The Joe Rogan Experience - August 13, 2014


Joe Rogan Experience #534 - Robin Black


Episode Stats

Length

2 hours and 54 minutes

Words per Minute

199.12369

Word Count

34,767

Sentence Count

3,090

Misogynist Sentences

37


Summary

This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom, a website that allows you to do a lot of the things that you would normally have to go to an attorney s office to handle, you can do it yourself online. They were developed by top attorneys to provide self-help services at your specific direction. They re not a legal firm, it s not a law firm, but they provide you with legal self help, and they can also provide a contact for a third party independent attorney if the shit hits the fan. And what does this mean? This means that if you want to form an LLC, incorporate, get a will, or get a power of attorney, living trust, things along those lines, you ll be able to do all that step-by-step on legalzoom. It s amazing! And not very expensive. You can start your own business now at Legalzoom, and you can save some money that way. Protect your family. All of it at legal help furnished through vetted independent attorneys. It's a sweet fucking website. And they have an A+ rating from the BBB, which is a B+ from the Better Business Bureau, which to me is giant! And they don't just give those away. They don t just give you the stuff you want, they give you everything you need to make your life a little bit better. We're also got a new batch of NatureBox, and it's AWESOME! and I can't wait to try them out! . If you're hungry, you'll want to eat them. . . . and you're not just because you don't want to be hungry, but you don t want to go out and eat candy, but because you re hungry, right? you can eat them all day long so you re just gonna eat them in your office, right in your cubicle , right in front of your office or in your living room, right at your office? or you can have them at home, right across the office, or in a cubicle, or wherever you re at work, or at your favorite coffee shop, or your local coffee shop or whatever else you want them to make you eat them it s gonna be delicious and you re not hungry and you won t be hungry and they won t have to pay for it any more than you can get them in a vending machine right there


Transcript

00:00:01.000 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and everybody else.
00:00:06.000 What's up, fuckers?
00:00:07.000 This episode is brought to you by LegalZoom.
00:00:11.000 LegalZoom is a pretty awesome service.
00:00:14.000 And what it is, is a website.
00:00:17.000 Essentially a self-help website that allows you to do a lot of the things that you would ordinarily have to go to an attorney's office to handle.
00:00:27.000 You can do it yourself online.
00:00:29.000 They were developed by top attorneys to provide self-help services at your specific direction.
00:00:35.000 It's not a legal firm, it's not a law firm, but they provide you with Legal self-help, and they can also provide you with a contact for a third-party independent attorney if the shit hits the fan.
00:00:48.000 And what does this mean?
00:00:49.000 This means that if you want to form an LLC, if you want to incorporate, if you want to get a will, power of attorney, living trust, things along those lines, you can do all that step-by-step on LegalZoom, and it's very easy to do.
00:01:03.000 I know a lot of people have done that.
00:01:05.000 Onnit was formed that way.
00:01:06.000 Brian formed his desk squad company that way.
00:01:09.000 All that is done through LegalZoom.
00:01:11.000 Super easy to do.
00:01:13.000 There's a lot of things that you would ordinarily have to go to a lawyer.
00:01:16.000 You'd have to put your clothes on.
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00:01:35.000 And they have an A-plus from the Better Business Bureau, which to me is giant.
00:01:39.000 They don't just give those away.
00:01:41.000 So I like that.
00:01:42.000 I know people that have used this service.
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00:01:50.000 You can even get a divorce if, you know, the other person you're getting a divorce with is really cool.
00:01:58.000 But if they're not, and then if they're really that cool, why are you divorcing them?
00:02:01.000 What the fuck are you doing?
00:02:02.000 I wonder how many people have gotten divorces through LegalZoom.
00:02:04.000 It's probably like three.
00:02:06.000 I might be wrong, but you could do it.
00:02:08.000 So, go there.
00:02:10.000 Go to LegalZoom.com.
00:02:11.000 Enter the code word ROGAN in the referral box at checkout, and you can save some money that way.
00:02:17.000 Protect your family.
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00:02:20.000 Legal help furnished through vetted independent attorneys.
00:02:23.000 It's a sweet fucking website.
00:02:25.000 I really enjoy LegalZoom.
00:02:27.000 I like the fact that there's a lot of things that, you know, it used to be super inconvenient to deal with Like simple legal issues, like forming a corporation.
00:02:36.000 You can do all of that now.
00:02:38.000 You can start your own business now at LegalZoom.com.
00:02:42.000 And when you do that, go to the checkout box and the referral box at checkout, rather, and enter in the code word ROGAN for more savings.
00:02:50.000 So that's LegalZoom.com and enter the code word ROGAN. We're also brought to you by NatureBox.
00:02:55.000 I got a new batch of NatureBox, Jamie.
00:02:57.000 Oh, you're going to love all this new groovy shit we got, but no sriracha cashews.
00:03:03.000 I fucking talk too much about sriracha cashews, and now you bitches all buy them up.
00:03:08.000 They ain't no sriracha cashews left.
00:03:09.000 We're fucking killing the cashew farmers.
00:03:11.000 Those poor cashew farmers and those poor sriracha makers, they're working double, triple overtime, sweating their balls off trying to make sriracha cashews.
00:03:20.000 I need some.
00:03:21.000 What's that?
00:03:21.000 I need some.
00:03:22.000 Yeah, we all need some.
00:03:23.000 Blueberry almonds, though.
00:03:25.000 Dark cocoa almonds.
00:03:26.000 Have you had those?
00:03:27.000 Oh, good lord.
00:03:28.000 And peanut butter nom-noms.
00:03:29.000 They might be my new favorite.
00:03:31.000 Peanut butter nom-noms might take the place of sriracha cashews.
00:03:33.000 But I shouldn't tell you fuckers, because then you buy them all up, too.
00:03:37.000 What NatureBox is, is you order it online, and you pick the stuff that you want, and then they send you boxes every week.
00:03:44.000 And here's the deal behind it.
00:03:46.000 If you are a person that works in an office, and you have one of those goddamn vending machines that tempts you, you're kinda hungry, and you walk by, and the most healthy thing in there is some shitty-ass granola bar, and you know that's not what you want to eat, and you definitely don't want to eat candy, but you wind up doing it just because you're hungry.
00:04:02.000 NatureBox gives you hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of delicious snacks to choose from.
00:04:08.000 Really good stuff, and there's a lot of stuff that you don't have to feel guilty about.
00:04:12.000 There's a few things that are a bit questionable.
00:04:15.000 A few pretzels and things along those lines are not necessarily good for you.
00:04:19.000 But they have zero trans fats, zero high fructose corn syrup, all the stuff that's really shitty for your body, low in sugar.
00:04:27.000 You can get plenty of them that are low in sugar, non-GMO, and without gluten.
00:04:31.000 And they ship for free.
00:04:34.000 Peanut butter nom noms, like I said, are my favorites, but...
00:04:37.000 There's so many good ones.
00:04:38.000 The blueberry almonds, the Big Island pineapples are fantastic.
00:04:42.000 There's a lot of really healthy choices that you can choose from that are delicious.
00:04:47.000 They're really good.
00:04:48.000 I've signed up a bunch of friends on NatureBox.com and no one's complaining.
00:04:53.000 Everybody's enjoying the shit out of it.
00:04:55.000 Brian's completely addicted to it.
00:04:56.000 That fucker doesn't even go food shopping anymore.
00:04:58.000 He just buys NatureBox and has it stacked around his house.
00:05:02.000 He needs to go to a goddamn grocery store.
00:05:04.000 He wonders why he's not feeling good all the time.
00:05:06.000 Fucking dude smoking cigarettes and eating snacks.
00:05:10.000 Like, have a goddamn meal.
00:05:12.000 But in between meals, NatureBox is seriously the way to go.
00:05:16.000 It's the official snack provider for the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
00:05:20.000 We have them laying around the office right now.
00:05:21.000 I just brought in a brand new box.
00:05:23.000 And if you go to naturebox.com right now, you'll get 50% off your month's first box.
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00:05:48.000 It's delicious, and it's about as good a choice as you can get when it comes to snack foods.
00:05:54.000 So naturebox.com forward slash Rogan.
00:05:56.000 Go there and enjoy some delicious savings.
00:06:00.000 We're good to go.
00:06:19.000 Your physical fitness performance, your endurance.
00:06:22.000 We have things that aid in recovery.
00:06:26.000 We just find whatever the best shit that we can find online, whether it's athletic equipment like battle ropes or kettlebells or things along those lines, medicine balls, all things that provide what we call functional strength.
00:06:41.000 And what functional strength is...
00:06:43.000 The idea behind functional strength is athletic equipment and exercises that improve performance in any given task.
00:06:51.000 Like if you do bicep curls, it's not necessarily going to help you do jiu-jitsu.
00:06:56.000 Or it's not going to necessarily help you throw punches better.
00:06:58.000 It's going to make your arms look bigger.
00:06:59.000 You look all fucking sexy at the beach and shit.
00:07:01.000 But the reality of athletic performance is your body has to move as one individual unit, all parts moving together to enhance your athletic performance, not just your ability to lift weights in a very specific and isolated way.
00:07:15.000 And that's what kettlebells are all about.
00:07:17.000 I'm a huge fan of kettlebells.
00:07:19.000 If you've heard this podcast before, you're probably like, will you shut the fuck up about kettlebells?
00:07:23.000 Jesus Christ, son!
00:07:24.000 But I just think that these bad fucking Russians, they figured out some cool shit and they figured out a long time ago one of the best ways to improve athletic performance is this thing called a kettlebell.
00:07:36.000 It's like a Bowling ball an iron bowling ball with a handle on top of it and it's all about swinging these things around and it's all about overcoming inertia and using your whole body in these explosive movements and it is just absolutely fantastic for developing full body strength like full body strength where you can We're good to go.
00:08:12.000 We had the Primal Bells designed, the great apes.
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00:08:28.000 There's some artistic kettlebells that are out there from other companies, and they look really cool, but the reality is you want a kettlebell to be completely symmetrically balanced so that when you're swinging it, there's not like some weird momentum that comes from the odd shape of it.
00:08:44.000 We designed these kettlebells to make sure that not only do they look great, but they function the exact same way as regular kettlebells.
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00:09:05.000 Alright, that's it.
00:09:06.000 End of commercials.
00:09:08.000 Robin motherfucking Black is here.
00:09:10.000 Cue the music.
00:09:10.000 Young Jamie, let's get going.
00:09:14.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.
00:09:16.000 Train by day.
00:09:17.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night.
00:09:19.000 All day.
00:09:22.000 There's very few people in this life can say that they've gone from glam rock to expert MMA commentary and even fighting in MMA. Very few people other than you, Robin Black.
00:09:33.000 There might be some lady out there, some chick, I don't know.
00:09:37.000 Yeah, pretty weird.
00:09:38.000 I tend to try to do stuff that I like.
00:09:41.000 That's kind of my goal in life, is to do a bunch of stuff I like.
00:09:44.000 That's a beautiful goal, man.
00:09:45.000 And if everybody did that, we would have a lot more happy people in this world.
00:09:48.000 Yeah, I think you're right.
00:09:49.000 Yeah, you do a fantastic job.
00:09:51.000 You work for the Fight Network in Canada, right?
00:09:53.000 Yeah.
00:09:53.000 And you do a fantastic job of breaking down fights.
00:09:56.000 And your enthusiasm is so contagious.
00:09:58.000 It's really cool.
00:10:00.000 Yeah, thanks.
00:10:00.000 I've really enjoyed watching those videos because as a person myself who's a huge fan of fights and just...
00:10:06.000 There's so many aspects that I think that maybe the casual fan might miss.
00:10:12.000 Yeah.
00:10:12.000 Or the person who has never trained or competed might miss.
00:10:15.000 And you do a great job of sort of encapsulating those really important moments and highlighting them and isolating them.
00:10:23.000 And you do it all with passion.
00:10:24.000 It's really fun.
00:10:25.000 Man, thank you.
00:10:26.000 That is the coolest thing anyone's ever said to me.
00:10:28.000 I really fucking love doing these things.
00:10:32.000 You can tell.
00:10:33.000 Yeah, I do.
00:10:34.000 Like, I spend hours sitting there and look at how beautifully these guys move.
00:10:39.000 And the moment in time where two unwilling guys are like, they each are trying to choreograph their own thing.
00:10:44.000 Right.
00:10:45.000 And what's going on psychically, what's going on mentally.
00:10:48.000 Like, it, honest to God, I've done a lot of fun things and they all seem to kind of lead to this.
00:10:54.000 And if I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, I'd spend my time in my little lab researching what's going on when two men fight.
00:11:01.000 Like, that's what I do with my life.
00:11:02.000 And that's what I do now, and I absolutely love doing it.
00:11:06.000 Yeah, you could tell.
00:11:08.000 And like I said, as someone like me, who's also a huge fan of MMA and a huge fan of watching two people try to figure each other out in the most dangerous and the most high-stakes sport, I think,
00:11:23.000 in the world.
00:11:23.000 Maybe not the most dangerous as far as, I mean, I guess maybe NASCAR is probably more dangerous, dangerous, but the high stakes of the human...
00:11:32.000 Hand-to-hand combat, to me.
00:11:34.000 There's so much on the line.
00:11:35.000 There's so much psychologically going on.
00:11:37.000 And there's so many little things.
00:11:40.000 I'm sure there's a lot that I'm missing if I watch basketball.
00:11:43.000 I'm sure there's a lot that I'm missing if you watch football.
00:11:45.000 But when it comes to striking and grappling and mixed martial arts, the variables are so gigantic.
00:11:53.000 And the different approaches to overcoming those variables are so gigantic.
00:11:58.000 You did a recent thing on Gunnar Nelson.
00:12:00.000 Yeah.
00:12:01.000 And Gunnar Nelson, who is a jiu-jitsu expert and now an MMA fighter out of Iceland, who's a really interesting dude, like super stoic.
00:12:10.000 Yeah, cold.
00:12:11.000 Yeah, fucking cold as ice.
00:12:13.000 Never smiles, never laughs.
00:12:14.000 He's a weird dude, but wicked jiu-jitsu.
00:12:18.000 I remember him from just before he ever got into MMA or high-level MMA. He beat...
00:12:24.000 Monsen?
00:12:25.000 Fucking Monsen, yeah.
00:12:26.000 Yeah.
00:12:26.000 Who's a gorilla!
00:12:28.000 I remember seeing this little guy on Monson's back.
00:12:31.000 I'm like, who is that motherfucker?
00:12:32.000 Like, that guy's a beast.
00:12:34.000 How do you take Jeff Monson's back?
00:12:36.000 Yeah, and that calmness, he uses that so intelligently.
00:12:42.000 I'm reading this book.
00:12:43.000 Have you heard of this book, The Rise of Superman?
00:12:45.000 No.
00:12:46.000 Oh, dude.
00:12:47.000 You have to read this book immediately.
00:12:48.000 So this guy goes, and he has researched the biochemistry that's happening in the brain.
00:12:54.000 At the moments where people feel like a surfer feels like at one with the wave, you know, where a free climber feels at one with the wall, there's actually biochemistry happening in the brain.
00:13:04.000 And there's four neurotransmitters that are released simultaneously.
00:13:08.000 And in that moment, there's all of these things that humans do better.
00:13:12.000 One of them is pattern recognition.
00:13:15.000 So when two guys are fighting, you can see patterns in how they move and predict outcomes, right?
00:13:23.000 Different guys get into it in different ways.
00:13:25.000 The bulk of the research is on action-adventure sports, like flipping motorcycles through the air five times and stuff.
00:13:31.000 Because those guys, if they are not in that state, they die.
00:13:35.000 So the level now, there's exponential growth in what people can now do in that state.
00:13:41.000 Because it's sort of a global experiment that men are pushing each other further and further.
00:13:46.000 I mean, everybody used to gather around to see Evel Knievel jump 10 buses.
00:13:52.000 Now, every day, 10 guys do that and flip four times while doing it.
00:13:55.000 So the level of what people are able to mentally accomplish.
00:13:58.000 So that's happening in fighting.
00:14:00.000 And I'm obsessed with science.
00:14:03.000 So what's going on physically is fascinating, what's going on psychologically, but the science is crazy.
00:14:08.000 And that's kind of where my research is going now.
00:14:10.000 If you could take an EEG and put it on their brain in the highest moments of combat, what's going on in there?
00:14:17.000 I wonder if you ever could do that, because if they were in that highest moment of combat and they had an EEG on their brain, would they be thinking the same?
00:14:23.000 Because would they realize they had an EEG on their brain?
00:14:25.000 Would it distract them?
00:14:26.000 Well, in theory, If all these people screaming and you sitting at the side of the cage and wearing your underpants getting punched in the face, if all that isn't distracting, a couple of things on your head, it's hard to say though.
00:14:37.000 I mean, the state, what you want to check with that EEG or something is the mental state, the biochemistry, the neurology happening in the brain.
00:14:47.000 And if they're not in that state, you can't do it.
00:14:49.000 But people have done it in other sports.
00:14:51.000 They've done it and looked at what's happening in the brain and there's something called...
00:14:56.000 Hypofrontalism, where actually less is happening in the front of your brain during these moments of perfect performance.
00:15:03.000 And that's what this book's about.
00:15:04.000 This guy is chemically analyzing the highest level of performance.
00:15:09.000 So to take that into fighting, these guys are operating at that level now.
00:15:12.000 The top guys, Carlos Condit.
00:15:15.000 Is operating at that level.
00:15:16.000 You know, he's operating in moments of pure flow.
00:15:19.000 And when these guys are in those moments, what's happening in that, that shit's fascinating.
00:15:25.000 Like to look at fights and look and see that these guys are operating in the highest level of human performance and in that state against each other, they're fighting each other.
00:15:33.000 It's crazy.
00:15:34.000 Yes, it's really fascinating.
00:15:36.000 The book is called The Rise of Superman, and it's by a guy named Steven Kotler.
00:15:41.000 And it's got four and a half stars on Amazon.com, so that's a pretty good sign.
00:15:45.000 It's a great book.
00:15:45.000 I'm going to do a little breakdown on what's going on with pattern recognition in that state.
00:15:49.000 And imagine you and I are both in that state, and you know that I'm starting to recognize patterns.
00:15:56.000 You can lay traps for me by doing something called chunking, where you'll go one, two, three, four.
00:16:01.000 And I'll start to recognize that pattern and anticipate it, and you'll change one thing in that pattern and hit me.
00:16:07.000 So chunking, understanding that I'm predicting your patterns and using that against me, all of that kind of stuff just fascinates the shit out of me right now.
00:16:15.000 Well, that's always been a big thing about striking, about changing up the speed of your approach and also throwing feints in, pretending to go one way and going another.
00:16:25.000 There's all sorts of different things that people have done to try to offset pattern recognition.
00:16:29.000 In each other's brains.
00:16:31.000 The better your brain performs, the different I have to approach to make you pay for having such a good performing brain.
00:16:38.000 You know what I mean?
00:16:39.000 Your brain can anticipate stuff, so I need to make that a bad thing for you.
00:16:44.000 Wow.
00:16:45.000 So what it says here is that flow is caused by a mighty cocktail of five powerful chemicals, from dopamine to serotonin.
00:16:53.000 And that's interesting.
00:16:54.000 I've never really thought about it, that they have all these chemicals flowing together.
00:17:01.000 I've always thought of it as just sort of a quote-unquote state of mind, that you achieve a state of mind.
00:17:06.000 But this state of mind being a bunch of neurotransmitters that are flowing together in the optimum levels.
00:17:11.000 Yeah, man.
00:17:12.000 Like, think of that.
00:17:12.000 The way...
00:17:14.000 Your state of mind affects your emotion, and your emotion affects your biochemistry, and your biochemistry affects your performance.
00:17:22.000 So they're linked to each other.
00:17:24.000 So that idea that guys get focused, that focus causes a biochemical change in their brain.
00:17:29.000 This is the kind of shit I want to go to next on my breakdowns.
00:17:32.000 Like start playing with this kind of stuff.
00:17:34.000 Evolutionary things.
00:17:35.000 You probably read that the hand, part of the reason it evolved the way it did, was for fighting.
00:17:40.000 Have you read that?
00:17:40.000 Yeah.
00:17:41.000 And the jaw.
00:17:41.000 Yeah, the shape of a man's face.
00:17:43.000 Exactly.
00:17:44.000 So I start looking at what that means and why.
00:17:46.000 The science of that kind of stuff is just starting to blow my mind.
00:17:49.000 It is totally fascinating stuff, and it's also the thing about achieving this flow state that's so maddening for people is that it just slips through your fingers.
00:18:00.000 It's there, and it's gone.
00:18:01.000 You achieve these brief moments where you've seen it in basketball games where a guy just feels like he can't miss.
00:18:07.000 He hits those three-pointers from the outside.
00:18:09.000 In pool, I play pool a lot, and there's these moments.
00:18:13.000 They're rare and fleeting, but when they come, it's like you can't miss.
00:18:17.000 Yeah.
00:18:17.000 You know where everything is.
00:18:19.000 I'd be willing to bet you're in that state some huge percentage of time when you're doing comedy.
00:18:24.000 Because once you read about it, there's a whole bunch of confidence that how it affects your inhibitions and your unwillingness to use inhibitions.
00:18:34.000 You're probably in that state almost always when you're hitting it in comedy.
00:18:38.000 Yeah, I would think so because when you're doing comedy, I've always described it as you're more like a passenger than you are like the pilot.
00:18:46.000 You're just kind of like doing it and sometimes words will come out of your mouth and you're like, I don't even know if I can take credit for those words because I guess it's not...
00:18:55.000 I know it's me.
00:18:57.000 It's coming out of my mouth.
00:18:58.000 I know it's my voice.
00:18:59.000 I know technically I created them.
00:19:02.000 I wrote them, but it's not really me that's doing it.
00:19:05.000 It's like it's just coming out on its own.
00:19:07.000 And a guy who catches an enormous killer wave will say exactly the same thing.
00:19:11.000 And a guy who walks a tightrope over top of Niagara Falls will say the same thing.
00:19:15.000 You're going into that state in that time.
00:19:17.000 Yeah, I would imagine.
00:19:18.000 And in jujitsu, you see it as well.
00:19:21.000 Like when guys are rolling, there's moments where you know there's a certain transition.
00:19:26.000 Someone will hit the over-under, the guy will try to escape a flow immediately to an armbar and then immediately to a triangle.
00:19:32.000 And it's all happening so fast, it's almost impossible for that person to be thinking.
00:19:36.000 They're just reacting and hitting those moves and just completely like in that zone.
00:19:42.000 One of the aspects of flow state is that you interpret time differently.
00:19:47.000 So you'll hear that from a lot of fighters.
00:19:50.000 One of the things I think that helps me analyze stuff is that when I fought, I had success and I had terrible failures.
00:19:58.000 Like terrible, embarrassing, changing who you are as a man failures.
00:20:03.000 How many times did you fight?
00:20:04.000 Nine.
00:20:05.000 Yeah.
00:20:05.000 I won four of them.
00:20:07.000 I'm going to do one last fight.
00:20:08.000 I'm going to end five wins and five losses.
00:20:10.000 How old are you now?
00:20:10.000 45. Five wins and five losses, you're sure?
00:20:14.000 I'm sure.
00:20:14.000 I'm sure.
00:20:16.000 Hey man, to get to ten, I mean, but I'm telling you, I had the kind of losses that make you question who you are as a man.
00:20:24.000 You know what I mean?
00:20:25.000 For days or weeks or effect, you're popping to your head.
00:20:29.000 Experiencing that, I think that's an analyst's life.
00:20:34.000 Like I've had a flow, say my last fight, I went in the second round, I literally completely did whatever I wanted for seven minutes.
00:20:41.000 It was perfect.
00:20:42.000 Two fights earlier, my brain almost melted down.
00:20:45.000 When I look back, I don't know if I lost vision or if I fainted or what.
00:20:49.000 Just absolute, utter failure.
00:20:52.000 It hurts you because in our genes, when males would fight, if one of them would lose, you'd be kicked out of the group.
00:21:04.000 You may never have sex again.
00:21:06.000 One loss of a fight with another male Could change your history for the rest of your life.
00:21:11.000 That's in our genes only X generations ago.
00:21:14.000 And we still feel that.
00:21:15.000 But failure is really fucking brutal.
00:21:18.000 But it makes you look at these things differently.
00:21:21.000 Like now when I look at these elite level fighters who can do that every day, I have such a marvel in what they're capable of.
00:21:27.000 And I think that's because I got brutally embarrassed in fight before.
00:21:32.000 And you sure don't like that experience, but it changes who you are and hopefully in good ways later on.
00:21:38.000 Well also when you lose and whenever you fail at something and you feel that awful feeling of failure the motivation that comes from that to never feel that again is Almost impossible to recreate without having experienced failure you find it in comedy I experienced it in fighting as well like that those moments where when it's over you just feel like such a hunk of shit that like when you're training from then on and Your intensity is so much higher,
00:22:06.000 because the stakes are higher, because you know that a brutal beatdown by somebody is such a horrible proposition, not just in the moment, but after that moment.
00:22:16.000 The thinking about the act, the thinking about it, the same as failing.
00:22:20.000 I think failure as a person, and especially as a man, Yeah.
00:22:46.000 I've got to do some pretty fun things.
00:22:48.000 I have a really good life.
00:22:50.000 I like everything that I do.
00:22:51.000 And I got a killer wife and I live in Canada and I have fun and stuff.
00:22:55.000 And I really think the only two things that I ever had going for me was that I have a crazy good work ethic and I'm not afraid to look like an idiot.
00:23:04.000 I don't give a fuck.
00:23:05.000 I am not afraid to look like an idiot.
00:23:07.000 Failure sucks and it hurts you, but being not afraid to be made fun of or put down or looked at and laughed at and not give a shit about that, you'll try stuff.
00:23:17.000 You know, you'll go for things.
00:23:19.000 Like, you'll do stuff.
00:23:20.000 And, I mean, man, nobody ever had more haters than a guy who wore eye makeup and tried to go into the fight game.
00:23:26.000 Like, I mean, fucking everybody hated me.
00:23:29.000 Everybody in Canada.
00:23:30.000 Like, Anybody in the fight business.
00:23:32.000 And here I am fucking six years later.
00:23:34.000 All you can do is put your head down and try to do good work.
00:23:37.000 You can't do anything else.
00:23:39.000 You can't kiss anybody's ass.
00:23:40.000 I was talking to Eddie about this too.
00:23:41.000 You can't kiss anybody's ass.
00:23:43.000 You can't beg your way out of it.
00:23:44.000 You can't buy your way out of it.
00:23:45.000 If they hate you and they think you're a joke, The only answer is to just try to do great work.
00:23:50.000 There's no other cure.
00:23:51.000 And that's what I tried to do.
00:23:53.000 Yeah, I think in that sense, sometimes it's good to have haters.
00:23:57.000 Because it keeps you motivated.
00:24:00.000 It keeps you motivated and it also, it's a balancing act.
00:24:04.000 You know, I think the world needs yin and yang.
00:24:08.000 The world needs push and pull.
00:24:10.000 And I think that having some negativity in your life, it makes the positivity feel so much better.
00:24:16.000 Yeah.
00:24:16.000 No, it makes a lot of sense, man.
00:24:18.000 I mean, we were just talking about losing.
00:24:21.000 There is that evolutionary reason and that deep in us that, oh my God, I'm going to be pushed out of the group and never have sex again.
00:24:30.000 I'm going to wander the earth alone for the rest of my life.
00:24:32.000 That's in us.
00:24:32.000 But I think also, you know, I forget where I was going with it.
00:24:39.000 He's not even stoned, ladies and gentlemen.
00:24:41.000 No, I had an edible this morning, actually.
00:24:42.000 Uh-oh.
00:24:43.000 But...
00:24:44.000 Yeah.
00:24:45.000 I mean, it's just one of those things.
00:24:46.000 It's a miserable, miserable thing.
00:24:48.000 But I know where I was going.
00:24:50.000 Winning is so good because losing is so terrible.
00:24:54.000 I mean, if losing didn't suck, winning would be, oh, cool.
00:24:56.000 Let's go try and win again next weekend.
00:24:58.000 I remember when I was competing the day of the competition, there was always moments where I was like, I got to stop doing this.
00:25:04.000 This is just too much stress.
00:25:06.000 This just feels terrible.
00:25:07.000 And then once I would win, I would go, this is the greatest feeling the world has ever known.
00:25:13.000 I feel sorry for people who don't know what this feels like.
00:25:16.000 To win a major Taekwondo tournament or something like that, it was just the craziest feeling.
00:25:22.000 You just felt like, wow, all that work paid off.
00:25:25.000 And that fuels you as a person to accomplish other things.
00:25:29.000 It gives you this understanding of focus and of motivation.
00:25:33.000 And discipline, and then if you apply all those things to anything, to writing, to whatever you're trying to do, to building a business, to whatever you're trying to do, you can accomplish things that you felt were insurmountable before.
00:25:45.000 For sure.
00:25:46.000 I mean, there was...
00:25:48.000 The opposite of that, too, is in us, I think we all think if the zombie apocalypse happens tomorrow, I'll be the guy who rolls the car off my wife, picks her up, runs out of here, kills ten zombies on the way, gets on the helicopter, and gets out of there.
00:26:02.000 But that's not entirely always true.
00:26:04.000 And you need to find that out about yourself.
00:26:07.000 Right.
00:26:07.000 You need to face the fire to understand what it's like to be under extreme pressure.
00:26:13.000 And losing makes you say, I'm not necessarily that guy who fucking flips the car, does that, jumps, kills ten zombies.
00:26:23.000 But then if you can come back and win, you go, you know what, if I'm at my best, if I'm focused, if I have my shit together, some of the time I can be that guy.
00:26:30.000 And I think that's what you kind of hope for.
00:26:32.000 Well, it's also objective analysis of your own shortcomings and your own strengths.
00:26:38.000 And that comes in martial arts.
00:26:40.000 It's a huge factor in martial arts because especially when you're training.
00:26:45.000 When you're in the gym and you're sparring with, you know, if you've got a great gym, like you're training a 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu or something like that, you've got...
00:26:52.000 Just a whole room filled with killers.
00:26:54.000 And everyone kind of knows the food chain.
00:26:57.000 Everyone knows where everybody stands.
00:26:59.000 And why does everyone know where everybody stands?
00:27:00.000 We know where everybody stands because we're tapping each other out on a regular basis.
00:27:03.000 And so, because of that, you're forced to really analyze your game.
00:27:07.000 Like, this motherfucker gets me in his guard.
00:27:09.000 I'm in trouble.
00:27:10.000 Like, I gotta stay out of this guy's guard.
00:27:11.000 I know this.
00:27:12.000 Why?
00:27:13.000 Because I've been caught.
00:27:14.000 I understand it.
00:27:14.000 Whereas, if you don't have any experience overcoming adversity, like, psh, nobody's catching me.
00:27:19.000 And then you get in there with somebody who just ragdolls you.
00:27:21.000 And you're like, what the fuck?
00:27:23.000 And your ideas of who you are change.
00:27:26.000 Because you have this distorted...
00:27:28.000 How many guys out there that have never fought have this crazy distorted perception of what they're capable of?
00:27:34.000 Insane.
00:27:34.000 Nobody looks at Tiger Woods and goes, on the right day, I'm beating that guy 18 holes.
00:27:39.000 Bro, you don't know how I play golf.
00:27:41.000 Exactly.
00:27:41.000 If I played golf, I would dominate.
00:27:43.000 Yeah.
00:27:43.000 Because I'm taking it to the streets.
00:27:45.000 It's going to be fucking street golf.
00:27:47.000 Guys really think that, but that's a lack of understanding of what that really is.
00:27:53.000 You can kind of see the willingness or the ability to go, there's trouble, I'm going to hit it with this fist.
00:27:58.000 That's in every guy.
00:27:59.000 So they don't understand that other guys have an understanding of physics, an understanding of where their body works, what happens when you hit somebody in the throat.
00:28:07.000 The natural instinct to roll away gives them your back.
00:28:10.000 All the most basic, they don't even understand that exists.
00:28:12.000 So they have the idea that if I hit that thing with this thing, I might be able to beat it.
00:28:17.000 Yeah, they think that somehow or another they're tougher.
00:28:20.000 Somehow or another they're more alpha.
00:28:22.000 Whatever goofy shit they have in their head.
00:28:25.000 And it's just a prop.
00:28:27.000 It's like a building that they use for a movie, but there's nothing inside the house.
00:28:32.000 You have this fake facade, and then behind there, there's no house!
00:28:36.000 Where's your fucking house?
00:28:37.000 Whoa!
00:28:38.000 You know and some fucking beast mounts you and starts pounding on you and you give you back and you're like and then after that's over You're so Devastated and defeated and who you your perceptions of who you were were so screwy Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've had guys tell me that they would never lose if they fought Because my mentality they're always like this yo,
00:28:58.000 bro.
00:28:58.000 I don't lose my mentality.
00:29:00.000 That's I've had a dozen Why do they all have Italian accents?
00:29:04.000 Because they're all Italian.
00:29:05.000 It's a huge part of my culture.
00:29:08.000 The Italians, I don't know what it is about my people, but they're goofy as fuck when it comes to that.
00:29:13.000 They have this bizarre belief in their ability to fight.
00:29:16.000 That's awesome.
00:29:17.000 I don't know what it is.
00:29:18.000 It's still wrong most of the time.
00:29:20.000 Even if it's wrong, you see...
00:29:23.000 Dudes do terrible things.
00:29:24.000 Treat people bad, be assholes.
00:29:26.000 If that guy took a beating when he was 15, he'd be a better person.
00:29:29.000 You're right.
00:29:30.000 He would be a way better guy today.
00:29:31.000 He would treat people better.
00:29:33.000 But, you know, there's not enough of that going on.
00:29:36.000 We're really soft.
00:29:37.000 Like, our culture is really so...
00:29:40.000 Like, by Fight Network, where I work, there's like a metro where you get groceries.
00:29:45.000 And we used to walk around this building.
00:29:46.000 It takes like four minutes.
00:29:48.000 And they built this path on the other side, so it only takes two minutes now.
00:29:51.000 It costs like $80,000, $100,000 to strip it out, put this stuff down.
00:29:55.000 What the fuck are we doing that for?
00:29:58.000 Well, you're in Canada.
00:29:58.000 What part of Canada?
00:29:59.000 Yeah, Toronto.
00:30:00.000 It gets cold as fuck in Toronto.
00:30:02.000 Yeah, about two minutes.
00:30:02.000 I mean, it's like we're going to literally spend money to make sure that people don't have to go do more effort for two minutes.
00:30:09.000 Even escalators.
00:30:10.000 Like, why do we make this shit?
00:30:11.000 Like, you know what I mean?
00:30:12.000 We, in the history of humankind, there has never been a softer culture than North America.
00:30:17.000 Canada.
00:30:18.000 Never in human history.
00:30:20.000 And that's, I think, another reason why fighting is so interesting.
00:30:24.000 Because in a world like that, let's go see what happens when we see the opposite of that.
00:30:30.000 When we see people who drive it to the hardest level, push it as far as they can humanly go, and go in against another guy.
00:30:36.000 You're talking about a guy saying, oh, you know, I'm hard.
00:30:38.000 That guy's fucking hard too.
00:30:40.000 The guy you're fighting is also mentally unbelievably talented.
00:30:45.000 And he's better than you.
00:30:46.000 Yeah, and he's training every day, and he's objective, and he's got a real balanced sense of who he is.
00:30:51.000 He's a real martial artist.
00:30:53.000 Yeah, that's a good point, that how soft we are is one of the reasons why it's so exciting to see someone compete in such a dangerous and volatile profession.
00:31:03.000 But the critics of MMA would say, well, the reason why we are so quote-unquote soft is that our race, the human race, is evolving.
00:31:12.000 And that we are moving towards a state where we no longer require physical conflict.
00:31:18.000 I think that martial arts is the key to that gap.
00:31:22.000 And this would seem like contradictory to someone who doesn't engage in martial arts, but I think that the realities of the biology, the realities of the body itself, and the long history of combat that's ingrained in our genetics, I think we're good to go.
00:31:53.000 Is to actually exercise out all of that conflict in the gym.
00:31:58.000 So that it doesn't exist in society.
00:32:00.000 It doesn't exist in the workplace.
00:32:02.000 It doesn't exist in friendships.
00:32:04.000 And it doesn't exist in the world at large.
00:32:07.000 It only exists in dojos.
00:32:09.000 It only exists in gyms.
00:32:11.000 And some of the nicest, most respectful people I have ever met have been killers, murderers.
00:32:19.000 I mean, in the gym, you know, in the cage, in boxing rings, kickboxers.
00:32:23.000 The nicest folks.
00:32:25.000 Because of the fact that they have no insecurities when it comes to that stuff.
00:32:29.000 Their focus when it comes to their martial arts is not about, you know, like...
00:32:35.000 It's not about going out and bullying people on the street or going out and picking fights.
00:32:39.000 No, their focus is in bettering their skills and in doing so and in training really hard, all your need to prove all that goes away.
00:32:49.000 I've seen MMA fighters that people don't know and they get into discussions with people and someone will get douchey with them and they'll smile and laugh like...
00:32:56.000 There's a famous story.
00:32:58.000 My friend Tate Fletcher fought on the Ultimate Fighter.
00:33:00.000 He's a black belt in jiu-jitsu.
00:33:02.000 He's a bad motherfucker.
00:33:03.000 He's a cool-ass dude, too.
00:33:05.000 Super nice.
00:33:05.000 If you're a friendly guy, Tate's going to be your best friend.
00:33:08.000 He's just the nicest guy ever.
00:33:09.000 But we were in the Hard Rock Hotel, and there was this big fucking kid, man.
00:33:14.000 He was like 6'6", maybe.
00:33:16.000 At least 6'4", 6'5".
00:33:18.000 And Tate's like 6'4".
00:33:19.000 So this guy was bigger than Tate.
00:33:21.000 And probably like a big...
00:33:24.000 He's probably college age, 23, 24, and he was just being a fucking drunk asshole to everybody and just walking around with his shirt off, this big giant kid, and he got to Tate's door and he said to Tate, like, hey man, that's my fucking room.
00:33:41.000 And Tate's like, no, I'm pretty sure it's my room.
00:33:43.000 He's like, I got my key right here, and I'm going to use the key.
00:33:46.000 And Tate goes, take it easy.
00:33:49.000 And Tate opens his door and goes inside.
00:33:51.000 And I had the room next to Tate, so I go inside my room.
00:33:53.000 And I hear bang, bang, bang.
00:33:55.000 I hear banging on Tate's door.
00:33:56.000 And we had our doors open.
00:33:58.000 Yeah, joining.
00:33:59.000 Yeah, the joining rooms.
00:34:01.000 And I stepped through Tate's door.
00:34:02.000 What the fuck's going on?
00:34:03.000 Is that that same guy?
00:34:04.000 And so Tate opens the guy.
00:34:06.000 He goes, don't you shut the door on me, bitch.
00:34:08.000 It was like some crazy...
00:34:10.000 Crazy moment where this guy was not just picking a fight, but going after Tate once he went into the room.
00:34:16.000 They go out into the hallway.
00:34:18.000 It's weird that people do that at all.
00:34:19.000 It's just a big bully.
00:34:20.000 Just a big bully who used to being a big bully.
00:34:25.000 Tate goes, what do you want to do, man?
00:34:28.000 What do you want to do?
00:34:29.000 He goes, I'm going to kick your fucking ass.
00:34:31.000 Tate goes, why don't you come over here and swing on me, man?
00:34:33.000 Come on.
00:34:33.000 Come on.
00:34:34.000 So Tate is standing in front of the dude, and the dude is like, oh shit, this is really happening.
00:34:39.000 And then Tate throws an inside leg kick, and then pulls guard.
00:34:45.000 Grabs the guy, pulls guard.
00:34:47.000 Before the guy even knows it, Tate hooks an omoplata...
00:34:51.000 He's on the side of the guy, and then security shows up.
00:34:54.000 So he's got this guy in an omoplata.
00:34:56.000 He's got his arm under his neck in an omoplata, and security shows up.
00:35:00.000 And they go, stop, stop, stop!
00:35:02.000 So I go, don't worry about it, man.
00:35:04.000 I go, it's fine.
00:35:05.000 He's just going to put him to sleep.
00:35:06.000 It's okay.
00:35:07.000 And the security guy goes...
00:35:09.000 Hey, you're that guy from Fear Factor.
00:35:10.000 And in that moment, in that moment where the security guys are completely going, holy shit, what are you doing here, man?
00:35:16.000 I go, this drunk guy's picking on my friend.
00:35:18.000 And when I said, like, don't worry, he's just going to put him to sleep, Tate said, and in his head he was like, alright, I guess I'm going to put him to sleep now.
00:35:26.000 He wasn't going to hit the guy.
00:35:27.000 He just decided, like, look, if I hit this guy, then it becomes this crazy assault, and there's marks on him.
00:35:32.000 So Tate just chokes, puts a rear naked choke on him, and sleeps him right there in the hallway.
00:35:37.000 His friends pick the guy up, and it's like a scene in a goddamn movie.
00:35:40.000 His friends pick the guy up, they put him in the elevator, the elevator door closes, and the guy vanishes.
00:35:46.000 And he disappears from life.
00:35:48.000 And that's the end.
00:35:48.000 And it just laughs all night of us.
00:35:51.000 For years, we still bring this up.
00:35:53.000 That shit happened in like 2003. We still bring this up because it was so ridiculous.
00:35:58.000 You've seen Ryan, what's his name, that jiu-jitsu guy in a bar and he takes the guy down and mounts him?
00:36:05.000 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:36:06.000 Ryan Hall.
00:36:08.000 It was like a restaurant or something, right?
00:36:10.000 Calm as all hell.
00:36:11.000 Don't worry about it, don't worry about it.
00:36:12.000 Gets him down, mounts him, waits until he's exhausted.
00:36:15.000 Well, he's used to doing that all the time.
00:36:17.000 That's the thing about training is you're used to struggling essentially for your life.
00:36:23.000 What is a tap?
00:36:25.000 Tap is a way that you can train where it's safe and someone taps.
00:36:29.000 And what that means is you got me.
00:36:32.000 But what does got me mean?
00:36:33.000 It means you're Dead.
00:36:34.000 I would have died.
00:36:35.000 Or my arm would have broken in half and then you'd have killed me.
00:36:37.000 Then you kill them.
00:36:38.000 It's essentially you're playing a game called I kill you with my body.
00:36:42.000 Or you kill me.
00:36:43.000 Or we kill each other several times over the course of a seven minute rolling session.
00:36:48.000 And then we shake hands, thanks man, that was great.
00:36:50.000 And then you move on to the next guy who's going to kill you.
00:36:52.000 And be a better person out into the world.
00:36:53.000 And walk out into the world and be a better person.
00:36:54.000 I agree 100%.
00:36:55.000 It exercises that stuff out of your system.
00:36:57.000 And that's the frustrating thing when all of a sudden, you know, I come to town and my wife's here and her friends are like, what's the deal with this war machine and Christy Mack?
00:37:07.000 They don't know about any of this stuff.
00:37:08.000 They don't know about any of the good things about martial arts.
00:37:12.000 They don't know about any of the good things it does and makes people a better person.
00:37:15.000 They just come in and they're like, hey, some MMA fighter beat up a porn star.
00:37:19.000 Like, you know what I mean?
00:37:20.000 They don't know.
00:37:21.000 Like, they don't know that there's that side to it.
00:37:23.000 Yeah, that's a fucked up story.
00:37:26.000 I don't, you know, I don't know what exactly went down.
00:37:29.000 People keep asking me to comment on it.
00:37:32.000 This is the only thing I would ever say.
00:37:35.000 Anytime, you know, there's an altercation like that between a man and a woman and a man hits a woman, it's It's never correct.
00:37:44.000 It's always evil.
00:37:45.000 It's always wrong.
00:37:46.000 It's beyond fucked that a guy could beat a woman.
00:37:50.000 It's beyond fucked.
00:37:51.000 And it should be a heinous crime that's punishable in the worst ways possible.
00:37:58.000 But I don't know what happened.
00:38:00.000 All I know is it appears, according to her story, that he beat the shit out of her.
00:38:05.000 That's what it looks like.
00:38:07.000 There's no evidence to the contrary.
00:38:09.000 And that's awful.
00:38:10.000 So that's all I could say.
00:38:12.000 I mean, I'm not commenting on it until...
00:38:15.000 I mean, really commenting on it until I know more of what exactly happened.
00:38:19.000 I don't know what the fuck went down, but...
00:38:22.000 I don't know how a guy could do that.
00:38:23.000 I literally do not know how a man, especially a martial artist.
00:38:28.000 He always likes to think of himself as not a martial artist.
00:38:31.000 He's a fighter.
00:38:32.000 Yeah, and that's probably true.
00:38:33.000 He's an animal.
00:38:35.000 And there are those guys.
00:38:36.000 Typically in the gym, you don't get guys get that good that are animals like that.
00:38:40.000 They don't have enough.
00:38:41.000 They have too much ego to go, I'm not good at this, so I have to train that to get better.
00:38:45.000 So these guys come into a big gym, and they're new, and they're tough guys.
00:38:49.000 They're gone in a year.
00:38:51.000 They won't have the absence of ego enough to train things they're not good at and then they end up leaving.
00:38:57.000 So it's rare that somebody has to be very driven of like an animal style fighter type to get past that, to get to that level or just be genetically really superior or whatever.
00:39:10.000 It's rare that that style of person becomes a high-level MMA fighter.
00:39:14.000 Yeah, it is rare because if you're that fucked in the head, usually you're not strong enough mentally to keep going and to get to that.
00:39:20.000 War Machine's a high-level MMA fighter.
00:39:25.000 It's just so disappointing.
00:39:27.000 I had him in the podcast six months ago, maybe, something like that.
00:39:30.000 It's unbelievably sad.
00:39:32.000 But like you said, we don't really know.
00:39:34.000 And his life's over.
00:39:35.000 His fucking life is over.
00:39:36.000 I mean, I don't know what he's going to do, because he's been in jail twice now, and this is the third one, and a girl, a pretty little girl like that, she's tiny, man.
00:39:45.000 She's 100 pounds.
00:39:46.000 Yeah, and you don't like to speculate on how this will land.
00:39:48.000 That's a change of subject.
00:39:49.000 It is disturbing.
00:39:50.000 It's a weird one, too, you know, not just this topic, but...
00:39:53.000 It's strange.
00:39:54.000 I like to analyze fighting.
00:39:55.000 I don't really like to be an MMA journalist because a lot of that time you're not talking about fighting.
00:40:03.000 Guys are talking about this guy said that thing or this sold that many things or why is this guy not a star?
00:40:10.000 I don't care really about that shit so much.
00:40:12.000 To me, I'm just so unbelievably curious as to what is going to happen when Demetrius Johnson fights this guy.
00:40:18.000 And then after he fights that guy, sitting there and trying to figure out what the thing was that made that one moment like that.
00:40:24.000 Do you know Jaron Vallel?
00:40:25.000 Yes.
00:40:26.000 Jaron Vallel was reffing that match.
00:40:29.000 We talk about bad refs, we talk about bad judges.
00:40:32.000 Jaren's cool, and I ran into him in Winnipeg.
00:40:34.000 Actually, Joe Dirksen was at this party, and you were talking about guys that kind of are cool.
00:40:39.000 Dirksen works now in a prison, and he said guys will be like, I think I could beat you, and he'll be like, yeah, you probably could.
00:40:44.000 Joe doesn't give a shit.
00:40:46.000 But Jaren Villal's there, and he was saying, oh, I really liked your Demetrius Johnson break.
00:40:50.000 I'm like, thanks, man.
00:40:50.000 Whenever anybody likes those, it means a lot to me because I love doing them, right?
00:40:56.000 And so we're talking about it.
00:40:56.000 He goes, well, you know, tell me what else you saw.
00:40:59.000 And I'm having a beer and whatever.
00:41:01.000 And I said, why?
00:41:02.000 And he goes, well, I was reffing that one, so I looked at a lot of tape, too.
00:41:06.000 And I'm like, really?
00:41:07.000 That's cool, man.
00:41:08.000 He goes, yeah, me and Big John, him and John are very good friends.
00:41:10.000 They'll go on Skype and look at tape together.
00:41:12.000 So I'm like, wow, that's fucking cool that you do that.
00:41:15.000 And he goes, yeah, I saw a couple things.
00:41:16.000 You know one thing, he didn't say you missed, but he suggested, and it was fucking brilliant.
00:41:22.000 Like this referee that was reffing the main event picked up on this one that basically when the two guys, when Demetrius Johnson ends up kind of in that center zone, not quite in the clinch and not quite at, you know, in the pocket, kind of in that middle zone,
00:41:37.000 he'll give you a little shove.
00:41:39.000 To put you in a position.
00:41:40.000 Well, he is looking for one of your only two logical responses.
00:41:45.000 You're going to back up, and he backs all the way out, or you're going to push against his, and he goes to the clinch.
00:41:50.000 So he goes in as a little sample test, and he does it all after Jaron pointed it out.
00:41:54.000 I'm like, holy fuck.
00:41:55.000 I looked at his fights.
00:41:56.000 He always does that.
00:41:57.000 And for a referee to go and spend that much time and find that little moment because...
00:42:02.000 And I said, why'd you do that?
00:42:03.000 He goes, well...
00:42:03.000 I just wanted to be in the right moment and right places and be aware of what was going on.
00:42:07.000 I'm like, that's a fucking good referee.
00:42:08.000 That's a great referee.
00:42:09.000 That's what we need.
00:42:10.000 Yeah, that is what we need.
00:42:12.000 And that's an actual example in Demetrius Johnson of a guy who's trained by one of the best in the world in Matt Hume.
00:42:18.000 I did a breakdown of Matt Hume's first fight in Pancreas.
00:42:21.000 Oh, yeah.
00:42:22.000 I'm a big Matt Hume fan.
00:42:23.000 I really like him in the corner, too.
00:42:25.000 He's great at giving technical instructions in between rounds.
00:42:28.000 I think there's a few guys that are just really good trainers, and you just see it in the examples.
00:42:36.000 Dwayne Ludwig, I think, right now is the best.
00:42:39.000 Dude.
00:42:39.000 I don't think there's a better striking coach on earth.
00:42:41.000 Yeah.
00:42:42.000 Duke is right up there with him.
00:42:44.000 Right up there with him.
00:42:45.000 Duke and Henry Hooft are in this world of perfection and Bang Ludwig is pushing the boundaries a little.
00:42:52.000 He's trying to test.
00:42:53.000 He's taking new things.
00:42:54.000 Even just the simplest shit that he was showing me after or before TJ's fight.
00:43:00.000 I think it was before.
00:43:01.000 And he was showing me the elements of when guys will go to enter.
00:43:06.000 And you know how I'll use punches to get you to think up and down and you start responding up and down.
00:43:10.000 He makes you believe that he is playing with your up and down and while your brain is focusing in on that, he camouflages his footwork in.
00:43:19.000 So some of the punches are bullshit to make you think about them while he steps off in a different place.
00:43:26.000 Shit like that.
00:43:27.000 And he's...
00:43:28.000 Oh, man.
00:43:29.000 And he is operating like...
00:43:31.000 He's got 700 cups of coffee in him.
00:43:33.000 He's yelling and he's thinking fast.
00:43:36.000 And you can see...
00:43:36.000 Talk about flow.
00:43:37.000 When he's teaching, this guy's in a different place.
00:43:40.000 Yeah, he really is.
00:43:41.000 Dwayne Ludwig chugs alpha brain.
00:43:43.000 Yeah.
00:43:43.000 He eats that shit like candy.
00:43:45.000 He eats it all day long.
00:43:46.000 He's obsessed with analyzing fights and training fighters.
00:43:51.000 It's such a huge part of his daily thought process.
00:43:57.000 It's engrossing.
00:43:58.000 It's his whole being.
00:44:00.000 And that's why he's so goddamn good.
00:44:03.000 I sat down with him at lunch the day TJ fought Burrell.
00:44:07.000 And when TJ Dillashaw beat Hennenborough, who at the time was thought of as the best pound-for-pound fighter or one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world, TJ was a big underdog, and TJ went into that fight and dominated Hennenborough, knocked him out in the fifth round after dropping him in the first,
00:44:22.000 dominating him for five rounds, and then stopped him.
00:44:24.000 But what was crazy was when I had lunch with Dwayne, Dwayne told me exactly what the plan was.
00:44:30.000 And then he went out and did it exactly that way.
00:44:33.000 A lot of switching stances.
00:44:35.000 A lot of capitalizing on Burrell loading up and standing flat-footed.
00:44:39.000 A lot of stepping to the outside and immediately countering.
00:44:42.000 And he did it over and over and over again.
00:44:43.000 And TJ's a sponge, man.
00:44:45.000 I had a chance to watch those two work out together.
00:44:47.000 And TJ is just a sponge.
00:44:50.000 He's a sponge.
00:44:51.000 Everything Dwayne teaches him.
00:44:52.000 Sometimes it's like you got the brilliant teacher and the brilliant fighter and then the two together make an even bigger thing.
00:44:58.000 And there's no conflict between those guys.
00:45:00.000 They're really good friends and TJ's a completely open book.
00:45:04.000 His cup is empty and Dwayne is completely ego free when it comes to teaching him.
00:45:09.000 He's all about getting TJ better.
00:45:11.000 TJ's all about getting better and they're great friends.
00:45:13.000 These guys love each other.
00:45:14.000 Yeah.
00:45:14.000 So they're always laughing and joking and palling around together.
00:45:17.000 Like when TJ beat Hennenborough and there was this moment after the fight where they hugged and they're both crying.
00:45:23.000 It was real.
00:45:24.000 Woo!
00:45:24.000 Yeah, fucking real, man.
00:45:25.000 I was tearing up when I was watching it, Cage Side.
00:45:27.000 It was crazy.
00:45:28.000 Amazing.
00:45:29.000 Yeah, it was incredible.
00:45:30.000 It really was.
00:45:31.000 And Demetrius and Matt Hume, similar thing.
00:45:34.000 I looked back, it was 1994. It was like four months after UFC won.
00:45:39.000 And I went back and re-analyzed.
00:45:41.000 Because up at Fight Network, we're calling classic pancreas.
00:45:44.000 So we got all the old pancreas.
00:45:45.000 And we're commentating them through the lens of today.
00:45:48.000 So we're going, you know, this guy does this.
00:45:50.000 Wow, you know, in 2014, that couldn't happen because of this, this, and this.
00:45:53.000 So we're looking at him historically in the context of today.
00:45:57.000 It's super cool, man.
00:45:59.000 It's the funnest thing.
00:46:00.000 Like, guys, don't.
00:46:02.000 There's no such thing as, like, if a guy wants to pass your guard, he just passes it.
00:46:06.000 Like, in the 90s, everyone's good at footlocks for some reason.
00:46:11.000 People change positions.
00:46:12.000 You get a mount, and you'll, like, swing your leg over the top to go back to side.
00:46:16.000 So I'm in the mount, my leg over to end up in side.
00:46:19.000 You'll be in 8, 10 different positions.
00:46:21.000 Always kind of, they were chaining together submission attempts and positions to try to make you keep guessing.
00:46:26.000 But it didn't, like, it had overstayed its welcome.
00:46:29.000 You're looking at it and going, this doesn't work, but they're still doing it.
00:46:32.000 You know, it's fascinating.
00:46:33.000 Dogshit jiu-jitsu is what it is.
00:46:35.000 I watched Coliseum 2000 with Hicks and Gracie over his house way back in, I gotta say, it was probably like 2004 or 2005 or something like that.
00:46:47.000 It was back when Hickson was still thinking about fighting.
00:46:49.000 And it was a few years after he had fought Funaki and Coliseum.
00:46:53.000 And we were watching fights together.
00:46:54.000 We watched the entire event.
00:46:56.000 And Hickson would break down the movements.
00:46:58.000 And he's like, look at all this space!
00:47:00.000 Oh, you can't have this space!
00:47:02.000 You know, like, space to him is just evil.
00:47:05.000 Like, what is this?
00:47:06.000 You know, because Hickson's jiu-jitsu has always been the elite of the elite.
00:47:10.000 So when he watches, like, these errors and these things, like, big, goofy movements, you know, with big openings, it would just drive him crazy.
00:47:19.000 Like, he would just be talking about all these errors and what's wrong with this and so focused on it.
00:47:24.000 And if you watch...
00:47:26.000 Jiu-Jitsu or you watch MMA from 93 and then watch, say, Demetrius Johnson in 2014. You're like, boy, this is like, no sport has evolved this quickly.
00:47:37.000 Never.
00:47:37.000 And those two examples, when I looked at Matt Hume, he was better than everybody.
00:47:43.000 Him and Evan Tanner were better than everybody.
00:47:46.000 Just because they were fighting like today.
00:47:48.000 And you look back, Matt Hume was doing this kind of leg ride and side ride like wrestling position that Chris Weidman was teaching at a seminar I was at like two years ago.
00:47:58.000 He was doing it in 1994. He had good Muay Thai too.
00:48:01.000 Matt Hume had very good Muay Thai.
00:48:03.000 Fantastic, yeah.
00:48:03.000 Remember he fought Pat Miletic and broke his nose and they stopped the fight.
00:48:07.000 That was crazy.
00:48:08.000 They stopped the fight for a broken nose.
00:48:10.000 I know.
00:48:10.000 I remember thinking, what kind of goofy shit is that?
00:48:13.000 You look back at these Pancrase ones too and it's like there were rope escapes.
00:48:16.000 Yeah, that's right.
00:48:18.000 You've got it.
00:48:20.000 Instead of tapping, I grabbed the rope.
00:48:22.000 And then we're stood up.
00:48:24.000 And it's like, if it is not finished, you win, because I grabbed the rope once.
00:48:28.000 But we tried to figure that out.
00:48:29.000 I was going to talk to Dave Meltzer, who I don't really know good, but we've chatted online and stuff, because he understands that history moment.
00:48:35.000 Because there's also a lot of works back then.
00:48:38.000 Legitimately.
00:48:39.000 When you say works, for folks who don't know what we're talking about, we mean fixed fights.
00:48:42.000 Yeah.
00:48:43.000 And a lot of that has a history because of pro wrestling.
00:48:47.000 Pro wrestling in Japan was huge, and that's also where the rope escape came from.
00:48:50.000 That was always a big thing in pro wrestling.
00:48:52.000 A guy would have a hold on a guy, the guy would grab the rope, and the referee would make them break.
00:48:56.000 It was a way to keep pro wrestling interesting.
00:48:59.000 Well, when we look back at it, we suddenly, Ram Dean and I are calling these, and we look at each other.
00:49:04.000 Fuck, that's fake.
00:49:05.000 And the first time that happened, we were like, well, like, I mean, we have to address that.
00:49:11.000 Like, your credibility demands that you don't go, oh, and he powerbombed him.
00:49:15.000 I mean, you can't do that.
00:49:16.000 And you're talking about history.
00:49:17.000 We're trying to make this series a history lesson as well, right?
00:49:21.000 So you have to talk about it.
00:49:24.000 The reason it looks the way it looks, you nailed it.
00:49:26.000 It's like basically wrestling was fake.
00:49:29.000 Once upon a time wrestling was real.
00:49:30.000 Guys went to towns and they wrestled each other and the winner was the winner who could wrestle.
00:49:34.000 But guys got so good and it got so boring that they had to fix them and became pro-wrestling.
00:49:38.000 Is that why they did it?
00:49:40.000 Is it because guys got so good or is it just because people wanted to control the outcomes?
00:49:44.000 I think a bit of both.
00:49:45.000 I bet it was more gambling than anything.
00:49:47.000 Maybe so.
00:49:47.000 Maybe so, yeah.
00:49:48.000 And then pro wrestling over there, these two guys, Funaki and Suzuki, went and said, we're going to take pro wrestling, which we love and everyone loves, and we're going to make it real.
00:49:58.000 And so when they made it real, that was pancreas.
00:50:01.000 So suddenly it's like wrestling was real, then it was fake, and now we're going to make it real again.
00:50:05.000 So there were things like rope escapes left in there as you transferred from fake to real again.
00:50:11.000 They stayed there for a bit.
00:50:13.000 Yeah, that's interesting.
00:50:14.000 That's really interesting.
00:50:15.000 And they were so obsessed with the storylines because they were originally wrestling performers that most of the works involved them and involved them losing.
00:50:23.000 So in its own way, it was only there to create entertainment.
00:50:27.000 But it's a weird time in there.
00:50:29.000 Like for purists, and I fucking love the sport, you have to make sense of why that was for people so that they're not just...
00:50:36.000 It doesn't color MMA in a way.
00:50:39.000 But it was that moment where MMA and wrestling sort of touched each other in the early 90s.
00:50:43.000 Yeah, that is an interesting thing, man.
00:50:46.000 It's also an interesting thing that...
00:50:48.000 We were saying this, that I don't think there's ever been a sport that has changed so much and grown so much in just a period of 20 years.
00:50:57.000 If you go to UFC 1 and then go to...
00:51:02.000 I don't know what number we got now.
00:51:04.000 180, 78, 78, 77. If you go and just go to...
00:51:12.000 From 1993 to 2014, it's gone through like a thousand years of evolution.
00:51:17.000 The level is so different.
00:51:19.000 The level of athleticism, the level of endurance, the martial arts skill, everything's different.
00:51:25.000 Everything's different.
00:51:26.000 I think it's one of the things I love about it the most.
00:51:29.000 People will talk, Jon Jones and Cormier are having all this heat.
00:51:33.000 And they ask me about it.
00:51:34.000 It's like, I don't care.
00:51:36.000 It's interesting.
00:51:37.000 But for me, the biggest thing about one of the – I always say the biggest thing because I also love the science.
00:51:41.000 I also love the brain chemistry.
00:51:42.000 I love the beauty of the dance, all of it.
00:51:44.000 But one of the things I'm most interested in is it's basically one global science experiment in real time using thousands and thousands and thousands of fights.
00:51:54.000 to distill down to the nugget of what's the best and it still is that every 500 fights the best coaches are going okay well that doesn't work anymore well we've added that that works and it's this ongoing distillation down to the purest way to beat other guys that changes slightly now Because of this sort of demand for entertainment from the audience and stuff that changes.
00:52:15.000 Like, you know, guys are rewarded more for standing now than certain things.
00:52:19.000 So that alters it.
00:52:20.000 But you take that out of it, and basically we just have thousands and thousands of contests all there to help us determine the research of how to be the best fighter ever.
00:52:29.000 Yeah, I have issue with that aspect of it, where the technical aspect of fights changes for it to be more entertaining.
00:52:38.000 I think it's not good.
00:52:39.000 I think it's not smart and I think it takes away from the purity of mixed martial arts expression.
00:52:44.000 Like, what is martial arts?
00:52:46.000 It's all about doing the very best thing in order to win a fight.
00:52:49.000 And if you put yourself more in danger so that the crowd roars and, you know, like, just drop your hands, duke it out.
00:52:55.000 I remember a guy who's a friend of mine wrote something on Twitter and he wrote, you know, fuck technical striking, you know, just stand in the center of the cage and let it bang.
00:53:05.000 Yeah.
00:53:05.000 And meanwhile, the guy who wrote that is all fucked up now.
00:53:09.000 He's got all sorts of physical problems.
00:53:10.000 He's had a bunch of fights.
00:53:11.000 He's all banged up.
00:53:12.000 It's like, no, don't think that.
00:53:16.000 Don't say that.
00:53:17.000 That is like, fuck thinking.
00:53:23.000 I'm just going to hit this with a hammer.
00:53:25.000 No, no.
00:53:26.000 You have to think.
00:53:27.000 That's the whole thing.
00:53:28.000 The whole thing is solving the puzzle.
00:53:30.000 And solving the puzzle in striking is about technical striking.
00:53:35.000 It doesn't mean no knockouts.
00:53:36.000 There's a lot of knockouts that come from tactical strikers.
00:53:39.000 It means doing it the right way, where you have the most amount of success, the least amount of risk, and you're doing things based on the amount of knowledge that's been accumulated over thousands of years of martial arts.
00:53:52.000 You're applying that in an intelligent way.
00:53:54.000 Johnson, Demetrius Johnson, in my opinion, is the best example of that.
00:53:58.000 That fucking guy does everything right.
00:54:00.000 Everything he does is perfect.
00:54:02.000 He doesn't rush anything.
00:54:03.000 You never see him slugging it out and fucking dropping his hands and like, come on, bitch, come on, bitch.
00:54:09.000 There's none of that stupidity.
00:54:10.000 It's all brilliant martial arts, and he's so exciting to watch.
00:54:16.000 Sometimes people say it's not as exciting because he's not finishing guys as much, but He fucking finished John Moraga in the fourth round of a fight that he was dominating.
00:54:24.000 He finished Joseph Benavidez with one punch.
00:54:27.000 He's the second best guy in the world at his weight.
00:54:28.000 Exactly.
00:54:29.000 He's a beast.
00:54:30.000 And Bogotinov, the only reason why he didn't finish him is because he's EPO'd to the fucking gills and who knows what else.
00:54:36.000 He didn't fatigue.
00:54:37.000 Yeah, he didn't fatigue.
00:54:38.000 Fatigue is such a part of it.
00:54:40.000 It's such an enormous part of it.
00:54:42.000 If you are...
00:54:44.000 If everything else is equal, but you're in better shape than the guy, eventually it's no longer equal.
00:54:49.000 It's really that simple.
00:54:51.000 Well, that's the Nick Diaz strategy.
00:54:52.000 Nick Diaz strategy.
00:54:54.000 Nick is obviously a very high-level martial artist when it comes to his technique and his experience, and he's obviously a very, very tough guy, but he's also in fucking phenomenal shape.
00:55:04.000 Nick Diaz has swam back from Alcatraz twice in the fucking Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco filled with sharks.
00:55:13.000 He swam back twice.
00:55:14.000 He's done triathlons.
00:55:18.000 He's done marathons.
00:55:19.000 I mean, he's a fucking beast when it comes to his physical conditioning.
00:55:22.000 And what he does is just puts up pace.
00:55:25.000 He just makes you run with him.
00:55:27.000 Like, come on, let's go.
00:55:28.000 We're going running.
00:55:29.000 We're going running.
00:55:29.000 And he starts throwing these punches that are like 50% speed.
00:55:33.000 Hey, come and catch me.
00:55:35.000 He'll even mentally get you pulled in there.
00:55:37.000 He's good at that, too.
00:55:38.000 Oh, yeah.
00:55:38.000 Come on, bitch.
00:55:39.000 Come on, bitch.
00:55:40.000 Exactly.
00:55:40.000 That gets you riled?
00:55:42.000 Yeah.
00:55:42.000 Oh, it's brilliant.
00:55:42.000 Oh, yeah.
00:55:43.000 You know Jack Slack?
00:55:44.000 Sure, yeah, yeah.
00:55:45.000 Oh, man, that guy is doing killer stuff.
00:55:47.000 Excellent stuff.
00:55:48.000 Yeah, great breakdowns.
00:55:49.000 There's a little group of people out there.
00:55:51.000 It's a niche in a niche, and I'm proud to be part of it.
00:55:53.000 I stand there and do mine, but Jack is fucking good.
00:55:57.000 And there's this young guy, Lawrence Kenshin, is really good.
00:55:58.000 Yes, I was going to mention him.
00:56:00.000 I'm glad you did.
00:56:01.000 Yes, he's excellent.
00:56:02.000 He does great breakdowns.
00:56:03.000 And I'm so happy that there's these guys doing it.
00:56:06.000 And instead of going, who's that fucking guy?
00:56:08.000 I'm better than him.
00:56:09.000 Good for you.
00:56:10.000 We end up kind of, we're friends and we're kind of like pushing each other.
00:56:13.000 It's really cool.
00:56:13.000 Well, that's an interesting thing about MMA commentary that's like that as well.
00:56:16.000 Like, I'm really good friends with Michael Schiavello, really good friends with Jimmy Smith.
00:56:20.000 I worked with Mike.
00:56:20.000 Twice.
00:56:21.000 Good friends with Jason Chambers as well.
00:56:23.000 He's a great buddy.
00:56:24.000 And because I'm friends with all these guys that also do my job, there's no competition amongst each other.
00:56:30.000 I tried to get Jimmy Smith hired by the UFC. When Jimmy Smith's contract was going up with Bellator, I called Dana White and I said, Dude, this guy's the best.
00:56:39.000 He's great.
00:56:39.000 He's a real martial artist.
00:56:41.000 He's a real good guy.
00:56:43.000 I go, He should work for us.
00:56:44.000 He's fucking great.
00:56:45.000 But Bellator must have understood he was so valuable.
00:56:48.000 Well, they were worried.
00:56:50.000 Also, they would worry that who the fuck else is out there?
00:56:53.000 I mean, it's a really tough gig to have a person who's very passionate and very articulate, which Jimmy is both, and is really good at breaking down scenarios and situations and is legitimately passionate while the fight's going on, like you could see it.
00:57:06.000 And also, not afraid to call out bad refereeing, bad calls, bad judgments.
00:57:13.000 It's very important to him to be honest about the whole scene.
00:57:16.000 There's not that many guys out there.
00:57:17.000 So if Bellator did lose Jimmy, who the fuck else?
00:57:21.000 Who do they get?
00:57:22.000 He does all their fights.
00:57:24.000 Yeah, they probably would call you.
00:57:25.000 And you would do a great job, I'm sure.
00:57:27.000 Brian Stan does a great job.
00:57:29.000 Kenny Florian, of course, does a great job.
00:57:31.000 The guy, he's always been one of my favorites because he's a regular guy who just figured out how to get the answers to the shit he needed to get to.
00:57:38.000 You know what I mean?
00:57:39.000 He wasn't some big, powerful genetic specimen.
00:57:42.000 He was kind of a nerd who was like, if I can just figure out how to do this, okay, that worked, but this didn't.
00:57:46.000 And over time, he analyzes the same way.
00:57:48.000 But where I was going with Jack, talking about Jack, is he did this.
00:57:51.000 I'm sure it's him.
00:57:53.000 I'm remembering this amazing breakdown on Nick Diaz.
00:57:56.000 Yes.
00:57:57.000 And I'm pretty sure it was Jack.
00:57:58.000 If it isn't, if it was a different guy, I apologize.
00:58:00.000 But it's looking at Nick Diaz's striking compared to old-school bare-knuckle boxers.
00:58:06.000 You know, the guys with the mustaches fighting like this?
00:58:09.000 And it looks at it, and there's so many comparisons.
00:58:12.000 Weight on the front leg, catching punches with the top of his head.
00:58:16.000 It's so brilliant.
00:58:18.000 It must be Jack, because Jack's the best guy out there.
00:58:21.000 Yeah, he's done a bunch of great stuff.
00:58:23.000 He even wrote a whole piece on George St. Pierre versus Nick Diaz.
00:58:29.000 In advance of it or after?
00:58:30.000 I believe it was in advance.
00:58:32.000 And he wrote a breakdown afterwards.
00:58:34.000 He writes a bunch of those things, man.
00:58:36.000 Part of the reason he's so good is he's working so much.
00:58:40.000 He's in that zone.
00:58:42.000 But nobody knows who he really is.
00:58:45.000 Does anybody know what he looks like?
00:58:46.000 No.
00:58:47.000 And he doesn't want that, and I think that's super cool.
00:58:49.000 I think he's British.
00:58:51.000 I'm pretty sure he's British.
00:58:52.000 Yeah, I believe he is too.
00:58:53.000 But it's cool, man.
00:58:55.000 It's a little niche, but people are finding it interesting.
00:58:57.000 I always feel like, you know, you look at other sports, and on Monday, the ESPN will have a two-hour show.
00:59:04.000 And they will go into what happened.
00:59:06.000 And it won't be like, well, this guy threw a thing and the highlight will only be the catch.
00:59:10.000 They'll show what happened at the line.
00:59:12.000 They'll show, they'll talk about what kind of plays these guys called and stuff.
00:59:15.000 That kind of analysis.
00:59:16.000 Like, all you guys do a fucking killer job.
00:59:18.000 But the before and the after and stuff, that's an area I always wish the UFC concentrated on more, especially during the really passion years.
00:59:28.000 The heavy work has always been on the hype and the excitement and this guy hates and these two are the best and stuff.
00:59:33.000 But during that era, you feel like if you got 20% or 30% or 40% of the audience to be obsessed with the technique.
00:59:42.000 And I think a lot of times people went and showed how to do a triangle, not how to watch a triangle.
00:59:47.000 Right.
00:59:47.000 You know what I mean?
00:59:48.000 I see what you're saying.
00:59:49.000 But it feels like in a lot of other sports, they have spent time to develop a personality.
01:00:11.000 I agree with you.
01:00:16.000 It would be nice to see that.
01:00:18.000 They're doing a lot of that, though, on the breakdowns that they do on Fox, on Fox Sports.
01:00:23.000 You know, like Carlos Condit does a fantastic job of that.
01:00:24.000 I haven't seen his.
01:00:26.000 No, I'm sorry.
01:00:27.000 Did I say Carlos Condit?
01:00:28.000 I didn't mean Carlos Condit.
01:00:28.000 Who the fuck?
01:00:29.000 Who does that?
01:00:33.000 Dominic Cruz.
01:00:33.000 Dominic Cruz does a great job of it.
01:00:35.000 You're talking about Demetrius Johnson.
01:00:38.000 Dominic Cruz, if he can come back the way that he was, he's one of those super brilliant, mind-blowing performers, too.
01:00:44.000 Yeah, well, he's great as far as movement and footwork, and his conditioning is always top-notch, too.
01:00:50.000 Dominic is just so good at, like, not being there.
01:00:53.000 Like, you swing for him, and he's off to the left, and then he's countering you off to the right, and you're like, fuck him, where is this guy?
01:01:00.000 But he does a great job.
01:01:01.000 Like, he did a great breakdown of Kung Lee versus Rich Franklin.
01:01:05.000 Yeah, with the right hook, I think.
01:01:06.000 Yeah, right hook.
01:01:07.000 Drew out the right hook.
01:01:08.000 Yeah, he did a great job of explaining, like...
01:01:11.000 When someone is head straight up in the air and they don't move off the center line, that shit drives me crazy.
01:01:17.000 I watched it and I was like, fucking who's training you?
01:01:21.000 What's going on here?
01:01:22.000 And then you watch a guy like TJ Dillashaw so satisfying because he does all the right things, because he's constantly moving off the center line, because he's completely unpredictable.
01:01:32.000 Like when Dominic did a great, he did a great breakdown of what Franklin did wrong and where the errors were.
01:01:37.000 And he's done that for a bunch of different fights.
01:01:40.000 So Dominic is really good at that.
01:01:41.000 Yeah, he's fucking talented.
01:01:44.000 When we're talking about Dwayne Ludwig, when he's teaching, he'll say, you make no errors unless you're making them on purpose.
01:01:51.000 And what he means by that is if you, obviously, you show, well, this is here, the guy will throw a punch.
01:01:55.000 We want him to do that and we'll respond.
01:01:57.000 And there's a really wild, heavy case of it where you see...
01:02:01.000 I broke it down and if you even just look at the fight itself, you see it as soon as somebody mentions it, was Jacare versus Okami.
01:02:14.000 So Jacare, the whole fight...
01:02:17.000 All he's got in mind is the overhand right.
01:02:20.000 And the way for him to draw that out is, you know, how everybody, you know, when they talk about where the front foot goes, you know, against the southpaw, he's got his front foot intentionally inside, and he's offering a straight line to his chin for the straight left.
01:02:33.000 And Okami, you can see him seeing it and going, no, shit, he wants me to throw that.
01:02:38.000 Oh, shit, he's doing, he's ready to counter it.
01:02:40.000 And the hesitation on Okami is like, it's such a fascinating moment as a guy's going...
01:02:46.000 Look, I'm out here.
01:02:47.000 You can hit me with it.
01:02:48.000 And he's going, oh, he's telling me I can hit him with it, but he's got that right hand ready.
01:02:52.000 And just those moments to me are the fascinating shit.
01:02:54.000 Well, it's also even more fascinating when it comes to a guy like Jacare is because if you do engage, the real fear is that he's going to take you down.
01:03:01.000 So, there's always this thing, when you're striking with a guy who's such an elite grappler, it's like, this guy's trying to goad me into a slugfest, but I know that he's going to change levels and take me down at any moment, so you're always hesitant to really commit to shots and extend yourself, because if you extend yourself, it makes it much more difficult to defend and take down.
01:03:18.000 A guy like Okami is also, or a guy like Jacare rather, is also fascinating because he started out his career as one of the elite of the elite in grappling and really had bad striking in the beginning.
01:03:29.000 When he got knocked out by Makako, his striking was just very rudimentary, which wasn't very good, but now he's destroying guys with striking.
01:03:38.000 Like, he beat the fucking shit out of Yushin Okami with striking.
01:03:42.000 And, like, that's terrifying to people because now you take this guy who is this just phenomenal top 1% of all grapplers ever.
01:03:51.000 I mean, I think Jacare, like, out of elite jiu-jitsu guys, he's, like, top 1% ever.
01:03:56.000 And now, destroying people with stand-up.
01:03:59.000 It's, like, the focus that made him a great jiu-jitsu fighter and the athleticism is now making him an elite striker.
01:04:06.000 And that's terrifying.
01:04:07.000 Yeah.
01:04:08.000 What is always kind of an additional terrifying is that you don't see him for like a year.
01:04:14.000 When a guy's not around for a year, you're like, what the fuck is he doing?
01:04:17.000 Like, what does he have now?
01:04:19.000 What new things does he have?
01:04:20.000 What does he do better?
01:04:21.000 What's way faster than it was a year ago?
01:04:23.000 That always scares the shit out of me.
01:04:25.000 It excites you when there's a fight coming, but you're like, shit, man, what has this guy been doing in the lab for the last year?
01:04:31.000 Maybe he's got some crazy shit we don't even know about.
01:04:33.000 Yeah, well, he's definitely getting better.
01:04:35.000 He's not slacking off, I guarantee you that.
01:04:37.000 But did you see when he got elbow surgery and they cleaned out his elbow?
01:04:40.000 Did you see that?
01:04:41.000 Oh, pull that up, Jamie.
01:04:43.000 Jacare elbow surgery pictures.
01:04:47.000 He had, before he fought Francis Carmont, he had, like, really bad, like...
01:04:56.000 Bone spurs and chips and shit inside of his elbow.
01:04:59.000 It was like, you know, all the years of elbowing people and also of getting armbarred, like, things break off inside your elbow and it becomes, like, crunchy and you're moving it around.
01:05:10.000 It's just all inflammation and tissue damage.
01:05:13.000 And look, we'll show it to you up on the big screen, but it's really fucking crazy.
01:05:18.000 Like, there's a cup of all the things that they remove from his elbow.
01:05:22.000 He's got teeth in his elbow.
01:05:23.000 It looks like teeth.
01:05:25.000 Oh, that's disgusting!
01:05:26.000 Chunks of bone and cartilage.
01:05:28.000 And all ripping apart all the stuff around it all the time.
01:05:31.000 You know, people don't...
01:05:33.000 You know, how could they?
01:05:34.000 But nobody really sees a guy who's a black belt level guy who's been training you and Eddie and...
01:05:44.000 Black belt level guys train all their life.
01:05:45.000 They have no idea what that does to their joints and their bodies.
01:05:49.000 Jiu Jitsu is a fucking vicious sport.
01:05:52.000 It's a hard, vicious sport.
01:05:55.000 Kickboxers will look over at the Jiu Jitsu area and they see the guys stretching and stuff and they go, look at these guys.
01:06:00.000 They don't want no part of that.
01:06:01.000 They don't want to go in there and have their skeleton all stacked by a guy.
01:06:05.000 It's a vicious sport.
01:06:06.000 Well, it's a sport that I'm realizing.
01:06:08.000 Like, one of the things that I did, I made some mistakes with my jiu-jitsu training.
01:06:13.000 And one of the mistakes that I made was for a long time, I didn't do any strength and conditioning equipment.
01:06:18.000 The strength and conditioning training, I did mostly just jiu-jitsu.
01:06:22.000 Like, for years and years, I would lift weights like maybe once a week or something like that.
01:06:26.000 I'd get a little lift in just to kind of maintain my strength and size.
01:06:29.000 But I didn't specifically, like, strengthen my core, strengthen my spine, strengthen...
01:06:40.000 Yeah.
01:06:56.000 Big guys tend to try to muscle things.
01:06:58.000 The really technical guys are always the really small guys because they don't have the muscle-up option.
01:07:04.000 So their option is only to use the proper technique and leverage.
01:07:07.000 But strengthening your body is important just to prevent injuries.
01:07:12.000 Strengthening your hamstrings to prevent knee injuries.
01:07:14.000 Strengthening your quads to prevent knee injuries.
01:07:17.000 Strengthening your neck.
01:07:18.000 Strengthening your back.
01:07:19.000 Strengthening lower back.
01:07:21.000 Stretching.
01:07:22.000 A lot of guys slack off on that shit.
01:07:24.000 And I did too.
01:07:25.000 And I got some...
01:07:26.000 Some pretty serious back injuries because of that.
01:07:28.000 Because I wasn't strengthening those areas.
01:07:31.000 For the longest time, I very rarely worked my back.
01:07:36.000 I didn't do rows or any exercises specifically.
01:07:40.000 So having an issue with discs and stuff like that forced me to really concentrate on that.
01:07:44.000 Yeah, that's nasty stuff.
01:07:46.000 Yeah.
01:07:47.000 And then, you know, guys get back injuries.
01:07:49.000 Doctors give them, like, opiates and stuff.
01:07:51.000 That shit can wreck their lives.
01:07:52.000 Oh, for sure.
01:07:53.000 Like, a bad back injury leads to something like that.
01:07:55.000 And next thing you know, you're...
01:07:56.000 You're a junkie.
01:07:57.000 Yeah, you're fellating dudes for money for heroin.
01:07:59.000 Hey, how'd you get there?
01:08:01.000 It was a bit of a leap, I recognize.
01:08:03.000 But...
01:08:04.000 What is your martial arts background?
01:08:06.000 When did you start doing martial arts?
01:08:07.000 I started about nine, Taekwondo.
01:08:10.000 I have a black belt in Taekwondo.
01:08:11.000 I trained through high school.
01:08:12.000 All in Canada?
01:08:13.000 All in Toronto?
01:08:14.000 Yeah.
01:08:14.000 K.S. Cho College.
01:08:16.000 I grew up in Manitoba.
01:08:17.000 You know what?
01:08:18.000 My parents are the coolest people ever on earth.
01:08:22.000 I was just like a weird kid and I really liked Bruce Lee and stuff.
01:08:26.000 I was really interested in martial arts and I was pretty hyper and odd and didn't have a lot of focus.
01:08:31.000 Once they said, if you're serious about this, we'll do it.
01:08:33.000 They would drive me an hour and a half each direction to Winnipeg to go train three times a week for my whole, as a kid, teenager.
01:08:40.000 That's amazing.
01:08:40.000 It was amazing.
01:08:41.000 You've got great parents, man.
01:08:43.000 Holy shit.
01:08:43.000 It changed my whole life.
01:08:45.000 I competed.
01:08:46.000 I did really well and stuff.
01:08:48.000 I enjoyed it.
01:08:49.000 I had interest in every martial art, so I did a little Sikaran, which is like a Filipino martial art.
01:08:54.000 What's it called?
01:08:55.000 Sikaran.
01:08:55.000 How do you spell that?
01:08:56.000 It's S-I-K-A-R-A-N. It's like Kali?
01:09:00.000 No, Arnis and Kali are an offshoot of Sikaran.
01:09:03.000 It's a Filipino martial art, and it's very much like Taekwondo, but when they compete, they stick their hands in their belt, and it's all spin kicks and hook kicks and shit.
01:09:12.000 It's super cool.
01:09:13.000 They put their hands in their belt.
01:09:14.000 They compete like wide stance with their head far back, lots of hook kicks off the front, and no hands.
01:09:20.000 It's a kicking.
01:09:20.000 It's like savant almost.
01:09:22.000 Wow.
01:09:22.000 But savant does have hands now.
01:09:24.000 It's modified to have hands over time.
01:09:25.000 So I did a lot of that.
01:09:27.000 No blocking either?
01:09:28.000 No.
01:09:29.000 All moving your head and your body.
01:09:31.000 It was just a very Winnipeg thing.
01:09:33.000 This one central area of Canada This Filipino master of it came there and he started a school.
01:09:39.000 He was a really good businessman.
01:09:41.000 So it ended up being in the whole world, if you looked at where Sikaran was taught, the Philippines, and there was a chunk, a little red dot in the middle of Canada because this guy was there and he had a bunch of schools and people studied, and a lot of Filipino population.
01:09:53.000 So I did a little of that.
01:09:54.000 Wow, that's crazy.
01:09:57.000 Sikaran's really cool.
01:09:57.000 Check it out.
01:09:58.000 I don't know how much there'll be of modern stuff on the internet, but it's basically a ton of round kicks, hook kicks, and spin kicks with your weight heavy on the back leg.
01:10:06.000 So it's sort of like kicking, like a martial arts version of soccer.
01:10:10.000 Yeah.
01:10:11.000 Like you can't use your hands at all.
01:10:12.000 Like fencing with your feet.
01:10:13.000 Yeah, I mean like you can't even like block.
01:10:15.000 No.
01:10:16.000 That's so ridiculous.
01:10:17.000 Yeah, it's really weird.
01:10:18.000 I mean, but is boxing ridiculous?
01:10:20.000 You can only punch.
01:10:21.000 Yeah, but at least you can block.
01:10:23.000 Yeah.
01:10:23.000 Yeah.
01:10:24.000 Actually, you would see a lot of.
01:10:27.000 I always found it interesting, even just as a kid, I was curious.
01:10:30.000 Guys would be doing, you'd go to the tournaments and guys are all doing hook kicks and then shift forward and spin kick.
01:10:35.000 All of a sudden, guys started doing this from there where they would just bounce on their back leg hooking and round kicking.
01:10:42.000 So they'd bounce towards each other doing that, so they were tapping.
01:10:44.000 It's just an interesting thing as a teenager to see.
01:10:47.000 And then I started playing in a rock band in my 20s, so I didn't do much martial arts at all out Did you practice music before that?
01:10:54.000 When did you get involved in music?
01:10:57.000 Growing up as a kid, Bruce Lee and Alice Cooper were like my two hands.
01:11:01.000 Ah, okay.
01:11:01.000 So that's where the glam rock came from, the makeup and...
01:11:04.000 Yeah.
01:11:04.000 And late mid-twenties, I started playing in a band and I really liked performing.
01:11:09.000 And I did a lot of jumping and kicking and wearing tight pants.
01:11:12.000 Like David Lee Roth style.
01:11:15.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:11:17.000 Somewhere between David Lee Roth and the New York Dolls.
01:11:19.000 Oh, wow.
01:11:20.000 And very drunk, very fucked up through the whole era.
01:11:24.000 We would go and we...
01:11:26.000 Oh, man.
01:11:27.000 And I told Eddie this story.
01:11:28.000 I haven't told a lot of people this story, but people asked me about it.
01:11:30.000 My friends asked me about it recently.
01:11:32.000 But I was basically on tour, so I could do that for like 10, 12, 14 years.
01:11:35.000 Yeah.
01:11:36.000 We're touring England and the UK and Italy and a few places like that.
01:11:42.000 We did really well over there and I had a seizure from just doing so much drugs and drinking so much.
01:11:50.000 When I came back, the doctor said the vodka and Red Bull was actually the biggest The fact that I took a lot of speed over the three days without sleeping let me drink more vodka and red ball but basically as the sugar leaves your body it goes down and you get sick and when the alcohol then leaves your body it draws more sugar out and you have a hypoglycemic seizure.
01:12:12.000 So I'm laying on the couch I felt terrible for like 10 hours and then all of a sudden apparently I just yelled something and people came over and I felt this electricity shoot down my arms into my hands and they just locked up and I rolled back down my eyes rolled in my head I thought it was 10 seconds later and everyone was looking at me like I just got knocked out.
01:12:30.000 And then apparently it was like a minute or something.
01:12:32.000 And I went back and the doctor said, dude, you've got to get your life together.
01:12:35.000 Wow.
01:12:35.000 And then I started training martial arts again pretty much that day.
01:12:39.000 And then I trained three times a week, then five, then seven.
01:12:42.000 Then I was doing jiu-jitsu Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 7 a.m., noon and 6 p.m.
01:12:47.000 And Tuesday and Thursday, noon and 6 p.m.
01:12:49.000 Wait a minute.
01:12:50.000 You were training jiu-jitsu three times a day?
01:12:52.000 Three times a day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, twice a day, Tuesday, Thursday, for about six months.
01:12:56.000 And then people kind of knew me a little in Canada, like on television doing stuff.
01:13:00.000 I was like a reality show judge.
01:13:03.000 And the network said, oh, you're going to fight?
01:13:05.000 Well, why don't we do a TV show about that?
01:13:07.000 And that kind of allowed me...
01:13:09.000 I really wanted to be in the fight world.
01:13:11.000 That's what I loved.
01:13:12.000 The second I kind of had, you know, been not living a crazy lifestyle, all I wanted to do was martial arts.
01:13:19.000 And then really from that minute on, that's all I kind of did.
01:13:22.000 That's all I was interested in.
01:13:24.000 Wow.
01:13:25.000 Wow.
01:13:26.000 It's crazy that you blacked out from Red Bull and vodka.
01:13:30.000 So the hypoglycemic aspect of it is just super bad for you, huh?
01:13:35.000 Yeah.
01:13:35.000 Oh, yeah.
01:13:36.000 In fact, my wife just told me this morning, unrelated, she was on the internet and she said, Toronto looking to ban alcohol and Red Bull served in bars.
01:13:47.000 Just popped up this morning on the internet.
01:13:50.000 That's so crazy.
01:13:51.000 I never thought of that as a bad drink.
01:13:53.000 Yeah.
01:13:53.000 Yeah, very dangerous.
01:13:55.000 Once something like that happens to you, you look it up on the internet, there's a lot of that going on.
01:14:01.000 Hypoglycemic seizures as a result of vodka Red Bulls.
01:14:03.000 That's so funny.
01:14:05.000 When it's hypoglycemic, what if you use sugar-free Red Bull?
01:14:08.000 Does it have a lesser effect?
01:14:10.000 It could help, yeah.
01:14:10.000 It could help!
01:14:11.000 I'm trying to give it a go.
01:14:13.000 I'm enabling folks.
01:14:13.000 Give it a go.
01:14:14.000 I feel like it's always like a weird thing when you mix an upper and a downer too, right?
01:14:19.000 And that's what you're doing with alcohol and Red Bull.
01:14:21.000 If you smoke a bit of weed and you drink a coffee, it's kind of the same thing.
01:14:24.000 Not really though, because I don't think weed is a downer.
01:14:27.000 It's not a downer in terms of like a depressant.
01:14:30.000 Alcohol is a true depressant.
01:14:32.000 Weed, like, you could smoke a joint and lift weights and have a great workout.
01:14:36.000 I can't.
01:14:37.000 You can't?
01:14:37.000 No, man.
01:14:38.000 You need to hang out with me more.
01:14:39.000 Yeah, maybe so.
01:14:41.000 Oh, man, all I want to do is, like, chill out.
01:14:43.000 I'll watch fights, I'll do a bit of writing or whatever, but I tend to get a little introverted and a little mellow.
01:14:49.000 I don't know, it's just...
01:14:50.000 You know what's fantastic?
01:14:52.000 Weed and yoga.
01:14:53.000 Yeah, that would make sense to me, for sure.
01:14:56.000 It's amazing.
01:14:56.000 Stretching.
01:14:57.000 I was talking to my friend Aubrey about this the other day.
01:14:59.000 There's this buddy that we know that makes these, they're called jambos, these organic edibles.
01:15:09.000 He uses honey instead of processed sugar, and they're really delicious.
01:15:14.000 They're super strong and you know Aubrey ate one and then went on this like two-hour stretching and like Rampage was like like using a lacrosse ball to roll out all the the tight tissue that makes just makes you really in tune it makes you feel like I like lifting weights on it because it makes me like feel like what my body's doing I feel like I can get like a sense a better a more in tune more sensitive and Yeah,
01:15:41.000 I'd be afraid of, not afraid, but I don't feel like doing something physical, but I'd definitely give it a try.
01:15:47.000 Is weightlifting for you, that's become like a martial art, right?
01:15:51.000 It is to me.
01:15:51.000 I think of, especially Olympic lifting, that's a martial art.
01:15:54.000 In what way?
01:15:55.000 At Olympic lifts, say a clean or a snatch, you work forever on the little details to try to make yourself calm enough to be able to express yourself with the lift.
01:16:07.000 To be able to really put it all together.
01:16:10.000 You move one way wrong, you don't nail the lift.
01:16:12.000 You distribute your weight different in your feet, you don't nail the lift.
01:16:15.000 You don't drive and tie your hips together with the same time that you're supposed to go up on your toes and shrug, you don't hit the lift.
01:16:20.000 So it becomes this Ongoing work to try to make this thing better.
01:16:24.000 I see what you're saying, yeah.
01:16:26.000 And man, doing an Olympic clean to me is one of the great things in the world.
01:16:32.000 To be able to just really hit one.
01:16:33.000 It's such a full body exercise too.
01:16:36.000 It really enhances your ability to explode.
01:16:39.000 Anytime you're doing anything where you're pushing up from your toes from the ground and extending and lifting it up over your head and forcing your whole body to fucking power that up.
01:16:49.000 Everything.
01:16:49.000 Your whole chain, your core, your spine, everything.
01:16:56.000 Your shoulder, your delts, your quads, your toes.
01:17:00.000 Your toes are pushing.
01:17:02.000 That's why Steve Maxwell is a big proponent of lifting weights barefoot.
01:17:06.000 Yeah.
01:17:06.000 He thinks that, you know, when you have a, like, especially a spongy sort of like a running shoe on, where it's like a lot of give, that you're not feeling, you know, you're not engaging your toes, pushing off the ground.
01:17:19.000 I think it'd also take away some of your force.
01:17:21.000 Some of the force you're exerting, it would kind of absorb it a little bit.
01:17:25.000 I definitely, they, a lot of the Olympic lifters around where I go, I go to this place, Bang Fitness in Toronto, and it's just like, It's the best part of my week to go in there.
01:17:33.000 And most of the guys who Olympic lift just use the tiny, tiny, tiny shoe.
01:17:38.000 Yeah, really thin sole.
01:17:40.000 Yeah.
01:17:41.000 I like those.
01:17:41.000 A lot of people criticize those toe shoes.
01:17:44.000 You know, apparently they made a bunch of ridiculous claims that aren't necessarily true.
01:17:48.000 I still like them.
01:17:49.000 I love them for lifting weights.
01:17:51.000 They're so comfortable for lifting weights.
01:17:53.000 And again, the same thing.
01:17:53.000 They're really flat and they make you feel...
01:17:56.000 I like the fact that the toes are all free moving because you can push off with those things.
01:18:01.000 You feel like your connection to the ground.
01:18:04.000 But yeah, I'm a big fan of Olympic lifts.
01:18:07.000 I'm a big fan of obviously of kettlebells.
01:18:09.000 I'm a big fan of anything where you're doing these explosive strength exercises.
01:18:14.000 They just make your body so much goddamn stronger.
01:18:16.000 You just feel good doing them.
01:18:17.000 You know, talk about drugs or whatever.
01:18:20.000 It's like you get endorphins from doing full body lifts.
01:18:24.000 Hey, have you ever seen that?
01:18:25.000 On the internet, these kinesiologists broke down in like milliseconds, Bruce Lee's one-inch punch.
01:18:31.000 Yeah, I've seen that.
01:18:32.000 Isn't that crazy?
01:18:32.000 And they show that it's actually the order in which his body fires.
01:18:36.000 And it's like the millisecond, the shred of a millisecond in between the different body parts kind of firing one after the other.
01:18:43.000 It's fascinating.
01:18:44.000 It is fascinating.
01:18:45.000 You know, I used to be a...
01:18:47.000 Well, I still am a huge fan of Mike Tyson, but one of the things that I used to always be fascinated about Tyson and people didn't comment on is the size of his fucking legs.
01:18:55.000 Like, that's where all the power was coming from.
01:18:57.000 He was, like, pushing off the floor, constantly, like, pushing off the floor, and just...
01:19:03.000 Everything was, like, thrusting from the bottom.
01:19:06.000 And when you see a guy punching, you assume, like, oh, it's his body, his upper body, his arms are throwing the punch...
01:19:13.000 But really, with a guy like Tyson, those vicious power punches, it was all coming from his ass.
01:19:18.000 From his toes down, pushing off, and all his quads and his upper body throwing it into it.
01:19:25.000 It's amazing how much of your full body is involved in techniques.
01:19:32.000 And kettlebells, Olympic lifts, stuff like that.
01:19:35.000 The bottom half attaches to the top half.
01:19:39.000 That strength in between those two.
01:19:40.000 That's definitely the big part.
01:19:42.000 When you compete, what weight do you compete at?
01:19:44.000 135. Whoa!
01:19:45.000 What do you walk around at?
01:19:47.000 Probably 158 right now.
01:19:49.000 Wow!
01:19:50.000 That's a lot.
01:19:51.000 Drain yourself, huh?
01:19:52.000 Yeah.
01:19:53.000 I mean, when I was fighting for me, even at the beginning, was trying to figure out what's going on.
01:19:58.000 Like, really understand it to the point that I can fairly analyze it.
01:20:02.000 And I really felt like that I had to go in and do it.
01:20:04.000 Also, you become a better person going and doing that.
01:20:07.000 You know, pushing.
01:20:08.000 You talked about it just today.
01:20:10.000 You're pushing, taking risks, going and putting yourself in harm's way, putting yourself at risk of failure.
01:20:15.000 I mean, that's part of it.
01:20:16.000 But really, it's to figure out stuff.
01:20:18.000 Being forced to make heavy weight is tough.
01:20:20.000 Going to a weigh-in and seeing a guy want to kill you.
01:20:22.000 All of those experiences, I think, helped my real calling of analyzing fights.
01:20:28.000 Why did you decide to cut so much weight?
01:20:30.000 It started out, my first fight, I probably walked around at 145 pounds, and then you cut weight, and your next fight, you're 148 pounds.
01:20:38.000 And then you cut all that weight, and you come back, and you gain your 150 pounds.
01:20:42.000 I was also 39 when I took my first fight, and now I'm 45. So over the six years, I gained three pounds a year.
01:20:49.000 Just muscle lifting weights.
01:20:50.000 Yeah, lifting weights, working really hard, changing my life from eating burgers and shit and drinking beer at lunch to working out twice a day.
01:20:59.000 All of that just added three, four pounds of muscle a year.
01:21:02.000 And each time you cut weight, after you've gained the weight back, you fought.
01:21:06.000 And then you've had your couple of days to eat pizza and burgers and stuff.
01:21:10.000 The weight that you are then is a pound or two heavier than it was the last time you were there.
01:21:15.000 Really?
01:21:15.000 Yeah, at least it was for me.
01:21:17.000 So these guys, at least maybe in your 30s and 40s, so a lot of these guys, you know, they either have a perfect, and I was going to say they have a perfect diet, but a lot of these guys celebrate the way that you deserve to celebrate after you fought a fight, and they don't have the perfect diet right after.
01:21:31.000 But that walking around weight creeps up a little bit, at least it did for me.
01:21:35.000 Well, the lighter weight guys, traditionally, those have been the guys that have the shortest careers.
01:21:42.000 The lighter weight guys, when they get into their 30s, it starts to drop off, whereas heavyweights, In their 30s, a lot of times they're just hitting their prime.
01:21:49.000 You know, like you could have a heavyweight...
01:21:51.000 Like, look, George Foreman won the heavyweight title at 45 years old.
01:21:53.000 46, actually.
01:21:55.000 And was the oldest heavyweight champion.
01:21:58.000 And was the oldest boxing champion until Bernard Hopkins recently.
01:22:01.000 Which is just...
01:22:02.000 The freakiest of freaks.
01:22:04.000 He's the strangest guy ever.
01:22:06.000 He's amazing to me.
01:22:08.000 Do you know him?
01:22:09.000 Have you got to know him?
01:22:09.000 No, no, no, no.
01:22:10.000 I need to meet him.
01:22:11.000 I've never met him, but I've admired his style.
01:22:14.000 I was amazed back when he beat Kelly Pavlik, which was like, what was that?
01:22:20.000 2007 or something like that?
01:22:23.000 Seven years later, he's still blowing people away.
01:22:26.000 It's wild.
01:22:27.000 It is wild.
01:22:28.000 Who's that football player that was fighting in, was it Bellator?
01:22:32.000 Hershel Walker?
01:22:32.000 Hershel Walker.
01:22:33.000 He's 50-something.
01:22:35.000 He was 48 when he was fighting Strikeforce.
01:22:38.000 Oh yeah, Strikeforce, of course.
01:22:41.000 Shredded.
01:22:41.000 I mean, he was goddamn shredded and just a beast at 48. But Hershel Walker's...
01:22:48.000 Something going on there that's not kosher.
01:22:52.000 I mean, with his brain.
01:22:53.000 Because he says that he eats a salad and drinks a bowl of soup in a day and that's it.
01:22:58.000 That's not even possible to keep that kind of mass.
01:23:01.000 Well, I mean, we could get some doctors and dieticians and they would 100% tell us there's no way that could be true.
01:23:07.000 Right.
01:23:07.000 So when a guy tells you that all he eats is a salad and drinks a cup of soup every day, you're like, okay, I don't know what he's doing.
01:23:12.000 He might be fucking with people.
01:23:14.000 Yeah, I don't know.
01:23:15.000 There's something not kosher about that, though.
01:23:17.000 Yeah, it's weird.
01:23:17.000 But he's so yoked.
01:23:19.000 It's crazy to see that kind of muscle mass on a 48-year-old guy.
01:23:23.000 No loss of muscle mass.
01:23:25.000 In fact, he looks like a 25-year-old guy in his prime.
01:23:30.000 Well, the science.
01:23:31.000 I mean, it is not cool to suggest that somebody's doing something, but not talking about him necessarily.
01:23:37.000 You mean performance enhancing drugs or something.
01:23:39.000 Yeah, but the science of many guys in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.
01:23:44.000 The science is there to make a 65...
01:23:46.000 I mean, we've all seen photos of those 70-year-old guys just shredded.
01:23:49.000 Look at Stallone.
01:23:50.000 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:23:51.000 Stallone is like 67 years old now, and he's ripped.
01:23:55.000 I wish I had his body.
01:23:57.000 No, crazy.
01:23:57.000 It's ridiculous.
01:23:58.000 It would be fascinating to get a real, one of these guys on the front end of anti-aging and human performance, that science, to figure out like, okay, a bodybuilder uses this much growth hormone.
01:24:09.000 A guy like, say, an actor on CSI maybe uses like this much, you know, like anti-aging.
01:24:14.000 How much is this 70, how much is Stallone using?
01:24:17.000 You know what I mean?
01:24:18.000 To get a sense of where the chemistry is happening.
01:24:21.000 Like, is this more?
01:24:23.000 Is this different?
01:24:24.000 Do you have the new shit that we don't know about?
01:24:26.000 Like, what's going on at the elite level?
01:24:28.000 Like, Stallone was, I don't, I mean, he's not an athlete, so it's not a big deal, but he was caught at an airport once with a whole bunch of...
01:24:34.000 It was in Australia, because it's illegal in Australia.
01:24:37.000 They have weird laws when it comes to hormones, even hormones that are prescribed by doctors that don't show any negative effects on the body.
01:24:44.000 When used at normal doses, meanwhile, they have alcohol at every fucking store, you know, every bar in every corner.
01:24:49.000 Yeah, it's all crazy.
01:24:50.000 Science is fucking weird.
01:24:51.000 Medicine's weird.
01:24:52.000 It's ignorance.
01:24:53.000 It's not the science or medicine that's weird.
01:24:55.000 It's the ignorance.
01:24:57.000 No, it's essentially the people that are dictating the rules, the people that are writing the laws, their ignorance about understanding the effects on the human body that these substances have.
01:25:08.000 If it's done correctly...
01:25:10.000 And if it's done through proper medical supervision, it enhances the body.
01:25:14.000 And that's what people don't understand.
01:25:15.000 When you arrest a guy like Stallone, who's showing up with growth hormone, and he's, why don't you just let him take his shirt off and look, does he look bad?
01:25:24.000 He's healthy, he's performing well, he's happy, his life is good.
01:25:27.000 What exactly is going on here?
01:25:29.000 It's also, it's not like he's competing in some sport where he has some unfair advantage.
01:25:33.000 No, he's an old guy who wants to have a body that works good.
01:25:37.000 For sure.
01:25:38.000 And why is it okay that that old guy could go to the bar and just do shot after shot until his fucking liver collapses and no one stops that, but you have a problem with him bringing in boxes of human growth hormone.
01:25:50.000 It's weird.
01:25:51.000 It is weird.
01:25:52.000 For some reason, people...
01:25:54.000 When something...
01:25:56.000 It happens that people decide something is a law or bad or they've made a decision on something.
01:26:02.000 It takes forever to change it.
01:26:04.000 People are anti-science, right?
01:26:06.000 They're anti-science.
01:26:08.000 So it's like you'd go, no, look, this is why this is good.
01:26:10.000 No, because since the 60s we've said this is bad, therefore it's bad.
01:26:14.000 Well, I think when it comes to growth hormone and testosterone and all these different things, where people have an issue is because the way it's played out in the public eye has been all about illegal use in sports.
01:26:29.000 Right.
01:26:29.000 It's been about the Barry Bond situation.
01:26:31.000 It's been about Mark McGuire.
01:26:33.000 It's been about all these people that are taking these things and cheating in sports.
01:26:38.000 So because our associations have been all about people getting unfair advantages in sports, people automatically assume that these substances are bad for you.
01:26:49.000 When you look at cigarettes, which are one of the worst things for you ever, no one's stopping that from being legal.
01:26:55.000 Those are everywhere.
01:26:55.000 There's people that make hundreds of billions lobby to make that stay legal.
01:27:00.000 It's like, I'm making $100 billion.
01:27:02.000 I've got to get some government person to say, cigarettes is okay.
01:27:06.000 Let's keep that cool.
01:27:07.000 It's motivated by finance, by commerce.
01:27:10.000 Yeah, but that's why I don't understand.
01:27:12.000 You could sell testosterone, too.
01:27:15.000 That could be motivated by finance as well.
01:27:17.000 It's just there's a big difference between the way people look at...
01:27:20.000 There should be a big difference between the way people look at someone who's doing something that's a performance-enhancing drug that's allowing them to compete with an unfair advantage in a sport and doing it where if you're a guy like Sylvester Stallone and you're doing it to enhance your life and you're 70 years old or whatever and you're shredded,
01:27:37.000 who gives a shit?
01:27:38.000 Let the guy do whatever he wants.
01:27:39.000 Well, what if there's an element of trying to keep a difference between the people at the top and the people at the bottom?
01:27:48.000 What if all the people at the bottom got testosterone?
01:27:51.000 That would be harder to manage them, harder to kind of keep them...
01:27:53.000 What do you mean?
01:27:55.000 The societal difference between the oppressed, the people who are kind of at the bottom of the food chain, the people who run shit, the kind of people who kind of monitor how the world kind of works, prefer to keep people watching TV, not really eating bad food,
01:28:12.000 smoking cigarettes.
01:28:14.000 There's a direction to keeping some of society not super active.
01:28:17.000 And those people don't want those people to take performance-enhancing drugs.
01:28:21.000 They want them to smoke cigarettes and eat hamburgers and shit.
01:28:23.000 I wonder if that's a real conscious decision.
01:28:26.000 You know, that's a thing that gets thrown around a lot, that accusation gets thrown around that there's some sort of international cabal that's looking out to keep the proletariat down.
01:28:37.000 But not so much saying that there's some room somewhere where 20 guys are in there making decisions, just the feeling, the way that society kind of breaks itself up.
01:28:47.000 If these laws happen for this reason, it keeps these guys rich.
01:28:50.000 The way that society kind of divvies shit out, it just kind of ends up being that way.
01:28:54.000 I think it kind of ends up being that way more than anybody's trying to make it that way.
01:28:58.000 I think that what people have when it comes to testosterone and human growth hormone and anti-aging and all these, the stigmas that people have on whether it's the efficacy of them or the dangers of them, is a lot of it is based on sports.
01:29:12.000 A lot of it is based on all the negative press that we've heard about guys taking steroids in sports.
01:29:17.000 And then there's, you know, in MMA, there's this huge issue with testosterone replacement therapy, which was up until very recently legal.
01:29:25.000 Now, human growth hormone has always been illegal, but they were never testing for it until recently.
01:29:32.000 When Chael Sonnen got popped for human growth hormone, it was a big deal because it let everybody know, like, oh boy, these new tests.
01:29:40.000 Like, I had a conversation with Chael about it right after he got popped.
01:29:44.000 Well, turns out these new tests are really good.
01:29:46.000 And that's really what it was.
01:29:49.000 They're doing these tests that cost $45,000 per athlete.
01:29:52.000 Wow.
01:29:52.000 Yep, it's all financed by the UFC. Lorenzo pays for all this shit, and they're testing the blood.
01:29:57.000 I guess either do it or don't, and they're doing it.
01:30:00.000 And they're doing it, they have this, like, really intense chain of evidence where, like, the guy will show up at your house, take your blood, and it's like, you know, a fucking suitcase.
01:30:08.000 He's got chained to his wrist.
01:30:09.000 Like, it's one of those type of deals.
01:30:10.000 The guy travels with it to wherever the lab is.
01:30:13.000 Like, it's in his custody the entire time.
01:30:15.000 And they take the blood from your body, he signs off on it, and they bring it to the laboratory, and then the laboratory analyzes it.
01:30:22.000 And you're finding...
01:30:23.000 They're gonna find out a lot of guys are taking shit.
01:30:26.000 Of course.
01:30:27.000 It's a really interesting one.
01:30:29.000 It's such a large thing.
01:30:30.000 It's like people will try to talk about it in a three-minute chunk on TV or write one article about it.
01:30:35.000 But it's such a large philosophical thing, right?
01:30:38.000 We have to look back at what it means to strive and want to succeed and want to win and the desire to be great and all that.
01:30:45.000 I mean, shit.
01:30:46.000 We can go and train at elevation, which will increase your red blood cell count, but you can't take EPO, which will do the same thing.
01:30:54.000 And for a lot of guys, it's like...
01:30:56.000 You know, they want to be great.
01:30:58.000 And it's like at the low levels or the mid-levels, the guys are broke.
01:31:01.000 You know, maybe it's not as vital.
01:31:03.000 But at the top of it means $5 or $10 million.
01:31:05.000 And that chasing greatness has always been there.
01:31:08.000 And this doctor's like, I can help you chase greatness.
01:31:11.000 That's naturally, instinctively there to go, Well, let's explore everything.
01:31:15.000 Right.
01:31:15.000 Well, that's where the Balco guy came in.
01:31:18.000 Yeah, right.
01:31:18.000 The Victor Conte guy who came along and came up with some different strategies for avoiding tests, some drugs that hadn't been detected yet that they found were effective.
01:31:28.000 They sort of manipulated the components of some various performance-enhancing drugs.
01:31:33.000 And that's where they got that stuff that they called the Clear that they were giving, allegedly, to Barry Bonds and a bunch of different people.
01:31:39.000 I had Conte on the podcast, and he sort of explained the whole process behind all that stuff.
01:31:43.000 Wow.
01:31:43.000 He's a fascinating cat because now he's kind of working hard to stop doping in sports, which is like really a weird position to take when that was your whole career was like juicing guys up.
01:31:54.000 I think I saw him on like Dateline or something.
01:31:56.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't know how I feel about that.
01:31:59.000 It's weird.
01:32:00.000 It is very strange.
01:32:06.000 Yeah.
01:32:07.000 Yeah.
01:32:11.000 Yeah.
01:32:24.000 And so then Chris Weidman posts, hold on, is this what happens when you replace TRT with TNT? And he shows a picture of TRT Vitor versus the recent Vitor who's off testosterone.
01:32:35.000 And he has shrunken.
01:32:37.000 I mean, he has really, like Luke Rockhold just said that he has a chicken neck now.
01:32:41.000 I mean, it's weird.
01:32:42.000 And that's going to get to him.
01:32:43.000 You know what the easiest thing to do to get a guy in the gym, a big, like...
01:32:48.000 Now that's the wrong photos.
01:32:50.000 Because that's a photo of him before testosterone placement and after.
01:32:54.000 What you want to see is...
01:32:55.000 During and after.
01:32:56.000 Chris Weidman comments on Vitor Belfort TRT and look for a photo.
01:33:01.000 The guys will be like, well, I didn't really need it.
01:33:03.000 It's like, then why were you taking it?
01:33:04.000 Yeah, how can you say that?
01:33:05.000 Yeah, of course.
01:33:06.000 And you look at him.
01:33:07.000 But there's definitely all kinds of stuff at play.
01:33:11.000 That will dramatically affect his confidence.
01:33:14.000 Oh, yeah.
01:33:15.000 And his confidence.
01:33:16.000 How are you throwing spinning head kicks in the eye?
01:33:18.000 Because you've got this level of confidence.
01:33:19.000 I can do it.
01:33:20.000 That's not going to just affect how he looks and what he can do.
01:33:23.000 It will affect the way he performs, without question.
01:33:25.000 Yeah, shrink that down so we can see the full image.
01:33:28.000 Yeah, wow.
01:33:29.000 Look at this.
01:33:29.000 Look at his body, like on the right-hand side.
01:33:32.000 It looks like he's lost at least 15 pounds.
01:33:35.000 Yeah, and his neck and the swelling under his chin.
01:33:38.000 That's crazy.
01:33:39.000 His neck has shrunk.
01:33:41.000 It really is.
01:33:41.000 Look at the difference in the left picture, like how high his traps are, and the right picture.
01:33:46.000 It's nuts.
01:33:47.000 I mean, his body is shrinking.
01:33:50.000 It looks so different.
01:33:52.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:33:52.000 It's a strange one too because you go into a gym with bodybuilders, you want to get a guy just freaking out.
01:33:59.000 He looks smaller today.
01:34:00.000 Don't lose their shit.
01:34:02.000 Those guys especially.
01:34:03.000 A guy's been walking around in the world with the craziest body that you've ever seen and now people online go and he's got a chicken neck.
01:34:11.000 That's going to affect his choices from here.
01:34:14.000 It's a tough place to be for him.
01:34:15.000 Gotta stay offline.
01:34:16.000 Yeah, for sure.
01:34:18.000 He's definitely going to hear about all these things that people are saying about him.
01:34:21.000 And it's interesting because people are saying, like on the underground, people are speculating, like, maybe this is going to make Vitor start using again.
01:34:28.000 And if he does start using again, then he's going to piss hot.
01:34:31.000 And it's also about, like, they're testing these guys.
01:34:35.000 Who's testing them?
01:34:36.000 Where are they testing them?
01:34:37.000 How are they being tested?
01:34:39.000 You know, is it going to come down to the UFC has to show up at the gym every day while a fighter's training and have them pee in a cup every day?
01:34:49.000 Yeah, good point.
01:34:50.000 What is the way to tell if a guy's taking anything?
01:34:54.000 Because the problem with urine tests especially, because guys would joke around about it.
01:34:59.000 They would say it's not even a drug test, it's an intelligence test.
01:35:03.000 If you test positive when they're testing your urine, you're a fucking idiot.
01:35:07.000 Because all this stuff, like oral testosterone is out of your system within 24 hours.
01:35:12.000 Human growth hormone is out of your system within 10 hours.
01:35:16.000 You can't even test, I don't think, human growth hormone without using blood.
01:35:20.000 I don't even think you can test in urine.
01:35:23.000 So these guys that were getting popped, they were just doing it completely wrong.
01:35:27.000 So now that there's this really stringent testing, you've got to think, well, guys are cheating in the Olympics.
01:35:34.000 Right.
01:35:34.000 If they're cheating in the Olympics, how are they getting away with it?
01:35:37.000 That's some of the most stringent testing ever.
01:35:40.000 Because they know when they're going to be tested.
01:35:42.000 That's a new protocol, yeah.
01:35:43.000 A new thing.
01:35:44.000 It's like, okay, at 3 o'clock in the morning you set your alarm, you take this one at 3. You drink this many liters of something before you do that.
01:35:51.000 Yeah, they'll find a way.
01:35:53.000 Because the game is to try to win.
01:35:56.000 And try to win every little scenario.
01:35:58.000 And the doctor who's trying to fix this thing, he's got a game to try to win too.
01:36:01.000 People are motivated to try to do great things.
01:36:04.000 And this doctor's assignment in life, your assignment in life, well, you have 20, you know, you'll make people laugh and call fights and do a million things, but his is to beat drug tests.
01:36:16.000 This doctor, this one doctor here, his goal is to go out there, wake up tomorrow and fucking figure out how to win this contest of beating this test, you know?
01:36:25.000 Yeah, I'm really curious to see what's going to happen to these guys that were on testosterone replacement and now they're off.
01:36:33.000 Because Chael Sundin's retired, he's out of the business, but Vitor's still in it, and Vitor is one of the few guys from 1997, when he made his debut, that is at the elite level today in 2014 and is ready to fight for a title.
01:36:47.000 So it's really interesting.
01:36:50.000 Yeah, it really is.
01:36:50.000 It's really, really interesting.
01:36:52.000 But hormones are a weird thing too.
01:36:54.000 My thyroid burned out.
01:36:55.000 And I never thought of this until like...
01:36:57.000 This is how stupid...
01:36:59.000 Like I grew up by a nuclear power plant.
01:37:01.000 Like in this town called Pinawa, Manitoba.
01:37:03.000 There's like a nuclear research plant there.
01:37:05.000 And when I was young, my mom's thyroid went out.
01:37:07.000 And then when I was in my 30s, mine just ended up dying as tumors.
01:37:11.000 And so if they fixed it up, you take a hormone, two hormones that take your T3 and T4. And the other one is...
01:37:22.000 TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone.
01:37:24.000 Those three things go out of whack when your thyroid is off.
01:37:26.000 You feel like shit.
01:37:27.000 Like you can't function when your hormones go out of whack like that.
01:37:31.000 So imagine somebody, I don't know what it would be like to have your testosterone at that level, but it's got to throw you the fuck out of whack.
01:37:37.000 Yeah, well, these guys that get off of it, the thing is when you take testosterone, you put this artificial testosterone in your body, your body stops producing regular testosterone.
01:37:47.000 So if they had low tests before, it's even lower now because your body stops taking it.
01:37:52.000 You're injecting all this stuff into your system.
01:37:54.000 And, you know, he's only 37 years old.
01:37:57.000 It's a weird thing to have old man testosterone levels at 36, 37 years old, and then to have to face a fucking beast like Chris Weidman, knowing that Vitra Belfort, when he fought Michael Bisping,
01:38:12.000 when he fought Luke Rockhold, when he fought Dan Henderson, all these guys, he was on this artificial stuff.
01:38:18.000 And it was making him super confident.
01:38:20.000 He was built.
01:38:21.000 He was strong.
01:38:22.000 He was super explosive.
01:38:24.000 And now all that's gone.
01:38:25.000 And now he's still got technique.
01:38:27.000 And Weidman's a motherfucker.
01:38:28.000 He's a motherfucker.
01:38:28.000 And he's like, man, you look at that guy.
01:38:32.000 You look at what...
01:38:33.000 He's a weird one, too.
01:38:34.000 You don't even look at him and think he's just a modern amalgamation.
01:38:38.000 He's just genetically better than us.
01:38:40.000 He's more handsome than us.
01:38:41.000 He's funnier than us.
01:38:42.000 He's more confident than us.
01:38:44.000 He's genetically better than 97, 99% of all men on Earth.
01:38:49.000 And he learns fast.
01:38:51.000 And he's incredibly driven.
01:38:53.000 And he grew up wrestling.
01:38:54.000 The thing about wrestlers, they just spend their whole time dominating other men.
01:38:58.000 That's all they're about growing up.
01:39:00.000 They dominate other men physically.
01:39:02.000 That's who that guy grew up with.
01:39:03.000 Then he learns well.
01:39:04.000 He's got the best coaches.
01:39:05.000 Everyone believes in him.
01:39:06.000 Like a guy like that.
01:39:07.000 We called that he was going to beat Anderson Silva.
01:39:09.000 He was in our studio and we're talking to him.
01:39:11.000 And you talk to this guy in advance and he fucking believed without a shadow of a doubt he was going to beat him.
01:39:18.000 Even turned down, remember this, he turned down his contract renewal.
01:39:21.000 And said, no, I'll beat him and then I'll sign my new contract.
01:39:23.000 I know I'll have to beat him twice.
01:39:25.000 Everything he said came true.
01:39:27.000 Everything.
01:39:28.000 Yeah, he's an animal.
01:39:29.000 Yeah, that's crazy.
01:39:30.000 And he did it all with his knees all fucked up.
01:39:32.000 You know, a lot of people don't know, he couldn't even bring his heel up to his ass.
01:39:36.000 Like, his knees were so arthritic.
01:39:38.000 And then he went and got that Regenikine done in Germany.
01:39:41.000 And then after he had that done, he still had to get his knees scoped.
01:39:45.000 But against Liotto, his knees were great, and now he's throwing kicks at him and shit, and he's a different animal.
01:39:52.000 He's an unusual dude.
01:39:53.000 He really is.
01:39:54.000 He can take it, too.
01:39:55.000 That's the other thing about Weidman.
01:39:57.000 Like, Liotto unloaded on him in the fifth round, and he was still there.
01:40:00.000 And kind of asking for more.
01:40:01.000 Yeah, fourth and fifth round.
01:40:02.000 When he was at Fight Network, he had a couple hours to kill until he went to the airport, and he was hanging out, and Ramdeen started playing him in ping pong.
01:40:10.000 And Ramdeen was getting a slight better of him.
01:40:12.000 He fucking got dead serious.
01:40:14.000 I want a better paddle.
01:40:15.000 I'm not fucking around here.
01:40:16.000 Dead serious.
01:40:17.000 And he's like, I don't like to lose.
01:40:19.000 He's still having fun.
01:40:20.000 We're having a great time.
01:40:22.000 But he did not want to lose that game.
01:40:24.000 It was not in him to let this guy beat him at ping pong.
01:40:27.000 He's not a ping pong guy even.
01:40:29.000 He just is not having it.
01:40:30.000 Just not having it.
01:40:31.000 There's a lot of guys like that.
01:40:33.000 I played Jake Ellenberger pool once, and Ellenberger, who's a fucking stud, he's not very good at pool.
01:40:38.000 And I've been playing pool a long time, and he's fucking, every time I was winning, he's like, fucking shit.
01:40:44.000 Damn it.
01:40:44.000 Like, you can see, like, he was handling it, but he didn't like it.
01:40:47.000 Yeah.
01:40:48.000 But that's the quality that makes them great fighters.
01:40:51.000 That unwillingness to lose.
01:40:53.000 The guy who wants to fight you if you fucking beat him at pinball.
01:40:58.000 That's that quality that makes them a great fighter.
01:41:02.000 Hating losing.
01:41:03.000 Once you're getting at this point where these guys are the top, top guys, They have to have all of it.
01:41:08.000 They have to have that quality.
01:41:09.000 They have to have that genetics.
01:41:10.000 They have to have those coaches.
01:41:11.000 They have to have that mental game or else there's just no way.
01:41:14.000 That's how good the whole level is now.
01:41:16.000 It's still getting better.
01:41:17.000 It's shocking.
01:41:18.000 Ellenberger had that fight with Rory and he's never been a shit talker.
01:41:23.000 And all of a sudden he was talking all kinds of shit on Twitter and stuff.
01:41:26.000 And when he got in there, it raised that pressure so high That, you know, it wasn't that I, like, I gotta beat this guy.
01:41:35.000 It was, I just can't lose bad to a guy I called a fruit stick on the internet.
01:41:39.000 And the pressure of it.
01:41:40.000 That's why when people are so excited about Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier, I'm like, this kind of, although it's great, I love that people are into a fight.
01:41:46.000 I love, like, that there'll be a million more people than normally watching a fight.
01:41:49.000 That's, I love that.
01:41:50.000 That's awesome.
01:41:51.000 But for me personally, I just want to see them fight.
01:41:54.000 They're going to fight whether they hate each other or not.
01:41:56.000 They're going to go in there and we're going to see 25 minutes or less of these two guys putting together their lifetime of everything to fight.
01:42:02.000 Whether or not that guy hates that guy isn't really all that relevant to me.
01:42:05.000 Yeah, I agree with you.
01:42:08.000 I was torn on that whole thing because part of me loves the fact they're fucking with each other and getting into each other's heads.
01:42:16.000 But I think that it's not a good representation of mixed martial arts to see two guys who are at the elite level have a street fight like that.
01:42:23.000 I hated that.
01:42:24.000 I loved when they were talking with no mic on because that was real.
01:42:27.000 That was funny when Jon Jones puts the microphone and goes, Hey pussy, are you there?
01:42:31.000 That's amazing.
01:42:34.000 And then I would kill you.
01:42:35.000 I would kill you.
01:42:36.000 I would literally kill you.
01:42:37.000 I would literally kill you.
01:42:38.000 And he's like, John, you think I would just let you kill me?
01:42:40.000 Yeah.
01:42:41.000 Come on, Daniel.
01:42:42.000 You can do better than that.
01:42:42.000 I'm a big Cormier guy, man.
01:42:44.000 Although John Jones is absolutely brilliant.
01:42:46.000 But when they fought each other on a stage, I hated that.
01:42:49.000 Stupid.
01:42:49.000 Like...
01:42:50.000 Two of the best athletes in the world, and that's the worst fight I've ever seen.
01:42:54.000 I don't want no part of that.
01:42:55.000 It's bad.
01:42:55.000 People are going, oh, you watch that show?
01:42:57.000 Oh, you work in that business?
01:42:58.000 Look at these idiots.
01:42:59.000 That's terrible.
01:43:00.000 But when they were talking about each other with a camera on, that's real, and there's so little real in the world.
01:43:05.000 You fucking win some...
01:43:08.000 Hip-hop award and you got to thank God and your fucking producer and you know I just feel so blessed and I want to thank the fans it's like fucking bullshit let me see what you say when there's when there's not everybody there yeah that's the thing about that getting John and Daniel well apparently that video was pulled Yeah.
01:43:26.000 There was more.
01:43:27.000 Apparently, when they said, guys, you're on the internet.
01:43:30.000 I think, again, it's Melcher might have that.
01:43:32.000 Hey, guys, you're being shot.
01:43:34.000 This could be around the world.
01:43:35.000 And Jones' face just went like, holy shit.
01:43:40.000 He was like...
01:43:41.000 Like, he realized, you know?
01:43:43.000 That's the best part.
01:43:45.000 I don't know why that part didn't get shared.
01:43:47.000 Well, you know, everybody's trying to put up an image.
01:43:51.000 Like, John's depiction of what happened when he first met Daniel.
01:43:54.000 I was just trying to make a new friend.
01:43:56.000 Like, what?
01:43:57.000 They both told the exact same story.
01:43:59.000 Only he said, I did this, this, this.
01:44:02.000 He did that.
01:44:03.000 This happened.
01:44:03.000 He was a dick.
01:44:04.000 And I go, yeah, I did this, this.
01:44:06.000 This happened.
01:44:06.000 But I was just fucking around.
01:44:08.000 But they tell the exact same story.
01:44:09.000 Well, he wasn't even saying he was fucking around.
01:44:11.000 He was like, I was just trying to form a new friendship.
01:44:13.000 Like, what?
01:44:14.000 Fuck you were.
01:44:15.000 You're trying to let some dudes in your division know that you're the fucking king.
01:44:19.000 You ain't taking me down.
01:44:21.000 You know, he was like trying to let him know.
01:44:22.000 He was trying to fuck with his head and let the gamesmanship begin.
01:44:25.000 And that stuff is definitely...
01:44:28.000 That's all interesting because that's all real, too.
01:44:31.000 That's all having a real effect on the outcome of a fight.
01:44:34.000 All of that mental stuff.
01:44:36.000 You know, guys at the weigh-ins, how they act.
01:44:38.000 I mean, you've seen the science where they looked at the smiles?
01:44:42.000 No, there's a science to it?
01:44:44.000 Yeah, these guys, so check that out on the internet.
01:44:46.000 These researchers, these sociologists go and they looked at hundreds or thousands of UFC weigh-ins and they found that guys who smiled lost an extremely large percentage of them.
01:44:57.000 Really?
01:44:57.000 Yeah, for real.
01:44:58.000 Wow.
01:44:59.000 For real.
01:44:59.000 And because that moment is a moment of the starting of the conflict between the two males, between the two alpha males.
01:45:06.000 It doesn't start when the cage chorus starts.
01:45:08.000 It starts when we're setting the tone of who's who in there.
01:45:11.000 And when the smile is a giveaway of a certain...
01:45:13.000 There's two kinds of smiles.
01:45:14.000 One's called the Cheshire smile, and it is a smile of, I'm going to fucking kill you.
01:45:18.000 And that one doesn't count.
01:45:19.000 They look at the actual types of smiles.
01:45:21.000 It's real.
01:45:22.000 It's fascinating.
01:45:23.000 That one doesn't count.
01:45:24.000 No, because it's a different expression.
01:45:26.000 You can look at slivers of expression in psychology and what they mean, and that one means something different.
01:45:34.000 Isn't that fascinating, the difference in understanding facial expressions?
01:45:39.000 Human beings kind of get when someone's creepy, but would a robot be able to figure that out?
01:45:45.000 Study finds smiling fighters are losing fighters.
01:45:48.000 But that's not always true.
01:45:50.000 John Dodson smiles every fight.
01:45:52.000 That's not a good example.
01:45:53.000 He smiles before he fucks people up, too.
01:45:56.000 The math.
01:45:57.000 You look at the math and it's like whatever the numbers are.
01:45:59.000 There are exceptions.
01:46:01.000 They might lose whatever 68% of the time or 63%.
01:46:03.000 That's higher than the 50% that you would think.
01:46:05.000 But that still means there's 32% of other guys who smile and kick ass.
01:46:10.000 It just shows that there is a sway in the statistical truth of that.
01:46:15.000 That's funny.
01:46:16.000 Donald Cerrone and Anthony Pettis.
01:46:18.000 Actually, I did a breakdown.
01:46:19.000 I'll send it to you of what the impression of alpha male posturing, the effect that that has on fighting.
01:46:27.000 So guys will stand there and they'll project a certain posture.
01:46:31.000 There was research done at the University of Harvard, Harvard University, about alpha posture and what happens if you're interviewing me for a job and I have a certain posture and they talk to you after, you'll score me much higher of your opinion of me.
01:46:45.000 Also, yeah, and that affects your – when we go to fight, and like Uriah Faber has that a lot, and he projects a certain thing, and that will affect your performance.
01:46:55.000 But the science actually shows that it affects his performance as well because there's certain postures that when you do them, your testosterone raises a measurable amount and your cortisol drops a measurable amount significantly.
01:47:06.000 Just by doing a certain physical posture.
01:47:08.000 What?
01:47:09.000 Yeah, it's real, man.
01:47:10.000 A physical posture makes your cortisol drop and your testosterone raise.
01:47:14.000 Well, instead of testosterone therapy, why don't guys just posture all day?
01:47:17.000 Some guys do.
01:47:19.000 Would that really work?
01:47:20.000 Well, there's a few of them and a big one...
01:47:22.000 Somebody tell Vitor.
01:47:23.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:47:24.000 Just drive that shit all the way up.
01:47:25.000 His neck will swell up again.
01:47:27.000 This trap's...
01:47:28.000 It's a Harvard research, and they did it to measure your biological responses to your own physical posture, but it also, there's an interpretation of the other guy.
01:47:40.000 So I broke that down, and then I took a piece of Donald Cerrone standing there looking over at Pettis.
01:47:45.000 And then I've superimposed what Cerrone said after.
01:47:47.000 And he said, I looked across the cage at him and I looked at him and I thought, dang, I pissed him off and he's coming hard.
01:47:53.000 And it was the worst performance he's ever had.
01:47:54.000 And he talks openly.
01:47:56.000 Cerrone's fascinating because Cerrone's a regular guy who deals with fear and uses it appropriately.
01:48:02.000 And he talked about looking over, and he literally said, I saw that guy, and he said, after, I knew I had to see a psychiatrist, like a sports psychiatrist, or a psychologist, because there's no way I should be about to fight a guy, and the things going through my mind is, oh man, I pissed him off.
01:48:16.000 Never should happen.
01:48:17.000 But it was, in part, the posture of Pettis that projected that on him.
01:48:23.000 That's interesting.
01:48:24.000 Each of these guys who wear red win a slight percentage larger.
01:48:28.000 All of a sudden, GSP is wearing red every time.
01:48:30.000 Really?
01:48:30.000 Because guys are looking for 1% and 2% incremental raises.
01:48:34.000 There are certain guys, anyways.
01:48:35.000 Why does red make you win more?
01:48:37.000 I don't know.
01:48:38.000 I would think Mike Tyson always wore black.
01:48:40.000 Yeah, well, Mike Tyson was Mike Tyson.
01:48:43.000 Mike Tyson is going to wear pink.
01:48:44.000 Yeah, fuck, that's okay.
01:48:45.000 It's probably something that you see in the wild when you see a certain color in nature and it has an effect on you.
01:48:52.000 Red, huh?
01:48:53.000 Each of these things might be 1 or 2%.
01:48:56.000 In the end, if you can't fucking fight, it doesn't matter.
01:48:58.000 Right.
01:48:59.000 So if you have the physical skills and you have the technique and then you add on those other things.
01:49:04.000 Yeah, imagine both guys at the top level have all that.
01:49:07.000 They both have the best strength and conditioning on earth.
01:49:09.000 They both have the entire human history of fighting skills.
01:49:12.000 They both have all the mental training.
01:49:14.000 They have all that shit.
01:49:15.000 Shit, man, if I could get a half a percentage of increase on my side in any way, let's stack up two or three of those half percentages.
01:49:21.000 I wonder what the red thing is.
01:49:23.000 That's a weird one.
01:49:25.000 It's true in all sports.
01:49:27.000 Sports teams that wear red have won a slightly larger percentage of time than any other color.
01:49:32.000 Really?
01:49:32.000 Yeah.
01:49:33.000 Wow.
01:49:34.000 Why red?
01:49:35.000 I don't know, man.
01:49:36.000 This is the kind of shit that fascinates me.
01:49:38.000 You know, they also say that red sports cars get pulled over more.
01:49:41.000 Yeah.
01:49:42.000 It's something in nature.
01:49:43.000 It's something that we probably have to deal with as a threat evolutionary.
01:49:47.000 Well, red is a threatening thing.
01:49:49.000 If you see an animal that's red, like a snake that's red, you assume that that's a snake that could poison you.
01:49:56.000 But animals, there's no red predators, are there?
01:49:59.000 There might have been certain thousands of years ago.
01:50:03.000 T-Rex or some shit.
01:50:03.000 Yeah, of course.
01:50:04.000 In sports, red is a winning color.
01:50:07.000 Fascinating.
01:50:08.000 So you start stacking up all these sciences.
01:50:09.000 So now I got years worth of fucking breakdowns I can do just from all these things to reading and looking.
01:50:15.000 It's like you start to combine them.
01:50:17.000 You know, you got the evolutionary hand and you got the jaw and you got red winning.
01:50:21.000 You got alpha posture.
01:50:22.000 You put all that shit together.
01:50:23.000 What the fuck does that mean?
01:50:25.000 That's what I'm doing with my life.
01:50:27.000 That's interesting.
01:50:28.000 You know, I also am fascinated, and I want to bring this back to you competing at such a light weight.
01:50:34.000 I'm fascinated by the science of weight cutting and the negative aspects of weight cutting.
01:50:39.000 This is an important part of MMA. And one of the best examples, in my opinion, is Anthony Rumble Johnson.
01:50:45.000 Anthony Rumble Johnson fought at 170 for the majority of the first stint of his UFC career.
01:50:51.000 Fought one fight at 185 with Vitor Belfort.
01:50:54.000 Actually didn't even make the weight.
01:50:55.000 Was overweight.
01:50:56.000 Got cut from the UFC. And then started fighting heavyweight.
01:50:59.000 Fucked up Andrzej Orlovski as a heavyweight.
01:51:01.000 Was destroying guys in the first round.
01:51:04.000 Almost stopped him.
01:51:05.000 Really, probably they should have stopped that fight.
01:51:07.000 Then fought in the UFC as a light heavyweight.
01:51:12.000 Two fights in a row has just been a murderer.
01:51:15.000 Phil Davis is a world-class dude.
01:51:18.000 Full Davis couldn't take him down and just got battered on the feet and then destroyed Little Nog in the first round.
01:51:24.000 40 seconds of the first round.
01:51:25.000 Just lit him up like a Christmas tree.
01:51:26.000 And looks like the scariest guy in the world at 205 pounds when his first career was 35 pounds lighter than that.
01:51:35.000 That's crazy.
01:51:36.000 I remember seeing him in Ohio when I was sitting in the stands.
01:51:39.000 It was Rampage versus Keith Jardine.
01:51:42.000 And I was sitting in the stands and there's these pretty girls.
01:51:45.000 Look at the size of him.
01:51:46.000 What the fuck?
01:51:48.000 He's amazing.
01:51:49.000 What fight is that?
01:51:51.000 Staples Center.
01:51:52.000 It's probably...
01:51:53.000 Was that Phil Davis?
01:51:55.000 No.
01:52:00.000 That might have been him when he fought at 170, which is ridiculous.
01:52:03.000 Crazy.
01:52:04.000 But I saw him, and there was these hot girls and eight UFC fighters walked over.
01:52:08.000 Oh, hi, great to see you.
01:52:09.000 And I was like, oh, okay, those are the Ohio chicks, right?
01:52:12.000 And Anthony walks over just to say hello.
01:52:14.000 They might have fucking had a real job.
01:52:16.000 I don't know.
01:52:16.000 I projected that on them because they were pretty.
01:52:19.000 And he goes over.
01:52:20.000 That's him at 170. I turn to my buddy, and I'm like...
01:52:24.000 That huge guy, that fucking enormous guy looks a lot like Anthony Johnson.
01:52:28.000 And it was Anthony Johnson at like 240 pounds when he was a 170. But yeah, I mean the weight cutting thing...
01:52:35.000 I don't know how he did that.
01:52:36.000 Yeah, I don't know.
01:52:37.000 He almost killed himself probably doing it.
01:52:38.000 And I mean, if we're talking about measuring things that really work, looking at the math of like, is this better than this?
01:52:46.000 Okay, great.
01:52:46.000 You're eight pounds heavier than the other guy.
01:52:48.000 That raises your, let's say, if we're going to score your likelihood of winning, it raises 6%.
01:52:54.000 Well, it's the point of diminishing returns.
01:52:56.000 Yeah.
01:52:57.000 What if it drops you 8% because of the weight cut and stuff?
01:52:59.000 It's true.
01:53:00.000 For me, I mean, all of this was a learning experience so I could be a real analyst.
01:53:04.000 That's what I wanted to do.
01:53:05.000 So cutting weight was an experience that I really needed to have.
01:53:08.000 And understand it.
01:53:10.000 But wrestlers did it.
01:53:12.000 They were good at it.
01:53:13.000 Wrestlers were beating everybody and they were bigger and everyone else was like, we gotta do this.
01:53:16.000 And I think you're right.
01:53:17.000 I think you're absolutely right.
01:53:19.000 You gotta see guys get away from it eventually.
01:53:21.000 Get away from that huge weight cut.
01:53:22.000 Well, I wish guys didn't cut weight at all.
01:53:25.000 I mean, I really wish they fought and everyone made an agreement to fight at what you weigh.
01:53:29.000 But everybody wants this advantage.
01:53:31.000 But the problem is when both guys are seeking an advantage and they both try to achieve that advantage, what you actually wind up happening is you have both guys that are fighting not to the best extent of their abilities.
01:53:47.000 And so instead, neither guy has an advantage and both guys are compromised.
01:53:52.000 Yeah, and it's also dangerous when it comes to combat sports.
01:53:55.000 The difference between wrestling, which is a combat sport, but it's not a contact sport in terms of concussive blows.
01:54:02.000 Where you're dealing with striking, there's a big difference.
01:54:05.000 Almost all of the instances of brain damage and death that occurred in boxing because of boxing matches were lighter weight fights.
01:54:13.000 Not brain damage, it's like accumulative.
01:54:15.000 The heavyweight guys, of course, got that as well, but In fights where guys like had bleeding on the brain and then wound up dying.
01:54:23.000 Almost all of them.
01:54:25.000 There was one recent one that was a heavyweight bout with Eric Perez, fought a Russian guy, and the guy had some swelling of the brain and his career is probably over.
01:54:32.000 That was a prolonged beating, an unusual situation.
01:54:36.000 Whereas like Boom Boom Mancini and Duck Kukim, that was a severe weight cut.
01:54:41.000 Gerald McClellan, severe weight cut.
01:54:44.000 A lot of fighters who wound up having horrible tragedies inside the ring, it was because they had depleted themselves, they dehydrated themselves, and then they got beat up.
01:54:53.000 Yeah, there's got to be a death in a high-level MMA one day, and you would guess that if there was dehydration in the brain, that would add to it, for sure.
01:55:02.000 Well, a guy died in Brazil from cutting weight.
01:55:05.000 Yeah, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:55:06.000 It's true.
01:55:07.000 It was liver or kidney failure or something.
01:55:09.000 Kidney failure.
01:55:09.000 Yeah.
01:55:10.000 Which almost happened to Daniel Cormier when he competed in the Olympics.
01:55:13.000 He had kidney failure and they pulled him out of the Olympics.
01:55:15.000 Yeah.
01:55:15.000 And that big weight cut that guys do, one of the tools they use is hyperhydration where you use like a ton of distilled water.
01:55:24.000 To flush all your sodium, but it also is like a kidney trick, where it's actually tricking your kidney to perform a certain way.
01:55:31.000 It's really risky.
01:55:32.000 Yeah, I think in the long run, if everybody just said, yeah, let's just fight it.
01:55:36.000 Sam Stout and KJ Noons had a fight up in Quebec City, and they just, like, two days out, they're like, how much are you weighing, man?
01:55:43.000 I'm weighing about 171. What about you?
01:55:45.000 Like 170. You want to just fight at 170?
01:55:47.000 And they just did it.
01:55:49.000 Yeah, that's smart.
01:55:50.000 It is smart.
01:55:50.000 I mean, why torture yourself?
01:55:52.000 Especially if you're both doing it.
01:55:54.000 Yeah, it just doesn't make any sense.
01:55:55.000 If you're both walking around at 185 and you're both cutting down to 170, fight at 185. You know, you probably both fight better.
01:56:02.000 The trick is that everything's that arms race we were talking about.
01:56:05.000 Everything is somebody looking for an advantage to win.
01:56:08.000 So we agree to do it, but then I'm lying and I actually cut 15 pounds and now I'm way bigger than you.
01:56:13.000 You know what I mean?
01:56:14.000 Until you find a way to make it have to happen or make something that both guys adhere to for some reason that's safe, this is the way they're going to do it.
01:56:23.000 Yeah, it's interesting.
01:56:24.000 BJ Penn has a weird way of looking at things.
01:56:27.000 Because BJ, although he dropped down to 145 pounds when he fought Frankie Edgar in his last fight, would not IV. And Dolce tried to get him to IV. He wouldn't do it.
01:56:38.000 He feels like IVs are cheating.
01:56:40.000 That's weird.
01:56:41.000 Yeah, the IV's cheating, but cutting weight's not cheating?
01:56:46.000 Yeah, I know.
01:56:46.000 It's weird.
01:56:47.000 So, like, dehydrating yourself, getting on the scale of 145, and then drinking water's okay.
01:56:52.000 Yeah, but putting it into you a different route is not okay.
01:56:55.000 Yeah, there's something about, like, needles.
01:56:57.000 It's not natural, I guess, the idea.
01:56:58.000 I wouldn't agree.
01:56:59.000 I think most guys wouldn't agree.
01:57:00.000 He's a unique one, though, man.
01:57:02.000 But a lot of debate over in our office with a few friends and stuff about his place in the world.
01:57:08.000 Personally, I think B.J. Penn is one of the greats ever for a million reasons.
01:57:12.000 Certain people will say, well, his record says this or he never beat.
01:57:18.000 There's reasons that people argue it.
01:57:20.000 But I think the biggest thing is pure talent.
01:57:23.000 And one thing I think people sort of forget, you see a guy and you go to a guy's back and you trap his arm in there with the hook, that's a BJ Penn.
01:57:31.000 You take a guy on the fence and you turn your body sideways and you elbow him when you're defending the single, that's a BJ Penn.
01:57:37.000 Did we really see that at all before he fought Diego Sanchez?
01:57:41.000 When you got a guy in a triangle but he hides his arm over here and you pressure the straight arm bar against your face until he gives you the triangle, that's a BJ Penn.
01:57:49.000 There's all of these things that he did.
01:57:52.000 I don't know.
01:57:55.000 It's a weird one.
01:57:56.000 At the very least, he should be considered one of the most beloved fighters of all time.
01:57:59.000 Well, he is a great fighter, for sure.
01:58:01.000 And he's a two-division champion.
01:58:04.000 Without a doubt, he's an all-time great.
01:58:07.000 What I think about BJ is that BJ, at his very best, was outside of his comfort zone.
01:58:14.000 He brought in Marinovich to do strength and conditioning, and he just got in this unbelievable condition.
01:58:18.000 And when he fought Diego Sanchez, he was probably at his best.
01:58:21.000 He was just a destroyer.
01:58:23.000 And he had incredible endurance.
01:58:24.000 I mean, he fought and he had the same pace deep into the fight that he did at the beginning of the fight.
01:58:32.000 And that's what plagued BJ. B.J.'s just extremely, extremely talented, extremely game, very aggressive, but didn't like to train hard, didn't like to push himself, didn't like to get outside.
01:58:44.000 I mean, you know, he'll dispute that.
01:58:46.000 Of course he trained hard, but did he train the way he trained when he was with the Marinovichs?
01:58:51.000 Like, you would talk about how he couldn't even hold his kid at night because he was so tired.
01:58:55.000 But that's what it takes to be at that kind of level, you know, and he didn't like that.
01:59:00.000 And when we're sort of on this hand saying absolutely one of the greats ever, and the other side of the debate, that's one of them, and another one was I think his Yeah.
01:59:16.000 Yeah.
01:59:20.000 Yeah.
01:59:34.000 I'm the smaller guy.
01:59:35.000 I'm the quicker guy.
01:59:37.000 Enough with this other bullshit.
01:59:38.000 I'm just better.
01:59:39.000 I'm going to beat guys.
01:59:39.000 And then he fought guys like Rory and fucking Nick Diaz and these monsters.
01:59:44.000 There's no way this 145-pounder should be in there with Rory McDonald just sizing his lettuces.
01:59:49.000 He should have never been a 145er either, I don't think.
01:59:52.000 I think he looked like this skinny, emaciated version of BJ Penn when he was there.
01:59:56.000 I mean, yeah, you can make the weight if you just don't eat any food, but then your body eats itself.
02:00:00.000 Like, that's not smart either.
02:00:02.000 And then him at 170 was not like Frankie Edgar at 155. Frankie Edgar at 155 is ripped.
02:00:08.000 He's in shape.
02:00:09.000 He's moving fast.
02:00:10.000 BJ had a role.
02:00:12.000 You know, he looked pudgy.
02:00:13.000 He looked soft.
02:00:14.000 He just didn't look like the same guy.
02:00:15.000 And he fought well.
02:00:16.000 He's a very good fighter.
02:00:18.000 But...
02:00:19.000 His physical...
02:00:20.000 The correct weight for him, I will always think, is 155 pounds.
02:00:23.000 Or if there was a 150, maybe.
02:00:25.000 You know, if that existed.
02:00:26.000 Well, I think 55 is fine.
02:00:28.000 You know, when he fought Diego Sanchez at 55, it was perfect.
02:00:31.000 I think the issue was that BJ needs...
02:00:34.000 He needed to be outside of his comfort zone.
02:00:36.000 He needed to be away from that camp and be, you know, with a Matt Hume-type guy who organized his entire camp, brought in high-level guys...
02:00:45.000 He dictated his training and took him outside of his comfort zone.
02:00:50.000 Yeah.
02:00:51.000 But he also likes being in Hawaii.
02:00:53.000 He likes training in Hawaii.
02:00:55.000 There's a lot there.
02:00:58.000 There's that 10,000 hours theory, right?
02:01:01.000 There's a couple of guys who have done hard research under this.
02:01:05.000 And one guy, there's a book called Talent is Overrated.
02:01:07.000 And it's buying that.
02:01:09.000 It doesn't matter what you were born with.
02:01:10.000 If you outwork everybody, you'll be the man.
02:01:12.000 And the other one is called the sports gene, right?
02:01:15.000 And it's the opposite.
02:01:16.000 It doesn't matter how fucking hard you work.
02:01:18.000 If you don't have that gene, you can't do it.
02:01:20.000 Of course, the truth is somewhere probably in the middle.
02:01:22.000 Well, the truth is most certainly in the middle.
02:01:23.000 The issue is when you've got a guy who's got excellent genetics and is working hard, then you get a Jon Jones.
02:01:30.000 You get a guy who has fantastic genetics and is super disciplined and focused and trains very hard.
02:01:36.000 That's when you get true elite athletes like Jose Aldo.
02:01:39.000 You get the elite of the elite when you have the best of both worlds.
02:01:42.000 When you've got a guy who works really hard, but he has shit genetics, he will never achieve greatness.
02:01:47.000 They just don't.
02:01:48.000 I think you could get close to it even five years ago.
02:01:51.000 Like we mentioned Florian.
02:01:52.000 Florian doesn't have no genes.
02:01:54.000 He was just really smart and he worked really, really hard.
02:01:58.000 And look how close he got.
02:01:59.000 Close but not quite there because he just didn't have the genetics to do it.
02:02:04.000 But he sure as fuck got close for a nerdy little cat from Boston.
02:02:08.000 Well, he didn't have terrible genetics.
02:02:10.000 I mean, he was fast, he had good kicks, he had great jiu-jitsu, you know.
02:02:13.000 It's just these elite of the elite, the BJ Penn guys, the guys who just, they have that little something extra.
02:02:20.000 You know, these, these Lyoto Machidas, these, you know, there's guys that just have, they have everything.
02:02:27.000 They have genetics, like Weidman.
02:02:29.000 Genetics and hard work and focus and mental toughness.
02:02:33.000 And breeding.
02:02:34.000 His family was good.
02:02:35.000 His family took care of him.
02:02:36.000 Pointed, taught him the things he needed to learn.
02:02:38.000 He had all of it.
02:02:39.000 His dad was an NFL player.
02:02:41.000 So it's like, those genetics are strong.
02:02:45.000 That's all a big thing.
02:02:46.000 And also, I think growing up with brothers.
02:02:48.000 There's a lot of fighters that grow up with big brothers.
02:02:51.000 They're used to fighting in the house all the time.
02:02:53.000 And those guys wind up being motherfuckers, man.
02:02:57.000 Like Matt Hughes.
02:02:58.000 Matt Hughes and his brother.
02:02:59.000 His brother was a mirror.
02:03:00.000 Yeah.
02:03:00.000 He's got a twin brother who's also a savage, and they beat the fuck out of each other all the time.
02:03:05.000 And when you have that sort of an environment, man, you're extra tough.
02:03:10.000 You're extra strong.
02:03:12.000 Jon Jones, he's two super-athlete brothers.
02:03:15.000 And one of them is just so big.
02:03:17.000 340. He weighs 340. And he's still to this day.
02:03:22.000 And it's vertical.
02:03:22.000 You see, this guy's...
02:03:23.000 It's crazy.
02:03:24.000 It's a beast.
02:03:24.000 That's not human.
02:03:25.000 Super athlete.
02:03:26.000 Certainly not...
02:03:26.000 If you came from outer space and you looked down and you saw a pit bull and a chihuahua, you wouldn't think those were the same animals.
02:03:32.000 You saw me and John Jones' big brother, you wouldn't think we're the same thing.
02:03:35.000 Exactly.
02:03:36.000 You would just be like, oh, look, there's two different kinds of stuff.
02:03:38.000 This one's small and this one's 340. Yeah, Bridget the Midget and Shaquille O'Neal.
02:03:42.000 They're two completely different things.
02:03:45.000 Yeah, but they're the same species.
02:03:47.000 Yeah, there's genetics that are just undeniable.
02:03:49.000 And if you've got a guy who's got those fantastic genetics and he is just engrossed in MMA, I mean, his body, his mind, his focus, he lives it, breathes it, eats it, sleeps it, gets up in the morning and thinks, how do I get better?
02:04:03.000 That guy's going to be better than you.
02:04:05.000 And also there's physical power, especially when it comes to striking.
02:04:10.000 Physical power when it comes to striking is something you're either born with or you're not.
02:04:14.000 Dominic Cruz is not born with it.
02:04:15.000 He breaks his hands all the time and his body's kind of fragile in a way.
02:04:20.000 He's got the mind for it.
02:04:22.000 Yes, but will he be able to beat a guy like Burrell?
02:04:26.000 Will he be able to beat the guys who have The genetics and have that physical power as well.
02:04:31.000 There's these guys that have that knockout power.
02:04:35.000 Anthony Rebel Johnson.
02:04:36.000 There's a God-given gift.
02:04:38.000 The world has given him a hand of cards and it is excellent.
02:04:42.000 And then you put him with Henry Hooft who has a God-given gift to take guys like that and make them better and now we're terrified.
02:04:48.000 It's fucking scary.
02:04:49.000 And man, the beauty of how he moves...
02:04:54.000 I trained with a guy, Evan Boris, who's a kickboxing coach who trained with Henry.
02:04:59.000 He was one of the guys carrying his bucket and learning from him.
02:05:01.000 And he's just as passionate.
02:05:03.000 Young guy up in Toronto.
02:05:04.000 And he tells me all, he gives me insight into how Henry thinks and tries to show me stuff through Henry's eyes.
02:05:13.000 So you feel like you're learning one step down from this master.
02:05:16.000 And so his thing is with a guy like Anthony Johnson is that Henry Hooft...
02:05:22.000 We'll say to him, you know, you gotta be ready.
02:05:26.000 If you are ready, you don't gotta get ready.
02:05:28.000 That's the essential, fundamental plan of Anthony Johnson, the way he stands and the way he moves, is at all times you're in a type of balance where you can deliver power.
02:05:37.000 Because you have power, and we just need to keep you in a spot where you can deliver it all the time.
02:05:42.000 So his takedown defense revolves around that, the way his footwork works revolves around that.
02:05:45.000 It's all built so that at any moment in time when you throw a punch, you're in the state to be able to smash with it because you have that gift.
02:05:52.000 Yeah, and also when you see a guy like Hooft or anyone who teaches that classic Dutch style of kickboxing, it's such a technical style and that style can be lost on someone who doesn't understand what's going on.
02:06:04.000 Is that every movement has a purpose.
02:06:06.000 Every technique has a purpose.
02:06:08.000 Every technique chains into another technique.
02:06:10.000 The left hook leads to the right low kick.
02:06:13.000 And all these techniques, they go together like bread and butter.
02:06:17.000 They're a part of a system.
02:06:20.000 And Dwayne Ludwig is the best at breaking down.
02:06:23.000 He's got books.
02:06:24.000 He was over at my house the other day, and he had all these books of detail, all his techniques, and how they intertwine together, and he has steps and levels, and he has a whole belt system based around these techniques.
02:06:35.000 I mean, he's spent countless hours analyzing and categorizing and putting all this stuff together.
02:06:41.000 And that's what's sort of lost on a lot of people that you illuminate very well with your breakdowns.
02:06:47.000 Thank you.
02:06:47.000 I appreciate that, man.
02:06:48.000 I can't tell you.
02:06:50.000 When I wanted to do that, I wanted to do it for people like you and Bang Ludwig and fighters and people in the business.
02:06:57.000 I wanted them to like it.
02:06:58.000 You know what?
02:06:59.000 And it fucking means the world to me that people like it.
02:07:01.000 Well, you break down jiu-jitsu, too.
02:07:03.000 You broke down Eddie's match with Hoyler.
02:07:04.000 Yeah, jiu-jitsu is something I trained a lot for a while.
02:07:08.000 And then I was in an environment where I was literally in one day heel hooked by three guys who intended to injure me.
02:07:14.000 It was a really bad environment.
02:07:15.000 Who are you rolling with?
02:07:18.000 Not a rat, but it was like, you know, people.
02:07:21.000 And there were just guys in the gym, but there was a little culture of guys.
02:07:24.000 I'm like, who's that fucking guy?
02:07:25.000 He wears makeup.
02:07:26.000 He's on TV. He thinks he's a fucking...
02:07:27.000 And they came after me one day.
02:07:30.000 And they were trying to hurt you?
02:07:31.000 Yeah.
02:07:32.000 One for sure.
02:07:33.000 Going for heel hooks specifically to try to injure you.
02:07:35.000 Two of them were specifically heel hooks for the purpose of trying to injure me.
02:07:38.000 Wow.
02:07:39.000 And later I heard, I'd heard from a number of people that that was a bit of the MO of a couple.
02:07:43.000 Anyways, it's one of those things.
02:07:45.000 So I kind of got away from it for a while and then I started reading Eddie's books actually.
02:07:51.000 I'm going to train at his place tomorrow night.
02:07:52.000 Eddie's?
02:07:52.000 Yeah.
02:07:53.000 Last time I was in LA, I trained over there.
02:07:55.000 Fuck, you take one class with Eddie Bravo and your whole understanding of everything you think you know about Jiu Jitsu, the whole thing fucking falls apart.
02:08:04.000 It's so crazy.
02:08:06.000 That you sit there and it's like, these are positions people use.
02:08:09.000 You know, whatever, we'll take 10 or 15 of them.
02:08:11.000 And the guy goes, and in between, as you know, obviously, in between each of those, there's an entire universe of stuff to do.
02:08:19.000 In between the positions that people already know as positions, entire worlds, you know?
02:08:24.000 Yeah, but Eddie has done a fantastic job of...
02:08:31.000 Yeah.
02:08:45.000 Like, a guy in his gym will come up with some new variation on a specific technique, and then they'll add it to the rotation, and then they'll drill it, and then they'll try it from another angle.
02:08:54.000 Yeah, I remember when I was there just that one time, and I had trained with Eddie.
02:08:58.000 We met in Toronto one time, and I took him out for a bunch of drinks.
02:09:01.000 It was fun.
02:09:02.000 He's a really cool dude.
02:09:03.000 It's really cool to have a buddy like that.
02:09:05.000 And have him invite me to his gym and stuff.
02:09:08.000 And he, you know, I got his books.
02:09:12.000 And, you know, you see, okay, I understand mission control.
02:09:14.000 Make sure you got the leg locked, you know, the invisible collar, dewclaw, all that kind of basic stuff.
02:09:19.000 You read a little bit about his basics.
02:09:22.000 Read a little bit about twister side control and the twister.
02:09:24.000 And then you think you have an idea of what the Eddie Bravo system is if you read that.
02:09:29.000 Like, I thought, well, in the world of guys who know about MMA, I think I know, you take one class with them, you don't know fucking anything.
02:09:36.000 Like, there was something we did from some truck position, and my first curiosity was, I need to know how this guy's brain thinks.
02:09:43.000 Like, why he thinks these, how he comes up with this shit.
02:09:45.000 Because it was something that felt a lot like a lockdown position from another angle upside down while holding a leg.
02:09:51.000 And I'm like, okay, well...
02:09:52.000 Well, there's a lot of techniques.
02:09:54.000 You can reverse the positions of the bodies and just say, like, well, if I'm on my back, I get a guy with a triangle.
02:10:00.000 What happens if I'm not on my back, but I'm on his back?
02:10:05.000 Right.
02:10:06.000 And I'm behind him, and then can I catch a triangle there?
02:10:09.000 Yeah, it's kind of the same thing.
02:10:10.000 The arm is there.
02:10:11.000 It's like, remember when Matt Hughes choked out Ricardo Almeida?
02:10:15.000 Yeah, yeah, that front choke.
02:10:16.000 And he TP'd up with his head.
02:10:18.000 And that's essentially an arm triangle, but it's an arm triangle from a completely different position, from a head-to-head position.
02:10:25.000 It's a weird thing, but it's the same position.
02:10:28.000 It's still choking off the neck on one side with the forearm, and then with your own neck and your own body pressing against it on the other side.
02:10:38.000 And that element of wrestling, that was sort of a bulldog kind of wrestling kind of stuff.
02:10:43.000 The Schultz headlock.
02:10:44.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:10:44.000 And the weird...
02:10:46.000 To either in the moment or have trained it, either one is amazing, to figure out that the angle of elevating your hips so high drove that extra thing.
02:10:55.000 All those little elements made it beautiful.
02:10:57.000 You have a black belt under Machado as well?
02:10:59.000 Yes.
02:11:00.000 That's fucking crazy.
02:11:01.000 Yeah, you have a gi black belt and a black belt in the air system.
02:11:05.000 Well, I started training in 96. And so when you were training in 96, and guys would say, oh, there's a purple belt coming through town, everybody was blown away back then, right?
02:11:14.000 Like, was that the level still?
02:11:15.000 No, no, not in 96. Well, there was a few purple belts.
02:11:20.000 I mean, I started out at Carlson Gracie's.
02:11:23.000 I took one class at Hickson's.
02:11:25.000 See, back then in 96, I didn't know that there was a difference between Carlson Gracie and Hickson Gracie.
02:11:31.000 It was just Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
02:11:32.000 And the only reason why I went from Carlson's to Hickson's is that Hickson's was all the way across town.
02:11:37.000 Carlson's was much closer to me.
02:11:39.000 It was like a 20-minute difference in the drive, so I just started going to Carlson's.
02:11:41.000 And that was when Vitor had just made his debut against John Hess.
02:11:45.000 And they were actually calling him Victor Gracie.
02:11:48.000 And I even accidentally referred to him as Victor Gracie during one of the things that I did for the UFC in 1997. UFC 12, when I first started working for him.
02:12:00.000 Babyface.
02:12:00.000 That's fucking...
02:12:01.000 UFC 12, yeah.
02:12:02.000 Think about that, man.
02:12:03.000 How long have you been doing that?
02:12:04.000 I've said this a few times.
02:12:06.000 I don't know if...
02:12:06.000 You probably don't realize it because when you're in stuff, you don't...
02:12:10.000 Often people that are driven don't often pause to look and be proud of what they've done.
02:12:14.000 Maybe, hopefully you do that, but...
02:12:16.000 That you actually invented the idea of commentating this sport, which is very different than any other one.
02:12:22.000 And there's so many things that people think are just terms, but they're terms that you said.
02:12:28.000 Do you know what I mean?
02:12:29.000 Things that you said that are common, descriptive things, they think they've always existed, but they didn't exist before you said them in a lot of cases.
02:12:36.000 And that's really a wild thing, the influence in how people observe this great sport and how big an influence that is.
02:12:44.000 Well, I definitely don't think about it, but the difference between this sport and a lot of other sports is that this sport, the play-by-play guy is not the play-by-play guy.
02:12:54.000 The color guy is the guy who's the expert, the martial arts expert, essentially has to be the play-by-play guy as well because he has to break down the subtle nuances of positions to people that are watching at home, especially when it comes to the ground.
02:13:07.000 There's a big issue with explaining jujitsu to people that don't know jujitsu so they can enjoy it.
02:13:13.000 Because if someone doesn't know, like, why is that guy hurting?
02:13:16.000 What's going on there?
02:13:17.000 UFC 1. What happened there?
02:13:20.000 Exactly.
02:13:21.000 Especially when it comes to the ground game, there's a bunch of positions that need to be illuminated.
02:13:25.000 So, when fights are happening, I'm calling...
02:13:29.000 Like, I'm doing a play-by-play slash color job.
02:13:32.000 Like, I'm giving...
02:13:34.000 Like, if you watch boxing, the color guy will say, you know, they'll sort of, like...
02:13:41.000 Give you an overall assessment of what's going on.
02:13:44.000 But Jim Lampley, who's the play-by-play guy, will explain the shots that are landing and this and that that's going on.
02:13:51.000 And then the caller guy will say, well, he needs to do that or he needs to do this.
02:13:54.000 He says the what and he says the how and the why.
02:13:56.000 Yes.
02:13:56.000 And when I worked with Morrow, I did a few dozen shows with Morrow, and he explains to you that in his case, he knows it, so he will do the what.
02:14:07.000 Yes.
02:14:07.000 And your job is the how and the why.
02:14:09.000 So when you do color with Mauro, he does it old school, which is why he's so natural at boxing.
02:14:14.000 Right, right, right.
02:14:15.000 You know, he transitioned into boxing so naturally because he was an actual play-by-play guy.
02:14:21.000 But the odd thing, and I'm a fucking full-on Mauro fan, and he had a huge influence in helping with a lot of stuff.
02:14:26.000 But because if you're a play-by-play guy and you're not really obsessed, if you're not deep into it, you will start to get certain things where you are missing out on stuff.
02:14:37.000 So he might say, you know, he's on his back.
02:14:40.000 Why doesn't he put the hooks in?
02:14:42.000 Well, he wants to ride heavy on the hip.
02:14:43.000 He doesn't want the hooks.
02:14:44.000 He wants to ride, you know.
02:14:45.000 And so you start to sort of project what you think is next.
02:14:50.000 And that's why when you do color, you're saying what is happening and what might happen.
02:14:55.000 Well, there's a difference between Morrow doesn't train.
02:14:57.000 Right.
02:14:58.000 He's not a black belt.
02:14:59.000 You have to be.
02:15:01.000 I really believe that you have...
02:15:03.000 Well, I don't know if you have to be a black belt, but you have to be a high-level grappler to understand the nuances.
02:15:08.000 And I think you also should have some competition in your life.
02:15:12.000 Yeah.
02:15:13.000 Some form of it where you understand the psychology behind competing, rising to the occasion.
02:15:18.000 What's going on in that moment when you see a guy who's breaking.
02:15:21.000 You know, you can learn a lot by watching, but I think doing is really important and critical when it comes to breaking down jujitsu.
02:15:29.000 I've seen, like I was watching a Pride the other day, and someone, one of the guys, it wasn't boss, it was whoever he was doing it with, I think it was Quadros.
02:15:57.000 Right.
02:15:58.000 He's a guy who doesn't grapple.
02:15:59.000 He doesn't understand.
02:16:00.000 And he's just going on his limited book of knowledge.
02:16:04.000 But it's not based on...
02:16:06.000 It's not an extensive, comprehensive encyclopedia of training and knowledge and of being obsessed with combat sports.
02:16:15.000 For sure.
02:16:17.000 Chevello I worked with too, and fuck is that guy fun.
02:16:19.000 He's great.
02:16:20.000 He's so fucking fun to work with.
02:16:21.000 He's a great dude too.
02:16:22.000 He's such a good dude and he's having so much fun.
02:16:23.000 And trust me, if Mauro hears me talking about him and he thinks I'm being critical, it will hurt him.
02:16:29.000 He's a fucking very tender dude.
02:16:31.000 But I'm not.
02:16:32.000 I think Mauro's a fucking genius.
02:16:33.000 I think he's killing boxing.
02:16:35.000 I think he's absolutely killing it.
02:16:36.000 He's amazing.
02:16:37.000 He's great at glory too.
02:16:38.000 He's a good dude.
02:16:39.000 I like Mauro.
02:16:40.000 He really does love fighting.
02:16:42.000 What we're saying is just there's a reality of the difference between a play-by-play guy and the color expert position.
02:16:49.000 Yeah, and that's why he's such a good play-by-play guy.
02:16:52.000 And you're right, the expert color is what's really going on.
02:16:57.000 If you were in this place, what would it feel like?
02:17:01.000 I think that guy on the couch, he doesn't know what it feels like.
02:17:03.000 You can just have a guy drive his shoulder under your face to turn you sideways.
02:17:06.000 He doesn't know what that feels like.
02:17:08.000 It's fucking terrible.
02:17:09.000 And you've got to take care of that before you take care of any other thing.
02:17:12.000 And there's certain positions like the Von Flu choke.
02:17:15.000 Remember when OSP fought Nikita Krylov?
02:17:19.000 And he choked him out with that Von Flu choke.
02:17:21.000 And a lot of people didn't even know what the fuck was going on.
02:17:24.000 But because I've been around for so long, I've seen that choke before.
02:17:27.000 I remember when Von Flu started doing it on people.
02:17:30.000 Amazing.
02:17:30.000 And then we started trying it out in the gym.
02:17:32.000 Really?
02:17:33.000 Oh, that's so cool, man.
02:17:34.000 It's a weird technique.
02:17:35.000 Seeing history like that.
02:17:37.000 Because at like...
02:17:38.000 There's a big difference between later going, what was that?
02:17:42.000 Oh, it's a Von Flu choke and going, oh yeah, I remember when Von Flu was in the gym doing it.
02:17:46.000 That's fucking cool.
02:17:47.000 Well, there was also a scene recently where someone was trying this old Bas Rutten neck crank.
02:17:52.000 Bas Rutten has this fireman's neck crank that he would do.
02:17:56.000 Side on?
02:17:56.000 Yeah, it's like from almost like he has a head on one side and the leg on the other side and tries to connect the two of them together.
02:18:03.000 And Boss used to tap guys with that.
02:18:05.000 Boss is a fucking physical beast.
02:18:07.000 You know, he's such a specimen.
02:18:08.000 But somebody tried it in a recent MMA fight and I remember in the middle of the fight going, whoa, whoa, whoa, I've seen this before.
02:18:13.000 What fucking choke?
02:18:14.000 It's like you never see that technique.
02:18:17.000 But then all of a sudden it's there.
02:18:18.000 It didn't work, but it could, you know?
02:18:21.000 When I was talking about Pancrase, Boss was the other guy that it was like, he's walking in the ring, and you looked at that, and you didn't want to be in there with this guy.
02:18:29.000 You see the Boss in Pancrase, that would have been as terrifying a human being as anybody had ever seen.
02:18:36.000 The intensity, that's what I thought about him and Evan Tanner.
02:18:40.000 These guys were kind of competing, and then him and Evan Tanner came in there and they just It went crazy.
02:18:45.000 Like, they just put it on people.
02:18:46.000 Like, they put a level of hurt on people that would have been terrifying had you never seen that before.
02:18:51.000 Well, Boss was the first, like, really high-level striker in MMA. I feel like Boss was the first guy, if you watch his pank race fights, he was blasting guys with kicks.
02:19:02.000 Like, he hadn't seen anybody kick that hard before.
02:19:05.000 It was more about jiu-jitsu before then.
02:19:08.000 I mean, you had, like, Orlando Veet, who was, like, a high-level kickboxer, was in the early UFCs, but he was only, like, 165 pounds or something like that.
02:19:15.000 He was a small guy, and he got manhandled by grapplers, you know?
02:19:19.000 He fought, um, what was his fucking name?
02:19:22.000 The big judo black belt guy.
02:19:25.000 His name escapes me.
02:19:27.000 He wound up fighting, the same guy wound up fighting Marco Huas, and Marco Huas mounted him, and he tapped when Marco Huas mounted him.
02:19:34.000 Yeah, right.
02:19:34.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.
02:19:35.000 But fear, tapped from fear.
02:19:37.000 Well, it was also because he thought that the position was lost.
02:19:40.000 Right.
02:19:40.000 Like, once a guy got you into that position.
02:19:42.000 It's over.
02:19:42.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:19:43.000 And for him, it probably was.
02:19:44.000 For him, it probably was.
02:19:45.000 He probably didn't have an answer for that.
02:19:46.000 So it's like, I can tap now, or I can tap after you hit me six times, or I can tap after you hit me 20 times, or I can go unconscious.
02:19:53.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:19:53.000 There was a lot of shit back then, too, where people didn't know that you could get out of positions.
02:19:59.000 And they thought that when you got into a position, that was it.
02:20:02.000 It was over, you know?
02:20:03.000 It must have been a wild time in the 90s to be trained in that.
02:20:07.000 Because it was foreign to people.
02:20:09.000 If you told somebody you were trained in jiu-jitsu, did they know what the hell you were talking about?
02:20:12.000 No, they didn't know what it was.
02:20:14.000 Remco Pardew was the big name.
02:20:16.000 I think we might have called that one recently.
02:20:18.000 Remember he fought Orlando V and got him in side control and blasted him with elbows?
02:20:22.000 He was in that judo side control, like holding the head there and just boom, elbowed him unconscious.
02:20:27.000 Yeah.
02:20:29.000 That was fascinating, man.
02:20:30.000 Yeah, Pardieu.
02:20:31.000 Fascinating, fascinating.
02:20:32.000 Just watching those guys, like, watching that sport evolve like that to, like, the beginnings were just people trying their style out and finding out that it didn't work at all.
02:20:42.000 Like, remember there was that ninja guy who fought Pat Smith?
02:20:45.000 Yeah, and doing, like, those instep kicks, which kind of, Jon Jones kind of brought back.
02:20:49.000 Like, if you have enough reach, and you know what I mean?
02:20:51.000 But you gotta have all that other stuff, too.
02:20:53.000 Of course, of course, yeah.
02:20:54.000 You know, these guys thought they were gonna kick you once and take your knee out.
02:20:56.000 Smoke bomb, and then, you know...
02:20:58.000 Well, there's a lot of people that say that.
02:20:59.000 You know, hey man, if we fought, I'll just kick somebody in the knee and take him out.
02:21:02.000 Like, yeah, okay, really?
02:21:03.000 You really think that it works that way?
02:21:05.000 Because you know the guy tries to not have you kick him in the knee.
02:21:08.000 Not only that, he might see you winding up and going towards his knee.
02:21:11.000 What was this motherfucker doing?
02:21:13.000 Move his knee out of the way.
02:21:14.000 And then you're missing things.
02:21:15.000 Then you're all confused.
02:21:16.000 Your go-to move didn't work.
02:21:18.000 Yeah, and that's sort of the thing.
02:21:19.000 You've seen it, definitely.
02:21:21.000 A guy goes in, you know, at the low levels kind of where I get to compete and call fights and stuff sometimes.
02:21:26.000 Brand new guys sometimes go in, their first thing in their mind, this was going to knock a guy out.
02:21:31.000 The second that doesn't happen, they just didn't really think past that.
02:21:34.000 Now it's a scary and horrifying place to be.
02:21:37.000 Well, I remember Pat Smith fought recently in Glory, and one of the things that really troubled me before his fight, he said, I'm a one-round fighter.
02:21:44.000 I fight for one round.
02:21:47.000 I'm there to win or lose, but it's all going out in one round.
02:21:50.000 And I'm like, you can't say that.
02:21:52.000 That guy's only job is to survive one round, and he's got it.
02:21:55.000 Well, not only that, it's a crazy way of thinking.
02:21:58.000 This fight's scheduled for three rounds.
02:21:59.000 If the guy's exactly the skill level of you, it's going to take some time, man.
02:22:03.000 I don't know why he decides to do that.
02:22:07.000 I mean, he's one of those guys that really likes to put on a show, really likes to have an exciting fight.
02:22:12.000 And that's one of the things we were talking about earlier is these guys that sort of sacrifice technical style fighting in order to make things more exciting.
02:22:20.000 But in the long run, that's not good.
02:22:23.000 It's not good for you.
02:22:25.000 It's not good.
02:22:26.000 It's just not the way to do it.
02:22:28.000 Yeah, and it changes things.
02:22:30.000 That idea that we're...
02:22:33.000 The whole thing is going on to try to figure out who's the best.
02:22:36.000 Not to figure out who's close to the best but the most exciting.
02:22:41.000 If we all agree that takedown defense is going to be the most important thing for the next two years, who gets good at that and landing right hands?
02:22:48.000 It's not a worldwide game to figure out who's the most exciting.
02:22:52.000 It's to figure out who's the baddest dude on the planet, who's the best fighter in the world.
02:22:56.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:22:57.000 And the only way you find that is guys competing at their very best, like using all of your, like if guys played chess and they just said, you know, fuck all this strategy and shit, I'm just going to get gangster with my rook.
02:23:11.000 You know, I mean, that's really essentially the same sort of decision making.
02:23:14.000 It doesn't work that way.
02:23:16.000 It's all about using all of your talents, your mental talents, your emotional control, your endurance, all of those things.
02:23:25.000 Knowing when to push, when to back off, managing your energy during a fight.
02:23:29.000 That's a huge aspect of it as well.
02:23:31.000 Sure.
02:23:31.000 Managing your energy is absolutely critical.
02:23:35.000 Managing, like, when do you pour it on?
02:23:37.000 When do you back off?
02:23:39.000 Do you have that under control?
02:23:40.000 Like, is that taking care of itself out of stress or out of fear or out of danger or because he pushed you?
02:23:46.000 I mean, you talked about one-rounders.
02:23:48.000 Kevin Randleman was, like, going to fight you for three minutes.
02:23:50.000 It was going to be the worst hell of three minutes that you've ever had in your life, but if you could get past it, you've got a chance of beating him now.
02:23:56.000 Yeah, there's a lot of those fast twitch muscle fiber guys.
02:24:00.000 They have a lot of fucking explosion in the beginning, but they just slowly wear themselves out and then there's nothing left at the end.
02:24:07.000 Tyron Woodley is a great example of that.
02:24:09.000 He hates it when you talk about that.
02:24:11.000 I know.
02:24:11.000 Tough shit.
02:24:12.000 Yeah.
02:24:13.000 It's important, it's my job, and I'm a fan of his, and I think that he's too big.
02:24:17.000 I think he carries too much weight.
02:24:20.000 I mean, the guy's got, he's got a, essentially, he's running a race that's an endurance race, and he's got this monster truck engine.
02:24:28.000 And he, you know, he's getting two miles to the gallon, but for that first two miles, he's a motherfucker.
02:24:34.000 Yeah.
02:24:34.000 You know, I mean, Tyron is one of the best athletes in MMA. His wrestling, his physical strength.
02:24:40.000 His blitzes.
02:24:41.000 Those blitzes.
02:24:42.000 Remember what he did, too?
02:24:43.000 What's his name?
02:24:43.000 The thoroughbred?
02:24:44.000 Jay Huron.
02:24:44.000 Jay Huron?
02:24:45.000 Fuck.
02:24:45.000 And even Carlos Condit in the beginning.
02:24:47.000 Yeah.
02:24:48.000 You know, Condit.
02:24:49.000 Like, until that leg went, you were like, how the fuck?
02:24:50.000 Fuck, did he survive that blitz?
02:24:52.000 That was crazy.
02:24:53.000 Well, his lead right hand is so fast.
02:24:56.000 He's so fast.
02:24:57.000 So explosive.
02:24:58.000 Travel's good.
02:24:58.000 We talk about Hendrix and how he can close distance.
02:25:01.000 This guy even more so.
02:25:02.000 Yeah.
02:25:03.000 But what some, I think, athletic guys will try to do is make it not an endurance sport.
02:25:10.000 They'll make it a sport of sprints and comms and sprints and comms and sprints and comms.
02:25:15.000 And that would be the way to try to...
02:25:18.000 Be that athlete.
02:25:18.000 We haven't seen anyone make that work, but I think that's what guys are trying to do, is everything is a 30-second on and a 20-second recovery, and fight that way, and train that way, and train to recover that way.
02:25:30.000 But I can't think of anybody we've seen sort of make that really work yet, but I think that's how that level of athlete's trying to do it.
02:25:38.000 Well it's also, Chael Sonnen had a comment on MMA and about just the physical demands of the body.
02:25:44.000 He's like, the reality is that 25 minutes is too long.
02:25:47.000 He's like, it's too long to fight.
02:25:49.000 He goes, you can't fight at your best for 25 minutes.
02:25:53.000 So it all becomes about managing when you explode, when you go after the guy, when you...
02:25:59.000 You know, and for Chael to say that, especially, I mean, you think about his fight with Anderson Silva, was a crazy endurance test.
02:26:08.000 I mean, he just went after Anderson in that first fight for four and a half rounds, just full clip, took him down at will, just pushed the pace constantly.
02:26:17.000 Most likely he was on EPO at the time.
02:26:19.000 At least we knew he was later.
02:26:22.000 And still, you know, that's his thoughts, is that it's just too long.
02:26:26.000 It's just too long.
02:26:28.000 Except for a guy like Mighty Mouse.
02:26:30.000 Yeah.
02:26:30.000 Which is crazy.
02:26:31.000 Why is that?
02:26:32.000 130 pounds.
02:26:33.000 A 125 pound guy does not have the same requirements when it comes to gravity and there's nothing pulling on him.
02:26:39.000 That book I was telling you about that I'm in the process of reading, Rise of Superman, they talk about how some of these guys in these states, a lot of the analysis is guys in skateboards, the guy in the skateboard who jumped over the Great Wall of China, and guys who are flipping and downhill skiing and stuff,
02:26:56.000 that they start to believe that gravity applies to them differently.
02:26:59.000 You know what I mean?
02:27:00.000 They start to take action as if gravity does not apply to them the same way.
02:27:04.000 I mean, look at this guy who jumps the fucking Great Wall of China on a skateboard.
02:27:08.000 Part of his belief when he's in a state to try this is he has to suspend reality to even fucking give that a go.
02:27:14.000 Because any normal person looks at that and go, there's no fucking way I can jump the Great Wall of China on a skateboard.
02:27:19.000 But this guy has to put himself into a state where that truth becomes not true.
02:27:24.000 Yeah, fucked up, right?
02:27:26.000 That's so strange.
02:27:27.000 I know, right?
02:27:28.000 How does that work?
02:27:29.000 I don't know.
02:27:30.000 That's so crazy.
02:27:31.000 But this guy, you'll like the book a lot, man.
02:27:33.000 I know I will.
02:27:33.000 The guy compares certain psychedelic trips.
02:27:36.000 He looks at how that also alters the brain chemistry and those times where people are at one with something where they've actually, in some ways, reality is just that thing we each have.
02:27:46.000 And yours is different now.
02:27:48.000 Yours is different in the moments where you bring this brain chemistry together in a state of flow.
02:27:54.000 And when you're in that state, your reality is different.
02:27:56.000 And if your reality is different, maybe the fuck you can jump the Great Wall of China.
02:27:59.000 Well, it kind of makes sense, right?
02:28:00.000 Because isn't reality in a sense subjective in that like how you feel about a moment changes what that moment means to you.
02:28:09.000 So it changes your reaction to that moment.
02:28:11.000 And I think that those guys that do that parkour, those guys have to be like that too.
02:28:17.000 That is exactly right.
02:28:18.000 I'm fascinated by that shit.
02:28:18.000 How the fuck do you think you can do that?
02:28:20.000 Those guys are nuts, man.
02:28:22.000 But they, I mean, you hesitate for one second, you die.
02:28:25.000 And that's the same with those flippin' motorcycles, same with free climbing, fuckin' mount, whatever.
02:28:29.000 You create a state where if you do not believe for one moment, you're dead.
02:28:35.000 Not, well, shit, I lost a fight.
02:28:37.000 Or, oh, man, that cost me some money.
02:28:39.000 Death.
02:28:40.000 Death.
02:28:41.000 And these guys, you know, and some of them will say, I could spend months learning how to spend 20 minutes of yoga to get a taste of that state for a second, or I can put myself on a rock face and have it for three hours out of necessity.
02:28:56.000 And that's what some fighters are doing.
02:28:58.000 I mean, all the top guys are operating in that state.
02:29:00.000 All of them.
02:29:01.000 Yeah, the rock face thing is really interesting, isn't it?
02:29:04.000 When you see those fucking Alex Honnold crazy fuckers and they climb up these things free climbing.
02:29:09.000 It's almost like a different animal.
02:29:11.000 Like, human animals walk around.
02:29:13.000 Sometimes we swim and stuff.
02:29:15.000 We don't do that.
02:29:16.000 No.
02:29:16.000 You know?
02:29:17.000 Well, he does, but he's a human.
02:29:19.000 I mean, it's essentially like putting your focus into something and taking that something, whatever it is, to the highest level that's possible.
02:29:26.000 And the mind is a big part of it.
02:29:29.000 He was talking about how when you're rock climbing, I had him on the podcast, he was talking about rock climbing that when you're doing it, you're really pretty chill.
02:29:38.000 He goes, you don't really feel crazy unless something's really wrong.
02:29:43.000 He goes, most of the time everything is really calm and really chill and you just sort of zen and you're just, this is what you're doing and you're just going through it and you're...
02:29:52.000 Putting the powder in your hands, you're sticking your hands in cracks, and you're just pulling yourself up.
02:29:57.000 He goes, then you kind of get to the top.
02:29:59.000 Yeah, for hours.
02:30:00.000 Yeah.
02:30:01.000 And doing shit that, in his case, doing shit that no one else does.
02:30:05.000 Jumping over and grabbing something with a finger and stuff.
02:30:06.000 Well, I don't think they do that too much.
02:30:08.000 They try to just crawl.
02:30:09.000 I think the jumping up guys are fucking nuts.
02:30:13.000 It's all levels of nuts.
02:30:15.000 There was a piece that they did in one of those television shows where they talked about Alex where this guy who was also a free climber was like, look, it's not a matter of if he's going to fall.
02:30:26.000 It's a matter of when he's going to fall and he's going to die when he does.
02:30:29.000 And, you know, this guy's kind of freaking the fuck out.
02:30:32.000 But then he talked to Alex about it.
02:30:33.000 He's like, man, maybe not.
02:30:34.000 I don't know if he's going to fall.
02:30:36.000 This motherfucker might just keep doing that.
02:30:38.000 I mean, he's a guy, Alex Honnold, that's what he does.
02:30:42.000 He lives in his van.
02:30:44.000 I mean, he's got a van with all these drawers in it.
02:30:47.000 This is where I put my toiletries.
02:30:49.000 This is where I put my underwear.
02:30:51.000 He has a bed in the back of it.
02:30:53.000 He sleeps in the bed.
02:30:54.000 And then he just climbs everywhere.
02:30:56.000 The guys who get to that point of human performance, there's a level.
02:31:02.000 It's so weird we discourage obsessive compulsiveness.
02:31:06.000 We discourage it.
02:31:07.000 I'm sure there are damaging things about it.
02:31:09.000 But I mean, you tell me that fucking guy isn't the extremist version of that.
02:31:12.000 And yet it's been focused in a way that stretches human performance.
02:31:16.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:31:17.000 I think obsessive compulsive is almost the only way to achieve greatness.
02:31:22.000 I don't think there's any other way.
02:31:24.000 I don't think you can be like this really relaxed, like, hey, easy come, easy go, you know, no big deal.
02:31:30.000 No, you have to be a fucking maniac.
02:31:32.000 It's all about how much focus you have on that goal, how much intent you have on that action.
02:31:38.000 And if you're not completely obsessed, I've always said that greatness and madness are next door neighbors and they borrow each other's sugar.
02:31:46.000 Because you don't get there without the other.
02:31:50.000 I know when I was competing, when I was at my best...
02:31:53.000 When I was four-time state champion in Taekwondo and I won the US Open in a bunch of other tournaments, I was crazy.
02:31:59.000 That's all I did.
02:32:00.000 I would train in the middle of the night because I knew that no one else was training.
02:32:03.000 I used to have the keys to the gym.
02:32:05.000 So I used to go to the Dojangs, what the Koreans call it.
02:32:08.000 I used to go there Two o'clock in the morning, because I had the keys, and I would train knowing that no one else was training.
02:32:13.000 And I felt like I had an edge that way.
02:32:15.000 I'd seen Mike Tyson talk about how he would run when everyone was asleep, because he felt like his opponent was sleeping, so that gave him an edge.
02:32:24.000 So, you know, I would like that.
02:32:26.000 And that kind of insanity, like, I didn't have anything else going on in my life.
02:32:31.000 Everything else I was a loser in.
02:32:32.000 But I knew I was really good at Taekwondo.
02:32:34.000 So that was what I... I sucked at relationships.
02:32:37.000 I sucked at work.
02:32:38.000 I sucked at school.
02:32:40.000 I sucked at everything except Taekwondo.
02:32:43.000 So that became 100% of my focus.
02:32:45.000 And I know I was insane at that time.
02:32:47.000 I know there was something wrong with me.
02:32:49.000 It was a terrible way to live your life unless that's your only goal.
02:32:54.000 The scary thing is, let's say there's, you know, 10,000 guys who are living that way.
02:32:59.000 Anything.
02:33:00.000 Comedy, fighting, anything.
02:33:02.000 Only one of them is actually.
02:33:04.000 We're going to get the 10,000 most obsessed, and we're going to find out who the very best most obsessed.
02:33:10.000 You know what I mean?
02:33:11.000 The genetics and the obsession must come together in the perfect storm.
02:33:14.000 Because if you're competing and you have the same amount of obsession as some Jon Jones character, Fuck, that guy's just too goddamn strong, too big.
02:33:23.000 You see guys get in there with John, and then when John locks up with him and then sends him flying through the air, they realize, oh, there's another level to this thing.
02:33:31.000 When he almost took off Teixeira's arm, that must have been fucking terrifying.
02:33:36.000 He's been in there with Chuck Liddell and every great fighter at 205 pounds over the last 10 years of not losing and training every day, and this guy does this to him?
02:33:43.000 Tears his shoulder apart in the first round with some new move that he had been thinking about doing.
02:33:49.000 John had just been thinking about it.
02:33:50.000 John is so brilliant in his ability to improvise in the heat of battle.
02:33:55.000 Like, he saw that Glover was loading up, so he decided to stand, like, right on top of him, and then he would anticipate, he would feel him loading up, and then avoid those shots and counter with elbows in tight.
02:34:07.000 And he was fucking Glover up in the place where Glover thought that he was going to dominate.
02:34:11.000 Yeah.
02:34:11.000 And he went in there, and the things that he never even planned to use, but a lifetime of Greco-Roman playing in there, I thought, oh, shit, I win this position.
02:34:20.000 Fuck it.
02:34:21.000 We're going to win it here, then.
02:34:22.000 Well, that loose underhook, that was what allowed him.
02:34:25.000 Glover had this loose underhook, so John just wrenched it, just yanked on it with the overhook, and tore his shoulder up, man.
02:34:32.000 And it must have been mentally freaky, too.
02:34:34.000 It's like, what the hell am I in here with?
02:34:36.000 I thought I was just in here with a guy with punches and kicks and chokes, like the rest of us.
02:34:39.000 Right.
02:34:40.000 What is he doing?
02:34:40.000 He's tearing off part of my body.
02:34:42.000 John is always adding new wrinkles.
02:34:45.000 John is one of the first guys to really get good at that front leg side kick to the thigh.
02:34:50.000 On a downward angle, too.
02:34:52.000 Because he's so tall.
02:34:54.000 Also, he's shooting down at your knee.
02:34:57.000 John dropped Vitor with a front leg side kick to the body.
02:35:01.000 Those long legs, man, are such a huge advantage.
02:35:05.000 We only measure reach with arms.
02:35:09.000 In MMA, because we have this goofy system where all we do is copy boxing because it's such a young sport.
02:35:14.000 We copy boxing when it comes to reach.
02:35:16.000 We copy boxing when it comes to the 10-point must-scoring system.
02:35:19.000 Both things are woefully inadequate when it comes to MMA. But a big one is the reach of kicks.
02:35:25.000 For sure.
02:35:25.000 Because John can kick you from a range where you can't even touch him.
02:35:30.000 And he's hitting you with his best weapon.
02:35:32.000 From an outside distance that he owns.
02:35:35.000 Yeah.
02:35:36.000 And your only way to get past that is to go through that.
02:35:38.000 Mm-hmm.
02:35:38.000 Come on.
02:35:39.000 It's barely fair.
02:35:41.000 And his legs are so much stronger.
02:35:42.000 Everybody kicks harder than they punch.
02:35:44.000 Everybody does.
02:35:44.000 And John's an excellent kicker.
02:35:46.000 So he's out there kicking the shit out of you, and you can't even touch him.
02:35:49.000 And what are you going to start doing?
02:35:51.000 You're going to start doing what Rashad did.
02:35:52.000 Try to clear out of that range.
02:35:54.000 Yep.
02:35:54.000 I mean...
02:35:56.000 The way to handle it, if it's humanly, mentally possible, is to pass it and get in there.
02:36:01.000 But he's training you.
02:36:02.000 The way you touch an element, you never touch it again, he's doing that with his fucking kick in front of you.
02:36:06.000 Also, I think it's fascinating that John is now at this level where he's been the champion for several years now, and he's very confident.
02:36:14.000 And he's also used to these championship contests.
02:36:17.000 He's used to the bright lights.
02:36:18.000 He's used to the big event.
02:36:19.000 It becomes a part of his every...
02:36:22.000 He understands that experience very intimately.
02:36:25.000 So, when he gets in there, he's championship fights with a guy like Glover.
02:36:28.000 This is the big show for Glover.
02:36:30.000 Holy shit, this is it.
02:36:31.000 And for John, like, here we go again.
02:36:34.000 And here we go again is very different than, oh my god, this is it.
02:36:37.000 Here we go again is a much more comfortable place.
02:36:39.000 Because every other time I've been in this place, I won.
02:36:42.000 People went crazy, I made a bunch of money, and I got even bigger.
02:36:45.000 Oh, I'm in this place again.
02:36:47.000 I love his attitude after the Gustafson fight.
02:36:51.000 His attitude was, I've always been asking for a dog fight, and I got what I asked for.
02:36:56.000 And this is a blessing.
02:36:57.000 And you know it is.
02:36:59.000 It is a blessing.
02:37:00.000 You don't know.
02:37:00.000 If you're just wrecking every guy, well, what happens to one day where I can't wreck you for four rounds?
02:37:05.000 Well, now he knows.
02:37:06.000 He knows what happens.
02:37:07.000 He fucking wins.
02:37:08.000 He dug deep.
02:37:09.000 One of the most important aspects of that fight is that he faced a guy, first of all, with the same sort of physical advantages that he has, a guy with a really long reach, a guy who was an excellent striker, a better, smoother, more efficient striker than he is.
02:37:22.000 Who took him down, added confusion to the equation.
02:37:26.000 Yup, did something unpredictable, and then on top of that he still won.
02:37:30.000 You know, and then, man, I was really looking forward to that rematch.
02:37:33.000 It was a bummer when Gustafson hurt his knee.
02:37:35.000 But what's interesting is Gustafson hurt his knee, they cancel the fight, but now John hurt his knee, but the Cormier fight is still on.
02:37:43.000 Yeah, well, it's run by commerce.
02:37:46.000 Yeah.
02:37:46.000 I mean, we have to.
02:37:47.000 We're in the business.
02:37:48.000 I don't own the UFC. What's the bigger fight, though, in your opinion?
02:37:51.000 Well, I'm more interested.
02:37:53.000 They're both pretty fucking good.
02:37:54.000 They're both pretty fucking good.
02:37:56.000 I think they're both tens.
02:37:58.000 Yeah, Cormier is so fascinating because we haven't seen it.
02:38:01.000 You know, you see, all you got to do is flash up what he did to Dan Henderson, throwing him up in the air.
02:38:06.000 No one's ever done that to Dan Henderson.
02:38:07.000 And then you got all this heat that gets regular people excited.
02:38:10.000 But, I mean, what happens when a guy got that close, and Gustafson's confident, he believes he's going to win this time.
02:38:18.000 He thinks he's learned some things.
02:38:20.000 Like, that's real.
02:38:21.000 You got to do them both.
02:38:22.000 But I think you got to do the one...
02:38:24.000 That the people are most excited about, which is the one where guys fight on a stage and then say they're going to kill each other off.
02:38:29.000 Now it's more exciting.
02:38:31.000 It's almost like when Daniel Cormier grabbed John's neck and threw him back, he ensured that that fight was going to take place.
02:38:38.000 Because if Gustafson got knee surgery and John...
02:38:43.000 We can't fight until January.
02:38:44.000 Well, in theory, we should go back to that.
02:38:46.000 Yeah, in theory, that should be the fight.
02:38:48.000 But everyone is so hyped up on the Cormier fight now.
02:38:52.000 But, you know, Cormier went into that fight, like he agreed to that fight with a pre-existing injury that he was pretty vocal about.
02:38:57.000 He has a partially torn ACL. He's got an MCL strain or a tear in his MCL. And now he has more of an opportunity to rehab it.
02:39:06.000 But when you have a partially torn ligament, like especially an ACL ligament, I don't know how much rehab you can do.
02:39:12.000 Yeah, I mean, you either get the surgery or you live with it in that whatever 75% state it's in until you get the surgery.
02:39:20.000 I think it's a 50% state.
02:39:21.000 I think it's 50% torn.
02:39:23.000 All three of those guys, it's knee issues.
02:39:24.000 I don't know if that's a 205 thing, it's a height thing, it's a high impact.
02:39:27.000 It's a wrestling thing.
02:39:28.000 It's a wrestling thing.
02:39:29.000 Wrestling and jujitsu and, well, I mean, even kickboxing, you're going to have knee issues.
02:39:33.000 But just the knee sucks.
02:39:35.000 It's a shitty design.
02:39:37.000 Shoulders suck too.
02:39:38.000 Shoulders suck too.
02:39:39.000 Well, it's not that they suck.
02:39:40.000 It's that the human body is not designed for MMA. Not for that.
02:39:43.000 Especially not for jiu-jitsu.
02:39:45.000 I mean, jiu-jitsu is all about testing the boundaries of your joints.
02:39:49.000 Yeah, omoplata guys over there.
02:39:50.000 Shit ain't supposed to do that.
02:39:52.000 Yeah, it's awful.
02:39:53.000 It's not supposed to do that.
02:39:54.000 Yeah.
02:39:54.000 And there's a few guys like Keenan Cornelius that have just unbelievably ridiculous flexibility of their joints.
02:40:00.000 Like, what is that from?
02:40:01.000 Is that from straining them all the time and testing them in the gym?
02:40:03.000 Pushing it.
02:40:04.000 Like, you know, pushing the limit.
02:40:06.000 Yeah.
02:40:06.000 Like...
02:40:07.000 In theory, how do you stretch your neck?
02:40:09.000 You add those circles or you stretch your lip or whatever?
02:40:12.000 Right.
02:40:12.000 Can we do that with ligaments and soft tissue?
02:40:14.000 I guess they can, but look at Hoyler Gracie when he fought Eddie.
02:40:17.000 I'm going to tell you something.
02:40:18.000 I've been in that position before.
02:40:20.000 When Eddie had that leg and he was twisting Hoyler's leg like that, that's called a vaporizer.
02:40:26.000 It is an unbelievably painful position.
02:40:28.000 I do not know how Hoyler didn't tap.
02:40:30.000 Yeah, mental.
02:40:31.000 I don't think that was some biological thing he's altered.
02:40:35.000 I think that was a guy just saying, my life depends on his reputation, who he is as a person, his business.
02:40:42.000 All of those things depended so heavily on him not giving in to pain.
02:40:45.000 And I think he was capable of doing that.
02:40:47.000 But he has a history of having incredibly flexible joints.
02:40:50.000 Like when he fought Sakuraba, Sakuraba had him in that deep, deep Kimura and the referee stopped the fight and he was furious.
02:40:56.000 He's like, I'm fine.
02:40:58.000 He had his arm cranked up behind his back.
02:41:01.000 You know, first of all, it's crazy when you think of the fact that Hoyler Gracie fought Sakuraba and Sakuraba fought Vitor Belfort and Vanderlei Soba.
02:41:08.000 Like, think about the difference in size between those guys.
02:41:12.000 I mean, incredible.
02:41:13.000 I mean, just unbelievable.
02:41:15.000 He won the fucking Abu Dhabis at 145. You know, how the fuck?
02:41:20.000 And fought those giants, yeah.
02:41:21.000 How the fuck?
02:41:23.000 That was another time.
02:41:25.000 I love hearing stories from guys that were around in the early days when they're like, yeah, we drove nine hours because they said we were going to have an MMA fight and we got there and they said, well, your opponent's not here.
02:41:34.000 You got this guy.
02:41:35.000 And it's like, I weigh 140. He's 175. They're like, close enough.
02:41:38.000 Fight him.
02:41:39.000 You know, that's how it was.
02:41:40.000 And, well, who is that guy?
02:41:42.000 Where does he train?
02:41:43.000 I don't know.
02:41:43.000 He just got out of prison.
02:41:44.000 Or do you want the bouncer?
02:41:45.000 I mean, and that's who you fought.
02:41:47.000 And these lunatics on the front end of the sport were driving around for $100, spending $300 to get there, not knowing.
02:41:54.000 I mean, you didn't know if a guy knew the death touch or something.
02:41:56.000 You didn't.
02:41:57.000 You didn't know if there was some other thing he could do.
02:42:00.000 Yeah, people believed in the death touch back then.
02:42:03.000 What if they knew it?
02:42:03.000 There's people still teaching that stupid shit.
02:42:05.000 I know.
02:42:06.000 And there's people out there that are also still teaching, you know, what we do works on the streets.
02:42:09.000 The streets are very different.
02:42:11.000 What you do is a sport.
02:42:12.000 That nonsense drives me fucking bananas.
02:42:15.000 I was on the Opie and Anthony show and they used to have this guy that did their security.
02:42:19.000 He was this fucking fake karate guy.
02:42:21.000 And he would always talk about street techniques.
02:42:23.000 What we're doing is all about street defense.
02:42:26.000 And I go, let me tell you something, dude.
02:42:28.000 What works on train killers is the best shit.
02:42:32.000 All this nonsense about street techniques, like you're going to do that and do this and that's going to work better and you're going to fucking death touch somebody in their solar plexus and go after their pressure points.
02:42:42.000 Bullshit.
02:42:43.000 It's all nonsense, you know?
02:42:45.000 And if you try to bite somebody, let me tell you something.
02:42:47.000 If a guy gets on top of you and mounts you and you just bit him, he's gonna fucking kill you.
02:42:52.000 Absolutely.
02:42:52.000 He's gonna take your eyes out.
02:42:54.000 He's gonna kill you.
02:42:55.000 He's gonna break your jaw.
02:42:56.000 He's gonna tear your arms out of their sockets and leave you a cripple.
02:42:59.000 And a guy could do that.
02:43:00.000 For sure.
02:43:01.000 And if you get all this street shit in your head...
02:43:03.000 It's dangerous.
02:43:04.000 But if...
02:43:05.000 You train Systema or Krav Maga or whatever, and you're up against some dumbass, it'll be valuable.
02:43:11.000 Sure.
02:43:11.000 But if you're up against a trained fighter, you're going to be in a lot of trouble.
02:43:14.000 But you should always prepare for a trained fighter.
02:43:16.000 And that's the difference between, like, the street systems versus real MMA. Like, real MMA is the stuff that works.
02:43:24.000 It's the best application the human body has when it comes to using your body in a combat sports scenario.
02:43:30.000 It's the best.
02:43:31.000 That's the reason why you don't see Kung Fu in MMA. I mean...
02:43:34.000 Roy Nelson jokingly calls himself a kung fu fighter, and I know he has actually done some kung fu training, but the reality is Roy's throwing a fucking heavy overhand right, and he's got a black belt in jiu-jitsu to back it up.
02:43:46.000 Yeah, exactly.
02:43:47.000 And if, I mean, hey, if for whatever reason you like wearing a kung fu outfit and doing all this stuff, it makes you feel good, fuck it, go train it, for sure.
02:43:55.000 But don't try to tell...
02:43:57.000 We're good to go.
02:44:13.000 And say, hey, George, you know, you do really good, man.
02:44:17.000 Hey, we should train together.
02:44:18.000 I have Kung Fu Studio down the street.
02:44:20.000 And they would literally, I could teach you some shit.
02:44:22.000 And really, literally believe that when they're talking to the greatest fighter in the world at the time, that they got some secret shit back on St. Denis Street in Quebec, in Montreal, that he could teach George St. Pierre.
02:44:36.000 This guy really fucking believes that.
02:44:37.000 They really believe they got some death touch they're going to pull out.
02:44:40.000 And George is going to go...
02:44:41.000 This is going to change my whole career!
02:44:43.000 Thank you for teaching me Death Touch!
02:44:44.000 That shit's gotta happen to you, too, right?
02:44:46.000 Oh, yeah.
02:44:47.000 Well, there's always some guy that says that he has some new thing that no one's ever seen before.
02:44:50.000 He has his master can't be defeated.
02:44:52.000 There's a bunch of knuckleheads out there, man.
02:44:55.000 But George is an amazingly patient guy.
02:44:58.000 I've seen George deal with a lot of fucking people.
02:45:01.000 He's one of the nicest guys that's ever reached a super high level of any combat sport.
02:45:08.000 And really open-minded.
02:45:09.000 Like, he'll listen to it.
02:45:11.000 I've seen him exchange techniques with people.
02:45:13.000 I've trained with him.
02:45:14.000 I saw him training sidekick with him, and he had his knee low.
02:45:16.000 He was using his knee low.
02:45:17.000 And without question, he trained fucking taekwondo for 10 years, competing all over.
02:45:23.000 That's how you do a turning sidekick.
02:45:24.000 And he got, and he understood that.
02:45:26.000 Yeah, well, that was a weird moment because John Donaher, who's a friend of mine, was talking, and we were out to eat after a fight, me, him, and Eddie, and he said, do you guys know any good Taekwondo guys?
02:45:39.000 George wants to work on the mechanics of his spinning back kick.
02:45:41.000 And I said, this is going to sound so stupid, but I have to say it, I have a great spinning back kick.
02:45:47.000 My spinning back kick, I really know how to do it better than anybody.
02:45:50.000 And you say that, and people go, get the fuck out of here.
02:45:54.000 Lifetime martial arts expert.
02:45:55.000 I mean, why the fuck can't you say that?
02:45:57.000 It's still because I'm a comedian and a fucking commentator.
02:45:59.000 I'm not a fighter.
02:46:00.000 I mean, those days are long gone.
02:46:02.000 Yeah, but that doesn't mean that a lifetime mastery of a technique isn't, you know?
02:46:07.000 That's true, but so many people have ridiculous egos.
02:46:10.000 And I'm not going to name any names, but I know a lot of guys that are involved in the same sort of thing that I'm involved in.
02:46:15.000 They'll tell you that they're great.
02:46:16.000 And then you train with him, you're like, oh fucking Christ, I'm wasting my time.
02:46:20.000 So I had this moment where I was like, tell George if he wants to train.
02:46:24.000 And then Eddie told him like, dude, seriously, you got to see this guy kick.
02:46:27.000 And I'm like, this sounds so stupid.
02:46:29.000 Like no one's going to believe me.
02:46:30.000 And so then George showed up.
02:46:33.000 So I was hoping, you know, when George showed up, like that he wasn't like, okay, come on, show me.
02:46:38.000 You know, this is stupid.
02:46:40.000 Why am I wasting my time?
02:46:41.000 Well, once I kicked the bag once.
02:46:43.000 And then he went, oh, shit.
02:46:45.000 Like, this is real.
02:46:47.000 And then you could see, like, he got this, like, I'm actually going to get something out of this.
02:46:51.000 As opposed to, like, I'm just being nice to Joe because we're friends and I'm going to go humor him and, you know, he's going to throw some pussy-ass kicks.
02:46:59.000 Yeah.
02:46:59.000 But when he saw me kick a bag, you know, when you kick a 200-pound bag and it goes flying, and then it puts it in your head, you go, oh, I get it.
02:47:07.000 I get it now.
02:47:08.000 But it was his open-mindedness was so impressive, because I wouldn't have listened to me.
02:47:13.000 I would have been like, bitch, get the fuck out of here.
02:47:15.000 Like, George is going to give you advice on your job.
02:47:18.000 Exactly.
02:47:18.000 You know what I mean?
02:47:19.000 Exactly.
02:47:19.000 But, you know, if you have an open mind.
02:47:21.000 But when I did that TV show where I was learning to fight, I trained with George.
02:47:27.000 And we'd use that on the show.
02:47:28.000 And I was terrible.
02:47:29.000 Like, I mean, I literally was trying to take, doing Taekwondo growing up.
02:47:35.000 An ad, kind of boxing my head.
02:47:37.000 Like, I'm fucking horrible.
02:47:38.000 And I'd never wrestled a day in my life.
02:47:40.000 I was doing jujitsu like 10 times a week for whatever number of months.
02:47:43.000 Never.
02:47:43.000 And that will forever.
02:47:45.000 People will just put that on and go, oh, fuck, this guy's terrible.
02:47:49.000 And it is bad.
02:47:50.000 But, I mean, what the fuck?
02:47:51.000 You're doing a TV show about taking some guy who wears eye makeup and trying to teach him to fight.
02:47:56.000 He happens to be there with George.
02:47:57.000 Of course, he's terrible.
02:47:59.000 That's a beautiful thing about martial arts or any difficult endeavor is that you start off, everybody starts off, they suck.
02:48:06.000 If you don't have those techniques, you don't know what you're doing, you're not going to be good.
02:48:10.000 And then as you train, you get better.
02:48:13.000 And when you get better, it's like you go down a path.
02:48:15.000 And then you can stop and pause and look back and go, look where I started.
02:48:19.000 I started way back there.
02:48:20.000 And now here I am, I'm getting better.
02:48:22.000 And then you turn around and go, but look how far I got to go.
02:48:24.000 And that's exciting.
02:48:25.000 Yeah, well, that's the beautiful thing about martial arts is that there are so many levels.
02:48:29.000 And when we're seeing in mixed martial arts, it's like the jujitsu is still at a fairly low level.
02:48:35.000 I think the jujitsu is still like purple belt level at even like a high level.
02:48:40.000 It's not like Marcelo Garcia, like high level black belt.
02:48:43.000 The striking is still at a fairly low level.
02:48:46.000 We're not seeing Ernesto Hust yet.
02:48:47.000 We're not seeing these like ridiculously technical, absolutely perfect executions of striking technique.
02:48:54.000 We're getting closer...
02:48:55.000 We're getting closer with the jiu-jitsu, we're getting closer with the striking, but there's room to grow.
02:48:59.000 And that's one of the reasons why we're seeing new techniques now.
02:49:02.000 Like, how many people are throwing wheel kicks now?
02:49:04.000 There was no wheel kicks up until Terry Adam fought Edson Barboza.
02:49:12.000 This has been seen before.
02:49:14.000 When Tony Hawk did the four things, within a year, 10 guys could do it.
02:49:20.000 And did it in training.
02:49:21.000 The quad and figure skating, nobody could do it.
02:49:24.000 Now, fucking college level figure skaters do the quad.
02:49:27.000 Four minute miles.
02:49:28.000 Yeah.
02:49:29.000 When it happens once, suddenly it's now real humans do this.
02:49:34.000 Just because that guy did it, not every guy thinks he can do it, but some guys think they Yeah, it's an amazing thing to watch the actual growth.
02:49:43.000 I love it.
02:49:43.000 I'm so fascinated by it.
02:49:45.000 Yeah, me too, man.
02:49:46.000 Me too.
02:49:46.000 It's such a cool aspect of martial arts to be there while this is all going down and see this thing evolving and getting better.
02:49:54.000 Front kicks to the face now.
02:49:56.000 Same thing.
02:49:57.000 All of a sudden, there's the quad and figure skating.
02:49:59.000 They're all doing it.
02:50:00.000 Front kicks in play for almost every good striker now.
02:50:03.000 That's in play for We're also seeing a lot of that sideways karate stance like Ryan Jimmo does and Gunnar Nelson does and Lyoto does.
02:50:11.000 That sideways karate stance is a totally different thing.
02:50:14.000 Some guys you see are using it.
02:50:17.000 They grew up using it.
02:50:18.000 And for a right-handed guy, whenever they switch the stance and the right foot in the front is when you're going to see it.
02:50:26.000 You know what I mean?
02:50:26.000 Yes.
02:50:27.000 It's suddenly not as camouflaged anymore.
02:50:30.000 Not only are guys using it, but it's like, oh shit, he's in that stance.
02:50:32.000 I better watch out for the sidekick.
02:50:33.000 Well, you see a lot of front leg kicks off the dominant stance, the dominant leg.
02:50:37.000 There's not a lot of guys who develop that powerful front leg left sidekick.
02:50:41.000 They develop it off the right leg.
02:50:42.000 Do you remember when Chris Clements did a spinning thing on that?
02:50:46.000 I broke that down.
02:50:47.000 And the big question people had was, how did he know to do that?
02:50:52.000 And when you look at it, you see Wonderboy, and he turns sideways, and Chris and me, and I froze it and said, look in here.
02:50:59.000 Chris grew up doing taekwondo.
02:51:00.000 Chris is a traditional martial artist as well.
02:51:02.000 So he knows when this right leg comes forward and the stance is distributed this way, either a side kick is coming or a hook kick is coming.
02:51:08.000 Or a round kick, front leg round kick.
02:51:10.000 The hip was flared enough that he was probably...
02:51:14.000 The round kick wasn't as in play because of the position of how far his shoulder or hip was.
02:51:19.000 So then we freeze it and say, that's what he knows.
02:51:21.000 He knows from a lifetime that both of those are in play.
02:51:24.000 Now let's watch.
02:51:25.000 He throws the side kick and goes, freeze.
02:51:27.000 Now, Chris in his mind would know if this still happens, the next option, since he's just given me a sidekick, his point is hoping to drop my hands and hook kick me in the head.
02:51:35.000 When he saw that happen, there was a little flare of the hip and his brain goes, oh yeah, that's coming.
02:51:39.000 And then he timed it on the hook kick.
02:51:41.000 But it was his ability to kind of see the future.
02:51:44.000 You know what I mean?
02:51:45.000 Exactly.
02:51:46.000 And we predict the future all the time.
02:51:48.000 When you go to open a door handle, the reason if it was really hot or if it was spongy that you'd be surprised is because your brain was predicting what a door handle would feel like.
02:51:56.000 Yeah, and that's what you were talking about earlier when it comes to pattern recognition.
02:52:01.000 That's a big thing with pattern recognition.
02:52:03.000 Yeah, it is.
02:52:04.000 Yeah, and it's definitely what guys are playing with.
02:52:08.000 Do you know Adam Zuchek?
02:52:10.000 He trains Sarah Kaufman, but he's also kind of a secret weapon for Greg Jackson.
02:52:14.000 He's up in Victoria, BC, and he sends guys up there to do certain things.
02:52:18.000 He's very talented.
02:52:19.000 And we were talking about after Sarah's fight, Kaufman's fight, her last one in Quebec City, she was throwing a lot of off-tempo things which he taught her because she's a dancer, right?
02:52:29.000 So he can work footwork off time and different rhythms with her.
02:52:33.000 But he was also talking about pattern recognition and how him and Greg Jackson, that's one of the things they're on heavy, is training you to expect certain patterns, chunking those patterns that your brain anticipates and then giving you a surprise.
02:52:48.000 And that's on the front end of some of their thinking right now.
02:52:51.000 Wow, that's so fascinating.
02:52:51.000 Fuck, yeah, man.
02:52:52.000 So cool.
02:52:53.000 And what's so cool is when you have that many great minds doing it, now you've got one of these guys thinking that, but you've got Duane over here fucking thinking this.
02:53:01.000 You've got Matt Humes over there, and there's all these different guys in there.
02:53:04.000 Duke Rufus is in Wisconsin, and he's looking at it and trying to break it down.
02:53:08.000 And then put them against each other, and the lessons that we learn there, everybody's going to go back in their labs and prepare for the next one.
02:53:14.000 Yeah, amazing stuff.
02:53:15.000 Dude, we're out of time, but this was a lot of fun.
02:53:17.000 Thank you, Robin.
02:53:18.000 A lot of fun, man.
02:53:19.000 Hey, man, really thank you for having me.
02:53:20.000 It's a real thrill, and thanks for digging my stuff, and thanks for sharing.
02:53:22.000 Hey, I appreciate that you're doing it.
02:53:23.000 I really appreciate you doing the podcast, too, and we've got to do this again, man.
02:53:26.000 I'd love to.
02:53:26.000 How often are you in L.A.? My wife's working here right now, so I'm visiting a little bit.
02:53:30.000 She's in theater.
02:53:31.000 So not all that often, a couple times a year, but I'd love to.
02:53:34.000 I'll come back.
02:53:34.000 I'll bring some beer.
02:53:35.000 We'll do it again.
02:53:36.000 We'll do it again for sure.
02:53:37.000 Follow him, RobinBlackMMA, on Twitter.
02:53:40.000 And where can people see the videos?
02:53:43.000 Yeah, check out Fight Network.
02:53:44.000 FightNetwork.com.
02:53:45.000 We've got some stuff.
02:53:46.000 But Fight Network is a 24-hour television station.
02:53:49.000 It's in Canada.
02:53:50.000 It's now in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Texas.
02:53:53.000 And it's on Roku.
02:53:55.000 And you can call up any cable provider and say, I want Fight Network.
02:53:59.000 And it's a 24-hour fight channel.
02:54:01.000 Beautiful.
02:54:02.000 All right.
02:54:03.000 And thanks to our sponsor.
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02:54:04.000 Go to LegalZoom.com.
02:54:06.000 Enter in the code word ROGAN in the referral box at checkout to save yourself some cash.
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02:54:31.000 Alright, we'll be back in about 20 minutes with Scroobius Pip.
02:54:34.000 Much love.
02:54:35.000 See ya.
02:54:36.000 Take care.
02:54:36.000 Big kiss.