'Gumby" On The Mat Interview
Real Life Training
Jun 9, 2004
Have you been training anywhere?
I got two days at Roger’s place, a really good facility and some good guys to roll with, one huge purple belt and the brown belt Jude as well and Roger gave classes the first day and Mauricao gave classes the day after. I’d really recommend the academy to anyone who’s in town.
What’s on the list after this week?
Not yet to be sure, I will be heading off to Brighton and finish my travels at Sol Gilbert’s new academy and from there I’ll be heading back to the States.
The Bay area of San Francisco and have been there pretty much all my life.
Where do you train?
At Ralph Gracie’s school and have been there eight years and a purple belt right now. I’ve been pretty consistent with my training over the years training five to six days a week and I also get to train with some quality guys, two of my room mates are black belts, one of which is Dave Camarillo and the other is Cameron Earle, not to mention Sandro “Batata” Santiago and there’s some pretty talented brown belts at the club, Mike Prudencio, Misho Ceko and Tom Cicero. There are probably nine or ten black belts overall at the club and we’re pretty spoiled really. Ralph is a phenomenal teacher and when he first opened up, the academy was just a mile from my house and I didn’t really know how fortunate I was at the time I started to have a guy like this in the area. He’s a great teacher, has great enthusiasm for the sport and he’s fighting soon and is in fighting shape now and a number of other guys are gearing up to fight, the higher belts that is. He’s kinda like the crazy Gracie, he drums the basics into you and then kicks your ass on the mats.
OK, regards onthemat.com; how did the website evolve?
OTM has been running about five years now and Scotty and I started it off; we were working in the Silicon Valley area, with a lot of tech and Web companies and we had the idea to make a site on something we like ourselves. Scotty actually wanted to do it as he was preparing for his first trip to Brazil back when not many foreigners were there and he wanted to have something to trade with the Brazilians, you know shoe me round Brazil and I’ll give you coverage back in the States and we whipped up a website. It was pretty crummy at first and was updated once in a blue moon, but it was ours; at the very same academy we have Don Geddis of bjj.org fame and we used to bounce ideas off him as well. It was just going to be a hobby and we had our jobs to concentrate on as well, we were doing that and we’d have back up people to cover the tournaments as well. At the start we made a batch of t shirts with the original hooker logo on and we made them up and gave them out to some friends. Being in that area we had some high-powered talented friends, and we managed to cover guys like Dave Camarillo, BJ Penn, Garth Taylor, quite a few others and they had t shirts and I’ll never forget this, we showed up at one tournament and we saw a whole bunch of guys, who came up to us and said ‘you’re the OTM guys, your site’s cool’ etc and we said ‘ yeah we’re just fans with a small site’ and when we were taping the fights we noticed guys had made their own OTM patches and had them on their gi’s and Scotty and I looked at each other and thought maybe we could a little further with this.
Who else are involved in OTM?
(laughs) Man, there’s loads of guys, I’d have to check back at the office for a full run down as I’d hate to miss anyone out; the main guys are still Scotty and myself and pretty much everything on the site comes through us. There’s contributors and staff writers, yourself, “Dirty” Larry Estevan, Scott Proffitt, he’s doing a lot of MMA events, the infamous Ulysses “Useless” Gomes has just submitted an article, Rebecca Motte, Ed Clay, Balia from Canada, Greggie, the mysterious Mosquito, Ryan “Beovis” Bevins, Adissa Banjoko, Justin “Mr. Bean” Serlunik, Alex “Legends” Oxedine, Gabe Ruediger, Erik Owens, Aaron Briley, Danny “DoNothing”, Melissa “MJScooby” Hendricks, Stepan Kesting, Garri Bannar, the legendary Pacqueta, Marc Laimon with his video remix series, Ryan Gregg, Brian Cimins, we work with a lot of promoters as well. My room mates have sent in articles, like Dave Camarillo, Mike Prudencio, Cameron Earle, Scotty’s brother Cade “Grapplecaun” Nelson, not to mention programmers and graphic designers such as Lamonster, Dan Guard, Della, James Brewster and the list goes on and on, anyone I have forgot I am truly sorry, I’m on the spot here (Laughs).
I got two days at Roger’s place, a really good facility and some good guys to roll with, one huge purple belt and the brown belt Jude as well and Roger gave classes the first day and Mauricao gave classes the day after. I’d really recommend the academy to anyone who’s in town.
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Not yet to be sure, I will be heading off to Brighton and finish my travels at Sol Gilbert’s new academy and from there I’ll be heading back to the States.
Where do you live in the US?
The Bay area of San Francisco and have been there pretty much all my life.
Where do you train?
At Ralph Gracie’s school and have been there eight years and a purple belt right now. I’ve been pretty consistent with my training over the years training five to six days a week and I also get to train with some quality guys, two of my room mates are black belts, one of which is Dave Camarillo and the other is Cameron Earle, not to mention Sandro “Batata” Santiago and there’s some pretty talented brown belts at the club, Mike Prudencio, Misho Ceko and Tom Cicero. There are probably nine or ten black belts overall at the club and we’re pretty spoiled really. Ralph is a phenomenal teacher and when he first opened up, the academy was just a mile from my house and I didn’t really know how fortunate I was at the time I started to have a guy like this in the area. He’s a great teacher, has great enthusiasm for the sport and he’s fighting soon and is in fighting shape now and a number of other guys are gearing up to fight, the higher belts that is. He’s kinda like the crazy Gracie, he drums the basics into you and then kicks your ass on the mats.
OK, regards onthemat.com; how did the website evolve?
OTM has been running about five years now and Scotty and I started it off; we were working in the Silicon Valley area, with a lot of tech and Web companies and we had the idea to make a site on something we like ourselves. Scotty actually wanted to do it as he was preparing for his first trip to Brazil back when not many foreigners were there and he wanted to have something to trade with the Brazilians, you know shoe me round Brazil and I’ll give you coverage back in the States and we whipped up a website. It was pretty crummy at first and was updated once in a blue moon, but it was ours; at the very same academy we have Don Geddis of bjj.org fame and we used to bounce ideas off him as well. It was just going to be a hobby and we had our jobs to concentrate on as well, we were doing that and we’d have back up people to cover the tournaments as well. At the start we made a batch of t shirts with the original hooker logo on and we made them up and gave them out to some friends. Being in that area we had some high-powered talented friends, and we managed to cover guys like Dave Camarillo, BJ Penn, Garth Taylor, quite a few others and they had t shirts and I’ll never forget this, we showed up at one tournament and we saw a whole bunch of guys, who came up to us and said ‘you’re the OTM guys, your site’s cool’ etc and we said ‘ yeah we’re just fans with a small site’ and when we were taping the fights we noticed guys had made their own OTM patches and had them on their gi’s and Scotty and I looked at each other and thought maybe we could a little further with this.
Who else are involved in OTM?
(laughs) Man, there’s loads of guys, I’d have to check back at the office for a full run down as I’d hate to miss anyone out; the main guys are still Scotty and myself and pretty much everything on the site comes through us. There’s contributors and staff writers, yourself, “Dirty” Larry Estevan, Scott Proffitt, he’s doing a lot of MMA events, the infamous Ulysses “Useless” Gomes has just submitted an article, Rebecca Motte, Ed Clay, Balia from Canada, Greggie, the mysterious Mosquito, Ryan “Beovis” Bevins, Adissa Banjoko, Justin “Mr. Bean” Serlunik, Alex “Legends” Oxedine, Gabe Ruediger, Erik Owens, Aaron Briley, Danny “DoNothing”, Melissa “MJScooby” Hendricks, Stepan Kesting, Garri Bannar, the legendary Pacqueta, Marc Laimon with his video remix series, Ryan Gregg, Brian Cimins, we work with a lot of promoters as well. My room mates have sent in articles, like Dave Camarillo, Mike Prudencio, Cameron Earle, Scotty’s brother Cade “Grapplecaun” Nelson, not to mention programmers and graphic designers such as Lamonster, Dan Guard, Della, James Brewster and the list goes on and on, anyone I have forgot I am truly sorry, I’m on the spot here (Laughs).
