Rigan Machado – 1991 – SEAL Team 6 Training – Assisted by Marc Denny

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4 thoughts on “Rigan Machado – 1991 – SEAL Team 6 Training – Assisted by Marc Denny”

  3. The Team had sent two men out to spar with Eric and me to check us out before bringing us out (A third DB from the LA area did not show up that day). Satisfied, a few months later they brought us to Virginia Beach.

    At that point the US was pre-positioning a massive army in Saudi Arabia for the rescue of Kuwait and the invasion of Iraq, so adrenaline was pretty high. There were machine gun nests at the front gate.

    Eric did not arrive until Day Two, so I had to teach the stick portion of the Day One– with Rigan teaching the BJJ portion.

    In the footage you see here I had about six months of BJJ. Remember, this footage is two years before the UFC and pretty much no one had ever seen BJJ. Rigan began by letting each of them start with their favorite position/hold on him and solving each of them in short order.

    Marcinko was gone at this point, but many of the men you see here (note– it is no accident that their faces cannot be clearly seen in the footage we use) were part of the original team, getting up in front of them was a moment of growth for me.

    Two of them went to pick Eric up at the airport that night. Eric did not have a beard then and with a cardigan sweater he looked like the computer tech nerd that he was and is in the Clark Kent side of his life. As we all sat down to dinner the two who had picked him up related not being sure that he was the right man as they went up to him at the airport.

    “We thought he looked like a Lutheran minister.”

    The weekend continued and for me a memory I will carry with me always.

    Liking their experience, several of the men continued with Rigan and the Machado brothers and liking the stick some got involved with Guro Inosanto as well.

    I remember one evening about four of them came by my house after rolling at the Machado school. After being cleared by Zapata at the front door they came in. They were wearing Inosanto t-shirts. Not knowing who they were, Hot Dog went up to them and said “Don’t make me Hubud you!”

    Funny moment!

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