💥 AJ Silva: Hard Work, Wrestling 🏆 & Giving Back Through Semper Fi 🇺🇸

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's up everybody. Clint Phosa here and it's the Front
Porch Chronicles. Today we got a super cool guy. I've
been following him for a while on Instagram. I was
glad to finally get him all here. His name is
aj Silvo. Welcome to the Front Porch brother.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Wait, man, I've been looking forward to this.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Be really excited.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
So let's intro the people to you. Let's take it
all the way back. Where did you grow up?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
So, first of all, thanks for having me on, But man,
I moved around a lot when I was a kid.
So I grew up Garden Grove, freaking born at Charcosta
and stuff down in Santaannah, and then freaking live in
Garden Grove since I was damn since I was born
all the way to like sixth grade, i would say.

(00:57):
Then moved to Corona and then moved down to Santa Anna,
lived there for a while, and then lived in Orange
for about a few months, and then moved to Eastvale
and then Corona again, and then Orange and then now
I'm living out in like Tustin sant Ana area.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
You you were bobbing and weaving bob not my choice,
but we stay ready, we stay ready. So what what
would you like as a kid?

Speaker 3 (01:26):
From what I think, I think I was a kid
that kind of handles stuff on his own. But from
a lot of my relatives, they're like, oh, you needed
your mama, you needed your grandma. You always buy your grandma,
always buy your grandpa. So I mean that was one
of those kids. But I mean I was very just
outgoing as a kid. My grandpa's super outgoing. I would
I wouldn't mind striking up a conversation with anybody, kind
of the same.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Way I am.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Now. I have two younger brothers, so we're all very
different in that sense. My middle brother, Andrew, super quiet,
reserve guy. Aaron, my youngest brother, we have like a
ten year difference. He's kind of a mixture of both
of us. He's very quiet, but also he don't he
if you push him, he'll let you hear it. And
I'm I'm I'm not upset. I'm like, if you you

(02:06):
could do whatever you want. If you talk about me,
I don't give a shit realistically, but if you talk
about somebody that I care about, obviously there's a problem.
But Aaron, the youngest one, he don't care. He's just
very quiet.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
And just he'll let you know that if you say so, I'm.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Andrew, He's the he's the little guard dog. We have
to where somebody looks at me the way he's gonna
go tell me about So that's never been that's never
been my thing. I don't I like, I don't care
about confrontation. But at the same time, too is just
I'm just very laid back. I'm relaxed.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah. So it's funny. I've got five kids, and so
growing up I was the pit bull. My brother was
the you. He's very I've been out going, but I'm
also the was the pit bull, just because I had
a kind of savage life. But uh, my kids are
all like that. So people say, like, oh, and like

(02:54):
I have to discipline each one of them differently because
like my youngest is the mixture of all of them,
my oldest is her own, like they all have their
own little vibe. So you explaining that, I one hundred
percent get it. So who was your biggest influences early on?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
I'd probably say my grandpa.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
I mean, my dad was in I lived with my
dad and my mom I think all the way up
until like sixth seventh grade, and then kind of on
and off till then. So, I mean my daddy d
work provide stuff like that. My mom for sure too.
So now I've grown up a little bit, so where
I got to really just look back and by damn,
like my mom was working two jobs. At some point,
my mom was leaving dropping us off to school, and

(03:41):
I mean not knowing.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
I mean, we're making her late for.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Work because we're just digging around in the room and
taking forever to put our clothes on her. Everything she
said to do the night before, we're doing it in the
morning of and we're kind of all over the place.
And then now I'm like, oh, shoot, like she had
two jobs. She's dropping us off at eight o'clock at
school and then not coming back home till eight o'clock
at night. So I would we would live with my
grandparents in the beginning, and they would take care of us,
you know. But my mom, now now that I know

(04:04):
all the work he's put in, and I mean single
mom of three kids, three boys, for sure, there was
times when we've had to like stay in like one
bedroom places and we're all in the same bedroom. So
I mean I couldn't stand living in it with my
two brothers, because I don't have my space grown up,
and then I can't imagine being a full on adult.
A mom, I'm going to share your space with three
of your sons, you know. So I would say her

(04:25):
for sure. And my grandpa, my grandpa, her dad. So
he definitely instilled that hard work and that work ethic
to kind of just grind. He had his brothers or
his parents passed away at a young age, and so
he stopped going to school and started to work, and
he kind of just took care of his family, his
brothers and sisters, Like I think, I think I had

(04:45):
eleven or twelve years old, and so I'm hearing those stories.
And he would tell me those stories when he was alive,
that he'd have to do that. So anytime I had
an excuse of anything, he'd always bring up like, yeah,
I was twelve years old pretty much that I had
to do this, and you over here and I'm over
here eighteen nineteen at the time, thinking my shit's hard.
But he's alway telling me this, or sometimes he'd be
And this is where I think Andrew, my brother, gets

(05:06):
his kind of meanness from It's from him, Like I'd
be sleeping at their house, spending time with my grandparents,
and most grandparents would love it when their grandkids are over.
I'm not saying he didn't, but he's standing over my
face at five thirty six o'clock in the morning looking
at me.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
He's like, you to sleep all day? What are you
gonna do?

Speaker 3 (05:23):
I'm just like, jeez, it's an hour and a half
to get to your house and I'm just relaxing right now, sleeping.
And then he's over standing over me, and I mean
we're outside freaking cutting.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
He didn't have a long back there. He's all rocks.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
There's all rocks out in the Tabacula area where they lived,
and we still had to pull some weeds, cut the
hedges on the on the trees, stuff like that. So
I mean, I would definitely say my mom and my
grandpa to wear influenced me the most. And now it's
kind of one of the things where my mom was like, Okay,
she's she's a badass, you know.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
So it's crazy how when we're kids and we see
those things from a perspective, we're like, where, why is
she not here? Why is she got YadA YadA? And
then we see like what was going on in the backstory.
Once we once we have to get a job and
pay our all bills and do our own things. It's

(06:10):
crazy how we look back and we're.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Like, crap, okay now every time.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
See yeah, now, I see. It's funny. The older I get,
I'm teetering on but I'll be fifty in a couple
of years. And the older I get, the more I learn.
And it's crazy that all these stories and all these
things you'll hear about enjoy time while you're here because

(06:34):
life's too short, YadA YadA, And as a kid like
you hear that stuff like yo, okay whatever, and then
as you get older, it's more and more like wow,
Like there's glimpses of things, and if you don't take
the opportunity to enjoy those things, they quickly go away.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, And I think that's so huge too, because it's like,
I mean, for me, ap to younger brothers. I'm twenty seven,
Andrew's twenty four, Aaron's eighteen, and it's like with Andrew,
I mean, obviously I'm the older brothers, so I would
try to like kind of lead him the way, but
the same I'm I'm still trying to figure it out.
But now that I have a ten year difference with Aaron,
it's like, hey, you got to we gotta do this,
we gotta do this differently. And it's that thing to

(07:17):
where it's like you enjoy the time of people that
you have because you don't.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Have forever kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
But it's also the same thing as like everybody's siblings
and family have told him this, Hey pa, attention to school,
do this. You don't want to work hard for the
four years you're there. That way, you don't have to
work like you know, I mean, everything's kind of set
up for you. And it's kind of that thing where
everybody tells you that, and then as a kid, it's
like kind of wandering out the other of course you're
gonna work hard, but you don't really understand the meaning
of it to like you're done. Or you see somebody

(07:41):
that's doing a job that they don't like to do
but they have to because they have a kid, or
have to ride for the family and so on, or
sometimes they don't they have something that they don't want
to do, and now they go down the wrong, wrong path.
And so it's kind of those things where I've been
telling Aaron a lot because he's getting ready to go
to college next year. He's a senior in high school.
It's like, hey, like, you got to bust your ass
in the great it's shooting this as much as you
do the wrestling, because it's that thing towards a domino effect.

(08:03):
Not saying that you can't meet the perfect person for
you at a D three niau CO whatever it is,
but if you're gonna go to a Division one school
and wrestle there, you're most likely going to meet somebody
another athlete that was a Division one athlete that prioritized
her grades, prioritized her sport, that she's doing whatever it is.
And usually at that point, the apple don't fall far
from the tree to where she's got to come from

(08:24):
a good household as well to where the standards are
set high, you know. And so that's kind of something
I told him. I was like, hey, like, you might
think it's just fucking school, but you go to college
and I'm telling you sacrifice right now, your grades, doing
them right, you're wrestling, getting them better.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
And you go to a Division one schul.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
I'm telling you, right now you might meet your you
might meet your wife. They're not saying, that's the whole goal.
But you're gonna meet like minded people that are going
to keep you accountable, and it's that should be attractive
to you. It shouldn't be somebody that's gonna go to
party and go do this and that and so on.
And so he kind of at the beginning, he's still
fucking young, so he's like my wife.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
But then like over.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Time he's like, Okay, I got get. I get what
he's saying.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
And so grades are so like thinking back now, grades
are so important because people think, especially athletes think that
because they're a superstar athlete. Most of the time in
high school and whatever, you can kind of get away
with some stuff because some teachers are turned the blind

(09:22):
eye or whatever. But once you get to college, dude,
you're a diama dozen and grades reflect your tendencies and traits.
So you can be a great, you know, athlete, but
if you can't devote the time to something that that

(09:43):
is that important, it's going to hinder you later on.
So what was it that or what really led you
into wrestling when you started?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
So it's kind of a I don't say it's a
funny story, but so my family's huge my great my
great grandma had twelve kids, like eleven girls, one boy.
And like I said, those kids, those kids had a
lot of kids too. And then those those kids that
had a lot of kids had some more kids. And
that's kind of where I fall and in line with it,
I'm not part of the story. But so I have

(10:18):
family lived all over, a lot of them them in
sant Anna for the most part, but other than that,
I had some family lived in Bakerfield or like Presno area,
and so every holiday, and that's the thing with our
family would always get together. If we live locally in
the area, we'd meet every Friday night and the parents
we'd play poker in the garage, or the parent parents
play poking the garage. The moms would be inside, cooking,

(10:38):
talking whatever it is, and then the kids were playing
footba outside, baseball, whatever it was. We just played hanging around.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
But every holiday we'd have a huge get together.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
And so my cousins from up north, Elijah Zuna, no Azuona,
Isaiah Zuna, they all wrestled and so their parents were like, hey,
tell my parents, get kids to wrestle. And I remember
I wrestled one of them and I was like I
got my ass beat and I'm like, nah, I should
I'm not doing that. It's stupid. It's a super sport.
And I'm like little, I'm like five six, seven, eight nine,
whatever it is. And then fast forward when I moved

(11:10):
to Corona, I lived with my uncle, then with my
mom and my brothers, and my uncle wrestled, but he wrestled,
play football, played baseball back in high school too, and
he'd always tell us about wrestling. But I was like, did,
I'm already got a football. I'm not gonna just wrestle
to wrestle. And so I remember he brought us to
a practice in Morco and we go, and I mean,

(11:32):
I was doing fine.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
I was wrestling good.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
My other brother Andrew came to and he and Andrew's
always been a small guy too. In high school for
like prefoce, like he was eighty four pounds of the freshman.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Eighty four pounds of the freshman.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah, and so he's always been a small guy. I've
always kind of been like whatever size, you know, like average,
I guess. And so I was doing good to practice.
I'm like Dan because I was at the coach's son
and I was taking him down I'm like, oh, this
is perfect, Like I get it now. Maybe I was
just younger and I didn't understand it. And then I
think I took him down and like I landed on
I'm hard or something that such a long time ago,
but I definitely pissed him off and he beat my

(12:04):
ass for the next thirty minutes of practice, and I'm like,
fuck this, this is the fucking most stupidest sport I've
ever seen. And now I remember going home and my
uncle comes to pick us up the next day. My
other brother, Andrew, because he's always loved.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
The scrap, he was hyped.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
He already had to shoes downstairs that he was ready
to go, and I was hiding. I was like, I'm
not doing this shit. This shit's stupid, and so I
didn't go. But my uncle's like, I'm not going to
just take Andrew.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
And fast forward.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
We moved to Orange my eighth grade year, I think
or seven, yeah, eighth grade year, and I'd come home
with football really late. My mom would take us back
home get home around eight o'clock, and our apartment was
like right here, and there's another apartment next door to
where we see the family come home every single time too,
because they'd be come home like the practice and my
moms would talk and they're like, oh, yeah, my son's
you wrestling at Santa Ana wolf Pack And I'm like, okay,

(12:51):
like my mom's you should do it, and I'm like, dude,
like no, I'm I'm like they're touching people and sing
let It's like that's I'm not doing that.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
It's like, freaking that's weird.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
And basically I go to Survey play football there and
I ended up getting hurt. I have a scar on
my chin. I don't know if you could sell, but
I ended up getting hurt and so where my tooth
kind of came through my bottom lip and all my
teeth were loose. So they couldn't play football the whole
year pretty much. And my mom was like, hey, surve,
it's freaking expensive. You're not gonna just come here and
just fucking go to school. You better go in something.

(13:22):
And I'm like, I'm just gonna do tracking the spring. She's like, no,
it's too long, Like do something in the winter. And
I'm like, okay, I'll wrestle and because I was like
I just wrestled, fucking go to practice and whatever. But
I pretty much wrestled in our team. We had one
hundred kids on the freshman team as a wrestling team.
It's pretty big, and.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
It's yeah, and it's a small school too.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Do I think the graduate I think the total populations
kids were like anywhere from five fifty to like eight
hundred kids.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
I think.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
So I'm having one hundred kids on the team's kind
of crazy. And so that's got the apple got me
started into it. But my whole thing was I'm gonna
quit after season ends. I'm gonna quit during this school
year because it was hard, especially when you have one
hundred kids on the team to where some some schools
have freaking twenty kids max. And you could be a starter,
you know, And now I have to actually work for it.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
And I'm one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
And at this point I didn't understand the weight cut port.
I was just like, I'm just gonna wrestle. I'm gonna
try to get big. I'm not gonna cut weight. But
you're just wrestling and you're losing weight naturally. And then
now you're leaving practice at seven o'clock, eight o'clock at night,
and it's glooming outside and it's raining and yourself homework
to do, and then you're like, damn, I have a
wrestle off tomorrow, and then like you're thinking about it
all day because you've never been used doing this, and

(14:36):
so now it's like I'm filming things I haven't felt before.
Because in football I was pretty solid. I was pretty
good football player. I was a cornerback, I was running back.
I was keep return part returner. And I was like,
and I've said this before, I got another podcast, but
it was like I was cocky. I was like, I'm like,
this is easy, like fucking I'm gonna wrestle and beat
everybody's ass.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Because in football i'd start fights.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
I'd push people and go I'm like, well, well be
cause I'm thinking I'm a good football player.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
I could fight too.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
I don't know where that came from, but you see
it when you get to high school. See the jocks
that walk around all tough and shit, but they've never
been punched in their life. They've never done anything. And
that's kind of what I fell into as a player.
I was like, oh, I'm good, I could do this,
and so I was doing that and uh but no,
I remember just getting really tough that freshman year and

(15:18):
then sophomore year, I end up starting on varsity, and
then junior year same thing, and then senior year, same thing.
But I remember I wanted to quit up until like
late sophomore, maybe after sophomore season was already over with.
At that point, I was like, hey, I'm doing it.
Might as well as commit to the wills fall off
and really just push myself. But that's kind of what
made me started into wrestling, and my mom never gave

(15:39):
me a reason to quit. I'm like, now as a coach,
I see kids to where it kind of reminds me
of myself, and I'm like.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Hey, you gotta just push through it.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
You gotta you can't just quit because it gets hard
right now, or you can't.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Just You're gonna find a way to do it.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
You're gonna find excuses, and the excuse a lot easier
to find. But if you push yourself and you kind
of tell yourself you're going to do it, you're gonna
do it. You gonna do it, those excuses are hard
to find, and then it's gonna lead to better things
way past wrestling. But my mom was on my ass
one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Were you do you think you were low key. Were
you kind of nervous because the other two times you
had tried to wrestle or you wrestled with somebody, they
kind of flung you. Were you nervous going into that
first match.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
I'm sure that had a lot to do with it.
I just think most of it, too, was as a kid,
like nobody ever wanted to like mess with me. And
it wasn't as an intimidation factor. It was always just
like I was a I got along with everybody where
I'm like, I didn't know how to react to that.
You're act, hey, you're wrestling here in the middle of
the mat right now, everybody's washing like figure it out.

(16:44):
Like I was never used to that, and so I'm
used to football to where I was good, but I
still need help in alignment from all these other people.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Know the paint, it's a paint. There's ten other people
out there at a time, wrestling, MMA, jiu jitsu, all
of those things, broy. They literally I tell people the
first time I did an MMA mat fight, like we
went through training camp and we were like we're gonna
do this, and we're gonna do this, and dude that

(17:14):
there's nothing you can explain that cage closed, Like what
was I supposed to do? Again? No? And then you're
looking over there and this dude's like me mugging and
you're like, okay, we about to fight. Yeah, and then
it's like I don't want to get knocked out in
front of my people, my people, So dude, the bell
rings and then you just run across and it's like
what They're like, we worked and I'm like, she's like,

(17:36):
I forgot see what had happened?

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Was?

Speaker 1 (17:40):
So I know you went to survive, y'all won back
to back CIF titles. Yes, what did the grind look
like day to day? With so many dogs? And you said,
like you said, a hundred people in there, what did
it look like daily? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (17:57):
So we the surveyte program started, I believe like the
wrestling program started in two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine. Yeah, I think the inauguration season was like
two thousand and eight, two and nine, something like that.
And so it was two years because that's what twenty eleven,
I started high school. Two I'm fifteen, I graduated, So
it was two years in and you go into the
wrestling room.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
It was a small, little bungalow. It looked like it
was a classroom.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
That's what it was. You jump up, you touch the
ceiling into where it was small at the time. I
mean we had it so we had three or four
different practices because you couldn't fit all those kids in
the room, and so we're doing it. But pretty much
like freshman year, I would say, there's a lot of
just conditioning, a lot of sprints. I think probably just
getting your mind ready for Hey, it's not going to
be easy sport, so a lot of conditioning. We had

(18:38):
wrestle offs every Monday for frost Off tournaments for.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Because okay, the winner would go to a JV tournament.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
The loser of the wrestle off, the second wrestle off
whatever would go to the frost Off tournament, and the
loser's loser would just go to the freshman olan tournament.
And if you have four people in the wake class
and then you're not wrestling, if we couldn't get you
in kind of thing to where so it was a
grind every week just to just wrestle off. And I
remember just coming out of the it was just different
for me because I remember varsity would practice first and

(19:05):
we practiced after and we have they'd have because I
didn't know what to wear as a freshman, I'm wearing
all football players are wearing tank tops and shorts and
looking like thinking that's it's swagged and it's just like you.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Like now the coach, I'm like, do you look like
such a dork?

Speaker 3 (19:18):
Like what are you wearing here freaking practice? But I
was doing that, And so I remember watching some of
the restlers come out of the room and they're like
wearing They're wearing sweatpants and their tape, their shoes, shoelaces
are taped, and their ankles are taped, and their wrists
are taped with long sleeved shirts, and I remember when
I'm coming out of the room and there's like the
shirt was kind of like mine almost like just kind
of it was hanging low because somebody had obviously just

(19:40):
pulled it during wrestling, and he had blood kind of
here and then blood on his shirt, and I remember
just this I remember is so distriputedly, Kyle, you have
you have blood on your shirt? And he was like,
looks like, it's wrestling, what do you expect and just
walks away, and I was like, oh shit, I'm like,
the fuck did I sign up for?

Speaker 2 (19:55):
I was like I knew it. I knew it wasn't
no w WE, but I was like, what the hell
is this? And so we no.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Literally I'm on clothesline somebody, but no, So I was
that and then sophomore year we had so freshman year
we had coach contreras in coach Clinton running it, and
I believe my sophomore year coach Okatta helped and then
coach Clinton was there as well.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
And the one thing I say we did the best.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Was as far as a team, they had a lot
of coaches come and help out, taking time out of
the day. Like we had I think seven or eight
coaches on staff, and each coach had a role. And
Coach Clinton was really really good at I mean he's
really you.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Tell him you aske him weight now.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
He's super o CD to where he has to have
things done a certain way, and we'd always fuck with
them when we go on trips on the tournaments and hotels.
We'd always like fuck with the stuff in his hotel
room to see if he if we noticed we moved
his toothbrush a little bit, and he would notice right away,
like he moved my stuff, but no, he would. The
practice schedule we would do though, like junior senior year,

(20:53):
Monday was like a technique day to where I'm gonna
go over some stuff that coach Okotta sees that we
need to work on. Or if we had a tournament
and this is what we have to up on we
couldn't get off the bottom or we got to our
sit position, we couldn't do anything. Then that's all. We're
doing a lot of high level technique doing that, and
then quick thirty second goes at the end of practice
like ten fifteen minutes, and then we go lift and

(21:14):
we'd lift throughout two hours or not two hours, an
hour and a half probably, and then speed lifts will
be about an hour or thirty minutes something like that.
And then Tuesdays we'd go hard drilling in a little
bit alive and then we'd lift, and then we'd do
judo with Tony because he was an Olympian and judo
and so we do it every night every Tuesday Thursday
from like six to like eight, and then Wednesday was
our green Flag day to where it was just it

(21:35):
was a live day. You go in, you drill for
a little bit warm up, and then you get in
your group of seven and it was one of six thirteen, twenty, twenty, six,
thirty two, and thirty eight, so a group of six
and we do an iron man to where it was
just like neutral versus neutral, one versus two neutral, one
versus three one on top, one versus four, one on bottom,
one versus five neutral, and then one versus six neutral,

(21:55):
And we had a pretty tough group. Like junior and
senior year, like, we were all ranked pretty much number
one on Orange County individually. I think we only had
like one kid that wasn't ranked number one. It was
like number three or four in Orange County. And then
Southern Section rank in Southern California we were like top four,
top five kids. And then in the state we had
everybody ranked like top twenty, top fifteen in the state

(22:16):
of California. Yeah, top twenty for sure. And so if
you had a bad day that in that room, you
had a really bad day. And so for the one
of six pound or Liam he he he ended up
becoming actually a pan am third place or a few
weeks ago. He still wrestles right now, wrestled with Nebraska.
He's an all American so at a. I remember I met

(22:36):
him because he was a freshman round as a sophomore,
small dude too, eighty four pounds he had. He's kind
of what helped me to kind of understand the wrestling
aspect and just the confidence you need because the football
calkiness and conference isn't you need wrestling. You gotta do wrestling.
Confidence you can do whatever you want to do. And
so with Liam, he had a jiu jitsu background in
pink creation background to where he'd fight and so remember

(22:59):
him telling me a freshman he's gonna be a state champ.
And I'm like, oh shit, this guy's judits Becker, probably
gonna state champ. And we do tournaments and I remember
he's getting zast beat by girls and I'm like, damn,
like I thought he was good. And he keeps saying
he's gona be state champed's and I'm like, dude, like
not tell him this, but I'm like, you can't even
beat the girls, Like like how are you gonna do that?
And so but fast forward, each year he just progressed

(23:21):
progress and then he was a state finalist his junior year,
first in school history first, and then senior year State
finalists again got upset in the finals and he realised
I think he wins at match nine, nine or ten times,
but just got caught happens. But he would he's a
small dude where he would just want to scrap with everybody.
And then our one thirteen pounder who my best friends
of this day, wrestled the CIA finalist. He had a

(23:44):
five point oh GPA in high school. Five point zero. Wow,
he had like when the sat was like a twenty
out of the twenty four hundred scale, he had like
a twenty three something. I think he missed one or
two questions, and so now he was he's a but
he's a thing to where I know that you touch
his nose, he gets pissed, He gets an A minus,
he gets pissed. And then I was a twenty pounder.
I mean I was kind of just figuring it out.

(24:04):
I'm all right, what like I would get mac. I
was cutting a lot of weight. I'll couple like one
forty four forty five to like one twenties and that
was weekly just because my dumb ass would just blown
up on Sunday to eat. And so then twenty six pounder,
he was chirping all the time. He was like Calcy
Baker tells, he would always chirp though, and so you
know it's gonna be action when you saw him. And
then thirty Two's he was just fucking funky and he

(24:25):
would just get in your head because he would talk
shit too sometimes. And then thirty eight pounder Troy, He's solid.
But we would wrestle that group and to where we
talk a lot of shit. Like in that group, we'd
really get under each other's skin and it was it
was scraps to where we would Our group in the
room was called the Corner because we were in the
corner of the room and it looked like in the beginning,

(24:47):
it was just some beat up mats on the wall
and there was blood and matt are fucked up here
and just blood all over, and it was just like,
you know, you're in that group, it's about to suck
for you. And so if you're having a bad day,
they made that shit worse and so like it really
puts it in perspective because it's like you could really
be having a bad day for whatever reason. Your girlfriend,
don't talk to you, parents at home, like annoying you.

(25:09):
School is hard, you're cutting away, you're angry, whatever it is,
you better fix that because if you come in think
about anything else other than trying to like trying to
like wain or wrestle them, you're gonna really have a
bad day. And so there are some days where nobody
got to take down and so it was just scraps
and we'd get irritated to her sometimes too, it's like

(25:32):
the whistle would blow because the one minutes are over
with and if you're on a leg, you're just gonna finish.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
You're not gonna you worked hard.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
To get the leg a practice, you better fucking just
hurry up and try to finish. And sometimes I would
lead to fist fights. And with Clinton, he never really
stopped a fist fight. Kind of you would look at
it and then kind of let us handle it a
little bit, and then he'd stop or be like hey,
like relax. And we respect him a lot where anytime
he said hey, like you just you do it. You
relax and whatever. But that's I would say, that's like

(25:59):
the day and life there. And then thursdays were just
kind of a burned day, cut weight, do what you
need to do, kind of let us roam freely, do
we needed, and then Friday tournaments and Saturdays or tournaments.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
But now those are some of the And that's the
thing too.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
I tell the kids I train, and sometimes not so
much anymore because a lot of my friends have like
nine to five jobs and they're busy doing their own things.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
But I would probably say when.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
I first started coaching, I had a lot of my
friends come in over somewhere over winter break and stuff
and just kind of rustle my guys and girls that
I would train, and then obviously they would start talking
about how wrestling was in D one College or how
wrestling was in the room at Survey and it because
it's different when a coach tells you, but when you
have other people telling you this how it was, that's
how it was. But I mean, those are still some

(26:41):
of my closest friends to this day. In the moment
fv's guys, fuck them, I don't give a fuck, And
then after you're like, oh, these guys are chill, Like
I fuck with these guys, And then it's a whole
new confidence. When you're at tournaments and everybody's in the
semis quarters whatever in that group and you're doing it
all together and you realize, okay, it's it's I to
understand why we're beating the fuck out of each other.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
But now it's like okay, So then that.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
When you go to competitions, when you go to competitions,
it's like, dude, if I survive that the way, this
is nothing.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
And that's exactly what I would tell myself because there
was still some stuff to were in the room. I
would win goes with guys that are winning tournaments, and
when those are the guys that are ranked higher than
me in the state, and I'm like, what the fuck's
going on? And it's just that confidence thing to where
if you could wrestle, and that's what I was telling
these guys you can.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, I feel people all the time fighting that they're
all run. It's such a mental game. Speaking of that,
what do you feel like wrestling taught you about life?
Not necessarily just winning, but about life.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Realistically. I mean, just putting it simple is like just
don't be a bitch, Like there's gonna be shit that's
gonna happen, like for me like dis located my shoulder
and some matches. And you think of football player, basketball player,
NBA players, all these that they're out for a long time. Okay,
with wrestling, sure you could probably be the same thing.
But I remember losing a tournament and I remember having

(28:09):
all my kids or all my teammates waiting for me
because my coach never let anybody leave unless everybody was done.
And I remember my should just okated the match and
I lost, and I remember telling the coach, hey, my shoulder,
just okay. He's like, did you wrestle? You finished? He's
like I'm like yeah. He's like okay, so what's that
to do with anything? And I'm like, okay. I remember
telling I remember telling my mom later and she was like,

(28:29):
I don't hear it.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
It stop bitching, and I'm like okay.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
So then it kind of just quickly and I still
wrestled the next week and the stuff after. I do
a lot of rope exercises and so on. So but
I would say just that simple as just don't be
a bitch, like realistic, like I'm applying, there could be
shit happening outside of practice, outside of what's going on,
outside of whatever. Nobody cares. They're gonna listen. Sure, Like
I think everybody needs to talk to somebody. They're gonna listen,

(28:55):
but nobody cares, and like, there's this thing I actually
I saw it yesterday. It was like wrestling coach actually
said it. I'm probably gonna butcher it, but it's pretty
much like something that is something along the lines of
I don't even want to say it now, but something
along the lines of like, don't like nobody cares about
your problems, and like seventy percent of the people just

(29:15):
don't care, and thirty percent.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Of the people like love that you have them.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
And so it's like, be careful who you tell your
stuff to because it's like seven percent of people don't
give a fuck, and then thirty percent of them are.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Like happy or you have a lot of trouble probably bro.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
That's why I keep my circle. I keep my circle
so small just because of that. And it's like, yeah,
we need to talk about things and we need to
work through things. But the friends that I have that
are in my circle tell me right and wrong. Like
they're not gonna co sign on this or that, and

(29:52):
they're gonna be like, hey, you need to get up
and do what you gotta do. Kids gotta eat.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
No absolutely, And that's the thing too. With the rest
I realize that right away. It's like, damn, nobody cares
that I'm hurting. Then the coach when he's talking to us,
he's like, you're taping your stuff up. You're doing it,
that's fine. Nobody cares. When at the tournament, no nobody.
There's not a fan up there that's like, hey, that
guy right there in the matt number four, he towards
a cl last week and he's still nobody gives a shit.
I'm gonna use no literally, if anything they can, if anything,

(30:21):
the competitors care more like, oh, she I'm gonna go
after that, like I'm gonna fuck. And so that's just
what it taught me one hundred percent. And my mom
taught me the same shit too. It's like she's struggling
two jobs and all these things. It's like she ain't
complained once, and wrestling's easy. I chose to do this sport.
It's like, you know, so it's just it just gives
you a different perspective. And it's like as simple as
don't be a bitch, but the same time, just like

(30:42):
just get tough, you know, like shit's gonna happen. Not
saying it's gonna be easy, but I mean you chose
to I chose to wrestle. It's it's selective suffering, and
you get to use a selective suffering that you choose
to do for when something happens later on left, you
have a family loss, you have somebody divorce, lose a job,
whatever it is. Now that suffering that you chose to
select when you wrestled, you could just apply it to this,

(31:04):
because if you could do that, you can handle this.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
And so that's I'd say. I learned that the.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Most wrestling is so humbling, absolutely and you can't you
can't fake it. Jiu jitsu the same thing jiu jitsu
that wrestler like, it's so humbling. Uh, how do you
think those tough moments shaped who you are now?

Speaker 3 (31:30):
I think it's just kind of kept me to be
a Look like you said, it's humbling. I think it's
kept me to be humble and just apply kind of
what I've learned, just to like have that like white
out mentality, you know, just like you could always keep learning.
And I remember being young, being nineteen twenty, and I
was like listening to some coaches show some technique, and
I remember like, that's not going to work. Like, you know,

(31:52):
it's like it's not going to this and that, and
I remember it's being really humbling because like I remember
coach telling me and telling some kids something how to
do a technique, and a year later something like that,
we had the Orange County Coaches Wresting Association like banquet
where people got awards, and I'm like on my phone,
I'm not really paying attention because it's an intermistion. But

(32:12):
then they're saying somebody's name. They said somebody's name, and
then they're listening off their accomplishments, like this coach has
been coaching.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
For this long blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
But as a wrestler, he was a two time state champion,
he was a CIF three time CIF champion, he was
a Fargo national finalist, blah blah blah. And they're like
this is coach blah blah blah, and I was like,
the fuck that's I mean? And as the same coach
that told me something the year before or told the
kid something, and I remember looking, I'm like that's not
gonna work in the match, but I'm like, yeah, this

(32:41):
guy was a fucking high level wrestler, and I'm over here,
way worse than he ever was. You know, I was.
I wasn't even privileged to forget to tie his shoes.
And I'm like, damn, like he was a savage and
I didn't think that. And that's the thing too. There
are a lot of coaches in this sport that obviously
nobody does this for money, but there's a lot of
coaches in the sport that stay at a school because
I'm their teach there and so on, and they don't

(33:02):
get the support they need with the faculty and the
staff and the kids to where they never get to
show how good of coaches they really are. And so
that's for me dumb and me to be thinking. I'm like,
when I see coaches that have schools that just aren't
that good, I'm like, oh, it's the coach, the coaches.
But then now coaching for the longest time and going
to different schools and seeing it, I'm like, oh, dude,
that's not even it, Like it's nothing. It's easy to

(33:25):
run a club program because you get kids paying that
want to be there, but for a high school program,
when kids join their junior year because they realize they're
not going to make it in football, and basketball because
they're five to three. Like then then at that point
then they give you either all and then they still
And then I realized that coach is still getting those
kids to state or still getting into masters.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
I'm like, that's what two years. I mean, that's that's
tough to do.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
And so but no, I would say, like I've applied
just being that humble, but also just like just a
work ethic, you know, just a work ethic and knowing
that if you could cut weight, if you could cut
twelve pounds in a day, you can suck it up
and run while you rolled your ankle and toya miniscus
and LCL and you still get your weight off.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
If you do all those.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Hard things, it's like everything else. If you really applied yourself,
you can do it. And that could just be with work,
with whatever. There should be no excuse because you've already
done the hardest sport in the world.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, weight cuts, bro, what's the most you've ever cut
with a weight.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Cut in a day and a day. I'd probably say
anywhere from like ten to twelve something like that. Nothing
too crazy, you know, but it was like already when
like my body was like that kind of that's.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Kind of cra I did sixteen one time. Fuck that,
like my body held onto the water for the first
time ever. I woke up and I was like, wait
a minute, what And dude, I had to ride. It
was in San Diego. I had to ride. At the time,
I was in La with a friend. I rode from

(34:52):
La all the way to San Diego with full gear own,
with the feet around. I had to ride by my
myself because I told my friend. I was like, dude,
I'm fixing the swept. I got to like ocean side
and was like, I was so dehydrated. I was erling
and got down to the San Diego Open, I was

(35:13):
still like half a pound over. Even after I got
there and rode the bike for an hour, I was
still like half a pound over. I went in and
took you know, and ib JJF. You're not allowed to
take your draws off. So I was like, oh, I
need to run to the bathroom. I took the draws off,
wait in, and then go oh, I got to go
to the bathroom again, put them back on, and went

(35:34):
in and won three matches in one go. But I
thought I was gonna got everybody's like we're going to
sell BROD. I was like, I'm going to sleep. My
body was literally dead.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah, it's it's crazy the effects at Dusty and I mean,
I'm paying for it now. It's like, I have really
bad hips, really bad knees, and I didn't think I
had a lot to do with the weight cutting, but
the doctors were telling me.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
They told me I needed a replacement.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
I got one years old and they were like, it's
because like your cartilage on your hips, when you lose
that fluid from cutting, dehydrated, is just grinding and then
now it's like here when it should be up here.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
And so it's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
The same thing with concussions, same thing with concussion in football,
not saying that one it's worse than the other, but
whatever a concussion with wrestling or MMA. The reason that
there's so much worse in the reason you'll watch MMA
fights sometimes and the guy get caught with something not

(36:35):
even that hard and knock him out. But it's because
that water and that fluid isn't in the brain and
it's like moving them. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. So if
was there ever a moment that broke you down but
also built you.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Up, I would probably say in that season my senior year.
It's kind of funny too because like Danny Silva so Danny,
I'd never even trained with Danny of we out well
like mutual friends with at Chris McCatty into where we
sallow each other a long time ago, and it's like

(37:14):
his friend was one of like my rivals in high school.
Danny's friends was one of my rivals in high school
SNA and I remember that was kind of like my
first urnam of the year and I beat this kid
into where pretty pretty much like it was one of
the stories to where like I trained that whole whole year.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
I wanted to do really good.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
I hated that my teammates had to wait and watch
me wrestle the year before because my shoulder is located
and I was like, I can't, I can't not make
it to the second day and being the quarters or
semi's already, I gotta win this last match of the night.
And I remember looking at this guy's Instagram a day before,
two weeks before the tournament, and he's like on the
scale flex and stuff. He looked big, and I remember

(37:55):
sending it to my friend and I was like, dude,
if I have to wrestle, I'm I'm gonna go ask
beat and because on the scale and I was going twenties. Yeah,
And next thing I know, I look at the bracket.
I wrestle him like in the third round, second round,
and I'm like fuck because I'm like I did not
want to see him. But then all throughout that when
I'm waiting the bouch in the room, when they getting

(38:16):
ready to call my name to go on deck and be next,
it's kind of just us next each other. And in mind,
I was like, dude, like I trained with the best
guys in the state, Like I should not be fucking
losing to this guy. And I ended up beating him
and I was super surprised, and then I did it.
I'm like, Okay, I'm that guy. And then I beat
him again the next week and then basically we fast
forward to the So the All Star Match used to

(38:38):
be in the middle of the year. Now the All
Star Match is like two weeks before season to get
everybody excited and stuff like that, so it's not really
an All Star match anymore. But he used to be
number one versus number two Orange County, like you're wrestling
in it like coach, hey, you're wrestling your number one
right now. Because the rankings would be put out every
week by this guy named Daniel Calhoun, and now I
think he works at the UFC and stuff, but he
would do the accurate rankings. And I remember we had

(39:00):
five Counties on Friday, Saturday, we had All Star Match
on Monday, and then we had Saint John Bosco on Thursday.
And five Counties is like a four pound allowance. So
where I mean, you've done weight cutting twos where if
you're not doing it to a tea and scientifically, it's
like you can kind of mess it up a little bit.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
And so even when you do it scientifically I did it,
your hormone levels in everything have to be so pinpoint.
Oh yeah, you.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
Can't mess one part up because then it's the whole
thing's fucked. And I remember for me, it's like on
Sunday I would be like one forty sticks, one forty five,
and then I'd go on a run. Since I was
a little fat, I would probably lose about three or
four pounds, no problem, just on a light two mile jog,
and then Monday I'd be like thirty eight. Tuesday would

(39:49):
be like thirty four thirty three, and then Wednesday whatever
would be twenty eight, and then Thursday I'd get down
like twenty five and then have to cut the last
three or four at home. But I remember being a
tournament was on Friday, five counties, so instead of being
one twenty two, it was one twenty four, and on Wednesday,
I was like one eight two. I'm like on weight already,

(40:11):
like this is perfect, and then it was the hardest
cut of my life. On that Friday, I just jumped
the gun a little bit to where I didn't lose
anything in my sleep. I still waited to go one
twenty four point six and I'm like fuck, and so
I had to go get the weight off whatever. Did
not wrestle my best there, and then had the Ulstar
match on Monday, and I think I thought the coach

(40:31):
told us we had to make weight for it, but
it was just all honor system, honor code into where
I'm wrestling the guy and I'm like, oh, he is
not one twenty right now. It was that dude outside
his name Sali Bravo. He's still like I still talked
to him to this day. It was one of the
things tour in the moment. I'm sure we hated each
other because it was always just back and forth and
it was a close house match. But I remember like
he took me down in the Ulstar match and this

(40:53):
is where it was just one mat at a time
and spotlight down and took me down with like thirty
seconds left in the match. And he took me down,
so that means the match is tied. Whatever. He lets
me go with like twenty seconds left and it takes
me down again, and I'm like fuck, And I ended
up losing the whole place going crazy because I lost it.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
I'd beat him like four times.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
That year, and he like was like Ahi, screaming and shit,
and I was like, fuck, this sucks. And I remember
my coach is kind of like consoling me and stuff
like that and helped me out. And then I'm thinking, fun.
I checked my weight and I like weigh like one
thirty four, one thirty five after the way in and
then the next day because I eat some spaghetti at home,
and then the next day, I wait, like one. I
had boss go on Thursday and that was a tough

(41:36):
due for us. So they were top five team in
the state and they had Valenci brothers areon Pico, Okay
to leave all these guys, and I'm like fuck, And
I remember telling the coach. I'm like, hey, I don't
know if I'm gonna be able to make twenty twoes like
you're making twenty twos. I'm like okay, and then I remember.
Then I remember Wednesday comes and this is where something
that still haunts me to this day, and it's one

(41:57):
of the things as a coach where I feel like
everything happens for a reason, where I could tell my
wrestlers this kind of story, and I have with the
times that the kids have struggled with the weight cut.
But I remember Wednesday, coaches like, hey, just wrestle hard today,
don't worry better wage, just cake, Just wrestle and we'll
see where you're at after. And keep in mind, I
was like high thirties and I after weigh one twenty

(42:20):
two on Thursday, after practice was over with, I weighed
like one twenty five point eight, and I remember coach
asking me again and he was like, are you going
to do it? And I was like, I don't know
if I could make it because I felt so depleted
and dehydrated, and I just bitched out in here, and
I was like, and then I remember, because we're still
going to win the duel. I'm like, we had a

(42:42):
high level guys, everybody was they had really high level superpowers,
but then we just were stacked throughout the board, so
we're still gonna win.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
Pretty much everything I could have went wrong went wrong
that duel, to where if you lose a match at
three point swing whatever, one of our guys lost the
match in overtime and got pinned in over time, which
is super hard to do.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
You get taken down the matches over with.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Yeah, he gets put to your back and gets pinned,
So now it's a huge twelve point swing, and then
they're going crazy. Pretty much we end up losing, and
I remember like being like that, this is my fault,
like I fucked up. But I remember the next week
trying to get the weight down and it was just
hard because I was making twenties a whole year from
November on and right now it's January and we're not
even in postseason yet, not even in February. And I

(43:23):
remember being in that group in that corner that next
week getting ready for the next tournament, and I remember
I'm just getting my ass beat like that, probably because
we lost a duel, and another part because I mean,
it's just a terrifying group to where you're having a
bad day in that bitch you're gonna about You're about
to have a fucking terrible day. And I remember just
fucking tearing up a little bit, just going like hitting

(43:44):
club and hard and doing stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
And I remember my coach calling me.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Over there, Hey, wife phone, sarve yourself, wife on, sarve yourself.
And I'm like, I'm not Steffen and shit, and then
he was like, white on, start for yourself. I'm like
I'm not. He's like, yeah, you are a stop film
starve for yourself when we're going out there. But I
remember that being one of the biggest thing I remember,
like it calmed me down, but it also was just
like it put things perspective, cause it's like I'm I'm

(44:10):
letting myself feel sorry for myself because the way it
cuts hard all like the way it gets hard, Like
who gives a shit, Like you got it, you signed
up to do it, you gotta go do it. Nobody
cares that it's your own fall for ballooning up and down,
Like if you didn't.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Want to do the way, then fucking you go twenty
six thirty two and go try to wrestle those guys off.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
But you're doing it because you want the betterment of
the team, because you're the ownly one team that could
make twenties and twenty six is to whenever we needed
you too.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
So it's like I just gotta suck it up and
do it.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
And to where I would say, that's probably one of
the moments where it's like really like that still sticks
in my head to still see it. So remember what
I was wearing, So remember that atmosphere in the room,
And I was like, that's a moment right there where
it's like damn, like it's really just all in my head,
like I gotta stop letting this beat me. And that's
that's the thing the coach would always say, is like
it could be your greatest weapon or greatest enemy to
whatever you decide to let it be, and so stop

(44:59):
feeling sorry for yourself.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
One that's I like how you said that it can
be your greatest gift to your grades enemy. You know,
speaking of that, I know you had to deal with
simplify wrestling. How did that come about.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Yeah, So it was one of the things to where
because for me, out of school, I went to cal
Baptist and I was supposed to wrestle there and didn't
get any scholarship supposed to wrestle there. And this is
where kind of, I guess, like my coaching kind of
came into life. I graduated high school at seventeen years old.
Then I got ready to coach. I struck howard to

(45:36):
go to cal Baptist, and my mom, like I says,
a single mom, and my brother really wanted to go
to survive, and so she was like, hey, you could wrestle,
but if you don't get a scholarship, I mean, you're
gonna have to pay that shit out of your own pocket.
I'm not paying that because and you wants to go
to survey. And so now I'm thinking like fuck, like
I'm not. It's not a confidence thing. It's a.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
If something happens and I.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Get hurt, I would pay a medical bill, and then
I I also got to pay tuition. So it was
also just a thing to where I was like I
had to kind of put myself in the back seat
because I'm like, I didn't I'd worked hard in wrestling,
probably for a year and a half late junior year
to senior year. I worked my ass off freshman sophomore.
I thought I was working hard, but I wasn't into
where I was like, all right, Andrew's been working hard

(46:18):
and he's been wanting to do this. Let me just
take a back seat and let him accomplish his goals.
And so he started wrestling there and so on and
then did what he needed to do. And so where
I was like, okay, like it's good whatever. I was
coaching him a little bit. It's a two time cfjamp
Master's finalists, grego CTE champions, So I'm saying, all right,
so I think I know what I'm doing a little bit.

(46:39):
And then obviously his coaches obviously helped too. But I
would wrestle them all the time and we go over stuff.
And my cousins what I was saying earlier, My great
grandma and great grandpa had a lot of kids. Those
kids all pretty much went to the Marines, maybe all over,
but I would say predominantly more of them. We're all Marines,
and they're very They're like us, they're very upgoing. People
love to hang out with them.

Speaker 4 (47:00):
You know.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
And I remember as a kid loving hanging out with
them because they're all jokes. They all crack jokes. And
my mom would always tell me, Oh, see that's your
uncle blah blah blah's your cousin there, and it's like
that guy don't look scary and like in person, like
in the pictures he looks and temptating. But I'm like, oh,
he's the nicest guy. And then as older I got,
my mom was like, oh, yeah, the drill startings blah
blah blah blah, and he used to say this and that,
and I'm like, oh shoot, And I remember that I

(47:21):
wouldn't see them at family parties or events anymore, and
I'm like, what's going on?

Speaker 2 (47:24):
And then remember hearing that.

Speaker 3 (47:26):
They're dealing with pretty bad PTSD. And they started this
organization called Semper five Sports and they had a baseball
they had a softball and I think, I believe a
soccer program, and I mean with the stuff. The reason
they started the organization is because the PTSD but also
helping the youth was a way of them finding that
joy in life again and giving back and really changing

(47:50):
people's lives. And they're bringing that same simplified Dallas mentality
to sports to where it's respectful, it's you must maintain
a three point o GPA to beyond this team. You
must do this, you must do that. You're in order
not posting this on social media. And this is all
I like as like a seven I think seventh eighth
grade high school teams that they would coach, and I
mean they did awesome, like they did amazing the softball

(48:12):
programs to where he sent a lot of kids to Harvard,
to Yale, to UCLA, to you of Arizona because they
had a really good softball program, like all over and
even their baseball teams are solid. But I remember he
would ask me every time i'd see him, Hey do
the temper wrestling? Can you do it? And I remember
being like, nah, I don't want to, like because one,
I mean, I don't think at the time because I
was like twenty years old, twenty one years old, maybe

(48:33):
I was do young twenties. I was like, nobody'sdn't take
me seriously, like especially in Orange County, I didn't. I'm
not an Olympian, I'm not an a champ. I'm not
a California state champion, not a ncl American, like nobody's
gonna take me seriously, Like I felt comfortable doing with
my brother and his friends because I wasn't getting paid
to do it. I was just doing it to do it.
It's like I wanted to help out and I loved
watching film and I love breaking stuff down. And he'd

(48:55):
ask me every time I see him, every time I
see him, and then he finally asked me again. And
at this time, I think I was getting ready to
go to school for nursing, and I was working like
three or four jobs. I was working catering events, I
was working at a restaurant as a buster and server,
and then I would work just to like on call.
Somebody needed me to clean something up pretty much, and
so I was just all over doing that. I was like,

(49:16):
I don't have time because if you don't like it, Hey,
you don't like it, then you just tell me I
don't want to do it again. That's it.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Just try it.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
I think you really hit it off, you know. And
especially since Wrestling Fargo Tournament is like sponsored by the Marines.
It's like in every Orange County Wrestling Association event, they
always have Marines on the campuses. Do the pull up
bar challenge outside like just do it.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
See what happens.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
And I remember I remember doing it, and I was like,
all right, guys. I remember telling people about it, like
let's do this whatever blah blah blacause that I've always
had a sphere of people that I know and a
lot of people that respect me and stuff, so like,
all right, I'll do it. And I remember doing like, hey,
first official practice, two weeks whatever, blah blah blah blah
for free. Don't worry about it. Two weeks for free.

(49:57):
I had around like sixty seventy people come and I'm like,
oh shit, I mean, this is sick. And then he
was like yeah, he's like it's a nonprofit too, so
he's like you can charge what you want to charge,
and then if whatever you want to do with the money,
you do with your money, we'll give it back to
the veterans. We'll do this with the veterans. We'll do
this next. I know with him, they would go like
to hospitals and visit veterans and they do certain things
like that, so it was pretty cool stuff. And they'd

(50:18):
go like do like fundraisers as far as like turkey
stuff for Thanksgiving and then stuff for Christmas. So it
was awesome. So I'm like, all right, this'd be cool.
And I remember like second week comes and I'm like,
all right, guys, this is what we're gonna do. We're
gonna charge like one fifty months for three four days
a week.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Blah blah blah blah, see you guys.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Then I had fucking like four kids show up, and
I'm like, damn, I'm over here coming in. I'm like,
this is aweso blah blah blah. Have four kids show up,
and then two of them said they couldn't afford it,
and then the other two were like paying half of
what that was. And keep in mind, at this point,
I think I lived in like east Vale, So I'm

(50:55):
driving from east Vale all the way to Orange County
to do it and then like on oh and I
like two days there and then two days in Corona
area and those It's just different dynamics in Orange County
and people have more of this up there. Some people
have it, but some other people like they're not putting
their money towards wrestling or anything. They're doing it towards laundry.
This that real life shit, you know, And to where

(51:17):
I'm like, fuck, dude, I might lose. I'm I'm wasting
my own money trying to do this. But a part
of me too is just I don't know. I just
stuck with it. I was like, I'm just super competitive
to where I had a vendetta kind of like I mean,
I had everybody's name down because I have them sign
like a waiver to where like you don't get hurt
and if anything happens, you know, So every single one
of the persons that didn't show up, I kept their name,

(51:40):
and I pretty much just wanted like my kids, going
all right, this is the four kids I have. Fuck it,
We'll ride in to where it was kind of like
kind of Mendeta, right, We're gonna chase those kids and
just try to beat them. And so where we did it,
and I remember one of the parents wanted to do
a private lesson with me, and at the time, my
private lesson prices weren't too crazy. I was just like,
I just wanted to show wrestling and I was like, oh,
it's thirty dollars an hour or whatever, and he was

(52:02):
like it's a little too pricey. Uh, can we do
thirty for two privates and I was like, no, like
it gas money coming down, Like no, this doesn't make
sense for me. And I remember training kids and pretty
much they end up beating that guy's kid and he's like, oh,
I want to do privates again, blah blah blah, like
well when prices went up, so we'll do He's like

(52:25):
he's like, he's like, all right, we'll do it. And
pretty much long story show when I was twenty nineteen
and then COVID happened and stuff, and then I felt
like I got a lot of my clientele from a
lot of like because nothing was open during COVID into
where at a time there was an mma gym that
they were doing practices out of in one of the

(52:46):
kids I helped out and one of the kids that
helped me out with my brother.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
I was like, hey, can you come to.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
This practice the small there's a small practice a lot
and the MAY fighters here, UFC fighters are here.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
It's just small Okay, So I go.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
It's awesome, and then I'm like I remember telling them, Hey,
do you mind if I bring some people for the
next practice, Like yeah, sure, just bringing the three or four.
I'm like, so I text three or four of my
guys that have been feeding to get on the mat.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
I'm like, hey, practice here.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Don't be late, blah blah blah. Cool, let's say practice
at ten o'clock. I get there right at ten o five,
a little late. The same parking lot that was empty
the two days before was filled with cars. And I
go inside and I see like forty fifty sixty people
inside that gym, and I'm like, oh fuck. And then
I see the owner of the gym, the UFC fighter,

(53:30):
high level UFC fighter, and he's like looking at me,
and I'm like, oh fuck, he's gonna kick my ass.
And I remember finding the kids that I told to come.
I'm like, what you why'd you tell people? Like I
just told one person. I'm like, don't I didn't tell
you tell anybody. I said you three coming, And he's like,
well I just told one person. I'm like, well, no shit,
now one person that tell other person. Nobody's been wrestling.
So they're just they're like, oh, open, Matt, we're gonna go.
Like so then pretty much what happened. Like he's like,

(53:53):
just run the practice, like just do what you need
to do. Whatever, we'll do practice whatever. I remember after
the practice over with, he was like, if you're a
kid that you brought today, continue to like beat up
on my fighters the way they did today. You guys,
more than all can come whenever years want. Like that
was a perfectract blah blah blah, and I was like, oh,
sick cool And so pretty much we do practice there
every Tuesday Thursday, and we train was really low key

(54:15):
because it was COVID. It was really low key, like
I think the walls were cardboarded and you're getting to
practice and people drop you off. There's no cars and
no attention, and a lot of high level fighters were
in there. A lot of high level coaches would come
in from all over the world to like train there
and like show stuff. So I'm like learning stuff from
high level fighters. I'm learning stuff from Olympians, I'm learning
stuff from World champs, from old placers. I'm seeing the

(54:36):
high level people that I like watch on TV because
I love UFC. I love them and may I love
that stuff. So I'm like damn. And then I'm running
practices and I'm giving away like the T shirts saprifice
shorts on sport and they're posting on their stories and
they're like they're telling me, thanks coach for the stuff,
and I'm like, at the time, it was twenty nineteen,
twenty twenty. I mean, I'm twenty two years old, twenty

(54:56):
three years old, and they're calling.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Me coach, and I know they're older than me, and
I know, like, you should not be calling me coach.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
I fucking suck and you guys are high level UFC fighters,
top five rings in the world, and I'm like, damn,
this is awesome. And I remember meeting kids that would
go to that gym and their parents are hit me up, Hey,
can you do private at my house. I'm like, oh, sure,
and then he could do a private house. I'm mad,
and I'm like, now I'm like getting a lot of
people to do private to me at different schools, and
I was like, well, this is awesome. I could really

(55:23):
do stuff with this, and I mean, this is sweet.
And then once they kind of the band got lifted,
I kind of just kept that clientele. And then if
they were a junior senior and their kids were good
because they pressed through COVID, they would tell their teammate
would be like, how'd you get good? And then they
refer to me, and it was kind of that domino effect.
And back then I put a little bit more attention
to it because I had a website, I had had

(55:45):
my brochure that I wanted, my my Instagram page. I
would use that SEMPI five page often. Right now I
don't really use it too much, kind of just post
stories and stuff. But I really want to get back
into doing that. But no, it was kind of just
I started doing I started doing that and it was
it was kind of awesome, and so that's kind of
what got it started. Then then it was kind of

(56:07):
a domino effect of getting clients and we go to
terments all over the country and got the brand going.
And then now that I'm in the high school position
as the head coach, I'm still trying to figure out
if I want to do it as a club or
if I want to just kind of start something different
under my name, because I feel like I have been
doing under service as far as the simplified name, not
really giving back and doing what I should be doing

(56:28):
with him, because I've just been so focus with the
high school program, So I don't know if I should
just be cutting off and doing something totally different as
far as like the name goes, what.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Do you what do you are you? What do you
you think you're going to do a club.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
I want to start a club after the high school
we're at and so because I have a lot of killers.
High school Corona dam R High School.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
Okay, yeah yeah yeah, uh, let me know if you do.
My son, my youngest son is seven, uh, and I
want him to uh start wrestling.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Hell yeah good Uh, but.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
He won't do it unless I'm I'm there. He's really weird.
I tried to take him to jiu jitsu once and
but he uh he's from Uh, he's from Santana, so he.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
Uh, he's got this in his blood.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Oh. Bro, he's a natural. He's mixed with Alabama Backwoods
crazy and Sananna Mexican. So he's about that life.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Yeah, so I'm gonna get him in. So getting to
know you a little deeper when you're not coaching or training.
Who is a j Silva.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
I'm just super like laid back, like realistically like last year.
I'll say last year. I mean just a long time.
I'm in for the for the longest time. I've just
been doing trainings and I mean that's what I do
for that's what I do for work. I mean, I
just do private trainings all day pretty much, and so
for the longest time I'm in my schedule realistically, from
four or five six years ago till now, it was

(58:09):
usually been just like pretty much private lesson I eight
thirty to nine thirty, another one at nine thirty to
ten thirty, another one at eleven to twelve lunch, and
then another practice at one to two. I do group private,
and then high school practice from two ten to four o'clock,
and then youth practices from like four to five thirty,
and then I'd have my private lesson coming at five twenty,
get stretched out to five thirty, and then trained with

(58:31):
them till six fifteen, six twenty, and then I do
my group class at six fifteen at eight o'clock. And
it was just like that every day, and even on Sundays,
I've practiced at nine o'clock till like eleven, and it's
like I had no time for myself, and I liked
it because, I mean, I love coaching wrestling. I love
coaching the highest level jiu jitsu athletes, the world champions,
the world beaters. I love training the highest level wrestlers.

(58:54):
I love training to the UFC fight MMA fighters, the
celebrities sometimes in LA I love. I love training the
kids that don't even know what double leg is yet,
Like it's it's it's so cool because like they're so
excited about the sport. They don't even know what it's
about yet, and they're like, oh, I'm learning how to
do in the conference they get. But I was like,
I remember just being really burnt out about it, and
I felt like, honestly, I felt like such a whimp

(59:14):
because I'm like I always kind of go back to
my grandpa and my mom. I'm like, they had two jobs,
Like my mom had two jobs you did not like doing.
My grandpa would wake up at four o'clock every morning
and then come home at like seven o'clock at night
and do the same shit over and over again, not
once that I hear them complain, And I'm like, I'm
over here complaining and burnt out from doing something I
enjoy doing. Yeah, So I was like, do I really

(59:34):
want to do this for the rest of my life?
And like this is do I really enjoy this? And
so I remember kind of canceling all my private lessons
and just doing a twelve o'clock to two o'clock class
and then that's it. The rest of my day free.
And I mean, I just realized. I mean, I'm just
very laid back, but I love the chaos. I'm a
guy that loves the chaos. I cannot be chilling and
sitting doing nothing like I love the case And as

(59:56):
much as I thought I hated it, like I love it.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
And that's kind of who I am. I have to
be doing something all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
I cannot just be sitting on my ass and not
doing anything, because then I get irritated. And if I
get irritated, now I'm irritated with somebody else because they're
lazy or they're this and that. I'm like, but if
I'm training and I'm coaching, you could be the laziest
guy in the world and I'd be like, O, awesome, man,
that's cool. But if if I'm being a bum too
and somebody else leaves their stuff on the floor or

(01:00:23):
bumps into me or it's just super agitated, I sid yeah,
And that's where it kind of comes out, and I'm like,
I need to train, I need to practice, I need
to wrestle with the guys. I need to coach, because
that's what's my therapy. Like I'll coach.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
You say, you took the words right out of my mouth.
I was gonna say, like people talk about all the
time jiu jitsu, and I grew up in a very
chaotic household. So for me, I'm not This isn't to
be like cool or what. I fear no man, woman, child, nothing.

(01:00:57):
So like when I do jiu jitsu, I'll close my eyes,
like especially, I'll pull guard and close my eyes and
people be like, what are you doing? And I'm like
that to me, the world is chaos to me, that
moment and that that time that I'm training is so peaceful.

(01:01:19):
To me, there's not anything that's gonna happen in there
that's gonna throw me off my zen. So definitely I
feel you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
One therapy that's awesome, though, that's closing your eyes of jujitsu.
That that's pretty sick because it's like it's it's just peaceful,
Like there's chaos in there, but it's a controlled chaos,
and it's like there's and it's like the movement.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
It taught me, it taught me better because sometimes our
eyes can deceive us, right, Sometimes our eyes can make
us think something is something, So I'm moving straight off
of movement as opposed to what I'm looking at and
thinking they're gonna do. Soncha, what's something about you that

(01:02:04):
people would never guess?

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Hm hmm. I mean this year I felt because I
just recently took over the head coaching.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Job, I feel like this year, my kids.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Know both sides of me, Like they know I'm a
really nice guy and also like I could be an
asshole like when I'm a coach. I feel like before
people like some parents or even just some kids who
are like, oh, you're an asshole like this and that,
and it's one of those things to where it's like, no,
I actually care about you guys a lot, like kind
of that kind of thing. But I don't even know
what because I'm an open but I saw people straight
up how it is like I'm not I'm not fake

(01:02:44):
about it to where like everybody's probably kind of back
if you said you have a small circle people that know,
like kind of know certain things. But I mean for me,
like I'm a small circle friends too and then that
little group, but the same time too them, I really
don't hid too much what you see on Instagram, I
mean real estate, that's me. I mean I don't really
hide too many things. Uh, I mean, what's something they
don't know? I mean I love going to the beach,
and if it's that that kind of thing, like I

(01:03:04):
like to just relax, Like as much as I'm out going,
that's probably something. As much as I'm outgoing, I need
that one day a week where it's just me and
I'm just chilling because for me, like I'm extroverted for sure,
but there are times like there are times where I
could go out with my friends and I mean I'm
hanging out talking and whatever, doing things, or even I
find myself doing this a lot after practice because every

(01:03:25):
group's different.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
It's a frost off group.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
It's like, all right, guys, we're doing this, We're gonna
have water break right now, blah blah blah blah. But
the varsity group is I'm talking to them a little differently
when it's MMA fighters that say, hey, we're not friends, right,
we might have friends outside, be like this's all we
gotta get done because if not, you're gonna get knocked out,
you know, breaking alarm. I'm like, something's gonna happen into
where luckily, I've never I mean i've never done gotten
the fight stuff like that where I've got knocked out.
But I understand, like they have stuff on the line,

(01:03:47):
they're getting paid to do this. But after hard practice
and stuff like that. After practice, I'll get my car
and I'm just just driving and like then i'm home,
I'm like, oh shit, I had no music playing the
whole time. And that's kind of like for me. I
think that's like my therapy too, because it's like that.
Or I'll go to have you ever been in Salt
Creek Beach and Dana Point. Yeah, I love the beach.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
I'll go in the water every time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
But that's the spot where I go every Sunday and
I'll put my blanket down, I'll listen to music and
I'll just chill. I'll just chill people watch. I love
the people watch, so I'll just go there. I'll people watch.
I'll bring some food, get some man.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
We're so we're so similar. It's kind of super weird
because I'm the same way. Like I have to tell
people like when I date or whatever, like I have
to tell them like, yes, I'm extrovert, Like I love people.
I love to talk whatever, but yea also take on
people's energy and stuff. And it's like there's times, bro,

(01:04:44):
where I just be wanting to chill and it's not
that you did anything, no said, there ain't nothing really
that is stressing me out. I just need time to recharge.
And people like people will be like, oh but you
go out, did you do this? And you okay, I

(01:05:05):
still need to recharge your phone. Your own your phone
all the time. You gotta recharge you right, absolutely, bro,
I gotta recharge. Let me ask you this, what kind
of legacy I know, you coach, what kind of legacy
do you want to leave? Not just necessarily in wrestling,
but as a man.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
As a man, I probably say being a man of
your word. That's something my grandpa would do. I would say,
you gotta you gotta be a man of your word.
And for me, like obviously like my my my dad
wasn't in the picture. Later on and my grandpa we
would talk about it. And then obviously the older my
grandpa got, he kind of just got a little bit

(01:05:46):
more forgiving. But obviously you have kids, somebody leaves your
kids stuff like that. Obviously you're not gonna like be
very fond of them, and he would always tell me,
he's like, you just gotta be a man of your word.
You gotta If you say you're gonna do something, you
gotta do it. And for me, I'm like, okay, Like
that's simple to do because I wouldn't then I won't
say anything that I know that I'm not gonna do.
But it's like, sometimes there are hard things to do

(01:06:06):
and hard things to say it, but you still got
to do it. You can't just bitch out and not
do it. And so I would probably say that's probably
one of the things I want to definitely leave because
I have two younger brothers too, to where I That's
why I think too. As a wrestler, I mean I was,
I was whatever, I wasn't the greatest, and as a coach,
so I feel like that's what I really have a
n act for And that's why with my brothers, I

(01:06:27):
enjoy coaching them and I have a way of breaking
down the technique. I have a way of breaking certain
things down for them. But the thing is I can't
tell them, hey, you got if you want to do this,
you gotta do this. You gotta do this, you gotta
I have told them but I know deep down subconsciously
they could probably be thinking, well, I mean, you didn't
do that, or you can't do this and so on,
and so it's like, I gotta if I'm gonna tell

(01:06:48):
them to do something, I should just probably show them
rather than say it, because they're gonna follow eventually.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
And that's what I've noticed you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Absolutely, And that's where I feel like for me before,
because I feel like Andrew was like my test run
with Aaron that was like, all right, I know how
to do it now, and they're not even my kids
to where I'm like, Okay, when I have kids, this
is kind of what I gotta do. And that means
I got to get in shape. I gotta be training,
and you did Sue more often. I gotta be boxing
if I want to box. But I can't just be

(01:07:18):
slacking because I'm tired. I gotta be doing it because
I can't have my kids train if I'm not doing it, because.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Then the last thing they're gonna be like, well you
don't do it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
But if you're doing it consistently eventually, That's what I
did with my brother Aaron. Andrew forced him your wrestling,
I'm like, you're wrestling because I wasn't happy with how
I finished. I was like, you're gonna do it. We're
gonna do blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
It was super like I style, We're gonna beat the
fuck out of you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
We're gonna I don't give a shit if you you're
gonna hurt somebody. With Aaron, it was a little bit
more different approach to where it was like, hey, we're
gonna have fun. We're gonna have fun doing it. But
I never forced him. I was having watched practice. He
would watch the whole time. He's playing on his fucking
game Boy or whatever, and then eventually now he's playing
on his game Boy and then looking up, and then
game Boy and looking up, and then now it's eventually
game Boy's not even there and he's just watching practice.

(01:08:00):
And it's one of those things to where I think
that's what plays a huge role. And I feel like
if you're a man in your world, but you also
do it like and you're doing it, people will follow.
And it's kind of like that David Goggins thing is
like Roger that like people are gonna follow too, And
that's what it is. It's like you say you're gonna
do something, you gotta go out and do it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
And it's as simple as that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
And like the highest level fighters in the world, entrepreneurs,
whatever it is, I mean, even Prime Connor McGregor, that's
what he was saying.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
He was like, it's as easy as that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:28):
If you say you're gonna do something, go and do it.
Like there's no mystic mac, there's just say you're gonna
do it, you go do it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
It's as easy as that you've got to.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
Do and that, to me, I can respect. It's funny.
I've hung out with UFC World champions Mike Tyson, like
I've hung out with people that have won, and for me,
those are great. But at the end of the day,
what makes a man, or makes a person solid to

(01:08:56):
me is somebody who is a person of the word.
Like that's one thing I pride myself. If maybe it's
my Southern roots, but if I shake your hand in
the South, Like, if you shake somebody's hand and you
tell them you're gonna do something, it's gonna be done
during really no second. So I can respect super respect that.

(01:09:18):
I'm the same way. If you could go back to
talk to ten year old AJ the kid that was
just figuring out life. What would you tell.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
Him that four hundred bucks you got for your birthday
put it in bitcoin?

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
I love it, dude. That is probably by far one
of the best answers.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
It's the only answer. No, I'd probably say, huh, this
is hard because I don't agree at any I've done.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Yeah, but I would.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
Probably say, and now you asked me this question tomorrow
probably they answer a chance, probably, but right now it's
kind of something just came to mind. Probably just be
a little selfish because I've always kind of had my brothers.
I want to make sure they have the best life.
I want to make sure that like when they go
out to eat, we got to eat, when we have
to do certain things, they never pay, nor should they,
nor should they. Like I'm a big brother, I'm supposed

(01:10:24):
to get it like that's my that's my role. I
feel like I have and so for me, I've always
put them first. So where if I don't have money
for whatever it is and my brother asked me, hey
can I do this? Or hey, I'm taking a girl
on a date, can I for sure here whatever or
whatever it is? Or hey I have this bill to pay,
cant here like it's not a problem, but I feel
like for me, I didn't. I feel like I didn't

(01:10:45):
go out to different college because I wanted to stay
home and make sure Andrew was doing fine with the wrestling.
I want to make sure that I didn't leave my grandparents,
my mom, they needed help in Aaron, And I feel like,
not that I resent it, but my brother went to
school in Colorado and he was having fun wrestling out
there and parties. There's different people, You're living on your own.

(01:11:09):
I'm like, damn, like fuck. I was like pissed. I
was like, oh, I was told that I couldn't afford
it because fucking survey, and then now it's like he's
there living the best time in his life. So it
was a little bit more of a resentment thing. But
it was also like I could I could have gone
a cow Baptist, or I could have gone somewhere else
and pay the tuition with a loan.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
I know a lot of people that did that. Are
I could have applied for FASPA, you know. But it
was definitely something to where I had other stuff in
the back of my mind to where it's like I
didn't want to leave other people behind, and I felt
like if I was going to a different school in
across the country or out of my comfort zone, I
would have felt bad. I would have felt selfish because
I'm like, people are struggling back home and I'm over

(01:11:47):
here not giving a fuck and I'm getting my education.
But I'm having fun. I'm having fun with friends and stuff.
But I do think that being a little selfish would help.
I think some people like I think you seem like
a really stand up guy and super nice and put
other people before yourself. But I feel like everybody needs
to be selfish up sometimes just to think.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
We put a negative contemptation on selfish self. Yeah, right.
I think we're taught a lot of the wrong things right,
because selfishness is not a bad thing we have. If
you can't prioritize yourself, then you can't prioritize anybody else
in your life. You can't you can't take care of

(01:12:32):
anybody if you can't take care of yourself first and foremost.
You can fake it till you make it, but until
you fully take care of yourself, you can't fully give
to other people.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
And I think that has a lot to do with
what you said earlier about like recharging yourself. It's like,
you gotta make sure that you're okay first before you
could help your kid, your family, whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
So I did the same thing my brother. I start
taking care of my brother. I was eighteen years old,
my brother was six. I took care of my brother
all the way up. I have five kids. I've always like,
you know, Southern California, living single in Southern California. The
struggle is real. But I have three very young kids

(01:13:17):
that depend on me, not just financially, but they depend
on me emotionally, mentally, and all of those things. So
for me, the struggle is real, and I do what
I need to do to make sure that they're provided.
But at some point in time, like I had to
learn to say no two things, like you know, their

(01:13:39):
mom would call and be like, oh, we need to
do such and such, an how much is it going
to be a thousand dollars for a birthday party? That's absurd.
She's turned in four or five. Like we can get
a taco truck for one fourth of the costs. I'll
buy a bouncy thing before we go, Yeah, rent one.

(01:14:02):
So but I think I had to learn to prioritize
self before I was able to fully be able to
give to other people.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:14:20):
What, if you were talking to your athletes, what would
be the message that you would want to stick for them?

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
If I was talking to my athletes, would be something
like work ten twenty years, agoes in the line.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
That's like one thing they remember.

Speaker 5 (01:14:40):
Yeah, I'm gonna So it's kind of weird because like
a lot of the families that CDM.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
People think of CDM, especially my friends, like oh like
picture perfect households over there, everybody's rich, this and that.
But I feel like, and you know too, wrestling doesn't
attract those kind of peop. Wrestling attracts the kids that
have struggled and maybe they don't know it, but attracts
those kind of kids into where I would probably say,
out of the thirty forty kids we have on the
team right now, I'd probably say eight ninety percent of

(01:15:12):
those kids don't have a dad or don't have a
mom in the picture. Like something happened into where making
a long story short, we had a kid on the
team last year who where he had a mom, his mom,
something happened to his mom and dad they split apart,
and there's a lot of resentment he had and to
where she knew that's what happened to my parents. So

(01:15:33):
I would talk to him about it, like, hey, you
don't have to, but I'm here for you, blah blahlah blah,
and it really wouldn't get through to him. But I
basically he ended up like quitting. And he was one
of our better wrestlers, and he ended up just doing
some dumb things he probably shouldn't be doing, wasting his
time other places that he shouldn't be doing, and his
mom's worried about him, and so she asked if I
can go talk to him, and I was like, well,
I don't never haven't seen him in three weeks, so

(01:15:55):
I don't know where to go. And so she's like, oh,
well I thought he's been coming blah blah blah blah,
and so where Basically I end up having to talk
with him, and pretty much it had to go along
the lines of like, because I know he didn't like
the way his dad made his mom feel and stuff
like that, and she's tooisted to me and stuff, and
I pretty much just told him I was like, hey,
like you can complain about not liking the way your

(01:16:17):
dad treating your mom.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
You could bitch about that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
You could be like, hey, my life sucks and I
can't do my homework. I can't focus on wrestling because
the outside factors coming in. It is like, but like,
you're eighteen years old, you're gonna blank, You're gonna be
twenty eight. It's like you got to figure it out
right now. And if you say that you hate the
way he's making your mom feel by leaving her and
making her wonder where he's at. What are you doing
right now by going all over the place and you're

(01:16:41):
hiding your phone in your car that way your mom
doesn't know your location, and you're doing stuff that you
shouldn't be doing. Like no, because right now you think
it's funny, but it's not funny because you're making somebody
else pay and suffer for you because it's hard on you.
You think it's hard on you. You think it's harder
on you than it is your mom. It's like you're
over complaining that your dad left, yet you're doing the
same exact shit. And so right now, I think I

(01:17:03):
know you don't think it's a big deal, but if
you leave right now and don't join this team when
shit gets hard. In college, if you do go, you're
gonna drop out and you're not gonna go to class
because you're gonna be like, well, this shit sucks. When
you do dat a girl and you have temptation that, oh,
this girl's prettier or this girl's smarter, you're gonna cheat,
You end up in a marriage.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
You're gonna find ways to find way out of it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
You get your job laid off, you get this and that,
you're gonna find a way to quit. You're gonna find
a way to give up because shit gets hard. Or
you could stick with the team right now in practice
and not miss and show me how committed you are.
And he's like, I practice right now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
I'm like, no, come back tomorrow. Show me if you
want to practice, and we'll go.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
And the conversation probably lasts about thirty to forty minutes, and
I'd probably use a lot more f bombs and this bombs,
and this bombs, this and that to get my point across. Yeah,
But I mean he hasn't missed a day since. And
I feel like I've had a lot of those talks
with the kids. Sometimes not as bad as that, because
they usually listen like right away, but I I'd probably
just say, like, like it kind of has the go
go back to being the man your word, you got it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
You gotta.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
If you're gonna do something, you gotta you gotta do it.
If you say you're gonna wrestle, you gotta wrestle. And
I think rustle is the best metaphor any Marshall art,
I think is the best metaphor because it's like you're
gonna cut wait, it's gonna I mean, she's gonna get
hard in your mind's not gonna be all there. So
when you get to the real world, when shit gets
hard and you get laid off, or you have a
big presentation, or you're fucking subordinate didn't email somebody that

(01:18:22):
were supposed to email.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Now it's on your ass. You can't just oh well,
own up to it, do it. I'll get it done.

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
When pressure comes in, you gotta just fight back and
you gotta go. And that's what I feel like will happen.
And I know a lot of wrestlers have come back
and said, hey, coach, thanks for Like there's a lot
of things I've said to where it's like I said this,
or kids where I'm I thought it was just going
one in off the other because sometimes they're like, they're
not giving me the answers I need, and then they're
coming back to, oh, you were right, coaches, and what
you said was true, blah blah blah, and I'm doing
well in college. So it's cool seeing that. But it's like,

(01:18:52):
that's why I love coaching too, because you get to
really have that father figure impact on these kids. And
they might not know it in the neither did I,
but then now they're and I feel old about it
because I started. I was coaching when I was eighteen,
so where some kids are older than me, I coach
because they were at nineteen graduating. Yeah, And I was like,

(01:19:12):
but it's like, it's cool. They're all doing well and
if they ever have a question, I think they always
hit me up and we'll go out. And I have
a have a really good relationship with my coaches, with
Coach Clinton, with my football coaches I used to have,
and Coaches Spinosa and all these guys that would coach me,
and that's the same way it is now with these kids.
So where it's it's cool, but just there's a lot
of things I probably hope that they remember. But just
kind of just something to word. Just be a man

(01:19:32):
of your word, you know, just be a man of
your word, lead by example, don't be a follower.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
I tell people all the time to when you talk
about fighting, martial arts, all of that stuff. My brother
we were talking about it yesterday and he said, hey,
this guy really isn't you know, he isn't a dog.
And I said, well, because he's been catered to sometimes.
To be a well, I say all the time, to

(01:19:58):
be a dog, you got to go through shit. Yeah,
and that's the way that you learn. Luckily for them,
they got somebody like you that's kind of been through
some stuff that can give them words of wisdom to
help them. You know. But goes back to what you said,

(01:20:19):
being a man of your word and following through with things.
And when you do those things, most of the time,
those kids just want consistency because they don't get consistency,
whether it's from one of their parents or a family
member or whatever. So you know, this is why I

(01:20:42):
love doing this show to finally meet you, hear your
story and kind of your journey of helping others. Let
me know about the club wrestling because I definitely want

(01:21:04):
to get my son in. I used to live right
over there by CDM. But I'll shoot you my info
if you need anything. You'll have, any events or anything,
let me know and I'll help post them as well.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
Oh perfect. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:21:22):
I appreciate you coming on and like I said, I'll
be out there soon to catch up with you in person.

Speaker 3 (01:21:29):
Heck you, it'll be fun. Hell a bakery, let's go,
let's go.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
Take it easy brother, and I'll see you soon.

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):
Great. Thanks brother, all right, appreciate it. Peace,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}💥 AJ Silva: Hard Work, Wrestling 🏆 & Giving Back Through Semper Fi 🇺🇸

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

The Joe Rogan Experience

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

💥 AJ Silva: Hard Work, Wrestling 🏆 & Giving Back Through Semper Fi 🇺🇸

On Purpose with Jay Shetty