Show Notes

The Alabama Twisters: What Happens When Competitors Become Teammates

What happens when nine gym owners stop competing against each other — and decide to build something together instead?

That’s exactly what the Alabama Twisters have done.

The Twisters are a professional jiu jitsu team competing in the Professional Grappling Federation (PGF), a submission-only league built for action and entertainment. But what’s fascinating isn’t just the format of the matches — it was the way this team came together.

In this episode of The Localist, Carrie sits down with Russell Marbut, Matt Elkins, and Flearoy Brown to talk about collaboration, ownership, and what it really takes to build something sustainable in Alabama.

What Is the PGF?

The Professional Grappling Federation has one defining rule:

There are no points. Only submissions.

Athletes compete in six-minute matches. The only way to score is to submit your opponent. Chokes earn six points. Breaks (like arm bars) earn three. There’s even a shot clock for stalling — because in this league, you get penalized for being boring.

The result is fast-paced, high-energy competition that’s easier for casual viewers to understand — and structured like a season, more similar to traditional American sports than most jiu jitsu tournaments.

If you want to watch the Alabama Twisters compete live, you can stream here:

PGF World Stream: https://kick.com/pgfworld
Alabama Twisters Stream: https://kick.com/AlabamaTwisters

Nine Owners. One Vision.

What makes the Twisters unique isn’t just how they compete — it’s how they’re structured.

The team is owned by nine gym owners from across the region. Instead of guarding their territory, they chose collaboration. They cross-train. They stagger open mats. They co-host events. They divide responsibilities based on strengths — marketing, operations, logistics, event production.

It’s a business model that feels surprisingly familiar.

Clear roles. Shared vision. Open communication. Leaning into strengths instead of stepping on each other’s toes.

That kind of structure doesn’t just work in sports — it works in business.

Why They’re Careful About AI

In a world where AI can produce content instantly, the Twisters have intentionally chosen to build personality-driven media instead. Their belief is simple: AI can create volume, but it can’t create culture.

The humor, the rivalries, the inside jokes, the behind-the-scenes moments — those things feel real because they are real. The relationships existed long before the team was formed.

And in today’s digital world, authenticity is a serious competitive advantage.

Building Something Bigger Than a Team

The Twisters aren’t just focused on Vegas or the national stage. They’re investing in Alabama.

They’ve hosted large-scale grappling events in Birmingham, structured like wrestling competitions — organized, entertaining, and community-centered.

Their long-term vision includes youth participation, state-level competition, professional pathways, and sustainable growth for the sport in Alabama.

Instead of waiting for someone else to invest in the state, they’re doing it themselves.

What Small Business Owners Can Learn

Even if you’ve never trained jiu jitsu, this episode has takeaways:

Collaboration can outperform competition.
Culture doesn’t happen by accident.
Authentic content builds loyalty.
Structure creates sustainability.

Whether you run a gym, a shop, or a service-based business, the principles are transferable.

Mentioned in This Episode

Alabama Twisters Website: https://alabamatwisters.org
Instagram: https://instagram.com/alabamatwisters
PGF World Stream: https://kick.com/pgfworld
Alabama Twisters Stream: https://kick.com/AlabamaTwisters

Thanks to Our Sponsor, Infomedia

The Localist is sponsored by Infomedia, a Birmingham-based web and marketing company that believes small businesses deserve big results online.

If you need help with strategy, website development, or digital marketing:

Contact Infomedia: https://infomedia.com/contact

Join Us at Localist Lab

Localist Lab is our free, live marketing event series for small business owners who want practical, immediately usable ideas.

See upcoming events and register: https://infomedia.com/events

Episode Transcript

Carrie
Welcome to the localist, a podcast for small business owners, where we talk about the highs and lows of building community through entrepreneurship. I’m your host, author of The localist book and small business consultant, Carrie Rollwagen, the localist is sponsored by infomedia, a Birmingham based web and marketing company where I work as senior vice president at infomedia, we believe that small businesses deserve big results online today, on the podcast, we are welcoming back the Alabama twisters. So the Alabama twisters are a professional jiu jitsu league that is based here in Alabama. We’ve actually had them on before. And our previous episode, we interviewed my husband, Russell Marbut, because he is one of the owners of the twisters. That episode was right before they really got into the groove as twisters. I think they were already competing, but this was their first season competing. So in that episode, we really kind of dive into exactly what the PGF is, which is the league, the professional grappling League, where they compete. We talk about how they put the teams together, how they bought in, and things like that. And today we’re actually getting to revisit that conversation, and we’re adding a couple of people. Russell is coming back on, but we also have Matt Elkins, who is the president of the twisters, and we have flee Roy Brown, who is also an owner of the twisters as well. The twisters season actually starts tomorrow, so we’re going to drop some links in the show notes where you can listen in, but we really get into what has happened between the last season and this season, they have built a lot, not only in the actual competitive league, but also as far as events that are in Alabama, as far as building that community and building a fan base as well. In this episode, we get into how the PGF in particular takes inspiration from different sports some of the more interesting parts and the things that keep those games and those leagues really interesting and competitive, and kind of applies some of those things to Jiu Jitsu. We talk about content creation and why this group, in particular, the twisters, really believes that individual content creation and original content creation performs better than AI. And we also talk about how difficult and sometimes rewarding it is to run a business with nine different owners. Because the twisters have nine different owners. We only have a third of them on today. I also wanted to mention that our assistant producer, who is in the room with us, although not on camera, actually trains jiu jitsu at Russell’s gym and has competed in Twister events before. So the guys on the podcast talk to him a little bit off camera and maybe roast him a little bit as well. This was a really fun episode for me, obviously, because I have personal ties, but I think there’s a lot here that we can learn from obviously, if you own a gym or if you happen to own a sports team, there are some direct correlations, but I think there are a lot of lessons that any of us who run a business or dreaming of running a business, can really have some great takeaways from here as well. I enjoyed this conversation, obviously for personal reasons, but I think there are some really great takeaways here too. Clearly, if you own a gym or if you happen to run a sports team of your own, there are some direct correlations, but I really think there are a lot of parallels to what the twisters do, and especially as far as like how they promote themselves, how they look at other businesses and other teams to learn more about what they can do that any of us can incorporate, whether we’re just going to work or building a business or dreaming of building a business someday. So here are Matt Russell and flee Roy, welcome to the podcast. As we’re recording, I think you guys are about to start your season tomorrow. So I kind of wanted to kick off by saying, like, how do people watch, and what are they going to see if they watch? We’ll drop the link to the live stream in the show notes too.

Matt Elkins
Yeah, so you would find us on YouTube. And every Wednesday night, we’ll be having our matches. We’ll have three matches. We’ll have blocks, so we’ll compete in each block and go head to head against the other teams, the other three teams that are available. And I think you guys could catch that also. Is that on our twisters page as well.

Russell Marbut
I think right now, we’re just running on PGF worlds. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to code stream it, but PGF worlds,

Carrie
you guys can get us the links, and we’ll drop whatever we have into the show notes so people listening can find it there. So what are let’s kind of start, if you’re used to watching Jiu Jitsu, what are you going to see? What’s different about like, the PDF, and, I guess, a little bit about what is the PGF, and then maybe we’ll drill down into like, if you haven’t watched it at all, what are you going to see? But if you’re, if you’re saying, like, I’ve watched martial arts before, I’ve watched Jiu. To before what like? Why would they watch PGF? Where are they going to see that’s different.

Matt Elkins
So the PGF is the professional grappling Federation, and it’s, it’s has its own coined rule set. It’s six minute matches. There’s no points to be scored in the match, and it’s only decided by a submission. And so there’s only one way to advance or to score points for the season, and that’s to submit your opponent. And you get six points if you choke, or we call them kills in the league, six points for a kill, and then you get three points for a break. And that would be like an arm bar or a wrist lock or something like that. So you you aren’t incentivized by anything else but pushing the action and pushing the pace. Some of the other traditional rule sets, they reward you with points, and sometimes at the highest levels, these guys are so good and they’re such a small difference in their in their skill sets, that they’ll just like, get ahead by a like an what they call an advantage point, or they’ll score two points and then just camp out the rest of the match and stall. And so it takes the entertainment value out of it sometimes with those points scoring systems, but the PGF, like I said, it has a seasonal approach, just like any other sport, and so it allows you to accrue points throughout the season to make it to the playoffs. So there’s those incentives to try to make sure that you’re pushing the action and trying to submit your opponent.

Flearoy Brown
Yeah, I think Go ahead. Another thing that they do that is significantly different than any other jiu jitsu rule set that I’ve been a part of is the stalling calls are significantly, significantly more harsh, right? Like there’s a shot clock. Yeah, there’s a shot clock that starts you, you, you get the initial stalling call. The shot clock starts at the end of the shot clock. It’s not a point, right? Because we don’t deal with points. It’s you immediately go to what’s called tabletop, which is one of the worst positions that you could possibly be in in jujitsu. And you have to start from there and fight from there. So essentially, if you get a stalling call, that’s dang near the end of into your match there, right?

Carrie
Is it accurate to say you get punished for being boring? Yes, you 100%

Flearoy Brown
get punished for being boring. That’s why it’s the, in my opinion, it is the pinnacle of jiu jitsu right now, because it’s the most exciting. It’s, it’s, you know, you go to these, not gonna name any names, you go to these other jiu jitsu tournaments, and you’ve got, like, double guard pools, and this, that and the other and, like Matt said, they kind of figure out. They’ve, you know, these, these other rule sets have been around for so long, everybody’s kind of figured out how to game the system there. So they’re now, they’re no longer doing Jiu Jitsu, they’re playing the rule set instead, right? So a lot of what you’ll see is like, you know, a guard pull into full guard, and then they’ll just sit there for four minutes, and with a minute left, after the other person’s exhausted from trying to escape, they’ll just sweep him, win, win by two points or whatever.

Matt Elkins
To that point they like the common person watching that has no idea that they’re sitting there having this little nuance battle that, as a high level grappler, you would probably understand a little more. But the casual fans don’t bite their teeth into it, because they’re like, these guys are just kind of hugging each Yeah. And so with the PGF, it’s pretty obvious to see, like, Oh, dang, he just grabbed that guy and choked him out like it was a John Wick movie. Yeah, I think he won.

Carrie
I think it’s really fun, yeah. Like, when I first, when Russell first started training, I wouldn’t know if he won or lost until they held up his hand at the end. I would be like, oh, good sometimes. But I do think that even if you don’t, if you’re not used to watching Jiu Jitsu, like a lot of people we work with, have kind of watched PGF matches, and they’re really surprised, because they’re like, Yeah, I had no idea what was going on in other leagues, but it is actually fun to watch, even if you don’t exactly know what you’re looking at. If that makes sense, I

Matt Elkins
think the biggest difference in the PGS approach because jiu jitsu has been around for a while. There’s been some really big promotions, successful promotions, it said they’re just taking sports models and like I said, stalling calls are in other sports like wrestling, and, you know, a shot clock is from basketball and so on and so forth. So they’re just taking elements of traditional American sports that people like to consume, and they’re just kind of stretching it over the sport of Jiu Jitsu. And it’s turned out to be a pretty, pretty entertaining.

Carrie
Yeah, it is pretty fun. It’s like, I get very into it, even though I’m only watching the stream, like yelling in my apartment and stuff like that.

Matt Elkins
Giving a twisties. Man, we got to get some, we got to get some foam fingers for the twist

Flearoy Brown
fingers like this. You

Matt Elkins
got to add the thumb to the Voltron aspect.

Carrie
So is that you’re making a tornado? Is that, or is that?

Matt Elkins
No, that that originated from Brandon mccathern, the guy who started the league. He’s. He’s my coach, and we just decided at some point that we were just going to change the culture of how, you know, our gyms worked, and how we wanted to approach jiu jitsu as a sport. And it was during the pandemic, so everything was shut down. So all of a sudden, the jiu jitsu culture became a little more malleable than it traditionally was, and so that just came from us. You know, that was our little, our little tag on, or whatever about Voltron, where we were aligning all these Power Rangers, if you will, to form this Megatron type.

Flearoy Brown
And essentially, that’s what we’ve done with the the ownership of the twisters. It’s the exact same idea just applied to

Carrie
so tell me some about that, or tell the audience I’m about that. I’m obviously a little familiar. But so you guys have, it’s not just like one person who’s super wealthy and wants to own a team, which is also cool, but you have, like multiple people, most of whom own gyms around town and that are

Flearoy Brown
also super wealthy. Yeah,

Matt Elkins
that’s true. It’s a it’s interesting because, you know, there’s strengths and weaknesses to to everything, pros and cons, and obviously, having a New York Yankees budget, there’s some benefit to that. There’s no doubt about it. But what we’ve been able to collaborate on has just been, ultimately, it’s just been the passion projects of all of us as individuals. When I was a 10th plan at Birmingham, Matt Elkin standing by myself trying to put on tournaments, it’s me doing all the leg work. And sometimes people support it. Sometimes they don’t support it. You know, if I’ve russelled Someone’s feathers before, then maybe they’re not going to send their students or something. And so we wind up, all of us wind up collaborating. And it just makes it really has brought a whole new, new dynamic to how to be successful in the jiu jitsu space. Because I really feel like a lot of people kind of like, want to go do their own thing and their own little brand, and being able to align all of our efforts under the banner of the Alabama twisters has been a really powerful thing, and all of our efforts combined have. It’s been huge for for us, and especially, like I said, I’ve tried to run tournaments before, and it’s just not, it’s just not the same thing when you got a whole group of people that are, you know, down with the common goal, yeah,

Carrie
and it seems like it does seem cool, because everybody has their own stuff. Like a lot of you, own your own gyms. Leroy, you coach, correct. Okay, so, like everybody has their own

Matt Elkins
you call it that.

Flearoy Brown
I’ve had a state champion every single year that I’ve coached wrestling.

Matt Elkins
Congratulations.

Carrie
So, but everybody has the part that they can do on their own, and then you can go together and put on these events together. So in some ways, it does seem like the best of both worlds, I guess, yeah.

Russell Marbut
I mean, we, I mean, we have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the sport. So, you know, when there’s nine of us that are all experienced multiple years, you know, we can really, like, pull on that experience and make stuff happen, you know.

Matt Elkins
And everyone has a different perspective, you know, that’s that’s one thing that we all are so different. And all of our gyms, while our jiu jitsu gyms, all have something a little bit different, the culture is all a little bit different, and we’re able to cover each other’s blind spots. I feel like, really, really well because of that, I think that some of the other organizations in the league are going to have a little bit tougher of a time because they’re going to be so dominated by one person’s perspective. And I think, I mean, maybe I’m tone deaf to it, but I feel like we do a great job of communicating even, you know, sometimes when there’s nine voices gets a little loud, but I think that we do a great job of like, you know, everyone cares about what’s truthfully going to work. And if you know, we surrender to that idea, then I feel like we’re going to do our best work. And so far, we’ve done pretty well with just our first couple of events that we’ve even put on here locally. So very excited,

Carrie
yeah, well, tell me some about, like, how you actually make that work? Because I know that you guys have meetings regularly. Like, coming together and moving in one direction doesn’t happen by accident. So how do you how do you communicate? Or if there is, like, if, two people are disagreeing, like, how does that work? Just as far as like, making the organization work,

Matt Elkins
in my opinion, by now we have, finally, after how long we’ve been doing this now, six months, eight months, something like that, couple years, a couple of 1000 years, we’ve, we’ve managed to kind of let people flow and attract themselves to the thing that they want to be good at. So, you know, there seems to be a certain group of guys that do the front end social media stuff. There seems to be people that, do you know that they’re focusing on marketing. Then there’s people that do the back end things really well, that never want to be on camera, and please don’t shove a microphone in my face. And so and then there’s some guys that are in between that have, that have started stepping up. And maybe even if they’re not present in every single way, in every single meeting, they’re able to, hey, hey man, we need you now and step up at the right times. And so we’ve been pretty successful, as you know, considering there’s nine people that we’ve been trying to get, it’s just like high school group projects, like, there’s a couple of people that work really hard, and then there’s some guy that just stands around

Flearoy Brown
looking beautiful, being handsome, and hits

Matt Elkins
on the teacher or something. Well,

Flearoy Brown
you know, there’s the brains, there’s the beauty. So we’ve really got the trifecta of everything that you need,

Matt Elkins
the perfect cocktail,

Russell Marbut
three headed beast.

Carrie
I mean, honestly, the three of you do a lot of the marketing stuff, right? Is that correct?

Matt Elkins
Yeah, we definitely seem to have, have taken that role on and seem to work really well together. And so it naturally is kind of divided into those things. And like I said, it’s been, it’s been super cool.

Carrie
How do you approach doing those things? Because I think a lot of teams that I’ve seen like, not just in jujitsu, but in general, are kind of like just generating AI posts and things, and I think your social posts are, I they

Flearoy Brown
aied, they ate. Okay, listen, here’s the thing, these two guys are friends. They know each other, this, that and the other. They took AI images of I’m not gonna say who it is. They’ll know. They took AI images of themselves and put them in an AI Bentley for an Instagram ad that’s that’s insane, that’s insane.

Carrie
So well we we do the Yeah.

Russell Marbut
I mean, I think our brand is, like, organic, like, so we do ourselves a disservice if we, like, start doing that stuff too much like breach, yeah, so we try to keep it organic.

Carrie
You have Leroy also.

Flearoy Brown
AI has no soul, yeah, that’s the thing. When we do stuff, you can tell that we sat there for hours and produced it and wrote it. And it’s not just us typing into an algorithm, like anybody can do that, anybody could do that. What we do, not everybody can do. Yeah, right. And I really think that’s what separates us from the rest of the pack. I think it comes to the

Matt Elkins
social game. I personally believe that there is a obviously, a great deal of things that AI can do really well, but it seems like there’s starting to be like, some type of backlash, whether it’s over convoluted emails or just like these, organize a group chat with an AI or something like that, and people are like, Hey, man, maybe not, yeah. And the social media game, I think that’s something that we we are going to be able to to keep it authentic for quite some time,

Carrie
it seems like you guys are playing to your strengths there too, because the do they call you the nasty nine, still the nine, so you have like, a like, even that kind of implies that it’s like gritty and kind of grassroots, almost. So I think it does seem like you’re taking the things that are unique, the most unique about your team, and playing them up.

Matt Elkins
Well, what we’re talking about also allowed Brandon, who’s from Decatur, to start the PGF and to find his way. Because being from Alabama, you’re not in the peak culture for Jiu Jitsu, you know, Austin, Texas, maybe somewhere up north or something like that, California, of course. But because we didn’t have these really high level coaches, and we had to figure it out on on our own, you know, we had to find a way to get relevant or get good. And that is in its own strength. It was our weakness at first, but after years of just leaning into the craft, now that’s, that’s what we have the other people don’t have because they’ve, you know, they’ve had a silver spoon, so to speak, as they as they’ve come up, no, don’t, don’t get my boy.

Flearoy Brown
Hey, what? Nothing given to us. We had to get it out the mud,

Matt Elkins
except the chains.

Flearoy Brown
So the chance. No chance.

Carrie
I mean, you’ve also used flroroid quite a bit, which I think isn’t another thing, like, Let’s take something that is our strength, like you guys. I remember the when the last, the first season, I think that you, you really had to throw this together really quickly in the first season. And somebody interviewed flee Roy, and he was just acting like, Oh, we’ve known we’ve had this going for so you just got the impression that this is like, so worked out, and it’s great, and it’s so exciting. I feel like you just do that well, like, when there’s a camera pointed at you, you. Just kind of like, I know what to say. Is that correct or is that? I mean, sometimes maybe saying different things.

Flearoy Brown
Leroy Brown wasn’t made for the camera. The camera was made for Leroy Brown. You know, as

Matt Elkins
long as there’s somebody to be like, Hey, dude, yeah, not that part, yeah. And he’s done great. He’s honestly done great when we first started. So I think that This started a long way before the actual Alabama twisters started. We’ve all been cross training and having the little, you know, the little movement going that is a little less traditional compared to what some jiu jitsu schools would say, you know, cross training and stuff like, that’s usually a little, little no no. And we’ve kind of thrived off of that. And so it’s something that has been happening for a while. The twisters have only been around for the last several months, but the energy and the culture that we’ve that we represent, that’s been, you know, that’s been something that we’ve built over several years, and is very organic and authentic, yeah, you

Russell Marbut
might say we were born for this. Hey,

Matt Elkins
is that right? At least three people, but I do think that that’s where we have the common goal. I would say that most gym owners, at some point, if they’ve owned a jiu jitsu school, they wanted jiu jitsu to be more relevant and be more of a mainstream sport, maybe like wrestling, or more like football or whatever. So, man, I thought you were like, I thought not having a wrestling stuff popped out. I thought you were scoffing at wrestling issues.

Russell Marbut
That take me down if I just sit down. Dude,

Carrie
for people listening. Playwright, coaches, wrestling Correct, yes,

Flearoy Brown
second best wrestling coach in the state. Thank you for blessing me.

Russell Marbut
Matt does have two state championships in the state of Alabama,

Flearoy Brown
some tournaments. I also have two youth state championships as well. So we both have

Matt Elkins
two state championship that’s only four less than me and youth, Russell,

Russell Marbut
you’re the white belt. Naga, I am the

Flearoy Brown
white belt, North American grappling Association

Matt Elkins
National Champion, yes, yes, I am, and I’m the black belt one.

Carrie
I don’t know if it’s considered breaking the fourth wall when it’s just like you’re only talking to the fourth

Flearoy Brown
I mean, for the people, the women specific,

Carrie
well, I actually want to talk about your Birmingham events, because that is something that I think is really cool and or, I mean, Alabama or regional events really, you’ve kind of alluded to this, but we are about to be able to see the you guys, like the twisters team, competing at the PGF, which is a huge part of what You do. But even when you’re not in that season, you guys put on events yourself, correct? So kind of tell us about how that, how that goes, like, how you decide what you’re going to do, what you’re going to put your efforts toward, and how they’ve gone as far as, like, your perspective is,

Matt Elkins
I think that we were kind of talking about it a minute ago, you know, Russell alluded to, you know, we were born for this, or, you know, our purpose, or whatever. And having the team in Las Vegas is really cool, but I don’t feel that like I don’t feel called to that as much. It’s a cool part of it. But what I ultimately want, I think that is what brought all of us together as the nasty nine owners, is that we all want the Alabama jiu jitsu culture to sustain and not just be, not just be around, but be, you know, at the top of the tier, you know, we want to be in those same conversations with these other people, these other big states, even though we didn’t start with all the same resources that they did. So I think that that’s what motivates all of us is to get people in Alabama doing Jiu Jitsu, competing in Jiu Jitsu. I mean, if it scaled to where we wanted it to, it would be a youth sport, a high school sport, a college sport, and then, of course, would spit out at the professional grappling Federation at the top is pros. And so we have seen people from Alabama, the PGF owners, when they started the league, rise to the top of the sport and be in that conversation. And so now we’re at the bottom, trying to just cover the width of it and just make sure that there’s sustainable culture and a regular season with a state championship and an off season and stuff like that. And we’re just hoping, I think, that our goal is just to legitimize the sport in Alabama so that it’s synonymous with other athletic, sports that kids sign up and instead of feeling like it’s karate or flag football or something like that, that’s a little adjacent to the mainstream, instead,

Carrie
yeah, because you have kids and adults at these events, correct? And then, I mean, it’s fun, it does. It is kind of a family event, too. The last one I went to is at Iron City, and people were like, they would come and compete, but then they’d hang out, watch other people, kind of get food, talk to people like it was, it does become a Hangout kind of event. It’s not just you go only if you’re competing.

Russell Marbut
We don’t. We don’t want to be at the whim of these like national organizations that come to Alabama or Birmingham when they want to take the money and run like we want to be that organization that is based here and puts on events and puts them on regularly and gives our people opportunities to show what they can do.

Matt Elkins
There’s no way that somebody that runs an IBJJF event in Alabama or a Naga event in Alabama, or even some of the Southern, you know, companies that come to come to the state, there’s no way for those people to care as much about the Alabama jujitsu community as we do. And so it seemed to be just another spot that was untapped where com, you know, these companies thought they could come here and put on a tournament, make someone spend 120 bucks, get them on the mat for one Matt, and then leave, get in, get out, just it’s kind of, it’s just been a really bad experience, honestly. And maybe if people have never done tournaments before, they wouldn’t know. But especially wrestling culture, they’re very good at running tournaments. They have huge tournaments every weekend with hundreds of kids in them, and so that’s the that culture already exists and but they’re the way that the jiu jitsu does tournaments and wrestling does tournaments. They’re just not the same. Wrestling is all about the action and who gets the most exposed, you know, I’m sorry, experience, and then jiu jitsu is more so just like, here’s a medal. It’s like, it’s kind of taking this karate style, little niche inside of these grappling tournaments. And so we’re hoping to completely remedy that and try to make a little a little more, like wrestling culture. You know, I started wrestling in 1999 it’s in the 90s. Emory, know

Russell Marbut
nothing about that dude.

Matt Elkins
It wasn’t just on Instagram reels with filters. It was all real, the Creed and the Limp Biscuit and the surge soda. But, we helped grow Alabama wrestling culture. It was, it reminds me very much right now of what jiu jitsu culture is. You go, there’s six or eight kids in a bracket and stuff like that. People are frustrated because they’re having to grapple the same people over and over again. And that’s just what it was, you know, like now kids have it completely different, and they get these sick belts and all this kind of cool stuff. But that’s essentially what I feel like we’re doing is just growing the sport culture, similar to how it used to be with wrestling, but wrestling has grown and is doing very, very well. Women’s Wrestling is growing and becoming one of the fastest growing sports in the country, so we don’t feel like it’s going to be as long of a process to get jiu jitsu to follow suit, but we definitely have to backfill the culture a little bit, a little just because of how the karate aspect of the tournaments kind of took, you know, over a little, yeah.

Carrie
I mean, that makes sense. Like you were even saying one of the things that PGF has done is taken things from other sports that worked well and kind of applied it to Jiu Jitsu. And in some ways, I think it sounds like this a similar thing. You’re like wrestling tournaments. We like the way these run, and so we kind of want to take some of that that’s working and apply it to Jiu Jitsu.

Flearoy Brown
Why write our own blueprint when we could just steal somebody else, right?

Carrie
I mean, I think it’s working. I the last event, it did seem like so many people around me, I heard saying, like, this is amazing. It’s running on time, which never happens. Like it’s actually moving. There’s not a lot of just, like downtime. Nothing’s happening. There was always something happening. You weren’t confused about where to go. It was a really great location. It was you guys had walk out music for people. It was just way more of an event that I think everybody could enjoy.

Flearoy Brown
It’s almost like we were born to do I’ve heard it said, Yeah.

Russell Marbut
I mean, I agree. I mean, I think the event we put on in Iron City was probably the coolest grappling event that’s ever happened in the state Alabama.

Flearoy Brown
I think it was the coolest combat sports event that’s ever happened in the state of Alabama.

Matt Elkins
Yeah, it was definitely, it was definitely very unique, even, even the things that like I was saying, wrestling has some things really, really right. Jiu Jitsu has some things really, really right. You know, when I first got into Jiu Jitsu, it was not nearly as popular as it is now. And I remember seeing like they started throwing money at guys for winning jiu jitsu tournament. And as a former wrestler, I, you know, I kind of scoff at I’d be like, they’re gonna pay these, these guys to wrestle each other game. We do it for honor, like real men, okay, pride, ego, and all the things that make the world go round. We’re talking about the real, yeah, but jiu jitsu started, you know, promoting athletes and telling the story, kind of like you would see a little more in MMA, or even done best in, like professional WWE wrestling. They started, like, promoting these people and telling the story and creating these characters. And that’s something that jiu jitsu does have, right? So we have been at kind of the we’ve been right there next to Brandon mccathern and Keelan lawyer who started the professional grappling Federation. So we’ve got a firsthand look at how to apply this logic to our promotion and our team. And yeah, it seems like we’re all having a really good time. You know, that’s the most important thing. There have been some stressful conversations that we have to have. It’s, it’s when you’re doing something cool, like that. It’s got to be that way. But honestly, I think we’re all having, as you can tell, a pretty decent time. It’s a dream come true to be able to do this. It’s something that we’ve always wanted, and just not knowing how to facilitate it. So now we see that that light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s, it’s very exciting.

Carrie
Yeah, I mean, even you guys as gyms, like you were working together before this, but now you’re able to, like, actually, really move forward in an organized way. Because, I think before you were talking about, like, because you guys, um, and 10th Planet Matt’s gym, and then Cobra, you guys already were like staggering your open Matts and things that, so that people in Birmingham could experience as much as possible from each gym. Is that right? Yeah. And then, yeah,

Matt Elkins
I think that it. I mean, aside from always wanting to be in a place as a former, student only. I wanted to be able to cross train with people, yeah, and it became this, like, hush hush. Like, no, no. Thing very taboo for me to sneak over somewhere on a Thursday night and take class from somebody else, because then my coach would be offended like you think that I couldn’t teach you all these things or whatever. And I understand that perspective on some level, but we, we decided to try to be proactive about it and be like, Hey, listen, we wanted to cross train. Obviously, our students are going to want to cross train. So how do we make that a cool thing instead of this, like unfortunate situation? And so we facilitated it. And so now on Fridays, we all go to own and cross train there. Saturday, there’s a couple different spots. Cobra usually has their open Matt on Saturday. And then Sunday, people come to 10th plant in Birmingham. And we just keep this, like, crowd just moving around. And then during the week, like, everyone stays at their own gym and they take their technique classes and etc, etc. But it’s good to, like, get some different looks and stuff like that. And it’s also just cool to hang out with other people that like to do the things that, you know. And so when

Carrie
it really forms that community, like I know, before Russell started on that was a huge thing that he would get so frustrated about when he would go to other cities and train, and it’s like they’re able to do this, like cross train, I mean, there’s nothing like that here right now, and you really can build up that community. And it is cool to see the jiu jitsu community coming together. Like, so much across. I mean, you got again, you guys are already building this, but I think the twisters help you. Like, really even, like, move forward more amplifies, yeah, amplifies it, yeah, amplifies it.

Flearoy Brown
Because before, it was kind of just between, yeah, that we did it intentionally, right, yeah, but it was just kind of us, our three gyms, that started participating, and then as soon as the twisters, you know, came along, I mean, Sundays have been popping, Fridays have been popping. Saturday open, Matts have been popping so

Carrie
and you’re able to pull in other gyms throughout the state, Mississippi, is that right?

Matt Elkins
Yeah, there’s one gym from Mississippi. JC Hyatt owns grapple, jiu jitsu and flow wood.

Flearoy Brown
Mississippi, awesome, most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen JC Hyatt, they are icy blue. I mean, it’s, it’s almost criminal. He won’t even wear, No, he won’t wear sunglasses. I mean, listen, it would be, it would be a crime against God if he wore sunglasses, to be honest with you, it would be like slapping God in the face if you covered up those beautiful, piercing, deep, light blue eyes. I mean, I love Jason. You don’t ever talk about my setting me up for a joke that I’m not allowed to tell, right?

Carrie
All right. Well, let’s I

Flearoy Brown
actually want to talk about like that, Matt,

Carrie
I want to talk about the team a little bit, but first i. I’d love it if you told everybody about the draft, because I think that’s another thing that’s really cool about PGF. And the last time Russell was on you, the draft had already happened, so we didn’t talk about that. So what you guys just had that fairly recently. What was that like? Did it go as you planned? Yeah. What? What happened?

Flearoy Brown
It went beautifully. Hustled the whole room. I honestly, I left and I felt bad for what we did to everybody else, right? It was, I mean, we were never so you’re happy with your team. Oh yeah, we are beyond, beyond happy with our team.

Russell Marbut
Some people have said we’re the preseason favorites, some people, some people, at least three people have said

Matt Elkins
that what’s really crazy is like of a recent after a recent tournament that happened this weekend, our last pick for our for our starting five, Jake Strauss, actually beat returning ADCC trials champion, which is a huge deal, and we call him for 1000 bucks. Yeah, he’s a Florida

Flearoy Brown
man too. He’s a Florida man too. So, you know, they’re built different.

Matt Elkins
Yeah, the draft went really, really well. We got that. We picked the first, the first guy that was up for bid. So this, this season, every season, the draft has had to evolve because the league is growing. And so this season, as we move more towards the twisters and the Las Vegas kings and all these companies bringing their entire rosters with them, we we only brought two athletes out of five starters. So we brought Elijah Carlton as our number one draft pick. He’s a multiple time PGF world champion. He’s been on UFC BJJ. Is a veteran, and so he’s going to absolutely crush it. He’s one of the one of the top picks in the entire league. And then number two is his training partner, Kevin buring. Both of those guys train under Sean Applegate at 10th Planet, Atlanta, who is our coach. So we have a really tight knit group for those those first two. So the draft was about trying to figure out how to find people that were going to complement our first two point scores. Because not everyone’s going to score points. They’re just not. Some of, some of the people are kind of like, we refer to them as anchors, hard to submit guys that aren’t going to give up a bunch of points, but you don’t, you’re not leaning on the not leaning on them to score. So our first pick in the draft was Travis Haven and the whole goal was to get him because he can, he can choke people for six point kills, and he also knows how to, how to hit leg locks and all those types of things. So he’ll pick up some three point plays as well. So he’s like a dynamic guy that we wanted to try to score, because our first two guys, we think we’re going to be able to rely on the score consistently. And so if we as a team have three guys that are scoring points every single night, we’re going to run away with this thing. And so past that, we wound up getting the Alabama twisters qualifier winner Anthony Salisbury TV dinner, as we call him in the biz, he in under a minute, click TV dinner, salisbury Steak and mashed potatoes. He’s 17 years old. And just like, honestly, when we met him, we were like, Man, this kid is a he’s got a great attitude. He’s just hungry, he wants to make it in the sport. And so somebody that we thought we could invest in that would also potentially score some points. I think he’s going to be a problem, even at 17 years old. Some of these he’s this year’s Rafael Ferreira, yeah, yeah. I think he’s going to be very exciting. I think that he is definitely going to score some points.

Carrie
That’s what I was going to say. Like, he was so fun to watch last season. Like, who’s your fun to watch? Who do you think you’re people? It’s important dinner.

Matt Elkins
Yeah, it’s important for us in the season that we have that entertainment value. Because at the end of the day, there’s only ever going to be one team that wins the championship every single year, and as the league goes from four to eight to 16 to 32 get lost in the sauce pretty easily. It’s just another team that’s in the league. So we definitely want people that are pushing the action and stuff like that. We don’t want people to be gaming the rule sets, which is, you know, you see people do that in other organizations and stuff like that. So TV dinner is definitely going to get out there and slang it and then pass that. That was when we picked up Jake Strauss and the Darce daddy himself. Jake Strauss, they were about to walk him so in the in the draft, if all four teams don’t bid on you, you get walked and you go to the back end of the draft. Well, we only had a, I forget how much we had, 1200 Yeah, we had like 1200 to left, and almost the very last guy in the entire draft was somebody that we had our our eyes on, so we were going to try to play it. But the other team still had way more money to bid, and we could kind of sniff out that they were probably had one or two of the names that we. Circled at the very end, and we were going to get outbid for those guys. So we walked Jake to start, and then everybody else, and I just knew somebody was going to bid on him, and then no one bid on him. So we were just, like, 1000 just to see what would happen, and no one else said a word. So we’re going to Pam all the remaining 1200 but I mean, the dude just beat one of the former ADCC trials champions in a sub only format,

Flearoy Brown
and he’s also one of those to watch because he is exciting. He is an exciting, exciting grappler and an exciting personality off the matt as well. Me and Jake Strauss get along. We are good pals, close personal friends. Some would say at least one person that said

Matt Elkins
he was gonna make it to your wedding. But yeah, unfortunately, that whole debacle with the steak fruits at the restaurant, yeah, that’s

Flearoy Brown
how that goes. Yeah. It goes like that. Sometimes, yeah, supposed to be my grooms man, but I forgive him. I’ll have another wedding to the same woman, to the same woman, same woman. I’m a Christian. Christ is king. I don’t believe in divorce. For me, you’re gonna remarry her, yeah, just gonna marry her a second time. She’s so good to me. Dude, obviously clip my toenails before we got here today, I might remarry her in the parking lot.

Carrie
I mean, I don’t think, I don’t think you can expect that from me. Clip your own toenails. It’s working. Well, I feel like we have a good Well, look.

Flearoy Brown
It started when I weighed like, 320 pounds, and me clipping my toenails meant I was gonna, like, pass out due to lack of oxygen. She really did it as like a health thing. And then I just keep lying to her, telling her, Oh, my head. I get light headed. So she just keeps clipping them.

Matt Elkins
What it is is that the Lord won his soul over by sending him, Jessica, that’s how he was. That’s how he’s no longer just nothing but a wretched sinner. That is true. Yeah, the Lord sent him Jessica. And he was like,

Flearoy Brown
well, by gotta believe now, damn it got me.

Carrie
Jessica is really awesome. Every time I hear people like training with you and being like, flroy is like a character that some version of that. It’s like, and then Jessica is an angel.

Flearoy Brown
Oh yeah, she’s a saint.

Matt Elkins
I absolutely adore her. Yeah, I think, I think that right now is probably a good time to shout out all the wives. I was gonna I was

Flearoy Brown
thinking about that on the way here. They’re honorary the owners. Like, really. Like, I mean, I know y’all go home and discuss it. I know they go home and discuss it. She’s literally sitting in there while I’m having all the meetings and stuff like that, so she hears all the stuff

Matt Elkins
too, right? I’m sure they get sick of it.

Flearoy Brown
Out of bed. These two guys can attest I’ve been kicked out of bed, not once, not twice, several times, but that these twisters

Russell Marbut
takes meetings in bed? Yeah, well, I think that’s the first mistake. It’ll be

Matt Elkins
like, 10pm on a Sunday, when we started our eight o’clock meeting, 1030 and we’ll just like, flee royal, adjust his phone, and we’ll just see that Jesse’s in the back. I’m like, Dude, we’re

Flearoy Brown
a team. Brother. Listen, I love that. Okay, we’ve been together since we were 15.

Matt Elkins
Listen, when my old lady finds out that Jessica’s listening in the background, she’s like, you don’t even let me listen.

Flearoy Brown
Well, we’re going to Atlanta after this to hang out with the platinum playboy.

Matt Elkins
KB, with that said, I think that all the women in the twisters owners organization, carry yourself. My fiance, Maya, I know that they’ve got to be absolutely sick of it. So we appreciate the support and the love, because what else are we gonna

Carrie
I mean, I do think that, well, first of all, anybody like your spouse or your partner owns a business, I think that is part of it. You are part of that business almost always, no matter what. And then I do think, and I think this is true of your partners, of DJs, business partner’s wife, too. It’s just like you see how much jiu jitsu like, how important it is to like to your partner being like a complete person, if that makes sense. Like, I mean, I think that it helps with discipline. It helps with community. So much of what you said, as far as, like being fulfilled in life, like building that community is, I think the point for you guys. And yes, it’s always like, oh, okay, like eight o’clock, Pam, it’s now time for the call, because you guys have to have weird time to calls, because you also do you have other jobs, other gyms, that kind of thing.

Russell Marbut
Fire your therapist. Yeah, sign up for Jiu jits here.

Matt Elkins
I was about to say, Listen, it’s the best 100, couple 100 bucks that you can spend for yourself a month to go and choke some fools out. And honestly. The unfortunate part that people will never get to that side of it is that you have to be choked out first. You have to be the nail before you can become the hammer. But, man, some of us, some of us, yeah, some of us never become the hammer at all, just eating it daily.

Matt Elkins
No. Daily is great.

Carrie
I mean, I think that’s something that’s yeah,

Flearoy Brown
he said it one other time, dude.

Carrie
Well, speaking of that community and the athletes, are you guys, you’re doing another thing that’s different this time, right? And that you have a house where all the athletes are going to stay during the tournament is that,

Matt Elkins
yeah, I was about to say, we don’t have we don’t call it the house. We call it the crib.

Flearoy Brown
We actually call it the storm shelter.

Matt Elkins
It’s a great I don’t know what the other teams did for their Airbnb, but these dudes ought to feel super comfortable. I’ve competed in the PGF in its early seasons, when it was here in Alabama, first season, famously, Brandon bought a bunch of, like, single size, you know, little mattresses, and we slept on the mats at the gym. And so it’s definitely come a long way since then, and being out in Las Vegas. The the last season that I competed in was in Las Vegas, but it was only a week, being a week, there was was a lot. So being there for six weeks, eight weeks, or something like that, can be, I know it’s got to be a lot on the athletes, and so we just wanted them to be as comfortable as possible, because there’s nothing worse than if you’ve ever, I mean, if you’ve gone and gotten an Airbnb and it wound up not being what you thought it was gonna be or something, and you’re stuck there for a few days just feeling kind of, you know, cramped, and it’s uncomfortable. So the guys are gonna feel great.

Carrie
They haven’t all been competing together, right? So this would be, it seems like, good for, like, the gelling of the team or whatever, too.

Matt Elkins
Yeah, yeah. We did have to make a rule that there’s no competitive games of basketball. Absolutely not there. You can you can shoot some hoops. You can go throw some horse shoes in the custom horseshoe pit. You could take a couple swings in the batting cages out back if you needed to hot tub and milk shakes. Hot tubing, milk shakes.

Carrie
So is this like a pro at like, you’re just thinking, we like, has there been an issue with basketball games? Or you just like, No, and well, ahead of time,

Flearoy Brown
as a matter of fact, the day before I was supposed to sign up for Jiu Jitsu, and this was back when old Coach Brown used to drink. So I had been sitting at the pool, yeah, I’d had a couple beverages, and I decided to go play basketball with this guy, man, I take one shot, I go up, swish, come back down, ankle snaps. The day before I was supposed to sign up for Jiu Jitsu, right? So I had a personal vendetta against basketball. And then me and Matt grew up wrestling, which is during basketball season. So really, we’re just anti basketball.

Matt Elkins
It’s really, this is what really happens, is that people that are good at grappling and good at wrestling like the reason that a lot of people get into it is because you don’t have to be super athletic to get good at it. It’s an output and an effort thing. And if you do that for long enough, you’ll you’ll get good where, like football, basketball, if you’re not six foot, then maybe it’s not gonna be your thing, you know. And so very targeted. I wasn’t all what I’m getting, linebacker, fullback, he’s making my point right now, by the way. And what happens when two wrestlers or two grapplers get around a basketball hoop is that they start being like, No, I couldn’t have played in the league, but I can beat you brick, okay? And so broken ankle and broken ankle, and so that’s, you know, like I said, I don’t think that it’s going to be that big of a deal. There is one guy that we didn’t mention is our is one of our two. I don’t like calling them bench players, but there are non starters, but he’s a professional, former professional football player. I’m sure Eric Allen would absolutely dice them boys up. Travis Haven looks like he could have also played some ball, though. You know, yeah, one of the mom stars, the blue monster. I’m not saying

Flearoy Brown
that the original handsome guy.

Matt Elkins
Personally, I think Travis Haven’s a handsome guy. Said nothing about him looking like an actual blue alien dude. I’m talking about he’s shaped like an avatar.

Flearoy Brown
Dude, you said he doesn’t look like the blue monster.

Matt Elkins
First of all, monsters, the monsters. Dude, this was from the 90s. Yeah, y’all are aging yourselves. Dude, listen, I tried to hide on status, and I’m just, I’ve leaned listen, I’m

Flearoy Brown
29 I’m not ONk status yet. I still got like, nine months.

Russell Marbut
Bro. There, I’m fully on top, dude.

Matt Elkins
I hate it for you, you can run as hard as you want. The fanny pack screams, otherwise

Flearoy Brown
you’re crazy. Dude. This is a by the way, use promo code Leroy Brown at jiu jitsu bomb com if you want some merch that is going to increase your testosterone levels tenfold and show

Carrie
your age. What’d you say?

Matt Elkins
Intro, your age, whatever. What are you gonna do when you turned 31

Flearoy Brown
hopefully I’ll be dead by then.

Matt Elkins
Just sign off. You’re gonna log out trying

Flearoy Brown
to live fast and die hard. Live hard and die fast.

Russell Marbut
What else you got?

Carrie
Well, I mean, I really just want to make sure everybody, kind of like, knows how to connect with you guys, how to watch, like, live, just watching the YouTube is the best way to watch.

Russell Marbut
Follow us on Instagram, Alabama twisters. We’ll be updating everything. That’ll be the easiest way to, like, know what’s going on. I think it’s 4pm here is when it starts. We’ll be out in Vegas. But on the YouTube, I

Carrie
think it’s fun to kind of watch you guys’s Instagram as well, because you kind of learn the behind the scenes of the athletes too. And I’m imagining with the house, you’ll probably have a little more

Flearoy Brown
content making some tents,

Matt Elkins
hot tubs and milkshakes. No basketball, no, absolutely no basketball, unless

Matt Elkins
it’s me and Russell, we can play we can have him play horse, you know I’m saying, but we just can’t run 21 for

Flearoy Brown
Yeah, but then Travis Haven says, Travis Haven is gonna dunk, and then three of them are gonna drink the guys like, oh, they can’t dunk. No, dunk any basketball, yeah? Well, dude, there’s, there’s two guys on our team that could dunk, and then there’s everybody else would break an ankle trying.

Matt Elkins
So is this one you’re gonna prove that you can touch rim, I can touch RAM,

Carrie
five foot five. Watching the Instagram to see this, to

Matt Elkins
see, yeah, to see if Leroy can touch the backboard.

Carrie
Get a little trampoline. But like out of shot,

Speaker 1
here’s the mascot. So, yeah, doing the mascot tricks. Yeah, little front flip off of

Flearoy Brown
the little mini tram. Do you listen? We got to change the topic. I’m starting to sweat. Y’all are set me up for too many well,

Carrie
actually, another thing to watch out for, I think, is what you guys are wearing. So, for example,

Flearoy Brown
get voted Best Dressed in the PDF. It

Matt Elkins
was a close on his own personal,

Flearoy Brown
first of all, Travis Thomas’ Instagram. It was on his own personal Travis Thomas’s Instagram. First of all, he made the post, and he DMS 400 people. I didn’t DM a soul. I posted it to mine. I’ve got a very cold, very strong following. I’m a what, what? What people call a niche, micro celebrity, right? Some, some have said that,

Carrie
to be fair, we have somebody in the office who’s such a big fan? We made flavor record a special birthday message.

Flearoy Brown
You know what I’m I’m discovering is more is like truer and truer every year that I’m alive, is that the only man that wants to see you do better than them is your dad, dude, your homies hate it when you get a little fan base going, Dude,

Matt Elkins
when they get a pinky ring and a blue jean jacket. You are wife’s blue jean jacket.

Carrie
You are the first you are the same size studio that we had a concern from the engineer about your jewelry making too much making too much noise. Thank you.

Flearoy Brown
I appreciate that big dog. I knew I liked you. They weren’t worried about Matt’s jewelry,

Carrie
but it was, it is it has actually an extra layer. And that’s another thing about the PGF, is there’s, there’s, I mean, there are couches around everybody kind of dresses up for it. It’s like an event, you know? That I think is a fun aspect to watch.

Russell Marbut
Yeah, that’s kind of how it is out in Las Vegas. It’s like a closed event. So it’s just people close to everything that’s going on that are there. I think as elite grows and something we’re really excited about, and I think when the whole thing goes sizzler is when more teams like are joining the PDF. We able to start doing home and aways, you know, having home games so our local fans can come to the real thing, you know? And I’m super excited about that.

Matt Elkins
I’ve heard that maybe we could be having Home and Away games in the next season and next, next March.

Flearoy Brown
Yeah, some have said that, yeah, at least three people,

Russell Marbut
I keep hearing it does change your perspective, because watching on watching on the stream is like, super cool. But when you go and you’re around the athletes, and you see it up close, and then you see how hyped they are when they win, or how like. If they get themselves locked back in after maybe they took an L it like, it really kind of, like pulls you in a little more. So I think when we start having these events at home, I think that’s when hopefully Alabama, Birmingham, really starts to, like, back us.

Matt Elkins
And it’s definitely, you know, when you’re talking about the elevated experience with the couches and little red carpet. The league was bought after season five, part of partially bought by the lead guitarist and the architect of the band Five Finger Death Punch and and his wife, who is one of the Gracies, like when you hear about Gracie Jiu Jitsu, which is legends of, yeah, and so we’ve been able to have said that. And so they bought those four people. And so they bought the they bought into the league. And the whole goal for them was to try to, especially Zoltan and his wife Grace, they’re, they’re big into racing cars and stuff like that, and so they wanted to make it like the f1 of Jiu Jitsu. They don’t want it to, you know, we always kind of joke about it not being like NASCAR, you know, we don’t want it to go NASCAR. We want to go f1 so having couches and folks dressed up and all that kind of stuff is definitely part of the culture, yeah.

Carrie
So people can watch out like a stream starting tomorrow, watching, watching the league, follow on Instagram, and then you guys have an event coming up in Alabama, again, in March, correct?

Matt Elkins
Yeah, march 28 we have an open style tournament. So there’s kind of two different formats of events that we’re putting on right now. We’re putting on invitationals, which are, think of it like an MMA fight card. These two people are going to match up, they’re going to have a match, and then whoever wins wins, and that’s the end of the night. So it’s, it’s a that’s when we’ve got the couches and, you know, big events, get dressed up, come enjoy some beers and enjoy your night. And then the Open tournament is just more like think of a high school wrestling tournament these guys are going to be in. There’s going to be a high volume of matches, kids to adults, everybody can come and play in those events. So it would be kind of like a public event that anybody can compete in on March 28 and then in April, we’ll wind up running another Invitational that’ll be more so hey, maybe these people want to be professionals in the sport one day, and they’re kind of in the minor leagues, okay, some sorts.

Carrie
So. And even with your local events, you stream them and you do commentary, correct, yes. So I like that about it, too, the PGF and the the other events, being able to stream and watch, kind of hear what’s going on, and you can kind of have explained like, this is what’s this is how this athlete even approach it. Like, this is what happened with this athlete before. This is what we tend to see from them. You get things explained like, what’s a money bag and things like that that could happen during the match. So I think that’s a fun way to be involved too. Yeah, if you want to be a fan of the Alabama twisters, if you’re sold and you’re super fan, other than following on Instagram, is there anything else you should do?

Matt Elkins
Yeah, we have our our twisters fan club. And honestly, I would say that right now, it for people that are watching that are not familiar. It would just be if they’re excited by it and they want to see more events, you can subscribe for $10 a month, and that just helps support us to put on bigger events and higher staffing and stuff like that. And so yeah, and there’s also some benefits, especially if you’re in the jiu jitsu community, you’re going to get some free access to some seminars that we put on and stuff like that, some some local community events that you’re going to get discounts. And eventually those tiers will grow and we’ll wind up having exclusive merch and things like that, similar to how the Green Bay Packers have their fan ownership model, and those fans get certain types of benefits. The twisters fan club is essentially the same thing for us.

Carrie
And then some of those seminars you guys last year had some of the people who are competing in the league come to some seminars, right too soon, and like, be able to train with them. So that was like a cool thing after the season, that they’re kind of a celebrity, because you watch them in the PGF, and then they’re in back in Birmingham, at somebody’s gym, and you can actually roll with them. And yeah, how?

Matt Elkins
How much would a really devout football fan pay to get to go and, like, kind of play catch with Tom Brady, yeah, you know, or learn, learn some about about how he grips the deflated football and so. But like I said, that’s, that’s what we just keeps a little

Flearoy Brown
dude. They did a commercial about it years ago.

Matt Elkins
Well, but like, you know, whether it was LeBron James or whoever, just if you could go and, like, play ball with them and learn from them as a fan, that’s an incredible experience. And so that’s something that we that’s very unique to what we’re doing, that obviously you probably couldn’t do. With other professionals.

Flearoy Brown
Well, that’s kind of what I was going to bring up. Is, how many, how many seminars have we done as the twisters?

Matt Elkins
I think we’ve done three. Two, we did the super seminar, and then we had Elijah Carlton out for a seminar. And I think that we’re due up to give Kevin buring a seminar.

Flearoy Brown
And the super seminar, we had, how many athletes there too? And B Mac, right?

Matt Elkins
Yeah, we had three teachers at the Super seminar. And, I mean, they were like, I don’t remember, maybe 75 100 people or something like that. They came, yeah, very busy day. I don’t remember getting a head count, but it was a full basketball floor full of mats, and it was packed. And so that was a really cool day. HAFA El fahara, still to this day, you know, he messaged me not long ago and saying, like, hey man, thank you for that experience. That experience. That was one of the coolest jujitsu experiences that

Flearoy Brown
I’ve ever had, most beautiful curse of writing you

Matt Elkins
ever seen in your life. Do not roll that beautiful bean footage my man. He’s a big iPad guy. We’ll say it like that digital. Yeah. Emery, can you write in cursive? I’m sure. See, dude, you’re from the 90s. Yeah, I’m from the 90s. Bo Yeah, I’ll be writing in cursive. That’s what I’m saying. It’s a lost art. It’s like Latin in this place, bro.

Flearoy Brown
Hate it for him. Yeah. Poor Emory. Uncultured swine, dude.

Carrie
We’ll practice later. You can have him write, like, write sentences if he’s not doing a great job in the gym, I will improve my arm bar and cursing

Flearoy Brown
Bart Simpson. We’ll just get like, a chalkboard, just for Emory.

Russell Marbut
I won’t get tapped in the first minute and a half

Flearoy Brown
of your next rubber guarded into oblivion ever again. Sorry, Emory. I love you, dude.

Matt Elkins
I really feel like we’re picking on Emery right now, and he can’t defend himself, and he’s being a sweetheart, not saying something, but nothing wants me. I just want you to fire back. Fire back. Brother said that Carrie has more questions. He was being professional. Me, mugging me.

Carrie
So I actually don’t have more questions, though, those are my questions, but we he is correct and that I think so. Thank you for coming on. If you want even more background, we’ll link to Russell’s episode two. But also just check out the PDF, check out the twisters especially, and, you know,

Matt Elkins
twisties up blast, right? Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Carrie
Oh yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. We’re

Flearoy Brown
about to go rock out some push some pull

Matt Elkins
ups. Though you got coke on your shirt, I

Russell Marbut
didn’t want to say it’s been on there the entire

Flearoy Brown
time. I was pouring Coke into the glass and then taking shots

Matt Elkins
of it. I saw that you’re over here like Dale Earnhardt and Hank Williams Jr, yeah, dude.

Carrie
Thank you so much to Matt flroy and Russell for coming on today. I think we can all tell from their interaction why they like to create original content, because it is super engaging. All of them are are really fun to be with, and I hope fun to listen to and watch as well. If you’re in Birmingham and want to deep dive more into marketing tactics for your small business, join us at our live event localist lab. They are free practical, and they give really doable insights that you can put to work right away for free. Tickets. Head to our show notes, and you can grab them there. You can also get them at Carrie rollwagen.com or on my instagram at sea Rollwagen, the localist podcast is written and produced by me. Carrie Rollwagen. Our show runner is Taylor Davis. Hannah craigen is our outreach manager, and we record right here at infomedia studios. So thank you again to infomedia for the sponsorship that makes all of this possible. Our engineer in the room today with us is Aaron Duncan, and of course, we were assisted by Emory Lambert, who we also called out on the podcast. Until next time, whether you’re buying from a local business or running one, remember that you’re making our community stronger every day you you.