Eddie Bravo and Joe Rogan trace the twister’s origins to 1985 Santa Ana High School wrestling, where Jesse Barrios taught him leg-based submissions—later adapted into jiu-jitsu by the Machado brothers. Eddie admits lying about making high school football teams, contrasting his struggles with exceptions like Cain Velasquez and Matt Mitrione, while Rogan highlights MMA’s growing crossover from wrestling. They joke about dating tall women for athletic offspring, referencing Zulu’s extreme approach, before shifting to Hickson Gracie’s jiu-jitsu legacy and films, with Eddie praising Marcelo Garcia as the greatest practitioner. The conversation ends with Eddie’s 2003 Abu Dhabi upset over Hoyler Gracie—a rematch derailed by a promoter’s disorganization—underscoring how early specialization and natural talent shape combat sports careers. [Automatically generated summary]
Eddie Bravo is wearing a Korean Zombie shirt and what this means for you non-MMA people.
There's a guy named Chan Sung Jung.
They call him the Korean Zombie.
That's his nickname.
And this weekend, on Saturday night at the UFC against Leonard Garcia, he pulled off the first twister ever in the UFC. And the significance, of course, is that Eddie Bravo, our guest today, actually invented the twister.
And all that means is we're so weak, we need to use our legs a lot more than the big, strong dudes who are wrestling and hitting the weights and had big chests and shoulders.
Those guys really didn't rely on their legs as much as the weak guys like me.
I would skip weightlifting practice.
I was in the back where I was hiding.
I was weak even back then.
I was a terrible athlete.
I've never been a great athlete.
So I had to rely on using my legs.
And I thought, you know, they came to me.
Jesse came to me and I go, dude, you'll be perfect for this.
You know, because they knew I'd just get smashed if I try to go heads up with people.
So it's a pinning move that I learned in wrestling.
I got pretty good at it.
That was my shit, even in high school.
That was the thing I always tried.
I got some cool ass stories that maybe one day I'll talk about them, but I have some cool wrestling stories.
But anyways, I sucked at wrestling.
I only had one takedown in two fucking years.
I sucked.
So I just totally relied on leg riding and using...
It's actually called the guillotine.
It's actually not called the twister.
It's called the guillotine.
But when I started doing it in jiu-jitsu, Higgin Machado and Jean-Jacques Machado would just call it the twister because the guillotine already existed.
There's a lot of people out there that think that I took this wrestling move and I said, I'm going to try to fool the world and change the name and say I invented it.
So once I realized that Mexicans don't play football, I'm like, oh my God, I was in ninth grade and I was the slowest motherfucker out there.
And that was it, you know?
I had these dreams of playing football or making it in music.
Football was crushed in ninth grade.
Once everyone starts growing, you know what?
Junior All-American in peewee football, that's fucked up.
I played defensive lineman and middle linebacker in football.
I actually thought I was going to be a defensive lineman and a middle linebacker because when you're eight and you're nine, everyone's the same size.
And, you know, there's some brainwash going on that I really thought I was going to be a football player.
I really thought I was until ninth grade, shit.
Oh man, when I was in sixth grade, I was supposed to make the football team because in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood, I was a pretty good football player around Mexicans from like a really poor neighborhood.
I was pretty badass.
But when you go to school, when I went to sixth grade and in junior All-American, you know, football, peewee football, I was pretty good.
But once people start growing and start changing in sixth grade...
I went to sixth grade and I didn't make the football team.
They cut me.
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I was supposed to be the football star from the...
So in my head, I'm like, wait till ninth grade when I get to high school.
I'm going to play some tackle.
I'm going to show you what the fuck's going on.
So that's what I was thinking.
I go, fuck this year.
Fuck sixth grade.
So seventh grade, I transferred myself to a school far away that I only went to because...
There's more stories where I was driven away from my junior high school, so I went to another school.
I tried out for the football team in the seventh grade.
I got cut again, but it was flag football.
But I was so embarrassed that I told my friends growing up, all my kids, I told them that, yeah, I made the team second string quarterback, but you know what?
I got in a fight, so they had to cut me, man.
It sucks.
That's the story I told them!
I told the kids that I grew up with thought I made the team, but I got cut because I got in a fight with a dude.
It's interesting, though, that football, and I guess it's just where the money is, that the high-money ones like football and basketball, they get the best athletes.
I mean, even though the UFC's been around now since 93, it's not been like a real accepted mainstream thing, but for like the last five or six years, right?
One of those dudes, I'm sure, Minute Bowl, Akumbe, Mutombo, I can't even say his name, but one of those dudes, I'm sure, started playing basketball late.
He has this story about the way he described it was a large negress and that he knew that she would make great babies for him.
So he found her and he described like what he did, like how he shot loads into her to make a boy that he knew that the way he was doing it was definitely to make a boy, like he had some method.
Well, for the people who don't know the history, Eddie Bravo tapped Hickson's brother, Hoyler, in Abu Dhabi in 2003 in this giant upset when Eddie was at Brown Belt.
And he caught him with a triangle.
So there's, like, perceived animosity sometimes because of that.
But there's none exists.
You've never been anything but respectful of any of those guys.
You know, it's just...
There's, uh...
I know that they were trying to do some sort of a rematch with you and Hoyler, but, uh...