Martial arts lolcows

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Back while I still had Facebook, I used to be member of the group "Bullshit Martial Arts", headed by Don Roley. Awesome guy, trained by late Oguri sensei, for 14 years in Japan, very knowledgeable about language and history and skilled translator and skilled at exposing frauds even in the era of forums, before social media.
Not only that this group exposed and made fun of many fake martial artists and lolcows, but they've also helped put some notable pedoforks and criminals behind bars (Ron Collins, Vernon Van Zille...).
 
Jason David Frank.

God, Yes. Dude knows his stuff martial arts wise, but everything else he's a lolcow [I'm shocked he doesn't have his own thread]. From clinging onto a children's brand [Power Rangers], having his fans spam contests so he can win, trying to bully his way into the 2017 movie, getting kicked out of the premiere of the 2017 movie, desperately trying to fight Phil "CM Punk" Brooks in the UFC, making sure his dick is sucked every time he returns to PR. And now created a PR rip off brand [Legend of the White Dragon] to compete with Power Rangers [while still using him in PR suits for promotion]
 
Stephen K. Hayes is on my list of wannabe ninjas next to Frank Dux. He's all over Bullshido and various forums. Unlike other cows, he actually got to star in a Discovery Channel documentary. I also like how he says "neenja", just like that lady with that stupid song.

 
Bit of a necro, but I didn't want to make a thread about something that hasn't happened yet, but I'm starting to smell imminent spergery on the wind.

Gonna set up a lot of pretexts and pretexts within pretexts, forgive the autism.

So first off I'll explain the Ultimate Self Defense Championship:
The Ultimate Self Defense Championship was a martial arts YouTuber collab series primarily funded, produced, and orchestrated by martial arts YouTuber Rokas Leo, of Martial Arts Journey with Rokas Leo (formerly Martial Arts Journey) with the idea that Rokas and five other martial arts YouTubers would collaborate on multiple self-defense "scenarios" to see who would perform the best overall in terms of self-defense.

The important people to know for this shitshow are:
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Rokas Leonavičius
Host of the event and owner of the channel, Rokas is a Lithuanian Aikido practitioner who ran his own school for several years and had been practicing it since he was a teenager. He initially ran his channel marketing how "powerful" Aikido is and how it was a valid, if not superior, martial art compared to its peers.

Supposedly the school he studied under was outright a cult according to some vlogs of his I can supply if requested. He even dared try to prove aikido's superiority in a sanctioned match against some middling mixed martial artist, and got his shit kicked in. He immediately had a moment of clarity, realized aikido was horseshit, and got into mixed martial arts and started studying, while also trying to figure out if anything in aikido could be useable while looking at the style with a far more critical eye.

His struggle to maintain humility, his blatant autism, and the fact he fucking nearly bankrupted himself on this event when he was improvising a lot of it make him almost lolcow-worthy, but not enough to warrant a thread... yet. This post is gonna go into why he might enter that echelon, if not someone else I'll get to later. All you really need to know shorthand is he has a funny accent and really wants to be famous.

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Jeff Phillips
Owner of the Australian self-defense school Western Combatives (archive) in Sydney, he acted as "Coach" for this event and his school - a massive gym with a lot of specialized areas for practicing combative scenarios of all kinds, ranging from fights in movie theaters to being attacked in offices. He's gotten some minor acclaim in Australia, and it's likely this bit of hype - plus the USDC event, made him become a bit arrogant that his insights on self-defense were the end-all be-all (A very common problem with people who run self-defense "dojos"), and seemed to become a bit too inattentive with the blatant problems of the event. He's one of the two main players in this shitshow, alongside

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Ramsey Dewey
Ramsey Dewey, with no distinct or separate YouTube channel name, is a former kickboxer turned coach and referee after a series of horrifying career-ending injuries in the late 00s/early 10s kickboxing scene of China that left him more than half blind with a large hole in his skull that rendered him unable to justifiably get back in the ring. His channel mostly covers martial arts coaching, religious studies (He is very openly and proudly Mormon, and has an entire separate channel where he reads the Bible and discusses the verses), and various skits with his students and daughters.

One of his more popular styles of videos are his opinionated breakdowns of the "self-defense industry" - Dewey very ardently believes self-defense as a business is a scam and one should simply be trained in mixed martial arts, something that provably works in sanctioned contests of combat, instead of shit like D.U.S.T.'s bullshido or Krav Maga, ranging from breakdowns of how various "self defense techniques" simply don't work to long unedited rants shitting on specific self-defense channels, This has garnered him controversy on multiple occasions, including beefs with self-defense-focused channels such as the aforementioned D.U.S.T. and the crazy screaming chink Master Wong.

His harsh opinions on the "self-defense industry" are what put him at odds with Jeff Phillips. He's the other main player in what I think is gonna be a lot of upcoming spergery, as I'll go into detail about his part in the USDC later as well as how he might've just kicked up a bunch of shit today.

The other contestants include YouTubers Jeff "MMAShredded" Chan, "Sensei" Seth Adams, and "Icy" Mike Pesesko- the third might sound familiar given he's the guy who beat the shit out of Spec Ops Obese Ninja Ron Collins. I'll mention them off-handedly if or when they become relevant in this rundown.

If you want to see the full thing, Rokas actually made a two hour long full "movie" of the event so you don't need to jump through a big ugly playlist.
(Will try to download to directly archive later, it's a big fucking YouTube video and Ghostarchive just refuses to even humor archiving it)

The event was controversial for a lot of reasons, namely it was very clear Rokas and Jeff had no idea what they were doing, improvising how the score systems worked, kept levying their biases against contestants (Namely Jeff Chan, who ultimately won the competition because all the other contestants were too injured, gassed out, or incompetent most of the time, but was frequently denied wins for arbitrary reasons), and even resulted in nearly crippling Ramsey Dewey during a "zombie apocalypse" event where one of the "zombies" leapt off of a ceiling directly onto Dewey's head and tore open his knee, a severe injury he is still failing to recover from several months later.

In spite of the controversy, it was a rousing success and Rokas managed to crowdfund a second season featuring "Karate Nerd" Jesse Enkamp, video game reviewer Ranton, and Catboy Crusher Natan Levy.

During the initial popularity surge of the event, nearly all of the contestants did react/discussion videos about their participation in the event, reflecting on what they did right and wrong, behind-the-scenes tidbits, the like. The most critical of these were by Ramsey Dewey, to the point he stopped about halfway through because people disliked how he was negative about the event.

Jeff Phillips did not handle his criticisms well, with multiple response videos ranging from quick 5 minute videos trying to clarify his side of things (archive) to trying to flex how their training weapons aren't "pool noodles" because they made a tiny dent in a gutter (archive). If you might notice, these videos are half a year old. Ramsey decided to turn the other cheek and ignore it - bridges were burnt, event was over, money was made, who cares.

Well, apparently, Ramsey's commenters really wanted him to finish his reactions, in spite of the negative reactions they got, and so he delivered:
(archive)
(archive)
In both, he goes into detail about the event being a shitshow, how they kept making up deductions based on arbitrary "What-if" excuses that did not happen in the scenarios they participated in, called it "LARPing," and at one point goes into the closest thing a devout Mormon will get to a swear-laden rant before finally cursing in the follow-up video, repeatedly calling the event "Piss poor."
Among his various complaints:
>Everyone was immediately shoved into the event ltierally the same day they got off the plane, meaning they were still jet-lagged and didn't even have time to breathe
>They weren't even told this would happen as they initially all went to the beach together before Rokas and Jeff set up a rope ring and made them play a glorified sumo match
>Jeff claimed the event was going to use "MMA Rules," and every single combative event featured multiple glarifying violations of unified MMA rules, ranging from groin attacks to 12-to-6 elbows and oil checks
>The zombie apocalypse event, which was discussed in prior videos, did seriously injure him and he still has trouble walking over half a year later
>They seriously endangered the final contestants in the last event by making them get into fist fights over a bridge that was tall enough that if any of them fell, which could easily happen from even just a poorly aimed double-leg takedown, they would die
>Jeff lied about the output his lackeys would be using on them in scenarios, claiming it'd mostly be taps and just indicators they'd been hit, before letting them sucker-punch the contestants with their eyes closed
>Rokas repeatedly edited clips to misconstrue events, like in a scenario where they have to get out of a female boss sexually harassing them without getting MeToo'd - the woman pounced on Ramsey and claimed he touched her when she in fact touched him
>Jeff had a blatant bias against mixed martial artists and kept trying to make up excuses for Jeff Chan to not get points, even saying in a match-up where he had a man twice his age and half his size pinned down and his skull renovated by about 10 elbow strikes was "a draw" because Chan didn't pick him up and slam him on the ground
>On several occasions the contestants just weren't allowed to actually fight back - for example, one of the contestants was chased up a ladder, and instead of being able to push away the attacker with his foot, he just had to keep yelling "I'm hypothetically kicking you in the face right now!" which ultimately did nothing to help him

It remains to be seen if there'll be a reaction, but this all got revealed in wake of Rokas revealing he'd have to delay the premiere of the second season because he claims to have long COVID, and Jeff clearly being very reactive and sensitive to criticism, I fully anticipate some fun sperg wars.
 
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Good god that's painful to watch. I don't know any martial arts but I wrestled through jr. high and highschool and have competed at the state level a few time and just from that I can tell you most of that crap won't work in that vid. He's sacrificing way to much of his leverage and weight advantage by getting crazy.
Stacking with 1 arm in?
This can only end well :story:
 
It remains to be seen if there'll be a reaction, but this all got revealed in wake of Rokas revealing he'd have to delay the premiere of the second season because he claims to have long COVID, and Jeff clearly being very reactive and sensitive to criticism, I fully anticipate some fun sperg wars.

Hey, thanks for this excellent breakdown. I'm a big fan of Icy Mike, Sensei Seth, and Ramsey Dewey. The USDC was something I discovered very recently and it was really fun to watch. I've been meaning to watch Dewey's breakdown but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

I though the scoring was very weird too, and the fight between Icy Mike and Seth over the high-up bridge that either one of them could've fallen over very easily was something that I thought was bizarre when I first saw it. I didn't know about all the rest of the things, though. It really does seem like it was quite the shit show.
 
Does Andrew Tate counts as a martial arts lolcow?

He's a guy that did MMA (kickboxing) for a while until he and his brother decided to become grifter right-wing political commentators in the manosphere afterwards. I hate to make this thread sound too political but Andrew Tate isn't wrong when he says there is a male loneliness crisis where men aren't dating and getting married anymore but what makes this man a grifter is what he tries to sell you afterwards (which is the Tate brothers wanting you to buy their overpriced books, wanting you to convert to Islam to "Own the feminists", and that you should live a hedonistic rock star lifestyle which is arguably just as self-destructive for men as third-wave feminism is for women).

It doesn't help that the Tate brothers are facing serious sex trafficking charges in Romania (this includes alleged sex trafficking of children) so I think Andrew Tate is a perfect addition for this thread.
 
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Another underrated lolcow community that doesn't got the attention it deserves. Now it's more likely merged with the "self-defense training experts" community.
Who is currently the biggest lolcow purely from the arts of "bullshido"?
 
Was reminded of this thread thanks to a sticker notification. I should probably do a longer write-up now that Ultimate Self-Defense Championship's second season has came and went and Rokas is working on the third one right now (he's stated he'll be starting filming in a couple of weeks on reddit (archive)).

The most distinct things were they got a gayming YouTuber and an alleged "regular guy" (he was an ex-con who used to do prison boxing a la Kimbo Slice) as two contestants, with the regular guy being an absolute darkhorse contestant due to his candid behavior and things like saying "I'd just fuckin' walk away if I was in a bar this violent!" and pissing off Jeff Phillips and stirring a little controversy since he lost by just two points to MMA fighter Natan Levy (who was obviously a little controversial at the time because of the fact he's Israeli and obviously going to be in favor of his home country). Jesse Enkamp also demonstrated his autism by accidentally flirting with a gay sex offender (in a scenario) on camera, which was funny. It's worth a watch because it's kinda funny but don't expect anything worth talking about afterwards.

Season 3's contestants include Natan Levy (returning as champion), Bellator Featherweight Champion Gabriel Varga, Kung Fu Midget Kevin Lee, Former JTF-2 member-turned-mixed martial artist Randy "Relentless" Turner, small-time Kudo practitioner/mixed martial artist Vilius Terasevičius, Karate+Sumo YouTuber Sensei Seth (returning because he'll do anything for content, and is also fat), founder of Krav Maga school "Nomad Krav Maga" Shannon "Shane" Langwell, and the yet unnamed winner of the World Self-Defense Championship which should be coming out in the coming weeks though there seems to be a post-production delay for some reason (see reddit link above). I'm not exactly holding my breath, I anticipate this to be one of the dullest seasons yet given they're scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point.

Who is currently the biggest lolcow purely from the arts of "bullshido"?
The issue is the "martial arts community" isn't as unified a community like the "gaming community" or the "cartoon fandom" or something. Boxing guys and karate guys don't usually cross over much. There's much more centralization now thanks to mass-communications and social media but not enough there's a universally agreed upon cowish figure. The e-celebs are mostly businessmen who had their businesses before they had their internet "careers" meaning they know basic PR, and the ones who don't get plenty of business from the guys who don't care. There's also so many niches within niches that don't really sit on social media in nice archivable capacity outside of very specific forums with very boring people.

The closest you get to it is internet tough guys who decide to cover topics of martial arts and usually embarrass themselves. But you're not gonna find a proper Frank Dux anymore who just makes shit up and tries to profit off of idiots not knowing what he's talking about and just paying into the confidence he displays specifically in the field of martial arts, those types get into more tech-related fields now like Jason "Maldavius Figtree" Hall. Nor are there many Ninja Rons anymore, especially with Street Beefs making it very easy to get a legally sanctioned in-ring fight to test your mettle. Does this mean there aren't? No. But are they worth making threads for? Also no, there's just not enough to talk about nor is there enough to laugh at beyond a one-off moment or two.

In general, martial arts is hard to find contemporary lolcows in because the experts and competent names now were raised in trained in the times of dealing with profound liars and con artists (and bombers) and maintaining scrutiny and procuring evidence was very difficult and are now all for as much transparency as possible. Obviously you've still got liars and con artists, but now they have to work for their proof and lose credibility very quickly because other names in the scene will go "Okay, if you really believe you're this tough, let's go into the ring and let's test your shit out" and unlike in many other scenes, this usually isn't bravado (though that doesn't mean it never is, many times it is) but a learned behavior of keeping more Frank Duxes out of the scene.

So any martial arts lolcows are ones from the past, who have somehow survived all scrutiny. In that case, the winner is Steven Seagal who followed the DSP school of "failing upwards" to now work directly for the Russian government as one of Putin's martial arts wizards.

If you want the more one-off modern lolcows, the best archive you'll get is McDojoLife who documents and calls out wannabe cult leaders and martial arts lolcows and has physically sparred with them on a few occasions so as to call out their internet tough guy behavior, but he doesn't condone phonebooking or any particularly sneeding and as a result you won't get anything akin to anything better than a sub-par Prospering Grounds thread where it's all unarchived screenshots and clips.

I was maybe thinking of doing an OP kind of adjacent to martial arts lolcows specifically focused on bodybuilder, martial artist, and "human punching bag" Houston Jones whose channel I'm about 70% sure is actually just a masochism/sadism fetish channel disguised as a fratboy "Dude what would happen" channel - but that'd require a lot more research than I've put in and it probably wouldn't be a very substantial thread.
 
he yet unnamed winner of the World Self-Defense Championship which should be coming out in the coming weeks though there seems to be a post-production delay for some reason (see reddit link above).
Can't edit but I checked Jeff Phillips' channel and he released a trailer announcing it will be coming out on June 1st.
(offsite archive)
Local archive:


The very first second of the video uses the security camera footage from pooner Audrey Hale's shooting up of an elementary school, as though the self-defense techniques used in this event will be deployable by the people who were victim to Hale's attack: Geriatric schoolteachers and toddlers.
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