The Team House - Murphy's Law Episode 7 with Jim "Smokey" West

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

Jack and Dave interview special guest Jim "Smokey" West on his extensive martial arts background, get him to tell some stories about bar brawls, and answer lots of viewer questions as we go. Street fights, near death experiences, and much more on this episode going nearly two and a half hours long. Check out Jim's latest book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Messages-Beyon... Please consider supporting our stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MurphysLawstreamBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents,

and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Good morning, Mr. West. Say hello to the internet. You're live. We're live.

Hello, internet listeners. I always say we're the weird part of the internet. This is like the weird stuff you stumble upon somehow or other, like you're clicking on things, you're not even paying attention to what you're clicking on, and then you end up on the live stream. Yeah, right? That's kind of crazy. And you're talking to calls from all these strange people.

So, thanks for coming down here today and being our in-studio guest for episode seven of the actual stream of the actual name of the stream is Murphy's Law. But we're changing the name to be something

a little less narcissistic. I put it I put it to the voters to our supporters a couple of different names to see which one they like, and it looks like we're going with the team house. The team house, yes. There's definitely a team house. I like it. It's got that appeal. So that is kind of what we're going to be working with, and I'm going to have some graphics made up to do all that kind of stuff.

You're going to have to get some camouflage. Man, I'm still a little bit of focus on here. I don't know why that is. I'm going to try to dial it back in. But anyway, Jim, so this is your first time coming on here. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about your background and who you are. My background. How far back?

Well, I mean, you and I have known each other for a while now. Right. And we met through a mutual friend in Manhattan. Danny. Yeah. So that was kind of interesting. I'm in the construction industry now, and I do safety, which is a long way away from combat arms

and special operations. And in some respects, and others in respects, a lot of similarities, but I can explain that later. But I was doing a safety orientation of one of my projects, and this guy at the end of the safety orientation, goes, are you James Smokey West? and I'm like, who the hell I am. My name's Danny.

I said, well, coming to my office and explain to me, you know, right, what this is all about. We walk in, and Danny's a unique guy, as you know, he seemed to know more about me than I knew about myself. He's never been in the military, but he's definitely an enthusiast. Oh, yeah, you're changing smoke for the west. And he says, have you ever met Jack Murphy? I said, Jack Murphy, you know, who the heck is Jack Murphy? It's all kinds of people I don't know now. And, oh, Jack Murphy, you know, he writes books, he does this and that, podcast,

tales of the man named Jack Murphy. Yeah, Murphy's Law, Army Ranger, you know, 75th Ranger battalion, all these direct action missions. So, you know, I said, well, yeah, let's meet him. I think between both you and me, Jack, you're like, well, who hell's the guy, Jim West? Before you met me, I thought, who the hell is the guy Jack Murphy? I'm always happy to meet any of our boys, you know, any SF guys or retired dudes that are kicking around the city. You know, I'm always happy to take those kinds of meetings.

But, yeah, I had no idea what to expect. Right. I had no idea who you were. Right. Well, a lot of times it's like there's so many posers out there and people that make up stories about, you know, what's real and what's not, just to get attention. We both met a number, you know, because you're in the social media industry, you probably met more than I am because I just. kind of don't pay attention that much. But anyway, a week later, we got together for lunch, if I'm not mistaken.

And we sat down and got to know each other a little bit. I thought that was cool. It was a good first meeting. And then we met a week later, and I felt like, well, half the stuff sounds like bullshit. Who's James Smokey West, you know? Let's see, you used to do a lot of street fighting. you used to train professional fighters, you train UFC fighters,

you're on your combat veteran from a special forces group from Desert Storm who wasn't represented, right? And then your Halo, scuba, sniper, you know, kind of starts sounding like bullshit after a while. So for our third meeting, I remember I just went home and said,

look, instead of trying to explain all this stuff, I just brought in my DD-214, and a stack of certificates about an inch thick or so. And I thought Jack was pretty unique. I didn't realize he was probably a speed reader. I actually knew what he was looking at. So he just started, you know, jump school, this, that, just flipping through these certificates like he really didn't give it to him.

And all of a sudden he just stops. He goes, Desert Storm. Seventh Troop wasn't represented in Desert Storm. And I was immediately impressed. I'm like, well, that's true. But they were because I was there. And, you know, so, you know, who am I? I'm a guy that, you know, grew up, the youngest of a couple of brothers and sisters

and my cousins lived next door. And all of my, all of one brother, and my cousins were all in special forces. You know, of course, I was still in high school. And while I was in high school, my, oh, look who's here. Uh-oh, I have a guest. Hey. Hey, how's it gone? So, Dave, you park it right there, and I'll bring you in frame.

So Jack is asking kind of a little bit about who I am. Who is this weird? The man, the myth, the legend. Yeah, that guy. The legendary, you know. I think I'm confident enough to do this on the fly now while we're streaming. Go ahead. Let's go ahead.

Let's go, Jim. So, anyway, my brothers, you know, one was in Vietnam. The other was in Special Forces at the time. in late 60s, early 70s, very early 60s. And, you know, my special forces brother used to bring guys home from the team. They were coming back from, you know, Fort Bragg and Thailand and other places.

So I always felt like, man, this is what I really want to do, you know? And, of course, I didn't realize you had to finish high school. They scoot you in a little closer to jump. Right. My pleasure. There you go. That a boy. So, you know, I'm like, man, this is really what I want.

to do. And then my three cousins were also in special forces. And one of them was actually one of the members of Blue Light. The other two were team medics. And by the way, they're all passed away today. I guess one hand, I'm glad I'm the youngest because when I was really young, I wanted to follow on their footsteps. But they never found out how to stop drinking and smoking along the way. And, you know, I gave up most of that years ago to pursue the fight training and things of that nature. But, you know, so anyway, I got in high school. I was in my junior year, I was 17 years old, and I wasn't feeling thrilled. I was in a Catholic military high school.

The same one actually at Russell Wilson, a quarterback for the Seahawks went to, you know, but obviously different time frames. But I amassed so many of the merits. I mean Christmas, when my mom comes in and goes, and we're talking to the father and the priest. And, well, if him get through school, he's got to stay out to school, and he's got to work off these 300-sum of Merits.

And I'm just drifting into the nomen's land. My mother looks at me and goes, I said, look, you know what, can I just drop out of school and join the army and be like my brothers? She's like, yeah, we just packed up left here. She's ready to kick me out of the house by now, right? And get rid of all these problems because it's funny. Actually, I joined the Army in 10 December 1972.

It wouldn't zero a direction. I just wanted to leave home, and I didn't want to return home with failure. And I wanted to be like my brothers. And my mom always used to say, hey, you know, Smokey, that's the nickname I got when I was born, the house burned down. And as any result, you know, she said that the neighborhood crime reduced by 80% once I was going to military. What were like most you do merits for and what kind of trouble were you getting into at home and things like that? Oh, good Lord.

I got all instructions, a lot of fighting, skipped school a few times. I didn't want to behave. I just had a lot of energy. And I think, what I failed to tell you, that was my third high school. Because I got kicked out of all the rest of them, fighting as well. And skipping school and misbehaving. Now, was your brother, like, was he a scrapper to you when he was growing up? No, my brother was a track star.

And the other one was kind of weird. He was like the intellectual. He actually came with a computer. He could build mainframe computers, but he ended up going Vietnam. And I guess he, on his downtown, we had him couriering mail sacks back around the, you know, between the different organizations and come to find out he got busted because some of the guys were shipping some marijuana

and other drugs from, yeah, which at the time he didn't know much about, but he got busted and they sent him up to the 5th mechanized unit, and he's up there clearing the way before the 100,000, you know, they're out there with 50-count machine guns, he got wounded a few times,

he got all screwed up in Vietnam, and because he wasn't the warrior class like me and my other brothers and cousins, he kind of got strung out on drugs that lasted until the day he died a few years ago. But it was really good guy, a real smart guy. You know, they got mortared sometimes weeks on end at 24 hours a day, and whenever the VC would take a break in that action, they would take him a day or half a day or a few hours to dig their buddies out of the foxhole

and exodus. It had a real significant impact on him. I never forget when he came home. I was still in high school. He was 130 pounds, 6 foot 1,000. just all PTSD which you never acknowledged till maybe a year or a half before we actually died you know yeah it's a little late then uh but anyway i stayed in the army for a while a little couple years and i got out because i got involved with some in in germany i got involved with some uh fighters right

they're going to pick that up on the mic is this vibrating yeah well um so so at any rate i um got When I went to Germany, I met a guy named Ronald McKinsey, I started getting involved with Tai Chi Chihuahua. It's kind of like yoga with punches behind it. And I started getting in these point tournaments and stuff and doing kind of forms and point fighting. I was pretty good at it, you know. It was a little scaring rat, but I was good at it.

In fact, after my first month of the instructor, Ronald McKinsey came back and handed me my money back, I thought he was kicking me out of the class. Like everybody else did. But he said, man, you're so good. I'm not going to charge you for these martial arts lessons. It's privilege to train here. And actually today I'm a 10th degree black belt.

And I have my own martial arts system, which have been sanctioned through Jerry Pennington and back to Japan. I mean, it's legit, right? Which we'll be rolling out later, working on all the documents and books now and stuff and training program of instructions. But so with that said,

I've never paid for a karate lesson, a martial arts lesson in my life. And I'm a bona fide, certified guy, right? And it's kind of like dropping out of school. I just, I had one thing in my brain. I never want to go home with failure. So it's just, you know, the same thing we all subscribe to. Don't quit. So he's just hanging in there.

Greg Walker wanted me to ask you a question, breaking the balls a little bit about the guy who taught you everything you know. Oh, my God. So here we go. I was scouring with my Facebook, which I do about five minutes a week, and I saw that Greg Walker had taken his time and done his due diligence to look at the Gary O'Neill's book, American Warrior, and he said, made a statement, and he countermanded it and basically says Gary's lying about all these things. I've always been suspicious about Gary, but Gary didn't.

I've heard the mill that Gary's telling people that he's taught me everything I know about martial arts. I can't attest all the other stuff, but it's very credible. I can tell you that Gar-Dell didn't teach me a frigging thing about what I know about martial arts. So that would be a lot. Who are some of the people who really did, like, teach you and mentor you over the years? I think you mentioned your first introduction. I did. But you've also mentioned over the years like Bill Wallace, Joe Lewis.

Yeah. So, so, so I basically have a street fighting book coming out probably in the next 90 days. It's about street fighting, but actually it's going to break down all the technical fight principles, which are legit. Joe Lewis originally wrote them. So after I, in 1975, I fought in the European International Championships in Berlin, Germany. So this is about what, three years after you started? Or like when did you start? No, I was talking before I left home. It was more like backyard boxing, stuff we'd learned from. books. Yeah. You know, don't keep sand in my face, you know. We just tested a lot of stuff out the hard way. Yeah. About formal training, and my first formal training was the Kung Fu stuff in Europe, right? In Germany. How did you end up in Germany? Like, how did that happen? How did that happen? Um, I wanted to be close to my brothers. Okay. And so one of my brothers

was in Germany, so I pulled a few strings and I ended up going to Germany. Okay. And I actually, I got my high school to plumb while I was in Germany from Kaiser Slater in high school. going on some military program. So I got a real high school diploma. Remember, I wanted to agree. Right? GED. No, no.

When I dropped out of school, I went down to the induction station, and they weren't even going to let me in the military because I didn't even have GED. So they took it back then. They'd take you the back room, take a GED. I hasted. That 12 o'clock midnight, I'm on a friggin' bus to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. On 10 January, where it was like 10 frigging degrees out there being screamed and hollers.

I'm like, here you know, here you're on the next next layer of the journey, right? But anyway, when I got to Europe and started, I mean, we were living and breathing, we're doing yoga and meditating, and Bruce Lee became my idol. I remember, memorized every word, every movie, every move I was mimicking and copying, and we're fighting every day in the gym and stuff, and I started drinking a little bit, we had a few fights at night, you know, but, and in 1975, the European and then I met Bill Wattles, and he, he was, He may not even remember those days, but he was very instrumental. And also there was some guys that fought the first big ball and kickboxing match.

I was pretty thrilled about that. And they had these Australian demo teams. I mean, it was really a thrill to be there. I met Heidi O. Chai. He's in D.C. now. And these guys are just, the guys who read about it. I'm like, holy time, they're here. I don't have to meet them.

Just wanted me to do more, right? I always want to do more. I mean, I think every tournament fight that I ever fought either knocked the guy out or I got disqualified the first two kickboxing matches. So I found that later if it wasn't for me.

But I got out of the military in 76 to fight pro. Like I said, it wasn't, you know, I wasn't making any money. I was training with a guy named Danny Wilson, who, him, Jared Bennington, Joe Lewis. They were all kind of intertwined in the American

Open Stop karate systems. So I got I got out, I took whatever I learned in the military. You know, back in the day, you know, when you go through a basic training hand-to-hand was, you know, bad, I train in Q, I kill, kill. You know, so my mind was formed very early that harming people was okay. Right? So I think, weren't you already there before you got in the military then? Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you, you know, it's interesting because I was playing football and from grade school, in junior high and high school, and I was on a swim team since I was I was five. As you hit those preteens and stuff, my buddy's neighborhood buddies were starting to experiment with drugs and stuff. And I didn't feel like that was for me. So the first time some kid in the neighborhood got busted for marijuana, and I was the only guy not using it.

They blamed me as ratting them out and arcing them out, as what they'd say back then. And it was bullshit. So then the next time you know, I'm riding my bice up down the street and three or four and jump out and whip my ass. So, yeah, it was a, it was a, early in life, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think that probably a lot of our listener or watchers are like they're younger. So Bill Wallace, Bill Superfoot Wallace and, like, you know, we used to read Black Magazine all the time. That was what that in common. I mean, that's when I was growing up. And, you know, like, that's how you found out about these guys.

And they were like the, they were as, I don't know if they were as famous as like Horace and Horace. I don't know. Back in the day, yeah. They were, for the people interested in that, they were. Benka Jet your Quaid is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, back in those days,

Joe Lewis, was super fall. They were in. I mean, Bruce Lee. So they all came together under Robert Trius, who were back in 1946 or seven. He was kind of like me in the sense that he was very formal traditional martial arts,

Japanese styles. He'd get in a lot of trouble, a lot of street fights, so he went to Japan and learned all this shoot fighting and stuff. Brought it back, and he founded the American Open Style karate system. Now, Jerry Pennington, a guy named Roger Dad in there, like the one and two. By the way, Roger has adopted me now as his formal trainer.

So I've promoted him recently to his eighth in this system, but he is a tenth. And I've known Roger since he was a teenager. So how did you go from something like Tai Chi Chuan and Wushu, which are very, like, Tai Chi Chuan is very, well, say soft. And circular and Wushu is very kind of formal to into more like the, aggressive sort of. Well, that's what happened. So I got out of the military and went back home to fight. I didn't know where to go or what to do and driving around the neighborhood. And I've seen this a little, it's about twice the size of this room, maybe, maybe the size. Maybe twice

size. And it's an American, open, American kickboxing. Oh, that'll work. So I crawled in there and there were a bunch of guys that are very non-traditional wearing cut off shorts and teetops and sweating and dirty and it stunk and they've beaten the crap out of each other. This guy, Danny Wilson was his name, who became my trainer at the time. Hey, you want to work out with us? See, just warm yourself up. These guys are killing each other.

I mean, we used to be barren up, but they just came out with safety punches. These guys were punching extra hard because they didn't think they could hurt you with safety gear. You know, and so Keith Hayflick at the time was the United States Paradi Association's United States

Light Heavyweight title holder He could have been Kermit the Frog for all I knew Anyways, I'm stretching out And they started razzing on me Because I had that Bill Wallace flexibility and stuff Oh, it's Bill Wallace, ha-ha This stuff, right?

I'm like, you know And so I got up there And this guy just started wailing him, you know He just picked off my kicks, Punched me all in the face, knocking on the ground I'm trying to get up. He's still kicking a punch of me So I went ballistic and we got like a street pipe there.

Danny Wilson, he broke us up, you know? And look, if you want to learn this stuff, you got to learn how to box. And I refuse to take a bruise or a cut without going back into the fire. Yeah, it's just my makeup. It's in my, you know, I'm wired that way. And I didn't know it until then.

It's no, I used to fight a lot when I was a kid. And I was scared to lose because I'm afraid to die, to lose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're gonna fight. And so with that said, you know, I came back the next day and he says, if you're going to do that, you need to learn how to box. So they had a place back then, and it's mid-7, it's called the Broad Shaked Boxing Ring, Jim.

So two nights a week, they look like an old Rocky movie. You know, I go in there, you know, it's got these old hardcore guys. I mean, one of these boxing coaches fought Dempsey, for God's sake. Wow. You know? Wow. You know, before Muhammad Ali revolutionized all the footwork to the level it, he did, and ring-saviness.

But, you know, it's a transitional time in martial arts and boxing, I think. So, you know, you're going to bobbing, weave, rope. I thought I was really great already. You know, for the first six weeks, you just wanted how to push slide, how to step, how to bobby and weave, how to throw a jab, you know, then before they even let you spar. I mean, you know, they teach you footwork by working, you know, they put foam, two inch, foam and boxing rings covered by a canvas and so it's like

working out in a mud puddle, you know? Yeah. And bouncing around on tires to get your rhythm down and I tell you those days I was like a sponge because one I don't like getting hit. You know and I just believed. I never questioned anything. I think when we're

younger, it's not like today all the internet, you know, you just question everything. Yeah. If you told me that was the right hand, that was right in. And I would do it until it work. That's it. So I just practice and practice. I'd be up to midnight by myself, you know, just doing stuff and all that, you know.

So you never, you never had any doubts about boxing the sense of, well, this isn't like, this isn't a martial art or this because it's distinctly a Western tradition. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Well, you know, if you look at the martial arts, like I said, to take horse creation, remember when he first came out in the ring and there was style against style? Yeah, that's strategy. Yeah, that's trying to. And, you know, he's got that one hand out. Yeah. And it was to create an obstacle so that people had to work around the hand to get to you. Yeah. And all I could visualize, you know, was way back in the day the Marcus of Queensberry, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So I said, well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of science here that people just tend to overlook it. Yeah. And of course, Bill Wallace and Bruce Lee types, they brought the ecciology and kinetics into the game. You know, they broke down how to muscles work better. And, you know, you know, And then you get the Muhammad Ali, influence on the footwork. And over the years, you know, I've always believed, like when the UFC first came out,

I trained a couple of competitors for that. It was style against style. Right. Great's jitzy guys. And then your wrestler were just to crane and house. Yeah. And all the way back then, I made the assessment. I said, you know, this is going to continue to evolve because you'd give an American anything to one.

Yeah. He figures are going to make it better. Yeah. And I said, eventually it's going to come back to the roots to boxing. Yeah. And even though the wrestling is still a great part of it, The Jiu-Jitsu is still a great part of it. Look at the fights today in the UFC first thing.

More and more of these fights, even World Title Bouts, going the distance and never going to the ground. So it's evolved back to basic pugilism, which is a martial arts. 100%. I think that it's really, it's interesting because I think people have a tendency to overlook boxing as passing martial arts. It's because we've been propagandized now for, oh, I feel like, that every fight ends up on the ground. Yeah.

And so all we can do is ground fighting. And it was in the military, I think a lot of it is because of safety, really. They want you to do something that's safe. Yeah. Well, and it's also like, jiu-jitsu, especially like the basics, you know, the first 12 moves or whatever. They're very easy to train up. They're very easy to give somebody a basic level of competence. Whereas, I mean, and boxing is also just to get a basic level of competence.

Well, it takes a little bit longer. It takes, you think it takes a little bit more, well, my whole fight training mentality is what's affected. Right, right. You know, my stepfather used to tell me when I was growing up that a fighting system two hits, you hit them and they hit the floor. So, you know, and Bruce Lee made his comment years ago that, you know, people always talk about what kind of punch,

he said when a punch becomes a punch, and then you'll know. So basically, you know, I think the five basic, you know, like, you know, good balance, good boxing footwork, and your five basic punches, you don't have to get really extravagant. Right. Because when you punch, if you punch right, your defense is built into the punch. Now, you actually, in my new system that's called American Extension Fighting, which would be rolled out later, you know, and it's starting being developed behind the scenes in different ways,

you have to shift your weight a little bit because of the leg kickers and the guys that will shoot on your legs because avoiding that take damage is huge if you expect this to work today unless you just get off first you know but and then you gotta hope the guy can't take the punch or hit him flush you know people to train every day they're going to see that flash movement and there are very few people that can hit without telegraph them

they're rare and I'm one of those rare guys by the way But outside of that, you know, this becomes a contest really quick, right? It's nail-biting, you know, scratching the eye. So with your American, and I'm sorry, we'll get back to your history in a bit, but with, so with your American extension fighting? Right. Okay. With the American extension fighting, like, what would you say are the biggest influences in it?

From, obviously you have a wide range of training and experiences, plus other people coming back to you with their own. stuff and you know well for me I look at fighting like this I disagree with the idea whether it's for safety or for any other reason that the best maybe most fights end up on the ground and some people are now influencing that's a safe place to fight but safe never entered the idea with fighting with me so boxing has always been my base even beyond the come through on the straight line because I mean you know a straight punch is that The hook's a hook, the philosophically, it's all the same.

It may not be as soft, but when you're working angles, you know, it's like you're going to combine the soft and hard. I can tell my son that you don't have, if you can touch it, you can hit it. So, you know, we start blending this psychological aspects. So boxing is the basics because in a bar room and the street, the last place you want to be is on the ground shortly. In a battlefield, if there's not motor rounds going off, the last place you'll be, and if you're kicking doors, which now are in the urban terrain, and you're running around a corner,

and you run into a room with 12 people where there was supposed to be two, and it's a fistic cuff, you know, because you don't want to kill each other with your bullets, or you lost your gun coming around the corner. The last place you want to be is on the ground. I've ended up on the ground one time in a street bike, one time. And I'm going to tell you,

the guy that I ended up on the ground, I rolled him on top of me, I put him in a choke, and covered me, because all I could see is feet. And, you know, drunks will stomp you in the head just for any reason. You know, and that's the last place you ever want to be. If you could, you want to know what to do if you have to go there, you know. But, but so my, my first influence is really everything. But like you said, I've had so much exposure, you know, to guys like Bill Wallace, Joe Lewis, you know, it was instrumental. even he and I had a controversial relationship because things we learn about each other along the way, right?

Yeah. You know, and a lot of the, you know, the Gary on theos of the world as well, you know, whatever they do, and I'm sure he's told a bunch of eyes in his life, it seems. The deal about that is, is people with that alpha dog personality, they're real protective of them. It's not just your surroundings, but you know, it's like my karate versus yours. You know, mine's better than yours, bigger than yours, whatever. It's not always the case, right? Or maybe it is.

But if the case was the bigger, stronger gap, just to always whip my ass, then there'd be no need for martial arts. So that soft stuff comes into play, right? With passing moves and getting behind angulation. But, you know, if I'm moving all about, you know, we're getting in the mix, and, you know, that bell goes off. I just know that right hand is going to reach your job. It's coming.

So you have to learn have a punch and burst and change gears really fast. The other line of bullshit, I feel, is that now people, people just trainers, instructors, all over the place, everything has to be basic. You've got to keep it basic. Stand up fighting. That's way too advanced. You can't do that. It's like, who the fuck comes up with this stuff?

I mean, you go talk to Jim West. He'll teach you how to fight. I mean, you're not going to be able to teach someone all. You're not going to be able to teach someone all the nuances of boxing or stand-up fighting in a day, of course, because there's a lot of philosophy and strategy that goes into it and technique. But I know that you can take a person from scratch and teach them how to throw a punch. Easy enough, right? I mean, talk about basics, right?

You've seen, I think, some excerpts from my fight book that's coming out, the street fighting. And one of the things I mentioned is, like, the world's like four and a half billion years old. And it wasn't about two and a half million years ago. We started walking upright. And then when we walked, it was left foot, left hand, kind of like a monk here and ape. And as we continue to evolve, it's left foot, right hand, you know. But that's not how you punch. So when you punch, you'll wait.

Like if I want to throw a right hand, my weight's driving off the right foot. If I want to throw a left hook, my weight's driving off the left foot. So we've got to get back to our Neanderthal roots to be a really good fighter, right? to make it effective. And then what I tell people is your elbows are sitting perpendicular underneath of your fist and also behind your punch, whether it's a straight punch or uppercut, you know, because when you like this, you get weak

and they also lose your defense. So things are perpendicular. So if you hold you in, elbows close to your side and your hands, you know, above your shoulders, go loose and just put your hands right here and just roll your elbows in. And then you've got to create an angle. And all you've got to do is just roll the hand over the back, right?

So most people will say, don't lock you out. It's very difficult, right? So I'll tell you guys, extend your hand, hit with the front two knuckles, and now back off. So if they're fully extended, it's 100%. Let's throw a bunch of it at 98%. Because you never want to lock your joints out, right? Especially with these Russian arm bars and people hit the joint.

So it's just a bubble. And you focus more on getting your arm back, right, Jack? Boom, so it's a good bobble out back. I call it the geometry of punches. Everything's on the line. So if it goes out and comes down, it's what I call swimming. As soon as that happens, bang, you get hit, right?

So everything's got to be, and I can teach you that one day, not even a day, 30 minutes don't happen. The stepping and coordination of the step takes a minute, but it's not that difficult to teach. What's hard to teach is people, is to put them under fire and make sure that they can stay relaxed and stuff that's coming. So when people say it's too hard to learn or it's too much to learn, I live by one simple philosophy is learn a lot and use a little. Because if all you learn is say five things and your opponent just is on you like a windmill and gone crazy, he's on PCP,

and then you start swinging ashtrays at you, you know, you're like, let's have one, two, three, four five. I've exhausted all of those. What's next? What's next is, you know, panic breathing, panic, brain, because I don't have any more options.

But if you learn, you know, what you learn, you know, what you learn, in rank, to retire, special forces overseas, from me, from each other, And you go, hey, wait, I got a thousand more things I can trick with here, right? So let me get myself in a stall position because you can take punches and stall without getting compromised, without getting knocked out, right?

And if you learn how to do that, it's easier to stay relaxing and keep your breath control under control by reaching that, having a lot of solutions that you can reach out into the atmosphere. Oh, this is my right hand didn't work, maybe my elbow would. You know, maybe a headbook one. You know, there's so many more tools. And the way I present that is, you know, you have a toolbox. And whether it's all-time quanto or all jihitsu or all-in-a or all this or that, that it's going to fill up a layer in the toolbox.

The American Extension Fight wants to fill all those. I don't fill up your tool. Your new book, the one that you've been working on, I mean, it's the toolbox, isn't it? It is like a towel, two manual, right? Right, sir. And so, I mean, what kind of stuff is going to be in there? Because you were telling me, You went out for coffee before this.

You were telling me it's like going to be a street fighting manual. Well, it's everything manual. It's geared to street fighting because they're, you know, if you look at the way our world has changed, you know, call it socialism, communism, too much social media, too many people. Antifa out there, you know, there's crazies, criminals, crooks out there trying to mug you in the middle of night.

It's, you can call it what you're on progressive social. You know, in order to pay for all this stuff, They've got to increase taxes. You know, like on the surface, you know, Trump's created all this jobs and stuff. In one election, that can turn around to six months. And it can turn around anyway based on different circumstances. So when people get poor, you know,

they blow up all these oil rigs and plants out in Saudi Arabia. You know, you get a 15% to 10% percent, whatever 15% spike in oil costs. You've got to pay for that somewhere. I mean, most people in America are, probably 30 to 60 days being out on the street. And so when you get hungry and you get poor, you get dangerous. You're dangerous.

Poor people are just dangerous. And so the need to defend yourself is here right now. And so, yeah, it's a street fighting thing for anybody. The 90-pound girl, I mean, if you look at the statistics and all this stuff we brought out in the book, look at the number of college girls that have been raped, date rate. 70, 80% it's crazy. I mean

not just like college girls but like women in general it's like one of that four I mean the statistics are pretty damn it's it's terrible. I was a year ago doing a corporate seminar for a group and I noticed that a couple of them said can I bring my kids

and you use that look at an older crowd and bring kids and you got a 14 year old son and a 19 year old daughter and the daughter you can just her body link. She wanted nothing to do with this. And so during the breaks, the stuff we'd talk and so, you know, mom, dad, me were talking and she had been raped in college, and one of her friends got brutally raped, and she was horrified.

By the end of that seminar, she was allowing us to put her in an amounted position from the guard and push off and scratch, and she was throwing punches. Yeah. I mean, she would push and she would just crank her right in the chest hard as she hit. Yeah, Jim, you bring that out women. I do. You really had a talent for it. I have a talent for kissing people. I always tell people, train angry, you know? Like you're four here, right? You're out of the bar

and having a great time. One of my teaching points of my son, stop laughing so freaking much, stop being everybody's friend. Listen, the more you laugh, the more you're for, you become, the blinders just closing, you don't see the danger,

you know, around you. All you see is what's in front of you and all this good stuff. I always teach you to don't smile. My first coach... Smiling right now. Yeah, you're laughing at the end. My first coach, you'd be sitting there

and put your own mitts and you're, my, my, my, my, mott, and hitting them. He said, good job, and smiling. You smile back, he would take those mitts with big old hands and, boom, I mean, like, knock life out there, you know. Never smile, you know, when you're working. One of my previous, very successful boxer,

I mean, bosses years ago, he said successful people were going to smile. It doesn't mean that. never smile. Right. When you're at work, when you're in business, and listen, saving your life is business. Right. If you smile because you're having a good time because it's a genuine smile, I think is one thing.

But when you're smiling, I have sort of a social sort of, hey, I'm okay, I'm safe. I'm okay. You're okay with me. I'm okay, you know. Yeah. Well, I've had too many of the okay moments turn into a flash firefighting. Yeah, like you're just talking. somebody swinging.

Yeah. And I was like, what the hell is just happened? Yeah, I mean, I can tell you from first thing, experience. Like, I have a tendency to be too friendly to people. And then, and then, you know, like in social settings or whatever, it, you know, it invites trouble. And then you have to flip that switch. And all of a sudden, you're like, oh, this wasn't who I just stepped up. Like, this isn't the guy that I thought I was talking to.

Oh, yeah. Because I know the fact that we are more than just people. Right. We're actually guys and girls. and there's testosterone involved in this game. When you fuel that up with drugs and alcohol. Desperation. I mean, that thing that happened to my buddy in the Greenbray Sport Parachute Club

Dennis years ago, by the way, I recently reconnected with it. We were sitting around a little group in this story and all the nuances of the technical fight principles, whatever's wrong, whatever's right, but anyway, there was a, you know, we're sitting around as white goes over to the bar, It's old G.B. Club, you know, back by the old Army woman, back into the day, right? In fact, it was December 29 in 1983. It was a turning point in my military life.

So, anyway, she goes back. I'm going to go give child gas a drink. You know, being social. We're having a good time. My back's to the bar, which comes circle up in the chairs. And Dennis because she's been up about like 10 minutes. Some guy was talking to her, and he's probably just going to go help with a beer. So this guy, you know, getting the discussion.

next second of the other guy flips out of eight-inch plate and staffed Dennis right through the stomach through and through hits a man ordering to stomach and everybody starts moving away. Yeah. And old Moses Floress, he's still alive today. He doesn't know his own name anymore, but he's in his 90s.

Speaking about a hero of sorts, young brother. But he's the only other guy that would react to him. And like, let's go save somebody's life, you know, jump into the fire. I had no plan, nothing on my mind. I just looked over my shoulder, I'm like, holy crap, jumped out of my chair. I still had the brown jacket today.

There was a brown leather jacket that I had on the back of my chair. As I'm running over there, grabbed this, and this guy took Dennis and stabbed him again through the hip. Another artery, two arteries. And Dennis is alive today, I think largely because of me and him. I think he feels the same, but I know he does, in fact. So by then I close the gap, put my head on me on his shoulder. He turns around with a crazy look on his face.

Like I had no plan. I saw the knife and just dropped my coat on top of his head, right? And instead of stabbing me, he both hands went up here to clear his vision in his head. And I stomped across his ankle, rushed an arm bar straight to the floor, ripped the knife out of his hand. Which is enough to take down most people. Yes. I've heard this story before. Right.

So, but the guy gets back up. He pulled another knife out, right? He went through a couple of knives, actually, which is kind of really weird. I'm sitting there and I said we did good you got to take care of Dennis and understand this is just seconds I mean it's not a minute

this whole thing is just seconds somebody goes he's got a knife he's got a knife and I looked at Moses because Moses points to the table the pool table and knife was laying on the table and my mind is leaving the crowd but I looked over and I saw something

a shiny object in his hand I'm like now you know I'm up to here and I just pushed off of it and he swung at me a mist his back went to the wall and I got to the head old paneling on the wall. When he missed, I hit him,

cracked his hitting the wall, and she swings again. I never saw the night. Then he swung at me and swung at me. I hit him finally back to the floor, boom. Then eventually he gets out, pulls out a third night. I literally was planting my foot right to his chest out the front floor. Continue to stomp the guy until the police came. I got arrested for something.

But he was hooked up to a kidney machine for a while. He was brutally beaten. I mean, probably he can't close to dying. I beat it. But having a guy take that kind of beating and talking about self-defense, later was determined he was on PCP and some other drugs.

Really? Yeah. So. Who goes out with like three? That's wild. Yeah. I mean, that's like, yeah, going out looking for a fight.

One of my night fighting mentors goes out with five knives every night. Really? Very well concealed today. Yeah. And he's good with a knife. somebody on the stream watching wants to know how you met Dale Comstock that's pretty cool I had a little karate club right after I retired in Spring Lake

North Carolina and Dale comes in yeah because Dale's a consummate you know shooter shooter and looter you know he always trying to improve himself you know physically and I should point out for people who have no idea what we're talking about Dale was a 82nd Airborne. Yeah. I think he was like maybe the youngest guy to make it through Delta selection. He was like 21 or something. Oh, he was 24, I think.

He was a young guy. He was an operator. And then he's a team sergeant, I believe in third group. Yeah. And also lifelong martial artists. Yes. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, that's Dale.

And so you can look him up online. Dale Comstock. He's easy to find him there. He's all jacked up. It looks like him on steroids. But so, you know, this guy comes in. He wants to train his kids, you know, so, and he'd been to Cornydale, he'd been to a bunch of other schools, and he just didn't think there was any,

there were much reality. Plus, in the Kagga or Delta, they were training with Hoyce Gracie and Horan and bringing in all these outside trainers. And that's, at the time, about as real as it gets. You know, this guy's got to learn, right? But he comes in and he saw the way I was training the kids, I knocked some guy out the first night, you know, and he's like,

well, this is pretty real, you know. Dale told me when he came and visited your dojo, he said, you had all these little kids lined up for their karate class, and they had, like,

fucking bats with, like, with pitting you put around them, you had them wearing helmets and stuff, and had these kids just, like, wailing on each other, beating the crap out of each other, and he was like,

okay, this is no real. You have to teach people have to dodge and punch, you know? The concept is a hit without getting hit. Diff, dodge. Yeah.

That's the Dodger wrench you, dodge ball. So then Dale joins up his kids, and he said, I might as well work out too, and our first sparring session. If you read his book, this is an American badass there. I guess the first and only guy's ever knocked Dale out. I mean, it wasn't a cold knockout, but it was not, you know. And he developed, I think in his book,

he said, The Only Guy has ever given him nightmares as me. And on the podcast that we did before, you know. but Dale's as tough as they come, you know, and not the kind of guy who want to run into a dark alley. I don't know, and I was telling him Jack the other day, like, I don't know if I've ever met anybody more driven than Dale. I remember that while he was, he has a doctorate in, like, like, herbology, like, is it something?

Yeah, something like that. And I just remember, like, every down moment. he had he was studying you know I mean I was eating snickers bars yeah it's not a normal

like a normal person not me or you watching like YouTube videos when he gets something in his head like he's gonna do it and there's nothing that'll stop him so I think that you two meeting

was probably very like fortuitous so Dale's actually been promoted in my system too along the way and he's a sixth degree in American extension 5-year he knows what it takes to get there yeah

So, you know, my top two guys are a guy named Roger Dadman, out of Richmond, Virginia, who's also fought for world titles. He's only done karate as I like, nothing else. He's in the martial arts Hall of Fame. You know, he's, actually, he's a senior board member today, you know, and he met Roger. Yeah, super guy. He got.

He's, you know, he's not one you're on, one of wrestle with you don't have to. You know, he's a super guy. But, so, okay, so I kind of derail us. So you went and you trained boxing. Were you still going back to the American karate school while you were doing the boxing? Oh, yeah. Okay. That was part of the upbringing.

In other words, if you want to build a whole draw with these guys, you have to learn basic boxing fundamentals. Right. Because when you're in the clinch, before you get into the clench, when you just, those hands, you know, they work a lot faster, a lot less energy than the legs. Okay. And if you know how to position yourself and get off and actually set up and get a three-point combination on one solid right hand or left if you're left in, it fights over. It's just flat out over. And then where did you go from there? Because you mentioned one of your knife fighting teachers.

So how how, where did, yeah, so where did your path go then? Did you start seeking out instructors in a bunch of different stuff or did you just have to meet people? or that's a weird thing. I've always, okay, there's a couple of things. One, when I realized I couldn't make any money, I came back into the Army and ultimately got into special forces. And of course, North Carolina's a hub for the Ninja Turtles, you know, how they are, and they're personally outside of the uniforms.

A lot of world champion kickboxers come out of North Carolina, to include Joe Lewis. And back in those days, he was the guy, you know. So, and he was also influencing a guy. you know, through the seminars and the videotapes, all these people that I trained with. And Danny Wilson, my trainer, you know, and Jerry Pennington, they were like the three guys

and a few others out there, but they kind of disagreed on, to agree on something, but anyway, so they kind of fell out. Creative differences. And they're still creatively different today. But they all have the same-based document, which I think there are 23 technical fight principles written by, by Joe Lewis, clearly influenced by the Bill Wallace's,

Bruce Lee's, and Robert Reyes of the world, and probably Chuck Norris and a few of the others. They had their click back in the day. Yeah. And, but Joe Lewis was just probably panel for pound the debats of the group. However, Jared Piddington fought him two or three times and beat him a couple of times.

And he's still alive today. You know, he's actually signed off on my new martial arts system, which I think is a pretty honest. Yeah. You have to prove yourself out to all these guys, right? Another viewer is asking if you'd be willing to talk about your near-death experience. Sure. I usually don't, but since the book is out there, I'll tell you before that.

First, Jack and I were working on my autobiography, which is still out there somewhere. It's still floating around. Autobiography, non-published world. And then I said, I'm not ready for that yet. You know, so fighting, it's just so easy because it's what I've done, you know, and all that other stuff, you know, part of me is like, who wants to hear it anyway? You know, because obviously, you know, when I'm originally retired, I kind of forget all this crap, you know. But, Jack, you brought me back into it. It's all your fault.

But I was driving down the road, and I got a friend of mine named Paul Williams, who I've known since the mid-70s. Here's are my brother's company. and every Sunday we kind of communicate, right? And a great guy. He's a Louisiana Cajun guy that still keeps the accent. He still lives in Louisiana, the day. And so on Sundays, one Sunday, when it was still really cold, that arctic blast came down recently before, you know, like before summer,

and it was gray and muggy. And I'm thinking about the books and I'm thinking about this. And I'm thinking, if I write this fight book, and I'm going to be your teacher in the stage, you're going to learn from Jim West. And I've got 10 or 15 fight stories that are real. I'm drunk in a bar, drinking in a bar. Who wants to learn from a frigging drunk?

I have to establish myself beyond that to where I'm today, because I've been to some life-changing events. The most life-changing event is my oldest son being murdered 16 years ago. but even before that I just never thought about it was ram wide open I should mention I've never seen you drink more than like one course of life in my life

since I've known you you know when I drink bad things happen you know and so back to the near death experience and this book if you haven't read it you can find it on Amazon it's called Messages from Beyond by James Smokey West and I'll post links to all this stuff

in the description of the video after we finish. I appreciate that, Jack, because this book is very important. I was driving down the road on that Sunday, going to Pennsylvania. It's cold and windy. And I looked up in the sky and it's probably a million crows because, I mean, it was like the next eight miles of crows being windwipped all the way around. And I had a vision and a dream after my son was murdered that he morphed into a hawk and flew away. And a dream man that's told me that you can see. set people free in their dreams. In other words, if they, if they died of sudden violent death, they were unprepared, they were being trapped. And so I believe, wholeheartedly, is my symbolism of this hawk. And I'm driving down the road. And then all this happened at the same time, talking to Paul Williams on the phone. And I look at these crows. And I said, what's going on, Paul? You sleeping in or what? It was Sunday. He goes, and he's got this Cajun accent. now, motherfucker, I'm getting right to go to church.

What do you mean you go to church? I don't know you since the mid-7. I don't know you go to church. Yeah, brother, I do my TV church every Sunday. He said, I got to tell you, man, the signs are here, and I'm looking. Right? I'm looking at him. He says, the signs are here, you know.

He says, God's coming. And I looked up, and right at that very moment, there's one tree. There's a hawk. and all that crows being with this one hog just sitting there stoically looking down and like and paul's telling me this and then he goes but you know jim the devil's coming too and he said i ain't always living perfect life and i'm like wow so i had this epiphany i got to write this book you know and i wanted to talk about not just what happened on a son but i've been having dreams and visions and the book itself if you really look at it it ties what's currently going on in my life

visions of dreams I've had way back with. And when I died, I was four blocks from home. I was working at Camp McCall as a phase three instructor at the time. Four blocks from home in Richmond, Virginia. Fell asleep, 45 miles an hour, no seatbelt. Bang. Straight to a 150-year-old oak tree. They said, you can't kill a tree?

I kill a tree. And I'm still here. It killed you, too. It killed me. I had no memory of that, not to this day. I didn't know until I was going to the VA and I was rifling through my records that I actually had amnesia for two solid days.

I was gone. Zero memory except when they were cutting me out of the car and bringing me back to life. And I didn't know I was dead. I don't think you do. So even today before, during, and after, I've never had a fear of actually dying because it's a very pleasant feeling.

on the surface. But then it's kind of a waiting room, you know, that I ended up in. It was pitch black, dark. Like I said, I felt like I was laying in this warm, you know, black room, weighing on my eyes closed in this nice tropical breeze. I'm like, this is really great. I didn't know if I'd been chopped out of the car and I was dead. I really is really great. So they have to die. It's too bad. But I can promise you, based on my real life experiences, that there's something after that. You know, there's kind of like a holding pattern, you know. Did you feel at that moment when you were floating,

did you feel like there was something else? Did you feel like you were in a waiting room at that time? Was there any kind of anticipation or expectation? No, best feeling ever had in my life. And then suddenly, to answer the rest of this, you know, like Paul Hart with the rest of the story. As I was sitting there, I started having a consciousness about, I couldn't, it's kind of like the sleep tears when you can't wait for. sleep tears when you can't wake up in your sleep.

I've had that many times. Yeah, it's a lot like that, right? And so I suddenly realized, I'm really feeling good. I don't want to wake up, but I don't know where I am. I couldn't wiggle my fingers. In fact, they weren't even there. It's like my spiritual self, you know. And all of a sudden, as soon as I developed this consciousness,

it's like that blackness started taking weight and form. And if you ever watch the movie Ghosts, or our only star, gooombs the guy coming to sweep the guy away. It's almost like that but darker, much darker. And it's like these, everything was compressing me. I could hear these unintelligible voices.

I didn't, you know, right, right, I'd garble and really dark and deep. And I'm like, then I started my panicking, you know, and I didn't sleep wherever I was. And it was like a tail, like a gray tail just flew up from where my feet would normally be. And with a red tip and hitspan in my left eye, and I just jumped up.

And I was screaming, where in the hell am I at? And what the fuck's going on? And I'm sitting on an operating table in an ER. And there were two nurses off to my side cleaning up. And there was a glass, and the doctor standing outside. They had already pulled the blood on me. I was done.

Right? Like they thought you were a cadaver. I was a cadaver. home. And so anyway, I can see the doctor look up and he's running to me and he's giving hand and arm signals to the nurses and he walks up and he gets right beside me and he looks at me and he says, we're glad to have you back, Mr. West. Oh, I was really open he was going to say my bad. Yeah. I was thinking about my bad. And I'm like, well, wherever I'm in. And he says, I'm going to ask you not to talk because we have to do a little work on you.

They'll lay me down and shoving vacuum hoses down my throat, and I can see a mirror. They had to reconstruct the surgery. I had reconstruct my left cheek, my nose, my sinus cavities had to be scraped out. I remember every single moment of surgery. They even had to cut off three centimeters in my tongue and stitch it up.

And then it was two days later, I thought it was five minutes later, My dad, he's kind of weird. He was a World War II guy. He's dead now. He was a hardcore iron worker, sheet metal guy. He was in the battle of the bowl. Wow. Yeah.

And he's in my room, I'm sitting there. And the clothes I was wearing, he pulled him out of their car, covering him out of the car to show me the clothes. I'm like, what is wrong with you? Well, I'm still trying to sort all this stuff out. But my memories of the hereafter are as real and vivid as this moment here. And if you read the book, I got to tell you, my takeaway from that moment was, wow, you better live your life differently, but I didn't. I didn't change it all after that.

And that was in the 80s, right? And then until my son was murdered in 2003, I was pretty much running on full tip. But I can't tell you this, 17 years after that car grade, that was in 70s, I'm sorry, Well, 79, 81, you know, 79, April, 79. I can tell you, 17 years later, I've been out Rucks Avenue, working and burning up all night. You know, I get my own, you know, couch and I went into one of those spots, right?

And I woke up within my dream, I'm sure a lot of you guys have done this. Like, you think you're awake, but you're dreaming. Yeah. And where I woke up was the exact same place to do that dream. Oh, really? The night I got killed.

Yeah, I was there. 17 years later. Did it start with the comfort? Yeah, start everything. And the only difference is I knew where I was, and I reverted back to all the way when I used to meditate, my Kung Fu days and control my breathing. I started controlling my breathing, you know, I'm breathing deep.

And all of a sudden, it's like all that darkness started to move and separate. And I can tell it was just like lost souls, just like mine. I noticed exactly what it was. And as they started to separate in my dream, I could actually see that bright light through that. And I just woke up. I'm like, wow, here's more. This is something true. Well, getting into this whole subject.

Because there are more questions for you, Jim, but I also want to bring up this play that Dave and I went and saw. Right. Called Last Out. Last Out. Last Out. UO.G of a Green Beret. Okay. Yeah.

And there's this retired SF officer, Scott Nann, put it out. I got invited to it and we went to it not really knowing what to expect. But, I mean, this isn't really spoilers since I think it's like in the play the... What's the program? The program. Sorry. Work, brain, work. In the program, it's sort of like a ghost of Christmas past type story

and that the first scene of the play is the protagonist dying. And then the rest of it, as the play plays out, it's basically him. reviewing and reliving various aspects of his life, especially his military career, as his dead teammate, a guy who had died of 9-11, is trying to get him to go to the afterlife. Like, hey, bro, you got to let some of this stuff go and come with us now. And I'd love for you to see it, Jim, hear what your thoughts are. I was actually really impressed by the content of the plus. It's, uh, we were both kind of directed.

it, I think, or I don't know dreading it, but I'll speak for myself, is that there's all, just in sort of the veteran community these days, there's a lot of value to having post-traumatic stress. You know, there's a lot of

people like want to brag about it. Yeah, it's celebrate their trauma. Celebrate their trauma. And and so I never experienced it. You've never experienced you've never experienced, you, you,

would it mean for yourself or you've never seen anybody who takes advantage of the indulgence? Both. So in the theatrical community, I would say that a lot of veteran plays or, you know, or veteran short films or whatever, really focus on that and it's really sort of indulgence. And I'm not at all criticizing how anybody deals with anything. But I also think that there's a bit of inauthenticity for some people. Yeah, yeah. You know, some people take it on because they know it's going to pay benefits.

And so I was, obviously I want to support veterans and I want to go to their plays and things like that. But I was kind of dreading the whole, oh, I hope this isn't like a, you know, woe is me fast or, you know, or war is hell. or whatever. And it wasn't that at all. It was not in any way self-indulgent. I mean, it wasn't, the dialogue was phenomenal. The scenes in it. All of the various vignettes in the play,

you would relate to immediately, Jim. You'd see it because there were things that we all experienced. Yeah. Yeah. It was very well done. So that's part of the book. You've got to read through the lines, but like when I looked at the birds and the crow on these signs and dreams, And I even recommend at one point that if you have this weird ass drink, it makes no sense.

Just write it down. So let me ask you, did that experience, did that inform your spiritual, your current, whatever? And I don't know what kind of a spiritual system you follow or whatever. But did that inform you at all? Did that influence you? Has your perspective on the afterlife or spirituality changed it all because of that? I think William Shakespeare said it best.

To that own self be true. You know, yes, and in other words, the life that you live here today may not be the same as the life you live in Uganda or Honduras or mainland China, if you don't have any money. Norms, societal norms, you know, that we grow up with and that they're getting so politically correct now. The interests of us spending on the sidewalk,

I think we, it's like being in your fork and putting them blinders on, was so worried about, you know, that paycheck next week. Can I pay the bills? Got to pay the rent. You know, what's next for me? 60% of all these modern-day marriages ended up in divorce. You know, it's just a Sodom and Gomorrah out of here.

It really is. And we, I don't think, if you don't have a specific religion to cling on to and truly in your heart and believe, what I do, when I say, you know, to that own self be true, you can't live to someone else's expectation ever. And you have to know in your mind, in your heart of hearts, what's right and what's wrong. And if you live to those norms, my inner belief, based off of all my experience,

is to include my son passing, is that there are two roads, you know. And you have a choice today to figure out which one you're going to be when the lights go out. You know, and some of that made me predestined. Like my son, you hear the other thing, the good die of him. Even, he was so artistic, I thought he was way ahead of his time. And maybe his time just wasn't here now, you know, maybe it just wasn't here.

So I have hopes that there's reincarnation. I mean, we'll never know until we know, you know. But, you know, it's like within 10 minutes of my son getting murdered, I was getting a call from the Pittsburgh Coroner's officer, wanting to harvest body parts. And obviously I think it could fly really well. I said, listen, he was 18 years old. And that would have to be his choice, not mine.

And so just in case, because one may never know, that he needs that in his next life, no, just let him take out of this world what he brought into it. I'm all about helping other people. But you know what? When your number's up, it doesn't matter if you've got to, you know,

somebody else's heart or lungs, your numbers just up. It doesn't matter how old you are, how young you are. The only thing, can we control destiny? What the hell is destiny? Well, I'm going to be three weeks from now

or where I'm going to be when the lights go out, is you saying, right? So I honestly don't know. I mean, for years after my first encounter with death, I just didn't want to die. I still don't want to die. I still don't really know, but I do know when I saw that light

that you have to believe. and so my spirituality doesn't believe belong around a specific religion as much as it does a specific belief you know that i do believe there's more and that if you're true to yourself you know like honor your god which you know it doesn't matter to pick the religion and you stay true to your own values you know your values right then uh just let it let it let it rock and roll you know and and i think that if you can stay relaxed in the fire, man, there's a way out, you know, and it's a good way out. So it doesn't matter if you fight every night or if you go to church every Sunday. It's how you handle your day-to-day business, you know.

How easy it is for us to get frustrated and change your language the way you talk. Well, you know, I'm disappointed. I'm not frustrated. I'm not mad. You know, you have no character-building process what you think you say, you know, what you say you do, what you do, you become. So, you know, it's all about believing in yourself, you know. man, that's the rest of me.

I mean, I'm not going to agree with everything anybody does. I'm not going to like a lot of people's lifestyle, and I guarantee it they don't like mine. That's true that I don't get a fuck, you know. I know there's a hereafter, and I'm just going to get up every day and do my best and then call them, you know, call it quick. Jim, somebody was asking about Russian systema,

the martial arts system. What do you think of all that? I think everything that's just, I can tell you, I don't about Russian system, but I can tell you that Russian system, are very reality-based. You know, like Bruce Lee's saying, when the punch becomes a punch, it is what it is.

You know, rear-neck of chokas, rear-neck chokas, taking out, you know, boxing's boxing. I mean, it is what it is. If you go back and look at the, you know, the Russian boxers where they've ruled supreme for a long time, and now that Irish and the Europeans,

and back in the late 60s, early 70s, you know, I have to be Italians and Irish, you know, and Muhammad Ali did his thing. Then it was all the Afro-American boxers and then the Spanish guys in a little catapult. You know, this is a question about rhythm. You know, technique is nothing about technique, right? To me, and Russian system, right?

It doesn't matter what you learn is how you learn, you know? And where all those boxes go is they can't compete and mixed martial arts, no. They chase the money. They're 6 foot 8, 290 pounds. They play basketball. They play football. You know, the box and they started losing all the money.

I mean, mixed martial arts isn't paying the money. I think. I have no experience with Sistema, but they get criticized because the instructors have everyone fighting in slow motion. And what it becomes is like, you know, those videos out there of like the Kung Fu Master and he waves his hands and his students just fall down. Did the systema how is it supposed to have one of those energetic components to it? I thought that it was... When you listen to the instructors, there is a sort of mystical. Russian mysticism.

So if I could fight them Russian is really really really hard. close to China and you know all this stuff started yeah thousands of years ago you know just learning how to breathe and the thing about it is the old trapping or sticky hands in your training pushing almost slow motion right like some of them yeah they don't they like there's hypnotism involved in the system so I'm not hyped doing the hypnotism part of it but I am like it's okay to work slow and learn that learning that basic body rhythms that people have because if your breath control is off at full tilt you're going to panic and you're going to lose your breath guitar and fast and the merits of that is I think is adequate

and something that could benefit you know any fighter but I wouldn't exclude amping it up you know yeah do you have any thoughts on um like crap maga? yeah I've got to thoughts I I think the first thing I like about it, it is truly reality-based. I mean, look where it comes from, right? They're putting guns and he's ready to get his hands at five years old because literally there's spot this big on the map with half the world trying to crush them.

So I got to learn to fight early and defend themselves, right? And so they take it very seriously. And it is based on what's real, a lot of real studies. And also what I like about it is there's no belt ranking system. So you can just come into your leisure. work and go. And I know a lot of the people that migrate to Cromaghan have a commonality. They just want to survive in the streets, you know, and they're not looking to be competitive out in the rain and stuff. So I enjoy that about them. I think a lot of

you know, a portion of my American extension fighting works on that reality-based level. Actually, all of mine works on a reality-based level. I just don't know that the individual's as it gets watered down along the way is being trained up to the true intent of the guy if you went to the homeland and says look I'm not I'll sign anywhere but let's get down dirty you know I don't think they get down I think they teach down dirty a lot but not that not enough you know too much pads too much stuff you know to make it feel real nice and really it's not so like in my mind and I'd like your opinion I'm gonna make a text while we're talking sure sure I mean that in my mind and I don't know what Systema like I've seen some videos I don't know what it's really all about

so I don't want to like act like I do but Sistema and Krav Maga and then you have like American gutter fighting right you have the that's Clint yeah yeah you train for a while

the Fairgram Applegate well I actually met at Carl Sistari's place training in that you know based on the old Applegate Fairbent and, you know, uh,

site stuff. And, yeah, well, the affair man's time too with death, you know, cut,

cut the lead down. Yeah. And, uh, Algate, where the Abelgate's, uh, killer,

be killed. Um, and so I think, I think that, like, with these systems, right, that there's a difference between

training somebody for self-defense and training somebody to fight. Like, there's, there's, there's, well, I put myself out of business because I'll,

you know, like, Jack, you talk of the Dale or anybody else, , I just couldn't get through all these soft programs. Next thing you know, I got a handful of guys that are fighting on pay-per-view, UFC,

in the streets, all the local underground stuff, you know, Valley Tudow. And every night in my club was a bloodletting. You know, it's... And I'll tell you, in a business sense, it ain't all that cool. Since that time, I've learned how to train to that level without letting on blood.

Right, right. So we actually take it to another place. I can take a 90-bound girl or some guy that was, you know, Portnoy that grew up, you know, framed his own shadow, getting bullied, and within one hour, have them hit me with full force punches instinctively. And if you're not bringing that up in a person without coaching them, I think there's another level. And that's the level that we're already at. Right. I want to introduce that to the world trouble.

so do you feel as though that there are like in some of these systems that they're sort of self-defense oriented that you're going up against like an assailant in a very in a in a you know against a you know against a grab or against somebody trying to take take you down like not take you down like a jih Tzu person taking you down but like a mugger taking it like do you feel as though that there's a difference between like these short-quist-year-old Because I don't know of Krav Maga. Like, I don't know how many moves there are in Kravagna. But I know that, you know, like, Applegate had a very set. He's like, look, you only have these people for this amount of time to train them, like the OSS or, you know, whatever. And so we're going to teach him these things that will hopefully save their life in this situation. Now, you know, you're going, you know, with Fair Baron, I think, wasn't he, he was, he was a blackout in several martial arts, I think. Yeah, but if you look at his old white-white, you know, YouTube videos, it looks like old army in the hand.

Yeah, and that's what I'm saying is that they were, they were training with these ideas of a way out to have such a takeout. So when you look at like Krav Maga, maybe it's a STEMA, I don't know, and, you know, some of these other things, do you feel that there's a difference in that? Okay, so Krofmaga isn't really teaching somebody how to fight. Is teaching them self-defense? Do you feel like there's a difference in that or no? I think that's a great question because we're, you know, we're in process of finishing up my book. And Justin and I, we keep talking, you know, self-defense. I say, I call it self-offense. Yeah, you know, because, like, for example,

you ever watch a couple hockey players, right? When they grab each other, beating the crap out of each other, or they've got a lot of pads on it. But the same time when they grab, they roll their shoulder because there's, you know, more or less just pretty much three knockout points on the body, but via the jaw, doctor, and heart, man, by way. So everything's protected. So they're really not even hurting each other.

What looks good for teeth, you know? and then a helmet flies often the referee breaks it up, you know, if it's too stupid. But so when you learn proper self-defense, your offense is built into your defense. So, you know, terminology, you know, what you say you think you do. You know, to me, it's, you know, the total objective to my, to American extension fighting is how fast can I turn my defense into an offense? And frankly, I think that can be done in the blink of an eye. Because if it's, if you've just got a mugger on your butt and five seconds have gone by and 35 punches, you know, turning that thing around is kind of difficult to do.

Right. So how can we take that initial contact and turn it over that? Right. And that's the stuff we're teaching, right? So, yeah. The other thing I wanted to definitely ask you about gym is exercise PT working out. I've worked out with you before. I couldn't move like I was like a tank turret for like a week or locked up.

Like walking around like that. What's your, I mean, you're in incredible shape. I know you're recovering from an injury. But I mean, you're in great shape. You're, how old are you? 65. I'm 65. And I mean, what's your approach in the gym?

You're not really, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're working out for what, general fitness or to support your martial arts in the effort? What's your thoughts? I think they go hand in hand. So I've always told my son and others, I think it's been coined by somebody. I don't know, but the reason it came from me is,

you know because you've seen me a little with your bulging at and I just I go three hours you know and it's not a bullshit there's no risk time right yeah I've been like punching you in the kidneys as hard as I can and then like three days later you're like man why my kidneys are right yeah you didn't feel it so so so the point I always say you know it's not it's not it's not how strong you or how long can you be strong you know it's an effectiveness of your overall body and I'm I'm truly to be 65, all the injuries and broken bones and stuff, you know. As I got out of the military and started working for myself and I working for corporate America, I realized I ain't got time to go to the gym for three hours.

The time's not there. So I started trying to figure out, how can I maximize my workout? And then I interview a lot of people that own martial arts clubs. You know, you get two hours a week, 50-minute sessions. After that, you lose attention span, people just can't be there. And for 50 minutes, you learn stuff, but is it effective? And not in my opinion. Then you've got to go to, you know, get up in the morning and run.

How can you combine that to a workout that not only can I learn how to punch? You see all these boxing fitness classes. You know, there's some merit to those things. But there is some merit there. But to me, it's time versus repetition with everything that you do. You know, you see these guys building muscles, and then they always pulling muscles, because they didn't build the infrastructure, the bones, you know. The ligaments and tendons have to be strengthened.

If you have strong ligaments and tendons, screw the muscle. You don't have to be all bailed up, you know. No disrespect to bail, or anybody. But, you know, my tendon and ligament strength is, and I really found it out. So, Jack's mentioned my shoulder injury. So on May 28th of this year, three months ago, I had surgery. I had five inline fractures. My bicep was torn loose.

The legroom had put my shoulder back in place and all that other legament and tendon stuff. So I had seven holes. They cut through the yard. Now I had seven screws in my shoulder. I mean, five in my shoulder and two of my upper humerus would have to reconnect the bicep tendon where God didn't intend for it to be. And that was three months ago, right? and I'm already working like taps on the bag and stuff.

So, and trying to work the rotation, you know, because it is what it is, but my thing is time versus repetition, right? What I mean by that is that's just, that's going to get you cardio and maybe some fat burning, but definitely resistant training, which when you're tugging and pushing and punching, that's a lot of resistance. You know, so when you do your workout, whether you're punching a bag or doing curls or overhead presses or squats, doesn't matter to me, or I'm running. Let's say, I do what I call a 60-wrap workout. And you're in there, I'm doing curls. I don't care how much weight I'm at it. If I need to add or reduce the weight, I will. But I grab a weight, and I go, 60 reps.

And I won't stop trying to get the 60 reps, right? and then I take a 10 second rep, I do trisept push down, 60. And there's a couple ways if I were going to program that out. I don't look at the time. I just pick 12 exercises 60, 60, 60, 60, 60. Like total body workout?

Yes, every time. Back, shoulders, squats, abs, you have just boom, boom, boom, neck. I lay my back, you know, and do it. So, yeah. And when I do that, I get my 60. But let's say I have to compress that time. Let's let I'll do I'll try my go so my goal with the 60 rep workout is to do one rep per second for one minute and then switch to the next exercise

So whatever those 12 exercises are it can be normally I'll start with back pulls you know like my upper back And then I'll turn around to your chest down to do lower back then I'll do over-head presses Then I'll do trisect push downs then I'll do curls then I'll do waist rotation squats you know like that and then I'll do ab crunches. How many days a week? That's easy. That's like 12 to 18 minute workout every morning. Every morning, yeah.

And I'm not worried about muscle building or what it looks like. If I want to get in the fat burning, that's not going to necessarily get you there. That's going to be how you eat. And if you want your exercise to get you in a fat burning, you need to do that for an hour. So you just got to sweat for an hour. This is a separate layman term. We're not getting into our own big science here, but it works. You know, just burn one you put in.

Right? So if you say I'm going to go for a minute, you know, how do I achieve my goal and still feel good about myself? My minute, a curls got here, and I only got 38 curls. I only got, you know, 25 push-ups, and my minute's up here. Don't worry about it. You got the minute here. Just don't stop for the four minute.

You can adjust the weight, the reps. You can get on your knees. You can cheat. It doesn't matter how you get there. But that time and that rep theory of mine is how I, go all day when I'm in front of somebody because when you do that, it's really good for the

heart, really good on the heart. And it teaches you how to breathe, because if you're breathing shallow or something, you ain't going to make it. If you're holding you're going to make it. So if you're making those workouts, say through 12 exercises a daily dozen, create your own, you're going to have phenomenal standing down

and your heart's going to be strong, and you're going to have a different kind of strength. And so after you train strength endurance, then you go to the bag, right? Is that your usual go-to? If I have time, yeah, I love my bag work. Sometimes I will mix it up and do bag first. You know, I just work standard boxing workout. I do three minutes on and 30 seconds off, and that's where I'm kicking a war punch.

And I'll do open hand gloves. I'll work elbows, head butts, knees, front kicks. I've got a three-legged bag, a kick on the legs. I just mix it up all the time. How many rounds? My goal right now is 12 rounds. You know, when I used to train Braddog and Anthony Bradley back in Callahan boxing him 100 years ago in Fort Bragg, when we trained all the pro fighters and stuff, we did 40-round workouts.

It wasn't all on the heavyback. And how many? You got 10 rounds on the mitt every day. You got mint workbook, maybe 10 rounds. You got jump rope for 10 rounds. You know, five minutes of jump rope is the equivalent to running a month. Yeah. So, you know, my feet and knees aren't what they used to be.

So I do it on those little round trampolings. Oh, wow. Yeah, smart. So, you know, there's always ways to overcome. You know, he's got to figure that out. Greg Walker's asking some questions here. He's got questions for you, Jim. I'm younger than you, Greg.

Jim, could you describe the martial arts scene training in special forces in the 70s when you were teaching on Bragg, for example? Well, yeah. Yeah, we were all crazy back then. Greg, you probably remember the likes of the very handsome Wild Bill Crane and those guys, you know, Mike Lee Channis, and when you got hit with a sidekick or it was real. You know, and there were no pads or no, you know, so when you were blocking, you might as well got one of those little macho armies, you know, or those wind chum dummies, because and Greg, you can pipe back in, but I think you're always a little bit sore.

I always had some bruising going on, and it seems like you're always kind of trying to look for the special elixir to toughen you up. Like, for my shins, I bite, no one wants to get it by my shins. I used to put this match of Chinese herbs up and down and take an old rolling vent, like to roll the dough out, getting the nerves and then walk around the stick all day. My idea was, you just answered Jim Gregg's questions. Like what's sport.

Yeah, I was very rude. realistic, you know, because you're, I think part of that too was you never knew if you're going to deploy. And so I think we're always, and we knew we had, you know, everybody thinks, hey, we're great combat veterans and great tactician. But we're, you know, special forces in the old days that weren't directs acting, we were teachers, you know, we were force multipliers. And we had to pull in those commandos and those indigenous guys, and we had to make a believer out of them, you know, because they were coming from the dredges of life, you know, that didn't have any upbringing. and we had to shake them up overnight, you know. So we, yeah, I think most of us, you know, we just, we went out with the idea that

that's pretty confident what I do though. And I know when I blocked you, you gotta feel it, you know, so it was a lot more touchy feeling. Yeah, you mentioned my coach, so did you guys do a lot of, like, Colley and a screen-downs? I didn't know they work with it that much. Greg did and some others do,

but I did work with some, you know, Billy Crane, who spent some time with him and some other guys. And of course, I did a lot. I have my own thing going on at the time. I've always done my own thing, you know. So what kind of knife fighting have you studied? And what do you, like, what do you,

and I'm sorry, I know there are other questions. And like, what would types of knife fight? I mean, you kind of just prison shanking or like what? Well, yeah, a lot of enterprise prison shanking, that's that. But when I got out of the military, I shaped up my knife fighting through a guy named, um, um, um, um, um, um, there's a guy, Scott, uh, He was one of the Chris Syok guys.

Have you heard of Syak Colley? Yeah, yeah. Those guys that came from the, this guy's from the hunting. They were the, that was the Cyok Collar, yeah. Yeah, they practice their knife fighting skills, you know, there's none better. Yeah. And so I used to do a lot of stuff.

I just teach myself a lot of natural body movements. Yeah. If you think of a knife, a knife itself is an extension of your body. You got a knife moment? I don't know. I'm actually first time I've ever. I have a box card. That's better than a knife.

I've got razor blade to cut you now and rip you up a layer. But, yeah, a lot of the knives and stuff, you know, I just, I like to use a reverse grip with them. So, because I tend to use my, as much as possible my fist, you know, skin to skin. So, you know, if it doesn't go skin to skin to skin, it goes weapon to skin, you know, steel to skin. So, you know, and I've always believed that a, hey. I've always believed that the knife throwing on a knife throwing. All this stuff is knife. But listen, the fight's going to happen here.

Yeah. It's not going to happen over there. All this true eye and that, you know, and if you look at some of my stuff, I teach all that. And it just stars? Yeah. Do you prefer like a caramette? And would that be your... A carambert is very good.

You've seen me work with them? Have you seen me work with them? I haven't. I've really good. I can show you a video. I've seen you messing around with the extreme mistakes. Yeah, I'm really good at the script. I just think everything's part of body.

In the American extension fighting, you know, boxing's our base, but then we get into this frame. You're in your frame, and you see these guys trying to do some bastardization of it where it's kind of weird, but halfway effective. I'm the guy that's created this mess, right, the way it is. And so when you frame, like, your box, somebody comes in, you all get your body movement,

you're slipping by them, the footwork's number one. When you frame you, you're locking your jaw in, and you never cross your hands and I can do the same thing with a knife. When I'm in here, as long as I'm here and I've got this knife in either hand I can get you off of me really fast and slice and dice

but the important thing is to lock the jaw in so that you don't get the coup counter and go get knocked out. That's a, that point is in that Greg had a follow-on question he's asking about did the badger, did that ever come out? Yourself, it's your self-defensible that you develop out. So we discussed the badger

and I did earlier today and The answer to this, no, no, Greg. However, it's not far away. You probably remember Robin McCauley and some of those guys, Greg, he's been exposed to it. I'm getting some mock-ups made because it's got so much versatility. It can be used for a lot of stuff that we're going to put together a training video and try to get out in a range 37. So before we release it, we're going to try to get out there in time.

and get a government contract. I've got a commercial and a government copy, so it's not long away. What is the value? Can you describe it? Do you want to describe it to people? Yeah. You're going to get... I don't have to if you don't want to.

If you want to, if you want to wait a lot of it. So actually part of it, I'll show you a picture of it. Because part of the delaying, Greg, is that I have a patent that just got fully patented. So if anybody tries to knock it off. But it's also designed to work with the form of hand-to-hand combat that you're describing, right? Yeah, it really is. You're holding it in your hand while you're framing.

I'll show you a picture here. Give me a moment. I'm digging through my rifle through my stuff. I'll say stuff. Yeah, give us a chance. We're over 30 and working out. Yeah. We have somebody else commenting about the book I had recommended Three Sips of Gin by Tim Bax.

and he's recommending one about that Gurka is Gurka better to die than to be a coward by color sergeant, Kailash Limbu. I'll take a look for that. He's also asking, Jim, what do you think of the Kukri? Well, actually back in my Kung Fu days, I had the guy that used to train when he's kind of a wild-ass guy,

and we used to train with the kukkid because he's got that inside blade, we used to walk around the body. Remember, I'm still recovering from shoulder injuries right now. So, but I think they're awesome because you can use them not only at a distance, but you can use them really up close. So I think they're pretty awesome. I have one. I've got one in the house.

Yeah, I have one I bought in Nepal. It's actually the kind that they carry in World War II. Really? That one on my bookshelf. Yeah. It's huge. It's like that big. The ones they carry today are a little small.

They're like nine inches. That's six inches long. Oh, very nice. And that's a mock-up. It's not like a finished. Nobody wants your six inch when they have my foot long, Jim. They can have yours. I love to see it.

So I created an angle. So when you hold it here, it's got a spike on one end, curves around the hand. I can flip it back, still bare a knuckle. There's no external blade. There's a blade on the inside that cuts coming out. So it's geared for defense only.

Yeah. But you can break through a brick wall with it. You can climb with it. Yeah. Somebody wrecks a car. You need to break it. Yeah. Fire Department is EMS, police.

Yeah, it looks like a combat veteran. You lose your gun and pulls right off. Ladies can carry it on a handle of the purse. Lose the purse, you're still in shape. And it's for here. It looks like a combination of a rescue tool and a caramid in a way. In a way. Yeah.

Yeah. Or like a bit of an ice pick on steroids. Yeah. So the cool thing about it is this angle. I can turn it 360 degrees in this one. If the bent, rounded edge is here. without ever touching myself and if I put it on this in

and it comes back it's gear where you can't cut yourself most people will cut themselves dicking around the knives and it's very very difficult to cut yourself at this one

and I bet I could do it I bet I got myself yeah I know I'm good somebody's asking are you are you cornering a fighter heard your name on a UFC fight pass fight on as a female fighter's quarterman. Wasn't sure if that was the real Jim West.

I heard that it was another Jim West, too, but no, I'm not right now. So I have to do my... I have to investigate this. I found somebody stealing my stuff. But I have in the past. And the same guy saying he didn't get any notification when we went live, which is a good interview for my PBS. PSA, my public service announcement is please subscribe to our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button,

and hit the little bell icon. And that's so that you get notifications when we go live. So please make sure you get that. I also know, as a fact, I've heard other YouTubers say it that their people, their subscribers, who are getting notified are also not getting notified for all of their streams. So basically, I don't know if you guys know this, but YouTube has basically decided. to stop supporting creators and start supporting

mass media. It's going to be like Facebook where you're going to have to like buy ad ads. Yeah, so basically they're downranking all independent creator content. They're ranking Fox and MSNBC and CNN. Really? Really? Yeah.

So now, yeah. So now if, yeah, so now that's what everybody's competing. That's what Amazon is starting to do the same thing where it's like the big publisher are buying ad space and those are the books that get promoted. Amazon cut its teeth as like it was a place where independent authors could go. Oh, create space.

Like myself, I'm an independent author with my independently published books on Amazon. And it seems like now they're going the way of Barnes & Noble and Borders, who they're all but out of business. Borders, I think is out of business. Barnes and Noble is scaled way, way back. It's like Amazon, why are you going down this road, man? This is what was the doom of your competition. they're bending knee.

They're all bending me. And same thing like YouTube. YouTube has been like the refuge for like alternative, you know, forms of entertainment. All sorts of different entertainment. That is true. Well, I mean, the guy who used to do you still on Bellar, YouTube kicked him off because they, I mean, they consider. Shipley. Shipley.

Yeah, they kicked him off. I don't know exactly why they did it, but. and maybe I could have Don Shepley come on the stream sometimes. That'd be awesome. But I think it was something it had to do with like if you're singling people out. Targeted harassment is what they call it, I guess. And he was definitely singling people out. And there were people who were doing bad things.

Yeah. Right. So, pretending to be Navy SEALs, pretending to be Green Berets. So, I mean, he was exposing people who were liars. So how often do you have you, I mean, how often do you experience that where you run into guys who claim to be

soft in art, especially in the martial arts world. Not a lot, but I have. Yeah, and it was pretty embarrassing because when a guy comes to me and says, hey, I'm a former NACCO and Force Reacon, green,

man, I'm like, wow, that's cool. I don't go, in my first instance, I'm, really? You know, are you lying to me? And there was a guy in Richmond, Virginia. Night, 33, blacked up in our system, And then also he's training all the county police and all kinds of people, you know.

It name's Keith English. Not to single anyone out. Great, we're losing our channel. We're getting shut. It was fun, guys, thanks. Is that bad? No, no, no. I was joking.

He marketed, he's really good. He's a great martialist. He's a good guy. I like the guy. Found out in the last couple of years that his whole market strategy, he's got the tattoo. Force Recon Rat 2? Really? Rat 2.

Yeah. And he marketed itself as a supporting force recomb Marine. And I've known him for years and never got it. It's always sad, man. I mean, I remember I met one guy who was legit special

forces, who was a green beret, but then that wasn't enough for him and he had to claim that he was in Delta and I was like, okay, who do you know in the unit? And the only names you could give me were guys who were K-I-ed. So that's sense of right. flags right away like all the guys you know are dead so we can't ask and you know I mean it's one thing

for a civilian to think they can get away with it but for a vet like you know those the community well the vet from within side of the old place exactly that's what I'm saying a soft vet you know you're going to get called out and you know I can make one phone call yeah and find out you know it's funny I got when I got a email you know five years ago say hey Jen they're busting you out on this credentials check website is it what you talk about they didn't know this stuff existed someone over there and one of my earlier DVD tapes which I didn't write the ad on you know whiskey nine halo scuba guy yeah I think it I think it said something like certified whiskey nine and that's not a certification and all this stuff and what fuck you know this can't

is an identifier of course I mean it's but yeah but somebody who tried to say oh this guy's all these dirty names if somebody doesn't like you they're going to go over your DD-214 with one of those like stainer like little magnifying glasses or like try to find something I'm putting my own one yeah I think it's funny you mentioned whiskey nine

I got married years ago like and then divorce not too long like that so I was a guy no almost I was in a bar we were getting married in San Antonio and at my wedding

at you know it were guys from every unit every branch, every unit, every soft unit. And we're all in a bar hanging out, you know, the whole wedding party and everyone, all the guests. It was like the night

before. And this is in San Antonio, so there's a military base there and it's talking to, like, I see one of the girls from our party, like, talking to these guys, and I went on a very good, everything on your case, and they're just, they're really cool, their military, and they start telling his stories. One guy

was, I'll show you in S-A-S. Another guy was, was something else and he goes oh but you don't want to you don't want to mess with him I'm like all right what's his deal he goes he's a whiskey nine I go what's that he's Halo and and he's he's here they he gets called out on secret missions I go I go I go I'm like I start talking from to all my buddies I'm like hey listen to this and these guys like talking with this girl like hey what's he doing oh all those guys they're all like Rangers and seals and Green Beret and stuff and so he's probably just telling them you know

so you guys met like your doppelganger party. Oh yeah. These guys just started like it was it was quite the humorous situation. Yeah, so on my website, you know, the American Extension Fighting.com website. And, yeah, you've seen my stack of stuff. I put a couple of certificates out there, you know, that were real. I mean, I got my, when I graduated with a Q course, when I went to sniper school,

when I graduated Halo, Combat Diver's School, when I graduated at Operation Intelligence. I just put a few of those things. A little picture me there, too, in a suit. And so, me having been, it's in the back gate of the White House. So, you know,

I'll put some of that stuff out there for the naysayers, you know. Sure. Oh. And look, I think it's fair for people to question. I mean, it's fair. It's very fair, to give out there trying to capitalize on that. Yeah.

But, you know, it's really sad, especially in the martial arts community, because, you know, there's such a need for, especially today's battlefield, for all these soldiers to know how to defend themselves when they lose their weapon in those quarters. You know, I think it's essential. Not that it would have always been, but, you know, when you go from unconventional warfare to urban warfare, and everything's happened, I mean, where you get that click.

you know, whatever, when you need it most. And even this guy that was talking about Keith, I mean, the guy, if you learn from him, you learn good stuff because he's really good. But how can you take pride in the guy being opposed to you? Yeah, and that's, yeah. It's kind of safe. It's like that underlying insecurity that you have to go that further mile.

Yeah, you have to reinvent yourself. You know, take what works with you, you know, if you're one of those folks and then just make it better. You see it a lot in weapons train, too. people who are phenomenal with pistol craft, weapon craft, or whatever, and they feel like being good at that isn't enough, so they have to like embellish. And it's like, man, you know, like, you're really good at what you teach. Don't, don't fuck it up. Don't mess up. There are also like some real deal guys out there because, you know, the whole like tactical world out there.

Sure. You know, these guys who are real former soft guys. And I'm not going to mention any names. I'm not going to bust anyone's balls publicly, but I mean, you go and watch their, like, promo videos and stuff, and it's like, wow. Like, this hurts my balls to watch it so bad. And, but I mean, I get, I'm also not the audience. Like, they're trying to sell themselves to civilians. Sure. Operators operating operationally tack like, tack like, tack like, tack. Right. Right. What hurts me, but, yeah, what hurts me now is guys that I knew along the way years ago, and now they're making boatloads of money, you know, pimping themselves. how was the military

hand-to-hand guy and they got to whooped their ass, knock them out, you know, and I'm like, what do they really know? I mean,

they know, what are you teaching from? Yeah, I mean, this is something I don't think civilians understand often is that like, if,

whether it's hand-to-hand or shooting or lot picking or whatever else it is, nobody in the military, in any special operations community is great at that, just by the nature

of them being in that spot I mean they're good they're very good but like you'll bring in like for pistol you'll bring in somebody like Jerry Barnhart to teach you shooting

you know you'll bring in you'll bring in a lot smith to teach you lock picking you know unless a guy takes like for instance you and hand to hand unless they take a real interest in that and grow themselves

just by the nature of being in you know in a J-Soc unit or whatever else they're going to they're going to be generalists. They're going to be, you know, they're going to be good. They're not going to be the best in the world. The best of the world are doing that one thing all the time. Like no operator can be totally proficient on long-range marksmanship, pistol marksmanship, off-road driving, urban

surveillance. Right. Like you just can't, you have to pick and choose. Yeah. Like, like myself and martial arts. I mean, no matter what else I did, I said that gym, you're always training. That's the thing. I mean, all the time. And I wanted a gym. and when I was in I was one of those weirdos who on the weekends I would go and shoot my pistols out of the range yeah that's what it that's what it takes is it takes yeah you know like I'm saying is I'm not saying that there aren't guys in those units that are phenomenal at it but they're phenomenal at it not because they're in the unit they're phenomenal at because they practice so they go on their off time yeah yeah so let me let me build on that and something you asked to move forward and today that earlier today

we didn't get to yet about training, you know. And, like, when I was shooting all the time, I'm really good. And I know that I'm not the guy that I used to be. Remember, my vision's not as good. So I had to figure out how can I still be effective? Remember, it's different to me in the fact that, you know? I mean, you know, everybody asks,

what's the difference in the weaver and the solacea and all the, you know, and one's basically staying still, one's kind of moving. So for me, as I've gotten off. older, I have to be realistic. When am I going to use a gun? When am I going to shoot somebody? Right. You know, I'm not going to walk around the streets of the gun going, oh, I'll shoot somebody.

For the average civilian, like, you see them, like, putting on a full kit with an M4, like, when in the fuck is a civilian going to blow through a basic load of ammunition through their M4? Yeah. So, for me, it's really simple. You know, somebody breaks in my house, I got a shotgun and a pistol, and I know that from my basic boxing stats, you know, my, my, my, my tripod that I don't have to aim to catch you with what I do now.

So I'm not going to take you out to range and come from the leather faster than you or, you know, just put stuff down range with a sniper's stuff. If I take a week, I'd be okay. Yeah. But things happen a lot faster. Somewhere I'm at, this is what I was going to try to. I know what I can be good at and be effective at. Right.

So I know everything to me, in England and American extent, There's an environmental part to the overall program. Low light, high lights, and difficult situations. Like right now, I have an injured shoulder. How am I going to make that work? Well, that would work with this Isosceles shoot the position. No problem. You know, right now.

Can I hit you with a straight right hand and be effective right? No. So I sit around, figure how can I hit hard with the right hand? So I'm taking the rotation and I'm pin it on to my side, arm to my side and maneuver myself using a little load kicks and stuff and I can pin my arm and use my body to hit you with it's like a batterer man so I got to bring you closer right and I got to set that up so I figured out how to make that works it's like throwing a hook punch you know a lot of over guys shoulders go out they go I can't throw a hook bunch with my shoulder shut so I tell people

you know your hands right it comes from the old Chinese stuff is is to use you know the goose neck like this here's goose neck right so so if it hurts me to do this roll your hand over and it takes all that pain out hit with the back of the wrist back quick and can block the jaw and you got the elbow nuts all that stuff so so you got to learn what works for me and how can I make it work right so just because you've got injuries or you've gotten older or you don't train you have to you have to take that toolbox and pull out the bottom of the words like I can use this yeah and I'll be honest all those back to the basics you know we we mentioned

to chanis, but Greg is also asking about Chuck Sanders, if you ever sparred with them? No, I didn't sparrow with Chuck Sandler. I knew the guys. We were on two different paths back in that day. And did the great know a guy Sevelli as well? If he's listening, he can chime in.

Yeah. You know, the only could knock you out through a wall. But, no, but I did sparrow Joe Lewis and a whole bunch of other former world champions and a whole bunch of boxers and Hank Johnson and Marvin Johnson's brother. And I've had a lot, I worked with Keith Hayflick. You know, he was a, you know, a light heavyweight world.

I mean, U.S. title holder at the time. Roger, we've done hundreds of rounds together. And Dale Frow and the manager turtles, you all say lightweight world champion. I mean, you know, I've worked with so many amateur and professional world champions that are probably 30, 40, 50 years. And we put time in, you know, like, and all my training, like when I do my knife training with the carombin for it, with the sample, the talon, I do it with a neck and blade.

You know that. So I don't protect use fake knives and stuff. Who was either who was the toughest person you ever fought or what was the toughest fight you've never been in? I don't know. It was for the man. It was a thing. I was going to.

I was, I knew. I've been bulking up and I can actually ask me to ask this question. Yeah, I actually fought Jim and Pat McNamara. Not at the same time, you know, I took like a five minute break. Well, it was a good thing you took that break. I think it was too long a break. So that's a really unique question. You know, as we go through different portions and parts of our life,

our own perspective changes based on our experiences, right? Sure. So part of that experience is when I was young, and even as I grew older, I found that I've lived in my black talent. I found that if I put this on me, I'll let you watch it on us. He's going to watch mine. I'm going to indulge. So I'm probably one of the fastest in the world. So Billy Crane, Wild Bill Crane back in the day, he's still alive, I think he lives in Albuquerque.

You know, him my brother would like this. when I was in high school. First and foremost, he can take a punch. If you go online on the guys to develop YouTube, a big country-looking guy, a green-brae doing demonstrations, he's bringing pipes on it, bending pipes on his chest,

taking two by force across the back of the head. That's why I'll be a crank. That's a pretty tough guy. The other thing about that, Green, he truly doesn't care. When you don't care, it's not, are you afraid, are you not afraid?

Who's gonna win? If you ask Billy, well, what if you go to jail? Well, I just go to jail. Well, I just go to jail. He legitimately doesn't care. And I've witnessed him. In fact, because of him, I ended up getting so many street fights

because we just developed, eventually merged and hung out together for a while. It was like the old wild west, you know. It was really bad. And Billy, you know, everybody has, what do you learn? I've knocked more people out with either right, or an overhand right.

And people are wondering, well, why is that one technique your go-to, you know? One, usually, you know, the distance is already, we've lost control of that. We've lost control of the whole fight. So I'm talking to chin and launches overhand right, and I can be chest-to-chested where you'd knock you out with it. And I have it.

Well, Billy Crane's daddy used to be a sparm partner for Rocky Marciano. And his mom, there's a wonderful lady, and he wrote Bulls in Texas. and he went to Yazoo, University of Mississippi, he played football. He's just a guy that grew up not caring. And he told me that his dad taught him have to throw his old Rocky Marciano overhand right. And look, he was not a big guy, Rocky Marciano. He did tons of damage.

He took tons of damage. And, you know, Billy's very capable of taking tons of damage. But he told me how to throw his launches overhand right. It works for me. I can even do it with a bad shoulder, which is really cool, because it's very cool. really close. I almost don't have to release it to make it work. Like maybe 10 minutes?

Yeah. You're going to wrap this up. There's a few more questions. If you guys got any questions, get them in now before get them in the wrap up. Speaking out of forever, hold your piece. I love that.

Not bad. Yeah, yeah. He just saw me with the little knife play. Yeah. Got talent. It's a talent. It's a nice little play.

Taylor asks, are you still training the young female UFC fighter? No, she went and got married. She's still training doing her own thing. I wish her all the best in the world. She did tell me that she should have want to get back into fighting that she would come back to me. So, but, you know, you know, people, she has her own path, you know, and fitness is her number one path. And she's doing very, very well at that these days. And she got married to a guy. One understanding is he's very spiritual and what I'm doing well. Timmy asks any involvement in bare-knuckle boxing in the future?

Not unless I get in a bar. I, I, I, uh, the anticipation is no. I am 65 years old, but when I train on my heavy bags, I do open hand. I do all the strikes that might, that might have to fall back to in a real fight. And I work with 16-ounce boxing gloves. Got like the extra weight. It makes me work harder. And then I take the gloves off, and I work bare-knuckle. And the reason I work bare-knuckle,

because when you hit with a glove or with hand-wrapped, even a Mitchmore-S charred-ounce finger-free glove, is 100% different to hit the bare-nuckle. When you hit the bare-knuckle, you have to adjust how you punch and your distance and a whole lot of other stuff. So if you anticipate your lifestyle may drive you to bare-knuckle contest, get yourself a really heavy bag,

because your punch has got to be dead spot on not to screw up your knuckles or wrist. And do a lot of bare-nuckle punch. Do you recommend that they could add like a macawari or something like that to it, or do you think the bag is enough? I think if you get a 175-pound 200-pound heavy bag, that's the weather, that ought to work. But the macawari's over time, you know, like when I was young, I just feel a lot of that.

Do you have to do that? No, that really is a solid heavy battle and get you there. How different disciplines teach on fighting, defending against multiple opponents and what's a realistic approach? So more than one guy coming at you. Yeah. I've actually had that happen in the past.

Believe it or not, I have this unique way of winning people. Especially in my turmoil days. I've got all living on the dark side of martial arts. Before I give you an exam, I'm walking, this guy called Ice Pick in my book, I'm walking out of the, you know, in Langues School, I'm sitting at Monterey. I'm walking out in the park a lot, I had a few beers, me and a couple of my friends, and here come these guys in wage formation. The first guy, he was a 10th group guy, never knew his name then, don't know it now, but they called him ice pick, but they called him ice pick, and he just came right to me like, gonna make a reputation. His hands were in his pocket, and he's, he walks up and stops here. I'm like, what's up? They called me ice pick. I said, well, that's great, I reached over and grabbed his sweater.

sweater, pulled it over his head and hit him in the face, boom, fucked him all up. The other two guys started to move. My guys got out of the way. And I stepped between two cars because they're parked this far apart. And they had to channel themselves into me. So instead of getting one to the left one. Beat him into the shoot? Yeah, I beat him right to the shoot.

So I stepped on his guy's foot, hit him. He falls backwards. I don't even think it was a knockout punch. But when he fell, he stumbled into his buddy. They both fell down. I'm like, that's pretty easy stuff. You know? So I always put one gap between me and that and make sure there's none ever behind my back.

That's the number one. And that's like the huge misconception is like I hear guys talk. I'm sorry. I think they sound like idiot. It's like, I need to have the wall to my back. Whenever I go to the restaurant, I sit with my back to the wall. It's like, first off, dude, go to VA and talk about your PTSD issues. Second, like, if you got your back to the wall, where the fuck are you going and you get in trouble.

My thing where the back's the wall. And I don't care where my back yet. I want people in front of me. I want to be able to visualize everything around me and if people do start getting to my back I've got pretty wide range

in night vision and peripheral vision and I react to motion when I can't see motion then I'll reangle myself I always want to know what's behind me and that's when I go to like

Edick Quiznos I just sit wherever and let people walk behind me I get a little buzz out of that you know like I'm riding I'm riding the edge of life Well, if you think about it, you've got more than one sense, you know, and you can hear things around you. If things get really deadly silent behind you, your hair's going to stand up on your back.

And you can watch other people's eyes. Yeah, I can tell you, like, I haven't, I've been trying not, like, I've been practicing, but I have an issue with having my back, like, generally I, I generally have to have my back to all. But that doesn't actually come from, that comes from my childhood more than anything. You know what I mean? But, but it's, I get very,

yeah, it makes people nervous. I get very nervous, you know, but also it's really weird going out on a first date and the girl, you know,

she sits down, and it gets really weird like asking her, it's like, oh, you know, I've got this thing. Can you please

trade me seats? I just tell them be comfortable because what I do is I just watch people's eyes, you know, because they're going to give

stuff away. Yeah, look, you know. Well, the problem I find, though, is most people are oblivious. Like when you're in a bar and there's like tension rising, not from your group or from your people, but someplace else, everybody else in the group is generally completely oblivious to it.

I'm like, hey, let's move this conversation over. Well, sadly enough, I just, like I said, well, the middle of the around the edges, I'm more comfortable with people where I can see. Yeah, that's the most important thing. And sadly enough, if I sit at the bar, all bars have a bar. here. Yeah, you know. Yeah. Corey has a question for Jim and Jack. Any tips for a former infantry guy with SF aspirations, whether it's fitness, mental, whatever. Yeah. You know, the Ranger courses, special forces, courses, all the special ops groups, they build these courses around endurance. You know, it's how far can I run and rut, how many hours a day can I stay awake? It's

still be functional, you know. And I would say whatever you're doing, if you really want to be successful, when your buddies are going out to drink at night, before you go join, and I'm not saying don't. Put a 35-pound rope on your back

and take the two-hour run-march. Yeah. You know, and then go drink. And then get up in a morning of SPT. At this point, I mean, more so than when I went through definitely a lot more than when you went through. Now, I mean, you can find programs on the internet that former operators have written about rock marching and how to prepare for selection.

But, yeah, endurance, PT test, all that kind of stuff. Also use the same type of equipment, you know, like to use a civilian rucks act. Oh, yeah. It's different than a military. So, you know, go through an Army A and Instore some stuff, you know, and get some, you know, like jungle boots or something. canvas because you've got to condition your feet don't do everything on a flat level surface you know won't go around the edges of mountains and stuff and up and down the hills because because all that pacing it's a whole lot different between going over a

mountain and going around one you know yeah one one guy's asking who can or what's the secret to beat kabib I don't know who that is is that a UFC fighter yeah it's just my opinion I think could be is I wouldn't say easily but the person that beats him can have you know a decent wrestling background but he's got to be brutally strong and his endurance level has to be the same as or better and he's got to not be afraid to get in a clinch with the cat but his footwork in my opinion has to be superior because a guy that can just sit there and hit him and make him miss and get him chasing you with a good jab and stuff and take him into the deep water

before, you know, four of the fifth round, can beat with the key, can be. You know, if you try to, if you're afraid of the tang down, you're never probably going to beat him unless you're just going to out wrestling. But you've got to have superior hand speed. And also, I think physically you have to outline it, be lined up with a guy. You know, some fighters have really long arms. And I got that sinewy type strength and stuff. I think they've got to have a long reach on him, you know, because kicking him in the legs and so this guy was wrestling bears as a kid. You know, so, you, you know, like, if you go back historically,

they look at Muhammad Ali and, and, you know, they did 12 rounds of ring. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Inno, In a no key, that was his name. His name was Anoki. But anyway, there's a YouTube videos of that. But you're not gonna beat him playing his game.

You're gonna, you're gonna, you, to me, just like boxing that jab's gotta be, every time he moves, you have to disrupt that movement. And it's gotta be a, effective. You got to make you miss. So you can't let him corny you and you got to have brutal strength. So if you see somebody that looks like they match up with him, I'd wait 18 months and put him back to gym, make sure to keep your speed and power and increase their strength 10 times. You got to have a muscle of this guy. Another viewer is asking what you guys thought of Johnwick

3. I haven't seen it. I like all the Johnwick stuff. Yeah. The first one to me was the best. 100% 100% the first one I feel like well Johnwick three I thought was more fun than John Wick 2 yeah I felt like John Wick 2 they go oh what worked in Johnwick 1 okay let's do more of that and longer and the fight scenes went too long in John Wick 2 I felt like the um I feel asleep watching his fight with common yeah you know like the body two bodyguards like the first fight when they were in Italy I felt like they they were just putting the fight on display, basically. I'm more like, what's his name, Liam, you know, and taken. Oh, you're Lee Mason, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

They both have similarities, but here's a more vicious and more realistic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but John McClure was a lot of fun. Like the dogs, the elements with that and stuff like that, like that, that was a lot of fun. But the fight scenes did, like, I felt, like start driving out.

They got to bring something you to it. Are you guys going to go see the new Rambo movie? 100%. 100%. 100%. Absolutely. I want to go see it,

but I can't take my daughter to see that. It might be a little bit much for a... Doesn't get any better. Timmy asks, can you have power behind a regular punch having a 65 reach?

Can you have power behind a regular punch with a 65 inch reach? If you're three foot tall, yes. No, I'm being facetious. You can have power behind any kind of punch. by that is a lot of people say power's at the end of the punch. I'm sure you've heard that.

What's that? Timmy. Timmy. So the idea is when you hear that, you think the power's way out here, you know, what if I'm hitting a guy with an uppercut that's close to me, right? I've got to still put power at the end of this punch or if it's an elbow. So 65 inches, 84 like John Jones, doesn't matter. You've got to put yourself in the right position and you've got to, you connect at the right time. So timing has a lot to do with it. But you know, you don't want to and recoil has more to do with that power than just trying to hit. You made the point to me that you have to think of the punches like a snap. Like it should snap at the end. A thousand percent. You know, if you're just hitting the guy real hard and trying to drive

through, it may be a point of aim back here, but when you push through it just becomes a big push and less of a punch. But when you, so when I train people to punch, I teach them to let their hands are very relaxed going out. They tighten up about the last two inches of the punch. So it gives you that's, you know, so there's no antagonist being used when your hands going out is going to go faster. And as soon as you tighten it up, man, comes back quicker. And of course when you do that, you're putting that shocked wave through it so have a big push. But remember, it's not about the length of your arm versus where the end of that punch actually lines up. You pointed out to me too, working the heavy bag, is that you

You shouldn't be like pushing the bag. If it feels strong, it's wrong. Like you shouldn't be pushing the bag. Like when you punch, the bag doesn't really swing. No, pop, pop, pop, pop, it's like a little machine gun. Yeah. Which you can feel the punches. It'll damage stuff.

You can feel it, yes. So it's all about recoil. You know, so if this is the surface and I'm punching this way, I'm probably gonna put my point and aim here, and pop up, but as soon as my hand tightens up, it's already on its way back. So I'm not pulling the hand back. I'm pulling the elbow back,

because these elbows got to stay close. When you're pulling the hands back, you're leaving things open. So it's push-pull mechanic, you know, real quick, and tighten up right on impact, pow. And you love that explosion on the end of your punches. Now, can they practice that on a heavy bag? Do they need to focus misle? What does that work that timing?

Okay. Both. Both. You need to put it in a lot of different, you know, because your footwork on a heavy bag, you can learn, you know, where you need to be in relationship and work all the angles and, you know, And one thing, you know, like when you get close enough where you're this striking versus this striking,

out here, I work about two to four inches outside of my reach. So when I step, everything's lining up. Because if I can touch the heavy bag, before I start stepping, when I hit, my hand's never going to mature. It becomes a big punch, a big push. And so I want to make sure I work for work outside of the comfort zone. and when it gets inside, I want to change my ankle so that I'm kind of squaring off to the guy. So I can get the lateral, you know, shifting weight behind your punches.

One of the things you did with me that I do with my daughter when I train her is have her punch the medicine wall. So holding it in your arms right here and having the fighter circle around in your moving. I'm glad you said that because I was going to add that. You said, minced and heavy bag. The other thing I do is take a 14, 10, 10, 12, 14 pound, you know, rage ball or medicine ball and hold it. It's a punch over here, give me a hook,

put your body over here, right hand. And sometimes you're calling a punch off your partner. You know what they come to was you step into it and you shorten that punch up deliberately. So they have to constantly readjust on the fire to make sure they can maximize their power. You tired me to fuck out because you used to work in the heavy bag which is basically stationary

and now you're moving all around the room. You're not having a leg. And I gotta say something, Jack, no disrespect, when you said circle, it's not really circle. I have a phobia. If you're training with me, you ever watch these guys training, pop, pop, pop,

walking circles around? If you're doing that, get out. You've got to cut your fighter off. You've got to keep constant forward pressure. Instead of circle, just step off in front of them. Always, it's like a mirror.

It's like a dance. Don't allow people to circle. Don't train circling. Because if I'm standing, you go that way, I just go this way. You're not going to see it coming. So you always keep your opponent.

in front of your face your opponent right awesome I get excited how much of a psychological impact to attack dogs have on the enemy that I can actually answer oh yeah it scares the shit out of yeah and I mean part of it depends

on who your enemy is obviously because different cultures have different fears of dogs but yeah attack dogs scare the piss because can I say something I actually was on a drug bus down in South America somewhere years, years ago. We got up on this house. Of course, you know, they can't afford the alarm systems like here.

So their alarm system is a dog. Yeah. You get in the neighborhood. Yeah, we come after you, right? They're trained, right, these druggies. And so when you hear dogs barking, you've already been compromised. Yeah. And we hit this door.

And I'm going to say, you know what an eye drill is, right? immediate action drill, you know, you're walking down, you get ambush, what do you do? Turn fire? You attack, you're a turn fire. In the American extension fighting, I have drills to return fire. We hit this door, and all I saw was dog teeth, and I didn't have time to get scared, and my muzzle went straight in his mouth, and I started hollered, like, you know, and this dog was wimply up underneath the bed.

Yeah, can they be scary? A human being can be scared to allow them to get scared. Remember what I said is self-office? How quick can you turn your defense to an offense? If you hesitate, if you wait, that dog's going to be the most horrifying thing in the world. But if you're walking out of the street, I hope them, that dog, they get scared like we do. Yeah.

In Iraq, there were times where we had dog handler is out there with us and you just crack open the door, just take like a pry bar, pride like the door open this much. and send the dog in ahead of the assaulters. And you've got to be careful how you use the dogs, though, because if, you know, for instance, like the guy's running, you got a squirder, a guy running off the objective, and you cut the dog wounds to go chase them,

if a ranger walks in between the dog and that guy, that bad guy, the dog's going to fix it on them. And I was told the same thing by the Navy of dudes who train dolphins. They're like, when we set the attack dolphins out in the water, like, if you're not part of the exercise, you need to get a fuck out of the water because they will fuck you up. Now, see, I have seen dogs, like, weave their way through. Really?

Weave their way through not only U.S. soldiers, but indigenous soldiers. That's pretty interesting. To go after the dog. Yeah, to go after the bat. Like, it knew who the bad guy was. And I'll tell you what, you want to talk about terror. When you have an IR camera on a dog and, like, you're watching the screen. You're watching the screen.

You're watching the scream. and that dog goes into an almost pitch black room where the bad guys are waiting and they can't see anything and this dog comes up starts attacking them you want to watch somebody freak the fuck out it's like holy terror because these dogs like they're aware

like they will they'll creep oh they'll creep they'll creep oh yeah they'll probably come down you know sometimes they'll go in and bubble up and sometimes like they'll go in and stop and get an excess and they'll creep. That really good at one of these games like,

oh yeah, and you're like, oh my God. And you guys just sit there eat poplar. Oh, my God. The freevers. Yeah. These were the Belgian malanol. The malinol, yeah. Which are fierce. So, yeah, I mean, that attack mode of mine,

you don't see it when you see me in when you talk to me in the streets. Yeah. I'm a nice guy all the time. And my, not that far past, people used to say Jim West is like a him and IED. He touch him and explodes. And I try to, I try to. impart that through training to people I do work with and I do

technically I do have technical training aspects most people who don't experience that will teach you how to explode just like that so so for your for your own like when when you decide to strike preemptively if you do like at what at what point what triggers you like what what tells you it's go time if it's a preempt to strike if somebody's not attacking you but if you go this is going down so first of foremost I'm really good at the fusions and good stuff you know because I don't get excited yeah show intent at all you know I may have some really bad intent I'll show it yeah I just you know I like it's just

nothing like the bark you know but and and and and of all these hundreds of fights I've been in most of somebody's hit me first you know a rear bottle of something the few times I have in somebody when I'm when you realize it's going down I'll be honest in my youth, sometimes I wanted to go down and just fired away. Sure. But as I got a little older and a little more responsible, I give you an example. I was talking to a guy one day, and right and wrong and different, I don't know. But if you're approaching it in my personal space, I can't see your hands anymore.

And to me, that, you know, to me, I'm already under assault. Yeah. You know, because I was talking this guy, and it was at the old stadium, many years ago, 35 years ago maybe. and I'm drinking my beer and I'm sitting there, mine in my business, and this guy said, oh, I'm going to start asking all these questions about fighting and stuff. You know, some people like to encroach, like a car sale, and I'm like, you know, please, you know, I like this distance, right?

And he's just, yeah, yeah, I got it, he keeps coming. Yeah, I study this, and I do that. And I kept stepping backwards, got on it, I don't want to be spit in my face, I don't want it. You know, all this stuff is part of the real deal, right? And I'm, and I, so I will always put something between, with me in this case with my little beer bottom. And I'm sitting out like this.

So I'm already thinking, you know, he won't back up. I don't know what his intent is. I don't know the guy. And I've been sucker punched a number of times, normally with a beer bottle. And I took a step back and there was a pinball machine right behind me. Okay, so I'm not backing up anymore. I said, could you please keep your distance?

He goes, oh, so that's how you are. He takes a step forward. And I clicked him in the bottom of his chin with a beer bottle. Caught him so much by surprise and he hit him right on the bone. He doesn't have nothing to nerve bone. Hair goes back, he stung over, step, falls down. Oh, I see how you are. I said, no.

I said, that's just an introduction. Yeah. There's another me that you don't want to know. I ask you respectfully keep the distance. So why don't you do that? That's your hors d'oeuvre. That's your order. I eat the steak.

You told me that story about the guy in Applebee's who tried to, like some Marine or something, tried to start a fight with it. Well, it wasn't Marine. It was like half, it was sitting in the bar. I just got there first night in town. Tuesday night, family night. Family night.

And I go, you know, near the area, I sit down, I ordered myself with Talapia. Over here were all the guys from the military base, the younger guys. And over here with all the guys that looked like retirees, you know, and then I sat close to the guy right, like this close, bars to them, you know, with the back on it, was sitting there.

They're arguing about, you know, is Egypt and Africa or the Middle East, and, you know, they're going to guys. You look like a military guy. I used to be. I'm trying to, you know, I don't want to be bothered. I just want to do my thing and leave. And then this guy was drunk, obviously.

And he kept messing with me. He goes, hi, he said, what did you do? I said, well, I'm tired of the Army Special Force. Oh, man, I want to buy you a drink. I want to buy you a shot. You got to drink a shot. And I'm like, I don't want a shot. But I appreciate it.

He goes, no, man, I insist on it. I'm thinking, well, I'm new in town, you know. I said, typically being shots to have a bad hand. I really appreciate, you know, maybe I'll drink a second beer or something. No, man, what if you want to say? You know, just get along. People's starting to look at her.

Just get along, I'll drink. I have one with it. What do you want? I said, well, let's do a shot of the churnal. And tequila's like, get big, barge in her. And she's still a friend of mine today, by the way. The name's Nicky.

He says, I want two double shots of tequila right here. No, he's going to get you. Right? Okay. So she sets them down. I want to drink these. He picks up a shot. I pick up my eyes, I want to drink to your successful military career or something.

Okay, so he cheered, and I do like this, and he sat his down. All the red lights came, and I'm like, that's a little fucked up. And so I shot, gave him down, I put it down, I put my hand behind his, and I push it back to him and said, my brother, you got to do what you said. When I did that, he takes his right hand, boom, punching right in the face, and my feet on the lower rung of the barstool. So I just planted myself, started to tuck my chin and started to push him off. And as I was looking down, I noticed the barstool coming off the ground.

So I did what I call a push punch. He just caught him and over the right, knocked him out in the barstool. It was horrible. He goes over backwards. His ear hits a chair and he'll wait to the floor. Ripped off half his ear and his head goes into the floor and split his skull open. He's bleeding out on the floor. I thought I was going to jail for life.

I'm fucking family night, Jim. Family night, Jim. I didn't get in trouble. The cops did come. Can't take you anywhere. Yeah. And then the bar. I had to see everything.

So the security camera. Okay. So the little manager comes out. I was getting ready to do some damage, but I only hit him once, and I was going to follow up. I believe in following up. You're getting ready to do something?

It sounds like you're doing something. No, I was just getting warmed up. And that's the danger of getting knocked out. You know, you don't know what's happening, right? So anyway, this little manager comes out, you're going to jail. I've already called the police. I'm like, okay.

So I stopped. I went back to the bar where my beer was. I pulled a wallet out and took my ID card Saturday. Then I started drinking my beer and everybody was like, what the hell he doing? I said, well, when I go to jail, I'm going to finish my beer. You know, so cops came, took my ID card, looked at him, the EMS came. He looked like a mummy, this guy on shot. And the cop comes back out and he's a captain, chief police, whatever. And I hands back my ID card, hands me his business card and says, would you like to press charges? I said, what are you talking about? I said, where am I anyway, right?

And he says, oh, this guy has history. He said, really? He's not the first time he's done that. We reviewed the security cameras and it looks like he hit you and you've seen him one time and set up the fences. That's pretty much the story.

And that was great. I mean, so many stories and we just scratched the surface today. We didn't even really get into like good military career at all. But I mean, I think we've gone like, shit, this is like two and a half hours. So, probably, you probably got to get back home because you start early days. Yeah, yeah.

I've got to the right to work. Yeah. What time do you wake up in the morning? About 3.30. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a long day for you. Sleep is not my friend.

But thank you everyone for tuning in in the middle of your workday and all that. Thank you, Jack, for having me. Thanks for coming out, Jim. Really appreciate it. Yeah, for sure. You know you're welcome on anytime. you know, love having you on, and I think the people, the audience will hear them from you as well. Well, I enjoy the questions, because honestly, I think with just the fight itself, you know,

that there's so many experts out there, it's hard to navigate your way through what's real. Yeah, yeah. There's so much information out there. Right. And I'm honest to God, in my opinion, one of the few people that has touched, you know, the street fighting moral over the way I have, the martial arts. I mean, I'm a 10th-degree black belt grandmaster, and I've got my own martial arts system. which has been sanctioned by the best in the world.

And I've got all the military background. You know, I'm combat veterans, special forces, guy. I was in the 80 second before that. You know what I mean? I've paid a lot of dues along the way, and I found a way to bring it to a spot where it, I think, I'd like to at least believe

what I'm telling is real. Yeah, you know, you've been enough fights, have been enough experience to know that, you know, like the question, I thought it was good question that the 65-inch armor. reach. It has nothing to do nothing, to be honest. The power of the punch is right here, wherever it is. And I don't

I think you can line a bunch of people up here and they would try to talk about Arminuant instead of where the power really is. You know, and bringing that experience to bears, I really like the questions and it's fun. Yeah, and this is one of the advantages to like doing this as a live stream is that the audience

can directly participate and ask the guest whatever they want. So yeah, super cool, man. And when you're your fight manual, Street Fight book comes out, come back on and we'll go in-depth and talk about it. I would love that for sure. Yeah, it'd be great. And yeah, Dave and I

can flip through it and then we'll have some questions lined up for you. I'm ready. And thank you again, all the viewers, all the listeners, for those who listen to the podcast, I will post the link for the SoundCloud and for all that other stuff to Jim's book on Amazon. I'll put that stuff all in the

description. Please remember to subscribe to the channel if you haven't and hit that bell for notifications. Yeah, I'll Also share the video because once we get to 10,000 subscribers, Jack said he'd get in the ring with Jim. And if you want to see that live stream, get us to 10,000 subscribers. And Dave will do full frontal. If I may, there's no benefit for a young guy to bring with me because if he went, he whipped an old man. And if he loses, he got whipped by an old man.

It's a lose, lose situation. Well, I mean, I will do that. If we get to 10,000 subscribers, hell, we don't even have to. I will get into the ring with Jim. You just have to not kill me. That's all I ask. We're not going to give that much of a way. You can't promise that.

And please support the stream on Patreon if you can. It's patreon.com slash, I think it's just Murphy's Law stream. How did you spell Patreon? P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com. So I'll post the link. I think I already posted it in the comments, and I'll put it again in the description. Yeah, it's Patreon.com slash Murphy's Law stream.

We're going to, as I mentioned in the beginning of the stream, we're going to change the name of it to something that's a little less self-centered. We put it to the Patreon supporters to vote on, and they like the team house as the name. So that's going to be the name going forward, but for now it is what it is. And all you guys who have been supporting us on Patreon already, Thank you for doing that.

We really appreciate it. We're moving towards our goals. It's really cool. And I think it's fucking awesome to have dudes like you coming on in studio. And we're just going to continue building it from there. Yeah. And obviously we want to have you back on soon. And we'll focus more on the military stuff because we have a lot of people very interested in that.

Sure. I mean, I thought that was a good military question about how you train for, you know, because, you know, and the takeaway is your, you know, get the right equipment, Yeah, right shoes. Use different terrain. Day, night, rain, you know, just go for it. Yeah. So, again, thanks, guys.

Share the video with your friends. Thanks, sir. Share the podcast with your friends. Jack, thank you. Hey, any time, Jim. Always welcome. And we will see you guys next time.