#113 Dave Roberts - Brazilian Top Team Colorado
David Roberts - UFC Veteran, 2nd Degree Jiu-Jitsu Blackbelt in Brazilian Top Team under Murilo Bustamante and Juliano Prado. He started his Jiu-Jitsu training in Memphis, Tennessee in 1994. In 1999, he Moved to California to further his training and competing. He has trained with many of the top names in the sport of Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. David's major accomplishments, to name a few, are World Champion Muay Thai Heavyweight, 3X MMA Champion, Pan American and National Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Champ. David later went on to help open gyms, coach young athletes and adults, and created a non-profit organization. Roberts is the current owner and professor of Brazilian Top Team Colorado. Tune in as Dave Roberts joins Bobby Marshall in studio to discuss Jiu-Jitsu, helping others, domestic violence, bullying, social media, family, Colorado, outdoor life, and much more.
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Dave Roberts - Brazilian Top Team Colorado
Our guest for this episode is my good friend, Second-Degree Black Belt, and Professor Dave Roberts from Brazilian Top Team Colorado. I have known him for quite some time, long before I started this show. It was great to finally have him in here as a guest. He is an outstanding person doing some amazing things in and outside of his jiu-jitsu gym, and I hope you join our conversation.
There are some guys that I have been working with. I had them on the show and it was pretty cool. They do some pretty wild shit. They are the Verken Group, bringing a military aspect to the hunting world. They are making this device right now that's for your phone. Your phone will clip to your chest like a Bino rig. A lot of guys use their phones now to hunt. There are all these apps and stuff that they have like onX, and I have a Garmin watch that tracks like where you are at GPS-wise and you can mark waypoints and stuff. It's always a pain in the ass to pull your phone out or maybe it's going to drop.
This is a thing that hooks to your chest and it flips down and it's a hard deal. You can look at your phone and do it or maybe your bows in your hand. It’s pretty badass. They hooked me up with this hat and cool guys. We had John Lakeman on the show. He's so heavily involved that I couldn't reveal his identity. They’re good friends to have. I'm so grateful that we have people like that in this country protecting us. We dove right into it. I'm super happy to have you here.
I'm excited to be here. First show too.
Popping the cherry. I have been asking you for a couple of years and we are finally put it together. I enjoy everybody that comes in here, but I count you as one of my close friends in the community. I always enjoy having my friends in because it's way easier. I don't have any nerves because it's not a scientist or biologist sitting across from me.
It's just two buddies talking.
I'm a big dumb guy as you know. Sometimes I sound stupid when I'm asking questions. I'm super stoked to have you in here because as long as I have known you, we have always hung out in the gym. We have always had kids around or maybe it was at a bar or something. This is an uninterrupted conversation. I have never been in the same room where there are not a ton of people around. I'm glad that you are doing it here.
It's crazy to think it's been years because a lot has been going on in the past years.
You might have to look back. We are older than that. If you go back to the first episode and look at the date, there should be a date of when we’ve done an episode.
That's right because you started this long after.
It was right after the pandemic. You might need to go to Spotify. It’s March of 2020.
You and I have known each other well before that.
My kids were tiny when I brought them in. Now, some of them are in middle school and that's wild. It was cool. I grew up wrestling. I always respected jiu-jitsu because I started watching the UFC back when it was like barroom brawls. I saw the first one from a blockbuster video and that we stole from one of my buddy's dads or something had it.
Watching that for the first time and watching like Royce Gracie was incredible, but nobody knew what jiu-jitsu was back then. I was looking for something to get the kids into once we moved back to Evergreen and you guys had started up your business around the same time. Two of my kids were in Taekwondo, but it was like all the Taekwondo gyms that they went to were a racket almost.
I hate to say it that way but they were learning some striking skills and stuff. There were kids in there that were like 9 to 10 years old and they had black belts and they couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. It was almost like a money scheme type thing where it's like every three months we had to pay for a new belt and then there was new gis associated with the belt. It was like all this different bullshit.
I knew jiu-jitsu was a bit more wrestling-based but I never put it in perspective until I stumbled into your guys' gym because I was so fed up with the Taekwondo shit that was going on. I was like, “We are going to go get some real like MMA training, a life skill. Fuck the belts and all that bullshit anymore. Let's go get you a real skill.” If I'm going to invest the money and the time, and we stumbled across you guys and you were opening your business up here.
Was it in that small location?
It was like a little strip mall. It was like the first one that you guys were in.
That would have been a few years ago because we have been opening the new spot in 1 year, 3 years at the last spot, and in the original spot, we were there for 9 months.
When we came in, the mats had been put down. The heavy bags weren't even up or anything.
We had those green poles. Do you remember those? You are talking about quite a while now.
That was pretty wild. The moment I met you like I stumbled in. It was off hours and it was cool because it was me and you there. I feel like we instantly became friends, bullshitting about what I was looking for and then you schooling me on the jiu-jitsu side of stuff. Being a UFC fan, I watched it but you don't know shit until you get on the mat and start learning yourself. Watching my kids roll and then you guys inviting me on the mat, I was like, “This is fucking great because it turned into a family thing.” It's something the whole family can do. Everybody can benefit from it.
One of the biggest things that stood out to me was that it was like the first four weeks that my kids were taking jiu-jitsu. They were still white belts. There might have been a stripe on there or something, but they didn't know a whole lot, but you guys were teaching them the basics. I was at a class and my daughter was in the class. I was sitting there waiting for her to get out.
You guys invited the parents on the mat. You made us all get on our knees and then our kids take our backs and put us in a choke and we had to tap. It was amazing to me that a kid could do that. Not that you couldn't flip that kid and throw them against the wall, but the fact that their arms are big enough to still get a choke and make you tap.
It goes back to technique. That's what's great about it is you can take a 5, 6, or 7-year-old and teach them proper technique. It's like, “If you lock it in correctly, it's going to work.”
It does too. I remember that they did this and I'm going to tap really quickly. The kids love it too because they are getting after their parents.
There are some stories. What's great is we have a few teenage girls too and you get these grown men that come in. I'm doing personal training with this daughter and her father. After a little bit of training, I will go in and roll with the dad and then one of the sixteen-year-olds will come and roll with the daughter, and then we finally switched it up. Our sixteen-year-old that's been doing it for a few years rolls with this grown man, and next thing you know, he's blown away. He's like, “I couldn't do anything. The sixteen-year-old is putting me in chokes and arm bars.” I'm like, “Now you truly appreciate jiu-jitsu when you get in that position.”
Size doesn't matter. It's all about skill and technique. I learned that the hard way with you guys on the mat. It was very humbling to have. Shout-out to some of the guys that were coming in like Dr. Castro and some of those guys. He's maybe like 5’10’’ or 5’11’’ or something and I'm 6’4’’. I probably had at least 120 pounds on him at that point, but he would fuck me up. He'd tapped me out more times than not.
It's funny now that he's my doctor, because I'm like, “My doctor has choked me before,” and that’s so funny. It was awesome and I can't wait to get back in there. I'm glad that you are opening up some stuff for me to come in. I have my schedule and it's going to be very humbling coming back because I have taken a long break.
You'll get it back pretty quickly.
I'm going to try to remember some stuff.
It's working out perfectly because I got this family and it worked out. Sometimes you start a program and nobody's interested and it takes a minute to get it going, and then sometimes it doesn't get going. You are like, “Am I wasting my time?” In this case, I have you and a few other people that are already interested, and it's going to be one of the better classes, especially for this area. Everybody works from home. It's like I get done with work, it's too late or too early. Right in the middle, it's like, “I'm going to take a break. I'm going to let it all out and then I'm going to get right back to work.”
That's my favorite thing is to work out on a lunch break. I'm super pumped that you guys are adamant because I will be there as much as I can for sure if I'm in town. Starting off, if you are somebody that's starting off in jiu-jitsu, where do you guys baseline that to get people that are interested? I know that it can be very overwhelming. You got a lot of eyes on you and that type of thing.
A lot of people are apprehensive about even trying it. It's intimidating to walk into a gym. Even as open as you guys are and as nice as you are, the whole team is there and everything, it can be a bit intimidating. What if some of our readers have always wanted to get into something like this or some mixed martial arts, whether it's Muay Thai or something like that, that'll help them walk through that door so they have a little bit of knowledge when they go in and they have some confidence behind. What’s something we can tell them?
That's tough. Over the years of training, I developed my own system, in a sense, of making people feel comfortable and fundamentals are what it's all about. The biggest mistake people make when starting off is they jump on YouTube and I hate YouTube. If you are starting off, it's okay if you've been in it for years. I can look at a new move and check it out because my body knows how to move. It knows how to look at a move and go. That makes sense, but then you get people who don't know where to start.
The fundamentals is what it's all about. The biggest mistake people make when starting off is they jump on YouTube.
You got people there the first week trying to rubber guard or something.
I saw this on. They come in. We got a guy that's very talented. He has to learn the fundamentals, but he's coming in doing all this fancy stuff and he's going up against guys with the fundamentals. It's like, “That would work. If you knew the fundamentals, you knew how to roll first and how to get into that move.” You see a move on YouTube and you try to jump into it. You are either going to hurt yourself or hurt somebody else. It's tough to say but the biggest thing is they got to be honest. They got to walk in, ask questions, and be comfortable saying, “I don't know what I'm doing.”
Honesty is key because as soon as you hop on the mat, you can't bullshit.
For sure. If you are rolling with somebody and you are uncomfortable, then I tell people all the time, I have to remind all my students new and old, and say, “We got some new people in here. Work with them.”
The camaraderie that's in a jiu-jitsu gym that I found and especially at your guys' place is super cool. A lot of those guys that we rolled with at 6:00 AM back in the day, I'm still in touch with them and they are there to help you out. There were times when I'd go in and like, “My elbow is a little bit fucked up, so take it easy on this arm.” It's not like you are going to go in there and get your ass kicked the first minute you walk in. You guys are good about that. Even when I started it was like, “This is a house rule. We'll drill but you are not going to roll for the first several days.”
I give it a couple of weeks. Even then, it's like you get some guys that come in and they want to roll.
Especially if they have a wrestling background or something that they can step right in.
That's totally different because you got to think. Even if you are a wrestler, that's mat time. Whether it's wrestling, judo, or jiu-jitsu, it's mat time. If you come in and you say, “I wrestled in high school,” to me, that tells me that you can control yourself on the mat, so why not? That's some of the best times for my older guys because they might not have done any wrestling, and then here comes this guy.
They just throw all kinds of shit at you.
You get this new guy comes in or even a collegiate wrestler comes in and he does this. He could have been out of wrestling for years. When he steps on that mat, it comes back to him then you can't do that necessarily in a jiu-jitsu mat because now they are all over this guy, blue belt maybe in jiu-jitsu, and then next thing you know, a blue belt is like this.
Think about some of the savages that we know firsthand like RJ Haynes or Luke Burrier. Those guys are monsters. Even in their 40s, I wouldn't want to mess with either of those dudes, but you would never have to because they are good people.
That's it and that goes back to the whole thing of jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and boxing. You develop self-discipline where you don't have anything to prove. That's like with our kids. I encourage all our kids. I tell them, “Don't expect to win your first match, but go out and give 100%. That's what we are looking for. Listen to your coach and try your best.”
I tell the parents, “Watch. Mark my words. You are going to see a difference from Saturday, the tournament, to Sunday every time.” It changes them. It changes their mind. It changes the way they roll. They change their goals in life and everything. You are not in a team sport even though we are a family. It's just you. One of the biggest fears in life is standing toe-to-toe with somebody. Jiu-jitsu tournaments are fights without punches. That's it. There's nothing easy about it.
I have taken kids that are shy and they are scared of life and they step on that mat then come Monday, they are a whole different attitude like, “I want this. I want to be the best at this. I can do it.” How many kids out of our kids are scared to step on that mat? They then come off that mat and you see them like a totally different person and it's amazing of what it does to the chemistry of everything.
It’s the same for adults. It's the same feeling. I wish I would have gotten involved with it long before I did with you guys. I wish I would have picked it up a little bit earlier. I don't think it was readily available as it is now. It’s crazy how many gyms there are.
At one time, it was one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Soccer is probably number one, but the whole way Gracies developed it is a reason why it's expanding. Their whole belt system from what every belt means, white to blue fundamentals, blue to purple. You are a fighter. You are training to be a fighter. You get the brown belt. If you are training to become a professor, you become a black belt. That's why when you become a black belt, the system is to teach. It makes sense.
When you become a black belt, the system is to teach.
It’s like teaching something that you have knowledge of, almost makes you better on the mat.
When I started teaching, just helping out helped everything. It’s just the knowledge and retaining it.
It's super important. It’s one of the biggest things that I enjoy. I was talking about Taekwondo and its belt system, and you brought up the belt system that it's not like this rapid progression like you can't become a black belt in a couple of years. You are talking about almost a decade.
It feels like you get them quicker now than you did in a sense back in the day, but there was no real system involved. When I started back in the '90s, there was no IBJJF. If there was, it was just starting. There was no system to follow. Every professor had their own way of doing things. It was hard to be a ten-year blue belt, but now it's like you have the system of attendance. I call it mat time and then you have your test and knowledge, and even in the kids.
You get the stripes which is cool, and it's amazing to see. A piece of tape around the belt does something to the kid and their excitement. We run a test maybe twice a year, but that's not for every kid. One kid may test once a year, but he's getting no stripes throughout, which shows progression and they know that. You are right about the whole Taekwondo thing.
It teaches hard work. Not getting something that fast. To compare it to Taekwondo, and maybe I was going to the wrong spots, but that belt progression was so fast. It was every 2 months or 60 days. They were testing for a new belt and then it was stripe city. You show up for a class, you are getting a stripe almost. It was ridiculous.
We get that a lot. We get people that come from Taekwondo schools around the town and you are paying a membership. You figure at least $160 a month, and their argument was every six weeks, there was a belt test. They are like, “If you do that, you are paying eighteen months of membership.” That’s almost $3,000 plus a year for that. Even parents can see it.
I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm not knocking Taekwondo. It's a studied art. There are a ton of different martial arts. There’s judo. There are so many different arts. To be a mixed martial artist, the best thing to do is study all of that like Muay Thai. Have a little bit of that background. It's proven in the UFC or at the professional level. Let's face it. Not all these kids are after that. They want to go do something that's cool and I get the Taekwondo. Karate and Taekwondo are Hollywood martial arts like The Karate Kid.
I don't know about you, but every time I saw The Karate Kid, I bought a book and I did katas in the living room or walked around the house, kicking and stuff like that.
Maybe my first fist fighter or an altercation as a kid, I tried a crane kick or something and totally got punched in the mouth or something. It was stupid. I was always into the bad guys on that. Have you watched Cobra Kai?
I saw it when it was free on YouTube. It was the first two seasons. It's funny because I will go back and help my brother work a few times a year, and then he and I will talk about it. He will tell me each season and tell me who comes back and I'm like, “I got to get Netflix and binge-watch.” “Sweep the leg, Johnny.”
That was my favorite part. When they were all dressed as skeletons going to the Halloween party and dancing, I was like, “Those guys are cool.” Growing up in the '80s and stuff, that was the only relationship that I had with any martial arts. I had a wrestling background, but nothing super extensive. I wrestled a little bit in middle school and then a few years in high school and that was about it, and that was awesome. That was very humbling, as much as jiu-jitsu is.
Going back to that belt progression, it's so good the way that jiu-jitsu is structured and how you guys approach it in some other gyms. It teaches work ethic. You are not expecting to get something. It's like you are going through the fundamentals and hard work. You are going to go through some suffering and humiliation. All that stuff is left on the mat.
When you do get something, it's almost like you appreciate it more. It's like the person that has everything. You give them a one-of-a-kind gift. Some of the stuff that I cherish here the most are these handmade stone tools, my buddy, Donny Dust, made me. He's like a primitive survival guy. Those are so cool because you can't replicate that. You can't go buy it. These challenge coins that we get from some of the military people that we have had in or law enforcement are super cool, too. Those things are pretty awesome because it's something you can't obtain without some respect or hard work.
You know what they say. The faster you make it, the faster you lose it whether it's money, skills, or anything else. If you try it fast like, “I want to go through college as fast as I can. I want to get that certificate so I can move on.” You are wasting your time. It’s the same thing with money. There have been times where it's like you make money super fast and it's like tomorrow, it's gone. What happened to it?
When you earn it over time, you retain it for one and then you appreciate it, like you said, because it's a lot of hard work. Going back to the kids, you teach these kids these techniques. Even something as little as a scissor sweep and they are messing it up. My daughter did a tournament and she could have won the tournament.
When you earn something over time, you retain it and appreciate it.
What age do they start letting kids compete in tournaments?
Grappling Industries might be as low as four.
That's badass.
She started competing. She competed in wrestling at five. At that point, it was fun because the kids would get out there and run around. They throw themselves on the ground. It gives you an example with her, we talked and it's like, “You could have won, but your technique was off.” We then drilled it. We drilled the whole class. My philosophy is if one person needs to do it, they all need to do it.
We won gold in our very next tournament because if they got taken down, they were getting on top from a scissor sweep or we drill them to attack. There's no like, “Don't circle around.” You get that fight to the ground, and that's all they know. The problem is if that didn't work for them and they ended up on their back, then we are going to lose on points then they learn that scissor suite perfectly.
To them, not only did they feel the progression, they felt the win. They pull it off perfectly. Going back to what you said, there's so much that goes into it that develops a child's mind from confidence to the ability to learn and say, “If I want to learn something I can, nothing's going to stop me.” Even in wrestling, every kid has a natural tendency to want to wrestle. We all see it and that's why jiu-jitsu is right up that alley.
When they see the progression, they come in, they are new, they get beat up on the mat, and then they get better. Right around 12 to 13 years old, I'm teaching these kids how to teach and help other younger kids. There's a whole big thing that goes into play in the development of a child from their mind-to-life skills, and to being able to protect themselves.
I was telling my daughter because she trains in ballet seven days a week. It’s morning sometimes, and night most of the time. She loved going to jiu-jitsu. She loved coming in and taking class with you and the other kids, Missy and all that, and so I'd love to get her back. I told you about this. I was telling Gabby maybe.
I was like, “Dave is starting another class and you could maybe go to it in the afternoons before ballet.” She got all excited and she's like, “When am I going to have time?” I said, “It won't interrupt any of your ballet.” She's got a ton of obligations there. I told her, “You are getting a little bit older now. If you ever want to go on a date with a boy, you are going to have to be a purple belt.”
From a self-defense standpoint, jiu-jitsu is one of the most effective things that you can learn, especially if you are a young woman and you are in a rape situation. How much do you learn on your back to get out of that situation? Not that people are in there trying to rape you. I don't want this to come off the wrong way, but if you've never taken jiu-jitsu or don't know anything about it, it's super close and a lot of it's on the ground where you are on your back.
You are not going to teach. Even in my women's self-defense, I teach them and tell them, “You can learn how to box, but seriously, if you are in a self-defense situation, your hands aren't taped. All you are going to do is piss off a guy. You punch him. You are going to piss him off. You are going to end up on the ground anyway.” Muay Thai for standup is probably your best bet, knees, and elbows.
You take a woman and teach her how to throw a good elbow, that's a little bit different. Knees and even a little bit of kicks, but at the end of the day, they talk about fights. 85% or more of fights end up on the ground, whether it's a fight, rape situation, or getting mugged. I tell people all the time, “The few times in life that I have had to use jiu-jitsu in real life, it's happened super quick.” I'm talking about seconds. Guy comes up, goes to throw a punch, double leg to the ground. Guy comes up and I feel threatened. He's wearing a jacket, cross collar choke. By time the I even sense that thing up, he's falling to the ground.
That’s worse than you think.
It is. What's funny is when you choke them out and they come too, and then you are like, “Crap.” You got to choke them out again, and then they flop around like a fish.
The best part about that is when the police show up, if you haven't thrown a strike or punch at somebody, it's not assault. You are defending yourself at that point, especially if you are telling somebody to stop. I'm sure that you could get in some trouble with the wrong situation or something, but it's the most effective way as a female in that situation.
Why would they still be there too? If I'm a female and I can take somebody out, I'm not going to stick around. I tell them all the time, “If this happens, leave this.” Why am I going to stick around? You take care of yourself and then you get out of there.
We have even talked about that with some firearms instructors that we have had in from a tactical standpoint. Even some of the military people that I have talked to in the past, it's like 1) Be prepared for a situation and have a plan. 2) Don't be stupid. Don't hang out. Get the hell out of the situation. If you can diffuse the situation by going away from it, that's the best thing that you can do. If push comes to shove and you are in that tight situation, then at least you have some skill or self-defense, Whether t's a firearm, mixed martial arts, or jiu-jitsu. That applies across the board. If my daughter wants to go on a date, that's the stipulation.
The good thing about that class too that we are starting, there are already two women involved. We have Coach Missy that's going to be there, and then we have another female that's going to be in there and then, who knows? We'll probably get more in there. We are also starting a Wednesday ladies' night in our Conifer location, which is cool because Coach Missy is going to be there.
That's not for the dudes to show up and pick up chicks.
No. It’s not.
Most ladies’ nights that I know about are for that.
Sometimes it's funny too because we got to get them on the mat. One of our benefits to developing or having so many women in our program is the fact that I do have a female coach that can be there to make them comfortable, and to show them things here and there. After a little bit then, you have a lot of the younger girls. They start learning this technique and then they look around and they are like, “I might want to try it out on a guy,” and then go out there. The next thing you know they are sweeping and putting them in arm bars.
They have confidence then. How did you get into all this? Let's do a deep dive back because that was one of the things I was most excited about. Like I was saying at the beginning of the show, you and I don't get to hang out like this. I know you have a crazy background. Let's go back to the very beginning because I got little tidbits of it. You fought at a professional level. How did you get into all this? Maybe let's start with where you grew up. I don't even know if I know where you are from originally.
Originally, Jacksonville, Florida. My dad was military and so we moved around a lot. I went from Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, and to Tennessee. Tennessee was where I grew up because it was eighth grade through high school. When I think of growing up, that's it. Maine was probably the next place where I grew up and that was in the '80s. That was where it was we watched the shows or that main street karate studio that I never got to sign up for. My mom wouldn't let me sign up for it.
Do they think it was too dangerous?
I don't remember what the excuse was. My dad wanted to teach us how to fight. He boxed and wrestled. He did all that, but my mom was against that. The joke was throughout my career, my dad is like, “Can you imagine how better they would be if I was able to train them at a young age?”
If you had some boxing training, mixed martial arts training, or something like that.
Starting off early, this is 2023. This is my 30th year of training in mixed martial arts. In ‘93 is when I started wrestling. I started in ‘92 as a recreational wrestler to get my feet wet. When we moved to Tennessee, that's where I started my wrestling. Shortly after like anybody, UFC 3 came out. I remember my brother's buddy was like, “You guys got to see this.”
That's where Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock were fighting and a few other guys were fighting. When I saw that, I never had in my mind that that's what I wanted to do, that I wanted to be a fighter. I knew that I wanted to learn it all. It was either my sophomore or junior year. Do you remember the Gracie affiliations all over the country? Royce would go around and do seminars.
I never got into it at a young age, but now that I have been into it, there are Gracie gyms everywhere.
Different affiliations of Gracie. Ace opened up Torrance in the early-'80s or something like that. They had an affiliation right there in Memphis. There was a grappling tournament and it was like I had to wear the gi top. I had to wear all that.
It was Memphis, Tennessee. That's a wild town. There’s a lot of crazy history, too.
It's different now, but back then it was awesome. We lived one county north, so we were in the country especially out there. I entered this tournament and I got all the way to the finals and I was frustrating the guy because I don't like the gi. I didn’t like the guy. I never trained in the gi. I was a wrestler. I would slip out of the gi top. I ended up losing by one point to the guy with no jiu-jitsu experience.
You had no jiu-jitsu training. You just went and bought a gi or something.
It was a gi tournament and I did. I'm like, “I'm going to test my skills.” I was smiting people with my head and arms, and pinning them. It was taking wrestling moves. Putting extra pressure on it. I felt like, “I'm pinning them but now I got to hurt him. How can I hurt him?” The guy was a blue belt. Afterwards, we talked and we made a deal where if I would come to train him in wrestling, he would train me in jiu-jitsu. It was perfect. His instructor was a kickboxer and a Shotokan karate guy. Two days a week, I would drive into Memphis and I'd get my jiu-jitsu and my karate/kickboxing in. That started. You figure I started that ‘94 and ’95. My wrestling started back in ‘93, and then it all continued from there.
In 1997, I was walking on Beale Street. There's New Daisy Theatre there, and they would put these pseudo boxing. They would wear head gear and the gloves and it was just mixed martial arts. You figured out, I was seventeen at the time. I came back to my instructor and I said, “I want to do this. I want to try it,” and he's like, “No. Let's give it a few more years and this.” I'm like, “I'm going to do it anyway.” I end up doing it and I win my first three fights all when I'm seventeen. I'm forging my father's signature on this.
I'm weighing in and they are like, “Can we get your parents' signature on this waiver?” “Sure.” Grab it, walk away, sign it, and come back. The funny thing is I go 3 and 0, and all three of those were one round combined, and so I invite my dad out. I'm in the ring and they start announcing me and they announce me as 3 and 0 and all this. I go out and win my fourth fight super quick. I come out and sit next to my dad and he looks over and goes, “3 and 0.” I'm like, “Crap.”
Not pulling the one over on him then. Especially being a military guy.
For the longest time, the joke was like, “I need a signature on something.” He goes, “Why don't you sign it? I know you can sign it.” It was after my fifth fight and that's when I got called up to the UFC at the time.
You did five fights in pseudo-boxing, and you got called up to the UFC like that?
Jeff Mullen was the judge for it, and my brother had fought. They were looking for a 185-pounder. My brother fought in UFC 19. He did pretty well. He probably would have won, but the guy broke his nose and he couldn't stop the bleeding.
I feel like in the first years that there weren’t weight classes and stuff at that point.
There was.
I remember Royce Gracie going against a sumo dude. He was at 200 pounds on him or something.
It was in that era that they started to play around with the rules. They had changed no striking to the back of the head, which technically if you were to go back to my fight, I probably would have won by disqualification because of his strikes right to the back of the head. The weight classes were there and new rules were there. I let a few changes.
That's wild. You were seventeen still when you're called out?
I got called up when I turned nineteen.
You had gotten a couple of more years of training in. You were still training in between and all that.
I was training the whole time. After that, I have never gotten my ass beat that bad so I basically wanted to quit. On the airplane ride from Birmingham to Memphis, I was with these guys from Southern California and they were super cool. One of them was like, “You are young and you got talent. If this is something you want to do, you got to fly out and train with us.” He gave me his number. He's like, “If you take me up on my offer, you can sleep on my couch for a few weeks. I'm a painter. You can help me work.” It was like putting out on a silver platter like, “If this is what you want, we are going to make it happen for you.”
If you want something so bad, it’s going to happen for you.
You went and took your first UFC fight. What was that like walking into that situation?
You figure five amateurs, but I was on top of the world. I'm like, “Here I am. I'm beating 26-year-old pro boxers. I'm beating all these grown men,” and I'm like 17 or 18. I don't know what it was like to lose. Even in my high school junior and senior year, I didn't know what it was like to lose on the wrestling mat either. It was like, in my mind, I was unstoppable.
Were you always a big guy?
No. I was 170. They trained me and when they were training me it was like, “This guy knows a little bit of ground. We are going to train, but we got to keep this to the feet,” and I'm like, “Okay.” Everything is fine and dandy until I get in there and they start making announcements.
Right now, it's a huge spectacle, the walkout music, lights, cage, and audience.
A lot more now, but even then, it’s still the same. You feel the energy in that room.
Were you in the same room warming up with other fighters? Did you have corner guys that went with you and the whole coaches and stuff too?
We had blue and red corner. They had the mat in there, and when it was your turn you warmed up. It’s the same.
There was some organization to it because it seemed like a free for all.
It was well organized. It wasn't the way it is now. There's so much money behind it. Even then, there was still a lot of money behind it. As far as organization, it still ran the same way as far as the walkout, the cutman, and everything. It's not as barbaric as people thought it was.
I'm sure it still had to be commissioned or something. There was a commission involved.
It was and there was only so many states that would.
Were they going to decisions at that point or was it submission only?
It was rounds. Mine was 3 to 5-minute rounds. One of the big changes were they used to have the tournaments. They did away from the tournaments time-wise and things like that. They cleaned it up in a sense. Going back to that fight, you were asking going into it, it was all fine. Walking out again on top of the world and they announced me. Here I am this eighteen or 19-year-old high school wrestling standout. They might even have said something about Taekwondo or something, and then they announced this guy. When they announced this guy, I felt like I was standing there for ten minutes while they were announcing his credentials.
Even to this day, I can remember he's saying that he's a 26-year jiu-jitsu veteran. He was a fifth-degree in jiu-jitsu. All I could do is look back at my guys. Look back at him. They looked at me and threw their hands up, and I'm like, “You son of a damn.” He was a world champion. They were naming all this stuff off Pan Am Champion. Here I am, I'm like, “All this is going in my head. What did you sign me up for?”
You didn't know anything about who you were fighting before you got there?
I listened to my coaches. It probably wouldn't have made a difference anyway, but to their defense, afterwards, they are like, “Would you have taken the fight?” That made me think, I'm like, “It was an opportunity of lifetime.” Even though to me it was an embarrassment or it was a beat down, it got me to where I was at now. It’s huge.
I take that too because everything that I have done in my career good or bad, there's a reason why I went through it. I believe that now, which we'll go into later about the nonprofit. Whether it's action good or action bad, knowledge good or knowledge bad, it all plays a part on how you can better somebody's life or better somebody else. Take your skills and don't waste them. If I went through a very dark time and I'm going to take that and not waste it and put it towards something else to help somebody else. Does that make sense?
100%.
I wanted to quit and I went and got a job. I did all this stuff. I thought long and hard about it, but the passion was still there.
You are riding back with these guys from that fight and somebody offers you to move to California.
It’s a free place to stay for a few weeks.
They needed somebody to train with, didn't they?
Yeah. When I got there, they had members but they had a team. Back then, there was the Pat Miletich team. There was Tito Ortiz. That's when he was starting Team Punishment. There was Lion’s Den and very small amount of groups. I remember when Tapout was one of my gears.
That was the shit. That was the gear to have back in the day.
It was. In my first fight in California when I moved out there, they had opened up the door and drove their Cadillacs. There was one of those old Cadillacs, so it wasn't fancy. It was a big trunk. They popped it up and had their shirts hanging over, truly starting this out of the trunk of a car. I'm walking but didn't think anything about it at the time. These are pretty cool shirts. They are sponsoring everybody, and it blew up to be like a multi-million-dollar company.
When it did, I was living down in Southern California and those were the people I avoided at the bar, because I was like, “These guys want to fucking fight.” They were selling Tapout hats and shit to everybody. You didn't know who had skills, especially down there in Orange County or something.
Affliction came out.
Some wild shirts. They never got into that style.
Here was the thing. Like Tapout, you can buy a shirt for $20 or they give it to you. Either way, everybody was affording it. Being a young fighter, you can't afford that. They'd show up with boxes of shirts and jeans. You figure everybody around my size is same waist, same size, and same weight. If I wasn't getting sponsored this high-end clothing, I wouldn't have been able to afford it. It's like if I'm wearing it and somebody else is wearing it, they are either sponsored and we know who they are, or they got a lot of money and bought this and they don't have time to train. It was a little bit different than the Tapout.
My point was the trained fighters probably didn't want to fight in a bar. All those fucking assholes that would wear that shit at the bar, they all wanted to fight, especially once they got a little bit of tequila in them. It’s ridiculous. The 909ers is what I called them.
The Country Boys. That's pretty funny then Tank Abbott.
I loved watching Tank Abbott.
What part of Southern California?
When I moved, I moved into Hermosa Beach and I never left the South Bay. I lived in Hermosa for the first eight years. I lived for three months. I moved to Torrance, which wasn't bad but I like being by the beach. You are talking about a seven-minute drive.
It was Torrance and then it was a Manhattan and there was Redondo.
I could never afford to live in Manhattan and I didn't want to. Those guys were snobs up there in my opinion, but Hermosa was great because I started in the music industry and some of the bands that I was first touring for lived in Hermosa Beach. That's how I got to know it. There was a huge staging company that I would work for part-time when I wasn't touring, and then I ended up working for them full-time. It’s called All Access in Torrance, and they do the Super Bowl Halftime now. I came up with that company.
When I first started with them, they had like not a very big warehouse, I don't know square footage-wise, but then they grew into 3 or 4 different buildings. We are all over the industry. We were doing J.Lo, Madonna, and all the A-list acts and custom. It was a lot of fun stuff. At the time, I was involved with some freestyle motocross on the production side, that side and stuff. Living in California made sense. If I wasn't touring with a band, then I was at home and I always had work.
There are so many opportunities out there.
I love living out there at the beach. I grew up here, so I was a mountain kid. I never got to travel. I had never seen the ocean until I was like sixteen years old because that's how poor we were. A family vacation was a camping trip, which was cool. I look back at that and there are so many life lessons in that. We never got to go to Disney World or a beach. I have family members that are older than I am and they have never seen the ocean, and they don't care too. It’s like Colorado landlocked.
It's funny because the same thing with me, being military and going from place to place, and then you find these families. Even in Tennessee, it's like you find families that never left the state. I'm like, “Get in your car and drive. This is a little ridiculous. What's wrong with you?”
At least go to North Carolina or something. Go to the mountains.
Go Subway.
I get it too. Now, I feel that way. I don't want to go anywhere. I have been all over the world and that is one thing I wanted to do, but I understand those older guys in my family. Some of my uncles don't want to leave here. Why would I leave here? Everywhere else sucks.
They go somewhere else, and all they do is complain.
“I told you it was a waste of time. I told you you'd be back.” That's the whole thing. It’s super cool. I'm super fortunate it was here and it wasn't like, “It would be a horrible spot to grow up.” There are some bad spots.
I will give you an example. After California, I moved back to my mom's hometown then after being gone for almost twenty years, you get back to there and I'm like, “This is not it.” I'm so used to like you said. It’s the life, opportunities, and all that. I spent a year or a year and a half and got job transfer. I one day packed up everything in my car. The original story going from Tennessee to California, I did that from Tennessee to Colorado.
You picked and moved out of Tennessee. Where did you move in Southern California and start training?
Originally, it was Huntington Beach.
There are some wild dudes down there too.
That's how I got hooked up with the Tito Ortiz and Rob McCullough. We were part of Team Punishment for a while, and then Rampage came along. Him and I were high school rivals and I brought him out to California and then we came off together. In Pride, he started to tick off the same as Tito, but two different directions, so then we created Team Rampage.
We were part of that for a while, and then things fell apart. Instead of getting into the whole dark side of things, I'm like, “This isn't worth it. It's going to lead to trouble.” I got a family now and I took off. It’s one of the better decisions I have ever made. Normally, I don't back down from a fight, but you start thinking about other people.
Dave Roberts: We created Team Rampage, and we were part of that for a while, but then things fell apart. Instead of getting into the whole dark side of things, I decided it isn't worth it. It's going to lead to trouble.
That was the severing of you being in that professional fight world at that point.
Pretty much. It was they did it and done it. I'm ready. Just to get away from that life. When you are younger, you want opportunity. It's not a bad place to be.
That was the realization for me to move back here was having kids, and I was like, “It was a great place to live.” I'm glad I got to live there for fifteen years and go all over the world and stuff before I started having kids, because that fucking changes everything. You can't explain that to somebody that doesn't have kids either until it happens to you, but you start looking around. I remember skating down Hermosa Beach on the boardwalk or the strand.
There were like 8 or 9 different bars up there.
You could go to house parties. All the poor people there had house parties on the beach, and you go house to house. Especially on 4th of July, the bars would be empty and each house, they would have door guys and there'd be fights. Cops were filming episodes out there and shit. The beach police and their shorts, the four-wheelers and the whole thing, it was bad.
I was skateboarding down the strand and I had an infant at the time, and I'm going by all these young teens that hang out at the pier and stuff. Some of them are slammed out on heroin. Some of them are smoking weed. Some of them are down there drinking. Other kids are surfing and wreaking havoc. Some kids are down there skating. I started looking around and going, “I don't know if this is the best place for the kids to grow up,” so we moved to Redondo Beach, which is a little bit far. It's like literally 4 miles up the strand. You can ride a beach cruiser.
You can be there and not knowing you left the next town.
I was like, “It's time to move out of Hermosa,” which isn't that far. We moved into Redondo and we waited until the kids were going to get into elementary school. My wife was taught dance there and she has ballet studios here now, but it was a different level. These parents had so much money there that were all coming from Manhattan Beach. There's this whole like keeping up with the Joneses too. It was like a status thing. “Do you drive a BMW? Do you have a cell phone? How much money can your dad spend on private classes and all this stuff?”
I never saw that side of it until I had kids because I wasn't going to go hang out in a ballet studio unless I was trying to hang out with my wife. That was the big catalyst for me, and then I started thinking about, “Where do I want them to grow up?” At that point, I had been all over the world. At the time when I was living there, I was this close to buying a place in Cape Town to have a second place to go. South Africa is fucking amazing. If you've never been there, it's a bucket list place to go for sure.
I heard it's great for swimming.
I will tell you a crazy story about that. I don't want to take up all of your time, but I'm going to get into that here for a minute. One of the things I did when I was on tour with rock bands on my days off was going to bars and surf, so I could go rent surfboards all around the world and go find breaks. iPhones were around about the time that I started doing this or the internet at least. I think I had a BlackBerry when I was touring.
I was going to say that if you had a BlackBerry, you were cool.
The cool part about it is we had BlackBerry Messenger on it and it would work. It’s a BlackBerry to BlackBerry, but you didn't have to have cell service. I can't remember. If you are on tour with a rock band, especially when you get over into Europe, you might be in another country overnight. You might only be in a country for a day. To go sign up for cell phone service or something is ridiculous.
It’s crazy. We had to do that in Japan all the time every time we went. It's like, “For three weeks, I need a cell phone.”
You are buying some throwaway piece of shit that doesn't work anyways. It's like, “Who are you going to call?” “I wanted to talk to the guys I was on the road with.” We had BlackBerries but you could still get on the internet. I would look at Surf.com or something and it had a surf report for each beach. I figured this out while living in Southern California.
It was like, “This is a way to look at the surf and see what it's going to be.” There are all kinds of people on there that rate it. They rate it for shark danger. They rate each beach for weather, break, swell, and people. There were all these different ratings on there and some of it was in real-time. You could look at San Onofre State Beach and see how many people were out there surfing.
It was cool because it did something with the weather. They got lifeguard reports. I don't know how it worked, but super cool. One of my surf buddies showed that to me. I was like, “This is the fucking jam.” Then I started using that when I was on tour and I would find surf spots. When I was in Cape Town, I was like, “There's no way I'm surfing there.” The second day we were there that I spent in Cape Town, we took a boat tour and they drug this dummy of a seal behind it and the sharks come completely out of the water.
It was the first time I had seen a great white in person, and it was fucking mind-blowing. Are you are talking about something that weighs like 3,000 pounds? Have you ever been to a rodeo or something and seen those bulls jumping around or a bison or something like that? It’s something bigger than that. It's superfast that comes completely out of the water. It’s the supreme predator of the ocean.
Isn't it like the most shark-infested area? That's what I was saying. It's good for swimming and I'm like, “I love going to the beach, but the ocean is just dangerous.” When I left Southern California, I'm like, “I'm okay with not seeing the ocean,” but see, I got it good because my wife’s family lives in Southern California. It's almost like anytime we want, we get to go back. It's great.
I'm in Cape Town and I'm looking up the surf report, and where we were staying was like a harbor district or something. It was cool. There were all these world-class sailboats like from the racing teams and they had a ship building place. It was cool but there was no surf break, and then the only spot where you could maybe catch a break is where we had gone on this tour and saw great whites coming out of the water. I'm looking up surf spots. It was there. There were signs everywhere on the beach saying, “Enter the water at your own risk.”
I'm looking up the surf report. I find this little town that's an hour away. It's called Muizenberg and it's up on the Atlantic side of the tip further north. I take this cab to Muizenberg and we had to go through a couple of villages that didn't have running water. These people were carrying buckets of water on their heads.
I had trouble trying to find a cab that would even take me out there from the city. They are like, “No.” There were some dirt roads we went down, but I found this one cab and he's like, “I used to live out there. I will take you.” He was a super cool guy. He's like, “We got to stop at the gas station and get some candy.” It was like you had to pay a toll to go through some of these villages like handing out candy to kids and shit or they'd stop the cab. I don't know what they'd do. It was a super cool experience.
I get to Muizenberg. It's this little German city. It’s a super cool spot and it's a surfer's dream, for me anyways. A fat surfer that rides a longboard that's not out carving. It was literally break after break. Originally, when I looked up the surf report, I was like, “I'm not going to get in the water. I want to go see this.” When I saw the shark rating, it was 8.7 or something. I'm used to Redondo Beach, Rat Beach, or Hermosa Beach. It's like nil. We have leopard sharks or something, but a white shark in there is very slim. Your chances of a shark attack there is rated 1.2 back in the day.
It was funny because the guys that wrote the report found humor in it because they were surfers. It said, “Meat on a stick.” It was very sharky or whatever it was. I got out there and there were hundreds of people out there surfing. Nobody was in each other's way. I thought to ask a local. I was like, “Is there a spot to run a surfboard?” My chances are pretty good like 1 in 100 at least. There are 100 spots out there in the water.
Is there a saying like, “If you are running from a bear, you don't have to be the fastest runner?” Is it the same thing? If you encounter a shark, you don't have to be the fastest swimmer, just faster than the slowest.
You don't have to be the fastest swimmer, just be faster than the slowest.
It's the wrong place and the wrong time. You could apply that to a bear attack, but if you are with a group of people, I don't think it matters. I think it's luck of the draw. A lot of guys lose their arms. They lose limbs like that pro surfer girl that lost her arm. The sharks taste it and they are like, “This tastes like shit. Fuck off.” I don't know.
Anyways, I'm like, “There are hundreds of people out there.” My chances of getting eaten by a shark can't be that bad. I surfed. I had a fucking incredible day. I caught more waves than I have ever caught in one spot. It was so easy. The water was pretty warm and an incredible spot because you are so close to the equator. The people were super cool. The next day, I go back and I'm looking at the surf report to go back and somebody got attacked there and eaten the next day.
You are still surfing? An
No. I wasn't surfing. I was thinking about going back and taking the $120 cab ride to go back because I had another day off. I was like, “I'm not going back. I'm good. I got it in once.” No. It's fucking wild down there. I was thinking about buying a place there. This was pre-having kids. I'd been all over the world and that was the only spot where I was like, “Maybe I could live there,” like someplace out of the country.
I love America so much and everything that we stand for. Even though all the times I got picked on are in fist fights in England, and all kinds of crazy shit touring around the world, this is still the best spot and then I was like, “Where do I want to live in America?” It was like the dirt here, growing up and playing in the dirt. It's different. Maybe it's because it's home to me.
Were you born and raised here in Evergreen?
Yeah. About 1 mile from here, which is wild. Back to your story, you suffered from the professional fight game, and then at that point, were you a black belt in jiu-jitsu and decided like, “This is a form of income, or I want to teach?” What was the catalyst for you getting into that?
I had a gym out in Southern California but I was more running the gym as an administrator as opposed to coaching. Growing up, helping my professors, coach, and things like that, one of the benefits I had was I trained with so many different professors that I got to pick and choose what I felt was best from each of them.
I didn't have one professor, which took me a long time to get my black belt when you go from innocent professor to professor. It's like it was good in how I teach and coach but it was bad for the amount of time that I spent with a professor. When I got my black belt, I got it from Juliano Prado. Him and I had a history throughout our fighting career because he was helping us train. He had his own gym. We started with him when he was right off the Ferrari dealership in Newport Beach. He was right across the street from that, and that's where we met years ago.
As time went on, training with this and that professor, going back to everything you do in life helps you to build on what you are going to end up doing with it. If I did the math, I was going to be a fifth-degree black belt at this time, but I'm only a second-degree now. I'd be a third-degree next time. Throughout that whole training, I was able to pick up a lot of good things.
Everything you do in life helps you to build on what you are going to end up doing with it.
That helped me. I don't know if you remember. Once I first started with you, I was still on the road quite a bit. I didn't have this going, which is nice. It has freed me up not to travel so much, and the pandemic totally shut everything down including you guys, but I started going to different gyms when I was on the road, and do a walk-in on an open mat. Some places were accepting someone and letting you do shit. They were like, “Sorry. We don't take outsiders because we don't know you.”
We pick and choose, and then a lot of times I might have to pick up the phone and talk to somebody on the phone to get a feel for it.
This makes sense, especially for a guy my size walking in and going, “I want to roll.”
I know right? I got an experience and they are like, “We ain't got nobody for you.”
It was crazy because of what that made me learn and let's put it in perspective this way like a Gracie gym. The white belts there are as good as some of the gyms that I went into. I was wrong with guys that were wearing a purple or a brown belt. The level of picking the right teacher or professor, or aiding yourself with a proper school was insane. Some of them when I walked into and I was getting manhandled by white belts. Sometimes I was used to rolling against this rank. I don't know. It was different. That could be for gym and region, maybe an area.
My rule is if you come to my gym, especially now that we opened up a conifer, we have people that train somewhere else and then, they will come to us then I had a guy I rolled with and I thought he was brand-new at it. I start rolling with him and he's doing things like using his foot in certain ways, and I'm like, “We got done. What belt are you because you are not new?” He goes, “No, I'm not new.” I didn't know. I didn't sign him up.
He's just, “I come in. I'm teaching. He's one of the new students and my wife's like, “I signed him up last week.” We started talking and he's a blue belt from somewhere else.” I'm like, “He shows some skills.” His thing was, “I don't know what the etiquette is when you go to a new gym. I told him, “My rule is whether I believe you are a true blue belt or a purple belt or what, then it's not up to me. If you earned it from somewhere else, I'm going to respect that. If you are a blue belt and I don't feel you have the skills to necessarily be a blue belt, never.”
In my mind, it is, in a sense challenging. I will be honest with people. If he comes in as a blue belt, I'm not going to tell him, “I don't think you are a blue belt.” What I'm going to tell him is, “I think you lack this and this, so let's catch you up to speed.” Going back to the whole coaching thing. BTT, in the early-2000s, was one of the best fighting teams in the world. It was like they are all about fundamentals. Anybody that's played high-level sports of any kind, football or boxing, know that the fundamentals are where it's at. You can get to a senior and you start pulling off this fancy stuff, and then you get into college, you are going back to fundamentals.
You can watch championship fighters and boxers and you see how they get to the top and then all of a sudden, they fall off. I witnessed that. I know why a lot of these top fighters fall off is because they get to the top. They don't feel like they need to train as hard. They feel like they don't need to do all this boring stuff, but that's the fundamentals.
When you stop doing the fundamentals, you start falling off. As I said, I witnessed this with some of the guys on my team. They get to the top. They are on top of the world. The next thing you know, they give them a few years and they look like they don't even know how to fight because they are too good. They don't want people to push them anymore. They are too good for that. No names. You know who I'm talking about.
Instead if you always need to be pushed, you always need the fundamentals and I'm a stickler for that. I was talking about this with one of my guys. Even a couple of years ago, we had a couple of purple belts come in from different regions. The last thing they did to us is walk out and they go, “You got some damn tough white belts.” It's the fundamentals and teaching the fundamentals.
If you are a walk-in a gym, what do you guys call them? Is it just a walk-in?
I call them walk-ins.
In some of the gyms I went to, they accused me of sandbagging, because I was a white belt with no stripes, and I would travel with my gi in case it was gi class or something. I would go in at that point and I didn't have anything that I accredited, but a ton of mat time. I was smoking some dudes. I got accused a couple of times of like, “Are you really a white belt? Sandbagging son of a bitch.” It's funny not in a bad way. They were like, “You are good for a white belt.” I attribute that to you, so thank you.
Going back to the fundamentals, a lot of gyms and even as a coach, that's one of the toughest things that I had to learn because when you are trying to develop a gym, you are trying to develop the memberships. Your biggest worry is keeping these members. You are like, “Am I coaching you, in a sense?” I'm coaching because I have had so many high-level coaches that I follow their whole system and it's a proven system, so I change it. When you are worried about your members, you are like, “Am I teaching? Do they feel it's too boring?” All this is going through your head as a coach.
They are watching YouTube videos at night.
You get a few of them, especially at the beginning stages of opening up a gym. You are like, “Am I doing this right? I know what it takes for them to be good, but am I doing it wrong? Should I be showing all this fancy stuff? Should I jump to the fancy stuff?” We have been open going on for years. We got two gyms. We got a nonprofit now.
I sat down and talked with some of my old guys. He was telling me. He's like, “One of the things that we do that develops a positioning,” he said, “It was so boring at the time, but I trusted you,” and I'm like whatever. I think back now that when he rolls with anybody at any level, he rolled with a brown belt. Once he established the top position, the fight was his. He even said it, he goes, “Going back to that boring drill that you made us do fifteen minutes every single class that came in is why I am a blue belt at such a high level.”
It's like those fundamentals when I was walking into those gyms were key because some of those guys were trying some crazy shit. It's easy to catch people when they are trying crazy shit. I'm no expert in it by any means. It gives you an opportunity once you get to a good position where you can try some crazy shit yourself from my standpoint. It's like, “I can try this because I'm in a safe position and can get back to wherever.”
Exactly. The fundamentals teach you how to move. It teaches how to establish a position. You know how these so-called advanced moves. You know how to apply it now. It's like somebody coming in and we have a guy that is at that stage, but I have dealt with people like this enough that you know how to develop them because they are the guys that watch YouTube films before they sign up. You ask them, “Do they have any experience?” and they will say none, but then you know that they go home and watch YouTube videos.
The fundamentals teach you how to move. It teaches how to establish the position.
They lay on their back, they get smashed the whole time and they are trying to pull this thing off. I'm like, “He's an athlete.” You look at him, you are like, “You could have been a college athlete of whatever you wanted to be.” He's trying to get fancy before he knows what he's doing. You allow him to get fancy with it, and then we say, “That's not working for you. Let's go back to the basics.”
Fundamentals are key. Tell me about this nonprofit because I know that it has something to do with women and self-defense and I'm a big proponent of all of that because I got daughters and an awesome wife. The last thing I ever want is for them to get hurt. Shout-out to my buddy Jeremiah Wilber too whom I have had on the show a couple of times.
I need to link you up. He's running a nonprofit that does human trafficking and domestic violence-type stuff. He’s a former Green Beret. He's a Colorado guy. He spent twenty years in special forces and the Army. He’s a bad motherfucker. He's a real cowboy and outfitter, but he started the War Party Movement and he's doing some amazing stuff to help combat human trafficking like removing women from domestic violence situations.
They have War Party ranch where it's like building some confidence in these women that maybe have been abused, young girls, or whatever so that they can go out, get into the world, and have some confidence in what they are doing. They are doing it from a ranch or agricultural setting like teaching them horse skills, how to move cows, and that type of thing. I think that he incorporates a shooting part. It’s like some firearms training because that's very empowering as well. On the jiu-jitsu side or self-defense, I know that he's got some experience in that as well.
Since we are on that, that would be great. I would love to because we are planning on, especially here in Evergreen, our first location is to do our women's self-defense seminar. We have done a few before. What I have done is basically take realistic situations and I tell them right off the bat, “Some of this is going to be uncomfortable, but it's not going to be as uncomfortable if you are put in these situations and knowledge.” You teach somebody something. It's not just showing you something. It's I'm going to explain why we do this so it makes sense. I'm a firm believer that if I do something or if I learn something and I understand why I'm doing it, it almost sticks with me. Does that make sense?
That's a big part of jiu-jitsu too. It's more of a motor skill almost. You can sit there and watch something, drill, have the perfect partner, and all that of stuff. Drilling is one thing and that's how you learn the fundamentals, but when it comes to rolling and it's like crunch time. It's almost like body awareness and knowing where you are at. Taking a second to think and be like, “I got to use my brain before I start exerting so much or getting in a good position.”
Doing it so much and repetition. That's what I try to get and remind everybody too. “Even if this seems boring, you have not done it enough times because it needs to be reactive. This goes for boxing, kickboxing, MMA, UFC, or anything. The moment you start to think, you are moving too slow.” If you and I are fighting and if in my head, I'm going to say, “Here's my combination,” I'm already too late. It needs to be done too reactive. Same thing like, “If I got to take you down, you are a better boxer than me.” As soon as I think and hesitate, it's too late. It needs to be open and go.
Brazilian Top Team: The moment you start to think you are moving too slow and hesitate, it’s already too late.
That's what I was getting at with the motor skill. It's like something that's pre-wired in your brain, and at the last episode that we did, we had a strength and conditioning coach from Landow Performance, Eric Telly. He's awesome and he was talking about the neuro transporters or the insulation that goes around your nerves. He broke it down scientifically like they get guys ready for the NFL Combine to run a faster 40-yard dash. They take somebody that might be 4’6’’ and they try to turn them into 4’3’’ and it all comes down to technique, fundamental skill, head placement, and finger placement. The science that's behind it before the guy even starts running is wild.
There's a lot. I can remember my strength and conditioning coach. It was times like going back to doing squats with a broomstick, and I'm like, “This is a waste of my time.” A good coach will explain why we are doing this. You don't question it. I'm doing squats with a broomstick and I'm getting a workout because my technique, posture, and everything were horrible. He fixed that, and immediately, doing squats with a broomstick all this time, but because I fixed my posture fix this and that. My weight would jump up 25 to 50 pounds off of my one rep.
It's all body placement and positioning and bone structure and all that.
Going back to seeing results and all that, it sticks in your head. That's what I took from that, it's like, when my coaches would explain to me why we are doing certain things, whether I still believed it or not, seeing results, I'm like, “Done. You got my full attention. Whatever you say, I'm doing.” I'd love to meet up with this guy. It's right up the same alley.
Explain to me what a class is. It’s for females only.
The seminar is going to be for all ages, females. It's our way of introducing women to the sport. Put them in certain situations, not basic jiu-jitsu, but put them straight into a scenario that they may be in, and this is how it works. This is why we are doing this, and that may be all it takes for them to say, “I should try this jiu-jitsu thing out,” which in turn, at some point, may save their life later on.
I got a question and this is something that I have thought about. I could be totally wrong on this. I have no experience in teaching this or anything like that, but when you involve a weapon like an edged weapon, A knife, or a blade of some sort, jiu-jitsu might not be the best thing. That might not be the best skill to have to be super close to somebody.
Running is probably the best.
Get away.
In a sense, it depends on the situation. We can go over different scenarios, but sometimes you are put in a situation where you can't run.
Create distance, a spider guard-type stuff.
Closing distance is sometimes good. The one thing that's good about jiu-jitsu and going back, there are certain basic rules to jiu-jitsu. There are three points of contact always. I'm a firm believer in controlling one arm at all times. That goes into play. Let's say you have a knife, but if I'm so used to training and grappling. I have to focus on one arm and attack that arm, it's going to come into play. For a blade, you got to figure. You got to either get real distance or get super close because if you get in that strike zone and there's no way you are not going to block. You are not going to karate block anything like that.
These are all crazy scenarios to even think about, but closing a distance with a firearm, too, sometimes.
That's why training is so important, too.
I'm going to take this back. Closing distance if somebody's got a hold of you. If somebody's arm’s length away, the best thing to do if you and I are sitting 6 feet apart like we are now or whatever this is to probably create distance.
With the knife or the blade, if I can keep that distance between you and me, that is better than me trying to engage you with a blade. A gun or something like that, it depends. I run and you shoot. If you in your mind, you are going to shoot me and the more distance I cover, you are going to shoot. Now my chances are hoping you miss, but if you pull something out and you are going to shoot or fire a gun at this distance, 4 to 5 feet, I better close that distance as quickly as I can.
If you can keep that distance between yourself and someone else, it’s better than trying to engage with them.
It's not like the Wild West where you do the old pace off.
It's tough though because you have to train the scenarios, but jiu-jitsu is great for everything. For all that.
Just the body awareness and having some motor skills to get out of a situation.
Everything has to do with the situation. If I know jiu-jitsu and you have a gun, and I know if I try to run at first to try to diffuse the situation, but if I know that you are going to pull the trigger at some point, I need to close that distance. With training and you are not lacking training, as soon as that gun is out of play, then you are getting choked out, you are getting armbar, you are getting swept, and things like that. The whole time this is going on, you need to focus on that weapon. Does that make sense? Do you know what I mean? I love talking about the 15 or 16-year-old young females that learn jiu-jitsu and then, you have these older male adults that come in and then you are watching them school them and fighting.
If you look at it from an attack standpoint or a situation standpoint, the likelihood of somebody pulling a gun or a knife on you are very slim, but rape or sexual assault is super fucking high. The chances of that happening to a young female, I don't think it happens to males very often. Maybe in certain situations, but If you are a young female.
I will give you an example. Somebody comes in and they are doing jiu-jitsu for the first time. I use this as an example and say, “See what you do naturally? That's what an attacker with no training will do naturally. If you go to do a move like a jiu-jitsu move, you are going to have to put probably half the effort. That's why it works so quick. It’s good.” Let's say a rape situation, which we call the guard and he's in there double choking you. His hips are so high and you pull off a scissor sweep, no problem. He's got his arms around your neck, you break his arms, no problem. It’s super quick.
Collar choke if he's wearing any clothing.
That's why we want to do this women's self-defense of more often. It's because you get caught up in work and things like that. It's like, “I want to be able to do something every six months in a sense where it's free.” If they come in, they learn it, they love it, they will be back or they sign up.
That's awesome. You guys are offering this class for free. Do you have to be in the community or can people travel in for it?
Anybody. That's part of the nonprofit. Going back to the nonprofit, you figure in the last several years, whether it's altercations in the street or seeing things happen like you say, hanging out at bars.
It's wild in San Francisco. I don't know if you've been lately, but it is.
I probably won't go back. I went there once.
I only have to go for work sometimes. That’s the Wild West.
I see it on the news. I have no desire. There are different things. I can tell you stories along the line, and it's not all about jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu is just an avenue of this is something we are going to help and give them. To give you an example, my wife and I were perfect partners especially when it comes to this nonprofit because of I have a totally different side than she does.
I wasn't in a victim in a sense, but I was bullied in school so I know what that was like. I bullied a kid once in my life and I still had that same feeling of bullying that kid, and I'm thinking, “I bullied that kid because I wanted to. It was a time of my life when I was probably in sixth grade and I was wanting to be accepted into this other group.”
It's always outside of the influence and who's watching because I did the same thing. I was bullied and I bullied people.
I got middle school and high school. In high school, I never got in a fight because 1) I was a top-level wrestler. 2) I got into jiu-jitsu kickboxing. Even with our football team, the moment I stepped in as a freshman, it was me and our freshman tailback. They tried to initiate us in the weight room and we weren't going to stand by.
We grabbed the weights and we started swinging weights and we were going to fight. From that day on until my senior year, there were no initiations. All that crap was out the window. I made a point to protect everybody. I was a jock, but I was best friends with the nerds. In high school, it didn't matter who you were. It wasn't like, “I need to be accepted in this group or that group.”
It was totally different when I went to school. It was very cliquey. It was strange. There were people that would fight over something. Growing up here at a ranch community, there were a lot of people that were still like a ranch community. It's not like it is now. This is more like a suburb or city now more than anything. When I was going to school, it was like, you could get in a fight for wearing cowboy boots or something.
It sounds stupid. You are exactly right. I can remember that more in middle school where it's like they would find a reason to fight. Why? It’s because you need to fight. We fought because we went to different schools too.
The cowboys fucking hated me because I was like the punk rocker. There weren’t very many. Punk rock wasn't popular at that time, Suede Vans shoes or a black jean jogger with a Slayer patch on there or something.
You and Luke would have been best friends.
It's so funny. He's the angry hippie man is what I call him because he's such a good guy.
Going back to the nonprofit, that's the angle that I went. As far as growing up or during a career, I have an addictive personality. You know how it is entertainment. You are in that whole party scene. It’s the fight scene. It’s the same thing. If you are in the entertainment industry, that's how it went.
Just being around those people, it makes going back and talking to a normal person very fucking boring. “Really? That's the story there that you told me.” I don't feel that way now, and I don't feel like I'm better than anybody. Being around a high level of characters and people that are not very reserved and are very open, spending hours on in a day in a gym or in a firefighter community. It’s the same thing. The stuff that police and firemen see is fucking insane. When you are in a fucked up situation, the best way to deal with it is humor.
Humor is huge and that's why I love making people laugh. It's the best medicine. Going back to the nonprofit, then you have the side of my wife where she’s been the victim of domestic abuse and things like that, and then together starting off. Sometimes you hit. Even when we first opened the gym, whether it was help from our peers or help from certain organizations, I had to experience all that. It's like, “I can either let it go to waste,” or there are people out there that have no clue how to get extra help.
There are some people out there that are judged because they are a lower class or things like that. We run our class being a gym. We run across that all the time. Whether it's like, “We can go on for hours on stories.” There was a kid when I was coaching wrestling in Tennessee. It was very emotional because I would go out and coach wrestling. This kid was part of gangs and in trouble, and this and that. I can remember the first thing I thought when this kid came on because I didn't know anything else to think. “Is this kid going to be badass?” This is the kid that is fighting everything that he's doing. He's fighting for it. He's got a reason to be fighting.
I remember teachers coming to me. The principal said, “You got that kid on your team? Good luck with him.” Thanks. I don't need luck. You are going to see it. Halfway through the season, I got teachers coming to me. I got the dad. We were crying. We were in tears, because the dad's telling me, “I can't thank you enough for what you did for my kid.” I'm like, “I didn't do anything. I'm just the messenger. I'm taking the skills. He's doing it all by himself. I'm giving him the skills to excel at something. He started believing in himself.”
It takes an extreme IQ to be street-smart. You can't take an IQ test, and it shows up on there. It's a totally different learned thing to hustle or to be in a situation where you might even have to steal food so you can eat. Think about the drive that those people have, and the appreciation for certain things.
There are different stories. Everything from a young female that kept walking to my door at a gym in Southern California. She could have probably done it twenty times. I happened to be there three times, and she'll come to the door, and then she'll turn around and walk off. She'll come back and then it would be like a another day. She'll come to the door, turn around, and walk off. On the third time, I saw this, I chased her out and I said, “Hey,” and then we talked. I said, “Come on in for a second. We go in and we talk and this and that, and then we get her signed up.
She starts cardio kickboxing, something super simple, but then women in that class gravitated to her because she was a young female. She felt accepted in something to a point where she was like coming in with a hoodie on tucking her head. She didn't want to talk to anybody. She was super shy. Five months later, she comes in, I'm like, “What's up?” Playing around, and then she's telling me about her day, completely changed. She started wearing makeup and things like that. She started feeling better about herself. No matter what took place, something clicked to where it changed her life and then she loved it.
The bonds that she built in there are real friendships. Some of my best friends I got in fist fights with right off the bat or it comes from jiu-jitsu. Some of my closest people that I trust up here are people that have either hit me in the face and sparring in your gym, choked me, or arm barred me. It's like there's a mutual respect that happens. I can't explain it. It's a natural human thing, and this happened in warrior culture, too, going way back to a tribal situation.
How I equate jiu-jitsu or being involved in a gym or something is like, “You have this little tribe.” You have these relationships. It’s the same thing with even talking in here at the show. In some of the friendships that I have had, I feel like this is the deepest conversation I have ever had with you and we are having it publicly.
You have the other side of it. You have the victims like my wife. It's funny. We were talking about this. If somebody's new at it, then I always offer a free private. One hour and say, “If you are uncomfortable with trying it out,” I will ask them, “Why are you pushing this off? Why are you uncomfortable?” “I get uncomfortable around other people.” “Why don't you come in? It's going to be me and you. Let's train. Let me show you a few things,” and we do that.
I always say, “I have a 95% retention rate,” because when I do that, it gets personal. We are always somehow laughing. Some stranger comes in and we end up telling stories, laughing, or anything like that. We are connecting within one hour. The next thing you know, they are set. They are in our class. My wife does it, and I walk by. It's joking but she's got women crying. She's crying. I'm like, “This is a private lesson.” At the time, I tell her, I said, “You are not allowed to teach private lessons,” but she has 100% signup retention because she's connecting with these women. There's some connection.
There is a connection because you are stretching, you are warming up, if you are going to jiu-jitsu class, you are expected to be there on time.
Unless you are a purple belt, then you feel you don't have to be on time. That's the purple belt joke.
I'm an old guy, so I need to go and get warmed up especially if it's one of those 6:00 AM classes or something. We had at conversations at 6:00 AM right as the pandemic was starting. We got doctors in there that are rolling with us, and we are like, “What do you think?” They are like, “I don't know. It doesn't seem worse than like the common cold.” All this wild shit that you have and the relationships that you build in and outside of it are awesome.
Take all that.
We offer that for free from a nonprofit. Just going to one class, you are going to build some relationships and leave with some confidence. That's super awesome that you're doing that.
At this point, I have five women that are higher level belts that have been there have done that, that have stories, everything from my teenagers to my wife. There's going to be some form of connection, whether you are a child or a victim. A lot of times, women come to these things because either they were a victim, or they understand the world that it's become. There's always some connection there.
Even to a group therapy thing, that's what a court would order or something is to go to some anger management or victim's deal. At that point, you are sitting in a room and who likes to do fucking that? It's like, “Do some activity.” That's why I get behind what Jeremiah is doing. He's like, “A) We are going to get you out of the fucking situation, and B) Once you are out of the situation, we are going to give you something to do then C) You got something to fall back on.” Now you can go be an outfitter. Now you can go work on a ranch. Now you can be in the mountains all the time connected to nature.
I understand that and that's why I stand behind that, and I want to stand behind your guys' too. We have readers from all over the world. Primarily, the majority of them are in the US and we have quite a few in Colorado. If anybody wants to come to this, and they live in the Colorado area, do you guys have a date picked already?
In a sense, it’s brand-new. I joke. I say, “It's all in my head, but we are starting to put things down on paper.” All I got to do is set the date, because the seminar itself is like practical situations. The last one, in my opinion, is different than anything else. That's why it'd be great to partner up with your buddy because I don't do the weapons, the firearms, and things like that. That's not my expertise but if you are being attacked by an unarmed man, no weapons, or whatever, then that's what we are going to focus on. Like you said, we are going to get you out of that situation. BTTEvergreen.com that has our contact information.
It's Brazilian Top Team. It's a huge affiliation worldwide.
It has a huge history in the early-2000s. They had huge fight team. In my opinion, at the time, was the number one team out there. We can name off fighters that came from there, but at the time, it was like the Nogueira brothers. There was Murilo Bustamante. The list goes on and on. They were all champions. If somebody's interested, go to that website or they can text us, email us, or call us. They are going to get that phone number. Either way, they can contact us. I'm excited because that's something. Doing the free seminar is to get the women in a sense involved. It's also a way for us to promote. We are going after innocence families in need.
More importantly, it's to protect them. That's the biggest value in it all. It's a win-win for sure. For them to have some confidence or protection especially if you are in a situation that where you are getting abused or something. Knowing how to defend yourself is key.
That's another way we can reach them. Let's say we do this and the lady comes, there may be 1, 2, 3, whatever ladies involved. If they know, “I have somebody I can come to now.” This is in a sense to introduce them to that, but at the same time, if they are in trouble, if they are in a situation, they are now going to have somebody to come to. That's somebody that's been there and done that. That's going to walk them through it.
We want to focus on innocence right now locally, which is basically the foothills, everything from Gilpin County to Park County. We already have kids that they have deadbeat dads. I talk to the moms and I tell them because the dad signs up and the dad won't pay, but I go to the mom and I tell the mom, “I don't want you coming in here, feeling uncomfortable. Do not, because your son is not. We are not going to kick him out of the program. We are going to figure it out, but you don't go telling dad that this is what's going on, because we are going to try to get that money out of him, because it's a business in a sense.” Those are the families we want to go out there.
You are not turning people away because of their financial situation.
No. Nobody should. That's where the nonprofit comes in. We talked about addictive personality or I mentioned I had one. What you got to do? Imagine if you have an addiction to drugs, alcohol, or something like that, I got three members right now that they stopped all drinking. They have lost 30 to 40 pounds. It's because they found something they are now addicted to.
It's very hard to go in and roll, especially if you are going in an open mat where you are rolling for an hour and a half, even on a full stomach. That's the last thing you want to do is go eat a large pizza and then go, “I'm going to go to open mat.” There are some guys that do that.
You don't go home and then you start craving food because you are like, “I trained. I want to go home, eat something light, and go to bed.” Again, what that creates is where you used to drink maybe a beer or whatever every single night, now you are creating in a sense of distance between that addiction. It’s your body awareness.
That's why I'm drinking whiskey tonight, because I'm not coming to class until Tuesday.
That's our thing. We can reach people. I have seen what jiu-jitsu does mentally, physically, emotionally, and everything. That's going to be an avenue to reach people. At the same time, my wife came up with so many different ideas that we want to work. I want to call one of my programs, the Ambassador Program. We have 80 kids on roster right now, and it's like these kids have no fear in life, especially the ones that have gone out and competed.
I'm like, “Think about what you did. You went out and competed against a kid that knows as much more than you.” Imagine somebody that doesn't know anything. They have no fear. My Ambassador Kids Program is where I want them to almost be the voice of the community inside their schools. They don't have to stand up for somebody and fight. That's not part of it, but I guarantee you most of the time, if you are a bully, you are a coward in a sense.
If you're a bully, you're a coward in a sense.
The only a couple of times that I did was strictly outside of influence and I felt unsecure myself in this situation.
Exactly. That's the thing. Here's my program. I want them to step up and say something to protect somebody else, not be the guy that's texting, filming, or whatever the kids do these days.
That's fucking stupid. When people are standing there filming somebody get their ass beat. It's ridiculous.
Again, I'm not signing them off to police the schools, but I want them to be able to come to me and say, “This is what I witnessed. I went to every school in the area and say, ‘I want to develop a relationship with this school because I'm not expecting that our schools have failed the whole bully thing.’”
I'm not afraid to say it. We all know that. We have teachers. I want to be that person that says, “If this is going on, here's a certificate.” You give that bully this certificate. You give the victim this certificate that gives them free training. Give me time. Give me 2 to 3 weeks with this kid, because we have been there. We know that there's something going on with the bully. There's something going on with the victim. The victim cried, and then the bully, it’s the same thing. There could be a few different out there but there's always an underlying thing. I understand. Teachers don't have time to deal with the kids and this and that.
It's more important now than ever, and I commend you for doing it. I don't know if you've heard about some of the shit that's going on with this woke culture and I don't get behind it at all. I don't give a fuck what anybody says or whatever hate mail they send me.
I hope they can deliver it.
There are kids now that are identifying as animals, so they have to have litter boxes in the school to accommodate. Think about how bad they are going to get picked on for being different. For me, it was back in the day. Growing up in this community, if you had a piercing, wore different colored shirts, or bad religion shirt with a cross out in it, you might get your ass beat. I don't know what kids are going through now. I have no idea, but I can only imagine it's harder. The one thing that we didn't have to deal with is social media. All these kids are on social media, because the suicide rate has gone up tremendously.
We know. There are statistics on that.
We have done episodes on suicide, and I know people firsthand that have taken their life and I don't know every scenario. I would imagine that as a kid. I don't know any kids, thank God, that have taken their life. It's something that they cannot get away from. Back when I was bullied, it was only at school, or only when I ran into those assholes on the street, or at a party or something like that, but now it's totally different. A majority of it is done online and the shaming is done online. It could be as simple as a photo. Somebody bending over to pick up their lunch tray or whatever it is, so they can't get away from it.
That's part of it. I want to be able to reach the bully. The aspect of it is to be able to reach them because there's an underlying reason why they are each in different things where they are at or whether they are bullying. Social media is a little bit different, but as far as the bullying aspect in the schools, it still goes on, not as bad as social media. That's huge now. It's like to be able to reach them and to spend time with them. Everybody is like, “You don't want to take a bully and teach him martial arts. That's ridiculous.” No. You don't understand the power of what we do. I guarantee you. I can change that kid.
If you change his confidence, he's not going to need to bully somebody else. The social media is fuel for the fire, because then when you see that person, that image has popped in your head of whatever they got bullied on and now it's even worse. Now you've expanded on it because everybody knows because it's a public thing.
It's tough because now as a victim, you feel alone. That's the other thing too, is my goal, obviously, and I hate to say this, but there are groups out there for high school. There are places you could call this and that but that's not what I'm trying to reach. I'm not trying to reach them. I work with kids. We have a phenomenal kids program and we have a few high school kids. Once you get to that level of that teenage age, if you don't develop them correctly young, then it's going to go into the high school years. Once you get into high school years and you are part of your peers and all that stuff, it's super hard to try to reverse them. I will let them deal with them.
If you don't develop kids correctly when they’re young, it's going to go into the high school years.
What I want is I want the kids that are from ages 5 to 13 or 14 years old or whatever. I'm not putting an age on it but that's what I'm focused on. You get the young kids that the dad's already left. The mom's on welfare. The kid is this. The kid doesn't have friends because of his status. What does he feel? He's a victim. Whether he's getting bullied or not, he's a victim of his emotions. My kids are so great in the program that it's like it doesn't matter who you are. You are walking off that street.
Are you teaching your other kids to look out for some of these kids maybe and empower them, “Let me help you?”
That's part of the Ambassador Program. I want to make innocence incentives, or like let them know, “You guys have a responsibility because being with me for 3 or 4 years already, you have a power or a voice to be that person. You don't have to wait until you are an adult to speak up.” I tell my son and daughter all the time. “If you see something that's not right, you come tell me. You come tell mom.” We have the three-system rule. I homeschool my kids, but it always was, “You tell a teacher.”
It's so hard now because even the teachers need to walk on an eggshells with everything. You can't even refer to somebody in the wrong way.
It’s because you are going to offend them. You have the three-system rule. My three system rule is if something's happening of something makes you uncomfortable, you go tell the teacher. If they don't do it, then you have to go to the authority figure, which is the principal, which is supposed to be, in my opinion, the parent of the entire school.
The third thing is take care of it yourself. My kids can take care of themselves. My daughter is 6 and she beat the crap out of a 10-year-old, but they also have, they don't aren't the ones that are worried about getting picked on because of the way they walk. They are confident, they know they can fight, and they can stand up for themselves. If something bad is told to them, do you think they worry about what's told to them? They brush it off.
If you are a victim, you are afraid that you might get beat up. That was the biggest thing for me. The fear of being bullied was like 1) You are humiliated, but 2) It's a fear of like, “I'm unempowered.”
That's my goal is to reach out to those families. Jiu-jitsu is what I'm about, but it's the other services we can provide. My wife was talking about most abused women end up going back because if you cannot take them out of a bad relationship properly, then they go back. Why? It's better to be beaten at home than being out somewhere else. Plus, it's habit. We are all creatures of habit.
If you cannot take people out of a bad relationship properly, they go back.
If you can take this person who is in a bad situation that we know you, you are either going to get killed or badly injured. The kids shouldn't be around this. It's a situation where you need to be out of it, then we are going to have those services. We are going to meet or work with other nonprofits that is going to put them in the right places to get them the help and a lot of it is knowledge.
Even being a third party reporting it to law enforcement isn't a bad thing. I don't have any issues being a rat when it comes to a man hitting a woman, or a kid being abused at all.
I wish I could be like Vigilantes. Not now obviously, I'm more mature, but back then, I'm like, “If somebody could send me an address description.” I used to go collect money.
I was the same way. I got in major trouble in my life like a major court case over something like that. It’s a sexual assault.
I'm like, “Why can't you deputize me to go and take care of this?”
That's the natural reaction, but you'll end up fucking yourself. The system is so fucked. I got in more trouble than the guy that committed the sexual assault.
It sucks.
Let's end it on that. We have been talking for two hours. This is awesome. We'll do this again. This has been a lot of fun. I'm totally behind what you are doing with the nonprofit and anything that I can do to help or be there to support, you always have a platform here. Keep me posted. I will make an announcement. I would like to link you up with some of the people that I know and some of the nonprofits that we work with that we have built some awesome relationships here in the show. We know a ton of people in law enforcement.
Even if I could pick their brains on how to do things the right way and anything, I'm the guy that if I talk to somebody, I want to learn at least one new thing that I never knew before.
That’s why I love you, man. Cheers to that. Real quick, drop the nonprofit's name before I forget, and the school's name and everything your guys' website. I know you have an Instagram and all that stuff. Where can people find you?
The martial arts school is BTTEvergreen.com we also have BTTConifer.com which is Brazilian Top Team. We are the only two schools here in Colorado. The nonprofit is called Fight for Hope Foundation. We don't have a website yet, but all that is in the works. We are working fast and hard to launch this thing.
It's so hard to launch one of those things like a 501(c)(3).
It is. We have been blessed because when I started this thing, it's been on my mind for ten years, and then finally, it was the Tim Tebow book that I was reading. One of the parts in the book was talking about when you want to conquer the world, but in your mind you can't, you don't get anywhere, but if you start with one person, then you are going to get somewhere. I thought, “What am I waiting on?” Then I went out and I started creating this 501(c)(3). They say, “After you are all done, then it takes about six months to get your approval,” and it took us two weeks. The guy that was helping me out with it was like, “That's beyond incredible. That's insane.”
If you just start with one person, you're going to get somewhere.
It means somebody believes in what you are doing. I do too.
I'm fired up. I can work fast enough on this thing. It's like jiu-jitsu. Everything is like that. It goes day by day and it does what it does.
I love the fact that you are truly passionate about it and you are taking it to another level and taking it somewhere else. There are 1 million jiu-jitsu schools out there, but the fact that you guys are applying it in other areas and more real-life situations is commendable.
I want to reach the people that can't afford it and haven't thought about it. They won't think about it because they can't afford it. I want all that out of the way. I have so many of members that are waiting for me. They are ready for me to pull the trigger, but I don't want to do it until it's done. I'm excited.
Let us know once you do get it going and let's have you back in. Let's do another episode on that and hang out again. I love you, brother. We are on the same page. Cheers. Thanks for coming in. I'm glad we finally did this, and we live like a couple of miles away from each other, so you are welcome here anytime. Thanks everybody for reading.
Important Links
John Lakeman - Past episode
Jeremiah Wilber - Past episode
Brazilian Top Team Colorado - Instagram
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