The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #149 with Dan Henderson

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00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

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00:00:12.000 Hello, Dan Henderson.

00:00:13.000 What the fuck's happening?

00:00:15.000 Good to see you, brother.

00:00:16.000 Good to see you, too.

00:00:17.000 Man, what have you been up to, other than coaching?

00:00:20.000 You're coaching a lot, I know that.

00:00:22.000 I watch a lot of your videos.

00:00:23.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm coaching a little bit.

00:00:25.000 Got some decent up-and-comers, but other than that, I've been working on a project where I own the building my gyms in, and I'm putting a brewery distillery restaurant in.

00:00:36.000 Oh, nice.

00:00:36.000 Part of it will overlook there.

00:00:38.000 So we're in mid-construction right now.

00:00:39.000 So it's been...

00:00:42.000 We started construction and it got put on hold when COVID happened.

00:00:46.000 So it's been almost the biggest fight of my life trying to get this thing done.

00:00:50.000 But yeah, it's finally...

00:00:52.000 Finally going to be done, hopefully end of the year.

00:00:54.000 You're still down in Temecula area?

00:00:57.000 Yeah, in Temecula, yeah.

00:00:59.000 That's a good area.

00:01:00.000 No, I love it there.

00:01:01.000 Last time I saw you was at that casino.

00:01:02.000 That's a fun little casino.

00:01:04.000 Oh, at Petranga?

00:01:05.000 Yeah.

00:01:05.000 Yeah, no, I love it out there.

00:01:09.000 I was born and raised in California, so it'd be hard to leave.

00:01:13.000 I got so many roots there, but living in Temecula, I feel like I'm in one of the best spots in California.

00:01:20.000 Yeah.

00:01:20.000 Yeah, it's one of the best.

00:01:21.000 It's most sane.

00:01:23.000 Yeah.

00:01:23.000 It's pretty sane.

00:01:25.000 Yeah, pretty.

00:01:26.000 A lot of ranches and it's like normal people.

00:01:28.000 Not a lot of craziness going on.

00:01:30.000 Yeah.

00:01:30.000 You get closer to Los Angeles, it just gets polluted.

00:01:33.000 Yeah.

00:01:34.000 Just toxic fucking thinking.

00:01:35.000 Where did you live up there?

00:01:37.000 I lived in Bell Canyon, which was like a half hour outside of LA, which was nice.

00:01:43.000 Like I had land and a lot of coyotes and a lot of owls and hawks and shit and mountain lions.

00:01:49.000 It's good.

00:01:50.000 It was good juxtaposition.

00:01:53.000 It was a nice relief from Hollywood.

00:01:55.000 I get there.

00:01:55.000 It's quiet.

00:01:56.000 And how was the little community, though?

00:01:58.000 It's fine.

00:01:59.000 Yeah, it's fine.

00:02:00.000 Like it here better, though?

00:02:02.000 Oh, yeah.

00:02:03.000 Way better.

00:02:05.000 I'm never leaving.

00:02:07.000 Yeah.

00:02:08.000 No, this place is the best.

00:02:10.000 It's just the freedom that you get in Texas.

00:02:12.000 It's just so much...

00:02:14.000 You just get so accustomed to it.

00:02:16.000 Yeah.

00:02:16.000 I couldn't imagine.

00:02:19.000 I don't know if I could deal with the humidity out here.

00:02:24.000 You get used to it.

00:02:26.000 I don't know.

00:02:26.000 I've always liked the heat.

00:02:27.000 It doesn't bother me at all.

00:02:30.000 Because I do the sauna every day anyway, so I think my body's acclimated to heat.

00:02:34.000 So during the summertime, you don't really have to get in the sauna?

00:02:37.000 I get in the sauna, too.

00:02:38.000 I do it every day.

00:02:39.000 But during the day, like getting ready for elk season, I was out in my yard every day for three hours at 105 degrees.

00:02:46.000 I'd just bring a 64-ounce hydro flask filled with electrolytes and water and just drink that.

00:02:52.000 And I would come inside, and it was literally like I went swimming.

00:02:54.000 I would just be drenched.

00:02:56.000 My jeans, my shirt, everything drenched.

00:02:58.000 What are you doing out in the yard?

00:03:00.000 Just shooting.

00:03:01.000 Okay.

00:03:01.000 Just shooting, you know, getting ready.

00:03:03.000 So I had to practice.

00:03:05.000 So it's like there's only one place I could practice 100 yards.

00:03:08.000 Yeah.

00:03:09.000 It's in the yard.

00:03:09.000 So I was out there practicing every day.

00:03:12.000 Have you taken a 100-yard shot?

00:03:15.000 No way.

00:03:16.000 Never.

00:03:17.000 I would never do that.

00:03:18.000 Never.

00:03:19.000 But when you take a 100-yard shot every day, 50-yard shots look like a chip shot.

00:03:24.000 Right.

00:03:24.000 Like I shot my elk last week at 50, and it was...

00:03:26.000 Easy.

00:03:27.000 It was perfect.

00:03:28.000 It was perfect distance.

00:03:29.000 I knew I was going to hit it.

00:03:31.000 Yeah, I've gotten a couple at 50. I think one at 60 was my longest shot, but yeah.

00:03:36.000 My friend Cam shot one at two yards.

00:03:39.000 He shot at two yards.

00:03:40.000 A frontal shot at two yards.

00:03:41.000 He just made a video of it.

00:03:42.000 It's fucking crazy.

00:03:45.000 This elk, he was on his knees, and the elk was coming up the trail, and the elk had no idea he was there.

00:03:50.000 He was just standing there at full draw, and then the elk looked down and saw him there.

00:03:54.000 What?!

00:03:55.000 And it caught him right in the chest.

00:03:57.000 It went right through his heart.

00:03:58.000 Wow.

00:03:58.000 Yeah, this is the video.

00:04:02.000 This is a real clip of it.

00:04:04.000 So he's moving up this trail and this is the elk.

00:04:07.000 Well, you'll see the show.

00:04:09.000 Well, it's very hard to see.

00:04:10.000 You'll see it on his YouTube channel.

00:04:11.000 It's much better, but that's how close he was.

00:04:13.000 It was two yards from it.

00:04:14.000 That's funny.

00:04:15.000 My first elk I ever shot was with a bow, but it was at like 10 feet, so three and a half yards.

00:04:22.000 But yeah, it was in a burn area, so there was a lot of new growth going up, and there was a little quakey tree, and I saw an elk a couple hundred yards away.

00:04:30.000 I called him, and he started coming over, and then I called again kind of in a different direction, so we'd kind of go into a nice little spot.

00:04:38.000 I could shoot him and I'm kind of jittery getting my trigger on the loop, you know, my release on there.

00:04:45.000 By the time I look up, he's like right on the other side of this quake, 10 feet away from me, you know, just kind of looking to see where the cow is.

00:04:54.000 And just same thing, plugged it right through the middle.

00:04:58.000 I've never taken that shot.

00:04:59.000 I had an opportunity to do that shot last week at 45 yards, but there was some shit in the way of him, and I don't like that shot.

00:05:05.000 Yeah, not at that distance.

00:05:07.000 No.

00:05:07.000 That shot's like a 20 and under.

00:05:08.000 I passed right through him.

00:05:10.000 Oh, yeah.

00:05:11.000 It's a devastating shot.

00:05:13.000 Just right at an angle.

00:05:14.000 Yeah, it's devastating if you hit it.

00:05:16.000 There's so many videos online of guys hitting that.

00:05:19.000 They just spray blood and die instantly.

00:05:22.000 He managed to run 20 yards down the hill and didn't make it any further.

00:05:30.000 It's a great discipline for fighters.

00:05:34.000 A lot of guys who leave fighting and the excitement and the intensity of fighting, nothing can match that.

00:05:41.000 The only thing that comes close for a lot of them is bow hunting.

00:05:44.000 Yeah, I can see that for sure.

00:05:46.000 I mean, I've done it.

00:05:47.000 I was doing it when I was fighting too, but yeah, I mean, I grew up hunting, but never really started shooting animals until I got a little bit older and getting a little better at it.

00:06:00.000 It's hard.

00:06:01.000 I need to get out and bow hunt a little more.

00:06:03.000 That's my favorite hunt is a bow archery elk hunt.

00:06:06.000 Yeah, no, it's the most exciting.

00:06:08.000 It's also the most crazy.

00:06:09.000 There's screaming, and there's so much chaos, and you've got to duck those cows and sneak around.

00:06:15.000 It's fun.

00:06:16.000 I love it.

00:06:17.000 To me, it's like the best way to get meat, first of all, and then it's also the best way for me to decompress.

00:06:24.000 Right.

00:06:25.000 And it's really good meat.

00:06:26.000 Oh, it's the best meat.

00:06:28.000 It's the best meat.

00:06:28.000 I ate the heart last night.

00:06:30.000 Oh, I don't know if I can do that.

00:06:32.000 You don't eat the heart?

00:06:33.000 No.

00:06:34.000 It's good, man.

00:06:35.000 You just fry it up.

00:06:37.000 I just put salt, pepper, and garlic on it and butter and fry it in butter.

00:06:40.000 I feel like it would have a different texture.

00:06:42.000 It does.

00:06:43.000 It's chewy, but it's good.

00:06:45.000 It tastes good.

00:06:46.000 I'm not a fan of liver either.

00:06:47.000 I eat the liver too.

00:06:49.000 Yeah.

00:06:50.000 I can't do it.

00:06:52.000 It's good for you.

00:06:53.000 I mean, it's the best meat for you.

00:06:54.000 Well, it might be good for you, but...

00:06:56.000 It's rough.

00:06:57.000 I don't eat too much.

00:06:59.000 I ate a couple ounces in the morning with eggs.

00:07:02.000 I just slice it up and vacuum seal it and freeze it and then thaw it out for breakfast.

00:07:08.000 It's a good breakfast.

00:07:10.000 Gets you going.

00:07:11.000 Yeah, no, I'm not into that.

00:07:13.000 You're more of a man than me for sure.

00:07:16.000 That's definitely not true.

00:07:19.000 So how have you adapted to retirement?

00:07:23.000 I feel like I'm pretty good.

00:07:25.000 It's not like I have the itch to get in there and do it again.

00:07:29.000 Occasionally when I see some of these guys with a little bit different style, I feel like it would have been fun to match up or see how I do against them.

00:07:38.000 I'd do it in practice.

00:07:41.000 With no cameras, just to see how it would be.

00:07:45.000 Not for any type of title or money.

00:07:48.000 It would be fun.

00:07:49.000 Yeah.

00:07:49.000 For a lot of guys it's so hard to not just resist that urge to come back.

00:07:54.000 Yeah.

00:07:55.000 I mean, I started wrestling when I was five years old, and two Olympic teams, and then I started fighting, and I fought for 20 years, so I feel like I did enough.

00:08:09.000 You definitely did enough.

00:08:10.000 You did a lot.

00:08:12.000 A lot more than most, over that span of time, than most guys compete at that level, and I felt like...

00:08:25.000 I was ready when I retired.

00:08:26.000 I was, you know, honestly, my body felt okay.

00:08:29.000 I hadn't really had too many big injuries at all for a while, and I just was spending too much time on the couch after practice, just too tired to do anything else during training camp.

00:08:44.000 So family life was kind of, you know, with the kids and not spending time doing stuff like that was taking a toll.

00:08:53.000 So I was like, you know, it's time.

00:08:55.000 Yeah.

00:08:55.000 Well, you did it at the right time.

00:08:57.000 And it's good that you didn't come back.

00:08:59.000 It's just like so many guys come back and you kind of wish they didn't.

00:09:03.000 Right.

00:09:04.000 Well, I wouldn't be one of those guys if I did come back.

00:09:08.000 I still feel really good.

00:09:12.000 But I don't plan on it.

00:09:14.000 But nobody's offered me enough money to get off the couch anyway.

00:09:17.000 Well, what I'm interested in seeing is like there's so many different options now with guys.

00:09:22.000 You know, like bare-knuckle boxing.

00:09:24.000 It's nice seeing a lot of guys going into that.

00:09:26.000 And I felt like that would be a thing that you would excel at.

00:09:29.000 Yeah, I hadn't really watched it until I watched Chad Mendez fight last year.

00:09:34.000 And I'm like, man, I like those rules.

00:09:37.000 That would be right up my alley.

00:09:38.000 Like, I don't think I would do okay at boxing, straight boxing, but not that great.

00:09:45.000 I would do a lot better at the bare knuckle rules with the dirty boxing.

00:09:50.000 Yeah.

00:09:51.000 Hold on to the guy and...

00:09:52.000 Yeah, it's very different.

00:09:54.000 I really like what Jorge Masvidal is doing, where he's got bare-knuckle MMA. It just shows you...

00:10:00.000 It's like, when you don't have...

00:10:02.000 First of all, grappling is way better.

00:10:04.000 Because you don't have the padding over your gloves that prevents certain chokes.

00:10:08.000 It just gets in the way of stuff.

00:10:10.000 But also, it's more realistic.

00:10:14.000 We talked about this before, but I think it was Tank Abbott was the first guy who figured out that if you wear MMA gloves, you actually could punch harder, because you're not worried as much about breaking your hands.

00:10:25.000 Wrap your hands up, put gloves on, and it's not a disadvantage, it's kind of an advantage.

00:10:31.000 Yeah, it doesn't necessarily protect your opponent that much.

00:10:34.000 It really protects your hands.

00:10:35.000 Right.

00:10:35.000 No, I agree.

00:10:37.000 For sure.

00:10:38.000 But it just seems to me weird that, you know, your elbows are unprotected, your knees are unprotected, your shins are unprotected.

00:10:45.000 You can go bone to bone with that, but not with your hands.

00:10:48.000 It just seems like it doesn't really make sense.

00:10:50.000 Right.

00:10:51.000 And when they first started UFC, there was no gloves, and that's how it was.

00:10:58.000 And when they started wearing gloves, that was my thoughts exactly, was more to protect your hands than, you know, I guess without your hands, if your hands break or fall apart, then the fight kind of doesn't happen as well.

00:11:15.000 Yeah, it's just, it's interesting to see how effective it is, too.

00:11:19.000 Like, Mike Perry has done an amazing job transitioning into bare knuckle.

00:11:23.000 Like, he's probably the most successful at it.

00:11:26.000 Definitely the most successful at it from MMA guys.

00:11:28.000 Right, yeah.

00:11:28.000 I saw him with Luke Rockhold.

00:11:31.000 Knocked some teeth silly.

00:11:33.000 Yeah, I mean, when it's just raw knuckle on your face, like a regular mouthpiece, it's not quite good enough.

00:11:39.000 Right.

00:11:40.000 And it's interesting that guys are still using the upper mouthpiece only with bare knuckle.

00:11:44.000 I would think you might want to use an upper and a lower.

00:11:47.000 Yeah, I always just did the upper.

00:11:49.000 Yeah, most people do.

00:11:51.000 I mean, very few people fought in MMA with an upper and a lower, right?

00:11:54.000 I don't think anybody.

00:11:55.000 Not that I know of.

00:11:56.000 Not that I know of.

00:11:57.000 In boxing, you used to see it.

00:11:59.000 You used to see guys who had like a full mouthpiece, but it just gets in the way of your breathing too much.

00:12:05.000 Yeah, that's what I have a problem with.

00:12:06.000 Yeah.

00:12:07.000 Do you breathe out of your nose?

00:12:08.000 Can your nose work?

00:12:09.000 My nose works fine.

00:12:11.000 A lot of guys, you know.

00:12:13.000 I started snoring and so I went and got a sleep test.

00:12:18.000 But they went in and cleaned it up.

00:12:20.000 No, they put a scope up there to see how my nose was because they, you know, just like you, they thought my nose couldn't breathe.

00:12:28.000 Right.

00:12:29.000 And he said it was completely clear and no, it was all good.

00:12:32.000 That's amazing.

00:12:33.000 Yeah.

00:12:34.000 It's amazing that you haven't had too many big injuries.

00:12:36.000 I know you broke your hand at least once, right?

00:12:39.000 Was that the Vanderlei fight?

00:12:42.000 That was a wild one.

00:12:43.000 That was...

00:12:46.000 In the first round, I broke it.

00:12:48.000 Wow.

00:12:48.000 I just remember going back to the corner, shaking my hand saying my hand hurts, and they started talking about something else, what I needed to do, and then I never thought about it again the rest of the fight.

00:12:59.000 Wow.

00:12:59.000 And I was throwing it.

00:13:02.000 So, you know, just the adrenaline or whatever I had in me just didn't even feel it again.

00:13:09.000 You got some wild highlight, real knockouts.

00:13:12.000 Some wild fights.

00:13:13.000 I remember the first fight I ever saw of yours, I think it was in 1997. I think you just posted it on Instagram.

00:13:20.000 Or someone did.

00:13:21.000 It was like me interviewing you backstage.

00:13:24.000 Yeah.

00:13:25.000 Right after the fight.

00:13:27.000 97. That was in 97?

00:13:29.000 I think so.

00:13:30.000 I'm pretty sure.

00:13:31.000 That was when I first started working for the UFC. I think that was a tournament back then.

00:13:36.000 Yeah, what year is that?

00:13:37.000 Does it say?

00:13:38.000 Oh, shit.

00:13:39.000 UFC 17. It was 17, yeah.

00:13:42.000 Yeah.

00:13:42.000 That was, yeah, 1997. No, 98. 98. I fought in 97 in Brazil in a tournament, just to make some money to keep wrestling, and then I did the UFC a year later.

00:13:55.000 Who talked you into doing MMA in the first place?

00:13:58.000 Well, you know, Randy and I were training partners forever for wrestling.

00:14:03.000 And, you know, we'd always watched it on TV and said, you know, that'd be fun.

00:14:08.000 But I don't know if I'd want to get in there with some of those three or four hundred pounders, you know, those big fuckers.

00:14:15.000 And Randy called me up one day and said, hey, I'm doing this tournament down in Brazil at heavyweight and they got a lightweight tournament.

00:14:22.000 And this is like two weeks before.

00:14:23.000 Yeah.

00:14:24.000 And you want to go do the lightweight tournament, which is like, it was like 176 or something.

00:14:30.000 And I was like, well, okay.

00:14:32.000 And I was wrestling 180 and a half at the time, so it was an extra five pounds, but...

00:14:39.000 Yeah, I went down and did it.

00:14:41.000 But in the meantime, I guess Randy had already put an application into the UFC and they said no, which I didn't know he put in the application.

00:14:52.000 But then he got a call.

00:14:53.000 Somebody got hurt.

00:14:54.000 So he didn't go down to Brazil.

00:14:55.000 He went to the UFC instead.

00:14:57.000 It was like within a week before, a week after that fight.

00:15:01.000 No, not that one, but the one down in Brazil, which was I think it was UFC 13 was his first one.

00:15:10.000 Yeah, I was there for that too.

00:15:12.000 And he had a tournament against two big heavyweights.

00:15:16.000 Yeah, he fought some big muscular guy the first fight who had a lot of hype on him.

00:15:21.000 And I don't remember who he fought in the second fight.

00:15:24.000 I don't remember.

00:15:25.000 But that was like when we first started seeing elite wrestlers.

00:15:29.000 Right.

00:15:30.000 First started seeing Royce Alger, Coleman, all those.

00:15:34.000 Did Kenny Monday fight in the UFC? Yes.

00:15:39.000 Yeah.

00:15:40.000 No.

00:15:41.000 Was it Kevin Jackson?

00:15:42.000 Kevin Jackson.

00:15:43.000 Kenny Monday fought Submission.

00:15:47.000 I remember Matt Hume submitted him.

00:15:49.000 Oh, yeah.

00:15:50.000 Remember that?

00:15:51.000 I think I wrestled with Frank Shamrock.

00:15:54.000 That's right.

00:15:55.000 And I had a screwed up ankle.

00:15:58.000 I rolled it right before the World Championships a month before that.

00:16:03.000 So I went in there wearing wrestling shoes so I could hide the tape that I had on my ankle.

00:16:08.000 Frank's pretty good at ankle locks.

00:16:11.000 That was me not knowing anything about it.

00:16:13.000 Well, Frank was really one of the first guys that had like a full overall MMA game.

00:16:19.000 Right.

00:16:19.000 No, I agree.

00:16:20.000 He really did.

00:16:21.000 I mean, when he submitted Kevin Jackson, like very impressive.

00:16:25.000 He could submit you off his back.

00:16:27.000 He had crazy cardio, full range of skills.

00:16:30.000 He could strike.

00:16:31.000 He could grapple.

00:16:32.000 He could do everything.

00:16:33.000 Right.

00:16:33.000 And the cardio.

00:16:34.000 He was like one of the first guys that showed like cardio could be a weapon, like the Tito Ortiz fight.

00:16:39.000 You know, his cardio was a real weapon.

00:16:41.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:16:41.000 And Tito's usually in pretty good shape, too.

00:16:43.000 Yeah, well, Tito learned from that fight.

00:16:46.000 I mean, I think that was a big wake-up call for him, that how much cardio plays a factor.

00:16:52.000 Yeah.

00:16:52.000 And it's a different pace from wrestling, so that was something we had to learn.

00:16:59.000 Wrestling was a little bit higher paced, a little more action, shorter durations, though.

00:17:05.000 So I had to learn to kind of pace myself a little bit when I first started doing this.

00:17:10.000 When you first started doing this, what were the distance of the rounds?

00:17:13.000 Was it five-minute rounds?

00:17:15.000 No.

00:17:17.000 The one down in Brazil, I think, was...

00:17:21.000 A 15-minute straight round and then maybe a 15-minute overtime if there's no submission.

00:17:29.000 Then they go to judges.

00:17:33.000 But, I mean, I didn't go.

00:17:35.000 I think I went like seven or eight minutes the first fight with Crazio.

00:17:40.000 It was my first fight.

00:17:41.000 He was like a black belt.

00:17:44.000 Which I didn't know a whole lot about.

00:17:47.000 After watching that fight again nowadays, it just, you know, I see so many mistakes that I did.

00:17:52.000 And I didn't know how to punch either.

00:17:54.000 I never sparred before.

00:17:56.000 I never sparred before I fought in the UFC on that one you just put up.

00:18:00.000 Never?

00:18:01.000 Never.

00:18:02.000 And then I started sparring after that.

00:18:04.000 Well, no, I hit the bag and hit focus mitts and, you know...

00:18:08.000 It was just kind of awkward to punch your friend in the face, you know?

00:18:12.000 But after that, it was like, me and Randy were like, fuck, we need to start sparring.

00:18:16.000 That is so crazy.

00:18:17.000 You guys didn't spar at all before the first year.

00:18:20.000 That is wild.

00:18:22.000 That's wild.

00:18:23.000 I was off balance a lot, you know, getting hit, falling down.

00:18:28.000 Because, you know, when you don't spar, you don't have the same balance or...

00:18:34.000 Yeah.

00:18:34.000 It's just a lot better to practice the way you fight.

00:18:38.000 That's so crazy that you fought the first...

00:18:40.000 So did you have a striking coach?

00:18:43.000 Yeah.

00:18:43.000 We had boxing guys and kind of kickboxing guys that would come in, but there was no coaches back then.

00:18:49.000 MMA coaches, I should say.

00:18:52.000 And then we just started really figuring out what works really well with our styles and, you know, takedown offense and, you know, setting up strikes and...

00:19:04.000 I think the first real MMA coach was probably Miletic.

00:19:07.000 Probably Pat.

00:19:09.000 Pat and Matt Hume.

00:19:11.000 Yeah, Matt Hume.

00:19:12.000 Good call.

00:19:13.000 Yeah.

00:19:13.000 Those are the first guys that were really putting it all together.

00:19:16.000 Right.

00:19:17.000 You know?

00:19:17.000 I mean, and even back then, guys kind of didn't know exactly what the right...

00:19:22.000 I mean, now, if you go to ATT or one of these big gyms, I mean...

00:19:26.000 They have protocols.

00:19:27.000 They know exactly what they're doing.

00:19:29.000 They have training schedules all mapped out in advance.

00:19:32.000 Hard days, easier days, technical days.

00:19:34.000 I mean, they really have it down to a science.

00:19:37.000 Monitoring recovery.

00:19:38.000 It's kind of crazy when you think about your first fight, no sparring at all.

00:19:45.000 Yeah, my first four fights, because there was two fights each one of those events.

00:19:49.000 And then the UFC, you fought Carlos Newton, right?

00:19:54.000 Yeah, Carlos Newton and Alan Goez and then Carlos.

00:19:58.000 Two very elite submission guys.

00:20:01.000 Yeah.

00:20:02.000 Yeah, Carlos Newton, people forgot about him.

00:20:04.000 That fucking guy was good.

00:20:05.000 Yeah, no, he was tough.

00:20:06.000 He was good.

00:20:07.000 Real well-rounded.

00:20:08.000 He broke my jaw.

00:20:10.000 Did he really?

00:20:10.000 Yeah.

00:20:11.000 Just like a last minute of the fight, he kind of hit me.

00:20:14.000 It didn't daze me or anything, but...

00:20:17.000 And then, you know, shortly after, five seconds later, I took him down.

00:20:21.000 And when I took him down, my chin kind of pushed against his chest, and it kind of shifted, and I'm like, ooh.

00:20:27.000 Yeah.

00:20:29.000 That doesn't feel right.

00:20:32.000 When did you realize that you had that kind of crazy power?

00:20:37.000 Because it's kind of funny that a guy who started out grappling and didn't do any sparring at all for his first four MMA fights was one of the most dangerous strikers in the sport.

00:20:50.000 I don't know.

00:20:51.000 I mean, I grew up playing baseball and threw really hard.

00:20:54.000 And then When I started, not sparring, started MMA, I'd hit the focus mitts and everybody would say, oh shit, you hit hard.

00:21:07.000 It's just natural.

00:21:08.000 It just took me a while to figure out where to put it.

00:21:12.000 There's a few guys, I think Gomi, I think Takanori Gomi started out as a pitcher, which makes sense.

00:21:18.000 You see the way that guy throws punches, just fucking whips his whole body into it like a fastball.

00:21:23.000 Put a lot of weight into it.

00:21:23.000 Yeah.

00:21:24.000 That's actually probably a great thing to start out with, just to learn how to put a lot of force behind your arm.

00:21:31.000 Driving with your legs and everything.

00:21:34.000 Yeah, it completely makes sense if you think about it.

00:21:36.000 Because you think about how many guys practice medicine balls now.

00:21:39.000 You know, they whip medicine balls against the wall to advance your punching power.

00:21:44.000 Yeah, it's hard to teach.

00:21:45.000 I mean...

00:21:46.000 Yeah, you either have power or you don't have power.

00:21:48.000 Yeah, I mean you can definitely get better at mechanics to make it harder, but not like what a lot of guys have naturally.

00:21:58.000 Right.

00:21:58.000 Isn't it wild?

00:21:59.000 That's a crazy thing because you can't really tell.

00:22:02.000 Sometimes by looking at guys like there's guys that just me well you look pretty strong but there's some guys like They just don't look like they carry that much power, but they have crazy power, right?

00:22:15.000 It's so it's weird powers a weird thing like if you either have nuclear power or you know And again, I think a lot of that is...

00:22:24.000 It is mechanics, but a lot of the most mechanics come naturally.

00:22:28.000 Like some of those pitchers that can throw the ball so goddamn fast.

00:22:35.000 And some of them are skinny as fuck.

00:22:37.000 They just whip that thing around.

00:22:41.000 And then there's also your frame.

00:22:43.000 Some guys just have bigger shoulders, bigger hands.

00:22:46.000 They're just naturally designed to hit things more.

00:22:48.000 More leverage points.

00:22:50.000 Yeah, it's just, when you think back, like as a pioneer in the sport, I mean, it's pretty wild what you guys did.

00:22:59.000 Pretty wild that you entered into the sport that at the time was just kind of a way to make some money.

00:23:03.000 Right.

00:23:04.000 It wasn't, there was, I mean, when I started doing the post-fight interviews, it was banned from cable.

00:23:10.000 The only way you could get it was DirecTV.

00:23:12.000 I actually got DirecTV.

00:23:14.000 That's when you started?

00:23:15.000 Yeah, 97. Because it was...

00:23:17.000 I feel like it was right after...

00:23:20.000 It wasn't banned from cable yet until after I fought.

00:23:26.000 I think it was banned from...

00:23:28.000 One of those years it was banned from cable.

00:23:31.000 And there was a lot of shenanigans with Budweiser and...

00:23:34.000 You remember McCain?

00:23:36.000 McCain was trying to keep it out.

00:23:38.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:23:39.000 They were calling it human cockfighting.

00:23:41.000 Yeah, I wasn't a fan of his.

00:23:44.000 No.

00:23:45.000 Most MMA guys weren't.

00:23:46.000 Because it was so ridiculous.

00:23:48.000 There was no deaths in MMA to speak of.

00:23:50.000 Right.

00:23:51.000 Not like in boxing, which we have a few every year.

00:23:55.000 Right.

00:23:55.000 And they were trying to say it was more dangerous.

00:23:57.000 I'm like, I don't think it is.

00:23:59.000 I don't think it is.

00:24:00.000 I mean, everything's dangerous.

00:24:02.000 Even combat sports is dangerous.

00:24:03.000 Right.

00:24:04.000 But to say that MMA is more dangerous is just ignorance.

00:24:07.000 You just didn't understand what was happening.

00:24:08.000 No, yeah.

00:24:11.000 I have heard that over the years, a lot of different things.

00:24:15.000 Yeah.

00:24:16.000 I got nothing bad to say about MMA. I mean, I grew up as a wrestler and, you know, kind of competing is what I've done my whole life and...

00:24:24.000 Yeah, I don't feel like it affected me in a bad way at all.

00:24:30.000 If anything, it was positive things that made me tougher, made me have more drive with other things in my life.

00:24:37.000 Well, you're very fortunate that you came out of it on the other end healthy.

00:24:42.000 Yeah.

00:24:43.000 We know guys who haven't.

00:24:44.000 No, I know.

00:24:45.000 There's a few guys that are pretty messed up.

00:24:46.000 I'm not saying that it hasn't affected some guys, but I'm just saying, fortunately, I went through it fairly good.

00:24:55.000 No, you went through it great.

00:24:56.000 And I think a lot of it was, and Randy's the same way, just being smart in training.

00:25:00.000 A lot of these guys just...

00:25:03.000 Bang way too much in practice.

00:25:05.000 And I'm always an advocate of sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes in training.

00:25:11.000 If you're training to fight, you have to fight in training.

00:25:14.000 Yeah.

00:25:15.000 How do you know how to manage that?

00:25:18.000 Yeah, I think over the years, you know, you just, you definitely have one, we have one hard, solid spar day a week, and then more technical sparring another day with the big gloves on,

00:25:34.000 and then The other days of the MMA gloves, you know, we're still going hard, but not with the striking part.

00:25:42.000 Just lighter strikes, which, you know, it's kind of hard sometimes.

00:25:47.000 Some of these guys, when they go lighter, they slow down their punches instead of...

00:25:52.000 Keeping your speed there and your timing and not punching as hard.

00:26:00.000 That's kind of a hard thing to get used to.

00:26:03.000 It took me a while to have that control.

00:26:06.000 I would accidentally drop guys a lot in practice because I didn't have control when I was kind of new to the sport.

00:26:13.000 Is there a way that you do now where you train guys to learn how to punch fast but not hit hard?

00:26:20.000 Yeah, you yell at them.

00:26:23.000 Don't do it in slow motion.

00:26:25.000 Don't do it in slow motion but also don't connect full clip.

00:26:27.000 You don't need to hit hard but don't go slow.

00:26:31.000 You just got to remind them because guys just do it naturally.

00:26:34.000 But it's kind of crazy for you as a pioneer because you guys had to kind of figure it out.

00:26:39.000 That word makes me feel old.

00:26:40.000 A pioneer?

00:26:41.000 I hear it all the time now.

00:26:42.000 What's a good word?

00:26:42.000 I don't know.

00:26:43.000 But you are.

00:26:44.000 That is a good word, but it just does make me feel older.

00:26:47.000 You're the definition of a pioneer.

00:26:49.000 I mean, UFC 17?

00:26:51.000 I mean, come on, man.

00:26:53.000 That was back in the dark days.

00:26:55.000 I feel like I should have a fucking panda and do some gold mining.

00:27:01.000 Yeah, but I mean, there's no better word for it.

00:27:04.000 But back then, you guys had to kind of learn along the way as the sport evolved.

00:27:09.000 I've always said this, that there's not a sport that you could ever point to that has evolved more since 1993 to 2023. It's nothing even close.

00:27:19.000 You watched fights today, like the Makachev-Volkonowski fight.

00:27:23.000 I mean, everything's so high level now.

00:27:25.000 Everyone's so good in every aspect of the game.

00:27:28.000 Yeah, that was a good...

00:27:29.000 I mean, their first one was a good one.

00:27:31.000 That was a...

00:27:31.000 I didn't expect that.

00:27:33.000 I didn't expect it either.

00:27:34.000 Yeah.

00:27:34.000 That guy evolved.

00:27:35.000 He got better.

00:27:36.000 He got better and he figured out a lot of the things that he was doing wrong in that fight and then setting up that head kick with those body kicks.

00:27:41.000 I thought Volk was going to get him this...

00:27:44.000 I just felt like he had more tools and easier adjustments.

00:27:49.000 Did you ever have to take a fight like that on 10 days notice?

00:27:52.000 Because that's what's crazy about it.

00:27:53.000 They took it so short notice.

00:27:55.000 Yeah, a number of times.

00:27:56.000 Especially in Pride, that was pretty common.

00:27:59.000 Yeah, Pride, they would just call you up like a week before the fight, right?

00:28:02.000 I fought Big Nog.

00:28:03.000 He was heavyweight champ at the time on 10 days notice.

00:28:09.000 Jesus.

00:28:12.000 Yeah, I mean, there was a couple of others.

00:28:15.000 I fought Bustamante on probably a week's notice.

00:28:19.000 So, during the Pride days...

00:28:21.000 Two and a half months after a knee surgery, a new ACL surgery.

00:28:25.000 No way.

00:28:27.000 They called me up and I was hunting out in Colorado and they tracked me down on my buddy's cell phone up in the mountains and said, hey, you need to...

00:28:36.000 And I didn't have a contract at the time and I went and had knee surgery because I tore my knee and it's like, well, if you don't take the fight, we don't know what will happen with any future contracts.

00:28:48.000 So I'm like, alright, I'll do it, but you're paying me win or lose, you know, the win bonus also.

00:28:57.000 And so I took the fight.

00:29:00.000 Luckily, I knocked him out real quick with that knee.

00:29:04.000 So, yeah.

00:29:06.000 And who was that against?

00:29:08.000 Bustamante.

00:29:09.000 Bustamante.

00:29:10.000 I don't remember that fight.

00:29:11.000 It was after he was UFC champ and then left.

00:29:15.000 That is crazy.

00:29:16.000 You fought two and a half months after ACL reconstruction.

00:29:19.000 Yeah.

00:29:20.000 That basically means your ACL was useless.

00:29:23.000 Well, I mean...

00:29:25.000 Yeah, I mean, it was like a minute into the fight.

00:29:28.000 How?

00:29:29.000 Right.

00:29:30.000 Okay, now I'm remembering that fight.

00:29:32.000 See if you can find that fight.

00:29:33.000 You got it?

00:29:34.000 Here it is right here.

00:29:36.000 Now, this was, which way did they do it?

00:29:39.000 Did they do a cadaver?

00:29:41.000 Did they do a patella tendon?

00:29:41.000 I did the cadaver because it was a quicker recovery.

00:29:44.000 Yeah, much quicker.

00:29:45.000 I did the cadaver on my right knee and I had the patella tendon on my left knee.

00:29:49.000 My right knee was good to go in six months, but my left knee, it took like a year before it felt normal.

00:29:55.000 That's crazy.

00:29:56.000 Which knee is it?

00:29:58.000 My left.

00:29:59.000 My lead knee.

00:30:00.000 And so you're supporting on it.

00:30:02.000 You already threw a kick.

00:30:03.000 So you're trusting it.

00:30:04.000 Do you just not think about it once you're in there?

00:30:06.000 No, yeah.

00:30:07.000 I mean, I was hiking like 10 miles a day for about four days before they tracked me down up in Colorado.

00:30:15.000 That's crazy too.

00:30:16.000 Luckily I was, you know, but I was also drinking beer every day.

00:30:20.000 Well, that doesn't get you in shape though.

00:30:22.000 Yeah.

00:30:24.000 The beer doesn't, but the hiking 10 miles a day in the mountains, that's actually probably pretty good for your fucking endurance.

00:30:31.000 You know?

00:30:31.000 Oh, there it is.

00:30:33.000 Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

00:30:37.000 That's it.

00:30:38.000 That must have been such a relief to take a fight like that two and a half months after surgery.

00:30:44.000 Yeah, no, it was definitely a good moment for sure.

00:30:48.000 I was a little nervous about it because he's a tough dude.

00:30:51.000 Yeah, very tough dude.

00:30:52.000 Very tough dude.

00:30:53.000 The funniest thing about that, you know, the one week that I had at home training, I threw like a wide left hook and dislocated my thumb and it popped out.

00:31:07.000 You can see it still screwed up now, but...

00:31:10.000 When I got there, I'm like, hey, can I get a shot to numb my thumb before the fight?

00:31:16.000 Because they can do that there.

00:31:17.000 They don't let you do it here.

00:31:20.000 They're like, yeah, but you got to go to the doctor.

00:31:22.000 They'll x-ray you.

00:31:23.000 So I went in there and they got one of those things.

00:31:25.000 You can see the chicken x-rayed me doing this.

00:31:27.000 There was nothing wrong.

00:31:28.000 And then I'm like, but...

00:31:30.000 They had the x-ray machine where you could see the bones move, and it's just so weird how the bone just comes right—the ligament is gone.

00:31:36.000 Oh.

00:31:38.000 So— Is it still gone?

00:31:39.000 Yeah.

00:31:39.000 It's just torn off?

00:31:41.000 Yeah, I just—by that time, I just taped it for about a year, and then it was good.

00:31:48.000 But my other thumb got jammed in the fight.

00:31:51.000 Like, when I was trying to finish him, it must have— My whole thumb was so swollen, so I couldn't even wipe my ass.

00:32:00.000 I couldn't take my pants off.

00:32:02.000 I had no thumbs for like a week.

00:32:04.000 So both thumbs were fucked up.

00:32:05.000 Yeah.

00:32:09.000 Wow.

00:32:09.000 But yeah, that was the funny part about that.

00:32:12.000 The Pride days were so wild because did you – when you were under contract with Pride, did you just like when an event was coming up just prepare like you were probably going to fight in the event?

00:32:23.000 Because they didn't contact anybody until like a couple of weeks out.

00:32:27.000 For their New Year's Eve shows, you know, I knew that I'd probably be fighting most likely on most of those shows once they started because that was their big event of the year.

00:32:39.000 I think I did two or three of those.

00:32:44.000 But I was ready to go.

00:32:46.000 The only ones that really that I noticed that was real short notice were those two, you know, against Big Nog and then Bustamante.

00:32:54.000 Remember when Bustamante fought Tom Erickson in that one crazy event?

00:32:59.000 No.

00:32:59.000 It was one of those no time limit things or like a 30 minute round or something like that.

00:33:04.000 And Tom Erickson was like 300 pounds.

00:33:05.000 Was it an MMA fight or was it a grappling?

00:33:07.000 No, it was an MMA. It was an MMA fight.

00:33:09.000 I think it was the same event where Oleg Tektaro fought Henzo Gracie and Henzo Gracie KO'd him with an up kick.

00:33:16.000 It was like the first time we ever saw an up kick.

00:33:18.000 Was that in the UFC? No.

00:33:20.000 No, that was...

00:33:23.000 That was some one-off.

00:33:25.000 Some of the first few UFCs, they were doing goofy stuff.

00:33:29.000 Like, they had super long fights, no time limits.

00:33:32.000 Right.

00:33:32.000 The first UFC was no time limit, each fight.

00:33:34.000 No time limit.

00:33:36.000 They just fought.

00:33:37.000 And Pride had, when I first got to Pride, it was two 10s.

00:33:41.000 And then they turned into 10 and two 5s, right?

00:33:44.000 Yeah.

00:33:45.000 Do you like that?

00:33:46.000 I think the 10-minute round is a good idea.

00:33:48.000 I liked it because I thought it separated the men from the boys, really.

00:33:53.000 I mean, about 7, 8, 9 minutes in, you know, guys start breaking.

00:33:58.000 Hmm.

00:33:59.000 Also, if you're a grappler and you take a guy down with four minutes into the round and you've got six minutes to go now instead of one minute.

00:34:08.000 You've seen the UFC guys struggle so hard to get a takedown and they finally get a takedown and then boom, round's over.

00:34:16.000 Whereas I just feel like in that situation, maybe the right move is to start him in the next round exactly where you left him off.

00:34:24.000 You know what I mean?

00:34:25.000 No, I would like that.

00:34:27.000 Because you think about the advantage that it is for an elite striker like Alex Paheta or something like that.

00:34:32.000 If you take that guy down and dominate him in the first round and then the second round starts and he has to go right back to side control or wherever you had him.

00:34:39.000 Or just do three eight-minute rounds or something.

00:34:42.000 Something like that, yeah.

00:34:43.000 Three eight-minute rounds for a championship round.

00:34:45.000 For a championship fight.

00:34:46.000 I like that.

00:34:47.000 For any fight.

00:34:48.000 Yeah.

00:34:49.000 Well, it's just, I think, you know, Chael Sonnen has said this.

00:34:52.000 It's just like, no one can really fight all out for 25 minutes.

00:34:57.000 You've got to kind of pace yourself.

00:34:58.000 No.

00:34:59.000 Yeah, and that's what I said.

00:35:00.000 Coming from wrestling to MMA, I kind of learned how to pace myself, and then Sometimes, like my fight against Shogun, which was five rounds, but I got tired because I tried to finish him in the third round and just fucking shot my wad.

00:35:18.000 Yeah.

00:35:20.000 That fight was fucking crazy.

00:35:23.000 That was a crazy one.

00:35:24.000 It was probably more crazy to everybody else watching than it was to me.

00:35:28.000 Really?

00:35:28.000 Why's that?

00:35:29.000 Because, I don't know, I felt like I dominated him the first three rounds.

00:35:33.000 Yeah.

00:35:34.000 Yeah.

00:35:34.000 It wasn't a close decision on those three rounds.

00:35:38.000 The fourth round was kind of close, so it could have went either way, I thought.

00:35:43.000 And then the fifth round, he was on top of me, but he wasn't hurting me at all.

00:35:47.000 So I knew he wouldn't finish me.

00:35:50.000 In my mind, I knew for sure he wasn't going to finish me and I already won the fight.

00:35:55.000 Anytime he did hit me, I'd try to get out.

00:35:59.000 He just kept mounting me again every time I'd almost get out.

00:36:03.000 I was so tired.

00:36:05.000 Well, I want to say crazy in that it was entertaining.

00:36:07.000 No, for sure.

00:36:08.000 It was a very wildly entertaining fight.

00:36:10.000 But a lot of people, like, oh, they didn't know what was going to happen, if he was going to finish me or not finish me.

00:36:16.000 But I knew that he wasn't going to.

00:36:18.000 So that's why it wasn't as exciting to me.

00:36:21.000 It definitely was a lot tougher fight than I was hoping for.

00:36:26.000 Well, because of trying to empty out the gas tank.

00:36:29.000 Yeah, that.

00:36:30.000 I don't know if he was coming off injuries in the past with some of his other fights where he kind of almost quit and they broke him or finished him.

00:36:42.000 So that was my goal was to go out there and get on him pretty hard and try to break him and finish him.

00:36:50.000 He's a guy that I feel like maybe fought a little too long.

00:36:53.000 Yeah, maybe.

00:36:55.000 And he definitely manned up and was a lot tougher than I thought he was.

00:37:02.000 Oh, he's a tough motherfucker.

00:37:04.000 In pride, he was amazing.

00:37:05.000 In pride, he was fucking amazing.

00:37:08.000 I think a lot of guys left their best days behind in pride, unfortunately.

00:37:13.000 You know, a lot of guys, by the time we saw him in the UFC, Big Nog, Cro Cop.

00:37:16.000 Cro Cop, yeah.

00:37:17.000 Yeah, there's a few of those guys that just...

00:37:19.000 Fedor.

00:37:20.000 Fedor, yeah.

00:37:20.000 The wars that they had in Pride were so insane.

00:37:24.000 I feel like Fedor didn't have big wars, though.

00:37:26.000 A couple, but not...

00:37:27.000 No.

00:37:28.000 Not where he got hit much.

00:37:29.000 No, not really.

00:37:30.000 I mean, even in the Cro Cop fight, he was basically walking down Cro Cop, which is crazy when you think about what an elite striker Cro Cop is.

00:37:37.000 Right.

00:37:38.000 Fedor was a motherfucker, dude.

00:37:40.000 Goddamn, that guy was good.

00:37:41.000 I feel like some of the referees or something told me, like, when they were in there reffing Krokop in the UFC, he's out there saying, I'm too old for this shit, or I don't, you know, like, why am I here type of thing.

00:37:55.000 That's not the attitude you should have when you're out there.

00:37:57.000 Yeah, well, I think also, I don't know what he was doing when he was in Pride, but I know a lot of guys, when they were in Pride, were doing a lot of shit.

00:38:06.000 And then they came over to the UFC and all of a sudden they're getting tested.

00:38:09.000 Whereas in Pride, they were saying like specifically, we don't test you for nothing.

00:38:13.000 Like Ensign told me.

00:38:14.000 They did P-test, but I'm not sure what they tested for.

00:38:19.000 They didn't do anything with it.

00:38:20.000 They just wanted to make sure you were on steroids.

00:38:22.000 Yeah.

00:38:23.000 I asked them if they would.

00:38:25.000 And the answer I got, well, if we did that, it would be you and no Garrett would be the only fighters we'd have.

00:38:33.000 Yeah.

00:38:33.000 I always wondered.

00:38:34.000 I always wondered how much of what you saw was guys that were sauced up.

00:38:39.000 We know some guys were sauced up, for sure.

00:38:41.000 Yeah.

00:38:42.000 For sure.

00:38:42.000 I think a lot of sports have that evolution in there.

00:38:45.000 Before they get big enough to be concerned about that, they're already doing it.

00:38:51.000 Yeah.

00:38:52.000 Well, then there was the testosterone replacement error.

00:38:56.000 Yeah.

00:38:57.000 And I was the first one to get on that.

00:38:59.000 Yeah.

00:38:59.000 And I was like, there's no way I'm doing it.

00:39:01.000 I don't want to do that.

00:39:03.000 And, you know, the doctor's like, well, you'd feel a lot better.

00:39:07.000 And I asked the athletic commission if I even could.

00:39:11.000 They're like, yeah, if you get a Doctor's prescription and, you know, they say you need it, no problem.

00:39:16.000 I was like, oh, really?

00:39:17.000 Okay.

00:39:18.000 And then everybody started kind of abusing it.

00:39:20.000 They abused the shit out of it.

00:39:21.000 Fucked it up for everybody.

00:39:22.000 Well, those days, the Vitor days, everybody talks about TRT Vitor.

00:39:26.000 Yeah.

00:39:27.000 Because testosterone replacement Vitor was fucking, Jesus Christ, he was scary.

00:39:31.000 When I found him in Pride, he tested positive in Vegas.

00:39:34.000 Oh, really?

00:39:35.000 Because we were in Vegas.

00:39:37.000 Ah.

00:39:37.000 Their first Pride event in Vegas.

00:39:40.000 Well, you were one of the only guys who didn't show a performance decline when you got off of it.

00:39:45.000 Right.

00:39:45.000 No, I wasn't taking much, but I was...

00:39:50.000 And I always...

00:39:51.000 Even when they weren't testing me...

00:39:54.000 Like they do now, they randomly show up.

00:39:57.000 And I was asking for the UFC to do that for years, even though now they're getting rid of it.

00:40:02.000 Well, they're getting rid of it, but they're implementing some sort of a new program called Drug Free Sport.

00:40:07.000 But I don't know what that means.

00:40:09.000 Their logo might be a wink.

00:40:11.000 Yeah, it depends on how much money you're making them.

00:40:15.000 Yeah, I think they wanted a little bit more control of when the tests were going on because you thought it would show up at 6 o'clock in the morning and test guys on weigh-in days and shit like that.

00:40:24.000 Well, I mean – and I had to deal with that when I wrestled on the national team.

00:40:30.000 Top three guys were subjected to that as well and I had that for years.

00:40:35.000 And then – That's why I was like, oh, I don't want to do that.

00:40:40.000 But they're like, oh, you can.

00:40:42.000 But I would test myself at least once or twice every training camp.

00:40:46.000 So I could, if anybody questioned me or how I was doing it, I could show that I'm not abusing it.

00:40:54.000 This is what my levels were during training camp.

00:40:57.000 So I did that all on my own just because.

00:41:01.000 Even though I would only get tested by them at the fight.

00:41:04.000 Yeah.

00:41:05.000 Did you have to do anything differently once you got off of it, once they removed the TRT exemptions?

00:41:10.000 No.

00:41:11.000 Didn't do anything different, just stopped taking it?

00:41:13.000 No, just...

00:41:15.000 A lot of that shit's in your head anyway, so I was like, fuck it, I'm just...

00:41:20.000 At that time, yeah.

00:41:22.000 I mean, I'm sure that I was a little bit affected, but I felt like, yeah, I could push through it, no problem, and I did.

00:41:29.000 And as I got older, though, like in my early 40s, mid-40s, I really started feeling the age a little bit as far as just not recovering.

00:41:42.000 Mm-hmm.

00:41:44.000 Did you adjust your training to handle that?

00:41:47.000 Yeah, I mean, I made my training camps like a month longer, three weeks longer, just to kind of ease into it and not really go real hard for the first two, three weeks and then really start a hard training camp and then taper off a little bit better,

00:42:05.000 but just a little bit shorter practices with more intensity.

00:42:11.000 So going back to being a pioneer, I know you hate that word, but you really are.

00:42:15.000 I don't hate it.

00:42:16.000 How did you guys figure out what's the best way to train?

00:42:20.000 Like, who helped you put together camps?

00:42:24.000 Because you're going from this one discipline, wrestling, which you excelled at, and now you're competing in MMA, and there's so many different ways to do it, and nobody really knew exactly the right way to do it.

00:42:33.000 There was a lot of, like, different camps were doing it different ways.

00:42:36.000 Right.

00:42:36.000 How did you guys figure out?

00:42:38.000 I don't know.

00:42:39.000 I think...

00:42:41.000 Knowing how much there was to learn in the sport, we kind of broke it up into different categories.

00:42:51.000 One day we're going to spar hard, but we also needed to learn how to grapple on the ground, how to use our wrestling to control certain positions.

00:43:03.000 So I think just knowing that, we didn't spend every day sparring hard or, you know, three, four days a week sparring hard because we needed to learn the other shit too.

00:43:13.000 So I think it just naturally went that way.

00:43:17.000 And then as we got a little bit older and more experienced in the sport, you know, kind of fine-tuned that a little bit.

00:43:27.000 On certain days, we do certain harder things and Really try not to beat your brain up too much.

00:43:36.000 Every day.

00:43:36.000 Just one day, maybe.

00:43:37.000 Yeah, it's kind of...

00:43:38.000 It's interesting that even today, there's different schools of thought.

00:43:41.000 Like, Sean Strickland spars basically every day.

00:43:44.000 Right.

00:43:45.000 Whereas Max Holloway...

00:43:45.000 He was at my gym for like three years.

00:43:47.000 Oh, yeah?

00:43:48.000 Yeah.

00:43:48.000 Was he?

00:43:49.000 He's a wild boy.

00:43:50.000 Yeah.

00:43:51.000 I kind of had to let him go.

00:43:54.000 Oh, did you?

00:43:56.000 The crazier days?

00:43:57.000 Yeah, no.

00:43:58.000 He just kind of gets too involved talking shit about people.

00:44:02.000 Yeah.

00:44:04.000 I can see that.

00:44:05.000 I liked him in the gym.

00:44:07.000 I liked him there.

00:44:07.000 He was a great training partner.

00:44:09.000 You need at least one guy in your gym that does that and goes hard and makes everybody else go hard when they're going against him.

00:44:20.000 So I liked it, but...

00:44:22.000 Other people didn't.

00:44:24.000 Yeah, he just was too disrespectful to teammates and stuff.

00:44:28.000 Oh, I see.

00:44:29.000 Yeah.

00:44:31.000 How's the young Sean Strickland?

00:44:33.000 Yeah.

00:44:34.000 No, I definitely see that.

00:44:38.000 I always rooted for him when he left.

00:44:41.000 It wasn't like I was like, I hope that guy...

00:44:43.000 No, I always rooted for him.

00:44:45.000 I thought he had a ton of potential.

00:44:47.000 I was yelling at him to go up a weight class because he was always trying to make 170. I'm like, dude, you need to go 185. You'd feel a lot better.

00:44:57.000 You'd be fine competing up there, but everybody's always mentally afraid to be against the bigger guys.

00:45:05.000 Yeah, he's a different fighter at 185 than he was at 170. At 170, you could see he was compromised.

00:45:11.000 I mean, he ought to have cut 25 pounds.

00:45:14.000 Easy, right?

00:45:14.000 Yeah, no, he's big.

00:45:15.000 He's way too big for 170. But when you saw his fight with Adesanya, were you shocked?

00:45:22.000 I only saw parts of that.

00:45:24.000 I didn't see the whole thing.

00:45:25.000 I was somewhere else.

00:45:26.000 I didn't get to see it.

00:45:27.000 It's fucking amazing.

00:45:28.000 Yeah, no, I saw parts of it and yeah, he looked great.

00:45:32.000 He looked fucking amazing.

00:45:33.000 The crazy thing is how good his defense is.

00:45:36.000 I thought he would do well against him.

00:45:37.000 I didn't think he'd do well just standing up with him.

00:45:41.000 I mean, I thought on your side it would get, would outpoint him a little bit.

00:45:47.000 But I thought Sean would take him down and beat the shit out of him if he got on top.

00:45:51.000 Well, that's a lot of people don't realize.

00:45:52.000 Sean has a very good ground game.

00:45:54.000 No, very good, yeah.

00:45:55.000 Very good.

00:45:56.000 He just doesn't use it very often.

00:45:57.000 He's black belt in jiu-jitsu, good wrestling, good takedown defense.

00:46:01.000 He's solid everywhere, but he just loves to bang.

00:46:04.000 He loves to stay in the front of guys.

00:46:05.000 He doesn't have huge power.

00:46:08.000 He's probably getting better at putting it in better places now.

00:46:14.000 But he's not a big knockout guy, but he definitely adds them up.

00:46:20.000 He's by far one of the biggest pressure fighters that just moves forward all the time.

00:46:27.000 Well, he's also able to do that because of his defense.

00:46:30.000 His defense is so underrated.

00:46:32.000 He's hard to hit, yeah.

00:46:33.000 So underrated.

00:46:34.000 And in that Adesanya fight, you saw it so clearly.

00:46:36.000 Yeah, he's really hard to hit.

00:46:38.000 So good at moving just out of distance and then putting more pressure back on you, checking those calf kicks.

00:46:44.000 He's quick.

00:46:45.000 Yeah.

00:46:46.000 I was super impressed with that.

00:46:48.000 Yeah.

00:46:49.000 And it's even more impressive, you know, coming back from an accident like he had, too.

00:46:53.000 Mm-hmm.

00:46:53.000 Yeah.

00:46:54.000 And he talks about it.

00:46:55.000 It's like, my quad's all fucked up on his right leg.

00:46:57.000 Right.

00:46:57.000 It's like his one leg is just like, the quad's not even attached.

00:47:01.000 Yeah.

00:47:01.000 Which is nuts.

00:47:03.000 Yeah.

00:47:04.000 Yeah, no.

00:47:05.000 But again, it just shows what the body can do if you just let it.

00:47:09.000 Yeah.

00:47:09.000 You know, if you're just mentally tough enough to push through something.

00:47:13.000 Well, he changed his style a little bit because of it.

00:47:16.000 You know, he stands different than most people.

00:47:19.000 He stands very straight up.

00:47:20.000 He always has.

00:47:21.000 Yeah?

00:47:22.000 Always?

00:47:23.000 Yeah.

00:47:24.000 When I'd spar him, I'd have to...

00:47:25.000 I quit aiming for his head.

00:47:28.000 I just aimed for his chest, and it kind of stopped him.

00:47:31.000 And then I could, you know, follow up.

00:47:33.000 If I hit him in the chest, I could follow up and hit him again.

00:47:36.000 But he's hard to hit.

00:47:39.000 Yeah, it's impressive.

00:47:40.000 And he's the only guy doing that sort of Philly Shell style at a championship level.

00:47:45.000 It's, like, very interesting seeing him out there.

00:47:47.000 He looks different than everybody else.

00:47:49.000 Yeah.

00:47:50.000 He's quick.

00:47:51.000 That really helps him not get hit also.

00:47:54.000 Yeah, but it's just also I think when we're going back to the different schools of thought in terms of sparring, he spars every day.

00:48:00.000 It's most of his training is sparring.

00:48:01.000 Right.

00:48:02.000 So when you see him fight Adesanya in the fifth round, the guy wasn't even breathing heavy.

00:48:07.000 I mean, he looked like ready to go five more after that.

00:48:11.000 He's got like just...

00:48:14.000 His natural ability is his cardio.

00:48:16.000 Among, you know, he knows how to fight well too, but naturally he just has cardio for days.

00:48:23.000 Well, I gotta think that has a lot to do with constantly sparring.

00:48:27.000 So the sparring thing is not, there's not a lot of tension.

00:48:30.000 Very loose and very composed and very efficient.

00:48:34.000 Right.

00:48:35.000 Whereas some guys...

00:48:37.000 But then again, you look at Max Holloway, he's about as good as it gets, and that guy doesn't spar at all anymore.

00:48:42.000 He says, I don't want to get beat up.

00:48:44.000 He shouldn't.

00:48:45.000 Yeah, he just says...

00:48:46.000 Especially the way his fights are typically wars, you know?

00:48:49.000 Oh, he's had some fucking crazy wars.

00:48:51.000 Crazy wars.

00:48:52.000 Crazy wars.

00:48:53.000 But he's like, I want to go into those fights fresh.

00:48:56.000 And I think that was something that he picked up during training camps.

00:48:58.000 Like some of the training camps where he sparred a lot.

00:49:00.000 He was a little beat up by the time he actually got into the octagon.

00:49:04.000 And so now he's like, look, I already know how to fight.

00:49:06.000 So I'll just do drills and hit mitts and pads and constant conditioning and it works.

00:49:12.000 Right.

00:49:13.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:49:14.000 But that's what's interesting is like there's no one perfect way to do it.

00:49:18.000 It depends upon the athlete, depends upon the skill set.

00:49:22.000 Right.

00:49:22.000 No, for sure.

00:49:23.000 And, you know, you could, like, I set certain days to do certain things because of, you know, how tough certain things are on certain days and you want to go hard, then you want to kind of take it easy for a day.

00:49:37.000 Easier, I should say, but...

00:49:40.000 It doesn't work for everybody.

00:49:41.000 Some guys just need a little bit more.

00:49:44.000 Some guys need less.

00:49:45.000 Do you think that's something that you just need to tune in on your own with a coach and with the people that you work with and just figure it out over time at multiple camps?

00:49:54.000 Yeah, I guess.

00:49:55.000 But, I mean, for the most part, you get what you get put into it, out of it.

00:50:02.000 So, if one day you're not feeling it, you know, you kind of get in there and you get lazy.

00:50:08.000 You might get beat up a little bit, but that means you're having to push through some adversity to kind of keep going, which is also a good thing in training to have to do some days.

00:50:21.000 Yeah.

00:50:37.000 Yeah.

00:50:38.000 Yeah.

00:50:42.000 Yeah.

00:50:44.000 Do you have a toughest fight?

00:50:46.000 I have a toughest night of fighting.

00:50:48.000 That was when I did that tournament, the rings tournament, the 32-man unlimited weight class tournament.

00:50:55.000 Oh yeah, I forgot about that one.

00:50:57.000 How many times did you fight that night?

00:50:59.000 Well, the first event I fought twice, and then I came back and fought three times in a night.

00:51:08.000 How much of a gap between the first two fights and the...

00:51:11.000 So I fought Gilbert Yavelle, whatever his name is, the first fight that night and had about an hour probably, which is pretty good, 45 minutes to an hour.

00:51:24.000 And then I fought Big Nog.

00:51:28.000 And he fucked my knee up.

00:51:32.000 We were in the clinch and he jumps to guard and his ass landed on my leg and just popped my MCL. So my leg really hurt, my knee dead.

00:51:42.000 I made it through that fight, beat him.

00:51:44.000 And then I had about 20 minutes, 25 minutes.

00:51:48.000 There was one fight in between.

00:51:49.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:51:51.000 And then I had to fight Babalu in the finals.

00:51:53.000 And Randy was in my corner and Ryan Parsons.

00:51:58.000 And I find out afterwards they're like, oh, there's no problem.

00:52:02.000 He's going to be able to fight.

00:52:04.000 I was just a bucket of shit out there in the locker room.

00:52:09.000 It hurt.

00:52:10.000 And then...

00:52:12.000 But that fight, I never made that much money.

00:52:17.000 This was in the year 2000, so I think the most I had ever made from wrestling with everything combined was when I fought in the UFC the year before that and made like 20 grand.

00:52:31.000 This final fight was worth 200 grand.

00:52:34.000 Wow.

00:52:36.000 Win or lose, it was a $200,000 difference.

00:52:39.000 Just the one fight?

00:52:40.000 Yeah, the finals.

00:52:41.000 The champ got everything.

00:52:43.000 It was basically a winner-take-all type of thing.

00:52:45.000 If I would have taken second place, I would have had five fights for about $30,000 total, and I made $230,000 instead.

00:52:54.000 Isn't that nuts?

00:52:55.000 Yeah, and I'll tell you what, when I went out there and they played the national anthem beforehand, that got me pumped up, ready to go.

00:53:02.000 And the thought of $200,000.

00:53:05.000 Did you tape your knee up or anything?

00:53:07.000 Ah, no.

00:53:08.000 I mean, there wasn't really much time, and I just went out there and fought, kind of defended takedowns.

00:53:17.000 And this tournament was, they had a little bit different rules.

00:53:21.000 It was two fives.

00:53:25.000 And kind of like the ultimate fighter and the possibility of another five if it's a draw.

00:53:31.000 And Babalu was a fucking stud too.

00:53:33.000 Yeah, him and Nogueira were both pretty big, like 40 pounds bigger than me.

00:53:40.000 Babalu had one of the most horrific KOs early in his career.

00:53:45.000 He fought Brad Kohler and he soccer kicked him with wrestling shoes on.

00:53:49.000 Remember those days?

00:53:50.000 Yeah, I remember that.

00:53:53.000 Brad Kohler was like a bodybuilder.

00:53:55.000 He was a tank.

00:53:56.000 Yeah, I remember him.

00:53:56.000 He was a tank.

00:53:58.000 And Babalu stuffed his shots and got him down and soccer kicked him into the next realm.

00:54:06.000 Yeah, I think I remember that.

00:54:09.000 Yeah, see if you can find that.

00:54:10.000 Babalu was an animal.

00:54:11.000 Very tough guy.

00:54:12.000 Yeah, no, he was tough.

00:54:13.000 Him and Noguera, up till the time when I had fought them, they'd submitted everybody in the tournament that they'd fought so far.

00:54:22.000 So Noguera had finished three guys.

00:54:27.000 He hit them with a lot of low kicks.

00:54:29.000 That was back in the wrestling shoes days.

00:54:32.000 Very interesting.

00:54:33.000 The difference in your amount of grip that you have with wrestling shoes.

00:54:37.000 Big fucking difference, right?

00:54:39.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:54:42.000 Yeah, Babalu's super high level.

00:54:46.000 Yeah, he was tough.

00:54:48.000 So here it is.

00:54:49.000 He gets him right here.

00:54:51.000 Boom!

00:54:54.000 Soccer kick.

00:54:55.000 What show is that in?

00:54:57.000 Is that in Brazil?

00:54:57.000 Boy, I don't know.

00:54:59.000 I don't remember.

00:55:00.000 2000...

00:55:02.000 What does it say?

00:55:03.000 World Extreme Fighting.

00:55:06.000 Okay.

00:55:09.000 January 15th of 2000. Just different fucking rule sets.

00:55:14.000 About a month later is when I fought in that tournament.

00:55:17.000 I think it was like February, the King of Kings finals.

00:55:21.000 World Extreme Fighting.

00:55:22.000 Go on plow.

00:55:22.000 Jens Pulver was in there.

00:55:24.000 No shit.

00:55:26.000 Wow.

00:55:28.000 That Phil Johns dude looks like Justin Gaethje.

00:55:30.000 He does.

00:55:31.000 I thought it was at first.

00:55:32.000 Oh, Pele fought fucking Pat Miletic.

00:55:35.000 I forgot about that fight too.

00:55:37.000 John Lewis, Jeremy Horn.

00:55:39.000 Wow.

00:55:40.000 Noguera.

00:55:41.000 Yeah.

00:55:43.000 Rodrigo.

00:55:45.000 Yeah.

00:55:46.000 Matt Hughes was in there.

00:55:48.000 Wow.

00:55:50.000 Bunch of legends.

00:55:52.000 Wow.

00:55:54.000 Wow.

00:55:56.000 Just those days, man.

00:55:59.000 That's never going to happen again, where you have just the emergence of a sport like this that becomes one of the biggest sports in the world.

00:56:07.000 Yeah.

00:56:07.000 I think they should do tournaments again.

00:56:09.000 You think so?

00:56:10.000 Multiple fights in a night.

00:56:13.000 It would be wild.

00:56:14.000 I think they should start doing that, and then it kind of gears it up to be an Olympic sport after that.

00:56:20.000 What do you do, though, if you have injuries?

00:56:24.000 Well, I think you've got to tame down the rules a little bit, but there's typically alternates when they do any MMA tournament.

00:56:33.000 Right.

00:56:33.000 But they have an alternate—yeah, but, I mean, if someone—like, say if you have a war against one—like, say if you have a war against somebody, and then in the next round, the guy who also fought, he has to pull out, and then they put it in an alternate, and he's fresh.

00:56:49.000 Yeah, I mean, but they make the alternates fight.

00:56:53.000 Oh, do they?

00:56:54.000 Like, my fight with Bustamante was an alternate fight.

00:56:57.000 Oh, I see.

00:56:58.000 I see.

00:56:58.000 So the alternates fight...

00:56:59.000 I actually could have fought again that night.

00:57:01.000 I'm thankful I did, and I didn't have any thumbs and a skinny knee.

00:57:08.000 Wow.

00:57:09.000 Yeah, that would work.

00:57:10.000 That would work where you have a potential alternate.

00:57:12.000 You might need two.

00:57:13.000 Well, if you needed the other guy, I guess you would take the loser of the alternate, right?

00:57:18.000 I guess.

00:57:19.000 I guess.

00:57:19.000 I guess you would.

00:57:20.000 Unless you got KO'd.

00:57:21.000 Yeah.

00:57:22.000 Well, it depends on where it's at.

00:57:24.000 Right.

00:57:24.000 If it's in Japan, like dust him off, put some ice on his head.

00:57:27.000 Yeah.

00:57:28.000 Yeah.

00:57:31.000 It is interesting when you see tournaments, though, because it's like you have a built-in super fight, right?

00:57:37.000 You see over the night guys winning, and you know their style, and so you're looking forward to the matchup when it comes to the main event.

00:57:45.000 Right.

00:57:45.000 I mean, that was the early UFC. Right.

00:57:48.000 I thought UFC 17 was a tournament.

00:57:52.000 Yeah.

00:57:53.000 Yeah, the tournaments were wild.

00:57:54.000 The first one I went to was UFC 12. That was when Vitor fought Trey Tellegman, and then he fought Scott Ferozo.

00:58:01.000 And he won the heavyweight tournament when he was 19. Right.

00:58:05.000 Yeah.

00:58:06.000 Randy came in after that, I guess.

00:58:08.000 Just don't...

00:58:09.000 Yeah, Randy was...

00:58:10.000 That was back when Vitor was like 240 when he fought Randy.

00:58:13.000 He looked like his trap started at the top of his ears.

00:58:16.000 He had a little bitty head on top of a huge body.

00:58:20.000 He was crazy big.

00:58:22.000 He was so bulked up.

00:58:24.000 But I just wonder what athletic commissions would allow you to do that.

00:58:27.000 I know Los Angeles, just a few years ago, when they had Glory Last Man Standing, they had a big tournament there.

00:58:34.000 It was a big kickboxing tournament.

00:58:36.000 I wonder if they would allow something like that with some athletic commissions with MMA. Yeah, I don't know.

00:58:43.000 I mean, I wouldn't see why they wouldn't.

00:58:47.000 I mean...

00:58:48.000 Be exciting.

00:58:49.000 They could tame it down a little bit, kind of like they do The Ultimate Fighter, but, you know, have it all in one night, not over...

00:58:59.000 Right.

00:58:59.000 Well, it certainly would be exciting.

00:59:02.000 I think the options that would be interesting are one 15-minute round instead of three fives.

00:59:08.000 I think that would be very interesting.

00:59:10.000 And then a tournament.

00:59:11.000 That would also be very interesting if they decided to do it.

00:59:14.000 I mean, if someone wants to stand out from another organization, like the PFL or one of those...

00:59:18.000 Like the PFL's got some weird point system that they do that I don't really understand.

00:59:22.000 You get a certain amount of points for a submission, a certain amount of points for a KO, and it's like you're ahead in the score.

00:59:30.000 Is that like to go for the whole season to see where you're ranked?

00:59:34.000 Yeah.

00:59:35.000 But I thought the whole season was a tournament.

00:59:38.000 It is.

00:59:38.000 Well, I guess it's only certain weight classes or every weight class?

00:59:41.000 It's weight classes.

00:59:42.000 Well, I don't know if they do it with all weight classes, but I think that's just how they run their organization.

00:59:49.000 I hope they stop doing that.

00:59:51.000 Well, they're now going to own Bellator.

00:59:54.000 Yeah, which is interesting.

00:59:56.000 They got a lot of cash, apparently.

00:59:58.000 A lot of oil money going that direction.

01:00:01.000 A lot of investor money.

01:00:02.000 Yeah.

01:00:03.000 Listen, the more big organizations, the better, I think.

01:00:07.000 For the athletes, for sure.

01:00:09.000 For the fans, for sure.

01:00:10.000 And they have Francis Ngannou.

01:00:12.000 Francis Ngannou becomes their heavyweight poster guy, and he's their heavyweight champion.

01:00:18.000 It could be very interesting if they throw a bunch of money at it.

01:00:20.000 No, I agree.

01:00:21.000 I think it's great for the sport and, you know, great for the fighters.

01:00:26.000 Yes, definitely great for the fighters.

01:00:28.000 The fighters can't just have the UFC. And it's good for the UFC too.

01:00:31.000 Everybody needs competition.

01:00:33.000 You know, the UFC needs the...

01:00:35.000 And it's great for the fighters.

01:00:37.000 If you got the PFL bidding on you, you got one championship bidding on you, and you got the UFC bidding on you, that's a good place to be.

01:00:43.000 Well, for sure.

01:00:44.000 If there's only the UFC around, you've got to take what they give you.

01:00:48.000 I was kind of in that boat for a bit when the UFC bought Pride, and then I was in the UFC again, and then Strikeforce came along, and I went there, and then they bought Strikeforce.

01:00:59.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:01:00.000 That's what I told the press.

01:01:01.000 I said, Dana is like a stalker.

01:01:05.000 He loves me so much, he's got to buy the companies.

01:01:09.000 I'm like...

01:01:12.000 You remember Affliction?

01:01:13.000 They were out for a hot minute.

01:01:15.000 Yeah, I think they basically broke the bank when Josh Barnett tested positive.

01:01:22.000 He was going to fight Fedor.

01:01:23.000 And the fight, they just canceled the whole event.

01:01:26.000 Yep.

01:01:26.000 And never had another show.

01:01:28.000 Dana didn't know about it.

01:01:29.000 I'm pretty sure he was gambling.

01:01:30.000 I think he was playing blackjack.

01:01:32.000 And I texted him.

01:01:34.000 And I said, hey, did you hear what's going on?

01:01:37.000 I go, Josh Barnett tested pot, and then he called me up.

01:01:39.000 He goes, what the fuck's going on?

01:01:40.000 And then I told him, he's like, holy shit.

01:01:42.000 He was so happy.

01:01:46.000 Yeah.

01:01:47.000 He was so happy.

01:01:48.000 It would have been nice for, I think Trump was getting ready to be involved as a, he was at the event to watch, or he was at the previous event to watch, and I think they were kind of grooming him to be an investor.

01:02:01.000 Interesting.

01:02:01.000 That would have been interesting.

01:02:03.000 Yeah.

01:02:03.000 That was back when everybody loved Trump.

01:02:05.000 Yeah.

01:02:08.000 Isn't that crazy?

01:02:09.000 Boy, do fucking things change.

01:02:12.000 He was in all the rap songs.

01:02:14.000 Rappers would always talk about Trump.

01:02:16.000 Everybody loved Trump.

01:02:17.000 He was like this wheelin', dealin', billionaire character that everybody enjoyed.

01:02:22.000 Yeah.

01:02:23.000 I felt like he'd done a decent job.

01:02:26.000 As president?

01:02:27.000 When you look at his regulations, it certainly helped the economy.

01:02:31.000 I feel like we were in a lot better spot then than now, for sure.

01:02:35.000 Without a doubt.

01:02:36.000 Well, there's a lot of shit that happened.

01:02:37.000 COVID and the world.

01:02:39.000 The world scares the shit out of me right now.

01:02:42.000 Right now, I'm like, boy, this is not good.

01:02:45.000 None of this.

01:02:46.000 This Ukraine thing, not good.

01:02:48.000 Yeah.

01:02:48.000 Everything not good.

01:02:50.000 Everything scares the shit out of me.

01:02:51.000 I'm looking at all of it going, fuck.

01:02:53.000 Fuck.

01:02:54.000 There's no good solutions to the Middle East.

01:02:57.000 All of it looks terrible.

01:02:59.000 And the Ukraine thing looks terrible.

01:03:02.000 It just scares the shit out of me because it's just like all it takes is one person to fucking launch a nuke and the world changes forever.

01:03:10.000 Right.

01:03:11.000 And I've never felt like that was a possibility in my lifetime until now.

01:03:16.000 Yeah, I mean, this is, it is a little bit on the unsure realm of how I, you know, I feel definitely a little bit unsure about what's going to happen.

01:03:27.000 Yeah.

01:03:28.000 Very.

01:03:29.000 Yeah.

01:03:30.000 Yeah, I'm looking at like moving to Iceland or some shit.

01:03:34.000 We're going to be safe from the fallout.

01:03:35.000 Go do some more research on aliens and figure out where the next vacation spot is.

01:03:41.000 Well, that would be fascinating if the aliens come down and stop at all.

01:03:45.000 Yeah.

01:03:45.000 If they're just going to listen, you dipshits.

01:03:47.000 We've been watching, waiting.

01:03:49.000 It's like the way I describe it is like two brothers fighting in the backyard.

01:03:53.000 The parents are like, hang on, let them fucking work this out and just figure out when one of them grabs a rock, then run in.

01:04:00.000 Okay.

01:04:00.000 Enough.

01:04:01.000 That's enough.

01:04:03.000 Yeah, I don't know.

01:04:04.000 Just, I've never felt more like the world's on the verge of being forever ruined.

01:04:11.000 This is what it feels like right now.

01:04:13.000 It just feels like I've never felt more like we're on...

01:04:16.000 I mean, this must have been what it felt like at the beginning of World War III, or World War II, rather.

01:04:23.000 Don't say III. I know, I know, I'm sorry.

01:04:27.000 Freudian slip.

01:04:28.000 Yeah, it's fucked.

01:04:33.000 So what have you been up to other than obsessing over hunting?

01:04:38.000 Oh, that's my main hobby these days.

01:04:41.000 But other than that, you know, running the club.

01:04:45.000 We have this comedy club that you went to last night.

01:04:47.000 I was impressed.

01:04:48.000 It was pretty cool.

01:04:49.000 Thank you.

01:04:50.000 It's been fun.

01:04:50.000 That's a nice thing, because, you know, in L.A., we had the Comedy Store, and one of the things that I realized when I moved out here, there was no real home base.

01:05:00.000 And all these comics had already moved out here.

01:05:02.000 There was a shit ton of comedians that decided, fuck California, I can't deal with this anymore, I can't perform.

01:05:07.000 Because they were locking everybody down for like a year and a half.

01:05:10.000 They wouldn't let anybody do shows.

01:05:11.000 They wouldn't even let them do shows in the parking lot of the Comedy Store.

01:05:15.000 The whole thing was so crazy.

01:05:17.000 It didn't make any sense.

01:05:19.000 And out here we were doing full shows indoors.

01:05:23.000 Yeah, it's amazing how that is, huh?

01:05:25.000 Yeah, nothing happened.

01:05:27.000 You know, we're all gonna die!

01:05:29.000 No one died.

01:05:29.000 I shut my gym down for six weeks.

01:05:31.000 Oh, that's it?

01:05:32.000 Yeah.

01:05:33.000 Nice.

01:05:33.000 That's good.

01:05:34.000 Yeah.

01:05:35.000 No, I live in a good spot.

01:05:36.000 That is a good spot.

01:05:37.000 And our county sheriff said, fuck you, Governor Newsom.

01:05:41.000 You're a hypocrite.

01:05:42.000 I'm not going to arrest people for being responsible and owning businesses and still trying to make their money and keep it afloat.

01:05:52.000 Well, it destroyed LA. I mean, it destroyed the restaurant industry.

01:05:56.000 It really did.

01:05:57.000 It destroyed it.

01:05:58.000 At one point in time, they lost somewhere around 70% of all restaurants.

01:06:01.000 It was just insane.

01:06:03.000 Wow.

01:06:03.000 Just insane.

01:06:04.000 And they never corrected.

01:06:05.000 Because you know what it is?

01:06:07.000 The people that run the government, the amount of money they make is not dependent on whether or not businesses stay open.

01:06:13.000 If it was, they would have never shut jack shit down.

01:06:17.000 If they worked it like, say, if you work for a company, I agree.

01:06:36.000 100%.

01:06:37.000 Right.

01:06:42.000 You would have seen a completely different response.

01:06:45.000 They would have been like, ladies and gentlemen, you just need to get vitamin D and everybody needs to start drinking water and exercising and losing weight.

01:06:51.000 And here's some ways to boost your immune system.

01:06:53.000 Instead of everybody has to stay indoors and all the kids have to fucking be home and mask up and...

01:07:00.000 It's just nuts.

01:07:01.000 It's just nuts to watch it all work.

01:07:03.000 And so many people stepped in line.

01:07:05.000 So many people were like, okay.

01:07:07.000 And nobody got angry about it.

01:07:09.000 I was one month in.

01:07:11.000 I was like, what the fuck is going on?

01:07:13.000 I started looking in May of 2020. Because I was like, these motherfuckers are never going to let this go.

01:07:19.000 They're never going to let this go.

01:07:21.000 They keep ramping up all the new regulations and ramping up what can be closed.

01:07:26.000 They shut out outdoor dining, which made no fucking sense.

01:07:29.000 None of it made any sense.

01:07:31.000 And that's when I started moving.

01:07:32.000 When I came out here...

01:07:34.000 First thing we did with my family, we went to a restaurant.

01:07:36.000 We sat indoors.

01:07:38.000 And my kids were like, we can eat at a restaurant?

01:07:40.000 This is crazy.

01:07:41.000 And we went on a lake, on Lake Austin.

01:07:44.000 We were looking at this house and we went on a boat on the lake and there was people jumping in the water and drinking and playing music.

01:07:52.000 And my kids were like, I want to live here.

01:07:53.000 So then it was just talking my wife into it.

01:07:55.000 It's like, come on.

01:07:56.000 Like, listen, we could just, if we don't like it, we could always move back.

01:08:00.000 Where was she from?

01:08:01.000 From L.A. area?

01:08:01.000 Well, we both lived in L.A. for 20-plus years.

01:08:04.000 Yeah.

01:08:05.000 You know, it's like I had all these friends there.

01:08:07.000 I had all my business was there.

01:08:08.000 Everything was there.

01:08:10.000 You know, comedy was there.

01:08:11.000 Everything was there.

01:08:12.000 But I just didn't like—I don't like people telling me what to do, especially people that are hypocrites.

01:08:17.000 Right.

01:08:18.000 And those photos of Newsome came out when he was dining indoors with no mask on.

01:08:22.000 And it's like these fucking— And his kids were still going to school at a private school.

01:08:26.000 Yeah.

01:08:26.000 Yeah, all of it.

01:08:28.000 The whole thing was fucked.

01:08:29.000 It was just the whole thing was fucked.

01:08:31.000 You're just allowing these people that...

01:08:33.000 I never thought about who the governor was before.

01:08:36.000 I never thought about who the mayor was.

01:08:38.000 Oh, me neither.

01:08:39.000 It didn't bother me.

01:08:39.000 I never really cared.

01:08:40.000 I didn't care.

01:08:41.000 I did what I had to do and hopefully they did a good job and they didn't fuck the economy up.

01:08:45.000 Now we need Joe Rogan in there.

01:08:47.000 Fuck that, dude.

01:08:48.000 You don't want me.

01:08:49.000 You don't want me in there.

01:08:51.000 I would rather have you than...

01:08:53.000 Yeah, you probably would.

01:08:54.000 You'd probably want to have me in there, but they'd probably assassinate me.

01:08:57.000 It wouldn't take long before I'd be like, hey, why are we spending money on all these things?

01:09:01.000 Fuck out of here with this.

01:09:04.000 How many people are working on the Homeless Committee?

01:09:06.000 Oh, fuck.

01:09:07.000 Get out of here.

01:09:08.000 We looked into that.

01:09:09.000 The homeless thing is nuts.

01:09:11.000 There's people on this, whatever, governing body that's supposed to be handling the homeless crisis.

01:09:16.000 There's people on that that are making $240,000 a year.

01:09:20.000 They have zero incentive to get rid of the homeless problem because then they don't have a job.

01:09:24.000 What are you going to do?

01:09:25.000 Are you going to transfer over to somewhere else and make the same amount of money?

01:09:29.000 They could probably use that money to actually help homeless out.

01:09:34.000 I don't know how the fuck they do it.

01:09:36.000 They've ruined it.

01:09:37.000 It's gotten so bad that I just don't know how you pull the...

01:09:41.000 How do you turn it around?

01:09:42.000 Well, I think a lot of homeless, a lot of it stems from getting mixed up with drug use and being dependent.

01:09:52.000 Drug use and mental illness.

01:09:53.000 That's the primary cause of most of it.

01:09:55.000 You know, and they try to make it seem as if it's just like people down on their luck, like, eh, there's a view.

01:10:01.000 Probably should have finished that wall.

01:10:03.000 Would have helped.

01:10:05.000 That's what the craziest thing is.

01:10:07.000 Two things are happening simultaneously.

01:10:09.000 The southern border wide open and people are pushing for people to be able to vote with no ID. Those two things are insane.

01:10:17.000 No, absolutely.

01:10:18.000 Did you see that they're sending people back from Venezuela?

01:10:22.000 Because Venezuela has a communist government and the people that come over to here, they escape socialism.

01:10:27.000 And those people are most likely to vote like Cubans do in America.

01:10:30.000 Cubans in America vote Republican.

01:10:33.000 And so when they're having these issues, they're trying to actively send Venezuelans back to Venezuela.

01:10:38.000 Of course they are.

01:10:40.000 It's so transparent.

01:10:42.000 It's so transparent.

01:10:43.000 I don't care what their other excuses are.

01:10:45.000 The fact that they're targeting Venezuelans and that Venezuelans 100% hate socialism, the ones that come over here, It's nuts.

01:10:54.000 I mean, look, there's always these periods in history where things get bad and then they get better again.

01:11:00.000 They get bad and they get better again.

01:11:01.000 I mean, things were great for a long time, but they are on a slide and we got to pull out of that fucking slide.

01:11:07.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:11:08.000 And if we don't, it's not good.

01:11:10.000 I'm real nervous about next year.

01:11:13.000 Real nervous.

01:11:15.000 No matter who wins.

01:11:15.000 Right.

01:11:16.000 The country's going to be in a frothy uproar because of this fucked up media that we have.

01:11:20.000 Right.

01:11:21.000 I think they're the biggest problem that we have.

01:11:23.000 Yeah.

01:11:24.000 No, they are.

01:11:25.000 On both sides, not just...

01:11:27.000 Yeah, I agree.

01:11:29.000 Well, their business is just get people riled up, get people paying attention.

01:11:33.000 And the most outrageous shit that they can say, the most outrageous stories they can publish, those are the ones that are going to get clicks.

01:11:38.000 So those are the ones they publish.

01:11:41.000 And then everybody gets into this frothy panic in the meanwhile.

01:11:44.000 It's amazing the spin that they could put on, you know, if both sides were airing the same exact story, it sounds like two completely different things.

01:11:54.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:11:55.000 It's crazy.

01:11:55.000 There's no, like, real, like, objective news source that everybody trusts anymore.

01:12:00.000 There's not one thing where you go, oh, this is the buh-buh-buh news.

01:12:04.000 They're always legit, above board.

01:12:05.000 It's a complicated issue, and they're going to lay out all the different sides to it.

01:12:08.000 No.

01:12:09.000 Yeah.

01:12:09.000 Everything's got a spin to it.

01:12:13.000 It's not good.

01:12:14.000 It's not good.

01:12:15.000 It's not good and I don't know how it gets better.

01:12:18.000 Yeah, I don't either.

01:12:21.000 It just sucks that you have to think about it.

01:12:23.000 For most of my life, I didn't really think about it that much.

01:12:27.000 I never did.

01:12:28.000 I always worried about wrestling and then fighting and then, you know.

01:12:34.000 Simpler things.

01:12:35.000 Yeah.

01:12:36.000 Getting better at what I did.

01:12:39.000 Yeah.

01:12:40.000 And I would never go into politics, so it didn't matter to me.

01:12:46.000 I never really cared.

01:12:48.000 Just like what you said, I was the same way.

01:12:51.000 I didn't really pay attention to much of it until recently.

01:12:55.000 I talked to Dana White once.

01:12:56.000 I said, you should run for president.

01:12:58.000 And he's like, dude, the skeletons that would come out of my closet, it would be like the walking dead.

01:13:04.000 Yeah, that's absolutely true.

01:13:05.000 Of course.

01:13:07.000 Of course.

01:13:09.000 They don't give a shit if you'd be good at your job.

01:13:12.000 They just give a shit about getting their side in.

01:13:15.000 Right.

01:13:16.000 Yeah.

01:13:16.000 And this country is so polarized.

01:13:18.000 The whole right versus left thing is so crazy.

01:13:23.000 Yeah, I feel like racism is a lot worse than it was before, all this, just because...

01:13:30.000 They talk about it all the time.

01:13:32.000 They're talking about it, too.

01:13:33.000 And when it's not even there, they're still talking about it.

01:13:36.000 Yeah, they're making an issue when it's not even there.

01:13:37.000 And they're stirring the pot.

01:13:39.000 Yeah, because that's what their job is.

01:13:41.000 Their job is just to get people outraged.

01:13:43.000 I mean, if your business is just to get people fired up and paying attention to things and angry...

01:13:48.000 That's what they do.

01:13:49.000 It's just our job to kind of, like, figure that out now.

01:13:52.000 And I think trust in mainstream media is at an all-time low.

01:13:55.000 I don't think there's ever been a time in my life where people trust the mainstream news less.

01:14:03.000 Well, I know that I don't trust them, but I don't know how even...

01:14:08.000 I don't know.

01:14:09.000 Well, no one's watching them.

01:14:10.000 CNN got its lowest ratings since the 1990s the other day.

01:14:14.000 They have 43,000 people watching.

01:14:16.000 You know how crazy that is?

01:14:18.000 And that's 43,000 people worldwide or just in the States?

01:14:22.000 I don't know.

01:14:23.000 I mean, I don't know.

01:14:24.000 I was just reading it.

01:14:25.000 It's crazy, yeah.

01:14:26.000 But even if it's just in the States, that's nuts.

01:14:29.000 That's nothing.

01:14:29.000 Especially when they do the points on how many millions.

01:14:34.000 Yeah.

01:14:34.000 I mean, that's literally a Taylor Swift concert.

01:14:40.000 Not even a big one.

01:14:41.000 It's one of her smaller concerts.

01:14:43.000 Wow.

01:14:44.000 Yeah, it's nuts.

01:14:45.000 But I would like to see the UFC in an arena.

01:14:49.000 I think the UFC could do that.

01:14:51.000 An outdoor arena?

01:14:52.000 Yeah, that Raiders arena.

01:14:53.000 I think they could do that arena.

01:14:55.000 Like what Pride, then K1 did back in the Tokyo Dome.

01:14:59.000 Yeah, Saitama Super Arena.

01:15:01.000 No, that's enclosed.

01:15:03.000 Was it enclosed?

01:15:04.000 Yeah, it just stretches.

01:15:06.000 They had a big arena.

01:15:08.000 I didn't go to it, but they had like 80-some thousand people there.

01:15:12.000 I think it was a New Year's Eve show.

01:15:14.000 The only problem with that is you have to hope it doesn't rain.

01:15:17.000 Yeah.

01:15:17.000 And I think they had people skydive in.

01:15:20.000 Oh, look.

01:15:21.000 Obsessed with Las Vegas fear.

01:15:23.000 I eyes UFC card at venue in 2024. Oh!

01:15:27.000 I've heard about it.

01:15:28.000 I haven't been in there yet.

01:15:29.000 Have you been in there?

01:15:30.000 No, I haven't.

01:15:31.000 I've seen it in videos and stuff.

01:15:33.000 It looks insane.

01:15:34.000 When you're inside of it, the entire thing is a screen.

01:15:37.000 Like, everything.

01:15:38.000 The ceiling, all the...

01:15:39.000 Have you seen it?

01:15:40.000 Have you seen the videos of it?

01:15:41.000 No, I haven't.

01:15:41.000 It's Fucking bananas.

01:15:44.000 I've heard that it's crazy.

01:15:45.000 Yeah.

01:15:46.000 Crazy good.

01:15:47.000 Crazy good.

01:15:48.000 For concerts.

01:15:48.000 Yeah.

01:15:48.000 Oh my god.

01:15:49.000 How many is his seat, Jamie?

01:15:50.000 18,000.

01:15:51.000 18?

01:15:52.000 Yeah.

01:15:52.000 Oh, that'd be perfect for a UFC. Yeah.

01:15:55.000 And then you could show the replays on the ceiling.

01:15:58.000 You could show the replays everywhere.

01:16:00.000 So the guy knocked out could see it too.

01:16:02.000 Oh boy, yeah.

01:16:03.000 As he's on his back, you can see the head kick land.

01:16:06.000 When you look at the level of fighting today and think about how it was when you started, are you proud?

01:16:14.000 Are you proud that you were part of it in the beginning?

01:16:17.000 Well, yeah, I'm definitely proud that I was part of that journey, but I mean...

01:16:25.000 I still feel like there's certain things missing on some of these guys.

01:16:31.000 They're just not great at any one thing.

01:16:36.000 Some of them.

01:16:37.000 But they're really good at everything, but not spectacular.

01:16:41.000 Not specialists.

01:16:42.000 Yeah.

01:16:43.000 But you have a few guys that are specialists, like Pejeda.

01:16:46.000 There's a few of the elite kickboxers.

01:16:48.000 But then you see where the holes are in their game, too.

01:16:52.000 Yeah.

01:16:53.000 Yeah.

01:16:54.000 I don't know, but yeah, I think it's definitely evolved into some guys that are a lot more skilled and talented than back in the day, for sure.

01:17:07.000 For sure.

01:17:09.000 Maybe I think what's missing is just the old school attitude.

01:17:14.000 Well, the old school guys did it because they wanted to do it, and there wasn't really much money in it at all.

01:17:19.000 You had to be really kind of crazy.

01:17:21.000 Yeah.

01:17:22.000 You know?

01:17:23.000 Yeah.

01:17:24.000 Well, you had to be a wild motherfucker to enter into UFC 1 or UFC 2 or UFC 3. I mean, it was just...

01:17:31.000 You had to be fucking crazy.

01:17:33.000 It was funny.

01:17:34.000 I came home from the 92 Olympics and I was in my hometown in Victorville, which is in the middle of nowhere, and I went out to the local bar and some guy was in there talking to me about, hey, we're getting ready to put on this show.

01:17:52.000 We're going to see who the toughest guys are.

01:17:57.000 We're going to have a wrestler, boxers, and he's describing the UFC. And it happened about three months after that.

01:18:05.000 It's like, yeah, we're putting together this show.

01:18:07.000 We're about to do it, you know, blah, blah, blah.

01:18:09.000 Next thing I know, the UFC started.

01:18:12.000 Wow.

01:18:13.000 I have no idea who that guy was.

01:18:15.000 Just some guy you met at a bar?

01:18:17.000 Yeah.

01:18:17.000 I wonder who it was.

01:18:18.000 Yeah, I don't know.

01:18:19.000 I wonder what his gig was, what role he had in it.

01:18:23.000 I found out about it from a local video store.

01:18:27.000 I think someone had told me about it, and then I rented UFC 2. It was 94, and I just moved to LA, and I remember watching it and going, holy shit, they did it.

01:18:39.000 Because I always remembered thinking back when I was kickboxing and taekwondo, everybody always wondered, what would happen if a judo guy fought a wrestler?

01:18:48.000 What would happen if a boxer fought a karate guy?

01:18:50.000 But to see it all actually happen, like holy shit, this is nuts.

01:18:56.000 And that was back when, you know, Hoist Gracie, it was just kind of getting started, and then jiu-jitsu was everywhere.

01:19:04.000 Jiu-jitsu schools just popped up everywhere.

01:19:06.000 Right.

01:19:06.000 And it was just like a complete revolution of martial arts, where there had never been anything like that before.

01:19:13.000 Right.

01:19:14.000 There was a John Peretti thing.

01:19:16.000 Was it World Extreme Fighting?

01:19:18.000 Remember he had that?

01:19:19.000 Yeah.

01:19:19.000 He had that event.

01:19:20.000 With John Lewis, right?

01:19:22.000 Mm-hmm.

01:19:23.000 Yeah.

01:19:23.000 Yep.

01:19:24.000 John Lewis, Mario Sperry was in that, Maurice Smith, Conan Silvera.

01:19:31.000 There's a lot of good fighters that came out of that as well.

01:19:34.000 There's a few of these organizations that were emerging.

01:19:38.000 And then in Japan, there was rings and K1, and then Pride emerged.

01:19:43.000 And at one point in time, Pride was bigger than the UFC. It was fucking huge.

01:19:49.000 Yeah.

01:19:50.000 I think they just hit—them and K1 got in a pissing match with, you know, with something, and they really kind of crippled each other.

01:20:00.000 I can't imagine how they did it.

01:20:02.000 It was so big in Japan.

01:20:04.000 I can't imagine that it fell off as much as it did.

01:20:07.000 Because it was so much bigger in Japan than the UFC ever was.

01:20:11.000 And I think they had a bigger audience internationally also.

01:20:17.000 Not in the States than the UFC, but internationally, like in Europe.

01:20:22.000 Because they would really get a lot of European fighters and Brazilians to fight.

01:20:29.000 There was a hardcore base in America that watched it.

01:20:31.000 I remember guys from jiu-jitsu school, when they would air it live, they'd come over my house at like 3 o'clock in the morning to watch it.

01:20:38.000 I forget when it would air.

01:20:39.000 Or sometimes it would air like you would have to stay offline and not find the results for like a while and then try to watch it.

01:20:47.000 Yeah, and they delayed it.

01:20:48.000 But those events seem so insane.

01:20:52.000 Those events seem so incredible.

01:20:54.000 What was the biggest crowd that you fought in front of over there?

01:20:57.000 I think, I don't know, 65, 70, somewhere in that range at Tokyo Dome.

01:21:04.000 Like, it was sold out for New Year's Eve.

01:21:06.000 Wow.

01:21:07.000 I don't even remember who I was.

01:21:09.000 What is that like?

01:21:12.000 I don't know.

01:21:13.000 Any other day, but definitely a lot more energy.

01:21:17.000 What I liked was, you know...

01:21:20.000 As a fighter, they did, like, their opening ceremony was pretty cool to me.

01:21:26.000 And, you know, you get up there and they do a big show and then they introduce all the fighters.

01:21:33.000 I think that was pretty cool, a way to do it.

01:21:36.000 And it's just part of their culture, too, you know, putting those athletes.

01:21:42.000 The pageantry.

01:21:42.000 Yeah.

01:21:43.000 Yeah.

01:21:44.000 So I do miss that, as well as other things with the show.

01:21:47.000 But they put on, and this is what I always say, everybody used to say, oh, what's better, you know, what's better fighters than UFC or Pride, you know?

01:21:56.000 I'm like, I don't know.

01:21:56.000 I think they both have great fighters, and they're probably pretty comparable, but...

01:22:03.000 There's no comparison to the show they put on.

01:22:05.000 Pride just was a show in addition to the fights.

01:22:09.000 And also, the walk-in.

01:22:11.000 Like, the walk-out was giant.

01:22:13.000 It was crazy.

01:22:15.000 Pyrotechnics and fucking giant screens.

01:22:18.000 I mean, it was an event.

01:22:20.000 It was unbelievable, yeah.

01:22:23.000 And I put certain fighters in that era up against anybody.

01:22:26.000 I mean, I think Krokop in his prime over there is one of the scariest heavyweights ever.

01:22:32.000 Fedor in his prime over there, without a doubt, if not the best heavyweight of all time, definitely there's an argument between him and a couple other guys.

01:22:42.000 I agree.

01:22:45.000 You know, there were so many great fights over there.

01:22:47.000 Yeah.

01:22:50.000 Yeah, there was quite a few.

01:22:53.000 And, you know, when they started trying to do it, you know, kind of work with UFC a little bit, UFC would send in some of their guys over, Chuck and Rampage would get over there.

01:23:05.000 Even though Rampage had fought there before.

01:23:08.000 Yeah.

01:23:10.000 And I think that 10-minute first round really hurt some of those guys.

01:23:16.000 Yeah, it was different.

01:23:17.000 They sent Chuck over there.

01:23:18.000 I remember he KO'd Alistair at 2.05.

01:23:22.000 Yeah.

01:23:24.000 Alistair was skinny.

01:23:25.000 Yeah, and he fought with, what's his name?

01:23:30.000 He's from Dallas, I think, from...

01:23:33.000 Guy Metzger.

01:23:35.000 Guy Metzger.

01:23:35.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:23:38.000 And Guy was beating him, knocked him down, and then, you know, I don't know what happened, but he got caught.

01:23:44.000 Yeah, Chuck caught him.

01:23:45.000 Chuck could bang.

01:23:46.000 Chuck had crazy chin, too.

01:23:48.000 His ability to absorb shots was nuts.

01:23:51.000 Yeah.

01:23:52.000 He was willing to, and obviously that cost him in the long run.

01:23:55.000 Yeah.

01:23:55.000 But he had an iron chin.

01:23:58.000 He would just bite down on his mouthpiece and just eat shots.

01:24:00.000 Yeah, you try not to be known for that.

01:24:03.000 Yeah.

01:24:03.000 It never really turns out well in the long run.

01:24:06.000 Almost every guy that winds up, you know, that has that sort of style eventually winds up getting KO'd.

01:24:12.000 Right.

01:24:13.000 Eventually the foundation just falls apart.

01:24:16.000 Yeah.

01:24:18.000 It doesn't take much sometimes when you get it in the right spot.

01:24:22.000 Yeah.

01:24:23.000 Well, you know, do you have KOs that are like some of your most – like the Hector Lombard one.

01:24:29.000 I was just watching that the other night.

01:24:31.000 That one was nuts because we never saw you throw a head kick before.

01:24:34.000 I threw three head kicks or high kicks.

01:24:39.000 They weren't close to the head because I just wasn't that flexible against Rich Franklin in England.

01:24:47.000 But I fell to my ass every time I slipped.

01:24:50.000 Yeah.

01:24:51.000 So I had thrown them before, and I'd throw them in practice, but against lefties I kind of had this thing where I kind of changed levels, like I'm going to kind of look at your legs and my head kick comes up there, and he's short, so I was able to land it.

01:25:08.000 That's a guy that I think people miss his prime too.

01:25:12.000 Because his prime was in Bellator.

01:25:14.000 He was fucking starching people in Bellator.

01:25:17.000 Hector Lombard in Bellator was a fucking terror.

01:25:20.000 He was a terror.

01:25:21.000 He was so athletic.

01:25:23.000 He was so fast and powerful.

01:25:26.000 And that judo background, you know?

01:25:29.000 I remember when he came to the UFC, he had a few fights like that.

01:25:32.000 Like the Nate Marquardt fight was a good example of that.

01:25:34.000 Where you saw that same sort of Hector Lombard.

01:25:38.000 Yeah, he comes in fast and strong, and then, you know, you gotta weather the storm a little bit.

01:25:45.000 Well, you caught him with a head kick, and I think, if I remember correctly, you hit him with a back fist.

01:25:51.000 Back elbow.

01:25:52.000 Back elbow.

01:25:53.000 And then you elbow them on the ground.

01:25:55.000 Yeah.

01:25:55.000 That was the elbow on the ground was devastating.

01:25:58.000 When he first came here from Australia, he was Cuban, but he went to Australia and lived there.

01:26:06.000 When he first came to the States, he came to my gym first for about three months.

01:26:14.000 Nobody liked him.

01:26:15.000 He was a big bully.

01:26:16.000 Just trying to knock people out warming up.

01:26:18.000 Oh, really?

01:26:19.000 You know, just when you're supposed to be going easy, just trying to hurt people.

01:26:24.000 And it would happen every time I'd be out of town.

01:26:27.000 I'd come back.

01:26:28.000 I'd hear about it.

01:26:30.000 And Sokidu was in there, too.

01:26:32.000 And he'd fucking put him in his place once.

01:26:34.000 But...

01:26:35.000 So when I went to fight, Hector, you know, the media has, like, asked me, you know, Hector's saying how he never – he left your gym because he never felt welcome, blah, blah, blah.

01:26:44.000 I'm like, well, I never had a problem with him.

01:26:47.000 But everyone in my gym thought he was a big bully.

01:26:51.000 Yeah, and that's all I said about it.

01:26:52.000 And we're in the face-off, like, week of the fight.

01:26:58.000 And he asked me – Who says I'm a bully?

01:27:03.000 And I'm like, what did you say?

01:27:06.000 And yeah, who says I'm a bully?

01:27:08.000 And I'm like, everybody.

01:27:10.000 Everybody said you're a bully.

01:27:12.000 Well, who?

01:27:13.000 Everybody at my gym.

01:27:16.000 Not me, but everybody at my gym.

01:27:19.000 And he just couldn't get over that.

01:27:20.000 And I'm like, you motherfucker, this isn't the time or place for that.

01:27:23.000 I'm going to fuck you up.

01:27:25.000 So those last couple elbows were a little more personal.

01:27:30.000 It's probably the only fight I've ever really felt that way that I really wanted to fuck that guy up.

01:27:35.000 Not the Bisping fight?

01:27:36.000 No, it was just a fight to me.

01:27:39.000 I didn't like him, but it wasn't a guy that I'd hang out with, but he was just him, and I knew that I would beat him.

01:27:47.000 But that logo that you have, the flying punch, that is the ultimate fuck you.

01:27:53.000 That logo is so wild that you put that as your logo.

01:27:57.000 But I don't even know why he's upset about that, because he's not even in it.

01:28:04.000 Yeah, but he knows what it is.

01:28:07.000 Everybody knows what it is.

01:28:09.000 It's not like a chalk line on the ground underneath him.

01:28:11.000 I remember when I saw it, when I saw that logo for the first time, I went, oh shit.

01:28:17.000 Because that, I mean, you flattened him with that right hand.

01:28:21.000 I mean, he was out cold.

01:28:22.000 And then you launched yourself through the air and smashed him with that right hand.

01:28:27.000 Yeah.

01:28:28.000 But that becoming your logo was one of the wildest things.

01:28:32.000 I can't believe.

01:28:34.000 We're good.

01:28:35.000 I mean, that's a crazy logo.

01:28:37.000 I mean, everyone has to know what that is, because otherwise it wouldn't even make sense.

01:28:41.000 Like, what is he doing?

01:28:42.000 Right.

01:28:43.000 Is he about to do a cartwheel?

01:28:45.000 You know what I mean?

01:28:46.000 It's not like, you know, you're throwing a head kick or you're throwing a punch.

01:28:50.000 It's like you're flying and your arm is above you like this.

01:28:53.000 Well, what about Air Jordan's logo?

01:28:55.000 There's no basket there.

01:28:57.000 That's true, but no one winds up with a massive concussion after that, you know?

01:29:03.000 It's a great logo, though.

01:29:04.000 It really is.

01:29:06.000 Somebody had photoshopped him on some shoes.

01:29:09.000 I think I posted that not too long ago.

01:29:11.000 Oh, photoshopped him out?

01:29:13.000 No, that logo.

01:29:14.000 Oh, like a Michael Jordan?

01:29:16.000 Yeah.

01:29:17.000 Oh, that's cool.

01:29:19.000 Yeah, there's a lot of guys that make custom sneakers.

01:29:21.000 They should make you a pair of those.

01:29:23.000 Why not?

01:29:24.000 Yeah, why not?

01:29:25.000 I don't wear shoes that often.

01:29:27.000 So, how often are you still training with guys?

01:29:31.000 You still work out with guys?

01:29:32.000 I need to.

01:29:33.000 I'm getting chubby, so I need to start working out.

01:29:36.000 Yeah, well, I don't drink that much beer, but, you know, I'll have...

01:29:42.000 Yeah, just everything.

01:29:43.000 I like to cook.

01:29:44.000 I'm pretty good at it.

01:29:45.000 So I just need to start working out a little more.

01:29:48.000 I'm not too bad for not doing shit.

01:29:51.000 I mean, I might have worked out once in the last six months.

01:29:54.000 Oh, really?

01:29:55.000 Yeah, no, that's not good.

01:29:56.000 Oh, no.

01:29:57.000 The least I've ever worked out in my whole life.

01:29:59.000 Just, I don't know.

01:30:00.000 Maybe having to do it for so long.

01:30:02.000 Well, that does happen to a lot of fighters.

01:30:04.000 You know, they get fat after they're done fighting.

01:30:07.000 They're just like, fuck, all the weight cutting, all the bullshit.

01:30:09.000 You just get so tired of it.

01:30:10.000 You just want to enjoy your life now.

01:30:12.000 Right.

01:30:14.000 I don't know.

01:30:15.000 I just...

01:30:16.000 I don't know.

01:30:17.000 Maybe I just got lazy or something.

01:30:19.000 It's not about...

01:30:20.000 I don't know why.

01:30:21.000 You still look good?

01:30:21.000 I'm at my gym almost every day and I coach and stuff, but I feel like I'm still capable of doing a lot of things.

01:30:29.000 The last time I have worked out, it always goes well.

01:30:33.000 Are you thinking about just training a little bit now?

01:30:36.000 Yeah.

01:30:37.000 More grappling stuff, trying not to do the sparring part as much, even though I'd probably get antsy wanting to spar just for fun.

01:30:46.000 I'm sure you would.

01:30:48.000 When you were training, what did you do for recovery?

01:30:53.000 Guys today, they've got massage therapists and saunas and cold plunges and all that jazz.

01:30:59.000 Did you have a sophisticated way to recover when you were training?

01:31:04.000 Yeah, I would try to sauna, you know, and I would get, during training camp, a massage probably twice a week.

01:31:14.000 And they were about three hours long each time.

01:31:17.000 You remember my masseuse Mariah?

01:31:20.000 I do remember her because she told me that working with you was like working with wood.

01:31:24.000 She said you were so dense.

01:31:25.000 She said she never massaged anybody who was so dense.

01:31:28.000 She said it was crazy.

01:31:30.000 Yeah.

01:31:32.000 So she actually owns a business that's in my building where my gym is.

01:31:36.000 It's called The Lab.

01:31:37.000 But they do like IV therapy and hormone replacement also and peptides and all sorts of different...

01:31:49.000 Are you doing all that stuff?

01:31:50.000 Yeah.

01:31:50.000 I do some peptides and I do the hormone replacement as well.

01:31:56.000 I work with another company, like an online one too, Blokes.

01:32:00.000 It's pretty good for...

01:32:02.000 It's virtual, so it's super easy for me to...

01:32:05.000 I don't even have to go anywhere and just do it all myself.

01:32:09.000 I'm so glad you guys are doing that now.

01:32:12.000 Right.

01:32:13.000 Because, you know, peptides are a thing that that was one of the sticking points with USADA. They were stopping guys from using BPC-157.

01:32:19.000 Right.

01:32:20.000 And they allowed it for a while and then they stopped using it.

01:32:23.000 Like, come on, guys.

01:32:24.000 All this is doing is helping people recover.

01:32:26.000 That's all it's doing is helping people recover from injuries.

01:32:28.000 Right.

01:32:28.000 For injuries, not necessarily anything else.

01:32:31.000 They got a new one that's pretty good too.

01:32:34.000 I forgot what it's called.

01:32:36.000 Something 5000 or something.

01:32:38.000 I forgot what it's called.

01:32:40.000 But yeah, it's for injuries as well.

01:32:42.000 But you know, the FDA is trying to stop people from taking that.

01:32:46.000 Which doesn't make any fucking sense.

01:32:49.000 Yeah.

01:32:49.000 When they're not stopping people from taking opiates.

01:32:52.000 Right.

01:32:52.000 It's nuts.

01:32:54.000 So yeah, she's doing that.

01:32:57.000 But yeah, I would do massage therapy for recovery and sometimes an ice bath.

01:33:04.000 I'd ice things down.

01:33:07.000 Depends on what's hurting.

01:33:09.000 And supplements and eating good during training camp.

01:33:13.000 But no stretching.

01:33:15.000 I would get stretched after the massages.

01:33:19.000 I just couldn't imagine how inflexible you are and how powerful you are.

01:33:23.000 It was just nuts to see you moving around, trying to touch your toes.

01:33:28.000 I feel like because I'm not very flexible, it kept me from getting in bad submission positions sometimes.

01:33:37.000 Interesting.

01:33:38.000 They couldn't move you.

01:33:39.000 Yeah.

01:33:43.000 I've heard guys say that, that being inflexible gives them more power.

01:33:47.000 I'm like, I don't know if that's true.

01:33:49.000 Well, that I don't know.

01:33:49.000 I mean, when I was a high school kid, I was pretty flexible and just slowly over time, I just petrified, I guess.

01:33:57.000 I don't know.

01:33:58.000 Well, you got dents.

01:34:00.000 My dad was the same way, just the same body type.

01:34:03.000 Yeah?

01:34:03.000 Yeah.

01:34:04.000 So it was just genetics, you think?

01:34:05.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:34:06.000 My sister's that way, too.

01:34:08.000 Do you ever wonder, like, what it would have been like if you started today?

01:34:12.000 Like, how much further you would have progressed?

01:34:15.000 I would have probably made more money.

01:34:17.000 Oh, for sure.

01:34:18.000 A lot more money.

01:34:18.000 What's the most you ever made in one fight?

01:34:21.000 Um...

01:34:22.000 Well, the most I ever should have made in one fight would have been when I fought Biz Bang, because I had pay-per-view in my deal.

01:34:31.000 And, uh...

01:34:35.000 The second Bisping fight?

01:34:37.000 No, the first one.

01:34:38.000 The first one.

01:34:39.000 And when we coached on the Ultimate Fighter, we were going to be main or co-main.

01:34:44.000 I think GSP fought that night, and then Frank Mir and...

01:34:51.000 And Brock Lesnar were supposed to find a different event and somebody got hurt and they pushed him to that event.

01:34:57.000 So Dana bumped me down to the third spot and promoted it still as a co-main but didn't pay me pay-per-view.

01:35:07.000 So it would have been like three or three and a half million for that one.

01:35:13.000 Just pay-per-view.

01:35:17.000 Like three hundred grand.

01:35:18.000 Oh shit.

01:35:21.000 But the most I've ever made, I think, is probably around a million.

01:35:26.000 Do you remember what fight that was?

01:35:28.000 Well, there was a whole contract of that.

01:35:31.000 Like six fights, I think.

01:35:33.000 Oh, I see.

01:35:34.000 Plus certain pay-per-views, depending on the event.

01:35:40.000 That one's got to suck.

01:35:41.000 That one's got to sting, the three million one.

01:35:43.000 Yeah, and you know, you'd always hear stories, not me, but about Dana, you know, giving a bonus or whatever, you know.

01:35:52.000 I never saw that, so.

01:35:54.000 You never got one of those locker room bonuses?

01:35:56.000 No.

01:35:57.000 Well, I mean, knockout of the night I got, but.

01:36:00.000 Yeah, but not one of the big ones.

01:36:02.000 Yeah.

01:36:03.000 That sucks.

01:36:04.000 So, I mean, I didn't take it personal, but I did go to Strikeforce right after that.

01:36:11.000 Yeah.

01:36:11.000 What did you think about Strikeforce?

01:36:13.000 Strikeforce had some great fights.

01:36:15.000 Yeah, I thought they...

01:36:16.000 I mean, I love Scott Coker.

01:36:18.000 He's...

01:36:20.000 Well, I mean, he just has the fighters in mind all the time also, not just the bank account.

01:36:30.000 So, yeah, I feel like Strikeforce had some great fighters.

01:36:35.000 They, you know, had certain things that UFC definitely did better.

01:36:39.000 You know, they were a little more organized with certain things.

01:36:42.000 But overall, Strikeforce was, I liked them quite a bit.

01:36:48.000 Well, it was definitely nice having another major organization.

01:36:51.000 Yeah.

01:36:51.000 You know, there was Elite XC that lasted a little while.

01:36:54.000 Remember that?

01:36:55.000 Yeah.

01:36:56.000 Kimbo Slice was their big guy.

01:36:57.000 Right.

01:36:58.000 That was pretty fun.

01:36:59.000 I think that was on CBS, right?

01:37:01.000 Wasn't it?

01:37:04.000 I think it was.

01:37:06.000 I know Strikeforce had a CBS show.

01:37:11.000 I fought on that card against Jake Shields.

01:37:15.000 And then the Diaz brothers got in a fight with Mayhem.

01:37:17.000 Oh, that's right.

01:37:19.000 That's right.

01:37:20.000 And I'm like, dude, this is not good.

01:37:22.000 And then the announcer said, sometimes these things happen in MMA. We're like, what?

01:37:27.000 That's the only time it's ever happened.

01:37:31.000 It almost happened with Johnny Walker this past weekend.

01:37:35.000 Yeah.

01:37:35.000 That was a weird one, wasn't it?

01:37:37.000 That was the weirdest one.

01:37:38.000 That one didn't make any sense at all.

01:37:39.000 They asked him where he was and apparently said, I'm in the desert.

01:37:42.000 Yeah, which is a good answer.

01:37:44.000 He's in the desert.

01:37:45.000 He's kind of a funny guy.

01:37:47.000 He's kind of eccentric.

01:37:49.000 He's eccentric.

01:37:50.000 You ask him a question.

01:37:52.000 He seemed fine.

01:37:53.000 He seemed fine.

01:37:54.000 They asked him where he was.

01:37:55.000 I'm in the desert.

01:37:57.000 Okay.

01:37:58.000 Do you know what country?

01:37:59.000 But he also looked confused when he's standing there looking at the guy and not saying anything.

01:38:06.000 But it was hard to hear what was going on.

01:38:09.000 Also, he doesn't speak English as a first language.

01:38:12.000 Yeah.

01:38:12.000 So there's that, too.

01:38:14.000 Right.

01:38:14.000 I thought the stoppage was...

01:38:16.000 Ridiculous.

01:38:17.000 Yeah.

01:38:18.000 Well, that's one of those ones where I think, like, why, when a referee calls it off like that, why can't they...

01:38:24.000 Restart it.

01:38:24.000 Restart it, yeah.

01:38:25.000 Oh.

01:38:27.000 Yeah, I don't understand that either.

01:38:29.000 They did it I think Randy might have fought on the card.

01:38:34.000 It was a UFC in Japan.

01:38:37.000 Sakuraba, I think.

01:38:38.000 In Conan.

01:38:39.000 Yeah.

01:38:40.000 And he wouldn't leave, and then they restarted the fight.

01:38:43.000 Yeah.

01:38:43.000 Do you remember that?

01:38:44.000 No, they fought again.

01:38:45.000 They fought again another time.

01:38:47.000 No, they started the fight again that night.

01:38:50.000 Did they?

01:38:51.000 I'm almost positive.

01:38:52.000 I think they fought again that night.

01:38:54.000 I don't think they fought again immediately.

01:38:57.000 No, I think it was immediate.

01:38:59.000 Was it?

01:38:59.000 I was there.

01:39:00.000 Oh, interesting.

01:39:02.000 Why do I have it in my head that they fought later in the night?

01:39:09.000 You're saying the same night?

01:39:10.000 Yeah, the same night.

01:39:12.000 Maybe they did that.

01:39:14.000 That's what I think they did.

01:39:15.000 Because Conan hit him with an uppercut and Sakuraba dropped down for a low ankle.

01:39:21.000 Right.

01:39:21.000 And they stopped him.

01:39:22.000 And they tried to say it was a stoppage.

01:39:24.000 Do you remember Matt Lindland and Bustamante?

01:39:27.000 Yeah.

01:39:28.000 That was a crazy one.

01:39:28.000 And they restarted that one too.

01:39:30.000 Yeah.

01:39:30.000 Even though he did tap.

01:39:31.000 He did tap.

01:39:32.000 He caught him.

01:39:35.000 Matt Lindland got caught in an arm bar.

01:39:37.000 Tapped.

01:39:38.000 He said, I didn't tap.

01:39:39.000 I might have been in the corner.

01:39:40.000 I don't remember.

01:39:41.000 He might have been.

01:39:42.000 And then they started, and then they went a whole nother round, and then the round after that he caught him in a guillotine.

01:39:48.000 So Bustamante tapped him twice.

01:39:50.000 Yeah.

01:39:51.000 That was nuts.

01:39:52.000 But that was, you know, I mean, I'd like them to look at replays and say, oh, that's a tap, and that makes sense.

01:40:00.000 But in that case, of the one this weekend with Ankalaev, and he started it up again.

01:40:05.000 They're both fine.

01:40:06.000 Everybody wants to see the fight.

01:40:07.000 What's the formality?

01:40:09.000 Like, what's the point?

01:40:10.000 Didn't make any sense.

01:40:12.000 Because he didn't understand what I asked him.

01:40:15.000 It's also like, check his eyes.

01:40:18.000 Also, when someone gets hit with an illegal shot, don't they have a certain amount of time to recover?

01:40:23.000 Five minutes.

01:40:23.000 Yeah.

01:40:24.000 So why is the doctor in there immediately anyway?

01:40:27.000 And I didn't...

01:40:29.000 They called it a no contest, but it was questionable because it was kind of a – it was definitely illegal.

01:40:36.000 Right.

01:40:37.000 Which means – Disqualification.

01:40:39.000 Which means disqualification, but he called it an unintentional.

01:40:43.000 But he intended – yeah, so I didn't understand that.

01:40:47.000 Yeah.

01:40:48.000 So, but yeah, I don't know if maybe, and I don't know Johnny Walker, but I didn't know if he was kind of playing it off like, I'm going to get the win if I don't.

01:41:01.000 Interesting.

01:41:02.000 That's why he looked like he was confused at the question.

01:41:05.000 That was curious to me as to why he was just, you know, looking at him.

01:41:10.000 Well, I don't know how well the doctor spoke English either.

01:41:14.000 Was the doctor an English-speaking guy?

01:41:18.000 I don't know.

01:41:19.000 Johnny isn't.

01:41:20.000 Johnny can speak a little bit of English, but when I've interviewed him, he speaks Portuguese.

01:41:26.000 So when you're talking to him in English, he has to really pay attention.

01:41:30.000 And there's nothing wrong with that answer.

01:41:32.000 In the desert, it's true.

01:41:33.000 Where are you?

01:41:34.000 I'm in the desert.

01:41:35.000 He's in the desert.

01:41:36.000 He's telling the truth.

01:41:37.000 It's not like he said, I'm in Hawaii.

01:41:40.000 Maybe you should stop the fight then.

01:41:41.000 The fucking guy thinks he's in Hawaii.

01:41:43.000 But he said, I'm in the desert.

01:41:47.000 Yeah.

01:41:47.000 Weird.

01:41:48.000 Yeah, that was kind of a weird...

01:41:50.000 And I was wondering, why can't they just restart it?

01:41:54.000 Yeah.

01:41:55.000 It's a bummer.

01:41:58.000 But, you know, do you enjoy watching fights these days still?

01:42:01.000 Yeah, but it's not...

01:42:02.000 I mean, I don't pay attention to what's coming up that much.

01:42:07.000 So, you know, if I kind of see it that day and I'm not doing anything, I'll definitely watch it.

01:42:14.000 But, you know, it's rare that I'm looking forward to certain fights.

01:42:18.000 I am going to go to New York for the Stipe John Jones fight.

01:42:22.000 Oh, are you?

01:42:22.000 Yeah.

01:42:23.000 That should be exciting.

01:42:24.000 Yeah.

01:42:25.000 What do you think about that fight?

01:42:27.000 Well, I think I said this, like when Stipe was champ way back when, that, you know, I think John Jones would be a lot, or he would be a lot tougher fight for John Jones than some of the big, hard-hidden guys that can't wrestle very well.

01:42:44.000 Because Stipe can wrestle probably not as well as John Jones.

01:42:49.000 So it's going to be, I think it's interesting.

01:42:51.000 I think it's a tough one to call.

01:42:54.000 Stipe has more power than Jones.

01:42:58.000 He's not as...

01:42:59.000 I don't know what the right word is, but he's not as goofy.

01:43:05.000 He doesn't do odd things.

01:43:07.000 Creative.

01:43:08.000 He's more straight...

01:43:10.000 Basics.

01:43:11.000 Basics, but good at them.

01:43:12.000 Yeah, very good at that.

01:43:13.000 I think Jones being a little bit more goofy and doing things that are a little bit different helps him a lot.

01:43:20.000 Yeah, he's very unpredictable.

01:43:22.000 He always comes in with a pretty good game plan.

01:43:26.000 Sometimes when I think he should be shooting the whole time, he doesn't.

01:43:31.000 But I think he could do well against Stipe as well.

01:43:38.000 He's just got to use that length.

01:43:40.000 Yeah, I'm interested to see what happens also because Stipe's had a lot of time to recover.

01:43:45.000 You know, it's been a long time.

01:43:47.000 What was wrong with him?

01:43:48.000 Well, the knockout to Francis was a pretty rough knockout.

01:43:52.000 Right.

01:43:52.000 And, you know, have a good solid two years off, have a lot of time to train.

01:43:56.000 He wanted to put more weight on because he felt like he was a little too light in the Francis fight.

01:44:00.000 Yeah.

01:44:01.000 I'm interested to see him fully healthy, like how much he's got left in the tank.

01:44:06.000 Because if you go back to the Stipe that knocked out Fabrizio Verdun, the Stipe that knocked out Junior Dos Santos, Stipe was a bad fucking man.

01:44:14.000 I think a lot of people are looking past him in this fight.

01:44:18.000 Yeah, and I don't think Jon Jones is the same as he was before he tested positive, like for the third time on things.

01:44:30.000 You know, maybe he's really not doing anything nowadays, and he's just...

01:44:34.000 I don't feel like his body is the same.

01:44:37.000 Well, he's heavyweight now, but before he went to heavyweight, he just looked softer.

01:44:41.000 He didn't look as good of cardio, wasn't as...

01:44:46.000 I don't know.

01:44:46.000 He just didn't fight the same as he did back when he was testing positive, I should say.

01:44:56.000 Interesting.

01:44:57.000 I always felt like John just wasn't challenged.

01:45:00.000 When he defended the title a bunch of times, first of all, he was partying a lot.

01:45:05.000 He wasn't necessarily training that hard.

01:45:08.000 He basically said for the Gustafson fight, which is one of his toughest fights, he didn't even train.

01:45:13.000 He barely showed up.

01:45:14.000 He just kind of thought, no way this guy's going to beat me.

01:45:18.000 I'm going to go fuck him up.

01:45:19.000 And Gustafson came in real prepared.

01:45:21.000 And John had to dig deep.

01:45:23.000 And the most impressive thing about that is he pulled that fight out in the later rounds when he wasn't really training.

01:45:28.000 Right.

01:45:31.000 Yeah.

01:45:32.000 So, I don't know.

01:45:34.000 I just feel like he doesn't look how he used to.

01:45:37.000 Well, he definitely doesn't have heavy weight.

01:45:39.000 Well, when I say look, I don't mean physically.

01:45:43.000 Oh, you mean like how he moves?

01:45:44.000 A little bit physically, but when he was at 205, he still looked a little soft his last couple times there compared to what he used to look like.

01:45:53.000 And you think that might have been from stuff?

01:45:56.000 Yeah.

01:45:57.000 Could be.

01:45:58.000 Definitely.

01:46:00.000 Picograms.

01:46:01.000 Yeah.

01:46:02.000 I mean, but he had tested positive before, so it's not like...

01:46:07.000 And that's crazy how they just, even during USADA, they just slapped him on the wrist.

01:46:13.000 Yeah, I think...

01:46:14.000 I never understood that.

01:46:15.000 I don't know what the thought of that was.

01:46:18.000 I don't know what the explanation for that was.

01:46:19.000 I can't really remember.

01:46:20.000 But I think that they thought that that was a tainted supplement, which does happen.

01:46:26.000 Well, What's-His-Face sued a company for tainted substances and got a ton of money.

01:46:33.000 The other Cuban, I think it's Cuban...

01:46:36.000 Not Hector Lombard, but...

01:46:38.000 Oh, Yoel Romero.

01:46:39.000 That's right, he did.

01:46:41.000 Yeah.

01:46:41.000 That's right, he did.

01:46:42.000 I think Tim Means popped accidentally, too, from a tainted supplement, and Tim doesn't look like he does anything.

01:46:49.000 Right.

01:46:49.000 You know, he looks totally natural.

01:46:52.000 The early days when you were fighting, you kind of must have assumed that everybody was on something.

01:46:57.000 Yeah, but nothing you could do about it, and it doesn't matter.

01:47:02.000 I'm going to beat him anyway.

01:47:03.000 It was my attitude.

01:47:04.000 Yeah.

01:47:06.000 Yeah.

01:47:06.000 And you did, for the most part.

01:47:09.000 Most of the time.

01:47:10.000 Tried to.

01:47:11.000 Yeah.

01:47:13.000 When you look back, I mean, you had a fucking amazing career, man.

01:47:16.000 Amazing career as a wrestler, and then amazing career as an MMA fighter.

01:47:20.000 I mean, it's got to feel good.

01:47:23.000 You lived a great life.

01:47:25.000 No, for sure.

01:47:26.000 And the book that I got coming out, it made me remember a lot of things.

01:47:35.000 Not that I forgot, but it just brings a lot more things fresher in your mind.

01:47:40.000 Yeah.

01:47:42.000 It's not like I sit around and reflect about what I've done in my life.

01:47:45.000 I just keep moving forward.

01:47:48.000 But that book kind of made me do that.

01:47:52.000 It was kind of fun to kind of look at my life in that way, for sure.

01:47:59.000 I'm sure it brought back a ton of memories.

01:48:01.000 Yeah.

01:48:02.000 And it's funny, when we were writing it, I'd always come up with After I'd read it, after it was kind of written down there, I was like, oh, I forgot about this story or that story or that kind of goes with that.

01:48:16.000 So we had to kind of add a bunch of shit.

01:48:19.000 Oh, yeah.

01:48:20.000 It made it a little tougher because...

01:48:23.000 I feel like I've forgotten more things than I remember these days, but you never know.

01:48:28.000 Did you do an audio version of it?

01:48:32.000 No.

01:48:33.000 I was like, it would be cool to actually read it myself in the audio thing with my voice.

01:48:39.000 They wanted me to send a sample of that.

01:48:42.000 I did like a five minute I played it back to myself.

01:48:47.000 I'm like, oh my god.

01:48:48.000 There's no way.

01:48:50.000 So I sent it to him saying, yeah, we might want to think about a professional for doing this.

01:48:56.000 I know you can edit it, but yeah, it's not good.

01:48:59.000 Then my wife got home from work and I had her listen to it and we just couldn't stop laughing.

01:49:06.000 It was bad.

01:49:07.000 I mean, I'm not the best reader, I guess.

01:49:09.000 Well, it's tough to do.

01:49:11.000 There's a real skill to reading audiobooks.

01:49:14.000 Right, and trying to put the emotion part into what it's supposed to be.

01:49:21.000 Like if you're telling a story.

01:49:23.000 There will be an audio version, but it won't be my voice.

01:49:27.000 Yeah.

01:49:28.000 So I think acting is out of the question for you?

01:49:30.000 Acting?

01:49:31.000 I don't know.

01:49:32.000 I mean, I could do certain things, but I don't know if I... I really don't want to act, like, that much.

01:49:40.000 Randy's done it amazing.

01:49:41.000 Yeah.

01:49:42.000 No, I... A little bit like action movies, I'd probably be okay at, for sure.

01:49:47.000 But some of these other TV drama type shit, there's no way.

01:49:52.000 Right.

01:49:53.000 I mean, I probably couldn't do it with a straight face.

01:49:58.000 They do, after this, we kind of did this book, and there's some producers...

01:50:06.000 Like Barry Josephson wants to do a biopic on me now.

01:50:11.000 Oh, that's awesome.

01:50:12.000 Yeah.

01:50:13.000 And my question to that was – and question to you, how do you put your life in a two-hour show?

01:50:22.000 Yeah.

01:50:23.000 How do you do that without them doctoring it too?

01:50:25.000 Like what they did with Mark Schultz and Foxcatcher.

01:50:28.000 Right.

01:50:28.000 Yeah.

01:50:29.000 Yeah, that's hard because they're going to want to tie it up in a nice ribbon.

01:50:33.000 Right.

01:50:34.000 So, I mean, now they're talking about, you know, a limited series instead type of thing.

01:50:39.000 Oh, that would be interesting.

01:50:40.000 Like a Netflix type deal?

01:50:41.000 Yeah.

01:50:42.000 Yeah.

01:50:42.000 That would probably be better.

01:50:44.000 Yeah, if they did your whole life in a two-hour movie.

01:50:46.000 I mean, what do they chop out?

01:50:47.000 Right, right.

01:50:49.000 Right, what do they chop out?

01:50:50.000 Yeah.

01:50:51.000 Yeah.

01:50:51.000 What would you be in your movie if it was only two hours?

01:50:55.000 How the fuck would you do it?

01:50:56.000 Right.

01:50:57.000 Yeah.

01:50:57.000 It'll just be a bullshit version of your life.

01:51:00.000 Right.

01:51:00.000 Just to make a movie.

01:51:02.000 Right.

01:51:02.000 Who would play you?

01:51:05.000 I think they have a couple guys in mind.

01:51:08.000 But, yeah, nobody that looks really like me exactly, but...

01:51:12.000 Do you have anybody that can move right, though?

01:51:15.000 You know what I'm saying?

01:51:16.000 Walk like a caveman.

01:51:17.000 Well, also punch and throw, you know, and have good takedowns.

01:51:21.000 Yeah, the one guy that is a possibility, I think he trains sometimes at Boss's Place.

01:51:28.000 Oh, that's good.

01:51:29.000 Yeah.

01:51:30.000 Yeah, you can't have just an actor that doesn't actually know how to fight.

01:51:34.000 Right.

01:51:35.000 It would look terrible.

01:51:36.000 Yeah, and I think whoever they do pick should probably come up to my gym for a couple months.

01:51:43.000 A hundred percent.

01:51:43.000 Yeah.

01:51:44.000 Yeah, you get to beat up on them a little bit.

01:51:48.000 Maybe that'll motivate you to get back into gym.

01:51:51.000 Yeah.

01:51:52.000 I'll just have him get in shape for me.

01:51:54.000 Yeah.

01:51:56.000 Well, let me know when that comes out, because I'll definitely want to hear it, and we'll tell everybody about it.

01:52:03.000 Yeah, so I wanted you to have the book a little bit ahead of time, but I think I showed you the cover.

01:52:10.000 You got a quote on the back of it, I believe, on the back.

01:52:17.000 I can't read it without my glasses.

01:52:19.000 Dan Henderson, here.

01:52:20.000 Well, I got glasses.

01:52:21.000 Hold on.

01:52:24.000 I think they just took one of your commentating...

01:52:27.000 Yeah, here it is.

01:52:28.000 Oh.

01:52:28.000 Dan Henderson is a savage.

01:52:30.000 He came from a pure wrestling background.

01:52:32.000 Very little striking training.

01:52:34.000 And he went and became one of the most dangerous one-punch knockout artists in the history of the sport.

01:52:38.000 Facts.

01:52:40.000 Facts.

01:52:40.000 It's available now.

01:52:41.000 You can get it...

01:52:42.000 The audio book.

01:52:43.000 You get it...

01:52:44.000 Oh, for one credit.

01:52:45.000 It's on Kindle.

01:52:47.000 It's on hardcover.

01:52:48.000 Available right now.

01:52:49.000 Hendo, the American athlete.

01:52:52.000 You know...

01:52:55.000 I was trying to figure out what to name it.

01:52:57.000 And when I was in Japan, I had all sorts of different nicknames and they would just call me Dan.

01:53:03.000 But the media over there called me the American athlete.

01:53:07.000 So that's why I kind of came up with that.

01:53:11.000 It's a good one.

01:53:12.000 Yeah, I didn't know what to say.

01:53:14.000 It's perfect.

01:53:15.000 Hendo, the American athlete.

01:53:17.000 Perfect.

01:53:18.000 Perfect.

01:53:19.000 Well, listen, Dan, it's a pleasure talking to you.

01:53:21.000 You've had a fucking amazing career.

01:53:23.000 You're a real legend.

01:53:24.000 I know you don't like the term pioneer, but...

01:53:26.000 I'm all right with it.

01:53:28.000 You know, the funniest thing about that is the guys...

01:53:32.000 That look as old as me or they got a big beard.

01:53:36.000 They look like they're 40 or 50 years old.

01:53:39.000 They come up to me and say, I've been watching since I was a kid.

01:53:43.000 I'm like, how?

01:53:46.000 Yeah.

01:53:47.000 So, yeah, it goes with the same feeling when I hear the word pioneer, but it's fine.

01:53:52.000 I mean, I do enjoy the fact that I was a pioneer in the sport.

01:53:56.000 You definitely were.

01:53:57.000 If there's a better word, let me know and I'll start using that one.

01:54:00.000 But thanks, brother.

01:54:01.000 I appreciate it very much.

01:54:02.000 No worries.

01:54:02.000 I appreciate you having me, yeah.

01:54:03.000 And the book's available right now, folks.

01:54:05.000 Go out and get it.

01:54:06.000 Support a legend.

01:54:08.000 All right.

01:54:09.000 Thanks, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 24, 2023

JRE MMA Show #149 with Dan Henderson

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