Ben Askren talks about his career in the UFC, why he left Bellator and why he thinks he should have been allowed to fight for the UFC in the future. He also talks about why he was let go by the UFC and what he would do if he got an offer from the UFC. He also explains why he decided to leave Bellator, and how he thinks the UFC should have handled his situation. We also discuss why he doesn t think he should ever fight again, and what it would take for him to return to the UFC as a full-time fighter. And of course, we talk about how he feels about the current state of the UFC after all of the changes that have been made in the organization in the past few years and what the future holds for the future of the organization. If you like the podcast, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share the Podcast! Cheers, Jon & Rory -Jon Sorrentino <3 -Jon & Rory Raldsy & Rory Mcgregor Thanks for listening and supporting the podcast! <3 Jon and Rory - Rory - Thank you so much for all your support and support! -Your continued support is so appreciated! Love ya! -Jon and Rory! - Cheers! - Rory and Rory xx - The Best Podcast of the Podcast - The Roster - The Top 5 Podcasts of the Decade - The Crews Podcasts - The Chads Podcasts - Jon and The Crew at Workin' Out There Podcasts Podcast - Thank You, Rory - Jon & The Crew and the Crew at The R&R Crew - Thank You for all the Support & Support? - Tom and Rory's Music - - and so Much More! - Thankyou for all of Your Support and Support, Thank you for all Your Support & Love & Support, Cheers & Support & Cheers. -A Big Thank You! - Your Support, Ben & Rory's Best Effort & Love, - Best Regards, The Best Effin' & Much More - Ben & Gotta Have a Merry Christmas - -- - AJ & Good Luck, ~ - Rory & Jake - Blessings, XOXO - EJ & JB & DRS - MURPHY
00:00:03.0005, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ben Askren, ladies and gentlemen.
00:00:08.000Dude, I've talked about you on this podcast at least a dozen times.
00:00:12.000You 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.
00:00:26.000But yeah, I never really got to fight those top guys, and it was for reasons beyond my control.
00:03:03.000And so a lot of UFC fighters were pissed because they gave him a whole bunch of money.
00:03:08.000And 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.
00:03:18.000And then I had a 12-month matching period.
00:03:21.000And 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.
00:03:28.000But we will not make you an offer until that happens.
00:04:08.000What I love more than anything in the world is to challenge myself.
00:04:10.000If you look at my wrestling career, that's what it's all about.
00:04:12.000Taking the next best thing every single time.
00:04:15.000And 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.
00:04:22.000I'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.
00:04:31.000And Bjorn calls me and said, you're released.
00:06:01.000Marlon 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?
00:07:20.000But 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?
00:07:30.000I think he said something like, Ambien takes Ben Askren to go to sleep.
00:07:39.000Number two, my fighting style is not highly attractive.
00:07:41.000But 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.
00:07:50.000But if you look at consistent bases, George St. Pierre is the number one draw of all time.
00:07:54.000He heavily relied on takedowns and ground and pound.
00:07:56.000I mean, he didn't have a finish in like five years or something.
00:08:00.000Let me say what my take has always been on you and that style is that it's important and that it really works.
00:08:43.000What 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.
00:09:06.000And 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.
00:10:02.000If 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?
00:10:06.000And so that was kind of my whole goal when I got in MMA. How do I not get knocked out, right?
00:10:11.000And 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...
00:10:21.000And 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?
00:10:29.000But 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.
00:11:03.000Because 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.
00:11:17.000So I think there's a lot of advantages that we as wrestlers have when we come into mixed martial arts.
00:11:22.000And if I could add to that, the intention is pure.
00:11:24.000It's pure for competition because there's no financial reward.
00:11:27.000It's not a bunch of people that are getting into wrestling because they want to get rich.
00:11:30.000It's a bunch of people that really want to prove that they're the best.
00:11:32.000And 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.
00:11:46.000Well, 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.
00:11:57.000Now, none of them are getting rich, and there's only about a dozen of them making, like, a decent living, right?
00:13:24.000It'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?
00:13:47.000And so that's 12 years prior to, you know, my Olympic birth.
00:14:53.000Yeah, 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.
00:15:01.000I think both are pretty evil and both are archaic and both need to be changed.
00:15:06.000If you could abolish the NCAA and the IOC, that'd be fantastic for athletes worldwide.
00:15:11.000Yeah, well, especially when you look at the football teams that are getting literally billions and billions of dollars every year.
00:15:18.000And these athletes are ruining their lives.
00:15:21.000I 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.
00:15:30.000And meanwhile, the university has made tons of money off of them.
00:15:35.000Yeah, 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.
00:15:46.000Yeah, you can't have a YouTube channel.
00:15:50.000So, 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.
00:16:02.000Jimmy, you were telling me about this, right?
00:16:03.000Like a guy got in trouble for having a YouTube channel?
00:16:06.000Yeah, he was a punter for a college football team or a kicker.
00:16:11.000And there was a wrestler from the University of Minnesota.
00:16:16.000He made a rap album, and he had to either quit the wrestling team or donate all the money back or something like that.
00:16:22.000It's like rap and wrestling, they have nothing to do with each other.
00:16:27.000The fact that he can't go make money off freaking recording an album is mind-blowing.
00:16:32.000It's disgusting, because you're keeping a kid from being industrious.
00:16:35.000You're keeping a young guy who's trying to find his way through the world.
00:16:38.000You're keeping him from being successful.
00:16:40.000But 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.
00:16:48.000He's learning as a young guy, like, hey, look, I could be industrious.
00:16:54.000This is what we should be encouraging people to do.
00:16:57.000To take chances and make money, the idea that you're saying somehow or another this spoils his amateur athletic standing is just stupidity.
00:18:15.000And 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.
00:18:32.000He was a champion here, he's a champion there.
00:18:36.000And hey, I've never got to sit down face to face with Dana and say, why was there no offer?
00:18:41.000You 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?
00:18:50.000And so it would be really interesting to me to sit down and say, tell me for real, because I have my assumptions.
00:18:56.000On what the deal was, but I don't really know.
00:18:58.000And 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.
00:19:09.000You 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.
00:19:21.000Well, fighters very rarely are yes men.
00:19:34.000If you're the guy who's running the division, you're the guy who's running the division.
00:19:37.000And you're not gonna take any shit from anybody.
00:19:39.000Yeah, 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?
00:22:44.000And so you need both sides of those coins to make it whole.
00:22:48.000And 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.
00:23:19.000One 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.
00:23:27.000I mean, everybody teaches you how to wrestle.
00:24:26.000I'm not going to freaking write papers.
00:24:28.000I'll still study sports psych on my own.
00:24:30.000Actually, every Monday, I do something called the Mental Monday on one of my Facebook pages.
00:24:35.000People message me questions, and I talk about the mental aspect, because you're right, there aren't enough people that talk about it.
00:24:41.000In 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.
00:25:12.000I'll do something over and over and over and over again.
00:25:14.000And 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?
00:25:23.000And my coach said, hey, I was that person many, many years ago and it helped me just talk about fishing, right?
00:25:30.000Because I don't want to think about what I'm going to do.
00:25:35.000Because if I think about it too much, I'll obsess.
00:25:36.000And 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?
00:25:46.000So maybe the day before I can think about it, a couple days before I can think about it.
00:25:49.000But like, even when I'm in MMA locker room, I'm not thinking about my fight.
00:25:54.000Because 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.
00:26:05.000I'm going to come up with a brilliant strategy in six hours, you know?
00:26:10.000I 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.
00:26:53.000I 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.
00:27:03.000the 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
00:27:32.000there'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.
00:28:37.000So 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.
00:28:48.000I think their guys would get a lot better, a lot faster.
00:28:51.000And I think you'd see a really interesting dynamic develop between the high-level athletes and the coaches.
00:28:57.000Well, I think they're still trying to figure out what's the best way to coach fighters.
00:29:01.000And I think everybody's got their own way of doing it.
00:29:03.000For us, the hobby's way is different than the way they do it at American Top Team.
00:29:07.000Matt Hume is doing it different than the way Duke does it.
00:29:12.000And the only way you can tell is how well the athletes compete.
00:29:15.000That's the only way you really find out who's correct and who needs to make adjustments.
00:29:19.000Yeah, 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?
00:29:49.000Every NCAA championship is scored by team.
00:29:50.000So you get a very good indication of what coach is doing it right and what coach is doing it wrong.
00:29:55.000And then, obviously, with the recruiting process, the coaches that are doing it right now get the next crop of the best talent, right?
00:30:00.000And so you have a very good idea of what's working, what is not working.
00:30:04.000We'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.
00:30:12.000Now, you were able to instigate your strategy in pretty much every single one of your MMA fights.
00:30:18.000The only fight where you really struggled is a Jay Heron fight.
00:31:09.000Went to visit him for Thanksgiving, and he whooped my ass.
00:31:11.000And I'm like— I freaking suck at wrestling.
00:31:14.000I 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.
00:31:24.000So at that point in time, and for pretty much the rest of my career, I would go to one of the local colleges.
00:31:31.000Once a week or twice a week, just to keep my skills sharp.
00:31:33.000And so I think that was the biggest mistake I made in the Haran fight.
00:31:44.000But I think if I had to pinpoint one thing, that would be it.
00:31:47.000Isn'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?
00:33:31.000I 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.
00:33:44.000You literally have to take three months and freaking wrestle every single day.
00:35:13.000Just because you didn't want to get hit?
00:35:14.000Yeah, I felt it was an unnecessary risk.
00:35:18.000Well, 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.
00:35:27.000Yeah, 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?
00:35:40.000But then they studied people who had played football for any length of time.
00:35:51.000How 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?
00:36:09.000No, 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...
00:36:20.000A lot of people are walking around like that.
00:37:10.000Plus, they have helmets on, which allows them to be more confident, clashing into each other.
00:37:15.000I think a giant percentage of those guys.
00:37:18.000So 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.
00:38:12.000And she was talking about some genes make you more susceptible for traumatic brain injury than other ones.
00:38:20.000Like, 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.
00:38:52.000Is 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.
00:40:49.000I 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.
00:41:40.000I mean, I remember one time, though, I got my knee operated on.
00:41:42.000I had an ACL reconstruction, and they gave me one of those buttons in the hospital where you press it and you get morphine.
00:41:49.000And it was when they had my leg on this motion machine, right?
00:41:54.000So, like, right after surgery, they're trying to get your blood moving.
00:41:58.000And 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.
00:42:05.000And then I'm sitting there, and this thing's just, it's just throbbing paint.
00:42:59.000For like a couple people, it's probably the right career path.
00:43:02.000For a majority of people, probably not a great career path.
00:43:05.000But 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.
00:44:00.000It 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.
00:44:09.000It was talking about big wave surfers and the flying suit and all this.
00:44:13.000It was talking about the psychology behind it and how...
00:44:16.000Like, 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.
00:44:23.000I 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.
00:44:35.000But he's got a bunch of sponsors, and he actually makes a living doing that.
00:44:38.000I would never recommend that to anybody.
00:46:11.000I 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.
00:46:54.000Yeah, 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.
00:47:01.000It'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.
00:47:09.000Yeah, you get to a certain point where you can only do so many flips in the air with your bike.
00:47:13.000Apparently, they haven't stopped trying to go more.
00:47:15.000They would do one rotation and everybody would go, this is crazy.
00:47:18.000Then some guy comes wrong with two and then now they're doing three.
00:47:20.000Wasn't there the movie about Tony Hawk was like the first one that did the 720 or something?
00:48:37.000And that's what I think what you were saying about shaming.
00:48:40.000They try to shame you into being less racist or shame, but you're not doing that.
00:48:43.000If 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.
00:48:56.000Yeah, and what they're really doing also is they're making people afraid to speak their minds, right?
00:49:02.000And really, if you and I had a disagreement on something, how we would come to a common ground is by discussing it.
00:49:07.000I'd say, well, I think you're a reasonable person.
00:50:10.000I 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.
00:50:23.000So I think that's a double-edged sword because I think Alex Jones does it as well.
00:50:42.000And 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.
00:56:39.000Yeah, so I think there's obviously those people who are on right the way, one side of it.
00:56:45.000So if you go a spectrum for me, right?
00:56:48.000There's the American who's drinking Diet Coke and eating frozen pizza and listening to whatever CBS says.
00:56:53.000And 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.
00:57:03.000Now we can fall anywhere in the middle there.
00:57:04.000So I think as an intelligent individual, we look at situations independently and say, well, there's some sketchy things there, not sketchy things there.
00:57:18.000You know, that's a wise way to approach it.
00:57:20.000And I think CBS or NBC or, you know, name your news source, they're run by people.
00:57:26.000And if they weren't there, they only have access to a certain amount of information.
00:57:29.000And sometimes they get bad information.
00:57:31.000And sometimes they don't necessarily know.
00:57:33.000I 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.
00:58:42.000We're looking at a picture for the audio folks of James Kingston on the top of this tower.
00:58:46.000And I don't know how many fucking stories he's up there, but it's insane.
00:58:50.000Because below him, and I mean way below him, are skyscrapers.
00:58:54.000That's probably like Dubai or something, right?
00:58:56.000Do you think that Dunbar's number could apply to other things besides people, like websites or numbers of instructions, that kind of thing?
00:59:05.000You know, I think it applies to too many things.
00:59:08.000It applies, I just think, for names, names and people, I'm struggling.
00:59:15.000I think I'm getting, like, I have an overflowing pot.
00:59:18.000Like, 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.
00:59:28.000Like, he won, and I went, Chris Cater, and then I went, his fucking name's Calvin, you dumb cunt.
00:59:32.000Like, I just don't, I think I'm running out of space in my head for names, so my apologies to Calvin Cater.
01:00:08.000And 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.
01:00:15.000Especially if you're someone like you or I that runs into so many people who you meet on a regular basis.
01:00:22.000You've got to keep those people all in your brain.
01:00:24.000But is it—so I guess I haven't read that much.
01:00:28.000Is 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?
01:00:33.000I 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.
01:00:45.000Especially if you think about commentating on fights, I have to pay attention to these guys and what they're doing and their career.
01:00:51.000And there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them.
01:01:36.000And it's like, this fall was my first where I full-time worked at one.
01:01:42.000And so now I'm really immersed in the one academy, whereas I was kind of loosely keeping track of all three.
01:01:47.000But 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.
01:02:54.000It's six million people on a really, really small island.
01:02:59.000But some of their academies are only a mile or two apart.
01:03:03.000Like, 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.
01:04:14.000I 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.
01:04:22.000So there was a whole bunch of those Asian countries that got independence in the 1950s and 60s.
01:04:30.000And Singapore, I believe, was founded in 1965. It could be off by one year there, maybe.
01:04:35.000But, you know, a lot of those countries are not doing super well economically.
01:04:39.000And Singapore is like this freaking standout country who's like top five world per person wealth.
01:05:21.000So only a little bit of money comes out.
01:05:23.000If you want the nicest healthcare or the nicest housing, then it's only a tiny percent government subsidized.
01:05:30.000So 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.
01:05:38.000And 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.
01:05:47.000And 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.
01:06:32.000When you go all the way back, I think about it...
01:06:34.000So 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.
01:07:08.000Well, in his defense, it was MMA from a long time ago.
01:07:12.000And it wasn't really the same as MMA now.
01:07:15.000And 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.
01:08:44.000This 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.
01:08:55.000But I think you have to realize that any time there's something that happens, people start looking for all these different Correlating factors, right?
01:09:05.000You start saying, well, hey, look, there was local tests that were being done.
01:09:10.000They were looking out for planes that were potentially going to fly into buildings.
01:09:15.000They knew this was going to happen in advance.
01:09:16.000But if you talk to anybody that is in intelligence, they're dealing with that shit every day.
01:10:06.000I 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.
01:11:00.000I mean, those things have been now proven to be totally factual, that the United States government went and did that stuff.
01:11:07.000So the fact that, you know, in 1960s or 70s, those things were reported the opposite, right?
01:11:12.000So we can't obviously take everything that we've been reported as truth.
01:11:16.000Well, there's definitely been conspiracies that have been put together and executed.
01:11:22.000And these conspiracies have greatly affected the American people.
01:11:26.000The Gulf of Tonkin is a perfect example.
01:11:28.000Another one that they were planning on was Operation Northwoods.
01:11:32.000Operation Northwoods was one that they were planning on blowing up a drone jetliner and blaming it on the Cubans.
01:11:37.000They were going to arm Cuban friendlies and have them attack Guantanamo Bay.
01:11:41.000They were going to sacrifice American troops and American lives.
01:11:44.000And they were going to do this in order to get people to be excited about a war with Cuba.
01:11:48.000This 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.
01:11:55.000So we know that there were people, at least in 1962, that were planning on shit like this.
01:12:13.000Yeah, 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.
01:12:49.000But 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.
01:13:01.000Apollo 13 was the one that they didn't apparently make it and they had to come back.
01:13:06.000But that was the only time in history that a human being has been more than 400 miles above the Earth's surface.
01:13:12.000All the space station missions, all the space shuttle missions, all that stuff is...
01:14:05.000Surely our technology is far superior to what it was in 1969, right?
01:14:09.000The technology is far superior, except that they're not using that technology for manned space travel into deep space like that, into the moon.
01:14:53.000The 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.
01:15:05.000But 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.
01:15:17.000And it's also, there's unquestionably some stuff that, whether it was images or video, that was faked.
01:15:29.000So like I said, I've never looked into this at all.
01:15:30.000Gemini 15 is the big one because there's a photo of Michael Collins.
01:15:34.000It 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.
01:17:17.000What 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.
01:17:27.000And they secretly brought him over to America.
01:17:30.000And 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?
01:17:38.000It's because the Nazi scientists were insanely advanced.
01:17:42.000So the question is, like, well, were they really Nazis or were they scientists that were under the boot of the Nazi administration?
01:17:51.000But I do know that these are the people that were the head engineers and the people that designed it.
01:17:58.000Wernher 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.
01:18:10.000But technology advanced from then to when 1969 happened to when they did it.
01:18:16.000I stopped saying that we never went to the moon because I really don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
01:18:20.000And that's a big part of understanding these conspiracies.
01:19:37.000You'd have to take your shoot off and then you would die.
01:19:40.000Yeah, they didn't have a camera that you could put in front of you.
01:19:43.000Well, 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.
01:19:50.000Well, that's what they said, well, it was that they did it remotely.
01:19:53.000That'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.
01:20:02.000It's all, there's some squirrely footage.
01:20:05.000You ever see the video of them jumping around?
01:20:45.000And, 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.
01:21:23.000Neil Armstrong made a rare public appearance in the next generation of taxpayers.
01:21:28.000No, no, no, just play the whole thing so you don't confuse everybody.
01:21:31.000In 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.
01:21:44.000Today we have with us a group of students among America's best.
01:21:51.000To you we say we've only completed a beginning.
01:22:17.000I mean, you're supposed to say, yo, I went to the moon, bitch.
01:22:23.000You're not supposed to say breakthroughs that can be truth-protective layers.
01:22:28.000I don't even understand what that means.
01:22:29.000The press conference is one of the more fascinating things.
01:22:32.000If you watch the press conference, again, I was balls deep in this stuff for years.
01:22:37.000The press conference from 1969 when they returned from the moon is one of the most cryptic, weird things you'll ever see.
01:22:44.000These guys look like they just stole something and they're being questioned.
01:22:50.000I'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.
01:24:06.000If 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.
01:24:12.000And 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.
01:24:38.000Like falling down and it's very weird.
01:24:41.000But 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.
01:24:49.000Oh, so you were posting those videos back in the day.
01:24:51.000Yeah, I posted those videos back in the day.
01:24:52.000I had a debate on Penn Jillette's radio show with a guy who was an astronomer.
01:24:58.000And he wasn't willing to admit a lot of stuff that was a fact.
01:25:01.000Like the fact that Wernher von Braun was a Nazi.
01:25:03.000Well, why does the flag look so still there?
01:25:05.000Well, the flag had a wire, first of all, on the top of it that stiffened it up to make it...
01:25:10.000But there's videos of the flag moving in a non-existent breeze, which is weird too.
01:25:17.000They 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.
01:25:26.000The wires one is weird if you watch them fall down.
01:26:04.000Now 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.
01:28:43.000And 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.
01:29:20.000And 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.
01:31:25.000Again, me as a top guy, I would rather be in half guard than full guard.
01:31:30.000I'm going to land a lot of damage from half guard.
01:31:32.000If 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.
01:31:37.000So 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.
01:31:45.000You're going to have to get up, and putting your feet on someone's hips and kicking them is no longer a great solution.
01:31:50.000It works every once in a while, but it's not like you can do that every single time.
01:31:57.000Yeah, 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.
01:32:04.000Because once you do get taken down, or once you get a takedown, and there's some, you know, Yolo Romero was the perfect example.
01:32:11.000He never did folk style wrestling in America, right?
01:32:12.000He's a very, very elite freestyle wrestler.
01:32:15.000But he gets these takedowns, and he can only stay on top for like 15 seconds.
01:32:20.000It's like you did all that work to get the guy on the ground, and now you just let him back up.
01:32:54.000And 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.
01:33:04.000He 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.
01:33:16.000Well, what are your thoughts on, like, Corellin?
01:33:24.000And 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.
01:33:32.000And 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.
01:33:59.000And 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.
01:34:09.000I 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?
01:34:20.000So I'm gonna fight them whether they're cheating or not.
01:34:21.000Well, like the Pride days, it was essentially sanctioned.
01:35:14.000So 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?
01:35:21.000So essentially, everyone moved up one weight class.
01:35:24.000Every one of their champions bumped up a weight class.
01:35:26.000So, like, over there I fight 185, but, you know, it's essentially welterweight.
01:35:30.000They even call it welterweight, because it's the same thing, because I can't cut any water weight.
01:35:43.000So there's the day of the fight, the day before the fight, two days before the fight.
01:35:47.000If 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.
01:36:34.000So now I don't have to do that dehydration process.
01:36:36.000I'm literally the exact same size I was prior.
01:36:40.000And, 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.
01:37:04.000You have to get hydrated and make weight.
01:37:06.000So 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.
01:37:14.000What's the parameters when it comes to hydration or non-hydration?
01:38:24.000And 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.
01:39:47.000And, 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?
01:40:07.000And 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.
01:40:35.000To get down to my target weight six weeks prior to competition, right?
01:40:40.000So I'm walking around 183 to 185 six weeks prior.
01:40:43.000So I'm the same exact person every single day.
01:40:45.000Whereas 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?
01:40:53.000So, you know, maybe I get up to 195, which is, that's a small bump.
01:40:57.000Some of these guys are really undisciplined.
01:40:58.000They get way, way, way, way overweight, right?
01:41:01.000And so during that last six weeks or even the last couple weeks, they're trying to bring that body weight down, right?
01:41:06.000And so in my mind, there's two ways to lose weight.
01:41:08.000You can diet and lose body weight, right?
01:42:57.000Not even just black belts, like world class, 19 to 23, in their physical prime, ready to fight each other every single day.
01:43:05.000And so you get used to this grind, dealing with people, battling people, discomfort every single day.
01:43:11.000You know, and a lot of it's also dealing with injuries.
01:43:13.000Like, you know, and Chael Sonnen talks about it a lot, that, hey, and I always talk to my kids about this.
01:43:17.000Listen, the national tournament for the NCAA is March 15th through 17th.
01:43:21.000And you cannot guarantee me you're going to be totally healthy on that date.
01:43:24.000You cannot guarantee me you're going to be not sick on that date.
01:43:27.000You're going to have to compete March 15th through March 17th no matter what if you want to win a national title.
01:43:32.000And so wrestlers get used to this grind where you just don't see that in other sports.
01:43:38.000Yeah, 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...
01:44:01.000Jiu-Jitsu schools, can you name where there's literally 40 black belts?
01:44:04.000I mean, it's been born out through high school wrestling.
01:44:07.000You go to all these national tournaments and state tournaments, you find out who the best are.
01:44:10.000The best of the best get recruited, and they go to these institutions to train with the other best of the best of the best.
01:44:17.000And 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?
01:44:33.000Yeah, there also seems to be like a much more systematic approach to training people and a lot more drilling.
01:44:40.000You know, and a lot of jiu-jitsu schools, like, show the arm bar from the guard.
01:44:54.000I'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.
01:45:05.000It 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.
01:45:13.000I love studying people who are the best in their field at whatever they do.
01:45:17.000And we know, without a shadow of a doubt, just saying go for five minutes is not the most effective way to train some more.
01:45:36.000All these different scenarios that we might try.
01:45:38.000I 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.
01:45:45.000If we're drilling that, We don't just say, okay, now go five minutes.
01:45:49.000Because how many tries are they going to get at going in the mantis position that are the front headlock?
01:45:53.000Maybe one, maybe two, but essentially most people of you say go for five minutes.
01:45:58.000They are not disciplined enough to make themselves do new skills.
01:46:02.000And then they just do it over and over and over and over again, right?
01:46:05.000And 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.
01:46:12.000I'm going to put him in there 50 times in that practice.
01:46:16.000He'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?
01:46:22.000And then maybe some days you say, hey, go for 10 minutes, go wrestle, right?
01:46:26.000Because you want to change it up a little bit.
01:46:27.000But 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.
01:46:39.000Eddie 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.
01:48:47.000But you're not going to reach the pinnacle because you're not putting yourself in the right situation.
01:48:50.000It'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.
01:49:02.000Yeah, you almost have to have everything.
01:49:04.000And the fighters that have those really strong attributes just have to be aware that those attributes are strengthened even further by technique.
01:49:14.000And so again, it's both sides that coin to me.
01:49:16.000Another one would be something called beginner's mind and then know-it-all, right?
01:49:20.000When you come into practice, you need to have a beginner's mind.
01:49:23.000I 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.
01:49:30.000It's like, this guy really cared about learning from every possible source.
01:49:47.000But then when you go into a competition, you can't have that same mindset thinking, I don't know, I need to ask.
01:49:53.000And 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?
01:50:11.000So you've got to balance both those things, right?
01:50:14.000You can't have just one, because if you're, I know it all, I'm a badass.
01:50:18.000That's great for competition, but you come into practice, you're going to stop your learning, right?
01:50:22.000Now, when you are coaching kids, how much time, if any, do you spend on mindset?
01:50:30.000And 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.
01:50:38.000But 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.
01:50:46.000And 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.
01:50:53.000You 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.
01:51:05.000Then 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.
01:51:11.000And 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?
01:51:19.000So 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?
01:51:26.000Well, you need to practice a little harder so you get used to that pressure.
01:51:29.000Remember 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.
01:51:38.000So 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.
01:51:48.000So I think for a mental aspect it comes a lot more on a one-on-one basis.
01:51:52.000And sometimes I'll use it in front of the whole team.
01:51:54.000I don't like really picking on people.
01:53:26.000I don't think it trumps especially knowledge.
01:53:29.000And then if kids wrestle really hard against each other, and Cale had that one saying, like, wrestling is the best strength and conditioning.
01:53:35.000If you wrestle really hard against each other, you're going to develop those things.
01:53:38.000And 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.
01:53:45.000And I think that comes from, that doesn't come, if you put me in a weight room, I can do nothing abnormal.
01:53:49.000I am not abnormally strong in any exercise.
01:53:51.000I'm actually, like on a division one college team, I'm significantly less strong than most people, right?
01:53:56.000But then when they wrestle me, they're like, holy shit, I never felt anything like that.
01:54:00.000And I think it's because a lot of those things that I do are very, very, very wrestling specific.
01:54:06.000And I develop that strength because when I grab someone in practice, I freaking grab them as hard as I can.
01:54:09.000When I squeeze them, I squeeze them as hard as I can.
01:54:12.000And so now from doing that thousands of times, I've developed that squeeze or that strength.
01:54:16.000And so I think strength conditioning is important, but I don't think it trumps doing other stuff.
01:54:20.000And 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.
01:54:27.000What did you do when you were fighting in MMA? How much did you devote to strength and conditioning?
01:54:53.000Potentially, 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.
01:55:02.000You need to be able to move a lot of things really fast.
01:55:04.000So kind of CrossFit-type stuff I think is probably the right direction to go.
01:55:08.000And 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.
01:55:21.000So did you do, when you were saying you were doing CrossFit-style workouts, so were you doing kettlebells, box jumps?
01:55:29.000So 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.
01:55:38.000What about your diet and nutrition and supplements and things along those lines?
01:55:43.000I have never been that much into nutrition.
01:55:47.000I was fat when I was a little kid, right?
01:56:22.000That's amazing you had that discipline at 11. Yeah, I know.
01:56:25.000So 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.
01:56:35.000So I lost 30 pounds, and so now I've slowly started reintroducing a lot of stuff.
01:57:25.000And so then it's like, well, now I really can't take anything.
01:57:27.000Because 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.
01:57:46.000I mean, you know, like, it's like healthy food.
01:57:50.000Like, we're eating salads and, you know, I'm not eating cake and ice cream and pizza and that kind of stuff.
01:57:56.000And we're eating healthy food at my house, you know, but I'm not measuring the grams of this or grams of that.
01:58:02.000So 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.
01:58:11.000And so I think, like, my training is more important than focusing on nutrition and stuff.
01:58:16.000I want to really, like, really zone in really high-level focus when I'm training and stuff.
01:58:22.000And so I think if I worry about all this other stuff, it'll take my focus away from that.
01:58:25.000Right or wrong, that's kind of how I thought about it.
01:58:48.000And 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?
01:59:03.000I mean, they're not super wealthy countries.
01:59:05.000And 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.
01:59:59.000EPO. 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.
02:00:09.000Well, people have definitely tested hot for that in the UFC. Who's the guy that fought Mighty Mouse?
02:00:20.000I 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.
02:01:46.000And 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.
02:01:54.000It would be like hedging your bet against yourself, and I don't ever bet against myself.
02:02:02.000It'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.
02:02:20.000It'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.
02:02:31.000So 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...
02:02:42.000You know, Team Takedown had Jake Rothschalt, who was an amazing wrestler, and for whatever reason, he just didn't transition great to fighting, right?
02:02:51.000And it was like, for as good of a wrestler as he was, he probably thought he was going to be a little better.
02:02:55.000Yeah, what do you think is the factor?
02:02:57.000Like, if you had to look at a wrestler...
02:02:59.000Because there's not a lot of outliers like that.
02:03:03.000When we talk about how good Jake was, he still made the UFC. He still won some fights.
02:03:08.000He wasn't a bad fighter, but he was a three-time NCAA champ.
02:03:11.000So you expect him, hey, he'll probably go challenge for a UFC title.
02:03:15.000In his case, I don't know what the factor was.
02:03:20.000But 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.
02:03:30.000I've looked at it from striking, from if you see really high-level kickboxers.
02:03:35.000Some 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.
02:03:44.000I 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.
02:03:57.000And he had decent takedown defense, too.
02:04:20.000What would you think would be like this?
02:04:22.000Well, it's weird because there's so many different guys.
02:04:25.000You 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?
02:04:44.000I'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.
02:04:51.000I mean, you can literally not name me, Joe, a jujitsu guy or a striking guy.
02:04:59.000Well, 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?
02:05:08.000I mean, when you see the crossover, like John Jones was a wrestler.
02:05:12.000He can strike with pretty much anyone on the planet, right?
02:05:17.000He can pretty much strike with anyone on the planet.
02:05:19.000I mean, so you have these wrestlers who are becoming high-level at these other skills, but you don't have a lot of...
02:05:25.000Other skills becoming high-level at wrestling.
02:05:27.000And 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.
02:05:36.000Yeah, I think it's a recognition of what's important.
02:05:39.000Like, 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.
02:05:46.000Yeah, and just figured it out and realized what a critical skill it is, too.
02:06:02.000So there's a handful, but there's not a lot.
02:06:04.000But 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.
02:06:12.000You know, it's interesting when you see a guy like Khabib Nurmagomedov, and you see...
02:07:22.000Even like Anthony Pettis who got a lot of submissions from guard.
02:07:26.000A 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?
02:07:34.000Or Gil Melendez getting guillotine choke because he got jacked a few times, right?
02:07:38.000So there's a handful of those, but just strictly like, I take you down, you're in guard, then I submit you.
02:08:47.000What do you think's going to happen down there?
02:08:49.000Well, I think some guys get locked into a defensive position, like they realize they're getting overwhelmed, and so they just try to survive.
02:11:42.000He had some injuries which sucked for him.
02:11:44.000But it was that it was happening for a world title fight.
02:11:47.000You know, they're fighting for the interim title and he misses weight.
02:11:50.000Yeah, 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.
02:11:57.000Actually, was it for an interim title when he was supposed to fight Tony?
02:12:00.000I don't think it was the original time.
02:12:22.000I 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.
02:12:29.000Well, I think what would be the most lucrative thing is Conor versus GSP. No, shut up, Joe.
02:14:07.000I 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.