Elite Performance vs. Medal Count: The Success Mirage in American Taekwondo

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Terrence run to the St Louis grill.
I'm sorry, not sorry.
Ain't it funny?
Herb P on the track, my sisterill advise opinions maybe, but
facts ain't lies, it's coldmetal mentality.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Watch the sunrise 1F1 , I'm checking in, so we're
sitting pretty still mean secondbest in the world.
Get witty face, ponyx, pressurecookin' hot.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Gave my sweat, my focus, everything.
I got DJ Grimes, a DJ holdin'down the beyond, still on the
stage.
I want the time To turn the newpage.
Learn to discipline, focus,respect for the fight, my fight,
fight, fight, fight.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
To me vitality we can do something, one that won't
end in reality.
Just me, it's still me.

(00:57):
Again, it is the time for thewarehouse 15, and it hasn't been
too long, hasn't been too short.
But again, like we always say,remember we're here to discuss
the world events with you,what's going on in Taekwondo,
but, more importantly, sorry,not sorry if we hurt your
feelings.
We haven't started with thirdplace in a long time and I've

(01:20):
apologized to TJ's mom onnumerous occasions.
So I'm going to work my way upthe performance ladder.
We're going to start with thebronze medalist today.
Tj, how are you doing, brother?

Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm good.
I'm good Just chilling, hangingout.
Like I said always, Thursday isa good day for me.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
But you've won some gold medals.
I mean, we're always callingyou Bronze TJ, but you've won
some gold medals.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
I hope so.
Yeah, tj.
But you've won some gold medals.
I hope so.
Yeah, I hope a few of those.
I probably got more of thosethan I got bronze medals, for
sure you got.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
You had to have won a .
You had to win a gold medal toget to the olympic team.
So you know, we, we should befolk.
I don't know why you callyourself bronze tj, you know?
I mean, I see you more of a aslike pewter guy.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
I used to have a bunch of poker friends.
I played poker in miami andthere's two TJs, one TJ and the
other TJ.
I was bronze TJ, he was whiteTJ.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
White, tj Got it.
Bronze was for the color ofyour skin.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
No no, no.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
It was white TJ and black TJ.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
They changed it to bronze because when they found
out, I got third at the OlympicGames.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
I got to do a shout out to my boy, James, at Muto
with my beautiful Muto jacketthat I just received today.
James and Muto provide greatTKD equipment and just stellar,
stellar, stellar service.
I sent him a text and nextthing you know at my doorstep

(02:43):
faster than TJ showing up forour weekly podcast is a jacket.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
How are we today?
You were late actually, oh.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
All right, coach Moreno.
How are you, sir?
How are you doing?
How is everything?
You're called the Mayor ofTaiwan-do.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
I'm like really impressed with Coach Terrence
Jennings because he must havesome kind of good zen.
With all the crap you throw hisway, all the shade you throw
his way, he's always smiling.
He's always happy.
I don't know.
I think he's low-key, about tocome over and stab you.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
He is very listen.
He's very kind and generous,which means one of two things
he's either Forrest Gump, and hedoesn't understand what I'm
saying, or he's incrediblypatient and a Buddhist at heart.
So I'm going to go with thelatter and not the former.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yes, yes, look at today, man, I got my coffee and
look what my daughter made me.
My daughter made me especiallyfor the podcast A charcuterie, a
charcuterie.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Oh, there it goes.
It made made me hungry.
I may have to go make some foodisn't that cute.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
She's like here for your podcast.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
She gave it to me nothing but love in the moreno
household and, uh, loving andloving children.
So they can't and I mean thatin a good way, I mean I'm
talking about in a good way sojust family, family first
speaking of camila camila.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Camila just had her 12th birthday.
On saturday we had a nice, nicebirthday party here at the
house for her and her friendsand some family members.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Did tj cut tj come down?
Did he get on his pony?

Speaker 3 (04:15):
his 40, 40, 40 acres and a mule.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
How did you get there ?

Speaker 3 (04:22):
first of all, the moreno household.
When we have parties, the partyisn't just for one person, it's
for everybody.
So hold on, hold on a secondhoney.
It's like happy birthday.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Check the mail.
Could you check the mail?
I don't, yeah, no, no, I'm surehe sent it.
There was an invite, yeah, to abirthday party.
Yeah, not nothing.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
All right, sorry, go ahead I, I did send it, but you
know, I mean, I sent it in aPelican, my Pelican's over here
in Miami.
I sent it over that way.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, happy congratulations, congratulations
to your beautiful daughter andyour wife and your family.
There's nothing better thancelebrating birthdays and that
kind of family time.
Yeah, cool cool, go ahead.
No, I was going to, I've got to.
You know, I'm always.
I'm always saying bad thingsabout people.

(05:09):
So I'm going to take a secondto thank, in particular, the
staff of USAT.
I had a coach who didn't dowhat he was supposed to do in a
timely fashion, so I'm alwayscriticizing them.
That doesn't mean I won'tcriticize them anymore, but I've
got to say thank you forhelping my coach, who was
recalcitrant and didn't sign upin time, and making him able to

(05:29):
be able to come to the USATevent, which I'm sure we'll talk
about.
But you know, I'm the kind ofguy when you do something good,
I've got to mention it.
When you do the other stuff,I'm going to mention it as well.
So to Steve McNally, pleasethank you for the amazing
service that you gave my athleteand me, and I appreciate it.
All right, we're up.

(05:49):
What's up, mr Moreno?
Mr TJ, what's the next?
We got a subject.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Let's move on.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
That's the softest thing I've ever heard this guy's
charming.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Okay, I got a a couple things, but since we're
doing he just called me charming, did he?

Speaker 3 (06:11):
call me sure, I called you let me get.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Let me get up for a second, I gotta I.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
I have a couple things that you know we'll get
to talk about.
You know, I like to compare acouple things that we'll talk
about.
I'd like to compare a coupleorganizations.
But first TJ, this guy wedidn't watch.
I didn't really watch too much,to be honest with you, but as
you know, they had the I don'tknow if it's called the Korean
Open or the Choochun Open, butthey had an open over there in

(06:39):
Korea.
It wasn't really that big byKorea standards.
I mean, the divisions werepretty small.
It looked like it was prettymuch dominated by when I say
dominated as far as numbers byKorea, china, and then there's a
spattering of Americans and afew other countries.
I think I saw Japan andPhilippines and stuff like that,

(07:00):
but nothing that great.
I was actually a littlesurprised at the, the lower
level, that um that was there.
I don't know, uh, if you gottacheck out any of the americans,
we sent them.
I think I say we, it's not true.
I think america's had probablyeight people that attended there
.
We had one silver medal.

(07:20):
Christina teach out got to thefinal.
Um, I actually watched thatlast match against um, uh, a
korean girl.
If I'm not mistaken, thatkorean girl beat one of our peak
girls, ava lee, and the uhjunior worlds and uh, this was a
couple years ago, so to watchher now you know, obviously
christina is a very strong,aggressive, tough fighter, very

(07:42):
physical inside and stuff, andthis Korean girl wasn't bigger
than her but was able towithstand overpressure, you know
, score very easily inside,kicked her face a couple times.
I was very impressed actuallywith the Korean girl because I
don't know correct me if I'mwrong, tj, I haven't seen a good
67 from Korea in a minute,right I don't know.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
I think a lot of the girls are like they're soft too.
You know what I mean.
I think they play, but they'rea little soft.
So I haven't watched the fight.
Personally, I should go backand watch it.
But yeah, I know thephysicality that Christina
Tichon has, so you know, be ableto stand in front of her, she
must have a little bit ofstrength at 67.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yeah, yeah, she was good like she was wrestling
inside with her, so I wasactually impressed.
I'll be curious to see if shemakes it the world championship
team for korea.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Well, congratulations for getting to the finals,
though I think it's still goodto be able to get deep in those
tournaments in asia.
A little bit, um, because it'salways a tough field, right, the
hokus, the hokus.
Look better.
This was gen 3 correct.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, I don't know if I said it to you Somebody sent
me this thing that the bug wasfixed in Gen 3.
So they were doing all thoseslide kicks and nothing was
scoring.
And then they were doingregular kicks and it was scoring
.
The cut kick wasn't scoring.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
So all of a sudden, at least in that little
demonstration, they lookednormal and yes, I mean I didn
see any like there was the pointtotal was very low.
It was like normal, like normal, normal bad.
You know wasn't like bad bad,it's just like normal bad, you
know.
But definitely I think thatthat system, for whatever reason
, did work better over there.
Um, I got maybe I watched like10 to 15 of those matches, but

(09:20):
quality of the event looked cool.
I always like when they putevents over.
It always looks like superclean and neat and everything.
So definitely fun to watch.
I'll probably still go back andcatch a few more of the event.
Looked cool.
I always like when they putevents over.
It always looks like superclean and neat and everything.
So definitely fun to watch.
I'll probably still go back andcatch a few more of the matches
, though.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Which you know.
I mean we'll talk about it aswe get closer.
That Grand Prix Challenge 2 inKorea, I think, is going to be
wild.
What's the date?
For that, of course it's rightbefore the President's's right,
uh, right before the president'scup, president cup is I leave
on the third, so I think it'slike the last week of uh August.
That's going to be a tough one,though for sure.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Like I think, everybody's show kind of comes
out to that one.
If they were here, they'reprobably going to be there.
Plus, you'll get a, I think, afew more people you know, just
cause you're playing forsomething a little bit bigger
bigger iran, china, korea, uh,uzbekistan, it's going to be.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Thailand, it's going to be packed, it's going to be
packed.
That's going to be.
I'm not going to go to that one.
Um, brazil is only sending fivepeople and we have two coaches
that have two and three athletes, so I'm like there's no sense
for me to go over there for aweek they're still capping this
one at 50, right.
Yes, they are 50 per division.
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Five per country per division.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yes, got it.
So I mean, you know it's funny.
We got to give credit wherecredit is due, christina, making
it to the final.
I think it's pretty darn good,like you said, to navigate that
field.
Our other ones not so much.
I think the deepest anybody winwas in the second match.
Everybody lost their secondmatch Again.
I don't know what that says.
I think a couple of our girlslost the ones that won it.

(10:49):
So maybe bad luck reaching themin the early rounds.
But again, if you're the bestor if you're good, I guess you
got to be at least competitive.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Right, you got to take that person to a third
round but you got to have reallyclose rounds to kind of say,
all right, I'm not that far off.
But when you lose in the secondround of a not so big
tournament, it's uh, that's alittle tough, I think, right, I
mean, I think I still think withthe, the points being a little
crazy right now, so I think theystill haven't completely

(11:19):
settled in.
So you're getting a lot ofinteresting matchups.
I still think it's you match upearly or you go to these
tournaments, these g2s.
I think everyone's experimentingwith their guys.
I think you're seeing a lot ofyounger people and I know we say
younger now, which means 17, 18, but just like newer faces, you
know, fresher to the vision.
You know that for that rolloverfrom the juniors of last year,
blah, blah, blah.
So I think there's a lot of,especially in the lighter

(11:40):
divisions, always right, the 54,58 guys and the 46, 49 girls.
Is the the turnover rate is.
It's high because you knoweverybody, who's, every girl,
who's 16, 17 around that age.
You know there's 49 and 46 andthey can fight.
Those have been the same thingwith the 58 guys in the olympics
.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
There's a 58 guy named park uh, park taejun.
Is that my same thing?
Park taejun?
Yeah, park taejun.
He won.
He won the Olympic gold medal.
He put on a show.
He's just like kicking the crapout of everybody In Korea.
He'd be another world champion.
This guy Bae to make it to theOlympic Games and he's the
younger one.
So anyway, fast forward to thistournament.
In the final, to your point, tj,some random Korean kid in the

(12:21):
final, like it was two rounds,it was two rounds or three to
two, I forgot, but two to one.
It was a super, super closefight.
Like this random Korean guy wasbeating the Olympic champion
from Korea all the way through.
He just this, the Olympicchampion, pulled it out, but not
by a lot.
Like it was really close.

(12:41):
I'm like even the respect, likethe bowing and the shaking
hands and kind of the tempo ofthe fight.
Like he couldn't open upbecause this kid had a good
right back kick.
You know, of course he had agood left cut.
I was impressed.
I was like to your point theserandom young kids out there
giving zero respect to Olympicchampions, world champions, you

(13:03):
know.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Yeah, no swallow divisions.
I definitely think we're therenow.
It gets, it gets.
I want to go to a I don't knowif you guys ever seen one live,
but I want to go to like aKorean nationals like live.
I don't know if they let you, Iwant to go sit there and watch
the national.
I just think, like I want tosee some of the early, early
matches.
You know what I mean, the onesthat random kids that don't make
it far, but they are like thosekind of matches.
They're deep and all that stufflike that.

(13:25):
But I think it's amazing to seethat at that level, that much
turnover that fast you know Ihaven't been one in years.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
I mean, I'm talking back in the 80s and 90s.
I had.
But one thing I remember.
I'll give credit to the pasthigh performance director of GB,
gary Hall.
At one open or something likethat, I was sitting and talking
to him.
He's like yeah, we just spenttime in Korea with our team and

(13:54):
we went to the nationalchampionships.
This is when Dae Hoon wasfighting.
And he's like let me tell you,they have a ton of talent.
And I was kind of like, reallyLike Korean men weren't doing it
, other than Dae Hoon.
I go really.
He's like oh yeah, this nextgeneration, they're coming.
And I just remember kind of Idon't want to say dismissing it,
but not thinking too much in itbecause I hadn't seen it.

(14:15):
And then all of a sudden, lookat the last couple years.
I mean I think when we firststarted this podcast about how
Korea men are back.
These guys are.
They have a different style.
It's a very volume in-your-face.
Keep kicking, tj.
You know they don't even lookat the scoreboard.
These dudes just kick, kick,kick, kick Every once in a while
, every 15 seconds.

(14:35):
They'll look over to see howmany points they got.
But these guys.
They got some volume.
So Gary Hall mentioned that anumber of years back, so now
we're seeing all the fruit ofKorea's changing of the guard,
so to speak.
So it's kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well, you've got to remember in part that fighting
style can work because nobodygets hurt anymore, right?
Yeah, 100%.
So when the technique is basedon just touching the chest
protector, learning how to dothat and I'm not making it, it
sounds like I may be sayingsomething about that.
I'm not.
When you don't have to worryabout power, then you don't have

(15:13):
to execute with power becausepower is not the scoring dynamic
, then you don't take the samerisk.
You also don't get hurt becauseyou're not being hit with power
and you don't get as I wouldn'tsay.
You don't get hurt becauseyou're not being hit with power
and you don't get as I wouldn'tsay.
You don't get as tired becauseI think you do still get tired.
It's a different kind of thing,but you don't have to worry
about getting hurt and you canjust kind of do light touching,

(15:35):
like really light, what I calllight goofy sparring, and I'm
not saying that the sparring islight, but you're executing in a
different technical paradigm.
So I mean, how, in a tournament, how many guys get knocked out
in these tournaments?

Speaker 1 (15:51):
very few, but like very, very few.
I mean I think there's stillsome big face shots.
Some people take some nastyshots that are face kind of
going in front, like still canbe hit, can be effective in
hitting someone pretty good, butI don't know.
I guess the question would be,if we go back and compare we're
talking world championship level.
Obviously right, let's go backhow many people got knocked out
at the world championships?

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Five to seven.
You could go back.
I knocked out one guy.
Every world championships,every international match I won.
I knocked out one guy.
Jimmy Kim knocked out guys.
Patrice Remarque knocked outguys.
Jimmy Kim knocked out guys.
Patrice Remarque knocked outguys.
Jungkook Young knocked out guys.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
I remember a world championship in Germany where
Victor Estrada this is a worldchampionship he dropped the
Turkish guy cold and then thenext match, karami knocked him
out cold.
These are I mean, victor Estradawas a five-time World Cup
champion and he gets dropped byKarami.

(16:53):
So I think your point, young,is I mean, the way people used
to fight.
The contact level was so muchthat you couldn't try to, like
we could be, we could teach youhow many times we have people
with bad knees and we're likelet's see if we can kind of
skate around these these, thesematches and just see if we can
steal it with this and defend,get in the way.

(17:14):
In the old days you couldn't dothat.
There was just no way, it wasjust impossible.
So if your knee was screwed up,you have no chance.
Right mean, can you imagine youtj trying to slide back double,
slide back, triple, like it'simpossible, you know, yeah, so I
mean that's not a commentary onanything other than to say no,
no no, like when I watch, I meanand I'll say this, this, I will

(17:36):
say it's not going to soundgood.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Basically, when I look at these divisions, I
haven't seen one player thatlooks like a fighter.
I've seen players that looklike K-pop dancers and ballet
guys.
They're little, skinny, tall,flexible people that you know.
Like you know, I'd love tofight one and just hit them
really hard and not worry abouta scoreboard, and I think that's

(18:03):
a difference.
I think, when you looked at ourteam teams that coach Moreno
and I were on, or your team,even the and not to say that
your athletes are in condition,it was a different kind of body
type.
In order to take the rigors offighting Olympic style Taekwondo
, you had a condition.
We practice chest protectordrills with two chest protectors
, called terminated drills,where we hit each other as hard

(18:25):
as humanly possible, first ofall to make that sound at that
point chest guards, two soft, notwo, just two, two, two.
And then we had drills where wedid one, but for the most part
we we did two and there was areason.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
You had to.
You couldn't do.
You couldn't do a practice.
No, I'm just kidding.
No, I get it.
Listen, that's so crazy.
I said that on the podcast.
We practice blocking now andbefore we used to practice
getting hit.
How ironic is that we used topractice getting hit.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
If you practice blocking, you get your arm
broken.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
You couldn't take it, but the was.
The thing was actually.
I remember doing cover pointshows and you had to wear double
pads in your arm.
No, but tj, it wasn't thepractice getting hit, but we had
to have the feeling of hittingthe body.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
So, unfortunately, we didn't want to kick a shield
whatever, but yeah, I wasgetting hit though, like because
I think there was more tradingstuff too.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Like you go back like back, like in close stance,
like if your arms that're goingto take one to the ribs, and
sometimes it was a 1v1 and I hadto hit you harder than you hit
me If you throw a round kick,you might get back kicked and
when that back kick hits you youhad to be returned with another
round kick Because the way thescoring dynamic worked, they
didn't score the round kick andthe back kick, they scored the
last thing.
So if you, If you round kick,hit him with the round kick, he

(19:42):
hit you with the back kick.
You came down and you hit himwith the round kick.
It was 1-0 for you, it wasn't2-1.
They didn't have theintellectual capacity to
understand that you could scoreboth techniques.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
So if two techniques scored, no points went up.
I was going to offer this.
If you took TJ, we talked aboutthis, me and you have so many
conversations that we can haveour own little offshoot.
But these average taekwondoathletes, they are tall, skinny,
like you said, young there'ssomething that wait before,
let's go back in for a minute,but there's something different
about tj today.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
If you're on youtube, oh, he doesn't have a hat.
Oh, okay, you, you lookedyounger today.
Yeah, I have a hat.
Oh, it's, it's a change, tj.
So you went to Miami Miami, Ilove you and you left your hat.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
I need to go to Miami .

Speaker 2 (20:32):
We're all wearing peak apparel today, so I have my
Godzilla, my Godzilla andGojira, as they say.
But go ahead, coach.
I didn't mean to interrupt you,although I did.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Sorry, not sorry no, we'll say if you took an average
taekwondo athlete like you said, tall skinny and you hit them
hard, you'd break them.
But if you do the same thing toone of these top level guys,
they not a deal with you hittingthem hard and they'll just be
like, okay, whack, whack, whack,and they'll get you.
So I would say in the old daysthe same thing there was.

(21:09):
There was some tall skinny guyslike doug lewis I'm saying
american doug, I was tall andskinny, chris spence was tall
and skinny and we learned how todo it.
So I think, as as always, wetalk about the highest level,
they're able to deal with it.
The mid-level, I think not somuch, not so much, but anyway,
that's that.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
I just want to talk a little bit about that korea
tournament, um yeah, I thinkoverall the hokus, I was just
happy to see like the kind ofthe score, like I could sit back
and watch it and I'd be sooverwhelmingly shocked when
stuff happens, you know, andobviously I'm into it really
deep, but it's just the from theladder of going back to the
Grand Prix Challenge and allthat stuff we were talking about
before like that was, you can'tplay like that.

(21:49):
This I can tolerate, this I can, I can deal with almost.
Like the person running intothe foot you're like, well, he
didn't kick.
Well, the other person, uh,came too far and he kind of, you
know, got his leg in between.
I'm okay with that stuff.
That stuff that's not scoring,it's.
It's definitely a point game,but for, for some reason in my
brain I know why, I guess I'vebeen doing it for a while, but
that's unique, that's likethat's a, that's an

(22:10):
understanding of spacing and andand timing and I mean there's
different ways to to look at it.
You know, definitely volumebased, for for the koreans,
though, I mean, I thinkeveryone's got to be a little
bit volume based and being ableto be willing to go deep waters,
because it's a point, like youjust said, it's a point-scoring
game, you know.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Well, one of our American athletes was over there
and it's funny.
I was watching and I'm likeyou're not going to win in that
category, one of the lighterweight categories, and throw
five kicks a round.
Anymore there's just no way.
I mean you've got to be able toget a high point total, have a
high output total.
That's just the way it is.
And you know, kind of goingback to, sometimes in America we

(22:49):
can fight these little slowgames and pick people apart, but
that's not working in Europe,that's not going to work in Asia
, that's not going to work inAfrica.
So anyway, it is what it is.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
But let's transition.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
It's a tough division to navigate man 68, 58, they're
all tough.
But hey, let's talk about it alittle bit next week because I
know we have a.
There's a USAT tournament andback-to-back and AAU team trials
.
What are you thinking?

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, I got to go to USAT Nationals and then the day
that the seniors fight, theyweigh in to fight the under 21
tournament, which is like thenext day, and then fly straight
from there to houston for theaau team trial.
So it is like back to back toback.
I mean we just fought aaunationals on july 4th and we're
fighting the team trials on july28th.
That's fast for me.
I mean I know they have thereasons of putting up the

(23:36):
competition with the, the juniorolympics and everything, but
that's a fast turnaround for fora team trials within the same
month.
You know, know.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, I mean normally I think historically it's been
the beginning of August, so it'sbeen about four or five weeks.
But yeah, it's pretty.
It sucks a little bit that it'scoinciding with the USAT
Because some people have tochoose, some, you know, choose
because they're too close.
I mean you could theoreticallymake it but you got to do what.
I mean my family same thing.

(24:06):
Like you, they're flying,they're leaving at night,
getting back the next day sothey can be there for the team
trials on Monday.
So it's expensive, it's hard onthe body hard to cut the weight,
I mean, but it is what it is, Iguess.
I mean we don't really have anychoice this year.
I'm not sure what's going tohappen in the future, but I
think that the USAT is going tobe a little bit bigger.

(24:28):
I mean, I don't really know thenumbers, I mean, but I'm just
assuming California always getsa big draw.
I know they're going to haveprobably a good representation
just with the California people.
I mean.
I know, you know, at the statechampionships sometimes they
have 1500 people.
Yeah, but how does that?

Speaker 2 (24:43):
work, how come it is so big?
Cause I have kids fighting andyou know the parents are coming
back and telling me there's 50,60 kids in a division and I'm
like I thought you could onlyqualify two per state, right?

Speaker 3 (24:57):
So there's 50 states, that's a hundred people.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, but I mean it's still a lot right?
Is that the usual number?

Speaker 3 (25:01):
I mean that's still like state championships the
first or second, I believe, andthen the regionals.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Everybody qualified oh, is that what it is used in
old?

Speaker 3 (25:13):
days.
In the old days you'd be topfour tj, but this year, for
states, maybe just one.
I thought cali got like topeight, though.
So cali did get top eightbecause before they had two, and
I think this thing they onlyhad one, and because it's so big
, as they should, the top eightqualified.
I mean because their states arebigger than anybody's, and so

(25:35):
you're a 10 year old, blue belt,50, 70 pounds and you got 60
kids in that division.
You tell me you're only going toget one or two kids from there.
That's not fair.
I mean we talked about this along time ago with the regents.
I mean, in wrestling,gymnastics, all these things.
Listen, if texas has got thebest boxers in the world or the
best wrestlers in the world, andin Iowa no, not Iowa in Rhode

(25:57):
Island there's only two.
It is what it is.
If you're good, you learn howto beat everybody in Texas.
If you're good, learn how tobeat everybody in California.
But I agree with Californiagetting eight If you're going to
have one state.
I mean Florida has 450 peoplemax.
That's reforms fighting.
It's small right now.
So when I hear that, comparedto California with over a

(26:21):
thousand, nah, man, they shouldhave more than just two
qualifiers.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
So I think I think to your, which is I mean, I know
we don't have a true like you goto this tournament, you qualify
here, you qualify here.
You go to nationals.
You go to team shop, youqualify here, you qualify here.
You go to nationals, you go toteam chocolate, blah.
It was kind of like a conjoinedthing.
Everyone kind of can basicallyget to nationals by just going
to the regionals.
Right, all you gotta do isregister for the, the regionals,
and you could qualify fornationals and that's all you
need.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Tournament yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
so I mean that's open , you don't gotta do anything to
get there, you just kind ofregister, go fight.
I mean I look at it this way.
I know it's a lot back-to-backfrom my guys.
I got a couple guys doing allthree, I got some guys doing two
, I got some guys doing one, butI told them basically, you know
, we're just looking at themfrom the development side of it.
We're going to go get matchesand, whatever happens, just keep
kind of moving, looking forwardto the next one because, it is

(27:06):
going to suck.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
There's no other way to tell.
Under 21,.
Team Childs is a new worldchampionship under 21, which I
think is a good initiative bythe WT.
So I don't know the date TJwill know the date, but they
have that, I think, on the 21stand then senior fights on the
22nd, Literally back to back,Like that's just, that's not
good planning.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, the day they fight, the day they fight the
Nationals.
They're weighing in for theunder 21.
Or under 21 and then fight thenationals one or the other Cool.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
Juan Carlos Alejandro Gonzalez, maria Lucia Mendoza,
macarena Chipotle, tapatio conQueso, Guacamole, ferreira,
santiago Rodriguez, buteverybody calls me Bobby.
My name is Pablo Juan Carlos.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Sorry, I could.
I saw that thing kills me, man,I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Hey, that's just true , though.
That's just true, right there.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Everybody calls me.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
Bobby, they call me Chewy, yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
It's going to be a lot back to back though, yeah,
but I think you know we we, youknow, to save money at
tournaments and to the detrimentof the athletes and the coaches
, and I think you have to thinkabout that, especially when you
want to have performance right.
So I mean that's got to bebetter and well thought out.
Um, you know, it's hard to be ataekwondo athlete now,

(28:22):
especially an elite athlete, ifyou want to win.
And you got to have money, yougot to have a sponsor.
And you know it wasn't that wedidn't have to have money, we,
we had to have money as well,but we could at least have.
We fought in three to six toseven high-level tournaments a

(28:47):
year.
So you fought, if you weren'ton the team, you fought to
qualify to go to the nationals.
You fought nationals, teamtrials, team trial finals and
then one or two internationalevents.
But like in 87, which was alifetime ago, I fought like six
international events in likeeight months.
Like you know, pan Am Games,pan Am Taekwondo Championships,

(29:10):
world Cup, world Championships,right, nationals, team trials,
team trial finals.
So, like you know, seven events.
You know like and like.
That was a lot.
I can't even imagine what like.
How do you peak now?
You have to go to all theseevents and you know, you develop
a survivor mentality ratherthan a winner mentality.

(29:32):
Right, you can't peak.
I think that's in professionalsport too, and soccer.
It's hard to peak when I lookat these soccer guys, because
they're playing at the World Cup, the World Club Cup, the UEFA.
Whatever they're playing at,they're forced to play in them.
What do you do?

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Taekwondo is just weird just for the money yeah, I
think I'm gonna have like morelike, uh, a build and sustain.
You gotta build them, work whenyou can, and then you're
sustaining across three, four,five, six, seven events.
It's not high level, do you?

Speaker 2 (30:05):
peak, do you peak?
In other words, you're, you'rean olympian, you, and let's go,
let's talk to, let's talk la.
So you're la, you got a peakfor la.
That's.
That should be what the realityis, right and we're um.
The next olympics is what?
2028.
All right, so 28, we're in 25,we're in 25.

(30:25):
So it would be interesting tolook when the because there are
some sports they don't choosetheir o their Olympic team until
a month out because they wantthe athlete to peak and so track
and field.
But that's a different worldbecause you can recover more
from that metal, metalperformance, podium performance.

(30:57):
You have to time that andperiod periodization so that
when you get to that moment,you're going to peak at the
olympics.
You're not going to peak at theteam trials unless the team
trials are far out from theolympics.
So I'm a better fan of liketeam trials in may, olympics in
september, but that's just notgoing to happen anymore.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
So let me go back because, tj, I'll ask you this
and I heard me ask you this.
So the pinnacle of our, of ourfighting young, was the was, of
course, forget about theOlympics but the pinnacle for us
was the world championship.
Anyone that won a worldchampion was, was in a different
category.
Like you, were like a worldchampion, a world champion,
world champion, it just it neverwent away.

(31:37):
But now, tj, a lot of peoplewin world championships and you
congratulate them on a big turnbecause they just got 200
freaking points, but like it'salmost kind of watered down
because like right now there's agrand prix, three right up to
the world championships inthailand.
Like it's almost like I don'twant to say it's not important,
but is it that much differentthan a grand prix?

(31:59):
I'm talking the good grandprixs, the top 32, not these
watered-down grand prixs, thetop 32.
It's arguably harder it's, it'sharder.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
It's harder to win a world if a world cup is done by
qualification, or a world, or agrand Prix or whatever these
things are.
If you're fighting, you knowthat the first match you walk in
is top 16, top 8, top whatever.
That's a harder tournament.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Because the other ones are random.
You get like, you get everybody.
You might get Botswana, not tosay Botswana is going to be.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
I feel like the World Championships now because of
the point, is like the bonusthing.
If you get that, you're almostguaranteed to go to the olympics
via points, right?
I mean that's almost what it is, so I don't know.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
I just I mean that's you were talking about how many
times you fought, I mean I thinkit started back and it started
when, like I mean when we, whenthe grand prix first started.
What was the first year?
2013?
first grand prix is 2013 and umyeah I think london, right,
london, anyways, irrelevant, uh,or manchester, I'm not sure
which one.
It was 2013.
Um, everybody that was top 32showed up.

(33:01):
You had one through 32 inattendance.
I think it was a littledifference the moment we started
getting ourselves that drop off, and then the thirans, and then
we got the, the wild cards, andyou start adding all those
elements.
In a little bit, it changes the, the sting of it.
You know, we.
We know when you know peoplehave gone to grand prixs and the
other three, four big guys inthe division weren't there and
there was three, four otherdecent guys.

(33:23):
But that, that as well, and andeven the 100 seating changes
everything too.
You know it's, it's a it's,it's a little easier to look at
as just another competition,even though they're big medals.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Obviously you're young, to your point.
Listen again, it was mucheasier.
It was, it was pot.
You can't.
You can't peak today, you'reright.
Maybe for the olympic games,maybe, especially if you
qualified in january you alreadyqualified, you had time to like
kind of get yourself ready.
I think there's a balance.
I know when I was coachingbruce was coaching Briseida
Costa for Mexico, they did thetrials like, oh, I guess it was

(33:56):
like five, maybe four weeksbefore the Olympics.
It was too much stress, I mean,there was too much buildup and
after that it was a down andthen it was kind of like, oh, it
was very difficult to go, butso there's got to be that time.
But the great Steven Lopez, likethe guy fought twice a year,
actually usually once a year.
He fought the team trials andhe didn't fight the Pan Am
Championships.
He waited to the Olympic GamesI'm sorry, the World

(34:18):
Championships the next year andmaybe he would get to a training
camp or something.
But he literally let everybodykick the shit out of each other.
He watched everybody, then hekept his mystique, then he went
in there, he took care of theaverage people and sometimes
you'd have a bump in the road inthe quarterfinals or semifinals
, but he was fresh enough goodenough too much stress on the

(34:41):
other person to basicallynavigate that era to win five
world championships.
So, to your point, he was ableto do what you should be able to
do in high-level fighting andMMA.
They peak right.
They look for the right momentsto become the UFC champion
Boxing same thing.
That's the reason why theydon't fight every six weeks.

(35:03):
The top guys fight every sixmonths, or twice a year if
they're lucky.
So anyway, that's enough ofthat, I guess.
But the team trials for AAU andthe nationals for usat should
be interesting and it's going tobe, I think, a battle of
attrition for some people, somepeople I think the higher tier
of the guys that are competingat the, the higher levels, is a

(35:25):
little bit easier to to.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
I guess you say peak, um, because I say I think
before when I was competing,obviously I was just using my,
my air, like the competitionwithin the united states was
heavy, so like I did have toalmost, you did have to almost
peak at nationals, or you didn'tgo to team trials, you did
almost have to peak at team.
Go to the second phase.
You know I'm and my personalstory, I'm standing across from
the olympic silver medalist, theworld champ, like if I don't

(35:48):
peak today, there's no, there'sno.
So I mean I think there is it,you know.
So I think it's that kind ofbuild and stay sharp mentality.
I mean, how many months do wehave between the final Olympic
trials and the Olympic Games?
Like three or four or four orfive in 2012?

Speaker 3 (36:04):
I don't think that much I think two months.
Maybe two to three months Max.
I don't even think it was threemonths.
I think it was maybe two tothree months max.
I don't think it was threemonths, I think it was maybe two
, maybe two and a half.
We had a good time.
I, we, I mean honestly, I meanit was the best time.
I mean we were still sharp, wedidn't have a whole lot of time
to bask in our glory.
Um, you know.
So it was, uh, it was a goodtime frame.

(36:25):
But again, tj, you're right,you know young, you're right.
I mean, sometimes these domesticthings were so hard to get out
of, there was so much stress towin that that you just felt like
you were built to go on to thenext step.
I think it's all been watereddown on the domestic
qualification, the domesticfinalization of the team.
So when people get to thesebigger levels, they don't really

(36:47):
know who they are, they don'treally know if they're really
prepared.
They probably don't even.
I would say a lot of us, theydon't even believe it.
Going to what you said, Iremember my thing was nationals,
always nationals For us.
We celebrated if we got topfour at nationals and I didn't
even care after thequarterfinals there was some
people I'm like you need to wina national championship, but

(37:09):
some people I'm like I don'tcare, because I knew in six
weeks we had the team trials andthat's when I would put my my
game.
Planning for each personNationals was crazy, cause I
didn't know who we're going tofight, when we're going to fight
, it was just stress.
But once we got to the teamtrials, that was the real like
uh, the extra step.
But nationals was, was, waseverything, because that got us

(37:32):
to that step.
But now, like there's ranking,there is winning at nationals.
I got a kid that's in the teamtrials next year because he won
the U S open in January,arguably he don't have to do, he
don't have to do crap thiswhole year.
Well, they made a requirementthat you have to go to nationals
.
But he can go to nationals.
Kick me in the face.
I leave.
He can show up in a team trialsnext year january.

(37:54):
I don't think it's correct, butthat's what that's my to my
point.
That's one little avenue forhim to get to the team trials.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
I mean, I get the incentive I'm not a fan of any
of that.
I mean, I get it, you wantpeople.
You want people um competinginternationally and doing those
things that these kids are doing.
I get that part, but like Idon't know, I would take.
I mean, if it was up to me Iwouldn't even do.
I don't think I would rank inan in the country, I wouldn't
rank.
I would have unrankedtournaments for nationals.
I would just do like old schooland just make a randomized

(38:20):
bracket.
I think it's important to tofind out, like you said about
find out who you are.
What if you do, got to fightthe big guy first that day.
It is what it is.
You know you go to worldchampionship and now I know it's
a little bit blah, blah, blah,it's seated, but we got a lot of
young guys that are going tothese big tournaments and
they're the lowest ranked people, so you're gonna fight someone
good first match yeah, yeah, Igot an athlete that went to the
east regional, so only twopeople in division.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Oh, I, I forgot they lost, they lost, they got second
.
They didn't get second, theylost.
Okay, they're going to the au,the usat nationals.
They're ranked number four.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
What how?

Speaker 3 (38:55):
I didn't even know and I was told this.
I'm just kind of like oh, sothat's right.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
They have this national.
Yeah, I've never been.
I laugh at the nationalrankings because what they have
is you know, and I see theschools use, they use it and you
know, the challenge is theorganization's run by PR people,
Right.
The challenge is theorganization is run by PR people
, right?
So when they're doing this,they're trying to make PR and in
the PR of it, that's what'shappening and it doesn't help
the sport.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
I don't think it helps the sport.
No, which you know what.
Maybe that's a transition,because I think I was talking to
somebody from another country,from Mexico, and I watched the
Mexican team trials and I waslooking at the team and it's a
little man.
It started to mirror UnitedStates TJ.
The leadership is questionablein Mexico right now.
They've had a president that'shad two terms and the first time

(39:43):
in the history of the sport theguy changed the bylaws to get a
third term.
So they're talking about ifit's legal or not, but anyway,
in the meantime we know thedebacle they had at the Olympic
games.
So now they have athletesliving in other places in
training, not at the trainingcenter, like historically.

(40:03):
If you're first or second team,you go to the training facility
and you train.
I had to pull up the statsagain but they had a high number
of people that don't live atthe Olympic Center in Mexico.
That made the national team.
You had Olympians and worldchampions that lost in a one-off
fight to somebody domesticallyand now not going to the world

(40:28):
championship.
So it's really interesting tosee how there's some disarray
from the leadership from the net.
I made a comment, you know,earlier in the year for the
united states team trials thatthere was two men out of eight
places.
That was that was based out ofthe academy.
There was, I think, two women,same thing at eight, or maybe
it's three, I can't remember,but it just didn't look really

(40:52):
good.
If the national center with thebest athletes, the best coaches
, the best facility, the bestresources go to a domestic team
trials and they're notperforming it doesn't, it
doesn't say a lot right, itdoesn't give the people, the,
the, the community a lot ofconfidence.
And so that happened in Mexico.
You're looking at their teamand now you know they've always

(41:13):
had national team coaches andnow they have four coaches,
three of which are random, onethat's at the training center.
It just seems like their fabricis getting broken up.
And you know, I think that asmuch as I've criticized the
United States, you knoworganization I'm looking at, you
know, across the border, rightnow, mexico has been
historically good, right, and Iknow they have way more

(41:34):
resources than us and way morebodies than us as far as numbers
of athletes.
But right now, they're on shadyground right now and I was
talking to one of my goodfriends, oscar Salazar.
Shout out to Oscar, he's anOlympic silver medalist, I mean,
one of the legends in Mexico,and we were just talking about
the, the craziness over there,but he was like he said are the

(41:57):
mexicans learning from theunited states?
He says, because he goes, theylook exactly the same.
And I started thinking aboutI'm like man, there's some,
there's some parallels there too.
So I know you've seen themexico a little bit for a long
time, tj, but it was, uh, it's alittle strange over there right
now I always thought it waskind of, I mean, how you'd want

(42:17):
it to be right.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
I don't know how many people you could uproot and
make they figure it out, but Ithink making the national team
just to go on the good side ofit, should look a little bit.
I mean, you'd want to be in aposition where you can go hey,
I'm gonna go here for the nextsix, seven, eight months and
train and get ready for thisevent.
I know it's harder with kids,but maybe from the adult side
and I think that's part of it.
There's no you go back, there'sno incentive to make our

(42:38):
national team you just make thenational team Like you just go
to nationals, you know.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
But there is incentive in Mexico because they
get money.
That's what I'm saying.
You have that.
That's a good start.
You know, I I think that youknow we've had this debate a lot
because obviously in mexico'ssituation too like there's a lot
of good coaches in mexico thatcoach at the state level that
don't even coach at the statelevel, they just have their own

(43:04):
private clubs um, there's somereally good ones out there.
I have a lot of respect for.
I mean, I don't want to singlepeople out, but there's some
good ones in careétaro, goodones in Puebla, there's some
Michoacán, there's some reallygood ones.
But you can't build a cultureor a community unless you're
training together.
So the good, probably theutopia, bring the talent

(43:27):
together and bring the coachesas well.
Right, because right now youhave all these people on the
outside not respecting theinside and then when they come
together, it's just every manfor themselves and there's no
way you can build an identity asa culture.
From Korea to Uzbekistan to Iran.
Listen, here's what I do knowAll the successful teams.

(43:48):
They put the best guys together.
You know, I mean they've hadwhat do you call it centralized
training.
Now, that goes against myphilosophy for America right now
, because we don't have acentralized training, it's not
open to all, it's a private clubthat says we like you, come

(44:09):
over here, mexico, you make thenational team or B team, you go,
you go.
But that's not the UnitedStates, right?
If that was the way, we wouldhave 16 men and 16 women there.
They'd have 36 athletes there.
And guess what?
You want to see the cream ofthe crop rise.
You would see the cream.
But they don't do that.

(44:29):
We don't have the.
I don't know.
Do we not have the resources?
Apparently they got millions ofdollars, but we don't have the
resources.
They don't care, they don'twant the time, they don't want
to build a bigger staff, theydon't want to integrate with
other coaches.
I don't know, but when I lookat other countries the
successful ones that's what theydo.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah, I think that's the.
I mean like we, we talk aboutit a lot actually, but I think
that's got to be it.
I mean we always talk about.
You know, these guys look overhere and say there's a lot of
talent over here as far asathletes.
Like when we talk aboutcoaching and coaching people
that really know what they'redoing, guys that can kind of do
those things, if you're notworking with them, there's no
way, like we're sustaining thecore of athletes at the bottom.
We're like kind of pushing themthrough.
There's no way you how it allshould work and how it all

(45:09):
should look.
You know what I mean it doesn'tmake any sense.
Like it should be as simple asyou make the national team and
you get some kind of funding, atleast for three months, at
least for four months, at leastfor five months, so they have a
little bit of relief and youkind of keep them in the system
of some sort.
You know, I don't.
I mean we talked a long timeago, coach, about how we had
some open or somewhere.
And we're talking to theRussian guys.
I know they have, like they dothe regional training centers

(45:31):
and like kind of like it was amatter of you.
Perform X this year with thisamount of money we review, you
get more athletes.
They kind of let the coachbuild into where they're
supposed to go, as opposed totrying to snatch and put
everyone in one system.
I think that slope of having acentralized training is always
tricky.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
No-transcript throw this to you, young, because
you've been kind of quiet onthis, because I know you're
letting us run with it.
But I'm going to ask you thequestion and TJ jump in after
him.
So if they did something assimple as format and I'm going
to kind of clean up what yousaid format if you make the

(46:33):
national team, let's just let'sgo to two seniors and juniors.
Let's say cadet, you can't doyet because they're two, their
bodies are growing.
You don't really know, the bestone is the little league,
shortstop or the quarterback.
But by junior and senior you'restarting to get a minimum
senior.
You make the national team.
You come out here to train, youknow, for two months before the

(46:57):
world championship so you canintegrate with the team and the
coaches.
You get your airfare, yourhotel, your stipend Again small.
We put two kids in a room,three kids in a room, whatever
we have to do.
But there's a format Everybodycan build to.
That I can feel good, like mykid is going to the national
program, my kid is gettingsupported as much as I and I'm

(47:18):
going to use myself as much asmaybe.
I think I can give them more orI have better, but at least I
know there's.
There's a structure in a plan.
If they did something as simpleas that, that'd be something to
build to versus right now.
It's kind of like the opposite.
I win and now, coach, what do Igot to do now?
I don't know, mr Johnson, Idon't know what to tell you.

(47:40):
I don't know if they're goingto pay, I don't know when
they're going to have a camp.
I don't know if they're goingto try to learn to work with you
.
I don't know who's going to sitin your chair, because they're
going to decide that some chickfrom the West coast of Florida
is is the best thing sincesliced bread and she's going to
get stuck in your chair.
You know what I'm saying.
Like that's, that's wrong, youknow?
So what do you think about that, young?
I mean so you?

Speaker 2 (48:02):
know a quick yeah, but it's certainly worth the
effort.
You know, and by way ofbackground, as both of you know,
I've been fortunate enough tobe an elite athlete, an elite
coach, an administrator,developed programs and, inside

(48:23):
the Olympic movement, I was ontwo or three key committees
where this was my job and thenwhen I went to the Olympic
Council of Asia, I was on thatcommittee, I led the effort to
figure out how to do this, inparticular our sport.
And so the model there's, modelyou described.
There's two benefits to it.
And then there's the model, theabuses of different models in

(48:47):
the States, the abuses ofdifferent models in the states.
So in the states there was amove to fill beds at the olympic
training center way way back inthe day, because somebody
figured out how to get bedsthere and in order to stay at
what they thought was importantto stay at the olympic training
center and stay as part of theolympic movement was to fill
those beds, and that was duringsang lee's time, and they found

(49:08):
ways to fill.
And then there was a secondgeneration of when you went
there and other guys went thereand we always used it as a focal
place for training just beforeevents and we spent a lot of
time there.
But we would do what you'resaying, which is at the point
where you make the national team.
You were brought together, youhad a national program, you had
national coaches.
Now that all presupposes eithera national team philosophy and

(49:32):
a national team coaching staffthat can help you, and swimming
is an example of it.
So when you went to theswimming national team, you had
a guy like Michael Phelps, whowas coached by arguably one of
the best coaches in the world,bob Bowman.
He didn't need to come there,and when he went to Stanford,
they went there only before theOlympics.
In our situation, if we hadfaith in the coach that was at

(49:57):
the Olympic Training Center andwe had an outlier who wasn't
getting great coach but hadgreat talent, then they would be
better served by being at aprogram.
What you're talking about is ahybrid, and the hybrid is when
you receive, when you reach acertain level, you are now
exposed to the realities ofelite athlete training, which
presupposes that you're notgetting that at home.

(50:19):
So an athlete at your programor tj's program or back in the
day in my program, they weregetting that anyway.
They were getting that probablybetter than whatever.
In this situation, the questionbecomes is there a unified
coaching philosophy at thenational level that's being run
by a national coach of reputethat can help those athletes get

(50:41):
to the next level?
And in korea this happens allthe time, where you know, but
it's done.
Grammar school to middle school, to high school, to college, to
professional team is what itused to be probably not anymore
and that worked because at eachlevel you were getting a better
and better coach, and when yougot to the next level you're
getting the best coach.
Here it doesn't work because,to speak frankly now, we don't

(51:02):
have the best coach as part ofthe national program.
We don't have a coachingphilosophy or any developmental
philosophy at that level that'sgoing to help a left athlete
who's not on the bubble, butit's already at podium level, so
would it help?

Speaker 1 (51:18):
an athlete.
What do you mean by?
What do you mean I just stopped?
What do you mean by coachingphilosophy?

Speaker 2 (51:23):
so a coaching philosophy takes two or three
different uh, two or threedifferent shapes.
A national coaching philosophyis one that says we have an
understanding of our highperformance plan.
We know where our athletes comefrom.
We know we're going tointegrate ourself all the way
down into the grassrootsdevelopment level where we're

(51:45):
going to provide materials andunderstanding and trainings at a
dojang level.
Then they're going to go toregional trainings in their area
, then they're going to go tostate trainings and they're
going to go to regionaltrainings at a national level
and there's going to be anational level of camps for
athletes that want to get betterat this thing.

(52:05):
And they do this in soccer.
So if you're a local soccer kid, you go to the local soccer
club.
If you're playing ayso, afterthat club then you go to
regional camps run by umnational programs.
Then, if you're good enough atthat and they see you as
national team, you go to theolympic development program, the

(52:25):
odtp, odp, or you go to thenational.
You get scouted and you go tothat.
Then the next thing up fromthat, you start getting scouted
by professional academies.
Now that's a hierarchy thatlasts on itself, but it's run by
USA Soccer in some cases.
In our case, the national team,the national program by the

(52:48):
USAT does not go down to thedojang level, it doesn't go to
the state level, it doesn't goto the regional level and it's
kind of now separated itselffrom all of that and what
they've said is grassrootsdevelopment.
Good luck, let us know how thatgoes.
If we look at you and weidentify you and we like you and
you bow correctly and you giveus enough money, we'll invite

(53:08):
you to Bow, they don't bow.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Yeah, that's good.
The word on the street is thatthere's no correlation or
there's no connection betweenjunior and youth winning in an
Olympic.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
And then your pipeline's broken.
So at the moment where you'renot connecting your, if you
weren't connecting that pipelinein soccer, for example, you
wouldn't have any results.
If you're not collecting thatpipeline in soccer, for example,
you wouldn't have any resultsIf you're not collecting that
pipeline in football orbasketball.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
That is probably the dumbest thing you could say.
That's probably the dumbestthing you could say.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Yeah, how about this?
How?

Speaker 2 (53:39):
about this Go ahead, no, no, so just to close the
loop on it.
So what you're saying is ahybrid.
You're saying now, what weshould say is, as a reward for
getting to a certain level,we're going to offer these
certain programs that you cancome to, whether they're
financial, and they provide youwith an opportunity to go to
Korean Open, and this wassomething the AAU tried for a

(53:59):
while.
So when you made a certainamount of money, you know you
got to go to this.
When you made a certain amountof this, you got to go to that
and it wasn't directlycorrelated to performance, but
it was correlated to results.
So in your city, if I weresaying, if I were fixing usat
today and if someone in the roomwas smart enough to let me fix

(54:21):
it, then what I would do is Iwould say your very first thing
you need to do is fire yourcoaches because they don't
understand athletic developmentof grassroots.
Next thing you need to do ishire professional coaches from
any sport that do, and thenthey'll develop a matrix for you
to get podium performance infour to eight years.

(54:42):
Next thing after that identifyyour best coaches, put them in
positions of power from thenational team level all the way
down to the level of a dojong.
Now you have a program and nowfigure out what you're going to
do with all that money thatyou're making, because the
reason they have regionals andpeople qualify through regionals
it's a money train.
So the money train which theyhave has to go somewhere.

(55:05):
So you know, I went to thewebsite, um, when my guy messed
up to figure out what was goingon and I saw they have a bunch
of sponsors and you know it wasa bunch of money.
And so that's really in thecurrent, in the current
incarnation of usa taekwondo,what I've said is the solution
to performance and success.
Now, you don't have to like it,you don't have to love it, you

(55:25):
don't have to hate it.
That's it.
Now, when you look at success,you then judge success and say
what have we missed?
So if you're not getting enoughathletes in the pipeline, you
got to address that.
If you're getting athletes inthe pipeline but they don't have
the right information, you haveto address that.
If you're getting the athletesin the pipeline, you have the
right information, they're notperforming, you have to address
that.

(55:46):
They're going into theinternational arena and they're
not performing, then you have toaddress that, but without any.
So there's no accountability atthe dojong level, no
accountability at the statelevel.
There's no accountability atany level.
So let me give you the, let megive you the last thing and I'll
stop talking because tj's clockran out.
If you had athletes comingthrough the program and at the

(56:08):
regional level these athleteswere identified and you put them
into the national team whateveruh pipeline and they don't
perform, then you need to firethe guys at the regional level
because he hasn't developed anathlete.
That's, that's fitting theprofile.
If you put them in the nationalteam profile and they're not
performing, you fire that guy.
If they go to the olympics andthey don't, to be to speak

(56:29):
frankly, after the last olympicsthe entire coaching staff and
the sport development program atusat should have been fired,
because you had people on a lotof planes going and doing a lot
of galas and going to a lot ofevents and you had no results.
If there hasn't been a medal inthe male division in since TJ,

(56:50):
then we got a bigger problemthat we have to fix now.
Until you get performance basedand I'll end it here then
you'll get exactly the resultsyou're, you're engineered for
and right now, usa Taekwondo isperfectly engineered to get
warm-ups, and what I mean bythat is guys show up at a
tournament.
They have two desires.

(57:12):
One is to get a warm-up andcome home.
Two is to get a medal.
You don't have medal performers, you have warm-up performers,
and warm-ups are just a price ofentry.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Well, real fast, I was going to joke around they
don't bow and they don't weartheir warm-ups, so they're not
getting those either.
Let me say this what do youguys think about this?
Because all sport, olympicsport, is the same.
You have individual sportsboxing, wrestling, judo,
taekwondo, swimming, okay, andthen you have team sports
basketball, volleyball, waterpolo, it's like that but the

(57:44):
common denominator, even ingymnastics which, arguably, if
there's one sport that wedominate more than anything in
the world, it's gymnastics,women's gymnastics and they
still have a national team coachthat has to set the philosophy,
set the trend, set theexpectations.
And, yes, they have coachesunderneath them, some of them

(58:04):
brought on for the individualathletes, some of them happen to
be people that work with thehead coach the individual
athletes, some of them happen tobe people that work with the
head coach.
But you have to appointsomebody that can organize those
individual athletes or thoseteam sports.
When I look at USA Wrestling,they have a head coach.
It doesn't mean that he cancoach every single pit, because

(58:25):
some come from the military,some come from university, some
are trained by themselves.
So the only common denominatorthat I can think of is somebody
that is leading that charge hasto have the confidence and the
respect of the community.
That community has to feel likethat person cares about

(58:47):
everybody.
I'm going to use myself.
Look, my title is the headcoach of Brazil.
I don't go around to all theclubs, but I bring the guys
together.
I put the people in place, butI set the philosophy.
I say when we train, I say whattimes we train, I say how often
we train Everything.
I say what time we go tobreakfast.

(59:07):
We set our culture so that thecoaches could do their best, so
the athletes could do their best.
That's the way the programworks in Brazil, because they
don't have a centralizedtraining.
They have centralized training.
Maybe I could do that.
My point is here in the UnitedStates I just said the national
team staff.
They have one person that leadsit supposedly, but I don't care

(59:30):
if they're a nice guy or not anice guy.
It doesn't seem like they havethe best interest of everybody.
That's because if they did,they'd be taking every national
team, every junior.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
So stop there before you go further, because now you
have, that's where you firesomebody, because the price of
entry for a coach that's runninga national program is inclusion
rather than exclusion, and atthe point where you become
exclusionary, that's my second,yeah so that and that's so.
Right there, there's not asecond.
You're gonna, you gotta go toyour second point.

(01:00:02):
But here's the reality at thatpoint there's no, there's
threshold issues for nationalprograms.
So I can't be.
I can't be in charge of USATaekwondo, because my demeanor
and my political way of handlingthings is not inclusive.
In other words, I would firepeople, I would hire people, but
I would have results.
There's a difference.

(01:00:23):
I would definitely have results, but I would fire and hire
people.
I'm not inclusive.
In a weird way, the guy who'sin charge of this thing needs to
be inclusive to a fault andopen the tent, make a bigger
tent rather than excludingpeople.
Go ahead, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
No.
But then my next thing TJ wasgoing to be okay.
If that person, let's say,doesn't have the real best
inches of all people, then evenif his staff was considered top,
top shelf look at our countryNobody looks at those coaches.
I'm sorry if you don't like it.
Nobody looks at those guys andsay, oh my gosh, that's the

(01:01:02):
person that's going to take meto wherever I need to go.
Okay, they're on the staff.
Okay, they're living out there.
Okay, they're with them everyday.
It doesn't mean that they'regood, it doesn't mean that
they're qualified, it just meansthat they're there.
So, by default, they areconsidered national team coaches
, which goes to like what we'vetalked about.

(01:01:22):
There's so many pockets ofpeople in this country I mean
without being self-servingthere's so many pockets that are
more experienced, produce more,been there longer, understand
the communities a lot betterthan the people that have been
positioned up there, fromadministrative type people to

(01:01:43):
actual coaches.
There lies in the because, atthe bar, at the Nationals and
the side talking on the side ofthe ring or in the holding area,
everyone's talking about howbad they are, how they don't
know, how they haven't done, howthey don't care, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
Hence the reason why everyoneloves this podcast because we

(01:02:07):
say what everyone's thinking.
So my point is with ournational organization we don't
have the buy-in again.
I'm not judging people'scharacter are they nice people,
are they good people?
But the truth is in the pudding.
If you've been here seven yearsand you and we still have our
pipeline is decimated, broken, Imean we're gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
We could have a big event right now because in
california but I in a weird way,like when you know, like I
don't like to talk about the twocoaches or the one coach I
don't even know if the othercoach is around anymore because
one fought, kind of was okay,the other one was a clown and
he's not a good coach and hedoesn't produce results.
And so that kind of goes to thesecond point of what you said a

(01:02:51):
good coach or a good program.
And I'll give you again whatI'm looking at now in soccer.
So they have these huge talentID camps and they don't call
them that, but they're calledshowcases, and at the showcases
a hundred to 150 of the topcoaches in the country from
professional academies andcolleges and D ones, ands and 3s

(01:03:11):
come to see the athletes.
And they are smart because whatthey do is they know the clubs
that traditionally produce goodathletes and have good coaching
and good substructures and theynexus with those clubs.
So they have that relationship.
They go to that club and theysay to that guy you got anybody
that's good, that I should comesee.

(01:03:33):
So in soccer, and not to say ussoccer is perfect, because it's
certainly far from that, but atthis level, when they go out to
identify these kids.
They have relationships withthose lower coaches.
They don't exclude thosecoaches, they don't.
They go all right, let me go tosvsa, let me go to la galaxy.
Let me go to uh the earthquakes.
Let me go here to find thatathlete I need for my program at

(01:03:57):
uh yale or harvard or clemsonone of the best programs in the
country and they go okay.
Historically, I get an athletefrom there and when you look at
it, you'll see that relationshipbetween the coaches at the
highest level.
And you saw this in Korea,korea at Dongsung High School,
which was world renowned forproducing athletes.

(01:04:17):
Chede had a relationship.
They went down there to seeokay, who do you have for me?

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
The USA has a relationship, though, with me,
because they have a paramedalist, uh olympic medalist, a
world champion and a brand newrecruit.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
No, no, they have a relationship.
Your athletes have a relation,you don't.
You're welcome.
Yeah, thank you.
And they should say thank youand they should be sending you
money and my point is thatthey're too stupid to fix it and
that you can, and I I'll letyou go, tj, but here's the last
thing I'll say.
You can excuse ignorance, youcan excuse naivete.

(01:04:54):
You cannot excuse ignorance andyou can't excuse stupidity.
Naivete is when you don't knowbetter because you haven't had
access to the information.
Ignorance is when you see theinformation and you ignore it.
Arrogance is when you know allof it and, despite knowing all
of it, you don't fix it, to thedetriment of the American public

(01:05:16):
.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
And Taekwondo should be defunded.
For the level of arrogance, Iblame your senior, I blame your
senior.
Who's that?
But anyway, dj, I don't.
You know.
Warwick, your senior, listen,you better bow to him.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
He's not my senior.
I'm actually a ninth degree andI think he's a third.
Yeah, he's your senior.
I give him the respect he's duebecause he was my team captain
and he was one of my coaches.
But I know I will always bow,but I bow because I have respect
for myself and that was thebest advice I ever got from
somebody.
But he actually asked me aquestion.
He said people ask me about youand they want to know if we're

(01:05:53):
still friends.
And I said, yeah, we're friends.
But I told you when you took thejob, if you started taking a
paycheck and you didn't fix it,you're part of the problem and I
live to that today.
That guy's part of the problem,you know.
And I and I shout, I gave ashout out to Steve McNally why
he solved the problem, theproblem for me, and so I
respected that.
There were two other people inthat text, one my junior, one my

(01:06:13):
senior.
They didn't text back, theydidn't offer to solve the
problem.
So one's my junior and I usedto employ him in this program,
right?
The other one's my senior anduh, you know, oh, well, well,
and it's ironic that the guy whosolved my problem wasn't a
taekwondo guy, so I give him youknow that I was gonna ask um,

(01:06:37):
I'm probably more to you and toyou, uh, both.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Actually, when we talk about, like you know,
they're not being successful.
I think I guess my questionwould be.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
I want to ask the question wait which?
So you're going to ask themayor of taekwondo and then
you're going to ask thegrandmaster of disaster?

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
yes, sir, all right, just checking, good together
sorry, not simultaneously at thesame time.
What, what does, what does?
What does success look like?
When you say non-performing?
Yeah, because we always talkabout it, right, and I think I
think, like we talked about lastolympic medal being 2012, yada,
yada, yada.
I'm not sure the community orpeople understand.
Like what, what would we wantto look like at this point, or

(01:07:14):
what should we be to go?
Hey, we're winning, we'resuccessful, and I don't mean
winning by medal count, I meanwinning overall.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
but yes, sir, no, I was going to say this before you
asked that, because I'm notnaive.
I know that it's difficult towin in the world nowadays.
Even the best national teamsmaybe get a medal or two medals,
but everybody knows they'restill good.
Does that make sense?
Like it's almost an eye test?
So you're right, if we had,let's just say we went to the

(01:07:42):
world championships and youngexcuse me, because I know in our
era it was different but let'ssay we had three medals.
Let's say we just got threemedals through the men and women
, right, and?
But we had a bunch ofquarterfinals.
We had people losing to thechampion in the quarterfinal,
like we had some death matchesand you just felt that the USA
was strong.
I remember a year, one time, wewent to the world championships

(01:08:05):
and same thing, I think we hadtwo medals.
I think it was Mark and Steven,but I don't know, I can't
forget who it was.
But we had a bunch of like justthe US team looked strong, they
were going deep intotournaments.
When I look at Turkey, when Ilook at Spain, spain, you never
notice them and then you're likedamn, they got three medals, or
damn, they got four medals.
Same thing with Uzbekistan.

(01:08:26):
There are some programs thatyou can look at and you can say
they are healthy, they're goodat every stop cadet, junior,
senior university and you'relike they're building.
How many times do we say oh,that team's up and coming.
Does anybody say that about us?
So for me it's the eye testthat is my beautiful daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
You're always showing off your beautiful daughter.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
This is my beautiful artist.
Yes, daughter, you're alwaysshowing off your beautiful
daughter.
This is my beautiful artist.
Yes, she shows me all her stuff.
But seriously, tj, I think it'smore of are we healthy?
Do we have Brazils like this?
We recognize that we'reprobably going to have two or
three top people on each side,men and women, but from top to
bottom.
We want to make sure peopletrain hard, do things the right

(01:09:12):
way, get in scraps, make gooddecisions and, of course,
sometimes they're just nottalented enough to beat the
Iranian or the Russian.
Okay, but we have to becompetitive.
So I'm not looking for a way out, I'm just being realistic.
You're going to have your stars, but your pipeline has to look
healthy.
Your national team has to lookdangerous.
We've seen it.

(01:09:37):
Has anybody ever said thatIran's not good?
No, but they go through theirtimes where they're not
producing their four gold medalson the men's side, like we've
known.
Russia, same thing, uzbekistan,same thing.
So my definition of success andhealthy and performance and
result is having your stars showup consistently, having a
mid-level person have a greatresult.

(01:09:57):
But overall the team iswell-trained, dangerous,
competitive.
They look the part Jordan.
They don't bring a full team.
But would you say, tj, thatthey're healthy?
Would you say that they'recompetitive?
Everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
So success, as defined by the U S Olympic
committee back in the day andstill, even now, is based on
sustained, and the words werechosen.
It's just saying it was chosen.
I was on the, obviously at thepoint where we've made our
statement and we chose the wordscarefully Sustained,

(01:10:33):
competitive, excellence,performance versus results.
And now ask yourself a questionIs it sustained?
And the answer is no.
Is it competitive?
No, and is it excellent?
No, and is it excellent, no.
And so on all fronts, you'remissing all marks.
Because you can make a case whensomeone's performing well and

(01:10:55):
we talked about this in thecoaching program when we created
it performance over results.
So if you can perform well, youcan run into the best guy first
round and perform well.
And it was interesting.
I was watching this again, somesoccer thing and the the guy
said you have no control overwhat happens on the pitch.
That was winning and losing.
You have no control over howdid you perform.

(01:11:16):
You don't even have controlover that.
So that and that was aninteresting thing to kind of say
, but it's not untrue.
So you can, you can make anargument for everything that's
happening currently, but if youhave over how many every year
years it's been, since we've hada medal.
Did you say 16 years, was it?

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
Olympic medal.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
Yeah.
How many years 2012.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
So, yeah, how many years has it been, Not 16.
Well, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024.
Yeah, 4, 8, 12.
It'll be 16 years by 2028.
The next time I have a chance12 to 16 years.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
If you haven't put somebody on a medal podium and
you don't see an upward trendtowards that, then you don't
have competitive, sustainedcompetitive excellence and you
don't see a trend.
So if the trend is trendingdown or trend in trending level,
then you have to ask yourself aquestion If you're competing
against people that are financedbetter, have a better
infrastructure and it's notanything you can have.
So if you live in the middle ofafrica and you don't have

(01:12:15):
running water and you don't havea gym with a floor and you're
trying to compete, I get it.
But when you live in one of themost prosperous countries in
the world that has resources,time and energy and your finance
and your cash flush and you'renot producing, then it's a a
methodology problem, it's not anathlete problem.
And I say the same thing insoccer, by the way, just so you
understand.

(01:12:35):
There's no argument for why theUS shouldn't be producing the
best soccer players in the world, because everybody says the
best athletes are goingsomewhere else, and that's just
simply not true.
The athletes who are good atbasketball are good at
basketball.
They wouldn't be good at soccer.
They'd be okay at soccer.
There's no athlete that'smaking a decision not to play
soccer.
We have more people in thiscountry playing soccer at every

(01:12:58):
level than we do playingvirtually any other sport.
More kids are doing soccer thanare doing basketball, and half
the country plays soccer, and sothere's a problem in their
pipeline as to development.
But in our pipeline there's noexcuse for why we shouldn't be
performing because we have.
We're not genetic, we're notgenetically disadvantaged, we're

(01:13:20):
not financially disadvantaged,we're not intellectually
disadvantaged.
So the answer, resoundingly, isthat is an administrative
problem, that is a methodologyproblem, that is simply a
philosophical problem.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
So but that's that's why I told you, tj, for me it's,
it's, it's, it's.
We got to be competitive, wegot it.
We have to look the part, wehave to be the part, because I'm
not naive, I mean, I, I do likethat.
I mean that's why I likekhhabib so much.
Khabib is, like you know, inMMA, he, he, all of his people,
he's like whatever's going tohappen is going to happen.
You get knocked out, you getchoked out, you lose the

(01:13:59):
decision.
All the work has already beendone, but so some of it is out
of your control.
I know we like to say wecontrol it, we can, you know,
make your luck, but sometimesthere's just weird things that
happen in the sport.
There's literally no answer.
But that doesn't mean thatyou're not successful.
That just means some weirdthing happened.
But I don't feel like that'sthe point right now.
I don't think we havecompetitive, sustained

(01:14:20):
competitive excellence.
Tj, how many times you are like, oh my God, that one result
saved an organization, the worldchampionships saved by a world
championship person's out, oneOlympics saved by a person that
maybe wasn't even supposed to beat the Olympic Games.
So that's not sustained, that'snot competitive excellence.

(01:14:41):
That's pretty fortunate, nottaking anything away.
Well, look at Korea, you guystalked about Korea, right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
So you could say that Korea has sustained competitive
excellence.
They have people in thepipeline that are coming up.
They plan for those people inthe pipeline.
They're coming up and they'rewinning.
You could say that about half adozen Euro-Russian whatever you
call them now countries.
You could say that for oddcountries, countries to watch

(01:15:07):
Thailand, watch Thailand.
I look at some of the stuffthat's going on with those guys.
I'm like the uh, the Arabicnations.
They're, they're, they're,they're.
They put a ton of money behindstuff.
They get good coaches.
So we, we as a country, have tomake a decision, to have a
philosophical change, and rightnow, most of the people you know

(01:15:28):
and it'd be my last thing onthis is the reason you don't
have it is because you haveempowered the plebs and the
masses, and so they're notcomplaining because they're at
the table and they get to eatdinners.
You know they're eating whileeverybody else is starving, but
the athletes that should bewinning aren't winning and the
athletes that should be in thepipeline and identified aren't
being funded and the coachesthat should be doing development

(01:15:49):
aren't there.
So you know you'll have theoutlier.
You might have a kid, like youknow.
It's hard.
I don't.
I don't want to rain on cj'sparade because athletically he
has all the tools set necessaryto have a to have a podium
performance.
So that's a kid that with theright coach, that gets him off

(01:16:10):
the internet, puts him in a gym,gets him to put a shirt on and
put a chest protector on instead, that's a kid.
With the right coach he couldbe a world class and a long term
performer.
But you know, if you're hiphopping, break dancing and
capoeira wing and that's thefocus of your time, if you know
you and you're spending moretime on TikTokoks and everything
else, that you're not going tohave the results.

(01:16:31):
So, but anyway, do you knowwhat you're gonna say?

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
maybe.
Just he changed my direction soI said cj.
I think if anybody I mean ifanybody, I mean if we're just
being real if anyone has somekind of sustained
competitiveness, it's.
It's cj.
You know what I mean he.
He's.
He's in the mix, he's, he's asilver medals at the World
Championships.
He's a.
You know, he runs deep in everytournament.
You always, I think, he showsup for the moments.
But the reality is back to justthe Olympic stuff.

(01:16:56):
We know that's a tricky day.
We know the Olympic dayanything can happen.
And I think when we talk aboutgo back to your point about
peaking and being ready forthose moments, maybe that is a.
Maybe that is a you know focustype thing.
That is a you know focus typething.
Maybe that's a.
Whatever, I know it's a.
We all know sitting here howtough the Olympic day is.
You know I was.
You know we make jokes about itbut, like I, I was right at the
brink of doing it or not.

(01:17:16):
Doing it like it is is a toughday.
You have to do the thingsrequired of you to to get
through that day, and it is oneday every four years.
That's what makes it scary, butthat's what also makes it
special, that's what also makesit tough.
That's what also, when you havethat guidance and that help in
the chair with you and in theroom with you and telling you
what's right and what's wrong,sometimes I think you are put in
a better situation.
But I'm a firm believer incoaching is definitely more than

(01:17:40):
giving drills.
It doesn't matter the drillsyou're given, it's the belief in
the drills, it's the belief inthe system, it's belief in the
process that gets you throughthe tough moments.
All the rest of it's it's it'sclown work.
Everyone knows how to kick andhold targets and you know.
Obviously some coaches havebetter explanations of when and
why, but it's all the same shit.
So coaching is it's got to bedeeper, it's got to be deeper.
And if, like you, go back toyour, you guys point about the

(01:18:01):
culture, the culture has to bebuilt, the, the organization has
to to to believe in it.
I mean, like we, like you, Imean you know people say they
like this podcast because we saywhat they want to say.
I mean that's what we, allthree of us, said here and
chosen to do.
Look at it from a, look at thisfrom a just a point by point
standpoint.
I mean, obviously you know wefeel what we feel, but all these
points are valid, like no,there's been no lies told here,

(01:18:33):
there's been no exaggerations.
Ask the question about what doessuccess look like?
Because you know you guys havebeen around the system way
longer than me at the nationalteam level and developing
athletes and developing systemsfor it.
So it's just I I can't say.
I always sit back and try tofigure out.
But you know they did get amedal here, but this did happen,
like you were just saying.
But at the at the core, we'renot scary at the core, I don't
think medal performance doesn'tmatter, tj.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
That's the's the thing that like.
I got what I'm going to say, andI you said something
interesting, you know, and it'snice to have all three of us on
the podcast for a differentreason, people like want to
glorify metal performance at theOlympics or a particular metal
gold, brown, silver and I alwaystease you.
But the reality is I had a goodday.
If I had an average day or asub-average day, that would have

(01:19:12):
easily had been a differentcolor medal or no medal at all.
Any of the matches I foughtcould have went another way,
just with one bad kick or onebad moment right.
So I'm always humble about theaccomplishment, and I was there
for both of Coach Moreno'sperformances, and one thing
going a different way or anotherway would have been a different

(01:19:34):
day for him or for you.
So you can't get caught up inthe metal, but you can get
caught up in the performance.
So what I'm going to do is sayone last thing, and that's going
to be.
We're talking about sustainedcompetitive excellence and
performance.
I'm using the metal count as aa marker on any particular day.

(01:19:56):
A metal can save you or killyou.
As you've pointed out, we've hadthose things which have
obscured and muddied the waters.
There's no sustainedcompetitive excellence.
There's no way that you can goin and say I feel like today we
have a good shot at a medal withthe pool of people we're
bringing.
You can't say that, you can'tsay that for quite some time.
So that's the reality.

(01:20:17):
You could say I went in with agood hope for performance and it
didn't work out because of X, yand Z that's a different
conversation.
And then you just take it onestep better.
Of X, y and Z that's adifferent conversation, and then
you just take it one stepbetter.
Are we going?
Are we?
Are we doing everythingnecessary to say either of those
things?
Currently?
And I think the answer is no,we're not doing sustained

(01:20:39):
competitive excellence.
Oh yeah, we're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
We're doing hope and hope and pray.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
In other words, I play basketball, I shoot the
ball, I hope and pray.
I don't pray.

Speaker 3 (01:20:50):
Listen, I don't know, I know we've gone a little bit
longer than normal.
I do want to kind of clean upsomething that we talked about
last time real fast, it doesn'thave to be long, because TJ, me
and you talked off the air Afterthe last podcast when we talked
about the AU Nationals and someof the officiating.
I had a bunch of DMs To behonest with you, nothing bad.
Some people asked me they wishI would have came to them

(01:21:12):
directly and talked to thembecause they felt that they were
responsible for whatever.
And you know I honestly, allthe conversations were great.
Unfortunately, like I said, thispodcast, I can't be a hypocrite
.
You know, young, you did itearlier to Mr McNally.
You know I stand by what wesaid.
You know I know there was itwasn't anyone's direct fault,

(01:21:32):
but it doesn't change the factof the scenario.
So I'm I'm thankful to all thepeople that reached out to me.
Nothing was for me, it's notpersonal, as it.
Most of the stuff isn'tpersonal, it's just.
You know, you say it all thetime, tj, it's it's logic, it's
things that really happened andnow we just have to deal with it
.
So to the people that you knowwe talked, you know that talked

(01:21:52):
to me personally.
Thank you for reaching out.
I'm always willing to have aconversation.
I'm always willing to help ifasked and if needed.
And some of those people didask, you know, moving forward,
if I could help them a littlebit.
So that's kind of cool and I'mhappy that I'm happy for some of
that, maybe the fist-upresponse for people, because at
least by them reaching out to meit shows to me that they're

(01:22:15):
willing to come to the table.
They could have stood there andsaid screw Juan, screw TJ,
screw her, but they didn't.
They actually came.
I respect that more that theysent me the messages.
We had some good dialogue.
Everybody went away happy.
I had some people that I forgotmy friend.
Some good dialogue.
Everybody went away happy.
I had some people that I, myfriend Alex, mr Alex he's, he's
awesome from Houston.
He was like I hope my ringwasn't bad and I go, man, you

(01:22:37):
know what.
I actually sat and watched yourring and you know what.
You did a great job and I Ifeel bad for people like that,
but just again putting it outthere, we said what we said.
We stand by what we said, butthank you for the interaction,
for the people that came to medirectly.
I respect that a lot, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
I got a few messages too, and I think that's kind of
cool because, like I said, Iknow it's kind of cool to know
that people are listening, butalso that we're adult enough to
have, like you said, to have theconversation no-transcript

(01:23:16):
conversations.
So I definitely appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:18):
So, sir, so, as we always say, uh, sorry, not sorry
.
So you know, we, uh, we gotta,we gotta be you to keep it real.
And it may not make people feelgood about everything in the
world, and you can, if we overspeak, under speak, whatever we,
you know, we should definitelybe cognizant of that and then be

(01:23:42):
that.
But at the end, for us, youknow, I think it's important to
keep it practical, live and real, because the conversations
aren't happening.
So for me, I'm going tocontinue to have these
conversations till I see achange that, you know, make
something better.
And when I make a mistake, youknow I have people remind me of
my mistakes and and I'll be likeyou know, okay, I've made a

(01:24:04):
mistake, let me, let me own upto my mistake.
And then if somebody doessomething that shows hope or or
a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm willing to look at that.
But you know, right now there'sdefinitely some stuff at the
aau that it sounds like it needsto be addressed and it may be a
leadership void, and hopefullythey do it.
There's definitely stuff at usataekwondo that needs to be
addressed but has needed to beaddressed, and at the wt level

(01:24:27):
there's a ridiculous amount ofstuff.
Right now I'm sitting hereinstead of being in wherever
this handjob-a-don ishandjob-a-don in California
somewhere, because I'm not ahypocrite.
That particular organizationdid a lot of bad things and the

(01:24:50):
only people out of there theclown show.
Unfortunately, americans don'tunderstand what it is, and so
some have gone.
So if you're there and you'relistening to this, turn around
and go home.
I'll refund your money.
All right guys.
But all right guys, it's timeto I see somebody running around
the back of that.
I was glad I got to share mydaughter, but in the words of
the immortal three sorry, notsorry, brothers, peace, all

(01:25:16):
right.

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