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Combat Confidential #005 - S1E5 - Barry Crushell This week we met with the future Dr. Barry Crushell. Barry is an ex Irish Defence Forces Officer, and expert in Irish employment law, and founding partner of Crushell & Co providing the best of legal advice and protection in the…

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welcome everyone back to the podcast thank you so much uh this is episode five with my friend Barry Kershaw he is a lawyer he is a soon-to-being author he's currently working on a PhD very impressive he is a ex-army officer and today we have a great chat talking about our experiences in Jiu Jitsu Combat Sports and our experience in the honest services so check it out but before I go because I always forget at the end I want to give a shout out to our number one sponsor welcome mativa BJJ wonderful School Academy to go to located in Middletown headed by the great and powerful Edson Jr a brown belt under John Kavanaugh out of spghq so if you're looking for a new gym give them a shout at very least do me a favor go into Instagram search for locomotiva underscore Jiu Jitsu and give them a follow are the sponsor myself Wolverine flightware check us out you're the finest of sports related gear and clothing new stuff coming out regularly so with that let's get into it [Music] [Music] depends yeah are we live now yeah I'll probably added this part out so yeah all right welcome everybody back to the podcast uh I have here my special guest Mr Perry crucial this is crucial because it's crucial that it's crucial okay yeah no it's crucial crucial sometimes I could be crucial yeah look I'd be called worse well my my my real first name Juan um I don't know what it is about this country but people can't seem to understand it yeah I was in the hospital once and I was waiting I was in the waiting room there for over an hour and then finally I I got annoyed and I went up to the nurse and I'm like hey like what's going on here like I've been here forever you know people are coming and going you know are you gonna call me or what's going on and then uh what's your name I said one uh I said one and they're like how do you spell that and I'm like j-u-a-n and they go Joanne no it's not Joanne because as soon as I said that I'm like I heard them yeah they've been calling to win yeah oh my gosh the thing is that when I first met you then you said your first name property was Juan yeah I thought you said Juan and then I said man this guy could be half asian I don't think I ever told you that I thought your first name was Juan w-o-n yeah like like the Asian name and I talked to myself okay he's got sallow skin he's got some you know dark eyes and whatnot so potentially maybe he's mixed race but then I realized you were John but it's just you know with the H but it's the same also with the uh you know with the Brazilians yeah with the ore um I'm able to get into it later but the worst part about it was the woman who I spoke to she was Filipino so I like I mean a lot of Spanish names would be common in the film of course I kind of expected her to yeah to know it you know so but it could be worse you could be Brazilian with an ore name like like Roger yeah everyone calling but your real name is hodger yeah so now when I ever meet an Irish guy with a first name beginning with or who does Jujitsu I just call him the H so if you're a hodger or you're a Richard or anything like that Richard becomes Richard so that's just one of my my my my little games with these people that's funny cool that's funny all right well here um so you and I train together yeah at SPG HQ and intercourt um you know that's honestly there's one question about like I like to ask anyone that I try to move but like what is it that brought you to jiu jitsu or martial arts in general yeah it's an interesting question um it's kind of funny when I was growing up you know I used to play some sports you know usual Irish kid you're playing football you're playing Gaelic football I didn't play hurling because when I played it once I got a whack across the face and I was like nope that's enough for me but I've heard that story before yeah people I was like no this is this was pre-helmed days 1980s safeties and so um I was an army officer uh for years and when I left I joined a a large corporate law firm yeah and I'm going to be honest I found myself it was a little bit like Fight Club I found myself going to work in the day and coming home at night and just having this yearning for something a little bit more yeah I kind of needed to just release a little bit of angst sounds crazy but anger aggression there was testosterone building up I felt very confined during my time in the military yeah everything was very physical you know you're going for runs on a daily basis you're going to the gym you're out there on long range exercises on patrols and whatnot and I was kind of looking for a replacement for that and I first started out I did when I was a kid I did Kenpo as a kid for for a couple of months but the guy who would give me a lift he was a couple of years older than me he stopped when he stopped something like you had to stop as well I had to stop as well so I still know my moves from that my Kata so um but then after that there was a gym near my um near my workplace it was called kokoro MMA and I don't think they exist anymore but it's in a place called Gaelic Street near Crow Park okay so it was very different from being in a large corporate law firm where you have a huge board room and people are serving you coffee and you've got people literally flying in on you know private planes for board meetings on a quarterly basis and then you're packing up on a Friday evening and you're going down to train in this place called kakoro and they had some karate lessons there early on and so I just said let's try this out it was full contact karate and I enjoyed it but what would happen is the kokoro guys themselves who are proper this was a pure MMA gym really really raw they would start cross-training so on a Friday evening you would have cross training between the karate guys the kokoro guys and then when was this like what this would have been 2005 sorry 20 20 2015. yeah 2014 2015. that's about the time when people this is what they're doing that this was when MMA was just starting to take off and this was when like I remember the first time I met Conor McGregor it was on the street yeah and like I just saw I saw him he was going in to get some um some runners or shoes in a shop in Dublin and he was being left alone and I turned to everybody's like this is the up and coming MMA guy so I was like hey Connor got the picture taken and then the next time that I actually met him would have been rolling in SBG but to get a very long story short kokoro was raw and on Friday evenings we'd have sparring sessions where guys coming from Bridgestone Muay Thai uh karate uh other karate clubs it was full contact and that's where I was introduced a little bit into grappling but it was full contact and I was going into work on Monday and Monday morning with black eyes and I would have to pretend it was rugby training oh man yeah because that was sort of deemed socially acceptable I was rugby training but after a while I just said to myself you know what I need to get a balance here that's when I found um SVG which was on the long Mile Road at the time yeah the yellow mat I wasn't old old school I can't say I was there before the wave really took off but I was there just as the wave was coming up and I I started off mainly doing wine Muay Thai in the morning times two or three mornings a week and um really enjoyed it and then sort of just evolved from there very slowly very slowly evolved so how many years has that been when I guess when did you oh 2015 so yeah I suppose yeah that's a long time ago but the problem here is is that when people say how long have you been training like we know of guys who we train with who are trained in a year but doing it twice a day yeah that's that's a different level that's a different level so people say how long are you training like and then I'm close to a decade yeah there's been a consistency there you know it's been maybe balancing out it's been two sessions maybe three sessions a week if it's good sometimes skipping weeks on end but I've always been consistent I'm probably the ideal uh member for a guy like John Kavanagh because I pay every month by direct debit and I barely turn up as often as some of the other guys and that's what you want that's your ideal the guy who's turning up two or three times a day he's wearing the mat down there's been very little wear and tear coming from they say that like uh the likes of these gyms like fly fit and you know like these kind of like 24-hour you know um like generic faster commercial gym yeah the commercial gems like they have an occupant I can see they have a uh like a membership limit of like four or five times what like they could actually take because they know 100 certain people will just pay and not come in because and then they make it difficult to cancel as well yeah so because um although SPG is not like that no SVG no svgs SVG has been great I mean yeah I've been a member there for for a long time now and on occasion when I've had to suspend membership or whatnot there's been just sort of like no issues they might ask the question do you mind us asking why and I say oh I'm sick and I've been told that I I won't not but yeah those sort of gyms because it's interesting when you go to most gyms it's probably always a core element whether it's in a whether it's one of these fly fits or you know one of these other commercial gyms you'll see the same people again and again and then occasion you'll see random facing I kind of recognize that person they might be membership they might have been members for 10 years I'm kind of that guy yeah one of those guys in SVG everybody kind of might say I recognize who he is but then I get to know what a guy's there as well and um the interesting thing is it's a great Community people end up knowing a little bit about you and then what actually happens what I've found is I've gotten to know some guys better off the mat than on it particularly when they've had problems or issues or whatnot and they've said Hey Barry I can I speak to you a moment about this or that or whatever yeah so that's kind of when you get to know guys but um but no yeah I've been there nearly 10 years and it's been great it's been great yeah the same I would I'm going on three years I think this summer yeah and yeah it's fantastic would you start on the the whim to Warrior yes I did and you know I think that's a great for anyone who is really apprehensive about you know joining the gym and like they just don't know like for me years ago in the early 20s I went to a Jiu Jitsu gym and like it wasn't much of a I didn't get a very good reception a lot of like there were others or there's other reasons that kind of did yeah exactly why but like it was it didn't get a good reception so I kind of left there and I'm like yeah like you know maybe it's not for me and you know because I kind of had that kind of experience I was always really nervous about going to another gym yeah just to try and experience it and the the or the train altar now yeah um I think it's perfect because you're going into it with you know 80 or more of the people who are doing it have never done anything we're all learning together yeah and the cover is all the great fundamentals it covers all of the foundations I mean you start like what happens if you're in martial arts for a long period of time you begin to um underestimate actually how much training and how different you are from any other person who isn't doing martial arts so you look at somebody who goes in day one and doesn't know the difference between a job and a cross yeah and then at the end they've gone from learning a job at a cross through to a single or a double Leg Takedown true then to a submission I mean that flow I mean that's phenomenal and so I mean it was it wasn't available when I started and one of the great things about it I think as well is that you have to like if you commit to it you can't just pick and choose when you're going to turn up yeah like you're there I used to see the guy 6am half five half six whatever I think even now they've got two sessions in the mornings um I mean you also get to know a group yeah so you guys kind of it's almost like a class that graduates together absolutely it's um speak to another mutual friend of ours um he had said that I could grow on the military so it has that um that element of doing something difficult not like physically or doing something physically difficult with a group of other people 100 and then like you're all kind of suffering together I don't know what it is about like that that suffering in a group but it really does it brings people together absolutely it does you know like there's a lot less you're not complaining about you know silly things you know like the suddenly the you know your coffee not being as hot as it doesn't mean or whatever like that that stuff is well it's not an issue anymore well interesting it's only my first time thinking about this now I was out for dinner last night and we were with some friends and we were speaking about actually friendships and people exposing their vulnerabilities yeah you know if you meet someone and they're on the they've got their guard up and talking about you know they're not telling you little they're not telling you much about themselves They Don't Really everything's always great there's never any problems or whatnot it's very hard for you to build a bond with that person but I suppose when you think about it when people are down and they're starting a journey like you know the winter warrior was or treyalta now you are exposing your vulnerabilities without even articulating it absolutely you know you're kind of there saying hey I don't have a good I don't have good lungs I don't have a good heart I'm out of shape I'm uncoordinated um you know all of those different things and everybody gets to know it you know of each other and I think when you when you expose your vulnerabilities like that and you go through a shared experience you know it certainly brings people together and that was probably one of the reasons why I enjoyed it because I suppose since leaving you know the military I didn't have a group like that and when we just spoke about yeah you can go to a commercial gym fly fit uh please don't sue us we're not denigrating our product here but when you go to a fly fit yeah it's great to be there but it's not it's not the same it's not a group it's not a group it's not a club it doesn't have it's not a spree decor yeah and so that was that's one of the things that I think you get in most martial arts James and then it varies between came to German I know that certain gyms have different vibes and actually one of the good things about SBG is that there's nearly a place for everybody yeah like if you're the nine to five worker like most of us are you can always find where do I fit in here yeah uh if you're the 18 year old who wants to become a pro MMA fighter you'll certainly find your your like what's the phrase water always Finds Its level yeah because I was trying to level up but anyway so you've been training now for a little over a decade yeah for about a decade yeah um how do you feel that uh do you like how do you take a training like mentally does that help you throughout your day like in your normal day job yeah 100 I suppose it's very interesting because I think training in a martial arts does give you a degree of self-confidence absolutely you know it does give you a degree of self-confidence and again I don't want to overestimate my own abilities you know yeah I certainly don't but one of the interesting things I suppose this is a strange thing I never really talk about but when most people see me in my day job in a suit and tie there's a certain perception we spoke about this earlier ourselves there's a certain perception and it gives me a confidence knowing that to a degree you could hold your own yeah okay but beyond that I think that's a confidence that nearly everybody should have like particularly young men but also you know young women as well I mean I'm the father to her daughter so I would love her when she grows up you know to have a sense of security in and of herself and I think that's important but for me I suppose in terms of my day today it's actually you know I work very hard I've got a lot on my plate I'm also supposed to be supposed to be finishing off a doctorate I'm supposed to be writing a book a doctor yeah I'm doing a doctorate yeah I'm gonna come back to that yeah I'm supposed to be writing a book as well and I've just also set up my own business a couple of years ago um and I've got you know I'm busy what tends to happen for me is is it's very easy for me in my head and Gustavo our culture BJJ codes if you're watching this this is what happens is I look at my diary something pops up and I say you know what Friday is free I'll train twice on Friday I won't go today I'll train twice on Friday that doesn't happen and when I leave my training go for a long time what tends to happen is that release that I get from training it builds up it physically builds up inside me like when you're getting choked out you know never happens never happens to you whatsoever but you know for those of you who don't know there is a a gorilla we train with Carl Andy he knows who he is when he's on top of you you know and you know he is just about to just true pure Brute Force ignorance and some technique he's about to you know Americana you or something like that you're worried about clients about builds about everything else that goes out the window so for me it's actually quite meditative absolutely that you're there and you're focused on wanting only and everything else goes out the window because I wake up in the morning time I go to bed at night probably overthinking about certain things I'm not as bad as a lot of other people have it but yeah certainly to an extent I'm thinking about I'm always thinking in the future I'm always thinking about what do I need to do this week next week what's coming up this month what about geez the year is nearly finished I mean we're nearly into June now yeah and I still feel as if I've got time to start my goals yeah I'm like no are this year for x y z but when I'm training all of that disappears and so for me I've kind of come to an acceptance that I need to do it I need to do it because it's going to help me in other areas so that I'm a better person for the people who are around me because I haven't got all this pent up and built up energy and I know there's other people who get that from different Outlets certainly you can get it from drugs and alcohol and that sort of stuff and people have done that but other people can get it from different sports but for me just that intense physicality um the fact that you are nominally In Harm's Way if you're not focused on what you're doing absolutely that means that you can't be focused on anything else and that's it's that's a great release from everything else that's going on even just for the hour 45 minutes a day where you can't focus on the other side 100 it's nice to to have that time to to not have that weight on 100 and I get that short break makes it easier yeah until your next break 100 and so I mean for me you know as I mentioned I set up my own business a couple of years ago and then you're trying to work on that and build it and build it and build it and everything else gets put to the side for a while but I think I have come to a point where I thought I did at the start of actually was it this year or last year um when I was like okay there's no point in me having autonomy if I can't do the things that I want to do and it's very easy to let your training slip and I do try I mean generally yeah being trained at home you have my train at home home gym there I saw your dummy that you have yeah yeah so I so I'm very lucky with that yeah so I have a little cabin at the back of the house and I do have it I have a matted area I've got a raw machine I've got some weights I've got a um you know seven foot you know 40 kg Muay Thai bag so that's great I'll always try to get 20 minutes in yeah but it's never the same um the dummy is never the same as Andy yeah no it's just something about even like that group of people and then even if it's like a small class four or five people it's still there's still something about having that kind of group uh sometimes that's even better A lot of people have noticed but last year our coach is a Gustavo um the BJ Jake classes started again and at one point I love you learned I was the first one to turn up our next thing he was there he was a perp about at the time he went from purple to Brown to Black into space of a year which is phenomenal but I was one of the first ones to turn up and it was just me and him and I was like oh no oh my God no and the focus is on me there's going to be nobody else to train with is anybody gonna turn up but obviously now he's built something really really strong there absolutely that's good I think on a regular basis there's the eight or eight to dozen at least a dozen yeah yeah yes yeah that's one of the you know generally speaking you'll find the time if it's a priority for you absolutely now I need to I need to remind myself of that a bit Yeah Yeah but um what about you I mean how do you find your challenges in terms of getting to training what what are some of the impediments that you've had yeah so mostly right now um you know I haven't I say newborn she's sick seven months old now yeah um you know so it's difficult yeah uh you know so I find it I like training as early as possible so the morning classes like really suit me um but now with with the baby and just kind of her sleep schedule that those are a bit difficult and then you know I have a four-year-old as well and she has to go to crash yeah and then you know just it doesn't always work out yeah but I find that the the middle of the day or in the evenings yeah um those tend to work out a bit better yeah um but it's very hard it's very hard if you've got a family yeah it's especially with like a newborn because they're schedules yeah you know like it's constantly it's changing as they're getting older yeah and you know so as soon as you have something set you change 100 you know and then as soon as you feel like uh all right everything's normal now back to normal it's done and that's even the same for me because you know um with our baby um her routine was changing so in my head I was like okay these lunchtime classes are going to be perfect and then next thing then she's like her nap time changes and you're like okay what's my what are my responsibilities uh and how does that fit in so it can be difficult but you know I think even parents need to give each other time away from being parents as well and from each other and I think that's important and I think it's just a question of prioritizing but um okay so you served in the military yes previously yeah what what service were you in uh I was in the U.S Air Force okay I spent because in there four about four years all together yeah it's two years in Germany and then two years in this tiny little island in Guam or called Guam in the middle Pacific yeah um it was it was fun I did enjoy it um I didn't necessarily like the uh kind of the lifestyle yeah um I enjoyed the kind of the camaraderie that you that you had with the other people or the I think the people that I served with but you know like my um my co-workers um I I say I didn't like the lifestyle because like the the Air Force it's weird like we get picked on in the states by the other branches rightfully so yeah um you know and at the time that I was kind like I TR I got in and kind of a weird time because uh you things were kind of transitioning so we had like there was what was called like the old Air Force yeah and kind of the new Air Force I was right at right at the transition of those two you know where the old Air Force was turning into the new and then um you know so like I my first Duty station like my first six months um is what I would consider kind of like old Air Force yeah um you know so things were things were a lot different things were a bit more relaxed yeah things were not taken so seriously like you know um the jokes about the air force that the other branches would give us you know we kind of like yeah yeah it's true you know it's easier over here it is nicer over here yeah um you know and then the new Air Force started and then we got new leadership um you know new uh like officers at like a command level and up and what they were trying to do was change things from they wanted us to have more of this like Warrior aspect yeah which was completely undeserved because uh you know like I hadn't touched a gun since basic training and I had 100 rounds and that was it wow you know and then that's the entirety of my weapons training um everything else that I have is all on my own all like wow done as a civilian who was the who's the president of the states when you joined uh I almost said Bush but no it was uh President Obama okay and were you there was he the president throughout yeah for the whole time because to me it would always be interesting like what was what would the tone be like under different presidents because obviously when Trump the impression that I get is the military were very proked Trump uh and he would seemed to be very Pro military sure I don't know I I a lot of the people that I know like they would all right I'd say it's just like anywhere you know like like I say 50 50 you know like you know you have people who are you know die hard one way or the other yeah um and then you have your people in the middle that are just trying to decide the majority yeah um I don't know I think the people who is my own personal opinion uh you know the people who would say the military is for Trump they were just kind of you know the loud ones you know the ones who were just kind of making the most noise now I don't necessarily know that that's true um but like I mean I met a lot of people who you know were fans of Obama who were yeah you know at the time you know like I at the time I I wasn't yeah um you know like given the uh the luxury of being able to look back on things I think my tone is probably maybe a little bit off um but yeah it it it's like I said it's probably about 50 50. yeah in reality yeah um and then like I said yeah you have that silent majority in the middle that don't really kind of give their opinion one way or the other yeah that's interesting because the um the last Law Firm I worked for was the U.S Law Firm yeah yeah yeah maybe tell me yeah so I founded their Dublin and London office and um yeah they were quite conservative they were it was founded by two military veterans okay and so I remember when they came over here and they were looking to launch into Ireland they'd found somebody who was a lawyer but also that's military yeah and they're like this guy's gonna get it because they had Sops like they had standard operating procedures for everything and so that was that was really great but I remember I went over for some induction training for two or three weeks and really just to sort of see what was happening now they were headquartered up in Albany so it wasn't in New York so they had a Manhattan office which is phenomenal um and then we went to Albany but while I was up there you know one of the weekends they knew I would have been pretty bored there wasn't much to do so they brought me out to the gun range I know so it really felt and as we got out of the gun range I could see all the Trump flags flying and I was like it was just really surreal so well you know and I also had one of my one of my best friends he was um pilot and he would say no I'm a Naval aviator and I'm like come on man it's the same thing but even same thing here now in in you know in our one of my best friends if we ever use the word plane it's a aircraft airplane no it's listen mate you know what it is it's a Ryan airplane it's landed in Dublin Airport it doesn't need to it's late you know they don't need to be worried about what it's called yeah did you get any exposure to um to martial arts in the military or where did it come from no uh I didn't um so my pretty much my entire exposure is from about what almost three years ago yeah so I did the winter time train out to now uh and the destiny entirety of it and it would so the thing that really drew me into it as like I said earlier kind of like that that suffering is a group but the the only other time where I have experienced that type of relationship with other people that you know I necessarily didn't know or wasn't close to was in the military yeah no I said I I was in the airport we didn't do anything crazy but like we still had to deal with the same you know shitty leadership as every other Branch you know the power hungry you know all one you know the lieutenant who you know or uh in my case it was a captain um you know he we sent to deal with that type of stuff yes you know and so we kind of had to suffer through that together um and I remember leaving the military and then realizing like just how different it was that from the rest of the world yeah like military really idiot proofs a lot of things you know like you said Sops yeah you know there's a reason for that and it's because they don't want a to you know well well in my in my or my experiences because they don't want someone to ruin a very simple procedure well it's interesting because the first t-shirt that I only think I bought from Wolverine before was aim front I think was yeah was the the TV yeah front towards enemy and that's probably in relation to like a schwar or a rocket launcher and you're thinking to yourself if somebody's about to fire this thing and they don't know that it goes that it goes that way there are there's some trouble yeah but it's very interesting because when you talk about that about something being idiot proof I mean just the other day I mean on Sops just the other day we had a situation whereby a client of ours and for those who don't know about this stage you might have guessed I I'm I'm a lawyer but a client of ours didn't turn up for her hearing oh and we had said previously that we would seek a postponement of the hearing date yeah but um it wasn't granted and I was acting under an assumption that she was informed that hadn't been granted the invite was still in the diary nothing had changed so we were like why wouldn't she turn up so where at least query it at least query it yeah so then the next thing I was like okay how can we avoid this situation again what do we need to do what are some of the problems that are coming up in relation to pre-hearing issues and so I said I said right instead of having our meeting with the Barrister who would argue the case three or four weeks before let's do it seven days beforehand so that we know at that point exactly you know that the case is going to go ahead that we filed our submission that we have the respond and submission all these sort of things and build it into our sop so that when I have my instructions when I when an email goes out from me which is all template it's literally run like that military sort of sense all you need to do is follow these instructions yes because when the next person comes along because my staff won't always be there but when they come along again and somebody replaces legal executive or secretary or whatnot that they're literally following a system yeah protocol and that's going to work yeah it's oh if only you could get something similar in like Jiu Jitsu or Marco now I know the Gracies have tried it you know I mean grace University they try to have everything on a curriculum but I just think in terms of there's no Sops for there's no Sops for fighting I'm actually interesting I know we're speaking here now but even the evolution of it um as we're recording this last night Crown Gracie was fighting in UFC and yes spoiler alert at this point he lost but he was what's good you know what I mean and he was pulling guard he was literally pulling guard in an MMA fight I saw Clips on that yeah and they were talking about how different it is how it's an old school mentality to a new world of fighting and I I know it's been like uh you know because I'm big on Jiu Jitsu but when I was doing the MMA I went from MMA to jiu jitsu yeah and there is a transition because they're not the same yeah you know and they're similar for sure but uh they are not the same and you you have to make a switch like in your head you have to like switch like onto Jiu Jitsu or onto MMA because there are differences in in the pair that if you don't like you're gonna get yourself in a bad situation well that's one of the things that I always kind of Wonder I mean you you do have certain Jujitsu practitioners who have this belief that it directly translates to street self-defense yeah and it's like no you know I mean there are certain things there I mean if you were to strip it back I mean if you were to look at I read um Hicks and Gracie's book breed uh last year and they used to go you know to different gyms to the beach to different places to fight yeah they would use Jiu Jitsu there but it was a very different form of Jiu Jitsu you know it was a very different form of gtu whereby you know what was working it was actually probably more akin to MMA Jiu Jitsu what was working was things that were very simple very basic but they're not a very advanced level with the threat of strikes yes and so for me that's one of the reasons why I do like svgn and I do try to incorporate some striking classes every now and then some wrestling classes or MMA classes it's just to keep that sense of realism that okay because I think you could be in and this is no disrespect to any purist Jiu Jitsu practitioners because a lot of people do it for the sport but you could get it you know very badly wrong if you think you can rely upon it alone and I still think that debate I like is it uh his uh interpretation is that um like known Jiu Jitsu is paraphrasing them also probably screwing it up but basically it's like uh you know if we're gonna have a fight or so far on the street and you know you're kind of coming at me this you know I can run away you know like I I don't we don't have like so I don't need to know how to strike I don't even know how to box I don't even know how to kick um because you know I can run away and where the difference changes as soon it's when you put your hand on me yeah and I can no longer get away that's where the kind of the Jiu Jitsu comes in yeah um and honestly like that you know if you have hands on each other then you know you're inside really so then um and they say only one percent of the world is are less is training like one percent of one percent or something so the chances of coming across somebody like that and I do like that approach because I think it's very easy for us as guys to the right approach in my opinion especially on the street is always to run away yeah because like you don't know like this other guy like he can have some sort of underlying issue and then like you know say you do strike them and he hits the ground or like you that's a big issue like and he dies or he ends up like seriously that's a big issue and so I suppose in terms of revealing a little bit here I mean during my 20s I did have some altercations and as I think most of us yeah which shouldn't have happened yeah and there are probably all 100 ego driven you know somebody putting it up to you yeah and you're saying okay you've got this opinion of me I'm gonna change it for you and um I was very lucky that there are there were no real incidents there I was a 20 year old army guy you know and used to play a good bit of rugby I was bigger than I was lifting weights and whatnot and so and somebody sort of slighting me I would take it seriously um but you are right the idea of just walking away or running it you have to it's on a Raiden you know it's underrated but sometimes as everybody out there knows it's very hard you have to you have to beat a better person and just allow those juices just to go I mean if someone like Jocko is saying that he's gonna walk or run away okay buddy no problem yeah and like this guy is a man Mountain this guy will just absolutely murder you in one hand murder you wrap you up like a pretzel probably not think about it but the point that you're making as well is you don't know what somebody else is doing you don't know that guy could be a phenomenal boxer that guy could be a phenomenal lab 100 like taekwondo guy it was interesting because it was a video footage from last year doing the rounds some undesirable characters I think attacked uh or had an altercation with some um workers in a cafe or a restaurant on South William Street and I think they may have harassed one of the female workers and then two or three of the male waiters came out and they followed them out now one of the guys picked up a stool they hit to kind of troll with these guys but one of the other guys who was doing the rounds did a spinning back kick and just nearly sliced the guy's head just within he was literally within an inch and you would look at this guy and go no not a trend whatsoever yeah but then you see him getting such precision and being able to you know hit you with his heel against your temple yeah that's scary so yeah so as you kind of uh so I think that's an important thing just to kind of stay level stay cool and avoid it that is one thing that you can learn from martial arts in general like uh you know like if you're competing you know um when I first started out one of the things I pointed out to me was like you know you're going too fast you're trying to use brute strength and you're not conserving any energy or you know you're not breathing properly so you know by the middle of the round I'm even huffing yeah and I can barely breathe but one of the things I've learned now is I don't say take your time but you know it's I'm not like I'm I'm not trying to you know Murder you're not in a rush right away I'm not in a rush yeah and you know it's just kind of everything is cool if you look at it at a high level folks like they might be moving quickly and fast but they're cool they're calm they're not jittery they're not you know all over them but that's one of the big things you kind of notice generally speaking um like I'm not gonna reveal my age now but I'm probably halfway there okay I'm closer to halfway there than a quarter and when young 18 19 20 year old like white belt start man they'll cause you trouble yeah because they are just athletic they're strong they've got they've got lungs and you know you might have some GAA player who comes along and like this guy can you know probably has a better it's probably more of an athlete than you are and has that sort of mental mentality I'm gonna I'm gonna show I'm gonna prove my point here but that's where the sort of just wrapping somebody up like looking at the clock saying we've got five minutes here we're a minute and a half in I've got them wrapped up just let him just contain him like a snake for a couple of minutes let it wear him out yeah and that's what they used to say like the real Power of Juju of Jiu Jitsu is I mean if you were to look at any of the Gracie breakdowns that's what they say is they say a lot of it is actually containing someone for a period of time allowing them to expend their energy and then then going forward but then interestingly then you kind of Wonder you know because that's one thing I've kind of picked up you know from my uh my Instagram degree that I have it hasn't yeah and um yeah just letting them you know blow themselves out 100 or on you know as rather than me try to overpower them or whatever yeah and then I'm there just waiting for them to be spent the problem I've had before I remember like entering competitions as a white belt and being like okay I gotta prove myself now and whatnot and then somebody coming out and just going hell for a letter and then I my I have to respond in turn and then I'm at the side gone my lungs are just my lungs are out I'm I want to get sick I'm really how am I going to get you know I've got one I got a five minute break between the next one but I also have to remember the other guy is probably in the same situation and if you're particularly if you're competing at Masters uh I think that's where you know I think hopefully some older guys cooler heads and just let it settle but um but yeah I mean I the way I see it is this is I'm in this for the Long Haul like there's guys out there who will get their black belt after 8 10 12. yeah 100 and they're at it uh in my head it's like you know what slow song Sterling slow and steady you know the tortoise in the race and the most of the guys they actually say this is an interest when they're talking about you always hear about the the greatest belts you can get as white belt because you've taken the first step but they actually say that when you look at the dropout rate it's actually white to blue belt which is the biggest dropout rate okay so that actually if you do hang on in you know I mean we're looking I don't know if the audience can see it now but you've got a white belt blue belt purple um it's that white the blue belt that most people I mean how many white belts do you know who like how many of your whim to Warrior crew stayed on I think they were like 30 of us been there 25 30 and that I can think of offhand maybe five of them yeah but those five are probably really into it now I mean there's one blue about out of the hair yeah out of that group yeah and then there's a couple others that have been uh foreign that's not bad because once they're there I suppose you can always dip in and out it's easier it's actually harder to come back what do they say it's um something along the lines of it's harder to restart when you stop yeah no I agree with that because you're dealing with the different kind like the same kind of emotions of joining when you're brand new again 100 this experience that you're supposed to already have so yeah it can certainly be intimidating what I know sometimes you know even our coach Gustavo when I arrive in if he hasn't seen me for a few weeks there's like this mad Round of Applause sort of moment who's this guy where is he from and then what will happen is I'll be like Gustavo after hiring somebody else no I've got time this time I'm here three days a week no problem business pixel I was like who's Gustavo I forgot so yeah it's probably the same challenge that most working guys and girls you know the 20 year old guy who's doing nothing else and wants to be an MMA fighter he's got the time and the energy and the luxury but if you've got people who've got you know commitments they've got family they've got um they've got other things that they need to be doing the fact that the day can make the time to do it that to me is actually more inspiring than for example a pro athlete you know I I hear that um and I would certainly agree because you know if these young kids dare I say yeah um you know who don't understand they have literally all the Time in the World 100 and uh the interesting thing about about that is if you were to look at MMA compared to a lot of other sports like if you want to be a professional soccer American football player baseball player basketball player generally speaking you have to start very own you start very young and not only that but by the time you get to 18 or 19 the writings on the wall yeah like somebody's going to tell you someone's going to intervene and go and you haven't made it you haven't made the draft you're not getting into an academy or whatnot yeah whereas the interesting what MMA is is you can continue you can be a pro MMA fighter Like You Do It full time and nobody's going to stop you from doing it yeah you know if that makes sense no one's gonna pull you inside and say no your coach might say look maybe it's time you consider other options but if you want to you could spend your from you know 18 to 26 just doing this and it's very like it's kind of a romantic lifestyle you know training twice a day you're room at a crew there you're mixing it you know with Elite with Elite Fighters and whatnot it can be quite I'm sure intoxicating but for a lot of these guys um you know from what I've seen even in my 10 years I've seen some of these guys who've started and they've said I'm gonna make the UFC and then they end up making KFC you know which is unfortunate so I'd always say to people you know I think be realistic I think things are kind of changing um you know because like our 30s aren't the same as our 30s for like our parents you know 100 and then I know like for women just because women in general tend to start this a lot later in life um you know so like you could be you could start training in your late 20s yeah um as a as a woman and then be a pro into your 40s oh yeah whereas like uh for a man that that's a little unfeasible yeah but even for men I think it's that's changing a bit yeah um well I mean even now I mean mid late 30s I mean you look at see to someone's nearly someone as soon as a dude is nearly touching 40. yeah that is not a retirement it's kind of it but it's just that even in general though you have like there's only so many beatings to the head you can take oh yeah 100 it's interesting because a lot of people a lot of the public who when they see MMA they have a particular perception of it I think it's just gory mindless violence but in many respects it's actually safer than a lot of other sports out there at the same time you know at the same time I mean you you're coming from the United States and you look at American football I mean that's just one where in fact if they had less protective gear this sport would have to evolve to make it safer because the next thing down is something like rugby now they're already talking about concussion and rugby and whatnot but yeah like it does happen um and that is sad when it happens because people that might be the only thing they have to to rely upon and even we were speaking about it separately before but retired UFC fighters now going into bare knuckle boxes yeah and that's taking off and I just finished a book by um there's about a bear knocking bare knuckle boxing champion Gormley was his name um he was basically king of King of the the gypsies yeah King of The Travelers and this was back in the day but now it's it's really taken off I mean you know was it the bkfc yeah a fight Championship yeah look I used to be like I told you I used to be an advocate for no gloves in UFC yeah but kind of after watching that I'm like ah it's probably not a terrible idea it'd be interesting to see because if there were no gloves if there were no gloves you know I'd love to see what a bare knuckle MMA fight would how it would pan out particularly not just at the very first but if it evolved a little bit to see what it would look like because a lot of these guys have already said listen I don't want I don't want to take damage to the Head yeah like would it would there be more on the ground but then when it's on the ground once it gets on the ground then it's Fists you know that's quite devastating but like being on the ground there with no gloves it'd be a lot easier to maneuver your hands around I always found that to be uh to be a challenge especially because you know we had to use like the sparring gloves yeah you know so those are a lot thicker but uh you could probably get away with it by calling it you know you know nogi striking or something like that you know what I have seen and I like is uh it's uh what do they call that um like combat Jiu Jitsu oh yeah it's like the kind of the yeah I like that the great thing about that is it adds a degree of realism yeah absolutely and I actually think that in general in an Ideal World Indy every MMA s or BJJ partition of wood class a week or a month practice it a little bit just to give you a sense now again I've got very good friends of mine um I want to do it with knives yeah I was going to say Alan and fair is there probably out there and they're just BJJ purists and they're like they just did support jiu jitsu but I and one of them was even talking about oh because he's now training in a gym in in Berlin he was in RGA which is kind of like my local gym in Dublin 15 but he was in RGA and I was in Berlin he was saying he was thinking about doing a striking class on a Sunday and he's like ah but what's the point and I was kind of like in my head to be able to fight but then his perception was well it's not going to add anything to my ground game and he's more like a Grappler so that's the main thing for him so I can get it I can get it it really depends where you're coming from so you know um it really depends what your motivation is but whatever it is you know if you're a striker if you're doing Jiu Jitsu if you're doing a combination like we're hobbyists yeah but at the same time I also want to be doing this if I can when I'm 60 years of age I'd love to be sick 70. yeah this is what I found on Instagram and I forget her handle but she I think she just got a black belt and she's like in her black or brown bones she's in her 70s my dad is 72. he has been he's your typical Irishman drinking and smoking all of his life I sometimes joke and say he's like a cockroach he never gets sick if there was a nuclear strike tomorrow he'd come crawling out of somewhere he's just this indestructible type of character doesn't look pristine but he's like still physically working he's still doing manual labor if he can do it with the damage he's put his body true anyway I can certainly make it Jeff all right so here look um it was great having you man no it's great to be here um I I sincerely enjoyed our chat like I could talk about this all day yeah um this type of conversation in general really well as I said you're here at uh Loco local motiva BJJ you are welcome to come to uh crusherland Co law at work our offices yeah I did want to hit on that real quick so of course all right so your solicitor so I'm a solicitor yeah so um I'm a solicitor all I do is employment law nothing else I said do anything before and before that yeah before that I actually started Life as a funds lawyer at one point so funds is like you know you're sort of Wall Street lawyers to be quite honest these guys are you the one who kept them out of jail I listen I would if I could if he was my client but um no what happened was I did that for the first year I was quite attracted to I got a job offer when I qualified with another U.S Law Firm who had an office here in Ireland and I was quite attracted to like you know that space the idea of being the corporate lawyer nice suits you know the shiny glass office and whatnot put I quickly came to realize that wasn't the picture I had of myself when I was growing up yeah you know I had this image of what I wanted when I wanted to be a lawyer I had an image of the type of lawyer I wanted to be and that was mixing with people solving their problems and it sounds corny but actually making a difference now certainly in employment law you'd definitely be able to find it well look at one of the good things about employment laws this I'm not doing criminal law because I don't want to be spending my day with criminals I'm not gonna lie to you okay there are all criminals some of them guilty well then I was I was best man for one of my good friends who was one of the very well-known criminal Barrister he wrote the book on non-fatal offenses against the person I'm not too sure if he'd share your assumption that most of his clients are actually Innocent but anyway I didn't want to be spending my day with criminals um and also I didn't want to be spending my day with suits yeah I wanted to meet somewhere in the middle and with employment law the best thing about it is at least your clients have a job so there is some barriers you gotta get paid so I started my practice about two and a half years ago it's all I do and I really enjoy it and one of the great things about it is I've been really lucky that I could build a profile quite quickly yeah and become a specialist in a very particular area I started my doctorate at the same time it's a doctorate looking at the criteria necessary to bring a successful generally looking at what is the identifying features of winner and loser cases so that we can accentuate one and avoid the other and I thought to myself it'll take me four or five years to get busy and by that stage I'll have my doctor done but it was like you know after three months it was just all go and that's been very fortunate but now you know it's just been great because there's some really great cases that I get to work on some really interesting stuff when you when you come home at the end of the day and you can turn you know to your partner and say wait till I tell you about this yeah you could never do that generating corporate law wait till I tell you about the share purchase agreement that I drafted today where some of my cases are interesting very interesting case that I started and I finished through a different practice was I started a case recently uh about two or three years ago in my old Law Firm 11 drivers who are being terminated they were working for Guinness okay they're actually subcontractors for a different outfit so they were working for a company who were dropping off kegs to pubs there was a particular Pub in the north side of Dublin inner city that didn't have any relationship with Guinness but also had Guinness on tack it's interesting okay and what was happening was Guinness filmed these delivery drivers dropping after making an extra stop and dropping off kegs to this location now one would assume they were cakes of Guinness but they couldn't prove it okay and there would have been a degree of cake swapping where somebody might have had too much Heineken or too much Carlsberg and they'd swap them over so that's obviously what was happening in this case so those 11 drivers we filed their complaint and everybody thought it was a foregone conclusion nah come on man these guys have lost we know what's happening here I attended their disciplinary meeting I attended their appeal and then I moved on from that law firm but the other day all of them got a settlement they got a necessary compensation of between two to ten thousand each total Award of about 110 000. because the company didn't follow proper processes are these processes that the company would set up for themselves their illegal industry standards like that you have to investigate it you have to give them an opportunity to respond that there has to be an independent appeal and things like it's not even that necessarily they did not even necessarily that they guilty or not guilty of what they were being 100 it's that the company did not follow their their own procedures or illegal and that's an interesting one because when clients come to me very often they want to poured our heart out and I'm like I don't need 90 of what you're telling me yeah it'll be relevant we'll put it somewhere in the submission yeah I need to know Were you invited to an investigation meeting was it independent could you cross-examine people what's it put it to you in writing blah blah blah blah and I'm not trying to get people off on a technicality but generally employment law is there to protect the most vulnerable people in society it's there to protect the people who are making your breakfast roll yeah absolutely yeah I was gonna say like probably most are probably most of the people who even know about employment law probably are the I wonder like it's interesting is it like kind of the everyday person that would know to contact you well this is very interesting this is an interesting one and if I'm being honest you know generally speaking what I've seen through my own research in my doctorate is that like I got this figure this morning so I we divided the people bringing claims to the workplace relations commission um which is kind of like an informal Court yeah for employment law disputes we divided them into I think it was five or six social categories from a which would be upper middle class I think it was down to C or D and that sounds terrible we really base it on my master salary and out of the complaint is only 1.5 percent where upper middle class really and the majority were from lower socio-economic backgrounds do you think it's because maybe there's easier transition well the best the reason being is I guarantee you that the people who were had the resources to bring a claim and then that's when I I mean another assumption they probably have money saved up well not only that their money saved up but also they can hire good lawyers yeah they know the system they have they have the social you know and cultural capital to know how to get not say game the system but work the system they can get a lawyer very early on in the process once the proverbial hits the fan and then someone like me intervenes and then they get a settlement agreement and we're in the process now of reviewing and we've I've reviewed or drafted or negotiated hundreds if not thousands of settlement agreements over the last even the last two and a half three years and the vast majority of our people who are there middle class and and above because if somebody gets fired someone's a cashier in Tesco or they're making chicken fillet rolls and Etc maybe their employer doesn't fear the consequences of not following processes and procedures for them as much as they will a VP or a director of operations so that's what we found um and the unfortunate thing is is that yeah we try to provide as much assistance as we can the only case that we take on I'm not in a pro bono basis but a deferred payment basis are pregnancy related dismissals because I'm like that is the most vulnerable person in society everybody as we try to help so people come to us but we like getting you know dozens of inquiries a day and so you kind of have to weed them out but I was told the other day that that I was taking advantage of people by charging a consultation fee but I kind of revert back hey if you go to a barber you know if you go to a get your car serviced if you go to get anything done the person there is going to charge you yeah and to be honest it's fair enough because I mean you might have some folks who make an appointment and not show up and that's what happens about it probably happened quite a bit and I think it would happen to me most sorry if I think it's just you know you're kind of well we're guaranteeing where that happened to me most was actually when I was providing free legal advice on free legal aid centers and you know people just don't know the value when something's for free they don't know the value exactly but yeah so um see if anybody does need any legal advice C or us-h-e-l-l-i-e yeah and but the point I was originally making is you're more than welcome we've got a nice new office down in Smithfield I've got two very uh grandiose green leather chairs a beautiful gold painting backdrop so the next time you know hopefully although I know Edson great guy let's level up the podcast and get it done or hey I'm I'm happy Perfect Season Two Season Two that's when we have uh that's when Joe Rogan comes to get interviews yeah cool but um all right look it was fantastic talking to you my pleasure I sincerely appreciate you coming in I don't have to do this again I want to talk I want to talk about this book you're writing yeah um yeah so cool all right everyone thank you for your time yep uh check out be today welcome to t-ville um and I know we went on a lot about SPG but uh the head coach here Edson um is a brown belt out of SPG so you know you're getting a good education he's a good guy as well yeah he's a great guy he's a good friend of mine um and I highly recommend this place I come here often um so yeah check it out um follow me at the Michigan mall and then you can follow Barry here Barry James Paul uh on Instagram or else you'll just find at Barbie crucial another more professional social media sites all right and uh what's the do you have an Instagram for your office oh it's a crucial law c-r-u-s-h-e-l-l-l-a-w crucial laughs like to throw everything down but all right great cool appreciate it thank you thank you very much [Music] [Music] to go God go go go go go go go go go [Music]