoping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Sounds great. Yeah, Sounds good. Man. Anything else you want to shout out or any other things you want to give before we go? Dude.
Speaker 2:No man, just thank you all. I really appreciate it. I love talking shop, so thank you for that. Um, I talked earlier about fighting in nightclubs when I was a kid. I have a book called Sensei's Bars and Scars on Amazon and it's about me fighting in nightclubs as a teenager and like I have photos that go along with every story. So like one of the photos is literally my instructor who set himself on fire in a nightclub. Like it's a photo of him in like an 8 foot fireball, like to show like this really happened. So because some of the stories are crazy but they're all true. So hopefully everybody enjoys it and check out McDojo Life on any platform that you can.
Speaker 1:Awesome mate. Well, I've really enjoyed that, mate. Before we jumped on, we were like let's try and keep it to an hour and we're at 90 minutes. So that tells you how much the fun we've had.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed that. Sorry, I'm long-winded.
Speaker 1:No, no, I really enjoyed it honestly. Yeah, Good to meet you, man. Thanks for your time. Thank you guys.
