No, Houston area. He used to come do seminars. He was cool, but honestly a little sadistic, and then I found out about all the stolen valor shit later. I was only 15 at the time so I wan't going to say shit lol. Basically the dude is a pathological liar. All the talk about the gurkhas, the Olympics, all complete bullshit. He said he had 3 Silver Stars and 3 Bronze Stars. Lies. He said he had master's degrees in philosophy and law. Lies. He said all sorts of shit. This is what I heard with my own ears.
Dig around a bit, it gets worse. That's only what I heard, he's said all sorts of bullshit to other people. The dude is a complete fucking fraud. He ALSO claimed to have a PhD in psycholinguistics and taught for 5 years at Harvard, which is fucking hilarious because that's MY field, and he's definitely lying about that.
It's all fucking disgusting. My cousin served in the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a real soldier. My dad was friends with a guy that was in Merrill's Marauders (who actually served side by side with the Gurkhas). That's a soldier. I've got a buddy that was a SEAL. These guys don't sit around and talk shit about what they did.
The part that is really strange is, he obviously knows what he's doing as a martial artist. He could have just gotten by on his own merit. But he had to go and tell tall tales about himself, and it's a fucking disgrace.
My own original martial arts teacher still hasn't disaffiliated himself from this fraud, and it makes my respect for him drop too.
That's something I still really like about BJJ. The Gracies were lecherous fucking dirtbag rich kids who made no bones about it. It's a fighting system meant to do damage, not this mystical garbage. Alright, rant over.
Google Maung Gyi. You'll be shocked (assuming you didn't already know).
