The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #12 with Ben Askren

00:00:00.000 Yeah, my oldest one is super.

00:00:02.000 Here we go.

00:00:03.000 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ben Askren, ladies and gentlemen.

00:00:08.000 Dude, I've talked about you on this podcast at least a dozen times.

00:00:12.000 You are the number one guy that I'm most disappointed never fought in the UFC. Yeah, I always get, whenever you talk about me, I get like 15 texts like, hey, Joe's talking about you now, and they'll send me clips or whatever, so I obviously appreciate that.

00:00:26.000 But yeah, I never really got to fight those top guys, and it was for reasons beyond my control.

00:00:32.000 Yeah, and you're done now.

00:00:33.000 Yeah, so I said, I don't want to say I'm done, period.

00:00:37.000 I said I'm done, excluding the fact that I get to fight and prove I'm number one.

00:00:42.000 That would be the excluding factor.

00:00:43.000 So if you could get in the UFC, you'd be willing to do it again?

00:00:47.000 I mean, I don't care where it is.

00:00:49.000 I really, genuinely don't.

00:00:50.000 And obviously that would be the thing that makes sense.

00:00:53.000 But there is legislation like the Ali Act and other things going through.

00:00:55.000 So I don't know that maybe...

00:00:57.000 You know, I'm still 33, so I'm not old.

00:00:59.000 And, you know, GSP took four years off from one fight to the next fight.

00:01:03.000 So it's like I'm going to age overnight.

00:01:05.000 Well, your style, too.

00:01:06.000 You avoided so much damage.

00:01:09.000 I didn't get hit once in 2017. Really?

00:01:12.000 Yeah, I didn't get hit once.

00:01:13.000 Yeah, in three fights.

00:01:16.000 That should tell people you were fighting in 1FC, which is a big Asian organization.

00:01:20.000 It's like the Asian version of the UFC. Yeah, so 1FC started in 2012, I think.

00:01:27.000 Obviously, my contract with Bellator came up in 2013, and then there was that negotiation process, and it obviously went south.

00:01:32.000 And what happened there?

00:01:33.000 You were the champ of Bellator, and then all of a sudden you left.

00:01:36.000 So you're still undefeated, right?

00:01:38.000 I'm undefeated, 18-0. 0.98

00:01:39.000 So what the fuck happened that Bellator let the champion go? 0.97

00:01:43.000 That wasn't what happened. 0.98

00:01:44.000 No.

00:01:45.000 And there's so much misinformation out there.

00:01:47.000 And, you know, I'm popular, but I'm not that popular.

00:01:50.000 And so lots of times my story gets mistold because I get spoken over...

00:01:55.000 By other people, right?

00:01:56.000 And they don't hear what I say.

00:01:57.000 So here's what happened.

00:01:59.000 Obviously, so prior to me in Bellator, Hector and Eddie were the ones that left, right?

00:02:05.000 Hector Lombard and Eddie Alvarez was now the UFC, both of them.

00:02:09.000 Both the middleweight champ and then the lightweight champ, and they both got taken care of pretty well.

00:02:13.000 But if you remember Eddie's situation, I don't know if you remember this.

00:02:15.000 He got an offer from the UFC, still under the matching period with Bellator.

00:02:20.000 Bellator says we matched it, right?

00:02:22.000 And in terms of what was in the contract, it was matched, right?

00:02:27.000 But because Bellator has no pay-per-view venue, well, if UFC says we'll pay you on pay-per-view, Bellator says, well, we will too.

00:02:34.000 But that's not real life, right?

00:02:36.000 Right.

00:02:37.000 That's fictitious.

00:02:37.000 They've done two pay-per-view shows ever.

00:02:39.000 And they've never met any type of thresholds.

00:02:42.000 So, you know, they say it matches, but it doesn't say—I don't know if you remember, but they went to court over it.

00:02:45.000 And the UFC won.

00:02:47.000 Eddie got the right to—I'm sorry, he didn't win.

00:02:49.000 He somehow did like a one more fight in Bellator and then went to the UFC. I don't know exactly what the finality of that case was.

00:02:57.000 But anyways, when that happened, his contract became public knowledge.

00:03:02.000 Right?

00:03:03.000 And so a lot of UFC fighters were pissed because they gave him a whole bunch of money.

00:03:08.000 And so when I was 12-0, I had my last fight in Bellator against Andrei Khrushchev, July 30th, maybe 31st, of 2013. Beat him up pretty good.

00:03:18.000 And then I had a 12-month matching period.

00:03:21.000 And so what was expressed to me by the UFC brass was that you need to get rid of your matching clause, and we will make you an offer.

00:03:28.000 But we will not make you an offer until that happens.

00:03:31.000 Get rid of your matching clause.

00:03:32.000 How do you do that?

00:03:34.000 Well, here's how I went about doing it.

00:03:36.000 Because it's 12 months, right?

00:03:38.000 I'm not going to sit over 12 months.

00:03:40.000 So I'd call Bjorn every day and say, hey, Bjorn, I'm not going to resign.

00:03:43.000 Bjorn is the guy who was running Bellator at the time.

00:03:45.000 Correct, yeah.

00:03:46.000 And now he got fired.

00:03:47.000 Yeah.

00:03:48.000 And Bjorn had a terrible reputation, but I had a decent relationship with him.

00:03:53.000 I never butted heads too bad.

00:03:56.000 So every day, they said, Bjorn, let me go.

00:03:58.000 I'm not coming back.

00:03:58.000 And so everyone says, well, Bellator didn't want to re-sign me.

00:04:01.000 Well, that's not true at all.

00:04:02.000 Every day, it's Bjorn, let me go.

00:04:04.000 Bjorn, let me go.

00:04:05.000 Because, you know, I love challenges.

00:04:08.000 What I love more than anything in the world is to challenge myself.

00:04:10.000 If you look at my wrestling career, that's what it's all about.

00:04:12.000 Taking the next best thing every single time.

00:04:15.000 And so, yeah, so finally in, and all this time, you know, Dana in the UFC is saying, we want Ben Askren, we want Ben Askren.

00:04:22.000 I'm ranked number seven in the world or what, you know, somewhere around there, 12 and 0. And so I remember I was going to the Asian food store because I was going to make some tonka soup.

00:04:31.000 And Bjorn calls me and said, you're released.

00:04:35.000 Full, you're released.

00:04:36.000 You can go.

00:04:37.000 I appreciate that.

00:04:39.000 So, Friday morning, it's Thursday night.

00:04:40.000 Friday morning, it's in November sometime, maybe mid-November.

00:04:45.000 Morning, they fax over the release.

00:04:47.000 My management faxes it to UFC headquarters.

00:04:49.000 And all of a sudden, that afternoon, there's a little scrum where everyone's asking Dana questions.

00:04:54.000 And then Dana says, we're not interested in Ben Askren.

00:04:56.000 And I said, wait, what just happened there?

00:05:02.000 Because for the last three months they were saying, we're interested, we're interested, we're interested.

00:05:05.000 Now I finally produced this full release from Bellator that I got, and now they're not interested.

00:05:12.000 And so I said, wow, I just got caught in the middle of this.

00:05:16.000 So was there a reason given?

00:05:18.000 So then I said, F that.

00:05:21.000 So I bought a plane ticket to Vegas for Monday.

00:05:24.000 So that was Friday that happens. 1.00

00:05:25.000 I said, fuck that. 1.00

00:05:27.000 I'm going to Vegas! 1.00

00:05:28.000 I'm not taking this shit, you know? 0.99

00:05:30.000 So, Monday I buy my plane ticket to Vegas. 0.99

00:05:33.000 I fly out to Vegas to UFC headquarters.

00:05:36.000 I met with Lorenzo.

00:05:37.000 Dana was on the little speakerphone dealie.

00:05:39.000 And they offered me a Zufa contract, but it would be confidential, and I would have to fight one fight for the World Series of Fighting.

00:05:48.000 Which is like, well, that's bizarre.

00:05:51.000 What?

00:05:51.000 Yeah.

00:05:52.000 One fight for the World Series of Fighting.

00:05:54.000 Exactly.

00:05:54.000 What was their relationship with the World Series of Fighting?

00:05:56.000 I don't know.

00:05:56.000 The World Series of Fighting was like a feeder organization at that time.

00:05:59.000 Something, yeah.

00:05:59.000 In a way.

00:06:00.000 Yeah.

00:06:01.000 Marlon Marais, Justin Gagey, both those guys came from champs over there to the UFC. I think the relationship is very hazy between the old World Series of Fighting and the UFC because there was also people that went the other way, right?

00:06:13.000 Andrei Lovsky gets...

00:06:14.000 Drop from the UFC, goes to World Series, Anthony Johnson, boom, all these people.

00:06:18.000 So they say, one fight, one fight.

00:06:20.000 World Series are fighting.

00:06:21.000 We will pay.

00:06:22.000 Zufa will pay you.

00:06:23.000 But you do one fight.

00:06:25.000 I say, well, that's effed up, but okay.

00:06:28.000 I said, I don't think anyone's going to go for it, but I'll do it.

00:06:30.000 So I leave, and about six hours later, I got a phone call that says that deal is no longer available.

00:06:37.000 We are not going to make you an offer.

00:06:40.000 Yeah.

00:06:41.000 So, wow.

00:06:43.000 And you have no idea why.

00:06:44.000 Well, here's my guess.

00:06:46.000 I've never got to sit face-to-face with him and say, what was your problem with me?

00:06:50.000 I think there's four things in my mind.

00:06:53.000 Number one, he didn't really like me.

00:06:56.000 Stemming from the...

00:06:57.000 I called him out on the steroid thing.

00:06:59.000 You know, where he said, it's impossible...

00:07:01.000 And this is where our disagreement is.

00:07:02.000 It's impossible to test all UFC athletes.

00:07:04.000 I said, well, that's not true.

00:07:05.000 USADA does it all over the world for all kinds of athletes, right?

00:07:08.000 You can do it.

00:07:08.000 It's just expensive.

00:07:09.000 But let's just call it what it is.

00:07:11.000 You're a private business.

00:07:12.000 You don't have to do drug testing.

00:07:13.000 Well, obviously, they do it now, so you were right.

00:07:15.000 They do it now, yeah.

00:07:16.000 They do it through USADA, so you were totally right.

00:07:18.000 Yeah, so I was correct. 0.92

00:07:20.000 But that was, you know, when Dana is wrong in an argument, and he's got this huge army that follows him, and he said, I'd rather, I think his quote was bad, because I'd rather watch flies fucked than Ben Askren fight, you know? 0.86

00:07:30.000 I think he said something like, Ambien takes Ben Askren to go to sleep. 0.89

00:07:34.000 Yeah, there's a few of them.

00:07:36.000 So the personal attack started, right?

00:07:37.000 So that's number one.

00:07:39.000 Number two, my fighting style is not highly attractive.

00:07:41.000 But I also think that's a little bit of fake news because if you look at George St. Pierre's the Consistently, now obviously McGregor has trumped him, but only a couple of times.

00:07:50.000 But if you look at consistent bases, George St. Pierre is the number one draw of all time.

00:07:54.000 He heavily relied on takedowns and ground and pound.

00:07:56.000 I mean, he didn't have a finish in like five years or something.

00:08:00.000 Let me say what my take has always been on you and that style is that it's important and that it really works.

00:08:08.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:08:08.000 What you're able to do really works.

00:08:10.000 And I've always said this, and it was proven Saturday night in the Stipe Miocic-Francis-Igano fight.

00:08:16.000 Wrestling is the most important part of MMA. Absolutely.

00:08:18.000 The ability to take the fight to the ground.

00:08:20.000 Obviously, Stipe has a lot of other attributes.

00:08:22.000 He took tremendous punches in that fight.

00:08:24.000 I mean, I know you didn't get a chance to watch it.

00:08:25.000 I saw some highlights, though. 0.99

00:08:27.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:08:27.000 I mean, the first round was chaos. 0.99

00:08:29.000 I mean, Francis Ngannou's a terrifying guy.

00:08:32.000 And Stipe took the shots, used great movement, used striking of his own, but most importantly, after a while, got his wrestling going.

00:08:38.000 And then once he got Ngannou to the ground, Ngannou didn't have any answers.

00:08:41.000 He didn't know what to do.

00:08:43.000 What you've been able to do to guys like Douglas Lima, who just fought Rory McDonald for the Bellator title, Korosh Goff, who's another fantastic fighter who has beaten a lot of really top-flight guys, you're able to use your wrestling and completely nullify all their striking and offense.

00:08:59.000 And that's a huge part of fighting.

00:09:02.000 Fighting is not what's exciting for people to watch.

00:09:04.000 Fighting is what actually works. 0.94

00:09:06.000 And what you've been able to do time and time again is take these guys who look like world beaters and completely nullify their offense, take them to the ground, and beat the shit out of them. 0.98

00:09:16.000 That's huge. 0.99

00:09:17.000 That's very, very important.

00:09:18.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:19.000 And so, you know, we can get back to the UFC thing later.

00:09:23.000 But so, yeah, I mean, when I started fighting, right, it was just like, hey, let's go fight.

00:09:27.000 I didn't really make coaching.

00:09:29.000 And so I didn't move to Duke's until...

00:09:32.000 Duke Rufus.

00:09:32.000 Duke Rufus, yes, until 2010, I think.

00:09:35.000 So I started, no, no, 2011, I'm sorry, because I was in Arizona.

00:09:38.000 I was coaching for Arizona State University.

00:09:40.000 But when I moved there, I know, hey, there's a lot of elite strikers in this gym.

00:09:44.000 I said, but I'm never going to be an elite striker.

00:09:47.000 But if no one can hit me, they can't beat me.

00:09:50.000 They're not gonna outlast me.

00:09:51.000 They're not gonna outcrapple me.

00:09:52.000 They're not gonna beat me.

00:09:53.000 If they can't knock me out, they're not gonna beat me.

00:09:55.000 Plain and simple.

00:09:56.000 So my whole goal was, how do I not get hit?

00:09:59.000 I don't need to be a great striker hitting people.

00:10:01.000 I just need to not get hit. 1.00

00:10:02.000 If you can't knock me out, I'm going to eventually get you on the ground and I'm going to beat your ass, right? 0.99

00:10:06.000 And so that was kind of my whole goal when I got in MMA. How do I not get knocked out, right? 0.99

00:10:11.000 And so you said, obviously, I found a really good way to do that and it added a lot of longevity to my career where I wasn't taking damage that a lot of other people...

00:10:21.000 We're taking.

00:10:21.000 And I think there's also a lot of other things to being a really high-level wrestler that, you know, besides, obviously, you can control where the fight happens, right?

00:10:29.000 But there's a lot of other things that high-level wrestling provides us, right, that came from that world that other disciplines don't get.

00:10:36.000 You know, a lot of competition.

00:10:38.000 We compete thousands of times, right?

00:10:40.000 How to get our mind right.

00:10:42.000 These wrestlers are just strong.

00:10:44.000 I mean, there's just a different strength.

00:10:45.000 Actually, I got to go work out with Jordan Burroughs last week, who's a mid-time world champ.

00:10:50.000 And it's like, you forget how strong wrestlers are.

00:10:52.000 Like, you grab them, and you're like, good God, this guy is like...

00:10:55.000 You know, I don't feel that from MMA people.

00:10:57.000 I grab him, and I'm like, oh my...

00:10:58.000 Everywhere.

00:10:59.000 It's like there's nowhere he's weak.

00:11:01.000 Very, very disciplined, right?

00:11:03.000 Because wrestlers, like, we've been in the system from youth wrestling to high school wrestling to college wrestling where we're under, you know, coaches and have a very strict training plan and understand how to put a training regimen together where a lot of other martial arts don't have that kind of structured system.

00:11:17.000 So I think there's a lot of advantages that we as wrestlers have when we come into mixed martial arts.

00:11:22.000 And if I could add to that, the intention is pure.

00:11:24.000 It's pure for competition because there's no financial reward.

00:11:27.000 It's not a bunch of people that are getting into wrestling because they want to get rich.

00:11:30.000 It's a bunch of people that really want to prove that they're the best.

00:11:32.000 And so you have so many top-flight guys that are incredibly mentally strong feeding off of each other, knowing that they're going to be competing against each other, and almost no financial possibilities except for coaching.

00:11:46.000 Well, yeah, there's, I mean, now, so, 2018 to 20, 2008, when I was wrestling, and then when I decided to make that jump to MMA, there is a lot better financial structure for senior-level athletes.

00:11:57.000 Now, none of them are getting rich, and there's only about a dozen of them making, like, a decent living, right?

00:12:03.000 Yeah.

00:12:03.000 And so...

00:12:04.000 Which is crazy.

00:12:05.000 There's thousands of wrestlers.

00:12:06.000 Exactly.

00:12:07.000 So your point's mostly correct, but there are a handful of top United States athletes now who can do nothing but wrestle.

00:12:12.000 Where when I was in 2008, when I was training, that wasn't even the case.

00:12:15.000 I had to go do camps.

00:12:16.000 I was coaching at Missouri, so I was doing other things in addition to wrestling.

00:12:20.000 So like a top Olympic athlete, what else would they do to make money?

00:12:24.000 Well, so like in 2008 I was doing a lot of camps, right?

00:12:27.000 You'd travel around the country, do camps, make money, coach a college team.

00:12:31.000 I was making money that way.

00:12:33.000 So a handful of things like that.

00:12:34.000 It wasn't just wake up and train every single day.

00:12:37.000 But the athletes today that you were saying...

00:12:38.000 Now that's what they're doing.

00:12:39.000 That's it.

00:12:40.000 Coaching and a bunch of different things.

00:12:42.000 No, no, no.

00:12:42.000 Some of them don't have to do anything now.

00:12:44.000 So you're saying they just do it from...

00:12:45.000 So where are they getting the money?

00:12:46.000 Jordan Burroughs and James Green, for example.

00:12:49.000 Sponsorships are slightly more lucrative than they were then.

00:12:52.000 There's something called the Regional Training Center system, which most major colleges have one that's a lot more lucrative.

00:12:59.000 And that's fundraising, right?

00:13:00.000 They're not earning money.

00:13:02.000 The RTC people go, say, hey, rich guy, would you like to fund this program that'll help us develop Olympic little athletes?

00:13:09.000 Sure.

00:13:09.000 Okay, right?

00:13:10.000 And then the United States, USOC has slightly more funding given to USA Wrestling than in the past.

00:13:16.000 Well, it's the tragic story of John DuPont.

00:13:18.000 I mean, that's literally why that whole...

00:13:21.000 People have seen that movie.

00:13:22.000 What was that movie called?

00:13:23.000 Foxcatcher.

00:13:24.000 Yeah, awful.

00:13:24.000 It's a crazy story of Dave and Mark Schultz and this millionaire, billionaire, crazy guy who wound up shooting Dave Schultz and was this weirdo guy that was running this camp and these guys kind of got stuck Yeah, because, I mean, and that's, 96 was when Schultz got shot, right?

00:13:47.000 And so that's 12 years prior to, you know, my Olympic birth.

00:13:51.000 And so then it's even worse.

00:13:53.000 I mean, these guys are literally making nothing. 0.99

00:13:55.000 And then we can go back to the argument of amateurism and the Olympics is stupid, which was abolished. 0.98

00:14:01.000 Like, 92, the Dream Team was kind of totally abolished with amateurism. 0.93

00:14:04.000 Yeah.

00:14:04.000 But yeah, those guys in that era, the 84, 88, 92, they were making nothing.

00:14:09.000 And so when this guy, John DuPont, offers them money and stipends and places to live, they don't really have a better option.

00:14:15.000 It's freaking sad, to be honest about it.

00:14:18.000 And then obviously USA Wrestling sanctioned him because he gave USA Wrestling a lot of money.

00:14:21.000 So yeah, it was a really bad thing.

00:14:23.000 And so we're doing a lot better in 2018 than we were 10 years ago and way, way better than we were doing 20 years ago.

00:14:29.000 Yeah, the Olympic thing where they try to treat the Olympics like it's an amateur sport event, it's a business.

00:14:37.000 You're making billions and billions of dollars off these athletes who get paid zero.

00:14:42.000 To me, it's disgusting.

00:14:44.000 I think it's just this relic of ancient thinking, and these guys are using it to steal money from young athletes.

00:14:51.000 That's what I think.

00:14:52.000 I think the whole thing is theft.

00:14:53.000 Yeah, I usually don't know who's more evil, the USOC or the IOC or the NCAA, because the NCAA runs right along the same lines.

00:15:01.000 I think both are pretty evil and both are archaic and both need to be changed.

00:15:06.000 If you could abolish the NCAA and the IOC, that'd be fantastic for athletes worldwide.

00:15:11.000 Yeah, well, especially when you look at the football teams that are getting literally billions and billions of dollars every year.

00:15:18.000 And these athletes are ruining their lives.

00:15:21.000 I mean, you have football players that maybe play one, two seasons, if they're lucky, they get their back blown out, their legs get blown out, and then they never have an NFL career.

00:15:30.000 And meanwhile, the university has made tons of money off of them.

00:15:34.000 Tons of money.

00:15:34.000 And they make nothing.

00:15:35.000 Yeah, and to make that even worse, because I actually had a whole podcast about this argument with someone, and we're on the same side of this, but to make it even worse, if you're an NCAA athlete, Joe, you can't even make money off your own image and likeness.

00:15:46.000 Yeah, you can't have a YouTube channel.

00:15:48.000 It's effing insane!

00:15:49.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:15:50.000 So, not only will they not pay you anything, which I think we can debate and argue on that, but the fact that they can't make money off their own image and likeness, it should be criminal for that to happen.

00:16:02.000 Jimmy, you were telling me about this, right?

00:16:03.000 Like a guy got in trouble for having a YouTube channel?

00:16:06.000 Yeah, he was a punter for a college football team or a kicker.

00:16:09.000 Do you remember his name?

00:16:10.000 I don't remember his name at all.

00:16:11.000 And there was a wrestler from the University of Minnesota.

00:16:16.000 He made a rap album, and he had to either quit the wrestling team or donate all the money back or something like that.

00:16:22.000 It's like rap and wrestling, they have nothing to do with each other.

00:16:27.000 The fact that he can't go make money off freaking recording an album is mind-blowing. 0.91

00:16:32.000 It's disgusting, because you're keeping a kid from being industrious. 0.91

00:16:35.000 You're keeping a young guy who's trying to find his way through the world. 0.79

00:16:38.000 You're keeping him from being successful.

00:16:40.000 But that kind of success, like figuring out a way to make some money off of your name doing rap, that could lead to all sorts of paths in life.

00:16:48.000 He's learning as a young guy, like, hey, look, I could be industrious.

00:16:51.000 I could go do this.

00:16:52.000 I could be creative.

00:16:53.000 I can go do that.

00:16:54.000 This is what we should be encouraging people to do. 1.00

00:16:57.000 To take chances and make money, the idea that you're saying somehow or another this spoils his amateur athletic standing is just stupidity. 1.00

00:17:04.000 I think it's fucking disgusting. 1.00

00:17:06.000 It drives me nuts. 1.00

00:17:07.000 Agreed, 100%.

00:17:08.000 It just drives me crazy.

00:17:09.000 So we're back to your situation with the UFC. So the UFC says we're not interested in you.

00:17:15.000 No offer.

00:17:16.000 So Bellator's released you.

00:17:17.000 So I had spent three months telling Bellator, I'm not coming back.

00:17:20.000 Do you think they played you?

00:17:21.000 Do you feel like the UFC might have played you?

00:17:23.000 Absolutely.

00:17:23.000 They played me 100. So, okay, so the reasons.

00:17:25.000 Dana doesn't like me, number one. 0.90

00:17:27.000 Number two, my style, not great.

00:17:29.000 Didn't you say something like he's a bald, steroided something or another?

00:17:34.000 It was mostly after the fact.

00:17:35.000 You know, after that went down that I really tortured him.

00:17:38.000 But, you know, the original one was he's lying about the USADA thing.

00:17:44.000 So that was the simple.

00:17:46.000 So those people who say me and Dana had beef prior to me not getting an offer.

00:17:50.000 Have you met him?

00:17:51.000 Yeah, I mean, yeah.

00:17:53.000 Have you talked to him?

00:17:54.000 We've never had an at-length conversation.

00:17:56.000 He's a great guy.

00:17:56.000 A lot of people get the wrong impression of him.

00:17:58.000 I mean, I really love the guy.

00:18:00.000 Yeah, you and I have had different experiences with the man.

00:18:02.000 I'm sure we have.

00:18:02.000 I always feel like I should be there when people have experience with him.

00:18:05.000 Let me let you know the Dana I know.

00:18:07.000 Yeah, so that would be two.

00:18:09.000 Number three, I think, obviously, stealing a key piece away from Bellator was important to them.

00:18:15.000 Right.

00:18:15.000 And then number four, I think they thought I really had the ability to be their champion, and if someone can be a Bellator champion and make this transition directly to UFC and then be the UFC champion, you know, remember this is when they're going on, Bellator's now on Spike now, that Bellator would use that to say, look, we're the same.

00:18:32.000 He was a champion here, he's a champion there.

00:18:34.000 So I think those four things are...

00:18:36.000 And hey, I've never got to sit down face to face with Dana and say, why was there no offer?

00:18:41.000 You know, like when Anthony Pettis was the champ, and I'm helping coach him, or Tyron was, I haven't had more than five words with Dana in passing, right?

00:18:50.000 And so it would be really interesting to me to sit down and say, tell me for real, because I have my assumptions.

00:18:56.000 On what the deal was, but I don't really know.

00:18:58.000 And then if I have to add number five, number five is I think he got the idea that I would never be a yes man, which I'm not going to be, never would be, where Dana really kind of likes the yes man champion.

00:19:09.000 You see, he's got some heat with Tyron, he's got some heat with Stipe, as we saw on Saturday night, and Dana really struggles with the personalities that won't cater to what he wants to happen.

00:19:21.000 Well, fighters very rarely are yes men.

00:19:25.000 And that's by nature of who they are.

00:19:27.000 A little bit, yeah.

00:19:28.000 You know, especially the really good ones.

00:19:29.000 Especially as things start going well and start going their way. 1.00

00:19:32.000 They realize they're the fucking man. 1.00

00:19:33.000 I mean, this is... 1.00

00:19:34.000 If you're the guy who's running the division, you're the guy who's running the division. 0.98

00:19:37.000 And you're not gonna take any shit from anybody. 0.96

00:19:39.000 Yeah, but that's and you see as some of these guys ascend right up the ranks they do like Jon Jones started having trouble with Dana, right? 0.97

00:19:47.000 But didn't have it until he was...

00:19:48.000 Jon Jones was having all sorts of problems.

00:19:51.000 His problems I think had very little to do with Dana and more to do with his actions outside of the cage.

00:19:56.000 I mean inside the octagon he was And the way he was promoted, he was promoted fantastic. 0.98

00:20:01.000 But he's just crazy. 0.98

00:20:03.000 John's crazy. 0.99

00:20:04.000 John needs a babysitter. 1.00

00:20:06.000 John's the baddest motherfucker at 205 ever. 1.00

00:20:09.000 He just needs a babysitter. 0.99

00:20:10.000 How anyone let him drive a car anymore when you got that much money is beyond me.

00:20:14.000 Pay your buddy 40 grand a year and have him drive you permanently.

00:20:19.000 Why he was driving his own car, that one's beyond me.

00:20:22.000 Well, they didn't know until they bought him a Bentley, and then he wrapped it around a tree.

00:20:26.000 I mean, that's when they should have known.

00:20:29.000 But then there was the other one where he hit and...

00:20:31.000 The hit and run was after that one.

00:20:33.000 Yep, the hit and run was after that one. 1.00

00:20:34.000 And then there was the other one where he got pulled over speeding in his Corvette, and he told the cop to go fuck himself. 1.00

00:20:40.000 Terrible decision. 1.00

00:20:41.000 What are you doing? 1.00

00:20:42.000 He's a fucking wild dude. 1.00

00:20:44.000 That's why he's so good. 0.99

00:20:45.000 It's one of the reasons why he's so good.

00:20:47.000 Absolutely, but then you gotta put safeguards in place, right?

00:20:49.000 Like you're making how many million a year?

00:20:52.000 Multiple, at least.

00:20:53.000 For sure.

00:20:53.000 You can't pay someone 40 grand to drive you around.

00:20:55.000 Listen, you're preaching to the choir.

00:20:57.000 I mean, I wish I could clone me and send me to all these camps and be like, John, John, John, listen to me.

00:21:04.000 Everything's gonna be fine.

00:21:05.000 I got a driver, we got a Cadillac, got an Escalade out here.

00:21:08.000 Get in the car.

00:21:08.000 Wherever you want to go.

00:21:09.000 We're going places, baby.

00:21:11.000 We're going to have some fun.

00:21:11.000 But no driving.

00:21:12.000 No driving.

00:21:13.000 None.

00:21:13.000 We don't need driving.

00:21:14.000 We got music.

00:21:15.000 We got fun.

00:21:16.000 Let's go.

00:21:17.000 Oh my gosh.

00:21:18.000 I mean, seriously.

00:21:19.000 Yeah.

00:21:19.000 Well, that's what you would have if you had like...

00:21:22.000 I don't know what he's doing.

00:21:24.000 I've never been to Albuquerque.

00:21:26.000 I don't know how he's living.

00:21:28.000 But you can't...

00:21:29.000 You can't babysit everybody.

00:21:31.000 The UFC has 500 fighters on its roster.

00:21:34.000 I mean, how many of those guys are prone to wild behavior?

00:21:37.000 I'd say 350. A lot of them.

00:21:38.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:38.000 Most of them, right?

00:21:39.000 High-risk males that fight in a sport where you have the potential to be hurt every single time you step out on the job.

00:21:45.000 Yeah.

00:21:46.000 But when you're making millions of dollars, you've got to put safeguards against yourself.

00:21:50.000 Yeah, but I think also what makes John so good is his self-confidence.

00:21:55.000 And he probably was like, I got it. 0.95

00:21:58.000 Yeah, I fucked up before, but I got it now. 0.55

00:21:59.000 So I'm really into sports psychology, and I want someone to write this book because no one's ever written it. 0.98

00:22:04.000 But I think there's this, I call it the hypocritical elite athlete.

00:22:08.000 So there's two sides to every coin, right?

00:22:11.000 And if you're a really elite athlete, you need both sides of those coins.

00:22:14.000 And I'll give you a great example because this is kind of what you're talking about.

00:22:17.000 There's these guys who are ultra-elite preparers.

00:22:19.000 They eat right.

00:22:20.000 They sleep right.

00:22:20.000 They train right.

00:22:21.000 They do everything right.

00:22:24.000 But then if one little thing goes wrong, it messes with them.

00:22:27.000 If they don't get the right food or their weight cuts bad, they start panicking.

00:22:31.000 And then on the opposite side of the coin, there's these cowboys.

00:22:35.000 And they're just like, I'm not going to eat right.

00:22:37.000 I'm not going to sleep right.

00:22:38.000 I'm not going to do anything right. 0.88

00:22:40.000 But when I step in the cage, I'm going to fight my ass off.

00:22:42.000 And nothing's going to bother me. 0.71

00:22:44.000 Right?

00:22:44.000 And so you need both sides of those coins to make it whole.

00:22:48.000 And so you want someone, ideally, who does everything right, but at the same time when something goes wrong or their toe hurts or whatever, they can just say, well, it doesn't really matter.

00:22:58.000 I'm going to go compete anyways.

00:23:00.000 Right?

00:23:00.000 You want to have both sides of those.

00:23:01.000 That's why I think a lot of the UFC fighters are more on the cowboy side of it.

00:23:04.000 Like, well, I'm not really going to do a lot of things right, but I'm just going to go, I'm a fighter, I'm just going to go fight.

00:23:08.000 Like cowboy.

00:23:09.000 Right.

00:23:10.000 That'd be a fantastic example.

00:23:12.000 Yeah, the namesake of my argument.

00:23:14.000 Yeah, that's a good point.

00:23:19.000 One of the more fascinating things about any form of high-stress, high-level competition is there's no real guidelines of how to prepare your mind.

00:23:27.000 I mean, everybody teaches you how to wrestle.

00:23:30.000 Everybody teaches you how to kickbox.

00:23:31.000 There's all these martial arts schools that teach you technique.

00:23:34.000 There's very few real rock-solid programs of how to manage your mind.

00:23:41.000 Absolutely.

00:23:42.000 I think you should be taught...

00:23:45.000 Almost like in a step-by-step basis, like, hey, you get a flat tire.

00:23:50.000 Do you kick your car and scream, or do you just go, this is what it is, and hey, I could have been born in Ethiopia with no feet, right? 0.99

00:23:57.000 I could be living in a fucking coal mine somewhere. 0.99

00:24:00.000 No, I'm lucky. 1.00

00:24:01.000 I'm fortunate.

00:24:01.000 This is nothing.

00:24:02.000 This is a minor setback.

00:24:03.000 No, and so I actually started going to graduate school for sports psychology.

00:24:07.000 I got nine of the 36 credits done.

00:24:09.000 And then I actually got a scholarship to go further and get it paid for.

00:24:15.000 But I was traveling so much.

00:24:16.000 That was 2007-08 when I was trying to make the Olympic team and I was gone all the time.

00:24:20.000 And then once I was out of school for a year, I was just like, there's no freaking way.

00:24:23.000 I'm not going to go.

00:24:25.000 I'm not going to sit in a classroom.

00:24:26.000 I'm not going to freaking write papers.

00:24:28.000 I'll still study sports psych on my own.

00:24:30.000 Actually, every Monday, I do something called the Mental Monday on one of my Facebook pages.

00:24:35.000 People message me questions, and I talk about the mental aspect, because you're right, there aren't enough people that talk about it.

00:24:41.000 In wrestling, there's actually this company that's being highly successful called Wrestling Mindset, and they have a training program for athletes' minds, because there's nothing out there.

00:24:49.000 Is there a website for this?

00:24:50.000 Yeah, it's WrestlingMindset.com.

00:24:51.000 No kidding.

00:24:52.000 That's great.

00:24:53.000 That'll apply to everything.

00:24:54.000 Well, they're starting to expand into different disciplines.

00:24:57.000 But you're right.

00:24:57.000 I think there's these general principles of sports psych which can kind of go into any domain, right?

00:25:04.000 And you're 100% correct that every single individual is different, right?

00:25:08.000 Like for me, I'm an overthinker, right?

00:25:11.000 I'm obsessive.

00:25:12.000 I'll do something over and over and over and over again. 0.99

00:25:14.000 And so like when I was 14, I was at this big national tournament and I was obsessing about who I'd have to wrestle and all this stuff and it wore me out mentally and I got my ass kicked, right?

00:25:23.000 And my coach said, hey, I was that person many, many years ago and it helped me just talk about fishing, right?

00:25:30.000 Because I don't want to think about what I'm going to do.

00:25:33.000 I'm not one of those guys.

00:25:35.000 Because if I think about it too much, I'll obsess.

00:25:36.000 And so ever since age 15, I've always taught myself and trained myself to not think about the competition within Like, you know, six hours, right?

00:25:46.000 So maybe the day before I can think about it, a couple days before I can think about it.

00:25:49.000 But like, even when I'm in MMA locker room, I'm not thinking about my fight.

00:25:53.000 My mind's off of it. 0.98

00:25:54.000 Because if I'm not, if I don't understand what my strategy is going to be by six hours before, and I haven't trained myself by six hours before, I'm fucked. 1.00

00:26:02.000 I'm already fucked. 0.99

00:26:03.000 What am I going to do? 1.00

00:26:04.000 Six hours!

00:26:05.000 I'm going to come up with a brilliant strategy in six hours, you know?

00:26:10.000 I intentionally fly people to my fights who are just my friends, who have no intention of telling me what to do MMA-wise, and just want to bullshit backstage.

00:26:20.000 Right?

00:26:21.000 That's really smart.

00:26:22.000 Keeps me really calm.

00:26:23.000 Because otherwise I start obsessing.

00:26:24.000 And that's going to lead to something really negative.

00:26:26.000 So that's like one thing is where, you know, but some people are the opposite.

00:26:29.000 Like they F off too much and you kind of got to bring them back to focus, right?

00:26:32.000 Right.

00:26:33.000 You know, another sports psych concept is what level of energy do you want going to the competition?

00:26:37.000 Some people, you got to get them amped up.

00:26:39.000 Some people, most people, you got to calm them down quite a bit.

00:26:41.000 Like, let's relax, let's execute.

00:26:43.000 Because when you're too amped up, you're not going to execute.

00:26:45.000 Right.

00:26:45.000 So I think there's a lot of these sports psych concepts that can...

00:26:48.000 Cross over many different genres, but you're right.

00:26:51.000 No one trains you about it.

00:26:53.000 I think it's a huge part of the sport and it's overlooked because the sport is not just, and I think this is true with every sport, the sport's not just the movements that you make, it's what's going on inside the machine.

00:27:03.000 the manager of the body is the mind and if the manager is like poorly formed and the structure is all out of whack and you you have like whenever a problem comes up you fall right into a pit all these things should be addressed and you should develop this mindset and develop the ability to manage your mindset at a i think at a young age i think it's it's really critical yeah no i totally agree and you know i think i think one interesting thing which i don't know if it's going to happen mm or not we'll see right

00:27:32.000 there's very few people who came from a wrestling background that are head coaches of mma teams right who came from this very very structured environment of say college wrestling it's like you go to i went to i remember my first training camp i went to american top team in florida and i show up it's 11 o'clock but i'm like practice, show up at 11 o'clock.

00:27:51.000 Where's everyone at?

00:27:53.000 Right?

00:27:53.000 And then we start at 11.45, like 45 minutes late.

00:27:56.000 And then so the next day I'm like, well, am I supposed to show up at 11.45 or should I show up at 11?

00:28:01.000 Because if we say 11.45, I can show up at 11.30.

00:28:03.000 So I show up at 11.30 and then they start at 11.20.

00:28:06.000 You know, like what the hell?

00:28:08.000 Whereas in college wrestling, if you're a minute late, you're going to get punished in college wrestling, right?

00:28:13.000 Right.

00:28:13.000 It's a very structured, organized system.

00:28:15.000 So I'm very curious to see the day where there is an MMA team that is very structured, like a college wrestling team would be.

00:28:22.000 I think it would be very effective towards performance for athletes.

00:28:25.000 But then again, you are going to have—it's a different structure because college wrestlers are poor, right? 1.00

00:28:30.000 Where you're going to have a bunch of MMA fighters who get rich and then say, well, I don't want to do what you're saying right now.

00:28:34.000 How are you going to make them, right?

00:28:36.000 They're the one paying your paycheck.

00:28:37.000 So it does become an interesting circumstance, but I think if there was someone who ran a highly structured mixed martial arts team, as structured as a college team, I think they would have a gigantic amount of success.

00:28:48.000 I think their guys would get a lot better, a lot faster.

00:28:51.000 And I think you'd see a really interesting dynamic develop between the high-level athletes and the coaches.

00:28:57.000 Well, I think they're still trying to figure out what's the best way to coach fighters.

00:29:01.000 And I think everybody's got their own way of doing it.

00:29:03.000 For us, the hobby's way is different than the way they do it at American Top Team.

00:29:07.000 Matt Hume is doing it different than the way Duke does it.

00:29:10.000 Everybody's got their own way.

00:29:12.000 And the only way you can tell is how well the athletes compete.

00:29:15.000 That's the only way you really find out who's correct and who needs to make adjustments.

00:29:19.000 Yeah, and it's really hard in fighting because, I mean, even your highest level camps, how many, say Bellator and UFC, how many high level MMA fights do they have per year?

00:29:29.000 Maybe 30?

00:29:30.000 I think that'd be a lot for most of these teams.

00:29:32.000 Right.

00:29:32.000 And so you only get 30 sample sizes, right?

00:29:35.000 Whereas a college wrestling team, you're going to have...

00:29:38.000 Between everybody on the team, the all 40 guys, you're going to have at least 1,000 matches every single year.

00:29:44.000 Minimum, right?

00:29:44.000 And then, obviously, every event is scored by team.

00:29:47.000 Every dual meet is scored by team.

00:29:49.000 Every NCAA championship is scored by team.

00:29:50.000 So you get a very good indication of what coach is doing it right and what coach is doing it wrong.

00:29:55.000 And then, obviously, with the recruiting process, the coaches that are doing it right now get the next crop of the best talent, right?

00:30:00.000 And so you have a very good idea of what's working, what is not working.

00:30:04.000 We're in MMA... I think we struggled to see that because the sample size isn't large enough to give us a really, really direct correlation.

00:30:12.000 Now, you were able to instigate your strategy in pretty much every single one of your MMA fights.

00:30:18.000 The only fight where you really struggled is a Jay Heron fight.

00:30:21.000 Jay Heron fight, yeah.

00:30:21.000 Absolutely.

00:30:22.000 That was a close fight.

00:30:23.000 What was different in that fight?

00:30:25.000 Well, so that was my first fight at Duke's.

00:30:28.000 Obviously, Jay Heron's pretty damn good, too.

00:30:30.000 We don't want to take that away from him.

00:30:31.000 I think he was ranked No.

00:30:32.000 16 in the world or something.

00:30:34.000 At that point in time.

00:30:35.000 So that was my first fight at Dukes.

00:30:36.000 I think the biggest mistake I made, I mean, and obviously at that time, I'm literally two years into my fighting career.

00:30:41.000 So I stopped wrestling completely.

00:30:45.000 I didn't do one wrestling practice.

00:30:46.000 I moved to Dukes August 1st.

00:30:48.000 Well, I moved to Wisconsin August 1st, started training at Dukes August 1st.

00:30:51.000 I fought three months later at the end of October.

00:30:53.000 I literally did not do one wrestling practice.

00:30:55.000 So what were you doing?

00:30:57.000 I was striking like six times a week.

00:30:59.000 I was doing jiu-jitsu a handful of times a week, and then I was doing conditioning.

00:31:03.000 After that fight, my wrestling—well, and then actually I went to—my brother was living in New York at the time.

00:31:07.000 My brother's also an NCAA champ. 0.99

00:31:09.000 Went to visit him for Thanksgiving, and he whooped my ass. 1.00

00:31:11.000 And I'm like— I freaking suck at wrestling. 0.98

00:31:14.000 I went cold turkey, so it's like, okay, I don't need to wrestle every day to be great at wrestling anymore, but I need to wrestle once a week, twice a week, with high-level competition.

00:31:24.000 So at that point in time, and for pretty much the rest of my career, I would go to one of the local colleges.

00:31:31.000 Once a week or twice a week, just to keep my skills sharp.

00:31:33.000 And so I think that was the biggest mistake I made in the Haran fight.

00:31:36.000 I didn't wrestle at all prior to it.

00:31:38.000 But Jay Haran was good.

00:31:40.000 He was also a Division I college wrestler.

00:31:41.000 He knew what he was doing also.

00:31:44.000 But I think if I had to pinpoint one thing, that would be it.

00:31:47.000 Isn't it fascinating that a guy with as much wrestling experience as you have, all you have to do is take some time off and everything degrades?

00:31:54.000 Well, it's timing.

00:31:55.000 It's all timing, right? 1.00

00:31:56.000 So you take three months off, your timing's going to go to shit. 1.00

00:31:59.000 It's just amazing. 0.99

00:32:00.000 I tell you, I wasn't doing one practice.

00:32:03.000 But that was also what helped me get the striking thing down, is I was doing...

00:32:07.000 And this is what I think.

00:32:08.000 You actually made this point.

00:32:10.000 Who the hell were you talking to?

00:32:12.000 About wrestlers are willing to go in the environment.

00:32:14.000 I was striking six to seven times a week.

00:32:16.000 How many strikers go and wrestle six to seven times a week?

00:32:19.000 It's a real problem.

00:32:20.000 None of them do.

00:32:21.000 It's a real problem.

00:32:21.000 They don't like it.

00:32:22.000 They refuse to.

00:32:23.000 Well, that was Francis Ngannou in his training camp.

00:32:25.000 When I talked to people outside afterwards, it's crazy.

00:32:28.000 Before, everyone was saying, oh my god, he's in tremendous shape, everything's amazing.

00:32:32.000 And then afterwards, it was like, oh, he doesn't train on the ground.

00:32:35.000 What?

00:32:36.000 He doesn't train on the ground.

00:32:37.000 All he wants to do is strike.

00:32:39.000 Well, you can't let him do that.

00:32:41.000 Absolutely not.

00:32:43.000 He's going to fight a Division I wrestler.

00:32:46.000 How is he going to do this?

00:32:47.000 How is he going to stand up?

00:32:50.000 He's going to somehow or another magically stuff all the takedowns?

00:32:53.000 You have to train that.

00:32:54.000 You have to train it.

00:32:55.000 Yeah, but you've got to train it.

00:32:57.000 But then even when people train it, these strikers, the hell of those strikers...

00:33:01.000 They don't want to do it right.

00:33:03.000 Like I said, when I go to Dukes, when I started at Dukes, and it went down to four times a week where we were striking, right?

00:33:08.000 But in the beginning, it was six or seven sessions a week I'm striking, right?

00:33:13.000 And so I'm immersed in that culture.

00:33:15.000 I have to learn.

00:33:16.000 You can't not learn when you're doing it six or seven times a week.

00:33:19.000 But these strikers, they want to do one wrestling practice a week, two wrestling practices a week.

00:33:25.000 Well, if you're here and they're here, how are you going to catch them by doing one practice a week?

00:33:30.000 It's freaking impossible!

00:33:31.000 I mean, if I got to be in charge of an MMA guy's camp, and I don't know, I coach wrestling, I love coaching the kids, I don't know if I ever want to coach MMA people, I would consider for someone like High Level, But you've got to immerse yourself.

00:33:44.000 You literally have to take three months and freaking wrestle every single day.

00:33:47.000 Just wrestle.

00:33:48.000 You have to build those skills.

00:33:50.000 You're not going to learn something well doing it one time a week.

00:33:53.000 You are going to do it.

00:33:54.000 Period.

00:33:55.000 No, I completely agree.

00:33:56.000 And I think that it all depends on what the athlete brings to the table.

00:34:01.000 Some guys have a little bit of wrestling, and then maybe they need to work more on submissions. 0.99

00:34:05.000 Maybe some guys need to work more on their striking to get hit too much. 1.00

00:34:09.000 Every single fighter, there's a different recipe.

00:34:13.000 And you have to figure out what that recipe is.

00:34:15.000 And it's hard because it's like the only way you find out is how well they perform in competition.

00:34:20.000 And how many times do you even get the chance to do that?

00:34:22.000 Three a year?

00:34:23.000 Three a year?

00:34:23.000 Yeah.

00:34:24.000 Maybe.

00:34:25.000 Yeah, and so that's that.

00:34:27.000 And listen, so I'm not saying a striker has to do six sessions a week for three years straight.

00:34:33.000 But I'm saying take three months.

00:34:34.000 Take six months.

00:34:35.000 Immerse yourself in that.

00:34:36.000 Yeah.

00:34:37.000 Be obsessed.

00:34:38.000 Learn those skills.

00:34:39.000 Figure it out.

00:34:40.000 And then after that, it might be once a week, twice a week, three times a week.

00:34:43.000 But then when we start considering the CTE factors, which I'm not totally sold on CTE yet.

00:34:50.000 It's because you don't get hit.

00:34:52.000 You're the poster boy for wrestling as a martial art, if you really think about it.

00:34:57.000 Yeah, no, for sure.

00:34:58.000 I watched Concussion.

00:35:00.000 I was actually flying to my fight in April of 2016. I watched it and I said, shit, that's scary. 0.99

00:35:05.000 I sparred two more times the rest of my career. 0.99

00:35:08.000 So my career was...

00:35:10.000 Nineteen more months.

00:35:11.000 I sparred twice.

00:35:12.000 I didn't do it.

00:35:13.000 Just because you didn't want to get hit?

00:35:14.000 Yeah, I felt it was an unnecessary risk.

00:35:18.000 Well, there was a recent study that came out just a few days ago that said that it's repeated sub-concussive hits that are causing CTE, not concussions.

00:35:27.000 Yeah, but the study that made me really question the CTE phenomenon was they did that study where they studied a whole bunch of professional football players, and it was like 100%, it was like 99% have CTE, right?

00:35:40.000 But then they studied people who had played football for any length of time.

00:35:43.000 Any length of time.

00:35:44.000 And it was still like 80% of the people.

00:35:47.000 And it's like, well...

00:35:48.000 F, I can't live my life in a bubble.

00:35:51.000 How can 80% of people who have ever played football, I mean, how many American males, what percentage of American males walking around at 40 years old today played some level of football?

00:35:59.000 It's like, gotta be 80%.

00:36:01.000 So you're telling me 70% of Americans walking around with CTE are American males?

00:36:05.000 Like, that's crazy.

00:36:06.000 No, but that's real.

00:36:07.000 Come on.

00:36:08.000 That really is what's happening.

00:36:09.000 No, but you've got to think there's got to be some kind of low threshold because otherwise, 40 years down the road, if everybody played football and everyone who played football has CTE, everyone's going to be walking around like...

00:36:20.000 A lot of people are walking around like that.

00:36:22.000 Come on.

00:36:22.000 I think that's what's going on.

00:36:23.000 Or it might be the Diet Coke.

00:36:25.000 It'll be a little bit of that.

00:36:28.000 I think way more people have some form of brain damage than realized.

00:36:32.000 Really?

00:36:32.000 Yes, yeah, I do.

00:36:33.000 Well, I think in the world of martial arts, I know so many guys.

00:36:36.000 Yeah, but let's talk about not martial arts.

00:36:38.000 Okay, not martial arts.

00:36:39.000 What do you think?

00:36:39.000 Just regular people.

00:36:40.000 Football players?

00:36:40.000 I think football players, it's even worse because you're running.

00:36:43.000 You're running at each other, clashing heads.

00:36:46.000 I mean, you watch football.

00:36:47.000 I mean, the damage those guys take is crazy.

00:36:50.000 Once in a UFC, you'll see like a wild head kick KO. Sure.

00:36:54.000 Boom.

00:36:55.000 In football games, these guys are literally running at each other.

00:36:59.000 I mean, it's crazy.

00:37:00.000 One team's running this way, the other team's running that way.

00:37:02.000 And they slam into each other.

00:37:03.000 And these guys are 250, 300 pounds.

00:37:06.000 That impact, the...

00:37:08.000 The jarring of your brain.

00:37:10.000 Plus, they have helmets on, which allows them to be more confident, clashing into each other.

00:37:15.000 I think a giant percentage of those guys.

00:37:18.000 So that one study said it was something around 80% of anyone who ever played any level of football for any length of time, for any length of time, has CTE. That means like, I mean, if we take the American population, at least 80% of American men played football at some point in their life.

00:37:34.000 Probably, yeah.

00:37:34.000 I think they have CTE. So we're talking about like a gigantic population.

00:37:38.000 Yeah, I think there's levels of CTE, though.

00:37:40.000 I mean, I think, you know, you get to the point where you're like Joe Frazier, you could barely talk before he died.

00:37:45.000 Rest in peace.

00:37:46.000 But then you also get to guys that are just like a little forgetful and don't know why, or impulsive and don't know why.

00:37:51.000 You know what I mean?

00:37:52.000 There's a lot of that.

00:37:53.000 There's a lot of weird stuff that comes with CTE. I've studied it pretty extensively.

00:37:57.000 And the more studies that I've read on it, the more I've gotten really disturbed.

00:38:00.000 So do you think there's maybe just a low threshold for what they call CTE? Well, there's also genes that certain people have.

00:38:07.000 What was that gene?

00:38:08.000 Rhonda Patrick talked about it.

00:38:09.000 I don't remember what it was.

00:38:11.000 She's fantastic.

00:38:11.000 She's amazing, right?

00:38:12.000 And she was talking about some genes make you more susceptible for traumatic brain injury than other ones.

00:38:20.000 Like, if you have it, you are many times more likely to develop CTE. But then also, and then, so the other thing that I would, is out of curiosity to me when they do the CT studies, especially with, they're doing, you know, after death with these football players, right, that were, so now if they're dying, they're probably played in the 60s, 70s, 80s.

00:38:38.000 Right.

00:38:39.000 That time period.

00:38:40.000 Steroid use, very, very high.

00:38:42.000 And drug use is also very high in that culture.

00:38:45.000 And so, and alcohol, which we also include in drugs.

00:38:48.000 So it's like, did those things...

00:38:51.000 Contribute.

00:38:52.000 Is it a mitigating factor or is it going to create this crazy storm of brain damage that you're going freaking running into people like this, then you're doing steroids, then you're freaking drinking a pack of beer, then you're doing some cocaine.

00:39:08.000 That can't be good for you, right?

00:39:10.000 Can that be good for you?

00:39:11.000 It can't be.

00:39:12.000 No, it can't be.

00:39:13.000 Yeah.

00:39:13.000 Yeah, especially the pills.

00:39:14.000 A lot of them get caught...

00:39:15.000 Or the pain pills?

00:39:16.000 Yeah, they get caught up on pain pills.

00:39:17.000 That's a big one. 1.00

00:39:19.000 Man, we just found out that Tom Petty died from fucking pain pills. 0.99

00:39:21.000 Yeah, my wife and I were talking about how sad that was. 1.00

00:39:24.000 Man.

00:39:25.000 He couldn't have a sense of...

00:39:26.000 Because my wife and I both love Tom Petty's music, but how at 66 years old, he was still like...

00:39:34.000 Not so okay with himself that he was jamming pills down his throat.

00:39:37.000 He didn't have a sense of, I have had great accomplishments.

00:39:40.000 I've had a great life.

00:39:41.000 I have people around me that love me.

00:39:44.000 It's got to be a sad, lonely thing when you're overdosing on pills, I would have to assume.

00:39:49.000 I mean, I don't want to guess, but I would imagine he's in some kind of pain if he's taking those opiates.

00:39:54.000 He had a hip fracture he was recovering from.

00:39:57.000 Well, let me tell you something, man.

00:39:59.000 My friend Amber from the UFC, she hurt her ankle recently.

00:40:02.000 She blew out her Achilles.

00:40:04.000 And she said the doctor immediately tried to prescribe OxyContin. 0.99

00:40:07.000 She was like, get the fuck out of here. 1.00

00:40:09.000 Seriously? 1.00

00:40:09.000 Yeah, she's like, I'm not taking that shit. 1.00

00:40:11.000 No. 1.00

00:40:11.000 And, you know, it happens, man. 1.00

00:40:15.000 Doctors just try to shove pills down your throat. 0.97

00:40:17.000 It's a real common thing.

00:40:19.000 And if you have any sort of serious injury and they put you on that stuff, one of the things they put Tom Petty on was fentanyl. 1.00

00:40:26.000 And fentanyl is that shit that's fucking killing everybody. 0.99

00:40:29.000 It's with meth, right? 1.00

00:40:30.000 Fentanyl and meth are very similar.

00:40:31.000 No, heroin.

00:40:32.000 It's an extremely potent opiate.

00:40:36.000 It's much more potent than heroin.

00:40:40.000 Many, many hundreds of times more potent.

00:40:42.000 And so they give these people fentanyl patches, and then they're taking Oxycontins too, and who knows what else they're taking.

00:40:48.000 Oh my gosh.

00:40:49.000 I mean, I feel terrible for someone who has bad pain, like, you know, from a broken hip or something like that, but Jesus Christ, take the pain rather than death.

00:40:59.000 Seriously.

00:41:00.000 Take CBD. You could take CBD. It doesn't even have a psychoactive effect and has radical pain-reducing properties to it.

00:41:06.000 Yeah, and I don't do drugs, but the fact that People are so actively prescribing these heavy, really heavy, hard drugs to patients.

00:41:16.000 They kill people. 0.96

00:41:16.000 Kill people. 0.96

00:41:17.000 And weed is still illegal. 0.77

00:41:18.000 And I don't smoke weed, so I'm not even, like, for myself, but just for other people, it's crazy.

00:41:23.000 Well, I've never found weed to be a pain reliever.

00:41:26.000 Really?

00:41:26.000 I've heard a lot of people say that.

00:41:27.000 I know.

00:41:27.000 A lot of people do say that.

00:41:28.000 It's just maybe...

00:41:30.000 I don't know.

00:41:33.000 I'm one of those people that if you're in pain, just be in pain. 0.96

00:41:37.000 Yeah, it sucks. 0.96

00:41:38.000 Just relax.

00:41:40.000 I mean, I remember one time, though, I got my knee operated on.

00:41:42.000 I had an ACL reconstruction, and they gave me one of those buttons in the hospital where you press it and you get morphine.

00:41:49.000 And it was when they had my leg on this motion machine, right?

00:41:54.000 So, like, right after surgery, they're trying to get your blood moving.

00:41:58.000 And so there's a couple screws in there, and they've taken my patella tendon and cut it and put it inside and drilled it all in place and everything.

00:42:05.000 And then I'm sitting there, and this thing's just, it's just throbbing paint.

00:42:08.000 And they give me this little button.

00:42:10.000 I'm like, click, click, click.

00:42:11.000 Oh, good God.

00:42:12.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:42:14.000 But I'm like, I'm in the hospital.

00:42:15.000 I'm not going to overdose. 0.93

00:42:16.000 But I remember thinking, wow, this could be really fucking dangerous if you had this in life. 0.77

00:42:20.000 Like if it was like a little button on your hip, you could just press it, and you get a dose of morphine. 0.95

00:42:25.000 But it was a wonderful feeling.

00:42:26.000 I've only done it once while I was in the hospital.

00:42:29.000 I got it for that brief moment.

00:42:31.000 I was like, wow, this is an amazing feeling.

00:42:34.000 You feel like you're floating through a cloud of love and just flying through the air.

00:42:39.000 I went from being in exacerbating pain to...

00:42:43.000 So how do you feel then?

00:42:44.000 So we got in this discussion, we were talking about CDE. So now, like, okay, I think MMA is a terrible career path.

00:42:51.000 And people ask me all the time.

00:42:52.000 As a professional, undefeated MMA fighter.

00:42:56.000 Champion in two different...

00:42:59.000 For like a couple people, it's probably the right career path.

00:43:02.000 For a majority of people, probably not a great career path.

00:43:05.000 But so, you know, how do you feel about it when you think that, I mean, you're obviously saying, and I'm on the fence, but you're saying I think a lot of these people are getting CTE, clearly.

00:43:13.000 They are.

00:43:14.000 How do you feel about, you know, being involved with it?

00:43:17.000 Because that's like, in my future, I could probably coach some MMA, but I struggle with it because it's like...

00:43:23.000 Well, should I really recommend this person do MMA or should I not? 0.94

00:43:25.000 Because are they going to end up fucked up and not be able to take care of their kids or where?

00:43:29.000 I don't think you should ever recommend MMA to anybody. 0.95

00:43:31.000 Okay, good.

00:43:31.000 I usually don't.

00:43:33.000 Yeah, I don't think anybody should recommend MMA. But I think some people, it's their destiny.

00:43:37.000 Yeah.

00:43:38.000 There's a few people out there that they want to...

00:43:41.000 I don't think you should recommend skydiving to anybody either, though.

00:43:45.000 Can you make a career out of that?

00:43:46.000 I mean, my friend Andy Stump is a world record holder in that squirrel flying suit.

00:43:52.000 Oh, that's just death. 0.97

00:43:53.000 He's a maniac. 0.99

00:43:54.000 Did you ever read... 0.98

00:43:55.000 There was that book called something...

00:43:57.000 Chasing Superman or...

00:43:59.000 Do you remember what I'm talking about?

00:44:00.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:00.000 It was about people like him and how it almost always ends up very poorly because you need this bigger rush and this bigger rush and this bigger rush.

00:44:09.000 It was talking about big wave surfers and the flying suit and all this.

00:44:13.000 It was talking about the psychology behind it and how... 0.95

00:44:16.000 Like, it ends up poorly very, very, very often because these people need bigger rushes and more challenges, and then they end up fucking themselves up. 0.95

00:44:22.000 It only makes sense. 0.99

00:44:23.000 I would never encourage anyone to do that, but for him, I mean, he's a retired Navy SEAL, and this is just another level of psychotic shit that he can do to fill his time with. 0.94

00:44:35.000 But he's got a bunch of sponsors, and he actually makes a living doing that. 0.64

00:44:38.000 I would never recommend that to anybody.

00:44:40.000 I wouldn't recommend skiing.

00:44:41.000 I don't think, you know...

00:44:43.000 My kids like skiing.

00:44:44.000 I don't even like skiing.

00:44:45.000 I go skiing with them.

00:44:46.000 Can you get hurt skiing?

00:44:48.000 No, I've never gotten hurt. 1.00

00:44:49.000 But I'm like, fuck that. 0.99

00:44:50.000 Every time I'm skiing, though, I'm like, don't get hurt, don't get hurt, don't get hurt. 0.99

00:44:53.000 I didn't get hurt.

00:44:54.000 Don't get hurt, don't get hurt.

00:44:55.000 All I think is Sonny Bono.

00:44:57.000 Oh, geez.

00:44:58.000 Who else?

00:44:59.000 One of the Kennedys hit a tree, right?

00:45:01.000 Then maybe that could have been a false flag.

00:45:03.000 No.

00:45:04.000 Could have been, right?

00:45:05.000 Someone pushed him into the tree. 0.99

00:45:07.000 Yeah, they fucking took his ski out with a sniper rifle right when he got too close to the woods. 0.96

00:45:11.000 Yeah, I think that there's a lot of very, very dangerous careers. 0.97

00:45:15.000 Sure.

00:45:15.000 And I think if you feel compelled to do that, no one should be talking you into that.

00:45:21.000 Yeah.

00:45:21.000 But I don't think anybody should stop you.

00:45:23.000 Like, I like the fact that boxing exists.

00:45:26.000 You know, I would never want to tell Vasyl Lomachenko, don't fight.

00:45:30.000 Sure.

00:45:31.000 I would never want to tell him don't fight.

00:45:33.000 I want to see him fight.

00:45:33.000 What if it gets proven without a shadow of a doubt that these things cause CTE? Do you think the government is going to ban them?

00:45:42.000 No, I don't think they can.

00:45:43.000 Really?

00:45:44.000 How could they ban?

00:45:45.000 Are they going to ban BMX? The government likes banning everything.

00:45:47.000 They really do.

00:45:48.000 They like banning things that cost them money or that cost people who donate to them money.

00:45:54.000 The banning of the drugs is really tied to pharmaceutical drugs more than anything.

00:45:58.000 They're not banning it because they're trying to save us.

00:46:01.000 They're banning it because someone's putting pressure on them to ban it.

00:46:04.000 Or had put it in the past.

00:46:05.000 Nobody's banning skateboarding.

00:46:07.000 No one's trying to ban BMX ride. 1.00

00:46:09.000 Those guys get fucked up. 0.98

00:46:11.000 I mean, I was watching this video the other day of those guys doing the ramp with the skateboard, and the guy got to the top of the ramp and didn't catch it right and fell like 100 feet. 1.00

00:46:19.000 Oh, it's awful.

00:46:20.000 Oh, Jesus Christ. 0.96

00:46:22.000 I mean, they get beat the fuck up. 0.95

00:46:23.000 But that's another one where... 1.00

00:46:25.000 That damn book. 1.00

00:46:26.000 Chasing Superman or Being Superman or something. 1.00

00:46:29.000 Depping Superman.

00:46:29.000 Decoding Superman.

00:46:31.000 Is that what it's called?

00:46:32.000 Decoding Superman?

00:46:33.000 Yeah.

00:46:33.000 Okay, so if you go back and watch the original X Games, when I was a kid, I don't remember what year it is, 90s at some point.

00:46:40.000 Oh, The Rise of Superman.

00:46:42.000 Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance.

00:46:44.000 This is a freaking fantastic book.

00:46:46.000 I mean, it's like...

00:46:48.000 It's so awesome.

00:46:48.000 I'm obsessed with sports psych, like I said.

00:46:51.000 I'm sure.

00:46:51.000 Oh, Steven Kotler.

00:46:52.000 Yeah, that guy's interesting.

00:46:54.000 Yeah, but so if you look at like the original X Games stuff and then you go to like the X Games today, it's a different world.

00:47:01.000 It's totally different events, so much more extreme because it has to be this advance, advance, advance, advance, but then all of a sudden people are getting effed up.

00:47:09.000 Yeah, you get to a certain point where you can only do so many flips in the air with your bike.

00:47:13.000 Apparently, they haven't stopped trying to go more.

00:47:15.000 They would do one rotation and everybody would go, this is crazy.

00:47:18.000 Then some guy comes wrong with two and then now they're doing three.

00:47:20.000 Wasn't there the movie about Tony Hawk was like the first one that did the 720 or something?

00:47:25.000 But now they go way more, don't they?

00:47:27.000 Yeah, and they're going to be more every year.

00:47:31.000 And if you watch any of those parkour kids that are jumping from building to building, and we've had one of them in here.

00:47:37.000 What was his name?

00:47:39.000 James...

00:47:39.000 Who the...

00:47:42.000 Find it.

00:47:43.000 I don't remember that one.

00:47:44.000 I listen to mostly your political ones.

00:47:47.000 I think some of the people you bring on are highly fascinating.

00:47:49.000 Yeah, it's an interesting time.

00:47:51.000 I get labeled alt-right all the time.

00:47:54.000 I know, it's bizarre.

00:47:55.000 Everybody's so quick to label people today.

00:47:58.000 It's such a strange time.

00:47:59.000 Finger pointing and putting people in boxes.

00:48:02.000 They're doing it disingenuously.

00:48:03.000 It's more divisive.

00:48:05.000 A lot of these leftists, they want to...

00:48:09.000 They want to say, well, I'm trying to make people less racist.

00:48:12.000 But what they're really doing, they're being very divisive.

00:48:14.000 I think you identify as a libertarian.

00:48:18.000 I identify more as a libertarian than Republican or Democrat.

00:48:21.000 But yeah, a lot of people say I'm alt-right or love Trump so much.

00:48:25.000 And it's, well, I'm more libertarian than anything.

00:48:28.000 I think less government, less invasion into our lives.

00:48:32.000 But people want to put you into a little box because you don't agree with what they're saying.

00:48:36.000 Yeah, it's a weird time for that.

00:48:37.000 And that's what I think what you were saying about shaming.

00:48:40.000 They try to shame you into being less racist or shame, but you're not doing that.

00:48:43.000 If you're pretending someone's racist when you know they're not, or if you're pretending that someone is a sexist or homophobic or whatever, when you know that you're just, people are, they're ignoring nuance.

00:48:56.000 Yeah, and what they're really doing also is they're making people afraid to speak their minds, right?

00:49:02.000 And really, if you and I had a disagreement on something, how we would come to a common ground is by discussing it.

00:49:07.000 I'd say, well, I think you're a reasonable person.

00:49:10.000 What do you believe?

00:49:11.000 And you'd say, well, I don't agree with that, and this is why.

00:49:14.000 And eventually we would talk it out.

00:49:15.000 And maybe we still disagree, but we'd come to a common ground, right?

00:49:18.000 But instead, those people on the one side, they're not saying that.

00:49:21.000 They're saying, what'd you say? 0.71

00:49:22.000 You're racist. 0.99

00:49:23.000 You're sexist. 1.00

00:49:24.000 You're homophobic. 1.00

00:49:24.000 Name one, right? 1.00

00:49:26.000 And then end a discussion.

00:49:27.000 Then there's no discussion at all, right?

00:49:29.000 Yeah, they're trying to win.

00:49:30.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:49:31.000 They're just trying to win.

00:49:32.000 They're trying to label you and then get the upper hand and win.

00:49:34.000 Yeah, I think there's a real problem with people not being reasonable.

00:49:38.000 And I think that you should be able to have conversations.

00:49:41.000 People have criticized me, even in person.

00:49:44.000 Why would you have that guy on your show? 0.85

00:49:47.000 Which one?

00:49:48.000 Any guy.

00:49:48.000 Like Milo Yiannopoulos, perfect example.

00:49:51.000 And I'm like, well, look what happened.

00:49:52.000 I mean, we've got to see how the guy thinks.

00:49:55.000 I mean, all of his weird issues that came up and his book deal falling apart, a lot of that had to do with conversations I had with him.

00:50:03.000 Now you get a chance to see how the guy actually thinks.

00:50:05.000 I don't think there's anything wrong with the way he thinks.

00:50:07.000 I think he's a provocateur.

00:50:10.000 I mean, it's not how I think, but I think that everybody has this perspective on who he is that is exaggerated because of this public persona that he does to be outrageous.

00:50:23.000 So I think that's a double-edged sword because I think Alex Jones does it as well.

00:50:26.000 Alex is way crazier, though.

00:50:29.000 Well, okay, but same idea, right?

00:50:31.000 Part of their persona is a show.

00:50:34.000 It's making it more extreme because they want to say that one thing that's totally effing crazy that'll catch a headline somewhere.

00:50:41.000 Right?

00:50:42.000 And so they have these beliefs, but then they kind of go beyond them because it is a show and because they will make more money if they get more followers or more people clicking on their articles or their videos or whatever.

00:50:52.000 Right.

00:50:53.000 So I think it is.

00:50:54.000 But then, you know, you go to someone like the Brett Weinstein guy.

00:50:56.000 I think he's fascinating.

00:50:57.000 Yes.

00:50:58.000 And people calling him a racist. 0.98

00:50:59.000 Crazy. 0.96

00:51:00.000 And, you know, he was strong liberal. 0.97

00:51:02.000 Well, he's as progressive as it gets.

00:51:04.000 He's as far from a racist as you could ever get.

00:51:06.000 Yeah.

00:51:07.000 Yeah, there's this need to label people.

00:51:10.000 Well, Alex is a showman in a lot of ways. 0.97

00:51:13.000 But also, he says some things that are pretty fucked up, like the Sandy Hook stuff. 0.94

00:51:20.000 He's looking for conspiracies everywhere. 0.98

00:51:23.000 He finds them some places.

00:51:26.000 So sometimes he's right.

00:51:27.000 But the problem with looking for conspiracies everywhere is you're gonna...

00:51:32.000 You're gonna make people feel terrible.

00:51:35.000 Yes.

00:51:35.000 There was an article that I read about a guy who was a conspiracy theorist until his son was killed in Sandy Hook.

00:51:43.000 What?

00:51:43.000 And then people were telling him that his son wasn't killed and that he's some sort of a government actor.

00:51:49.000 And this guy was devastated.

00:51:50.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:51:51.000 Of course, the people that are really the nutty conspiracy theorists, oh, he's fucking undercover still! 0.99

00:51:56.000 He's still undercover! 0.93

00:51:58.000 There's people out there that look for conspiracies in everything, and it becomes a real problem because it muddies up the water.

00:52:05.000 But I think at the same time, at least for me, I think we have similar thought processes.

00:52:11.000 You can't just take what mainstream media tells you and say, well, I guess that's how it happened.

00:52:15.000 No, you can in some situations.

00:52:18.000 But in Sandy Hook, you have dead kids.

00:52:20.000 You have people grieving.

00:52:22.000 You have bodies, autopsy reports.

00:52:24.000 It happened.

00:52:25.000 You have a guy who had guns.

00:52:27.000 You had a mentally ill person who had access to these guns. 0.55

00:52:31.000 But then if you take that same thought process on, say, Steven Paddock in the Las Vegas shooting...

00:52:35.000 We still don't know how that turned out.

00:52:36.000 Right.

00:52:37.000 The Las Vegas shooting is complicated because we know one guy did do that.

00:52:42.000 But we think there was other people involved.

00:52:44.000 They think there was other people involved.

00:52:45.000 And he might have gotten help from people, whether it's willingly or unwillingly, or wittingly or unwittingly.

00:52:51.000 But I don't think there was other people shooting.

00:52:53.000 I don't think they've said that.

00:52:55.000 So I don't know, right?

00:52:56.000 And that's what a lot of these conspiracies, you have to understand that you're never really going to know the real truth, right?

00:53:01.000 You have to keep an open mind.

00:53:02.000 And you say, okay, well, this person says this.

00:53:04.000 What does this person say?

00:53:05.000 What does this person say?

00:53:06.000 Do these things check out with each other?

00:53:08.000 And it's like, how many different times have they changed the Las Vegas shootings timeline, right?

00:53:12.000 And then it was kind of weird that it went way out of mainstream media.

00:53:16.000 Like, all of a sudden you heard about it for a week, and then you didn't hear about it again.

00:53:19.000 I think that's a sign of the times.

00:53:20.000 I think the news cycle today is about 10 hours.

00:53:22.000 Really?

00:53:22.000 Yeah.

00:53:23.000 But you would think that people would want answers on it.

00:53:25.000 I mean, that's the largest mass shooting in United States history.

00:53:28.000 You'd think we'd want some more clear answers on what really happened and how it happened and why it happened.

00:53:34.000 And we never really got those.

00:53:35.000 And I know there's been a few new articles on it recently, and so maybe we're going to find out more information.

00:53:40.000 Well, and it's an incredibly confusing story.

00:53:42.000 Absolutely. 0.99

00:53:43.000 Because the guy was clearly a psycho, clearly fucked up, and clearly planned this out for a long time. 1.00

00:53:49.000 I mean, he got hotel rooms overlooking music festivals in other places. 1.00

00:53:54.000 Yeah.

00:53:54.000 And, like, was planning out how to do this for a long time.

00:53:58.000 He had a note in his hotel room that had all the ballistics calculations. 0.96

00:54:03.000 So he knew, like, bullet drop from X amount of yards, and he was calculating how to kill all these people. 0.72

00:54:10.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:54:10.000 He was on some weird anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication which does all kinds of weird shit to your head. 0.99

00:54:18.000 There's a guy that was prone to fits of rage. 0.95

00:54:21.000 He was a calculated professional gambler.

00:54:25.000 There's a lot of weird stuff with this guy.

00:54:27.000 Yeah.

00:54:27.000 The fact that he accumulated these weapons over years.

00:54:31.000 Yeah.

00:54:31.000 And maybe did it knowing that he was going to do this.

00:54:35.000 So you don't...

00:54:37.000 Whenever there's a mass shooting or anything that's crazy, you have two things happen.

00:54:41.000 One, everybody wants answers.

00:54:43.000 And two, everybody forgets about it really quick. 0.99

00:54:45.000 Because some new shit happens in the news. 0.99

00:54:47.000 And if it wasn't your family that got shot, it wasn't someone that you were close to that got shot. 0.99

00:54:50.000 I know people that got shot there.

00:54:52.000 I met them.

00:54:54.000 I met people in Vegas that got shot there.

00:54:56.000 I talked to them after it was over.

00:54:58.000 It was complete and total chaos.

00:55:01.000 And when there's complete and total chaos, you get all sorts of conflicting reports.

00:55:06.000 People were running into other casinos saying that there's a shooter because they ran out of that area.

00:55:10.000 And so then people were calling in police reports.

00:55:12.000 There's a shooter in the Monte Carlo.

00:55:14.000 There's a shooter in this.

00:55:14.000 And so those things get reported as fact when many times it's part of the confusion of a chaotic mass shooting like that Vegas event.

00:55:23.000 I don't know what happened other than the fact that this one guy definitely killed a bunch of people.

00:55:28.000 But whether or not someone was helping him or whether or not there was other people involved, I think they're still investigating.

00:55:33.000 Yeah.

00:55:34.000 So I guess my greater point there would be that...

00:55:38.000 If you're an intelligent individual, you can't just take what CBS tells you to be complete fact, right?

00:55:44.000 You go do some investigation yourself.

00:55:46.000 You try to read from different sources.

00:55:48.000 And then, hey, Sandy Hook, I think there's like a 99.99999% chance that Sandy Hook was real, right?

00:55:55.000 Is there some crazy...

00:55:57.000 In the, you know, infinitesimally small chance that it didn't happen, sure, right?

00:56:00.000 I don't think there is.

00:56:01.000 I think it's very unlikely.

00:56:02.000 And then, so Vegas, right?

00:56:03.000 I think there's a zero percent chance that Sandy Hook didn't happen.

00:56:06.000 Zero percent.

00:56:07.000 I've looked into it pretty, you know, it's just sad to me.

00:56:10.000 And you're a dad.

00:56:11.000 You know, the idea of your kid going to school and the school getting shot up by some psychopath. 0.84

00:56:16.000 Yeah.

00:56:17.000 Imagine if someone was saying that that was fake.

00:56:19.000 Yeah.

00:56:20.000 After your kid's dead.

00:56:21.000 You'd be frustrated, infuriated.

00:56:24.000 You wouldn't even know where to turn.

00:56:26.000 And that's actually happening to these people.

00:56:29.000 And they're getting labeled as frauds.

00:56:31.000 And people are emailing them and saying, how could you do this?

00:56:35.000 You're defrauding the American people.

00:56:37.000 You're a part of the Illuminati.

00:56:39.000 Yeah, so I think there's obviously those people who are on right the way, one side of it.

00:56:45.000 So if you go a spectrum for me, right?

00:56:48.000 There's the American who's drinking Diet Coke and eating frozen pizza and listening to whatever CBS says.

00:56:53.000 And then on the total opposite of the spectrum, there's the group that thinks every single thing that ever happens in America is a planned conspiracy by the New World Order.

00:57:00.000 Right.

00:57:01.000 So those are our two ends of the spectrum.

00:57:02.000 Right.

00:57:03.000 Now we can fall anywhere in the middle there.

00:57:04.000 So I think as an intelligent individual, we look at situations independently and say, well, there's some sketchy things there, not sketchy things there.

00:57:12.000 That's probably true, right?

00:57:13.000 And kind of independently think about stuff by ourselves.

00:57:16.000 And that's how I do it.

00:57:17.000 Yeah.

00:57:18.000 You know, that's a wise way to approach it.

00:57:20.000 And I think CBS or NBC or, you know, name your news source, they're run by people.

00:57:26.000 And if they weren't there, they only have access to a certain amount of information.

00:57:29.000 And sometimes they get bad information.

00:57:31.000 And sometimes they don't necessarily know.

00:57:33.000 I don't know how much of it is a part of some grand conspiracy rather than how much of it is a part of the chaos of these moments, the lack of information and people drawing conclusions.

00:57:44.000 And then also witnesses on the scene.

00:57:47.000 When people are on the scene of something that's crazy, they give all sorts of weird accounts.

00:57:52.000 And they're just, they're filled with adrenaline.

00:57:54.000 They don't know how to handle the situation.

00:57:55.000 People, you know, people don't handle chaotic events very well.

00:58:00.000 Yeah.

00:58:00.000 Agreed.

00:58:01.000 But...

00:58:01.000 I don't think the earth's flat, if that's fair.

00:58:03.000 Oh, good for you.

00:58:04.000 Yeah.

00:58:06.000 What do you possibly believe in that might be crazy? 0.96

00:58:09.000 Can I take a piss and I'll tell you? 0.87

00:58:11.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:58:11.000 I've been holding you so long.

00:58:12.000 I'm gonna run fast.

00:58:13.000 Go ahead.

00:58:13.000 No worries, man.

00:58:14.000 I wonder if there's something wrong with my bladder.

00:58:17.000 That you can hold it?

00:58:18.000 Yeah.

00:58:18.000 Do you think I've trained it?

00:58:20.000 Yeah.

00:58:20.000 I mean, sure.

00:58:21.000 That guy is going to try to shoot himself to see the flat earth in a couple days.

00:58:25.000 Oh, the guy's shooting himself up into the space?

00:58:28.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:58:28.000 Dumb fuck. 1.00

00:58:29.000 I think March 2nd. 1.00

00:58:30.000 James Kingston was that guy, by the way.

00:58:31.000 James Kingston.

00:58:32.000 Thank you.

00:58:32.000 Sorry, James.

00:58:33.000 Yeah, it's Dunbar.

00:58:35.000 There he is.

00:58:36.000 Dunbar's number, brother.

00:58:37.000 You can only keep 150 people in your brain at any time. 1.00

00:58:40.000 Look at that fucking picture. 0.99

00:58:42.000 We're looking at a picture for the audio folks of James Kingston on the top of this tower. 1.00

00:58:46.000 And I don't know how many fucking stories he's up there, but it's insane. 0.91

00:58:50.000 Because below him, and I mean way below him, are skyscrapers. 0.98

00:58:54.000 That's probably like Dubai or something, right?

00:58:56.000 Do you think that Dunbar's number could apply to other things besides people, like websites or numbers of instructions, that kind of thing?

00:59:03.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.

00:59:05.000 You know, I think it applies to too many things.

00:59:08.000 It applies, I just think, for names, names and people, I'm struggling.

00:59:15.000 I think I'm getting, like, I have an overflowing pot.

00:59:18.000 Like, Shane Burgos and Calvin Cater were fighting this weekend, and I called Calvin Cater Chris Cater after he won, even though I'm a fan of his. 1.00

00:59:28.000 Like, he won, and I went, Chris Cater, and then I went, his fucking name's Calvin, you dumb cunt. 0.98

00:59:32.000 Like, I just don't, I think I'm running out of space in my head for names, so my apologies to Calvin Cater. 0.99

00:59:40.000 I'm running out of names.

00:59:42.000 We're talking about Dunbar's number, how you can only keep so many people in your brain.

00:59:46.000 My brain's overflowed.

00:59:47.000 I don't have any hard drive space left.

00:59:49.000 I didn't know, so I thought it was, is that the guy that says you can only keep track of 150 people?

00:59:54.000 Yeah.

00:59:55.000 Like what's going on and the relationships and that kind of stuff?

00:59:57.000 Yeah, you only have so much room in your hard drive space.

01:00:01.000 It's based on tribal societies.

01:00:04.000 Our brains are sort of designed to keep track of 150 people.

01:00:07.000 That's how we evolved.

01:00:08.000 And then over the last X amount of hundreds of years, now all of a sudden you have to keep track of many, many multiples of that.

01:00:15.000 Especially if you're someone like you or I that runs into so many people who you meet on a regular basis.

01:00:22.000 You've got to keep those people all in your brain.

01:00:24.000 But is it—so I guess I haven't read that much.

01:00:28.000 Is it that you have to just know their names and faces, or is it that you have to know what's going on in their life?

01:00:33.000 I think you're supposed to be able to track them, like have some sort of a—whether it's intimate or personal relationship with these people, know them.

01:00:45.000 Especially if you think about commentating on fights, I have to pay attention to these guys and what they're doing and their career.

01:00:51.000 And there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them.

01:00:53.000 500 fighters now?

01:00:54.000 Yeah, 500 fighters that's active.

01:00:56.000 And then how many of them get new guys come in, old guys go away, I still keep them all in my head.

01:01:01.000 Hey, what's Sean Shirk up to these days?

01:01:04.000 They're all still in the head.

01:01:05.000 And it's like there's only so much room.

01:01:08.000 And after a while you'll wonder, you're like, wow, where are all these people going?

01:01:12.000 Yeah, I found that obviously with, and it's sad, like, you know, college friends.

01:01:17.000 It's like, you know, and it's good because you see them and it's like no time's passed, right?

01:01:21.000 But it's like, if I knew if I was living two minutes away, we'd probably be best friends still.

01:01:25.000 Right, right, right.

01:01:26.000 But now I get to see you once a year, twice a year maybe.

01:01:29.000 I can't keep up with you.

01:01:31.000 Dude, it's super challenging.

01:01:32.000 I totally agree.

01:01:33.000 And now Max and I run the Wrestling Academies, my brother.

01:01:35.000 We have three in Wisconsin.

01:01:36.000 And it's like, this fall was my first where I full-time worked at one.

01:01:42.000 And so now I'm really immersed in the one academy, whereas I was kind of loosely keeping track of all three.

01:01:47.000 But now that I'm kind of totally immersed in the one, I find it a lot harder to keep track of what's going on at the other two, where I was kind of better at it before when I wasn't so immersed in one.

01:01:58.000 Yeah, I can only imagine.

01:01:59.000 Eddie Bravo has 100 schools.

01:02:01.000 That's crazy, right?

01:02:01.000 There's 110th Planet Jiu-Jitsu's worldwide.

01:02:04.000 He can't keep track of all of them, can he?

01:02:06.000 I don't know.

01:02:07.000 I don't know.

01:02:07.000 I'd have to ask him.

01:02:08.000 I know he travels to all of them.

01:02:10.000 He's constantly traveling.

01:02:11.000 How can he travel to all of them?

01:02:12.000 He travels constantly.

01:02:13.000 He's doing seminars at all of them.

01:02:14.000 Oh my gosh.

01:02:15.000 He's just always traveling.

01:02:16.000 Yeah.

01:02:17.000 So does he do like one time a year for each facility or something?

01:02:20.000 I don't know.

01:02:20.000 It's a good question.

01:02:21.000 If he goes to Columbia, it probably wouldn't even be once a year.

01:02:25.000 Yeah, he's actually got one in Singapore now.

01:02:27.000 Yeah, he's everywhere.

01:02:29.000 He was out in Singapore when I was there for one of my fights this year.

01:02:32.000 It was maybe the May fight, I think.

01:02:35.000 He was out there doing his 10th Planet seminar and now they have a 10th Planet program at Evolve.

01:02:41.000 It's crazy.

01:02:41.000 Evolve is supposed to be an amazing facility.

01:02:44.000 I've heard great things.

01:02:45.000 I mean, the nicest MMA facility I've ever been to.

01:02:49.000 They actually just opened their fourth location just in Singapore.

01:02:52.000 Singapore is a city-state, right?

01:02:54.000 It's six million people on a really, really small island.

01:02:59.000 But some of their academies are only a mile or two apart.

01:03:03.000 Like, they're not far apart, but the population density is such that, you know, listen, they start classes at, I think it's 6 a.m., and they end classes at 11 p.m., and you can freaking stop in any time of day, and there will be a class there that's full with Muay Thai or Jiu-Jitsu, whatever, you name it, it'll be going on.

01:03:21.000 That's incredible.

01:03:22.000 Well, Manhattan is kind of like that in a lot of ways, right?

01:03:26.000 How many Jiu-Jitsu schools are in Manhattan?

01:03:28.000 I mean, obviously Marcel, yeah, there's hundreds, but really big ones.

01:03:32.000 Henzo's got a huge one.

01:03:33.000 Marcel's got a huge one.

01:03:34.000 So, yeah, there's a lot right there.

01:03:36.000 I mean, Henzo's is huge.

01:03:38.000 That place is enormous.

01:03:40.000 Hundreds and hundreds of students.

01:03:41.000 No, I thought it was thousands.

01:03:43.000 Could be.

01:03:43.000 Someone told me Henzo has over a thousand students in the main New York City location.

01:03:49.000 And I think it's, you know, it ain't cheap because you got to pay for rent.

01:03:54.000 And so they're probably paying a couple hundred bucks a month.

01:03:56.000 Yeah, so Evolve is...

01:03:59.000 I think $350 a month.

01:04:01.000 Wow.

01:04:01.000 But obviously, so Singapore is one of the most wealthy countries on the planet, so you have to take that into account.

01:04:07.000 Pretty much everyone that lives there has a decent amount of wealth.

01:04:10.000 Singapore is a fascinating country.

01:04:14.000 I was there 15 times or whatever, so I got kind of immersed in the culture, and then I ended up reading the books about Lee Kuan Yew, the guy who started the country.

01:04:22.000 So there was a whole bunch of those Asian countries that got independence in the 1950s and 60s.

01:04:30.000 And Singapore, I believe, was founded in 1965. It could be off by one year there, maybe.

01:04:35.000 But, you know, a lot of those countries are not doing super well economically.

01:04:39.000 And Singapore is like this freaking standout country who's like top five world per person wealth.

01:04:47.000 And why?

01:04:47.000 Why are they doing so much better?

01:04:49.000 And so this is me from an outsider's perspective.

01:04:52.000 So they really do a lot of kind of, it's kind of like self-tracking, right?

01:04:57.000 And so every month a bunch of your check comes out to, you know, like we would pay taxes, right?

01:05:02.000 A bunch of money comes out of their check.

01:05:04.000 So they can spend, this is fascinating, they spend their money on three things.

01:05:07.000 It goes into this fund, right?

01:05:09.000 Education, healthcare, and housing.

01:05:12.000 Okay?

01:05:13.000 And so if you want cheaper of any one of those, if you want the cheapest form of it, right, it's very government subsidized.

01:05:19.000 And it comes out of your fund, right?

01:05:21.000 So only a little bit of money comes out.

01:05:23.000 If you want the nicest healthcare or the nicest housing, then it's only a tiny percent government subsidized.

01:05:30.000 So the more expensive the stuff gets, whether it's education or housing or healthcare, the less subsidized it gets, and the cheaper it gets, the more subsidized it gets.

01:05:38.000 And so everyone kind of, you know, they pay into this fund, so everyone has this personal fund that they can use, and then, you know, into those three things.

01:05:47.000 And so I think a lot of people have, I think they feel like they have more control over their lives, and, you know, obviously it is very strict regulations and laws, but from what I've seen, and I've spent a lot of time there, everyone seems pretty happy.

01:05:58.000 That's interesting.

01:05:59.000 Yeah.

01:06:00.000 That's an interesting way to go.

01:06:01.000 I mean, I don't think there's any one good way to govern people. 0.97

01:06:04.000 I think we have a pretty good system over here, but it's obviously filled with bureaucratic bullshit and red tape. 0.98

01:06:11.000 Way too much government. 0.99

01:06:12.000 Way too much. 1.00

01:06:12.000 There's way too many people doing stupid jobs. 1.00

01:06:14.000 And getting paid too much for doing them. 1.00

01:06:18.000 And then the shit like trying to chase down medical marijuana in 2017, trying to stop legal marijuana. 0.99

01:06:25.000 Why? 0.99

01:06:26.000 Who's paying you to do this?

01:06:27.000 Why are you doing that?

01:06:29.000 That doesn't make any sense.

01:06:29.000 This is not what our tax dollars should be going towards.

01:06:31.000 You know what's funny?

01:06:32.000 When you go all the way back, I think about it...

01:06:34.000 So we talk about that process of who's keeping them from doing this, and you talk about the pharmaceuticals with weed, which I think is true.

01:06:41.000 You know what?

01:06:41.000 A funny one I think about is John McCain and mixed martial arts.

01:06:46.000 Who was sponsoring John McCain?

01:06:48.000 Budweiser.

01:06:48.000 Budweiser, who was the main advertiser for boxing.

01:06:51.000 It's like...

01:06:52.000 You cannot make an argument that boxing is safer than MMA. You can't freaking do it.

01:06:56.000 It's impossible.

01:06:58.000 It's impossible.

01:06:59.000 But John McCain's over here getting paid by Budweiser and saying, MMA is awful, let's ban it.

01:07:05.000 And at the same time, he's promoting boxing, essentially.

01:07:07.000 It's freaking mind-blowing.

01:07:08.000 Well, in his defense, it was MMA from a long time ago.

01:07:12.000 And it wasn't really the same as MMA now.

01:07:15.000 And he's turned the corner, and now he supports MMA. But also, you've got Budweiser and Bud Light are sponsors now of MMA. But that's a real problem with politicians.

01:07:25.000 They're dirty. 1.00

01:07:26.000 There's so many dirty politicians. 0.99

01:07:27.000 I don't know what percentage is, but it's high. 0.90

01:07:29.000 97. It's probably a fucking high. 0.99

01:07:32.000 What crazy shit, what crazy conspiracy do you believe in? 1.00

01:07:37.000 So the one that got me started really independently thinking for myself was 9-11, which I think that was for a lot of people. 1.00

01:07:44.000 Yeah.

01:07:45.000 Yeah.

01:07:45.000 What do you think about 9-11?

01:07:48.000 I know I don't know all the answers, but I know the given explanation, I don't believe.

01:07:53.000 What given explanation? 0.99

01:07:54.000 The one that came, what's the damn report that they wrote? 0.99

01:07:58.000 The NIST report? 0.99

01:07:59.000 No, that wasn't what it was.

01:08:01.000 Was it?

01:08:01.000 Yeah, well, NIST is the one who did the report on Tower 7 collapsing.

01:08:07.000 No, what was the other report they came out with right away?

01:08:10.000 Anyway, so my buddy lived right by the airport, and he played loose change for me.

01:08:14.000 And I said, you are out of your GD mind. 1.00

01:08:17.000 Like, you are insane, man. 1.00

01:08:19.000 Right. 0.99

01:08:20.000 And then I started thinking, well...

01:08:21.000 That doesn't...

01:08:22.000 Maybe?

01:08:23.000 Maybe I should think about it, you know?

01:08:25.000 That it was an inside job?

01:08:28.000 Not totally.

01:08:30.000 I mean, so I think obviously the planes flew into the buildings for sure.

01:08:34.000 I think there's no doubt about that.

01:08:35.000 But that maybe there was inklings, inclinations that was going to happen and that not enough was done to stop it?

01:08:42.000 I think...

01:08:44.000 This is another thing where you have a gigantic tragedy, and because of a gigantic tragedy, there's a lot of people that draw these conclusions based on witness testimony and things that are happening.

01:08:55.000 But I think you have to realize that any time there's something that happens, people start looking for all these different Correlating factors, right?

01:09:05.000 You start saying, well, hey, look, there was local tests that were being done.

01:09:10.000 They were looking out for planes that were potentially going to fly into buildings.

01:09:15.000 They knew this was going to happen in advance. 0.99

01:09:16.000 But if you talk to anybody that is in intelligence, they're dealing with that shit every day. 1.00

01:09:23.000 Just one day, something happens. 0.99

01:09:26.000 There's always...

01:09:28.000 Warnings about terrorist attacks.

01:09:29.000 There's always warnings about things happening.

01:09:31.000 And a lot of times, these warnings get thwarted.

01:09:34.000 Like, the FBI stopped that...

01:09:35.000 Last week, there was one.

01:09:36.000 There was one in San Francisco, right?

01:09:38.000 Yeah.

01:09:38.000 They had bombs, and they stopped them.

01:09:40.000 Yeah.

01:09:41.000 And this has happened many times.

01:09:43.000 Now, when they don't catch it, and it goes through, then people start thinking, oh, there was some sort of a conspiracy.

01:09:51.000 They allowed these planes to fly into buildings.

01:09:53.000 A missile hit the Pentagon.

01:09:55.000 And...

01:09:57.000 There was a video that came out of that last week, but it might have been fake news.

01:10:00.000 The Pentagon thing?

01:10:01.000 There was a video of something hitting the Pentagon, which looked like a missile and not an airplane.

01:10:05.000 Really?

01:10:05.000 But I don't believe it was true.

01:10:06.000 I was like, this is interesting because I've never seen this video before, and obviously there's no video evidence of what hit the Pentagon.

01:10:13.000 Well, there's a video of something.

01:10:15.000 I know there was one hidden camera thing or security camera video that was released. 0.99

01:10:20.000 But what they did have is all sorts of pieces of aircraft all over the fucking lawn. 0.98

01:10:25.000 I mean, in a blown up building and a plane that's missing and all the people dead. 0.99

01:10:30.000 Like, I'm gonna guess it was a plane.

01:10:32.000 Yeah.

01:10:33.000 I think people look for conspiracies in everything because it's exciting.

01:10:37.000 There's something stimulating about it.

01:10:39.000 There is.

01:10:40.000 But then obviously, I know that you don't believe that everything we're told is the truth right away, right?

01:10:46.000 I mean, if we go to something like Gulf of Tonkin incident, right?

01:10:50.000 I mean, that's been proven to be false.

01:10:52.000 Or the fact, like the Banana Republics, right?

01:10:54.000 Where Dole asked us to go take out one of their dictators because they were going to nationalize all the banana plants in that country. 0.63

01:11:00.000 Yeah.

01:11:00.000 I mean, those things have been now proven to be totally factual, that the United States government went and did that stuff.

01:11:07.000 So the fact that, you know, in 1960s or 70s, those things were reported the opposite, right?

01:11:12.000 So we can't obviously take everything that we've been reported as truth.

01:11:16.000 Well, there's definitely been conspiracies that have been put together and executed.

01:11:22.000 And these conspiracies have greatly affected the American people.

01:11:26.000 The Gulf of Tonkin is a perfect example. 0.72

01:11:28.000 Another one that they were planning on was Operation Northwoods.

01:11:32.000 Operation Northwoods was one that they were planning on blowing up a drone jetliner and blaming it on the Cubans. 0.74

01:11:37.000 They were going to arm Cuban friendlies and have them attack Guantanamo Bay. 0.94

01:11:41.000 They were going to sacrifice American troops and American lives.

01:11:44.000 And they were going to do this in order to get people to be excited about a war with Cuba.

01:11:48.000 This is a real thing that was signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was released by the Freedom of Information Act, and it was vetoed by Kennedy. 0.98

01:11:55.000 So we know that there were people, at least in 1962, that were planning on shit like this. 0.98

01:12:00.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:12:00.000 So that's a real thing. 0.99

01:12:01.000 And the idea that that just went away and no one does that anymore.

01:12:04.000 It's crazy.

01:12:05.000 I don't believe that. 0.99

01:12:06.000 I think there's most certainly evil people in all fucking sectors of life. 0.99

01:12:12.000 Yes, absolutely. 0.98

01:12:13.000 Yeah, so it's good to have an open mind, but there's also a lot of fucking conspiracy loons that look for— And they get consumed with it. 0.98

01:12:20.000 That's the issue. 0.96

01:12:21.000 They get consumed with nothing that I've been told is true, which is obviously, like I said, the one far into the spectrum. 0.92

01:12:28.000 Anyone who's dead end is crazy also.

01:12:29.000 Yeah, there's people out there that think the satellites are fake.

01:12:32.000 And they think that dinosaurs were not real.

01:12:35.000 And that the Earth is flat is the one where I just shake my head like...

01:12:38.000 The moon landing one is my favorite.

01:12:40.000 Really?

01:12:40.000 I got balls deep in that for years.

01:12:42.000 I was completely convinced.

01:12:43.000 So you think they did not go to the moon?

01:12:44.000 No, I don't think that anymore.

01:12:46.000 But you know what I think now?

01:12:47.000 I think I don't know.

01:12:49.000 Okay.

01:12:49.000 But I do think that it is one of the more fascinating conspiracies that between 1969 and 1972, they had seven attempts, six of them successful.

01:13:01.000 Apollo 13 was the one that they didn't apparently make it and they had to come back.

01:13:06.000 But that was the only time in history that a human being has been more than 400 miles above the Earth's surface.

01:13:12.000 All the space station missions, all the space shuttle missions, all that stuff is...

01:13:17.000 Within orbit.

01:13:18.000 Yeah, it's low.

01:13:19.000 It's all very low.

01:13:20.000 They went 260,000 miles out and back into deep space, but they had never even flown a chicken out there and see if it comes back alive.

01:13:28.000 Really?

01:13:29.000 Yeah, no.

01:13:29.000 I'm not into the space travel ones.

01:13:31.000 I mean, they did a couple of flybys that went around the moon early before they landed on the moon.

01:13:35.000 But other than that, I mean, without...

01:13:38.000 Unmanned drones like what we have on Mars and things like that.

01:13:41.000 We've never really sent a living thing out through the magnetosphere, through the Van Allen radiation belts, into deep space.

01:13:49.000 There's all these possibilities of solar flares and anything that would have killed them instantly.

01:13:53.000 And they just did that.

01:13:55.000 And then we haven't been able to do that since 1972. That's the one way.

01:13:58.000 I've never looked into the moon landing.

01:14:00.000 I think it's kind of goofy, right?

01:14:02.000 Well, it's weird.

01:14:03.000 It's a weird one.

01:14:03.000 Why have we never gone back?

01:14:05.000 Surely our technology is far superior to what it was in 1969, right?

01:14:09.000 The technology is far superior, except that they're not using that technology for manned space travel into deep space like that, into the moon.

01:14:19.000 So it's like...

01:14:20.000 Our technology in all these other areas is superior, but they haven't really worked towards that because they haven't been funded.

01:14:27.000 So the big issue is, in many ways, it's money, right?

01:14:30.000 How much money is there in going to the moon?

01:14:33.000 And it's also very risky to send humans out there.

01:14:36.000 We're talking about manned missions to Mars now, which may or may not take place by 2030. They're talking about doing that.

01:14:43.000 It's way cheaper and safer to send robots out there.

01:14:46.000 Why risk human lives?

01:14:48.000 They put robots on the moon, right?

01:14:50.000 And they put robots on Mars.

01:14:52.000 The rovers.

01:14:53.000 The rovers on Mars, that's the most interesting, because they're sending these really high-resolution photos of the surface of Mars, and they're running tests and checking for biological life.

01:15:03.000 It's really, really interesting stuff.

01:15:05.000 But between 69 and 72, when they did all this stuff, the technology back then was nothing compared to what they have now in terms of calculations and computers.

01:15:17.000 And it's also, there's unquestionably some stuff that, whether it was images or video, that was faked.

01:15:27.000 Really?

01:15:28.000 Yeah.

01:15:29.000 So like I said, I've never looked into this at all.

01:15:30.000 Gemini 15 is the big one because there's a photo of Michael Collins.

01:15:34.000 It shows him in deep space and they use it as a press release saying that he was on a spacewalk when it was really an image of him from a test run where there was all this stuff in the background and he was on this harness and they just blacked out the background and tried to sell it as him being in space.

01:15:52.000 Oh.

01:15:52.000 See if you can find that.

01:15:54.000 Michael Collins.

01:15:54.000 I was looking up how much it costs to send somebody to space.

01:15:57.000 Oh, it's insane.

01:15:58.000 $70 million.

01:15:59.000 $70 million?

01:16:00.000 For a NASA astronaut to fly on a Russian shuttle.

01:16:03.000 Well, there's all these private guys trying to sell tickets to places.

01:16:07.000 I mean, Bezos is trying to do it.

01:16:09.000 Musk, obviously.

01:16:11.000 But that's space.

01:16:11.000 That's just low Earth orbit.

01:16:13.000 That's still inside 400 miles.

01:16:15.000 None of them are trying to go anywhere?

01:16:16.000 No.

01:16:17.000 Well, they might in the future.

01:16:18.000 Or Branson.

01:16:19.000 Well, that's all same thing.

01:16:20.000 It's all low Earth orbit.

01:16:22.000 But they are talking about future visits to the moon and to Mars.

01:16:26.000 But a lot of times I feel like when they say that, you know, George Bush Sr. said that they were going to go back to the moon again. 0.96

01:16:33.000 In like, fucking, when was that? 0.96

01:16:35.000 1990 or whatever the hell that was? 0.97

01:16:37.000 People have always said we're going to go back to the moon, but we haven't been back since 1972. Does that mean that we never went?

01:16:43.000 No. 1.00

01:16:43.000 But then it gets weird when you find out that Wernher von Braun was a fucking Nazi. 1.00

01:16:48.000 Who? 1.00

01:16:49.000 Wernher von Braun.

01:16:49.000 He was the head of NASA. He was the guy who organized the moon landings.

01:16:54.000 He was the head rocket guy.

01:16:57.000 He was... 0.87

01:16:59.000 That guy was a legit Nazi. 0.73

01:17:02.000 The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that if he was alive today, they would prosecute him for crimes against humanity. 0.89

01:17:08.000 They would hang the five slowest workers every day in front of his Berlin rocket factory.

01:17:14.000 Oh, yeah.

01:17:14.000 No, 100%.

01:17:15.000 I mean, that's what they did.

01:17:17.000 What they did was they took this thing that was called Operation Paperclip, where when we won World War II, they took all the top Nazi scientists. 0.66

01:17:27.000 And they secretly brought him over to America.

01:17:30.000 And they did it on the down low so that no one would think, like, hey, why do we have a guy named Werner von Braun running the American space program?

01:17:38.000 It's because the Nazi scientists were insanely advanced. 0.66

01:17:42.000 So the question is, like, well, were they really Nazis or were they scientists that were under the boot of the Nazi administration?

01:17:48.000 I mean, well, I don't know.

01:17:50.000 I mean, I'm not around then.

01:17:51.000 Yeah.

01:17:51.000 But I do know that these are the people that were the head engineers and the people that designed it.

01:17:58.000 Wernher von Braun himself was saying how impossible it was just years before they did the moon landing and years before Operation Paperclip that it was impossible to go to the moon or how ridiculously impossible it would be.

01:18:10.000 But technology advanced from then to when 1969 happened to when they did it. 0.96

01:18:16.000 I stopped saying that we never went to the moon because I really don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. 0.51

01:18:20.000 And that's a big part of understanding these conspiracies. 0.95

01:18:23.000 It's hard.

01:18:24.000 Well, you have to really know.

01:18:25.000 How much do I know about rocketry?

01:18:28.000 How much do I know about aerospace?

01:18:30.000 Zero! 0.90

01:18:31.000 So if I'm running around saying I don't believe people went to the moon, what is it based on?

01:18:37.000 It's based mostly on ignorance, speculation, and the excited feeling that comes with trying to uncover a conspiracy.

01:18:45.000 Sure.

01:18:47.000 I think you do have to be a little bit discerning on what you hear.

01:18:50.000 But it is frustrating.

01:18:51.000 And that's where a lot of these conspiracy guys, they think they know more than they do.

01:18:55.000 Because you have to come to the realization that you're probably never going to know the real answer with a lot of these things.

01:19:01.000 Very likely.

01:19:01.000 I mean, some of them come out many, many, many, many years later.

01:19:04.000 We're talking about like Gulf of Tonkin, right?

01:19:06.000 Or Operation Northwoods.

01:19:07.000 Many years later, it comes out.

01:19:08.000 But, you know, there's a good likelihood that I'll never know the truth on stuff I read a lot about.

01:19:13.000 I think with the moon landing, it's way more likely that we went to the moon, but that some of the footage is fake.

01:19:18.000 And I think they probably did that because it's incredibly difficult to film things on the moon.

01:19:22.000 And I think they filmed some stuff in test runs and then tried to pass that stuff off.

01:19:27.000 They should have brought their iPhone.

01:19:28.000 They didn't have it back then.

01:19:29.000 They had these cameras that they had in the center of their chest.

01:19:33.000 What if they would have been taking a selfie on the moon?

01:19:36.000 Snapchatting it.

01:19:37.000 You'd have to take your shoot off and then you would die.

01:19:40.000 Yeah, they didn't have a camera that you could put in front of you.

01:19:43.000 Well, maybe they have one of those clicker buttons they could have with their big gloves on and they, you know, they put the thing out and then they click it and then boom, Snapchat, Wi-Fi on the moon.

01:19:50.000 Well, that's what they said, well, it was that they did it remotely.

01:19:53.000 That's how they captured the video of the lunar module leaving the surface of the moon and panned up and watched it go, that they did all that remotely.

01:20:02.000 It's all, there's some squirrely footage.

01:20:05.000 You ever see the video of them jumping around?

01:20:07.000 It looks like they're on trampolines.

01:20:08.000 Yeah, I've seen that.

01:20:09.000 Like they're just bouncing straight up in the air. 0.99

01:20:11.000 You're like, well, what the fuck is that? 0.87

01:20:13.000 How come the physics are different in different flights? 0.98

01:20:15.000 Like in some of the flights, like Apollo 11, they're barely getting off the ground.

01:20:19.000 Is there one where they're walking, but they're kind of going...

01:20:22.000 Yeah.

01:20:23.000 Like that?

01:20:23.000 Well, there's ones like that, and then there's also ones where they fall down.

01:20:27.000 It looks like they're getting yanked up by wires.

01:20:29.000 I think it's entirely possible that some of that stuff was faked.

01:20:33.000 But I think it's way more likely that they actually went to the moon than they didn't.

01:20:37.000 But it's way sexier to think that they faked the whole thing.

01:20:40.000 It's fun.

01:20:41.000 It's fun to think they faked the whole thing.

01:20:43.000 That everybody was quiet about it.

01:20:45.000 And, you know, Neil Armstrong gave this real cryptic speech on the 25th anniversary of the moon mission saying that, you know, there are hidden truths.

01:20:54.000 What is the exact quote that he said?

01:20:57.000 Um...

01:21:00.000 Some of the great truths that could be revealed, removing some of truth's hidden layers.

01:21:08.000 So what if he was giving it away?

01:21:10.000 It was real cryptic.

01:21:11.000 It was like, what do you say?

01:21:13.000 Let's see if you can find it.

01:21:15.000 Yeah, play the video.

01:21:16.000 He might have been giving it away.

01:21:17.000 Well, if you were a conspiracy theory, this would give you a rock-hard boner.

01:21:22.000 Listen to this.

01:21:23.000 Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance in the next generation of taxpayers.

01:21:28.000 No, no, no, just play the whole thing so you don't confuse everybody.

01:21:31.000 In 1994, Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance and held back tears as he spoke these brief cryptic remarks before the next generation of taxpayers as they toured the White House.

01:21:44.000 Today we have with us a group of students among America's best.

01:21:51.000 To you we say we've only completed a beginning.

01:21:57.000 We leave you much that is undone.

01:22:02.000 There are great ideas undiscovered.

01:22:06.000 Breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers. 0.96

01:22:15.000 What the fuck does that mean? 1.00

01:22:17.000 I mean, you're supposed to say, yo, I went to the moon, bitch. 1.00

01:22:23.000 You're not supposed to say breakthroughs that can be truth-protective layers. 0.98

01:22:28.000 I don't even understand what that means.

01:22:29.000 The press conference is one of the more fascinating things.

01:22:32.000 If you watch the press conference, again, I was balls deep in this stuff for years.

01:22:37.000 The press conference from 1969 when they returned from the moon is one of the most cryptic, weird things you'll ever see.

01:22:44.000 These guys look like they just stole something and they're being questioned. 0.98

01:22:50.000 I've never seen a video where people look like they're more full of shit than that video of the press conference from 1969. It's weird, man. 0.99

01:22:59.000 It's weird.

01:22:59.000 They're like fidgety and looking nervous like they're getting away with something.

01:23:03.000 So they didn't do it then?

01:23:03.000 They might have done it.

01:23:06.000 They might have been forced to say some things that they didn't want to say, and that could be part of it.

01:23:12.000 Absolutely.

01:23:12.000 They could have done it.

01:23:13.000 But there's a lot of weirdness with the moon landing.

01:23:16.000 If you wanted to have a conspiracy to wrap your head around that's exciting, it's one of the best ones.

01:23:24.000 Really, but who benefits from it?

01:23:26.000 The United States government did because it showed military superiority over the Russians. 0.60

01:23:29.000 We were able to do that.

01:23:31.000 It also, you know, it was the Nixon administration. 1.00

01:23:34.000 People were just flat out full of shit. 1.00

01:23:36.000 Well, yeah. 1.00

01:23:37.000 I mean, they were just lying to people left and right back then.

01:23:39.000 That's government, though.

01:23:40.000 Yeah, but even more so then because it was unchecked.

01:23:42.000 There was no media.

01:23:43.000 Social media.

01:23:44.000 Yeah, there was nothing that would expose them for this.

01:23:47.000 And this stuff, they would air it on TV once in 1969. You never see it again unless you watch it on film.

01:23:54.000 There's no...

01:23:54.000 YouTube, we can go back and watch the astronauts on trampolines video.

01:23:59.000 That's my favorite one. 0.99

01:24:00.000 You watch that, and you go, what in the fuck is happening there? 0.99

01:24:02.000 These guys are bouncing up in the air. 0.99

01:24:04.000 Like, how are they doing that?

01:24:05.000 Like, they never did...

01:24:06.000 If you watch Apollo 11 when they were moving around on the surface of the moon, it's just like they're moving in slow motion. 0.79

01:24:12.000 And then you go to whatever it was, like Apollo 14 or 15, when they were doing the trampoline thing, they're fucking flying through the air.

01:24:20.000 Have you seen it?

01:24:20.000 I've never gotten into the moon thing.

01:24:23.000 The flat earth thing is ridiculous. 0.85

01:24:25.000 Watch this. 0.97

01:24:26.000 And like their feet are hidden.

01:24:28.000 Look at this.

01:24:29.000 Watch these guys bounce up in the air.

01:24:31.000 It's like they're on some sort of wire.

01:24:32.000 Like they're being yanked up into the air.

01:24:34.000 Oh yeah. 0.99

01:24:35.000 Like what the fuck are they doing? 0.99

01:24:37.000 And they're playing. 0.99

01:24:38.000 Like falling down and it's very weird. 0.98

01:24:41.000 But it could have been that they were really on the moon and these guys were fucking cowboys and yahoos and they wanted to bounce around. 0.96

01:24:49.000 Oh, so you were posting those videos back in the day. 0.97

01:24:51.000 Yeah, I posted those videos back in the day.

01:24:52.000 I had a debate on Penn Jillette's radio show with a guy who was an astronomer.

01:24:58.000 And he wasn't willing to admit a lot of stuff that was a fact.

01:25:01.000 Like the fact that Wernher von Braun was a Nazi.

01:25:03.000 Well, why does the flag look so still there?

01:25:05.000 Well, the flag had a wire, first of all, on the top of it that stiffened it up to make it...

01:25:10.000 But there's videos of the flag moving in a non-existent breeze, which is weird too.

01:25:17.000 They try to make some logical explanations for why the flag could be moving in a vacuum, and some of it makes sense, but some of it doesn't.

01:25:26.000 The wires one is weird if you watch them fall down.

01:25:29.000 Go to that one right there, Jamie.

01:25:32.000 Like, if you watch, like, sometimes they're falling down, and when they're falling down, it looks like they get yanked back up.

01:25:38.000 But I think it might not have been real footage.

01:25:41.000 What they might have done is use some test footage, like, right there, Jamie, right there, let it go.

01:25:47.000 Like, homeboy falls down, and then it looks like he gets yanked back up.

01:25:50.000 Look at this.

01:25:51.000 Whoops!

01:25:51.000 Oh, he did not, that was not him standing up.

01:25:53.000 Yeah, what is this?

01:25:54.000 That's not him standing up.

01:25:55.000 You can't stand up like that.

01:25:56.000 Right, but you're on the moon, so you realize you're in one-sixth Earth's gravity.

01:26:00.000 But there was nothing to make him go like this.

01:26:02.000 Exactly.

01:26:03.000 Right?

01:26:03.000 You can't get up without...

01:26:04.000 Now we go back to MMA, because that's what these freaking folk-style wrestlings, the next generation of MMA, because you have to turn to your base to get up. 0.70

01:26:13.000 You can't look at...

01:26:14.000 There's nothing on the ground.

01:26:15.000 How's he going to get the momentum to go?

01:26:16.000 He's getting yanked up.

01:26:17.000 He would have super abs.

01:26:18.000 He would have to be like a breakdancer.

01:26:20.000 No, you can't, because...

01:26:21.000 Okay, maybe a breakdancer.

01:26:22.000 Maybe a breakdancer.

01:26:23.000 But you can't get up without putting a bass down, right?

01:26:26.000 Yeah.

01:26:27.000 Yeah, that was really weird.

01:26:28.000 It's very weird.

01:26:29.000 Watch it again.

01:26:30.000 Watch him get yanked up.

01:26:31.000 Yeah, he's got no bass.

01:26:32.000 Yeah.

01:26:32.000 It almost seems like that little piece is played in reverse.

01:26:35.000 Yeah, it almost does.

01:26:36.000 Yeah, it almost does.

01:26:38.000 Yeah, he couldn't stand up like that.

01:26:39.000 But the thing falls down right afterwards, so it wasn't in reverse.

01:26:42.000 I think... 0.99

01:26:43.000 It's entirely possible that some of the footage was bullshit. 0.98

01:26:47.000 But it doesn't mean that they didn't go to the moon. 0.98

01:26:49.000 Yeah.

01:26:49.000 It means that overzealous people in...

01:26:52.000 And he only had one foot on the ground there, too.

01:26:53.000 Right.

01:26:54.000 Yeah.

01:26:54.000 Oh, that's true.

01:26:54.000 Look at this.

01:26:55.000 Watch.

01:26:55.000 So he stood up like...

01:26:56.000 Look at that. 0.98

01:26:56.000 It's ridiculous. 0.98

01:26:57.000 He can't do it. 0.84

01:26:58.000 His right foot's down, his left foot's up, and he just goes straight up in the air.

01:27:01.000 It is crazy.

01:27:02.000 That's fake.

01:27:03.000 But, I've never been in one-sixth Earth's gravity in either of you.

01:27:06.000 Nah, Joe, it's fake, dude.

01:27:09.000 I think that's fake.

01:27:10.000 Ben Askren says we never went to the moon.

01:27:12.000 I said that video was fake.

01:27:15.000 No, the video was real.

01:27:16.000 That's from television.

01:27:17.000 Okay.

01:27:18.000 That guy standing up like that, he got help somehow.

01:27:21.000 You can't stand up like that.

01:27:23.000 Very well, he could have been on wires.

01:27:25.000 It could have been that they were using that to simulate what it would be like.

01:27:29.000 Because they definitely filmed a lot of simulations.

01:27:32.000 They did a lot of that because they wanted to prepare the astronauts.

01:27:35.000 It's entirely possible that some of those simulations got passed off as being an actual video of them on the moon.

01:27:41.000 Sure.

01:27:42.000 Fair enough. 1.00

01:27:43.000 Or they faked the whole fucking thing. 0.99

01:27:44.000 I wasn't there. 1.00

01:27:45.000 I don't know.

01:27:46.000 I was only two.

01:27:47.000 I'm going to use that as a prelude.

01:27:48.000 I think folk style wrestling is the next, that's the next genesis of MMA, right?

01:27:52.000 We go, what's next?

01:27:54.000 Yeah.

01:27:54.000 Like, that guy standing up.

01:27:56.000 People don't realize, if you watch the Liam O'Rourke fight, it was incredibly frustrating to watch for me.

01:28:02.000 Because Lima was literally just laying on his back in guard, you know?

01:28:06.000 And guard is almost non-existent, effective in MMA now.

01:28:11.000 Well, unless you're Brian Ortega.

01:28:12.000 Okay, there's a few guys.

01:28:14.000 Tiny amount, right?

01:28:15.000 But I think those guys are like you.

01:28:18.000 Like, your wrestling is so highly effective in MMA. Some people can say you can't get by just with wrestling.

01:28:23.000 Well, whoop.

01:28:23.000 Well, hey, I don't just wrestle.

01:28:25.000 I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu.

01:28:26.000 You're right.

01:28:26.000 Yeah, no doubt.

01:28:27.000 But you use a lot of wrestling.

01:28:29.000 Yeah, primarily.

01:28:30.000 Yeah, I mean, it's not that Brian Ortega can box, too.

01:28:32.000 He can do a lot of other things, too.

01:28:33.000 He can strike.

01:28:34.000 I mean, he's a good, solid striker.

01:28:35.000 But his guard is so dangerous.

01:28:38.000 Yeah.

01:28:38.000 It's just another level of dangerous as opposed to most MMA fighters, including Lima.

01:28:43.000 Yeah.

01:28:43.000 And so, you know, people actually going back to their base, right, which has been, it's been a no-no forever in MMA. You don't go back to your base because you expose your back.

01:28:51.000 Right.

01:28:52.000 But then again, you know, what percentage of guys who are sitting in guard actually get submissions from the guard now?

01:28:57.000 The number's really small.

01:28:59.000 Yeah, it's low.

01:28:59.000 So you're going to have to find out now.

01:29:02.000 Okay, like, this is so frustrating.

01:29:04.000 So in the Lima fight, Rory wins the first two rounds.

01:29:07.000 It's competitive, but he wins pretty clearly.

01:29:10.000 But the leg kicks are...

01:29:11.000 I've never been kicked as hard by anyone as Douglas Lima.

01:29:13.000 He kicked me one time in the leg.

01:29:15.000 I freaking didn't walk right for a week.

01:29:17.000 Really?

01:29:17.000 Oh my god, he kicked so hard.

01:29:18.000 He kicked so hard.

01:29:19.000 So hard.

01:29:20.000 And so, third round, there's this accumulation of leg kicks, and all of a sudden, Rory's leg is really effed up from getting kicked a handful of times.

01:29:28.000 And he's doing that low calf kick.

01:29:29.000 Yes.

01:29:30.000 Well, he's kicking him kind of all over, but then you see Rory starting to do this one and, you know, and started checking it.

01:29:35.000 So, Lehman starts taking control of the fight.

01:29:38.000 I think he wins the third round, in my opinion.

01:29:40.000 Fourth round, in the beginning, he, like, kicks him once, and Rory falls down, and he hops in a mountain, starts beating him up.

01:29:46.000 He's like, holy crap, this fight might be over.

01:29:48.000 And then, so Rory recovers, but then in the fifth round, Rory goes out and shoots, like, a single-leg, double-leg, like, immediate.

01:29:55.000 We're talking first...

01:29:56.000 10 seconds, right? 0.99

01:29:58.000 And going into that round, you think, shit, he might get finished this round. 0.99

01:30:01.000 I mean, he can barely walk. 0.99

01:30:02.000 Look at his leg.

01:30:04.000 And so Limay gets taken down 10 seconds into the round.

01:30:08.000 He literally stayed in guard for 4 minutes, 50 seconds.

01:30:11.000 And you're like, at some point, is he going to try to get up?

01:30:14.000 Because he has to get up.

01:30:15.000 If he gets up and he lands one or two more kicks without getting taken down, the fight's likely over.

01:30:18.000 Wow.

01:30:19.000 But he refuses to turn to his base because this is anti-jiu-jitsu.

01:30:24.000 You shouldn't turn to your base in jiu-jitsu.

01:30:25.000 Why don't you just worry about getting choked? 1.00

01:30:27.000 Fuck it, Joe. 1.00

01:30:28.000 At that point, you're losing. 1.00

01:30:30.000 What else are you going to do?

01:30:31.000 Well, he never tried to sweep him.

01:30:32.000 Did he try to submit him off his back?

01:30:35.000 He kind of tried butterfly sweeping a couple times.

01:30:37.000 I thought it was two rounds, two rounds, right?

01:30:41.000 You're losing the fifth round.

01:30:42.000 You've got to try to get up at some point.

01:30:44.000 So that was the round that did it for Rory?

01:30:46.000 So he won 49-46 on two scorecards and 48-47 on one.

01:30:52.000 So it was 3-1.

01:30:54.000 So then even more reason to get up if you're losing by that much.

01:30:59.000 But yeah, Lima refused to get up.

01:31:01.000 So at that point I'm thinking, hey, maybe Lima thinks he won or something?

01:31:04.000 I don't know.

01:31:06.000 But yeah, so a lot of jiu-jitsu people are struggling with this fact that In modern day MMA, you're going to have to try to get up.

01:31:13.000 Because guard is no longer that effective, and you just get punched in the face over and over and over again, and that's terrible.

01:31:18.000 What are your feelings on going to half guard and going for an underhook on the same side?

01:31:23.000 Try it, but it's not...

01:31:25.000 Again, me as a top guy, I would rather be in half guard than full guard.

01:31:30.000 I'm going to land a lot of damage from half guard. 1.00

01:31:32.000 If you're in half guard, you're going to be trying to work, and you're going to get yourself tired, and you're very unlikely to sweep me.

01:31:37.000 So I think half guard is better than full guard, but I think eventually where people are going to have to get to is they're going to have to actually get up.

01:31:45.000 You're going to have to get up, and putting your feet on someone's hips and kicking them is no longer a great solution.

01:31:50.000 It works every once in a while, but it's not like you can do that every single time.

01:31:54.000 Yeah, it's pretty rare.

01:31:55.000 Pretty rare.

01:31:55.000 Pretty rarely.

01:31:56.000 Everybody's so aware of it.

01:31:57.000 Yeah, so bottom and top folk style wrestling, I think, is the next genesis in MMA where people are really going to have to have a deep understanding.

01:32:04.000 Because once you do get taken down, or once you get a takedown, and there's some, you know, Yolo Romero was the perfect example.

01:32:11.000 He never did folk style wrestling in America, right?

01:32:12.000 He's a very, very elite freestyle wrestler.

01:32:15.000 But he gets these takedowns, and he can only stay on top for like 15 seconds.

01:32:20.000 It's like you did all that work to get the guy on the ground, and now you just let him back up.

01:32:23.000 Like, what was the point?

01:32:25.000 What was the point of it?

01:32:27.000 Well, he smashes some guys on the ground, like Machida, when he got him down on the ground.

01:32:31.000 Some of them, yeah.

01:32:32.000 Put him away. 0.79

01:32:33.000 He's a freak athlete, too.

01:32:37.000 It's hard to say, hey, do what he does.

01:32:39.000 Because, like, no one's built like that guy.

01:32:41.000 That guy has the weirdest body I've ever seen.

01:32:44.000 Really?

01:32:44.000 Why?

01:32:44.000 Because he looks like he's 230 pounds, and he weighs 185 when he weighs in.

01:32:49.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:32:49.000 It's like, how the fuck is that 185? 0.97

01:32:51.000 I always look at him, I'm like, I don't even understand it. 0.98

01:32:53.000 Like, where's the weight going?

01:32:54.000 Yeah.

01:32:54.000 And you would think he's one of those guys that's on PDs by looking at him, but then when you look at him, like, he won a world title in 98, 99, somewhere in there.

01:33:04.000 He looks the same at age 18 or 19. That's 40. Yeah, it's incredible, because then you think, like, well, if he is on PDs, it had to be prior to age 18, because he looks the same.

01:33:16.000 Well, what are your thoughts on, like, Corellin?

01:33:19.000 Because you know that Corellin...

01:33:20.000 PDs.

01:33:21.000 Yeah, but they used to call him the experiment.

01:33:24.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:33:24.000 And his parents are tiny, you know, his parents are like 5'5", 5'7", and then he's six foot, whatever the fuck he is, and a gorilla of a man. 0.99

01:33:32.000 And I always wondered, like, one day in the future, whether it's five years from now or 30 years from now, they're going to be genetically manipulated people. 0.98

01:33:42.000 That's crazy, right?

01:33:43.000 Well, you watched Icarus, I'm sure.

01:33:46.000 Oh, you had that guy on here.

01:33:48.000 And that was fascinating, and that pretty much just, I mean...

01:33:51.000 Cemented the Russian anti-doping program.

01:33:54.000 Every single person.

01:33:55.000 State-sponsored doping program for every athlete.

01:33:58.000 For everybody.

01:33:58.000 Which is crazy.

01:33:59.000 And it's like, you had the hint that they were likely cheating, you know, but then as someone who competed against them, man, that's a tough pill to swallow.

01:34:07.000 How does it make you feel? 0.74

01:34:09.000 I mean, now it's like, well shit, I guess I should have been one way or the other, but to know that you were a leg down, and like going into MMA, now, in MMA I knew everyone was cheating, for sure, right? 0.98

01:34:20.000 So I'm gonna fight them whether they're cheating or not. 0.98

01:34:21.000 Well, like the Pride days, it was essentially sanctioned.

01:34:24.000 That was sanctioned.

01:34:24.000 Like, they would tell them, like, hey, you know in this contract it says you can do steroids, right?

01:34:29.000 How does 1FC handle that?

01:34:31.000 So they don't do drug testing yet.

01:34:32.000 Well, that's great.

01:34:33.000 That should be fine.

01:34:35.000 I've been pushing them to do so in my time there.

01:34:39.000 And their thing is that a lot of these countries, it's not prevalent in Indonesia or Manila or wherever. 0.98

01:34:46.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.97

01:34:47.000 We'll find out. 1.00

01:34:48.000 Just get the fuck out of here with that. 1.00

01:34:49.000 That's my take. 0.99

01:34:50.000 That's not me saying that.

01:34:52.000 That's me.

01:34:52.000 That's Joe Rogan saying that.

01:34:54.000 Get the fuck out of here with that. 1.00

01:34:55.000 I know you've talked a couple times. 0.99

01:34:58.000 I've heard you about their weigh-in program at 1FC. Yes.

01:35:00.000 Which I think is fantastic, and I think every MMA organization should do it, the high-level ones.

01:35:06.000 Could you explain it?

01:35:08.000 Yeah, so it's really simple.

01:35:09.000 You do hydration, and you do weight on the scale, same time.

01:35:12.000 So you can't cut water weight out, right?

01:35:14.000 Right.

01:35:14.000 So you piss hydrated, get on the scale, literally moments later, like you go in the bathroom, you piss, they test the specific gravity, you go get on the scale, right?

01:35:21.000 So essentially, everyone moved up one weight class.

01:35:24.000 Every one of their champions bumped up a weight class.

01:35:26.000 So, like, over there I fight 185, but, you know, it's essentially welterweight.

01:35:30.000 They even call it welterweight, because it's the same thing, because I can't cut any water weight.

01:35:34.000 So they adjusted it.

01:35:35.000 So they adjusted it.

01:35:37.000 So I was the welterweight champion, and I was still the welterweight champion.

01:35:39.000 They just moved the weight class.

01:35:41.000 It's different.

01:35:43.000 So there's the day of the fight, the day before the fight, two days before the fight.

01:35:47.000 If you make the two days before the fight, if you make both the weight and the hydration, you do not have to weight test or hydration test on the last day.

01:35:54.000 You're clear.

01:35:55.000 So if you make it both those days...

01:35:57.000 Because there's not going to fluctuate in 24 hours.

01:36:00.000 Listen, if you can figure out how to cheat that...

01:36:02.000 I can't figure out how someone could possibly cheat that test.

01:36:04.000 Because when they first instituted it, I said, well, how is someone going to cheat on this?

01:36:07.000 Or how could someone cheat?

01:36:09.000 You know, it's like...

01:36:10.000 They watch you piss.

01:36:12.000 You can't have a WizNager on or anything.

01:36:15.000 I don't know how you would cheat.

01:36:17.000 I don't think you can.

01:36:20.000 It's fantastic because Fight Week then, instead of making this...

01:36:23.000 When I would fight 170, I would be 183 to 185 to start my water weight cut.

01:36:28.000 I would cut the water weight to 170 or 171, depending on...

01:36:31.000 Title or non-title.

01:36:33.000 And then I would hydrate back up.

01:36:34.000 So now I don't have to do that dehydration process.

01:36:36.000 I'm literally the exact same size I was prior.

01:36:40.000 And, you know, media obligations during the week are obviously a lot easier because I'm not worried about cutting my weight or I'm not feeling miserable or whatever.

01:36:47.000 And it's a lot safer.

01:36:49.000 And then so if someone misses...

01:36:52.000 If someone misses, obviously they're fined, the same as in America, if you miss what you're fined.

01:36:55.000 If you miss hydration, so say, Joe, you're 185, and you weighed in 185, but you're dehydrated.

01:37:02.000 You didn't really make it, right?

01:37:04.000 You have to get hydrated and make weight.

01:37:06.000 So if you miss weight, so it's the last day you haven't made it, you have to keep drinking until you piss hydrated, and then whatever you weigh there is what you weigh.

01:37:14.000 What's the parameters when it comes to hydration or non-hydration?

01:37:18.000 It's the same scale they use.

01:37:20.000 In America, at the beginning of the college wrestling season or high school, you have to do a specific gravity test.

01:37:25.000 I might mess up a zero, but I think it's 1.025.

01:37:29.000 Oh, okay.

01:37:29.000 Which I know is the same they use for hydrated and not hydrated in wrestling in America.

01:37:33.000 So anything under that?

01:37:35.000 You're dehydrated?

01:37:35.000 No, you're good.

01:37:36.000 So you want to be below...

01:37:37.000 So 1.000000 is water.

01:37:39.000 Oh, okay.

01:37:40.000 So you want to be close to that, right?

01:37:42.000 And so there is like...

01:37:43.000 You do have to just...

01:37:44.000 You have to drink some water.

01:37:46.000 If you drink a whole bunch of water, you piss it out.

01:37:48.000 You're perfectly hydrated.

01:37:50.000 In the early days, they did tests.

01:37:54.000 The first two days were actually just testing to see where you were at.

01:37:57.000 The third day was the one that counted.

01:37:59.000 If you ate a bunch of meat or something, you might show up as dehydrated, even though that's what you walk around at every single day.

01:38:06.000 You just have to make sure you drink a lot of water so it's coming out nice and clear.

01:38:09.000 That's an interesting way of doing it, and I think that's a great idea, because I think that is one of the biggest problems in MMA today.

01:38:15.000 Uriah Hall and Vitor Belford got cancelled last week, because Uriah Hall was literally having seizures on his way to the weigh-ins.

01:38:22.000 Crazy, right? 0.98

01:38:23.000 It's fucking insane. 1.00

01:38:24.000 It is. 0.99

01:38:24.000 And I think it's one of the worst parts of MMA, because I think MMA shouldn't be about who's slickest in being able to deceive the weight system. 0.99

01:38:34.000 I mean, it should be...

01:38:36.000 Your skill versus your opponent's skill, you're both the same size.

01:38:39.000 Well, the whole point of it is, the whole point of a weight is to fight someone our same size.

01:38:43.000 Yes.

01:38:43.000 That's the whole point of it.

01:38:44.000 Yes.

01:38:44.000 And so, why people would fight back against the system that 1FC is using is beyond me.

01:38:49.000 Because, listen, the most miserable part of my weight cut, I'm fine dieting.

01:38:53.000 That's all good, right?

01:38:54.000 But when you've got to cut that last 12, 13, 14 pounds of water weight out, it's miserable.

01:38:59.000 Everybody knows it's miserable, right?

01:39:01.000 And it affects your performance the next day.

01:39:03.000 Yeah, I mean, so my thought process is it affects them more than it affects me.

01:39:06.000 Maybe that's just me being positive about it, right?

01:39:08.000 Right.

01:39:09.000 Why is that?

01:39:09.000 Because of your wrestling background?

01:39:10.000 Because they're a pussy, and I'm not. 1.00

01:39:12.000 Right? 1.00

01:39:13.000 Or maybe it's just me psyching myself up.

01:39:16.000 So my thought process on everything is anything that goes wrong will affect my opponent more than it'll affect me.

01:39:22.000 Oh, that's a good point.

01:39:23.000 I am more stable. 1.00

01:39:24.000 I can deal with shit that goes wrong. 0.99

01:39:26.000 Most people, it affects them. 0.99

01:39:28.000 And so maybe that's just me telling myself that, but that makes me feel good about it.

01:39:31.000 Well, a lot of people feel that way about weight cutting.

01:39:32.000 They like weight cutting because they think that the other guy is not going to be able to handle it as well.

01:39:36.000 Make him go through some adversity, and then the next day he's going to be troubled.

01:39:39.000 Sure, exactly.

01:39:41.000 But I think if you take that process away, I think it makes medial obligations a lot easier.

01:39:45.000 It's healthier.

01:39:45.000 It makes people a lot healthier.

01:39:47.000 And, yeah, I mean, how many fights, just from a business standpoint, how many fights have we had canceled this year because of the weight thing?

01:39:53.000 I mean, it's been quite a few.

01:39:55.000 How much did it change your performance physically?

01:39:57.000 How would you feel the next day?

01:39:58.000 I think I felt, you know, honestly, for me, I know they said those studies that you don't really fully hydrate.

01:40:02.000 I believe it was 36 to 48 hours after.

01:40:05.000 Man, I've always felt fine.

01:40:07.000 And so when I graduated college, the weight class in the United States for the Olympic stuff was 163. I would weigh roughly 175 on a day-to-day basis and then water cut down to 163. And then when I was fighting at 170, I would be between 183 and 185 and water cut down to 170. So my water weight cut was very, very similar every single time.

01:40:30.000 And I was disciplined in that manner.

01:40:32.000 I didn't want to be fluctuating.

01:40:34.000 And so my goal was actually...

01:40:35.000 To get down to my target weight six weeks prior to competition, right?

01:40:40.000 So I'm walking around 183 to 185 six weeks prior.

01:40:43.000 So I'm the same exact person every single day.

01:40:45.000 Whereas I think the part that a lot of these people F up, and it's because they're not disciplined enough, is they try to descend while they're training, right?

01:40:53.000 So, you know, maybe I get up to 195, which is, that's a small bump.

01:40:57.000 Some of these guys are really undisciplined.

01:40:58.000 They get way, way, way, way overweight, right?

01:41:01.000 And so during that last six weeks or even the last couple weeks, they're trying to bring that body weight down, right?

01:41:06.000 And so in my mind, there's two ways to lose weight.

01:41:08.000 You can diet and lose body weight, right?

01:41:10.000 Fat, mass, whatever.

01:41:12.000 And then there's the water weight, where we're sweating and we're taking that out of us, right?

01:41:16.000 Those are the two ways.

01:41:17.000 And so I think a lot of guys, and I don't know if you've ever cut weight, Joe, but for me, it was in college.

01:41:23.000 In the summers, I'd get really fat.

01:41:25.000 And then I'd bring my weight down in the fall and you'd feel it. 0.98

01:41:28.000 When you're losing more calories than you're taking in, it's like this weird feeling in your body and you feel like shit all the time.

01:41:33.000 And so I think a lot of fighters are doing that really close to when they're fighting.

01:41:39.000 And so now the water weight cut makes you feel terrible.

01:41:42.000 And now they're cutting everything out calorically also.

01:41:44.000 And so that's like a double whammy.

01:41:46.000 That's what I think about it.

01:41:47.000 There's another thing that benefits wrestlers, and that wrestlers seem to take pride in being able to push through discomfort.

01:41:55.000 Yes. 0.99

01:41:55.000 And the more miserable you are, the more you just fucking bite down your mouthpiece and deal with it. 0.99

01:42:00.000 Because you get used to doing that all through camps, all through college and high school. 0.99

01:42:05.000 You're always dehydrated.

01:42:07.000 You're always losing weight.

01:42:08.000 Well, I mean, college wrestling, the weight cutting is not that bad anymore.

01:42:12.000 So they have the system, and people are starting...

01:42:13.000 When did it change?

01:42:15.000 97, I think.

01:42:17.000 A couple people died.

01:42:18.000 Right.

01:42:18.000 And so they changed it.

01:42:19.000 And they institute the same thing as 1FC? That's sort of a hydration test?

01:42:23.000 So it's once.

01:42:23.000 You do it in the beginning of the season, find your minimum weight.

01:42:25.000 But I think more than anything, it's a one-hour weigh-in.

01:42:28.000 So if your dual meet is at 1 o'clock, everybody weighs in at noon.

01:42:32.000 Right.

01:42:32.000 So what people have found out is...

01:42:34.000 You can't cut weight.

01:42:35.000 You can't cut weight. 1.00

01:42:36.000 You wrestle like shit. 1.00

01:42:37.000 The problem with fighting doing that, though, is... 1.00

01:42:39.000 Brain injuries, yes.

01:42:41.000 So that's, I think, one of the best.

01:42:42.000 But in college wrestling, you're talking about the discomfort thing.

01:42:44.000 Part of that is that, you know, when you go to a college wrestling program, again, it's very structured.

01:42:49.000 You can't skip practice.

01:42:50.000 You have to be there every single day, right?

01:42:52.000 On time.

01:42:53.000 Right.

01:42:53.000 And then it's like, you have 40, you know, black belt, right?

01:42:56.000 Jiu-Jitsu black belts.

01:42:57.000 Not even just black belts, like world class, 19 to 23, in their physical prime, ready to fight each other every single day.

01:43:05.000 And so you get used to this grind, dealing with people, battling people, discomfort every single day.

01:43:11.000 You know, and a lot of it's also dealing with injuries.

01:43:13.000 Like, you know, and Chael Sonnen talks about it a lot, that, hey, and I always talk to my kids about this.

01:43:17.000 Listen, the national tournament for the NCAA is March 15th through 17th.

01:43:21.000 And you cannot guarantee me you're going to be totally healthy on that date.

01:43:24.000 You cannot guarantee me you're going to be not sick on that date.

01:43:27.000 You're going to have to compete March 15th through March 17th no matter what if you want to win a national title.

01:43:32.000 And so wrestlers get used to this grind where you just don't see that in other sports.

01:43:38.000 Yeah, I think that aspect of wrestling is one of the biggest tools that they take into the octagon, the mental toughness and that ability to...

01:43:47.000 I mean, the grind.

01:43:48.000 Again, it's a badge of honor in wrestling to be able to handle the grind.

01:43:53.000 It's not really in kickboxing or in Muay Thai or any other sport like that.

01:43:57.000 Well, they're not really forced to.

01:43:59.000 I mean, how many kickboxing are...

01:44:01.000 Jiu-Jitsu schools, can you name where there's literally 40 black belts?

01:44:04.000 I mean, it's been born out through high school wrestling.

01:44:07.000 You go to all these national tournaments and state tournaments, you find out who the best are.

01:44:10.000 The best of the best get recruited, and they go to these institutions to train with the other best of the best of the best.

01:44:17.000 And then in addition to that, the post-collegiate guys who are trying to make the world teams and Olympic teams, they're sticking around training, so you have this melting pot of Freaking really great wrestlers that are training with each other every single day for five to, you know, plus five years if you're going to world championships, right?

01:44:33.000 Yeah, there also seems to be like a much more systematic approach to training people and a lot more drilling.

01:44:40.000 You know, and a lot of jiu-jitsu schools, like, show the arm bar from the guard.

01:44:44.000 Here, we hook the arm.

01:44:45.000 Okay, I go under here, my legs, I make my leg, I lift up.

01:44:49.000 Okay, you practice.

01:44:50.000 Everybody, get together.

01:44:51.000 It drives me insane.

01:44:52.000 They'll do it a few times.

01:44:54.000 I'll go to jiu-jitsu classes sometimes, and they'll literally go over two techniques, you drill it twice, and then the rest of the class is just people rolling.

01:45:02.000 Five minutes.

01:45:03.000 Five minutes goes.

01:45:04.000 Maybe.

01:45:05.000 It drives me insane, Joe, because I come from this wrestling background, and then I also like sports psych and the study of high performance is like, that's what I love.

01:45:13.000 I love studying people who are the best in their field at whatever they do.

01:45:17.000 And we know, without a shadow of a doubt, just saying go for five minutes is not the most effective way to train some more.

01:45:22.000 Does not happen.

01:45:23.000 So in wrestling, there's a whole bunch of different...

01:45:25.000 Some days you might do matches.

01:45:26.000 Some days you might do a 30-minute go.

01:45:28.000 Some days you might do groups of three women to go. 1.00

01:45:30.000 Some days you might do situations.

01:45:32.000 I start on the single leg.

01:45:33.000 I start on the high crotch.

01:45:34.000 I start on front lock, right? 0.94

01:45:35.000 And so there's...

01:45:36.000 All these different scenarios that we might try.

01:45:38.000 I mean, if I'm coaching my academy, right, and we're working on it, we drill front headlocks, or we call mantis position, we grab both armpits and bounce and go.

01:45:45.000 If we're drilling that, We don't just say, okay, now go five minutes.

01:45:49.000 Because how many tries are they going to get at going in the mantis position that are the front headlock?

01:45:53.000 Maybe one, maybe two, but essentially most people of you say go for five minutes.

01:45:58.000 They are not disciplined enough to make themselves do new skills.

01:46:01.000 They revert to whatever they do best.

01:46:02.000 And then they just do it over and over and over and over again, right?

01:46:05.000 And so if I want a kid to be good at a front headlock, which if you're going to wrestle at a high level, you need a good front headlock, period.

01:46:11.000 Factual.

01:46:11.000 You have to have it.

01:46:12.000 I'm going to put him in there 50 times in that practice.

01:46:16.000 He's gonna get it over and over and over and over and maybe the next day it's single legs and then maybe next day it's double legs, right?

01:46:22.000 And then maybe some days you say, hey, go for 10 minutes, go wrestle, right?

01:46:26.000 Because you want to change it up a little bit.

01:46:27.000 But saying go for five minutes every single day is very much not the most effective way to do it and it's so insanely frustrating for me to have that happen at almost every jiu-jitsu school on the planet.

01:46:39.000 Eddie Bravo's talked about this a lot, and one of the things that he says is that jiu-jitsu is so fun to roll that people just want to get to the rolling part real quick.

01:46:46.000 I don't care what they want! 1.00

01:46:48.000 You're right.

01:46:48.000 I like the way you think.

01:46:48.000 I don't freaking care, Joe.

01:46:50.000 And my kids tell me all kinds of stuff.

01:46:52.000 I said, I'm running practice.

01:46:54.000 I went to the Olympics.

01:46:56.000 I won 200 trophies.

01:46:57.000 You're at my school because you want to learn how to be the best, and I'm going to help you be the best.

01:47:01.000 Just listen to me.

01:47:02.000 I don't care what you like.

01:47:03.000 I don't care what you like.

01:47:04.000 Some days, every once in a while, hey, you guys want to play a game?

01:47:06.000 All right, let's play a game.

01:47:07.000 Every once in a while.

01:47:08.000 Just to keep it fun.

01:47:09.000 Just to keep it fun, right?

01:47:10.000 Hey, you want to do this?

01:47:11.000 Let's do that.

01:47:12.000 Every once in a while.

01:47:14.000 I'll indulge you.

01:47:15.000 But most of the time, you're here.

01:47:18.000 We don't really push our young kids too hard.

01:47:22.000 I'll talk about high school guys.

01:47:24.000 You're telling me you want to be a state champion.

01:47:26.000 You're telling me you want to go to college.

01:47:27.000 You're telling me all these things you wanted to.

01:47:29.000 I know what it takes to get there.

01:47:30.000 I've been there myself.

01:47:31.000 I've seen many other people achieve those things.

01:47:33.000 And so, you know, and there's a lot of, you know, it's really funny because people choose, and we can go MMA, we can go life.

01:47:39.000 People choose what they value, right?

01:47:40.000 And I'll just give you a simple example.

01:47:42.000 I got this one kid who's probably listening to the show right now because I know he loves you.

01:47:46.000 What's his name?

01:47:47.000 I can't give one of my kids a shout out, not all of them.

01:47:50.000 But you probably know who you are.

01:47:52.000 He's going to know who I'm talking about. 0.69

01:47:54.000 He goes freaking hard.

01:47:56.000 Just boom, grind, grind, grind. 0.83

01:47:58.000 I couldn't ask for a kid to work harder, Joe.

01:48:02.000 But when I start teaching technique, he tunes me out.

01:48:05.000 And then we go to a national tournament and he places, but he gets scored on a whole bunch by the technique we were just drilling.

01:48:11.000 And then I say, hey bud, you just tuned me out the last three weeks. 0.99

01:48:15.000 We were just drilling that thing and you just got your ass kicked by it. 0.98

01:48:18.000 And so I love the fact that you want to go hard, but you need to also value the technique, right? 0.98

01:48:24.000 And then there's some people who value the technique too much.

01:48:26.000 And all they want to do is technique.

01:48:27.000 And then when it comes to going hard, they don't go hard enough, right?

01:48:30.000 Because in wrestling or in any venture you want to take in life, there's not just one way to be successful.

01:48:35.000 You need a bunch of different attributes to be successful.

01:48:37.000 And so if you overvalue one or another and you devalue other things, you're not going to be as successful as you could be.

01:48:45.000 You might still be successful.

01:48:47.000 But you're not going to reach the pinnacle because you're not putting yourself in the right situation.

01:48:50.000 It's funny because in a lot of ways it's like what you were talking about earlier, the two sides of the coin of a fighter being a wild person who doesn't care, the cowboy, and then the other guy who's like super systematic, everything's controlled.

01:49:02.000 Yeah, you almost have to have everything.

01:49:04.000 And the fighters that have those really strong attributes just have to be aware that those attributes are strengthened even further by technique.

01:49:12.000 Yeah, 100%.

01:49:14.000 And so again, it's both sides that coin to me.

01:49:16.000 Another one would be something called beginner's mind and then know-it-all, right?

01:49:20.000 When you come into practice, you need to have a beginner's mind.

01:49:23.000 I mean, I got to work out with three or four-time world champion, Olympic champion Jordan Burroughs last week, and he was asking me questions.

01:49:30.000 It's like, this guy really cared about learning from every possible source.

01:49:35.000 And he's already at the pinnacle.

01:49:36.000 And he's still trying to learn.

01:49:38.000 Interesting thing that Dominic Cruz said during the broadcast about Stipe Miocic.

01:49:42.000 That Stipe, when he went to Alliance MMA, was asking everybody everything.

01:49:45.000 You have to.

01:49:47.000 But then when you go into a competition, you can't have that same mindset thinking, I don't know, I need to ask.

01:49:53.000 And so kids who have just the beginner's mind, they're great in practice, but then they go into a match and they're like, Coach, what should I do here?

01:50:00.000 What should I do?

01:50:01.000 It's like, just...

01:50:02.000 Go wrestle!

01:50:03.000 You don't wrestle!

01:50:04.000 But then, kids are coming to practice like, I know it all.

01:50:07.000 Well, that's a very unhealthy mindset also.

01:50:09.000 But it's great when you compete.

01:50:10.000 It's great when you compete.

01:50:11.000 So you've got to balance both those things, right?

01:50:14.000 You can't have just one, because if you're, I know it all, I'm a badass.

01:50:18.000 That's great for competition, but you come into practice, you're going to stop your learning, right?

01:50:22.000 Now, when you are coaching kids, how much time, if any, do you spend on mindset?

01:50:30.000 And so, on my Facebook, every Monday I do this Mental Monday, and then I usually repeat it or something fairly similar to the kids in practice.

01:50:38.000 But I also think it's a lot, you know, I think competition is where you get your really, really good teachable moments, because that's when kids care the most.

01:50:46.000 And so, like, the kid I was talking about, when he loses, because he didn't want to listen to me, I could say, well, look at this.

01:50:52.000 This is a great example.

01:50:53.000 You know, I said with, I did this, I do private lessons with this fourth and fifth grader, they're brothers, and And like five weeks in a row, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong.

01:51:04.000 They don't want to listen, right?

01:51:05.000 Then they have a match last week, they do it wrong, and it didn't cost them the match, but it almost cost them the match.

01:51:11.000 And now I can say, every single time I say you're doing this wrong, I can say, remember that time in that match when you got put on your back because you did it wrong and you refused to listen to me?

01:51:19.000 So I think that matches create great teachable moments, you know, like, hey, remember when you wilted under the pressure because you weren't tough enough?

01:51:26.000 Well, you need to practice a little harder so you get used to that pressure.

01:51:29.000 Remember when the referee made a bad call and you flipped out because he made a bad call and then you didn't think about, well, I still have to wrestle the rest of this match.

01:51:38.000 So there's all these teachable moments within competition where you can point to something very clearly and say, well look at this and see how this affected you and see how you would have been more successful.

01:51:48.000 So I think for a mental aspect it comes a lot more on a one-on-one basis.

01:51:52.000 And sometimes I'll use it in front of the whole team.

01:51:54.000 I don't like really picking on people.

01:51:57.000 Every once in a while I will.

01:52:00.000 So I think this competition provides a lot of teachable moments for athletes to see, well, am I stronger here?

01:52:06.000 What do I need to work on?

01:52:07.000 Because, again, you can't say one mental aspect makes a guy successful.

01:52:11.000 It's this conglomeration of many, many, many mental aspects that will make you highly successful.

01:52:16.000 Now, when you're coaching, whether it's coaching wrestlers or MMA fighters...

01:52:19.000 I don't coach MMA fighters anymore.

01:52:21.000 None?

01:52:21.000 Zero?

01:52:22.000 Okay, I help a couple buddies, but I don't...

01:52:24.000 But you don't consider it?

01:52:26.000 Nah, not really.

01:52:26.000 Just help a few buddies.

01:52:27.000 Let's just say when you're coaching wrestlers.

01:52:29.000 Do you concentrate at all on strength and conditioning, or is it from the wrestling that you get most of your strength and conditioning?

01:52:37.000 So we only got them, you know, an hour and a half, three or four times a week.

01:52:41.000 And so we don't do a lot of strength and conditioning.

01:52:43.000 I know, especially with the older kids, I recommend they do some on their own.

01:52:47.000 You know, for a college program, for a high school program where we're getting them Monday through Saturday, maybe twice a day, possibly.

01:52:54.000 Obviously, we're going to do that.

01:52:55.000 But, you know, we're an academy.

01:52:57.000 You know, we're kind of on our own.

01:52:58.000 We get them three or four times a week.

01:52:59.000 So it just doesn't trump what we need to do in that short time window.

01:53:03.000 Right.

01:53:03.000 How do you balance it out, though?

01:53:05.000 How do you know how much strength and conditioning to do versus how much technique and skill work?

01:53:10.000 I mean, at the college level, are we talking about?

01:53:12.000 Because we do no strength and conditioning.

01:53:14.000 And I recommend kids do it on their own.

01:53:15.000 And if I had 12 hours a week with them, I would do that, but we don't.

01:53:20.000 We don't have that ability to.

01:53:23.000 I think it's important.

01:53:24.000 I think it's really important.

01:53:26.000 I don't think it trumps especially knowledge.

01:53:29.000 And then if kids wrestle really hard against each other, and Cale had that one saying, like, wrestling is the best strength and conditioning.

01:53:34.000 I can't remember what he said.

01:53:35.000 If you wrestle really hard against each other, you're going to develop those things.

01:53:38.000 And it's like, I think people, when I grab people or squeeze people, they're like, oh my god, I've never felt anything like it.

01:53:45.000 And I think that comes from, that doesn't come, if you put me in a weight room, I can do nothing abnormal.

01:53:49.000 I am not abnormally strong in any exercise.

01:53:51.000 I'm actually, like on a division one college team, I'm significantly less strong than most people, right? 0.90

01:53:56.000 But then when they wrestle me, they're like, holy shit, I never felt anything like that.

01:54:00.000 And I think it's because a lot of those things that I do are very, very, very wrestling specific. 0.97

01:54:06.000 And I develop that strength because when I grab someone in practice, I freaking grab them as hard as I can.

01:54:09.000 When I squeeze them, I squeeze them as hard as I can.

01:54:12.000 And so now from doing that thousands of times, I've developed that squeeze or that strength.

01:54:16.000 And so I think strength conditioning is important, but I don't think it trumps doing other stuff.

01:54:20.000 And if I had all the time in the world, and these kids didn't have to go to high school or middle school, I'd probably put them through some, but, you know, we don't have that luxury.

01:54:27.000 What did you do when you were fighting in MMA? How much did you devote to strength and conditioning?

01:54:31.000 Really twice a week-ish.

01:54:33.000 And what did you do?

01:54:33.000 Maybe three sometimes.

01:54:34.000 What kind of stuff did you do?

01:54:35.000 So I had a personal trainer since I moved to Milwaukee.

01:54:38.000 And then I actually helped him open up a CrossFit gym.

01:54:43.000 And it wouldn't be, not specifically CrossFit workouts, but kind of that type of work.

01:54:48.000 Nothing slow where I'm doing three sets of ten, then two sets of eight.

01:54:51.000 You know, nothing slow like that.

01:54:53.000 Potentially, you know, one or two days we might do like a slower start and then, but you know, I think fighting, you need to be very highly active.

01:55:01.000 You need to be in really good shape.

01:55:02.000 You need to be able to move a lot of things really fast.

01:55:04.000 So kind of CrossFit-type stuff I think is probably the right direction to go.

01:55:08.000 And now, when I go back to college programs, besides the heavyweights, the in-season stuff for college programs is mostly higher-paced stuff, which I think is very relevant to both wrestling and fighting.

01:55:21.000 So did you do, when you were saying you were doing CrossFit-style workouts, so were you doing kettlebells, box jumps?

01:55:28.000 Yeah, everything.

01:55:29.000 So when I said that, I just meant that we were moving at a high pace through a lot of stuff, and it would be like he would tell me, hey, do sled pushes, do this, do that, do that, do that.

01:55:38.000 What about your diet and nutrition and supplements and things along those lines?

01:55:43.000 I have never been that much into nutrition.

01:55:47.000 I was fat when I was a little kid, right?

01:55:51.000 Because I ate too much.

01:55:52.000 At age 11, I said, I don't want to be fat anymore.

01:55:54.000 So I went from 130 pounds to 100 pounds. 0.97

01:55:57.000 Damn, you lost 30 pounds at 11? 0.99

01:56:00.000 Sixth grade? 1.00

01:56:00.000 No, sixth grade. 1.00

01:56:01.000 When you're 100 pounds, that's a lot of weight.

01:56:03.000 That's 30% of your body. 1.00

01:56:04.000 Well, yeah, I was fat as shit. 1.00

01:56:06.000 That's crazy. 1.00

01:56:06.000 What were you eating? 1.00

01:56:08.000 Everything.

01:56:08.000 And you were wrestling then, too?

01:56:10.000 Yeah.

01:56:10.000 I was having some success because when you're fatter, there's not many people to compete against, right?

01:56:14.000 Right.

01:56:16.000 Anyway, so I lost 30 pounds in sixth grade, so I stopped drinking soda.

01:56:19.000 I had this whole list of stuff.

01:56:21.000 I just cut out.

01:56:22.000 That's amazing you had that discipline at 11. Yeah, I know.

01:56:25.000 So now when I look at kids, I think the mental maturity is huge in long-term success, being able to see the future and make decisions on what you want to do at that young age.

01:56:35.000 So I lost 30 pounds, and so now I've slowly started reintroducing a lot of stuff.

01:56:39.000 It's like soda's gross.

01:56:40.000 I haven't drank a soda in...

01:56:44.000 I cut out fast food.

01:56:45.000 I haven't eaten fast food in 20 years.

01:56:49.000 It's just disgusting.

01:56:51.000 I eat generally healthy.

01:56:53.000 My wife and I cook at home a lot.

01:56:54.000 We make really healthy food.

01:56:57.000 But I don't take any supplements.

01:56:59.000 Zero.

01:57:00.000 No multivitamins?

01:57:01.000 Nothing.

01:57:02.000 So you get all your nutrients from your food.

01:57:04.000 Yeah.

01:57:05.000 And I just figured, like, so I tried a couple supplements in college, and I never felt anything from them.

01:57:11.000 Like, I didn't feel any different, you know?

01:57:13.000 And so I'm like, I didn't feel anything.

01:57:15.000 Why am I going to go take that?

01:57:17.000 I don't need to take it.

01:57:18.000 And then, so, then obviously I became like this anti-PED crusader.

01:57:23.000 You know, by chance.

01:57:25.000 And so then it's like, well, now I really can't take anything. 1.00

01:57:27.000 Because if I go take something and I pop hot because these idiots are putting something in the supplement that shouldn't be there, I'm going to look like a total asshole. 1.00

01:57:33.000 Right. 1.00

01:57:34.000 So I literally, I didn't even take protein.

01:57:36.000 I mean, I took nothing.

01:57:38.000 Wow.

01:57:38.000 Yeah.

01:57:39.000 That's crazy.

01:57:39.000 So did you make sure that you ate the proper amount of vegetables, green leafy vegetables?

01:57:44.000 Nah, I just ate some food and went scrapped.

01:57:46.000 Right.

01:57:46.000 I mean, you know, like, it's like healthy food.

01:57:50.000 Like, we're eating salads and, you know, I'm not eating cake and ice cream and pizza and that kind of stuff.

01:57:56.000 And we're eating healthy food at my house, you know, but I'm not measuring the grams of this or grams of that.

01:58:02.000 So I really think one of my, and this has been proven by science, that you only have a certain amount of time every single day to have a high amount of mental focus on stuff.

01:58:11.000 And so I think, like, my training is more important than focusing on nutrition and stuff.

01:58:16.000 I want to really, like, really zone in really high-level focus when I'm training and stuff.

01:58:22.000 And so I think if I worry about all this other stuff, it'll take my focus away from that.

01:58:25.000 Right or wrong, that's kind of how I thought about it.

01:58:28.000 That's a smart way to approach it.

01:58:29.000 Yeah.

01:58:29.000 And it never really affected me.

01:58:30.000 I mean, like I said, you know, even when I took the supplements in college, I never really felt them at all.

01:58:35.000 Right.

01:58:36.000 So it was like, well, if I don't feel it, why would I do it, you know?

01:58:38.000 It's kind of ironic, though, that you were an anti-drug crusader and you went to the one place that doesn't drug test.

01:58:43.000 I know, right?

01:58:44.000 It really hurt me.

01:58:46.000 It's kind of crazy.

01:58:48.000 And it is, if you look at, so we talked about Singapore being so fantastic and having a really high GDP. A lot of the countries over there, Indonesia, Manila, you know, Manila, Philippines, they don't have huge high GDPs, right?

01:59:03.000 I mean, they're not super wealthy countries.

01:59:05.000 And so when we think about, you know, how much it costs to buy a lot of the steroids that are They're not readily available in America.

01:59:12.000 They're just not as available.

01:59:14.000 And so I think they do have a point.

01:59:16.000 And if you look at their athletes, there's not a lot of athletes that look like Yo Romero.

01:59:20.000 Now, Yo Romero's probably not using, like I pointed out earlier.

01:59:23.000 Well, he's tested clean, except once he gets a tainted supplement, but they proved that it was a tainted supplement.

01:59:28.000 So when you look at their athletes, maybe except a few of the Russian ones, they look pretty normal.

01:59:34.000 It's probably unlikely that they're using.

01:59:36.000 Except for a few of the Russian ones.

01:59:38.000 If they're from Russia, they can't help it! 1.00

01:59:41.000 It's like part of the culture.

01:59:43.000 They can't help it.

01:59:44.000 That's so crazy.

01:59:44.000 Yeah, that one Russian guy that I fought in April of 16, he was freaking enormous.

01:59:51.000 And, you know, the other thing that I think a lot of MMA people are using...

01:59:55.000 Some type of, oh my gosh, I'm blanking.

01:59:58.000 What gives you endurance?

01:59:59.000 EPO. EPO, that type of stuff, because if you watch a college wrestling match, how tired people get in seven minutes, and then we're fighting 25 minutes and you're not going to get tired, that's not normal.

02:00:09.000 Well, people have definitely tested hot for that in the UFC. Who's the guy that fought Mighty Mouse?

02:00:14.000 Yeah.

02:00:15.000 Bagutinov.

02:00:16.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.96

02:00:17.000 Crazy.

02:00:17.000 But I think more people are using that.

02:00:19.000 And I think if you...

02:00:20.000 I don't have any conclusive evidence, but if you look at when USADA started and then how some of these people fell down, just straight down.

02:00:28.000 Their bodies look different.

02:00:29.000 They look different.

02:00:30.000 They're competent.

02:00:31.000 I mean, Johnny Hendricks would be one that comes to mind. 0.77

02:00:33.000 I mean, what's his freaking record since USADA? It ain't very good, I'll tell you that much. 0.74

02:00:36.000 And all of a sudden, he can't make weight.

02:00:38.000 And if you remember...

02:00:39.000 So obviously, I watched Johnny because he was...

02:00:42.000 I couldn't stand Johnny.

02:00:43.000 He beat me when we were 17, and then I tried to wrestle him.

02:00:47.000 So we were different.

02:00:48.000 He was 165.

02:00:49.000 I was 174.

02:00:50.000 And I wanted to wrestle him for the All-Star Classic, and I called the people who put it on.

02:00:54.000 I said, I want to wrestle him.

02:00:54.000 And they turned the match down.

02:00:56.000 So I wanted to get that one back, and I never got to get it back from when I was 17.

02:01:01.000 So I've been following Johnny pretty closely.

02:01:03.000 If you watch Johnny, like the Condit fight, prior to that, he gets so tired in like two I mean, just exhausted.

02:01:12.000 Exhausted.

02:01:13.000 And then all of a sudden, he's going to these five-round fights, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

02:01:17.000 How are you going to get tired?

02:01:18.000 That exhausted in two rounds.

02:01:20.000 And now you can fight for five rounds, Johnny.

02:01:21.000 Like...

02:01:22.000 What's going on here?

02:01:23.000 I mean, in his defense.

02:01:24.000 I don't got any proof.

02:01:25.000 Team Takedown, they implemented a pretty fantastic program over there.

02:01:30.000 I mean, they spent a lot of money on it.

02:01:31.000 And that was the whole thing where they were paying him, but then they wanted 50% of his earnings.

02:01:36.000 Yeah, I got the same offer right out of college.

02:01:37.000 Did you?

02:01:38.000 Yeah, we were both graduating in 2007. How does that work?

02:01:39.000 I felt like he was betting against myself.

02:01:41.000 They paid you $100,000 a year for seven years.

02:01:44.000 They got 50% of your career earnings.

02:01:46.000 And I said, my thought was, well, if I ever make it really big, I'm going to make a million dollars a fight, and I'm going to pay them back in one fight.

02:01:54.000 It would be like hedging your bet against yourself, and I don't ever bet against myself.

02:01:59.000 Yeah, but for them, I get it, too.

02:02:02.000 It's like they have to have some sort of a reason to put out that investment, and it's a big bet whether or not you're going to be able to be a superstar.

02:02:08.000 Absolutely. 0.99

02:02:08.000 So if you think you suck, it's good to take that bet. 0.99

02:02:11.000 If you think, I don't know if I'm going to make it, dog, I'm okay with making a little bit of money, then it's a good bet. 0.99

02:02:16.000 It doesn't seem like the best strategy.

02:02:19.000 It doesn't seem like it.

02:02:20.000 It's interesting, and I think there's probably somewhere in there with, you know, I know a few managers where you go pick out, it's pretty proven that high-level college wrestlers are going to make really damn good fighters.

02:02:30.000 That's pretty proven.

02:02:31.000 So going to try to find a couple every year, spending some money on them, and then getting a percentage of their earnings, that's probably a pretty, I don't want to say a safe bet for the people putting out the money, but it's...

02:02:42.000 You know, Team Takedown had Jake Rothschalt, who was an amazing wrestler, and for whatever reason, he just didn't transition great to fighting, right?

02:02:49.000 He was good, but he wasn't great.

02:02:51.000 And it was like, for as good of a wrestler as he was, he probably thought he was going to be a little better.

02:02:55.000 Yeah, what do you think is the factor?

02:02:57.000 Like, if you had to look at a wrestler...

02:02:59.000 Because there's not a lot of outliers like that.

02:03:03.000 When we talk about how good Jake was, he still made the UFC. He still won some fights.

02:03:08.000 He wasn't a bad fighter, but he was a three-time NCAA champ.

02:03:11.000 So you expect him, hey, he'll probably go challenge for a UFC title.

02:03:15.000 In his case, I don't know what the factor was.

02:03:20.000 But there's not a lot of outliers like that where they're a really high-level wrestler and then they don't have any success in MMA. That's really unique.

02:03:26.000 You don't see it a lot.

02:03:28.000 Yeah, it's interesting.

02:03:30.000 I've looked at it from striking, from if you see really high-level kickboxers.

02:03:35.000 Some have a style that would readily translate to MMA and some are fantastic kickboxers like maybe Peter Ertz is a good example or Ernesto Husper.

02:03:44.000 I wouldn't really think that they would translate that well to MMA. Whereas Mirko Krokop, who might have been like a slight notch below them in terms of kickboxing, translates perfectly to MMA because he's so explosive and quick.

02:03:57.000 And he had decent takedown defense, too.

02:03:59.000 He developed it.

02:04:00.000 He developed it.

02:04:01.000 But the thing about Mirko was unbelievable power and speed.

02:04:05.000 And he could just close the distance quickly and blast you.

02:04:08.000 And I think that is a difference between that and a guy who's like a methodical, set things up.

02:04:14.000 Those guys didn't do as well.

02:04:16.000 They didn't translate as well.

02:04:17.000 They got taken down too easily.

02:04:20.000 What would you think would be like this?

02:04:22.000 Well, it's weird because there's so many different guys.

02:04:25.000 You know, one of the other things I think benefits us wrestlers is the fact that jiu-jitsu people are stuck on doing jiu-jitsu the jiu-jitsu way, right?

02:04:31.000 Strikers are stuck on striking.

02:04:33.000 When we come into MMA, we know we can't win a match just by wrestling, right?

02:04:38.000 So we know.

02:04:39.000 We know.

02:04:40.000 I gotta add striking.

02:04:41.000 I gotta add jujitsu.

02:04:42.000 And I'm open to that idea.

02:04:44.000 Right?

02:04:44.000 I'm open to those ideas that I have to add those things into my arsenal where some jujitsu guys are like, well, I'm just gonna submit them.

02:04:50.000 Yeah.

02:04:50.000 And they don't develop their...

02:04:51.000 I mean, you can literally not name me, Joe, a jujitsu guy or a striking guy.

02:04:59.000 Well, maybe Jose Aldo, who has developed high-level wrestling, but you can name a lot of wrestlers who have developed high-level something else, right?

02:05:08.000 I mean, when you see the crossover, like John Jones was a wrestler.

02:05:12.000 He can strike with pretty much anyone on the planet, right?

02:05:15.000 I mean, Stipe Miocic was a wrestler.

02:05:17.000 He can pretty much strike with anyone on the planet.

02:05:19.000 I mean, so you have these wrestlers who are becoming high-level at these other skills, but you don't have a lot of...

02:05:25.000 Other skills becoming high-level at wrestling.

02:05:27.000 And for me, I think it's the stubbornness of people who come from those other backgrounds are too stubborn to want to work a lot in wrestling, whereas wrestlers are like, okay, teach me how to strike. 0.98

02:05:36.000 Yeah, I think it's a recognition of what's important.

02:05:39.000 Like, George St. Pierre is a perfect example of a guy who started off with a Kyokushin background, didn't wrestle in college or high school, became a fantastic wrestler at MMA. Yeah, he's good.

02:05:46.000 Yeah, and just figured it out and realized what a critical skill it is, too.

02:05:50.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:05:51.000 So there's a handful of them, right?

02:05:53.000 Very small handful.

02:05:54.000 Jose Aldo would be like, he wasn't an offensive wrestler, but he would be like, he was so ridiculously hard to take down.

02:06:00.000 I mean, fantastic takedown defense.

02:06:02.000 So there's a handful, but there's not a lot.

02:06:04.000 But then if you go to wrestlers going the opposite direction into jiu-jitsu or striking, you can name quite a few that were able to do those things really well.

02:06:12.000 You know, it's interesting when you see a guy like Khabib Nurmagomedov, and you see...

02:06:16.000 He's fantastic. 1.00

02:06:17.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00

02:06:18.000 And his mauling, aggressive wrestling. 1.00

02:06:23.000 I mean, you see what a massive factor it is in fights, like the Edson Barboza fight.

02:06:28.000 That, to me, is one of the perfect examples when I say, look, the ability to take a guy down and control him on the ground is the...

02:06:36.000 It's the bottom of the pyramid.

02:06:38.000 It's the most important foundation.

02:06:39.000 Yes.

02:06:40.000 Because he dictates where the fight takes place.

02:06:42.000 Yeah, you might catch him when he's coming in trying to get you.

02:06:44.000 You might.

02:06:45.000 But if he gets you. 0.97

02:06:46.000 He was like a freaking Terminator, though. 0.74

02:06:47.000 He was just like, I'm just going to come get you. 0.98

02:06:49.000 Yeah, he just ate kicks and kept moving forward. 1.00

02:06:51.000 I'm going to fucking beat your ass. 1.00

02:06:52.000 You have no hope. 1.00

02:06:53.000 Just the constant chasing him around.

02:06:55.000 Chasing him, right?

02:06:56.000 It was insane.

02:06:57.000 Yeah.

02:06:57.000 No, he was fantastic.

02:06:58.000 Yeah.

02:06:59.000 But no, I would totally agree that at the bottom of the pyramid, it's the trump card.

02:07:03.000 If you're fighting a wrestler and you can't stop a takedown, You're going to lose 90% of the time.

02:07:08.000 And if you're the wrestler and you can go get a takedown really easily, you're going to win 90% of the time.

02:07:13.000 The only wild card in that equation is a guy like Brian Ortega who fights so well off his back.

02:07:19.000 But how many people get submissions from guard?

02:07:21.000 How many of those?

02:07:22.000 Even like Anthony Pettis who got a lot of submissions from guard.

02:07:26.000 A lot of that was transitions off of, I body kick Benson Harrison, I body kick Benson Harrison, Benson Harrison hates getting body kicked, so he dives in for a takedown and gets armbarred, right?

02:07:34.000 Or Gil Melendez getting guillotine choke because he got jacked a few times, right?

02:07:38.000 So there's a handful of those, but just strictly like, I take you down, you're in guard, then I submit you.

02:07:43.000 Right.

02:07:44.000 Maybe for Bricio Verdum every once in a while.

02:07:46.000 Yeah.

02:07:46.000 Maybe Brian Ortega, but the number's pretty damn small.

02:07:49.000 It is very small.

02:07:50.000 And it's smaller now than I think ever before because people understand the takedown or the guard defense.

02:07:55.000 Yeah, even like this guy that I... So one of the things that frustrates me more than anything else I've made is bad strategy.

02:08:01.000 Just like drives me up the wall like the Lima thing. 0.97

02:08:03.000 But this freaking knucklehead that fought Michael Chandler on Saturday. 0.99

02:08:07.000 I didn't see it. 0.99

02:08:08.000 His name's Goidi Yamauchi, or I don't know what his damn name is. 0.98

02:08:13.000 So the first round, he pulls guard. 0.98

02:08:15.000 Like, fast. 0.63

02:08:16.000 Gets freaking hammered on for like four minutes.

02:08:20.000 And then he ends up on bottom again in the second round.

02:08:22.000 Third round...

02:08:24.000 He gets taken down in, I don't know, 15 seconds.

02:08:27.000 Did he try to get up one time? 1.00

02:08:28.000 No, he just laid there and got his ass whipped for 4 minutes and 45 seconds. 0.99

02:08:32.000 Like, every once in a while, I'll try a Kimura. 1.00

02:08:33.000 Every once in a while, I'll try a triangle. 1.00

02:08:35.000 But it's like, dude, you're getting your ass whipped. 0.99

02:08:37.000 You're down two rounds to nothing. 1.00

02:08:39.000 Try to get up.

02:08:40.000 Try to do something.

02:08:41.000 Change your strategy. 1.00

02:08:41.000 If your strategy's not working, you can't just stick with the same bullshit and get your ass whipped for another 4 minutes and 45 seconds. 1.00

02:08:47.000 Give me a break. 1.00

02:08:47.000 What do you think's going to happen down there? 1.00

02:08:49.000 Well, I think some guys get locked into a defensive position, like they realize they're getting overwhelmed, and so they just try to survive.

02:08:55.000 You think so?

02:08:55.000 Yeah.

02:08:56.000 Really?

02:08:56.000 Yeah.

02:08:57.000 You don't think that way because you're a champ, and champions don't think that way.

02:09:01.000 Really?

02:09:01.000 But I think for some people, there's acceptance of their fate.

02:09:06.000 Ass-whooping this? 0.99

02:09:07.000 This is just, they're getting their ass whipped, and so they just try to stay conscious. 0.99

02:09:11.000 They try to just protect themselves as much as they can. 0.99

02:09:14.000 Kind of like Edson Barbosa, but then, you know what's interesting about Edson Barbosa?

02:09:18.000 You saw, once he realized he was going to survive, like when it was like two minutes left in the third round maybe-ish. 0.95

02:09:24.000 So like the first round, he's like, I'm getting fucked up. 0.93

02:09:27.000 I'm just going to survive. 0.95

02:09:29.000 But then when there was a couple minutes left, he was like, okay, I'm going to fight again. 1.00

02:09:32.000 I'm going to make it through this shit. 0.99

02:09:34.000 If I want to make it through this, I might as well just fight back. 1.00

02:09:36.000 Yeah.

02:09:36.000 So he started fighting back really hard the last two minutes of that fight.

02:09:39.000 He tried.

02:09:40.000 He certainly tried. 0.99

02:09:41.000 But there was a period in the middle where he had resigned to just taking an ass whooping. 0.98

02:09:44.000 Well, I think his body was just not responding. 1.00

02:09:47.000 He was getting so fucked up. 0.99

02:09:48.000 And you could see the pace that Habib put on him in the first round. 0.99

02:09:54.000 Halfway into the round, Barboza's like, Jesus Christ.

02:09:56.000 You see the look in his eyes.

02:09:57.000 He's got that thousand-yard stare.

02:09:59.000 He's like, whoa.

02:10:00.000 What I set up for.

02:10:01.000 Yeah.

02:10:02.000 This guy's on another level.

02:10:03.000 I mean, he really is on another level.

02:10:05.000 I'm fascinated by him fighting Tony Ferguson.

02:10:09.000 Apparently, they're going to do that now.

02:10:10.000 It's going to happen in April.

02:10:11.000 Yeah.

02:10:11.000 They don't know if it's going to be for the interim title or the actual title, whether they're going to strip Conor.

02:10:16.000 They're in a weird position.

02:10:17.000 I think he beats up Tony.

02:10:19.000 That's just my...

02:10:19.000 And I've underestimated Tony before, so I could be wrong again.

02:10:23.000 I just think...

02:10:24.000 I think it's, again, Trump card.

02:10:25.000 I think Tony's kind of one of those guys where he's pretty good everywhere.

02:10:28.000 He's pretty damn solid wrestling, high-level jiu-jitsu.

02:10:32.000 But I see...

02:10:34.000 Khabib's wrestling being better than Tony's wrestling.

02:10:36.000 So it's going to end up on the ground.

02:10:37.000 And I think Tony's going to think he can submit him because his jujitsu is very high level.

02:10:42.000 But I think it'll be one of those things where Khabib's just good enough not to get submitted.

02:10:46.000 And then he's going to land damage and land damage and land damage and land damage.

02:10:50.000 And Tony's going to get close to a submission and close to a submission and close to a submission, but not quite get it.

02:10:55.000 And then all this damage is going to just accumulate and accumulate and accumulate.

02:10:59.000 That's kind of how I see it going.

02:11:01.000 It's fascinating.

02:11:01.000 And I also think it's fascinating now that Khabib has changed his training and has a real nutritionist and had no problem making weight.

02:11:08.000 So all the factors that played into him getting removed from the last time they were supposed to fight pulled out of the car.

02:11:15.000 I thought that was kind of overblown.

02:11:16.000 He only missed weight one time.

02:11:18.000 He only missed weight one time, but his body shut down when he's making weight for the Michael Johnson fight in a similar way.

02:11:25.000 But he still did the Michael Johnson fight.

02:11:26.000 Yeah, but it was the same thing happened during the weigh-in.

02:11:29.000 It was a rough weigh-in.

02:11:30.000 But there's been other guys who missed weight many times.

02:11:33.000 I mean, if we go to...

02:11:34.000 Johnny Hendricks.

02:11:35.000 Johnny Hendricks, Melvin Gallard, Calvin Gastelum, and they missed it by a long way.

02:11:39.000 So I thought the Khabib thing kind of got overplayed.

02:11:41.000 He missed weight one time.

02:11:42.000 He had some injuries which sucked for him.

02:11:44.000 But it was that it was happening for a world title fight.

02:11:47.000 You know, they're fighting for the interim title and he misses weight.

02:11:50.000 Yeah, I mean, and so it was one of those where he probably just like, it was like okay for him to make it be difficult and he just got just a little bit too big.

02:11:57.000 Actually, was it for an interim title when he was supposed to fight Tony?

02:12:00.000 I don't think it was the original time.

02:12:02.000 It was Kevin Lee, right?

02:12:03.000 That was for the world title.

02:12:04.000 Yeah.

02:12:05.000 Or interim title.

02:12:06.000 Interim title. 0.81

02:12:07.000 Yeah, that whole division is kind of fucked up with Conor not even knowing whether or not he's fighting anymore. 0.86

02:12:11.000 They're going to strip him, right? 0.98

02:12:12.000 Yeah, most likely.

02:12:13.000 I think so. 1.00

02:12:14.000 Unless Conor says, fuck it, I'm in. 1.00

02:12:16.000 Fuck it, I'm back. 1.00

02:12:18.000 Fuck it. 1.00

02:12:19.000 Fuck it, I want to keep me belt. 1.00

02:12:22.000 I think the best course of action is strip Conor, let Khabib and Tony fight it out, and then if Conor wants to come back, give him a title shot, and that's going to happen, whatever. 0.99

02:12:29.000 Well, I think what would be the most lucrative thing is Conor versus GSP. No, shut up, Joe. 0.78

02:12:35.000 I want to fight GSP. Oh, you do? 1.00

02:12:37.000 Yes, I want to be number one.

02:12:39.000 I don't want to fight Tyron because we've been friends for 20 years.

02:12:43.000 I want to fight GSP. That's who I want to fight.

02:12:45.000 Do you think that they would set that up?

02:12:46.000 They would try to set up GSP versus Tyron, right?

02:12:49.000 That would be the big super fight.

02:12:50.000 GSP doesn't want to fight anyone who can hit hard because he's worried about the brain damage.

02:12:54.000 You think so?

02:12:54.000 Yeah, I don't hit that hard.

02:12:58.000 That's an interesting way of looking at it.

02:12:59.000 Have you ever trained with GSP? I've never trained.

02:13:01.000 So I've trained with almost every top welterweight of this era, except GSP. Really?

02:13:07.000 Yeah.

02:13:07.000 Well, GSP and Rory.

02:13:09.000 But Shields, Fitch, Diaz a couple times, Tyron, obviously.

02:13:15.000 You know, go down the line.

02:13:16.000 I've trained with pretty much everyone in this era.

02:13:18.000 What do you feel like, if you do wind up retiring, what do you feel like you'll wind up doing?

02:13:23.000 Just coaching wrestling?

02:13:25.000 I love doing it.

02:13:26.000 I really enjoy it a lot.

02:13:28.000 I don't think I'd go back to the collegiate level.

02:13:31.000 That's obviously always an option.

02:13:33.000 For the four years I coached college wrestling, I loved it.

02:13:36.000 And then it was like, hey, I won the Bellator title.

02:13:38.000 I was making a lot of money.

02:13:40.000 I should probably try to be good at this instead of just doing it halfway.

02:13:44.000 And so I did that.

02:13:45.000 And then we opened the wrestling schools.

02:13:46.000 And now it's going a little.

02:13:48.000 And I really enjoy that a lot.

02:13:50.000 And there's positives and negatives.

02:13:52.000 I love coaching at the highest level, being able to talk at the highest level to the college guys.

02:13:57.000 So I missed that part a little bit.

02:14:00.000 But then obviously if you go work for an institution like that, there's going to be a lot of bureaucracy and I worry about that.

02:14:06.000 I don't like that.

02:14:07.000 I love owning my own business and having my own freedom and not having to worry about what I tweet or what I say or have anyone tell me what to do or where to be or where to dress.

02:14:17.000 So I love that freedom.

02:14:19.000 Obviously then running your own business has its own challenges also.

02:14:23.000 But I think I will coach wrestling for the rest of my life.

02:14:26.000 Whether I fight once more or whether I don't fight once more, I'll probably cook dressing for the rest of my life.

02:14:31.000 Awesome.

02:14:31.000 Yeah.

02:14:32.000 But listen man, I'm glad we finally got a chance to do this.

02:14:34.000 Yeah, it was fun.

02:14:35.000 Really, really fun.

02:14:36.000 And tell people about your podcast.

02:14:38.000 So I have a wrestling podcast called the T-Row and Funky Show.

02:14:41.000 It's the what?

02:14:42.000 T-Row and Funky Show.

02:14:44.000 T-Row and Funky Show.

02:14:45.000 How do you spell that?

02:14:46.000 T-R-O-W and Funky. 1.00

02:14:50.000 Tommy Rollins was a two-time NCAA champ for Ohio State.

02:14:55.000 Made a couple world teams.

02:14:57.000 Was really close to making an Olympic team.

02:14:58.000 Yeah.

02:14:59.000 We were on the phone one day and he said, I want to do a podcast.

02:15:02.000 I'm like, I want to do a podcast too.

02:15:04.000 Let's just do one.

02:15:05.000 It's not like a job for us.

02:15:07.000 We just do it for fun.

02:15:08.000 We enjoy it.

02:15:08.000 We love talking about wrestling.

02:15:10.000 For me, it's really nice.

02:15:12.000 No one's on the same schedule as me now that I can talk wrestling with.

02:15:16.000 To be able to get on and talk for an hour a week about wrestling, it's a blast.

02:15:20.000 Awesome.

02:15:21.000 That's on iTunes.

02:15:22.000 It's everywhere.

02:15:23.000 iTunes and SoundCloud.

02:15:24.000 People want to find you.

02:15:26.000 It's Ben Askren on Twitter, Instagram.

02:15:29.000 I'm on Instagram, but I don't really get into it.

02:15:32.000 I don't know.

02:15:33.000 I can't get into Instagram.

02:15:34.000 It's just pictures.

02:15:35.000 I get it.

02:15:36.000 There's no banter back and forth.

02:15:38.000 I post every once in a while.

02:15:39.000 But you like Twitter?

02:15:40.000 I love Twitter.

02:15:41.000 Twitter's fun.

02:15:42.000 Ben Askren, ladies and gentlemen.

02:15:43.000 Thanks, brother.

02:15:43.000 I appreciate it, man.

02:15:44.000 That was fun.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 20, 2010

JRE MMA Show #12 with Ben Askren

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript