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McDojoLife (@mcdojolife) is one of my all time favorite accounts on all of Instagram. The page exposes fake and fraudulent martial artists who teach people tactics such as no-touch knockouts. No only does Rob expose fakes, but he exposes conmen who rip off their students and convicted sex offenders and pedophiles who work with children in martial arts. He is basically a real life super hero!
Rob wouldn’t even tell me his last name because he regularly gets death threats from the cult-like followers of the schools he takes down. So we just know him as McDojoLife Rob!
The McDojoLife Instagram account has over 300k followers and is followed by tons of celebrities like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, and Kelly Slater. There is just something about the bullshit martial arts videos that McDojoLife posts that grabs our attention.
In this podcast episode, Rob talks about how he first got involved in martial arts before the days of McDojoLife. As a child he had a cleft palate and required many surgeries and his mother wouldn’t let him participate in sports despite his pleading. But that all changed after some bullies at school beat the crap out of him one day and a friend encouraged him to try martial arts. He started with karate, but eventually moved on to sample a wide variety of martial arts like boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, taekwondo, and Brazilian jiu jitsu.
During the podcast episode with Rob, we discuss many theories as to why people follow these fake martial arts masters. We talk about how the rise of MMA and the UFC have shed some light on what works and what doesn’t. Rob teaches me the genius behind the sales tactics that are used to encourage people to enter these fake dojos and how to avoid falling for their scams. He tells the story of Xu Xiaodong, a Chinese MMA fighter who has challenged fake martial artists to real fights and exposed them as frauds.
According to Rob, there should be five rules that all martial arts should agree to:
- No pedophiles
- No mislabeling/no-touch knockouts
- Don’t rip people off
- Train safely
- Don’t like about belt rank or fight record
Rob and McDojoLife are currently in the process of putting together a documentary about fake martial arts which they hope to shop to places like Netflix. Rob has launched a crowdfunding campaign and hopes to start shooting in August. If you go to the Instagram page @mcdojolifedoc and donate there, you get access to exclusive content as well.
If you enjoyed this episode, you might want to check out the episode with Daniele Bolelli where we discuss different philosophies of martial arts. Also, you might want to check out my book, The Cage: Escaping the American Dream, where I detail my journey from Wall Street bond trader to professional MMA fighter.