My father created this whole MMA thing.
I took a year of karate. It was like obligatory... every kid was taking like one year of karate and one year of piano in my town. It was Bruce Lee and Liberace. But I was not a white belt. I graduated. I had a colour belt - but that's all you need to know. It could have been black, it could have been yellow, or it could have been anything in between.
I can pretty much say that because of Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Damme, that's why I do what I do today.
First I tried karate but I didn't like it because it was boring. There was no action like you see in the movies.
I was a pretty fit and physical kid, and my first interest was in martial arts and kung fu with all the Bruce Lee movies.
Some of the martial arts films, the motivation is about martial arts. That's where it's coming from. It is a visual, commercial film, to showcase the next stunt, the biggest thing. And character development becomes a side thing.
There are certain things that I always dreamed of, like fighting in the UFC. There's just certain things that I feel like haven't been accomplished there. There's such great women coming up in the sport; seems like a wonderful time to be in women's MMA.
I watch mostly every martial arts movie... I really like movies that aren't just martial arts. I like movies that have spiritual meaning behind them, like samurai movies, or movies that have meditation.
To make a kung fu film is like a dream come true, because I'm a big fan of kung fu movies and I'm learning kung fu for a long time.
Growing up, all of my friends would set their schedules to the showing of kung fu movies on TV.
My role in kung fu - in the art of kung fu, not the series - is not as a practitioner. My role is that of an evangelist, which is an entirely different thing.
That was always the top martial artist - the Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt. Once I started beating them, I knew I had what it takes to form a new martial art. That's when I came up with Joe Jitsu, my namesake, so my legacy lives forever through the martial arts.
I grew up doing martial arts, and it's one of these things where I always kind of liked acting, but I was never real serious about it.
In my camp, we have Minotoro Noguiera and Lyoto Machida.
Actually, I have never been a great fan of martial arts competitions. Not even when I was training martial arts myself.
I want Shogun because he's a legend of the sport. I respect him very much. He has good style and it matches with mine. I want to fight him in Brazil.
I've kind of grew to enjoy fighting legends that I got into the sport watching and admiring.
I have made movies on education and dance, have directed and choreographed legends of Bollywood. Now, I want to make a movie on martial arts. I myself am a black belt, so I am looking forward to do something on this.
There is also a strong following among the urbanites on the East Coast when it comes to martial arts films.
I was raised on Bruce Lee.
I've been training in Jiu-jitsu for about six years and I'm very fortunate to live in that world. All the fighters hang out and have lunch together just about every day and trade stories. And I've always been fascinated how in the world of Jiu-jitsu in L.A. everybody in the fight world - cops, special forces, bouncers, stuntmen - connected across different lines.
You know, it's such an insult to actual martial artists that I say that I do martial arts.
You know, MMA doesn't need New York, New York needs MMA. And I say that with all due respect to New York.
I had a bit of a martial arts background from when I was a teenager: I did a bit of karate.
I've always been huge into martial arts.
