Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Benny "The Jet" Urquidez & William "Blinky" Rodriguez (2026) - Chest Biting, Shin Guards and Forgiving Murder

Transcript

Benny "The Jet" Urquidez & William "Blinky" Rodriguez (2026) - Chest Biting, Shin Guards and Forgiving Murder · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  Today is going to be a journey. We are going way back back to
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  the source code. We really are the absolute
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  patient zero moments of mixed martial arts.
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  That's the perfect term for it. So we're diving into The Joe
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  Rogan MMA Show episode 173 and the guests are Benny the Jet
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  Arcadez and William Blinky Rodriguez.
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  And you know, people throw the word legends around a lot.
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  All the time. But these two, I mean, they were
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  doing MMA before anyone even knew what to call it.
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  Exactly. If you look at the UFC today,
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  it's this polished, you know, billion dollar machine, you got
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  rules, weight class, doctors, all of it.
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  But this deep dive takes us back to the primordial soup of the
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  1970's. The.
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  Wild West it. Was absolutely the Wild West and
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  guys like Benny and Blinky were basically inventing the sport by
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  trial and error. And it sounds like error usually
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  meant someone getting seriously hurt or finding yourself in a
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  just a crazy situation. Or a horror film.
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  Yeah, yeah, depending on how you look at it.
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  What really got me about this whole thing isn't just the fight
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  stories and we have some wild ones to get to.
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  Hey, we do. It's the arc of it all.
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  We're going to talk about how a simple misunderstanding about a
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  name basically changed, striking forever.
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  And how a local cobbler accidentally invented a piece of
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  safety gear we all use now. Yes.
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  And then we have to talk about this really profound story about
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  murder and forgiveness that just completely redefines what it
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  means to be a tough guy. That last part, Blinky story
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  about his son, it just, it stops you in your tracks.
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  It does. It takes a whole conversation
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  from how to hurt people and shifts it to how to heal people.
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  It's incredible. So powerful, but OK, let's set
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  the scene. We need to take everyone back to
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  what, 19731974? Yeah, the era of full contact
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  karate to understand martial arts back then were completely
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  siloed. Right, no Internet.
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  No Internet, no YouTube information, just didn't travel.
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  So if you were a karate guy, you fought other karate guys right?
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  A boxer fought boxers. There was no real cross
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  pollination of ideas. So you had all these guys, these
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  black belts, who thought they were the most dangerous men on
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  the planet. And maybe they were within their
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  own. Rules, but they'd never actually
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  been tested outside of that little.
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  Box, precisely. And the whole landscape was just
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  chaos. There was no PKA, the
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  Professional Karate Association, none of that yet.
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  Which brings us to the Hawaii fights.
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  This sounds like something out of a movie.
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  Benny and Blinky talk about flying to Hawaii for these
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  elimination bouts. And the lack of regulation is
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  just it's shocking by today's standards.
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  Lack of regulation is being very polite.
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  It really is. There were basically no rules on
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  technique. And the big one?
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  No weight divisions. None.
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  Zero. You sign the contract, You
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  fought whoever they told you to fight.
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  And that leads to this first just terrifying story.
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  Blinky Rodriguez gets his match up.
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  Now, Blinky's not a big guy. No, he's a featherweight. 145
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  lbs maybe. Lean quick and he's told he's
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  fighting a man named Ernest White.
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  OK, Ernest White is 6 foot 3 and weighs 245 lbs.
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  Whoa, that's £100 difference. A full 100 lbs.
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  Today, a Commission wouldn't just stop that fight.
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  They'd probably pull the promoter's license.
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  It's just physics at that point. It's David versus Goliath, but
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  without the slingshot. And this is where you see the
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  mindset of that era. Benny's in his corner.
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  He's his brother-in-law. And he doesn't tell him to run.
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  No, he leans in and tells him the cold, hard truth of the
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  situation. He says the promoters, they want
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  a spectacle. They want to see the little guy
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  get smashed. If you don't knock him out, you
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  will not win. Wow, so don't just survive
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  against this giant. You have to completely finish
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  him or they'll rob you. That's the pressure and he did
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  it. Blinky 1 But that lawlessness,
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  it led to some desperate moments.
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  Benny tells the story about getting pinned.
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  Right, because they were judo black belts.
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  They understood grappling. But submissions weren't really a
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  thing yet in these fights. The refs didn't know what they
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  were looking at. Just one guy on top of the
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  other. So Benny's pin, he's exhausted,
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  he can't move, so he just, he bites the guy.
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  On the chest. Right on the chest.
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  The guy jumps up screaming, pointing at the bite mark on his
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  PEC. The ref looks at Benny and Benny
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  just shrugs and says I was getting tired.
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  It's hilarious now, but you see the desperation when there are
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  no rules, you do what you have to do.
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  They were making it up as they went along, but maybe the
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  biggest discovery, the thing that changed everything, came
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  from a misunderstanding. That sounds like a comedy
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  sketch. The Muy Thai incident.
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  This is my favorite. It's so good.
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  It perfectly shows that isolation we were talking about.
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  South Benny's brother Arnold comes up to him and asks, hey,
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  you want to fight a tie? A tie?
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  And Benny, completely innocent, asks what's Tai?
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  He thinks it's a person's name. He literally thinks the
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  opponent's name is Mr. Muay Thai, so he says yeah sure, I'll
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  fight him. He has no idea Muay Thai is a
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  whole fighting style from Thailand.
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  A style that specializes in, you know, chopping people's legs out
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  from under them and throwing elbows.
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  He steps in that ring thinking he's about to have a karate
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  match with a guy named Tai, and then the first kick lands.
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  Reality hits hard. He says his eyes bulged out of
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  his forehead. You have to remember in American
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  karate, then, you didn't kick the legs.
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  It wasn't seen as honorable. Right.
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  It was all about points above the waist, so his legs had zero
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  conditioning for that kind of attack.
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  They were just soft targets. He was getting chopped down like
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  a tree, he said. He didn't even know they could
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  use knees. He thought the guy was just
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  fighting dirty. Oh, so we're brawling now?
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  Exactly. He didn't realize he was up
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  against a centuries old old refined martial art.
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  It was a huge wake up call for the entire American scene.
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  A massive hole in their game. But this is what makes Benny the
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  Jet special. He didn't just get beat up and
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  complain, he adapted. And that leads to an innovation
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  that everyone listening probably has in their gym bag.
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  The shin guard? Yep.
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  Necessity is the mother of invention, right?
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  So after that fight, Benny knows, OK, I have to learn how
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  to block these kicks and I need to teach my students.
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  But you can't just throw full power link kicks at each other
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  every day. You won't be able to walk the
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  ties. They were just, you know,
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  kicking banana trees since they were kids to deaden the nerves.
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  Or using lidocaine spray to numb their shins.
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  Right. Betty didn't have time for that.
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  He needed a solution now. So he goes to a cobbler, an old
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  school shoe repair guy. It's.
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  Such a great image. He walks in.
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  Ask the guy to make these leather pads for his shins and
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  the Cobblers. Confused, he asked well how are
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  they going to stay on? And he suggests this brand new
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  material, Velcro. Velcro.
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  So Benny Urquidaz basically invents the modern martial arts
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  shin guard all so he could train to fight like the Tais.
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  It's an amazing story, and that one piece of gear allowed the
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  score to evolve so much faster here.
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  And Speaking of techniques, evolving the calf kick.
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  Oh, this is a huge one in modern MMA.
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  The calf kick is everywhere now it.
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  Cripples people, it ends fights. But for a long time everyone
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  thought it was this. Like new discovery, a new meta.
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  But Benny and Blinky were doing this in the 70s, they called it,
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  making the dancers flat footed. Because it hits that peroneal
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  nerve right and your foot just goes dead.
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  You can't bounce on your toes anymore.
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  If you're fighting a guy who moves a lot, a boxer, you just
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  chop the calf and suddenly they're a stationary target.
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  What's so fascinating is how that technique, just it
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  disappeared for a while. Why did it?
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  The rules. American kickboxing came along
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  and a lot of promotions had rules where you had to throw a
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  certain number of kicks above the waist.
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  Leg kicks were seen as, I don't know, less flashy.
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  So the sport actually devolved in some ways.
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  It did. It went in a different direction
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  and now, 50 years later, it's come full circle.
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  You have guys bringing it back and dominating with it.
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  Good technique, never really dies.
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  But there is one very famous story of someone not respecting
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  that technique and paying a huge price for it.
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  Muhammad Ali versus Antonio Ornouki, 1976.
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  The weirdest super fight ever. Boxer versus wrestler.
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  And Benny was there. He was fighting on the
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  undercard. And because he knew about this
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  stuff, about cross style fighting, he actually tried to
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  warn Ali. Really.
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  Yeah, he went to Ali's locker room before the fight, he said.
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  Mohammed, this wrestler, he's going to go for your legs.
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  He's not going to try and box you.
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  And Ollie being Ollie. Just blew it off.
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  I'm too fast, he can't touch me. I just didn't understand the
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  threat. And the fight was, I mean, it
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  was ugly to watch Enoki just lay on his back and kicked Ollie's
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  legs for 15 rounds. But people forget the damage.
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  Ollie's legs swelled up so bad they had to drain fluid from
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  them. They got infected.
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  There's a real argument that his movement that float like a
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  butterfly was never the same after that night.
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  Permanently damaged because he didn't respect a weapon he
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  couldn't comprehend. It's a tragic lesson.
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  So Benny and Blinky, they take all this knowledge they've bled
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  for, and they open the Jet Center in LA.
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  The Mecca of kickboxing. Joe Rogan even talks about
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  training there back in 94. But for me, the most interesting
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  thing about it wasn't the fighting, it was the the
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  sociology of the place. The mix of people.
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  Exactly. They had a group they called the
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  fighting attorneys that. Sounds like a bad sitcom, right?
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  But these were real high-powered lawyers, and they were in there
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  sparring with actual gang members from an outreach program
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  Blinky was running. That sounds like a recipe for
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  disaster. You'd think so, but this is
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  where their philosophy, their code, comes in.
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  They called it mirroring truth. What does that mean?
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  Mirroring. Truth.
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  The idea is that fighting strips away your ego, your mask.
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  When you're tired and getting hit, you can't pretend.
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  Your real self, your fear, your anger, it comes to the surface.
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  And once it's out in the. Open.
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  You can deal with it. You can reprogram it.
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  So the lawyer and the gang member, they realized, they both
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  felt the same fear of getting hit.
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  They weren't a suit and a thug anymore.
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  They were just two men. It created a neutral ground
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  that's incredible, but they do have some critiques of how
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  modern MMA has maybe lost some of that spirit.
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  Yeah, a few 1 is really practical eye pokes.
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  The. Worst, it happens all the time.
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  Fighters have their hands open, fingers out, if any solution is
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  so simple. Curve the glove.
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  Make them like mittens, like the old Everlast bag gloves.
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  Make it so the hand is naturally closed.
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  It's a simple design fix. But deeper than that, they miss
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  the Bushido, the honor. That's the real heart of it.
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  They respect the skill of modern ground and pound, but they don't
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  love the spirit of it. Hitting a man when he's already
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  down. In their day, if a guy went
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  down, the honorable thing was to let him get back up.
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  You beat him at his best, now the smart business move is to
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  swarm him until the ref steps in.
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  It changes the whole thing from a duel to just a beat down.
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  It does, and they get that it's a sport, but they feel like
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  something of the character building part gets lost.
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  And Speaking of character, this brings us to the emotional core
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  of this entire deep dive. And I have to say this, this
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  part is just staggering. We need to talk about Blinky
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  Rodriguez and his son. This is the story that just
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  stays with you. Blinky's son was a teenager.
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  He was murdered in a drive by a completely random, senseless
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  shooting. Wrong place, wrong time.
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  And you think about a man like Blinky, a fighter, a man who
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  knows violence. The rage from that kind of loss
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  must be bottomless. He carried it for years.
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  He channelled it into activism, trying to broker peace between
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  gangs, but the personal wound was there.
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  And then in 2023, he gets a phone call.
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  From a friend who tells him we know who the killer is, he's in
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  prison and he wants to meet you. I just, I can't imagine getting
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  that call. What do you even do with that?
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  Blinky said he wrestled with it. Every part of him probably
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  wanted to say no, or worse, he said he heard this gentle voice
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  telling him to say yes. So he goes.
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  He goes to the prison, walks into the Chapel.
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  And the man who killed his son David walks in, and the first
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  thing David says to him is, can I get hug just.
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  Wow. And Blinky.
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  Blinky says yes. He embraces the man who murdered
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  his child and they both just breakdown and weep.
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  That moment, I mean, that's a level of strength most of us
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  can't even comprehend. Blinky then leads him in prayer
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  and he has this quote. He's perfect, he says.
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  The power of forgiveness is more powerful than my left hook, and
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  I had a good one. He calls it leaving the 99 to go
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  get the one. It totally reframes what a
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  warrior is. It's not about destroying, it's
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  about healing. It takes more strength to
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  forgive than it does to fight. So these two guys, after all
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  this, you'd think they'd be retired, but they're not done.
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  They're planning something new. The safe haven.
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  And there's a great story here. Apparently, when they built the
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  first Jet Center, Benny drew the blueprints on toilet paper in
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  Japan because he had nothing else.
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  And Blinky had a literal dream about that exact gym layout the
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  night before. It's like they're on the same
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  wavelength. So now Benny's doodling again.
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  On real paper this time, he's designing 9 new pieces of
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  equipment, five of which he says have never been seen before.
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  And I believe him. Their goal is to build a new
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  center, not just a gym, but a safe haven, a place for mental,
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  physical and spiritual training to recreate that magic of the
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  Jet Center for today. Sounds like we need it.
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  We really do. We have plenty of places to
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  learn how to fight. We don't have enough places that
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  teach us how to find peace. So that's the whole journey
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  from, you know, lawless chest biting fights in the 70s to
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  inventing the gear we use all the way to this place of radical
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  forgiveness. It's the full evolution of a
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  martial artist. You start by learning to fight,
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  then you learn to win. But the final stage is learning
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  that the real fight is always internal.
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  And it leaves us with a really big question to think about.
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  We've spent 40 years making the sport safer, more regulated,
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  more profitable. But in doing that, have we
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  stripped away the code? Can you have the sport without
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  the Spirit? I think Benny and Blinky would
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  say you can, but it's empty. The real victory is always a
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  spiritual one. Something to think about next
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  time you're watching the fights. Thanks for diving in with us.
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  See you next time.