PT 1: THE BEGINNING

    Our story begins in 2003, when Mike Mason opened White Tiger Martial Arts Academy, which started as a traditional Tae Kwon Do gym in Valdosta, Georgia.

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I began training there at six years old. My dad, Eric Shaw, and Mike were close friends, and he believed martial arts was something I needed in my life. Little did we know how right he was, or what it would eventually become.

 

Time went on, and I basically grew up in that gym. I was not always the most consistent kid, but I will spare you those details because this story is not really about me. It is about the origin of the gym and how LPC eventually came to be.

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What I can say is that I had a front-row seat to watch Mike build White Tiger from the ground up. By the time I was 15, I went from being that inconsistent kid training Tae Kwon Do to becoming an instructor and helping run classes around the gym.

I loved what Mike had built. It felt like home.

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PT 2: FOUNDING OHANA

    As the gym continued to grow, so did our programs. Our Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes in particular started gaining serious momentum.

One day, a man named Mathew Perreira walked into class. At the time, Matt was a BJJ purple belt.

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Matt began spending more time at the gym and eventually took the lead in developing our BJJ program. As the years passed, he started feeling the pull to build something of his own.

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Inspired by his heritage and his desire to create something meaningful with his family, Matt eventually left White Tiger to open Ohana Jiu-Jitsu in Hahira, Georgia.

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PT 3: LIFE CAN BE FUNNY

Life has a funny way of sending people down completely different paths, only for them to arrive at the same destination.

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Eventually, I found myself in the position to purchase White Tiger Martial Arts Academy from Mike, who by this point had become like a second father to me.

In 2023, I rebranded the gym as LEGACY 31. The name was chosen to honor my brother, Brannon Shaw, as well as the legacy Mike had built over his 20 years running White Tiger.

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I operated as Legacy 31 for nearly three years.

During that time, I met Mike Budnick. Mike spent a lot of time in Valdosta because he owned a large fitness facility in the area. Whenever he was in town, he began training at the local combat sports gyms, including both Legacy 31 and Ohana.

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With more than 15 years as a BJJ black belt and experience as a professional MMA fighter, Mike knew exactly what to look for in a gym. And he happened to find something special in both places.

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PT 4: WRAPPING THINGS UP (ALMOST LITERALLY)

    In 2025, Matt decided that his time running Ohana had reached its natural conclusion.

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The gym he had originally built so he could spend more time with his family had grown to the point where it began demanding that time instead.

Later that year, Matt made an offer to Mike Budnick. After careful consideration, Mike accepted and took over the gym in partnership with his wife, Sarah Budnick.

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Because Mike had already been training at both gyms, he could see something on the horizon that he couldn't pass up.

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He gave me a call, and we started talking.

As those conversations continued, we realized we shared the same vision for where we wanted to take our gyms and how we wanted to truly help people through what we do.

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With a larger vision of creating a true performance institute built around martial arts and combat culture, we decided to merge our efforts.

That decision created Legacy Performance Center.

In many ways, it brought everything full circle, reuniting Ohana Jiu-Jitsu with what originally began as White Tiger Martial Arts Academy.

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PT 5: CLOSURE AND WHAT COMES NEXT

    Legacy Performance Center exists to give people the heart of a fighter, the body they deserve, and a mind at peace.

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Sarah, Mike, and I are committed to honoring the work, sweat, tears, and years that Mike Mason and Matt Perreira poured into these communities.

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Our goal is to build on those legacies while creating something even greater, something bigger than any one of us could have imagined when this journey began.

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And in many ways, the story is still just getting started.