In this video, a journalist meets Hollywood superstar and martial arts legend Steven Seagal for breakfast in Dubai. They are escorted to Steven’s private suite where they discuss his secret style of jujutsu and the importance of mastering technique. Steven demonstrates various strikes and kicks, emphasizing the importance of breaking an opponent’s rhythm. They also discuss the power of meditation and the legacy of a true warrior. The journalist is inspired by Steven’s teachings and looks forward to a day of training and learning from him. The video ends with a teaser for the next episode, promising more valuable lessons and insights.
Key Insights:
- Stephen Seagal eats breakfast in his private suite.
- Seagal has mastered a secret style of jujutsu that was used by samurai warriors.
- Seagal emphasizes avoiding the ground in fights, as most battles end with one person standing vertically.
- Seagal teaches techniques to sever the brainstem, rip out throats, and blind opponents.
- Meditation and practice contribute to power generation and lightning-like strikes.
- Legacy and ethics are crucial to Seagal, and he values teachers and lineage.
Transcript
It’s 10:30 a.m. in Dubai and I’m about to have breakfast with Steven Seagal in this luxury hotel. I had no idea what to expect. All I had was this message from somebody who claimed to be Steven’s assistant. „Hello, we’re meeting a friend for breakfast here.“ But as I searched through the entire hotel, the man was nowhere to be found. Maybe this was all just a scam to kidnap me. Where is he? Luckily, I brought my brother Oliver along as my bodyguard. Maybe we should go inside and look. I think he would meet us in the reception.
That’s when a security guard suddenly approached us. Yes, turns out Steven Seagal eats breakfast in his private suite, and this man was gonna escort us all the way up. Good morning, and there he was, the martial arts legend Steven Seagal, known for breaking the bones of men and the hearts of women. This was a dream come true because I used to make my own action movies as a kid, and now I was gonna spend a full day eating, training, and learning from Steven Seagal himself, finishing off with a five-star dinner in the world’s tallest building. Plus, he’s gonna teach Oliver the same kick he taught Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida. This is good stuff. Get ready to see Steven Seagal like you’ve never seen him before.
So I would show some of the techniques in the movies, but most of the real wood, we kept secret. You know, until now. But then, you know, you try to talk to people, and they’ll go, „Well, you know, this stuff that you really do, it’s so dangerous. How many times can you rip someone’s throat out in a practice, sir? You don’t rip out your throat. We don’t rip out your eyes. Just as in karate, we don’t blow out your skull. You stop before.“
Yeah, but the difference is, we’re very careful who we teach this. Turns out Sensei Seagal had mastered a secret style of Jujutsu while residing in Japan. This is what the samurai warriors used on the battlefield, but it’s the complete opposite of modern jiu-jitsu because rule number one is to avoid the ground. When people say all fights end up on the ground, they are incorrect. 90% of the fights that I know end up standing up, with one person going horizontal. They knew if they went to the ground, they were dead because they were on the battlefield. We don’t want to dive down on the ground, and just as much time as those guys spend trying to dive for your legs and get you, we spend just as much time cutting your head off or knocking you out or ripping your eyes out or ripping your throat out or severing your brainstem when you go down there because your head and your neck will be vulnerable. I don’t care who you are, if you know what we know. Yeah, and then I’ll show you some of that stuff.
Good morning, brother. How are you? This is amazing. Is this what a Hollywood superstar eats on a daily basis? This is what Japanese would eat every day. As the first Westerner to run a dojo in Japan, Sensei Seagal faced lots of adversity, including dojo yaburi life-or-death challenges from rival martial arts schools. There are certain very famous people who challenged me, and I said there’ll be no money involved, no cameras, no one’s going to see it, and there are no rules. Did anyone accept? No, no, of course not. Great.
Real someone that says, „When I wake up in the morning, I am prepared to die. When I go into battle, I visualize myself as already being dead.“ Yeah, next is coming. And just like that, it was time to head to the dojo. But first, I wanted to talk to this guy. What is it like to be Steven Seagal’s practice dummy? Is it a lot of pain? Yeah, yeah. This is my job kind of, you know? It’s a very unusual job. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m excited. Let’s have fun. I think you will taste this too. You think?
And with those words, we left the hotel and drove about 20 minutes to an amazing mixed martial arts facility where the top floor had been reserved just for us. It was time to finally feel the power of Steven Seagal. This kind of strike is… Oh, this is my fighting pose. Yeah. And from here, I might do this. I’ve already killed you, but I have this now. From here, I have this. Come around here, brother, and look here. We break it. This is snap off, and I can’t move. I can move them around from here. This is good stuff. Yeah, I can also walk him around like this, come down to here like this, punches, and I throw him. Yeah, if he doesn’t go, I snap his arm up and on the street, yeah, people normally will not punch you like this, right? They normally won’t punch you like this. They’ll punch you like this, that’s right. So as it comes, you’ll notice something very different. This, in sword, is called ato, so when the sword comes down, I’ll show you with him, you see the sword? Yep, this is a sword. This is when I suddenly realized what we were actually practicing. Because up until this point, I thought he was just showing us random brutal techniques, but it turns out these movements were meant to be used with a sword. Because if a samurai lost his weapon on the battlefield, he could use the exact same movement patterns with his empty hands.
Kicking? Yes, downstairs. I wish you were there, but these guys said, „Wow, I know the guys that you talked that front kick to. No one could see it. No one can see it because it’s different. For example, if you’re here, yep, and I wind up into a big kick, yeah, you’ll see it. Yeah, you know? Yeah. But what I try to do, you know, is a kick where you don’t see it. Ah, it’s more like a spear. Just like the arms could be used as swords, the legs can be used as spears, just like the samurai. Just don’t lift your knee, put your foot straight there. Yeah, okay, difference. So from the hip, more, more than the knee, and don’t push him, cut him. Yeah, yeah, because you don’t see the light go on when you got it. Yeah, yeah, you got it. And I imagine like if I keep my posture the same, yeah, I won’t see anything. You don’t lift up like this. The spear, we have another technique that comes from sword. Wow, when the strike comes, this is the sword. I’m hitting here, here, or here, this side or this side, doesn’t matter. So when I punch, I’m not doing this. No, I’m… Yeah, you feel the difference, yes? So you’re doing this, yes, I’m doing this. Yeah, you can’t tell when you’re looking. It’s way different when you feel it. But it reminds me of the kick because the kick is also, there’s no telegraph. You can’t really see it until it’s too late. From the sword stuff as he comes, this is the te ntochi, this is heaven and earth. But the old style would be that strike or we’re striking planting on the foot, grabbing the throat, striking with this. Yeah, can you try that on Oliver so you can feel it? Because it doesn’t matter how you come from here, yeah? I have you here, yeah? Here, here. Yeah, you can feel what would happen. Yeah, you need to try that in your next fight. Would that even be legal? Yeah, that’s the thing. You can’t do the finger stuff either. Supposedly, if you have all of them, yeah, all of them are legal, but they never do it. No, no, yes, yeah. Okay, if you have to fight somebody to end it immediately, but in the case that you can’t end it immediately, you never let him fight his style, right? Yes, you always will break his rhythm and his timing so that he can’t fight his style. We teach all the beginners to find a rhythm, to find a certain rhythm. But then at some point, you need to learn how to break the rhythm. So you don’t break there, yeah? Yeah, and not let them break your rhythm, yeah. Well, when you’re the aggressor, it’s pretty hard for them to break your rhythm. In our style, we are completely offensive, completely aggressive. We don’t wait and watch and try to get them tired. We don’t do any of that.
What do you think about that as a pro fighter, Oliver? Because you usually want to feel your opponent out, I think it’s dangerous to start to feel the other guy out, because then, yeah, because then he can impose his rhythm on you before you attack first, yeah. And really, in real life, if you want to end it immediately, you have to attack first, yeah, that’s better. How about in the eyes of the law, if you look like the aggressor? I want to sound terrible because, well, you’re about to be a police officer. Oh, yeah, that’s true. But I don’t care, not about the law. If I have to fight, I don’t care about them. Yeah, I care about ending it quick. Because, for example, if you go to punch, when your punch comes, yes, if I do this, a lot of guys do this, this isn’t that real karate. Real karate would be mine, but when you get really good, it would be like this. Alright, it’s just like the spear. It’s like your kick. This is square, I’m sorry, this is square, this is triangle, and this, yeah. Exactly. They would always say, hands, knees, elbows, feet, and daggers. So this, yes, we’re here, we do this a lot. Um, and this would actually be the dagger that a samurai, that’s right, yeah. And I’m coming in here and in here, once in a while we’ll come in here, and you can feel that, right? I can’t. This, this, because I train it every day. Yeah, this, you know, is very dangerous. Yeah, and you can imagine if I did that in your throat, yeah, oh right. Yeah, feels great. I wasn’t ready. So if he comes with this wild one on the side, I’ll cut the hole here and, yeah, that’s a throat strike. One of the worst strikes I’ve seen. Two children fighting in a quarter tournament, punch in the throat, she spit her mouthpiece out, walked two steps, and then just collapsed. Did she die or no? She was carried out on a stretcher. Stretcher, yeah. Um, and it was just, that’s what we do. Yeah, everything we do is here. Yeah, we will sever the brainstem. You will sever the brainstem. That’s what happens. That’s why when people, like, for example, when you come to grab my leg, I’ll hit you in the eyes like this. On the way down, yeah, as you come here, I’ll hit you here. By the time you’re down here, look what’s exposed. Yeah, it’s your brainstem. I don’t care who you are. You’re dead. Yeah, the only takedowns that we will do that we think are nice, we’ll sit people down like this. What is your method for power generation? Because I’ve heard so many different ways of generating power. Practice, yeah, of course, practice, yeah. And meditation? Oh, okay. Okay, yeah, let’s sit down.
One of my masters once said, „It’s like lightning. It’s the combination between energy between heaven and earth and an explosion when they meet.“ That’s beautiful. Qi is flowing through you. So it’s not what I would call relaxation. It’s that… It’s the lightning already coursing through your body. It’s there. That electricity is already coming out of your hands, into your eyes. You know, what Musashi that Miyamoto said, „Make your everyday stance your fighting stance. Make your fighting stance your everyday stance.“ What did you just see? Exactly. You’ll see me standing like this all the time. Yeah, it’s great. Someone I went said, „When a tiger dies, even though we have appreciated him in life, we take his pelt and hang it on the wall, and that’s what he’s remembered by. His pelt. When a real warrior dies, he has to be remembered by what he did in life, his technique, his water, his ability and desire to teach, and what he left his students and what he left the world. The value of karate is of what it does to you as a human being and changing you as a human being, understanding that the development of the physical man and the perfection of the spiritual self are the same, and that in doing these things simultaneously, we learn first and foremost how to make the world a better place and help others. That is what we call a legacy, and that’s another reason why I’m doing this interview. Yeah, because in America, you have guys like Gene LeBell and Bob Wall, these people who, every time their mouth opened, they were lying. Really? And they tell those guys, this is the sad thing about America. You can destroy someone’s life, their legacy, their reputation, just by making up lies. As soon as I spoke the truth about certain things that are happening in the world, a huge campaign on a secret, very top secret level was mounted. Fifty people were paid to say all kinds of things about me to destroy me. Yeah, I’m not going to put up with that. No, so I just left. But the shame about the tiger and the way the tiger dies is like when someone I said, „We look at his pelt on the wall and we think, ‚Wow, it’s beautiful.'“ But when a great warrior or great someone I dies, he has a real legacy. And people who have real ethics and morals and decency, they admire the people that have technique and have history and have teachers. Have teachers, and they would never try to tarnish what they are. No, America is different. Yeah, they don’t care where I came from. If you did that, somebody will come and kill you the next day. Yeah, they’ll come to your dojo or your house and say, „It’s on right now. One of us is going to live, and one of us is going to die, or one of us is going to be unconscious, and maybe he’ll live, and maybe he won’t. I don’t care.“ Yeah, that’s how it was. That’s how I was.
It’s the land of the mouth. There are people who say, „I did this and I did that, and I studied all these martial arts.“ But none of them can tell you the names of their teachers or where they studied. None of them. Yeah, everything is in the teacher. Everything, even Lord Buddha said, „There would be no guru without the Buddha. There would be no Buddha without the Buddha.“ Ah, it’s the same in Shin. It’s the same, your spiritual side. It’s very inspiring to me. I didn’t know that before about Shin and everything. So, and I have studied Buddhism my whole life, and I think that shows, like, in the purse and even when you do martial arts and stuff, like, the way you carry yourself, somehow, I think it’s different. It’s such a different… When I’m thinking about some of the fighters that I train with that have no spirituality in them at all, and the ones that come from a more traditional background, you see the way they carry themselves is way different. Very perceptive. Yeah, this is, you know, 60 years of, yeah, stuff. There’s only so much I can remember, so much I can give you in one day. But in the next video, I receive an amazing gift from Sensei Seagal. Plus, we learn his invisible punch, an incredible kick defense, and the truth about Bruce Lee. Like any other human being, he was human. You don’t want to miss this.
