Episode 15 - The technology in Taekwondo with Master Ali Ghafour

     Master Ali Ghafour is the CEO of 2020 Armor systems and CEO of the United Battle League. His knowledge in technology and passion for Taekwondo had him create a scoring system and even a new set of competition rules.

  In this episode, Coaches César Valentim and Ali Ghafour talk about the impact technology has in our sport.

  Listen to his insights on the current issues behind the tech in Olympic Taekwondo and his 2020 Armor protectors and UBL league.

  This podcast is supported by Hawkin Dynamics, Firstbeat Sports and Athlete Analyzer! 

 Visit our Instagram @taekwondopodcast and Facebook @taekwondocast 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Speaker 1 0:01

Have you been looking for a Teon do podcast with qualified people who know what they're talking about, who help you keep up with everything going on in the Teon do world? Well, you found it. This is the Teon do podcast. Teon do news competitions in a of the events training in sports science, keeping the fans, coaches and high performance athletes up to date with the latest news and trends on Olympic TaeKwonDo. Let's do this. This is the TaeKwonDo podcast. And now your host coach, Cesar Valenti team and Peter Nestle .

Speaker 2 0:42

Hello and welcome to Teon podcast. We are a podcast based of Austria in English language for everyone out there who likes Teon . In this episode, we talk with Ali Fu from the 2020 armor, the UBL league CEO, and what impact technology has had on Olympic Teon Welcome to our podcast. I'm coach Saar Valentine . And with me is master Ali four CEO of 2020 armor and the United battle league. Hi Ali , how are you?

Speaker 3 1:19

I'm doing good Caesar . How are you doing

Speaker 2 1:21

Well, I'm happy to be recording on my podcast last time it was on yours.

Speaker 3 1:25

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I think. And you were the first one. Uh, cause when we were talking about it, when we met in Belgium, I know we're going to get into that in a second, but then I realized , you know what, there's a lot of stuff that we talk about that a lot of people , uh, probably would like to know a little bit more about. So , uh, I figured what perfect guest to , to have on my first podcast. Uh , my first guest yourself and , uh , I guess I'm , uh , judging by episode number I'm number 15.

Speaker 2 1:53

Yes we are . At the episode 15, we started with two bonus episodes, then some episodes about ranking and me talking with my co-host about periodization and other things regarding COVID and you are like my fourth or fifth cast . I'm very happy that you are here.

Speaker 3 2:07

Nice. Happy to be here, man.

Speaker 2 2:08

Well, for everyone out there who doesn't know who you are, can you please tell us a bit about yourself?

Speaker 3 2:13

Yeah, sure. My name is Ali for , um, I was originally born in Afghanistan. I moved to Canada at the age of five. I grew up here all my life. Um, I was on the Canadian national Techon team , uh , WT obviously, and , um, uh , was on the national team many times. About four times went to three world championships. Um, my last competition was 2007 PanAm games in Brazil. Uh , and then, and then I talk art from competition. I have a degree in computer science and went cold Turkey from martial arts. Didn't do anything for Teon for two years and decided to build my career in the technology space. I've always loved technology, still love technology. And then , um, built a couple of startups , um, technology based startups along the way. And then around 2016 , um, built 2020 armor. Uh , I'm sure we'll get that in a second. Um, and then just last year , um, launched the UBL, the United battle league. So , um, I love martial arts. I love technology. I love businesses. And with the UBL and 2020 armor, they're all three put together.

Speaker 2 3:30

Yes , we met in Belgium for the first time and the people who matched us together matched us due to our love for data. And let me be clear to our listeners. We are not in the business relation and 2020 sponsor this podcast or my club , uh , yet <laugh> but we , uh , but when I heard you talk about equipment and being able to score and to record data being shared with the players and coaches that, that , that data would you , that really hooked me up. Can you tell me a bit about what your system does?

Speaker 3 3:57

Yeah, sure. So , um, it all kind of came a about where I was watching , uh , our friend Yvette young , uh , which maybe , maybe a lot of people know here. I know, you know, her Caesar , she's a world rank number one right now from Canada. It was 2015 and I was watching her compete with my wife and she was fighting , uh , and my wife doesn't know anything about TaeKwonDo. Um, she doesn't come from it and she saw dominating winning, but didn't understand how she lost. Uh , and so for people who aren't familiar with the scoring systems , um , just don't understand what's going on. And I thought, you know what? I , I have the skillset and the network to potentially fix this , uh , and the passion to go through it and to do a couple things. One make the sport so that anyone can understand it, like my wife and make it so that the people who look like they're waiting should win <laugh>. So the people who, you know, are kicking the of the other person that generally, you know, you'd expect them to win, right? So the person who's faster, the person who's stronger, the person who kick the more , it kicks more obviously in, you know, in legal areas. But , um, I thought that that was something that's I still think it's still obvious, but , uh , that was kind of missing. So create a 2020 armor to , to solve that. Um, so create , uh , a scoring system. That's easy to understand that the general audience can understand and really bring the speed and power that's missing from today's game. And along with that, what I realized was there's also not too much data. That's how we, we connected. And like, I never knew what my reaction time, power and stamina was when I was competing. And , uh , a lot of athletes today don't outstate 95 plus 99 plus percent don't know those numbers. And so you can get those numbers, you can get 'em in very specialized places. Like I know your gym is stacked with all this equipment. Um , but you're the exception. And so how does, you know, data's as good as how often you can get it and how easy you can get it. So you can, you can go to a really fancy place, but if you only go there once a year, data's no good. So how do you make it accessible? How do you make it , um , easy to understand how do you make it so you can collect it all the time and that was missing. Um, because I , I have written on my wall right here. What gets measured, gets improved. It's just that simple. Um, if you know what your reaction time is, if you know what your power is, if you know what your stamina is or isn't , um, then you can improve it. And , um, why not have that information and that power before you go into a match? Because right now the one we know for doing good, our training is doing good. If we wanna turn that's our that's , that's when we know we've done good. But how do you know if you're going into that tournament that you're really ready, or maybe if you're not ready that you need to adjust your game. And so that's what the data really tells you. So I thought that was missing. And so that's kind of where it all started and , uh , where it is right now. And so we have obviously a vest that can measure impact , um , on the vest itself has a score , uh , the , the scoreboard and display. So it's very easy to use. Uh , you can connect to an app and the app gives you all that data. Like I mentioned, reaction time , power, stamina, but then when you spar , we give you think we're at 15 now 15 data points. And remember, I remember when me and you were talking, you're like, oh, are there , isn't the data point I haven't seen. I'm like , right . Lemme show you my idea . And it's like, yeah , you're right. I haven't seen that data <laugh> . So we show you like the number of combos that you've done, the number of counters, the number of combo breakers, the time when you did your first hit, all these sort of data points were at , and these might sound overwhelmed, overwhelming, but , um, when you start looking at them, they easy to understand. And then if you can gain one insight, right . One insight from this, from this data that can help you win one match. That's so valuable. Right. Um , and so, so yeah , so that's what the , that's what the product does. It's a headgear and , and , um , and the vest and then the app, and extremely easy to use. Um, and does all those things that match keep track of scoring measures all your data?

Speaker 2 8:03

Well, basically when you hook me up was due to all those data points. It's for me important as a coach, that I understand the physical abilities of my players and the impact of my training , uh , program on the development of those abilities. They also understand why a system . I usually say, we don't guess we assess our play players and their abilities, and the players are also a big part of it. They do understand the assessments and they do see the, the impact of the training plan into , uh , their physical abilities. And , uh , that's the difference between , uh, your scoring system and the others ones out there , uh , in terms of data gathering, you can use it in training, but there are , is also a very big difference is the competition rules, because in your league and the way your system works, it's not where you score and how much you score, but also how strong you score. And that makes the game a little bit different, very, very different from what Olympic Teon is right now. My question is , uh , how did you get into that

Speaker 3 8:58

In video games? Um, I mean the video games street fighter came out in 1987. You know, like this indu , this industry is huge, right? I mean, these games, they spend millions and millions and millions of dollars figuring things out like how she would display the health bar. Uh , what much should , um, should, should there be a light, should there be point system or, or health bar , should there be a light, medium or, and hard kick , right. So they've already kind of figured out that stuff and, you know, they , they say a lot of what people say. It's like, there's no really new inventions. It's kind of putting together other ideas together into new invention. This is the same kind of concept . So I took , I look at that and I said, you know, what was, and it came from the history, what was the history of scoring? Right? The history of scoring was , um, before electronic scoring was basically whoever kicked the guy's in the round, they would get, they would win that round. Um , basically kinda like boxing, right? Almost like a 10, nine system, but not really. So it's basically whoever dominated that round , um , would win that round and then dominated two outta three rounds would , would win. And if you really like hit 'em hard and went on the floor, you get two points outta the round . It was still points, but you know, its like that. Um, and then, and then we went into the trigger based system. So you'd push a trigger and then automatically on, on the scoreboard, if two outta three judges scored, it would come up and then we went to electronic score . If you think about the history, all we were trying to do was mimic what we did with the , with the paper scoring. So it was just, okay, that's what we used to do. Then let's just try to mimic that. But if you step back from all of that, like have a clean place of paper , white slate, and it's like, how would you really score it so that everybody can understand and you get the best fights. It's the health bar system or energy based system and the round base system. So I know we talked about in our podcast , um, uh, the round base system is being one of the biggest changing impacts so far, which I really like , uh , at the last tournament I was at at the end of the day, usually the games done at the end of the day, the stands were still full and people were cheering. That's a big, that's a big D friends in today's game . So we, you know, so having whoever wins two other three rounds, which is what we do , um, and whoever has more health at the end of the round or depletes all their health , uh , and you can deplete the health by kicking harder. Um, it solves a lot of problems. So , um , behind me is a nice little pattern that protects us from , uh , from all those , uh , ideas. Think about what we do for a 360, right. And not about to the body right now. We, sometimes we stop the game and then we add , I don't know , is it two points now though ,

Speaker 2 11:28

We add the technical points are extra two points for the spinning kick to the head or to the body protector.

Speaker 3 11:34

So, so why do we do that? Right. We do that because it was a more technical technique, but really what we're saying is that technique probably should take off. I mean, you think about 360, this way more momentum, right? It hurt . Would you rather get hit by a random or a 360, right. Neither nor, but I mean, if you had to choose, right, so the 360 generates more power, the back kick generates more power, right ? Because you're , you're turning, it's a harder technique. The spin hook kick generates more power, all these things that we're giving technical points for just generate more power. But if you did a, sorry, not to swear if you did a crappy 360 and you just glanced, why should that happy worth five points ? If I just like booted you in the stomach and really hit you hard with a roundhouse kick and then someone did a 360 and just grazed me and got five points. And I got only , uh , two points that doesn't make sense, right. Again, from an audience perspective and also from a fighter to fighter perspective, if we're both looking at it's like, okay, yeah, that rattle was kick was worth more Riley and hurt me more. So the energy based scoring the power based scoring solves all the complexity that we're trying to do with the point based scoring today. And , um, yeah, you know, I just, I just put a lot of thought into it , um, refer to video games, see how they did it. And um, and then when I, when I poke holes at it, when I asked a whole bunch other people , uh , in the industry to poke holes at it , no one really could. And I thought, okay, you know what? This is the , the , the rules that , that , that makes sense. And that's what the rules that we use for you to , for the UBL, for the United battle league, same thing. Um, and then the athletes fight differently. They fight harder, they fight, they take more risks because if you get anybody right, if you get it more rewarded, more reward for the risk that you take, then you're going to probably take it, especially if it's in a , you know, heated situation or you're down , um, all these things , um, just make the fight again, easy to understand. Very, very exciting.

Speaker 2 13:30

The way the technical kicks are scored right now are due to the complexity of the geek , not the power of the geek . Um , the current PSS systems don't accurately score the power that is scored. The , sometimes the scratch kicks will show up as scoring more power than a very powerful, direct impact to the back leg. And that's something that it's changing the game because the rules are trying to catch up with the technology instead of being the other way around.

Speaker 3 13:53

Right. Right. And, and , and that's where , that's why I started with a blank slate. I said, okay, what do we need for it to be, and make sure the technology fits that versus the other way around. So , uh , so we had the benefit of doing that and, and I , and I, and I didn't start with going through WT approval cuz I knew that would've been a big challenge. You know, obviously WT is a huge organization and I tried to build business from a top down approach like that. Um, just doesn't make sense. Um, so we decided to go after the recreational market, provide value to club owners, to athletes and then hopefully, eventually I think WT , uh , will come around again, seeing some positive indications of going in that direction with the new rounds , um, scoring , uh , whoever wins two , three rounds, which again, I think is gonna hit. Um, we just have to change the points going down in my opinion.

Speaker 2 14:42

Well, they did change a little bit and I have a question that's uh , more about your system. It's also a personal question. If I want to use the WT set of rules with your system, will it be able to work in training?

Speaker 3 14:53

Yeah. Yeah. So we have 10 different game modes , um, five, two player and five, one player. Um, two , two player, obviously you need two vests and you spar with somebody. So our primary game game one is energy scoring and then game five is we call it tag and that's point place scoring. So one point to the body, two points to the head . That's what we do. You keep it very simple. Um, you can add points manually throughout the match if you wanted to. But yeah, but we do have a , a point based version as well.

Speaker 2 15:22

This podcast is supported by Hawkin dynamics. Hawkin dynamics believes that technology is most useful when it stays out of your way. That's why Hawkin developed the world's first way . Artist force plate system with extreme usability. It is the quickest, easiest to use and most robust solution on the market. It is trusted by all sports organizations, large and small, as well as tactical military and rehabilitation environments around the globe. It's forced testing in the Palm of your hand here at Vitech center, we use Hawkin dynamics to test and monitor , enter our team . The cloud based platform allows us to access data and publish a variety of reports on the go. My favorites are trend reports and of course, weight reports where I can monitor different metrics to view progress and identify performance indicators or to compare weights to a baseline data range. I use it on a daily basis to identify, read a simple jumping test takes me less than a minute to assess the entire team. Having my own Hawkin dynamics force plates allows me to test reactive trends, maximum trends, rate of force development as symmetry and so much more. The real time feedback on the app is useful. Not only for testing, but as a training tool, making it more accurate. And at the same time, more engaging for the athletes. If you are interested in learning more about Hawkin dynamics or getting your own, the team can be reached at info, head Hawkin dynamics.com or on Instagram or Twitter at Hawkin dynamics.

Speaker 4 16:45

This podcast is sponsored by first beat sports . First beat sports combines the most comprehensive analytics in team sports with the custom interface to support real time monitoring recovery monitoring, performance management, and much more the result, data driven decisions that support your athletes and team training, recovery and performance goals. First beat sports is trusted by professionals over 23,000 athletes representing over 1000 teams around the war , rely on the solution to train and plan with confidence on a team and individual level using HR V based insights. For more information, please visit our website. First beat.com/boards .

Speaker 2 17:28

When talking about Teon training, we need to talk about a analyzer ATLA analyzer is the first techno specific at monitoring system. It is used by both national teams, regional squads and small clubs to maximize performance, prevent injuries and communicate with both athletes and trainer teams at analyzers, a cloud based system with a friendly smartphone app. You can plan and monitor every aspect of your training. Even when you are not in the gym with your team. The easy to use video analysis tool is not like anything you've seen. It helps you understand your athletes and even their opponents making this app. The only tool you need to manage your team. Before I used a analyzer, I spent an absurd amount of time in front of the computer rating spreadsheets and using half a dozen software solutions. I have Atlas in my center, but also abroad and with a analyzer it's much easier to communicate plan and monitor their development. Now that I have extra time, I can focus on what matters training my ATDs and it still leave me some room to do other stuff like this . Techon do podcast Alet and analyzer offers you a two weeks free trial. Visit them@atanalyzer.com to sign up or click on the link in the episode description to get the most of your free trial. I recommend you first book, a free personal demonstration with Nicholas . It'll give you a great insight of what at analyzer has to offer you and your team. It is well worth the time

Speaker 1 18:50

You're listening to the Techon do podcast. Now back to your hosts, coach Caesar , Valenti team and Peter Nestle.

Speaker 2 19:01

So welcome back. We were talking about the rules in the systems and how we can adapt , uh , to use your PSS system with , uh , from kind of scoring systems, even with the WT rules. And when we talk about Olympic Teon today, we often talk about the old style and the new style, the new style being the techniques and player characteristics we see being developed after the introduction of electronic product protectors. What impact do you think technology has on Teon nowadays?

Speaker 3 19:29

Oh , everything, literally everything. Uh , going back to the comment that we said before , uh , the players fight based on how the, the technology rewards them. Um , so the , um , and , and two , so if it's four points for grace to the head, then you're gonna get of told people that learn , learn how to grades . So it's a combination of technology and, and , and rule sets, but 90%, 80% of the tech of , of the way the game is played is become of the technology. So now let's go back though. Um, obviously there's good things and bad things. So the good things and , uh , before electronics, it was old school , uh, very strong fights, very strong fighters , uh, lots of waiting , uh, too much waiting. And , um, and then, and then, you know, potentially unfair scoring, not all of them , but there is a lot of , uh, I mean, that's a whole reason why electronic scoring was introduced, right, is to , to get rid of the, the issues with, with the unfair scoring. So 2008 , uh , match with the , the Chinese girl and great Britain girl that started all that. Um, and then , uh , today's game, lots more action. Um, it's just the type of action. It's just not that, that same speed and, and power. That being said when I was at the nationals, the Canadian nationals this last weekend here in Toronto, even though it was the same , uh , a lot of the same rules, the round base scoring really made people fight a lot more aggressively. Um, sometimes a little too aggressive with the pushing with the guys. I think that rule has to be modified, but with the girls , um, who don't have, you know, as much upper body strength as the guy . So they don't , they don't rely on that as much. I just, I , it felt more old school to me. They were kicking they're kicking harder. And I don't know why, because it was still like, whatever you get for the , uh , the body is still two points, maybe it's cuz there was a lot of pent up , you know, people wanted to fight and they haven't fought in a while cuz in Canada we've been locked down for a while and that could be too , but um, but yeah, a hundred percent of the technology has , uh , a major impact on, on how the game's played. And so that's why, you know, any kind of features we build in or , or any sort of way that we build our technology. I'm, I'm constantly thinking of how will this make the players fight? Uh, will it make em fight strong? Will it make em fight fast? Uh , will it make em , um, fight with heart? Cause that's what all fighters will do . And that's what the audience wants to see. Um, if it becomes something so technical that it doesn't really look like a fight anymore , um, then it's really not good for, for anyway , not good for support , not good for the audience. Not really good for the athletes either. And um, yeah,

Speaker 2 22:26

Well, you know, my opinion on that, you know that I , I'm not a big fan of the old school because I do remember the three rounds of three minutes for the men and three rounds of two minutes for the women that were too long, too boring, a lot of , um , time without actions. And when you say that players were powerful, it was not true. Players were rough, they were not as athletic developed as they are today. And you had a , a big difference between players. You would have some nations that would have very good , uh , sportive athletes and you would have a lot of the nations that would send people to the worlds that had no idea what Teon was. And they had no idea what the training plan was. And that's not the reality nowadays from , uh , African continent, all the way to the Western world, you will get the most advanced training matters , most modern training technology and trainings, methodology you'll have better trainers you'll have of course better athletes. And if the technology is there to help and to remove the bias and to make the fights more exciting. Sure. Yes, I do understand that most of the kicks and the touches are abusing the technology because the technologies like that, you will use it in your favor. That's not blame on the players and say that it would fight harder. They fight better . They fight with more techniques. They have a more resources, they have a bigger arsenal and we it's an entire discussion that I'm not going to go into it now, but there's an entire , probably a bonus episode or a , a bonus series about old school versus new school. And I'm not gonna go through that. I do understand there was a lot of impact, a lot of strong kicks on the old days. And you don't see that much these days, but you also don't see the opportunities for those kicks so much because the players are know how to block. And I can tell that 10 and 20 years ago, nobody would train even blocks. And now they're training the blocks. As much as they're training the attacks, it's like training soccer and only practicing shots scoring at the goal and not defending your own goal. So the game change because the players are better. And of course you understand that the doesn't create opportunities and the , the , and the gap of the performance gap between the players is not so much that will allow you to basically hit the other one, like a boxing bag. And you see that at the national levels and especially the lower, the level of the tournament, the more aggressive matches you'll find because you will find a lot of difference between the performance. You'll find the high level world Olympic ranking athletes competing against someone that is probably their first time in an international stage and not even an international stage if you're competing at nationals. So again, I understand that the technology needs to change. I'm one of the biggest advocates to change the technology and introduce more technology to remove the ghost points . So, or the scratch points or the easiest score . And it's not about increasing the threshold , uh , or the , the hit threshold on a technology that doesn't work. Because if you hit with this part of the sensor, you will score more. If your foot has three or four sensors on one side, you will hit with that side, easier than you'll hit with the other side of the foot or in some of the technology that is out there, you don't even need to score , uh , on or make a contact because the distance , um , between the sensor and the vest will already score it. So depends on the brands you're using, depending on the brands you're using, you will have to score even adjust your food position differently. So <laugh> , what is the to 20 , uh , has that it's different from these other systems that are out there?

Speaker 3 25:52

Yeah. So I think again, going back to simplicity, right? Um, because for me, the definition of success is a random stranger off the street wanting to watch a match . The reason why that's the definition of the success , that's how you grow participation. Yeah. You grow petition , you grow , um , business opportunities, you grow sponsorship opportunities. Um, so you , you , you have more chance of it being put on TV. Uh , you get more TV, again, more advertising opposites. So that's my definition of success. And so you have to make it as simple as possible. And , um, and , and , and really that's what it comes down to. So how do you, how do you cut down the amount of , um, referee , um, stoppages , uh, how do you cut down the , uh, I know we we've in introduced a lot of new rules sets to prevent, to change a game style to accommodate for , uh , the, the , the gaps in , in the technology . So how do you get rid of that? How do you make it, so that just the two people fight with very little stoppage and you just understand what's going on. And at the end of the , the round, the right winner wins , uh , it it's really, that's the simple as , as the goal is. And , um, and, and yeah, that , that's how we do it. So one of the other technology ways that we , uh , that we've hunted as well is we don't have socks and , uh , sensors on the hands or, or feet. Um, we look at the distance between the athlete. So if the distance at is , is at a , um , reasonable , uh , distance , um, then we allow the point, if you're too close, then we don't, which again makes, makes sense for a lot of the techniques for striking sport. Uh , you should be at some sort of reasonable distance before you can score a point.

Speaker 2 27:44

Yeah , well, we've talking about the different rules and about all the making the sport , more attractive, making it , uh , get more sponsors more and more visibilities you've recently launched a professional league that is somewhat different from what we see in the Olympic Teon . Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Speaker 3 28:00

Yeah. So the UBL, the United battle league is essentially all these concepts that, that 20, 20 hour , uh , enables and, and, and used in , in , uh , in , in this league . And, you know, WT is , uh, is , is amateur , um, is, is an amateur Federation not in , um , I dunno if that translates well , uh , in , in different languages, not as in like, they are a

Speaker 2 28:30

Nonprofit ,

Speaker 3 28:30

A nonprofit , yeah . Uh , in north America say it's amateur league , um, versus professional league, right? So you have professional soccer or amateur soccer. So , um, WT is , is , is amateur sport , uh , non , uh , nonprofessional and they're the Olympic stream and always will be the UBL is the professional stream. So that's the, that's the goal there . So , and if you look , if you're talking about basketball terms, so that's the NBA, it's not the NBA, obviously yet. <laugh> , uh , but that's, that's , it's the NBA versus the world basketball association is what , what WT would be. So it's, it's the professional path for athletes and the idea there was again , um, executing on all those, those topic points that I , that I mentioned making the game more, more, more fun, easy to understand all those things, but now add this whole level of production value behind it. So , um, you know, the best produced , uh, type one mill match you'll ever see today is Olympics , uh , maybe some of the grand pre events , but that's about it, but it still looks like an amateur sporting event. Um, even though it's very high quality, like even, you know, all the sports, you pick them , um , anything on a field of play , um , uh , gymnastics, et cetera , it still looks like, you know, there's a crowd and the thing, and , and , and that's about it. Whereas with the UBL we're taking that production value to, to another level, integrating a lot of technology. So they look like they're fighting in a , in a virtual world and they're real fights, real people , uh , real outcomes, but it look , their background looks like, again, they're in or a virtual world. So we're layer layering on top of , uh , laying a lot of technology on top of this, a lot of production value again , using the similar rules , uh, same rules as of 2020 armor , and hopefully , uh , WT adopts in , in the , in the future. But , uh, but yeah, it's a professional version, the United battle league. So it's team based as well . So , um, so there's eight teams . So the initial season , um , so we did a pilot event, so you can watch it on UBL dot stands for good game in the gaming world. If you're wondering what that means , um, UBL gigg , you can watch the , the full show for free it's about 80 minutes. Um, and we got 150 million view on it , uh , which is fantastic. Three times the goal that we had set out for ourselves , uh , over 15 , uh , networks, TV networks, worldwide, and , um, and the gamers loved it. The video gamers loved it. We were a couple of , uh , live streams on Twitch , uh, a couple other streams services as well. And so the general public and , and the martial artists really liked it as well. So the general public really seemed to, to like the younger demographics seemed to like it as well. It's skew younger, which is great. That's the holy grill for any sporting organization Federation, any pro sports to always trying to , how do you keep the younger audience engaged because you know, their older audience at some time and they have to bring in new audience to , so from the get go , we, we , uh , have that audience already. And so, yeah, so that's, that's what it is. It's , it's a professional league. Um, there's two men, one women on , on the team . So it's , um, um, that's also different. There's no pro league that has men and women together on the same team. Um, it's very trans as parents with the scoring obviously, but also with the teams . So the teams fight each other, they get to their next round next round's the bracket system. And , um, and then it's gonna be very, there's , there's gonna be a lot of storytelling behind it. So you really get to know the athletes. Um, and the , uh , we'll pull the , the teams will have a theme to them. So, you know, a certain team, let's say they're the dragons, they'll be like a more aggressive team. And then we'll pull out from the , the athlete's real stories, but only their aggressive ones, right. To kind of re re kind of , um , solidify the, the , the theme of that team. So if you're a player or a person like, oh , I , I associate myself more with this team cuz they kind of represent my, my personality trait and then you have another team that's more wisdom kind of based , right? So they thinkers were a little bit more defensive for example. Or then you have the showy team that , you know , loves to do 360 S in the back kick . So these, these are the kind of things that the league will have, again, all real fights, all real outcomes, but really deep story lines and very entertaining. So again, the general audience would like it. Uh, also if you're a hardcore practitioner, like I can really get behind that. I respect your skills. I would wanna fight in it. Uh , um , and yeah, that's what the UBI is all about.

Speaker 2 33:01

I understand where you're going from with that on one side, you're going and appealing for the streaming and the paper view kind of audience, just like at a professional combat sport leagues. And on the other hand, you're going appealing for the environment and storytelling from , uh , video gaming and video gaming competitions. Um, I've seen so far, it's all in a virtual environment, but when you compare that to a call of duty final, you would actually fill up arenas and make even more money than FIFA world cup. Uh , and even the Olympics, the biggest events right now are in terms of money making and prize money are actually the, the video gaming. Um , that's also where you wanna go at a mixed event where you will have the , all the interactive and the 3d and virtual backgrounds with the real players, but also in the real arena with , uh , hopefully packed with thousands of fans

Speaker 3 33:51

Eventually. Yeah. Uh , at the beginning , um , just because of complexity , uh , for the first couple years , uh , we'll, we'll do it in a studio, but yeah , yeah . Uh , what I would , uh , the end goal is to have , um, the , the fights in a , in a real place. And then , uh , in the backdrop would be the , the actual , uh , if you were watching on TV, it would look like it's, it's the virtual role that they're in. And so the people who are live there in the audience would , would get that feeling. Um, and, and, and yeah , all from a technological, from a technology perspective, all that stuff is, is possible today, right. That technology exists. And so it's just a matter of, of , of doing it , uh , for us just to manage costs at the beginning, as we scale up the business and, and, and , uh , generate the revenues we wanna generate , uh , we have to manage costs at the beginning, just doing live events. Uh , you know, you think about venue and then , um, all the , all the different kind of costs that come with that. Um, we decide to do that a little bit later, but yeah , that's definitely part of the plan to, to make it , uh , both in person and then obviously watching it on the metaverse on your computer as well.

Speaker 2 34:59

Hmm . Well, as I mentioned, the goal is to you develop your own system and hopefully the Olympic Teon will follow it is what happens. Uh , you now have eGames as part of Olympic program. So obviously creating your own system, your own concept, and hoping that someone else buys it. It's a good way. I wish you the best of luck I'm looking forward since I'm a total geek of the gaming part and the streaming part. Um , hopefully we, we will see the United battle league grow further and further, and maybe get some of the advantage of , uh , high performance Teon gets . And I've seen that the players are the same. Thank you, Ali . It was a pleasure being here with you again with everyone who's listening. This was a techno podcast. If you haven't already listened or other episodes that are available, wherever you listen to your podcasts, we are releasing your episodes. Every Tuesday, stay tuned, subscribe to the podcast, leaves the positive review and share it with your friends. See you next time .

Speaker 1 35:57

You've been listening to the TaeKwonDo podcast, keeping the fans, coaches, and high performance athletes up to date with the latest news and trends on Olympic Teon do your host coach Caesar Valenti team has almost 20 years of experience with high performance. Teon do and has worked all around the world as a Teon O trainer. Peter Nestler has been teaching. Teon do for more than 20 years, and he's currently one of the top referees in Europe. We hope you enjoyed the show, make sure to like rate and review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, find us on instagram@teondopodcastonfacebookatteondocastandtheonedopodcast.com . See you next time.