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
Coaching, Outliers, and the Meaning of a Title in Modern Taekwondo
Ever wonder why a world title doesn’t hit the same anymore? We dig into how Taekwondo’s points era reshaped status, strategy, and what “champion” really means. From Grand Prix saturation to the 12‑point gap, we unpack how incentives changed athlete behavior and why the crown now rewards game mastery more than old-school attrition. It’s not easier—it’s different—and that shift matters for coaches, athletes, and anyone trying to build a program that lasts.
We get personal about roles on and off the mat: are we better as athletes or coaches? You’ll hear blunt truths about buy‑in, patience, and what it takes to guide competitors who don’t share your hunger. We talk systems, not saviors: why federations fail when they chase outliers, how to design a pipeline that produces consistent contenders, and the core ingredients that actually scale—stance integrity, distance control, layered counters, and honest conditioning that holds up under pressure.
Training myths take a beating. We separate flashy mashups from work that transfers, laying out a structure where physical prep feeds technical skill and tactical decisions without gimmicks. And because we still love the sport’s soul, we play with cross‑era dream matchups and pay respect to legends whose presence changed rooms—proof that intent, IQ, and fundamentals never go out of style.
If you care about high‑performance Taekwondo, sustainable athlete development, and what truly creates champions, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a coach who needs it, and drop a review telling us which title you value more—and why.
Sorry, not sorry. Till today. Time again. It's that time again. We are back. It's the warehouse 15 and not the 14 or the 13. We got Coach Juan Moreno and he is ready today, raring to go. I noticed that TJ gave up on his blue. He's back to the man, Mike Tyson, the king of the unequivocal, the unimaginable Mike T.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, let me let me start. Because first of all, I gotta show you my new glasses, complimentary of the the Perez family.
SPEAKER_02:I got all those are beautiful.
SPEAKER_01:Honey, honey, come here. Look at look at the ball.
SPEAKER_03:You got new glasses. It looks beautiful. So I can you got the progressives, he used your thing. Well, that's foster city eye care. Send your orders to us.
SPEAKER_01:The rest will take care of. These things make me dizzy though, man. I'm like, I gotta get used to it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, you gotta get used to them. Yeah, yeah. So when you look down, you read like this. That's correct. When you look up, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But I TJ, I like your shirt, but I gotta come look at those glasses.
SPEAKER_04:Like how my outfits are always uh no, we gotta start with it.
SPEAKER_01:We gotta start with it. But all right, but go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:This is acceptable today. This is one of my favorite hoodies.
SPEAKER_01:It's a beautiful but I gotta stop you guys because hey honey, check the check the mail.
SPEAKER_02:Check the mail, see if I got a shirt.
SPEAKER_01:Can I get a shirt tight? I try to send it to Puerto Rico, but it bounced back because bad bunny said no makeup.
SPEAKER_03:Don't get me started on the bad bunny, the hate on bad bunny, my brother.
SPEAKER_01:It's tight, right? It's tight. You guys like it? I like it. I love it. I like it. I got you guys. No, no, this is a proto prototype. I just I had one made just to check it out. I'll I'll make TJ.
SPEAKER_03:I'll send one to uh Croatia for you and then young no notice how much notice who you took care of first.
SPEAKER_01:No, young, I'm gonna I'll send you a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:You know, it's gonna look good on me.
SPEAKER_01:But you're just gonna complain about it.
SPEAKER_03:It's how much TJ, you're glowing though. You glow, get back in the light. No, get back. You you got a blue aura about you today. But I gotta say something else.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, go ahead. Look, man, TJ was delayed this podcast. We're doing this late at night. It's night, dark outside. Because TJ had a a barber, but like I did my early. Shout out to my man. Danny the barber made me fresh, you know, for my Brazil trip in China. Boy, let me see. Let's see your fade. Let me see. TJ. First of all, you I I've seen your haircuts. We ain't gonna talk about your haircuts.
SPEAKER_03:This one's this one's not good. Look at this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, this one, this one's a little rough. T my guy TJ, believe it or not, Terry. I got a TJ too. My TJ didn't do me well.
SPEAKER_01:Revive Barber Shop, Miami, Danny the Barber. I gotta give him a shout out. So I told him about the podcast today, so he's gonna check it out.
SPEAKER_03:That'll be easy to find. Danny the Barber. Yeah, yeah. Danny the Barber. Yeah, Danny the Barber. Yeah, I'm here for Danny the Barber. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Matthew, Danny the bar. That's like that's like John the Pumler. John the Plumber. Pumler? Where do you learn how to speak? I didn't do my warm-ups before today. I should do them now.
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_03:Man, that Tyson thing is scaring me. Every time it's like it peaks up from the bottom of the frame. I know. I can't, it's scaring me. It looks like a video, actually. It looks like a video. Yeah. That's pretty funny. Don't no calm down. I'm not gonna say anything about Tyson because he could still flip it.
SPEAKER_04:It is a late night one, though, so that's good. Not for me.
SPEAKER_03:Not for me. 720.
SPEAKER_01:What you got, TJ?
SPEAKER_04:You good? I'm good. Very good. It's like the end of my day. So every time I come home, I feel good. So had a few karate classes today. A couple new uh new new students. It's pretty interesting as always. Yeah. Can I ask?
SPEAKER_02:Can I ask you a question? So when they come in, are they do they have shoes or no shoes? I'm just curious.
SPEAKER_04:For the for the so right, so that's a big thing.
SPEAKER_02:When they come when they walk into school, like they're wearing shoes or no shoes.
SPEAKER_04:When they walk in the school, like when you're stupid, you're dumb. You're dumb.
SPEAKER_03:You're so dumb. And do you take tuition in cash, chickens, or milk?
SPEAKER_04:I don't know why he thinks North Carolina is so country. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_03:I looked it up on a map. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04:But, anyways, yeah, my kids are fun, man. So I got to work with those guys tonight and have my adult classes before that. And then obviously, my my senior guys to finish out the day with some strong training stuff. So always good. How about you?
SPEAKER_01:Good. Same thing. I just got been packing all day, getting ready. I'm gonna be gone for over three weeks, so I got a lot to do. Head of kind of get everything set up. I know it's gonna be a tough one, but um heading to Rio tomorrow, night. I get there in the morning, right to training. Actually, I'm gonna probably head out to one of our coaches' schools. Just he's got some things going on, so I might go check it out for a little bit. But yeah, back to work, man. World championships. We'll talk about that a little bit later on. Talk about that a little bit.
SPEAKER_04:That's right. I'm heading out to Canada this weekend, too. I'll be going to see my guy uh Mark down there in Canada. We got a seminar going on on Saturday, two good sessions. I'm excited. I always see the stuff that he does with his kids and when he kind of the stuff that he posts. I feel like it's a very uh very sport-based system. So it's gonna be interesting, it'll be fun. Obviously, there's some other schools coming out, so looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_03:I know we got a lot, we got a lot to get to tonight, and Coach Moreno's got to get to bed because he doesn't stay up usually past nine o'clock. And then TJ's got to check in with his officer. So let's get to it. I think we got I think we got Coach Moreno leading us off today.
SPEAKER_01:Well, dude, I just want to ask you guys something. Did you guys see that foot that this drama going on with this football coach from uh Arizona where the guy was running for the touchdown and he he crosses he's about to cross the line and he gets he fumbles the ball? No, he dropped it, right? He dropped it, he dropped it. So yeah, he dropped it. So then the coach is like, I don't know about it on purpose.
SPEAKER_04:No, I mean like he thought he crossed the line, he dropped it through, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the coach on the one of the coaches on the sideline is just yelling at him, yelling him, yelling, yelling, yelling him. Then he kind of like whaps him in the shoulder as he walks by. And so now it's been this big media thing. He got fined$100,000 for that, for for I don't know if it's for discipline or whatever, but you know, people are not even talking about the guy that made the horrible mistake. Like in some coaches, they would have cut him right there, cut him. But like it's almost like it's the fault of the coach. And it's crazy. Like in this day and age, I was listening to an agent, an NLFL agent, talk, and he was saying that it's almost rare for a coach to yell at an athlete anymore.
SPEAKER_04:And wasn't like just what we talk about.
SPEAKER_01:Fear of getting fear of getting fired, fear of uh, you know, just in the the players have too much, like not too much, but have so much control over what's going on. Like coaches can't even coach. So I thought about that. I'm like professional football. The guy makes a horrible mistake that would have put the game 28 to 3, I think. Instead, the other team comes back and wins. And that's I mean, come on, you don't make that at a professional level mistake. And I guess my point is it's crazy that the coaches got the big drama right now and not the uh not the athlete. No one's talking about the athlete's mishap. Interesting.
SPEAKER_04:You know what's funny? I've seen that happen a few times recently, too. I don't know if it was in like a lot of college, I think it was college or high school, like that being like kind of like a funny thing that shows up on social media. But uh I don't know. I I saw the incident, I didn't think twice about it, like the whole exchange between them. I mean, I saw it, but like also I saw the the athlete's reaction. I don't know his name. The athlete's reaction, and there wasn't it didn't seem like it was like yeah, it seemed like it was like uh one of those football things, like hey, you know, you gotta tighten up, you know, and they smack each other's helmets, they smack each other's shoulders pads, they you know what I mean. Football's football, so I didn't even take it as like a negative thing, but I did hear there was some stuff going on. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I mean it's I thought I thought it was a c I thought it was a contact sport.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, but it was yeah, I don't know. I didn't think too much of it to be honest with you in that situation. Me neither, me either.
SPEAKER_01:Anyway, let's go, guys. Just because um the world championships are coming up in a couple weeks. Like I said, I'm leaving tomorrow uh for Rio for a pre-staging camp, and then uh we head over to China. And uh since it's coming up, I I was thinking about something, and I wanted to get your guys' thoughts on and Hung, especially you know, interested in yours. Yeah, they're a little loud.
SPEAKER_03:Um guys, guys, don't don't mind us. We're just doing a podcast, but you can come over and sing and dance. Sierra, come say hello to everybody since you were yelling. Come say hello, come show them your beautiful.
SPEAKER_04:I can't even my video's not coming in right now. Come over here, say hello to Uncle Juan and I said it popped back. Say hi.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, you look so pretty. What good thing you can do.
SPEAKER_03:He says you look so pretty.
SPEAKER_01:Good thing you look like your mom, because you're daddy.
SPEAKER_03:She says good thing you look like me.
SPEAKER_01:No, I did not say that. No, go ahead. My question is um, I don't know if it's philosophical or just you know your own opinion. Do you think that winning a world championship right now in the sport of Taekwondo has as much meaning as it did in the past?
SPEAKER_03:That's a good question. I mean, um in the past, when you won the world back then, I and I I'll be honest, right? Even for like a guy like me who was fortunate enough to win the Olympics, I will say that the Olympics was more important than the world championships to me and to the world that didn't know Taekwondo. Sure. But the world championships still was the penultimate tournament. I'll say now that's not the case. I think you actually would prefer to win the Olympics.
SPEAKER_01:But do you think it has the same meaning to the individual? The individual and like how we see a world, there's gonna be a world champion in a couple weeks. How do we view them? Do we view them in the same as maybe we viewed some people of the of other eras? What do you think, TJ?
SPEAKER_04:I I think for me, with with the introduction of like all the grand prize and the grand prix challenges and all those things. Um we've seen, I think maybe we've seen the those high-level matchups so often because of the ranking. Um, it doesn't feel as strong, but obviously the world championships is the world championships. I just I think there's a lot of a lot of tournaments out there now, a lot more a lot more competition going on. I think before everyone met at the world championships, and it was like you didn't know what could happen that day. You know what I mean? In in my eyes. So uh maybe it's for that, maybe it's just because we're so used to fighting all these high-level tournaments against high-level people. But just slightly, I don't, I don't know about compare before and now there's gonna be a world championship. Being a world champion is like special, obviously. I think I think it I think it, you know, it it competes with being an Olympic gold medalist. Like it's the same thing in the sense of winning that big one in that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, let me let I'm gonna say no. It's funny because I pulled like five different people today, and all of them said no. I no prompting from me. They're like, it just doesn't, it seems like back in the day when someone was a world champion, like you almost freaked out. Like, whoa, those guys are like special, those guys are monsters. Like, there's gonna be a 16 new world champions next you know, couple weeks. Like, again, do you look at any of them and go, they're a monster? Like that guy got through, like, I don't know, maybe again, maybe I'm using I'm being old school right now, but I feel like in those days, if you won the world championship, you proved that you were durable, you proved that you were technical, you proved that you were mentally strong. But biggest thing everyone always said for being a world champion, you were physical. Like you were physically able to endure six matches. And now that we all know that I guess you I guess you got to be able to endure six matches, but it's not a physical test anymore, it's a game test. So it's almost like you're like, oh yeah, that dude was pretty good. That lady was pretty sharp, she's she's good. But like you're right, TJ, a world champion is a world champion. But I I just remember back in the day, anytime I met a world champion, I almost freaked out, like, dude, that is the shit right there. Like that dude is a badass. Not no questions about it. There's gonna be some world TJ, we know some world championships from Guadalajara that we're kind of like, how? What what are we talking about? A scrape at the end of the match that gives you five points to win the match? Like, I don't know. I mean, I'm not trying to hate on people's big result, but I think it's watered down.
SPEAKER_04:I get what you're saying. I I think when you say the word endure, and I think about like you know, when I think about that that what you're saying there, uh you know, before there not being like a 12-point gap, even what if you had to go through all three rounds with the bad guy? You know, and that bad guy was bad, but like he you were we there was no stopping the matches because you were better. Maybe he was just gonna be stronger than you in the long run. I think eliminating that takes away from that that what you say durability, you know, because some guys, you know, the bottom, the top guys fighting the bottom guys, it's is most likely it's a lot of 12-0, 12-0. You know, let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_01:And young Her Herbie Young, you'll you'll you'll know a little bit more about this too. So in the old days, like there was a consistent, like to win a world, very rarely, and I can count maybe on one hand, did some random person come and win a world championship. But nowadays, a random person can win a world championship. I'm saying the good ones still do it, but there's very there was very few back in the day. Like you had to have a reputation, you had to win some big things, and you just saw it like it's coming. Very rarely, maybe a Korean, maybe Kim Todo was one guy that never made the national team in 89. He makes a national team and he wins a world championship in 58. Well, 54 back in those days. Um, but like I don't know many people. Maybe Gessler, Hessler from Cuba, like just came out of nowhere that one year and won a world championship in 68, uh, pre, I think 2008 Olympics uh world championships. It was pretty pretty amazing. But man, there's not many people, and now you see it happen a lot. Somebody gets on a run, there's some new kid on the block. I don't know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:So I mean, you know, it was a tournament of endurance and perseverance and mental and physical ardues, and so yeah, there's no doubt that you had to learn that, and with the exception of maybe some Koreans, right? Because but the Koreans, the system they came up through was that arder, ardor that the they had to go in and they had to fight and they had to win. So um I think any tournament that you get you can walk away from and not have a pain or an injury or hurt is I don't think that's the case.
SPEAKER_04:I think people still get banged up. I think there's still a lot of that. I get their feelings.
SPEAKER_03:They get their feelings hurt. That's that's about all they get hurt. I mean, come on now. Let's let's be let's call it what it is, right? Like you you watch those tournaments, you know. I mean, we talked about it last week. They didn't go, nobody's getting knocked out. They're if they're banging a leg, it's because they're lifting their leg and doing that dumb canceling stuff and they're pulling muscles. TJ's nobody's doing shin to shin.
SPEAKER_01:What's the main what's the main purpose of a world championship right now?
SPEAKER_04:Just the for the points. It's just points. But I think that happened when when we started, we put points to all this stuff. It became more of that. You know, I said I think I said it last time, or I think we're talking about it last time. We didn't used to like you you won or you lost. There was no, I got six points for this or five points for this, and three and a half points for this. Like that stuff's important now, you know what I mean? It's it's a numbers game. Um, but definitely those are the big points out there, you know?
SPEAKER_01:It's funny because that's what I wrote, I wrote right here in my in my notes. I was like, I I think it's it's the point stuff because all anyone does is try to chase points. It the gold, still, and the bronze doesn't matter. Hey, I got six points, I got eight points, I got ten points, I got 20 from a G2 world championships of 14, I got 140 points, and they know these points are gonna get them to where they they all that to their ultimate goal, which is the Olympics. So I think the points took away some overall importance because at the end of the day, it's accumulation of tournaments. So I don't know, it's uh it's kind of a weird, uh, weird thing. But let's I mean piggybacking on that, like because we all fought in world championships. We all, you know, I think we could probably in our eras that was the thing to do, right? Right? We all wanted to win the Olympic the world championships. I know I certainly did. TJ, you're probably right in that cusp crusp where people started thinking only the Olympics, like the Olympics was the big thing.
SPEAKER_04:Uh my 2013, 2015. I I still think we were fighting for a world championship in my in my brain. In 2013, 2015, I think we still were. I think a little bit like right after that 2016 movement into 2020, I think it became a little bit of a stronger point, this point. You know, I know there were points involved, but those are still tough tournaments, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Just for the fact of like the death and the number of people that were highly ranked or like very good in each division.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know this if this goes along with this, but like, because we all did, you know, Hyungi, right after you competed, you started coaching like seriously. I mean, and before that, you were just kind of bringing people along. I think that was the era where you're an athlete and you just have people train with you, and you know, you whether you coach them in the you know, post your your competition uh career or not, it was remained to be seen, but I know you did. So my question would be do you guys think you're a better athlete or a coach?
SPEAKER_03:Interesting. TJ.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know. That's a tough question. Um I think I'm I think because I think I'm a better coach. I think I'm a better coach. I think um I I can I I see a lot of things from just being an athlete for a long time and competing at that level. I think my the way I can like process things, look at things, I think I'm a better coach and understand where these kids are coming from and what they need. I think coach, mentor, all that stuff kind of is what at the end of the day I kind of got led to. So I definitely think I have a strong side of that more than uh athlete side.
SPEAKER_03:Um, I never wanted to teach Taekwondo because I didn't think I was any good at it. And and Coach Moreno knows this because um I thought that I was just unique at what I did as an athlete, and I figured out a way to win, and I had a way of training, it was simply different and better than most people, and they didn't really look at it the same way I looked at it. So I never thought I was uh I didn't think I was good at taekwondo, nor should I be teaching it. Then I realized I was actually okay at taekwondo as long as I didn't define it by Korean taekwondo. So if you define it by Korean taekwondo, then um, you know, that's a different conversation. Um so when it goes to the coaching thing, I don't ever think I'm I'm I'm a good trainer in the sense of in the gym training, getting somebody re ready, and if they listen to me, then I'm a really good coach. And uh my son might differ, but to to talk about that. But um I'd say I was a better athlete and I'm and not a better coach, but I'm a great educator and a trainer. So if you're willing to buy into my method and you're willing to come and listen and you do what I tell you to do, you'll be successful. So I'm not necessarily the coach that if an athlete's not willing to do what's necessary, you're probably with the wrong coach. Because I'm not gonna babysit you. So I'm gonna probably say a better athlete. What about you, coach?
SPEAKER_01:But TJ, what are you gonna you're gonna?
SPEAKER_04:I was gonna say real quick, you know, because we were talking about that, and he started talking about you know, his what he was just saying. Um, I think it's I think coaching, because I know like my career and where I started and how I got to where I got, I was coached the entire time. Yeah, you know what I mean? I was very, very coached. You know, I was from the beginning, I was taught what was taekwondo. I was taught how to stay, how to move. Like I had very in-dailed coaching. And I think that's what makes me a little bit more inclined on that side to say that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I think you know, it's it's strange because I think we obviously we all had a certain amount of success. Um, and you know, I know both of you guys, you know, Hyung, I know you were very um education was a very important part of your life, and you never saw yourself, because I remember you never saw yourself as a lifer martial artist as far as teaching and stuff like that. A martial artist, yes, but not not a school or a coach. And you had other things that you wanted to pursue, and um you did those things and were successful at those things, but it you still were drawn back to it. TJ, you know, you're you're a lifer, right? You're uh you're a guy that you know was involved, involved in the the sport, excelled in the sport, did seminars and coaching and training at a very young age, and so it was a natural progression for you. And also being part of you know my program, I think it even helped you prepare yourself even more. For me, I definitely um I asked my wife this question, and um, she said, you know, I'm definitely a better coach than I was an athlete, you know, and and it's because I learned so many bad things that I didn't want to be repeated as I went forward. So for in my era, I didn't necessarily have great coaches. I had a few good mentors, and I take things from them all the time, but um, there was way more bad and way more um lack of knowledge and understanding of sport development, mental development, physiology, all that stuff. And so to piggyback off you, TJ, I, you know, I learned from that. I was, you know, trying not to repeat it, but at the same time, understanding what the athletes went through and saying, I remember being being an athlete and saying, if I'm a good, if I'm a coach, I'll never do this, I'll never do that. And I haven't, you know, I don't want to say those things are because I don't want to call people out, you know, that that helped me at some point, but definitely I think I've had way more. And the truth of the matter is now my my coaching career has actually outlived my my competitive career. I mean, I competed for you know 15 years and I coached for 25 years, you know, so it's it's a little bit different, but um, I definitely think I'm a better, better coach. But coach, you said something about outliers, so don't let me forget about that, you know, because you said you're like kind of an outlier, but um I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I mean I I mean, you know, like it's interesting what you said because we've all experienced bad coaching, so I think you become numb to it and you just don't listen to it. I had excellent coaches, my personal coaches. When I was on the US team, I had a couple of good mentors. I had no true. I sorry, no, true. I I yeah, true. Oh, I they said who. Yeah, yeah, true. And I and so in that way, I think that's it. As far as when I say I'm not a good coach, the reason I'm not a good, I don't feel like I'm a good coach is my my lack of patience for athletes that don't do what I tell them to do is just too great. Like I have, you know, TJ was on a team or two that I was head of team, and he knows, and Coach Moreno was there because he was one of the other coaches. There was a coach that I sat down at a table and you know explained the world to him because he had a different vision of it and it wasn't working. He was living in a fantasy land. Now, somebody else might have handled that differently. I'm just too much of a realist that, you know, I think when you get to the highest levels of coaching, you got to be honest, you got to keep it real for lack of a better word, with your athletes so they know what the deal is. And if you're not doing that as a coach, then you're doing your athlete a disservice. And I think that was one of the things that I I arguably could have handled better in certain situations, but I didn't have the patience to handle it better when it came to certain individuals.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I don't know. I I agree with you. I I think it's you know, like what you just said, the last thing you just said. I mean, if I go back in my brain, I'm going, and I was talking to someone else about this the other day, coach. Like we were talking about, I was talking to uh Nat actually. Like there was never a reason to miss training. Like you just didn't miss training, like you didn't you didn't give anyone a satisfaction of you missing training. Like you you just didn't do it. Like it wasn't even you did everything around your day to get to training. Yeah, you know what I mean? And it's when you say that, and like in my brain, if I was if I stick to that, it's it's like it's a hard sell. You know what I mean? Everyone's got something else to do, or they got something else going on. I'm not knocking anyway, I understand life is life, but like the way we thought about it, the way I was brought up was you just didn't miss training. It wasn't it just didn't happen, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, listen, I think that you know, I again you guys know how much I love other sports. And when I when I see athletes like Magic Johnson, like Michael Jordan, you know, some of the greatest players, they they just they couldn't be executives, they couldn't be coaches because actually there's a taekwondo athlete that won a gold medal in the Olympics. And um, I remember talking to the person and they couldn't understand why people didn't have the same mentality you're just talking about, TJ. They're like, I can't understand why people don't want to get the proxy. I can't understand why people don't want like they couldn't, they were such a personalities, obsessed in a positive way of getting their goal. They couldn't understand why the athletes that they were coaching didn't think like that or didn't want it like that. And so to your point, Young, it was hard for a guy like you. I mean, you're I think I'm lucky because I'm like an old school guy and I also have a little bit of a new school. I mean, I've I've a younger soul when it comes to the athlete development side. But I can see how it'd be hard for you in your era to just these pampered, coddled, candy corn, you know, I can't say everybody, but uh certainly a very high percentage of well, you mentioned that athlete you just talked about the professional football player of the college, whatever he was. There you go.
SPEAKER_03:That guy, he wouldn't have made it off the field.
SPEAKER_01:Like I, you know, not not in Don Schuler's time, not in uh uh any of the old school coaches, right? They would have been like, you're out, get out, you know. So it's definitely uh it's a little bit that's uh I just thought it'd be an interesting question to ask you guys, you know, what you guys think personally, but so you meant you mentioned outlier young. So I was thinking about that because I know we've talked about federation structure and stuff like that. Do you think that federations or people try to base development on these superstar outliers? Do you think that's the right way or the wrong way?
SPEAKER_03:USA USA taekwondo does that. USA Taekwondo waits for somebody to be developed by somebody else and then they poach them. They're poachers, right? And that's that means that you can't guarantee success unless you know that every day you show up somewhere, there's going to be somebody worth looking at or taking a look at, or somebody could bring in the door. So sustained competitive excellence has always been about planning for the future. And we use the Sony model in Japan, right? Sony on the first floor of their development, they have everything that's coming out this week, this year, this month, this year. Second floor, they have the stuff they're thinking about. That's two or three years in the future. And on the third or fourth floor, that's where all the stuff they're thinking about for five years from now. So that's good development. You're planning for your future, you're developing the current and you're nurturing the past so they can deliver to the future. And I think that when you make your strategy um outliers, then buy a lottery ticket because you have as much chance of finding one of those as you do winning the lottery. It'll happen. And if you're lucky, there'll be somebody that'll get in the pipeline. And then you've got to presuppose that they stay in the pipeline or able to stay in the pipeline long enough to be developed. We've had our in the past, we've had outliers that came up through the pipeline, James Villasana, but that's not an outlier. James was a part of a structure in Texas that had an amazing history and legacy of excellence. So almost any outlier, with the exception of quite frankly, you, coach, and um Arlene Lemus, perhaps, the rest of them were part of an organized program where they were developing competitive excellence.
SPEAKER_04:So I'm um it's a lot. It's a lot, it's a lot, it's a lot. I I think because it's such a I don't even like using the word style game when it comes to our sport right now. I think because we've been limited to a certain thing and a certain way of thinking um that the majority of the people that do are developed from the bottom. I say the people that you start with and you kind of get them too, I think it's that part has to be super important to follow through with the people that they're with. Because I I don't I don't I'm not a believer in defacing. You have success with one athlete or a style of athlete or someone who's uh what's special, and then you base your whole program off of that, what you're gonna give everyone else. I just don't think it lines up. And I think again, you asked a question last episode about what what we what do we consider of being successful at this point? Is it one world championship medal? Is it two world championship medals? Is it no, you know, is it a a quarterfinal finish? So I think when that line is moved on what success looks like, I think programs, you know, they have their success and they go, look, look what I was able to do. And it's one person out of the 25 people they've worked with, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I think that okay, let's let's go in the United States. I mean, there was um we used to talk about all the successful people won despite the organization. There was no you know, organizational support. Yourself, Jimmy Kim, Arlene Lee Miz, myself, there's a bunch of people. And it's even you can go into the Lopezs. Obviously, there, you know, that shifted for the Lopez's when they got a lot of financial support. But before that, all the great fighters were created by themselves through their own personal coaches, uh, personal programs. So they won despite. I guess my question is we look at a a CJ, we look at an Abu Gash, we look at these servants, like these guys are unique outlier people, and they're and everyone's trying to emulate them instead of going, those are anomalies, those are outliers. That is not what you basically there's there's one CJ. If you're trying to fight like CJ, it's the old school. You're trying to be like a Korean. You're not gonna catch Koreans because they're already they're so far ahead of you. You can't be like CJ, you can't be like Servet. I've never seen anybody in the world to this day or before turn and spin per number of times of attack as Survet. It's not even close. That guy's his back kick in Nanabon was his roundhouse kick. Like it's crazy, right? It was nuts.
SPEAKER_03:No, you can't like, but you know, so to put that in perspective, and I'll let you continue. So there are guys that are that's not even an outlier. An outlier, performance outlier is one thing. That was a freak of nature, like Jung Myung sum, freak of nature. Nobody could jump like him, nobody could create like him. Servette, freak of nature, no one could do what he did. No one was not that they couldn't do it, no one was willing to do it. Now it was James Viasana, no one was willing to do it. He was, and those are different levels. Let me just be clear. Jiang Myung Sung created stuff that never existed before, a way of doing things. Servette took stuff that was in the queue and did it with a regularity that most people couldn't do it in. And then James Viassana, he was just uh willing to take chances using traditional ideas of techniques and create them to a certain way. I'll give you one other name on that list, and that's probably Patrice Remark. And it wasn't that Patrice was an ultimate tactician, tactician or technician, he was willing to go shin to shin, Kyoko Shinkayan, you know, differently, with anyone, and so those are different things. Whereas, you know, all of us on the phone today, we were we were taekwondo players. We understood our game and we played our game and we did what was necessary to make ourselves win. And that's a different thing than calling somebody an outlier, whether it's a performance, and I'll put in the outlier category for performance, not for technique because he wasn't good at technique, is Steve Lopez. Lopez wasn't a great tech technician, he was a great tactician in the sense of a negative management for game. He had the ability, like his brother, to be a great technician, but he wasn't a great technician. He got way better as he got older, but then his athletic skill and technical didn't meet his age and his in his IQ for sport. And so he could have had a greater, he had a long career. It's not bad to say about the guy, but he wasn't, you wouldn't compare a Steven Lopez technically to the other guys in that route that I was talking about. He just wasn't he wasn't that guy, and that's not to throw any shade on him or whatever you call it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, those are definitely special styles like Servette spins. You're talking about. I mean, that's just uh he chose to fight that way, and I don't think you can't reteach it. You talk about Abu Gash, all those guys, they're just you can't reteach that. You can't you can't.
SPEAKER_03:Ashley Castaneda. Ashley Castaneda had a back kick that no one could stop, and he did it with reckless abandon. It wasn't Servette. The other cat from Canada that was that guy was Jean-Claude. This guy, Jean-Claude, had the sickest hook kick. He knocked out more guys. He was the only guy that I think knocked out more guys per tournament than some of the guys we talk about. He knocked out at least two guys of tournament with that kick, and they knew it was coming, and there's nothing they could do about it.
SPEAKER_01:But like so But those guys I know I I know both those guys, and and I have the utmost respect more for Ashley. I don't know Jean-Claude too too much, to be honest with you. But like I'm talking like, I don't know what then what's what's then what how you how do you define an outlier?
SPEAKER_03:Because they're doing these guys are just so so an outlier, an outlier, and I'm that's why I want to make the distinction. One type of outlier is someone you had no idea existed. You find them, they show up, and they're just amazing and win everything in the world. And if you don't develop them, they come from outside your program. And I would argue in most cases, they were developed by somebody else. I had like I I had I had a I had a I had a like yo man TJ, why'd you start talking about it? Can I tell you why? Can I tell you why? Because every time every time Mike Tyson peaks up, I get nervous, man. Tyson's still making so so that's a performance outlier that you didn't know existed. A technical outlier, a guy that can just do something that nobody's ever done before, that's Servette. And give you, I'll give you a music analogy because I know you guys know this. There was a guitar player, Eddie Van Halen. What he did, he did before anybody else could do it. There were guys doing it, but he did it in such a way that it was so over the top that nobody had thought about it, and he was unique in and of himself. That's why when you talk about uh James Viasana, I call him an outlier performance-wise. Technically, he wasn't stringing together new things, he was just doing it and being willing to do it when others weren't willing to do it.
SPEAKER_01:But that's what I'm saying. I know you said Changmasana, you know, he created stuff, and I know he created stuff that nobody didn't know. He was a freak. Yeah, but like these other guys, I I gotta say they're outliers because everybody they're just unique, crazy people. They just have this unique ability that I just think you can't replicate, you know. And I think I I think it's a trap that people, um, and and and I I guess where I was going with this is federations are trying to build people around that person. Jay Jones, they tried they tried so hard in GB to make everybody like Jay Jones. I mean, they had actually they had a little success with some of the girls, but none of the guys.
SPEAKER_03:You can love the GB or hate the GB or whatever, and I I actually like most of the guys, but they their success didn't come from Taekwondo. Their success came outside of Taekwondo, and you're gonna try to recreate that. Then you got to go back into that pool because she was the athletes they developed, were developed in another like you. You and Arlene were developed outside of Taekwondo.
SPEAKER_01:But this is my point. This is my point 10 years.
SPEAKER_03:That takes 10, 12 years.
SPEAKER_01:So Jay Jones has to be an outlier. Abugar has to be an outlier. They're just like they're in the system, but they're just that unique person that are just crazy and and survet. So I don't know. I just I don't know. For me, I was just I was thinking about that because as I was talking about, you know, coaching and stuff like that. I think too many people nowadays, and TJ, we talked about this last podcast, these coaches' identity is to look at the shiny star in the corner and say, let's train everybody like that, for no understanding of why, you know, I mean, whether that guy's just physically more advanced or again, maybe God-given talent more advanced, um, or just even a mentality. Like, like, I just there's nobody you I don't you could do all the training in the world, and you will not make anybody as athletic as Abu Gash.
SPEAKER_04:You know what's funny? I used to watch those oh for sure, 1000%. I used to again just go. I used to watch those videos where I'd watch the kids when that whole clap kit thing became a thing. They'd be putting their foot on the side of the bob and literally throwing themselves through the air. And coaches were putting down mats for them to practice it. To practice it. Most absurd thing to watch.
SPEAKER_03:I hope I hope they all got brain damage and selling.
SPEAKER_04:Any amount of training, any moment of training, any seconds of training, practicing clack kicks off a mat.
SPEAKER_03:Like that is that's that's 10 minutes. That should be 10, that should be 10 minutes of a practice. In other words, if you're gonna do let me let me let me give let me give them 10 minutes. Here's what here's what I'll say. You the 99% of your practice, 95% of your practice should be the fundamentals of taekwondo, so you can actually do taekwondo. Then you have to be a realist. At some point, you have to say, what is gonna score in a tournament? Let me practice that, let me dedicate some time to it. When you watch, and I'll go back to soccer, you watch a soccer practice, 90% of a soccer practice, 50% of it's conditioning the athletes. The 90% of it is technical and tactical. They're working on making sure the athletes have the technical and tactical skills. Then at the end of practice, maybe for 10 minutes, they're practicing penalty kicks because they look at it and they go, This we're making in this situation. The best hope we have for a point is a penalty. If we can draw a penalty through our tactics, we got to make sure we got now. They don't spend an hour and a half playing practicing penalty kicks, they practice it.
SPEAKER_04:But I wouldn't be mad at them practicing penalty kicks. At least it wraps into like where the sport isn't just shooting the ball or whatever. Yeah, but you should be mad.
SPEAKER_03:So you guys should be mad at taekwondo in general. I'm gonna say that 90% of what I watch in Taekwondo in general shouldn't be practiced. So I mean, I'm sure if I'm gonna get mad at the clap kick, I'm gonna get mad at the I'm gonna get mad at the back hook kick to the body. You want to be mad at something? Please, baby Jesus, show up at my school and try to back hook me, kick me in the body. Please, please. I promise you, at 65, I will kick you in your ass so hard that I will be a KP assistant that goes off.
SPEAKER_01:It's gonna be like zero. No, TJ, they're gonna do it, they're gonna hit him in the liver to get a liver shot.
SPEAKER_03:You're gonna go down like like Julio Cesar Chavez hooking him in the go down like Julio C, then you could carry me out. If somebody come to the school, anyone, come to the school and give me your best back hook kick to the body, please. I promise you. And we'll do the Jake Paul challenge. Come, I'll be there for you. I'll put a hundred to your ten thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_04:I get it, I get it.
SPEAKER_03:I'm just saying hold on, let me practice it, hold on. Yeah, hey, oh wait, let me let me get a better view for you all.
SPEAKER_01:You know what's funny? Actually, you know I talk about old school, new school, like you just said that what soccer does, but you know, think about it, almost every sport, especially combative sports, but football. Do they play football all week? Absolutely not. They physical, they they recover, they work their techniques, and they do their tactics. Basketball, same thing. They go through walkthroughs, like every MMA, they don't box, they don't fight every every day. They'll do a certain discipline, drill, drill, drill. They'll have certain times where they you know do live rounds, so does boxing. It's weird that these Taekwondo people think that they gotta fight every single day. You know, I mean, it's uh it's a strange time in the world, I'll tell you that right now.
SPEAKER_04:But the biggest phenomenon is the go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Like every drill I see, it just it always looks like it's just kicking. You know what I mean? Maybe they're doing it for the cameras, maybe they're not, but I feel like when I see a lot of they're doing it for me.
SPEAKER_01:They think that's that's strategy.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, even like the tempo, some of the training drills, and like I, you know, like yeah, but are they are they like go the box stuff? High tempo, high this.
SPEAKER_03:The books, the box drill stuff. Are they getting are they literally jumping on a box, kicking a target and jumping back down, like all that nonsense that I see? You don't you don't know you don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's just my feet.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, like jumping off, like the jumping lower. And honestly, I just jump down to a fast kick. I'm like calling me the dumbest guy in the world. I think I've asked Postword that question a lot of times. I don't I I can't fathom the when you're on the mats and you jump down and go forward. Like I get what the I understand. You're loading, reloading, changing directions, and all that.
SPEAKER_03:It's a conditioning drill.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But we built that we spent a lot of times doing these conditioning drills with but the funny thing is you could just you do that and you have one movement. You have one movement. But TJ, they're trying to do strategy type stuff from it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you you build the muscle or you don't. You know, you spend if you want to go do you do that by itself. You don't need to combine it with that. I mean, it's just that's like trying to do power lifting and reps at the same time. It's I think it gets a loss. You know who does it really well is the Serbians. They have really good physical fitness stuff. Coach Dragon and his people, they have really good, they know how to break it down. They know how to work every part of the leg in an exercise, you know, and then how it transfers into their kicking. You don't see them doing a bunch of like a combining the two. I'm not saying never, but they it's very separated where you see a lot of, I think I know where you're going with that, TJ. You see all these people, all their conditioning drills are jumping and doing the kicking and falling and doing the kicking or going back and doing the kicking. They're always trying to put the the technical aspect into the physical aspect, and it's not necessarily always throwing awake.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I don't I don't really like to talk about the stuff that we do because you know we have a secret kind of thing that we do. We have a lab, but we did, you know, I try to always create drills that I think are good. And and you've been to my school a lot to know how I drill, and TJ, you've seen what I think matters and stuff like that. So in the past, I created all this stuff that I thought mattered. Um and then recently watching the new taekwondo, I you know, I have a bunch of kids who compete, and right now I'm looking at them on a see how they're training because they're in the gym training with Mr. Lopez. And so we, you know, we we made the investment. It took a little bit of money. Um, and we went out and we got this, we needed a certain amount of equipment because the the drill that I do is very unique and it doesn't exist anywhere in the world, but it was perfect for the style of fighting that I see the kids being forced to fight the go, go, go stuff, and the the back hook kicked the body. So, and and the next stuff I'm gonna tell, I can't really tell you where I got it because to get this equipment was illegal. So we found this one piece of equipment, and and then we had to go late at night to it's it's a it's a it's a it's a metal thing, and then it's shaped in a certain way, and the kids have to lay on the floor. They then have to get on the side of their body, the side thing, and I got this from the U.S. coaches that are our current U.S. coaches when they came to visit my school. They have to then use the hip flexor muscle, and they lift their legs up in the air.
SPEAKER_04:I can't tell if you smoke it or not.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, I'm serious. And two monkeys, I got these two monkeys restored from the zoo. They hit my feet, and the kids juggle the monkeys, and then they jump up in the air, they clap their hands, jump on a box, to the they kick their feet behind, kick themselves in the ass, and then they take their same two feet because I only get ballet dances, it works, and they clap themselves in the face before the monkeys can hit the floor. Now, any athlete that I get that can do this, then I send them to the Olympics.
SPEAKER_04:That's funny.
SPEAKER_03:Don't copy that, and I'm not gonna tell you where I got the monkeys, and I'm not gonna tell you what the metal piece was for.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Hey, let's uh we got you know a couple minutes here. Uh again, since we kind of got in.
SPEAKER_03:You gotta get to bed. Is it did your did your milk get warmed up? Is your is your milk almost at room temperature? And I'm talking to cerveza.
SPEAKER_01:I got that in the outside. No, no, no. No, just just try to be, you know, keep timing. So don't be don't be don't be flexing, man.
SPEAKER_03:I saw you lifted your arm. You went, Oh, what happened I got a bruise. What the hell? How did I get a bruise? Old age. I got a bruise.
SPEAKER_02:I don't even know.
SPEAKER_03:I don't even know how I get it.
SPEAKER_04:You hit the mic myself.
SPEAKER_03:Dude, I'm getting old, baby. I'm getting old. Hold on. Wait, I'm sleepy. Okay, go ahead, coach.
SPEAKER_01:So no, I'm just like, like, so you want me to send the monkeys your way? Send me the monkeys. All right, okay. As long as you're not spanking them.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, it's a late night podcast. I'm gonna have to make this one not for the kids. All right.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, we talked about uh outliers or anomalies or whatever. So what do you so let's do a let's do a couple in in light that the world championships are coming up, let's do some uh let's do some dream matchups. Her Perez versus uh I don't know, Simone Alessio, something like that.
SPEAKER_04:Midget versus giant were they doing that? They were doing that online. They had a bunch of people, like uh different, different athletes. Okay, so give me some. I didn't see it. Give me no mean um last one I saw what well, let me see if I can find it. I don't even remember. There was a bunch of them. It was Cervet, it was um Abu Ghai, it was a bunch of different different places. It was like five or six. I don't really remember. That's cool.
SPEAKER_01:Like, so young, give me a give me a I tell you what, you give me a person, give me a person that you think holding high regard, and I'll see if I can match a current or somebody else, and let's let's oh man.
SPEAKER_03:May you rest in peace, Jimmy Kim.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_03:I'll go you better go home. You better hope Tyson comes up. What are you gonna say? Tyson?
SPEAKER_01:I'll go Lauren, the the Russian guy. You know why I pick him? Because he's long, lanky, very, I mean, very long and very skillful. It's not a power game. He can he can hit good, but he's very very skillful. Like, and he he I think he comes from an ITF background because he can double kick, he can back leg kick, like he's definitely not a sit in your front leg at all. Because that would get trapped hook kicked by by Jimmy and you would go to sleep for sure. But like you watch this guy young Ronald's kick, back kick, sidekick, back kick. Pretty good fight. That'd be that's an interesting one. Um, that's a tough.
SPEAKER_03:I thought that's almost not fair.
SPEAKER_01:You know why I was and again, and you know, rest why you bring up someone that's past, man.
SPEAKER_03:I I I I can't you asked me for my listen, if you're gonna you want my dream team, I could go back and give you a dream team.
SPEAKER_01:I would be I would question Jimmy's uh Jimmy's conditioning.
SPEAKER_03:Jimmy, you gotta love Jimmy. May you rest in peace. Jimmy was the first guy to say, you know, everybody says I don't train hard enough, but I win, right? So Jimmy was able to manage his fitness, yeah. Um, and they didn't know that he actually we didn't have a posterior, post anterior cruciate, he had to have a posterior cruciate um ligament in his knee.
SPEAKER_01:Really?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, didn't have a at all, at all. His knee would you, but he was able, he was so muscular and athletic. Um, so I always go to Jimmy because he was he was an anomaly and an outlier. He was so physical, so strong for a heavyweight, and so powerful. And every kick he threw, even though he's the nicest guy in the world, was with bad intent. So I'll give you a guy, and that second guy he should come from from TJ, but it's Patrice.
SPEAKER_01:She used to be a hard match. Oh, yeah, I see this, TJ. Like CJ versus Chris Manich.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that was on whatever page that is, they were on Mundo.
SPEAKER_01:Is that Mundo?
SPEAKER_03:Is that for is that for um Taekwondo or for rapping and and dressing? Was it the Oscar for dressing or putting on fur coats? Or the last one I saw he was doing bang bang with guns or something, some sort of gun playing with no shirt on, and he was wearing a mask like he was a terrorist. When you ask, when you ask what when you ask you, bother everybody's silence. I know. Yeah, don't don't join my don't join my, you know. I think type I just on that note to for whatever it's worth, I still think Taekwondo knows a martial art and you should carry yourself as a black belt and a martial artist. So I don't I know who he got his black belt from, but um, if you're a black belt, carry yourself like one. Don't be, you know, yo-yo-yo and wearing your pants down around your butt and no shirt and fur coats and pop pop pop or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01:I I found the whole draw. I I found the whole draw.
SPEAKER_03:Who's the draw?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, tell me first first matches CJ versus Aaron Cook. That whole thing.
SPEAKER_03:Uh I mean listen, I love Aaron, but if if if in a current fight I wouldn't talk to in an old school fight, I'd still have my money on Aaron. But it's hard to deny CJ's athleticism.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Chris Monich versus uh Maxime. For me, I call Maxime easy, but they put Chris Manich. Pasquil versus Czech Cise. Maxime the the Russian guy.
SPEAKER_03:Pasqual, Pasqual was gonna beat everybody.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, if he did kick hard and strong and a lot, who uh Chris Manich? Yeah, he's exchanged heavy. He has some heavy exchanges, like he, you know Karami versus Sansotis.
SPEAKER_01:Ah, Karami.
SPEAKER_02:Karami.
SPEAKER_01:Uh Steven Lopez versus uh Alessio.
SPEAKER_03:You think so? Fat fact because Steven Stevens, yeah, because Steven managed the game. Steven Steven wouldn't Yeah, but they're almost the same.
SPEAKER_04:Alessio manages the game too. Like he'll open up every now and then.
SPEAKER_03:Who was the guy that beat who was the guy that beat Steven and knocked him out? The Argentinian. What was his name?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron. It was Aaron.
SPEAKER_03:No, uh Aaron, but who was the guy at the Argentinian?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's not him. That was uh I forgot his name. He was from uh in 2000, that was early, that was in 68. What about Lynette Love? Is she on this list anywhere? How about Bari Bari Tarukulu? Where's Daniel Casey the easy bari Hadi versus Victor Estrada? Sorry, that they that match happened. That match happened. No, it didn't. Didn't it? No, he he lost to Karami. Karami knocked him off. Oh Rafael Alba versus Dave uh uh Mundei Sung. Sorry, Munde Sung.
SPEAKER_03:Mundai Sang is nasty. I'm not a I'm not a Munde Sung fan.
SPEAKER_01:What Algash versus Zervet? Dang. Did they ever fight? I don't even remember. Did they ever fight? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_03:Who was that little freak from the Dominican Republic that was biting everybody? Everyone Mercedes Gamer Mercedes. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Him and him versus who? Nobody? Nobody. They're crazy thing. That's a crazy thing. He was known for biting people, huh? And I suppose techno he was known for biting people.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, here he's here.
SPEAKER_04:He's here. He's who'd he bite? How they put Jack James. He bit James. Who'd he bite? James Howe. He bit James. He bit James Howe.
SPEAKER_03:He had did he bite? Did he bite Tyson? Did he bite Tyson?
SPEAKER_04:No, but listen, I thought we all I thought it was an overreaction. James comes back, he should have his arm. You can see the top row of teeth and the bottom row of teeth in different things.
SPEAKER_03:Can I make a confession here? And and and Anthony Graf will own up to it. So when guys would try to survive me during sparring classes in my gym, they would grab me. And if they kept grabbing me, I would bite them. What? What? I I I bit I bit Anthony. But stop grabbing me. There's no referee in the room.
SPEAKER_01:How did you bite him?
SPEAKER_03:On the shoulder.
SPEAKER_04:Not on the mouth. He moved his mouthpiece around, put it inside, hit him, and then put his mouthpiece back in. So the referee didn't see.
SPEAKER_03:This is yeah, yeah. I'll bite you with the mouthpiece. Still hurts.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it does hurt. That was crazy. That was crazy.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't know. This is a pretty good little list. I mean, I don't know. It seems like they got a lot of light guys on one side and big guys on the other side. They got a couple messed up, like Ashop. Remember that the Belgium kid against Gabriel Mercedes? They got Rashitov versus Suntake.
SPEAKER_04:That's a good one, though. I'll take the who do you think? Achov, Gabriel Mercedes. Gabriel Mercedes.
SPEAKER_03:No. You got these names, these names you guys are speaking. I think you're speaking pig Latin. I don't even know.
SPEAKER_04:I I think he could get him. Roshov. He was bigger.
SPEAKER_03:That's a big answer.
SPEAKER_04:I don't think so. He could fight. He could fight.
SPEAKER_03:Can I ask you why you guys keep ducking? You keep ducking Lynette Love. Lynette Love, what's the dream matchup? Lynette Nov and what? A pillow? What do you got?
unknown:Lynette.
SPEAKER_03:Lynette Love. Come on. It's got to be somebody short because she couldn't kick over a waist. So Lynette and give her Sitsu.
SPEAKER_01:Lynette and Arlene.
SPEAKER_03:Arlene. My money's on Arlene.
SPEAKER_01:Me too.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Arlene.
SPEAKER_01:Raj Talvin. Suntei Jin. I don't know if you guys know who you know who Sunday Jinn is?
SPEAKER_03:I know Suntei Jin, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He's the one that uh beat Steven one time. Steven beat him one time. Dehun lead versus uh Day Hun versus Oh uh Resper from Turkey.
SPEAKER_04:Nah, it's gotta be. I like him too, but it's gotta be Daehu. Again, I don't get I don't go crazy about too many people or think like I watched it consistently, but he could win consistently.
SPEAKER_01:He gotta do it. Damien View Damien Via versus Levin Turkat, the German kid.
SPEAKER_04:I think it was bigger too. It's gotta be Tunkat, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He's too big.
SPEAKER_03:What about TJ versus Moreno?
SPEAKER_01:Uh TJ all day. Thank you, sir. Nah, nah, nah. It'll be the battle of the ages. Ah man. I reverse punch up old school.
SPEAKER_03:I leave a hole in your Mike Tyson shirt. Mike Tyson, I have braces.
SPEAKER_01:I I told you about uh when I fought with Mark Williams. Did we talk about that?
SPEAKER_03:No, tell me, tell me, tell me.
SPEAKER_01:So like I always liked Mark, but I didn't like Mark because he was a loudmouth that didn't really do Olympic Taekwondo. We did. And he won one time at Nationals. And he came in, you know, and he fought so goofy. Steve Capner, am I he just fought so weird and just threw everybody off. And I was so mad at people losing to him. Like, how are you gonna let this old dude come in here that never fought before and whoop your ass? I was so I was so Dong Lee lost to him. I was so mad.
SPEAKER_03:So anyway, after the 92 Olympics, no, no, Dong Lee didn't lose to him, he he lost to him. Like it wasn't even close. So now I love Dong Lee. He's good at Taekwondo.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he was. He's a good dude. But so we go to uh one of your first camps. I mean, uh you know, Hyung, you oh right, right. Herb Herb invite invented these these national camps, like in this country, anyway, when it comes to real marketing it and stuff like that. I know some maybe uh Joe Bichue had like some training camps, but nothing like what you had. So anyway, he had a macho camp in that in those days. It was a week long. So anyway, Mark is one of the instructors, I'm there, Kevin Padilla's there, Steve Capner's there, Christina Bannon Rodriguez is there. Oh, just remind me about outliers. And so so all of a sudden, Mark, you know, I'm like, man, we're gonna fight. You know, I can't wait to fight. And that was after '92, because I'm like, you know, I fight anybody. So we we we line up, and Mark, like, we're fighting, and we're kind of playing cat and mouse and checking or whatever, nothing big. And one time, nope, just Shangar's foreign guards, he just goes like punches me hard. Like, I found that disrespectful because I'm like, dude, we're not wearing like that's a copy out, like a cop out. Like, you can't kick me, so you just punch me. You know what I mean? But back in those days, you didn't do that in light sparring, you know what I'm saying? He punched me hard. Like I had to like walk around, like I was like, like one of these. So then I caught him with he tried to punch me, a side cut kick, back kick. It got low, kind of low. So, anyway, later on that night, we're sitting talking shit, and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna give it to you, bro. You you punched the shit out of my chest, man. That that that he's like, no, flacco, you kicked me with that back kick. I almost I almost had to go run out, run out. So I was like, all right, man, we we we kind of got each other.
SPEAKER_03:We could be cool, but like, yeah, yeah, but that's real warrior stuff, right? So, like, yeah, you know, like you guys hit each other, you didn't want to let each other know you got you got hurt, you know. And to give it up to my one of my Olympic brothers, um, you know, Naeem Hassan punched me. My roommate. So he punched me once so hard that he and he didn't know, and we talked about it later. He's like, Man, I hit you so hard and you didn't nothing happen. I said, if you had breathed on me in the next 30 seconds, I would have fallen on the floor and died because he had punched me. He had a really good punch. You know what's crazy?
SPEAKER_01:He's like, in people in that era, that dude punched people and knocked them out, like for real. So as bad as Patrice was, yeah, like kicking people and people being afraid. Naeem punched people, you know better than me. He punched people out.
SPEAKER_03:Like, you know who you know who had a punch like that, too? He was running for vice president of WTF is the middleweight, the middleweight that fought Jung Cook Young. Uh, he was a welter, then came in the middle and fought me three times. I beat him three times. Um, the guy, the vice president of WTF from Turkey, um Sahim Mateen Sahin. Mateen, yeah. Yeah, he we're we were sparring, we fought three times and I beat him. But this one time I was beating him badly too 80 89 world championships, and he he he he I kicked him in the kidney and almost broke his arm, but at the same time, he punched me, yeah, and I was like, Oh my god. Like if I you know, I was like, gee, if I get hit again, I think I'm gonna die. So he was a he's a tough guy. I always had a lot of respect for him. Luckily, I ended up on the right side of that for me anyway, the right side of that matchup every time. But he he was a warrior, man. That was like real, real, real stuff. Um, punching was a you know, it was funny because punching didn't score. No, but it scored, it scored. It scored on in people's minds, yeah. Like you didn't want to get hit.
SPEAKER_01:You don't want to kick to their kitty where they could open a punch.
SPEAKER_03:They could open punch you. You didn't want to feel and there were guys that could punch, and for women, you guys remember this name was Kim Dotson. Yes, she for a girl and Mandy Malone. These guys punch hard, so dude, somebody put up a a picture of her last week. Yeah, of her doing you see that back hook kick though?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, I remember that one.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, jumping back hook kick. I was like, oh, she's listening she's had a sad life. Uh I'm not gonna speak on it, but um, yeah, she's a tragic figure, but arguably one of the best, in my humble opinion, one of the best women fighters I ever saw in Taekwondo. Just tough as nails. Yeah, I didn't, you know, I watch her practice and I'd be like, dude, I wouldn't want to train with her.
SPEAKER_01:You know what? I mean, I was gonna one more thing about outliers, but like, you know what's crazy when you think about someone like her, like length, flexibility, technical ability, yeah, power, explosion, intelligence. Like, that's a rare. I know we talk about people being good nowadays, but that shit, she was good. She was she was legit.
SPEAKER_03:Mandy, Mandy was in that wrong, the wrong place, the wrong time with the wrong people. And so she should have been a world champion. Yeah, she needed to be taken care of. And but we the list goes on to those people, yeah, right. There are great technicians that we all know that got undone by themselves or the people they surrounded themselves with. And if you were fortunate enough, either you didn't go into those rooms and so you weren't affected by them. But that Coach Moreno, that could have been you. You know, you came into the room and had you gone and done, had you come in when you came in and anybody paid attention to you, and you got in the mix of all of it, your outcomes might have been different. I think it was your adversity, the amount of adversity you had to face to get where you got that made you who you were.
SPEAKER_01:Listen, 100% adversity, because there was a time in 1986, I was invited to go to this international event in Puerto Rico by this famous middleweight in the United States that just won the World Cup, and you know, there was no social media, there was only like telephone numbers, and I waited by my phone for about two months and up until the week that I thought I was gonna go, and I never got the call. 86, 86, 86. That was the year I was born.
SPEAKER_03:86?
SPEAKER_01:No, you invited me. That was after the nationals that year. No, real fast, I want to talk about an outlier or something because I was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast with uh Michael uh Venom Page. He's the point fighter that turned into a kickboxer, went to glory, and then came over to the UFC. And he's like, he does like not a bonds. You know who he is, TJ.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, good guy, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Good guy, super nice, but it was interesting because he was talking about how he never thought he'd be an MMA fighter because he wasn't tough enough and how he lost so much and everything was point and tag. And Joe Rogan was talking about how it's a missing piece in MMA because they're they're they know how to get out of and they know how to explode so fast. And I agreed with what he said in principle, but I was like, I didn't agree because talk about outliers, because Herb, you know how many great point fighters in our era tried to come over and fight WTF style at the time and just couldn't do it. How many great kickboxers can't do MMA? Like, I think he's just a unique dude, like he's just a special, special guy. So while I understood what Joe Rogan was saying, I'm like, this guy was literally a point karate fighter that fought at the NASCAR, the ISKA in Orlando, um you know, with you know Leota Machado. He's a karate outlier, he's a karate guy, and he fought like a karate guy. I mean, wonderful and it worked, and it worked, it worked, but again, it's not a I maybe go back to what I was talking about before. That's not a style that you can replicate. Like maybe you put something in of that in your art style, but I guess my point, if it was so dominant, why wouldn't every other people do it?
SPEAKER_03:Well, they can't, so you got to remember too, and that's uh the last thing I say on I know you guys got a lot going on, but so Arlene Lemus, when Arlene was Arlene, and what she did, she could do, but even in her world, they couldn't do it the way she could do it. And when she came here and did it, it was what it was, and that's exactly what you're saying. So just because exceptional, you gotta be exceptional where you were, and then you gotta be like Jung Myung sum, I'll go back to that leaping flying guy, may he rest in peace. He was exceptional in Korea. He wasn't just exceptional when he went to the world championships, he was exceptional, beat everybody doing that stuff in Korea. So when he comes, of course, to the world championships, it's he's gonna be exceptional here. Just because it works with one guy doesn't mean it's gonna work with everyone. Dude, I'm waiting for the shirt. I just got it yesterday, man.
SPEAKER_01:Come on.
SPEAKER_03:We have a new shirt coming out. So if you're kind enough to send us a comment, we'll get you some shirts if we like you. And again, if you don't get a shirt, sorry, not sorry. This has been the warehouse 15. We're gonna miss Coach Moreno. Hopefully, he'll call us from points west, south, and north, and we'll do it abroad.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, we gotta do it abroad.
SPEAKER_03:That'd be cool if they can get a and then um hopefully I don't I don't know where you shop, if it's Target or Costco or where we're Wiggly Piggly or Piggly Wiggly, whatever they have in North Carolina. But I like that Tyson thing, and I don't know if I'm allowed to wear it or would that be crossing some sort of barrier that I shouldn't cross. But if uh you want to send me a link where you got that, if that in fact is allow me. Go for it, go for it.
SPEAKER_01:Look, you guys want to talk about what time is it over there? Is it 8 30?
SPEAKER_03:Oh I don't know. I don't pay attention to time.
SPEAKER_01:Now we know anything after five o'clock. We gotta get the old man some Tums and some some Roleids because that boy he drank too much coffee. But now that boy Oh my god, dude, it's that my wife made some food.
SPEAKER_03:I usually cook, she made some good food. So it is.
SPEAKER_04:I usually cook, she made some good food. Yeah, later.
SPEAKER_03:This is that this has been the warehouse 15. We are out. Guys, good work to