During the last week of April, while Low-Ki was attempting to head off the story about his refusal to refund Game Changer Wrestling’s deposit for the WrestleMania weekend booking that he missed, he was pushing something else on his Twitter, as well. He implored fans to visit his new website, TheMindPrepared.com, which he hypes as “Professional Performance Education for personal improvement.’ In other words, it looked like he was trying to become a life coach. That this came on the heels of his latest dispute with a promoter made the matter all the more surreal and intriguing. So it was decided that I would take one for the team and cover the introductory webinar that Low-Ki had scheduled for the program...at a cost of $25.
It was certainly steep for an introductory speech from someone who has no training or experience in any field that would appear to be directly relevant. When Low-Ki (who is going by his real name, Brandon Silvestry, for this venture) attempted to start the Q&A portion of the event, he had to switch the Zoom conference call window to one that showed everyone who was on the call. There were three other than Low-Ki: Myself, a man who turned out to be “oatgan,” a Twitter personality and prolific forum poster, and a woman named Krystal. At most, for the appetizer for Low-Ki’s new career, he made $75. It’s possible, though, that he made less: Krystal was called on first, and had a noticeable rehearsed quality to her question, which did little more than let Ki go on more about his issues with technology, a key topic from earlier. It’s entirely possible that she was genuine, but if she was, she was the only one, as the other two paying customers were a reporter and someone clearly watching for comedy value.
So, what exactly did $25 get us?
At least early on, the idea appeared to be that Low-Ki absorbs new teachings quickly and wanted to pass on his methods for enhanced learning. A key example that he gave was that he was advancing quicker than everyone else at his wrestling school (the now defunct LIWF Doghouse) and was able to get licensed by the state athletic commission after six months of training. He did not say what state’s commission he was referring to, but New York is his home state and the only one that makes sense. While he made a point of acting as if commissions grade prospective wrestlers based on their in-ring competence, there are no known states where this is the case. New York, in particular, was notorious in this era for Frank Goodman’s USA Pro Wrestling shows that featured untrained “ticket sellers” (wrestlers allowed on the show for selling X number of tickets themselves) in undercard matches. Goodman’s shows frequently featured Low-Ki, who would, in theory, be aware of this.
Later, there’s an attempt to push IMAGE as an acronym (Integrity, Maturity, Acknowledgement, Goals, Esteem), but it doesn't really go anywhere. Neither does a discussion of the Doghouse being in a bad neighborhood. At this point, Low-Ki starts going off on the evils of technology and social media and the webinar starts to completely fall off the rails. He explains how children learn to empathize as toddlers, only to infer, without any kind of real explanation, that using tablets and other electronic devices that early keeps them for developing a sense of empathy, as well as messing with their fight or flight response. It sounded as if he had done some research into the topics, only for it to not register in a substantive fashion. In general, he did not seemed particularly well-prepared or well-informed on his pet issues. One memorable example, which referred back to the theme that 140 characters (Twitter’s old character limit; it’s now 280) is not enough to glean context, saw him mention “140 characters, or whatever Facebook uses nowadays.” Unlike Twitter’s microblogging format, Facebook posts have a 63,206 character limit.
The anecdote seemingly designed most to push the program’s bonafides came after Ki/Silvestry gave his thoughts on police shootings, using the topic to pivot to his own story. Once, he was in a car in New York with his trainer (he did not identify “my trainer” at any point, but Homicide having trained him is not a secret), his cousin, and his friend, who was driving. According to Ki, he put his Walkman under his seat and shortly thereafter, a cop pulled the car over. The cop apparently saw him put something under his seat and, thinking it could be drugs or a gun, pulled them over. Ki says he remained civil with the officer, showed him the Walkman under the seat, and the officer apologized in a “well, we still had to stop you, but I’m glad it was nothing” kind of way. All of this was designed to illustrate how Ki knows how to de-escalate a situation, citing later training at the Verbal Judo Institute. While Low-Ki’s credibility did not seem high at times, Homicide confirmed to Fightful that this story was 100% true.
After some talk about meeting goals (like being able to do as many Hindu squats/free squats as Japanese wrestlers) and his motion capture work for video games, it was time for a Q&A. The first person called on was “Krystal,” who seemed almost overly engaged and asked a question that brought Low-Ki back to his thoughts on technology. The back and forth took up most of the remaining time, and felt strongly like it was not spontaneous. “Gotta be a plant,” said fellow webinar attendee oatgan when reached by Twitter direct message. “There's no way someone serious stumbled upon that presentation and was taking notes to ask a serious question at the end.” He added that “Low-Ki isn't a real person where could you possibly see it advertised,” referring to how the webinar was only promoted on the existing pro wrestling-focused Low-Ki social media accounts.
Meanwhile, I attempted to send a question about if Ki is trying to do some kind of ongoing program and how much it would cost, to which he said that it depends on what the person is looking for in terms of time and if it’s remote or in person. I did get a link to his rates later by emailing him, and “The Mind Prepared” starts at $100 for an hour-long session.
Overall, there was absolutely nothing here to suggest that Low-Ki—well, Brandon Silvestry—would make a suitable life coach or whatever he is actually trying to be. The message was, essentially, that Brandon is a quick learner, very determined, interested in human behavior, and has taken courses in conflict de-escalation. How this makes him qualified to teach anything other than pro-wrestling or maybe the “verbal judo” was never explained. Neither was why anyone would want to be guided by someone who became a borderline pariah in his chosen field in spite of being possibly the most talented indie wrestler of his generation.
