Latest / The Ageless Warrior Lab / Erik Paulson: First American Shooto World Champion & MMA Pioneer | Combat Submission Wrestling Ep 36

Transcript

Erik Paulson: First American Shooto World Champion & MMA Pioneer | Combat Submission Wrestling Ep 36 · The Ageless Warrior Lab

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: In 1988, I took seminar with Sensei Nakamura, and he taught 30 catch wrestling moves, and then he showed 12 leg locks.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, holy crap! I know it's a new secret weapon.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Shudo, the grappling, is throwing right into an immediate submission, which they call it quick kill, and there's no time lapse between the throw or the takedowns to the submission.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then Hickson said it's not about 100 moves once, it's one move 100 times.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because you become an expert.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: You could kill a whole room with one armbar.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Someone's gonna go to Japan to fight.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Orion and I had talked about the UFC in his living room.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, what if the fighters are walking in and they're presented with their arms, and then the last thing you hear is that door guard and then the bolt going down because oh interesting.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the HS Warrior Lab.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm DJJ Blackbelt at 30 dozen member Dave Meyer, here to draw wisdom from Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the martial arts and explore how it applies to success in business, relationships, your long-term health, and making the most out of your life.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: What you're about to hear is a discussion I had with Eric Paulson.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you don't know who Eric Paulson is, and if you have any interest in MMA, and certainly in the development of MMA and the UFC, you definitely should know who Eric is.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Eric is a person who was training full contact martial arts back long before there was a UFC.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: He came out to Los Angeles and, like many of the people I've spoken to on this podcast, was training with Dan Inasanto at the Innesanto Academy.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: He was learning French kickboxing savat.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was learning Thai kickboxing, he was doing Western boxing, he was doing wrestling, he was doing Muay Thai, he was doing Kali, uh stick fighting, escrima, arness, all of these systems of weaponry.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he was one of the first students who heard about the Gracies in Los Angeles, started even before I did.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point he had a discussion with Horian Gracie about what would become the UFC and what the octagon should be, what the cage should be.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: You'll hear uh his input in that.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But he chose to go to Japan, and we heard that from Frank Shamrock as well, that even before the UFC here, there was mixed martial arts in Japan, and I should explain that.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: The UFC was astonishing and amazing.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was set up to pit someone from one style against someone from another style, and that's what Horian Gracie wanted to do.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to show off Brazilian jujitsu.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you had stylists, a judo person and a jiu-jitsu person, and a boxing person.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there were no rules.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Technically, there was a little bit.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't eye gouge, you couldn't bite, you couldn't fish hook, put your finger in someone's mouth and tear at their lips.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, you could elbow, you could headbutt, you could groin strike, you could kick on the ground, you could upkick, you could do anything.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: There were no weight classes, there was no time limit to the match.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And whoever won would then advance to the next match in the same night, and then to the next match in the same night.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is crazy.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was an amazing, unique thing that was happening.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what was already happening in Japan was what we would think of as a more integrated mixed martial arts.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: You had Pancrase, which was having large audiences and decent paydays, and that allowed open-handed striking and kicking and grappling and submissions on the ground.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's where Ken Shamrock came from, Pancrase and came to the UFC.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You had Shuto, which involved closed fist striking, I believe elbows, knees.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You could go to the ground, you could do finishes.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: There was striking allowed on the ground at that time in Shuto.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And there were weight classes and there were time limits there.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was more organized, and it was more close to what we would think of as MMA today.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you should check out these early, late 1980s, early 1990s things going on in Japan, because it was a whole scene going on there, and that's where the money was, and that's where Eric chose to go.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: He could have fought in the first UFC, but that would have meant he would have been representing Shuto and would have been fighting Hoyce Gracie, his own coach.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So he didn't want to do that.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he became the first American to win the Shuto world light heavyweight title in Japan.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was a trailblazer.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: The Japanese were not really looking to bring over Americans who could win, but they did want competition.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: He opened the door for Hicks and Gracie to then go fight in Japan, where Hickson dominated.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we talk a lot about the early days and Eric's development, his thoughts on martial arts.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's an encyclopedia.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: He drops a lot of different names of techniques and describes different techniques, uses the Japanese terminology.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: We used to do that a lot in the day.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I understand what he's talking about, but you may not.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay, just push through it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was just so well connected with the people who were forming all of these different systems in Japan and great martial arts people, a lot of whom I know as well.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the links are all in the show notes.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: He took a break from coaching, which he talks about, but is now coaching some fighters again, specifically the Ruotolo brothers, for their bid into MMA fighting, which is really interesting.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they couldn't have done better with a coach to help their MMA game.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: We also talked a bit about some health challenges he had and some kind of spiritual realizations.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's the founder of the Combat Submission Wrestling Association, CSW.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Eric is just a very interesting person.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So sit back and enjoy my conversation with my good friend, Professor, he has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Professor Eric Paulson.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Eric, it is so great to get a chance to talk to you.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for making the time, man.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And also, it's nice to see you again, Master David.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, is that are you referring to the coral belt thing?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're a master.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: You're no longer professor, you're master.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know what, Eric, there are so many people who have so much more knowledge than me, but I do have a few years in, and that's what the coral belt is.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Dedication.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Look behind you, look at all of the medals from all your competitions, all the years you put it on the line.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is true.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's not even all of them we're referring to.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching on YouTube video, you see those medals behind me, which are actually real.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a fake background.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Have you counted how many you have?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, I have not, but there's a bunch.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But do you do a lot of these competitions?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in the first few years of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that I was doing it, back what you started around that time too, there were no competitions.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, those are almost every single one of those are from when I was a black belt because there just weren't any other competitions before.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you about because you've got this unique view.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are, I mean, to say a pioneer, you were the first complete fighter I ever saw.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: You were the first person who absolutely had jujitsu, absolutely had your wrestling chops, absolutely had punching and kicking at a time when people didn't even have the words for that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think especially for people coming up today who are interested to know who are the trailblazers, who made this sport that is now MMA, your name has got to be right up there.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm really looking forward to introducing you to people who maybe haven't had a chance to see your stuff yet.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me, Eric, how did you get into martial arts?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: What's your origin story and what arts have you trained in that got you to where you are today?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I was playing hockey, football, and baseball as a child.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was in fourth grade, I was in hockey season.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: We had to drive up to this place like three hours or four hours up and four hours back.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't get to play.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And our team lost, and our coach said, You guys suck.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: You guys are a bunch of losers.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then I said, I didn't even get to play.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, It's because you're a loser.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Well, screw that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: If I didn't get to play, how am I a loser?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Just because we're on a losing team, I didn't even get to try.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I came home and I told my parents, I said, Hey mom, I don't think I want to do hockey anymore.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not productive.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: The coach is not nice.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting in fights.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I was going after the guy, not the puck, all the time.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I was in the penalty box all the time for fighting.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: A boxing match started and a hockey game broke out.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then I told my dad, and my dad was heartbroken because that's the number one sport in Minnesota in the winter is watching football on TV and playing hockey.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So my mom said, Well, what else would you like to do?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I don't know what else is there to do.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and she brought me by my elementary school in fourth grade, and there was a traditional judo teacher teaching judo, and she said, Would you like to do this?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I have no idea.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I w I took my first class and he goes, I need an okay, and I go, Me.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, I want to teach you guys the first thing is learning how to break fall.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just say for our listeners that oke means the person who the guy who was going to show the techniques needs another body to demonstrate on.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Uke.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he threw me and I didn't know how to break fall, and I hit the ground flat and he knocked the wind out of me.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And man, that's when I realized that I was a slapstick comic because I made the entire class laugh and clap.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then I go, throw me again.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: He threw me again and then knocked the ear out of me again.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he thought it was funny, so he started using me regularly.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And for some reason I really took to it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a competition where we had to grapple against each other.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Two years in a row, I won the competition with the class, and I really loved it.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I found a judo teacher that was close and I was training with him.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the guy's really good at throwing, but they weren't so strong on the ground.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're good at pinning, but they weren't really good at movement, transitioning, or submissions.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I stayed with that for like 70, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got in a street fight.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to do a drop sail noggie on a guy on ice, and he grabbed my hair and just ripped me backwards and then just started punching my face.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, oh, I'm back to hockey again.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So then I grabbed him and then I was punching him.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was like Don that Dom Fry fight.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: We were punching each other in the face.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: He's pulling my hair.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pulling his hair.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you give?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't give.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Do you give no?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, all right, we both let go on the count of three.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: One, two, three, let go.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, rematch.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this kid was a bully at the bus stop.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, man, I gotta learn how to strike.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't know how to strike, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I tried judo on the ice, wrong context, anyways, slippery shoes, and I got my hair pulled and put back in a snowbank.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, I need to learn how to fight.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to the movies.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: In the movie theater, there was Game of Death was actually in the movie theaters.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a long time ago.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: What, 77, 78?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then I saw the premiere of Enter the Dragon, and I go, that's it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta do striking.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: When I was in sixth grade, there was a local karate school by the movie theater, and I used to sit outside and watch, and it was all sparring.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then I said, Do you guys do katas?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: They go, Oh, only for belt testing.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he goes, otherwise we mostly fight and spar.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, oh, perfect.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I got into the striking.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then when it transitioned into full contact karate, I was doing point karate tournaments all throughout the Midwest.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, You should do the point karate.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's called full contact karate.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Eight kicks around, and then the rest is punching.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I fought a fight.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I got beat up, and I go, man, I gotta learn how to box.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: There was a boxing gym at Fred Moore Junior High School, and they had a Golden Gloves boxing program, and I jumped in and right off the bat my dad goes, Don't tell him that you know karate.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So my dad wanted me to box.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, That karate is very mystical and very deadly.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Boxing, now that's a real sport.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I started boxing, and then for some reason they took me out of calisthenics and they go, We want you to spark.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I got to go in the other room and start sparring.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So then I started competing in Golden Gloves boxing.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that helped me with my kickboxing, which was my taekwondo.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I read all of Bruce Lee's books and magazines.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: My brother is a wrestler.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: We used to get in fights all the time.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I would kick him in the head and he would take me down and slam me.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: That was the running argument.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Who would win in a fight, a kickboxer or a grappler?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: At that time period, I said, What else can I do for a winter sport?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And my mom said, How about gymnastics?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because I wanted an individual sport.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I went into gymnastics.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of seventh grade, I went into the program and I became a gymnast.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I was a captain of my gymnastics team in high school.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: There were two co-captains.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was one of the co-captains and competed in gymnastics.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to go to college for gymnastics, UCLA, after Mitch Gaylord got a perfect 10 on the high bar.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was like For fun fact, I went to high school with Mitch Gaylord at Grant High School.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was a year ahead of me.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was not on the gymnastics team.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was in a gymnastics class.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: We were a bunch of yahoos that he looked down on because then he would come in and do his uh working out.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: But this was the 84 Olympics in Los Angeles.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Continue.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I was supposed to fight in the eight Olympics in Seoul Korea in Taekwondo.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I got a motorcycle a week before, and I broke my heel and a hand, and my face bounced off the floor.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I lost my spot, and my teammate, she fought and she won, got a gold medal.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Then she went into movies, and when I was actually, I moved from Minnesota to move to LA to train with Dan and Asano to do movie work and to go back to college.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to go in the army, they wouldn't take me.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had protein urea.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know what that is?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: I was working out too much and I was spilling too much protein into my kidneys and I was peeing it out.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was running six miles a day.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing martial arts, lifting weights, gymnastics.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Tried to go in the army.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: They kicked me out twice.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Tried to go in the air force.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I said I tried to go in the army, but I failed my pee test twice, which was just protein urea.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to go in the Air Force, and the guy goes, Well, have you ever smoked marijuana?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, who hasn't?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, sorry, we can't take you.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, say I smoke five.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was laughing because all the athletes in our school were stoners.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, growing up in the 70s in high school, absolutely, that was a very normal thing.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: It used to grow on the side of the roads.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: We used to just grow out in the country and it'd be growing on the side of the road.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: You said a few things I just want to touch on really quick.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, that initial experience you had where your coach, who sounds like just an incredibly terrible coach, called you all losers and called you a loser, even though you didn't get to play.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are some people that are just drawn to team sports, and there's some people that are more drawn to individual sports where you don't have to rely on anybody else.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's on you.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like you're an individual sport guy.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely an individual sport guy.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to be on a team and happy to support a team, but I really like when your fate is in your own hands.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what I was about.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's funny when I played baseball, one year I made triple A.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And every time I'd go up to bat, I'd either hit a home run or I'd strike out because I was trying to kill the ball.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: They'd go, hey, just meet the ball, quit trying to kill the ball.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was the head home run header in my league.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: So one other thing I wanted to say, Eric, is that you mentioned which is better boxing, wrestling, or whatever.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to note spoiler alert, you got good at all of them, which is the best thing, is just have all of the skills.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's weird how people in our society call karate a martial art, but boxing a sport.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: They'll call kung fu a martial art, but wrestling a sport.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wrestling, boxing are as much, or in many cases, more of a martial art, a fighting art, than a lot of the things that we think of as martial arts, which have largely just become, like you say, forms, a series of movements, dances, and things like that.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think because they pressure test.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So wrestling, you're required to compete.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's three sides martial science, martial combat, martial sport.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And what are the differences?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Martial science is how it's scientifically put together, why it was created.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the farmers use the sickles and the nunchucks to beat rice, the oars are the paddles and the bow staff, and the sickles are the size and the comma.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they used it for wheat, for cutting fields, the oro is for paddling.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when they got invaded, they had to defend themselves, so they just grabbed whatever they had, and those were the weapons of choice.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Did you see the movie The Octagon?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: With Sakura and Tadashi Yamashida, they use the size.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: For the listeners who don't know, Google it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a three-pronged metal weapon that you can spin, and it's super impressive.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And same with the Kamas.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Tadashi was notorious for the Kama.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: He'd have like whip them around and he'd have like holes in his back, bleeding holes from the commas in his back.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody who's worked that like Nunchak has whacked themselves in the head or cut themselves now and again, for sure.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: But with Filipino collie, they would use a staff or sorry, a stick to prop open the window shade because they're in a straw hut.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when someone would come into the village to challenge, they would just grab the stick that was holding up the window shade and go out and fight with it.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if it was serious, then because it's third world country, they always had bladed weapons.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: So they would go double sticks, single stick and dagger, double dagger, single dagger.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they had all the different flexible weapons, blowguns, the sash, they used the sarong.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of different weapons that they offer.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't into the weapons as much.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got good at weapons.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to just fight empty hand because I got bullied so much as a little kid.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: I really wanted to learn how to like take care of myself.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be a sheepdog.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to help those other people that couldn't fight.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to learn how to fight and defend my friends that were getting beat up, also.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love the concept of sheepdog.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are lambs and there are wolves, but there are sheepdogs who are every bit as tough as the wolves, and they protect the lambs.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta look after the sheep or your friends.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's important.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you said martial science, martial art combat, and then martial sport.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Martial sport.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you would call boxing and maybe jujitsu and wrestling, these things are martial sports.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, jujitsu traditionally was not.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: So Japanese jiu-jitsu traditionally again was a form of fighting mixed with Aiki Jiu Jitsu.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: They had all the striking also, they had all the nerve strikes.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's why you call it a judo chop.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, I meant Brazilian jiu-jitsu, how it's practiced today.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I think, well, it's the police train it more for self-defense in case of a bad situation.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then others just do competition stuff.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the point system is a must.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I went to Ray Diego's class and he was talking about the points.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Get your points, get your points.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is get the pass, get the points, take their back, hold them back.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Stay in that position.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the point system was really stressed at his gym.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I just said, guys, we're gonna start from the feet.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the fights you'll ever fight, you're gonna start from your feet, unless you're so good and you can just sit down and pull them into you.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: At the highest level, we start people on the feet.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning level, we don't start people on the feet because most people don't know how to brake fall.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: They post and their shoulder pops out.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: And unless you own a school, you've got to be careful on all those people posting and landing on their elbow when they get hip tossed and their clamicle pops out, or they don't know how to brake fall, they get hurt.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why most places start people in the beginning stages.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: You start on your knees.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: In the advanced stages, you start in a situation like what?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Half guard, butterfly guard, turtle.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: You start down.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: The advanced guy always supposed to start down, like either turtle or bottom position.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think people take this for granted, but you make a good point.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most of schools start their regular training on the ground.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a safety thing, it just makes it easier, safer.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Master Haggins said, let's get to where all the magic happens.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, because I had the guy standing for three minutes, and he goes, All right, that's enough standing.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Let's get down to brass tacks, let's get down to where all the magic happens.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're Higgins Machado, that is certainly true.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Although I went to judo tournaments with him and he was tossing people, he was tossing judo black belts also.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's crazy.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's an amazing grappler.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So just real quick, because you've gone through this whole litany of martial arts.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned taekwondo and did karate and boxing, and you started with judo, and of course, Dan and Asanta, which I just actually interviewed Burton Richardson, and so that'll be out just before this.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, he talked about all the different things that you could learn at Dan's school.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: But how did you come in contact with Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I was training in Palm Springs, and all there was at Palm Springs was Taekwondo.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I used to go to Coachella boxing and try to get some boxing in, and then we used to spar Audi with all the guys, and I had a private garage.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: My friend converted his garage into a gym, and we put mats down and we just started rolling.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, hey, all fights are gonna end up in a clinch and on the ground.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is 1986, and I'm in Tim Tackett's garage.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Tim Tackett was a student under one of Bursley's old students, Bob Bremer, and under Dan and Asano, guru Dan.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Tim Tackett had a garage in Redlands, and I started training with him in his garage.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And basically, what he would do is analyze all the different arts.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, here's what he said.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, bottom line, push comes a shove.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to know that you guys can knock someone's dick in the dirt.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: That was his mentality.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we had a sniper, an army sniper.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: We had uh Bert Poe, who was a survival specialist, a tracker, and also the first guy at Normandy Beach.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: He was a marine raider and he was a sheriff.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he had first hand knowledge and he had one of the strongest grips in the world.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: He got in a fight with a guy on the ground and he just fish hooked him and ripped his face.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that they called the guy Smiley the rest of his life.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was his because of the scar?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and he had all these war stories.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when I met him, he had Rick Fay by both of his obliques, and he was pinning him up on the wall like this, and he was holding him up against the wall.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Rick was like, There was no words coming out of his mouth.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Holy crap, he goes, That guy's got the strongest grip in the world.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: The doctor said he had like a gibbon like grip.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, he goes, The strongest man in the world got the strongest grips.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Get yourself a grip trainer, keep it in your car, and use it all the time.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I have like two or three grip trainers in my car.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I worked my grip, and I had a really good grip because I was a gymnast, so I used to do tons and tons of.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Full-ups all the time, and yeah, we used to grab a scale and test to see I could get the scale up to about 120.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so just to sell next time we're on the mat, don't let you grab me.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that was before, and that before I had neck surgery.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then when I got neck surgery, my grip became more human.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it changed everything because I got a little bit of uh what do you call it, atrophy into my fingertips and my toes.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry about that.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: So when did you connect up with Gracie's?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: So during the time I was at Tim Tackett's garage, they said, hey, there's a new martial art that's out, and it's taken the world by storm.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's these Brazilian guys, and they have an open challenge and they'll fight anybody and they'll take all comers and they go, it looks really interesting.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: I would be interested to see what that's all about.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Eric, we will all pitch in and buy you a private lesson.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I took my first private lesson with Horian in his garage in 1986.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he was the nicest guy in the world.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I was gonna maybe have to fight him.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, What arts have you studied?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I said a few things.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Okay.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, let's say I grab your chest like this, and I'm about to hit you.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, What would you do?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, What would I do?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Well, the first thing I would do, and I go, Bing, bing, bing.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the eye jab.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I did like three eye jabs.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing I did is I throat chopped him.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third thing I did is I hit his bicep like three times.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's called a gunting, which means scissors.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what it does is it gives you a dead arm.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I bam bam bam.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, but let's say I'm tough and that doesn't hurt.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, and let's say I don't need my eyes to fight.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, How do you not need your eyes to fight?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Why don't you?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is better.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he grabbed my hand and he propped his elbow on his hip and then he ducked under my arm and he put me in a hammer lock and then he pulled my face back and then I tapped.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he basically hit a hammer lock from the back with the face rip.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, It's all leverage, it's all based on science and leverage.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to be big to do it.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you're going to do it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: So he showed me like five self-defense techniques.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: I got all the self-defense that they were teaching back then.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and then we got to go on the ground, like so at the end of your private, the new guy coming in got to roll with him for just a few minutes.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then not only that, but Hoyce, so four in at first, then Hoyce would do the techniques to you and show you a few things, how to pass the guard.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: They had the lesson structure.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very inquisitive because I was seeing other arts, and I said, Well, what if put your arm in here like that?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Can't they triangle you?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, That is the next lesson.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they were can you put the arm in to systematically set yourself up to be triangled?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next lesson was the triangle, and then the next lesson after that was the follow-up, and then the next lesson after that was the defense of the triangle.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting because you got to roll with the guy.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it said, What was it like training with Hoist?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, he was always angry, and he taught me how to tap with every part of my body, including my mouth, my feet, my hands.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: I used to bartend at sunsets in Manhattan Beach on the pier.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they used to all come in, and I didn't realize, but this girl I worked with was his ex-girlfriend.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Her name was Liz.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Liz goes, Hey, Eric, I heard you're training with Hoyce.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is that true?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Yeah.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, What are you training with Hoyce?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I go, right after my shift today.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: So she'd call up Hoyce.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, Hey, Hoyce, Eric said he's gonna kick your ass today.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, bye.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I walk in and I go, Hi, hey, Hoyce, how are you?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Pudo the kimono.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh, somebody's having a bad day.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he was always like grumpy, and I was like, What's going on?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she was always talking smack behind my back.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: I see.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I continue with the privates, and I was like, Wow, this is really intriguing and interesting because we used to grapple, but not really knew what we were doing.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I said this is similar to Judo.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then I asked Orion, I said, Is there any way to get better if I put mats down in my house and roll with my roommate?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Oh no, you're not allowed to do that.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he didn't want you to do training outside of with him.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he said, if you want to train, you take more private lessons.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 1988, my roommate was training with Hickson, and he said, Hey, the meanest of all is this guy, his name's Hickson, and he teaches out of his garage in Torrance.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Well, I'm already going to Torrance and training with Vorian and Oise.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, But you think I could take a private just to see the difference?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And when I went there, he goes, Where would you like to start?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Can we start on the ground?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, What do you think jujitsu is?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, it's self-defense.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Oh, that's part of it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Pretty much the magic happens on the ground.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so he taught me on the ground, and I learned so much more on the ground than I learned from Hoist at that time.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because Horian was so busy, Hoist became my teacher.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize I was claustrophobic until he smothered me.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: He chest smothered me on my face, and I had to find a little teeny hole in his armpit to breathe.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just to breathe, yeah.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I started having a panic attack because I was asthmatic and I worked in a smoke-ridden bar till 4 a.m.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because people could smoke back then.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I was having problems breathing, and I was tapping, and he wouldn't let me go.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he kept smothering me and I'm tapping, and I tapped again, and he wouldn't let me go.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I freaked out.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: I put my thumb in his eye just to get him off me.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Listen, I'm sorry.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: I go, but I was having a panic attack and I was tapping and you weren't getting off me.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then I asked Master Horian, I said, Hey, what do I do?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was freaking out.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was having a panic attack on the bottom.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, You must take more privates.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: The only way to get through the anxiety is to take more privates so you get comfortable on the ground when you're getting smothered, which is actually true.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: The more you get to the city.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: You need to get used to the experience and realize consciously and very deeply that although you feel like you can't breathe, you can breathe and you'll be okay.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it's very understandable, Eric.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not at all surprised.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know so many tough fighters, especially stand-up fighters, who absolutely have panic on the bottom because they're not used to being held down and it is legitimately hard to breathe.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you feel like you can't get out, especially if you have a breathing issue, that is a very normal human reaction.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you just we've all been there, and you just have to learn from experience that you're okay.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's true, it's real.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had a dream where you got held down and you couldn't move and you're wrapped up in your blanket and you're like, I'm starting to have it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I felt that before.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Higgin, who I know you then started training with and got your black belt under, which is how I met you, he would spot that in me.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when he would see me doing that, he would hold me down like that too.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or after training, you know, be completely out of breath.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: He would say, I had to lay my ghee, which you call the kimono, over my face, right?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you can still breathe.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're like feeling claustrophobic and now there's this heavy, sweaty ghe on your face and it's on your mouth, you just have to calm down, you just have to relax and just kind of go inside, right?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: You get used to it.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: I read a story that Hickson used to roll himself up in carpet.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever hear that one?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, tell me about that.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: He would roll himself up in carpet so he could get through the panic attack and felt like he was going to die because he couldn't move.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he had to calm himself and go inside to the point where he could be calm in a useless situation.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: But he used to roll himself up in a carpet.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: So Hickson's intents, if people look online, they can find his sort of like I forget what he called it.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Gymnastic naturel.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, a very complete fighter.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: So just wondering, were you trying to learn all these different martial arts?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: You had done striking, you were doing grappling.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Were you trying to become a complete fighter, or were you just sort of stumbling onto these things?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Both.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: I knew the best hands in the world were boxing.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the best kickers in the world were taekwondo guys.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: The most powerful and most devastating of all kickboxing styles was Boy Thai because of the nine, not eight weapons, but nine because of the headbutt.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: So like the Lao Red or the Cambodian boxing allows, they do a lot of headbutt stuff.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: So can I just clarify are the eight weapons hands, elbows, knees, feet, and then the ninth is the head?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Two hands, two elbows, two knees, two shins, and then the Japanese say or Zutski, which is a headbutt.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Gura Dan started taking Cambodian boxing and they really teach a lot of the headbutt stuff.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Headbutt is a great technique.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: The front headbutt, sidebutt, back headbutt.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the problem.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you use it in a real fight, to defend yourself is one thing, but if you headbutt someone in a real fight, the odds of you getting sued are so high because you're gonna break their faceplate or smash their nose if it's done correctly.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the headbutt as far as for all odds, self-defense, is a wonderful weapon.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to sit and practice it for five hours a day on the heavy bag.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: All you gotta do is nod really fast and get your head lower than their head.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as devastating styles, Muay Thai, and then as far as the ground, Resign Jiu-Jitsu, in 1988, there was a seminar at the Unisano Academy, and it showed a guy punching, clenching, suplexing, punching on the ground, and then submitting it went with uh Americana or pillow, we say the arm locker, Americana.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then it showed a guy kicking, catching, takedown, and ankle locking.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, So you were looking at somebody stringing it all together.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was like, what is that all about?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it was actually a punch, kick, throw, submit.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wow, that looks interesting.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And man, in 1988, I took a seminar with Sensei Yuri Nakamura, and he taught 30 catch wrestling moves.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Combination one is 30 techniques.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've only seen like two of these moves.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then he showed me probably 12 leg locks, ankle lock, heel hook, toe hold.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, holy crap! And then I went home to my roommate, he was a blue bouncer Hickson, and I he goes, Hey, how's that seminar?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Oh, that was amazing.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: I learned a bunch of new things.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, like what?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I ankle locked him, and then I hit a pillow v arm lock, which they're calling the J-Lock now.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's a pillow v arm lock from judo.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, I did that on him, and he goes, Holy crap! He goes, What is this stuff?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I go, It's my new secret weapon.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, What do you mean?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Well, jujitsu's more transitioning, attacking an arm, taking the back, taking the neck, getting the mount.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, the pseudo they're grappling is throwing right into an immediate submission, which they call a quick kill.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: And there's no time lapse between the throw or the takedown to the submission, which I liked.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing is they had a diversity of incremental movements when you're moving your arm from low to straight to bat to V to up above the head to across.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, they have a lock because it's Japanese mentality.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: So incrementally, every time you move your arm, there's a submission.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that's interesting.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then Hickson said it's not about a hundred moves once, it's one move a hundred times.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true because you become an expert.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: You could kill a whole room with one armbar or a rear choke.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that was interesting just to see the differences.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's intriguing.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: There would see an art that was stringing it together.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then the fact that he told me there was a competition in Japan, they actually fight in it.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Do you guys actually have fights?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Yeah.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: And he gave me a tape.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I watched it and I go, Wow, this is exciting.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do that.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so my first lesson with Higgin was actually in 1986 when Hoyce couldn't show up one day.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he came in and he said, Where do you like to start?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Can we start on the ground?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did a private and I was like, wow.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: And Hoyce said, How was the private with my cousin?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: I go, It was amazing.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: He did a lot of technique on the ground.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I really like that.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to learn more about the ground.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not so much self-defense, but I wanted to learn more.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, But you have to go through the self-defense protocol in order for you to get to the ground, which was part of the teaching.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's how Hoyce and Horian were teaching it at the time.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then they had garage training.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know about the bluebelt garage class?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't invited, but I peeked in the window one time and I and I remember seeing a purple belt in there.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: It must have been Bob Bass.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I go, what is that?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a purple belt.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just all rolling.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: They were rolling.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, no wonder these guys are getting so good.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: They got a group together and they just all just start rolling.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: That was amazing.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I wanted to be invited to that for a while.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when I first got invited because I was training with the Machado brothers, their other school in the San Fernando Valley, an hour and a half away.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is that where you started out in the valley?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I started in the valley.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: I lived in the valley.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that's why it took a little while for me to show up in the South Bay because I had to be invited.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: But getting you back to Japan and Shuto, so this is at a time when the UFC I guess hasn't even happened yet.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: So because I was combining arts, boxing, kickboxing, judo, my brother is a wrestler, so we would wrestle all the time.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Also, I'd be at a gymnast.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was strong and flexible.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: That helped.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I just I wanted to get my ground game better as much as I could.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, I just need good bodies.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I need is good bodies.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care about a belt.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: I care about training partners.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I was trying to find as many good training partners as I possibly could get.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the only way to do that was to go where all the best guys are rolling, and that was jujitsu.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was really no other play.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: You could go to wrestling class, judo class.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the same.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Jiu-Jitsu practice was way different.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I was mixing the arts like that.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: In 1989, he sits here and gave me a video.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was Shudo fights in Japan, first generation.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I watched all of it.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I want to do that.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then he said, Okay, so we started formulating a plan that I was going to prepare to get ready to go to Japan to fight.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Horin and I had talked about the UFC in his living room, and he said, Hey, I want to show you this idea.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: I want to bounce it off of you.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, We're contemplating this new event where all these different styles fight each other, and it's going to showcase Brazilian jujitsu because jujitsu has to go against all these other styles of martial arts.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he showed me a diagram of a crane coming down with a cage on it, and then they would bolt it in.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: These are the early concepts of what became the octagon.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, what if the cage is already bolted in and the fighters are walking in and they're presented with their ards, and then the last thing you hear is that door going smack and then the you know the bolt going down.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Oh, interesting.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Yeah, people don't want to watch a construction of a cage being built, or people screw it a cage in.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said, So, yeah, I think that would be better.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: Just have it screwed in, and it's the cage door closing, and boom, two men enter, one man comes out.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: He showed me that back in 1988, I think, was his idea about that.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because he showed me the history of his family and all the newspaper clippings, and Henner and the kids, Halleck and Rose, were all little kids in the watching TV.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're watching cartoons.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it was interesting.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: This idea had been coming about, but I said, Listen, I do boxing, I do kickboxing, uh judo and grappling.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to fight.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to try.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we were formulating this plan by 1990.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was ready to go to Japan to fight.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, they were talking about the UFC.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I said, Well, if there's a UFC, I would love to fight in that.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, Really?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, I want to fight.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a casting call for a shoot wrestler.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, I'll do it.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Can I be a shoot fighter?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you had been training jujitsu with them.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'll bet you they didn't want that.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Hickes said, Well, the odds of you fighting Hoyce would be very high.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: So if you fight my brother, I can't train you.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh, I didn't even think about that.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought it was a big tournament.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Yeah, I mean, when you win, you and my brother would end up fighting each other.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Well, I wouldn't want to fight Hoyce, he's my teacher.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I don't want to fight my teacher out of respect.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so that was before the UFC.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happened?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was fighting in Japan in late 92.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: I got ready, Chad and I, the director of John Wick, we got our invitation to go to Japan to fight.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we both fought in Japan in early 1993.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Which was right around the time the UFC was happening.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was in November.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: We fought in April.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just for our listeners who were young or just may not know about this kind of history.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I think people in the West see the UFC, which was truly amazing, as like the first kind of no holds barred mixed martial arts kind of thing.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what was, in my view, weird about the UFC was it was this fighting between styles.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: There was no gloves, unless you wanted to wear gloves for some reason.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: There was no weight classes, there was no time limit.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a crazy kind of thing.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: What was happening in already in Japan was a much more refined with weight classes and maybe with gloves, but they were ahead of the game with more integrated punches, takedowns, kicks, and real support and actually some money behind it in Japan at that time.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was very technical.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you looked at Shudo, there were five different events there.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Shudo was the only pure, real fight card.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: You had rings, you had Pancrase, you had Pride later on, and then you had Pro Wrestling.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Most of those cards were predetermined or works.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not all the fights were works, but if you take a card and there's one predetermined fight on the card, it's deemed as not 100% real.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: So when I fought, there was no rope escape and shoot out.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Pancrase had rope escape.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: They started open-hand fighting.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: We started with gloves.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: So just to clarify, rope escape means if you grab the ropes, you break the clean.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: So like if you catch me in an ankle lock and I could crawl back and grab a rope, suddenly you get stood up again.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a reset, yeah.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: The dynamics for Pancrase were super interesting for the crowd.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the guys were skibbies.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: They wore the little bikini bottoms.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: They all were buffed and tan.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ken Shamrock came from Ken Pancrace, right?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then fought in the UFC.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Ken Shamrock and I, at the time, we had almost the same record as far as MMA fighting went.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then they said, Well, we found a shoot fighter, Eric, so we've already got him.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Who's that?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, Ken Wayne Shamrock.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, but there's hardly any American shoot fighters.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, Well, Ken is one.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then I looked him up and I go, Oh, okay.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, shit.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: He looks apart because he was muscular.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: Super bust.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Super bust.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like bodybuilder, little shorts, strong body, just looks like a football player.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: So they chose him because he would be a perfect opponent for jujitsu.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, those type of fights were happening in Japan all the time.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in Brazil, too.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: They were having mixed martial arts matches where a judoka would fight a wrestler, a jiu-jitsu guy would fight a lutta livre guy.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the distinction is between you can have fights where you have fighters who are well-rounded in all of the ranges fighting, which is what we think of as MMA today.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, what UFC was doing is you're taking fighters from different styles, and they're each gonna try to, one would think, make their style work, unless they just abandon their style and start doing something entirely different.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Street fighting or whatever.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you're right.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was a comparison of styles, which really showcased and highlighted jujitsu.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And back then nobody knew jujitsu.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: So they had a market cornered in Japan.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually already a sport.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: The punchy, kicking, throwing submission was already a sport in Japan with ranking.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you started fighting in Japan and you won the world championship.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: First American, yeah, in Shuto.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was the first American to fight in Shudo in Japan in '93.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then the first American to challenge five.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: I fought five champions.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: I had to beat five champions in order for me to even qualify to fight for the belt.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: I even beat the light heavyweight champion of Japan.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: I armbarred him two years before I had a rematch with him at a title match.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the first time I armbarred him, and the second time it took me two years for him to prepare to get ready to fight again.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the second fight I fought him, I ankle locked him, reverse toe hold and broke his knee.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I won the belt in 1996.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Which is amazing.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And back then, I've got to ask, because I remember seeing some of this stuff back in the day and seeing you.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: You had long hair, right?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: You used to pull it back into a ponytail.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was a stunt man.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: So in Hollywood, I got a lot of parts because of my look.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: I got a lot of bad guy parts, and well, I had long hair because it was a good selling point to be a bad guy in a movie.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: So do I remember there was a fight you had when I guess hair grabbing was legal and someone was actually grabbing your hair in a professional fight?
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was WCC in 1995.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: I got hired as a Viking warrior on Sinbad, the movie Sinbad, we're shooting in Morocco, and the movie got pushed a little bit, and so I had to have long hair in order to be the Viking warrior.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: That was supposed to be a good paying job.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when I went to North Carolina to fight, I'm like, I'll just get my hair cornrowed.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: How hard is it to find someone that could cornroll my hair, right?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: In North Carolina.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Couldn't find one person.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: And my buddy goes, Oh, don't worry, just put it in a bun, you'll be fine.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Don't cut your hair.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: You got that movie coming, don't cut your hair.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I put it in a top bun, and then I bunned the bun.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrapped it and wrapped it again.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it was really tight, and I pulled it back.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: And man, I fought Sean McCully, and he got his fingers in my hair.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was practicing in my garage with a botching face saver headgear.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a ringside.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't punch, there's no open like a figure eight here.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a barrier.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's called a face saver.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we were hitting each other on the ground with that, and we're going to Kazakatami head and arm, and we were headlocking hitting each other.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot different defending Kazakatami with your head pulled straight back in the if your head's Just imagine putting your head, putting your head straight back, put your head straight backwards.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: And don't try to fight like that.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, with someone yanking your head back, yanking your chin up.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: My chin was up and he was clipping me with elbows on my temples.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, man, if I get out of this, I knew he wasn't going to knock me out, but I was like, okay, he's pulling, he needs to let go of my hair.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was a two-minute time limit and it ran out.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then he stood us back up and I go, all right, reset.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I beat Sean.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: I actually took him down, and Cecil People goes, No submissions.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I'm not submitting him.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: I put my hooks in and just started elbowing the back of his neck.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think I elbowed him like eight, eight to twelve times in the back of the neck.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: The spike was legal.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: I elbow spiked him and then I snap elbowed him, knocked his mouthpiece out with a hook, and his mouthpiece flew across the cage, and then he tapped out.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: When I got up, I walked over, I grabbed his mouthpiece, and I handed it back to him.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then boom, boom, it's like, whoa, I just gave his mouthpiece back to Sean McCauley.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went to the final, sorry, semifinal.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got to fight James Waring.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: James Waring was training with this guy.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's the guy from um Rambo?
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, anyways, he said, listen, the last guy just pulled his hair.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: You get your fingers stuck in that hair, and don't you dare let go.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I fought with my head back like this, and we were kneeing each other the balls.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: I need him, he need me, I need him, he needs.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: I stomped his foot, he stomped my foot.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: My head was back.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: I had him against the cage.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: He was pulling my head back and I would just try to hockey punch him.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then he spun me to the cage and he hit me.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, this is a bad spot.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I spun back and I was pressing him against the cage, but I couldn't get his hand loose.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, give up.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: I go, let go of my hair, pussy.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, just give up.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, make me.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm like, I'm heading him.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm all of a sudden I go, hey, there's Cynthia Rothrock out in the audience.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, oh yeah, I'm fighting.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then anyways, we kept going and I slipped.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he had my hair and he was spinning me on the ground like a top.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he wouldn't let go of my hair.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he was trying to stomp my head, soccer punt, and stomp my head as he was spinning me.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I was spinning.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to spin like breakdance and then pop up to my feet.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then keep going.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: He wouldn't let go.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden, here comes the towel.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Chad was so scared he threw a towel.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was so mad.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I was going to beat him.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why did you throw in the towel?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why would I endure all that pain and punishment if I didn't think I was going to win?
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, he wasn't going to let go.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: His fingers were like glued.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Tangled as we were only supposed to fight with a piece of tape around our knuckles.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy had full-on hand wraps, and they were signed off by the commission because he was a WBO boxing cruiserweight champion.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: The fastest knockout in history was 23 seconds from him.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he comes out with casts on his hands.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: I go, those hand wraps are illegal.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, so what?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, they signed off on it.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they're actually making his knuckles be harder.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're supporting his knuckles and putting something hard on the knuckles that can knock you out.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, I think he was like 50 pounds heavier than me.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: This was a crazy time, Eric.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Spoiler alert, you ended up in future fights, I think you didn't have long hair anymore.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I cut my hair.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: I fought in Japan in 96.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: I won the belt.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that fight where I got my hair pulled, I cut my hair.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: I went to the Pan Ams and I won the Pan Ams as a blue belt at Iredondo Beach.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: Did you compete in that?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Was that the first Pan Am's?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 96.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I did.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: That was my first tournament.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had won an inter Machado school tournament at Purple Belt.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: I fought at Purple Belt in the first Pan Am's.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Eric, you've trained in all these different arts.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: You have been referred to as like an encyclopedia of martial arts, but you're extremely creative.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think I mentioned to you, you're the first person I ever saw do a Superman punch, which, if the people listening don't know what it is, go look it up.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: But like you are extremely creative.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think about creativity in the martial arts?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something you just bring to it?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you encourage that in people?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you fall on do what the instructor teaches you or be creative?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, learn the move and get good at it.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: But then look at all the variations that come from that one move.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I think every move that you're taught, everything is based on a series due to an action and reaction.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if I go to hit a uh, let's say uh an Americana on you, uh, what's to call it?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Utigurami.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: So Gaku Utigurami is a Kimura or chicken wing.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: And a V, we call V armlock because it's a V.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then Bob Anderson created the Americana.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: He did it to holes, and they called Matt the Americana because he's an American wrestler.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, when they react to that, sometimes they straighten their arm down, sometimes they straighten their arm out, sometimes they bridge and straighten, sometimes they loop it over their head.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's where all the series and the follow-ups come from, from reactions from different people.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the biggest things I said, the only way to get better at any of the ground stuff is you've got to roll all the time.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta roll with everybody and roll all the time.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how you download information, see how people react, because everyone reacts differently.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think due to a reaction, some people, when you attack an ankle lock, they grab your elbow and they kick their leg through and they put the boot on, right?
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Others grab the back of their knee and they retract their leg.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: People try to grab their head and climb up.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: Some people control the hands or one hand so you can't get such a good grip on it.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: One's not right and one's not wrong.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: I just find that variations come in creativity.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it comes from writing.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: I write the move, and then I just start writing follow-ups.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you roll a lot, I dream that I'm rolling, and in my dreams, I'm dreaming like counters, defense.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's about two girls in my life that I actually escaped an arm bar in my sleep, and I elbowed him in the face.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Elbow escape.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Oh, you did an elbow me.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Oh, I'm sorry.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: These are the hazards of dating a fighter.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Frank Shamrock, when I talked to him in an interview recently, he also mentioned that he dreamt for even after he retired, it took quite a while before he stopped dreaming of fights.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is super creativity.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think the creativity is thinking outside of the box.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, it helps you almost telepathically when you're rolling with someone and you're in their guard and you push their knee down, you know they're probably gonna shin block you.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: Most people will shin block you.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's an easy way to set up an ankle lock.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: You just push their knee down in the guard, and then all of a sudden they shin block, and then boom, you jump to a yellow.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing if I stand up in your guard, I know most of the time you're gonna back sweep me.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if I stand up with my head up, I don't back sweep.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: So then I grab the knee and I pinch and turn, then that gives you another ankle lock.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I learned that the catch wrestling from Shudo, which was approximately 150 submissions, it was 10 combinations or sorry, 12 combinations.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then I said, I wonder if I could put this into the jujitsu and make it work with jujitsu instead of it being two separate arts, have uh like a combined art where you can attack from every position, defend, and be strong at defense and transitions.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the movement when I was in Japan, I was watching the fighters move.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: And this is no lie.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: When I first went to Japan, I saw them do two things that I brought back to America.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Number one was the S or the Z mount.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching them climb up the guy sideways, and I go, that's interesting.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a crooked mount.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started calling it the Z mount, and that was in 1993.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then lower body control is you only control their legs and you hold just their legs and clamp on their hips, but you reverse case and face their legs.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the leg lockers would just go low body control.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I found out that there's a couple judo players that were notorious for that style where they'd only hold your legs, and then they would get mount, they call Tate Shihho, would get mount to spider mount you from there, or they would go to north and south from there, or they would helicopter mount, reverse helicopter mount.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I came up with something I call a star drill.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: A star drill starts with side control, kazuri keza, north and south, spin around the head, kazuri keza, side control.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then I said if we make it called around the world, then you mount and dismount.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then if we want to make it better, we add mount, dismount the knee on belly, go back to the mount, dismount the neon belly, go off to side control, and go back through the circle.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then let's add the low body control star drill.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's number two, where we control the legs.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: You pull their far in each spider mount, you run around their head, go to north and south, or you reverse helicopter mount so you can attack the legs.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: I call the morning newspaper.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're sitting on the toilet reading the morning newspaper.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: But today it's the morning iPad or the cell phone.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, so there are lock flows which string together finishes.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: And am I correct in sort of describing this as a positional flow where you're stringing together control positions?
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes, yes.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's the star drills I teach all the kids.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then I have a star drill for the turtle.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: When the person's in a turtle and you spin to their side, you put your knee in, and then you switch your knee, and then you go to the truck, which is it's called leg riding from wrestling, and then you step over the far ankle and you have your knees in a 90-degree angle, and you can hip bump them and actually turn them by that.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then you crab ride or frog ride them, don't put your hooks in, and then you go back to the truck and then switch your knees, and that's the next star drill.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is that creativity I'm talking about, and that this encyclopedic knowledge of stuff.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you have links or examples of this stuff online, I'll be sure to add them in the show notes.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: But so for someone starting out now in martial arts, you have trained in very specific systems, you've assimilated things from all kinds of systems.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: You were, of course, at Dan and DeSantos Academy, where he gives different things.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any thoughts on whether someone should go to one art like jujitsu or Thai kickboxing and get good at that and then branch out from there?
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or should someone be looking for more of a synthesized MMA art?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or what are your thoughts on how to draw from all of these different sources most efficiently now?
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a couple theories on that.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like for me, I wanted to find the best teachers that taught striking.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to Master Ajahn Chai.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: He is our tie boxing coach.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Guru Dam brought him in to teach tie boxing.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: We had Salim Asley, which is our Savat coach, and then we had Nikolai Sonyak, who is a professional savat fighter.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to learn the different styles of kickboxing, and then I box.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: I have probably six different boxing coaches that I train with.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: Even to this day, I still box all the time because I think you could end a lot of fights with just some good hands and good defense.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of watered-down martial arts today because there's not a lot of people that got really good and went in depth.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then some of them that are like traditional karate.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Jim Liu wants to go learn traditional okina karate now, which is weird to me.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: I said, why don't you learn like a fighting style, like Kyokushet or something?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I don't know.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: I just really like the Okinawan stuff.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: So he wants to go back to an authentic martial art, which is intriguing.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of guys just go, oh, I want to do MMA.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: So now you got a bastardized version of a guy who might not be a very good boxer.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: He might be an okay tie boxer, might not even know what Savat or Taekwondo is.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's a mediocre wrestler.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's not very good at submission, but he's good at take-downs, or he's really good at ground and pound, or you get a guy that's really good at submissions and doesn't know how to punch his way out of a paper bag.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I believe it's either striking or grappling or weaponry.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Weaponry should always be included.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like Bert Richardson said, everyone's got a weapon.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: You always assume everyone's got a weapon on them.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he said that to me too.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: So just in terms of having a knowledge of a lot of different stuff, do you think that a well-rounded fighter needs to know a hundred different finishes?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Too much.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's too technical.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's that, and then there's what Hickson said, which is hey, if you've got good control, you can tap everybody with literally one finish.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering how important is it for a fighter to have like a let's just say a big menu of stuff versus a coach, right?
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because a coach, I guess, really should have a big menu because they want to be able to teach everything to fighters.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you agree that a coach should have a lot of options, but how important is it for a fighter versus just get good at one thing and go with that?
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the easiest ways to train a fighter is to warm them up and then put the gloves and shin guards on them and make them spar.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: Someone said, When I come to your gym, how long do I train with you before we get to spar?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, today.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, What?
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: At this other authentic Muay Thai school, we have to train six months on the bag before we ever get to.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: I go, that's authentic Muay Thai.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: I said, What are you and your buddies going to do on the weekend?
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to watch a UFC, probably drink a couple beers, put on some glums, and try to fight each other in your living room.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, at least I can watch you guys fight a little bit.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then you want to delve more into the arts and go, hey, I really want to get good at kicking.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: I really want to get good at the clinch.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: I want to learn how to elbow and knee.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: I want to learn how to catch a kick, take a guy down.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: I want to learn how to take a striker to the ground.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then that would be more shootboxing or MMA.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then as a striker, I want to learn how to get taken down and then get back up to my feet.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: They call wrestle ups.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: So now all the Nogi grapplers are wrestling up.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're all trying to wrestle up to get back up to their feet.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not new.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I said nothing is new.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: I said a long time ago, you know what?
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: All these top-level jujitsu guys, they're all going to get a wrestling coach.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: In order for them to compete in the future, everyone's going to get good at takedowns, and they're going to learn how to ham fight.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to ham fight for warm-up.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to do one to two to three takedowns, get a good takedown, and then they're going to fight on the ground and then wrestle back up.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's going to be a big insurgence of wrestling that's going to be added to jujitsu.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is the originator of Shudo, Susator Sayama, and then it's on technical shooting.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I saw.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was spats.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: They had to wear spats, which are tights.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting because it was meshing all the arts.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: Back when we first were training, there was really not an answer to a Moody Tie kick except for a shield.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, lift your knee and deflect it slightly.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or evade or ride the kick.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: Shudo came out at Sensei Yuri.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: When he came in, he goes, tie kick me.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: I tie kick him.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: He caught my kick.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Holy crap.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he took me down and ankle locked me.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then he did it again.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: He put me in a half boss of crab.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then he had his spinning knee bar, and it was all systemized.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: So he had catch A, which is a over hook, catch B as an under hook, catch C is a front over hook, catch D as a and then you pull the and then you sweep him.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: So he had all these kick catches.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was an answer to Muay Thai.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then he had all the takedowns from the they call the Kabisma, which is the plum.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he started doing all these throws.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: He did uh jumping Victor Nagi, which is a dive roll knee bar, drop sail Nagi, Kubinagi is a head and arm throw with a parayagoshi, backtrack, hip toss, suplex.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, whoa, this is perfect, because it's combining all the arts like and for me it was intriguing because it was a finally a chance to mix all the arts that we were doing and combine them and put them together in a smooth fashion.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then the secret weapon for me was the fact that I was doing jujitsu and learning how to roll and defend and get out, and not so much attack, though get to the back, get to the neck, get to the mouth, but dominant control, escaping bad, horrible positions and transitions.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was my secret weapon because in Japan nobody did Brazilian jujitsu.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I got accused by Hickson and Limon.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: They said, We know you're teaching jujitsu to the Japanese.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, Why would I teach the Japanese what I'm secretly using on them when I'm fighting?
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why would I go there and teach them what I'm using?
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's absurd.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's the dumbest thing in the world.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I hooked Hickson up with his fights in Japan.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: I asked him three years in a row if he wanted to fight in Japan because they said we heard you trade with Hickson.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Would he like to fight in Japan in Shudo in the tournament?
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I came back with three offers.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: First offer was 15 and 15, and he goes, Not enough money.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: So next time I went back, they gave me another offer.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: When you say 15, 15 to fight and 15 to win.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was 30 and 30, and he goes, Still not enough.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went back one more time and they said, All right.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that the offer was 50 and 50.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, let's negotiate.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I hooked up a meeting with Sensei Yuri and Hickson and Kim, Sensei Yuri and Haromi, and we went to Cheesecake Factory and they negotiated their deal for him to fight in Japan.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he did a number of fights in Japan, and I think Hickson was very successful in Japan.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he did really well.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you should have seen all the judokas just licking their chops when him and Euler did that demo.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, of course, everybody wanted and they were like this.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was a big thing, and the Japanese really wanted to beat jujitsu because they wanted to prove that it came from Japan originally.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, those are Japanese words, jujitsu, the gentle art, sure.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was funny.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: One time I walked into Hicksons and I go, Yeah, Professor, how come you guys don't bow in or bow out on the mat?
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it keeps the discipline, it stops it from being late.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Give them 50 push-ups if they walk in late.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, That is not the Brazilian way.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then I went, Okay.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, But didn't jujitsu come from Japan?
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Pay respects and honor for the lineage.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yes, but it was perfected in Brazil.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's okay.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, look, that's funny.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the attitude, right?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothing, of course, is ever perfected, it's always in the process of being perfected.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I hear you.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: I came from more traditional styles where we bowed.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when I got that lesson, it was always, it still is weird for me.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: I still do a little mini bow going on and off the mat just because of the respect.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: And also, it's just for me, it's like thankfulness.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I step off the mat, I'm just kind of thankful that I didn't get injured.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I I don't know, it's just a thing I do.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: I used to always also kind of put my belt to my forehead before I put it on, just as kind of a little mini prayer for like, let's not hurt anybody, let's have safe training.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember when I was training and we in a group class, and Higgin took off his belt and was doing like a snap thing, like at people's backs to like whip them to make it harder.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember looking at him doing that with his black belt and me just thinking, like, I have never seen anyone do anything like that with their belt because everything for me was like so much respect and a black belt.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm now part of the Brazilian culture too.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: The rat tail.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know Chris Outer said that was his creation.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and when you got a new belt that you had to walk through a line of people with your hands up and no shirt on and have them whip your front and whip your back go through.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: He says he regrets that.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you'd get sued today, but I just gotta say, I loved that.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you mentioned that you are back to coaching, and who are you on the mat with these days?
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, what happened?
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: I had a fight team for 25 years.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's a long time.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was on my third generation of guys, and when I gave the fight team over, I was traveling seven days a week.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was teaching in the daytime and at nighttime for five days a week and on the weekends doing seminars.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: My day off was on an airplane, and I did it for 18 years.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: It got to the point where it's too much.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, Okay, I'm gonna give the fight team up to one of my pro fighters, and so he took the practice over.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: And there was five things I just requested at first.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Please don't do these five things, and I think he would agree with that.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_01: The five things.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: And number one, try to make people show up on time.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're a professional fighter, doctors just don't show up whenever they feel like it, they show up, they have to be prompt and on time.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you guys gotta be punctual with your time.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, number two, don't get stoned before practice, don't drink a beer before practice, don't come in hung over, turn your phones off.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: How hard is that?
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: Unless you're a doctor and you're on call, turn your phone off.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or unless somebody's sick, turn your phone off.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a girl in practice, she's not fresh me, she's off limit, she's your teammate, she doesn't have a bullseye on her back.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hit on the girl in practice if there's a girl, which is a big problem right now.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then what else?
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, how about your words?
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Your words mean everything.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: I get once in a while you drop an F bomb, but guess what?
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: The second somebody swears, then the second everyone else starts following the lead, the profanity needs to be kept out of the gym.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna treat my gym like it's a church.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: You don't go to church and drop F-bombs, and at my school, even though you're training to fight, listen, mind your mouth.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's your manners, that's gratitude, it's respect.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm walking in the gym and I'm listening to the fighters talk, they drop 15 F-bombs in 45 seconds.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: And where does that come from?
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: It comes from the coach.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_01: That means the coach is dropping F bombs.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if he says it's okay, then you're gonna do the same thing.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's extremely important that we are attempting to make ourselves better people all the way around.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: All the way around.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: Not just a better fighter.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking crap, you're swearing all the time.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're attracting negative energy.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like a spell when you're swearing all the time like that, you're attracting negativity.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: Then other people hear it and they do the same thing.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: Are you bankrupt vocabulary wise?
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're bankrupt.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's all you can do is drop F bombs.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's have a normal conversation, keep profanity out of your mouth, keep our minds clean.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let's focus on our training.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you want to do when you leave here, do it.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're in my gym swearing, what are you gonna do when you leave my gym?
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna even talk worse than you are in here.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it got to the point where these guys were talking so much shit on each other and swearing at each other.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I put my hair in the locker room and I was listening, I was like, whoa man, you show me your friends, I'll tell you who you are.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was listening to these guys talk.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: I go, man, I wouldn't hang out with one of you guys the way you guys are talking.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hang out with people that have a healthy relationship, that talk and praise, build people up.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it got to the point where it got so bad, I just go, That's it.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: My practice is over.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: You guys ruined it.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_01: I said, you guys are filthing up the gym.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I want to keep my gym a clean gym, a good environment, a healthy environment.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: A mother couldn't come in and sit and watch practice because of the way you guys are talking.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: Before, during, and after.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the last thing I asked everyone to do is they have to run before practice.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_01: You got to hit the road.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you run after practice, that's fine as long as you're running.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: I said, if you're a fighter and you're not running, you're not fighting.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you run for jujitsu?
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, actually, I do sprints.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you're the smart one.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I swear by my sprints, man.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I do them Tabata style, where I'll sprint, I will rest for half as long as the sprint, so I'm not getting full recovery, and then I'll go back and do it again.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's my magic sauce.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, the sprint is the number one exercise you could do that will like quadruple your testosterone.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why I'm such a stud.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly why.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do ice baths?
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: Any chance I get, I don't have one here, so I do cold showers, but I've got a buddy who has a cold plunge and it's refrigerated water, and he's got it circulating the whole thing, so you don't build the warmth around your body.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: I try to do an ice bath every day and I meditate while I'm in the ice bath.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't remember where I was reading.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: You had some health issues that you've sort of come around to.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't know, has changed your philosophy.
• 1:08:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I was always spiritual.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I worked in downtown LA at a ministry called St.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: Martin de Porce Ministries.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I was there for about seven or eight years.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then due to all my neck trauma, I got a staph infection in my lungs and it wrapped around my spinal cord, and it went all the way up to the second vertebrae.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I got septic.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting ozone treatments, and I noticed one of the bags that I had was half full, and I don't know if it was from that or what, but my arm was super hot after I got back and I started hallucinating.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to the hospital, and they said uh in the next 24 hours or so, Eric's not gonna be around.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to make a choice what you're gonna do.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I closed my eyes, I would see a face, a new face, every five seconds.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't move.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: My entire body was septic.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: And anyways, I had to have surgery.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_01: They had to cut the front, move my windpipe over, they had to suck all the pus out, yeah, clean it out.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then they go, Oh my god, the amount of damage this guy has to his throat.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, look, five bone spurs for getting choked so many times, four calluses, my throat was flat.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: My windpipe was flat, and I was choking on food every day.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a three and a half hour surgery on the back.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: They cut me again, they found I had four herniated discs, and they fused six discs in the back.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in the hospital for a month.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: After my surgery, my whole family showed up and they said they gave me about eight days to live.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because they thought it was in my brain or my heart.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't quite sure.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then the doctors kept coming in and they go, How's our miracle?
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, What do you mean?
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: They go, You're a miracle.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: I go, they go, You should have lived through that.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: How you were walking around was one thing.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact that you lived after being so septic and having the infection wrapped around my spinal cord like a candy cane, they thought for sure it was in my brainstem, in my brain or in my heart.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that it didn't penetrate that was amazing enough.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I was in bed for four months.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had to relearn how to walk, my back went out on me.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever slept in bed for a week straight?
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Your legs will go out on you.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, no, you you're atrophy, for sure.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's what happened.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that, it was like a reboot.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I just strengthened my belief in God because I didn't even said, I said, Why did you spare me?
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I went out in the lawn and meditated.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, What was the purpose of being spared?
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, why didn't I die?
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And first thing he said is you have more people to inspire.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then he kept saying, All you need to do is aspire to inspire.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, What does that mean?
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: They go, just keep doing your work, posting your work.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're helping a lot of people.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why I can't make any political posts because I'll get beat up from the feed up, I'll get pigeonholed, I'll get canceled.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: I try not to say anything.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Once in a while, something will slip out.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to send a friend something to say, hey, what do you think about this?
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm inquisitive.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, hey, what do you think about this?
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then something slipped through the cracks, and I'm like, oh crap, I posted that on Facebook.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like boarded.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you want to inspire everybody, and we're in such a divided society when we want everybody to do well, it's good that you kind of walking that line.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So has that become your new mission?
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now that you're back in training people, that inspiring people is part of that?
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because I want a lot of people to see a lot of the old stuff that people had never seen.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was videotaping my training, late 80s, early 90s, and I have so much video footage that nobody's ever seen of sparring and rolling and stick fighting, and there's so much stuff that I think it's inspirational because, first of all, I was in my prime time, I was still young, and I was super ambitious.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we were really cutting edge back then at that time, and there's just some really cool stuff.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is kind of cool to watch.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wow, it's pretty cool.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I never even knew I had that.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen some of the stuff that you're posting, and I love it.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Keep posting it.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of your coaching, are you working just with professional fighters or regular people?
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering if businessmen are coming to you.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I teach jujitsu Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then I teach catch wrestling right behind that.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I go gay doggy, and then I teach shoot boxing, which is a bunch of kicking and throwing.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all classes, and those are for normal people.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started fight practice back up Tuesday, Thursday mornings.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole reason I started the flight back up was because I was in my ice bath and I got a question asked as I was in my ice bath during a meditation.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, would you ever consider coming out of retirement for fighting?
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, you mean coaching?
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, coaching.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I go, it would have to be the right person.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then I said, if this is you, God speaking to me, it would have to be set from you.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden he goes, Well, what about two?
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, I think one's enough.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: One one would be enough.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, It's a two-part package.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Let me think about it.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next day, all of a sudden the manager of the Rotolas goes, The real reason we're here today, Eric, is because Cade opened his blabber after his last jiu-jitsu win.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, Hey Kate, what's next for you?
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, I don't know, MMA.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he started laughing.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So all of a sudden, now Matt Hume is the matchmaker, and Matt Hume is already trying to book him a fight.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, When would that fight be?
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, One month.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, You got a month?
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I go, have you ever done MMA?
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, No.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, You got to show up tomorrow.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: You got to come in.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to pressure test you.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I came in, I pressure tested him for five five-minute rounds.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I gave him a new person.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Every two minutes, he got a fresh person.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And man, he not only got better every round, he was submit everyone, every round, and his distance, timing, and head movement, and ability to mix the art.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he wasn't even tired at the end of the five-fives.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Holy crap, you're a super athlete.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, My brother's got better lungs than me.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, So I get on the phone, I call up Sean, I go, hey, Sean, I'll take the job.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I got both of them fighting now.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're both champions at one fighting championship.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_01: They are both jiu-jitsu champions.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Kane and Ty Ratolo.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're amazing grapplers, and that's so interesting.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've both seen the situation where someone comes from grappling or jujitsu and then they try to walk into MMA and only use the grappling in jiu-jitsu, like make that work.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they end up kind of taking a pounding as they're trying to do that.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Are the brothers embracing striking as well?
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because since they're little kids, their parents made them go in the garage and beat each other up.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_01: They would grapple, they would go to all the jiu-jitsu tournaments, they would grapple, go out of grappling tournaments, and then they'd throw on the boxer club and just beat the shit out of each other.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they're twins, they're mere twins.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So these kids have nothing but competition in their blood.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, they're surfers.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_01: First thing I said when they walked in the room, they introduced themselves to even the janitors in my gym.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they got to know your name.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: They walked up and said, Hi, my name's Cade.
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_01: What's your name?
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then they introduced themselves to everybody.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_01: When they left, they go like, much love.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then they high-five you.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then everyone's like, Holy crap, those are good kids.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: How old are they?
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_01: I go, they're 21.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Wow, they act like they're like 30.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then the second thing, I said to him, I go, I want to meet your parents.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, Why?
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I go, because I want to congratulate them and such a great job of how they raised you.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're so respectful.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're super humble.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're not braggadocious by any means.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're nice kids.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_01: They laugh, they smile, and they're super duper respectful.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it means the most for me to come out of retirement for two respectful kids and their friends, their posse they bring, they're all super cool guys.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's respectful.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're all young.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're all in their early 20s.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's the newest generation.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And these kids, they get it.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're jujitsu.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like unbelievable.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're lucky to have them to work with.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's like kick having this amazing magical clay, but they're lucky to have you because of your incredible experience.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's boy, I expect great things from them.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Are you thinking of building a team again, or is it just going to be them?
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_01: It'll just be those two.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have a couple other pros that are in my practice, but my focus because of the fact that they're both going to be fighting.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Objectively, I would like Ty and Cade to be on the same fight card in one fighting because we have to go to either Thailand, Japan, or Qatar.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of going to Qatar, coming back and going to Thailand, it's kind of nice to go to Qatar once and then wait for the next one.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, I hear you.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just released an interview with Caesar, Gracie, and he talked about how it was so hard for him to have a team of fighters, and you're constantly going out to all these different shows, and you've got to be there for this travel.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a hard thing to do.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that was what I was doing with the fight team, not just training everybody, but cornering them too.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's a whole lot.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Fighting's all about you.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_01: You're selfish.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be in order for you to win.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Coaching, nothing's about you.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about everybody else.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then when guys they're fighting, they're winning.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_01: You get it much more from being a coach, I think, than you ever did as a fighter.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And why is that?
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're training all these other guys to become a champion and you're changing their lives.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't just change your life, but now what you did, you're changing their lives.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So now you're sharing and passing on the torch and also the lineage of all the training that you've done.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's important.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_00: But business, there's a term scaling that you're taking something that is just good for one and you're able to replicate it and make it work for multiple people, and that's what you're doing as a teacher.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Both fighters are different.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Cade and Ty are different fighters, but when they fight, their competitive nature, they're both dogs.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like Cade's yelling at Ty because he's flat footed and his hands are down here, but his hands aren't up here, they're down here.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Move your head.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Shut up.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, You're flat-footed.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, mind your own business.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, let's be positive, guys.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's keep it positive because well, I only want the best for my brother.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, hi, are you cool with your brother yelling at you?
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yeah, I kind of like it.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_01: It fuels my fire.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: But they're always there, they corner each other all the time.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the coolest thing because it's family.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And right now we have a like a perfect team.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone gets along, everyone has fun.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_01: We go, it's all respect, it's all business, and we are five and oh for MMA.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So Kate is three and oh, and Ty is two and oh, and then I also secretly help them with submissions for CJI.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_01: So he's like, hey, can you come in and just work privately with the Ritolos on catch wrestling stuff that people don't know?
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So with that's what we did.
• 1:18:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was secretly going down there training them for two-hour sessions.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you did well.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you won the whole thing.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Ty hurt his knee in that second round.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, anyways, what's funny is there were 15 guys in the room.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_01: I took a picture, and they're all the Oregon State wrestlers and jujitsu guys from San Clemente, and they went through those 15 guys three times.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Three revolutions of 15.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_01: They all started on their feet.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think the boys got taken down one time.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you guys are like nuts.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I videotaped it.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching it, just going, their balance is unbelievable.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And their ability to switch and turn the switch, like when someone's attacking, they turn the attack into their attack.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you go really hard at me, they go twice as fast.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden they're like it's gonna be really exciting to see how they develop and how their careers develop if they stick with it.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are you yourself still exploring new ideas, or are you at this point feel that you've been exposed to enough and now you're just transmitting?
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, I'm researching all the time.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I research all the time.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: I watch videos, I read, I like to read history.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Let me see.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'll show you this book.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me if you've ever seen this book.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, I've not seen it.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_01: The evolution of modern jujitsu.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you've got to look up the his yeah, you know how many volumes?
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of volumes, and it's volume two, and there must be other volumes.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_01: 39 to 49.
• 1:20:17
  SPEAKER_01: It just talks about the history of jujitsu way before.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know who Robert Drysdale is?
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So Professor Robert Drysdale told me to look this guy up and so you can get more history out in the background of jujitsu.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because the stories are a little bit different than some of the stuff we've been told.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of people, if you hear a story from one person, so you're going to hear one story.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a mixture of tons of different stories.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, and different people who are even a part of the same thing or experiencing things differently, even in the moment.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_01: This one doesn't have pictures.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_01: This one's just talking about where it came from and how it blended from Japan and kind of traveled to all different parts, came to America.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what's his name with the guy down in San Diego?
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_01: He was a competitor.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_01: He calls it American Jiu Jitsu, not Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So American jiu-jitsu, I think people misunderstand jiu-jitsu.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people have only heard of jiu-jitsu through Brazilian jujitsu.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then they say, Oh, you do Japanese jiu-jitsu, and they don't really understand that there were traditional styles of Japanese jiu-jitsu, very formal things.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_00: There is judo, which came from jiu-jitsu.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's the jiu-jitsu I was learning when I started as it in 1968 as a little kid, which was a half Japanese man.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_00: His father was Japanese, his mother was American, kind of what the armed services guys brought back.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was, in a way, closest to what the Gracies call self-defense.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Their sort of stand-up grips, you know, someone gives you this attack, you respond in this way.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was practiced as a sport like judo.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's just a lot of different flavors of what jiu-jitsu has become.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it was very Americanized already before Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Keenan Cornelius.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Keenan Cornelius.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, Keenan is the son of Tom Kallos, who you might know.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I know Tom Kallos.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Tom is an old friend in the martial arts, and Keenan is his son.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it was Tom Kallos who got BJ Penn actually first training with Caesar.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Keenan, of course, is amazing.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Keenan's a very intellectual, very cranial.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Him and Robert Drysdale had one of the most amazing podcasts, and they were just talking, and it was really interesting.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen Robert Drysdale's book?
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I've not.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'll check it out.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll link to it.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it talks about the history of jujitsu.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: He hit me up.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_01: He was talking about catch wrestling, and that I said the Kalkoma was originally not only a judoka, he was jujitsu, judoka, a nawaza specialist, a throwing specialist, and a catch wrestler.
• 1:22:56
  SPEAKER_01: He was a carnival wrestler.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's how he made a living.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_01: He had over a thousand matches.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy goes, No, he wasn't.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_01: He's just a judo guy.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, well, then how do you explain this picture?
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's got wrestling shorts on, he's got a half Nelson on a guy.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I go, that's catch wrestling.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because any of the wrestling before the 30s or 40s was catch wrestling.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone learned punishment holds.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's how you pin someone, you put a sub on them when they stall, and then that makes them squirm, and then you try to pin them.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that was interesting.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think for people who want to get good in a martial art, understanding the evolution, understanding the history is helpful.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly looking back, because like you say, there are some things that are new takes on things, but generally people have been fighting with the same body for thousands of years.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can look back and see even things just from the 1800s, 1900s, you can see some interesting things that maybe you can apply more effectively today.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_00: But you'll find a lot of real interesting stuff in books.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people don't read, they just go on the internet.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it was funny because I had this discussion with Eddie Bravo.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he came and he did a seminar at my school during my camp.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I brought a bag of my books and I put them all out, and I was like, hey, and I go, Have you seen this book?
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Have you looked at this?
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is all about this.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked at me and he smiled and he goes, All my information comes off the internet.
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I don't read.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, What?
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I sit, I look at my phone.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of information on the internet.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of misinformation.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of wrong information.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people doing things that just look good.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have a buddy, David Mitchell, who is a fighter, and he says he just he uses it for inspiration.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_00: You get ideas.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is you're only then getting ideas that people are floating around today, and you're missing out on stuff from 50 hundred years ago.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because guess what?
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_00: There was no one videotaping then.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's not on the internet.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Someone was asking where all the leglocks came from, and I asked Toro Sayama.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Can you tell me where the leglocks came from?
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, sure, in Japan.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Achilles lock.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Sambo.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I go, knee bar, he goes, Sambo.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_01: I go toe hold.
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Carl got catch wrestling.
• 1:25:03
  SPEAKER_01: I go hip lock.
• 1:25:04
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, catch wrestling.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_01: How about the heel hook?
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Oh, the heel hook.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_01: That came from Brazil.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, what?
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Yvonne Gomez brought the heel hook to Japan and taught all the pro wrestlers how to do a heel hook.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I mentioned John Will.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_00: He was at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, and there's a stone relief they've got on the wall of a centaur.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Centaur heel hooking a Roman soldier.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_00: In the middle of a battle on someone.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just told that story today because someone said, I have a heel hook.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_01: I made up this move.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_01: I go, No, you didn't.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_01: You stumble across it.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's a picture on a wall of a centaur heel hooking like a Roman soldier.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what I'm saying.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_00: The human body has been around for a long time and people have been fighting for a long time.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know that when people say, like, I've forgotten more than you've ever known, the human race has probably forgotten more fighting techniques than it's ever known because you probably had these systems that people were doing and warriors were doing, and then maybe their tribe got wiped out or whatever, and there was no preserving of it.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we probably are just reinventing things.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or stumbling across or redoing them and calling them the J Lock or the Goth Lock with the Pill of the Armlock from Judo.
• 1:26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Even Jean Labelle showed it in 1943 in a book.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's called The Pill of the Arm Lock.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, I'm Same.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is that your book on the shelf there?
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is my book over my shoulder there.
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a book I wrote many years ago through Black Belt Publications on training for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, submission grappling.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Does it have the point system in it?
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's right.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was at the beginning of kind of modern jujitsu tournaments, and I was explaining the point system and all that stuff.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's great.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't looked at it recently.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure the rules have moved on a lot and stuff like that.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there was some good pointers in there about just sort of a mindset for people who are trying to get into competition.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any advice for people who are just getting into martial arts now?
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Should they compete?
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have anything that you wish you would done differently?
• 1:27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think pressure testing is extremely important, but controlled.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_01: I look at it from a technical standpoint.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I was fighting and training fighters, I looked at it from an athletic standpoint.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_01: So the better the athlete, the more success they're going to have versus someone who didn't run and lift weights, and all they do is jujitsu, and then you got a guy that is doing as much running, lifting, and swimming as he is jujitsu, it evens the odds a lot.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I said athletically, I think if you can get your body to a point where you're a good athlete, make yourself more athletic, whether it's getting up and walking or running every day, swimming, hitting the heavy bag, and then training the technical aspect, and then also just having super hard roles, and then there's technical light roles.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing worse than when somebody goes, Let's just go light, and then they go really hard.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_02: I hate that.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_01: I just expect everyone's gonna go hard.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: So just to close us out, are there any principles that you draw from martial arts that you think are useful in life or that might be useful in business off the map?
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think if you can read this book, it gives you some really good pointers.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Power.
• 1:28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is that your book?
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm not that gifted to write something that is profound.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Who is it written by?
• 1:28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Robert Green?
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Power by Robert Green.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hose is a friend.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Work is a spy.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_01: These are just articles.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Know who you're dealing with.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do not offend the wrong person.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_01: This book is profound.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this really is a valuable book.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you have not read this book, I highly suggest, especially if you're a teacher or a coach, if you're a professor, college professor, whatever whatever you do, if you're out dealing with the public, this gives you so much uh such a great insight.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing you're asking me spiritually, so spiritually, I had a lot of students that wanted to get married, and nothing makes me happier to see two people that want to share their lives together, so that's why I I went and got my minister's license so I could marry my friends.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I started marrying friends after their seven hours, which is kind of funny.
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_01: The last one we did was in Montana.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_01: We were up in the mountains of Montana, and my friend said, Would you marry my fiance and I?
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we were up on the water.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was beautiful.
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_01: There were six of us.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Man, it was so amazing.
• 1:29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm going to Barbados.
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_01: My friend decided he wants to marry his girlfriend, so we're gonna go to Barbados in two weeks.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing I do, I have a lot of fighters that have never been baptized, and they ask, they have to, I don't, I don't ever say, You need to be baptized.
• 1:29:44
  SPEAKER_01: They ask because maybe some guys are having night terrors.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_01: That happens a lot.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people might have night terrors, nightmares.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I live in a haunted house or something like that.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I think one way to ward a lot of that stuff off is to get baptized.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, Oh, really?
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a guy today ask me if I could baptize him.
• 1:30:03
  SPEAKER_01: I baptized probably about 12 people, I think, so far.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that is very cool.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I actually got a minister's thing.
• 1:30:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's very easy to do because I had some friends also, my friend I mentioned, Dave Mitchell and his wife Lauren Sachs, both black belts.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first wedding I ever did, and it was beautiful.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was up here in Northern California in the Redwoods.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was super fun.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a nice thing to be invited into someone's life like that to try to give them a little bit of wisdom.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people I like being married so much, I've done it twice.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the second time right behind you there.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second time is a keeper for sure.
• 1:30:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I agree.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's particularly nice if people met in the martial arts.
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like you say, it's a very challenging thing.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't want people dating, you know, on the map.
• 1:30:47
  SPEAKER_00: It can lead to all kinds of problems.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_00: But every once in a while, two students, people are legitimately training and they meet and they become friends, and they got that martial arts to bond them, and that's wonderful when that happens.
• 1:30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's another easy way for someone to destroy your business, is when guys are just dating all the girls at your school.
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_00: So And then you're gonna lose a student for sure because they're not gonna want to be on the mat at the same time.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and in order for you to keep your school running, you want to retain your as many students as possible.
• 1:31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I enforce that rule.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've had a couple bad ones, but we have three good ones that are happening right now, and they're all gonna be getting married, I think.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_01: I believe.
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, very nice.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that makes me happy.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_01: The baptism thing also, because times are unsure right now, and I think it's important that you stand strong with your faith and belief, whatever it is, and not to be unsure, just be sure of at least who you are and stand your ground.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other is people pass.
• 1:31:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've had some people pass and I've done last rites for people to set them off.
• 1:31:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's also another good thing that you could do as a minister, is you're allowed to do last rites.
• 1:31:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't particularly care about leading a funeral, but speaking at a funeral is another big thing too.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then also helping the incarcerated a little bit by talking to them.
• 1:32:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's another big one, I think.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a very good deed if you're doing that.
• 1:32:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very good deed.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Feeding the homeless, obviously.
• 1:32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Help those in need all the time.
• 1:32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, like I say, you're the complete martial artist.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_00: You were really, at the very beginning, one of the first people I ever saw, and I'm talking pre-UFC, who combined all kinds of fighting styles.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that you're still able to do it throughout your challenges, and all the ways in which you're giving back to people that you're describing here is wonderful.
• 1:32:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are a warrior in the good sense, like you say, the sheepdog.
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I just have so much respect for you, Eric.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think healing also is a big part of it too.
• 1:32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:32:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I went through massage.
• 1:32:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was a massage therapist for a chiropractor for 15 years.
• 1:32:56
  SPEAKER_01: You still do massage?
• 1:32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I do on certain people.
• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_01: If someone gets hurt, I fix it.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_01: I put bones in.
• 1:33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Your shoulder pops out, I'll put your shoulder in.
• 1:33:05
  SPEAKER_01: If your nose breaks, I'll put your nose back.
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_01: If your finger is dislocated, I'll put your finger back.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've had a guy with a dislocated knee, I put his knee back in, ankles back in.
• 1:33:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's extremely important.
• 1:33:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's the highest level of martial arts is the healing arts.
• 1:33:22
  SPEAKER_01: You can heal people spiritually and physically.
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you can break it, you should be able to put it back together.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with that.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's called in Japanese jiu-jitsu, it's seifuku jitsu, it's the restorative arts.
• 1:33:34
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was always important with my first jujitsu instructor.
• 1:33:38
  SPEAKER_00: We also work massage, exactly the same kind of thing.
• 1:33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And also that helps you just have a better understanding of the body.
• 1:33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Weirdly, understanding healing arts can also help in your fighting as you understand which way the body does want to work and which way it doesn't want to go.
• 1:33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I used to watch you when I used to come in and you're always stretching before you're training.
• 1:33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 1:33:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're always sitting lotus stretching the whole time.
• 1:34:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, wow, you're like the only guy that comes in and stretches.
• 1:34:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're not like the typical stunt man.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_01: They do the stuntman stretch.
• 1:34:08
  SPEAKER_01: You touch your toes twice and they touch the sky and they're ready to go.
• 1:34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Called the stunt man stretch.
• 1:34:12
  SPEAKER_01: I also use two of your moves still to this day.
• 1:34:15
  SPEAKER_01: The one where they're passing your guard, you grab here and then you take the arm off.
• 1:34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Take it across your head and then hip toss them over.
• 1:34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Go to your knees.
• 1:34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I use that one all the time.
• 1:34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And another one is I use your I actually created a series off of your give them the wrist, take the anchor, and then ankle pick.
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_01: You give them the wrist, you grab your wrist, you grab the wrist, you pull it to the floor, then ankle pick.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_00: I do that to everybody.
• 1:34:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad.
• 1:34:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've improved on it.
• 1:34:41
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have to get on the mountain, you'll have to show me what you're doing.
• 1:34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I call it the Dave Meyer.
• 1:34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm very honored.
• 1:34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so one is you go like this, you pull her down, and you hold it down, and then you ankle pick with the arm.
• 1:34:52
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is you pull it down and you let them yank it out, and you still hit the ankle pick, the low single.
• 1:34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a way to enter for the low single.
• 1:35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:35:01
  SPEAKER_01: The third one is you anchor them down and you go for the near ankle and they step their foot back and you go for ankle pick.
• 1:35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:35:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third one or fourth one is you anchor them down and you go for the leg, their front leg, and they step their leg back, and then you just pull their arm really hard and you're on their back.
• 1:35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love it.
• 1:35:18
  SPEAKER_00: You work all these different permutations, you're bringing your creative mind.
• 1:35:22
  SPEAKER_00: I am honored to have my name associated with that.
• 1:35:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's very nice.
• 1:35:26
  SPEAKER_00: I got my low single from John Will, who I mentioned, so credit where credit is due, but I really appreciate it.
• 1:35:31
  SPEAKER_01: Did you learn the anchor from John Will?
• 1:35:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, I got the just the shoot in for the low single, the feeding the hand, taking it, dragging the person low so they pull back.
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was me.
• 1:35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 1:35:43
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 1:35:44
  SPEAKER_01: I still teach that to this day.
• 1:35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a sneaky way.
• 1:35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're not good at takedowns, it's a sneaky way to get to their legs.
• 1:35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've done that on people that are good.
• 1:35:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten that on black belts for sure.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I saw you do that at that tournament.
• 1:35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Remember the tournament at Joe Moriers?
• 1:36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
• 1:36:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh a challenge match.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Who did you go against?
• 1:36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Fabio Santos?
• 1:36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, maybe, yeah, maybe.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I had a big fight there with Fabio Santos.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, I feel like I should let you go.
• 1:36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Your wife's gonna be mad at me.
• 1:36:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 1:36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:36:13
  SPEAKER_01: That was great, great talk.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad we worked out the bugs.
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Super congratulations on your Coral Bell.
• 1:36:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a huge achievement.
• 1:36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:36:22
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 1:36:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that you are back to coaching and stuff.
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that all your health stuff is behind you.
• 1:36:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're you seem really strong, really in good shape to me.
• 1:36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I just look forward to seeing you next time I come down to LA.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Master Dave.
• 1:36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Grasshopper, thank you.
• 1:36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Eric.
• 1:36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Eric is a great guy, a very interesting person, as you saw.
• 1:36:48
  SPEAKER_00: He trains out of his academy in Los Angeles.
• 1:36:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have got links in the show notes.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this, please do let me know.
• 1:36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like or share.
• 1:36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely tell me what you thought.
• 1:36:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment.
• 1:37:00
  SPEAKER_00: That would be really interesting for me to hear, and I do respond to all the comments.
• 1:37:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you are listening on Apple or Spotify, leaving a review there is very, very helpful.
• 1:37:10
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks if you can do that.
• 1:37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I will be back next week with more lessons from the lab.
• 1:37:15
  SPEAKER_00: And until then, keep developing your strength, your wisdom, and go out and do good in the world.