Bright Future Seems Brighter After Castro Podcast

This past week, Dave Castro broke his silence on an hour-long podcast with Sean Woodland and Tommy Marquez, in which they broke down all that has happened in the past few weeks, and all that will happen moving forward. The interview was incredibly insightful, and it was great to hear some honest transparency coming from Castro. Here are some highlights and some thoughts about those highlights:

Castro seems a bit bitter about how things went down with Glassman. They worked very closely together for a long time, and while he doesn’t condone what Glassman has done, he doesn’t feel right about how Glassman was forced to sell. He brings up a decent point about cancel culture, and how that culture is a dangerous thing to embrace. He pointed out that people wanted an apology, so Glassman apologized. Then they wanted him away from leading the company, so Glassman retired. Then that still wasn’t enough, so now Glassman had to sell. Castro expressed fear of what he deems an eventuality that someone will get ticked at him for his programming of the games, and cancel him next. Take his point or leave it, but it’s the other side of the coin that nobody has spoken about so far. Veryyyy interesting.

Castro was genuinely hurt about the feedback he received for being named CEO. He’s a strong dude and former Navy Seal who has a hell of a backbone, and he didn’t love being called Glassman’s puppet in his new role. He also got very emotional, and brought up an amazing point, that people were so up in arms about the times, that nobody ever stopped to realize or acknowledge that he was a Mexican CEO. He was very proud to be a minority who worked his way up to the top, and folks decided they rather call him an extension of racism than celebrating the fact that a minority made it to the top. My heart really broke for him there.

Castro is looking forward to change. Although he was obviously very successful under the old regime, he is looking forward to what the new future has to offer. He is excited about some of the ideas that Eric Roza has, and is impressed with his past as a businessman, it should be good for the company.

Castro believes that Roza is huge on media and CrossFit. This includes getting the games in front of as many eyes as possible, getting out commercials about the community, and really reverting back to the ways things were a few years ago when CrossFit was all over ESPN and CBS. He was unable to confirm if CrossFit would rehire a media team but said it’s definitely possible.

Castro finally admitted he didn’t like the new model of the games. This is the stuff that pumps me UP. Castro believes that the games should be for the elite, and should be hard to earn. He said that he feels the new changes a few years back to the games model has made it too easy to get to the games, and a little hard to follow as a fan. He said that now the games are largely participatory. He thinks that this has contributed to the downturn in interest over the past few years. 

Castro strongly hinted towards big changes coming. He is aware that people want to bring back regionals and acknowledges that this indicates folks prefer the structured model of open, regionals, and games. It’s clean, easy to follow, and hard to earn. He said we won’t go back strictly to regionals, but there will be a lot of changes coming towards some type of hybrid model, which will be rolled out sooner rather than later. 

Castro also said he would love to add a ranking system to the open. For example, finish in the top 20% and be considered expert, top 40% advanced, and so on. Then, when people are trying to host their own small time competitions, it will be easy to distinguish which skill levels belong in a division. He also hinted that he would love to host Official CrossFit competitions outside of the games season, for average Joe’s type folk to compete in, as a way to engage the community.

There was a lotttttttt to unpack here, but in the end, I find it all very exciting and informative. I don’t think I’m alone in being excited about changes to the Games structure. I miss the way things were, and I can’t wait for more coverage, a more firm season, and a lot of exciting stuff to come!

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