Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson joins the show to talk about his life as a professional mixed martial arts fighter. We talk about how he got into the sport, what it's like training with his brother Steven Johnson, and how he trains to be the best at what he does. We also talk about some of the crazy things he does outside of training, and what it takes to be a professional MMA fighter. We finish up the show with some of our favorite moments from the past week and talk about what we are looking forward to in the future. We hope you enjoy this episode, and stay tuned for our next episode next week! Cheers, Dwayne Johnson and the "Rocky" Crew! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! The Rock is a proud member of the Rockin' Bulldog Nation. Thank you so much for all your support, stay safe out there and Don't Get Lost in the Storm! -Dwayne Johnson & the Rock 'n Roll Crew. -TJ & The Rockn Rollin' Rockn' Crew Check us out on Anchor.fm/TheRockn' Bullcreek Family! Thanks for checking us out! Don't Tell a Friend About Us! Timestamps: 5:00 - What's your favorite food? 6:30 - What are you eating? 7:15 - What do you would like to eat for dinner? 8:40 - How much food you're hungry? 9: What would you like to have in your next meal? 11:00 13: What's a good steak? 16:00 -- How do you want to eat in the next episode? 17:30 -- What's the worst thing you're going to eat? 18:00 | What's someone else's favorite meal you're scared of? 19:40 -- What s your favorite meal or how do you need to eat so much more? 22:00 // 15:30 21: How much do you think you're getting out of your morning routine? 24:40 27:15 -- What kind of food is your favorite part of the day? 26:00 & 27:10 28:15 29:00 Is your favorite type of meal you'd like to sleep in the middle of the morning?
00:02:39.000I'd rather hit mitts and be aggressive.
00:02:41.000I'm too aggressive of a person, I guess.
00:02:43.000Well, we were talking before the podcast about our friend Cam Haynes who just ran 200 miles, and we were like, that shit is not good for you.
00:03:02.000Because I just know, it's like my dad.
00:03:04.000When I grew up hunting, we'll go hike 100 miles in a week to go out the backcountry and have a backpack and sleep out in the middle of the woods.
00:03:11.000I just feel like that's how Cameron Haynes would do it, you know, just as hard as possible just to do it.
00:03:16.000Yeah, my friend Adam Greentree from Australia came over, flew over to America last week, went to Montana, and then hiked...
00:03:26.000Some crazy amount of miles into the mountains, camped out, went in deeper and deeper because he kept encountering wolves and grizzly bears, camped out there, shot an elk, and for the last four days has been packing out this elk by himself.
00:03:44.000So if you've never shot an elk or you've ever seen an elk before, folks, an elk could weigh, you know, somewhere around 800 pounds, which is probably around 400 pounds of meat that he's packing out.
00:03:55.000So four days of 100 pounds on his back...
00:03:59.000When you're hiking, you can't carry it all out.
00:04:02.000So not only say you hike five miles with something on your back, you've got to go back and get the rest of the elk to hike that five miles again.
00:04:07.000So you're hiking the same trail two, three, four times, depending on how big the elk is when you're quartered out.
00:04:13.000Yeah, and I'm pretty sure he said he hiked 12 hours.
00:04:16.000So that could easily be who knows how many miles.
00:04:49.000And a dude met him up there, a friend of his, hiked through the night to come and meet him up there and help him, I think, on the third or fourth day.
00:04:58.000But he's got all these videos of him up there in the mountains.
00:05:21.000Because when you're on public land, most countries don't have the same sort of public land setup that we have in the United States where you can just go hike into the mountains and camp out in these national forests.
00:05:33.000And so he took advantage of all that, and he's up there.
00:06:02.000He got a real big moose and then over the night in camp, a grizzly bear came in and tried to take his moose off and took a big chunk out of its neck.
00:06:54.000He got popped for some supplement thing.
00:06:57.000And a lot of people are getting popped for tainted supplements.
00:07:00.000If you buy things in the store, there's a lot of supplements that you get at any nutrition store that have all these...
00:07:09.000If they're not steroids, they're peptides, they're all these things that sort of make your body produce more hormones that are illegal by USADA. And he got caught for that stuff, apparently.
00:07:27.000At this level, you have to be mindful of what you're taking into the body, especially with the new guidelines, so it's just part of following the rules.
00:07:34.000You can't go in the cage and eye poke somebody and be like, oh, I didn't know.
00:07:36.000Now there's so much going on with supplements.
00:07:37.000Now you have to make sure you put it in the research and the investigation.
00:07:40.000Speaking of eye poking, did you see that picture of Travis Brown's finger knuckle deep into Fabrizio Verdum's eyeball?
00:07:47.000He didn't even say anything in the fight, right?
00:09:06.000Obsessed about martial arts making things better.
00:09:08.000Someone's got to do something because the way things are going We're just so many guys are getting eye gouged so many guys getting damaged eyeballs It's just it's not worth it man, and it seems like we're waiting for something terrible to happen You know like look at Michael Bisping.
00:09:40.000I think they fixed it enough to where he can fight, and then when he's done fighting, they'll probably fix his eye completely is what it seems like.
00:09:44.000Well, what they did is they stuck oil in his eye.
00:09:47.000I don't understand it, but one of his eyeballs apparently has oil in it that's protecting the retina, so that's why one of his eyeballs is black.
00:10:34.000He was telling me weeks before the fight that...
00:10:37.000Things he was doing while he's hitting mitts, dropping his right hand all the time with his left cross and kind of leaning back and kind of shoulder rolling and whatnot.
00:10:44.000And Dwayne called it out a couple weeks before the fight that he saw openings.
00:10:47.000He didn't say he was going to get knocked out with it, but he saw some openings there.
00:10:52.000You can see where the openings are on that one for sure.
00:10:54.000And I remember after Bisping caught him, and his trainer pointed at him, and I'm not quite sure what he said, but he was for sure saying, like, see, I told you, I told you, like, that was it.
00:11:08.000But it's cool to see something you've trained multiple times come out and actually work, and then win the fight, and then the title fight, whoo!
00:11:17.000Well, along the lines of what we were talking about today when we were working out, there's so much depth to this sport.
00:11:25.000There's so many options and there's so many possibilities that to the outsider, people look at it, it looks brutal.
00:11:31.000You see that eye poke and you're like, oh my god, this sport should be illegal.
00:11:34.000But to a person who really understands and watches it and appreciates it, it's like this crazy language.
00:11:42.000That you have to learn with all these different words and all these different ways of putting together sentences and I like to use a language analogy because Like if you're talking to someone and they only know a few words and they want to yell at you But you're like some Sam Harris type dude who can just has an incredible language and you're just so eloquent You spin them up like a web and they don't really don't know what the fuck to say.
00:12:04.000Yeah And that also happens in a fight when a guy has a very simple like real obvious game He does a couple of things and he does it well as long as you engage him in that same sort of simple obvious way He's got a chance, but when you over flood him like Dwayne this Dwayne was showing me this Switch series that he works on,
00:12:28.000But one of the things I noticed is while you were demonstrated to me, because it's so unusual, it forced my brain to hiccup for a second and go, oh, okay.
00:12:37.000And if that happens in a fight, you're fucksville, right?
00:12:43.000Those little moments where your brain is overloaded because it's got to think instead of just react because you're doing something unique.
00:12:48.000If you're thinking inside the octagon, you're going to get caught, you're going to be in trouble.
00:12:52.000You need to have a completely clear mind and just kind of react to things.
00:12:55.000And for me, it's just been kind of having fun out there.
00:12:58.000You know, the more fun I have and the more loose I stay, the better I'm going to fight.
00:13:01.000If I go in there with a game plan and thinking what I want to throw and what to watch out for, what he's good at, what he's not good at, then I'm going to be a little bit slower, you know?
00:13:09.000We were talking about your fight with Dominic Cruz that you seemed so emotional.
00:13:54.000Those are the small mistakes you learn from and you change them up next time and you come out there a little more level-headed and play his game.
00:14:01.000Kind of like you were saying, he's a point fighter.
00:14:04.000If you go out there and let him point fight you, then that's what he's going to do.
00:14:08.000So you've got to be able to react to how he fights and change it up a little bit and that's why each training camp is a little bit different and you learn those things.
00:14:15.000When you go and watch a fight after it's over, do you see openings and you're like, shit!
00:14:33.000Into the first round, I was watching the fight against Cruz and I had a double leg locked up so deep and I just didn't finish it and that could have changed the entire fight.
00:15:12.000Hitting and not getting hit, or getting the takedown, not getting taken down, things like that, right?
00:15:15.000So now it comes to the point of adapting to the athlete and the scenario.
00:15:21.000What's correct, again, is making sure you have high success with that technique, whatever that technique may be.
00:15:26.000So just putting in the time of the reps until it comes out fluidly and there's no longer a thought but an instant reaction.
00:15:32.000Well and also having the right coaches too that can give you that information and can give you that high level technique because there's so many people out there that are talented people but you see their game just doesn't evolve.
00:15:44.000It just hits this level and it's sort of like the level that their coaches are capable of taking them to and then they don't go any further.
00:15:52.000You have to believe and trust in that coach to be able to take you to that level.
00:15:55.000Someone can be telling you the exact thing you need to do, but if you don't trust and believe that guy, if he doesn't get it through your head the right ways, then it's not going to make sense.
00:16:02.000You're not going to do it because you don't believe in it.
00:16:06.000Well, I think it's amazing what's going on right now with MMA, that people who are casual people, like, perfect example, the other day I was at my daughter's school, and one of the dads came up to me, and this dude was just a new fan.
00:16:20.000He'd only been watching MMA for the past year.
00:16:23.000And he was just rapid-firing questions at me, and he was obsessed with it.
00:16:28.000He's like, I was never into martial arts when I was a kid.
00:16:45.000And we were going over this, about it, and this guy was a real smart guy.
00:16:50.000I think he was a hedge fund manager or something like that.
00:16:52.000But he was obsessed with all the possibilities.
00:16:55.000You know, and I think casual fans are starting to understand now that this is a very intellectual pursuit.
00:17:02.000If you don't have a strong mind, and if you don't have this full range of options and possibilities inside the octagon, you're most likely limiting yourself.
00:17:39.000And I think you for sure are one of those coaches and there's a few guys out there I know you don't like to hear but Dominic Cruz is one of them.
00:17:46.000He's also doing it We were talking about him today that like his style is so fucking odd You know, he's technically not sound actually, but you know, but he uses it the right ways.
00:17:56.000He's got awesome timing Yeah, he's got great cardio.
00:17:58.000He's got a great chin Yeah, and then he can get away with the the bad things he does because he does them for the right way for himself Yeah, I don't necessarily think you can say it's technically bad because he's so fucking successful and he knows how to do it.
00:18:39.000He's trickier than I expected, for sure.
00:18:41.000But a piece of that, again, game planning is the talks up to the fight to get them emotionally invested, and then it becomes a bit trickier to find the head.
00:19:17.000The thing with him, too, that pisses you off so much is that he'll attack anything and just talk about something that doesn't even make sense just to talk and talk louder and faster and not give you a chance to talk.
00:19:27.000It's like high school girls just bickering at each other.
00:19:31.000I think that's what pisses you off the most, you know, because he's not even actually making a great point.
00:19:34.000He's just making it and making it louder.
00:19:48.000Well, you lost a very close decision to him, and then you beat Rafael and Sun Tzu, which, in my opinion, was, we were talking about this today, was an excellent example of how far you progressed, because you guys had a really tough fight the first time you fought.
00:20:40.000I'm on an 11-fight win streak, still have the belt, you know, known as hopefully one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters in the world, you know.
00:20:48.000What's interesting right now, too, is this new rule set that's going to go into place in January, you know, where they've changed this whole thing about downed fighters, like being able to attack a down fighter.
00:21:01.000You have to have four points down now.
00:21:32.000I mean, I think there's way more force in the elbow that comes down the side, because it's more like a punch.
00:21:37.000Because you get your whole shoulder torques into it.
00:21:40.000Your shoulder dropping down is a weird movement.
00:21:42.000I mean, I guess there's some guys like Anderson Silva or, you know, Yatzen Klai or some badass TIE fighters that can generate ridiculous power with that, but I don't think it's any more than any other kind of elbow.
00:22:01.000...is probably, like, if there's going to be, like, one thing that needs to be changed, I mean, it would be really nice if we could all get together and figure out a way to make it so there's less eye pokes.
00:22:09.000Well, here's three experts in the field right now, and we're all saying...
00:22:12.000Pride style gloves would be an example, or like the Shido gloves, but anything that doesn't allow the hand to fully open.
00:23:58.000He'll come out and he'll train exactly the same.
00:24:00.000For me, when I go to altitude, it messes with me big time.
00:24:03.000But I feel like I get the effects from it.
00:24:05.000Long term when I'm done with the camp.
00:24:07.000I've felt big differences when I train at altitude when I'm done with my camp.
00:24:12.000After I've been out there for six weeks and I'm in a camp, and you come back down to sea level, when we first start hitting mids at wherever we go, it just feels awesome.
00:24:19.000Yeah, sea level, you feel like a Superman, right?
00:24:21.000Yeah, it's crazy how much of a difference it makes.
00:24:22.000Have you ever tried one of those altitude tents, those things that people sleep in?
00:24:29.000Yeah, it gets hot in there, and then your body doesn't recover as well.
00:24:33.000If you're sleeping at really high altitude, anything higher than where we're at, if you're sleeping at a real high altitude, it's hard for your body to actually recover overnight when you're actually supposed to recover.
00:24:41.000You're supposed to have your testosterone built up when you're sleeping and oxygen get into your muscles and recover over the night.
00:24:47.000And if you're sleeping at high altitude, it's really hard to do that.
00:24:50.000You wake up more sore, you wake up more tired, and it's hard to recover.
00:25:10.000You know, so that your body, when you're sleeping and hanging out, you're rebuilding all these red blood cells, but then your threshold of working out at sea level, you can push it so much harder.
00:25:18.000So your body's used to going that hard.
00:25:20.000You know, but you train in lack of oxygen, you can't train as hard.
00:26:25.000And he knows the effects of the altitude, and then so he just did his next camp there.
00:26:29.000I wonder if there's a difference between, like, when, I think, when they're studying how athletes perform while they sleep at a high altitude and train at low altitude, I wonder if there's a difference between the intensity level that MMA requires and the amount of,
00:26:46.000like, I don't think there's a sport in the world that requires you to train as much as MMA, because there's so many different things you have to work on.
00:27:22.000What definitely makes it fun to watch.
00:27:24.000You know, it's really kind of crazy when you think about like the 10-minute rounds that Pride had and how difficult five-minute rounds are.
00:27:30.000Well, you definitely need it if you're a grappler.
00:27:32.000I mean, who the fuck's going to beat Damien Maia if every round's 10 minutes?
00:29:02.000He was so entrenched in what Damian Maia was going to do to him in the fight rather than worrying about what he should do.
00:29:08.000What aspects he should take to the fight to stay away from his game instead of really what he's going to do.
00:29:12.000So, you know, you can use that to your advantage if you're a fighter that's so strong at one thing.
00:29:16.000Confuse someone and get them so worried about what you're going to do that they're actually thinking inside the fight rather than reacting and just doing what they're good at already.
00:29:23.000Because if Matt would have fought, I feel like the way he should have in that fight, he could have picked Damian Maia apart.
00:29:51.000Yeah, but what's one of the cool things about MMA is that there are these outliers, like this one-trick pony, like Damian Maia, but what a fucking trick!
00:29:59.000I mean, he can strike, and Damian striking has gotten leaps and bounds better.
00:30:03.000It's one of the reasons why he's gotten so better at applying his jiu-jitsu, is because he's so much more comfortable with his stand-up, his distance is very good now, he understands striking really well now, but...
00:30:34.000Jake Shields beat him in essentially a grappling match.
00:30:37.000You know, and a lot of people forget, you know, Jake Shields was always a guy who kind of struggled with the stand-up because he wasn't like an explosive guy.
00:30:44.000He was just sort of like competent with the stand-up.
00:31:39.000It is so interesting that there are so many different styles, and there's so many different people, like Wonderboy, who's a one-trick pony in the other direction.
00:31:48.000You know, just his fucking striking is just bizarre.
00:31:52.000And his style is like really karate-based, almost like a sport karate style.
00:31:56.000But it just incorporates the movement, and he's operating from a longer distance, and he likes to draw people in and get them extended before he catches them.
00:34:48.000I know he's really close with our wrestling coach at Mosley Farm, Leister Bowling, and I've been hearing it from Leister that he's a free agent.
00:34:54.000Looking about getting back into working out and seeing how his body holds up to see how he's going to push it and what's going to happen.
00:35:01.000Yeah, he has some pretty significant back injuries, right?
00:37:25.000She's into acupuncture and doing all that.
00:37:28.000And the foods that they're feeding you are the right things for your endocrine system and boosting your testosterone and making you just a healthier human being.
00:37:35.000I mean, if you eat and live healthier, your body's going to produce more testosterone and live the right way.
00:37:42.000What I've heard is that more fats, like eating more fats, and I've seen it in a lot of different athletes, especially athletes that start following ketogenic diets.
00:37:51.000It ramps up their hormone production because fats are a precursor for hormones.
00:37:56.000So a lot of coconut oil, a lot of avocados, saturated fats from healthy meats, especially like grass-fed meat.
00:38:03.000I feel like you can't get enough of it.
00:38:05.000I mean, if you're working out as much as I am during camp or even just working out all the time, like you can't get more.
00:38:09.000The good fats are one of the best things for you.
00:38:11.000Yeah, that's the other thing to take into consideration.
00:38:13.000When people talk about athletes and people talk about people that exercise and are fit and want to follow a healthy diet, there's such a different caloric requirement for someone like you who's training two or three times a day.
00:38:26.000Yeah, two or three, just to switch it up.
00:40:09.000I think it's not healthy for your brain.
00:40:10.000It's too hard to recover hydration on your brain, you know?
00:40:13.000Have you ever thought that if you didn't do the hypertrophy training and you didn't do all the power training and you just did more aerobic, like you might drop down to 145 naturally and then might be able to cut to 125?
00:42:36.000It looks like a real fucking problem when you're in there with him.
00:42:40.000I'm assuming, makes sense, is Matt Hume, being his coach, who's obviously the wizard, right?
00:42:46.000Very intelligent in the fight world, but with the background of Cejudo missing weight so much, attacking the body, assuming that maybe he had a hard cut and maybe ate too much or drank too much, and attacking the body as far as the game plan.
00:43:10.000Yeah, I find that he may be the exact example we're talking about with TJ. Maybe they were very similar in size, and he just decides to go down there.
00:43:22.000Yeah, just doesn't have the correct, maybe not the correct path to actually make it happen if he's actually missing weight that he needs to get.
00:43:28.000He doesn't miss it in a long time, but he did a few times back in the past.
00:43:32.000But he missed a couple of the UFC weights, huh?
00:43:34.000Yep, and they made him fight at 135. That's right.
00:43:36.000He fought a fight at 135, and then he showed them that he could make 25 again and did it.
00:43:41.000Because he's going to be fighting Benavides now, and I'm not sure when that fight is, maybe December, but Benavides is coming out to Colorado in about one week.
00:44:20.000Benavidez is also one of those guys that if you saw him in a silhouette, if you couldn't see who he was, if you couldn't see any detail but you saw him move around, you would know it was him.
00:45:19.000Try to tear anybody's name down, but to help uplift and inspire and help people become better human beings.
00:45:24.000That's what I feel my message is on this earth, is to help people become better.
00:45:28.000And my vehicle, my tool is martial arts, so I love it.
00:45:31.000Whether it's general fitness or training the highest level ninjas to compete for the belt, it's my service back to the world to help make sure we're all together.
00:45:38.000Well, it's interesting to see you really flourish as a coach, too, because very few fighters have taken to it the way you have, where not only were you a very good fighter, an excellent fighter, but you've surpassed that as a coach.
00:46:04.000Only one way to be great is to be obsessive and then to have fellow ninjas like TJ and Benavidez to play along with this tool of martial arts to see what the next layer is.
00:47:09.000For me, because I have so many things going on, there's so many other elements throughout the world with my wife, my family, my business, I'm lucky and I'm blessed that everything in my circle, my bubble works with each other well.
00:47:19.000Because, I mean, I take my kids to go and train, my wife goes and trains.
00:48:07.000So I have my daughter, Jade, my little boy, Dwayne Bang Ludwig, and then my third child is Carter Boss Ludwig, but we all refer to him as Boss.
00:49:43.000The story would prove your point correct.
00:49:46.000I'm about to hop in the shower, and my wife tells me the dogs are fighting out back, so I grab my towel, I wrap it on it, I run outside to separate the dogs, because they'll fight because the neighbor's dog barks, and they'll bark at that, and then they'll bark at each other, and then they start arguing and fighting, right?
00:49:59.000So, anyways, I run outside with my towel on to get the dogs to separate them.
00:50:03.000While I'm separating the dogs, the towel falls off, but I still have to separate the dogs, and the neighbor's behind me now.
00:51:06.000Yeah, as much as I travel and move around, I want the pit bulls there because no one's gonna break into my house with the pit bulls and my wife having the gun and everything, so we're good.
00:51:14.000Or if they do, they're not gonna have a good night.
00:54:27.000Well, there's strange times because we're asking women to take on a lot of the traits and characteristics of men.
00:54:35.000Some of them want to, and I understand that, but for some, they feel like they're required to, and I don't necessarily know if that's what they want.
00:54:45.000But I think society wants a woman to be a breadwinner.
00:54:48.000They want women to contribute and compete with men in the workplace in a lot of ways.
00:54:52.000And a lot of women want to do that, too.
00:54:54.000Yeah, and then when you see that, and then when it comes to the military, it's very difficult to say, like, oh, women shouldn't be on the battlefield.
00:55:01.000Because then all of a sudden you say, well, what are you, sexist?
00:55:03.000But, you know, it's not traditionally a female...
00:55:33.000I was reading something about arachnophobia, where they were thinking that arachnophobia, which is a fear of spiders, and a bunch of different snake phobias and a bunch of different phobias, might literally be the memory of your ancestors.
00:55:45.000Someone your ancestors know died in front of them, got bit by a spider, or they almost died and they got bit by a spider, and that shit is just hardwired into your DNA. Some people will see a fucking spider and they can't move.
00:56:46.000We were just talking about Sensei before he arrived as far as...
00:56:49.000I'd like to go back to this, but again, he's the first one that I was aware of that actually did elevation training when he came to Colorado.
00:56:57.000What he did is he took combinations and then chunked them together, hence numbers like four.
00:57:02.000If you say four in the routing system, it's jab, cross, hook, cross.
00:57:04.000So again, it's that same idea of taking a combination and chunking it together because if I was to say jab, cross, hook, cross, that's a lot more time than me just saying four.
00:57:12.000And that concept is what it took to continue to develop the system and just the idea to be able to communicate with TJ on the pads or in the cage with limited time, just calling simple commands or combinations so we can actually make sure that the fight's still taking place and not getting too sidetracked.
00:57:26.000You know who's got a really interesting system is Mark Henry.
00:57:30.000Mark Henry, who trains Edson Barbosa, Frankie Edgar.
00:57:33.000He's a fantastic trainer, like one of the most underrated guys in the business.
00:57:37.000Rashad Evans told me that he will name combinations after his daughter, like Rashad's daughter, like certain things.
00:58:45.000The Deckers, stuff like that, the Tyson and the Deckers, those things kind of tie together.
00:58:50.000You're doing things you're supposed to do naturally anyways, like you're returning with the same punch and slipping and then rolling into the body and kicking inside and then kicking the head.
00:58:57.000Those are supposed to come together no matter what.
00:59:15.000Yeah, boss, before you got here, we were talking about the level of MMA right now.
00:59:18.000It's so fascinating because there's so much depth and people are getting so much better and there's so many different styles and it just seems like such an exciting time right now for MMA. Yeah.
01:00:01.000And there's a science behind it now, too.
01:00:03.000You know, how to train, when to train that hard, and which ways to do it, how to make your body bigger if you need to, or faster, if you need more endurance to train that way.
01:00:11.000So, I mean, it's just like all these other sports.
01:00:17.000I talked to Crazy Bob Cook and Crazy Bob Cook said, Kane will take like a month off or two months off, get hurt, you know, something like that.
01:00:59.000The thing with Dwayne is when you hold focus, Mr. Typex for Dwayne, You cannot say, oh, you cannot take a break for five seconds and say, listen, make sure that you do it.
01:01:08.000He wants to keep going, keep going hard the whole time.
01:01:13.000I said, guys, step back, do this different now, okay?
01:02:33.000They think they can see it better, you know, but once there is a trust, And there was always a good trust between Dwayne and myself, and the same with him and TJ. Then he knows what you're seeing that's probably gonna work.
01:03:43.000The reason why I brought that up about training fighters is because there's an interesting parallel between you two guys both great fighters and then both wind up having great students you having Dwayne as a student and Dwayne now having TJ as a student and a bunch yeah I mean there's there's a lot to that There is,
01:04:00.000you know, but it's all connection, and that's about everything in life.
01:04:03.000You know, once there is a connection, that is, people, you know, if I don't care for him, you know, if he's not a good guy, you know, and that's what some fighters also, they come in, they just work out, they're gone again.
01:04:13.000You know, they don't build a relationship, and once that happens, it hurts their fighting, I guarantee you that.
01:04:19.000Yeah, I'm sure, and for fighters, it's really a problem when you build a relationship with the wrong trainer, and then you've got to leave that guy, and you know, you have this tight bond with someone who doesn't really know enough.
01:05:02.000Yeah, it doesn't mean they suck as a human being.
01:05:04.000It just means that in that moment, that was the wrong thing to do, or they didn't execute it properly.
01:05:10.000Yeah, and then I have to be on point, too, as far as a trainer with the fighters I'm coaching, I've got to make sure I'm calling the right commands at the right time as well, and that goes back to...
01:05:18.000The relationship that you have and making sure you have that connection.
01:05:21.000When you also have to know your fighter's capabilities.
01:07:13.000You know, in that incredible environment of being there in Brazil, 45,000-plus people screaming for Fabrizio Verdum, and he just shuts his lights out.
01:07:22.000Yeah, that's one of the things, our main battle, right, is being able to control ourselves.
01:07:26.000And he looks to have mastered that ability to control his own emotions and make sure he's directing the energy in the right path.
01:11:25.000And once you can keep it simple, it's much easier to...
01:11:29.000Well, it's one of the things that we were talking about earlier was the amount of fighting that is mental.
01:11:35.000And the amount that is your attitude and how you feel about things and how you go into things and just your enthusiasm.
01:11:41.000Like Travis Brown, we were talking about Travis Brown, who earlier in his career was this fucking stone-cold killer.
01:11:48.000I mean, he had all this crazy footwork, he'd throw a lot of kicks, and like, remember when we knocked out Stefan Struve with that Superman punch?
01:12:16.000He started losing after he I change camps.
01:12:18.000Most of the time, and that's what I tell people, like my stretch routine, and every time when I say this, they ask me, what is your stretch routine?
01:12:25.000I do the same stretch routine as I did 23 years ago when I started.
01:12:36.000If it's a winning combination, do not break it.
01:12:38.000Once you break, how many fighters you see changing camp or firing a trainer or firing a manager or somebody who always helped them and suddenly they start losing?
01:12:46.000You broke the spell or whatever you want to call it, the mystical thing that was going on.
01:12:53.000Yeah, but it's so rare that you find the perfect person.
01:12:56.000Like, if you're with Johnny McFuckstick in Columbus, Ohio, and he's a shitty coach, and you've been with him forever, and you've got this weird bond with him, and then Faraz Zahabi wants to train you, and you're like, God damn.
01:14:52.000He started training with Weidman, who was a great wrestler, and it just completely changed his confidence and his stand-up, and now he's so loose standing up.
01:15:00.000You're getting to see the same Wonderboy that was, I think he was like 57-0 as a kickboxer, something fucking crazy like that.
01:15:07.000And you see those skills now because good luck taking that guy down.
01:16:02.000Yeah, you go to a wrestling coach that doesn't know how to strike, he's not going to learn how to close the distances with punches to build a timer takedowns.
01:16:09.000He's going to want to grab ahold of you and move you around to shoot on you.
01:16:12.000He might also not understand where you're in vulnerable positions for submissions.
01:16:16.000A lot of wrestlers still shoot that double with the neck on the outside.
01:16:20.000They just haven't figured the distance out or the difference in the technique out.
01:16:25.000Yeah, that's why I love this trio and this lineage because I'm taking what Sensei has done as much as I can than what I've done and then adding that up and I'll pass it in TJ's way and this is a direct line of lineage of martial arts information that's been expedited and it's awesome to have an actual martial art family.
01:16:40.000Just keep passing along the knowledge.
01:16:42.000It's fun for me as a martial art nerd.
01:16:44.000It's also interesting because TJ has that wrestling background as well.
01:16:47.000And I think that's a big factor in his success because he's incorporating all of your techniques and your techniques.
01:16:53.000And then on top of that, you've got that elite athleticism.
01:16:56.000The wrestling base so you've got awesome takedown defense and takedowns and also I really firmly believe there's something about wrestlers that fucking grind of dieting and starving yourself and dehydrating yourself and the mental toughness that you get from certain wrestlers It's off the charts.
01:17:15.000I've still to this day never done anything harder than wrestling, even with all the aspects of martial arts and fighting.
01:17:20.000Fighting to me is a lot easier than a grind of a wrestling season.
01:17:25.000I wrestled at Cal State Fullerton where we started weight tour.
01:17:28.000Like I said, I overworked myself and pushed through a 9-month season being completely strict on everything.
01:17:34.000My diet, my I'm not going out and having fun with my friends because I'm wrestling and then wrestling every weekend.
01:19:47.000The way he'll stand now, too, is because he'll only let you shoot a single leg because he knows how easy it is to get out of it.
01:19:52.000He'll never ever wear shoes again wrestling ever since grappling.
01:19:56.000Don't you think the injuries, the twisting knees, come from shoes, wearing shoes?
01:20:01.000Because a lot of guys, they do it on the wrestling mat, and that's still okay because it might slip a little bit, but as soon as you step on the judo mat with shoes, you're planting your feet.
01:20:09.000And then with upper body motion rotation, something's going to twist.
01:20:12.000Because a lot of injuries happen with wrestling, right?
01:20:25.000To have your shoes on while wrestling, you know, because you're not going to be able to get away with a, we call it a stanky leg, where you just whip your leg out, you know?
01:20:31.000If I have a grip, and what you want is the grip above your knee, but as soon as I get your grip below my knee, just by pushing it down, I'm out.
01:20:39.000There's got to be a similar situation to wearing gloves, right?
01:20:41.000Like when you're trying to limp arm at a certain position, you have those, yeah, real naked, it's really hard to finish with gloves on, yeah.
01:20:47.000Any kind of grappling we do at elevation is with our gloves on, you know, because I'm catching certain moves and I can wrist ride differently.
01:22:03.000Tape his hands up in training, and then when he has to hit without.
01:22:06.000On the other side, you know, hitting a bag, but because if you do it wrong, like if you're hitting a bag bare knuckle, because I had a guy who told me, my coach is a really good coach because he lets us hit the bag until our hands bleed.
01:22:22.000I said, because if this happens four weeks before the fight, guess what's going to happen?
01:22:26.000Every single workout when you hit, you're going to reopen the cuts.
01:22:29.000It's going to hurt every first round of your workout, right?
01:22:33.000So yeah, if you do it perfect and the impact is perfect, but as soon as you hit and you slide a little bit and you shave a knuckle off, well, four weeks before the fight, that's not going to heal anymore because you reopen it every time.
01:22:45.000One of the interesting things about MMA is how we're still kind of learning, and there's no right approach for everybody.
01:24:00.000And then kind of make a perfect plan for myself.
01:24:02.000My strength conditioning coach, Lauren Landau, I believe in him completely, of watching him train athletes and peeking me the right way and how I feel personally.
01:24:11.000You know, where I'm at right now, I trust in every single coach that, for different aspects, at least for bowling for my wrestling, he's been around the game for so long and knows how fighting works, that I'm going to trust him in my wrestling techniques and help him pick me apart.
01:24:22.000You know, Elliot Marshall is my jiu-jitsu coach.
01:24:24.000I really believe in Colorado at Elevation Fight Team with me and Dwayne.
01:24:27.000We really got it pretty good to figure it out.
01:24:30.000But someone's going to come in and have a different mindset of what they want to do.
01:24:33.000And if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you.
01:24:36.000Yeah, it's just, it's the trial and error and the learning as you go along is so interesting because, you know, you lose a fight and then you go, God, what did we fuck up on?
01:24:54.000I had Joe Silva call me when I was up on a ladder doing electrical work in the mountains to fight in two weeks, and it was against Jonathan Goulet.
01:25:34.000We were working on that exact technique, just pulling down the jab, going overhand, right in the back with Sensei, and just repped it out, ripped it out.
01:25:41.000It was so fun because I'm leaning over the cage, and I'm saying, Dwayne, he's going to come up straight forward.
01:25:47.000I want you to step to the side and just knock him out.
01:25:49.000You will hear me say that, repeating it over and over.
01:25:51.000I say, I don't know what, because every time I have that, I have one time I say, he's opening with the right low kick, I want you to counter it.
01:25:56.000And then the guy opens with the right low kick, and how do you know?
01:26:07.000With Goulet, for some reason, I go, he's going to come straight at you, just move out, and just counter.
01:26:12.000Don't you think it's kind of data chunking?
01:26:14.000You've seen so many fights, you've trained so many people, you just see things.
01:26:18.000And you don't even know what you're seeing.
01:26:20.000You know how sometimes you'll see a guy, like I call it all the time, I'll see a guy lift his heel up and he's about to throw a right kick.
01:26:25.000Like you just know, just for whatever reason.
01:26:28.000Twist a little bit, you know his back kick is coming.
01:26:30.000And then, the funny part is when he does a back kick, 9 out of 10 times, the other one throws a back kick.
01:26:35.000So I always thought, I'm going to do this on purpose and hopefully when he makes one, I'm going to catch it.
01:28:21.000People lift the heel up, you know they're going to throw something.
01:28:23.000Well, figure out what they're going to do in that same theory is paying attention to what combinations and what techniques actually land and then chucking those together and making those the system.
01:28:32.000So just going back to the language and the vocabulary of high percentage combinations, drill them and rep them out.
01:31:34.000When they put their hands up, but this is what goes on.
01:31:37.000If I want to kick you in the head and I see you put your hand up, a normal person automatically takes the power of the kick because he sees he's defended.
01:31:43.000But if he just would not care and just kick as hard as he can on the defense, he will kick him out.
01:34:05.000That was Vendelay always intimidating somebody, and now you have suddenly a guy who does not care.
01:34:09.000Not only that, your strong suit is striking, and you're taking on one of the most explosive strikers to ever compete in MMA, and a guy who, you know, was a legit K-1 level striker.
01:34:20.000You know, it's interesting how that style really worked really well.
01:34:46.000But his style, that explosive one-shot style, translated so well to MMA. Whereas maybe Ernesto's style would not have translated that well.
01:35:22.000Well, when Krokov gets a full blast kick, you're going to be forced to block, and then you can counter, which buys him a little bit of time to get out of the way again.
01:35:30.000That was TJ in his last fight with the sensei.
01:35:31.000I just went for the kick and just step in and throw the cross, time him on the way in.
01:35:34.000Well, there's levels to everything, right?
01:36:35.000Because he used to come out with the headdress and stuff as well.
01:36:36.000That's right, Blinky Rodriguez, who was his brother-in-law, was...
01:36:40.000I saw him in Holland, coming in, he was fighting Spang, Ewan Spang, who's a big, bright guy, strong, strong kickboxer, and Benny never fought with low kicks.
01:36:50.000And Spang is murdering him in the first round.
01:36:53.000Everybody's for Spang, Spang keeps going, and he gets low kick, low kick, I don't know how he stayed in the fight, Benny, right?
01:36:59.000In the second round, he starts coming in a little bit, and it was five rounds, five at the time, because Thai boxing.
01:37:06.000And now, Benny the Jet starts coming back.
01:37:08.000And suddenly, Spong starts spitting out his mouthpiece because he needed an extra break and then he did it again and he did it again.
01:37:14.000And there, it was like Rocky versus Ivan Drago.
01:37:16.000You saw literally the whole audience change from being for the Dutch guy to be for Benny the Jet because they realized this guy is so tough and he keeps hanging in there.
01:37:25.000And then, Benny the Jet stopped him in the fourth round.
01:37:54.000He lost to Schilling in that crazy fight where they went that extra round, and Schilling knocked him out with a right hook, which was an insane fight.
01:39:57.000Obviously, I'm a huge fan of MMA. I think that MMA is the most exciting sport in the world, but there's some things that you see and And kickboxing that you just don't see in MMA because there's no threat of the takedown.
01:40:08.000So you see these wild technical exchanges.
01:40:11.000And in my opinion, we need more of that.
01:41:53.000I just feel like there's no reason to take out those clinch battles, and there's no reason to take out those elbows.
01:41:59.000Because the guys who are good at those clinch battles, you know, they just start fucking blasting each other with knees to the body, and it has a significant toll.
01:42:06.000And then the elbow battles that they have inside the clinch, to me, it's a really important part of stand-up striking.
01:42:31.000Yeah, I think if we didn't have those guys, we wouldn't know that.
01:42:35.000We would have only the level of striking that we see in MMA. And I think, you know, when you go and you watch, like, a Ramon Deckers fight, you know, you watch, like, him in his prime, you realize, oh, okay, this is possible.
01:42:48.000Like, there's levels to this fucking thing.
01:43:42.000But it's, you know, it's the training.
01:43:44.000I told her, start sparring maybe when you're 15 years old.
01:43:48.000Wait with that, because your brain is still wiring everything to your nerves, you know, at that age, and it stops at 14. Just give it two more years, you know, till all the connections are there, and then maybe start sparring.
01:43:59.000But competing, I would just wait, wait for competing.
01:44:02.000Don't go in this early, do jiu-jitsu, wrestling, do all that, but striking to the head, I think they should wait with that.
01:44:09.000Even doing those things at a young age, you need to make sure they're fun.
01:44:11.000I almost got burnt out of wrestling in 8th grade.
01:45:11.000Now, if you decide, oh, your great sparring partner doesn't show up and you get somebody from the club somewhere, yeah, who has this weird, he's not as professional, yeah, you get injured.
01:45:20.000But I've never been injured in sparring.
01:45:56.000I think your reflexes need to be tested all the time.
01:45:59.000If you're going to fight, well, then you're going to have to fight in training because that's what's going to happen.
01:46:04.000Unexpected things, unexpected techniques, you know, you need to be prepared for that.
01:46:07.000If you just spar, you don't know what I'm going to throw at you.
01:46:10.000You can visualize a counter on my right straight.
01:46:12.000Well, what if I set it up as a one-two instead of just a right straight?
01:46:17.000With that being said, we're talking about sparring, but it's not just full-on fight sparring, but there's a whole level of sparring drills that you can play with and mimic scenarios going back to the patterns, right?
01:46:28.000The jab, the cross, the rear low kick.
01:46:29.000Learning how to deal with those things in the motion.
01:46:32.000But while you're doing that drill, you have to have the clear mind like you're in the fight, but know that you're going to be countering the jab.
01:46:37.000You're sending something up in the jab.
01:46:39.000Not just going in fighting guys, I don't want this to be misled, where everyone's just fighting and sparring hard, but to do actual sparring drills, because there's a full path between hitting mitts and actual sparring, and then that's the web of the sparring drills.
01:46:50.000Yeah, I think Cowboy also had an issue with cutting the weight, too.
01:49:33.000I'll get home and want to just relax, veg out, maybe watch some TV, just do nothing, right?
01:49:37.000And then maybe it'll be like 12 o'clock at night, I'll get a text from Dwayne, like, on something on my fight, what I should be doing, what I should be thinking about.
01:51:05.000And that's something I learned from Rob Kamen, too.
01:51:08.000Rob Kamen, who's amazing, he has a system.
01:51:12.000And one of the things that I learned when I was training with him was like, this guy has this system the same way a lot of jujitsu guys have a system.
01:51:19.000You know, and it's like his system of breaking things down and movement and strikes, that it's all like, it has a pattern to it.
01:51:30.000And you can follow this pattern, there's a progression to it.
01:51:33.000And with the way the world is today, you can learn it all from him online.
01:51:37.000He's so good at breaking things down and being able to film it and show it to people that you can go on his online academy and learn exactly what I'm doing.
01:51:44.000Yeah, all you need is a willing participant.
01:51:46.000Someone to train with you is going to do the same amount of work that you are.
01:53:50.000No, but I think once you say, listen, if you're known to do that, that it happened with you in the past, a referee should be allowed to go before there and say, listen, when I poke, I'm going to give you a red card.
01:55:05.000I mean, Christoph Suszynski was one time fighting, and he got kicked six times, I believe, it might even be seven, in the pills, and he goes back to the corner.
01:55:12.000The pills are the balls, ladies and gentlemen.
01:55:43.000Most of the time, it's with the lead leg, and they don't step open the right foot, so the angle cannot go like a 90-degree angle into the muscle, and it kicks straight up.
01:55:51.000And Beecher goes, look, if everybody who gets kicked in the pills, I guarantee you, the leg that they're standing on, the toes are pointing forward.
01:55:57.000If they would point to the side, it would be okay.
01:55:59.000Well, with check, I believe it was knees and a clinch.
01:57:37.000Eddie Bravo thinks he should be able to hit a guy in the back of the head.
01:57:40.000He thinks that when you take a guy's back, that when the old days of MMA, when a guy had two hooks in, you almost didn't go to the rear naked choke.
01:57:48.000You just blast a guy in the back of the head with elbows.
01:57:50.000Yeah, that's right, but then we go again before rules, right?
02:02:22.000It shows you how tough Travis is that he continued with his finger smashed, and it was a compound fracture where the bone broke through the skin.
02:02:30.000That's one picture, but there's some even better ones that he released today where you could see it after the fight.
02:02:38.000So it was a weird thing where Fabricio threw this punch and he threw like one of those Chuck Liddell style overhands that come over the top and it landed on the fingers of Travis and snapped one of his finger.
02:02:50.000So Travis calls time, which you really can't do.
02:03:17.000I kicked him in the head, and then I got excited and wanted to give him another kick in the head, but I slip, and I fall on the ground, and Maurice wants to jump on top of me, and I put my hand up.
02:04:03.000Master Tong, he's my first striking coach at Alpha Male.
02:04:06.000And when Dwayne first started to come to teach at Alpha Male, I think it was my second fight you were there.
02:04:12.000We were in San Jose against Hugo Vianna.
02:04:15.000And we're in the hotel room, day of the fight, just kind of hanging out, just waiting, and Master Tong's just in the bed.
02:04:21.000He sleeps all day long, and then he's in the bed just hanging out.
02:04:24.000Dwayne comes to hang out with us, and he's telling Master Tong a story, and Master Tong's kind of looking at him like he's paying attention.
02:04:30.000But then he looks at Dwayne and he goes, bird!
02:05:07.000And then so Danny just corners me and after the fight I get back and Master Tong's like, oh TJ, I go smoke way up in the rafters.
02:05:14.000So supposedly he says he went up in the rafters to smoke his cigarette and he was too scared to get down so he couldn't come down to come corner me.
02:06:59.000Yeah, so he legitimately apparently has a problem gambling and not budgeting his shit, right?
02:07:03.000So, anyway, I fly to New Jersey, do two seminars, corner, I'm working my ass off, I'm leaving the hotel after the fight down the next morning, and he's following me down the hotel.
02:07:14.000Oh, Dwayne, Dwayne, can I have a little bit of money?
02:07:19.000And then I gave him the crow-cop stare.
02:08:08.000Without even you knowing it, he makes you do things you're supposed to do the right way just by holding them and having a very limited vocabulary.
02:08:58.000Faber went into that fight with a hurt hamstring and Master Chong knew that as well.
02:09:00.000He tore his hamstring a little bit and went into the fight a little injured.
02:09:03.000And so when Master Chong went back to Texas, he was bragging that he made $5,000 because he bet all this money that Faber wasn't going to win the fight.
02:09:10.000And then it got back to Faber because Faber knew the trainer out in Texas.
02:09:13.000And so it came back to him and he found out about it.
02:09:16.000And, you know, allegedly, who knows if it's really true, but Master Tong was bragging about it, you know?
02:10:57.000The best is when the time when Diego Sanchez won a fight, and then at the time you're going to interview him, he's like, hey, you told me I was weird before.
02:15:11.000If you have only 10 days or two weeks to train high altitude, I almost would say don't do it because your first week It's going to be the worst week.
02:16:21.000But it makes your whole inspiratory system much stronger and it's easier for you to pull in.
02:16:24.000Well, you're talking about your own personal O2 trainer where you put it in your mouth and you have like different filters on it too, right?
02:16:31.000I'm now with a guy who is the trainer, the scientist behind Usain Bolt, three other gold medalists on track and field, actually Dominic Cruz as well is training there.
02:16:43.000This guy has a higher IQ than freaking Einstein had.
02:16:46.000He has like over 25 medical journals wherein it's proven that only inspiratory training works.
02:16:53.000So what happened was he did an A review of my competition.
02:17:01.000Explain what this thing is to people that are listening that don't know.
02:17:04.000It's a device that I invented because I was an asthma patient and I realized that after an asthma attack for like a week in bed or eight days in bed, I would resume my track and field and I would break my running times.
02:17:22.000And then I realized when I went to the doctor's office and I saw a poster on the wall with a pair of lungs on there and it showed where it's inflamed when you have bronchitis.
02:17:32.000And what happens is you think as a kid it's infected in the lungs.
02:17:59.000It starts with a hole of 15 millimeters.
02:18:01.000Millimeter you start training with it and once you feel that you get the same air as you did before you go to 14 millimeter and now with this guy what this guy does with it because When my lawyer called me and he said listen, did you read that review about a competition?
02:18:39.000But if you complete, and air out is all with force, it's all done by your core and your diaphragm and your intercoastal muscles here and your ribs.
02:18:46.000But breathing in is also done with that.
02:18:59.000So now we're going to come out with all these medical journals with Usain Bolt, all these people that he trains all do inspiratory muscle training.
02:19:05.000So they all use that kind of a device?
02:19:40.000And the only thing that the scientist said is that, well, you can use it like you did, boss, with training, because it cured me from my asthma.
02:19:47.000On my website, you will read a lot of people cured it from asthma.
02:20:15.000Oh, and what he said, what I wanted to say is what he does, he lets them in the morning do 30 repetitions.
02:20:20.000So they take a small or tiny hole and you lean over with the O2 trainer and once you breathe out, every bit of air goes out of your lungs and then while you're breathing in, you're sitting straight up.
02:20:33.000And then you breathe everything out again.
02:20:42.000If you go for six weeks, two times a day, 30 minutes, and 30 repetitions, and after that, just one time a day, the increase you're going to have, you're not going to have any lactic acid in your core, which, by the way, is the most important thing in fighting.
02:20:55.000That's why everybody gets tired, I always say, because they're...
02:20:58.000The muscles start pumping, you know, just like your biceps are pumping, and they start pushing your lungs backwards.
02:21:03.000So now your lungs cannot freely inhale anymore because you're pushing them backwards with your core.
02:21:08.000And that's the reason when you see guys, you know, that's why I used to do, I actually said that at the seminar last Saturday, I said that's why before a fight I would do a lot of abs, but constant stretching abs.
02:21:23.000And that was for that reason, because I know if this gets tight, your core gets tight, everything goes downhill.
02:21:28.000That's why the guys in the beginning with the steroids, well, in the beginning they're still doing it apparently, but you saw guys, because if you use steroids, you pump much harder, right?
02:21:37.000So they're very strong until the core builds up with lactic acid.
02:22:25.000There's still air in there because they can completely empty their lungs.
02:22:29.000We're looking at a video, for folks who are just listening to this, we're looking at a video on Boss Rootin' O2 Trainer, which is online on YouTube, right?