In this episode, I talk about the UFC's UFC 246, GSP vs Bisping, and what it means for the future of the UFC. I also talk about my thoughts on the recent retirement of UFC welterweight champion, George St. Pierre, and how he was a great example of how a champion should carry himself in order to be the best at what he is today. I talk a little bit about my favorite coach in the world, John Donaher, and why he's one of the best in the business. And of course, I give my take on the UFC 246 and how it was a night to remember for a champion like George St-Pierre. I hope you enjoy this episode and don't forget to subscribe to my other shows, The Ringer and The Athletic. I'm always open to suggestions on topics and topics related to anything you guys want me to talk about. Tweet me and let me know what you thought of this episode! if you have any thoughts or opinions or thoughts on any of the topics covered in the episode. Tweet Me! or any other topics you'd like me to cover in the next episode. Thanks for listening and supporting the show! Timestamps: 0:00 - What do you think of the episode? - What was your favorite part of UFC 246? - How did you feel about it? 6:30 - What are your thoughts on GSP/Bisping's retirement? 7:15 - What does it mean for the UFC future? 8: What are you looking forward to the UFC s future in MMA? 9:40 - What is your favorite coach? 11: What would you like to see him do next? 14:00 15: What's your favorite UFC fighter? 16:00- What does your favorite piece of advice for a future UFC fighter in the UFC champion? 17:30- What is the best jiu j j jiu-jitsu jiujitsu training? 18:40- What s your favorite training program? 19:00 What s the best coach you would you look forward to seeing in a fight? 21:00 -- who do you would like to have in a UFC fighter training with your next opponent? 22:30 -- what are you're looking for? 26:15 -- what s your biggest challenge? 27:40 -- who is your biggest rival?
00:00:39.000So I'm sure I'll do some of those definitely in the future with him.
00:00:43.000He's really good at breaking down fights too, man.
00:00:46.000He's got a skeptical eye for things and he has a great, obviously he was a high-level professional heavyweight fighter, but he also has a real good understanding of where someone is at various stages of their career.
00:00:59.000I think that's big because fighters have like these peaks and valleys and you never know where they're at.
00:01:06.000Fighting is a hard, hard business, and the idea that you could stay at a super high level for a long period of time, that just doesn't seem to be the case.
00:01:16.000It seems like everybody's body starts giving out after a certain period of time.
00:01:22.000After a certain amount of time cage fighting, your body's just giving out.
00:01:27.000Unless you're a guy like GSP that takes all this time off, which I think was brilliant now, in retrospect, he knew what we all didn't know.
00:01:35.000He really was in fucking amazing shape.
00:02:28.000I mean, I don't want to say that I doubted him because I did not doubt him because I'm very open-minded and I have a deep respect for George.
00:02:35.000He's just a great person, a great example of, in my opinion, how a champion should carry himself.
00:02:43.000George has always been one of my favorite examples.
00:02:45.000Because you see him and you're like, that guy is well-spoken, he's friendly, he's genuine, and he's super open-minded in terms of like...
00:02:58.000His willingness to listen to coaches and formulate a good game plan and always be trying out new stuff.
00:03:05.000He spent a lot of time working with those guys in Henzo Gracie's, the Donaher Death Squad.
00:03:10.000There was a lot of images of them training together.
00:03:13.000If he's training with Gary Tonin and some of these fucking animals, I mean, John Donaher is a wizard, and he's done just this amazing job with Eddie Cummins and These kids that he has in New York that are these leg lock masters.
00:03:37.000And for George to be in the mix with those guys, he's getting down with some serious fucking strangle experts.
00:03:47.000So for just knowing that he's training with those guys, because Eddie Cummins has been killing tournaments, Gary Tonin's been killing tournaments, Ryan's been killing tournaments, all those kids, Nicky Ryan, his brother too, they're all animals.
00:03:59.000So Donaher has this great group of really savage jiu-jitsu players, and George is diving into that mix.
00:04:07.000Comes to LA, he's doing boxing with Freddie Roach.
00:04:12.000You know, he's one of the best boxing coaches in the world, Manny Pacquiao's trainer.
00:04:15.000So he's, like, getting down with, like, real boxing trainers.
00:04:18.000He's getting down with real jiu-jitsu coaches, and he never stopped.
00:04:21.000He never stopped, which is just amazing.
00:04:24.000And it's amazing that he can just jump right back in.
00:04:27.000Dominic Cruz sent me a text message right after it was over.
00:04:29.000He said, I told you, ring rust is bullshit.
00:04:33.000And unfortunately, Dominic just broke his arm.
00:04:36.000I don't know the specifics of it, but that's a huge bummer.
00:04:41.000He's got to be chomping at the bit now to get back in there.
00:04:45.000Now that TJ just knocked out Cody Garbrandt, he must be chomping, chomping at the bit.
00:04:51.000So a few of the fights that went down really recently this past weekend, Pettis and Poirier.
00:04:56.000Holy shit, what a good fight that was.
00:06:52.000Who knows what the fuck is going to happen now with Conor.
00:06:55.000Because Conor was involved in some sort of an altercation.
00:07:00.000With referee Mark Goddard where he jumped into the cage while the fight had not been called yet apparently.
00:07:06.000This is Mark Goddard's interpretation of it.
00:07:10.000And I think Conor's, he made an apology, and I think what he was basically saying was that he was angry that the referee had not stopped the fight.
00:07:19.000First he thought the referee had stopped the fight, and then he was angry that he had not because he gets like really concerned when someone's taking a beating too much.
00:07:27.000And he felt like this guy really was out of it and taking a beating.
00:07:31.000I think where the confusion was, and I hope I'm not fucking this up, we'll check.
00:07:35.000The confusion was, I think, that Mark Goddard was saying, essentially, that he had not known whether or not the bell had gone off.
00:07:44.000He knew the bell was close, but he did not know whether it had gone off.
00:07:47.000It was too loud in there for him to hear it.
00:07:49.000And he was concerned, I believe, that it went off.
00:07:52.000And so that's when he stepped in because he thought the round was over.
00:07:56.000He was not necessarily calling the fight yet.
00:08:00.000Then when Conor McGregor jumped in, since he hadn't already called the fight, he was in a bad situation because the fight, technically speaking, was still going on.
00:08:32.000The first round was progressing and then so when the guy got hurt he said he connected Charlie Ward connected with a left hand that slumped John Redman to his knees and at this exact point I could not and had not made my determination that John was either out of the contest or not in the position to intelligently defend himself.
00:08:53.000The punch and the action that followed naturally resulted in a surge of crowd noise one that was so significant I had already made my determination that I could not audibly hear the bell sound for the end of the round.
00:09:06.000I had made my decision to step in with the belief that the bell had indeed been sounded, which in actual fact it had not.
00:09:14.000This is a critical fact to the ensuing proceeding.
00:09:18.000So apparently there was a massive amount of confusion because of the noise And so it looked like a very reasonable stoppage.
00:09:30.000See if you can find the video footage.
00:09:32.000To me, because there's a bunch of video of the brawl itself and all the craziness that happened with it.
00:09:38.000But it definitely seemed like, if I remember correctly, I've seen it, but last time I saw it was a couple days ago.
00:09:45.000It looked like a really reasonable stoppage, like a smart stoppage.
00:09:50.000Like, you see it and you go, yeah, that guy is, he's getting hurt.
00:10:31.000You know, and I'm sure Connor, if he could take it back, would take it back, because I'm sure he, you know, realized that this is a disaster.
00:11:36.000People would climb into the ring and beat the shit out of each other.
00:11:38.000We've obviously had a few incidents where corners argued with each other, but relatively speaking, when you think about how many fights take place, it's a very small number.
00:11:48.000And it's one of the reasons why is because we have pretty clear rules.
00:11:52.000You have to listen to the referee at all times.
00:15:22.000Early in the year, he should have at least got a three or four game suspension, not just a $50,000 fine, which is a tenth of what he makes that day, probably.
00:15:30.000I don't think anything would happen to you if you're a fighter and you threw your mouthpiece at the ground in front of a referee.
00:15:35.000I think because the UFC is so violent that that would be taken as like, oh, come on, throw the mouthpiece on the ground.
00:15:43.000But I think in basketball, it's probably a pretty big deal, right?
00:15:59.000It's so gross anyway with all the hands and sweat and blood and everything just going around the court.
00:16:03.000Is it dissatisfying, though, to take out your mouthpiece filled with spit and hit someone in the face with it as it is to spit in their face?
00:16:11.000Never done either, to be honest with you, but I don't know.
00:16:14.000The spit in the face thing is a dangerous move.
00:18:12.000I think that if you stop and think about how many fights there are and how few even bad situations there are in between fighters, I like to think that even though it's a super intense endeavor to be fist fighting another person, male or female, for the most part there are really friendly people that do it.
00:18:39.000For the most part, they're very, you know, they're accomplished.
00:18:44.000And they don't have any time for bullshit.
00:18:46.000But lately, there's been this trend, and I think it's because Conor McGregor's been so successful with it, of shit-talking to like the nth degree.
00:18:56.000Like, who can be the biggest shit-talker?
00:18:59.000And Kobe Covington is just going for it, baby.
00:23:08.000Like, even if you sent a falcon, I don't know if it would come right back to the same GPS spot that you left it go from, but pretty, pretty close.
00:26:15.000There's some people that think that some people are martial artists, you know, and they think that this is all like offensive, that you should conduct yourself like a martial artist.
00:26:26.000And some people have said that, you know, a lot of people like agree with it and think that this is a better path for the sport for all of us.
00:26:33.000But there's no denying the entertainment value of being a shithead.
00:26:43.000I don't want people to fight, but I am entertained often when they do.
00:26:48.000I think we'd all be better off if they didn't fight.
00:26:50.000But there's something about, like, Jon Jones going, I beat you after I did cocaine.
00:26:54.000Like, there's something about that that, yeah, it's not like...
00:26:59.000It doesn't feel like the embodiment of the true spirit of what we would think of as martial arts being a vehicle for developing your human potential and the path of the warrior samurai and the noble poet.
00:27:11.000You know, we have all these like Kwai Chang Kane views of what martial arts are.
00:27:15.000But one thing that martial arts are is a psychological warfare as well.
00:27:22.000It's undeniable that it has a big impact.
00:27:24.000And who you're fighting, you can get emotional if a guy fucks with your head too much.
00:27:29.000You can get to a point where you're out of character and you take chances you shouldn't take.
00:27:32.000You're nervous beyond your ability to control because you're so worried about losing to this person that you have this big emotional investment with.
00:28:22.000Psychological warfare is something that's always been a part of the martial arts, but some people feel like the most noble path for both warriors is just be respectful and just have no emotions on the line with this in terms of hate for each other.
00:28:40.000Instead, just respect each other like warriors and go after it.
00:28:43.000And there's been some amazing fights where guys took on that mentality.
00:28:47.000That's, you know, It's an interesting thing, the way people express themselves when they're doing what I think is the most difficult athletic endeavor.
00:29:00.000The way people get to express themselves.
00:30:16.000He's got his own sort of version of that.
00:30:20.000One of the more amazing things about Fedor's career was he would be in the middle of a firefight, just a full-on firefight, and he never let his expression shift.
00:30:32.000You never saw Fedor gritting his teeth and making a mean face.
00:30:41.000Maybe if he made one or two mean faces in his career, I might have missed it.
00:30:45.000But most of the time, he would be in the middle of these fucking horrific wars in Pride with, like, just dead face.
00:30:54.000You know, I mean, he, in hindsight, especially since Kane's been injured so many times, he, in hindsight, I think has to be recognized right next to Fabrizio Verdum as the two greatest heavyweights of all time, which Kane Velasquez is right in there in that mix, too.
00:31:07.000And if he wasn't injured so much, I would think Kane is probably the most difficult one for all of them.
00:31:14.000He just was, when he fought Verdum, not making excuses for him, but I think he really didn't have enough of an opportunity to adapt to the Mexico City altitude, like extreme altitude, and Verdum did a very wise thing.
00:31:26.000He got up there way early, and he lived up there, even higher than Mexico City.
00:31:31.000He lived up, he set up his training camp.
00:32:10.000Minotauro, when he tapped Mark Coleman, that was gigantic for jiu-jitsu.
00:32:14.000To show that a guy could tap somebody off of his back that was a UFC heavyweight champion and still a murderer like Mark the Hammer Coleman.
00:34:45.000If he gets anybody that's anywhere near his size on the ground that's competing in the heavyweight division, there is a huge likelihood that he has a massive jiu-jitsu advantage.
00:34:56.000And until you've rolled with a guy who has a massive jiu-jitsu advantage, you don't realize how big the difference between him being 5% better than you, him being 10% better, him being 15%.
00:35:08.000Fabricio's probably 20-30% better than anybody else in the division when it goes to the ground.
00:35:14.000So even if you're good and strong and you're athletic and you're quick, he puts the smush on you.
00:35:44.000I think even though people know it's his strong suit, they know how badass he is, when you watch, like, the shit that he can do, there's not a whole lot of guys that are like that as a heavyweight.
00:35:53.000There's not a whole lot of guys that have that kind of guard.
00:35:55.000There's not a whole lot of guys that are just so dangerous from everywhere.
00:35:59.000And his striking has gotten really good too.
00:36:01.000You gotta think he knocked out Mark Hunt with a flying knee.
00:39:06.000But at his prime, man, like when he knocked out Luke Rockhold or when he knocked out Michael Bisping or Dan Henderson in one round, he was just terrifying.
00:40:02.000You're not supposed to say that, but here's one way that a company like Bellator or one of these other organizations could get ahead is if they allowed that.
00:40:16.000I don't know if that has to be a State Athletic Commission thing, but if there was a way...
00:40:20.000Where Bellator decided, listen, let's be honest here.
00:40:25.000Fighters would be much healthier, be able to get through their training camp better, feel more physically strong if we just allow them to do just a little bit of TRT. We'll monitor it.
00:51:31.000If, say, Max Holloway wins this fight spectacularly and then starts talking a bunch of shit about Conor McGregor and then moves up to 155, I think Max Holloway could easily compete at 155 if he wanted to do some sort of unification bout.
00:51:48.000Not a unification bout, but a champion versus champion bout.
00:51:52.000I think for sure Max Holloway could be competitive at 155. And Max Holloway's only loss in his career was to Conor.
00:52:01.000That's the only loss he has on his record.
00:53:37.000I think they did something where it shows John Wayne Parr, and it shows all the places, and they put stitches on all the places where he's had actual stitches.
00:53:47.000They, like, you know, doctored him in.
00:53:49.000Yeah, the picture's just straight crazy.
00:53:53.000You're like, you are in a business that shreds your face.
00:54:25.000That was a fight that he had where his cornerman took that big cut on the side of his head and started making mouth things with it and talking.
00:58:14.000I don't know if it's just the person who recovered, didn't fight someone who hits hard enough or in the correct places to do enough damage where they couldn't return, or if they're so damn tough, it doesn't matter who hits them or where they hit them, they figure out a way to make it back.
00:58:35.000You've got to take into consideration, like, if you're watching, say, a Frankie Edgar-Grey Maynard fight, and you go, oh my god, this could be stopped at any moment.
00:58:43.000It could be stopped, but it wasn't stopped, and Frankie came back to win.
00:58:47.000He had a draw in one fight, won in the second fight.
00:58:50.000And in the second fight, where he won by knockout, it was arguably even crazier, because Grey Maynard was fucking him up in the first round again.
00:58:59.000Like, Grey Maynard was a beast, and he was huge for 155. But Frankie Edgar got through that storm.
00:59:05.000Some guys wouldn't have, and some referees would have stopped that fight.
00:59:16.000I don't know if the right move is to let a guy fight and let him recover and give him every chance he can to win that fight, even if it makes him take unnecessary damage.
00:59:29.000Give him the benefit of the doubt or err on the side of caution and safety.
00:59:34.000And different fighters would have a different opinion.
00:59:37.000You know, there was this archaic idea for a long time that has pretty much since been abandoned.
00:59:42.000But the idea was that if you tap from strikes, you're a bitch.
00:59:46.000It was a real thing, you know, that people would stick in George St. Pierre's face because he tapped with strikes to Matt Serra.
00:59:54.000Matt Serra just blasted him, and he was on top blasting him, and George knew he was going out.
01:00:28.000But I think between fighters, there should be a difference between the shit-talking that fighters engage in and then the way that other people analyze the actual sport itself.
01:00:37.000Because I think if you analyze the actual sport itself, you can't see anything wrong with tapping of strikes.
01:00:41.000If you're a pundit, you're a sideliner, you're an MMA fan, you're, in my opinion, If you really trust a guy's judgment as a champion, and as a high-level fighter like George St. Pierre, you can't be upset if he taps the strikes.
01:00:57.000It's because he's getting fucked up and he knows it.
01:03:47.000You think about how many people play football, how many people box, how many people fight, how many people are going to walk out of that thing to Gondsville, and how many people are going to be really clever, like Mighty Mouse, and avoid the damage...
01:04:04.000And just have a technical understanding of where to be and where not to be, what's coming next, how to keep somebody thinking, how to overload their mind with possibilities.
01:04:16.000You know, it's like you've got two different styles.
01:04:19.000You've got that style, the super technical upper echelon of MMA, where he gets super aggressive and picks up his pace towards the end of the fights and wind up finishing guys.
01:04:48.000And when I do the weigh-ins, I call him the Tasmanian devil.
01:04:51.000It just comes out of my mouth like an idiot.
01:04:54.000But Ray Borg, who's a very good fighter and very tough and fast, man, when Mighty Mouse just put it on him, it was like, you're watching an artist.
01:05:02.000You're watching someone who's just clearly head and shoulders technically above anyone in his division.
01:05:09.000That's why this fight that TJ's asking for gets really interesting.
01:05:14.000TJ Dillashaw versus Mighty Mouse is going to be one of the greatest fights of all time if they could pull it off.
01:05:22.000If they actually wind up making that fight, holy shit will I be excited.
01:05:26.000I'll be so excited because I think this will be the first time in a long time where Mighty Mouse has been challenged.
01:05:36.000Ian McCall had him in a really bad spot.
01:05:40.000He's certainly been challenged by other fighters.
01:05:44.000He certainly fought fighters early in his career.
01:05:49.000We had like really good fights with him, Joseph Benavidez.
01:05:52.000But at the stage that he's at now, he's like, he's so fucking, he's so advanced that I think it takes someone like a TJ Dillashaw, like a real super confident world champion killer to give him the fight that we need to see.
01:06:11.000Because if TJ really can make 125, and he says he really can make 125, then holy shit what a fight that is.
01:06:39.000TJ right now is operating at a real high world championship level, and the only fight that he lost, he lost to Dominic Cruz by the narrowest of margins.
01:06:49.000Some people don't even feel like he lost that fight.
01:06:51.000There was an argument that if you look at the damaging blows, that he landed more damaging blows to Dominic, particularly if you factor in the leg kicks.
01:07:02.000So it's arguable that that was at the very worst a draw.
01:07:06.000That it was such a close fight to call.
01:09:47.000I was going to compare it to something that came out this week.
01:09:50.000The way the college football runs their big playoff is they have a panel that takes into account all of the official rankings that are done, a couple computer rankings, but then at the end of the thing, it's still the seven or eight people are going to decide...
01:10:06.000That this team is ranked over this team.
01:12:28.000Because if he does too much, it leaves these openings, and he doesn't want to even remotely risk that he's going to put himself in a position where he gets open and Wonderboy catches him.
01:12:39.000So he makes Wonderboy do all the leading, and then when the bombs get dropped on both occasions, Tyron Woodley was the one that hurt Wonderboy, which is crazy.
01:12:48.000When you think that Wonderboy is one of the best kickboxers that's ever fought in MMA. He had some insane kickboxing record.
01:12:54.000I want to quote it out of the top of my head.
01:15:02.000You could get that level of martial artist to judge fights.
01:15:06.000And I think you would have the opportunity to create a totally new system that's not boxing-based because the 10-point must system is just so flawed.
01:15:15.000Have a new system and just only have high-level, world-class martial artists and nothing less do all the judging.
01:15:25.000Because they'll understand what the difference is between someone just taking somebody down and someone taking somebody down and threatening them.
01:15:31.000Someone who's on the bottom who's winning with elbows or was threatening with submissions.
01:15:35.000Maybe they don't understand how close these submissions are.
01:15:38.000Some people don't know a triangle's locked up until it's a fucking tap.
01:15:42.000If you've never sparred a day in your life and you watch someone who's tapping someone with a wrist lock, you're not going to know what the fuck is happening.
01:16:01.000A lot of them are real martial artists, 100%.
01:16:04.000But there's quite a few that were sort of grandfathered in from boxing, and they don't necessarily know a whole lot about MMA. Now, this is not representative of the vast majority, but I see them every now and then, and some of them are very nice people.
01:23:11.000Do they all just get into a huddle and watch the video or is there someone?
01:23:14.000I would imagine the referee probably watches it and they probably watch it with like Mark Ratner, one of the officials, you know, and they look at it and make an informed decision, you know, and I don't know what the parameters of that are.
01:24:11.000And we even got Mark Ratner on the air, and Mark Ratner thought it was a legal knee, because he was down on one knee with one foot and no hands.
01:24:20.000He's like, under the new rules, that would be legal.
01:24:24.000And Big John McCarthy says, no, it's not.
01:24:26.000If anything from your feet, other than the soles of your feet, are down on the ground, you're still a downed opponent.
01:26:36.000So I can't use it because it's better.
01:26:38.000So you can just elbow me all day long in the face, but you can't knee me in the head and put me out of my miseries.
01:26:44.000I don't know who's right or who's wrong, but it's an effective martial arts technique, and they've eliminated it supposedly for the safety of the fighters.
01:26:51.000But you've got to figure out, like, what's legal and what's not legal.
01:27:50.000If you punch somebody in the back of the head, like when Matt Serra fought George, I'm pretty sure some of those shots he blasted them with, he hit them in the back of the head.
01:27:57.000It might have even been the first one.
01:27:59.000Because if you're swinging sometimes and your hand goes around, like your hand hits the back of the head all the time.
01:28:05.000Head kicks, head kicks hit the back of the head all the time.
01:28:13.000Like if you go over, like say if someone's standing with their left shoulder to you, if you go over that left shoulder and drop down with that kick, that neck kick, shit, that a lot of times goes in the back of the head.
01:28:26.000That's a lot of times where it's landing.
01:32:01.000Prior to the 2009 Sugar Shane Mosley-Antonio Margarita fight, Mosley's trainer, Nazeem Richardson, was in the Margarito dressing room so he could observe Margarito's hands getting wrapped prior to putting on boxing gloves.
01:32:15.000As Margarito's trainers were wrapping their fighters' hands, Richardson noticed what appeared to be a plaster of Paris powder on the wraps.
01:32:26.000The plaster of Paris hardens when it comes into contact with moisture.
01:32:31.000And any fighter will sweat during the course of a fight.
01:33:34.000Aldo, Max Holloway, we covered that a little bit.
01:33:37.000I want to see if Aldo still can compete at a world-class level and improve.
01:33:46.000Because you know that he can compete at a world-class level.
01:33:48.000You've seen the last few fights that he's had.
01:33:50.000He still, I mean, other than the fight that he had with Conor, where Conor starched him, did he fight Frankie Edgar right after he fought Conor?
01:35:23.000At this stage of the game, if Aldo could bounce back the way he bounced back from the McGregor fight and outbox Frankie, if he could bounce back in some way, figure out what he did wrong in that first fight, and solve the puzzle, woo!
01:36:04.000Yeah, so, yeah, November 11th, multiple outlets have confirmed Otto will replace Frankie Edgar, so I guess that was when they announced it.
01:37:44.000I think it's important for everything.
01:37:46.000I think these systems competing with each other makes them greater.
01:37:49.000I think the more opportunities that young fighters have to perform and fight in, the more you're going to see higher and higher level of ability and performance, level of fighting knowledge.
01:38:01.000Just this more competition is higher level for the UFC, it's higher level for Bellator.
01:38:12.000And as long as they're not competing with each other on the same night, as long as they don't do anything dumb and have fights on the same night, I think they complement each other.
01:38:32.000Way more world-class fighters, but Bellator's got some tough motherfuckers, some real legit world-class fighters too now, and their roster's growing.
01:38:42.000Like, Rory McDonald is one of the best fucking welterweights on the planet, and he's over there now.