The man behind Sub-Zero

Mortal Kombat was made in Chicago, and its fighters were real people: actors filmed frame by frame and digitized into the game. John — Chicago-born, a competitive bodybuilder and Collegiate Mr. Illinois — became one of them in 1995. In Mortal Kombat 3 he was the younger Sub-Zero and the sorcerer Shang Tsung.

When Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy brought the classic ninjas back, one man played all of them. Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Ermac, Rain, Noob Saibot, Smoke and Chameleon share the same body and the same movement because they are all John, palette-swapped. In 1997 he returned as the elder Sub-Zero (and the human Scorpion) in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, and when the series went 3D, Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat Gold modeled Sub-Zero’s face on his. He was on a GamePro cover in the costume in 1995. Thirty years later the character is still one of the most recognizable in gaming, and John is still the man under the mask — his Instagram is @Subzerounmasked.

The persona was powerful. It was also pressure. On the podcast John talks plainly about the years after: panic attacks, social anxiety, bouts of depression, and the slow, unglamorous work of getting through them — breathing, boundaries, daily reflection, and telling the truth to himself first. He tells it the same way he tells the story of the eating disorder he still manages: not as a pitch, but because it is true and because it is why he understands the people he trains.

That is the through-line of Fearless Fitness. A body that has been on magazine covers and in an arcade cabinet, and a coach who knows that the hard part is rarely the workout.