I have the tremendous honor of having two very special black belts on the show, Dave Kama and Ryan Young. Dave Kama is part of the legendary "Dirty Dozen" aka the first non Brazilian black belts (Dave was actually number two), he also trained in the legendary Gracie Garage (yes it was literally in a garage) and he has been a Black Belt under Rickson Gracie and training BJJ for over 35 years. In 1993, Rickson asked Dave to take over as head instructor at the Rickson Gracie Laguna Niguel location. Dave has been running this location ever since. In 2012, upon Rickson’s retirement, Dave officially changed the name of the school from Rickson Gracie Laguna Niguel to Kama Jiu-Jitsu, part of the Rickson Gracie Team of Academies.
As for Ryan he trained under Relson Gracie in the '80s before training under Rickson and is now a third degree black belt under Dave Kama. Ryan was one of the first BJJ prolific YouTubers, he has hundreds of free videos to learn from. This interview was actually supposed to be with just Ryan but he told me if we could do it at 4 am my time he would have a surprise guest. And I was thrilled to have both Ryan and Dave on the show, quite the coup for the show. The depth of their knowledge of BJJ and being part of its history is just invaluable. They seem to be the lone voices left advocating for the Self Defense aspect of the art. I get the sense that having to infer that self defense is the most important part to learn of BJJ is just crazy to them. It makes me feel like they think that the BJJ community has lost its way, at one point Dave even says without the self defense learnings BJJ is a different art altogether, interesting food for thought.
Some housekeeping notes, they did the interview on the built in microphone of an iPad pro so the audio is rough at times, I boosted levels as much as I could and spent weeks working on the audio but you may want to turn it up. Additionally, it was recorded at the Austin, TX academy so there is some training background noise at times. Just a reminder to please give us a 5 star review on iTunes or just share this podcast with a friend it really helps us out, and check out our Forever White Belt merchandise at https://teespring.com/forever-white-belt, and leave us a message at anchor.com/foreverwhitebelt, also Like our Facebook page to get all the latest at https://www.facebook.com/foreverwhitebelt and check us out on all the socials by searching for Forever White Belt.
