Benny "The Jet" Urquidez and William "Blinky" Rodriguez—MMA legends inducted into the Martial Arts Museum—reveal their 1970s kickboxing roots, from Benny’s first Muay Thai fight (1973) against Narong Noi to Blinky’s brutal sparring with Dana Goodson in Hawaii. They pioneered techniques like shin guards and calf kicks, clashing with Thai fighters while upholding a warrior code that faded as MMA commercialized. Blinky’s 2023 prison forgiveness and their future Teo Plaza gym in Mexico blend martial arts with redemption, proving true legacy lies in artistry, service, and breaking cycles—not just dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, you know, unfortunately in some communities, drive-bys aren't uncommon.
And so when it becomes a generational curse, you know, and kids are getting killed sometimes randomly, that happened to me.
It came knocking on my door in a valley that's got two million people.
It knocked on my door, and I was just, I was, I'm going to put it this way, I had a calling on my life to do something about it because it became a situation where families and community was like, well, yeah, well, that's what happens in our community.
And I was saying, that is not what happens in our community.
This is our community.
And so I began to move.
I began to move, ironically, with some churches that had that kind of ministry in their ministry and peace marches, etc.
But my son got shot while he was learning how to drive a stick shift.
Still going 36 years later, put an organization together and some with real lived experience, others with degrees, and really put together a whole nonprofit that speaks directly to it where it's at.
And so at the end of the day, yeah, it's over when we say it's over.
You know what I mean?
And ironically, what led the charge for me, at least, Joe, was forgiveness.
The forgiveness that only God can give.
I got to tell it the way it is.
And that forgiveness ended up taking me to the neighborhood that killed my son.
And we had a huge meeting in that neighborhood in the park.
And a peace treaty kicked into place.
No mother's crying, no baby's dying.
So to this day, I still continue to press in with a whole different, how would I say, integrated service delivery, but keeping violence in the middle of it and dealing with it.
And it's awesome that you brought them to a place like the Jet Center where they can learn discipline, learn how to fight, build real confidence, learn real martial arts skills, and also real martial arts mentality, especially when it's coming from guys like you.
I mean, I remember when you knocked out Jean Yves Terrio.
Jean Yves Terrio was the fucking man.
He was the man.
Everybody was terrified of that guy.
And I believe you knocked him out of the left hook.
You know, actually, believe it or not, my brother, Arnold, was asked, you know, he says, he was calling me the world champion because in 73 it was called Full Contact Karate.
And Blinky and I, you know, we went to Hawaii and no rules, no weight divisions, no nothing.
So when you trained in this, like when, so after the first fight, did you bring in a Muay Thai guy to train with and explain you elbows and show you how they're throwing their techniques?
You know, I was going to say, you know, there was a phase there, because you mentioned Chuck Norris earlier, that he raised some money in Detroit, and he had done Into the Dragon.
So he had that notoriety, and he had a cattle call.
So fighters came from all over Southern Cal to his dojo in Santa Monica, and it was single eliminations to the knockout to see which five guys would represent LA.
And the same was going on in New York, the New York Dragons, Detroit, the Detroit Dragons, D.C., the D.C. Dynamos, and then the Texas Gladiators.
Those were the teams people were vying for.
And we participated.
I ended up becoming the middleweight starter.
Benny was the lightweight.
And then Steve Sanders, who was the old name in traditional karate, three of his guys from the Black Karate Federation, Ernest Madman Russell, Danny Ferguson, Sugar Bear, we were the LA team.
And what's crazy is that you won as a team.
If you went out there and knocked the guy out or you got knocked out, they got 25 points.
And so it was an accumulation of points that you would get $1,500, but the losers got $700.
So that took off, and the last tournament or fight show that they had was in Detroit.
And after that, that's when things started going another direction.
But it's just interesting the way that it evolved.
It's just crazy that it took so long for MMA to recognize the potency of the calf kick.
Because, you know, I talked to Daniel Cormier, who was a two-division world champion.
I talked to Michael Bisping.
Michael Bisping became a middleweight world champion, never got calf kicked his entire career because the calf kick kind of emerged after he became a champion.
Now, what's really interesting is what's happening right now.
So in kickboxing and in Muay Thai, people thought, oh, the calf kick doesn't work there because the Thais know how to block it.
Well, the Japanese fighters, the Kyokushin guys, are now dominating some of the Thai guys because they kick calves.
There's this bad motherfucker from Japan named Yuki Yoza.
And you know who he is?
That dude is lighting these people on fire because he's constant combinations and chopping at the calves and chopping from the inside and the outside with every combination.
He needs crippling Thais to the point where they can't move and they're getting beat up and knocked out.
There's another guy, Masaki Nori, and he's doing the same thing.
And he just beat Tawenchai, who's like one of the best Thai guys.
And the way he beat him was brutalizing his calves.
Just kicking the inside of the calf, the outside of the calf, stopped all the movement, and then caught him with a left hook.
And that's why, for me, at least, going into that fight with Bill Wallace, it was like, if you're not kicking calf thigh, body and head, it's not international.
Well, we got to see some glimpses of guys who were skillful with leg kicks, fight guys who didn't know what to do with them, and then their progression.
Because a good example is Don the Dragon Wilson when he fought Dennis Alexio.
Dennis Alexio was a scary man.
He was a destroyer.
And back in the day when Dennis Alexio was fighting, it was all above the waist stuff.
And then he agreed to a below-the-waist kick with Don Wilson.
Yeah, my friend Shuki Ron from Majiro Gym said that he was training with Stan Longitas, and he said he got a hip replacement because Stan Longides was kicking his leg so hard with the pads on, you know, where they hold the shield.
He said he had to get a hip replacement from getting kicked that hard.
I mean, it's, but the thing is, unfortunately, what happened was PKA karate became a thing was, remember, you had to get a minimum amount of kicks on the ground.
But it was also, a lot of the guys were not good kickers.
And so what it became is guys who weren't that good a kicker, and then they would box.
And it was kind of sloppy boxing.
And so it lost a lot of the appeal to the American public, which was unfortunate because if they just allowed low kicks from the beginning and we got to see the guys from Japan, we got to see the guys from Thailand, we got to see you guys do all your thing, it would have probably flourished in America and been as big as MMA.
Because this is something that I've been trying to push with the UFC.
Because, you know, one championship fight, they do a real good job with it where they'll have Muay Thai fights, they'll have kickboxing fights, and they also have MMA, and they also even have grappling competitions.
But I've been trying to say to the UFC, like if you, like, a lot of times people boo when people go to the ground.
Well, here's the solution: have some fights where it's just stand-up fights.
Have some fights, MMA gloves, Muay Thai rules, you know, where you don't go to the ground.
Like, have that.
I mean, it would be incredibly exciting.
And have, you know, like, or you could even do a whole promotion of it.
But in America, unfortunately, kickboxing, because of the PKA, what they call it, the kick of the 80s, remember back then?
You know, in the PKA, because of Bill Wallace, it was from the waist.
Yeah.
And so my brother and Howard Hansen started the WKA World Karate.
And that's when we went to Japan and we started saying everything went because in Japan, elbows and knees and so forth, because they're Muay Thai fighters over there.
But, you know, the really purpose of that is because, you know, the insurance behind it, I mean, people were getting, I mean, I'm talking about just their lips opened up across their eyebrows.
And I mean, they were getting from the elbows like they were like axes going across your face, you know, with elbows and so forth.
And it's really just about presenting a package together and making it exciting for people.
See, the thing is with the UFC in America, the UFC is so popular that if the UFC is coming to town, everybody's going to go see the UFC.
Every time the UFC is at Philly or Houston, it's like, let's go.
And you get tens of thousands of people want to come out to see the UFC.
But with kickboxing, you got to sell it on these people.
You got to sell it to them.
And it hasn't been sold properly yet.
But the thing is, the product is there.
There's great strikers out there.
Like, Jamie, pull up a clip of Yuki Yoza.
This cat freaks me out because like his combinations, man, he's so lethal.
And it just, you see guys who just don't know what to do with the fact that he's taking away their legs like right away.
He does this weird thing too where he like hooks their legs too and throws great boxing combinations too.
But it's like everything is just constantly chopping at the inside of the legs.
He throws high kicks and everything.
He's just, and he's just brutalizing these dudes.
And it's constant, no matter what he's doing, he's chopping your legs, taking your legs away, going inside, going outside.
The kid's very good.
And, you know, that Kyokushin background, you know, you guys know as well as anybody.
It's such a brutal style.
And they have to learn boxing afterwards because the Kilkushin competition is all punches to the chest only.
But look, if you can learn how to kick, you can learn how to punch.
It's just a matter of putting the time in.
And this dude has put the time in.
He does this sneaky thing too, where he throws a low kick and then he hooks their calves and it works even on the ties.
I mean, just when you see a Thai getting his legs destroyed by a Japanese, you realize, wow, this sport has really changed.
That's without a doubt.
One of the cool things about combat sports is that you see a new person rise doing something different, and when they do, everybody else has to sort of catch up.
And then the techniques evolve, and you see everybody rise to the level of whatever this person's at and recognize that there's new techniques that people are using.
Because, you know, martial arts has evolved more since 1993 to 2026 than it did in the last 10,000 years.
And it's really because of exposure and because people like you guys went out there in the early, early days and laid it all out on the line to find out.
Because when I started doing martial arts, it was 82, 81, or 82.
And back then, no matter what you, 81, no matter what you did, you thought your style was the best.
And no one really knew.
You know, if you did karate, you thought karate was the best.
If you did taekwondo, that was the best.
And there was no competition where everybody went together that we knew of, other than we heard about your fights that you guys had in Hawaii.
Everybody heard about that.
It was like legendary.
Like Penny and Blinky went on Hawaii and they fought everybody.
No rules.
Like, no rules.
But we figured, oh, the strikers won.
Striking's the way to go.
It has to be.
Like, the best strikers won.
But then you watch the UFC, like, oh, geez, what are they doing?
Like, what is this Brazilian cat who's strangling everybody with a gi on?
Well, there's a lot of promoters that definitely encourage fighters to not go to the ground and discourage them when they did go to the ground because they knew they could take a guy down and just hold him down and beat him up a little bit and win.
And the promoters are like, we're not interested in you.
Which I think is not fair because it's all about fighting.
And if a guy can hold you down, you have to figure out how to get up.
And if otherwise, we're pretending.
We're pretending these techniques work.
Because if a guy is like a world-class wrestler, some Division I all-American, he takes you down, holds you down, you got to figure out how to handle that.
Otherwise, we're lying.
Because the sport is about combat.
It's about fighting.
It's the sport of fighting.
Fighting is a man that can hold you down.
If he could hold you down and beat you up, why is the referee standing you up?
Why is the referee giving you an opportunity to fight?
You have to figure out how to get up.
You have to figure out either how to submit him off your back, sweep him, or stand up.
Those are the options.
A referee standing you up because the crowd's booing, that's crazy.
I think that the crowd, you know, they want to see action and they can't see it on the ground, but they don't realize there's a lot of action going on on the ground.
Like I was excited about it, but also kind of talk them through it because they didn't know what was happening.
You had to explain, like, why are his legs wrapped around that guy's neck?
This looks gay.
Like, what the hell is going on?
You know, like, what is this?
And you realize, no, he's cutting off the blood to his brain with his legs.
And they're like, whoa, that's nuts.
You're like, right?
That's what Mel Gibson did to Gary Busey and lethal weapon.
They're like, that's crazy.
It works.
Like, yeah, that's a real technique.
He learned from Hori and Gracie.
And so the early days was a lot of it for me was about kind of explaining to me, to people that are at home what was happening and talking them through it.
Like that was the main part of my job once the fight got to the ground.
Now everybody understands.
Now everybody knows what a chokehold is.
Everybody knows what an arm bar is.
Everybody knows.
So now it's just about explaining whether or not he's in danger or he's free, where the elbow is, where the knee is.
And it's just kind of letting people know like whether or not he's okay or not.
They'll dazzle you with a spinning back kick to the chin, or they'll take you and put you in a rear naked choke.
You know what I mean?
So that's the other part of the game.
But when you start talking about back in the era that you understand and we understand, it was the Buddha heart.
That was the transition.
It was the spirit of.
It was the essence A. You know what I mean?
It was that tradition that really brought more mystique to the martial arts, more tradition, in a way that people honored.
You know what I mean?
So it was kind of like you start seeing the different transitions that came.
See what I'm saying?
And it's just like you hear people, it's like a guy's out.
He hits the ground, boom.
The referee don't get there in time, but he takes another whack or two.
You know what I mean?
So then that's the part, at least I'm like, wow, man, you want to make sure he don't get up, but at the end of the day, those couple of extra shots can create the damage.
I believe the injuries that end the ground and pound or whatever, but the injury, even standing up, getting knocked out, standing, and hitting the mat.
You know, a lot.
You know, a lot of promoters are saying, you know, we want to see that.
But again, the insurance part, I mean, to get the insurance to cover a lot of these fighters is brutal.
Yeah, but you have to be.
It's a small show, that's it.
It's brutal, and you have, it's a lot of ground impound, a lot of jarring of the mind and the body.
Eventually it's going to give out.
And so some of them don't last two, three years.
And they're great at what they do.
But by the time they finish, it's hard for them to make a living.
Especially if they're married and so forth.
I mean, you've got to continue on life.
So they try to make it safe enough, but at the same time, when it comes down to the art of war, it's mental warfare, it's physical warfare, it's even spiritual warfare, the energies, man, that are coming at you.
So educating the public to what it really takes and what it is that we're doing in the ring, in the cage, what is exactly, okay, it's entertainment, but there's a skill.
There's a skill that we're using to be able to go in there and stop an opponent without getting hit.
Yeah, it really is a test of your spirit because it's a test of your spirit just to be able to discipline yourself, to get in condition and train properly.
It's a test of your spirit to be able to fight at the level of your actual abilities under pressure.
And when I describe martial arts competition, I say it's high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.
It's just like that's what you're going against a skilled guy who's trying to do something to you and he's moving and you're trying to do something to him and any mistake, boom.
And then the referees got a light in your face, and the next thing you know, you're like, oh my God, you don't know what happened.
You know, and the gym that you guys had set up, the Jet Center, was legendary for developing champions and legendary for teaching proper technique and showing you the consequence of the moves and also teaching people that you don't have to spar to try to kill each other all the time.
You know, you could spar, like some of the best sparring I ever got was at the Jet Center because the place when I this is after I've been done fighting.
When I lived in Boston, when we trained, it was war.
Every time you sparred, you were just fighting.
There was no one pulled any punches.
No one pulled any kicks.
Everybody was blasting everybody full blast.
It was terrifying.
And you saw a lot of guys get knocked out in the gym and then they'd be back a couple days later.
And that's crazy.
That's crazy.
We know that now.
Back then, we didn't even think about it.
Everybody just came back.
You just came back, you started training again, you had a headache, and you just dealt with it.
He came into the fight, like, severely compromised.
It's like going into battle with a hole in your armor.
He was already messed up.
And, you know, there's like, there's a time and place for hard sparring because I think you have to have some hard sparring to sparring to understand that, hey, you can't just block something like that.
You're going to get your arm fucked up.
You can't just have your, you're going to have to deal with the fact that hard shots are coming your way.
So sometimes you're going to have to spar hard.
But technique sparring is so important too.
One of the reasons why the ties are so successful is they play spar.
Like they fight every week.
So there's no reason to get banged up.
So when you watch Thai fighters, when they spar over there, they're like, oi, oi!
They touch each other.
They just touch each other.
They're not trying to hurt each other.
Because once a week, they have to go fight hard.
So they don't fight hard when they're training.
It's like their fighting is like their one hard sparring day.
When you go to a Muay Thai fight in Thailand, in the beginning of the fight, you see everybody waving money around and pointing to people, and everybody's like setting bets.
So the first round, those fighters are just kind of like setting the pace and just experiencing each other's timing.
And then the second round comes in, all the bets are in, they start ramping it up, and then they start really fighting, which is alien to a lot of foreigners.
They go over there and they try to go wild in the first round.
Like, you got to let the bets get in.
And they're like, what?
What are you talking about?
Like, no, no, no.
It's an agreement, a silent agreement.
When you go out there for that first round, for that first round, you're just feeling each other out.
That guy's not going to try to knock you out.
He's just trying to feel you out.
He's going to try to land some shots, a couple hard leg kicks, maybe a teep.
But really, he's just waiting for that second round to open up.
It is crazy because the money from the gambling is what led the sport to be so huge, and the sport becoming so huge over there is what led them to be so good.
And all that money and gambling led it to be one of the most fierce fighting styles on earth.
Because while the rest of the world hadn't figured out the knees and the elbows and the clinch and the leg kicks, the Thais had been doing it forever.
They had already been doing it for a long time.
It took a long time for the rest of the world to catch up to what Thailand had figured out just from allowing people to fight for money.
And then, of course, the leg checks, counters, and you start, we started getting the idea, okay, well, okay, this is how you fight them.
And then you have other styles for American bread fighters that didn't have part of that game in their repertoire of arsenal, you know what I'm saying?
It's unfortunate because even Dana White, when I talked to him about it, I was like, oh, people don't care about kickboxing.
I'm like, it's just because it was sold badly in the 80s.
That's really all it is.
Like if it was around today, I genuinely believe it would, like, if kickboxing had gotten the same sort of promotional push that the UFC got way back in 2001, I think it would be just as big as boxing, just as big as MMA.
Yeah, like everything doesn't work if you're not good at it.
If you try to punch Floyd Mayweather, you're not going to hit him.
It doesn't mean punches don't work.
It just means you're not good enough at it.
You know what I mean?
It's interesting that people don't see that.
Even coaches don't see that sometimes.
You know, Terrence Crawford learned how to switch hit, you know, because Terrence Crawford is one of the best switch dance fighters ever since Marvin Hagler.
And one of the reasons why he did it is because his coach told him he can't do that.
His coach was like, don't do that.
Stay Orthodox.
Stop messing around.
He's like, what?
He's like, I could fight this way too.
He's like, no, no, no, you can't.
He's like, oh, okay.
I'll show you.
And he would go on, start fight southpaw, and then like start fucking people up and switch hands on them.
And they're like, oh, no.
Because it's an amazing skill to have.
But it's only amazing if you develop your southpaw style as good as your orthodox style.
It doesn't mean that you can't do it.
It means it has to be at that leg.
If you want to land a spinning back kick, it doesn't mean you can't land a spinning back kick.
It just means your spinning back kick's not good enough to land.
But Benny Arquidez can land that spinning back kick.
It was also the benefit of that is you had a lethal left-hand kick.
So your left side kick, that front kick, the side kick from the left side, and the front round kick from the left side was fast as fuck because you're a naturally left-sided fighter.
You know, I think that it's just each decade as we go.
You know, as Blinky was talking about, the Bursciuta way, you know, there was a, you know, you had honor, there was an honor system and all that.
And then in the 70s, it started to change when full contact karate came in.
It started to change.
And then kickboxing in 75 and on, people were, you know, oh, we're not martial artists, we're kickboxers.
Then Muay Thai came, oh, we're Muay Thai, we're not kickboxers.
And every then we're UCI fighters, we're not Muay Thai fighters.
I said, you know, so every decade it changed.
But again, you needed to learn from ground one.
And the ground one was internal.
The I am concept for what you tell yourself with that, you know, and there was an honor system going on and there was a code of honor between warriors.
Fought Madison Square Garden in 1978, you know, also.
And just paying homage, you know, because she also pioneered and was taking the forefront, you know, fighting at the Olympic, fighting at the Forum, fighting Japan, traveled the war and fought, and represented well and trained hard.
And it's one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you on to talk about it because I think the sport needs to recognize the pioneers that blazed the trail.
And you two are one of the most important pioneers that blazed the trail in martial arts in this country.
And you did it back when no one knew what was going on.
People need to understand it.
70, like when did you guys first start fighting?
When did you have your first kickboxing competitions?
And for a guy who relies on his legs as much as Ali did, that's a crazy fight to take because if he got sidekicked and hyperextended his knee and it was never the same, it would compromise his movement.
That was float like a butterfly.
That was a big part of his style.
That's true.
And I just can't imagine how anybody allowed him to take that fight.
Like, if I was his manager, I'd be like, there's no way you're taking this fight.
And Carl Gotch went over to Japan and trained a lot of those guys.
Like a lot of Sakuraba, a lot of those guys who eventually became big-time mixed martial arts fighters.
They started with catch wrestling.
And Carl Gotch was one of the beginning guys that came over to Japan and taught a lot of those Japanese pro wrestlers a lot of the different submission holds of catch wrestling.
And his big thing was conditioning.
Carl Gotch is a legendary strength and conditioning guy.
Like his routine was absolutely brutal.
In order to be able to train with him, before you could train with him, he had to know that you were in physical condition.
So you had to go through this program to get yourself up to, I forget what the requirement was, but it was some insane requirement of physical conditioning before he would even teach you anything.
It's like Christy Martin was the first one in America that really broke through and became a famous female boxer.
But before her, and then there was, of course, Leila Li, and there's been a few other ones, Clarissa Shields, right now, who's the greatest woman of all time.
And it's like, there's, you know, it's those people, they owe it to Lily in a lot of ways.
And just like martial arts fighters owe it to you guys.
If someone didn't step in in the very early days and blaze that trail, no one's going to find out what's on the other side of the woods.
So if you could just cover it up like an old school Everlast bag glove, just do that.
Because you could still grapple, no problem.
It's like if you've got padding over the knuckles, just extend the leather over the tips of the fingers, make it like a mitten, put it under the hand like this, so your hand will slide into it the same way.
Your thumbs will still be free.
So you still have, unfortunately, you'll still have some pokes from the thumbs, but way less when you don't have eight other things to poke with.
Guys would cut a hole in it and take their squeezy bottle, their water bottle, take that little straw part and stick it in there and squirt water into the horse hair and pat it down.
Yeah, he got caught using plaster of Paris inside of his, or whatever it was, something that when it got wet would harden up like a rock inside of his hand wraps.
I mean, you know, it's, again, when you call it a sport, there's got to be, there's got to be the prosciutto way of honor system and respect and so forth when you're talking about a sport.
Because instead of a bunch of kids imitating people talking trash, what you would have is a bunch of kids that imitate very respectful martial arts people.
It's like my instructor had a saying that martial arts was a vehicle for developing your human potential.
And I never forgot that.
I was like, if you could get great at martial arts, you could get great at anything, at anything.
It's really just a matter of taking that knowledge that you learned about yourself and going through the fire and learning how to be a great martial artist.
Yeah, and even though it's about defending, self-defense is defending, instead of, you know, being a striker, it's learning how to defend it, sleeping and moving and defending.
But it got turned around and it became striking, you know, instead of learning how to, because I would put my money on a good defensive fighter than a striker, because it's easy to go out there and strike, but if you don't know how to defend, striking back at you.
Well, one of the most humiliating things for a fighter is they think they're a good striker, and then they get in there with someone who has impeccable defense, and they can't hit him at all.
And, you know, it's also what caliber of fighter are you training with, which is probably one of the most important things for young fighters to understand.
You will imitate the atmosphere of your gym, period.
And the level that is the top guy at your gym, that is the level that everybody aspires to.
If you are training with a bunch of champions, you're training with a bunch of high-level guys, you will aspire to be at that high level.
If you are the toughest guy in your gym, if you're the best guy in your gym and you're not a world champion, you're not the best in the world, you're just pretty good, like you're not going to grow in that gym.
You got to get out of that gym.
You got to get out of that gym.
You got to go find people that are going to test you and put you in danger and put you in a position where you're going to have to learn and grow.
And like I said, like when I was living in Boston and when I was kickboxing in Boston, people would talk about the jet center with like hushed tones, like, you got to get to the jet center.
Because I was telling people I was moving to L.A. They're like, oh, you're going to move to L.A. You've got to go to the Jet Center.
And I knew about it.
I was like, oh, like one of the first things I did.
Like one of the first things I did, I showed up for work.
But he lost to Teofilo Stevenson from Cuba, and he wins the silver medal, and he's the first in the Hispanic community, Mexican-American, to win a medal or to fight in even that category.
I remember I was just talking to my friend Joey Diaz, who's Cuban, and we were talking about Teofilo Stevenson, that that was the guy that they were trying to get to fight Muhammad Ali when he was in his prime because they were like, you know, Muhammad Ali might be the best in the world, but he might be the second best.
Because this is this cat in Cuba that is a bad man.
And Teofilo Stevenson was a bad man.
He was so good.
But he was just locked into Cuba and locked into that amateur program and we never got to see him fight professionally.
I remember in the 70s and the 80s, there was a lot of talk about that, about him fighting, you know, and then him, you know, him eventually defecting and coming over to America, but it never happened.
But the thing with Alex, that showed somebody that's gone away and come back home can make it.
If he could win the silver medal for the United States of America in the World Games when we had boycott at the Olympics, that was just part of the proof.
And so now when you're getting guys into union jobs, you're getting guys with tattoo removal that's going on.
You're doing advocacy in the courtrooms and you're just being able to roll out, there's education going on, and there's a response to yellow tape, the CVI, the community violence intervention programs that are now nationwide.
Yeah, so now There's another thing that's going on with tattoos, you know, where it's a no-laser removal.
There's some new technology and stuff that I'm talking to people about that you don't have to go through to get in laser and ow and ooh, and you can hear that laser going off.
So, what's it about?
It's about meeting the needs of people.
It's about touching lives.
You know what I mean?
It's about showing them another way and having the ability to open up a door that they can get through.
The beautiful thing about a fighting journey in a gym is it allows you, a martial arts dojo, allows you a path.
You go in there, you start, there's some rules.
I'll see you tomorrow.
Like, okay, I'll see you tomorrow.
And then you're in there tomorrow, and then you start getting a little better.
And then you learn growth and you understand, like, if I work towards something, I could build towards something.
And now I'm seeing progress, you know, and now I've got a brown belt.
You know, now I've got a black belt.
Now, I'm a, I could tell people I'm a black belt.
Like, like, I did something, I accomplished something.
And I think that's one of the great things about belt systems in traditional martial arts is it gives you a sense that you've got a.
There's a rite of passage like you've made, you've gone through this thing and now you've moved to another level and now you you're supposed to behave like you are at a different level.
Now you're a senior student, now you know, now you're one of the elite students in the gym, you're held to a different standard.
It's very important for people you know, absolutely a lot of times what happens is a lot of a lot of them come in with a lot of emotions anger fear, frustration and especially at the JET, with the JETS gym, we were able to tap in and put fear to them in a in a sparring way that it will bring up all that emotion up.
And then we had a chance to reprogram that.
That was the best part about the gym is to bring up what everybody hides until you're threatened.
Right hey, once you're threatened, I don't care what you hide under your bed in your closet will come up, and then you get a chance to reprogram the way you're perceiving it, the way you're looking at it, and help them to uh heal, not not uh, pat it or forget it or act like it doesn't heal it, so that it doesn't stop them on their journey.
And that's what the JET Center was all about is being able to bring that up, mirror their truth, help them look at their really uh, what they're really all about, and continue, let them go on their journey.
And that's why the JET Center was so successful, because we had a chance to really mirror their truth and bring all that that they hide and bring it forward.
And they felt safe enough, they felt to actually go there.
Yeah, and you get to see them go through that and develop real confidence.
Yes, instead of this bravado, this false confidence trying to make people feel like you're confident and scare them off, you develop silent confidence where you really know how to fight.
That's what makes the art you know so unique but so needed.
And in the art, it gives you a foundation to build on and in your life and no matter what and we've had all walks of life that come through the JET Center, all walks I mean.
And the ones that I mean, we had so many different attorneys coming in and we used to call them the fighting attorneys, but there were six, seven of them and they would, you know, in the gym.
They were so humble to each other, they love each other.
They go outside, all of a sudden, they don't know, they don't know each other.
I said, What's wrong with you?
You just finished spotting with them, working with them.
And they said, He's an attorney.
I said, And but it was uh, it was, it brought character out of them, it brought their heart and let them mirror the really truth on their journey and what they were where they were going.
It's special for an attorney to step into that world and be around both these young gang members that are learning a new path and then professional fighters.
And, like, you know, you're in a different world of discipline and willpower and focus that will help you in everything you do.
Will help you as an attorney, will help you as a doctor, will help you in anything you do.
And certainly help you as a human, as a human, just get through life.
There's nothing that's going to be harder in life than other than the loss of a loved one.
Nothing going to be harder than your hardest training session at a real fight gym.
It's just that is that makes the rest of the world easy because your hardest thing you volunteered to do and you look forward to doing it again.
And you do it every day.
When you could do, like, I always tell people, martial artists are some of the nicest fucking people you'll ever meet in your life.
They're some of the nicest people because they don't have anything to prove.
Hey, Joe, so you know, you may mention right now one of the hardest things to do is lose someone.
And so for me, I wanted to share a little bit that in 2023, I got a phone call that was something that I could never anticipate.
It was January of 2023, and it was a call that was made.
One of my sons called to tell me that he had talked to a friend of ours that does a lot of work with the prisons, has a lot of entrees on big-time boards.
And that he was at one of the prisons.
And an inmate walked up to him and asked him if he knew me.
So he said, you know, do you know Blinky?
And he said, yeah.
He says, why?
And the guy says, because I'd like to talk to him.
And he said, well, why?
He said, because I'm the guy that murdered his son.
And so my son's telling me that our friend wanted to know if I would consider talking to him on the phone.
So I had just entered into a season of fasting and praying.
Me and my wife now were going to celebrate 10 years for you, you know.
And I said, I don't know.
I was grappling, Joe.
I was grappling.
I was fighting with it.
And then I heard a gentle voice, and it was, say yes.
Say yes.
So I called my son back and I said, tell him I said yes, but I don't want to talk to him on the phone.
I want to see him in person.
And so that's exactly what happened.
On January the 30th, we drove up to the prison and we get there.
And first we stop and get something to eat and then we get to the prison and the CO is right there waiting.
And when we get there, he says, yeah, well, come on through.
And so me and this guy went through.
And he says, Yeah, you know, we don't normally have meetings on Monday, but everything's fine.
We're going to be okay.
So they walk us through.
We walk through, get out to the back door, and there's the yard, the yard, the barbed wire, everything's right there.
We start walking.
We go into a building to the left.
Now, I thought I was going to be talking to somebody behind glass.
But it turns out that they're asking me, What do I think about this room?
And I'm like, in my mind, why are they asking me?
What am I thinking about this room?
You know what I mean?
Because, you know, that's up to them.
But I look down the hallway and there's a door.
I said, what's behind that door?
And the CEO tells me, he says, that's a chapel.
I said, can I see it?
We walk back down the hallway.
He opens the door and there's a podium right there and there's about 15 chairs.
So I said to him, Can we use this room?
And he said, yes.
So at that point in time, I need to go to the restroom.
So we walk out of the building.
He takes me to the restroom.
When we come back out, my friend, the one that was setting it all up, he's not there.
But there's an inmate.
I can hear him saying, Hey, Blinky, thank you for the letter to the parole board.
I got a date.
But I'm in another dimension, Joe.
I mean, I'm like somewhere else.
So a couple of minutes goes by, and I hear my buddy, and he says, Hey, Blinky, this is David.
And when I pivoted out, he was right here in front of me.
This guy that had killed my son.
And the words that came out of his mouth, Joe, I cannot even, I didn't have a second to try to digest it.
But he says to me, Can I get a hug?
And when he said, Can I get a hug?
I grabbed him and I embraced him and I began to weep.
I began to weep.
I began to cry.
I began to travail.
And he began to weep.
And that was a Holy Ghost moment where the Spirit of God was moving on that whole issue.
And we went from there into that chapel and we spent a little over two hours talking.
The CO that was there and my buddy, they were sitting in the corner of the room.
And as I'm talking to him and we're going over, because my wife, before I left the house, she says, remember, he was just a young guy.
You know what I mean?
He was probably confused back then.
So now I'm talking to him.
And now we're going over different things that took place.
And I hear that voice.
Tell him, talk to him.
So I said, okay.
I said to him, Can I have the privilege of leading you to the Lord?
And he said to me, Yes.
He says, yes.
Tears start coming out of his eyes.
I stepped a few feet over.
I put my hand on his right shoulder, over his heart, and I let him.
And he began with a contrite heart.
He began to weep and cry.
And I came to realize because it took me a long time to unpack that.
Once I left there and I came home and to the chair where I always sit to read.
And wow, it's like, what just happened?
What did I just do?
What just took place?
And at the end of the day, Joe, it was, I leave 99 to go get one.
And that's what I grasped, that one life, that one person.
So that's why I've always said since then that the power of forgiveness is more powerful than my left hook, and I had a good one, Joe.
And it's incredibly powerful of you to forgive that man and to be able to recognize that he made a horrible, horrible decision that affected your life and everyone around you.
But he's just a human being.
And we're all capable of doing something terrible if we're in the wrong environment with the wrong people around us and the wrong lifestyle, wrong decisions.
I love being able to get somebody and turn them inside out so they may look at their truth and see that we all have talent and we all have a gift.
It's just giving a chance to see that.
You know, I really take a lot of pride in seeing somebody that I can see that they doubt themselves, they hesitate about, and to go out there and really look at themselves and start to love themselves.
There's no better feeling to see somebody come up from being very meek and weak to something just so strong and doing something great for society and for that's amazing.
Well, the young guys coming up today are some of the most technical I've ever seen.
Yeah.
It's an amazing time because what we're seeing now is these kids that are in their 20s that, you know, the UFC really became popular in 2005 from the Ultimate Fighter.
So you're seeing kids that were really young when that was happening.
And they grew up watching Anderson Silva, John Jones, Vitor Belford.
They've grew up watching these elite fight Connor McGregor.
And now they are the newest version of that.
And the thing about martial arts that's so different is we really didn't have a chance to see mixed martial arts on television at all until 1993.
And so you're seeing this incredible.
There's no sport other than mixed martial arts where you look back at 1993 and look at it in 2026, and it's totally unrecognizable.
What is it like for you two men as pioneers, like real true pioneers in the earliest days of martial arts in this country to see where it is today and to know that you started those first steps?
You know, it's for me to start something, but in the way of the Bushuda way, of the code of honor and respect and so forth, this is what I felt that we were doing, building up a way of life where warriors will fight with dignity and honor and respect.
And along the line, when actually my last fight was in 95, 94, I got my last fight.
And then it started to change because the Gracies came in in 90 and 195.
It started mixed martial arts all the way up to 2000.
And then cage fighting was huge.
Man, just everywhere.
But I wasn't really, I was following some of it, but I didn't like some of it.
It didn't leave a good taste.
And because when I saw some of these guys were on the ground, just pounding this guy on the ground, I thought, wow, was that me in the street once upon a time when I was young?
And I said, so a lot of it that I didn't want to take their livelihood from them because I didn't want to hurt them to the point where they couldn't make a living if they were married, if they were sick, you know.
So I always had that in my mind, in my heart, that to me it was a sport.
When somebody hit the ground, I said, get back up.
I pinned a lot of people, but to hit them on the ground, I just said, get back up.
But again, you know, the fight game, again, there's a difference between the fight and the art of sport.
Because in the art of sport, I mean, you do a lot of that on concrete and wood, a whole different ball game on the mats, because there's two different flavors of understanding.
One protecting in the street and hitting that kind of ground and so forth.
Because a lot of times at the internationals, it was concrete.
That was in 64, 65, how we fought on concrete, taking down sweeps, but letting them back up.
There was a coat of honor, even though we swept and took them to the ground.
And some will reverse punch to the ground and then let them back up.
But again, I just think that sometimes when you're on the ground and there's somebody's livelihood, you know, you're thrashing.
And the idea, okay, I understand what it takes, you know, to hold that hand up as a winner and what it takes of the rules.
But I've always turned around when I see somebody jumping on something.
And when you guys are seeing the sport, the crazy thing about your time was that there was no other motivation other than the journey because there was no money, there was no fame.
I mean, you obviously got a lot of notoriety and respect amongst martial artists and amongst people like me.
But the general public, you know, if I say, you don't know who Blinky Rodriguez and Benny the Jet are, they're like, what?
Who's that?
And martial artists know.
People who've watched the movies know.
People who saw Black Belt Magazine, they know.
But you were doing it in a pure sense.
You know, it wasn't just a vehicle to become famous.
It was because you were trying to figure out who's the baddest man on earth.
But to answer your question, I've been doodling again.
Oh, but I'm talking about a gym that will be a safe haven where people will come to learn their truth.
Learning defense, self-defense, but learning about themselves, mirroring their own truth, that they will be able to feel safe and to be able to release all that people or they've been taught these emotions of anger, fear, and frustration.
They get a chance to release it and feel comfortable and feel safe enough to do it, that they may go on their journey.
This is the next gym that I already started doodling on.
When they get a chance to hear something like this, they will come from all over the world to mirror their truth, to look at themselves, their purpose and reason why they exist, why they're here, what are they doing.
That's the kind of place, in my mind, is what I've designed in.
That's why I designed equipment and all that for this place.