The Shintaro Higashi Show - Interesting Rule Changes

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Rule changes are some of the most popular and controversial topics among Judokas, and they've been covered quite a bit in the podcast. How about this time, we take the initiative and propose new, interesting rule changes that could help Judo. Will these rules help or hurt Judo? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter talk about some of their ideas on new rule changes that could make things interesting for Judo. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hello, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about interesting ideas for rule changes to make judo better. It's kind of a fun thing, you know? Yeah, it was actually a suggestion from one of our patrons, Phil. He actually said it in a more, like, interesting way. He asked, what one technique would you legalize to intentionally change the aesthetics of judo for the worse? So we're going to cover that in the beginning, but I think after that we're going to just talk about interesting

rule changes that could actually benefit judo. I mean, I think like leg grabs is the most common thing when it comes to rule changes, and it's still such a hot topic. I had a friend from back in the day come, Vinny Mancuso. I don't know if you know him. Oh, Vinny, of course I know Vinny. He's unbelievable. Great wrestler, great at leg grabs

great at judo all this stuff right and he comes in we're just still talking about it it's like oh man you know like this was a big part of my game

I developed my entire system around it now it's gone and you know I don't know like if I'll be able to recover from that all this stuff

so it's still a hot topic you know and you see grappling criticisms from other grappling I was like why would you take this thing out? You know?

Right. Right. But I think most people agree. They, yeah, it looked, judo looks better. Better. I mean, it's not just that, you know, you can't just, but it's like, they're making these little rule changes to shape judo in a way that's going to be spectator friendly.

That's going to be good for the sport overall. Yeah. Okay. So some of these things that I would intentionally change to make judo in a way that's going to be spectator friendly, that's going to be good for the sport overall. Yeah. Okay? So some of these things that I would intentionally change to make judo worse, I'm restricted by grabs. Okay? Why, why, why? Because it's so easy to spam. Okay, you're shooting on a leg. Alright, you know, like, how are you

going to penalize it? Drop Sanagi, if you don't off-balance him or anything, you just drop to the floor, you get penalized. That's for a false attack. Yeah. Right? Leg grabs, you're just shooting on a leg, and then, you know, you just drop to the floor. You get penalized. That's for a false attack. Leg grabs, you're just shooting on a leg, and then you kind of have to sprawl, right? So everyone sprawls. You just spin the whole match. Diving at the leg, diving at the leg, diving at the leg.

Right? Right. And so, you know, it can kind of look bad, and then your hips become back, right? You're more of a defensive posture to protect your legs, so now you're bent over. Not as many scores. Right? And yes, I get it. You turn, throw, and then you can grab the legs and lift them up.

I get that, but it just becomes a much more defensive game. Defensive posture. Upright, you're much more athletic and dynamic. I mean, that's what this is for. And then, you know... We want high amplitude throws. Yes, big throws. That's what they want.

They shouldn't do like Greco and freestyle, like in wrestling. Oh, like more. Oh, I see. So Greco, the analogous element of judo would be like the current judo, and then you want maybe like more freestyle. Yeah. Oh, they have freestyle judo, actually. Yeah, they do, yeah. But like Greco, you're not even allowed to hook the legs. maybe like more freestyle like yeah but I mean they have freestyle judo actually yeah that is a dude yeah

but like correctly you're not even allowed to hook the legs you can't touch your opponent's leg with your legs right right right and that would be kind of like tough I think

and I guess you could do that you know like what you can't do coach you're dash yeah we want foot sweeps yeah but you could have a leg grab division

and a non-leg grab division it's too much to do though I don't think the IGF is going to want to do that who wants to do that you're going to now compete in two events or one evental. It's too much to do though. I don't think the IGF is gonna wanna do that. Who wants to do that? You're gonna now compete in two events or one event. Right.

It's just too much work logistically to do. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't think they could pull it off smoothly. You know, that'll double the time for these tournaments to run. Right. And nobody wants to be in a tournament for double the time that you already have to be in, you know what I mean?

Nobody. Right. Right. The competitors, mostly. The competitors. Mostly the competitors, actually. What else can we change to make the aesthetics worse? Unrestricted gripping. What does that mean?

So you can just kind of disengage and rip grips and just take off hands and do any kind of gripping. Push people away, kind of. Push people away, strip two hands on one, even though they just kind of recently implemented that again, where you can do that if you attack right away. Did you notice? Oh, I didn't know that. See, it's hard to keep up with these things. Impossible to keep up.

But, you know, that would make it so defensive. Like, if you're a judo enthusiast and you're watching, like, okay, I get it. Why is this guy doing this? But if you're not a judoka and you're watching judo and they're grip fighting, it's extremely boring. It looks like they're grip fighting, that's extremely boring. It looks like they're slapping each other.

Not even. It just like, it makes no sense. It's like, it just looks like a very fast game of patty cake. Right. And there's nothing interesting or cool about that to the average person. Right, right, right. And then you wouldn't have any penalties. And then you would make matches 10 minutes long.

You would essentially have a jiu-jitsu match. That's a sick part that's no but it's not spectator friendly man it's like yes if you're watching jiu-jitsu yes you're gonna watch it right flow grappa does a good job on stuff but to the average viewer i think it's scrolling through the channel uh you know like i'll turn on soccer i know exactly what's going on there's a ball they're trying to get it in the net okay pretty easy to understand yeah football uh-huh those guys are trying to get the football to the end and they're nailing each other all right you know you don't need to know the nitty-gritty of the rules right like it's considered all sides like 10-yard penalty baseball is a little bit you know boring but you get it right you get it yeah you? You get it.

You see two people just slap-fighting each other, sitting down, and then just defensive, nothing happened, and they're just rolling around for 10 minutes with no action, and you're not a very educated consumer of the sport,

you're not going to watch it. Huh. How about, I feel like 10 minutes is too short. It should be unlimited until someone gets an eight ball. Oh, my God. Forget it. I will never, ever go gets an 8-ball. Oh, my God. Forget it.

I will never, ever go to a tournament ever again. Can you imagine? No. Can you imagine a kid's tournament? Oh, my God. I'm like, oh, the kid, like, I have this idea about judo tournaments. Yeah. You've heard me talk about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't need regulation mats for a 5-year-old, 6-year-old. You can run four matches in one adult mat, probably. Yes, that's what I'm saying. If you have four mat areas, okay? If you have four adult-sized regular mat areas, split those into four. No, seriously. Have one ref on each one of those little squares.

You have 16 matches going at once. You think one ref can watch four matches at once? No, no, no, no. Each one person in the thing you know and then you kind of preemptively say to the coaches

and the dad like listen man like this is you know we're doing this because we can finish this in a quarter of a time you know what I mean the appeal for a lot of parents

is like hey come in watch a kid do judo compete you know you can make brunch you go home watch football on Sunday with your family you know what I mean

you don't want to be there until freaking 4pm and burn football on Sunday with your family. You know what I mean? You don't want to be there until freaking 4 p.m. and burn an entire Sunday with your family, especially if your kid has a sibling. You have three kids, right? Your brother and sister are sitting there watching. You have a baby there. It's the worst thing in the world. It's not good for the sport at all.

You know what I mean? And adults after can't, like, adult competitors can get out there early, too. Early, man. Yeah, so it's like, yo, four matches per regulation, man,'s like, yo, four matches per regulation method, and you have four maths, you can finish in quarter of the time.

According to my maths. Is that correct, Peter? Is that math correct? Probably. I mean, it might not be perfectly linear, but... No, it's exactly linear. Well, there's that.'s that's how we think you would uh make judo aesthetically worse but i like yeah yeah i like leg rubs yeah well let's

talk about that now like how about the actual rule changes that could you know be interesting actually make it more fun yeah um we'll just say yeah you know shit about this yeah yeah i mean i think like i don't want to make this a leg grab episode already did that yeah and i don't want to repeat myself so much but i do believe like leg grabs can come in right for instance like leg grabs are allowed in overtime that's interesting even freestyle wrestling right back in the day like in order to win like you, the round or whatever it is, they'll do the coin toss. And then the winner gets to start with a leg. Whoa, they did that?

Yeah, I think they still do that. Oh. Yeah. It's very weird. They do that in baseball, too. You know, now in baseball overtime, you know, to speed things up, you start with a runner on the second base. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, I just learned it this year.

So you don't have like five inning overtimes anymore. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. No one needs that. No one wants to watch that. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, especially to me. If it's not a 20-second TikTok video, I'm not watching it. The reels, the TikTok videos, yeah, you know it.

So, okay, so maybe leg grabs allowed in overtime and then we we can see if other sports do this you know yeah um what else so we anything else about the leg grab we can like move on after this is so like not you know conventional thing but like uh it's kind of my idea originally and specifically. And I don't think it'll, it's kind of almost unfeasible. But, you know, you could grab a leg. You could grab, do any kind of leg grabbing you want, but you get a penalty if you don't score with it. That's it.

If you score with it. Why wouldn't that be feasible? I don't know. It would just be too, it's too controversial. You know what I mean? I see. Yeah. But you get too controversial. You know what I mean? I see. Yeah. But you get three shots.

You know what I mean? You get three shots, three takedowns that you could go for, and you kind of time them. And the guys were very, very good at that. Don't even need to develop a straight-up game. They kind of rely. They just wait, right? Yeah.

Wait until the end. And this is the thing. If they get a passive score penalty, they'll be like, oh, goddammit, that's a little bit more than one chance. They get a penalty for stepping out of bounds. Now, if they go for the leg grab, right, they either score and win or not score and then be penalized out.

See, that makes it interesting, I think. The weird meta will rise up from that, I think. 100%. But they do lots of weird niche rules in wrestling. Yeah. You know what I mean? The parterre and stuff, or you mean even more niche? Well, starting with the leg and the coin toss.

That was weird. And correctly, you start with the gripping leg around the back like that, which is kind of nice too because they want people to throw and score. Right. Because they constantly need to make it spectator-friendly if it's going to be any sort of an Olympic event. You know what I mean?

So that's an interesting idea. I see. And then, how about this? How about, like, moving on to Newaza a little? You know, people also complain about, you know, lack of Newaza time in judo. Yeah. Yeah.

I think this is, like, will make the jiu-jitsu guys very happy right now if there's no forward progression for five seconds yeah they'll stand you up right that's kind of like my interpretation that's what i tell everybody it's not exactly that but if you're not doing anything you can sit there look at each other in someone's close guard make eye contact just sit there one two three four five you can both look up at the rafter be like all right guys stand back look at each other in someone's close guard, make eye contact, just sit there. One, two, three, four,

five. You can both look up at the rafter and be like, all right, guys, stand back up. Yeah. Right. They should penalize people passivity on the ground as well.

Would that count? Would turtling count? You know, if you're just sitting there tight like this, and see, these are rules that are very difficult to enforce and reward versus penalize. You know what I mean? So I'm kind of just talking out of my ass here.

I just hope everyone knows this. You know what I mean? But if you're going down to the ground and you're doing the walls and you're just strictly defensive, so five seconds go by, nothing happens. Potentially,

stand up, penalty won. Not doing anything. Or, oh, you would still stand them up? Yeah. It would be a penalty though. I see.

So now, next time you miss the throw and you're on the bottom, you're not just going to tighten up, you're going to like roll into a leg grab and like try to drag the person to the floor.

You would try to do more Nwaza exchanges, right? Because like, this is the thing, right? Let's just admit here that Jiu-Jitsu Nwaza is try to do more Nwaza exchanges, right? Because like, this is the thing, right? Let's just admit here that Jiu-Jitsu Nwaza is superior to Judo Nwaza now.

Yeah. You got to admit that. You know, it took me a long time to kind of just like say it out loud, but it's true. You know what I mean?

Like, we know this already. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, they spent so much time on that too. 10 years ago, it was a different story

because Jiu-Jitsu wasn't as developed, right? And 10 years ago, you know, blue belts and purple belts were teaching nirwaza classes, jiu-jitsu classes, okay? Oh, yeah, I remember those days. And you have a judo guy who's a freak athlete at the top of the world who's been doing judo for 30 years, right? That guy's going to have good nirwaza. He can kind of go in there and then just like some ragdoll,

some blue belt instructor, and then just take them down, squeeze them and then choke them. It's possible. Now, that has not happened. That's a lot tougher now. The level of competition, even in blue and purple, it's just unreal. And I'm not talking about like some rinky dink, jujitsu school, random guy who no one knows his lineage running a school versus like an Olympic judoka who's never done jujitsu school, random guy, you know, who no one knows his lineage, running a school versus, like, an Olympic judo who's never done jiu-jitsu.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, like, average, high-level judo competitor, right, walking into an average jiu-jitsu school, and will that guy, you know, do well against, you know, their head instructor? No. No. Right now, we know this now.

Yeah. So how do we make judo Nwaza better? How do we make it more exciting? You know what I mean? It's under the old adage that people are like, Nwaza is boring, therefore we need to limit it because the Olympics will get rid of it if it's boring. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And they did some of this stuff too. Now, if someone misses a throw and they're on their knees and you're standing, you could throw from it. You can literally pick them up, gut wrench them to throw. Yeah. Right? if someone misses a throw and they're on their knees and you're standing you could throw from it you could literally pick them up gut wrench them to throw

yeah right that's even restrictive to nirwaza like people wouldn't want to go down right

maybe but it's still like what was considered right if someone drops to their knees now there's no throw that can happen

now you're forced to do nirwaza you have two guys that don't really want to do nirwaza you're lying on top that don't really want to do a new waza. You're lying on top of each other, waiting for the ref to call mate. Yeah. It's silly.

Yeah. Now, the guy goes down. Now you have to physically lift him, and you're about to get thrown. So now you're scrambling around. Your arms are extending to, like, base out. Now you can attack an arm, and now you can attack a neck. So I wouldn't say it's restrictive, but restrictive but you know it's definitely better for the rules right yeah so why not make it so that you know you miss a throw you're down on the stomach you

can't just sit there and defend you have to proactively go after certain things right whether it's guard pulling or whatever but then you you raised an interesting point here. This unintended consequences. So it's not, I know, you know, we're just musing here, like we're talking about things, but when you try to implement it in real life,

it's a lot of time you don't, you can't foresee everything. So like, I remember when they first banned leg grabs, it wasn't a complete ban. It was, you could still go for it as a counter. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah. But then they stopped doing that because it was impossible to tell like yep the ref's job was

too hard and yeah man you never know man sometimes like you until you do it you know it's like the vaccine rollout i mean yeah come on i don't know how even then i asked how he's joking guys he's joking it's great in theory right this technology it works he created this thing let's just give it

to fucking hundreds of thousands of people no I'm kidding I'm kidding guys well but yeah I mean the point of

unintended consequences still stands you know but anyway so we'll that's his point yeah we're talking about it sounds good in theory unintended consequences still stands, you know, but anyway. That's his point. Yeah, we're talking about it sounds good in theory, the you know, penalizing Nwaza, but

I think it can be done though. I think it can be done, right? If one person is super passive in Nwaza, and then if you're actively defending an armbar or something, then obviously you're going to be a little bit more passive, right? You're not going to be pushing through. But you know, for the example of, like, riding time in wrestling, in collegiate wrestling, okay?

Another freestyle, Greg, I'm talking about college wrestling. What's that? The ride time. So when you take someone down and when you're on top, the top position, the timer starts going. Ah, okay. And if you get to a minute, you get a point. And then let's just say someone reverses you,

and now they're up, okay? Yeah. Timer goes down. And if you get to a minute, you get a point. And then let's just say someone reverses you. Now they're up. Okay. Timer goes down. Oh, what the hell? Yeah, it goes down. Right. You know what I mean?

Wait, so what happens then? Oh, I see. So you can kind of go back and forth. But if the top person gets a point, does it reset? No, the timer never resets. So this is the thing, right? If I'm wrestling you and it's six to six the points yeah tied and then you've taken me down at that last second or whatever it is last minute and now there's a minute left on the clock okay and then all of a sudden you're on top for more than a minute yeah right now you're the point so theoretically i'm losing

seven to six oh i see right and then let's say i reverse it i reverse you okay let's say Right? Now you have a point. So theoretically, I'm losing. 7 to 6. Oh, I see. And then let's say I reverse it. Let's say you have riding time of a minute 6. Okay? I reverse you, and now I have to hold you down for at least 7 seconds. So that you will lose?

Bring the riding time point down. Oh, so the writing point goes away. Yeah, unless someone has more, a net one minute or more, it doesn't count for points, right? But it keeps track of who's on top longer. That's what it is. I see, I see, I see. You know what I mean?

So how would that work in judo though? Because what's the top position, I guess? I don't really know i mean i guess if you're on top but like but you know like if you're in someone's guard is that that's kind of neutral right yeah yeah yeah so it won't really work in it only works in collegiate wrestling but i like the idea of it yeah they keep track of it right and they tried all sorts of like rules for like keeping track of who owns more of the mat you You know, they made like a little real estate football kind of a game where it's like, right. You have more mat space behind you. Therefore time goes up or

whatever it is like that just doesn't work. Right. Right. And you know, they were trying all these things and like passive and penalties and all that stuff, but wrestling freestyle, they just got rid of it. All passivity yep oh really and they just oh that's interesting so they just implemented this not just this is a little while ago i could be wrong now like someone let me know if i'm wrong because i haven't followed freestyle wrestling in a very long time but they took out all the passive rules like because it's subjective right right ref has to like keep track did he attack, yeah. Same shit happens with judo. Yeah. So he goes, you know what?

If you get pushed out of bounds, one point. You're past. Yeah. That's point. If you push out point, that's it. You know? And then so now they changed that rule, too. You can't, like, physically extend your arms to push the guy out of bounds like this.

You kind of have to, like, push him with your body and whatnot. That's what I think. But that would be an interesting thing for judo, too. Like, know stall all you want yeah you know that i think that's uh one yeah criticism i have about all this uh you know the passivity rules yeah yeah it's like it's hard first of all i think the biggest problem is if you don't do judo it's like confusing like oh why why is this guy getting penalized yeah for us

we know what it means to be passive but and the wrestling and then the referee can really decide these matches

yeah so wrestling did another interesting thing if you're down by one for the takedown yeah the person who scores last gets

gets the win. Wait, wait, say that again? So if it's a three-period match, right? You have one period, one period, one period, three periods. You have to win two out of three periods. Yeah. If you have one point and then the other person scores one, right?

Then the person who scored last gets that round. Oh, I see, gets that round there's no tie if it's 0-0 it goes to coin toss then you start with delay I see they're doing all these different things nuanced niche things to make wrestling

exciting you think bringing the round system into judo would work I think so 2-2-2 judo would work? I think so. You know, 2-2-2 is a little bit long, I think. Yeah. Judo just reduced their matches to four minutes. Four minutes, yeah.

Male and female. Yeah. The whole discrepancy there, right? Like men had five-minute matches, women had four-minute matches. They're like, oh, this is so sexist. This is not right. But then they, you know, IJ was like, look at the statistics. Women don't throw anybody. It's very, very much lower. Yeah, the last minute.

And then they've been doing this, and they have more data now. They're like, alright, guys don't really throw anybody in the last minute either. Not as much as women, but it's still very unlikely that someone throws someone in the last minute. But if you did three periods of two minutes, wouldn't people...

Six minutes. But there would be more action within each round. But if you did three periods of two minutes, wouldn't people- That's six minutes. Six minutes. Six minutes, but there will be more action within each round because it's shorter. Potentially. Yeah. But no one wants to do six minutes. Yeah. I guess you still get tired.

You're going to increase your match time by 50% plus the time in between you're waiting around. Yeah. That's too much, man. It just makes these tournaments much longer. It drags them out. It's too tough, man. It just makes these tournaments much longer. It drags them out. It's too tough. You just don't want to burn your weekend. I don't want to burn my weekend. That's why I don't go. I don't go to these tournaments anymore. Literally.

You know what? One of the coaches in the region was like, hey, man, I'm running an Adjuto tournament. This is going to sound really selfish and make me look bad. But the coach was like, hey, man, can you come to my tournament? I was like, how many matches are you running and how many people do you have? He's like, we have 400 people signed up for the thing. 400 people? Maybe we'll get, it's not even that much, you know?

Maybe we'll, you know, get 50 last second, maybe it's 500 tops. How many mats are you running? Four mats. I was like, I'm not going. I was like, I'm sorry, man. I'm not burning the whole day. That sounds like a nightmare. I was like, I have a four-year-old daughter, man. I'm like, I'm really not going to go burn a Sunday. You know what I mean? I'm going man I'm not burning the whole day that sounds like a nightmare I have a 4 year old daughter man I'm really not going to go burn a sundae

you know what I mean I'm going to go what you know like bring my kid you know kids you know at the judo school and well I'm going to sit from 9am all the way to like 7pm or 6pm and burn my whole day with my kid I could be taken to the park or whatever not doing it

not doing it lose my voice you know like it's not worth it the risk reward terrible you know what i mean if it was a dedicated kids tournament guaranteed end by 11 this is the thing too man my parents at my dojo they don't want to be there all day because they have kids and they have things and they have events and brunch and all this stuff the new york city moms and dads, they are very, very busy people there. Yeah. They want to do like, and you know what? This is the thing that you know people don't understand, okay?

Look at every single freaking successful after school program, whatever it is, the thing that you put your kid into. You know what I mean? I'm excluding high level stuff. I'm talking like majority five to 10 year old stuff. It's like, my kid's going to have a baseball game. All right, they go. They have a little bit of a 30 minute learning thing.

They compete for an hour or two, they're done by 10, done by 11. Okay. Soccer. Get there at nine, you know, they play two or three games,

they organize into teams or they already have teams and whatnot. They're done by noon. And they don't play the full field. No. One regulation size field

can host like, yeah, 10 matches. So dumb, dude. These guys got to stop. Like, seriously. Yeah. You should start your own tournament.

You know Colton Brown just recently did a tournament, and he was like, we had- Did he do that? Yeah, he was like, we had 100 people in the room. You know, we had, I don't know how, I'm making these numbers up, but he was like, we had 100 people in the room room and we had 150 matches and everyone fought and, you know, in and out, you know, in two hours.

And then he made a little comment like, y'all hate me already. Wait until I start running tournaments. Ha ha ha. And I was like this, yes, Colton, when you run a tournament and you guarantee a finish time for me, I will bring everybody, everybody. Well, that's, that's a shout out, you know, like. Yeah for me, I will bring everybody. Everybody. Well, that's a shout out. Yeah, I'm telling you. If you want to have Shintaro at your tournament,

make sure. I'm like, oh, this is like a US Judo sponsored event, so we have to do the regulation, upholding the thing, and then the rules and the liability. I get it. You don't want to get sued. You know what I mean? You don't want to get sued, and I don't want to burn a whole you don't want to get sued. Yeah. You know what I mean? You don't want to get sued and I don't want to burn a whole day

so I'm not bringing my people. You know what I mean? And you know what? This is the thing. I'm not discouraging everyone who wants to compete in my dojo. If they want to go, they can go. You just won't find me there.

All right? Unless some of these things change. And it's not just specific to that. There's so much toxicity in the room and it's like, it's not run properly and people are frustrated and dropping F-bombs. It's just not an environment that I really want to be in. You know what I mean? Truthfully.

That's a whole other thing. That's a whole other thing. Don't even get me started on that. I'm going to get all riled up. That's another potential rule change. You know, the regulation size mats for kids. Change that. Change it. Seriously. Yeah. We don't need that. You, change that. Change it. Seriously. Yeah.

Yeah. We don't need that. You know, yeah. Dude, I've seen this in Japan. I probably talked about it before. I'm sorry if I repeat myself. But I've seen it in Japan, dude.

They literally was in like a big Kokushikan High School had an open tournament for like all the local high schools. Yeah. Dude,

they put down belts. Like they shrunk together belts, white belts. And they put it all across the mat and made like a grid. Oh. Dude, they made a grid. And the space that you fight on was like, it's tiny. It's high school kids too. High school kids, but they're big kids.

Yeah, they're big. Yeah. They must have had 20 matches going at once, dude. Dude, it was unbelievable. They had like 300 kids doing this freaking thing. Insanely organized. Kept track of everything, dude. And you know what?

I fought in it as well. Oh, yeah. You talked about it. I was 26 years old at the time. This is this. With a back patch. Yeah. I went to compete for the Grand Slam in Tokyo for the USA.

It said USA on my back, and it had all the sponsorships on there. And then I was talking to one of the coaches. I was training at the high school because the college was done for the winter holidays. All the college kids were training with the high school kids and were there on a Saturday morning. And then the scrimmage happened and the coach comes over to me and goes, hey, why don't you fight in this thing? I'm like, what?

He's like, yeah. I'm like, it's a high school tournament. He's like, yeah, you know, you'll do alright. I'm like, really? Like, I gotta fight in this thing now? You have like, it's a lose-lose. If you beat them up, if you win, you just beat up on high school kids. If you lose, you just lost to a high school kid. I jumped on unconscious.

Yo, that's so mean. That's so mean. No, but those kids are good, man. Those kids are very good. You know, but boy, was it organized, dude. They were literally, like, two and a half hours, three hours in. I, myself, had three matches, dude. Nice.

I had three matches, and then everyone had between, like, five to ten matches, three matches, dude. Nice. I had three matches and then everyone had between like five to ten matches, 20 matches going out once. At the end of it, everyone bowed. There's no awards. They're like, all right, go home.

And then they had practice after that for two hours. We did. Yeah. That was brutal. I was like, I thought they were going to let us go.

Nope. Yeah, we were there until like 3 p.m. That's earlier than a lot of the local tournaments. Yeah, but we were competing for the whole time.m. That's earlier than a lot of the local tournaments. Yeah, but we were competing for the whole time. The competition was done by like 11, 30, 12 o'clock. It was nuts.

Yeah, we usually get out at like 6, 7. It was like 9 to 12. I had more matches. You know, most people had like 5 to 10 matches. Yeah. It was unreal. And you know, they do this in France too, I hear. Got 20, 30 matches going on.

Wrestling, they do this as well. I've hear. Got 20, 30 matches going on. Wrestling, they do this as well. I've been to wrestling tournaments. In America, yeah. Yeah, they had 16 mats go running at once. These little mats with the thing, and you're just going out there, and you could pump out a crazy number of matches in that day. You could do 10, 15 matches, and then go home, and it's like you could have dinner with the family.

You know what I mean? You could play video games for the rest of the day. What kid wants to go to these things and leave at 6 p.m. and then have to do their homework, go to bed, and now it's Monday? I know. No kid wants to do that. I don't want to do that. That's how you end up hating judo.

You know what I mean? That's a, seems like this is the most important rule change you want. And there's one mat, regulation mat, going. It's black belts. That's the number one thing. That way, the local kids can see the best guys who are the best black belts in the region, and they can develop their own heroes. Aw.

Yeah. And that, dude, it would have been huge, dude. Imagine, like, if I was, like, a chubby 8-year-old kid, which I was, right? I'm going out there. I lose. I'm sitting under the bleachers, and I'm crying, right? Like I used to, right? Like a little bitch.

And then I go out, and then I hear something. Whoa, oh, my God. And I, like, peek out my head under the bleachers, like, wiping the tears off my face. And then it's Colton Brown doing judo. Oh, and he's, like, destroying people. He's destroying guys. You know what I mean? And then I'm, like, I, like, walk up to Colton, like, wow, you're so amazing doing judo. Oh, and he's like destroying people. Destroying guys. You know what I mean? And then I'm like,

I like walk up to Colton like, wow, you're so amazing at judo and whatnot. And then Colton's like, yeah, keep training hard, kid. That'll like, that'll keep me going, right? You know what I mean? Like, that's amazing. Right?

Like, none of the local kids that are doing judo know any local champs or nothing. Yeah. Look at the Yonezuka brothers now they're at the top of the world they're going to

Tokyo Grand Slams they're like going to Junior Worlds like meddling the kids don't know about them it's messed up you know what I mean

they never see them locally because yeah because it could be in different times yeah that's what they should do

you know maybe it'll freak out the parents too who knows I think I mean you know I think the benefits outweigh the costs. The costs. Well, that could be a very, very fun thing.

Just my ideas, some ideas, you know. A lot of little changes we talked about, you know. Well, maybe. I just digress a little bit. No, I think it was very relevant. And maybe you guys could have your own ideas about possible rule changes and then, you know,

if you got, maybe this is how it starts, kind of a grassroot and then we can influence who knows, you know, and then I was going to say, IGNF is doing a great job changing these rules to make it exciting, data-driven decision-making stuff. I'm a huge fan of what they're doing.

And I think Judo is going in the right direction. Truthfully, I really do. And also, if you guys haven't already, please purchase my Rote Koyanagi video. The most concise, dude.

It's 10 minutes long. It's 10 bucks. It's on ShintaroHigashi.com. Please check that out. That's right. Also, support us on Patreon if you can. Yes.

You get to join us, join our Discord server and talk to us and other people. All right. Well, that's about it. I think it was a fun topic. Anything else, Shitaru?

Nope. Thank you very much, everyone, for listening. Cool. Thanks again. And we'll see you guys in the next episode.