Egan Inoue is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu athlete from Honolulu, Hawaii. He began training aged 28 years old and was influenced by his brother Enson to start grappling. He says “We were at the raqcetball nationals because I was a raqcetball player by trade and we’d gotten into a street fight. Prior to that, I’d always done martial arts to better my mental wellbeing and already had my black belt in Taekwondo. We [me & Enson] got into a car accident and this guy was massive and wanted to fight. In my head I was like ‘Oh my gosh I don’t know how I’m going to stop this guy’. Enson was doing Jiu Jitsu for 3 months and said ‘I’ve got this’ and he handled the guy, put him to sleep. I couldn’t believe it. That’s why I started Jiu Jitsu, it was the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. My brother put him to sleep no problem and the guy was so massive, this guy made Enson look small. This was in Seattle, Washington – we weren’t even home.”
Egan still trains BJJ to this day and is currently a fourth-degree black belt. However, he adds that he has spent enough time at 4th degree to be fifth degree, so it is more of a technicality as to why he isn’t a fifth degree yet. He was awarded his black belt with his brother Enson in 1999 from the legendary John Lewis. Although Lewis lives in California, Egan mentions they still keep in contact over Facebook.
We asked Egan about his thoughts on John Lewis as an MMA coach and what made him so good. Lewis trained UFC champions such as BJ Penn and Chuck Lidell. However, his own pro record was 3-4. Egan responded “I think what made him such a good coach was the mindset he had, and he actually fought himself. There’s a lot of guys coaching fighters that have never been in a cage and they’ve never fought before. In my mind, you cannot understand what the fighter is going through. If you’ve never been punched in the face or rocked you have no idea what it feels like. John Lewis has. I know a lot of people may say ‘he never fought that many and he wasn’t that good when he fought’ but I can say with John he had a hard time in competitions. He never really did well in competitions. But he still stepped in there and fought knowing that. That’s probably what made him a great coach.”
When training BJJ, Egan says he still has an old school game and used to compete at 82kg when fighting. He also adds that his toughest matches in Jiu Jitsu happened whilst at purple belt during Worlds as they always went the distance against bigger opponents. In MMA, he states that Pride was really tough. Whilst fighting, he also says his worst injury came when fighting against Jason “Mayhem” Miller which popped his cartilage in his rib which also flipped over. Even today his rib will still occasionally cramp as a result.
Q&A
We’ve interviewed Baret Yoshida and your brother Enson and they’ve said Hawaiian people love to fight. You seem kind of friendly so is the fighting less of a big deal in Hawaii?
“I think Enson mentally gets himself angry and fights more on anger whereas for myself I don’t get angry, I’m not sure about Baret. For myself, it’s more of a game. I don’t imagine them hurting my parents or anything and I think that’s where Enson is suited, not for me it’s more about the game.”
You were world champion at raqcetball and also held a spearfishing world record for a while. Including martial arts, these disciplines are physical but very different. How did you become highly successful at 3 or 4 things that are very different from each other?
“I think what I learned in raqcetball is to become a world champion is a couple of things. One is to have that goal and you’ve also got to have that vision. The vision has got to be huge, something big. Then once you get that, you’ve got to break it down into smaller goals, right? So you have a yearly goal, a monthly goal and a daily goal. Then you break it down even more into what I call ‘the process’ and your process are things that you do every day. You make them non-negotiables. You cannot negotiate these, you have to do them. If you stick with that and the pattern it will take you where you want to go.“
He continues:
“It worked with me in raqcetball. With spearfishing I didn’t hold the deepest dive [but] I speared the biggest fish. It was 116lbs it looked way bigger than me. I went 80 feet, got dragged down to 100 feet before I was able to swim back up. To build the tolerance to dive that deep is a daily thing that you just get better at. I took the same principle to BJJ and then MMA and it works. I’ve been an athlete all my life, since 16 years old all I’ve done is athletics. I’d be considered a dumb jock. When it was time for me to write a book (Becoming Relentless) I was like ‘what?’ Same exact thing, same process. I’ll give a good example for the process when writing my book…200 words a day that’s it. Pretty soon the book is done. You have the little goals like the chapters, stories to tell and then after you get that you do 200 words a day and it’s done. The book shows examples of the process and my different careers, different obstacles and how I overcame them.”
In 1999 I read that you turned up to a tournament and Relson Gracie said you were too early and basically the match was continually postponed. You went to go home and they called you back and it turned into a fight?
“Haha, basically you’re pretty close. So, my match was scheduled for 10AM. They made me warm up and then they said ‘oh your opponents not here, so sit down and wait’. So they did that three more times throughout the day and then 4PM came and then my opponent showed up. I was like ‘man, where have you been?’ and he was like ‘the match is at 4PM’. So the whole time they had it planned. When the match was going to start I wore the same gi that I won the Worlds championships with. It was measured and everything was good. Royler Gracie was the ref and started talking in Portuguese and suddenly Royler checks my gi and says ‘all good’ and then starts talking in Portuguese again. Royler takes off his stuff and just walks off the mat. Then another ref comes up and does the same thing saying ‘all good’. So we’re ready to start and they start yelling in Portuguese again so the ref comes back and starts measuring the inches of my gi. He says ‘sorry my friend you’ve got an illegal gi, you’ve got to change’. The thing is a month before, a guy from Relson’s school said to me ‘bring an extra gi that’s huge because they’re going to screw you and f*** with your gi so you can’t fight and they’ll be like that’s why you won the Worlds because you cheated’ so I already knew and went to get my other gi from my car. When coming back is when they wouldn’t let us in and that’s when the whole big fight started.
After that, he got a restraining order against me. During the brawl, all of the guys locked hands and made a circle so we could get it done, Relson and me could just finish it and have a fight, but he wouldn’t step in. He stood on a table and shouted ‘I was a black belt when you were a thought in your daddy’s head’. I can still remember him saying that, I was like ‘come down and settle it, you and me’. All the guys had a big circle so no one could break it up and he wouldn’t come down. Right after that, I had a restraining order put on me from him haha.
Relson and I had a problem from long ago, we had issues when I wanted to start my own school he was telling me that I couldn’t. I wanted to open an MMA school and do more than just BJJ and that’s why he didn’t like me. I’m really tight with Renzo and he’s a good example of the Gracie family. The brothers (Renzo and Ralph) will help you open up. They’re all great guys. I want to say it’s just Relson, it’s not the other Gracie’s who I’m good friends with. Royce comes to my gym every time he’s in Hawaii. It’s just Relson, not the other Gracie’s.”
What are your plans for the future?
“I’m trying to build my online fitness workouts. We’re still building my Jiu Jitsu gym but that’s stopped right now with Coronavirus. Since the pandemic, the online workouts have grown. I’ve got a lot of people from Europe like Germany and Spain joining my bootcamps from there. The training is 5PM for them.” You can find more about his fitness bootcamp here.
