Eddie Bravo is known for a variety of things, but perhaps none as famous as his Royler Gracie upset he managed to pull of way back in 2003 at ADCC. What you might not know is that prior to his trip and even starting jiu-jitsu Bravo made his life buy working some odd jobs including DJing in a strip club.

At that point he says, he didn’t even consider himself a jiu-jitsu guy. At the time he made it to ADCC 2003 he was acting as a writer on the Man Show  – a job Joe Rogan got him by insisting Comedy Central hire him even though he had no prior experience.

” I’m a purple belt in jiu-jitsu working in the strip club. 5 years in the strip club. Five years deep. Then I start smoking weed with some stripper I fell in love with. “

Bravo describes being in love with the girl intensified the experience for him:

“Right at that point I turned into a mad man. All these stand up comedy ideas .. It was like I understood now how to put together a joke on stage I was so obsessed with it”

However in spite of his obsession with stand up comedy he met one of his best friends – tv personality Joe Rogan in a jiu-jitsu class. He also got Joe Rogan to try weed.

“My music changed, my jiu-jitsu changed. ” Bravo added ” Problem solving, because jiu-jitsu is about problem solving. Being creative to solve problems. It boosts your creativity, that’s my guess.”

This was all around 2000. Joe Rogan vouched for Eddie and was helping jump start his stand up comedy career. Which was a non starter because Bravo had no experience to that point.

“Couple times I did ok, couple time I really bombed. That’s when I realized this is just like jiu-jitsu – you have to really work at it – you have to go up 3,4 times a week minimum and to craft just like jiu-jitsu so I decided , you know what.. I’m not gonna be able to do this. I can’t spend time, can’t be going out all the time to do comedy. It’s too much work”

Bravo kept on writing bits for Rogan and the two wrote sketches together.

This is where the Man Show needed some staff. Man Show was interested in Joe Rogan who hooked up Eddie in what Eddie refers to as the biggest mistake of his life:

“I was dying inside. They treated me like s*it because Joe made them hire me. I had no experience in writing. “

At that point Bravo had only one major thing going on – he’d qualified for Brazil ADCC in 2003.

“At least I got this trip to Brazil, I’m gonna get killed (chuckles) … Brown belt. I came back I beat him (Royler) I sad f*ck you and I quit and opened up 10th Planet. I realized I did not want to be a writer. “

When further prompted about the first Royler fight he says his mindset was:

“This was the last thing I was gonna do before I figure out my life… ”

Bravo continued: “At that point I was a brown belt stuck at comedy central. I couldn’t quit comedy central and teach jiu-jitsu as a brown belt in LA. There’s so many legends in LA like Rickson Gracie, Jean Jacques Machado.. . That’s suicide.”

Bravo had one thing going – Joe Rogan had treated them to a trip to Brazil for the ADCC getting Bravo his business class plain ticket.

As far as nervousness went for the first Royler fight Bravo said:

“It was surreal. Oh s*it. Royler was the best guy. It was tough. It was all over the place and I triangled him and tapped him. But this next match I got smoked by this jiu-jitsu prodigy named Leo Vieira. He beat me on points like a million to nothing so.. After that I was depressed like nothing. Nobody was gonna remember me beating Royler because I got smoked right after that and I was like depressed but when I got back to home people just kept talking about the Royler match how it was the biggest upset in the history”

At that point he was encouraged by his friends to start a bjj school and he quit the comedy central writing job.

Eddie Bravo also touched upon his life prior to enjoying weed, his life before jiu jitsu and a whole lot more. You can listen to the entire interview below.