Transcript of JRE MMA Show #173 with Benny "The Jet" Urquidez & William "Blinky" Rodriguez

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Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Gentlemen, what's happening?

Where do we begin?

Where do you begin? Let me tell you, when I first came to Los Angeles in 1994, there was two places that I had to go. One of them was the Comedy Store, and the other one was the Jet Center. And I started training the Jet Center in 94 before you guys shut down because you had the earthquake and you had the roof damage. So I was there before that happened, and I took your classes. I took your kickboxing classes because I remember it was very scary because you had a bunch of gang members in there because you were doing that outreach program where you're helping young gang members. So I had a spar with gang members. So I was training at the Jet Center until it shut down. And then I went briefly when you guys reopened in North Hollywood. I went to that place for a little bit, too.

It was just gym.

Yeah. But then I started training at Majiro Gym, which is in the valley. But legends. You guys are legends, man.

Well, thank you, Joe.

True pioneers in martial arts.

For you to remember was really humbled me. You remembered, you mentioned my son and why I was starting that. Yes. And you don't even know what it's grown into since that day.

Tell the story about your son and how that whole thing started.

Well, unfortunately, in some communities, drive-bys aren't uncommon. And so when it becomes a generational curse and kids are getting killed sometimes randomly, that happened to me. It came knocking on my door in a valley that's got 2 million people. It knocked on my door. I'm going to put it this way. I had a calling on my life to do something about it because it became a situation where families and community was like, Well, yeah, well, that's what happens in our community. And I was saying, That is not what happens in our community. This is our community. And so I began to move. I began to move, ironically, with some churches that had that ministry in their ministry and peace marches, et cetera. But my son got shot while he was learning how to drive a stick shift. Wow. And it took his life. And that's not normal, and that should not be common. I'm still at it.

You're still doing that?

Still going. Thirty-six years later, put an organization together, and some with real lived experience, others with degrees, and really put together a whole nonprofit that speaks directly to it where it's at. At the end of the day, Yeah. It's over when we say it's over. You know what I mean? And ironically, what led the charge for me, at least, Joe, was forgiveness. The forgiveness that only God can give. I got to tell it the way it is. And that forgiveness ended up taking me to the neighborhood that killed my son. And we had a huge meeting in that neighborhood in the park, and a peace treaty kicked into place. No mother's crying, no baby's dying. So to this day, I still continue to press in with a whole different, how would I say, integrated service delivery, but keeping violence in the middle of it and dealing with it. That's awesome.

And it's awesome that you brought them to a place like the Jet Center, where they can learn discipline, learn how to fight, build real confidence, learn real martial arts skills, and also real martial arts mentality, especially when it's coming from guys like you. I remember when you knocked out Jean-Yves Théreau. Jean-yves Théreau was the fucking man. He was the man. Everybody was terrified of that guy. And I believe you knocked him out with a left hook. Is that correct?

Right leg, left hook?

Yeah.

The combo. The more traditional shoulder can sweeps. You turn it over with the instep, and You know what I'm talking about? Yes, sir. And you reset and come back with the money. Yeah. But he's a bad dude. He went on to have a great career.

Amazing career. Yeah. I mean, he's one of the all-time greats in kickboxing. Without a doubt. And it's just I think it's important for people to recognize the real pioneers. And, Benny, you were a real pioneer. I mean, there was no one like you when you emerged. When you emerged in the kickboxing scene, the karate scene, there no one like you. And you went undefeated, and you took on people of all sizes. And to this day, there's amazing highlights of you on the Internet that people still bring up because you were fighting ties when you had no Training like that. You were getting low-kicked by those dudes. They still found out a way to win. It was pretty crazy.

Well, I tell you, it was when my brother asked me, Would you want to fight a tie? And And I said, What's Thai? He said, Muay Thai. And I said, I'll fight him. Honest, I thought that was his name. I had no idea what Muay Thai was at the time. And so we took it on.

Where was the first Muay Thai fight that you had?

Matter of fact, it was at the Olympic Auditorium when we first fought. In Los Angeles? Yes. Ernest Hart fought the first Thai champion, and that was the main event. And I'll tell you what, when I first got kicked in the legs, my eyes bowed out of my forehead. I have strong legs, but I've never had anybody try to break my legs. And so it was a rude awakening, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me because he took me to the streets. He really did, because when he started oboeing, kneeing to my face, and I said, Oh, you want to fight that way? Okay. I didn't understand I just thought that, All right, there's a free for all.

Did you know what the rules were?

No.

That's crazy. So you didn't know they were going to use elbows or knees?

No.

That is crazy.

All I knew is Muay Thai.

Nourong Noi. Nourong Noi was the guy that he fought that night. Lompingui Stadium.

Yeah, he was a great champion as well.

Oh, without a doubt.

That's so crazy that you didn't even know what you were in for. Who was promoted it, set that up.

Actually, believe it or not, my brother Arnold was asked. He was calling me the world champion because in '73, it was called full contact karate. And Blink and I, we went to Hawaii. No rules, no weight divisions, no nothing.

How much did you weigh back then?

145. Wow. And so I ended up beating actually- 160. And Blink There was four of us left after we fought five, six times on Friday. And then we fought a couple of more times on Sunday.

You fought two days?

Yeah. There was that many no rules. It was just weight division. I mean, there was no weight division. It was Brackets. That's it. So Blinkie ended up fighting. There was four of us. I fought Bernice White, and I told Blinkie. I said, You know what? This guy... Now, he's 245 pounds, Dana Goodson, 6'3. And I said, Blinkie, they don't want to see you and I fight. They want to see David and Goliath. They want to see me fight him. And I said, So if you don't knock him out, you're not going to win because this guy, they're wanting to keep him up. And sure enough. And I said, Blinky, if you don't knock him out, you don't hurt him. Hurt him for me because I knew I was going to fight him next. That's what it was.

So he was 240 pounds?

Yeah, 245 pounds.

And you were 145?

Yeah.

Wow.

You could pick him up and throw them around. So I got them tired.

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Wow. Hast du den gesehen? Ey, das ist ja der absolute Wahnsin. Einfach nur perfekt.

Nice. Manchmal merkt man sofort, dass es passt.

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So what were the rules? There was no rules at all. No rules. So could you stomp on the ground? Could you soccer kick? Could you do all that?

You know what? There was no rules. I actually threw him. I pinned him on the ground. He started to roll me over. I I bit my mouth beside. I beat him on the chest.

Oh, my God.

He pump, strike my face. And we got up and my teethmark was on his chest. He said, You bit me. I said, I was getting tired.

So Did they have submissions? Did anybody know submissions back then? No.

Well, you know what? We're in judo. We're Black Bouts and judo men. Back in '60, we were already doing judo And making that we're already boxing back then. So we had a good idea of the contact. It's just there was no rules at the time. No rules, no weight divisions. It was just elimination. So that happened for almost two years, from '73 to '75. And then it started. That's when I first heard of Muay Thai.

Are there any of those no rules fights available on video? Can people watch any of those fights? Absolutely. Are they online?

No. Where are they? Actually, there's some. But you know what? Actually, I'm doing a documentary, and we're bringing a lot of... I have filmed from '69 to '96. I'm two millimeter Miller. I'm talking about beat him out. And they're actually putting together old fights. So you'll see Blake and I way back then, fighting Black and White. And then Well, there's some available online that are...

So this is you against... How do you say that guy's name? Kayat Bandit? Nagaroni Kayat Bandit? So is this another Muay Thai guy? Yes. Yes. So was this after you had fought Muay Thai already, previously?

Yes, because I started to recognize what it was about.

So how many Muay Thai fights had you had before you fought this guy?

Two.

Two. So when you trained in this, So after the first fight, did you bring in a Muay Thai guy to train with and explain you elbows and show you how they're throwing their techniques? Or how did you learn how to deal with these guys?

Basically, somebody had black and white with filming, and I looked at it, and I went to an old gentleman that used to actually do clothing and shoes and so forth in this leather shop. And I asked him, I said, I want to protect my shins. Older man. And I said, I want to protect my shins. You have something? And he brought out some pad. And I said, yeah. And I told him, I want to put it around my shins. So I created the first shin guard.

You were the guy who invented the shin guard? Yeah. Oh, that's great.

And I told him, how do we keep it together? And he said, and he's the one that brought out the Velcro. And so he put on. He sold on Velcro on And so I ended up asking him, can you make more of them? And I started giving them to him. That's how... Because we were doing late checking because we were watching them, but it was hurting us. Like, what the heck? Yeah. How did they do it?

You guys were doing bear shin. Yeah. So bear shin, leg kicking, training hard. Yeah.

We didn't know any other way.

So what were the Thais doing back then? How were they protecting their shins?

Well, you know what they have? Spray, numbing spray. They were spraying their shins. Like lidocaine or something like that. Yeah, they were putting stuff that... They couldn't feel it. They couldn't feel the impact.

So after you invented shin guards, is that how shin guards made their way to Thailand?

I'll put it this way. When I went to Thailand and to work with some of the Thais, I looked at them, I said, Oh, they're finally... Because they didn't have them. I said, Oh, you got shin guards here? And I was surprised. Oh, But a lot of them didn't even use them still. And some of these high up in the hills, the way they train, they didn't train with shin guards. They just sprayed their shins. Oh, my God.

Kick banana trees. Yeah.

I've seen that. I've seen Bull cow kicking banana tree and cutting it in half.

The problem with that is I was talking to Blinky. I said, We got a lot of nerves on our shins, and And I said, And so we had a doctor that was one of our students, and I asked him about that. He says, Once you break, you tear all the tissues and the nerves of your shin. He said, later on, it will affect you. This is the reason why I started designing. So we can... And I mean, these were like homemade shin guards.

So did you ever work out with a Thai man? A a Muay Thai fighter who was showing you how they do the techniques, or did you only learn it from film?

I only learned from the film. Wow.

Was there any Thai guys in LA at that time? No. Wow.

At that time, there was none.

When was the first Muay Thai gym started opening up in LA?

Wow. It's hard to remember because we weren't tracking with them. We were just figuring out how to fight them and give them lateral movement because everything was linear. Everything was linear. So the American side of kickboxing. Obviously, you had more hands, but they would clench. Once they clench, they nullify that. So we were just making adjustments along the way.

Especially in Japan, this is basically when we really started because they started bringing us back there. One right after another, they started bringing us back there after I took their belt and they couldn't believe American just went in there and took their belt from them. And they didn't like it. They didn't want it. And they kept having us come back, trying to take that belt back.

In Japan?

In Japan. Never happened.

Wow. And you got to realize I was like, back then, this is like post Bruce Lee movies. So martial arts had exploded, karate had exploded worldwide. Everybody wanted to learn martial arts. And Japan was at the forefront of the kickboxing movement, right? Because they had had a bunch of Muay Thai guys fight Japanese guys, and the karate guys lost the Muay Thai guys, and then they had to adjust. And then they got rid of elbows and created kickboxing because they wanted more excitement. They wanted to get rid of the clench and get rid of the elbows. And then K-1 was formed out of that. That's right. It's like you're really patient zero. You know what I'm saying? The real mixed martial arts movement really began with you guys.

True. Wow.

I was going to say there was a phase there because you mentioned Chuck Norris earlier that he raised money in Detroit, and he had done Into the Dragon. So he had that notoriety, and he had a cattle call. So fighters came from all over Southern Cal to his dojo in Santa Monica. And it was single eliminations to the knockout to see which five guys would represent LA. And the same was going on in New York, the New York Dragons, Detroit, the Detroit Dragons, DC, the DC Dynamos, and then the Texas Gladiators. Those were the teams people were vying for. And we participated. I ended up becoming the middle starter, then he was the lightweight. And then Steve Sanders, who was the old name in traditional karate, three of his guys from the Black Karate Federation, Ernest Madman, Russell, Danny Ferguson, Sugar Bear. We were the LA team. And And what's crazy is that you won as a team. If you went out there and knocked the guy out or you got knocked out, they got 25 points. And so it was an accumulation of points that you would get $1,500, but the losers got $700.

So that took off in the last tournament or fight show that they had was in Detroit. And after that, that's when things started going in another direction. But it's just interesting the way that it evolved.

Have you ever heard of the PKA? Yes, sure. Okay. So the PKA started with Don Quine, Judy Quine. But only that was from the waist up. And only because they were protecting Bill because he didn't like getting kicked in the legs.

Superfoot. Bill Walls.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's why they decided not to have the legs kick because Bill only had one good knee, right? That's right. He had one knee that was messed up, which is why he only threw like left kicks.

That's it, that front leg.

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That front leg was nasty, though. It was just predicated upon that, but they just waist down. The fight with Johnny Sterio, he was waist down, no kicks. But there was a sanction by the WK that allowed leg kicks, leg sweeps. And that's how I was able to set him up with that. But at the end of the day, I mean...

So when you said leg sweeps, you were allowed to kick below the knee?

Yes. Interesting. You could kick, and I would set them up with the kick between the ankle and the calf.

Well, what's interesting now is that is one of the primary weapons of MMA now is the calf kick. It's interesting, right? Because people slept on the calf kick for a long time.

Well, people that are dancers, they like to dance in the ring. You went for the calf and they were flat-footed, and they couldn't dance no more. So you want to stop somebody that was dancing, you go right for the calf and they become flat-footed. But if you had some people that had good right hands, you kick them in the thighs, they couldn't lean on that front leg to hit with the right cross. So there was a really method of combat, of warriorship in there that we developed over the years that we knew how to take power from our opponent.

It's just crazy that it took so long for MMA to recognize the potency of the calf kick. Because I talked to Daniel Cormier, who was a two division world champion. I talked to Michael Bisping. Michael Bisping, who became a middleweight world champion, never got calf kicked his entire career because the calf kick emerged after he became a champion. Now, what's really interesting is what's happening right now. So in kickboxing and in Muay Thai, people thought, oh, the calf kick doesn't work there because the Thais know how to block it. While the Japanese fighters, the Kyokushin guys, are now dominating some of the Thai guys because they kick calves. There's this bad motherfucker from Japan named Yuki Yosa. You You know who he is? That dude is lighting these people on fire because he's just constant combinations and chopping at the calves and chopping from the inside and the outside with every combination. He needs crippling Thais to the point where they can't move and they're getting beat up and knocked down. There's another guy, Masahaki Nori, and he's doing the same thing. And he just beat Tawen CHAi, who's like one of the best Thai guys.

And the way he beat him was brutalizing his calves, just kicking the inside of the calf, the outside of the calf, stopped all the movement, and then caught him with a left hook.

And that's why, for me, at least, going into that fight with Bill Wallace, it was like, if you're not kicking calf, thigh, body, and head, it's not international. Because everywhere else in the world, that's what they're doing.

Because you guys had already experienced that. Whereas a lot of the karate guys, they hadn't. They hadn't. They hadn't experienced that.

So the fight with Bill and I was the first live broadcast on CBS Sports Spectacular to air. Wow. Yeah. And the irony, and it is what it is. Look it, I get it. I think any fighter, any champion, just a fighter, period, rather get knocked out than get robbed. Right. Me out. If you do it, more power to you. But so then that was what lingered within there. And there was a time we were almost going to rematch, and it didn't happen. But at the end of the day, the fight with Joe... Excuse me. What's his name? Oh, my God. I'm having a senior moment, Joe. You don't have those, though, Joe. I'll have them soon. Yeah, but John needs Terrio. You know what I mean? That was the difference in that fight that I could kick the calf. And so when you got a money move that you've developed over the course of time, because we were a Kempo Shodokan at first. And, you know, Kempo, you had a little flash. But with the Shodokan, it was front kick, it was right leg sweeps like that. And so I was able to utilize that technique, and it worked for me to come back with the hook the way I did.

But at the end of the day, man, it's been a long journey from there.

Really high. Well, we got to see some glimpses of guys who were skillful with leg kicks, fight guys who didn't know what to do with them, and then their progression. Because a good example is Don the Dragon Wilson when he fought Dennis Alexia. Dennis Alexia was a scary man. He was a destroyer. And back in the day when Dennis Alexia was fighting, it was all above the waist stuff. And then he agreed to a below the waist kick with Don Wilson. And Don Wilson just took his legs away. He just kept kicking. I mean, Dennis likes it. It was a tank, man. That guy was a powerhouse. We knew him. Don just kept chopping at those legs, chopping at those legs. And eventually, Dennis could barely move.

Yeah. Actually, Dennis ended up fighting one of our fighters.

No, no, no. It was not Dennis. It was What?

Anyway, he was from Australia.

Stan Langeanidis.

Stan Jaegel.

Stan, the man Langeanidis. The thunder from down under.

Yeah, I remember that, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think he broke Dennis Alexio's leg.

His femur.

Yeah, he broke it with a leg kick.

Yes, he did.

Yeah, there it is.

Boom.

Yeah, right there.

I think he was in Hawaii. I think it was his lower leg. It seemed like it was his lower leg. Yeah. Right there. Boom. Yeah, he checked it. Oh, yeah. You see it buckling. Oh, God. Was that Dennis Alexio's last fight?

That's the last time I've seen him fight.

Because, I mean, how do But most guys, when that happens, it's over. That's crazy.

So Stan, the man, came to stay at the Jit Center for a while. So he lived in town with us for quite a while.

Yeah. My friend Shuki Ron from Majuro gym said that he was training with Stan Langenitas, and he said he got a hip replacement because Stan Langenitas was kicking his leg so hard with the pads on, with the hold, the shield. He said he had to get a hip replacement from getting kicked that hard. How crazy is that?

Back then, it was not how hard you hit, it was how right you were hitting. Sure. When he hit, he hit that target right on the money.

Well, it looked like Dennis was trying to check it and he didn't turn it. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, even the impact, it was the way he shot the impact. Just sheer power, too. I mean, just right on that. Without a doubt. Right on that shinbone. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, but the thing is, unfortunately, what happened was PKA, karate became a thing was remember you had to get a minimum amount of kicks.

You have to do math while you're fighting.

But it was also a lot of the guys were not good kickers. And so what it became is guys weren't that good a kicker, and then they would box, and it was sloppy boxing. And so it lost a lot of the appeal to the American public, which was unfortunate because if they just allowed loud low kicks from the beginning, and we got to see the guys from Japan, we got to see the guys from Thailand, we got to see you guys do all your thing, it would have probably flourished in America and been as big as MMA because this is something that I've been trying to push with the UFC Because one championship fight, they do a real good job with it where they'll have Muay Thai fights, they'll have kickboxing fights, and they also have MMA, and they also even have grappling competitions. But I've been trying to say to the UFC, a lot of times people boo when people go to the ground. Well, here's a solution. Have some fights where it's just stand-up fights. Have some fights, MMA gloves, Muay Thai rules, where you don't go to the ground. Have that. It would be incredibly exciting.

Or you could even do a whole promotion of it. But in America, unfortunately, kickboxing because of the PKA, what they call it the kick of the '80s, remember back then? That's what they call it, right? That's right. That's what they call it, right? Pka, Karate, the kick of the '80s?

That's right.

Bad Brad Hefton.

Bad Brad Hefton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a lot of guys that were really good. Jerry Trimble, he was really good. He was really good. I met him once on a set. I think we did a commercial together or some shit. I forgot what it was, but I met him when he's been doing a lot of acting. But those guys were really good. Of course, Rick Rufis. Rick Rufus was outstanding, and he changed the course of his life from fighting a tie, too. Well, he got broken down by that one tie dude. That's right. And had to learn leg kicks and had to learn what that's all about. But if they had allowed that on TV from the beginning, I think PKA Karate would have been hugely successful.

You know, in the PKA, because of Bill Wallace, it was from the waist up. And so my brother and Howard Hansen started the WKA, World Karate. And that's when we went to Japan and we started saying everything went because in Japan, albums on his knees and so forth because there are Muay Thai fighters over there. And I figured, okay, then to me, there's no rules. Let's go.

It's interesting because in K1, they eliminated the elbows. That's right. They just wanted less cuts. They were like, too many people are getting cut and fights are getting stopped from cuts. That's right. And we just want more action.

But the really purpose of that is because the insurance behind it... I mean, people were getting... I mean, I'm talking about just their lips opened up across their eyebrows. And they were getting from the elbows. They were like axes going across your face with elbows and so forth and brutal.

But the tie, they wanted to catch you with the elbow because they wanted you to bleed because the fight's over.

Well, they're so good at slicing. Oh, yeah.

They have that down.

And that's what really cuts you open, especially to the forehead. And the forehead bleeds like crazy. The one decision to Did benefit Bill Superfoot-Walace probably screwed over kickboxing in America. Kind of crazy, because then Bill Wallace became the first commentator on the UFC. Which is ironic. The first commentator on the UFC is Bill Superfoot-Walace. Which is crazy because this is no rules, Bill. This is like, this is rules are completely out the window. That's right. It's very unfortunate because I think the development of kickboxing in this country has been stagnated. It had shot for a while with Glory. Glory was doing really well in America. They had Last Man Standing in LA. Remember that? Yeah, absolutely. A crazy event. Amazing event. But For whatever reason, it just didn't take hold. It was so exciting, but it just never... I believe they had it on Spike TV for a while. It just, for whatever reason, it wasn't promoted correctly or it just didn't catch with the American public. And I genuinely don't understand it.

Couldn't get the sponsorship either, Joe. Yeah.

But it's with the views come the sponsors, right? And it's really just about presenting a package together and making it exciting for people. See, the thing is with the UFC in America, the UFC is so popular that if the UFC is coming to town, everybody's going to go see the UFC. Every time the UFC is at Philly or Houston, it's like, let's go. And you get tens of thousands of people want to come out to see the UFC. But with kickboxing, you got sell it on these people. You got to sell it to them. And it hasn't been sold properly yet. The thing is, the product is there. There's great strikers out there. Jamie, pull up a clip of Yuki Yoza. This cat freaks me out because his combinations, man, he's so lethal. And you see guys who just don't know what to do with the fact that he's taking away their legs right away. He does this weird thing, too, where he hooks their legs, too, and throws great boxing combinations, too. But it's like everything is just constantly chopping at the inside of the legs. He throws high kicks and everything. And he's just brutalizing these dudes.

And it's constant. No matter what he's doing, he's chopping your legs, taking your legs away, going inside, going outside. The kid's very good. And that Kilkishin background But you guys know as well as anybody, it's such a brutal style. And they have to learn boxing afterwards because the Kilkishin competition is all punches to the chest only. But look, if you can learn how to kick, you can learn how to punch. It's just a matter of putting the time in. And this dude has put the time in. He does this sneaky thing, too, where he throws a low kick and then he hooks their calves and it works even on the ties. When you see a tie getting his legs destroyed by a Japanese, you realize, wow, this sport has really changed.

That's without a doubt.

That's one of the cool things about combat sports is that you see a new person rise doing something different. And when they do, everybody else has to catch up. And then the techniques evolve and you see everybody rise to the level of whatever this person is at and recognize that there's new techniques that people are using. Because martial arts has evolved more since 1993 to 2026 than it did in the last 10,000 years. And it's really because of exposure and because people like you guys went out there in the early, early days and laid it all out on the line to find out. Because when I started doing martial arts was '81 or '82. And back then, no matter what... '81. No matter what you did, you thought your style was the best. And no one really knew. If you did karate, you thought was the best. If you did taekwondo, that was the best. And there was no competition where everybody went together that we knew of, other than we heard about your fights that you guys had in Hawaii. Everybody heard about that. It was like legendary. Like, Penny and Blinkie went on a ride.

They fought everybody. No rules. Like, no rules? Who won? But we figured, oh, the strikers won. Striking is the way to go. It has to be. Like, the best strikers won. But then you watch the UFC like, oh, jeez, what are they doing? What is this Brazilian cat who's strangling everybody with a gee on? This is nuts. And then changed martial arts again.

But everybody's looking for the next biggest thing. And so far, I mean, where do you go from there? From UFC, where you can throw and ground in pound and so forth. When you do technique standing, everybody sees it. But when it goes to the ground, everybody's looking at the monitor because they can't see nothing. Right. And so a lot of people were thinking it's boring, but they didn't realize there was a skill on the ground, but nobody seen it and it looked boring. But when you got up, so they were paying some of the fighters to stop the opponent standing instead of going to the ground.

Well, there's a lot of promoters that definitely encourage fighters to not go to the ground and discourage them when they did go to the ground because they knew they could take a guy down and just hold them down and beat them up a little bit and win. And the promoters is like, we're not interested in you, which I think is not fair because It's all about fighting. And if a guy can hold you down, you have to figure out how to get up. And if otherwise we're pretending. We're pretending these techniques work. Because if a guy is like a world-class wrestler, some division one All-American, he takes you down, holds you down, You got to figure out how to handle that. Otherwise, we're lying because the sport is about combat. It's about fighting. It's the sport of fighting. Fighting is a man that can hold you down. If he could hold you down and beat you up, why is the A referee standing you up? Why is the referee giving you an opportunity to fight? You have to figure out how to get up. You have to figure out either how to submit him off your back, sweep him, or stand up.

Those are the options. A referee standing you up because the crowd's booing? That's crazy.

That's really true, though. I think that the crowd, they want to see action, and they can't see it on the ground, but they don't realize. There's a lot There's a lot of action going on the ground.

There's a lot of action.

But they don't see that. They want to see. It's almost like everybody at a car race. They want to see the racing, but they want to see a car crash. I don't understand it, but they want to see the car crash.

They want to see something happen. They want to get excited. But that's casuals. The casuals are the ones that boo when the fight goes to the ground. You can't change the rules for the casuals. But that's the problem when business gets involved in sport. You start altering the rules to make it more business friendly, which I just don't agree with. I just don't think that's the way to do it.

Well, when you're talking about warriors, you're talking about training Samurais. Yes. They're trained to actually get in and do their job and back away. Yeah. But again, right now, the promoters, a lot of the promoters are looking at, how can I fill my seats? Yes. They don't care about the fighting. They care about how can I bring, okay, he's popular. He'll bring more people in the seats.

Yes.

And that's all they're looking at.

Well, it was my job in the early days of the UFC when it first got on television, to explain to people what's going on when it hits the ground. So it was my job back. And I started working for the UFC in 2001. Well, I started in '97, then I started again in 2001. And very few people, other than martial artists, understood jiu-jitsu. I had been training at Carlson Gracey's. And then by the time '98 came around, I was training at John Jacques Machado. So I was training every day. So I knew jiu-jitsu. And so I had to explain it like I was sitting next to my girlfriend. Like, okay, what he's going to do now, he's going to throw his right leg over the side of his neck, and he's going to trap that arm. Okay, now he's fucked. Now he's in trouble. Now he's going to hook that leg under his ankle. He's got the triangle. He got the triangle. And I had to get people excited about it. I was excited about it, but also talk them through it because they didn't know what was happening. You You had to explain why are his legs wrapped around that guy's neck?

This looks gay. What the hell is going on? What is this? And you realize, no, he's cutting off the blood to his brain with his legs. And they're like, whoa, that's nuts. You're like, right? That's what Mel Gibson did the Gary Bussi in Lethal Weapon. They're like, That's crazy. It works. Like, yeah, that's a real technique. He learned from Hory and Gracie. And so the early days was a lot of it for me was about explaining to me, to people that are at home what was happening and talking them through it. That was the main part of my job once the fight got to the ground. Now everybody understands. Now everybody knows what a chokehold is. Everybody knows what an arm bar is. Everybody knows. So now it's just about explaining whether or not he's in danger or he's free, where the elbow is, where the knee is. And it's just letting people know whether or not he's okay or not. But they know what's going on now.

Even though they know what's going on on the ground, they still want to see him get up. You hear the crowd, get up.

There's nothing like a knockout. And there's nothing like a head kick knockout. Head kick knockout is the ultimate. When someone lands a head kick knockout like Leon Edwards in first Kamara Usman, he's losing the fight. Fifth round, boom. Head kick. You see Kamaro go down, the crowd, Salt Lake City goes nuts. That is the ultimate expression of martial arts is the kick, right? And a head kick that scores a knockout. That's a Bruce Lee movie. True. That's what everybody wants to see. They want to see it in real life against a trained, skilled opponent.

I get that. That's the car crash.

Yeah, that's the car. It's the skillful car crash.

Exactly. All of it is skillful, but the more they know about it, the more they understand the skill it takes to get there.

So you shed the light on it. You know what I'm saying? Once people, like you said, understood the damage that's going on and the need to know the technique in that art form makes you the winner. At the end of the day, who's getting their hand raised? You know what I'm saying? And then you got those that can do both. They'll dazzle you with a spinning back kick to the chin or they'll take you and put you in a rear naked choke. You know what I mean? So that's the other part of the game. But when you start talking about back in the era that you understand and we understand, it was the Budo heart. That was the transition. It was the spirit It was love. It was the essence. It was that tradition that really brought more mystique to the martial arts, more tradition in a way that people honored. You know what I mean? So it was like you start seeing the different transitions since they came. See what I'm saying? And it's just like you hear people. It's like a guy's out. He hits the ground. Boom. The referee don't get there in time, but he takes another whack or two.

You know what I mean? So then that's the part. I'm like, wow, man, you want to make sure that he don't get up. But at the end of the day, those couple of extra shots can create the damage. More damage. Absolutely. More damage. You see what I'm saying, Joe? So at the end of the day, hey, it's vicious. You got to be conditioned. I mean, you got to put in the work without a doubt. You know what I mean? Because exhaustion has made cowards many. Yes. So that whole Budo heart, the tradition, that atmosphere fear that spirit, little by little started dissipating, and then the new era starts coming in.

I believe the injuries in the ground and pound or whatever, but the injury, even standing up, getting knocked out, standing and hitting the mat. A lot of promoters are saying, we want to see that. But again, the insurance I mean, to get the insurance to cover a lot of these fighters is brutal. Yeah, especially small shows, right? That's it. It's brutal. And you have... It's a lot of ground impound, a lot of jarring of the mind and the body eventually is going to give out. And so some of them don't last two, three years, and they're great at what they do. But by the time they finish, it's hard for them to make a living, especially if they're married and so forth, you got to continue on life. So they try to make it safe enough. But at the same time, when it comes down to the art of war, it's mental warfare, it's physical warfare, it's even spiritual warfare. The energies that are coming at you. So educating the public to what it really takes and what it is that we're doing in the ring, in the cage. What is it exactly? Okay, it's entertainment, but there's a skill.

There's a skill that we're using to be able to go in there and stop an opponent without getting hit.

Yeah, it really is a test of your spirit because it's a test of your spirit just to be able to discipline yourself, to get in condition and train properly. It's a test of your spirit to be able to fight at the level of your actual abilities under pressure. And when I describe martial arts competition, I say it's high level problem solving with dire physical consequences.

Very well put.

That's what it is. It's just like, that's what you're going against a skilled guy who's trying to do something to you, and he's moving, and you're trying to do something to him, and any mistake, boom. And then the referee's got a light in your face, and And the next thing you know, you're like, oh, my God, you don't know what happened.

I mean, you have two types of fighters. You have a checker player who take two hits to give one that don't care. And then you have a chess player that don't like to take any and give the four, five, and six. They're doing combinations. Exactly. They're the ones that do a combination.

Well, that's why it's important where you train. And the gym that you guys had set up, the Jet Center, was legendary for developing champions and legendary for teaching proper technique and showing you the consequences of the moves and also teaching people that you don't have to spar to try to kill each other all the time. You could spar. Some of the best sparring I ever got was at the Jet Center because the place... This is after I've been done fighting. When I lived in Boston, when When we trained, it was war. Every time you sparred, you were just fighting. There was no one pulled any punches. No one pulled any kicks. Everybody's blasting everybody full blast. It was terrifying. And you saw a lot of guys get knocked out in the gym, and then they'd be back a couple of days later. And that's crazy. That's crazy. We know that now. Back then, we didn't even think about it. Everybody just came back. You just came back, you start training again. You had a headache, and you just dealt with it.

Nobody actually understood a concussion. Right. Hey, All right, shake it off. It'll be okay. Sit down for a while, have some water. Okay, back in. And so you went back in with a concussion, not even knowing that you had a concussion. Other than I had a headache or I was a little dizzy, but I'm okay again. Let me get back in because you didn't want to feel like, Hey, I can't hang.

You didn't want to feel like a bitch.

That's right. I can't hang. And so you get back in there with this. And so that's what's going on with a lot of these fighters. Before they go, I mean, they're training for their fight and they get a concussion. And then next week, they're going into their fight with a concussion, not even knowing they had a concussion.

Happens all the time. I know one guy who got knocked out twice in camp, and then one of them was less than two weeks before his fight, and then he got touched on the chin and his fight just went out cold because he was already fucked up. That's right. He came into the fight severely compromised. It's like going into battle with a hole in your armor. He was already messed up. And there's a time and place for hard sparring because I think you have to have some hard sparring to understand that, hey, you can't just block something like that. You're going to get your arm fucked up. You're going to have to deal with the fact that hard shots are coming your way. So sometimes you're going to have to spar hard. But technique sparring is so important, too. One of the reasons why the Thais are so successful is they play spar. They fight every week, so there's no reason to get banged up. So when you I've watched Thai fighters, when they spar over there, they're like, they touch each other. They just touch each other. They're not trying to hurt each other because once a week, they have to go fight hard.

So they don't fight hard when they're training. It's like they're fighting is like their one hard sparring day. Yes. Because some of them literally are fighting once a week. You get these guys that are 22 years old. They have 200 fights, which is crazy.

But again, If you're fighting for a lifestyle as eating for your family, so forth, when you go in there, they're fighting. There's no sparring session. It's a fight. And that's why they bring home food to their families. So when they go out there, they're fighting at five years old. They're already trained. Three years old, they're already training. By the time they're 10 years old, they They have so much experience of the fight. And some of them are done. By the time they're 22, 24, they're done.

They're already had 300 fights by then. That's it. Which is crazy.

It is crazy.

Yeah. And a lot of it over there is motivated by gambling. That's right. So when people watch Thai fights, they go, why they take the first round so light? Well, it's because that's when everybody gambles.

And they can switch rounds.

Yeah.

Switch opponents.

Oh, do they sometimes?

That's what I understood.

They switch opponents in between rounds?

No, no. Opponents. My God. Who they're betting on.

Oh, right, right, right. Switch opponents that they're going to bet on. Yeah, they do that all the time. I mean, there's so much gambling going on. When you go to a Muay Thai fight in Thailand, in the beginning of the fight, you see everybody waiving money around and pointing to people and everybody's like, set in bet. So the first round, those fighters are just like, setting the pace and just experiencing each other's timing. And then the second round comes in, all the bets are in. They start ramping it up, and then they start really fighting, which is alien to a lot of foreigners. They go over there and they try to go wild in the first round. You got to let the bets get in. And they're like, what? What are you talking about? No, it's an agreement, a silent agreement. When you go out there for that first round, for that first round, you're just feeling each other out. That guy's not going to try to knock you out. He's just trying to feel you out. He's going to try to land some shots, couple of hard leg kicks, maybe a teep. But really, he's just waiting for that second round to open up.

Exactly. And that's, again, it's a way of life to them. And a lot of them, their parents are selling their kids when they're very young because they can't afford it.

And the kids take on the name of the gym.

And that's all. They're upstairs. They walk, talk, sleep, and dream it in that gym. They don't go outside every day. That's all they do. They're trained for fighting. And I mean, I've been to a couple of them, and that's it. They don't see nothing else. They just train and go upstairs. They do it, and the next day they do the repeating, and then they go to the fight.

It is crazy because the money from the gambling is what led the sport to be so huge and the sport becoming so huge over there is what led them to be so good. And all that money in gambling led it to be one of the most fierce fighting styles on Earth. Because while the rest of the world had hadn't figured out the knees and the elbows and the clench and the leg kicks, the Thais had been doing it forever. They had already been doing it for a long time. It took a long time for the rest of the world to catch up to what Thailand had figured out just from allowing people to fight for money.

I mean, you're talking about in '75, just understanding the word moita, thinking it was a guy. What the heck is that?

That is such a Crazy story.

And then, of course, the leg checks, counters. And we started getting the idea, okay, this is how you fight them. And then you have other styles for American breadfighters that didn't have part of that game in the repertoire of Arsenal. You know what I'm saying? Right. And I think that's what the other thing that the PK did. It didn't give anybody from the PK a chance to learn internationally what was going on in the world. Not to put them down because you know what? That was all part of us moving forward back in the day, learning. But when you come up through Shorokan, you're going to know how to sweep and you're going to know how to front kick. You know what I mean? And so that was on the traditional side of the art.

It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate because even Dana White, when I talked to him about it, I was like, People don't care about kickboxing. I'm like, it's just because Because it was sold badly in the '80s. That's really all it is. If it was around today, I genuinely believe it would... If kickboxing had gotten the same promotional push that the UFC got way back in 2001, I think it would be just as big as boxing, just as big as MMA. I think it would be huge right now.

I'm going to agree with you because there are a lot of excellent stand-up fighters that are really colorful-Absolutely. And use all their weapons. They can use elbows, knees, feet, jumping. I mean, things that everybody, I don't do that. They didn't want me to throw spinning back kicks. It doesn't work. I said, Really? And I've been showing them for every time they said I made them eat the words because, again, the art, if you do it right, it looks fancy.

It doesn't work if you're not good at it. No, No. Yeah. Everything doesn't work if you're not good at it. You try to punch Floyd Mayweather, you're not going to hit him. It doesn't mean punches don't work. It just means you're not good enough at it. You know what I mean? It's interesting that people don't see that. Even coaches don't see that sometimes. You know, Terrence Crawford learned how to switch hit because Terrence Crawford is one of the best switch stance fighters ever since Marvin Hagler. And one of the reasons why he did is because his coach told him he can't do that. His coach was like, Don't do that. Stay orthodox. Stop messing around. He's like, What? He's like, I could fight this way, too. He's like, No, you can't. He's like, Okay, I'll show you. And he would call it Start fight southpaw. And then start fucking people up and switch hands on them. And they're like, Oh, no. Because it's an amazing skill to have. But it's only amazing if you develop your southpaw style as good as your orthodox style. It doesn't mean that you can't do it. It means it has to be at that leg.

If you want to land a spinning back kick, It doesn't mean you can't land a spinning back kick. It just means your spinning back kick is not good enough to land. But Benny Orquides can land that spinning back kick.

I mean, I'm softball. I'm a lefty. But I fought left forward because my brother said, Don't let them know you're lefty. So he trained all of us. Even my sister was lefty, and we all trained left forward. But when we struck, you couldn't tell that we were a softball. So we started left-handed and working this, but that was his logic.

Was also the benefit of that is you had a lethal left-hand kick. So your left-side kick, that front kick, the side kick from the left side and the front round kick from the left side was fast as fuck because you're a naturally left-sided fighter. That's right.

Yeah. That's right. I think that it's just each decade as we go, as Blinkie was talking about, the brochuda way. There was a You had honor. There was an honor system and all that. And then in the '70s, it started to change. When full contact variety came in, it started to change. And then kickboxing in '75 and on, People were, We're not martial artists. We're kickboxers. Then Muay Thai came, Muay Thai, we're not kickboxers. And then, We're UCI fighters. We're not Muay Thai I said, So every decade it changed. But again, you needed to learn from ground one. And the ground one was internal. The I am concept of what do you tell yourself with that. And there was an honor system going on. And there was a code of honor between warriors. And that got lost. That's right. And there was power in that. There was power in that code of honor, of strength, of annoying. And they said, Well, how do you know? I said, I just know. But they said, how do you know? I said, I can't answer you that other than the fact that I just know.

The tenets of a warrior code that you would learn in traditional martial arts were very important. That's why everybody would bow at the beginning of the class and everybody would key eye at the same time. There was a rigid structure to it, and they would not let anyone trash talk. There was no yelling and swearing. There was no none of that.

You don't even wipe the sweat off your head.

There was bowing and it was the beginning of the fight. Everybody bowed to each other, went back to the corner. There was no trash talk. There was none of that. It was your words will be spoken with your weapons. That's it.

I wanted to just add, Benny mentioned his sister. Well, we're one cousin. I was married to Lily. Lily was my wife, and she passed away. But she was a trailblazer for women. Absolutely. Boxing and kid boxing. One titles in both. Fought Madison Square Garden in 1978. 8 also. And just paying homage because she also pioneered and was taking the forefront, fighting at the Olympic, fighting at the Forum, fought in Japan, traveled the world, fought and represented Well, and trained hard. You know what I'm saying?

Because actually at the fights, my sister Lily, she actually fought first. Blinkie will fight, and then I would be the last to fight. So all three of us, when we traveled the world introducing kickboxing, my sister, Blinkie and myself, we all fight at the same card.

So the night Bobby Chacon, if you remember that name? Bobby Chacon, sure. Okay. Bobby Chacon and Alexis Argueo. Oh, yeah. We fought on their card. Both of us. First husband and wife to fight on a boxing card like that. Under that right there.

Wow.

And I grew up with Bobby. We grew up with Bobby. He came out of the San Fernando Valley. Little featherweight.

Yeah.

His whole style. He was a bad man. Yeah. His whole style.

I was his sparring partner for a while. He started busting up my nose and give me black eyes. I said, one time he hit me with such a beautiful right-hand, my leg came up automatically and he started taking his glove off. I'm not sparring with you. I said, it was a reflex. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring the leg up. He said, he started taking his glove. I don't want to sparring with you no more.

Did you hit him with the leg or just pick it up?

No, I picked it up. He hit me with a nice right. And automatically my right leg came up. And by then he told Joe Pont, I'm not spying with you no more.

The craziest thing about all this is you guys were Trailblazers. There was very little money in it.

Are you kidding me? Very little money. We paid for our own way just to get there to fight.

We paid them to fight. Really? No, we didn't pay.

When I said we did, we paid for our own gas just to go out there and actually fight. So it was very little money.

Yeah, there was no money and glory and big houses and cars and the things that fighters look for today.

Just heart. Yeah. Just the love of the sport, building it.

Well, I don't think you guys get enough credit. And it's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you on to talk about it, because I think the sport needs to recognize the pioneers that blaze the trail. And you two are of the most important pioneers that blaze the trail in martial arts in this country. And you did it back when no one knew what was going on. People need to understand. When did you guys first start fighting? When did you have your first kickboxing competitions?

Actually, it was in '73. It was called Full Contact Karate. And we already was fighting in '64 martial arts. And that was bare-knuckles, hitting the ground. We were already sparring. And then-No, No one knew about it back then.

No. We have to realize the Bruce Lee movies, when did they start coming out into America? When was into the drag?

Early '17. Right.

So this was almost ten years before that.

Yeah. Crazy.

Like, real pioneers, man. No one knew about it. You had heard about judo. People knew about judo. Maybe some people had heard about karate, but it wasn't that popular in America.

The first thing was actually popular was boxing. Right. Of course. After the boxing.

Boxing has always been Other than all the other sport, but boxing was when it came to the art of war.

And then it was judo. I started actually judo in '60. And then '63, we started Kimpo Karate.

Is that when you met Jean LaBelle?

Yes, exactly. And I'll tell you what, talking about the master of disasters.

Oh, yeah. He was awesome.

He was awesome. I got a chance to meet him because one of the guys that I first trained jiu-jitsu under, I took private lessons from this guy, Silvio Pamento.

Oh, yes. You know Silvio? I do. He's a great guy. Shout out to Silvio. And he was a Jean Labelle student. So he had a bunch of nasty tricks that he had learned from Jean LaBelle along with his jiu-jitsu stuff. So he showed me a lot of different chokes and different things and different variations that Jean had developed. And I was like, man. And then I finally got to meet Jean. What a character that guy was. He is such a character.

Jean was one of those type of warriors, since they're saying, if you want to train with me, don't be afraid to get choked out. And before you can actually train with him, he choked you out. He choked you out, and he would go and get lipstick and put it around your eyes. And then when he wake you up, you had all this. That was since a junior. And I told since a junior, I said, Get it over. Just choke me out. Get it over. Because I knew that I knew it automatically. Like he was being easy I said, Just do it. I said, I'm not afraid. Just do it. And before or not, I was out and I was back up again. I didn't even know I was out. And he said, You took it like a charm, man. What's it? I said, You know, since then, if I'm not afraid to die, what can you possibly do to me? He said, Really? And And I said, Yeah. And then he grabbed my big toe and put me in pain all the way up to my forehead, all the way back down to the other big toe.

And I said, I'll never say that one again.

Your big toe. He had a big toe submission.

Yeah. He grabbed my big toe right at the edge of it, and he put his nail in it. And oh, my God. My eyes were bulging.

Jean told me a story about when he was old. I think he was in his 70s. Some kids were breaking into his car, and he went outside. Did you hear this story? Yes. There's two guys that were talking. They're like, Get the fuck out of here, old man. He's like, Oh, really? He grabs this dude, fucking hip throws him out of the concrete, boom, grabs the other dude, chokes him unconscious. He fucked up two dudes when he was 70 years old in front of his house.

Matter of fact, I did a couple of movies with him.

His mother was Eileen Neaton. She owned the Olympic Auditorium. Oh, wow. The Olympic Auditorium him was the spot way back then. You had some big time fights. Big time fights. Jean LaBelle. He was always humble. You know what I mean? And he wore his humility very well.

Yeah. He was very self-deprecating and joking about himself and being silly. But, man, you shook that guy's hand. You're like, this is a fucking gorilla. It's Jean. There he is. Such a great guy.

Yes, he is, actually.

And he had one of the first mixed rules fights when he fought Milo Savage. That's right. That even predated the karate fights or the mixed martial arts fights that you guys had in Hawaii. That's right. He fought Milo Savage, who was a boxer, and he wore a gee. And the gee was so smart because Milo, the other guy I tangled up in the gee, and Jean grabbed him and strangled him.

Matter of fact, it was Muhammad Ali at the time we went to fight in Japan, and he was the main event. I was a semi-event.

Was that when he was fighting in Inoki? Yeah.

He stood on the ground. How was it?

I went and I knocked out my opponent quickly because I wanted to see the fight. So I stopped my opponent.

Who did you fight?

Do you remember? I can't even think of his name.

See if you can find the undercard, Benny's fight on the undercard. Because that fight with Inoki was crazy. I don't know how they talked Muhammad Ali into fighting him.

It was a five-rounder, and there was not supposed to be no decision. It was five-rounder and so forth, and they both got paid great money. But I was telling in the dressing room, I was telling Muhammad Ali, he's going to go for your legs. And he starts saying, I'm so fast. I said, Muhammad, he's going to go for your legs. And I said, Sure enough. After I fought, I didn't even want to go to the dressing room. I just wanted to stay there when they came out. And sure enough, the first thing Tony did, jumped, went to the ground, and did a flying round kick to his thighs. After the second round, Tony Inoki went out there and started going to his ground. And Muhammad Ali jumped on the corner of the ring and was kicking him on the ground as he was holding onto the ring. At the time, it was funny to see it. But after the five round, I tell you, Muhammad, they How do you guys get to carry him.

Yeah, his legs were fucked up.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, they were really badly damaged. And for a guy who relies on his legs as much as Ali did, that's a crazy fight to take because if he got sidekicked and hyper extended his knee and it was never the same, it would compromise his movement. That was float like a butterfly. That was a big part of his style.

That's true.

And I just can't imagine how anybody allowed him to take that fight. If I was his manager, I'd be like, There's no way you're taking in this fight. This guy's going to ruin your legs.

First of all, it was always about, whether it was about the money or not, but it was about doing something different. And Tony Unoki being Muhammad Ali here in United States, Tony Unoki was the man in Japan.

He was the man in Japan, pro wrestling. Yeah.

And so that's why they went in. It was packed, the place.

Did you find that video? Is it available online at all? I was looking for the... I can only find stuff about the event. It was called the War of the Worlds, and they also showed it on TV on the screen. Andre the Giant. Andre the Giant. That was in New He fought Chuck Wepner? Wow. That's crazy. So that was in New York? Yeah. That was a TV event. It says 10 rounds direct from New York, and this is 15 rounds direct from Tokyo. Oh. So it's like a pay-per-view. Vu or something. Oh, wow. Even a co-feature will appear local to your area. Oh, wow. But there's no video available? Look, I'm still looking right. It was an air fight.

That was a great fight, though.

Their fight was crazy. Their fight was crazy. When you look at Inoki kicking him, you're like, this is just nuts.

He jumped right to the ground.

He was a big guy. Oh, yeah. Inoki was a big guy.

But you You know what? He wasn't full Japanese. He was half Japanese, half something else. But he was tall and he had a square jaw and his thighs.

Yeah, he was a big dude.

Oh, yeah, without a doubt.

Is this Is it promotion for the fight, not the actual fight itself?

I don't know.

Oh, there it goes. Oh, it's not showing you the actual fight, but there was a lot of that.

Oh, yeah.

I wonder what they paid Ali to do that. Yeah. Because that seems like a crazy decision to make. Here it is.

They took him right to the hospital.

Look at that. Drops down and kicks the legs. This is it. Ali was on the ropes lifting his legs up.

I'm in the corner. I wonder if you could see me there, but yeah.

But it's just getting your legs kicked like that. If you don't know what the hell is going on, that's going to destroy your legs.

Oh, yeah. I mean, right after that went right to the hospital. They had a drain. They had a drain. I mean, his legs were full of fluid. They had to drain it out.

Oh, man. Yeah, I heard he got infected, too. Didn't he get infected in the hospital? And he was there for quite a while? Yeah. That's terrible, man. That is so terrible. I just don't understand why anybody... So this is 1976?

Yeah, that was the undercard there.

Was Ali the champ back then?

I think so. I think so.

Wow.

Just nuts, man. Yep, he was WBC, WBA, heavyweight boxing champion. Wow.

I trained with Tony Onoki.

Yeah? Yeah. What was that like?

I'm going to tell you. The way they trained there, they had these... I mean, working. I mean, they didn't use weights, but the strength And his grip was like a vice grip.

And they used those steel clubs?

Yeah, the steel clubs. But all that was just natural movement. So I even tried. So it had smaller ones for me. But I trained with him for a week. And I'll tell you what, every day I got up, because there was muscles I've never used before. Oh, my God.

Well, a lot of those guys learn strength and conditioning from Carl Gotch. Yes. And Carl Gotch was a legendary catchwrestler, and Carl Gotch went over to Japan and trained a lot of those guys, like Sakuraba, a lot of those guys who eventually became big-time mixed martial arts fighters. They started with catch wrestling. And Carl Gotch was one of the beginning guys that came over to Japan and taught a lot of those Japanese pro-wrestlers, a lot of the different submission holds of catch wrestling. And his big thing was conditioning. Carl Gotch is a legendary strength and conditioning guy. His routine was absolutely brutal. In order to be able to train with him, before you could train with him, he had to know that you were in physical condition. So you had to go through this program to get yourself up to... I forget what the requirement was, but it was some insane requirement of physical conditioning before he would even teach you anything. You had to be in shape. You got to have a gas tank. You got to be strong. You got to be agile, and you got to be able to move well.

My mother I still razzled at the Olympic auditorium. Really? With actually, Sensei Jean on the same card. And then actually, I fought. I fought at the Olympic. And And then my sister Lily, she did roller derby at the Olympic Games. Oh, wow. She used to do roller derby.

I was a rough lady. Yeah. Man, that's crazy.

She did roller derby. Tough.

Roller derby's tough, man. I've watched some of that. I went to see an event of that live. It's like, those girls get slammed.

Oh, yeah. So a little quick vignette. Lily was in a fight on a Bobby Chacon card at the Olympic Auditorium. So they did an article on Bobby, and And in the article, they mentioned Lily, that she's had over 50 street fights. And when she read that, she was like, why would he say that? Because he was pulling for her. You know what I'm saying? It's just crazy stuff like that. But she went in there and she was throwing him down. And then out of the ring, you'd never guess it by looking at her.

Right.

Never guess it. Never guess it.

Well, that was interesting because there was no real female boxing presence in country back then. That's right. Really didn't exist. Before Lily, who?

There wasn't.

There was no one.

Lily is the one that actually... A bunch of girls got together, and Lily is the one that actually started boxing because they were saying, Women can't box. She was knocking people out. She was knocking men out at the gyms. And that's when they decided, Well, let's see what's going to happen. Sure enough, she went out there, and she was the first woman to have a boxing title, a martial arts title, and a kickboxing title.

That's amazing. She was the first one. That's amazing. And then there was Lucia Ryker. Lucia Ryker, right behind. She couldn't get any fights. Women didn't want to fight her. She was knocking people out dead. And she was a kickboxing champion as well. Yes, that's right. Started out Dutch kickboxing champion and then went into boxing and could never get that fight with Christie Martin. Christie Martin was the big name, and she could never get a fight with her. It's like Christie Martin was the first one in America that really broke through and became a famous female boxer. But before her, and then there was, of course, Leela Ali, and there's been a few other ones, Claressa Shields right now, who's the greatest women of all time. And it's like, there's, it's those people, they owe it to Lily in a lot of ways. And just like martial arts fighters owe it to you guys. If someone didn't step in in the very early days and blaze that trail Well, no one's going to find out what's on the other side of the woods.

Hey, Joe, but after you saying that, since they Ben is going to be inducted this coming Saturday. Really? At the martial arts museum. So it's going to be, it's going to become, it's going to be inducted to the martial arts museum.

That's awesome.

Actually, we have the first three finger glove. This was a '73, the first three finger glove of striking and grabbing. There's a lot of stuff that-like in Game of Death, those Bruce Lee gloves.

That needs to be redone. One of the big problems with MMA today is eye pokes. It's a giant problem. And I think it could be at least 80 % solved by covering up the fingertips. We don't need the fingertips for grappling. You never grapple like this. You never interlace your fingers. That's right. So if you could just cover it up like an old school Everlast bag glove, just do that because you could still grapple. No problem. It's If you've got padding over the knuckles, just extend the leather over the tips of the fingers, make it like a mitten, put it under the hand like this. So your hand will slide into it the same way. Your thumbs will still be free. So you still have, unfortunately, you'll still have some pokes from the thumbs, but way less when you don't have eight other things to poke with. That's right. I think that could be done. And I don't think that takes away from the MMA sport at all.

No, because, again, a lot of them, they're striking and they're striking with their fingers open. I mean, some of them, I had this one guy that had his finger stuck so deep that they actually had him. I mean, that's how deep his finger when he jabbed with his finger open.

Well, that happened recently with Tom Aspenal. Yes. With his heavyweight title, he was fighting Cyril Ghan, and Cyril Ghan poked him in the eye a couple of times. But one time, in both eyes, he poked him. And his right eye is fucked up. He's already had one surgery. He's going to have a second surgery soon, apparently.

How many detached retinas over the course of time?

Oh, a countless number. I mean, you're going to have some detached retinas from fighting, period. There's no way to avoid it. You're getting punched and kicked and elbowed in the eye. It's going to happen.

In the MMA.

Yes. But it's going to be less of it. I mean, look, Sugar Ray Leonard had a detached retina. That's right. And that was just from boxing gloves. You're going to have some detached retinas, but I think you'd have a lot less eye injuries if you covered those damn fingertips. And it's just we've gotten used to these MMA gloves that they have today. It doesn't mean that that's the only way to do it. They need to figure out another way.

Got to take care of the fighters.

100 %. And also make the sport better because if fights don't get stopped from eye pokes, it's more exciting. It's better. You don't want to fight, stop from an eye poke. So the fight will go on. There'll be better fights.

It's a better product. The same thing back then. They were fighting with eight-ounce gloves, but there were horse hair in it. And a lot of them were putting their glove in the spit bucket. So making the horse hair wet. So it gets real solid and it starts to-Guys would cut a hole in it and take their Squeezie bottle, their water bottle, take the straw part and stick it in there and squirt water into the horse hair and pat it down.

That's right.

That's what we started to play with.

We remember Margarito. He got caught. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He got caught using plaster of Paris inside of his, or whatever it was, something that when it got wet, would harden up like a rock inside of His hand wraps.

Like hitting them with a brick.

Yeah.

That's why the rep, I mean, they would come and check your wraps. They would mark it to make sure before the glove goes on because they were doing a lot of crazy things.

A lot of dirty shit.

Oh, yeah.

Well, Margarito got away with it long after people had already been checking things, too, which is really crazy. Yeah. But you're always going to have cheaters. That's just how the sport is.

I mean, it's, again, when you call it sport, there's got to be the brochuda way of honor system and respect and so forth when you're talking about a sport. But when it becomes away from a sport, then it becomes a money thing. You get away from that brochuda way of really a code of honor between warriors. Back then, even the Samurais, they're signed to the dead, but there's a code of honor, and they knew what they were there for. Just like, you know what you're going in there for. But now there's rules, and either you go by the rules or don't do it.

Yeah. I mean, I think if people had a martial arts code of honor, it would be just as exciting and maybe more interesting.

So in agreement.

And you would also develop a lot better human beings. Yes. Because instead of a bunch of kids imitating people talking trash, what you would have is a bunch of kids that imitate very respectful martial martial arts people. Very respectful, true martial artists.

Very well put. Absolutely.

It's there for self defense. It's not to be aggressive.

And self improvement. That's the other thing. It's like my mind's My instructor had a saying that martial arts was a vehicle for developing your human potential. And I never forgot that. I was like, if you could get great at martial arts, you could get great at anything. It's really just a matter of taking that knowledge that you learned about yourself in going through the fire and learning how to be a great martial artist. And you could apply that to anything.

It's supposed to be a way of life. It's supposed to teach you about honor and dignity and respect and so forth. That's basically what it was all about.

Yeah, that's what it's supposed to be about. Yeah.

And even though it's about defending, soft defense is defending instead of being a striker, learning how to defend it, slipping and moving and defending. But it got turned around and it became striking instead of learning how to... Because I would put my money on a good defensive fighter than a striker Because it's easy to go out there and strike. But if you don't know how to defend striking back at you.

Right. Well, one of the most humiliating things for a fighter is they think they're a good striker, and then they get in there with someone who has impeccable defense and they can't hit them at all. And then they get confused.

They get countered.

Yeah, they get countered. They get confused. And it's also what caliber of fighter are you training with, which is probably one of the most important things for young fighters to understand. You will imitate the atmosphere of your gym, period. And the level that is the top guy at your gym, that is the level that everybody aspires to. If you are training with a bunch of champions, you're training with a bunch of high level guys, you will aspire to be at that high level. If you You are the toughest guy in your gym, if you're the best guy in your gym and you're not a world champion, you're not the best, you're just pretty good. You're not going to grow in that gym. You got to get out of that gym. You got to get out of that gym. You got to go find people that are going to test you and put you in danger and put you in a position where you're going to have to learn and grow. And that's the only way.

And that was the advantage of training at the Jet Center. We have people coming from all over the world, all over the country. You had nothing but people that you had to aspire fired for. You had to reach for the stars, make it happen, and with condition being the name of the game. You know what I mean? And from time to time, there was wars in the gym. You know what I mean? But there's other times where there was, we're going to learn today. You're not just going to start swinging from left to right.

Well, it was the mecca of kickboxing. And like I said, when I was living in Boston and when I was kickboxing in Boston, people would talk about the Jet Center with hush tones. You got to get to the Jet Center. Because I was telling people I was moving to LA. They're like, oh, you're going to move to LA. You got to go to the Jet Center. And I knew about it. I was like, oh, it's one of the first things I did. Like, one of the first things I did, I showed up for work. I did all the things that I had to do. I was working on this TV show. Then I went to Van I's. I was like, I got to go sign up. Come on.

That's beautiful.

Joe, you mentioned that you could sling them pretty good yourself. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. You leaned over and ripped the body shot to that one guy you you were sparring with. He went down on one knee. And if I'm not mistaken, you mentioned, man, I thought, holy crap, I'm going to get shot in the parking lot. And then he walks up to you and he taps your glove and he says, Good shot.

You see what I'm saying? I remember that. I was nervous sparring those dudes.

But that was part of why I had them there. You know what I mean? Because at the end of the day, it's not about violence. And that was giving them that lesson that they needed to learn. You know what I'm saying? During that time of their life. And now we've grown it into something now where we've done over 200 sporting events with rivals. Yeah, that's awesome. Tackle football games. No no pass. Handball, softball games.

People need to learn that the division that we have with each other, we look at us versus them. It's mostly bullshit. It's not real. It's like they're just human beings, just like you're a human being. And it's way better for them to be your friend than for them to be your enemy. There's no need to have enemies like that for no reason whatsoever other than tribal gang bullshit. It's not real. And the thing about martial arts is it teaches you the real battle is inside yourself. The real battle is learning and growing. And unfortunately, with young men, there's this desire to show how hard you are and that you're macho, but you don't have any skills. You're not really macho. So you have to posture and be louder than everybody else. And martial arts teaches you like, Man, your battle is in the gym tomorrow. You get back in there tomorrow and get better and then learn why you got hit and then get better and learn why you're throwing your left hook wrong or why you're throwing your round kick wrong and train it and work on the bag and put in your time.

And you're going to learn and grow. And then you're going to realize, I've been fighting my own self for this whole time. I've been fighting nonsense, and I've been making enemies that don't exist.

We had a guy that came into the gym, 6'3, 230 pound Mexican-American, which was a rare commodity back in 1980. And he had just done five years on a manslaughter, and he wanted a box. So I Started working with him. Not long after, I get a phone call and it's a parole officer and he says, Hey, I hear you're dealing with Alex. And I said, Yeah, I'm dealing with him, and he's doing just great. I said, I'm a private entity, and I'm going to work with guy. I don't got to chase him. He's in the gym all the time. And so took him to the Diamond Belt. He won it. Took him to the Golden Glove. He won it. Took him to the state title. He won it. He earned the right to go to the Nationals in Beaumont, Texas.

Is this Alex Garcia?

Alex Garcia. So I was his trainer manager at that time. Oh, wow. All them years. He earned the right to go to the World Box-off, wins the World Box-off, goes to the World Games, fights who? Theophilo Stevenson. 6'7, Cuban. There was a three-time Olympic gold medalist. Alex fights him for the gold on ABC World Sports. Wow. And he doesn't win. But he lost the Theophilo Stevenson from Cuba, and he wins the Silver Menno. And he's the first in the Hispanic community, Mexican-American, to win a medal or to fight in even that category, that weight division.

I remember I was just talking to my friend Joey Diaz, who's Cuban, and we were talking about Tia Fillo-Stevenson, that that was the guy that they were trying to get to fight Muhammad Ali when he was in his prime because they were like, Muhammad Ali might be the best in the world, but he might be the second best because this is cat in Cuba that is a bad man. And Tia Phil Stevenson was a bad man. He was so good, but he was just locked into Cuba and locked into that amateur program, and we never got to see him fight professionally.

And back then, they wouldn't let him fight pro. Nope. Fidel Castro would not allow that. And didn't he come out with Muhammad on the cover of Time magazine? Like they were teasing people with that fight?

Perhaps. I mean, there was a lot of talk about it. I remember in the '70s and the '80s, there was a lot of talk about that, about him fighting and then him eventually defecting and coming over to America, but it never happened.

But the thing with Alex, that showed somebody that's gone away and come back home can make it. If he could win the silver medal for the United States from America and the World Games when we had boycott at the Olympics, that was just part of the proof. And so now when you're getting guys into Union jobs, you're getting guys with tattoo removal that's going on. You're doing advocacy in the courtrooms and you're just being able to roll out. There's education going on, and there's a response to yellow tape. The CVI, the Community Violence Intervention programs that are now nationwide. Ide. They become a movement.

And when you say tattoo, you're talking about gang tattoos.

Tattoos, but yeah, mostly just things of people's past that holds them back. So now there's another thing that's going on with tattoos, Where it's no laser removal. There's some new technology and stuff that I'm talking to people about that you don't have to go through getting laser and you can hear that laser going off. So what's it about? It's about meeting the needs of people. It's about touching lives. You know what I mean? It's about showing them another way and having the ability to open up a door that they can get through. A path. Absolutely.

That's the thing about a lot of people. They don't know how to make the first step. They've made some mistakes in their life. Their life is a mess. They don't know the first step. The beautiful thing about a fighting journey in a gym is it allows you, a martial arts dojo allows you a path You go in there, you start. There's some rules. I'll see you tomorrow. Okay, I'll see you tomorrow. And then you're in there tomorrow, and then you start getting a little better. And then you learn growth and you understand, if I work towards something, I could build towards something. And now I'm seeing progress. And Now I've got a brown belt. Now I've got a black belt. Now I can tell people I'm a black belt. I did something. I accomplished something. And I think that's one of the great things about belt systems in traditional martial arts is it gives you a sense that there's a rite of passage. Like you've made, you've gone through this thing, and now you've moved to another level. And now you're supposed to behave like you are at a different level. Now you're a senior student.

Now you're one of the elite students in the gym. You're held to a different standard. It's very important for people.

Absolutely. A lot of times what happens is a lot of them come in with a lot of emotions, anger, fear, frustration. And especially with the Jets gym, we were able to tap in and put fear to them in a sparring way, it will bring up all that emotion up, and then we had a chance to reprogram that. That was the best part about the gym is to bring up what everybody hides until you're threatened. Once you're threatened, I don't care what you hide under your bed, in your closet, we'll come up, and then you get a chance to reprogram the way you're perceiving it, the way you're looking at it. And and help them to heal, not pat it or forget it or act like it doesn't heal it so it doesn't stop them on their journey. And that's what the Jets Center was all about, is being able to bring that up, mirror their truth, help them look at what they're really all about, and continue, let them go on their journey. And that's why the Jets Center was so successful. Because we had a chance to really mirror their truth and bring all that that they hide and bring it forward.

And they felt safe enough. They felt protected. To actually go there.

Yeah. And you get to see them go through that and develop real confidence. Yes. Instead of this bravado, this false confidence, trying to make people feel like you're confident, scare them off, you develop silent confidence. Where you really know how to fight.

True. That's true. So that's what makes the art so unique, but so needed. And in the art, it gives you a foundation to build on in your life. And no matter what, and We've had all walks of life that come through the Jets Center. We had so many different attorneys coming in, and we used to call them the final attorneys. There were six, seven of them. In the gym, they were so humble to each other. They love each other. They go outside, they don't know each other. I said, What's wrong with you? You just finished spying with them, working with them. And they said, He's an attorney. I said, And? But it brought character out of them. It brought their heart. And let them mirror the really truth on their journey and where they were going.

Also for an attorney, need to step into that world and be around both these young gang members that are learning a new path and then professional fighters. You're in a different world of discipline and willpower and focus that will help you in everything you do. It will help you as an attorney, will help you as a doctor, will help you in anything you do. And it certainly help you as a human. As a human, just get through life. There's nothing that's going to be harder in in life, other than the loss of a loved one. Nothing going to be harder than your hardest training session at a real fight gym. That makes the rest of the world easy because your hardest thing you volunteered to do and you look forward to doing it again. And you do it every day. When you could do... I always tell people, martial artists are some of the nicest fucking people you'll ever meet in your life. They're some of the nicest people because they don't have anything to prove. When I introduced my friends to guys, I'm like, What do you think? I was talking about Georges St.

Pierre yesterday. I was introducing someone to Georges St. Pierre. I'm like, What do you think he does? He's like, I don't know. He seems like a nice guy. I'm like, That is one of the baddest motherfuckers that ever walked the face of the earth. He's a two division UFC world champion, one of the greatest of all time. They're like, No way. I'm like, Yeah. He's like, How are you doing, my friend? Super nice, super friendly. I'm like, Yeah, he's got nothing to prove. There's nothing to prove. So he can be a nice person. He can be a nice person and not feel weak.

He can be himself. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, Joe. You may mention right now, one of the hardest things to do is lose someone. And so for me, I wanted to share a little bit that in 2023, I got a phone call that was something that I could never anticipate. It was January of 2023, and it was a call that was made. One of my son's called to tell me that he had talked to a friend of ours that does a lot of work with the prisons, has There's a lot of entrees on big-time boards, and that he was at one of the prisons, and an inmate walked up to him and asked him if he knew me. So he said, Do you know Blinky? And he said, Yeah. He says, Why? And the guy says, Because I'd like to talk to him. And he said, Well, why? He said, Because I'm the guy that murdered his son. And so my son's telling me that our friend wanted to know if I would consider talking to him on the phone. I had just entered into a season of fasting and praying. Me and my wife now we're going to celebrate 10 years, Gloria.

I said, I don't know. I was grappling, Joe. I was grappling. I was fighting with it. Then I heard a gentle voice, and it was, Say yes. Say yes. I called my son back and I said, Tell him. I said, yes, but I don't want to talk to him on the phone. I want to see him in person. That's exactly what happened. On January the 30th, we drove up to the prison, and We get there. First we stop and get something to eat, and then we get to the prison, and the CEO is right there waiting. When we get there, he says, Yeah, come on through. So me and this guy walk through. And he says, We don't normally have meetings on Monday, but everything's fine. We're going to be okay. So they walk us through. We walk through, get out to the back door, and there's the yard, the yard, the barbed wire. Everything's right there. We start walking. We go into a building to the left. Now, I thought I was going to be talking to somebody behind glass, but it turns out that they're asking me, What do I think about this room?

And I'm like, in my mind, why are they asking me? What am I thinking about this room? You know what I mean? Because that's up to them. But I looked down the hallway and there's a door. I said, What's behind that door? The CEO tells me, he says, That's a chapel. I said, Can I see it? We walk back down the hallway. He opens the door and there's a podium right there, and there's about 15 chairs. So I said to him, Can we use this room? And he said, Yes. At that point in time, I need to go to the restroom. So we walk out of the building. He takes me to the restroom. When we come back out, my friend, The one that was setting it all up, he's not there. But there's an inmate. I can hear him saying, Hey, Blinkie, thank you for the letter to the parole board. I got a date. But I'm in another dimension, Joe. I mean, I'm like somewhere or else. So a couple of minutes goes by and I hear my buddy and he says, Hey, Blinkie, this is David. And when I pivoted out, he was right here in front of me, this guy that had killed my son.

And the words that came out of his mouth, Joe. I didn't have a second to try to digest it. But he says to me, Can I get a hug? And when he said, Can I get a hug? I grabbed him and I embraced him and I began to weep. I began to weep. I began to cry. I began to travail, and he began to weep. That was a Holy Ghost moment where the spirit of God was moving on that whole issue. We went from there into that chapel, and we spent a little over 2 hours talking. The CEO that was there and my buddy, they were sitting in the corner of the room. As I'm talking to him and we're going over... Because my wife, before I left the house, she says, Remember, he was just a young guy. You know what I mean? He was probably confused back then. Now I'm talking to him, and now we're going over different things that took place, and I hear that voice. Tell him, talk to him. Talk to him. So I said, Okay. I said to him, Can I have the privilege of leading you to the Lord?

And he said to me, Yes. He says, Yes. Tears start coming out of his eyes. I stepped a few feet over, put my hand on his right shoulder, over his heart, and I led him. And he began with a contrite heart. He began to weep and cry. And I came to realize because it took me a long time to unpack that. I left there and I came home and to the chair where I always sit to read. And wow, what just happened? What did I just do? What just took place? And at the end of the day, Joe, it was, I'll leave 99 to go get one. And that's what I grasped, that one life, that one person. So that's why I've always said since then that the power of forgiveness is more powerful than my left hook, and I had a good one, Joe.

Daddy did.

I just, nice and short, man. But the power of forgiveness, Joe, reconciles. It gives you a chance, man, to rekindle the fire. It gives you the opportunity, man, to live life without carrying a heavy yoke on your neck that people carry. It's powerful. I can't articulate to you in words what forgiveness is, but forgiveness is divine, the love that's required, the humility that's required to forgive unconditionally. And that's why I trust in Christ.

That's a beautiful story. It really is. That's a beautiful message. And it's incredibly powerful of you to forgive that man and to be able to recognize that he made a horrible, horrible decision that affected your life and everyone around you. But he's just a human being. And we're all capable of doing something terrible if we're in the wrong environment with the wrong people around us, the wrong lifestyle, wrong decisions. But we're all just human beings.

And that's Why I'm still doing what I'm doing? I had to say, Farewell to my brother Ben, because we own the Jets Center together. 50/50, man. And it was just that type of calling, Joe, that said, Go. And So here I am now, 36 years later. It's still jumping. That's amazing. And it's still working.

I went there 32 years ago. That's when I first started. That's when I made my way to LA. That's when I first You came to your gym and took your classes. Do you still have a gym?

You know what? Right now, I'm just doing a lot of traveling. I'm doing my documentary right now and working on the documentary and so forth and just doing a lot of traveling.

I've seen a lot of videos online of you teaching seminars and teaching people. You're still doing a lot of that?

A lot of it.

Do you enjoy that still?

You know what? I've always thought I was a better teacher than a fighter.

That's crazy.

You're one of the greatest fighters of all time. The fighting, I can do. But the teaching I love. Really? I love being able to get somebody and turn them inside out so they may look at their truth and see that we all have talent and we all have a gift. It's just giving a chance to see that. I really take a lot of pride in seeing somebody that I can see that they doubt themselves, they hesitate to go out there and really look at themselves and start to love himself. There's no better feeling to see somebody come up from being very mink and weak to something that's so strong and doing something great for society and for his family.

That's amazing. Yeah, that's right. Do you ever get any professional mixed martial arts fighters that reach out to you for training? Absolutely. Who have you trained with?

Well, you know what? Right now, basically, what I do is I don't talk about any of them. I just work with them. And everybody asked me, but I said, You know what? I don't care who you are. I care about what you would think, how I can help you with. If it's mental, if it's physical, because when it comes down to it, 80 % of it is mental, 20 % of it is physical, but 99. 9 % of that is spiritual, which is internal. This This is what I work with him on. And so some of the fighters, I said, I prefer not to know who you are just other than what you want from me. And from there, I can work with you on that. And so a lot of people want me to go and see their fights, while they're cage fighting, MMA and stuff. And there was only One time I went, I believe. I went one time because in the beginning, there were great technicians in that cage, beautiful technicians, and it got lost. It got lost somewhere around. And then every once in a while, you'll find somebody that stands out like a sore thumb.

It's just beautiful technique. And you can see they really love what they're doing.

Well, the young guys coming up today are some of the most technical I've ever seen. It's an amazing time because what we're seeing now is these kids that are in their 20s that the UFC really became popular in 2005 from the Ultimate fighter. So you're seeing kids that were really young when that was happening. And They grew up watching Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, Vitor Belfort. They grew up watching these elite fight, Conor McGregor. And now they are the newest version of that. And the thing about martial arts is so different is We really didn't have a chance to see mixed martial arts on television at all until 1993. And so you're seeing this. There's no sport other than mixed martial arts. Where you look back at 1993 and look at it in 2026, And it's totally unrecognizable. It's so much different. But MMA, it is. And these kids are so technical. It's like we were talking about today. The kids of today, they can do everything. They could submit you. They can take you down. They can kick box with you. They could do it all. They don't have a weak spot in their game.

And those are the elite young fighters of today. And we're seeing a lot of those now. A lot of them.

The only thing you can't coach is heart. Right.

You can't coach heart. I mean, you could teach it in a way they can learn it from the pain of not having heart and the shame of not having heart. And you decide, I'm never going to be that person again. Some people say, heart is either in you, you either have it or you don't. But, man, I don't believe that. I think it's something that can be grown just like everything else, just like technique, just like everything.

Condition does a wonderful job, right?

But that's the journey. Yes, that's the journey. The journey is finding that. That's the journey. The good, bad, ugly shows up that it may teach you something about yourself. Yeah. And that's the mirroring of your truth.

What is it like for you two men as pioneers, like real, true pioneers in the earliest days of martial arts in this country, to see where it is today and to know that you started those first steps?

It's for me to start something, but in a way of the Bushura way, of the code of Honor and respect and so forth. This is what I felt that we were doing, building up a way of life where warriors will fight with dignity and honor and respect. And a Along the line, when actually my last fight was in '95, '94, I got my last fight. And then it started to change because the graces came in in '90. In '95, it started mixed martial arts all the way up to 2000. And then cage fighting was...

Huge.

Man, just everywhere. But I wasn't I was following some of it, but I didn't like some of it. It didn't leave a good taste. And because when I saw some of these guys were on the ground just pounding this guy on the ground, I thought, wow, was that me in the street once upon a time when I was young? And I said, so a lot of it that I didn't want to take their livelihood from them because I didn't want to hurt them to the point where they couldn't make a living if they were married, if they were... So I always had that in my mind, in my heart, that to me, it was a sport. When somebody hit the ground, I said, get back up. I pinned a lot of people, but to hit them on the ground, I just said, get back up.

Yeah, but it's an important part of fighting.

That's right. Yeah. That's right. But again, the fight game, again, there's a difference between the fight and the art of sport, because in the art of sports, you do a lot of that on concrete and wood, a whole different ball game on the mats, because there's two different flavors of understanding, one protecting in the street and hitting that ground and so forth. Because a lot of times at the internationals, it was concrete. That was in '64s, '65, how we fought on concrete, taking down sweeps, but letting them back up. There was a code of honor. Even though we swept and took them to the ground, and some will reverse punch to the ground and then Let them back up. But again, I just think that sometimes when you're on the ground and there's somebody's livelihood, you're thrashing. And the idea, okay, I understand what it takes to hold that hand up as a winner and what it takes of the rules. But I've always got turned around when I see somebody jumping on somebody.

Yeah, that's understandable. Considering in your day that was frowned upon. But today, it's one of the most important parts of the sport. Yeah.

But as for me, I'll tell you, you mentioned how it felt to be a pioneer, a true pioneer in the in front. And I feel privileged to be a part of that. I mean, it was such a robust time. It was so exciting. It was rich. There was richness in the air. We were thriving. We were pushing. First, it was the trip to Hawaii, where we end up in a semi-comedy thing, where if you don't knock them out, you're not going to win. Well, by the way, when we got to the airport, Dana Goodson was cattying there. He was taking the luggers and he's seen us. Hey, you guys double team me. You know what I'm saying? But it was just the atmosphere was rich. It was thriving. It was special. It was a special time. You know what I mean? And so I didn't want to cheat the game because I knew for a fact the condition was king, being in tip top shape. Because there's one thing being in shape, but being in tip top condition. Now, you almost could radar someone's going to throw. You could catch it. You could see it.

You could feel it. So being on the front end, even though we got limited recognition, it wasn't always about the recognition. It was about the art. It was about It was about life. It was about how you treat people. And I'm grateful, Joe. I'm grateful because still today, it's about people. It's about service. It's about being able to open a door, give an opportunity and touch a life in the same way, Benny's talking about the emotion and what that allows to happen to an individual's life. Well, we're approaching in a multi-pronged approach You see what I'm saying? The basic needs of opportunity that a lot of people don't get a second look. It's just like, next, next, next. You take the time to talk to them. You know what I mean? And I want to say this. I want to say this. You wear humility so extremely well. I'm just saying, Joe. You know what I mean? That's what I sense. That's what I discern in my spirit. I've been running the race a long time, Joe. I've been running the race a long time. And there's an anointing that breaks the yoke of bondage.

There's an anointing. And it flows, Joe. And if I left here without saying that, I would be so disappointed in myself. But anyways.

Well, my humility is honest. I know who I am, and I'm just a person like everybody else. And The beautiful thing about martial arts is it teaches you that. It teaches you who you really are, not image and what you're portraying. What is your real spirit? What are you really capable of? What can you really accomplish? Who are you? And you have to learn that. And that's the beautiful thing about hard training and learning and competing. You have to learn who you are.

That's the journey.

It doesn't come without lost. It doesn't come without... You have to go through some shit.

The good, bad, ugly shows up.

Yeah, all of it. It is a part of who you are. And when you guys are seeing the sport, the crazy thing about your time was that there was no other motivation other than the journey because there was no money. There was no Fame. I mean, you obviously got a lot of notoriety and respect amongst martial artists and amongst people like me. But the general public, if I say, you don't know who Blinkie Rodriguez and Benny the Jet are? They're like, what? Who's that? And martial artists know. People who watch the movies know. People who saw Black Belt magazine, they know. But you were doing it in a pure sense. It It wasn't just a vehicle to become famous. It was because you were trying to figure out who's the baddest man on Earth. And there's only one way to find out.

True.

Yeah.

Truth speaks for itself.

Truth speaks for itself. So do you have a desire at all to have a gym now? Do you ever think about what it was like when you had the Jet Center?

There's something that I've been drawing in my mind, just like when the Jet Center, I was drawing I started drawing on toilet paper. In Japan? Actually, in Japan. And I had an idea, and I started drawing on toilet paper because I didn't have anything else. So I started drawing the Jet Center, and I told Blinkie. I said, Blinkie, This is our gym. What do you think? And he looked at me and he said, I dreamt about that. After I showed him on toilet paper, this is going to be our next gym. This is going to be the gym of what we're going to do. And he had a dream about it right before that.

Really? The Keel Plaza in Chinchaku. Yeah. Came downstairs. He was already there to eat. And he says, Blink, one day we're not going to lease or rent no more. We're going to own this gym. And he pulls his paper out and he starts pointing it out. Jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, cold plunge. And he just starts going through it. And I'm looking at him and I'm smiling. Ben says, Hey, you think I'm crazy again? I said, Ben, I dreamt that gym last night. I dreamt it. The proof is that It was what we said is when we walked into that bowling alley at 1454 O'Friar Street, we closed a two and a half day escrow on that property with $4,000 down. Wow. And it was that we started a month later with the construction and building of it.

You can feel it in the building, man. I remember very clearly the first time I walked in the room, I was like, wow. I was like, I'm really here. It was crazy. I didn't get too nervous entering the fight gym. But that gym, I got nervous because it's like the legendary history of it. You guys really did something very, very special. I was real sad when the roof got damaged and it went under. I was like, man, this is the end of an era.

But to answer your question, I've been doodling again. Oh. But I'm talking about a gym. There will be a safe haven where people will come to learn their truth, learning defense, self defense, but learning about themselves, mirroring their own truth, that they will be able to feel safe and to be able to release all that That people or they've been taught this emotions of anger, fear, and frustration. They get a chance to release it and feel comfortable and feel safe enough to do it, that they may go on their journey. This is the next gym that I already started Absolutely not. I didn't do it on a toilet paper.

Actual paper this time.

Yeah, actual paper this time.

Where are you going to plan on doing that?

Actually, that's the key. Location. That's the key. Because, again, this one will be different than anybody he's ever seen. And it will be a place to come from all over the world to look to mirror their truth.

So do you think you're going to do that in California?

Maybe. I mean, born and raised. You can take the kid out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the kid. So we're still... But right now, I already draw I already finished drawing.

But, hey, California could use something like that. Yeah. Really could.

Because believe it or not, I've already done nine pieces of equipment that nobody's ever seen. Five machines that nobody's ever seen. And it's all about a mentally, physically, and spiritually endurance. To take you to the next level that you never thought you can get there.

So if you do something, when are you planning on doing it?

Well, right now, I'm just taking one day at a time because sometimes you jump ahead of your time. A lot can happen in one day. So I take it one day at a time. But I've already started it and we'll see where it goes. I really can't answer you. When, but it's on the making.

That's beautiful. That makes me very happy because you've got a lot to teach people. Both of you do. And you with your outreach, you have a A lot to teach people.

We've actually talked at one point about us buying a huge building and having a gym there, but also servicing people there, right out of there. The people that come to our office for tattoo removal or moving their lives up the road a little bit. All that comes with the programming of the different services. I'm not going to inundate this broadcast with this, Joe. But at the same time, We've had that conversation. It is about humanity. It is about people.

People need a place. People need a place to come. And they came from all over the world. When they get a chance to hear something like this, they will come from all over the world to mirror their truth, to look at themselves, their purpose and reason why they exist, why they're here, what are they doing? This is the place in my mind is what I've designed it. That's why I designed equipment and all that for this place.

That makes me very happy that you're considering doing that. I think that would be amazing. And I think you're right. I think people will come from all over the world to train there and to learn there. And I really hope that happens. I really do. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here. It's an honor.

Thank you, John. My pleasure.

Thank you. It's good to see you again. Good to see you, too. Good to see you, too. Thank you. Good to see you. You're still bobbing in with me.

Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you, everybody.