Konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. You got me? Konnichiwa and welcome to Minimum Effort Podcast. Today I am here with my co-horst.
Co-horse. Co-host. That was all on purpose. Co-horse. JJ.
Host. Co-host. JJ.
And I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Mankin. Hey, Mankin.
Hi Minkin. Hey, how's it going? It's good.
Alright. So, tell me about Poland. Poland. Yeah, so Poland was really fun.
The tournament went pretty well. So starting off, let's give shoutouts where shoutouts are due. Kellyanne Ball becoming number two, number two in the world, right? You know, if you remember her first tournament at the world stage was Alabama, right? And she went...
and she went from that to becoming number two in the world right that that this is wild this is wild right yeah so pretty pretty impressive pretty impressive it's quite amazing amazing. And then the women's team got third place again. Women's team back to back, back to back with that, uh, with that bronze, with that bronze women's team, really putting in that work.
I, I, I shed a lot of tears of happiness during, during this, uh, during this. So that was fun. Yeah. Especially for the women.
yeah women juniors some of the dudes some of the dudes it's rough man it's rough yeah it was rough yeah it was rough watching some of this stuff i i was very impressed by the ladies. The ladies were really good. I mean, for the men's team, you couldn't have pulled a worse pick than Japan on the first run.
This is the thing. The team was really positive about it and they were trying to make lemonade out of lemons, right? Which was cool because they're like, well, if they beat Japan, it shakes the world, right? That would be rad, right?
But even if they lose, that puts them into, it puts them still into repercharge. So they're still within a medal, right? Which was pretty cool. I thought that was a really good look at it. You know?
Yeah, it is definitely. It's better to be positive about it than to be... Like, oh, I'm not going to win.
There's no way we're going to come back from this. And in that particular day, Japan, their juniors, I don't know if you noticed it or not. They won everything. Every division. I watched the whole thing, but I can't recall.
I can tell you. I can tell you. Juniors won every division.
You've been in class. Yes, teams, everything, they want everything. Makes sense. It was for juniors that make sense. It does make sense.
If you really think about it, right, you're like, they probably been messing around with sumo since they were like little, little kids, right? And anyone else, it's probably not the case, probably started doing it maybe. Top three to five years, maybe tops somewhere in that neighborhood, right? As an average, they're just adapting different styles into sumo.
So, you know, I feel like that was like a situation that I had to explain to some of the juniors, like this is why. And then when it gets into the adult division, it changes up a little bit, right? Changes up.
and it's because people have time to marinate within the styles and embrace their own physicalities and stuff and find their own similar style as adults but uh a little bit about your juniors jj all right let's talk about juniors um so we had the most uh so the most impressive would be malik for sure uh malik uh got all the way up to uh I want to say semifinals, right? Would that be semifinals? So he got up to the semifinals, fighting for third. He ends up losing.
I do have to say there was a little back and forth between Bulgaria, who I like one person on the team, and the United States. And it was mainly them standing in front of everybody and bumping of heads. And when Malik beat Bulgaria, it felt real good.
It felt really, really good. I am not that petty of a person, but at that moment, sure was. Because they were yelling at me, I was yelling back, it definitely got weird.
The setup for like a coach to be in the mix was not there, right? So I had to kind of be all the way on the backside of the stage and just kind of like try to project my voice. I'm really happy that... All of the people that kind of train with me can hear me, which was good, right? Because I have a particular style where I put my hand over my mouth and I give them a couple cues at the beginning just so that they can hear me.
And it's like, nod your head if you can hear me. Make sure you do this. Just like where they have to listen, do something, and then that's their answer back.
And from there, that's why you can see like. With Malik, I'm able to like really kind of pop into his head and tell him to do things as he's going. And you know what I find amazing about Malik is this, I mean, he always liked sumo, but this really inspired him. Like he came out wanting more, right?
Yes, yes. And he was like, his mom texted me like, Malik wants to go to Japan and train. I was like, oh dang, okay. yeah um speaking of that we uh we're working on him getting out there to train a little bit um and uh i might go to oh maybe maybe well let me know so i can tell uh so i can tell uh oh no don't don't worry it's because i'm trying to also set up something with uh tasasago oh nice with uh you our main man and uh maybe hit up yama so there there's like if if we're going stables i need to kind of help a little bit just so that he feels more comfortable um yeah so i i we we're we're working on some stuff okay cool cool cool cool cool yep cool i think the better training would be at a university though a hundred percent But there is a spiritual, there's a spiritual thing where, like, yeah. Who were you most surprised by for the juniors?
The heart of Ziba. Ziba, yeah. Her heart is, it's huge.
It's huge. Like, she went out there and she really started to, like, develop her style of sumo. Right?
And I've never seen. At first, I thought she was having, like, a breakdown. I was like, see, it's okay. But she was crying and laughing when she connected with Estonia.
Where the Estonian girl was like, I'm just going to pick you up. She's like, ah. I was like, it's okay, you know.
Like, I thought she might be embarrassed. or something along those lines no she was like this is the best and she really like bonded she really bonded with them right and like made i think some of the best friends of her life which that's what it's about man that's what it's about yeah i agree and uh jaheim was there he couldn't compete because of like the when we got the passport and all of that stuff it didn't work out but he was there and he was ready to fight like like i saw him basically foaming from the mouth in the lightweight division and he was like shadow gripping he uh he was a part of the team training uh he really was like i got this next year he liked it a lot yeah yeah yeah that's a lie because On Saturdays and Sundays, we always have about 12 students, and that was while you were there. So you're focusing on particular individuals that weren't there, but then you also got different individuals that were injured or whatever to come through. So you are just insecure for no reason. Never mind that.
my insecurities let's talk about boland a little bit more let's keep talking about boland also let's give a shout out to him uh he has the energy that every introvert wants to have right like he is like a firecracker of explosive energy and i was like oh i can't keep up i couldn't keep up i as soon as i was like hey huh you got to talk to him yeah yeah yeah we we spoke a little bit and of course i'm like i think me and you might be closer mentally as possible like than i actually think originally because i was like hey what's up man i'm blah blah blah and he goes hey i know who you are blah blah blah watch every episode and then he starts talking and i'm like oh right yes yes and then i was like behind my hat Where's my JJ for life hat? Yeah, it was a lot. It was a lot of awesome.
I lost you completely. I missed that whole story. You missed the whole story?
Yeah. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can hear you now. So you gotta read you the story.
I could. Just know, just know that... I thought I was introducing Minimum Effort Podcast to him, and he was like, I already know who you are, I watch all your episodes, and then just went from there.
I was like, okay, alright. And then I just went shy boy and was like... I always think that we're just like speaking into the nothing, but apparently people are... People fucks with us.
People watch it, which is strange, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's strange.
We only spend it because we're like, let's do something. I'm bored. Yeah, and I'm just trying to bond our friendship even more.
Yeah. And then now we have a logo. We have a podcast.
We have merchandise, kind of. It's crazy. Oh. Okay.
So, what was the atmosphere like? A lot of emotions. Did it feel kind of like Japan? Like last year?
No. No. Japan felt...
kind of magical. This one felt like ones and twos, right? It felt like it was, you just kind of come in, you do what you got to do and call it a day from there. Like it wasn't that same thing, right?
And I think it was just the fact that we weren't in Japan, you know, you feel me? Yeah, the place where sumo started, right? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It just felt different. Also. I did not have Christina with me, which probably affected a little bit of me, right?
And then you were the official head coach this year, too. I was the official head coach, and I never really had time to sit back and enjoy anything. It was all about supporting the athletes. That was my job, and I think I did an okay job. Okay job.
I don't know. You could ask other people. Most people probably said you did a great job.
Who knows? I think so. Yeah. Call someone up right now. Hey, guys.
I know. Definitely not doing that. Definitely not doing that.
Here we are again on the Minimum Effort Podcast. Thank you for calling in. Yeah, we just cold call somebody and be like, hey, what did you think about JJ's performance?
Should I call Seth Adams? Like, hey, hey, Sensei Seth. You don't have his number.
He's unlisted. I'll just call him on the thing, the Instagram. No, it's probably business accounts, so he can't receive calls from other people.
There it is. There it is. Just message him.
This is Megan from the Minimum Effort Podcast. I would like to hear your thoughts about JQ as head coach. A little bit behind the scenes, I did make a survey, just trying to see what people thought of my performance.
and the overall experience and that kind of stuff and support from the federation and the federation has all of that information so if you want to find out anything just go ahead and reach out to them they'll give you that data i don't want to give you that data because i like uh people to have their um privacy but who knows about the federation i don't know um so yeah uh so then i guess let's talk about the ladies um madison uh literally kicked butt right like i i got there i was like hey you're gonna be the first one up let's go ahead and tie you up um jacob tied her up her her boyfriend and he did a great job on that then we go in the back and then it's all about kind of like focusing her style of sumo into sumo right because she has she comes with mma experience she comes with a lot of grappling experience purple belt in jiu-jitsu wrestling like all of these things right and then the only problem is she doesn't have that kernel of of sumo there right and her grappling can get her pretty far because she's an athletic monster right So then we go in the back and I just kind of start working with her Sariashi and giving her the reasons, right? This is one of my favorite, my favorite things when I'm talking to someone that understands grappling, like actual grappling and just trying to give them like a quick shot of, of, of knowledge. So then we do Sariashi. I fixed a little bit of her arm positioning, like the reason why we do it because some of the things were a little off. And then we worked on just some Butskari, just back and forth.
And then her Shikos and just like, just really embracing the step away. Just do Shikos, just do them until you're like, you get a good sweat on, right? And then every time you go in, you adjust their Shiko.
Like, why are you doing this with this? Like, what's the point of turning the toes? What's the point of this, right?
And again, she's an athletic monster. right so she can go through a full range of motion but understanding what her her body position needs to be right so just the dialing that in and then from there just then working in just pummeling right because the women's lightweight division every lady out there is like a beach wrestler and some kind of uh like folk style wrestling right they have some kind of system so yeah everything that she has is valid we just have to uh blend the two together right so that was nice um and then she ended up getting to uh to uh semi-finals also yeah she fought for third um so that was that was pretty freaking awesome um then we had um leah who no i guess it would have went ashley first so Ashley, then Leah. Ashley, same thing. She's tuned in.
She understands my system. She can hear my voice from across the way. There was a quick adjustment that we had to do. She listened and fixed that adjustment.
And it had to do with like hand positioning and a couple other things. Right. And if you go back and listen to to to worlds, you could probably hear me. put your hand on her face oh i can't find that yeah yeah oh oh yeah oh yeah so i say it and she like as she's walking up and she goes so she nods her head she steps in and then she goes for it right oh hell yeah that's what's up she ends up getting knocked out by um um haraguchi from brazil and you know It's She's amazing she's amazing yeah right um then we had leah leah did a great job she um she came in a little underweight a little underweight and she put up a lot of effort and man that second match that second match of hers was the best match i've ever seen she almost threw her she almost tripped Like, you keep watching that, you're like, man, she had that match.
She had it. Had it. Woo!
Tough match. And then, of course, like, Kellyanne. Kellyanne went out and did the Kellyanne.
It was systematic. Great approach. Yep.
Yep. I mean, she just, she has. As Yama put it for the Sokkao opening, he's like, Miyokozuna. Because she doesn't, you know, you can see, and then she'll be like, she can judge someone's, how good someone is, and then, you know, she doesn't, she's not aggressive, too aggressive, she's not, you know, what do you say, she's not overly excited, calmly.
Yeah, he's a person now. You know what's crazy? She rolled her ankle. right before yeah like bad bad and i was like what are we doing like and i saw it she stepped and when you look like you're like oh everything looks eat like level she stepped in a hole and twisted her ankle yeah and she still killed it still killed it um but that's if you watch the team tournament i think that's why she ends up getting tripped by uh i forgot who it was but it's it's it shows in that one where it's like damn it um what else is there oh and then we got the dudes got the dudes dudes went out um ed lightweight so first draw was against uh japan And this is the thing.
What kind of draw did you give him? Okay, so this is the thing. I can show the videos.
I don't have any control. There's no control. There's no control.
But Ed gets that draw. And let me just say it. Joe, you doubted him. You're like, oh, I guess he's just going to lose to Japan and go.
Joe, didn't happen. Didn't happen, Joe. Didn't happen. nope he went out there and demolished him so how about that how about that he did destroy japan that was pretty i mean yeah it was uh yeah yeah but i mean he by far had the toughest bracket like japan and then after that it was ukraine ukraine arrested yeah so so that's because he was uh he was seated or whatever do you see i thought they don't see did you see actually kind of they see it a little they see it a little it's very confusing like i can show you how they do things and it's very confusing um but he ends up going out and against ukraine a half second difference he won he came out oh yeah no good approach great a great um intensity um and he slipped and right when he slipped ukraine slipped let me tell you something dude picked up a crap ton of weight i was like hey man what's up and i like gave him like uh like a like a hug and i felt like i just grabbed a chimpanzee yeah like what the ukraine ukraine uh yeah uh is it dimitri Something like that.
Maybe I think. I'm really bad with international names. It's the American.
But I was like, whoa, whoa, which was wild. And lightweight was slamming. Ed ended up going way too aggressive in his next match and lost to Finland, which he shouldn't have lost to. No, Ed should have gotten the medal.
That was it. He should have gotten bronze. yeah i think i think ed is better than most of the competition out there yeah ed ed honestly not not honestly honestly if if the bracket was changed up a little bit ed would have won right if he would have thought he would have gotten a medal at least maybe maybe silver maybe silver honestly like you move the bracket around a little bit and that's because they're you know there's a couple there's a couple stinkers out there right like we don't need to say who or whatever but there's a couple countries out there that need to develop a little bit more they're not really there and ed's on like the top tier of my own personal thing top five top five in lightweight individuals yeah yeah and then once you found out that like bulgaria had a hip injury oh he did he still got to third yeah yeah joseph had had a hip injury and he got him still got the third yeah yeah exactly so there's like opportunity for like greatness there and he's right there he's literally right there he ended up getting next year i was surprised how much in his feelings he was uh you know i was like i know i've been there but you won't stay there you won't stay there buddy your feelings are valid I guess next year. That you'll get over. I guess next year.
Oh, yeah. 100%. 100%. I mean, I don't see anybody beating Ed.
The national no, the national game needs to be it's stepping up. So Ed's going to have to keep training correctly and focus in on what he's doing because there are some guys that are kind of coming for him. Not me. Not me.
Wait, what? Hey. No. Hey. What?
Wait, like what? Hey, I'm like the top. five.
Top seven. You're somewhere in the top ten. I will give you that.
But this is the problem. You don't know how to focus. And Ed is all focus. Maybe a little too much focus. Yes, yes.
It's just um... it was just a an approach issue and right you have to narrow things down a little bit for what what the task is right but lesson learned fix it from there right whatever um and then in uh middleweight we had uh nobody so we could just skip that right away let's see yeah there's nobody there nobody there um which i kind of just took the time off because i have to tell you something i was really stressed i was really stressed the player was stressed out man um so i disappeared for a second like collected my thoughts got some coffee tried to eat some food kind of couldn't eat any food i didn't eat a donut i found a donut i ate a donut it was good it had pistachios on it and a pistachio cream inside once again Those Polish people, they can bake their ass off is quite good. They know how to bake stuff, yeah. Oh, yeah.
So then after that, right, we had men's light heavy. And Seth really put in some effort, man. oh no yeah watch it i was like oh yeah dang uh probably i don't want to rank people because i know everybody but probably the best performing male i think result wise i think that's that's true that's true um but honestly that's kind of the nature of the beast when you look at it like um it's going to be like that um for people and the reason it's going to be like that is most of the dudes were new um except for angel angel has competed on the world stage outside of that everybody was new right and it's just like being able to go out there and kind of feel that pressure and work with it right so overall it's not it's not bad um let me tell you something though i will say Middleweight's real big. Like, real big. Like, I don't know if I'm in the right division anymore. I might have to cut back down to lightweight.
You're pretty big, too. I'm not that big, man. I'm not as big as these guys, man. Like, I looked at them and I was like, my frame ain't like that, man.
I don't know if this makes sense. That's why I'm staying under 85, man. I can't...
i'm already 85 and i'm already small so dude it's it's crazy and then i looked at like i looked at light heavyweight and i was like why are these people not heavyweights it was strange it was real strange and then in heavyweights i think that most of them were actually kind of small like there were some heavyweights that big heavyweights no no we didn't have any like like you know like any overlooks right where they're just like oh and then pour over another yeah yeah well yes there was a few of the guys were in open way i'm like man this is this is wild like i i don't know i think jay legit might have been the biggest guy in that weight class yeah i can see that yeah and not not in the tournament not in the tournament because From Ukraine, that dude is huge. That guy is huge. He's like, what, 6'6", and he's like 450 pounds, I think. Sure. I don't know. 500 pounds. Sure. This is the thing. He's so big that it doesn't make sense to me. yeah right it's like my brain just kind of turns things off like even one of my best best friends neville right neville is what six six or something like that sometimes when i stand next to him i just disappear mentally maybe also physically but mentally i like disappear just like and i just don't think about the fact that he's like almost like a foot taller than me right it's crazy like i'm five i'm five eight i'm five eight eight six six it's almost a foot taller this is crazy it's crazy but yeah i think this is a great spot to end overall i think that um we showed up where we we kind of showed the world that we're here we're developing and that we need more coaches We need more coaches. Not one person. We need a head coach and an assistant coach. Yeah. So take me, assistant coach. Um, so I did reach out to the Federation and I pitched a couple of different things, right? I pitched like the idea of like a head coach and being able to hire a staff or something like that, or having a budget of some sorts or something along those lines. It will probably fall to deaf ears, but you know, whatever, whatever. I know what I think we need. if if if we have a full roster um we're definitely going to need additional people right like if we have um what's it 18 if we have 18 competitors we definitely need more more people because teams doesn't have to be teams can be different competitors teams can be different competitors and i also think that we should think about that think about that right maybe uh uh like the the thing about it is everybody wants more time on the on the dojo i get it i get it but i do think that maybe a second place or something like that or a person that You think, man, this guy is like right there, you know, like maybe putting them on the team might make sense. You know, I don't know. It's just there's there's ways to do things like Japan has. They have a team, but then there's not everybody on the team was in the weight division. So it kind of makes they mix that up in all the different divisions, right, for ladies. And then so they end up having like, damn, there are 30 people walking around. It was wild. But that's like an opportunity, right? And I think that the future is bright and we're going to kill it coming up soon. I believe, I believe this. We're going to next year, more medals. More medals. I think that next year we will have two male medals. That's my prediction. Is that two? Two. I don't do that. I don't do that. but we're gonna have two world medals i can almost guarantee it all right are you gonna keep it keep your secret who it is of course we're like what are we doing here yeah we're not trying to jinx it either so yeah i i'm doing a soft prediction then from there actually it is still in the scheme of things it's a pretty wild prediction so whatever still We should do our prediction episode for next year again. Okay. Bet. And we should stay in amateur sumo. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to do it. I haven't been watching enough professional sumos. Me either. Me either. I fell off. But this is a great place to end. Thank you for being a friend. Coming down the road and back again. Minkin, your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant. Your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant. You're a pal and you can't treat me like that.