In this episode of Train By Day, Joe Rogan interviews one of the best pound-for-pound jiu-jitsu players in the history of the sport, Gordon Ryan. We talk about how he got to where he is today, how he's coached so many of the world's best jiu jitsu athletes, and what it's like to train with someone like John Donoher, who is a genius in jiujitsu and a true mad scientist in the world of Jiu Jitsu. Joe also talks about the crazy things he's done with Chris Weidman and George Stansberry, and how he and John are so damn good at what they do, it's crazy! And of course, we talk about some of the craziest things John has ever done, including what he's got going on with Chris' t-shirt and what he does with his rash guards, and why he's not wearing them at all. Enjoy! -Joe Rogan Learn more about your ad choices. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and also consider leaving us a five star review on iTunes and telling a friend about what a great podcast you're listening to! Subscribe, rating, and a review! if you're looking for a chance to win a FREE place on the next episode, hit us up and tell us what you think of the podcast! Thanks for listening! Cheers, Joe and God bless! -Jon and God Bless! -Eugene and Jon! - The Joe Rogans Experience. -Jon & Rory "The Jiu Jiu-Jitsu Experience" - Jon & Rory "The Real" Rogan Podcast by Night, All Day, all day, All day, by Night and Day, by Day, By Night, by Parrisa and Night, By Parris, by Norm, by Nick & Rory, by Joe, by Nightside, by Saje, by Jeff, by John, by Pete, by Brian, by Chacho, by Gorms, by Chris, by Jay, by Ed, by David, by Tom, and so on and so much so much more! - Thank you for listening, Jon and Rory, Thank you, Jon, thank you, God bless you, Thank You, Jon & Rachael, and Rocha, and much more... -AJ & Rene, by B.J.
00:00:50.000So, I'm gonna go ahead and give credit to John.
00:00:53.000I mean, I think that without him, I maybe would have been successful.
00:00:58.000I would have been, you know, maybe the best in the world at some point in my career.
00:01:03.000But I don't think that without John, I would be where I am right now.
00:01:07.000And I don't think that I would have gotten this good in this amount of time.
00:01:11.000I've been training 10 years, I've been competing professionally for 5 years.
00:01:15.000And I think that a big part of the reason why I am where I am is because of John's coaching.
00:01:20.000Yeah, and we're talking about John Donoher, for people who don't know, who is a literal genius and a mastermind in jiu-jitsu and a true mad scientist.
00:01:29.000And watching him coach you guys is very fascinating because he's so serious and stoic and Gordon Ryan, pass over the left leg, Gordon Ryan, post, like the way he talks.
00:01:50.000He does it to address us, because a lot of times, like, you've got Nicky, for example.
00:01:55.000Like, there's a lot of guys named Nicky, so he makes sure you know he's talking to you when he says Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rod, Craig Jones, Gordon Ryan, so you know that when you hear your name being called, your first and last name, you know that, okay, this person is addressing you in a room of, you know, five, ten thousand people.
00:02:35.000People who know John on a personal level and have trained with John know that John knows just as much about MMA or even more about MMA than he does about jiu-jitsu.
00:02:44.000He's been coaching MMA with George and with Chris Weidman for longer than he's been coaching jiu-jitsu.
00:02:49.000He's only been coaching professional jiu-jitsu athletes for five years.
00:02:53.000And I've watched him personally teach judo privates to judo Olympians.
00:02:58.000I watched him teach wrestling privates to wrestling world team members, wrestling Olympians.
00:03:04.000He knows just as much about the other martial arts as he does about jiu-jitsu.
00:03:16.000I've seen him one time ever with a t-shirt on because we went to Long Island to train with Chris Weidman one time and he forgot his change of rash guards so he had a street rash guard on and he didn't have a second rash guard to change into and Chris didn't have a rash guard for him so they gave him like this pink flamingo t-shirt that he ended up we did a whole session with Chris Weidman it was right before he's gonna fight Luke Rockhold the second time which ended up never happening But we did this whole session with John with this pink tropical t-shirt
00:03:46.000on and then he changed out of the t-shirt to get back into his street rash guard and leave to go home.
00:03:51.000I'm just like, okay, this is happening.
00:03:53.000I posted it and everyone was freaking out about it.
00:03:56.000How crazy is it that he has a street rash guard?
00:03:59.000Yeah, he's got street rash guards, he's got training rash guards, and he's got his nighttime dinner date rash guards.
00:04:06.000He's got a date rash guard, he's got a dinner rash guard.
00:05:23.000The way you're widely regarded as the best pound for pound grappler, he's widely regarded as the best Jiu Jitsu coach.
00:05:29.000It's really interesting to see that you guys just have been dominating the grappling scene and to watch all this play out and to see people study you guys but still not be able to catch up.
00:05:45.000Yeah, I mean, what most people do is they just see like a general outline of what we do, but no one looks at the specifics of what we're doing.
00:05:52.000They say, oh, you know, Gordon's a good leg locker, let me try to do leg locks, or Gordon's trapping hands from the back, let me try to do that.
00:05:58.000But they don't see the very specific details, and the specific details are what's going to be the difference between finishing a high-level guy and having a high-level guy escape.
00:06:06.000So what everyone does is they just see the general idea and have the general outline of what we're doing, and they try to just copy that.
00:06:13.000But, when you just try to copy the best guys, if you just try to copy everyone else, you get the same results as everybody else.
00:06:18.000You have to go further than what the best guys are doing.
00:06:20.000You have to innovate and, you know, I look at the other best guys in the world and I say, what are they doing?
00:06:25.000You know, that works against the other high-level guys and how can I make that better?
00:06:28.000Not just let me try to arbitrarily copy what they're trying to do.
00:06:31.000Now, what is missing in, like, if you take the rest of the people that are in the top ten, like, what are they doing differently?
00:06:40.000What everyone does in Jiu-Jitsu is they try to do the least amount of work possible to win a Jiu-Jitsu match, right?
00:06:46.000So they try to jump past your guard, they score an advantage, they score a couple points, and then for the next seven minutes they do nothing.
00:06:55.000Whereas what we try to do is we try to take the hardest route to a victory and we try to submit the guy.
00:07:00.000So, what you see is a complete, there's just a complete different mindset between what the rest of the guys are doing and what we're trying to do.
00:07:07.000We're trying to go out and we're not satisfied unless we hit a submission.
00:07:11.000And in my case, sometimes I call the submission and I'm trying to, you know, go out and hit a specific submission.
00:07:18.000But, you know, they're happy just going out and having a match where there's ten minutes in the feet.
00:07:22.000They just hang on each other's collar ties, and then they win a ref decision, and they run around beating their chest like they just did something.
00:07:29.000So just the mindset for winning in competition is completely different.
00:07:35.000How did jujitsu get to be this sport where you have so many stalemates?
00:07:40.000You have so many guys that do this thing where they run around just collar tying each other and pushing each other around and no one ever takes a chance.
00:07:47.000No one ever realizes that, you know, hey, we've only got four minutes to go.
00:08:22.000We just try to get better at Jiu-Jitsu and better at submissions.
00:08:25.000Whereas our training program is built around control that leads to submissions.
00:08:29.000No matter what ruleset we go into compete under, we're always trying to control the guy and then submit him.
00:08:34.000Whereas most people, they have a training program built around positional advances where they're just trying to do whatever they can to win, and a win's a win, and however they win, they're happy with it.
00:08:47.000I started training with him, the first time I ever started training with him was 2014. Was that the first time you trained?
00:08:53.000No, I started training late 2010, almost 2011. With Miguel Benitez, he was one of Ricardo Almeida's brown belts owned the school.
00:09:08.000And this guy, Miguel Benitez, was a blue belt under the guy who owned one of Ricardo's affiliate schools.
00:09:15.000I started training under him from white to mid-level blue belt.
00:09:19.000And then Gary actually took over, Gary Tonin took over the school when I was like a purple belt.
00:09:25.000And then purple belt, I started training part-time with John because I just graduated high school and I had to go to college and work to afford to get to the city.
00:09:34.000But then somewhere around mid-level purple belt, I think it was like 2000, mid to late 2014, is when I started training with John full-time.
00:09:42.000So I've been training with John full-time like, you know, six years or so.
00:09:45.000And has the training changed since you first started?
00:09:49.000Discuss this with Sean, because he's got such a complex system of training and taking people through positional dominance to submission.
00:10:01.000Has this evolved during the time that you've been with him?
00:10:05.000At first, he was just trying to get us better at jiu-jitsu, specifically better at leg locks, because the big hole in the high-level competition jiu-jitsu scene was leg locks.
00:10:16.000Nobody really knew how to do leg locks well.
00:10:18.000So the first couple years of us training was just him trying to get us competent and then eventually to be the best in leg locking.
00:10:25.000And then once we got there, once we could beat the best guys in the world, or at least hang with the best guys in the world, then it was more specific towards winning under certain rule sets.
00:10:35.000You know, EBI came along and, you know, okay, how can now, you guys can do jiu-jitsu, you're competent everywhere.
00:10:41.000How can you succeed, and how can you beat certain players, or how can you win under specific rule sets?
00:10:46.000So it went from just a broad idea of initially getting better at jiu-jitsu, just as a whole, and then more specifically, how can I win ADCC? How can I win EBI? How can I beat this guy?
00:10:59.000Has his training program evolved in terms of how he takes people through advancements, like how they start out in learning and then get to a place of a position where they're a black belt in competition?
00:11:25.000But a lot of it has—we used to just do all open rounds.
00:11:29.000Now we have a lot more positional rounds in place where we start in certain positions so that if we get to those specific positions, even though people have been training for twice as long as us, we've been training a lot longer in those specific niche positions.
00:11:43.000So we actually have a lot more experience in those positions than they do, even though they've been training jiu-jitsu for much longer than we have.
00:11:51.000So our whole thing is to get to our key positions where we know where if we have one breakthrough, if I can get to the guy's back or I can get to the guy's legs, we've been in those static positions a lot longer than the other guys have.
00:12:03.000And even though they've been training twice or three times as long as we have, we have a lot more experience in those domains than they do.
00:12:09.000Now, did that start with EBI, where they have that very specific two option positions after the first initial time period?
00:12:18.000You know, when EBI came out, we actually came into the gym one day, and we tried to do back escapes, and it was just the worst workout ever.
00:12:28.000Like, we had a zero percent escape rate, nobody escaped, and John's like, fuck, this is gonna be a real problem.
00:12:34.000If someone locks a body triangle on you, you know, like, none of us figured out how to get out.
00:12:38.000He comes in the next day and he finds a match between Hodger Gracie and Tim Kennedy in MMA. And Tim Kennedy successfully escaped Hodger's back control multiple times during the match.
00:12:51.000So this guy went home and spent the entire night looking for matches where high-level guys can escape the back.
00:12:58.000And he came in and he taught us the escapes that Tim Kennedy used versus Hodger.
00:13:01.000And we went from one day having a 0% escape rate to like an 80% escape rate the next day.
00:13:06.000And then we kind of just built it from there and everything snowballed.
00:13:08.000And then, you know, we ended up dominating the EBIs.
00:13:11.000So it really takes a combination of things.
00:13:13.000It takes obsessed athletes and it takes an obsessed trainer.
00:13:18.000And an obsessed trainer, in one way, there's something interesting about John in that he's He's injured.
00:13:25.000Like, his knee's all fucked up, he's at a hip replacement, from rugby, right?
00:13:31.000And, you know, he can't compete, but when he was training early in his career, like, everybody used to talk about what a motherfucker he was.
00:13:46.000Like, imagine only being able to use one of your legs.
00:13:48.000Like, I tore my LCL, and I was like, there's no way I can train with a blue belt right now, never mind having to train with the best guys in the world.
00:13:54.000Yeah, it's pretty remarkable, but his mind is so unusual.
00:14:17.000And then you guys also motivate each other and the success, obviously the Donaher Death Squad is so well known and so successful, that must be motivating as well.
00:14:26.000And it's also attracting a lot of other killers that want to be like you guys that come there to train and learn and grow.
00:14:36.000Yeah, I mean, you see a guy like John who's injured, and he's just miserable some days because he's in so much pain.
00:14:43.000He comes in every single day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and he gives his best every single session.
00:14:50.000So, you know, you as an athlete, you know, this guy's giving you all that he can for not asking anything in return.
00:14:56.000The only thing he's asking for is that you show up.
00:14:58.000So, like, you have basically a series of cheat codes in front of you, and they're there all year round, every single day.
00:15:06.000You kind of feel like a shitbag if you don't show up to train.
00:15:08.000So it's like, you know, this guy's giving you everything.
00:15:10.000It's like, okay, if I don't show up, like, I'm kind of an asshole.
00:15:13.000We went to dinner after the last event that they had here, when you fought Wagner Rocha, and John was outlining what happens when guys come to train.
00:15:24.000Like, guys have never been there before.
00:15:25.000He's like, alright, I'll see you tomorrow.
00:15:43.000I mean, if we're tired, we just train lighter.
00:15:46.000Even if I feel like I'm just completely beat up and I don't want to get up and go to training, even if I just go there and I train really light and I'm there mentally and you're thinking about the sport, I mean, you're getting better.
00:15:59.000Whereas if you just spend the day on the beach or something, then you're not thinking about the sport and it hinders progression.
00:16:06.000So I think that, you know, some people argue you need a rest day, you need this, you need that.
00:16:10.000I mean, if I have a rest day, I can rest and I can not train hard and I just go lighter.
00:16:25.000That's very controversial, though, because most trainers in most sports will tell you that you need rest days, that you need days where you do nothing, and that even days where you don't even think about your sport, because that's actually gonna refresh your enthusiasm.
00:16:41.000For us, he says, like, in order to stay interested in the sport, you need to be constantly working towards goals and you constantly need to be innovating so that you're working on new things.
00:16:51.000I mean, people get bored with jujitsu when they're working on the same thing for six months at a time, a year at a time, they're not getting any better, they hit a plateau, and then they feel like, you know, I've been doing the same shit for the last two years, I'm bored of it, I don't really want to do this anymore.
00:17:04.000Whereas with us, every day it's something new, you know, every week it's something new, every six months you turn into a completely different grappler.
00:17:11.000So it's easy to stay interested in a sport that you come in and you know that you're gonna show up to a session and if you don't show up to that session that John's gonna teach something that you probably have never seen before or something that's new and you know you're gonna come in the next day and everyone's gonna be trying to hit it on you like what the fuck is this when did you teach this and you go yesterday when you weren't here and it's like okay that makes sense Wow.
00:17:33.000So, it really does demand a synergy between an obsessed trainer and obsessed students.
00:17:49.000Like, John just, like, what he does for fun is he studies tape on various martial arts.
00:17:53.000Like, you reference any fight or any wrestling match or any boxing match or jiu-jitsu match, like, John will give you, like, a full background story on the whole thing.
00:18:00.000Like, he just, he knows everything, not even just about martial arts.
00:18:03.000He just knows everything about everything.
00:18:05.000He's, like, the closest thing to Google that you can get, in my opinion.
00:18:08.000Like, you just ask him a question about any given subject, and he knows something about it.
00:18:14.000So, you know, when he goes home every night and he studies tape, you know for a fact that the next day he's coming in and he's showing you something that he watched from...
00:18:23.000Like the other day, he showed us something that an Asian kid hit from the U23 World Championships in 2018 that he was taking people down with in the wrestling championships.
00:18:36.000And it's just like, this guy went home and started watching the U23 Worlds from 2018. Who does that?
00:18:43.000He and Lex Friedman had a conversation while we were at dinner where Lex brought up some obscure wrestlers from Dagestan and John was like, oh yes, yes.
00:19:18.000I mean, the crazy thing is that when you look at the domination of your team and you look at it over the course of, you know, six years, it's relentless.
00:19:33.000And because of this philosophy of seven days a week training and constant innovation and always refreshing the mind with new techniques and And always stimulating the athletes with new options.
00:19:44.000You're seeing this never-ending progression where, as I look at other teams and you get these elite guys who are at a world championship level, and even elite guys at a world championship level, even though they win world championships and they do really well, they are stagnant in their progress, at least observationally.
00:20:04.000You know, they don't look any different.
00:20:05.000What most people do is they get to a certain level, usually in jiu-jitsu it's black belt, and they coast on that technique.
00:20:10.000And they get a little bit more physically mature.
00:20:13.000The most high-level competitors get their black belt at 22, 23, 24. And they get physically more mature until they're 30. But they don't ever progress technically.
00:20:21.000Whereas with us, like every six months, like if I fought myself a 2019 ADCC right now, I would crush myself.
00:20:37.000Now here you are so young to be not just the best on the planet, but arguably the best of all time at 25. I just want to finish my career and I want people to think that, okay, there's just absolutely no chance that anyone could ever touch what you've done in your career.
00:21:00.000Like right now, sure, I'm arguably the best of all time, but people can surpass my records.
00:21:05.000When I finish my career, I want people to sit back and think, wow, no one's ever going to get close to that.
00:21:25.000You're having a really hard time getting fights.
00:21:26.000I mean, props to Wagner for stepping up because he's a smaller guy and he's one of the rare elite black belts that did choose to step up because you're in this weird position right now where people are worried about their reputation.
00:22:13.000People are fighting me for like $6,000.
00:22:17.000If you're going to get knocked out by Tyson for $10 million, it's a little bit different than getting embarrassed by a shit-talking fucking Gordon for like $5,000.
00:22:28.000That's the other thing that's unusual about you, is that when people think about successful martial artists, they think of these stoic warriors who bow to each other and show respect.
00:23:32.000Even if they hate you, they have no choice but to listen to you and respect you.
00:23:35.000Well, I like what you did with your first, one of your matches that I saw, it was a couple matches ago, you said you were going to finish with a mounted triangle.
00:23:47.000And then this last match, you drew a picture of a triangle, put it in an envelope, and then gave it to the commentator and said, don't open this until after the match.
00:23:58.000But that time you didn't let him know.
00:23:59.000The first time you said it in advance though, right?
00:24:02.000I said it right before the match, so you probably didn't see it.
00:24:05.000I posted it right before the match, but the chances of him looking at it when he was getting ready to walk out were probably pretty low.
00:24:12.000Whereas the one with Wagner, there's no way he could have seen it because I just put it in an envelope and they didn't open it until after the event.
00:24:19.000Yeah, because there was times when you had him in good positions, where I was wondering if you were letting him go, because you said that you wanted to maul him.
00:24:29.000Yeah, I wanted to abuse him for the first 20 minutes and then finish him with like 10 minutes left, which is what I did.
00:24:36.000If I wanted to triangle him before that, I could have probably done it pretty easily, especially on the back, but that's just not what I wanted to do.
00:24:44.000Why did you want to punish him like that?
00:26:30.000And people give George shit, and George is the nicest guy ever.
00:26:33.000So I'm like, you know, well, if people are going to talk shit regardless, I may as well just say and do what I want and just be authentic and have fun with it.
00:26:42.000But it seems almost out of place for someone who's as good as you are.
00:26:47.000Yeah, I mean most people with this kind of talent don't do it but it's fun for me and I just feel like it just upsets so many people and they take it so seriously and I don't and I'm just sitting there like I'm sitting there like laughing behind my keyboard and everyone's like pulling their hair out on the other side of the screen and I know that it upsets so many people and you know it's just it's easy to run with it.
00:27:09.000It's just, when you see people react, like Cyborg in particular, the second fight that you had with Cyborg, how many times do you- Twice.
00:27:18.000The first one you submitted him, but the second one, he's literally swinging at your head, like, making it look like he's touching your head, but he's actually smacking you.
00:27:26.000Yes, he smacked me, like, I think it was 14 times in the match, and then finally, like, the last second of the match, they DQ'd him for it.
00:28:10.000The problem is I just go way further than is necessary.
00:28:13.000Like they start at like level two and I just go to a level a thousand like right away and I just don't stop.
00:28:17.000Like it's like they like they like they like talk shit about me like 2015 and we're like 2021 and I'm like still just berating them every day.
00:28:26.000So I just go way overboard and that's what people get upset about.
00:28:29.000But I never actually attack someone who hasn't started with me first.
00:28:36.000It's just funny, the dedication to shit-talking.
00:28:44.000Yeah, Instagram, I just stopped pretty much using Instagram.
00:28:47.000I just, like, post, like, once a day or once every other day now.
00:28:49.000But Instagram deletes, like, if I go on and I comment something, and I, like, attack a hater who attacked me and retaliate, like, 60% of my posts just get erased now.
00:28:58.000So it's like, I would spend hours a day on Instagram.
00:29:02.000But now it's like not even worth my time because I know that if I go on and I write, you know, 30 comments, 20 of them are gonna get erased.
00:29:08.000So it's not even worth my time dealing with it anymore.
00:29:14.000I think it's a combination of people reporting it, and I think it's just the algorithm has a hit on me, and I think that, like, because it shows you your violations.
00:29:22.000I have, like, hundreds of violations, like 300 violations.
00:29:26.000Like, I tell people to kill themselves and stuff.
00:29:28.000So, like, now they just started threatening to delete my account, and they delete, like, all my comments.
00:29:34.000So it's not even worth going on and attacking people, like, because normally it's fun for me to entertain the fans by attacking the haters.
00:29:42.000But, now, it's just like, Instagram just erased like 60% of my shit, so it's not even worth attacking people, because you spend six hours online, and four hours of them are useless, because all your comments just get erased.
00:29:53.000So, even if you just have a post and they leave the post up, if you have comments under the post, they'll delete your comments?
00:30:01.000Yeah, they delete comments all the time.
00:30:03.000Like, people attack me, I retaliate, and then they start to, uh, and then we go back and forth, and then, like, the whole comment section gets erased.
00:30:11.000So you spend, like, four hours on a comment thread, and then the original comment gets erased, and then, before you know it, like, you just spent four hours on Instagram, and it was all useless.
00:30:29.000So now I just go on, like, once every day or so, once every other day, I just promote, like, a fight coming up or an instructional that's coming out, and then I just, I don't even bother arguing with people anymore.
00:31:13.000It's just it is one of the weirdest problems to have to be the best in the world at something and then have someone like Instagram like Deleting yeah comments and I'm like I'm like perma ban on Facebook like I get like 30 ban days I'm okay for like two days, and then they just ban me for 30 days and And they'll go back and they'll find shit from like 2015. They're like, this goes against community standards.
00:32:06.000She's, like, yeah, it's going to get deleted.
00:32:07.000And then 30 minutes later, like, oh, this goes against hate speech.
00:32:11.000So it's just, like, I always used to do it for fun.
00:32:14.000But now it's not even fun because I just waste my time doing it.
00:32:17.000Now, obviously, the next course of progression for a guy like you would be MMA. Yeah.
00:32:22.000Now, I know that you had talked about doing MMA in the past, but now it seems like it's actually going to happen.
00:32:28.000Yeah, so John doesn't want me to compete in MMA because he feels like jiu-jitsu is just about to break into that next level of professional sports.
00:32:38.000So for me at least right now, I feel like I need at least someone from my team to be able to do the things that I'm doing before I can kind of move away from jiu-jitsu into MMA. Because right now we have Gary in MMA, he's carrying our flag, our team's flag in MMA. We have me at the top of the heap in jiu-jitsu.
00:32:54.000So like if Craig or Nicky Rod and my brother can start doing the things that I'm doing and they win in ATCC Absolute maybe, or they go out and they start beating and submitting all the high-level guys, then I feel like maybe I can leave jiu-jitsu.
00:33:07.000Because if I start fighting MMA, I'm going to focus on MMA. So I feel like if one of my teammates can kind of take my place, then I can start moving into MMA and then go from there.
00:33:16.000So you really do genuinely look at it as a team effort.
00:33:20.000You're not looking at it just as an individual.
00:33:22.000Most athletes are very selfish and they just take, take, take, whereas we have a very good team cohesion and we're always looking out for one another and I find that that's the way that people operate best.
00:33:36.000If you look at most teams, It's basically just a bunch of tough guys in a room who train together, who have no loyalty, and if someone offers them a better deal, they're going to go somewhere else and train there.
00:33:47.000Whereas with us, we're very loyal to John, and everything that we do is the same.
00:33:54.000My game is very similar to John's, very similar to Gary's, very similar to Craig's.
00:33:58.000We all are taught by John, and we all follow the same ideas and the same philosophy of jiu-jitsu.
00:34:03.000So the loyalty within the team is very strong, and I feel that It's always going to be a team effort.
00:34:12.000Without John, I wouldn't be as good as I am.
00:34:14.000Without Gary, I wouldn't be as good as I am.
00:34:16.000Without Nikki, it's the collaboration of minds in the gym that really pushes you forward.
00:34:21.000I feel like we're different in that sense that we're not a team that recruits people.
00:34:26.000We're a team that builds athletes from almost the ground up.
00:34:30.000You see a lot of the big MMA teams, or even the big jiu-jitsu teams like Atos, for example, they recruit guys.
00:34:37.000Guys who are already successful, they recruit them, they give them a place to live, they give them a training program, and they just recruit tough guys.
00:34:46.000A guy like Andre, and you look at his black belts, they all have vastly different games.
00:34:50.000Kynan's game is different than Andre's.
00:34:52.000Hinger's game is different than Andre's.
00:34:53.000Keenan's game is different than Andre's.
00:34:55.000And it's basically just a team of recruited guys who are a bunch of tough guys training in the same room.
00:35:01.000Whereas John, we have a team of homegrown guys who all do the same thing.
00:35:06.000They all have discernible games that all mimic what John teaches, and they just have slight changes and variations due to our physical attributes and personalities.
00:35:17.000Now, when you say you think of it as a team, this is taking it to a completely different level, because you're not willing to progress your career outside the realm of Jiu Jitsu until someone else can carry the crown.
00:35:49.000I want him to go down in history as being the guy who had the absolute best team in the world.
00:35:56.000Right now you can make the argument that sure, Gordon's the best in the world, but the rest of the guys don't win as much as him.
00:36:02.000So, I want to get the rest of the guys on my team to my level so that you don't have the argument anymore of, sure, Gordon's good, but he's the only one who really wins when it counts.
00:36:13.000You know, I want to go into ADCC with my team, and I want to win every single division.
00:37:17.000So it doesn't make sense to do the super fight and the absolute.
00:37:19.000But it does make sense to do the weight division and the absolute.
00:37:22.000So if they let me do the weight division, I'll be the first person in history to ever do the weight division plus the super fight at the same time.
00:37:38.000He didn't do less jujitsu to do MMA. He just added MMA on top of the jujitsu sessions.
00:37:45.000So he trains MMA seven days a week, and he spars lightly seven days a week, and then he finishes that.
00:37:52.000And right now, we don't have a gym set up in Puerto Rico, so we're working around the class schedule of the gym owner.
00:37:59.000So he does MMA at 9, and then he trains for like an hour, spars, then he has like a 30-minute break, and then he does jiu-jitsu at 11, and he just adds the session on.
00:38:11.000So he does MMA and jiu-jitsu seven days a week, within like two hours of each other.
00:38:15.000And when he's training MMA, he's also grappling.
00:38:20.000Most of the MMA training is shootboxing, is standing to takedowns because he's already so good on the ground.
00:38:27.000He needs to work on fence wrestling and shootboxing.
00:38:31.000But he definitely is some grappling when he does MMA. So he grapples and spars, and then he pretty much goes right to jiu-jitsu and has to do that.
00:38:40.000So, I mean, that's definitely not an easy thing to do, and seven days a week is definitely not an easy thing to do.
00:38:45.000And how is he doing in terms of striking coaching?
00:38:47.000Did he bring someone with him to Puerto Rico?
00:38:50.000Was he using a different person in New York?
00:41:41.000Everything's always like this, contraction.
00:41:44.000So when I have to open myself up like this, if I try to put my hands over my head and do a squat, my hands end up almost parallel to the floor.
00:41:52.000My shoulders are just the most inflexible thing.
00:41:54.000So I work with a guy who helps me stretch occasionally, and that helps me stretch occasionally.
00:42:02.000That I neglected for a long time was sleep.
00:42:04.000I feel like that if I can get like six to eight hours of sleep, I can recover, you know, pretty well.
00:42:10.000I feel like for a long time, I would just get like three, four hours of sleep a night.
00:42:14.000And it was okay when I was 19 years old, but now I feel like I need the extra sleep.
00:42:18.000And I feel like if I can get a decent night's sleep, you know, I can sleep forever.
00:42:22.000So it's easy for me to have a good night's sleep and not have to wake up in the middle of the night.
00:42:26.000But if I can get a good night's sleep, I feel like I can recover pretty well.
00:42:29.000So is the issue just going to bed on time?
00:42:32.000Yeah, I mean, I usually, we finish pretty early, so, you know, I do the MMA session with Gary either, now since I signed with one, I've been doing a lot of fence wrestling.
00:42:44.000John's been coaching me and Craig with fence wrestling because Craig's competing in SUG and I'm competing at one in the cage, so I want to wrestle people on the fence a lot.
00:42:53.000So, I'd usually do the MMA session with Gary, and then I'd do the Jiu Jitsu session after that, and then we come home, I eat food, I relax for a little bit, I lift weights, and then I'm usually in bed by like, you know, 9, 10 o'clock.
00:43:06.000And the Jiu Jitsu, the MMA doesn't start until 9, so I mean, I sleep for 8 to 10 hours every night, usually.
00:43:12.000So you generally like to lift weights at night?
00:43:14.000Because I've seen videos of you getting up in the morning and lifting weights in the morning.
00:43:18.000Sometimes I go through kind of cycles where I'm like, man, I feel really good when I get up and I lift weights early because then it's out of the way.
00:43:30.000So I do it for like three weeks, and then I travel to compete or something, and then the routine gets fucked up, and then I get back home and I'm like, I'm not waking up tomorrow at 5 a.m.
00:44:38.000Do you think that would even take you another level past where you're at now?
00:44:45.000I could, but I don't think the gains are...
00:44:47.000I think the gains are going to be marginal.
00:44:49.000I think that the big thing that's going to take me to the next level is just getting better at Jiu-Jitsu.
00:44:54.000So that's what most of my focus is on.
00:44:56.000That's why I have to hire someone to help me stretch because I'm very disciplined with Jiu-Jitsu and I'm relatively disciplined with weightlifting.
00:45:04.000But with anything else, I'm just like...
00:45:06.000That's like the two things I'm good at in life is like being able to lift weights and being able to do jiu-jitsu and everything else.
00:45:22.000I mean, Dan Gable was in here recently just ranting and raving about what a gigantic impact sauna has had and how he recognized it from all these athletes overseas competing in the Olympics, how they utilized the sauna and had a big impact on them.
00:45:38.000Yeah, I'm definitely not opposed to saunas.
00:45:39.000I actually like sitting in saunas and hot tubs, but it's something that I don't have a sauna, and I've never done them.
00:45:47.000But if one day I have a sauna, if I buy a house again, I'll definitely think about putting a sauna in there, because they're not that expensive.
00:45:55.000You get those barrel saunas, they're reasonably inexpensive in terms of the value that you get from them.
00:46:01.000Yeah, and if it'll help, then, you know, I'm definitely, I have to do some more research, but if it'll help, I'll use it.
00:47:01.000I've done it, but the problem is when I was getting ready to initially fight MMA, it was like 2018 I started working with John, and then In early 2019, I tore my LCL, and I came right back from that surgery, and I had to jump right into an ADCC camp.
00:47:24.000So my thing was, I had to get my knee better, and then I have to prepare for 2019 ADCC. And I did 2019 ADCC, and then after that...
00:47:35.000I sat down with John, and John's like, you know, this is a huge ADCC. I think grappling is going to start to go into a direction where it's going to start to be like a real professional sport.
00:47:45.000I think you should stick with grappling at least for a few more years before you decide to move to MMA. What John doesn't want is for...
00:47:54.000For me to leave grappling just as it explodes into the next level.
00:47:58.000I was actually getting ready to start talking to promotions about fighting MMA, and then I hurt my knee, and then I had to do the ADCC camp, and then we did the ADCC camp, and John's like, dude, you have a super fight next year, it's gonna be in Vegas, it's gonna be huge.
00:48:14.000So he's like, just focus on that for now, and then see where we go after that.
00:48:18.000Now, you started competing when you tore your knee.
00:48:21.000You started competing before it was really 100%.
00:48:24.000Yeah, so I competed six months to the day after the LCL reconstruction in my first tournament, and then I competed at ADCC seven months to the day after the reconstruction.
00:48:37.000So it definitely wasn't 100%, but it was okay enough to compete at least.
00:48:44.000I just work with a with a PT who my surgeon recommended.
00:48:48.000My big issue is that my hip on the one side locked up.
00:48:53.000So my hip on my left hip, I tore my left LCL. My left hip locked up and was like was losing all of its flexibility to kind of overcompensate for the LCL being torn.
00:49:03.000So a big thing was like opening up my hip and my whole left lower back was all tight.
00:49:07.000So a lot of it, like the first few months of rehab, which is him just working on flexibility and getting range of motion back.
00:49:13.000And then they use, for the rehab, they use that BFR, the blood flow restriction, where they put that thing around my quad, and it cuts off 80% of the blood flow.
00:49:25.000And then you do like very mild exercises, like bodyweight squats or lunges and stuff.
00:49:29.000And the idea is that it Stops the blood flow from getting down to your leg and then when you take it off the blood rushes down to the bottom of your leg and it promotes healing so they use that and I use that for a few months and it it seemed to help and then I just was like I actually we do a 12-week ADCC camp and I was just miserable the whole camp like I started wrestling again and my timing was off I was getting exhausted I just felt terrible and Like 10 weeks into the
00:49:59.000camp, I was like, John, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this.
00:50:04.000And then like on the 11th week, I just like from a Friday to a Monday, I just came in and I just started beating the shit out of people.
00:50:13.000I think I might be able to do this so like like the whole 12-week camp I was just miserable and I was like there's no way I can do this and then like a three-day span I went from like just being terrible and then all my timing started to come back my hand fighting from standing position started to come back and I was like I think I might be able to do this and then by like the time ADCC rolled around I was like all right I'm in and it ended up working out.
00:50:33.000What do you attribute that to like how'd you do that?
00:50:35.000I mean I don't know I think it was just I was doing rehab like I was supposed to, and the knee itself wasn't really the issue.
00:50:44.000It was just my body lagging behind for like, you know, you don't train for four months.
00:50:49.000All your timing, you know, your timing's all off.
00:50:51.000You start wrestling and your hand fighting's off.
00:50:54.000You're a day late and a dollar short in your shot, so you just feel...
00:50:56.000You feel like, you know, there's nothing physically that...
00:51:00.000There's nothing that bad physically wrong with you.
00:51:02.000Like, my knee wasn't, like, gonna buckle or break in half or anything.
00:51:06.000But I just felt like my overall timing for everything was off.
00:51:09.000And then, like, I started wrestling hard for, like, two weeks, and everything started to come back.
00:51:14.000And then, like, you know, from one day to the next, almost, it seemed like I was like, okay, I feel like everything's kind of coming back now.
00:51:19.000And the last, like, week or two before ADCC... It was when I really started to feel like I was who I was before I hurt the knee.
00:51:29.000I think John has a real point in terms of saying that grappling is on its way to becoming a legitimate professional sport, like a much bigger professional sport.
00:51:43.000It needs a big personality who's also doing fucked up things like writing a triangle down on a piece of paper, putting it in an envelope, and handing it to the commentators before the match, and then finishing someone with that.
00:52:12.000Nobody wants to fucking listen to someone coming out.
00:52:15.000There's 20 matches and all 20 guys say the same thing.
00:52:17.000They want a guy who's coming out and like, fuck this pussy, I'm going to beat the shit out of them.
00:52:20.000People are like, all right, I can get behind that.
00:52:22.000So, you know, they can kind of live vicariously through you because they want to do that.
00:52:27.000They want to go up to their boss tomorrow and be like, you know, fuck you, I'm going to beat the shit out of you.
00:52:33.000They can kind of get behind that because they can't do that in their lives.
00:52:39.000But, you know, there's always going to be a limit on how big grappling can get as a sport because grappling is a participant-based sport where most people who watch grappling either participate in grappling or they have family members who are doing it and they're watching their cousin compete.
00:52:59.000The NBA or the NFL like most people who watch MMA aren't showing up the next day to get punched in the face Like people are just watching it because they they they want to they want to be entertained It's a spectator sport, so I do believe that it's going to get much bigger in the coming years But I also believe there's gonna be a cap on like it'll never be the size of football for example or the UFC for example Yeah, it might not be but I think it can be bigger than people give it credit for because of the submission Because people are so accustomed to seeing submissions in MMA. Yeah.
00:53:27.000And to see people pull off submissions in Jiu Jitsu.
00:53:32.000Especially when you have good commentary, which who's number one does, you know, and a lot of these commentators are really educated now because they're such fans of the sport.
00:53:42.000So they can talk people through submissions and let people know exactly what's happening and when someone's in danger and when they're free.
00:53:48.000But I think you're right in terms of we need more big personalities and more competition.
00:53:53.000The fact that you're having a hard time getting matches is weird.
00:53:58.000With all these big heavyweights out there, there's a lot of guys who are your size who they're not stepping up.
00:54:06.000And another thing you need, too, is you need a training program that pushes you towards submissions.
00:54:12.000Like, nobody wants to watch two guys in 50-50 fighting to fucking scissor back and forth until someone gets an advantage, and then you come up, and, you know, people want to see movement, which is exciting, okay?
00:54:23.000Ultimately, what people are looking for is movement, because people aren't moving, there's no excitement.
00:54:34.000And if you have a training program, like I said before, built around just doing the absolute minimal amount of work to win, then you're going to be boring.
00:54:42.000But if you want to take the hardest route and you say, "Okay, how can I fight to a submission?" There has to be a lot of movement to get a submission.
00:54:49.000You gotta work through various, you know, positional gains to get to a submission in most cases.
00:54:54.000And you submit a guy and you're like, okay, people are like, okay, I can get behind that.
00:54:57.000Like, people see an arm break, people see a guy get strangled unconscious and they're like, wow, that was fucking, that was intense.
00:55:04.000Is John, does he have a game plan to try to elevate the status of grappling or to elevate the profile of it?
00:55:16.000I remember I had one of the most important conversations of my career when John told us that you have to be exciting in one way or another.
00:55:26.000If you look at a guy like Chael Sonnen, for example, he hasn't defended the UFC title for 10 years in a row, but he was entertaining outside of the ring, so even though he didn't have the skills to beat the best guys consistently, people wanted to watch him because he was entertaining and he was different.
00:55:41.000Where if you look at a guy like George, George wasn't really entertaining outside of the ring, but he would just go in and just beat everybody over the course of two or three generations.
00:55:50.000And he's like, if you look at notoriously who the most remembered and highest paid people, it's the people that were entertaining in the competition and outside of the competition.
00:56:03.000You look at Tyson, you look at Muhammad Ali, you look at Conor.
00:56:07.000Guys that have the skills to back up what they're saying so that they're entertaining outside before the fight.
00:58:48.000You have an actual genius Competing against, like, most instructors that, like, you know, a lot of the top-level coaches that are coaching jiu-jitsu in the U.S. grew up in, like, a favela in Brazil.
00:59:06.000They moved to America, they became successful.
00:59:09.000But, like, to compete against a guy like John, who's, like, a legitimate genius and is, you know, teaching at Columbia University in New York and then just applies that intelligence to the sport of jiu-jitsu, it's just not fair in most cases.
00:59:22.000Like, the The level of intellect, there's just no comparison.
00:59:27.000But it's also the level of intellect and this obsessive dedication to teaching people.
00:59:32.000Like the only thing he enjoys is knives.
00:59:46.000So whenever we win a big tournament, I remember when I won 2017 ADCC, he came in with a katana that's this big, that was custom made by one of the best knife makers in Japan.
00:59:57.000And he goes, this katana is designed to cut the heads off horses in battle.
01:00:02.000And if you lined up three male human beings back to back, it would chop them in half the torso with one swipe.
01:00:08.000And I was like, wow, that's fucking awesome.
01:00:11.000So I just have a collection of knives sitting in my room.
01:02:23.000And, like, Texas is one of the worst places I hear for them.
01:02:25.000They opened up one road in Texas, and the day they opened up the road, like they did construction on this road, the day they opened up the road, they had 40 car accidents with pigs.
01:03:00.000Yeah, it's definitely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, I know for sure, because I know ranchers who have said, like, on their personal property, it's over a million dollars of damage per year by hogs.
01:03:12.000Because, say if you're growing something...
01:06:25.000This article, I just was looking at it.
01:06:27.000Those bison have grown from the bison brought 115 years ago and it says that they're causing a nuisance and they're going to have a hunt this year.
01:06:57.000Because I was there, and dude, you could just get right, like, I was real careful that we did it behind a fence, and I was, like, literally ready to grab my kids and run behind a car, because when they turn, if they just decide to turn, like, if the dude has a hard-on, he feels like you're cock-blocking, they'll just fucking come charging at you and send people flying through the air.
01:07:15.000They send themselves flying through the air.
01:07:17.000It says they have moved up to, like, it says 88 of them have been moved on to tribal lands since 2019, so it's only in the last two years.
01:09:09.000But that's so easy at 100 yards because you're probably using a rest.
01:09:15.000All you have to do is just not flinch.
01:09:17.000And if your rifle's zeroed in, you should be able to put them all inside a couple inches.
01:09:23.000I mean, the only variation is you moving.
01:09:26.000Like, with a really good rifle, you just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, boom!
01:09:30.000Like, if you just keep, like, with a rifle rest, like a lead sled, which is most of the time, they use a Caldwell or something like that, you're rested.
01:11:32.000Like, you take the bones, and you make bone marrow out of the bones, you make ossobuco out of the shanks, all the parts that people, like, oftentimes leave behind.
01:13:15.000They have terrible vision, but they can smell really good.
01:13:18.000They smell really good and they hear really good.
01:13:20.000Yeah, we were trying to position ourselves in the right spot and we just couldn't get it and they just fucking kept moving, moving, moving.
01:14:02.000So I actually have a condition called gastroparesis, where your stomach doesn't push the food down to your intestines how it's supposed to.
01:14:12.000So food basically just sits in my stomach for longer than it's supposed to.
01:14:16.000And I've had this for like three years, which is why I'm just constantly nauseous and just can't eat the amount of food that I need to.
01:14:21.000So I'm basically limited to chicken and rice and eggs.
01:14:38.000Yeah, so I had recurring staph infections, and it was like, I would take oral antibiotics, and then I'd be on antibiotics for a week, 10 days, two weeks, and then like four days later, staph infection.
01:15:05.000And Ever since then, I wake up in the morning, I'm nauseous, I go through the whole day extremely nauseous, and then I just go to sleep nauseous.
01:15:17.000Yeah, so normally how it goes is there's at least one hour of the day where I'm just so...
01:15:24.000I'm incapacitated from being nauseous that I have to just sit in the bathroom because I'm just so nauseous I just can't deal with it.
01:15:30.000So the problem is when I eat food like you can manage it with diet what you eat and how often you eat so normally what I should be doing is fasting so my stomach is empty the whole day and I just have a meal At nighttime, but I would just waste away if I was fasting.
01:15:44.000So I go kind of in these waves where my stomach's okay for a few months and then it goes into a bad dip.
01:15:51.000And when I travel a lot to compete or to teach or whatever the case is, I'm usually forced to eat at restaurants.
01:15:57.000And what do restaurants do to make all the food taste better?
01:15:59.000They put grease and butter and I end up eating for four or five days at restaurants or all this shitty food, and then I'm fucked up for like two weeks where I just can't eat anything.
01:16:51.000I'm big, but I'm not crazy big compared to your average heavyweight in grappling.
01:16:58.000Bouchesha is like 6'3", 265. Guys like him, people I'm competing against are like 250, 260, 270. When I fought Bouchesha ADCC, I think he weighed in like 263, and I was 210. So 50 pounds is 50 pounds.
01:17:14.000If I was able to get up to a weight where I was walking around at 260 and then cutting to 240, I think I would be much better than I am right now.
01:17:21.000But the problem is I just can't get the calories because of the gastroparesis.
01:17:31.000Is he the one who talked to you about fasting?
01:17:33.000Because I know he's a big proponent of fasting.
01:17:35.000So I talked to him about it, and I've just done my own research.
01:17:38.000And I do think that fasting would help because...
01:17:42.000The main thing that makes me nauseous all the time is the fact that the food is sitting in my stomach longer than it's supposed to.
01:17:47.000So if I just went through my day with an empty stomach and then ate at night time, it would be a lot easier for me.
01:17:53.000But the problem is I would be like 180 pounds if I did that.
01:17:56.000So I have to just wake up and every two to three hours I have to just shove my face of food and try to get the calories in.
01:18:01.000But I actually found out that I had gastroparesis when I did a gastric emptying test.
01:18:06.000And they basically take eggs And they put this radioactive dye in it, and they make you eat eggs and toast.
01:18:15.000And then in increments, it's like a five-hour long test.
01:18:18.000Every hour or so, they put you between this machine, and it takes images of the radioactive dye, and it tells you how long it takes your stomach to empty the food.
01:18:26.000And I was retaining food way more than a normal person should be.
01:18:31.000So my stomach isn't contracting the right way to push this food through.
01:18:34.000So when I go to eat my second meal, I'm already full from the first meal.
01:18:37.000And it's always a big problem with people that have done antibiotics where there's always a rebound period where you have to take a lot of probiotics and your gut biome has to sort of re-flourish.
01:19:25.000Then I pretty much just accepted it because John used to teach privates to a guy who was regarded as one of the top three gastro doctors, either in America or in the world.
01:19:36.000And he told him, like, once the food goes in your mouth and down your throat, we basically have no idea what's going on.
01:19:42.000We just basically take our best guess and we do some trial on our medications.
01:19:48.000So I'm like, I'm not going to waste my time at doctors.
01:20:02.000But then recently, before the Roberto Jimenez match where I called the mounted armbar, It got so bad to where two days before I was going to fly to compete, like four days before the competition, I wasn't able to eat in like five days.
01:20:40.000He was like, you know, we're going to find the cause of this.
01:20:43.000So I started going to a few different doctors.
01:20:46.000They did a few different tests for H. pylori and then they did the gastric emptying test.
01:20:52.000And they were like, yeah, you have gastroparesis.
01:20:54.000So now they're just like, you know, try these.
01:20:57.000They have like some few medicines that they try, and you try one for a few weeks.
01:21:01.000It doesn't work, you try the next one.
01:21:02.000It doesn't work, you try the next one.
01:21:03.000So I've been on this medicine now for like four weeks.
01:21:05.000And it's helping a little bit, takes the edge off, but it could just be a coincidence because I could just be on that kind of up cycle that my stomach's doing okay right now, but in a few weeks it may be bad again.
01:21:16.000Has anyone recommended taking a break off of competing, like a month or so, where you just fast and try to eat at night and rebalance it?
01:21:26.000I actually, I tried, well I didn't compete in like the whole first, almost the whole year of 2018 because I just couldn't even train Jiu Jitsu, I was just so terrible.
01:21:38.000Now, I haven't tried fasting for a month, but I've tried fasting for a week where my stomach was so bad that I just couldn't eat.
01:21:49.000I feel less nauseous because my stomach's empty, but then the second I start to eat again, I just get nauseous again.
01:21:56.000So, it's something that I've been dealing with the last three years that's incredibly infuriating, but you just do what you gotta do because nobody cares that your stomach's hurting.
01:22:05.000And there's no, there's no, like, uh...
01:22:57.000The hardest thing for me is just knowing that...
01:23:00.000I believe that I would be better if I was heavier.
01:23:03.000I don't necessarily think that I need to be 240, 250 pounds to beat the best guys, but my goal at this point isn't focused around beating the best guys.
01:23:16.000If I was just concerned with how do I beat the next best guy, I would have had to have done half the work that I've done to get to the point to just be better than the number one guy in the world.
01:23:29.000But my goal now is focused around how can I be the absolute best athlete that I can by the time I hit my prime.
01:23:35.000And I just believe that being a 250-pound Gordon would be better than being a 220-pound Gordon.
01:23:40.000And having to deal with the fact that I may never reach my full athletic potential because of the stomach problem is what's, like, the most frustrating for me.
01:23:49.000And that the stomach problem was likely caused by antibiotics.
01:23:53.000Yeah, that's when I first started having problems.
01:23:55.000I just had recurring staph infections, and it was just oral antibiotics, oral antibiotics, every single time.
01:24:00.000And ever since then, I've just been fucked up.
01:24:02.000Yeah, I've had staph a couple of times, and when I took the antibiotics, I was amazed at how much they wreck your endurance.
01:25:19.000I think it was probably just a coincidence because when my stomach started to get better, it was when the pandemic hit and I wasn't traveling to compete.
01:25:27.000I wasn't traveling to teach seminars or film instructionals.
01:25:32.000So I was on a routine where I was eating clean food, like just chicken and rice, plain chicken and rice and eggs at home for like two months straight, and my stomach started to get okay.
01:25:42.000What really messes me up is when I have to travel and eat like shitty foods that's not home cooked.
01:25:46.000So I think that the kombucha helped, but it was just more of a coincidence that I was eating the food that I needed to be eating for a longer amount of time.
01:25:53.000So do you still do the kombucha or do you stop?
01:25:57.000I feel like the main issue I have is that I get full fast, and I feel like the food's sitting right here, and I feel like I need to burp, but I can't to make room for more food.
01:26:06.000So the kombucha or anything really carbonated helps me.
01:26:10.000The bubbles help me digest it, and it helps me burp, and I can make room for more food.
01:26:15.000Have you thought about traveling with someone who can cook for you wherever you go?
01:26:20.000I could, but the problem is whenever I go to travel, I'm always put in hotels where I don't have kitchens.
01:26:28.000Like, if you want to, you know, get a kitchen in a hotel room, you have to get, like, some crazy suite that, like, costs a shit ton of money.
01:26:38.000I have to maybe talk to Flo when they book my next hotel if they can Airbnb me something.
01:26:43.000But that's the main thing is getting off the routine and eating shitty foods from IHOP or restaurants and stuff.
01:26:49.000Because I feel like There's a lot of Airbnbs in most cities.
01:26:54.000You can get a probably pretty decent house and bring everybody in there, and it might be better anyway because you could bring some portable mats, lay them out in the living room, and maybe go over positions and stuff in your actual house.
01:27:07.000Everybody sleeps in the same house instead of being in a bunch of different hotel rooms, and you could cook.
01:27:11.000Yeah, that might make a lot more sense.
01:27:14.000Like, even, like, yesterday, I taught a seminar, and then I finished, I did an interview, and there was, like, only, like, one place open.
01:27:23.000And I got, like, the healthiest thing I could, I got, like, eggs on toast.
01:27:28.000And it shows up, and it's just, like, loaded with butter, and it's, like, soaking wet with grease.
01:27:32.000And I'm like, if I don't eat this, I'm not gonna be able to go to sleep because I'm so hungry.
01:27:37.000But if I eat it, I'm gonna be fucked up.
01:28:02.000So was it a series of trial and errors that led you to chicken and rice and...
01:28:07.000Yeah, so what I would find is I would be on an up cycle, and my diet used to be like, first of all, I used to be able to eat an incredible amount of food, like five, six Big Macs at the same time.
01:28:20.000I used to be able to eat more than most people.
01:31:55.000Say if you're going to train in an hour and a half.
01:31:57.000So normally we train in the morning, so I'll wake up and I'll have a light breakfast, like three or four eggs and like two pieces of toast.
01:32:06.000That's usually just plain scrambled eggs and toast.
01:32:09.000And then between the MMA and the jiu-jitsu, I'll have like maybe a protein shake and like a granola bar or something, or I'll have like a little thing of chicken and rice, something that's easy to digest.
01:32:23.000And then that holds me over and then I focus on most of my eating after the jujitsu session where I have the rest of the night to eat and I try to stuff my face from then until I go to sleep.
01:32:34.000I'm hoping, this is my hope, that someone's going to listen to this that has a solution and there's someone out there that you haven't been in contact with and they're going to reach out to you and they go, I think I'm going to fix this.
01:32:45.000Yeah, I've been posting and stuff on my Instagram and people have been helping, but obviously this is a much larger platform.
01:32:50.000The medicine that I have now, it's like four weeks in and seems to be taking the edge off a little bit.
01:32:55.000Whenever I eat terrible foods, it still just, it fucks me up.
01:32:58.000Does the medicine fuck with you at all?
01:33:01.000No, it's actually a medicine that originally they tested as an antidepressant, like Viagra was supposed to be for blood pressure medicine, but then they just found that it was better for a dick pill.
01:33:49.000But the second either I eat an edible or I try to smoke something, I haven't smoked in like three years because every time I would get high, I would just instantly be twice as nauseous.
01:34:26.000I can plan my meals and plan my day around it, but it's still something that you have to deal with every day, and it's annoying.
01:34:32.000Well, it's just one more credit to you that you're able to reach these insane heights in competition while being so compromised.
01:34:39.000I mean, everyone has their problems, but this is definitely something that day-to-day is very, very frustrating.
01:34:45.000So you're on the same training regimen as Gary then.
01:34:49.000So you're doing MMA training in the morning, and then you're doing Jiu-Jitsu right afterwards.
01:34:55.000Yeah, and then I lift weights at night.
01:34:58.000So, this thing with One FC, do they have you set up for grappling matches?
01:35:04.000So, the way my contract works is I'm exclusive for MMA and non-exclusive for grappling.
01:35:09.000So, if I want to fight MMA, I can't fight in any other organization.
01:35:14.000Now, I'm not obligated to fight MMA in my contract.
01:35:18.000My contract is just for grappling matches.
01:35:21.000But if I choose to fight MMA, it has to be with One.
01:35:23.000But I'm not obligated to go out and do any MMA fights.
01:35:28.000So right now my plan is, my focus is the ADCC Superfight 2022, and that I want to use the 1FC deal to rebrand myself as a fence wrestler.
01:35:40.000Right now I'm the best open mat grappler, but I want to be able to put experienced MMA guys on the fence, put them down and finish them on the fence.
01:35:47.000Now, 1FC, with its resources, if they had exclusive grappling matches, maybe they could find you competition.
01:35:57.000Yeah, so I think what they want to do, because they have...
01:36:01.000They don't just have MMA. They have every martial art where they have the belts in each martial art.
01:36:05.000But I think what their ultimate goal is, is they want to make a jiu-jitsu belt, and they want to have divisions for jiu-jitsu, like in MMA. Like, you win a title, you win a belt.
01:36:15.000So, it's gonna be interesting to see what their approach is going to be, because What I think they thought was going to happen was, you know, oh, we'll just sign him and we'll get him to fight guys like Boucher or guys like Andre Govao or, you know, these top-level jiu-jitsu guys.
01:36:31.000But then I think that what they're going to realize pretty soon is that it's going to be incredibly hard to get a jiu-jitsu guy to fight me and even harder to get a guy to fly to Singapore and, you know, fly across the world to compete against me.
01:36:44.000Because the guys just won't compete against me in Jiu Jitsu.
01:36:46.000And now it's on TV. Now they're doing it on TNT. Yeah.
01:36:49.000Regular people in America are gonna get it as well.
01:36:54.000But it's gonna be interesting now because they're gonna start to realize that the Jiu Jitsu guys just won't fight me.
01:37:00.000And then who else am I gonna compete against?
01:37:01.000I'm gonna do a grappling match against an MMA fighter.
01:37:05.000Especially in these Asian countries, most people are known for their striking.
01:37:12.000Grappling isn't at the level in most of these Asian countries that it is in the US. So what are they going to do?
01:37:20.000Put me against an Asian MMA fighter in a grappling match?
01:37:23.000It's going to be tough to find someone who is really competitive in a grappling match in a cage with me for them because the Jutsu guys just won't do it.
01:37:33.000Well, I know that some people have priced themselves out.
01:37:36.000They've said, yeah, I'll have a fight with you, but I want a million dollars.
01:37:41.000So the funny thing about that is I'm pretty sure there's an interview of Andre saying, I would fight my grandmother for $40,000.
01:37:48.000And then he's just like, no, I won't fight Gordon for less than a million, which is amazing because every one of his ADCC fights prior to this, the ADCC purse is $10,000 to lose, $40,000 to win.
01:37:59.000So it's like you're looking for a however many X increase to go from $40,000 to a million dollars.
01:38:13.000It's like the whole ADCC event isn't even going to generate a million dollars in revenue.
01:38:19.000How did this get started, this beef between the two of you guys?
01:38:22.000Because for people who don't know, there was an event here a few weeks ago, and he came up to you, and what did he say to you?
01:38:29.000So the whole thing originally started when I was petitioning for matches against the top-level guys in 2016 when I first got my black belt.
01:38:39.000And, you know, I was like, I want to compete against Andre or something along those lines, and his wife was like, well, win the ADCC Absolute, and then you'll have your chance to compete against Andre.
01:38:49.000So, you know, I go in, I lose the Absolute 2017 to Felipe Pena, and then I go out and I win double gold, and I win the Absolute in 2019. So now Andre had originally said that he was retiring after his fight with Felipe Pena for 2019 ADCC. But then I win the absolute, so it kind of sparked everyone's interest.
01:40:17.000After the last match where Craig submitted his student, Ronaldo, we went up to shake their hands in the corner after, and John shook Andre's hand, and I went to go shake their hands, and Ronaldo wouldn't shake my hand, and Andre flipped me off.
01:40:30.000So I was like, okay, no, this is fine.
01:40:31.000I just started laughing, and I walked it off.
01:40:34.000And then we go backstage, and I go to walk to do an interview, and Andre's waiting for me, like, past the curtains in the backstage area.
01:40:45.000And I don't think he realized the camera was there, but I saw the camera was there, and I was like, this is kind of...
01:40:52.000Jamie, go find the video, because there's a video of this.
01:40:54.000I was like, this is kind of out of character for Andre to be like talking shit to me when nobody's around.
01:43:21.000If you walk up to someone, call them a pussy, and push them, that's pretty much as far as you can go before you get into a fight.
01:43:29.000So I'm like, okay, there's gonna be a fight, let me start it off with a smack.
01:43:33.000And then I hit him, And I realized that he wasn't retaliating, and I was like, okay, this guy doesn't want to fight.
01:43:40.000So then I went to go walk away a second time, and he started following me, and I was like, okay, maybe he changed his mind and wants to fight again.
01:43:45.000So I smacked him again, and he just backed up, and I was just like, okay, he clearly doesn't want to fight, so I'm just going to walk away, go do my interview, and then he kept walking towards me, and then he started to get more bold when everyone was around.
01:43:56.000So I was like, well, we can fight right now.
01:44:01.000And then he just he clearly wasn't interested in fighting and I think what he thought was gonna happen because the Ottos guys are always like you know Gordon always always talk shit online, but then he's nice in person, which sure I am You know, but I'm not like a bitch like if you walk up to me and you start pushing me like we're gonna get into a fight like a You're talking shit online because it's part of your strategy for marketing yourself Yeah, I mean, I want to make money.
01:44:42.000Like, when I talk shit about Dylan and I say, like, hey, this guy's 18 and 16 as a black belt, like, that's not talking shit.
01:44:48.000That's just saying how terrible his record is as a black belt.
01:44:50.000Like, I just, people get upset because I talk about the numbers that I have and the numbers that these guys have, and nobody wants to hear that, and they just get upset about it.
01:44:58.000So, you know, most of what I do, unless someone, like, attacks me personally, is just talking about, like, how everybody sucks and I'm the best.
01:45:07.000That's a hand that's been busted a bunch of times, too, right?
01:45:09.000Yeah, so this one, I broke this one three times.
01:45:12.000The most recent one was a week before ADCC. I had a crazy...
01:45:16.000So this ADCC was like the worst for me because I'm seven months off the LCL surgery.
01:45:21.000I had food poisoning the day before, so I was like all fucked up.
01:45:25.000And a week before the tournament, I lived in New York, and I had Super 73s, the little electric bikes, and I used to ride those to training.
01:45:37.000And it was like late September, so it was getting kind of cold, and I'm like, this is the last time I'm going to use these bikes before I put them away for the winter.
01:45:48.000I was going to take them to the gym, back home, to the shop to get serviced, and then I was going to not use them.
01:45:53.000That was the last day of the year I was going to use them.
01:45:56.000Coincidentally, on the way there, Nat's bike gets a flat tire.
01:47:05.000The only time I feel like it's not as strong as my left wrist is when I do workouts where I have like a barbell or any kind of bar and I have weight on it and I have to go do curls like this.
01:47:14.000I feel like it's not as strong holding weight like this.
01:49:21.000Fucking number one thing for grapplers is the neck and the back.
01:49:24.000It's like those are the ones that when you fuck them up, you can't really fix them the way they can fix like an LCL. And it's not even, most of the time it's wrestling.
01:49:32.000It's like when I'm wrestling and guys are heavy on the head, that's what fatigues it.
01:49:35.000And other than that, I just had a grade 2 MCL tear when I was like 16. But I've been pretty lucky as far as catastrophic injuries go.
01:49:53.000So what I proposed was to do an ADCC rule style takedown match.
01:49:59.000Because an ADCC style rules takedown match is...
01:50:04.000Wrestling, but it's not wrestling in a traditional sense.
01:50:06.000There's submissions involved, and the scoring for ADCC, in order to score points by either taking someone down or taking their back, is completely different than any kind of wrestling scoring.
01:50:17.000So yes, he has the advantage in the standing position, he can take me down, but the scrimmage to the first point actually starts when you hit the ground.
01:50:24.000So what I proposed was we do an ADCC takedown match where...
01:50:28.000You have an advantage that you're a better wrestler, but I have an advantage that I know what the rules are, I know how to score under an ADCC. Explain to people ADCC's Abu Dhabi Combat Club, and the way they have it set up is for the first, how many minutes you don't score any points?
01:50:41.000So for the regular matches, it's five and five.
01:50:43.000It's five minutes no points, and then five minutes points.
01:50:46.000And unfortunately, the idea behind that was they were going to encourage people to go after submissions.
01:51:02.000And then you have the finals matches, which are 10 minutes, no points, 10 minutes with points, and then two possible 10-minute overtimes.
01:51:09.000So you have possible 40 minutes of wrestling.
01:51:11.000In the finals of ADCC. So the pace is much different, the stances are much different, and the criteria for scoring is vastly different.
01:51:19.000And he's like, no, I don't want to do that.
01:51:21.000I just want to do one match, which is no time limit, submission only, jujitsu, and one match, which is a freestyle wrestling match.
01:51:28.000And I'm like, well, we can do that, but, I mean, it's not going to be, like, exciting because you're clearly going to beat me in the wrestling match, and I'm clearly going to beat you in jujitsu match.
01:51:38.000So I was like, how can I make this more exciting?
01:51:42.000explain who pat downy is so so pat downy is an olympic level guy from the usa he's a wrestler um and he's just like he's just a guy from the usa who he just competed at the olympic trials he lost but he's like a legitimate guy who's beaten legitimate guys and he's won and he's he's operating at a high level in wrestling um and he wants to start fighting mma and he wants to start you know dabbling in jiu-jitsu but um he's known for his wrestling and he's primarily a wrestler.
01:52:09.000So he's like, I want to do one wrestling match and one jiu-jitsu match.
01:52:15.000So I didn't want to just go out and submit him because that wouldn't prove anything.
01:52:19.000What I wanted to prove was that under an ADCC rule set, I would be able to out—what we call it is scrimmage wrestling, where you scrimmage for the first point.
01:52:27.000Whoever gets the first point or submission wins.
01:52:29.000What I wanted to prove was that he wouldn't be able to score on me under an ADCC rule set, and that I would eventually tire him out, and I would be able to score on him and take him down multiple times.
01:52:42.000And we just got to the tipping point of when he was starting to get exhausted somewhere about 20 minutes in, and I took him down twice, and then I locked in a power half Nelson, which isn't a submission.
01:52:54.000And I just fucking lost my mind because I was just on the cusp of starting to take him down and embarrass him and he just basically gave up and quit in the middle of the match.
01:53:04.000So I was just furious about that because I went out to prove something and I wasn't able to because he just stopped in the middle of the match.
01:53:11.000And then we did a freestyle wrestling match and he teched me.
01:53:15.000He rolled me through a bunch of times and he teched me in like 20 seconds because...
01:53:21.000Yeah, he scored 11 points in like 20 seconds because he got behind me, took me down, and then I didn't belly out.
01:53:29.000I was just trying to do what I would do in jiu-jitsu, just get on top.
01:53:33.000So he's just rolling me through, rolling me through, rolling me through, and I'm like, oh, he's scoring this whole time, and then before you know it, the match is over.
01:53:39.000So we did one freestyle match and one jiu-jitsu submission-only match, and obviously he won the wrestling and I won the jiu-jitsu match, but I didn't win the jiu-jitsu match how I wanted to.
01:53:49.000I wanted to take him down a bunch of times and then submit him.
01:53:56.000What would have made more sense is a rule set like I had with Bo Nickel, where it was you could do jiu-jitsu, but you weren't allowed to pull guard.
01:54:07.000So I had to wrestle him until one of us got a takedown, and I wasn't allowed to sit to guard, and I wasn't allowed to do leg locks.
01:54:15.000So you've got a little bit of jiu-jitsu, you've got a little bit of wrestling, where he has the advantage standing, and I have the advantage on the ground.
01:54:22.000Yeah, that is definitely more interesting.
01:54:25.000Maybe with something like 1FC having you over there, they could entice some elite grapplers in other disciplines like wrestling or maybe judo or something like that.
01:54:36.000Yeah, I mean, that's definitely an option.
01:54:40.000And I think that wrestlers are always out to prove that wrestling is the best.
01:54:44.000But I do think there's something to be said for competing under an ADCC rules.
01:54:49.000Because if you think about it, if you're ultimately looking to transition to MMA... The scoring criteria for ADCC is the most like grappling in MMA. If you take someone down in a normal jiu-jitsu match, there's pretty much an unspoken rule where the bottom guy plays guard and the top guy tries to pass.
01:55:08.000But in MMA, if a guy gets taken down, what does he try to do?
01:55:12.000So then your whole thing is you have to hold him down to actually score the takedown.
01:55:18.000Or if he turns his back, you have to take his back.
01:55:20.000It's the same thing in ADCC. You have to get held down for three seconds.
01:55:23.000So what everyone does in ADCC is they don't just sit and accept the takedown.
01:55:29.000They try to pop back up to their feet.
01:55:30.000So it's very like MMA. There's just not punches, but there's submissions.
01:55:34.000And guys are trying to heist up and get away from you.
01:55:36.000You have to be able to hold them down or take their back.
01:55:38.000So, I mean, if you're looking to prepare for an MMA career, scrimmage wrestling under ADCC rules makes a lot of sense because it's very similar to what you do in MMA. And there are a lot of guys that are considering transitioning from wrestling into MMA because it's really one of the only viable professional outlets.
01:55:57.000Like, I know Flow Grappling has put on some professional matches for grapplers, and I know Jordan Burrows is making a living just doing grappling competitions, but it's not like MMA. It's not as prevalent.
01:56:11.000Like, in freestyle wrestling, if you Granby and expose your back, you get scored on.
01:56:15.000Like, in MMA, you can Granby, you can do all these things, you can do submissions.
01:56:18.000So, you know, wrestling under an ADCC rule set, like, to have a wrestler who practices that kind of MMA wrestling, it's much different than just a traditional, you know, freestyle or collegiate wrestling.
01:56:34.000I know that you were doing something the other day where you were talking about a gi sponsorship, and you were asking if somebody was willing to do something with you.
01:56:44.000Are you thinking about competing in the gi?
01:56:46.000I'm not going to compete in the gi, but I'm going to teach in the gi, and I just basically wanted a sponsor to...
01:56:52.000To sponsor me to wear their gis during what I'm teaching.
01:56:56.000For me, I'm not opposed to competing in the gi, but the thing about the gi is it's just not as fun for me to train in the gi as it is to train no gi.
01:57:07.000I find it's much more enjoyable for me to train no gi than it is in the gi.
01:57:11.000I feel like if I don't enjoy doing it, why am I going to do it in the first place?
01:57:17.000I feel like I'm the best in the world, debatably the best ever.
01:57:22.000Why would I take time away from that legacy to pursue something that I'm not even really particularly interested in?
01:57:29.000And honestly, that's dying in America.
01:57:31.000In the next 10 years, the Gi is pretty much going to be phased out as far as competitions in America.
01:57:35.000It's going to be like a novelty where They have some competitions here and there, but Nogi, as far as numbers support, Nogi is the way of the future as far as professional grappling goes.
01:57:47.000Well, it translates to MMA. Everybody understands the grappling in MMA. The same grappling applies to jujitsu with no gi.
01:57:53.000And you see people with the gi and they're doing all this crazy shit where they're pulling the collar around the back of the head.
01:59:50.000And if you look at like the old ADCCs, it was basically just an unspoken rule where it was dominated primarily by Brazilians.
01:59:58.000They would train the gi, they would show up, and they would take off their gi, and they would just hope for the best.
02:00:04.000But then you have a guy like Dean Lister who comes in who's a specialist, who only really trains no gi, who comes in and starts heel hooking people, and you're like, oh shit, this is different than what we're doing.
02:00:12.000We have to either adapt or we're going to lose.
02:00:15.000And, I mean, people have done a pretty poor job overall at adapting, to be honest.
02:00:20.000That's one of the other things I was going to get to.
02:00:22.000Has any other team sort of looked at the system that you guys have put together and adopted something similar or quasi-similar?
02:01:01.000But they don't see the nuances that make the difference between hitting on the best guys in the world and having it completely fail on the best guys in the world.
02:01:11.000They just look at the general outline and they try to copy it the best they can and they fiddle around with the position and they hope for the best.
02:01:17.000But no one's really even doing a good job of not even just copying us, but No one at all is going beyond what we're doing.
02:01:28.000Like what John does, he looks at the best guys in the world and he says, okay, this is a great move.
02:01:33.000How can I make it better and how can I go beyond what they're doing?
02:01:35.000What everyone's just trying to do is just a shitty version of what we're doing.
02:01:39.000They're not trying to look at us and be like, okay, this is good what they're doing, but how can I make it even better than what we're doing?
02:01:45.000But Craig Jones was the only guy that before he was training with you guys was looking at what you were doing and figured out a way to successfully emulate a lot of it.
02:01:54.000Yeah, I mean, Craig was very successful before he started training with us.
02:01:59.000I remember Craig may be one of the dumbest people I know because he lived in beautiful, sunny and beachy Australia, and he moved to this shithole that is New York to just take a train or a car through the Lincoln Tunnel every day.
02:02:18.000And he would come to that basement and train with us.
02:02:21.000And when he first got here, we'd do a lot of positional rounds.
02:04:49.000It's something that's okay to visit here and there, but I never liked the big city.
02:04:54.000I never liked that everyone was always so pissy and aggressive.
02:04:58.000I never liked being verbally and physically attacked by homeless people on subways, which I think is pretty normal for anyone to not want to be...
02:05:08.00050% tax and not, you know, not go out of your house and have a homeless guy shitting on your sidewalk.
02:05:14.000I think it's a pretty normal thing to request.
02:05:32.000Like, it was crazy when the lockdown first happened because, you know, we were still training, and we would drive into New York City, and there was just nobody there.
02:05:45.000Like, to drive into New York City and just see zero people, besides the homeless people, on the streets was just, like, it was, like, almost surreal.
02:05:52.000Like, you walk into Times Square, and there's just nobody there.
02:05:55.000Like, it was like a ghost town in New York.
02:05:57.000Everyone was afraid to leave their houses.
02:05:59.000And we were like, yeah, we're just going to keep training because what else are we going to do?
02:06:05.000So they're like, you guys can't train.
02:06:11.000And by the way, we're raising taxes and everything's going to cost more money because now we need to make up for the lost money that we have in taxes because...
02:06:24.000They kept raising prices on everything.
02:06:26.000And it's like, why am I going to stay here if I can't even legally go to train jujitsu and I'm just paying all these absurd prices for no reason?
02:06:38.000No, I came up with the idea to move to Puerto Rico because...
02:06:41.000So the biggest thing for us was that we weren't sure how COVID was going to affect opening up a school.
02:06:51.000So originally what we planned was to move to Puerto Rico as kind of a semi-permanent location because we had a friend in Puerto Rico who had a private mat space like in his house that we could train at if we needed to.
02:07:04.000So we were afraid of—we were looking at Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida, but we were afraid to move to Texas because there were so many uncertainties at the time.
02:07:12.000We didn't want to move to Texas, spend $200,000 opening up a school, and then having the government be like, you guys can't run this school, shut it down.
02:07:19.000And then we're like, well, what the fuck do we do?
02:07:21.000So we kind of use Puerto Rico as an intermediary step where we move there and worst case scenario, we would still have a place to train and mats to train on at a friend's place so that the competition guys could train and get ready for competition if they needed to.
02:07:34.000And now we're working on opening up a school there and it's a little bit more permanent for now.
02:07:39.000And so where are you guys training now?
02:07:40.000When I see you training, it looks like you're in a gym.
02:07:43.000Yeah, so we're in Combat 360, a buddy of ours, Juan, that we know through one of our mutual friends.
02:07:50.000He has a school down there in Guayanabo, and we're currently training in his gym.
02:07:56.000The problem is it's pretty much only big enough for just the competitors.
02:07:59.000So everyone's asking, oh, when can we come train, when can we come train?
02:08:01.000Well, whenever we get the school opened is when you guys can come train.
02:08:05.000Because right now it's a relatively small mat space and you put 15 people on the mat and it's crowded.
02:08:11.000So right now we're just working on a friend's gym.
02:08:13.000We're working on opening up a gym for us and then once the gym gets open it'll be a lot a lot easier.
02:08:18.000What led you to Puerto Rico versus New York or versus rather Texas or Florida?
02:08:25.000For us, it was just originally the COVID restrictions.
02:08:29.000Like I said, there were so many uncertainties as far as moving, like, you know, was Biden going to win or not?
02:08:36.000If he got into office, what was he going to do with the COVID restrictions?
02:08:39.000And we didn't want to move to Texas where...
02:09:02.000We didn't have any close friends in Texas or Florida that had a private space for us to train, provided a school wasn't going to be an option.
02:09:11.000But in Puerto Rico, we had friends there that just said, okay, we can lay mats down in my house, my garage, or wherever the case is, and we have enough mat space for 20 people to train on if we need, if a school isn't an option anywhere in the country.
02:09:23.000So the fact that we had a surefire place to train, even if gyms were getting shut down, was the reason why we moved there.
02:09:30.000So how many months went by before a competition was held?
02:10:10.000And then I think it's like somewhere...
02:10:12.000Five or six months into the lockdown, they started doing no spectator shows, and then it kind of just kicked off from there.
02:10:21.000And where do you anticipate, like, so the regulations, the way they have it set up in Puerto Rico, you can kind of do whatever you want, right?
02:12:52.000It has just enough power to where if you pop the clutch at 8,000 RPM, you can get the tires to break loose.
02:12:59.000And it's perfectly balanced 50-50 with the weight in the back.
02:13:02.000So if you pop the clutch and you get the tire spinning and you want to do a little drift, you can hold the drift easily without any experience because the car is giving you everything that it has as far as power go.
02:13:14.000So you can't overshoot it and spin around.
02:13:16.000It's like just impossible to do and it's perfectly balanced so you can like hold it in drifts You can do burnouts with it.
02:13:22.000It's like the best fuck the best car ever reporter Have you ever seen the company that's called flying Miata?
02:13:26.000I have yeah, they're ridiculous Yeah, what I wonder what those are like to drive because it's got upset the balance of the car a bit No, yeah, they put they have all kinds of crazy stuff They put Hellcat engines in the front of them like it just have like a 2000 2000 pound car at 700 horsepower Yeah.
02:13:43.000The fucking engine must be so much heavier than the...
02:14:01.000Yeah, and it actually is faster than that because you have to shift into third gear in order to actually hit 60. So if second gear carries you through 60 miles an hour, it would be like a mid-five, like a 5.4 or something like that.
02:14:13.000But you have to shift into third to hit 60. So it's quick, but it's definitely not fast.
02:14:18.000You're not going to get in the car and be like, oh my god, this car's fast.
02:15:43.000It has Apple CarPlay and has all the things that you need, but it still gives you this raw driving experience of an older 80s or 90s car where you feel like it's just you and the road and there's not much else to be distracted by.
02:15:59.000It's hard to get a mechanical feeling with these newer cars.
02:16:03.000One of my favorite cars that I have is a 2005 BMW M3. The old M3s are amazing.
02:16:08.000It's not nearly the fastest car that I have, but it's so mechanical.
02:16:12.000Everything about it, you feel everything.
02:16:14.000When you're shifting the gears and you're driving it, you feel when the tires are about to break, you can really feel it.
02:16:21.000There's nothing better for me than the old muscle car feel.
02:16:25.000I have the CTS-V that I bought from my dad, the 2017 CTS-V, and just the fact that if you just stomp on the gas, you're not sure whether or not you're going to die.
02:19:40.000I'm a giant fan of the old muscle cars.
02:19:43.000I was talking about just the fact that the CTS-V, where if you get into a nice Mercedes or a BMW or an all-wheel drive Audi and you stomp on the gas, It's fun, but you know what's going to happen.
02:19:56.000You're going straight line, it's going to be fast.
02:19:58.000With a Cadillac, you hit the gas, and you're like, at any moment I could die.
02:20:04.000You have 700 horsepower rear-wheel drive, and it's like, this bomb's gone off behind you.
02:20:10.000I have a Corsa exhaust on it, and the tires are spinning, the car's moving everywhere, and you're just like, wow, this is what I signed up for.
02:20:18.000LAUGHTER It's just so funny that it's a Cadillac.
02:20:21.000If anybody from the 1960s could see a Cadillac today, they'd be like, what the fuck happened?
02:22:15.000I actually have a buddy in Puerto Rico who's gonna, you can rent a track for like 200 bucks a day or something in Puerto Rico, and when I get back, actually, like one of the first days I get back, I'm gonna take the Miata to a track, and I'm gonna try to see if I can fuck around a little bit there with it.
02:22:31.000But it's definitely something that I want to do, I just have never done it.
02:22:34.000What do you think you're gonna be doing when you're done with all this competing?
02:22:39.000When I finish competing, I don't really know.
02:22:43.000When I finish competing and when I finish my competitive career, I want to compete until I'm 35 to 40. That's what my goal is now, as long as my body and my stomach are okay.
02:22:56.000Maybe I'm going to be – I'm definitely going to have enough money where I don't need to have – need to open up a school to support myself, but maybe I'm just going to be bored and maybe I just want to run a school to help other people and just because I love jiu-jitsu so much, I just want to teach.
02:23:11.000Or maybe I'm just going to be like, you know what, I've done jiu-jitsu for the last 20 years, fuck this.
02:23:15.000I don't want to have anything to do with it.
02:23:16.000And I just buy a house in the middle of the woods somewhere and not have to deal with anybody.
02:23:24.000Right now, with the current series of events that's happening in America, I feel like I'm just going to want to buy a house in the middle of the woods in Montana that you can't get to unless you helicopter and not be surrounded by anybody.
02:23:42.000But I think one of the things I also want to do when I retire, it's like on my bucket list, is I want to have like a rooftop tent on a truck, and I want to travel around teaching seminars to all 50 states and see which states I want to buy houses in, like see which states are the most enjoyable.
02:23:58.000So that's one of the things I want to do when I retire.
02:25:14.000So I basically just use my matches now to market whatever instructional I'm going to be coming out with soon.
02:25:19.000And these instructionals, here's the big question.
02:25:23.000How come people aren't seeing these instructionals and then utilizing your system and then why don't we see like a bunch of clones of the Don of Her Death Squad out there?
02:25:32.000You see them in the up-and-coming generations.
02:25:35.000The guys who are already established are too arrogant to watch them.
02:25:39.000And it's just like I talk about, like, most people get to a certain level, usually it's black belt, and then they coast with that level of technique and they don't really get any better.
02:25:46.000So if you go to, like, ADCC Worlds, you see your typical 2010 Jiu-Jitsu.
02:25:54.000If you go to ADCC Trials with all the up-and-coming guys, you see pretty much just a mimic of what our game is.
02:26:00.000Everyone uses Ashigrami's into leg locks.
02:26:02.000People are trapping arms from the back.
02:26:04.000So you see a lot of the younger generation and the new school guys trying to do what we do, but the old school guys, the guys who I'm competing against currently, won't even bother.
02:26:15.000They're too lazy to watch an 11-hour instructional on back attacks.
02:26:20.000And they just were like, you know what, fuck this guy.
02:26:22.000I'm gonna do the same shit I've been doing for the last, you know, 25 years.
02:26:27.000How long do you think they can last doing that though?
02:26:30.000It seems like with the new guys coming up, you do see these more complex games.
02:26:37.000Well, you see a general pattern in jiu-jitsu.
02:26:41.000You see a guy get to a certain level, he wins a few competitions, or a few big competitions.
02:26:47.000Then he coasts on the technique he has, and the only progression that he makes from the age of 25, where he wins his first ADCC, to the age of 35...
02:26:57.000Everyone just takes more steroids so they just get bigger and stronger and they just coast in the same technique they have and then by the time they're 35 to 40 they peak physically and then after that they kind of degenerate and then that's the end of the career.
02:27:12.000So I mean What we're focused on is rapid progression over a small amount of time.
02:27:24.000Myself at 35, I won't even be competitive with myself now.
02:27:28.000Whereas most guys, a 25-year-old competitor versus a 35-year-old competitor, they're relatively the same in technique, but the 35-year-old guy has just 10 more years of juice, and he's just a little bit bigger and stronger.
02:29:12.000Well, actually, he did a thing about me and Lachlan Giles because we were arguing about him being on steroids.
02:29:19.000And I forget what he actually concluded because it was more about, it was like a natty or not, but it was also like talking about the argument between me and Lachlan and, you know, building, gaining mass in a sport where you're basically just doing cardio all day.
02:29:35.000So it was like a natty or not, but it was mixed with some other arguments that I had with some guy online.
02:29:40.000But his argument, well, his video about Paulo Costa and John Jones and all these guys that have either failed tests or had issues in the past was very enlightening because I didn't know how much wiggle room there was.
02:30:01.000And, like, if you think about it, like, USADA has a certain amount of resources, and WADA has a certain amount of resources, but beating drug tests, like for the Olympics, is like a multi-billion dollar industry, and you have countries behind beating drug tests.
02:30:19.000Like, your country wants to win the Olympics.
02:30:21.000Like, you have the country of Germany, the country of the US, the country of Russia.
02:30:26.000Dedicating scientists and billions of dollars to getting these guys to pass the drug test to win the Olympics.
02:30:32.000The industry for beating drug tests has a lot more money going through it than the industry for drug testing itself.
02:30:39.000Yeah, well, if you've seen the documentary Icarus, have you seen that?
02:30:46.000It's a documentary that they basically got very lucky.
02:30:52.000And the guy, Brian Fogel, who's the director of the documentary and he created it, he was going to do a bike race clean and then do it the next year juiced and document it and see how much of an effect it actually has on cycling.
02:31:06.000So he does it clean, and then he hires this guy who's the head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency.
02:31:11.000Well, when he does that, it is right at the same time where they get busted for the Sochi Olympics.
02:31:17.000So what they did with the Sochi Olympics is the Russian team had this really elaborate scam where they put a hole in the wall, and they were passing clean urine through and taking the dirty urine.
02:31:28.000So they had all the urine stored in this one room.
02:31:30.000And they had figured this out by doing a microanalysis of the glass that the urine was in.
02:31:36.000They found scratches that indicated that they figured out a way to get past this very sophisticated locking mechanism that was previously thought to be impossible to open up.
02:31:47.000And so these guys had done that, and they had swapped urine out, and then they got busted, and now this guy, Gregory Rechenkov, had to escape Russia in fucking the cover of night and come over to America.
02:32:16.000The Russian athletes, all of them, across the board were juiced.
02:32:22.000He said the only people that weren't juiced were the figure skaters, because they didn't find any benefit in juicing them, and with their fine motor skills deteriorated, and they also found that the females looked too manly.
02:32:36.000It's always funny to see guys that are competing at like 35 years old that are like twice as jacked and twice as cut as they were when they were 25 years old.
02:33:11.000It was way down the line that it didn't even make sense to give it to the next guy.
02:33:14.000So it's really interesting how everyone thinks that if you can pass a USADA test that you're like 100% clean and I just don't believe that's the case at all.
02:35:12.000Am I going to relinquish the title and move to MMA? Am I going to relinquish the super fight title and move back to the division and do the absolute?
02:35:23.000Have you ever gotten to a situation like that where you had to compete against a teammate?
02:35:26.000I had to compete against Gary Tonin at the last ABCC. That's right.
02:35:30.000Everybody thinks that match was fake, but that was the most heartbreaking.
02:35:34.000That's the thing that annoys me the most is everyone thinks it was fake, but it was 100% real, and it was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever had to do because Gary is one of my first coaches.
02:35:43.000Gary was a black belt when I was a blue belt, and he was one of the first guys who really helped me move up through the ranks.
02:35:49.000He introduced me to John, and he was a big part of my career, my early career, and even my career now.
02:35:56.000And that was the first year that they allowed two people from the same team to be in the absolute.
02:36:04.000But the way the ADCC does it is because there used to be so many fake fights in the semifinals or the finals that they make all the teammates fight second round now.
02:36:12.000So you can't fake a fight and then go to the finals being fresh, or you can't fake a fight in the finals.
02:36:18.000So they make all the teammates fight second round.
02:36:22.000So I had to go out and compete against Gary second round.
02:36:24.000And everyone thinks it was fake because it looks like he just gave me his back.
02:36:28.000But Gary knew that his one chance of definitively beating me was to leg lock me.
02:36:35.000So he tried to back step into my legs.
02:37:01.000And now they have, like, what they do is they have, like, three-way agreements where, like, not even guys on different teams will make agreements to, you know, to beat one guy on the other side of the bracket they don't like.
02:37:13.000Like, who has the best chance of beating a guy we don't like?
02:37:16.000Or if it's this guy, then we'll do two fake matches and this guy will go to the finals.
02:37:44.000You know where Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu started from, right?
02:37:46.000It started from, like, the Gracies, like, fucking going in and beating the shit out of karate instructors for fun and taking over their schools.
02:37:51.000Like, what are you guys talking about?
02:38:49.000So it's just funny to watch coming up to the ranks and seeing all the crazy shit that happens when people are either competing or negotiating to do competitions.
02:39:01.000It is funny when you go back and look at the old school jiu-jitsu matches or just old school fights like when Hicks and Gracie fought Hugo Duarte on the beach, smacked him in the face and started the fight and then they're fighting on the sand.
02:39:15.000And then the camera cuts out, next thing you know he's on top of them.
02:39:17.000That was like a normal day for those guys.
02:39:20.000And now I smack Andre after he assaults me and everyone's like, Andre should sue him.
02:39:27.000How do we get from here to where we are now?
02:41:13.000They treat it like a hobby where they want to make money doing it, but they don't actually put in the work to be able to achieve the things that they want.
02:41:20.000And maybe they win a tournament here, maybe they win an ADCC there, but in order to make money doing jiu-jitsu, there's a lot more to it than just going out and winning a few tournaments.
02:41:29.000You have to market yourself well, you have to be present on social media, you have to be able to teach people, you have to speak well.
02:41:36.000There's a lot more than just winning competitions.
02:42:21.000I mean, it's hard to keep up, and that's one of the things I pride myself on the most is that I work harder and I work smarter than all the rest of the guys, and it shows.
02:42:33.000And I just feel like I'm at a level now where I'm getting better faster than I ever was, and I feel like the more time that goes on, it's just going to get worse and worse for everybody.
02:42:45.000Because the more you know about the sport, the more you can understand the mechanics and the biomechanics, the easier it is to go back and fix mistakes from day to day.
02:42:54.000Like, when I was at Brown Belt, for example, if I had a problem from mount, I would either have to sit in the position and try to...
02:43:04.000I'd be there for 30 minutes or an hour trying to figure out what the best options are, or I would go to John and I would ask him the question.
02:43:09.000But now I understand how everything works.
02:43:11.000So if I run into an issue, I can just think about, okay, what are the rational ideas I can play with here that will get me to a solution that works?
02:43:20.000So the more you know about jiu-jitsu, the easier it is to go back and kind of reverse engineer what issues you have, and you can solve problems by yourself.
02:43:27.000So that you're an independent problem solver rather than someone who just has to go and ask somebody else a question and you get an answer from the guy.
02:43:33.000So you can innovate stuff and you can create stuff on your own and you can go beyond, like John's whole thing is he wants to go beyond what he teaches us.
02:43:42.000He doesn't want to create a bunch of robots who just try to copy what he says.
02:43:45.000So he gives us an idea and then we run with that idea and we innovate on our own and we end up creating something completely different, completely new from what he was originally showing us.
02:43:55.000Well, whatever you do, whether it's MMA or jujitsu, I'm gonna watch.