Episode 48: BJJ Cancel Culture

We've seen both Erberth Santos and EliteSports Company come under fire recently for very different reasons. 
In this episode we're looking at what happened in both situations and whether or not the bjj community should be banning certain competitors and companies. 

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Transcript

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i'm justin lesko a brazilian jiu jitsu brown belt and former pro mma fighter and i'm mike callahan a brazilian jiu jitsu brown belt and a law enforcement officer in the last few days we've seen two instances where the bjj community has overwhelmingly agreed that we're done with two separate things so one scumbag person that we're gonna talk about and one scumbag company that we're gonna talk about so that that was weird but it's one scumbag person and one scumbag company not you know you get it we get it well should we collectively be banning herbert santos and should we be canceling elite sports company so i have some thoughts we have some thoughts but what's the opposite of like a canceled culture what's the idea celebrate promote love yeah all those work yeah so that's essentially how we feel about epic role epic role bjj is a jiu jitsu lifestyle brand with the goal of connecting the jiu jitsu community while also helping you look your best both on and off the mats so give them a follow on instagram you can find them at epic roll bjj or you can visit their website at www.epicrollbjj.com you can go on there you'll be able to find rash guards keys shirts shorts anything that you need just go to their site check it out they got it and if you use the code podcast 15 you can get 15 off your order now let's get into it welcome to that jiu jitsu podcast do you want to talk about canceling or with santos first or do you want to talk about a shady ghee company first why are you putting behind like door and door b and i'll just pick a door and you choose okay i'll hold the hand up left left or right all right uh left hand all right left hand was with santos so we'll go with him first yeah he's a [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] yeah so he's for context [ __ ] piece of[ __ ] for context he's a piece of [ __ ] but this beef stems from him and gordon ryan once again gordon ryan sort of the center of controversy but gordon sort of started it he posted a video that herbert had posted of his like kid on top of a refrigerator who was like afraid to jump into his hands and gordon like meme captioned it about people who talk[ __ ] on instagram but then don't want to compete so not necessarily making fun of his kid at all i still think you shouldn't put people's family or kids in memes personally so then herbert santos post a picture mocking gordon ryan's recently deceased father who died like two three months ago which is right so two trains of of of thought here number one you shouldn't post anything gordon was wrong for doing that there was nothing to indicate that it was he didn't go after herbert's daughter it was just it was a it was a shot below the belt but it wasn't that [ __ ] idiot erbirth then goes and post you said a picture mocking gordon ryan's dead father it was a picture of gordon ryan's dead father also erbirth has been saying for months about uh gordon ryan's girlfriend how you know i don't know apparently there was something that went on between her and uh lucas barbossa like way back when but like how he was how herbert was going to like rape her or something like this dude is just a[ __ ] neanderthal but even so that's all stuff off the mat we've seen erberth on the mat fake an injury to get out of his match with felipe pena and you know how dare i claim that someone would fake an injury well he got up and ran across the mat to jump into the crowd and start a fight about 10 seconds after complaining that his knee was injured because someone in the crowd was taunting him we also saw him potentially pee his pants to get out of a match those some people have said that it was just sweat but i'll put a picture up on the screen you can decide for yourself and we've seen him in that same match the potential p match where he just lays down and gives up because i guess he doesn't feel like grappling anymore so it's like it's not like this dude's got amazing jiu jitsu obviously he does have good jiu jitsu but he's not got amazing jiu jitsu that it's worth putting up with all this [ __ ] off the mat so now after this whole thing with gordon's dad all i can see on instagram and reddit and twitter is basically just like ban herbert santos from ever competing again or have promoters stop putting him on shows and i find it hard to disagree with that sentiment and if you know you can say that you know one of the options here to to resolve the conflict is to have these two meet in a match but that's not going to resolve anything because if it is a jiu jitsu match and it's you know follows the rules of a jiu jitsu match then herbert doesn't stand a chance and gordon will [ __ ] destroy him right we're in agreement on that yeah yeah absolutely but more so i think that he is such a loose cannon that you will have the result of the cyborg gordon match at i think it was nogi worlds a couple years ago when cyborg got like was like smacking him on the head and like grabbing his fingers and bending his fingers back and eventually got disqualified i think that that will be tenfold like i think that you'll have herb earth thrown punches like it's just yeah there's no need to even go down that road you know i mean and that's even if erwith shows up because that's sort of the reason gordon posted the meme that again he shouldn't have posted a meme with someone else's kid in it that you just shouldn't you just shouldn't but herbert is known to take fights and then pull out take fights pull out he did it with mikey musemechi like i want to say two or three times why would we want to put up with this [ __ ] in our sport for a guy who when he does compete might not take it seriously he might fake an injury to get out of it might piss his pants on purpose to get out of a match like yeah he was um there was a time when so do you remember years ago it was like 2012 when when lloyd irvin was doing that like video blog it was like one of the first video blogs out there was like the next world champion video blog yeah yeah with keenan and jt and i'm trying to think i think tim spriggs was in there for a little bit there was a bunch of them it was when they were all living in that house so then after lloyd irvin and you know those guys left lord irvin he did a second like group and in that group was like it was tim's breaks because he stuck with him but it was muhammad ali it was erbirth sajar eubanks niger easton like those like and urberth was a killer like he was a brown belt world champ you know what i mean so um and he like exploded onto the black belt scene like people were but he you know i think he's just i don't think he he has the mental fortitude um and this is just an objective view on things if he fights gordon ryan gordon ryan's gonna [ __ ] destroy him yeah and i don't i don't i don't disagree with you i just don't think that fight ever gets made no unless it's at like an ibj jjf or something you know and i don't think that the the campaign to ban urban santos is going to be successful i mean still let lloyd irvin into places and we talked about the lloyd urban pass and that you know i mean you could you can make the argument in mma too you see guys like greg hardy jon jones people still getting fights people still having a job based on being shitty people herbert santos who the [ __ ] is he you know what i mean like at the end of the day he's [ __ ] nobody you know this was this was one of the most this was one of the most ruthless not ruthless just one of the most scummy low blows that you could do yeah i don't know why gordon ryan and his family posted those pictures like i know that like his dad was a i know that his dad was very well liked and you know he was like a um i don't know like a fixture in the in the bjj community i just i don't know why they would post those pictures on there especially it doesn't really matter why they posted those pictures because they were their pictures and their family member to do right what they needed to do at a time when they're going through something like it doesn't matter if it's weird or not you still shouldn't do what santos exactly exactly but i and you're 100 right that's the what i was saying was just with the amount of nut jobs out there on the internet now and with the amount of people out there that gordon just openly feuds with can you say are you honestly shocked that those photos surfaced in the negative light by somebody else like because i'm not you know and again it's that um this isn't this isn't me tr like it's this has this is not gordon ryan's fault it's not his family's fault this is just one [ __ ] scumbag being a piece of [ __ ] and posting these pictures yeah and gordon sort of leaned into it a little bit where he was like mocking robert santos for doing that mocking him for posting something about his girlfriend and then deleting it like gordon seemed to be rolling with it as opposed to like a[ __ ] kill reaction like which i think would be a justified reaction reasonable reasonable reaction and then herbert's blocked gordon ryan on yeah i saw that too because he was posting these pictures about his girlfriend about gordon's girlfriend and apparently like they were getting more follows and everything and they're apparently getting ready to release an only fan's account it's just it's it's [ __ ] crazy so yeah he's a scumbag anybody who disagrees with that you're a scumbag you know i just should promoters still put him on their shows if you're running if you're running another promotion would you put him on your show if he was fighting anyone but gordon ryan like yeah if he's fighting gordon ryan i want to see that on a on a show but should he still get matches i'll be surprised like just giving gordon's relationship with these guys at flo grappling and um i'd be surprised if herbert got a match on flow grappling yeah and i could be wrong i could be wrong and maybe gordon's like who [ __ ] cares you know yeah i mean it's not for us to determine what gordon's reaction is or should be um and i'm sure that there will be people who defend our birth by saying it's gordon ryan he does this he's i mean we've talked about him acting like a child on instagram like it's not a secret that he's who he is he's not the most wholesome family-friendly dude so i'm sure that will be the defense but uh you shouldn't do that and i don't necessarily subscribe to if anyone does one thing wrong they should not get matches or they should lose their job but let's look at the track record of the person we're talking about this isn't just like a one-off thing it's it's a person who even if you are a person who could defend all the things he does off the mat you see the [ __ ] he does on the mat too so why would you still like want to be a fan of that guy i don't know he's not coming on our show anytime soon after this episode i'm sure so i guess we could just uh yeah we really feel yeah i mean this is this podcast is just gaining popularity by the second too so i mean i'm sure he would love to come on here he'd probably agree to come on here and then [ __ ] quit right before he would uh i'm just gonna leave it at that uh yeah he justin wants to leave it at that so when he does find out like that when he does track us down justin's gonna be like mike was the loudmouth mike was the loud mouth justin's just gonna have all these sound bites of just me saying all this [ __ ] i'm gonna be like i'm pretty sure that there was other dialogue coming from justin that came in a negative light but then once again it's good to be the editor so the other incident which we actually have a connection to right is the current the current movement to ban elite sports and if you're not familiar with elite sports elite sports company is a gee mma nogi manufacturer they're actually like if you search on amazon for a bjj gee like they're one of the top results like they're a cheaper brand but that's just who they are so i'll tell you our side story our connection in a minute but basically what's happened in the last week or so is a bunch of instagram accounts for jiu jitsu like meme accounts and jiu jitsu influencer type accounts or all posting screenshots of messages from the elite sports i guess sales rep would be the title basically saying we want to run a contest on your page the the instagram person runs the contest and then elite sports doesn't send the prizes to the winner and then starts posting like your the winner you pick doesn't have enough followers and changing the number constantly and just refusing to send all this [ __ ] out so i mean it's bad it's not as bad as that [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] dj mackey down in tennessee with endo athletics who just blatantly takes people's money um one day i'm going to get drunk you scumbag and i'm going to i'm sorry i'm not going to get drunk i'm going to get justin drunk and i'm going to make him forget to edit out the part of me calling you a scumbag but anyway this is like i left it in last episode last time you talked about them i left it out yeah yeah so leave this in too so it's not they're not necessarily stealing people's money but what they're doing it's it's just it's a scumbag move so before we even started this podcast not this episode just the show in general[Music] they reached out to me personally about promoting them and if you've been following my instagram for a long time you know about this time about a year ago i posted a few things for elite sports yep they reached out about like a normal sort of influencer thing we'll send you some equipment will give you a coupon code if you can post a few things use the coupon code it's standard practice everyone in the world knows how paid advertisement goes on instagram so they send me a rashguard send me shorts actually weren't bad stuff i didn't like it wasn't great but it wasn't bad i won't post something if i think it's bad and i won't promote something if i think it's bad all of a sudden the messages start changing from the person i was talking to a year ago where originally it was like they wanted me to post like twice a month on my instagram feed and tag them obviously and then it started changing into like hey can you actually i think he actually said i misspoke can you post once a week and then also once on your story and then he was like oh can you take like three or four like promo shots and send them to us and then my response to that was i'm really producing a lot of content for you for a free rash guard and free shorts like that's a lot of stuff i'm giving you for not right yeah normally and and i mean for for those of you who aren't familiar with the way it works there's you know monetary you know tears too so you know that what what he's explaining you know not only were they going back on it but they were exceeding or they they wanted to exceed what would be considered reasonable by anyone who's done this anybody who's done this it would it would this wouldn't be reasonable so go ahead i basically said that to them and they were like okay well like the coupon code and you can make more for so like all right it's really not a big deal three pictures here you go like it's not a huge deal i'm a reasonable person what the abundant stop to me posting and tagging for them was someone i know bought stuff from them used my coupon code and that company never told me that that company never sent me the money they never sent me the percentage this was a confirmed purchase it wasn't like someone's saying like oh yeah i'm gonna buy some stuff like i saw the stuff they bought that's that voids our contract in my opinion yeah right yep that was about a year ago pandemic happens whatever fast forward so mike and i both have access to the instagram account for this show now and a message comes through from elite sports and first of all i notice it has to be a different person than the person i talk to because a lot of words were spelled wrong that weren't spelled wrong last time there was no capitalization or punctuation and the person i spoke to like seem to have half a brain and also there's a lot of pluralizations on words that shouldn't be pluralized you know like i'll send you gears like yeah yeah so they said the same thing to us that i said a minute ago where it was like we want to run a contest on your page so i said absolutely we just need to know more details because again mike and i both will not promote something if we don't believe in it i'm not gonna pose i'm not gonna post just anyone who gives me a hundred dollars to post for them like it doesn't work that way the guy's being real cagey like he won't tell me the details of the contest he won't and so then i'm saying what can you send to us he wants us to do a shout out video for them and like a thank you post for them before he sends us anything to promote he wants it first that's again not how it works like heart hard pass hard pass a hard pass so basically we go back and forth a few times and i he says something about the contest or how he's going to send us free gears and again i say once we get the stuff we'll post about it we'll do the contest on our page and that was the last message because i kept pushing him on sending us the stuff first i i want to say this was like maybe a month two months ago it was before this whole ban elite sports thing took off in last couple days then i start seeing all these people post that i guess posted this contest on their page i'm glad that we didn't but like what uh what did you think was gonna happen if you're this guy from elite sports did you think that no one would post about you not sending any winners any equipment ever like what was your end game here what was the play yeah the the whole thing kind of seemed shady from the start and you know just through our contacts on social media we were able to see that people were actually taking part in this contest so in a way that legitimized it for us a little bit but there were still red flags based on our experience with this company yeah i'm not posting for you for free when you can't tell me the details of the contest you can't tell me what you're gonna send me you can't tell me what the winner gets just not at the same time you have people out there trying to grow a brand whether it's a podcast whether it's another you know influencer or so when this guy reaches out and says before i give you any details you have to follow and post something about us you like there's going to be people there that say okay and just think say like if i don't know 50 people did that that's that's that's a a lot of advertising it might not sound like it's a lot but that is a lot of advertising for doing[ __ ] nothing there's something to be said about that like is that it's not it's it's completely unethical at the same time is it a way to push your product yes is it a scumbag way to push a product yes you know there should be an agreement in place before any of this happens and it is and i'm not you know the majority of of you know our advertising and you know we won't get into specifics about the products that we push but you know justin handles the majority of that but what he said is 100 true you're not going to see anything on this show that you know a is an inferior product or b is coming from you know shady places you know shady accounts shady businesses um and you know it's just a shame hopefully this this catches on this whole here's the other thing too they're now if you go to their page and what's their we'll put their we'll put their page on i'm not going to put their page on because i don't want to give them any extra if you want to look for elite sports company you can find it on instagram or you can just look at like well but here keep this in mind if you go to their page you're not going to find any negative comments about it because they have scrubs they scrubbed it they've taken all negative comments off their feet it seems like they have somebody monitoring this and it's up to the minute with like you know they won't let any negative comments on there like what what you see on instagram right now like this whole sort of movement to get them banned and everything is pages are posting screenshots of conversations that are mirror images of the conversations that i described with this person it's not like people got buyer's remorse and right didn't get what they paid for it's it's the same scam that's being run over and over and like mike said like if you hear us doing an ad for someone or you see us promoting someone it's because we do a lot of research in the people we work with we don't we get solicited a lot from people who want us to promote stuff if you've been following like my personal instagram i've promoted always be choking geez for a long time when i first started working with them i look at their history i notice that they're a veteran-owned company i see they have great reviews he sent me product to try before i even posted anything it's good product i love their keys and they don't even pay me he just sends me gees to wear but i wouldn't promote them if they were bad geez right i wouldn't i wouldn't promote geese that were shitty because i just wanted free keys and there's i'm not gonna name any names because we're not trying to ban every company that we don't work with but there's been people who've sent me stuff that sucks and i won't promote it there's been people who've reached out to this show about promoting stuff and you look at the reviews and you look at the experiences people had and it's negative i don't want to be associated with that do i think that they should hard pass do i think that they should get banned and lose their company forever i would say no no yeah and and here here's another thing having an inferior product is having an inferior product but having an ethical business model is fine because there's a chance that you can improve the quality of your product right even if you have a great product but you have an unethical business model you're done you're done like you shouldn't no one should associate with you because regardless of the quality of the product the unethical business model is what's going to carry the day and that's what it's always going to be prevalent and you just don't want to deal with that but if you have a shitty product and you know you're just you're working on improving the product but you have an ethical business model and you're you know you're dealing with people on the you know up and up and i don't have any problem with that we're not going to push a product if it's [ __ ] but you know call us when you get when your product gets better i guess yeah yeah and i i don't think that elite sports should be like banned forever i think that the sales rep that works for them should probably not work for them anymore and yeah i don't think that this is a i don't think this is something where wherever this is is is anywhere in the united states so well like the issue with them is that if you do look at their instagram you do look at their website it does have an air of legitimacy i mean as recently as december 2020 they had promotional photos with mackenzie dern in them like they're not like they don't look like a shitty company they look like a reputable company so if you're like what you said a few minutes ago if you're trying to build a brand and a seemingly reputable reputable company that mackenzie during works with reaches out to you to do a contest you you might not ask certain questions if you're excited to work with a company that looks legit it just sucks that like this could be a good brand but you got one guy now who pissed off the entirety of the bjj meme universe on instagram and probably he's not gonna recover yeah it's not i mean and what's the the option for them is to ditch the elite sports name and throw another logo and then hopefully people forget about it and don't dig too far into the history of the company that's it yeah yeah i mean i think that i'm glad that like attention is being raised to an issue and i'm sort of glad to see like this meme army coming together of we all are getting screwed by this company and now what they could do is you could say we had a sales rep who went against the values of the company we're sending out information to all of the winners of this contest you know we apologize moving forward but it's just been radio silence from them so far and uh sort of like herbert santos making his instagram private and unfollowing and blocking gordon ryan you're not really addressing the issue here as to why people like i'm not a big believer in cancer culture but this is the reason that people it's just easier to be done with someone and just get them out of here yeah i hope that's what happens to this company if you had to get rid of one and not the other who do you get rid of urban santos or elite sports company i would get rid of the clothing company and the reason being is because herbert's not doing anything like he's not going to win any world championships going forward like he's just going to fade off anyway into complete irrelevancy you know so i'm okay with that um maybe we should put them together and he can have a new sponsor elite sports to come to sponsors if you want yeah let them sponsor him that'll that'll sink that ship real [ __ ] quick all right guys thanks for hanging out with us so we put links to our social media accounts below so if you want to follow us individually or follow the show just give the link a click check it out also make sure that you guys are subscribed to our youtube page we have some special guests coming onto the show in the next couple weeks that we're really stoked about so once those interviews are done we'll be posting them to the youtube page as well if you enjoyed this episode please give it a big thumbs up i'll link below to epic rolls instagram account at epic roll bjj and you can check them out at their website www i'm not going to say www like mike you can check them out their website epicrollbjj.com and use and use the coupon code podcast 15 to get 15 off your order say don't put your pants don't pee your pants don't fake pee in your pants don't pee your pants for real but don't fake pee in your pants to get out of a match all good advice thanks everybody we'll see you next time thanks guys