← The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tim Ferriss Show
#814: Chatri Sityodtong, CEO of ONE Championship — From Dirt Poor to Top-10 Sports-Media Franchise, The $100M Breakfast, Dominating Social Media (30B+ Views/Year), Key Strategic Decisions, and the Moneyball of Fight Matchmaking
02:38:39
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- [00:00]
Tim Ferriss
All right, all right, all right. Good day, ladies and germs, boys and girls. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show, where it is my job, that's me, Tim. To deconstruct world class performers in every interview. To tease out the lessons learned, habits, routines, frameworks, anything at all. Favorite books, who knows that you can apply to your own lives. My interview today was so much fun. I just wrapped it. It was with none other than Chatri Sidyathang. Now, if you don't know that name, you will, and that is because Chatri is the founder and CEO of One. You might know it as One Championship and if you don't know it, you're about to know it. It is one of the top 10 biggest sports media properties in the world in terms of viewership and engagement, right alongside the NBA, Formula One, Champions League and Premier League. With global broadcast reach to 195 countries, it is the largest sports media property in Asia. One is a celebration of Asia's great cultural treasure, martial arts, and the associated values that you might think of when you think of Asian martial arts. Integrity, humility, honor, respect, courage, discipline and compassion. So how does that translate? What it means is they produce one of the best spectator sport experiences I have ever seen in my life. I first came across it on Amazon Prime. Thank you to my friend Doug for making that recommendation. And it blew my mind for a million reasons that we'll get into in this conversation with Chatri, but it features not just one type of martial art, but many different disciplines. So the best of submission fighting, the best of Muay Thai, the best of mma. And they approach it very, very differently from what you may have seen before. And his story is incredible. From being dirt poor to ultimately cutting his teeth in various ways in business and ending up where he is. We talk about key decisions, key negotiat, lessons learned from failures, how he actually pulled himself up by his bootstraps and was able to attract and recruit the help of people internally, externally, athletes, innovations across the board. It was a super, super fascinating conversation. I took a lot of notes. I think there are a lot of takeaways and you can find everything, one championship@1fc.com or one championship across all social. And I believe, and this is a big statement, that they have one of the best social media teams in the world in any industry, sector, discipline, you name it, they are spectacularly good. And we'll get into how they used a very, very focused approach to become very large in a relatively short period of time. And with that, I will let us get to the conversation. Right after a few words from the people who make this podcast possible, we will dive in with Chatri Sidya Tong. Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to continuous improvement. You can see it in their coffee. Try Glitch Coffee. You can see it in Jira Dreams of Sushi. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus on improving one thing, one product over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1. I met the founder way back in the day randomly in a coffee shop in Argentina. It must have been between 20052007 and ever since then. One product they are now unveiling AG1 next gen. The same single scoop once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health. I love it for its great taste. I just mix it with cold water. It's easy. And the way it helps fill nutritional gaps in my diet, it's my nutritional insurance. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. NSF conducts annual audits of AG1's manufacturing facilities, reviews ingredients for toxicology, and ensures AG1's label claims are accurate. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome Kit, and five of the upgraded AG1 Travel Packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1.com Tim as many of you know, for the last few years I've been sleeping on a midnight luxe mattress from today's sponsor, Helix Sleep. I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs and feedback from friends has always been fantast. Kind of over the top to be honest. I mean, they frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. What kind of mattress is it? What do you do? What's the magic juju? It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom which I sometimes sleep in, and I picked it for its very soft but supportive feel. To help with some lower back pain that I've had, the Sunset Elite delivers exceptional comfort while putting the right support in the right spots. It is made with five tailored foam layers, including a base layer with full perimeter zoned lumbar support right where I need it, and middle layers with premium foam and microcoils that create a soft contouring feel. Which also means if I feel like I want to sleep on my side, I can do that without worrying about other aches and pains I might create. And with a luxurious pillow top for pressure relief, I look forward to nestling into that bed every night that I use it. The best part, of course, is that it helps me wake up feeling fully rested with a back that feels supple instead of stiff. That is the name of the game for me these days. Helix offers a 100 night sleep trial, fast free shipping and a 15 year warranty. So check it all out and you, my dear listeners, can get between 20 and 27% off plus two free pillows on all mattress orders. So go to helixsleep.com Tim to check it out. That's helixsleep.com Tim with Helix, better sleep starts now. Optimal. Minimal. At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question now?
- [06:34]
Chatri Sityodtong
It is inappropriate time.
- [06:36]
Tim Ferriss
What if I did the opposite?
- [06:37]
Chatri Sityodtong
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. Ferris Show.
- [06:49]
Tim Ferriss
Chatri, nice to see you. Thanks for making the time.
- [06:52]
Chatri Sityodtong
Thanks a lot Tim. Glad to be on your show and.
- [06:56]
Tim Ferriss
Greetings from the other side of the planet. Where are you right now? Where do we find you?
- [07:00]
Chatri Sityodtong
I just landed back in Singapore where I live, but I'm always on a plane every week in different parts of the world.
- [07:07]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, you seem like a man of intensity and endurance, which we're going to get into in some measure. But let's begin at the very beginning. What is your birth name and why is your current name seemingly different?
- [07:21]
Chatri Sityodtong
My birth name is Chatri Trisharpissel. On my passport, it's what my parents gave me. But I use my martial arts name which my grandmaster Kuruyotong Senanan gave me. So in Thailand, when you train and compete for a given gym, the master of that gym will eventually bestow upon you your last name. And it's usually the fight name is the last name is the name of the gym. It's just a historical custom in Thailand. So my first name is Chatri, which is my birth name and my last name in the martial arts world is Sitjotong, which my grandmaster gave to me Actually, he gave me the fight name of Yao Chatri Sidyotong, which means extraordinary warrior. And Sityothong is student of Yat Tong. Long winded thing of just I identify with maybe in part because of my complicated history with my own father that I feel so much closer to my grandmaster and use the name that he, you know, bestowed upon me. And it's just one of these things that's kind of funny, but evolved, but it's, you know, but if you go ask any old school fighter from Thailand all over the world, they're still using their fight name. It's just part of the culture of Thailand.
- [08:36]
Tim Ferriss
The last name bestowing is something I imagine a lot of listeners will not be familiar with. But I remember ages and ages and ages ago training at the Fairtex gym in San Francisco and then actually going to Banpli in Thailand to visit the Fairtex camp. Yeah.
- [08:57]
Chatri Sityodtong
Oh my God. You are hardcore old school martial arts, man. That's amazing. That's amazing. So you must have known Bunkert Fairtex.
- [09:04]
Tim Ferriss
In San Francisco and yeah, and Fairtex, Jung Sanan and a number of people I remember at the time who are outside of Muay Thai were like, wow, what do they feed people in that family? And I was like, that's not really how it works, but exactly.
- [09:19]
Chatri Sityodtong
So the two biggest gyms, I guess in history in longevity in Thailand have been Fairtex and Situ Tong. And so, yeah, exactly. Bunkurt, Fairtex, Jung San, Fairtex. You know, everyone adopts the last name or rather takes a gym name as your last name. As you well know now. I didn't realize you also did a lot of Muay Thai. Amazing.
- [09:37]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah. That was my favorite striking art. Not that I was exceptionally good, but in part because coming from wrestling, I had effectively zero head movement. So I tried boxing. It was very, very hard for me to get accustomed to head movement. And in Muay Thai certainly there is head movement, but it's just a different species of head movement. And I was like, I think this is going to fit my programming a little bit better than other options. So we'll come back to that. But could you paint a picture for us of your childhood and then also just describe what happened, if the Internet research serves me correctly, in 1997 or so?
- [10:19]
Chatri Sityodtong
I grew up in a well to do family in Thailand, so I was a bit an anomaly in that sense. Muay Thai, as you probably know, Tim, is a very poor person sport in Thailand yet when I was about nine years old, my father Took me to Lumpini Stadium which is a mecca of Muay Thai and I just got bit by the bug and of course you know Muay Thai on TV seven days a week in Thailand and I got the bug early and I started training. And then one day I, you know, asked my father, can you take me to Sit you Tong camp which was the number one gym at the time in the country. And that's where I began my training under Kuyeo tongue and you know, six hour days and it was, it's incredible training. But later in life, in the early 90s, my father started to. His business started to falter and then eventually went bankrupt and he abandoned the family.
- [11:06]
Tim Ferriss
What was the business? What type of business was he involved in?
- [11:09]
Chatri Sityodtong
He was in real estate. He was in real estate.
- [11:11]
Tim Ferriss
And what caused that collapse?
- [11:13]
Chatri Sityodtong
I think real estate goes through cycles and my father was caught on the wrong end of a cycle with a lot of debt. You know, he just over invested and I never actually spoke to him about it. That's what I kind of surmise, put the pieces together to this day because one minute my father was doing well and the next minute the bank repossessed the car, the house and he had literally nothing. And then when he abandoned the family it was a really rough time and I had a lot of anger with and I didn't see my father for I don't know how many decades. But I eventually reached out to him maybe around 10 years ago, I went to go find him. I found him in Pattaya which is where I spent a lot of my childhood in Thailand. And it was dirt, dirt poor. And of course how you remember your father when you were younger versus he was frail and old and wasn't what I had imagined my reunion to be. I reached out to him because I carried so much anger with me for so long and I really wanted to know why after my father went bankrupt, why would he just throw his family away and just abandoned, you know, basically disappear. I remember, I don't know if I've ever said this story before but I remember that night when I saw him and we went to go out, eat dinner and it was weird because he's so old and so frail. And I asked dad, you know, this first time, I really asked him, you know, why would you just disappear? He was a man of very few words and in his own way explained that as a Thai man growing up he felt so ashamed of himself that he could not no longer provide food for his family. And it's just the way society Works. Maybe it's Asian society, maybe it's Thai society, but in many ways, it was just easier for him to just, I guess, disappear rather than face every day looking at his kids and his wife. You know, I try to be empathetic about it, you know, and I thought we had time to rekindle the relationship. But unfortunately, shortly after, a couple years later, you know, he ended up. Crazy story. He ended up getting a stroke about a year after that. And it's the worst kind of thing. I didn't even know this kind of thing existed. But he became completely paralyzed, except his brain was 100 working and his eyes were working so he could hear you, he could see you, but I mean, it's like, I guess you're locked in your body. And that was very rough for me to see. And about a year and a half after that, he passed away.
- [13:37]
Tim Ferriss
Wow. I mean, what timing. And I don't know if this is the right way to put it, but what luck that you reached out to him a year or a year and a half prior to have that conversation. Did having the conversation offer the catharsis that you had hoped for or contribute in a way that has really stuck with you?
- [14:00]
Chatri Sityodtong
It took my anger away, or maybe my anger dissolved over time. It was bittersweet because I thought that I had this kind of like, I'm going to go find my father and we can talk it out and then we're going to be closer than ever and there's going to be a real relationship. So in that regard, it didn't happen that way. And another crazy thing is, you know, at his funeral in Thailand, in Buddha funeral, you cremate the body. I was, you know, obviously giving the eulogy to all family members. And, you know, again, I didn't have a lot of emotional attachment to my father because I hadn't seen him in so many years and very, very distant. I had memories of him, but we weren't close by any means. I ended up not being able to keep it together. I was bawling. So there's a lot of weird things, you know, like in some weird way, I finally understood my father. So life came full circle. But in a weird way, you know, I wish I had looked for him earlier when I had managed to bring the family out of poverty, you know, I could have easily, if I wasn't so angry, if I wasn't so stuck to my pride, you know, maybe I would have had had that quote unquote fairy tale ending. One thing I learned about life, man, Tim is Like, you never know what is good luck or bad luck until many years later when you discover what the lessons were of that experience. Right? So anyways, I added eulogy. You know, we crammed his body, I guess maybe a typical Asian household or Thai household. My father was larger than life. And that's how I remembered him as a kid is he was the one who introduced me Muay Thai. He took me to Lumpini Stadium. He took me to Suju Tong camp. And when someone gets cremated, it's the. I've gone to funerals, of course. You know, when I lived in America, where you bury people other than my grandmaster, watching someone get cremated, and the next day you actually come back and pick up the ashes and the bones. They asked me, what do you want to do with the bones and the ashes? And I thought, you know, I'm going to go to the beach where my father brought me. I took a boat out, and then we sprinkled his ashes everywhere. But that's also kind of crazy because that's how you realize, you know, everything we have in life at the end of the day, my father, like this great man, you know, when I was a kid, just ashes in the ocean and that's what all of us are going to end up. And I remember going back that night on the plane and thinking to myself, all the things that my father did wrong in life and all the anger had him. I started to write down the things that I was grateful for. He gave me my name, which, crazy enough, ended up being symbolic of what my life's work would end up being, right? He's the guy who introduced me to Muay Thai. He's the guy who took me to the beach for the first time. So many things. So I prefer to remember my father for the good, all the good that he did, than focus on the big mistakes he did in life. And I think that's something I learned from him just through his life, going through his life and watching it from afar and being a part of it. And the end, the things that he did wrong. I don't want to live my life that way. But at the same time, I wouldn't be here running the world's largest martial arts organization if it weren't for him taking me to Muay Thai.
- [17:02]
Tim Ferriss
Thank you for that story. I have a complicated relationship with my father, to put it mildly. And that's actually very, very helpful for me to hear. So once we're done recording, I'm going to go back and listen to it again because I think it Underscores perhaps some things that I need to do, frankly. So I really appreciate that a lot. And from here I want to hop to your mom. We might come back to your dad. Certainly I recall very distinctly. Well, let me back up and give you a little bit of context on how I got my first exposure to one. So I have a private group chat on my phone, as a lot of people do now. My friends created this and they named it Fight Porn. That's the name of the chat. And the reason it's called Fight Porn is that I'd say my four or five closest friends are all former competitive fighters. And effectively this chat is video clips, discussions about fights, not really betting on fights, but kind of putting your reputation on the line to try to predict who's going to win, who's going to lose, what round, et cetera. And one of my friends, Doug, I'll give him credit, said, have you guys seen one? And I was like, what the hell is one? And he pointed me to one on Amazon Prime. And I thought to myself, how on earth have I not seen this before? And I have to say, it brought back so many memories of prime time. And hopefully you take this as a compliment. Pride K1 all of these incredibly powerful memories, these nostalgic experiences that I had and blew my mind. Completely blew my mind. So I'm flashing forward a little bit, but that's a way of setting the table for a video that I watched because I was tracking Takeru. I'm going to say it with the kind of American pronunciation, Segawa. And at one point I saw a video of you giving him a pep talk. It wasn't really a pep talk. It was more like a rallying support. Not really a lecture, but a pat on the back, a smack in the ass. And it wasn't in English. What language was that that you were speaking?
- [19:27]
Chatri Sityodtong
So I was speaking Japanese. My mother's Japanese, my father's Thai. And that was after he had gotten knocked out by Rotank. So that was the biggest fight of his career. That was March of this year in Tokyo, Saitama Super Arena. I mean, Tim, you are a fight expert for sure. For you to go back, I mean, it was literally where pride in K1, literally Saitama Superina, the legendary stadium in Tokyo. And Takeru versus Rotang, arguably the two greatest pound for pound strikers on the planet. And Takeru got knocked out in the first round, I think in 80 seconds. And I went backstage to congratulate the winners and. Etc and I went to go see Takeru and You know, he was heartbroken and crying. Yeah. I went backstage and I gave him a pep talk. I said, hey, you know, these things happen. It doesn't take away from your legacy, your body of work. You know, split millisecond here, split millisecond there, and the outcome could have been very different. And I said, the only thing you can do is go back and review what you did wrong and level up. That's one thing. I think amongst the fight committee, amongst our fighters, have a very close bond with our fighters because I'm a lifelong martial artist, Muay Thai, all of my life, and jujitsu black belt. So when I gave these one on one talks or actually before every big event, I go backstage and have all the fighters who are going to compete that night and give them an inspirational talk about what this night means and how they can carve their legacy and unleash their greatness upon the world. So I feel very deeply when I see something like that. And I was crying. He was, man, broken. Broken. His team happened to be there filming it. It wasn't our team. They filmed and they put it out and it ended up going viral in Japan. I don't think people knew that I could speak Japanese. The Japanese fans know that I'm half Japanese, but I don't really use it that much.
- [21:23]
Tim Ferriss
This is a way to segue to your mom because. And I have to say, I have never been to Saitama Super Arena. Someday I hope to actually check it out. I was, though, in Japan about two weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. And I was at the All Japan Judo Championships at the Budokan, which is awesome. Which was fantastic. You've never seen so many cauliflower airs in your entire life. It was just fantastic. So it was also my first time setting foot in the Budokan, which was legendary, historic.
- [21:55]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:55]
Tim Ferriss
Just absolutely iconic location in a beautiful, beautiful spot where, by the way, it's impossible to get any rideshare because you're right next to the Imperial Palace. So I realized that ended up having some nice walks as a result. But coming back to your mom, it seems like your mom and your dad informed your life in very different ways. And your dad may have been, in some respects, like Hamen Kyoshi. Right? Like, he was like the opposite teacher. You're like, I don't want to make some of those same mistakes. And then your mom was.
- [22:28]
Chatri Sityodtong
I forgot you spent a year in Japan or something like that. Right?
- [22:30]
Tim Ferriss
Or exchange program.
- [22:31]
Chatri Sityodtong
That's why your accent is. I was like, what the I was like, oh, man. Tim, Tim. It's like we're like kindred spirits here, you know? Yeah, yeah. You majored in East Asian Studies. That's what it.
- [22:41]
Tim Ferriss
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of overlap. And so it's like you came to the US to study. I went to.
- [22:49]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes, yes, exactly.
- [22:51]
Tim Ferriss
And actually I'm still very close with my host family. Went out to have dinner with them from when I was 15. So it's been 30 plus years. I'm still close with them, so I want to paint a picture for folks and then you can fill in some of the gaps. But it seems like at some point your mom moved in with you in your dorm room.
- [23:14]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes.
- [23:15]
Tim Ferriss
Could you explain what some of that journey looked like and how that happened?
- [23:21]
Chatri Sityodtong
When my father abandoned us and went bankrupt. It was my mom's crazy idea. It's like, Chatri, you're the oldest son, given that you live in Japan. The hierarchical nature of family structures in Asian society. And now that my father was gone, it was my duty to take care of my younger brother, my mother, and. And their wellbeing. But we had, you know, literally no money, and I had one suitcase, and my mom had borrowed money from all the people who were remaining to be our friends, because obviously when something scandalous like that happens, and at the time in Thailand and no one get divorced, no one ever went bankrupt, you know, it's just these things didn't happen, but scrounged around about $1,000 and, you know, one suitcase, all of my life's belongings. And I had to figure it out once I got to America. And it was her idea for me to, you know, apply and eventually immigrate. That was a game plan. It got so bad for her that she ended up moving in with me in my dorm. Obviously, the school administration didn't know. In college, actually, in grad school, it was a tiny little single dorm room in Morris hall at Harvard. You know, I slept on the floor and she slept on the bed, and it was just barely enough room. And, you know, you had one of these key cars where you open the dormitory door from the outside, and in between classes, you know, just time it with her and give her my key card and, you know, living on $4 a day. And of course, you know, I didn't tell everybody this. Of course my closest friends knew, but I was not proud of my family background or the fact that I was poor. You know, actually, I was deeply ashamed and I didn't want to talk about it. And so, you know, when people went to parties or people went out to dinners, I didn't do any of that stuff because I couldn't afford it. So, you know, I had to make some excuse every time. It's like, hey, Chatri, let's go out. You know, let's go to a club tonight. You know, there's going to be. Our friends are going to be there. And I knew I can't go and afford a beer. I can't afford the entrance fee of a nightclub. So my mom was very. Was very much a part of my graduate experience at Harvard. But amazingly, some of my best memories or most powerful memories, and obviously now today they're more. I view them in a very positive light because of how we were very blessed in life. I remember lying there with my mom. I was. I'll be lying on the floor and my mom was on the bed. And, you know, she would ask me these crazy questions. We had no money. And she'd be like, chatri, one day, you know, I want us to go live in New York City. And, you know, just crazy things. And I'd be like, man, Mom. My stress was, how am I going to get money for next month? And luckily, I was teaching Muay Thai. I was a tutor at Kaplan. I did all sorts of odd jobs. But my biggest worry was, you know, do I have enough money to even pay for the school tuition fees? So on an Excel spreadsheet, I budgeted $4 a day. If I went on the subway, that's a dollar. Like, man, you know, like, these are the things that consumed me when I was going through Harvard. I always say that without the love of my mother, I would never have been there in the first place. It was my mom who, when we had nothing, she really believed in me. And I think the saying is that, you know, when someone loves you, it gives you strength. When you love someone, it gives you courage. And I think that's a very true statement when it comes to my relationship with my mother. She gave me both. I could feel her unconditional love. Hence it gave me strength to do things when I was full of fear, doubts, and insecurities. I wasn't some academically gifted guy or I wasn't. I remember I was that first week I was dirt poor. I didn't feel like I belonged. I thought everyone was better than me, smarter than me. I didn't have money for the full ride. You know, I had to go find loans and, you know, so it was just like a. A time of massive uncertainty in my life. And I Just, you know, I had to keep it to myself. But again, looking back on everything, the fact that I had my mother's love, that gave me strength every day to fight more. And I always say too that, you know, if you're fighting for yourself, like you're fighting because you want a six figure salary, you're fighting because you want to buy a nice car, it's very easy to quit. But when you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, it's impossible to quit. So in that moment, I was fighting for my family, fighting for my younger brother, fighting for my mother. Of course, you know, down the road as I was again been blessed with a lot of good luck in life. These are the things that I always remember is like, you know, when you're fighting for something much bigger than yourself, you become unbreakable. There's so many precious lessons that I learned from that journey. And crazy enough, when I made my first little bit of money, I think I was around 30 something, maybe 31. I bought a condominium in New York City to surprise my mom because I remembered what she told me in the dorm room and brought her to New York and gave her the keys. And it was overlooking the Hudson River. And it's one of my most favorite memories with my mom is surprising with her own house because she had suffered for so long, for so long that I would just to be able to see her face. And knowing that little crazy dream was born in the dark of midnight when we're going to sleep. And she wanted to talk about our dreams. So in that sense, she also gave me that. I'm a little bit of a crazy dreamer. My friends think I'm a bit of a crazy guy. And I think I got that from my mom.
- [28:51]
Tim Ferriss
Go mom. That's incredible. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. It's a mess out there. The hyper complexities of the US economy, global economy, can be very confusing and there's a lot of conflicting advice. But saving and investing doesn't have to be complicated. Here's something refreshingly simple to use and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now you can earn 4% APY, that's annual percentage yield on your cash from partner banks. With the Wealthfront cash account, that's nearly 10 times the national average according to FDIC.gov so don't wait. Earn 4% APY on your cash today. Plus, it's eligible for up to 8 million in FDIC insurance through partner banks. And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. There are already more than 1 million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more and build long term wealth. So check it out. Visit wealthfront.comtim to get started one more time. That's wealthfront.com Tim this is a paid endorsement of Wealthfront. Wealthfront Brokerage isn't a bank. The APY is subject to change. For more information, see the episode description all right, well we could spend an entire like the next two hours just unpacking what it was like to actually hand over the keys and how your mom responded. But I have a million questions I want to ask you, so I would say let me mention a few things and then we can add in any sort of seminal moments as needed. But my understanding is you leave grad school, you try your hand in the world of startups, you do pretty well in the startup world, then end up going to finance and do pretty well on Wall Street. And, and my two questions are, I know that's a major, major condensation. But number one, what was it like and what was the moment? Because I remember for myself the moment where you're like, oh my God, I actually have some money. When was that moment when you were like, oh, this is a little different. This is a lot different. I actually have some money. It doesn't need to be a lot of money. But what was that like? And then why didn't you stay in finance? Why didn't you stay on Wall Street?
- [31:19]
Chatri Sityodtong
So, you know, it's kind of funny, like when I was a kid, there's a few things I was truly obsessed with. Okay, I was obsessed with martial arts. And that anyone from my childhood would tell you chatter is that he's the martial arts guy, he's crazy about martial arts. But I was also crazy about for Christmas, somebody gave me the book One up on Wall street by Peter Lynch.
- [31:40]
Tim Ferriss
That's a great book.
- [31:41]
Chatri Sityodtong
And I just got completely fascinated with, and I think I was like a teenager, but I was completely fascinated with, wow, people can actually make money doing that. And so I got obsessed with Warren Buffett and Ben Graham and Intelligent Investor. And this was like when I was again a teenager and I just voraciously consumed it. But I never thought I would ever, you know, ever do something along those lines. Right? And it wasn't like I was investing or anything, it was just it was just like a hobby, curiosity, but it was almost borderline obsession because I was reading, I mean, tons and tons of finance books and investing books just for, like, for fun. So I always had kind of that in the back of my mind. I don't know, it's just like an external kind of stuff when you're younger, as a kid, oh, it'd be so glamorous to be a hedge fund manager on Wall street, that kind of stuff. And so I think when I graduated from Harvard, I was dirt poor. Dirt poor. I went to Silicon Valley with my mom. We slept in a tiny little apartment. I couldn't even afford beds or furniture. So we had two sleeping bags. And it's just, you know, we have. It's. We talk about those. We had two sleeping on the floor. And that was how I started my journey in Silicon Valley, because, again, I just had this crazy dream, right? One of my classmates, Su and Liu, said, chacha, let's. Let's go to Silicon Valley. Let's. Let's just try our luck. And, you know, both of us were poor, and we had maybe a few months of cash left, you know, if at all. But by pure luck, we went to this angel investor day at Harvard, and this guy named Richard Armstrong, literally one hour meeting. He's like, okay, I'll cut you a $500,000 check.
- [33:15]
Tim Ferriss
It's a good meeting.
- [33:17]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah. We were blown away. Soon, and I were blown away out of that small little apartment where my mom and I slept on the floor. We started hiring people. And so I think at our peak, we had like six people or seven people in that little apartment.
- [33:31]
Tim Ferriss
And what was the business? Just in brief, for folks, it was.
- [33:34]
Chatri Sityodtong
A company called Nextdoor Network. So basically, it was enterprise resource Software. It started off as a marketplace, but eventually morphed to enterprise optimization. So basically, Jiffy Lube was our largest customer at the time, where you could come in with dynamic pricing and the software would, you know, how many bays there were, how many cars were coming in. And we see dynamic pricing today with airlines and stuff, right, or hotels, that kind of software. But it was for the. It was more enterprise. We rode the Internet boom all the way up, and we came partially down, and we were lucky to have sold the company. We grew from, like, you know, like six, seven people, and then within about a year, we'd raised $40 million and had, like, I don't know, 200 people, you know, real offices and all this stuff. And it was just a crazy ride. This was in early 2000 or. Yeah, around 1999, 2000 time frame. That was a crazy ride. And when I looked through old photos and it's kind of crazy, so soon. Lou, my classmate from Harvard, who started the company with me in Silicon Valley, he actually lives in Singapore now. So we hang out here and we have obviously our collection of pictures and whatnot. And we go back and be like, man, that was some crazy times. And my mom would be there in front of the microwave because we would. We're so poor at the time, we would get a dollar, I remember, $1.25 microwave frozen food and these little meals. And that would be our lunch or dinner or whatever it is. And my mom would be in front of the microwave and we had photos of that. And we were in our little startup and again, these crazy days. But after we sold a company, I said to myself, okay, I didn't make a ton where I could retire for Reich, but I had a good little bit of a nest egg. I thought deeply, what do I want to do? Am I a software entrepreneur or what am I. I started going into this kind of deep.
- [35:20]
Tim Ferriss
If I interrupt for a second, I'm sorry. That initial nest egg, whether it was from savings from salary or the eventual exit, was there a moment? And if not, that's totally fine. I'm just so curious. Having been poor for so long and scrapped so hard and having to track everything in an Excel spreadsheet to make sure you don't exceed your $4 daily budget, et cetera. Throughout school, was there a time when it's like you went to the ATM to take out a little cash and you saw the balance and you're like, huh, okay, Things might actually now start to be different.
- [35:58]
Chatri Sityodtong
I grew up in a well to do home when I was a kid and saw it get wiped out. Like, I mean, it was like that. Okay. That I, even to this day I don't have that sense of like, look at my bank account or look at what I have as a sense of like, security.
- [36:16]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [36:17]
Chatri Sityodtong
So I never had that moment of. I could exhale.
- [36:21]
Tim Ferriss
Like exhaling.
- [36:21]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, exhaling. No. What we did though was we went with, I think about like 13 or 14 employees and we rented two, you know, RV vans and we did a cross country trip across America. And that took like, I forget, like a couple weeks. That was me moving from Silicon Valley to. To New York. I didn't know at the time that I was going to move to New York and I was going to do the whole investing thing. That ride. I remember and I remember one Night, it was in Albuquerque, and we were in RV park, and I went up to the roof. I was lying down on the roof of the RV and looking at the night sky. And it was completely beautiful. Stars. And it was just clear sky. I mean, it was at night, but it was clear in the sense of all the stars. And that was the only moment I felt like, man, I can actually do anything from this point on. I don't have to scrape by or I don't have to. But it was just a momentary, fleeting sensation of like, the universe is so big. I can do anything. And it wasn't I can do anything in an arrogant way. It was more like whatever happened in the past with my family and my father, I didn't have to be burdened by it or trapped by it. So it was a feeling of, not exhale, but a feeling of, I'm not going to be shackled by my past. But it's weird, Tim. Even to this day, I had this feeling of, man, life can throw you curve balls. And all of a sudden, I could be on the street. It's crazy. It's crazy. But I still have this fear or not fear. I don't know what it is. Or maybe what it is is I never want to be so poor again. Because what really broke me, and this one I remember very poignantly. I'd never seen my mother cry up until my father abandoned us. And it was one night, and she tried to be this really strong, brave woman, and I saw her cry. That broke my heart in a million pieces. And then one other time I saw was in my dorm room, you know, at Harvard. And that was my fuel. I said to myself, I never want to see my mother cry ever again. I'm going to work my ass off. I'm going to be rich. And so I naively thought genuinely that when I was poor, that, man, if I just make a crapload of money, all my problems will be gone because I will be able to provide for my mother. She'll have no more worries. And this at the other, I didn't fully understand the meaning of life. I kind of like accepted society as, you make a lot of money, and that's just, you know, you buy things. It wasn't later in life until I was like, maybe my mid-30s when I had my hedge fund, you know, we had a record year. I made a lot of money. And of course you're very happy because you made a lot of money. But then I went down to the sushi restaurant down in the office Building and I sat at the sushi bar for lunch. And I remember I was by myself and I remember all adrenaline and happy. But then over the course of that lunch, I don't know what happened. I just started thinking about, is this what life is about? Like, okay, so I'm gonna go now and buy more material things. I'm gonna go buy a house, another house or whatever, you know, it just hit me hard. Like I'm like, man, what's going to happen with my life is I'm going to keep living this thing where, okay, yeah, I make a lot of money, but I had a deep sense of emptiness. And yeah, my mom was taken care of. I was happy, of course, all that stuff, but it was almost just like, oh my gosh. And I remember a cold sweat, thinking, I'm going to roll forward another 50 years or whatever to the end of my life and shit. All I have done really is buy and sell companies and short companies. My clients were all either multi billion dollar institutions or multi billionaire families. So then I'm like, what was I here on earth for and what was I doing with my life? And I remember so well when I was five years old. But my mom would feed this all the time. Throughout my elementary and middle school years and all that, she would always say, chatri, you're going to grow up to help people. And you know, I also, my mom is gibberish, you know, because she's like, you're so special, Chatri. And of course, I know every mother says that to their child, to their, you know, but it was weird, when I was at that sushi restaurant, those words came to me. It was like, chatri, you're gonna help people when you grow up. And I was sitting there, I'm like, right now I'm helping nobody. Because if I'm helping wealthy people get wealthier, okay, what is the point of that? And if I'm making multi billion dollar institutions get wealthier, what is the point of that, right? And so I remember being very restless for several weeks. I couldn't sleep. Eventually I said, I have to do something. And it was again, pure luck, but also a lot of introspection. At the time. I was training at Renzo Gracie's school, Jiu Jitsu training every day. And it's crazy, this whole journey from being well, to do family, to being poor, to being escaping poverty and making it. I trained religiously, either Muay Thai or Jutsu every single day. This is just part of my, my DNA. And actually, even to this day, you know, I just came back from training earlier today. It's my foundation to every single day. If I get my training, it's almost like, Tim, you know, you've competed as a wrestler and done sanshu and stuff like that. When you're in the moment of training or sparring, there is nothing else you could think of. You are in the moment, right?
- [41:45]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. If you think of something else, you get reminded very quickly.
- [41:48]
Chatri Sityodtong
Very quickly. Exactly, exactly. So it's almost like you can escape whatever good or bad in your life for those couple hours and not think about anything. If you go for a run, you'll still think about work, family, your relationship issues, your dad, whatever it is, you'll still think. Or if you go lift weights, okay, your mind is still active on whatever. You haven't left your life. But you know, Tim, when you go train and you're sparring in someone who's really good, all that stuff evaporates. And so that's what I love. You know, I own a chain of martial arts schools here in Singapore and I train every day with Muay Thai world champions.
- [42:28]
Tim Ferriss
Is that evolve or.
- [42:29]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, evolve, yes, or Jiu Jitsu World Championship. And I truly believe, my grandmaster, Kuya Tong Senanan used to always tell me, I never really understood it until much later in life. To unleash your greatness, you must be surrounded by greatness. And so every day I go to evolve. These guys are the best in the world, what they do, you know, I'm a high level martial arts for sure, but not against the world champion, right? I mean, you train with Jung Sanan and Bunker. You know how badass those guys are.
- [42:58]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:58]
Chatri Sityodtong
Best, Best in the world.
- [42:59]
Tim Ferriss
Their levels. Different levels.
- [43:01]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Same thing for a black belt. I mean, I'm a black belt, but there are levels to being a Jiu Jitsu black belt. And for the most part, when I train with them, I get my ass kicked. But I relish that. Obviously it's a two hour break from anything I'm dealing with in the world, but I love it because it's a daily and constant reminder of how I should live my life. You see, if I have ego, I'm the owner. I walk in and this guy beats the crap out of me. In another world, if I didn't have martial arts my whole life, I'd be like, blah, blah, blah, you know, I'm the boss. But what I actually tell to my training partners, bro, whatever it is, don't go easy. Give me if you can't submit me, you suck. You better submit me or you better hurt me. If we're sparring, you better get the best of me, because you know you're a world champion. Don't hold back, because that's not what I want. I want you to help me improve. And so you have to let your ego completely disappear. In society, I'm a CEO, but when I'm in training, I'm a nobody. And these guys beat on me, but it levels me up. And it's a daily reminder for me that I'm here to learn, grow and evolve and be the very best martial artist I can be. And the only way to do it is by surrounding yourself with greatness. Because diamonds are created under heat and pressure. And that's how I think all of us, how we all can unleash our greatness in life is. It's kind of sad, but it's through love, pain and suffering. That combination can work magic in terms of unleashing human potential. You will discover things about yourself that you never even knew existed in you when you go through a process of love, pain and suffering. And so that's something I do every day. Number one, I love it. It's my greatest obsession in life. But I do go through pain and I do go suffering every single day because it's a part of this warrior mindset. I mean, you spent time in Japan, you know, the whole bushido, the whole samurai spirit.
- [45:04]
Tim Ferriss
Yamato, Damacy.
- [45:05]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes, yes. You nailed it. This is what Tim is talking about, guys, is this Japanese warrior spirit that every Japanese person has in their heart. Actually, that's why it's the birthplace of mixed martial arts. It's a birthplace of kickboxing, obviously, the birthplace of karate and aikido and judo and kendo. It's a magical country. And I'm not saying that because I'm half Japanese, but the more I understand about Japan, the more I truly appreciate the culture. And so one of that is this sense of unbreakable warrior spirit. Japanese fighters are some of the toughest. And I don't mean technically, I mean, I'm talking about you cannot break a high level Japanese fighter. You just, you know, and if you went to the Budokan, watching the judo championships, these guys, they don't break. They don't break.
- [45:49]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, they'll go until they can't go. I still remember to this day a fight way back in the day. I was in Japan for this way back, which was pancreas. So pancreas had just launched, and it was a fight between Bas Rutten And Funaki. And Funaki got beaten into. He looked like a tomato that had been kicked around a room by 12 kids for an hour. I mean, he was so destroyed. And he just kept getting up. And I mean, there's a point where I remember Boss was just like, what is this? What are we doing here?
- [46:25]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, exactly.
- [46:26]
Tim Ferriss
And that I. To this day, from 15, I remember watching that and thinking, good lord, this is just a different species of experience. And just to come back to the mixed martial arts in Japan for a second. So when I was there, the way I initially got exposed to all this was through Shuto. So Sayama Satoru of the first generation Tiger mask.
- [46:52]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes. Unbelievable. He was at the event in March in Saitama.
- [46:56]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, really?
- [46:57]
Chatri Sityodtong
He was my guest. He was my personal guest.
- [47:00]
Tim Ferriss
Tough, tough, tough human. And a very, very tough coach. He used to take a shinai, like a bamboo kendo sword, cut off the tip. And then if his fighters were misbehaving or not doing what he wanted, he would hit them in the back of the legs, hit them on the back. He was tough and nasty fighter also. And from there then ended up wanting to figure out where to train. I went to this place called Kiguchi Dojo. And Kiguchi Sensei was a former Olympic wrestler and Rumina Sato. And all these guys train there.
- [47:36]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes. Ruben. As a friend, you know. Yeah. And yeah, all these guys are telling me it's crazy because I was literally just in Japan a couple weeks ago with Sakamoto, who's the CEO of Shuto. I just was hanging out with the CEO of Pancreas, and we're talking about all these old crazy stories. And again, yeah, Sensei. So everything you're saying is just crazy.
- [47:53]
Tim Ferriss
It's super small world. Yeah, super small world. And I'll give you two more small world. So I have a bone jutting out of the side of my ankle from Rumina, who put on the nastiest heel hook in practice. I'm still a little annoyed about that. It was so aggressive. But I ended up doing well after that. Probably should have tapped much earlier. Which also leads to nyc. We're going to talk more about Henzo, but I actually spent a little bit of time at Henzo's gym way, way back in the day. Only went a handful of times. And it wasn't really his fault. It was an accident, but Rodrigo actually popped my right elbow. And I'm getting surgery probably in the next few weeks because I want to get back into training. And the extensors have been torn for like 20 years.
- [48:36]
Chatri Sityodtong
Oh my gosh. Oh, my God.
- [48:37]
Tim Ferriss
But that gym is phenomenal. And it also ties into, just to loop a few things together. So from Wall Street I have written down here, correct me if I get any of this wrong, but in 2008, you start evolve.
- [48:49]
Chatri Sityodtong
I moved to Singapore in 2007. Yeah, yep. Yeah, down there. Yep. But I'm still a hedge fund manager at that point, so it was crazy. So I get to Singapore to open up the Singapore office from a hedge fund. So we have offices in New York and Singapore and there's no place to train because Singapore is not like a mech of martial arts. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start a martial arts school. And it was really just selfishly for me to be able to train with. And all my sityotong brothers were in Thailand and it's an hour and a half flight from Thailand and they're all the baddest world champions on the planet. And that's how Evolve started. It was kind of like scratching your own itch. I don't want to say a side hustle. It's my obsession. I mean, martial arts, my obsession. So the fact that I didn't have any high level place to train when I was used to training at Henzos. Right. When I was in New York, that was kind of the murderer's row, the accidental birth.
- [49:44]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. So many good people there.
- [49:46]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah. But that whole time period was when I'd reached Singapore was already after I had that lunch, that sushi lunch. You know, I'd already had this like sense of, you know, I have to do something bigger with my life and it's not about making money, it's about helping others or making an impact. I think you had also said, that's right, Tim. Like when you retired from angel investing was like, angel investing was fun, but you didn't have that impact that you had when you came out with your books. And that's when you had, you know, millions of people reading your books and their lives changed by your lessons and learnings about life. When we work our asses off for something much bigger than ourselves and we know we're impacting, if you're lucky, your country and if you're even luckier, your continent and maybe the world. Right. There's a sense of like, my life has meaning and it's not about money. It's that somehow Tim Ferriss is on this planet and he's actually helping people, millions of people all over the planet through his books. Same thing I get now, the joy of one hearing about you having this WhatsApp group with your buddies and all you guys are competitive former martial arts or fighters, and then you discover one, and that's. I get excited or like when I was in Japan and the entire stadium of Saitama completely sold out, or when we were in the US In September in Denver, the Denver Nuggets stadium completely sold out. And I was sitting there in Denver and I was just like, this is the Denver Nuggets. This is the NBA World Champion Stadium, and it's completely sold out. And this company I started here in Singapore, and never in a million years did I think we would sell out. And then literally months later, we sold out in Thailand. Impact Arena, a massive stadium. And then in Qatar, Doha the next month, also another massive stadium. And then Saitama Super Arena. So it was just like this last several months has just been just a reminder in some ways, as I travel around the world, this thing has just gone viral and our viewership numbers are just massive, massive around the world. You see, that is the same, I feel, when I've read about you, Tim, is that same drive or that same sense of meaning in your life or purpose. It's the same thing. I really get excited when somebody's like, man, hey, I saw that fight, or I was there, or whatever.
- [52:00]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, yeah, we're going to definitely get back to this through line in a second. But vividly remember watching one for the first time. And it brought back all of those memories from Japan because it's very elegantly produced in the sense that it's not like being trapped in a video game with a thousand distractions, which a lot of spectator sports have kind of turned into. It's like you have the lights on the fighters, the crowd is often darkened.
- [52:31]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes.
- [52:31]
Tim Ferriss
And there's this. I'll paint with a broad brush here. But it depends on where the fights are. Right. There's either in Japan, you know, the audience is very reverent and it's very quiet. There might still be like, a fight. Oh, you know, like something like that. And they'll clap for certain things and shout for sure. But otherwise it's quiet. It's very different from the US and then I've actually. So I've been to Lumpini before, and I've been to Raja Damnan before.
- [52:56]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah. And that's like, you know, high energy.
- [53:00]
Tim Ferriss
With the music and the betting and the.
- [53:02]
Chatri Sityodtong
Hey, hey. Every.
- [53:04]
Tim Ferriss
Every low kick or whatever is coming out. And as a viewer, as a spectator, it really allows you to kind of savor the main course without distraction, which is the fights. Let's hop to one. So it looks like around 2011, that's the birth of one championship was not an overnight success and we're going to get eventually because I did not expect to find Mike Moritz and Doug Leone in this story, which is fucking wild. So we're definitely going to come to that because that seems like a really important moment. But before I want to read one of my friend's questions because there have been different fight promotions in say Pan Asia before. For instance in China there's something called Sandawang, which is King of Sandow, which actually has some great fights, but they never hopped, they never really hit the mainstream globally. And for the people who are wondering, Sanda is like shoot boxing. It's like kickboxing plus throws. It's actually very entertaining to watch, but they never cross the chasm, at least as far as I know. And my friend's question is this. I want to know about the economics starting out. What was the thesis about why they would succeed and what did they learn from prior fight leagues, whether successes or failures. And then his other question, which is also one of my questions is most importantly, how the fuck do they have such consistently high quality fights? Because I don't know what savant quant you have in the basement who's moneyballed the matchups, but I'm accustomed to watching fight cards where it's like yeah, okay, great, two out of the six fights are good and all of my friends have no idea. We've watched a lot of fights in every possible discipline. How you guys consistently have such absurdly but just starting out. I also want to know what were the kind of original theses and what did you learn from prior fight leagues as well?
- [55:11]
Chatri Sityodtong
It's been over 13 years and to be sitting where I'm sitting is honestly less than 1% of 1%. Okay, odds. If you told me to do this again, I definitely would not have. I would have just rolled out a chain of martial arts academy and I have had a few hundred locations by now. Why the first three years I really thought, you know, I love martial arts. Asia is the home of martial arts 5000 year history. There's 4 billion people here on the planet. Surely it's going to be easy to create a global sports property. And naively okay, I did this high level. I was like well you know, America has NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Europe has F1, Champions League, EPL, Bundesliga. These are all multi billion dollar properties. The market cap of NFL is north of 120 billion. NBA is $70 billion and its valuation. And I thought, man, I'm a martial artist. I know martial arts. I'll be able to somehow aggregate 4 billion fans here and then export this around the world. And it'll be easy. The first three years, Tim, complete disaster. My buddy from Harvard and I, we made a little bit of money. So we invested, thinking that, you know, within a year, we get institutional investors to back us, given our credentials and our expertise and the market opportunity. Zero. First. First three years, we couldn't land. We met with 150 investor institutional investors, zero. Broadcasters across the continent. Zero Brands. Forget about it. Governments, forget about it. Most governments banned martial arts content actually on tv. Live martial arts content. Why? Because of the violent nature. Okay. And first three years, literally, like no fandom, no metrics, what to speak of. Just losing money hand over fist.
- [56:59]
Tim Ferriss
What were the main objections of the investors or broadcasters? Maybe we focus on, let's just say, the investor side. What were the most common patterns of objections or refutations?
- [57:15]
Chatri Sityodtong
There was this billion dollar property, and you're way too late. You're way too late.
- [57:19]
Tim Ferriss
Late to the game.
- [57:21]
Chatri Sityodtong
Late to the game. You want to create a global property. And I think at that time, UFC was about a couple billion, right? And their metrics were already, you know, substantially larger than ours because we were just a startup. I remember when we first started our Facebook page, they had some like 20 million fans on Facebook or something like that. We started with zero today, and it's all organic today. We have 50 million. They have 50 million on Facebook as an example. But I'll tell you how we got very lucky. It was at the end of year three, and I called my mom, my Japanese mom, who was completely against me starting this. Okay. Because in Japan, as you know, Tim, martial arts promotions, combat sports, is run by yakuza, the mafia in Japan.
- [58:02]
Tim Ferriss
Mobbed up. Yeah, super mobbed up.
- [58:04]
Chatri Sityodtong
So my mom is this conservative, tiny little Japanese lady, and she's like, there's no way my son is gonna quit.
- [58:12]
Tim Ferriss
Wall street, become a mobster.
- [58:17]
Chatri Sityodtong
She's the typical Japanese lady, where she was like, my son went to Harvard and he's on Wall street and he has his hedge fund. She loved the checkboxes, the checklist of credentials. As you know, Japanese culture is very much this way. Japanese society, you know, if you went to Todai in Japan, you're viewed as a God, right? Like, you know, it's very hierarchical. And I said, mom, I want to do what I love. And mom, you told me As a young kid, I got to go help people, and I want to live my life with my greatest obsession and somehow help people, whether it's our athletes, our fans, et cetera. And you know what's crazy, Tim? In writing the business plan, there was no such line of like, we want to have the biggest pay per view, we want to have the best fights, or this. It was literally the mission of the company. Over many, many, many days and weeks literally came, and it's still true to this day, is to unleash real life superheroes who ignite the world with hope, strength, dreams, and inspiration. And of course, we put on the best fights. I agree with your friends and I'll explain how we put on fights. But the first three years, complete disaster. There was no tam. It was all theoretical. It was all this business school mumbo jumbo.
- [59:20]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [59:20]
Chatri Sityodtong
For notes.
- [59:22]
Tim Ferriss
Total addressable market.
- [59:23]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, right, exactly. And if I didn't love martial arts as much As I did, 1,000% of the quit. So I called my mom. Mom, end of year three. Lost a crapload of my money and my friend's money. And I think we're done. We got no traction. And I thought my mom was gonna tell me I should stick with it because, you know, Chatri, since you're a kid, martial arts, blah, blah, blah, you love it. And she said, oh, great, why don't you just quit then.
- [59:48]
Tim Ferriss
Before you get double sleeves of tattoos and can't go to the onsan with me.
- [59:52]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, yeah, she did great. And then the conversation ended shortly after that. And I remember thinking to myself, my mom just said, just quit. And then I said, okay, if I just quit, let's say I quit today. And then it goes back to like, well, why did I even start this thing in the first place? When you really put yourself to say, I'm going to quit, you start to think about, why did I start this thing and what is it? And I said, well, martial arts, my greatest obsession. If I want to make an impact on the world and I have the opportunity to inspire, you know, millions and one day, hopefully billions of lives through our heroes. Values and stories is what we call. Those are the three pillars of what we call our formula Success at one championship. Values, heroes and stories. If we can unleash these real life superheroes and tell their stories of overcoming adversity, tragedy, poverty, impossible odds, those stories are going to be incredible. And of course, the values that we exhibit, which you know very well is the true Bushido, values of, you know, integrity, honor, respect, courage, discipline, compassion, etcetera that martial arts teaches us. And I thought, there has to be a place in this world, one promotion, one promotion that has true authentic martial arts at its core. And so from that day, I said, I will never quit, come hell or high water, I'm going to put everything into it. If I lose all my money, screw it. And you know, we got so lucky. Facebook, you know, so a big shout out to Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook started taking off in Asia at that around that time as smart mobile devices were as well. If you chart Facebook's user growth and just engagement levels, okay. In Asia, with the history of one championship, it is like mirror. So what happened was we saw a couple of videos start going viral around the world when we posted and we're again, we're small platform at the time, very small page, but we could see that something was happening. So we used that hockey stick data. Even though it's small, we collected this data and we showed broadcasters. He took a look. This is something that's happening in your country. Numbers of jobs gone 10x. Yes, they're small, but they've gone 10x in the span of three months. And then I remember we had a few months left of cash and I bet the whole firm and I put everything into video. I said, we are going to be the world's best viral video makers along the lines of value shares and stories. But we want to ride the algo, not pollute it by bastardizing martial arts, but really showcasing the very best. So whether it's a knockout, that's great, spinning back kick, all that stuff. But in the context of, how can I say I didn't want to cheapen martial arts. I didn't want to bastardize it and cheapen it, just and make it look like two thugs cussing at each other out, that was something I didn't want because that's not my experience in martial arts. My martial arts experience has been about love, pain and suffering As a result of that, of thousands of hours of training, you inherit these incredible values and something I'm sure you relate to, Tim. I mean, for you to get heel hooked by Rumen Asato and then somebody else in Rodrigo popping your arm. And this is part of the journey. Love, pain and suffering. And yet somehow you want to get back into it, Right? So that to me is what martial arts is about. The unbreakable warrior spirit, the beauty of authentic martial arts. So anyways, long story cut short. The combination of us making the bet on Facebook literally saved the company. This is something that Facebook confirmed With us. Actually, I end up getting invited by Zuck to go to Facebook headquarters a couple years ago, because out of 5,000 sports properties on Facebook, the number one producer of organic video views in the world is one championship. We produced 30 billion organic video views last year, and this year we're on pace already for 40 billion. 40 billion, not million. And I remember we went from how fast we went from 100,000 organic video views for the whole year, and suddenly the next year it was like, you know, 5 million, and the next year 100 million. It just went ballistic. And without that, I don't think we've been able to convince broadcaster investors and brands and sponsors and athletes. And now, as you know, Tim, as a business expert, once you've built a platform business, every global sports property is a platform business where there are multiple stakeholders who derive economic benefit or social benefit or some level of benefit from the platform. And hence, the platform becomes, quote, unquote, monopolistic. Right? NBA, there's no way you can break NBA. There's no way you can break NFL. It's truly a platform business. And so we have achieved that status. And like I said, if you'd asked me to start this business again, no way. And it's less than 1% of 1% that we're standing here. And there are many, many inflection points of luck. Just blessing. Yes. My team and I work our asses off and we made the right bets when it came. But if you told me 13 years later, you know, you're top 10, according to Nielsen, top 10 largest global sports media property, there's no way I would have thought that would have happened. It's crazy. We're broadcasted live in 190 countries every single week with the largest broadcasters. Like, it's Amazon on America, but it's Sky Sports in Europe, it's in Japan, it's UNEX and Thailand, it's Channel 7 in Middle East. As being sports, it boggles my mind what has happened. And it's like a lot of hard work, a lot of love, pain and suffering. But I have to be 100% honest. It's a lot of luck. A lot of luck. But putting on great fights, like your friend said, is not luck. We have a chemistry lab, if you will, where we slice and dice qualitative and quantitatively. It's a team of about 13 or 14 folks, and we slice quantitatively and qualitatively and, you know, and all that. And of course, one huge benefit is all of us on the matchmaking team. We're all martial artists. So it's like, you know, Matt Hume. You know, legendary Matt Hume. Yeah. Folks like Rich Franklin, you know, legendary martial arts himself, and. And so got very lucky. That happened to be all my friends, right. My martial arts buddies. And we're all working together and we get to cook up the best fights. And another advantage we have is because we're not only doing mma, we're the world's largest martial arts organization. Right. We've showcased everything from kickboxing, Muay Thai submission, grappling boxing, MMA and everything. And the most important thing for us is signing the very best of the best athletes, the very best of the best martial artists. But very equally important is finishing ability. So this is something that's. I don't know if other organizations look at it. I'm sure they look at it, collect it, but I don't know if they look at it when they sign athletes. One champion has a 70% finish rate. That means of all our fights.
- [66:31]
Tim Ferriss
Absurd.
- [66:31]
Chatri Sityodtong
70%.
- [66:32]
Tim Ferriss
Absurd.
- [66:33]
Chatri Sityodtong
People get knocked out or tapped out or choked out. It's a global duopoly now, right? UFC dominates in the West. We dominate in the East. We're roughly the same size. They have a 38% finish rate. And why is that? Because in America, there's predominantly American wrestlers like yourself, and American wrestling is not necessarily geared towards finishing. It's an unbelievable martial art that controls. You can take the fighter down, pin him up against a cage, you can hold him, you can ground and pound him, but it's not necessarily a finishing. Finishing. Right. Versus out here, we get a rook tang, or we get a, you know, it depends on the discipline. Or we sign the rule. Tolder brothers, those guys are killers. So we look for the best of the best, but we try to find athletes who come to kill. And again, I don't mean kill in a bad way. What I mean is the true origins of martial arts is self defense. Self defense is not about dancing for points. It's not about taking someone down and waiting and letting the judges score. It's about finishing a robber coming to your house, somebody coming to harm your family. Martial arts is about finishing a dangerous situation. Right. So that you're. You live for another day. That spirit, that Bushido, that samurai warrior spirit, lives in one and lives in our athletes. And that's why we have a 70% finish rate.
- [67:49]
Tim Ferriss
All right, so I have so many more questions to ask about that. We're going to come back to that. But I want to mention just a few things for folks. So initially all that pushback, the 100 plus investors, the broadcasters, sorry, UFC has already taken this game and won it. You're too late. When I started this podcast in 2014, the vast majority of people I asked who were involved in the game told me I was Too late in 2000.
- [68:16]
Chatri Sityodtong
And now you're the number one in the world. Number one business podcast in the world. Amazing.
- [68:19]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, and sometimes that's true, but it's not as true as often as people say it. And some of the things I wrote down here, which were like, God, these seem like really important things were. I mean, there are tons, right? But leaving finance, fight card construction, matchmaking, how to get Amazon prime and Sky Sports, we're going to get to that, that kind of stuff. Sequoia. And then social media, non event engagement. Because I've watched what you guys have done on social. Very, very. And correct me if I'm wrong, it also seems like by diversifying outside of MMA and having Muay Thai, having pure submission, the only way you make pure submission. Well, I say combat grappling. Interesting. Is if you have people finish. Right? So you have to prioritize that for a general audience. Muay Thai by itself is action packed, right? Particularly if you incentivize fighters. And also I'd be so interested to hear what are some of the other ingredients that you consider for putting on good fights. So you talked about finish rate, but by the virtue of having these other disciplines like Muay Thai, also you increase the likelihood of having clips that will get shared a lot because, man, you add elbows in and then, oh man, do things change and a few things. And I might be misremembering, but I looked at it and I thought also in at least a lot of the fights that I saw, okay, rounds are short. That's smart. It makes me think of K1 where people put it all on the line and they weren't trying to conserve energy for round 10, right. Or something like that. What are some of the other elements that go into constructing these fight cards? You mentioned the quantitative and the qualitative. So finishing rate would be one. And that's not just matchmaking, but actually signing fighters in the first place. What else goes into that? Because it is incredibly consistent.
- [70:19]
Chatri Sityodtong
It is just.
- [70:21]
Tim Ferriss
I've never seen anything like it.
- [70:22]
Chatri Sityodtong
Thank you, Tim. And you know, I'm truly grateful because that. You can see that. Because we try our best to have the. You'll see a typical one one champion card in tomorrow night. We have one Friday fights, right? That's every week we have 12 fights, you'll see like eight, 10 of them will be finishes and all 12 will be barn burners. Okay, we don't have one championship where in other organizations they may have a 12 fight card. But eight fights are a little bit of a snooze fest or decisions. And then, you know, the main comaine is amazing. It lights up the stadium. It's literally from the go first fight, all the 12th fight, it's as if they're fighting for their lives. So I think our scouts around the world scoured 10,000 of the very best martial artists on the planet. We give out 50 offers a year and we have a criteria for what we look for. Okay, so let's say you're the best in the world, but you are a decision, a points person. It's very unlikely you'll be signed by one. Doesn't matter if you are like 50 0, like Floyd Mayweather, but if you're there to like play a game, score points, that's not real martial arts. And there's guys without a perfect record. And as you know, these, some of the Thai world champions have 400 professional fights and they have lost 100 times. That's real fighting. If you have fought 400 times and your record is 300 wins and 100 losses, that is an average world championship record in Thailand as an example of an elite fighter, because there are no padded records. If someone's 50 0, it's highly suspect that they were given easy opponents or they chose their opponents at the right time, or there's a little bit of this kind of manufacturing. And you see that a lot actually in the West. In the west, there's a lot of 20 and 0, 15, 0, 30 0, like in different combat sports, it seems like the west really puts a priority on. But the problem with that is the longer you go with an O, the more defensive you become as a fighter because you're protecting that O. Right? So when we sign athletes, we look for the best of the best in the world, doesn't matter what discipline, but we look for that killer instinct and the finishing rate, we really spend a lot of time looking at that. So that when you get too pit bulls who are there to finish and they're both the very best in the world. So that's one layer. You got to get the ingredients right. But then as you said, the incentives. So you know, we pay the highest in the world for fight versus but the win purse, but also the bonuses, especially knockout, you know, finish bonuses. That's the quantitative side of Things, but then also backstage again, before every big event, I line up the entire card and I literally give, and I think some of it's on social media already, some of my speeches, but I literally give like a two minute Rocky Balboa type of speech. And I don't do it for drama. I do it because I really want to inspire every single athlete to give their very, very best performance. And so I talk about, or I ask them about, why are they here? They spent typically 10, 15 years training six hours a day, six days a week to reach the pinnacle of martial arts, the highest level in the world, in one championship. And I asked them to think about all the sacrifices, all the heartbreaks they suffered through, the injuries they've gone through, how many birthdays did they miss, how many friends parties, how many cousins or nephews or nieces birthdays do they miss, how many times do they, you know, have to sacrifice to get to this point? And then I asked them, you know, is this your greatest love? Is this what you are put on the planet for? And I make them really go deep. And if you are able to tap into a person's why, the deepest why, and you're able to then also tap into everything, they have to suffer. And I tell them tonight it's broadcast live to 190 countries around the world with the biggest broadcasters. It's crazy. Our last show in Tokyo, at Saitama in March, our last big show, we broke viewership record. We did 2.3 billion organic video views on digital and social. Okay, 2.3 billion on single show. I didn't know at that time it was going to be that big at the time. And that's excluding our TV broadcast, right? So our TV broadcast around the world then we ended up trending and you know, number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. But trending in US and UK and France and Australia, Thailand, Japan, it was just trending all over the world, China. And I tell them, how do you want the world to remember you tonight? You have a chance to unleash your greatness upon the world in a way that you will make magical memories for your fans. You will create something extraordinary. And you know, I've had fighters cry in those huddles. I have. And then I walk away. And the reason why I can give this kind of speech is because I have walked. I mean, maybe not at the elite level that they're at, but I have walked in their shoes, in training and competing and injuries or whatever it is. So there's a real bond that I have with our athletes and the fact that I train every day and I train with them, I mean, I don't want to name names, but I train with different athletes that come by and I'm flying to Tokyo or I fly to Denver or I go wherever, because I'm always training. No matter where I am, I always train. But how do you produce a Six Sigma performance? It's not because you train and you're. I'm going to fight. No, it's. There has to be something bigger. You have to be fighting for something bigger. It's almost an emotion. It's almost an emotive state of this is it. This is my moment in time and I'm going to deliver everything I can. I'm going to be unbreakable. And what Chatri told me in that locker room, you know, all the sacrifices I went through, my parents going through, and if I win, of course the purse is big and blah, blah, blah, all the other stuff, if you're fighting for something bigger than yourself, you're unbreakable. That is what I, at the end of the day, try to remind our athletes that they are fighting for something much bigger than themselves.
- [76:05]
Tim Ferriss
Well, it certainly translates to a phenomenal viewer experience for folks who have not seen one. Check it out. You will not be disappointed. You can thank me later. I do want to double click on two things. So the first is pushing all your chips in on Facebook and social media, because a lot of people, I'm just trying to time this out. Maybe this is like 2014, 2015 was around there. Okay, so a lot of people were pushing their chips in on social. Maybe not in as aggressive and all in fashion, but a lot of people were trying to make it work and a lot of people didn't figure it out.
- [76:49]
Chatri Sityodtong
Right.
- [76:50]
Tim Ferriss
So what I'm super curious about is what were the guiding tenets or the principles or the lessons learned where you zigged and zagged that allowed you to actually make it work? That's kind of question number one. And then I definitely have to get to this Sequoia meeting because I want to know how the hell that happened and what happened in that meeting. I really did not expect to see this in my research and I'm so happy I was surprised by it. But first on the social media, because a lot of people to this day try to make it work and never figure it out. So what allowed you to translate pushing the chips in into success on social?
- [77:34]
Chatri Sityodtong
Again, there's a lot of element of good luck. I don't Want my team or rise to be so arrogant to think and to say and have the world believe that it was just hard work in our genius.
- [77:42]
Tim Ferriss
You know, I'm going to be an asshole. I'm sorry. I'm going to jump in, though. I want to give credit where credit is due also, because when I first saw you guys on Amazon Prime, I was like, oh, this is really interesting. And then I followed you on Social and then I was looking at the videos and I was like, okay, this is very smart. I was like, number one, they are not stingy with highlights. You share, basically, as far as I can tell, all the best highlights. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't watch the full fights. I want to watch the full fights because it's rock' em, sock' em robots the whole time. But you share highlights and you also tell really, really good stories. And I remember Stamp Fairtex, who doesn't hurt that she's pretty cute and does her dances and so on, but what a killer.
- [78:29]
Chatri Sityodtong
She's a beast. She's a beast.
- [78:30]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, my God. Like when the opponent's backing away and she throws the liver kick, I mean, it's just brutal. But the way that you tell the story and also because you have such privileged access and focus on Muay Thai as well, and as you mentioned, poor person sport, that's how a lot of people hope to get out of poverty. They start fighting when they're really young and you have this incredible human interest story and you guys do a masterful job of combining that with spectacular fight footage. But yes, there's always some luck involved.
- [79:02]
Chatri Sityodtong
So I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the controllable factors. So the controllable factors, obviously you have to know what the combat sport fan wants. Okay. But at the same time, if you're only appealing to the combat sports fan, it's a smaller market, if you're able to tell a story and make it more mainstream again about abject poverty or tragedy or adversity or whatever it may be that can transcend beyond a combat sports fan and go viral around the world to human interest stories. So of course, one is my team and I, and I was literally the first social media manager and I understood that you have to crack the algorithm, but if you just blindly follow the algorithm, you'll put out junk because you're just chasing endlessly. You have to be very clear about who do you want to be, what are you trying to communicate and what are you trying to do by giving this video to Your fans. We always say we want to invoke emotion, strong emotion, laughter, sadness, inspiration, awe. Something very like, oh my God, oh, wow. Something that's going to surprise and delight you in your day. So you're going to hang out with us and watch 10 times a day, you know, when you go, whenever you go, Tiktoks, Instagram, wherever, you know, or Duyun, Kuaishou, weibo in China, etc. But at the same time, you have to be true to, you know, why we started this company. You know, you have to be true to real martial arts finishes, real Bushido, the warrior way, you know, not bastardizing or cheapening into some sort of street fight thug by having your athletes create fake drama about, you know, hating each other or whatever it is. That's just not what I think will transcend and become truly mainstream. I think at the end of the day, people want to watch all over the world, the very best of the best go at it, but they want to know the stories behind why this person is what they're doing and why he or she is where they're at and what are the stakes of this fight. And of course, we have to be very sharp about every single platform has a specific algorithm that it's looking for and marry that. So that's all the skill aspect of what we can control. But what I mean by luck is you look at the mobile device, okay, millennial Gen Zs, which make up 80% of our audience today, what do they do? Their first window of media consumption is their mobile device. They wake up in the morning, they look at TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is, they look at it 10, 20 times a day before they go to bed. That's the last point of media consumption. What does that mean? You need to dominate the mobile device. And that was what we did in 2014. We said to ourselves, we are going to dominate the mobile device. Why is this lucky? Because mobile device took off, Facebook took off. All the social took off. But the ping pong ball, the tennis ball, the soccer ball, the basketball, the football, you cannot see clearly on a mobile device. And I'll give you a great example. When Naomi Osakara won the US Open for the first time. And I remember because she's half Japanese, right? So I was like, oh my God, half Japanese, first one like me, blah, blah, blah. So I looked at Facebook and I could see, you know, it was highlights of her match. And I looked at it and I couldn't see the ball. And I'm like, two seconds I just strolled past because I'm like, I couldn't consume it. That's what I mean by luck. Combat sports is the perfect content for mobile devices. And that's why you have the two giants, UFC and One Today, dominating in that sphere, and why we have Millennial and Gen Z audience, and why other sports are struggling and trying to catch up, but they have the wrong content genre for mobile device. Because you cannot see the soccer ball, the football, the ping pong ball, the tennis ball. You can barely see the basketball. It is very hard to consume. And no one's going to watch a 200 lap car race on your mobile, right? You just not. That's what I mean about luck. But yes, everything you described about our content and how we explain a stamp, fair text or, you know, yes, she's the best in the world, but does she twerk? Does she dance? Does she sing? Is she cute? Is her personality larger than life? And that's her real personality. You know, that's another thing about us. Everything we do is about authenticity. There's no manufacturing, there's no like, oh, well, let that person be a bad guy, that person be a good guy. Let's create drama between them. They hate each other. Let's stage a camera backstage so they bump into each other. We don't do any of that. We just let them be who they really are. We tell their real stories. But the one important thread for all of our content and everything we do is that it's real martial arts.
- [83:15]
Tim Ferriss
I want to give you and your team some additional credit too. In additional to the human interest, in addition to the highlights, you guys also are very clever. You mentioned strong emotions, right? So, laughter. I've seen quite a lot of funny stuff that is organic as a product of the personalities, sort of outtakes where somebody's accidentally kicking their boyfriend in the head as trying to demonstrate a technique. It's like, oh, shit. And then you see them doing damage control or whatever. It might make me sound like a bad person to find that funny, but it is pretty funny when you watch it. And also I remember very specific segments where, for instance, you had some absolute Muay Thai heavies. And by heavies, I don't mean big, I just mean killers kicking a device. People may have seen these in arcades and so on, where you might punch what looks like a speedball. And then it shows you your power output. And you had a number of them kicking a device that was similar, showing pounds per square inch or kilograms per square inch of impact. And I Mean, that is pretty fight sports specific, but I'd never seen something like that done before. And I'm like, okay, that's very, very clever. Like, that is clever. I'm going to share that with my friends and even though it might be within the Fight Porn WhatsApp channel, they'll share that with their five other friends who aren't on it and it'll perpetuate it. Right?
- [84:35]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah. So I have to give credit and I tell our team this, we have the very best social media team on the planet. Many of my teammates have been on this journey for a long time with me, but I do believe I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but it's the fact that I actually built the first page and I was actually a social media manager. Something about my personality is probably very similar to your Tim is like when you do something, you're all in. Okay. So when I decided that Facebook was going to be it, I said to myself, I want to be the best Facebook manager on the planet. So I was obsessed. Not about reading, I was obsessed about experimenting, learning every little trick. And you know, of course I was reading in voracious, but I would look at all these other pages that were doing very well and you know, and I would just steal ideas and think about concepts and just being completely consumed by it. And of course it helped a lot that I myself, because I'm a lifelong martial artist, I know what the fight fan wants. I know, I know exactly right. At the same time I wanted to, to build a property that transcended fight fans. I want it to be truly mainstream. Right. Again, that's something that NFL has done incredibly well in America that when it's super bowl, the entire country watches. And that is something that one day I do want when we have a major world championship fight that the whole world stops to watch like Olympics. I think when there's a gold medal like Olympic swimming final or 100 meter dash final, I think there's something like a billion billion five people watch. Right. I can see that happening with one. I can genuinely see that having a billion billion five concurrent viewers watching or World cup soccer finals, I think that did a couple billion concurrent viewers. I can see one doing it because just this year our numbers have. We've already broken our previous high by 300 or 400% in our last event. So can you imagine on this big numbers of 30 and 40 billion organic video views, we are still breaking our records on a single individual event by 3x. So we're just Scratching the surface of what one can be.
- [86:40]
Tim Ferriss
Let me take you back to the pain and suffering for a second. So you're struggling, Struggling. Mom, I want to quit. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. You should quit. And they're like, wait a fucking second. And it's not working. It's not working. Suddenly you have some graphs to show from social media. Hey, broadcaster and Country X, this is what's happening in your backyard. And yes, the numbers are small, but take a look at the growth rate. And so the tide starts to shift. And then you seem to hit an inflection point. And I've had Roelof Botha on this show before from Sequoia. How important or unimportant was that meeting that you had with Michael Moritz and Douglas Leone? And for people who don't know who they are, these guys are kingmakers. I mean, they are the top of the top wizard of Oz venture capitalists behind so many successes. We could spend the next 30 minutes listing them all off. I mean, these guys are absolute icons. Was that meeting important? And then assuming it was, how on earth did it happen? And what did you do in that meeting that made the impression? It made.
- [87:56]
Chatri Sityodtong
I call it the $100 million breakfast because Sequoia Asia orchestrated it. They thought we were onto something very big. And they said, Mike Morris and Douglas De Leon are coming. And we're only booking a handful of meetings for them because they're a very busy schedule.
- [88:13]
Tim Ferriss
What was the organization that helped book it for you?
- [88:15]
Chatri Sityodtong
Sequoia Capital Asia. It was the managing director. Yeah. Sequoia Asia, run by Shailendra Singh, and he was the managing partner.
- [88:24]
Tim Ferriss
How did you connect with them in the first place?
- [88:27]
Chatri Sityodtong
This is what I mean about Serendipity. Long story cut short. It was around April of 2016. We had hired a small investment bank and we said, we want to now go raise institutional funding. And we didn't have any institutions at the time. It was still bootstrapping, but we think we had enough to go raise institutional funding. We had a slide with our metric, a couple of slides with our metrics, all these big hockey stick charts. And that was like, I think 4 o' clock, the meeting ended with our bank. We walk out, and now we didn't think anything of it. Two hours later, the investment banker calls us and says, sequoia Asia wants to meet you. And we're like, how did you do what? This investment banker, he walked into the elevator and Shailendra Singh, the managing partner of Sequoia Asia, was in the elevator. He happened to be carrying the One Championship slides that hockey sticks charged. And Shailendra said to our investment bank, Ripple Dot is the name of the thing. And our investment banker was named Atin Kukreja. He turns and says, what company is that? And he goes, oh, it's a sports company called One Championship. What is that? And on the elevator ride, Shylander decided, I want a meeting with these guys. I'm going to fund them off of the Metro because, okay, it's literally like this. Literally. What happened?
- [89:47]
Tim Ferriss
Bananas.
- [89:48]
Chatri Sityodtong
So on Sunday, it was a Sunday because Sequoia Asia demanded to meet us, to meet me. So on Sunday I had breakfast, me and my partner had breakfast with Sequoia and they told us, I mean, Shan Lander said, we want you to drop the investment bank. We want you not to go on the roadshow. We will fund it. This is the first institute of funding. And they funded and it was a small check. I think it was like 15 million. But about a year later, I think is when Mike Moritz and Douglas Leone were in town only for a couple days because they were doing, I think doing Asia wide tour. So only a couple days in Singapore. And Shai Lender said, hey, I want them to meet you. They want to meet you. Whatever it is, we want to meet. Of course I know who they are. They're legendary. Mike Morris is, as Tim said, Mike Morrison, Douglas known are probably the greatest investors in Silicon Valley has ever seen. Amongst the greatest Sequoia Capital, obviously one of the greatest, if not the greatest venture capital firm in history. I go to breakfast and it's Mike Moritz and it's Doug and Shailendra. So it's the four of us and I'm sitting there and they're asking all questions and Mike Morris says, ask all these questions and I will never forget it. At the end of the breakfast, Mike says, HR tree. There are founders who their entire reason for being born on this planet. And he named, I think it was like, I think he named Bill Gates or whatever it is for Microsoft that were put on this earth for that one reason to go after something gargantuan. And you are that guy for this opportunity. And he said, most founders are there for a business opportunity. They see a pain point in the market and they solve the Solution and the IPOs or they sell the company and then they move on to the next thing. He just looked me in the eye and says, this is going to be a home run. No, they grilled me all these different kind of questions. So the funding actually came out $100 million funding came out of Silicon Valley. So this is the first sports investment in the history of Sequoia in Silicon Valley. So it didn't even come out of the Asia fund, it came out of the main fund to invest into one. And I think again, I might begin the years wrong. But around 2017, if my memory serves me right, I think that was $100 million for at a billion dollar valuation around there. I was in shock because after the breakfast, which I thought went okay, I know it was an hour, literally two hours later, Shylander says we want to cut you a check for $100 million. Two hours after the breakfast. So we had the breakfast at 8 in the morning. I remember 10, 11 in the morning, I'm walking and Challenger calls me and says we want to put a check for 100 million bucks. They think you're onto something special. And man, I'm eternally grateful to this day, I mean eternally grateful to Mike Morris and Douglas Neal. In that one hour they slice and dice in the business completely. And even me as a person, I'm telling you, this whole journey have been moments of serendipity, moments of just good blessings for us to get this far. It's mind blowing to me and I would never have done it if you told me do it again. It's luck.
- [92:45]
Tim Ferriss
I mean, of course, the elevator. I hope that investment banker gets a box of chocolates too. Every once in a while.
- [92:53]
Chatri Sityodtong
I'm giving a shout out to attention Tian Kukreja rippledot. He is the best TMT investment bank out here in Asia.
- [93:01]
Tim Ferriss
What is tmt?
- [93:02]
Chatri Sityodtong
Technology media and telecom investment bank.
- [93:05]
Tim Ferriss
Okay, okay, got it. So you did have a lot of luck with that amazing encounter in the elevator. You also had to perform in the breakfast. And those can both be true, right? So there is definitely a skill element needed to capitalize on the luck. What I'd love to hear about, you mentioned them asking a lot of questions, slicing and dicing the business as well as you personally, I guess two things. What were some of. And it may be too long ago, but to whatever degree you recollect even an impression, what types of questions made them different from perhaps other investors in other meetings? What types of questions did they ask? And, and number two, what were the main pitch points from your perspective that you think made the difference?
- [93:58]
Chatri Sityodtong
It was very interesting because I remember Mike Moritz asking very qualitative human questions about me, about my motivation, about how I hire people. It was just very qualitative. And so I didn't think the breakfast would result in an investment. I thought it would just be another prolonged process. I'd have to go to Silicon Valley and da, da, da. Just a long, prolonged process. And he quickly sussed out. Very quickly. He said, this thing is so big, this project is so big, but it's going to require a founder with unbelievable resilience. And that's why you got to find the guy who, this is his life's calling. He said it also requires a founder who can attract and retain the very best people on the planet. And not every business plan needs that guy. He said, but in this case, it requires a founder that can attract and retain the very best. And he just looked me in the eye. Guys, I think you're the guy. I think you're going to be able to convince broadcasters, athletes, investors, group presidents, chief commercial officers, internal and external stakeholders to build this whole thing. I'm like in one hour, how could he have guessed that about me? And I didn't even have that impression of myself. I just thought, hey, I'm a guy who loves martial arts and I'm a little bit crazy, so I have a high tolerance for risk. And I guess even though I did almost quit in 2014, I guess I do have a little bit of resilience. But I didn't think of myself in the terms way Mike Mortz was saying. And Doug, his questions were about the business and he educated me in that one hour that what I'm sitting on in a sports profit is a platform business. He's the ultimate platform business, actually. He said Most tech companies, SaaS or Platform this, that the other, they can get broken. And he gave a great example. And I don't want to name names of a tech company, but it was a relatively well known tech company. He's a relatively well known tech name, but he gave that example, said three PhD engineers in Stanford, if they come up with the right solution, can dismantle this. At the time it was a $10 billion company. They can dismount like that.
- [96:03]
Tim Ferriss
I think I know which one now.
- [96:05]
Chatri Sityodtong
He said, there are no three engineers in this world that can dismantle what you've created right up at this point. Because at that point maybe we had a few billion organic video views and at that point maybe we were in 117, 120 countries broadcast. There was clearly momentum being built and clearly we'd broken through a lot of barriers. Government started getting interested in us. So it was just he could see that different stakeholders, we're going to derive economic value from the platform. We've built, but he could also. And he literally said this to me, and I remember it. He said, there's no engineering team in this world that can dismantle you. And that was very powerful. So, you know, most companies, tech companies, software companies, can be dismantled by a great team that does it better, faster, cheaper or whatever, right? But no sports property, no global sports product can give dismantled in a heartbeat. We now have about 500 million fans. A little over 500 million fans, okay, globally, if I left one and I said, you have to now compete with one championship, I'm going to look at one championship is going to do about 40 billion organic video views this year. They have 500 million fans. They're in 190 countries, broadcast live every single week. They have the best athletes across every single discipline. Where do I begin? Do I fly to Amazon and say, hey, it's Chachi, do you remember me? Or do I go to our world champions and say, hey, your contract's gonna end. I would not be able to replicate this. Or at least, you know, Tim, you'd have to give me, you know, you and I would have to go raise $10 billion together. And you have to give me at least another 10 years to gather that many fans to put out that many videos. You know, we put out about 20,000 videos a year right now, all produced in house. So it's just this. And again, Douglas Leon just nailed it. On one hand, Doug is this, like, business model genius. That's slicing and dicing. And the other hand, Mike was slicing, dicing. The human characteristics. If I was the right founder, if I was the right entrepreneur, did I have the right skills? And he really narrowed it down to the number one skill for this thing to work is a founder whose greatest strength is to attract and retain resources or attract and retain talent, internal talent, the very best people, but the very best athletes, the very best governments, investors and et cetera, et cetera. Again, I didn't think of myself in that way, and it's very humbling to think of that, right? But in the end, Mike and Doug both, and I don't know how they solve it, are dead right. If you ask me, what is the necessary skill required even to this day, it would be exactly what Mike said and it's exactly what Doug said about the business. In one hour, I don't know if they had prepared or planned or. I don't know, but they slice and dice. And then and again, like two hours later, literally Charlendra calls me and says, we want to cut you a check for $100 million and I think it was about a billion dollar valuation around there.
- [98:52]
Tim Ferriss
Did you give a presentation at the beginning of the breakfast or was it just conversation?
- [98:57]
Chatri Sityodtong
No, no, I just sat down. It was like breakfast with your uncles. It was so informal. It was so informal and so casual and I had a presentation prepared, I had my laptop. But it ended up just being, you know, how do you like your eggs? And like.
- [99:13]
Tim Ferriss
It just, it was very float as a conversation.
- [99:16]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, I guess, you know, they obviously, they're legends in the business and, and they've earned their reputation that way and their experience base must be so vast in sussing out business models and founders and, and entrepreneurs and whatnot that they can, you know, it's pattern recognition.
- [99:32]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, they have a very well developed water feel for these things. Was there anything that you learned in all of the 100 plus prior pitch meetings that you brought to bear on that conversation in terms of knowing which points to hit? I imagine they also by that point were very much a warm audience in the sense that regional Sequoia had invested. They were probably pre sold on the metrics or their analysts or associates at Sequoia had combed over all the numbers and everything ahead of time. But was there anything after all of your pitch meeting experiences that you felt you brought to bear on that meeting?
- [100:14]
Chatri Sityodtong
I remember that breakfast. I can remember yesterday, I just remember walking away feeling like everything was so laid back, almost disarming and so, I don't know, maybe their line of questioning or how they did it, it's just like there was no gamesmanship, there was nothing. I was just plump. Whatever they asked, the way they asked it, I felt comfortable enough to just, just give them the good, bad and ugly of the business versus in the earlier days, I might have tried to paint the most positive light possible. Right. I'm sure that if it was my very, very first time meeting Sequoia and I was that way, it may not have worked. But I don't. I just went with the flow and I remember that that morning I just went with the flow. And that's why after the breakfast I thought, man, there's going to be a lot more meetings because there's no way there's going to invest in it. And actually they didn't tell me that this meeting was one and done. I had no expectation. They just said, hey, come to breakfast. That was literally it. And they didn't tell me anything. And it was again two hours later that they called and said, hey, we want to put 100 million. And I was shocked. But Doug and Mike only met me for one hour. But they're legends for a reason, right? I don't know. They're a lot smarter than I am. So what do I know?
- [101:21]
Tim Ferriss
Well, I think you know a thing or two, it would seem, or you're doing a great job of faking it. Either way, it seems to be working out for you.
- [101:28]
Chatri Sityodtong
I know a lot about martial arts. How about that? I know a lot about fighting, doing every all the time.
- [101:34]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, that's true. And I don't want you to over short sell yourself in some other departments. So let me ask you a little bit more about the business side.
- [101:42]
Chatri Sityodtong
Sure.
- [101:43]
Tim Ferriss
Whether it was before the Sequoia meeting or afterwards, what were the most important broadcaster platform deals? Of course, I'm based in the us, so Amazon prime leaps to my mind. But maybe that wasn't the most important because sometimes, as you know, to grease the path for all of your future larger customers, you need one marquee customer. And maybe the marquee customer was not in the us, it was somewhere else. That kind of de risked the proposition for other folks like Amazon Prime. I have no idea. So I'm just curious what some of the most important initial dominoes were in that kind of broadcaster ecosystem and how they happen.
- [102:25]
Chatri Sityodtong
I don't know where I read this, but I read this saying of like, go chase your dream and the path will appear and the people will appear. Something along that lines. I'm screwing up the quote, but when I started this thing, it is crazy how much luck. Again, just like that breakfast I said. Right. But around that same time, a guy named Fabian Stetchel from CAA, which is CAA's the second world's largest agency business, they do all the meteorites for all the major sports properties. They have all the major Hollywood stars.
- [103:00]
Tim Ferriss
And you know, it's a huge, huge talent agency.
- [103:03]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, exactly. Very proud. But they do all the sports media rights properties. Literally in 2016, 2007, around that same time period, Fabian and I, we met over video call because one of the divisions within CA was looking at potentially investing in us. And Fabian and I just hit it off. And he's based in New York.
- [103:26]
Tim Ferriss
What is his job or what was his job there?
- [103:28]
Chatri Sityodtong
Oh, he's still there. He's a very senior person. He's basically in charge of selling meteorites for properties for the biggest sports price. So he did nascar, he did. I forget which ones, but the very big ones, MLB, et cetera. And again, almost 10 years ago, he spotted us and the investment arm of CA was looking to invest at an early stage company like ours. And Fabian was from the meteorite side. And Fabian and I hit it off and he actually was one that helped orchestrate this Amazon deal. But that's what I mean, Tim. Along the way so many incredible people appeared and just suddenly believed in what we were doing, believed that the world needed a major global sports property out of the continent of Asia. Because if you think about all the big sports properties around the world, global sports only came from the West. We're literally the first and only global sports property coming out of the east, sending content around the world. Okay. I don't know, maybe they saw the address of market was huge, maybe they saw the brand. You know, it's hard for me to.
- [104:29]
Tim Ferriss
Know exactly how did you initially connect with. Was it Fabian? Yeah, caa, did you just get a cold email?
- [104:36]
Chatri Sityodtong
So I might be getting the dates wrong, but I think when Sequoia announced they invested in us, that came with a lot of interest.
- [104:44]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, for sure, yeah.
- [104:48]
Chatri Sityodtong
Mike Morris Douglas is own investing in one. And so CAA's division that invests contacted us and we did a call. But what transpired from there was a friendship with Fabien and many years and again he was instrumental in helping us crack the US market. And CA was also instrumental in getting us Sky Sports in the uk. That's the biggest sports broadcaster. It's the ESPN of whatever it is, right? The UK of Europe. It's literally one thing after another. I'll give you a great example. I am on this panel for Milken Institute. It's a conference, a business conference. I'm on this sports panel and literally next to me is a name now, a very close brother, a friend named Hassan Al Tawadi, who at the time was chairman of FIFA, Qatar, the World Cup, Qatar. And this was also like eight years ago. So we're sitting on a panel and then it's NBA and then it's F1. And they just sat us next to each other. And Hassan turns me and says, chatri, I want to meet you afterwards. Oh yeah, of course. We have this meeting. And he's like, chatri, I've been doing Muay Thai for like five years. I love Demetrius Johnson, I love, you know, Rotang. And we had this one hour pow on and I'm like thinking, this is the chairman of Qatar World cup, which is going to be happening in, I think, I don't know, four or five years from now, right? And he's like, chatri, hey, why don't you come to Qatar? Just I want to show you around, Hasan. And we became very fast friends. And I flew to Qatar for the first time during COVID in 2020. Everything was shut down. I got some special visa to leave the country, Singapore and got some special visa to be allowed to enter Qatar. I go there now, I've been to Qatar and Qatar is literally like a second home to me now. Qatar Investment Authority, the government of Qatar invested in one as a result of this. Me sitting in Milken next to Hasan Al Tawadi, who you know is literally like a brother now we're very close. Who's a martial artist like you, Tim.
- [106:43]
Tim Ferriss
Okay, time wise, just to put it on the timeline, was that after or before the Sequoia investment?
- [106:48]
Chatri Sityodtong
That was after, after. Around the same time, maybe 2017, 2018. Sequoia was around 2017, so maybe a year after that. So what happened was after the word got out in Asia, but around the world that Mike and Doug personally, or ggf, it's called, I think the Sequoia Global Growth Fund, which is managed by them, by Doug and Mike invested in one. That's when we got invited to speak at Milken World Economic Forum. Suddenly all the pieces started coming together, but at each of these things was somebody who loved martial arts or saw the purity of what one was doing and how different it was from anything else that existed on the planet. It was one thing after another. And again, when you opened this talk, you said, hey, I have this WhatsApp group with my buddies who are all your friend. Doug introduced you to this one. That is literally how all the dots have connected, is somebody saw that. And then you said, chatri, I don't mean to offend you, but it reminds me of pride in K1. And of course I know your background. Having lived in Japan, I'm sure we're going to end up training together. Okay, Just these weird things.
- [107:48]
Tim Ferriss
Just go easy on my right elbow.
- [107:51]
Chatri Sityodtong
The weird, greatest coincidences, I'm telling you, man. And so this I really believe that sometimes when you chase a dream that's aligned fully with your passion and your purpose on life. My purpose. My mom told me from when I was a five that I'm going to help here to help the world or help people. And how do I help people today? You say, well, our athletes, we change our lives. And through the stories of our athletes, we inspire all of our fans to live their greatest life. Every week we give magical memories to families with their fathers and sons or daughters watching in front of the tv. I'll give you something in Thailand again, which you're very familiar with. In Thailand, one championship is as big, if not bigger than NFL or NBAs in America. The number of fans have come up to me and said, I spend time with my father more than I've ever spent because of one championship. Because every Friday as a family, we sit down in front of the TV and we watch one championship. You man, like that is exactly how I got introduced to Muay Thai. My father took me to Lumini Stadium, which you have been when I was nine years old. And despite all the, you know, I had a complicated relation with my father. Didn't see him for decades. A lot of anger, a lot of hatred. But in the end, I'm full of gratitude for all the good he did for me. And without him, I would never have found my greatest love, which is martial arts, when I was nine years old. And the fact that that's my most poignant memory of my father to this day. And that magical memory is happening all over the country of 70 million people in Thailand, where I grew up. I just came back from Thailand. It still doesn't register. It's wild. I land in the country and it's like, imagine, Tim, if you had started NFL and it became popular in your lifetime, let's just say in America. And everyone knew Tim started NFL. It's like that. It's like, yeah, it's wild. It's the most surreal experience as a kid growing up in Thailand and to see what's happened now. But you see, but now I really do believe that my mom's words about helping others, somehow it all feels almost like destiny. You know, my father named me Warrior. He took me to Muay Thai. I was so obsessed with it, and I'm still obsessed with it, that it became my life. And I could have had a very comfortable life in the investment world as a hedge fund manager or entrepreneur, other business or whatever. I could have done real estate or whatever it is, but somehow it's the weirdest thing. I just feel like my destiny is to be here, right here, right at this moment. And everything that came with it and all the good, bad and ugly that happened in my life somehow have led me to this moment. Sorry to be a little bit cornball with you. I'm a very philosophical guy. I think deeply about the meaning of life, and I think deeply about what is it that I want to do, you know, what is it that I want to do? Meaning that, you know, I don't own a lot of fast Cars I have, I own a Toyota. I don't have any material desires. This is a G shock watch. I don't have many material things. I almost nothing. It's because I just learned a long time ago, being poor, that all that kind of stuff is attaching yourself to material things versus attaching yourself to a purpose or meaning of life. I don't know. I found much more deeper fulfillment and happiness having found and aligned my passion, my purpose, than I ever did buying anything material.
- [111:10]
Tim Ferriss
Well, I also imagine, given your background and experiences, that attaching yourself to material goods or just subconsciously becoming attached to them as you accumulate them and value them more and more highly feels like skating on very thin ice compared to purpose, which is much, much harder to take away. Just seems like psychologically it makes all the sense in the world. And I'd love to ask. I have a lot of questions remaining. I am definitely going to ask you. I'll plant the seed about Renzo. I want to hear more about Renzo and his role in your life. Before we get to that though, I want to ask a few specific questions. You mentioned philosophy. I also recall the one up on Wall street, the lynch book. And I'm wondering if there are any books that you have either reread quite a bit on your own or gifted to other people. And this comes to mind because you're attracting talent, right? You're cultivating talent and stakeholders. And I've been involved with quite a lot of companies since 2007, 2008, and I remember visiting the Shopify offices for the first time because I was their first advisor in 2008 or 2009.
- [112:26]
Chatri Sityodtong
What an incredible story.
- [112:28]
Tim Ferriss
Great guys. And they have, at least at the time that I visited, they had, for instance, Andy Grove, High Output Management and a few other books that they would give to everyone when they became an employee or at least someone in a management position at Shopify. So for all these reasons, I'm just curious if there are any books that stand out to you that you've reread or that you've gifted or recommended to other people.
- [112:53]
Chatri Sityodtong
I do not say that I have one book that I go to, but I would say a few books that I think are very interesting. One is a book that recently came out called 32 principles by a friend of mine, Henry Gracie. So he's part of the Gracie family, the Jiu Jitsu family. And the 32 principles relates to Jiu Jitsu, but it's a double meaning. Each principle is also relating to how to live life. And I Found that to be a very powerful, almost like bible of what martial arts has been for me, but also how I also, you know, have inherited from Jiu jitsu doing for about 20 years and all the life lessons that applies. You know, it's very simple things. It's like in Jiu jitsu, if you force something, it often doesn't come to you. If you align and connect and you go with the flow, you'll be able to catch that submission. You'll be able to, you know, choke someone out or get an arm bar, whatever it is. But oftentimes when you go for something directly and you force it, it's a very good analogy for life. You know, certain things that you can't force. Passion or purpose. It's either that's your true self or you're faking it. If you're faking to yourself, you only get so far and you'll fake it to the world. So that's one book that I think I would recommend anybody to read. And whether you do jiu jitsu or not, there's a lot of powerful lessons in that. And sorry, it's very martial arts because I'm always martial arts obsessed with another person that I think books, and there's a lot of books on Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is someone, and people may not truly understand. Bruce Lee was, yes, he was a world class martial artist, but he was a very deep person in how he thought about life and meaning of life. And so reading his philosophies, reading his has always had a major impact. The Tao of Jeet Kune do, his first martial arts book. But there's a lot of stuff on Bruce Lee about how he lived life and all that. And one quote that comes to mind is he says, he said many, many, many years ago, right when he was alive, don't pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a hard one and the meaning of that. Like, why would you want to do that? You know, you pray for the strength, for a hard one, because a hard life is often a meaningful life. Love, pain, suffering. You're going because you're pursuing something oftentimes bigger than yourself that involves love, pain and suffering, such that the path is going to be hard. Praying for an easy life means you wasted your potential as a human being. I have an easy life meaning. I never was given a challenge. I was in the lap of luxury my whole life or whatever it is, or I had food on my plate. I never went through any adversity. So Bruce Lee is someone I talk A lot about quote, a lot. But I also look at even modern day heroes, including our athletes and their stories in terms of whenever we'll have a company meeting. And it's completely unrelated to martial arts, but every month we have an award called Be Like Nick. Goes to the employees, our teammates who go above and beyond the call of duty in their work and do the extraordinary. And then we tell the story of it. And why is it called like Be Like Nick? Because it's about Nick Vojic. So there's this motivational speaker who's born with no arms and no legs. I don't know if you know Nick Wojciech.
- [116:04]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I think I've shared his videos in my newsletter actually, years ago.
- [116:07]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, yeah, I think he's from Australia. He's born with no arms and legs. Tried to commit suicide when he was nine by drowning himself in the bathtub because he was endlessly bullied and had no future and his mom saved him. Incredible life. Incredible life story and incredible optimism and sense of if he can make it and become one of the world's greatest motivational speakers. He has a beautiful wife, I think he has three kids. Incredible life. And we started this Be Like Nick several years ago award and those are my tools for how to teach. Because I just feel like sometimes for me as a leader, if you hand people books, they may or may not read them, but that's not how they learn. I find storytelling to be the most powerful way to live and exemplify the values of your company, of your organization by like Be Like Nick. These stories, rather than say everyone be good, you know, don't lie, don't cheat or whatever it is, the values, right. It's better to tell stories of real life heroes within your own company that exemplify your values, that exemplify what it means to do extraordinary things and hence Be Like Nick. So I know I'm not answering a question directly about books. I have so many books I would, you know, so if you want to know about investing.
- [117:18]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, bridging to the storytelling is great. I mean, it can be a physical book, but it's more a metaphor for teaching. In this particular case, learning, teaching. So I think the storytelling maps into that. Are there any people who you have looked up to or who you admire for their storytelling ability? It could be within the world of business. I remember one of my most nerve wracking interviews very, very early on that I had was with Ed Catmull, who at the time was president of Pixar and he wrote a Book called Creativity, Inc. And it talks about storytelling quite a lot. The reason that was so nerve wracking is the first person I did not know who I interviewed on the podcast. I was really, really nervous. But are there any folks you look up to as storytellers in the way you describe it or otherwise?
- [118:09]
Chatri Sityodtong
Outside of my family, my greatest role model is KRU Yeotong Senanan, who is the founder of Sikyotong Camp Yeo Tong Gym, which is where I cut my teeth from Muay Thai. He was a very philosophical man, and he died penniless. But he didn't die penniless because he was materialistic or he wasted money or he was into gambling or anything. No, he died penniless because all of his money, all the time, every year, was given to those less fortunate. His whole mission in life was when he built Sichuandong Gym. It was the number one in the entire world at one point in Muay Thai, producing most number of world champions, the most fierce fighting gym in the world. And his whole philosophy was giving to orphans and underprivileged kids. And he wanted to share the art of Muay Thai. And he would fund their food, their education and etc. And a few years before he died, I think five or six years before he died, he won 56 million baht, which is about a million, almost $2 million in the lottery. In the lottery.
- [119:15]
Tim Ferriss
Wow.
- [119:16]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes. Okay. Yeah. And he. The crazy thing, he got the money the next day, literally. He announced on in the media, anyone who wants me to give you money, just come to the Jim, tell me your story, and I'll give you what I believe is appropriate. And I'm not kidding. Thousands of people showed up, thousands. And people would say, you know, my mom is dying of cancer. And he would give 10,000, whatever, until it was all gone. This is a true story. You can even Google it, and it's there. And he was somebody again, had the most big impact in my life. And he was an incredible storyteller. He would tell us stories of legendary fighters and why they became great and how they lived their life. You know, he was someone. Never smoked, never drank, and he has a whole bunch of other tenants. And to this day, you know, his words are in my. In my head. His. His lessons are in my head. So a powerful storyteller for me is someone who tells a story. But embedded is a deep lesson because that's how I think knowledge and experience gets passed on. So I don't have anybody in the modern era. I'm just thinking about who tells good stories. Of course, I have friends who tell good stories, funny stories. There's nobody I look up to per se. But storytelling is definitely a very big part of my leadership as it is a very big part of the one championship brand in terms of. If you look at our broadcast on Amazon, you'll see these storytelling videos before they fight. Right? It's. Why are they fighting? What is at stake? Is it because a mom is dying of cancer? They got to pay the hospital bills? Is it because they want to be the greatest in the world? And the belt is everything they've ever dreamed of. What is at stake and what is a story? Because that's what we believe. Yes. There's going to be a fantastic knockout and you and your buddies will appreciate it because it's martial arts at the highest levels. By the way, Tim, I haven't announced it yet, but we have a big major event in Tokyo later this year.
- [121:09]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, man.
- [121:10]
Chatri Sityodtong
I haven't announced it. So this is coming, but I won't give the date yet. But I would like to invite you as my personal guest to come to Tokyo. We sit cage side together. Okay. And Sayama Sensei will be there.
- [121:20]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, man.
- [121:21]
Chatri Sityodtong
Just because your background. And I'm telling you.
- [121:23]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [121:24]
Chatri Sityodtong
That when you sit there and you watch all the videos, all the life stories, you'll walk away, Tim Ferriss with a magical memory and some powerful lesson. Okay. And of course, you're. You're in the incredible seat of meeting so many different incredible human beings. And you have extraordinary means your whole career, that it might not be that special. But I promise you, given your background of loving Japan, speaking Japanese, loving martial arts, being who you are, just. You will love sitting there. And then I'll take you backstage, you'll see the speech. You go meet the guys. That for me is storytelling. You walk away with some powerful memories and lessons. And I'm inviting you. For real.
- [121:59]
Tim Ferriss
Yes. I would absolutely love to do that. So you can let me know the dates on the bat phone. That sounds amazing. And I think I actually bumped into Sayamasato once when I was like 15 or 16, because I saved up all my money and I went to one shuto match and then the announcers were like, you know, and then he came out and did the whole thing. And I just remember being so in awe also of the guy's thighs, the size of his legs and his head kicks. Just unbelievable. But that sounds like an amazing experience. So thank you for the invitation. I would love to talk about that.
- [122:39]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes.
- [122:40]
Tim Ferriss
So chatri I'd love to ask you just some real quick kind of paint by the numbers 1 questions on a broadcast and online level. From a distribution perspective, what are your biggest countries?
- [122:58]
Chatri Sityodtong
You mean in terms of viewership or in terms of.
- [123:00]
Tim Ferriss
In terms of viewership.
- [123:02]
Chatri Sityodtong
In terms of viewership. Well, obviously the continent of Asia for us is quite large.
- [123:08]
Tim Ferriss
If you thin slice it within Asia, are there any. For instance, when I'm looking at the podcast, I can go into Spotify or whatever the platform analytics might be and say, like, okay, looks like us within the US these particular states or cities, then you have this, this, this, this, this.
- [123:24]
Chatri Sityodtong
So one way to think about it is when we throw events, and it doesn't matter what time of day we throw events, where do we trend? Around the world is also a very important metric we look at because, yeah, I can list our top 10 countries, but surprisingly they don't always correlate. So for example, in March when we're in Tokyo is Asia primetime show on a Sunday. We trended number two or three in America. America is not a large market for us, but we have a rabid fan base and a very growing fan base. Actually, you know, we're only second only to ufc and we're not even on ground in America. Right. In terms of the actual metrics. And there's obviously a lot of local promotions in the U.S. but for sure, Asia, like, you know, countries like China, Japan, Thailand, these are obviously big countries, you know, India. But what I say to the team is, you know, our 500 million fans are scattered all around the world. So in any given one country might be small, right? It might be a million fans, but in another country, okay, like if you think it's like Thailand, definitely one of our top markets. 70 million people population and 70 million people are fans, there's no question. Right? So that might be one country that over indexes, but Philippines is the same way. Philippines were top two or top three sports property.
- [124:44]
Tim Ferriss
I have an assistant in the Philippines who went to one of your shows live in Manila, actually.
- [124:48]
Chatri Sityodtong
And there's also, it depends on who's world champion at the time. So this is another funny thing is when we have a world champion for XYZ country. Okay, I'll give you an example. Actually, it's on my Instagram. Although I'm not very social media. That's funny. As a social media expert, I'm not very social media engaged. I'm not engaged on my platform, on my own personal ones because I just find it to be very laborious and I'D rather focus on the business. But I do have one clip up there where when China won its first world champion, Tang Kai, first MMA world champion CTV5, which is the central government of China, came out on TV and online and on print Jiayou which means yay. China won its first world championship in one championship. Okay, it was all over. He came back home and this is the clip to 10,000 people. The government threw a thing at 10,000 fans and they're all holding their phone. His welcome home was crazy. We did like a billion organic video views on that single fight on the continent. It's not that big given that China is a billion three. But the point is that this blob of 500 million is growing. But what we have seen is that the pockets of popularity depends on who's the world champion, who's the most popular world champions at the time, where are they fighting, what country? Right. So like recently in Japan, our numbers just blew up in March as I mentioned because of the Saitama event. But previously to that it was, you know, Takeru had fought but he blew up the. Because he unfortunately got knocked out in the first round. I mean the best way to think about it is it's a blob. And the blob around the world ebbs and flows based on where the events are, what time zones. Because sometimes we have US prime time events, sometimes it's Asia prime time and sometimes we're in throwing events in like in Denver and sometimes we're in Doha Qatar. So I think that's the best way to describe it. But every metric we look at again it's depending on country. I think almost every country I look at because I get these stats across the world 2x 3x, 4x if it's 4x obviously usually a small base. These are the kind of numbers we have hockey stick charts like almost every week. I don't know of a country that is down and just off the top of my head, you know, from prior time because it's just combat sports is growing so fast. So that's a long winded answer. I know but it's because I, I'm telling you like last year 100 it was Thailand was our number one. But this year, not necessarily like, you know, it depends on the year on what is popular. Right. Four years ago it was China for sure.
- [127:14]
Tim Ferriss
Or three years ago, a few follow up questions. Actually a comment then follow up questions. The comment is and I started thinking this around 20202021 during COVID but particularly I'm tracking Invest in some of these companies too. But I'm tracking AI development really, really closely and recently dealt with a deep fake video of me promoting stocks and some scam which was 99% convincing. I mean, this is fake video. Background, clothing, facial hair, everything except for a few glitches was convincing. And I think as more and more is CGI or AI produced that. Man, oh man, one of the last places of refuge for pure authenticity is going to be live sports. So I think the growth, I'd be shocked if the growth doesn't continue and if it might, might even accelerate as people are looking for some type of oasis where they can separate fact from fiction.
- [128:15]
Chatri Sityodtong
That's a very fascinating thing. I've had deepfake videos of me done as well. And it's kind of disturbing actually. In this deepfake video, it was just last week, my social media team took it down, was me promoting gambling. I don't gamble. But we're moving more and more into a world where you don't know what is real news and what's fake news. There's so much manipulation of the media and then on top of it, now you have AI. It's a scary world that we're going to be living in in the next few years.
- [128:44]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, it's pretty spooky. Let me follow up on the offices where you have important broadcast relationships because I'd love to hear more about that because I guess as an outsider who knows nothing about the broadcast world, I think, well, once you sign the deal or maybe if Fabian helps put together a deal and you agree on the X year term and when things are going to be broadcast, what is there to do with an office on the ground? Is it just taking people out to nice lunches and making sure they're happy? What is actually going on?
- [129:21]
Chatri Sityodtong
When we did our first broadcast deals many years ago, I thought that, oh, you signed the contract and it's done. But actually what happens is every broadcaster has tons of content. In Amazon's case, it's they have NFL, they have nascar, they have, you know, wnba and of course there's one. And of course there's a programming schedule. But humans are humans. Like if you are, you know, we have these teams and I give a great example, let's say our Japanese broadcaster, we have weekly meetings with cross departmental. So programming, marketing, sales, blah blah, blah, blah. Check in every single week in Japan on ground. And it's to make sure that the broadcaster and the content is at the right hour, the right number of promos, the highlights, what else can we be doing to grow the viewership? So you're always actually there's a lot of work that goes behind the scenes to make sure it's a rating success and that it continues the types of athletes. I'll give examples. So our broadcast partner in Japan, unix, asked me to sign some Japanese superstars as an example. So having a deep and strong partnership is very, very important. But also it's usually we have a team, of course with broadcast partnership, but we'll have a team of social media experts as well and athlete ecosystem scouts. Okay, so there's kind of three pillars that once you establish a very strong partnership with the broadcast partner, you have a broadcast team with a that manages everything from marketing and sponsorship sales and promos and highlights and da da da da, and different time slots and shoulder content. And then of course, social media, you want to make sure you're blowing up social media so that you're culturally relevant in that country with the athletes. And there's content you're always making. And of course the athletes are competing, so you can also do that. And then the third leg is obviously athlete ecosystem. So I'd say those are the three pillars. Whether it's China or the US or Japan or Thailand or whatever, or Philippines where we have folks, it's usually those three pillars that are at work.
- [131:22]
Tim Ferriss
I'd love to just drop a quick comparison of say physical retailers because I've been learning a lot more about this outside of books. I learned about it within the realm of books and book distribution, but have learned more and more about truly mass retail, which I mean, it's just wild how much of an impact mass retail has online. Yes, Amazon is a big deal, but but predominantly physical retails is still just enormous. Also just for food security in the US which is kind of wild to think about. But the reason I'm bringing it up is that I'm wondering and different broadcasters must vary widely. But in the say, retail space, you go into a large retailer in the U.S. it's like, okay, if you want an end cap instead of placement down at the knee, then chances are you might have to pay for it. You want better placement or you want them to sell internally to store managers or people who make buying decisions. Well, you may have to pay for that like co op advertising fees and so on. They're also going to want to know in many cases what you're doing to drive consumers to them as a retailer, distributor. And I'm wondering if there are similar types of asks of one from broadcasters.
- [132:37]
Chatri Sityodtong
In the media industry, you're either the IT content or you're not. If you look at the history, the 13 years of one, there were partnerships in the early days where I just had to give the content for free. I'm like, hey, here are the metrics on social, please put it on tv. And Asia at the time was predominantly still free to air tv. It slowly transitioned to digital. But the vast majority, I'd say like maybe two thirds of the continent is still free to air tv. But as we became more and more popular and you know, again, a champion in China or wherever, and the popularity rises and of course the ecosystem, whether it's B2B. B2G.
- [133:13]
Tim Ferriss
What's B2G? I haven't heard that before. What is that?
- [133:15]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, government. Government.
- [133:17]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, got it.
- [133:18]
Chatri Sityodtong
Governments. Yeah, governments. Yeah. Because, you know, just like F1, we are traveling circus and our events in different countries are funded by governments because they want to attract the eyeballs and the tourism.
- [133:29]
Tim Ferriss
Right, Interesting.
- [133:31]
Chatri Sityodtong
Okay.
- [133:31]
Tim Ferriss
So it's like a. It's like hosting the World Expo or something.
- [133:33]
Chatri Sityodtong
It's good for the economy. A great example is Qatar. They did World cup and what was he after? F1. They have a few big global sports properties that the tourism bodies have funded. Right. So we're different countries. So in Qatar's case, World cup was their big bet in terms of introducing themselves to the world, but also building economic and political bridges for Qatar's economic and political system. But also again, an introduction. Here's Qatar. Right. What better way to do it than with the Qatar World cup where, you know, a few billion people watch and for the whole World cup, it ended up being the best World cup in history. Right. It was in terms of games and, and viewership whatnot. But how many CEOs flew in and politicians and how many deals were done? How many? You know. And it has been a major catalyst for Qatar's economy and political landscape. It just has. And since then there's momentum been built with Qatar. Sports has that power because sports properties, when done right, win the hearts and minds of an entire country or entire region, or in Olympics case, the entire world. Right. And that is what I mean about you're either it or you're not. So some sports properties, and I don't want to name names, but they just are never going to be it. They're in a genre that the sport is a snooze fest or the sport is long form or it's just uncool or production value is bad, whatever it is. Right.
- [135:04]
Tim Ferriss
And not being the it thing means you don't have leverage. Correct. You're not in a good position.
- [135:10]
Chatri Sityodtong
Right. And then in the case of one, again, it's shades of gray, just as it is for NBA. NBA is very strong in America, very strong in Philippines. But Thailand, no one cares about basketball. So every sports, global sports property has this like shades of gray and zones where they're very, very popular and they're it. And you can command a very big price for meteorites. So it's exactly like retail. If you have a hot IT product that regularly sells out with a very, very fast inventory, turns out the shelf space they're going to give you is premium. And the retailer will probably give you a rebate back because it's such a great product and it pulls consumers into the stores. Same thing. So a broadcaster will have 30 different types of programming. News, sports, this, that, da da da, da da. But of course, the crown jewels is where they the ones that drive viewership, drive cultural relevance. These are the ones that broadcasters will pay premium dollars for. Right. So it really, really depends on market by market, what the economics are. But in the early days of one, literally, we gave the content for free to everybody. We just wanted to be on air. And then they would be on air on a delayed basis at 2 in the morning. Then we slowly would persuade them to do it at 11pm and eventually live. And the numbers would blow up and then they're like, oh, this is a hit. And then they start investing in the property.
- [136:31]
Tim Ferriss
And then how much funding have you guys raised at this point?
- [136:35]
Chatri Sityodtong
In total, we've raised a little over $600 million. But the beauty of the sports business, even NBA, NBA has about a thousand employees globally total, full stop. It's a $70 billion property because it's an asset light business. That's a platform business that at the end of the day rests on the brand and the media rights. Okay. Of course, athletes. But it's not like you have to build to scale globally. Okay. Again, we're broadcasting 190 countries around the world every week. Okay. Live. It's not like we have to build a factory in 190 countries. We don't need to raise $10 billion. We don't need 20,000 people. I think if I'm not mistaken, like, you know, very mature sports properties might have 2,000 people maximum. Like a WWE, I think has. That's not sports, but it's, you know, pseudo Sports has about 2,000 employees. It's around there. And that's the beauty of this business. So $600 million is a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money when you think about the viewership that we have. The, you know, how big we are. Right. How popular we are in the world. When you think about our status as a top 10 global sports property, I think that's also why people love software companies. Although I would argue that for what Doug Leone was saying, sports properties are far more enduring than a typical SaaS company is or typical tech startup is.
- [138:05]
Tim Ferriss
No, exactly. I mean it's like I've been involved with companies and seen companies that have raised multiple billions of dollars in their seed series or their series A. And yes, on one hand you have the potential for 100x return or if you're lucky, 1000x return. That is possible. But also a few PhDs in a lab could design something that completely destroys that company. And there's a certain rapid escape velocity that can be achieved if you're the 1% of the 1%. But very, very hard to defend typically to develop a moat. Whereas your business has been on a lot of levels like a motherfucker to build. But once you've hit that critical mass now you have a beautiful thing to defend.
- [138:54]
Chatri Sityodtong
That's why I said, you know, it's less than 1% of 1% that I'm actually standing here with my team. That one actually survived the 13 years. And the fact that our metrics are just continue to explode is mind boggling to me. But we've hit that point now like any competitor to one would have to invest a minimum, minimum I think of a few billion dollars and at least a decade to be able to catch up with us. But by then our own metrics will be multiples of what it is today, right?
- [139:21]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. If people are looking for business opportunities, they'll choose something else rather than try to scale Everest backwards. We didn't get to say much about Renzo Graci, but I want to at least give a shout out to Renzo because I've only met him very briefly, but what a sweet guy. Also an incredible technician and teacher and I still remember also some of his finishes from back in the day. Like Oleg Taktarov. Oh my God. From the back, heel to the face, basically kip up to run across the ring and it's just incredible.
- [139:56]
Chatri Sityodtong
You're right, it's Oleg Taktarov and he was called the Russian Bear was his nickname. And Henzo was on his back and he was kicking and then Oleg came in and then he got up, kick, boom. He falls Down Henzo gets. Stands up and throws a right hook and knocks him out. I mean, I'll tell you, Renzo is someone who has had a profound influence. Not only did I train under the Henzo Gracie banner and he gave me my black belt, but we joke with brother from another mother. We're always talking at different time zones, all hours of the night. I always say, he is the candle that lights up all other candles around the world. The number of students like myself that he has all over the world that are carrying the torch of Henzo Gracie Jiu Jitsu, but equally important, carrying his values as a human being. Of. He's genuinely the most generous person I've ever met. Ever met in my whole life. Generous of his time, of his heart, anything he can do. He's just genuinely. He and I have been close friends for 20 years. Plus now almost 20 years rather. Actually, he came to the very first ONE Championship Show. He flew from New York all the way here just to attend the first one. And at that time, we were just a startup, a tiny little show, but that's the kind of guy he is. And I don't know if, you know, he had his last professional mma fight in ONE Championship. He was 52 years old. Came back and fought Pride legend Yuki Kondo in Philippines. 20,000 people say to me it was crazy. And he wins by the most unbelievable, beautiful submission. And then he's on these cornerman's shoulders and he's out there and the fans go crazy. And that's Henzo. I mean, and he gave this incredible speech about ages is just a number and whatever you set your mind and your dreams are, go it and live your dreams and have the guts to be who you really are. And that's his last fight. Yeah.
- [141:56]
Tim Ferriss
I did not know that. That's incredible. Wow.
- [141:59]
Chatri Sityodtong
He gave that to me as a gift. I mean, I'm telling you, of course we paid him, but I'm saying he did not have to fight at 52 years old, because I said, hey, Renzo, can you fight? I'd love you to have your last fight in one. And again, he's 50, but just epic. And he did it because he wanted to help grow one champion. He wanted to grow our popularity. He knew that if he fought in it, he'd bring the Gracie family name with it, you know, and. And people be intrigued about. This is his last fight of his career. Right. So it's a lot of epic stories. He was actually in Qatar in February at our show. He was in Abu Dhabi for something but then he came over to Qatar. But yeah, and he's given me so much about Jiu Jitsu knowledge, but he's given much more about how to live life. And it goes back to what my mother said. You have to help others. And that's Henzos to the core. Yes. He's legendary. He's, in my opinion, the most complete Gracie out of the Gracie family. And that's saying a lot, because there are a lot of monsters and killers from the Gracie family. Legendary life, legendary career. Left Brazil, nothing but the shirt in his back. Came to America, went to New York City, got cheated by his first partner who took his passport. Incredible story. And then now built the most successful jujitsu academies in America and fought in pride, Fought in one, fought in all the epic promotions. And what a life. What a life. But people don't know this about him. Is like, he is the nicest, the most generous, the most loving human being. And that's why I said he's a candle that lights up the world. Yeah.
- [143:35]
Tim Ferriss
He's one of a kind. So deep out the Henzo. And for people who want to look him up, Henzo, that is Brazilian, Portuguese with an R, R, E, N, Z, O. Gracie.
- [143:45]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, I'm actually wearing his shirt to represent. Represent.
- [143:47]
Tim Ferriss
I can see that. Yeah, I recognized it. So if you could bring back in their prime a few fighters from the olden days, and these have to be professional competitors. So not Bruce Lee, but Sakuraba. Fair game. Ernesto Hoost. Fair game. You can pick from any time. Really, Senshai. Whatever you want to pick. But if you were to bring people back in their prime to fight in one, in any discipline, who would you bring back?
- [144:18]
Chatri Sityodtong
So, for mma, I would get a prime. Fedor Emelianenko.
- [144:23]
Tim Ferriss
Yes.
- [144:24]
Chatri Sityodtong
Right. I mean, he's definitely has to go down as one of the greatest in history. I'd bring a prime Henzo Gracie, and maybe even against each other, because Henzo would often give 50 pounds of weight. He'd be fighting at 170, and his opponents would be at 220. I would love to have Raman Decker.
- [144:38]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, so good. The rainbow shorts.
- [144:42]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes, yes. And his left hook.
- [144:44]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, I'm sorry. You know what? I was thinking of a different Dutchman. No, I was thinking of a different guy. Ramon Decker.
- [144:49]
Chatri Sityodtong
No, no. Rob, Come on. Rob. Come on. Rob.
- [144:51]
Tim Ferriss
Rob, come on. Is who I was thinking of. Yeah.
- [144:53]
Chatri Sityodtong
Ramon Decker is a left hook. Yes.
- [144:56]
Tim Ferriss
He had, what was it, like seven or eight fights against Coban.
- [144:59]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my God. You're crazy. Tim. I had no idea that you knew martial arts this deeply. It's a wonder that we have not met before. I'm telling you, I know everybody in martial arts. You know it cold, man. You're an expert. It's crazy, but yeah. So I would bring back the greats like Raman Decker and Rob Kaman, who are the two first foreigners went to Thailand, went to the fight in the toughest arenas and fought the best ties. And a time, this was when I was training in the 80s and 90s, where, you know, there were very few foreigners who could even hold a candle to an average tie. Right. Today it's become a global, truly global sport. You have the likes of Jonathan Haggerty or Liam Harrison or from all over the world, the greats. Right. Even now there's a sensation in Japan, Naraka, who's broken all records already at the lighter weight divisions. This killer, he just joined one, actually two days ago. But I'd love to being a prime Mike Tyson and a prime Muhammad Ali and do a boxing fight in one championship. That would have been unbelievable. I'd bring back a prime. Who else? Wanderlei Silva was somebody who was an absolute killer from back in the day. Yeah. Rampage Jackson.
- [146:12]
Tim Ferriss
And I was just gonna say Quentin.
- [146:15]
Chatri Sityodtong
When they fought in pride.
- [146:16]
Tim Ferriss
Pride. In pride, yeah.
- [146:17]
Chatri Sityodtong
That to me was one of the.
- [146:19]
Tim Ferriss
I mean, these guys just the guard slams alone from. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God. Come out with the chance. That was so fun.
- [146:27]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah. Even grappling. I want to do one of the greatest of all time, arguably is Marcelo Garcia.
- [146:33]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. My friend co founded this school with him in New York City. Josh Waitzkin.
- [146:38]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah. Yeah. So Marcelo's signed to one, you know, he had his debut in January. He wants to fight Tyrell Tolo, the current welterweight champion.
- [146:46]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Rutolo brothers are nuts to watch. Nuts.
- [146:50]
Chatri Sityodtong
So getting those two guys, Marcelo versus Tai, I think would probably be the.
- [146:54]
Tim Ferriss
How old is Marcelo now?
- [146:56]
Chatri Sityodtong
41 around there. But he's in prime prime condition. Of course, the last couple years he's battling cancer, but he's cancer free now. And that's why he wanted one last big run. And then if he wins a world title, one, he will retire as arguably the greatest of all time.
- [147:13]
Tim Ferriss
Can I just say a quick thing about Marcelo so people can look up Marcelo. He's famous for the Marcelotine, as he calls a variation of the guillotine, where he kind of levers up one of his arm on the shoulder of the person in his guard. But Marcelo, number one, absolutely. One of the sweetest human beings. I've ever met in my life.
- [147:32]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes.
- [147:33]
Tim Ferriss
So soft spoken and just a deeply, deeply kind human. Secondly, as my friend described it, is able to turn himself on and off better than almost any athlete I've seen. Where he would literally, they'd have to find him before his World Championship bout, let's just say in a tournament or a finals match for the World Championships, because he would be taking a nap under a bleacher and they would be like, marcelo, you're up, you're up. And he'd go, okay, wake up. Kind of like shake his head and then just go from 0 to 10 and get out there. And similarly would compete against folks. And I guess this is true in ADCC Absolute division, and it's true in all Japan Judo Championships, but he competed against guys who were like 50, 80, 100 pounds heavier than he was. Just an incredible athlete.
- [148:23]
Chatri Sityodtong
So Marcelo will be competing again in one later this year, but his debut was in January in Thailand and he was very nervous backstage because it's a huge production and obviously it was a major event. And he was fighting Imanari, the leg lock specialist from Japan. Legendary like specialist. And because Marcelo had not competed in 13 years, but also went through cancer the last few years, he didn't know how he was going to come back. And he just put on a flawless, unbelievable, just crushed Imminari. Made him look like, honestly, like a blue belt. And that's no disrespect to Imminar. Imanari is a high level, world class black belt, unbelievable leg lock specialist. But Marcelo just. There are levels, right? And Marcelo's just on another level. So I do want to do Marcelo Garcia versus Tyrell Tula. I think that will be the most watched Jiu Jitsu match in history because of the epic storylines.
- [149:17]
Tim Ferriss
Stylistically so different, too.
- [149:19]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- [149:21]
Tim Ferriss
Couldn't be more different.
- [149:23]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, man. This has been such a fun interview because I've said a lot of things or told a lot of different stories or just unexpectedly because of the way the flow has been and at the same time had no idea how deep, deep you are, because obviously I did my work on you and I knew you did martial arts, but I didn't know how deep. But that's crazy. It's crazy how much you know and all the little nuances too. I mean, down to Henzo's upkick on Oleg Toktarov. I think that event was called Extreme Fighting Championship or something like that.
- [149:54]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, it was an oldie. This is way back in the day. This is Way back in the day when I just come back from Japan. It's probably a few years after I came back from Japan. And in Japan, I would always go to the bookstore after school after judo practice. I did judo and I would try to find Kakuto Gitsushin, which was this magazine that was all martial arts, to see the latest K1 photos and so on, to see what had happened. And that's basically how I forced myself to learn to read was judo textbooks and Kakuto Gitsushin.
- [150:23]
Chatri Sityodtong
Wow. Wow. How long did you study? Because your accent is flawless. It's like literally a Japanese. Japanese accent.
- [150:29]
Tim Ferriss
I was there for 11 months. I studied for maybe five months before I got there and lived with a Japanese host family, went to a Japanese school, wore the seifuku uniform every day, and did basically next to no English for the entire almost year that I was there. Then I came back and I studied a bit more, went to Middlebury Language School. But really it was that 11 months and just going 100% Gadibing, like, wow, amazing. Get the kanji in a poster and it's like, I don't care how tired you are, if your senpai made you drink or clean the judo floor until you were dizzy, you have to do 20 characters. It doesn't matter what condition. You have to do 20 characters a day. And that was the deal.
- [151:15]
Chatri Sityodtong
Amazing.
- [151:17]
Tim Ferriss
So people can find all things one championship@1fc.com. Is that the best place to point people?
- [151:22]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yes.
- [151:23]
Tim Ferriss
All right, great. And then for social, is there anywhere in particular you'd like to point people? Just so they can see the master works that you guys put out?
- [151:31]
Chatri Sityodtong
It's a hashtag. Is JustOneChampionship on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, whatever. The usual YouTubes?
- [151:38]
Tim Ferriss
Yep, the usual. All right, guys, check it out. You won't be disappointed. The highlights are ridiculous, as are the stories and everything else that we've discussed. Very last question. If you could put anything on a billboard, could be anything. Just to get a message out to. Metaphorically speaking, many millions or billions of people. Could be a quote. Could be anything at all. I was thinking about the love, pain, suffering. Of course, the Bruce Lee quote comes to mind, but it could be anything. Is there anything that you would put up?
- [152:07]
Chatri Sityodtong
Suffering is the path to our greatness. And I say this to all my friends, my relatives, and I truly believe this from the bottom of my heart, that suffering is a path to greatness. That oftentimes God or the universe puts us on a path where we, when we're Going through it, we suffer. But in hindsight, when you look back on it, it's probably the most beautiful part of the journey, I'm sure. For example, Tim, when you're in Japan, not being able to speak English, it was suffering for quite a bit until it began.
- [152:38]
Tim Ferriss
Six of the 11 months were brutal. Absolute brutality.
- [152:41]
Chatri Sityodtong
Yeah, but, yeah. So that's what I would say is suffering is a path to our greatness because it brings out the best in us. And it's a hard thing to understand when you haven't suffered, but when you do suffer, be grateful for the suffering. That's what I always say to myself when I'm suffering anything, it's because as long as I have a very powerful reason or why, then you can almost suffer through anything. So I think suffering is the path of greatness.
- [153:08]
Tim Ferriss
All right, excellent place to wrap up, Chatri. Thank you so much for the time. This has been so much fun for me. I've really looked forward to this. Can't wait to get back in front of a screen or in front of an actual ring to engage with one. So let's definitely keep in touch and I really appreciate you making the time today for a very, very wide ranging and super rich conversation for me. I took a ton of notes, so I deeply appreciate it.
- [153:36]
Chatri Sityodtong
Thank you so much too, Tim. I had a wonderful time. Incredible questions, incredible conversation, and I look forward to seeing you in Japan together.
- [153:44]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, I'll be there. I'll be there. And for everybody listening.
- [153:47]
Chatri Sityodtong
Awesome.
- [153:47]
Tim Ferriss
We'll link to everything in the show notes. As usual at Tim Blog Podcast, just search Chatri or one championship and it will pop right up. And until next time, remember, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And as always, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests and These strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog Friday, Type that into your browser. Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. As many of you know, for the last few years I've been sleeping on a midnight luxe mattress from today's sponsor are Helix Sleep. I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. Kind of over the top to be honest. I mean they frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. What kind of mattress is it? What do you do? What's the magic juju? It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom which I sometimes sleep in. And I picked it for for its very soft but supportive feel. To help with some lower back pain that I've had. The Sunset Elite delivers exceptional comfort while putting the right support in the right spots. It is made with five tailored foam layers including a base layer with full perimeter zoned lumbar support right where I need it and middle layers with premium foam and microcoils that create a soft contouring feel. Which also means if I feel like I want to sleep on my side, I can do that without worrying about other aches and pain pains I might create. And with a luxurious pillow top for pressure relief, I look forward to nestling into that bed every night that I use it. The best part of course is that it helps me wake up feeling fully rested with a back that feels supple instead of stiff. That is the name of the game for me these days. Helix offers a 100 night sleep trial, fast free shipping and a 15 year warranty. So check it all out and you my dear listeners, can get get between 20 and 27% off plus two free pillows on all mattress orders. So go to helixsleep.com Tim to check it out. That's helixsleep.com Tim with Helix Better Sleep starts now. Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to to continuous improvement. You can see it in their Coffee Tri Glitch coffee. You can see it in Jira Dreams of Sushi but why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus on improving one thing, one product over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1. I met the founder way back in the day randomly in a coffee shop in Argentina. It must have been between 2005, 2007 and ever since then. One product they are now unveiling AG Next Gen, the same single scoop, once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals, and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health. I love it for its great taste. I just mix it with cold water. It's easy. And the way it helps fill nutritional gaps in my diet, it's my nutritional insurance. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. NSF conducts annual audits of AG1's manufacturing facilities, reviews ingredients for toxicology, and ensures AG1's label claims are accurate. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome Kit, and five of the upgraded Aggressive AG1 Travel Packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1.com Tim.