@sk213 Waaaay back before anyone much in the US had heard of kettlebells there was a book publisher named John du Cane. He did a lot of obscure martial arts books for zany low interest Kung Fu mostly and internal arts like Chi Gung. It didn't make much money and he drove a limo part-time to make cash. He would edit books while his prom clients got drunk and then drive them home.
While searching for new authors he came across Pavel at a local community college day. He said that you paid $10 and could go to any session for any of the lectures being done. Pavel was doing Pavel's thing and he recognised what a charismatic presenter he is and how his knowledge was counter culture to the pump and blitz style bodybuilding content in vogue. He also had a great back story that could be well marketed.
John paid to get an article in Milo (the infamous Pickle Juice and Vodka article), into Muscle Media 2000, and onto T-Nation, and suddenly he was "the Russian secret for strength and conditioning". One day, while talking training at Pavel's house, John noticed a KB sat in a corner gathering dust and asked what it is. Pavel tried to talk him out of it saying he wouldn't be interested and that it wasn't for him etc, but he eventually showed him a few things and john realised immediately how powerful this could be as a marketing tool - here he had this Russian dude with this Russian tool no one know of. It was iconic, it was different, and it was incredibly marketable. Pavel didn't actually want to teach kettlebells but was convinced. (And you could see this when he split to create StrongFirst as he wrote a series of articles titled. "The Best..." and it was best squat, best hinge, best press, etc and NONE of the choices were KB choices. It's just not where his passion lies).
So John was the guy who effectively created the whole thing and Pavel was the face and the knowledge. Together a great team and certainly better together than they have ever been apart.
In the early RKC years it was pretty slow. Then they started to build some momentum and needed some extra Master trainers because it was impossible for someone to do a good job presenting solo to such big groups for a three day weekend. (Seriously, if you've not done it, teaching solo for a three day weekend is awful). The first lot of Master trainers was Steve Maxwell, Steve Cotter, Mike Mahler, and another guy whose name I always forget.
Around this time, Dragon Door brought Valery Federenko to a cert. There was no competition, they were trying to help and he was the king as far as KB training was concerned. Then some of the guys, like Cotter, went to some GS comps and got annihilated. Just embarrassed. They had gone along thinking that with their HS training they'd dominate but some of the comments from that era were hilarious in terms of how they felt about their performance. (There used to be a board called IrongarmX that had a KB sub forum. There was one thread in particular that was like 100+ pages and was the entire history of DD/ RKC/ Pavel and that era with all these guys like Maxwell, Cotter, etc commenting).
So Cotter is at home one night and he's got his blog doing pretty well. Back then you had affiliate links for DD events. They were good money as you got 10% of event sales if someone clicked through your link. I've had events where I made $5k+ from. my affiliate links so they were well worth having. Anyway, he gets a phone call off Pavel saying he needs more banners or something. Basically insisting that Steve's personal blog be rebranded as an RKC blog or he's fired. Steve tells Pavel to go fuck himself (funnily enough, identical to my last ever conversation with him) and proceeds to go to all corners of the internet and make comments about John du Cane and Pavel being gay lovers. He gets banned form the DD forum to try to minimise any further damage. (Incidentally, Steve Maxwell is 100% convinced Pavel is gay after some events they taught together. Not that it matters if he is or isn't, but Maxwell wasn't influenced by this incident at all, so it was funny to hear him talk about this when I met him. Also had choice words to say about Pavel's alleged military background, which anyone who could do maths should have been able to figure out anyway.) Steve then goes full into GS and goes from already amazing (and he is a super freak physically) to absolutely incredible.
At this point it's like 2007 and the original Masters are burnt out and they bring in the next lot - Kenneth Jay, Dave Whitley, Brett Jones, and a few more. DD does a stellar job of making these guys into super heroes so that they are the attraction at events. (At John's Marketing Mastermind that he ran a few times, he gives an entire presentation on this aspect of building the DD business and how to use it in your own business). This lot of guys go to some GS comps too and suffer the same fate as the previous round. Whitley's comments about this were pretty funny I remember as he's a big, strong dude and was not at all used to struggling.
Fast forward to now and you can see guys like Levi Markwardt who did a HS cert (can't remember if he did RKC and then went to SF or just started at SF) and then left, because like anyone wth eyes, he could see that what is being sold/ promised isn't actually what is delivered and that the results from GS are far superior. And you can see that same path repeated over and over with anyone who starts with HS because of the marketing and then heads to GS.
Love kettlebell lore