Comedian (101:22)
Yeah. Well, the first time. The first time I went on stage, I was more scared than I had ever been fighting, which I thought was crazy. So I started fighting before I could really be scared. I started fighting when I was 15. That was like the first fights that I had. So you were scared, but you didn't. You were so stupid. You didn't know what could happen to you. And I was really lucky that I had a really good squad school. The school that I trained at was super technical. That was the guy who I trained under, this guy, J. Hun Kim. He trained with General Chae Young Yi, who was like the founder of Taekwondo. And so it was like, the technique was perfect. Like, you had to have perfect technique. Like, if you did anything sloppy or anything, like, kind of they would correct you. Like, you had to have it down. And they emphasize a lot of heavy bag training, which a lot of schools didn't even have a heavy bag, which I thought was crazy. Like, we would go and do these. These things where we'd have. Our team would go and train with another team. Like, we would travel in New York and there was like another. An instructor that was friends with our instructor, and they would bring the competition teams to compete against each other. And we'd fight in a gym. The gym. So it was like these unsanctioned fights that you would have. And, you know, you'd find people that were roughly your weight and these guys didn't have heavy bags and that you'd go to their gym. They have like a, you know, strip mall type gym. And there was. In their dojang, they didn't have a heavy bag. I was like, this is crazy. You guys don't train with heavy bags. And I didn't make any sense. To me, they had kicking paddles and a bunch of different things, but they didn't have anything to improve thrusting techniques and stabbing techniques, which, like, you need resist distance, you need a heavy bag. And so our instructor was adamant about like, if you can't hurt somebody badly with one kick, you're, you're doing the wrong thing. These techniques were originally designed for war, right? And you're supposed to be able to have devastating power in everything you throw. That got lost a little when Taekwondo got into the Olympics or when was on the path to getting into the Olympics, Olympics, and it became more of like point scoring. They would try to hit you and run away, hit you and run away. It was a lot of like fast moving techniques that didn't have the same sort of devastating impact. So where I got real lucky in where I trained is that they really emphasized power. And so the school that I was at was very feared because a lot of the other black belts were like, the guys that I trained with were really dangerous. Like they were, they were known for when they would go to a 20 tournament, people would get scared because if these guys hit you, you're in trouble. Like these were dangerous cats, you know, that were like just wheel kicking people into another dimension, turning side kicking people and crushing rib cages. It was a lot of that. And so I got real lucky that that's the gym that I started in that I started with like, you know, you imitate your atmosphere, right? The first guy that I ever saw hit a bag was this guy, John Lee Lee. And when I saw him, he was the national Taekwondo light heavyweight champion and he was competing, he was training to compete in the world. So he was about to go to, I guess it was the World cup and he was in full training mode. Like the moment I walked into the gym and I watched him fold this heavy bag. And as I was going up the stairs, I could hear the sound of it. This is, I was just visiting this gym. I was leaving a baseball game at Fenway park and me and my friend just walked up the stairs and it's just because we didn't want to wait for the tea. It took so long for so many people leaving the baseball game. There's going to be big lines, it was going to be packed. Let's just walk up here and see what's going on. And as we were walking up the stairs, I heard this sound that I'll never forget. It was like whomp, whomp kaching. And the kaching was the chains of the heavy bag. Because this 120 pound bag was flying through the air. When this guy would hit, hit it and the, the chains are going and rattling, then it would come down he would set it up again and he was 7, 10ft from me. Like there was this like little ledge we could sit and watch people. And they had set it up like that. So the heavy bag was set up right where people would walk in. Because it was a great recruitment tool because you would really get to see what people are capable of. And the moment I saw that, I was like, I want to know how to do that. That, like, how do you do that? Like he was doing spinning back kicks over and over again, turning sidekicks, just folding this bag and that. But like, that's crazy that a person could gen. I didn't think a person could generate that kind of force. And I trained with him a lot and I learned from him a lot. He taught me a lot. And he was an interesting guy too, because he was like a real street guy. Like he'd been in and out of jail, wound up having a substance problem, but it was this funny dude from Chelsea, which is like a real hard, dangerous neighborhood in Boston. And just a killer, man, a killer, Just a killer. And when he would, when he would compete, people get so nervous. It was crazy to watch because I started to see. I started training with him and going to tournaments with him when I was a white belt. So I was a white belt and he was a black belt national champion. And when John Lee would show up, you see people whispering like, John Lee's here. He would see guys take these deep breaths. They knew he was in their weight class like, cuz they knew this guy wasn't trying to win on points. He was trying to break your body. He was trying to just crush your organs. He was trying to separate your brain from the inside of its skull. He was trying to hurt you. And he did it to a lot of, of people. I watched him knock out a lot of people, A lot of people. It was wild to see. So like, you know, but it was, to me, it was just like this new thing that was going to change who I am, you know, I went for the first time in my life I felt like I wasn't a loser because I was like really good at this thing that was scary, you know, And I just threw myself into it. It was my whole life, life. I didn't do anything. I didn't party, I didn't go to, didn't. I had very few friends outside of high school. You know, I was, it was, my whole thing was just training. I'd get home from school, get something to eat, immediately leave, hop on the train, head into town every day.
