Nick Dunn (@nicktheear)
a.k.a. “The Favorite”
The crew's real martial artist. When the table needs someone to actually choke a man out, it's Nick.
JK News / Off The Record cast member — the resident strength & conditioning + martial-arts guy. Earned his BJJ black belt (~Dec 2023), documented across multiple OTR episodes. Deliberately private about personal life on-show.
Where's Nick from? He keeps that close to the vest — the man famously won't even tell the table where he lives.
# At the Table 3
candids from the set — tap to expand
# How Nick Got to the Table
Nick knew the guys from the gym first. A strength coach and jiu-jitsu player, he was rolling with and coaching the JK guys — Joe Jitsukawa especially — and turning up in the David So / GeniusBrain podcast orbit (billed 'Nick The Ear w/ Joe Jitsukawa') by 2019, long before he had a seat. By the time the Careful Boyz had a name in 2021, the quiet coach was one of them.
# Brands & Businesses
His strength & conditioning + online coaching brand (NTE = 'Nick The Ear'). Based in Pasadena (2176 E Colorado Blvd). Bio at /nick-the-ear.
Pasadena BJJ academy he trains/teaches with (1790 E Washington Blvd). IG @lionheartjiujitsuacademy.
Where he does fitness + personal training in Pasadena.
# Lore at the Table
- 'Nick the Ear' the handle that became the name (@nicktheear). To grapplers the cauliflower ear is a badge of honor; to Nick it's just the brand across the gym and the show.
- Nick Won't Tell Us Where He Lives the signature running gag. To the cast he's the vault; to Nick it's boundaries, played for laughs. It got its own episode (and a prequel, 'Nick Refuses to Tell Us Anything About Himself').
- Secretly Competed so on-brand that even his jiu-jitsu tournaments were a secret until the cast pried it out of him ('Nick Secretly Competed in a Jiu-Jitsu Tournament!').
- The Black Belt arc the payoff to years of quiet grind: 'Nick's Journey to Black Belt' → 'Nick is Officially a Black Belt in BJJ' (~Dec 2023). The cast's certified martial-arts legitimacy.
- The one who could actually choke you out the legit fighter in the room: a former amateur MMA fighter and BJJ black belt who coaches combat sports for a living. When grappling comes up, Nick is the authority.
- From Fitness to FAME the show's own framing of his origin: the coach who became a cast member, with a full career in fitness and martial arts before the camera found him.
- The tuba origin Nick's self-described 'non-fictional X-Man origin story': as a kid he stuck his head too deep into a tuba during 'Stars and Stripes Forever' at the Rose Parade. Make of that what you will.
# The Personal File
For the cast's most private member — the man who literally won't tell the table where he lives — there's one story Nick has actually opened up about: his marriage. He married his high-school sweetheart, Tiff (yes, he was Prom King), and the show has built whole episodes around how a quiet kid landed her ('How Nick Got With His Wife in High School'). Tiff recently faced a health challenge that took the couple to Cleveland for one of the country's top specialists in the field — and she's recovering well; the whole table's pulling for her. The rest you have to earn: out of high school he wanted to FIGHT — chased amateur MMA and took his lumps, including some serious head injuries, before deciding prizefighting wasn't the path. So he started coaching middle-schoolers, put in eight years at Pasadena Fight Academy, earned a B.S. in Applied Fitness (Cal State Northridge, 2016), and turned himself into the coach — and the legit BJJ black belt — behind NTE Training. He wanted to fight; he ended up the coach. And off the mats? A shameless pug dad — two of them, his 'children' (which he reminds the table about every single episode); one looks like Garfield, both are 'champion line,' and yes, he runs sprints with them.