On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster joins us to talk about his new movie "MMA" and the incredible performance by Dakota Johnson in it. We also talk about what it's like working with his son on his first movie, "The Rock."
00:00:46.000It's I I keep using the word surreal, but it doesn't describe it.
00:00:50.000Um like I was saying that my son when he watched it, and just flipping out, like talking to me, like on the side, like I was saying, like literally, just going, Dad, dad, he's got your mannerisms, he's got your speech manner.
00:01:05.000But you imagine, like I'm I'm picturing my son, he's in New York when he watched it.
00:01:10.000And so I'm picturing him in the corner of the lobby of the theater, talking with his back to everybody, going, Oh my god, Dad, like it's like a doppelganger.
00:01:20.000He's got all of it, you know, like full blown, like it was like the the the lot of my saying for myself is I'm it I can't see the force through the trees.
00:01:30.000I'm in the middle of it, am I looking at it objectively?
00:01:32.000Am I really looking at or am I seeing something and to hear my son say, Oh my gosh, dad, he nailed it.
00:03:12.000Like some of the sometimes, like when you're getting ready to fight, she's starting arguments.
00:03:16.000I'm like, oh my god, I'm getting anxiety.
00:03:22.000So here's what was he so it vet, so I saw a a 80% complete version of the film in January of this year.
00:03:32.000And then um, and then the first time I see a complete version of it was in Venice.
00:03:37.000And so I'm in Venice, and there's Benny on my right, and there's DJ on my left, and there's Emily next to uh DJ.
00:03:45.000And the last scene of the movie, right?
00:03:48.000That intensity of that scene, I'm just telling you, it was like I I said it was therapy for me.
00:03:56.000Because I think for the first time I could actually I could actually see my part in it.
00:04:02.000Like I could see my part, how fucking hard I was on the people around me.
00:04:06.000You know, how just singularly driven I was to accomplish something at at all cost.
00:04:14.000And the person that paid it the most was Dawn.
00:04:17.000She paid a heavy price, you know, and you know, anybody that's successful, you know, for me, I was trying to raise everybody up, you know, everybody around me.
00:04:26.000And it was just his selfish endeavor, and I could see it in those moments.
00:04:30.000I could see it in what who DJ was, you know, and who Emily was in the intensity of it.
00:05:46.000He goes like, oh yeah, he follows all the fights in Japan.
00:05:49.000And he's like, and so for me it was just fun.
00:05:52.000I mean, it was it wasn't, it was actually costing me money, which is why I wind up quitting.
00:05:56.000Because I quit and I did it for like a year and a half, two years, maybe, and then in 98, I was like, I can't do this anymore.
00:06:02.000I'm just it's just actually costing me money.
00:06:04.000And so then when I um started doing Fear Factor, that's when Zufa bought it, I went up working for them again.
00:06:11.000But in those days, it was it was for me, it was a dream because as a lifelong martial artist, when I was a kid, there was always the big question, what was the best style?
00:06:22.000And no one knew until Hory and Gracie put it all together and decided to create the UFC, and then all of a sudden we get to see it, and then obviously you had Japan Valley Tuto and then Pride and all these big events over in Japan, and and it it became to me, it was like finally someone did it.
00:06:40.000That was so part of my first fights in Brazil, I was still uh brainwashed by the idea that oh shit, he's seven foot tall or six nine, he's the toughest dude in the room.
00:07:14.000And it's just like he understood what what what I was as a wrestler, you know, that I can impose, like I said to tell you the def best definition I've ever had for a wrestler is I can hold a grown ass man where he doesn't want to be held for as long as I want to hold him there, and he can't do a fucking thing about it.
00:07:30.000That's a wrestler, and you can dictate where the fight takes place always.
00:07:34.000So if you come a wrestler like Chuck Liddell, yeah, then you say, No, no, no, you can't take me down, so I'm just gonna beat the fuck out of you standing, and there's nothing you could do about it.
00:07:43.000Not not a single thing, it's the most important skill.
00:07:46.000Oh my god, it's foundational, and and that's why there's so much success for for the deck.
00:07:53.000Um I'm gonna blank on the names, but uh the wrestlers are it's a resurgence of like really what a foundational piece it is, yeah, and how important it is when you have a high high you know what they're able to do too as a wrestler.
00:08:09.000I used to look at the Russian wrestlers and go, what makes them so good?
00:08:13.000They could flurry in succession more times than I could, like Kurt Angle, right?
00:08:20.000When I wrestled against Kurt, Kurt trained at a level that I wasn't training at.
00:08:25.000He could sustain a flurry to the point where I would just make mistakes, right?
00:08:30.000Because I would be to exhaustion, and you watch him, these they'll string these moves together and string them together.
00:08:37.000Oh my god, unbelievable example of that.
00:08:39.000Unbelievable because you'll see you'll see him shoot, reshoot, shoot again, get up, stand up, fake, shoot again, and you can't keep up with it.
00:11:25.000This was uh I don't know who the fuck was doing that event, but uh it was just in a ring, and Vitor came out and blitzed him with punches, and nobody had seen anything like that before.
00:11:34.000Like, oh god, this is a because everybody thought Brazilian jujitsu black belt, yeah.
00:11:38.000You need to think you're gonna have a guy who has hands like that.
00:11:46.000Like you can be fast, and that's one thing, but fast and actually hitting the target when the target's bobbin and weaving, it's like, oh my god, man.
00:11:53.000He's an interesting case study because he's uh like first of all, pioneer, right?
00:11:59.000First fought in the UFC when he was 19 years old.
00:12:02.000And you know, went through, won the tournament at 19, which is just bananas.
00:12:06.000And then when we got to see him kind of he got off the sauce and his body kind of faded out, and then they brought back testosterone replacement, and then when testosterone replacement came in, all the sudden it was TRT Vitor, and he was the scariest motherfucker alive for like five fights or whatever it was before they killed the TRT exemptions, and then it all went away for him.
00:12:33.000It's just like that should be a commercial for testosterone replacement.
00:12:38.000You know, part you know, back then, because there was so much myth surrounding mixed martial arts that you felt like if you didn't do something, it was like the saying is like oh, you're going to a gunfight with a knife, right?
00:12:51.000It was that type of mentality back then.
00:12:54.000Well, it's also everyone was on it and there was no testing.
00:13:54.000Because you know, sometimes they fudge a little.
00:13:56.000You know, they so here's what so I was in Vancouver for the set when they had the setup, and I I was sitting there, I was laughing with Benny about it, going, All right, who came up with the pyramid in the door opening with fog machines?
00:14:12.000Because it's like I can't even imagine the brainstorm going, you got any bright ideas of how to introduce the yeah, let's do a pyramid and let's have a trapdoor fall.
00:15:19.000But they just did Hollywood shenanigans.
00:15:21.000Yo, uh so you know that was a huge part from the beginning of this when when DJ and I DJ and I talked back in 2019 is just the like the trust factor.
00:15:32.000You guys started talking about this in 2019.
00:16:29.000And I was like, God damn, this is a good movie, man.
00:16:32.000And I just I was just blown away by how well he captured the chaos of the pride organization, all the the weirdness of the contract negotiations, everything.
00:16:43.000Off uh so Benny from the beginning said the only way we're gonna be able to do this is have that authenticity to the point where I sent them watches, rings, necklaces, posters, everything I could find, picture-wise, everything to their props in production.
00:17:05.000Oh wow and they reproduced everything.
00:17:10.000So Joe, and when I I mean, like when I went up to Vancouver, like and walked into some of these sets, like literally going, Holy fucking shit.
00:17:22.000Oh my god, like like you'd walk into a room and there there'd be from one corner all the way to the other on the wall, just pictures of me and my house and my this and this outfit and this and these in my house and this and and then production saying, okay, was this accurate?
00:17:37.000How did this it was this it was this unbelievable painstaking they rebuilt my life 25 years ago?
00:17:46.000So when DJ got into care got into me, he actually was that was he was me.
00:18:10.000So first time I saw him in uh in uh Vancouver, like nobody told me nobody said, Hey, listen, we're gonna do prosthetics, we're gonna give me your cauliflower ear, we're gonna make his brow, and then nobody told me this.
00:18:23.000So I was up there for fight week, and uh they're getting ready to shoot uh the scene where they're introducing everybody to the finalist for the Grand Prix, and so DJ's the last one to walk in, and I'm watching the ring.
00:18:57.000I could still see him in there, but I'm like looking at a like a mirror picture myself, and it's this experience where I'm like, oh my god, man, like wow, like you like you're going, like this is you going to a place that nobody even thought you could get to.
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00:21:08.000So so it's one of those things where um everything just kind of lined up in a way where you're like, all right, this is like this is Manifest Destiny, right?
00:21:19.000This is like this is like Joe Dispenza.
00:21:21.000You know, like really like you're like you're really tapping into something that's bigger, because it's pulled all these people together.
00:22:02.000I know that he was doing 15 rounds a day, and he made a deal with himself that his back touched the ropes, he would have to do another round.
00:23:18.000And really have a leave a real legacy.
00:23:21.000Because he could have been one of those guys that retired as an undefeated cruiserweight, and boxing fans like myself would talk about him, but everybody else would be like, who?
00:24:20.000Because it's not just the light on the feet, it's the angles he takes after punches and then the shifting of the weight back to center when you don't expect it.
00:25:31.000And that's one of those where you know, my mentor, the guy that uh that really brought me to another level is a guy named Chris Campbell.
00:25:39.000He was Dan Gable's first NCAA champ when Dan Gable's coach at Iowa.
00:25:44.000Um he made the 1980 Olympic team that was boycotted, won the 1981 world championships, voted best technician in the world, and then retires.
00:25:53.000And then decides he's gonna make the ninety 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.
00:26:00.000So he's at 37 years old, he wins a bronze medal that year in Barcelona.
00:26:20.000So he ends up, he ends up, he ends up just really taking me by the hand and and understanding like singular devotion to something.
00:26:31.000It's he would back then he did tape study, which wasn't a huge, huge deal, but literally watching the Russians wrestle in some of the tapes, his nemesis was this guy Kdartsev.
00:26:43.000And you look and watch the tapes, and you go, I don't see anything.
00:26:46.000Once you slowed it down, you go, you can't move him out of position.
00:26:50.000He doesn't when he attacks and retreats, he's never out of position.
00:26:54.000And you know, you'd look at it and go, wow.
00:26:58.000Because it was just these little things, little things that make it.
00:27:01.000It's amazing that the Russians achieved that level in not just wrestling, but also in MMA, also in any combat sports, name boxing, Russian kickboxers are super technical.
00:27:14.000They're all known for being so technical.
00:27:18.000You know, like and it's and again, I would think that somewhere in there, there's a route.
00:27:22.000There's a common like there's coaches and mentors.
00:27:30.000You know, somebody really going, Hey, let me let me show you.
00:27:34.000And they had a mentor and they had a mentor.
00:27:36.000It's this lineage that's passed along.
00:27:39.000Um, and I know I went from being a good wrestler to being a really good wrestler when Chris took me under his wing.
00:27:46.000You know, we drill the same thing thousands of times, and it would be like the difference between holding my hand here and holding it here, and I'd go, It's two inches.
00:28:05.000Yeah, and so I need him to be here perfect.
00:28:09.000Because once you go full speed, you're gonna miss it, but you're only gonna miss it by this much.
00:28:13.000You know, it's interesting that George St. Pierre, although he never wrestled in high school or college, his training in Montreal was with Russian wrestlers.
00:28:22.000It was all Russian nationals who had moved to Canada.
00:28:35.000He's he's certainly in the conversation.
00:28:36.000It's so hard to say who, because you know, Mighty Mouse, I think never got the credit that he deserves because he was on 125 or then people forget how good Anderson was when he was in his prime.
00:28:46.000People and then BJ Penn, BJ Penn when he was in his prime.
00:28:49.000I feel like you really have to look at a guy when he's redlining, like when he's really at the peak of his abilities.
00:28:57.000You can't judge him by the fights they fight after their prime.
00:29:00.000Yeah, you can't because it's not fair.
00:29:02.000You just gotta say, like who when they were champion, when they were running shit.
00:29:07.000Yeah, who exhibited a level of MMA that's above and beyond everyone else?
00:29:13.000And George is certainly in that conversation.
00:29:15.000Oh, he's for sure I mean part of um part of what I like John Jones, right?
00:29:21.000Like when you get somebody that's at that level at his peak, right, and he can make other professional fighters look like they're amateurs.
00:29:54.000Just like you know, what happened with you and what happened with him and what happens with a lot of guys is like the pressure of life, sometimes and what makes you a great fighter in the first place, there's a certain wildness.
00:30:17.000Yeah, I'm sure you tell Well, I remember I had no idea.
00:30:22.000And I don't think anybody had any idea until the Smashing Machine documentary came out.
00:30:26.000And when that documentary came out, everybody was like, holy shit.
00:30:30.000First of all, kudos to you for allowing people to see you like that, raw, completely honest about all of the addiction problems, all everything.
00:30:45.000Then they saw you, they just saw this fucking dominant destroyer, this guy who was like smashing everybody, and you just thought, oh, well, that guy's just uh he's just a machine and just so mentally strong, and he just gets out there and gets it done.
00:30:59.000And then you allowed them to show you where in the the making of the documentary, it was what they were essentially trying to capture was you at your prime.
00:31:15.000It was just kind of random luck they caught you at that time.
00:31:19.000So when uh John Greenhall, who's a producer, uh I went to Syracuse with him.
00:31:26.000I was we were on the wrestling team together.
00:31:27.000He's the one that called me, said, Hey, um, I'm gonna do a documentary at that point.
00:31:33.000My vision of what it was was a little best buy camera where they're like little flip screen and they show up and they go, okay, we're filming a documentary.
00:31:43.000Hang on, I got changed tape, you know.
00:31:45.000And they show up in Japan for my Volchanchin fight with two 10,000, 15,000, whatever they were, digital Sony cameras, a boom mic, and like five people.
00:31:59.000I'm like, oh fuck, you're you're like you're really gonna make a like you're gonna make a documentary.
00:32:08.000John could see, John could see what was the contrast, like me as a fighter and me as a person, that contrast.
00:32:17.000Um, and so that's what he was after is like to to really show this contrast and like you can do this for a living and be this kind sensitive, you know.
00:32:25.000Well that was what was weird about you.
00:32:26.000It was a very weird contrast because you're very soft spoken, very kind, always very considerate to people, very nice, and then you get into the cage, and it's like who the fuck is that guy?
00:32:38.000You know, you know what the feeling is.
00:32:39.000The feeling is like the question I always had in my head is going, okay.
00:32:43.000If somebody's gonna go you, me, in a room, who the fuck's coming out?
00:32:47.000And I never was able to answer that question for myself.
00:34:04.000And so I go, okay, what do I got to lose?
00:34:07.000And so I go up and we sit down just like we're sitting here, and his wife interprets the whole entire time, and it was this it was actually beautiful.
00:34:15.000It was beautiful because that's awesome.
00:34:50.000Well, you know, also like Brazil had a much longer history of these kind of fights, like going way back to the Ayleo Gracie days, and this is an ad by better help.
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00:36:20.000That's better.com slash J R E. I mean culturally understanding way different.
00:36:29.000And that's like the okay, I'm gonna carry myself.
00:36:32.000You know, part of it was, you know, I wanted to change the narrative of like when you looked at the early UFCs, it looked like some some guys were just scraped off a bar stool and thrown into the octagon, right?
00:36:48.000And so when I came there, I was like, okay, I'm gonna be considered professional, right?
00:36:53.000I'm gonna carry myself as a professional.
00:36:55.000I'm gonna be articulate, I'm gonna dress as a professional.
00:36:58.000I'm gonna because I wanted up the ante.
00:37:00.000I wanted to like raise the standard, right?
00:38:52.000And it's still with an accent because he spoke Korean too.
00:38:55.000So it's just one of those where understanding like the the culture back then just it was still stuck, you know, and hadn't really progressed.
00:39:15.000And so here's here's where it gets a little sticky.
00:39:18.000So I go over there, I take uh for Pride 2.
00:39:21.000It's supposed to be me and Hoyce Gracie.
00:39:23.000Him and I, I there's still fight posters that have signed of him and I facing off with each other, signed the contract to fight for way more money than was being probably paid for the in the UFC.
00:39:36.000And um when I get back to the States, I get served with uh I get served with papers to appear in court in New York City, the UFC suing me.
00:39:46.000Um it's when Bob Meyerwitz still owned it and Art Davies was involved.
00:39:50.000And so they're suing me for breach of contract.
00:39:53.000And it was like one of those things where I was like, okay, I didn't, you know, like one of those experiences where I was like, oh shit.
00:40:01.000You know, and the Japanese said, okay, we still want you.
00:40:05.000So it took it took four months, five months to sort out the differences between what the UFC needed and if they're gonna let me go and all this other stuff, and in that time frame, Hoyce got hurt.
00:40:17.000And so Hoyce had to step out and they put uh Broncosigate in there, and I ended up fighting Bronco and Pride too.
00:40:26.000So if everything if if everything would have gone as everything, I would have fought Hoyce Gracie in the Tokyo Dome, him and I main event, me at my peak, Hoist still in his prime.
00:41:03.000This is the transition from not knowing what I was getting into, going, I can't fucking carry that much weight at all and be cardiovascularly.
00:41:25.000Like if I didn't if I didn't fucking get a hold of you and fucking squeeze the life out of you in the first like couple minutes, I was fucked.
00:42:13.000Like literally like functional training and going, okay, how do how do you how do you approach something and come up with a formula where you can get through a training camp and still be viable at the end of that training camp when you have five minute rounds?
00:44:18.000Oh my god, super conditioned, but you you lose I lost a little bit of what I needed was that physical dominance.
00:44:28.000You know, I could have the endurance, but again, it's one of those where it's like going into it when I fought Fegina, there's so many factors that were just uh, you know, that I didn't account for and my calorie intake just wasn't where it needed to be.
00:44:41.000And like a lot of times leading up to a fight, like my appetite just diminishes as I get towards it, especially that fight week.
00:46:13.000Because it's a short it's a short time frame because again, it's asking the question of like, okay, championship fight, 25 minutes, five five minute rounds.
00:46:35.000He might be the one be the only guy because he doesn't seem to get tired.
00:46:40.000You get so this is this is like observationally, usually in that championship fight, if it's a striker against a wrestler, usually the first two rounds, strikers usually have that advantage.
00:46:50.000And then third round, if you go back and watch this third round, the grappler starts to impose a little bit more on him.
00:46:57.000And then fourth take down fourth and fifth round is the grappler completely just takes that fight over because it's one of those things where you it's that grind.
00:47:16.000The guy's trying to fuck you up and take you down.
00:47:19.000There's so much energy involved in trying to stuff a takedown and then when you don't have it, you're like, I'm just let him take me down and just like take a break here and then work back to the but no, like with some guys like you're not getting back up.
00:47:37.000Yeah, part of part of what I I go, like if I look at my fight and go, I was never gonna be the best striker, like never gonna be the best kicker puncher, but if I could turn you into a wrestler, that's that was the secret sauce for me.
00:48:30.000And like I was saying, that that Russian Dagistan, Uzbekistan, it's this ability to sustain an attack repeatedly.
00:48:41.000Because it's that cardiovascular system.
00:48:42.000I'm born at 6,000 feet in altitude, 7,000 feet in altitude, a little bit more of an advantage, right?
00:48:48.000And so you end up with these attacks where you can sustain them beyond your ability to defend them.
00:48:54.000It's also having such a technical game that as you're implementing the first attack, you've already got three attacks on standby.
00:49:02.000Like, and then as he counters you've anticipated the counter, you have a counter to his counter, and then in a counter to his readjusting after your counter.
00:49:11.000And you're you're just hitting him over and over.
00:49:23.000It's nuts because it was like a lot of people thought it was boring because it just didn't get to a decision, you know, it just went to a decision.
00:49:30.000But you just kind of appreciate that level of dominance against a world champion.
00:51:33.000Like there was a period of time where I couldn't I couldn't watch uh I didn't watch the UFC, probably about like seven, eight, nine years.
00:51:40.000And uh over the last five, six years I watched it uh almost religiously, right?
00:51:45.000And just realizing the fighters today, oh my god, man.
00:51:50.000They're they hit a level, and it's that it's that mutation, it's like this first generation, second generation.
00:51:57.000And they're advancing so fast that you're looking at these new fighters, you're like, where like it's such a unique set of skills to do this.
00:52:07.000Incredible set of skills, unique to any other sport in the world.
00:52:12.000I know it's and it's also you're really fighting three different sports as one sport, yeah.
00:52:33.000While getting kicked and punched and elbowed.
00:52:36.000It's uh it is uh but without guys like you, it would have never gotten here because if there weren't people that were willing to fight for very little money, travel overseas, have these crazy events, and you know, and beat your body up and do what you did and what Coleman did and a lot of those guys did in the beginning.
00:52:56.000Without you guys, there's there is no UFC today.
00:53:02.000It was you know, one like being in the Hall of Fame and being in the pioneer we and understanding that um like I said to myself, you know, even if I advance a sport, you know, this much, it needed this much at the time to get to where it is today, right?
00:53:17.000Like Coleman advances sport this much.
00:53:20.000Well, you guys brought in the new element, and the new element was elite wrestling with enormous muscles.
00:53:57.000Like people I I you know, they Watch it now and and you know this this film, right?
00:54:04.000It it gives it gives people a a little bit of a look inside of like what it was and and you know for for me the cool part about it is understanding like I'm like I said, I'm just a little piece, but that little piece is necessary to be able for me to watch some of the guys do what they do now.
00:54:28.000Well, it's different than any other sport in that these little pieces had to be there before people could figure out what to do.
00:55:20.000You know, we have these long ass conversations, and I'll tell him about kickboxers that I've been watching, or tell him about these guys.
00:55:26.000I mean, that's one of the ways that we became friends, and one of the ways that I started working for him in the first place is because we would have conversations when I first met him when I was on Fear Factor and I wasn't even working for the UFC.
00:55:37.000I'd be like, You got you watched the fights in Japan?
00:56:10.000But to me, it was like it was a Eddie Bravo and I when we were kids, well, we were young, young fellows, when we we were hanging around working out, we would say to ourselves, like, you know what this sport needs some crazy billionaires who love the sport, they're just gonna dump a bunch of money.
00:56:25.000Because we knew at the time, we were like, this is the most exp exciting sport in the world, right?
00:56:30.000So all it needs is for uh these really rich guys to be fans of sport.
00:56:34.000And it's almost like it manifested itself because that's what happened.
00:56:37.000The fratidas came along, and they were just really rich guys who love the sport, and they took a crazy chance.
00:56:46.000They were forty million dollars in the hole.
00:56:49.000Forty million in the hole on the UFC, and it was just losing money, losing money.
00:56:53.000And they just hung in there year after year after year until it they were almost ready to fucking sell, and then they decided to go forward with the ultimate fighter.
00:57:07.000Well, people got to see it on spike TV, and then it became the fights were so wild that people were calling their friends, yeah, and they were saying, You gotta watch this.
00:57:18.000So as the the show is on, and this is like before social media was really, yeah.
00:57:24.000So as the fight was on, the the ratings kept going up and up and up and up.
00:57:28.000And it was like Spike TV was like, holy shit, we gotta fucking hit.
00:58:05.000They'd all be talking shit to each other and all that, and they knew they were gonna fight in the final, so it was like this long build-up, and they were perfectly matched.
00:58:13.000And it was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, fucking swing, wheel cake, punch, take talk, that's it.
00:58:19.000I mean, there's so much shit in there.
00:58:21.000That fight just went on and on, and at the end of it, the whole crowd was like, Oh yes!
00:58:27.000And you know, I was the one I was the first person to suggest.
00:58:31.000I was like, they both should have a fucking contract.
00:59:51.000It's just one where the fratidas first bought the UFC.
00:59:56.000Um I was living in California, and a friend of mine who was helping me at the time said, Hey, listen, uh, they're up at Big Bear having a training camp.
01:00:09.000They're gonna do their first big push with Tito, right?
01:00:13.000And uh I get hit by a drunk driver at 11 a.m. in the morning on the way up.
01:00:18.000So uh my attorney was in the car with us.
01:00:21.000He I literally the tow truck takes us up to the top of the hill.
01:00:25.000Um I still get to talk to Dana, I still get to talk to Frank and Lorenzo, and I'm like, yeah, I got it by drunk everything like, well, we're going to Beverly La Hills Wheelshare tomorrow.
01:00:34.000Why don't you just jump in the limo with us and we'll take you down?
01:02:21.000I mean, it's just one of those, and again, this goes back to what I was saying about Frank and I haven't conversations back then about heart rate training.
01:03:55.000There's there's a few guys like that, and Kabib has to be in that conversation too.
01:03:59.000When you look at his dominance over like the way he was winning fights, I'll never forget when he fought Edson Barbosa.
01:04:05.000It was in the first round, and Edson had this look in his eyes, like, oh my god, I've got to get two how many more rounds with this motherfucker.
01:04:13.000Because he was just already exhausted in this fucking animal from Dagastan with just on him, on him, dragging to the ground.
01:04:22.000I'll never forget we had Michael Johnson down the ground.
01:04:25.000He's beacon beating Michael Johnson up, and he's like, quit, quit.
01:05:52.000You talk about about humble pie, like you fucking having to sit back and like that's at a level where where you're a bad motherfucker to begin with, and somebody that's even a badder motherfucker.
01:09:41.000I just go just as a source of pride, suppressed it was one of those where I was like, okay, now that it's explained to me, I go, well, wrestlers need to be represented there.
01:09:52.000And so I go over there, and it was one of those things where it's like, well, I can actually show everybody here in this world that thinks their shit's dominant.
01:10:37.000He's real tall and long and just elite striker.
01:10:41.000But he fought this cat, Benoissan Denis, who is uh judo black belt, elite on the ground, super fucking strong, and he just dominated him, man.
01:10:51.000He got a hold of him, ragdolled him, got him to the ground.
01:10:54.000And Mauricio had his moments in the fight standing because Benoit Saint Denis is a French special forces guy, he's a hard motherfucker.
01:11:02.000And so he did stand with Mauricio for a little bit, but he got dinged up a little bit, but once he got him to the ground, it was just full domination.
01:11:11.000And then it left everybody in this position where we were looking at Mauricio Rufi as being like that guy's a future world champion.
01:11:17.000To like, oh no, like that gap's too wide.
01:12:20.000Yeah, that's you know, and again, this is this is one of these things where fundamentally also wrestling gives you a cardio base that you can build off of.
01:13:02.000I was there at Nationals when when he literally hit the mat, and I'm like, like literally, I watched when he when his neck broke at freestyle nationals, and he got hit with an arm spin, and he gets arm thrown and his head gets almost like separated.
01:14:14.000But this it's like the years that I beat him, and then 95 when we wrestled in the freestyle nationals, and I had beat him four four times in a row at that point.
01:14:23.000So we we wrestled in the 95 Freestyle Nationals, and I get a hold of him for the first time, and something was different.
01:15:47.000And that's what scares people, I think.
01:15:49.000That's why people get really terrified of like truly special athletes because they don't want to know how lazy they really are.
01:15:58.000I think it's one of the things that drives people nuts about seeing like some insanely disciplined, like elite top of the food chain grappler or striker or whatever it is.
01:16:28.000It's we're kind of seeing that we We've had this conversation recently in regards to Marab, because we're saying, okay, is Marab just physically gifted?
01:16:39.000Because I think Kane had a a some sort of a genetic advantage with cardio.
01:16:44.000Because DC would talk about how he would take three months off and come back in the gym and fuck everybody up with like cardio.
01:17:49.000So that didn't you didn't used to think that that was possible.
01:17:52.000They used to say that if you ran a marathon, like you were destroyed for like two weeks.
01:17:56.000No, he was running a marathon a day while he worked a full-time job.
01:18:02.000So he was getting up in the morning at dark, he was running 13 miles, he was going to work during his lunchtime, he would eat after lunch, after work, he runs another 13 fucking miles.
01:18:14.000He would be one where I I wouldn't want to look at him because I'd think I'm lazy.
01:18:34.000He rarely even competes in races, but yet he's doing the a level of cardio where he brings world champions like Israel Adasanya comes to train with him and he's throwing up in a bucket.
01:18:45.000He can't keep up and Coggins is fifty.
01:21:16.000What if what if like we're gonna push that even further where there's guys that can sprint for five, five minute rounds like there's a few flywaves that can do that.
01:21:34.000And because it's just one where, like I was saying, from where I started from 25 years ago, and the training methods and how archaic they were, and how little knowledge was out there.
01:21:44.000Now knowledge is advancing at such a rapid rate, and they're understanding how to recover.
01:21:53.000Yeah, and if you add in a bunch of stuff like hyperbaric chambers, so if these guys have access to hyperbaric chambers and and training with uh hypoxic chain chambers and shit like that, there's it's there's levels and levels and levels that can be reached.
01:22:07.000It's you just have to be a complete fucking psycho and go through all the levels.
01:22:40.000Because what what started to happen when I was fighting is that once the financial piece started getting in there, it started attracting more talent.
01:23:02.000If you're a young kid and you're really good at baseball, but you also like jujitsu and MMA, and you you know, have an amateur fight, maybe, and you're thinking about what you're gonna do with your career.
01:23:13.000You could be so rich playing baseball.
01:23:49.000And even and it's way better in the UFC, by the way, than it is in boxing.
01:23:52.000When you watch a boxing card, most of the money's at the top, and there's there's very little spread out.
01:23:57.000Yeah, there's guys that fight in the UFC undercard that make excellent money, but when you first start, you don't or think it's like 10.
01:24:06.000It's one of those things where it's like would I expect this like start at Microsoft, right?
01:24:11.000Yeah, and going, Yeah, I get a million dollars a year.
01:24:13.000Fuck no, you work your way into, and that's one of one of the things about the sport, as long as it has the opportunity to let somebody grow into it, you know, and still gives them financial incentive to grow into it, right?
01:25:00.000My first four fights, I was using that money to get to the next fight to get to the next fight to get the next fight.
01:25:07.000Then all of a sudden I get in Japan and they pay me enough money for the one fight that the next day I woke up and I was a professional fighter because it was the only thing I had to do was train as a fighter.
01:25:22.000What was the biggest check you got in Japan?
01:25:24.000Uh yeah, a little over half a million.
01:25:36.000Here's what's fucked up about it, right?
01:25:37.000So my first couple times over there, I'm like, I put like first time I I got I put forty something thousand in one cowboy boot with two socks.
01:25:47.000I put 40,000 in the other cowboy boot with the two socks.
01:25:51.000Because it was straight out of the fucking cartoons how you got paid.
01:25:55.000Because the next day you would go up to a room and and you literally would have a room, you'd have an adjacent room used to Japanese guys in black suits smoking, and then you'd have this room, which is where you get paid.
01:26:07.000They had these you know, suitcases that had your pay, you could choose your currency, right?
01:26:34.000I go to the to the bedroom, that's it's in the hotel room, and I grab the fucking case to the pillow, and I go over and I fucking just scrape the fucking money, put it in the pillowcase, and I go, okay, thank you.
01:27:27.000You know, I know that's gonna be this one, you know.
01:27:30.000It's like so I end up fucking just going, oh, cowboy boots, tube socks, like fucking 40 grand in one boot, 40 grand in the other, put it in a fucking and like walk and like you got anything to declare?
01:27:41.000Just like walk through, but realizing that eventually when I claim the money, um, they handle claim form, they go, okay, you're claiming 140,000.
01:30:22.000You know, because like Gene was one of the first guys to ever have like a mixed fight.
01:30:27.000So there was uh a guy who was a boxer and he had a judo gi on, and he chases the guy and gets the guy into a grappling exchange and then strangles him.
01:30:35.000But it's guys, he had like a boxer versus judo.
01:30:48.000Way back when he was so this is Mark Coleman and I did a clinic in North Carolina that was a judo Gene Labell clinic that he brought us in for.
01:32:00.000Like he had uh a very almost like catch wrestling style base submission He had a a lot of like very very painful moves that he would do on you.
01:32:30.000Yeah, it's just you know you don't know until you know, and then you go, wow.
01:32:34.000But it's just it's so wild that even at the highest levels, like at the wrestler the level that you were wrestling at, a guy like Kurt Engel can go, Well, let's check it out another notch.
01:33:18.000Yeah, and to be able to maintain that drive, that's what's the probably one of the hardest things.
01:33:23.000Cause you you have to have almost no rest, and you're maintaining an insane drive for years and years and years while sharks are nipping at your ankles.
01:35:32.000Him and Bruce Lee getting together with Bruce Lee was like, you know, the most famous martial artists on earth, the guys who's turning people on to martial arts, had the most open mind.
01:36:30.000I mean, it's one of those things where I look back on it and I've read like part of part of the history and stuff, and you understand it obviously way better than I do, but you know, like ahead of his time, just like when Gracie came along ahead of his time, you know, and in presenting something where he's knocking down all these stereotypes.
01:36:48.000Yeah, and they had rigid stereotypes back then.
01:36:50.000Oh, where you'd have you'd have to like get in gang fights to protect the style that you were doing.
01:37:03.000So so uh so boss would have me, boss would have me out there, Avi Rubin is a guy that owned it, and I would go out there and I would teach wrestling a couple days out of the week.
01:37:11.000It's how I got introduced to boss, Olec Tara of Markahuas and Pedro Hizo.
01:37:15.000They were training out of there as well.
01:37:17.000So you would get these guys, uh jujitsu guys, that would sit on the outside, wait until the other students were gone, draw all the blinds, lock the doors, and go, can you teach us wrestling?
01:37:32.000Because they were so afraid that if they got caught there with me, it was like a traitor.
01:38:11.000There's some guys who were open to teaching people everything, but there was definitely some schools for a while that were holding back techniques.
01:38:19.000Like I remember when Hoyce Gracie, one of my friends said that when Hoyce Gracie uh caught Dan Severn in a triangle that uh he asked his instructor to show it to him, he's like, You're not ready for that.
01:40:03.000I had a conversation with Hoyce probably about four or five years ago, and I'd never spoken with him outside of a competition or event or anything like that.
01:40:17.000Like he was so just like talking to him, and he was just so powerful and so inspirational, and it just having this conversation with him was just just like amazing.
01:40:28.000I was just left the conversation, hung the phone about and going, wow, what a what a just an amazing human being.
01:41:43.000Like because boxing was very threatened by it, and everybody had businesses with people, and then there was there was so much bullshit that kept it like it it was out of New York until like ten years ago.
01:41:54.000So we were we were on um, me and my brothers were on our way to see uh a UFC event in New York, and it got cancelled and it got moved down south.
01:42:51.000You know, I went you know, I went to the first sanctioned uh the UFC flew me out to go to in New Jersey when they had their main main main card in in New Jersey.
01:43:52.000So that's one of the worst offers I've ever heard.
01:43:55.000And it's one where where the whole idea behind it would be, hey, we just if you believe in us and you believe in directors you're going, look, we just got sanctioned in New Jersey, right?
01:46:46.000But and and I don't know the the the you know, I obviously let me ask you this.
01:46:51.000If you're if you were like looking, like say if your son wanted to start fighting or someone wanted to look to you would you if you were giving a young fighter advice, would you say go right into the UFC?
01:47:02.000Or would you say, no, the best case scenario is go into another organization like the PFL, build build your style up, yeah, build it up on maybe a slow little slightly lower level of competition, although not necessarily still elite guys.
01:47:22.000That's uh literally I go, go you you fundamentally you need to build a base of what you what you're gonna become, right?
01:47:29.000So submission grappling ADCC, if a young kid, like 16, 17 year old kid, even 18, 19, 20 year old kid, I'd go, you need submission grappling because you can participate in those at a competitive level that teaches you how to compete.
01:47:42.000It teaches you how to prepare to compete, right?
01:47:46.000And it teaches you without the impact of striking and punching and all of this.
01:47:52.000So that's like the first foundational piece.
01:47:57.000Foundationally is like if you you have to have uh A mechanism out there which allows you to compete without having the physical impact that fighting does.
01:48:34.000I mean, the fighters have become so good now that you can't just throw somebody in there because it fu you get fucked up, it might fuck your confidence up and you go, I just I'm done.
01:48:50.000I wonder that if you also, if you build yourself up in another organization, then obviously you have at least a name and the hardcore fans know who you are.
01:49:00.000So like uh Rainier De Ritter is another example.
01:49:11.000But he's a fantastic grappler, but he was already a champion in one, so he's a champion in one FC, and then when he comes over to America and he starts fighting for the UFC, people are already hyped for he's like immediately getting tossed in there with Kevin Holland, immediately getting tossed in there with like very elite fighters.
01:49:32.000And so, like maybe there's uh uh an argument for if you were like managing a fighter, saying, like, d don't just if you're if you fight well in the UFC, you might be three fights in and in the waters that you really can't swim in.
01:49:44.000Yeah, because the the level gets high very fast.
01:49:47.000Like maybe you'd be better off getting a f uh a few years in at a different level of competition to really tighten your skills up and make sure that when you finally do it.
01:49:59.000You see, you've been bringside for this.
01:50:01.000You see when a young fighter, when he clicks and he gets it.
01:50:11.000Like watching it, you're like, oh my god, he's it like he's in there.
01:50:14.000Oh my god, it like gives me goosebumps to think about it because it's that moments that I can look at and go, oh fuck.
01:50:20.000And you know, it's a beautiful creation, it's like the a testament to the amount of hours worked, like you know it better than anybody alive.
01:50:29.000When you see someone perform at like a super elite championship level, you go, you know how hard that motherfucker had to work to get to what you're seeing right now.
01:50:37.000It's it's even and this just brought this up uh just as a thing, like DJ playing me in the movie.
01:51:09.000I'm like where like where do you hire a walk coach?
01:51:13.000Well, the crazy thing is like that story was made for him.
01:51:16.000Yeah, it was that it was made for him because you have to be that big to sell that, yeah.
01:51:21.000And you can't get that big that quick.
01:51:25.000No, we so we were talking about this the other day, uh uh with DJ is that like there's like uh you know, through the history of like you know, movie making, there's been actors that have like I'm getting big, and they go eat you know, Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
01:51:38.000And then there's like watching the whole transition of what DJ was doing and how he's like, Well, I just don't need to be big because that's one thing.
01:51:46.000I need to be big, but put on quality of what I'm doing, and so it's these fast twitch, it's like a wrestler, fast twitch fibers.
01:51:52.000You look at him and go, Oh shit, he just didn't get big, he put on specific muscle for what he was doing, you know, and to be able to go through everything and understand going, he secluded himself.
01:52:03.000He literally locked himself away uh for 11 weeks up in Vancouver and didn't bring his family up, which I guess he normally does, and just went through his training camp.
01:52:18.000You know, like every day, same routine, get up, do the same routine, do this.
01:52:22.000I was up there for fight week, got all of his stunt guys all like this is this is foundationally, because I'm not gonna teach him wrestling, 25 years of wrestling and Fucking a month, right?
01:52:58.000How do you shoot this whole entire well uh well I'm gonna give DJ foundational pieces of like changing your level for a double, here's where you get and like certain foundational pieces you have to have, and then like I told them once you get to a certain point, everything from that point on is your own.
01:53:15.000It's like when you watch wrestlers going, oh he sh changes his level, and then all these little nuances, that's individual.
01:53:43.000But once I hit the person with with the attack, right?
01:53:46.000Double egg, everything from that point going on is my own.
01:53:49.000Whether I tip him this way, tilt him this way, run them for run them backwards, sit down, change that it's all these little new I go, we need to do foundational and then you're good.
01:54:00.000So I so it was a lot of work for him to get to that foundational point.
01:54:04.000And uh once he got there, it's like, okay, you're good.
01:54:10.000It was like really well done to the point where it looked like the historical fight.
01:54:14.000Yeah, they did, and again, this is Benny, you know, just like him and how he wanted to shoot it.
01:54:20.000And I really appreciate that because it's like that's hard to do.
01:54:23.000It's hard to uh hard to really capture.
01:54:25.000Like you watch a documentary or a doc you drama rather on a person's real life when that person's a famous person like yourself, and I've seen you compete for decades.
01:55:07.000And something you can build off of and somebody can look at and go, Oh wow.
01:55:12.000I think it's important if we're talking about Rocky though, we have to say Rocky two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, whatever the fuck they got to, but Rocky one was real.
01:55:21.000Oh my god, that was I I literally I remember being in the theater and literally watch it and just like as a kid, yeah, watching it and like I I wanted to be Rocky.
01:55:31.000Dude, I drank a raw egg and I ran around the block as I got home.
01:55:49.000Yeah, it's a great movie, and it's a weird movie.
01:55:52.000It's a weird it is, it is because that that's that's the classic underdog, yeah, overachiever, you know, but he doesn't win.
01:56:01.000There are guys like that, man, and that's what's crazy.
01:56:04.000There's guys that like are hyper fucking talented, but for whatever reason, they just never Buster Douglas Yeah, oh my god, it yeah, Buster Douglas.
01:56:13.000Buster Douglas got it together for one fight against Mike Tyson and pieced him up and didn't artistically.
01:56:54.000But like that one fight, man, he got it together, and you go, wow.
01:56:58.000So there's guys like uh that Out there that that are supremely talented, but for whatever reason they just never sustain, never can keep it together.
01:57:10.000I mean, just like you're saying, like the like the outliers, it's a mental thing that they have that uh a level or a gear they can get to that everybody else just can't.
01:57:20.000It it has to be, or it there's there's gotta be something, something they're doing that's so different.
01:57:26.000And everybody's trying to figure it out.
01:57:29.000Yeah, what is and it seems to boil down to almost always dedication.
01:57:34.000It's like how dedicated are you to it?
01:57:36.000And are you so dedicated that you're really willing to objectively look at what you do good and what you not so good and and and change that and fix it and and really tighten down your diet and really get like get religious with your subject.
01:57:51.000That's the ability um to be able to be just have the self-perspective, right?
01:58:38.000Slept in the chair next to the door, you know, and be like, all right, fucking because he would just give two beeps, beep beep, and you know, all right, I'm up, you know, and fucking out the front door.
01:58:47.000We go to the gym, we'd train in the morning, so we'd do wrestling drills, stuff like that, and then I would do cardio or strength.
01:58:54.000He would go to work, he was a full-time attorney, he'd go to work all day.
01:58:57.000I would start practicing with the the wrestling team, warm up, and then I'd wait for him to get off of work five o'clock, and then we train for a couple hours and then get up and repeat.
01:59:07.000But it's this level of intensity with everything had intention.
01:59:11.000There wasn't anything that was left without intent.
02:01:07.000So when uh DJ and I connected again in 2023, when this got kicked off green light for the film, he sends me this picture of Panther Videos, Panther uh martial arts, seek and destroy videos.
02:03:05.000I literally, so the so on Torrance, when I've trained with him, there's like uh there's one room and then another room, and there's a door between them, and so he had half of his class kind of all stacked up in the door watching us train, and it was like five minutes with a gi, and I just looked at Higgin and I go, I ain't never fucking wearing this thing again.
02:04:33.000You have to play tennis at an elite level.
02:04:34.000You should be you all your grips should be based on control of the body, gable grips and underhooks and overhooks, and like you you can't you're because that's the one thing that we saw with a lot of jujitsu guys in the early days.
02:04:47.000They were so used to grabbing collars and grabbing sleeves, yeah, that when they went to the ground, they lost 30% of their game.
02:07:00.000If you watch it today, it's such a weird video because it's an elite performance by Francis in his prime where he's like seeking destroy going after Steve A patient.
02:07:11.000You know, it's when DC started calling him patient Francis.
02:08:01.000The Justin Gagey Tony Ferguson fight, there might have been a I don't know, a hundred people, two hundred people in the whole fucking arena.
02:08:25.000The UFC like ha ha and you hear thuds and stuff, and I hear it a little better than most people because I'm wearing the headphones and the microphones are in the but you don't hear it like you hear it when there's an empty arena.
02:08:44.000So that's so I've sat there with with a group of people that like watching somebody check a kick in here shin on shin and just me, nobody in the room getting it but me going, Oh, yeah, having it like ow, I don't care.
02:09:10.000I mean, the the the COVID times were dark times, but it did make me feel very fortunate to be working for the UFC because to be there live as a you know, a person who's like just love this sport since it first started.
02:09:24.000To be there live while those fights were going on, I'm like, this is nuts.
02:09:28.000That is just one of those where uh you know, again, money can't buy that.
02:09:32.000I mean, it's just one of those experiences like uh like I've had a couple through this process of filmmaking where it's like n no money on earth could buy that experience.
02:09:41.000Like in Venice, standing there, like literally like I'm crying because it like I said, it was at the end of that, it was like therapy.
02:09:48.000Watch watching me and and literally settling into like wow, man, I was a dick.
02:09:53.000You know, I just was really hard on everybody around me.
02:09:56.000And then having Benny next to me, DJ next to me, feeling their emotions and feeling DJ's emotions, because they never experienced anything like it either.
02:10:41.000That's the one where I'm like I'm like, no, I was a selfish, self absorbed.
02:10:45.000And I look at it, I go, okay, all right, I can accept that and and understand that I was trying to raise everybody up.
02:10:52.000And if you couldn't get with a fucking program, I didn't have patience for you.
02:10:55.000Well, you had gone through like when you were talking about these camps, and you had gone through the kind of training that's required to reach the level that you were reached that you had reached.
02:11:05.000You know that you know what's in there for everybody, and people that don't want to come aboard, you get mad at them.
02:11:22.000It's understanding like I know that X, I only have X amount of fucking fights in me, and I gotta try to maximize and that's not gonna work.
02:11:31.000You know, because a lot of that was assembling people that were accountable to me, right?
02:11:36.000And and you know, money can hold people accountable in a certain degree, but at a certain point, it's like, you know, the training partners I had around me, um, it was like, hey, I can help you get to the next level.
02:11:57.000Make a commitment to me, and I'll give you that little piece that you're missing.
02:12:01.000You know, and that was kind of the the the part that I helped, you know, go, okay, my training partners be accountable to me, and and I'll help you with that little missing piece of how to be a professional.
02:12:11.000You know, and so I just didn't have patience, I didn't have patience, and it's one where I'm nice, I'm cordial, all this other stuff, but uh you know, at the end of the day, I was like, I was demanding.
02:12:21.000Do you think that maybe that that kind of drive played a factor in you having an issue with substances?
02:12:34.000Yeah, I uh you know, part of it was that um you know, you almost like I almost buy into the bullshit and I can never be this perfect being that I was trying to be, and so I'm always falling short, and that feeling of always falling short and this just like you know, I couldn't live up to what I thought I needed to live up to.
02:14:17.000That you want it bad, you want to get it, you want to get the poison back in you?
02:14:21.000Like what kind of weird and that biological mechanism is that?
02:14:25.000The crazy part is the first recognition of like that I'm stuck, that I don't know the answer of like because I'm caught between, you know, like, all right, I'm going through this physical withdrawal and everything else that comes with it, or I'm just gonna go seek the thing that's causing the physical withdrawal because it makes me feel better.
02:14:47.000You know, so you're caught in this loop of just bullshit, right?
02:14:50.000And then you go, I'll just have a little.
02:17:41.000Well, I think part of that is gotta probably have seen what you did and genetics and there's it's like some learned memory in there, probably.
02:17:50.000I don't think we totally understand where personalities come from.
02:17:53.000It's a mixture of like oh gosh, spirits and hormones and genetics and where you are bored and what part of the fucking moon's facing this way.
02:21:08.000I mean, uh, and the thing about what you did is that like I said, I thought it was so brave that you did it publicly when you did the Smashing Machine documentary.
02:21:17.000And I was thinking, like, did you were you happy that you were getting on film, so like maybe this like would make you get clean.
02:24:07.000I did at the at the very what made you decide not to.
02:24:11.000Um John had said something to me like um I guess it's like a uh parable where it's like if you live your life and you've saved one person's life, you've had a worthy life.
02:24:26.000Meaning that if somebody watches this and sees your struggles that you gone through and sees the hope that you have in that in your recovery, it gives them hope or gives them because what keeps you addicted is shame.
02:24:56.000And so that shame is what usually keeps people, but if they see me and the film go through this process and this deep revealing process of what was going on with me, it gives them an opportunity to go, well I I can I can ask for help too.
02:25:14.000When you got through the film, how how long did it take you to get clean?
02:25:20.000Um I got clean off of off of off of morphine off of the new bane I was doing um right after all the way through the Volchanchin or all the way through the uh Fajita fight, and I was clean for started drinking,
02:25:38.000which is a whole nother topic, but you know, I hadn't done narcotics in you know, probably like three years after that, and then I started up again, and then it's was this process of like start stop start stop start stop, and then the thing that predominantly dominated me was alcohol, because it's socially acceptable, easily accessible, yeah, you know, all these different factors of it.
02:26:03.000And so that's eventually like I've like I've said, uh my so my mom passed away September 3rd um 1996.
02:26:14.000And uh, so my son knows this, and so my sobriety date's September 4th.
02:26:21.000And so my son asked me that day, September 3rd, he's like, Dad, I know you need to drink today, uh, because your mom died, uh, but would you stop tomorrow?
02:26:32.000And at the time I thought it was just another empty promise of like, yeah, yeah, I'll I'll stop, I'll stop.
02:26:37.000And next day I got up and there's just something a little different or whatever it was that day.
02:26:43.000And I stopped asking the questions why, because it's irrelevant, right?
02:26:47.000Um, and from that day till today I'm sober.
02:27:05.000And you know, there's also the reality that I think a lot of people need to take into consideration when it comes to fighting, is that uh a lot of guys are they're self-diagnosing or or or self-dispensing something to make themselves feel better.
02:27:21.000Yeah, because they've taken a lot of damage.
02:28:15.000All my identity was tied up in being a fighter, you know, and understanding like these simple words of like fighting's what I did, it's not who I am.
02:28:27.000And understanding once I got to that point, you know, It's like that's when some of the relief came in, but part of it, my head, like there's something fucking I don't know what it is.
02:28:37.000And so I was just seeking relief because of like there's something that's fucked up in my head.
02:28:47.000Still to this day I look at it like you know, it was I call it a god shot because it it was one where it's like something needs to change because this is unsustainable, you know, unsustainable with the alcohol, unsustainable with what's going on in my head, and you know, get sober, things quiet down.
02:29:22.000It makes no sense at all, but it makes perfect sense.
02:29:24.000No, it does make sense because you're willing to articulate your deep thoughts, your your very vulnerable thoughts on you know who you are as a guy who was, you know, one point in time, one of the scariest fucking human beings walking the face of the earth.
02:29:38.000And you're you know, it's that's important for people to know and to hear and to that and to recognize that like man, a lot of people can get caught in that trap.
02:29:50.000You know, just be a little bit more compassionate and understanding and appreciate people for s telling a very difficult truth about their life.
02:29:58.000Because I think people need to hear that stuff.
02:30:01.000They do like I said, you know what I understood, like giving them the permission for the documentary, saying to John, going, Okay, if this could change or help one person, then uh my life has value, right?
02:30:16.000And then when it premiered at HBO at the studios, there there's a this was like the whole crowning moment is having like a sixty-five-year-old grandmother come over to me who I would have nothing in common with and say to me, you know what?
02:30:42.000Where she felt comfortable to sit down and talk with me about her grandson, and it was like this moment of like, oh fuck, this what this is what it's about.
02:30:53.000It's about opening that door up so people can connect and go, Well, if he can do it, I can I can I can tell my truth.
02:31:18.000Um the Ibogain initiative uh passed through thanks to former governor Rick Perry, Republican, who uh through working with veterans found that a lot of veterans who struggle with addiction and who uh PTSD that Ibogaine is incredibly effective.
02:31:38.000But it's a psychedelic that takes twenty-four hours and it's apparently like brutally introspective, but literally corrects addictive pathways, like whatever the connection is in the brain that causes you to be addicted to things, yeah, it can disrupt those in a very bizarre and unique way.
02:31:53.000And it's something like eighty plus percent effective with one dose of getting people to stay off of narcotics, cigarettes, alcohol.
02:32:04.000And I think with two doses, it's in the nineties.
02:32:08.000So if you do two different hybrid gain ceremonies, yeah.
02:32:13.000It was in a yeah, they were going, most people were going.
02:32:15.000My friend Ed Clay uh did it down in in Mexico, and he even had a place that he was running down in Mexico because you couldn't do it in America, because it's illegal here.
02:32:24.000But it it literally stops the train of addiction dead in its tracks.
02:32:29.000They don't totally understand how it does it, but it's very effective.
02:32:33.000I know a lot of veterans who have to be.
02:32:35.000So they've talked about relief like uh the neuroplasticity of of drugs like that to create new pathways instantaneously.
02:33:58.000And so there again, kudos to Governor Rick Berry, because what he's done is like open the doorway to right wing leaning people going, oh, maybe we shouldn't dismiss all these things that God put here on Earth.
02:34:21.000But I'm saying that this also might cure you, and it's read of it's it's a plan.
02:34:25.000So that's again in the last five, six years, alternative perspectives has been just paramount in my just in opening me up, you know, to having a better understanding of like how rigid I was and how how just this thin line of thinking I had had for so long about stuff like this.
02:34:49.000You know, and so you know, it's just been this incredible um experience to get to here because I've had to open up.
02:34:58.000I've had to go, okay, I'm gonna do meditation, I'm gonna do this.
02:35:01.000I did I did meditation for fighting, but it was visual meditation.
02:35:06.000How the fuck I was gonna dismantle a dude in the ring, right?
02:35:09.000I would sit and do but this is meditation to access different parts of my brain, right?
02:35:14.000To try to get into delta waves and you know, theta, beta, you know, all these different things, so I can open different spots in my brain up.
02:35:41.000So she's Nietzsche and Buddhist, and it's one of those things where she got me to start chanting.
02:35:47.000Um I don't do it as much now, but the first three, four years we were together, it's like I chanted with her regularly.
02:35:52.000And it's one of those where it's like harmonics and vibrations and frequencies, you know, and understanding like man, we know so little, but realistically, all this stuff through like all the different stuff they discovered in Egypt with the sound chambers and all the different things.
02:36:09.000I mean, it's a whole different thing where we just ignored.
02:37:56.000The problem with us is that we don't fucking see the stars anymore.
02:37:59.000That's a giant problem with human beings.
02:38:01.000We've screwed ourselves up with light pollution.
02:38:03.000And it's not a coincidence that the people that live in the most populated cities are the most diluted, ridiculous people that are the furthest away from nature.
02:38:12.000Not that they're not awesome people, but what I'm saying is like you you are so far away from nature.
02:38:18.000You're so diluted from being like a wild animal.
02:38:21.000So you know what I've actually done the last company?
02:39:56.000The best source of psilocybin is cow poop.
02:39:59.000Duncan used to live in uh my friend Duncan Trussell used to live in Asheville, North Carolina.
02:40:04.000And uh the farmers out there used to put a certain kind of feed into their diet to make sure that fungus couldn't grow in their shit so that the the kids wouldn't go in the field and pick the mushrooms.
02:40:15.000Because there were so many spores in that area.
02:40:18.000These kids would go just get bags of mushrooms and go to other planets.
02:42:32.000And you're like, and that's a whole thing is that you go, okay, you're you're thinking you're gonna pick up on it, and it's like no, you're never going to.
02:44:21.000I mean, it's just one of those where I'm so vulnerable.
02:44:23.000It's it's one of those where it's like there's there's other than checking it or getting out of the way, there's not a fucking shit you can do.
02:44:30.000Well, Pereira has a very interesting way of checking it.
02:44:34.000So he checks it like the hacky sack way.
02:45:18.000I know exactly what you're talking about.
02:45:20.000You're not gonna see it, but he's just uh he's clever.
02:45:24.000There's a lot of cleverness, and it seems to be very creative, like the style that he has, like how he figures out how to know he's just gonna land one.
02:45:33.000So he's got it's very creative little ways to chop at the legs.
02:45:38.000Yeah, I still I still think Sean O'Malley's got the best feints.
02:45:43.000I mean, just so I I remember watching him before he got to the UFC, and a friend of mine was like, No, no, no, you gotta you gotta watch this kid.
02:45:52.000You know, and watching him going, it would be like this just again and again and again, and just realizing, oh fuck, that's what he was setting up.
02:46:03.000To get to what he wanted to get to, and then it was like a feint here, feint on this side, faint here, and he all of a sudden he's got a tendency, and now it's like attack time.
02:46:12.000Did you ever see the Eddie Winlin one?
02:46:14.000Uh he faints an uppercut and he comes over the top with a right hand.
02:50:18.000You know, it's like, fuck, I'm gonna go to the gym, I don't get out of fucking thing that I hate, and I'm gonna fucking do it for 45 minutes and I'm and I'm that's a win.
02:50:26.000And I think if you looked at the proportion, like if you looked at this if there was a study done on people that are happy versus people that are not in this life, I bet the people that would gen generally say they're happy get more of those.
02:50:40.000I get more of those wins in over themselves.
02:51:09.000And then you get to regular life, it's like, okay, let's the fuck I'm not I'm not like what's my doing anything.
02:51:16.000Yeah, what's my win letting somebody in on traffic?
02:51:19.000That's that's a giant problem for fighters too, because you're you're you're at fucking 9,000 RPMs for years, and then all of a sudden boom.
02:51:28.000And you're supposed to go to normal life now.
02:51:30.000No, no, and I didn't so this is this is again where fucking this idea of like of like I didn't understand how much of myself was tied up in it and how much I needed to go, it's what I did, not who I am, and understanding like this who I am has a lot longer career than this fighter.
02:51:51.000Yeah, it's it's it's understanding who I like really getting into the fact that you know I'm much more than just a fighter.
02:52:03.000You know, and understanding like, okay, what is that?
02:52:07.000You know, I'm I'm a compassionate person, I'm empathetic, you know, um, you know, I'm trying to be kind and in understanding the people around me.
02:52:16.000I try to bring um I call it emotional sobriety, right?
02:52:19.000Like if I'm emotionally honest with the people in my life, everybody else is fits in.
02:52:24.000If I'm emotionally dishonest, people get fucked up.
02:52:30.000You know, so it's like it's understanding these these aspects about my life going, oh God, man, I need to make these the important parts of where I'm building and what I'm building in my life.
02:52:40.000And it's been you know, it's been a process.
02:52:42.000It's been some days I'm like, fuck this, man.
02:52:57.000Well, I call well in my hall of fame speech, I call it, you know, s at like when I was first getting sober, it was like I just I would try to get through a minute.
02:53:05.000I go, I just need to make it through this minute, that's all.
02:53:08.000And then I just need to make it through this next minute.
02:53:11.000This I just need to get through this next.
02:53:13.000Some of them are fucking hard because I just wanted to fuck fuck this, because I'm so uncomfortable.
02:53:19.000You know, and I'd get through that minute, I go, I just need to make it through this hour.
02:53:22.000I need to just make it through this day, and then it'd be this week, you know, and then all of a sudden it's like a month goes by, but I'd still have to go back, I just need to make it through this fucking minute.
02:54:14.000You know, it's like I could wrestle, I can compete, I can do grappling, but to physically beat I I had to flip a switch and turn into this other person that I'm like, fuck, I'm glad I know he's there, but it's like that's not that's not me.
02:55:30.000Do you when you look back, do you I mean if you would gotta give yourself advice, when would you think would have been a good time for you to stop fighting?
02:55:49.000Cause it because that wa you know what?
02:55:50.000And and like if people understood like uh that time period, like I got sober, um, I just fought Ensign and then I went and did Abu Dhabi and I and I won my weight class, won the all around, which was a big deal for me at the time.
02:56:08.000And then if I would have won that championship, uh if I would have won the Pride Grand Prix, it would have been mic drop.
02:56:16.000I could have walked away and it could have been a kabib moment where it's like, oh, I wonder how good he fucking I wonder how good he could have been.
02:56:23.000You know, it would have been a complete fucking mic drop, right?
02:56:27.000But it's just at that moment I I knew that something had changed in me that I didn't have that thing in me that I needed to do it. 'Cause you need a thing in you to do that.
02:56:41.000And that's what we're talking about, like a gear.
02:56:43.000You need a different gear, you need a different component to get to that level.
02:56:48.000Um and if you if you don't have it, it's like you know, they say in the NFL, if you're thinking about retirement, you shouldn't be playing the game.
02:56:55.000So you were at a point where your dislike of hurting people was interfering with your job.
02:57:54.000You know, and it to get for me to get there was was so not difficult, but i like I would watch film of me walking out and I couldn't even recognize myself.
02:58:06.000Like my facial expression, how I walked, how I carried myself, I'd look at it and go, Well, that doesn't even look like me.
02:58:15.000Like transforming like into a completely different person.
02:58:19.000And it's understanding like like compartmentalizing everything, like no emotions, no nothing, singularly focused to one thing, and that thing was I'm gonna impose my will on you till I fucking take yours.
02:59:10.000Cause it's it's fucking you talk about vulnerable, like vulnerable, yeah, like fucking barren your soul.
02:59:17.000That's you you get to a place of exhaustion, you know, it's weakness.
02:59:23.000You know, you're showing everybody you're in there, you weren't strong enough to train to the capacity you need to train to to fight, and look at this dude, he's beating the fuck out of you, and you got fucking hot pants on.
02:59:39.000Uh you have fucking hot pants on and beat in the fuck I so I mean there's that whole thing, it's it's very fucking vulnerable to fight.
02:59:47.000Cause there's it's just it's just very like the loneliest places, two loneliest places in the world is walking into the ring and after the fight's over.
02:59:57.000The two loneliest places I've ever been in my Entire life are those two places.
03:00:02.000Because there's no help when you're walking into the ring.
03:00:04.000It's just fucking you, and you know that.
03:01:17.000And you know, this driven component of me, the the bane of that is that once that thing was over, I had to go fucking chase something else.
03:01:29.000And I can never fucking sit in that moment and be okay with whatever and you know, again, it's one of those things where it's like thankfully I am designed the way I am, you know, because I'm finally in a place where I'm like, I'm okay with me.
03:01:49.000I'm I'm glad that you got there, and uh I'm glad to just be able to sit down with you and talk to you and tell you how much I appreciate first of all your career.
03:01:57.000But you've been able to do that smashing machine documentary, I think wasn't just eye-opening for a lot of people to realize like wow, a lot of these guys are struggling in a way that we couldn't even possibly comprehend.
03:02:08.000It's all they're doing it in in private.