John "Shrek" McPhee

John McPhee’s official bio is the short version: a retired U.S. Army Special Operations Sergeant Major with over 20 years of distinguished service in special mission units, retired in 2011, now a Master Instructor and the founder of the S.O.B. brand. In his own channel and interview tellings, the career runs 1st Ranger Battalion, then Special Forces, then Delta Force — the path that produced the callsign “Shrek” and, from his Iraq years, “The Sheriff of Baghdad.” SGV keeps that record in his words: it is his stated history, told by him across hundreds of hours of video, and it is the credential every lesson on his channel is priced against.

The teaching has a center, and it is not war stories. It is video diagnostics: film the shooter, diagnose the mechanical fault from the footage, correct one thing at a time. His mantra, in his official site’s wording, is that efficiency is speed and accuracy applied simultaneously with perfect technique — and that practice does not make perfect, perfect practice does. The “Worst Shooting Video Diagnostics” series applies the method to real students’ footage; his defensive-shooting doctrine stays close-range and minimal, a position stated plainly enough that Colion Noir built a whole response video disputing it — that argument, both sides attributed, is linked below and is one of the most instructive reads in this section of the library.

Around the teaching sits the rest of the man, and the channel does not hide him: the go bag he keeps in his vehicle and the reasoning behind every item in it, the Glock 48 he recommends to beginners, the single dagger he carries, a stem-cell trip to Panama he documented day by day as his own medical story, and a competitive jiu-jitsu run — purple belt, Worlds mats, and his own statement that the art helped him with PTSD. His largest long-form series is none of these: it is Booze N’ Views, a bar-stool news commentary show that is honest entertainment and labeled as such in his library here.

Featured appearances on SGV: McPhee was telling his story here before this library existed — as Mike Ritland’s guest on Mike Drop #195, in the full interview, Sons of Saddam — bagging Uday and Qusay, Solo Delta Operations — the singleton missions, and John McPhee Was Sent on a Suicide Mission? — and as the subject of Colion Noir’s response to his training doctrine. Read the Ritland conversation beside his own teaching videos; the disagreement with Colion is the lesson.

Disclosure: McPhee sells SOB Tactical gear (his B-Sling, Deep Concealed holster, and tools), the SOB TV subscription training platform, and in-person courses. SGV presents his products as his, his doctrine as his teaching, and his war stories as his own accounts — not independently verified reporting.