I met and became friends with my instructor's sons, Josh and Shawn Rafferty. Shawn learned Thai boxing while serving in the Marine Corps, and together we took our current knowledge and added to it by training in styles other than what we were used to. At this point, I had my first taste of the UFC. After watching in disbelief that stand-up fighters could not keep a fight standing, I began studying some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. We began training at a school down the road with a jiu-jitsu program, and we used Rafferty's father's facility to train. Training was short lived as our school shut down, and attendance dropped off at the jiu-jitsu classes. From there, we had no place to train, and refusing to quit, we cleared out an old shed in the Rafferty's backyard and continued to practice.