Benny 'The Jet' Urquidez

Don't do it.

It's supposed to be a way of life.

It's supposed to teach you about honor and dignity and respect and so forth.

That's basically what it was all about.

Yeah.

And even though it's about defending, self-defense is defending instead of, you know, being a striker is learning how to defend it, slipping and moving and defending.

But it got turned around.

And it became striking, you know, instead of learning how to.

Because I would put my money on a good defensive fighter than a striker because it's easy to go out there and strike.

But if you don't know how to defend striking back at you,

Well, you know, a lot of times what happens is a lot of them come in with a lot of emotions, anger, fear, frustration.

And especially with the Jets gym, we were able to tap in and put fear to them in a sparring way.

It will bring up all that emotion up, and then we had a chance to reprogram that.

That was the best part about the gym is to bring up what everybody hides until you're threatened.

Right.

Once you're threatened, I don't care what you hide under your bed, in your closet, we'll come up.

And then you get a chance to reprogram the way you're perceiving it, the way you're looking at it, and help them to heal themselves.

Not pat it or forget it or act like it doesn't.

Heal it so that it doesn't stop them on their journey.

And that's what the Jet Center was all about is being able to bring that up, mirror their truth.