On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Conor Mcgregor. We talk about his weight loss journey, how he lost weight, and what he does to lose weight in order to be the best he can be. We also talk about the dangers of drinking too much water and the benefits of not drinking enough water, and how to cut down on your calories and water intake. We also discuss how to stay hydrated and prevent weight gain and how important it is to drink enough water to keep your body hydrated so that you don t get dehydrated and lose weight. I hope you enjoy this episode and don t forget to check out the rest of the show on Spike TV this Friday night on UFC Fight Night 19! Thanks for listening and God bless! -The Joe Rogans Experience -Jon "The Eagle" Rogan is a comedian, actor, writer, podcaster, and podcaster from Los Angeles, California. He is one of the most genuine, down to earth people I've ever met and one of my favorite people in the entire MMA community. . Jon Rogan is a great human being, and I really enjoyed getting to know him and talk to him on a deeper level than I could ever dream of. - Thank you for being my guest on the show. , and I hope y'all enjoy the show, Jon and I have a great conversation with him! and hope you guys enjoy it! Thank you, Jon! -The Eagle Experience -J.R. -Jon Rogan Show - - The Eagle Experience - The J. Rogan Podcast - Jon's Place - J. R. is a place where we talk about all things MMA, UFC, and other MMA and other things going on in the world of MMA and RELATIONSHIP! -Jon is a lot of other stuff. -The JOE ROGAN Experience - JOE'S JOE EXPERIENCE - the JOE JORDAN EXPERIENCES - THE JOE ROLLER - JORDY RODAN EXODUS JOE SCHILLER and JOE CRUISE SHOW - JOSEY ROGO RYAN EPISODE - JOSH MILLER JOSY CHEESE - JACOB SCARTER - JAMES MEYER, JOSH WELCOME
00:00:39.000I try to cut like 12 pounds of water, maybe a little less, but the process, it's like five gallons of water over three days.
00:00:45.000Is there like a science to this, or is this like, does everybody do the same thing?
00:00:50.000Or like, it seems like a lot of people have different methods on how to do this.
00:00:52.000Yeah, a lot of people have different methods.
00:00:55.000I read about it online probably five years ago from some wrestler and we tried it and it worked really well for me so I just keep the same way but I'll do two gallons of water like my weigh-ins on Thursday so I started on Sunday.
00:01:05.000Two gallons of distilled water on Sunday.
00:01:09.000Two gallons on Sunday, two gallons on Monday, one gallon, Tuesday to Wednesday, and then Wednesday for 24 hours, I won't drink any water, no salt, and it just kind of comes right off.
00:01:19.000So Wednesday, no water, all the way through Thursday, no water.
00:01:25.000And because of the distilled water, because the distilled water has no minerals in it, it's just pure water, it just flushes through your system?
00:02:01.000It just seems like, because I know my friend Aubrey, he went on this weird diet of distilled water.
00:02:07.000He thought distilled water would be pure, and he started getting dizzy and shit, I think, and he went and got himself checked out, and they're like, dude, you don't have any fucking minerals in your system.
00:02:25.000187. You weigh in at 187, you walk around somewhere around...
00:02:29.000If I'm walking around, like, maybe six weeks ago, I was probably like 210, 212. You know, if that's eating whatever I want, you know, drinking beer, doing whatever I want to do.
00:02:37.000Yeah, everybody's got their own little ideas about what should be done as far as, like, how much weight to cut before you compete.
00:02:44.000Some guys think cut the minimum amount possible, and then there's these extreme dudes that cut, like, 30, 40 pounds.
00:02:50.000Yeah, it really comes down to everybody and then also like your style of fighting some guys I think need to feel strong a lot bigger and stronger because maybe they're lacking or because they you know whatever reason they need to be bigger and stronger than the other guy but there's a hindrance you know I've cut too much weight and over hydrated and learned lessons that way where you you know yeah I think when I fought Simon Marcus the second time when I flew to Vegas I still had like one gallon of distilled water I was supposed to drink,
00:03:19.000and they wouldn't let me take it on the plane.
00:03:48.000And then after the second round, it was like, it was almost like, you know, when you have a dream and you're trying to fight somebody, but you're laying on your arm and you can't get the punch off.
00:04:37.000I don't know how many times Calvin's missed.
00:04:39.000Not as many as Lineker, but he's caught it close many times.
00:04:43.000And then you got a guy like Anthony Johnson that had a really bad reputation in the UFC. He got cut because he couldn't make weight, and then finally decided to stick to his natural weight, and he's killing it.
00:04:57.000You know, you gotta learn your lessons and work from it.
00:05:00.000There's never been a guy like Johnson, who at 170, he's a good fighter, very good, but struggles to make weight and then fades late in fights because he's depleting the shit out of his body.
00:05:11.000Goes all the way up to heavyweight and beats the shit out of Andre Orlovsky, and you're like, what the fuck?
00:05:39.000Yeah, you know, it's a weird thing, you know.
00:05:44.000If you don't do the weight cutting, or we did like same day weigh-ins, then you still have guys that are gonna try to cut the weight and fight the same day, and it's not healthy.
00:05:51.000It's terrible, boy, especially striking sports.
00:05:54.000It's terrible for you with wrestling, but guys get away with it.
00:05:58.000But with combat sports, anytime you're involving head strikes, We're good to go.
00:06:47.000Well, there's some guys that think, and I'm one of them, that MMA would probably be more realistic and better if no one wore gloves.
00:06:54.000I feel like if you can knee someone in the face, elbow someone in the face, kick someone in the face, why you punched him in the face with gloves on...
00:07:02.000It just protects your hands more than anything.
00:07:35.000If you watch the old K1s and stuff, you'll see Badr Hari and these guys have a huge amount of padding placed over their ankle and their foot.
00:07:44.000That padding is not protecting the person they're hitting, it's protecting you.
00:07:47.000So if you're ripping kicks and you kick somebody in the elbow and you have a pad on it, it's going to protect you.
00:07:53.000You're going to be more likely to keep kicking than if you smashed your foot in the first one.
00:09:20.000So you were in camp with Nick Diaz in preparation for his fight this past weekend with Anderson Silva, which was an amazing fight.
00:09:28.000You know, and I've been thinking a lot about that fight after it was over.
00:09:31.000And one of the things that really, really like locked into my head was there's a lot of people that are calling for Anderson to retire now, you know, and they're saying that, you know, and even Chris Weidman is one of them.
00:09:42.000He said he'd like to see Anderson retire.
00:09:44.000But I watched the fight and I was thinking about myself after the fight.
00:09:49.000Nick and Silva, that was a better fight than Nick and Carlos Condit.
00:09:54.000It was a better fight than GSP and Nick.
00:10:13.000And I think that the guy coming off of those two fights, it's almost like we expect more of him than of just a regular fighter.
00:10:21.000If that was GSP in his prime and he put on the exact same performance, and if you just CGI'd GSP's body and made someone watch the fight, well, that's a good fight.
00:10:30.000Well, the beginning was kind of ridiculous.
00:10:31.000Nick was clowning him, which was hilarious.
00:11:08.000I'm yelling out instructions or whatever, and he did that, and I was like, You know, and then he stood up and walked right at him with his hands down.
00:12:22.000But, you know, Anderson stood up with him, and the entire fight was taking place kickboxing.
00:12:29.000I think Anderson looked good, you know, and especially when you come off two big losses like that and your head's all fucked up and, you know, everybody's calling on you to retire.
00:12:38.000First of all, the first fight had to fuck with his confidence so hard that he did that.
00:12:42.000Because he was clowning and he got caught, which is everyone's worst nightmare.
00:12:46.000Because, like, when you're clowning, you're trying to make fun of your opponent and then, boom, you get cracked with a big left hook and the lights go out and you're like, No way.
00:12:55.000Like, to lose that way after all those victories, after the Vitor Belfort fight, after fucking up Chael Sonnen in the rematch, and after all those spectacular victories against James Irvin and Forrest Griffin, and, you know, to lose like that is like,
00:13:15.000Going into the camp, I was looking at stuff, because, you know, it was a really tough fight for Nick, and...
00:13:20.000You know, a lot of people didn't think he was going to, you know, Forrest Griffin when the fight first came out said that, you know, it was just a silly fight.
00:13:25.000It wasn't, I don't know, I wouldn't call it a super fight.
00:13:27.000You know, he's just too small for that, you know, and I think a lot of people count him out.
00:13:31.000But when I was looking at Anderson's fights, things that I noticed were people say he was showboating or whatever.
00:13:38.000I think that when it didn't go his way against Chris Weidman the first time he started he kind of broke mentally and that's why he started showboating and I had done that in the past and paid for it but ultimately I think that his style is to bait people into coming so he can use his reach and then catching them with shots so right with Nick you know my thing was you have to find that middle range somehow you know either get him to come at you or go just enough that you're inside of that middle range but not go all the way into the
00:14:08.000clinch and get and get stuck in his clinch you know right and That, I think, had a lot to do with Nick baiting him to come forward.
00:14:15.000And I think that also messed with Anderson's head.
00:14:25.000They're not prepared to fight that level of kickboxing.
00:14:28.000You know, they're not used to seeing that level of striking, that speed, that range, those moves.
00:14:33.000And then the other thing is that they...
00:14:35.000They get out there and they're like, I'm fighting, you know, the best striker in the world.
00:14:37.000This is the GOAT. This is the GOAT. Right.
00:14:39.000And I think that was a big thing for Nick was, you know, I don't think Nick believes for a second that he's the greatest fighter of all time.
00:14:47.000And same thing with Chael Sonnen the first time he fought him.
00:14:49.000Chael fought, you know, for all the stuff that Chael said, Chael really believed he was going to beat Anderson Silva that night, which is why he did beat him for, you know, almost the entire fight until he got caught.
00:14:59.000I think the second fight maybe was a little different, but I think most of the other guys that he fought didn't really think that they could, they didn't visualize themselves winning that fight, and then that gave it to Anderson.
00:15:08.000Well, Anderson is a great counter-striker, and that's always been what he's most spectacular at.
00:15:14.000I mean, he will lead, but most of the time, he only does it when he has a massive advantage.
00:15:19.000Like, the first couple rounds against Damian Maia, like he was going after Maia.
00:15:23.000But Damian Maia is like a plodding guy who doesn't have good strike, especially back then, didn't have good striking.
00:15:30.000But if you look at the Talos Latis fight, or if you look at...
00:16:26.000You know, Nick and Nate, they get painted to be these, like, bad guys, and, you know, that's part of the persona that, you know, they promote, and that's all well and good, but, like, they're very, very respectful.
00:16:35.000But, you know, when he, um, uh, when Nick beat Frank Shamrock, he was on the ground after the fight, and Nick reached down and picked him up and said, you know, you're a legend, you can't be on the floor, stand up, or whatever.
00:16:45.000And this is, but all people see is, you know, they go for the stare-down in the press conference, and Nick flicks him off, and Frank Shamrock grabs his balls, but, you know, they're both very respectful fighters, and, uh, I think they get a bad rap sometimes.
00:16:58.000Well, he definitely gets crazy before the fight and anxious, but that's to be expected.
00:17:04.000And the shit-talking, look, Sun Tzu said it in The Art of War.
00:17:09.000Miyamoto Musashi talked about it in The Book of Five Rings.
00:17:12.000There's all sorts of things that go on in the fight.
00:17:15.000And in any contest, there's advantages to be had.
00:17:19.000And there's mental advantages that if you do not take advantage of those mental advantages, and your opponent does, you're at a disadvantage.
00:17:25.000And when Nick immediately starts to fight, and he's like, he's got his hands out to Anderson, like, what, bitch?
00:19:02.000I think he gets people thinking he doesn't know what he's doing or he's crazy, but I guarantee...
00:19:08.000Once you figure out he knows exactly what he's doing all the time, there's a plan, which there totally is, then, you know, but you worry about him sometimes.
00:21:10.000You know, some people do have vices and whatnot.
00:21:13.000But what's incredible is you fought in that fucking glory tournament, which was a brutal tournament, which I went to in LA. It was amazing.
00:21:20.000That fight with Simon Marcus, when it went into the fourth round, you caught him with that right hand.
00:21:24.000First of all, that is a fucking war for one fight.
00:21:27.000But the fact that you had to fight three fucking times in a night against world-class fighters like that.
00:22:44.000But yeah, after I knocked out Simon in the Glory Tournament, We're in the back dressing room and they want me to lay down and ice me and all that stuff and I'm like, coach, let's go outside.
00:22:57.000You smoked a cigarette in between the fights?
00:22:59.000I went outside after Simon and had my hands wrapped and walking out.
00:23:04.000The security's like, where are you going?
00:24:33.000Wayne was stepping backwards and putting his foot on the rope and jumping off the ropes and doing a lot of weird stuff that was just frustrating for me.
00:24:41.000So I had to stay focused on that fight and then I got the W. I honestly didn't know who won the fight because neither one of us were really scoring, but after watching the video I see that I won the fight.
00:24:52.000So I had about 30 minutes after the Simon fight, before I got up for Wayne.
00:24:57.000But after the Wayne fight, it was like, go in the back, change your gloves, and there was like one fight between us.
00:25:01.000I think it was like nine minutes before I was back in the ring again.
00:25:04.000And I was walking to the ring, and I just kept thinking, like, how the fuck am I going to do it?
00:25:54.000That's some archaic shit those three fights in one night to get world-class fighters to fight three times in one night like I Went there and I talked to Kevin Kay who you know is one of the big wigs over at spike and I said this is awesome Well, you know the this event is awesome.
00:26:18.000Yeah, this is not smart and If you guys lose somebody because of this, if someone dies, like a world-class guy dies because of this, you guys look like assholes.
00:26:32.000If you have a war, if a guy has a war with another guy and gets dropped three or four times in a fight, like, you know, some fucking George Foreman, Ron Lyle type shit, where they're just blasting each other back and forth, and one guy manages to just get through by the skin of his teeth, And then he gets head kicked an hour later by somebody else.
00:26:53.000You fight, you should fight once in a night.
00:26:56.000You're in camp, you're training for a long time.
00:26:59.000Obviously you can do it, you did it, but if you had your choice to be at your best to fight a guy like Levin, You know, you want to be at your best.
00:27:09.000You want to go through a full training camp, and you don't want to have two fights that fucking day, nine minutes before you fight one of the best kickboxers on earth.
00:27:19.000And it's like, when you're going into that tournament, and both times that I fought Levin, your training camp is for that first fight, you know?
00:27:26.000And then in the back of your mind somewhere, it's like, oh, well, if I get to the next round, it could be this guy, it could be that guy.
00:28:23.000Like six days before the fight, Wakelin pulled out of the fight and they gave me Kingo Shimizu, who I'd never heard of, who was like the Japanese champion who used to fight at heavyweight and was coming down to middleweight.
00:28:34.000I had like six days to watch tape on him and try to figure out a strategy.
00:28:38.000Well, Levin's such a slippery guy, too.
00:28:40.000You were the first guy to ever catch him like that.
00:29:13.000We see it a lot in the UFC, where these guys are, you know, out, limp, and then right when the ref breaks them, they're going for a leg, or, you know, they're coming back, too, sort of.
00:29:22.000Yeah, you see guys have their eyes roll back behind their head, and then they get hit again, and it's almost like they refocus, like the new jolt of electricity to their brain, like, clear!
00:29:34.000That's another thing, like, with, uh, you've seen it with, like, Dan Henderson in some of those fights, you're like, oh, he's out, and then he comes back, or, like, uh, Chet Congo in his fight with, uh, oh my god, I can't remember his name.
00:30:00.000But man, he's had some rough KOs over the last couple of years where he had never been KO'd, and then he gets KO'd by Congo, and then he gets KO'd by LeVar Johnson.
00:30:10.000But the Muikasa one was hard to watch.
00:30:47.000Whereas you can be the same guy for the first round as you can for the fifth round.
00:30:52.000Those big guys, what we were saying earlier about cutting all that weight, when you have that much muscle to feed, there's definitely benefits.
00:31:01.000You could bum rush a guy and you're just a machine for as long as you have oxygen.
00:31:06.000But there's that weird middle balance where you're trying to find the comfortable middle ground between Being ridiculously strong and being an endurance athlete.
00:31:32.000I think there's a little bit of a confidence issue, too, when it comes to when you talk to the people that have trained with him and the people in his camp, you know.
00:31:58.000It makes you really strong if you're a grappler.
00:32:00.000It can certainly give you some advantage, but those guys, man, especially if you're built like that and you're trying to fight five rounds, you're taking a crazy gamble.
00:32:09.000That gamble is, I'm going to get this guy out of there in the first couple of rounds.
00:32:12.000And then you got a guy like we were talking about, Cain Velasquez.
00:33:44.000Some guys are just fucking full pedal to the metal offense.
00:33:48.000That's how they train, that's how they think, that's how they fight.
00:33:50.000And then when it comes to defensive skills, they might have an A-plus for an offense, but their defense might be like a C. Right.
00:33:58.000You know, and then when it starts going their way and they clang up, they don't know what to do.
00:34:02.000They have to think instead of just being instinctive and rolling with stuff because it's a natural part of your everyday thing.
00:34:09.000That's a weird thing about fighting, man.
00:34:11.000It's like how much emphasis, especially when it comes to MMA, how much emphasis to put on striking, how much emphasis to put on grappling, how much emphasis to put on your cardio and strength and conditioning.
00:34:23.000And I think that a huge part of that that's missing, I think, in a lot of people, or even just in this conversation, is like the mental aspect.
00:34:35.000And that two hours before the fight, from the time you check in to the time that you walk out in that ring, if you're not mentally strong enough and prepared for that, you just don't perform.
00:36:31.000I'm not really sure how he got into that.
00:36:34.000He does a lot of seminars and goes to a lot of things and studies a lot of stuff.
00:36:38.000I don't really know if he went to school for that or what that is, but he's very, very good at what he does.
00:36:43.000He works with Liam Harrison, he works with Jordan Watson, he works with Julie Kitchen, he worked with Andy Howes and most of the really high-level kickboxers overseas.
00:37:27.000Like me fighting Kalkali, I think I had nine professional fights.
00:37:30.000And, you know, he knocked out Mighty Mo, and he was a Roger Dumner champion at over 200 fights.
00:37:36.000Yeah, if you don't know who he is, he's a world-famous Thai boxer who was about 175, 180 pounds, fought Mighty Mo, who was close to 300 pounds at the time.
00:37:49.000Head kicked him and it was just one of those ridiculous k1 matchups where they used to do in Japan They love freak shows.
00:37:55.000They love to put together Noguera versus Bob Sapp or Bob Sapp's 375 pounds and you know, they put Bob Sapp versus even crazier They put Bob Sapp versus Manoa who's like 185. So you got a guy was ginky pseudo versus the Samoan the Samoan guy Genki Sudo also fought fucking the fat guy with the ball,
00:38:40.000Sometimes they say, like, styles make fights, and like, sometimes it's, I mean, obviously you want to see who's the best of the best of the best, but sometimes you want to see these other, you know, these two might not be even in the top ten, but man, they're gonna fucking get down, you know?
00:39:16.000I just think it's a little shady that your guy comes off with such a catastrophic injury and the first thing he does is start stomping away at somebody else's kneecap in a fight.
00:39:24.000Did you see the fight with Miguel Torres, the kickboxing fight, the recent fight?
00:40:45.000It's not that bad to get choked unconscious.
00:40:47.000I know it seems like it would be really bad, but it really is just like it shuts your brain off and then turns your brain back on again.
00:40:53.000The best way to describe it is like a garden hose.
00:40:55.000You pinch a garden hose, it stops the water, and then you let it go, and the water goes flowing through it.
00:41:00.000It's not nearly as bad as getting knocked out.
00:41:03.000So holding on to a choke and putting a guy unconscious, it's really not that big a deal.
00:41:08.000But holding on to a heel hook, you tear the ligaments apart, and you're talking about a guy who's going to go through six months of rehab, surgery, the whole deal, and then it might not ever be the same.
00:41:18.000Yeah, you're taking away a guy's livelihood for over a year.
00:44:32.000That's the stuff that was invented by this guy...
00:44:35.000I forget his name, but he's in Germany.
00:44:39.000And he created this procedure where you take the blood, they pull it out, like a lot of blood, and then they spin it in a centrifuge and heat it up.
00:44:48.000And when they heat it up, it takes the blood, and the blood reacts to the heat as if you have a fever.
00:44:55.000And it creates this amazing anti-inflammatory response.
00:46:06.000Thank God there's so many eggheads out there that are just fucking pounding on the keyboards and, you know, doing in the lab and trying to re-engineer human beings.
00:47:13.000Heard his left elbow, like, hyperextended his left elbow when we were training, like, maybe three or four weeks before the fight, and it really started messing with him, like, the week before the fight.
00:47:23.000And we were in Vegas, and his manager actually called Dana to find out, you know, what doctor or whatever to go to to get him a cortisone shot into his elbow.
00:48:00.000Yeah, and then you're going into a fight where your boxing is your strong suit and you don't feel really comfortable throwing your left hand.
00:49:28.000I'd have, like, stingers all the way down my arm.
00:49:31.000And I'd wake up, I mean, for the first, like, week or two after the fight, I was, like, waking up in the middle of the night, like, shaking.
00:49:37.000I would get a fever because I was in so much pain from this nerve stuff.
00:49:40.000And I guess I got, like, multiple x-rays.
00:49:47.000And they said it was basically like, you know, you see these guys where they get hit in the face or hit in the head and they get these hematomas on their head.
00:49:53.000And it's just blood and crap that's stuck between the skin and the bone.
00:49:58.000Well, mine was, I guess, inside of the cartilage of my rib or whatever.
00:50:01.000And, you know, even for the Melbourne fight when I would be training jiu-jitsu or I'd be working on my chokes or somebody puts their weight on my chest, like, it would swell up afterwards.
00:50:10.000So I was thinking ibuprofen by, like, the handful there for a minute.
00:51:40.000Yeah, to your organs try to protect your organs and then once you get back to room temperature it pushes it all out and it creates this amazing anti-inflammatory effect like all the soreness that you have and just it just does a weird thing to your body but the energy that you get out of it I don't know I don't know if it's an adrenaline rush if your body realizes like hey we're not gonna die life is beautiful look the Sun is shining I'm alive you know it's like one of those things where they say You don't really appreciate peace unless you've experienced war.
00:52:10.000You don't appreciate love unless you experience hate.
00:52:12.000You don't know how beautiful it is to be able to walk down the street and not freeze your dick off until you're inside one of those booths.
00:52:19.000But there's a lot of physical effects.
00:53:01.000There's a lot of cool science, actually, with cold therapy.
00:53:05.000After the last man standing tournament I was thinking about doing, I just didn't...
00:53:09.000I don't know why I didn't end up doing it, but Nike makes a cooling vest that...
00:53:14.000It's basically like it has all these pockets in it and it keeps you like really cool.
00:53:21.000So I was thinking after the fight of putting that on because I found out that like 75% again don't quote me on these numbers but 75% of the Your energy system is spent on temperature regulation.
00:53:33.000So if you had to have multiple fights in one night, how much time are you wasting sitting in the back sweating and you're wasting energy that you need later on in the fight?
00:53:42.000So we were thinking about trying to use that cold pack or those cooling vests.
00:53:48.000I think Nike came out with it for the Beijing Olympics.
00:53:51.000That's a great, you have two fights this weekend?
00:54:02.000It's hard to compare because when you, you know, you get in such, I mean, I was in phenomenal shape for that, for that last man standing tournament.
00:54:09.000I think I had like, we found out about that fight, I think four or five months in advance and I was going pretty hard for it the whole time.
00:54:16.000And, uh, When you have a camp like that, who structures your camp?
00:54:21.000Who structures how much running you do, how much strength and conditioning you do, how much kickboxing, how much striking on the pads?
00:54:33.000Yeah, with that camp, it was like, okay.
00:54:36.000Because we just came back from the Wayne Barrett fight where he just seemed like a lot bigger than me.
00:54:40.000So I was like, you know, I was fighting at 175 before I signed with Glory.
00:54:44.000And then when I went to Glory, it was automatically up to like 187 and 186. And, you know, the Glory 10 tournament, Artem Levin wasn't a very big guy.
00:54:53.000And Kingo Shimizu worked out really well for me.
00:55:36.000I think it was probably the last five weeks I stopped with the strength and conditioning and was just focused on speed and trying to get used to that size that I was.
00:55:44.000And I trimmed down quite a bit, but it was like build the muscle, bulk up, and then get fast and loose and then go into the tournament.
00:55:51.000And then my cardio and my speed and everything kind of comes in the last four weeks.
00:55:55.000Yeah, some guys, there's a lot of guys who like to do that for MMA. Like, they take off from a fight, and then once they're done, or they get out of camp, before they, say if they know they have a fight four or five months away, they'll do nothing but strength and conditioning.
00:56:07.000No fight training, no sparring, you know, no getting hit, no grappling.
00:56:11.000They're just lifting weights and just, like, jumping boxes and doing all kinds of plyos and shit like that.
00:56:17.000That was the first time I had ever done that, that I really focused on the strength and conditioning stuff.
00:56:22.000And then when I did start, um, When I stopped with that and I started doing the runs and stuff, Nick was actually in town and we went for a long run at Venice Beach.
00:56:32.000We were over at Rhonda's house that day and we went for this long run.
00:58:48.000Just like my coach tells me, hey, you're dropping your hands or you're doing this or you're doing that or you need to focus on this, this, and this.
00:58:54.000My mind coach is doing the same thing.
01:00:00.000Well, I kind of live in that general area.
01:00:03.000I live in Alhambra, South Pasadena area, so it's not too bad for me.
01:00:06.000I was living in downtown for a long time, and then my son started going to schools, and I was like, you know, I'd rather have him in a little better school system.
01:01:28.000Yeah, Timoyama, but there's no, like...
01:01:31.000Jackson's MMA where you got like world champions training in one facility that's like this center spot It's almost seems like like for a lot of places like it might actually be better to be in a small town and bring the guys in and then of course you're gonna have less Distractions and less bullshit if that happens you're right,
01:01:49.000but LA doesn't have a lot of great kickboxing either There's not a lot of different spots.
01:01:52.000I mean for as many people as there are 20 million people Yeah, when I moved out here from Ohio to pursue kickboxing, it was because Los Angeles and California was the center for kickboxing in this country.
01:02:08.000It was the only place when I moved out here when I was 19. They were the only ones putting on sanctioned Muay Thai fights.
01:02:17.000It was Dennis Warner and Vute Promotions.
01:02:20.000But there's really good gyms in Van Nuys.
01:02:24.000There's a really good gym in North Hollywood.
01:04:04.000But when it comes to a place where you have a legit world-class MMA training facility, like an AKA, You know, there's still not that many of them.
01:04:17.000You know, and especially when you look at California, you would think, man, you know, this is, like, so much kickboxing, so much jiu-jitsu, so much MMA, like, you know, or so much, you know, so many fighters.
01:05:18.000This is an interesting time because people are still trying to figure out how to train correctly for MMA. It's like you've got a lot of guys that are still holdovers from the early days where they would get together and try to figure it out and slug it out.
01:05:33.000There was a lot of unnecessarily hard sparring or unnecessarily hard not smart sparring.
01:05:41.000And then, you know, people are still trying to figure out, like, what's the best way to go about it?
01:05:45.000And then you have people that have figured it out, like the AKAs that have figured it out, or the American Top Teams, where they have it down to a science, you know?
01:05:55.000Whereas, like, if you look at any other major sport, like at baseball or football, like, they have protocols, like strength and conditioning protocols, they put all their athletes through, and there's been programs, because they go through...
01:06:05.000From high school to college to the pros, they know, state of the art, this is what we're supposed to do.
01:06:30.000With me transitioning over to MMA, that's one thing I'm really enjoying.
01:06:35.000I've done kickboxing for so long where I don't know everything there is to know about kickboxing, but I feel very at home.
01:06:41.000If I get in good shape and my coaches are just sharpening me up and keeping me fresh, I think I can get in a kickboxing fight and just react naturally.
01:06:50.000With MMA, I'm still learning and still thinking about things, and a lot of times I'm I remember what I was supposed to do like 10 seconds after I got tapped out.
01:07:26.000You just fought Melvin Manhoof in a big MMA fight in Bellator, and then you're going from that, and a couple months later, you're fighting in a big kickboxing event.
01:07:34.000Is it difficult to do both at the same time?
01:07:43.000I feel like I can be really successful in both right now, depending on the right matchups.
01:07:47.000I don't think I'm a contender for a title in MMA just yet.
01:07:54.000but uh yeah it's uh you know there's things i have to remember not to do um for both you know what i mean right if i knock somebody down in mma i don't walk away right right eight count you know that's your mark hunt yeah you know he's the king of the walk away ko in mma it was funny when i knocked out melvin um i felt the walk away like i needed to do though i knew he was out but um my coaches my coach and my manager were very adamant that The night of the fight and the week of,
01:09:15.000He comes out throwing bombs, knocked out Mark Hunt with one punch.
01:09:20.000I mean, he's a terrifying knockout striker.
01:09:21.000And his highlight reel is like 12 minutes long.
01:09:25.000Everybody, like the week of the fight, everyone's like, Joe Schilling's fighting this guy, and they tagged me in it.
01:09:29.000Every time I checked Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, it was like, People reminding me that I'm fighting this guy, and it was just like, knockout, knockout, knockout.
01:11:47.000I mean, he should have been fighting 155. And he was going over to Japan, and they wanted him to fight 185. They were like, you know, you're a big guy.
01:14:02.000So is your plan to, in Glory Days, you're fighting in Glory, I would love it if Glory became really successful, because I'm a huge fan of kickboxing.
01:14:12.000But I don't know, I mean, how successful was their pay-per-view venture?
01:14:16.000The pay-per-view venture, I don't think it did very good at all.
01:14:41.000You know, if they were going to put that on Spike TV, I think that would have done huge numbers for building their brand.
01:14:47.000But they had a great, you know, the other thing they did on that was they had two cards at one time.
01:14:52.000So you have, you know, Cro Cop was the main event on the card that was live on Spike TV. And I think it's just hard to get people, I mean, I love kickboxing, but I'm not going to watch it for an hour and a half and then Pay another 60 bucks to watch it for another hour and a half on Sunday night.
01:15:09.000Well, they tried the UFC strategy, the way the UFC has the prelims on Fox Sports 1 and they have the main bouts on pay-per-view afterwards.
01:15:18.000But the UFC is just way more established.
01:15:20.000I think it's really hard to do that with kickboxing because, for the most part, most of the people that are watching have no idea who anybody fighting is.
01:15:28.000Except Joe Schilling and whoever he fights.
01:15:31.000But if you watch, you know, the UFC, they're prepping you for the big stars.
01:15:37.000But they haven't really established glory enough to have big stars yet, but...
01:15:41.000Man, that level of kickboxing is so high.
01:15:44.000And it's kind of frustrating because for the new fan, even for MMA, you still get people like, oh, what's this boring stuff on the ground that don't appreciate the sport.
01:15:58.000They just want to see the action or whatnot.
01:16:01.000Those people need to tune in to kickboxing.
01:16:12.000That's the one thing that just disappoints me so bad.
01:16:15.000When I go on Twitter and I read, like, a fighter will post something, you know, after the fight, and you read all the people talking shit about them.
01:16:21.000It's just like, oh, fucking Christ, man.
01:17:21.000You get more fans, you get more whack jobs, but there definitely seems to be a little bit more Ignorant fans that hang out trashing people in MMA. There's just so many dummies in this world that get there.
01:17:52.000Imagine if, you know, someone came from another planet and they were trying to understand what people were like and they read comments on Instagram.
01:18:00.000They'd be like, well, we gotta nuke this fucking thing.
01:18:24.000I don't pay attention to football or baseball, but every now and then I will read, like, comment sections on blogs just to see, like, if they're the same as, like...
01:20:38.000If there was like a legit establishment where he could go to and just give them money, and it's just, to me, look, I have daughters, and the last thing I would ever want is my daughters to be prostitutes.
01:20:50.000However, I believe that part of our issue that we have as human beings with prostitution is just this weird...
01:23:14.000Later on, there was a time when before Glory, before Lion Fight got a TV deal, there was kickboxing and all the shows that I was fighting on.
01:23:27.000The fans didn't really have any connection to any one of the fighters unless you went to every show.
01:23:31.000So it was really hard to set yourself apart as the high-level guy or the better guy, who was really doing it, because there was no media at all.
01:23:43.000Five or six best kickboxers in the United States got together and started like our own website, started promoting ourselves and we hired, got the best photographers in the sport and kind of just built our own media for ourselves.
01:23:59.000Eventually Lion Fight got a TV deal and Glory came, but for a long time it was just us kind of making it for ourselves.
01:28:36.000I've had to repair the rims like three or four times just because the tire gets so low and you hit a bump and it puts a hole in the, or bends or cracks the rim.
01:29:50.000It's like a canister and you can put a little Whippet cartridge in it and you hit the button and it'll fill up and you can fill up your balloon off of that.
01:32:08.000I would think that that's like, especially for a kickboxer, when it comes down to the K1 glory days, those are probably the glory days.
01:32:18.000Not necessarily of Muay Thai, because there's a lot of the great Muay Thai fighters, particularly in the lower weight classes, came out of Thailand.
01:36:32.000But if anybody watches that tournament or doesn't get hooked on Glory and hooked on kickboxing, you've got no pulse.
01:36:39.000And that's the other thing that Glory's doing, which I don't know any of the finance stuff about it, but they're not going cheap on any of it.
01:37:31.000He fought Artem Levin, and then he fought Alex Pereira, who's another guy in the top 10 in Brazil.
01:37:39.000He came up short on both of those, but I have a lot of respect for somebody that's that young in his career and going after the top fights.
01:39:50.000It was one three minute round and it's really hard to do to really make leg kicks that effective in three minutes with giant shimp heads on.
01:40:30.000Just a slight slope, just enough to let you know that you're at the edge, and then they would bring everybody back to the center.
01:40:35.000It wasn't a very big thing, but I think that for MMA in particular, one of the things that drives people crazy is people being pressed up against the cage.
01:40:44.000A lot of people don't like that aspect of MMA, like the clinching up against the cage and throwing knees to the leg, and they start booing, and they want everybody to separate.
01:40:55.000If a football game can be played in a fucking giant 100-yard field, and a basketball game can be played in this really long court, why can't an MMA fight take place on a flat, just big, round,
01:41:11.000flat area like that, where you don't have a ring?
01:41:14.000And there's a red zone where you're out of bounds, and make that red zone, whatever, to fucking five yards or something like that.
01:41:23.000And then bring everybody back to the center.
01:41:53.000Once they start smashing you against the cage, then there's a lot of different variables.
01:41:57.000And yeah, how many fights like Tim Sylvia, I think it was Tim Sylvia and Brandon Vera, they spent like three rounds just smashed against the side of the cage the whole time.
01:42:11.000And it's also hard to see through a cage.
01:42:14.000If you're standing in the crowd, even if you're on the floor, a couple rows back, and there's a pillar, and they're behind that pillar, and they're fighting, you can't see shit.
01:42:25.000You wind up looking up at the big screen.
01:42:33.000This is something that we had to complain about for a long time.
01:42:36.000Because if you're sitting there and the whole fight is going on on the opposite side of the cage, you can't tell what's being landed or what, you know?
01:42:44.000They're throwing punches and a lot of those punches that...
01:45:11.000I think it was definitely, you know, the mind game and the...
01:45:15.000I think it was a really good strategy that he did come up through that.
01:45:18.000He said in the back that he was going to do something like that.
01:45:23.000I had no idea he was going to lay down and put his hands like that.
01:45:27.000Well, he probably didn't even know before he did that.
01:45:29.000I think he just knew if he doesn't want to engage, I think he said, I'm going to flip that switch.
01:45:36.000I didn't realize that was the switch he was talking about, but God, was it awesome.
01:45:40.000And really, like, It's hard, like, you know, there's an article that just came out that said, it was called The Sober Replay, like, The Sober Thought, like, when you watch a fight after, you know, like, the next day or whatever.
01:45:52.000And when we were in the corner, you know, we were yelling instructions, but between Gilbert and Nate Diaz and Cesar Gracie and I, all of us were just sitting there like, this guy's such a fucking beast.
01:46:03.000Like, we were so, like, blown away by what he was doing.
01:46:06.000We were just so impressed, and, you know, I was really proud of him.
01:46:10.000I was Well, especially first time fighting at 185, too.
01:46:13.000He steps up and fights the greatest ever at 185. After a two-year layoff.
01:46:45.000And then to do so well, I mean, the judges scored cards and they gave all five rounds to Anderson, but every one of those rounds were very competitive, except the fourth.
01:46:54.000I think Nick took off the fourth round, but every one of those rounds I thought was really competitive and really close.
01:46:58.000He was competitive enough, and especially if you consider the other fights that Anderson has been in.
01:47:21.000He threw a wheel kick at one point in time, but there was no moment in time where he was treating Nick the way Nick treated him.
01:47:28.000You know where he was like come on bitch like let's do this Let's do this, you know like stood in front of him.
01:47:33.000He just wasn't ready for that I mean the psychological aspect also having a guy like Nick taught you if Nick knocked him out like what if he was taunting him and then all sudden boom Nick catches and he's down like that would just be Devastating and he just was not prepared for that or Nick lays on the ground and he jumps into you know Nick's garden is trying to triangles yeah Anything can fucking happen in MMA and a guy like Anderson knows it as much as anybody now and Especially after it happened to him.
01:47:59.000I think also, too, the pressure of competing at that high level and being the champ for as long as Anderson was.
01:48:06.000I remember when BJ Penn beat Matt Hughes, and I talked to Matt Hughes after it was over, and he was really honest about it.
01:48:12.000In the cage, he said, honestly, it's a relief.
01:48:15.000Being the champion is a lot of fucking stress.
01:48:18.000He didn't swear, but he was like, it's a relief.
01:48:22.000I'm glad I got this weight lifted off my back and I'm going to go back and relax and see what's up.
01:48:26.000That's kind of the impression I got from George when I was talking to George.
01:48:59.000I mean, I'm good friends with him, and I really have no fucking idea what's going on in his head 90% of the time, which actually makes it really fun sometimes, you know?
01:49:52.000Does that fuck with your explosion at all?
01:49:55.000Like, there's some people that believe that all that slow running and slow twitch endurance type work, that it can actually fuck with your explosion.
01:50:05.000Nick kind of disagree with me, but I think it does.
01:50:06.000I think that him, Nick, and Nate both are not the most explosive people when it comes to their movement patterns or whatever.
01:50:14.000I feel like with me doing more, I do a lot more sprint work than I do long distance kind of stuff.
01:50:51.000Oh, you know, uh, I don't know, come on, shit like that.
01:50:54.000Nick, when, um, let's see, when the, uh, for this last fight we were sparring, and Nick did, I think it was when the UFC was filming it, um, Nick had done, like, nine five-minute rounds with fresh guys.
01:51:06.000It was, like, me, Chidi, and Jaquani I had brought in to spar with him, and then, um, another guy.
01:51:10.000And like the last round I could tell that he was tired and was kind of like clenching me up against the fence and was like holding or whatever.
01:51:15.000And I'm like, come on, Nick, let's go.
01:51:21.000But like, you know, the other thing about Nick, as mentioned, is like sometimes it's a lot better, which I agree with.
01:51:28.000It's a lot better sometimes to spar with people you don't know instead of like your buddy.
01:51:32.000You know, you get, you go a little harder or you get a little more competitive with somebody you don't know.
01:51:36.000And like when Nick and I first started, I mean, he used to, It'd be a lot more competitive with me, and now we're pretty good friends, so I find myself talking shit to him or trying to piss him off or hit him hard to get him to push a little harder.
01:52:20.000Like with Nick, yeah, sometimes he'll coast with this camp.
01:52:26.000He was coasting in some of the rounds, or if I put him in there with somebody that wasn't that hard, he would not do so well, and we'd just kind of go at the level of the person he was going with.
01:52:52.000You know, there's a lot of people, interviews people, some guy, some interview guy, I forget who it was, but he was like, you know, how do you feel about this fight with Nick?
01:53:01.000You know, looking at Nate's last performance, you know, I was trying to compare, like, Nate versus Nick.
01:53:09.000Like, well, if Nate didn't do so good against Dos Anjos, then, you know, and I'm like, how the fuck?
01:53:14.000It's two fucking completely different people.
01:53:16.000Yeah, two different opponents, two different people, two different weight classes.
01:53:20.000But, yeah, a lot of times the people have complained that both of them don't block kicks very well, and their understanding of kickboxing is a little different.
01:53:27.000So, like, for me as, like, a coach, so to speak, in this camp, I was trying to put and bring in the best possible sparring partners I could for them, so I brought in Artem Levin, I brought in Chidi and Jaquani who was sparring with me.
01:53:40.000I believe, and I got a lot of flack for this, I believe all three of those people are better kickboxers than Anderson Silva.
01:53:46.000Being that they're kickboxers and Anderson Silva is an MMA fighter, so it's not a knock on Anderson Silva, I just think that those are very high level.
01:53:56.000It's reality, you know what I'm saying?
01:53:58.000I mean, Anderson has had spectacular striking moments in MMA, but when it comes to his actual real-world kickboxing experience, it's fairly limited.
01:54:06.000He's had nearly as many fights, especially in world-class competition.
01:54:13.000But it was like, you know, Artem has a very confident, Head movement.
01:54:55.000But he got used to seeing those situations so that when it happened, when Anderson threw that spinning heel kick, Nick was prepared for it and moved out of the way.
01:55:04.000Most of the kicks he blocked, you know, Nick threw a lot more kicks than he usually does.
01:55:09.000So his awareness of kickboxing had showed, you know, and that was...
01:55:13.000I didn't know how the fight was going to go, but I felt a lot of responsibility as far as if Nick got caught with something, some kick or some kickboxing move, I felt like I was going to be my fault, but I didn't show him.
01:58:52.000Fedor had some amazing fights in Pride, but the problem is those guys that he fought, they came over from Pride and they fought in the UFC. They didn't look nearly as good.
01:59:10.000There's all these different questions.
01:59:11.000But those are the two guys that, in my opinion, I go with Anderson, mostly because I've seen him live, and I think that the level of competition that he faced is probably a little higher.
01:59:22.000But it's an argument that I could see.
01:59:24.000When people say Fedor was the greatest of all time, I'm like, yeah, I could see your argument.
01:59:39.000I mean, he fought fucking Diego Sanchez at 155. And he fought a lot.
01:59:43.000Sean Shirk, 155. And fights Anderson, 30 pounds heavier, and it's very competitive.
01:59:47.000That was his sixth or seventh fight where somebody he, where his opponent was either at one time a UFC champion or went on to become a UFC champion.
01:59:56.000He fought six or seven of those guys in his career.
02:00:04.000And then when I was going through his...
02:00:07.000I was looking at the opponents and the strikers that Anderson had fought in his career, and then I was looking at the strikers and the opponents that Nick had fought in his career, and it was just from my own curiosity.
02:00:17.000But, like, Nick fought straight with his hitters at their best, you know?
02:00:56.000No, he's a very good, very good fighter.
02:00:58.000It's just one of those things where...
02:01:01.000I just feel like right now is a great time for him if he wants to like follow through right now if he really wants to Remain active and jump right back in and there's so many marquee battles for him I would love to see Nick versus Hector Lombard you want to talk about I mean what the fuck would happen to Hector Lombard if Nick starts talking shit to him like that you know and it's a great fight Hector's a monster Matt Brown would be an awesome fight too.
02:01:25.000There's a lot of really exciting fights for him at 170, and I'm sure there are some at 185 as well.
02:01:59.000Well, people are concerned about Anderson, first of all, that, you know, after the fight was over, to watch him, like, weeping like that is also one of the reasons why people are concerned.
02:02:09.000You know, they're like, Jesus Christ, like, this is, like, the pressure on this guy must have been tremendous.
02:02:16.000I've come back from knee surgeries before, and, like, that must have been such a really challenging thing, to come back from all that and, you know...
02:02:27.000Maybe he wasn't crying because he was...
02:02:30.000I don't know why he was crying, but I'm sure that was a lot emotional to go through.
02:02:35.000And to come back after being knocked out and basically humiliated.
02:02:38.000And then your next fight again, you get your legs shattered and you're out for another year.
02:03:52.000And that was something else that we were looking at, like, in the camp, you know, we were looking at...
02:03:59.000We were obviously concerned of how Nick was going to react in the clinch with...
02:04:04.000With Anderson after seeing Anderson's fight with Rich Franklin, you know?
02:04:08.000And then watching the fight over again with Weidman, I was like, I want you to punch from there.
02:04:13.000Just start throwing punches and cross-face to get out of that clinch.
02:04:16.000You see how easily Nick was able to get out of it and how well it worked for Weidman.
02:04:21.000With Rich Franklin, he had really no idea what to do there, you know?
02:04:26.000Yeah, Rich was at a loss when it came to that.
02:04:30.000He's a very tough guy and a very well-conditioned guy, but I don't think he was the most technical when it came to certain aspects of fighting.
02:06:26.000He got tagged earlier in the round, too, that I think contributed to that.
02:06:31.000He got hit with some big shots earlier in the round where you could see he got dinged.
02:06:37.000Dana and I actually talked about it before, and he said he felt like Chuck was hurt early in the round.
02:06:43.000And, you know, that was just the one that just put him away, was the one that landed.
02:06:47.000It was crazy that Rich was, he hit him with a broken arm.
02:06:50.000You know, he hit him with the right hand, and then after the right hand, he hit him with his left, and his left had been snapped earlier in the fight.
02:06:57.000He didn't even, you know, just threw punches and didn't even realize it, and after the fight, he realized, oh, shit, what the fuck's going on with this thing?
02:07:05.000That's a common thing in kickboxing though, isn't it?
02:07:15.000A lot of people, and another thing I was explaining to Nick in this camp is somebody along the line told Nick to block your holding pads this way.
02:07:24.000So that exposes your forearm, like the bone on bone.
02:07:30.000If you keep this inside, you're going to take it on the meat of the arm, the meat of your other arm, and then you put one hand here.
02:07:36.000So this doesn't hurt nearly as bad as going here.
02:07:39.000There, it's bone on bone, and the shin's going to win against the ulna or whatever bone there is every time.
02:07:46.000It's so weird when you watch a guy's shit get broken, like the Tyrone Spong-Kokan Saki fight.
02:07:52.000Especially when a guy like Spong is just such a high-level kickboxer.
02:07:56.000You watch him throw a kick and then you see his leg just go noodle, just snap.
02:08:26.000The bones, there's just nothing that makes them any tougher than, you know, you're born with a certain amount of bone density and you can lift weights and they'll get thicker and a little bit stronger, but...
02:08:37.000So someone was telling me that, because usually all of the guys that I can remember that I've seen where they're breaking their legs were always black guys.
02:09:24.000Somebody told me that and I googled it and sure enough there was a study done on it that your darker skin tone works as a filter and you don't absorb as much.
02:09:33.000I think it was D3. That's weird because I guess the more melanin acts as sunscreen.
02:11:27.000Well, they also say when you're kicking, like shin on shin all the time, what you're also doing is you get these deposits of blood and it fills up and calcifies and, you know, all the bruises when it heals, those micro fractures and tiny,
02:11:43.000you're getting all this calcification.
02:11:45.000It almost leads to like a shin instep protector, you know, all over your shin.
02:11:51.000Like, you ever see that fight in Lion Fight or Malapet?
02:11:53.000Just starts, he kicks this guy, and you see the guy react, and so he just starts going shin to shin with him, just winging his shins, and I'm laughing at the guy, because Malapet's shins have just been numb since he was like six.
02:12:09.000But it's almost like he's got armor on his shins, and he's just smashing them into the other guy's shins and laughing at him while he's doing that.
02:12:16.000Because his shins all just fucking covered this layer of protection that's been built up.
02:12:23.000Like knuckles, like those dudes, those karate makiwara guys.
02:13:09.000Makiwara is just like this, for folks who don't understand, it's like a 2x4 that's wrapped with rope.
02:13:14.000And they lock it into the ground so it's real stiff, and they would pound this 2x4 with a rope until you develop all this calcification and all this calluses all over the top of your knuckle where it's like one big knuckle.
02:13:30.000The first two knuckles become one big giant knuckle.
02:13:33.000But does that help your hands protect you from getting injured?
02:13:58.000But these are usually the bones that break...
02:14:00.000But usually they say you want to hit with these two bones, because these two bones line up directly with your wrist, and these two are kind of on an angle, so it's a lot easier to break these two.
02:14:09.000Yeah, especially considering how your hand's built.
02:14:15.000If they have a more narrow hand, maybe it would be more protected by the outside edge, but mine sticks out on the side.
02:15:08.000Never broke my nose, although Simon Marcus, and I think our first fight, he had slammed me, tripped me, and landed on top of me and knocked me.
02:15:16.000And I stand up and I'm walking in the wrong direction, and the ref wasn't paying attention and said fight, and I just got blasted two more times.
02:15:22.000But after that fight, one of the things he finished me with was a push kick to the face, and after that fight, all of the cartilage inside my nose, like this ball or whatever, is not...
02:16:31.000That's really incredible when you think about the fact that he did have that amazing record coming into that fight with you.
02:16:37.000That fucking right hand that you landed on him was so perfect.
02:16:41.000It was so perfect to watch him fucking just drop like he got shot by a sniper in front of all the people in LA. I gotta tell you, that Can't Stop Crazy is fun until you have someone fucking yelling it over and over behind your ear while you're trying to watch the fights.
02:16:57.000I was watching the fights and some chick was yelling, Can't stop crazy!
02:18:18.000It wasn't that, you know, well received, it wasn't that big of a deal, but man, this was a giant deal.
02:18:24.000All those Spike TV cameras, you know, everybody, people being interviewed, and the whole deal, it was like, it was, there was so much energy behind it that, like, everybody was realizing, wow, this might, and the fact that it was a big pay-per-view card, like, this might be a big moment where kickboxing becomes just like MMA,
02:18:39.000you know, becomes like this next-level sport.
02:18:42.000Because I'd always have, like, when you look at the level of competition, like, when MMA became huge, The level of competition was not nearly as high as where the level of kickboxing competition is right now.
02:19:21.000Yeah, but we'll go back to Rich Franklin.
02:19:22.000I mean, Rich Franklin's a very good fighter.
02:19:24.000But, like, the difference between, like, Rich Franklin of, you know, the Rich Franklin that fought Anderson Silva and, say, like, you know, like Mighty Mouse Johnson.
02:19:46.000You've got that with the elite kickboxers of today.
02:19:50.000Whereas I don't think MMA had that when it started to take off.
02:19:55.000So if the promotion was behind it, and if they just...
02:19:58.000If it caught on with the American people and the names started getting established, you know, Joe Schilling and all these guys and, you know, these names became more established and it became something that became, you know, mainstream.
02:20:12.000I just think, like, the quality is there.
02:25:32.000Yeah, and I think that those guys, when they're fighting and kickboxing as opposed to Muay Thai, there's like an element of their game that they've worked so hard to adapt and to get proficient at, and then that element's been removed.
02:25:44.000You're forcing them to fight at like 70%.
02:27:32.000I don't know if Melvin would have went down from that right hook with a boxing glove as dramatically as he did.
02:27:38.000Did Glory adopt K1 rules just because K1 was like the big organization and K1 started to fall off and then It's Showtime came along and It's Showtime put up some really big fights and then Glory kind of came along and took that over.
02:27:51.000Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened.
02:27:54.000I think that, from what I understand, the guys...
02:27:58.000K-1 was K-1, and then most of the fighters from Holland were under one management team.
02:28:05.000And when K-1 started to fail, that management team...
02:28:12.000Had all the contracts for the K1 guys and they started at Showtime because they already had all the fighters under contract.
02:28:17.000And then when at Showtime eventually sold to Glory, the company Glory.
02:28:23.000So it was just like the same people, same scenario.
02:29:16.000In Edmonton, you know what I'm talking about, that dude.
02:29:19.000But, uh, now, um, and you remember Spike TV, when the UFC was still on it, and had the Ultimate Fighter, that was, like, kind of the home for combat sports, and I know that Spike TV is now rebranding, I think, in March, and they just signed, um...
02:32:01.000I think it's a Roman thing, the name, but whatever.
02:32:05.000Maximum Fighting Championship was what I was trying to remember.
02:32:08.000MFC, Mark Pavlich's organization, which is up in Edmonton, which is another good thing to watch.
02:32:13.000You see a lot of Ryan Jimmo came out of there.
02:32:16.000A lot of young, up-and-coming guys that are really good fighters came out of these HGNet fights that they used to put on back in the day.
02:32:23.000So if Spike can do that and just make it like the home for fighting, like every Friday night, boxing, MMA, kickboxing, people will get programmed.
02:32:31.000If they just stick with glory, I feel like I can't miss.
02:32:35.000It's just a matter of promoting it correctly, getting people to understand, like, these are the best kickboxers on earth, and it's super high-level shit.
02:32:44.000It's not like, you know, they're just learning how to kickbox or putting them on TV. Like, these are the best of the best.
02:32:50.000Do you think there needs to be more Americans fighting for an American audience to...