Pimps, Pinky Rings, and Performance: The Truth About Sports Funding

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
Watch the sunrise 1F1, themcheckin' in.
So we're sittin' pretty, stillmean.
Second best in the world.
Get witty.
Face down to Polnick's pressurecookin' hot.
Gave my sweat, my focus,everything I got DJ Grimes a.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
DJ, holding down the bronze Stood on the stage.
I fought.
The giants turned the new page,learned to discipline, focused
respect for the fight.
My fight ain't lies.
It's something that no onetells me.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
We've been through some hell.
It's one of our names inreality.
Just me.
It's still me, it's like me.
That's how the world gets ready.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Breathe, let it out, see, cause you're on back.
We are back.
It is the warehouse 15 and, aswe say in the video before this,
sorry, not sorry.
Today we are joined bygrandmaster of disaster ju Juan
Moreno, second in charge, thirdon the award chart as a bronze
medalist, grandmaster ofSub-Disaster.
He is actually in an internalpolice interrogation room.
Hence the light, and it shinesbright.

(01:22):
We are hoping and wishing himthe best.
Hopefully Johnny Cochran orwhoever is still alive can come
and get shines bright.
Hopefully Johnny Cochran orwhoever's still alive can come
and get him out.
If it does not fit, we mustacquit.
Welcome to the warehouse.
The Menendez brothers aregetting out.
The Menendez brothers aregetting out.
They're getting out.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Are they really they're getting?

Speaker 3 (01:42):
out.
They're eligible for parole.
They're white.
They're white, they're gettingout.
Are they really?
They're eligible for parole.
They're white, they're gettingout.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
How.

Speaker 5 (01:51):
How are they out, abuse?

Speaker 3 (01:56):
They had it in self-defense man, in that case I
did.
Bring long to me.
Bring long to me.
That's an old joke.
You have to be an insider toknow that one.
That guy shouldn't get out.
Bring long to me, bring long tome.
That's an old joke.
Bring long to me.
But anyway, gentlemen, what dowe got this today?
What's going on?
Tell us a little bit about life.
Who's starting us off today?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I am currently in Richmond Virginia, not too far
from my actual hotel.
Just first warning if you sayanything bad about VA, I'm going
to fly to California and fightyou.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
What is it Richmond?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Virginia.
Yeah, we're in Virginia, thehome of the lovers.
703 is where I'm fromAlexandria you know.
So don't talk bad aboutVirginia.
You can talk about NorthCarolina, you can talk about
anywhere else you want, notVirginia.
But I am here.
We got the Grand Prix or no?
What is it called?
What is this shit called?
What is?
It.
East Open.
Yeah, east Open qualifier forthe final and for the national.

(02:51):
So I got a bunch of my guyshere fighting as some seniors,
some cadets, some juniors.
So we'll be doing some karatethis weekend.
Nice, nice, ready for it?
Yes, yes, yes.
Nice, nice, yes, yes yes, sothat's what's up for me.
Drove a four and a half hourdrive Just got to the hotel, so
you know, getting ready for theweekend.

Speaker 5 (03:11):
I'm back in Miami, back in 305.
Uh-oh, what do we got here?
I'm from Richmond, Well,actually from Henrico, but
nobody knows anything aboutHenrico so I just say I'm from
Richmond, just to make it easier.
Yep, okay.
I'm from Richmond, he's notfrom.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Richmond.
I'm not from Richmond.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
I'm not from Richmond .

Speaker 5 (03:38):
Sorry coach.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
No, no, no.

Speaker 5 (03:41):
Actually not sorry, sorry, not sorry, sorry, not
sorry.
Wait a not sorry, sorry, notsorry.
Wait a minute, what happened?
My screen went off because Ihad a so on Kim calling me.
No, I got back from Uzbekistanon Saturday night.
Still a little bit jet lagtrying to get over that, but
real successful trip for me upthere.
My wife actually is in Virginiawith my athletes from Miami.

(04:04):
Yeah, so she's going to be upthere competing or coaching, is
in virginia with uh, with myathletes from uh, from miami.
Yeah, so she's gonna be upthere competing or coaching.
You know some of those athletes.
So, yeah, I'm home for theweekend, I'm gonna recover, do
some things and I'd like to talkabout um kind of a couple
different topics.
I'd like to talk a little bitabout the cadet worlds.
I'd like to talk about some umtraining and some coaching stuff
.
I think it'd be a interestingtopic.
I mean, me and uh tj weretalking about a little off air

(04:26):
before we got out with you young, and I think you have some
really interesting insights toto some of that because of you
know, based on how you trainedand how you broke some some
models of what, what do you say,what, how, what the common
things that people talk about,what you need to train, and I
think you broke a lot of thosebarriers and I think we did it a

(04:47):
little bit in some sense too.
So we can talk about thatafterward, but maybe we should
talk about the cadet worldsfirst.
You want to start off TJ, yourobservations.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, I mean I'll start off.
I mean, obviously USA finishedwith two bronze medals, I
believe.
Right, I don't know thedivisions and the weights and
all this stuff Silver.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Silver.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Silver won bronze medal.
Yeah, overall I watched a lotof cadets.
I think this is the most cadetfighting I've watched in my
entire life.
So I've watched a lot of thefights back.
I mean, the strong countriesare the strong countries.
I see a lot of intelligence.
It's crazy because, like we weretalking about it earlier, I
think it's a weird, I think it'sa.
It's a newer game for them.
It's the, it's the.

(05:26):
They've grown up only usingelectronics.
They've grown up only trainingto win on this system, and
that's something that I didn'tcome.
That's not the generation Icame from.
Obviously, you know kind ofgoing through all the different
levels of no, no scoring toelectronic, to all that stuff.
But it's interesting to see how, how smart these kids are
getting on spinning the, arefighting on the system and

(05:46):
scoring on the system, and Ithink the intelligence level for
me is kind of cool to see.
I mean you see some of theseyounger kids making some smart
adjustments in rounds and stufflike that.
So I mean, overall I think itwas what's it called the venue
looked awesome.
I like the way the venue looked.
It looked very professional Veryprofessional.
It was a bizarre game.
Yeah, awesome.

(06:06):
I like the way the venue looked.
It was very professional.
It was a bizarre game.
Was it the same place that wewent for the Grand Prix final?
You don't know.

Speaker 5 (06:12):
I think it looked like it, but I don't know,
Overall.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Like I said, I watched a lot of cadet matches
but I think the level isdefinitely getting higher.
Like I said, I think a lot ofthe Asian, middle Eastern
countries or Asian countries aredoing very well, along with,
you know, the Eastern Europeansand Russians.
I mean.
Their kids are tall, longstrong and I mean it's
definitely interesting to see atthat level and kind of compare

(06:36):
it to the other levels, goingthrough the juniors and the
seniors.

Speaker 5 (06:39):
Well, there's only one dominant country in the
world, and that's Russia.
I don't care what anybody says.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
Not.

Speaker 5 (06:45):
Korea.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
Not even close.

Speaker 5 (06:47):
I mean not even close .
I mean Russia, listen top tobottom I'm talking for cadet,
juniors and seniors not evenclose.
I mean, and you know how much Ihave affinity for the Iranian
program, the Korean program andsome other programs, but I'm
just talking as a squad, fromweight, from the lowest to the
heaviest.
All their people arecompetitive and you know, I want

(07:08):
to talk about that a little bitbecause I mean they're, they're
smart, they're playing the game, they're they're.
They have good height, theyhave good ability, they're calm.
There's just so much goodthings to say about them.
And you know, I mean again Ithink it was back to saying I
had a couple gold medals.
K Kazakhstan was good, korea hada few.
I mean, the medals were spreadout, but just consistently.
I mean, what do you say with acountry that gets five or six or

(07:30):
seven medals?
I mean they're dominant,they're dominant.
And when they did lose it wasclose.
Or when they did lose, theylost to somebody else that was
really good, that got at themedal stand.
So I was super impressed bythem.
But, to your point, the levelwas amazing.

(07:51):
I love to see some of thesekids make adjustments.
It was really crazy how theseround-by-round system nowadays
some kid would go lose firstround to Korea by a point gap,
lose by 12 points, and then comeback the next round like
nothing happened and point backuh, point, gap korea, and then
win the final round like the howthese kids, you know, as we're

(08:11):
older, we, we remember a littlebit too much.
You're supposed to have this,this clear mind, where you can
forget things quick, but thesekids, they can just let all the
bad go and move to the nextround like nothing happened.
And it was impressive.
I saw that over and over andover and it was just strange to

(08:32):
me, because the first round I'mlike, oh man, this person is
going to kill them, they're sogood.
And then the second roundchanged the round.
I'm like, what happened?
You don't see that too often inthe senior level, maybe in the
junior level, but not in thesenior level.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, and it's always one of those.
I mean I've talked junk aboutthat too.
When I see a senior gap,someone that first round and
then gap the second round, I'mgoing that's either a player
error or a coaching error.
That shouldn't happen at thehigher levels.
That's a tough one for me andI'm going to say the person that
wins that second round, I'veseen it both ways.

(09:06):
I've seen them drop the thirdround, but more of the times
they win that second round andthey win the third round.
So they figure it out.
So it has to be a coaching, agood up for the coach and kind
of like whatever they changed inthat situation.
But nah, like I said, I thinkyou're right.
These kids are all tall, they'reall long and they're getting
smarter.
And I see them playing the game, the electronic game that

(09:28):
Grandmaster of Disaster hates somuch.
Wouldn't call it a game.
Maybe we'd call it a game butnot a fight.
But I think they're gettingreally smart at it.
I think they're getting used tothe system.
I think that anxiety, that itwould be interesting to see
those same kids in the samegroup once they get to the
juniors and the seniors.
I always find it interesting inthat point A lot of these

(09:48):
countries have the advantage ofheight.
When they're cadets They've gotthe tallest cadets or the
longest cadets, and then all ofa sudden, juniors happens and
they're not so tall, they're notso long, and that's when things
start to get interesting for me.

Speaker 5 (10:01):
Let's be clear there's very few outliers that
have success at cadets, successat juniors and success at
seniors.
They're really, it's kind ofthat third tier down from the
Olympics.
So I mean.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
So you think there's no correlation?
There's no correlation betweencadet success and senior success
.

Speaker 5 (10:22):
I'm not going to say there's none, but it's not as
big as you would think.
I think what's important isthat they're in that mix and the
question is now this is wherewe've dropped off.
We have pretty talented kidsand cadets, but they just don't
seem to continue their growth atjuniors and continue the growth
at the seniors, like some othercountries.
So are there some kids that arewinning Olympic medals that

(10:45):
were good in cadets and good injuniors and good in seniors, of
course, but there's way morepeople that are good in the
Olympics that weren't so good incadets.
So I don't think the data showsthat it's that important, did
you?

Speaker 2 (10:58):
guys make your junior team every year.
That it was a possibility.

Speaker 5 (11:02):
Who what guys?

Speaker 2 (11:03):
You two, you two.

Speaker 5 (11:05):
When that it was a possibility.
Who, what guys?
You two, you two.
When I competed, they didn'thave a junior team.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
No junior team, no junior team.
I would have that's crazy.

Speaker 5 (11:10):
I never lost a junior match, so wait, wait, no junior
team.
I mean I'm bragging.
But from the time I was ayellow belt to a black belt
until I started fighting seniors, I never lost a junior
taekwondo match ever.
I lost.
Point karate matches, I mean Ilost.
No, I didn't lose any fullcontact matches, but I mean

(11:32):
point karate matches I lost.
But taekwondo, aau slash, usat,slash, wtf, none, none.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
What was the first junior world's year 89.
89.
89.

Speaker 5 (11:42):
89 was like in Colorado Springs.
It wasn't like what we have now, and then I think there was a
little gap and then they startedit up again.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
So 89 was the first one.
Got you, got you.
Okay, that's pretty cool.
I didn't really even thinkabout that that far back.
As far as that system was.

Speaker 5 (12:02):
You know what One thing I noticed and again, I'm
going to say this from aprogramming standpoint, not an
individual athlete, because Ipersonally think most of our
national I didn't see all thenational team kids fight, but I
thought most of them fought verystrong, very competitive.
They showed that they had some.
Now, just because they showedthey had some doesn't mean that

(12:25):
they were competitive with thetop four, like you know.
I'm saying like in the medals,I so.
But I also think some of thathas to do with our leadership
and our programming and why wedon't, why we're not able to do
some more things.
But I wanted to bring this upbecause I saw a country like
mexico, which we thoroughlydominated at the pan am
championships, like two monthsago, on the cadet level, junior

(12:46):
level, dominated, but yet theyhad, I think, four or five
medals.
I don't know if it was five orfour, but they were consistently
winning medals right from thebeginning.
And I was trying to ask myselfwhy.
And the only thing I could comeup with is that the team is
together more, they're trainingmore and I think that they

(13:08):
domestically they've been builtto fight four and five and six
matches all the time.
I think they're ready for our.
Most of our kids have neverfought four or five matches.
The girl that made it to thefinals, she had six matches.
It was a real tournament, yeah,and she had three out of the
five that.
She went three rounds like shebattled, she, she was impressive

(13:32):
.
I mean, I'm gonna tell you, inthe semifinals she got smoked in
the first round by korea.
She smoked her in the secondround.
In the third round it was four,four and they gave the decision
to her, but that was, I mean,she fought extremely well and
six matches.
The kid joe, uh, josh, hefought five.
He would have fought six if hewould have made it to the final.
Um, but I think those wereprobably one or two of the, the

(13:56):
rare kids that are used to thatcould actually do four or five.
Now I can't say that for surebecause I don't know all the
kids and I want to bedisrespectful to anybody, but I
just think, as a our team trialsare one or two matches, three
matches, but Mexico.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Some of our seniors are one or two and three matches
, let alone the cadets.

Speaker 5 (14:15):
Some of our seniors have zero matches.
That's also true.
I mean, let's be real.
So I mean, anyway, I just thinkthere's something to be said
for that.
Like, I think somehow we haveto get our, um, our system built
up where our kids are.
You know that whole out theyand I've heard the people say
it's steel, sharpen steel.
Well, I'm not sure we have anysteel.

(14:36):
You know, I don't think we haveany steel sharpening each other
right now because we just don'thave enough people.
Um, for whatever reason it is,that's a crazy thing to say that
we don't have enough people.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Um, for whatever reason it is, that's a crazy
thing to say that we don't haveenough people like that's a
that's we do but we don't.
No, I'm sorry, no no, I agreewith you 100.
I'm just saying like that's acrazy problem to have.
You know what I mean.
That I mean, I mean, yeah, allI know is when I hear other
countries talk about the unitedstates is how many people we
have and how many access toathletes we have, and you know

(15:08):
blah, blah, blah resources andall that stuff.
It's just interesting to hearyou know that has to be the
issue, you know.

Speaker 5 (15:15):
I'm going to ask you a question, but first let me.
That is so funny because I wasin Uzbekistan.
There was a Russian teams werethere and we had this nice lunch
and they were.
I really enjoyed it becausethey asked me a lot of questions
about America.
And you know, they know peakperformance and they have this
thing young over there in Russiacalled the grand masters club
and so they're like peakperformance, peak performance.

(15:36):
And then I was like I said so,tell me about the grand masters
clubs.
I've seen this stuff.
How many people?
2,500 people in their program,2,500 people.
Yeah, I think it's more like afederation than actual club.
I don't think it's like whatPeak does.

(15:56):
But when they told me 2,500,and then they have another
program that kind of competesagainst them and he's like when
we did it, it's war.
Like when these two clubs fightit.
It's war like when we, whenthese two clubs fight, it's war
they have 2500 people at thegrandmasters club yes, and
that's like crazy.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
So it's like, uh, it's like, it's like a peak,
basically like different schoolstogether, or yes, I mean I
think they, they all decide thatthey, they work together, they
have a leadership.

Speaker 5 (16:22):
But I don't, I don't think it's exactly like peak,
but just the fact that they havea group outside of their
organization, outside of theRussian Taekwondo Federation,
that they have this own group, Imean, think about that.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
I mean, they got funding, they got athletes, they
, I mean One thing that we Ithink that we miss out on and
again I go back to our day likewe had internal conflict, like
you're talking about those twoteams like war against each
other.
We had internal conflict inAmerica.
You know we had strong areas ofthe country and strong coaches
and strong teams that you, whenyou talk about steel, sharpening

(16:57):
steel, you know maybe I mean Iknow that's got to be part of it
.
I don't think we have thosesame kind of hubs anymore.

Speaker 5 (17:04):
So let me transition to you, because a lot has been
said that you have to have aspecific look of a room to be
successful, and I'm not going tosay that that's wrong.
But I know that there's alsosome different models, right,

(17:24):
and you had one growing up inyour heyday, because I know I
was at the Olympic TrainingCenter and you had one growing
up, or in your in your heyday,because I know I was at the
olympic training center and youweren't.
And you and your trainingpartner, kevin padilla, spent
your time in hoboken and andpreparing yourself and you were
never unprepared.
You were never, uh, uh, didn'thave the cardio, you were never
out of strength, you were neverout of timing.
Did you win everything?

(17:44):
Yeah, you won a lot, but youknow I'm saying like so it's
funny because didn't have thecardio, you were never out of
strength, you were never out oftiming.
Did you win everything?
Yeah, you won a lot, but youknow what I'm saying.
So it's funny because peoplewant to say that you have to
have this, but I'm not so sure.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
I mean it all depends on the athlete and what they
have relative to their supportstructure.
So I've been thinking aboutthis a lot, because I've written
a lot on performance and how doyou build performance.
And then, quite frankly, I'mlooking at like we talk about
every week almost about my sonand his performance, and what

(18:16):
can I do to make things workbetter?
So I think, first and foremostand this went astray with a
particular group out of Texasthat I won't mention but first
and foremost, and this wentastray with a particular group
out of Texas that I won'tmention but first and foremost,
you should always look at whatthe athlete, where they came
from, what has brought them tothis place of success so far,

(18:38):
and then, what do you need tofund?
It's called bubble funding.
They're on the bubble where youneed to get them to the next
level.
Now, that works if you have aresponsible subsystem of people
that understand it, support itand do everything necessary to
make sure that it happens, andin that case, it works.
It can be abused, though, andwhen it was abused, it was.

(19:01):
It was you.
They funded a particular groupof athletes and the person in
charge of that program was aneophyte and had malintentions
and only cared about thesubgroup of that group which
happened to be his family.
They then brought people inbecause it was the mecca at that
time and they abused them.
They abused them and andthere's a bunch of stuff that

(19:21):
happened to people that werethere, and then there were
people a bunch of stuff thathappened to people that were
there and then there were peoplethat got harmed and then there
were people that many other badthings happened and that's
because there was no oversightby the funding agency, which was
, in part, the US OlympicCommittee and USA Taekwondo.
So the caveat is, when youbuild high performance plans

(19:43):
which I built a few and Iactually worked on one for USA
Taekwondo you've got to havemarkers and you've got to have
first you start with a plan, ahypothesis.
If I do this, this is theoutcome.
Here are the markers.
So you say I believe, if I fund12 to 15 year olds in domestic

(20:06):
programs across the UnitedStates and we hold regional or
national level identificationcamps and then we refund them
based on progress and what wefeel progress is not results
then we will yield thisimprovement in the regional
championships, the Pan Am Gamesand the World Championships and

(20:26):
ultimately the Olympic Games,and then, based on those markers
, you either fund or continue tofund, or you decrease funding.
This used to be the OlympicCommittee's model.
So when you do that, you holdpeople's feet to the fire just
like a professional team, and ifthey perform they get rewarded
and if they don't, they getfired.
And when you take the, when youtake the fear of firing people

(20:47):
out, they don't perform.
So there was a car and I'll goback to commercial.
There used to be a cardealerships.
They paid the car dealershipguys a hundred dollars a month.
That's all they got, or athousand dollars a month, it
doesn't matter, it wasn't enoughto live on.
But for every car they soldthey got an additional $1,000 or

(21:09):
$2,000.
Well, those guys worked theirbutts off to sell cars because
otherwise they didn't eat.
And I always joke about themodel for USA Taekwondo, but it
should be.
You take these high-levelathletes, you take them to a
world championships, you pay fortheir flight and you pay for
their hotel room.
If they lose their first round,you don't pay for their flight

(21:32):
home and you kick them out ofthe hotel room if they win their
second fight damn you pay.
You pay for their flight and andyou give them some money for
food if they make it to thethird round.
You pay for the flight home andthe flight there, and you give
them a little more money forfood if they win a gold medal it
reminds me of a story.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, I was at american when they had american
sports university.
I don't know if anyone knowsabout that.
It was like it was a.
It was a university that wasbeing built in california.
It was um and basically offeredme to come out there and train
there and it's supposed to beaccredited by the time I
graduated and everything.
But they offered me to pay formy flights, my hotels, my food,
my training, everything.
So I went for a little over ayear.
I was actually trained while Iwas there.

(22:10):
I was trained with JosephSaleem.
He was the head coach of theprogram at the time.
So it was a pretty good timewhile I was there.
But I remember, before the PanAm Games team trials I can't
remember what Pan Am Games teamtrials the guy who was the
president in charge of the wholecollege, a Korean guy, asked to
have a meeting with us.
It was like 9 in the morning.
We go to this meeting, we sitoutside of his office for, I

(22:30):
think, until about 1030.
So an hour and a half and we'vebeen sitting out there and,
mind you, he's in the office.
Finally he calls us in.
We go in there.
We're all standing there, me,it was.
You remember?
James Mutaseri, nia Abdallah Me.
James Mutaseri, nia Abdallah,jessica Torres.
We're all standing up in a lineand we're standing in front of

(22:50):
his desk, hands behind our back,doing like the very traditional
thing, and he looks at us.
After waiting an hour and ahalf, he goes if you lose, don't
come back.
And then sends us out of hisoffice.
That was the end of the.
I kid you not, that was the endof the conversation.
I made the team that year,james Wachowski made the team
that year.
I think a bunch of us did.
Well, my point is like so Iagree with you a little bit.

(23:10):
I think there has to be somefollow-up and some repercussions
and some we're not just givingthings out for free just to be a
part.

Speaker 5 (23:21):
But I'm going to ask you another question there,
because this is so unbelievable,because you're so unsolicited,
and so you were talking about if, if the scenario presents
itself where there's a, there'sa good athlete and a good coach
and a good support network,somebody has to look at this and

(23:41):
decide if that's true or not.
And if it is you, it is, theycould be funded, hypothetically,
right, and then have oversight.
So it doesn't get crazy likewhat you mentioned as well,
because that's my I guess that'smy question, because I think
there has to be some oversightgroup.

(24:01):
Let's say it's not the USOC,let's say it's the USAT and they
have to say is TJ really thecoach?
I'm just using your name, youknow it's coach X who's got
these programs.
Can you really get them towhere they need to get to just
because he has people on theteam?
Because if he hasn't, if hehasn't won a world championship
medal, if he hasn't won a grandprix medal, if he hasn't won an

(24:23):
Olympic medal, we're justspeculating, right.
So I think that weeds out a lotof people.
Number one and then, if theseathletes are doing well because
I think there's some athletesthat have a system, like you did
, herb, like they would haveloved you to come.
We would have loved you to cometo Colorado Springs, but you

(24:44):
didn't need it.
You didn't want to leave yourhome in New York, you didn't
want to leave your trainingpartners in New York, you don't
want to leave your food in NewYork, and it didn't matter.
You didn't really need us andyou were still successful.
You still won Olympic goldmedal.
Blah blah, blah, blah blah.
And I think there's a fewpockets of people with their
athletes that can do the samething.
And, should there be oversight,absolutely You're not going to

(25:07):
give people money for free.
I'm not going to pay you money.
And then I hear someone talking.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
I know, I don't think they realize I'm doing a
podcast, but now they do Goahead.

Speaker 5 (25:17):
Okay, okay, no, no, no.
So my question is do you thinkthat let's say let's use USA
Taekwondo they so my question isdo you think that let's say,
let's use USA Taekwondo theyhave their academy.
But let's say there's anathlete or somebody out there
that has a good program with agood coach and they have some
results.
Do you support them?

Speaker 3 (25:36):
without them coming out.
You have to.
You have to, and the reason isthis Right now, what you've
created in the US is nobodyoversaw that program.
So they took dollars first,performance second.
So they were enamored with,hoodwinked by and courted by,
some medical finance group inthe middle of ass backwards,

(25:59):
kansas, nowhere, and they'relike come, come, come, because
we need something to do with allthis money and and we want to
we want to be cool too, and wehave this training center that
we really don't actually careabout your sport.
We have other things here thatare better than your sport, but
we need to show them that wehave diversity in our approach
and we have a pile of money weneed to spend.

(26:20):
So come and we'll welcome youwith open arms now.
Now your job is to get peopleactually come here, because
nobody wants to come here andyou bring them here and, by the
way, we are the Mecca of nothing.
So come, come anyway.
Now, that's okay.
Take the money, put yournational office there, and the

(26:41):
group before this which peopledon remember is indianapolis.
Indianapolis had more ngbs thancolorado springs because they
had, they created ainfrastructure to support them,
they gave money to them, theygave them free, rent, whatever,
and so swimming's out there,everybody's out there.
So all of a sudden, if you doget critical mass, you become
the de facto olympic trainingcenter for sport not training

(27:05):
centers, but where people cometo do business as such, in in,
in kansas or wherever this placeis that you have this training
center?
It's not the same and you'renot developing excellence.
And, by the way, you can't what.
When you develop these kind ofprograms, you either get two
types of athletes.
You get the athlete that's gotnothing going on in his life or

(27:27):
her life needs somewhere to be,doesn't want to work but wants
to train and doesn't necessarilywant to perform.
They want the free paycheck,they want the free food and they
want a place to sleep ratherthan getting a job at Starbucks
or Home Depot, like some old jobprograms had to have to make
money to train and compete.
So that's part of the problem.

(27:50):
Now you take a guy like me oranyone else.
In our generation we worked, wefound a way to work in things
that we could to make enoughmoney to survive, and then we
were surrounded by our bestcoaches, our best partners and
our community, and so we managedto survive and thrive, in part

(28:11):
because we had the constant fearof performance, meaning if we
didn't perform we couldn't comehome.
You could come home to thetraining center in North
Carolina because nobody cares,they don't even know who you are
.
You can't come home to Jerseyor New York because everybody
that you left is expecting youto win and, by the way, they

(28:38):
know you, like cheers, by name.
We know your name, and so youhave a certain level of
accountability, of pride in yourperformance, and so right now,
what you have, unfortunately, isa well-funded system where the
ngb is pocketing all the moneythey're paying for the plane
tickets.
I saw sherman, whatever hisname is, sphinx, nelson lopez,
whatever his name is, in fajuja.

(28:59):
Wherever he was in, whateverthe last, what's he doing there?
What?

Speaker 6 (29:03):
having a good old time.
What's he and then I?
What?

Speaker 3 (29:06):
and then I watch his his, uh facebook post.
Is he a preacher?
Is he a rap star?
Is he, uh, pimpy rings, pimp,pinky rings and pimping so that
he's become the de facto umprince under the king and queen,
jay and steve and you canfigure out which one's which and
they're all happy why?

(29:26):
Because they're getting planetickets, they don't have to stay
home and they don't have to seetheir wives.
And that's not the way you runan NGB.
And so let's just call it forwhat it is Now
performance-driven underperformance-driven models.

Speaker 5 (29:39):
Hold on, hold on.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
And no performance reviews either.
Oh, no, no.
I mean, let's be honest.
Who's reviewing theirperformance?
No one, you know why?
Because there's nothing toreview.
If the board were awake andthey weren't drinking the
Kool-Aid and they weren't havingthe Soma from 1984, George
Orwell keeping them happy, theywould be going.
What did you guys do at thelast Olympics?

(30:06):
Nothing.
Find a new job.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Before we go too far, I want to go back just real
quick and then we can keep going.
But with the whole, you know,you find that one athlete that
is, you know, in a greatsituation training-wise, has a
great coach, has a great system,has a great path, has a big
network of people.
I mean, is that not why I wasable to stay and train in Miami
when I went to WCAP?
They don't take that stufflightly.
When you go to USM, you havetwo reasons.

(30:29):
You have environmental reasons.
Like you ski or something, ornot even skiing, you need to be
somewhere where your environmentcondones you need to be there.
That's one.
And then for two, it's supportsystem and training system.
They came out, they vetted thesystem, they saw the training,
we had dinner, we talked aboutit, they talked to you, met you,
and they allowed me to stay fortwo years and train to pursue
something that I had alreadystarted, because they saw that

(30:51):
the facilities, they saw thatthe coaching, they saw the
support was there.
So when you ask the question of,when you ask the question of,
should the answer be yes?
The answer has to be yesbecause America's big, the
country's big, the area's big,and then you do have coaches who
can coach.
You do have programs, whounderstand what programming is.
It's not a Taekwondo school,it's not your run of the mill,

(31:14):
no, you have Olympic-levelcoaches, olympic-level athletes
with Olympic-level prestige andOlympic-level sight, working
with an athlete on a levelthat's making them, it's working
for them.
Right now, that's my biggestthing, that's why I go a little
crazy is that you take kids froma system, take people from a
system that they're growing in,just to go there, and then what,
and then what?
That can't be.
The only indication of fundingcannot be your location, like if

(31:36):
you come train with us, thenwe'll pay you.
That is the dumbest thing I'veever heard in my entire life.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
It can't be your only way.
It can be different in teamsports.
So in a team sport you can makean argument that teams should
train and live together and youcould create a model In
individual sports and the wayyou understand this.
Just look at what the IOC does.
The IOC funds individualathletes in individual training

(32:01):
programs where they reside.
That's where the money goes.
They don't fund trainingcenters.
They fund individuals in theirtraining environments because
they realize that's what works.
So when you're looking at Africa, when that IOC money comes from
Solidarity and some of it wentto Patrice from Mark and his
group, they looked at okay, whois the guy running the program?

(32:22):
What's his level of success?
Where does the athlete want totrain?
In that situation, they movedthe athlete to the best coach.
So it's really not hard math.
It really just is a question ofwhether you want to do the math
and sometimes you don't likethe math.
And in this particularsituation, usa Taekwondo doesn't
like the math because itdoesn't benefit what they want
to do, which is playing ticketsand pinky rings.

(32:45):
Pimps and pinky rings.

Speaker 5 (32:47):
But, I'm not even thinking of changing it.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
They can still fly wherever the hell they want.
They can go wherever they want.
I'm just saying from a go ahead, Coach.

Speaker 5 (32:54):
No, no, I agree.
I'm going to agree with you, tj, because you're right.
If the only way that they willfund somebody, first of all, if
I think Athlete X is good and Ipitch them, I talk to them, I
tell them everything we want toget because obviously I believe
in them, they're not having thisconversation with everybody,

(33:15):
they're having it with a selectfew people.
And what if that person says,no, I can't, I have to be with
my mom, I have to be with my dad.
I got to support my littlebrother, I have a great training
, I have all those differentthings that you just said.
Do you believe in me or don'tyou believe in me?
If you believe in me, you wouldgive me that support and there
could be some oversight, therecould be some results orientated

(33:37):
right, like you said, young, ifall of a sudden I'm taking the
money and all of a sudden I'mgetting my ass kicked.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
They're called benchmarks.
It's what?
Again back to the Army system.
It's called benchmarks,benchmarks, whatever, bench.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Oh no.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, benchmarks, bench, benchmarks.
You set things in place wherethis is where you are now.
By next year, let's say, ifit's something as basic as
you're in the top 20 now or top50.
Now, by next year, you're onthe national team.

(34:09):
You set benchmarks and youreview those benchmarks every
year, case by case, becausedifferent, because maybe athlete
a was injured through half theseason, didn't get to compete,
maybe there's a reason to keephim on athlete b, blah, blah.
You keep it moving, but you,you cannot tell me.

Speaker 5 (34:14):
The only way to be funded in the united states of
america to do taekwondo is ifyou go to that one room in north
carolina and train, it'simpossible I'm gonna get, I'm
gonna give you, I, you and Iwant to keep going on this
because so, for example, if youhave a situation where you have
a good coaching right, you haveaccess to other good coaches
that work with that athlete.
If you have programming enoughwhere people are coming in

(34:37):
consistently, that's good andyou have access to where you can
send that person.
They don't, so that's all.
In their home, there's nothing.
That's all the right model,that's the same or, if not,
better than what other peopleare doing.
So it's a it's a great model.
But I'm going to go.
I'm going to go.
One more.
That cause, I think what's whatthey say a lot of times when

(35:00):
people say is like, oh, I needto train with you.
You know, you got to come trainwith me so that we can
understand each other.
It makes sense, but it's a loteasier for the coach to learn
the athlete than the athlete toto abandon everything that
they've done for 15 years oftheir life, to go into a new
system and expect results in thenext 12 months, six months,

(35:23):
eight months.
As a matter of fact, I was aliving proof of this.
I trained up until 1988 bymyself.
Blah, blah, blah, got to theOlympics, won a World Cup, won a
Pan Am Championship and got asilver medal at the Olympics.
All right, I went out toColorado Springs and I probably
had my.
I was lucky, I had some medals,but my performance was not good
for another two years.

(35:45):
Because I look good in training,I look good doing the drills
and, I kid you not, I remembergetting to the match and going
what the hell do I do?
I wasn't comfortable with myold shit.
I wasn't comfortable with thenew crap.
I was lost.
God gave me a gift and I waslucky enough to kind of figure
it out, but in my brain that'show I was feeling and I don't

(36:07):
think there's many people likeme.
So my point is you take a kidthat's successful, has a support
network, all the coaching, allthe resources other than
financial support and you knowgetting to events out of his
system that he's successful inor she's successful in, and put
him in somewhere where theydon't want to be, with not the
right training partners, with adifferent coach from a different

(36:29):
mentality.
They're not the same philosophy.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
It just means, as an organization, you just don't
really want to win.
You don't want to win.
You want to be like going backto.
You just want to be around fora long time.
You know you just want to.
You just want to be a for along time.
Because what they're saying isit makes no sense.
You can't make it make sense.
You've got to know yoursurroundings.
You've got to know youratmosphere.
You've got to know who you'reworking with.

(36:52):
You've got to know who thesekids are being trained by.
You know what I'm saying.
He likes to cut me off.

Speaker 5 (37:05):
Yeah, it's too loud, yo it's way too loud.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
He's getting bored over there.
It's too much karate talk.
No, but it just doesn't makeany sense.
You can't explain it to me.
Where it makes sense, let's saywe've never done it before, but
where we are now in this wholepoint of going, are we ahead,
are we behind?
Are we somewhere in the middle?
Do we need to catch up?
Do we need to go faster?

(37:28):
Where are we at?
That's the part that I think Idon't think we're realizing.
I don't think we're ahead.

Speaker 5 (37:33):
We're definitely not ahead.
Bring it full circle.
We talked about the cadets.
This is our leadership havingthese situations right now with
athletes.
They have six people out thereright now with athletes.
They have six people out thereright now.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
They got six people out there and how is that?
At the academy, at the training?

Speaker 5 (37:50):
center, okay, academy , yeah, and maybe now Will's
coming.
Okay, eight people, ten people.
That's the model for our juniorprogram and our cadet program.
We're behind.
We're behind from a programmingstandpoint, not from an athlete
standpoint, not from apotential standpoint, but from a
programming standpoint.
Not from an athlete standpoint,not from a potential standpoint
, program programming standpointwe're.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
We're behind, so do another.
We're about to do another idcamp, though no, we're not
excited about the id camps.
We're about to do another idcamp.
We're good, but I don't know.
We're gonna identify for 20,apparently, 2032, um 2028 and
2032, as if, like, we don'tsupport our cadets and juniors.
Now why the hell does it matterif I identify you as a cadet or
junior?
What is?
Were you going to get a letterfrom me saying you're cool?

Speaker 1 (38:29):
I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
You're not going to do anything with the information
.
You clearly haven't doneanything with the information.
We've done these talent IDsbefore.
What has become of the talent?
What comes from it, besidesthem putting more money in their
pocket.

Speaker 5 (38:41):
My athlete was offered to go to a talent ID
camp.
What?
He's on the national team for asecond time.
He's won European Opens.
He's won Pan American Opens.
He beat the Pan American Gamesgold medal.
He beat the guy that's at theacademy.
And you want him to go to atalent ID camp and he went out
there for a week by himself.
That's what.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
I was going to say Meanwhile, you just had him in
your room for a week for a week.

Speaker 5 (39:03):
What do you need an ID?
Against who?

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Because if there's more talent that he needs to be
compared to in the rest of thenation other than this room,
then what are we doing?
Clearly, we're all wrong.

Speaker 5 (39:14):
Yeah, so I got.
So we got this Grand Prixchallenges in Charlotte.
It's coming up, it's in June.
You're going to love this.
They had this thing.
They were trying to bullypeople calling a stay to play.
You had to book through their.
Well, they tried to make yousee that you had to book through

(39:34):
their agency in order tocompete at the Grand Prix.
So you had a booking agency andthey were like, threatening
people, like if you don't, we'regoing to remove you from the
list, and like, finally, I thinkthat WT was like a housing
agency can't remove people froma list.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
But who's housing agency?
Because I feel like we've beenthrough this story already.
I feel like we've done this afew times in other places in the
world and it just held up tonothing.
People figured out and theorganization already, WT figured
out that people book in advance, People book for their groups.
You can't force anyone to stayanywhere.

Speaker 5 (40:10):
They were calling people and telling them you have
to cancel your reservation andbook through us.
I'm like what if I only bookedand it got a non-refund?
It was crazy.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
But who is this organization is what I'm saying?
It's just some housing companyrandomly that somebody at WT
works with.

Speaker 5 (40:27):
No, it's USAT, it's LLC, local Organizing Committee.
It's not WT stuff at all.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah well, that ain't gonna fly, but we've tried
again Once again.
We've tried that already, right?
Some of those people in theorganization complained about
this already.
We've already been through this.
That's silly.

Speaker 5 (40:47):
I thought that was crazy, because people get like
really threatening letters,emails and stuff like that.
People are freaking out.
Oh my god, they're gonna.
You know, I got my plane ticket, I already have my hotel room
and they're gonna disqualify me.
I'm like, bro, they ain'tdisqualifying you.
There's no way they can't.
I mean unbelievable, so usatwttype stuff.
Right, herb, if you're going tocome watch for $50 a day, make

(41:11):
sure you go to the housingagency so that you too.
Oh so in Brazil we sent amessage.
We were like we were going tosave that hotel, but we get it
for this price, and the housingbureau's price was more.
We're like, why would we payfor more?
Hey, the cheeseburger costsfive bucks, but I'm going to pay
you ten.
What kind of shit is that?

(41:32):
You got a lot of poor countries, man.
Come on, man, this is some.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
BS, I don't care None about that.
I ain't in no poor country with50 bucks a day to watch
Taekwondo.
I want to know how much theOlympics?
I meant to look it up beforethis podcast to see how much the
Olympic tickets were To go tothe Olympic tickets for the
three sessions.

Speaker 5 (41:51):
It can't be crazy, Even at the Olympic Games we're
talking about $50 a day, I thinkso Like $35, $35, $35,
something like that.
I got it, but that's you'retalking about the Olympic Games.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Right, we're talking about the Olympic Games.

Speaker 5 (42:07):
You're talking about the NBA Finals.
You're talking about the NBAFinals.
You ain't talking aboutpreseason shit.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Exactly it's a Grand Prix challenge.
I don't know.
I think, like you said, itcomes down to you got to figure
out how to fund athletes wherethey stand at the point,
especially if they're not beingsuccessful.
Again, I want to leave thecoach the air, the space to go.
I think that kid can besomething good.
I think he's not yet not inthis system, not the way he is,

(42:35):
but I think I could personallytake him and make him grow and
our system could take him andmake him grow.
That's why you move someone tosomewhere else.
But if it's not for that fact,I mean you're just I'm going to
say you take random people.

Speaker 5 (42:52):
That I'm not sure you know what to do with.
I'm not sure they fit your mold, I'm not sure they fit your
system and that's just a waste,like in my.
In my case, with my athlete, Imean my athletes and again I'll
debate with anybody on it, causethere's no debate but my
athletes is different than everysingle athlete that went out
there, because my athlete comesfrom a program that's you know
that's produced multiple Olympicgames.

(43:12):
you know, olympic medals, worldchampionship medals, grand Prix
medals a network that is justbigger than anyone's in the
country, and they don't want toaccept that as fact.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
What you're saying is fact, but people don't hear
that as fact, Like I don't knowif it needs to be written down,
put on paper, spread out in aspreadsheet, strategically
placed so you can understand.
But it's happened over and overagain.

Speaker 5 (43:32):
Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, and so you know.
My point is the other athletes,whether they're good or not,
they were coming out of programsthat didn't have a high-level
coach, that didn't have a goodroom around them.
So maybe those people overthere said you know what, you
can't compare what we're doingover here to what you're doing
at home.
And they could be right.
But in this situation I'll givethem the benefit of the doubt.

(43:58):
We're on par, I'm giving youthe benefit of the doubt and I'm
being nice, I'm being kind,because you know, again, if you
give Juan Moreno a facility anda budget and athletes, yeah, try
me out.

Speaker 4 (44:15):
We're rocking and rolling baby?

Speaker 2 (44:17):
No for sure.
But that's the thing.
It just comes down to this wandof money that they try to wave
in front of everyone's faces,like I don't think they've went
as far as they go.
What are we going to do withthis athlete when we get him
there?
Like I don't think they've wentas far as they go?
What are we going to do withthis athlete when we get him
there?
How are we going to takeAthlete X and make them better
progressively through the time.

Speaker 5 (44:31):
And Young they've done it for I don't know how
many years now, because they'vedone it with Gavin they did it
with.
I forgot the other kid, joeWhitworth's kid, they did it
with.
I mean, how many kids have theyhave come through that program
that have come and gone that?

Speaker 2 (44:46):
they picked and they got no medals.
I think more kids have quit thesport as a whole than the
number of champions they've madeor people they've made better.
How about that?
How about that as a fact?
How about that as a fact?
I'm going to say, even the onesthat achieved high-level medals
Olympic gold medals, pan AmGames gold medals, world
Championship gold medals allthose people they're gone, they

(45:06):
don't exist anymore.
Gold medals, world championship, those, all those people,
they're gone, they don't existanymore.
So, so, so, so we've made.
We've made more people quitthis sport than we have people
that have progressed andcontinue in a part of this world
right now.
That's a fact.
That's crazy.
That's a fact.

Speaker 5 (45:17):
No, that's a fact.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
That's crazy too, so what are we talking about?
I I.
Every time we get here, I getto the point where I'm just like
this is where I turn the lighton right.
That's what I go you know, likeI mean, what are we doing?
We're clearly not doing theright thing.
We're clearly not doing theright thing.
There's no way.

Speaker 5 (45:36):
So I don't know so but that's, I mean, it's, it's,
it's some stuff, simple, as youknow.
You know, congratulating thecadet team, you know, uh, after
it's over, and you know you'resupposed to motivate them before
, like that, that team of egghead coach, you know, good luck
guys, come on.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
So I think that's part of the.
You know, there's obviously alot of problems, but certainly
one of the problems that ishappening is and it goes back to
just foundation.
So the foundation ofperformance is not being used,
it's simply not being done.
Number two, the accountabilityisn't happening.

(46:23):
And then, number three, theleadership is vacant and vacuous
.
And so when you look at thosethree things, you have absent a
glorious accident or a wonderfulmiracle like the Pope coming
from Chicago.
It's not going to happen andyou'll have no results.
But the wake up call shouldhave been the last olympic games

(46:46):
, where they invested all thistime, energy and money and I was
just watching a funny video ofuh gareth, uh brownstein and um
and cj talking about what theywere going to do and why and how
they were going to do it andwhy and what was going to happen
and why.
And I I almost think thatshould be played endlessly on

(47:06):
cycle for the board of directors, because those were inherent
promises in bose and nothinghappened.

Speaker 4 (47:12):
So I know we lost him yeah I don't know he's.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
He's probably got bored and he's he's got to go.
He's got to go do something.
So someone would like to jointhe room.
I, of course he'd like to jointhe room he's back, he's back,
he's back.

Speaker 5 (47:27):
I was talking to Elsa and you guys were like are you
guys frozen?

Speaker 3 (47:30):
well, I found.
I found some early footage ofof WON in Korea what is it gonna
be?

Speaker 5 (47:43):
I gotta ask hyung, I gotta ask you last one I'm not a
fan of WON but I don't thinkit's light.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
People when they see it, they think it's a little bit
I got to ask you.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
I got to ask you what last one of the questions about
training.

Speaker 5 (47:57):
Am I the?

Speaker 4 (47:57):
black guy.

Speaker 6 (47:59):
Yes, I thought, I thought, I thought that was the
both of you that was me.
That was me interviewing you.
I was the Asian guy.

Speaker 5 (48:07):
Just because a good story.
I was telling TJ off camerawhen we were starting.
I was telling him about SifuVizio, because he's like this
iconic guy and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
He used to beat you up.

Speaker 5 (48:19):
He did right.
You said he was this, like Iwas telling TJ off camera.
I was like, oh my God, I'm justkidding when I first I had
heard all the stories about himand how amazing he was as a
fighter, as a person, as aphilosopher, and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
I mean he's a legit undergroundfighter.
I mean crazy.

(48:39):
So and I almost like loved theguy without even knowing the guy
, just from you know, growing upwith you and hearing all these
stories, cause if you tell mesomeone's good I believe you.
You know.
So anyway.
So when I met him at Kevin'swedding and the dude was about
this big, I was like that's theguy.
But cause I remember youtelling me you'd go in like a

(49:00):
little ring with them and hewouldn't wear any pads except
for boxing gloves.
And you guys would we have allgear head to toe and have like
literally and I know how brutalyou were and I'm like I don't
understand how you didn't likekill that little man, but he was
just so he's an individual.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
You know, and I don't I um he's.
He was very private about histraining.
It was very private about hisuh preparation and he didn't
think that we should share evenour own preparation.
He gave me permission at onepoint because he realized.
He said you know, you're goingto be different.
You need to spread your message, your gospel, he says you, you

(49:41):
can't be like, you shouldn't bedoing what I'm doing.
You need to teach many people,not a dojong.
And so he was um.
You got to understand.
He was one of the firstnon-asians to learn kung fu
period.
He was taken in at a schoolwhere they didn't take
non-asians and then he fought inthose underground things and he

(50:02):
was the real deal.
Then he went into the pka andhe was the real deal there and
beat everybody and did it evenlater in his career, after I
retired from the olympics yougotta understand, older than me
and retired and he still did it.
So for me there wasn't aquestion as to whether I would
um train with him and whether Iwould stay with him.

(50:25):
I stayed with him becausethat's where my success was and
he was a mystical character andanybody who ever trained with
him and, by the way, I wasn'talone, like Emilio Navarez,
world champion kickboxer, cameto him, the Chong brothers,
george and John, when they wereon the Budweiser team, came to

(50:46):
him to train and these peoplewould just, if they could get an
invite, they would show up fora couple of days.
And uh, the national karateteam came to train with us
because they three or four ofthe guys came from Sensei
Miyazaki school, tori Miyazaki,and they came to train with us.

(51:06):
So to be invited there or to beable to train at that level.
It was a different environment.
But, by the way, theenvironment.
You came for free, you didn'tpay, you trained if you were
able to get to train there, andyou met the expectations and

(51:27):
that was it.
So it was a little bitunderground, it was brutal, it
was no holds barred, literallylike in.
You know, as far as thetraining, not the stylified and
and then it produced champions,many, not just me, but anybody
that came in there was betterfor the experience of having
come through it.

(51:48):
So that's a culture that exists.
It's a culture that exists atpeak performance, right.
It's a culture that exists.

Speaker 5 (51:56):
But what about him as an individual, like how I mean,
because, like I said, he was solittle?
First of all, I'm jealous andI'm pissed at you because you
never invited me.
I thought I was your brother.
You never invited me to comeand train well, once you get
beat up, well, I, to be honest,I had run out of invites.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
So what would happen is I was looking for people.
I was looking for people thatcould help me be my training
partner, so I wanted them totrain with us there so that I'd
have somebody to train with thatwould understand.
When I left there and I brought, I tried, four or five people,
six or seven or eight or 10.
And the last one was KevinPadilla, because he was the only

(52:33):
one that stayed.
The rest quit, the restwouldn't do it.
And then he got to a pointwhere he said don't bring anyone
else.
He said because they're notgoing to stay.
He says they don't understand,understand.
And so, um, you know, for a guy,for a person of his stature and
his power and his understandingof fighting, if he were today

(52:56):
to coach the usa taekwondo team,they would win.
They would win because of hismethod, he, he would shortly,
quickly figure out the system.
He would look at it, say thisis how you win, here are the
things you can do to thwart, howthey win, here are the things
you can do in addition to whatthey do to win, and here's how

(53:19):
you win.
And that's what he did with mygame and, quite frankly, he took
Padilla, who was a good player,potentially a great player, and
he took him from a player whowasn't winning and made him a
player who won five for fiveyears on the US team, right.

(53:40):
So he had the ability and stillhas that ability to see the
potential in somebody and andand make it now for himself.
Personally, he fought everybodyand anybody, any size, didn't
matter, and that's a skill youknow well.
That's Mark Williams too, andMark Williams um was 140 pounds,

(54:04):
150 pounds to do.
The guy you know, for whateverit's worth, you got to
understand what he did.
This is a guy who didn't train,he just fought, show up at the
gym and fight for an hour.
He thought training was showingup a couple days before the
tournament and training a littlebit.
He went into the nationalchampionships and dismantled

(54:28):
every fighter put in front ofhim, including Dung Lee
Dismantled, dismantled,dismantled.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
We used to go to his gym in New York and we'd walk
downstairs to this weirdbasement area, move the curtain
and it was just like 20 sweatymen down there just fighting
each other no, I mean like talkto tony talk to tony five hours,
six hours talk to tony graff itwas crazy talk to tony graff.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
So tony graff comes in as a, as a kid, with peter
and bardatos and and talk totony this this is a man who and
this is one of the things thatpeople forget about fighting,
and this is why I'll giveeverybody a chance, anybody from
any sport.
He was a guy who didn't fightthe style of Taekwondo we did.

(55:16):
He fought point Taekwondo andpoint karate.
He fought in tournaments whereeverybody, anybody, monkey kung
fu guys would come in literallydoing monkey kung fu.
Mafia Holloway came in and wasrobo breakdancing during his
fighting.
He fought cats that were likeridiculous and he dismantled

(55:39):
every guy because he understood,first of all himself, second of
all, fighting in general, andthis was the gift that Sifu
Vizio had.
He has and has he had theability to understand what it
means to fight.
And right now I'm working on myyou know, my next book and I'm

(56:00):
talking.
I'm thinking about and I'd asksome of my friends to
participate.
I know you're waiting for yourinvites, but I'm trying to
understand what I want to sayabout fighting and the strategy
of fighting.
So I'm working on it now andwhat I realized is
philosophically, we all startwith an idea of what is fighting

(56:21):
.
What does it mean to win?
And you can break it down intothree simple things.
And you can break it down intothree simple things you do what
you do well, you avoid what youdon't do well and then you
exploit the weaknesses of whatother people don't do well and
avoid their strengths.
That's fighting in general.
Everything else we do fromthere becomes strategic

(56:41):
implementation of those basiccomp, of basic confines and
constrictions.
Now how you do that?
Coach Randall knows I alwaystalk about progressions.
I do A.
I see what happens when I do A.
I do B.
When A doesn't work, I do A, b,c when I'm trying to trap

(57:03):
somebody, because fighting isbasically do what you do well.
If it works, continue doing it.
If it doesn't work, figure outhow to trap somebody.
Because fighting is basicallydo what you do well.
If it doesn't work, figure outhow to trap what they do well
and then exploit theirweaknesses.
Now if you watch any sport,you'll see that and um, I always
use the second analogy as aweakness of fighting and sport
and anything.
And you see it in fighting.

(57:24):
All the time when somebody isfighting, they try to win.
Then when they start losing andthere's 20 seconds left, they
start fighting differently andthey actually enjoy, in some
cases, more success.
Now, had they done that earlier, they would have enjoyed the
success sooner.
And you see it in football allthe time Guys are trying to win,

(57:46):
they're trying to win.
It's not working.
Last two minutes they changetheir whole game and all of a
sudden 20 points go on.
It's the risk reward factor,right.
And so as we look at this and asI write this, you know I want
there's no book, and I think youguys would be hard pressed to
find it or video series on thatconcept of Taekwondo, because
it's hard to write and it's hardto think about and it's hard to

(58:08):
say, but it needs to be said.
And, by the way, I can tell youthis once I write it, or once
it's said, it'll just be astarting place.
It'll evolve, but I guaranteeyou it'll be more truthful and
useful than whatever is going onin North Carolina right now at
their center, because that's not.

(58:29):
You need to bring in thoseathletes and do what's called an
individual education program,an IEP.
You look at each athlete.
You look at their strengths,weaknesses, see what
opportunities are, what threatsthere are to their success.
And then you work with them.
In addition to the corefoundation of what they should
know, what do you do to makethem better?
That's the difference between agreat coach and a good coach.

Speaker 5 (58:54):
Yeah, sorry, a couple things on Mark Williams,
because I know he's kind of he'sa crazy guy.
But TJ, literally the guy neverfought a Hogo tournament in his
life.
You got to imagine this.
He's coached people, he's satin his chair, he's been around
forever.
He's never fought a Hogotournament in his life.

(59:16):
The dude goes to nationals infeatherweight and wins the
national championships, doesn'tgo to the trials, he just wants
to go and beat everybody.
Just because I'm like I was madat people for losing to him,
because I'm like how are yougoing to let this dude come in
there that's never fought andbeat everybody?
And he beat everybody and hebeat them at exactly what he

(59:37):
said.
He knows what he does well.
He knows what to avoid ontheirs and how to exploit them.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
He kicked three or four times the entire tournament
, maybe five.

Speaker 5 (59:49):
It was a thing of beauty.
It was a little crazy.
So once I got to know him alittle bit later, he coached me.
One time he comes up to me, mynickname was Flaco for being
skinny.
He's like Flaco, don't get hit,and I'm like freaking genius.
Okay, I was like.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
I was planning on the other one I was gonna get hit a
lot, all right, I've had the.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
I've had the privilege of him coaching me too
.
The select words he used were alittle bit a little bit tougher
, had nothing to do with tecuadope, but the point was received
and I did not lose, so I don'tyeah for sure, but but then,
when Herb had his first goldmedal camp, it was me, Kevin
Steve Kaepner, ChristinaRodriguez, who's appointed

(01:00:34):
fighter for the match, and thenHerb Pedro Xavier.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
No, Pedro wasn't the first one.

Speaker 5 (01:00:37):
The second one, third one.
Yeah, he was the second one, soanyway it was boiling up.
I mean by then I was retired.
I can fight a lot of people andI'm like it was only a matter
of time before me and him had togo.
And so we're fighting and likeyou know he, you know he fights
like this and stuff, like hefreaking reverse punched like a

(01:01:01):
hole in my, he's like, and we'relike no hokus on, just like
shin guards, forearm guards, wefight hard but like in those
days you didn't punch like that.
That was considered like notappropriate.
You could kick the shit out ofme, you could kick my, you could
knock me out, but you didn'tpunch somebody because he didn't
.
And he went and it hit me and Iwas going like I was like and I

(01:01:22):
was like all right, I can't lethim know.
He got me.
Later on I got him with a cutback kick.
Nice, cut back kick Hit him.
I knew I got it.
So later on we're out there,we're at dinner.
I said I got to tell you man,you punched a hole in my
freaking chest.
Man, that shit hurt.
He's like yo, that back kick.
It almost sat me down.
I was like all right, we'recool, we're cool, we're cool.

(01:01:48):
Yeah, we're cool, we got it.
But it was funny.
I mean, mark's always crazylike that.
But yeah, anyway, I just I wasgoing on about that.
You know stephen vizio becausehe was mythical to me and you
know I, I knew about his historyand I knew how important he was
to you, like I said, fortraining wise philosoph, and I
remember you telling me that hedidn't like you guys showing
people what you did.
Just be quiet, you, tj.
We talked about how everyonegets on the internet right now

(01:02:09):
and you know we had a greatmatch.
It wasn't what I came to do andeveryone wants to tell all the
details of why they lost, or youknow why they won, or like as
if we didn't think they weretrying to win, like it's almost
like a what do you call it?
Some kind of imposter.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Imposter syndrome, almost.
You want everyone to feel youfeel not that who you say you
are is who you are, but evenwhat you just said about the
training stuff and exposing thetraining, I mean this is a
different world, though I'mstill getting used to putting
trainings on the internet andtrainings on YouTube and

(01:02:45):
trainings on Instagram.
I don't think there's anysecrets in taekwondo, let me
tell you.
I really, really don't thinkthere's any technique secrets or
anything like that.
But, like I come from the samegeneration where you didn't
really talk about if you weren'tin a room with me, you don't
know what I do and you didn'twant to be in a room with me.
If you didn't want to be in aroom with me, you knew what I
did that's how it works.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
I think I just heard that quote from the puff daddy
uh trial.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
That's going on right now that you didn't want to be.
You didn't want to be in a room.
If you want the room, only wayyou know what's going on in the
room.

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
Is you in the room, baby?
And apparently she's tellingeverything happened in the room
but but but you know what?

Speaker 5 (01:03:21):
I guess maybe we could finish on this.
I know we can finish on this.
You know, because p becausePeter you asked you know about,
like, you know our programmingand where we are with cadets and
juniors and seniors.
How can we're?
Are we behind, aren't we?
You know where we're at?
I'm going to say that we, a lotof people, have imposter, you
know, syndrome number one andnumber two.
I think people want or allowthemselves to be victims.

(01:03:45):
They allow themselves to havean excuse on they're young or
it's their first time or theydidn't know.
Whatever it is.
I don't understand why youshould verbalize that publicly.
It's okay if I'm talking to myathletes saying, hey, listen, tj
, you're young, you're new inthe division, you changed
divisions we're going to buildup, but to have to go out there

(01:04:06):
and publicly tell everybody thatI think we're creating a victim
mentality.
I think we're creating a weakperson.
I think we're building excuseswhere it doesn't have to be you
won or you lost, it's okay.
Whatever people need to thinkabout it, they will or they
won't but to go out there andhave to say it.
I think we're becoming victimsand we're becoming weak and

(01:04:27):
therefore we won't but to go outthere and have to say it I
think we're becoming victims andwe're becoming weak and
therefore we won't be successful.
So I think that that's got tostop.
I think coaches, I think weshould talk to our people, I
think we should talk to our kidsand just have the coaching and
the conversations in-house.
You want to put stuff on socialmedia?
I won, I lost the conversationsin-house.

(01:04:48):
You want to put stuff on socialmedia?
I won, I lost, had a great time, okay, but to go into details
of this and that man that's toovictim and that's too weak and
that's too soft and that's not awinning model in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:04:57):
I don't think they're making it.
Sometimes it feels like they'remaking excuses for themselves.
It's not for the athlete,they're making excuses for
themselves.
Or, like I trained them, I didthis, I did this, we didn't do
this, we didn't do that like Idon't know.
I agree with you 100%.
I think that that's where wehave to start with our, with our
kids.
We talk about the cadets, thejuniors or seniors.
I mean, unfortunately, I thinkthat those levels used to be a

(01:05:18):
lot stronger in America thanthey are now.
From the.
I'll start from juniors.
I didn't grow up with cadets asa, as a whole.
We had team collegiate team,pan Am Championship team and the
world team.
Those are like your three, yourlike stepping stones in the
direction.
Obviously, the Olympic teamcoming later, olympic medals,
but I just think we're not asstrong like that.
We're not as strong anymore andI think, like I said when I
said earlier about the havingthose strong hubs and those

(01:05:40):
strong coaches and those strongprograms, I think those are
really utilized, whether it wason purpose or an accident.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Those rooms were utilized and you knew where you
had to go if you wanted to bethe best that was there was
there was.
There was really no other wordfor it.
So well, I'm gonna, I'm gonnause that as our jumping off
point.
I'm gonna remember and remind,remind everybody of a couple of
things.
Just the last thing is if youwant to be in the room with tj,
that's how you know what goes onin the room right and bring
your own bottle of baby oil.
That's all I'm asking.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
Go to my school website that has no baby oil,
but go there.
I'm putting some new videos andtraining stuff up there.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
You don't get that with your white belt and
everybody.
If you get a chance and youfind yourself stuck in North
Carolina, make sure to visitTJ's new facility.
It's beautiful.
And of course, if you're inMiami, go visit Coach Moreno's
facilities.
If you're in California, govisit somebody else's.
I'm busy, but this has been the.
Warehouse 15.

(01:06:36):
Now, you're always welcome.
My friends are always welcometo come out and visit.
I was in most recently inMaryland.
Shout out to Chan Yun Lee whoinvited me to go to his dojang
in Boyd and he's actually inGermantown, maryland, which is
outside of Boyd, and what aprofessional facility, and you

(01:07:00):
know I love success.
I went to this guy's school andthe school really wasn't
physically much bigger than mine.
Outside he had four buses thathe did pick kids up in.
He had a van.
He had 60 kids on the mat.
I gave this pretty decent,hopefully, seminar and left them

(01:07:21):
with some stuff and enjoyedsome good food on the way out.
But it's nice to see ourbrothers in Taekwondo.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Are you going to teach entertaining at my gym
when you come?
Are you going to teachentertaining at my gym when you
come?
You gotta teach a training atmy gym when you come listen,
I'll come to your.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
I'll come to your gym and teach on a couple of things
.
One I don't know where.
I don't want to know about thatother room.
You got to have a secret entry.
Number two, you know I'll bringmy books and you better you.
I like to sell my books.
You better sell some books.
I got my training manual manual.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
I'll get your area set up in the corner.
That's it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
I'll sign some books and then three, I don't want to
go visit that other place inNorth Carolina and I don't want
to spend $50 a day and stay atthe Hooker Hotel for $200 a day.
So otherwise, like I saidbefore, sorry, not sorry.
This has been the Warehouse 15.
It'll be up and then next weekI'm going to challenge each of

(01:08:11):
you to bring a story.
Since Coach Moreno talked aboutmy mentor, one of my mentors, I
want you to dig down deep, deepinto your heart and find a
story about a mentor in yourlife that changed your life and
made you who you are today.
And with the exception of thePink Diddy story, we'll save
that one for later.
Warehouse 15, we're out, out.

Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
We are back.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
We are back.
It is the Warehouse 15.
And as we say in the videobefore this, sorry, not sorry.
Today we are joined byGrandmaster of disaster juan
moreno, second in charge, thirdon the award chart as a bronze
medalist, grandmaster of subdisaster, he is actually in a

(01:09:01):
he's in a internal policeinterrogation room.
Hence the light, and it shinesbright.
Hopefully johnny cochran, orwhoever's still alive, can come
and get him out.
If it does not fit, we mustacquit.
Welcome to welcome to thewarehouse.

(01:09:21):
Well, the menendez brothers aregetting out the.
The menendez brothers aregetting out, they're getting out
, they're getting out, they get,they're.
They're white, they're white,they're getting out, they're
getting out in.

(01:09:42):
In that, in that case.
In that case, bring long to me,bring long to me, bring long to
me.
That's an old joke.
Bring long to me.
But anyway, gentlemen, what dowe got today?
What's going on?
Tell us a little bit about life.
Who's starting us off today?
What?

Speaker 4 (01:10:14):
is it Richmond Virginia?
Oh okay.

Speaker 3 (01:10:44):
Okay, nice, nice.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Nice nice, nice, nice and Say I'm from Richmond.
I'm from Richmond.
Well, actually I'm from Henrico, but nobody knows anything
about Henrico so I just say I'mfrom Richmond, just to make it
easier.
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
I'm from Richmond.
Well, really I'm from New York,but All right, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
Sorry, mr Moreno, sorry coach.
Well, actually not sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Wow.

(01:12:18):
Hey.
Jason's trying to reach me.
Oh no, oh, my God, silver,silver, my god, it's over, it's

(01:12:50):
over.
Yeah, yeah, oh, my god, theylove his dad.
I've been asking about his dad.
They took his dad off the meds.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
Yeah, I see a lot of intelligence.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
They didn't think that it was called it.
So yeah, oh my gosh, I know Allright.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, his dad has been doinggreat.
But I think, like I asked himlast week, when he went to the

(01:13:33):
doctor, the doctor provided himwith an IV off the meds because
it was like he was seeing like awhole big band.
Okay, all right no-transcript.

Speaker 3 (01:25:55):
So I've been thinking about this a lot because I've
written a lot on performance andhow do you build performance.
And then, quite frankly, I'mlooking at like we talk about
every week almost about my sonand his performance, and what
can I do to make things workbetter?
So I think, first and foremostand this went astray with a
particular group out of Texasthat I won't mention but first
and foremost, you should alwayslook at what the athlete, where

(01:26:17):
they came from, what has broughtthem to this place of success
so far, and then what do youneed to fund?
It's called bubble funding.
They're on the bubble.
What do you need to get them tothe next level?
Now, that works if you have aresponsible subsystem of people
that understand it, support itand do everything necessary to

(01:26:38):
make sure that it happens, andin that case, it works.
It can be abused, though, andwhen it was abused, they funded
a particular group of athletesand the person in charge of that
program was a neophyte and hadmalintentions and only cared
about the subgroup of that group, which happened to be his

(01:27:00):
family.
They then brought people inbecause it was the mecca at that
time and they abused them.
They abused them, and there's abunch of stuff that happened to
people that were there, andthen there were people that got
harmed, and then there werepeople that many other bad
things happened, and that'sbecause there was no oversight
by the funding agency, which was, in part, the US Olympic

(01:27:21):
Committee and USA Taekwondo.
So the caveat is, when youbuild high performance plans
which I built a few and Iactually worked on one for USA
Taekwondo you've got to havemarkers and you've got to have
first.
You start with a plan, ahypothesis.
If I do this, this is theoutcome.

(01:27:43):
Here are the markers.
So you say I believe if I fund12 to 15 year olds in domestic
programs across the unitedstates and we hold regional or
national level identificationcamps and then we refund them
based on progress and and whatwe feel progress is not results

(01:28:05):
then we will yield thisimprovement in the regional
championships, the Pan Am Gamesand the world championships and,
ultimately, the Olympic Games,and then, based on those markers
, you either fund or continue tofund or you decrease funding.
This used to be the OlympicCommittee's model.
So when you do that, you holdpeople's feet to the fire just
like a professional team, and ifthey perform they get rewarded

(01:28:26):
and if they don't, they getfired.
And when you take the fear offiring people out, they don't
perform.
So there was a car and I'll goback to commercial.
There used to be cardealerships.
They paid the car dealershipguys $100 a month, that's all
they got.
Or $1,000 a month, that's allthey got, or a thousand dollars

(01:28:47):
a month, it doesn't matter.
It wasn't enough to live on.
But for every car they soldthey got an additional thousand
dollars or $2,000.
Well, those guys work theirbutts off to sell cars because
otherwise they didn't eat.
You know and I always jokeabout the model for USA
Taekwondo, but it should be.
Take.
You take these high levelathletes.

(01:29:08):
You take them to a worldchampionships.
You pay for their flight andyou pay for their hotel room.
If they lose their first round,you don't pay for their flight
home and you kick them out ofthe hotel room.
If they win their second fight,you pay for their flight and
you give them some money forfood.
If they make it to the thirdround, you pay for the flight
home and their flight and andyou give them some money for

(01:29:28):
food.
If they make it to the thirdround, you pay for the flight
home and the flight there, andyou give them a little more
money for food if they win agold medal yeah.
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:31:32):
Thank you, thank you Bye.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
So it doesn't get crazy like I mentioned.

Speaker 5 (01:31:38):
Well, because that's my I guess that's my impression,
Because I compare it to theother side Then the feed is a
positive thing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Feed is like that's the key.
Now, that's really good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:32:54):
yeah, you know it helps affectScott, I don't think they
realize I'm doing a podcast, butnow they do.

Speaker 3 (01:33:02):
Go ahead, you do, yeah, you have to, you have to,

(01:33:22):
you have to.
And the reason?
The reason is this right now,what you've created in the us is
nobody oversaw that program.
So they took dollars first,performance second.
So they were enamored with,hoodwinked by and courted by
some medical finance group inthe middle of ass, backwards,

(01:33:44):
kansas, nowhere, and they'relike come, come, because we need
something to do with all thismoney and and we want to we want
to be cool too, and we havethis training center that we
really don't actually care aboutyour sport.
We have other things here thatare better than your sport, but
we need to show them that wehave diversity in our approach
and we have a pile of money weneed to spend.

(01:34:06):
So come and we'll welcome youwith open arms.
Now your job is to get peopleactually come here, because
nobody wants to come here andyou bring them here and, by the
way, we are the Mecca of nothing.
So come, come anyway.
Now, that's okay, take themoney, put your national office

(01:34:26):
there, and the group before thiswhich people don't remember is
Indianapolis.
Indianapolis had more NGBs thanColorado Springs because they
had.
They created a infrastructureto support them, they gave money
to them, they gave them freerent, whatever, and so
swimming's out there,everybody's out there.
So all of a sudden, if you doget critical mass, you become

(01:34:47):
the de facto Olympic trainingcenter for sport Not training
centers, but where people cometo do business as such in Kansas
or wherever this place is thatyou have this training center,
it's not the same and you're notdeveloping excellence and, by
the way, you can't.
When you develop these kind ofprograms, you either get two

(01:35:08):
types of athletes.
You get the athlete that's gotnothing going on in his life or
her life needs somewhere to be,doesn't want to work but wants
to train and doesn't necessarilywant to perform.
They want the free paycheck,they want the free food and they
want a place to sleep ratherthan getting a job at Starbucks
or Home Depot, like some old jobprograms had to have to make

(01:35:31):
money to train and compete.
So that's part of the problem.
Now you take a guy like me oranyone else.
In our generation we worked, wefound a way to work in things
that we could to make enoughmoney to survive, and then we
were surrounded by our bestcoaches, our best training
partners and our community, andso we managed to survive and

(01:35:55):
thrive, in part because we hadthe constant fear of performance
, meaning if we didn't performwe couldn't come home.
You could come home to thetraining center in North
Carolina because nobody cares,they don't even know who you are
.
You can't come home to Jerseyor New York because everybody
that you left is expecting youto win and, by way, they know

(01:36:18):
you like cheers by name.
We know your name, and so youhave a certain level of
accountability, of pride in yourperformance, and so right now,
what you have, unfortunately, isa well-funded system where the
ngb is pocketing all the moneythey're paying for the plane
tickets.
I saw sh Sherman whatever hisname is, spinks Nelson Lopez,

(01:36:41):
whatever his name is, in Fajuja.
Wherever he was in, whateverthe last, what's he doing there?
And then I watch his Facebookpost.
Is he a preacher?
Is he a rap star?
Is he pinky rings and pimping?
Is he a rap star?
Is he a pimpy rings, pink,pinky rings and pimping so that

(01:37:03):
he's become the de facto umPrince under the King and queen,
j and Steve, and you can figureout which one's which.
And they're all happy why?
Cause they're getting planetickets, they don't have to stay
home and they don't have to seetheir wives, and that's not the
way you run an NGB.
And so let's just call it forwhat it is now performance

(01:37:32):
driven under performance drivenmodel.
Oh, no, no, because who'sreform?
Who's who's reviewing theirperformance?
No one, and you know why?
Because there's nothing toreview.
If the board were awake andthey weren't drinking the
kool-Aid and they weren't havingthe Soma from 1984, george
Orwell keeping them happy theywould be going.
What did you guys do at thelast Olympics?
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:39:04):
Find a new job.
Um, I'm going to go ahead andstart the recording.
That's perfect.
Little, little.

Speaker 3 (01:39:25):
So you could, you could.
So it can be different in teamsports.
So in a team sport you can makean argument that teams should
train and live together and youcould create a model In
individual sports and the wayyou understand this.
Just look at what the ioc does.
The ioc funds individualathletes in individual training

(01:39:46):
programs where they reside.
That's how people, that's wherethe money goes.
They don't fund trainingcenters, they fund individuals
in their training environmentsbecause they realize that's what
works.
So when you're looking at africa, when that ioc money comes from
solidarity and some of it wentto Patrice, from Mark and his
group, they looked at okay, whois the guy running the program?

(01:40:07):
What's his level of success?
Where does the athlete want totrain?
In that situation, they movethe athlete to the best coach.
So it's really not hard math.
It really just is a question ofwhether you want to do the math
and sometimes you don't likethe math.
And in this particularsituation, usa Taekwondo doesn't
like the math because itdoesn't benefit what they want
to do, which is playing ticketsand pinky rings.

(01:40:30):
Pimps and pinky rings, thankyou.

(01:41:31):
Bitch marks, oh, no, oh, thankyou, that's good, Thank you.

Speaker 6 (01:41:38):
I went out to Colorado Springs and I saw that
I was fine.

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
I was looking at the medals but my performance was
not good for another yearBecause I looked good, right, I
looked good, good, good.
I remember getting to the matchand I was like what the hell
did I do?
Look, I wasn't running the game.
I wasn't helping you, I wasrunning the game.
I was running the game.

(01:43:46):

Speaker 6 (01:43:49):

Speaker 1 (01:44:11):
That's no-transcript.

(01:47:41):
I feel like we've done this inother places in the world.
It helped us.
People figured out theorganization already figured out
that people can't stay anywhere.
They were talking to people andtelling them you can't do this.

Speaker 2 (01:48:05):
What if I don't do this?
It was crazy.
It's just some housing companylike randomly that somebody at
WP works with.
No, it's WCT, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:49:23):
It's looking hellishly important the corner.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you, I got it Right, right, right, right, right,

(01:49:50):
right, right, right, right,right, right, right, right,
right, right, I don't know.
But if it's not for that, thankyou.
I've been over and over andover and over and over and over

(01:50:15):
and over and over and over andover and over and over and over
and over and over and over andover and over, which it could be

(01:51:35):
, but it's different.
You know, if Juan Moreno wasn'thappy, he wouldn't be able to

(01:52:03):
talk about it.
I don't think they.
What's the question?
I'll be here and take questionsto make this better.
I think that's more.

(01:52:34):
How about that?
How about that?
I would say, even the ones thathave set a cheap high level
battle, how about that?
How about that?
How about that?
I want to say, even the onesthat have achieved high level
battles, the ones that have gonebetter, the ones that have gone
better, the ones that have goneso far, I think if they want to

(01:52:55):
move with the course, they'regoing to have to do it so.

Speaker 3 (01:53:50):
So so I think that's part of the.
You know, there's obviously alot of problems, but it's
certainly one of the problems.
That is happening is, and itgoes back to just foundation.
So the foundation ofperformance is not being used,
it's simply not being done.
Number two, the accountabilityis inhabiting.
And then, number three, theleadership is vacant and vacuous

(01:54:13):
.
And so when you look at thosethree things, you have absent a
glorious accident or a wonderfulmiracle like the pope coming
from chicago.
It's, it's not going to happenand and you'll have no results.
But the wake-up call shouldhave been the last olympic games
, where they invested all thistime, energy and money.

(01:54:34):
And I was just watching a funnyvideo of uh gareth, uh
brownstein and Brownstein and CJtalking about what they were
going to do and why and how theywere going to do it and why and
what was going to happen andwhy.
And I almost think that shouldbe played endlessly on cycle for
the board of directors, becausethose were inherent promises

(01:54:55):
and boasts and nothing happened.
So, yeah, I don't.
He's, he's probably got boredand he's, he's got to go.
He's got to go do something.
So someone would like to jointhe room?
I, of course.
He'd like to join the room?
Yeah, he's back.
Yeah, he's back.
Well, well, I found I foundsome early footage of of wadding

(01:55:22):
korea.
Well, I found some earlyfootage of Juan in Korea.

Speaker 4 (01:55:48):
I thought that was the both of you, hmm, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:57:02):
So he's an individual , you know, and I don't.
I um he's.
He was very private about histraining.
He was very private about hisuh preparation and he didn't
think that we should share evenour own preparation.
He gave me permission at onepoint because he realized he
said you know, you're going tobe um different.

(01:57:22):
You need to spread your mess,message your gospel.
He says you.
You can't be like, youshouldn't be doing what I'm
doing.
You need to teach many people,not a dojong.
And so he was um.
You got to understand.
He was one of the firstnon-Asians to learn Kung Fu
period.
He was taken in at a schoolwhere they didn't take

(01:57:44):
non-Asians and then he fought inthose underground things and he
was the real deal.
Then he went into the PKA andhe was the real deal there and
beat everybody and did it evenlater in his career, after I
retired from the Olympics.
You got to understand olderthan me and retired and he still
did it.
So for me there wasn't aquestion as to whether I would

(01:58:08):
train with him and whether Iwould stay with him.
I stayed with him becausethat's where my success was and
he was a mystical character andanybody who ever trained with
him and, by the way, I wasn'talone, like emilio navarez,
world champion kickboxer.
Came to him, the chong brothers, george and john, when they

(01:58:30):
were on the budweiser team, cameto him to train, and these
people would just, if they couldget an invite, they would show
up for a couple of days.
And, uh, the national karateteam came to train with us
because they three or four ofthe guys came from sensei
miyazaki school, tori miyazaki,and they came to train with us.

(01:58:52):
So the to be invited there orto be able to train at that
level.
It was a different environment.
But the, by the way, theenvironment.
You came for free, you didn'tpay, you trained if you were
able to get to train there, andyou met the expectations and

(01:59:12):
that was it.
So it was a little bitunderground, it was brutal, it
was no holds barred, literallyas far as the training, not the
style of fighting, and then itproduced champions.
Many, not just me, but anybodythat came in there was better
for the experience of havingcome through it.

(01:59:33):
So that's a culture that exists.
It's a culture that existed atpeak performance, right, it's a
culture that exists.
It's a culture that existed atpeak performance, right, it's a
culture that existed.
Well well, I, to be honest, Ihad run out of invites.

(01:59:57):
So what would happen is I waslooking for people.
I was looking for people thatcould help me be my training
partner, so I wanted them totrain with us there so that I'd
have somebody to train with thatwould understand.
When I left there and I broughtI tried four or five people,
six or seven or eight or ten,and the last one was Kevin,
kevin Padilla, because he wasthe only one that stayed, the

(02:00:20):
rest quit, the rest wouldn't doit.
And then he got to a pointwhere he said don't bring anyone
else.
He said because they're notgoing to stay.
He says they don't understand.
And so you know, for a guy, fora person of his stature and his
power and his understanding offighting, if he were today to

(02:00:42):
coach the usa taekwondo team,they would win.
They would win because of hismethod.
He would shortly, quicklyfigure out the system.
He would look at it, say thisis how you win, here are the
things you can do to thwart, howthey win, here are the things
you can do in addition to whatthey do to win, and here's how

(02:01:04):
you win.
And that's what he did with mygame and, quite frankly, he took
Padilla, who was a good player,potentially a great player, and
he took him from a player whowasn't winning and made him a
player who won five for fiveyears on the us team, right.

(02:01:25):
So he had the ability and stillhas that ability to see the
potential in somebody and andand make it now for himself.
Personally, he fought everybodyand anybody, any size didn't
matter, and that's a skill youknow well.
That's mark williams too, andmark williams um was 140 pounds,

(02:01:49):
150 pounds, the dude, the guyyou know, for whatever it's
worth, you got to understandwhat he did.
This is a guy who didn't train,he just fought, show up at the
gym and fight for an hour.
He thought training was showingup a couple days before the
tournament and training a littlebit.
He went into the nationalchampionships and dismantled

(02:02:13):
every fighter put in front ofhim, including dung lee
dismantled, dismantled,dismantled.
But talk, talk to tony tony.

(02:02:34):
Talk to tony graff.
Yeah, talk to tony graff.
Talk to Tony Graff.
Yeah, talk to Tony Graff.
Talk to Tony Graff.
So Tony Graff comes in as a kidwith Peter and Bardatos and
talk to Tony.
This is a man who and this isone of the things that people
forget about fighting, and thisis why I'll give everybody a

(02:02:54):
chance, anybody from any sport.
He was a guy who didn't fightthe style of taekwondo we did.
He fought point taekwondo andpoint karate.
He fought in tournaments whereeverybody anybody monkey kung fu
guys would come in literallydoing monkey kung fu.

(02:03:14):
Mafia Holloway came in and wasrobo breakdancing during his
fighting.
He fought cats that were likeridiculous and he dismantled
every guy because he understood,first of all himself, second of
all, fighting in general, andthis was the gift that Sifu
Vizio had, he has and has he hadthe ability to understand what

(02:03:40):
it means to fight.
And right now I'm working on myyou know, my next book and I'm
talking, I'm thinking about andI'd ask some of my friends to
participate.
Um, I know you're waiting foryour invites, but um, the I'm
trying to understand what I wantto say about fighting and the
strategy of fighting.
So I I'm working on it now andwhat I realized is,

(02:04:02):
philosophically, we all startwith an idea of what is fighting
.
What does it mean to win?
And you can break it down intothree simple things you do what
you do well, you avoid what youdon't do well, and then you
exploit the weaknesses of whatother people don't do well and
avoid their strengths.
That's fighting in general.

(02:04:22):
Everything else we do fromthere becomes strategic
implementation of those basiccomplement, a comp of basic uh,
confines and constrictions.
Now how you do that, you know,coach mirandol, you know I
always talk about progressions.
I do A.
I see what happens when I do A.

(02:04:43):
I do B.
When A doesn't work, I do A, b,c when I'm trying to trap
somebody.
Because fighting is basicallydo what you do well.
If it doesn't work, figure outhow to trap what they do well
and then exploit theirweaknesses.
Now, if you watch any sport,you'll see that and I always use

(02:05:04):
the second analogy as aweakness of fighting and sport
and anything.
And you see it in fighting.
All the time when somebody isfighting, they try to win.
Then when they start losing andthere's 20 seconds left, they
start fighting differently andthey actually enjoy, in some
cases, more success.

(02:05:24):
Now, had they done that earlier, they would have enjoyed the
success sooner.
And you see it in football allthe time Guys are trying to win,
they're trying to win.
It's not working.
Last two minutes they changetheir whole game and all of a
sudden 20 points go on.
It's the risk-reward factor,right?
And so as we look at this andas I write this, you know I want
there's no book, and I thinkyou guys would be hard pressed

(02:05:46):
to find it or video series onthat concept of taekwondo,
because it's hard to write andit's hard to think about and
it's hard to say, but it needsto be said.
And, by the way, I can tell youthis, once I write it, or once
it's said, it'll just be astarting place.
It'll evolve, but it will.
I guarantee you it'll be moretruthful and useful than

(02:06:10):
whatever is going on in northcarolina right now at the, at
their center, because that's not.
You need to bring in thoseathletes and do what's called an
individual education program,an IEP.
You look at each athlete.
You look at their strengths,weaknesses, see what
opportunities are, what threatsthere are to their success, and
then you work with them, inaddition to the core foundation

(02:06:32):
of what they should know, whatdo you do to make them better?
That's, that's the differencebetween a great coach and a good
coach.
Thank you.

(02:07:28):
He kicked three or four timesthe entire tournament.
Maybe five, five, five.

(02:07:54):
I was planning on the other oneI was going to get hit a lot.
All right, I got that you.

Speaker 4 (02:08:19):
Pedro.

Speaker 3 (02:08:21):
Pedro Xavier.

Speaker 4 (02:08:22):
Oh, second one, third one, no-transcript puff daddy,

(02:10:53):
uh trial, that's going on rightnow, the p diddy thing only way
you know what's going on in theroom is you in the room, baby,
and apparently she's tellingeverything happened in the room
where's my baby oil?

Speaker 3 (02:11:07):
um, thank you, um, thank you.

(02:13:47):
Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna usethat as our jumping off point.
I'm gonna remember and remind,remind everybody of a couple of
things.
Just the last thing is, if youwant to be in the room with tj
that's how you know what goes onin the room right, he and?
And bring your own, bring yourown bottle of baby oil.
That's all I'm asking.
That doesn't.
You don't get that with yourwhite belt.
And everybody, if you get achance and you find yourself

(02:14:08):
stuck in North Carolina, makesure to visit TJ's new facility.
It's beautiful.
And, of course, if you're inMiami, go visit Coach Moreno's
facilities.
If you're in California, govisit somebody else's.
I'm busy, but this has been theWarehouse 15.
Now you're in California, govisit somebody else's.
I'm busy, but this has been theWarehouse 15.
Now, you're always welcome.
You know my friends are alwayswelcome to come out and visit.
I was in most recently inMaryland.

(02:14:29):
Shout out to Chan Yun Lee, whoinvited me to go to his dojang
in Boyd and he's actually inGermantown, maryland, which is
outside of Boyd and what aprofessional facility, and I
love success.
I went to this guy's school andhis school really wasn't

(02:14:49):
physically much bigger than mineOutside.
He had four buses that he didpicks kids up in.
He had a van, he had 60 kids onthe mat.
I gave this uh pretty decent uh, hopefully seminar and uh and
and left them with some stuffand enjoyed some good food on
the way out.
But it's nice to see ourbrothers in taekwondo.

(02:15:14):
Listen, I'll come to your, I'llcome to your gym and teach on a
couple of things.
One, I don't know where.
I don't want to know about thatother room.
You got to have the secretentry.
Number.
Two, you know I'll bring mybooks and you better you, I like
to sell my books.
You better sell some books.
I got my training manual and,uh, that's it.
I'll sign some, sign some booksand then uh.

(02:15:36):
Three, I don't want to go visitthat other place in north
carolina and I don't want tospend $50 a day and stay at the
Hooker Hotel for $200 a day.
So otherwise, like I said before, sorry, not sorry, this has
been the Warehouse 15.
It'll be up and then next weekI'm going to challenge each of
you to bring a story, sinceCoach Moreno talked about my

(02:15:58):
mentor, one of my mentors.
I want you to dig down story.
Since coach moreno talked aboutmy mentor, one of my mentors, I
want you to dig down deep, deepinto your heart and find a
story about a mentor in yourlife that changed your life and
made you who you are today.
And with the exception of the p?
Diddy story, we'll save thatone for later.
Warehouse 15 we're out.

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