Fighting Matters

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Steve Kwan and Stephan Kesting make a public service announcement ahead of Alberta's October 19 referendum on whether to start the process of separating from Canada. They lay out how US officials and MAGA influencers have openly courted Alberta separatists, what leaving Canada would cost Albertans, and why people staying home is how Brexit happened. They also get into BC's snap election, with voting info for both provinces below.

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🔗 Links Mentioned:
- Alberta referendum questions (vote October 19) — https://www.elections.ab.ca/elections/referendum/
- Where to vote in Alberta — https://www.elections.ab.ca/current-election-information/where-do-i-vote/
- Elections BC (advance voting October 16 to 21, final voting day October 24) — https://elections.bc.ca
- Decision Making and National Unity Under Threat (DisinfoWatch report on US and Russian interference in Alberta) — https://disinfowatch.org/foreign-interference-targeting-canada-and-alberta/

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👥 Featuring:
- Steve Kwan — https://bjjmentalmodels.com
- Stephan Kesting — https://grapplearts.com

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- Alberta's October 19 separation referendum
- US officials courting Alberta separatists
- Brexit and the risk of staying home
- What separation would cost Alberta
- Trump's promises and his record
- Martial artists who say they're above politics
- BC's snap election and the BC Conservatives

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📖 Chapters:
00:00 — Two Canadians, freshly vaccinated
00:42 — Alberta's October 19 referendum
02:14 — Bessent, Bannon, and Alberta oil
06:02 — Separatists meeting US officials
07:08 — Russia and the Arctic routes
09:07 — Brexit and the turnout problem
14:02 — Norway's sovereign wealth fund
15:36 — What separation would cost Alberta
18:44 — Danielle Smith and Donald Trump
20:09 — Trump's promises and his record
24:53 — US military threats to Canada
26:26 — "Above politics" in martial arts
30:00 — The BC election and Conservatives
33:37 — Voting dates in Alberta and BC

On this episode of the Fighting Matters Podcast, Stephan Kesting, Jesse Walker, Jeff Shaw, and Steve Kwan examine how the recent insane actions of Donald Trump represent the normalization of extreme behavior in society and politics.  What sort of example does it set when political leaders behave in a way detached from morality and accountability?  We also look at the role of martial arts teachers for modeling and teaching core values

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Featuring

Stephan Kesting, https://www.grapplearts.com
Jesse Walker, https://roughhandsbjj.com
Jeff Shaw, https://bellinghambjj.com
Steve Kwan, https://bjjmentalmodels.com

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Chapters

00:00 Crazy things Trump has done in the last 3 days
04:02 The normalization of outlandish behavior in society
08:13 The role of accountability and integrity in leadership
10:01 Impact of political chaos on international trust
16:02 The potential for political change and the midterm elections
17:54 The danger of normalized lies and misinformation
20:00 The political expediency of leaders and their actions
21:55 The significance of voting and civic engagement
24:05 The broader mechanistic agenda behind political distractions
28:05 The influence of societal role models and behavior modeling
32:00 The silence and apathy in communities and martial arts
34:00 The normalization of hate speech and misinformation
36:08 The failure of leaders to acknowledge mistakes
37:52 The impact of political chaos on international relations
40:09 The importance of moral integrity in leadership
43:59 The role of martial arts in teaching core values
46:12 The erosion of trust and its global consequences
50:01 The influence of wealth and power on accountability
51:54 The importance of international cooperation and trust
56:02 The decline of American influence and trust worldwide
01:00:07 Closing thoughts and call to civic action

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Steve Kwan and Mike Mahaffey connect a month of far-right imagery in combat sports: Nazi salutes and a swastika flag at a kickboxing event in Orlando, an ADCC finalist with a history of posting Nazi salutes, and a Tatami gi pulled over SS-style lightning bolts. They argue this keeps happening because the sport keeps making excuses for it, and that fans can change that by being deliberate about who gets their money.

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👥 Featuring:
- Steve Kwan — https://bjjmentalmodels.com
- Mike Mahaffey — https://instagram.com/oldbastardbjj

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- Nazi salutes at a Paul Miller kickboxing fight
- Josh Saunders' ADCC final loss to Victor Hugo
- Tatami's Autsiders gi and its SS-style bolts
- Turning Point USA on the UFC BJJ mat
- Fuji BJJ's event conduct policy
- Voting with your dollars in jiu-jitsu
- Buying local in a K-shaped economy

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📖 Chapters:
00:00 — A month of hate in fight sports
04:10 — Paul Miller's kickboxing salute
06:37 — Josh Saunders in the ADCC final
08:26 — Tatami's Autsiders gi controversy
14:46 — Josh Saunders' coaching business
17:29 — Voting with your wallet in BJJ
20:14 — Sports have always been political
23:02 — Turning Point USA on UFC BJJ mats
27:39 — Fuji BJJ's event conduct policy
34:53 — How the far right gets normalized
37:47 — Finding ethical jiu-jitsu coaches
40:10 — Far-right versus far-left threats
42:14 — The mood on the ground in the US
45:45 — Fascism and incompetent loyalists
50:39 — Local spending, K-shaped economy

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Steve Kwan and Stephan Kesting talk through the Canada-US trade war from the Canadian side of the border. They explain why this was never about tariffs, and why Americans are not hearing how much of their own economy runs on Canadian lumber, oil, electricity, and potash, the base ingredient in most fertilizer. Canadian boycotts have already done damage that dropping the tariffs will not undo.

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🔗 Links Mentioned:
- FULL SPEECH | Carney explains why Canada suspended trade talks with U.S. — CBC News — https://youtu.be/l-WgOxbWUHk

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👥 Featuring:
- Steve Kwan — https://bjjmentalmodels.com
- Stephan Kesting — https://grapplearts.com

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- What the US demanded in the talks
- French labeling and Canadian culture
- 51st state rhetoric and sovereignty
- Alberta separatism as a wedge
- Potash, lumber, and US dependence
- The odds of a hot war with Canada
- Boycotts as the real pressure

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📖 Chapters:
00:00 — Two Canadians on the trade war
01:15 — The Welland Canal fake story
03:26 — What American media leaves out
05:49 — This started in January 2025
08:32 — The real reason talks collapsed
10:16 — Quebec and the French language
16:23 — Trump signed the USMCA himself
19:12 — Trust that takes decades to fix
25:10 — Hostile posts are policy now
29:50 — Could this become a shooting war
31:46 — Why Canada can hurt America
35:55 — Potash, lumber, and toilet paper
39:45 — Loyalty picked over competence
47:02 — Where are the American protests
51:33 — Boycotts and voting with dollars
55:10 — A Canadian insurgency and NATO

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Jeff Shaw and Jesse Walker are joined by Jose Fernandez, a health economist and purple belt who chairs the economics department at the University of Louisville. He explains who pays for tariffs, why 70% of the world's gis coming out of one country matters for your gear budget, and what gym owners should do about prices and leases while their students are getting squeezed.

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👥 Featuring:
- Jeff Shaw — https://bellinghambjj.com
- Jesse Walker — https://roughhandsbjj.com
- Jose Fernandez — https://louisville.edu/faculty/jmfern02

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- The tight labor market and consumer sentiment
- Gym pricing, leases, and rate freezes
- Politics in the gym and local elections
- Tariffs on gis and rash guards
- The AI bubble and robot labor
- The federal debt and taxing the rich
- Insurance paperwork and doctor hours

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📖 Chapters:
00:00:00 — Introducing Jose Fernandez
00:03:57 — The indicators and the debt
00:06:47 — White belt signups slow down
00:08:51 — Leases, rent, and expansion
00:11:48 — Why you shouldn't cut prices
00:13:38 — Family discounts and freezes
00:19:05 — Politics in the jiu-jitsu gym
00:20:29 — Vote in your local elections
00:25:09 — Who pays the tariff on your gi
00:28:23 — Trade deals without tariffs
00:32:31 — Why the stock market climbs
00:38:00 — Robots replacing human labor
00:47:54 — AI, drones, and modern warfare
00:54:12 — Cheap gas and the oil reserves
01:00:03 — The debt and the sacred cows
01:11:24 — Insurers waste doctor hours

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Steve Kwan and Stephan Kesting pull up a screenshot of the UFC BJJ 10 mat and read the sponsors out loud: the Air National Guard, the AI drone company Anduril, and Turning Point USA. Dana White has spent years insisting the UFC is not political, and you can read the rebuttal off his own mat. They argue the money is there to launder reputations and buy the silence of athletes who do not have many other options.

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👥 Featuring:
- Steve Kwan — https://bjjmentalmodels.com
- Stephan Kesting — https://grapplearts.com

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- The sponsors on the UFC BJJ 10 mat
- Anduril and Turning Point USA
- Dana White on the UFC not being political
- Exclusionary UFC BJJ contracts and ADCC
- UFC BJJ viewership and visibility
- What UFC BJJ athletes get paid
- The chilling effect on athletes who speak out

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📖 Chapters:
00:00 — Stephan's Arctic expedition
02:21 — Dana White on being political
03:15 — The YAMMA bowl cage, revisited
04:24 — Reading the sponsors on the mat
05:33 — Anduril, the AI drone company
10:09 — Turning Point USA on the mat
16:28 — Could the left buy the same ad?
21:13 — The capture and kill strategy
24:00 — UFC BJJ's viewership problem
28:15 — Owning all of combat sports
32:09 — What UFC BJJ athletes get paid
43:41 — The Sartre quote on fascists
34:45 — The chilling effect on athletes
51:20 — What people can do about it

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Jesse Walker and Stephan Kesting (just back from thirty days in the Arctic wilderness) are joined by Dr. Clayton Green, a board certified dermatologist with a PhD in microbiology who worked face to face with patients through the whole pandemic. Clayton and Stephan take apart the conspiracies the pandemic left behind (nanobot tracking chips, the lab leak, RFK Jr.'s claims about Lyme disease) and explain why frightened people reached for them in the first place. Jesse's question runs underneath the whole thing: how did a community built on evidence-based martial arts end up rejecting evidence-based medicine?

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👥 Featuring:
- Jesse Walker — https://roughhandsbjj.com
- Stephan Kesting — https://grapplearts.com
- Dr. Clayton Green

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- The Big Pharma payment myth, debunked
- Fear, certainty, and bad decisions
- Fauci as the scapegoat
- Changing the guidance was correct
- Grapplers rejecting evidence-based medicine
- Ivermectin and the grifters targeting grapplers
- The genetics that rule out a lab leak
- Algorithms and radicalized coaches
- Your phone tracks you better than any chip

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📖 Chapters:
00:00:00 — Introducing Dr. Clayton Green, dermatologist
00:01:53 — The Big Pharma payment myth, fully debunked
00:03:57 — Six years on, still no reckoning for COVID
00:05:49 — Fauci as the scapegoat for a whole government
00:08:07 — Fear and anger drive people to false certainty
00:10:12 — The early mask messaging that cost public trust
00:18:11 — Saving the mask supply for hospitals was right
00:23:01 — The vaccine claims held true until Omicron hit
00:26:51 — Reaching for ivermectin over actual medicine
00:29:13 — Operation Warp Speed, the win nobody will claim
00:31:42 — Grapplers rejected evidence-based medicine
00:37:02 — Pleading the fifth to dodge a perjury trap
00:41:45 — Genetic fingerprints rule out a lab leak
00:45:35 — Social media moderation and anti-Asian backlash
00:50:34 — YouTube radicalized Stephan's old instructors
00:53:35 — Debunking nanobot chips, 5G, and snake oil
01:00:37 — RFK Jr. is wrong about Lyme disease origins
01:03:06 — The AIDS-virus sequence myth, taken apart
01:05:17 — Whether we can get the public trust back

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Jesse Walker and Mike Mahaffey catch up on a run of recent news where powerful people did awful things and faced no real consequences: Andrew Tate arrested on 42 charges he may never answer for, ICE killings at traffic stops with the FBI reportedly stepping back, an FDA food-safety scare that ended in an apology to a Trump donor, and a Kentucky senator who has vanished while still collecting his seat. What ties it together is a question that hits close to home for two jiu-jitsu coaches: what happens to a country, or a gym, when people only look out for themselves?

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👥 Featuring:
- Jesse Walker — https://roughhandsbjj.com
- Mike Mahaffey — https://instagram.com/oldbastardbjj

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- Andrew Tate's arrest in Florida and the 42 charges waiting for him in the UK
- Why the manosphere and the administration still hold him up as a model of masculinity
- Two ICE killings at traffic stops, deaths in detention, and who answers for them
- Voting your pocketbook, and what a community loses when people only care once it hits them
- Class versus culture: who is actually making your life harder
- The "diarrhea lettuce" scandal and the FDA's apology to a major Trump donor
- Mitch McConnell's disappearance, Kentucky's empty seat, and the octogenarian problem
- Team-first versus me-first, in politics and in jiu-jitsu

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📖 Chapters:
00:00:00 — Judo at an advanced age and teaching EMS crews to fall
00:02:40 — Andrew Tate arrested, 42 charges, and the purple blouse
00:11:44 — Two ICE killings and the accountability that isn't coming
00:21:03 — Detention deaths and what you'd do if they came for you
00:25:00 — Coaches cheering this on while their communities suffer
00:28:44 — Why people only wake up when it hits their wallet
00:32:06 — Phone banking and the voter just trying to survive
00:37:11 — Nobody survives alone, and who's really to blame
00:40:04 — Diarrhea lettuce and the FDA's apology to a donor
00:44:03 — The jiu-jitsu parallel: team-first beats the selfish island
00:47:31 — Where is Mitch McConnell, and the octogenarian problem
01:00:08 — Photobombing Master Worlds and signing off

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Steve Kwan is joined by Jesse Walker of Rough Hands BJJ to talk about Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate whose campaign has come apart under a run of scandals: a Nazi-associated tattoo, credible sexual assault allegations, and more. They use his collapse to get at a harder question that runs through both politics and jiu-jitsu: why we keep excusing disqualifying behavior from people we want to believe in, and what it costs us when we do.

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👥 Featuring:
- Steve Kwan — https://bjjmentalmodels.com
- Jesse Walker — https://roughhandsbjj.com

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- Who Graham Platner is and how his campaign fell apart
- The Totenkopf tattoo and the "I didn't know what it meant" defense
- AIPAC, the rise of antisemitism, and where criticism of Israel ends and conspiracy begins
- Why we keep handing passes to people with disqualifying histories
- "Due process trolls" and why a courtroom standard isn't the bar for who we associate with
- How tolerating bad behavior normalizes it, and the Trump parallel
- The same rot in jiu-jitsu: protecting bad actors because they win or teach well
- Term limits, aging politicians, and elevating grassroots talent over big names

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📖 Chapters:
00:00 — Why Fighting Matters isn't a left-wing podcast
01:11 — Who is Graham Platner?
03:24 — The Totenkopf tattoo and the "I didn't know" defense
05:23 — A campaign in freefall
09:15 — AIPAC, antisemitism, and drawing the line
14:11 — Nazi tattoos are disqualifying, even accidental ones
16:38 — Two sets of rules and the Fetterman problem
20:00 — Purity tests vs. keeping your moral compass
24:10 — The jiu-jitsu parallel: bad teammates and PEDs
25:54 — Due process trolls
32:02 — Mamdani and elevating outsider talent
44:34 — Supporting bad actors in jiu-jitsu (Josh Saunders)
49:24 — Being good at jiu-jitsu is not a competitive edge
53:29 — Geriatric politicians and term limits
59:07 — Wrapping up: accountability in practice

In this episode of the Fighting Matters podcast, Steve Kwan is joined by Jesse Walker of Rough Hands BJJ and Mike Mahaffey of Old Bastard BJJ on the eve of America's 250th Fourth of July. They open with whether there's anything left to celebrate and end up somewhere harder: the same instinct to look away that got the country here is alive in jiu-jitsu too. The clearest example is Izaak Michell, invited to ADCC while wanted in Texas on sexual assault warrants, and the string of accused and convicted men the sport keeps platforming anyway.

🔗 Links Mentioned:
- The Find Out Podcast, "Ex-MAGA influencer explains why he abandoned Trump" — https://youtu.be/ylPlpgQygdU
- Magic BJJ — https://magicbjj.com

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👥 Featuring:
- Steve Kwan — https://bjjmentalmodels.com
- Jesse Walker — https://roughhandsbjj.com
- Mike Mahaffey — https://instagram.com/oldbastardbjj

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- America's 250th and the state of the July 4th "celebration"
- Rebuilding the country instead of defending the old institutions
- The normalization that links national politics to jiu-jitsu
- Izaak Michell, his ADCC invite, and the Texas arrest warrants
- Josh Saunders, Nazi salutes, and the "keep it non-political" excuse
- Why "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't settle the ethics
- How the sport risks going radioactive the way MMA once did
- Redemption tours, silence, and what speaking up actually does

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📖 Chapters:
00:00 — Big heads, Ace of Bass, and July 4th
02:40 — America's 250th: did the country even make it?
06:33 — Rebuilding the country, not restoring it
10:29 — Mask-off politics, the courts, and the truth
18:23 — How a MAGA influencer's fever broke
20:36 — Holding your nose, in politics and on the mats
24:10 — Who is Izaak Michell, and why ADCC invited him
30:01 — Josh Saunders and "keep it non-political"
35:34 — "Innocent until proven guilty" isn't a free pass
40:15 — What happened to MMA could happen to jiu-jitsu
44:47 — What will you tell your grandkids?
49:19 — No clean leagues left for ethical athletes
51:44 — The redemption tour: Tyson, McGregor, and ADCC
53:07 — What we can actually do about it
56:50 — Closing thoughts and where to find everyone