The collapse of Atos (and what comes next)

Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Fighting Matters. I am Steve Kwan from BJJ Mental Models. I have Jesse Walker from Rough Hands BJJ on the line. Jesse, sir, how are you doing today? Speaker 2: I probably could be better, Steve, on a number of fronts, but, uh, here we are. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's likely going to be what we, we talk about here in this episode. Um, unfortunately, small crew here for a variety of reasons. One is because everyone else seems to have that terrible illness that's going around and is sick. Um, but also this episode came together pretty quickly in light of current events and I thought it was important that we at least put something out to talk about what's going on. Um, I guess to maybe kick this off, Jesse, probably the, the sensible thing to do is to start with just a quick primer on what's been happening in the Jiu-Jitsu community in case people have missed the news or aren't aware of it. I know that this is, um, still breaking news, still happening pretty quickly, so the details aren't out. But for those who missed the, the full backstory, um, Atos, the affiliation has appears to effectively be collapsing at this moment. And it's because of allegations that have been levied against the instructors and leadership at that gym, most notably Andre Galvao. Now, I, we kind of sat on this for a while because I didn't want to come on here and speculate and, you know, put words in anyone's mouth or talk about stuff we don't know. But just, I believe last night, one of the victims put out a statement. Um, so I'm just going to take a minute to read it here in case people didn't catch it. This is from Alexa Hurst, and to my knowledge, she's the first person who's come out and actually explained, um, her, her story here as a victim. So here's what she says. Moving forward, I am no longer associated with Atos Jiu-Jitsu. This is something I never imagined I would have to say, as I spent most of my childhood and teenage years dedicated to this team. But now, unfortunately, I have no choice but to step away and speak out. Within the past six months, I was made very uncomfortable on many occasions by Andre Galvao. He touched me inappropriately during training sessions. He repeatedly commented on my body and my appearance. During training sessions, he would take me away from the training partner I chose for myself, send my partner to train with someone else, and he would make me train with him. He made sexual moaning sounds in my ear while he was on top of me. And in another instance, when his head was very close to my head, he licked my ear. I reached out to Angelica Galvao, someone I have always looked up to as a second mother, and who has known me and mentored me since I was a kid. Not only did she do nothing about it, she told me not to say anything and told me that, if it's wrong, you have to at least act like it's right, and don't bite the hand that feeds you. She chose to ignore me, silence me, and protect her husband. But would you still feel this way if it was your daughter? Now she has chosen to discredit me and attempted to cover this up, which in my opinion makes her just as responsible. I grew up training at Atos, and it was Andre Galvao who promoted me to gray belt as a child. I'm beyond heartbroken. I once looked up to him, not only as my professor, but as a hero and a father figure, and to know that he would do this not only to me, but to multiple other people is beyond devastating. I never wanted this. I have nothing to gain by making this public. I'm choosing to leave behind all my friends and my family. This is my truth, and I know for a fact that I am not the only victim of this. To the other girls, I hope this gives you the courage to come out. As much as it hurts, I'm doing my part in making this sport a safer space. I refuse to carry shame that doesn't belong to me. Silence only protects abusers, and I refuse to be silent anymore. I have filed a report with local law enforcement. So, just to that was the statement again that that was made by Alexa Hurst, um, just the other day. This was not the first indication that something was going on at Atos, though. There has been big news, um, even a few days before this, mass exoduses from the gym. Um, but because no one had come out and made a an official statement who was directly involved, there was just a lot of speculation around what was happening. And of course, in times like that, I think the, the least responsible thing to do is to come onto a podcast and speculate. Um, but now that people are actually making statements, we can at least talk about those and feel good about it and feel responsible about it. Um, there has been again, a mass exodus of big name, uh, athletes and also affiliated gyms who have now distanced themselves and detached themselves from Atos. Um, we just saw, for example, that, um, you know, friend of BJJ Mental Models, Christian Woodmansee, just, um, de-affiliated with Atos. JT Torres from Essential BJJ, same thing. A lot of the gyms have, um, it's really a profound collapse because I have seen throughout my Jiu-Jitsu career, many times where allegations have been levied against an instructor. And unfortunately, whenever this happens, there are always a whole bunch of creeps and weirdos who crawl out of the woodwork and try to defend the accused and attack the victims. And it's really fucking gross. And it seems to happen every time. And unfortunately, a lot of the time, the accused basically managed to skate by with no more consequence than a bit of temporary embarrassment. I mean, you, you still see like Roberto Cyborg Abreu and Lloyd Irvin hanging out at major tournaments and events. They still get invites despite everything that they've been involved with. But this seems a little bit different, um, because it really seems like in a matter of less than a week, one of the biggest organizations in our sport, at least from a competition standpoint, appears to have effectively collapsed. Um, and it's, it's been honestly very heartening to see all of these people from all spectrums of life stand up and say, this is wrong. Um, and to actually take real action about it and do something about it, even at risk and consequence to themselves. I mean, Jesse, you and I have talked many times about how the biggest challenge we have in the Jiu-Jitsu space is all of these people will come out and they'll preach about morals and toughness and virtue. But as soon as someone in their circles gets busted for doing something gross, they don't live those virtues. They rally the, you know, the caravans and they defend this person no matter what and it's just, it's disgusting. This time, though, it seems like it might be different. Jesse, thoughts on this. I know that, you know, you and I have talked about this quite a bit. Of course, your partner Shelby, again, one of the people with this bug, otherwise we'd love to have her on the podcast too, um, has been very involved in hearing women's stories and she's been on the podcast before. And you just put out an amazing article on Substack about martial arts culture that did the rounds on Reddit and on social and got a lot of shout-outs. What are your thoughts on this situation? Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Um, I am heartbroken. I am just completely, you know, devastated about the, the state of our industry in a lot of ways. Uh, but, but to your point, I have also been heartened to see the swift, in my opinion, response from affiliates, from the people at the school itself, um, in addressing this and in trying to deal with it. Um, I think that's been really good. Um, I, you know, for me, I still don't feel like, you know, maybe, maybe this is the turning point. You know, maybe this one's finally the one, you know, that, you know, how many, how many of these did we have to and a lot of them are different, right? In the last year, it seems like we've had more, um, bad actors that were athletes within that maybe had some kind of a role model role in the school, but not not necessarily top leadership. Um, I think this has been certainly the biggest with the, you know, the person at the very top being the the accused. Um, but for me, I still don't feel like we as a community and as an industry have a plan to move forward and to start doing and being better. Um, you know, all these affiliations that left, you know, what's going to prevent them from hooking up with another scumbag, unbeknownst to them, right? But, you know, hooking up with somebody else that's going to be causing problems down the road or is currently causing problems and we're finding out about it, you know, a couple years down the road. I mean, I think about, you know, JT and and Keenan, uh, you know, they and, you know, a they're not the only ones, but, you know, they left the whole Lloyd Irvin situation and ran right into the arms of the Andre Galvao situation. Now that, you know, there was a lot of years separating that, but, um, we as a, as a community, um, have not done a good job policing, um, vetting, uh, and being good consumers, uh, about who we, who we participate in the community with. Speaker 1: Yeah, I, I think that's incredibly well said. And I mean, you brought up some examples of people who have, you know, they already had to escape a toxic instructor before, went to Atos thinking that they were fleeing the situation, only to find themselves embroiled in it again. Um, and that might seem like really bad luck and a lot of people might even cast, you know, aspersions on these people and think, well, how is it possible that you could have this happen multiple times? What does that say about you? I, I got to say, and you can, I know, Jesse, that you can relate to this. I think maybe younger people don't understand this because their involvement in the sport hasn't been that long. But as someone who's been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 20 years, there are way more of these predators in the sport than anyone should have any right being comfortable with. And if you train for any extended period of time, you will cross paths with these people over and over and over again. Um, in our worst of 2025 episode, you were, you brought this up specifically. You know, I live up in the Vancouver area in British Columbia, Canada. I legitimately don't know, I can't, I don't think I can count how many Jiu-Jitsu instructors up here and martial arts instructors up here have had that, you know, allegations against them. It has happened over and over and over again. Um, I remember my conscience was first really shocked when I found out that a gym that I had, I had left a while back, the instructor there had been embroiled in, um, rape and physical assault allegations, and he's still there training, living his best life years later. That was the first time that that happened, you know, in my circle and I was shocked, and that happened again and again and again and again and again. And this is Vancouver, not, not a huge city in the grand scheme of things, not exactly a Jiu-Jitsu hotbed. You don't think of Vancouver in the, in the same sense that you think of, you know, Miami or, or California or something like that where you have a huge Jiu-Jitsu presence. Vancouver has a, has a good amount of gyms, but it's a very small area, but yet again and again and again this happens. Um, Adam Zujak at Zuma, we did an episode on this and the accusations against him. Um, there was a guy, I think his name was Dan Golkar, who was a Jiu-Jitsu MMA instructor here. Um, the RCMP was investigating him for, um, inappropriate relations with a minor, so he fled the country. Um, there was another guy up here who was, uh, he was actually teaching after he had been jailed for, I can't remember what, I think it might have been extortion or something, and he had also been tried and had to stand in front of the Supreme Court for sex trafficking among other things. This goes over and over and over, and then there's like the softer allegations where I've kind of heard things through the grapevine about someone, but I don't have enough information that I can even confirm it. Over and over and over again this happens. And I don't have the data to prove or show this, but look, I know and you know that this is a fact of life for most women in all walks of life. You know, you could be working at an accounting firm and your, there's a good chance you're going to get subjected to this stuff. So I can't prove it, but it really does feel like Jiu-Jitsu and the martial arts are uniquely susceptible to this kind of abuse from instructors, generally male. It seems to be kind of a, a trend that is so common in Jiu-Jitsu that I think it's almost a, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's almost kind of like a foundational fingerprint of the sport. If you were to ask me what defines Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you know, we can talk about the mechanics of the martial art and the history of it, but I think a big part of it that we have to acknowledge is, we have a huge problem in the sport with abuse of power, um, and instructors who do really, really awful shit. What are your thoughts, Jesse? I mean, tell me a little bit about your story here and what you've seen from your experience living in a very different part of the world for me. Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, as you were saying that, you are absolutely right in that this is, this is a struggle that women have to deal with in every aspect of their everyday life. Um, I don't feel as compelled to demonstrate or show data about the Jiu-Jitsu community when we present ourselves as someone who should actually be the exact fucking opposite of their everyday life, right? We are marketing to these people that this is a place that they can come and be safe and get safe. And, you know, we are, we are luring them into the fucking snake pit. Um, it is atrocious. Um, you know, we are supposed to be helping, uh, these women and, you know, everybody, frankly, you know, learn to defend themselves, help them empower themselves, you know, all of these things that we purport to do, and more often than not, it seems, we're doing quite the opposite. We're bringing them into hostile environments where they're harassed, um, where they're preyed upon, they're abused, they're raped. Um, it's, it's unforgivable. And, and the fact that we continue to turn a blind eye to it and don't do whatever it is that's necessary to fix the sport. Um, and I, I think you really put your finger on it. Um, it, it really is a, it is a power issue. You know, martial arts has always had this weird kind of hierarchical power structure, uh, that is very easy to abuse. Um, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I think, is probably the most popular, at least fastest growing martial art in, in the world right now. Um, so it is, it is a wonderful target for, you know, predators to settle down in and, and start victimizing people. Um, and we are, we are allowing it. And I, you know, I, I do think that there is something there, there are probably some unique aspects to the culture of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, maybe because of its origins, um, that maybe exacerbate some of the issues. Um, but again, I think those we need to talk about, we need to deal with them, and we need to start moving away from them. Um, because as, as cultural touchstones and something that we build into the foundation of, of this, this wonderful art and sport, um, it, it's not working for us. Speaker 1: I want to ask about your response to this because like I said earlier, after this happened, you, I, I saw you wrote an article and put it on Substack titled, You're Picking Your Jiu-Jitsu Gym Wrong. I suggest that for people who haven't already checked that out, go check that out. I'll do my best to put a link in the show notes to the article so that people can easily find it. Um, but I, I turfed it up on Reddit when I saw it and I see it's been, you know, viewed tens of thousands of times at that this point. And I think it was extremely well said. I'm going to put you in the awkward position of narrating your words right now. So I'm going to read the intro to your article here and then you can kind of tell me what your, your thesis is. So you wrote, you wrote, another week, another report of serious misconduct at a world-famous BJJ Academy. Sexual assault allegations, abuse of power, patterns of predatory behavior that went unchecked for years, and somehow people act surprised every time. But here is what shouldn't surprise anyone. These reports keep coming from some of the biggest, most prestigious, most competition successful gyms in the world. Schools with famous affiliations, schools run by legendary competitors, schools that everyone told you were the best. So maybe we need to reconsider what best actually means. Um, and I love that, that stance because I think that over the past 10, 15 years, there has been this attempt to, um, paint competition success and athletic dominance as like a primary virtue in Jiu-Jitsu. Whereas, you know, all we care about is, is someone good in competition. Nothing else matters. I think that is a fundamental error in terms of how we operate within the sport and also how we pitch and sell Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to the broader community. This idea that Jiu-Jitsu is divorced of ethics and all we care about is your ability to beat up someone else. I think that represents the worst of the martial arts. But I'm, I'm going to turn this over to you because again, you dumped a lot of thoughts into that article. Expand on your feelings here about Jiu-Jitsu and picking gyms, how we pick them, how we, how we decide what the best means and whether our moral compass is off track and pointing in the wrong direction. Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, you know, for me, it was, I mean, I, I think everything you just said is, is spot on. I, I really feel like we don't, we haven't provided people, consumers, a, a good way of, of comparing and contrasting, uh, Jiu-Jitsu gyms, you know, certainly in areas where there are choices. Um, and a lot of, you know, how many articles are you going to be able to find on the internet when you're like, how do I pick a Jiu-Jitsu school? And it's all about like, lineage and competition record and this and that and the other thing. Um, when in reality, I don't know exactly the statistic, but, you know, it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard Rob Bernacki say is like, 95% of the people that practice the sport don't actually ever play the sport. Um, and, and that in my experience as a coach, you know, I've been coaching almost 20 years, that's absolutely true. Um, we, most people don't come to Jiu-Jitsu to be a competitor, uh, to be a, a, a world champion, to be anything but like, I just want an activity to do, to have a community or to get in shape or to learn to defend myself. So when those are the metrics that we're telling people to use, uh, to, to select a gym, we're really doing them a disservice when those things that they're using to select the gym aren't really important for their, their needs anyway. Um, so, you know, part of the reason I wrote that article is maybe to help people, uh, pick some better criteria, some better metrics that they can use to start thinking about, and, you know, it was obviously, you know, through the lens of, of dealing with, you know, the, the, the sexual abuse scandals and everything else, but how to be smarter consumers about really picking schools that are going to be a better fit for them and, and their families. Speaker 1: I remember one time, um, I did a podcast appearance on someone else's show. I think it was the Elbows Tight guys. And they asked me, you know, what would you recommend to someone who's looking to find a Jiu-Jitsu gym to train at? And I think they expected me to talk about like quality training or ecological dynamics or something. And I said, look, the first thing you should do, Google the instructor's name alongside the words rape and or criminal and make sure nothing comes up. That is the single most important thing that you can do when you're, um, trying to find a new Jiu-Jitsu gym because most of these instructors, and you see this with Andre Galvao right now, they all follow the same playbook when they get accused of stuff. And a big part of it is, I mean, it's DARVO, right? What, what does DARVO stand for? Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. I think that's it. It's the typical abuser's playbook. You see the exact same thing with Donald Trump. We saw the same thing with Roberto Cyborg Abreu. We saw the same thing with Ricardo De La Riva. All of these people who get accused of heinous things, not only do they deny it, but then they go on the attack and they try to paint the victim in a negative light. And the end result of that is a culture of intimidation that encourages people to stay silent in the face of really awful stuff. And when people stay silent, over time, it enables coaches to bury that bad news. Right? I mean, if one person tells their story and puts it in a Google review and they talk about what really happened, it's relatively easy then for that, that instructor who is accused to try to suppress that message and to just overwhelm it with other content to try to bury it so no one finds it again. So you've got to dig that up. I mean, if you want to, I, I really think everyone, regardless of how much you love your instructor or how confident you are right now in their moral character, Google your instructor with a few of those keywords afterwards because you might be pretty surprised at what comes up. Um, there are a shocking amount of instructors who continue to teach and have financial and business success despite the fact that they have been accused of heinous, heinous things. I mean, there's always the thing, you know, dudes especially will always say, well, how come she didn't press criminal charges? How come he didn't get convicted? You're innocent until proven guilty. And I say, motherfuckers, you don't understand how the real world works. Um, you know, if you are just some student at a gym, just a, just a person who's training, and you get assaulted by a world-famous Jiu-Jitsu instructor who probably has significantly deeper pockets than you and significantly greater community influence, your ability to actually get justice there, especially in a sexual assault case, is tremendously limited. And so for all of these dudes who immediately jump to the defense of, um, of the accused and say like, well, you got to, you know, act like this is CSI, provide some, provide some hard evidence. Where's the video footage? Where's the DNA? If, if that's your first instinct to react that way when accusations come up about your favorite instructor, shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. Like, you, you don't understand how hard it is for women to get justice anywhere, but especially in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And if you train in this sport long enough, you will see this happen to your female friends and then you will start to understand. So, trust me on this, as someone who's been around the block a few times. There is a reason why these accusations often don't result in a criminal conviction. It is incredibly hard to do. And although that might mean the person was not found guilty in court, that does not mean that they're completely absolved of everything. It doesn't mean they're guaranteed innocent. It just means there's not enough information to put them behind bars. We as people in this sport have to have a higher standard of moral conduct for our coaches than saying things like, well, he wasn't convicted and put behind bars, so he's clearly completely innocent. No, fuck that. If you work at an affiliation or trained at an affiliation and all of the other black belts leave and publicly condemn this person, if you are the last person standing defending the accused, there is something seriously wrong with you from a moral standpoint. Speaker 2: Yeah, and I, let me, let me punctuate that because I mean, I, I think it's incredibly important. You know, I had, I had some conversations today with people, uh, online, in person. And, you know, you would hear things like, uh, the, the term like, nothing's been proven yet or, you know, this, that or the other thing. Um, it's probably not going to be, right? Again, we're not getting out the black lights and checking out spatter, spatter patterns and it that's just not real. But when, when you are seeing false accusations do occur. They are exceedingly rare, but they do happen. But when you are talking about seeing things like mass exodus out of a school and, you know, potentially dozens of victims coming forward with claims, um, we do, like you said, I think we have a moral duty, uh, just relying on the legal system alone is not sufficient. Um, and does not, we're not bound to that, uh, as a community, as an industry. Um, we are, we are and should take corrective measures when it is clear that even though we may not know exactly what happened, that there were serious and terrible infractions, we need to take corrective measures as a community. Pure and simple. Um, and I, I understand the tendency to, to feel like we need proof. Um, you know, we, we, we are the US especially is very legalistic that way. Um, but also let's not pretend like we're living in a fucking world in 2026 where everybody's operating on actual truth and evidence. Uh, you know, fucking take a look around. Uh, so let, let's be real about what's happening here and let's figure out how to fix it. Speaker 1: Evidence and proof are required if you want to punish someone from a criminal standpoint. If you want the government to step in and take away their rights and put them in jail. Understandably, when the government gets involved, the government is going to err on the side of innocence until proven guilty. But you and I as civilians don't need to have that level of rigorous standard when it comes to who we choose to associate with. Right? I mean, if, if this were your kid, right? If it was your kid who released this statement and said, Andre Galvao sexually abused me at his gym. Would you still be sitting here and saying, oh, well, you know, where's the evidence? Where's the proof? False accusations happen all the time. Of course you wouldn't. You would pull them out and you would go fucking nuclear on this guy. So, I find it tremendously hypocritical that people rally around folks like Galvao and demand excessive levels of proof and attack the victim and defend Galvao. When you and I both know, if the victim were someone in their family, someone they cared about, they would go nuclear on this dude. They're holding a, a different standard here. And part of it is because, I don't, I mean, I don't want to psychoanalyze people. I don't know if it's denial. I don't know if it's, you know, no one wants to admit that their hero turned out to be a monster. I don't know why people do what they do, but it's a common pattern where you will see people rally around and defend their instructor when you and I know they would never do that if it was someone else and it was their own family that was impacted. But in this case, because it is self-serving to them to defend this person, they will do so, even if it means they wind up having to publicly defend the most heinous of shit. Um, and that's been very frustrating to me to, to see that in the community. I feel like, you know, over the past 10, 20 years, I've talked about this so many times. We've had so many conversations about this, especially on BJJ Mental Models. And I, I really hate having to have this conversation because I'm just some fucking idiot. I'm just some guy. And I don't want to have to keep talking about this stuff. I don't feel like I'm particularly qualified or informed on it. But I also feel like there is a moral obligation to that anyone who has any kind of platform where people listen to them has to speak up about this type of stuff, or else what the fuck are we training for? Right? What's the point of a martial art if you're not using it to defend people and to protect people and to live our best versions of ourselves and to uplift people? That's the whole point of a martial art. It's not to rack up medals and take steroids and talk shit on the internet, right? The whole point of martial arts is self-empowerment. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Well, and let me interject on something you said. Um, number one, you said something about nobody wanting to admit that their heroes are monsters. Um, none of us need to be your heroes. So let's start there. Andre Galvao never needed to be your hero. Steve and I don't need to be anybody's hero. We're all just like you said, we're just fucking normal dudes. Um, we, we happen to have a small platform and like you said, I think we do have that responsibility. Um, but one of the big problems here is that we let these insane hierarchies get created and we give normal human beings superhuman powers, uh, over our person, our safety, our self-worth, uh, and it needs to end. I don't know why we have this tendency to do that as human beings. Um, but, uh, myself, Andre Galvao, anybody else is no more deserving of power over you, um, than you are of power over yourself. Um, and we need to quit giving it to each other, uh, for it to be abused. I mean, I think that's one of the big problems. Speaker 1: Do you think that, and I mean, look, this is, this is wild rampant speculation on my part. Again, no proof, but it's something I've been thinking about lately. Do you think there is a parallel and a line that we can draw between certain aspects of Jiu-Jitsu culture to the kind of people who do these offenses? Because, because like, between a lot of these people who get accused, it really looks like a lot of them kind of follow the same sort of pattern where they're probably abusing tons of steroids. They're wrapping themselves in the cross and religious messaging. They're constantly talking about virtue and, um, you know, morals on the internet. And then they're the ones who get busted for doing something heinous, right? I mean, Andre's not the only guy who does this. Um, I think of course of Cyborg, of Wagner Rocha. I saw a picture the other day of Wagner doing some badass pose while he's got like crosses and religious messages on his rash guard. And I'm thinking, man, that's, that's high irony coming from a guy who's been accused of the kind of stuff that you've been accused of. Is that just my bias or do you think there's a pattern here? Because it really does feel to me like a lot of these abuses come from places where people are kind of wrapping themselves up in this moral fabric. And I wonder if there's a parallel there. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm trying to, I'm trying to put all that into a bucket. I, I do certainly think that there is an aspect. If we, we, you know, I could probably just go forever about the religiosity piece of it, uh, but certainly when you talked about the steroids and that other stuff, um, I, I do think that there is an aspect, certainly when people get to that level of power, the rules don't apply to them. I can take steroids. I can, I can cheat in competition. I don't, I can act inappropriately in front of my students. I can abuse my students. I can this, I can that. Um, because the rules don't apply to me, right? And we see that acted out, uh, you know, on the world stage as well. Uh, you know, we're seeing a lot of it right now with the Epstein files and everything else. The rules just don't apply to me. Um, so I definitely think there, there's a piece of that. And then, you know, for the religiosity piece, I, I absolutely think that it's really easy to drape yourself in that as a, as a barrier to critique. Um, again, we see that, you know, the world at large as well. Uh, you know, people purporting to be this, this virtuous, uh, ethical, moral being, uh, when in fact they're, you know, just monsters with the shield in front of them. Um, so yes, it's, it's, it's Speaker 1: Literally a shield in the case of this affiliation. Speaker 2: Yes, right. So, uh, yeah, I mean, there's, there's absolutely a pattern here. And, you know, the, the playbook is, is well written and it's well played. Uh, and it should be obvious to us now, but for some reason, we keep fucking falling for it. Speaker 1: I mean, you brought up the parallels to the non-Jiu-Jitsu world in, in the media right now. And that's, that's a common thread that was really striking to me when this happened. It was very bizarre seeing all of this come out about Galvao right in the face of this latest shocking Epstein drop. And I think the common thread which you talked about, which you talked about is not just the lack of accountability, but the brazenness with which these people will lie and, and do these heinous things. I mean, the accusation that came out against Galvao specifically, the one that we know of, and again, the accuser here has said that she believes there are many more women who were also victimized and probably will come out. Um, but this, this one case, right? Like if what she says is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then she's saying that one of the most famous accomplished grapplers and coaches in the history of the sport took one of his female students, who was not even old enough to buy alcohol at the time, and in fact, still is not, and in class, in the gym, pinned her down and moaned into her ear and like nibbled or licked on her ear, all like, that is an unbelievable abuse of power. Like to, to do something like that, to, to take, to take that kind of risk when you have so much to lose, just goes to show how invincible these people feel. And you see the same thing with Epstein, right? I mean, take a look at, I mean, with this latest drop, we're now all of these conversations from Elon and Howard Lutnick, or people call him Howard Nutlick, which I think is a much better name. You know, they all come out now about all of the, all of these backstories. These fly in the face of blatant lies that these people had, had made up just a while ago. I mean, Howard Nutlick did that interview where he basically fabricated this giant story about how he and his wife were so appalled by Epstein and they'd never have anything to do with him. And then you find out from this drop that many years after Epstein was busted for what he did, they were coordinating dates with him on his fucking pedo island or wherever the hell they met up. I, I'm not even sure where they met up, but there's emails going back and forth of them coordinating, you know, play dates or whatever the fuck these weirdos do. And then you've got Elon Musk, who was proudly posting about how he had declined Epstein's invite and would never go to the island. And now it turns out that Elon, as we all expected, is this weird fucking pathetic incel loser who is basically begging Epstein to come and hang out at his island. Just the, the depravity of these people, not just that they would do these horrible things, but they would, that they would carry this feeling of invincibility, like the consequences don't apply to them. That should be what really shocks the conscience. And I, you know, we all knew that this was happening, but the more we see it, the more shocking it is. And the, the most rage-inducing thing is that they seem to be right, right? Like at this point, where have the consequences been? They have completely gotten away with it, at least to this point, unless regular folks get up and fight like crazy to hold these people accountable. We, we cannot just rely, and this has been clearly established. We cannot just rely on the fact that the courts and the government and the people in power will do the right thing by themselves. There needs to be tremendous public pressure to force their hand. And I am really glad to see that happening with Atos here. I, I am really encouraged at least up front that we're seeing this. What I worry about now, though, is that like we saw with the Me Too movement, that there might be some far-right incel reverse whiplash effect, where a year from now, those forces push back even harder and try to bury all of the victims here. Because we saw that with Me Too, right? That looked like it was going to really change a lot of things and some people were held accountable. But then these fucking weirdo incels organized and elected Trump into government and now we're living in this weird fascist pedophile hellscape, right? And I worry, you know, if, if we don't keep the pressure up here, I worry that the same thing will happen in Jiu-Jitsu. And in 2027 or 2028, all of the people like us will be getting shouted down by this giant army of goons who are supportive of Andre and all of these folks. I worry that that could be the case. And the only way that we can prevent that is by not letting that happen. You know, we, we let a bunch of really shitty people demonize things like inclusion and DEI and Me Too. We let them do that and we were all bullied into silence. And we can't allow that to happen this time. We have to aggressively root out and pursue and go after these people and not just assume that justice is going to happen on its own. I think that really anyone in the sport who has something resembling a platform has to speak up, right? If you, and a platform doesn't mean you're like some sort of influencer, but even if you've got students or people who look up to you, they're looking at you for cues that they're in the right place and that they're doing the right thing by training with you. And so you speaking up, as you're seeing with a lot of instructors, is so fundamentally important to cleaning up our sport and holding people accountable, especially if you're just some regular white dude, right? I mean, a lot of the time, people in that demographic think, well, I'm nobody, no one cares about me. The fact that you are kind of like the target demo for MAGA and stuff, if you're willing to speak up in the face of this and stand up to your Jiu-Jitsu heroes, that makes a huge difference. And I'm so glad to see that people are doing it this time. I just hope they don't burn out and get bored of it. I hope that we're able to sustain this forever if need be. Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to put it in perspective, at least, you know, this, this keeps keeps it crystallized for me because we see it so fucking often is, we're so far away from getting it right that we still have organizations like the IBJJF wishing some of these fucking goons happy birthday on Facebook, right? Uh, not only will we not police ourselves, but we're still celebrating these pricks. Um, and until we hold some of those organizations accountable as well, I don't know that this is ever going to change. We, we really have to, just like Steve said, we have got to fucking keep our foot on the gas and apply pressure everywhere. Speaker 1: I think, um, especially once the rest of the Fighting Matter guys come back from the brink of death or whatever they're dealing with right now, I really think that we should talk about taking real action because I do think it's important to speak up, but it's easy to get sucked into this trap of just talking and on the internet and not taking action in the real world. And I think that we need to discuss this. I think there needs to be talks about some sort of organized action within the Jiu-Jitsu space to hold these people accountable. Like it's great that in the case of Atos, this has shocked the conscience so much that people seem to be doing something about it, but look, I, I really don't want to put this guy on blast because of the level of respect I have for him, but, I mean, we got to talk about BJJ Fanatics and Bernardo Faria, a guy who has this reputation of being this loving, caring, good person, but his platform is hosting, you know, instructionals from all of these people. He's profiting off of Andre Galvao, Jake Shields. I mean, we could, God, we could run down and build a list of people who have been accused of Nazism, violent crimes, sex offenses, and they're still making money off of BJJ Fanatics. I can't imagine that from folks like Jake Shields and Josh Saunders and all of these folks, I can't imagine they're actually selling that much content on BJJ Fanatics. Why can't this just be taken down? Like, what would be the real world harm to Bernardo taking down this content, right? Do we really need to have a bunch of instructionals from Cyborg on BJJ Fanatics? Is that really going to move the needle financially? And, I mean, God, if I, I would love to see them distance themselves from Andre Galvao in this case too. That is obviously a much bigger ask because I'm sure that, you know, being a much bigger name, there's real money to be made from the people who are partnering with Andre Galvao. But this is, this is not a question about money. This should be a question about conscience. Well, and it's blood money at this point. Yes. Yeah. That's the thing. And I, I find that just so frustrating that, you know, I know that these platforms will, will take the impartiality argument. They'll say, we're just a platform, we don't judge, we just host things, we want to be an open marketplace. But again, where's the Wiltse brothers instructional on BJJ Fanatics? As soon as BJJ Fanatics was targeted, they took action. And so I know they can do it here. And I really think everyone should vote with their dollars, right? And, and not just do it, but tell everyone they're doing it. Tell, tell everyone they're doing it publicly. I would love to see more people post and say like, look, Bernardo, BJJ Fanatics, we love you. We really do. We respect what you've done for the sport. But this is a bit too far and we've got to take some action here. We can't be platforming these people. We can't be funding them. We can't be letting them make money in the face of all of this. We can't be enabling them doing these terrible things. If you own BJJ Fanatics, there's probably a switch you can flip that would cut off their income in a matter of seconds. Why are we allowing this, right? How can we balance this like nice guy reputation with, I'm also platforming some of the worst people in the sport? That really bothers me. Speaker 2: This is definitely going to get us on BJJ Docs again. Speaker 1: Probably. But I mean, I think that we do need to talk about organized action, right? I mean, it, it's, it's one thing for folks to sit here and talk about this stuff, but, I mean, God, Scott Galloway has been talking about targeted economic strikes and how, I mean, look, we clearly, at least in the face of politics, we're dealing with an administration that doesn't care about feelings. They're going to do what they can get away with until they are stopped. And the main lever that people like you and I have is economics, right? If we can cut off their funding, they die. Um, we saw this in the case of what happened with Jimmy Kimmel and how quickly Disney capitulated because they lost about 7 million subscribers between Disney Plus and Hulu almost overnight. That's the kind of message that these organizations respond to. And I would love to see people distance themselves from anything that financially supports the worst offenders in the sport, right? I think that at some point we have to take action. And, and God, I know there's people out there who say things like, well, I'm just here to produce the best Jiu-Jitsu and my athletes need this content. No, they don't. They absolutely don't. There is no shortage of quality Jiu-Jitsu content out there. If you think you need to buy instructionals from people that you don't like, like Gordon Ryan or Andre Galvao or whatever, if you think you need to buy those and that you can't get good information elsewhere, you're completely wrong. There are tons of people who are producing equivalent if not better content. Better. Probably cheaper and not embroiled in all of these things that are going to make it, that are going to make it harder for you to sleep at night, right? I mean, you want names? I can give names, right? Like there's a lot of people who have Patreons that you can sign up for for like $10, $20 a month. And I know for a fact that content is amazing. Um, and I, I mean, I'm not saying that we need to and they deserve our support. They, they do, right? Like why are we throwing hundreds of dollars at instructionals for people that we know to be doing this terrible stuff? When there are folks like Joseph Chen, who have a Patreon, charging a few bucks a month and providing awesome information. Um, there, there's a lot of folks like that. And there are even folks who, who verbally and, and physically say and do the right thing, right? I mean, a lot of our athletes that, that we love, we love them just because they don't get involved in this stuff and we've never heard anything bad about them. But then there are also people who take aggressive action to do the right thing and they're willing to speak up. Uh, why don't we support those people, right? Because I, I'm telling you, you will get just as good information from regular folks as you will from the latest Andre Galvao instructional. You don't need his information to be a great grappler. There are people who have won world championships following platforms and sites like BJJ Mental Models. And I can tell everyone, I'll be the first to tell you, I am the most like mid, non-competitive, loser black belt there is. I just do this for fun. But there are world champions who follow our program and have success with this. You don't need to be following Andre Galvao and paying him money to get good results. There are so many other options. Just cancel that shit. Like, and, and tell the people that you're doing this. Explain why you're canceling these products that you can't in good moral conscience support them anymore. I've done this for Amazon and other services as well. Why can't we do this within the Jiu-Jitsu space? Because you and I, you know, if we all cancel our Amazon memberships, between the two of us, Jesse, we're not going to be able to probably move the needle with Jeff Bezos. It's going to take a much bigger coordinated action. And I do think that needs to happen. But within Jiu-Jitsu, we can do this. If a few dozen, maybe a hundred of us, all, you know, refuse to support these people anymore and we publicly inform these companies and say, we're not supporting you and here's why. That will move the needle, right? That absolutely will move the needle if we do that. If the IBJJF gets a hundred emails tomorrow of people pulling out from tournaments, canceling their affiliation fees and publicly condemning them for supporting Cyborg and Galvao and all of these people, they will change course overnight because this sport is just not that big. A small handful of people could really make a difference if they mobilize. And again, maybe it's up to us to do that. I mean, maybe Jesse, you and I and the, the rest of the old bastards here should sit down and figure out what that would look like. Cause someone has to do that. Someone has to actually take a coordinated action against these people. It's I think we can get behind that. Yeah, I think we can get behind that. We can spearhead it. Fuck it, we'll do it. We'll do it. Stay tuned. We'll come up with something. And if, I mean, if anyone has any ideas or suggestions and they want to help, they want to be a part of this, do again, um, drop us comments, shoot us a message on Instagram or Substack or wherever and let us know because I, I'm really passionate about doing this stuff right now. I think that it's great that we're speaking up. That's the first and easiest way to make a difference. But I think that targeted economic action is probably the smartest thing that we could do as a, as a sport to clean this up. Speaker 2: Yeah, completely agree. Speaker 1: Well, Jesse, if people want to follow you or find you, where can they do that? Speaker 2: Yep, uh, you can find me at roughhandsbjj.com or roughhandsbjj on all the socials. Um, and, uh, if you're in Louisville, Kentucky, whether you're passing through, you live here, come train with us. Speaker 1: Amazing, sir. And all of my stuff is at BJJmentalmodels.com. Thanks as always to everyone who listens and supports us here. I mean, it putting this kind of content out is always a little bit scary because we are sort of touching the hot stove here, right? A lot of these are, these are topics that can be considered controversial sometimes to people and there's often pushback when you speak up about these things. So, um, to the people who do send us nice comments and kind of cheer us on, I appreciate it because it is hard to do this stuff. But, uh, thank you as always to Jesse, to everyone else on the crew and everyone who listens. We really do appreciate you. Keep fighting the good fight, guys. Take care. Speaker 2: We'll see you next time.