In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with two of the most respected officials in the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, John McCarthy and Herb Dean. We talk about what it takes to officiate a fight, the importance of fighter safety, and how to deal with the criticism that comes with the job of officiating a fight. I hope you enjoy this episode, and don't forget to subscribe on your favorite streaming platform so you never miss an episode. -Joe Rogan -J.P. -Herb Dean -John McCarthy -Pete Spratt -Kirby Hoshida -Shawn Coplen -Dillian Whyte -Manny Pacquiao -Andres Cerrone -Josh Taylor -Will Tate -Jon Bones JR -Canelo Alvarez - Conor McGregor -Jose Aldo -Jake SWEARS -Frankie Edgar -Logan Shaw -Cris Cyborg -Justin Edwards -Dustin Poirier -Tyron Woodley -Max Holloway -Calvin Cater -Greg Maeda & more, we talk about a lot of things, including: -How to stop a fight in the first round of UFC 246, what to look for in a fight and what to do about it. -The importance of stopping a fight early in the second round -What to look out for in order to make sure the fight is not going to be able to recover in the third round -When to stop the fight -Who's the most important part of a fight? -The difference between a fight should be standing up and standing up vs. standing up? What to look at in the next round And much more! - How to make a good decision - What to expect from a fight that's going to hurt a fighter - Is there a long-term injury? Can you stop a fighter in a round that needs to be better than the other guy's chances of recovering from a knockdown? & much, much more... -What do you need to do to make the fight better in the fight ? - Canelo vs. what to watch for in the opening round? and much more - and what should you expect from the next one? Thanks for listening to this episode! I hope it helps you guys have a great night!
00:00:18.000You have, first of all, as a referee, you have one of the most difficult jobs in MMA, and you're one of the rarest guys because no one complains about you.
00:01:00.000Like, sometimes fights get stopped early and it is the worst feeling when a guy is kind of rocked, but then someone stops the fight and then the guy complains and the crowd's like, boo!
00:01:14.000Because our philosophy, and I primarily work with two of the commissions, Nevada State Athletic Commission in California, two of the top commissions in the world.
00:01:22.000You don't want to fight to go too long to risk long-term injury for the fighter.
00:01:26.000So there's that philosophy of maybe stopping a fight one punch too early versus one punch too late.
00:01:30.000Your goal is to stop it right on time.
00:01:32.000But it takes a lot of hard work to get to that point.
00:01:35.000Depending upon the history of the fighter, you know, their ability to come back and, you know, you got to make that subjective determination right away.
00:01:42.000But man, it's the worst feeling in the world if you think you get to that point, you let it go too long, or if you mistakenly stop it too early.
00:02:02.000If it happens and if it's you that makes a bad call, all the hate comes your way.
00:02:08.000You've got to kind of stay away from some of the social media criticism because you've got someone there that may not understand the detailed specifics of how we officiate and what we do.
00:03:18.000Of what they're looking at, and it comes down to intelligent defense.
00:03:23.000And that's not just holding your hands up.
00:03:25.000That needs to translate into doing something offensive.
00:03:28.000And if you could tell that a guy's listening to your verbal commands and he's doing something to fight back, as long as he's showing some good cognitive skills and showing something offensive where he's not looking at long-term injury, there's a possibility of him letting that fight go.
00:03:41.000But man, if it's starting to stem on a 10-7 round where the fighters just get destroyed and they're going to get hurt, now it's our responsibility to step in with fighter safety.
00:03:48.000Yeah, like I said, it's a very difficult job, but you do it well.
00:04:29.000And if you remember in the movie Top Gun, Viper and all those guys that were in the camouflage planes, they acted as the enemy forces and trained blue forces before they go off to combat.
00:04:37.000That's what I did the second time around.
00:04:39.000The Nellis Ranges are probably up in that general vicinity.
00:04:43.000But as far as being someone that worked at that, no, I worked at Nellis Air Force Base.
00:05:05.000They're just trying to protect us from the aliens.
00:05:06.000You know, the crazy thing is in that area when people used to think they would see UFOs and stuff like that.
00:05:12.000You know, there's a book that came out a couple years ago called Red Eagles that explained a lot of that stuff going on and what they thought were UFOs or, you know, transportation planes that were landing at some of the bases and stuff up there.
00:05:37.000And I saw a stealth bomber flying overhead.
00:05:40.000I swear to God, I thought it was Darth Vader.
00:05:42.000When you see one of those things in real life, you would think, especially if you didn't know that the United States was developing one of those, like when they were first developing them and flying them before they made it public, that thing looks like it's from another world.
00:07:18.000I mean, if we thought that we were being invaded and then you saw things like that flying overhead, that is what I would imagine they would be flying.
00:07:37.000I heard a crazy story one day that someone was hunting up in Montana and saw something similar to that that he had never seen before that came out of the ground in a vertical type thing and then took off.
00:09:41.000The United States is still going to be at the top of the food chain as far as the personnel that we have, the men and women that fly these airplanes, and then the equipment that we're flying.
00:09:50.000You're not going to find anything to match it.
00:09:51.000That's incredible, that turn that it just made in the sky.
00:11:13.000You obviously want to be able to stay out there to maintain and go the length of your mission.
00:11:19.000But you look at the length of the mission and fuel capacity and the goal is obviously to have somebody there as a backup because you never want to be out there by yourself.
00:11:38.000So until they come up with something superior to internal combustion engines, we're always going to be limited by the amount of fuel that they can carry just because of the weight, right?
00:12:00.000So in a fourth generation, like an F-15, F-16 is a fourth generation fighter, we wore G suits on the abdomen and down on the legs.
00:12:07.000And basically what that does, as you pull G's, you're going against gravity, and blood starts to drain from your brain down into your lower extremities.
00:12:15.000So the G-Suit is just a capability to help counter it.
00:12:18.000It's really a tightening restriction of your muscles, starting with your calves, hamstrings, buttocks, all the way up.
00:15:06.000And as part of that pressure breathing, when you exhale and open your mouth, it's going to force air back in with that pressure breathing system.
00:15:12.000So with the two of those together, And then we combine it with, you've got to be in shape.
00:15:41.000Back in the day, it would be, go drink a Coke and a bag of Doritos and get that sugar rush for that 45-minute flight and be able to sustain through it.
00:16:48.000That they take the gun out and they put a smoke barrel in it, but it's the same basic avionics, the same basic controls, and it's just painted red, white, and blue.
00:16:57.000And all the professionals that are the maintenance guys for the Thunderbirds, the best in the world, the finest in the world, and I had four of the finest when I was on the team, they take them off of active duty lines and bring them to Nellis Air Force Base and do all the stuff on the planes, but...
00:17:09.000There hasn't been a real horrible air show collision in a long time.
00:17:17.000I remember there was one in 1988 when I first started doing comedy.
00:17:20.000I remember watching it on TV. I think it was in Italy.
00:18:05.000Full nose down trim, I have to hold back pressure the entire flight.
00:18:09.000It's about 30 pounds of back pressure the entire flight.
00:18:11.000So it's like doing a bicep curl for 30 minutes.
00:18:14.000And if I were to pass out, With that full nose down trim, instead of possibly bumping into one of the other planes and making it more catastrophic, my plane is going to go straight down into the ground and it'll be at a minimum loss.
00:18:25.000So, you know, you'll see when guys and gals apply for the team, they'll put them through strength tests.
00:18:31.000They'll sit there on a, you know, a shoulder pull machine and they'll have to hold this 25 to 30 pounds in this little range like this for 15, 20 minutes.
00:18:39.000They have to sit there and hold that like that.
00:19:25.000Oh, so there's no, like, program that's assigned by...
00:19:29.000You do have to do an Air Force fitness test, which is, you know, so they do waist circumference, and then you have to do sit-ups, push-ups, and a mile-and-a-half run.
00:19:45.000You know, a combination of standards that they do for that.
00:19:48.000You have to do that and get scoring on it and based upon your age, the minimum numbers that you have to get.
00:19:54.000But honestly, if you're someone that's in shape and you work out regularly, like if you go out to Las Vegas and go to the base, their gym out there looks like one of the best gyms that you've ever seen in the world.
00:21:55.000A war or any kind of combat where those types of planes have fought against each other.
00:22:00.000You know, there hadn't been a shooting war really, you know, in a number of years since Iraq and, you know, maybe some stuff in Kosovo and like that.
00:22:07.000But there's, as far as dogfighting, enemy versus enemy in the sky, you haven't had that in a number of years.
00:22:12.000What do you think about all this Space Force talk?
00:22:15.000It's kind of weird because You had those capabilities within the Air Force already.
00:22:21.000And to split it off into a separate force, you're essentially just pulling entities out of branches of service that were already there doing the same thing.
00:22:29.000And there are a lot of people that, you know, we got some great folks that work, you know, do all the space stuff, you know, working with NASA and international space entities doing all that.
00:22:56.000You know, it's communication capabilities.
00:22:58.000So like when I worked at NASA, we were finishing the space shuttle and it's like, what's going to be the next generation of going into space?
00:23:06.000And the goal was eventually to get to Mars.
00:23:09.000And so my daughter at the time was six, seven years old.
00:23:12.000And my boss, the NASA administrator, he looked at her because my daughter wanted to be an astronaut.
00:23:15.000He's like, you're the perfect age of someone that's going to go to Mars.
00:23:19.000And the goal was to be able to go back to the moon.
00:23:51.000It's like, you know, priorities as far as financial budget, what we need right now.
00:23:56.000You got some incredibly smart people that work at NASA and, you know, some of the other international space entities.
00:24:02.000But I think the truth of it that came down to, and, you know, you saw those movies, Hidden Figures, and they talked about launching to the moon and stuff.
00:24:10.000Some of the knowledge and capability to get to the moon was lost.
00:24:15.000Because a lot of these professionals that did all their mathematics and calculations to get us there, they had that stuff up here.
00:24:22.000They go to a chalkboard and they write it down and say, okay, this math formula, this calculation, this projection, this will get us to the moon.
00:24:28.000But as they started to age off, guess what?
00:24:30.000We didn't have that technology written down.
00:25:43.000When I was working down there, I had some friends down there in the space industry, and I was talking to one of my friends down there, and I had on this little band that said, you know, failure's not an option.
00:26:13.000So the basically the philosophical head of, you know, all the launches down there, when we had some of the Apollo missions that were not successful, you know, launches that went off that weren't able to do everything or, you know, not able to get to our destinations.
00:26:28.000He basically threw down with a NASA philosophy that said failure is not an option.
00:26:32.000That's him right there with the vest, right?
00:26:33.000Yeah, we're going to make it to the moon.
00:27:24.000Well, they recreated it, but it's kind of obvious because he looks like he's acting and there's a light here and a light here because the shadows are in different directions and he's sitting there.
00:29:24.000Yeah, vodka is easy to get carried away with because it doesn't seem like you're drinking much.
00:29:28.000So here you are at their space station thing, their headquarters, and they're celebrating a successful launch.
00:29:33.000They're celebrating going to stage two, stage three, et cetera.
00:29:37.000And there was a lot of celebration, a lot of caviar and stuff like that.
00:29:40.000But I kind of looked at it like, the base, could my kids live here for a year or two?
00:29:47.000Now, obviously, they're going to take care of you.
00:29:49.000The weirdest thing for me, when we travel around, you'd have security and stuff with you.
00:29:53.000But when we went to Russia, because there may be some forces that, you know, are anti-government or other things that you want to deal with, we would have, like, we'd be walking in our group, and there would be Russian soldiers surrounding us, like, in a circle.
00:30:06.000They would have, you know, like, their AK-47s and stuff, and if anybody thought they were going to interact and get in the middle of this, you know, those guys are hard, the way they keep their security, protecting their VIPs and stuff, but...
00:30:17.000It is interesting the relationship between the United States and Russia when it comes to space travel, that the United States needs the Russians.
00:30:25.000Yeah, because we had a design to have the constellation, what was going to be our new rocket system, etc.
00:30:30.000But once again, because of budgetary constraints and what Congress is going to approve, If there was another means to be able to do that, we said, we're just going to send our folks to Russia for right now.
00:30:40.000So when I left the White House, the boss was like, what do you want to go do?
00:30:44.000And he said, narrow down to three places.
00:30:45.000I was either going to go fly to the F-22, I was going to apply to be an astronaut, or as I did, I was going to go back to Nellis Air Force Base.
00:30:52.000The astronaut program would have been a dream come true.
00:30:55.000But since we had already selected the last crew for flying the space shuttle, I said, I don't know if I'm going to get the chance to go up in the space or not.
00:31:01.000What if they talked to you about going to the moon and putting a base up there?
00:31:27.000So you could be chilling in your little space station that you spent six months to develop and set up, and then boom, you get hit with a rock.
00:33:14.000I said, you go find the point on earth where it ends and you can fall off.
00:33:20.000And I said, I will pay for college tuition for all of your children.
00:33:23.000I didn't hear another thing from him ever.
00:33:26.000When I fly now, our plane will go up into the low 40s.
00:33:32.000Most of the time, we're going to fly in the high 39,000, something like that.
00:33:35.000You can start to see the curvature of the earth when you get up there, especially at dusk and dawn.
00:33:40.000So when you get up at 49,000, 50,000 feet, you can see the good curvature.
00:33:44.000Yeah, the view from the space station, just the images that I've seen from there, it seems like that would just change your life.
00:33:54.000The relationship that you have to the Earth, the way you look at living on Earth, Being above it and looking down on it, like, oh, down there is home?
00:34:05.000It must be a complete paradigm shifter.
00:35:15.000So we have a couple of communications.
00:35:17.000There's a satellite link on the back of the plane and hopefully it's working because that's our communication as far as back and forth, talking to the company, looking at weather and folks in the back as far as being able to socialize, internet, social media, stuff like that.
00:36:13.000But now I'm so conscious of everything going around me.
00:36:16.000Because of sitting up front, we have to be, you know, our flight attendants are amazing, everything they have to deal with in the back.
00:36:22.000But because of security procedures and stuff like that, so I had an incident on the plane about five years ago that I'll never sleep on the plane again.
00:36:31.000So it's very secure when we come out of the cockpit.
00:36:36.000You know, you don't want any kind of cockpit intrusion.
00:36:40.000And you'll notice when we come out of the cockpit, pastors cannot use the front restroom and there'll be security procedures in place.
00:36:49.000So I came out of the cockpit, and this gentleman got up and started to walk towards me, and the flight attendant was like, you've got to sit down.
00:36:54.000And the guy just stood there, and it turned into a Texas standoff, like, who's going to win here?
00:37:07.000About five feet away from the flight attendant, wouldn't sit down.
00:37:11.000So what I did now is I picked up the P.A., Got on it and said, hey sir, pilot's out of the cockpit, you need to sit down right now.
00:37:18.000And now what that did is that got other passengers involved and everybody's looking around in their seat to see what's going to happen.
00:37:23.000I thought he aggressively was going to try to come up and do something.
00:37:27.000So what I did is I put my hand on the back of the flight attendant and I said, if he comes forward, I just need you to lean about five feet to the left.
00:37:35.000If he aggressively postures and tries to attack, I'm going to put his jaw on the floor.
00:37:59.000You know, the doors are really enforced.
00:38:01.000But, you know, there have been people that have...
00:38:03.000You know, before the safety seal at the bottom that have busted that out and tried to get into the cockpit and, you know, other crazy things that have happened over the years.
00:38:11.000My goal is to get you from point A to point B as safely and smoothly as possible.
00:38:15.000And if somebody tries to get into our cockpit, I'm going to defend that as much as I can.
00:39:59.000But coronavirus for little kids is not, statistically speaking, it's not a big danger.
00:40:05.000It takes some, you know, that's how I go back to our flight attendants.
00:40:08.000One of my flight attendants, Frank, you know, we talk about that all the time.
00:40:12.000They are amazing with what they have to, you know, deal with.
00:40:15.000So one, customer service, safety, et cetera.
00:40:16.000And when you start to deal with issues like that, man, it takes a lot of, you know, patience and discretion to do the right thing.
00:40:23.000But if it's an adult that simply does not want to comply, they'll do everything they can.
00:40:28.000To get that person to comply to the point of having to call up front and tell the captain that we have an issue.
00:40:34.000And then even when it comes to that, because it's about safety and customer service, we're going to get on the PA and say, ladies and gentlemen, we have compliance things that you need to follow.
00:45:31.000Back in the day, that's where Randy Couture would train, Marvin Eastman, Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell.
00:45:36.000I went in there, and that's where I started doing all my boxing, my jiu-jitsu, and everything else.
00:45:40.000So, I was already doing some stuff with the UFC. You probably don't remember, but some of the old school UFC fights, like when Randy Couture fought in Columbus, Ohio, they would have me come out to the fights and go to a local VA hospital there in the area,
00:45:57.000and I'd bring a group of like 5 or 10 vets out to every single UFC fight.
00:46:01.000Is Columbus when he fought for the title against Tim Sylvia?
00:47:11.000I did that for a little bit, and the ISKA folks brought me on as a judge, and I did the judging for about six months.
00:47:16.000While the whole time I'm still going to these gyms, Extreme Couture, Syndicate, JSEC, getting in the ring, and I'm practicing with these guys, and I go, you know what, I love this refereeing stuff.
00:49:22.000And you know, they work together, you know, with the commissions and the Association of Boxing Commissions to get proficiency across the board.
00:49:29.000Well, I took John's course and I was like, God, man, this is really challenging.
00:49:32.000Is he still doing that now that he's doing a commentary?
00:49:34.000I don't know if he's doing it just because of all the virus stuff.
00:49:37.000But one thing I will say is we still do training.
00:49:39.000Like, so tomorrow, The state of Nevada has training.
00:49:43.000I run all the training for the state of Nevada.
00:50:30.000So I do that for a little bit, and then the Athletic Commission goes, we think we want you to be a referee as well.
00:50:36.000So at the time, there was no one that was doing both.
00:50:38.000They want you to concentrate on one of your expertise.
00:50:41.000So if you go back and look at it, for a while there, I was the only person that was refereeing and judging, eventually worked my way up to UFC fights.
00:50:50.000Now, I made a transition so I could focus more on refereeing, and then my fights have progressively gotten bigger and bigger as my proficiency has gotten better.
00:50:57.000If you look at that last card that we did, I think I had three of the biggest fights of any UFC card.
00:51:25.000And, you know, we don't have anything to do with the assignments.
00:51:27.000The Athletic Commission gives us our fights.
00:51:30.000I've done Kevin Holland's, like, last four fights.
00:51:32.000And, you know, I tell folks I got the greatest seat in the world sitting there in the octagon with these, you know, men and women who go in there and do that stuff.
00:51:38.000But I fortunately have, with great mentors and guidance and opportunities from the UFC and some of the organizations, have gotten some of the biggest and best fights in the world.
00:53:45.000Or they get the bright light of the doctor shining a flashlight in our eyes of what happened.
00:53:49.000And one thing we've tried to transition doing, you know, I've had some fighters get really hurt really bad.
00:53:55.000We normally keep everybody out of the octagon.
00:53:57.000But one thing we're doing is we're allowing a coach to come in.
00:54:02.000With the doctor, with the inspectors, with myself, and give them a familiar voice.
00:54:06.000You know, you get knocked out, you come back, and here's Mark telling you, no, the fight's over, you may not recognize.
00:54:10.000But if your coach is there in the corner saying, hey, such and such, you got knocked out, calm down, it's fine, this is coach, such and such, I'm here.
00:54:17.000We're finding that's calming the fighter down just a little bit.
00:54:19.000Obviously, medical protocols and safety, we've got to do all that.
00:54:22.000I like asking one of the coaches to come in, stand off to my side, and kind of give them a familiar voice.
00:54:29.000When Olivera had Tony Ferguson in that arm bar and he had his arm completely hyperextended and it looked like his arm was breaking, like what was your thought there?
00:54:38.000Because some guys have stopped fights when a guy has a fully locked out arm bar and it's very controversial.
00:54:45.000Like some people think you should just let it keep going.
00:54:47.000Other people think like that one of the best examples was Herb Dean with Tim Sylvia versus Frank Mir.
00:55:06.000Once I got in the octagon and I explained it, and I explained it to the audience, because people were booing like crazy because the fight was stopped.
00:56:01.000So I tell guys, and we learn as we progress watching fights.
00:56:04.000You know, we talk daily, weekly about stuff that we gotta do.
00:56:07.000So I tell them in the back of the rules meeting.
00:56:08.000For a choke, at this level, I'm not going to stop it unless the fighter goes out.
00:56:12.000If it's any kind of other submission, I've got to see a dislocation, separation, or it has to break.
00:56:17.000Or, if you scream, and there's a difference between a scream and a grunt to get out of something, if you scream, it's a verbal submission and we're going to stop it.
00:57:02.000And we've got to be conscious of the time.
00:57:05.000So the 10-second clapper had already gone off, so I'm counting down in my head.
00:57:09.000And the goal is to, right when that horn goes off, you'll see when we stop a submission from that, we go right to the pressure point, push back the opposite way, and take off the pivot point.
00:57:26.000I'm pushing on it and stopping it, also verbally telling the guy to stop, because you don't want any extra damage after the bail.
00:57:46.000I think when he fought Jake Shields, you know, there was some extracurricular activity.
00:57:49.000That was with Kimura, and that was in the PFL, right?
00:57:54.000Yeah, he held on to a Kimura, tapped Jake, but then held it long, and then afterwards there was a brawl inside the octagon, but...
00:58:02.000Yeah, and I think I'd referee the fight right before that.
00:58:04.000And, you know, it's our responsibility as a referee to know your fighter.
00:58:08.000You gotta, you know, we do, what I do is I look at the entire card and I'll go back and try to look at their fights or whatever I get assigned.
00:58:15.000And I don't know what I get assigned until I get there.
01:00:16.000You know, it's different now because they're not fans in the UFC Apex or, you know, wherever some of these other people are doing.
01:00:22.000But if it's like the T-Mobile or something, and you may hear something, you may hear a snap, or someone may verbally submit, and if you stop it, man, the crowd will go crazy.
01:01:17.000In some senses, because some stuff you don't want them to be able to hear because you can overwhelm them with referee feedback.
01:01:23.000The goal, I really don't want to say anything to them a lot during the fight.
01:01:27.000I want to interact as least as possible.
01:01:29.000You know, you say some stuff, you know, some fans are like, oh, he's in the middle of the fight, he's interacting too much.
01:01:33.000But to help the TV audience, the pay-per-view audience, etc., what I've learned I need to do is, you know, either say it in the microphone where you guys can hear me or to come over to the table and, you know, kind of tell you what's going on.
01:01:43.000It would help, but I think maybe you should have the ability to, like, press a button and broadcast to the crowd, too.
01:01:49.000Like, he just bit his opponent and have the place go...
01:01:52.000You know, so we're doing some different things right now.
01:01:55.000You know, we just started the instant replay in Nevada.
01:02:01.000They assigned myself, Jason Herzog, Jared Villal, and Herb Dean as a committee to build that.
01:02:06.000And we took what the boxing guys had and we developed it into MMA. And then we had kind of an approval board that we had to present it to.
01:02:14.000So we had to present it to Big John McCarthy and Mark Ratner.
01:02:18.000And what we did is we took the platform, told them how we were going to do it, and then we actually got their blessing to be able to do it.
01:02:24.000Well, those are two very reasonable, intelligent guys that have a tremendous amount of experience.
01:02:28.000And then once we were done with that, we took it to the ABC Rules Committee, you know, who looks at what's going to be fouls, what's not going to be fouls, and then we presented it to them about two months ago.
01:02:38.000Everybody there, you know, we gave some feedback.
01:03:00.000He's working with the production truck.
01:03:02.000The views that you guys get for instant replay and stuff, he has a capability to, you'll see, they'll put that yellow light on the catwalk of the octagon.
01:03:10.000That's telling me it's going to be an instant replay.
01:03:12.000Or, if you see the referee, Do like this?
01:03:14.000That means something just happened where I need an instant replay.
01:03:17.000I think enough people don't understand that now, what's going on with the instant replay.
01:03:20.000Because for the longest time, it stopped the fight.
01:03:23.000Even if it was an illegal move and someone was going to get a point deducted, once you instituted the instant replay to find, for whatever strange reason, the fight was automatically stopped.
01:03:47.000And then you can get to the point that we find that if someone is faking an injury, if we find that through instant replay, there can be point deductions.
01:03:54.000I was just going to ask you about that.
01:03:55.000What do you do if a guy pretends he got kicked low and then you see in the instant replay that he got kicked in the liver?
01:04:01.000So if we call timeout, I want to see the instant replay.
01:04:04.000If I miss it, if I make a mistake, I got to man up.
01:04:07.000You know, no ego, no pride or anything.
01:04:09.000But if a guy's really badly hurt with a body shot and then you go to instant replay, you're talking about a minute, two minutes, three minutes.
01:04:15.000He's got, you know, that feeling is gone now.
01:04:19.000Now he's been able to recover and he can actually keep fighting.
01:04:22.000You as a referee have to make a subjective call there.
01:04:25.000So at the time when you call a timeout, if you feel that the injury warranted enough to be a TKO, I can't stop the fight.
01:04:35.000I have to put the fighter back in that same position.
01:04:38.000You know, if he's down on the ground, yeah, there's going to be a level of recovery there, so you are going to lose something.
01:04:43.000But I'm going to put the fighters back in that, you know, whatever the dominant position is.
01:04:46.000Oh, so if a fighter kicks a guy to the body, and the fighter is down, said he got kicked low, and you determine that he did not get kicked low, you'll make him down on the ground again?
01:04:56.000Wherever he fell, so you gotta take that snapshot.
01:04:58.000You know, if someone's in guard and there's a foul, I call stop time, and if I need to have a doctor look at them, before I bring that doctor in, I'm gonna take a snapshot of where they are.
01:05:08.000So let's say the bottom guy commits the foul.
01:05:11.000I wanna put him back in that same, if it's a dominant position, you know, at least 51% dominant position, I'm gonna put him back in that.
01:05:18.000So in that case of if someone fakes an injury, I can't get it back to that point where he's 100% hurt.
01:05:25.000But I can put him back as close to I can in a dominant position.
01:05:28.000Now, if I determine that a guy is intentionally faking an injury or something, and I can't put him back in that dominant position, I can fix it by saying unsportsmanlike conduct, and it can be up to a point deduction.
01:05:41.000Or if I determine that, nope, he would have been done at that point, get up and fight right now.
01:06:21.000You know, it has to be weight bearing.
01:06:22.000And the way we determine weight bearing, I can't determine weight bearing if he just has his fingers down, even though there may be some bending in it.
01:06:29.000So we alleviate it and we say flat palm or flat fist.
01:06:32.000If that fighter is flat palm and they're transitioning, coming up, and you catch that person, you know, if the hand is that close, man, it's a tough call.
01:06:40.000That's what they pay us for, to be able to make that high-level subjective call, though.
01:06:43.000And a fighter is legally allowed to lift a guy up slightly, just enough to get his hand off and then land a knee to the face.
01:06:51.000You know, I tell them in the back, if they got him down and you got that flat palm, you can lift him back up.
01:08:11.000We've got to be consummate professionals, but there's no pride and ego.
01:08:16.000The worst feeling in the world is as a referee to know that you just made a mistake in front of however many millions of people that just watched that pay-per-view.
01:08:24.000Yeah, I mean, listen, if you do enough fights, you're going to make a mistake.
01:10:02.000I mean, you remember, it was so loud in that arena.
01:10:04.000I can hear the coaches coaching back and forth.
01:10:08.000I can hear you guys at the table talking.
01:10:10.000But if I can't hear that, that tells me I'm not going to hear the horn or the bell.
01:10:13.000I was so worried because, man, these guys are slugfest back and forth.
01:10:17.000I go, I was so much into it, I didn't have track of how much time was left.
01:10:24.000So I go, that horn is going to go off and I'm not going to be able to hear it.
01:10:28.000But the great thing right now is, A, you can hear the horn with no fans in there.
01:10:31.000But it is so incredible because we can hear you guys with all your commentating and you can hear the coaches.
01:10:36.000And then you can hear the fighters talking back and forth to their coaches.
01:10:39.000They can hear all the specific instruction.
01:10:41.000And as you know, this whole season, you know, back from like March or April, whenever we started, man, we got some hungry fighters in there that, you know, with the teamwork, with the coaches and stuff, that closed environment, you could hear the punches and the kicks.
01:10:55.000Well, the first one I did without any audience was Justin Gaethje and Tony Ferguson, which was in Florida, which was just wild just to be there and to see a fight with no audience.
01:11:06.000I mean, you really feel, first of all, you feel very fortunate because there's so few people that are going to get to be there live.
01:11:13.000But also, there's a dynamic to the fight.
01:11:32.000You know, the fans get to hear things they normally wouldn't hear.
01:11:35.000Like, you know, I had the fighter that kind of quit on the stool a couple months back.
01:11:40.000And the fans, with the microphone that we have on...
01:11:44.000They get the chance to hear me actually talking to the fighter.
01:11:46.000I went over to him and said, hey, do you want to continue to fight?
01:11:49.000And he had the interaction back and forth with his corner a couple times.
01:11:52.000In the normal, in the T-Mobile, which is a phenomenal arena, I may not be able to hear that because you've got 20-some thousand fans in there yet.
01:11:59.000But as I go back to the corner, I can hear everything that the coaches are saying.
01:12:03.000And if a fighter's giving an indication that they no longer want to continue, now I can put that back into my equation on how the fight's going to go, my interaction with the doctor, etc., We're good to go.
01:12:49.000Gerald McClellan, which was a tragic boxing fight where Gerald McClellan was one of the best fighters on the planet Earth and just a destroyer.
01:12:58.000And he knocked Nigel Benn out of the ring in the first round.
01:14:06.000So the preparation, the matchmakers, matching somebody up with a good fight, having a proper preparation, training, et cetera, to be able to get to that point.
01:15:34.000And you know, that may seem very harsh to say that, but it's a simple thing of, hey, we've prepared you, you've prepared to get to this point, go in there and do your thing.
01:15:43.000Oh, so he's kind of fucking around too.
01:15:44.000Yeah, it's to loosen you up a little bit.
01:15:57.000That's so crazy that that was your first pay-per-view fight.
01:16:00.000He pulled me to the side, and I didn't know it ahead of time, but when I got there, he said, hey, we're going to step it up a little bit tonight.
01:16:19.000So we had to take him through a series of medical tests in the back.
01:16:21.000Mr. Ratner was back there, you know, the Athletic Commission was back there, a couple of the doctors from the UFC. And they were like, Mark, if he demonstrates that he tears that muscle even more, if he's hurt, you got to stop the fight.
01:16:34.000So can you imagine in that Orlovsky fight with Travis Brown, If I see that calf muscle tear, I have to step in the middle of that fight and stop it.
01:18:38.000And Travis weathered the storm and came back and KO'd It's about right here that I'm thinking the fight's over because he's going to miss him with the punch and he's right there and he staggers so much that I'm already at the mind frame that this fight's going to be over.
01:18:52.000And then he catches him here and then he turns away without any intelligence.
01:21:04.000Yes, well, they've realized, they see these, you know, the Conor McGregors, the stylebenders, they see these guys that are becoming these gigantic superstars, the Dustin Poiriers, and they realize, like, wow, like, you know, fortune favors the brave.
01:21:19.000Like, you gotta go in there guns blazing.
01:21:21.000We see it with the Tuesday night fights, and then also the Saturday venue there at the Apex.
01:21:25.000You know, some people may not realize the impact of what the UFC did.
01:21:30.000In the middle of this pandemic, you know, Bellator did it in their bubble as well, but, you know, UFC kind of led the sports world for everybody.
01:21:36.000You know, folks are getting burned down on social media and it's like, what else do we do?
01:21:39.000And sitting on the couch doing a thing that gave an outlet, you know, not just for us as officials, but athletes and teams and everybody have something exciting to be able to watch.
01:21:48.000You know, you know how passionate Dana is about it.
01:22:19.000Listen, man, those guys are not dying from Coronavirus.
01:22:23.000Maybe we thought maybe they were risking their lives at the beginning of the pandemic because we didn't really know what the virus was.
01:22:29.000But now the argument that they're risking their lives now is preposterous.
01:22:32.000You're not gonna kill elite athletes with this virus.
01:22:36.000They may not know the safety protocols that we go through, you know, no, you know, the testing, you know, you test and you go in the bubble and you isolate and Also, they're alerting the fighters about vitamin supplementation, how to strengthen your immune system, and how to check.
01:22:50.000If they're paying attention, they're monitoring their resting heart rate.
01:22:54.000If you wear something like a whoop strap, it'll show where you're cardiovascular, how your body is recovering for things, and it can actually give you indications that you might be suffering from this virus.
01:24:05.000Some people get there the night prior on Friday, and then, you know, we go to the arena like at 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock, or, like, since I live there local, I'll go over Saturday morning at 7 o'clock, test and isolate, and then go to the What do you bring like a Yeti cooler with you or something?
01:24:55.000The crazy thing about that is when I had the surgery, The anesthesiologist made a little mistake and I wasn't completely anesthetized yet when they put the intubation tube in and I hit my vocal cords.
01:25:05.000So you go back to that Arlovsky and Travis Brown fight.
01:25:09.000I took a little hiatus right after that because when they hit my vocal cords I couldn't talk for about six months.
01:25:17.000So he damaged my left vocal cord and then he stretched my right vocal cord.
01:25:21.000You know, your vocal cords essentially touch together to make the tones.
01:25:51.000You know, I'd go through a speech therapist and you know, they, they, she'd do stuff like she, you know, had me go over certain tones to be able to get it back and you know, never raise my voice.
01:26:00.000They don't even want you to whisper because I guess the whispering would still have, you know, effects on the vocal cords being able to heal.
01:26:37.000The only place I notice it, if I do a lot of fights where I have to yell a lot, at the end of the night, my throat can be sore and I sound like I lose my voice just a little bit.
01:27:15.000But I gotta tell you, the one thing that religiously, whether I'm doing it with the UFC or whether I'm doing my flying, I got into Tim Tamming.
01:27:53.000And he said, take it home for a couple days.
01:27:55.000And then I didn't realize how magical that thing was as far as, you know, pressure points and, you know, active release and stuff like that.
01:28:02.000So I take that thing with me whenever I go fly a trip for the airlines or when I do that preparation for the UFC. That's good because it's small.
01:28:09.000Well, you know, they got the traditional ones that have the heated tips and the pressure points and stuff like that.
01:28:14.000That is part of my everyday routine and I absolutely love it.
01:29:15.000Every fight is important, whether it's the first fight on the card or whether it's the 12th fight on the card.
01:29:19.000But when you have a night like that, just a mental preparation and a letdown when you get done with that, you know, you realize it's a little bit fatiguing, tough on the body, etc.
01:29:27.000So, man, there's so many elements that you've got to come into to be ready for that.
01:30:40.000Is he or she good enough to continue the fight?
01:30:43.000He put some, you know, stitch or one of those guys, you know, they do their thing.
01:30:48.000A cut guy went in there and put some stuff in his nose.
01:30:50.000Doctor made a determination that he was able to continue the fight.
01:30:52.000For the fighter, I imagine like that sort of momentum stopping for something outside of the actual fight itself has got to be very annoying.
01:31:00.000I have never seen, knock on wood, a UFC fight or Bellator fight or anything like that have to be stopped because of that.
01:31:07.000You see all the stuff on YouTube and everything if a referee gets hurt.
01:31:11.000Most of the fighters, you're going to hope at this level they're professional enough, they're going to stop.
01:31:45.000So we try to maintain that, you know, 90 degrees off where the fighters directly on your left and right and keep a constant movement with them.
01:31:52.000You look for eye pokes and groin shots and stuff like that.
01:31:55.000But you sit there and watch us, you know, we're usually sweating by the end of the fight.
01:32:00.000I mean, you have to be in great shape to referee a fight, especially with small guys that move a lot.
01:32:06.000And I try to, you know, so in addition to the strength and conditioning stuff, you know, I've done some classroom stuff like, you know, people talk about what they do during the pandemic.
01:32:33.000And then I'm planning on taking that back to share it with the other officials that work with us and doing some corporate wellness and fitness too.
01:32:40.000I got grand plans and stuff that's coming out there.
01:32:53.000The octagon surface is one thing to be able to do it.
01:32:56.000But what I do for preparation in the back, I do a lot of side-to-side movement to the left and back to the right, and then shuffling back and shuffling forward to try to mimic the actual movements that I'm going to do inside the octagon.
01:33:07.000I've got to be able to practice with the application I'm going to use it for.
01:33:15.000When guys are fighting, what am I looking at?
01:33:17.000When they go to the ground and certain submissions come up, what position am I going to be able to go in to look at the pressure point to be able to hear and see what the fighter is saying?
01:33:26.000It's a lot of preparation and getting ready for it.
01:33:28.000Is there a fight that stands out for you as the most difficult fight you ever had a referee?
01:33:33.000I would say that Travis Brown and Arlovsky, because of knowing of Arlovsky's injury ahead of time, The impact of that, the number of fans that were there, how loud it got.
01:34:02.000He's a great teacher, but there's no one more knowledgeable about the sport than him.
01:34:06.000But knowing that you've got the trust...
01:34:09.000Because, you know, the athletic commissions are going to talk to the senior referees as to where to start to put people.
01:34:15.000And to make it to a UFC slash Bellator level of fight, you've got to be really, hopefully, a good judge, a good referee, or a great judge, great referee, because of the impact that it could have.
01:34:27.000And then to have that on a pay-per-view, to have the expectations of the Athletic Commission and Dana and the rest of the UFC staff there, because the last thing you want is to have a fight get messed up and catch the criticism of the promotion, the fans, you know, fellow referees, etc.
01:34:43.000And then because of how loud it got in there.
01:34:45.000But what I try to do is I try to say, Regardless of it's, you know, amateur fighter, A, B, professional fighter, fighting for a title, contender, etc.
01:34:54.000Once that door closes, I try to treat everybody the same.
01:35:45.000But, you know, you get the best stuff there.
01:35:47.000When I came back to Vegas, you know, I go to a couple of different gyms there and trying to keep that balance of professionalism with training with the guys.
01:35:53.000I go to Coutures and I go to Syndicate.
01:35:55.000And then, you know, I was at one point there.
01:35:57.000We had Vinny and Fredson and Mike Powell, all those guys in the same gym.
01:36:05.000A lot of people train, you know, to get the belts or to go do a tournament and stuff like that.
01:36:08.000That's not my focus is, one, because I don't have the time.
01:36:11.000I try to learn how I can apply that back to me refereeing, knowing the details of a specific submission or hold or something like that, and at what level amateurs, am I going to stop it when the guy's in a good choke and he can't get out of it, versus at the next level, knowing how somebody's going to transition from one position to the other.
01:36:29.000There's a benefit to a guy like Lloyd Irvin throwing you around, though, and that is that you recognize the levels.
01:36:36.000Because sometimes people get a very distorted sense of what they could physically do to a large black belt.
01:36:43.000You get the guy sitting at home eating wings with the beer in his hands.
01:36:47.000I can get in there, and you hear it at the T-Mobile.
01:36:49.000I could get in there and kick his ass, you know, this, whatever.
01:36:52.000And they don't realize the level of professionalism, proficiency some of these fighters have.
01:36:57.000You know, to watch a Vinny Magales, you know, do a stand-up fight and then transition to the ground, you're like, man, you're about to see something incredible.
01:37:13.000You know, you're fighters across the roster in the UFC. They may think someone is a stand-up expert and they go to the ground and you see something amazing right there.
01:37:20.000So that's why us as referees, you got to be proficient at it.
01:37:24.000You got to have an understanding of how that's going to apply.
01:37:44.000Well, there's a judge I will not name, but he told me that he was in the middle of a fight once judging a fight and one of the other judges asked him what the person was doing.
01:38:07.000We're talking about more than 10 years ago.
01:38:08.000But it was weird back then because you had a lot of people that were refereeing fights that didn't really even understand what they were judging fights.
01:38:17.000They really didn't understand what they were judging.
01:38:18.000They didn't understand what they were looking at.
01:38:20.000And, you know, we, you see that criticism out there, you know, these judges in this jurisdiction are their boxing judges and stuff like that.
01:38:26.000Now, you got folks that have been doing this for, you know, 15, 20 years, that they may not be proficient on the ground themselves, but they have an understanding of it.
01:38:37.000You know, some of the judges may be in whatever, you know, their 60s.
01:38:40.000The issue is when you go to some smaller commissions that don't have the kind of experience, obviously, Nevada and California are the top of the heap.
01:38:48.000But there's places we've gone to where you've seen judging that you're like, oh, this is just insanity.
01:38:53.000Like, this is not a person that really understands what they're talking about.
01:38:57.000And it's really incumbent upon every referee and judge that wants to get into the game.
01:39:01.000Like, I had somebody call me yesterday, a former fighter at Fortis MMA. You know, great guys down there.
01:41:36.000Like our executive director in Nevada, Bob Bennett and Jeff Mullen, they're going to make the selections for the top referees and judges in the world.
01:41:44.000They're going to give those opportunities.
01:41:46.000Yeah, those are great guys, and it's a welcome change from the past administration.
01:41:50.000Now, when you're talking about fighters, you can't really get close to these guys, huh?
01:41:57.000It's kind of a tricky situation for you.
01:42:00.000If you train with these guys and you're friendly with these guys, do you excuse yourself from a fight, or do you just keep it professional with everybody?
01:42:08.000You try to keep it professional with everybody.
01:42:37.000I think it depends on what day of the week it is.
01:42:39.000He's such a skillful guy, you know, just such a really intelligent, well-rounded game when he was fighting, like just a consummate professional.
01:42:48.000And, you know, for me, so like when I started at JSEC Fight Capital back in the day, he was in there with Randy and Marvin Eastman and all those guys.
01:42:55.000So, you know, I've taken this transition with him the entire time.
01:42:59.000It would be really tough for me to go in there and do a Mike Powell fight.
01:43:02.000So what I do is like to, you know, two primary commissions, Nevada and California, I'll call them ahead of time and say, you know, Hey, Mr. Foster, I've trained with Mike Powell before I did this kind of training with him.
01:43:15.000And that's something that Herb and Big John taught me back in the day, present it to the commission and tell them and let them make determination.
01:43:20.000Yeah, that guy, Andy Foster, is one of my favorites.
01:43:22.000He's really so ahead of a lot of other commissions.
01:43:27.000They're so proactive in implementing more weight classes and weight cutting in a lot of the things that they do.
01:44:38.000I think, you know, John Morgan and the MMA Junkie guys did the article a couple months ago, and they talked about, you know, the numbers of fights of the year for 2020. And I think Herb was at the top.
01:44:47.000And then, like, he had 80-some fights, and Jason had 60 fights.
01:46:36.000And, you know, kudos to the Sean Shelby and the matchmakers over at UFC. This entire season, There have been some great fights the entire time.
01:48:08.000You look at the number of top-tier fights that we've got coming up.
01:48:12.000I think they said the number of champions that we have, like 70% of them, are going to be in title fights coming up in the next couple months.
01:48:19.000And, you know, both guys dominated Tyron Woodley, which is crazy to think about that Tyron Woodley was literally at the top of the heap destroying everybody.
01:48:31.000And then two guys come along and dominate them back to back.
01:48:35.000And those two guys are now fighting for the title.
01:48:42.000When you look at Gilbert Burns, you're talking about a guy who's a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, top of the food chain grappling game, and learned how to strike while he was fighting.
01:48:54.000Started training in MMA and didn't know how to strike.
01:48:57.000Now he's one of the scariest strikers in the sport.
01:48:59.000Yeah, he dominated that fight with striking.
01:49:01.000Dropped Woodley in the first round, which is crazy.
01:49:04.000You would have thought, if anybody has an advantage in the striking, it's going to be Woodley.
01:49:08.000I mean, so well-rounded, both of those guys.
01:49:27.000We see the fighters afterwards with the physical impact that it has on them.
01:49:32.000The fans have their favorites, and they watch, and they want this and that to happen.
01:49:35.000They don't understand the physical impact on the fighters during the fight and after the fight.
01:49:38.000Well, that's why, you know, a guy like, bring up a guy like Tyron Woodley, you know, who was on top of the heat for so long, and then you go through three brutal fights in a row.
01:49:47.000He has those two fights, and then the Colby Covington fight.
01:49:50.000It's like, you, you, you, it's such a fucking hard, scrabble game.
01:49:56.000Like, you're on top, and then you're not, and then you look at a guy like Anderson Silva, who was on top forever, and then just lost, like...
01:50:23.000He looked good for the first couple rounds, and then when he got caught and went down, that's when you go, ah, the skills have depleted a little bit.
01:50:32.000It's crazy to watch, you know, Uriah Hall put it up on his Instagram.
01:50:36.000He said, when I said I learned from this man, I learned from this man.
01:50:39.000And it shows the difference between, it shows a contrast in Anderson Silva's fight with Forrest Griffin.
01:50:46.000When Forrest Griffin comes charging at him, he picks his spot and lands a right hand.
01:50:52.000And that is exactly the same thing that Uriah Hall did to Anderson Silva.
01:51:39.000And I think when you get these older fighters, the fighters that are able to sustain their careers outside of the UFC are clearly using hormones.
01:51:48.000You know, and so there's protocols, obviously, for that, that, you know, from the USADA... In some places.
01:52:08.000We are cognizant of that as officials, that we may have to watch someone a little bit closer.
01:52:13.000If you really count on, regardless of organization, the officials knowing and understanding that, that someone's a little bit older and it's going to have an impact, you better do your part as a referee.
01:52:49.000And, you know, we have to do, you know, brain trauma protocols in courses, you know, because you want, like, your high school coaches and stuff like that to understand that for their athletes.
01:53:00.000But we as officials have to go through those protocols as well, you know, to take these courses and understand, you know, the impact of brain injuries.
01:53:07.000Because, once again, fighter safety is always a top priority.
01:53:11.000I would never want to be part of a fight that someone had a long-term impact injury because of brain trauma or something else because I didn't intervene.
01:53:21.000How do you feel when you see guys that are fighting, like they have these 20-plus year careers, like guys like Diego Sanchez.
01:53:29.000I mean, he won the Ultimate Fighter Season 1 in 2005, which is really crazy when you think of the fact that 16 years later he's still fighting in the UFC. And then his actual career, fighting career, goes back a couple years before that.
01:53:46.000You know, he's been fighting a long time.
01:53:48.000You know, it's tough because I think at UFC 200 he fought against Joe Lozon.
01:53:53.000And you remember up against the cage he was taking some pretty hard shots.
01:53:57.000And you have to delineate as an official, do I step in and stop this?
01:54:03.000Or do I know this fighter's history of being able to come back?
01:54:06.000Man, that was probably one of the tougher fights I had to do.
01:54:09.000And then looking back at it, that was probably a lesson learned for me that I probably should have or could have stopped that fight a little bit earlier.
01:54:16.000You know, I let him take the shots, and then he threw some punches back, and then finally when he punched him and he went down, I stepped in.
01:54:24.000And Diego actually, excuse me, he thanked me afterwards for when I stopped it.
01:54:29.000You know, he came to realization that he could not have come back.
01:54:32.000But you think of a guy's resilience, you know, and then I did this fight several years later against Chiesa, I mean, you know how Diego's one of the all-time great fighters when he does stuff.
01:54:43.000So subjectively, as a referee, there's that fine line balance of Do I make this decision, my decision, in the best interest of the fighter?
01:54:53.000Or do I think about the impact, you know, the capabilities of this fighter to be able to come back?
01:54:58.000So one, you got to know who it is in there fighting with you.
01:55:00.000You also kind of have to look at where they are now.
01:55:03.000Because if you go back to the Diego that fought Marvin Campman, I mean, he was like indestructible.
01:55:08.000Like Diego is responsible for some of the greatest third rounds in the history of the sport.
01:56:29.000There's so many different things going on because of when you're combining the wrestling and the jujitsu and the striking and then powerful guys versus endurance guys.
01:56:39.000I mean, even, like, I get in my head, like, oh, this is the way to do it.
01:56:43.000And then I see another guy who does it differently.
01:56:45.000I'm like, well, that way is pretty goddamn good, too.
01:57:08.000They just stay on you and overwhelm you with volume.
01:57:11.000You know, one thing I try to do in completely different worlds, but I try to treat it just like I did, you know, as a fighter pilot.
01:57:18.000And if you're in a dogfight against someone, you know, knowing possibly what could happen here, think about the predictions.
01:57:24.000So if I'm fighting against a certain type of plane, know what their capabilities are.
01:57:28.000I got a certain type of fighter here, knowing what their capabilities are.
01:57:31.000Is this fighter going to be more apt to want to go to the ground than going to throw a power shot?
01:57:35.000And doing your study, Of what the fighter traditionally does.
01:57:38.000You know, some people go back to their bread and butter, regardless of what's going on.
01:57:41.000A guy's going to want to fall down and pull guard or something like that, or he's going to go up against a cage and do this.
01:57:47.000But just going with the flow of the fight.
01:57:48.000As we move with the fighters, look and see what's happening.
01:57:51.000If it's time to stop the fight, it's our responsibility to step in and stop it.
01:57:55.000When you train, if you're training jiu-jitsu or what have you, are you training just to get better as a referee or do you actually enjoy it?
01:58:23.000Yes, I moved up a little bit more, you know, started training with Chaz and, you know, a couple other folks in town.
01:58:28.000So I would say that would be more of my foundation.
01:58:30.000But to fully understand, you know, with the jujitsu, you know, taking a shin-to-shin kick, you got to do it at least one time to know what it feels like to see what these fighters are going through.
01:58:38.000With the positions, you know, to train to get an understanding of, yeah, that's a good choke right there.
01:58:43.000You know, that's a good pressure point submission right there.
01:58:46.000But what I also do in conjunction to getting on the mat and actually doing that is I will have two guys get on the mat and roll, and it may be a step-by-step process.
01:58:57.000And I want you to flex it to the point of knowing when you're going to tap to be able to equate that to, I got a fighter in the cage right now, knowing what to look for.
01:59:04.000And when you got Vinny and Fredson and those guys out there showing you the different types of things.
01:59:16.000So my methods may be a little bit different, but me as a referee, I got to understand fully what I'm looking at there from the outside perspective of knowing.
01:59:23.000Yeah, there's some that are really confusing, right?
01:59:52.000And he stopped moving, and he stopped like this, and I realized he was out.
01:59:56.000Now you put that into your memory bank and go, okay, fighters have their app to go to sleep with their eyes open based on this very unique choke.
02:00:03.000That's one of the only ones that they're going to do that.
02:00:05.000I had a Tuesday night fight that the guy's on the ground, and he gets put in the Von Flu, and he's looking at me.
02:00:10.000They really should rename it to the OSP choke.
02:00:14.000But that Tuesday night fight, this guy goes out from it, and everybody's like, what is he?
02:00:19.000He's still, his eyes are open, he's awake.
02:00:20.000I go, no, his eyes are open, but he's not awake.
02:00:22.000And then when a fighter lets go of the hole and then you realize that he's out, that's the kind of thing you've got to train for to be able to not understand.
02:00:28.000Well, OSP, he moves the guy's arm to the guillotine position.
02:00:33.000Like, he'll force a guy, like, he'll say, why don't you try to choke me?
02:00:38.000He'll, like, force a guy to try it, yeah.
02:00:41.000And then he'll tie it up, and then he'll sit back and put people to sleep.
02:00:45.000And it's weird because they're in Apex...
02:00:47.000Everybody can see it, and you'll hear the coaches saying, no, don't do that, don't do that, because they know what's going to happen, and he'll put you in it.
02:00:53.000The thing is, it's like if a guy's neck is there and your arm's here, it's like an instinct.
02:01:32.000The Von Fluchoke's a great example of a situation where it's hard to figure out what's going on if you've never been put in that position before.
02:01:40.000Do you ever let anybody do that to you?
02:02:00.000That's a little bit different versus getting knocked out, you know, if you've got any kind of brain injury.
02:02:04.000But I mean, we've got a lot of pilots that we work with, you know, that, you know, they do train, you know, for one, cockpit defense and, you know, physical preparedness and stuff.
02:02:12.000I think to fully understand it, you got to be put in those situations.
02:02:16.000Like I will tell you, for me, one of the most painful things I've ever been in was a toe hole.
02:02:20.000I mean, I thought I was going to, you know, break the damn mat.
02:02:24.000And some of the other, you know, submissions and stuff like that may not be as effective on you, but...
02:02:28.000What about like heel hooks and stuff like that?
02:02:30.000Do they show you where it's dangerous?
02:02:33.000Yeah, I try to get into the fine details of, you know, what can potentially break or dislocate or separate, what's going to be the pressure point.
02:03:31.000I think it was a Bellator fight, if I remember correctly.
02:03:33.000Yeah, one of those guys, he screamed at, I think it was a knee bar or something, and he screamed out of it, and the referee stopped it, and he yelled, and he said, no, you verbally submitted it.
02:03:48.000You know, there are certain camps that everybody- Isn't it crazy?
02:03:52.000They don't see, people don't realize the physical impact of it.
02:03:54.000When you get hit with that thing a couple times and it starts to swell.
02:03:57.000And because of where it is, that swelling, you know, the blood doesn't have room to expand.
02:04:02.000Like maybe if it's the quad or something like that, it can expand out a little bit more, but in the calf, With the restricted limitation there, that swelling and the blood compact is going to stay there in that area.
02:04:13.000And if you don't learn how to properly check, you get hit with that thing a couple times.
02:04:16.000Let me ask you this, though, as a Muay Thai practitioner, because I haven't really gotten a good answer.
02:04:21.000Why isn't that prevalent in Muay Thai?
02:05:17.000And, you know, you could tell people, you know, with the fight that happened, you know, with Connor and Dustin, that camp is practicing that a lot.
02:05:26.000And, you know, we as referees look at what people may be more apt to do during the fight.
02:05:32.000Also, specifically in that fight, because Conor has that wide stance, and he puts a lot of heavy weight on that front leg, and they're also southpaw to southpaw, so it opens up that back left leg kick to that front leg of Conor's.
02:05:47.000That if somebody gets kicked like there a couple times and then they change their stance, you know, that's going to alert us on what we've got to start to look for.
02:05:54.000And if I think someone's hurt from that, we may not interact with them.
02:05:58.000But, you know, I'll bring the doctor in a couple times and the doctor will sit there and they'll watch them stand up and they'll look at it.
02:08:13.000But if there's a stand-up and he can't stand up, then you've got to step in and stop the fight.
02:08:16.000It is just bananas to me how that one technique has dominated the sport over the last several years.
02:08:22.000Sometimes a technique comes around and a lot of fighters start doing it, but it's very rare that a technique that's been around forever, just they change the location of the impact.
02:08:34.000And by the way, Benson Henderson was doing that way back in the day.
02:08:37.000And for whatever reason, it didn't have the same impact.
02:08:40.000And you have people that don't know how to defend it.
02:11:21.000So, you know, I may stand about 7 to 10 feet away from a fighter.
02:11:25.000If I see that somebody's hurt like that, I may move a little bit closer so I can get a, you know, a better feel, look at their face and, you know, see what kind of impact.
02:11:32.000Or if he changes his stance, now I know we could be stepping down the ground to a stoppage of this fight.
02:11:37.000So as a referee, you got to build all that stuff into it.
02:11:39.000You got to understand what the guy just threw, the impact, that calf kick, impact that it could have on it.
02:11:44.000And honestly, go back to that fighter safety again.
02:11:46.000If a guy doesn't know better and he keeps taking all those shots, it's our responsibility to help him out.
02:11:49.000What do you do if you think a guy's got a broken hand?
02:12:13.000Like, say if a guy like Tony Ferguson, who his hand could be broken in a million different places, and I'm going to let you know, he'll still keep swinging it.
02:12:21.000Like, if you notice that someone did something like that, they pulled their hand back or shook it, like, how do you make that distinction?
02:12:28.000I'll look at whether to continue to throw it, and you've got to look at the look on their face or if they make any sounds after they throw it.
02:12:52.000But if the doctor makes a determination for the long-term longevity, their health, etc., You know, you'll see the doctor and I walk off to the side and, you know, we'll cover the microphone up to, you know, you still can hear what we're saying, but, you know, we want to be able to have a discreet conversation right there.
02:13:08.000In our jurisdiction, in Nevada, it's up to the referee to make the decision with the consultation of the doctor.
02:13:13.000In other places, California, et cetera, the doctor can stop fights.
02:13:18.000So if the doctor says, you know, Mark, his hand is messed up, we need to stop this fight.
02:13:23.000I'll go back, we'll make decision, and we'll pass it, you know, under the advice of the, you know, medical staff, Nevada State Athletic Commission, or whatever commission, referee such and such is going to stop this fight.
02:13:34.000I know corners have stopped fights before because of broken hands, but I can't remember a time that a referee stopped to fight for a broken hand.
02:13:40.000I have only stopped fights if I see, like, compound fractures, you know, bones and stuff sticking out.
02:13:49.000You know, we've had, you know, at the amateur, tough enough where you get some of the best competition.
02:13:54.000We've had fighters that have had, you know, leg breaks and bones coming out and, you know, other stuff like that.
02:13:59.000You know, we've had fighters get teeth knocked out and, you know, if a fighter says a tooth came out, you know, they swallowed a tooth or something like that, that's an automatic stoppage.
02:15:17.000When you've had this incredible military career and been a fighter jet pilot, and I would imagine that the thrills and the physical demands of that, it's probably pretty hard to top.
02:15:34.000So I've been very lucky with getting to do some great things.
02:15:36.000You know, so first I attribute it back to my parents, Norris and Shirley Smith, who, you know, an older brother, Norris.
02:15:41.000Don't you have like three masters too?
02:15:43.000I graduated from the Air Force Academy.
02:15:45.000Everybody from the Air Force Academy gets a Bachelor of Science because of the amount of math, science, and engineering that you do.
02:15:51.000I did political science there, but I focused on legal studies and pre-law.
02:15:55.000I got a Master's in Computer Systems Management.
02:15:58.000I got a Master's in International Security and Strategic Studies, which is like State Department stuff, and then this last one with health and wellness, nutrition, physiology, etc.
02:16:53.000This was a, so when I went to the Air Force Academy, you know, we got enlisted instructors, you know, along with the officer and instructors that help us do stuff.
02:17:00.000And it was someone I guess didn't like my, the way I talked and my persona.
02:17:03.000And, you know, she pulled me to the side and gave me the, you ain't gonna ever mount to be shit.
02:18:17.000That's the thing that I love about military vets is that when you become very accomplished in that, in the military, like the amount of discipline that's required, they just develop superior human beings.
02:18:29.000I've run into so many guys that are accomplished military vets, and they have more character, they have more discipline.
02:19:08.000You want your level of proficiency to be that good.
02:19:11.000At Nellis Air Force Base, where, you know, it's the home of the fighter pilot, the best of the best hang out there.
02:19:16.000You begin to increase your level of proficiency.
02:19:19.000You become one of the best in the world.
02:19:21.000You know, you've got to have that, is it cockiness?
02:19:23.000I'd rather call it, you know, confidence, yet unassuming.
02:19:27.000You don't want to be too cocky to the point of thinking you're, you know, you're indestructible, but you want to be good enough to be able to declare and know that you're the best in the world.
02:19:36.000And if I achieve something, yeah, I'm satisfied with it, but it's like, okay, what else can I go do now?
02:19:41.000You know, I finish at the Air Force Academy.
02:19:51.000So here I am, this kid from southeast Washington, D.C. that, you know, grew up with my parents taking me down by Reagan Airport and watching planes take off.
02:19:59.000And then I saw an air show, Thunderbirds, and I said, I think I want to do that one day.
02:20:04.000And here we are, years later, I stand out and the greatest accomplishment, greatest thing I think I've ever had.
02:20:09.000I was in the gym at the base in Arizona working out one day and I get paged to the front desk.
02:21:07.000But, man, and, you know, like I told you, when I got that message from you about stuff like this is, you know, We believe in the adage of good things happen to good people and a lot of dreams that keep coming true.
02:21:18.000And I try to impress this upon my children as a single dad.
02:21:20.000And I will tell you, above all else, anything else I've done, I'm most proud of being a single dad.
02:21:35.000Now, tell me what, like, to be a Thunderbird, when they have those crazy air shows, I mean, there's so much danger and so much coordination between all the jets.
02:21:46.000Like, how long does it take to prepare for one of those shows?
02:21:50.000So, the training season is about five to six months.
02:21:54.000Pull up a video of one of them Thunderbird airships because they're so crazy.
02:22:41.000The two solos take off and do their thing.
02:22:43.000So this second guy that takes off, he's going to go do a max climb to get up to about 5,000 feet and then roll and then do a split ass back and front.
02:22:53.000And he actually winds up rolling too low.
02:22:56.000And that picture that you see right there is the result of it.
02:23:00.000So he actually crashes right in front of us.
02:23:02.000So that's the video from this little cockpit camera that sits right here that looks at it.
02:23:15.000So when he rolls inverted to come back the other direction, he needs so many thousand feet to be able to make it on the backside of it without impacting the ground.
02:25:31.000It's not a lot of looking down at your instruments inside the cockpit.
02:25:34.000With the heads-up displays, it's designed to very rarely look inside the cockpit.
02:25:39.000And then your control stick is going to be on your right hand, and then your throttle and everything on your left hand with anywhere between 5 and 10 buttons on either one.
02:25:48.000So we used to call it the piccolo drill.
02:25:50.000You know, you do all this stuff and you'd have to manipulate doing shooting missiles and turning the gun on and turning your radar and doing all this stuff with your hands.
02:25:57.000So it's like your musical instrument almost.
02:26:36.000We start off at about seven feet apart.
02:26:39.000And then as you get more proficient, we go into what's called the diamond position.
02:26:43.000So the closest plane there on the left is the position that I would fly.
02:26:47.000And that's about seven feet apart right there.
02:26:50.000We eventually get to the part where your wings are overlapped and the slot is going to fall down into the slot position in the bottom of the diamond.
02:27:03.000He may do something like an aileron roll.
02:27:05.000How do you know exactly where they are?
02:27:09.000So, in the diamond, there are two positions that I would look at to put my plane in the right position.
02:27:16.000So the back of his wing, I would always line up and I would take the front of the missile rail.
02:27:20.000It has United, US Air Force painted on the side.
02:27:23.000I put the front of the missile rail on the A in Air Force.
02:27:27.000And then, you know, for two years, my neck would be turned 45 degrees to the right.
02:27:32.000I mean, you can see right there how close you are.
02:27:34.000And everyone is going off of the movements and the cadence of the lead plane.
02:27:38.000And he's saying, you know, something like, you know, left turn and the T in turn is when he's starting to move the stick to turn to the left.
02:27:45.000Or, you know, back in with the pull to start pulling back.
02:27:49.000You practice that hundreds and hundreds of times before we ever get out in front of a crowd.
02:28:18.000You know, for us, the United States Air Force, we're the spokespersons for the Air Force, Department of Defense, etc., But it's also instill, you know, faith and confidence in your military.
02:28:27.000It's a little bit different than out there dropping bombs and shooting missiles.
02:28:30.000But it's the, you know, to show the performance capabilities of the men and women in the Air Force, the personnel, as far as the performance capabilities of the equipment that we fly.
02:28:39.000You know, the F-16 is a fourth generation fighter.
02:28:42.000The best of the best will be the fifth generation plus F-22s, F-35s.
02:28:47.000But that's also to have a little bit of fun and go out and do an air show, you know, as fans.
02:28:52.000You're living the life of a rock star.
02:28:54.000The Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, you know, we did shows in Fort Lauderdale, like over spring break, where there are, you know, a million plus people out there on the beach watching us.
02:29:24.000You're going to have that many people there.
02:29:25.000So to prepare for that kind of a show, how long do you train?
02:29:30.000Uh, so the training, uh, so we practice in Las Vegas at the ranges just up north and you start basically right after Thanksgiving.
02:29:38.000So the last show of the year is going to be the second week of November.
02:29:41.000They take Thanksgiving off and then they get cranking from there.
02:29:44.000And from end of November, all the way up into March, Monday through Friday, sometimes on Saturdays, you fly two to three times a day, every single day.
02:29:53.000So it's about a hundred, you know, anywhere 120, 150 rides, flights to get you prepared for that.
02:30:22.000You've never seen a debrief to talk about a flight until you watched a Thunderbird or a Blue Angel debrief.
02:30:28.000We could be in there for hours talking about you taxied out and you were, you know, six inches off to the right or you were taxiing five knots too fast.
02:31:54.000Like, the horrible thing would be if the plane crashed and then they parachuted down to the fires.
02:32:00.000Can they maneuver the parachute in any way?
02:32:03.000You have drawstrings on it, but so when he ejected there, so when you watched a video inside the cockpit, He's going down like this, and he has his hand on the right stick, and you can see his left hand move three times.
02:33:10.000But because he stepped on the rudder and moved a little bit to the left, he actually misses the runway when he hits the ground.
02:33:17.000He lands on the side where it had rained a day or so before, and he lands in some soft dirt right there, and that kind of is what saves him.
02:33:26.000But if you're high enough, you can grab the strings and you can manipulate the parachute.
02:33:29.000But he was not even close to being high enough right there.
02:33:32.000So there was no other way for him to pull out of that.
02:34:39.000So if I wake up Tuesday morning and I got a cold, there's no backup for me.
02:34:43.000So he got removed from the team, and then, you know, unique for us, we finished the season as a five-ship.
02:34:48.000So we changed around some of our formations.
02:34:50.000Instead of having a six-ship formation, we did five-ship formations.
02:34:53.000We had to do some, you know, downtime there in Idaho, and then we got a waiver to fly back to Vegas, and then we sat for a little bit until they made a determination there was not actually something wrong with the plane, you know.
02:35:07.000Because if there's determination there's something wrong with the plane, everybody has to be grounded.
02:35:11.000When they determined all that was fine, we started training again and made a transition to a five-ship show and we finished the season as a five-ship.
02:35:17.000And then they hire odds and evens every year.
02:35:21.000So 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 will stay on the team while they hire 2, 4, 6, 8. And that's to keep consistency on the team every year.
02:35:28.000So that next year when 1, 3, 5, 7 are done, They'll hire a new 1, 3, 5, 7. And now you've got your 2, 4, 6s, and 8s that are second year consistency and will be the instructors for the team.
02:36:00.000And you got to be, you know, have the nerves to be able to do this, to It's one thing to go out and fly a fighter plane.
02:36:06.000All the basic maneuvers that we're doing are the same as every Air Force pilot learns.
02:36:11.000But now you're doing this in tune to music, you know, sitting 18 inches away from another plane, you know, in front of a crowd of however many hundreds of thousands of people.
02:36:21.000You know, my instructor was like, wiggle your fingers and wiggle your toes because you start to tense up and you do that, you're going to relax a little bit.
02:36:28.000But, you know, my neck was stuck like this for about two and a half years because that's...
02:36:33.000They were like, oh, we're going past Mount Rushmore.
02:37:41.000Uh, so you do the T37 for, so at the academy, you flew the glider for, I don't know, 10 rides and then the T41, uh, for, you know, 10, 20 rides until you solo, you know, they put you in a plane where you're proficient, you go out and solo.
02:37:54.000And then in pilot training, this is a formal, after you graduated ROTC, the academy, you do six months in the T37, decide what track you go on and then you do six months in the T38. And then I did well enough in the T-38 that I was able to pick.
02:38:08.000I selected F-16s and then I went to Luke Air Force Base out in Arizona and became proficient in F-16s.
02:38:14.000And then from there, I went to combat squadrons all around the world, South Carolina, Korea, you know, back to Arizona, Nellis.
02:38:20.000So I've flown, I think, six different versions of the F-16 and then flew to Thunderbirds where they fly F-16s, went away to do the tour at the White House, and then came back and finished up on F-16s again.
02:38:32.000And the tour of the White House, were you Secret Service?
02:38:35.000No, so I was actually a White House Fellow.
02:38:37.000So in 1964, President Johnson formed a program called the White House Fellowship, where the, it's actually the President of the United States will select anywhere between 12 and 15 young Americans, doesn't matter military, civilian, anything, to come and serve in their administration.
02:38:52.000And what it is, it's the highest level mentorship, leadership program that you can be a part of in our country.
02:38:59.000And the president places you somewhere in their cabinet to be a senior advisor to like a cabinet secretary, or like for me, I was a senior white house advisor at NASA. So I worked directly for the NASA administrator and you're a, you know, essentially a senior white house,
02:39:14.000you know, advisor or consultant, whatever task that cabinet secretary wants to have from you at NASA. And what I did for, uh, you know, NASA administrator, Mike Griffin, one of the smartest guys you'll ever meet in your life.
02:39:25.000Like he had seven degrees, a couple of doctorates in there.
02:39:28.000I was in a lot of capacities his right-hand man, so he would have me do all the programming for stuff at NASA. He would take me on trips with him to Russia, you know, discussions about the International Space Station.
02:39:38.000And I prepared a budgetary book for Congress 2007 that was presented to Congress to talk about the, you know, the compartmental programs for NASA moving forward with the cancellation of the space shuttle.
02:39:52.000So that was my, you know, kind of summary project for working at NASA for the year.
02:39:56.000And then I got to interact with all the agencies that work with NASA, you know, the International Space Station, working on the Soyuz, going to fly, and essentially getting to see things at that level.
02:40:07.000Now, part two of it What's back on the White House side?
02:40:10.000They bring us in a couple days a week and we'd have, you know, one-on-one private meetings with cabinet secretaries or, you know, chief of staff of the Air Force and folks like that.
02:40:22.000So I grew up in Washington, D.C. And you get these tours of the East Wing of the White.
02:40:27.000You know, you can walk through and see all the stuff on the East side.
02:40:29.000But it's surreal to be in the West Wing.
02:40:32.000Because you, they meet outside, and you know, you got to do all the safety protocols and everything, and then they take you in, and you take the elevator up to that.
02:41:52.000But as a husband, as a father, how passionate he was about his incredible spouse and his children, to see that side of a person.
02:42:01.000A lot of stuff we can't disclose just because it's private conversation, it's non-disclosure, but to see the emotion You know, of a father talking about his daughters, you know, who are in college and, you know, his hopes and dreams for them.
02:42:13.000And to be able to really respectfully ask any question, you know, that you want.
02:42:16.000We'd have these sessions, like with the president.
02:42:20.000We'd meet in the Roosevelt Room in the Oval Office, and it's tough as a cabinet secretary to get 5, 10, 15 minutes with the president.
02:42:27.000We'd sit in there with him for an hour and a half and talk about stuff.
02:42:31.000You know, ask, is the country ready for a female president?
02:42:38.000He had people that he looked at, leadership, that he thought would be candidates for presidency.
02:42:48.000Condoleezza Rice was on his administration, and obviously Hillary Clinton was there.
02:42:54.000So the level of people that were out there to have these discussions of, these are the type of people that we think, regardless of political affiliation, that could be looked at for leadership in our country.
02:43:06.000And with us, the people that they select to be in that program to be future leaders, military, non-military, you're sitting around some of the finest people in the world, people that I still talk to and associate with and have discussions with today.
02:43:21.000So here we are, years later, that these are still some of my best friends in the world.
02:43:25.000That you talk about goals and dreams and, you know, you think about stepping into politics and stuff like that and, you know, you get some sound advice to these people.
02:43:32.000But I'd already seen and been around the president before because when we did some of the air shows, you know, the president or vice president, someone comes, you know, they come and speak.
02:43:42.000And we did a show at the Air Force Academy.
02:43:59.000After General Chappie James, the first black four-star in the Air Force.
02:44:02.000So we go back and do this White House stuff, and we're at a Christmas party, and there's a formal greeting line to go and meet the President and the First Lady.
02:44:12.000And the aide is standing there, and he says, you know, Major Mark Smith.
02:46:11.000You know, they look at development of it based on historical platforms.
02:46:14.000You know, you go from the F-16, F-15 to the F-22 to the F-35, you get all that kind of input.
02:46:21.000So they're guys that, instead of being in a combat-coded squadron, they're actually in a test and evaluation squadron that get to do all that stuff.
02:46:27.000And they go out and test, what are the capabilities of this missile?
02:46:30.000Ah, it's not doing exactly what we want it to do.
02:46:35.000To the design folks like Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics back in the day when they're building stuff.
02:46:40.000You know, for the longest time, the F-15s and the F-16s, for us, that production line was done.
02:46:46.000But you go to St. Louis, and you look on the opposite side of the runway, they're building F-15s there again.
02:46:52.000And we just announced that the Air Force is going to start buying the next block of F-16s, the block 70s, which is, man, that's a really advanced plane.
02:47:03.000And guys that are active duty, they get to go out and fly that thing and test it.
02:47:06.000Now, you said the F-22 is the most capable.
02:47:33.000So the amount that it cost, you know, when the agreement came down to how many we were going to buy, I think it's probably in the hundreds now, you know, that we have, Congress was going to allocate a certain amount of funds to, okay, you can have this much money to buy this money.
02:47:47.000And the more you buy, the, you know, per price may go down, but because we have a limited amount, budgetary-wise, that's what we stop with.
02:47:55.000And then we got congressional approval for the F-35.
02:47:57.000And, you know, their competitions, the F-22 versus the, you know, the YF-22 back in the day versus the YF-23, which company makes it, they're going to have, you know, fly-offs and make a determination of which one we're going to get.
02:48:09.000So it's only communication that makes the F-35, that the F-35 does better than the F-22?
02:48:15.000It probably has a lot more than that, but I can tell you I've never flown it.
02:48:17.000I haven't had a chance to fly it, but advanced avionics, weapon systems, stealth capability, all that stuff is probably encompassed in the package.
02:49:39.000You pull 9Gs, your body feels like it weighs 1,800 pounds.
02:49:42.000And you're trying to maneuver the plane, keep sight of the other plane, maybe deploy weapons, control avionics, control your radar and stuff like that as you're doing all that.
02:49:52.000So there are physical limitations of the person that's flying the plane.
02:49:56.000That's why they looked at pilotless aircraft.
02:49:59.000I think some of the cargo companies have talked about that.
02:50:04.000There's a human element that I believe you always have to have there because of unknown conditions, you know, emergencies and stuff like that.
02:50:10.000They've looked at single pilot, you know, cargo airplanes and stuff like that.
02:50:14.000But I can tell you, when you have emergencies up there, it's nothing like having a person sitting in the seat next to you where somebody can handle the emergency while the other person's flying the plane.
02:50:27.000We've got drones and stuff that are out there, and you may have a pilot or controller that's on the ground that's controlling a single drone or multiple drones.
02:50:34.000So yeah, we're probably going to advance to that because...
02:50:38.000The physical limitations of the human body?
02:50:40.000Because watching that thing, the way it just changes direction and shoots straight up in the air, you're like, what is that like on a human body?
02:50:48.000Yeah, you've got to get over the air sickness and the fear of moving in the third dimension and really combating against the G-forces, but...
02:50:57.000In a dogfight scenario, you may get maneuvers like that, but in a long-range fight, you're going to be flying straight and level and maybe shoot a missile.
02:51:34.000Now you put that up in the air, moving in three dimensions, while you've got the G-forces on you.
02:51:38.000Do they do that with you, that spin thing?
02:51:40.000Yeah, you have to go through training for that.
02:51:42.000You know, when I finished pilot training, it's down at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
02:51:46.000You've got to do that to be able to go into your fighter, and then once you're done, to be able to prove that you're combat ready, you've got to go down there and you do that.
02:51:53.000You sit in a seat, and you've got to be able to pull 9Gs or whatever it is for a certain amount of time.