In this episode of Fighting Matters, Jeff Shaw and Jesse Walker are joined by Jose Fernandez, a health economist and purple belt who chairs the economics department at the University of Louisville. He explains who pays for tariffs, why 70% of the world's gis coming out of one country matters for your gear budget, and what gym owners should do about prices and leases while their students are getting squeezed.

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👥 Featuring:
- Jeff Shaw — https://bellinghambjj.com
- Jesse Walker — https://roughhandsbjj.com
- Jose Fernandez — https://louisville.edu/faculty/jmfern02

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- The tight labor market and consumer sentiment
- Gym pricing, leases, and rate freezes
- Politics in the gym and local elections
- Tariffs on gis and rash guards
- The AI bubble and robot labor
- The federal debt and taxing the rich
- Insurance paperwork and doctor hours

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📖 Chapters:
00:00:00 — Introducing Jose Fernandez
00:03:57 — The indicators and the debt
00:06:47 — White belt signups slow down
00:08:51 — Leases, rent, and expansion
00:11:48 — Why you shouldn't cut prices
00:13:38 — Family discounts and freezes
00:19:05 — Politics in the jiu-jitsu gym
00:20:29 — Vote in your local elections
00:25:09 — Who pays the tariff on your gi
00:28:23 — Trade deals without tariffs
00:32:31 — Why the stock market climbs
00:38:00 — Robots replacing human labor
00:47:54 — AI, drones, and modern warfare
00:54:12 — Cheap gas and the oil reserves
01:00:03 — The debt and the sacred cows
01:11:24 — Insurers waste doctor hours

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Steve Kwan and Stephan Kesting pull up a screenshot of the UFC BJJ 10 mat and read the sponsors out loud: the Air National Guard, the AI drone company Anduril, and Turning Point USA. Dana White has spent years insisting the UFC is not political, and you can read the rebuttal off his own mat. They argue the money is there to launder reputations and buy the silence of athletes who do not have many other options.

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👥 Featuring:
- Steve Kwan — https://bjjmentalmodels.com
- Stephan Kesting — https://grapplearts.com

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- The sponsors on the UFC BJJ 10 mat
- Anduril and Turning Point USA
- Dana White on the UFC not being political
- Exclusionary UFC BJJ contracts and ADCC
- UFC BJJ viewership and visibility
- What UFC BJJ athletes get paid
- The chilling effect on athletes who speak out

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📖 Chapters:
00:00 — Stephan's Arctic expedition
02:21 — Dana White on being political
03:15 — The YAMMA bowl cage, revisited
04:24 — Reading the sponsors on the mat
05:33 — Anduril, the AI drone company
10:09 — Turning Point USA on the mat
16:28 — Could the left buy the same ad?
21:13 — The capture and kill strategy
24:00 — UFC BJJ's viewership problem
28:15 — Owning all of combat sports
32:09 — What UFC BJJ athletes get paid
43:41 — The Sartre quote on fascists
34:45 — The chilling effect on athletes
51:20 — What people can do about it

In this episode of Fighting Matters, Jesse Walker and Stephan Kesting (just back from thirty days in the Arctic wilderness) are joined by Dr. Clayton Green, a board certified dermatologist with a PhD in microbiology who worked face to face with patients through the whole pandemic. Clayton and Stephan take apart the conspiracies the pandemic left behind (nanobot tracking chips, the lab leak, RFK Jr.'s claims about Lyme disease) and explain why frightened people reached for them in the first place. Jesse's question runs underneath the whole thing: how did a community built on evidence-based martial arts end up rejecting evidence-based medicine?

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👥 Featuring:
- Jesse Walker — https://roughhandsbjj.com
- Stephan Kesting — https://grapplearts.com
- Dr. Clayton Green

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🧠 Topics Discussed:
- The Big Pharma payment myth, debunked
- Fear, certainty, and bad decisions
- Fauci as the scapegoat
- Changing the guidance was correct
- Grapplers rejecting evidence-based medicine
- Ivermectin and the grifters targeting grapplers
- The genetics that rule out a lab leak
- Algorithms and radicalized coaches
- Your phone tracks you better than any chip

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📖 Chapters:
00:00:00 — Introducing Dr. Clayton Green, dermatologist
00:01:53 — The Big Pharma payment myth, fully debunked
00:03:57 — Six years on, still no reckoning for COVID
00:05:49 — Fauci as the scapegoat for a whole government
00:08:07 — Fear and anger drive people to false certainty
00:10:12 — The early mask messaging that cost public trust
00:18:11 — Saving the mask supply for hospitals was right
00:23:01 — The vaccine claims held true until Omicron hit
00:26:51 — Reaching for ivermectin over actual medicine
00:29:13 — Operation Warp Speed, the win nobody will claim
00:31:42 — Grapplers rejected evidence-based medicine
00:37:02 — Pleading the fifth to dodge a perjury trap
00:41:45 — Genetic fingerprints rule out a lab leak
00:45:35 — Social media moderation and anti-Asian backlash
00:50:34 — YouTube radicalized Stephan's old instructors
00:53:35 — Debunking nanobot chips, 5G, and snake oil
01:00:37 — RFK Jr. is wrong about Lyme disease origins
01:03:06 — The AIDS-virus sequence myth, taken apart
01:05:17 — Whether we can get the public trust back