John Donaghy is one of the most fascinating characters in the world of jiu jitsu. He started out as a jiu-jitsu student at the University of British Columbia, where he went on to become a full-time martial arts practitioner. He's been in the business for a long time, and is a master in his own right. John is also a huge fan of the Gucci Fanny Pack, which is a piece of designer leather that's been around for a while, but it's making a comeback. Joe and John discuss the history of the fanny pack, how it's made a comeback, and why you should be worried about your position in the sexual food chain if you don't have one. John also talks about how to get a good night's rest when you're a martial arts student, and how to make the most out of your time in the martial arts world, and what it really means to be a power lifter. If you're interested in learning more about John's background and martial arts, then you should definitely check out his YouTube channel, "JUICY" on YouTube, where you can watch his videos and get some tips and tricks on how to be the best martial arts martial artist you can be in the best possible way to get the best of your day to day life. You'll get a lot out of what you're doing, and you'll learn a lot more in less time than you have to do it. Enjoy! - Joe & Joe Joe & John - The Best Fiends Podcast The Best of the Best Podcasts of the Decade by John Donaghys - Jon & Joe don't know you're going to have a good time? Don't Tell Me What You're Not Having A Good Day - Don't Be That Good Enough - Don t Tell Me Who You're Good Enough by Don't Ask Me What's Good or Don't Give Me a Good Day by Don t Be That's a Bad Idea? Don't Get It Wrong by John or I'll Tell Me About It by Joe Rogan (featuring John Don't Care About It? - John is a podcast that's Good Or Not Good by Donaghs Podcasting About It on YouTube: and I'm Too Good or Not Good By Me by John McElroy If You're Having A Bad Day, Don't Say It's Not Good Enough?
00:02:16.000Well, what the internet is, is it shows what people are like when there's no social cues, when they're not in front of you, they don't have to deal with, like, looking you in the eye, and what weird little hidden demons of jealousy and anger and resentment.
00:02:32.000And it's a pretty sad story, isn't it?
00:02:34.000If that's what we're really like, it's not looking good for the human race.
00:02:38.000I just think it's the kind of people that comment in general.
00:02:42.000What it shows you is that 99% of what we call human goodness and politeness really comes out of fear of consequences.
00:04:45.000It's no exaggeration to say that the study of martial arts in English-speaking countries, North America, Western Europe, etc., was absolutely dominated by the striking arts.
00:04:56.000And if you ask the average person who was the best fighter in the world, they would typically say whoever was the best boxer in the world.
00:05:05.000So in the 1980s, Mike Tyson wasn't just the best boxer in the world, he was the best fighter in the world.
00:05:31.000It's one of the few countries where there's no indigenous wrestling culture.
00:05:33.000There were, but it was kind of lost in the sands of time.
00:05:38.000When I grew up, wrestling was something I saw once every four years at the Olympics on TV. And I didn't even associate it with fighting, to be honest with you.
00:05:48.000I just saw it as this strange sport where two guys tackled each other.
00:05:52.000And so I came to the United States and I was working as a bouncer.
00:05:57.000America has much, much more of a wrestling culture in it.
00:06:00.000In New Zealand, when I grew up, when you fought, you were expected to fight with fists and if it went to the ground, the two guys stood up and they resumed fighting.
00:06:07.000You stood up and you fought like a man.
00:06:10.000And in the United States, when I was bouncing, I was Absolutely shocked and impressed by the prowess of judo players and wrestlers in street fighting, working as a bouncer.
00:06:22.000I worked alongside them and I was massively impressed.
00:06:48.000It's become like a giant TGI Fridays now.
00:06:50.000That's pretty much what New York City is.
00:06:52.000To give you an example, I used to live on West End Avenue on the Upper West Side.
00:06:58.000When I would come home from working in nightclubs at 5.30 in the morning to go to sleep, there would be large numbers of street-walking prostitutes on my block, my avenue.
00:07:14.000If you saw even a single street-walking prostitute in that area today, it would be front-page news of the New York Times.
00:07:22.000It would be so shocking, so completely out of people's minds.
00:11:49.000So it made a massive difference, but I still saw it as something that was interesting and something I just wanted to gain competence in.
00:11:58.000That fundamentally changed because really at that point I wanted to finish my PhD and become a professor.
00:12:03.000That was my original goal when I came to the United States.
00:12:07.000But things started to change when the three senior students at the Henzo Gracie Academy, Hikato Almeida, Matt Serra, and Rodrigo Gracie all went their separate ways.
00:12:17.000They had to go out and start their own schools.
00:12:19.000And Henzo was busy fighting professionally in Japan, so he couldn't be at the academy all the time.
00:12:24.000And he came to me and he said, John, you're going to have to be a teacher.
00:13:28.000And so I decided my primary focus in Juditsu would be upon teaching.
00:13:34.000And fortunately, I came from an academic background.
00:13:37.000I had many brilliant, brilliant professors coming through the philosophy programs, both in New Zealand and the United States.
00:13:44.000Columbia University had a fantastic PhD program.
00:13:48.000So I was very experienced in the art of teaching, but in an academic context.
00:13:54.000And I thought, maybe this has given me, fate has given me this angle where I can use an academic approach to teaching in a sports environment.
00:14:05.000And that has really become one of the patterns of my approach to teaching a jiu-jitsu.
00:14:12.000So this is in the 90s and you are a purple belt at the time.
00:14:18.000When did you develop this leg lock system that has become so legendary?
00:14:24.000So for people, for the uninitiated that have never heard of you or understand what we're talking about here, For the longest time, jujitsu was primarily attacks on the arms and the neck.
00:15:02.000But you all of a sudden came along with this very effective system that there was rumblings many years ago about this where a lot of people were talking about it.
00:15:16.000And a lot of people were saying that, you know, John Donaher has this insane leg lock system, and then you started developing all these...
00:15:25.000For people who don't know, the top grapplers in the world...
00:15:28.000There's a lot of top grapplers in the world.
00:15:30.000Jiu-Jitsu is incredibly competitive, but...
00:15:33.000You're recognized as being one of the premier coaches of the most promising young people, like Gordon Ryan, who you're talking about before, who's an Abu Dhabi champion, Gary Tonin, Nicky Ryan, Eddie Cummings.
00:15:46.000You have an incredible crew of world-class strangle artists who are also known to be some of the very best leg lockers in the world.
00:17:37.000In my case, it was a great American grappler called Dean Lister.
00:17:41.000Dean Lister was invited by Matt Serra to come to the Henzo Gracie Academy.
00:17:45.000I believe, don't quote me on this, but I believe Dean was a brown butt at the time.
00:17:48.000I'm pretty sure Matt was a brown butt at the time, too.
00:17:51.000And he brought him in for around three days and he trained mostly with Matt Serra in preparation for a grappling tournament, if I remember correctly.
00:17:58.000Now Dean was known mostly in those days for his Achilles lock.
00:18:04.000Later on he would become a heel hook specialist, but in those days it was mostly an Achilles lock.
00:18:08.000And he came to the academy, he rolled with some people, and he was doing Achilles locks and getting some success.
00:18:16.000I remember he couldn't really get his stuff to work on Matt Serra, and Matt Serra could get his stuff to work on him.
00:18:22.000But he was doing something which was unusual.
00:18:27.000And so I talked with him just briefly after class, and I said, you know, it's interesting what you're doing with these Achilles locks, because I don't really do that at all.
00:19:36.000He would allow his students to go in any direction they wanted, provided they could prove it was effective.
00:19:43.000So I started studying leg locks, and that's where I'm going to come to the second question, which you asked, which is why did leg locks have such a bad reputation in jiu-jitsu?
00:23:30.000What's the most explosive event in the Olympic Games?
00:23:34.000The event that probably requires more Transfer of energy and development of kinetic energy than any other.
00:23:43.000There's a bunch you could name, but one of them for me is always going to be the javelin throw.
00:23:48.000The javelin throw involves a full powered sprint, a jump, a massive explosive turning of both hips and shoulders, and a throw.
00:24:01.000All the quintessential explosive elements of the human body are involved in the javelin throw, probably to a greater degree than any other Olympic event.
00:24:11.000And as a result, people can throw a javelin 80, 90 meters.
00:24:16.000What would happen if you took those same javelin throwers and made them perform the same event on their knees?
00:27:52.000Neon Valley scores more than side control, because from distance of Neon Valley you can strike with more power.
00:27:58.000It's inherently unstable, however, so it scores less than mount, which is inherently more stable, and offers the same punching platform.
00:28:07.000Step number three of Jiu Jitsu is to work your way through a hierarchy of pins where the pins are graded in value according to your ability to strike with effect on the ground.
00:28:18.000So far we've got three elements in this system of Jiu Jitsu.
00:28:23.000Step number one, get the fight down to the ground where explosive kinetic energy is less likely to be developed by a dangerous opponent.
00:28:30.000Step number two, get past his dangerous legs.
00:28:33.000Step number three, work your way through this hierarchy of pins where the pins are understood in terms of the potential to harm your opponent with strikes on the floor.
00:29:48.000When the system's not working and you can't take your opponent down, you can't pass as guard, you can't maintain a dominant position, and you can't get the regular submissions to work, fuck it.
00:30:39.000The worst injuries in Jiu-Jitsu don't come from submission holds.
00:30:42.000The worst injuries in Jiu-Jitsu come from falling body weight.
00:30:45.000When people jump guard, when people accidentally, when poorly performed takedowns, that's where you see catastrophic injuries in Jiu-Jitsu.
00:31:40.000The first thing is our four-step rendition of Jiu Jitsu I looked at Jiu Jitsu from top position, where we took our opponent down to the ground and we were on top of them.
00:31:51.000But my study of Jiu Jitsu didn't start from top position.
00:31:56.000If you look at my students in competition, you will notice that around 80% of their entries into leg locks come from bottom position or with their opponent behind them.
00:32:07.000In other words, from what are supposedly inferior positions.
00:32:13.000So for me, it was never a question of losing position when I went for leg locks because I was already underneath my opponent.
00:32:24.000So most of my early work in leg locks was how to get into leg locks from disadvantageous positions, from underneath or when someone is behind me.
00:32:34.000So I never felt this problem of, okay, I'm going to lose position if I go for leg locks.
00:32:40.000I could still play a conventional jiu-jitsu game and have a very, very strong leg lock injury.
00:32:44.000That was the first avenue of leg locking.
00:32:47.000But things became more interesting when I got further into the leg lock game and I started to realize that as you add leg locks into the game, you change the very nature of the sport.
00:33:04.000If you look at Jiu Jitsu as it's ordinarily practiced, it's a single direction game.
00:33:11.000If someone is in front of me and I'm standing over them, Jiu Jitsu is all about movement from the legs towards the head.
00:33:20.000I'm supposed to pass their guard, work my way up to chest-to-chest contact, and get my head next to their head, either in front of them or behind them, either mounted or rear-mounted.
00:33:32.000So Jiu-Jitsu always goes in one direction.
00:33:35.000If you ever get stopped or you lose position, you just start the process over again.
00:33:54.000So if I'm passing someone's guard and I simply can't do it, I can fall back and go back into the legs.
00:34:00.000If I'm side control on someone and they start to recompose their guard, I can fall back into the legs.
00:34:04.000I'm going from their upper body down to their lower body.
00:34:07.000Traditional Jiu-Jitsu always goes from the lower body, directionally, up to the upper body.
00:34:12.000So you end up head-to-head with your opponent.
00:34:15.000But once you start adding leg locks, Jiu-Jitsu for the first time becomes a two-directional sport instead of a one-directional sport.
00:34:22.000And you can play your opponent's reactions between the threat of lower body and upper body in ways that opens up submissions so much more easily than the traditional game.
00:34:32.000So if I take you back to the moment where Dean Lister says to you, why would you ignore 50% of the human body?
00:34:39.000You go back and think about this, and what is your next step?
00:34:44.000Do you just start looking at students and looking at what you're teaching and analyzing positions?
00:38:08.000They have very little to do with position.
00:38:10.000For example, Ashigurami itself scores nothing in Jiu-Jitsu, but done well, it can control an opponent just as well as rare mount can.
00:38:18.000So I started to see that there are many forms of control that went outside of the traditional, basic, positional hierarchy of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
00:38:30.000Probably the single greatest key in the development of my leg lock system again came from a simple realization that the greatest mistake that people had made in leg lock work prior to the arrival of the squad was that they made no distinction between the mechanism of braking and the mechanism of control.
00:38:55.000Ashigurami was the mechanism of control.
00:38:58.000The lock itself, whether it be a heel hook, an Achilles lock, a figure four toe hold, that was the mechanism of breaking.
00:39:05.000If you watch 99% of the people out there who claim to be experts in leg locking, they don't distinguish between the two.
00:39:13.000They see, for example, heel hooking as a single skill.
00:39:18.000There's the lock on the legs, the ashigurami or whatever term they use for it, and the lock itself.
00:39:27.000You can't differentiate the ashigurami and the lock.
00:39:30.000And you'll see people teaching in this manner.
00:39:33.000What I did was to strongly distinguish between the two so that my students could all hold an ashigurami position and switch from one ashigurami to another and hold people for extended periods of time and inhibit movement.
00:39:48.000If I can inhibit movement for long periods of time, I can break you at will.
00:39:53.000I can take my time when I come to break you.
00:39:57.000Because the control is there, the control is prime, the break is second.
00:40:01.000For most people it's just throw on the ashigurami and immediately go for the lock.
00:40:06.000The ashigurami is described as part of the heel hook.
00:40:09.000They don't distinguish between the two.
00:40:12.000Once I made that realization in the early 2000s, that's when the ball started rolling.
00:40:19.000That's when a significant amount of progress was made.
00:40:26.000I would say that your question was an interesting one.
00:40:34.000It was making first a critical distinction between control and submission, and in the case of leg logging, between the mechanism of control, ashigurami, and the mechanism of braking, which is the lock itself.
00:40:48.000A really good example of this is how effective it's been implemented by your students against real world class Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitors who don't use these methods.
00:41:01.000Like a good one is Gordon Ryan versus Cyborg.
00:41:07.000Cyborg who is a fucking beast of a man and just a physical specimen, a real freak.
00:41:14.000And is known for his tornado guard, is no stranger to leg locks.
00:41:19.000He's no stranger to any of the positions of no gi or gi jujitsu.
00:41:24.000But when I watched Gordon wrap him up and control him, and before he got the submission, you could see Cyborg look completely befuddled.
00:41:34.000Yeah, the match was over roughly 30 seconds before the submission was applied.
00:41:39.000Yeah, he was just trying to figure out a way out of it and just...
00:41:43.000It was a terrifying position to be in for...
00:41:47.000A real world-class brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt like cyborg when you watch that that match I was like this is stunning because gordon is what 21 years Which is amazing and cyborgs in his 30s, right?
00:42:01.000I think cyborg has been a black belt Many many years longer than gordon has even been doing jiu-jitsu.
00:42:07.000Yeah, he's one of the best guys in the world And when you look at how well Gordon dismantled him on the ground using the strategy that you just described, it just...
00:42:43.000I think cyborg and pitbull are two most commonly seen.
00:42:46.000So we're watching it here now, and you see cyborg who is this...
00:42:51.000Fucking tank of a man and Gordon Ryan is quite a physical specimen himself, but much younger guy Hasn't how long has don't Gordon been doing jujitsu?
00:43:01.000I believe it's between six and a half and seven years total now.
00:43:05.000That's fucking crazy and immediately he dives under Gets low Using butterfly guard And so what he's trying to do, Gordon is trying to do what with Cyborg's legs?
00:43:21.000The first thing that Gordon Ryan needs to do is establish inside position with his feet.
00:43:28.000Probably the single biggest starting point for any kind of Ashigarami-based game, if you want to remember anything about this, Joe, remember this.
00:43:39.000Whenever you go into leg locks, the person whose feet dominate the inside position will always dominate the Ashigurami game.
00:43:46.000That's the heuristic that I teach all of my students.
00:43:48.000Gordon Ryan has just established inside position.
00:43:50.000Well, Cyborg just pulled him in, which is interesting.
00:43:54.000Cyborg literally pulled him in with his feet inside.
00:43:57.000Yeah, but Gordon's feet were positioned in a way where they could only end up in the inside position.
00:44:24.000Initially, there's a battle going on here for inside foot position.
00:44:28.000Cyborg is an extremely well-trained and knowledgeable opponent, and he's doing a good job of trying to backstep with his left leg.
00:44:35.000He knows that if he keeps both of his feet on the left-hand side of Gordon Ryan's body, he will be able to prevent his opponent getting inside position.
00:46:53.000The foundational principle of control in leg locking is a principle I refer to as double trouble.
00:46:58.000Double trouble is a simple idea that if I control both of my opponent's legs, he no longer has the opportunity to use his second leg to defend the first.
00:47:08.000So the amount of trouble that you've put him in is literally doubled in a matter of seconds.
00:47:12.000Gordon Ryan has a hold of Cyborg's right leg with his left arm.
00:47:19.000And he has a hold of Cyborg's left leg with his legs.
00:47:24.000Why was I so confident that the match is over at this point?
00:47:28.000Because both of Cyborg's legs are now controlled by Gordon Ryan.
00:51:16.000Here, Cyborg is one of the most dangerous Jutsu players in the world, but with two of his feet locked together, he's effectively neutralized.
00:51:24.000Perhaps most importantly, we've got a very interesting distinction here between what we call a primary and a secondary leg.
00:51:31.000Which leg is the ashigurami locked up on?
00:51:36.000Well, he's got the left leg is what's triangle.
00:52:48.000Movement has been taken away from him, so his only option is to fight the hands.
00:52:53.000Gordon Ryan understands that he has control of the secondary leg, but he needs to make a transition to the primary leg in order to break Cyborg.
00:53:06.000He's going to have to release the secondary leg.
00:56:13.000It's immobilizing the leg he really wants to attack.
00:56:16.000He's switched his arm position from controlling the secondary leg, which he hasn't yet fully released, but he's put his elbow in front of the toes of the primary leg.
00:56:29.000To keep that primary leg from extending.
00:59:02.000If someone else was coming out and wrecking people with a given rule, I'd be studying what they're doing too.
00:59:07.000So yeah, there does seem to be an industry of that.
00:59:10.000The question is how successful are they?
00:59:13.000Do you see any other groups of people coming out and just exclusively finishing people with the same moves time and time again for years at a time at all levels of competition?
00:59:23.000You're seeing more Tenth Planet guys do that now.
00:59:26.000Tenth Planet guys have given you all the credit in the world, by the way, that they've started transitioning to a lot more leg lock attacks, leg lock defense.
01:00:05.000But I think at this point it's pretty clear that people have changed their minds about leg locks.
01:00:10.000People, I think, are recognizing that there's something different going on here, that this is a control-based approach to leg locks rather than, you know, a speed and power-based approach to leg locks.
01:00:21.000And the evidence for its success really comes from the nature of the squad itself.
01:00:27.000If you look at the three founding members of the squad, Eddie Cummings, Gordon Ryan and Gary Tonin, All three have very, very different body types.
01:00:35.000All three have very, very different personalities.
01:00:38.000And yet all three use a very similar game.
01:00:42.000Two of those three athletes came from nowhere.
01:00:45.000They had no competition record before they started training with me at the Henzo Gracie Academy.
01:00:54.000I believe Gary Tottenham was a brown belt competitor in the Gi, but he had no leg lock game.
01:01:01.000He was a guy who was essentially known for scrambling from bottom half guard and using rear naked strangles out of scrambles.
01:01:09.000Strangles out of scrambles, my God, that was a tongue twister.
01:01:13.000So Gary Tom was a particularly interesting case because he came to me as an already developed athlete.
01:01:18.000He's trained under a very good friend of mine, Tom DeBless, and completely changed his game.
01:01:24.000So that showed something very interesting.
01:01:26.000That showed that someone could already have a developed game and then take on this and change their game.
01:01:32.000So that was a particularly interesting case.
01:01:33.000With the case of Eddie Cummings and Gordon Ryan, they came to me early in their development, so they took it on wholesale, as it were.
01:01:42.000I think this style and approach and one of the things that's so fascinating about it is it really requires someone like you to systematically break it down the way you have described it.
01:01:58.000But I never stopped and thought of all the positions in the system, all the steps in the system, take the fight to the ground, get past the dangerous legs, achieve some sort of a dominant position, go for the submission.
01:02:14.000What I find with most Jiu-Jitsu players is that they know what they're doing on an unconscious level.
01:02:19.000My job as a coach is to make it conscious.
01:02:22.000Now, for me, the most interesting thing, when I first started thinking about jiu-jitsu as a system, I did that when I wrote a book for my sensei, Henzo Gracie.
01:02:33.000He asked me to write a book, and I started thinking deeply about, you know, what is this thing that I study?
01:02:39.000And when you start consciously thinking about, okay, breaking it down into steps, you see Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a step-by-step system.
01:02:48.000My question was, can I go further than that?
01:02:52.000If jiu-jitsu was a simple single system, what about if you divided jiu-jitsu up into niche areas and instead of having one overall system you had an overall system with many subsystems within it.
01:03:10.000So you had a leg system, a back system, a front headlock system, a kimura system.
01:03:15.000My approach to jiu-jitsu is that I had recognized that much of the success of early Brazilian Jiu Jitsu came from its systematic nature.
01:03:24.000The fact that it was a systems-based approach to Jiu Jitsu and I took various niche areas and created systems within systems.
01:03:35.000Then things started getting interesting when I started integrating the system so that one subsystem failed you could transfer to another.
01:03:42.000That meant that my students could put Opponents who had trained much, much longer than they had into a niche area which my students had so much knowledge of, so much training in that isolated niche domain that they could take someone who had trained three, four times longer than themselves and have more knowledge in that one domain than their much more experienced opponent did.
01:04:07.000And so what you saw with the squad was incredibly speedy progress where they were getting wins against people who trained two, three times longer than they had.
01:04:16.000And this idea of what I call integrated subsystems, instead of having Jiu Jitsu as just one simple single system, you keep the overall system of Jiu Jitsu, but you have subsystems within it, each one integrated with the other, so that when one system fails, you can pass off to another and go back and forth until you get the win.
01:04:37.000If I can innovate Jiu Jitsu in any given direction, that's probably the one I would push the most.
01:04:41.000Now, throughout this time, you're dealing with some pretty significant injuries and physical limitations that you've had.
01:04:50.000Tell me about those, what those were, and how those hindered you.
01:04:56.000When I was in my early teens, I was involved in a rugby injury where my knee was massively injured.
01:05:04.000Over the next six years I would dislocate my knee.
01:05:10.000The ligaments appeared to be severely compromised.
01:05:14.000Every six months or so I'd get a fresh injury which would be severe and I'd be on crutches.
01:05:19.000I spent a significant amount of my teenage years on crutches.
01:05:24.000Around the age of 19 I had one last injury and my knee just seemed to have no power in it.
01:05:33.000Things like I walked with a limp and you must remember this is in the 1980s in New Zealand and this is pre-MRIs, pre-arthroscopic surgery.
01:05:44.000The doctors said well we can do an operation where we shorten the ligaments so there's less looseness in there and hopefully your knee will be strong again.
01:05:54.000An operation was performed and unfortunately the ligaments were cut too short and as a result my leg never straightened again.
01:06:06.000I developed a severe case of atherofibrosis where my knee actually became deformed and doesn't straighten.
01:06:16.000Simple actions like walking, kneeling are extremely painful for me and have been my whole life.
01:06:32.000Also, there were other kind of structural problems as I got older.
01:06:35.000Because I walk with a limp and one leg significantly bent and one straight, I tend to be completely out of balance, out of sync with my body.
01:06:44.000So I soon developed considerable hip and back pain.
01:06:48.000So this is something I carried with me my whole life.
01:06:53.000And when I started jiu-jitsu at the age of 28, there was a concern, you know, am I going to be able to do this?
01:07:00.000Well, fortunately, ground grappling as a rule is generally easier on your body than standing martial arts.
01:07:08.000I don't think, for example, with my leg I could even become moderately effective at Muay Thai or Taekwondo or something where you have to be able to jump and land.
01:08:57.000So yeah, I had this problem and things didn't really become critical until my mid to early 40s when as a result of walking my whole life with a limp, my left hip started to become completely bone on bone.
01:09:13.000So then the problems doubled because now I had a Completely screwed up knee and a hip, but I couldn't get any kind of operations because George St-Pierre was fighting, Chris Weidman was fighting.
01:09:25.000They both had great goals and so I delayed the hip operation as long as I could until George had his first retirement and Chris Weidman became a world champion and then moved further away to Long Island.
01:09:41.000At that time I started training the squad and my first active competitive grappling student was Eddie Cummings and I was able to work effectively with him as best I could with my hip problems and of course the original leg problem and then at some point I got to a point where I literally If I walked down a New York City block,
01:10:09.000I would have to stop several times and just stand on the side of the road and wait for my hip to stop hurting so I could walk and it just became impossible to work with and I ended up getting a full hip replacement.
01:10:22.000So that's when they shear off the top of your hip, they screw a bolt down in there with a new hip?
01:11:11.000They generally don't have the longevity of a hip replacement.
01:11:17.000I'm 50 years old, so ideally you would want a replacement that outlived you, but I would probably have to get a second knee replacement when I get older to replace the first, which is not ideal, but I'm probably going to have to do it.
01:11:32.000Well, who knows what kind of crazy technology they'll have down the line.
01:12:02.000So, to answer your question, in the early days it was an impediment that I worked around.
01:12:08.000But as I got older, I had to do a first operation and now a second.
01:12:15.000Believe it or not, Joe, I was actually scheduled to get my knee replacement tomorrow.
01:12:20.000But I didn't do it because Gary Tonin is going to be fighting his first MMA fight in March 26. Now, is he fighting for 1FC? 1FC. Ah, interesting.
01:12:30.000So if I got the knee replacement now, I would not be able to help him get ready for his first MMA fight, which I thought would be – that's not fair on my part.
01:12:39.000And so I delayed it until after that fight.
01:12:43.000Why did he decide on 1FC? That's an interesting question.
01:12:46.000You'd have to ask Gary Tonin to be certain.
01:12:49.000But I think one of his main fears was that if he went through the amateur route and then worked his way towards the UFC, there would be problems because he's already an established name in grappling.
01:13:02.000And I think he was concerned that it would be difficult for him to get people to fight amateur.
01:13:09.000And then eventually make his way to the UFC. Whereas 1FC is a fairly well-known organization and they were pretty open.
01:13:17.000He did a grappling match for them and they loved it.
01:13:20.000They were like, you know, are you interested in MMA? So he could, as it were, go into a fairly high level of MMA right from the start as opposed to do a long, circuitous amateur route and then battle his way into the UFC. I believe, don't quote me on this, but I believe that was the logic behind it.
01:13:39.000Now, are you able, so when you're demonstrating techniques, are you demonstrating them verbally?
01:13:47.000After the hip replacement, I could only do it verbally and I had to trust in my students, Eddie Cummings, Gary Tonn, Gordon Ryan and others, Brian Glick, no one knows him, but he's one of my great students.
01:14:01.000I would point with a stick and they would do the moves for me.
01:14:07.000Since then I've gotten a little better and I like to demonstrate as best I can.
01:14:11.000There's days when I can barely walk and on those days I'll have the students go through.
01:14:17.000Sometimes there's certain standing techniques that are a little risky for me to do and I'll have students demonstrate those.
01:14:23.000But I do what I can on the days that I teach.
01:14:29.000It is quite fascinating that a guy who has catastrophic injuries of his leg is one who is known for being an innovator and crushing people's legs.
01:14:41.000There is something kind of strange about that.
01:14:44.000Yeah, you were joking around about it being revenge.
01:14:46.000Yeah, this is my revenge against the world.
01:14:48.000If God took away my leg, I'm taking away everybody else's.
01:14:53.000So, yeah, there is something ironic about that.
01:14:57.000Now, when you're teaching this system and you're showing all the guys in the squad, the Donaher death squad, do you have it worked out to the point where it's like you have a curriculum?
01:15:15.000I never like the word curriculum because that kind of implies that it's all worked out in advance and it's done step by step.
01:15:22.000I come in on a given day and I'm there seven days a week.
01:15:26.000I watch all of my athletes every single day.
01:15:29.000They don't do anything without me watching them do it.
01:15:32.000So I know at the end of every day what they need to work on tomorrow because I'm there.
01:15:50.000What an amazing resource for those guys to have someone like you standing over them, watching them and analyzing their positions and techniques and progress.
01:15:59.000That's generous of you to say, but I always feel that my students are more of a resource to me than I am to them.
01:16:09.000I've been blessed through my entire coaching career to have some truly remarkable students.
01:16:14.000Some of whom are famous and known to you and many others who aren't.
01:16:19.000And whatever debt they owe to me, I feel I owe at least as much to them.
01:16:28.000My students literally give me everything.
01:16:31.000I'm a notoriously difficult person to get along with.
01:17:18.000Describe that because you you didn't talk when like I remember I think one of our first long conversations with that some weird Denny's or something somewhere and one of those weird road shows Like we're just sat down.
01:18:26.000What I mean by that is there are four distinct skill areas of mixed martial arts.
01:18:34.000Any one of those skill areas always goes beyond the component martial arts that make it up.
01:18:43.000In other words, the skill area transcends the various martial arts that make it up and create something bigger and different from the core components that originally built it.
01:18:56.000When you look at the sport of mixed martial arts, you see there are four dominant skill areas.
01:19:01.000The first occurs when they first come out and the two athletes have no connection with each other and they're dancing around the cage.
01:19:12.000This is the so-called shoot boxing phase which involves skills drawn from Western boxing, Muay Thai, Karate, freestyle wrestling and various other martial arts.
01:19:23.000Where the two athletes are jockeying for position and typically they're trying to determine the direction of the fight.
01:19:35.000The second skill area is the skill area of the clinch, where the two athletes are both still standing, but now they've got a hold on each other.
01:19:42.000They're no longer moving around at will.
01:19:46.000This has its key components drawn from Muay Thai, Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling, judo, etc., etc.
01:20:01.000The area of fence fighting, fence boxing, where the two athletes are in a clinch, but they're locked on the fence, which dramatically changes the skills required for success than if you're in the open.
01:20:15.000And then you have a fourth skill area, which is the ground.
01:20:19.000And of course, that's divided into top and bottom position.
01:20:23.000So there are four skill areas of mixed martial arts.
01:20:30.000For example, you could add in the idea of the geography of the cage, you can add in new areas.
01:20:34.000But let's stick with that fundamental four for now.
01:20:38.000If you show me any one of those skill areas, yes, you can derive skills from those component martial arts, from Muay Thai, from Judo, whatever you choose.
01:20:52.000But that skill area is going to have other elements that are not part of those original martial arts, that is something different, something unique, and something above the various component martial arts that made it up.
01:21:07.000When you're fighting on the ground, a lot of what you do is derive from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and modern mixed martial arts.
01:21:12.000Most of the athletes come from a Jiu-Jitsu background.
01:21:15.000When they work ground skills, they work in a kind of a Jiu-Jitsu framework.
01:21:19.000But many of the things going on down there are a mix of things that are far outside of your daily training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
01:21:28.000You can bring in things from Muay Thai.
01:21:30.000You're throwing Muay Thai elbows on the ground, but on the ground the elbows have a very different feel from the standing position.
01:21:35.000The mechanics behind them are significantly different.
01:21:37.000You're throwing hooks on the ground, but the mechanics of throwing hooks on the ground are very, very different from the mechanics of throwing hooks in the standing position.
01:21:45.000So yeah, you're bringing skills in from boxing, but you're adapting them too.
01:21:51.000So the way to look at the sport of mixed martial arts is not just like, okay, I'm going to rope together some wrestling, some boxing, and see what happens.
01:22:00.000Rather, you're developing skills in four distinct areas, a minimum of four, And the skills you ultimately develop go beyond and are significantly different from the core components that you started with.
01:22:16.000And so ultimately the skills of a mixed martial artist at the highest levels transcend the various core martial arts that made the sport up.
01:22:27.000When you fight in a mixed martial arts fight, you're a jiu-jitsu fighter, you use it a lot more than just jiu-jitsu and the various other boxing styles, etc., etc., that you use.
01:22:36.000In the case of shoot boxing in George St. Pierre, everyone always talks about George's wrestling.
01:22:46.000He's wrestled a long time with very good people.
01:22:50.000But 90% of the success of his ability to take people down It goes far beyond wrestling.
01:22:58.000It has to do with the precursors to the shot.
01:23:02.000What wrestling teaches you to do in mixed martial arts is how to finish a shot.
01:23:06.000It gives you the body mechanics to finish the shot.
01:23:09.000But the setups are Completely different from wrestling.
01:23:15.000I can show you endless examples of good wrestlers who went into mixed martial arts competition with no background in mixed martial arts and couldn't take anybody down.
01:23:29.000You're being punched instead of grappling.
01:23:34.000George In my opinion, throughout his career, had a level of skill and technical insight in the art of boxing, kickboxing into takedowns that no one else has even come close to.
01:23:54.000Much of what he did in that area came from himself.
01:24:07.000But the skills he was exhibiting went beyond any one of those teachers or even them as a whole.
01:24:18.000The act of tying together all of those disparate skills came from him.
01:24:23.000The integration of skills And so you have someone who had a wrestling background, had a boxing background, had a Muay Thai background, but ultimately what he was doing was something bigger than all of those put together.
01:24:35.000There's a synergistic effect here where the sum was somehow greater than the components that individually made it up.
01:24:46.000And that's what I mean when I talk about a transcendent sport.
01:24:50.000George St. Pierre was largely responsible through individual experimentation, starting in his late teens and going through his entire career in the development of Shootbox.
01:25:05.000Now, when you work as a coach for George, you weren't just working as a jiu-jitsu coach.
01:25:11.000You were working in almost like a mastermind sort of a position.
01:25:17.000I mean, I saw some conversations that you had with him where you discussed various things.
01:25:22.000In fact, one of the things you came to me about was you asked me if I knew anyone who was proficient at the spinning back kick.
01:25:31.000And that's how I got to working with George.
01:25:36.000Your coaching with him was not just simply like, these are the principles of jiu-jitsu, this is what I want you to work on, when the fight goes to the ground.
01:25:45.000You were working on a lot of different aspects.
01:25:49.000You were a guy that sort of put it together.
01:25:53.000Now, when you don't have a background in striking and you're looking at all of these various disciplines and trying to formulate a strategy for a guy who's such a supreme athlete like George, how did you formulate that?
01:26:09.000Did you do it based on the individual, based on their physical strengths and limitations and sort of formulate what you think would be the best approach?
01:26:17.000Did you work it out with him in conjunction?
01:26:22.000When George comes to train with me, there's a bunch of considerations.
01:26:25.000First of all, George lives in Montreal.
01:27:25.000Secondly, George's game, because his takedowns are so strong, is almost always done from top position on the ground.
01:27:31.000It's rare for George to be in bottom position on the ground.
01:27:34.000And in a fight situation, if you're already on top of someone and you've got the striking prowess of George St-Pierre, I was happy to coach him more in what we call grapple boxing, the skill of grappling to punching on the ground.
01:29:29.000But if you can integrate that into a well-developed Complete skill set, they could be incredibly effective and I always saw tremendous potential for Taekwondo's jump spinning back kick.
01:29:39.000No one does spinning back kicks better than Taekwondo.
01:29:43.000That's one of their main things and they do it incredibly well.
01:29:45.000The setups are fantastic, the application, the mechanics, everything's super impressive.
01:29:50.000So I always thought that would be a, you know, George had a good spinning back kick, but I thought that would be a nice addition.
01:29:54.000You always want to be Building new skills into a pun.
01:29:58.000You don't want to be that predictable guy where everyone knows what you're doing.
01:30:01.000And I know you came from Taekwondo backgrounds, and so I thought that would be an interesting thing for you to work on with him.
01:30:08.000Well, it was a funny conversation because that was my specialty.
01:32:06.000When you see that, it's like those things by themselves, you're just gonna get taken to the ground and smashed and most people, unless you land one of those catastrophic spinning back kicks right away, the odds are you need all those other things as well in order to be particularly effective, which is why George was such a unique case.
01:32:27.000George can get away with that kind of thing, yeah.
01:32:33.000It was like, I've always wanted to show somebody this.
01:32:36.000Because it's a weird little thing that I know how to do.
01:32:39.000Going back to your original question, the idea of George in Shootbox, you'll see that George's entire methodology in The Standing Musician is built around the concept of a dilemma.
01:32:49.000The dilemma is always between his jab and his takedown.
01:32:56.000People always talk about proactive and reactive takedowns.
01:32:59.000Okay, this guy's a reactive, this guy's a proactive takedown guy.
01:33:03.000The thing about George is he would use his jab proactively, but he would use his takedowns reactively.
01:33:12.000Now that's interesting because George would literally provoke people into the takedown.
01:33:19.000I just want to point this out, past tense.
01:33:23.000You're saying this like you know something I don't know.
01:33:45.000I'm not going to claim to be a medical expert, but it's one of the most frustrating things that George has had to deal with, where there are certain parts of the human body that are just out of your control, and the stomach is one of them.
01:33:55.000Just things happening in your stomach, you can't control it.
01:33:58.000Things like stress seem to make it worse.
01:34:01.000And the truth is that no one really knows at this point.
01:34:05.000So wherever there's doubt, my Instinct is to think well, do you really want to come back George?
01:34:12.000You've done all this and What a great way to cap off a career too.
01:34:17.000And I gotta tell you when he came back This is what was really interesting about that fight George had said I'm better.
01:34:24.000I'm a better martial artist than I was before and he looked better I mean, he definitely looked like he was a little out of competition Like there was a moment.
01:34:59.000His technique, the way he was landing leg kicks and his sharp jab, and then ultimately that left hand that he used to stun Bisping and get him on the ground.
01:35:13.000You were there the night George went into his first retirement, and you'll recall the whole retirement thing was kind of, the speech was vague, it wasn't clear, it was confusing, because in truth he didn't know if he wanted to retire.
01:35:27.000The whole thing was actually contrived in the octagon, right there in front of you.
01:36:37.000So my question to him was, If you're going to come back, are you just going to do the same thing?
01:36:43.000Are you just going to come back to welterweight and do what you always did, which is come out and beat the best welterweights and just hold the title?
01:36:51.000Are you just going to be doing the same thing?
01:36:54.000I thought, if you're going to come back, let's do something significant, something you haven't done before.
01:36:59.000And so the way I put it to him was, what are the three most persistent criticisms you always hear about George St. Pierre?
01:37:12.000Number two, you fought so tactically sound, with such an emphasis on strategy and techniques or what have you, that matches could become dull.
01:37:25.000The average fan was like, well, yeah, he's winning easily and it's dominant, but doesn't do it for him.
01:37:34.000So we had this idea that on the one hand he was very technically sound, strategically deep but the fights weren't as exciting as they ought to be.
01:37:47.000The idea that he'd never gone up a weight category and the third most persistent charisma he didn't finish fights.
01:37:54.000He was a very skilled fighter but he wasn't finishing fights.
01:37:58.000So my point is, okay, if you're going to come back, let's do it in a way where you address those three things.
01:39:27.000I won't do it because it's not the thing to do, but I could run off some names of people he submitted in the gym that would shock you, like well-known jiu-jitsu people.
01:39:35.000And for the first time, our primary emphasis wasn't on grapple boxing, it was submission.
01:39:41.000Freddie Roach was working on the mechanics of punching.
01:39:44.000George always had good in-out movement.
01:39:46.000He always had that karate movement, the ability.
01:42:19.000So there's never been a shortage of coaches in his life, but there are certain things that seem to gel with him more than others.
01:42:27.000Interestingly, during that four-year period, George had a strong rebirth into karate and worked with a lot of specialized karate people, including Raymond Daniels and others.
01:42:37.000They came mostly from the European point-fighting karate circuit, and he was working with them a lot.
01:42:43.000And so they crossed a certain period of time where you're dealing with a different athlete now.
01:42:52.000This is a guy who's had four years off and the training had gone in different directions.
01:42:56.000His finishing skills in both fisticuffs and grappling had gotten considerably better.
01:43:03.000He was toying with the idea of going up to 85 and experimenting with diet, etc.
01:43:13.000And tactically, he was working more on the idea of being an exciting fighter through movement and pushing harder for the finish.
01:43:22.000And I thought those were three very, very healthy directions to go in.
01:43:29.000And this would, as it were, if he did come back, this would offer a genuine opportunity to address the three most persistent criticisms of his career.
01:43:38.000Initially, there was a lot of persistence from the UFC. I don't think they were fond of the idea at all.
01:43:42.000They wanted him to go to 170 and do what he had done.
01:43:45.000But George pushed hard for the fight at 85, and ultimately it happened in a rather strange way.
01:43:53.000Tyrone Woodley had a fight at 170, which wasn't the most crowd-pleasing fight, and George St-Pierre was supposed to fight Tyrone Woodley, and then the U.S. said, you know what?
01:46:45.000There was a critical moment on a Friday evening where I said to Farah Sahabi, this is the second time I've had to say this to Farah Sahabi, the other was the Carlos Condit camp.
01:46:55.000I said, if George isn't training by Monday, we're going to pull the plug.
01:48:06.000I'm not going to mention names, but I've seen George St. Pierre take down effortlessly some of the biggest names in mixed martial arts, in weight divisions far above his own, So many times per round, you just lose count.
01:48:26.000I'm afraid to even tell you the stories because people wouldn't believe me.
01:48:31.000I'm used to seeing George St. Pierre shoot boxing, bang, bang, down.
01:48:37.000I've seen that since the start of his career.
01:48:40.000I watched George St. Pierre do a shoot box workout where he couldn't score a takedown.
01:49:33.000He trained every day those last two weeks.
01:49:38.000As each day went by there was significant improvement and I remember there was a distinct moment about five days before the end of the camp I saw him do a shoot box workout and he looked like the old George I was okay.
01:49:55.000I believe you should google ulcerative colitis Yeah, I don't know it's so it's something to do with stomach ulcers I'm not going to claim to be an expert, but yeah.
01:50:08.000I can tell you what the symptoms were.
01:50:10.000It was extreme stomach pain and inability to eat.
01:52:14.000And then afterwards he told me, dude, I was in so much pain.
01:52:18.000And he was afraid to tell me because he would worry that if I cornered him and I thought he was compromised, I wouldn't corner him the way I normally would.
01:53:01.000Really, it centered around two things.
01:53:03.000One, I cannot discuss because it involves a personal life of George St. Pierre.
01:53:08.000There were some things going on in his personal life.
01:53:12.000That deeply affected him, and he was deeply unhappy with some circumstances in his personal life, and it's not appropriate for me to talk about those.
01:53:22.000And the second was the whole idea that it had become an obsession with George at that time, which was the use of anabolic steroids in mixed martial arts.
01:53:32.000And he was deeply unhappy with what he perceived as the prevalence of the use of anabolic steroids in mixed martial arts as a whole and among his opponents in particular.
01:53:45.000And he wanted a testing program to be brought in for that fight.
01:53:51.000There was talk about it but nothing came of it and it became like this psychological obsession during the camp.
01:54:01.000Between those two issues, there was a lot of unhappiness.
01:54:08.000It's not like he missed workouts or anything crazy.
01:54:10.000There wasn't going out at night or anything foolish.
01:54:12.000But there was a degree of unhappiness where I'm looking and thinking, how much longer can this go on?
01:54:21.000Now There was some talk about the Tyron Woodley fight and then Tyron had this bad performance, but if George did get healthy and was confident enough in his health that he could get through an actual training camp, would he be interested in considering a fight with Tyron Woodley?
01:55:37.000This is a very complex thing and you talked about it with George addressing that or attempting to address that in his comeback and trying to finish and be more energetic and aggressive.
01:55:49.000The reality is, that's not always the best way to engage.
01:55:52.000There's a right way to fight a person with a particular skill set.
01:56:01.000I was like, this is the only way to fight that guy.
01:56:04.000Unless you are what he is, which is a very skillful, traditional martial artist.
01:56:11.000That has this very unique ability to bend at the waist like a snake and slide in with techniques and does a lot off the front leg, dangerous stuff off the front leg.
01:56:20.000Unless you can do that too, you really shouldn't be on the outside striking with him.
01:56:30.000Again, if you look at the results of the fight, the times in the fight where someone was hurt, it was Tyron Woodley putting the hurt on Wonderboy Thompson.
01:56:40.000Those were the only times in the fight where it was really exciting.
01:56:42.000Other than that, it was Wonderboy trying to pick at him from the outside.
01:56:48.000It's a very difficult fight to look good at.
01:56:52.000You know, the whole idea of mixed martial arts fans, there's always three kinds of people that watch mixed martial arts.
01:57:00.000There's fans of drama, there's fans of violence, and there's fans of strategy and technique.
01:57:07.000Guys like us, when we watch MMA, we fall under the technique and strategy crowd.
01:57:11.000To me, I can watch Woodley fight Wonderboy, and I'm fascinated by it.
01:57:15.000To me, that's just like, wow, it's magic.
02:05:26.000Yeah, but that's a hallmark if you're going to call someone the greatest of all time is they have to be able to take on a wide array of opponents and still be successful.
02:05:36.000Yeah, which is why Demetrius gets my vote.
02:05:39.000I just feel like when you look at Benavidez, when you look at just many different people that he fought showed him a bunch of different looks, a bunch of different styles.
02:05:51.000And he was able to overwhelm them all.
02:06:12.000I think that's the big fight because TJ's willing to go down to 125. So instead of fighting Dominic at 135, TJ's like, I can make 125. And TJ feels like he'll be the guy to break the legacy.
02:06:46.000Incredibly intelligent, deep, deep knowledge of the sport, both stand-up and on the ground, and integrating those two things together.
02:06:53.000He's one of the few guys you can genuinely say has expertise across all areas of mixed martial arts and played a pivotal role in taking someone from being an unknown to a legitimate great world champion.
02:07:13.000People often don't make a distinction between recruiters and coaches.
02:07:18.000There's many fight camps out there that are very good at recruiting people that were already good and helping them to manage them, etc., and make them slightly better.
02:07:29.000But there's not many coaches out there.
02:07:31.000Matt Hume took a kid who no one had heard of and took him from obscurity to arguably one of the best of all time.
02:07:40.000And he did it in a way where that kid went from being essentially a wrestler to a genuinely well-rounded mixed martial artist with a complete set of skills.
02:09:32.000George is in there, especially coming back and beating Bisping.
02:09:35.000That puts him, you know, right back into the mix in terms of argument of one of the greatest of all time.
02:09:41.000Yeah, I think it was an important step for him because, as I said, there were three persistent criticisms and he answered all three in one night.
02:10:07.000After his fight in Madison Square Garden, he fought himself and a group of his friends, his training partners, came into the academy and trained in my Monday afternoon class.
02:10:16.000Khabib didn't train, he just sat on the bench because he just fought on Saturday night, so of course he's not going to train.
02:10:20.000But his My training partners came in and trained with the squad.
02:10:47.000Like all the people coming out of the Caucasus regions of Russia, his wrestling is extremely good.
02:10:54.000They have probably the best wrestling program in the world.
02:10:57.000That whole area stretching from Ossetia through Dagestan, through Chechnya, all the way down to Iran, that that area is just the hotbed of wrestling in the world.
02:11:07.000And it shows with all their fighters, they're all strong in wrestling.
02:11:10.000And then they just add to that the various skills and you've got a tough, tough group of people.
02:12:03.000Tony Ferguson and him would be a very interesting fight.
02:12:06.000What's interesting about those two fights is you have basically polar opposites.
02:12:10.000Khabib Nurmagomedov is a control-based fighter, whereas Tony Ferguson is a scramble-based fighter.
02:12:17.000And just that clash in styles is going to be fascinating.
02:12:21.000With regards to Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov, the feeling one gets is that if they did fight, it would be a complete shutout in one of two directions.
02:12:32.000It's either like a man beating up a child on the ground, or it's just a flush knockout.
02:12:40.000A guy unable to cover distance properly and walking into a left hand and just being catastrophically KO'd.
02:12:47.000You feel like there's potential for it to go in both directions.
02:12:53.000That's a fight I don't think goes the distance.
02:13:37.000But I think that Conor has been overwhelmed on the ground, though.
02:13:42.000And he's been overwhelmed by Nate Diaz, and he's been controlled on the ground by Chad Mendes.
02:13:47.000One gets the feeling that whatever amount of control they were able to impose on him would be nothing compared with what Khabib could impose.
02:15:40.000I just think that with, I've always said the most important, if you have a pyramid of technique when it comes to mixed martial arts, the base of the pyramid, the most important thing is the ability to control the grappling, the ability to take a guy down.
02:15:57.000If you can take a guy down and control him, you have a significant advantage.
02:16:01.000You can choose where the fight takes place.
02:16:04.000And if you're competent in the stand-up, which Khabib is definitely competent in the stand-up, so you are adequate in the stand-up but overwhelming when it gets to the ground, you can present problems with a guy standing up, in which case problems the guy has to deal with the striking aspects which open up the takedowns.
02:16:23.000I wholeheartedly agree with you, but I'll go a little further.
02:16:26.000Whenever someone asks me, what are the programs, what do you look for when you see a guy dominating fights?
02:16:34.000What makes someone go in the right directions with their training and their fighting itself?
02:17:48.000If there's one weakness that Khabib has, it is he's not as strong at dominating the setups to get to those areas where he can dominate pace, etc., etc.
02:18:02.000If he's going to lose a fight, it's going to be in that area.
02:18:05.000And Connor, more than anything else, is a guy who dominates the setups.
02:18:19.000So Connor's skill He's a master of dominating setups, especially in the standing position.
02:18:25.000But Khabib's mastery, out of those three critical areas for domination in all forms of fighting, is he's incredibly dominant in determining the direction of the fight and the pace of the fight.
02:18:39.000That's why he never gets tired in his fights.
02:18:41.000He's got a very high work rate, but he never gets tired.
02:18:43.000You never see him just completely shattered, despite the fact he's working hard the whole time.
02:18:47.000And despite the fact that he significantly weakens himself to make 155 pounds, which apparently he's done far better now.
02:18:54.000He had a real nutritionist heading into this camp, and it was much easier for him to cut the weight.
02:18:59.000I'd be fascinated to see him fight at 170. Well, that's a plan.
02:19:03.000Apparently, that was a plan, and Woodley was joking around about it, saying he'll send him nutritionists.
02:19:07.000He'll say, keep his psycho ass down at 155. That's funny.
02:19:14.000But yeah, with regards to your point before, this core combat skill, the most important one that you as a commentator look for when you look at fighters, can you determine, you put grappling skill as the number one thing, whether it be wrestling, whether it be sambo, whether it be jiu-jitsu, or whatever.
02:19:33.000I would go further and say, yeah, there's three things that I look for.
02:19:52.000Like, there's several schools of thought, and one of them would be, one of the more interesting ones is Nick Kurson and Marvin Marinovich, that camp, they believe that you already know how to fight.
02:20:03.000And that what the camp really should be about is just radical strength and conditioning to the point where...
02:21:07.000I'm not a big believer in the idea that you're going to create big, significant, fight-changing physiological changes in six to eight weeks.
02:21:29.000I'm not going to claim to be a medical expert who has a deep understanding of these things, but my experience in coaching is that physiological changes take time, and you're not going to get it done in a fight camp.
02:21:41.000Yes, you can make physiological changes over a year, two years, absolutely.
02:21:46.000George went up a weight division, but it took quite a bit of preparation to do so.
02:23:47.000Can you really get that much stronger in six weeks?
02:23:50.000I've always believed that the whole idea of fight camp is to prepare an already well-trained athlete to get around the problem of one individual.
02:24:00.000It's programming one individual to solve the complex problem that another individual presents.
02:24:06.000It's kind of like preparation for an exam, so to speak.
02:24:11.000And for me, the whole thing, every fight camp is motivated by two very simple questions.
02:24:16.000How are you going to win this fight and how are you not going to lose this fight?
02:24:20.000The entire structure of the camp is based around that.
02:24:23.000And almost all of that has to do with tactics and techniques rather than changes in the physical body.
02:24:30.000Now, when George is in off camp, when he's out of camp, is that when he would...
02:25:08.000I can answer with regards to the squat.
02:25:09.000Yeah, but what I was going to bring up is Weidman.
02:25:12.000Like, Weidman's approach, you know, coming from that elite wrestling background and then developing a lot of significant mixed martial arts skills.
02:25:23.000He is in an unusual situation right now, right?
02:25:27.000Where does he stand in terms of future opponents?
02:26:09.000So there was this incredible meteoric rise, and then there was a short period after that where he appeared to be crushing great former champions like Liotta Mishida, Vita Belfort.
02:26:20.000He wasn't just beating them, he was just incredibly impressive.
02:26:24.000And then I think people were shocked by what appeared to be an unbeaten record, and then suddenly three losses in a row.
02:26:34.000Getting smashed by Luke Rockhold, getting KO'd by a flying knee from Yoel Romero, and getting dominated by Gegard Mousasi, and then all the controversy that led to that stoppage.
02:26:44.000So it was three in a row on a guy who had never even experienced defeat.
02:26:50.000And so you go from no defeats to three catastrophic defeats in a row.
02:27:39.000And I'd heard of Chris because, you know, we're linked schools, fairly close by, and people were telling me about this amazing wrestler who's, you know, incredibly talented, picks techniques up.
02:27:49.000And, you know, I always take these things with a grain of salt because people exaggerate and stuff.
02:27:56.000This kid, you can show him a technique on Monday and by Tuesday he's doing it better than you are.
02:28:00.000And he has a gift for physical movement that you don't see very often in guys that big.
02:28:08.000He's big, agile, highly intelligent, and had at that time A level of self-confidence that was deeply impressive.
02:28:22.000I would show Chris a guillotine variation and then five minutes later he would be using it in the gym and then a month later be using it in an MMA fight.
02:28:34.000He literally would see opportunities and immediately act upon them.
02:28:40.000What I worry about with Chris is that in those three losses I'm not saying this has happened, but what I worry will happen is that fighters who are typically very dominant and were confidence fighters when they experienced defeat lose confidence.
02:28:59.000And a big part of Chris's success was that ability to see opportunity and have the confidence to immediately act upon it.
02:29:08.000So my concern, if I look at Chris, is will that still be there?
02:29:13.000Will he still have the same confidence, which was such a big part of his rise to the top?
02:29:17.000Will it be drastically altered by three losses?
02:29:20.000And I'm very pleased to say that it didn't appear to be so in the fight with Gastelum.
02:29:26.000He actually took a heavy hit at the end of the first round in that fight and came back.
02:29:30.000It looked like he'd gone through those three losses and come back strong and everything was fine.
02:29:37.000So I'm pretty confident Chris will go on to great success again at 185. Knowing how good Chris is on the ground, how shocked were you about the Luke Rockhold fight?
02:30:06.000I went back to training with Matt Serra.
02:30:09.000Those guys were incredible training camp.
02:30:11.000They did a fine job getting them through the machida fights, etc.
02:30:14.000I was at that UFC. It was in Las Vegas.
02:30:21.000Conor McGregor was the main event and Chris was the co-main event.
02:30:29.000The fight had an interesting beginning.
02:30:31.000Chris was doing well with the takedowns, but Luke Rockhold was doing a great job of controlling Chris's head with fake guillotines to prevent any kind of damage on the ground.
02:30:42.000They're doing a good job of standing back up to the feet, so there was no really significant damage.
02:30:46.000Then they got into an interesting kickboxing battle, where it seemed to go in one direction, then switch directions, and then Chris seemed to be getting the better of it, and things looked good.
02:30:56.000And then there was just one episode where everything just came unstuck in a second.
02:31:02.000And I remember watching, and it was like watching a bad dream, you know?
02:31:10.000Yeah, Chris threw an ill-advised wheel kick, which is slow and telegraphed, and Rockhold took him to the ground.
02:31:18.000And what I was most shocked with was, and I've seen it time and time again, I saw it in the David Branch fight, and saw it in the Leo Machida fight, is Rockhold's top game is fucking terrifying.
02:31:32.000I attribute that not just to his skill, which I think is considerable, but also to training on a regular basis with Daniel Carmiere and Cain Velasquez.
02:31:40.000His wrestling, his grappling, is severely underrated.
02:31:44.000Maybe not so now, but his ability to control guys on the ground is just terrifying.
02:35:27.000But the thing about Joel Romero is there's a certain twitchiness to his movement where it's so hard to read where he's going, where he's going to be in the next half second.
02:35:57.000Like you look at his body his proportions everything looks like something from a movie.
02:36:02.000Yeah, it doesn't there is real Yeah, and that flying need that he hit Chris with was like Jesus Christ Yeah, no, he could feel it in the audience.
02:36:11.000It was it was it was terrible It's just the the amount of force that he can generate is just stunning But he's also a guy that's carrying around a tremendous amount of muscle.
02:36:21.000And I wonder what kind of pace he can keep up.
02:36:24.000You know, and we saw that in the Whitaker fight.
02:36:26.000He faded a bit in that fight, wound up losing that fight.
02:36:29.000We've seen it in several of his fights.
02:36:31.000The Tim Kennedy fight, he faded in that fight and eventually came back to win.
02:37:36.000But your breakdowns of technique and strategy and what is actually happening, I think they're critical.
02:37:42.000Your voice and what you're doing with the squad and what you're doing for jiu-jitsu as a whole and the way you're able to articulate that and break these things down.