Tristan
purple belt
The last doctor who was going to operate on me said the same thing:
“So you’re going to give this up?”
And I said, “No. I’m going later today.”
Q: So you were just saying you live all the way out in the Bronx. I guess you can take the subway here, right?
Well, it depends. We live in the north-central Bronx. I don’t know if you know the Bronx at all. If you’ve ever gone to the New York Botanical Garden, you’re three blocks from my house. There actually is a Bronx Renzo’s, but what happened was—I’ve been doing martial arts now for, Christ, almost 30 years.
When I was in my 20s, I was working a lot and doing a lot of heavy weightlifting. At my heaviest, I was 270 pounds and really into strength training. And then after a while, I was like, well, what do I do with all of this? I help people move, I help my parents whenever we’re going traveling, I carry everybody’s luggage—but…
On 105th and Riverside, there was a place that taught traditional Japanese jujitsu. And so I went there, I watched some stuff, I was like, oh, this is really interesting.
Traditional jujitsu is sort of like judo and grappling, except that finger-bending is allowed. And biting too, except biting was symbolic. So if somebody’s hand was near your face and you said “bite,” he had to react as if he was bitten. But the finger bending was real. You would bend fingers.
Anyway, I got really into judo there. I liked it all, but my main interest was self-defense. And while it was really good stuff—it was nice and rough—it wasn’t really self-defense, you know what I mean? And so I left there and I joined a self-defense school way down in lower Manhattan. It was right near the World Trade Center while that was still there. And that was really gritty self-defense. Classes would be three hours long. You’d walk out of there bruised as hell. Everything was on the table. Like Krav Maga, similar kind of stuff. Really realistic, really brutal.
But I was still doing judo. I also wasn’t married, I had no kids, I didn’t own any property, and I was still relatively young. So I was also going to White Plains to help a friend of mine who opened his own dojo up there, where he taught a kind of mixed martial arts program. I would go there every Saturday.
And then 9/11 happened. Our dojo was right there. I mean, it’s a long story how the dojo got lost, but it’s all New York City real estate.
We wound up training at a place called Fight House, on 26th near the Flatiron District. Fight House was just a huge loft-like space with lots of different schools renting time there.
Q: Ah, that must’ve been amazing, like Blood Sport.
There were boxers, there were MMA guys, there were these Systema guys—there were all kinds of guys.
My self-defense school was there, and I’d grapple with the MMA school guys afterward. There was a Sambo school there, but no judo, unfortunately
Q: What do you do for work?
I’m an artist. At the time, I was doing concept art for film—designing creatures. I had been a comic book artist for many years, and a book illustrator too.
And I did all of that to pay for fine art, so I could do fine art whether or not it sold, which it didn’t enough to pay bills. So I would pay my bills with my square job, which was illustration. I was doing all kinds of things to avoid leaving New York. I did some ghost sculpting. Oh, and I’m a painter.
Q: What’s a ghost sculptor?
So like a ghostwriter. The exact same thing. It’s a famous sculptor who either can’t sculpt at all, or he can only sculpt crude stuff, but as he becomes famous, his gallerist and his buyers want more ambitious work than he’s able to do. They would hire somebody like me, I’d make it, and then they’d come and put their name on it.
I mean, that’s the way it is.
So I did all these things to try not to leave New York, to try to get my fine art career going. It wasn’t enough, so I went out to California and there was a Royce Gracie school near me. The main dojo was in Irvine, and I was in L.A., but a couple of times a week one of their guys would come out and teach a class there, so I joined that.
Royce came out one time while I was at that school. It was really cool. He gave me my blue belt. He laughed as I rolled with him, then gave me my blue belt.
Q: Royce is the UFC guy, right? That’s amazing.
It was cool. He’s like 6’4” or something like that.
But yeah—he laughed while I was rolling with him. I knew he was just playing with me, but he’s giggling and laughing, and then afterwards we’re standing up and he says, “Put a blue belt on this man.”
But they didn’t have any super heavyweights, so it was sort of like me and one of the brown belts, who was a lot smaller than me. Even though he was better than me, we were just always stalemated, and I wasn’t getting any better. So I asked around. A friend of mine knew somebody who was at a school in West Hollywood, which turned out to be a Renzo school. Professor Shawn Williams was teaching. I was with him for like seven years.
When I came back here, I was living in Brooklyn. I was now married. We were going to have a kid soon. I wanted a brownstone because I like to fix things. Every time we had an apartment, I’d replaster walls, build shelves from scratch, all this stuff. My then-fiance was like, “You’re just helping this other guy’s property. We rent this place. You’re spending all this time fixing these things and it’s not even ours.” She said, “I’m going to buy.” She’s from California, and that’s common. I’d only ever lived in rentals, and it never even occurred to me to buy.
Hunting for homes is brutal, and if you’re too comfortable, you might just stay. However, my wife had wanted to have a kid. And I’m like, “All right, well, we won’t try to have a kid, but we won’t try not to have a kid.”
Instantly we’re having a kid.
So we’re moving back to New York to this apartment that was too small for two adults, two cats, and a dog—and I work at home. So it was already too small before the baby was even born. So we ultimately found what would be called a brownstone in Brooklyn, but in the Bronx. And it’s a fixer-upper, but it’s a landmarked, beautiful, 116-year-old house with all the original features. And for the last seven years, we’ve been slowly restoring it while living there.
That’s the point of my long-winded answer. I was actually born in the Bronx, but my parents were living in Brooklyn when I was a baby. They now live on West 95th. My kid’s school—he goes to the one I went to—is on 112th. The other thing is, when my kid turned seven, I wanted him to start training. And the kids’ program here is incredible.
Q: I call it God’s work. If God could put together a program, this is what it would look like. Kids need to eat dirt, roll in the grass, be around other kids, and get strangled.
When lockdown happened, my kid was two. He only had me. My wife’s a physician, so she was working. He had no social interaction. And when he finally saw another kid at the playground, you could see how much he needed it.
Q: So when you moved back to New York, you already had your purple belt?
Yes. I got injured and stopped training about two years after we moved back.
When we were in Brooklyn, I trained at a dojo in Ridgewood, Queens—right on the border, easy drive. It had all super heavyweights. And I was still around 255, massively strong. That’s what I used to look for: gyms with super heavyweights. I even checked an MMA gym in Greenpoint, but I outweighed everyone by 40 pounds. And the Queens gym also had Muay Thai, which I liked. So I was trying to continue both grappling and striking.
Within three months, my kid was born. We found the house in the Bronx. And then I got injured.
I had been grappling with this incredibly strong MMA guy, and I had already been hurt earlier in the class, but had ignored it. I ended up with a torn shoulder and a torn bicep. So between the injury, the baby, and the house, it was a lot. I didn’t want to take a break, but I had to.
The house was a total fixer-upper. For the first year, I was doing demolition, living with tarps everywhere. We lived on the top floor. For most of seven years, it was like that. Only last year did we finally get all three floors livable. The basement and top floor still need work.
Q: Your wife must be getting fed up.
The kitchen sink sat in the living room for like four years.
The first time we had Thanksgiving there. I remember we had my family over, my brother was in town with his kids, and my parents were there. And at the end of it, after everything was cleaned and everybody was upstairs, I’m walking through the first floor, turning off lights, closing things down, and I’m like, oh my God. I just realized this had been a fantasy of mine for so long. It won’t be amazing when… it is amazing. Just to walk through this place that for years had been so disgusting. Plastic everywhere, covered with dust. I had to tear down this, tear down that, replaster everything, rebuild everything. And we have a garden. I became a very hardcore gardener about 14 years ago. If I didn’t live in the city, that’s all I would do. You know The Lord of the Rings? The wizard who lives with the animals and is covered in bird shit—that would be me. That would be me. I’d come back from the woods, covered in bird shit, explaining to my wife the conversation I had with a tree.
Q: Let’s talk about size. How tall are you?
6’1” and I’m about 215.
Q: And you’ve obviously lifted weights your whole life and done a lot of martial arts. So, where do you find challenges?
I’m 57. Everybody’s challenging me here.
There’s the age factor, but also how you move. Except at Ridgewood, with that powerful MMA guy, I was usually the strongest guy in the room. And I didn’t even realize that until later.
But I was never a goon. I tried not to use muscle.
Whenever I went to a new dojo, I’d roll first with the people who scared me the most—big, tough guys. But I always thought about Ferdinand the Bull. I just want to sit under the tree and smell flowers.
That’s kind of me.
I didn’t do stand-up because I wanted to hit people.
I didn’t grapple because I wanted to strangle people.
In this gym, you train with incredibly decent people. You have to like someone, trust them, to let them practice strangulation and joint breaks on you. Like you were saying about your son: “If A happens, then you do B, then C happens.” You might be thinking three moves ahead, but if the other guy is thinking five moves ahead, he gets you. It’s violent chess.
And I like that.
There’s camaraderie. It doesn’t work without a partner. And it doesn’t work with a bad partner. When I was bigger, I visited other gyms. Sometimes I’d walk in and realize it was a goon gym. There was a place in Glendale, run by a Russian or Armenian guy. He was like, “You have to train here.” But I watched, and I thought: these people just want to hurt each other. I think Gene LeBell’s place had some of that too. That kind of environment pushes people away.
So yeah, I was big, I was strong. My strength gave me shortcuts. I didn’t need to learn a technique if I could just hold someone down.
The problem is you can’t make yourself not heavy. I couldn’t suddenly move like someone who was 160. I didn’t have that lightness or flexibility. And when you roll with someone better than you, it’s hard not to use strength. I tore my bicep because of that. A friend of mine, Billy, was going for an armbar. Perfect position. And I just held on because I could. Muscle is strong, but tendons aren’t.
Pop.
I got a lot of injuries like that. I’m paying for them now.
So I used to choose gyms with super heavyweights. I chose this gym because it was a Renzo school. I knew the quality. I came here, watched, started training, and I was happy.
And I am happy.
I can’t really go with super heavyweights anymore. I still do sometimes. Interestingly, big muscular guys often train the way I used to—linear. And I actually do okay with them, because I understand that style. But I can’t do it anymore. When I came back after seven years off, I realized something immediately: I had the technique of a younger, massively strong heavyweight, but I wasn’t that guy anymore.
So I’ve been rebuilding my game.
This shoulder is weak. Full range of motion, but weak. It’s been torn multiple times. My knee is bad. I had my hip resurfaced. I’ve torn both biceps, shoulders, knees, everything—from lifting, training hard, ignoring pain. I have no ACL in one knee and damage in the other, hand surgery too, and one foot with damage from a broken toe I never treated. When you’re young, you think you’re invincible. You tear something, “Okay, surgery, I’ll be back in six months.” That was stupid. Now I don’t have that luxury. So it’s changed how I train, how I choose partners.
I’m older, lighter, weaker, and more damaged. But I still want to train, so I have to adapt.
Q: So let me ask. You’ve got injuries, you’re busy. Why keep training?
That’s what my doctor asked before surgery.
“Are you going to give this up?”
I said, “No. I’m going later today.”
Number one, it’s incredibly healthy. Number two, I’ve been doing it so long. Sometimes I don’t want to go. I could stay home, work more, and fix the house. But then I feel lousy. When I come here, it’s just… fun. It’s fascinating. It’s exhausting. I can come in angry, in a bad mood, and leave like a Buddhist monk. Nothing bothers me. There are so many benefits. And it’s not like aging doesn’t bring injuries anyway.
Q: So there’s awareness, resilience. Have you ever had to use martial arts outside the gym?
One time on a commuter train. I took a guy down and held him in a finger lock.
It was packed—no space. He had grabbed a woman, tried to rob her because she worked on the train. I heard someone yell, “Isn’t anyone going to help her?” I moved up, but I couldn’t get around him because there were too many people. So I grabbed him, dropped my weight, and took him down. Couldn’t get a position, so I grabbed a finger, cranked it, got the arm, turned it into a wrist lock, and pinned him. Held him until the train stopped. Then waited like 15 minutes for the police. When they stood him up, he was like 18 or 19.
It was depressing.
Where was he going to go? The train was moving.
There was another incident in L.A. The back of my building faced a rough high school, with lots of trouble. And another time, I actually had to pull a knife. But the train was the only time I actually had to use anything. Other times, my size was enough. People backed off.
And I let them go.
Q: Any last thoughts?
If you need anything else, I can talk about gardening forever.
This interview is part of the Murder Yoga Cantina series, which explores the people who make up jiu-jitsu culture.
