Chris Haueter is a legend in the BJJ world both as a practitioner and an instructor, but he’s just announced that the Combat Base garage in Redondo Beach will be closing. Haueter has been training in Jiu-Jitsu since the very earliest days of the sport’s presence in the US, eventually being promoted to black belt in 1996. He was one of the first non-Brazilian black belts ever, a group referred to as ‘the dirty dozen’, and has been teaching for longer than most people will ever practice at all. He opened Combat Base in 2005 and has been operating out of there ever since, making it an important place for many practitioners to visit during their travels.
In a recent episode of his podcast, Hauter revealed that the location that Combat Base sits in is the source of the closure:
“We are here in Redondo Beach. Like most areas along a coast, there is a limited resource called the beach. My father, when he purchased his first home in Manhattan Beach for like $56,000, knew that eventually they are going to run out of beach land and that beach land is valuable.”
Although the news might come as a shock to many in the community, Haueter has seen this coming for a while now:
“I have watched this neighbourhood gentrify. Eventually I knew we would either, if we could hold on to this thing, we would have a good nest egg, or we would be gentrified out.”
His wife Melissa joined him on the podcast as normal and she also shared some background on their situation to explain why they don’t plan on opening up a large academy like many of Haueter’s peers have done:
“Let us just say we are going to let go of a bunch of the other stuff Chris is doing so we can open up a school. So now we are going to pay six grand a month in rent plus lose four or $5,000 a month in income. So now we are actually in the hole like $11,000 instead of just six grand a month… We cannot afford to do that because we cannot even afford to keep this space. Because if we could afford to go in the hole $5,000 a month, we would be able to afford to keep this space.”
Haueter summed up his feelings on the decision to close pretty eloquently:
“At this point in time, I feel like I do not have the desire to pay to go to work. I get paid to work and I will not pay to go to work.”
The full interview with Chris Haueter where he explains that the Combat Base Garage will be closing was uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
