Transcript
People often ask me if kickboxing made me rich.
And people think, "Oh Tate, did you get your money from kickboxing?"
And the answer is no.
Kickboxing is not boxing.
Even as a four-time world champion, the most money I ever got paid for a fight ever was $100,000.
which sounds like a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot of money. You have to pay your manager 20%.
probably another 10% out for various fees, and you're only fighting twice a year, you gotta pay your rent, blah, blah, blah, blah.
you're not rich as an athlete.
most kickboxers
are broke or stay broke. You can transition to the UFC like
What's his name? Stylebender, whatever his name is. Can't remember his name. He's done it.
A few people have done it, but in general, kickboxing will not make you rich.
purely from a purse for fighting perspective. However, I still accredit fighting with making me rich for a variety of reasons. One, it made me extremely determined.
and it made me understand the value of hard work, which is the first thing. Two, it made me understand that excuses don't count and nobody gives a shit, you either win or you lose.
and three, it introduced me to a whole bunch of important people.
Kickboxing as a whole, rich people,
bad guys, mafia guys, these kind of things. They're always involved in these industries because they like the idea of sitting at the table and being involved with fighters and being friends with fighters.
and they have a lot of money and there's a lot of their money involved in the promotions and money laundering and these kind of things so
I did meet important people from fighting.
and these important people respected me because I was a fighter. And the difference between me and most other fighters
It's an idea.
Most fighters are stupid, and the reason they're stupid is because if you have a low IQ, you're brave, and it's a scary thing to do. So intelligence makes you sit there and think, is this really worth it?
but I am brave and smart.
which is unique.
I could leverage the relationships I made via fighting,
to move to Romania, for example, or open casinos in Romania, for example, or do a lot of other things I couldn't possibly have done any other way. So fighting did make me rich based off the back of the relationships that fighting provided me.
But from a pure fight purse perspective, fighting didn't make me rich. Also, I'd like to believe that a lot of the reason why the War Room is so successful and some of the other products on Carbortake.com is because I'm a kickboxing world champion and people know that I have a...
Warrior's mindset. It's easy to talk a warrior's mindset, but when you've actually done it,
It gives you a different level of credibility.
So fighting made me rich from a networking perspective and credibility and individual credibility perspective, but it didn't make me rich in regards to the fight persons I've been awarded.
I'm just the reason I'm talking about this on tape speech is because I get so many emails about my fight career and
- I think it's a good thing.
The next thing is, why did I not go to the UFC? Well, it's a simple answer. The reason I didn't go to the UFC is because I broke my hand three times in MMA fights.
and I kept breaking my hand and I needed the bigger gloves. The smaller gloves I kept breaking my hand. It was just unfortunate so I decided to stick with kickboxing. At the time it was the best money on the table.
Sure, if I got to the top top of UFC, I would have made more money. But if you're not at the top top of UFC, you're not making money anyway. So what's the lesson here? I don't know what the lesson here is. Usually I like to give a lesson in my tape speeches. I guess the lesson is if you become a kickboxing world champion and you're smart enough and you can meet important people with lots of money and you can prove yourself to be valuable to them, you can end up being a multimillionaire and buying lots of supercars.
That's a lesson.