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Welcome to the Knife Junkie Podcast. Your weekly dose of knife

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news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your

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host, Bob The Knife Junkie DeMarco.

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Welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast. I'm Bob DeMarco. On this

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edition of the show, I'm speaking with martial artist and media producer

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Paulo Rubio. I first started following Paolo on

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Instagram years ago under his company's name. At the time, Funker

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Tactical. I was tuning in to watch and learn from his

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martial artist clients from around the world, but soon took

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note of Paulo himself who often played the role of knowledge

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seeker. Many years, air miles and teachable moments

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later, Paolo himself has become the teacher with his videos

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passing along the many skills, drills and mindsets he's

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developed as a martial artist. I'm excited to talk

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with Paolo after so many years of following his work. But first, be sure to

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like, comment, subscribe, hit the notification bell, download the show

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junkie.com Patreon or scan the QR code on your screen.

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Get a whole year, save 12%. Again, that's the knife

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junkie.com Patreon.

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If you search Google for the best knife podcast, the answer

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is the Knife Junkie Podcast.

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Hello, welcome to the Knife Junkie podcast, sir, It's a pleasure. Thank you

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very much for having me. It's, it's great to actually talk

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to you after so many years, as I mentioned, of following you.

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And I believe personally this is a little

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quip of mine or a little pet peeve of mine. I believe the word

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journey is overused in our current, current era,

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but if anyone could use that word accurately,

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I would say it to you after watching you for so long.

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Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are

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right now. Sure, yeah, it's definitely been a journey, that's for

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sure. I guess where most people would,

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you know, pick up the beginning of that story

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is, you know me as Funker Tactical. I. I had

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the distinct opportunity and privilege to travel all around

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the world seeking and developing subject matter experts across

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the full spectrum of fighting. For many years,

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I sort of hid behind the camera. I was a camera guy, I was a

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content creator guy, I edited, I filmed, I directed, I did a

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whole lot of things. But you know, as that journey

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progressed, I had so many opportunities behind the

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Scenes after filming drunken nights in bars

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behind alleyways where these people would,

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would show me some things that maybe they didn't want

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necessarily to be on camera.

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And just by virtue of having this distinct opportunity

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to learn from so many masters and grandmasters in martial arts

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and combatives, I was, I was

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drawn to see if I had the capabilities to sort of

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alchemize that knowledge into skill. And so

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when I began that journey, I sort of coupled it with

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another journey of mine, a lifelong pursuit of

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teaching. You know, I taught business English in Japan.

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I taught video production at the college level here in

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Toronto. I'm a father, so I'm a natural teacher in that regard. And

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then just bringing these things together, I found

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that there was inspiration and knowledge to be learned from

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all sorts of different sources. But

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the, the, the true art from, for me, and what

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really gripped me and what forced me into

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committing was really the art of teaching.

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Right? How do I take this great opportunity that I've been

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afforded? How do I pass on that knowledge

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in a way that isn't just, hey, I'm going to make a cool video about

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this? You know, how can I connect with, relate to and

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transfer this information in person? And so I, I

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was very hesitant to do that, actually. I did not want to teach.

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I didn't want the responsibility. Um, I also

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studied a lot of what

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corrupted relationships, um, whether

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it's, you know, student,

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teacher, coach, athlete, I, I sort of

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studied the pitfalls. What, what causes these

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seemingly beautiful relationships to dissolve and get

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corrupted. And also by virtue of my own experiences, you know, I've made a lot

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of mistakes along this journey. But then when I

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actually started teaching and it began with a kids class,

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Filipino martial arts kids, kids class, it really

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all began to like, to gel.

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And so, and, and up to

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this moment, I am, I'm so studying, I'm researching,

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I am, you know, I come up with so many drills. I come up

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with hundreds of drills and I encourage people to

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create their own drills. It's not that difficult. It's not something reserved just

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for grandmasters. But also, don't be

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afraid to discard those drills. You know, most of the drills

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that I come up with end up being pretty garbage. So

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I get rid of them and I, I start again. Yeah, but,

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but I have the opportunity to actually deploy these drills, these

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ideas with really good people. Right.

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And they understand the journey that I'm on. I may. You

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know, one time I presented a journey to a group of black belts, and it

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was an idea that I came up with. In my sleep. And then I just

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presented it that way. I'm like, guys, I have this drill. I think it's

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rooted and founded in logic, but I haven't deployed it yet. Will you run this

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drill for me? Ended up being crap. So I'm like, well, thanks for trying. I'm

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not going to do that drill anymore. So the, the journey really has gone

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from somebody who was an observer to

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a reluctant instructor to now

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a dedicated one. I've, I've heard you say that

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you've back engineered your drills from.

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Well, from a fighting experience you had with a, with a master

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kaliador in, in the Philippines who, you

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know, beat you up, but you, you beat them back and

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sort of. So for those drills, if, if you don't

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have that sort of experience, how do you go about making your own

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drills? Well, you can manufacture them, right? You need to have

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some experience in the thing that

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you're trying to get good at. And you really have to be ego friendly 3

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to say, Hey, I suck at this part

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of the system, the arc, whatever the case may

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be, really suck at this part. So what

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elements do I need to improve upon to

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get better at it or to suck less? So maybe you'll, you'll say, you know

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what, I'm not strong enough. My grip strength isn't where it needs to be, or

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my reaction timing to these kinds of trajectories

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are lacking. And so just by knowing that, hey, I

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have real trouble, you know, I'll, I'll keep it simple. I have

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real trouble, you know, parrying a jab.

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And so the drill might be, hey, jab me a bunch of

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times and I'm going to try to parry it. And then what is

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with this motion that we can translate into

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something that may not be so demanding, you know? Okay, well,

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it's, it's an, it's an incoming force aimed towards your head.

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Can we use a tennis ball for that? Can somebody throw badminton

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ping pong balls at me? Right. And can I swat it with a

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paddle? Should I use my hand? Do I need head movement? So it's, it's

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really just understanding yourself and what you suck at that will

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give you. And also it requires somebody to tell you, hey,

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it's okay. You can create your own drills. You don't need grandmaster so

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and so to tell you or to give you permission. Yeah, you self

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diagnose and self correct because you know yourself better than

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anybody. And I, I think a lot of martial artists sort of fall into

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this. It's almost like daddy issues. You Know, like,

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we. We require external validation when we're

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perfectly capable of really validating ourselves and

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really keeping track of how. How good we're getting based on

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how much. How much less sucky we are. Well, I think

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a lot of that comes from lack of experience. You know, if you haven't

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gotten in street fights and you haven't been in combat, you could be

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wondering, like, is this stuff real? And there's a lot I want to talk to

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you about. Self perfection, self preservation. But before we get

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there, you. You have a really cool drill, one that

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resonated with me the first time I saw it. And just kind

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of boning up before this interview, I remembered, and it's

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your reverse blink drill. Yeah, tell us

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about that. So reverse blinking is

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based on some data that I came across that a knife Thrust

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happens in 0.14 seconds, and we blink

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between 0.10 to 0.40 seconds. So

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theoretically, we could. You could blink and miss it.

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And even if we saw an incoming threat, identify that it was a threat,

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it takes about half a second for the brain to go, hey, you should probably

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move something. And so the.

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The reverse blinking drill keeps us in

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complete darkness. And what that manufactures

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is that anticipatory cognitive load,

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that stress that we may feel when we're having an

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argument with somebody, as that violence may be escalating.

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And the reverse blink is based on the idea that

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you haven't got a lot of time to process

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information before you have to act. Right. And

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so there are evolutions to this drill that require us. So, you

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know, I'm in complete darkness. As soon as I open my eye, there's a knife

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here. And so what is my immediate action to that?

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Another thing that this drill set does is it really keeps us in

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touch with, you know, what are our instinctive

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responses and how quickly can we deliver them, and what are

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our trained responses? And the important question that I

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always ask my students is, you know, how do you know when your trained

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response, the thing that you've been working on, has actually

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crystallized as an instinctive response to you? And nobody can

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really answer that, but the real answer to that question is you have to

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come up with, you know, drills and protocols where

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you don't have a whole lot of time to think

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about what you're going to do? A

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good friend of mine, Mick Coop, famously, and I stole this off of him, he

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says, you know, don't bring your favorite number

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to the math test. Test, Right?

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And that's what a lot of people do. They Sort of manufacture these, you know,

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pressure tests and drills that

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reinforce the thing that they want to work

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rather than composing drills where you find out, hey, what am I actually going

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to do when I, when I have an extreme time constraint

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where I have to make a decision under

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fractions of a second coming off of emotional

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and cognitive load.

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Well, yeah, I mean that, that just makes me think of, you know,

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you get in a knife fight, let's just say, you know, or

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you get in some sort of engagement where you're using a knife

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to defend yourself

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and someone grabs you from behind. Who's to say that's not a police officer

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or someone's girlfriend or, you know, and you turn around, you slice

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that person up out of, out of reflex. Like how,

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how do you parse that? Yeah, so I have a lot of

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drills where there are layers of decision making

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and, and one addresses that specifically because. Yeah, you don't know because,

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you know, if you're dealing with somebody, knife fight or not, you're

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so hyper focused on that thing that there could be

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authorities, bystanders, sympathizers, or people just running

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away. Yeah. That you may have to engage with and

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have to make a split second decision. I'm, I'm good friends with a lot of

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correctional officers and they confirm for me that, you know, jails are

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full of people who meant to do well but did too much

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or did the wrong thing. And so

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I think the challenge is how do I

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manufacture not full reality?

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Because we can't do that. Right.

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Good, really good scenario training is inefficient.

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There's only one or two people going through the

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scenario. A lot of bad scenario

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training is linear. Like no matter what I do, no matter

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what I say, no matter how I de escalate, I'm going to fight. You might

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as well just practice fighting. Um, and so the challenge is

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how do we manufacture commonly occurring elements

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of reality in a way that's efficient, repeatable and safe?

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So what, what are those elements? An extreme time constraint,

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you know, auditory, visual distractions,

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ground surface condition. We can manufacture even

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physiological stress responses. Doing a bunch of push ups, getting our

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heart rate up, our body getting, you know, swollen

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by incorporating cold, that

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manufactures this, the stress response of blood

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going away from the extremities and into the core to protect it.

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So by understanding and studying, you

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know, what happens really in these real world

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encounters and just sort of hand selecting which elements can, can

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we manufacture safely where we are given

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who's here and the environment that we're in. So do

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people ever look at your drills and say, well, that's not how a real

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fight goes all the time. And. And I'm. In fact, one of

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the things that I do in my seminars is I say, guys, at some

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point, at any time, I'm going to say, are we knife fighting?

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The answer is no. And so I have these clips of rooms of

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40 people doing what looks like knife fighting, and you just hear me yell,

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are we knife fighting? Everyone goes, no. And

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that's a thing that I think

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good instructors have to deal

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with all the time, is that good drills often look

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boring, you know, especially when you're, you know, building

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fundamentals, when you're introducing new concepts, they're not going to look

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like a fight. A lot of the drills I do, I have a knife, you

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have a knife. But I only have a knife

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for the sake of efficiency, because I would be doing the same motions with my

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forearm with or without a knife. So, yeah, that's. That's

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definitely a thing. Almost all of my drills

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don't look like what knife fights look like, but if you

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can sort of discern and you're

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a critical thinker, you can go, oh, I see what he's doing there. He's

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manufacturing some sort of

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mental distraction into a decision making. Or

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maybe he's familiarizing these people to these three common attack

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trajectories. Maybe what he. What Paulo is trying to get us

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to do is to explore

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different defensive options, whether that's a slap, a parry,

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you know, a hack, a bisecting line, a grab. So, yeah,

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it's. It. It's not going to look like a fight. One

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thing I talk about is, let's say you're in my

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seminar and we are doing a scenario

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where we're sitting on a bus, and now all of a sudden, you have to

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defend yourself against somebody who wants to stab you while

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you're in this bus. Sounds awesome, right?

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Like, it could be really intense. And then I asked the group, okay, how many

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of you take the bus? Maybe two people put up their hands.

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So there. There I am creating something that looks really cool on

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Instagram. It's reality based. We're going hard at it, but the

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reality doesn't reflect most of the people that are in

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the room. And so I have to,

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you know, I call it representation. Like, what is the

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commonality in a bus that more

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people experience? Well, a lot of people find themselves

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in close quarters, right? The fact that

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the bus is moving, that might not. We can maybe represent

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that by creating unstable ground conditions.

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Right. Maybe we go on a hardwood floors and everybody puts on

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socks and I put some baby powder on the floor,

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right? Yeah, it's those things. And

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this is all I think about, like all day is how can we

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manufacture elements of reality and how can we integrate them

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into drills that have, you know,

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scalability. I often say we're going to do the same drill for

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different reasons. Right? Two big strong MMA guys may

286
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do a drill differently than a 72 year old woman that's

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in my class, it's in my seminar, it's the same drill,

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but you know, it. It's up to me as the coach, as the instructor

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to go, hey, you two big Vikings, why don't you,

290
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why don't you really push the action here, right?

291
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Why don't you really try to stab them with that low line thrust and see

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where you end up? Or as a 72 year old woman might be, hey, look,

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I just want you to see that before that thrust comes, it's likely that you're

294
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going to see an elbow flare. And so we're going to telegraph for you and

295
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we're going to do it a little bit, little bit slower and we're going to

296
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do this progressively at your comfort level.

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So we're doing the same drill but for different reasons.

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The, the socks on the hardwood floor with the baby powder

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reminded me. I, I had a kenpo instructor years ago who was

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originally from Hawaii and he would, he would bring in heaters and

301
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turn up the heat as much as, as he could get it. Got it.

302
00:18:58.210 --> 00:19:02.040
And then he'd say, okay, now try your joint locks now, now try your kotagashi.

303
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And you're, you know, and it's very hard to, to, to grip, especially if

304
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you're trying to do this out of any sort of flow or any sort. Of

305
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like sparring scenario. And I found that very valuable because

306
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it, it was one of my first indications of, oh yeah, man,

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you know, I look great doing these drills. Yeah, feel good. And I'm, look,

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00:19:20.880 --> 00:19:24.400
I caught my, my glance in the mirror, how cool I look. And then,

309
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you know, you change, you change up the scenario like that and you

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realize that it's a dynamic environment.

311
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It's like attribute training, you know, a little bit. Yeah, for sure.

312
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And you know, like, I could have a really strong right cross. I could

313
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be an incredible boxer. I could be world class taekwondo. But I,

314
00:19:43.790 --> 00:19:47.430
I live in Canada. I need good solid

315
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ground conditions to be able to generate power with tools that I'm really good

316
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at. So when, when those things are taken away, you're kind of

317
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forced to adapt to see what else you've got, or how do I change what

318
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I'm good at to be able to suit the condition that I'm in?

319
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Let me. Okay, we, we've. We dived right in.

320
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We dove right in. Let me, let me go back a little bit. You're.

321
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You're. You originally came from the Philippines? Yes, I was

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born in Philippines. Born in the Philippines. Immigrated to

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Canada. Growing up. When you were little, was

324
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there any emphasis on Filipino martial arts? Is

325
00:20:25.290 --> 00:20:28.810
this something that you learned as a kid? No, not at all.

326
00:20:29.050 --> 00:20:32.210
Actually, I got in a lot of fights when I was a kid, like in

327
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the Philippines. I fought a lot, mind you. I was only there until I was

328
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nine. But it was part of growing up and

329
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it was from a big family. I fought my cousins.

330
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I was always out in the street, you know, like my family. You

331
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was pretty. We weren't rich or anything, but we weren't

332
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poor. But I was out there with like the street kids, you know, I was

333
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out in the slums falling through rooftops and getting killed

334
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almost every day. And there's always scraps. And the weird thing was,

335
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when I came to Canada,

336
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I. I mean, probably within the first couple of months,

337
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I got in a fight and it was kind of

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traumatic because, like, I smoked this dude

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and then I thought, yeah, cool, no problem. And

340
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then I hear from my dad that his

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parents are going to come to our house to speak to him about

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it. And I'd gotten in trouble at school and I'm like, what culture

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is this? We got in a fight, it was over. I thought

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that was it. But, you know, in my, my then 10 year old

345
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mind, I guess I was like, oh, my God, are they gonna like

346
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deport us back? Like, I didn't know what was going on. Yeah.

347
00:21:46.930 --> 00:21:49.810
But I, I've always been interested in fighting

348
00:21:50.850 --> 00:21:54.690
Jackie Chan. Not so much Bruce Lee. For me, it

349
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was like Jackie Chan and old kung fu

350
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movies. When the UFC came out,

351
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I had buddies that we would just like grapple for

352
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hours in my living room. When I lived in Tokyo, I had a little

353
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fight club from

354
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all of the teachers that would come from Australia and New Zealand and

355
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the United States, and we would just kind of get drunk, find

356
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a soccer field and just fight for fun. I

357
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never really liked fighting

358
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when there was like, animosity and like real hatred. Yeah.

359
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But I always just liked fighting, you know, even in

360
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high school when somebody would have a problem with me and be like,

361
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look, man, yeah, we can fight, but hey,

362
00:22:44.460 --> 00:22:48.100
we're checking for Weapons. We're gonna meet here. You bring your friends, I bring my

363
00:22:48.100 --> 00:22:50.780
friends. Like, we have an agreement. If you wanna fight, we can fight.

364
00:22:51.580 --> 00:22:55.020
And. Yeah, but I don't like actual fighting. Who likes that?

365
00:22:55.180 --> 00:22:58.250
Yeah, well, yeah. Cause you don't know where that's gonna end. You know, you don't

366
00:22:58.250 --> 00:23:02.090
know what the stakes are. I want to be in control. Yeah.

367
00:23:03.530 --> 00:23:07.130
So not necessarily Filipino martial arts, but it,

368
00:23:07.450 --> 00:23:11.210
but it seems like you have a real emphasis on it now. Is that

369
00:23:11.210 --> 00:23:14.329
out of a love of knives or is it, or is it

370
00:23:14.570 --> 00:23:18.410
exposure? Yeah. So when I was doing Funker Tactical, it was really

371
00:23:18.490 --> 00:23:21.770
more or less a gun channel. It was a tactical channel. And then I met

372
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Doug Maraida, and he is a great ambassador for Filipino martial arts

373
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art. I thought it looked cool, so I started introducing it to this

374
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gun channel. Everyone started complaining and like,

375
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the hell is this? And then they kind of fell in love with it.

376
00:23:37.230 --> 00:23:40.950
I didn't though. Yeah, it was just something that I knew

377
00:23:40.950 --> 00:23:44.630
the audience wanted, so I gave it to them. And it wasn't really, until I

378
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met Jared Wi Hungi, where I, I

379
00:23:48.350 --> 00:23:52.070
fell in love with Filipino martial arts. And it was

380
00:23:52.070 --> 00:23:55.270
partly because this guy was like, you know, he was half

381
00:23:55.270 --> 00:23:58.430
Texan, half Maori. He spoke three

382
00:23:58.430 --> 00:24:02.150
dialects of the. From the country that I came from. He was

383
00:24:02.150 --> 00:24:05.990
a master in this martial art that belonged

384
00:24:05.990 --> 00:24:09.230
to the Philippines. And I thought that was, like,

385
00:24:10.430 --> 00:24:14.110
so inspirational. And the fact that he had a global

386
00:24:14.190 --> 00:24:17.630
following without a social media following, and he was

387
00:24:17.630 --> 00:24:21.130
teaching, you know, Korean rock Marines, FBI,

388
00:24:22.410 --> 00:24:26.170
multiple special and

389
00:24:26.170 --> 00:24:29.290
Reg Forces in the Philippines, Mongolia,

390
00:24:29.450 --> 00:24:33.130
Germany. I was like, I'm like, bro,

391
00:24:34.010 --> 00:24:37.770
you really do all of this based off of your love

392
00:24:37.850 --> 00:24:41.090
of Filipino martial arts? Because all I saw was like,

393
00:24:41.090 --> 00:24:44.770
fancy twirly karambit, double stick stuff that

394
00:24:44.770 --> 00:24:48.460
I'm like, how did you people think this is fighting? And he's like, yeah, it's

395
00:24:48.460 --> 00:24:51.940
all in there. You just have to be able to, like,

396
00:24:52.180 --> 00:24:55.940
reduce it, oil it down, understand

397
00:24:56.100 --> 00:24:59.220
what it is about the complex that can be made simple

398
00:24:59.940 --> 00:25:03.580
to suit your clientele, right? Like,

399
00:25:03.580 --> 00:25:07.420
knife work is so far down the priority list

400
00:25:07.420 --> 00:25:10.660
for a Special forces soldier. Like, before

401
00:25:10.980 --> 00:25:14.450
they, like, things really, really need to, like,

402
00:25:15.010 --> 00:25:18.730
be bad for them to have to need their knife, you

403
00:25:18.730 --> 00:25:22.450
know, like, they, they have to practice and maintain so many different

404
00:25:22.530 --> 00:25:26.290
skill sets, right? At least two weapons,

405
00:25:26.370 --> 00:25:29.890
two ballistic weapons on them, right? All of

406
00:25:30.130 --> 00:25:33.810
navigation, like, all of this stuff that they need to be good to

407
00:25:33.810 --> 00:25:37.570
be good at and maintain, you know, and then there's

408
00:25:38.320 --> 00:25:42.080
knife, right? So, like, I, I, I

409
00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:45.120
really took a lot from that. Like, I'M not going to be put in front

410
00:25:45.280 --> 00:25:48.640
of a unit, a department, whether it be law enforcement

411
00:25:49.760 --> 00:25:53.599
or military, and say, okay guys, we're going

412
00:25:53.599 --> 00:25:57.040
to do double sticks in a wally because it helps with your coordination.

413
00:25:57.760 --> 00:26:01.480
I mean, I really need to serve. I, I really need

414
00:26:01.480 --> 00:26:04.330
to understand what it is that they need, need for me. And I need to

415
00:26:04.330 --> 00:26:08.050
be able to deliver those things to the best of my ability in

416
00:26:08.050 --> 00:26:11.770
the shortest time possible, but also in a way that's functionally retainable

417
00:26:12.650 --> 00:26:16.490
because they may never get knife training for who knows how long.

418
00:26:16.650 --> 00:26:20.490
Yeah, yeah. How did, how did it come to pass that you

419
00:26:20.970 --> 00:26:23.210
started training these high level

420
00:26:24.410 --> 00:26:24.890
guys?

421
00:26:28.090 --> 00:26:31.860
Well, by virtue of my friendship with them first in,

422
00:26:33.220 --> 00:26:36.660
in my role in, in Funker tactical,

423
00:26:37.140 --> 00:26:40.820
I just had access, I had really

424
00:26:40.820 --> 00:26:43.540
unparalleled access to high level people.

425
00:26:46.500 --> 00:26:49.780
And I think the fact that I don't really,

426
00:26:50.660 --> 00:26:54.470
I don't try to sell candy as medicine, you

427
00:26:54.470 --> 00:26:58.190
know, I think I know, you know that

428
00:26:58.190 --> 00:27:01.630
there are certain kind of tactical

429
00:27:01.630 --> 00:27:05.310
professional that are just really good at

430
00:27:05.310 --> 00:27:09.070
sniffing out bullshit. Yeah. You know what I mean?

431
00:27:09.470 --> 00:27:13.190
And so I would just. Me being keenly aware

432
00:27:13.190 --> 00:27:16.750
of that, they always kept me in check. And

433
00:27:16.750 --> 00:27:20.030
so working in those industries really

434
00:27:20.030 --> 00:27:23.240
influenced even in how I teach the Philip. I love the art,

435
00:27:23.720 --> 00:27:27.280
I love the Filipino martial arts. I love the sophistication, the complexity, the

436
00:27:27.280 --> 00:27:30.840
mental challenge, the coordination challenges. I love all of it.

437
00:27:31.560 --> 00:27:35.400
I understand also that not everybody wants or needs

438
00:27:35.400 --> 00:27:39.080
that. So, you know, working with all of these professionals,

439
00:27:39.560 --> 00:27:43.400
including Jared, and the list is long. You know, there's a lot of people that

440
00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:46.920
I can name that have influenced me. Mick, Coop, Salmascoli,

441
00:27:47.340 --> 00:27:51.180
Gary Drake, Don Gula. Like, you know, these names probably don't mean a whole lot

442
00:27:51.180 --> 00:27:54.900
to, you know, your viewers, but, you know, these are guys who have, you

443
00:27:54.900 --> 00:27:58.700
know, been there, done that and they really,

444
00:27:59.020 --> 00:28:02.740
I think they really care about me. And so I'm, I'm

445
00:28:02.740 --> 00:28:04.780
really grounded. Like if I do something

446
00:28:07.420 --> 00:28:10.940
not so awesome, I'll get like a

447
00:28:10.940 --> 00:28:14.630
message like, what was that? My Rubio? What was

448
00:28:14.630 --> 00:28:18.070
that? Why did you say that was this? And then, you know, we have a

449
00:28:18.070 --> 00:28:21.750
discussion and then sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong.

450
00:28:21.910 --> 00:28:25.550
But I value. I val. I really value the

451
00:28:25.550 --> 00:28:29.350
opinions of, you know, a select group of

452
00:28:29.350 --> 00:28:32.750
professionals from all around the world to kind of keep me in check. So what

453
00:28:32.750 --> 00:28:36.390
would you say is the through line between all the

454
00:28:36.390 --> 00:28:40.240
arts, the, the different fighting arts you've been exposed

455
00:28:40.240 --> 00:28:43.600
to? You know, if you were to boil them down, what are, what are the

456
00:28:43.600 --> 00:28:46.400
similarities across the spectrum?

457
00:28:47.280 --> 00:28:51.000
I, you know, I really like the, the saying that if you

458
00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:54.400
understand a principle, if you understand one

459
00:28:54.400 --> 00:28:58.160
principle, you know, a thousand techniques. And I was just having this

460
00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:01.280
conversation with one of my students in the garage just now.

461
00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:07.510
There are universal fighting principles that

462
00:29:07.510 --> 00:29:11.270
just manifest differently and for different reasons.

463
00:29:11.270 --> 00:29:14.950
So once I really understood that, I could appreciate

464
00:29:15.030 --> 00:29:18.510
aata, I could appreciate chi sa, I can

465
00:29:18.510 --> 00:29:22.270
appreciate capoeira just as I can appreciate, you know, boxing,

466
00:29:22.270 --> 00:29:26.110
wrestling, jiu jitsu, muay Thai, sambo sanda, judo, you know,

467
00:29:26.110 --> 00:29:28.550
all of these like hard hitting combative arts.

468
00:29:30.950 --> 00:29:34.800
That, that's what it is. That's the through, through line

469
00:29:34.800 --> 00:29:38.040
as, as you put it, that there are universal fighting

470
00:29:38.040 --> 00:29:41.560
principles and what we choose to

471
00:29:41.560 --> 00:29:45.160
practice is a reflection of our preferences.

472
00:29:45.560 --> 00:29:49.120
It doesn't mean that they're not there, it's just, hey, maybe we prefer a

473
00:29:49.120 --> 00:29:52.840
softer approach to exploring a principle rather

474
00:29:52.840 --> 00:29:56.360
than going full on with it. One thing to me that,

475
00:29:56.360 --> 00:29:59.910
that is the most valuable. I, I did

476
00:29:59.910 --> 00:30:03.670
a, a bit of training for a while and I

477
00:30:03.670 --> 00:30:07.510
haven't in a few years, but it's always footwork to

478
00:30:07.510 --> 00:30:10.990
me that is in my daily life

479
00:30:11.310 --> 00:30:13.950
the, the most valuable non combative

480
00:30:14.910 --> 00:30:18.750
application. But skill and I guess balance is,

481
00:30:18.750 --> 00:30:22.350
is mixed in there. But foot, footwork, you know, if you're not

482
00:30:22.350 --> 00:30:25.740
solid on your feet, you know, no place to go.

483
00:30:26.300 --> 00:30:29.820
Yeah, footwork, maybe broadly speaking,

484
00:30:29.900 --> 00:30:33.700
mobility and maneuvering, you know, because sometimes

485
00:30:33.700 --> 00:30:37.540
we get the wrong idea of what footwork might be. You know, triangle

486
00:30:37.540 --> 00:30:41.260
footwork and you know, shuffle patterns and quarter turns

487
00:30:41.260 --> 00:30:44.940
and pivots, but it's just like moving appropriately

488
00:30:44.940 --> 00:30:48.380
based on what's in front of you. Sometimes it requires no footwork at all.

489
00:30:48.860 --> 00:30:52.300
But yeah, it's those things. Footwork, power generation,

490
00:30:53.340 --> 00:30:55.500
distance management, proximity management,

491
00:30:57.260 --> 00:31:01.020
strength. Strength matters, agility matters, speed matters. But

492
00:31:02.060 --> 00:31:05.500
you gotta be a smart guy. You have to be intelligent to do it

493
00:31:05.900 --> 00:31:09.580
at that level. But you can, you can just

494
00:31:09.580 --> 00:31:13.100
be dumb and strong too. Yeah, it, it

495
00:31:13.100 --> 00:31:16.950
helped, it helped to be strong, that's for damn sure. I mean not, that

496
00:31:16.950 --> 00:31:19.870
was always a big myth. Going into martial arts is,

497
00:31:20.670 --> 00:31:24.190
oh well, you know, you could be a little guy, but know these techniques.

498
00:31:24.270 --> 00:31:28.070
And my, my, my philosophy is that guy gets

499
00:31:28.070 --> 00:31:31.630
his hands on me, I'm done, I gotta move. What are,

500
00:31:31.790 --> 00:31:35.310
what are some of the myths that you've encountered about knife

501
00:31:35.310 --> 00:31:38.750
fighting in particular or martial arts in general?

502
00:31:39.710 --> 00:31:43.380
Wow, really putting me on the spot there. Like specific

503
00:31:44.500 --> 00:31:47.940
myths. You know, for me,

504
00:31:48.340 --> 00:31:51.540
one of, one of the big ones is that

505
00:31:53.140 --> 00:31:56.900
in order to know how to defend against the knife, you

506
00:31:56.900 --> 00:31:59.060
must know how to use the knife.

507
00:32:00.500 --> 00:32:03.980
And I don't really don't believe that. I think, you know, crack the

508
00:32:03.980 --> 00:32:07.780
practical knife work. Practical especially offensive

509
00:32:07.780 --> 00:32:11.590
knife work. When people go, yeah, we're not a self defense, we are an

510
00:32:11.590 --> 00:32:15.230
offensive knife art. I'm like, and how long have you been

511
00:32:15.230 --> 00:32:18.870
studying that? 20 years. You know, there's a

512
00:32:18.870 --> 00:32:22.670
kid in Columbia who's at 14 years old, never trained

513
00:32:22.670 --> 00:32:26.510
a day in his life would absolutely murder you. Yeah. With a

514
00:32:26.510 --> 00:32:29.670
knife. Because to be, quote unquote deadly with a knife

515
00:32:29.670 --> 00:32:32.870
requires no training. It requires no training.

516
00:32:33.350 --> 00:32:37.050
And so when I, whenever I see, you know, offensive, you know,

517
00:32:37.050 --> 00:32:39.890
or non defensive knife systems, I'm like,

518
00:32:40.610 --> 00:32:42.770
oh, what, what are you, what are you doing?

519
00:32:45.730 --> 00:32:49.530
One of the things that I really love this

520
00:32:49.530 --> 00:32:53.290
from, I got, I first got this from Jared. Bob, let's say you

521
00:32:53.290 --> 00:32:56.610
and I are about to get into a knife fight. Okay, you have a knife,

522
00:32:56.770 --> 00:33:00.250
I have a knife. We've committed, we're, we're in

523
00:33:00.250 --> 00:33:03.190
range. Okay, we're about to knife fight.

524
00:33:05.670 --> 00:33:09.270
How much would you pay for a 1 second head

525
00:33:09.270 --> 00:33:09.590
start?

526
00:33:12.870 --> 00:33:16.630
I'm asking you, we're about to fight. Knife fight to the death.

527
00:33:17.030 --> 00:33:20.470
How much would you pay for a one second? Everything.

528
00:33:21.110 --> 00:33:24.910
Everything. You would give absolutely everything. And

529
00:33:24.910 --> 00:33:28.470
in, and in that one second, really, you're, you're, you're gonna,

530
00:33:28.910 --> 00:33:32.710
you're gonna do what you need to do. Right? So you have that one

531
00:33:32.710 --> 00:33:36.070
second. What did you need? All the, all of those

532
00:33:36.070 --> 00:33:39.830
fancy techniques and. Yeah. Oh, that's a great way

533
00:33:39.830 --> 00:33:43.550
of putting it. Yeah. Right. And also I also

534
00:33:43.550 --> 00:33:47.310
use that to illustrate the fact that some of the things we do,

535
00:33:47.390 --> 00:33:49.550
you know, in quote unquote, knife fighting,

536
00:33:50.750 --> 00:33:54.390
buys us a half a second. Could buy us

537
00:33:54.390 --> 00:33:58.070
one one second. And so sometimes when people see some of the things

538
00:33:58.070 --> 00:34:00.870
that I do or that I teach, they're like, oh, yeah, but I would just

539
00:34:01.350 --> 00:34:05.190
do this. I'm like, yeah, this is not a 10.

540
00:34:05.190 --> 00:34:08.550
This is not a permanent control. This is not a

541
00:34:08.550 --> 00:34:12.350
submission. This I'm buying. Literally one second

542
00:34:12.350 --> 00:34:15.590
that we agreed on earlier. You would give everything

543
00:34:16.870 --> 00:34:20.550
you own, all of your money, all of your possessions, you would

544
00:34:20.799 --> 00:34:24.599
give to give this one second head start. And this is what

545
00:34:24.599 --> 00:34:28.319
we're training right now. And you've only paid a couple of hundred

546
00:34:28.319 --> 00:34:31.959
bucks, so good deal. Good

547
00:34:31.959 --> 00:34:35.479
deal indeed. So the training, we were

548
00:34:35.479 --> 00:34:39.239
talking before we started rolling. I remember when I first started watching you

549
00:34:39.239 --> 00:34:42.919
years ago, you were training your then young

550
00:34:42.919 --> 00:34:46.759
son who is now, you. Know, a full grown man. What's

551
00:34:46.759 --> 00:34:50.430
that? He's 18 years old, he's at work right now. Yeah.

552
00:34:50.430 --> 00:34:54.030
And a big guy. And he Moves impressively.

553
00:34:54.030 --> 00:34:57.630
Obviously you've taught him very well. But you also mentioned he's,

554
00:34:57.870 --> 00:35:01.710
he's a boxer. So what have

555
00:35:01.710 --> 00:35:05.430
you. What would you say you learned from teaching him from

556
00:35:05.430 --> 00:35:09.230
such a young age? About, about the essence

557
00:35:09.230 --> 00:35:12.350
of, of teaching. Fighting is

558
00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:16.520
you have to hide it. Like you have to hide

559
00:35:17.400 --> 00:35:20.360
lessons and you have to sort of Trojan horse

560
00:35:20.920 --> 00:35:24.640
skill development. Right. So the

561
00:35:24.640 --> 00:35:28.360
Trojan horse is fun. Like we're just have, we're just having fun.

562
00:35:28.360 --> 00:35:31.960
We're gonna play. So I never really forced

563
00:35:31.960 --> 00:35:35.760
my kids to train. I've always just had these cool games that I would

564
00:35:35.760 --> 00:35:39.500
play with them and then, you know, he f. He sort of

565
00:35:39.500 --> 00:35:43.100
fell in love with it. So that's, that's the secret,

566
00:35:43.180 --> 00:35:46.380
man. I never forced him to train.

567
00:35:47.100 --> 00:35:50.780
I think it's really important to get people used to,

568
00:35:50.780 --> 00:35:54.540
I mean, whether they're kids or not. But starting at a young age. I

569
00:35:54.540 --> 00:35:58.180
have, I have daughters and we've always rough housed. I've shown

570
00:35:58.180 --> 00:36:01.820
them some. Oh, that's important things here and there. Yeah, but

571
00:36:01.820 --> 00:36:05.410
yeah, that rough and tumble play. Getting used to just being touched

572
00:36:05.490 --> 00:36:09.130
or grabbed or being manipulated. I

573
00:36:09.130 --> 00:36:12.610
know I've taken time off from martial arts. I've gone back in

574
00:36:13.090 --> 00:36:16.690
and oftentimes I notice the two things that I

575
00:36:16.690 --> 00:36:20.210
lose in my time away. I don't really lose the skill,

576
00:36:21.010 --> 00:36:24.690
but I lose the, the, the wind,

577
00:36:24.850 --> 00:36:27.970
you know, my ability to keep up and that I have to gradually

578
00:36:28.370 --> 00:36:32.170
regain. But it's always a, a shock that first time back,

579
00:36:32.170 --> 00:36:35.970
being grabbed, thrown to the ground, being grabbed. Manipulated how? I don't

580
00:36:35.970 --> 00:36:39.690
want to be manipulated. And, and, and you know, I talked to my

581
00:36:39.690 --> 00:36:42.930
wife about this and she's, she's also done a lot of martial arts and she

582
00:36:42.930 --> 00:36:46.530
mentions the smell of another man or,

583
00:36:46.610 --> 00:36:50.410
or the breathing on you. You know, it's just like these

584
00:36:50.410 --> 00:36:54.050
are things you don't think of when you're just playing in the mirror. Yeah, no,

585
00:36:54.050 --> 00:36:57.840
absolutely. And I think, I think it's, it's,

586
00:36:57.840 --> 00:36:59.960
it's critical that, you know, for children

587
00:37:01.720 --> 00:37:05.480
especially these days where we live in, you know, peace and

588
00:37:05.560 --> 00:37:09.320
relative luxury as parents, we

589
00:37:09.320 --> 00:37:13.080
need to manufacture adversity for them. You know,

590
00:37:14.760 --> 00:37:18.200
we're lucky that, you know, we didn't grow up in a third world country with,

591
00:37:18.200 --> 00:37:22.040
you know, real adversity. Yeah, but those things are

592
00:37:22.040 --> 00:37:25.240
really important. There is no sense of accomplishment without struggle.

593
00:37:25.810 --> 00:37:29.250
And I think that's what rough housing and like rough play

594
00:37:30.210 --> 00:37:32.690
builds in, in kids.

595
00:37:33.810 --> 00:37:37.530
And then as adults, our brains are extraordinary

596
00:37:37.530 --> 00:37:41.250
machines. It doesn't really take long for us to go, oh yeah, that's Right.

597
00:37:41.410 --> 00:37:44.810
That's what that feels like. But if you hadn't

598
00:37:44.810 --> 00:37:48.570
trained in that, if you didn't play individual

599
00:37:48.570 --> 00:37:52.050
and team sports where you got to meet, really deal with

600
00:37:52.530 --> 00:37:55.930
victories, defeats, humiliations and

601
00:37:55.930 --> 00:37:59.570
disappointment, then I can really see why, when, when an

602
00:37:59.570 --> 00:38:03.010
adult takes up martial arts and they hadn't done any of those things

603
00:38:03.490 --> 00:38:07.089
very easy for, like, I know this guy's not going to stick around. It's too

604
00:38:07.089 --> 00:38:10.530
much for them. Yeah. So

605
00:38:11.810 --> 00:38:15.090
you're known for. Well, I don't know if you're known for. I know you for

606
00:38:15.490 --> 00:38:19.170
some hot takes. I mean, there was a period of time I feel like where

607
00:38:19.750 --> 00:38:23.430
you, you were doing a lot of

608
00:38:23.430 --> 00:38:27.110
myth busting and, or, or you still do it. I mean, you just recently

609
00:38:27.270 --> 00:38:30.150
did something about tough guy knife fighting,

610
00:38:30.710 --> 00:38:34.470
ropes. But yeah, you've been known for your hot takes. What,

611
00:38:34.630 --> 00:38:38.470
what? You know, kind of breaking down some of the, some of

612
00:38:38.470 --> 00:38:42.310
the things people might believe or get high on, you know, if you've trained long

613
00:38:42.310 --> 00:38:45.920
enough. Where does that come from? I've just,

614
00:38:46.160 --> 00:38:49.440
I mean, my mom will tell you. I've always just

615
00:38:49.440 --> 00:38:52.840
doubted things like Santa Claus really

616
00:38:52.840 --> 00:38:56.520
exist. Or. Are you, Are

617
00:38:56.520 --> 00:39:00.240
you sure that that rice is spoiled?

618
00:39:00.240 --> 00:39:03.880
Let me go, Let me go. Try it. I've always. And you know

619
00:39:03.880 --> 00:39:07.240
what? I mean, if we, if I can get, you know, deeper into it for

620
00:39:07.240 --> 00:39:10.800
a second. In the Philippines,

621
00:39:11.080 --> 00:39:14.520
I had a big family, both sides, all sides, huge.

622
00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:18.400
And everybody was in each other's business. Right. And you

623
00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:22.240
honor your elders and whatever your parents and your grandparents did

624
00:39:22.240 --> 00:39:25.880
were absolutely correct. You were not to question those things.

625
00:39:26.200 --> 00:39:29.880
And then at the age of nine, my family moved to

626
00:39:29.880 --> 00:39:33.640
Canada and I had no relatives here. And then when I

627
00:39:33.640 --> 00:39:37.410
was, When I was 19, my father passed away, so. So it was

628
00:39:37.410 --> 00:39:41.170
like, I really need to figure out where I

629
00:39:41.170 --> 00:39:44.930
am and how the world works because I

630
00:39:44.930 --> 00:39:48.130
don't have people telling me what's right,

631
00:39:49.810 --> 00:39:53.490
what to do. And so whenever I

632
00:39:53.490 --> 00:39:57.210
came across that, I always questioned them because I was never really

633
00:39:57.210 --> 00:40:00.890
allowed to do that, you know, as a kid, despite

634
00:40:00.890 --> 00:40:04.570
the fact that I was just like, just a super curious

635
00:40:04.570 --> 00:40:08.290
person, you know, I think just I

636
00:40:08.290 --> 00:40:12.010
really leaned on my, my creativity and my

637
00:40:12.010 --> 00:40:15.730
curiosity. Even today I was thinking about. Somebody

638
00:40:15.730 --> 00:40:19.210
wrote iron sharpens iron. And I'm like, wait a minute, everyone.

639
00:40:19.210 --> 00:40:23.050
Such iron sharpens iron. When I, you know, I looked it up, it's like, actually

640
00:40:23.050 --> 00:40:26.810
when you rub two pieces of iron together, they generate

641
00:40:26.810 --> 00:40:30.080
heat and cause deforestation. So it's not actually.

642
00:40:30.560 --> 00:40:34.240
That has always bothered me, man. Right. Iron doesn't sharpen

643
00:40:34.240 --> 00:40:37.960
iron. That's not right. And so it's like that, that

644
00:40:37.960 --> 00:40:41.440
kind of stuff, okay? And then, and then the

645
00:40:41.440 --> 00:40:43.920
fearlessness to express those things.

646
00:40:45.120 --> 00:40:48.920
Right? And, you know, you know, the comments get

647
00:40:48.920 --> 00:40:52.480
to me some days and sometimes I'll get snarky. But I remember,

648
00:40:52.960 --> 00:40:56.250
you know, during particular period in my life

649
00:40:56.650 --> 00:41:00.210
reading this quote from Bertrand Russell, this

650
00:41:00.210 --> 00:41:03.130
English philosopher, mathematician guy,

651
00:41:04.490 --> 00:41:08.290
and in this book he talked about how the fear of public

652
00:41:08.290 --> 00:41:11.290
opinion is the greatest barrier to true happiness.

653
00:41:12.250 --> 00:41:16.010
You know, and so if I really cared too much about what other people thought

654
00:41:16.010 --> 00:41:18.410
I was doing or how I was doing it,

655
00:41:19.770 --> 00:41:23.200
I'd be maybe miserable. And this caused a lot of

656
00:41:23.200 --> 00:41:26.440
friction in the Filipino martial arts community

657
00:41:26.920 --> 00:41:30.200
because here were all of these masters and grandmasters

658
00:41:31.480 --> 00:41:34.520
saying this and that, and I was like, wait a minute. No, that's not actually

659
00:41:34.600 --> 00:41:38.280
true. And then there was a whole lot of, you know,

660
00:41:38.280 --> 00:41:41.840
like, appeals to authority. Like, what does Paulo know, right?

661
00:41:41.840 --> 00:41:45.480
Like, he's only been doing this for five years or six years or 10

662
00:41:45.480 --> 00:41:49.170
years. This other guy's been doing it for 30, 40.

663
00:41:49.250 --> 00:41:52.730
And I'm just like, yeah, you could have been doing the wrong thing for 30

664
00:41:52.730 --> 00:41:56.210
years, bro. Like, hear me out. You know,

665
00:41:56.210 --> 00:41:59.490
logic is our ultimate metric for validity and credibility,

666
00:42:00.130 --> 00:42:03.610
not the fact that, you know, you belong to the bloodline of TD

667
00:42:03.610 --> 00:42:06.770
tertia. Like, sorry, you're an idiot

668
00:42:07.330 --> 00:42:11.130
and you're saying the wrong things and science doesn't back that

669
00:42:11.130 --> 00:42:13.900
up. I've gotten in a lot of trouble, Bob, because,

670
00:42:17.020 --> 00:42:20.580
you know, I'd post something and I'd read a comment from like one the

671
00:42:20.580 --> 00:42:23.860
Jesus, and the comment would be

672
00:42:23.860 --> 00:42:27.500
absolutely dumb. And I'd be like, yeah, you're dumb.

673
00:42:28.300 --> 00:42:31.980
And then I'm like, I later find out that's a grandmaster of

674
00:42:31.980 --> 00:42:35.420
this night. Like, sorry, man, I didn't know. I was just

675
00:42:35.420 --> 00:42:38.460
responding to the stupid comment he left on my post.

676
00:42:39.200 --> 00:42:42.680
I got in a lot of trouble for like, stuff like that, actually. Well, I

677
00:42:42.680 --> 00:42:46.480
mean, you can, you can. It's like a royal family

678
00:42:46.560 --> 00:42:50.000
anywhere. If a royal family lasts long enough,

679
00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:53.920
you're going to have a bunch of people that are inbred.

680
00:42:53.920 --> 00:42:57.760
Okay, so you can be intellectually inbred. Yes. You see that a

681
00:42:57.760 --> 00:43:01.280
lot in martial arts. And, and you can also get

682
00:43:01.520 --> 00:43:05.240
handed down. You can inherit things that just are not, are

683
00:43:05.240 --> 00:43:08.480
not right. And you know, what's that

684
00:43:09.200 --> 00:43:12.600
it? And, and some of that could just be mindset. We were talking about self

685
00:43:12.600 --> 00:43:16.160
perfection versus self preservation. You might be

686
00:43:16.240 --> 00:43:19.680
awesome at, at self perfection drills

687
00:43:20.639 --> 00:43:24.360
and, and not realize that that's what they are. You may have been taught

688
00:43:24.360 --> 00:43:27.360
that no this is what you do when you get into a fight.

689
00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:31.850
There's a lot of that. There's a lot of. I mean, whether it's

690
00:43:32.170 --> 00:43:34.650
by ignorance,

691
00:43:35.690 --> 00:43:39.010
stupidity, or malice, there's a lot of, you know,

692
00:43:39.010 --> 00:43:42.770
Filipino martial arts drills and sequences that

693
00:43:42.770 --> 00:43:45.930
are misrepresented as this is how fights go.

694
00:43:48.090 --> 00:43:51.690
Clearly it's not. And so I'm very

695
00:43:51.690 --> 00:43:55.530
careful with that. I love flow drills. I love flowery,

696
00:43:55.530 --> 00:43:59.180
sophisticated, elaborate stuff. But again, I, I would

697
00:43:59.180 --> 00:44:02.660
never, you know, give you a piece of candy and tell you it's medicine

698
00:44:02.900 --> 00:44:06.460
that's going to go and backfire against me. And not to

699
00:44:06.460 --> 00:44:10.060
mention all the people that, you know, believe in me and look after me are

700
00:44:10.060 --> 00:44:13.860
going to think this guy's become an idiot or he's

701
00:44:13.860 --> 00:44:17.540
sold out so. Well, those, those drills are,

702
00:44:18.260 --> 00:44:21.940
to me, very fun. They feel good. They're great

703
00:44:22.020 --> 00:44:25.740
exercise. It feels like dancing. They're, they're expressive. I

704
00:44:25.740 --> 00:44:29.470
mean, you know, there is a lot, there a lot to them. But when

705
00:44:29.470 --> 00:44:32.910
you look at a real video of, of a knife

706
00:44:32.910 --> 00:44:36.710
altercation, which, you know, the algorithm feeds me on a

707
00:44:36.710 --> 00:44:40.550
regular basis, yeah, they can be hard to watch,

708
00:44:40.550 --> 00:44:44.230
but they're. Yeah, they are important to watch, especially

709
00:44:44.230 --> 00:44:47.750
if you carry a knife for self defense or you train.

710
00:44:48.230 --> 00:44:51.710
What, what have you learned from watching those kind of

711
00:44:51.710 --> 00:44:53.990
videos and seeing how things go down?

712
00:44:56.130 --> 00:44:59.690
That really, it, it is. There are

713
00:44:59.690 --> 00:45:02.930
infinite variables. Like, I have,

714
00:45:03.570 --> 00:45:06.450
again, because of my world travel, I have

715
00:45:07.570 --> 00:45:11.410
cops and, you know, prison guards in

716
00:45:11.410 --> 00:45:15.010
Brazil that just constantly send me stuff. I have people

717
00:45:15.010 --> 00:45:17.490
showing me, like, cartel executions

718
00:45:18.530 --> 00:45:21.930
and ambushes and, you know,

719
00:45:21.930 --> 00:45:25.370
gang fights. And I've actually, like,

720
00:45:26.090 --> 00:45:29.890
I have to be very careful not to. To

721
00:45:29.890 --> 00:45:33.690
watch those. I feel like I've watched enough for a long enough period of time.

722
00:45:33.930 --> 00:45:35.930
I don't really need to see it. But,

723
00:45:37.450 --> 00:45:40.650
yeah, what I, what I learned from them is that there really

724
00:45:41.050 --> 00:45:44.850
is no formula for survival. You know,

725
00:45:44.850 --> 00:45:48.380
there is no. The humans are at the same time

726
00:45:48.620 --> 00:45:52.180
extremely resilient and fragile. You know, you,

727
00:45:52.180 --> 00:45:56.020
you see that? I mean, I saw one, like last year. It

728
00:45:56.020 --> 00:45:59.700
was a knife altercation. I believe it was in a mall

729
00:45:59.700 --> 00:46:03.420
in New Zealand. Big dude posturing up.

730
00:46:03.580 --> 00:46:07.180
Bang. One strike severed his carotid.

731
00:46:07.420 --> 00:46:10.780
And I literally counted almost to the second,

732
00:46:10.940 --> 00:46:14.710
like, I believe it was almost 17

733
00:46:15.030 --> 00:46:18.630
seconds before that big tough guy all of a sudden was

734
00:46:18.630 --> 00:46:22.230
completely unconscious in a pool of his own blood. One

735
00:46:22.230 --> 00:46:25.790
little thing, and then you see another one where it's like a

736
00:46:25.790 --> 00:46:29.590
constant. This guy's getting laced by this knife,

737
00:46:30.070 --> 00:46:33.790
and then he manages to get a hold of that knife, creates a

738
00:46:33.790 --> 00:46:37.510
moment in Time that, you know, allows him to

739
00:46:37.510 --> 00:46:41.210
escape or triggers something in the attacker that makes

740
00:46:41.210 --> 00:46:44.330
him go away. I've seen knife disarms where a lady just

741
00:46:44.650 --> 00:46:47.850
grabs the blade and pulls it away. You know,

742
00:46:48.810 --> 00:46:52.090
I've seen knife wielders getting

743
00:46:52.090 --> 00:46:55.890
disarmed and knocked out by a solid right cross. I've seen

744
00:46:55.890 --> 00:46:59.610
grappling and wrestling work. I've seen somebody

745
00:46:59.610 --> 00:47:03.250
get taped and right, so knife

746
00:47:03.250 --> 00:47:06.670
attacker, boom. The guy gets teeth. That was the end of it. Okay.

747
00:47:07.070 --> 00:47:10.750
Straight kick right into the solar plexus. All of a sudden it's like,

748
00:47:11.710 --> 00:47:15.470
yeah, this is not a great idea. So, you

749
00:47:15.470 --> 00:47:18.990
know, and you've seen third party interventions

750
00:47:20.350 --> 00:47:24.150
both defensively and, you know, offensively, where somebody's

751
00:47:24.150 --> 00:47:27.710
just completely fixated on defending this knife. Yeah. When

752
00:47:27.710 --> 00:47:31.510
somebody stabs them. What I've come to realize in what

753
00:47:31.510 --> 00:47:35.290
I express to my students is that people don't

754
00:47:35.290 --> 00:47:38.530
die from knife attacks because of technique failure.

755
00:47:39.250 --> 00:47:42.930
People die from knife attacks because of evaluation errors.

756
00:47:44.290 --> 00:47:48.130
What do you mean by that? You didn't know you were about to

757
00:47:48.130 --> 00:47:51.850
get stabbed. You made an evaluation error in thinking that it was one

758
00:47:51.850 --> 00:47:55.130
on one. You made an evaluation error as far as

759
00:47:55.130 --> 00:47:58.450
overestimating your skills and capabilities. You made an evaluation

760
00:47:58.530 --> 00:48:01.870
error as far as thinking there was an escape route. Made an

761
00:48:01.870 --> 00:48:05.630
evaluation error as far as really not knowing who the knife

762
00:48:05.630 --> 00:48:09.110
attacker was. There was a stabbing, I believe it was last year

763
00:48:10.150 --> 00:48:13.110
in Germany, where a law enforcement officer

764
00:48:16.230 --> 00:48:19.750
tackled somebody, realized he had the wrong guy,

765
00:48:20.230 --> 00:48:23.270
let him go. But it wasn't the wrong guy,

766
00:48:24.470 --> 00:48:28.080
that that was the right guy. It was an evaluation error that

767
00:48:29.840 --> 00:48:33.640
made him decide to disengage with the person you should have

768
00:48:33.640 --> 00:48:37.400
just continued to engage with. And the moment he disengaged from that person, then

769
00:48:37.400 --> 00:48:41.079
he got stabbed. He went after another guy, the wrong

770
00:48:41.079 --> 00:48:44.720
person. So it, it didn't. He didn't.

771
00:48:45.280 --> 00:48:48.960
I don't think that person died. But you know, people

772
00:48:48.960 --> 00:48:52.560
don't die in knife attacks because they didn't do an outside 2, 1, 1

773
00:48:52.560 --> 00:48:55.870
control. Right. Good enough. Or that they didn't do a

774
00:48:55.950 --> 00:48:59.550
palisut or a hubud good enough. Or, you

775
00:48:59.550 --> 00:49:03.350
know, people don't die from knife attacks because of technique failure. They die because

776
00:49:03.350 --> 00:49:07.150
of evaluation errors. They didn't read the totality of circumstances

777
00:49:08.190 --> 00:49:11.990
in such a way that, you know, affords them that favorable

778
00:49:11.990 --> 00:49:15.750
outcome. From your experience and from what you've seen, who

779
00:49:15.750 --> 00:49:19.150
you've trained and, and know, how do you feel about

780
00:49:19.740 --> 00:49:23.500
the average person carrying a knife for self defense, especially if they can't carry a

781
00:49:23.500 --> 00:49:23.820
gun?

782
00:49:29.340 --> 00:49:31.580
I doesn't really.

783
00:49:33.180 --> 00:49:36.700
Here's the thing. And maybe I'm going to get some hate for this. You know,

784
00:49:36.700 --> 00:49:40.380
people like to say the knife is meant to be felt, not

785
00:49:40.380 --> 00:49:44.220
seen, Right? Yes, I've heard that knife

786
00:49:44.220 --> 00:49:47.900
is meant to be felt, not seen. But then we're also taught

787
00:49:48.300 --> 00:49:51.900
what is the best defense against a knife? Run away.

788
00:49:53.340 --> 00:49:57.060
And so the presence of a knife triggers the right thing, which is get

789
00:49:57.060 --> 00:50:00.820
out of there. So the opposite must be true. So a

790
00:50:00.820 --> 00:50:04.220
lot of the value

791
00:50:04.460 --> 00:50:08.180
of having a knife for self defense is

792
00:50:08.180 --> 00:50:10.220
actually deterrence.

793
00:50:12.150 --> 00:50:15.430
If somebody is really that moment in time

794
00:50:15.430 --> 00:50:19.270
committed to causing me harm and I flip out my blade and I

795
00:50:19.270 --> 00:50:22.830
know how to use it, but just like a gun, you know, like you don't,

796
00:50:22.830 --> 00:50:26.470
you don't pull out your gun unless you're actually prepared to use it.

797
00:50:26.470 --> 00:50:29.030
And the same thing ought to be with a knife.

798
00:50:30.870 --> 00:50:34.670
Yeah. So as, as far as carrying a

799
00:50:34.670 --> 00:50:38.420
knife for self defense, you know, I'll be

800
00:50:38.420 --> 00:50:42.260
honest with you, I have never seen

801
00:50:42.900 --> 00:50:46.340
one, I've never seen a knife

802
00:50:46.580 --> 00:50:49.460
get used for a court

803
00:50:50.420 --> 00:50:54.140
justifiable self defense condition. I've

804
00:50:54.140 --> 00:50:57.380
read about them. I studied one or two.

805
00:50:57.780 --> 00:51:01.300
I know it does happen. You know,

806
00:51:01.460 --> 00:51:04.970
a duty knife as a tool or weapon

807
00:51:04.970 --> 00:51:08.570
retention makes logical sense to me. Those are,

808
00:51:09.370 --> 00:51:13.210
I think I may know, you know, by virtue of Jared,

809
00:51:13.690 --> 00:51:16.170
one or two cases where, where that happened.

810
00:51:19.370 --> 00:51:23.050
Yeah, I think, I think because it's such a, a valid

811
00:51:23.050 --> 00:51:26.810
force multiplier, we want to believe it's a good self defense tool.

812
00:51:26.810 --> 00:51:30.380
And on paper it is. I just haven't really seen

813
00:51:30.380 --> 00:51:34.180
it. What is tricom? I see it on your T shirt and

814
00:51:34.180 --> 00:51:38.020
I've seen it on a couple of your videos. You're an instructor in IT and.

815
00:51:38.020 --> 00:51:41.660
Yeah. So Tricom is. Its

816
00:51:41.660 --> 00:51:45.100
origin was for law

817
00:51:45.100 --> 00:51:48.740
enforcement, military executive protection and

818
00:51:48.740 --> 00:51:52.580
professional security personnel. It's a distillation

819
00:51:52.660 --> 00:51:53.700
of four pillars.

820
00:51:56.380 --> 00:52:00.140
It's a distillation of Muay Thai and boxing for

821
00:52:00.140 --> 00:52:03.980
striking, it's a distillation of German and

822
00:52:03.980 --> 00:52:07.180
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for grappling,

823
00:52:09.500 --> 00:52:11.260
Pikiti Tertia for

824
00:52:13.420 --> 00:52:17.020
weapons and I think maybe

825
00:52:19.340 --> 00:52:23.030
wrestling. Yeah, that's it. So yeah, so it's a

826
00:52:23.030 --> 00:52:26.390
distillation of those four

827
00:52:26.390 --> 00:52:29.550
pillars and it was created by Jared.

828
00:52:30.910 --> 00:52:34.190
And yeah, I. To this day,

829
00:52:34.590 --> 00:52:37.790
again, a lot of the stuff that's done under Tricom

830
00:52:38.510 --> 00:52:42.110
looks boring. But hey, it's designed for law

831
00:52:42.110 --> 00:52:45.470
enforcement and military. It's not meant to be

832
00:52:46.110 --> 00:52:49.810
sophisticated, you know. Right, right. It's really the

833
00:52:49.810 --> 00:52:53.650
congruency and the teaching methodologies within TRICOM that

834
00:52:53.650 --> 00:52:57.450
really I love. I'm. I'm curious, what

835
00:52:57.450 --> 00:53:00.290
is German jiu Jitsu. Yeah. So

836
00:53:01.410 --> 00:53:05.210
German Jiu Jitsu. I have a friend

837
00:53:05.210 --> 00:53:08.770
named Johannes Runninghoff who's like a world champion at it,

838
00:53:09.170 --> 00:53:13.010
basically. I think. I mean, schnitzels and pretzels

839
00:53:13.010 --> 00:53:16.350
are involved somehow. Oh, yes. Like regular. No, no, no.

840
00:53:16.990 --> 00:53:20.790
They have a. It's. It's a particular rule set, and I believe in

841
00:53:20.790 --> 00:53:23.950
one of the rounds, it's striking based.

842
00:53:24.270 --> 00:53:27.790
Oh, yeah, yeah. That's cool.

843
00:53:27.950 --> 00:53:31.390
Yeah. But German Jiu Jitsu is worth looking into. You'll find a lot of, like,

844
00:53:31.390 --> 00:53:35.150
parody videos. But German Jiu Jitsu is a real thing, man.

845
00:53:35.870 --> 00:53:39.510
Yeah. Well, okay, so this is the Knife Junkie podcast. We're almost

846
00:53:39.510 --> 00:53:43.230
at the end here, and I haven't even asked you about your knives

847
00:53:44.210 --> 00:53:47.610
or what you like to carry or what you like to train with. Do you

848
00:53:47.610 --> 00:53:51.450
have any knives close at hand that you like that you can tell

849
00:53:51.450 --> 00:53:54.370
us about? And what do you think makes a great knife?

850
00:53:55.490 --> 00:53:58.970
Yes, fantastic. And it's probably one of the most

851
00:53:58.970 --> 00:54:02.570
common questions that I get asked is,

852
00:54:02.570 --> 00:54:05.970
hey, what knife do you recommend? And

853
00:54:06.130 --> 00:54:09.810
my answer, people kind of get thrown off

854
00:54:09.810 --> 00:54:13.360
by my answer. Actually, here's some cool ones.

855
00:54:13.760 --> 00:54:17.560
Oh, yeah, this is a piccolo macro. Yeah, no, this

856
00:54:17.560 --> 00:54:21.280
one is by Bastinelli knives. Oh, Bastinelli. This

857
00:54:21.280 --> 00:54:25.040
one, like, look at it. Like, what is that? What is that? But

858
00:54:25.040 --> 00:54:28.320
it's the handle and the balance for me.

859
00:54:29.120 --> 00:54:32.760
So people always ask me, hey, what knife do you recommend? Here's my

860
00:54:32.760 --> 00:54:36.440
answer. So can you ask me, hey, Paulo, what knife? Hey, Paulo, what. What

861
00:54:36.440 --> 00:54:40.030
knife do you recommend? Okay.

862
00:54:40.990 --> 00:54:43.950
The knife I recommend is one that you think is really cool and that you're

863
00:54:43.950 --> 00:54:47.630
proud to own. It has. You have to

864
00:54:47.630 --> 00:54:51.430
love that knife because the more you love it, the more you're

865
00:54:51.430 --> 00:54:54.590
going to play with it and really understand

866
00:54:55.070 --> 00:54:58.790
the dimensions, characteristics, and properties of that knife. The more

867
00:54:58.790 --> 00:55:02.350
you play with it, the more familiarized you'll get with all those

868
00:55:02.350 --> 00:55:06.080
things, which will lead to you really being better

869
00:55:06.080 --> 00:55:09.720
equipped to utilize it.

870
00:55:09.800 --> 00:55:13.600
Right. For me, I'm. I'm not so

871
00:55:13.600 --> 00:55:17.240
much a knife junkie as I am a handle junkie.

872
00:55:18.600 --> 00:55:21.880
Yeah. Like, a good knife handle

873
00:55:22.360 --> 00:55:26.080
is everything. I think a lot of. A

874
00:55:26.080 --> 00:55:29.840
lot of people like the tactical look. Whenever I see a knife handle

875
00:55:29.840 --> 00:55:33.490
that's over texturized, I'm like, I

876
00:55:33.490 --> 00:55:37.330
think you're overcompensating for poor design. Like, you mean

877
00:55:37.330 --> 00:55:40.530
too many finger grooves and swoops? Yeah, it's like

878
00:55:40.930 --> 00:55:44.450
grooves and, like, texture so that it doesn't fall out of your hand.

879
00:55:44.530 --> 00:55:48.210
Oh, I see it. This, like, knife handle

880
00:55:48.530 --> 00:55:51.930
is smooth as butter, but I feel so

881
00:55:51.930 --> 00:55:55.730
confident in the grip that it, it could be soaked

882
00:55:55.730 --> 00:55:59.500
in blood. This knife's not leaving my hand. You know who

883
00:55:59.500 --> 00:56:03.300
made that knife? That's beautiful. Yeah, it's actually not very many

884
00:56:03.300 --> 00:56:05.180
people know him. His name is Jason South.

885
00:56:06.940 --> 00:56:10.700
Yeah, Jason south, he's a really smart dude.

886
00:56:10.700 --> 00:56:13.980
He's like a high level Brazilian jiu Jitsu guy, fought an mma,

887
00:56:14.860 --> 00:56:18.540
lives in Utah. Just like what you imagine like a knife

888
00:56:18.540 --> 00:56:22.380
maker is. Drives a truck and he's got a Harley. He's got everything. And

889
00:56:22.380 --> 00:56:25.720
then, you know, he started like doing knife work. But

890
00:56:25.960 --> 00:56:29.760
if you understand what being a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt

891
00:56:29.760 --> 00:56:33.400
and MMA fighter and a Harley rider is, you

892
00:56:33.400 --> 00:56:36.880
know that all of those things require absolute

893
00:56:36.880 --> 00:56:40.280
attention and seeking perfection. So when he, when he

894
00:56:40.280 --> 00:56:43.880
implemented those things to his knife work, I was like, you're going to, you're going

895
00:56:43.880 --> 00:56:47.480
to be great. And I'm glad I have one of your first ones because

896
00:56:47.560 --> 00:56:50.650
I'm not going to be able to afford one of these a couple of years.

897
00:56:50.970 --> 00:56:54.090
Jason South. It's beautiful. Yeah, definitely

898
00:56:54.490 --> 00:56:58.290
check that dude out. And he's so like transparent with his journey. Like,

899
00:56:58.290 --> 00:57:01.810
he'll work for hours and hours on a knife and make a

900
00:57:01.810 --> 00:57:05.610
mistake, chuck it, but he'll post about it. I'm like, that's,

901
00:57:06.170 --> 00:57:10.010
that's some, that's greatness. We're witnessing his

902
00:57:10.010 --> 00:57:13.850
evolution. And then Bastinelli Knives, like, that dude is

903
00:57:13.850 --> 00:57:17.290
just. Yeah, he's an artist, man. And not a lot of people know this,

904
00:57:18.180 --> 00:57:21.860
but he's super well trained. He is super well trained

905
00:57:22.180 --> 00:57:25.820
in so many different systems. He's got instructor certifications in a number of

906
00:57:25.820 --> 00:57:29.220
systems. And it's only now even his firearms work is

907
00:57:29.460 --> 00:57:33.140
incredible. And it's only now he's beginning to like, show that.

908
00:57:33.140 --> 00:57:36.980
But when you're an end user and you have the capability to design what end

909
00:57:36.980 --> 00:57:40.660
users use, you can really play a

910
00:57:40.660 --> 00:57:44.320
lot with art and practicality. I think nobody does

911
00:57:44.320 --> 00:57:47.800
that better right now than, you know, Bas Chen from Bassinelli Knives.

912
00:57:47.960 --> 00:57:51.320
Oh, yeah. And he's, I mean, he's got a beautiful design sense.

913
00:57:51.480 --> 00:57:55.200
He's a really cool guy. Super cool guy. And that, you

914
00:57:55.200 --> 00:57:58.680
know, that, that goes a long way. But you can just tell from his

915
00:57:59.640 --> 00:58:03.040
Instagram videos he'll have a fire hose and they'll cut it in half with a

916
00:58:03.040 --> 00:58:06.760
tiny little knife that he's produced. He obviously knows what he's

917
00:58:06.760 --> 00:58:09.840
doing. So I want to ask you one last question before I let you go.

918
00:58:09.840 --> 00:58:13.680
Is the Karambit the ultimate self defense name? Yes.

919
00:58:14.000 --> 00:58:15.760
Is it two karambits

920
00:58:19.200 --> 00:58:21.600
I. I have a love hate relationship with.

921
00:58:23.600 --> 00:58:27.320
I think. Yeah, you know what? I love karambits.

922
00:58:27.320 --> 00:58:31.000
I hate karambit people. That's like the

923
00:58:31.000 --> 00:58:34.400
Valley song. Exactly. If you're a karambit guy,

924
00:58:34.560 --> 00:58:38.090
we're probably not going to be friends, but,

925
00:58:38.090 --> 00:58:41.890
yeah, that's it. And also, I want to say, like, speaking about

926
00:58:41.890 --> 00:58:44.970
knife designs, man, I think there are a lot of,

927
00:58:45.610 --> 00:58:49.290
you know, knife designs out there that try to solve too

928
00:58:49.290 --> 00:58:53.010
many problems. So what about if I hold it in

929
00:58:53.010 --> 00:58:56.410
reverse grip? What about reverse grip, edge in. Let's solve that problem.

930
00:58:56.570 --> 00:59:00.210
Let's put a ring on it. Yeah. You know what? It needs

931
00:59:00.210 --> 00:59:03.890
to be serrated at some point and then double edged. But not the

932
00:59:03.890 --> 00:59:07.690
whole thing. Thing. Can we somehow make it into a fuller blade?

933
00:59:07.690 --> 00:59:11.450
And then. And it's just like you're trying to solve too many problems

934
00:59:11.450 --> 00:59:14.850
with your knife. You're creating a Frankenstein. Just keep it simple.

935
00:59:15.250 --> 00:59:18.970
Right? Like, that's, that's, that's what I want to say to

936
00:59:18.970 --> 00:59:22.450
knife designers and also knife people. Quit buying all these

937
00:59:22.450 --> 00:59:26.210
wacky knives, man. I'm just joking

938
00:59:26.850 --> 00:59:30.610
because I would be hypocritical, because what's the most important thing about

939
00:59:30.610 --> 00:59:34.390
choosing your knife is you got to love it and think it's cool. Yep. That's

940
00:59:34.390 --> 00:59:38.030
the number one thing. And, you know, beauty's in the eye of the

941
00:59:38.030 --> 00:59:41.470
beholder. No doubt about that. Who am I to judge?

942
00:59:42.270 --> 00:59:45.470
You got some cool ones back there, too. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

943
00:59:45.790 --> 00:59:49.630
Yes. How many years is this collection taken?

944
00:59:50.750 --> 00:59:54.430
I've been oldest one. Oh, my. My oldest one is

945
00:59:54.510 --> 00:59:58.350
a pocket knife. My grandfather has given, you know, gave me years and years.

946
00:59:58.350 --> 01:00:02.120
So I've been collecting knives my whole, you know, forever. Like,

947
01:00:02.120 --> 01:00:05.640
this is probably my oldest knife. But up here,

948
01:00:05.640 --> 01:00:09.080
I've got a lot of old Filipino bring backs

949
01:00:09.880 --> 01:00:13.160
that I got in. My brother has given me some.

950
01:00:13.560 --> 01:00:17.240
This, this Taliban was my dad's. Oh, yeah.

951
01:00:17.560 --> 01:00:21.360
And then I bought a bunch at flea markets in New

952
01:00:21.360 --> 01:00:24.440
York City before. Well, long a long time ago.

953
01:00:24.920 --> 01:00:28.710
And yeah, I just. Oh, cool, man. I love him. I keep

954
01:00:28.710 --> 01:00:32.350
going. Paulo, thank you so much for coming on the knife Junkie podcast. It's been

955
01:00:32.350 --> 01:00:36.110
really nice talking to you and, and meeting you. I feel like I've known

956
01:00:36.110 --> 01:00:39.470
you because I've watched so many videos of yours, but it's so great to actually

957
01:00:39.470 --> 01:00:42.950
meet you in person. I appreciate it. Let's actually get to know each other better

958
01:00:42.950 --> 01:00:46.550
then. I want to know more about you and what, what Filipino martial

959
01:00:46.550 --> 01:00:50.350
arts you've studied and what is currently trying to tug at

960
01:00:50.350 --> 01:00:54.080
your heartstrings. To get you better back into where you need to be. It's a

961
01:00:54.080 --> 01:00:57.600
deal. I'll give you a hint. It's a bowie knife. Okay. I love

962
01:00:57.600 --> 01:01:01.440
bowies. Awesome. All right, resort is out there.

963
01:01:01.600 --> 01:01:05.360
Thanks so much, Paulo. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. Adventure

964
01:01:05.360 --> 01:01:08.640
delivered your monthly subscription for handpicked outdoor

965
01:01:08.720 --> 01:01:12.560
survival EDC and other cool gear from our expert team

966
01:01:12.560 --> 01:01:15.680
of outdoor professionals. Thenif junkie.com

967
01:01:16.560 --> 01:01:20.340
battlebox There he goes. Ladies and gentlemen, Paulo Rubio.

968
01:01:20.340 --> 01:01:23.700
If you don't follow him on Instagram, do yourself a favor,

969
01:01:23.780 --> 01:01:27.620
seriously and find him on there. He is awesome

970
01:01:27.620 --> 01:01:31.380
and his videos are great. From his hot takes to his

971
01:01:31.380 --> 01:01:35.140
training videos, they're awesome. All right. For Jim

972
01:01:35.140 --> 01:01:38.740
working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DiMarcos saying until next time,

973
01:01:39.060 --> 01:01:42.420
don't take dull for an answer. Thanks for listening to the Knife

974
01:01:42.420 --> 01:01:46.260
Junkie podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review at. Review

975
01:01:46.560 --> 01:01:50.280
the podcast.com for show notes for today's episode, additional

976
01:01:50.280 --> 01:01:53.280
resources, and to listen to past episodes, Visit our website,

977
01:01:53.360 --> 01:01:57.160
thenifejunkie.com you can also watch our latest videos on

978
01:01:57.160 --> 01:02:00.080
YouTube at the knifejunkie.com YouTube.