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In The Arena Blog

Baret Yoshida and Andre the Giant

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Here’s a fun clip with The Arena’s Jiu Jitsu and Grappling Coach Baret Yoshida discussing his recent fascination with The 8th Wonder of the World, Andre the Giant.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Coach Baret Yoshida:
When I was like nine years old, I used to stay at my grandpa’s house. He had Japanese channel, so the best thing is to watch were the samurai movies or pro wrestling or Sumo. So I always be watching that, and I would just fascinate on The Giant and the pro wrestlers, I mean, how big they were. They were like monsters. You know what I mean?

Recently, I just got really into Andrea and I watched his documentary. I read his books. Then I started buying his T-shirts and obsessing over Andre the Giant. So Vince was messing around and he found a picture of Andre, and he put the Baret Submissions logo on top of Andre’s T-shirt. They just fit perfectly. He just made a couple of shirts for fun.

When Andre was young, he was a superb athlete as well. He used to do back flips. He would exercise with all of the pro wrestlers and they kind of just recruited him from there, and then he essentially built the wrestling because he was the anomaly. Wherever he would go, the stadiums would sell out. At the end, he was all beat up, but when he was in his prime, I think he would tear people to pieces. I just figure he was probably the greatest grappler that ever lived. You know what I mean?

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