Zoltan gives Kerrang! Radio presenter Loz Guest a run down of the world of martial arts, the Gracie family and whether it’s too late to start.
Kerrang! Radio’s final interview instalment with 5FDP’s Zoltan Bathory touches on all things martial arts covering his own martial arts journey
Check out a transcript of the interview (transcript by FFDP UK) below or keep scrolling to listen to the full interview with Zoltan. The segment featuring Zoltan begins at around 67 minutes into the show.
Finally, don’t forget to check out episode one and episode two where Zoltan talks about ‘AfterLife:Deluxe’ and his journey before Five Finger Death Punch. Trust us when we say all segments are well worth a listen.
On the outfit he wore in the ‘This Is The Way ft. DMX’ music video and his own martial arts journey:
It’s a Japanese robe actually. That’s what I have on.
I mean [in terms of] Martial arts, I started with Judo as a little kid, I was nine years old and then I did that my whole life and then maybe 15 years ago I converted to the Jiu Jitsu side. [I’m] a black belt in both. I am still competing to this day, world championships, national championships, on that level I still compete to this day. 2nd place in the American Nationals in [the] black belt heavy weight division, so I’m still out there, I’m still competing wherever I can.
My girlfriend is Carlos Gracie’s granddaughter so Carlos Gracie and Hélio Gracie, the two brothers that basically started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. They learned from [Mitsuyo] Maeda the Japanese jiu jitsu guy who brought jiu jitsu to Brazil. So Carlos Gracie was the elder of the family and his granddaughter is my girlfriend practically for ten years, so these guys are family. I know most of them and that’s how I met her. I knew the brothers. I knew Royler [Gracie], Royce [Gracie], I knew a lot of the Gracie fighters because I was competing.
Back in the day I was even judge of some cage fights. We used to go to Indian casinos because those were the only places that MMA was allowed first in the United States.
I get a black eye every three months at least. It happens. You scuffle with something. I broke my nose definitely over ten times.
On whether knowing martial arts reduces Five Finger Death Punch’s security costs:
No actually it increases it. (laughs) Basically the security guys around the band, for as long as I [can] remember, I always had jiu jitsu black belts as security guys. My tour manager is a black belt, my security guy is a black belt, my assistant trains. I generally travel with three [or] four of them.
So we take the mats with us, we lay them out, we have a back stage dojo and then we train every day, before the shows. [On] days off we go to various academies. There were days when we’ve had ten plus black belts backstage because the local guys are coming out.
Jiu Jitsu is a brotherhood. It’s really a tight knit community. I really, really recommend to women to train jiu jitsu because if you’re a woman, and you start to train jiu jitsu, you acquire one hundred brothers that are willing to die to protect you.
On whether there is an age cap on martial arts:
I have a friend who started at 60 years old. He trained a lot because he kind of retired and trained every single day. In seven years he got his black belt which is unusual but if you train a lot you can. By the time he was 59 [sic] I think he was, he was world champion.
An 16 year old purple belt girl will absolutely beat you, probably a blue belt too will in that environment, absolutely beat a 200Ibs man who has never trained martial arts for sure. And that’s a point that this about leverage, this is about tactics, this is about skills, this is about technique.
If you started jiu jitsu right now, the first two or three months you will be very sore because naturally you’re going to hard and you are going to try to do everything from muscle and that will be exhausting.
Eventually, you start to understand that this is not about muscle, this is about leverage, this is about angles and then it’s less and less intensive because you start to learn ‘Oh I can beat you with positions and techniques and also habits’. Like what’s going to happen in a fight right? Everybody who’s untrained will throw a haymaker [punch] naturally, that’s what they’re going to do. And what martial artists do is look at the natural motion, first you learn what everybody does naturally and then you have techniques to counter that. That means after a few months, you can beat everybody that never trained because they will do what they naturally will do – like the Haymaker [punch]. They naturally will do that.