Gone are the days when potential rulers would fight each other for a throne, but depending on how the 2020 presidential election turns out, we may end up with a leader who knows how to choke people.
You see, presidential hopeful Andrew Yang of the Democratic party has revealed that he and his son do jiu-jitsu. Yang posted a photo on social media of him and his son:
“Getting in some Jiu-Jitsu with the little guy.”
In a reply to a comment on the photo, Yang (or someone running his Facebook page) confirmed that he does really train, and in fact, he’s such a big martial arts fan that he’s included MMA and the UFC as an example to illustrate his labor policies. He’s been vocal about his issues with the UFC’s profit-vs.-pay disparities, citing the struggle of fighter Leslie Smith as an example. His blog post about the entire issue can be found here, but this snippet highlights the main point of the situation:
“Leslie noticed that she and her fellow fighters were not getting paid as much as athletes in other sports – fighters get paid as little as $12k per fight and fight 2 – 3 times per year. Meanwhile the UFC signed a new deal with ESPN worth $300 million a year and its CEO, Dana White, recently said the company was worth $7 billion. Fighters are getting paid just 10 – 15% of revenue, much less than the 47-51% prevalent in the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL.
Leslie decided to start a union and asked fellow fighters to sign up. Dana White didn’t like this. So he fired Leslie Smith in April. Leslie rightfully said, “I’m a top 10 fighter and I didn’t lose a fight. This is because I’m trying to start a union.” So she filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in Philadelphia, which agreed that she had grounds for action.”
Now, it seems that Yang has made jiu-jitsu a family affair. His son started to train at the end of January this year and apparently still seems to enjoy it.
It’s worth mentioning that if he were elected, Yang wouldn’t be the first president to also practice martial arts — Teddy Roosevelt also famously did martial arts, including jiu-jitsu.
While you shouldn’t base your political decisions solely on which candidates do jiu-jitsu and which don’t, it’s still pretty cool when you consider the possibility that our nation’s future leader might know how to do a kimura.
