Masters Alliance
9th Dan BlackBelt and Olympic Gold Medalist Herb Perez visit with the best and brightest to bring clarity to the future of Martial arts.
Masters Alliance
No Apologies: Three Champions Take on Taekwondo's Hard Truths
What happens when three Olympic-level Taekwondo masters remove their filters and speak their unvarnished truth about the state of the sport? The Warehouse 15 podcast delivers exactly that as Coach Juan Moreno, Herb Perez, and TJ dive deep into the challenges facing modern Taekwondo.
The conversation begins with TJ sharing his vision for his newly opened training facility, where he aims to create an environment focused on competitive excellence rather than traditional formalities. This sparks a broader discussion about how proper training environments should build athlete pipelines while fostering a culture of mentorship where champions help develop the next generation.
Drawing from US Olympic Committee research, the trio tackles the controversial question of athletic specialization, arguing that the trend toward single-sport focus before age 18 is damaging athletic development across all sports. They share personal experiences of how cross-training and multi-sport participation builds better overall athletes, while lamenting how modern coaching often forces premature specialization.
The conversation reaches its most passionate point when discussing World Taekwondo's rule-making process. They critique the closed system where small committees make decisions with limited external input, often originating from the Korean Taekwondo Association before being adopted globally. This leads to a deeper examination of Taekwondo's identity crisis – is it still the full-contact martial art it was designed to be, or has it been fundamentally altered by electronic scoring and spectator-focused rule changes?
Whether you're a competitor, coach, or martial arts enthusiast, this episode offers rare insights into the sport's challenges from those who've experienced it at the highest levels. Join us for a conversation that's as educational as it is entertaining – ending with a lighthearted challenge between two Olympic veterans that proves their competitive fires still burn bright.
Here we come Perez Moreno, jennings, the triple threat. Olympic gold, no doubt, no regrets. Warehouse 15, the truth we unpack. No sugar coat, no holding back, Sorry, not sorry for the words we choose.
Speaker 2:It's the truth. Things that's on you, not us, to lose Taekwondo's raw.
Speaker 1:We lay it bare. Your feelings might bruise, but we just don't care. We speak our minds. No apologies sent. This ain't no therapy session. This commentary heaven sent. You think your hot stuff a black belt elite? We've seen it all, from the head to the feet the politics, the favoritism, the fake, the grandstanders, the ones who just take we bled and we train reach the top of the game. So don't lecture us it's a crying shame.
Speaker 3:Sorry, not sorry for the words we choose. Welcome, we are back. It is the Warehouse 15, not the 16, not the 14, and you are here with the Grandmaster of Disaster and Olympic coach, Olympic athlete, Olympic everything, Coach Juan Moreno and TJ, the most important person in the world, at least to himself. How are we doing today, Coach TJ? He's so ridiculous. The disrespect I get for getting an Olympic bronze? No, no, it's good, it's all good. No, no, I was just. I'm loving those pictures behind you. You've changed the Joker into the Lions and I love these.
Speaker 4:It's all good. No, no, I was just. I'm loving those pictures. Behind you, you've changed the Joker into the lions and I love these positions Is this us Like?
Speaker 3:is this the three of us up here Like which one's me? If it's the three of us, it's gotta be the one doing the most talking in the middle.
Speaker 5:It's gotta be that, bob.
Speaker 3:Exactly turning sideways. Well, actually that might be you on the side, because it's turned sideways like a mugshot. I mean probably nothing unfamiliar to you All right, coach Moreno? How are you doing, sir?
Speaker 5:I'm good. I'm good, I'm getting ready for crazy trips. I'm heading to Maryland tomorrow to see one of my coaches, coach Thomas Jenkins, some folks out there and come back from that on Sunday. Then I'll see TJ out in Charlotte for the Grand Prix Challenge that starts next week. I'm going to arrive on Tuesday night. I got to make a little detour in the middle there. One of my children are graduating from high school. My third child is graduating from high school, so I got to make a West Coast trip and then come back and then go to the Grand Prix and then we got the really cool camp that I'm super excited about. I know we've mentioned it a few different times, but I'm really happy to bring a bunch of people together and you know we're going to be at Coach Jennings' new facility, so that's going to be awesome and, yeah, it's going to be a long, long trip, a long time away from home.
Speaker 4:But you got to do what you got to do Got to do what you got to do.
Speaker 3:I'm excited about the training. Yeah, excellence only happens when excellent people get together, and I wish I could be there to see Coach TJ's new place. I know that it's stellar. How is membership going, coach?
Speaker 4:It's good. We're just pushing advertising and doing all that thing. It's like a new learning curve. You, you know it's like a whole different twist on things. I I have a lot of help, a lot of support. A lot of people have reached out to me, you know, gave me their advice on how they've done things and put me in good, good direction. So we're doing it, I'm building. I'm just super excited, like you said, about the camp coming up soon to have all those people. That'll be a good pulling point, you know, to have all the international coaches and have the international athletes just trade in the gym and get a good feel. For me it's exciting because it'll be the first time to have that many people in a room. So get a good idea of what it feels like on a 35 plus person hot day in the room, you know. So I'm excited.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm going to give you. I'm going to give you two pieces of advice, and I used both of them when I they came to me. Number one was get with frank silverman. I'm going to get you his number and I'll have Frank have his people reach out to you. I think Frank is handling more of the wealth management from Maya now, but Maya was just instrumental in my success when I first opened up. You know, he gave me great advice, taught me how to do everything that I know how to do today with regard to marketing.
Speaker 3:And then the second thing, the other piece of advice I'd give you, is um Spark. Spark has been instrumental in us managing our website and our payables. And Chung Park and Rob and Ron Sell they are just doing a great job and I know they're they're down that way as well, and those are two guys, um that I don't. They don't sponsor us if I wish they would now that we've mentioned them on the podcast. But the um really just great, great stuff. And I I think you do those things. It'll accelerate your growth in your school more quickly than anything else that I could think of tj.
Speaker 5:You know um you know? Do you remember logan from uh new mexico?
Speaker 5:yes, I do and I remember, uh yeah, blackman, mr blackman, blackman and his wife, they're really big into Maya and their consultants and he said the same thing. There's a couple of people in the Maya Listen Maya and you know Spark. They're the giants of the martial art. You know community world as it comes to business. You know help and support. So I mean it's something to look into. But I was actually going to ask you before you. You said you gave your advice. You know, young, like TJ, like your, your vision of of your peak performance center there is a little bit more towards competitive high performance versus. I mean, of course you'd love to have a thousand of people, right, but like you're, you're you're more focused on.
Speaker 4:You know, athletic development, am, am, I, am I right there? Yeah, absolutely, I think that's that's the direction I want to go with everything and we do a little bit of um, uh, strength and conditioning kind of personal training, kind of like um, adult program stuff, but also, yeah, just the development of the sport, development of the kids, development of the athletes from a, from a younger age, older age, wherever. Wherever you get in, you fit in, you know, but just definitely I want it to be a higher level, higher level technical center, hopefully one day getting it to the point where we can be a full-time sponsored like a club, like the European club or Asian club, whatever it is, where I have full-blown sponsors and have people paying for the team to travel and all that stuff like that. I just want to make it accessible for the people that want to do it to the highest levels.
Speaker 3:You know Well we had built a model when I first opened the first facility. I did the Olympic Committee scholarship me into a master's program in Lausanne called Memos, and Bob Gambardello did it. I did it and a few others have done it, and Bob Gambardello did it, I did it and a few others have done it, and my thesis was on how do you do elite-level sport and how do you still build grassroots development. And so I came up with a model for grassroots development that I'll speak with you about offline and how it funds high performance. And we started that way and we had 850 guys in my school and probably back then a hundred of them competing, which is a lot.
Speaker 3:Now I've changed my model because I'm old and lazy, but there is a way to build a grassroot because you want to fill that pipeline. Well, actually it's a topic we'll talk about later. But, um, you can do it there for sure. And then I was was a little confused because you can get a sponsor, I mean for a guy. You get your art at Walmart and I'm sure you can get Walmart to sponsor your training center. You know the lion paintings. But and I was slightly a little more confused because when Juan started talking about Mr Blackman. I thought he was speaking about.
Speaker 2:All right. And then we're moving on.
Speaker 3:I got my haircut. I got no, no hold on, I got my.
Speaker 4:I don't want any letters. I got my. I got, I got my am I going to get canceled?
Speaker 3:I got my haircut by a Brazilian guy who didn't speak English and this is what I ended up with. So I want to talk. I know we've got the Brazilian Open coming up.
Speaker 5:No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got to go back. We talked about that last time, yeah, but what we need to talk about is the damn shirt you're wearing, because, honestly, I'm Brazilian, so are your sleeves Calm?
Speaker 3:down, here it comes, you asked for it. You asked for it, oh my God. You know, don just got off.
Speaker 5:I'm like 64 and a half. There you go.
Speaker 3:That's enough. Listen, I got the one day of sunshine here in beautiful Northern California, where we get three days of something that resembles spring or summer and the rest is what it is. So I was on my bike today today, but it actually was cold out. I had this under my um black and gold jacket that I wore hiding all my loveliness so that I don't get attacked by various and sundried people because this is northern california yeah, all right.
Speaker 5:Hey, let's talk a little, just get a quick no no, no, what is this?
Speaker 3:what is this? Turmeric, orange and turmeric juice from Trader Joe's? Trader Joe's is, if you're listening, you know. Sorry, not sorry, and I did have my cup of espresso right before this. That looks delicious. And then, tj, I see you got MD 4040, what is it called? Or what do you got? What are you drinking over there?
Speaker 5:let's go. You're getting very stereotypic right now. Man, I see you got.
Speaker 3:MD 4040. What is it called? What are you drinking over there? You're getting very stereotypic right now, man.
Speaker 5:No, no, no, no, no, not stereotypical, you're in the border of racism right there, man, that's border you might be sliding off, man, I'm not quite sure. I didn't mention it. It's cut off. For real.
Speaker 3:This is good that went south quickly, but that's a lot of foam in that coffee. Go ahead. What do we got?
Speaker 5:let's go, it's empty. No, no, I'm just gonna give a quick recap about the brazilian open, or the real open. I thought uh, I thought it was kind of cool because I wanted to check this out the on the men's side they won five out of eight gold medals and on the women's side they won three out of eight, but in every single final they had a Brazil athlete and actually I think I could throw it.
Speaker 4:Guy and girl side, both sides, boys and girls, both sides, both sides Were there a lot of other people there, though, as far as countries and all that stuff like that.
Speaker 5:Listen, countries and all stuff like that, listen, listen. I mean it's a little. Of course there was. Of course there's more brazilians, you know, but there's some spanish dudes there, there's chile, there was costa rica, there was mexico, there was a few, you know, a handful of americans.
Speaker 5:I mean, I expected, obviously, the brazilians to do a little bit better, but I thought somebody would trip somebody up and it went a little bit more finals, because it always happens, you know, we I mean there's way more americans at the us open than anybody else, but that doesn't stop the, the gold medals from getting dispersed to all those other people. So I thought it was pretty cool. You know that. That. I mean, maybe that's the model you want, right, you want to, you want to have your open and you want your people to win your open, so that, I mean so you can get the olympic ranking points.
Speaker 5:So, and many of them, we had brazil and brazil finals and we had some interesting, like national team athletes, I think, if I let me count, I know for a fact, we had one, two, three national team athletes what I would consider very good lose to other brazilians, like and again, that's another good for me, another good, I don't think that's a bad thing for them. I take it as a good thing that we have other people pushing, you know, and even a couple of the national team guys they had. You know, they got pushed in three rounds and it was. It's pretty interesting to have that domestic, that domestic depth that we've talked about TJ for so long. I think it was probably missing over here. I mean, I could be wrong, but yeah, in Brazil I think we saw that a lot.
Speaker 4:So yeah, it was always from a competitive standpoint. As far as in the U S it was always. It was a little bit tougher than this as far as the field was a little bit more packed with people and then younger people were coming up quick and they had shot. I think they it's crazy. We People were coming up quick and they had shot. I think they it's crazy. We didn't do as many tournaments, but I feel like they had shots at the older guys. They had shots to, to be better, to get in front of them, to to, you know, to force a win and change the direction of things.
Speaker 5:But it's Well, listen, we're right now they're having a. We have a junior camp Going on in Rio and two of our Olympic athletes went there on two different days just for sparring. Like you know what I'm saying. Like they, you know, nacino went, milena went, so we got one guy, one girl and they're just they're out there fighting with all the juniors. You know what I mean. Think about that. They're getting a shot at Olympic level athletes, world championship medal athletes, both Pan American Games champions. I mean that's pretty cool.
Speaker 5:I think that they're highly yeah, they're highly regarded in Brazil, but yet they make time to go over to those training camps. Think about this this is a junior training camp and they go there to work out with them, but that's. We keep talking about this, giving back. We talk about building the future. I think that's how you do it right. I mean, why not have some of our top-level athletes go to the Cadet World Championships or go to a training camp? Well, because we don't have training camps. That's why.
Speaker 4:Yeah, didn't work out, I think when I was on the junior team, I think we trained with the senior team at one point like crossover at the OTC, or it was the Olympic Training Center team, not the national team itself.
Speaker 4:It was the Olympic Training Center residence team that the junior team went out there for our um, our prep camps. We used to train with them and stuff that was interesting. We used to have that little dynamic. I mean we split the room sometime. You'd have the junior team guys cheering for the junior team person against, like this OTC team. They created this like it was cool. You know, and you're in it. When I was in a room with like the they were, these guys were you know medalists and you know the world championships. There were big guys in the room with us.
Speaker 5:It was cool well, they're men, men, men and women. You guys were kids. I mean, to be honest with you, I was herb. You were talking about, I mean a couple podcasts ago, about the first generation olympic training center athletes, which I totally agree with you. I think there was, I don't know 95 percent of them didn't deserve to be there, but they were there because of theiration. I think it kind of got a little bit better for a while. But when I was there, I would say that I was the second generation and I remember every junior camp that came 200, 300 kids, 300 kids and we had to be coaches. So the Olympic Training Center coach, dave Sung Lee, would lead the camp and each one of us athletes had 20, 30, 40 kids and that was our team and it was like our team is going to line up first, our team is going to be ready, our team is going to do drills, our team is going to train afterwards.
Speaker 4:This was for the. It was just a junior training camp.
Speaker 5:Yeah, just junior training camp. So we always were integrated with them. No-transcript. I just feel like there was a little bit more cohesion, you know.
Speaker 3:You're building a culture. So what you're talking about is how do you build a culture and how do you build continuity and how do you build throughput? So, like, philosophically, I ultimately believe that the senior athletes, to the best of their ability, should learn how to teach, coach and and become sympathetic and empathetic with the younger athletes. So you, when you do that, that's what happens. So when you take the older athletes and you have them coach the junior team athletes, you're building a culture where the younger athletes over time learn to respect their seniors, as opposed to telling them to respect them, because they coached them and they taught them. So now, when they idolize you guys, so when they see you and you teach them, they'll remember that for a lifetime and then they'll also build a culture themselves to give back. You know, as we talk every week not we me, because I'm obsessed, obviously my son I make him actually coach younger athletes for free. So any kid that likes soccer in my orbit, you know I'll offer my son up and he goes out for an hour or two with the kid and and he helps the kid in soccer. The kid might be nine or ten years old and my son's just turned 17, but he's learning a first of all to give back, be learning how to teach and or coach and transfer information. See, he's remembering and being reminded that he couldn't have gotten to the places that he's gotten to. Had somebody older and better not done that with him in his situation. You know, he had a player, professional player, two, two professional players from the earthquakes helping him, and then he had Jason Hahn Dr Hahn, good friend of all of ours and teammate. He was kind enough to hook me up with one of his guys from the LAFC, strength and agility right. So I made a phone call and Jason and I have a good relationship and so he hooked me up with this guy and coach, dan and Guzman, who runs a actually a program kind of like you coach, and he does it down in Southern California. Now he's gone into, like, the health and wellness space as well. But that was was like. Imagine a kid, nico's age three, four years ago, working with a guy from a professional team. Forget about whether the information is good or not, which it was, the allure of it, how it boosts his confidence. Because when you get that opportunity, those kids who come to the junior camps that you guys used to be involved in. They are like dude. I train with the national team guy, so when they go in there and they try something, they're like he taught me to do it, it's going to work, and sure enough it does. Why? In part because it's good information. The other part is because he believes it's going to work. He has confidence.
Speaker 3:And one of the downfalls of the current administration in USA Taekwondo is the lack of giving back. It's become exclusionary as opposed to inclusive, and when you make exclusionary things you raise things to a level where people don't believe they have access to it, don't have access to it and don't want to be part of it. So how many people do you know personally, each of you that have exited the sport, that just say you know what, I don't, I don't want? I mean, I could name off the top of my head four, five, six high level coaches, high level athletes that did the sport of the high level. Let's say I'm not showing up what, for what? For what reason? You know so and I think that's the. That's a cultural issue. You know that um we need to talk about at some point. And then it's a pipeline issue and, tj, as you build your facility. You know you need to think about the, the pipeline.
Speaker 3:You are a conduit to excellence. You are an athlete who has swam at the deepest levels of our sport in virtually every incarnation of it. You were in the Army, you were part of that program. You were in USA Taekwondo, both as an athlete and as a coach. You've been to the Olympics. You are, and Coach Moreno too too. You guys are in the mix and, by the way, still in it. You're still in the day-to-day of it. You've gone through what I would consider to be the hardest part, which was the old school method, to the new part, which is arguably as hard. Um, although I tease about it all the time, you guys have seen it all. So you have the most information. You have the most. So you have the most information, you have the most experience, you have the most knowledge. Yet in a large part you're sidelined domestically. You know, and I think that's a shame too.
Speaker 5:Real fast, I'll go ahead.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think, disconnecting to the culture thing and talk about the new gym and everything, I think that's the biggest thing for me. I want it to be a place where people can come in, you know, train for real. We, we have the idea, you know, like back in the day when I came to Miami coaches, because the room was so heavy, everybody there wanted to win. They wanted to win at whatever level they were at, from the kids all the way through. It was just that place and we didn't have to, we didn't have to pretend to be super traditional and if I Chedi Apkunye and all that stuff, you know, obviously we were respectful to the people we need to be respectful to, but we're allowed to focus on training and, like, be ourselves in training and compete with each other, you know, and that's that.
Speaker 4:That in itself is important. I think sometimes creating those rooms are tough, obviously, but I said I get an opportunity to teach Taekwondo the way that I think I want to give it to them at what levels and you know how to progress through the belts. I want it to feel like, even maybe a little closer to like a boxing gym, feel a little bit, you know that like kind of roughness a little bit, that acceptance of let's come here work together from the little guys all the way through. So I'm excited.
Speaker 5:I think listen I mean, you know it's kind of fun for you, tj is. We talk since we started this podcast we've talked about lack of culture, building culture, giving back development, world class, all this stuff. And so here you are, you got your new place and you have your chance to kind of mold everybody that comes. And it's going to be like this. But Herb told me one time I don't know if you remember this, I actually told this story this morning to my kid, michael and I learned from Magic Johnson and Arlene Lemus the same thing. They were both obviously amazing in their own disciplines, but they weren't very good at coaching and it was because they were so great at what they did. They couldn't understand why other people didn't think like them and want it like them and give it like them.
Speaker 5:And I remember Young, you told me, you said you said, juan, your challenge is going to be teaching and giving what you know inherently, what you know instinctively. How do you verbalize it? How do you systematically program it? And I think TJ is a little bit further on along than me when I first started. But that is going to be now that you have your own place, people every single day, people coming in, going through, leaving some staying longer than others. You have a chance to really put your stamp on people and take all this knowledge and all this um, expertise and experience and I mean different than even me, because when I started, like I was making it up as I was going, you know I'm saying like, think about that.
Speaker 3:like there wasn't a program like you're talking about, at that time it was just do my best and um, um, but you but you say, you say something that matters right, and, and what you said was you know, you took it upon yourself, right, there's, and we talk about this all the time, and Gambardello used to talk about it, um, cause, we learned it in that memos program. It was folk artist. Are you a folk artist? And you remember when we developed the coaching program, folk artist? Are you a folk artist? And you remember when we developed the coaching program, you and I? If you're a folk artist, that means that you can. You can make this thing right, you can carve it, you can do it. You have no idea how to teach somebody to do it, but you yourself did it for yourself. It's only at the moment where you try to transfer information to someone else that you can make sense of it in the sense of I try to teach and I never wanted to teach, by the way, because I thought I was terrible at taekwondo.
Speaker 3:I thought I sucked at taekwondo. I thought I was just good at doing my version of taekwondo. My round kick wasn't the traditional Korean one. None of of my kicks were my kicks were my kicks. I tried, but I never tried to be like them. So when it came time to teach. I had the imposter syndrome where I didn't feel that I had anything to teach. And then I realized, as I started to decide to teach, because I had athletes I wanted to help. My method is what I had to teach, not what I did athletes I wanted to help. My method is what I had to teach, not what I did, how I did it, but, more importantly, how I trained and how I systematized myself. My success came through that. So it wasn't until I started to teach that I truly understood. And I remember and you may not remember, coach, but you and I sat in the room with another coach and we had to, because we were writing a manual.
Speaker 5:We had to describe in words how to do these kicks, how to do these concepts, and that's when you truly know, if you know something right that's what I was gonna go with tj, like I mean, you know, like how many times you run a training camp or a seminar or just a regular class and you, just you come up with something and you're like that was fricking pretty good. You know, I got to remember that for the marriage. I think the same thing goes with athletes. You know, like, think about you beat things into people, but like if I were you, I would take some of my better kids and be like, hey, go work with Johnny over there for 30 minutes, 20 minutes. You know, make sure his cut is good or what, because they will grow from that.
Speaker 5:I know it sucks, you know, but it's a Mr Miyagi training tool, right? Well, I got to do this. But just by them verbalizing whatever, they will get it so much better. I mean, you can't do that with 10 and 11, 12 year olds probably, but I'm telling you, with some of your older guys they would. They probably benefit from that. So I don't know, it's kind of a little advice I'd give there, you know, for your school, but I don't know. I wanted to ask both of you guys, cause something like this popped up for me when is it too early to specialize. Specialize meaning home school 18 years old.
Speaker 3:So the Olympic Committee did a study on this and a good friend of mine, Mike Leonard, who was vice president of the Olympic Committee.
Speaker 4:Are you saying 18 is too early?
Speaker 3:You're saying 18 is too early to specialize. No 18 is before 18. So here's the mistake and it's happening across the country. So the US Olympic Committee looked at athletic development in countries and they realized that athletes are best not to specialize in a sport till they're roughly 18 years old. And the reason for that is they burn out and all the muscle development. You're better off to do a variety of sports and with athleticism you're better to do learning how to run incredibly fast. Stop and turn. Those three attributes in any sport explosiveness, stopping and turning, whether it's taekwondo, whatever, soccer, basketball, those athletic agility, speed development you specialize after 18. The problem is that the system in the United States and in some other countries has specialized to such a degree that athletes get injuries prone to sport because they don't cross train enough and they don't fully develop. And so the United States and its AAU program, for example, in basketball, if you don't specialize, you can't compete at that 12 to 13, 14.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so you're forced to specialize. Yeah, but you're killing your athletic development.
Speaker 5:But it's not even that. Nowadays the coaches don't allow that. They're like if you're playing like really good football, you know, and you're on one of these teams, they're like you gotta, if you want to play basketball, then then we're not gonna. We're not gonna consider you for our football team or soccer.
Speaker 6:Same thing, soccer you can't play soccer that happened to my son like oh, I'm gonna go play basketball.
Speaker 5:No coach, they'd be like hell. No, I mean, that's fine play, we're going to get somebody else. So I just was, I don't know. I mean, what do you think, tj? Let's go from our gut, our gut, taekwondo. Let's keep it taekwondo. I didn't care less about soccer man. Quit talking about soccer man.
Speaker 4:I think 11, at this age, at this point, 11 and 12 years old. I, at this, at this age, at this point, 11 and 12 years old I'm going to say 11 and 12, you made a decision. I mean, I started, I started Taekwondo when I was 11, but I started Olympic style, like going in that direction, at 12. So a year in I was doing just sport, Taekwondo. So I think 11.
Speaker 5:Well now I agree to say, because then cadets is right there at 12. Right, but let me ask you this Okay, specializing, this is what you're doing. Let me just make it more extreme Homeschooling, strength conditioning, special classes, that kind of specialization.
Speaker 4:No, that's crazy. I mean that's not crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's, that's where I was going with it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. No, that's a lot at that age. I don't even. I mean, they should just be working on like we were talking about earlier, like body movements and basic movements as far as, like, maybe that's a strength and conditioning and all this stuff, but I feel like that's stuff you get from your, your normal coach. You know what I mean. I don't think you're all involved to the point of your career where you need a specialized strength and conditioning coach at 10, 11 years old. You know, 12 years old, I don't I think so it's.
Speaker 5:I mean a couple things because I know like a lot of parents want that you know. And then what happened? Here's what I'm going to say. Like, I see the pros and cons right. You got homeschooling, you can travel more to events and you have to worry about missing school we know that's a big issue. You do have more time to train, get some extra classes, so you're going to have a probably an advantage or a bump up in your level because you're doing more reps and you're probably going to improve a little quicker. But at what? Where's the payoff? At what? When all of a sudden they wake up a year down the road and they're like I'm tired because they literally doubled their, their output, right From training five days a week at night maybe a couple to you know training in the morning, monday, Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, and they do that for a month or two months or three months or four months or six months or eight months a year and they're like they have no more interest, no more passion, no more fire.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I also think at that age too, I mean they're hearing it from too many people at that point. I think if you're just trying to teach them Taekwondo, motion or basic body movements, or I'm talking like developing this sport, having strength and conditioning, I think they're just hearing it from too many people at that point. Like I said, I think it should just be coming from maybe the Taekwondo side, because that's what happens. Right, there's no way at 12 or 13, I had a strength and conditioning coach.
Speaker 5:It was even thought about that way you just learn Taekwondo, you learn how to go fast, you learn how to keep your balance that those things were important and then all the strength and conditioning for me came like way later and it packaged me and gave me extra workouts, different ways to do the same things we're already doing. You know it's so funny, herb. You know I'm not an educated person. I love telling people I'm not a formally educated person, I didn't go to university, but it's funny how many things that I did, kind of again intuitively. So my three levels, you know where, obviously at the beginning, is to learn Taekwondo. Make sure you kick well, you move well, you block well, you can do combinations. Your Taekwondo level was not specific to herb or to want. It was good across the board. You had good fundamentals, everything. Then as you reach an age of like four, 15, because at the time that's when juniors was 15, 16, 17. This is when we start to incorporate strength conditioning, bounding, jumping. Once they have body control, then they can lift some weights. And then mastery is when you're in the senior 19, 20, 21, to make sure that you're trying to focus on winning matches. So you have a good skill level that needs to be to win. You have a good physical conditioning level that you need to win. And now you're into mastery. Now you're like how can I refine my Herperez-style kick, not at 9 years old or 10 years old or 11 years old. I'm trying to trick the system and I'm flexible so I can just touch everybody in the head and I'm come away. So I did this 25 years ago. So it's interesting I did. I love to have this conversation and I do say I was talking to a kid today. You know my instinct to say was like oh, it's your upbringing. Who can, who can take what? Who's got the mindset, who's got the heart? Who's got the will? But who's got the heart? Who's got the will? But you know, I mean I think, in Germany speaking, it does come from the family, but then there's some exceptions to that rule, right, you know? I mean, this kid told me one time he said he goes. One time in my life I thought about, you know, maybe quitting the sport when I was 11. I told my dad, yeah, I think I want to stop and he goes. My dad went, laughed at him and just kind of walked away and he went back to train that night. And here he is, how many years later? Yeah, I told him the story.
Speaker 5:You know, I'll never forget 1988. I go to the national championships and I get there and I look on the draw and there was no. Dae Sung Lee became my coach later on, but he's my adversary and when he went, when there was no, no day son Lee on the draw, my dad was like, ooh they. Suddenly he's not here. And I looked at him.
Speaker 5:I took that as a sign of disrespect for my dad, like well, you don't think I could beat him and that's not what he meant, but that's what I heard. You know what I'm saying. So it's kind of funny. Even if it's well-intended, sometimes it's, it's interpreted the wrong way. So I could be hard on my son and it could be like you're a jerk, you're a jerk. Even though it's well-intended. I can be soft on my son. Man, my dad doesn't care. You know what I'm saying. It's a weird balance that we're seeing with these kids nowadays and I would tend to say that most of them are way softer, way more controlling of their families. I want to do this, I don't want to do this, and there's less of parents going. As a parent, I know this is good for you. This is what you're doing. I know that vegetables are good for you. Fruit loops aren't good for you. If I gave you what you want. You'd eat fruit loops all the goddamn day, you know.
Speaker 3:So I mean it's just a thing. Right now. You raised another good question, right? So here's, here's the reality. So when you're you're competing in Taekwondo, we're a little bit different, because there are no, to the best of my knowledge, uh, national training programs where they're taking, privatizing it and taking kids in at 11 or 12 and then doing online school. But if you go to Europe and I think that's nationwide, I think that's worldwide If you go to Europe, in certain sports there are kids that go to sport academies.
Speaker 3:Most, starting with China. They identify kids as early as five or six, they give them a battery of tests and then, certainly in middle school, they do it in australia. I looked at the australian model and they say based on this, you're going to be this, this and this in china, because they're communist countries, they can do what they want. They identify the kids and they put these guys in sport academies and they do school at the sport academy. They eat and they live together.
Speaker 3:In taekwondo we don't have that, but I'll give you a western country that does it and they do it for a different sport which you don't. Let me talk about goal the, that sport, the kids. If they're not in an academy at 12. Then they say that kid's never going to become a premier league player. So unless you're been identified as a kid who's a good player at that age and you're in man man city, whatever, whatever you man united or one of these academies or in other countries they do it in europe then you're not going to be you said they do it here, they do here, they do it.
Speaker 3:They do do it here now and this is what they're trying to do. So you take the academies here we have a local academy here, right for our team and the local academies. They have two levels. They're academies for MLS. Next those kids go to regular school. They don't do anything. Hi, sweetheart, oh my gosh, what a beautiful girl, how beautiful, how nice. Good, well, she can tell, wait, tell her to look tell her to look, I got something for her.
Speaker 3:Oh, tell him what's your look. He wants to look what's your? Look here come get ready nice.
Speaker 3:No, it might doesn't work that's, that's because you have a black heart, it's true, it's true. So the um, so here, but now here they do it. So now, when they get to high school, high school freshman year, they start to do it. So, if you get invited to a professional academy attached to a professional team, you go to online school. Now, meanwhile, these kids who go to online school, they get recruited by the best colleges in the country. So, even though they're in online school, these kids are doing online school, they're doing soccer and they're doing rehab, they're doing whatever, and yeah, and they're in a training environment and it's a. You know, nico just got in Open a charter school real quick. What's?
Speaker 4:that Just open a charter school real quick. Let's make a tech window charter school real quick. Let's make a tech window charter school.
Speaker 3:Well, I thought about no, no, I thought about this model a long time ago, yeah, and I was like, let me go. And I I was like I want to go to a ski school. And everybody thought it was crazy and I was like, no, no, I will put a charter school in a ski academy, because they ski, they're out on the slopes, we'll use the indoor space. They already have the school and the facilities and I still think it's a valuable idea. So the guys train indoors right, they have all the facilities you need and you're just doubling up on the school, because the hardest part about this is the kids who can afford to go to ski school. You know and and actually care enough about skiing to do it. There aren't that many. But imagine if you did that skiing taekwondo, basketball, whatever you you revitalize the school part of it and you'd be using different facilities. So I actually thought it was a good idea. I wanted to do it and I still, if I weren't so old, I think about doing it because I think you could make it work.
Speaker 3:You, you're down in Florida, let's say. You parted with IMG. You said to IMG I'm going to develop Olympic athletes.
Speaker 5:They almost did it. They almost did it they should. They talked about having a martial arts program there and Coach Russell taught at it. Coach was one of my peak guys. He went up there and did a program there. Coach Russell taught at it. Coach, you know one of my peak guys. He went up there and did a program there.
Speaker 3:And I think what was that thing a while back where they were trying to do something? They tried to get USA Taekwondo involved in it. You don't remember this thing where it was like In Miami. It was in Florida somewhere. It was a bunch of schools, it was a big thing.
Speaker 5:No, I Listen. They were going to do a training center like an Olympic training center, and it was crazy. I went there on behalf of USAT. They gave me I forgot it was like 10,000 square feet. I got to divide it or build it how I wanted. I talked treadmills, electric, all whatever you needed. It was crazy and we were all working. Judo was there, wrestling was there. It was going to be in Hialeah. Tj you needed. It was crazy and we were all working. Judo was there, wrestling was there. It was gonna be. It was gonna be in Hialeah, uh, tj. I went to like so many meetings. It was like it was done. They took us and showed us the land, the location, um, and I mean, they were gonna hire a coach. It was crazy. It just it never came to fruition.
Speaker 3:I don't know if it was a governmental thing or whatever so here here's the model, and I'll give you the model because I had thought about it and the guy I learned it from wasn't, he had no idea what it was. So jp che, who was greg baker's um, greg baker's um coach, and I really liked him a lot went to a summer camp. He was a smart guy. What he would do is he would go buy land. He would then build a mole-use development. He had a basement. In the basement he would put Taekwondo, First floor retail stores, Second floor professional offices and he would build these things and they were crazy successful and profitable because the economics of it worked. So I looked at it. I said I've got the model. Here it is. Do the same thing. He did Basement Taekwondo, First floor stores, Second floor dormitories and kitchen. Forget about the professional offices. In the dormitories and kitchens. You put elite athletes and the elite athletes go to public schools and they train and at night they teach.
Speaker 5:Come on money bags come on, mr money bags.
Speaker 3:Now you do it think about it now, these elite athletes. I come to your training facility. So instead of calling it lion taekwondo, we call it tj's olympic training center taekwondo, and in it you know that if you go there, not only will you get a three portraits for your room of lions, you will get lion-like training by Olympians and by Olympic hopefuls. So now, when Johnny comes to class, mary comes to class. They're learning from top level athletes who are training currently to go to a world championship Olympic game and they're training. So these guys to earn their way, they're working in the school an hour a night, two hours a night. The rest of it they're training. So these guys to earn their way, they're working in the school an hour a night, two hours a night. The rest of it they're training going to school and you have a chef on staff that cooks for them and they're studying in local schools, and so it's a great model, right, and I know you've got that rich friend of yours that you do all the seminars for.
Speaker 3:You guys are like real estate barons. What's the Vietnamese guy? What's his name? Us team member? No, your other friend, the guy who always comes down. You guys, whatever, oi, oi Lee.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you and Oi, he's Korean man.
Speaker 3:Oh, he's Korean. Oh jeez, Can we stop the podcast and go back?
Speaker 5:Nothing but love, baby, Nothing but love. He's always like six foot three man, he ain't. No, come on man.
Speaker 3:Oh now, oh, that's talk about racist. Right there Some racist stuff. But anyway so but uh, so he is. So did you just say it again? You doubled down. So the with Oi, you and Oi should do it. You guys are real estate barons. Grab a spot in Florida Just make sure it's not on a sinkhole and dig a basement and put a taekwondo school in it and then run out and get chased by alligators.
Speaker 5:You don't want to be in the ocean.
Speaker 3:Oh, you can't put a basement in Florida.
Speaker 5:I can't put a basement, but anyway, I mean, I think we kind of went long there. Something else I want to talk. I talked to someone today, herb. Do you know where TJ? Do you know what the process is for the WT to change rules? Where do the rules? What group comes up with the rule?
Speaker 3:The original process was back in the day I was vice chairman of the technical committee and I was chairman of the education committee. So any rule changes were proposed by the technical committee. They then would be voted on by the technical committee and then they would be brought to the board for, brought to the executive committee for endorsement and then brought to the board as a whole. So the original change in scoring came from when I was on the technical committee and capen was on the technical dr cape. So we came up with the multi-tiered scoring of one, two, three, four points and they, they, they. They were uh moon from, uh david moon from mexico, who was the chairman of the committee. After we voted on it and got it passed in our committee, he didn't bring it to the whole committee and I had to walk out of the meeting to get it back on the agenda. Get it passed.
Speaker 5:This is my problem and, td, you'll see where I'm going with this is. Maybe that was good, but the problem is that, think, take whoever's on that committee is not. Don't you think that they should be able to give it to the math Like cause I, I know what paper sounds like. This group comes together, they, they, they come up with a plan, they give it to executive committee. The committee says yes, together they come up with a plan, they give it to the executive committee. The executive committee says yes, they take it to the board. Everybody votes on it. But at that board meeting, at the junior world championships or senior world championships, a couple of days before, all the people say aye, aye, they vote on it.
Speaker 5:Nobody knows what's going on. My question is don't you think that whatever proposals that they come up with, it needs to be dispersed to more people outside that room, because we know that something that sounds good even us three we can come up with something and there might be someone that comes on the outside and go, yeah, but what about this, this and this? Oh, yeah, you're right, because you know, tj, we've been talking about this. I mean possible, impossible. I heard that those rules that they just posted might not have been accurate, may not have been passed. And my question was wait a minute, why don't more of us even know about this? Like, who knows about this? First these people and the referees, and then the coaches and then the athletes? Like how do we, the last ones that know, like it has to be passed, it's got to be looked over by more than this committee, I don't care how brilliant they are. There's five, six, seven, eight, nine of them. There's got to be more yeah, historically historic.
Speaker 3:Historically the rules and everybody knows this historically the rules come from the kta. So the kta is the tail that wags the dog. They change the rules in the KTA. Once they're changed in the KTA, they get six months head start on everybody else and then those rules come to the WT and that's just historically how it's always happened.
Speaker 3:The problem is when you get a moron running the KTA like Yang Zhenban, this moron who didn't do taekwondo at a high level at all but thinks he's matters he was the guy that came up with the pushing and grabbing rule because he just didn't like pushing. You know like. And when you get allow somebody who doesn't like something, hasn't done the sport at a high level, doesn't have the intellect sport intellect at least to understand the sport then he that becomes endemic and you've seen the. When that happens, what happens? The best way to do this and there was a point where it was happening is you come up with a set of proposed rules, you roll it out to countries that have the ability to hold events with numerous athletes using the new rules and see what happens.
Speaker 5:So let's say you want to, but even that, but even that, even that young, I agree that sounds like a good test beta model. Yeah. But, for example, nfl, when there's a proposal it goes to all the teams. All the teams get it and they get to listen to it and they and it's work so like.
Speaker 3:Oh, can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question? What's your last name? What's your last name Kim? If it's Kim, Park or Lee, it matters. They don't care what Moreno thinks and they don't care what TJ no, no, let's be frank, they don't care what like. There's a recent note that went out. They're looking for board of directors. Board of directors don't apply unless your name's Kim, Lee or Park. That's just the way it is. And, by the way, the Kim Lees and the Parks that apply haven't done taekwondo, haven't competed in taekwondo when they did, if they ever did taekwondo. The Kim Lees and Parks that apply are the guys that used to do it with bamboo chest protectors and they were doing karate that they learned from the Japanese, to be frank. So, like you know, when you're asking, when you're asking that particular group of individuals who are nepotistic, xenophobic, to name a few things, you're going to have a kerfuffle, as we've said before, and you're going to have a swampalampalus, and that's what we have right now.
Speaker 5:I think I was just saying don't you think it'd be interesting, like to make a okay, that committee comes up with the meat and potatoes of it, and then there's some subcommittees I don't care if it's by region, you know where you get out there or maybe you mix it up so it's like because they might just go ah, we don't listen to that guy. Yeah, but what?
Speaker 3:okay. So, in fairness, one of the greatest Taekwondo athletes ever is involved now, jungkook Young. And what's happening? This guy's sitting in the back drinking tea, eating bulgogi and kalbi and soju, and he's not making. He's in the room he could be standing up for. This guy did taekwondo highest level, best athlete ever. He's sitting in the room signing off on this nonsense by the way he doesn't watch the tournaments. He doesn't watch the tournaments.
Speaker 5:Don't you think that it's gotten so bureaucratic where it's almost like even if he did say something, he just gets rubber stamped by other people?
Speaker 3:That's what I'm saying. What if? What if Martin Luther King said that? What if Mahatma Gandhi said that? What if Herb?
Speaker 5:Perez said that how many? How many Martin Luther Kings are there? How many Gandhi's are?
Speaker 3:there.
Speaker 5:Somebody's got to start.
Speaker 3:Somebody's got to start.
Speaker 4:I think, with all the proposed rule changes, it definitely should be sent out to everyone. I mean, you have all the national team contacts from around the world. Maybe it should be kind of put out there and let them know this is what we're thinking about doing, this is what we're going to go in this direction of. What do you guys think about this? Something of the sort. I mean, like you said, we're just making up more rules, like I think the last ones whether it's true or not true, is irrelevant, but where you couldn't, they wouldn't score front-hand punches. Like what are we talking about? Now? We're dictating how people can punch someone. Like that's just crazy. That's just now. We're going further and further.
Speaker 5:It should be listen, I know they can't do. Every coach it could. Maybe they could do with all the WT level two coaches. You get, you get the proposed list and you vote yes, no, yes, no and literally put it in a document. It could be in a Google, whatever, and we could see every single person. So if some idiot votes for this that we're like like you voted for that. You know that they don't want to do that. Okay, how many nations do you have? You have 104. Whatever they have, send to all the head coaches and let the head coaches be responsible for that, the country that they represent. So again, if some country you know votes for 3 000 degree spinning kickers worth 20 points, you can be like. You voted for that. You voted for that.
Speaker 4:Now we know yeah, but out of all the things they could be focused on fixing, we're worried about front hand punches and and making sure the the coaches let me, let me, let me, let me finish let me finish. Let me finish. Don't let the referee, the coaches, uh, interfere with the referees and the matches, like we're just picking things that someone, like he just said, doesn't like at the top, I guess, and going past the issue, we don't like this.
Speaker 5:What did I tell you, tj? What's that? What did I tell you? What did I say in that comment that you, when you put on, I think on Facebook I said how about someone that's a black belt in taekwondo understands what a good punch looks like, and if it's with a front hand or the back hand, it's a problem because you guys can't score it.
Speaker 3:You can't punch, you can't punch, no, it's not that it's not that it's like they're scoring when people are going like this.
Speaker 5:If a guy went like this and hit him, okay, but it's the referee's fault, they're the ones scoring it.
Speaker 3:Listen, go back to the original problems. It started with the refs and continues to be the refs, and you got to go back. I'm going to take you back to what the original conversation was and still, or the 99% miss.
Speaker 4:Like you know, when they go one, uh, the referee center goes. One person points, the other person stands up and agrees like that's 99.9. They're always going to agree with each other, like these guys, nobody it, no one pressed it in time and now it's like oh okay, yeah one. And we watch it happen over and over again.
Speaker 3:So here's the problem.
Speaker 5:If you press the wrong button. That's different. That should be different.
Speaker 3:But here's the problem. This started because the referees were inept or cheated. That's it, let's be clear. Second, we've lost our way in the in trying to fix what was malfeasance on the part of governments and and and, and, to be honest, koreans in korea and referees. So, as a response to that, we lost our way, because then we lost the essence of taekwondo.
Speaker 3:You have to go back fundamentally to what taekwondo was or thought it was Fundamentally taekwondo, thought it was a full contact martial art. It thought it was, and in fact it was for a very long time. The idea that you wouldn't score punches over kicks was so that you could allow kicks to develop as a kicking art as opposed to a punching art, because once you enter punches in, it thwarts the ability of people to do certain combinations of kicks that matter, and that's where cover punch came in. The problem is you've got to go back to either A trusting the referee or changing the scoring system to a power-based system that reflects more of what original taekwondo was. The difference between taekwondo and karate was karate was point fighting and one punch kill. And we couldn't really do, because if we did I would kill you. Well, we know that's not true, all right. So Taekwondo came up with a full contact martial art which was much more like Kyoko Shinkai who, by the way, was created not by Masayama. It was created by a Korean guy who named himself Masayama. So full contact Kyoko Shinkai is actually created by, ironically, a Korean that was in Japan.
Speaker 3:Now, with that said, is Taekwondo fundamental, existential question? Is Taekwondo, just like I would ask you if I asked you, are you Mexican, are you black? Am I? Whatever I am? That's a fundamental question. If I believe in my heart that I'm this, then that's what I am. If you believe taekwondo is a full contact martial art and that's what should be reflected in its aesthetic and in its scoring system, then you come out with different outcomes. Now, now is a front-hand punch. I can guarantee you, if I do a front-hand punch on you, you'll know I punched you. Now, is that a legitimate technique? But it is because, if you don't score it, if you say we can't do it and the reason we're not scoring it it would be interesting to know what their rationale is you can no longer score a front-hand punch. Yeah.
Speaker 5:I can't wait to ask to be honest with you. Listen again. I know the referees should know how to score, to take it away just because it's bad, that's your guys' fault, not our fault. That's your guys' fault. You don't know how to score it. Let's be honest.
Speaker 5:But my original thing was I just think that the think tank has to be bigger, because we always say this who made this rule? Think has to be bigger, because we always say this who made this rule? Who came up with this? It just doesn't seem to make any sense, and immediately after we hear something, there's five different reasons not to do whatever it is. And that was just in literally a couple seconds. So my point is I think it needs to be these rule changes or these rule addendments. I would like to blame bad referees, I would like to blame people that don't know the sport, like you mentioned, young. But regardless of that, come up with an idea and give it to us and let us shoot holes and then they go. Okay, that makes sense, we'll go back to the drawing board. That's all I'm saying. I just think it's got to be fixed from that standpoint because if not, we don't have all the answers.
Speaker 5:It just changes too much.
Speaker 4:It's always changing. It's forever changing. It's forever being redirected or retold. I still want just one system. I don't care which one, I just want one system and let's just leave it at that. I don't like the two systems. I don't like.
Speaker 5:I mean in a lot of sports, I mean soccer, they got some small fields, they got regulations right. It could be between baseball, basketball. I mean there's been a lot. There's a lot of different sports that you know. Tennis has different type of courts, golf does I mean. I get what you're saying.
Speaker 3:Do you know where most rule changes come from in Olympic sport? Do you know why? Do you know what the why is?
Speaker 5:Yeah, because they're more spectator friendly. They want more scoring. That's it More scoring.
Speaker 3:They look at it and they go. We got to sell sponsorships, so if you can't watch, it hasn't worked in. Taekwondo. It doesn't worked in Taekwondo it doesn't work in.
Speaker 5:Taekwondo, by the way, it doesn't work in any sport.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Judo did it too. And judo, you talk to anybody who does judo.
Speaker 5:there's this thing now A thousand points.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a thousand points. You can't like grab. You can't grab in a certain way anymore because it frustrates the game. So they just made the rule were legal and and the thing was like guys who really do judo, like mike swain, they're like it's the dumbest rule in the world because if you do judo you know that's essential to the art of judo.
Speaker 5:um, and when you think about when you think about making it almost impossible, uh, tj, to like score a point. Like put the level up so high that I wouldn't be adverse to like trying something to get tapped into something Like a trap, back kick, a step forward, back kick, I'm going to switch, you're going to round, scramble, back kick and you, you know right now you go like that, you score me. But you might go like that, but I ain't going to score. Maybe my back kick doesn't score, but you know what I'm saying. Like make it harder.
Speaker 4:Make it harder to score, heavier to score.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and you might get a three to one, you know, but there's a lot of exchanging, a lot of contact a lot of shots, right, You're going to have to change it. You're going to have to change the deductions because I might fall. Then people will try to win on deduction, you know.
Speaker 3:But I don't know. Steven Lopez made a career on ded deductions.
Speaker 4:I would just go back to 10, go back to 10 over over the span of the match and just let people live or die what 10?
Speaker 3:I don't like. Yeah, the 10 point must.
Speaker 4:No, no, I'm talking about the five deductions in one round thing, like give me 10, like I don't let me. Let me take risks and be in control of it. You know what I mean. As opposed to being, and for the three rounds like one round yeah, change the score. Yeah, yeah, just leave your gum drums remain the same, just you. You get 10, I like I like that.
Speaker 5:I like that. But I don't trust that because there's some bad freaking calls. You lose your card, tj. They call and all kind of crap on your holding, pushing leg block. I also don't like that.
Speaker 4:I don't know, I don't know what you do. I don't, I think you should. I mean, when you come to the you talk about card stuff. I think you gotta always have a headshot card. I think they gotta do. I don't know, I don't know what you do. I don't, I think you should. I mean, when you come to the you talk about card stuff. I think you got to always have a headshot card. I think they got to do. I don't think you should be able to like lose your card for that, especially in the third round. Now you just see someone helmet get hit. You can do nothing about it.
Speaker 5:If the referee doesn't count for headshots, for shit. And if you win you get another one bonus card. Oh, you gotta. Yeah, five, six cards at the end. You keep winning. That's the system's fault. Yeah, but I, I actually I.
Speaker 3:I designed the system for bad refereeing a long time ago. I said if you have a match where the referee you believe the referee made a bad decision or a bad call, the referee has to fight the athlete at that moment to win a point. And if he wins the point then he gets to continue. If not, otherwise, the point goes up. So let's say you raise a headshot, call, referee called it the wrong way or whatever. The referee has to go in and battle the athlete and this way referees will be a lot more careful about cheating. So if he makes a bad decision, yeah, be afraid to raise that finger, baby, so I'll give you. I got your come, john, right here, so you know I got a question for you.
Speaker 5:You fighting in the masters uh, masters uh division competition.
Speaker 3:I've thought about over the years I've thought about it, I don't know. Over the years I've thought about over the years I've thought about it, I don't know. Over the years I've thought about it. And the reason I don't fight in it is that old country song that says I'm not as good as I used to be, but I might be as good as I used to be. One more, you know, one more second, and that's all I got. I got, maybe I, I was.
Speaker 3:I was telling the story about practicing for my ninth Don, practicing for my ninth on. And when I'm practicing, I'm, you know, I want to be able to kick. And all this not because I, because really all they test you on is this you know forms. But I'm like, oh dude, I feel good, you know. So I'm axe kicking, I'm round kicking, I'm doing all this stuff. And then I'm I'm like, yeah, man, I haven't done back hook kick in a while. Maybe I should do some back hook kicks. So I'm feeling good, I'm twisting, I'm, you know, winding myself up, and then I throw a bunch of pretty good Right, and then all of a sudden I go and I pull every, every muscle available, which I never used to pull muscles. I pull every muscle available to me in anywhere that has anything to do with any part of my body and I'm like, yeah. So, although I'd like to believe, nothing is more sad for me than to watch a highly elite, competitive athlete. Um, I watched jungkook young spar.
Speaker 5:I'm gonna talk tj off the ledge man. Yeah, tj about to jump in the ring man. No, no, my guy I have my guy, my guy that works for me.
Speaker 3:He's like oh, he's watching the kids sparring. He goes oh, dude, I want to enter a tournament. I looked at him and I go lopez, stay in the gym, man, you're a teacher spar. I spar the five-year-olds, I'm working my way up to the six-year-old girls and then maybe I'll spar the seven-year-old boys. That's it, this guy. Of course he's moving around, what's he do? Hurts his knee, which is why he had to retire in the first place. So I'm like okay, all okay, all right, chuck Norris, get in there, give it your best, right? Like this he's. This is a, this is a. My Jimmy hurts himself, right?
Speaker 5:So I'm like you know, you gotta know, enjoy your glory. I think if you're listen, they have these new. I don't know I got to get that, but I just think for guys like you, I don't know 65, if you could find another 65-year-old Olympic gold medalist that wants to fight.
Speaker 3:I'm in.
Speaker 4:If I decided to fight again, I'd have to just go ahead and just go ahead and do the regular division. I would have to no, I'd fight you. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:If I really, really wanted to. I'd have to do the regular division. I think we should have a warehouse 15. Yeah, you would be up for today. I wouldn't even train, I wouldn't even train, I would drop, I would drop, I would drop. All I'd have to do, I'd drop the right hand on you. That's it, the right hand. I'm coming. Where's your training?
Speaker 4:camp you better and then the winner fights.
Speaker 3:Moreno, the winner, I'm out, I'm good.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're out, you're out.
Speaker 3:All right, tj, it's me and you so yeah, me and you.
Speaker 4:What do you? How long are the rounds? How long are the rounds? Let's go 5 minute rounds.
Speaker 3:I'm going to have to hit you early. I'm going to hit you early. I'm going to use my MMA, my original ultimate fighting. I said I'm going to try my thing and if it fails I'm going to tap out. Can we tap out if I get tired?
Speaker 5:can I tap out? You can do whatever you got to do, if he wears that or that gold uniform that he used to wear, run.
Speaker 3:I got it. I got it. I'm gonna sweat on you. I'm gonna grab you and sweat on you. That's what I'm gonna do, tj, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure if we fought right now, you probably beat me, there's no doubt, especially if you do that, sissy electronic body protector stuff no doubt you probably beat me, whatever, but I'm I'm not sure. I'm not sure. 20 years ago that would be the same I don't know.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're going oh all right now now, if you're gonna throw that at gauntlet, we're gonna go coach, you're gonna, moreno, you're gonna have to ref it, you're gonna have to ref it.
Speaker 4:So I, but I don't want to hear anything when I hit you in the planet well, how much do you weigh now?
Speaker 3:How much do you weigh TJ?
Speaker 4:Me Probably like 185, 186.
Speaker 3:Oh, so all right. Well, lee, you're bigger. Now You're bigger. What did you weigh back in the day?
Speaker 4:149 is when I fought.
Speaker 3:All right, you lose 40 pounds and we'll fight. You lose 40 pounds and we'll fight. All right, okay, bye-bye. Oh, we all like to believe. I like to believe. You know, only thing I wrestle with now is my conscience. So you know, I'm not fighting anything except my conscience and seven-year-old kids.
Speaker 4:Okay, okay, okay. Three five-minute rounds. I'll go down for you. Let's do three five-minute rounds.
Speaker 3:We'll start there all right, and speedos, let's keep it real.
Speaker 5:Let's keep it real, it's speedos you've got weird and bring that bring, bring that bring that lion Bring.
Speaker 3:All right, I'll fight you for all your trophies and medals and the lion posters and your guitars and bring your guitars. Oh no no, no, those are worth money. That's why I don't show them anymore. All right, I think.
Speaker 3:I think I think we have beaten this horse to death. This has been the Warehouse 15, and you heard it first here. Tj, my Olympic brother, wants to have a challenge match, so we're going to put it on a GoFundMe for the hospital bill for him after the match. It'll be a GoFundMe and don't worry, I'll visit you in the hospital after I pull my hand out of your.
Speaker 4:I think we should film it.
Speaker 3:Dude, we don't have to film it, it's not going to be that long. Make sure the camera's on, because this I'm not going to kick. I'm going to save my one good kick. If I hit you with my left leg, you're dead. But I'm going to start with this. I'm going to work on this. I'm going to work on this 65-year-old TJ 65 year old TJ. Move around for 25, 30 seconds. Oh yeah, yeah, just move around. Y'all be breathing for sure, unless can we fight on a bicycle? I do a lot of cycling whatever you want oh, I gotta come to the gym.
Speaker 3:Oh, slap box and I'll kill you. You see the length of my arms. My arms go down to my knees. My arms are 6 foot 2 man. My body is only five, nine on a good day.
Speaker 3:All right, this has been the warehouse with all the silliness. It's been the warehouse 15 and we are out. Face you guys. You guys, welcome, we are back. It is the warehouse 15, not the 16, not the 14, and you are here with the grandmaster of disaster and olympic coach, olympic athlete, olympic everything, coach juan moreno and tj, the most important person in the world, at least to himself.
Speaker 3:How are we doing today, coach TJ? No, no, it's good, it's all good. No, no, I was just. I'm loving those pictures behind you. You've changed the Joker into the Lions and I love these. Is this us Like? Is this the three of us up here? Which one's me? If it's the three of us, exactly, turned it sideways. Well, actually, that might be you on the side, because it's turned sideways like a mugshot. I mean probably nothing unfamiliar to you. All right, coach Moreno? How you doing, sir? Oh, congratulations, well, nothing. Yeah, excellence only happens when excellent people get together, and I wish I could be there to see Coach TJ's new place. I know that it's stellar. How is membership going, coach?
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 3:I'm going to give you two pieces of advice, and I used both of them when they came to me. Number one was get with Frank Silverman. I'm going to get you his number and I'll have Frank, have his people reach out to you. I think Frank is handling more of the wealth management for Maya now, but Maya was just instrumental in my success when I first opened up. You know, he gave me great advice, taught me how to do everything that I know how to do today with regard to marketing. And then the second thing, the other piece of advice I'd give you, is Spark. Spark has been instrumental in us managing our website and our payables, and Chung Park and Ron Sell. They are just doing a great job and I know they're down that way as well, and those are two guys that I don't. They don't sponsor us. I wish they would now that we've Mentioned them on the podcast, but the really just great Stuff and I think you do those Things. It'll accelerate your growth In your school more quickly Than anything else that I could think of. Black men, black men, thank you. But we had built. We had built a, we had built a model.
Speaker 3:When I first opened the first facility, I did the olympic committee, uh, scholarship me into a master's program in Lausanne called Memos, and Bob Gambardello did it. I did it and a few others have done it, and my thesis was on how do you do elite level sport and how do you still build grassroots development. And so I came up with a model for grassroots development that I'll speak with you about offline and how it funds high performance. And we started that way and we had 850 guys in my school and probably back then a hundred of them competing, which is a lot. Now I've changed my model because I'm old and lazy, but there is a way to build a grassroots because you want to fill that pipeline. Actually it's a topic we'll talk about later, but, um, you can do it there for sure. And then I was a little confused because, um, you can get a sponsor, I mean for a guy. You get your art at walmart and I'm sure you can get walmart to sponsor your training center. You know the lion paintings. But and I was slightly a little more confused because when juan started talking about Blackman, I thought he was speaking about never mind. All right, anyway, we're moving on.
Speaker 3:I got my haircut. I got no. No, hold on, I got my. I don't want any letters. I got my. I got. I got my. Am I going to get canceled?
Speaker 3:I got my hair cut by a Brazilian guy who didn't speak English and this is what I ended up with. So I want to talk. I know we got the Brazilian open coming up. Oh no, we got to go back. Calm down, here it comes. You asked for it, you asked for it. You know, don't be jelly, don't jelly. This is what 65 looks like, baby. This is what 65 looks like. Well, I just got off there. You go Enough. Listen.
Speaker 3:I got the one day of sunshine here in beautiful Northern California, where we get three days of something that resembles spring or summer, and the rest is what it is. So I was on my bike today, but it actually was cold out. I had this under my um black and gold jacket that I wore hiding all my loveliness so that I don't get attacked by various and sundried people because this is Northern California Turmeric, orange and turmeric juice from Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is, if you're listening, you know, sorry, not sorry, and I did have my cup of espresso right before this. That looks delicious. And then, tj, I see you got MD4040. What is it called? What are you drinking over there? Let's go, no, no, no, no, no, not stereotypical.
Speaker 3:I didn't mention what he said alright, this is good, that went south quickly, but that's a lot of foam in that coffee. Go ahead. What do we got? Let's go. Hmm, wow, thank you, hmm, thank you, thank you, thank you. You're building a culture.
Speaker 3:So what you're talking, what you're talking about is um, how do you build a culture and how do you build continuity and how do you build throughput? So, like, philosophically, I ultimately believe that the senior athletes, to the best of their ability, should learn how to teach, coach and and become sympathetic and empathetic with the younger athletes. So you, when you do that, that's what happens. So when you take the older athletes and you have them coach the junior team athletes, you're building a culture where the younger athletes, over time, learn to respect their seniors, as opposed to telling them to respect them, because they coached them and they taught them. So now, when they idolize you guys, when they see you and you teach them, they'll remember that for a lifetime and then they'll also build a culture themselves to give back. You know, as we talk every week not we me, because I'm obsessed, obviously my son I make him actually coach younger athletes for free. So any kid that likes soccer in my orbit, you know, I'll offer my son up and he goes out for an hour or two with the kid and he helps the kid in soccer. The kid might be nine or 10 years old and my son's just turned 17, but he's learning, a first of all, to give back.
Speaker 3:B learning how to teach and or coach and transfer information. C he's remembering and being reminded that he couldn't have gotten to the places that he's gotten to, had somebody older and better not done that with him in his situation. You know he had a player, professional player two, two professional players from the earthquakes helping him and then he had jason han, dr han, good friend of all of ours and teammate. He was kind enough to hook me up with one of his guys from the LAFC, strength and Agility. So I made a phone call and Jason and I have a good relationship and so he hooked me up with this guy and Coach, dan and Guzman, who runs actually a program kind of like you coach, and he does it down in southern california. Now he's gone into, like, the health and wellness space as well. Um, but that was like imagine a kid nico's age three, four years ago working with a guy from a professional team.
Speaker 3:Forget about whether the information is good or not, which it was the allure of it, how it boosts his confidence. Because when you get that opportunity, those kids who come to the junior camps that you guys used to be involved in, they are like dude, I train with the national team guy, so when they go in there and they try something, they're like he taught me to do it, it's going to work. And sure enough it does. Why? In part because it's good information. The other part is because he believes it's going to work. He has confidence.
Speaker 3:And one of the downfalls of the current administration in usa taekwondo is the lack of giving back. It's become exclusionary as opposed to inclusive, and when you make exclusionary things, you raise things to a level where people don't believe they have access to it, don't have access to it and don't want to be part of it. So how many people do you know personally, each of you that have exited the sport that just say you know what? I don't, I don't want? I mean, I could name off the top of my head four, five, six high level coaches, high level athletes that did the sport of the high level. Let's say I'm not showing up what, for what? For what reason? You know so and I think that's the. That's a cultural issue. You know that um we need to talk about at some point. And then it's a pipeline issue and tj, as you build your facility, you know you need to think about the pipeline.
Speaker 3:You are a conduit to excellence. You are an athlete who has swam at the deepest levels of our sport in virtually every incarnation of it. You were in the army, you were part of that program, you were in USA Taekwondo, both as an athlete, as a coach. You've been to the Olympics, you are, and Coach Moreno too. You guys are in the mix and, by the way, still in it. You're still in the day-to-day of it. You've gone through what I would consider to be the hardest part, which was the old school method, to the new part, which is arguably as hard. Although I tease about it all the time, you guys have seen it all. So you have the most information, you have the most experience, you have the most knowledge, yet in a large part you're sidelined domestically. You know, and I think that's a very important time.
Speaker 2:I'm very excited to be here, because all of us are here. I'm honored to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. In fact, I'm very excited to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy. Go ahead and start um, I don't know. Thank you, I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed this video.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you, but you. But you say you say something that matters, right, and, and what you said was you know, you took it upon yourself. Right, there's, and we talk about this all the time, and gamber delo used to talk about it. Um, because we learned it in that memos program. It was folk artist. Are you a folk artist? And you remember when we developed the coaching program, you and I? If you're a folk artist, that means that you can make this thing right. You can carve it, you can do it. You have no idea how to teach somebody to do it, but you yourself did it for yourself. It's only at the moment where you try to transfer information to someone else that you can make sense of it, in the sense of I try to teach and I never wanted to teach, by the way, because I thought I was terrible at Taekwondo.
Speaker 3:I thought I sucked at Taekwondo. I thought I was just good at doing my version of taekwondo. My round kick wasn't the traditional Korean one. None of my kicks were my kicks were my kicks. I tried, but I never tried to be like them. So when it came time to teach, I had the imposter syndrome where I didn't feel that I had anything to teach. And then I realized, as I started to decide to teach because I had athletes I wanted to help my method is what I had to teach, not what I did, how I did it, but more importantly, how I trained and how I systematized myself. My success came through that. So it wasn't until I started to teach that I truly understood. And I remember and you may not remember, coach, but you and I sat in the room with another coach and we had to, because we were writing a manual we had to describe in words how to do these kicks, how to do these concepts, and that's when you truly know, if you know something Right, right, right, right, right, right, right Right.
Speaker 6:Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right Right.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right, right, right, right Right, thank you. The first time I saw him I was like, oh my gosh, he's so handsome. And I was like, oh my gosh, he's so handsome. And I was like, oh my gosh, he's so handsome. And I was like, oh my gosh, he's so handsome. And I was like, oh my gosh, he's so handsome. And I was like, oh my gosh, he's so handsome. And I was like, oh my gosh, he's so handsome.
Speaker 3:And I was like, oh my, 18 years old. So the Olympic Committee did a study on this and so a good friend of mine, mike Leonard, who was vice president of the Olympic Committee, no 18 is 18 before 18. So here's the mistake, and it's happening across the country. So the US Olympic Committee looked at athletic development in countries and they realized that athletes are best not to specialize in a sport till a roughly 18 years old, not to specialize in a sport till a roughly 18 years old, and the reason for that is they burn out and all the muscle development. You're better off to do a variety of sports and with athleticism you're better to do learning how to run incredibly fast, stop and turn. Those three attributes in any sport explosiveness, stopping and turning, whether it's taekwondo, whatever, soccer, basketball, those athletic agility, speed, development you specialize after 18.
Speaker 3:The problem is that the system in the United States and in some other countries has specialized to such a degree that athletes get injuries prone to sport because they don't cross train enough and they don't fully develop. And so the united states and its aau program, for example, in basketball, if you don't specialize you can't compete at that. 12 to 13, 14, yeah, and so you. And so you know you're forced to specialize, yeah, and, but you're killing your athletic development. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that happened to my son.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, nope, nope, yeah Thank you um, thank you, um, um, um, look Amen, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, so you got. So you, you, you, you. You raised another good question, right? So here's, here's the reality. So when you're you're competing in taekwondo, we're a little bit different, because there are no, to the best of my knowledge, uh, national training programs where they're taking, privatizing it and taking kids in at 11 or 12 and then doing online school. But if you go to Europe and I think that's nationwide, I think that's worldwide If you go to Europe in certain sports there are kids that go to sport academies, most, starting with China. They identify kids as early as five or six, they give them a battery of tests and then, certainly in middle school, they do it in Australia. I looked at the Australian model and they say based on this, you're going to be this, this and this In China, because they're communist countries, they can do what they want. They identify the kids and they put these guys in sport academies and they do school at the sport academy. They and they live together. In taekwondo we don't have that, but I'll give you a western country that does it and they do it for a different sport, which you don't let me talk about goal the, that sport, the kids. If they're not in an academy at 12, then they say that kid's never going to become a premier league player. So unless you're been identified as a kid who's a good player at that age and you're in man man city, whatever whatever you man united or one of these academies or in other countries, they do it in europe then you're not going to be a high level. Here they do it. They do do it here now and this is what they're trying to do. So you take um, you take the academies here. We have a local academy here, right for our team, and, uh, the local academies. They have two levels their academies for mls. Next, those kids go to regular school. They don't do anything. Hi, sweetheart, oh my gosh, what a beautiful girl, how beautiful, how nice, good. Well, she can tell wait, tell her to look, tell her to look, I got something for her. Hello, tell him, come back here, come get ready. Nice, that's, that's because you have a black heart. So the um, so here, but now here, they do it. So now, when they get to high school, high school freshman year, they start to do it. So if you get invited to a professional academy, attached to a professional team, you go to online school. Meanwhile, these kids who go to online school, they get recruited by the best colleges in the country. So, even though they're in online school, these kids are doing online school, they're doing soccer and they're doing rehab, they're doing whatever and, yeah, and they're in a training environment and it's a. You know, nico just got in. What's that?
Speaker 3:Well, I thought about no, no, I thought about this model a long time ago, yeah, and I was like, let me go. And I. I was like I want to go to a ski school. And everybody thought it was crazy. And I was like, no, no, I will put a charter school in a ski Academy, cause they ski, they're out on the slopes, we'll use the indoor space. They already have the school and the facilities and I still think it's a valuable idea. So the guys train indoors, right, they have all the facilities you need, and you're just doubling up on the school, because the hardest part about this is the kids who can afford to go to ski school. You know and and actually care enough about skiing to do it. There aren't that many. But imagine if you did that skiing, taekwondo, basket, whatever you you revitalize the school part of it and you'd be using different facilities. So I actually thought it was a good idea. I wanted to do it and I still, if I weren't so old, I think about doing it because I think you could make it work.
Speaker 3:You're down in florida, let's say. You parted with img. You said to img I'm going to develop olympic athletes, they should, they should. Well, what was that? What was that thing a while back where they were trying to do something. They tried to get usa taekwondo involved in it. You don't remember this thing where it was like um, it was in florida somewhere. It was a bunch of school, it was a big thing yeah so, so, so.
Speaker 3:So here here's the model, and I'll give you the model because I had thought about it and the guy I learned it from wasn't. He had no idea what it was. So jp che, who was greg baker's um, greg baker's um coach, and I really liked him a lot went to a summer camp. He was a smart guy. What he would do is he would go buy land. He would then then build a mixed-use development. He had a basement. In the basement he would put Taekwondo, first floor retail stores, second floor professional offices and he would build these things. And they were crazy successful and profitable because the economics of it worked. So I looked at it. I said I've got the model. Here it is. Do the same thing. He did basement, taekwondo, first floor stores, second floor dormitories and kitchen. Forget about the professional offices.
Speaker 3:In the dormitories and kitchens you put elite athletes and the elite athletes go to public schools and they train and at night they teach, they teach. Now you do it. Think about it. Now, these elite athletes, I come to your training facility. So instead of calling it lion taekwondo, we call it TJ's Olympic Training Center Taekwondo, and in it you know that if you go there, not only will you get a three portraits for your room of lions, you will get lion-like training by Olympians and by Olympic hopefuls. So now, when Johnny comes to class, mary comes to class. They're learning from top level athletes who are training currently to go to a world championship Olympic game and they're training so these guys to earn their their way. They're working in the school an hour a night, two hours a night.
Speaker 3:The rest of it they're training going to school and you have a chef on staff that cooks for them and they're studying in local schools, and so it's a great model, right, um, um, and I know you got that rich friend of yours that you do all the seminars, for you guys are like real estate barons. What's the vietnamese guy? What's his name? Us team member? No, your other friend, the guy, always come down, you guys, whatever. Um, oi, oi, lee, yeah, you and oi, oh, he's korean. Oh, geez, I gotta have to. Can we stop the podcast and go back? Oi, nothing but love, baby, nothing but love. Oh, now, oh, that's talk about racist, right, there's some racist stuff, but anyway, so, but uh, so he is. So did you just say it again? You doubled down. So the with oi, you and oi should do it. You guys are real estate barons. Grab a, grab a spot in florida, just make sure it's not on a sinkhole. And uh, dig a basement and put a taekwondo school in it and then run out and get chased by alligators. Oh, you can't put a basin floor.
Speaker 3:Well, the original process was back in the day I was vice chairman of the technical committee and I was chairman of the education committee. So any rule changes were proposed by the technical committee. They then would be voted on by the technical committee and then they would be brought to the board for, brought to the executive committee for endorsement and then brought to the board as a whole. So the original change in scoring came from when I was on the technical committee and Kaepernick was on the technical, dr Kaepernick. So we came up with the multi-tiered scoring of one, two, three, four points. David Moon from Mexico, who was the chairman of the committee, after we voted on it and got it passed in our committee. He didn't bring it to the whole committee and I had to walk out of the meeting to get it back on the agenda. Get it passed, thank you.
Speaker 3:Historically, the rules and everybody knows this historically the rules come from the KTA. So the KTA is the tail that wags the dog. They, the rules, come from the KTA, so the KTA is the tail that wags the dog. They change the rules in the KTA. Once they're changed in the KTA, they get six months head start on everybody else and then those rules come to the WT and that's just historically how it's always happened.
Speaker 3:The problem is, when you get a moron running the KTA like Yang Chenban, this moron who didn't do taekwondo at a high level at all but thinks he's matters he was the guy that came up with the pushing and grabbing rule because he just didn't like pushing. You know like. And when you get allow somebody who doesn't like something, hasn't done the sport at a high level, doesn't have the intellect sport intellect at least to understand the sport then then that becomes endemic and you've seen when that happens, what happens. The best way to do this and there was a point where it was happening is you come up with a set of proposed rules, you roll it out to countries that have the ability to hold events with numerous athletes using the new rules and see what happens. So let's say you want to, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah well.
Speaker 3:Can I ask you? Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question? What's your last name? What's your last name, kim? If it's kim parker lee, it matters. They don't care what moreno thinks and they don't care what tj no, no, let's be frank, they don't care what like. There's a recent note that went out. They're looking for board of directors. Board of directors don't apply unless your name's kim leah park. That's just the way it is. And and, by the way, the Kim Lee's and the Parks that apply haven't done taekwondo, haven't competed in taekwondo when they did. If they ever did taekwondo, the Kim Lee's and Parks that apply are the guys that used to do it with bamboo chest protectors and they were doing karate that they learned from the Japanese, to be frank. So, like you know, when you're asking that particular group of individuals who are nepotistic, xenophobic, to name a few things, you're going to have a kerfuffle, as we've said before, and you're going to have a swampalampalus, and that's what we have right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, yeah, but what? Okay, so in fairness, in fairness, one of the greatest taekwondo athletes ever is involved now john john jungkook, young. And what's happening? This guy's sitting in the back drinking tea, eating bulgogi and kalbi and soju, and he's not making. He's in the room he could be standing up for. This guy did taekwondo highest level, best athlete ever. He's sitting in the room signing off on this nonsense. By the way, he doesn't watch the tournaments. He doesn't watch the tournaments. What if Martin Luther King said that? What if Mahatma Gandhi said that? What if Herb Perez said that? Somebody's got to start, somebody's got to start, somebody's got to start.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I guess yes, yeah, well, let me help, well, let me. Right right so but if you want, if you can't, you can't punch, you can't punch. Listen, yeah, yeah yeah referee. Listen, go back to the original problems. It started with the refs and continues to be the refs, and you got to go back. I'm going to take you back to what the original conversation was and still should be, I think yeah so yeah, yeah, so yeah, no.
Speaker 3:So here's the problem. Yeah, but here's the problem. This started because the referees were inept or cheated. That's it, let's be clear. Second, we've lost our way in trying to fix what was malfeasance on the part of governments and, to be honest, koreans in Korea and referees. So as a response to that, we lost our way, because then we lost the essence of taekwondo.
Speaker 3:You have to go back fundamentally to what taekwondo was or thought it was. Fundamentally, taekwondo thought it was a full contact martial art. It thought it was, and in fact it was for a very long time. The idea that you wouldn't score punches over kicks was so that you could allow kicks to develop as a kicking art as opposed to a punching art, because once you enter punches in, it thwarts the ability of people to do certain combinations of kicks that matter, and that's where cover punch came in. The problem is you've got to go back to either A trusting the referee or changing the scoring system to a power-based system that reflects more of what original taekwondo was. The difference between taekwondo and Karate was Karate was point fighting and one punch kill. And we couldn't really do, because if we did it I would kill you. Well, we know that's not true, all right. So Taekwondo came up with a full contact martial art which was much more like Kyoko Shinkai, who, by the way, was created not by Masayama. It was created by a Korean guy who named himself Masayama. So full contact Kyoko Shinkai is actually created by, ironically, a Korean that was in Japan.
Speaker 3:Now, with that said, is Taekwondo fundamental existential question? Is Taekwondo, just like I would ask you if I asked you, are you Mexican, are you black? Am I? Whatever I am? That's a fundamental question. If I believe in my heart that I'm this, then that's what I am. If you believe taekwondo is a full contact martial art and that's what should be reflected in its aesthetic and in its scoring system, then you come out with different outcomes. Now is a front hand punch. I can guarantee you, if I do a front hand punch on you, you'll know I punched you. Now is that a legitimate technique? But it is because, if you don't score it, if you say we can't do it and the reason we're not scoring it, it would be interesting to know what that rationale is. You can no longer score a front-hand punch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, silence, thank you. Well, so do you, do you guys? Do you guys know what? Do you know where most rule changes come for, come from in olympic sport? Do you know why? You know what the why is? That's it, that's it more scoring. They want they, they look at it and they go. We got to sell sponsorships. So if you can't watch this sport doesn't work in taekwondo, by the way, doesn't work in any sport. Yeah, judo did it too, and judo, you talk to anybody who does judo. There's this thing now yeah, you can't, you can't like grab, you can't grab in a certain way anymore because it frustrates the game. So they just made the rule illegal. And the thing was, guys who really do judo, like Mike Swain, they're like it's the dumbest rule in the world, because if you do judo, you know that's essential to the art of judo. And Thank you. Stephen Lopez made a career on deductions. He scored, he. What 10? Yeah, the 10-point must system.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Are you Thank you oh yeah, but I, I, I, actually I. I designed the system for bad refereeing a long time ago. I said if you have a match where you believe the referee made a bad decision or a bad call, the referee has to fight the athlete at that moment to win a point. And if he wins the point then he gets to continue. If not, otherwise the point goes up. So let's say, you raise a headshot call, referee called it the wrong way, or whatever. The referee has to go in and battle the athlete and the athlete, and this way referees will be a lot more careful about cheating. So if he makes a bad decision, yeah, be afraid to raise that finger, baby. So I'll give you. I got your kam jong right here. So you know, I've thought about over the years, I've thought about it, I don't know, over the years I've thought about it. And the reason I don't fight in it is that old country song that says I'm not as good as I used to be, but I might be as good as I used to be. One more, you know, one more second, and that's all I I got. Maybe I, I was.
Speaker 3:I was telling the story about practicing for my ninth Don, and when I'm practicing, I'm, you know, I want to be able to kick, and all this not because I, because really all they test you on is this you know forms. But I'm like, oh, dude, I feel good, you know. So I'm axe kicking, I'm round kicking, I'm doing all this stuff. And then I'm like, yeah, man, I haven't done back hook kick in a while. Maybe I should do some back hook kicks. So I'm feeling good, I'm twisting, I'm, you know, winding myself up, and then I throw a bunch pretty good right. And then all of a sudden I go and I pull every, every muscle available, which I never used to pull muscles. I pull every muscle available to me in anywhere that has anything to do with any part of my body. And I'm like, yeah, so, although I'd like to believe, nothing is more sad for me than to watch a highly elite, competitive athlete.
Speaker 3:Um, I watched jungkook, young spar, matin sahin. Yeah, oh, no, no, my guy, I have my guy that, my guy that works for me. He's like, oh, he's watching the kids spar. And he goes oh, dude, I want to enter a tournament. I looked at him and I go lopez, stay in the gym, man, you're a teacher, spar, I spar the five-year-olds, I'm working my way up to the six-year-old girls and then maybe I'll spar the seven-year-old boys.
Speaker 3:That's it, this guy. Of course, he's moving around, what's he do? Hurts his knee, which is why he had to retire in the first place. So I'm like, okay, all right, chuck Norris, get in there, give it your best, right, like this he's. He's, this is a, this is my gym. He hurts himself, right. So I'm like, you know, you gotta know, enjoy your glory at this glory. It does.
Speaker 3:Never competed, never competed. Yeah, 65. If you can find another 65 year old oold Olympic gold medalist that wants to fight, I'm in. I'm in Another 60. Yeah, no, I'd fight you. I'd fight you for sure. No, no, I'd fight you. I think we should have a warehouse 15. Yeah, you would be up for today.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't even train. I wouldn't even train. I would drop the, I would drop, I would drop. All I'd have to do. I'd drop the right hand on you. That's it, the right hand. Where's your training camp? I'm coming.
Speaker 3:And then the winner fights Moreno. The winner fights Moreno. Oh, you're out, you're out.
Speaker 3:Alright, tj, it's me and you, me and you. How long are the rounds? How long are the rounds? Oh, I'm going to have to hit you early. I'm going to hit you early. I'm going to use my MMA, my original ultimate fighting.
Speaker 3:I said I'm going to try my thing and if it fails I'm tap out. Can we tap out? If I get tired, can I tap out? I got it, I got it. I'm gonna sweat on you. I'm gonna grab you and sweat on you. That's what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3:Tj, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. If we fought right now, you probably beat me. There's no doubt, especially if you do that sissy electronic body protector stuff. No doubt, and you probably beat me. Whatever, but I'm I'm not sure. I'm not sure. 20 years ago that would be the same result. Oh, you're good. Oh, all right now. Now, if you're gonna throw that at gauntlet, we're gonna go coach. You're gonna, moreno, you're gonna have to ref it. You're going to throw that gauntlet, we're going to go Coach, you're going to have to ref it. You're going to have to ref it. But I don't want to hear anything when I hit you.
Speaker 3:How much do you weigh now? How much do you weigh, tj? Yeah, how much do you weigh? Oh, all right, you're bigger now. You're bigger. What did you weigh back in the day. All right, you lose 40 pounds and we'll fight. You lose 40 pounds and we'll fight.
Speaker 3:Oh, we all like to believe. I like to believe, you know. Only thing I wrestle with now is my conscience. So you know, I'm not fighting anything except my conscience and seven-year-old kids. All right, and it's in speedos. Let's keep it real. Let's keep it real. It's speedos and bring that, bring that, bring that, lion, bring. All right, I'll fight you for all your trophies and medals and the lion posters. Oh no, no, those are worth money, baby. That's why I don't show them anymore. All right, I think we have beaten this horse to death. This has been the Warehouse 15, and you heard it first here.
Speaker 3:Tj, my Olympic brother, wants to have a challenge match, so we're going to put a GoFundMe for the hospital bill for him after the match. So it'll be a go fund me and don't worry, I'll visit you in the hospital after I pull my hand out of your dude. We don't have to, it's not gonna be that long. Make sure the camera's on, because this I'm not gonna kick. I'm gonna save my one good kick. I, if I hit you, if I hit you with my left leg, you're dead, but I'm going to, I'm going to start with this, I'm going to, I'm going to work on this, that I'm going to work on this.
Speaker 3:65 year old, oh, yeah, yeah, just move around. Y'all be breathing for sure, unless can we fight on a bicycle? I do a lot of cycling. Oh, I got to come to the gym though. Oh, slap box and I'll kill you. You see the length of my arms. My arms go down to my knees. My arms are six foot two man. My body's only five, nine on a good day. All right, this has been the warehouse With all the silliness. This has been the warehouse 15. And we are out. You guys, you guys.