If we're talking about creating the future,

I will humbly posit to you

that the guest that I'm about to bring out

is part of creating the future.

We're talking about somebody, once again, Phil Wizard,

who saw some breakers in 2009

when he was in middle school.

Went home, he thought it looked really cool.

Went home and got on YouTube,

looked it up, and 15 years later

he won an Olympic gold medal.

[crowd cheers]

So I would humbly posit to you

that the stuff that we are about to speak about

and the stuff that you will see,

that you just saw, rather,

that is what a lot of this stuff is about.

That is what the technology is moving.

This is the stuff that goes into the phoness,

goes into the computers.

This is the stuff that we're doing.

So I would love to bring out, once again,

top rank B-boy before the Olympics even happened,

and now the first ever gold medalist B-boy,

Phil Kim, AKA, Phil Wizard.

[audience cheers] [upbeat music begins]

My man.

[audience applauds] [upbeat music continues]

Good to talk again.

Good to talk to you again.

Yeah, man.

So I just, first off, I want to thank you

for just silencing the haters.

First off, man,

if you have not seen this person's Instagram, look at it.

It is incredible.

I mean, cookies, cakes, like biscuits, baguettes.

This dude eat like,

and you will see him like posting himself

eating like all of this, I'm not gonna say junk food,

but very, very tasty looking treats.

[Phil] Soul food.

Soul food.

[Dexter laughs]

Very tasty looking treats.

And you got people in the comments saying, Bro, stop.

We need you good for the Olympics.

Yeah, I literally had people,

'cause you could bet at the Olympics on who's gonna win.

And I had people in my DMs being like,

Yo, I put money on you.

Can you fix your diet?

Like you need to eat healthy.

And then one of my other friends messaged me

because his friend had messaged him

being like, Is this how he really eats?

And one of my best friends know, he's like,

Yo, when he eats like this you know he's on.

Like, he's ready.

I think the day before you posted yourself eating

like cookies or something like that.

Yeah, I mean I just like to enjoy life.

Like those things, obviously,

like health and nutrition is extremely important

in anything physical.

But I think people don't understand,

like those aren't, it's not all I eat.

My meals are extremely healthy.

I like sweets, I've always liked sweets.

And it's not like I'm suddenly doing this for the Olympics.

Every competition, leading up to a competition,

I'm eating sweets the day before.

It's my version of carb loading.

I don't know if it's actually scientifically proven,

but it works for me.

Clearly it worked, clearly it worked.

So, man, there's so many moments from,

if we are just gonna talk about the Olympics,

one of my favorite moments,

if you could break this down for me is,

it's not even the finals actually, the finals is amazing,

but it's actually the semi-finals.

You versus Shigekix.

It's semi-finals, and just picture this if you can.

By the way, who watched the Olympics?

Who watched them?

Okay, about half.

About half.

Okay, we're doing good.

A little bit.

That's all right.

Your homework isn't gonna be to watch more.

We'll talk about this later.

But this, I think the end of round three

Shigekix is doing his thing.

And I mean, just imagine this guy,

just power move after power move, I mean every,

when you think of breaking, he's doing all that stuff

times 10.

It's amazing.

[Phil] He's incredible.

He's so good.

And then right near the end of his last set,

he starts stepping and he's doing a few things,

and he starts spinning, and he goes into this rotation

and I see you looking at him, and the camera picks it up,

and he looks at him and he goes from like fan mode

just enjoying what's happening and backing up.

He says, Hold on.

And then all of a sudden you do a handstand

and like go in kind of a split V type thing

just as he does the same thing.

So basically you predicted his move.

Which is incredible.

Talk about that.

It's funny because I think from an outside perspective,

and I didn't know, like I think this went a bit viral.

I saw it on TikTok after like a bunch of times.

But it's funny, 'cause for us it's not that weird.

Like I've done it to him specifically a bunch of times

in other competitions,

but I guess it was a bit different

'cause it was on the Olympic platform.

And from that angle in which it was shot too, it was like,

I will give myself credit, it was exactly the same move.

[Dexter] It was.

Like the exact same freeze.

[Dexter] It's symmetrical.

But the thing in breaking is like first,

for those who don't know, it's a freestyle dance.

So we don't know what the music being played is gonna be.

So we just kind of go up there

and you have to adjust to what you're doing.

But a lot of people, a lot of breakers

will still pre choreograph their movements,

and so they'll just time it to the music.

Shigekix is one of those people.

And so the breaking community is quite small.

And Shigekix and myself are on the same team.

We're both sponsored by Red Bull.

So I've competed with him and against him so many times

that I know his moves.

Like I know all of his moves.

I knew what he was gonna do.

And I think it's like, as a friend,

I probably shouldn't have done that to him

like on the Olympic stage, but in the heat of the moment,

you're just like, ah, I know what he's gonna do,

so I'm gonna do it.

Myself personally, I'm a bit of a,

I have a bit of a different approach.

Everyone has their moves,

but the way I put my moves together

are very different every single time.

And I don't even know what I'm gonna do

when I show up on that stage, based on the music,

based on the crowd, based on how I feel,

I change my plan all the time.

And so someone couldn't do that to me as easily.

Yeah, I mean it's unpredictable.

You'll go up and you'll do stuff where it's,

is this, is that breaking?

Do y'all do that?

Like the weird rubber band legs thing you're doing.

I mean it's amazing.

So I mean, again, just to put into context,

I mean imagine Simone Biles, somebody says,

Hey, those flips are amazing.

Too many of those, points off.

Nobody would ever do that, right?

It's completely, completely different

if you're talking about it as a sport.

Which brings me into something else,

which would make me think that,

before we were talking, and so we spoke

before the Olympics, and I remember one of the big

conversations was, within the community,

is breaking being at the Olympics even a good thing?

Now I'm curious, has that,

did that conversation change before?

Has it changed since?

What's the vibe been like?

Yeah, I mean, again, for the people that don't know,

breaking first derives from hip hop culture,

it's been part of the culture since its inception.

And breaking traditionally within the world of breaking,

has been seen as an art and a culture first.

It's a dance, it's about self-expression.

It's difficult to go into something like the Olympics

because there's, it's so subjective.

It still is.

It's based on opinion,

because it's, for example, figure skating in the Olympics,

it can be very subjective, it is very artistic,

but there are certain criteria they have to hit.

In breaking, there's no criteria that we have to hit.

You can go up and do whatever you want.

And so that makes it very, very subjective.

And so that's why that debate is so big.

Is it sport, is it art?

For myself, I do think the beauty of it

is that it doesn't really matter.

These are just labels to me.

At the end of the day, I think the beauty of it

is that it can transcend these things.

It's extremely athletic.

We see ourselves as athletes,

and we've always seen ourselves as athletes

prior to the Olympics.

But at the same time we see ourselves as artists too.

It's about self-expression.

It's about finding your style, finding your individuality.

And those are the people that are celebrated

within the dance.

And so we have a common saying within the world of breaking

that I kind of have adopted as well,

and that I kind of live by is like train like an athlete,

but think like an artist.

And so I think the beauty, again, of breaking

is that it can transcend those labels

and it can live within those two parallels.

I remember you were saying, I mean,

'cause some of the worry that about breaking

being at the Olympics was that okay,

is mainstreaming this going to dilute it?

Is a bunch of outsiders going to,

basically we're talking about selling out here, right?

So the Olympics have come and gone.

How do people feel?

Was it, because we were talking about,

this is gonna provide opportunities for people.

Has it?

Definitely, I mean, I can only speak

from my own experience and those

that I kind of have close around me,

but it definitely has opened up a lot of doors for people.

It's opened up a lot of narratives

and opportunities, like speaking here,

that we never could have done prior.

So we can speak about breaking on a bigger platform.

There are opinions on breaking

after the Olympic games for many reasons.

And we can have the opportunities to speak on that

and to talk about the culture, to talk about the fact

that for us it's not just a sport.

So yes, and I will say there are messy parts to it too.

Of course, going into the Olympics,

coming outta the Olympics, there are things that,

when I look back, I was like,

that could have been done way better.

This could have been done way better.

But that's with anything.

Nothing's ever going to be perfect.

But at the end of the day, again,

I can only speak from my personal experience.

I do think it is a net positive, but you never know.

Okay, you opened that window,

it could have been done better.

What do you mean?

There's a lot of things that were a bit disorganized

in the process.

When you're an athlete competing in it too,

you don't really look too deeply into it,

because you're so focused on your competition

and what you're competing at.

I mean, we've always talked about this before.

I know the people that kind of have been running

the Olympics, they're good friends of mine,

they're great people, but there are things

that maybe shouldn't have been done, certain judges

that shouldn't have been there, whatever.

But I also understand that I don't understand

the whole political and geopolitical like environments

surrounding that.

So I can't fully judge,

because I don't know the full picture.

But there are things for myself as a competitor

that I think could have probably been done better.

So we've kind of danced around this a little bit

and I wanna address the kangaroo shaped elephant

in the room.

And unfortunately, I mean I felt this right?

I felt this when I told people,

I talked to this guy who I think he's gonna get gold,

and then the conversation immediately turns over to,

if you're not familiar, Australian breaker Raygun,

who a lot of people had a lot of feelings about.

[Phil] Yes.

How has that conversation been within the scene?

Yeah, I mean it's hard,

because I get this question a lot now.

I bet you do.

But it's okay.

Honestly, I don't mind talking about it,

like first and foremost, I don't think anyone deserves

the amount of hate that she got.

Like no one deserves to be bullied.

That's just internet culture.

That's meme culture.

No one deserves that kind of hate.

But this is probably one of the problems

that isn't necessarily just for breaking.

I know it's inherent in other sports as well.

It was just more inherent in breaking

because it was the debut of breaking.

And again, we're going in as a sport

that no one really understands going into it,

there's a lot of negativity already being like,

why is this even there?

But it happens in other sports.

Essentially why she qualified was because

there's continental qualifiers,

and they had to do continental qualifiers.

So she won the Oceania qualifier.

Traditionally in breaking, there aren't a lot

of breakers in Oceania in general, the scene is very small,

and there's no one that's really high level.

From my understanding too,

because of the nature of things,

it was put together very last minute.

And so the opportunity for other people around Oceania

to even go to the qualifier,

which happened in Australia, was quite low.

So she was the best of the bunch that were there,

but the amount of people that were there

I think was quite low.

And so she rightfully earned her spot,

but she was not at the level of the other competitors

at all.

And I think the unfortunate thing is,

when you look at the B-Girl category specific,

I was there live, like it was some of the top level B-Girls,

especially on the second half,

when you go from top eight onwards,

the level was incredible.

And it was beautiful to watch.

It's unfortunate that the narrative was all focused on her.

And when I say it's happened in other sports,

from my understanding in things like swimming this happens,

where there are certain people that shouldn't be there,

but because of how qualifications work,

certain countries get kind of like buys.

But in something like swimming,

you can see the gap.

Like you can see the distance, you can see like,

oh, this person is significantly worse

than the other people.

But that's a little bit more difficult

to understand in breaking.

But because of that meme culture,

a lot of things kind of came up out of it.

Yeah, well I guess that's what takes me

to kind of wrap this question then is over,

you said that the Olympics has been a net positive.

What I've seen is a lot of people,

if you ask them about breaking in the Olympics,

the one thing they know about is,

and it's not even her full set, it's like a super cut.

It's all the bad parts because yo, there's some parts,

and I challenge anybody in this room

to do some of the moves that she was doing.

You cannot do them unless you actually are a B-Boy B-Girl,

at which point come on up and show us your thing.

But it's this really concentrated,

concentrated viral moment

when there was so much else.

Is there any concern, I guess,

is what I'm asking, is that that will be

what people have taken away from break?

Yeah, I mean again, that's just the reality

of meme culture in the internet nowadays.

Like you said, it's a super cut.

No one, it's the same thing with interviews.

People will take things out of context.

It's the exact same thing that happened

with the Raygun thing.

They just took the super cut of her bad parts

and put it on the internet.

Do I think it's bad?

Yes, I do think it's a bad, I personally,

like I do think it's a bit embarrassing for breaking

because people will kind of walk away

with the Olympics thinking this is what breaking was

at the Olympics moving forward.

So I don't think that that is the best for us.

But again, I think there's opportunities like this

to kind of change the narrative and talk about it.

Hopefully that happens moving forward,

and hopefully, again, Raygun honestly stops getting bullied

and has the opportunity to talk about it more as well.

So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, and another thing to be cleared up,

it was already set before the Olympics even happened,

that the breaking would not be an event in 2028.

[Phil] It was not because of her performance.

It was not because of her performance.

But let's be real,

like there's a lot of misinformation out here.

Exactly, yeah.

So let's say that you could wave a wand

and breaking would be in 2028.

Would you want that?

In the 2028 Olympics in LA?

It's a good question.

Yes, the simple answer is yes.

But I think within those four years

a lot would have to change.

Like what?

Just the way qualifications work.

And again, I think coming in as a new sport

and it coming in pretty quickly,

there are adaptations that are difficult to make

in a short amount of time.

I think after having experienced it once,

I would be an advocate for like,

things need to change for the next one.

There has to be a lot more transparency.

We can even just talk about problems within breaking

that have been around for a long time,

but now that are pushed to the spotlight more

with a platform like this in the sense that like,

when you go to a breaking competition,

the judging panel and the judging system

for the Olympics is just red or blue.

Like it just says who the judge voted for.

That needs to be more transparent, especially for people

who don't understand breaking.

Not this person won, why did they win?

By what margin, by what reason?

And I think those kind of things need to change.

There's a lot of just technical details.

But I think again, if it were to come back in the future,

I think it would be a cool thing,

but it would just mean that we would have to put in

a lot more work to make that more transparent

and more easily understandable for people.

And I think that's why it's almost a blessing in disguise,

because there's a lot of problems that have been spotlighted

for us within breaking that we never thought about before.

Because for us as breakers,

we understand all of this already.

I know why this person lost or won, I can see it.

But when someone else who doesn't watch breaking,

it doesn't happen often that there are a lot of people

who don't watch breaking,

especially at the scale of the Olympics, recognizing like,

oh, right, these people don't know this.

Like even the idea, people came up

to me and be like, oh, you know

what music's gonna be played, right?

When someone first asked me that, I was like,

what are you talking about?

Like breaking's a freestyle dance?

And it made me realize like, oh right,

people don't know about this.

People don't understand this.

So it just addresses a lot of things that,

myself included, that I didn't know as problems

until it's put on such a big stage like this.

It's really interesting to me that you have,

not only are you truly at the top of the game,

top level of this,

but also that you're still needing to explain this

to everybody.

I mean like, imagine LeBron James

just like doing what he does and then jumping up

in the announcer's box and saying, okay everybody,

what I just did, this is why it was cool.

Like it's amazing.

Yeah, but I think that's okay too,

because I understand that, again,

people don't understand this,

and it takes a lot to understand.

To the naked eye, watching breaking,

you'll be impressed by the things that are,

of course, physically impressive.

People spinning on their heads,

people doing these crazy movements.

But there are so many details and layers to breaking that,

myself included, only understand after years

of being into it and actually learning the dance

and understanding why other things are actually

significantly more difficult creatively as well.

But to the naked eye, they won't understand.

I'm happy to talk about that.

I'm a nerd about breaking,

like I love breaking, I still watch it to this day.

The people I compete with and against, I still fanboy over.

Like some of my best friends I grew up watching them.

And so for me, it's still surreal to me.

And I'm happy to open that door for other people if I can.

So this will be my last question then,

because we can talk about this all day.

You already know me.

So being that breaking is a part of hip hop culture.

And I think there's, I think the older the person is,

the more connection to that they feel, you know what I mean?

And I think the younger we get,

we feel like rap is something different.

Breaking is something different.

DJing is something different, right?

Do you feel like, in the future,

because you're at the point now where you,

you still got, if Olympics come back, you still got

2, 3, 4 Olympics left in you, definitely.

We'll see.

Nah man, but you're at the point now where there's kids

who are looking up to you,

where maybe you are the first YouTube video that they see.

And they're looking at you like, How can I be like Phil?

And so is there a way for you,

looking at the next generation, that breaking, the rap,

that everything else comes together

and we stop being distant cousins,

and we start being more like hip hop as a culture again.

Is that on the horizon for you?

I mean, I think that would be cool.

I will be completely honest, even for myself,

I know I'm way more disjointed to hip hop

than I probably should be.

And again, like you said, as the generations get younger,

those things tend to separate a lot more.

But I think that's not just the job of breaking,

that's the job of the rappers, that's the job of the MCs,

the DJs, and the graffiti writers

to bring that all together.

But it's hard because it does get disjointed

and history gets blurred as the generations kind of move on.

Even within the context of breaking,

there were some hip hop artists and rappers that came out

and be like, Yo breaking is in the Olympics, this is cool.

But then there are other people being like,

Yo, that's whack.

Like artists, like rap artists.

So it does, I don't think it's just our job.

I think it's something that we should push,

because history's extremely important.

And to recognize where this comes from is to understand

where that energy comes from.

And what you were saying even before

the context of break dancing and breaking,

why it's so important is because of history.

Because the reason it's called breaking

is because they would dance on the break of a record.

So they would dance, the DJ would loop the break,

so they would have two records of the same song,

and they would loop the break.

And on that break was the hypest part,

it was when the drums were played.

And so the dancers would start dancing.

So they would dance on the break of the song.

That's why we're called breakers, right.

And because of that, the reason it's so important,

for some people you might see it as just a name,

but the reason is because of is context.

It's why this dance started.

And that gets diluted further down you go.

The reason it's called break dancing

is 'cause the media saw it and they were like,

you're just break dancing, you're breaking your bones

and you're doing this crazy stuff.

So we're gonna call it break dancing.

That's why it's called break dancing, right?

But as generations keep moving forward,

that history gets diluted.

So it's important to understand that.

To understand where it comes from,

to understand that that's where the energy came from.

That's why it's called what it's called.

That's why history is important.

And I know myself, I have to do a better job of looking back

and understanding that even more than I do now.

And I know for future generations,

it's my job then to teach that.

Because if you don't teach it,

then you start losing it.

So I do think that's a responsibility of anyone

who has a platform like myself,

or any high level breaker.

But I also understand that I can do a better job of it

as well.

Thank you so much my man.

Thank you very much.

[Phil laughs]

Thank you so much Dexter, thank you for having me.

[audience applauds]