Before the Business, There Was the Jump
Brian Smith was 17 years old when he started jumping out of planes. Not as a stunt. As a soldier. A paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina — one of the most storied and demanding airborne units in the United States Army. You don't leave that experience unchanged. The discipline, the controlled aggression, the ability to perform when everything is falling around you — that doesn't wash out when the uniform comes off.
Brian carried it into sales. Then into business ownership. Then into a partnership with a UFC fighter and a brand that is as much a statement as it is a product.
Preparedness meets opportunity. That's not a quote I put on a wall. It's how I've lived.
Building Triumph Cigars
Triumph Cigars did not start in a boardroom. It started at a UFC event — the kind where if you show up every year, you start to know people. Brian had been attending UFC events as a massive fan and avid memorabilia collector. Year after year. That consistency led to a relationship with Ode' “The Jamaican Sensation” Osbourne — UFC flyweight, combat sports competitor, and now business partner.
What began as a podcast conversation became an idea. The idea became Triumph Cigars — a veteran-owned premium cigar brand that carries the energy of both men: military precision and combat sports intensity, filtered through Jamaican spirit and American hustle.
The VictevoCONNECTion
Brian Smith is featured on VictevoCONNECT — not as an athlete, but as exactly what the platform was designed to include: a professional who built something real, who understands pressure, who crossed industries through force of will and relationship. Athletes on VictevoCONNECT who want a window into what entrepreneurship looks like when built by someone who has been in high-stakes environments since age 17 will find in Brian a perspective that no business school produces.
The VICTEVO Media Magazine section “For Entrepreneurs” exists because this kind of story matters to athletes. The path from sport to business is not automatic. Brian Smith is proof that the disciplines are the same — and that the people who make the crossing successfully are the ones who never stopped training.