9 months too long
1 Like
haha so you do know.
these guys are locked up they roll 18 guys harderer and deeperer.
2 Likes
Is the time you mentioned part of the spin ?
Or legit ? Only reason I ask/ think legit is you mentioned leniency for the military time.
the time is legit. the money to run hitman when I had it was all made from me selling weed. I was part of a major network here in so-cal that went all the way up to bc. same as all the surf brands started with drug money. oh wait I mean loans from āfriendsā and family lol.
we were in the paper and they had a team consisting of rcmp, ice, homeland, dea, chp, and orange county drug task force tracking us for 18 months.
2 Likes
ha. Too sleepy to respond properly but have a pal that had a similar path.
Several times over the years he mentioned people that were in trouble for the same thing.
Just stuff like I mention some guy with a reputation for doing great in real estate and having tons of deals and properties.
My pal " yea he went away for the same thing I did"
Or yea look at that business that guy now owns this or that and doing well
āYea he also got in troubleā
2 Likes
i knew we was Bruddas
1 Like
for sure I stopped after the ultimate fighter went on the air and the sport actually took off.
once I got MMA apparel into retailers nationwide a first for any mma brand I had to chill as I was actually making real money.
never went back to it. now its legal and is going for 900 a pound for stuff I sold for 4k in 1999.
3 Likes
Remember BadBreed TV HTM ?
3 Likes
1/2 of that now
1 Like
1 Like
That was Me and Pack
1 Like
Funny stuff and an interesting story.
1 Like
This was interesting. Iām glad Joey brought it up too. Iām wondering if Torre was feeling pressure from the mma community or certain people within the community at that time to compete at least once? Maybe he was starting to feel some pressure from people regarding his legitimacy and decided he could put together a worked fight and say heās officially retired after to get any detractors to back off. There was definitely pretty strong skepticism on his credentials leading up to this fight as mentioned by Chris, Gerald, & Eddy. Or who knows, maybe Torre had put the pressure on himself to do this thinking in his own mind that people would think heās a fraud if they could never see him compete and get a win. Or another possibility is he was just that arrogant and/or mentally disturbed to want more than a journalism career in the sport and was willing to pay for a win in the cage so he could feel like a true peer of guys like Bas Rutten, Ricco Rodriguez, & Mark Kerr. I canāt help but think of some parallels with he and John DuPont. The way he really felt like he was a fellow wrestler with Team Foxcatcher and would even fix the matches he would have with those guys in his age bracket. John DuPont was obviously truly mentally disturbed. Not saying thatās the case with Torre, but there could have been some of that going on. I think Torre was mainly just trying to be a class A bullshit artist.
To your point about Torre possibly working in mma journalism still today had this fight not have happened, I think the wheels would have started falling off anyway after his post 9/11 comments he made about Muslims that got him canned by the sheik. He may have found a niche writing somewhere stateside or started his own thing but he was heading down a bad path anyway. His fraudulence would have been exposed somewhere down the line by someone and that would have ruined him anyway.
3 Likes
@Arod_Morgan @GSTREBENDT @HongKongPhooey
Iām in for one of these too! Let me know if they are for sale and how to order. Iād definitely rock a Bangkok Ready tee to support Gerald!
3 Likes
We need to go back to respecting people that compete in MMA.
Think about it.
These people agree to be locked into a confined space where the entire point is to either bend someoneās limb in a way that it wasnāt intended to go or to cause a head injury of such severity that it renders them unconscious.
After agreeing to that, they spend months training specifically for it where the idea is forefront in their mind.
Even after that, they then go do it in front of hundreds/thousands/millions of people where it is recorded for posterity.
The whole thing requires such balls of steel that I wonder how the fighters keep their balls from clanking when they walk.
5 Likes
Torre claimed to be a black belt from the beginning to get his foot in the door. Could he have done that if he were honest about being at blue belt level?
3 Likes
TOP
WTF Happened to the UG ?
2 Likes
It was the mid to late 90s right? People were just starting to figure out BJJ In America, it wouldnt have been seen as weird or illegitimate. He would still be seen as a martial artist given that he trained and was around fighters all the time putting in work.
He chose to do that to make himself seem like he could be a fighter himself but just decided not to. He didnāt want to be seen as a journalist/reporter who trained and hung out with fighters, he wanted more than that. He wanted to be revered by fighters and to be seen as a legend in the martial arts community, almost like a mythical figure. He wanted his name alone to command respect and attention when he walked into a room.
Money was definitely a motivation of his but it certainly wasnāt his only one, and not even his primary goal. His main motivation was feeling liked and wanted. He wanted and loved the attention he got. If he didnāt kill Brian he would have kept on, doing whatever he needed to do to keep himself relevant in martial arts.
He was obviously a huge fan of the sport and trained himself, and had an enormous amount of respect for fighters. So much so that he wanted to be one, but didnāt have the balls to make the leap himself. He was likely mentally ill and plagued by low self worth, thinking ābecomingā a fighter would make everyone love him, and in turn would make him love himself. But that would have never happened because you canāt use external forces to heal your inner self.
I wouldnāt be surprised if he was manipulated by Angela or even blackmailed completely. āGet this done or I will expose everything about you, or have you killedā. If she would pay somebody to kill her own husband, why wouldnāt she pay somebody to kill Rafiel too? Iām not saying heās innocent of this but clearly heās delusional and would be susceptible to being manipulated by the kind of person Angel obviously is/was. Listening to Rafiel talk he either wants to keep up his persona in jail to keep himself safe like Hitman said, or he truly believes his own lies. No way to tell which one it is. Either way Brian is the true victim in all of this.
Just my thoughts on the situation.
3 Likes
2 Likes
My cousin had 2 amateur fights and I have a different respect for him than anyone else I know simply because he got in there.
He won both but even if he lost, Iād still look at him the same way. Itās just a different breed of person.
4 Likes