In this episode, I speak with Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, world-renowned jiu jitsu fighter and Jiu-Jitsu Grand Master, Carlos Vazquez, who shares his story of how he overcame his fear of cold water and the fear of death. He talks about the importance of being prepared for the unknown and how he was able to overcome his fears and live a life of total peace and calmness. I hope you enjoy this episode and that you can learn from it and apply it in your life. I am so grateful to have Carlos as a brother and a brotherhood member, and I hope that you enjoy listening to this episode. Always good to see you. Always Good to See You. -Eduardo Pinto - Eudes Pinto - Eles Pinto ( ) Eudes is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Master, a Jiu- jitsu Teacher, and a martial artist. He has been a long-term friend of mine and a person who has been with me for a long time. He is someone who is always willing to do whatever it takes to be the best he can be best for himself and his family. I hope this episode inspires you to do what you need to do to become the best you can do to be your best in life, and to live your very best in the best in your own way. . Thank you for listening, Eudes! You are a very special person and you are an inspiration to me and I am proud of you. Thank you so much for being my brother, Eles, I appreciate you. Eles! . . . Eles Love you. -Eles, and Eles and I will always remember you, always Good Luck! -A very much Thank you Eles. -Sergio : Eles & Eles x , Eles ( ) Eles: ( & Eves ( ) ( ) . (Eles: Eles is a very good friend and a very humble man. ( ) Thank you, Eves: Eves, , ( . . Eves & I am very grateful to you for being a good friend of my family and brother and brother. ) (Thank you for supporting me! ) -Eves: , I am grateful for your support.
00:00:12.000Always good to see you and it was good to talk to you before the podcast we were talking about how you go into the cold plunge with a snorkel tell me about that yes the The cold water shower,
00:00:31.000the ice water, has always been very helpful for me in terms of controlling emotions and feel peaceful in hell.
00:00:40.000So I was doing it on the ice bath, but I always put a snorkel and put my head under the water.
00:00:48.000Because if you keep your head off the water, It becomes very physical, very uncomfortable, but it doesn't hit the emotional aspect.
00:00:56.000You don't feel like you're going to die because you don't feel the fear on your face, the discomfort in your ears and your head, which brings a different dimension of terrifying feelings.
00:01:08.000So I was putting the snorkel and getting under the water and breathing.
00:01:21.000When I achieved the calmness in my heart and lungs, I was ready to leave the water.
00:01:27.000I don't stay there for 10, 15 minutes.
00:01:29.000I stay there for 1, 2, 3 minutes at the most until I feel very peaceful.
00:01:34.000And because for me it was more like spiritual than actually physical.
00:01:40.000I'm not there to treat micro traumas or something.
00:01:43.000It was more to give me the sense of Ready to die at any point and feel like if you stay too long under the water, you're going to die.
00:01:50.000So you have to be peaceful and at the same time aware and develop courage, develop calmness, develop spiritual surrender.
00:02:02.000For me, it's everything I need to perform well.
00:02:06.000And so you started doing cold water therapy a long time ago.
00:02:11.000I mean, it was obviously in the movie Choke when you went into that frozen river.
00:02:29.000So, big wave surf is always something which terrified me and I was exposing myself to the ocean to understand the motion of the ocean and be comfortable in this kind of discomfortable situation.
00:02:42.000Also, cold water and other things I always do.
00:02:48.000And this was just always a part of developing yourself for fighting, developing yourself just for overall life?
00:02:57.000My life is a very unique one because since I started to understand my status of representing the family through jiu-jitsu, I put myself against the unknown, which is no weight division,
00:03:18.000So all those unpredictable aspects give me something which is different than just a sport-like lifestyle.
00:03:25.000I was living more the life of a guy who is ready to anything, anytime.
00:03:31.000So that kind of preparation requires not only the mental and the technical preparation, but also the spiritual preparation.
00:03:42.000And sometimes, spiritually speaking, you have to understand how to accept things, how to surrender things, and be above their physicality or actually the fear of dying.
00:03:55.000And did you develop these concepts on your own?
00:03:58.000Did you recognize that you needed to strengthen these aspects of your mind and your body as you were going through this journey?
00:04:06.000Yes, yes, definitely, because If you're going to fight somebody, you don't know who it is, what technique he knows, what size he has, when he's going to fight you.
00:04:34.000And that's required for me to start bringing scenarios and situations for me to become comfortable in these kind of situations, totally unpredictable.
00:04:44.000So I like to use nature as a friend of the ocean, the rivers, the cold.
00:04:51.000I like to use the experience of breathing when I was young, with 12 years old.
00:04:58.000I was practicing with adults at the academy.
00:06:15.000In the same year, I did three more times.
00:06:17.000And to the point I was getting rolled on the carpet, feeling nothing, stay waiting the time and leave the carpet.
00:06:24.000So I was fixing myself emotionally with the ways I could feel like was the options I have, how I can suffocate myself and not die.
00:06:34.000So I was putting myself in some kind of obstacles just to feel comfortable.
00:06:38.000And after that, I never felt the panic and I felt fighting anymore.
00:06:43.000And a lot of that panic can be resolved with another thing that you specialize in, which is breathing exercises.
00:06:53.000I feel like the big difference I did on myself to be able to capture more experience emotionally and also spiritually and also physically was breathing.
00:07:07.000The learning of breathing for me was the huge Because up to that point, I was an athlete, I was training forever, I was running, I was doing everything I could do, but never with the feeling of full potential.
00:07:23.000When I start to learn how to really function in the breathing system, I start to understand, because you can spend seven days without food, you can spend three days without water, but five minutes without breathing, you're dead.
00:07:39.000So learning how to function properly your breathing is not something you're going to learn when you're born.
00:07:45.000Because when you're born, you get slapped on your butt.
00:07:50.000And then you're alive and well to follow your life.
00:08:25.000When you use the diaphragmatic breathing, you're able to bring the air to the lower part, to the back part of your lungs, which triples the amount of air.
00:08:34.000So when you're expert in moving your diaphragmatic breathing, use your diaphragm effectively, you hyperventilate in a way you may get exhausted physically, but your brain is still sharp enough to get the intelligence,
00:08:51.000the sharpness, the enlightenment you need, even when you're Like, fading away in muscle, speaking, your brain is still cool and functioning.
00:09:02.000Because normally, when you start to get tired, you start to get fading your brain, you start to make poor decisions, you become a little stupid, because there's not enough blood for everything.
00:09:14.000But if you know how hyperventilate, you become much better.
00:09:18.000In terms of absorbing, getting, fixing your physical, understand your mental, and be able also to use the spiritual.
00:09:30.000It was just a time developed to my passion, which was representing the family, representing the jiu-jitsu.
00:09:37.000And I have no instructors, you know, no mentors in terms...
00:09:41.000Orlando Cani was my mentor in breathing, which I'm grateful for life.
00:09:46.000And after his experience, I become effective and know how to breathe and meditate and move and become much more connected with my spiritual elements.
00:10:01.000He was an army pentathlon champion in 1965. He was a yoga instructor, and he started to develop the biogynastica, which was an element of combining movements like an eagle.
00:10:16.000Not like a yoga with postures and breathing, with also moves and breathing.
00:10:21.000Sometimes you fast, sometimes you calm, sometimes you peaceful, sometimes you explosive, sometimes you're recruiting full power and keeping for longer.
00:10:33.000Different practice to give you the sense of incorporating breathing in your functional life, not exactly stop every tank, be in a posture and breathe, but Fighting and breathe, making love and breathe, and meditate and breathe,
00:10:51.000sleeping, how to breathe to get a full, relaxed, quick.
00:10:55.000So all the functional aspects to use breathing in your favor.
00:10:59.000And so he was a yoga instructor in this, do you call it Gymnastica Natural?
00:11:40.000My mother taught me, I mean, she took me to that yoga classes.
00:11:45.000And I didn't like much because the postures, the suffering, The flexibility was just there for me to understand my discomfort, but it doesn't give me too much, a good experience.
00:12:13.000But for me, I expect something more dynamic.
00:12:17.000I expect something more like Actually teach me how to apply breathing to functioning, not exactly how to breathe to become more flexible or how to breathe to resist the spiritual pain.
00:12:31.000Yoga put you in a position and expect you to work with your mind.
00:12:37.000The biogynastica puts you in a situation where you have to jump.
00:12:41.000So, how is the proper breathing for you to jump?
00:12:44.000How is the proper breathing for you to relax?
00:12:46.000How is the proper breathing for you to fight?
00:12:48.000How is the proper breathing for you to swim, to surf?
00:12:52.000In every aspect, in every sport, we have always different aspects of breathing.
00:12:57.000You see boxers, choo, choo, choo, choo.
00:12:59.000You see tennis players, choo, choo, choo, choo, because they excel when they breathe.
00:13:34.000But that seems like it would make sense if they did that.
00:13:36.000If I was looking at the guy who represented the family, who was the best fighter in the family, I would assume that other people would follow whatever he's doing.
00:13:47.000Yes, supposed to be, but sometimes this either ego or something.
00:13:54.000He gets advantage of knowing how to breathe properly and he's showing how comfortable he is when he's doing things.
00:14:02.000But other members of the family, they don't put too much attention on breathing and it's bad for them, you know, what I can say.
00:14:08.000It's just strange to me because people respect you so highly and respect your accomplishments in jiu-jitsu so highly.
00:14:16.000I would imagine that they would want to emulate all the aspects of a physical culture that got you to where you became.
00:14:24.000Yes, but my way to see jiu-jitsu has always been very clear to me, but always demands from me because, like I said, I was not sure about anything.
00:14:42.000So it requires from me A larger toolbox for a warrior.
00:14:50.000Not only the physicality, not only the training, the courage and the ability to do it, but also how to control my emotions, how to be visualizing what I want, all the aspects of the rational visualization and mindset.
00:15:10.000And also My spiritual side, because if you want to fight you don't know who, you have to learn how to not fear death.
00:15:39.000So for a guy who's gonna fight somebody with no weight division, no time limits, no rules, patience, hope, faith, visualization, those are very important elements for a spiritual warrior, for a warrior who's in a situation has to improvise,
00:15:57.000different than same weight division, five minutes rounds, the rules are there, the set.
00:16:03.000So it's a completely different element of Spirituality, in terms of acceptance, in terms of being engaged in something, you can die.
00:16:14.000I was expecting the best, but I was accepting the fact I could die trying.
00:16:19.000And quitting for me was not an option.
00:16:22.000So my life was being very much mowed under that kind of pressure, which I have to make comfortable.
00:16:30.000So that situation pulled me in facing my monsters in a very early age.
00:16:37.000And somehow I have to deal with the monsters, you know, from breathing, from accepting death, from being able to perform under pressure and things like that.
00:16:48.000And I have to, you know, sometimes a cold bath, sometimes going in a heavy ocean, sometimes just to prove myself I could deal with nature and I could flow with In a very ugly scenario and perform well because emotionally I was in control.
00:17:07.000Spiritually I was able to give my acceptance in my spirituality.
00:17:15.000Where did you learn techniques for visualization?
00:17:19.000I think visualization is part of the process even before I know what it is because I've always been very competitive because I've always been very Very focused on what I want.
00:17:33.000That focus, that idea of winning, competing, what I have to learn.
00:17:39.000So it always keeps me in a sense where the visualization pulls me in a sense I could win a fight in 10 seconds.
00:18:10.000So all the process, a hard fight, an easy fight, an impossible fight, and even death, is part of a good visualization because you have all the scenarios in your mind.
00:18:22.000You're kind of pretty much comfortable with all the scenarios, even death.
00:18:28.000So it's fascinating to me that when you started, there really was no, other than your father's fights and Carlson Gracie and some other people who had had fights before you, there was no history of it the way there is today.
00:18:45.000So it was really, like, people that don't know, they think of MMA, they think of the UFC, and they think it's always been like this, and maybe they'll go back to the first UFCs.
00:18:55.000They don't really understand that for decades, you and your family were having these no-rules fights, and they were having them in front of large audiences, and they were facing all kinds of different styles,
00:19:51.000If you put in confrontation, we believe in jiu-jitsu to 200%.
00:19:56.000So that idea was the focus point for the whole preparation and the whole concept of Making strategies because we're not expecting fighting another jiu-jitsu fighter.
00:20:10.000We're expecting to represent with jiu-jitsu against boxing, against wrestling, against all the styles.
00:20:16.000How old were you when you had your first match like that?
00:20:19.000My first professional was 19. Fight King Zulu with 120 fights and 4 draws only.
00:21:23.000And I get the idea, said, hey, dad, pull me in, pull me in, pull me in.
00:21:27.000So, I immediately ask him to, and he look at me, And he mentioned to the, to the Valdemar Santana said, yes, but I have my son here at 19 years old.
00:21:36.000And the guy said, no, Mr. Mr. Gracie, this is not a fight for him to try.
00:21:41.000The guy is very tough and this and that.
00:21:43.000As the guy tried to pull my father off the deal, my father becomes more excited to the, no, but I think he going to go handle the challenge, this and that.
00:21:51.000So he's become excited with the situation.
00:21:57.000One month later, I was there to fight.
00:22:03.000And we start the fight, and he has a trade, like one move he does, which grabs you with the hands between your legs and lifts you up and throws you back on the floor.
00:22:18.000And as he approached that, I moved back, blocked his shoulders and hit him with the knee right on his face.
00:22:26.000It was the best knee I could possibly give in somebody.
00:22:29.000And I expect him to just, I expect to win the fight right in that moment.
00:22:35.000But he just shook, he stood up, lifted his head, shook, spit a tooth, and started back ready again to go, you know?
00:22:45.000And then I felt like it was really serious, and I think it was much serious than I expected.
00:22:51.000And for the next 10 minutes, because it was 10 minutes rounds, For the end of the round, we just engage and fall on the ring and come back in and back out.
00:23:02.000A lot of commotion, a lot of strength.
00:23:06.000And at the end of the round, I'm kind of crawling to the corner.
00:25:08.000And that's not going to be the right way to resolve the matter.
00:25:11.000It's interesting that you figured out how to handle these things on your own, too, because it's an area that fighters seek psychological help with now.
00:25:22.000They hire psychologists, and they get hypnotized, and they do all these different things to try to figure out how to stop that negative conversation in the mind, how to stop those negative voices, and how to not give in to that weakness that wants you to quit.
00:25:41.000But some people don't even go for that and they seek for different people to help them, which is good too.
00:25:48.000But once you become more intuitive, when you become more enlightened with your own potential, you're able to resolve all the matters yourself, you know, because it's all about your mindset.
00:26:01.000It's how you think and how you believe and what you're ready for and what you're prepared for and how you're able to To accept and surrender everything around you.
00:26:12.000And these moments where you do want to quit, whether it's in training or in competition, for people who understand that and have experienced that and have overcome it, life becomes easier.
00:26:25.000Yes, I think, you know, martial arts practice with a complete idea It's a metaphor for life.
00:26:34.000You become a good martial artist, you become a good person, you're going to become a happy person because you want to be able to conquer your happiness outside of the mat.
00:27:10.000It's not only for that, but because they don't ever thought about how to resolve those problems.
00:27:15.000You know, they're just thinking the problem is there, what I'm going to do, but they don't thinking about how I can control the situation, how I can be on top of this, how I can...
00:27:27.000You know, just defend myself from those demons.
00:27:30.000And if you don't see the perspective of how I can resolve my problems, you allow yourself to put your problems in somebody else's hands to resolve for you.
00:27:47.000You've had a really extraordinary life, and it's so unusual.
00:27:53.000Your position, like what happened to you as a young man, having your father, Elio Gracie, who's one of the most important people in the history of martial arts, to be raised by a man like that, to be raised in the Gracie family, the most important family in the history of martial arts,
00:28:49.000So you become a grace even before you understand what it is.
00:28:53.000And you use kimonos, you play on the garden and wrestle everybody and play and able to throw, able to fall, able to choke.
00:29:01.000So you start to get in that environment where fighting is normal, is recreational.
00:29:06.000You get in the environment where being a Gracie, you eat well, you be in a diet from day one.
00:29:13.000You don't drink Coca-Cola, you don't take, you know, chocolates, ice creams, it's just about healthy stuff, carrot juices and salads and soups and this.
00:29:25.000So I've been created to become somebody special.
00:29:30.000And when you become knowledgeable about being Gracie, You start to put yourself in a line of, you know, one day I'm going to be the fighter, one day I'm going to be the representative.
00:29:46.000So all my life I was training hard with my brothers, seeking to become better than them, to get their spot or to represent in the family.
00:29:56.000And I was noticed I was talented at a very early age.
00:30:00.000And I always loved competing, very competitive.
00:30:03.000And it was just a great journey to become more confident in my style, more important in the family to represent.
00:30:14.000So it was just a bumpy road which had me create better strength, better mindset, better spiritual guidance.
00:30:24.000What is it like to have grown up in that environment and then move to America and just teach Americans and teach people that are like hobbyists and just want to try it and train every now and then?
00:31:29.000And if somebody says, yeah, but I believe box can, okay, let's fight.
00:31:32.000Oh, but I believe I can, judo can, so let's fight.
00:31:36.000So whatever style come up with the idea, capoeira, whatever style come up with the idea, he could Face a Jiu Jitsu fighter, so let's prove Jiu Jitsu is better, and let's keep teaching Jiu Jitsu.
00:31:51.000And in the teaching aspect, completely different than the representativity and the fighting aspect, Jiu Jitsu has always been a soft art.
00:32:00.000We always can accept and create strength on the weaker people.
00:32:40.000So from 13 years old, when my uncle Carlos opened the first Jiu Jitsu Academy in 1925 in Brazil, to 16 years old, he was sitting on the corner watching my uncle teach.
00:33:16.000And when my uncle Carlos arrived at the school, the student said to Carlos, Carlos, I like to keep training with Helio because he's so talented.
00:34:01.000He started adding leverage and angles for him to be able to do it, which transcends the physicality he learns.
00:34:11.000So, with that, my father started adding techniques and angles, and actually, I believe the guard, the guard of jiu-jitsu was developed not from Maeda, not from Carlos Gracie,
00:34:27.000but from Elio Gracie, who could not have another option to fight My father developed a A combat format from the bottom,
00:34:55.000which was not there until him show up in the jiu-jitsu scenario.
00:35:02.000So the techniques and the development we put on the jiu-jitsu makes our jiu-jitsu be accessible for weaker persons.
00:35:13.000So the weaker, he feels good because he don't have to use power.
00:35:56.000And then I asked my dad, I said, Dad, what I should do to become the best teacher I can be?
00:36:02.000And he said, if you want to be a good teacher, you learn the army lock, and you teach a good army lock, and make sure the guy knows how to do it tight enough and perfect army lock.
00:36:13.000If you want to be an excellent teacher, you have to see what the students need to learn.
00:36:22.000With that advice, he gave me something which is not only the physicality of the sport, but also the psychology aspect.
00:36:30.000Because sometimes you see a guy who is lazy and just...
00:37:50.000Not being an athlete, but being a martial artist.
00:37:53.000So all those concepts differ from today's attitude towards the practice and the training and also some people who are competitors They cannot teach beginners or be nice because they just fight too hard and they have to focus too hard on the training.
00:38:13.000Either you stay on their boat or he cannot go and help somebody else in a different atmosphere.
00:38:20.000For me, it was always, I can fight the worst guys that is today.
00:38:25.000Tomorrow I'm going to be teaching some old lady or some guy, and I keep myself focused on the levers, on the angles, on the details.
00:38:35.000So all this gives me a sense of being a duo, not only a good teacher, but also a good fighter.
00:38:43.000It's so amazing when you stop and think about the fact that your father had such a unique circumstance in terms of being small and also being there with Carlos when he was teaching those classes.
00:38:58.000But the fact that he was small and that he learned leverage and learned to maximize these techniques, It became the most important aspect of jujitsu.
00:39:07.000To this day, when I talk to people, I always say the best instructors, it seems like a lot of them are smaller people.
00:39:15.000Because those smaller people, they can't muscle their way out of these things.
00:39:19.000Sometimes when you get a really big, strong guy, they can use too much physical strength.
00:39:24.000But the small guys, they don't have that option, so everything has to be technical.
00:39:35.000Arguments against techniques and timing and connection.
00:39:39.000So the ideas of learning jiu-jitsu properly is for sure the right way.
00:39:45.000But some people, they're strong and they try to compensate the lack of speed or movement with the strength.
00:39:54.000So they become, they create their own pattern, their own way to fight because they can use, they can afford to waste energy because they have it.
00:40:36.000And after that point, you can take what you learn and add your personal abilities and attributes.
00:40:44.000Don't you think though that even those big strong guys, if they learned everything perfectly, if they learned the right technique in the right way and almost ignored the fact that they were strong, they would have even more success?
00:41:04.000I mean, you think there's, you know, one time I remember when Krohn was young, you and I, we were over at your house and you were showing me some fights from Coliseum, from the 2000 event, and you were breaking down how so many fighters leave so much space.
00:41:26.000And that this is all fundamentally wrong and that if you follow the correct principles of jiu-jitsu and if you see even these guys who are jiu-jitsu black belts, they left space.
00:41:37.000They had all these errors that they shouldn't have had because they didn't concentrate on the details the way your father did.
00:41:43.000Yes, I agree 100% because today not only the jiu-jitsu becomes very popular, But the competitiveness aspect of jiu-jitsu creates, based on rules and practice,
00:41:59.000a jiu-jitsu which is not representing the control For the kill.
00:42:04.000It represents more strategy for winning a tournament by points, advantages.
00:42:09.000Of course, if the guy makes a mistake, you can choke or submit.
00:42:13.000But the great objectivity of the fight today is not losing by points.
00:42:18.000It's not expose yourself by losing by little.
00:42:20.000So the worries and the concerns about Fighting become a little different than just fight for winning and keeping tight.
00:42:30.000Like, you know, there's no two options.
00:42:33.000You have to just go for the kill and tight enough and take advantage of every different space is given to capitalize.
00:42:43.000So the idea of controlling your opponent with the objectivity to win It's a little different than the objectivity of a jiu-jitsu who has create points or a system which in two or three minutes the fight is going to end and I'm going to win.
00:43:02.000So you can see a strategy was not there in my time.
00:43:06.000Yeah, there's a lot of that you would see with wrestlers entering into these tournaments where they would figure out how to hold a guy down, take a guy down, hold a guy down, but they would never pass through a dominant position and they would never finish.
00:43:24.000And you put that kind of strategy and a very tough guy who decides to compete in the MMA or a fight on the street.
00:43:33.000He will feel like not exactly comfortable to be effective in jiu-jitsu the way it's supposed to be because he's not going to find ideas for points or strategies, competitive strategies on the street or on the MMA. That's why the jiu-jitsu and MMA today has less representativity than supposed to have because it becomes a little spacey.
00:43:59.000The guard, the valetudo guard especially, It's not present in maybe 95% of the jiu-jitsu fighters today.
00:44:07.000But when you say by the valetudo guard, what specifically do you mean about that?
00:44:12.000Because if I don't have a valetudo guard, I don't know how to deal with somebody who wants to punch me.
00:44:29.000If you're training jiu-jitsu for life, and every time you put a gi and try to do arm locks, and you put yourself in a position you could get punched, and you never receive those punches, you're never aware of the angles and the possibilities, you become unaware.
00:44:47.000So you bring that defective jiu-jitsu to an MMA fight, You'll be scared of being in the guard because every time in the guard you get punched, you get problems.
00:44:57.000Different than a guy who has a comfortable situation from the guard position.
00:45:02.000I really like Krohn's valetudo guard because he's aware of the situation.
00:45:07.000He loves to be in the guard as he loves to be mounted, like myself.
00:45:11.000For me, I have no problems to be on the bottom in the guard or have to be mounted.
00:45:17.000For me, two are great positions for victory.
00:45:21.000That's a very good point because there is a transitionary period when fighters who are only competing in Jiu Jitsu have to deal with those punches and a lot of times they are not comfortable at all being on their back.
00:45:33.000They'd like to get out of that position and they would only like to be on top because in that position they can control the strikes better.
00:45:40.000And then you have to deal with a wrestler who is impossible to take down And you spend all your energy trying to go, instead pull him to the garden and kick his ass with pretty much simple attitude, you know?
00:45:53.000When you see jujitsu today, and you see that there's so much of it that does rely on points, do you long for the day?
00:46:05.000Do you wish that they had no limit jujitsu matches that were submission only?
00:46:09.000Do you think that's a better way to do it?
00:46:13.000Not only for jujitsu, but for MMA. If you want to be a result, you have to take off the judge and the points to see who is the best guy out there.
00:46:23.000And a tennis match can be quickly resolved if I win the three sets, but can be a five-hour dispute if every point we dispute like crazy.
00:46:36.000And that's going to be the difference to see a half-hour game or a five-hour game.
00:46:44.000So why we don't have that kind of scenario in jiu-jitsu or in MMA? Because you want to see somebody who wins at the end.
00:46:52.000And the situation, if I score on you 10 points and you end up mounted on me, I win because I have 10 points.
00:47:02.000But in reality, if you mount on me and you end the fight mounted, your chance for you to be the winner is bigger.
00:47:08.000Same thing than MMA. If I fight in MMA and I have...
00:47:15.000I win the first round because I punch you once in the face.
00:47:18.000I win the second round because I punch you again in the face and nothing happened.
00:47:23.000And on the third round, you mount on me, I turn back, you choke me out.
00:47:28.000When I was about to tap, the bell rings, the judge stops the fight.
00:47:35.000The guy who win the previous two rounds wins the match.
00:47:38.000And that's not, for me, a realistic understanding of what the fight means.
00:47:44.000For me, the value of who's winning the last round, if I have already the choke, I just need 10 more seconds to beat you and the fight is over.
00:47:58.000In terms of reality, this guy lost the fight.
00:48:04.000So the interpretation, the rules, the time, they're all kind of coming to promote entertainment, but not to give you the sense of who is the best guy out there.
00:48:14.000It is a problem, right, where you're trying to figure out how to make something so it's palatable to people to watch as an entertainment vehicle, but it's also representative of a competitive martial art.
00:48:29.000I don't think it's a capacity for you to do both.
00:48:32.000I think, right now, the idea is entertainment.
00:50:36.000The practice today of different styles of martial arts, without the punishment, without the suffering, you should do, for example, you go in the gym.
00:50:52.000When you go in any gym, no matter if it's MMA, at the beginning, you're not going to get hurt.
00:50:58.000You're going to be instructed to punch the bag or to throw the hip throws or sweeps.
00:51:04.000So you get engaged in a practice which favors your ability to deal with the techniques, the ability to get fit, the ability to understand pressure, but at your own pace.
00:51:17.000Sometimes, if you do this too much, you're going to quit because you're going to get injury.
00:51:24.000So the idea of creating a scenario To promote fitness, sensorial ability, for you to develop your senses, your capacities, your breathing,
00:51:40.000without putting pressure for you to have an enemy in front of you, I think that's growing because the real enemy today is the COVID. The real enemy today coming through email.
00:51:52.000So if you have a practice who is more than just go to the gym, lift weights, but a practice to develop your deflection, your timing to escape from a punch, the capacity for you to handle your base and not get fall, the capacity for you to, if you see a neck exposed,
00:52:09.000So you start to favor yourself with knowledge and practice, which doesn't put you a fighter, doesn't make you a fighter, but make you knowledgeable about possibilities you may have.
00:52:19.000And you're going to be happy to know them Even though you're a doctor, even though you're a lawyer, even though you're a guy who's just an executive, who has no plans to fight nobody, but by no better, you're more confident, you're more calm,
00:52:35.000you're more peaceful, because a lot of the insecure state of mind is what brings violence to the table.
00:52:43.000The violence coming when you feel threatening, when you feel, oh man, so ego and stuff.
00:52:48.000So when you become more confident, Even though you're not a fighter, even though you just practice in a light way, you become much more comfortable to be peaceful, to say, hey, man, I'm sorry, I don't want to fight.
00:53:04.000So you're able to come up with situations which is not about fighting to win.
00:53:12.000So using a lot of the concepts of martial arts make you more forgiveness, Make you more balanced, make you more capable to stretch your patience.
00:53:23.000And that's very positive to handle life, problems, situations, and so on.
00:53:30.000And I always tell people that I believe that jujitsu is the best martial art for real-life conflict because in training you're really going 100%.
00:53:39.000It's like if you go 100% all the time with kickboxing, you knock each other out every day, you can't do that.
00:53:44.000You'll be damaged, you'll get brain damage, you'll have to quit.
00:53:48.000But in jujitsu, when you have a training partner, they could be your brother, you could love them.
00:53:54.000But you're trying to choke them, and they're trying to tap you, and you're going at it full blast.
00:53:59.000And then you tap, or you tap them, and you keep going.
00:54:11.000Jiu-Jitsu gives you the pleasure of feeling your gauges, you know?
00:54:15.000Your temperature, your tiredness, your panicking, your intelligence, your sharpness, your techniques.
00:54:21.000So you're able to use those in a very expressive way.
00:54:25.000You're able to unleash the beast anytime you want.
00:54:29.000So you're able to really recognize yourself under pressure, discomfort, comfortable, confident.
00:54:35.000And those give you the articulation to live.
00:54:39.000You leave the school, you're more peaceful, you're more sharp, you're more intelligent, because you've been sharpening your knife at the school to use that life.
00:54:50.000What are your thoughts on all the new techniques of jiu-jitsu?
00:54:55.000There's many schools of thoughts when it comes to jiu-jitsu.
00:54:58.000A lot of people like to try all these fancy new moves and all these new strategies and new ways of approaching things, barambolos and different Iminari rolls.
00:55:10.000And some people think that the best way to handle it is to look at the very basics of jiu-jitsu and just hone those to a razor sharpness.
00:55:23.000Those fundamentals are the core of efficiency.
00:55:27.000But those fundamentals, sometimes they're connected with different elements of creativity.
00:55:33.000And because the guys are training like crazy today and always being...
00:55:37.000But the evolutionary process of the tournaments and the grips and the things, lapel guards and things.
00:55:43.000So I cannot deny the effectiveness of this when you have a lapel.
00:55:48.000I cannot deny the practice of this when the opponent is playing the game you expect him to play.
00:55:55.000But it's always a way to deal with situations to diminish the effectiveness of a lapel.
00:56:01.000So that play today, the guy coming with a technique of a lapel guard, some other guy coming with the un-lapel guard technique to do.
00:56:09.000So this evolves, evolves, evolves to the point where sometimes becomes a lot of wasting time because in reality what you want is to submit the opponent.
00:56:21.000So the idea of the submission, the idea of the finishing, the idea of being in control cannot be diminished based on that kind of amount of new techniques.
00:56:33.000So for every 10 techniques I see, I can relate at least with one.
00:56:41.000I can maybe accept works good, maybe three or four.
00:56:45.000But others will depend on The opponent allowed you to do.
00:56:51.000Pretty much a lot of things they show are effective when the situation is exactly what they show.
00:56:58.000If the guy changes a little bit, it's not happening anymore.
00:57:01.000I'm not exactly in favor of new techniques.
00:57:05.000I know they happen, but I really like the fundamentals.
00:57:50.000So I was talking with John Jack one day about it.
00:57:53.000He said, yeah, it works, but if you do this and that, you kill the position and there's nothing going to happen.
00:57:59.000And I understand every situation is like that in Jiu Jitsu, but in some situations, which the ones I really like, As you protect one, you expose other.
00:58:13.000As you protect this one, you're going to...
00:58:16.000So it's always something for me to exhalate the pressure and go towards the submission.
00:58:22.000Some positions, they're stuck in the middle, and I need you to make a mistake.
01:00:26.000The leg locks, understanding and pressure, are never being exposed too much to others.
01:00:32.000And now, like you said, after this kind of group starts training and stuff, so they really become more effective in knee locks, leg locks, and that's a big game change if you don't know how to escape.
01:00:46.000But again, if you get two guys that are experts, The training partners.
01:00:51.000You're not going to see that many leg locks.
01:00:53.000You're going to see a lot of preparations and stuff.
01:00:55.000But the leg locks will get the surprising ones who don't know the ability to escape.
01:01:01.000Because if you know what I want, as you start to approach, I start escaping.
01:01:06.000My movements have to be coordinated to anticipate the final move.
01:01:11.000If you get me on a checkmate, it's over.
01:01:14.000So with the legs are two possibilities for you to get the situation and make it happen.
01:01:20.000And it's very dangerous if you're not aware.
01:01:24.000But as you start to get used to give foot locks, you become like a part like giving chokes and taking chokes.
01:01:30.000So that becomes normal and it's just a new way, a new option for the submission.
01:01:37.000To prove your point, Craig Jones, who's one of the Donaher guys, said that they almost never tap each other with leg locks.
01:02:21.000Maybe not in the early days, maybe after the early days, but there was a time in jiu-jitsu tournaments, for sure, if someone would try to tap someone with a leg lock or a knee bar.
01:02:30.000Do you think that was because of the concern with injury?
01:02:36.000The idea of the footlock, even though I'm grabbing your foot and try to attack the joint of the foot, depending how I use my hips and my legs, I can really force your knee.
01:02:50.000So sometimes the criticism was, oh, the guy went to my foot, but he put pressure on my knee and popped my knee instead.
01:02:59.000So he's still holding the foot, but with the intention to hurt your knee.
01:03:03.000And those kind of inverse positions was forbidden for a long time in Jiu-Jitsu.
01:03:08.000So when somebody gets your foot, the referee will see if your intention is to hurt his knee and then immediately stop the fight and give you penalties and stuff.
01:04:22.000It's a difficult thing to learn unless you're with really good training partners and everyone's cautious and you do it correctly, but it can be done.
01:04:57.000And then the second motivation, the reason I did, was the fact I've been passing for so many experiences, you know.
01:05:05.000And those experiences make me grow as a man.
01:05:10.000Make me feel like capable to seek for happiness in a much more proper way.
01:05:16.000And make sure also the development of my warrior tools, not only physical, technical, but also the mindset, the emotional, and also the spiritual aspect of acceptance.
01:05:31.000Shows I've been through a lot and give my exposure of my life, of things I did to resolve the matters.
01:05:41.000I mean, I hope you like it, because if you don't like it, I don't have another life to tell you.
01:05:48.000But the tale of my life is basically on, you know, my experience, my life on Rio, which is very, very unpredictable, very wild.
01:05:58.000My relationship with my father, my brothers, my growing up as a jiu-jitsu practitioner, my times of parties in Brazil.
01:06:09.000So it's all my life, which I felt like even my mistakes I used to become a better person.
01:06:17.000So it was a process, an evolutionary process, which I'm very proud of it because today, even though I'm physically destroyed, like my back is bad, I have so many injuries, I feel like I'm still using jiu-jitsu in a very proper way through breathing,
01:06:34.000through visualization, through spiritual guidance, and I take all the information I have as a fighter to live my life and know how important it is to To live my life under those guidance,
01:06:49.000under those things I really believe and make a difference.
01:06:53.000And this exposes my life in a way to give people, through my experience, the options or the ideas to really reinvent themselves and become better.
01:07:06.000Last time I saw you, you were talking to me about your back.
01:09:16.000But the last doctor I spoke with was a neurosurgeon.
01:09:20.000He said in my case, It will be hard to create new tissues and new discs and creating spaces again.
01:09:28.000I mean, my process of degeneration is very, very aggressive.
01:09:34.000So he suggests me a surgery, a fusion of vertebras and stuff, which I feel like, even though if I fix one, the damage in the other vertebras can get worse.
01:09:47.000I just try to keep a mellow life and start to feel like those injuries become like a gift from God.
01:09:55.000You know, it's something which I milk my body so much, I have to pay the bills now.
01:10:17.000The disc degeneration issue is a factor with all jiu-jitsu practitioners.
01:10:23.000I've had a bunch of disc problems over the years.
01:10:27.000I've found some training methods to mitigate it, specifically some different pieces of equipment that provide you with spinal decompression.
01:10:38.000There's a piece of equipment that I talk about all the time on this podcast called the Reverse Hyper.
01:10:43.000It actually allows you to strengthen all the muscles around the spine, but it actively decompresses the spine as well at the same time.
01:12:17.000Do you do any kind of exercise other than the pool stuff nowadays?
01:12:22.000I do what we can say the physiotherapy ones, you know, the good, the proper abdominals, sit-ups, and the way I do my, like, superman positions for enhance the back.
01:12:35.000I do some gym work like machines and stuff, but nothing too crazy.
01:12:40.000Do you do any yoga anymore or any of the gymnastica natural?
01:13:11.000As part of Jiu Jitsu, we're all flexible.
01:13:14.000All the cousins, flexibility was part of the idea of Jiu Jitsu, you know, is a thin tree which the storm comes, they bend and they go back normal.
01:14:01.000So I may develop a little more than others, but pretty much it's part of Jiu Jitsu being flexible.
01:14:07.000But your flexibility was always very extreme though, like when you stand on a balance bar and do a standing split and hold your leg up in the air.
01:15:02.000Because I remember that in Choke, that you had that rubber band around your head, you're working on your neck muscles, and that's very similar to a thing that I use now that they sell called the Iron Neck.
01:15:14.000Because, you know, When you use the strengthening with elastics, you have resistance for you to do throws, you know, because if it's static, But when it's pulling off, you have to do the energy of pulling and moving your hip connected to not losing the momentum.
01:15:33.000So with the elastics, you have a good training for throws, good training for bass, good training for movement, for balance, for neck strength, for shoulder strength.
01:15:44.000So it's a lot of things coming from the bottom and stretch up with the elastics.
01:16:15.000I see a lot of people, like tennis players, using breathing.
01:16:19.000So the idea of using breathing functionally makes all the difference because if you don't know how to breathe in, you can be an athlete, but you're going to get caught tired with the blood, not enough blood, oxygen in your blood in your brain,
01:16:35.000so you start to make important decisions and stuff.
01:16:39.000When you know how to hyperventilate, You change the game of your performance.
01:16:45.000I increase maybe 40% after learning how to breathe.
01:16:58.000You say that Stylebender, the UFC middleweight champion, has recently started incorporating breath work, and he said it's made a tremendous difference.
01:17:06.000And he said, I will never gas out in a fight again.
01:17:09.000He goes, now I understand how to control my breath.
01:17:11.000Yeah, not only gas out, you become much more resilient for fighting, but your brain becomes clear because when you start to get tired, you don't push oxygen to your brain, so you become dummy and make important decisions, so functioning in every aspect of your life.
01:17:29.000And that's why you decided to title the book Breathe.
01:18:09.000Your heart too, when you get depressed, immediately you feel in your heart.
01:18:12.000And your heart show you, you said, show you, it's immediately connection.
01:18:18.000And what is amazing about that is the lung is the practical aspect within you who are able to control or help your brain and also help your heart.
01:18:32.000So through the proper breathing, you can control your heartbeats.
01:18:36.000Through the proper breathing, you can control your mindset and get calmer, control your panic, control your courage, control everything you need in the mental aspect and also spiritual, hope, faith, visualizations.
01:18:53.000So all the elements in your brain, all the elements in your heart can be much better guided, much better helped If you don't know how to involve your lungs in your brain, in your breathing, you're not able to favor your brain and your heart the way it's supposed to be.
01:19:17.000It's kind of amazing that everybody breathes, but a relatively small percentage of people know how to breathe correctly.
01:19:34.000The first learning you learn about breathing is to move the upper body, the upper part of your lung.
01:19:45.000If you don't learn, if you don't practice, you're never going to use the diaphragmatic breathing, which involves the full capacity of your lungs.
01:19:53.000So the diaphragm, when you learn how to move your diaphragm efficiently, you fill up your lungs in a different way.
01:20:01.000So if I breathe right, or wrong, either more or less oxygen, up to me the way I use the diaphragmatic or not.
01:20:14.000So when I learn how to use that, I'm able to help my body in whatever it needs, mental, spiritual, or physical.
01:20:23.000That famous scene in Choke, when you're moving your stomach around with the drums beating, it's really crazy.
01:20:29.000People love that scene because you're using that control of your diaphragm.
01:26:03.000But my focus now, because something average happened in almost every academy, is for every 10 students who come in today, eight will leave in less than six months.
01:26:16.000Because the progressiveness of the classes sometimes too soon gonna put you with a monster.
01:26:22.000That means a younger guy who tried to beat you.
01:26:26.000And sometimes that experience can be harmful because you don't have the heart, you don't have the spirit for fighting.
01:26:33.000You go there to training, to practice.
01:26:35.000And some strong kid hurt you or don't care about you.
01:26:40.000And you feel like, wow, man, I'm not here to get hurt.
01:27:13.000But the eight guys who quit, I felt like they not favored because...
01:27:19.000The exposure of jiu-jitsu for them was not exactly perfect to engage them in a lifetime practice.
01:27:26.000So my proposal now, my ideas now, is not only to enforce the top guys who are good, effectiveness, and competing.
01:27:36.000Instead, I like to create a bigger base, creating more people who are unaware of jiu-jitsu, become comfortable to practice jiu-jitsu, and take advantage of what jiu-jitsu can give to them.
01:27:50.000So if I put competition, if I put sparring, I'm not going to have the result I want.
01:27:55.000So I want to empower the guys by developing them on the senses they have and they don't know.
01:28:02.000The leverage, the base, the capacity to angle themselves, the timing, the deflections, the connection.
01:28:09.000So all the elements are there to serve you.
01:28:14.000You're going to be very happy to learn without...
01:28:18.000The egocentric aspect, the competitiveness, the disappointment, everything gonna happen if I allowed you to practice.
01:28:28.000So the first year in this program has no opponents.
01:28:33.000The first year in this program has only training partners.
01:28:37.000Where the guy is going to help you to understand the better angle of your chin, the better weight distribution, how you hold, how you throw.
01:29:08.000I want to say, okay, you can go for the blue belt.
01:29:10.000Where are you going to start your fighting against a guy who don't want to let you do?
01:29:16.000You want to try past John Gard, but John is not going to let you do it.
01:29:20.000So it's going to be a fight there, and you're going to have to get used to the fight aspect.
01:29:24.000If you like that, you're going to keep for blue belt, purple belt, brown belt, great.
01:29:29.000If you don't like that because you felt too violent or too aggressive or too brutal or whatever, you stick with the fundamentals for life because here you're going to get fit, you're going to get sharp in your possibilities to deflect a punch, to not get punched in the face, to don't get to know how to escape,
01:29:52.000Everything you need from fighting, but everything you need from jiu-jitsu to empower you, to give you a sense of balance.
01:30:00.000More sharpness in your mind, more reflexes, so the ability for you to become a fighter is not there, but the ability for you to learn about yourself and know everything you can do in case of an eventual situation will be there for you for the rest of your life.
01:30:19.000Do you have it structured so that a person learns with another person, so that you get together with a friend and you go over the program together?
01:30:27.000Yes, it can be this, or it can be for teachers who learn how to teach and press this for their students.
01:30:33.000Because the way for you to teach without competing is just demonstrating positions in a high level of understanding.
01:31:07.000It is a beautiful thing, the ability to learn online now, that there's so much information that a person can get from a program like yours that ordinarily would take years and years and years of practice in school.
01:31:22.000What are your thoughts on grappling dummies, on practicing on like a grappling dummy?
01:31:26.000Do you think there's any benefit of that?
01:31:29.000Maybe for a specific move, if you want to take something from the floor or eventually throw or something or strikes or positions or moving knee on the belly, they can have some benefit because you don't have to have a body, actual somebody.
01:31:44.000But in terms of practice, the practice of two people are better because you can have the change of angles and the acceptance of resistance and know how to because it's always a flow.
01:31:59.000When the guy tries to do something, either you're going to follow that situation, or if he resists, you're going to flow to another.
01:32:07.000So you need that sense of the ability to exchange directions and obey the energy of the flow.
01:32:30.000People start to become more confident to practice, but the schools are still not quite open for everybody, still like limited.
01:32:39.000And I hope it starts to get better now, but the situation is not, you know, even now with this new variant, people start to become more freaked out yet and start now to start to create, I heard they're going to create a mandate.
01:32:54.000For you to prove you're vaccinated if you want to go to a gym, if you want to go to the airport, if you want to go wherever you have to prove yourself that you're vaccinated.
01:33:03.000So things are not easy now, but we're getting there, we're getting better.
01:33:49.000If they could make that more affordable and make it more accessible and have a really accurate, rapid test and just have people, when they come to train, test them.
01:34:19.000I mean, it's hard to debate science and politics and what it is.
01:34:23.000So I think it's hard to get an opinion about it because you're always going to have somebody who's going against what you say.
01:34:32.000So it's important to do what you feel better.
01:34:35.000Well, it's also one of the things that we talked about earlier, that there's a lot of people that never have experienced real adversity in their life, and they're not prepared for uncomfortable scenarios, so they look to blame.
01:34:48.000And so they look to blame other people, whether they look to blame the unvaccinated people, or they look to blame certain doctors, or they look to blame the pharmaceutical companies.
01:35:01.000And a lot of times these people are not looking at their own situation in terms of what can they do to empower their own health.
01:35:09.000But instead they're trying to find enemies out there.
01:35:13.000Yes, and the most important is to keep your Your capacity to fight those virus, your immune system is strong, a lot of sauna, a lot of things that are good for you,
01:36:26.000So to have competency in striking and to be a good striker and then go into something where I was a complete beginner was very, very valuable for me.
01:36:41.000But the point is that I learned how to start.
01:36:46.000It's very good for your ego to be shot down and to become a beginner again.
01:36:52.000And so few people ever have that opportunity in life to do something very difficult, where you're really starting from the beginning as a white belt.
01:37:42.000So you have to be Putting things together, you have to have a right strategy, the right mindset, the courage, the capacity to visualize what you want.
01:37:55.000So all the elements and the tools of the warrior have to be used almost on a daily basis for you to live life.
01:38:40.000And it's one of the aspects that the people who don't practice it, they're not aware of it.
01:38:45.000They don't understand the extreme value.
01:38:48.000There's obviously value in learning martial arts and learning how to defend yourself, learning how to beat opponents.
01:38:55.000There's value in that, but there's extreme value in learning how to deal with difficult circumstances, learning how to overcome.
01:39:03.000Yes, because the idea of developing your practice within martial arts doesn't take you from using those practice in life.
01:39:14.000And the connection between both very much is always there.
01:39:18.000So if you're not experiencing martial arts, you don't experience the ability for you to resolve problems.
01:39:24.000And I feel like what is important in the practice is exactly the fact that the practice cannot be Strong enough for you to diminish your desire to practice.
01:39:43.000You have to add practice at will to grow in your process.
01:39:48.000So that's why sometimes a lot of people fall short in the continuous martial arts practice because sometimes the practice becomes too hard and trespass the limits for him, his capabilities.
01:40:03.000So I feel like martial arts now has to be taught And a very good sense from breeding to positioning for kids, for executives, for older people, for anyone, for women, for housewives, because it's a practice.
01:40:19.000You start to understand yourself without limitations and develop better qualities to become a mother, to become an executive, an entrepreneur, anything.
01:40:30.000Yeah, I couldn't agree more, and I think it's something that I think every young man should learn.
01:40:37.000I think there's too many men that go through life without any martial arts experience, and I just think it's one of the reasons why there's so much conflict.
01:40:44.000Especially in those days, because I feel like life today dehumanizes you.
01:40:51.000Robotics, technology, internet, they take you from the present.
01:40:58.000So, in the internet, you have your best picture, your best saying, and you put yourself as a character.
01:41:05.000But when you go shake hand of somebody, look at somebody in the eye, ask for a job, ask for a date or something, you lost the ability to communicate.
01:41:15.000So Jiu Jitsu and other martial arts too give you that sense of direct connection, the hug, the sense, the breathing together.
01:41:23.000So this brings a value not only for the aspect of learning martial arts, But to humanize you in a sense of using your senses, your power, your breathing, your heartbeat, your connection with your opponent's movements.
01:41:37.000So all this has to do with the Being present, being connected, being human.
01:41:45.000And that's also another aspect which is priceless, regardless the effectiveness you have as a fighter.
01:41:51.000I could not agree more, and I think there's no better martial art than jiu-jitsu for that, for expressing who you are as a person.
01:41:59.000Because you're learning so much about your limitations, your fears, your ability to overcome, your ability to learn, showing improvement because of your determination and discipline and hard work.
01:42:22.000Yeah, it's a very valuable thing that I think could...
01:42:26.000I sing its praises as much as possible and I'm glad that a lot of people listen.
01:42:31.000It's one of my most satisfying things is when I meet someone and maybe they're a black belt and they say, I started jujitsu because I heard you talk about it on your podcast.
01:43:00.000I'm not doing too many seminars those days with those COVID things, but I will be back on seminars.
01:43:07.000And I do exercise, you know, I have a loving wife, so I'm happy giving a peaceful life and trying to be at service, providing a good knowledge, a good understanding, a good possible solutions for a lot of people who are kind of practicing jiu-jitsu or wants to practice.
01:43:27.000Do you think you're going to stay in Los Angeles?
01:45:50.000Oh, so you are doing something like this.
01:45:51.000It's a combination of stories of myself and Maeda.
01:45:55.000So before the project was to do one movie about Maeda coming from Japan, the history he has around the world, and then Sero and Brazil, and then begin The Gracie Family, eventually end up on me.
01:46:10.000But now they split the movies, so they're gonna make one movie about Maeda, and they're gonna make one movie about myself.
01:46:53.000There's no other martial art like it, really, where you can specifically see the individual family and the individual family member in your father that changed the course of martial arts forever.
01:47:08.000And there's no other martial arts who has this focus on being the best one and confront with other ones, open challenge, things like that, which is just coming from a crazy Brazilian family.
01:47:20.000But because of that crazy Brazilian family, it answered all the questions that we had.
01:47:25.000You know, when I was doing Taekwondo in the 1980s, everybody that I was training with, we thought Taekwondo was it.
01:47:43.000I was like, oh, I thought I knew more than I knew.
01:47:45.000Then I went to Jiu-Jitsu and I was like, oh my God.
01:47:50.000I've talked about it before, but one of the first days ever training, I was a white belt, and I was training with this kid who was a purple belt, and I thought I was a tough guy.
01:47:59.000I couldn't believe that this guy could do whatever he wanted to me.
01:48:32.000But then when I trained with one guy who was very serious, he was very aggressive, you know, he wasn't trying to take it easy on me, which was good.
01:48:39.000It was a valuable lesson, but that was the seeds that was planted in my head about, I am going to learn how to do this.
01:49:01.000Yeah, the amount of students I have who come in with a different background, with their possibilities and their ideas in their minds coming, Well, well, very much above that reality, you know?
01:50:25.000And it happens with jiu-jitsu too, because some jiu-jitsu guys, they start lacking the possibility to clinch and to approach.
01:50:34.000And they felt like, oh, I need to learn boxing, I need to learn wrestling.
01:50:39.000So it becomes a cross-training, because...
01:50:41.000For every aspect of style, you have always a weak aspect of it.
01:50:46.000And you have to compensate with other tools.
01:50:50.000You know, for me, I was never being a good striker.
01:50:54.000But different than other jiu-jitsu practitioners, I was always putting a good striker to hit me.
01:51:00.000So I was very comfortable to the distance, to neutralizing the distance, to use my side kick and clinch.
01:51:07.000So I'm focused on the clinch, I'm focused on the On the approach of not getting punched, not exchange punches.
01:51:15.000And when I clinch, either I go fall on top if I was capable to throw, or bring the guy to my guard and able to cook him and slow burn from the bottom.
01:51:25.000Out of all your opponents over your entire career, do you think that your last one, Funaki, do you think he was the best?
01:51:33.000Oh man, I don't think he was the best.
01:51:38.000I think the situation he gets against me was the best situation because he was younger, he was heavier, he was in Japan and I got hurt on my eye and at this point when I was Half blind on my eye.
01:52:27.000And I'm ready with, I could not see very well because when you hit one eye, hits the both, the nerve optics, so you cannot see with both eyes, you cannot see very much.
01:52:40.000Then I spent about 45 minutes, 45 seconds to recoup my one vision.
01:52:46.000And as I recoup, I stood up, clinch again, and throw him down and mount and submit, put him to sleep.
01:52:55.000But I was a very, a position of the fight, I could not explain how bad it was, but that's kind of put me in a situation where all my life was somehow passing through me because I went in a position which I,
01:53:15.000in a fight, I confident I could win, but I was impotent, impotent.
01:53:20.000So I was completely in a pause in a moment to see what's going to happen because I was not quitting.
01:54:19.000It was a tough experience, but, you know, not because he was a great technician, but because the moment, the fight, the whole thing was very serious.
01:54:28.000But did the injury, was it a fractured orbital?
01:55:27.000The image, the video of you taking his back and choking him to sleep while his eyes were open is one of the great submission videos in the history of martial arts.
01:55:40.000First of all, because it was such a tough fight, but the moment you got to that position when you mount, when you take his back, and then you put the choke in, and you see him out cold, and then you kick him off of you.
01:56:37.000He was a guy that a lot of people were interested to see you fight because they felt like some of the guys that you had fought, you know, like Takata or some of these other guys, they were very big and they were very strong, but they weren't at your level.
01:58:10.000Yeah, it's a famous moment in the history of martial arts, though.
01:58:15.000It was one of those times where one of these challenge matches had actually come to America, because we had heard about all these Gracie challenge matches, but either you watch them on videotape, or they happened in Brazil, or the different moments where...
01:58:30.000You know, Luta Livre and Jiu Jitsu went at it in Brazil, but to see you, who is the main, the top guy in Jiu Jitsu, to someone to come to your academy and challenge you and get destroyed like that, that's a video that everybody wants to see.
01:58:44.000Yeah, and what's funny, because once he come in, I give him a waiver, right?
01:58:47.000A regular waiver just to relieve any injury or something.
01:58:52.000And he looked at the waiver and said, in Japanese for his friend, I have to sign this to fight.
01:58:58.000And then the guy coming to me, Mr. Gracie, you think he has to sign this to fight?
01:59:02.000If he don't sign, you're not going to fight him?
01:59:06.000Immediately, I felt like a double standard because if I say, no, he has to sign, he could leave and tell anything because he's a wrestler.
01:59:54.000He's still not yet fighting Vanderlei and other guys who kick his ass.
01:59:59.000So he's still high level in terms of reputation and will be the fight I was seeking for in terms of financial, pull my donkey on the shade, everything.
02:00:12.000But, unfortunately, I lost my son, and a couple of months later, my fight, and then after, I was, you know, have problems, emotional problems, family problems, I decided to focus on regaining my energy,
02:00:27.000instead just focus on a fight, which could be able, for me personally, to focus on the training, but allowed my family to get Depressed, so I stay like a family guy, keeping my ex-wife, keeping my kids strong enough.
02:00:55.000Well, listen, you've had an amazing career, an amazing life, and you are, in my opinion, one of the most important people in the history of martial arts.