In this episode, I sit down with former UFC Welterweight title contender Matt Mitchel "The Stylebender" Jones. We talk about his UFC 246 debut in Las Vegas, his transition from kickboxing to MMA, and how he handled the media hype that surrounded his first UFC fight. He also talks about how he was able to bounce back from a near fatal injury in his last UFC fight, and what it took to get back on the winning side of the cage. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. -Jon Bones Jones - UFC 246 - UFC Fight Night 3 - UFC 194 - UFC Fighter of the Decade - UFC Light Heavyweight Champion - Conor McGregor - UFC 206 Winner - UFC BJJ Champion - UFC Featherweight Champ - UFC Flyweight Champion- UFC Lightweight Champ- UFC Bantamweight Champ, UFC Bunkhouse Champion, and UFC Light heavyweight Champ, Rory Mcgregor. - UFC Middleweight Champion, Dana White - UFC 145 Winner, UFC 246 Winner, & UFC 246 Runner-Up, Conor McGregor vs. Tyron Woodley vs. Cowboy Cerrone. , UFC 246 winner, Conor vs. Nate Mendez vs. Gennady Golovkin, UFC 244 Winner, and much more! I talk about how I got my start in MMA, how I transitioned from being a kickboxer to a mixed martial arts fighter, and some of my favorite moments from my time in the sport, and a little bit of advice I would give my younger brother, Farah Sahabi, who is a chance to come along for the ride with me on my journey. . . . - I hope y'all enjoy the ride. I'm not only the ride, but the lessons I learned along the road to becoming a better martial artist, but how I learned from my first UFC fighter, but also how I can help other martial artist and a better version of myself! - Thank you for tuning into the game! I hope u guys have a great week! . Thank you so much for tuning in, and I can't wait for the next episode! :D - Jon Bones Jones - - The Stylebender , & much more!! -- Jon Bones - Jon Bones Cheers, <3 - Jon Soriano :) - Jon Mccartan - John Rocha ~
00:01:14.000Because you see, like, looking for a fight.
00:01:16.000Guys like, for example, Sage Nortcutt, he's been up and down in the UFC fight, you know, like his rise and stuff like that.
00:01:22.000But you have to, you can't just come in here with, like, maybe three fights, unless maybe, like, a Mickey Gall, who also has extensive background in something else, like jiu-jitsu.
00:01:31.000But, yeah, I took my time, fought around the world, fought different body types, different styles, and And then eventually, I think the UFC were like, okay, what do you want?
00:02:33.000I actually hurt my foot, because that was the third fight of the night, so it was a tournament, so the final fight, and I hurt my foot in his head, and I was like, okay.
00:02:39.000Because you kind of see me limp a little bit, then I went in on him and just, yeah, finished it off.
00:03:15.000Just got jabbed and then they just get flustered and they can talk all this stuff like oh we're gonna do this and this and that right and it's different when you see it on TV but when you're in because I've had it done to me I've got teammates that do it to me all the time if I'm not on my game they do it to me I'm like so this is what it feels like I don't want to be on the other side of that so if you come in overtrained yeah like Dan Hooker will catch me on some days Dan Hooker's a beast bro that's my guy bro he's a serious dude Like,
00:03:42.000I don't know, three weeks, Shane Young in Singapore, myself, Friday night, and Dan Hooker on Saturday.
00:03:48.000Dan Hooker's one of them never celebrating the Octagon guys either.
00:04:56.000We're about to take it to the next level and then bring NZ Sports again all the way up.
00:05:02.000Well, you know, what's interesting is that New Zealand in particular, like, you guys, there's something about having you guys come over here, and there's not, like, a long history where people think of, you know, like, New Zealand MMA fighters, but New Zealand kickboxers.
00:05:18.000I mean, it's one of the most rich environments.
00:05:20.000Like, think about all the different high-level kickboxers that came out of New Zealand, or Australia for that matter.
00:05:27.000Crazy number of, like, really high-level kickboxers.
00:05:30.000When I came to help Rumble with his camp for Jon Jones, because Rashad linked it up and said, you should come help us out, and I said, yeah, sure.
00:05:38.000So I went to Black Zillions when it was still around, and I was surprised.
00:05:42.000I was like, man, the stand-up in America is not even close on our level.
00:05:47.000The grappling, the wrestling, because you guys have it in schools, and all the Brazilians come here and open schools and stuff like that, but...
00:06:29.000I didn't really get to use my jiu-jitsu much a little bit in that fight, but the takedown defense, that's all Andre as well, my wrestling coach.
00:08:39.000If you want to speak to someone, Eugene would be the guy, or Tojo.
00:08:41.000They're the guys that have the history, just up here.
00:08:44.000But for me, I just came in and I enjoyed it and I jumped in the pool.
00:08:48.000Well, from the United States, there are some big kickboxing camps, but also you get a lot of guys who've come here from Holland and from other kickboxing-rich places.
00:09:01.000And of course, guys who fought over there and came over here like Alistair and guys who entered into MMA. It is interesting that for MMA gyms, there's a certain level of striking.
00:09:12.000And then you see a Nicky Holtzkin will come and start training with those guys.
00:09:37.000If I wanted to take the boxing blueprint, I could have done that because I'm 6-1 in boxing as well.
00:09:42.000So I could have done that and just got built up, fight the cans, fight some champions, local champions, some national champions, and eventually on the world stage.
00:10:45.000And I've always felt like guys who have a specialty, if they can get to a certain amount of good at this other thing without abandoning their skills as a specialty, they're always going to have that giant advantage.
00:11:40.000I'm searching for shots or whatever, but a lot of people kind of like either flare, close up, or they not turn away, but like they just try to use the wall.
00:11:49.000And you can't really use that in MMA because the gloves, they don't help.
00:11:53.000But in kickboxing, you can just like...
00:14:25.000What people don't see is how he felt after six hours later, ten hours later, 24 hours later, when his head's pounding and he's got to close all the drapes.
00:14:54.000I think, like, MMA, you can just grab any of those kids and give them some boxing gloves, show them how to sprawl, show them how to wrestle, and they're a beast.
00:15:03.000Ten in Gunners, ten Jon Joneses just walking down the street.
00:15:07.000I had the same size head, and I was just a skinny boy, so I looked like a lollipop.
00:15:16.000I think maybe, like, around 15, I started to get taller.
00:15:19.000So every time I'd come back from school or from a holiday after school, I was like, there you go, taller.
00:15:23.000And then somehow I just filled it out, realized I got athleticism, and then later on, like, I was never the athletic kid playing basketball or anything like that.
00:19:00.000There's definitely pros and cons to everything, but a guy who's got the kind of speed that you have can take advantage many times more of having hands low.
00:22:11.000And when I got some money, and I was talking to the guy that led me, and then, because he found out I'm a UFC fighter, he just led me to the private room, and I see McMahon, and I'm like, what the hell?
00:22:19.000And then we just start yarning, talking to people, and he's like, I'll introduce you to Dana.
00:22:22.000And I finally meet Dana properly, and we start talking.
00:23:36.000But it also might be similar to what you were talking about with Sage Northcutt, who I also think still has tremendous potential and still very young.
00:23:44.000I think there's an approach to take that you took that I think is really smart.
00:23:49.000One of the talk shows, UFC talk shows, Kenny Florin just said it.
00:23:53.000He said, get your experience outside the UFC before you go into the UFC. Wise words.
00:23:59.000Ten fights, nine fights, and just like fight a lot of good guys.
00:24:02.000Not just like, you know, Listen to me, man.
00:24:04.000You don't want to fight you on your second fight, right?
00:24:07.000Imagine you're a guy, you could throw a couple good punches, you think you're a badass, and then your stupid coach says, okay, you're going to fight this guy.
00:24:47.000If I was a white belt and I came in here and I didn't know shit and I was like a strong guy who maybe, you know, played basketball or something like that.
00:24:53.000I was just athletic and I tried to fight you.
00:24:56.000How bad would you fuck me up on the ground?
00:25:16.000You're gonna get fucked up and you're gonna get hit multiple times and they're gonna chip away at you until they decide to move in for the kill and then they're gonna fuck you up.
00:25:23.000There's not a damn thing you could do about it.
00:25:24.000And it's almost the same As him grabbing a white belt, letting him flail around, and then eventually choking him.
00:26:08.00080% of street fights end up on the ground and people don't know what they're doing.
00:26:11.000So I just felt like I never want to be in a situation where a guy gets me in an alleyway and tries to fuck me up and just snap my ankle or some shit.
00:26:19.000But I just feel like I want to be able to Be well versed.
00:28:10.000It was a perfect fight in terms of like you want to see like the effectiveness of like high-level timing speed and perfect technique like woo!
00:28:18.000Yeah, and the way he did it as well was clean.
00:28:21.000I think he only got hit once that fight.
00:28:22.000He landed like 100% of his shots in that fight.
00:32:01.000What kind of wrestling training it takes to get to that level.
00:32:03.000Well, that's why when you see a real high-level wrestler against almost everybody else, they have such a noted advantage in the clinch, like Daniel Cormier and Stipe Miocic this weekend.
00:32:14.000Dominic Cruz, we're very fortunate to have a guy that knowledgeable.
00:32:20.000Because Dominic's knowledgeable about basically everything.
00:32:23.000He started out as a wrestler, but he understands MMA as good as anybody that's ever talked on the mic about MMA. He's very clued up.
00:32:28.000So when he talked about, like, he showed me some stuff that I hadn't caught about Daniel's giving up the underhook so that he could limp arm, and then Stipe would run right into the right hand, and they had it all timed out.
00:33:04.000That is a beautiful picture because they've been working together for so long when John Anik stands up and DC looks at him and they're looking at each other.
00:34:02.000They forgot about undefeated Strikeforce fucking Grand Prix heavyweight champion.
00:34:06.000Tossing out Burnett, Bigfoot dropping him, all that kind of shit.
00:34:09.000I was like, and that was Burnett with five rounds, and he wasn't even like, he was early, that was early in his MMA career.
00:34:14.000So I was like, You guys don't understand.
00:34:16.000So I thought it was going to be DC putting them against the fence, grinding them out for five rounds, and still beating them up, like, fucking them up, and back and forth, but knockout in the first round.
00:34:27.000I thought if DC was going to win it, what was going to happen was they were going to get into the second and third and they were going to start getting tired and DC's wrestling was going to take over.
00:34:36.000Yeah, I thought it was going to go five rounds unanimous to DC. I felt like he had to somehow or another wear Stipe out a little bit before he gets takedowns and get him down.
00:34:47.000But I thought it was real dangerous standing up because Stipe's knocked out Junior Dos Santos, knocked out Alistair Overeem, knocked out Fabrizio Verdun with one punch.
00:34:56.000I mean, you think all the people Stipe's knocked out, you go, damn, and DC's coming up as a light heavyweight?
00:35:48.000Because they understand, I just like to be by myself and just chill, so they're just doing their own thing, and then we're just playing games.
00:35:52.000But I watch it to see what I did right, and I enjoy it.
00:35:55.000I was like, okay, this is what I did good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:35:58.000But then I see, if I was fighting me hard, I'd fuck me up now.
00:36:02.000That's a good way of looking at it, man.
00:36:03.000I can see certain things like, okay, I need to work on...
00:36:08.000Tendencies, certain tendencies, and change it up.
00:36:27.000I'd use the fake Ong Bak elbow to close the gap, and I'd gallop in and catch him with a right hand or something.
00:36:32.000Certain things like that were things I did good, but then...
00:36:36.000I can't really say the kind of thing to do with that.
00:36:38.000But do you think that maybe that when you learn, it's almost like You're learning words, like in these words or techniques, and then combinations or sentences.
00:36:52.000And then in having the mastery of all these words, you just see a new sentence that you could say.
00:38:35.000Yeah, I definitely did it in sparring before, but when I saw Rick Rufus, one of his first fights, it was a really important fight with a Thai champion, where he was fucking him up in the first round.
00:38:45.000We played it back because it was a really interesting moment.
00:38:48.000I think on YouTube it's labeled as the most important fight in kickboxing.
00:38:53.000And what it was was the first fight where we got to see Rick Rufus in his prime fight.
00:38:57.000Face a tie champion and this dude and Rick was winning in the beginning and one of the things that he hit him with he did that touch side kick spin back kick in the air this is it the fight that changed history is this Lawrence Kenshin as well?
00:39:32.000What I really love about Lawrence, though, is that, you know, he breaks down things and shows them in slow motion, as is Brendan Dorman and Jack Slack.
00:39:38.000There's a lot of these guys that do this.
00:40:56.000My first thought was, God damn, and I have to recalibrate everything I thought about fighting.
00:41:01.000Yeah, I fought a karate guy, a kyokushin guy, on maybe two hours' notice because my opponent decided, at the weigh-ins, he's like, I'm not fighting him.
00:43:02.000His legs were giant, but it was, there was a feeling of this very, you know, sometimes you hear someone or you see someone kick something or something, you go, oh, I could never, no one can take that.
00:44:52.000Honestly, man, with all this PD kind of talk, for me, I thought, yeah, some people take steroids or whatever, but after I seen Icarus, everyone's on steroids.
00:45:37.000They took gold medals away from two Russian cats in the 2000s because they went back and with new testing, I think they found EPO in their system.
00:46:50.000It's like athlete's health and wellness.
00:46:51.000But those who are cheating wouldn't be hanging around him like the way I would or wouldn't be as friendly with him because they don't want him sniffing around.
00:46:57.000Well, he's there to make sure that someone doesn't cheat on you, too, though.
00:48:41.000But for me, doing that job, holy shit, soul-sucking.
00:48:45.000Every single day, you know, you wake up, train, and then it was just a block away, and I'd walk to work, and I just knew I was going to get just ridden that day.
00:49:50.000The reason why Paul Felder didn't get that fight with Khabib when Tony Ferguson hurt his knee is because the Athletic Commission wouldn't recognize him.
00:51:43.000You know, Kevin Lee tweeted the other day that there's something like 150 different fighters in between 155 and 170. I think he said more than that.
00:54:52.000The reason is dietary fiber will hold water.
00:54:55.000If I put a bunch of water into a bowl and lettuce is brown and wilted, the next day it will absorb the water via osmosis and be good lettuce again.
00:55:03.000When you guys are near the end of your weight clot, they are cutting back on how much water they take in so they don't have to worry about the body absorbing the water.
00:55:09.000That means we can give them the fruit which is going to help them fuel the brain.
00:56:54.000What you know you can't learn on your own.
00:56:57.000The thing about a guy like you that's interesting to me is like, it's very obvious that you had very good technical training, but then you deviated.
00:57:05.000And you figured out your own creative path.
00:57:06.000And something you said earlier, which I think is really important, and it's a good thing to hear for people who don't really understand martial arts, is what you do really is an art.
00:59:13.000When you see a guy who can do that in a kickboxing match at a very high level, that's when you realize, whoa, this guy, you can't give him any room.
01:01:34.000You're doing everything correctly, and by doing everything correctly, you're kind of ensuring to continue your domination in that fight versus put yourself in danger, which some people like.
01:01:43.000Some people like, I just like to bite down on my mouth, piece, and bang.
01:01:46.000I love me a Justin Gaethje, Michael Johnson.
01:01:53.000I just want to keep my wits about me Yeah, like Mayweather get in get out make your money and fuck off.
01:01:58.000That's what I want to do You're fighting correctly in terms of like if you're trying to teach someone how to hit and not get hit you're fighting correctly Facts.
01:02:06.000But in order to push further, if you were trying to make it more exciting and engage more, you have to risk getting hit.
01:05:48.000And the first time as well was another weird, you know, he's walking forward, you know, not landing shots, but I'm moving back and hitting him the whole time.
01:07:01.000Well, Whitaker won the fight, but a lot of people thought Romero might have gotten the nod because he knocked him down and hurt him, and then he hurt him again in the next round.
01:07:11.000A lot of people thought, at the very least, it was a draw.
01:07:13.000Because if you look at it on paper, Whitaker never really hurt Romero, but Romero did significantly hurt Whitaker twice.
01:07:39.000When he came in here to do a podcast while I was in camp, him and Joey Diaz translated and shit, I was looking and I'm like, he's 230 pounds.
01:14:45.000Well, Boston to New York, New York to LA. So I started coming here around 93, and I think I joined.
01:14:50.000I joined the Jet Center, but they had got damaged from the earthquake in 93, and the fucking roof, when it would rain, it would just flood the whole gym.
01:16:01.000All those wrestlers, they all wind up with some sort of catastrophic back injury.
01:16:06.000It's just a matter of how long can you hold out.
01:16:08.000For me now, I'm trying to be preemptive because for the longest time, I kind of just neglected all that stuff with like chiro, physio, whatnot.
01:16:17.000So now I'm like, if I want to fight at this level and be healthy, avoid injury, You got to look after yourself in that sense.
01:16:25.000What kind of strength and conditioning work do you do?
01:18:21.000Damn, that's kind of so important because that's the time where you really have some opportunity for stretching or really advancing your range of motion.
01:18:29.000Yeah, well, any time, explosive exercise, you're really tired, your muscles are completely heated up.
01:18:35.000Or, you know, Bikram's great for that, too, because you get a lot of exhaustion of the muscles, then you have that extreme heat, and everything's super pliable.
01:18:57.000Cut the shit, of course you can hack it.
01:18:59.000If it was between live or die, never see your family again, or wait ten more minutes in the sauna, shut the fuck up!
01:19:04.000Even just for the first session I ever did ever in Bikram, I sat there.
01:19:09.000I didn't push myself as hard, but I just sat on the mat if maybe that pose was a little bit too much or if I felt some type of way, but I'm African.
01:19:24.000If you can't get through a 90-minute Bikram class, but you can do 60 minutes, then you have to sit down for 10 and then jump back in for 10, then just do that.
01:21:23.000I mean, I don't even mean it in a good way.
01:21:26.000They had this HBO documentary where they're interviewing him, and he was talking about girls saying that he banged him and all this different thing.
01:22:08.000You know, like, if you and him, if you didn't see, if you're both the same skin color, and you didn't see your heads, and you looked at your torsos, you would know who's who.
01:25:15.000It's so strange that people went thousands of years without these styles, and then when electronic music came along, people went, oh, the sound's different, let's move different.
01:25:23.000Yeah, but for me, I had this metamorphosis last year, around my birthday, and then, for whatever reason, I just went back to dance because I felt like I had this dance.
01:25:32.000You know how people get writer's block?
01:25:34.000I had dancer's block for like maybe six years or five years.
01:25:50.000I know dancers who have to do shows and they have to learn like 20 different sequences and that's for the whole show like 20 different each sequence might be like anywhere from a minute to three minutes and they have to do it like that so when I started dancing again when I went back to training drilling my I can retain that information so much better like it's muscle memory right so I don't even have to think about certain moves when I do it just boom Because,
01:30:17.000No, but honestly, like that pace, even like my first fight, it's sort of Diaz-esque in a way where it's like I didn't do it when I knew he was ready to go.
01:30:29.000Just pop, pop, pop, pop, find the shot, find the shot, find the shot.
01:30:33.000There's no need to like, it's wasted energy.
01:30:35.000Well, you've got a wise approach to your overall MMA game, but in particular to your striking game.
01:30:42.000You're one of those guys that's showing people that you can be very exciting, but take minimal.
01:30:47.000There was a couple moments in that fight where Brad was charging at you, where you're like, hup, hup, hup, here we go, and we're out the other side.
01:32:33.000Now, when you see a guy like Paulo Costa, who has like this just...
01:32:37.000I mean, he's not totally hittable, where like everything you throw, you're going to hit him, but he's much more aggressive, much more in your face.
01:34:39.000He had that constant pressure, Carlson-Gracy top game, crushing, you know, where you're going to shit out bone fragments after you roll with them.
01:37:14.000I think I went down to the legs, and I took away a tension from the top.
01:37:17.000Then I was able to go back to the jab, and I busted him off the jab.
01:37:20.000Now, when you're training, do you spend time to work on traditional moves like wheel kicks and side kicks and all that shit that you throw occasionally?
01:37:29.000Or do you throw them into your overall pad work game?
01:37:33.000The pad work, Eugene, he has his own system.
01:38:56.000But there seems to me, like right now, to be a new, Zabit Magomed Sharapov, that guy, there's a few of these guys that are coming up where you watch them, you go, whoa, there's some next level.
01:39:08.000You recognize, like a guy like me who's seen it for so many years, I go, okay, there's some next level shit going on right now.
01:39:21.000I mean, I'm sure there's been some all-time greats when you go to guys like Pernell Whitaker and guys like Floyd Mayweather, you know, artistic geniuses.
01:39:30.000But there's something that Lomachenko's doing that they're not doing.
01:44:46.000And then this kid, this fucking little shithead, like a baby, came over and just like, I think he either yelled at my face or whatever, and I was like, whatever.
01:44:54.000And then, because it's Brazil, they go crazy, like, holy shit, he knocked this guy out.
01:47:55.000But this weekend, ever since I got to the UFC or just before, every single fight after I win, because my brain tries to go to that place where it's like, okay, what's next?
01:48:48.000I mean, I think what you're doing in terms of your ability to reflect on yourself and to be real objective about your abilities and where you want to go.
01:49:53.000But then, like I said, some guys who are fighting and they don't, they just do it because it gets, like Brendan Sharp, he was doing it because he's great at it.
01:50:04.000He recognized there was this thing that he just, you go back to like his fight with Cro Cop or some of his earlier fights, he had a different attitude about fighting and then he realized he didn't have it anymore, but he was still getting paid well, so he didn't know how to jump out.
01:51:30.000Well, having people like that and also having people like Dan Hooker in your camp, having people like all the other training partners that you were talking about, having great coaches, all those things have to be together.
01:51:41.000It's like you have to have people that are honest, that are assessing you.
01:51:44.000You have to have a good trainer who's looking at you, who knows you.
01:51:48.000It's like you're a little off today, you're a little slow today, or today we're going to ramp it up.
01:51:51.000I think you're hitting the next level.
01:51:53.000We're going to add in some more different things.