I don’t give a flying bag of monkey crap how good you are when you have had a couple of hours to warm up, are doing it by yourself, have no impartial judge to watch, and pick and choose your performance examples. If you think that showing the results of a drill that you shot 23 times before recording is equivalent to a guy performing cold and on demand in public to someone else’s standard and judgment, then you are an idiot. Shot a sub 5 second FAST but never seem to show up to a class where you can actually try for a coin? Cool story dude.

 If you are the guy who loudly proclaims that some NFL QB sucks, and you go on to say that he should have checked off the first receiver and thrown to the third guy, but have not yourself touched a football since you were a scrub water bearer in high school, you are an idiot.

If you tell everyone at Buffalo Wild Wings that some UFC fighter sucks and that he should have had a smarter game plan for the match, but always seem to have some excuse about why you don’t train, you are an idiot.

If you tell a black belt that has been actively teaching BJJ since 2004 that the t-shirt choke he shows will never work, but then fail to show up to a seminar (at no charge done in your area) to show in person why that is true, you are an idiot.

If you tell everyone that you have an unstoppable guard pass, but somehow never seem able to go to a competition in which you would obviously take the gold, then you are an idiot.

If you tell the world that BJJ guys are vulnerable to “dirty tactics” and don’t know how to deal with them, but when you are invited publicly to multiple BJJ schools to demonstrate that in person and you strangely go silent? Here is your idiot ribbon.

If you cannot perform cold, on demand, on someone else’s timeframe and for public consumption, then your critique is as valid as your performance. Zero.

If we are concerned with true real world self-defense, then our standard of performance, and the final arbiter of that, has to be what we can do when we are not prepared. As world renown firearms trainer Tom givens has noted, self-defense is a come as you are affair. Is it important to train hard and track our progress? Of course, because doing so pushes the envelope of what we can do, and therefore gives us a better upper end of our individual spectrum, but at the end of the day, it is what we can do when the balloon goes up that matter. Don’t tell me what you can do on your best day. Show me what you can do when you are sick, tired, injured, etc. And don’t insult those who do focus on that and show their performances that reflect that.