Chad George Answers the Call of the ‘Savage’
Chad George means business. An entrepreneur since childhood, George, 36, fondly recalls early ventures selling baseball cards out of his parents’ garage and hawking mistletoe door-to-door. “I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life,” admits George. He’s also been a fighter his whole life.
A few weeks ago, the jiu-jitsu ace nicknamed “Savage” announced what will likely be his last MMA fight. Joining up with the newly formed Lights Out Xtreme Fighting (LXF), formerly California Xtreme Fighting (CXF), George is set to return to the cage on July 6 in Burbank, CA. (LXF is the brainchild of former NFL linebacker Shawne “Lights Out” Merriman and CXF founders Steve Bash and George Bastrmajyan.)
Asked why he chose LXF to host his final MMA bout, George remarked on the legacy of CXF as the premiere home for California MMA. A lot of George’s fighters, those he coaches out of his California Mixed Martial Arts (CMMA) gym, have touched gloves for CXF.
Having started his fight career in southern California, George also saw fit to end this part of his journey in the same location. “This probably will be my last fight and I think, what better way to end it all - in the exact same place where it started - Los Angeles.”
Queried if he frets more when he fights or when he coaches his athletes in fights, George emphatically acknowledges that watching his students compete is more nerve-racking than being in the cage himself. “Hands down it’s coaching my guys.”
It’s the helplessness of coaching that elevates his stress levels. From the corner, George can only do so much. His only weapon is advice, and it’s entirely out of his hands whether that counsel is heeded or ignored.
Responsibility to his students is part of why George has elected to call it quits on competitive MMA. He’s been fighting professionally for 15 years, most notably competing for both World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) and Bellator. George’s most recent fight took place at Bellator 192 in January of 2018. George defeated James Barnes via doctor’s stoppage in round two.
Having come full circle with his intentions as a fighter, George now understands why he fights. Those past 15 years were just about George getting the primal aspect of battle “out of his system.” But these days, George fights with emotional levity. “It’s just about getting in there and having fun with no pressure on my shoulders.”
But the 2017 Combat Jiu-Jitsu bantamweight champion hasn’t thrown in the towel on professional grappling. George declares that he will compete in jiu-jitsu “until the day I die.”
Standing at 5 foot, 6 inches, the Sacramento native wears years of competition on his face. Cauliflower bubbles over from jutting ears, tiny scars connect across a contemplative countenance. George’s warm grin reveals sincerity, but also intensity, and one look into his sharp eyes betrays the continuous revving of his cerebral engine.
It makes sense that there is a lot on George’s mind. In recent years, he has erected quite the local empire. Opening CMMA in 2014, and a second gym a few years laters, George has seen many of his fighters find success on local and national stages. His gyms also serve as a home for young folks and families looking for a place to get fit and learn the tenets of martial arts.
An artist by education, George once oversaw a flourishing production studio, generating video content for the likes of Nike. With a lifetime of entrepreneurship under his belt, it’s no wonder that George continues savvily building and improving the world around him. But how does he feel at week’s end? Is he exhausted or inspired?
Unsurprisingly, George doesn’t suffer under pressure. “I’m a mad man,” George proclaims. “I actually somehow seem clearer in the chaos.” Where a lesser man might get bogged down by the minutia of daily tasks, George has mastered the art of the bigger picture. “I look at things in the macro.”
But in doing so, George has had to adopt a skillset that counters the essence of a self-starter - asking for help. “I’ve become almost a perfectionist with delegation.” Still, knowing that no one will work as hard or execute as perfectly as he will can be challenging. “It’s horribly hard,” offers George. Always the optimist, George has found a workaround, and that is to “find people that can see it with their own vision, similar to the way you would be doing it on your own.”
Even with that kind of healthy mindset, starting a business from scratch is always an uphill battle. “It’s been a learning curve since the day we opened, and every day it’s something new.” “But the way my mind is wired is, I’m so hungry for what comes next, it drives me to be in the moment, just keep building whatever we have.”
Early pitfalls from opening a gym stem from an obvious place. “Financials, I mean, that’s a big one.” “When you have to completely drain your life savings. And actually, what people don’t realize is, I’ve had to do that on several occasions.”
Leaving his production studio business to pursue fighting really put George back at one. “I moved into my car. I was homeless when I decided to make the transition. I came from a flourishing career, moved into my car to pursue it. If you’re willing to do what it takes, it’s gonna work.”
“When I opened CMMA … I put everything into it and I was like, okay, I’m all in. Cut the safety net, and I’m gonna do whatever it takes to survive.”
Digging deeper, it’s clear that George is an ever-evolving human who continually looks inward, always asking himself the tough questions. He then takes those answers and asks himself how he can evangelize the core messages to help improve other people’s lives.
Apart from his gyms, George has found a new outlet for his experienced voice in the ever-growing world of podcasting. “The Savage Hour” podcast is George’s latest venture in entrepreneurial outreach.
Inspired by the daily content produced by super businessman and podcaster Gary Vaynerchuk, George believes that his contribution to the motivational landscape will reach at least one person. “Listen, if we can find ways to reprogram the way our habitual thinking is working, then it’s gonna have to be by feeding it with habitual information. If I can keep producing content for at least one person that’ll listen, fantastic. But I believe it reaches out to more than that.”
It’s clear that part of what drives George every day is the opportunity to use his winding journey as an inspiration for others. “It’s absolutely everything to me. The thing for me, is growing up my whole life was lack of self confidence. Failing to learn how to believe in myself. And failing to learn that I had all these abilities that I could perform or I was capable of. And now that I understand that all of that is garbage and it was self inflicted. I realize that there are so many people… suffering in the same thing. But if I could overcome it, and I know what I had to do to overcome it, anybody can. If I can give the tools, if I have a platform where people are gonna listen, if I have a stage where people can take this advice and be able to make something successful happen for them, that’s absolutely everything to me. And it gives me more of a reason to do it more and more and more.”
With all of this nonstop effort and exertion, it would make sense for George to perhaps rely on a mental resetting device such as meditation, journaling, etcetera to get back in line when the day or week has run away from him. But George insists that he’s too busy, too focused, to even stop and consider taking a break to regroup.
“I really don’t reset. I’m on. I’m on. As far as taking a step back, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I am on, I’m on fire, and it’s only gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger.” Keenly aware of how many people in his world are relying on him to keep his engine running is all the motivation George needs to fire on all cylinders.
“That’s why I can’t. I realize that, I’m at a stage now, that not only would it be selfish of me to even try to slow down, it would be an [in]justice for everybody that is trying to achieve anything because of the things that I said. I would only become a hypocrite and I refuse to do that.”
And though living everyday at full speed may seem like a lot of pressure from the outside, George once again insists that he’s not encumbered by the heavy workload. “No. Not at all. No. I’ve removed the pressure from myself. It’s an interesting thing, that there’s no pressure on me at all, because this is something that I’m doing that fulfills me. Pressure comes from outside influences, or what you think other people are gonna do, say… but that’s all hypothetical, you’re making that up in your head.”
One of George’s strongest messages to students, fighters, and listeners alike, is the concept of being a “mental champion.” George explains how the path to living life as a champion starts with some serious self reflection and as always, lots of hard work.
“You need to first figure out, what does a champion mean to you, and then you can reverse engineer it. Look in the mirror and figure out what does that person need to do to become a champion, and what are you doing in your life that’s prohibiting it. Because you can lie to everybody else, but when you close your eyes and you lay in bed at night, there’s one person you can never lie to. If you really become true to that person, you’re doing all those things that make that individual to become a champion, then that’s what living a life as a champion is.”
With his career as a professional MMA fighter mostly in the rearview, George has adapted his decade’s-old goals to fit into the life he’s occupying now. “Well, ten years ago, I mean, my goal was to be champion of the world. So, as I’ve grown and as the years have gone on, my perception of that has changed. I still believe I’m gonna be champion of the world, but maybe it’s not gonna me specifically. I’ve won titles along the way, but maybe it’s gonna be my guys. Maybe it’s gonna be somebody that I don’t even know right now that is influenced by something that I’m doing that becomes a world champion and they dedicate it to the stuff that I’ve done. I don’t know. And that’s what’s amazing about life now for me, is that I don’t know what comes next. What I know is that I’m going to win today.”