Meet the master of NFL combatives

It was 1992.

Joe Kim was a 24 year old 4th degree black belt in Taekwondo, and national team member. As Cleveland.com reported, one day, a red Mercedes pulled up outside of the school his father had founded in North Ridgeville, Ohio. Two enormous men got out of the car, walked into the school and asked, “Hey, are you Joe Kim?”

Bill Belichick was in his second season coaching the Browns in 1992 and wasn’t nearly as revered for being a visionary then as he is now. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t a visionary.

Belichick dispatched two of his defensive linemen — Michael Dean Perry and Anthony Pleasant — to Kim’s school. That’s when that red Mercedes pulled up, catching Kim’s eye.

The next few weeks were spent with Pleasant, Perry and Kim all dispensing their superior knowledge of their crafts — the two players teaching Kim what they needed in terms of football and Kim designing a plan for them using martial arts principles specifically for football.

At that point, Kim was invited to tour the Browns newly-opened training facility in Berea. Belichick, unswayed by Kim’s lack of experience in football, came away from that meeting impressed enough to offer Kim a job.

“Coach basically said, ‘Hey, listen, I would really like to have you part of this,'” Kim said, “because he said he believes in developing players and, back in the day he said, ‘I think football’s won with the one-on-one game so this type of thing is something that we need.'”

All that was really left was to create a position for Kim. Belichick jumped on the fact that Kim had interned in the weight room while living at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and named him an assistant strength coach.

From there, the real crash course in football began. Kim went into the office every day and learned the game.

“We’d watch these Betacam machines, forward and backward, forward and backward,” Kim said. “I watched football in a whole different light than I had ever watched it before and I just started the process of learning how to figure out what these football players need from a martial arts background to win the combatives.”

“I was just a young kid that was so eager to figure it out,” he said, “whereas now I’m like that old bull on the top of the hill that’s going to walk down to the pasture and not run down to the pasture.”

Kim compares his football knowledge now to then as the difference between a white belt and a black belt.

Now a 7th degree black belt with decades of football combatives coaching, video has emerged of Kim at work.

“My hands are actually on every single player,” Kim said. “I do the fighting combatives with them. I feel their power. I feel their strengths. I understand their leverage. I understand their movement because I’m actually fighting with them.”

“When we’re drilling something, we’re drilling it for a reason, for a purpose and you’re going to see a result. Otherwise, I believe I’m just wasting your time. I’m not here to give workouts.”