The Shintaro Higashi Show - Running Judo Tournaments - An Interview With Ramon Hernandez

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

In this special episode, Shintaro sits down with Ramon Hernandez, a former competitor and current dojo owner who is an active member of the Tri-state Judo community, to talk about what it takes to run successful Judo (and BJJ!) tournaments. Check out his upcoming tournaments at grapplersgrandprix.com, and his dojo at northjerseyjudo.com! Join our Discord server and start chatting with us and other grapplers by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Peter Yu's not here today, we have a special guest, Ramon Hernandez. I've known Ramon for a very long time. He's actually living the Judo dream. He has done Judo his whole life, he was a great competitor, he owns his own dojo, and now he's running his own tournaments, and he's active in the politics of the local Judo scene. Ramon, welcome, thank you for being here.

Shintaro, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate you giving me this opportunity to talk about my experience. Awesome. So I think first and foremost, running tournaments, I think that's sort of the main idea that we're going to cover here, right? So people want to know like,

oh, what is it like running a tournament? A lot of dojo owners like to think about maybe that's a great parlay into the next thing. Tell us a little bit about your experience with running tournaments. What made you want to go into it in the first place? So, number one, I'll go ahead and share with you that the two instructors, you know, prior to me running a tournament was Sensei Yusha Siddha Yanesuka and Tony Kamau, who ran tournaments.

You know, that was an example for me coming up. And, you know, when i came into judo i was watching these guys they ran tournaments uh watching clyde you know watching all the you know the big wigs in our area jason mars jimmy pedro that's all these guys running tournaments and i just wanted to uh you know not just run a dojo but move on to the next thing which is to run a tournament so in 2010 i ran my first tournament. It was a two-mat tournament. I rented the Lodi Boys and Girls Club. I had over 100 people, and holy cow,

I thought it was like the new kid on the block running an event. And I called my tournament the Garden State Judo Classic. I did steal the classic. And I did steal the classic from the Liberty Bell, never thinking that my tournament would never be as big as the Liberty Bell. And I'm happy to say that it's a huge event now. Yeah. So, guys, those of you who are listening who may not know,

we're all in the New York, New Jersey region. So the tri-state area, the Upper East, Northeast of New York, and the United States, that's where we are. So I know Ramon through the local judo circuit for years. His kid is very active right now in the competition circuit. You guys are going to U.S. Nationals this week, right? We are going to Nationals. Then he'll be competing in Chile at the IGF Pan American Open

and then in Argentina a week later. All right. So, yeah, your kid's in the international circuit, right? So that's a great thing. Hurt in the wallet. Yeah. What a thing. So now you have to run these tournaments to pad the wallet.

I have to keep the run alive. Absolutely. That's right. Yeah. We'll get into that a little bit. You know, the economics of running a tournament. So how many tournaments do you run now? Like, what is like, how many tournaments have you run?

What do you, how many tournaments you run a? How many tournaments have you run a year? I know these answers to this already, but for the listeners. So in 2010, I ran my first one. So in 2020, I was coming up to my 10-year anniversary of running tournaments. And then we got hit with the pandemic, so I couldn't run my 10-year anniversary. In 2011, 11 years later, I ran my 10-year anniversary. And then in 2022, I ran two tournaments. So I ran the Garden State Judo Classic, and then I coined the next tournament called the North American Judo Championships.

Both of them E-level tournaments with the USA Judo. And both of them, the last four tournaments have been 450 plus competitors. Yeah. So let me ask a question. What is the advantage of having like a governing body sanctioned tournament? Like USA Judo stamped, you get E-level points. Like what are the advantages of that? And what are the hoops that you have to jump through to get there?

So the advantages are, is that if you're chasing points, like some kids will be, some parents will be bringing their kids to point tournaments, you know, to chase the banter points, chase the intermediate, the juvenile, you know, the cadet,

the IDF junior, you know, senior and even veterans, you know, so this past tournament, I catered to, you know, juniors,

seniors and veterans. But, uh, the, the, the benefit is that if you go to, you know, get your toe wet net,

uh, in that arena, you know, you get your toe at an E level, then you take it, you know, get your toe wet in that arena, you know, you get your toe wet in the E level, then you take it, you know, if you have a local one in your area, like we do in the Northeast. So some of you listeners who do judo as a hobbyist that know nothing about the competition,

so it goes A, B, C, D, E, right? And E and D sort of local, C is national level, B and A is international, right? So do you think you get more competitors just because it's an E-level tournament? Is there sort of an embedded group of people that always want to go to these things so you get more active participants? Is that why you do the sanctioned thing? I do the E-level tournaments because I want to provide a win-win

for the competitors that are just getting into competing, you know, nationally, you know? So I do get a bigger draw for my tournaments, but I got to jump through some hoops, you know, in order to fulfill any requirements for USAG. Yes. Okay. So what are the requirements to make yourself an E-level tournament?

Requirements like making sure you have enough mat, safety area between competition areas on the end, requirements like, uh, making sure you have enough mat, uh, uh, safety area between competition areas on the ends, you know, uh, you know, providing, you know, uh, uh, you know, a quality event, making sure that, uh, uh, you know, our weigh-ins are, are, we're following all procedures on that standard operating procedures. USA Judo has a very, uh, thick uh thick uh sop when it comes to making sure you're following all the steps from from a to z you know so is there like an auditing process with like hey someone you know like how do you guys how do they check how do they stay on top

of it to make sure everyone's doing it the same way is that a thing yeah no it is a thing in years past that uh they would send a a monitor okay so I've had really good monitors. I've had Lou Moyerman, who's a monitor, a guy I looked up to because he always ran Liberty Bell. Liberty Bell, that's one of the biggest tournaments in the Northeast, right? Without a doubt. And then we had Parnell, who ran the Sturek Cup.

And also, he was a point tournament back in the day. What is he doing? What's going on? He took some time off, and he's been trying to get it back to its luster, and I think he's going to get there eventually. Yeah. So what are the E-level tournaments? I don't want to say you're competing with those events,

but sometimes there's too many tournaments. In the Northeast, what are the tournaments? I mean, I already kind of know. But for my listeners, can you explain a little bit of that sure we got at number one the northeast especially the new jersey new york area i would say the new jersey new york area is i don't want to call it the mecca but i'll just tell you that there's just a lot of judo going on between, you know, New Jersey and New York. Mostly New Jersey, though.

I got to tell you, like, there's a lot more dojos than New Jersey. Well, I think New York's done a—especially the city, Brooklyn, you know, done a good job. You've got a lot of Eastern European clubs, you know, the Georgian clubs, the Russian clubs, you know, your club. And what do you call it? They've got a rich, uh eastern european uh flavor going so yeah that's for sure that's for sure so how many tournaments have you run in total do you think oh you know well well over number one i was a tournament director for uh judo of new jersey i ran four uh state tournaments for them so okay i'm probably over 20 judo tournaments by myself

wow so like uh what are the issues like what are the things that like all right first let's start with a sweet spot like number of competitors right what is the sweet spot for the number of competitors i know if i go to a tournament it takes all day i i'm already like annoyed and pissed off you know uh so it's my biggest gripe with judo tournaments what do you call it I want to tell you that for me it's an all weekend thing when I'm running a tournament

and so I would tell you that when you see a tournament like let's say Clyde Worthen would run a 200, 250 a competitor tournament it'd be over by like 4 o'clock and you know for like a 3 mat area that's probably

that's all you want you know but when you go and you start yeah yeah but when you start to move into 4 and 5 mat areas you can handle you know anywhere between 4 and 500 competitors depending on your facility you know if you got a small facility it makes it super hard.

What's the biggest commercial success of a tournament that you've run? Oh, it would be definitely the last Garden State that we did April 16th. We had 468 competitors, 468 entries. And we catered to, from juniors, you know, to seniors, to veterans when it came to points. from juniors, you know, to seniors, to veterans when it came to points. And we also had non-point divisions for our novice divisions, for our brown belts, you know, for our novice adults, and even threw a NUWAZA division in there just to try it out, you know. Yeah, I know we're going to get to it today,

but you're very invested in the NUWAZA side of things for a lot of the other people to be involved. And you want to do a whole series of competitions. You have these big ideas, right, that you're going to share with us at the end of this podcast? Oh, absolutely. So on the judo side, you know, there are some people that obviously don't, you know, they do judo, but they don't want to go and, let's say, deal with the, you know, like the injuries that happen in a judo tournament. So we put a Newaza division together to cater, you know the like the injuries that happen in a judo tournament so we put in the waza division together to cater you know to those kind of people you know judo's for everybody you know and uh kind of i'm also in the process of building uh a tournament series for brazilian jiu-jitsu uh gi and no gi called the grapplers grand prix which i'll talk

about in the end so yeah that's a very exciting stuff so yeah and guys let's stick around for that because that's a lot of good interesting ideas new innovative things they're doing right yeah yeah i think smooth comp uh uh the operation of smooth comp it just it's spread like a wildfire, a bit of a vacuum, actually. And you come just, if you're a good operator of it, it just makes you look like, you know, a star tournament director, you know? Yeah, for sure, for sure. It does so many things for us that it allows us to look like professionals. Yeah. We're going to talk about that too, tech side of things because a lot of tech

innovations are happening right now, right? Even the competition circuit with the streaming. I don't know if you watched the World Championships, but it was spectacular. Did you watch it? I did. Did you watch it on YouTube.com? Dude, it was amazing, right? You could click on each individual matches.

You could watch Americans. You could watch guys who lost in the first round. You could click on it. It takes you right there. All of it. So I think between live streaming and like smooth comp and you know having that situation where people know exactly what to do when to do it and it's accessible i think it's a huge it's gonna be huge for i think uh grappling sports

period you know a lot of these other sports already do it so it's about time that we start adopting it you know and it's so hard uh especially with streaming you know you need so much internet in order to pull it off and you can't compromise your your your smoke comp operation with regards to scoring and stuff like that results you know yeah yeah if you throw streaming in there it could really uh bring down the whole tournament if you need a separate internet connection for that for sure really careful yeah when you're streaming nice all right let's talk about the stuff that a lot of people are very, very interested in hearing about. Let's talk a little bit about the economics of running a judo tournament. I mean, obviously we could kind of extrapolate the numbers, right?

Like, oh, $100 for entry and, you know, 200 people competing. It's X amount of dollars. I am no math genius, but like, can you talk a little bit about that? Like, are these things lucrative or what are the margins like? Well, before I go ahead and answer that, I'm going to tell you that it's a win-win-win for everybody. Somebody like me or Tony, Kamau, Jason Mars, Jimmy Pedro, whoever's running tournaments, Jerry Navarro,

who runs the biggest tournament in the country. When we run a tournament, it's a win, obviously, for competitors. It's a win for coaches. It's a win for the parents, and it's a win for us. But we have to make it. We have to try and make it as profitable as possible. And so I'd say my tournament, Tony's tournament, I know because we talk a lot about it, Leo Lopes,

another guy that's throwing an E-level tournament coming up soon. Yeah, Battle in the Square. Battle in the Square. And so our expenses can range anywhere between $10,000 and $12,000 to draw off. Is that mostly, so what are the expenses coming from? Like obviously mats, renting the space and venue, stuff like that, right? Mats, the venue, metals, PA, technology, computers, internet access. You talk to some of the guys I talk to,

like let's say Vaughn Anderson from USA Judo, and internet access is a pricey thing. You get super prices. Yeah, yeah. So how does that work? You don't just plug into the internet that the venue has, right? You got to set up your own or how does that work? So you can do that. But the problem is that sometimes the venue internet access is compromised because everybody jumps onto that, you know, cause they want internet access to see when their

matches are going to be up. And so you have to actually have your own password protected internet, you know, so you got to be careful. Through the venue? No, I actually, I bring in my own hotspot or like lately, I just invested in a T-Mobile 5G home internet access, which. Well, that's enough for you to run it? No. So.

Oh, no. Well, if that's enough for you to run it? No. So I have my own hotspot, right, which is just a small hotspot to run all the SmoothCom computers. But on top of it all, I have to run, let's say, streaming. So that takes a different password-protected access. So I just got into that one using T-Mobile. And I think to run like six mats officially, you probably need two T-Mobile home internet 5G access to make sure you can stream. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Long days, you know, from like those, like you have those little match cards that you have to go pick up and then bring to your table. And then like, you know, you're trying to put together the brackets. This guy didn't show up. He crossed them out. He shows up, up jesus christ right that's the way i

started and i started yeah looking at obviously uh tony picked that up from from clive worthen and uh and i picked it up from tony and yeah you know and everybody used that system but at the end of the day that was only going to get us so far and smooth cop is just it's a marvel you know just do you have your own account or do you have someone else run it for you i know american judo system is like kind of taking on some of that responsibility or like helping out people or it's a service that they provide right so can you tell us a little bit more about that so american judo provides smooth operations i think they even provide lane mats down for you uh since i'm and i think like let's say uh tony

kamal uses them for he used them for the state championship uh the new jersey judo open and uh he's using them for his two events uh summer slam and the northeast judo championship me i'm a hands on guy so i i have my own smooth comp i have actually two smooth cop accounts and uh because SummerSlam and the Northeast Judo Championship. Me and my hands-on guys. So I have my own smooth comp. I have actually two smooth comp accounts. And because I do got my judo running on one account, I have my jiu-jitsu, grapplers, grand prix running on another account. So I just keep them separate, you know.

And what do you call it? So I've made the investment've got, I've made the investment of purchasing all the computers, TVs, the iPads, the internet access and I'm just a, you know, a guy that wants to be hands-on

and control it all. So is it possible, right? So if one of our, I mean, we have a lot of listeners, right? Probably like,

I don't know, any episode might get two to three thousand people listening or something like that between YouTube and Spotify and all this stuff. Probably more because we're on a lot of other ones too, like Apple and whatnot.

If someone's listening who wants to run their tournament, do you provide services to run it for them, kind of like how American Judo does? Or is that not a service that you provide yet? Maybe you're going to consult it. You know what? I've already consulted a lot of people. I helped the Liberty Bell this past a couple few weeks ago in streaming

their event right so I was behind that streaming it I've actually gave a clinic here a summit on how to use SmoothCop we had five or six tournament directors here and so I've had help okay

American Doodle obviously is there to provide an A to Z service. Yeah. So you have that opportunity. If you cannot turn on a computer or you don't know how to, if you're having problems replying to your email, you should give them a call. Yeah. And do you know what they charge? No clue.

No clue. No clue. I assume it's a percentage of the revenue or something like this, right? It could be a per head charge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Since I'm so hands-on and I want to control every aspect of the tournament,

including operations with the referee, I just do it on my own. I enjoy doing it. I want to do it. I want to be in charge. Nice, nice. You have to be a little bit of a control freak to do judo, right? I control everything. Position, grips, balance, everything. You know what I mean?

I get you. No doubt. You want anything left up to chance. Back to to the economics of this right so you know at the end of the day like are the margins good i mean i know like people you don't want to give a number and be like oh this guy makes this much in a day there's a lot of prep work that goes into this stuff lots of years of experience that you've accumulated well you know people want to know like is it lucrative to run a tournament like uh you know you just said expenses are 10 to 15 grand right

I mean it doesn't seem too high the expenses right you know what it's funny because I'm always looking at the expenses and figuring out

ways to chop it down and making sure we don't have too many refs we have just the right amount of people working the event are the refs paid the refs are paid refs. We have just the right amount of people working the event.

Are the refs paid? The refs are paid refs, yeah, for Gino. All of them? No, all of them. You know what, depending on who's the chief and what kind of developmental work they're doing. You know, that's a different topic. But with regards to, like, let's say, you know, the cost of running an event, you just want to make sure that you're

not getting into too big of a venue. If you get into a venue where you're paying $10,000 to $15,000 a day, you're not going to make, I mean, in a judo tournament, you're not going to make a lot. If you're running a jiu-jitsu tournament it's a different ball of wax. They got 1,000 to 1,500 people who don't come into a jiu-jitsu tournament. You got 10 times the amount of people in the United States doing jiu-jitsu versus judo. But with regards to judo, if you're running a judo event, you're going to want to stay in the $2,500 to $3,000 range or $3, or $3,500 per day, you know, which includes your setup, you know. So you want to be careful, you know,

with not spending too much money with that, not spending too much money with your metals. You want to be, you want to have just the right amount of people, stuff, and resources to pull off, you know, what you're doing. So what's the ROI at the end of the day? The return? The return could be, you know, what you're doing. So what's the ROI at the end of the day? The return? The return could be, you know, on a judo tournament, the return could be, you know, north of, you know, 15 to 20,000 if you do it right, you know?

Yeah. I actually, I cap my tournaments because I can only run four mats. And at the end of the day, I have to consider the health of the referees, the staff, you know, and my own sanity, you know. So I cap it at like 475, the last one. 475. Yeah. Is there a world where we could do more?

There is a world. But the problem is venue is going to be your first challenge, you know, in the Northeast, New York City alone. Can't do anything in New York city. Oh my God. It's, it's, I mean, when you look at what they're charging per square foot and some of these venues, you can't do it.

I mean, look at, look at the big wigs in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and grapplers industries, Naga. These guys are directly not doing anything in Manhattan. Yeah. I mean, there used to be the New York Open, but then they were renting out CUNY for the weekend or something like that, and I guess it was just too much.

It's just too much money. But, I mean, if you look at even the jiu-jitsu side of it, which they have a lot more participation, they even have problems doing anything inside of New York City. Yeah. I mean, 20 Gs in profit, it kind of sounds like a lot, but I mean, I guess the amount of work that goes into it, right? Organizing, like how much work goes into it? Like how long do you have to start?

But you have to market a tournament also, right? You have to be all over the place. I say in a language alert here, you have to be all over the place like dog shit. Letting everybody know that you're running a thing, you know? So you're emailing people, you're talking to people, you're calling people, you're touching people on the internet, you're touching basic competitors and coaches, you know, to make sure everybody knows that you're doing a thing, you know? That's true.

That's true. All right. That's interesting stuff, man. For months, I'm doing that. Yeah, yeah. Every now and then I get a call from, you know, whoever it is. And Martin told me he sent guys, you know. And it's like, it helps.

It helps, you know. It's like, if I'm going to the dojo, if I'm driving to the dojo and someone catches me at that time, like, yo, can you make sure you send guys? And then I announce it at the dojo. There's always a few people that's going to sign up. You know what I mean? I don't usually go, like, anymore. But, like, it always helps. Like, that phone call always kind of pushes you.

I think a lot of these coaches. I'm talking to coaches all the time. I'm talking to them. I'm saying, hey, I didn't see you at the last one. We can work it out. Whatever the problem. The problem for me, I'm telling you, it's an all-day affair. I just can't burn a Sunday.

I have a five-year-old now. I have a daughter, right? You know this, right? It's tough to burn that day. Once she's involved with judo, sure. You know, like when she's much more involved, once you can sit through the whole day and like have friends there and watch this and enjoy that, it's a different ballgame, you know what I mean? But when she's five and when she wants to go to the

park, dude, I'm fucking going to the park. You know what I mean? Yeah. I was there. Ages and stages. I'm in a different stage right now that's right that's right a kid in the game alright so we talked about margins economics what do you think we can do to make

the tournament experience better right because if you look at the numbers what percentage of your dojo are competitors you know I know my dojo maybe like 5% of the guys that want to compete most of them don't want to compete. You know, I'd say 10, some dojos, 15%. If you're like 15, 15, 15, if you're, if you're an American club, but let's say if you're like an Eastern European club, you know, like a Georgian, Russian, you know, Polish, these guys,

they they're passionate about judo. And so, like, let's say an outfit like Darfight, they come 40, 50 strong. Yeah. And so some of these East European clubs, they come in numbers, in droves. They really do. You know, but it's the thing, right? It's like you do judo, you compete. That's like the thing, you know? Oh.

And they're passionate about it. So we have to learn to accommodate them. And it's tough sometimes because there's a language barrier. I've actually thought about hiring a Russian interpreter just to get us through the results area because kids are trying to get their medals. They want to go home. See, that's the outside of boxing that I like about you. You know, whoever, no one's ever said that before, ever in the history that I've been in judo for 35 years.

No one's ever said, you know what, maybe we should have somebody that speaks Russian there. There's always someone that speaks Russian there. Like an interpreter, interpreter just dedicated for that, you know? Yeah. Well, for you, that's a great thing. It's a more, it's a painful lesson because you got kids or adults that are coming up and they they can't uh defend themselves well in english yet and at the end of the day they're passionate about judo so you want to help them right and

make sure they're having a good experience yeah i mean i'm gonna sound like a broken record here but like why not make the kids compete on a much smaller mat and then have 10 matches going at once instead of freaking four? Okay. That's an excellent question. And unfortunately- I've seen it in France. I've seen it in Japan. I've seen in Japan, 20 freaking matches going on at once and they have, you know, 200 matches done by noon, right? I've seen this before. I'd hate to throw anybody under the truck on that, but at the end of the day, it's not the insurance companies that force us to put four meters between mat areas. It's really, you know, the referee commission.

So we kind of have to, you know, look at jiu-jitsu. How much space is there between one competition area, one ring and another ring? There's not a lot. And again... No and again getting run off the mat though like judo you know what i mean no no you're right they those guys those guys hit the ground quick but yeah when you're looking at judo we've got a a ton of space in between

mat areas and i'm not complaining i'm just i know i i can identify what what the challenge is there and if we could you know kill you know a couple of meters in between matters. And if we could, you know, kill, you know, a couple of meters in between mat areas, then, you know, we could do more. And you don't need a regulation-sized adult mat area.

What is it, 10 by 10? No, for, let's say, you know, again, me running an E-level tournament, I can do six by six. Okay. Six by six meters. International is 10 by 10, right?

International is 10 by 10. Yeah. 10 meters. 10 meters. That's huge. Yeah. Humongous. Humongous.

Yeah. That's way too big. I mean, not way too big. All right. So six by six, right? Yeah. You know, there's a 40 pound child need that much space. No.

Right? I mean, what? No. That makes no sense. Can we do something about this? You know? I mean, that makes no sense. Can we do something about this, you know? You know what? It's funny.

I saw at a tournament a long time ago, the tournament director actually had set up seven rings and the two rings on the end were the size

for kid rings and when the kids were done, he got up, reconfigured them to get ready for the adults so a guy that's good with switching the mats around like that smart guy you know can uh can handle it i hope i could cross that finish line on that area i've seen wrestling tournaments off-season wrestling tournaments that 20 mat areas going little rings for little kids and then you

know they would right it was unbelievable it's like wow they flipped over the mat and the other side is a big mat you know yeah because on one side they have these little rings and then you flip it and the huge ring you know so boy was that you know super efficient you know i love that you know all right so let's talk about tech we'll talk about tech and we'll talk about your thing that you're doing. Very excited to hear about that. So Smooth Comp, let's hear more about that. Is that like widely accepted all across every judo tournament in the U.S.? You know what? I tell you, I ain't going to mention any names, but I know some tournament directors knew that if they didn't jump on Smooth Comp,

they'd be left behind. And so I jumped on it because a friend of mine, Kevin Costello, said he went to the Nationals last year, and he said, Ramon, you've got to do it. And I did it begrudgingly, but at the end of the day, it's like putting duct tape on your eyebrows and ripping it off. The hair's going to grow back eventually, you know, except my forehead. You know, the crown of my head, sorry.

But I did it, and the first time I was scared to death, but I completed it. I got so much confidence from it. I became a huge Smooth Comp fan, and I did everything I could do to do little events prior to that big event in September. And then I did a bunch of events in between my last big event september and april 16th so uh it's smooth top is is the newest thing and it for a tournament director

whether you're doing judo jujitsu sambo wrestling uh they handle wrestling it so what does it do does everything but i'll break it down for you. So number one, it handles your registration. Number two, it handles your weigh-ins. Number three, it'll bracket everything for you. You got to click it about a minute. That takes a couple of minutes. It does a scoring. It's all random?

No, you can seed it. You can seed it. Number four, it handles the scoring for you. And then the fifth and most important thing is it handles results. So if you have somebody in the result area that's handing out medals, they just got to follow Smooth Comp and publish it and just filter the kids and the competitors out the door afterwards. Yeah.

Is it an expensive technology to use? You know what? If you're not buying a ton of credits, it could cost you $1.25 euros per person. Per person? Okay. So if it's a 500-person tournament, then it's... That they get. Yeah, okay.

On top of it all, you're not only paying that, but you're paying the credit card processing. But it's it's so worth it that you'd be dumb not to do it, you know, and the day of doing it by paper is just it's just a thing of the past, you know? Yeah. So we got a smooth comp. We talked about the Internet side of things is there any other tech that's like important now in running a tournament that you're using make sure that your

you know your equipment is uh as up to date as possible um you know making sure you got you know tvs top of the line equipment tvs if you're going to stream i wouldn't stream out of the gate my first event i didn't stream my second event I streamed and I screwed it up. And I actually, that's why I went to the Liberty Bell. I begged them if I could stream theirs. And I did and I learned. I went through my own learning to do it. How did that go, streaming of the Liberty Bell?

Went well. They liked it uh the funny part was i had the uh the stand and the and the uh ipad on the side where the guys were scoring you know and girls and they we had the mic on and we ended up turning it off because some of the guys were behind the uh behind the computer score was like oh well this guy should just go home he's terrible or like things like that yeah yeah yeah people talking shit all the time yeah so but you're you're whispering it but in reality everybody heard it because it's now it's recorded yeah yes yeah oh man that was a funny thing so we we killed the mics right away uh yeah that day nice nice uh what can i do you know technology

like i told you you you before the call, it's a beautiful servant and a terrible master. It can really kick you in the nuts. Yeah, for sure. You just got to have a handle on it. And you got to, like anything, like judo, jiu-jitsu, sambo is another skill, and you got to do it a lot to get good. Yeah, so what's the next thing that you're

talking about like you want to do jiu-jitsu tournaments locally like what was this the whole thing that you were trying to do i am uh putting together a grapp a grapplers brazilian jiu-jitsu gi and no gi tournament called grapplers grand prix and we held our first one in February of this year. I held it inside of a jujitsu gym, a very well-known jujitsu gym called Pure MMA Rockaway, New Jersey by Andy and Mikey Main. And they are prominent jujitsu practitioners here in New Jersey. They were gracious enough to host me my first one. I paid to have access to the gym that day. They helped to spread the news. I spread the news.

We had the event, and thank goodness it was successful. We had 100 competitors. I wasn't shooting for, you know, anything crazy like 400 or 500 like judo, but I know that eventually if I just keep adding water like a ficus, this thing is going to grow. And I want it to grow because running tournaments, being a tournament director is a challenge. It's a mental crunch. But for me, it's fun. The preparation, the day of, getting through it,

and you get to meet a lot of different people. It's fun, the preparation, the day of, getting through it, and you get to meet a lot of different people. So what is the series called again? Grapplers? It's Grapplers Grand Prix. It already has a federation page on Smooth Comp, and we're in the process of building a website. And right now it's small potatoes.

You know, I'm just doing it inside gyms. Like right now, the next one is being held on June 25th at Scorpions Wrestling Club. And it's where Judo Kai Fairfield, Kevin Costello, hosts his workouts. And so he's helped me out to run our next one. And we're going back to Pure in August august then in september i'm actually gonna try and host host one up at the jason marsh judo center oh wow so you're doing very like local inside the dojo competitions thank you yes in-house dojo okay house inner club saves a lot

of money on venue costs yes yes wow so that that's your goal with this whole thing? No. A lot of, no? No. So my goal, thank you, right, for saying that much, because what I want to take is graduating steps. Like I would never dive into a jiu-jitsu tournament not really knowing many people in jiu-jitsu. I do know a decent amount of people in Jersey, but in terms of like upstate New York or people in the five boroughs,

I, you know, who's Ramon Hernandez? There's a lot of jiu-jitsu schools, tons of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just think jiu-jitsu is so uber popular here in the U.S. thanks to the UFC. You know, it'd be a good bridge between judo and jiu-jitsu to just, you know, somebody to kind of not meld it. I'm not going to go ahead and change jiu-jitsu or change judo and jujitsu to just you know somebody to to kind of not meld it i'm not going to go ahead and change jiu-jitsu or change judo but i'd like to be able to operate in both worlds

and so i'm taking graduating steps to get into it and then eventually in maybe 2024 at some point you know rent a gym that i would for like let let's say the garden state, a venue for the garden, something like that, you know, but first I'm taking, I'm going to take my loves, you know, and I'm going to grow in the community first and not make a fool out of myself. So right now you're calling gyms and be like, Hey man, can I run an in-house tournament for you? Is the pitch? Yes. Yes. People that I know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I knew, how come you never approached me about this one? Listen, you know what?

I was afraid of the New York market The New York City market I thought they were going to boo me out of the five boroughs Man, that sounds cool I did one with Leo, you know We did like a local tournament for kids But Formed demonstration for the kids

Yeah, he told me about it, He said it was a huge success. It was a huge success, man. The kids loved it. No one's getting bombed. It's still stressful, right? Because the kids are going out there showing their moves and the parents are there and they're getting medals. Dude, it was like, I can't even tell you like how successful it was.

Not one kid was like upset. I mean, there were upset kids, but not one kid got bombed. There's no like big tears. No one's getting hurt everyone get the medal it was like such a nice morning yeah you know we had two all our kids you know and some of these kids you know uh i hate to say it can't do a vandori competition because they'll get crushed yeah yeah you want to keep them in the sport yeah one bad tournament these kids quit why would you want to do it you go out there you get bombed by a kid 20 pounds

heavier two years older never again no no so you protect these guys no doubt when's the next one my next one is uh june 25th and and i'd like to also add and i've seen other people uh do this you know i've seen uh let's say i was up at that page was challenging they read six mats for uh a judo competition they held one mat for jujitsu and they called it the american jiu-jitsu series something to that effect so okay so you know it's a it's it's a trend that i see tournament directors taking you know and so i'm not the only one uh uh doing this you know so you know what smooth top you know why why? You know, why not do it? I'm going to ask you about Clyde because he did something recently that I loved.

You know, he has this Friday Night Shiite series. And, you know, maybe, you know, it's your competitor. You guys are both in Jersey. I was there. I think. Oh, you were there. I was there. I sent a bunch of guys.

I sent like nine, ten guys there. They were all good guys, man. I was talking to some of them. Yeah. They did some good stuff on the mat. And what I loved about it was he was like, listen, Shintaro, not a bunch of kids, not masters and all

this stuff. Teenagers and senior novice. That's it. 7 to 10 p.m., get it out. That's it. It's Friday, 7 to 10 p.m. And my pitch to those guys are so easy. Guys, you come to training anyway between 7 to 10, right? Just go over the freaking thing. It's 30 minutes. You go in, in you get out you fight a bunch of random dudes you get a

medal that's it you call don't come to training that i just go through that one it's a win-win people got out of work yeah yeah drove over there yeah competed and then they sent me the videos i i stayed in new york to like coach you know teach class right because i had a guy come in whatever i had like a friend visiting the dojo yeah that couldn't like bail on that guy go but like uh I love that you know I think it's a place for this so do you like that idea I love the idea and uh fortunate that we have Clyde that hit the lotto when it comes to venues and he's a teacher in that school district uh and they've been able to pour a lot of money into judo. He runs a high school team there.

It's a class with a curriculum during the daytime, so he's got like 40 high school kids doing judo. Yeah, amazing. And it helps to give them the tournament exposure that some of them need and i i went with two high school kids you know and uh and and kids that want to compete you know i'm not all my kids want to be sending go with everybody just went with two kids that are constantly in the mix and uh and it was a great experience for them. Man, you are in the game, huh? You know what? I'm plugged in, as Jason would say.

Jason Morris says, you know, you're either plugged in or you're not. And so I'm plugged in. Nice. I'm still, like, on the mat, you know, chasing that dream. Maybe I'll get better. Maybe I'll compete. Who knows? I got a nonsense.

You know what? I'm plugged in as a coach because my back is, you know, when i wake up in the morning the first thing i feel is my back the next thing is i feel is my knees so you know coaching obviously allows me to stay plugged into the game and going to tournaments running tournaments and yeah yeah and now i'm trying to plug myself into the jiu-jitsu scene nice man it you know don't forget about us judo guys no i'll always be running judo tournaments i always have my club uh i'm just excited to to learn something new learn about a a community that uh you know a different community jiu-jitsu and it's very it got some similarities to to judo and i'm just yeah there's a lot of good things about jiu-jitsu and it's very it got some similarities to to judo and i'm just yeah there's a lot of

good things about jiu-jitsu how how let's say a little bit more fancy even with like their their their geese and things like that and um yeah there's some flair it's got flair and judo has a different flair but you know regardless i just i'm enjoying learning something new i'm not just learning smooth comp i'm just not learning streaming. I'm learning about a brand new community and making friends. They have their own culture. Yeah. Love that.

It's funny. I'll just tell you this much. In my rules for Grappler's Grand Prix, I tried to give three points away for a takedown thinking, let me try and make it work. But they didn't like that. And a couple guys said to me, you know, jujitsu guys that I know that said, Ramon, do yourself a favor.

Don't change the game to try and make it more judo. And they were right. You know, that was a huge mistake on my part. I actually changed it back before the first tournament. And if I had to coach anybody on that, I'd say don't change the game, man.

They like their game the way it is, and you better like it too or go do something else. So you're going to keep the same IBJJF rules for this? Yeah. I looked at IBJJF. I looked at Grappler's Grand Prix and Grappling Industries. I looked at Naga, you know, and for the most part, they're all

like pretty similar, depending on the reaping aspect of it, you know. Yeah, for sure. And so you just, you know, you try and, I don't want to say copy, but you try it and copy what's successful, you know. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

So where can people find more information about this? Where can people find you? If they want to reach out and say, hey, man, I'm running a tournament. I've had some issues. Where can people find you? Where can people find more information about your situation here with Grappler's Grand Prix?

For Grappler's Grand Prix, if you go to your browser and type in grapplersgrandprix.com, it'll take you to the, right now, the four events that we have up there for the rest of this year. And on there's my contact information. They can also contact me at,

go to norturesatjudo.com and my contact information is there. I actually had a tournament director, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament director from California reach out to me that runs Brave Kids Jiu-Jitsu tournament director from California reached out to me that runs Brave Kids Jiu-Jitsu tournaments. And he needed something, you know, and he actually shared some information with me that helped me out a ton.

And that's what got me plugged in with the 5G home internet from T-Mobile. And so it was a win-win talking to the staff. Yeah. So I'm looking at GrandPrixGrappling.com. Is that yours or not? GrapplersGrandPrix.com. GrapplersGrandPrix.com. Yeah, GrapplersGrandPrix.com.

Excellent. Look at this. Okay. Nice. So guys, check it out. You know? Oh, it goes to the Smooth Cop. Smooth Cop Federation page for now. Right? Oh, yeah. You got June 25th, August 27th, check it out. Oh, it goes to Smooth Cop. Smooth Cop Federation page for now, right?

Oh, yeah. You got June 25th, August 27th, September 24th, October 22nd. You going to do one in Queens? I'm going to try and do one at IGC. Oh, so cool. If I survive these, I'm going to do it. Is it Jiu-Jitsu? It's just Jiu-Jitsu.

Wow. Just Jiu-Jitsu. Very nice, man. I'm so happy that you're doing all these different things Thank you for your service seriously Because we need people doing this stuff I know it's a hassle I know it's a lot of work It's learning

Someone needs to do it You're right Someone's got to play that role Someone that's not me. That's too much work, man. And headache. Good for you. Good for you. All right, man. So thank you very much for being on the show. If you guys need to

reach out to Ramon for any reason, go to grapplersgrandprix.com. Hey, I just got one more thing to say before we end this conversation. I'd like to point out, Shantaro, that I've been a huge fan of your YouTube page

and the most important part, the growth of it. People say to me, hey, do you know Shintaro Higashi? And I go, I do. He is an established guy in New York. I beat his ass when he was nine years old. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that.

And I would never joke around about that anymore. I beat his ass when he was nine years old. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. And I would never joke around about that anymore. I said, I know that guy. He's an established guy in New York. He's a second generation judo guy. And so people talk about you in New Jersey all the time.

And so I want to congratulate you on a job well done with your YouTube page because you're helping to spread judo, not only for judo practitioners, but for jujitsu guys that are interested. So that's great. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much, man. Thank you so much.

You're going to have to stay on for like two minutes until the whole thing uploads. Just an FYI. Okay. No, that's no problem. Yeah. All right, guys. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you, Ramon, for the kind words.

And please, everyone, check out Rappler's Grand Prix dot com.