Jocko Podcast - 414: If Your Bear Defeat With Courage and Tenacity, in the End You Will Win. With Tom DeBlass

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Join >Jocko Underground<Tom DeBlass (born May 14, 1982) is an American Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner, submission grappler and mixed martial artist currently signed to ONE Championship. He has competed in the middleweight division for Bellator and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 414 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. One day a bunch of us were playing. We didn't have slides or monkey bars, so we reverted to basic boy stuff. We found rocks and threw them at things. Of course, we eventually started throwing them at each other. In the beginning, we just threw them at each other's feet.

But boys being boys, we were hardwired for warfare. Before long, this kid who already had a hard on for me being the smallest and weakest target available Was gleefully throwing rocks at my face as hard as he could He was a little serial killer in the making he legitimately got off on watching me be terrified I remember being on my hands and knees asking him to stop as he searched for another rock to throw The pretense of any sort of game was by then gone He wasn't even throwing them at me as much as he was just dropping them on my head at point blank range.

I had some sort of a realization that this kid would not stop. He would just keep doing this forever. If I survived today, he wouldn't just be there tomorrow and the next day. Or he would just be there tomorrow and the next day. It wasn't fair. Suddenly, I was standing up with a rock in my hand, a big one. And not a smooth rock like you find on a river in the country. This was a jagged lump of wrecked New Jersey concrete,

the kind of rock that scraped up your hand just by picking it up. As the bully closed within arm's distance, I threw a haymaker at him as hard as I could. The punch alone might have rattled him. It hit him directly on the ear. But with the rock of New Jersey justice in my hand, it did quite a bit more than that. his ear exploded, a combination of the cartilage being burst by the blunt force of the rock

and the skin being torn open by its jagged edges. Instead of swelling his ear up, all the fluid the body sent to the ear to protect it, gushed out. Everyone froze for a few seconds just to register. Well, except for my bully. He regressed from whatever age he was back to a toddler, screaming bloody murkyy. murder. He crumpled to the ground and curled up in a pitiful little ball of dirt and blood. That's what he probably was, that's what he probably was anyways, just a frustrated toddler at heart. I'll never forget the other kids staring down at this bully, now crumpled on the sand

holding his ear. He had lost 100% of his power. He could come back the next day and try and hurt every single one of us, but he would never be the same. Once you've seen a person shrunken into the fetal position, that's all you'll ever see when you look at them. His hand was caked with blood and dirt, and more blood was steadily dripping out, making more of a mess by the second. They looked from him up at me.

A paradigm shift occurred for everyone in that sandpit. Don't mess with Tom, anymore. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called How You Bear It, Triumph and Resilience in Life. The book is by Tom de Blass. And Tom is a jiu-jitsu competitor. He's a Ghi and no-Ghi champion. He's also an MMA fighter with fights in Ring of Combat, Bellator, and the UFC. He's also a Jiu-Jitsu and Submission Grappling Coach. He's a teacher with over 50 affiliated Jiu-Jitsu schools on five different continents. He also runs a charity, which is called buddies over bullies, which is very fitting.

And that works with communities and individuals to stop bullying and abuse. And Tom has had a hard journey himself through life, including bullying and abuse. but he was able to stop that cycle for himself and his family and now he is helping others to do the same and it's an honor to have tom here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned tom thanks for joining us man the honor is mine thank you so much for having me here guys i really appreciate it yeah it's pretty wild as i was reading reading your book um there's a lot of a lot of adjacent scenarios is going on with ADCC, with trials, then the time frame that you were competing in. And I know, I think the first time I ever met you, I don't, you may or may not remember this, but I think I was backstage,

I was cornering probably Dean Lister, and I think you were cornering Gary. Yes, sir. At Meta Morris. Yeah, yeah, that's the first time. I might have met you before that, but that's like the first time I remember. but we're also

we'll get to it but we were also in Spain together at ADCC I was over there corner and Dean you were over there competing so there's going to be some some interesting crossover of the Jiu Jitsu world Yes yes yes

Yeah I remember that I remember I was I was taken back by how kind you were Not that I didn't expect you to be kind But when we hear about you know military people I thought the handshake would try to break my hand And you were just a really gentle

Nice guy you know And I was like wow this guy's a really good guy man You know so It was cool to like we're all sitting back there and for whatever reason I mean we must have been like either red corner or a blue corner or something like that But also I mean basically we're Americans You know what I mean? So you're Americans and it's kind of like oh what do you guys doing and I remember we're looking at some You know looking at some footlocks looking like some heel hooks just kind of brainstorming and stuff like that yeah Dean was actually showing Gary something I believe yeah

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah I remember it's been an interesting to watch, because I really have had an insider view on Dean since the beginning. You know, when he went and won in 2003 in Brazil, the absolute, and he heel-hooked Cochereco, and people have never seen that before. Dean had been doing that move to me for like three years. I was like, well, this is, of course he's going to get that. But the position now called 50-50. And the fact that you say that he heel-hooked Cochreco, and a lot of my listeners,

They'll have no idea what you're talking about. To me is madness, right? Like you'll say names like Dean Lister, Ricardo Arona, and who's Arona? Who's Arona? You know what I mean? Yeah, man, Dean is such an OG. Truly, like, he did the impossible. It's quite incredible.

And then he came back and he did it again. You know, unbelievable. It's pretty cool that Donahur gives him, like, the props that he gives to Dean. Because, you know, he, Dean is not a marketer, right? No. Dean is not a guy that is going to go out there and be like, And he is the best teacher I've ever worked with. I mean, obviously I'm biased towards him because he's my friend

and he had not been training with him for a long time. But he also is, he's not a guy that has the mindset to like make a video compilation or a name. Like Eddie Bravo named moves. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's kind of a big deal. He marketed himself. Yeah, it's like a, it's something to do. to make people understand that this is your stuff.

And when people start talking about rubber guard, like there's other people that did that, but Eddie Bravo gave that thing a name and like this is what it is. And it's like, that's good for him and he did awesome with it. But Dean doesn't have that mind. And so it's very cool that Donahur is cool enough

to just be like, yeah, I got this idea for this stuff from this guy, Dean Lister. 100%. You know, Dean is, he's a simple guy that's a genius on the mats, and he doesn't care about the business aspect of things. And one thing that I always, like, I tell my athletes, like, you know, it worked for, Dean is Dean, but the fact is, you know,

99% of competitors will never accomplish what Dean has. That's just what it is. And I tell my athletes, I said, listen, you have to be more, nowadays you have to be more than a competitor. You have to learn the social aspect of things because there's so much behind everything. You know, like you said, Eddie named these moves. So now people who don't know Jitsu, They come in, oh, Eddie Bravo invented that.

Well, Eddie's fantastic, but did Eddie really invent every single thing? You know, and there's a lot of the stuff that I don't know all the 10th planet names. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, like the twister's a good example, right? Because the twister is a guillotine in wrestling. But yes. They call it the twister. And we can't call it the guillotine because we have the guillotine in jiu-tut, but that's a classic thing.

And so this is something he took from Eddie Bravo took it from wrestling. And he, of course, turned it into a sick submission. He made his own. And made it his own. And so, yeah, it's, you know, everyone, there's just some iconic people for sure that have gone out there. But, and then Donna her taking the whole thing and just, like, turning it into what it is today where it's a huge part of the game. And it wasn't a, it wasn't a huge part of the game before. I mean, it was not part of the game before.

It really was 100%. It was just like Dean. And so anyways, there we go. We already went into that little tangential situation. We start talking about that jiu-jitsu. But let's get into your life a little bit because your story definitely I think is going to resonate with a lot of people I want to read a little chunk from your book here. We get to the kind of with your background My father began drinking when he was 12 and his father was a functioning alcoholic as well

They lived in an era when an era when alcoholism was barely acknowledged there were a few books fewer there were few books fewer treatment centers and no hotlines Alcohol was socially accepted, a socially accepted way to cope. I got hints over the years that my father, let's just say he had plenty of things to cope with. You might think a man like this wouldn't tolerate weakness in the son, but again, he wasn't a typical alcoholic. When I would come home crying because the neighborhood kids picked on me, a sober dad was always there to comfort me. I was free to cry around him.

He would do what every dad should do, get on one knee and wrap his arms around me. He'd tell me that it was okay, ask me what happened, and do all that good dad stuff that I try and do with my kids now. In reality, I know my dad wasn't really two people. That's something that children of addicts just sort of need to believe sometimes. Separate the man from the addict. My father was a good person, but he was a complex person. Mentally strong, yet hopelessly addicted. Tender with his son, but able to smash bricks.

Not surprisingly, I had many of these sins. traits from a young age. My mother, Deborah, was on the other side of the de Blas coin. She was then and now is the strongest, toughest woman I've ever met my life. Sometimes I think she deserves a book more than me. My childhood wasn't always easy, but it paled in comparison to hers. Deborah was born in East Orange, New Jersey, a mainly black neighborhood. And by mainly, I mean Deborah was the only white girl in her high school.

Savvy history readers may note that Deborah would have been in the correct time. placed for the 1967 race riots in New Jersey and she was but that was almost a footnote in her life story Deborah's mother was born and raised in an orphanage with no family of her own I can't blame my grandmother for not being a stellar parent she married an alcoholic and the two had a turbulent marriage my mother was kidnapped when she was five or six and wasn't reunited with her family for years her kidnapper was none other than her own father a severe alcoholic and He took not just my mother, but her infant brother as well.

Or he took not just my mother, but her infant brother as well. You might imagine that Deborah's mother would have moved heaven and earth to find her children, but she never really made a serious effort to find them. So that's kind of setting the stage, man. Yeah, it sounds like a movie. It's quite incredible. And that's just really the tip of the iceberg. You know, my mom read the book.

She's like, oh, thank God, you didn't put the whole entire story. entire story. And people who read it are like, oh man, your life was so crazy. I was like, this is the PG version, man. Yeah, my mother was, my grandfather was a, he was an amazing man, but he was kind of similar to my father. He was a slave to addiction, but he was a lover. You know, he loved my mother with all of his heart.

He loved me with all of his heart, you know, and my grandmother was more of a stoic to where she didn't really show emotion. But to preface that, there was one time my grandmother was in a diner when she was a young girl, and she saw her mother. And she knew who her mother was. Her mother knew who she was because she gave her up a few years in. And she said, Mom. And her mother looked at her and said, I don't know you because she was with a man.

And she just completely denied her. So my mother ended up basically raising her brother, my uncle David, who died of cancer. God bless his soul. He was a, he was a very turbulent man as well, to say the least, in and out of prison. And, you know, my mother, I didn't realize that, I never realized my mother had flaws until I was a parent of my own, right? Because I basically was like a partner to her. We would come home every day, hey, is daddy drunk, is he high? We wouldn't make a bet to where, no, we shouldn't be betting about that. And, you know, it was like I was her ally against him. we just always stuck together because leaving him wasn't an option because I don't believe she could she wasn't financially able to but also at the same time I didn't want her to because we knew if my

mother left my father he would be dead when I was born the week after my mother got a call that my dad overdosed and died in Harlem and she was on her way to identify the body and my dad was walking down the street in a hospital gown. They actually said the wrong person died. My dad didn't die. He was alive, but then he disappeared out of her life and my life for like eight months. And when he came back, he thought he was gone for like three days. He had a lot of, a lot of problems. You know, and my mother ended up being, she was 10 years older or younger than him. And he met her when she just needed some kind of stability and you know even salt looks like sugar right so she thought she could get that stability in him and since she's so used to abuse when he would mess up and be

abusive you know you just think that's what love is through thick and thin and uh we both got used to that abuse because some days he would be wonderful and some days he would be Satan and uh I didn't know it any other way besides turbulence like now I still struggle with like when things are too smooth. I feel like this shouldn't be this way. You know, you find comfort in hell. And there's just, I've seen my father overdose and die

in front of me and get brought back. And the first time I saw that, I was like four. You know, and it's just a cycle of that nonstop. There's, I remember one time he was really drunk and and he was crying and I was a little boy

and I was trying to comfort him. And I remember that he was sweaty because we didn't have air conditioning. Excuse me. I remember the sweat on his chest was like getting all over my face when I was hugging him. And he was like, and he started saying how he killed. He's like, I just, I killed him. I killed him.

And at that moment, I realized like, all right, you have a lot of regrets about things you've done. You know, I never asked about who he killed or what he was talking about or perhaps he didn't kill anyone, you know. He served, but he went to Panama during the Vietnam. They didn't send him out. to fight. The thing is on my dad, he was a good man. Like, he wouldn't kill a bug.

You know, he was very gentle to animals, gentle to people. He would give to the homeless, but when he was not sober, he was just a terrible, terrible human being. And he just kept making the same mistake over and over,

right? To escape the pain, he would get drunk and high and then only to come back and regret what he just did again and escape. all over again and it became a cycle to where I would just say dad please just I forgive you just live for today I don't care about yesterday but you can never do that up until his dying day you can never do that what drugs was he taken well I only thought he did I only thought he drank alcohol you know I never seen my father pick up a drink he always would do it I'd never seen it

it was never accepted but my junior year in high school I was a track and field runner my dad wasn't in the house and I went to call my dad because you're saying to my grandparents and my mom was like you can't call him. My mom's great at stuff like this. She'll say stuff without prefacing what really she means. So I'm like, what do you mean you can't call him? She's like he overdosed last night. She didn't say, don't worry Tom. He's alive and I thought he was dead. He overdosed on heroin. So he did all kinds of drugs. He was more of a downer type guy, but he was addicted to heroin. He was addicted to alcohol, pills, anything. My dad would drink mouthwash if you could get it. What did he do for a living? Like, who's paying the bills? He was a barber. He had his own business and lost it, had his own

business and lost it. Then he had his own business and lost it again. And then he would be in and out of rehab probably about 50 times. My mom would work at the hospital. She would work nights and then come back and stay with me during the day. So my dad was always out of work and my mom paid the bills for the most part. Or when he did go to work, work, you know, he would do his best to pay the bills. But, you know, that day he overdosed. That was like a huge wake-up call. I went to school that day, and I broke my long jump school record that day. I jumped 22-10, 22 feet, 10 inches. And I was just so fired off and I was so upset. And I think a part of me wanted to do it to prove to him. But in the same sense, it broke my heart

that I broke the record when he wasn't there because I know when he came out of that coma, that was one more thing that my father missed that would make him go back to the drugs once again. My father missed my own wedding. The day of the, you know, when I woke up to go to his house, he was in his tucks, passed out on the couch super high, and he just didn't go to my wedding, you know. That's just, it's just how it was. You know, he was on methadone. I would take him to the methadone clinic. And then I found out he was taking like 20 Benadryl a day with the methadone to prolong the half-life of the methadone it's just madness with him you know man that addiction thing is just it's crazy it's brutal you know it really is and i forgive him and i always have forgiven him because

who wants to be an addict you know but at the same time now that i'm a father now that i'm a father when i look at my own kids i realize how awful at times he was as a parent because When I was not a father, I would look at myself as just a man and he's a man. He's flawed. I'm flawed. And we're just two men. There's a song that's a beautiful song. It's a big Samoan guy or Hawaiian guy sings it.

I forget the name of what he's incredible. And it's just basically like, I don't judge you. You don't judge me. We're just two men that make mistakes, right? So I didn't judge him until I have my own kids. And I'm like, excuse me, I can never imagine putting my children through the things that he put me through and allow them to see what I've seen. It's horrific, you know, and it does a real number on you.

And at the same time, I can't imagine how my mom would allow me to be witness to this. But she didn't break the cycle, right? So that's what it came down to. She was also very mental in her own right. And I didn't realize that until after my father passed away. But, you know, I'm so thankful that he was who he was because I have a very very addictive personality but my addiction became like you know sports uh bettering myself you know exercise i got addicted to that at a young age and i truly was addicted uh and if it wasn't that if i didn't

realize that that that alcoholic was within me uh which it is i probably could have been my father and perhaps my kids could have witnessed all the things that i've witnessed you know it's just really tough man it's really tough yeah you say in the book here um around the second grade a teacher began to remark that i wasn't like the other kids even back in the 80s it wasn't hard to diagnose me as depressed my school referred me to some sort of psychologist i'll never forget the first and only time i met with him by the end of our session he literally had nodded off to fall asleep i never saw a professional again but the depression wasn't going away it was quite incredible like you got to laugh i literally i i didn't know what suicide was as a little kid, but I would, oh, real quick, if you guys hear me

clearing my throat, I have something called ticks. It's like a minor form of Tourette's. Like, I twitch a lot. I have superior ADHD and I have ticks, so I always have something that I'm doing. So if you guys on the podcast listening, I apologize for my, I'm sorry. So, yeah, I just would pray to God for him to take me to heaven every day, you know. I just didn't want to be, I don't know if anybody listened to this saw the movie powder uh it's a really good movie and his guy was uh he was an albino and he was just a very good boy and the world wasn't for him you know his heart but he was like magical though he had powers i never had powers unfortunately but you know i would look at again i was so soft as a kid like i would never hurt anybody or anything uh never hurt an animal i never took my anger out on

someone else, I just didn't want other people to feel the pain that I felt. And anytime other people felt pain, I would feel their pain. So it's like, not only that I feel my own pain and depression, anytime I saw somebody else that was going through something and it could even be a sad movie, I didn't know how to compartmentalize things. And all that sadness would just weigh on my back, way on my back. And I was just so sad. I just did not like this world, this earth and I wanted to get out of here. I didn't know what suicide was, but clearly I was having suicidal thoughts

from six, seven years old on all the way through until my early 20s. And then you go into this and this is pretty early in the book. I was seven years old when it happened. He was 13. He molested me just one time in his room. It's hard to understate.

how unprepared an eight-year-old is for sexual activities. I had no real understanding of sexuality, certainly not the particulars. But more than that, I had a limited understanding of emotions of any kind, and I didn't even have the words in my vocabulary to understand or vocalize what happened. What I did have was the most damaging thing,

a very simplistic understanding of morality. What happened to me was complicated, A child who was very likely himself being abused abused another child. It's hard to say what level of culpability or even understanding he had of what he was doing. These are the types of things that legal systems and even philosophers would struggle with. But my seven-year-old mind couldn't discern any of this. Instead, I went into emotional retreat, one that would last well into my adult life. To this day, I think of the child who molested me.

He was a victim. He was in his own emotional retreat from someone else. But he still did it, and I was never the same. In the immediate aftermath, I felt enormous guilt and shame. I had read stories about Sodom and Gomorrah from the Bible. God had destroyed entire cities over homosexuality. A narrative emerged in my mind about what we had done. not about what he had done to me.

Molestation was something that the creepy old man down the street did. Having it done to me by another young boy confused me. I didn't know what to call it or how to describe it. I was seven years old. For these reasons, I told no one. Yeah, that's interesting. That's something I wasn't even going to put in my book at all because I didn't, you know, very few people ever knew that.

And Louis, my co-author, really said, hey, man, you should probably put this in your book because it could help a lot of men. I just didn't feel like, so my father, he died without knowing it ever happened. It was, I had a lot of morality back then, and I still do now, but at a point in my life, I shut down caring because I had to shut down caring, because as long as I cared, I wouldn't be able to live.

And he had me, you know, touch him. And I wasn't ready. And in my mind, I did take part in it, right? I did do it. When I did it, I wasn't thinking I was seven. I wasn't thinking sexually. You know, he was the leader. I was just doing what he told me to do.

And, man, that messed me up. I still remember it vividly. I went home that night and I woke up and I came downstairs and I was crying and I told my mother I had a headache. I remember I was holding my little stuff. I had a goofy stuffed animal. And I thought I was going to hell for sure. God was going to take me to hell. But it introduced me to sexuality at a very, very young age.

So it almost made me become sort of a sexual deviant within my own right. I understood what certain things were. Never. I would watch movies. and watch even cartoons and start feeling a certain way. And I found like the thought of sex would get me away from the pain that I was in. You know, so if my parents were fighting, you know, it's crazy to say. You know, I started, I was touching myself at a very young age.

Anytime something will go wrong, hey, get out of here and go pleasure yourself. And it became almost like a form of therapy. and that's very, very dangerous because you don't understand what's going on and you equate it with madness actually because the only time you think of sexual things is simply not to feel good sexually, but it's to feel good mentally to get away from the other pain that you're currently dealing with in your life. Like my father would drink alcohol or shoot heroin.

It was different for me. And it really affected me in my life, but it affected me most because It weighed so heavily on me for so long that I made myself, I had to turn off a switch and become cold. I had to stop caring about things. I always said, who I wanted to be in this world was a much different person than I ended up being. And it's not until right now, you know, being 40, 41, where I could start being who I truly feel I am, you know, because I was such a a soft kid and I had to force myself to become harder, not care, more without feeling. Because as long as I had feeling or care or compassion, I would suffer from my own sins.

Well, his sins that he cast upon me, but I felt they were my sins. So I had to make myself almost heartless, you know, and I actually started flirting with Satan. You know, I read the the commandments of the Satanic Bible and stuff like this. And when you just read them. Like, how old are you when you're doing this?

12, 13. You know, I love Jesus, but I would... Where'd you get the freaking satanic Bible from when you're 13 years old? I would go to the library. The library is 400 meters from my house, you know. What town was this in? Bayville.

Okay. Beaville, New Jersey. And I would just research things, you know. And I started researching in high school, like ancient Aramaic, like the true language of Jesus Christ. And the lost gospel of St. Thomas, I started getting really drawn into religion, spirituality. And there's some things you just shouldn't understand, you know. And what's crazy is that the commandments of the Santanic Bible. If you just read them, they sound pretty good, you know, and that's exactly how they get all the...

Yeah, that sounds like what they wanted to sound. You know, exactly. And then this went all the way through into my college years. And then I realized I was just getting darker and darker and darker. And I was lost as a human, you know. I thought I was who I was supposed to be, but who I was supposed to be was just the shell of a man, you know? And you already mentioned, like, you're playing and you talk about it in the book. And by the way, I get the book.

I'm going to, like, read like 3% of the book today. So much information in here. And the way you wrote it, I talked about it before we here. hit record, but it's written in a very literary way. It's a very, the way it's put together, the way your co-writer, Lou, Louis wrote it. It's like, it's, it's a great book. So get the book.

You know, you start talking about the fact that you were playing sports. You could dunk. Mm-hmm. Yeah, which I could touch the rim, uh, from the foul line, my junior year in high school. Dang. Yeah. Yeah.

I jump six five my junior year in high school. So I could, uh, I could jump, really well. Damn. You had some bounce. Yeah, me. And your best long jump was 2210. 20, 10, but I fouled, and that's after I tore my ACL, my junior year.

I came back with the torn ACL, but I tore my ACL in my opposite, my right leg, my jumping leg was my left leg. But I fouled about 70% of the time, and I kid you not, man. This one time, and it was a home meet, I must have fouled by hair. And, oh, I'm so angry. It still bothers me to this day. We measured it out. We measured it out and it was 24-3.

I fouled on all my best jumps. So I remember when I got the long, when I broke that school record, the day my dad overdosed. I actually, I didn't want to foul, so I slowed up before the mark. And then I jumped. And I thought it was a horrible jump. But I remember I felt a good pop. And it was 22-10, man. And I was going against a kid named Vemba Bukula, who was also a 24-foot long jumper.

And I beat him that day. And everybody cheered when I got it. He's like, what did you just jump? Because we were buddies. I was like, oh, it was a 19 foot jump. I didn't tell him what it was, you know. Back him off a little bit. Yeah, exactly.

He was an athlete boy. Yeah. I got lucky that day. 6.5, 2 high jump. That's good. My brother jumped, J jump 6'4. It's legit. What was your long jump?

Long jump, 217. It's a great jump. Yeah. So 22, 10, that's no joke. That is not a joke. What's Olympic record material? 291 is the world record by Mike Powell, or no, 29, 4 and a half by Mike Powell. But they say Carl Lewis fouled on a jump that was over 30 feet.

And then there was like an eight foot high jump, right? Yes, eight foot. Javier Sotomayor from Cuba, eight feet in the high jump. Yeah, but we're talking high school though, you know, for our numbers over here. So let's face it. Damn. And that's where you said you were just like kind of addicted to training. What was your training?

Were you training, like, when you were training? like when you look at what the freaking unbelievable training that people get now, what did your training compare to like to what you did back then? So basically, you know, old school, like I had a bar and some weights. I would do a lot of clean and jerks. I would do a lot of push-ups. I would do a lot of just sit-ups on the board with weighted sit-ups. And then I would do a lot of sprints all the time.

So that's basically all it was, like a lot of clean and jerks. My grandfather was really, really big into lifting. He was a lighter guy, like 190. but he would bend the railroad spikes. He would do chin-ups with his fingertips. He was a state champion wrestler from Pennsylvania. I'm the weakest one of my family by far. On both sides, actually.

My cousin, I posted not too long ago. My first cousin on my mom's side, he's 6-3-2-40 and just shredded. He's a Penn State linebacker. And, yeah, I got the – my dad was short but stocky, so I didn't grow as tall as I wanted to. I say I'm six foot, but I'm not. Yeah, I just usually do a lot of, I would clean like three, four times a week. Do a lot of clean and jerks.

That was my base, clean and jerks, clean and jerks, I would love them. I still feel to this day cleans are one of the best exercises you could do. It just gets everything. So I'll do a lot of dynamic exercises and a lot of sprints, a lot of plymetrics I would do. You know, believe it or not, I wouldn't change. If I was to do it all over again, I wouldn't change. I would probably do less than I did, but the exercise. I still believe in the core exercises.

You know, like if you want to get big, you should squat, bench, bent over row, push, press, you know, the basic things. I think strength and conditioning nowadays, there's a lot that goes into it. You know, you see all the ropes into this and to that, but I don't know how much I would have got into that even if it was available to me back then.

I think lifting is always like a supplement to your main sport, whatever it may be. No, I think that's awesome. Like, that's what I would say, you would be doing today if you were in those sports. Like, gas, printing, palm metrics, doing clean. Like, those are the kind of core things. I'm impressed that you had that stuff

and that you were doing that stuff even back then. Yeah, my dad really helped me with that stuff. He knew how to exercise and so did my grandfather. So I was blessed in that sense. He would show me what to do at a young age. And then he wouldn't stay with me and do it. He was always supposed to do it with me. But he wouldn't.

But I just stayed disciplined enough to always disciplined. You know, always disciplined to do what I was supposed to do whether I felt like it or not. That was imperative. You know, and that's one thing I've always done. And I think really in order to reach success, whatever success is, ultimately my definition of success is finding happiness, right? But I think discipline is imperative, you know.

I haven't been motivated in years. Motivation is going to get you far. Yes. So you end up getting a scholarship for, for what, for track and field? Yeah, the long jump. And you end up going to Monmouth, how do you say? Mammoth University. Monmouth University.

And when you get there, you say, I didn't drink at all in college or for several years thereafter. That's not easy to pull off in college, by the way. But growing up with my alcoholic father, I developed a hatred for alcohol. My primary release from life was still pain, sports, and self-inflicted adversity. And there's a point that you talk about here where you, basically, you say I heated up a metal coat hanger. This is when you're 16 years old. I heat up a metal coat hanger in the shape of a cross and branded it into my shoulder. Yeah.

I still have the cross. Oh, damn. I did that when I was 16. And in my mind, this we were supposed to feel like, you know, I'm a spiritual guy, and Jesus was crucified. He was brutally beaten and murdered, and he felt so much pain.

So I still believe till this, like if I was allowed to do this without being looked at as a psychopath, you know, how you get the guys to whip their backs and stuff like this, like I feel it's important for me to have felt pain physically, you know? I think there's beauty in it, you know, especially when things get too comfortable. If we're too comfortable, we don't feel pain.

I feel it's fake. It's not real. Like, for me, pain made me feel like I was alive still. And also at the same time, it forced me to stay disciplined. Like, I actually have burned marks all over my body. And every time, and this is so foolish to do. You know, it's not a smart thing to do. But I'm just telling you how my mindset used to be.

If I would push, I would heat a hangar, I would push it in my skin. If I would flinch at all, I would have to do it again. You know, so I would do it until I was able to do it and stay stoic while doing it. And again, when you look at it, the psychological reasons, probably because I was forced to think about nothing else but that exact thing that was happening. So I wasn't able to think about the madness in my life. I was just only forced to think about the pain at that moment. Now I could find the same benefits from focusing on my breathing.

You know what I mean? Like when you do the box breathing, I could find the benefits. and that so man there's a lot better ways to do it but uh when we listen to for music all different kinds believe it or not i would listen to a lot of like uh i always listen to rap uh some alternative i was more rap but i would listen to a lot of like uh like the the spiritual music like it's almost like creepy church music sometimes when i would get into these moments uh it's like musical there's one uh i mean i could sing and i'm not gonna but it's uh it's pretty interesting. I like all kinds of music, but I really

liked, and I listen, you know, a lot of the rap that I used to listen to, you know, like the 90s rap. It's very dark, you know, like Anix. You know, there's a lot of stuff like the ghetto boys. Some of their raps were very, very dark, you know, and they actually talk

about demonic things. And what you listen to is important, you know, everything around you, whether you realize it or not, has an influence on you. If you don't realize it. know, if you don't realize it, it could affect you. And I think that really happened to me.

And I think just what I was drawn to were all the things that made me feel tough. It didn't allow me to feel weak anymore, you know. Because my dad would always tell me, your day will come, son, your day will come. And I remember the rock incident very, very well, but there was another incident. I was a freshman in high school when we went to a party and this big football player for no reason. He was a junior. He tried to attack my friend and I, and we quick. They got us out of the party.

He's just being a tough guy. He was drunk. And then whatever, I didn't take nothing of it. He was large. He was a big guy. Next year, we're at my buddy's house, and everybody were putting on the boxing gloves boxing. And my dad taught me how to throw hands at a younger age.

I'm more comfortable throwing punches than I am in Jiu-Zitsu. And they said, hey, why don't you? I almost said his name. Why don't you and Tom Box? I'll do it. I'll do it. And so I was like, yeah, I'll do it too. And, man, I tore his face up.

He was leaking everywhere. He was, I remember I went home when there was blood on my shirt. And my mom was like, and I was like, don't ask me questions. You know, and that was a time in high school. My sophomore year where everything changed. Everyone saw that beating. And he kept trying to stop, but I wouldn't let him stop. I was hitting him just hard enough to where he really couldn't quit, right?

But just hard enough to also open him up a little bit. There was more so like a broken nose he had. But there's a lot of blood comes with broken nose. I remember that day everything my dad said, you know, your time will come if you stay patient. My day came that day. That was a good day. And I didn't have to fight him in a real way to actually really hurt him. It was kind of, you know, we had gloves on.

So it was a beautiful moment. I really liked that. Mutual combat, too. Yes, exactly. Exactly. When you're in college, so now you're going to college, you tore your ACL. Is that what happened in college? I tore my ACL in high school.

and I tore all the ligaments in my ankle in college and my jumping ankle. And after I did that, man, I just never had that pop again. I couldn't get past 19 feet. Did you get surgery on it? I didn't. I should have, but I didn't. But I also heard if I got surgery at that time, when you get ankle surgery at that time, I don't know how it is now.

It takes away a lot of your mobility. So you'll have strength in your foot, but you need dexterity and mobility in order to jump in order to push. So I didn't do it. I don't think anyone could come. come back as a long jumper after having that kind of ankle injury. How did you get the ankle injury? Playing basketball.

I rolled my ankle playing basketball. That's the most painful. I tore my ACL-L-CAL meniscus, my right knee. I have 95% of my meniscus removed in my left knee. I need two shoulder replacements. I'm going to waste to well again next week to get stem cells, which helped me tremendously because I have two torn rotator cuffs and two labrums. broke my nose three times, broke my hand three times, ripped my hamstring off my butt bone,

I had a pain surgically inserted in my toe, tore my bicep, dislocated my elbow, and the most painful thing, oh, and I slipped my disc in my back, the most painful thing I ever did was tear my ligaments in my ankle. That was horrific, man. That pain was just really bad, and it hurt forever. Like it hurt for a long time, you know? And is that what kind of, that's how you kind of started venturing, towards martial arts.

Yeah, I started, as a young man, as a young boy, I would do Taekwondo when I was like five or six. So I actually went back, I didn't know anything. And I went back to Taekwondo at like 19 when I tore my ligaments. And I just kept getting in trouble. I would go to competitions. And, you know, the Taekwondo that I was involved, there wasn't full contact. So if you hit too hard, you get in trouble.

So I kept getting disqualified for hitting too hard. So I found the school across the street named Tong Dragon. And Eric Colon was the instructor. Great guy, real sweet guy. But at that time, they didn't have any MMA fighters. They did some shoot fighting, which was open hand. I was training for just a couple months. I wasn't even a belt in Jiu-Jitsu.

And I was there like, oh, reality fighting is coming up. You want to jump in. Your opponent's, his name is Richard Thomas. He has no fights. But he was a Marine. He has no fights. Sure, I'll do it. He has no fights, no problem.

A week before the fight, Richard Thomas got hurt. And they said, hey, David Torrelli, his opponent got hurt. You know, his record is 7 and 3. He has 10 fights, but, you know, he's old. He's 35. He's old. You could beat him. And I said, oh, sure.

At that time, I thought I could do anything. I realized at that moment when I saw him before we walked out that I was in trouble. And I started trying to pump myself up, you know, and it just didn't work out well. I got to, they stopped the fight. They stopped the fight because he literally rained. down. I didn't top or nothing. I took that whooping, but man, my nose got broke. My eyes were swollen shut. I looked like I was from the, you ever

see Star Wars and their head connects to their nose? I looked like that for, like, I remember I went to college and I went to school and I said, and people were looking at me like, man, what is wrong with this guy? And I was a learning experience. And then I stayed there like a few more months and then I heard Ricardo Alameda's name. And I found Ricardo Almeida and Kerr Pellegrino and I started training with them. You write in here about the you say I remember rolling with a purple belt my first day he was probably 150 pounds soaking

wet how's that wake up call man he tapped me like 77 times it was so annoying and frustrating and I and I just felt like such a little weasel you know like I was like 195 and he just kept arm bar every on arm bar every time every time and you know when you don't really know the sensitivity of a submission at first you let it go for a while I think there's two types of people they either tap right away or they tap right before it's about to get broke. And I was tapping right before it's about to get broken. When that happened to me, I think there's two different ways to react. There's the people who say, you know what, I'd rather just get off these mats, look in the mirror and lie to myself, or I'm going to go home, look in the mirror and tell myself the truth. And

the truth is, you don't know anything. You're an infant on these mats. And I said, how could I live? How could I survive knowing there's such tiny little men that could do whatever they want to me to beat me just like I'm a small infant, you know? So I got addicted, man. I got addicted. It's a crazy experience. Especially, I mean, think about how athletic you are as a human being. That has a 23-foot freaking long jump and you can jump six feet.

Like, that's an athletic dude who's been training for athleticism his whole life and a little 150 pound. You give them, sorry, I won't read it, but you give some, like, description. This guy was a nerd, you know? 100% nerd. And you're just like, okay, cool, I'm going to smash this guy. Yeah, you just... And not only an athlete, like, I grew up fighting. I fought a lot.

So I thought I was like, I guess you would consider me a tough street fighter. You know, I got in a few fights, good ones. But, man, it's just such a different world. And you truly don't understand. You don't know what you don't know. You know, so when you tell people, you tell grown men, like you will literally get pinned like a small child. They don't get it.

Well, if I'm allowed to bite, if I'm allowed to bite, too. Go ahead. Go ahead. I got teeth too. Go ahead. You know what I mean? Exactly. Go ahead.

Good luck. People mad, dude. That's it. You're not going to do anything but get us annoyed, you know? And it's such a wake-up call. Like, as a man, I mean, let's just say as an adult, like whether my profession was jujitsu or not, I would not be able to walk around knowing I'm so helpless hand-to-hand.

You know, I just couldn't do it. And I'm not stupid. Like I have a buddy, Nick, he was a Marine Raider. And I'm like, listen, man, you drop us off in the woods. Naked, you're going to live, I'm going to die. Right? Put us in a room one-on-one, I'll be okay, you know? So I know my limits, but at the same time, what I could control, I definitely want to have as much control over as possible.

Yeah. So you mentioned Kurt Pellegrino, like freaking classic old-school fighter, and you say this in the book. I was invited to train with Kurt's teacher, Ricardo Alameda. Ricardo was a jih Tzu black belt. There was a mystique about him, for one. He had already fought the UFC and he was turning his attention toward King of Pancras, promotion in Japan. Also, he's the first Brazilian I had ever met.

Ricardo did not live up to the stereotype of an easygoing Brazilian. I remember he was serious and intense. He was Henzo Gracie's first black belt, and it's not an exaggeration to call him one of the top fighters in the world at the time. So this is what you roll into. So did you start training with Ricardo Almeida at that time? So first I started training with Kurt because he had a school in Tom's River. So I realized if I wanted to take it to the next level, I had to train with somebody who was done.

And at the time, Kurt was a Pan Am champion in the Blue Belt Division, which was huge as an American at that time. You know, it was only Brazilians winning. What year is this? Man, this has to be like 2004, 2003. Yeah. And then I started training with Ricardo through Kurt. But Kurt was my instructor at the time, and he was a Blue Belt. As tough as they come.

He was such a, he was a Jersey wrestler, super tough, one of the strongest humans I felt. And that was another huge wake-up call. because I started training with him, like a few months after I was already training. So I started doing good at the local school. I was one of the top guys in the local school. Then I wanted I train with Kurt. And again, I was an infant all over again. You know, so I was like, how could I leave this guy when he just knows so much, you know?

And I ended up traveling. I became very close with Kurt, traveled to Japan with him, cornered him in the King of Pancras. And, you know, Kurt, his career took off. He fought in the UFC. He did well. We ended up parting ways. He ended up moving to Florida and training with American top team And I stayed with Ricardo

But yeah, I learned a lot from him, man So now you end up You got like You're basically brought into the Henzhou clan at this jump Yes You got Hyen Gracie, Half Gracie Hodger Gracie You got Estima like there's some people you're training with

That are like they're the best guys in the world at the time Yeah my main so I quickly became one of their mean I used to call myself a sparring partner, but I was just basically a beat-up dummy, right? I was a tough kid who could get up and again over and over and over. First time I met Ricardo, he was sparring at Kurtz, and he was going to fight Nate Markhart,

and they needed a sparring partner, and I was like, I'll do it. And he literally, like, knocked me out of my feet, woke me up again from the double leg he put me on my head with. And I got up, and I was, man, this is amazing. And they're like, we like this guy. You know, he could be good for us.

So I was Henzu's main sparring partner when he was going to fight BJ Penn. So the training room was me, Kurt Pellegrino, Dante Rivera, Ricardo, Hian Gracie, Halv Gracie, and a few others. Bro, that's a room right there, boy. Man, I remember Hyen, Hian took a liking to me. He would never, like, talk to me, but he would walk up to me and, like, rub my face. And I would just sit there and let him caress my face, right? And then I would bow.

And then Halif I remember would get angry with me Because he wouldn't wear headgear So I never wanted to hit him hard in the head But then if I didn't hit him he would get furious But then if I hit him he would get furious So like you're just getting your ass up regardless You know but it was such a great experience And then Dante and I we would always

We would always get into it And Ricardo Halfenheim They would find great entertainment in our sparring matches So we would just literally put on MMA gloves And beat the heck out of each other man Like we would just fight like MMA fights every day. It was the craziest thing ever. That's I say all the injuries I've had.

Of course I have all these injuries. I didn't train smart. Well, there's so much smarter about training now. Oh my gosh. Back in the day. I mean, we did the same thing. Like it was to train for an MMA fight. What would you do?

MMA fight. That's what you do. Yeah. Well, we're going to fight. Small gloves. No head gear. Let's go. Let's go.

That's how we're doing it. And you do that. You know, we do that three, four, five times. Yeah, man. We're hard. I mean, ignorant. Yeah. Yes. I was sparring in Trenton and Camden and Philly boxing. And when you go to boxing

gyms, it's not a jiu-jitsu gym. Like, you're not talking to your sparring partner beforehand. They want to smash your face. And especially if you're an MMA guy, especially for a white boy walking into Philly, you know. And I can't tell you how many times I've been concussed in the boxing gym. You know, like, so many times I've took in some whoopings. It's crazy, man. I don't, people say, do you miss MMA? I miss MMA as much as much as I miss a sore throat. That's how much I miss MMA. There's a little bit of a deviation here in the book.

At this time, you start realizing you maybe want to find someone to, like a female to be with. You like join a dating set. You kind of talk about some of that stuff. And pretty quickly, you meet a girl and she gets pregnant. You use the term elation and terror when you find out that your girl's pregnant. Especially when I found out I was having a daughter. My God, bro. And yeah, she got pregnant really quick.

And I tried to, you know, I had my own home at the time because I opened my academy. I was very successful with it. I didn't have an association yet, but I had my own home. So she moved from Edison to my house. And we were just two, still are two separate people, you know, but we both tried to do the right thing and be there and, you know, raise our child together. And I thought, like, listen, she's pregnant. She's having my child. She's having Isabel.

There's no way we're ever not. We're going to make it work regardless. If my parents made it work, we can make it work. So she got pregnant again a few years later, and my son Thomas. But we both realized, you know, like it's really hard living with someone when you're two completely different humans. No matter who's wrong or who's right. Sometimes you just got to stop trying to figure out who's right and who's wrong,

and you just got to accept things are what they are. Right. There's no point in trying to have someone understand your point because they see things through their eyes. So we realize it's best that we go our separate ways. So we did. I still have my kids 50 to 60% of the time. I gave her my home. I walked away from when I gave it to her.

I got another smaller home built next to my parents. And it's just much easier that way. I'm a much better father this way because when I'm with my kids, I'm 100% with them. You know, I'm a very hands-on dad. and it forces me to do the things that I wasn't doing before. Like every morning I got to get them ready for school. I have to pack their lunch. I have to do these things.

I have to brush my son's teeth. Like things that dads generally don't do when you're living with their mother. You know, there's usually like a mother's role and a father's role. It's where now I have to play both roles, which I'm thankful. It was that divorce is definitely the hardest, probably the hardest thing in my life, right?

But now I realize how thankful I am that my kids, My kids never saw their mother and I argue. They, you know, bickering, yes, but they never heard me raise their voice to their mother. And my daughter is old enough now to know how my life used to be. And she's very thankful that she didn't have to see these things. You know, so things work out the way they're supposed to in the end, for sure. And speaking of things working out, you,

after that first MMA fight that you described where you got basically TKO, and the ref stopped it, you were like, I'm going back to MMA. You get an amateur MMA fight against some guy who you freaking toehold pretty quick, pretty simple, pretty straightforward. And then you get into ADCC, and you talk about in the book,

you give it some explanation. Most people that listen to this podcast will know what ADCC is. If you don't, ADCC is like the Olympics of submission grappling. It's the whole world, the best competitors in the world are going to get invited or make it through trials to get to this stage, which is the ADCC World Championships.

They're held in different places around the world. And so you're now part of this team, and you say in the book, in those days, each professional jiu jih Tzu organization could send a single competitor to the trials. And at Team Henz O'Gracy, it was determined that the best way to choose our trials combatant was to fight. it out amongst ourselves. Yes, you read that right. A tournament to determine who could compete in the tournament that determined who would compete in the tournament. Yes, we had wrestle off. Yeah. And that's what the whole world is doing. So the whole world is narrowing down who's going to represent their team. Who's going to represent their team? And then from that team, you're going to go

and fight in the trials. And if you win the trials in your geographical region, which is like North American trials, South American trial, you know, you're going to go. You're going to go and fight in the trials. European trials. And if you win those, and then there's also a combination of people that have won ADCC in the past or placed in the past, then they get like an automatic.

Yeah, there's eight invitees and eight qualifiers in the whole entire world. So you guys decide, what year is this? What year is your first ADCC? 2009. Okay. Yeah, so I won the trials in 2008.

Yep. And yeah, it's pretty cool. It's actually you say like, hey, this is the in-house tournament that you guys have at Hensos was like, Hey, it's not about, it's not a kiss and tell situation. Like what happens, happens.

Exactly. And in the book, you're like, hey, what happened happened? And I'm going. So you don't go. It's one of the few areas in the book where you don't go to much detail. He's like, hey, dude, we don't kiss and tell, bro. That's what's happening. And I'm still so big on that, man.

You know, like I tell my students too, you should not be. And I see it all the time nowadays. People are literally like they're texting about who they're tapping and training and this and that. And that's a great way to lose trust. than your training partners, you know. I was very thankful at the time that I was able to represent my team. Like, that was a feat within itself.

Getting out of that room. Oh, hell, you know? To represent handsos was like a dream come true. And before that, like, I dedicated everything in jihitsu after an MMA fight. And I ended up, like, winning the pans, the nationals, the Nogi Worlds. Glover and I actually,

he won as a black belt and I won as a brown belt. The first Nogi Worlds ever. He won the first Nogi Worlds as Black Belt. I won the first Nogi Worlds as a brown belt. That's what I think I met him. Or Jeffrey Glover. Yep, Jeff Glover. And always a madman, always a madman.

And yeah, I won. I ended up going to Barcelona. What a wake-up call. Just a great experience that was to be among legends, right? When your idols become your rivals. And it was a crazy thing to see. Dean, he did keep in those. So this is 2009.

2009, Barcelona. So I think Dean just got the invite. Yeah, of course. Because he had won in 2003, won Superfight in 2005. and I think he was injured in 2007 or something like that. So 2009, he might have just gotten the invite. Yeah, he didn't have to try. I know he didn't have to try.

So he didn't have to do the trials. So it's interesting. So we had him and Penny Thomas. So Penny Thomas. So Penny Thomas. She was here at Victory and she was our kids teacher. And, you know, training. We trained with it, of course, too.

But so it was. And actually, it was Penny Thomas. So the trip, the Barcelona was me, Penny Thomas, Dean Lister. and Seth Stone. So Seth Stone had been hanging out with Penny at the time. And so I was like, hey, bro, you know, like, I'm going to Barcelona. I want to come. He's like, sign me up, you know?

That's the kind of set stone activities that was going down. So Seth Stone was like, my best friend. And, you know, he did jih Tijuana and everything. But he was dating Penny at the time. I remember her, man. She was so tough. Oh, yeah. She's awesome.

And so that's who showed up. So we all flew over there. and I remember Dean he comes down and he's wearing a tank top like a really nice tank top and it just says UFC and giant letters like on the front of it

it was like one of those UFC what was the show he was on Ultimate Fighters It was like one of those I mean it's just literally like nine inch you and Dean is enormous too Yeah he's enormous And I look at Dean and I go

Trying to stay low profile already Because there's nothing low profile about that written shirt. So that's what you'd have. Did you have, you had a meniscus tear going into this. Is that right? I had a meniscus tear going into, I believe I did then. I definitely had one going into 2017. But I basically, I've always been hurt.

I think everyone's always hurt going into their competitions. So many injuries over the years. That ADCC was tough because my first match was cyborg. the whole entire match they gave Cyborg a negative 1 and me 0 right so that I was on top the entire time so I thought I was the victor

you know we had a scramble at the end no one scored we get up after the match and they're like wait a second oh we thought you were cyborg and he was Tom so they switched the negative point and they gave him the victory by a negative and I'm like oh man that was so and that actually

then I competed against Galval in the absolute division I lost 3 to 0 but that That mess up in ADCC where I got ripped off, that kind of drove me back to MMA. So I kind of, I left jih Tjitsu for a few years. I figured I need more control. If I was able to knock them out, I would have been okay. You know what I mean? But it was a great experience.

There was so many great. That's when Jokaray went against Triesdale in the super fight. Okay. Yeah. That's when Brawley won the absolute division. Yeah. And Dean in the ADCC in Barcelona, Dean, he won a couple matches, and then he went against Vinny Magalach.

Vinny, hell, yeah. And there was zero-zero at the end of whatever, overtime and regulation, and Vinny got the nod. They gave it to me. That's when Vinny won. Yeah, and I mean, Vinny, bro, that guy's not tapping. No. Like, he's not tapping.

That's when Verdun caught him in that arm bar. And Dean had, you know, put heel hooks on him and stuff like that, and he's just like, he's not tapping. It was insane. Maybe, does he have, like, Jeff Glover level, flexibility or something, Vinnie Mogulay. He must. I think Gordon heel-hooked him, right?

I think he got heel-hooked eventually by one person. Yes, Gordon, with an inversion. But we didn't think it was possible before that. And I might be wrong, Vinny. If he didn't, he'll hook you. I'm sorry. I know Vinny has a victory over Gordon. I think he's like the last one to beat Gordon that I remember.

He passed his guard in some kind of event. I forget what the event was years ago. But just think about what we're saying right now. These are the people that are competing in ADC. It's like Dean Lister, Vinnie Magalach, like just total. It's, it's, it's freaking monsters. Um, so you're going back to MMA. My, my, I'm going to the book here.

My life was a training montage. Four days a week, I would wake up at 4.30 and drive an hour to Ricardo's house. From there, we drive an hour and a half to gym for a two hour training session. After that, we drive an hour and a half to Henzos Academy in New York. Another two hour training session. Drive back to Ricardo's house, take a nap, train for another. hour and drive back home, I'd do this four days a week. The other three I needed to make money, took up becoming a school teacher. I'd finished college with my degree in education. I took a job

at a special education school right out of college teaching severely autistic children. So that's what you were doing. Yeah, so that training session was all throughout the summer, not exaggerated at all. And then the other two days a week, I would travel to Bricktown. And that's like 45 minutes or 40 minutes for me and train with guy Bill Scott. And then come to school. year, I would teach all day and then right after the school day was over, I would drive to Ricardo which is still an hour, hour and a half away. I would take two classes, teach a class, and I would come home. I would get home around 11 and then I'd do the same thing all over again. I would do that Monday through Thursday and then Friday I would train in Bricktown. So it was a really hectic,

crazy schedule, but I know I had to drive if I wanted to get the training that I needed. But I also knew I couldn't keep up being a school teacher and have this schedule indefinitely and compete at a high level. And at that time, I thought competition was everything. I didn't even think about like, hey, you want to be a school owner and this and that. I just literally one day I said, hey, I would love to not have a boss anymore. Although as a school owner, your students become your boss, believe it or not. That's the way it is, right?

So you always have a boss, but I wanted to do something that I love to do. My biggest problem as working in the real world was people who People who didn't take care of themselves physically Like bossing me around and listen it shouldn't have affected me, but it did, you know It really did. I was like how are you gonna tell me what to do? We call that a grudge Yeah, like how are you gonna tell me what to do when you you can't even beat your your diet? You know what I mean and And and I realized that way of thinking is immature because you could learn from anybody, but for me if the I don't take advice from people unless I really know that they've done it or they could teach me something.

Because if you take advice from just everybody and anyone, you're going to be really confused, you know? So I was like, I got to get out of here, man. This is just no good. And the pettiness that these teachers would argue about and talk about. And I'm like, man, pick and choose your battles. You're making mountains out of molehills. And I found a lot at that time the teachers, a lot of them really didn't like the kids. And that would, I was young.

I was, I was 22, and that would, that would bother me. Like, how are you going to talk badly about this little kid? Because here's the thing, this little kid, you don't know what he's going through at home. You know, and this is his only shot, right, at a life. And one of the kids I actually was a student teacher for, I saw he overdosed on drugs two years ago, you know, and I had him when he was six years old. And then another kid I had when he was eight years old, we still keep in touch. I just sent him a, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my watch not too long ago. He just crashed his truck.

I sent him my garment watch, and he got so happy, and it made his day, and I still kept contact with him, you know, so I think a lot of the teachers didn't realize, some do, many do, that you literally could be a pivotal moment in a child's life, you know, you're the reason why they push forward or the reason why they don't. And for me, I always looked at kids as I wanted to help them, you know, so I figured I could still help if I do things my way. Teach, I could help them to strangle and break bones rather than learn two plus two. You also say this in the book here.

There was a price to pay for all this. You're talking about your training and how you're living at the time. I'd love to tell you that I was on purpose doing what I love, and it's true. I felt like fighting was my calling, even if I didn't yet see the pathway to fame and fortune. No one was getting rich off of fighting back then. But at the same time, I knew I was unwell. My depression that I had battled with for most of my life had never really gone away. In fact, maybe it had gotten worse.

My loneliness had also grown. I probably don't have to tell you that the guys I was seeing day in and day out were not the most emotionally open people. They weren't bad guys. In fact, some of them might have even been supportive and helpful had I spoken to them. But in their world, fighting and training were solutions to everything. The constant war we waged at the gym was a way to deal with our various issues. In desperation, I went to my mother. I told her I needed help that something was wrong with me.

She was 100% supportive, and on a Friday morning, I checked myself into one of those places that they never call a mental hospital, but that's what it was. Yes. Now, this happened actually in my senior year in college before I became a school teacher. And guys, when I tell you, I was, you ever hear when you're like, you're awake, but you can't really get it? Like, you're dreaming, but you see what's,

going around. It's called something. Like, you're awake, but you can't move. It's sleep power, you're like paralyzing your sleep. I forget what it's called. It's a thing. And that was happening to me a lot. And it actually sounds comical. Like there was a vent in my college room. And the vent would make noises and stuff. And I actually, I was getting so far gone. And this is when I was also really, really, really, really out to library every day trying to like the cipher ancient Aramaic and understand all these things. And there's such a fine line between good and evil. And when you read the Bible, a lot of the things that were written in the Bible, people forget it was written thousands of years ago. Things are deciphered much different. And I also say,

I'm not going to get into it, but, you know, man ultimately wrote the Bible. What happens when, if you tell me something, if I tell you something, then you tell Jocko something, by the time it gets to this person, it's probably going to be a little different than what I initially said. So people put their spin on things. And when you take everything so literal sometimes, you know, I started to think, you know, and if you look into the Old Testament, like violence is not frowned upon, you know, I started to think I was doing wrong by not, like, eliminating bad people, right? And I would, I was to go straight dexterous.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I was, I would actually get to sleep, be paralyzed in my sleep, look at the vent. And I was starting to like get this, not that I would hear an actual voice, but like an urge, like telling me to go do what I know I'm supposed. Yes, just like Dexter. And I realize like how close I was literally to being on the front page of the New York Post that I just went postal and just took out a bunch of people, right?

Like, and I knew like, man, you got to get help. Like you need help. But the irony is when I got help, I realized. once I stepped in that mental hospital how much I really didn't need help compared to some of these people. You know, it was just, it's madness in there, what people are going through in there. And I'll never forget there was one moment that really stuck out. Like, there was this guy in like a wheelchair, but they had like strapped them down.

And he was like trying to wiggle his way out of the wheelchair. And there was another guy looking at him. And he started screaming. He's wiggling. He's wiggling. And I was so free. freaked out at the moment. I was like, get me out of here.

I tried to check myself out. I'm healed. Yes, yes. I tried to check myself out that I wouldn't let me check out. I was like, my God, I went in the room when I started push pressing the chair in the room like 400 times until I couldn't do it anymore. And I just laid down. I was like, what have you got yourself into right now?

And I wrote down, the woman there, she told me right exactly all your feelings. And I wrote down my feelings and I gave it to her. She handed it back to me. She said, listen, I'm going to give this back to you. you, you're going to burn it before you ever show anybody because they will lock you up for a long, long time, right? She knew I wasn't sick. She knew I wasn't going to do those things. I still had the, I knew the consequence of if I was to take action and start offing bad people like Dexter, you're going to spend the rest of your life in jail, right? So the consequence outweighed my desire

to do certain things. And then, you know, you start thinking, who the hell am I to judge who's right and who's right. I mean, there's certain people you just know. They're just not good people, you know, like, but again, the irony in that is I still know my molester to this day. And I have no ill will against him. And that's odd. That's very, very odd. I don't understand that. My daughter asked me why as well, because if someone was ever to touch my children, I know how I would handle that. But it's weird. And I ask myself, why don't I have anger or hate towards him? Because that was such a pivotal moment in my life that actually ruined my life in many ways and many senses. Why wouldn't I hate that guy?

Why wouldn't I hate that kid? And I think a part of it's because personally I was so used to being abused and taking abuse. Maybe I don't take it as personal or maybe I look at him as he was abused. I don't know. But that's still something I can't figure out. Why don't I hate him? You know, why don't I hate him? I don't know.

I mean, I'm thankful that I don't. But everything happens the way it's supposed to be in the end, I gather. I mean, the way you write about it in the book, you have a very detached perspective of being able to see, I mean, you literally write in the book that he's a victim too type thing. Yeah. You know, and that's a very detached perspective for you to be able to get to. And I look at little me as a different human.

Like there's little Tom and then there's Tom, right? Like it's two separate people, two different people. I couldn't remain little me for an extended period of time and make it in this world. You know, you just, I couldn't do it. I was too soft. I was too sensitive. I was too caring. I was too abused.

I was too helpless. So yeah, I did detach myself in many, many ways. I detached myself completely from my childhood. And then I went through like a nomad state where I became kind of, I guess, lost. I thought I was found, but I wasn't. I was lost. And then I think it wasn't until my late 30s to where I really started. finding out, like, I was successful in monetary terms and, you know, in my field.

But, I mean, again, if you think success is happiness, I wasn't successful until the last few years, right? When I really figured out a lot of things about myself and, you know, when you don't compare yourself to other people, that's why I don't have any interest in competition, because I'm obsessed with being better than who I was, but I don't really care about being better than that person or this person. But again, I say irony a lot. Like I tell my athletes, I said, the irony of jih Tzu is you all want to beat another person. But in order to beat another person, you have to dominate your own self first. So once you could dominate yourself, then you can think about dominating that man.

And chances are if you become the absolute best version of yourself, you're most likely going to be better than a lot of other people, right? Because most people aren't looking to become the best version of themselves. They're not looking to do so. So if you want to be a competitor, how do you beat this person and that person? How? You don't put your focus on them. You put your focus on yourself.

You do everything that you could do. You control what you can control because you can't control everything. You could control yourself, right? So when you become the best version of yourself, most likely, that's going to be good enough to succeed, I feel. You know, no doubt. And what's holding most people up isn't their opponent. It's themselves. It's that they didn't train hard enough.

They didn't humble themselves. They didn't work on their weaknesses. They didn't go to train when they needed to go train. Like that's all because of them, not because of their opponent. 100%. The mind is either your best friend or your worst enemy, you know, and there is such a battle, an eternal struggle. And then the worst is when you find your athletes that are just so talented and so incredible,

and then they get out there. And, you know, how many times we hear this person is a beast in the training room that just don't compete well, you know, because they kind of freeze underneath the bright lights. And I try to get into my athletes' mind, like, listen, it's your preparation that I'm the most proud of how you prepare. If you do all the right things, I'm super proud of you. Now, you winning in this competition is just, it's a gift that you're giving to yourself and me to celebrate all the hard work that you deserve to get. That's how I'm very big.

And I don't want the athlete that just go out there and win without training. I'm really not interested in that. I want someone who's willing to prepare, to sacrifice, to put forth the effort. So then we could celebrate a worthy cause. You know, we could celebrate something that they earned, something that I earned working with them. And that's the beauty in victory in competition. And when my athletes put in all the work, and then I know somebody beats them because at the given time my athlete doesn't show up mentally, it breaks my heart for some of my own selfish reasons, for sure, but also because I know what they did deserve. You know?

Last week, all my athletes, I said, if you just listen, you will win. If you listen, you will win. They all listen. It was an event called Men of War, and they all just did. phenomenal. Not one of them allowed their opponent to get off one offensive technique. And the thing is, Jiu-Jitsu is so common to life because I tell my athletes, if you just focus, I actually heard Dean Lister say one time. He said, if I could stay in the moment, no one could beat me if I could stay in the moment. What's the moment? Everybody wants to win.

Okay, but before you win, what do you got to do? You got to show up, you know, step by step, second by second minute by minute match by match. What do you do in between matches? How do you breathe? How do you recover? So I tell my athletes, every time someone's grabbing you, every time someone's touching you, they're doing so for a reason. You're getting caught on a submission because you're not reacting. When someone takes your back and strangles you,

don't just say you got your back taken and strangled. How did they get to their back? They passed your guard. They put their hand in a place that you didn't address. So my athletes this time, they addressed every single grip, every single thing that the person then when my student Cameron, he got a leg lock and a guy Estevan.

Estevan's a known little, he's a killer man. He's ranked seven in the world, the like 125, and I've never seen this guy get submitted before. And he didn't react. Cameron got above the knee line. His legs are like 18 inches this kid. So it's like impossible leglock.

Cam got above the knee line. He didn't react. Boom, he got heeled. You know? Jiu-2 works. Yeah, man. And it's just like, when you really,

when you take the approach in Jiu-Jitsu like you should take in life, it's going to be very hard to not find success, you know, step by step, second by second, address everything. Don't overlook anything. Yeah. Well, these are the lessons

that they take a while to figure out sometimes. You know, you talk about the book and you kind of mention it like you won nationals, you won no-gee worlds. At this time, you're training with the Henzhou Gracie team, which includes people like Matt Sarah, George St. Pierre, Ricardo Alameda,

and you're like saying, you're in that group. You know, that was part of, you were part of that crew. And that's a freaking badass place to be. And so you say this in the book, I was starting to experience real success, but privately I floated in and out of despair. Every win was a relief from my depression, but every win was temporary.

My life was an unsustainable formula. Fight and win to distract myself to take the edge off. When I couldn't compete, the edge still needed to go away somehow. In those times, my outlets became less healthy. I would go to parties, go to strip clubs, stay up all night, anything to keep me busy. If you would have forced me to sit on a couch with nothing but my own thoughts, I might have gone insane. Many people say they find themselves through martial arts.

I was avoiding myself. My own private thoughts, my past. I needed every tournament to be the biggest one possible, the one that would require 100% of my focus and mental attention. I wouldn't need to spend time with myself, but I also recognize that the cycle would eventually end. I couldn't compete forever, couldn't train forever. My pain would never stop coming for me. It would catch up with me.

I sometimes wondered if death was the solution. Yeah, for sure. I went back to that feeling of when I was a little boy, like who I had to become in order to survive wasn't someone that I really liked. And when you don't like your own self, you get tired of living with yourself. So what do you do when you're tired of living with yourself? You stop living with yourself, you know?

So I remember I was, I just, I wanted, I didn't want to be here no more. You know, I went to the store. I got a rope. I was going to make a noose and I was going to find a good tree to jump from and hang myself from. But I was too cowardly to do it, you know. That's what it comes down through. But ultimately, the cowardice became a problem because I didn't want anyone to find me. I said, well, man, what if a little kid finds me?

How's my mom going to live? I almost wanted my father to feel that pain, you know, to feel the pain that he made me feel so much, you know. But I didn't want my mom to feel that pain. So I got over that, you know, and I didn't end up killing myself. And I realized I can never do that because, you know, while I said I was too much of a coward to kill myself, I didn't want to be so much of a coward to not face myself. You know, there's, I would rather be the coward afraid to kill myself than the coward to run for myself, you know? So I really just, I started trying to find what would make me happy? Because winning wouldn't make me.

I would be happy for like a day and then I needed more. And it's like, people ask me, what are some of the things you would have done differently? What I would have done is I would have learned to stay in the moment more and celebrate my victories. And for me, if I was celebrating a victory, I wasn't working hard towards the next one. And as soon as I would win, I'd be on the mats the next day training to win the next one. Instead of being on the mats next day training because I love jiu-jitsu. I spent a lot of time training to win rather than a lot of time training to just. just love it. Like competition has to be a consequence of your love for a jiu-jitsu. You can't compete

to win. If you're only competing to win, well, why don't you go do something that's much easier on your body, right? If it's just winning that you're addicted. You have to be addicted to jiu-jitsu, you know, and you have to show up because you love jiu-jitsu. So my athletes, I try to make it fun for them. And the consequence of their love for jiu-jitsu will be when they step out under the bright lights and they finally win. But I realized what really made me happy, what was teaching? You know, and it genuinely made me happy helping people, and it's something that never left me.

It wasn't fleeting. You know, one thing about me, I made it to, I won 380-C trials in North America. There's not many people in history that have done that, and I also lost 3 ADCCs. You know, and I'll go back when I was in Little League. I walked a lot. I struck out the last batter to get into the Little League World Series, and then I walked the last batter to lose the Little League World Series. And I always said to myself, man, if I just would have won an ADCC,

well, you know, okay, if you just would have won, but did you win the Absolute Division? And then if you won the Absolute Division, did you win the Superfight? Then if you won the Superfight, did you win the Superfight more than anyone else ever won the Superfight? It's never enough. It's never enough. So just accept the things that are, you know.

And I think a lot of the reasons why I didn't win ADCC was my own mental shortcoming, to be quite honest. You know, throughout the years competing, I've given up 12 points in 18 years. I wouldn't give up position or things like that. But when it came to ADCC, I didn't find the way, right? And for me to be able to say that now and be okay with saying that, like, no, I wasn't Dean. Like, Dean did what I couldn't do. And that's okay, man. I respect it for that.

I love it for that. Good for you, brother. Tell me how it felt. You know, tell me how it felt. Like, because you find out who you are and who I am, I like who I am. You know, so I what made me happy was finding out where could I prosper the most? Where could I do best? and my best is

it's pretty good, you know, running a school, running an association. You know, I have 64 affiliates now. I never looked for an association, but every school that started associating under me that actually, because I have some schools that associate with me, they don't listen to any advice. Ironically, they don't grow. The schools that do, they've all grown by at least 35, 40%.

So that's something I'm proud about, you know. So I could sit next to somebody and hear where they flourished in life and then maybe they could hear I have. But at the end of the day, if you're not flourishing in a sense of life that could actually keep you feeling good for an elongated period of time, what does it matter?

So I could go back and be thankful now that I won the trials, but I can't live off that. You know, like one of the reasons now, you know, over the last few months, I've leaned out a lot, right? Because I'm not competing now. So when I was still competing,

I wouldn't mind if my weight would fluctuate here and there because I'm still competing. I'm still kicking butt. It's okay if I get chubby hair and there, right? But now that I'm not competing, I have to stay more disciplined to look the part and to still, I don't want to say suffer because eating well and staying fit is not suffering. But to remain disciplined in other aspects of life. So when I speak, people want to listen.

People want to hear what I have to say rather than being the guy that, you know, won the high school championship and want to talk about that. Like, oh, when I won the trials in 2009, 15, and 17. You don't want to be Uncle Rico. Right? From Napoleon Dynamite just out there like, you know, I could have,

Coach would have put me in, boy. That's it. And it's so easy to get caught up in that. And it's so easy. That's why I find a lot of MMA fighters and never retire. Because they're searching for that moment again, right? To where when I signed for one F.C.

Again, and I tore my bicep, I said, God's trying to tell you something, brother. You know, I've never been knocked out in a fight. I've never been finished in a fight. And I don't really want to be, to be quite honest. You know?

Seems like a good call. Yeah. I don't need to go out on this. You know, my last fight was actually a great one. I knocked out a guy, Jason Lambert, and it was a walkaway knockout. And I got lucky. You know, it easily could have been me. But like, what are we searching for?

Why are we trying to find something that's fleeting? Why are we trying to find something that doesn't last? We need to find things that last. What lasts is your impression that you make upon people. Well, what's going to make my legacy? last is my association, my students, my ability to help other people open a school and support their family, who cares who won the trials in 2016? There's people who win the trials every two years. Could we name all of them? Of course not. You know, so I find serving, you know, service,

giving back to people is something that makes me happy. And I'm, and I guess for my own selfish reasons. I like to say I'm good at it. I guess that's a competitor within me. But again, if you reach your own personal best, you're naturally going to find greatness because most people I believe most people in this world don't fight to find their best. I just truly believe they don't because I don't think they realize how much they're capable of doing. If they knew how much they could achieve, I think they would put in more work. Well, you obviously, you realize this at some point. I mean, not only, you know, in the book, you end up starting your own academy.

Yes. And you talk about all this stuff. In four months, you have 150 students. You grow real quick from the first space that you had. You grow real quick. You get a bunch of students and you end up with 150 students in four months, which means you can quit your job. And now you're kind of like well on your way to making things happen. You got Gary Tonin shows up, start training with that maniac.

Crazy guy. Man, I remember the first day he walked in. was a helian. He had long, ratty hair. He had severe ADHD like me. He couldn't look at me in the eyes. Every single thing I would teach him. How old was he at the time? He was 15 or 16. I brought, Gary Chandler me strictly until he was black belt. He won the ADC's trials under me. He won a Noggi World's two times just with me. He went to ADCC just under me. And then he started going to school at Rutgers in New Brunswick. That was closer to the city. And then he's when he started training in the city with John. And I say till this day, and I,

mean this if Gary just would have stayed with me he undoubtedly would have probably won three ADCCs in boring fashion right John made him exciting to where Gary always had that exciting style under me and I never wanted it like he would he would win a match like 72 to 47 and I'm like bro how do you give up 47 points like what are you doing right now so I didn't tell him good job for the first time until after you won the Brown Belt Worlds the second time. I didn't give him his blackout after you won the world the first time because I didn't like the way he won.

Dang. Yeah. So he got, John allowed him to, I guess, be him. You know, a great example of Gary is when ADCC 2017, the match for third place against Wagner Rocha, Gary was like, I'm not competing in this to win. I'm competing in this to have fun. I said, Gary, you're up for a medal. It's going to be the first time you won an ADCC medal.

Go win the medal. I don't care how boring it is. He's like, I'm having fun. He went out there and he was, Wagner took his back from behind and Gary instead of defending, he put his arms up in the air like he was flying an airplane and started like running around the mat. He was like, what am I watching right now?

And he started doing, you know, uh, Gramby's out of it. He ended up losing the match because he just had fun. He's like, hey, I had fun. So that's him. That's his happiness. And I, it was hard for me to understand at the time. Like, if you're not winning, how are you happy? Right?

Like, I don't get it, right? So yeah, Gary found his exciting, legendary, exciting style under John. 100%. You know, John's a master with his submissions. And Gary was able to flourish in that sense. I do believe positionally, Gary would have squeaked out three ADCCs in a nice, boring fashion under me. But you know what?

That wouldn't have made Gary happy. Gary won 80CC gold medal being boring, like Tom the blast. He's not happy, you know? Going back to the book here, it felt like almost everyone I knew in my life was there. My mother and father, Hensio, all of their students, all of my students. It was around 100 people all gathered there for me. In your lifetime, you rarely get to experience moments where so many people are gathered just for you. Not because you're going to give them anything, but because they just want to be a part of your moment.

Hensio, full of his usual charisma, gave a proud speech totally off the cuff, as usual. he knew exactly what to say with henzzo his words always took a backseat to his spirit hell yeah Hickardo spoke next it was different from Henzzo he couldn't make you laugh on Q but he didn't try and be something he wasn't if Hensow was a happy warrior Hikardo was the intense one at that time Hikardo was fighting in the UFC winning fights and slowly climbing the ladder he had assembled a legendary team including guys like Frankie Edgar who is now being seriously considered as a top contender for UFC title shot. At the end of their speeches,

they both tied a black belt around my waist. People cheered. Everyone wanted hugs and pictures. I felt happy, but as always, something helped me back. 100 people had just gathered to see me succeed. People that cared about me and were happy for me. I went to bed that night in my new house that I had bought. I had a black belt.

I was a brown belt champion. I had money. I had friends. But as crazy as it sounds, I felt incredibly lonely. Yeah, just a constant pit in my stomach, man. And that's something I've dealt with my entire life. And it was so frustrating because you don't know what is causing. It's like an impending doom.

You know, and I think a lot of it stems back to when I was younger, when things would go well, I knew right around the corner was something devastating about to happen. So I think I would always worry about something that was going to happen terrible, or I was always searching for something else to negate something terrible. happening rather than just staying in the moment. Like right now, when I got my black belt, hey, you got your black belt, you have your home, everything is good, nothing else matters.

The only thing that matters is right now. If you want a better tomorrow, you have to focus on today. That's the only way tomorrow, you can't worry about tomorrow, you can't worry about the past. You could learn from the past. I don't believe not thinking about the past. While staying in the moment, what I mean, when I say stay in the moment, I believe when we look at the past, we look at it from a very objective.

point of view to where I look at it not from a personal standpoint. I look at it as like I'm reading a book or I'm looking through history and what could I learn from that? What did I do well? What did I, what do I need to improve upon? When I think about the future, I can't get lost in it. I could kind of think about where I want my future to be. Okay, so now what do I need to do in the present moment in order to achieve what I need in the future? And I think for me, I didn't know what I wanted because I didn't know what found me happiness. I didn't know what my happy place was. So I won some cool competitions, you know, but it was never enough, but I still didn't win ADCC. So in my mind, I'm like, well, maybe I just need to win ADCC to be happy. No, that's not it.

It's not it. You know, it's never enough. And that's what I found was never enough. And that's that mentality of never rest, you know, always do more. And you should never rest. You should never rest. You should always do more, but that doesn't mean that you can't be happy with what you're doing at the given time. You know? And for me, when I realize, all right, what is success to you? All of success is happiness, right? My success is feeling happy. Okay, well, how do you find that?

You have to find out what makes you happy. What made me happy was serving. So the more I realized that, I would start, I would find glimpses of current, you know, I remember I had a time one time when I was younger. I was in my mother's living room and the breeze was perfect. It was the perfect temperature. I wasn't jumping out of my skin. A lot of times I can't rest.

Like I always feel like jumpy. I was completely relaxed. I wasn't cold. I wasn't hot. It was the perfect moment. To me, that was heaven, right? That was heaven right there. And I wasn't thinking about anything besides the breeze on my face,

the current temperature, which was perfect. and my current state of relaxation, you know? And to me, I was like, well, at this moment, I'm very successful. No one knows what's happening, but no one needs to know what's happening, because I know what's happening, right? And I think when you first reach a little bit of fame in your sport and you realize how mean people could be, it's also a slap in the face because no matter what you do, people aren't, it's not good enough. People always have something to say. People always want to bring you down.

So when you're, that's the confusion. You're living to serve people. Well, serving people and helping people makes me happy. But the same people I'm trying to help and serve have negative things to say here and there. How could you truly find happiness? Well, the key was for me, serving people the best way I can, being thankful that I serve them and understanding how they feel with me serving them is their own personal choice. I could only do my best. If it's not good enough for you, I don't know what to tell you.

Because a lot of people that you serve over and over and over again, the first moment, you don't give them exactly what they want, they forget every great thing you've ever done for them. You know, and that's what they look at. So it's like, you know what, man, I could only do what I could do. You know, and that's my best. And I could take my past experiences. is like the reason why I feel I'm a great coach right now is not my, my victories, but it's my defeats.

You know, you know what your students shouldn't do through your past failures. So when I started realizing as well, I could serve people better by all my failures. The things that would break my heart in the past were actually a blessing. Without these failures, how would I serve other people? How would I know how to avoid the failures if I've never felt them? So I started to learn more and more that you know success is fleeting if you look at success as victories because there's no such thing as victories that last forever

every great champion eventually false right but what makes you happy yeah and that's what you're chasing and it's it's pretty clear in the book and you mentioned it so you you win the trials you go and do ADCC you end up losing on like a mistake A freaking clerical mistake, which is ridiculous. Oh, man. Which then get you in the mindset of like, all right, well, if I can punch people, we won't have any clerical mistakes.

We'll have knocked out teeth and victories. You end up going back to MMA. You end up doing a ring of combat. You fight three times in, what was it, in the first year. And then the next year, so now we're into 2011. You fight three more times. And you're basically just crushing people, which is, I mean, at this point, the level that you're at, the school that you're at, the training that you're doing, like, you're in a lower league, you know, ring of combat at the time.

You're above them. Yeah. And it's proven out. You say by the end of 2011, I was offered the light heavyweight title fight against Mike Stewart. I overwhelmed him the first round TKO victory. Then you get a title defense against a guy named David. What is it? Teskevelli.

Teskevili. Oh, man. He was a scary guy, man. And that's a funny story about him. You have this fight midway through the second round. You feel his energy change. He was getting tired. And you basically go through this fight and you win.

The funny thing is going into that fight. I looked him up. And it's a highlight video of like this crazy Russian music. He's from the Republic of Georgia. And he's just suplexing everybody. And then I see all David Teskevelli lifting weights. He has a 54 pound plate. He lifts it from, it took him like 13 minutes,

from the floor to the sky, pressing over his head. He did it 250 times, right? I was like, whatever, I'll do this right now. So I went and I got a 45 pound plate, and I'm like, I'll do this right now. I got to like 27. And I was like, oh my God, this guy's going to kill me. I can't do this, but I was like, you know what?

Lifting weights is not the same. It was a strongest man I've ever faced. But again, as we were just speaking about before, there's a lot more to martial arts and to fighting than just strength. But he didn't suplex me. So that was a victory within itself. I mean, that's what's. You do talk about that in the book. Like you're getting ready for the fight.

And, you know, in your sort of from a coaching perspective, from a strategic perspective, you're always like, okay. You know, if the person's a better grappler, you keep them on the feet. If they're better on the feet, you take them to the ground. If they're better, you know, you have this plan, kind of general plan that you're going to use as a, as a person's a better grapple or you keep them on. fighter but then you're like seeing his wrestling is real good, submisses real good, striking's really good, you're kind of like damn, but it's, that is kind of crazy. He was that kind of level of conditioning and you, you broke him. Yeah, and he never felt stronger to me in the cage, actually. I never felt his strength in the cage. I just think I had more leverage and more smarts. And I think

a huge aspect in martial arts and fighting in jih Tzu's reaction time, right? So I think timing is a huge difference between average of great and great and excellent. A lot of times people know the technique, but they don't understand the timing. And I explain it to people who have never wrestled before. Finding that perfect time to shoot, they take that double. It's almost impossible, right? And a lot of times you don't have the experience.

You see the shot, but you don't realize when you see the shot, that's when you have to shoot. You can't see the shot and then think about it. So my timing was just better than his. You know, he hesitated a little bit and, you know, hesitation is death. You can't. And that takes time and experience. But, yeah, I got lucky, man.

I got lucky with that. You know, he also traveled from across the world fighting out of his country. It's not easy. But yeah, he was a strong guy. He was more strong than he was technical. And you can't be that because at the highest level, everybody's strong. You're freaks of nature. Yeah, and it's amazing.

You know, you take someone that, even though someone that can have this incredible aerobic and anaerobic conditioning to be able to do whatever was 250 cleaning jerks with a 50-count plate. So he's got that level. You do 27 and you're already hurting.

But the technique and the being able to relax in the cage and not be tense and not be like that's it. It's another huge piece. And what makes people tense is fainting. And I always fainted a lot. Like, faints make people jump.

Every time people jump, people get tired. It's like try to squeeze your hands together as hard as you could. See how long you could do it. Eventually you're going to get tired, you know? So, you know, being strategic in that approach and being efficient. Efficiency is huge. And I don't think he knew efficiency. Efficiency.

He went 100% a thousand miles per hour. But the thing is like, you know, I hate to bring back. We watch Blood Sport, you know, when he said, brick, no hit back, you know. The 250 pound plate didn't get back. You know, when you had that involved, it gets a little tricky. That's what a lot of these guys don't understand. These strong guys have no idea. And you think this day and age, they would get the hint,

but there's still guys out there that don't train and they still just don't get it. They don't realize their strength is. It's cool. It's cool to be strong. Yeah, yeah, be strong. God bless you. But don't mix.

Don't be confused. Yeah, don't let that get to your head a little bit. It's the same thing with Jiu-Jitsu guys. And, you know, we have to also understand, like, and here's, here the problem is, like, a lot of guys who don't train who have weapons while, you know, my, my, my, my gun will do it. You know, yeah, I get that, right? But jiu jutsu guys also need to understand that in different scenarios, your jihits will only get you so far. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, you know, like, you know, like that's real. And then after getting punched in your head, you know, if I have a knife in my hand, that's also an issue, right? Like, you know, that's why I see, you know, I can equate this. Like, I see it a lot of people get annoyed when the jih Tzu guys or fighters said, you know, it was a war. Or a lot of jih Tujitsu guys, and they call their jih Tutsu match a fight. So here's my thing. No, I don't believe a jih Tutsu match is a fight.

If you want to say it, I don't really care. Yeah. I've been punched in my face. There's a huge difference between getting punched in my face and a jih Tutsu match. And at the same time, no, I'm not dodging bullets in an MMA fight, right? But I think MMA fighting, like when you look at the heart and the, look at Frankie Eager's fights, right? You can't tell me that you couldn't put him in a life and death situation and he wouldn't fight with heart and honor, right? Because that's affirmative.

Yes, exactly. You know, so that's how I look at that. Yeah, that's wild too. You know, going back, you go back to like the 90s, the late 90s and the early 2000s. I would watch the UFC I was training in like I was trained hard a lot and you could watch the back then and be like dude I could actually take this guy in the UFC and be like oh yeah I could take this guy 100 and then and then I got to train with those guys and I'm like oh yeah I can take these guys like I train with guys that were in the UFC and be and know that I could beat them it's not like that it's not it's not like that anymore bro it's not these guys that are these guys that are and you know it it went that way pretty quick. Like as soon as I mean I would say you know by the time this is what 2004 2005 you're starting to get real like these guys are there's no holes in their games anymore it's like what you were saying about hey maybe the guy's not good at

striking cool I can stay on the feet or the guy's not good at grappling I'll take him down there's nobody like that in the UFC and even the guys who are like blue belts and they're black belts about how yes how to avoid submission yes how to avoid jihitsu yes jih Tzu is so hard to use in a five-minute match when you're slipping So that's why I never went for takedowns in my MMA fight. Because if you go for a takedown and you miss it, it's just exhausting. Then taking somebody down and then they stand up again, that's even more exhausting. It's like, what am I doing right now?

Man, these guys are good now. I'm so conditioned. Oh, dude, they're sad. It's literally insane. It's freaking awesome. What was the deal? So you write about it in the book, but talk us through this situation that happened with David's dad, like after the fight. So it was actually his instructor.

He was in the special forces for the Georgian military. And man, he gave me his dog tags. And he just said, you know, you fought with such heart and such honor. And you respected me and you respected David so much. Like, you know, I want you to have this. And it touched me so much. You know, I still keep in touch with his daughter here and there, like once in a blue moon, years down the line. But yeah, for him to give me his dog tags after I did.

beat his fighter. But, you know, it also showed me, like, the mentality of people from different countries, you know, that, you know, honor means so much to them. Nowadays, it's crazy. When you look at these Russian promotions, every single way in there's a fist fight and stuff. I don't know what's going on over there. But, like, you know, I think the fact that, like, you know, and I won, I didn't cheer too much. And I raised his hand. And I was, I was very thankful that he flew from the Republic of Georgia to give me the opportunity to win. Because without him, I could. I could didn't have this big fight and he was a champion over there and uh he you know he was big over there like he was when he would land like from wherever he was flying from they would greet him at the

airport and everything he was a superstar you know so i also understood every time i won i understood somebody lost so i know david had to go home uh losing and in that culture that could be really because all they have in a lot of other countries is their victory of defeat you know you're really only as good as your last fight so i i you know you know you know you're really only as good as your last fight. So I, you know, I had a lot of compassion and thankfulness for him. And I think his coach just saw that. And, you know, I saw that dog tie. I'll never lose it, man. You know, it was incredible. It was crazy. I'll fast forward a little bit here. So now you're the champion of that organization. And all of a sudden,

you're sitting by the pool one day and you get a call. I'll go to the book here. Tommy, did you hear me? I snap out of my thoughts to realize Ali never stop. talking yeah just say it again I'm saying it has to be tonight I need to call them back with a yes or no to this you don't keep this guy waiting listen tell him on my vacation and the belt's not going anywhere for a few weeks so they can the belt no Tommy this isn't this isn't ROC I'm talking about here we're talking about the big show I lean up in my chair chair the ice pack slide off my focus you had injured foot at the time and falls the ground practically sizzling when it hits the hot surface wait what you

You're not talking about Ring of Combat? Tommy, listen again. Joe Silva expects a call back in the next hour. If you say yes, I got to get you on a flight back home and get you back to the gym. My head is spinning now. So the UFC, that Joe Silva? Yes, that's the only Joe Silva, the UFC matchmaker. And what's the match?

Sorrel DeBate. Am I saying that right? Yeah, Surreal. Surreal DeBate. I know his name, I know the name, but only vaguely. striker, European of some sort. It's finally happening. I look at my ankle, more determined than ever to heal it.

Even if the UFC wants me in a month, I can make it work. Tom, there's more, he says, and it's not good. They need you in Sweden. Sweden? That card is in three weeks. Tommy, it's in 12 days. I take a long pause, understanding that I am ultimately going to say yes. Ali knows this too, but maybe for a brief moment he thinks.

thinks I might say no. Tommy, this is it. Behind that sentence are a hundred unsaid implications. When the UFC calls, you say yes. If you don't, they go to the next name on the list and your name may not come up next time. At this level, MMA was filled with divas that would play a hundred mind games to get a better fight on a better card for more money. I wasn't one of those divas, but no one knew that about me yet. They didn't know whether I was injured or just looking for a way out or of a short notice fight. A hundred men would fill my spot without a second thought if my manager didn't pick up that phone and say yes within the hour. Okay, Ali, call them back and tell them to get me the contract. Beautiful, beautiful. That's the right call, Tommy, the right call. How soon can you be in my

office? I'll have the contract ready for you. Just fax it to the gym. I'm going straight. In mid-sentence, I felt the sharp pain as I stand up on my lounge chair and put my weight on my ankle. I take a sharp breath, 12 days. Hey, you okay, Tommy? You cut out there. Just fax me the contract. Yeah, I was a rough one because I was supposed to have a ring of combat title fight the next month, but I fractured my ankle.

I threw a kick and I hit somebody's elbow. Not my ankle, my foot. And I broke the top of my foot, like the little bones. And I was having trouble walking. and I was like fat out of shape. I was drinking wine. And I accepted this fight. And they flew me out on Wednesday.

I fought on Saturday. And I had a training partner who thought he was 6'4. So Surreal Diabate is 6'6. And so I trained with this guy so much, but he was like his frame was small. And he was not 6'4. I thought he was. you know because you thought you were six oh

anyways yeah so when I got to Sweden and I saw surreal I was like is this a 185 this is a 205 he looked like an NBA player I was like my God dude six sixes he was enormous you know the world class kickboxer and man like I just I had no confidence because preparation builds confidence and I didn't have preparation I don't like doing things if I'm not prepared I'm not one of those guys

that call me anytime and I'll fight. That was never me. I'll never be that guy. Because I think what happens a lot of times with that is people call you to lose, you know? And even if you put an exciting show, you're still a winner. There's a lot of guys who could lose exciting and still feel good. My mental health wasn't that. If I lost, I didn't feel good.

I didn't know how to lose. And I never lost an MMA yet. And, man, the fight was going good until it wasn't. You know, I won the first round. the second round, I remember, you know, I took him down. I was on side control and my corner was still like screaming for me to get better position to where I think it's very important when you're a corner to, and it depends who you're going with.

Like, I like to stay, remain calm in the corner as much as possible. But I started getting like, I started freaking out, you know, and I already had side control. Generally, they don't speak up, stand you up from side control. but then like halfway during the round he like stood up i know i ended up on the bottom uh there was one shot he hit me with with an elbow my head was against the canvas so it had no room so i kind of got my head smashed in between his elbow and the canvas and he had a very large elbow uh and then he ended up winning a majority decision it was a tough fight it was a scrap uh one of the judges gave it to me i don't think he should have to be quite honest because i didn't really do i took him down

I positionally dominated him. I got like three takedowns around the fight. I passed his guard. But ultimately, I didn't do any damage. And he did a lot of damage to me. He hit me in the head a good few times. He can cuss me very well. And that was a learning experience, man,

because going into that, I was one of the top prospects in the world. And everybody was such a Tom fan. And then as soon as I lost, it's like people forgot that I took the fight on a week's notice that I was clearly out of shape. The weighing pitchers, good, If you're listening, just go look at the way in pictures. They're embarrassing as hell.

I'm like soft little chubby doughboy. You know, and they don't care. They think that if you take the fight, you should win. People don't understand, like, there's a lot that goes into preparation. I wasn't able to prepare, so I took the fight on short notice. And people ultimately were, they were just terrible. They were just, like, ripping me apart. Oh, you got tired.

I got tired. You know what I mean? Like, what do you think, man? Like, come on, give me a break here. I definitely noticed in the book, man. And even what you've been saying today, like, and you write about it. Like, that shit gets to you. Like, people talk and smack about it bothers you.

Yeah, it used to. Eccles laughing because I, that stuff, people say stuff about, you know, whatever, read my comments or whatever, like, you know, I think Rogan has the best advice when it comes to this stuff. He's like, just don't read the comments. Yeah, post them ghost. You'll hear him say, like, somebody that's kind of like coming into the world, he'll be like, no, don't, don't read the comments.

You know, he's really, he's really, like, serious about that. And I can tell you, like, I read comments. I don't they don't make me feel anything you know I don't get mad or anything and maybe it's because I'm not you know this is very this is more personal than I guess maybe what someone might say about me well you definitely take it more personally you're you're in a fight and you lost and like this is your career and people are talking smack about you and you don't like it I wasn't ready for it I wasn't ready and like and I remember talking Rashad Evans and he's like you know one day we're doing autographs so somebody walked up to me and

they handed me a picture of me being not knocked out by Leota Machita to sign. You know? Damn, dude. And I just wasn't ready. Yeah, I wasn't ready for it at that time. That's the thing that these young athletes got to understand. I try to make things very uncomfortable for them in the training room, right?

Because when you get out there, it's not just competing. It's like you got to handle the bright lights. You got to hand. And when I say bright lights, it's the pressure. It's the trash talk. It's the people who will never do it that like to talk trash, you know? You can't let that stuff phase you. It got to roll off you.

Now I'm to a point. I really don't care. It doesn't make a difference to me. I realize I don't care when my dad died and somebody made like a little cartoon, right? And it was like the Simpson characters. And one of the Simpson characters was throwing a frisbee and there was no one catching the frisbee. And the capture said, Tom playing frisbee with his dad. And I actually, where did you see this?

I got tagged in Instagram and they were like a burner account, you know. And I actually, I giggled a little bit. You know what, man, you can't win with these people. So it's like, I don't care anymore, but at the time I did care. And at the time it affected me, it affected my mental health. And you got to understand, you can't care. If you're going to be in any kind of limelight whatsoever, you just can't. Because there's no rules.

When you're in the limelight, like people forget all about mental health. People are like, oh, don't bully this and that mental health. Like, no, like any kind of like anybody popular in their field, people are ruthless to them. don't care what they say they think they they look at these people almost as if they're not people you know they're not human beings i'll tell you one time uh i forget what i posted about but i think i posted about a podcast or something one of the podcasts and someone put in the comments they about echo charles and they were like just the most degrading comment about echo charles and it was like hey who is this

Echo Charles guy and why is he on here? Everything he says is stupid. No one wants to hear from him. Why is he on this podcast? Jocko, you shouldn't have him on and just talk yourself and leave the Echo guy out because no one likes him. It was something like that.

And Echo responded. He, I saw, like, recently read the comment, I was pretty, pretty harsh. And then I see a comment from Echo and it says, Honestly, that's a fair assessment and I was like that is the best response It really is man. It really can't go back and you know what I've talked about on a podcast is like when something bothers you There's it's it's bothering you because there's some kind of truth in it and you know it's like yeah Echo is gonna say some stuff on the podcast and there's gonna be some people that don't like it and he says some dumb shit too by the way

No doubt about you know and so when someone says hey what it's like someone will say about me like oh Jocco's freaking all dramatic about this. Like, yeah, well, I do get a little bit dramatic about some shit. You know what I mean? Like, this is like, yeah, it's true. Jocco's a knuckle dragger. Yeah, I'm kind of a knuckle dragger. Jocco's freaking nationalistic patriot guy that just freak.

Well, yeah, I kind of am. I can get a little bit blinded by, you know, patriots. Like, it's all true. Like, these things are true. If you let them, when something really bothers me, it's like, oh, that's because there's some level of truth in it. And the best thing for me to do is being like, yeah, that's a good point. And it's the same thing you did.

Yeah, that's a good. point because there's been times where I've been talking about being on the baton death march and reading from a book of a guy that was on the baton death march and what he suffered through and echoes chimed in that like one time he had to walk from the grocery store to his car and the door wasn't opening you had like a lot of bags with him and so you got to be like yeah you know dude you can't really do that bro you know so everyone's got to vietnam everyone's got their vietnam you know what it is for me though there's actually something not too long ago that I read they were just hating on me,

they were hating on you, they were hating on Goggins, they were hating on a bunch of people. And what gets me is people who have never accomplished anything, right? Or you being a man, like being a grown man, how could you get behind a fake screen name,

talk negative to another man, go home and look at your woman in the eyes? Right? Like, I don't get it for me, but what I realize is I gotta stop trying to figure people out because you can't figure him out. So for me, like a lot of people, you know, they think it's so corny, these inspirational

things. I mean, I only think people who think the inspirational things are corny or the ones who have never suffered, right? Like they'll never, like, they've never been where you've been, you know, like, the reason why you don't really care about what comments say, because how many times have you been in life and death situations? Like, a comment is going to bother me? You know, like, you've been in some real stuff.

And that's what I started thinking. Like, you know, you just can't change certain people. And what I also realize is a lot of the hate that I've gotten over the years, a lot of people who say negative things on my post, right, I'll go to their page and I'll click on their messages. They're guys who used to message me that I never responded to and they get their feelings hurt. I'm sorry that I can't respond to every message.

You know what I mean? But a lot of these people who hate, they're just, People, yeah, sometimes they say things that are true, but they're also sometimes people that are just very unhappy. And we remind them sometimes of everything that they're not. Right. So instead of looking, when I look at, there's a story. There's this guy walks by a house. He looks at the home.

It's like a mansion. And he looks at the home and he says, wow, whoever is living here, good for them. They must have worked really hard to get there. Like, God bless him. And then the other person walks by and they look at the house like, oh, he probably had this given to him. his family comes from money. He must be doing something illegal. Which type of person are you going to be?

You know? And on the type of person, when I look at somebody, I might not agree with everything that somebody says, but I try to learn if I can. And I just feel there's a lot of people who get behind a fake screen name and talk. And it's like, for what? I would never comment on another dude's post

for no reason behind the fake screen name talking trash, you know? And it's just so odd to me. It's odd and it's also like completely common. I mean, that's what the social media is. Yeah, so you can't get too hyped about that kind of stuff. You can't. It'll drive you insane. You can't. You got to just kind of let that stuff kind of roll.

You know what I just, I wanted to, so when you were training with Ricardo Alameda and you were part of that school. So my buddy, Seth Stone, had, he went to Princeton. So he's in the SEAL teams with me, you work with me, and then he went to Princeton. And he trained with me. And he trained with me from like 2005. So now it's like, I think it might have been like 2010 maybe. But he's been training me the whole time.

I never give him any belt because you know like you're not gonna belt for me. I'm like I guess I'm kind of like you. If you're not giving Gary Tone in his belt after he wins freaking worlds. So he goes out to Ricardo, it goes to Princeton and he's at Princeton and goes like, hey, where should I train? I'm like, send me Google Earth, like show me the map. Like who, what's there?

See Ricardo, I'll meet him like go. go train with there there so he starts training there and after like a year he's like he's like giving me reports he's not saying anything but he's just like yeah I'm doing good I'm like getting some blue belts and like I'm having good roles and I'm like dude this this guy needs to get his blue belt like this is not cool and I wrote a letter and I sent my blue belt my own personal blue belt from when I was a blue belt and I sent a letter to Ricardo Alameda and I said hey that I I want to tell you about this guy's past. And I kind of talked about how he was in combat.

And we were training the whole time. And he was traveling and like, I never promoted him. And but I said like, if you think he's ready, this is my blue belt that I would like him to have. That's pretty intense. And he and Ricardo gave him his blue belt. And he read like that letter to the class. How incredible that was freaking legit.

That's incredible. But you know, that's one of those things where like the, when I saw Alameda like a year later, some event or something like it was pretty pretty legit just like the connection yeah between that he's such a smart guy ricardo like he's much different than your typical uh co-b Brazilian coach that you would think about he's a very educated guy he actually was accepted into one of the the most prestigious schools in brazil uh to go to college and he didn't do it and he chose jiu-jitsu instead very educated guy uh you can say how is he so educated and chose jiu-suezzi

but he's such a stoic man you know like I like I it's good because I had him and I had Hanzo right so like gosh that's chalk yeah and I'm kind of like you're mixing me what's the yin and yeah that's why a lot of people with me will be like oh you know like Tom is very contradicting well no I am because there's more than one side of me you know there's a time where I'm serious and you know more stolic and then there's a time where I like to joke around and there's a time where I feel people need a hug and a time where I feel people need to be smashed right Like not everything is the same. Every situation requires a different me.

You got to wear many different hats. It doesn't mean you're fake. It means you're able to be a chameleon and you have to be in order to make it. Going back until what's happening in your life at this time, so you get done with that first fight, short notice, and now you get another fight. And this next fight is going to be in China. Yeah, thanks, guys. Thanks so much. How much time did they give you between those two fights?

like two months I think oh damn like I wasn't ready like I had I was severely concussed and now you're going down to 185 185 and man like I was in Macau so I had to take a 17 hour flight then a three hour ferry ride then an hour taxi ride and I fought Ricky Fukuda who at the time it was like 24 victories and seven losses or something like that tons of experience and this was going to be my seventh or eighth fight it was a scrap man it was a war it was a good i don't want to say war sorry it was a good fight it was a it was a scrap uh but it was very competitive but he ended up getting the decision the majority decision again and uh i was like you know what mama is stupid so stupid it's for immature people i don't want to do this

and waste my time so i i was like i'm done i told joel Silva a lot of people were mistaken about how that went i didn't officially get cut by the ufc i i don't i I quit. I didn't want to do it anymore. And Joe was cool. He's like, I understand. Did he not say like, hey, bro, we gave you like some pretty rough fights out of the gate? I don't know if he hated me or what. Like, it was very odd that the way it happened.

But you know what, though, man? I'm thankful it did happen. Because when I came up, Glover to Chera got signed at the same time, right? If I would have won my first fight, 100% my second. match would have been against Glover. And I'm going to be honest with you right now. He's a huge 205er. I was a small toolfiver.

And when Glover hits you, your face breaks. You know, and I don't think at that time, I didn't have the, he had, Glover had a ton of experience. Like, he fought for years and years and years for getting to the UFC. I didn't have much experience. I fought for like a year and a half then I got to the UFC. I wasn't ready. Like, I was better than like the local shows, but I wasn't quite ready for the big show.

You know, my timing was off. And, you know, I lost two tough fights, and that was what it was. But then Bellator was fighting in New Jersey. And Richard Chu reached out to my man. I stopped working with Ali, and I started working with Danny LaGore again. Well, he thought I was still working with Daniel. I wasn't working with Danny LaGore yet. And he called.

So then I called Joseph. I said, listen, Bellator wants me to fight? Would I be able to fight for them? He says, yeah, you know, I think you need some more experience anyway. So that's a good thing. So I signed with Bellator, and, you know, I ended up fighting two times of Belator, two victories. It's funny experience to talk about.

My first fight in Bellator, the first round, I never lost a round on my feet until this first round. This kid's a golden-gloves boxer, long lanky dude, Carlos Brooks. He was chipping me up, man, and he was getting so confident. He was doing like the Ali shuffle and everything. I went back after the second. of trying to take him down against the cage. You know, that was a whole game plan.

And I just wasn't able to do it. He clearly prepared for that. So since I lost those other two fights and I had that experience, I truly believe if I didn't lose those two fights, I would have lost this one. I went back in between rounds and it's like, it sounds kind of silly, but I was, I said to myself, like, there's no way I'm going to lose this fight. I just can't. I can't lose.

You've got to find a way. and I ended up taking him down open cage. I didn't go against the cage. You know, what do they say? Craziness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I was crazy the whole first round. And I didn't succeed.

So against the cage, you had no balance. I meant in the middle of the cage you had no balance. I took him down with a single. And I ended up breaking his orbital. I hit him on an overhand and he was done. And then I had one more fight against Lambert. And that, my fight against Lambert, My daughter didn't want me to fight.

She was like, Daddy, don't fight, though. And it started, it was, like, bothering me a little bit. You know, I don't know why I was bothering me. Too sensitive. But it bothered me a little bit. And I ended up knocking him out the first round. You can see that fight. If you type in Tom, the Blasterer, is Jason Lambert.

As soon as I knock him out, I immediately go down. And I, like, check him and I hug him. Dude, I read that in the book, and I was like, really? Like, honestly, I was like, I read that in the book, and I was like, because it's written in the book, like, oh, you know, I felt like maybe this guy has a kid. And I was like, well, he just won the freaking Mel.

I was like, he's exaggerating in the book. Like he, we're going to see a little bit. Sure enough, man. You knock him out. You knock him down and then he gets back up a little bit. And then you knock him down with one shot. And as soon as he's down, like you take like one step back and look at him. And then you like legitimately, I was like, damn, this is exactly what you wrote in the book is exactly what happened.

It was It's probably the most For lack of a better word Abnormal End to a fight that I've ever seen Yeah You gotta go watch it Go watch it

It's like you can tell There's a lot going on For you to be in a fight Anyone anyone in the world To be in a fight And you knock a dude out And then shut it off right away And just be like

I'm not even happy about this Yeah That's exactly what it looks like It was It's very strange to see It was strange You know And I remember Frankie

Yeah you're calling me afterwards like he's like you you're such a bull crapper that's crap you didn't mean that he's like you did it all for show like how could you possibly do that for show in that moment you can't but i remember he was his wife i remember he was talking about his wife and his daughter and i was you know i don't believe my mentality for mma was right at the time you know it affected me i remember when i knocked him out what came to my mind immediately was i don't know how it flashed in my mind was if i was wanted to get knocked out and my daughter saw that how would she feel uh so i felt bad immediately and then i also realized like man if you're feeling bad when you knock people out maybe you shouldn't be fighting

you know like you can't feel bad uh and then i had a match lined up against king moe but i hurt my knee two times and i was like you know what man there's a great story i heard to where there was a flood in a town and uh the guy went to the top of the roof and a boat came to get him. And he said, no, no, no, don't worry. I don't need you here. Jesus is going to save me. Water keeps filling up, filling up. A helicopter comes to get him. He says, man, I already told the other guy, I don't need you here. Jesus kind of come to save me. So eventually the guy drowns. He dies, and he gets to heaven. And he looks at Jesus. And he says, I thought you were going to save me. And Jesus says, who do you think sent you the boat in the helicopter? You know? So I'm getting

these signs. And were they signs? I'm not sure. But I just felt there wasn't my time to fight anymore. I don't think my mentality was in it anymore and I hung it up and I dedicated everything to Jitsu again. So I came back to Jitsu, I went to another ADCCC started competing in Jitsu a lot, focusing on my school and that was the best thing I ever did was to get to stop fighting MMA

because mentally it wasn't conducive for me anymore. It started to get like, fighting started giving you more anxiety to where, you know, just the entire lifestyle the way MMA is like I remember training for a fight no matter what I would be doing, I would never be able to enjoy the moment

because I knew there was a fight coming. I knew there was another human out there training to put me away. And I was missing moments with my daughter because I was focusing on a fight. And I didn't like that feeling. And that really contributed to the empty feeling that I had within me because I was never in any moment. I was just, I felt like I was floating.

I was never able to have a My feet were never solid in the ground Because I was always focusing on that fight Hoping for a victory And then I would win And then I know I know there's another fight So that was kind of like King Moe was coming up at that time Right?

Yeah yeah Yeah he was he would have been a tough fight for sure I trained with him I rolled in here one day And Dean's like hey bro My buddy's here we're training with him And I go oh cool he's like you gotta go train with him He's like Olympic level wrestler

He didn't make the Olympics, he came in second on the Olympic trials, right? And I'm like, oh, hell yeah. And so I rolled in there and, like, we clap hands and freaking, he did a takedown with me. Like, his face hit me in the chest and his hands just, like, tapped the back of both my legs at the same time. You're fine. With the force I'd not felt before. Like, pop. Like, it all happened, like, in a millisecond.

It's pop. And I was on my ass. And I was on my ass like six feet away. And I was like, dude, that's a, that's a, takedown right there. He was a strong guy. Yeah. And it was weird to watch his career go the way it went.

Yeah. Remember, he ended up getting knocked out by a guy with like some weird kind of. He didn't use his wrestling a lot. Yeah. He became a boxer. And he was a super nice guy. And he was actually as good as he was and his nickname King Moe and stuff. Like he was super humble, always listened, like, ready to learn and like great to train with.

Yeah. I mean, you weren't going to get any takedowns on this. I'll tell you that. Like, you were going to be playing some. He wasn't very big either, right? Like he walked around like 210, right? He probably walked around at 210. He was not small, though, brother.

He's a big, tall, strong, and explosive. And the other thing that was crazy about him, like, because, you know, we would all exchange, you know, techniques and stuff. But he would talk about these, like, takedowns. And a couple things that he would say is, like, he would be looking at the ceiling on a takedown. Like, he would be like, you got to look at the ceiling. Like, you, your head has to be up. But then he would also just sit there and, like, smash his,

face into the cage and grind his face like putting pressure like conditioning for his face and his head. Oh my God. Because that's what he's going to take you down with his face. And he took me down with his face many times. And also super explosive like when you do a clean and jerk, when you watch an Olympic lifter do like and they do like a split squat as they do the jerk. Like he would explain that that's what he was doing. He's like, I'm doing this. Like, That explosiveness is what I'm going into. You're telling me this and I'm saying to myself, like, why the heck would I ever want to fight this guy?

Rubbing his face against the counter. I got time for this. But so you get a little bit more focused on Jujitsu. I got to go to this part of the book because it's pertinent to the world. You say right now I'm enjoying laying a beating on an arrogant prick of a purple belt. He's fresh off another win at a local Naga tournament. The kid wins everything. Gee or no, Gie, it doesn't matter.

He was bad enough. the beginning as an arrogant white belt now it's becoming apparent that he's actually very good he's not just big and strong he's smart he also works hard shows up every day the full package he walks into the gym with extra swagger like a king returning from another victory he does everything but ask a teammate to wash his car he even has a cute girl on his arm bringing her to witness the victory lap and run circles around some blue belts during practice he's only been training a few years at this point he has a lot to learn technically sure but more as a man in a weird way i really like the kid despite all of our efforts to beat his attitude out of him when he's a

white belt he just wouldn't eat the humble pie it's the sort of pathological confidence you develop a respect for over time you can beat the shit out of this kid but you can't beat the attitude out of him then he starts getting really good now you really have a problem ego backed up with legitimate talent while no one will say it to his face everyone at Ocean County Jiu Jitsu knows that he's going to be special and so does he I pair up with him at the beginning getting enrolled at fast pace. At this moment in time, I am the superior grappler.

I'm a dog who's been living on the streets. He's a dog who's been living inside. I throw him off with my physicality, forcing him to turtle, twist, roll, and shrimp his way back into defensible positions. All the while, I can't help but do a little shit talking in his ear. And yet, I also feel the kid is getting his composure back as the minutes tick on. He starts to write the ship, scoring a few minor victories. Like getting his frames in by shifting his weight to the side, I bait him with a foe submission

attempt, the one I used last month on him, this time, he ignores the trap. As his breathing gets under control, the veil that is constantly over him is briefly lifted. I see his face, bright red with sweat and frustration. I see a kid that needs to win, a kid that doesn't acknowledge losing like a normal person. I could beat him all day like this every day. It wouldn't matter. He would just keep coming back for more. When we finish out the roll, I'm surprisingly tired. A year from now, he'll be as good as Gary. Five years from now, who knows what the ceiling is. You know I own your ass, right? I ask him.

He blinks rapidly and heaved out between big breaths. If you need to take a break, I can give you a minute. The stones on this kid, I love it. This, of course, is Gordon Ryan, the best grappler in the world. My God, that was literally exactly what happened. And there's a picture of that. And when that's exact day when his girlfriend's sitting on the side and I'm smashing him and I'm smiling in the camera. Man, that's the thing that Gordon came up.

Like Jersey's a little different. Like our training is very hard-nosed. And we're a bunch of people that all... You think that's like the wrestling base in there or something like that? I think so. And we all came from backgrounds where our fathers were a little... Not that stable. Heavy-handed.

Yeah, you know, not stable. And, you know, Gordon was something, man. He was something special. And I knew. You could even ask him. I always knew if he stood with it. Did he start at your school? No, he started with my best friend, Haas, Hasim.

He gave his school to Gary. So he started with Haas and then Gary took over the school. That's where Gordon was. Gordon was never my student. Always like a little brother. And he started at 15. Yeah. And he used to do like Kimbo slice fights like in his yard.

He used to like do fights for money. And he had like a Mohawk. Like he's just like. Fist fights? Yeah, fist fights. Yeah. like a little degenerate, you know? But he was just the cockiest thing ever, man.

It was, and he was very annoying. Like, I remember one time he annoyed me so much. I blocked him on, like, every social media. And he was making, like, fake screen names and still messaging me to, like, get his point across. And I'm just like, you're so terrible, you know. But, yeah, it came to a point to where you almost had to start respecting it. Because the things that people hate about Gordon are,

the same exact things that make Gordon Gordon. You know, he is, he's someone that I believe, like when I say, you know, stay in the moment, be happy. I don't think he has that at all. I think Gordon is constantly out to prove something. And I think Gordon, no matter how much he wins, he wants more. So I don't know if he's ever happy. But at the same time, it's also making him and made him already at his young age the best

grappler to ever live. And that's undeniable, right? So you got to ask yourself, are you willing, the fact that he's willing to have that mindset for an elongated period of time and like live this way indefinitely and still get up every day and do it That's a rarity. Yeah to be to get to the top of the mountain and then keep climbing. Yes is is is rare very and he's I mean he's winning Easily look no easily very easily it's I hate to use the word easily but he's winning relatively easily The best guys in the world and he's still doing what got him there And that's a hard thing to find.

Most people, they get to the top and they're like, cool, time to take a breather. And that's why they don't stay up there. He just doesn't seem to care. I know he's got some health issues, which is a horrible. He seems to fight through him. Yeah, he does. But he gets, he has this stomach issue where he's just constantly nauseous, like always nauseous. But it's like, there hasn't been someone recently that's been even close to challenging him.

Like we saw what he did to galvow. It was just like, it looked like a. an intermediate student against an expert student. It was just crazy. Yeah. And just for people that don't know Jiu-Jitsu, like Andre Galvow was one of the greatest competitors. Andre is the most winningest ABCC champion in history.

And that looked like a one-sided match. It was amazing. They say it's match with me. A lot of people say Mason could give him a tough time. The only way Mason could give him a tough time is if Mason stalls well and then gets to overtime. So EBI rules are the only way, in my opinion, that you could possibly be court. Maybe you could hang on to his back longer than he hangs on to yours.

I doubt it. I doubt it. But we saw Nikki Rod at some success against him in the ADCC. I mean the EBI rule set, which I never liked the EBI rule set. I don't want someone to start in my back unless they earn that, right? Like so many times you see people just get mauled in regulation to go on to overtime and win. You know, those boys were actually winning in regulation and an OT. A lot of people now in that rule set, they stall in regulation, and they just make it to OT, and then they find a way to win.

They get to double on their hooks on the back, and they hold longer. So I don't know, man. I don't see. I mean, Uri is a very tough guy. Uri's match against Gordon and actually the Nogi Worlds, the last Nogi Worlds at Gordon won, the only one he competed again. It could have went to Uri. It was super, super close, right? Yuri is a monster, and I know Uri wants his victory.

And this is the next ADCC super fight. That's going to take place in August of September. About 225. And what was Gordon walking around it right now? About 220. Dude, Gordon's huge. He looks much bigger than he is. No, like the last time I saw him, I was at UFC.

And I'd been around him before at events, but it was like the first time he was like recognized, we like shook hands. Like, hey, good to meet you. But he's a breaking large dude. 6-3, every bit of 6-3. Yeah. Large, big frame.

He's a big dude, man. It's crazy. So people don't understand that he was... I can't believe he's only 220. Yeah, he's not. He's not... I think the heaviest he ever was like 235 and then he got sick and he lost a bunch of weight.

But like he won 80s when he was 193. You know, so he's not just winning a lot of people, the haters will say it's because of steroids. No, let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Everybody listening. Your hero most likely is on the juice, right? Like everybody in ADC, I don't want to say everybody, I'd say over 95% of people in ADCC are on something.

And I will also tell you something. It's not making them win, right? Their technique is making them win. The steroids are taking, yes, it helps them, but it's helping them to recover. You cannot train at a high level, as a high level athlete and not supplement with something. It's very hard because your body constantly gets broken down over and over and over. Your testosterone levels are actually lowering because you're beating yourself into the ground. You know, when I started TRT, I never juiced before.

And my testosterone levels were at like 300, very low because you're training two. So exercise can increase your testosterone, but over exercise could actually reduce your testosterone. So I was training so much. I actually, I was harming myself more than helping myself, you know. So he's not winning because of juice. He's winning because he's good, man. You know, that's it. No, yeah, clearly.

I mean, this is the technique that he brings and you watch him. It's freaking impressive. He's impressive. He's a once-in-a-lifetime athlete. Yeah. I don't think there's ever been an athlete in any sport that has been as dominant as he is in his sport. There hasn't.

I mean, I mean, Tyson, but not for as long as Gordon was, right? Tyson until he lost the Buster Douglas. You know, Mayweather was dominant, but Mayweather wasn't finishing people. You know, so, I mean, Michael George. something but it's totally different things the other thing is he's he's stayed where he's at through a large kind of revolutionary progression a hundred percent jih Tjitsu is different now than it was three years ago and different now than it was six years ago absolutely and I mean you could say I guess he's in some

ways leading that progression but like there's people that are doing things that three years ago weren't happening like this was not a part of Jiu Jiu's different Now every and it changes like almost I would say every six months if you're not in the game You're out of the game there's a 17 year old who just won ADCC trials at the at a hundred and forty two Oh yeah that's right he just ripped through everyone yeah Yeah man this kid was impressive his his his tenacity was something that people just don't understand We understand because you know a lot of people I always say people start trying to pass the guard from the feet until they can't pass the guard from the feet in about 30 seconds so a minute they go to their knees, this kid won seven, eight matches

on his feet passing the guard the entire time. He never went to his knees. It was the craziest thing that I've seen. They keep that mental fortitude that entire time to not have a dent in your armor. It was truly something impressive. Like I was, wow. It's almost like he's too young to understand

that it should have been harder. Yeah, there's, it's like, you know when you think a chain wrestling, when I think a chain wrestling, at the high level, I think like your chain wrestling like seven, eight things are getting connected together, right? Like you're thinking about chain. Like a guard passer, like him, like a modern guard passer, the chain is like 29 things that are going on. It's crazy.

29 things. Oh, stop. Here, here. And it's all these. And you make a fraction of a second over there and another millisecond over there and another millisecond over there and another millisecond over there. And finally you get a quarter second that you need to get that knee through or whatever. That's what's going down. And what's crazy is what I.

I saw him do so many times he would be stopped, so he would do the same thing all over again. It's like he never had a, like most people have a breaking point where like, you know, they try it so many times that eventually when they don't get it, they're like, all right, I don't got it. This kid, man, you could, like I saw it with Ethan. Ethan Krillstein stopped him over and over and over 30 seconds left in the match. He finally passed to Guard and won. He did something. He doesn't even realize how mentally tough he was. Do you know what it looks like?

It almost looks like he was made, like he's a machine bred just for this. All he knows is this. You know, he only knows this. What's his background? He's been training in his whole way. He's a pro-Bult and jitsu and a wrestler. Yeah. He's going to be special.

Yeah. There you go. Going back to the book here at this, you say, at this point, I made one of the best decisions I've ever made. I hired two people to run the operations of the academy. The first was my black belt, Craig Izzo. The second was a student, Danielle, who had been training with us for a while. Is that Danielle Kelly? No, no, Daniel, this, Daniel Shirelli, her name is.

Okay. She actually, my current girlfriend, we've been together for a few years now. Man, she made things easy. Talk about a woman's touch. You know, my school was successful before her, but my school wasn't, there was a lot of things that weren't happening. You know, like I was still have like 17 to 20 delinquents. a month. That means people aren't paying. And I just think in some aspects, like women just do things better than men, the things that'll kind of drive us insane. But when they do it for

your business, it's actually nothing but great. And when I gave that aspect, she initially started helping me during like COVID. And we never dipped during the pandemic. We never lost students because we were doing hardcore Zoom classes like professionally ram zoom classes and uh we had a woman's program before her but it was never big and she started with the women's program and she she's built like i tell her she's like she doesn't like when i say she's like a Clydesdale horse right she's just stacked yeah most girls aren't going to take that was a big combo she is she's she's a strong girl so she ran the women's program and she really started to build this women's program and i and i feel when schools have a large women programs that says

something positive for the school. So all I was doing the teaching of the advanced classes, she started doing all the behind-the-scenes stuff. And people got to realize behind-the-scenes stuff is what makes or breaks the academy. I ran the school successfully. A lot of it was just my reputation, but we took it to the next level when she started doing everything that we should do. Because for me, I knew a lot of the things we should do. I just didn't have, I hate to say it, and I had the discipline to do it all the time, where she does, right? And the organization, the organizational skills that she has. You know, she took over everything.

She started running. She does all my contracts for my affiliation. And my contracts doesn't, it's not a, the contract basically consists. If we split, you just can't use my name anymore. That's it. I don't want to lock you. If you don't want to be a part of me, I don't want you a part of me. You know, but yeah, she made things a thousand times easier, man, you know.

It's interesting sometimes, you know, like all couples, you have your ups and your downs. So if we're having some downs and we go into the school, you know, I just stand a that she stays in the office and it works out but uh yeah she does so well and made things so much easier for me yeah definitely a little bit of decentralized command goes goes a long way that's for sure um you end up doing ADCC again 2014 2015 you win the IBJJF nogee masters worlds uh and you also did your weight and absolute yeah never realize a well let's puts in this perspective, I competed in ADCC in September at 217. In November, I competed. I was 245 pounds. It wasn't a half. Say that one more time. Let me track this. Yep. 217, ADC.

What month was that? At September, okay. November, I competed at 245. Damn. Yeah, I went through a little rough moment. I got your grub on. No, I sure did. It wasn't 25 pounds of muscle. There is a picture of me breathing out where my friend would just always send randomly and adornant like the photographer who took it clearly must hate me because why you would ever post this is just i'm my hand is kind of like like just limp and i'm breathing out of my stomach is protruding i won the absolute division but i jumped in that thing i you know the master's division it'll be easy there are so many angry guys between 30 and 35 years old man that i i was like what did i get myself into so uh yeah i ended up winning i actually that photo my

my friend was sending it to me all the time. I was, you know what? I was like, I'm going to take this. Just fat shaming you. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I made it before and after. I made a, that was my before and I made an after. And I, like, kind of like, now he can't use it.

Because if everyone ever saw 8 Mile with Eminem, the last rap battle, he, everything you could say bad about himself, he says, so the guy can't attack him with it anymore. So I was like, I'm putting my weakest moment out there for everyone to see. What could you do anymore? I'm going to keep sending the picture. I already posted it. I don't care.

But it is quite an important. embarrassing photo. What do you walk around that normally? Now I'm like 213, 214. Usually I was like 225 to 230 but 245 was heavy for me. Very heavy for me. Like anything now above 220 for me

I started to go a little soft. I got to 250 one time. Like it was a goal, right? And I was like in a platoon and we were all trying to be as big as you could be and we're just deadlifting and squatting. and we were trying to get our average platoon weight up above 200 pounds. And you've got some guys in a platoon that are like 158 or something like this, right? So they're going to put on 10 pounds, you know, because they're hard gainers, right?

That's what it's called, right? Hard gainers. So they can only put on 10 pounds, you know? It's like hard for them. So it's on the rest of us to bring it up. So, you know, I was just eating and deadlifting and squatting. And I finally, I was like one or sorry, two like 47 or something. And I went on deployment. And the first place we went on deployment was a place in Spain that had the all you can eat buffet for lunch and dinner.

And I was like, I got this. I got this. So I roll in there like four days. And I'd get to 250. And I was like, oh, cool, 250. Like, I helped out the platoon. We're good. And then I went on a four mile run.

Oh, boy. And I was like, terrible. And I was like, all right, this is game over. Like, I can't do this. This is just not good. It's so odd when I. I went through moments like that too, where I thought I was big and strong.

And then I look at pictures. I'm like, you slob. Like, why did I think I was so muscular? And I was, I was big, but there was so much unhelpiness to that. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know how you were at $2.50. I actually think I just looked like a little bit the same,

just a little bit bigger all around. Yeah. You know? Like, I kind of just, like, gained weight all my own weight. 225. Yeah, you're always a big, strong guy. Some people handle it wear it well. Like I don't I could a lot of people don't think I'm even 215. They think I'm lighter. I think I'm like 190. But I could handle like 225, 2.30.

Get above 2.30. It starts getting a little. Yeah. It's a little mushy. The way I feel above like 230, I start to feel like not good. That's the thing. Like when I travel when I'm heavy, it's hard, man, because all the walking to the airport to travel, the weight matters. You know, it's like wearing a rucking vest, right? Like when you're when you're walking around with a 25 pound vest. Like, you know, that's why so many people, they're like, a lot of my students, like white belts, blue belts, all my knee is bad,

my back is bad, but sometimes it'll be 30, 40, 50 pounds over weight. And like, I say to them like, listen, don't get offended. But the first thing you should do, but the first thing you should do for your knees and your back is take off that 25 pound weight vest. So I'm not wearing a weight vest. No, you are.

You know, like you just don't realize it, you know? And you do feel a lot better when you're lighter, man, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. This, then you roll into BJJ Fanatics, which this is, you know, you tell the story in the book, but like BJJ Fanatics is a website, BJJ Fanatics.com. It's run by a guy named Mike Zenga and Bernardo Faria is a world champion. Like great dudes and they made this website that they had this division of it basically being like the Netflix of Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah.

And they're very fair with the instructors because they're. But basically, if you're a jih Tzu name, you can go on to BJJ Fanatics and make instructional videos about whatever it is that you're good at. You know, you've got some technique that you're good at or some broad strategy that you do or whatever. Whatever's going to help people with Jiu Jitzu, VJJ Fanatics.com. They made this. And you kind of, you know, you tell the story that they're like, hey, you got to come to Boston to film and you're kind of like, dude, why you're going to Boston to film? I'll just send you a video. You're kind of like, this doesn't seem to make much sense, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then a month later, you get your first check. Yeah, that was a changing moment in my life, man. That, like, that gave me the ability to not be stressed every month. You know, yeah, they sent me like a $40,000 check. It was crazy. And the thing is, BJN... What's really crazy about that is, like, just so everyone knows, there's no money in Jiu-Jitsu.

Every championship that we just talked about, you winning, you didn't get paid $1. No. You don't get for nothing. Nothing. Maybe if you win ADCC, you get like 40 grand. That's the champion of the world. Yeah.

That's trials, you get nothing. Like your team thing, you get to master's world. It's nothing. G no Ghi world's nothing. No, you get nothing. You don't get anything from Jiu-Jit-to. So you can have a school and, you know, what is a school? A school, as you just mentioned, a school means you're working 24 hours a day, basically.

And look, we all love to teach, but it's, you're working all the time. And you're going to make money, but you're going to get. get buy it's more like get buy money so to get a check for 40 grand yeah for doing the jih Tzu that you love for a month it's residual too right like like like i haven't made a DVD or an instruction now and probably like two years i i there zang is on my my ass about it i really got to do it he'll be calling you yeah but it's like uh it's still residual income that i get every month right because every month there's new people who are rolling jitsu every month that buy my instructional literally since i made my last instructional i think i made my last instructional i think

I made like 13 or 14. My game has changed so much. I have to make another word. It's quite incredible. It gave Jitsu athletes financial security. The crazy thing is there's well-known guys out there that don't sell well. They just don't sell well, right? So you have to connect with your audience.

So they let anyone film. Whoever wants to film you want to film, you want to film, right? But not everybody makes money. So it's like there's guys who have sold three instructionals maybe to their students. And there's people who have an audience that Bill, like, Gordon has months where he makes 200 grand. You know, and it's just like, the more popular you are, the more people relate to you, the more money you make. So it's really ultimately completely up to you and how you connect with people, right? And it gave jih Tzu guys the opportunity to make money, to be successful, to not just make money, but to make good money to become wealthy.

And actually it forces them to remain disciplined in the social, media aspect, right? Because you have to connect. If you don't connect, you don't sell. And a lot of people hate social media, I get it. And there's a lot of terrible aspects of social media, but there's a lot of incredible aspects of social media. Social media has given a lot of people the opportunity to be very, very successful. I don't know whether there's more positive or more negative aspects of it, but I choose to, you know, look at the positive. Even my Instagram, my Explorer page, it's all stuff that I like to see. It's not like, I mean, sometimes there's some funny stuff that I like to see, right?

But, you know, I choose not to go on the page where if I'm looking to learn from somebody, I want to make sure I can put a face to the name and I want to know what that person has done, you know, and I want to be able to know the inspiration they're giving is coming from a place of experience.

I remember one, there was a pretty popular men's page on Instagram and I talked to the dude. He was 18 years old. And I'm like, brother, you're teaching. men how to be men, you know, like you, he just started shaving. What's going on right now? That reminds me of Gary. I remember one time Gary was teaching, and I had a student that was, he made a few million

a year. He was a very successful guy. And Gary, after the shrews class, like giving a speech to the class about how they're all failures and this and that. I'm like, Gary, brother, keep it to jihitsu, man. You're just a kid. You know what I mean? Relax.

So, you know, as a, you know, as a, you know, as, you know, as, you know, as, you know, At this point, you do more instructionals. You end up getting into the New Jersey martial arts hall of fame. I didn't even know there was one, but you're in it. That's for damn shit. 2016, ADCC, U.S. National Pro Champion, 2016, ADCC North American 99 plus trials champion again. 2017 fight to win, 2018 fight to win champion. You beat Rico Rodriguez in 2017.

2019 um the the kassai pro super fight winner so you got all kinds of all kinds of good stuff going on and then of course uh 20 20 hits i'm gonna go to the book here for 2020 my father getting sick wasn't entirely a surprise to me there were early signs before my own run with co running with covid started in earnest before i was hospitalized i gave my father enough medicine for a small army

Vitamin C, D, supplements, antioxidants, everything I had. Living in the same house, you can try to be careful, but you can only do so much. We knew he could get sick if I got sick. I told him to be safe and be smart. He did neither. Then again, I'm not sure if I was being safe or smart myself, training in a gym every night with hundreds of students. He didn't take anything I gave him. Even after he went from sick to very sick, he was from a different time, a time when you just gutted everything out.

While all his ailments, addictions, and being over 65 on top of that, the disease worked its way through him with very little resistance. Even a medical team working around the clock would have had their work cut out for them. By the time he was admitted to a hospital, he was clinging to life. Just as with me, there would be no visits. After a fast forward a little bit, after about a week, I walked into my mother in the kitchen. She held a phone to her ear and was nodding to a voice on the other side. Tears were in her eyes as she kept nodding to a person that obviously couldn't see her.

I knew as soon as I saw her what she was being told. But she said the two words that confirmed it. How long? The curse of modern medicine is how long it can keep us alive well after we should be. Fifty years ago, my father would have passed away in a week. Now the days ticked on. He spent a week in hospice, then a week and a half, then two years ago. weeks. He was more or less asleep at this time, his waking moments never going beyond a basic

sort of awareness of the room and its occupants. I was told I could finally come and visit the old man. They said he was very close to leaving us, but admitted that he had far outlasted any of their original predictions. If they ever give you the opportunity to say goodbye to a loved one, think carefully about it. Often the last thing you see is the most enduring memory. A human has gone two weeks without food doesn't look like a human anymore. When I entered the room with my father, I thought I had entered the wrong room for a couple of seconds. He was like a skeleton, reduced to the bare minimum of muscle, mass, and body composition.

I remember his chin bone sticking out maybe a full inch from his lips, an odd detail that stuck with me. His eyes were merely rolled to different sides, and he likely hadn't used them for days despite their being opened. Half his hair had fallen out. And his body looks like parts of it were literally missing. He was covered in a large robe, and I thank God, I didn't have to see what his body looked like underneath. I will never forget that image.

I spoke to my father, starting at around 5 in the afternoon. We spoke until the sunset. We spoke into the night. We spoke long after most of the nurses and doctors had gone home for the night, through the shift changes and check-ins. He could only groan and moan, but he often did this in response to things I, said it was clear he was aware and listening at least on some level the only message I wanted to convey was that it was okay for him to let go stop being so stubborn and let this world go I told him that I loved him that we would he would always be my best friend I

forgave him for all the things he ever did to me I said that I would take care of mom and take care of his grandkids and I'll close out the book with this here I I think about the reality that I am with him now on the last night of his life. I may very well see his life slip away in the next hour or even minutes. I have a realization that speaking to my dad is as much for my benefit as his. It fends off the dark thoughts like a torch in the night. All his darkness and all his love have resulted in a strange mixture that was me. It reminded me of oil and water that naturally separate in the bottle.

My father had done terrible things to me, yet he also loved me with all his heart and wanted nothing more than to take back all those things. The oil should have corrupted the water, but somehow they both remained, and I had taken from each of them to become who I am. You showed up, I whispered to him. maybe not every day maybe not for every important moment but you're showing up now for the last few years and we're all grateful

I felt like I saw the slightest twitch in his eyes that's pretty that's pretty much shit but one one thing I didn't put in the book is uh excuse me I had COVID

I didn't know I had COVID my dad was a very very good grandfather to my kids. He loved them and they adored him, but he would nod out. And I knew why he was nodding out. I knew he was doing something besides just the methadone, you know. And then I looked over one day, and I said, Dad, you cannot get high in front of my kids. Like, we just can't have this, you know? And I looked over one day, and he nodded out, and he was sleeping on my daughter. It wasn't like a sleep like where he was just tired. He knotted out. And I got fear.

you know, and I pulled them upstairs. And I didn't know I had COVID. I had a gun and I'm like, it got very emotional. I'm like, is this what you want? And I put the gun in my mouth. And then he's like, no, no, no. And then I put the gun by him. I didn't know I had COVID, right?

And whatever we got over, like our million other fights that we got over. But I was very, very disappointed in him. and he went to apologize to me the next day. Halfway when he was walking in, he literally fell asleep in the middle of the room. Like he was walking and he stopped, and he just knotted out in the middle of the room. And I was like, man, there's no.

I'm fighting a lifetime to make this guy okay, and he'll just never change. So I heard him cough, and I was like, man, I lost it. I was like, you have COVID. I was like, you have COVID. Because I found that I had COVID like two days later. He's like, no, no, no, I'll be okay.

I'll be okay. I got this one my, I was out of the house and my house wasn't built yet. And so I was getting my, my smaller house built next to their house at the time. But I was living in my old room for a few months. And I got really sick. I was going through a lot of stress. and finally I started like vomiting blood and I just wasn't well

and I went to the hospital I had to go to the hospital I forgot everything I lost my memory in the hospital I didn't even know why I was there it was so odd so I never experienced anything like this that's like with COVID I was always like yeah I believe COVID's real there's it seems like there's people on one side

or the other like oh COVID's fake or oh COVID you know you want grandma to die no I believe COVID's real but I never believe we should be shut down right that's just my attitude about it's another thing but by the time I got out of the hospital he was in the hospital you know and my dad's on methadone they didn't give him uh his methadone for the first two or three days which you can't do that you know and he was on 80 milligrams of methadone a day ever since that he was just completely

like nonverbal he was very much able to like look at you and make eye contact with you and I was actually able to go for a little longer than I did. I just didn't have the balls to do it. So finally when I went, yeah, everything I said, like, I saw the fear in his eye, you know, the fear in his eyes. Like, he was afraid. My dad was always afraid of death because he actually did die and get brought back before. And when he died, he told me the one time he's, what he saw, his dream when he died was a bunch of men with like melted faces, just walking around aimlessly. like just moaning. We're nowhere to go, no end to it.

I gather that's hell, whatever you assume hell to be. He told the priest that before, and the priest just told him to pray, pray, pray. Well, I know my father worried, is that, are you going to see that again? But I know for a fact if there's a thing such as heaven or hell. My dad earned his spot. He was in a, I just wanted my father to just,

forget about all the times he's hurt me and just focused on his grandkids and just be happy because he's an amazing Grandparent to my my children and my daughter is still is heartbroken over his loss over his death and I said don't worry like you could go like you know you're suffering now but the suffering is going to be Not that much longer after that to do it on me suffer well, you know, I said you know you lived a certain life and now is your time maybe He was on hospice for 16 days which is a long time on hospice, you know, and I don't believe, like I felt my father's presence heavy after he passed away. And the way he died since I'm the one who gave him COVID, it was very ironic in the sense that I only wanted him to be okay my entire life. And then I'm

the one who actually gave him COVID. And in the way I gave him COVID was through an aggressive argument. So it was just very terrible. It was very, very hard for me to deal with. I carry the weight of that burden. Like my whole life, I just wanted him okay. But then I realized, like, I'm the one who helped to put him out of his misery. The only piece for my father was in death, for sure. And my mother, she would have died, for sure, of a nervous breakdown. She was still working.

You know, she was, you know, much, she was out of shape, overweight, very depressed, anxiety-stricken. I actually chose to go back there rather than get another place because my mom was taking him to the methadone clinic every day before work. So she would drive 30 minutes to the clinic, 30 minutes back home, 40 minutes to work, work all day, get home by 6 at night, be up at 4 in the morning for the next day. So I said, you know, I'll start taking dad. So I started taking him. And, you know, here I am, me, a few years ago, driving my dad back and forth to the methadone clinic. You know, not everything is always what it seems. And I'm pretty known for being pretty transparent.

parent on social media about my past and about my life and my my shortcomings and my struggle mental health and stuff but I felt so bad for you know ultimately killing him you know and people say oh no you didn't kill him well no it's called a spade a spade I did and it is what it is it just is what it is and but in his death he was given peace and I believe life and my mother was given another life She went through a really hard time for like six months to a year. And now my mom is happier than she's ever been. I got her to retire early. You know, I take care of her.

She helps me with my kids. She needs me with the house. Like she lives. It's my home. But she lives there, of course. I live in the smaller section. It's like six feet from each other. I take care of everything.

Just got them. My mom never had Central Air or nothing. I just got her Central Air. I'm able to do a lot of nice things for her. know, and I'm thankful to do that. So sometimes through tragedy, it's tragic at the time, but sometimes we don't always understand why things are the way they are. We don't always, things don't always go the way we want them to go,

but sometimes they go the way we need them to go, you know. So my dad was in my dreams for a long time, you know, I felt him for a long time. And I basically said, like, man, like, I can't have you here, you know, Like, I can't have you in my dreams. I don't want to really think about you. I don't want to really... The only time I'll talk to my dad is when I ask him to help my kids, watch over my kids.

Because I can't live with him and thought. I still have a lot more to do because that paralyzes me. You know, it makes me... It affects my mood. Even now when I'm talking about it, I'm not letting myself get attached to the conversation. I'm talking about it from... I'm cutting my...

out of the equation. I'm almost like I'm talking about a movie that I've seen. I'm not putting myself in the equation because I can't let myself get emotionally invested because when I let myself get emotionally invested, it weighs heavily on me. And when it weighs heavily on me, I'm very me when I'm depressed or feeling bad, it's dangerous, not just for me, but for for other people, you know, like if I get cut off on the road or something, That's something that should never even bother me, something that's just so minimal that could actually really affect me because I'm being emotional. And any time a man has run on his emotion, he's basically an overgrown infant. You know, that's what it comes down. I always tell my students, you cannot be emotional. You have to be strategic. You can't, at the moment you're emotional, you lose everything, you know. And I do get emotional when it came to him.

So, yeah, I haven't, I don't really, like, waste time thinking about him. because I do believe we'll be together again. And life is crazy, man. Like I was laying on my daughter the other day, and it's like one day she's going to go through everything that I went through. You know, and it's just the time I'm here, I just need to make sure I get them ready for, my sole purpose with my kids is I want them happy and I want them healthy,

but I want to get them ready to live where they don't need me. That's it, right? Once I know my kids don't need me, I'm at peace. and that's all I need. I need more time with them to get them ready for the world because the world is cold, the world is brutal, as we know. And they'll never experience the pain that I felt, but at the same time, that's also a scary thing, right?

Because what makes us us, it's our pain. But we don't want our kids to feel that pain. So how do we have our kids? You're doing a good job, right? Obviously, that's success right there. When your child could grow and be successful and be happy, no matter what you do in the world, the matter you, Jocko being Jocko,

if your daughter struggle tremendously, it's very hard to find true peace and happiness. You know? It would be awful. But the fact that you could walk on the mats and train with her and be with her

and she's your best friend and to have that relationship with my daughter, you know, to where she wants to be around me. And a lot of people think I'm that dad that's like hard nose and don't do this. No, I want to know you, Isabelle. I want to know your problems.

I want to know what you're going through. And I want you to understand everything I say to you, it's for you. It's not for me, you know? So I learned a lot. I'm so thankful for my father. I learned a lot about how to be a man, but also how not to be a man through him. You know, so ultimately life is a trip, man.

It's quite insane. But, yeah, and it's, I didn't do the book justice today because the way the book is written, it's actually you, it's at the, the setting of the book. is you and your you're driving your dad to the method of clinic yeah and it's day after day after day and you're you're telling him your life story the parts that he's missing so yeah it would be weird I would have just had to read like the audio book if I was going to do that right so get the book everybody there's so many lessons that we didn't talk about today and then you're still doing all kinds of other stuff buddies over bullies.com or dot org but buddies overbullies.org

how did that get started? Did that get started when somebody sent you like a bullying social media thing? This girl was getting viciously attacked on the bus by some older boys. And I was like, man, like this is just horrendous. So I said if someone find me this girl and they found me her parents or her mom. So I was able to talk to her mom when I got this girl training in a local martial art school. So what it is basically, the 503 is just about to be up and running and set. it happened so fast everything happened so in the beginning it's just like all right kids in my

area who are bullied who can't quite afford jiu-sitsu i give them free training i sponsor them training uh kids around the country or the world if i so i'll post the video hey help me find this this is the beauty of social media right how could i find these kids without social media within six hours of posting these kids i'm able to get in touch with their parents and then i'm able to reach out to them talk to a local school school owner reach out to the school owner reach out to the school or get that kid involved, that that school cannot afford to give that kid six months free training, we'll sponsor that, right? If they can't afford, we're very thankful they're taking on that. I post them, I talk about them, I give them a little bit of limelight, not that they're doing it

for that reason, but they deserve it, right? Because they deserve it because they're inspiring other people to do it. And it's helped so many kids because it's giving them the benefits of martial arts, but not only learning how to defend themselves, it's giving them a community and helping, it's helping them to see like they are loved. There is people who accept them. No matter, like a mother, I don't, there was a video of a little, there's a teenage boy. He, he loves Spider-Man. And a bunch of kids tricked him and said, oh yeah, we're going to we're going to dress up as superheroes. Come to the park, dress a Spider-Man. He came to the park, all excited to dress a Spider-Man and everybody just pointed to laugh and I'm going to

go on and she smashed his face in and broke his nose. Right. Ha-ha, so funny. Like, where do you find a pleasure in this. Like, oh, hurt people, hurt people. I don't understand that. A lot of people say, oh, but you know, you should help the bullies. I'm not there emotionally yet to want to help bullies. I don't like them because I suffered a lot. That never made me want to make other people feel bad. How you could hurt an innocent person is beyond me. My bullying stopped is when I took a rock and I bashed in his ear. That's when it stopped. No amount of talking and begging stopped him. So I talked to the mother the other day, and that kid's doing fantastic now. He's doing his first competition.

It's so great to hear that they're doing so much better, and they have a new community. I just got to say this. That's changing a human being's life. Yes. That's changing a human being's life. Yes, and they're realizing, like, man, the problem is in school. School is such a small part of a child's life, but it's all they know. So if they just realize, like, listen, these idiots in school were bullying you,

you're going to be around them a few years, but there's a whole not. other group of people that love and appreciate you that you have that you could rely on and they're getting that through this organization and it's just an amazing incredible thing you know and and i'm so that is my purpose for sure to help these kids like i found my reason my why is to help these kids you know and it's a it's a beautiful thing man yeah well i i guess i almost get made fun of at some points because when people tell me what kind of problems they're going through in life i'm always like oh you know step one start training jiu jihitsu like someone just asked us a question the other day and he's like and you know you don't need to tell me to train

jiu-jitsu because I'm already training jiu-jitsu but with kids like all the time you know get the kid people ask me kids getting bullied kids getting picked on kid doesn't have confidence kid is overconfident like all those problems that kids have yep train jihitsu train jih Tren jih Tren Jitsu Tren Jitsu train jitsu so the fact that you've taken it upon yourself and this organization to set up to to get kids to train jiu-jitsu is just it's just outstanding and like that one story you just told about that kid that's now training jiu-tizu that's doing his first competition his entire life is on a different trajectory now an infinitely better trajectory completely so doing that over and over again is just going to be it's going to have an impact all over the place and so if people want to

support that buddies over bullies.org that's where they go yeah reach out to me on on instagram you know if you have a problem you know if you know a child was being bullied do your best right attention i'll do my best to get to it. Just bear with me because right now it's only me working for it that is trying to do all that I could do. And there's a lot of other things that I'm juggling as well. And as far as jih Tutsu, even if you're not a jiu-gizu guy or girl listening to this, which you probably are, you got to understand. You know, there's certain instructors out there. Oh, Jiu-tosu is not for everyone. That's crap, man. Jiu-jitsu truly is for everyone. You could be a middle-aged mom. What are you looking for it?

For a goal setting, weight loss, self-defense, competition, friendship. You just, you just, are faced with adversity on the mats in a positive way, right, to where you will become a better husband, a better wife, a better brother, a better sister, a better friend. You're just becoming a better human being overall. And like, here's the thing, when I first started jih Tjitsu, I just wanted to compete, compete, compete. I can't even train hard anymore because I need new shoulders,

but I find a new love in teaching. You know, your goals change as you grow, right? So you will find, you know, your niche in your, Jitsu and why, is it called niche or niche? Niche. Niche. And that's the first time I've ever said niche the correct way. Well, we got it documented here big time.

For a long time, the funny thing is, one thing I was saying for a long time, I was saying, you know, you do this, it's going to come into fruitation instead of fruition, right? And I was sending my students for like six months, and none of my students have the balls to tell the professor. It's not fruitation, it's fruition. Yeah, so here we go. What you just said about, like, you just do for everybody? and like with with with with with family your family should do jih Tudu look I'm gonna say it like you you met you just met one of my daughters I got four kids all my kids do Jiu Jitsu or wrestle or train they all do it my wife trains like she doesn't train much anymore she had four kids she was pretty busy but she trained hardcore back back in the day I mean and guess what when like when we talk we can talk about Jiu Jitsu it's a common It's a commonality.

It's a thing in the family of like, how was your training? Did you train today? What did you train? What did you learn? What did you work on? What about this move? And by the way, when like I send a meme to my family about like, oh, you know, oh, you don't want to date this guy.

We just saw him pull guard or whatever. Like the whole family gets it, right? There's a common theme there. So, yeah, and you can talk about it and you can do it. You can train. And there's so many different aspects of it. Like one of my good. friends now, we developed a relationship. He went to one of my affiliates. He thought it was my

school and it was my affiliate in Kentucky, Tom Hardy. And the crazy thing is my best friend who was, you know, he wrote him, he was in a one percenter. He just died. Tom Hardy was filming the film, the bike riders was about the first one percenters. It was so crazy, the coincidence. But he's obsessed with jih Tijuana, obsessed with jih Tijuana. He finds so many parallels between jih Tijuana. in life, jih Tijuana and acting. And it's like when you can get people that are very successful in their own right, being obsessed with jih Tzu and they feel that it could help them become a better person, how could anyone say that it can't help them, right?

There's so many aspects to it, man, that just make you a better human. There really is. And you just have to understand, like, there's two things. Some people say you could have no ego. But at the same time, your ego could also help you. If your ego could help you get back to class the next day. after you have a tough day. Your ego can't help you from not,

you don't want it to make you get your arm broke, right? You got to understand. In training, there's no winning or losing in training. There's just learning in training. But for me, one of the reasons I continue to show up in the match every day is my ego. I refuse to not show up because I know there's other people that are showing up. My ego gets me there. You got to stay on that bus.

You got to stay on that bus. Man, the bus is moving. If you get on the bus, bro, it's going down the bus. You always going to bring us up when you were mentioned a social. media and like there's good aspects and there's bad aspects and somebody asked me a question about this as a matter of fact at the camp somebody asked me about like what about with social media is it good or bad and I said it's like fire right fire can heat your house it's good they can burn it down social media you can connect you can help bullies you can save people you connect with people

or you can freaking waste your life um same thing with ego like yeah can your ego be out of control and now your ego can be so big that you don't get on the mat yeah or your ego can be so big that you get your arm broken for no reason. So you don't want to go to that extreme. Your ego can also be so small that you don't have the confidence to go on the mat. Correct. So everything.

It's a happy medium. Yeah, you got to find that balance. You recently came out of retirement. I think it was this weekend. You came out of retirement, had another fight, right? Man, that was incredible. Freaking cool. That was one of coolest things I've seen, man.

I saw that on the internet as well. It was a man with Down syndrome. And he has Alzheimer's, okay? And he was talking to his sister. He said, Jessica, why did Jesus make me this way? She says, what do you mean? She said, why did he make me in school? Everyone will call me retarded.

And she's like, I know, but she's like, Markey, that was years ago. It goes, yeah, but I still remember it. And I just wanted to be a wrestler. But why did he have to make me this way? And I was like, oh, it broke my heart. And I was like, you know what I'm not a WWA wrestler, but I am a jitsu guy. So let's give this guy a match, you know? The funny thing is leading up into this match,

I'm looking at his videos and he's like chest slapping and punching and I told his sister like listen you know this is a grappling match right like I'm not going to get hit with a chair over my head so we went into the match finally he prepared and you did it you did it at a big event

yeah men of war it's on a stage it's a really great event it's a local event excuse me sorry and I reach out to them I say guys I want to give you this opportunity to host this because it's going to bring a lot of eyes to your arena as well. And he trained for like two months with Black Hole Connecticut. And they did their best to

help him get ready. And we did the face off. And apparently all he was talking about was winning that belt. And they had a belt. They got a belt prepare for him. So we went in the match. He took me down on a single. I stood back up. I wanted him to work for it, you know. But, man, he danced out to the ring. And he was ready. When he finally taught me, I looked up and his face was just, he just stared at me. And I was like, oh, this isn't going the way I expected it to go. Like, he's not excited. And then immediately he just put his hands over his face and started crying.

And I started crying. And the problem was, I didn't think I could stop it. And I was like, God, get it together right now. And like, literally, this was the best night of this dude's life. And it took minimal effort. All we had to do was post about it and then show up and given the opportunity to do it. You know? And it was just so incredible.

And that's the power of social media. It made me connect with him. This dude was a superstar. I've never been so happy to lose in my life. You know, it was incredible. Yeah, that was amazing to watch, to see you pull that off. And so then you also got, obviously you got Ocean County, BJJ. That's your headquarters academy.

But then you have this affiliate program where people, what is it? If I was one of your affiliates, what would I get out of that? So basically, you get to talk to me. I'm talking in the group chat. We have a big group chat that I'm in every single day. Anything you need, you can reach out to me. I get back to you immediately. I don't force you to wear my geese.

I don't force you to wear my uniforms, but you can include my logo. You can use it. I don't force you to... One of the beauties of opening your own jitza school is doing it to what you want to do it, right? So I don't force you to teach a certain curriculum, but I do allow you to come to my academy, see how we do things, ask how to do things, and you can do things the same exact way as I I basically, I give you the choice. You could use my logos.

You could use my name. You could reach out to any of us and take what you want. And if you just want to say you're part of the association and really not use what we're using, okay, you could do that as well. I do recommend that you try to take as much knowledge as you can. I don't give you a set curriculum because what I charge a month is so cheap if I were to just give you my entire curriculum. There's a few things wrong with that. Number one, you're not thinking for yourself. I want you to be a critical thinker.

I want you to be your own person, your own school owner. Number two, if I was to do that, I would have to charge significantly a lot more money. I charge my affiliates $2.50 a month. But I have some affiliates, like one, in Philippines, it's a charity affiliate. They don't pay at all. I have another guy in South Africa.

He's not paying yet because I don't have enough students yet. Like I never had an affiliation to make money. Money is always a consequence, I feel, of doing the right thing. We do have a lot of affiliates now, like 63 to 65, and every single person who's in that affiliation could tell you, like, I am at their becking call when they need me. I had one guy, I love him to death. He was messaged me privately every day, and I said, brother, do me a favor.

I said, let's keep it in the affiliate chat, right? Because any question that you have, I'm sure everybody also has, right? So it's hard for me to speak to every single person individually, unless it's, like, a huge problem. I'll definitely make time for them. but I am in the group chat, sharing things, showing things, answering any questions, they have any technical questions, for sure, do it, and they're always able to come to my academy and visit.

And we have a lot of my affiliations, my affiliates, and also, any of their students come to my academy and train for no mat fee, as much as they want. How do you vet the people that are going to be affiliates? That's a good question. So I basically talk to them. I want to know what they're, there's a series of questions that they got to answer. What is their reason for?

for jihitsu, what lineage do they come from? What happened with your previous lineage? Are you in trouble before? I do got to start doing background checks for sure. I haven't yet. I've taken their work and I haven't had any issues. But there has been some people that I've turned away that when they tried to come to me,

they had a lot of negative things to say about their previous affiliation. And I didn't think that it was solely the affiliation's fault. I think usually there's three ways. three sides of every story. And if the person can't see their issue at all, most likely history will repeat itself with me. You know, you can't please everyone.

So there's been some people I said, hey, you know, I don't think so. There have been some blue belts that wanted to open under me. I said, nah, you know, not a blue belt yet. Let's get your purple belt. And then you could kind of like get your foot in the door. Preferably, I'd want you to be a higher belt,

of course, black belt, preferably. Or, you know, a brown belt. I have some brown belts around their way to a black belt. but I'm pretty caught and dry like if you put the time in once you're part of my affiliation if you show up and I see you in my school and you've been training

for you know if you're four years as a brown belt you're gonna get your black belt right like if you're five years like I have a guy that I'm gonna be promoting to brown belt soon he's in my affiliation he's been with me for over a year trained in me like 10 times

visited me already and he's been in purple for six years so he's gonna get his brown belt very very soon so I'm like I don't have any contract with BJJ for that addicts. It was just a handshake. Nothing was ever written. So I'm that kind of guy still. Maybe I need

to get out of that. Danielle's the one who made the contracts for my affiliations. I never had them. I don't believe, like, I don't know, like, if you tell me you're going to do something, I want to take your word, you're going to do it, you know, but also at the same time as a different day and age, you know, so I do feel I have a pretty good judge of character when I talk to people. So I do, I have direct contact with every single person who wants to be an affiliate. I have to talk to them. I have to hear them. I have to know what they and what I do is I have them

download WhatsApp because a lot of times on the phone if you say something people forget you say it. I want everything a record of everything. Everything you say, you said this at this time then. I said this then. Don't tell me I didn't say it. I already told you. I learned that lesson a long time ago. So it's

growing significantly all the time. Yeah. So if people want to get to that, it's tomdablast.com and you can get all this stuff. And you do seminars. You got the book, obviously. What else? Does that get us up to speed

with what we got going on? I announced for the Tom De Blast World. I announced for one FC. I announced a grappling matches. Oh, that's right. That's right. Speaking to Danielle Kelly, I was listening to you announced

her freaking awesome win. That was a great win, man. She played the role so well. Oh, yeah. That's what people on. I talked to Jessica before the match and she's like, I was like, did you start working the cage yet?

She's like, I'll do it closer to the match. And it was two weeks away from the competition. What do you mean closer to them? I should have been doing this for two months already. Yeah. But, yeah, Danielle plays that rules out really, really well. Man, Danielle, I think it was the match before,

the girl was trying to do the can opener to her. And Danielle just, like, starts working. She sees her hips start to move. Her hips start to move. And next thing, you know, she freaking goes to the girl's back. And I was like, hell yeah, Danielle Kelly gets on. She's freaking outstanding. So you're doing that.

What else? Anything else we need to know about? No, I think that's it, you know? If you guys need me, find me. You could actually just email me at Tom DeBlass at Gmail if you were interested in the affiliation. Just put affiliation in capital letters. My name at Gmail, easy enough.

And yeah, that's it, man. I really appreciate you having me here. Yeah, man. I mean, just so everyone knows you're on the interwebs, Ocean County, BJJ.com is your school. Tomdeblast.com leads to a bunch of this stuff. Buddies over bullies.org. I think this is a freaking outside.

standing organization. You're on Instagram, and you're on Instagram too. You don't post and ghost, bro. You post and get in there, you're ready to scrap, bro. You're ready to get in the game with Tom DeBlass.

Everything I said about like their, no, don't read the comments. Tom DeBlass be reading the comments. And I calm down significantly after the pandemic. I was like heavily. People say their shadow band. No, no, no. You couldn't even search my name for nine months, right?

Like you couldn't find me for nine months. I went to like, you know, like 10 million reach a month to like 20,000, right? Because I was going hard at people, bro. And now I don't do that anymore. I can't, you know, I can't. Because, you know what is? People, a perfect example. Somebody said something to me, like, during the pandemic, like, I hope your kids get COVID and die.

Right. And I went hard on this person. The person deleted their comment and screenshot at what I wrote. They posted on the Internet. Like, I just went at him for no reason, for no reason. Oh, this is the true Tom the blast. Come on, bro. So, you know, you can't get people.

Did you threaten their lives? What did you do? I've gotten people's IP addresses. Oh, you're going that more than the face. I've dached people before. I've done crazy stuff. But I didn't realize it, but one guy was ripping my DVDs. He was pirating my DVDs, and this is a few years ago.

So I found out, I got guys that could, like, to find crazy stuff, like some of my friends. and I posted like his full name. I'm like if you're going to steal from me, people should know who you are. Yeah, I mean, and there was, that was looked so down upon that I doxed him.

I didn't know anything about that, but so many people were offended. I'm like, he's stealing for me, but I'm wrong for doxing him. Echo, what's your judgment? Like, okay, if somebody steals from you, so this guy stole from Tom, and he docks him.

So what is docks exactly? Oh, I thought you were like a pro on this. That's when you say on this, the internet like hey there's this person's name and address oh yeah yeah because they stole from that's doxing and it's it's really like a big deal in the world yeah and what's weird about it it's a big deal because it's taking the virtual world and bringing it in reality it makes the whole everybody that's a shit talker on the gram or wherever else it's like they're they that's like a huge violation it'd be like if we're doing jiu jit-to and i start

punching you right yeah it's like that type of thing but here's the thing what did that person do that they're getting punched now, right? Like it's like... There has to be consequence. Yeah. Yeah, I guess, right? For stealing from you, and then I guess there's a bunch of levels of stealing, right?

So they pirated your stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the way I see it, yeah, if you steal from someone and they docks you, hey, that's the way the world's right. What do you want better? Would you rather me go to your house and drag you out or just me, write your, you know, docs you?

Now, here's the thing. I always, I'm known for all the time. I get my school address. Like now when people talk trash, I'm just like three, three six lace. Oh, yeah, I've seen you do this a bunch of times. I was going to bring that up. We were talking about the comments. Someone will be like, I'll beat your ass.

You're like, here's my address. Send location. Let's do it. Let's do it. You know, and I always say now, I'm very calm. Like, listen, if you want to come and talk, we could talk. If you want to come and fight, we could fight. Whatever you want to do, we could do.

You know, and it's just, you can't win with these people. So I don't docks people anymore. I really don't get into it anymore. I don't look, I don't even look for the IP addresses anymore. made through the frisbee with my my dead dad i'd let him go for now so there you are you're on instagram you're you have twitter i i i don't post on twitter i i don't post on twitter i there's like somebody who has my name on twitter but it's not okay i'm on threads that instagram yeah yeah and you're at tom to blast jiu jitsu as well um on youtube so you got a little youtube channel

yeah i don't post there either best thing is instagram and threads i'll check threads every once from Instagram I'm always on always so that's where Tom de Blas is at echo Charles you got any questions um is it a question yeah oh okay yeah it's a question so the i found out why you get so mad at the people on the internet and i'm on that i'm gonna ask you tell me if you think this is accurate so wait wait you have a hypothesis because you just said i found out why as it yeah exactly yeah yes correction my hypothesis tell me what you think about this Instagram crowd is just the Instagram crowd. And there's varying levels of behavior.

So some people are just some people, they'll just be like, hey, anything Tom posted, I just love it. Everything, I don't care. I don't even know if I agree with. I never thought about that, but I love it. Yep, Tom, hell yeah, like, like, like, love, right? Then there's people on the other side, no matter what, no matter what you post, it's, I don't know, something negative.

It's always going to be negative. I don't like, yeah, exactly right. If you truly believe like, oh, okay, there are people. like this or people like this and everywhere in between if I don't know them personally it doesn't matter it's actually just internet characters if you truly believe that it's hard to get bothered by it that seems my hypothesis is you've created this in order for you not to get annoyed with these human beings and I like it I do like it yeah no oh that's that's that's your response to my my hypothesis

yeah I will I will definitely do the same thing similar to oh it's a bot like it's a boy who cares like this is just so you got it you really got to look at Because there's no rhyme or reason. In a way, it is that. It's not an actual bot like a computer bot, but in a way it is. You don't know each other. Yeah. It's not like they're in no position to have an opinion about you on a personal level

and you're in no position to evaluate that opinion. And I don't know each other. And I think one of the biggest problems that I've always had with everybody is like when I see somebody have a problem with everybody. You have millions of fathers. When I see people with extreme talent, like talent is very common, right? that don't utilize that talent that drives me insane. And but, you know, I got to remember, like, you know, people will tell me, like,

listen, not everybody's going to have the same work ethic. But for me, it's like, how could you not have a certain code that you live by? How could you not, like, want to be the best dude that you can be? How can you not see common sense? And perhaps that's a little bit of narcissism on my end to think that everybody should believe like me because they shouldn't. But it's for me, it's like, all right, if you're a man and you're on the internet talking trash to somebody you don't know, you're definitely not at a high level in your life in any aspect. And don't you want to be?

Don't you want to be? You know, if you're a kid with talent and you're not mad at them. You're disappointed at them. Yeah. Like, I actually know them. I don't know these people. Right. You know, it's like, you know, people who run from problems, people who start problems behind a fake name.

it's hard for me to respect to certain kind of individuals. I was talking my students about this the other day. Two of my students went through the same exact thing. Same exact thing. They messed up heavily. They messed up big time. And they got torn into.

And one of the students ran because they didn't want to face their problems. And the other student raised up and became better. Which one are you going to be? It's very easy to run, run. But if you keep running from all your problems, eventually you're going to find

you're going to be very lonely in a box with nothing around you because life is about making mistakes. You're going to fail and you're going to succeed. You're going to fail. You're going to get knocked down. Are you going to get up? Or what are you going to do?

You're going to run? You know what I mean? So it's hard for me to respect people who constantly never want to admit their faults, never want to admit that they're wrong and just, and I don't like people who don't like me. You're a good man. Thank you, brother.

I appreciate you. Tom, any closing thoughts, bro? I really appreciate you guys for, having me out here thank you I love all that you do means a lot to me I said for a while jaco is the real deal not that he needs anyone to tell him that but I don't respect I respect everyone but I don't I don't know the proper word admire many people definitely admire you man it's very hard to live like you live it's very hard to keep up the discipline that you keep up and you know I hope everybody understands it listen I I make mistakes I know that love me or

me just know my intentions are they're pure so if I could ever help you in any way I hope I hope I do all right so thank you everybody for tuning in check out my sponsor pit bull USA great people check out my school listen to the Jocko podcast buy it the the the malt shake is quite delicious I'm not if I could drink this just as a snack oh believe me you're not the only one in this room that drinks out as a snack right there incredible a good snack to have indeed man well thanks for joining us I'm sorry it took a while to make all this happen, but actually it's taken a lot longer for some other people.

So I'm glad we finally got it set up. And thanks for sharing what you've been through, your experiences on and off the mat, the lessons that you've learned. And really, what you're doing right now, you don't want to talk about making an impact. Like I said, you've already made an impact on one kid. You've changed a trajectory of their life.

And you're going to do that over and over again. I know there's many more on the list already. So thanks for what you're doing to help kids of all ages, And I mean of all ages, that's two to, two to, just 82. Help them overcome what they're facing, getting bullied, getting abused. You're making a difference. And we're grateful. So thank you.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. And with that, Tom de Blas has left the building for now. We're about to go do a seminar with Tom DeVlas here in a little bit. So that's awesome. Obviously, jiu-jitsu, man, what a huge piece of his life. But you know that that story that he told about the kid that got picked on and You know I follow Tom on Instagram so I kind of see this stuff as is happening

Yeah, but I didn't know the follow-up like the kid that dressed up like Spider-Man got made fun of and all this stuff He's doing his first jih T tournament. Yeah You and I both know what it takes to do a Jiu-jitsu tournament Yeah Like if you're a 15 year old or a 13 year old or a 10 year old or a 48 year old and you're going to do a A jujitsu tournament. That is such a huge step in your life. Yep.

It's going to, you're going to overcome so much. You're going to, it's just going to be a life-changing experience. Yeah. It's going to make you so much better. And here's a kid that was not on that path that's now on that jujitsu path. It's true. Like you, to do, to decide to do a tournament is like you have to kind of embrace jujitsu in a way that, you know, that it's going to take some mental strength. I'm not saying, is it the hardest thing in the world?

No, but I'm just saying, like, there's a difference between someone saying, oh, yeah, I'll just do a jiu-jitsu class and that's sort of it. Yeah. Versus someone who's like, embraces jiu-tuce two, and be like, no, I want to go into a competition. There's two different things. The implied thing that I didn't say is like, this is a person that's been bullied. Yep. That may, that's what I should. Like, for a person, look, for a normal person to go do a jitzy tournament is a step up.

It's out their comfort zone. it's like they're face to face with someone. They're going to win or lose in front of people. There's a lot going on there. But now you have someone that's been bullied. And they made that whole transition. They made that whole transition. And now they're going to compete.

Like this is a life-changing thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true, huh? Because, you know, on one hand or at one point, it's like, I'm being kind of the receiving end of this, you know, this hostility and all this stuff in a really a position of inferiority and on the receiving end and then yeah to make the transition all the way down to the fact I'm choosing now to go compete yeah now I'm superior now oh and actually no I have to basically

put my myself on the stage to prove whether or not I'm superior you know the spirit of competition of course but just to have that mindset now bro that's a that's a full 180 right there full 180 speaking to 180s deaf reset so we got this thing we did it last year it's like the year's type thing hey it's a new year and you know I've always said like hey dude don't wait till new years like start now but we did this thing last year it was kind of low profile um so it's basically like here's the things that you're going to do you're going to do 100 burpees or 100 burpees or 10 minutes worth you're going to eat clean you're going to make a list of which is we're going to follow a protocol right you're going to get on the path you're going to kind of mandate that you're

going to get on the path discipline equals freedom reset that's we so we did it last year I kind of you know, cool. I was like stoked, but this is kind of how I, this is sort of a normal life for me. Yeah. But it had such a huge impact on so many people when we did it last year. Like people made life changes.

Like these kind of life changes. Yeah. And so this year we are going like trying to get, trying to get it out there. Um, we also got, we made it better. So we got,

Jason Kalipa, he laid out a bunch of, uh, workouts. Yeah. So we got like health and fitness daily workouts from Jason Kalippa. We got leadership stuff coming from Ashlam Front. We got discipline directives coming from me.

We got, you know, it's obviously fueled by Jocko fuel. But it's coming. I'm going to do a warning order. So the military warning order is like, here's the mission. Here's what you're going to be doing. Here's what you need to prepare. Yeah. So I got that coming and let people know about that death reset where we are going to get the world on the path.

That's what we're doing. So stand by for some of that. JoccoFuel. JoccoFuel.com. Check out joccofuel.com to get some good clean stuff in your life to put in your body. That's what we're doing. We're making the cleanest and best possible supplements that we can make. We got everything from a beverage that you can drink that will give you energy.

Now look, some people call that an energy drink, but I don't want you to think of something with 400 milligrams of caffeine. I don't want you to think of something with sucralose. and other artificial sweeteners that are bad for you. I don't want you to think of something with a bunch of chemical preservatives that are bad for you. I don't want you to think about any of that

because none of that's in there. It's good, clean energy. Mulk, you just heard, you just heard Tom talking about that mulk. He's like, maybe I'll have this as dessert. Exactly. Yes, you will. I'm about to have one for dessert.

So, jocco fuel, hydration, greens, get the greens. And you know what else? Get the creatine. Oh, yeah. Just get on the, Crea train. Right?

Sure. The Creetrain. Get on the Crea train. Daily. Get your daily dose of creatine. It'll help. It's going to do all that for you. So, Joccofuel.com, check it out.

Also, you can get it in stores. You know, you go wah-wa, vitamin shop, GNC, military commissaries, Afees, Hanifer, dash stores, Wake Fern, shop right, H-E-B down in Tejas is getting it on. Meyer up in the Midwest is getting it on. Harris-Teter, Lifetime Fitness,

Shields. And look, if you're Belong to a gym. Tell your gym owner that you want to have a Jocko fuel there so you can take what you got from the gym and enhance it with your fuel. Have them email J.F. Sales at joccofuel.com. There you go. That's what we're doing. Also, we got origin USA.

We make stuff in America. Look, apparently we're training Jiu-Jitsu. Yes. Highly recommend. It's beyond highly recommended. What's next step beyond highly recommended? Mandated? Demandated.

Demandated. Man mandated. Look, I don't believe in mandates. Yeah. I don't believe in imposing my way on your way. What about insisting? Respectfully insisting. Here's the thing.

In the Navy, there's a whole like hierarchy of words. Yeah. And one of the, if someone's recommending, like, let's say you put in for an officer package and I think you're okay. Yeah. I would write like, I recommend echo for this program. That means don't, don't take him. Would recommend.

Yeah. And then it's like, The next one up is I strongly recommend. And people are still, you know, he's an okay. And then it's like, I give the strongest recommendation. And the highest thing that I knew of was I give my strongest possible personal recommendation. Sweet. So I'm going to give my strongest possible personal recommendation that you start training

Jiu-Jitsu out there, people. I understand. And when you start training Jiu-Jitsu, you're going to need a rash guard. You're going to need a ghee. So go to OriginUSA.com and get yourself your Gigi-2 stuff that's made in America. That's what we're doing. We're making it in America. It's not made in a sweatshop by slave labor.

It's not made by a 12-year-old that's making a dollar a week to breathe in chemicals. And the chemicals that they don't breathe in and ingest themselves are getting dumped into the ocean. That's not what we're doing. Made in America. OriginUSA.com. Get your gear there. Hunt gear. Delta jeans.

Boots. T-shirts. Joggers. I didn't really understand the jogger thing that's a thing though okay yeah people be wearing the joggers they do we make some like I don't know what to call them sweatpants yeah does there a difference between sweatpants and joggers yeah what's the difference the fit the cut the cut of sweatpants is bagger year yeah more tradition more traditional cut you know joggers is like we have something that's more towards sweatpants feel more a little bit more like rocky belboa yeah yeah yeah I could see that

Rocky Bell Bo is definitely. We also have joggers. Yeah. So. For the joggers. OriginUSA.com, get what you need there. True. Also, Jocco store.

Discipline equals freedom. Shirts. We're representing on this path that we're all on or about to get back on whatever your past scenario may be. You want to represent. Just go to jocco store.com. Choose what you want. Boom.

Get something. Also, what's available on Jocco store if you don't know. It's called the shirt locker. New design. Shirts. T-shirts. New design every month. People seem to like them.

They're a little bit more outside the, I paint outside the line. A little bit on them every once in a while But people seem like them's a new design every month like I said subscription scenario anyway it's on Jocko store It's called the shirt locker sign up for that if you want check it out. That's what it's called check it out It's true if you need some steak to go with your mulk which you probably do go to primal beef.com or go to Colorado Craftbeef.com Get yourself some good stakes from some good people That's what we're doing check them out also subscribe to the podcast

Check out Jocco unraveling. Check out the grounded podcast. Check out Jocko Underground.com. I just said grounded podcast. We haven't done that in like five years. I think that one's on hiatus. It's on a long hiatus. We'll have to watch out for that one.

Jocker underground.com. We did just cut one of those. What was that yesterday? Or it did before you. Just came out. So check that out as well. It's $8.18 a month. If you can afford it, it's no big deal.

Email assistance at jocco underground.com so we can bring you into the underground world where we have control. Just watch out. YouTube, check out our YouTube, check out psychological warfare, flipside canvas. Check out a bunch of books. Obviously, how you bear it by Tom DeBlass. And then I've written a bunch of books. So check those out as well.

Including the kids book, Way of the Warrior kid. Get some kids around. Get the kid in your neighborhood on the path. That's another thing. Like that kid training jiu-jitsu for the first time and going to compete, that's a life changer. I've had countless. People tell me that the warrior kid books change the trajectory of a kid's life.

So get those books for your kids. Also, Aschlam Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to ashlamfront.com for details. We also have an online training platform to learn about life. To learn about life. Leadership in life. That's what life is.

You lead yourself. You lead your team, you lead your family, you lead your friends. Life is leadership. And it is a skill that you can learn. Just like jujitsu is a skill that you can learn. And just like you have a huge advantage, an almost unmatchable advantage on the mats, if you know jujitsu and someone else doesn't, it's the same thing when you have skills, life skills, leadership skills.

Go to extreme ownership.com. Train and study. So you are prepared for the mats of life. That's what I'm asking. Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, go check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved. Go to America's Mighty Warriors.org.

Don't forget about Micah Fink. He's got Heroes and Horses.org. Jimmy May has got beyond the brotherhood.org. And of course, you heard about it today. Tom DeBlast has buddies over bullies.org. Check that out. and let's help kids get on a path in life that is going to help them for eternity.

That's what we're doing. If you want to connect with us on the interwebs, Tom is there, Ocean County, BJJ.com, tomdeblast.com, buddies over bullies.org. He's on the gram, primarily, and he will engage. So just stand by. That's at Tom de Blas. And then Echo is at Echo Charles.

I am at Jack. Jocka Willink. Just be careful because the algorithm is training right now. It's like in, it's in training. It's learning. Like, it's watching you and it's learning how it can beat you. So you got to be on guard. Otherwise, it might take you down and choke you out.

You don't want that. And thanks to those of you in uniform right now around the world, these are tenuous times. And you all stand on the front lines ready to defend freedom and our way of life. And we are thankful for it. Same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders. Thank you for defending us and keeping us safe here at home.

And everyone else out there, you're not going to have an easy path. You're not going to get it. That is the nature of the world and that's the nature of life. You will suffer. You will fall short. You will make mistakes. But if you get back up, if you regroup, recalibrate, and re-engage. If you keep fighting in the end, if you bear failures and defeat with courage and tenacity in the end, you will win.

So get back up, dust off, and go get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.