BTG 112 - Samurai Wagyu

[Music] hello and welcome to Breaking the guard I've just returned from my trip in Japan I was there for 15 days and I got to see a lot of that country going from Tokyo to Nico uh Nagano kazawa Kyoto Osaka coob and then finally okanawa and we doing a return trip to Tokyo so quite hectic I think it put a little too many cities in that time span because we're basically spending about two to three days per place but it was the best way to try to see as much as we possibly could over there now what I found very interesting I've never been to Japan before culturally very different than the US and many things that are very familiar to me from my martial arts background one the people there have so much pride in their work and it shows in any position I would go for example to a 7-Eleven to get water and then I had my dessert treat there was ice cream which I would get hogendas because I know hogendas is actually made like real ice cream eggs yolks milk cream and uh they use sugar which is not honey but it's close enough for a vacation snack and I would go just to get a little thing of ice cream for myself the attendant would run over grab a spoon get a napkin and would hand it to me so that I could enjoy the ice cream without you know trying to find a spoon or anything that and that little gesture was repeated at every 7-Eleven across the country uh and you know that's just one simple example but it goes from restaurant servers to you know um train operators taxis we had a taxi I remember that we didn't have an umbrella and it was r raining but we got onto a taxi and on the way out the taxi told attendant told us to wait in the car and they ran to the trunk grabbed an umbrella and gave it to us and I was like what the hell you know that's amazing like that's a very nice gesture now it turns out these umbrellas uh they're like City umbrellas I guess and they people kind of give them out I suppose cuz I know we essentially gave it to somebody else later down the road nevertheless just an amazing gesture and it shows a genuine care for their customers and their fellow people so I found that you know really amazing you know it's something you rarely see at least in my life in the US that seems to be the norm in Japan the other thing that kind of goes along with it is that everyone in Japan has a uniform when you go to the 7-Eleven everybody's dressed the same way when you go to the zoo all the staff are dressed based on their position um the taxis generally all have white gloves they wear like you know if it's a chauffeur service they all have their little white gloves and Suits uh and yet we would go to these cafes which they had like they call them cafes but it's really just like a animal house where you have like owls or you know Chipmunks or whatever animal that they are showcasing but all of them are dressed in the same uniform right so and you can kind of see right now where I'm going with is as far as like the parallels to martial arts right but it shows a sense of order and discipline that they're all addressed accordingly and it does really make a difference as far as my perception of of the business versus everybody just wearing whatever they wanted to uh so I found that interesting they uh the city of Tokyo for my understanding has 38 million people so it's a very big city you know on the level of like a New York City and there was not one piece of trash I saw on the floor uh no graffiti no homeless and you would [Music] see small children I'm talking about grade school 7y olds 9y olds roaming this this treat by them the City by themselves not with an adult and that was normal and I bring that point up because it is so safe that they trust their kids to be able to navigate on their own they're going to school on their own they're coming back from school on their own they're going you know to meet up with friends or going to eat they're navigating me Subway systems and metros on their own that type of autonomy is in the US would be considered like child neglect and over in Japan that's standard so another thing that's amazing to be able to feel so safe in your society that you could trust uh your kids to be on their own and they'd be fine and that kind of reminds me of what it was like when I was growing up in late 80s early 90s where we would just go out and just explore and come back home before dark you know parents we didn't have cell phones you know we were just able to you know just explore the the world with our friends and you know sometimes get into trouble sometimes not get into trouble right but like we were trusted you know uh and I guess the society was trusted enough to know that it wasn't that dangerous where we could get into into potential trouble that we couldn't navigate out of and I think that has diminished over time so it was interesting to see it overseas that that existed and I guess a level of safety that I I haven't experienced in my life like how comfortable it was there was no sketchy places that I was in in Japan and you know when you go in the Subways in New York City it doesn't feel great right it's kind of like going into a public bathroom you don't know what you're going to get it usually kind of smells and there might be some undesirable element you want to avoid being in uh you just you're just there to do the job right right and get out of there the conversely in Japan the Metros are very clean they and they're Pleasant they're comfortable to be seated in mind you it it does get busy at certain times and you will be like squished together but even then it doesn't it's not horrible right uh so it's uh another thing that struck me there part particularly another thing that also got my attention was they married architecture with uh Landscaping quite well you would see lots of you know skyscrapers and whatnot but they would have floors where it's just all trees and bushes and Greenery and even along the highways they would have vines on the walls they tried to marry the landscape with the the buildings so it doesn't look like a con jungle right like there's actual vegetation and trees all over the place so uh very thoughtfully designed you know and these are some of the things that stuck out to me and obviously one of the big ones is just to respect uh anyone who's working with you or you know whether it's a taxi your concierge or the hotel clerk they're bowing to you you know they're saying thank you they're welcoming you and they're always paying uh respect to their customers and I found that very refreshing they definitely have a an approach of humility to how they do service and I I started with a a a level of pride in their work and as in no one's just clocking in the 9 to5 and just wanting to get the hell out of there seems that everybody's kind of going out of their way to do their best level of service possible and mind you this is a culture which tipping is not allowed it's from my understanding is somewhat insulting to try to give somebody a tip and you know we're led to believe here in the states that oh you know without tipping people are not going to work the extra mile like you have to reward them for that extra effort whereas in Japan they don't even have that incentive and they go well above that and do so without appearing to be coerced right like they just genely want to know that they did their best and I think that is probably the best mind space or headset that you would want to have for your employees or your staff or people that are going to be working with you not that they need to be financially motivated to do you know extra that they just take pride in their work they want to know that I made this or I am doing this so I want to be able to know that it's the best that I have to offer so at least I feel that's what I try to do when I'm teaching when I'm you know working on my app or whatnot like that's I'm trying to showcase the best I have because I enjoy what I do uh so I want to make sure that others enjoy the fruits of my labor and are able to benefit from it so it's to me I found that part of Japan very interesting uh and invigorating now as far as the the sites and tourism we did have a good amount of uh sightseeing we saw lots of temples and churches did some hiking uh good amount of animal encounters that we got in there all that was fun uh they do have some access to things that we normally wouldn't be able to do like uh we were in a place that had like 40 different owls and they get to perch on your shoulders and you can you know interact with them all sorts of way my wife loves playing with animals so we got to do a lot of that with like Mir cats and Frets hedgehogs miniature pigs uh seaotter all sorts of Little Critters so that was cool um the temples and the that they had a lot of Buddhist stuff which I wasn't expecting I knew like for my understanding Shinto was the the religion there but a lot of the temples were Buddhist temples and uh so you're seeing a lot of stuff that um I I I didn't expect to see in Japan and that that was interesting uh seeing some of the Samurai and ninja stuff was really cool they had some exhibits where you would do tours and see like the different uh eras of the Ido period and how the samurai played uh a role in their cast system we got to eat at a restaurant that was descended from a Samurai and they had the Samurai armor on display and that that was uh interesting uh other things I enjoyed trying the the Japanese Wu in Japan also coob we went to coob which is I didn't know it was a city but in in coob we had coob B had like the top restaurant there and uh one of the top restaurants there at least and it was excellent definitely a level above as far as flavor profile and richness unique to anything I've ever tried um the wue was very marbled rich I put pictures of it on my Instagram and whatnot if you were following it so American Rue is not anywhere the same as Japanese wue I think they're two very different creatures and literally different creatures because the ones in Japan obvious Japan American so like they brought that same breed of cow but they're raising in the US I'm not sure the standards are the same uh seeing how meticulous they are about certain things I imagine the level of care they put is significantly higher and the for example at least for my experience there which is limited but you know I was there for like two weeks and we were dining out every day the what we consider a steakhous in Japan is I me well in the US is very different than how it works in Japan from what I've seen and most of the steakhouses I saw were tanaki style which would basically be like Benihana right where you have the big Skillet and the chefs cooking the food in front of you but in the US we associate that with a show right like you have the chef he'll make the volcano of the onion rings and then he'll you know spin the eggs crack it in the air throw food at your face right that type of stuff um and the setup is very different as far as they have the table that's kind of like a u the chef's in the middle and then he has uh you know all the the customers around the table that is not the setup in Japan the setup in Japan is usually like a sushi bar right so it's like a bar and the chef's just behind and it's kind of like a straight uh counter where he's doing all the cooking in front of you and there's no show he's not making onion ring volcanoes or throwing food at you he's just cooking it in front of you uh so it's a lot more a lot less theatrical right they're just keeping it simple cooking the the the food in front of you they seem to take a lot more care of on doing certain things like it looked like a lot of one of the big things was to make garlic chips where they would slice these little um uh garlic cloves into very very thin slices and then fry it over oil which they would then save the oil to cook the steaks in so it was like a garlic infused oil and uh I went to maybe I would say like three levels of steak houses if you will one would be like very casual where the chips were made in advance and the guy just had them in a container and he would just pour it on your thing right on your plate the second one I saw a guy who you know he actually sliced the garlic he fried the chips used the oil and cooked it in front of you he didn't he wasn't too meticulous about it just did it like he was cooking it at home the third one which is a high-end restaurant in KOB the guy was very careful on how he cut the garlic and he laid each garlic individually on a slice on the pan and took him about like 10 minutes to cook this where the other Chef did it like in two and he would turn each thing individually to make sure each side was cooked perfectly obviously that one was the best one uh but the level of detail that they put into like a small trivial almost trivial side item was impressive right uh and of course that one we had you know what they called so Kobe beef is basically wagu but made with stricter uh guidelines right so visually they can appear very similar right and I had a A5 wue not full bodied fat there there's like I had I think it's was called premium level there's a level above that but I didn't care to try that one because that one's pretty much almost a block of fat and I've had that before or an equivalent of that in the US and interesting but not my cup of tea all right so I wanted something that was a little bit more of a steak eating experience which this Co was it was very you know obviously very marbled but still had protein in it so you can enjoy the steak you know so I had that compared to just a traditional Wu uh because my wife had a traditional Wu I had the cobay and we kind of we shared them and you could tell the difference in the flavor the Kobe had a significant like I guess we call Umami you know another another texture or not not texture but another taste to it that was lacking in the in the wue not an everyday meal for sure but uh definitely a luxury treat that I'm glad I was able to enjoy there and uh as a country obviously it's very friendly towards a carnivore diets because everything has meat in it and uh but so I ate lots of different Wu from all the different regions because they'll have wue from Hokkaido Wu from you know Nago all the different uh districts had their own wues you know so that was a lot of fun eating there uh and again delicious so good culinary experience as well I think the only thing that I didn't find as interesting honestly were were the temples we probably went to the best place for the temples in the beginning which was niiko is kind of not a big city somewhat remote located in the northern not the most northern part but north of Tokyo uh we had some nice hikes there also but a lot of temples are very similar so and I guess since I don't speak the language I don't read the language uh I probably lose a lot of the significance of The Monuments not being able to understand the context of it uh but they kind of blend in together a bit so after seeing like 10 or 12 temples in Nico and we go to other places they all kind of had the same structure not surprisingly so uh but seeing the Samurai and ninja stuff was really cool uh I enjoyed that quite a bit uh the islands also were colder than advertised we went to okanawa which is again Island on the Southeast or I guess more south rather and online it kept saying it was 81° temperature water man it was not 81 degree temperature water it was probably like I imagine low 70s cuz it was pretty chilly not cold enough or I mean warm enough or you could stay in there without a wet suit and you know swim around but it wasn't that nice warm water that I'm used to in Florida uh so a little disappointing there they also seem to close down a lot of their beaches in the winter uh and with no clear reason why cuz we wanted to do some uh snorkeling we got to do some of it but we went to one area where they said that snorkeling was great and all everyone was saying the beaches were closed and it wasn't a jellyfish season or anything like that so I'm not sure what the deal was so that was a little bit of a bummer but other than that nice trip um and I'm grateful that we had the opportunity to go and check out Japan I definitely uh took away some things culturally from how customer service can be raised up a significant level just by being mindful of and having the right mindset you know and doesn't cost anything it's just putting effort anyhow that was my take on it uh I did get back on the seventh and on the eighth I was fortunate enough to be able to see the final of the pgf worlds season 7 and I only followed a little bit I saw day one but obviously I was in Japan I wasn't wasn't tuned in entirely but uh on the finals and I'm just going to refresh my memory just a little bit here you have Ryan Akin Nathan Hadad Paul Adera Elijah Carlton marcen machello Davis assar uh Chris willjack and Ernesto Rivera so a lot of familiar names there and overall good action on this there was I believe four five six submissions out of would have been like 10 matches so that's pretty good 60% finish ratio the matches that did go into OT were pretty intense and it wasn't like one guy just ran away with it um so it was a exciting matchups spoiler alerts coming through here you know opening round uh and mind you if you're not familiar with the pgf format they do four days in a it's five days in a row so in the fifth day in the finals you have done just completed eight matches previously it's grueling schedule and these were bigger boys 205 Pounders so recovery is going to be a bit worse for these guys than the lightweights and I feel like a Def definely showed uh especially as the tournament wore on the first matches like Ryan Aken defeated Nathan Hadad soundly got top position pressure past him went into the mount set up an arm triangle got the Finish looked very clean technically there and just great performance by him an odd thing they were doing this time around they had uh they would give a warning to somebody who was being passive and then they would give a shot clock where I guess it was like 15 seconds where they had to do something significant or they would be started from bottom turtle and the crazy thing about this was that uh Ryan had just mounted Nathan and had an arm triangle being set up he already had the arm crossed over head down in the Butcher Block and 10th Planet uh terms and was getting ready to shift to the side but they had called a shot clock on Nathan Hadad from being B out and not doing anything and then the ref was trying to stop the match to reset in the bottom turtle and Ryan's like no no no no no I'm about to win here like don't move my position you know and they they allowed it to continue fortunately and then he did get the finish it just seemed like a really silly ref call like why would you stop this and uh they had other situations that this occurred that I felt were in poorly time Ed or poorly executed where they would have a person who is stuck in a front headlock on bottom and they would call the bottom person for passivity and I think it was actually in one of the super fights or whatnot it was um where what's her name they don't have the name here oh yeah Vanessa demopoulos she was going to go with Kay Jackson and Kaya got her in a guillotine so she pulled guard ended up getting passed so it was bottom sight control with a full front headlock and very solid grip so the choke was still a threat and they called passivity on Vanessa being on bottom now there's no good it's not good to try to sit up in this position or to turn because you're going to get choked so it's usually better to got to stay in your back there and you're not going to get guillotine right away and you can kind of fight the grip there but I think Vanessa with her inexperience and the rule set reacted to the the the shot clock and turned into her immediately got guiltin high elbowed and finished you know so the passivity worked against her there because like she should have not moved the smart thing to do was to stay put and it seemed like a lot of these passivity calls were being called mostly on top guys although in those two situations that were again I felt poorly timed they were called in the bottom guy uh but a lot of times it would be the guy trying to pass someone's you know supine guard and or seated guard and the top guy just wasn't engaging a lot but neither was the bottom guy it felt kind of mutual right where you had in one case a guy just controlling grips from the bottom not really advancing and they would always call it paity on the top guy so I I appreciate the idea of that stalling claw and giving them the shot clock I think is a great ad as far as not just immediately penalizing them but giving them a chance to work out which always seemed to motivate people but I felt it was a little bit biased towards to be against the top guy it might take anyways anyhow so Ryan won the first match against Nathan dad by submission he had Paul Dera he defeated Elijah Carlton by kneebar this is actually when Elijah probably wish he didn't get the stalling call um because it was ardilla that got the stalling call from working on top they started illa on bottom Elijah tried to chase the back and throw the hooks in them to restart and Paul was able to get that knee bar from the back Mount and get a quick tap so uh that that worked in his favor actually then marcine defeated Davis cesari by Straight ankle loock and again you uh there was actually two straight ankle locks back to backs because Chris wojack also got a straight ankle lock Victory against Ernesto Rivera so it's funny because Brandon thought they were both Aoki locks and no they were just two classic straight ankle locks right uh it looked like aara had an ankle injury previously cuz he was all taped up and I saw one of highlights he did get ankle lock pretty bad uh I think it was actually by marcine as well so uh probably didn't feel good to get stuck in there again you know in the semifinals this is where I felt you could really see people fatigue set in particularly with Ryan Aken versus Paul illa they were both really tired probably about 5 minutes into that match and you could tell Paul was having a really hard time moving Ryan was fatigued but he looked a little fresher and in the over times they had a good back and forth Ryan of course has great back control but I felt he was too tired to get a finish like his grips were probably toast so he wasn't as much of a choking threat although he had a couple good bites which had potential but I think he was more in it for the writing time at that point which was a smart strategic call he's got great back control and Paul was just surviving uh to his go and there was one moment I think Paul had a really good run where he went I think it was in the second overtime because they were doing ebi sudden death but only starting from the back Mount so no spider web starts and Paul was able to go into an armar setup had a really good bite arm fully extended but Ryan was able to turn out and escape and I think he blew his wad on that on that attempt because when they were getting ready to start the third round he was just lying flat there and Eddie Bravo had to push him up into the SE the position so that Ryan could get into position he was so so tired uh but he ended up losing by riding time Ryan had uh dominated he had hold held full six minutes basically it was a two-minute time limmit and he held the full 2 minutes each round Paul had no way of escaping I think he was just too tired and he was just he wasn't going to try to win by riding time he was going to try to win by submission and it didn't happen for him and Chris WJ with marcine similar uh well they had more submission attacks they were both trying to ankle lock each other it looked like marcine had more attempts but Chris had the better bites but neither of them I think got really close to finishing they went into overtime and this overtime was very close um I think it was probably less than 10 seconds between them and riding time but Chris edged out uh marcen and they looked both a bit fresher none of them were collapsed between matches but they were definitely breathing heavy and then in the finals you had Ryan AK versus Chris WJ um again some leg lock battling not as much as with marcine uh they traded turns being top and bottom Ryan well I would say Chris looked better when he was on top just like Ryan looked better when he was on top and I think if Chris would have pushed the pace more and try to force being top more he could have done better work at fatiguing Ryan and maybe even getting a finish but he seemed content trying to play the bottom game going for leg locks and I felt that gave Ryan the rest he needed to kind of recover and not expend as much energy because Ryan was definitely looked like he had more wear in him than Chris but he was playing a smarter game and in the overtime this is a part where I knew that Ryan would do better at because he's great at back riding Chris not as much and it showed because Ryan was able to ride Chris usually for like a minute and a half and this is to a credit to Chris because he was able to escape each round and he got faster in his his Escapes in each consequent round uh which was impressive he had to turn quite a bit he did eat some strong chokes and you know neck cranks still on the way but Chris's control wasn't there like Ryan was able to get out within 10 seconds in a couple rounds so it was clear that Chris had to go for a submission and the chokes wasn't going to be it he wasn't able to get a good seat belt I don't know if it was the size differential Chris was definitely smaller he was small for that division Ryan upper body wise was significantly larger uh so maybe he wasn't able to get around well uh but his back control wasn't there and I felt like the strategy would have been to try to shift into an arm bar go from a seat belt to a kimuro grip throw the arm bar because the choke was never really getting there and the back control wasn't there or maybe try to go instead of backmount truck ride uh Twisted control type of deal and I say this as someone who also suffers like I I don't I I really have a hard time getting a body triangle my legs are just not long enough I have short femurs so like I I don't really get around that well so riding back mount with both hooks is usually trickier for me I usually like riding one leg and going into you know truck positions um where I feel I can definitely control people a lot longer when I get them on the the leg side single leg writing but in any case Ryan ended up winning that uh again all credit to him what a great uh I someone had made this point before and I I I felt the sentiment that doing what would have been 11 matches in 5 days at 205 PBS is difficult right that's very grindy work uh so to come out on top in this and the way he did what a gauntlet for a guy like ran and he and not only did he win his 20K for winning the finals but his team also won the regular season so he also won another 20K on top of that so big payday for him 40K in grappling is no joke uh so congratulations to him and a on a very well played game I and I think a fresh Ryan has a much better run at a fresh Cris and I think there is a size Advantage as well but it just goes to show uh his ability to play strategically and smart even when you know you're somewhat impaired right because at least in my mind I could see even the difference from match one to match two like it's a very different guy coming out now because like the fatigue has set in quite a bit his first match like I said looked technically very sharp and he was able to execute a finish pretty cleanly and by the end of match two it's like now we're in a battle of attrition mode right it's like who's going to expend the most energy who's going to play the smartest and um he did a really good job with that and uh congrats to Brandon McCarron for running another great uh tournament here the pgf is definitely picking up and I hope it continues to do so I see the athletes are getting paid well getting good exposure now they're in UFC Fight Pass so I think did the regular days on YouTube which you could still catch him on there and then and these are long streams by the way there like8 hours you know I watched one of them on like triple speed just so I could try to get through it kind of quickly uh to get caught up but there's a lot of grappling to be watched there so anybody who's trying to study some high level grappling uh a lot of leg locks going on particularly if you watch day one you'll see some some stuff that I've shown uh recently like kneeling ankle locks type of deal with straight ankle locks quite a bit of of straight ankle locking going on and a lot more Ashi here than uh than 50/50 at least I saw I didn't see day two three or four but I watched day one and there was a lot of Ashi attacking um and some zocks in game over positions so I I'll do some breakdowns as well over the channel over the next couple weeks but great stuff and uh again the more venues that athletes have to be able to you know perform and make a living off of the better so kudos to Brandon as well for making this happen I'm glad to see that that the league is growing and uh that's all I have for for this week well I actually mentioned one last thing that I just saw which was Jon Jones commented on I think I covered this in a a previous podcast about him or the UFC rather snubbing uh Tom Aspen for this title unification and Jon Jones chipped in and said that he has no interest in fighting Tom Aspen because he hasn't proven himself yet he hasn't done anything right and he's either going to retire or he's going to fight Alex Pereira now I understand that he is you know older and I'm not sure if an aspen fight is a big money fight whereas a Alex Pereira fight for sure is a big money fight but to say that Aspen hasn't done anything is insulting he has knocked out just about everybody in the top of the heavweight Division and I think if you see the top 10 he's cleared out like six or seven of them uh the only guys he has in fac I think has miic um and there's two others and they're like below the top five I believe so he's done what he has to do as a heavyweight Contender you know and has looked marvelous doing so so to say he's done nothing is BS like he has now has he been tested to the degree that Jon Jones has no right I don't think he's had the level of opposition available for him to because you know we've had people move away right like he could have fought of Francis Nagano but Francis left the division and I felt under a good reason but it still took away that big fight you know and Tom aspal wasn't around to be able to fight a DC you know so he's fought the best the UFC's has to offer so the other thing is if you're the champ to me it's kind of compulsory to you to unify the belt if you have an interim belt standing around and to say he's done nothing no he has an interim belt that's technically your belt until uh you know like the belt is under contention so he's not the uncontested heavyweight champion right now it's the contested heavyweight champion I feel to say that I thought that was insulting to say Tom Aspen hasn't done anything so yes he has and it's now I think in a normal League it would be like forced that he either fight to unify the belt or he vacate the belt right because that's the whole point of the interim belt it's unfair to that interim champ uh to not have it unified especially when the champion is around and fighting other fights and now planning another fight like it's kind of like he evaded him once and then he's going to evade him twice I don't understand how that works and um it's hard to say that he's not ducking him that and mind you I think Jon Jones is probably the greatest of all time I'm not his biggest fan outside the cage I think his Antics and you know the trouble he gotten into has tarnished his legacy quite a bit but as far as his ability to fight his desire and will and uh his technical strategy he's he's the best man like the guy is great everywhere he's able to beat people and make it look easy he can beat people at their own games you know so he is like I said probably the greatest of all time in fighting but he's ducking Tom Aspen that's my opinion I don't think he wants that fight I think it's not a good business maneuver for him because the risk is high and the payoff is low cuz he beats Tom Aspen everybody's going to be what he was supposed to beat Tom Aspen and I don't think Tom is as big as a draw as poten right now pten's just on fire and I think poten is less of a risk honestly striking sure he's dangerous but Jon Jones is if he's smart he's not going to strike with poten he's going to take him down and finish him on the ground and I think he's going to make it look easy so I think less of a risk bigger payoff and even if he did lose it wouldn't be like oh you ruined your legacy it's like well you lost to a guy on the end of your career who's at the top of his career right now and who's widely regarded as the most dangerous Striker so uh I think that's the calculus going into this so it is a duck now is it a duck because he's afraid of this fight or he just between the two choices he rather take the choice that pays more and less risk and I get that you know like you know he's older he's got to think about his future and stuff like that but to say that he's not ducking this guy seems it's very hard for me to not not think that you know and especially if he's going to retire after he fights poent potentially it definitely seems like a major duck like you have a responsibility as a champion to unify your belt and you're kind of avoiding that responsibility because you're going to clock yourself out so I don't know how not to think it's not ducking and I don't like to think that because like I said I think he is one of the greatest of all time despite despite his muddy uh record but you know it is what it is anyhow that's all I have for you guys uh I'll let you all go now enjoy the the rest of your week and I'll see you next week