0:00 I did it for a few months. I didn't last that long. What did you take? I did Wushu. A little bit of like few months. I was the fat kid at the at the end of the line. Like Damn, but you did so much Wushu you lost weight. Dude, like [Music] Welcome back everybody to another inspiring episode of the Careful Boys where today we get to welcome the Marshall Club of Andy and Big Ryan. [Applause] It's an honor to be here, seriously. So from martial art experts, what do you think of like gay ████ like this? Like This nasty, dude. I mean as long as it's genuine and it's your true expression. Bro, like yo, that's ill. That's just straight cancer. As long as you as long as you mean it.
0:50 No, cuz there's like a weird weird group out there that keep doing this. Yeah, and then they they wear they wear rice hats. They wear rice hats. How would you describe them to them? They're very appropriating, maybe? I'm just kidding. I just I just No, no, his his dad's group this is their This is their sign. Can just Oh, they know. They're cultured people, okay? You on the other hand, Mr. Oohs. Suddenly at 40. Suddenly I'm I'm a new identity now. Has it really been 10 years since we hung out? I last saw you in 2016. I saw you. Damn, what was that? 2016? 9 years ago? That's 9 years. In my head it's like 2021. But you hung out with them. I I was Yeah, 2016. I think you No, I remember we went to eat Korean barbecue together. That was fun.
1:42 That was a That was like 14 years ago. I don't remember this, bro. I remember went to your house and then we did karate at the park together. Yeah. Yes, I remember that. And I Did we get massages? Yeah. I think we went to get massages. It was like a room Yeah, it was literally like a room and all of us were getting massaged by like a bunch of Asian ladies and ████ but it was like open. Like in Oh, you could see each other? Wait, is is that like not normal to for open rooms or Cuz that's what we grew up on. That's I don't know. That's like the reflexology place. No, I just thought it was funny. Like we just literally went out, did karate at the park, and then we went to go get massages, and then we I think we ate boiling crab or some ████ I forgot. What does it look like to do karate? No, it was like it was like five or 10 of us. There was a lot of people. Didn't we shoot a JK Adventure with you guys? We
2:33 did a long time ago. And then we we taught you guys tricking and then we made you guys battle us. I remember. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I remember now. Cuz we went to your guys's Kung Fu studio. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then like We played with the swords and ████ This This might have been 2015, actually. We We didn't go We went way back, dude. Yeah, that's a long time. Yeah. Well, just to clue the millions upon millions of people in on what the ████ these guys are actually talking about. Like let's let's talk about what the Marshall Club is, you guys's story a little bit, like who the ████ you guys are type stuff, you know? Okay, well, do you guys want to start Should we start with like the back story? Start with Genesis. Genesis chapter one. Okay. So, we grew up in the slums of Little Saigon. And
3:24 For those who don't know, that's the area where all the Vietnamese immigrated after the war. So, it was like starting up again, you know? So, a lot of people growing up there had like a pretty like rough upbringing, I would say. You know, but the beauty in that is that because everyone was like picked on there's a lot of gangs around. Um Everyone just loved martial arts because they, you know, I guess it's it's subconsciously everyone just wants to know how to like defend themselves, you know? we grew up on like Kung Fu movies. Um but it wasn't like It was like the gems that were like around this time you had the like the '90s early 2000s you had like the like the Hollywood Yeah, like the Rush Hours and the Matrix. Martial arts was cool and then we all beyond that we had like the the Once Upon a Time in China. All those gems that were
4:15 They're They're all Iron Monkey. Fist of Fury. Golden Harvest. The Shaw Brothers Golden Harvest all that. We were It was The ones that were You guys You guys probably all grew up on the same cuz we're the same generation, right? So, like it was um Yeah. We but we for us it was like preserved in VHS tapes at like the bottom of the crates of the mom and pop's like Bottom of the crate, yep. And yeah, that's how we That's what we grew up on. And then When you guys hear Yeah, it still rings true. It's a real thing. Like I know it can I know sometimes it could be corny, but for us it's like No, it's it's it's it's so hip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It goes deep on the inside. I salute, for sure. So, um During that era my mom she worked at like a Mexican swap meet in Santa Ana. Um so then we'd be like running around and helping her work too, carrying just like loading ████ at like five, six
5:06 years old, you know? And in the back my mom had like a VHS set with a TV and that's where we would watch Kung Fu movies. So, so all our downloads came from an era like that. So, it's just like the work ethic that my mom had like I I thank her for this like to this day, you know? Just seeing that growing up it was very normal to us to think like, oh, you're like supposed to be grinding all the time to to be in this state of, you know, of of going hard as ████ And then I don't Those two, seeing my mom work and the Kung Fu films they did something, you know? That mixture. Yeah, that mixture. Martial swap meet it should have been the name. Martial swap meet? What made it so like um Did you have other friends that watched those type of movies or no? So, we all did, but we didn't think like it was like real until um I don't think I ever really told this story, but um do
5:56 you So, I went to La Quinta High School. And one year we had a career day and we had Zin Wukong, the urban ninja. Oh, yeah. That guy's OG, dude. So, he came to our school. He came to our school and then like he would like he would do his career day his his career was ninja for hire, right? And then so during his presentation he would like He would play It's so badass. Yeah, yeah. And he would play the um the urban ninja like uh The video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then and then like he would just take us outside and just do flips. Like run on the walls and flip run run on the benches and do like long chain do front flips and all So, for us to see that in person we were like Oh, this is real. You could DO THIS. HE HE MADE US and he had a very rebellious mentality. So, there was like the social norms of like the the Vietnamese immigrant like, you know, become doctor. Be a pharmacist, boy.
6:47 Exactly. We We grew up like we were That was beat into us until we saw that in person. Saw nail salon? Nail salon for I guess Nail salon option two, yeah. But pharmacy is option one. Yeah. Um And then yeah, so that day when we saw that we were like And he had this he carried this rebellious spirit. So, that's what caused us to rebel against the social norms and be like, all right, we're going all in with this this martial arts ████ I love how you guys had to be rebellious and just end up doing a cultural stereotype. I know, right? I'M GOING TO FIGHT TO DO KUNG FU. AND THEN IT'S LIKE YOUR PARENTS are like, man, what the ████ dude? Be a doctor. Break the social norm. Be a doctor, man. That's That's actually different. But but it goes deeper because cuz Kung Fu doesn't have to mean just like punches and kicks. It goes beyond the kicks and punches.
7:37 Kung Kung Fu the literal translation means Gong Fu. Gong Fu. A skill acquired over time. What does it mean? Skill Skill acquired over time. Skill acquired. It doesn't mean empty hand? That's karate, no? But I mean like like anything could be Kung Fu, you know? Like a chef, like that's his Kung Fu, you know? A plumber. You know, everything is Kung Fu So, that's hard. You're right. So, the When we were So, after we saw that we started like you know, we started running around learning to do flips like on the grass. So, this is like high school? High school. And there was an alliance. There was an alliance across all the high schools in Garden Grove. We called ourselves the Monkeys Flying High. It was like team Because So, like all the trickers or something got together? All the potheads. All All the All the
8:29 All the All the urban ninja fanboys. Oh, that's dope. So, like cuz he like so he like I guess there was just a few of us across like like we we were from LQ. We had a group in at Bolsa Grande and then we Some from like a a Garden Grove High, Westminster Westminster High, yeah. And we we just came together and then we formed like a crew called Monkeys Flying High. It was called Monkeys Flying High cuz EMC Monkeys were Zin Urban Ninja. Monkeys. It was Evolved Monkey Combat, but I think they changed to like Evolved in Martial Concepts later on. But But we just liked the novelty of like, oh, it's monkeys. We're like free. It's liberating, you know? It's So, then we just called ourselves Team MFH. It was Monkeys Flying High in the beginning. Yeah, yeah. And then So, then later there's this we found about about this gym called Gym-Max Gymnastics. So, it's like imagine like an open gymnastics gym where you pay a fee and then like you
9:21 could be a cheerleader or a gymnast or just like a street tumbler. Anyone could just go in and just They have trampolines. You work on your craft there, whatever you want. Foam pits. Like jam. Kind of Yeah, yeah, like a jam. Yeah. At this time though like the martial artists were like dominating this area. So, you had the group the comma from UCI. You had comma was in one corner, our crew was in one corner, EMC was in one corner, and then you just had all these groups. And then um And then if And it was kind of like it was kind of like a place where like it got like the it got competitive sometimes. And if you And if there was If there was magic that day, there would be battles. Like Yeah, like someone throws a backflip from across that corner and watches someone set higher, bro. You do roundoff back even And it was very It was very organic. [Laughter] Isn't it? That's so cool how everybody
10:12 just started creating a whole like scene. Right. Like the Like Orange County is a hub for martial arts that I don't think many people really knew about. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think over the years when like, you know, these groups started Like, you know, they grow up, you know, get get real jobs. Get real jobs. Like the ones that are still like standing with the true passion, we formed an alliance and we called ourselves Martial Club. So, that's So, all of the different of those like tricking groups or whatever kung fu groups got together? From different schools? Essentially. Well, I mean, the core members of Martial Club is me, Andy, and Daniel Ma. You guys Some of you guys have met. Yeah, Daniel Ma was from Coma Chinese Association Martial Arts from from the UCI team. Oh, baby. And then it was like when we're at open gym, we saw him we saw him doing kung fu because at the open gym a lot of people are like
11:02 tricking, right? It's more like the underground cool sport at the time. But he was the one in the corner doing like We're not just No, he did like That's the ████ in the movies, you know? Let's go over there and ask him. And at the time, you know, we're like mainly self-taught, so we didn't have lessons. So, so that was intriguing to see someone do the ████ we saw in movies and we're like, "Hey, can you teach us that?" So, we like I don't remember what he taught I forgot what he taught us, but He He like taught us something and and he started there. Yeah, yeah. So, Daniel was like traditionally trained and you guys just From the streets. Well, I'd I'd I'd be lying if I didn't I took a little bit So, our family was poor. Um so, we couldn't like afford it, but uh um I did it for a few months. I didn't last that long. What did you take? I did wushu. A little bit of like few months. I was the fat kid at the at the end of the line. Like What? Damn, but you did so
11:52 much wushu you lost weight. No, like No, like I feel like the majority of my training came later. Yeah, and we couldn't afford to So, only one of us could take classes. us could take classes. And then he would teach me like afterwards like in the parking lot. Like, "Oh, yeah, what was that I saw, you know?" I I I remember what we would do is we would go sit in on the classes and I would just watch and I would learn all the basics. Just absorb, you know. Dang, that's tight. So, um And then that and then kung fu movies. We grew up in the YouTube era, right? And so, like we had a lot of resources to to learn from. Did you just like reenact those scenes or like How did you How did you self-teach? Yeah, so I guess a lot of it is is through kung fu films, right? So, like beyond just like the kicks and punches, everything for us kind of like it's like it's like the cinematography went hand in hand. So,
12:43 like if people were doing like like something like here, right? We would know it's shot there from a profile or like if someone gets punched in the face, it's not just a punch randomly, but if the camera's there, I would know to cater here, you know? So, everything came hand in hand with from the martial arts to like the camera view, you know? So, whenever let's say if we're like creating like a fight sequence, it always came with the angles in our heads cuz it's just how we learned it. Yeah, it's never just like senseless choreo. It's like, "Okay, we need this moment here where there's like a big impact. Oh, let's shoot it there at this frame rate." You know, boom, you know, slow mo or whatever. So, it it it it all kind of goes hand in hand, you know, for us, yeah. That's tight. Really cool. So, when you guys started like learning it, how did you Did you just copy videos? Like in the future cuz after classes, right? You said you did a break and then you got back into it. Did a break? Or like did you You said you stopped after you Oh, oh, yeah, yeah,
13:33 yeah. I did it I did it Yeah, I didn't keep doing it. Um uh for 2 years. He took the classes when he was like a 10 or something. So, it wasn't till like high school that we were until high school until we were like I saw Zin in person. I'm like, "There's a So, what went from that to martial arts? Like Was it Daniel? Um No, I think it was always in It's like always in our blood. So, you did a mix of flips, but also martial arts. Yeah, for us it was kind of the same thing. That's tight. That's very wushu. It's very wushu. Yeah. So, how did you learn? Did you watch videos or did you just like movies or I think Yeah, I I I At the time, like let's say if there was a tutorial on like a move, there would be At the time, there was like five tutorials on like Juji Mufu? Yeah, Juji Yeah, Juji had like the first backflip tutorial. Yeah. First And he was like 180 lbs at
14:24 the No, not even. He was like frail at the time. And I So, that's how far back it went, you know? Um but I think at least for trickers, backyard trickers were very normal. We just had a martial arts influence. So, our our style developed like very martial. Cuz you know, like in martial arts, you learn forms, right? And then you learn like ████ this stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. Um without going to martial arts school, how did you guys learn those things? Yeah, cuz you guys are like self-taught black belts. Like that's the crazy part. How did you do that? Oh, we we would just copy the forms on YouTube or like in the films like let's say example like have y'all seen like Fist of Legend with like Jet Li? There's a part where he's he's teaching the guy the form. It was called the So, he does a form in a wide shot. You could just That was how we copied. use that like it's a class? Yeah, yeah, it's like Like we had a VHS, so we would
15:16 like, you know, press pause. Like Is that a Like it's the quality so bad back then. Like is it a fist or a palm? So, a part of it is our own intuition just like filling in the holes. Cuz I'm watching the same movie. I'm just sitting on the floor of the living room. Exactly. Yeah, I Yeah, but you're probably watching you be like, "Dude, this guy's mainly calisthenics. He needs to pick up a barbell." The biggest the biggest driving force is like passion and I would even say obsession. Yeah, yeah. Like if we were like I I Like for example, I went through like a a drunken fist phase. I would I would obsess. I would go over all the I didn't go that far. Did you drink gasoline? Wait, no, no. I did I did by accident. I did by accident. Um but uh yeah, like I would like go through all the videos.
16:06 And you would just copy the moves over and over. But it's not like move for move. It's like it's it's it's what spoke to me. So, like I'll I'll watch like I'll watch like a form like a Shaolin Like a Shaolin monk doing it. Like one of those. And then like not all of their whole sets speak to me, right? So, I'll just like pick the part that like And I'll just It's like cuz when you watch it, it comes with a feeling. And if you can recreate that feeling, it's Yeah, it's it's very genuine. Right. And and on top of that, every like action star had their own like a frequency going on, you know? So, like Jackie was all about like like like comedy like comedic action, counter spins. He was very rhythmic, right? So, there would be elements of that that we draw draw from. Jet Li was very like Jet Li knows himself so well even down to when he walks on screen, you can just tell, "Oh, Just this Like this is all He's
16:56 been He's He's Like he's lived the life of a martial artist, like, you know? You know, Tony Jaa does all the flying kicks with the hard hits. Donnie Yen, his screen presence is like just ████ dude. He's Donnie Yen, you know? So, there's different elements that we would, you know, be inspired by from like different action stars. And then whatever spoke to us, whatever our intuition told us was right for us, then we just slowly started combining them as our own encyclopedia, you know? Yeah. So, when you met all of your heroes and started working with them, were you just like creaming every day? I would have nutted my pants every day every day. Like That's Yeah, that's crazy. Like we're we're very spiritual people, so we we do believe in like universal like, you know, consciousness and everything. So, like it was weird like when we were in our Jackie mode
17:48 that very year. Like we were in a very hard Jackie mode that year. Like um And all the stuff we were shooting for our YouTube channel and stuff Was very Jackie inspired. We had a segment called My Stunts, which we're still doing, which we like, you know, we go and we just talk about like all the stunts that we did like exactly what Jackie did. And then that very year like we got called to To work with To work with Jackie? You guys manifested Jackie, dude. What the ████ That's crazy. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. But um What did you work with uh Jackie on? It was a commercial. It was It was like a He's in You know how he likes to save animals? He's a WildAid like Yeah, yeah. So, then he he he brought on Martial Club to like to like choreograph just little segments of like, you know, forms and stuff. Um And actually Andy, he he he took Jackie's old moves from
18:40 the first Drunken Master and showed it back to him. And Jackie was like, "Oh, I know these moves." Then he was like, "40 years ago, you know?" Like Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so crazy. It's been a journey and and and we're grateful for it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Grateful like the crazy. It must blow his mind cuz like a lot of those guys are like traditionally trained for them to go, "Wait, you just learned it on the internet or watching videos?" Yeah, you're like savants, basically. You know what it kind of reminds me? You know MT Pop? He's a dancer. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, like there's this dude who's basically Vietnamese guy actually as well. He's basically going around winning almost every major battle, all styles and popping battles. And then when you ask him like who taught him or where did you learn, he learned from YouTube. So, I feel like maybe that also gives a certain affinity of like his choices for like things like animation and stuff because he comes up with concepts and
19:31 the way that they look. It's not just like the feeling. The feeling's there. The technique and foundation's there, but like the way it like just looks put together, it must be this like insane new generational skill of like seeing things and being able to learn It's like the sharingan. You So, like seeing you guys and how like amazing your technique is, but seeing here and hearing that you didn't formally learn it It's hard. is ████ mind-blowing. I I will say like um it's teaching is conceptual too. And um in in Kung Fu we have a saying called like once a teacher forever a teacher for your lifetime. So like we do cross paths with martial artists like Daniel along the way who's taught us, you know, and you know, we've had a uh a mentor his name Like mentor figures, you know. mentor figures philosophy again and DY like one of our big bros
20:22 they teach us concepts and then to our beliefs concepts take us further than learning a concept. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And so um so yeah, that's that's uh I want to like you know, give credit to that too. That's cool that like it does show that anybody has a shot which is pretty sick. Like if you if you don't have the resources or your family's poor like you work hard enough at it like the fact that they got this far is freaking dope. You got to be passionately obsessed. That's so tight. I remember Joe Rogan was sharing your guys' clips and watching it on his show and I was like Oh ████ That's it. I I do remember yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I do remember that. Oh yeah he yeah he did cuz you guys had like a real of compilation of doing wild the one where you guys rip a guy's head off and you punted or something.
21:12 Wait, send us this one I swear you were like a backyard you guys were doing some wild ████ I remember the first time I saw it I was like Wait, can you guys send us this? Wait, I I I I have no idea what this is. Cuz doesn't he like say he said martial club official too? Like Wait wait I I I've seen one time like he posted a clip of us like doing tricks but he was like oh there's this Korean gentleman um I I've seen this clip I've never seen um The one you're talking about but I've never seen it. No, he's telling his friend about you guys. He goes have you seen this? Have you seen this one? It's like martial club and then like and then it's like you guys it's a compilation of you guys doing You doing a bunch of crazy ████ Okay, we need to see this. It was like 5 years ago or something. Okay. Yeah. That's so dope. It's on Spotify somewhere. We got to look for it. It's good to know. Was there also Oprah who was watching their stuff on her show? Oprah? Then find out in part two.
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