BETA Academy owner explains ending relationship with Lloyd Irvin

[yovan]

By the way, I haven't followed this thread too closely but... do we know what Leo Dalla thinks of all this?

 

[The Cicada]

I began training with Lloyd in early 2000. We trained in a battlezone of an environment, one in which you better bring your heart every practice. The amount of quality guys he produced from virtually nothing was simply amazing. I even fought amateur fights under him in the early years. Lloyd was a phenomenal coach and competitor. I also trained with Dalla for a bit. I am forever loyal to Lloyd for molding me into a person who could competently defend himself and his family. However, I am not loyal to a whole bunch of bs and drama.

Life took me in other directions with a family and jobs. I literally took off 8 years of training due to many factors. Flash forward to the fall of 2012. I wanted to get my son into another activity and I felt BJJ would be a great fit for him. I took him to a great gym right down the road from me with an instructor I knew from many years ago. In the process of taking my son down to the gym I got the BJJ fever again and have been training a couple times a week, my busy life permitted.

I was all excited to tell Lloyd that I got back into training again, but then I read all this crap and realized how insignificant my little life was compared to all this bs drama. It is is absolutely ridiculous to see grown men and women speaking to each other in such fashion. It is beneath the code of BJJ and martial arts in general to act in such an infantile fashion.

What the hell has happened to the BJJ I left in 2004?

I don't like to get into the politics of things b/c in the end, it is all BS. But I can tell you this.....my heart hurts for all this crap. I read the posts and especially those facebook screenshots anaconda posted and I am just disgusted. Disgusted. We are talking about supposedly professional people saying, "come make him shut up tough guy" "STFU" "C'mon Son" (over and over until you sound collectively like morons) and many other things that grown people, "professionals", and martial arts "leaders"/associates should not say.

Get your crap straight. Those of you acting in the above manner are an embarrassment to the martial arts community. I would never let my son train anywhere near people who post, "STFU" or a variety of other things on facebook and in other forums. What a joke.

This is BJJ. While it is important to many, it is not and should not be, the be all end all of life. The BJJ, chest puffing peacocks need to get over themselves. Martial arts and BJJ should be about building better people and creating a sense of community.

In the end I agree with this.....

"Fuck marketing schemes. Fuck business consulting. Fuck Aston Martins and bundles of 20's. Fuck instructional DVD packages on business models. Fuck upselling and high pressure sales and all the greed that has gotten into this sport. You know what I'll pay for? High-energy classes with a consistent level of instruction, instructors who push their students a little harder than they want to push themselves, that lead by example"

 

[ElKarlo]

I began training with Lloyd in early 2000. We trained in a battlezone of an environment, one in which you better bring your heart every practice. The amount of quality guys he produced from virtually nothing was simply amazing. I even fought amateur fights under him in the early years. Lloyd was a phenomenal coach and competitor. I also trained with Dalla for a bit. I am forever loyal to Lloyd for molding me into a person who could competently defend himself and his family. However, I am not loyal to a whole bunch of bs and drama.

Life took me in other directions with a family and jobs. I literally took off 8 years of training due to many factors. Flash forward to the fall of 2012. I wanted to get my son into another activity and I felt BJJ would be a great fit for him. I took him to a great gym right down the road from me with an instructor I knew from many years ago. In the process of taking my son down to the gym I got the BJJ fever again and have been training a couple times a week, my busy life permitted.

I was all excited to tell Lloyd that I got back into training again, but then I read all this crap and realized how insignificant my little life was compared to all this bs drama. It is is absolutely ridiculous to see grown men and women speaking to each other in such fashion. It is beneath the code of BJJ and martial arts in general to act in such an infantile fashion.

What the hell has happened to the BJJ I left in 2004?

I don't like to get into the politics of things b/c in the end, it is all BS. But I can tell you this.....my heart hurts for all this crap. I read the posts and especially those facebook screenshots anaconda posted and I am just disgusted. Disgusted. We are talking about supposedly professional people saying, "come make him shut up tough guy" "STFU" "C'mon Son" (over and over until you sound collectively like morons) and many other things that grown people, "professionals", and martial arts "leaders"/associates should not say.

Get your crap straight. Those of you acting in the above manner are an embarrassment to the martial arts community. I would never let my son train anywhere near people who post, "STFU" or a variety of other things on facebook and in other forums. What a joke.

This is BJJ. While it is important to many, it is not and should not be, the be all end all of life. The BJJ, chest puffing peacocks need to get over themselves. Martial arts and BJJ should be about building better people and creating a sense of community.

In the end I agree with this.....

"Fuck marketing schemes. Fuck business consulting. Fuck Aston Martins and bundles of 20's. Fuck instructional DVD packages on business models. Fuck upselling and high pressure sales and all the greed that has gotten into this sport. You know what I'll pay for? High-energy classes with a consistent level of instruction, instructors who push their students a little harder than they want to push themselves, that lead by example"

I have to say that is has gotten embarrassing. A lot of those FB posts are really beneath what we expect from coaches and upper belts.

problem is though, that TLI has allowed this kinda culture to develop and no is a part of training imho. As he made the 'us vs them' mentality a center piece of his philosophy.

For the building a better people and a community, I fell this is the opposite of what LI cultivates. As skilled of a coach that he is, he obviously has some serious personality flaws. Which in how he handles himself, makes it a fairly serious issue.

 

[ElKarlo]

From experience, he is not gonna change.

At the first, I thought things could have different for him if he trained under a bb until he got his bb.

Promoted to blue after one month training by an instructor leaving is not an ideal start.

He started his gym and added his own moral values to it.

You can easily manipulate and use students . It is damn easy and very tempting.

Li is a real big talker. I listened to him on inside BJJ podcast. He can go on and on. He can even talk for ten minutes on how he does not benefit of the medal chasers getting medals. It was amazing to listen. He just kep going on and on and everything just did not make sense at all.

He had an answer for everything.

BJJ is the right industry for him. It is full of naive students waiting to absorb his knowledge and willingly accept his beliefs.

BJJ team concept is something brought by the brasilians. Creonte etc..he just put his own twist to it.

It is funny as soonest his team does the fingers sign on the podium. I automatically about blood and crips. (Pls note I don't live in the us)

Yeah prollynot. But there is always the chance. And I and prolly others would be open to him if he does in fact change his ways.


But as you said, his power is pretty big in his gym, and that prolly made whatever flaws in him much much worse. and yes he justifies EVERYTHING that he does, which imho makes him a sociopath

 

[JustinTime]

Sanshou01, there's a ton of stuff in your posts that's simply inaccurate. Nak didn't go straight to TLI after Yamasaki's. He first got his black belt from Pedro Sauer. After he ended up with TLI, he stopped training for a few years after an injury. He started training again and Dalla urged him to open up BETA...

...Which by the way, has been around for just shy of 5 years... So Nakapan hasn't been "making money off of TLI" for 10 years. Further, BETA didn't implement TLI's high pressure sales model until 2 years ago. It brought new students to the school, but it scared away a few brown belts, a purple belt, and a guy with a decade of wrestling experience.

Nakapan said that his losses were the result of A) paying into Lloyd's MLM (pyramid) scheme, and B) partnering with Lloyd on a software project, only to have Lloyd short him of tens of thousands of dollars for his half of the investment. If someone owed me that much money, for that long, and was that unresponsive, I'd say "fuck that guy" too (and I'd probably say it very publicly). Anyone who says they'd act any different in that situation is full of shit.

It takes some balls to publicly state "I acted like an asshole and I'm sorry." Nakapan not only did this, but he succinctly documented his involvement in an unsustainable business practice. Was he wrong? Yes. But you know what, he's able to admit he was wrong, which compared to some of the other people involved in this situation is a big fucking deal.

Once you start teaching people Brazilian Jiujitsu, you start to really see the beauty of this sport. One of our students recently left for NYC, and on his last day he got in front of the class and reminded us that when he first came to the school, he was 35 pounds overweight and completely out of shape. He left our school as a good blue belt who said he was in the best shape of his life. I remember his first class, because I taught it. This stuff happens every day in BJJ gyms around the world, and it's a shame to see people get so fucking jaded about money that they lose the simple joy that exists in being a part of peoples growth.

Fuck marketing schemes. Fuck business consulting. Fuck Aston Martins and bundles of 20's. Fuck instructional DVD packages on business models. Fuck upselling and high pressure sales and all the greed that has gotten into this sport. You know what I'll pay for? High-energy classes with a consistent level of instruction, instructors who push their students a little harder than they want to push themselves, that lead by example.

+10 my friend. I think many people have lost sight of the beauty and power of the art we first fell in love with, and how we can help others through it. It doesn't have to be run from a paradigm of scarcity and greed to be successful. The instructors who seem to have the paradigm of abundance and enjoyment of the art are the ones that I can respect.

 

[SynesthesiaX]

Nak is apologizing for swindling people's money for many years now since his gym opened up, but how do empty words help his victims? You cheat people illegally and they call the cops and you get prosecuted....you usually have to pay it ALL back plus interests, penalties and fines....and maybe prison time.

This is a complete straw man. I reread the letter to make sure, but Nakapan never claims that the marketing and management techniques are illegal, just immoral and sleazy. He's apologizing for them because they basically squeezed his students and associates for more cash and he doesn't consider that to be consistent with his own morals or what martial arts are about in general. The letter is pretty clear laying this out.

 

[TeeptotheHead]

Nak is apologizing for swindling people's money for many years now since his gym opened up, but how do empty words help his victims? You cheat people illegally and they call the cops and you get prosecuted....you usually have to pay it ALL back plus interests, penalties and fines....and maybe prison time.

This doesn't make much sense. People shouldn't apologize because words don't help victims? I think Nak is taking the first step by apologizing. And I don't think he did anything illegal. I'm also going to go ahead and say his apology was more heartfelt than anything Lloyd had to say about anything he's *done* in the past.

 

[Eric O]

The funny thing is that these newly registered posters haven't come to the realization that they magnify TLI's problems. They just drive people like us to go out of our way to hate even more. Sometimes just shutting your mouth and sitting quietly while things play out is the best move. The lack of intelligence is beyond evident.

These threads are going to pop up in google forever.

 

[ElKarlo]

The funny thing is that these newly registered posters haven't come to the realization that they magnify TLI's problems. They just drive people like us to go out of our way to hate even more. Sometimes just shutting your mouth and sitting quietly while things play out is the best move. The lack of intelligence is beyond evident.

These threads are going to pop up in google forever.

Yeah it's beyond dumb. It's the opposite of TLI's SEO manipulation tactics

 

[Cali Grappler]

The funny thing is that these newly registered posters haven't come to the realization that they magnify TLI's problems. They just drive people like us to go out of our way to hate even more. Sometimes just shutting your mouth and sitting quietly while things play out is the best move. The lack of intelligence is beyond evident.

These threads are going to pop up in google forever.

Can you go back over the 800 posts on this thread and count how many of "these newly registered posters" are LI supporters. You guys are imagining things. Paranoid much?

 

[ElKarlo]

Can you go back over the 800 posts on this thread and count how many of "these newly registered posters" are LI supporters. You guys are imagining things. Paranoid much?

There have been a few. But it's been mostly the one guy denvull

 

[Eric O]

ehhhh

 

[Eric O]

Can you go back over the 800 posts on this thread and count how many of "these newly registered posters" are LI supporters. You guys are imagining things. Paranoid much?

ehh. Someone's upset because their intelligence has come into question.

 

[Cali Grappler]

ehh. Someone's upset because their intelligence has come into question.

I take it you didnt count any newly registered posters other than devnull?

I'm not defending LI, watch: LI is an attempted rapist and a shady business man. Hope that keeps the topic relevant.

But you are dilusional thinking that a bunch of LI students have made accounts here for the purpose of trying to cover his tracks. Did you think you're the only person that knows if you discuss a topic that its stays relevant?

Why do you think LI tried to ignore the problem and when it didn't go away, he finally addressed it. Now he moves on business as usual.

But if you want to believe in conspiracies, go for it.

 

[DanOfEarth]

Is Devnull Devon Delbrugge?

99% sure it is.

 

[grand]

It's hard to argue with stupid people, especially with a lot of stupid people.
And watch the facebook walls and youtube comments considering Lloyd, if someone writes something negative about him, instead of replying with something sensible, he deletes the negative comment. That is true sing of weakness.

His marketing reminds me of the shopping channel, with all these black belt club, fake testimonials and get 50% off schemes. I'm also stun by his lies of being a world champion, sombo black belt(what the hell is sombo?) and why do people call him master?

The word 'hater' is also his way to say that he doesn't do anything wrong and that he has haters because of his success, but in reality people hate him because he is ignorant narcissist manipulating douchebag.

Lloyd Irvin is disgrace to the sport and has taken the art from martial arts.

 

[Eric O]

I take it you didnt count any newly registered posters other than devnull?

I'm not defending LI, watch: LI is an attempted rapist and a shady business man. Hope that keeps the topic relevant.

But you are dilusional thinking that a bunch of LI students have made accounts here for the purpose of trying to cover his tracks. Did you think you're the only person that knows if you discuss a topic that its stays relevant?

Why do you think LI tried to ignore the problem and when it didn't go away, he finally addressed it. Now he moves on business as usual.

But if you want to believe in conspiracies, go for it.

lol

 

[Chulo**]

lol

I don't know why you're laughing like it's not true. Deep inside you know it, every fucking one of you bashing LI know this as well. I've said it several times here and I'll say it again: the hate for LI in this threads is not coming from the situation at hand, it's coming down to the hate against his money making technique, which pretty much hustles everyone, and there is NOTHING wrong with that, absolutely nothing. If you get hustled, it's your fault, nobody else. You are grown enough to think you can sit on a mil like him? You are grown enough to handle the consequences of your actions.

It's funny how the whole thing with LI is going down on Facebook yet none of the main bashers in this forum has stepped up to Facebook. All yall do is share your hate for LI in literally, a circular motion of posts and threads. The proof is the the last 3 pages of f12.

 

[Monoman]

Yeah it's beyond dumb. It's the opposite of TLI's SEO manipulation tactics

It's called The Streisand Effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

 

[Eric O]

It's called The Streisand Effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

This is brilliant. Hey Chulo, I don't have FB so could you send that link over for me. It'll help you guys out.