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♪ David: Hey, everybody welcome to "Chatbox."

I'm David cruz.

It's a support chat.

And growing appeal of sumu wrestling and we begin today with football and not talking about the Super Bowl.

That's American football.

Football the world's most popular sport and sporting event the world cup final coming to jersey in 2026 and we are greeting the news with equal parts go, jersey and oh, God, we are going to screw it up.

There is a potential for economic impact when hundreds of tourists descend on the region.

Joining us to separate the joy from the dread is the President and C.E.O.

of New Jersey Chamber of Commerce.

Tom, welcome back to the show.

>> Good to be on, David.

David: Tom is a member of the board we should mention.

Let's start with my pet peeive, New York-New Jersey.

Why do we sell ourselves short?

Is New Jersey itself not enough for the world?

MR. THOMPSON: I don't know -- >> I don't know the answer to that, but when they changed the venue name, they are going to call it the New York-New Jersey stadium and I am displease wd that because physically it's in New Jersey and most of the activity is going to be in New Jersey, it has to be reversed.

David: I got it, east Rutherford is not without its charms and Manhattan is 12 miles away, world trade center, being from here the best pizza is in New Jersey.

We have some work to do on getting the word out, don't we?

>> We do.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we as a State cannot pull off exquisitely.

We are going to be focused on by not just domestic -- the domestic you S. but worldwide.

We have to do everything we can to put a great place, highlight our assets and good things of New Jersey and keep the people here happy and get companies to come here domestically and internationally.

This is something that is an epic opportunity and we have to pull it off as well as we possibly can.

David: The governor says maybe $2 billion in economic activity for the region.

How is New Jersey business ready to take advantage of that?

I mean, I'm thinking Manhattan and all of that aside, you have elizabeth and bergen county and jersey city, Newark, Hoboken, that is are going to attract a lot of people, but there is more to do there in that regard, they really got to get going, no?

>> The imimmediate dwrait area isn't the only area that is going to benefit.

Towns that are 50, 60, 70 miles out have the opportunity to take advantage of this.

That's why, just the sheer magnitude of the world cup and the finals expands the opportunity zone tremendously in New Jersey.

And to answer your question, David, we as a State have to do something that we are not good at to make this work.

Local Government, State Government, counties, we have to work together to make it easy for things to happen and people to have companies as well situated as they can to take advantage of the marketing opportunities.

In New Jersey we don't do that well.

We need to do it well.

This has to be a collective effort of Government, businesses, the governor's office.

And if we don't do that, we aren't go to go maximize.

David: You can't wait until next year.

This should have started two, three days ago when they made the announcement.

>> The statistic that blew me away, when we had the Super Bowl away, there are were 150 million.

The world cup that will be in east Rutherford, New Jersey is going to have 1.5 billion with a b viewers.

How much more do we need as incentives to get our State the star shining on our State to pouf it up as much as we can for people to look at our State in a positive way.

David: American dream will have the impings worked out by 2026.

They could be a big winner here, right?

>> Absolutely.

We have to start working on it.

I don't know what their difficulties are and I don't know if they are being restricted by township regulations or State regulations but we have to make it easy for these companies to get their issues resolved and take advantage of this.

If they do think of not only the immediate impact on our economy but that is enormous.

Once in a lifetime.

David: Big fear is New Jersey transit, people look at the Super Bowl 10 years ago, the wrestlemania fiasco and reporters asked the governor this week.

>> Getting people as a general matter in and out of the stadium is and was and will remain a focus.

No on the Super Bowl, thankfully.

And the reason for that is they know.

You look at the Taylor swift triple header or boss triple header or Korean k-pop concerts, you see a consistent performance and whatever energies put into what I just said, it will be that on steroids.

A big game changer is how they moved people in the train out of New York City to the one that takes you into the meadowlands and did it with signage, and a lot of bodies on the ground.

David: Signage, He says.

It's one thing to get from New York Penn station to Newark station and from Newark-Penn station out, north, west and south.

We saw in Newark-Penn station this week alone.

Newark to cranford, we had service disruptions and lines from the terminal out into the iron bound for these replacement buses, this is a random Wednesday.

Are you afraid of something like that happening?

>> What you have just said I not dwell on.

We can't dwell on the negatives.

The governor is the person that got this deal done.

He is a soccer expert.

This might be one of the highlights of his career and He knows what happened with New Jersey transit and our mass transit system.

I can assure you that the governor who has the ability to get things done when He wants to is going to make sure it's not a problem.

David: Transit is so critical for business beyond special events.

The governor said He would fix it if it killed him.

He is still with us.

Are you saying He has fixed it?

>> He is not saying He fixed it.

He knows how important it is to this event and this is epic to the State of New Jersey.

The combination of making sure that that mass transit complements of what we are trying to acome accomplish here will be a huge not vaccinator.

David: It will be bus-driven from sea caucus junction to the stadium.

Go to go take a year to build it once they get the OKs to build it.

2026 gets here pretty quick.

Are you confident that the team can pull or push in the right direction to get that done?

>> No choice.

They have to.

What you said is key, which is are there regulations and permitting issues in place to allow this to happen?

Those are things that hold back businesses in New Jersey, the overregulated nature of our State.

They have to be addressed to make sure those hurdles are not in place so this can get done.

I talk about the Government and business and commerce working together.

So if that's in place with all the opportunity we have as a State, I think it can get done.

It has to get done.

But we have to have a cooperative collaborative to do that.

David: Stick with New Jersey transit.

These fare hikes that are coming, 15% next year and 3% annually in perpetuity, it seems, is that fair or is New Jersey transit need to figure out on a way to diversify its funding sources?

>> David they have not increased fare in New Jersey for a long time.

This is something if informal -- in a normal business environment companies increase their businesses.

If that was the case in New Jersey transit, what we are increasing prices to now are much lower than if they had done it on an annual basis.

Let's put it into perspective.

To increase prices every year, costs go up every year, salaries and benefits go up every year.

Any business who doesn't address costing in conjunctions with costs going up is not operating the way it should.

2% increases makes it business-wise.

Unfortunate people are going to pay more but you have to understand to have those things run better than they are now, you have to address the revenue side.

David: There's the question.

You know, many suggested that the corporate business tax surcharge not be allowed to sunset because that is a billion dollars to fund M.J. transit particularly as it prepares for a critical event in the region.

You and the organization were against that.

Where do you find the regular funding source if not from the corporate community which you have to admit benefits a lot from this great mass transit system that we have?

>> David, the corporate business tax is one of the worst ways to fund New Jersey transit.

And I make an analogy to we railed against the fact that the M.T.A.

in New York wanted to fund their problems by going to an outside source, which is the New Jersey commuters to fund their problems, the same thing with New Jersey transit.

You don't go to the corporate community to fund -- put the money in place to fix their problems.

You know, you look at the expense overload of the company.

You look at maybe the fare increases which they are doing.

One thing I would also say is, this is probably not politically pal atable -- maybe it is -- we lowered our tax from 7% to 6.65.

That is a huge source of money that could be used for New Jersey transit and spreads the burden over the entire populous of New Jersey and significant amount of money they can generate.

I did the math.

People say it is not fair to the underserved community.

It adds 37 cents to every 100 purchase.

37 cents out of 100 is money but not something like a knee buckler like the surcharge would be which would be self-defeating because sop companies would lose New Jersey and reduce employment.

David: Some would say like a true C.E.O.

of Chamber of Commerce.

That's part of the conversation we have another day.

>> We have to promote business and make it more attractive for business and that is what the bowl opportunity is.

If we were to have the Super Bowl opportunity and at the same time increasing corporate taxes to 11.5.

David: I think you meant world cup.

The world cup, we will be talking about this over the next two years, President and C.E.O.

of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce.

>> Every time I see is a benefit, David.

Thank you.

>> You probably don't know much about sumo.

And it has coming to our area next week at prudential center.

One of the competitors known as sandstorm.

Hello, welcome.

>> Hey, how are you?

>> The first thing our audience is going to notice you are not Japanese.

You from just outside of Cairo, Egypt.

How did a teenager get involved in that ancient Japanese sport?

>> I was doing body building.

And I was going to the gym every day and I started doing it at eight years old and at 14, I met the Egyptian national team coach and He was surprised by my physician eke and He asked if I would like to fight sumo.

I'm a body builder.

I don't want to gain fat.

Look at me.

This is the only image I had about sumo.

He said give it a shot, if you don't like it, just one time.

David: You were pretty good at it.

>> Yes.

I didn't know anything about sumo.

In that gym every day that was all about me.

So, when I tried sumo, I was like everything is different.

Completely different sport.

The way they train.

It's different than any other like competing sport or competitive sport.

Six months training every day until I become the champion of Egypt and after this, I went to the world champion, got the bronze medals three times in a row and for me, what's next.

What's next is to become the first and only professional sumo wrestler from Africa.

David: People are aware of and don't know much about.

What is the biggest misconception about the sport?

Most people will look at it and see two big guys bumping into each other.

Obviously more than that.

>> Sumo you have more than 75 techniques.

Imagine those techniques, each and every wrestler which is suitable for him, that He can keep working all his life so He can use it in the fight.

David: It's not about who's pushing who out first.

The goal is to get the guy out of the ring.

But it's legs, hands all of that coordinating?

>> Exactly.

Even the muscles you use for both techniques, you don't use that muscle often like you do in any other sport.

And during the match, to win for like the big guys, the heavy dlem weights don't like to fight with the small guy.

They are fast and can do techniques faster.

It's not about weight at all but how earl reaction to whatever your opponent is going to do.

David: The training and competing in Japan is distinct.

The sumo are in clubs, in stables and you train together and compete together?

>> Yes.

Sumo in Japan is way different.

Is stable has its own master and only one place for one nonjapanese.

In my stable I was the only one nonjapanese.

And for more than 45R sumo stables.

David: Only Egyptian guy in an all Japanese stable.

Were you accepted readily or difficult to be accepted?

>> Look, it was difficult from both sides.

Japan itself is a closed society.

Sumo is even more closed from Japan itself.

There was some difficulties for me and for them Japanese so we can accept each other.

Both of us, we had nowhere else but we had to adapt and accept it.

So we have nowhere else I have to learn the culture, the language and they have that passion or the option -- they have they wait for me to learn the culture and learn the culture.

In sumo, it took me three years to speak Japanese.

You have to learn Japanese.

You have to learn the sumo Japanese.

David: It's different now in the context that you are in now.

How is sumo different here, for instance, like we are go to go see in jersey next week?

How is it different?

>> So right now, it's not like one big competition.

We started a league already.

What we see next in jersey is a sumo club 2.

We have sumo club 1 a couple weeks at white Eagle and we are having the league and doing the same league as the professional one in Japan but which can be acceptable for the American people.

David: You are a jersey guy and you are performing in front of a home crowd.

How much does the crowd help when you're in the ring?

>> So for me personally?

I hear the cheering from the people it gives you the courage and gives the power, but as soon as you are inside the ring, I hear nothing.

I see nobody.

I'm like I got this and I will win.

I got, one, two, three, I'm going to do this and this is what it is inside and those few seconds before the fight.

And gives you more focus and more courage like when you hear the cheering and people call your name before you start the fight.

That's way different.

David: You started just outside of Cairo and go to Japan and now here in the States.

How did you end up in jersey?

>> I retired from professional in 2017 and I came to California and lived in L.A.2 1/2 years and then the COVID happened.

And then I went back to Egypt for two months to live with my family and came back here.

I came back to jersey.

And all that time I was away from the sport.

I had enough from professional sumo.

When I had this new idea about having a professional sumo league going on in the U.S. For me that's the amazing idea.

And for me, I like that.

I'm a challenged man.

David: Are you involved now in the business side of this as well?

>> I'm an athlete right now.

I'm an athlete.

I still can fight.

For me, I'm still fighting and still on my feet.

I don't want to know anything but fighting.

For me, I almost believe I'm in sumo, fighting, winning.

I will do this all my life.

I can do this.

I was born to do this.

This is my profession.

I'm in it to win.

David: He has a lot left to win in the tank.

Sandstorm.

Good luck.

And that is "Chatbox" this week and Tom BRACen for joining us.

Following me on x and get more content including full episodes when you scan the Q. R. code.

I'm David cruz.

We'll see you next week.

>> Major funding for "Chatbox with David Cruz" the New Jersey education association making public schools great for every child.

Professional support is provided by insider M.J. a political insider network.

Insider M.V.

is committed for giving an forever umh.

Online at insidernj.

Com.

♪ ♪