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John Donehue started his journey with Bill Wallace and became one of Gene LeBell’s original 4 Black Belts.
Having trained with Randy Couture
Rico Chiaperelli & Benny Urquidez; John Donehue does not hold back his thoughts on the other early Australian MMA instructors or those that he feel may have taken advantage of Gene LeBell’s kindness.
John has NOT given an interview in over a decade and his opinions along with an unapologetic approach makes this one of the most raw interviews that we have ever recorded.
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Very Cool @MMAHistoryPodcast
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Wow I may be mixing up threads or lost something from another thread.
Anyway nice guy talked to him with a couple of friends / old training pals.
He relayed about out traveling around the world and ending up training at Gene’s.
I am trying to recall if he worked doors/security a bit to get some traveling funds or if I am mixing that up.
We asked his advice on the type of places to train and when we told him our options I remember him saying to “go find a good boxing gym you will be better off”
Also maybe I should hold this comment but after a certain fight he basically said or confirmed it was basically fake so to speak or a purposefully one sided affair for show. Will listen if this topic comes up. Kind of a come on you know what you just saw type of interaction.
Again if I was not lazy, distracted or missed it wish I would have had asked @MMAHistoryPodcast to give the guy a compliment from the past.
We all thought he was a helpful guy not full of BS and straightforward advice.
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Very Cool williepep
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Looking forward to listening to this one. My current favourite podcast
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LIVE
@williepep he confirms that the Gokor fight was a work
He also has some choice words directed at Gokor with how he felt that LeBell was treated
Dude
He calls people out by name in it
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^^^^^^ @MMAHistoryPodcast
Good to know now I will “ blabber mouth “
Can’t recall if we were side by side during the fight but I know for sure right after it as it ended looking face to face I got my confirmation right there.
We were all standing kind of behind ring area seats talking.
To be fair you must admit my description above is basically what John described as his journey or path in the early days .
Not bad for recalling a conversation from 28 years ago with a stranger.
I don’t have much going for me so little memories like that are funny !
Side note I had a few of Ricco Chiapparelli’s matches on VHS and recall recording as it happened his 1987 win over Darryl Pope for the NCAA championship. I am sure I still have that VHS somewhere. Anyway I used to watch that match over and over.
Fast forward 10 years later and Ricco and his crew were sitting mat side during a Gene Lebell seminar (fights were probably the next day). I kept thinking I recognized Ricco but could not think of from where. He had that smooth vascular look (forearms etc movement ) of a real athlete but I could not piece together who he was.
But yea Ricco and Tom Erikson, and Matt Linland and the crew were also around the hotel lobby before the seminar. Pretty sure that was Matt Linland’s first MMA fight if I recall correctly.
Anyway it was not till later I figured out oh heck that was Ricco from the NCCA championships ha.
Also John Donahue mentioned that Hugo Duarte was a tough guy and of course we all knew him from the Rickson and In Action stories, so for fun I decided to go walk by Hugo while he was warming up before a fight to take a look and he looked like a guy not to be trifled with.
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