Matt Thornton : The Gift Of Violence

Mr Matt Thornton. The man, the teacher, the author.
We talk about his book ‘The Gift Of Violence’, about Straight Blast Gym, Jeet Kune Do, martial arts, self defense, combat sports, jiu jitsu.
But also about philosophy, psychology, the need to learn to fight in modern society and the peaceful warrior within.
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MATT THORNTON
Matt Thornton was one of the early group of American’s to become involved in the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, having been introduced to it in 1991. He was also the first person from the State of Oregon to receive a black belt in the Art.
As a teacher he produced a video set in 1999 titled simply, ‘Aliveness’ which became one of the top sellers of all time within the industry. It set off a firestorm of controversy, and remained a central catalyst in a Martial Arts training revolution that is still taking place all over the world. They were voted as one of the top five self-defense videos of all time by Black Belt magazine.
As a coach he has awarded fifteen of his own Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts. That list includes famed UFC coach and the father of MMA in Ireland, John Kavanagh. Who is the trainer to UFC legend Conor McGregor. The UK’s most successful MMA coach, Karl Tanswell; and other great teachers, competitors and trainers of champions.
Over the decades Matt has worked with some of the best MMA fighters, grapplers and combat athletes in the world, including UFC hall of famers Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Forrest Griffin, and others. He has also produced Oregon’s first and so far only, Mundials world champion.
Matt has been hired to teach seminars on functional martial arts all across the USA and the world; that list includes, Germany, Canada, Singapore, Japan, Denmark, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Reunion Island, Thailand, South Africa, Chile, and France, just to name a few.

In addition to that, he was the first Instructor to bring the arts of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA to the Nation of Iceland, where he met his wife, Salome.

In 1993 Matt received his blue belt from the legendary Rickson Gracie. He met his main coach, Chris Haueter in that same year. Chris was one of what is called in the BJJ community, the dirty dozen, the first twelve Americans to earn a black belt in the art. Matt appreciated Chris’ conceptual and no nonsense approach. Chris became a regular guest in Oregon for seminars and training.
Matt’s school, SBG, became Oregon’s first MMA style gym. Eventual spin offs included Team Quest, Impact Jiu-Jitsu, Nemesis Academy and many more.
On top of running his own Academy, located in Portland Oregon for over twenty years, acting as the Head Coach for SBG, an organization with over 50 affiliate academies located on every continent on earth, coaching top- level athletes, and giving Aliveness workshops around the world, Matt has also been published in multiple Martial Arts publications. These include Black Belt magazine, Inside Kung Fu, Martial Arts Legends, Fighters, Martial Arts Illustrated, and many more.
On top of running his own Academy, located in Portland Oregon for over twenty years, acting as the Head Coach for SBG, an organization with over 50 affiliate academies located on every continent on earth, coaching top- level athletes, and giving Aliveness workshops around the world, Matt has also been published in multiple Martial Arts publications. These include Black Belt magazine, Inside Kung Fu, Martial Arts Legends, Fighters, Martial Arts Illustrated, and many more.

personal website: mattthornton.org
gym website: sbguniversity.com

SBGU

book:

Hello everybody here we are again and this this time we have with us we have the pleasure to have with us Mr Matt thoron hello Matt how you doing I’m good Claudio thanks for having me on thanks thanks thank you it’s really really a pleasure to have you in my podcast I saw

You I tried to invite you I said okay he could tell me no so why don’t why don’t we try and um I would I would like to ask you first um just I I I swear just one one question about jondo then we we move on okay yeah

What uh you started with gikondo martial arts or you you have some basic experience before uh my dad put me in karate when I was a kid but I only did that for maybe uh six months so I had a little bit of karate and then I had done some boxing

And when I was in the military just a little bit U when I got out of the military I was uh adamant about wanting to spend my time training martial arts and I had chosen gundo is where I wanted to go start training because of the Cross training and the standup and the

Training all the different ranges and to me it looked uh practical and so when I left the military I moved back to California I started training in JKD so that would my first real martial art would have been J okay so speaking about martial arts in

The beginning uh what do you think is best for a young kid you know I like I say in my book I think what’s best is Combat Sports what works in a fight um is fighting Sports and the reason why fighting Sports work is because their results matter they want to win

And so they have functional training methods whether we’re talking about wrestling or Judo or boxing or or any of them so any of the Combat Sports are going to be great uh the problem with boxing and mu Thai and some of those Arts is the head trauma and that’s

Especially not good for kids so my recommendation for kids is to get involved in some sort of grappling art you’ve got wrestling you’ve got Judo you’ve got Brazilian jiu-jitsu those are all great obviously personally I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu that’s what I put my kids in I think that’s in many ways the

Perfect martial art for kids um so for same for me yeah I got two kids bra jit there you go it’s healthy they’re not going to get brain damage they love it it’s perfect for kids yeah yeah um so you started with the the jondo you you became really

Famous not exactly for jondo but for some some people call it functional JD do you agree with that name yeah that was the name I chose for my first videos but it wasn’t so much about jono as it was about that’s where I was coming from and what I was trying

To do was I was trying to explain a question that had uh interested me all my life since I was a kid which is what works in fights and what doesn’t what martial arts work and what martial arts don’t work and uh and despite what some people say there are certain martial

Arts that absolutely do not work um and in many ways could actually make you worse at fighting and I wanted to know the difference I wanted to know why some Arts work and some Arts didn’t work and in the producing of those videos which we called functional jodo the point of

Those was to explain to people I mean there was techniques in there and there was boxing and Jiu-Jitsu and and all everything else but I was using those as a vehicle to explain aliveness and that’s really what it was all about um since then my gym has and organization

Has grown in we’re essentially a uh Brazilian jiu-jitsu makes martial arts functional martial arts gym and so some of our locations focus more on law enforcement and self-defense some of our locations Focus heavily on MMA and professional MMA some of them focus more on Brazilian

Jiu-jitsu so forth and so on I own I have two myself and we do um stand at clinching ground we have wrestling Brazilian jiu-jitsu and boxing and Muay Thai at my gyms here uh and so that’s kind of where the organization SG evolved to but those initial videos that was the title

We put on it and the first group of people that came to me and became basically the original instructors for for the organ gation around the world most of them had come from a jundo background so they had similar background they understood what I was trying to say they agreed with it and

That kind of uh that message Hope gathered them together do you think you attracted more people from JKD concept or also the original or maybe the people from original wanted to stay in the in the background of Bruce Lee I’ve trained with most uh most most

Of them in one way or another not extensively but I’ve certainly met them and trained with them and and I’ve talked to a lot of them I have respect for all of them um I think in many ways both went wrong I talk about that in the

Book and I’ve talked about that publicly before but the problem with original gundo if you if we call it that um is you’re mimicking the fighting style of 130 pound man who was primarily a movie star and died in 1973 not to say he’s not a great martial artist but um

You know he had limited contact by that he was only 33 years old when he died and the idea that you take anybody no even if a world class fighter let’s say Sugar Ray Leonard right at his prime are most people going to be able to fight like Sugar Ray Leonard no the

Fundamentals of boxing will transcend different individuals and each individual has to take that delivery system and learn how to make it work for themselves but you’re not going to mimic you know boxers who mimic Muhammad Ali or sugaray L are most often don’t do very well they’ve got to learn how to

Make boxing work for themselves and so that’s the problem with the original group they’ve basically turned it into a a fixed style of trying to mimic what Bruce Lee did when he was alive the problem with the concepts group is a lack of discrimination like they would

They had some Arts that were very functional Muay Thai Brazilian jiu-jitsu of course uh some of the first people in the United States to do Brazilian jiu-jitsu were actually jundo people Hal fauler who was I think probably the first and he was a student of the coli

Academy under Dana Nano and he started training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu actually in the 70s because he had gone to Brazil and seen it as far as I know he was one of the first Americans to do it of course Paul vunak and others uh Richard bastillo so they had really functional

Martial arts and then they had other stuff that there’s just no other way to put it it’s just silly um and there was very little discrimination between the two so the analogy I’ve often used is you go to an all you can eat buffet and

A lot of is really healthy and good for you a lot of it’s just garbage and uh you’re not going you don’t learn how to develop your own fighting style by mixing and matching from things like that that’s not how it works so you develop your own style by focusing on

The fundamentals of standup clinch and ground and those fundamentals will transcend bodies once you learn what they are the the body mechanics the footwork the in Brazilian jiu-jitsu it has to do with the bass and the posture and the connection we have to our opponents those are

Universal and then through a process of a live training you learn over years it takes years and years to really earn your own style you earn it you don’t learn it or pick it through a process of live training you figure out how your body best manifests those fundamentals

And then you have your style and then as a coach if you’re smart and you’re ethical your job is to then go back and allow your students to go through the same process you did so you’re not teaching your style you’re introducing them to the fundamentals of standup clinching ground uh weapons

Whatever it is that you’re trying training and then you’re letting them through the process of a live training again develop their own style and to me that’s really what if you if you just boil it down and it it doesn’t a lot of times these kinds of things are semantic

We’re trying to think what Bruce Lee meant when he was alive and read his mind which none of us can do so it’s almost pointless but in my personal opinion that’s what Bruce Lee was going after that was the idea that’s what jundo should have been it was about

Truth in combat let’s find out what works let’s find out what’s real and ideally you know they would be the top MMA fighters in the world right now would be the jundo community because they’d have they should have had such a head start on this whole game but they

Hung on too tight to a classical mess it may not have been traditional karate or Kung Fu which they rightly um compared themselves to and and showed why what they doing with Superior and there’s nothing wrong with that but at the same time they adopted equally silly things

From Southeast Asia and penj seot all kinds of other stuff um which doesn’t have any application against fully resisting opponents you’re not going to see that kind of thing used in a cage and so the inability to let go of what didn’t work really held them

Back okay okay if you if you look back in your life your experience in martial arts do you can you see different phases of your experience from jondo to functional JD to MMA or you see it just like one flow no there was definitely um an evolution um you know in the

Beginning there was no such thing as an MMA gym right so when I started teaching Brazilian jiu-jitsu I uh hick and Gracie I had no know where to train it I only started teaching because I wanted training Partners I didn’t I didn’t think I’d ever do this for a job had no

Concept that I’d be able to feed my family doing this I thought it was always going to be I always have to have some other job and this would just be a hobby that I loved and the only reason I started training was because I needed training partners that was it and there

Was nowhere else to go there was no Brazilian jiu-jitsu schools there was no MMA schools in Oregon and so I was the first one and we made a lot of mistakes um the biggest mistake was uh we trained too hard it was too much head contact

The sparring was too rough and as the years went by we we evolved all of us in the organization because we care about what we do and we’re always trying to find better ways of doing it we evolve better training methods where you know

Now I’m very proud to say at my gym here in Portland we have 700 someon students here and some of my coaches are in their 70s uh you could come on a given day and you could see people in their 60s you could see young athletes in their 20s

You can see doctors that are 50 you can see women probably 30% of My overall membership is is female at this time kids so it really is for everybody and everybody’s training in a very realistic way but nobody’s getting hurt and so it took us years to develop that and I talk

About that in the book and um that was one of the main reasons why I wanted to write the book because I you know you shouldn’t have to repeat those mistakes my students should have the benefit of of not having to go through what we went through so that was probably the biggest

Evolution um and then The more I’ve trained it’s been 30 years ago more than 30 years since I started um SBG um The more I’ve actually fallen in love with jiu-jitsu and the deeper I see the fundamentals of the art going you know sometimes people talk about when we

Focus on fundamentals that being boring or how you might run out of techniques or anything and anytime you hear somebody talking like that you understand that they don’t understand how the art works because the fundamentals whether we’re talking about Jiu-Jitsu or wrestling or boxing are deep and you could spend a lifetime just

Working the fundamentals of any one of them so I never find it boring um and I’m I’ve learned more I’ve been a black belt now for whatever it is 20 something years I think I’ve learned 23 years I’ve learned more Jiu-Jitsu in the last probably three years than I did the

Previous you know TW 28 or 30 and and I can’t think of too many other things on planet Earth where that would be the case and so uh there there’s definitely been an evolution in a positive direction for us okay you you are uh 1969 right that’s

Yeah that’s when I was born uh you you can still learn in the last three years you got no problems with need knees no I’m 1968 my knees are totally up I I wanted to start again presing Jiu-Jitsu but I tried but my left knee is totally

Done I’ve had four knee five knee surgeries okay a hip replacement I’ve had ACL Replacements on both my knees um I had a full hip replacement last year uh I’ve had my share injuries and surgery and part of that is because like I as as I was talking about earlier I

Train too hard I trained too rough uh rougher than I needed to knowing what I know now I can tell you with with absolute confidence that if you’re with a group of people or a coach who knows what they’re doing there’s no reason why you can’t train and not get hurt if you

Have injuries bad knee bad shoulder pretty much whatever it is with the exception of maybe your neck because if you get a neck injury then you really do have to stay off the mat yeah but but anything else like that you can learn how to work around it and if you have a

Smart coach and a smart uh training Partners you shouldn’t you shouldn’t get hurt you know one of my one of my black belts she started with me Lily Pagel she started with me when she was I think 51 or 52 as a white belt um she got her black belt in uh I

Think she was 63 or 64 you know 12 or 13 years later and she’s still teaching to this day and she’s in her 70s and she rolls she gets on the map she’s TIY too you know she’s probably 100 something pounds um but but it can definitely be

Done so one of the things is I think a a lot of schools still to this day train rougher than is is necessary the beautiful thing about Jiu-Jitsu is you can get very good at it and learn how to defend yourself well against big strong people by training softly if you know

How to do it you you can still have the timing you still be completely alive but you don’t need need to be getting picked up and slammed on the mat you don’t need to have submission slammed on you like none of that stuff is necessary it doesn’t make you

Better um if anything it just breaks your body down so I think the secret is to learn how to train that way and then to find a group of people who know how to do it uh and that’s growing as more people do Jiu-Jitsu smarter people are getting involved and there are more

Schools that are like that this first book that I wrote I was more about um violence in general how to manage it how to deal with it in your life how how to uh how to protect yourself and your family and a little bit about training

Martial arts in terms of what you should look for and and what’s functional what’s not Al liveness but it wasn’t a training book it’s not U not filled with drills or anything like that my next book that I plan to write will be and one of the main the you remember in the

70s in the 8S it was full of people of books like that but now we have Internet we we have YouTube so so oh yeah there there’s no need anymore to do to write books like that no we don’t need picture books but the reason why I want to write

This next book is because I want to get across to people how to train that way and so the next point of my book will my next book will be specifically about how you can train in a healthy way that was my last question your next book yeah are you ready writing

It yeah I wrote a lot of it already I wrote three times what I what made it into this book um so I’ve got that basically this is a huge book and 300 some odd pages with 600 citations uh very data heavy I talk a

Lot about a lot a lot of things police shootings all kinds of other other things crime all that so in order to uh to pair the book down I really had to take out all the parts about training there was sections in standup clinch ground Jiu-Jitsu and

We we just had to cut that out so that’ll go back into my next book and I’m going to flesh that out more but one of the reasons why I really want to do it is because you know I want to pass what we’ve learned in SVG along to

Everybody else so that they don’t have to make those mistakes like nobody should have to get beat up to learn Jiu-Jitsu if you want to do it to to prove to yourself that you can manage it or whatever to to understand what it feels like I get that and you can you

Can put yourself through that to the degree that you find it necessary but it’s not needed you can learn how to fight without it yeah do you do you have still hope for some traditional martial arts or you don’t have it no not really I mean it’s not about

The art it’s about the Training Method right and the problem with traditional martial arts is they’re basically sclorotic patterns so they’re they’re dead patterns person a does this and person B responds this way uh and they lack that aliveness part that’s why the the one thing about training that I did

Include in a book was an entire chapter on liveness because I think once somebody understand understands that concept they can no longer be bullshitted by fake martial arts or pretend martial arts um but if you if you take something like a keto for example right which a

Keto could beautiful looking art I grant you it can look very cool it would looked cool when Steven seal did it above the law and came out in the movies and you know made the first movie it looks awesome but it’s not a functional martial art um and if you try to apply

Keto in a cage you’re just going to get beat up and if you try and apply it against somebody in the street of football player you’re going to get beat up it’s it’s not it’s not going to help you learn how to fight against a bigger stronger angry opponent with bad

Intentions now if you try to modify a keto to make it functional right let’s say you’re a third degree black belt or whatever in a keto and you want to functionalize that keto by the time you’re done with it you’re going to wind up with something that basically looks

Kind of like bad Wrestling Judo and Jiu-Jitsu and so it begs the question why wouldn’t you just go to do Wrestling Judo and jiu-jitsu directly yeah why why would you want to remake the wheel so um as long as the instructors and people who are teaching that are honest about

What they’re doing I have no problem with it like if they’re teaching iido for cultural reasons or for to get people moving or for health or what that’s fine but the moment they start telling people they’re teaching something that’s practical for self-defense they’ve they’ve veered into

An arena where they could they could get people hurt and so you know you have to tell the truth that point okay you you think the same about self-defense classes uh you know it really depends on the class so most of what people need to know about self-defense isn’t physical

Right it’s all the pre physical stuff which is basically what my book’s about so understanding how violence Works how people get selected how Predators select their prey how to get yourself off that deselected unselected off that list how to be a harder Target where to go where

Not to go how to um listen to your own internal instincts one of the big points in my book is that you know we are very successful creatures in the sense of evolution every one of us easy to forget at an obvious point but it is when you

Think about it it’s quite profound every single one of us including you and I every single one of our ancestors not only lived long enough to procreate but lived long enough to procreate and their offspring procreated in an unbroken chain all all the way back to the beginning of mankind completely unbroken

Shain 99 whatever 99% of every other creature on the planet including humans didn’t do that they died out right so you and I come from a very successful lineage that didn’t happen by accident our ancestors had fantastic instincts as far as who was a predator who was a

Parasite who they needed to stay away from many of them uh defended themselves over and over and all kinds of different situations many of them had to kill for you and I to be here today and all of that is in us it’s in our Primal instincts and what happens is we get

Isolated from that we get away from our physical nature you get stuck behind a desk you’re looking in a glass screen you forget about Primal instincts you lose touch with them but they’re still there and then when you’re in the presence of a true threat those alarm Bells will go off but

People don’t recognize them they don’t know what they are or they try and rationalize it away because they want to be a nice person they don’t want to appear like they’re judging someone whatever and then before you know it it’s too late and now they’re another victim of a violent

Assault and so just learning how to trust and listen to your own instincts is probably the single most important thing you could do to defend yourself right and the physical conflict part of it when it actually turns physical that’s at the end of a long process um

Usually there are many many steps before you get to that point that hopefully can if you learn how to manage you can avoid ever getting to that point once it gets to that point and it becomes physical if you’re somebody who’s a combat athlete you’re GNA they’re in your world

Somebody grabs you on somebody grabs me on the street and tries to hold me or something like this what I do every day I’m presing Jiu-Jitsu person they are now in my realm you’re going to be fine your body’s going to take over and you’re going to probably dominate that

Situation people forget how easy it is to beat up somebody that doesn’t know Brazilian jiu-jitsu or MMA if you have skill set in that kind of training right doesn’t mean we don’t need to be aware doesn’t mean you don’t want to respect there could be weapons there could be

Multiple opponents of course right but once it turns physical that’s where functional martial arts and everything will just kind of take over but all that stuff before that is is what’s most important and if you learn to pay attention and listen to that kind of stuff I think most people

Can avoid most um potential conflict and the last thing I’ll say about that is whether we’re talking about rape or assault or murder or anything else the vast majority of the the victimized know the know who uh the attacker right so we spent a lot of time in self-defense

Thinking about strangers attacking us on the street and of course that is something you have to learn about too and learn how to manage but more often than not male and female the person who’s going to attack you is somebody that you know somebody that you’ve let

Around your life somebody that you let into your inner circle so to speak or into your home even and so um learning how to manage those boundaries and get those kind of people out of your life is also very important so I talk a little bit about that in the book as

Well um to write a books you must love books so you what you usually read oh uh I read all kinds of things all the all the time so I’ve got a huge pile of books that I usually read three or four things at a time and I’ll read a

Little bit from one book and then switch to the other every once in a while I’ll get so engrossed in a book that I’ll read it from start to finish happens rarely but but does happen um and 90% of what I read is non-fiction so I like uh history and

Philosophy and Science and and things like that I occasionally read fiction my wife reads a lot more fiction than I do when I read fiction it’ll usually be older or more classical literature or sometimes science I enjoy but yeah I read a lot of non-fiction I know that you really love

Philosophy uh do you do you have a a philosopher that you think would be great for martial arts uh not I I mean not Eastern philosophy I I I’m thinking about Western philosophy sure um in terms of Western philosophy the stoics are always worth visiting and one of my favorite is

Western philosopher is probably Marcus Aurelius and his book meditations is usually always on my bedside it’s one of the few books that I always keep close to me um I’ve found a lot of practical advice when it comes to managing violence and everything else from him so

There’s a lot of good material there in a broader perspective talking about life itself I’ve always been very fond of Spinosa H okay okay um um there are many books I I collect a lot of books I love books as you and I collect a lot of books and I read a lot

Of books like those from Desmond Morris Harris Lawrence Carly all books that speaks about the behavior of animals and the aggressiveness and how it works and uh that what happens in the brain uh do you did you do some research and did one of these books inspire

You absolutely um a lot of those books inspired me so I got the idea for writing this book around 2014 so 10 years ago and I was having lunch with a writer who I respect a great deal and um it was his he’s actually the one that told me you know I

Told him I’ve been kind of working Loosely on a book about martial arts for a long time but I I hadn’t quite figured out where where I was going with it or where it would fit on the bookshelf because what I was writing wasn’t the kind of book that I thought would fit

Well in the martial arts section of Barnes & Noble next to you know Jiu-Jitsu University or something and he’s he said immediately you’re writing a book about violence that’s what you’re writing about it’s violence and it belongs in the non-fiction area where those kind of books are held and when he

Said that I knew he was right and I kind of lit a fire under me to focus in that area and I did two things that took a few years the first thing I did is I just went and looked at the raw data we have

A lot of crime data particularly in the United States from the FBI and the Bureau of Justice statistics and things like that and I just wanted to look at the numbers by themselves without any input or U narration um and just to see them for and see the story that they

Told and they do tell a story anybody who’s interested in just looking at the data should do that and you’ll you’ll start to see um a narrative that’s very different from the one that the media puts out about how violence Works um not just in the in this country but worldwide

Although you know obviously getting data from a lot of different countries can be tricky but the United States does a pretty good job of tracking that so I did that and then the next thing I did is I wanted to read everything that was on the market about violence and make

Sure that nobody had written a book that I wanted to write and so I did that and nobody had um I read a couple hundred books on the subject and then one of my um interest for many years has been Evolution and evolutionary psychology and and um and

So yeah I had a lot of uh that material already and U and so a lot of that went into the book so like I said at the end of the book there’s I think 600 citations all kinds of references to the data and uh things I talk about but we

We talk about uh violence from an evolutionary perspective why evolved and and U how evolved and every other aspect that you can think about so my goal is whoever reads the book I want them to be able to have a good relationship with the topic you know violence is such a intrinsic part

Of our being you know it’s so important to how we evolved that that you know with the exception of probably reproduction with the exception of probably sex it is the thing that gets most fetishized in other words people will um glorify it and and and turn it into some kind of fetish

Especially young men who are you know lacking maturity or people will demonize it and repress it and either extreme is not healthy and I want people to have a healthy relationship to the topic of violence so that’s one of the overarching goals of the book is that by

The time they read that they’ll have a better understand understanding of where it sits um in each of us do you think that writing a book whose title is the gift of violence could be risky in 2024 in a society like we are living in right now no people can misunderstand

The title yeah no not at all actually the idea for the title came from a book agent that I had um and in some ways it’s an aage to the gift uh the gift of fear so of all the books I’ve read on violence was the one that I recommend to

People besides my own the most often is the gift of fear by Gavin debecker he wrote two fantastic books one was the gift of fear that I think everyone should read and the other one was protecting the gift which was about uh protecting your kids so if you’re a

Parent I always recommend that and his overall thesis was similar to what I was talking about before that um he interviewed thousands of victims of crime and although many of them at first glance and when you first start talking to them will say that they felt like it

Came on very suddenly all of a sudden they were attacked if you ask them the right questions you realize that the contact had begun much sooner and they had started to recognize that they were in the process they were in the presence of a threat with those instincts and

Those instincts are a gift and that’s why it calls it a gift but for whatever reason many oftentimes the reason may be even Noble not wanting to judge people necessarily they ignored it and then that’s what caused them to become a victim and so that’s part of it the other part

Of it is you know what greater gift can you give somebody than freedom from exploitation by physical means and that only comes from violence or the ability to threaten violence and that’s never changed and that never will change and um you know that’s why I partially in the beginning of the book I

Also talk about things like pacifism and why they’re not just they just don’t it’s not just that they don’t work they’re also a moral we are all of us every one of us has a a moral obligation to engage in Conflict when you come into contact with someone who wants to

Severely hurt you your children or innocent people around you and uh the only way you’re going to manage somebody who’s committed to doing you harm is by being capable of executing and threatening violence and that is a gift it’s a gift to give people one of the most important gifts that everybody

Should have so they can walk through their life free uh naturally you you have many friends that are not in martial arts like everybody uh do you what what your friends uh outside martial arts think about your passion and the and your book for example people who’s totally outside

The World of Martial Arts and comat sports I’ll say I I certainly have a few friends that are outside the martial arts world but not many most the people that I associate with are are um either part of SBG or involved in what I do in some way and

Even the ones some of my friends who were you know intellectuals and writers and things like that previously had no um connection to martial arts now they do um it’s amazing how many people have taken up Brazilian jiu-jitsu like when you talk to writers and intellectuals and College professors and it more often

Than not um I I after talking to them a little bit I find out that they’re actually training somewhere and they’ve taken up the art and it’s very uh addictive and um very popular right now with all kinds of people so uh being honest probably like the

Vast majority of people I talk to and know also to one degree or another train okay okay so you got not not many friends that play Joe with you like ah so martial arts you defend ourselves so it’s better not to make you angry stuff

Like that you don’t have it you’re Lu I I’ve I’ve run I’ve certainly run into that before in parties and stuff but no it doesn’t make me angry and um and know you know I just uh I’m very fortunate that I have you know people say you’re

Lucky person if you have one or two friends that you can really count on I’m very fortunate that I have a lot and um most of them are also do what I do which I don’t think is a coincidence and I I have six kids um

Several companies my gym my own stuff so I don’t have a lot of time so the time that I do have to hang out with people I like to spend with my with my you know the friends that I care a lot about so I’m just not really play

They all play martial arts already huh the kids your kids all play martial arts they do they do not the littlest on because she’s she’s not a year old yet but the rest of them do okay okay uh you know Stephen Pinker the philosopher and and not the the

Psychologist he wrote a book who whose title is the better angels of our nature right why violence has declined and he says that we are living in the most in the most peaceful era what do you think about it because our perception is different no that’s empirically true um

It’s actually the first chapter my book and I quote U Pinker a few times and talk about that book that’s a great book and I would recommend everybody read it he’s talking big picture right and there’s no denying it the data is there

So if you look at a if you look at a long-term graph going back centuries the further back you go the more violent we were the most violent time in America in the Americas I should say was before the Europeans arrived and we know that from archaeological digs especially among

Some of the Southwest Native Americans in the southwest area where the homicide rate was extraordinary they were you know a lot of them were engaged in uh almost constant Warfare and cannibalism and attacking and um every generation you go back it tends to be a little rougher than the

Than the next one that that comes about now that’s long term short term of course there’s um spikes and Trends and since George Floyd in the United States we had the largest Spike and homicides that the country’s seen in several decades and violence is certainly not on a

Decline at the moment in a lot of our um in a lot of our bigger cities and depending on where you go I live in Portland Oregon homicides in Portland have tripled since George Floyd um and the shootings have more than tripled uh and then we’ve got all kinds of other

Crime and property crime that’s kind of going out of control that’s that’s on the that’s you think also one of the reason can be that the the L for policemen is harder and harder that’s 100% one of the reasons one of the all the cameras the cameras the telephones

Are on on these guys that puts their lives in dangers for for people and they don’t know how to manage violence anymore because everybody is pointing the spotlight on them yeah it’s one of one one of the chapters in my book is called um are

Police a threat and what I do in that as I address the BLM narrative um which I talk about with you here briefly but that was one of the biggest fallacies biggest hoaxes I think perpetrated on on the world in the 20th century was the BLM narrative this idea

That American police officers are going around hunting black suspects or killing unarmed black men and when you pull U Americans about that depending on which side of the political Spectrum they’re on if they lean to the left which in America is more uh you know liberal Democratic how many unarmed black

Americans do you think police shoot every year the majority will say a thousand or more and I think it was even like I quote the exact numbers of my book so people can look it up but I think it’s like 22 or 23% thought 10,000 which is insane if you think about it

Yeah the actual number and it’s pretty been consistent for for several decades and you can track this through the FBI The BJs or even the Washington Post has uh had been tracking this sta since Ferguson uh is about 12 so in a nation of about 360 370 million people every

Year there’s about 12 unarmed black males who are shot by police now there’s so few that you can look at each case individually and if you do you’ll see that unarmed doesn’t mean they’re not trying to kill the officer one case is trying to run the officer over in a car

In another case was a female officer on the ground and a suspect is trying to bash her head in with a radio all those things get considered unarmed okay uh and those are righteous shootings those are situations where the officer not only uh had to shoot they they should

Have shot and they did if you remove that from the data you’re left with one or two one or two a year that’s it uh and in almost every single one of those cases the officers are prosecuted so there never was this huge problem of officers shooting

Black Americans it’s not existent it was a myth and the media perpetuated it um they played some games with Statistics where they talk about how um black suspects were more likely to be shot uh you know they’d say well you know 40% of the people shot in this given Precinct

Happened to be black which is true but what they fail to mention is that 60 or 70% of the crime in that in that neighborhood has to happens to occur in the black neighborhood the officers are in those neighborhoods not because they want to shoot black people but that’s

Where the crime is that’s also where the victims are and their victims are also black right and the media doesn’t talk about that all they focus on is officer was white suspect was black and then they play that film over and over again and get people whipped up into a frenzy

And then you had here in Portland almost two years of non-stop riots to the point where the media stopped covering it but every single night you had idiot mostly wealthy white kids downtown Portland burning down businesses and attacking police officers what happens in a situation like that well I’ll tell you what

Happens it’s happened Nationwide any officer that’s close to retiring retires any officer that thinks he can retire early retires early anybody else with a lot of Education or experience that can transfer into a different kind of job does and there has been this massive flood of people fleeing from law

Enforcement the most experienced best people that we have Nation wide have now quit doing law enforcement to the point where the cities like here in Portland have to lower the standards to try and get more people if they had an opening for a police officer in Portland 10

Years ago you would have had 2,000 people apply with college degrees want that job now you’d be lucky if you got 10 and so the standards get lowered even more because they need the police you add on to that the idiotic defund the police movement which was one of the

Dumbest things that’s ever happened in the United States politics and you have a recipe for disaster and the people who have been exploiting this the bad guys the gangs the they’ve been taking advantage of this they know the police out there and they shooting each other

Fortunately a lot a lot of officers now are also training functional martial arts I went to the training center here in Portland last year and they’re they’re training they’re doing good stuff they they they’re doing what they should be doing the problem is they don’t even have time to get training

Right they get they get like uh I think it was an hour and a half a year of training mandated by the police department wrap your mind around that 90 minutes a year is all they’re given right and E even if they wanted to do

More like for example if I was going to go down there and work with them which I’d be happy to do and they have other people that are just as qualified as I am that are there that could help them they can’t because there’s not enough

Officers on the street to be able to rotate them out to train so the only way the officers get training is if they train on their own time and they have to kind of sign up at an academy like mine and and and do that and they should

Because that’s their job and many do but everything since George Floyd has gotten worse the quality of policing has gotten worse it’s more dangerous for the suspect it’s more dangerous for the officers uh it’s been a huge cluster for lack of better terms so that is why you’ve seen this

Spike and and it’s been an 88% increase in homicide in the black community so I can sum it up that way what was the result of the BLM movement an 88% rise in Black homicide rate that’s what’s happened meanwhile the people who headed up that organization have made millions

Of dollars and bought homes in all white neighborhoods that’s what’s happened I don’t want to push you through politics but do you think it’s on purpose all this yes it’s 100% on purpose um the media knows but they they they love it they love stoking the racial animosity

And get some ratings CNN loves it they salivate over it they have no ethics when it comes to this kind of thing um politicians know Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats and everybody else involved they know they knew what would happen they knew that the homicide rate in the

Black community would go would go up they knew there’d be a lot of dead kids little kids that get shot and driveby shootings in places like Chicago every weekend they just don’t care yeah if they think they can get a few more votes they’ll do it every

Time we in Italy we we have different problems we don’t have the BLM but anyway we we have some problems with all the all the guys that coming from from Africa mhm and it’s a mess especially in some areas in big towns like train stations it it’s becoming really really

Dangerous yeah um talking about your books I would like to know something about how do the structure of your book how did you organize the book that’s a good question that’s actually what I discovered is the sing single hardest thing about writing non-fiction is learning how to organize

It it really is hard because when you’re writing fiction you have a plot right you have a a story that takes you through and so figuring out where to put what took me a long time and a lot of trial by error and I had a lot a lot of

Help from my editors and my Publishers in doing that but I basically start with A Brief History of Violence that’s I talk about Stephen Pinker and the decline and and short-term rise and and evolutionary uh roots of it and then I have a chapter on truth and uh how to

Think critically about the issue because I want people to understand and have that epistemology I do believe that the epistemology is more important than the answer both in martial arts and in philosophy it’s not it’s not the answer that is important it’s how you arrived at the answer it’s not the conclusion

How you arrived at the conclusion it’s not the technique it’s the Training Method right and so I have a chapter in that to try and pass that on to people and then um then we start to talk about what I think is the most important aspects of violence which begins with

Maturity moves through intelligence and then noticing things around you and then finally we get to the decision-making process that happens um which is the the D part of the Mind acronym so that’s kind of how my book is is organized from start to finish um and it does tell a story it

Has a narrative in there and along the way I share some personal stories things that I’ve you know things that have happened to me or that I’ve that are relevant in the martial arts training to help um articulate some of the principles that I have in the book and

Help carry the carry the book along it was it was that was probably the single hardest thing about writing the book was figuring out how to how to organize it that way uh was it necessary for you to collect many many different subjects like uh history psychology anthropology and studies on animals

Yes to read the books yeah it is necessary many many friends or uh professional figures to help you write this book I I do I’m fortunate I have a lot of smart friends and people who are involved in different things one of my students and and good friends is Peter

Beian who’s a critical thinking Professor become relatively famous in the states these days for standing up to a lot of the W in the University system but he’s been helpful um I have other other friends and colleagues and students and and peers that are um evolutionary biologists that

I would go to for questions or you know when I was talking about Evolution I want to make sure I get the the specifics correct psychologists um like I said violence is a huge topic so it encompasses everything from uh brain scans and um prefrontal lobe and and uh our reactions

And uh different types of aggression the psychology behind it the evolution behind it all of that is incorporated uh in the book in a way that I hope is accessible for people um who like me are lay in on the subject and and don’t have a deep scientific background you shouldn’t need

That to understand the book I try and write clearly for people what kind of animal is a human being what do you think when you think the about the man what kind of animal you you you imagine uh I think there’s more Beauty in the world than there is

Ugliness and I and I think it’s easy to forget one of the things when you’re focused on self-defense or you’re focused on a topic like violence which could be depressing um you know a lot of the stories I tell in the book and things are are there’s no there’s no other way

To say it it’s they’re depressing because you’re talking about horrible things it’s easy to forget that there’s also great people good people doing good things everywhere all around you right and they’re not the ones that make the News That’s the other thing if you just if you only consume news right if you

Just sat around all day and read the paper worse watched the garbage on the network newscasts you would think that the world was um hell but it’s not you know there there’s everywhere you go whether we’re here in Portland OR Italy or wherever there’s lots of fantastic people doing

Wonderful things um for non-selfish reasons so I think it’s easy to forget that at the same time I believe um in what Hobs said and that our we do have our essential nature and we’re always just uh a thin veneer away from um savagery right and and you know if all

Of a sudden the lights the power went out for a week and the police stopped responding to calls or even a day or two I’m under no Illusions about what would happen you know and and it’s easy forget that because we live in a at as Pinker

Rightly said in the most civilized time of of all compared to our ancestors and hopefully it’ll be even better for my kids um but that possibility is always there right um you could have a solar flare tomorrow and wipe out all the electronics around the earth and within

A year 90% of our population would die of starvation and you’d have roaming bands of people traveling around killing each other murdering each other I mean that’s there it exists right it’s not going to go away so uh I think a healthy approach is to keep both things in mind

There’s a lot of beauty and a lot of wonderful people around us and a and most people I think are generally good most people are as good as you or I are um but there’s evil in the world too and it’s always been there and it’s always

Going to be there and it’s not going anywhere and the only thing that keeps it in check is good people who are capable of doing dangerous things to bad people mhm you know I I usually read and see many videos also from Jordan Peterson and he always stretches the the

Fact that to to be dangerous also I know that you agree and you also talked about that that good people must be dangerous one one of my favorite sayings which is kind of in a way it’s one of our um one of our gym mots for SBG actually comes

From a friend of mine fellow instructor Paul sharp which is one of our objectives here at SBG is to make good people dangerous to bad people that’s what we want to do make good people more dangerous to bad people and um and that’s really important you know and um

It’s the only thing that really does keep people safe and it’s a a noble project and something that I love to do and in Peterson’s case you know it’s also a prere prerequisite in many ways for being truly good I mean if you’re capable of doing great

Harm to someone but you choose not to that’s very different from someone who doesn’t have a choice anyway chooses not to but they wouldn’t even be capable of it if they wanted to right and and the last thing I’ll say about that is and I talk about this in the last

Chapter of the book but anytime you’re training in a functional martial art it doesn’t have to be Brazilian jiu-jitsu it could be wrestling thing could be boxing whatever but in any functional martial art there’s a process uh of losing that is necessary and like I tell

My students every day it’s on the matap pretty much every class failure is not just okay it’s actually essential it’s a necessary part of the process you’re going to fail over and over again whether you’re doing boxing or Judo or wrestling you’re going to get thrown

You’re going to get punched you’re G to get tapped out I’ve been submitted Tapped Out Untold thousand times right as many times as I’ve tapped people out if not more and tapped out that’s there’s no way you can get good at this art without that happening it’s impossible and when you put yourself

Through that process it also changes people you know I’ve seen kids come in and watch their entire uh the way they interact with reality changed completely over the course of one or two years from training in in a functional martial art it’s really quite a beautiful thing so it’s good for

People it’s a healthy thing to do you know for everybody how is how important for you is the concept of handling chaos um I’m not sure that chaos would be the word I would use but there is an element of the unknown that’s always going to be exist

In in any kind of violent altercation right or even training situation on the in the gym when you’re dealing with a live opponent you’re dealing with somebody else who has their own intentions their own objectives their own goals you know it’s like people many years ago when we were talking about

Brazilian jiu-jitsu they specifically talk talking about law enforcement they would say you know well police officers don’t want to be on the ground why would they try to be on the ground like dude it’s a fight you know you’re not going to get to choose where you wind up off

That’s why it’s called a fight all of a sudden you’re G to be talking to one person and someone else tackles you from the side or from behind and you find yourself on the ground you need to know how to deal with that doesn’t matter

Whether you want to be there you have to be able to deal with wherever you are put and that’s the nature of fighting you have to be uh adaptable being adaptable is very very important being able to adapt to change in circumstances um In the Heat of the

Moment and there’s nothing that better prepares you for that in terms of the physical than a live train you know that’s uh part of what I talk about it’s in a way it’s a part of intelligence is being able to adapt one of the most important things we do is one of the

Things that makes us so dangerous as humans and in Jiu-Jitsu you learn that every time you roll right you you you can’t if you’re trying to force your game on somebody else who’s good and Jiu-Jitsu it doesn’t usually go well you have to work with what they’re giving

You and and um and find a way to make that work and every single opponent every single training partner that you tap hands with is roll with is going to be a little bit different and they’re going to have their own different routes they’re going to have their own

Different intentions and you’ve got to be able to you got to be able to go there and you and you have to learn how to be comfortable in very uncomfortable situations that’s the other thing so people who never find themselves in uncomfortable situations when they’re put in an uncomfortable situation were

Often Panic which is obviously the worst thing you can do in any given situation is panic and one of the things that Jiu-Jitsu teaches people to do very well is teaches them how to be calm in situations where they’re very uncomfortable you can’t over the years

You’re going to be you’re going to be putting all kinds of situations that are extremely uncomfortable and you got to learn how to find Comfort there and survive and be able to breathe and overcome it and then lo and behold um you actually win the altercation

Eventually you find a way out right but um that’s a skill set it’s a skill set that if you’re in the military you learn through training whether you’re a Navy SEAL or what whatever else or if you’re a combat athlete and you’re or you’re an MMA fighter you learn it and you learn

It through experience and you learn it through live training um and that’s very very important and that carries over into your everyday life as well I mean being able to find yourself being able to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations is a very useful skill set for life in general

Uh do you already have a title for your next book you don’t want to talk about I don’t have a working I have a few ideas but it’ll probably be something like you know training for the gift of violence or training the gift of something like

That the next book is g to be very specifically targeted to training methods okay I I have one last question and it’s not about martial arts okay you love music I love music what do do you hear when you train if you hear something when you

Train yes I play music in all my classes usually um and how it works is when I’m teaching I’ll have the music off and usually what we do is I’ll show them something position or something that we’re working on and make sure everybody in class can do it mechanically correct

Which doesn’t take that long and then we drill and when we drill in spvg it’s always alive um so to an outsider would our drilling would very much look like sparring to a lot of people and when we drilling the music comes on and I have

Very eclectic taste so I like all kinds of different music so who you know all kinds everything from Jazz to rock and roll to Country to who knows what’s going to pop up on my playlist um but yeah that’s been that’s a big part of our training I’ve I’ve always loved training to

Music okay okay Matt I I thank you I thank you again do you want to add something about about your book no I appreciate you having me on um you can order you can pick up the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Indie share all the places books are bought and sold

Uh my personal website is Matt thon.org and if they’re interested in the gym they can go to straight blast jim.com and as far as training we have SVG university.com where my classes here in Portland uh go up online every week and no matter where they are in the world

They can uh they can take class with me if they want to so uh anybody that’s interested feel free to reach out and I’m happy to talk to them okay and there is the description of all the info about Matt toror in the description of this video Below in the

Meantime Matt it’s been really a pleasure to have you here and thanks for accepting my invitation than good nice to meet you thank you again see you next time bye guys thanks for coming and see you again bye Matt thanks again thank you man I’ll talk to you soon