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
Elite Performance vs. Medal Count: The Success Mirage in American Taekwondo
In this raw and unfiltered episode, we dive headfirst into the transformation of competitive taekwondo from a power-based combat sport to today's point-focused tactical game. The conversation kicks off with analysis of the recent Korean Open, where Christina Teachout claimed silver for the USA in what appeared to be a more reliable implementation of the Gen 3 Hokus scoring system.
What follows is a candid exploration of how modern taekwondo athletes have physically evolved - from the powerful, conditioned fighters of previous generations to today's taller, leaner competitors who focus on light touches rather than devastating blows. "We practiced getting hit," one host reflects, highlighting the stark contrast to today's training approaches. The episode pulls no punches when analyzing this evolution, with colorful descriptions of modern competitors as "K-pop dancers" who lack the fighting spirit of previous eras.
The heart of the discussion examines the fundamental failures in American taekwondo's development pipeline. While other nations implement centralized training programs that bring their best talents together, the United States suffers from fragmentation, politics, and a lack of vision. The hosts introduce the concept of "sustained competitive excellence" as the true measure of program success - not just occasional medals, but consistently fielding dangerous competitors across weight categories.
Perhaps most compelling is the passionate breakdown of what effective leadership in national programs should look like: inclusive rather than exclusive, respected by the community, and accountable for results. The conversation doesn't shy away from calling out systemic problems, yet offers constructive solutions derived from decades of combined experience at the highest levels of the sport.
Whether you're a competitive athlete, coach, administrator, or simply a taekwondo enthusiast, this episode delivers invaluable insights into the crossroads where taekwondo currently stands - caught between tradition and evolution, fighting spirit and point scoring, fragmentation and unity.
I'm Terrence run to the St Louis grill. I'm sorry, not sorry. Ain't it funny? Herb P on the track, my sister ill advise opinions maybe, but facts ain't lies, it's cold metal mentality.
Speaker 2:Watch the sunrise 1F1, I'm checking in, so we're sitting pretty still mean second best in the world. Get witty face, ponyx, pressure cookin' hot.
Speaker 1:Gave my sweat, my focus, everything. I got DJ Grimes, a DJ holdin' down the beyond, still on the stage. I want the time To turn the new page. Learn to discipline, focus, respect for the fight, my fight, fight, fight, fight.
Speaker 2:To me vitality we can do something, one that won't end in reality. Just me, it's still me. Again, it is the time for the warehouse 15, and it hasn't been too long, hasn't been too short. But again, like we always say, remember we're here to discuss the world events with you, what's going on in Taekwondo, but, more importantly, sorry, not sorry if we hurt your feelings. We haven't started with third place in a long time and I've apologized to TJ's mom on numerous occasions. So I'm going to work my way up the performance ladder. We're going to start with the bronze medalist today. Tj, how are you doing, brother?
Speaker 1:I'm good. I'm good Just chilling, hanging out. Like I said always, Thursday is a good day for me.
Speaker 2:But you've won some gold medals. I mean, we're always calling you Bronze TJ, but you've won some gold medals.
Speaker 1:I hope so. Yeah, tj. But you've won some gold medals. I hope so. Yeah, I hope a few of those. I probably got more of those than I got bronze medals, for sure you got.
Speaker 2:You had to have won a. You had to win a gold medal to get to the olympic team. So you know, we, we should be folk. I don't know why you call yourself bronze tj, you know? I mean, I see you more of a as like pewter guy.
Speaker 1:I used to have a bunch of poker friends. I played poker in miami and there's two TJs, one TJ and the other TJ. I was bronze TJ, he was white TJ.
Speaker 2:White, tj Got it. Bronze was for the color of your skin.
Speaker 1:No no, no.
Speaker 3:It was white TJ and black TJ.
Speaker 1:They changed it to bronze because when they found out, I got third at the Olympic Games.
Speaker 2:I got to do a shout out to my boy, James, at Muto with my beautiful Muto jacket that I just received today. James and Muto provide great TKD equipment and just stellar, stellar, stellar service. I sent him a text and next thing you know at my doorstep faster than TJ showing up for our weekly podcast is a jacket.
Speaker 1:How are we today? You were late actually, oh.
Speaker 2:All right, coach Moreno. How are you, sir? How are you doing? How is everything? You're called the Mayor of Taiwan-do.
Speaker 3:I'm like really impressed with Coach Terrence Jennings because he must have some kind of good zen. With all the crap you throw his way, all the shade you throw his way, he's always smiling. He's always happy. I don't know. I think he's low-key, about to come over and stab you.
Speaker 2:He is very listen. He's very kind and generous, which means one of two things he's either Forrest Gump, and he doesn't understand what I'm saying, or he's incredibly patient and a Buddhist at heart. So I'm going to go with the latter and not the former.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, look at today, man, I got my coffee and look what my daughter made me. My daughter made me especially for the podcast A charcuterie, a charcuterie.
Speaker 2:Oh, there it goes. It made made me hungry. I may have to go make some food isn't that cute.
Speaker 3:She's like here for your podcast.
Speaker 2:She gave it to me nothing but love in the moreno household and, uh, loving and loving children. So they can't and I mean that in a good way, I mean I'm talking about in a good way so just family, family first speaking of camila camila.
Speaker 3:Camila just had her 12th birthday. On saturday we had a nice, nice birthday party here at the house for her and her friends and some family members.
Speaker 2:Did tj cut tj come down? Did he get on his pony?
Speaker 3:his 40, 40, 40 acres and a mule.
Speaker 2:How did you get there?
Speaker 3:first of all, the moreno household. When we have parties, the party isn't just for one person, it's for everybody. So hold on, hold on a second honey. It's like happy birthday.
Speaker 2:Check the mail. Could you check the mail? I don't, yeah, no, no, I'm sure he sent it. There was an invite, yeah, to a birthday party. Yeah, not nothing.
Speaker 3:All right, sorry, go ahead I, I did send it, but you know, I mean, I sent it in a Pelican, my Pelican's over here in Miami. I sent it over that way.
Speaker 2:Well, happy congratulations, congratulations to your beautiful daughter and your wife and your family. There's nothing better than celebrating birthdays and that kind of family time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool cool, go ahead. No, I was going to, I've got to. You know, I'm always. I'm always saying bad things about people. So I'm going to take a second to thank, in particular, the staff of USAT. I had a coach who didn't do what he was supposed to do in a timely fashion, so I'm always criticizing them. That doesn't mean I won't criticize them anymore, but I've got to say thank you for helping my coach, who was recalcitrant and didn't sign up in time, and making him able to be able to come to the USAT event, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But you know, I'm the kind of guy when you do something good, I've got to mention it. When you do the other stuff, I'm going to mention it as well. So to Steve McNally, please thank you for the amazing service that you gave my athlete and me, and I appreciate it. All right, we're up. What's up, mr Moreno? Mr TJ, what's the next? We got a subject.
Speaker 1:Let's move on.
Speaker 3:That's the softest thing I've ever heard this guy's charming.
Speaker 2:Okay, I got a a couple things, but since we're doing he just called me charming, did he?
Speaker 3:call me sure, I called you let me get.
Speaker 2:Let me get up for a second, I gotta I.
Speaker 3:I have a couple things that you know we'll get to talk about. You know, I like to compare a couple things that we'll talk about. I'd like to compare a couple organizations. But first TJ, this guy we didn't watch.
Speaker 3:I didn't really watch too much, to be honest with you, but as you know, they had the I don't know if it's called the Korean Open or the Choochun Open, but they had an open over there in Korea. It wasn't really that big by Korea standards. I mean, the divisions were pretty small. It looked like it was pretty much dominated by when I say dominated as far as numbers by Korea, china, and then there's a spattering of Americans and a few other countries. I think I saw Japan and Philippines and stuff like that, but nothing that great.
Speaker 3:I was actually a little surprised at the, the lower level, that um that was there. I don't know, uh, if you gotta check out any of the americans, we sent them. I think I say we, it's not true. I think america's had probably eight people that attended there. We had one silver medal. Christina teach out got to the final. Um, I actually watched that last match against um, uh, a korean girl. If I'm not mistaken, that korean girl beat one of our peak girls, ava lee, and the uh junior worlds and uh, this was a couple years ago, so to watch her now you know, obviously christina is a very strong, aggressive, tough fighter, very physical inside and stuff, and this Korean girl wasn't bigger than her but was able to withstand overpressure, you know, score very easily inside, kicked her face a couple times. I was very impressed actually with the Korean girl because I don't know correct me if I'm wrong, tj, I haven't seen a good 67 from Korea in a minute, right I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of the girls are like they're soft too. You know what I mean. I think they play, but they're a little soft. So I haven't watched the fight. Personally, I should go back and watch it. But yeah, I know the physicality that Christina Tichon has, so you know, be able to stand in front of her, she must have a little bit of strength at 67.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, she was good like she was wrestling inside with her, so I was actually impressed. I'll be curious to see if she makes it the world championship team for korea.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations for getting to the finals, though I think it's still good to be able to get deep in those tournaments in asia. A little bit, um, because it's always a tough field, right, the hokus, the hokus. Look better. This was gen 3 correct. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know if I said it to you Somebody sent me this thing that the bug was fixed in Gen 3. So they were doing all those slide kicks and nothing was scoring. And then they were doing regular kicks and it was scoring. The cut kick wasn't scoring.
Speaker 1:So all of a sudden, at least in that little demonstration, they looked normal and yes, I mean I didn see any like there was the point total was very low. It was like normal, like normal, normal bad. You know wasn't like bad bad, it's just like normal bad, you know. But definitely I think that that system, for whatever reason, did work better over there. Um, I got maybe I watched like 10 to 15 of those matches, but quality of the event looked cool. I always like when they put events over. It always looks like super clean and neat and everything. So definitely fun to watch. I'll probably still go back and catch a few more of the event. Looked cool. I always like when they put events over. It always looks like super clean and neat and everything. So definitely fun to watch. I'll probably still go back and catch a few more of the matches, though.
Speaker 3:Which you know. I mean we'll talk about it as we get closer. That Grand Prix Challenge 2 in Korea, I think, is going to be wild. What's the date? For that, of course it's right before the President's's right, uh, right before the president's cup, president cup is I leave on the third, so I think it's like the last week of uh August. That's going to be a tough one, though for sure.
Speaker 1:Like I think, everybody's show kind of comes out to that one. If they were here, they're probably going to be there. Plus, you'll get a, I think, a few more people you know, just cause you're playing for something a little bit bigger bigger iran, china, korea, uh, uzbekistan, it's going to be.
Speaker 3:Thailand, it's going to be packed, it's going to be packed. That's going to be. I'm not going to go to that one. Um, brazil is only sending five people and we have two coaches that have two and three athletes, so I'm like there's no sense for me to go over there for a week they're still capping this one at 50, right. Yes, they are 50 per division. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1:Five per country per division.
Speaker 3:Yes, got it. So I mean, you know it's funny. We got to give credit where credit is due, christina, making it to the final. I think it's pretty darn good, like you said, to navigate that field. Our other ones not so much. I think the deepest anybody win was in the second match. Everybody lost their second match Again. I don't know what that says. I think a couple of our girls lost the ones that won it. So maybe bad luck reaching them in the early rounds. But again, if you're the best or if you're good, I guess you got to be at least competitive.
Speaker 1:Right, you got to take that person to a third round but you got to have really close rounds to kind of say, all right, I'm not that far off. But when you lose in the second round of a not so big tournament, it's uh, that's a little tough, I think, right, I mean, I think I still think with the, the points being a little crazy right now, so I think they still haven't completely settled in. So you're getting a lot of interesting matchups. I still think it's you match up early or you go to these tournaments, these g2s.
Speaker 1:I think everyone's experimenting with their guys. You know what I mean. I think you're seeing a lot of younger people and I know we say younger now, which means 17, 18, but just like newer faces, you know, fresher to the vision. You know that for that rollover from the juniors of last year, blah, blah, blah. So I think there's a lot of, especially in the lighter divisions, always right, the 54, 58 guys and the 46, 49 girls. Is the the turnover rate is. It's high because you know everybody, who's, every girl, who's 16, 17 around that age. You know there's 49 and 46 and they can fight. Those have been the same thing with the 58 guys in the olympics.
Speaker 3:There's a 58 guy named park uh, park taejun. Is that my same thing? Park taejun? Yeah, park taejun. He won. He won the Olympic gold medal. He put on a show. He's just like kicking the crap out of everybody In Korea. He'd be another world champion. This guy Bae to make it to the Olympic Games and he's the younger one. So anyway, fast forward to this tournament.
Speaker 3:In the final, to your point, tj, some random Korean kid in the final, like it was two rounds, it was two rounds or three to two, I forgot, but two to one. It was a super, super close fight. Like this random Korean guy was beating the Olympic champion from Korea all the way through. He just this, the Olympic champion, pulled it out, but not by a lot. Like it was really close. I'm like even the respect, like the bowing and the shaking hands and kind of the tempo of the fight. Like he couldn't open up because this kid had a good right back kick. You know, of course he had a good left cut. I was impressed. I was like to your point these random young kids out there giving zero respect to Olympic champions, world champions, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no swallow divisions. I definitely think we're there now. It gets, it gets. I want to go to a I don't know if you guys ever seen one live, but I want to go to like a Korean nationals like live. I don't know if they let you, I want to go sit there and watch the national. I just think, like I want to see some of the early, early matches. You know what I mean, the ones that random kids that don't make it far, but they are like those kind of matches. They're deep and all that stuff like that. But I think it's amazing to see that at that level, that much turnover that fast you know I haven't been one in years.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm talking back in the 80s and 90s. I had. But one thing I remember. I'll give credit to the past high performance director of GB, gary Hall. At one open or something like that, I was sitting and talking to him. He's like yeah, we just spent time in Korea with our team and we went to the national championships. This is when Dae Hoon was fighting. And he's like let me tell you, they have a ton of talent. And I was kind of like, really Like Korean men weren't doing it, other than Dae Hoon. I go really. He's like oh yeah, this next generation, they're coming. And I just remember kind of I don't want to say dismissing it, but not thinking too much in it because I hadn't seen it.
Speaker 3:And then all of a sudden, look at the last couple years. I mean I think when we first started this podcast about how Korea men are back. These guys are. They have a different style. It's a very volume in-your-face. Keep kicking, tj. You know they don't even look at the scoreboard. These dudes just kick, kick, kick, kick Every once in a while, every 15 seconds. They'll look over to see how many points they got. But these guys. They got some volume. So Gary Hall mentioned that a number of years back, so now we're seeing all the fruit of Korea's changing of the guard, so to speak. So it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Well, you've got to remember in part that fighting style can work because nobody gets hurt anymore, right? Yeah, 100%. So when the technique is based on just touching the chest protector, learning how to do that and I'm not making it, it sounds like I may be saying something about that. I'm not. When you don't have to worry about power, then you don't have to execute with power because power is not the scoring dynamic, then you don't take the same risk.
Speaker 2:You also don't get hurt because you're not being hit with power and you don't get as I wouldn't say. You don't get hurt because you're not being hit with power and you don't get as I wouldn't say. You don't get as tired because I think you do still get tired. It's a different kind of thing, but you don't have to worry about getting hurt and you can just kind of do light touching, like really light, what I call light goofy sparring, and I'm not saying that the sparring is light, but you're executing in a different technical paradigm. So I mean, how, in a tournament, how many guys get knocked out in these tournaments?
Speaker 1:very few, but like very, very few. I mean I think there's still some big face shots. Some people take some nasty shots that are face kind of going in front, like still can be hit, can be effective in hitting someone pretty good, but I don't know. I guess the question would be, if we go back and compare we're talking world championship level. Obviously right, let's go back how many people got knocked out at the world championships?
Speaker 2:Five to seven. You could go back. I knocked out one guy. Every world championships, every international match I won. I knocked out one guy. Jimmy Kim knocked out guys. Patrice Remarque knocked out guys. Jimmy Kim knocked out guys. Patrice Remarque knocked out guys. Jungkook Young knocked out guys.
Speaker 3:I remember a world championship in Germany where Victor Estrada this is a world championship he dropped the Turkish guy cold and then the next match, karami knocked him out cold.
Speaker 3:These are I mean, victor Estrada was a five-time World Cup champion and he gets dropped by Karami. So I think your point, young, is I mean, the way people used to fight. The contact level was so much that you couldn't try to, like we could be, we could teach you how many times we have people with bad knees and we're like let's see if we can kind of skate around these these, these matches and just see if we can steal it with this and defend, get in the way. In the old days you couldn't do that. There was just no way, it was just impossible. So if your knee was screwed up, you have no chance. Right mean, can you imagine you tj trying to slide back double, slide back, triple, like it's impossible, you know, yeah, so I mean that's not a commentary on anything other than to say no, no no, like when I watch, I mean and I'll say this, this, I will say it's not going to sound good.
Speaker 2:Basically, when I look at these divisions, I haven't seen one player that looks like a fighter. I've seen players that look like K-pop dancers and ballet guys. They're little, skinny, tall, flexible people that you know. Like you know, I'd love to fight one and just hit them really hard and not worry about a scoreboard, and I think that's a difference. I think, when you looked at our team teams that coach Moreno and I were on, or your team, even the and not to say that your athletes are in condition, it was a different kind of body type. In order to take the rigors of fighting Olympic style Taekwondo, you had a condition. We practice chest protector drills with two chest protectors, called terminated drills, where we hit each other as hard as humanly possible, first of all to make that sound at that point chest guards, two soft, no two, just two, two, two.
Speaker 2:And then we had drills where we did one, but for the most part we we did two and there was a reason.
Speaker 1:You had to. You couldn't do. You couldn't do a practice. No, I'm just kidding. No, I get it. Listen, that's so crazy. I said that on the podcast. We practice blocking now and before we used to practice getting hit. How ironic is that we used to practice getting hit.
Speaker 2:If you practice blocking, you get your arm broken. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:You couldn't take it, but the was. The thing was actually. I remember doing cover point shows and you had to wear double pads in your arm. No, but tj, it wasn't the practice getting hit, but we had to have the feeling of hitting the body.
Speaker 1:So, unfortunately, we didn't want to kick a shield whatever, but yeah, I was getting hit though, like because I think there was more trading stuff too.
Speaker 2:Like you go back like back, like in close stance, like if your arms that're going to take one to the ribs, and sometimes it was a 1v1 and I had to hit you harder than you hit me If you throw a round kick, you might get back kicked and when that back kick hits you you had to be returned with another round kick Because the way the scoring dynamic worked, they didn't score the round kick and the back kick, they scored the last thing. So if you, If you round kick, hit him with the round kick, he hit you with the back kick. You came down and you hit him with the round kick. It was 1-0 for you, it wasn't 2-1. They didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand that you could score both techniques.
Speaker 3:So if two techniques scored, no points went up. I was going to offer this. If you took TJ, we talked about this, me and you have so many conversations that we can have our own little offshoot. But these average taekwondo athletes, they are tall, skinny, like you said, young there's something that wait before, let's go back in for a minute, but there's something different about tj today.
Speaker 2:If you're on youtube, oh, he doesn't have a hat. Oh, okay, you, you looked younger today. Yeah, I have a hat. Oh, it's, it's a change, tj. So you went to Miami Miami, I love you and you left your hat.
Speaker 1:I need to go to Miami.
Speaker 2:We're all wearing peak apparel today, so I have my Godzilla, my Godzilla and Gojira, as they say. But go ahead, coach. I didn't mean to interrupt you, although I did.
Speaker 3:Sorry, not sorry no, we'll say if you took an average taekwondo athlete like you said, tall skinny and you hit them hard, you'd break them. But if you do the same thing to one of these top level guys, they not a deal with you hitting them hard and they'll just be like, okay, whack, whack, whack, and they'll get you. So I would say in the old days the same thing there was.
Speaker 3:There was some tall skinny guys like doug lewis I'm saying american doug, I was tall and skinny, chris spence was tall and skinny and we learned how to do it. So I think, as as always, we talk about the highest level, they're able to deal with it. The mid-level, I think not so much, not so much, but anyway, that's that.
Speaker 1:I just want to talk a little bit about that korea tournament, um yeah, I think overall the hokus, I was just happy to see like the kind of the score, like I could sit back and watch it and I'd be so overwhelmingly shocked when stuff happens, you know, and obviously I'm into it really deep, but it's just the from the ladder of going back to the Grand Prix Challenge and all that stuff we were talking about before like that was, you can't play like that. This I can tolerate, this I can, I can deal with almost. Like the person running into the foot you're like, well, he didn't kick. Well, the other person, uh, came too far and he kind of, you know, got his leg in between. I'm okay with that stuff.
Speaker 1:That stuff that's not scoring, it's. It's definitely a point game, but for, for some reason in my brain I know why, I guess I've been doing it for a while, but that's unique, that's like that's a, that's an understanding of spacing and and and timing and I mean there's different ways to to look at it. You know, definitely volume based, for for the koreans, though, I mean, I think everyone's got to be a little bit volume based and being able to be willing to go deep waters, because it's a point, like you just said, it's a point-scoring game, you know.
Speaker 3:Well, one of our American athletes was over there and it's funny.
Speaker 3:I was watching and I'm like you're not going to win in that category, one of the lighter weight categories, and throw five kicks a round. Anymore there's just no way. I mean you've got to be able to get a high point total, have a high output total. That's just the way it is. And you know, kind of going back to, sometimes in America we can fight these little slow games and pick people apart, but that's not working in Europe, that's not going to work in Asia, that's not going to work in Africa. So anyway, it is what it is.
Speaker 1:But let's transition.
Speaker 3:It's a tough division to navigate man 68, 58, they're all tough. But hey, let's talk about it a little bit next week because I know we have a. There's a USAT tournament and back-to-back and AAU team trials. What are you thinking?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got to go to USAT Nationals and then the day that the seniors fight, they weigh in to fight the under 21 tournament, which is like the next day, and then fly straight from there to houston for the aau team trial. So it is like back to back to back. I mean we just fought aau nationals on july 4th and we're fighting the team trials on july 28th. That's fast for me. I mean I know they have the reasons of putting up the competition with the, the junior olympics and everything, but that's a fast turnaround for for a team trials within the same month. You know, know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean normally I think historically it's been the beginning of August, so it's been about four or five weeks. But yeah, it's pretty. It sucks a little bit that it's coinciding with the USAT Because some people have to choose, some, you know, choose because they're too close. I mean you could theoretically make it but you got to do what. I mean my family same thing. Like you, they're flying, they're leaving at night, getting back the next day so they can be there for the team trials on Monday.
Speaker 3:So it's expensive, it's hard on the body hard to cut the weight, I mean, but it is what it is, I guess. I mean we don't really have any choice this year. I'm not sure what's going to happen in the future, but I think that the USAT is going to be a little bit bigger. I mean, I don't really know the numbers, I mean, but I'm just assuming California always gets a big draw. I know they're going to have probably a good representation just with the California people. I mean. I know, you know, at the state championships sometimes they have 1500 people. Yeah, but how does that?
Speaker 2:work, how come it is so big? Cause I have kids fighting and you know the parents are coming back and telling me there's 50, 60 kids in a division and I'm like I thought you could only qualify two per state, right?
Speaker 3:So there's 50 states, that's a hundred people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean it's still a lot right? Is that the usual number?
Speaker 3:I mean that's still like state championships the first or second, I believe, and then the regionals.
Speaker 2:Everybody qualified oh, is that what it is used in old?
Speaker 3:days. In the old days you'd be top four tj, but this year, for states, maybe just one. I thought cali got like top eight, though. So cali did get top eight because before they had two, and I think this thing they only had one, and because it's so big, as they should, the top eight qualified. I mean because their states are bigger than anybody's, and so you're a 10 year old, blue belt, 50, 70 pounds and you got 60 kids in that division.
Speaker 3:You tell me you're only going to get one or two kids from there. That's not fair. I mean we talked about this a long time ago with the regents. I mean, in wrestling, gymnastics, all these things. Listen, if texas has got the best boxers in the world or the best wrestlers in the world, and in Iowa no, not Iowa in Rhode Island there's only two. It is what it is. If you're good, you learn how to beat everybody in Texas. If you're good, learn how to beat everybody in California. But I agree with California getting eight If you're going to have one state. I mean Florida has 450 people max. That's reforms fighting. It's small right now. So when I hear that, compared to California with over a thousand, nah, man, they should have more than just two qualifiers.
Speaker 1:So I think I think to your, which is I mean, I know we don't have a true like you go to this tournament, you qualify here, you qualify here. You go to nationals. You go to team shop, you qualify here, you qualify here. You go to nationals, you go to team chocolate, blah. It was kind of like a conjoined thing. Everyone kind of can basically get to nationals by just going to the regionals. Right, all you gotta do is register for the, the regionals, and you could qualify for nationals and that's all you need.
Speaker 3:Tournament yeah.
Speaker 1:so I mean that's open, you don't gotta do anything to get there, you just kind of register, go fight. I mean I look at it this way. I know it's a lot back-to-back from my guys. I got a couple guys doing all three, I got some guys doing two, I got some guys doing one, but I told them basically, you know, we're just looking at them from the development side of it. We're going to go get matches and, whatever happens, just keep kind of moving, looking forward to the next one because, it is going to suck.
Speaker 3:There's no other way to tell. Under 21,. Team Childs is a new world championship under 21, which I think is a good initiative by the WT. So I don't know the date TJ will know the date, but they have that, I think, on the 21st and then senior fights on the 22nd, Literally back to back, Like that's just, that's not good planning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the day they fight, the day they fight the Nationals. They're weighing in for the under 21. Or under 21 and then fight the nationals one or the other Cool.
Speaker 3:Juan Carlos Alejandro Gonzalez, maria Lucia Mendoza, macarena Chipotle, tapatio con Queso, Guacamole, ferreira, santiago Rodriguez, but everybody calls me Bobby. My name is Pablo Juan Carlos.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I could. I saw that thing kills me, man, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Hey, that's just true, though. That's just true, right there.
Speaker 1:Everybody calls me.
Speaker 3:Bobby, they call me Chewy, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's going to be a lot back to back though, yeah, but I think you know we we, you know, to save money at tournaments and to the detriment of the athletes and the coaches, and I think you have to think about that, especially when you want to have performance right. So I mean that's got to be better and well thought out. Um, you know, it's hard to be a taekwondo athlete now, especially an elite athlete, if you want to win. And you got to have money, you got to have a sponsor. And you know it wasn't that we didn't have to have money, we, we had to have money as well, but we could at least have.
Speaker 2:We fought in three to six to seven high-level tournaments a year. So you fought, if you weren't on the team, you fought to qualify to go to the nationals. You fought nationals, team trials, team trial finals and then one or two international events. But like in 87, which was a lifetime ago, I fought like six international events in like eight months. Like you know, pan Am Games, pan Am Taekwondo Championships, world Cup, world Championships, right, nationals, team trials, team trial finals. So, like you know, seven events. You know like and like. That was a lot. I can't even imagine what like. How do you peak now? You have to go to all these events and you know, you develop a survivor mentality rather than a winner mentality. Right, you can't peak. I think that's in professional sport too, and soccer. It's hard to peak when I look at these soccer guys, because they're playing at the World Cup, the World Club Cup, the UEFA. Whatever they're playing at, they're forced to play in them. What do you do?
Speaker 1:Taekwondo is just weird just for the money yeah, I think I'm gonna have like more like, uh, a build and sustain. You know what I mean. You gotta build them, work when you can, and then you're sustaining across three, four, five, six, seven events. It's not high level, do you?
Speaker 2:peak, do you peak? In other words, you're, you're an olympian, you, and let's go, let's talk to, let's talk la. So you're la, you got a peak for la. That's. That should be what the reality is, right and we're um. The next olympics is what? 2028. All right, so 28, we're in 25, we're in 25. So it would be interesting to look when the because there are some sports they don't choose their o their Olympic team until a month out because they want the athlete to peak and so track and field. But that's a different world because you can recover more from that metal, metal performance, podium performance. You have to time that and period periodization so that when you get to that moment, you're going to peak at the olympics. You're not going to peak at the team trials unless the team trials are far out from the olympics. So I'm a better fan of like team trials in may, olympics in september, but that's just not going to happen anymore.
Speaker 3:So let me go back because, tj, I'll ask you this and I heard me ask you this. So the pinnacle of our, of our fighting young, was the was, of course, forget about the Olympics but the pinnacle for us was the world championship. Anyone that won a world champion was, was in a different category. Like you, were like a world champion, a world champion, world champion, it just it never went away. But now, tj, a lot of people win world championships and you congratulate them on a big turn because they just got 200 freaking points, but like it's almost kind of watered down because like right now there's a grand prix, three right up to the world championships in thailand. Like it's almost like I don't want to say it's not important, but is it that much different than a grand prix? I'm talking the good grand prixs, the top 32, not these watered-down grand prixs, the top 32. It's arguably harder it's, it's harder.
Speaker 2:It's harder to win a world if a world cup is done by qualification, or a world, or a grand Prix or whatever these things are. If you're fighting, you know that the first match you walk in is top 16, top 8, top whatever. That's a harder tournament.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Because the other ones are random. You get like, you get everybody. You might get Botswana, not to say Botswana is going to be.
Speaker 3:I feel like the World Championships now because of the point, is like the bonus thing. If you get that, you're almost guaranteed to go to the olympics via points, right? I mean that's almost what it is, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:I just I mean that's you were talking about how many times you fought, I mean I think it started back and it started when, like I mean when we, when the grand prix first started. What was the first year? 2013?
Speaker 1:first grand prix is 2013 and um yeah I think london, right, london, anyways, irrelevant, uh, or manchester, I'm not sure which one. It was 2013. Um, everybody that was top 32 showed up. You had one through 32 in attendance. I think it was a little difference the moment we started getting ourselves that drop off, and then the thirans, and then we got the, the wild cards, and you start adding all those elements. In a little bit, it changes the, the sting of it. You know, we. We know when you know people have gone to grand prixs and the other three, four big guys in the division weren't there and there was three, four other decent guys. But that, that as well, and and even the 100 seating changes everything too. You know it's, it's a it's, it's a little easier to look at as just another competition, even though they're big medals.
Speaker 3:Obviously you're young, to your point. Listen again, it was much easier. It was, it was pot. You can't. You can't peak today, you're right.
Speaker 3:Maybe for the olympic games, maybe, especially if you qualified in january you already qualified, you had time to like kind of get yourself ready. I think there's a balance. I know when I was coaching bruce was coaching Briseida Costa for Mexico, they did the trials like, oh, I guess it was like five, maybe four weeks before the Olympics. It was too much stress, I mean, there was too much buildup and after that it was a down and then it was kind of like, oh, it was very difficult to go, but so there's got to be that time.
Speaker 3:But the great Steven Lopez, like the guy fought twice a year, actually usually once a year. He fought the team trials and he didn't fight the Pan Am Championships. He waited to the Olympic Games I'm sorry, the World Championships the next year and maybe he would get to a training camp or something. But he literally let everybody kick the shit out of each other. He watched everybody, then he kept his mystique, then he went in there, he took care of the average people and sometimes you'd have a bump in the road in the quarterfinals or semifinals, but he was fresh enough good enough too much stress on the other person to basically navigate that era to win five world championships.
Speaker 3:So, to your point, he was able to do what you should be able to do in high-level fighting and MMA. They peak right. They look for the right moments to become the UFC champion Boxing same thing. That's the reason why they don't fight every six weeks. The top guys fight every six months, or twice a year if they're lucky. So anyway, that's enough of that, I guess. But the team trials for AAU and the nationals for usat should be interesting and it's going to be, I think, a battle of attrition for some people, some people I think the higher tier of the guys that are competing at the, the higher levels, is a little bit easier to to.
Speaker 1:I guess you say peak, um, because I say I think before when I was competing, obviously I was just using my, my air, like the competition within the united states was heavy, so like I did have to almost, you did have to almost peak at nationals, or you didn't go to team trials, you did almost have to peak at team. Go to the second phase. You know I'm and my personal story, I'm standing across from the olympic silver medalist, the world champ, like if I don't peak today, there's no, there's no. So I mean I think there is it, you know. So I think it's that kind of build and stay sharp mentality. I mean, how many months do we have between the final Olympic trials and the Olympic Games? Like three or four or four or five in 2012?
Speaker 3:I don't think that much I think two months.
Speaker 3:Maybe two to three months Max. I don't even think it was three months. I think it was maybe two to three months max. I don't think it was three months, I think it was maybe two, maybe two and a half. We had a good time. I, we, I mean honestly, I mean it was the best time. I mean we were still sharp, we didn't have a whole lot of time to bask in our glory. Um, you know. So it was, uh, it was a good time frame. But again, tj, you're right, you know young, you're right.
Speaker 3:I mean, sometimes these domestic things were so hard to get out of, there was so much stress to win that that you just felt like you were built to go on to the next step. I think it's all been watered down on the domestic qualification, the domestic finalization of the team. So when people get to these bigger levels, they don't really know who they are, they don't really know if they're really prepared. They probably don't even. I would say a lot of us, they don't even believe it.
Speaker 3:Going to what you said, I remember my thing was nationals, always nationals For us. We celebrated if we got top four at nationals and I didn't even care after the quarterfinals there was some people I'm like you need to win a national championship, but some people I'm like I don't care, because I knew in six weeks we had the team trials and that's when I would put my my game. Planning for each person Nationals was crazy, cause I didn't know who we're going to fight, when we're going to fight, it was just stress. But once we got to the team trials, that was the real like uh, the extra step. But nationals was, was, was everything, because that got us to that step. But now, like there's ranking, there is winning at nationals.
Speaker 3:I got a kid that's in the team trials next year because he won the U S open in January, arguably he don't have to do, he don't have to do crap this whole year. Well, they made a requirement that you have to go to nationals. But he can go to nationals. Kick me in the face. I leave. He can show up in a team trials next year january. I don't think it's correct, but that's what that's my to my point. That's one little avenue for him to get to the team trials.
Speaker 1:I mean, I get the incentive I'm not a fan of any of that. I mean, I get it, you want people. You want people um competing internationally and doing those things that these kids are doing. I get that part, but like I don't know, I would take. I mean, if it was up to me I wouldn't even do. I don't think I would rank in an in the country, I wouldn't rank. I would have unranked tournaments for nationals. I would just do like old school and just make a randomized bracket. I think it's important to to find out, like you said about find out who you are. What if you do, got to fight the big guy first that day. It is what it is. You know you go to world championship and now I know it's a little bit blah, blah, blah, it's seated, but we got a lot of young guys that are going to these big tournaments and they're the lowest ranked people, so you're gonna fight someone good first match yeah, yeah, I got an athlete that went to the east regional, so only two people in division.
Speaker 3:Oh, I, I forgot they lost, they lost, they got second. They didn't get second, they lost. Okay, they're going to the au, the usat nationals. They're ranked number four.
Speaker 2:What how?
Speaker 3:I didn't even know and I was told this. I'm just kind of like oh, so that's right.
Speaker 2:They have this national. Yeah, I've never been. I laugh at the national rankings because what they have is you know, and I see the schools use, they use it and you know, the challenge is the organization's run by PR people, Right. The challenge is the organization is run by PR people, right? So when they're doing this, they're trying to make PR and in the PR of it, that's what's happening and it doesn't help the sport.
Speaker 3:I don't think it helps the sport. No, which you know what. Maybe that's a transition, because I think I was talking to somebody from another country, from Mexico, and I watched the Mexican team trials and I was looking at the team and it's a little man. It started to mirror United States TJ. The leadership is questionable in Mexico right now. They've had a president that's had two terms and the first time in the history of the sport the guy changed the bylaws to get a third term. So they're talking about if it's legal or not, but anyway, in the meantime we know the debacle they had at the Olympic games. So now they have athletes living in other places in training, not at the training center, like historically. If you're first or second team, you go to the training facility and you train. I had to pull up the stats again but they had a high number of people that don't live at the Olympic Center in Mexico. That made the national team. You had Olympians and world champions that lost in a one-off fight to somebody domestically and now not going to the world championship. So it's really interesting to see how there's some disarray from the leadership from the net.
Speaker 3:I made a comment, you know, earlier in the year for the united states team trials that there was two men out of eight places.
Speaker 3:That was that was based out of the academy. There was, I think, two women, same thing at eight, or maybe it's three, I can't remember, but it just didn't look really good. If the national center with the best athletes, the best coaches, the best facility, the best resources go to a domestic team trials and they're not performing it doesn't, it doesn't say a lot right, it doesn't give the people, the, the, the community a lot of confidence. And so that happened in Mexico. You're looking at their team and now you know they've always had national team coaches and now they have four coaches, three of which are random, one that's at the training center. It just seems like their fabric is getting broken up. And you know, I think that as much as I've criticized the United States, you know organization I'm looking at, you know, across the border, right now, mexico has been historically good, right, and I know they have way more resources than us and way more bodies than us as far as numbers of athletes.
Speaker 3:But right now, they're on shady ground right now and I was talking to one of my good friends, oscar Salazar. Shout out to Oscar, he's an Olympic silver medalist, I mean, one of the legends in Mexico, and we were just talking about the, the craziness over there, but he was like he said are the mexicans learning from the united states? He says, because he goes, they look exactly the same. And I started thinking about I'm like man, there's some, there's some parallels there too. So I know you've seen the mexico a little bit for a long time, tj, but it was, uh, it's a little strange over there right now I always thought it was kind of, I mean, how you'd want it to be right.
Speaker 1:I don't know how many people you could uproot and make they figure it out, but I think making the national team just to go on the good side of it, should look a little bit. I mean, you'd want to be in a position where you can go hey, I'm gonna go here for the next six, seven, eight months and train and get ready for this event. I know it's harder with kids, but maybe from the adult side and I think that's part of it. You know what I mean. There's no you go back, there's no incentive to make our national team you just make the national team Like you just go to nationals, you know.
Speaker 3:But there is incentive in Mexico because they get money. That's what I'm saying. You have that. That's a good start.
Speaker 3:You know, I I think that you know we've had this debate a lot because obviously in mexico's situation too like there's a lot of good coaches in mexico that coach at the state level that don't even coach at the state level, they just have their own private clubs um, there's some really good ones out there. I have a lot of respect for. I mean, I don't want to single people out, but there's some good ones in careétaro, good ones in Puebla, there's some Michoacán, there's some really good ones. But you can't build a culture or a community unless you're training together. So the good, probably the utopia, bring the talent together and bring the coaches as well. Right, because right now you have all these people on the outside not respecting the inside and then when they come together, it's just every man for themselves and there's no way you can build an identity as a culture.
Speaker 3:From Korea to Uzbekistan to Iran. Listen, here's what I do know All the successful teams. They put the best guys together. You know, I mean they've had what do you call it centralized training. Now, that goes against my philosophy for America right now, because we don't have a centralized training, it's not open to all, it's a private club that says we like you, come over here, mexico, you make the national team or B team, you go, you go. But that's not the United States, right? If that was the way, we would have 16 men and 16 women there. They'd have 36 athletes there. And guess what? You want to see the cream of the crop rise. You would see the cream. But they don't do that. We don't have the. I don't know. Do we not have the resources? Apparently they got millions of dollars, but we don't have the resources. They don't care, they don't want the time, they don't want to build a bigger staff, they don't want to integrate with other coaches. I don't know, but when I look at other countries the successful ones that's what they do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's the. I mean like we, we talk about it a lot actually, but I think that's got to be it. I mean we always talk about. You know, these guys look over here and say there's a lot of talent over here as far as athletes. Like when we talk about coaching and coaching people that really know what they're doing, guys that can kind of do those things, if you're not working with them, there's no way, like we're sustaining the core of athletes at the bottom. We're like kind of pushing them through. There's no way you how it all should work and how it all should look. You know what I mean it doesn't make any sense. Like it should be as simple as you make the national team and you get some kind of funding, at least for three months, at least for four months, at least for five months, so they have a little bit of relief and you kind of keep them in the system of some sort.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't. I mean we talked a long time ago, coach, about how we had some open or somewhere. And we're talking to the Russian guys. I know they have, like they do the regional training centers and like kind of like it was a matter of you. Perform X this year with this amount of money we review, you get more athletes. They kind of let the coach build into where they're supposed to go, as opposed to trying to snatch and put everyone in one system. I think that slope of having a centralized training is always tricky. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:No-transcript throw this to you, young, because you've been kind of quiet on this, because I know you're letting us run with it. But I'm going to ask you the question and TJ jump in after him. So if they did something as simple as format and I'm going to kind of clean up what you said format if you make the national team, let's just let's go to two seniors and juniors. Let's say cadet, you can't do yet because they're two, their bodies are growing. You don't really know, the best one is the little league, shortstop or the quarterback. But by junior and senior you're starting to get a minimum senior.
Speaker 3:You make the national team. You come out here to train, you know, for two months before the world championship so you can integrate with the team and the coaches. You get your airfare, your hotel, your stipend Again small. We put two kids in a room, three kids in a room, whatever we have to do. But there's a format Everybody can build to. That I can feel good, like my kid is going to the national program, my kid is getting supported as much as I and I'm going to use myself as much as maybe. I think I can give them more or I have better, but at least I know there's. There's a structure in a plan.
Speaker 3:If they did something as simple as that, that'd be something to build to versus right now. It's kind of like the opposite. I win and now, coach, what do I got to do now? I don't know, mr Johnson, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know if they're going to pay, I don't know when they're going to have a camp. I don't know if they're going to try to learn to work with you. I don't know who's going to sit in your chair, because they're going to decide that some chick from the West coast of Florida is is the best thing since sliced bread and she's going to get stuck in your chair. You know what I'm saying. Like that's, that's wrong, you know? So what do you think about that, young? I mean so you?
Speaker 2:know a quick yeah, but it's certainly worth the effort. You know, and by way of background, as both of you know, I've been fortunate enough to be an elite athlete, an elite coach, an administrator, developed programs and, inside the Olympic movement, I was on two or three key committees where this was my job and then when I went to the Olympic Council of Asia, I was on that committee, I led the effort to figure out how to do this, in particular our sport. And so the model there's, model you described. There's two benefits to it. And then there's the model, the abuses of different models in the States, the abuses of different models in the states. So in the states there was a move to fill beds at the olympic training center way way back in the day, because somebody figured out how to get beds there and in order to stay at what they thought was important to stay at the olympic training center and stay as part of the olympic movement was to fill those beds, and that was during sang lee's time, and they found ways to fill. And then there was a second generation of when you went there and other guys went there and we always used it as a focal place for training just before events and we spent a lot of time there.
Speaker 2:But we would do what you're saying, which is at the point where you make the national team. You were brought together, you had a national program, you had national coaches. Now that all presupposes either a national team philosophy and a national team coaching staff that can help you, and swimming is an example of it. So when you went to the swimming national team, you had a guy like Michael Phelps, who was coached by arguably one of the best coaches in the world, bob Bowman. He didn't need to come there, and when he went to Stanford, they went there only before the Olympics. In our situation, if we had faith in the coach that was at the Olympic Training Center and we had an outlier who wasn't getting great coach but had great talent, then they would be better served by being at a program.
Speaker 2:What you're talking about is a hybrid, and the hybrid is when you receive, when you reach a certain level, you are now exposed to the realities of elite athlete training, which presupposes that you're not getting that at home. So an athlete at your program or tj's program or back in the day in my program, they were getting that anyway. They were getting that probably better than whatever. In this situation, the question becomes is there a unified coaching philosophy at the national level that's being run by a national coach of repute that can help those athletes get to the next level?
Speaker 2:And in korea this happens all the time, where you know, but it's done. Grammar school to middle school, to high school, to college, to professional team is what it used to be probably not anymore and that worked because at each level you were getting a better and better coach, and when you got to the next level you're getting the best coach. Here it doesn't work because, to speak frankly now, we don't have the best coach as part of the national program. We don't have a coaching philosophy or any developmental philosophy at that level that's going to help a left athlete who's not on the bubble, but it's already at podium level, so would it help?
Speaker 1:an athlete. What do you mean by? What do you mean I just stopped? What do you mean by coaching philosophy?
Speaker 2:so a coaching philosophy takes two or three different uh, two or three different shapes. A national coaching philosophy is one that says we have an understanding of our high performance plan. We know where our athletes come from. We know we're going to integrate ourself all the way down into the grassroots development level where we're going to provide materials and understanding and trainings at a dojang level. Then they're going to go to regional trainings in their area, then they're going to go to state trainings and they're going to go to regional trainings at a national level and there's going to be a national level of camps for athletes that want to get better at this thing.
Speaker 2:And they do this in soccer. So if you're a local soccer kid, you go to the local soccer club. If you're playing ayso, after that club then you go to regional camps run by um national programs. Then, if you're good enough at that and they see you as national team, you go to the olympic development program, the odtp, odp, or you go to the national. You get scouted and you go to that. Then the next thing up from that, you start getting scouted by professional academies. Now that's a hierarchy that lasts on itself, but it's run by USA Soccer in some cases. In our case, the national team, the national program by the USAT does not go down to the dojang level, it doesn't go to the state level, it doesn't go to the regional level and it's kind of now separated itself from all of that and what they've said is grassroots development. Good luck, let us know how that goes. If we look at you and we identify you and we like you and you bow correctly and you give us enough money, we'll invite you to Bow, they don't bow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. The word on the street is that there's no correlation or there's no connection between junior and youth winning in an Olympic.
Speaker 2:And then your pipeline's broken. So at the moment where you're not connecting your, if you weren't connecting that pipeline in soccer, for example, you wouldn't have any results. If you're not collecting that pipeline in soccer, for example, you wouldn't have any results If you're not collecting that pipeline in football or basketball.
Speaker 1:That is probably the dumbest thing you could say. That's probably the dumbest thing you could say.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how about this? How?
Speaker 2:about this Go ahead, no, no, so just to close the loop on it. So what you're saying is a hybrid. You're saying now, what we should say is, as a reward for getting to a certain level, we're going to offer these certain programs that you can come to, whether they're financial, and they provide you with an opportunity to go to Korean Open, and this was something the AAU tried for a while. So when you made a certain amount of money, you know you got to go to this. When you made a certain amount of this, you got to go to that and it wasn't directly correlated to performance, but it was correlated to results. So in your city, if I were saying, if I were fixing usat today and if someone in the room was smart enough to let me fix it, then what I would do is I would say your very first thing you need to do is fire your coaches because they don't understand athletic development of grassroots. Next thing you need to do is hire professional coaches from any sport that do, and then they'll develop a matrix for you to get podium performance in four to eight years. Next thing after that identify your best coaches, put them in positions of power from the national team level all the way down to the level of a dojong. Now you have a program and now figure out what you're going to do with all that money that you're making, because the reason they have regionals and people qualify through regionals it's a money train. So the money train which they have has to go somewhere. So you know, I went to the website, um, when my guy messed up to figure out what was going on and I saw they have a bunch of sponsors and you know it was a bunch of money. And so that's really in the current, in the current incarnation of usa taekwondo, what I've said is the solution to performance and success.
Speaker 2:Now, you don't have to like it, you don't have to love it, you don't have to hate it. That's it. Now, when you look at success, you then judge success and say what have we missed? So if you're not getting enough athletes in the pipeline, you got to address that. If you're getting athletes in the pipeline but they don't have the right information, you have to address that. If you're getting the athletes in the pipeline, you have the right information, they're not performing, you have to address that. They're going into the international arena and they're not performing, then you have to address that, but without any. So there's no accountability at the dojong level, no accountability at the state level. There's no accountability at any level.
Speaker 2:So let me give you the, let me give you the last thing and I'll stop talking because tj's clock ran out. If you had athletes coming through the program and at the regional level these athletes were identified and you put them into the national team whatever uh pipeline and they don't perform, then you need to fire the guys at the regional level because he hasn't developed an athlete. That's, that's fitting the profile. If you put them in the national team profile and they're not performing, you fire that guy. If they go to the olympics and they don't, to be to speak frankly, after the last olympics the entire coaching staff and the sport development program at usat should have been fired, because you had people on a lot of planes going and doing a lot of galas and going to a lot of events and you had no results.
Speaker 2:If there hasn't been a medal in the male division in since TJ, then we got a bigger problem that we have to fix now. Until you get performance based and I'll end it here then you'll get exactly the results you're, you're engineered for and right now, usa Taekwondo is perfectly engineered to get warm-ups, and what I mean by that is guys show up at a tournament. They have two desires. One is to get a warm-up and come home. Two is to get a medal. You don't have medal performers, you have warm-up performers, and warm-ups are just a price of entry.
Speaker 3:Well, real fast, I was going to joke around they don't bow and they don't wear their warm-ups, so they're not getting those either. Let me say this what do you guys think about this? Because all sport, olympic sport, is the same. You have individual sports boxing, wrestling, judo, taekwondo, swimming, okay, and then you have team sports basketball, volleyball, water polo, it's like that but the common denominator, even in gymnastics which, arguably, if there's one sport that we dominate more than anything in the world, it's gymnastics, women's gymnastics and they still have a national team coach that has to set the philosophy, set the trend, set the expectations. And, yes, they have coaches underneath them, some of them brought on for the individual athletes, some of them happen to be people that work with the head coach the individual athletes, some of them happen to be people that work with the head coach. But you have to appoint somebody that can organize those individual athletes or those team sports. When I look at USA Wrestling, they have a head coach. It doesn't mean that he can coach every single pit, because some come from the military, some come from university, some are trained by themselves. So the only common denominator that I can think of is somebody that is leading that charge has to have the confidence and the respect of the community. That community has to feel like that person cares about everybody.
Speaker 3:I'm going to use myself. Look, my title is the head coach of Brazil. I don't go around to all the clubs, but I bring the guys together. I put the people in place, but I set the philosophy. I say when we train, I say what times we train, I say how often we train Everything. I say what time we go to breakfast. We set our culture so that the coaches could do their best, so the athletes could do their best. That's the way the program works in Brazil, because they don't have a centralized training. They have centralized training. Maybe I could do that. My point is here in the United States I just said the national team staff. They have one person that leads it supposedly, but I don't care if they're a nice guy or not a nice guy. It doesn't seem like they have the best interest of everybody. That's because if they did, they'd be taking every national team, every junior.
Speaker 2:So stop there before you go further, because now you have, that's where you fire somebody, because the price of entry for a coach that's running a national program is inclusion rather than exclusion, and at the point where you become exclusionary, that's my second, yeah so that and that's so.
Speaker 2:Right there, there's not a second. You're gonna, you gotta go to your second point. But here's the reality at that point there's no, there's threshold issues for national programs. So I can't be. I can't be in charge of USA Taekwondo, because my demeanor and my political way of handling things is not inclusive. In other words, I would fire people, I would hire people, but I would have results. There's a difference. I would definitely have results, but I would fire and hire people. I'm not inclusive. In a weird way, the guy who's in charge of this thing needs to be inclusive to a fault and open the tent, make a bigger tent rather than excluding people. Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:No. But then my next thing TJ was going to be okay. If that person, let's say, doesn't have the real best inches of all people, then even if his staff was considered top, top shelf look at our country Nobody looks at those coaches. I'm sorry if you don't like it. Nobody looks at those guys and say, oh my gosh, that's the person that's going to take me to wherever I need to go. Okay, they're on the staff. Okay, they're living out there. Okay, they're with them every day. It doesn't mean that they're good, it doesn't mean that they're qualified, it just means that they're there. So, by default, they are considered national team coaches, which goes to like what we've talked about.
Speaker 3:There's so many pockets of people in this country I mean without being self-serving there's so many pockets that are more experienced, produce more, been there longer, understand the communities a lot better than the people that have been positioned up there, from administrative type people to actual coaches. There lies in the because, at the bar, at the Nationals and the side talking on the side of the ring or in the holding area, everyone's talking about how bad they are, how they don't know, how they haven't done, how they don't care, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hence the reason why everyone loves this podcast because we say what everyone's thinking. So my point is with our national organization we don't have the buy-in again. I'm not judging people's character are they nice people, are they good people? But the truth is in the pudding. If you've been here seven years and you and we still have our pipeline is decimated, broken, I mean we're gonna.
Speaker 2:We could have a big event right now because in california but I in a weird way, like when you know, like I don't like to talk about the two coaches or the one coach I don't even know if the other coach is around anymore because one fought, kind of was okay, the other one was a clown and he's not a good coach and he doesn't produce results. And so that kind of goes to the second point of what you said a good coach or a good program. And I'll give you again what I'm looking at now in soccer. So they have these huge talent ID camps and they don't call them that, but they're called showcases, and at the showcases a hundred to 150 of the top coaches in the country from professional academies and colleges and D ones, ands and 3s come to see the athletes. And they are smart because what they do is they know the clubs that traditionally produce good athletes and have good coaching and good substructures and they nexus with those clubs. So they have that relationship. They go to that club and they say to that guy you got anybody that's good, that I should come see.
Speaker 2:So in soccer, and not to say us soccer is perfect, because it's certainly far from that, but at this level, when they go out to identify these kids. They have relationships with those lower coaches. They don't exclude those coaches, they don't. They go all right, let me go to svsa, let me go to la galaxy. Let me go to uh the earthquakes. Let me go here to find that athlete I need for my program at uh yale or harvard or clemson one of the best programs in the country and they go okay. Historically, I get an athlete from there and when you look at it, you'll see that relationship between the coaches at the highest level. And you saw this in Korea, korea at Dongsung High School, which was world renowned for producing athletes. Chede had a relationship. They went down there to see okay, who do you have for me?
Speaker 3:The USA has a relationship, though, with me, because they have a para medalist, uh olympic medalist, a world champion and a brand new recruit.
Speaker 2:No, no, they have a relationship. Your athletes have a relation, you don't. You're welcome. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:And they should say thank you and they should be sending you money and my point is that they're too stupid to fix it and that you can, and I I'll let you go, tj, but here's the last thing I'll say. You can excuse ignorance, you can excuse naivete. You cannot excuse ignorance and you can't excuse stupidity. Naivete is when you don't know better because you haven't had access to the information. Ignorance is when you see the information and you ignore it. Arrogance is when you know all of it and, despite knowing all of it, you don't fix it, to the detriment of the American public.
Speaker 3:And Taekwondo should be defunded. For the level of arrogance, I blame your senior, I blame your senior. Who's that? But anyway, dj, I don't. You know. Warwick, your senior, listen, you better bow to him.
Speaker 2:He's not my senior. I'm actually a ninth degree and I think he's a third. Yeah, he's your senior. I give him the respect he's due because he was my team captain and he was one of my coaches. But I know I will always bow, but I bow because I have respect for myself and that was the best advice I ever got from somebody. But he actually asked me a question. He said people ask me about you and they want to know if we're still friends. And I said, yeah, we're friends.
Speaker 2:But I told you when you took the job, if you started taking a paycheck and you didn't fix it, you're part of the problem and I live to that today. That guy's part of the problem, you know. And I and I shout, I gave a shout out to Steve McNally why he solved the problem, the problem for me, and so I respected that. There were two other people in that text, one my junior, one my senior. They didn't text back, they didn't offer to solve the problem. So one's my junior and I used to employ him in this program, right? The other one's my senior and uh, you know, oh, well, well, and it's ironic that the guy who solved my problem wasn't a taekwondo guy, so I give him you know that I was gonna ask um, I'm probably more to you and to you, uh, both.
Speaker 1:Actually, when we talk about, like you know, they're not being successful. I think I guess my question would be.
Speaker 2:I want to ask the question wait which? So you're going to ask the mayor of taekwondo and then you're going to ask the grandmaster of disaster?
Speaker 1:yes, sir, all right, just checking, good together sorry, not simultaneously at the same time. What, what does, what does? What does success look like? When you say non-performing? Yeah, because we always talk about it, right, and I think I think, like we talked about last olympic medal being 2012, yada, yada, yada. I'm not sure the community or people understand. Like what, what would we want to look like at this point, or what should we be to go? Hey, we're winning, we're successful, and I don't mean winning by medal count, I mean winning overall.
Speaker 3:but yes, sir, no, I was going to say this before you asked that, because I'm not naive. I know that it's difficult to win in the world nowadays. Even the best national teams maybe get a medal or two medals, but everybody knows they're still good. Does that make sense? Like it's almost an eye test? So you're right, if we had, let's just say we went to the world championships and young excuse me, because I know in our era it was different but let's say we had three medals. Let's say we just got three medals through the men and women, right, and? But we had a bunch of quarterfinals. We had people losing to the champion in the quarterfinal, like we had some death matches and you just felt that the USA was strong.
Speaker 3:I remember a year, one time, we went to the world championships and same thing, I think we had two medals. I think it was Mark and Steven, but I don't know, I can't forget who it was. But we had a bunch of like just the US team looked strong, they were going deep into tournaments. When I look at Turkey, when I look at Spain, spain, you never notice them and then you're like damn, they got three medals, or damn, they got four medals. Same thing with Uzbekistan. There are some programs that you can look at and you can say they are healthy, they're good at every stop cadet, junior, senior university and you're like they're building. How many times do we say oh, that team's up and coming. Does anybody say that about us? So for me it's the eye test that is my beautiful daughter.
Speaker 2:You're always showing off your beautiful daughter.
Speaker 3:This is my beautiful artist. Yes, daughter, you're always showing off your beautiful daughter. This is my beautiful artist. Yes, she shows me all her stuff.
Speaker 3:But seriously, tj, I think it's more of are we healthy? Do we have Brazils like this? We recognize that we're probably going to have two or three top people on each side, men and women, but from top to bottom. We want to make sure people train hard, do things the right way, get in scraps, make good decisions and, of course, sometimes they're just not talented enough to beat the Iranian or the Russian. Okay, but we have to be competitive.
Speaker 3:So I'm not looking for a way out, I'm just being realistic. You're going to have your stars, but your pipeline has to look healthy. Your national team has to look dangerous. We've seen it. Has anybody ever said that Iran's not good? No, but they go through their times where they're not producing their four gold medals on the men's side, like we've known. Russia, same thing, uzbekistan, same thing. So my definition of success and healthy and performance and result is having your stars show up consistently, having a mid-level person have a great result. But overall the team is well-trained, dangerous, competitive. They look the part Jordan. They don't bring a full team. But would you say, tj, that they're healthy? Would you say that they're competitive? Everyone.
Speaker 2:So success, as defined by the U S Olympic committee back in the day and still, even now, is based on sustained, and the words were chosen. It's just saying it was chosen. I was on the, obviously at the point where we've made our statement and we chose the words carefully Sustained, competitive, excellence, performance versus results. And now ask yourself a question Is it sustained? And the answer is no. Is it competitive? No, and is it excellent? No, and is it excellent, no. And so on all fronts, you're missing all marks.
Speaker 2:Because you can make a case when someone's performing well and we talked about this in the coaching program when we created it performance over results. So if you can perform well, you can run into the best guy first round and perform well. And it was interesting. I was watching this again, some soccer thing and the the guy said you have no control over what happens on the pitch. That was winning and losing. You have no control over how did you perform. You don't even have control over that. So that and that was an interesting thing to kind of say, but it's not untrue. So you can, you can make an argument for everything that's happening currently, but if you have over how many every year years it's been, since we've had a medal. Did you say 16 years, was it?
Speaker 1:Olympic medal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How many years 2012.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, how many years has it been, Not 16. Well, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024. Yeah, 4, 8, 12. It'll be 16 years by 2028. The next time I have a chance 12 to 16 years.
Speaker 2:If you haven't put somebody on a medal podium and you don't see an upward trend towards that, then you don't have competitive, sustained competitive excellence and you don't see a trend. So if the trend is trending down or trend in trending level, then you have to ask yourself a question If you're competing against people that are financed better, have a better infrastructure and it's not anything you can have. So if you live in the middle of africa and you don't have running water and you don't have a gym with a floor and you're trying to compete, I get it. But when you live in one of the most prosperous countries in the world that has resources, time and energy and your finance and your cash flush and you're not producing, then it's a a methodology problem, it's not an athlete problem. And I say the same thing in soccer, by the way, just so you understand.
Speaker 2:There's no argument for why the US shouldn't be producing the best soccer players in the world, because everybody says the best athletes are going somewhere else, and that's just simply not true. The athletes who are good at basketball are good at basketball. They wouldn't be good at soccer. They'd be okay at soccer. There's no athlete that's making a decision not to play soccer. We have more people in this country playing soccer at every level than we do playing virtually any other sport. More kids are doing soccer than are doing basketball, and half the country plays soccer, and so there's a problem in their pipeline as to development. But in our pipeline there's no excuse for why we shouldn't be performing because we have. We're not genetic, we're not genetically disadvantaged, we're not financially disadvantaged, we're not intellectually disadvantaged. So the answer, resoundingly, is that is an administrative problem, that is a methodology problem, that is simply a philosophical problem.
Speaker 3:So but that's that's why I told you, tj, for me it's, it's, it's, it's. We got to be competitive, we got it. We have to look the part, we have to be the part, because I'm not naive, I mean, I, I do like that. I mean that's why I like khhabib so much. Khabib is, like you know, in MMA, he, he, all of his people, he's like whatever's going to happen is going to happen. You get knocked out, you get choked out, you lose the decision.
Speaker 3:All the work has already been done, but so some of it is out of your control. I know we like to say we control it, we can, you know, make your luck, but sometimes there's just weird things that happen in the sport. There's literally no answer. But that doesn't mean that you're not successful. That just means some weird thing happened. But I don't feel like that's the point right now. I don't think we have competitive, sustained competitive excellence. Tj, how many times you are like, oh my God, that one result saved an organization, the world championships saved by a world championship person's out, one Olympics saved by a person that maybe wasn't even supposed to be at the Olympic Games. So that's not sustained, that's not competitive excellence. That's pretty fortunate, not taking anything away. Well, look at Korea, you guys talked about Korea, right?
Speaker 2:So you could say that Korea has sustained competitive excellence. They have people in the pipeline that are coming up. They plan for those people in the pipeline. They're coming up and they're winning. You could say that about half a dozen Euro-Russian whatever you call them now countries. You could say that for odd countries, countries to watch Thailand, watch Thailand. I look at some of the stuff that's going on with those guys. I'm like the uh, the Arabic nations. They're, they're, they're, they're. They put a ton of money behind stuff. They get good coaches.
Speaker 2:So we, we as a country, have to make a decision, to have a philosophical change, and right now, most of the people you know and it'd be my last thing on this is the reason you don't have it is because you have empowered the plebs and the masses, and so they're not complaining because they're at the table and they get to eat dinners. You know they're eating while everybody else is starving, but the athletes that should be winning aren't winning and the athletes that should be in the pipeline and identified aren't being funded and the coaches that should be doing development aren't there. So you know you'll have the outlier. You might have a kid, like you know.
Speaker 2:It's hard. I don't. I don't want to rain on cj's parade because athletically he has all the tools set necessary to have a to have a podium performance. So that's a kid that with the right coach, that gets him off the internet, puts him in a gym, gets him to put a shirt on and put a chest protector on instead, that's a kid. With the right coach he could be a world class and a long term performer. But you know, if you're hip hopping, break dancing and capoeira wing and that's the focus of your time, if you know you and you're spending more time on TikTokoks and everything else, that you're not going to have the results. So, but anyway, do you know what you're gonna say?
Speaker 1:maybe. Just he changed my direction so I said cj. I think if anybody I mean if anybody, I mean if we're just being real if anyone has some kind of sustained competitiveness, it's. It's cj. You know what I mean he. He's. He's in the mix, he's, he's a silver medals at the World Championships. He's a. You know, he runs deep in every tournament. You always, I think, he shows up for the moments.
Speaker 1:But the reality is back to just the Olympic stuff. We know that's a tricky day. We know the Olympic day anything can happen. And I think when we talk about go back to your point about peaking and being ready for those moments, maybe that is a. Maybe that is a you know focus type thing. That is a you know focus type thing. Maybe that's a. Whatever, I know it's a.
Speaker 1:We all know sitting here how tough the Olympic day is. You know I was. You know we make jokes about it but, like I, I was right at the brink of doing it or not. Doing it like it is is a tough day. You have to do the things required of you to to get through that day, and it is one day every four years. That's what makes it scary, but that's what also makes it special, that's what also makes it tough. That's what also, when you have that guidance and that help in the chair with you and in the room with you and telling you what's right and what's wrong, sometimes I think you are put in a better situation.
Speaker 1:But I'm a firm believer in coaching is definitely more than giving drills. It doesn't matter the drills you're given, it's the belief in the drills, it's the belief in the system, it's belief in the process that gets you through the tough moments. All the rest of it's it's it's clown work. Everyone knows how to kick and hold targets and you know. Obviously some coaches have better explanations of when and why, but it's all the same shit. So coaching is it's got to be deeper, it's got to be deeper.
Speaker 1:And if, like you, go back to your, you guys point about the culture, the culture has to be built, the, the organization has to to to believe in it. I mean, like we, like you, I mean you know people say they like this podcast because we say what they want to say. I mean that's what we, all three of us, said here and chosen to do. Look at it from a, look at this from a just a point by point standpoint. I mean, obviously you know we feel what we feel, but all these points are valid, like no, there's been no lies told here, there's been no exaggerations.
Speaker 1:Ask the question about what does success look like? Because you know you guys have been around the system way longer than me at the national team level and developing athletes and developing systems for it. So it's just I I can't say. I always sit back and try to figure out. But you know they did get a medal here, but this did happen, like you were just saying. But at the at the core, we're not scary at the core, I don't think medal performance doesn't matter, tj.
Speaker 2:That's the's the thing that like.
Speaker 2:I got what I'm going to say, and I you said something interesting, you know, and it's nice to have all three of us on the podcast for a different reason, people like want to glorify metal performance at the Olympics or a particular metal gold, brown, silver and I always tease you. But the reality is I had a good day. If I had an average day or a sub-average day, that would have easily had been a different color medal or no medal at all. Any of the matches I fought could have went another way, just with one bad kick or one bad moment right. So I'm always humble about the accomplishment, and I was there for both of Coach Moreno's performances, and one thing going a different way or another way would have been a different day for him or for you. So you can't get caught up in the metal, but you can get caught up in the performance. So what I'm going to do is say one last thing, and that's going to be. We're talking about sustained competitive excellence and performance. I'm using the metal count as a a marker on any particular day. A metal can save you or kill you.
Speaker 2:As you've pointed out, we've had those things which have obscured and muddied the waters. There's no sustained competitive excellence. There's no way that you can go in and say I feel like today we have a good shot at a medal with the pool of people we're bringing. You can't say that, you can't say that for quite some time. So that's the reality. You could say I went in with a good hope for performance and it didn't work out because of X, y and Z that's a different conversation. And then you just take it one step better. Of X, y and Z that's a different conversation, and then you just take it one step better. Are we going? Are we? Are we doing everything necessary to say either of those things? Currently? And I think the answer is no, we're not doing sustained competitive excellence. Oh yeah, we're doing.
Speaker 3:We're doing hope and hope and pray.
Speaker 2:In other words, I play basketball, I shoot the ball, I hope and pray. I don't pray.
Speaker 3:Listen, I don't know, I know we've gone a little bit longer than normal. I do want to kind of clean up something that we talked about last time real fast, it doesn't have to be long, because TJ, me and you talked off the air After the last podcast when we talked about the AU Nationals and some of the officiating. I had a bunch of DMs To be honest with you, nothing bad. Some people asked me they wish I would have came to them directly and talked to them because they felt that they were responsible for whatever. And you know I honestly, all the conversations were great.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, like I said, this podcast, I can't be a hypocrite. You know, young, you did it earlier to Mr McNally. You know I stand by what we said. You know I know there was it wasn't anyone's direct fault, but it doesn't change the fact of the scenario. So I'm I'm thankful to all the people that reached out to me. Nothing was for me, it's not personal, as it. Most of the stuff isn't personal, it's just. You know, you say it all the time, tj, it's it's logic, it's things that really happened and now we just have to deal with it. So to the people that you know we talked, you know that talked to me personally. Thank you for reaching out. I'm always willing to have a conversation. I'm always willing to help if asked and if needed. And some of those people did ask, you know, moving forward, if I could help them a little bit. So that's kind of cool and I'm happy that I'm happy for some of that, maybe the fist-up response for people, because at least by them reaching out to me it shows to me that they're willing to come to the table. They could have stood there and said screw Juan, screw TJ, screw her, but they didn't. They actually came. I respect that more that they sent me the messages.
Speaker 3:We had some good dialogue. Everybody went away happy. I had some people that I forgot my friend. Some good dialogue. Everybody went away happy. I had some people that I, my friend Alex, mr Alex he's, he's awesome from Houston. He was like I hope my ring wasn't bad and I go, man, you know what. I actually sat and watched your ring and you know what. You did a great job and I I feel bad for people like that, but just again putting it out there, we said what we said. We stand by what we said, but thank you for the interaction, for the people that came to me directly. I respect that a lot, thank you.
Speaker 1:I got a few messages too, and I think that's kind of cool because, like I said, I know it's kind of cool to know that people are listening, but also that we're adult enough to have, like you said, to have the conversation no-transcript conversations. So I definitely appreciate that.
Speaker 2:So, sir, so, as we always say, uh, sorry, not sorry. So you know, we, uh, we gotta, we gotta be you to keep it real. And it may not make people feel good about everything in the world, and you can, if we over speak, under speak, whatever we, you know, we should definitely be cognizant of that and then be that. But at the end, for us, you know, I think it's important to keep it practical, live and real, because the conversations aren't happening. So for me, I'm going to continue to have these conversations till I see a change that, you know, make something better. And when I make a mistake, you know I have people remind me of my mistakes and and I'll be like you know, okay, I've made a mistake, let me, let me own up to my mistake. And then if somebody does something that shows hope or or a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm willing to look at that. But you know, right now there's definitely some stuff at the aau that it sounds like it needs to be addressed and it may be a leadership void, and hopefully they do it. There's definitely stuff at usa taekwondo that needs to be addressed but has needed to be addressed, and at the wt level there's a ridiculous amount of stuff.
Speaker 2:Right now I'm sitting here instead of being in wherever this handjob-a-don is handjob-a-don in California somewhere, because I'm not a hypocrite. That particular organization did a lot of bad things and the only people out of there the clown show. Unfortunately, americans don't understand what it is, and so some have gone. So if you're there and you're listening to this, turn around and go home. I'll refund your money. All right guys. But all right guys, it's time to I see somebody running around the back of that. I was glad I got to share my daughter, but in the words of the immortal three sorry, not sorry, brothers, peace, all right.