The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 28, An Ill Word Shall Not Be Spoken of Bloodsport

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Seanbaby and Brockway invite the wonderful Maggie Mae Fish to the kumite of podcasts in order to discuss Bloodsport in positive terms only. If you're looking for film criticism here, you'll only find a blindfolded full-splits Dim Mak to the crotch.

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred hot dog. Out of podcast slams with maximum hype. Say hot dog podcast word. Yeah. When you taste that nitrate power. You're in the dog zone for an hour. Come on.

You know the number. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero zero. Yeah.

Nine thousand. Welcome to the dog zone. Nine thousand. Home of one nine hundred hot dogs. Us. I'm TV Sean baby from the internet. And I'm known for my excellent podcast introductions. But today my notes got corrupted and everything is out of order.

So if some of this might not be quite right. So just ignore everything before your name. And we'll fix it all in post. Okay. Joining me today. She's a sexy queer icon known for her insightful video essays. Kirk Cameron's mortal enemy. Bobby the barbarian Brockway.

I'm Bobby the barbarian Brockway. And here's a Brockway fact. I once got chased out of a park for fighting a swan. No follow up questions. Oh, I had so many questions about that. No follow up questions. Also joining us. He's a whiskey drenched word puncher on a chopper cruiser with more

mustache than one beard can handle. Maggie may may ham fish. Oh, hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much. It's so good to have you on the show. Oh, thank you.

No, I was going to say thank you for inviting me. This was such a treat. I felt really honored and privileged. Thought to share this with me. Yes. Well, have you seen Bloodsport before we mentioned it? No, I had not seen it. I had not heard of it.

That's magical. Wow. Magical. Yes, I feel very similarly what I found out about Highlander, which really blew me out of nowhere. You know, only about a few years ago. Highlander will do that. Yes.

Highlander, he'll blow you right out of nowhere. He'll blow you out of nowhere. But very similar experience, which is very special. That's hard to recreate. It is like no bullshit, one of my favorite movies. It's usually my top three. I love it ironically, but completely sincerely. Every time I rewatch it, I'm like, I can't believe this still holds up

because it is like, I think I was 12 when this came out, and it was so important to me and I'm so nostalgic for it. But now I watch it and I'm like, wait, no, this is the perfect structured martial arts movie. These fights are awesome. The only thing Donald Trump got right. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's true. I remember reading that. It's his favorite movie. It's his favorite movie. There's a lot to like. I know. I can't believe it for that. And I too partake in, you know, Diet Coke every so often.

So if those are the two things that I have in common with Donald Trump. And I just, I think about Van Damme while I do it. Every Diet Coke I have, I just reflect on what he's up to. I'm also a brash idiot. So that for me, like it's just, this is it. This is the guy. But so Maggie, could you describe Bloodsport? Do you think in 15 seconds, do you think that would be possible?

Oh boy, absolutely. It could. Okay. So we have our star Jean Claude Van Damme. Hard name to say. Right. Let's say you pronounce it. Okay, great.

So, you know, he's in the military and he's like, no, actually I want to go off to Hong Kong and I want to compete in an underground martial arts arena. And the military is like, you can't do that. And he's like, suck it. And he does it. And young force Whitaker is mad about him. But, you know, in the end, he, he sticks it to America.

The end. Yeah. In your face, America. That's great. Yeah. That hits all the, all the key points. Rod strokes. I think what was fascinating to me about this movie is that sort of the,

the main plot of it is that no one knows about the kumite, but they show at the beginning, everybody knows about the kumite. Everybody. Absolutely. Like they find guys in bars that just know about the kumite. The reporter is like writing a story about like, this is the worst secret in any movie. Yeah.

I will say, like, if it's, you know, if it's a smaller town, that tracks because every, you know, secret in a smaller area. The secret gets out. Because when, when Donald Gibb is training Ray Jackson, who's of course Ogre from Avenger the Nerds, Donald Gibb, he was in like a one heavy bag fitness center and some dude comes up to him. He's like, whoa, you're really going to Hong Kong? I heard people get killed at that thing.

And like that's the level of like penetration it has had in the culture. I mean, he had to get an invite. How does that guy get an invite unless he just like hears about it at a bar, getting drunk and thrown out of some hillbilly bar? Yeah, he's already been there at least once. Hey, take this fight to the kumite, man. The what? The what?

The what? You don't know about the kumite? And so yes, the other main plot that sort of ties it all together is that he's not supposed to be there, but I'm not even sure if I recognize this in one of my other 250 viewings, but he's like it's like an unofficial rule that he's not allowed to go. Like he gets called to his CEO's office and they're like, hey, we heard on your furlough. You're going to go to Hong Kong to have a fight and we don't want you to do that because. We hate that.

Yes, we're so bad. You're so valuable that we don't want you to like, you know, turn an ankle in a fucking karate tournament. Nobody could possibly replace you, Frank Dukes. Right. So, so that's what I love is that these guys being sent halfway around the world to pursue him are just there because like somebody didn't feel like him going. Unless there's a very strict rule, which again, if everybody knows about the kumite, you'd think the military would have a rule against it.

Right. Like, yeah, it'd be written down somewhere, not just pull out of nowhere. Kind of a don't ask, don't tell situation, but with kumite. With kumite, yeah. Right. Yeah. And maybe the other, he kind of gives off a few. No, just kumite.

Okay. But it does end with him telling Ray Jackson, I love you and then them almost crying. Fight brothers. And the woman he's sleep having casual sex with is not in the picture. Just like go over to the other side of the room. We're having our moment. It's this might be one of those 80s action movies where it's actually a love story between two men.

I don't know, man. I loved every single one of my fight brothers and I am not ashamed to say it. Yeah. In a platonic way. I'm so glad I could introduce Bloodsport to you. It's kind of one of my favorite things. It's one of those things that it feels like everyone's seen, but when someone hasn't, you're like, oh, you're such a treat.

You're about to understand every movie. Every movie. I was going to ask, what about it stay like, what about it as a child stuck with you? And what is it about it that sticks with you? I don't think I'll ever forget this film and through a child. Okay. I love martial arts as a kid. And this movie had every martial art.

In fact, like they were so ill defined and a lot of these guys that it just felt like exotic. Like that guy has like a strange, like jungle style martial art. Children. Yeah. And I was like, that's not the way that the way that activated my childhood imagination was just like every country must have their own martial arts. And like, boom.

And then this movie like has that, but also what a perfectly structured like martial arts movie. Like it's just a simple tournament structure. I mentioned this on a different episode because so many movies make like Street Fighter or Bloodsport or whatever, or Mortal Kombat, like a film about a tournament and they don't do Bloodsport. Like they kind of do these other weird things and I'm like, no, Bloodsport did it exactly perfectly right.

And pretty much invented it. And I know there are other tournament things before this, but this exact like template was used so many times. A lot by Van Damme again, just trying to trying to recapture that magic. But yeah, every like decent tournament movie is just like, let's swap some words around in the Bloodsport script because why would you not? Exactly. I can't believe this isn't the most remade movie of all time.

Yeah. I'm surprised it's never been remade, although I did take a sneak peek on the Wikipedia and there was a sequel in the work. It was supposed to be during the Afghan war. Oh, good. So yeah, they didn't make it. Was it themed around that? I think it was.

Yeah. So maybe we dodged the bullet there and maybe it's good that, you know, this is a standalone. What if he roundhouse kicked Osama Bin Laden right in the face? I mean, wouldn't you be on board? Right? You're coming back around. Man, you're going to make me evil. While Stan Bush sang a song about it, kicking Osama.

That's my Stan Bush impression. Dare did I believe Osama's dead. That was Stan Bush version of Dare from Transformers. Yeah. So Stan Bush wrote, I think, two songs in this movie. You wrote Fight to Survive. What was the other one? Was Your Still the Night his?

There's a scene where Jean-Claude is running from Forrest Whitaker and the other guy. They're like running across the boats. Yeah. And it's like, it's a cute little song and it's like, it's about how someone is still the night, but then other things are also the night in the song. Like, she's the night and we're all the night. And it's, God, it's so good. I don't even know how to describe how, it's one of the things you got to watch.

Everyone's seen Bloodsport. Except for Maggie. And of course, those magical unicorns you find in the wild. So if you have a friend at home and you think they haven't seen Bloodsport, show them Bloodsport. Show them Bloodsport. They will love it. There are things in this movie that I had, like, forgotten that films could do.

I don't know. It was just so impressive. And to see everyone, you know, do martial arts, it's so impressively shot and, like, well choreographed. There are just so many things still, it's genuinely, like, about this really weird movie. Right. Like, in a modern sense, like, if this was a Tony Jaa movie, it would be shockingly bad, right?

Martial arts choreography is kind of campy and, like, outdated. But it's very good at storytelling. Like, you can tell what a guy's trying to do and where, like, what his style is. It's really distinct. It gets a little clumsy when the context starts getting made. But, like, for this many guys and this many fights, it's incredible. I like that you talk about things that this film does because one of the most bold decisions it makes is early in the movie, it does an 11 and a half minute flashback that explains

Jean Frank Dukes' origin, which is he breaks into a samurai school to look at a sword and his friends bail on him and he stays to, like, help clean up the mess. And the owner of the place sends his son in to kick his ass and then he cuts the brim off his hat and he's so dumbfounded by this and doesn't even move that he's like, oh, wow, you must have fighting spirit because I cut your hat off. He didn't do shit. It never crosses his mind that the kid just might be kind of slow. Right.

Despite the kid carrying himself like that and then they dub over him in the most ridiculous voice. Right. He's like, I wanted to see the sword. You're like, oh, okay, this slow kid. It's doing, like, three accents and they're all at war with each other. Like, I don't understand what he's supposed to be. He just had his hat cut off.

He was under a lot of stress. And so then they do a very long, one of the greatest training montages of all time, of course. They do fights. They do blindfolds. They do blindfolded tea. They do fish grabbing. His training, much like how we're all recording this right now, he was getting quartered with

ropes by his Shidochi. And I think most people who know about stretching know that it's not great to do it for more than, like, a minute or two. Like, once you're doing too long a stretch, you're actually doing more harm than good. Right. You're, like, ripping your... Yeah. Yeah, you're ripping your...

Yeah, don't do that, kids. It's also not great to be, like, tied to something and have somebody just yank it. Like, that's not... Yes. That's not stretching. Right. It's not exactly stretching. It's more closer to torture.

So he leaves him in this thing and he just kind of watches him. I'm going to use the word erotically, but I'm not sure if that's just something I'm injecting myself. But there's a tension there that's very alluring to me. Oh, I would say it's erotic. Yeah, they both make some smoldering eye contact. No words are spoken. They just...

They don't need to. The other thing about this movie, there's a lot of bold acting decisions by the actors. They don't look like they're performing. They're all very good actors. But there's a lot of, like, oh, what was that look? What did that mean? And another thing that I appreciate watching Bloodsport for the 250th time is you catch a lot of subtlety like that.

So he breaks free from it, just, like, smashes its dudes like fucking home gym. And I think that's what he was supposed to do. It's not clear, like, what the point of this exercise was at all, but his, you know, she seems happy with it. To illustrate his groin strength. Yeah, he destroyed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he impressed everyone in the room.

And there you go. Yes. My groin is stronger than nature. What every man seeks to prove. So 11 and a half minutes of that flashback, and then it shows him speaking to Tanaka, and there's a scene where his son died. They don't explain how Tanaka's son died, but Jean-Claude Van Damme basically volunteers to take over with this super awesome martial arts training.

Like, I cannot train anyone. My son is dead. My super awesome ninja stuff dies with him. And Jean-Claude's like, you know what? I could take on this secret ultimate ninja training, you know, if you want. You have been torturing me for three years. I mean, I was hoping it would pay off. And he says, I wrote this down in my notes.

He wrote, you taught me to use whatever technique works to keep an open mind. Which I love, it's very convincing, but it's also good storytelling to sort of say like Frank Dukes is like a Bruce Lee style guy. He's doing mixed martial arts in the era before mixed martial arts. And it convinces Tanaka almost, I think the next line he screams is, you are not Japanese! Which is a very funny thing to say from a Chinese actor. But it talks him into it, and he's like, okay, fine, I'll train you. And that's the origin story of Frank Dukes.

So Bloodsport invented like UFC and MMA fighting, right? We're all on board with that. I think so. I think you could credit it with that. I mean, everybody, everybody, every MMA fighter is really in there thinking like about which guy from Bloodsport they are. I think that every single time I fight, yes. Absolutely.

I was going to say, I'm sure it spurred many a young boy to take up martial arts, to defend himself. Oh yeah, I tied milk jugs full of water and kicked him after watching Bloodsport. I got so pumped about it. I loved Paco. He was the really mean Muay Thai guy. I don't like his meanness, but I love the way Muay Thai looks. I love his kicking shorts.

Yeah, his kicking shorts are great. I have several pairs of those in many colors. And I trained Muay Thai many years. And when I was in a Hollywood gym, I was there with my friend, and he was looking at me funny. And I was like, why are you looking at me funny? And he's just like, like he's waiting for something. And there he was, teaching Muay Thai fucking Paulo Toca, who plays Paco in this movie. And I was like, this is it.

I'm going to go meet a guy from Bloodsport. He showed me how to kick. It was fantastic. Somewhere in the back of your head, it's just going kumate, kumate, kumate. That guy's lucky I did not charge him with some jungle chops. He's got to be so used to that. Yeah, you would not be good to do that that day. Yeah, I was like 31.

Oh, OK. Man, to do that that day. And I still considered it. So we're done with a minute and a half flashback, and now he just goes to Hong Kong, even though he was expressly forbidden to do this by his CEOs. They don't say what branch he is, but Frank Dukes, the person this movie is based on, was in the reserves of the Marines. So I guess they're Marines.

An extra Marine, if you will. Yeah. The reserves just they kept him back there because it was America's trump card. So what happened is he learned early in his martial arts career. I think he had a black belt in Taekwondo and he would like do articles in Black Belt Magazine. He started to learn if he added military to like the descriptor of like his life story, he could fucking do anything. So now he was like this secret military guy.

And I was like, you know what? I was actually a super spy. I wasn't a reservist. I was a super spy. I was a secret undercover like ninja and, you know, several life zones. Life before the internet ruled. Yes. I mean, what were they going to do?

Not believe you? Yeah. That was your old choice. That would be absurd. And I guess let's get back to the movie. We'll talk about Frank. I would do want to talk about Frank Dukes, the real person after we discussed the perfect movie that he inspired.

I really like how Jackson hits on the girl on the bus where he goes, hey, babe, want to go out with a real big man? The real big man. That's the first thing he says. That's all I've got to offer you. I have. I am very large. Yeah.

I'm larger than most people. I'm larger than most people. Do you like Twitter? Yeah. But when she doesn't respond, he just goes, no, huh? And that's kind of it. Yeah, you're used to that. I was like, yeah, it was a little too aggressive, but I liked his out.

I thought it was great. Six out of 10. I thought it was great. Yeah. I bet it would work every so often. You know? I mean, it's a numbers game with him. Right, right, right.

Yes. There's like one out of 500 girls that's like, you know what? I do want to go out with a real big man. Yeah. I like that crazy, like, Tolkien character face you have with the cross eyes and the facial hair. It's great. So we also meet Janice, the sassy female reporter who you may not know this, Maggie, but that

became a staple character in every Jean-Claude Van Damme film for 30 years. Every single movie in the 1980s. Yes. Yes. It was pretty normal for all movies. But Jean-Claude Van Damme specifically, you got a two out of three chance of having the female lead be a reporter. So of course, she knows about the Kumute and she's trying to get the story about the Kumute

despite everyone knowing it. And everyone's very openly like wearing the karate outfits in the bar. She's like, hey, you guys, you guys are here for the Kumute. He's like, what is Kumute? It's like, you're all fucking with it. Also, that hotel is they say that that's in Kowloon, Walt City, that like slum that they go to. And it's it's obviously hidden because they have to like duck through all of these crazy

alleys just to get there. So she found her way there to this special like hidden hotel that is real high end and hidden inside the slum. And then everybody there is martial artists and they have the nerve, the nerve to be like, no, this isn't where the Kumute is. Right. You know, they're supposed to say, it's like home of the Kumute. Come, come meet last Kumute's champ for autograph signings.

Chong-Ling, the year four PM, amateur pajama convention. We're all just there. And to give you an idea of the op sec that they use when they're talking to dudes, Jean-Claude Vandam is playing karate champ with Jackson. And after one game, he goes, hey, you want to see some real fighting, you should come watch me in the Kumute. That's how he learned. Real secret.

Yeah. Don't tell anyone. Don't tell. You can trust you. We're karate champ brothers for life. But you know about this, this karate video game, you must know the world of karate. You must. And they inject just a touch of like a racial element where they don't like let them come

to the Kumute because they're like, well, everyone else is like, all these cultures are merging together to fight. But they don't like, they don't let Jean-Claude Vandam in because he's not a Tanaka. They're like, dude, you're a white guy. You can't come in unless you do the secret brick exploding punch. And he's the only one in the movie that has like a superpower. I just think it's a little unfair to. The dim mark.

The death touch. Yeah. The death touch. What the hell is a dim mat? It's the death touch. Everybody knows this. How are you with the Kumute? You don't know about the death touch.

Yeah, I was going to say. You don't know about the Kumute? Here, I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything. I guess we did skip over the part where Jean-Claude Vandam saves a woman from being slapped in the bar, which is a heroic. Yeah. It's heroic.

I like how he handles it. How he's like, tell you what, if you hold the coin, if I can grab the coin, then I get the girl. And she's like, what the fuck? And he's like, gives her a little wink and she's like, oh, no, this guy's cool. He's got this. It's the American shithead who makes tricks with bricks. That dude is one of my favorite like extra dudes in all of cinema history.

Fucking owns it. He is bringing so much fire to that. There's another dude in this movie I love who goes, OK, USA. Oh my God, I think I remember that. I love that the movie took a minute out to be like, wait, what was that? Yeah. Yeah. No, she is.

That dude ad-libbed that. You cannot commit to that. It had to have been ad-libbed. Yes. And I think Don Gibb is like an underrated actor, ogre from revenge of the nerds, like every time he makes a face in this movie, it either cracks me up or like lets me know exactly like what the tone of the scene is. Like when Forrest Whitaker shows up, he's like, OK, pal, sit down.

And he goes, I ate your pal dick face and you're like, oh, the tone just changed in this room. Like he can just turn it on like that. He's fun guy. But oh man. The military administrators are on his tail. I'm trying to keep up with my notes here. I wrote down the entire plot of Bloodsport.

Oh wow, you need to? I thought it was just. I just wanted to keep it in order for us. You make a good point. Maybe it's time for me to put on my fish grab and blindfold and see if I can do this without my eyes. I did forget to mention another favorite part of them. I'm going to be doing this a lot.

Earlier when he was training blindfolded, one of the parts of his martial arts training was to serve everyone tea blindfolded. And Tanaka's wife, also a Chinese actress, was looking at him the whole time and like, you're going to hit him. You're going to fucking punch this dude. Like she's got this like yearning. This little grin. Like I'll do it.

A little coy smirk. He's going to punch you right in the face. I love this part where he hits the white guy. And then of course he blindfold blocks the punch and she's like, oh, that's that's the good stuff. I love that part that the wife is in on it and she loves to watch him. Okay. So we start, we, let's talk about the fights now.

So they start the fight and they start with like the kung fu pajamas guy. And the thing you need to know about Bloodsport is if a guy is doing kung fu and wearing kung fu pajamas, they're not a main character. You don't need to worry about them. They probably have a name on IMDb. Yeah. Because I mean, they're in Hong Kong. I think they just get a lot, like a lot of scrubs from the local mcdojo is like, oh,

I, I have a purple belt and kung fu. I'll do the kumite because it's right next door. Why not? Why not try it? That's my attitude. Why not try the kumite if you're right there? Yeah. Right.

They, here's a guy that I never quite got a handle on who he was. Do you know the guy from Brazil that they showed like pit fighting at the start? Yeah. I thought he was kind of supposed to be capoeira guy. I get a capoeira vibe from him, but he's not totally capoeira. You're right. He's not like dancing in it. Is it possible the guys that made Bloodsport were like, no, that looks too dumb to like

do in competition? Maybe. They're like, let's, let's tighten it up. Let's add like a little boxing and kickboxing to the, to the dancing. This is just too silly, but I like the, the little jungle fella in the diaper that chops the coconuts. Keep that. Yeah.

This is too silly, but, but the man that is a monkey because he's from the jungle, I buy that. I want a hundred percent. That's a little Tarzan guy. This is fucking 1986. And I believe that is true. I thought that was a real thing. I really thought that somewhere someone was doing like monkey martial arts.

And there is a monkey style kung fu, but, but that it's not the official martial art of like the jungle, the Congo Republic or whatever of the future earth in the Apes territory. Oh, I'd love a movie just based on this guy and how his philosophies like penetrate into the future. I don't know. I love it. It's a fight to get to the kumite, where he has to go through his own local kumite, kumite

qualifiers. I've watched 70 prequels about Bloodsport and they all have different animal styles to can style. They never had, they never remade this. That is interesting. It's not the most remade movie in the world. They did some sequels that they were very forgettable. They were going to make a lady Bloodsport, which is, yeah, very promising.

But they never got around to it. Van Dam did make Bloodsport eight more times. Yes. They did call it something else, though. Yeah. He did make the quest, which is very literally Bloodsport with a touch of kickboxer elements co-written by Frank Dukes. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So literally. Yeah. So they were really into each other. They did re-make it. And it's pretty good. So Jackson is up next. We get to see what Ray Jackson can do.

And he draws a pretty lucky draw. He gets like 130 pound handsome boy in dance built tights. And they show him earlier in the movie doing warm ups and everyone else is kind of shadow boxing and he's just doing real sexy lunges. He's just like getting, getting those deep lunges. One of my favorite side characters in this movie, I have a lot of them. And Jackson like gets punched in the head a couple of times and then just fucking caves his brain in with a hockey fight punch.

Just like thump. And it's fantastic. He couldn't. He's got to have a 200 pound advantage on this guy and then he calls out strongly. He's representing the martial arts style of just fucking hit him. Everybody here is representing their martial arts style. And then he comes in with, I'm just going to hit you in the face. That's the Boston style.

The only Americans in this are like super loud, like biker bar guy and a Belgian character based on a Canadian man. Those are the two Americans. So represent America. Accurate. Oh, yeah, it's accurate. And then a Chang Lee's fight is next and he fights what's just very clearly a Bruce Lee knockoff.

Like a Bruce Lee pose at the start of the fight. And this lasts about two seconds for Chang Lee, just annihilates him. This is this is part of the movie that is excellent storytelling. Chang Lee beats him all three ways at once. So the way to win at the kumite is to knock a guy out to make them submit or to throw them out of the ring. And he does all three of those just to demonstrate this guy can do everything. And I just want to point out the script is perfect as I have and will many times.

You're not that's no work. You're not lying. Yeah, that's the truth. Is that the one where he sets the world record? I love that. That's why they get mad at each other. The next fight is when he's maybe he does set the world record or he beats his own record.

He beats his record. Yeah. In the first fight. World record. And then Frank fights next against the sex kidnapper whose name is Sadiq Hossain. And he beats him in world record time by like he throws him down and then he kind of waves it his face. And I never understood even after all this time if he did like a chi blast or if he just

like knew he was going to get knocked out and kind of did like a little flourish. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. But I read that as he was just so scared and outmatched like he knew he was outmatched that he didn't. Yeah. And then his pride got the better of me. He tried to beat him up after the bell and just got completely fucked up instantly.

So two knockouts for Frank Dukes already. I mean you have skipped over the first thing he says in the fight where he goes now I show you some trick or two. He might not get many lines but he dominates them. I bet that wasn't in your notes either. That's the kind of line you remember forever. Wow. How could you forget that?

It lives in your heart. Yeah. It goes straight from your ear and settles somewhere in deep inside. And this brings up another great throwaway character here because Jean-Claude knocks his gold tooth out and the guy who's in charge of like mopping up the mats sees that gold tooth and gets real conspiratorial. He's like darting his eyes around like a cartoon. Again great bold acting choices and he runs up and he grabs the tooth and tests it to see

if it's a real gold tooth. Now this is a filthy bloody tooth from a sex pest's mouth and he does this in full view of all the people he's trying to hide it from. I just love all this choice. I love the idea to put him in the movie. It's amazing. Yeah. I hope they wrote that down in the script.

Yeah. I hope they took him. Somebody took a draft of that. Just took a couple of lines. The script. Tighten up that scene. The script just describing it. Yeah.

The whole movie was actually based around that one moment. And that's why it's the best. So this is the next sequence in the film is like what I see when I close my eyes. It's a Standbush Kumate song and just a montage of everybody fighting. The crowd is super into it. The jungle guy gets a fight, the super mean Muay Thai guy, the sumo guy. Look at introduced to all these amazing characters. Jackson throws a guy out of the ring.

It looks like an eight year old Chinese boy. And when he hits the ground, he's just fucking dead. Like he dies on the impact. When he throws him, he's screaming. He's like, oh, no, don't throw me. Cut to him on the ground and he's just motionless. So that was a bad fall. However he took that fall, he's dead.

Right on the neck. Black belt and fucking you up. I do want to stop here and talk about the rules of the Kumate. Like Maggie, you've obviously grown into a very academic adult. Were you ever a sporty kid? I was actually, yeah. You're talking to a three sport varsity athlete at a division like C or D school. So take that into consideration.

Right. Yeah. I was a great long jumper in my high school. There's a lot of white people in the high school. I think I'll put it like that. This sounds like a racist joke, but for three years, every single one of my yearbook captions was white men can jump like a playoff of the popular film of the time. So that's pretty good.

All my press clippings are like very racist, very racially themed. I grew up in a small town, but reporters really like to do that for no reason. They make kids really uncomfortable. A lot of them die. That's true. So I guess I just, from a sporting perspective, here's what I think would happen with the Kumate. Like there's three ways to win.

You can knock a guy out or you can make him submit. Now the idea of turning off a human brain, we've been trying to do it since man could walk, it's pretty hard. And to get like a passionate fighter to submit is also pretty difficult, but picking up a dude and moving him three feet is kind of easy. So I feel like every fighter would, his game plan would be I'm going to shove him off the fucking Kumate mat. And so I think they just invented Sumo.

Like I think if you go back a thousand years in Sumo, that was probably a sweet Kumate fight until like people realized, you know, all I could do is dedicate my life to eating and shoving. And I'm the greatest Kumate fighter in the world. They're like, okay, we got to make it pretty far. Yeah. And without throwing anyone off the mat. Like he's, he was like bare-hugged guys showed that.

Yeah. And I'm saying, if you put guys on like a tiny little pad and say, when by shoving them off, they're like, well, that's, that's what I'm going for. And and so that's one of my issues with the Kumate is that this is just Sumo, a 150 pound man is not going to win this ever in a million years. And yet. And yet he did. And it's a true story.

And yet it's 100% accurate. That is what happened. Yeah. I will not be checking facts. I will not be looking. Fair enough. I believe this whole story. I believe each of these guys were in there.

I believe there was a Sumo guy and they, I somehow believe there was like Monkey Karate from Brazil or whatever. The movie caught me slipping in what I know about the world. It taught me. So you did the three sports, but no martial arts as a child. No martial arts. My brother took Taekwondo for a couple of years. And when I was little, I was curious, like, you know, I was into the idea of trying it,

but I just never ended up taking classes. And Brockway, you're, you're a black belt and seven martial arts. I actually did take a lot of martial arts specifically because of blood sport. Nice. Yeah. This came out. I don't know, like eight or something, maybe younger and, uh, yeah, it was formative. It like introduced me to the way the world works and it turns out it's karate.

Yeah. Absolutely. It solves all the problems. That's how the world turns is just the hidden karate tournaments. Everybody knows about them. Everybody's in on it. So I had to get ready. You know, I had to start preparing for adult life.

It decides the fates of many a nation every single year, so. By learning to snapkick in a strip mall. Yes. Yes. So, uh, Jean-Claude Van Damme now hooks up with Janice, uh, and of course there's a very famous scene here. Now I want each of you on a scale of one to 10 privately right now. We're going to say these at the same time out of 10.

How sweet is the scene where Jean-Claude Van Damme's butt is out of his panties? Just we're going to go three, two, one, and then say your score out of 10. Three, two, one. Seven. Did I hear a seven? Yeah, we'll give it a seven. It was, look, maybe I've been spoiled by other Van Damme movies, but it wasn't, it wasn't doing the splits.

It wasn't like, it wasn't out for very long. Like, I don't know. He really stepped up the game after this. I like it because you can tell like he's holding his butt out and then he hears the call for action and then he pulls it up. Like, it's this moment where you can fully see the performance and it's like all it would have taken as the editor is just half a second more and you would have, it would have looked like a man pulling up his underpants, but the way they did

it, it's just, it's so clearly Jean-Claude's like, no, I will show everyone my butt. This is going to be great. This is my thing from now on and I'm setting it now. I am establishing a legacy. And here's a part, I didn't notice this in my other 249 viewings, but there is an error here in the movie that I never caught before where they say goodbye to each other and they are in love. This is not casual sex.

This is the start of a relationship, lingering tender kisses and emotional music. And maybe they're just caught up in the the whirlwind one night stand romance. But this to me reads like they're going to be in love forever. So anyway, he's like, I got to get to the kumite and she's like, goodbye, love her. And they're like naming their kids and shit. And he gets to the kumite and they're like, God, you're running so late. And she's already there. He left the same location as her first and she's already there in like a kumite

gown and she's all dolled up as an undercover sex worker. And she says, this isn't the first time I've had to go undercover to get a story. And has met and convinced another man to bring her to the kumite. Yes. Yeah. Incredible. And he thinks this is cute. He's like, this is cute. But like seriously, they they're clearly at the start of a relationship.

And she just jumped into a morning kumite gown and took an escort gig at her boyfriend's work. Like this is a jarring emotional thing. Like if you went to work and you're like, I got to focus, I got to fight like 250 guys today. And your new girlfriend showed up as an undercover prostitute. You'd be like, this is really fucking with my head. I'm just why he wins. Inspirational.

Yeah, that's so anyway, that's I think the only error in Bloodsport, other than the fact that they invented Sumo and didn't realize it. So now there's the semifinals and all these all these fights happen in like 10 seconds each and yet they tell so much story. They got a hungar guy versus a Muay Thai guy. Hungar loses because the Muay Thai guy rules. Jean-Claude takes on a Taekwondo guy. And this is another perfect visual storytelling moment where

he starts matching the Taekwondo guys like spin kicks and he's just better at all of it. And so that tells the audience this dude can do everything and beat dudes at their own game. So that's all you have with Taekwondo. Yeah. He psychologically destroyed that man. He kept getting kicked. It's just like, this isn't working. I have one thing. That guy went home real sad.

Yeah, my whole life. He went to Taekwondo teacher and was like, I think I've spotted a flaw with our style. We need at least one more thing. Yeah. If other people spin faster than you, you lose like that. You know what? I think we ought to double down on the spinning. I think we should try to spin the fastest like teacher. No, I'm trying to say the opposite. No, no, no, no.

You join the rest of the nine year olds and we're going to train in the ultimate spin kicks. So Chang Lee kicks the Valletudo guys leg in half. They are the cap where a guy, whatever he is, that sort of Brazilian style mashup. And then Jean-Claude beats a karate guy. He also beats a guy I love who does like a weird pantomime at the beginning. His name is Gomez and he shows up and he's like points at him and then points it himself. And then he puts his hands together and he breaks his hands. And then he puts his thumb across his neck like he's demonstrating a Jean-Claude.

He's going to kill him in the art of pantomime. And Jean-Claude kicks him in the face and then kicks him off the platform in what has to be less than four seconds. Oh yeah, new world record. World record has been broken by like eight seconds now. And Chang Lee is so mad about it. Yeah, no ceremony. They don't even show like the new title card or the new time card.

It's just like, yeah, okay, keep moving, keep moving because this movie never stops. That is the pacing is very ADHD friendly from my scramble heads out there. Yeah, you will never get bored with a scene except for that 11 minute flashback. But also the flashback doesn't include that young child actor doing the Jean-Claude then damn. At least 15 years time periods. Yeah, somebody dies. Like one of the main characters that flashback dies in the flashback. Yeah, they change roles like Jean-Claude goes from punching bag to like protector

because he saves the kid from bullies. Oh man, my favorite detail, one of the kids cheering on the battle, cheering on the bullies, I think, is wearing a Bartles and James shirt. Just like this 12 year old kid in a Bartles and James shirt going, go bullies, go bullies. He loved that kid. Those were, I loved those two, those Bartles and James commercials because they had Bruce Willis and he would, he'd be out on like a, like out on a fire escape on the harmonica. And I was like, this is the coolest anyone will ever be.

Well, I'm clearly going to buy that, that wine cooler shirt. Oh yeah. I like wine coolers all the way up to the age of 14. Those are delicious treats. So I'm trying to check my notes. Where are we in this movie? We're in the fight montage. The sumo guy sort of, they demonstrate how he's sort of unkillable.

Like that's his thing because he's not like a giant sumo guy. He's probably like 270, 280 of functional muscle. Like he's a big guy, but like he's got strength and he's got like a little bit of a gut. Just a pretty hefty gut, but he's built. So he's basically whatever you hit him with doesn't hurt him, which is a great character to have in a movie. And so he fights Jean-Claude Van Damme and he kind of lands a bunch of good shots. Like it seems like, wow, he's really hurting the sumo guy.

And then just suddenly the sumo guy gets pissed off. He says, nope, you're not hurting me anymore. And he grabs him in a head in a bear hug, his signature move. Jean-Claude head butts his way out of it and then hits him with a dim mock. And I want to get your take on this scene because I never understood what they were going for. So this is obviously the death touch. It's that's what it's called. He already used it to explode a brick past the point of impact,

meaning this guy's organs just burst, right? Correct. Except nothing happens. Right. But he kind of comes back and he's really mad, but there's a panic in his eyes as if like he knows he's going to die. And he's just has like seconds to do one final attack. It just takes a while for the organs to shut down, but he understands.

Oh man, I have no more kidneys. I think he knows that my take on it is that he knows these are his last moments. So he tries the double skull punch, which of course Van Damme counters with the full splits dick punch. Again, a legacy defining moment that would make the rest of his life. So I think it's a fan. I think this he died and I think it was a glorious death. He died with no organs and an inside out dick.

Dying to the very first Van Damme's full splits dick punch. Exactly. I mean, you would enjoy it on the way down. You'd be like, it was worth it. And you'd be fully in shock as you feel no pain. Yeah. So so you think he was alive? You think his organs were not ruptured?

He was just mad? No, I'm with you. Okay, okay. It just took him. It just took him a little bit because he didn't seem to register it. But we have established that kills you. I mean, they call it the death touch. Everybody knows about it.

There's another guy right around this fight where I want to talk about that. He's wearing like giant samurai pants, which I think you might see sometimes in like taekwondo demonstrations. But he's just like a white dude in giant samurai pants. And the only move he tries in the entire fight against Chong Li is like a shoulder grab. He like grabs his outside shoulder and I'm like, dude, what were you going to try with that? And then Chong Li just fucks him up.

I just I love that. What's that dude doing there? It's like someone like someone called in sick. They're like, get the sound guy in these samurai pants. I don't know how to fight. Just grab his shoulder. It will fix it in editing. I love it.

It's like he went there to lose on purpose. Like he wanted to walk in, get it done over with quickly. Yeah. And so it's like, I'm not even I just I'm going to let this guy anything. And then they put him against Chong Li. He's like, oh, fuck. He just wanted to tell his physical therapist that yeah, I was in the kumite. Yeah, I didn't do great, but I got in some shots.

Are you sure the monkey guy doesn't need an opponent? I could be the guy that loses to the monkey guy. Yeah. Yeah, they showed the monkey guy one in the early montage, but then ran into the sumo guy that that was trouble. So now we get Chong Li versus Jackson. And this is like, it's pretty serious. So Jackson is very confident and Jean-Claude is like trying to give him advice.

Like go for the gut. And Jackson's response is, what are you talking about? Like his idea of the idea of having a game plan is ludicrous to this guy. And here's like the greatest fighter he'll ever meet, giving him real actionable game plan advice. Like this is how you can win. Stay away from his right leg. Go for the gut.

Like these are two things he can do as a fighter. And he's just like, you're fucking crazy. I'm just going to go in there and run at him. And he does. He puts both hands straight up into the air and runs at him. Tell me first. And it does not work. But what if it did work?

What if it did? And not entertaining that. That's the Jackson way. What if this does work? He did land some shots. He got in a Captain Kirk axe handle in a back fist. So stay positive. Yeah.

Jackson would want you to stay positive. And then of course he gets his head stomped in. So he might, he might die and the stakes are established. And then he takes his fucking, his cool Harley headband. Yeah. Bandana, I guess it is. I love John Cloud Van Amp's acting here because he's so mad at Chong Lee. And then he immediately shifts to like, oh, I'm super sad for my friend.

He just got his skull cracked open. And he was in his 20s at the time, very mature actor. Maggie can speak more to this as the actor among us. Like pretty good performance from a young John Cloud Van Amp here, right? Oh, absolutely. I want to give, you know, all the praise in the world. You know, it's, I think it's harder than it looks to act. But, you know, Gene Cloud does his best.

And a lot of times you get really honest performances because, you know, they don't really know how to act them. They, you know, it comes off very honest. They tap into like the real moments when they watch their friend get their head caved in. Exactly. Yeah. There's, you know, yeah, it's great. You know, here's a fun fact about Bloodsport. That montage of all the fights that I just described, where one of the main characters almost dies, was 10 minutes and one second,

a full 90 seconds less than the opening flashback. The economy of filmmaking. That is weird. Yeah, yeah. But also perfect script. Perfect script. Perfect movie. Yes. Yes. Don't change it. Some of these, some of these you shouldn't try to recreate.

Like don't put an 11 and a half minute flashback in your movie. Young filmmakers. But it works here. So maybe try it. You gotta know the rules before you can break them. This is where I turn on Janice real hard. Because Janice sees this like brutality and she's like, oh, no, I hate this. How can you boys do this?

How dare you fight? And Jean-Claude, he tries to explain this to her. He's like, dude, this is something we're very passionate about. Maybe you don't understand it, but like we train our whole lives for this. He's, he's doing his best. But she watched that other dude's leg get kicked in half and she was fine with that. She's watched a lot of dudes take some serious concussions. She was fine with that.

But like the friend of the guy she's fucking, when he gets hurt, she's going to shut the whole thing down. So she goes to the cops and says, you got to shut this kubitay down. Which I think is a villain move. I think she's the villain of the movie. Yes. As a woman, I will, I will attest that at that moment I was like, oh, she's the villain of the movie. That's so unnecessary.

Um, yeah, you don't call the cops, you know, especially on the coup d'etat. Come on. I mean, come on, come on. She, you, all of the hints were there the whole time. She was the only woman. That's true. That's true. Yeah, she has to be the villain.

She's got to be, yeah. And the love interest. Like she had a lot of roles she had to play just as the only woman. There's a lot to do. I did check IMGB to get some of the names. And there's a character in this movie called special lady that I honestly have no idea who it is. And she's like the sixth one listed on IMGB.

The character's special lady. It's a, she's a Hindi actress. I don't recall any people from that part of the country in the movie. Is it the, the woman that Hossain is harassing? Like in the bar before they mess with Janice? Yeah. You know what? You might be right.

That's special. That's got to be special lady. That's nice. That's nice of her because like, you know, she, she was just in there as an extra to get like sexually harassed. And they're like, you know what? Let's give her a little treat afterwards. It's a tough role to play.

She's special lady. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe our first IMGB credit was like sexual harassy. And she's like, could you like, could that be nicer? That was the framing, the framing. Speaking of IMGB credits, one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's first credit role was gay karate man, which is great. No notes.

Oh my goodness. What does it say? What movie that's from? Monaco Forever. Okay. This is ringing some bells. Memorize that. He should go back in and see if they'll change it to special lady.

He's like, I'm a big star now. You do me a favor IMDB. I want to be special lady and Monica. You did it for her. Do it for me. So here's the consequences of her calling cops. They show up basically just to arrest Frank Dukes with like his, the two military officers who've traveled all the way here to capture him.

And on the way to, in this spooky hallway, he beats up two cops. He hits one with his gym bag. He kicks one in the fucking neck, probably dead. Then they pull their tasers on Jean-Claude and he blocks the tasers into two other cops. So he has taken out four Hong Kong police. And then here these military guys from America tell their chief who showed up for this like, like man grab who they tell them, uh, no, no, no. Just we'll let him go.

I think that's what you call in Hong Kong. They're like the old Hong Kong man grab. We got, we got to let him fight. He beat up for your cops. That's, uh, that's fair, fair play. So that's what happened. He for these cops are in the hospital because of, of this woman's poor choices and it didn't do anything.

You're allowed to do this in Hong Kong or no man's land. I guess like technically they don't have jurisdiction. I would imagine. So again, perfect movie. This is not a mistake in blood sport. It's just a terrible consequences of this woman's terrible decisions. So agreed that there are no mistakes in this movie. Yes.

And even the one I pointed out where she gets to the kumite quick after a costume change and hooking up with an escort gig, I think that just is a testament to how good she is versus he probably got lost in traffic. I can, I could forgive it. Precisely. Precisely. Yeah. So, uh, now we're in the semis.

There's, there's just a couple of fights left. Uh, Paco takes on Frank Dukes and again, Frank Dukes matches the Muay Thai guy's strength. He's like, oh, you like to like brutally kick guys? Well, let's have a fucking gentleman's rib kicking contest right here. I like that they both agree to it. Yes. This is just an unspoken rule amongst them is just look, if somebody bears the ribs and then challenges you, you have to have a kick off.

Yep. I still do it to this day. I've, I have done that no bullshit at least 20 parties. Like if, if we get too loose and too drunk and there's enough space, I will have a rib kicking contest with someone every time. Well, I'm sorry I made fun of it. It's just a world I have no experience with. No, it has never gotten a good reaction.

This is something that people see it and they're like, what the fuck are you clowns doing? And I still, and I did it 19 more times. I like it here because she loves this rib kicking contest. The woman, she shows up to the kumite Janice does after trying to shut it down. And she's fucking enraptured, just loving this giggling and clapping. And after the fight, he sits down and people are into it. They're screaming Frank Dukes and he gives her a little wink.

And I mean, her panties are just drenched. Like you could see it just, oh, this Frank Dukes. So, which just always, it always happens to Frank Dukes. He's so used to that. He doesn't even notice. I do have a Frank Dukes story about that when we talk about the man himself. As we must. So, Chang Lee fights a kung fu guy that got to the semis.

And he's like one of the guys, I think from the original scene where she's talking to him in the bar, where she's like, you guys are here for the kumite. So he's had some lines, but we don't see how he fights. He's just kind of this generic kung fu guy. He throws like one shot and Chang Lee just wrecks him. And then punches him to death. And then intentionally breaks his neck after he's probably already dead. And the crowd loves it.

But then the kumite council, they all turn their back. They're like, oh, this is shameful. And then the whole crowd turns on him. Like these fucking sheep are like so bloodlusty. And they're like, oh, oh, we don't like murder. Okay, you're right. Yeah, we hate murder. So again, have some.

I forgot, I forgot that we don't like murder. Yeah. Do you like murder or not crowd? So these are the stakes going into the finals. Because Chang Lee points at Jean-Claude and says, you are next. And a lot of movies try to set up high stakes. Like, oh, if he loses, he won't get the money. He needs to save the orphanage or whatever.

But like he could die. Like Rocky Ford tried to set this up, but like Bloodsport is like, no, there's a real good chance if he loses this fight, he's going to die. And yeah, the stakes or more than so many other films, the stakes in this film are so clear. And it just adds so much more tension. You know, I like to know that there's a possibility Jean-Claude Banda might die before the end of this film.

Exactly. And there was so much more. There's his fickle woman will clearly turn on him. We've established 100% he has to avenge his friend. Who's going to get the Banda back? He has to get the Banda back. Banda. And you know that US military, if he dies, they will bill his estate for the training costs.

We told him not to go to the karate fight. Now he's dead and we spent a whole lot of money training to be a super spy. That's on you now. Eight different stakes all at once. Great job, Poby. Perfect movie. So they prepare the platform for the final match, which means they just kind of raise the edges a little bit.

I don't know why they do this. It's not established. I think it's just so the fighters can turn an ankle a little bit easier. It makes no sense. Nobody, not one person does a sweet jump off of it. Yeah, there's no point to it. Nobody does a sick flip or anything. They do a couple of jumps.

I think they probably do eight or nine jumping attacks during this fight and none of them are off the ramp. It's all from the flat part. So he fights Chong Li and he's doing really well. He's kind of kicking Chong Li's ass. Not even really following his own game plan. He doesn't go to the gut until he's kicked him ahead like nine solid times, full power. Chong Li, there's no rules in the kumite, apparently.

So Chong Li just very visibly pulls out blinding power from his pants, throws it in Jean-Claude Van Damme's face. So this is bad. Our hero is blind, but bad luck for Chong Li. Our hero has trained to fight blind. And, of course, just fights him without being able to see him. And makes a series of the best faces that anybody has ever made. Again, so many emotions.

That felt like five minutes of him just making a face and going. I like there's a little follow-up scream. Yes, a little follow-up scream. He's so mad about being blind and then it's kind of like... Yeah, what's that helping for? Yeah, what does that do? Did you learn that in your training? Got to scream it out.

He throws the ref into Jean-Claude Van Damme. And even when he could see, he throws the ref into Jean-Claude Van Damme. And what Van Damme does is do a jump kick off of the referee, which is fucking amazing. And then later he throws the referee at him when he's blind. And Jean-Claude's like, oh, no, I have these blind powers now. I know you're not the ref. So to us, this scene is like... It's like the slumdog millionaire of karate circumstances.

Like, he has been training weirdly specific things for this very moment. But to Chong Lee, it's kind of turning into a horror movie. And Bolo Young's decisions as an actor at this point is to be very scared. And so he's trying to sneak around. Because to him, this is a horror movie. This fucking blind guy is blocking punches and kicking him in the face. And he can't figure out what's happening. So I do love it.

In his panic, he does a somersault like a child might do. Not an attack. And Jean-Claude Van Damme does the full splits over it. He jumps in the air, does the splits. And at this point, I don't think it's a fight. Because this is not fight choreography. This is like art. Like they're telling a story of a young boy's dreams taking flight.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this perfect movie. But obviously, there's no martial art where they're like, oh, do a wild somersault into your opponent's ankles. That's a bad idea. Young fighters. Yeah, that's like Sonic the Hedgehog style. I was gonna say. That's the fighting style.

Yeah. Maybe that's what he was going for. Are we sure? Are we sure? How did those timelines sync up? Maybe he just played a bunch of Sonic and he got so desperate. He's like, fucking nothing else works. Nothing else is working.

Yeah, maybe he saw them playing karate champ and thought, oh, he's learning by playing video games. I'll do the same thing. Comical mix up. Played the wrong video game. Yeah. So this final fight takes eight minutes. Again, three minutes less than the flashback.

And I mentioned this early. They visit each other in the hospital. He visits Jackson in the hospital and the woman's there. But Janice is like, we're busy, lady. And he tells him he loves him and he goes, anytime, any place, anywhere, you need me, I'll be there. I did a real fast line read of that. But that took him 20 minutes to deliver that line in the film.

And Van Damme cries a little. Yeah. Because it's just so beautiful. Fight brothers. So beautiful. And then you're like, OK, we've now had two endings. He won the tournament. He says he loves you to the important character.

But then no, he goes to the airport to just wrap up the military plot. Like, OK, guys, I am coming home. You don't need to worry about me. United States government spent like 80 grand trying to get me back from the kumite. And then she shows up. The Janice shows up just to sort of wave at him goodbye. He gives her a little little salute. Hi, goodbye.

And then she gives him the kung fu salute that he used with his like Shidoshi, this thing she has no respect for that she tried to ruin. This is not your little kung fu salute to do, Janice. And then Van Damme returns it to her. It's like, why are you doing that? And then it ends. It ends on that. And I'm just like, oh, what a what a perfect movie, perfect movie.

He's just so above our that was the setup for the sequel Lady Bloodsport. Yes. See, she all this time she had studied under the same Shidoshi. She knew God, I would love that. Guys, there are some great female martial arts movies. I have a couple of them on VHS. And I just wish there were more in the world. There's something so satisfying about it. I do love I love.

I love Michelle. Yo, I've seen a lot of like Wing Chun is one of my favorites. I love a heroic trio. Let's see. Cynthia Rothrock fights are so good because they do those like taekwondo snap kicks and like her choreography is always like, whoa, Cynthia Rothrock, you can kick like seven times a second. She's like, yeah, but doesn't hurt.

It doesn't hurt anything. And it's like, yeah, but it looks fucking sweet. Let's put it in every fight scene in every movie. And I'm like, okay. She did a Hong Kong movie where she looked so awesome. And it just like shows how underutilized she was in her Western martial arts movies. Like she is crazy acrobatic and powerful. And then you just never know it from like, you know, China O'Brien or I can't remember

all of her American movies. But what are some of your favorites, Maggie? Some hot lady martial artists tips. Tiger Claw's three, the final conflict. Very nice. Very good. I think Tiger Claw's is the one. There's a very famous fight.

It goes around the internet every couple years where these two guys from a Cynthia Rothrock movie like rip each other's shirts off and like this one dude like cuts him with a knife across the chest and like licks the knife. And then he gets his eyeball stuck on a big meat hook. It's if you just Google like the greatest fight scene of all time, you'll find it like on the first page. Yeah, I know exactly. I think that was Tiger Claw's one.

So you have multiple Cynthia Rothrock VHS's right in front of you? This is the only one I grabbed. I have two more. I think I Tiger Claw's two. I forgot the third that I have. I bet it's Tiger Claw's one. And then I also have another. Oh yeah.

I wish I actually do wish that I had the trilogy in complete. Well, if anyone wants to send me Tiger Claw's one. Send me, I'm about to get a set of copies of it. Gladly. I'll keep an eye out. I'll pop this off to you guys if I do. All right. We got to talk because that's not the end of the movie.

No. The real end of the movie doesn't cut to black there. It stops and it does. I want to say 25 minutes of just talking about Frank Dukes like. Yes. Text card after text card and they all stay up for like a full minute. Every single one of just more and more ridiculous claims about what a big shot Frank Dukes is. How did he get them to do that?

He must be the best liar in the world to be like, okay, I get five minutes of your movie and each one has to just talk about how great I am. And they're like, yeah, that needs to go in the movie. Makes sense. This started in 1980. He did an interview with Black Belt magazine where he basically laid out the story of Bloodsport. Like there's a secret kumite. I was there on a spy mission for the United States government.

It turns out I'm the best fighter in the world and I fought all these guys and I'm awesome and they love me. And they didn't verify it. They had like a little blurb where it's like, hey, look, a lot of this stuff is really hard to verify. But like some of these organizations have letters and like that sounds pretty legit. They say this in the movie too. I guess life before the internet fucking ruled. Yeah, you can just say whatever you want. And some of this made it into the movie in a really funny way that hardly anyone notices where

the kumite, they're setting up the tournament. They're like the Kyokushin, the Kyokuriken council, whatever, in association with the International Federation of Taekwondo Teens and under Frank Dukes Ryutsu, Strip Mall Karate. Like it's just this super long title that sounds like a completely made up like martial arts federation. And that's in Bloodsport and it cuts to all these fighters waiting to fight. So you hardly notice how stupid it is, but it's very stupid. And it's from this article that they used as like, oh, wow, the IFAA said he's the heavyweight

champion. He must be, which of course, the organization doesn't exist. There were, yeah, I was going to say, I assume that does not exist. Yes. The easiest thing to do in the 80s was to make up a martial arts organization on which you were the world champion of and people like, oh, that sounds very impressive. So the title card says from 1975 to 1980, Frank W. Dukes fought 329 matches. He retired undefeated as the world heavyweight full contact kumite champion.

So undefeated, yes, out of 329. Not one, not one person. So these are these happen every five years that says that said in the movie and in the Blackbill magazine article. And so that means that 329 matches were not spread out like by, you know, a fight here and there. That was like all in two tournaments. So he fought 114 and one 115 and the other. Let's say that.

So this is actually pretty easy math. You just go to to the whatever power of people you beat. And that's how many people were in that tournament. So if you go to to the 114th power, and that's exactly what this is. That's you get 207 followed by 32 zeros, which is not only more people that existed on the earth in 1975. That's billions upon billions more people who have ever existed on earth. It's like the number of atoms in the universe kind of number.

And that's just napkin math that anybody could have done. So if you're in a tournament where you beat 114 guys, I think you're lying is my point. Especially, I mean, I don't want to step on it because you're probably getting to it. But his next is his other claim about how many people he beat in a row. Yes. Yeah, I do have notes on that. He says most consecutive knockouts in a single tournament was 56. So consecutive in a row consecutive with knockout.

And 56 if you if they're so there are at least 56 other competitors that he has to fight personally. And yes, who also had to have beat the same, you know, growing number of fighters. So again, there are stars in the sky. You just go to two to the 56 and you get seven followed by 16 zeros. So that tournament is assuming he was in a 56 man turn. He won 56 straight fights in a tournament. That's 18 million times the population of earth at the time.

And he knocked every single one of them out, which rules. If that's true, that rules that to knock out. When you realize what he was really saying was that all of human history is a kumate. Right. From now until we stop existing. Right. We have all been in the kumate and he is the victor. Wow.

Maggie, you're in the kumate right now. I am. And so are you. This is the kumate. Listener. This is the kumate. Kumate. The numbers still don't add up.

There's still. I love that you can give him that and the numbers still don't work. I can give you all of human history and it still doesn't work. Yeah. You got to go back to parameciums. But he also has the record for fastest knockout at 3.2 seconds, which is kind of conceivable, especially the ring out situation. But the fastest ultimate fighting championship knockout happened two years ago.

It is five seconds and it happened under circumstances that most people agree. Cannot be approved upon. It was Jorge Mazvedal. He need Ben Askren in the head and they hated each other. So they did not do a handshake before they fought. They just kind of ran straight into each other. So Jorge ran. Ben Askren kind of ducked down like he was going to try for a take down.

He just got need in the head, knocked out instantly, completely. The ref knew the second he got hit, this is over. But it still took him about a second and a half to get to the like corpse to say this fight's over. So everyone agreed like no one will ever run into each other faster than this and no ref will ever react faster than this. And we're looking at five seconds. So for Jean-Claude Van Damme to say I had, or for Frank to say I had three point two seconds,

it pushes the limits of reality just a little. There's another record on the title card, fastest punch with a knockout, point one, two seconds, which is amazing. What the fuck does that mean? At what point is point one, two seconds long punch from when it left his body? Yeah, did he wind up before the bell? Right. Do you measure from the hip twitch from like the first movement of the hand?

Is someone, is there a fucking Hong Kong monk with a stopwatch every time someone throws anything? Or like, oh, there's a kick. There's a kick. There's like must be hundreds of those monks. Clearly it was an old measurement system because his next one is like fastest kick with a knockout. And it's like 75 miles an hour or something. So we are switching measurement systems from fastest punch to fastest kick. Yeah.

And I love it because it's fastest kick with a knockout feels like he's kind of covering for it. Like 72 miles an hour is like, maybe I could kick faster than that. Like people in gyms are like, if they have like a PSI pad, they could maybe test that and say like, I kick 80 miles an hour, I kick faster than Frank Dukes. So he added with a knockout because like it's not the same in the ninja streets as you at your gym. And so I love this because it would require like four radar guns at every fighter pointed. Like, I'm not even sure that would work.

So it's incredible to me that in 1988, he thought this fighting tournament would be able to clock individual motions of a human body and then also keep stats of them with and without knockouts. Incredible. And they believed it so hard. Right. They put up title cards at the end of the movie for like five straight minutes just for you to They believed it. They believed the shit out of this.

Nobody's believed anything. It's hard to see people believe them. After eight years of this article existing and during the full production of this movie, no one thought, wait, this is fucking nonsense. How would you, how would you even do this? And I think I've demonstrated that not only these are absurd, like they're absurd upon instant reflection. Like just the moment you think about it, they're, they're completely disproven simply by the facts.

Like, yeah, I didn't know you were going to prep this, but I have it in my notes of the like 56 consecutive knockouts. So how many people are in that tournament? It would be more people like immediately as soon as you would say that, you're like, no, of course not. That can't happen. Yeah. It would have to be, you know, finding the same dudes over and over and over,

which the movie demonstrates. Oh my God, they believed him. So they loved him. They believed him. Yes. Everything could be true. They're, they're priests more uncertain of their God than the people who listen to anything Frank Dukes would say.

He said in that, in a magazine review, my involvement in that tournament was part of a plan launched in 1975 to infiltrate the criminal organizations that organized the fights. The original idea was to participate in the kumite tournament and make a few contacts. We initially assumed I would lose, but eventually I became one of the best kumite fighters to ever participate in the event. And so this is, God, it's got to be layers of awesome. I can't just be the awesome tournament.

I have to also be a criminal, investigating and taking down a criminal empire. And prior to 1980, he did, like I mentioned, he did martial arts articles and he was just some guy with a taekwondo black belt. But then soon he was the greatest secret martial artist on the planet. Like just overnight, his credits changed from like, yeah, I went to like Frank's taekwondo barn and tirefixin. And now he's, you know, good school,

secrets, but yeah, it's pretty good school. Good spin kicks there. So anyway, no one called him out on any of it. In the, in this kumite article, there are pictures of guys in karate gays, like punching each other with like their faces blacked out, like someone died smuggling these pictures out of the kumite. And it's pretty clearly they're just at like a kyokushin kumite,

which is, if you're not familiar, kyokushin is a style of karate where they don't punch each other in the head. You can kick them in the head, but you can't punch in the head. So the fighting is sort of adapted to just dudes running into the center and just blasting each other in the chest, which is just awesomely tough. And, and they do these kumites where they'll fight a hundred guys on one, more or less.

But basically people just take turns kicking your ass for a minute and a half, and you're just in the center of this crowd of people. So kyokushin kind of rules, and it's just obviously pictures of that. And then Frank Dukes is like, oh, no, no, actually they're, you know, there's a jungle guy and a sumo guy and a. So good note on him to take what was already pretty good and make it better. Anyway, I think we got through all of my notes on Bloodsport.

I think what a magic movie. I did. I did not think that could be done. It is magic. Yeah. You are the Frank Dukes of podcasting. And so Maggie, do you have a favorite martial arts movies and how would this rank among them?

Oh, man, you know, I I pretty much enjoy any martial arts movie no matter how bad, even even some of the real terrible just like homemade ones that come up on really sketchy streaming services. Because I just like the idea of it, you know, so even if it's done poorly, I still have a good time. But I would put this I would put this near at the tippy top. Like I said earlier, the action is non stop. And you'll yeah, you see things in this movie that you'll just you won't see

in any modern day action film. And it's all the more special for it. So agreed. Yeah. Brockway, same question to you. Number two. Oh, after. After what's the number one?

Rumble in the Bronx. Fantastic choice. See, my favorite fist of legend starring Jet Lee, then Bloodsport, then rumble in the Bronx. Bold choices. We are enemies for life now. And kill each other. Go.

My body. I'm just kidding. You know we're quite brothers. I love you. Me too. That's what Don Gibbs says. He didn't he didn't say I love you to Jean Claude. He's just so he says me too.

Very hound solo. So Maggie, before we go, is there something you'd like to pitch? A pitch. Please pitch. Where can people find more about? That's a good idea. Please pitch a movie and then tell people where they can find more of you. Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think that's what you meant,

but very suddenly I wanted to. Okay, so my movie that I think we should make is a martial arts movie, but it takes place entirely on the sea. So we're thinking boats, you know, martial arts on top of jet skis. And you know, it writes itself from there. I like there could be a scene where like a storm starts and the boats just going crazy. And like they're like, we don't stop the fight for anything.

And so these guys have to fight on the van dam. Yeah. Doing splits between two jet skis. Yeah. Oh my God, we can get some shark special effects. I think one guy should like be like a Tarzan guy, like the jungle dude, but he's like using the rigging like vines, like full on swing around.

Yeah, he just has a float, but it's somehow going just as fast as the jet ski. In hate with the sea. Yes, yes. Oh man, no, I really want that movie. We call it blood ocean blood sport, blood ocean sports, blood ocean sport. Okay, that's great. It rolls right off the tongue in a really clunky kind of way. But if we got the dam, then it's going to be great.

Yeah. But yeah, also if you want to find me, you can find me on Twitter and YouTube, where I have videos about movies. Yeah, I did love your last one about Tim Heidecker and Rob Schneider. Oh, thank you. It's such a funny couple of guys to pair up, like to talk about at the same time, but it's like, it's so perfect where you talk about how they're kind of doing the same character, but one is sincere and one is sarcastic.

And it's, it's, oh, and I never watched that Rob Schneider. So, so it's, I'm really glad you did and cut out some parts that are like so hilariously bad. Like it's, it's shocking how bad it is. And I did love that Tim Heidecker special. It's great. Yeah. So, yeah, great. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, guy friends. Me too. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you very much. Kumathe. Kumathe. Kumathe, Kumate, Kumate, Kumathe, Kumathe, Kumathe, Kumathe.

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