Stephen Koepfer

Stephen is a lifelong New Yorker and martial artist. He holds black belts in Tae Kwon Do, Judo, and a Master of Sport in Combat Sambo. Stephen has competition experience in various combat sports; incl ...Show More

Stephen is a lifelong New Yorker and martial artist. He holds black belts in Tae Kwon Do, Judo, and a Master of Sport in Combat Sambo. Stephen has competition experience in various combat sports; including a San Shou World Open Bronze Medal and Shuai Jiao US Open Gold Medal. As head coach of New York Combat Sambo, which he founded in 2003, Stephen has coached his team to multiple victories in both national and international combat sports including Sambo, Catch Wrestling, Combat Wrestling, BJJ, Grappling, Shuai Jiao, San Da & MMA. He was a for the 2008 US World Sambo Team as well as Head Coach for the 2015 & 2016 US Combat Wrestling World Team.Now a SAG-AFTRA stunt performer, since childhood Stephen has dreamed of working in the film and television industry; even having attended film-making camp during several summers of his youth. As he grew older he continued to experiment with film-making. At first with an old super-8 camera of his father's and later with modern digital technology. After high school, where Stephen focused on visual art, he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City on a full scholarship for Advertising and Graphic Design.While Stephen's professional life after college took him away from film and television, it was his life-long involvement in martial arts that brought him back to his original love. Recognized for his expertise, Stephen served as a technical adviser for Human Weapon (History Channel, 2008) and the season one finale of Dhani Tackles the Globe (Travel Channel, 2009), where he also appeared as himself. Stephen's inauguration as a producer came in 2011 with the acclaimed feature documentary New York Mixed Martial Arts (2011). The film's success led to distribution on Hulu. Since that time Stephen has been in front or or behind the camera on several other television, film and web-based projects in various roles including producer, director, actor, stunts and fight choreographer. Hide