Antonio “The Brooklyn Monk” Graceffo is an American author, adventure traveler, martial artist, fighter, and academic, who dedicated his life to exploring and unpacking eastern philosophies, cultures, and techniques, especially how they relate to martial arts and fighting. He is one of the few Americans who lived inside a Shaolin Temple to study the art of Wu-Shu up close. Over the last 15 years he travelled to almost all asian countries to learn their traditional martial arts and document them in detail. He wrote 8 books and over 40 papers on eastern martial arts, culture, and economy. He is especially known for being the first foreigner to learn the lost traditional Cambodian martial art Bokator, which was believed to be extinct after the communist revolution in Cambodia. The Brooklyn Monk travelled to Cambodia to find the last masters of Bokator. This journey has been documented by History Channel and on his Youtube Channel. 

I talk with him about his travels, his time in the Shaolin Temple, his best and worst moments, the clashes of culture, differences in training philosophies, about his fighting style, and of course about his adventure into Cambodia to re-discover Bokator.  

We will find out in this episode :

• why he believes Western Boxing is the best fighting style in the world


• why asians are great martial artists, but terrible fighters


• how Shaolin Monks use video analysis


• what “discipline” means across the globe


• what elements of the Cambodian fighting style Bokator could be useful in Mixed Martial Arts.

You can find Antonios YouTube Channel HERE

You can find his Twitter HERE

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Gerrit Keferstein:    Hi! What’s up! Thanks for tuning in to The Order & Kaos of Human Potential. I’m Gerrit Keferstein and today I’m here with Antonio ‘The Brooklyn Monk’ Graceffo. As his name indicates, he’s originally from Brooklyn but currently lives in China. He’s a mixed martial artist, a student of the game and a professor of economics. And what I mean by saying he’s a student of the game is he dedicated his life in the past, at least, 15 years to travelling around the world and learning, studying and documenting martial arts. And today he’s going to share some of those great stories that he wrote eight books on that you can all find on Amazon and some of those great stories are about him living in a Shaolin temple, he’s actually done that twice and he’s lived there for many, many months and we talked about him learning different styles off martial arts around the world from Cambodia to Taiwan to Thailand to China and India. We talk about differences in training philosophies and how they relate to differences in culture ultimately and religion. Also, that’s one of the most amazing stories is he’s going to tell us how he went to Cambodia to find the lost and forgotten art of Bokator. There was only one master left that taught the martial art of Bokator and he was dedicated to find him and he actually he wound up finding him and he wrote books about it. He basically brought the art back to life and he did documentaries with Discovery Channel on that and it’s just an amazing story and he’s going to share that with us today.

                            I messed up with the sound actually. I turned down my microphone way too low. So, it’s really, really hard to understand what I’m saying during the conversation. I hope you forgive me and I promise to do better next time but I hope you enjoy the conversation with Antonio ‘The Brooklyn Monk’ Graceffo.

<<02:19 >>

                            Antonio, you were living in the United States. You were successfully working at Wall Street. What made you make the decision to move out in the world and study martial arts.

<<02:33 >>

Antonio:                When I was in the military, I boxed, and when I left the military, I went through one year where I was not in the military and I was really kind of lost and I just did a lot of boxing, a lot of fighting and I was just like concussed like all the time. So, I was fighting two to three times a week. I would put ice in a bowl.  My bed was on the floor. I put ice in a bowl at the end of the bed and I’d put my face in it, lay on the bed, put my face in the bowl of ice. I mean, it was nuts. And I was just fighting all the time and I think I was looking for something. And I used to dream. I remember when I was in the military I’d just lay in bed and had some dream about like going around the world learning martial arts and I remember in my head trying to put together what would be the right combination.  This is pre-UFC. So, nobody knew. I was like “Well, I guess, I just got to learn how to kick, end up going to Korea or something.” I mean, I always wanted to live in a Shaolin temple, probably needed to learn how to wrestle and I remember just putting this odd mystic stuff together in my head. Then I stopped doing martial arts when I was at university. And then I started making good money. In my first couple of years working in finance I had no money and then finally when I started making good money on Wall Street, then I started using that money to start doing martial arts again.  And then UFC had come out, I was watching UFC videos and I was taking Muay Thai, tried a couple of Jujitsu lessons but I didn’t like it at that time. And then 9/11 happened and when 9/11 happened, when you think you’re going to die, when you think it’s all over and you think about this …

<<04:09 >>

Gerrit Keferstein:    You were in New York at that time?

<<04:10 >>

Antonio:                Yeah, I was in New York City. I was in Manhattan. So, I really thought that I was going to die.  And when that happens, one of the many things that goes through your head.  Obviously, I wished I was with my family. That was number one. I wanted to see them before I died. And number two, I thought “I’ve had a lot of dreams, things I wanted to do and I had money. Why didn’t I do them?” I just put them off to like work more or to do something.  So, one of the things since I was a little kid was I wanted to live in a Shaolin temple. And we used to watch the only non-karate thing that ever existed, right? So, there were the Bruce Lee movies but he died in 1973 and only one of his movies was actually a Hollywood, The Enter The Dragon it was called in the United States. I think it was called The Way Of The Dragon maybe in another country but that was the only one.

<<05:09 >>

Gerrit Keferstein:    That’s the one with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?

<<04:10 >>

Antonio:                No, that’s Game of Death. The one where he goes to the island and he has to fight on this island. That’s the only one that’s Hollywood. And so, other than that there was nothing that was not called karate and there’s very little martial arts stuff anyway but it was karate, it was Chuck Norris but there was a TV show. Right after Bruce Lee died like a year later, I think, in ’73 – ’74 a TV show started called Kung Fu starring David Carradine about a boy who’s half Chinese half American who grows up in a Shaolin temple and I grew up watching that. And my first martial arts teacher was also obsessed with that show and he’s talked about it all the time. And then when I was taking martial arts, that’s when cable first came and then that show was on cable.  So, I got to watch it again as like a teenager. So, that just stuck with me and I “Ah, I’ll go to the Shaolin temple, li