Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Discussions on improving your BJJ, navigating mat-politics and all aspects of the jiu jitsu lifestyle. Multiple weekly episodes for grapplers of any level. Hosted by JT and Joey - Australian jiu jitsu black belts, strength coaches, and creators of Bulletproof For BJJ App. Based out of Sydney, Australia
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Cauliflower Ear IS A Rite Of Passage In BJJ
Why does it seem like there is a new guard in BJJ and they are avoiding cauliflower ear like the plague AND would even go so far as to call it ugly... SHAME. Cauliflower ear is a literal and figurative symbol of the lumps you have taken along the way. Maybe you love your cauliflower ear, maybe you hate it, but as far as we're concerned it's not going anywhere. Let us know in the comments your cauli stories...
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From time to time, I find myself meeting a jujitsu person, someone that maybe listens to the show, or someone that's perhaps seen some of our stuff on social media, and I find myself sadly coming to learn from this individual that they have a partner, a boyfriend or a girlfriend who doesn't think that their cauliflower ears are attractive, and so this podcast is a message, a message to that person to let them know that I, that we, actually think you are more attractive because of your cauliflower ears, and let it be known that, if you don't have cauliflower ears, that your potential to be even more beautiful than you already are is awaiting you on the horizon. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2:Better listen very carefully. Enjoy the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready.
Speaker 1:Hey, so it's come to my attention somewhat recently that there are brethren of ours within this jujitsu community who in fact believe that cauliflower ears are not attractive but boo, boo earns.
Speaker 2:What are you thinking? Cauliflower ears are the I'm, I'm, I love them, I'm all in. I mean, once you got them, what are you?
Speaker 1:gonna do? I mean I, I gotta say I probably dug them before I had them you admire them yeah, yeah, that's right. It's not like the ear itself. If you were to take that ear off and put it on a in a frame on the wall, that's a perfect ear. It's just like. But it's like, it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a well there's something admirable about them yeah, you gotta know the pain if you, if you have even had the small amount of collie, it hurts Like you can't even lie on that. Like when you first get them you're like, oh, I can't even. It's very sensitive, it's so sensitive and so to work through that, to stick a freaking needle in your ear, pull the blood out and persist through that nonsense. You're a determined person, whatever you might say. People who build cauliflower ears over time that's a fucking hard-headed person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I do think that they have. I do think now that I've got, because I got my first one three months in, right Right, and then my other one came up, I don't know, probably over the next seven years, and then now they haven't changed for like they're kind of locking.
Speaker 2:They get fixed.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah and so I feel like what they indicate to someone is actually much greater than what it actually took me to get them. Like there was very little toughness for me to get that first one. I just drilled this takedown incorrectly for like a couple of weeks and then boof, yeah, and then, you know, I go to a bar and the bouncer, like whoa cauliflower, is bro. What kind of fighting you do. I'm like I've done like five jiu-jitsu classes.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean yeah, yeah and look, I got mine from ripping. My first really bad cauliflower was from ripping my head out of triangles. I was getting triangled a ton because I was just like leaving my head and arm in and instead of learning like a proper defense or changing my game, I just kept ripping my head out, kept breaking my ear down, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But so at that time I was living in St Kilda and fucking at that time I mean, st Kilda's cleaned up a little bit a lot of junkies. So when I went to the chemist I'm like I'd like a one mil diabetic needle. They're like, show us your diabetics card. I'm like, look at my fucking ear, dude. Like I'm not a fucking junkie, I'm trying to pull blood out my fucking ear. And the guy was like, oh yeah, they're like whoa, whoa, whoa. This guy's a gladiator Shit. Give him the needles, man.
Speaker 1:No, but they were, they were very grudging and I was like, look there's no track, it's so sus going into a fucking chemist and asking for needles Right.
Speaker 2:But the crazy thing was I you know we've talked about this before I struggled to get help. I went what the no? And here's the crazy thing. This is how I knew I loved cauliflower ears. Someone on Instagram posted a three-by-three square of like A, b, c, d cauliflower ears. It said name these like tag below who owns these cauliflowers? I can name six of the nine.
Speaker 2:Really Bro, wow I was like BJ Penn, like I could just, you know, I could just pick them and I was like wow. I was like Valish Ishmael. I was like Valish, uh, it was crazy to me that I actually knew, because I saw these people who are amazing at MMA or jujitsu and I looked at their ears and I'm like whoa, that's fucked up. But maybe there's a correlation with if your ears are more fucked up, are you also really good at the thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know and look, there's some people out there who don't have them, some people don't get them right.
Speaker 1:Speak to me about these pussies. I mean, well, yeah, I mean I feel like some people get really hard done by in this jiu-jitsu journey. Adam Childs, my coach, our friend Soft friend soft is is, it just is normal, they're just for listening. You could not know. No, he can put earphones in them and shit, no problem. Yeah, you could put a suit on and you'd think he was an accountant.
Speaker 1:There you go, you know hodja gracie hodja doesn't have them not really yeah, actually come to think of it, a lot of those and a lot of the gracies.
Speaker 2:Like did hoyla hoist today yeah, yeah, for sure, I think, from mma yeah more from h from MMA, yeah, more from direct striking, wrestling, more than the jiu-jitsu path, like. Even have a look at Bradley Westema, that guy, adcc champion Shanji doesn't have a lot of cauliflower either, does he? No. No, it's interesting Pussy Weak, probably not actually that good.
Speaker 1:You know, obviously avoiding the grind. Clearly, it is fascinating, right, that for some people they just don't get them, and I feel like that's what. Like we have it with hands at the gym when new people come to the gym and they always complain their hands hurt because the skin is weak, right, of course, and then over time they develop some calluses and then they don't complain anymore, of course. And I think that's the same thing with ears. I'm like you know, it flared up over the first initial years of my jiu-jitsu and then stopped, and it's like the ears just toughen up and get used to a bit of trauma.
Speaker 2:And I think, as you get better at jiu-jitsu, you less inefficient, grindy things, yeah, which means you're probably not putting your head in a bad spot. You, you know, you, you got better awareness, you don't brute things as much and therefore it maybe it, it unpeels. But then we have people who just go harder and harder. You know, whether it's jujitsu, like the meow, like meow brothers, those guys love, those guys are just like the embodiment of physical trauma.
Speaker 1:Not like I'm not talking about you know, um, like childhood emotional, yeah stuff. I'm just talking about bodies that have just been through the fucking ringer and they're just carrying scars and they obviously love it, yes, because they seem to do nothing about. Like they're just I don't know if they even, if there's even a word for rehab in their vocabulary, no, but like they're just so fucking real to me it's, and it's really. I mean, I find it so fascinating to look at them. Hey, like you look at photos of me, see me. You're like, oh man, look at his knee, look how his foot turns out, you know, like when they put pictures of their fingers.
Speaker 1:Fingers yeah, all fucked up Brutal.
Speaker 2:Super fascinating. There is a cost to all these things. But what, see back in the days, I would say probably late 20s, early 30s, I was single-ish, you know, kind of hadn't quite found the right girl. I would get really weird, like because person sitting across me doesn't know anything about jujitsu mma and they're just like I felt like I felt I was like being in a position of being a woman who might have certain physical endowments, where guys don't pay attention to your face, they're looking down or they're you know this kind of thing. Yeah, and this one girl, she, she couldn't stop looking at my ears and I I said, oh, my cauliflowers, this is, you know, because it was getting away a conversation and she said is it a birth defect?
Speaker 1:and I was like no, these are no not at all.
Speaker 2:I explained to her I got a bunch of those. It's not an extra chromosome.
Speaker 1:No, I explained to her. I got a bunch of those, but that's not it.
Speaker 2:That's not it. It's not an extra chromosome. No, I was trying to explain to her how I did it and she's like, why didn't you stop? And I was like conversation over Goodbye, because I look like a fucking sick man. You pick up the bill, bitch? No, it was one of those things. That Way. More guys had cauliflower ears, not just from jujitsu but from boxing from all kinds of things yeah.
Speaker 2:And I was like oh, it's more common here culturally and it was far more accepted. And I think, as MMA has become more popular and jujitsu has become more popular, I had a barber be like oh you fight bro. Like he was giving me mad respect. Yeah, barbers are pretty onto it Because he was just you it, because sometimes they pull your ear to the side. He's like that's not too rough on yours, is it, brother? And I'm like mate, go hard, I feel nothing.
Speaker 1:You could hang off my ear, no problem, it's a rock. Hold you just fucking. We know you struggle in the gym. Most people do. Jt and I both train in gyms and those places are full of people who don't. So JT and I built an app. It's called Bulletproof for BJJ and it is exactly the app for you. It's going to teach you how to get strong and how to get flexible, specifically for jiu-jitsu, and it's going to require that you go to the gym like a couple days a week, so it's not going to take much time out of your schedule, but in exchange, you're going to get stronger, better performance, less injuries and you're going to look better. So all you need to do to start your two-week free trial right now is go to the App Store, search Bulletproof for BJJ, download the app and connect with JT and I so that we can help make you Bulletproof for BJJ. I mean, you're obviously not dating private school girls, because I feel like that's the only cultural click where. Because rugby boys, rugby, sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you come from that Ivy League, kind of like you know Joey's boys, or like, yeah, private schools Potentially. And that's usually people's first thing is like, oh, you play rugby.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I'm like nah, bro, I was always too small for that, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and look, I have some favorite cauliflower ears. Who you got, randy Couture? Yep, Right up there, yep.
Speaker 1:I can't picture them, but I know. I've always thought Randy a very handsome man he is, and the ears were part of that.
Speaker 2:Brutally handsome. Bj Penn. These are some pretty swollen ears. By the way, these are cauliflower ears at the extreme.
Speaker 1:Bj Penn had that heavy top Very swollen at the top.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a ball, yeah, almost like a golf. I say I love them not because I would want that cauliflower ear, just because it is the extreme end of it. Epitomizes like crazy intense dedication to the art. Yeah, shinya Aoki, ah yeah.
Speaker 1:Did he?
Speaker 2:have a real spiky one. He kind of like juts out a bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:I remember seeing it and being like, ooh, it's rough. Yeah, do you have any favorite Collies?
Speaker 1:Like I kind of do, but it's been a while. I always liked Joe Lauzon. Yeah, I always liked his head and his ears and he always had that kind of buzz cut like me at the moment and his ears were just like big wing nuts, yeah, and he's kind of like a thin sort of guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I always dug his. None other really come to mind, but you know who I've been thinking about recently. So you know it's funny with jiu-jitsu and I think this is how you often tell jiu-jitsu cats is because if they're fortunate, lucky, blessed enough to have cauliflower ears, is that they usually have a very intact face. Yeah, so you'll see like an accountant face and then rough Wing nuts right, and you're like, oh pro jiu-jitsu, whereas when you see someone that has done like wrestling or rugby, they usually have like cauliflower face as well they have, you know sometimes, yeah, the brow comes over, sometimes the nose will have been broken, like that's a classic rugby.
Speaker 1:Look, isn't it? Yeah, um, you know, you'll see like sort of more protrusions at the cheekbones and the chin and then the ears, and you're like, okay, so, yeah, probably not jujitsu. Um, makes me think of that young kid, is it?
Speaker 2:uh, dorian olivares yes, so it was like kasai champ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's like top 10 on flow for wrestling and jujitsu, right, yes, and he's, he's young and he just not that long ago beat luke griffiths.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was wild.
Speaker 1:He was like 66 griffiths, like 100 plus 120. Griffith had his back, had his back and then he just fucking gets out and then took griffith's back. He's just tenacious as fuck, wild match and and he's got that cauliflower head where you're like. That is a head that has been through wars like a wrestler. I'm guessing most of that's from his wrestling career, but dude's not. I don't even know if he's 20 like he's young as fuck.
Speaker 1:Young but old yeah, worn and and so like full respect. Oh yeah, like I love that. I just I think it's so fascinating, right. Like I was saying about looking at the meow brothers, I remember it's like tattoos were when we were young, where when you saw, like when I was, when I was in my 20s I remember I was working in the film industry back then I remember seeing guys on set, some guys who had tattoos, and it would usually Tough, it meant something. It's like oh fuck, pain. Well, yeah, fuck, has that guy done time? Or was he some kind like what was his deal right? And tattoos actually told a story. They weren't just an aesthetic piece. That's right Now. Tattoo means nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everyone's getting tattoos.
Speaker 1:Every cunt's got them. It's a fashion accessory, right, true? But so I feel like the cauliflower ears and the colly face and all that. It tells a story about someone, and I find that very fascinating. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:And I think that we see this across all martial arts. Like I knew a security guard at the Rialto who was a kung fu guy and his knuckles were crazy hardened, like they were so swollen and like I mean he couldn't actually open his hand fully because the knuckle would prohibit, yeah, but he was breaking bricks. He was like like hand conditioning right. Yeah, because he was like if it ever comes to a fight, my hand is not going to break. Yeah, like he's calcified those joints Like a dim Mac time. Yeah, dude, because I shook his hand a couple of times and I noticed that his grip wasn't really strong but he never fully gripped and it was just because he said, oh, my fingers hurt a lot. And I said, oh, said, what's that from he's like, from beating like he's like.
Speaker 2:I used to work on the um wooden dummy for wing chung. He done wing chung, he done all kinds of styles of kung fu and he used to punch the and they used to have rope. The rope was there to soften punching the timber for the, the wooden dummy oh right, you're like the rope wrapped around the-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're like that's the soft part.
Speaker 2:That's the relieving part, what the fuck. And I think that this idea of physical conditioning, we like to remove it, but actually there's huge value in it. Like, don't get me wrong, I say my cauliflower ears come from a degree of ignorance, like it's kind of me a very dumb phase in Blue Belt really, when it really popped off both ears. But now I learned from it. What I like about cauliflower ears at least my own is the softest part of another person's body, which is their ears, is actually one of the hardest parts of my body. Oh, and I can gouge your fucking eye out with my ear. My ear's a weapon, so I'll get you inside a little spoon it's a little fucking god your eye out with a spoon, yeah.
Speaker 2:And what's crazy is oftentimes people want to touch your ear. It's kind of funny. I've had guys be like can I touch? Can I touch your ear, bro? Because they want to know is it soft or is it cushy? Because when you first get them they're kind of like they're just these balloons of blood until it calcifies and then it's a fucking rock and it's like, oh God. Like people go, oh my God, so hard. Like, yeah, because I'm a warrior.
Speaker 1:No, it's a funny thing. Yeah, so you know. I guess the takeaway from this is if you know someone maybe it's a significant other, or maybe it's just one of your mates that you catch up to play pickleball with on the weekends, as you do, and they don't think that you are beautiful because of your cauliflower ears, you need to fuck that person off out of your life and find somebody who loves you for your cauliflower ears, appreciate you for your co-fairies, appreciates you for who you are there it is.
Speaker 1:See you on the next one.
Speaker 2:Shoo.
