The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show 178 with Dan Hardy

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

00:00:09.000 Oh, yep, we're rolling, my man.

00:00:14.000 Nice to see you, brother.

00:00:14.000 Oh, yeah.

00:00:15.000 Great to see you, man. 0.99

00:00:16.000 What is this, Roma Neck? 0.71

00:00:17.000 What is that? 1.00

00:00:18.000 Oh, this is Moldavite.

00:00:19.000 Have you heard of Moldavite before?

00:00:20.000 No.

00:00:21.000 So, a meteorite hit in the Czech Republic millions of years ago.

00:00:26.000 And the particular tektite that was created from the earth matter falling back down to the ground.

00:00:33.000 Became Moldavite, and it's most tektites are like a black or a brown, but Moldavite's green.

00:00:40.000 Let me show you.

00:00:42.000 It's really interesting.

00:00:44.000 He's got some on the screen already.

00:00:44.000 It's just hold it up.

00:00:46.000 We got hold it up to the light.

00:00:48.000 Oh, that's dope.

00:00:51.000 So it's basically like nuclear glass, exactly.

00:00:53.000 That same type of wow.

00:00:56.000 And then that's the case my wife had made for me, and it's wrapped in an old chain that belonged to my dad.

00:01:00.000 Oh, that's so dope.

00:01:02.000 Yeah, keep with me all the time.

00:01:03.000 That's cool, man.

00:01:05.000 I used to have a piece in.

00:01:07.000 You know the old Thai amulets with the little bronze?

00:01:11.000 I used to have one in that, took it out.

00:01:15.000 I put the butter out and put a piece of moldavite in it wrapped in a piece of UFC canvas.

00:01:19.000 And I wore it just all the time.

00:01:21.000 But then my wife upgraded me as she tries to do all the time.

00:01:24.000 So the UFC gave you a chunk of canvas?

00:01:26.000 I have a whole canvas.

00:01:27.000 Ooh.

00:01:28.000 Yeah.

00:01:29.000 Ooh, nice.

00:01:30.000 You remember which fight?

00:01:31.000 It was Vadum Volkov from UFC London.

00:01:34.000 And it's just covered in Vadum's blood.

00:01:37.000 He got his nose busted pretty badly.

00:01:39.000 So, but it had to be in quarantine for like 12 months until they gave it me.

00:01:43.000 Really?

00:01:44.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:01:45.000 Because the blood?

00:01:45.000 It's a biohazard.

00:01:49.000 So, does it all die after 12 months?

00:01:51.000 I mean, I guess so.

00:01:51.000 I guess so.

00:01:52.000 It was kept in a warehouse and then they, yeah, they dropped it off for me.

00:01:55.000 Do they have to check it?

00:01:57.000 I don't know.

00:01:58.000 I mean, I wouldn't lick it, but it looks fine to me.

00:02:00.000 What could possibly be in the blood?

00:02:03.000 I mean, doesn't everybody get tested before?

00:02:04.000 That's a good point.

00:02:05.000 That's a good point.

00:02:06.000 Maybe there's just some kind of rule.

00:02:07.000 I think they incinerate them all now, don't they?

00:02:09.000 Do they?

00:02:10.000 I mean, they keep the.

00:02:11.000 They've got the pieces with the names, but I think the rest of it gets disposed of now.

00:02:15.000 Huh.

00:02:16.000 Yeah.

00:02:17.000 I wonder if there's any logic to that.

00:02:19.000 I don't know.

00:02:20.000 Or if it's just people being scared.

00:02:21.000 Yeah, maybe.

00:02:22.000 Maybe.

00:02:23.000 I've actually gotten the wall of my house, believe it or not.

00:02:23.000 It's a cool thing.

00:02:26.000 Yeah, I had it in the gym, but then it's on the wall of my house now.

00:02:26.000 Oh, really?

00:02:29.000 Oh, that's nice.

00:02:29.000 Yeah.

00:02:30.000 That's pretty cool.

00:02:31.000 It's just a nice thing to have, you know?

00:02:31.000 Yeah.

00:02:33.000 Dude, what happened with you in the UFC?

00:02:34.000 Like, I don't know the story.

00:02:38.000 I know you got into it with Herb Dean.

00:02:41.000 About a stoppage, a late stoppage.

00:02:41.000 Yeah.

00:02:43.000 Yeah.

00:02:44.000 And you were upset.

00:02:46.000 This was during COVID, right?

00:02:47.000 Yeah, this was, I think it was Fight Island 3.

00:02:51.000 And it was the second fight of the night where it had happened.

00:02:53.000 There was a heavyweight that had gone down and just took a bunch too many shots before the fight was stopped.

00:03:00.000 But the Jai Herbert Francisco Tronaldo one was the one where you heard me shout up and yell, stop the fight.

00:03:08.000 And it was just a weird circumstance.

00:03:11.000 And look, you know, caveat Herb's a great referee.

00:03:13.000 He's refereed me a lot.

00:03:15.000 But.

00:03:16.000 Every now and then, people do make mistakes, and in Fight Island, everyone was tired, it was quiet in the arena as well.

00:03:21.000 So, you can, I mean, you can hear me yelling.

00:03:24.000 It wasn't the first time I'd done it though.

00:03:26.000 I yelled at him in Moscow for a CB Dollarway fight.

00:03:29.000 And it's the thing is, there's a point where I'm there for the knockouts, I'm there for the blood, but I'm also there to make sure that once it's done, it's done, and those fighters are protected, right?

00:03:41.000 You know, and the way that that that Jai Herbert fell, it was just.

00:03:47.000 You get the reads, you know it.

00:03:48.000 You see him fall, and you're like, man, there's something not right about the way that he's falling.

00:03:53.000 And then as he landed, he was looking up at the lighting rig, but his arms were kind of stretched out.

00:03:58.000 So he was gone?

00:03:59.000 He was out of it.

00:03:59.000 He was gone.

00:04:00.000 And then there was this, and I think, of course, because it was quarantine times, it was silent in there.

00:04:06.000 The time, it was like you could hear a heartbeat in the air.

00:04:10.000 And there was just this moment where Ronaldo stood over him and looked at Herb.

00:04:15.000 And Jai's still on the floor, kind of not fully conscious.

00:04:19.000 And Ronaldo just started cracking him with more shots.

00:04:23.000 And that was the point where I stood up straight away and I'm yelling.

00:04:25.000 And Paul Felder was doing the same thing next to me.

00:04:28.000 You actually see Herb look at me through the cage and point at me and tell me to shut up.

00:04:32.000 The thing that annoyed me about it was the miscommunication about what had happened.

00:04:36.000 Because the message that got back to Dana and everybody at the top was that I left my commentary desk and went over and I was stood outside the cage.

00:04:45.000 And I wasn't.

00:04:46.000 Herb came to me.

00:04:48.000 So, like, I'm at my desk.

00:04:51.000 We've got this piece of plexiglass because it's all COVID poisonous.

00:04:54.000 Right.

00:04:55.000 That stopped everything, didn't it?

00:04:57.000 And then we had another desk in front of that.

00:05:00.000 So, Herb's basically, and Herb's, Don't move very quickly most of the time, he's a big old boy, and but he was moving at pace towards me, so I stood up, took my headset off, and put them down or had them in my hand.

00:05:12.000 He came over and he started yelling at me, and you know, you stay out of it, can't be shouting, and this and that.

00:05:17.000 And that's where you see me go, That was two times, it's the second time of the night.

00:05:21.000 Um, after the, I mean, as it's going on, and this was when we're not doing interviews in the cage as well, right?

00:05:29.000 So I'm standing, also hilarious, yeah, just.

00:05:33.000 Breathing on each other, sweating and bleeding on each other.

00:05:35.000 And we're shaking hands in the hotel and everything, and it was kind of odd.

00:05:39.000 But because I'm not going into the cage, I'm now turning around and my interview camera is behind me.

00:05:45.000 So basically, what the USC wanted me to do when Herb's marching over to me was to stand up, turn my back on him, and put my headset on.

00:05:51.000 Me as a martial artist, I'm not going to turn my back on someone when they're moving at me with the kind of pace that he was.

00:05:57.000 So everything got a bit delayed because I was having an interaction with Herb.

00:06:03.000 As soon as the event was over and I was on my way over to the ESPN desk, Herb and I bumped into each other and we had just had a brief minute conversation.

00:06:11.000 Everything was cool.

00:06:12.000 I said, Look, I respect you as a referee.

00:06:14.000 You left that one too late.

00:06:15.000 There was no doubt.

00:06:16.000 And it was the second one the night.

00:06:18.000 And there are other instances where it's happened, right?

00:06:23.000 Nobody's perfect.

00:06:24.000 I would make mistakes as well, of course.

00:06:26.000 Very difficult job.

00:06:27.000 Very, very difficult job.

00:06:29.000 The thing that annoyed me though, and for me, it was done then.

00:06:33.000 When I got backstage, someone from the production team confronted me about approaching Herb.

00:06:38.000 I tried to make sure that the narrative was set correctly, that he actually came over to me.

00:06:43.000 But that never got escalated up the chain.

00:06:46.000 So it was always, you know, you approach an official, et cetera, et cetera.

00:06:50.000 And it just so happened to coincide with where someone had approached Mark Goddard and pushed him at another event, UAE Warriors.

00:06:57.000 So the whole thing kind of got convoluted and bundled into the same thing.

00:07:01.000 Was that the Connor situation?

00:07:03.000 No, that was in Bellator.

00:07:04.000 But there was another one, it was UAE Warriors.

00:07:06.000 And I think someone had kept hold of a choke too long.

00:07:10.000 And then Goddard had separated the fight, and then he came over to Mark and he's trying to push Mark and stuff.

00:07:16.000 And when Dana actually made the statement about if you approach an official, you'll be gone, that was actually in reference to the other thing that happened, but it was linked in with me as well.

00:07:28.000 The thing that pissed me off is when I got back to the hotel or to the airport or whatever, Herbert posted this video, and he was like sitting at the airport, you know, trying to justify what had happened.

00:07:40.000 But it was just like, he was saying things like, if you think you're the smartest guy in the room, and just like poking at me, just constantly.

00:07:47.000 And I'm like, I've got a bunch of hours sitting on a plane on the way back to the UK now.

00:07:52.000 And you know what I'm like?

00:07:53.000 I'm pulling this apart and I'm like, did I step out of line?

00:07:56.000 Did I say something I shouldn't have said?

00:07:58.000 And I'm assessing it.

00:07:59.000 And then I'm going, no, hang on.

00:08:00.000 Hang on a minute.

00:08:01.000 Like, my intention is to protect that fighter that needed protecting, right?

00:08:05.000 His family are at home sitting watching that.

00:08:07.000 They don't want to see him getting smashed in the face unnecessarily.

00:08:10.000 They know the risks of the job already.

00:08:14.000 So, I kind of sat on the plane on the way home and I'm like, how am I going to deal with this?

00:08:19.000 So, I dealt with it the way that I would always do.

00:08:21.000 I get all the facts on the table.

00:08:23.000 I try and organize my response.

00:08:25.000 And what I did was I created a video that I put up on YouTube, which the UFC actually contacted YouTube and had them delete off the back end.

00:08:35.000 And it was about an hour and a quarter long.

00:08:37.000 It was a decent chunk of information.

00:08:40.000 But I went through what had happened on the night, other circumstances where Herbert maybe not pulled the trigger quick enough, or times when he'd been indecisive, like Cowboy Masvidal.

00:08:50.000 Not sure whether you remember that one.

00:08:52.000 Cowboy went down at the end of the first round and they actually helped him back to his stool and sat him on the stool.

00:08:58.000 And Greg Jackson's going, Hey, Cowboy, you're okay.

00:09:01.000 Then he went out and got TKO'd at the start of the second round.

00:09:01.000 Everything's fine.

00:09:05.000 But if you remember that, Herb jumps in and waves the fight off at the end of the round.

00:09:09.000 And then decides to restart it in the second.

00:09:12.000 So I pointed out a bunch of things where he could have maybe done a better job.

00:09:17.000 I also gave him the benefit of the doubt in like the Robbie Lawler Ben Askram fight, where to me that wasn't stopped early.

00:09:24.000 You could see Robbie Lawler's arm fall for a second.

00:09:27.000 I think he went out for a split second in that moment.

00:09:28.000 And then came back.

00:09:29.000 Yeah.

00:09:29.000 And then complained about it.

00:09:30.000 So in that moment, hard to tell.

00:09:32.000 Very hard to tell.

00:09:33.000 But you can see Herb in that situation going, oh man, I'm sorry.

00:09:36.000 I thought you were out.

00:09:38.000 Like those things are going to happen.

00:09:40.000 I would always rather the fighter be protected than just kind of leave it.

00:09:43.000 For the benefit of the doubt, and just let them take it.

00:09:45.000 It's different with a submission, of course.

00:09:48.000 But the point is, I was trying to create something that was quite balanced.

00:09:52.000 And the other thing, as well, was you know, it was Fight Island.

00:09:56.000 Like, we're getting tested every other day.

00:09:58.000 Like, we're quarantined in our rooms sometimes.

00:10:01.000 We were doing fights at weird hours of the day.

00:10:04.000 So people were kind of foggy and fatigued.

00:10:06.000 And it was just a weird environment.

00:10:08.000 So I gave Herb and all the officials the benefit of the doubt that, you know, you're not going to be at 100% at four o'clock in the morning.

00:10:16.000 But it was the way they responded to me which pissed me off.

00:10:19.000 And then the way that the UFC kind of pulled all their support for me.

00:10:24.000 And they contacted me and they said, hey, we're going to organize a conversation with you and whoever.

00:10:30.000 And I said, I just want to let you know I've got this video ready to go.

00:10:33.000 And I am going to post it because it vindicates what I did, in my opinion.

00:10:40.000 But it also offers some understanding of what Herb was trying to do and the job that he has and how difficult it is.

00:10:48.000 And unfortunately, I mean, it got a couple of hundred thousand views before it was taken down.

00:10:52.000 But it's just, it's still on the channel now.

00:10:54.000 If you look at it, it's just a little gray square with three dots, and there's just nothing on the back of it.

00:11:00.000 They literally went into my channel and took it away.

00:11:02.000 That's so weird that they could take down something that doesn't violate any laws or rules.

00:11:09.000 I mean, no, that's kind of weird.

00:11:11.000 I don't know whether they contacted YouTube and said, hey, you know, he's used some UFC footage.

00:11:15.000 Did you?

00:11:16.000 Yeah, I did.

00:11:16.000 But at the time, I had permission to use UFC footage.

00:11:19.000 They were allowing me to make war rooms and all kinds of stuff.

00:11:22.000 Because it only helps them.

00:11:23.000 That's it.

00:11:24.000 I mean, I was an ambassador for Europe as well as being a commentator.

00:11:27.000 So, my job in my mind was to spread the word of MMA, right?

00:11:30.000 I'm trying to educate everybody as much as I can.

00:11:33.000 And I could make a lot more content through my channel than I could rely on the UFC to make content.

00:11:38.000 So, I was just trying to churn extra stuff out to keep drawing attention to it.

00:11:43.000 So, they'd given me permission to use footage on my channel.

00:11:46.000 And I'd built a company off the back of this.

00:11:48.000 I'd built a company off the back of this.

00:11:50.000 I think you remember meeting those guys.

00:11:50.000 I'd employed my Raptors.

00:11:52.000 Mm hmm.

00:11:53.000 And all that was gone, you know?

00:11:55.000 And the thing is, it was like, I understand, I mean, the UFC are not going to fire me for shouting up to protect a fighter.

00:12:03.000 But I knew on that day my card was marked.

00:12:05.000 You know, I knew that my card was marked on that day because I was too stubborn.

00:12:11.000 I didn't wait for the UFC to tell me what I should have said and this and that.

00:12:15.000 I posted my video.

00:12:15.000 I wanted to clear my name and I wanted to back up the reason why I'd said that because it wasn't the first time I'd done it.

00:12:22.000 You know, it was the first time I'd done it in a quiet, empty arena.

00:12:25.000 But if you go back to.

00:12:26.000 I think it was Moscow with CB Dolloway, and he was fighting a guy called Murta Zaleev.

00:12:31.000 And for about a minute 15, he was just curled up in a ball on the floor, and he was just getting pounded.

00:12:36.000 He went from fetal position to completely belly down to fetal position on the other side in the space of that minute.

00:12:43.000 And at the end of the round, Herb just stood over him, and he's lying there like a corpse on the floor.

00:12:49.000 I'm like, this fight should have been stopped easy 30 seconds ago.

00:12:52.000 Even CB Dolloway came out and said that he didn't feel protected by it.

00:12:57.000 But the difference was that we've got 25,000 people in the arena, so you can't really hear me shouting, Stop the fight, in that scenario.

00:13:04.000 Right, right.

00:13:07.000 It's just an awkward situation because I like Herb.

00:13:10.000 I would never have him referee my wife.

00:13:11.000 I always make a request to make sure that he doesn't.

00:13:14.000 But that's more because of the history between me and him.

00:13:16.000 I don't want to put him in a position where I'm going to get angry at him again for not doing his job.

00:13:20.000 Right, you know?

00:13:23.000 But I was disappointed that the UFC kind of pulled all support for me and.

00:13:28.000 Backed her in that situation.

00:13:30.000 Was there a situation backstage where you got into it with someone else from the staff?

00:13:35.000 Because that's what I had heard that someone said something to you and you yelled at someone backstage.

00:13:40.000 I did, yeah, I did.

00:13:42.000 But in the scenario, I just left the ESPN desk, and this is like five o'clock in the morning or something now after the broadcast, and I walked backstage.

00:13:51.000 I won't mention his name.

00:13:52.000 I love him.

00:13:53.000 He's a lovely guy.

00:13:54.000 But everyone's kind of ragged and tired in Fight Island.

00:13:56.000 You know what I mean?

00:13:57.000 And as I'm walking back to my dressing room, he came flying at me.

00:14:01.000 And he's like, hey, you can't ever approach an official, and blah, blah, blah. 0.94

00:14:04.000 I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a fucking minute. 0.86

00:14:07.000 And like, just the intensity that he came at me with just spiked my adrenaline again. 0.97

00:14:12.000 And I'm already kind of like, I'm heightened because the flights have just ended.

00:14:16.000 You know what it's like with adrenaline?

00:14:17.000 I'm like, three days, I'm like excitedly shaking after a good event.

00:14:21.000 And it was just the energy that he came at me with just pushed my energy up.

00:14:26.000 So then we had this back and forth where I'm like, hey, you need to get your facts right.

00:14:30.000 He approached me, and blah, blah, blah.

00:14:32.000 And I don't know whether that information had already been passed on to people.

00:14:36.000 Above him to say, Dan Hardy's just approached Herb Dean after the fight, when in actuality that just never happened.

00:14:42.000 And because that was the perspective that the guys in the truck had got, I automatically felt like I'm going to get in trouble here.

00:14:50.000 Like I've done something really wrong.

00:14:51.000 Right.

00:14:52.000 You know?

00:14:52.000 And I mean, the thing is, it's like, I've been working with that man for a long time, the guy backstage I'm talking about.

00:15:02.000 I love him.

00:15:02.000 He's a lovely guy.

00:15:03.000 If I saw him now, we'd have a good conversation.

00:15:03.000 We've always got on.

00:15:06.000 It was just, you know, it's like a heightened experience, and just the energy that he came at me with, especially with the misinformation of me now, you know, being the guy that took my headset off and marched over to the door to wait for Herb as he walked out.

00:15:19.000 Right, right.

00:15:19.000 I just didn't do that.

00:15:20.000 Like, I'm there to do my job.

00:15:22.000 But ultimately, above my job and above everything, UFC and everything included, I'm there to make sure that the MMA is stable and the fighters are safe.

00:15:31.000 Right.

00:15:32.000 Because that's my instinct, you know.

00:15:34.000 Everybody that gets in that cage is someone's son or daughter or father or brother.

00:15:38.000 You know what I mean?

00:15:39.000 Mm hmm.

00:15:40.000 And in those moments, the people in the cage go from being the best fighters in the world to a very, very human victim that is not being protected by the referee.

00:15:50.000 And from a fighter's perspective, I want to feel that warlike feeling when I step in the cage.

00:15:57.000 I want to feel like I can throw everything at my opponent.

00:16:00.000 And I also want to feel safe that they can throw everything at me, right?

00:16:04.000 I don't want to have in my mind, oh, hang on, do I need to pull this punch because the referee's not going to jump in?

00:16:09.000 Like, there are three people in there, and one person's got the job to protect both of us.

00:16:13.000 Neither of us have a responsibility to protect each other.

00:16:16.000 We don't have a responsibility to pull a punch after a knockdown, we don't have a responsibility to stop when the bell rings, right?

00:16:24.000 Who was the referee with Anderson Silva and Michael Bisping?

00:16:28.000 Oh, that's a good question.

00:16:29.000 Because that was a weird one, right?

00:16:31.000 That fight should have been over.

00:16:33.000 Anderson hits him with a flying knee and then hops on top of the cage, and they didn't stop the fight.

00:16:33.000 Yeah.

00:16:39.000 Was that Herb?

00:16:40.000 It might have been.

00:16:41.000 It might have been.

00:16:42.000 Look, the thing is, can you find that out, Chambie, please?

00:16:44.000 Herb's refereed me a bunch of times, and I like Herb.

00:16:46.000 But that obviously was Anderson's beef.

00:16:49.000 That was Anderson's issue.

00:16:50.000 Anderson should have followed up until the referee stops.

00:16:53.000 Absolutely.

00:16:54.000 But.

00:16:55.000 You could have easily said this fight's over. 0.99

00:16:58.000 I mean, yep, that's her. 1.00

00:17:01.000 That's a crazy situation.

00:17:03.000 So, Michael, I think, had lost his mouthpiece.

00:17:06.000 Yes, he did.

00:17:06.000 And this is also when Michael was blind in his right eye, right?

00:17:11.000 So, you have to take this into consideration.

00:17:13.000 So, Michael loses his mouthpiece, and at some point in time, he points like that he wants his mouthpiece back.

00:17:22.000 And look at the time.

00:17:23.000 We're into the last 20 seconds.

00:17:24.000 Right.

00:17:25.000 And it's a beautiful knee that Anderson lands as well.

00:17:28.000 So he's got his mouthpiece.

00:17:36.000 That's you, buddy.

00:17:37.000 Uh huh.

00:17:38.000 One of my favorite fights to have called.

00:17:40.000 Bang.

00:17:44.000 Right on the bell.

00:17:51.000 Okay, the fight's not over.

00:17:52.000 He's saying the fight's not over.

00:17:54.000 But in this situation, that actually makes sense because he was still conscious and he was still up and he had his hand down.

00:18:00.000 Yeah.

00:18:01.000 That was Anderson's fault.

00:18:02.000 Oh, for sure it was.

00:18:03.000 For sure it was.

00:18:04.000 And unfortunately for Anderson, he had the adrenaline dump of thinking he'd won the fight.

00:18:08.000 Got up on the cage, started.

00:18:09.000 Celebrate and then add another 10 minutes.

00:18:11.000 And this is where Michael Bisbing is just a gangster.

00:18:14.000 He's pointing to his mouthpiece and he's communicating with Herb, but Herb didn't stop the fight.

00:18:22.000 I mean, the thing is, there's seconds left.

00:18:25.000 Anderson Silver's got no responsibility to pull any punches. 0.98

00:18:28.000 It was a perfect fucking formula, wasn't it? 0.98

00:18:30.000 God, he was a master in his prime. 0.99

00:18:32.000 And this is post leg break, too.

00:18:35.000 This wasn't even prime Anderson.

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00:19:45.000 Still, one of the best fights I've ever called.

00:19:46.000 This and Max Holloway, Calvin Cater, one of the best fights I've ever called.

00:19:50.000 It was a privilege to be sat cageside for it.

00:19:52.000 But, like, Bisping's, you know, coming out now with 10 minutes left and stamps his authority on this fight, which was very, very impressive.

00:20:01.000 But it was just, this was just a messy situation.

00:20:03.000 And I kind of didn't really mind this because of the circumstance that had played out.

00:20:07.000 I mean, Herb was very clear in him saying I didn't stop the fight.

00:20:10.000 But then, if you remember the Cowboy Cerrone.

00:20:10.000 Right, right, right.

00:20:15.000 Mazvidal fight.

00:20:16.000 I do remember that one.

00:20:17.000 That was different.

00:20:19.000 And Herb's bad habit at the end of the round, if there's an engagement, he steps in and he waves his arm.

00:20:25.000 That's a signal the fight's off.

00:20:27.000 You don't wave off the round, you wave off the fight.

00:20:31.000 So at the end of the round, the referee's job is to get in between the fighters.

00:20:38.000 Cowboy was on the floor, Mazvidal was already wandering off.

00:20:41.000 I mean, this is like, and watch this.

00:20:44.000 So this is the problem, right?

00:20:45.000 You have to leave the fighter to get back to their stool.

00:20:48.000 You can't touch him.

00:20:49.000 Herb's holding him up there.

00:20:50.000 Right?

00:20:51.000 And then they come over, they put the stool down.

00:20:54.000 He sits down, and then Greg Jackson's saying, Hey, cowboy, it's okay.

00:20:58.000 This always happens to us.

00:21:00.000 Like he's just not conscious for this whole minute.

00:21:03.000 He goes back out and gets TKO'd almost immediately afterwards.

00:21:07.000 But Herb has a habit of waving the fight off.

00:21:10.000 Yeah, but that didn't look like he was waving the fight off.

00:21:12.000 That looked like he was signaling the end of the round.

00:21:15.000 He didn't do this.

00:21:16.000 Potentially, but then if you've got one arm in between and you wave him with the other one, you know, I just don't, you don't need to, you don't wave at the end of the round.

00:21:23.000 I think by his hand movements there, I don't think that qualifies.

00:21:27.000 I think he's saying, stop, stop, stop.

00:21:30.000 I think he's putting his hands out.

00:21:33.000 He's got a hand on and a hand out.

00:21:35.000 No, the other hand's waving.

00:21:36.000 That right hand's waving.

00:21:38.000 Yeah, but I think he's.

00:21:40.000 Well, hmm.

00:21:41.000 Yeah.

00:21:42.000 It's just an unnecessary motion.

00:21:44.000 And I'm okay with the debate about it.

00:21:45.000 Like, doing the breakdown of the Jai Herbert finish, I learned something really important, which I don't know is.

00:21:51.000 I've asked lots of referees, and most of them have not heard about it.

00:21:54.000 Fencing response, right?

00:21:56.000 Have you heard of this?

00:21:57.000 No.

00:21:57.000 It's a concussion symptom.

00:21:59.000 And it's a weird thing.

00:22:00.000 In a newborn baby, when you turn their head to the side, their arms come up like a boxer.

00:22:04.000 Really?

00:22:05.000 Right?

00:22:05.000 It's a weird thing.

00:22:06.000 I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it's something that happens when people get concussion.

00:22:10.000 Like you will have seen this before in K1.

00:22:12.000 There was a really famous one where a guy gets kicked in the head, and as he's going down, you see it in football a lot.

00:22:17.000 Yes, you see it in football a lot.

00:22:18.000 So there's one with Marlon Murat.

00:22:20.000 Yeah, yeah, look.

00:22:21.000 See, Armstrong has seen that.

00:22:23.000 Yeah, you've seen a lot of that.

00:22:25.000 You want the judges, you want the referees to know about fencing response, to be able to recognize all of the different tells of a concussion, right?

00:22:34.000 So, and I didn't know about fencing response until after the Jai Herbert fight, but I had in my video that was taken down, I had lots and lots of different.

00:22:42.000 Versions of fencing response from K1 to football to rugby, all kinds of stuff.

00:22:47.000 It's a tell of concussion, right?

00:22:49.000 Like consciousness is not removed immediately with every punch, is it?

00:22:53.000 Like you've got everything on a spectrum.

00:22:56.000 You're either completely conscious or completely unconscious, but the window in which the fight needs to be stopped is probably 5 or 10% towards the end of that spectrum, right?

00:23:05.000 The point where someone's unable to defend themselves or not intelligently defending themselves.

00:23:09.000 And it's very subjective.

00:23:11.000 It's very, very subjective.

00:23:12.000 The problem is like when a referee stops.

00:23:15.000 Too early, it's very frustrating.

00:23:17.000 And we have seen many instances.

00:23:19.000 And then we've also seen some instances where it looked like a fight could easily be stopped and the fighter comes back and wins.

00:23:26.000 Frankie Edgar, Gray Maynard.

00:23:28.000 What a, what, I mean, fights.

00:23:29.000 What great fights.

00:23:30.000 Crazy fights.

00:23:31.000 Yeah. 0.62

00:23:31.000 Crazy fights. 0.62

00:23:32.000 But in the one where Frankie won, where he KO'd him, that it looked like he was out before.

00:23:39.000 That was three times in the first round.

00:23:40.000 Oh my goodness.

00:23:41.000 I mean, Gray Maynard was a beast.

00:23:43.000 He was a big, strong, powerful wrestler, really big for 155.

00:23:47.000 And Frankie, Famously, did not cut weight.

00:23:51.000 Frankie was one of the rare guys that fought at 155 and essentially weighed like maybe 160, if that.

00:23:57.000 You know, and he was just fast.

00:23:59.000 And because of that, he was very durable.

00:24:01.000 And this is a thing that we need to. 0.98

00:24:03.000 I mean, I fucking hate weight cutting. 0.98

00:24:06.000 I hate it so bad. 0.99

00:24:07.000 I really do.

00:24:09.000 I think it's sanctioned cheating.

00:24:11.000 I think we should have figured out a way to eliminate it a long time ago.

00:24:14.000 But, you know, honestly, when I watch one FC, I don't think they've figured out a way to do it either.

00:24:19.000 Like, it's not.

00:24:20.000 It's almost like it's ingrained in the culture to the point where I don't know, other than like random USADA style weigh ins, you know what I mean?

00:24:32.000 Instead of a drug test, like, hey, Dan, get on the scale. 0.99

00:24:35.000 Oh, but I've been eating and I don't give a fuck. 1.00

00:24:37.000 Get on the scale. 0.99

00:24:38.000 What do you weigh?

00:24:39.000 You're fighting 155.

00:24:40.000 You weigh 190.

00:24:42.000 This is crazy.

00:24:43.000 Oh, no, I'm just four weeks into camp.

00:24:46.000 You know, the next five weeks, I really tighten up my diet. 1.00

00:24:48.000 Get the fuck out of here, bitch. 1.00

00:24:50.000 You're huge. 1.00

00:24:51.000 You're way too big for 155.

00:24:51.000 Yeah.

00:24:53.000 Yeah.

00:24:54.000 I mean, look at Anthony Johnson, you know, one of Rumble.

00:24:58.000 Like, he was 214 on the night when we fought.

00:25:00.000 We both weighed in at 171.

00:25:01.000 He was 214.

00:25:03.000 That was before the days of IVs, you know?

00:25:05.000 Yeah.

00:25:06.000 But, like, you have to wonder what it does to people, you know?

00:25:09.000 Oh, it destroys you.

00:25:10.000 It probably had some sort of an impact on his health problems that he had because he was an enormous guy.

00:25:15.000 I ran into him one time at a lobby at the hotel, and I go, How much do you weigh?

00:25:23.000 And he goes, 230. 0.99

00:25:24.000 I'm like, Bro, get the fuck out of here. 0.99

00:25:25.000 That's crazy. 0.99

00:25:27.000 You're going to lose 60 pounds?

00:25:30.000 6-0 is nuts.

00:25:33.000 And he was 230, built like a house. 1.00

00:25:36.000 I mean, he was a fucking stacked dude. 0.99

00:25:39.000 It was crazy. 0.98

00:25:40.000 And unfortunately, those big muscular guys can cut more weight because muscle is more water.

00:25:46.000 Yeah.

00:25:47.000 But it's horrible.

00:25:48.000 Like, I mean, look, Izzy landed a perfect punch on Pereira, but I feel like Pereira at middleweight just could not take the same kind of shots that Pereira can take at light heavyweight. 0.99

00:26:02.000 It's just, you're dehydrating the shit out of yourself.

00:26:05.000 He would weigh in 40 pounds more than he weighed, like on Fight Night. 0.99

00:26:09.000 Fight Night, he would be 40 pounds heavier.

00:26:11.000 That's crazy, isn't it?

00:26:12.000 I think he was 41.

00:26:13.000 I think he was 226.

00:26:15.000 Yeah.

00:26:15.000 Which is bananas.

00:26:17.000 That's just bananas.

00:26:18.000 I mean, even if I think about it, I was getting up to like 186, 188.

00:26:24.000 And that felt like a lot for me, cutting down to 170.

00:26:27.000 Yeah.

00:26:27.000 I mean, at the time, I was fairly big for the weight class, you know what I mean?

00:26:31.000 Compared to some of the other guys around, but it just didn't work for me.

00:26:34.000 You know what I mean?

00:26:35.000 Like, I invested too much in getting bigger and stronger and.

00:26:38.000 Because when I was fighting before the UFC, I mean, I was fighting 10, 12 times a year, and I needed to stay close to weight.

00:26:46.000 So I was always within about 10 pounds.

00:26:48.000 There were very few fights before the UFC that I cut a lot of weight.

00:26:52.000 And then when I was fighting out in Japan, because I couldn't use sauna, I just didn't want to put myself in a position where I was having to trash bag and sweat out on the streets of Tokyo.

00:27:02.000 So my weight was low.

00:27:03.000 Why couldn't you use sauna in Japan?

00:27:04.000 Because of my tattoos.

00:27:06.000 Isn't that crazy?

00:27:07.000 I got kicked out of a gym in Japan.

00:27:09.000 Did you really?

00:27:09.000 Yeah, I had to go back up to my room and put a long sleeve shirt on.

00:27:12.000 That's crazy.

00:27:13.000 I said, nah, it's the gym and the hotel.

00:27:15.000 I'm like, I'm staying here.

00:27:16.000 Yeah.

00:27:17.000 They said, no, you can't have exposed tattoos.

00:27:19.000 I'm like, oh my God, that's so wild.

00:27:21.000 Do you have a Yakuza gym that I could go to?

00:27:23.000 Yeah.

00:27:25.000 I've got too many fingers.

00:27:25.000 That's what it is.

00:27:27.000 It's all about Yakuza tattoos.

00:27:29.000 I'm like, look at me.

00:27:29.000 Yeah.

00:27:30.000 Do you think I'm a Yakuza?

00:27:31.000 I know, right.

00:27:32.000 It's crazy.

00:27:32.000 I mean, I think it's changed a bit now, but this is.

00:27:34.000 I don't know, man.

00:27:35.000 This was not that long ago.

00:27:36.000 I mean, I guess it was.

00:27:37.000 Maybe it was 15 years ago.

00:27:39.000 When was the last time the UFC was in Tokyo?

00:27:41.000 I'm not sure.

00:27:42.000 I think it was more than 15 years ago, I believe.

00:27:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:27:46.000 I want to say it was like, shit. 1.00

00:27:49.000 It might have been like 2009 or something like that. 0.99

00:27:51.000 Almost 2007, I was out there fighting for Cage Force.

00:27:55.000 Yeah.

00:27:57.000 Yeah. 0.54

00:27:57.000 Crazy. 0.54

00:27:58.000 I mean, that was back when they didn't have those options, like those small portable sauna options that they have now.

00:28:04.000 Like, there's some of them, they have these hot boxes where it's like they have a little tiny heater in there and you zip it up and you're in this little thing and you can kind of carry it with you on the road and you can check it with your bags.

00:28:14.000 The blankets are really good.

00:28:14.000 Yeah.

00:28:15.000 Veronica used that for her last couple of cuts.

00:28:17.000 They're really good.

00:28:18.000 That was great.

00:28:18.000 But people use hot baths now.

00:28:20.000 No one was hot bathing in my day.

00:28:21.000 Like, if you were sweating, you were working out, you were running, you were in a sauna.

00:28:21.000 Right.

00:28:26.000 They were the only ways people were cutting weight.

00:28:28.000 Hot bathing came in kind of towards the end of my career.

00:28:31.000 What's better?

00:28:33.000 I mean, for me, I never used the hot baths.

00:28:33.000 I don't know.

00:28:35.000 I tried it one time, I didn't really like it.

00:28:37.000 And that's partly a psychological thing, I think, because for me, the hot bath was the reward after the fight.

00:28:43.000 You know?

00:28:44.000 Interesting.

00:28:45.000 I didn't want to feel like I was relaxing the day before the fight.

00:28:45.000 Right.

00:28:48.000 I was cold showered.

00:28:49.000 I wanted to feel like a feral animal, to be honest.

00:28:51.000 Right.

00:28:51.000 You know, so I would.

00:28:52.000 I would cut weight on my own.

00:28:54.000 I would, like, it was a process of me preparing for the fight.

00:28:57.000 I always imagined it like it's like, you know, you grab your shield and your spear and it's the march to the battlefield.

00:29:03.000 You know, you don't walk out of your tent and you're on the battlefield.

00:29:06.000 There's a process of getting there.

00:29:08.000 And the weight cut for me was a part of that.

00:29:10.000 It was the suffering to get to the fight.

00:29:13.000 So, like, for me, it was hot sauna, cold shower, you know, treadmill pads if I needed it.

00:29:20.000 I mean, Tokyo, I didn't even have a treadmill.

00:29:22.000 I just put trash bags on, cut the corners off.

00:29:25.000 The old school tie boxing weigh.

00:29:26.000 How much did you weigh before that fight?

00:29:28.000 I cut seven pounds.

00:29:31.000 And that was one of the reasons why I changed the way that I was doing it because I should have stopped that guy in the first round and I didn't have the power to it.

00:29:38.000 And that was his last fight.

00:29:40.000 He passed out after the fight, went to the hospital, he had a bleed on his brain.

00:29:44.000 And he retired completely after that.

00:29:48.000 His name was Daiso Ishige.

00:29:48.000 Who was that?

00:29:50.000 Oh, I remember him.

00:29:51.000 Yeah, he was the king of pancreas.

00:29:53.000 He was the favorite to win the Cage Force tournament, and I pulled him in the first round.

00:29:58.000 And I went out there just with the intention of doing a normal weight cut, you know, six or seven pounds, exactly what I would normally do.

00:30:05.000 I had a little bit more to cut because of the flight.

00:30:07.000 But I honestly, hand on heart, believe that if I'd either not cut the weight or I'd cut the weight in a better way and rehydrated, I would have been able to stop him and he wouldn't have had the brain damage that he ended up with.

00:30:21.000 Because, like, I look back to that third round and I just didn't have the power.

00:30:21.000 You know?

00:30:25.000 It was like a bad dream where I'm just punching him and he's just. 0.98

00:30:28.000 Bouncing around, he's a bloody guy. 0.78

00:30:29.000 So he just took repeated sub concussive blows.

00:30:32.000 Way more than he needed to.

00:30:35.000 You know?

00:30:36.000 And I don't know whether he cut weight as well, but certainly the thing that played into the damage that was done to him was my weight cut.

00:30:42.000 You know?

00:30:43.000 That's crazy.

00:30:44.000 Isn't that crazy to think of?

00:30:45.000 I just didn't want to.

00:30:46.000 I mean, but again, like, I have no guilt associated with that because we knew what we were doing when we got in there, and I would not hold it against him if that had happened to me.

00:30:55.000 You know what I mean?

00:30:56.000 But in hindsight, pulling the whole thing apart.

00:30:59.000 Like, I could have been a better version of myself as a martial artist, and it would have actually probably saved him some of the damage that he ended up taking in the third.

00:31:06.000 My position is that the UFC, and I think MMA in general, PFL, all of them, we need more weight classes.

00:31:14.000 I don't think there's nearly enough weight classes.

00:31:16.000 I think the gaps are enormous. 1.00

00:31:18.000 I think the names are stupid. 0.99

00:31:20.000 It's very stupid to have Welterweight 170 when Welterweight has been with boxing at 147 forever for a hundred years. 0.99

00:31:30.000 And all of a sudden, the UFC comes along and decides welterweight is 170. 0.95

00:31:33.000 Like, why is it called welterweight then?

00:31:35.000 Yeah.

00:31:36.000 You know, imagine if you go to another country and you buy a hammer and it's a sandwich.

00:31:40.000 No, I wanted a hammer.

00:31:42.000 I need to build a house. 0.99

00:31:42.000 What the fuck is this? 0.99

00:31:43.000 It's like a totally different thing. 0.99

00:31:45.000 Like, why is it 170 welterweight?

00:31:47.000 Why not just call it the 170 pound division? 0.88

00:31:50.000 That's what wrestling does. 1.00

00:31:51.000 They just have divisions.

00:31:53.000 It doesn't need to be like a name. 0.87

00:31:56.000 The name seems silly.

00:31:58.000 That's a good point, actually.

00:31:59.000 I've not thought about that.

00:32:00.000 I've actually developed a A system of introducing weight classes over the next several years for the PFL.

00:32:06.000 I mean, obviously, the problem that we have is that some weight classes are just not filling out because the fighters are just not there, unfortunately.

00:32:12.000 You know?

00:32:12.000 Right.

00:32:13.000 But I also think that's a bit of a result of the monopolization and the kind of killing off of the grassroots of the sport because the sport's not growing like it was in my day.

00:32:23.000 You know what I mean?

00:32:24.000 It's very, very different now.

00:32:25.000 What do you think is the cause of that?

00:32:28.000 I think the control and the monopolization of the sport by the UFC, unfortunately.

00:32:32.000 How does that stop?

00:32:33.000 Small organizations.

00:32:34.000 Well, because anything that starts to gather some momentum, they buy them out.

00:32:38.000 They got rid of them.

00:32:40.000 Well, they certainly did buy out a bunch of organizations back in the day, right?

00:32:44.000 They bought out Strike Force.

00:32:45.000 They bought out Pride, but they sort of bought out Pride. 1.00

00:32:48.000 They got fucked. 1.00

00:32:49.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:32:49.000 Like they thought they were buying out Pride. 1.00

00:32:50.000 Do you know the whole deal behind that?

00:32:53.000 All the contracts are bad. 0.99

00:32:55.000 Yeah, they got a fucking DVD library. 1.00

00:32:55.000 Is that right? 1.00

00:32:58.000 Look, over time, I'm sure it's been worth it, right?

00:33:01.000 But I believe they paid $60 million for Pride.

00:33:04.000 I might be wrong about that number, but that's what I recall.

00:33:07.000 And they didn't have any contracts. 0.98

00:33:09.000 Like, you know, the contracts were all fucked up. 0.96

00:33:13.000 So, like, they thought they were going to get Fedor. 0.96

00:33:15.000 They thought they were going to get everybody.

00:33:16.000 And so they got a lot of the guys to come over and sign new contracts with the UFC, like Krokop and Noguera and a bunch of other people.

00:33:23.000 But I don't think they got nearly what they thought they were getting.

00:33:28.000 Yeah, that's interesting.

00:33:29.000 I mean, obviously, you know, I love the UFC and I've always held Dana and the UFC and what they've created for us in very, very high regard.

00:33:38.000 But there has, in my opinion, we've passed the tipping point now where now we're starting to see some of the negative effects of them kind of locking down everything.

00:33:47.000 Because, like, there are certain organizations that are connected with the UFC and they're enabled by the UFC through Fight Pass, and then they become almost like the Feeder like LFA, exactly right.

00:33:57.000 But then a lot of these, a lot of those shows are now starting to get dropped off of Fight Pass, right?

00:34:01.000 And the reason for that is because Contender Series is replacing them.

00:34:05.000 So, what shows have been dropped off Fight Pass?

00:34:06.000 I think LFA's just been dropped, hasn't it?

00:34:08.000 Oh, has it been?

00:34:08.000 I think so.

00:34:09.000 I mean, Invicta was on there a long time ago.

00:34:11.000 I think they moved away themselves, but like there are Aries was dropped a period, you know.

00:34:15.000 My wife's a commentator on Aries, they were dropped a while ago.

00:34:18.000 What was Aries?

00:34:19.000 It's the French promotion, okay.

00:34:21.000 Aris, I always say it wrong, Aris is the and they were dropped from Fight Pass, yeah, yeah.

00:34:25.000 I think they've been picked up again now, but you know, but.

00:34:29.000 This is my thinking behind it, right?

00:34:32.000 And I remember back in the day when I was fighting on cage warriors in the UK and the UFC were coming over once or twice, it started to kill off all the other shows because everyone was like, I'll just save my money, I'll wait for the UFC to come.

00:34:44.000 Before the UFC came over and staked a claim in the UK, we had a lot of shows that were kind of popping up on weekends.

00:34:51.000 I was up and down the country and across Europe all the time.

00:34:55.000 But then when we started having two or three UFC events a year, a lot of the smaller shows just.

00:35:00.000 Just dropped off, died off.

00:35:02.000 Do you think so?

00:35:03.000 You're saying save your money, meaning as an audience member?

00:35:07.000 Yeah.

00:35:08.000 Yeah, but you can't fault the UFC for that.

00:35:10.000 Oh, no, absolutely not.

00:35:11.000 And look, and what they did when the UFC landed in Europe, they legitimized the sport.

00:35:16.000 And then, you know, so the perspective started to change very quickly.

00:35:20.000 Like when I was doing, when I had my title fight in 2010, I would say at least half of the interviews that I did was trying to justify the sport and why I was allowed to do what I did, right?

00:35:30.000 That was 2010.

00:35:31.000 So, this is back when everybody thought it was human cockfighting still.

00:35:34.000 And I was getting into debates with journalists about the human cockfighting thing and trying to.

00:35:39.000 Ew.

00:35:40.000 Those debates are so ew.

00:35:40.000 I know.

00:35:42.000 But, like, and imagine trying to, like, attach power slap onto the side of UFC when it was then.

00:35:47.000 It would have just buried us, you know?

00:35:49.000 I do not like power slap.

00:35:50.000 I hate it.

00:35:51.000 I hate it. 0.98

00:35:51.000 I do not like it. 0.98

00:35:52.000 And the thing is, and I'm very much, you know, as long as you're not hurting anybody else or you're agreeing to power slap for your ability to power slap each other.

00:36:02.000 Just a second, and I've watched a bunch of clips.

00:36:04.000 I've watched a bunch of people get flatlined and bounce their head off the podium and fall backwards.

00:36:09.000 And I don't like it.

00:36:11.000 My whole thing about martial arts is it's human chess, it's high level problem solving.

00:36:18.000 It's you're, you know, you're working up to a moment and you're doing your very best to not get hit and hit them.

00:36:25.000 And a flawless performance.

00:36:27.000 Like, it's one of the things that was most impressive about Hamzat during his first few UFC fights.

00:36:33.000 I think he fought like three or four fights where he took like.

00:36:37.000 Three punches?

00:36:38.000 Yeah, Reese McKee, John Phillips.

00:36:39.000 I can't remember the other one.

00:36:40.000 I called a couple of those.

00:36:41.000 Gerald Mearshardt, he took nothing.

00:36:43.000 That was one punch.

00:36:44.000 One punch.

00:36:44.000 That was flatlined to one punch.

00:36:47.000 I mean, that was the craziest thing about him.

00:36:49.000 It's like, look at this guy.

00:36:50.000 He's not even getting hit.

00:36:51.000 Like, this is nuts.

00:36:52.000 And he would grab guys, they'd be helpless.

00:36:55.000 I like skill.

00:36:57.000 There's no skill in having a big hand and a fat face.

00:37:03.000 And I don't even understand why you have chalk on your face.

00:37:06.000 It's a grip.

00:37:06.000 Or your hand.

00:37:07.000 Is that what it is?

00:37:07.000 I don't know.

00:37:08.000 Is it just to like the powder flies through the air?

00:37:11.000 And, you know, I don't get it.

00:37:13.000 Maybe dunk your head in water.

00:37:15.000 I don't know.

00:37:15.000 Hey, they used to do it in the Kung Fu movies, didn't they?

00:37:17.000 They used to put talc on people so when you hit them, you get a cloud of.

00:37:20.000 Did they do that?

00:37:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:22.000 And hitting the watermelons with the mallets to make the noises.

00:37:26.000 Again, like power slap can be its thing and exist just away from MMA, you know?

00:37:31.000 And what I hate to see is the likes of Herzog and Mark Smith and Forrest like catching these unconscious guys as they're falling.

00:37:38.000 It just attaches the sport that we've worked so hard to develop to something that is going to.

00:37:46.000 It doesn't injustice to the MMA fighters and how hard they work and how much of human chess MMA is.

00:37:51.000 Yeah, it's literally like taking. 0.87

00:37:56.000 What are those fucking smash em up derby racing events where they crash into each other? 0.95

00:38:02.000 Demolition derby. 0.97

00:38:03.000 It's like a Formula One driver being involved in Demolition Derby.

00:38:03.000 Yeah.

00:38:08.000 Like, that's fucking crazy. 0.98

00:38:09.000 There's actually a reason for the chalk so that they can see where the hit was made. 0.98

00:38:14.000 Oh, it's an indication of where the petition strike lands.

00:38:18.000 Well, can't you see that, though?

00:38:19.000 They're not like moving at the speed of light.

00:38:21.000 They're also not allowed to have excessive chalk and they can't use water.

00:38:24.000 There's no excessive water.

00:38:25.000 As you said, put your head in water.

00:38:26.000 They're not allowed to do it.

00:38:28.000 They have rules.

00:38:29.000 The idea they have rules is so crazy.

00:38:33.000 It's so crazy.

00:38:34.000 But it is a reflection of how solid the UFC is right now, right?

00:38:38.000 Because you go back to 2010, they couldn't have done that without having a real negative effect on the sport.

00:38:43.000 I think it has a negative effect on sport now.

00:38:45.000 I agree with you.

00:38:46.000 I just think it's not going to.

00:38:47.000 The UFC is so powerful and so strong now that they can even take a liberty and advertise Power Slap off the back of it and get away with it.

00:38:54.000 It's that, and then it's also we're in the TikTok era where it's just really all about clips.

00:38:59.000 I mean, is Power Slap.

00:39:00.000 Does it air anywhere?

00:39:02.000 Because it aired on television for a while.

00:39:05.000 Didn't they force it into the Paramount deal in some way?

00:39:07.000 Did they?

00:39:08.000 I don't know.

00:39:10.000 I think it's much more digestible in these very short clips.

00:39:15.000 You know, I don't think there's a person like, there's some fucking hardcore MMA fans who can tell you about guys that are competing in the amateurs and tough enough and they're making their way to the UFC and they're fighting in the LFA.

00:39:30.000 There's guys that are coming in their debuts and you can watch YouTube videos of guys. 0.90

00:39:33.000 Breaking down these guys' skill sets, and you never even heard of these cats.

00:39:37.000 Guys who are fighting in Russia, guys who are fighting in Brazil, and there's no power slap hardcore fans.

00:39:44.000 There's no like this guy, you gotta see him slap, you gotta see him take a slap, you gotta see the way she stares down her opponent before she gets slapped.

00:39:51.000 Like, yeah, it's not the same, man.

00:39:54.000 It's not, I mean, you can watch it, you could do it.

00:39:57.000 I don't have a problem with it.

00:39:58.000 This is America, I believe in freedom, but don't do it.

00:40:02.000 That's what I'd say.

00:40:03.000 I'd say, don't do it.

00:40:03.000 You come to me, yeah, don't do it as a recommendation, yeah, do it right?

00:40:07.000 Like, don't like, you know.

00:40:08.000 Whatever you would recommend.

00:40:09.000 But like. 0.77

00:40:10.000 Well, I'd also say don't do jackass. 0.83

00:40:12.000 And yeah, I've had those guys on my show all the time. 0.94

00:40:14.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:40:15.000 Every time I talk to Steve, I'm like, fucking do it, man. 1.00

00:40:18.000 He's a special type, man. 0.99

00:40:18.000 Why are you doing that? 0.99

00:40:19.000 He's a special type.

00:40:20.000 Yeah.

00:40:21.000 Johnny Knoxville told me he's been knocked out 16 times out cold.

00:40:24.000 I'm like, that's way too many.

00:40:27.000 That's way too many.

00:40:29.000 That's nuts.

00:40:30.000 Absolutely.

00:40:31.000 I mean, you have zero fights on your record.

00:40:33.000 I mean, KO'd 16 times.

00:40:36.000 That's real bad.

00:40:37.000 Hey, he's got well paid out of it, though.

00:40:38.000 He's, you know.

00:40:39.000 Yeah.

00:40:40.000 You find someone else that got knocked out 16 times and, uh, Yeah, right.

00:40:43.000 That's a good point.

00:40:44.000 How much did they make from it?

00:40:45.000 That's a good point.

00:40:46.000 I mean, that's the other thing with these power slap guys, they're making pocket money.

00:40:46.000 Yeah.

00:40:51.000 How much did they make?

00:40:52.000 I don't know.

00:40:53.000 Three and three?

00:40:54.000 Five and five?

00:40:55.000 Three?

00:40:55.000 Yeah.

00:40:56.000 I was chatting to someone in Vegas, and she didn't want to do it, but she was like, I don't have a choice.

00:41:01.000 I can't get MMA fights.

00:41:03.000 Wow. 1.00

00:41:03.000 You know, she just couldn't get MMA fights. 1.00

00:41:05.000 She was too big for most of the weight classes. 1.00

00:41:08.000 You know? 0.99

00:41:08.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

00:41:09.000 That's a problem.

00:41:10.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:41:11.000 Look at poor Kayla.

00:41:13.000 Yeah.

00:41:14.000 I just got to make 135.

00:41:15.000 Every time I see her in between fights, I'm like, how?

00:41:17.000 How do you get to 135?

00:41:19.000 You're as big as me.

00:41:20.000 This is crazy.

00:41:21.000 Yeah, I saw her the other week in Pittsburgh, and she's huge. 0.99

00:41:21.000 Crazy. 0.99

00:41:26.000 She's gigantic. 1.00

00:41:27.000 Yeah, she's got phenomenal genetics. 1.00

00:41:29.000 Yeah, she's got that neck scar. 0.94

00:41:30.000 Yeah, she got an artificial disc, which is really interesting that they could do that now.

00:41:35.000 And guys go, look, Altramane did it and came back better than ever.

00:41:38.000 I mean, everybody was so upset at him the way he won the title with Piotr Jan, but he had a legitimate neck issue going into that fight, and that illegal knee that he took to the head really did fuck him up.

00:41:51.000 And then he went and got an artificial disc put in his neck.

00:41:54.000 And then came back and dominated in the rematch.

00:41:57.000 And then, did you see him in his last fight?

00:41:59.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:42:00.000 Fucking dude, man. 1.00

00:42:02.000 That guy has the best back control in the game. 1.00

00:42:05.000 His back control is so elite.

00:42:08.000 It's really incredible because he gets a hold of your back, man.

00:42:11.000 It's like, my God.

00:42:13.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:42:14.000 See that?

00:42:15.000 And I don't mean to keep picking on officials, but that is another situation where I actually feel quite bad for Aljo that he had to put on that performance and damage his brand in such a way because he didn't want to continue fighting.

00:42:26.000 Right.

00:42:27.000 Right?

00:42:28.000 And the officials are put in a circumstance where they don't have the confidence to just go, no, hang on a minute.

00:42:33.000 That was bad.

00:42:34.000 Fight's done.

00:42:34.000 Fight's over.

00:42:35.000 Right, right, right.

00:42:36.000 Well, you want to give a guy the opportunity to fight still.

00:42:39.000 So you don't.

00:42:40.000 This is the thing about damage.

00:42:42.000 You don't know looking.

00:42:44.000 Some guys can take a shot like that and then they bounce back and they're fine.

00:42:48.000 Bisping came back and won that fight after that flying knee.

00:42:48.000 Look, Bisping.

00:42:51.000 You know, and you really got to kind of like let the fighter, if the fighter's conscious, you got to let them decide whether or not they can.

00:42:59.000 Because you don't know.

00:43:00.000 It's not possible to tell by looking at someone what kind of damage they've got, especially algae with the neck.

00:43:08.000 Neck situations are so bad, man.

00:43:10.000 But the crazy thing is that with these artificial discs now, like Weidman got one.

00:43:16.000 There's quite a few guys that have gotten artificial discs in their neck now.

00:43:21.000 And then they go back to finding, which is crazy.

00:43:23.000 I wonder how that changes the way that the head twists.

00:43:26.000 One thing I noticed on Joel Romero, whose head just doesn't twist, but his neck's fused, right?

00:43:26.000 I don't know.

00:43:32.000 His neck is fused to the base of his skull.

00:43:35.000 So, how do you turn his head to cause concussion?

00:43:39.000 I don't know.

00:43:39.000 Well, there's a good argument that it makes him more durable.

00:43:42.000 Do you remember when Derek Brunson head kicked him?

00:43:44.000 Yeah.

00:43:45.000 He hit him with a neck kick, like right here.

00:43:47.000 He didn't even budge because you're hitting a steel bar.

00:43:51.000 So then think didn't Tiger Woods have some kind of eye surgery?

00:43:54.000 So his eye was 2010.

00:43:56.000 So he has better depth perception for golf.

00:43:59.000 Did he?

00:43:59.000 I'm pretty sure he did.

00:44:01.000 Really?

00:44:01.000 Yeah, I'm sure he had something done to his eyes.

00:44:03.000 Put that into our sponsor.

00:44:04.000 Perplexity, Jamie.

00:44:08.000 What did they do?

00:44:09.000 Did he do that?

00:44:10.000 He got laced.

00:44:11.000 So, did he have bad eyes and he got them better?

00:44:13.000 Or did he have good eyes and said, What can you do? 0.99

00:44:17.000 Can you make me have fucking superhuman eyes? 0.94

00:44:21.000 To correct nearsightedness, it improved him to 2015 vision. 0.99

00:44:24.000 Okay.

00:44:24.000 2015.

00:44:25.000 So, he wasn't improved to 2020.

00:44:27.000 The problem with that is with these surgeries, if you have macular degeneration and it continues to progress, you are going to need it again.

00:44:36.000 Mm hmm.

00:44:37.000 Or it's going to get worse.

00:44:38.000 Like, Ari Shafir got LASIK and he's like, oh, it's amazing.

00:44:41.000 I have 20 20 vision because he had terrible vision before. 0.98

00:44:44.000 And then it started going to shit after a while because it just kept deteriorating. 1.00

00:44:49.000 And now his eyes suck. 1.00

00:44:50.000 The thing is, though, you know, athletes. 0.98

00:44:52.000 Like, if I mean, and I think there was a poll done a while ago with Olympians, like, if you can win a gold medal, but you're going to live to 30 or 35, would you take the gold medal?

00:45:01.000 And a good portion of them said, yes, they absolutely would.

00:45:03.000 Most athletes, in order to achieve their goals, would do absolutely anything.

00:45:08.000 So, if I all of a sudden discovered that having your neck fused like your Romero means that you've got a 30% chance of, you know, less chance of getting knocked out, how many fighters do you think without their neck fused just to bomb the advantage, right?

00:45:22.000 How about that Tommy John surgery that people get electively so they can pitch better?

00:45:26.000 Before surgery, he was extremely nearsighted.

00:45:29.000 He had an 11 prescription.

00:45:31.000 I don't know what that is.

00:45:32.000 Minus 11.

00:45:33.000 Essentially legally blind without glasses or contacts.

00:45:36.000 Whoa.

00:45:37.000 And one of the greatest golfers of all time, if not the greatest.

00:45:41.000 First, LASIK was done after his 1999 PGA Championship win.

00:45:46.000 Yeah, here you go.

00:45:47.000 Results and impact on his golf.

00:45:50.000 Wood reportedly achieved about 2015 vision better than the standard 2020, meaning he could see more detail at distance than the average person.

00:45:57.000 Interesting.

00:45:58.000 He described the cup and ball as looking larger and said his ability to read greens improved, he went on a notable win streak, winning five PGA Tour events in a row right after the surgery.

00:46:10.000 Wow.

00:46:11.000 That links into the stoned ape theory, though, if we're going in a massive surgery.

00:46:15.000 Right?

00:46:15.000 Because microdosing mushrooms gives you better edge and depth perception.

00:46:19.000 Yes.

00:46:20.000 So then the theory was that you would have better chances of surviving.

00:46:24.000 Either as, you know, not becoming prey or finding prey.

00:46:24.000 Yes.

00:46:28.000 Yes.

00:46:28.000 Yeah.

00:46:28.000 Right?

00:46:29.000 Better vision would make you hornier. 0.94

00:46:31.000 So it'd make you more likely to breed.

00:46:33.000 And it also makes you more creative.

00:46:36.000 And, you know, Terrence McKenna and Dennis McKenna link it to the creation of language.

00:46:41.000 Oh, it's very fascinating.

00:46:41.000 Fascinating.

00:46:43.000 I used to remember when I was in Vegas, I had a room in my house, which I think we talked about it before, which was the mushroom.

00:46:47.000 And I would like once a week, I would like clear the day and I would have ceremony on a Saturday in the evening.

00:46:54.000 Then I'd get up on Sunday morning and go out into Red Rock and I'd do trail running.

00:46:58.000 But like at the point where, you know, I took six or seven grams the night before.

00:47:02.000 So now I've probably got the equivalent of two, three grams in my system.

00:47:06.000 But I'm running in Vibrams downhill and I'm like a cat.

00:47:12.000 I can see the ground in a much different way to how I would if I was completely straight.

00:47:16.000 So, you know.

00:47:18.000 There are some fighters that have been microdosing through fights as well.

00:47:18.000 That's exciting.

00:47:21.000 I won't throw them under the bus.

00:47:22.000 Oh, I know a few.

00:47:23.000 Yeah.

00:47:24.000 Joe Schilling talked pretty openly about it.

00:47:26.000 He's got a fight coming up.

00:47:27.000 Does he?

00:47:28.000 Fighting in Brussels.

00:47:28.000 Joe's back?

00:47:30.000 Is he doing PFL?

00:47:31.000 Interesting.

00:47:31.000 Yeah.

00:47:32.000 Interesting.

00:47:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:33.000 How old's Joe now?

00:47:34.000 I'm not sure.

00:47:35.000 I spotted with him at Frank Mears' gym in Vegas a few years ago, Suffer.

00:47:40.000 Obviously, I knew Joe Schilling, who he was, and the gym that he created in LA had a real reputation and all that kind of stuff. 0.98

00:47:47.000 Damn. 0.99

00:47:47.000 42. 0.99

00:47:48.000 Wow.

00:47:48.000 But he was just, he was standing outside the back just smoking a cigarette, came in, put his gloves on, and just beat the snot out of me.

00:47:54.000 You know what I mean?

00:47:56.000 Such a good fighter.

00:47:57.000 Yeah, he's a beast kickboxer, man.

00:48:00.000 I was at the last man standing event in LA when he fought.

00:48:03.000 Like, that was really crazy because you had to fight multiple kickboxing fights in a day.

00:48:09.000 And, you know, this was glory.

00:48:11.000 This was like, who used to run Bellator?

00:48:13.000 What was the guy who ran Bellator?

00:48:16.000 Not Scott Coker.

00:48:17.000 No.

00:48:18.000 Yeah, no, it is Scott Coker because there was a guy before Scott, right?

00:48:21.000 Is it Bjorn?

00:48:21.000 Yeah.

00:48:22.000 Bjorn Rabney?

00:48:23.000 Right.

00:48:23.000 So he left and then Scott took.

00:48:25.000 And Scott was also involved in Bellator.

00:48:27.000 Yeah.

00:48:28.000 Or excuse me, in Glory.

00:48:29.000 Was it Strike Force?

00:48:29.000 Right?

00:48:30.000 Strike Force.

00:48:32.000 Scott Coker ran Strike Force?

00:48:34.000 Founded Strike Force.

00:48:34.000 So who ran Bellator?

00:48:37.000 Yeah, Bjorn founded it and then Scott Coker.

00:48:39.000 Right.

00:48:40.000 Okay, right.

00:48:41.000 So that is correct.

00:48:42.000 Okay.

00:48:43.000 I think he was involved in Glory too.

00:48:45.000 Right.

00:48:46.000 And I think I remember I went up to him and I said, this is awesome, but don't do this.

00:48:50.000 Don't have people fight multiple times in a night.

00:48:52.000 It's just like, because you get a concussion and no one even knows about it.

00:48:56.000 Like, there's been a lot of fights where guys got concussions and they didn't get knocked out.

00:49:01.000 And then you have to fight again in an hour.

00:49:03.000 And then you fight again 45 minutes after that. 0.99

00:49:06.000 Like, man, that's a recipe for people getting fucked up. 0.96

00:49:10.000 I know they did it back in the old days and hardcore and all that stuff. 0.97

00:49:12.000 It's all great, but man, don't do that.

00:49:15.000 But you look at some of those first round matchups when they were doing that, and you're like, okay, I can see what you're doing here.

00:49:20.000 You know what I mean?

00:49:21.000 Give people easier fights in the beginning.

00:49:23.000 Sometimes, but I think it's kind of random.

00:49:26.000 Sometimes it's going to tell.

00:49:27.000 You take the heavyweight K1.

00:49:28.000 I mean, like some of those guys, you fight Hong Man Choi or Bob Sap, no matter how confident you are in your skill set, just the sheer size of them is a problem.

00:49:35.000 Yes. 0.99

00:49:36.000 Those fucking K1 tournaments were bananas. 1.00

00:49:39.000 They were so good. 1.00

00:49:40.000 Woo, they were so good.

00:49:42.000 Especially the lightsaber.

00:49:42.000 I had a friend of mine in Canada that used to get me VHS tapes back in the day.

00:49:48.000 I think he had like a satellite dish or some shit.

00:49:51.000 I forget how he was getting them, but he was getting them and he was sending them to me.

00:49:55.000 K1, Heroes, all these like real obscure events he would send me.

00:50:00.000 Awesome. 0.96

00:50:01.000 Oh, I had a, I don't know where the fuck they are now. 0.77

00:50:03.000 I think they might even be in my LA house, but I had a giant box. 0.97

00:50:07.000 Filled with VHS tapes.

00:50:08.000 There were all kinds of old school fights.

00:50:10.000 I used to have a CD, like a zip CD thing that I used to take with me.

00:50:15.000 And I had a guy at my gym and he would, five pounds, he would burn me Pride or K1 Heroes or whatever.

00:50:21.000 And he was finding them online and just ripping it and selling them in the gym.

00:50:25.000 But I had a whole database of stuff IFL and all those old shows.

00:50:29.000 K1 Heroes, I loved.

00:50:31.000 You know, that's kind of partially how I got the job at the UFC.

00:50:35.000 When I first met Dana, he got me tickets because I was on Fear Factor.

00:50:41.000 And the UFC, they just purchased it.

00:50:43.000 So, this is 2001.

00:50:45.000 This is right post 9 11 when Tito Ortiz fought Vladimir Matyshenko, came out with the American flag.

00:50:52.000 Everybody went crazy.

00:50:53.000 And I started talking to him about like Japan Valley Tudo and do you know about this guy?

00:50:58.000 Do you know about that guy?

00:51:00.000 And I was just like rattling off all these fighters that he had never heard of before.

00:51:04.000 I was talking about all these guys that are fighting out of Russia, all these guys in Japan.

00:51:08.000 And then we started talking.

00:51:09.000 And then, next thing you know, he's like, Do you want to do commentary?

00:51:12.000 I was like, Oh, I just want to watch.

00:51:15.000 And you never thought about it before commentary?

00:51:17.000 No.

00:51:18.000 Well, I worked for the UFC before that as the post fight interviewer, but that was in 97, UFC 12.

00:51:23.000 I remember that.

00:51:24.000 And so I did it from 97 to 98, and then it was costing me money because I would make way more money if I'd go work at a comedy club for the weekend than I would doing this.

00:51:34.000 But it was fun.

00:51:35.000 So I did it for a little while, but then it was like, I think it was UFC Japan.

00:51:39.000 They wanted me to fly to Japan.

00:51:41.000 And Frank Shamrock was fighting Kevin Jackson.

00:51:46.000 Is that who it was?

00:51:49.000 I think he won by first round armbar. 0.99

00:51:51.000 And I was like, I'm not going to fucking Japan, man. 0.99

00:51:53.000 I can't, no. 1.00

00:51:55.000 I'm done.

00:51:56.000 So I just quit.

00:51:56.000 I was like, I love you guys.

00:51:57.000 It's fun, good time while it lasted.

00:52:00.000 Did you feel like it was going to go where it went, though? 0.99

00:52:02.000 No, I thought they were fucked. 0.99

00:52:03.000 Really? 1.00

00:52:04.000 It was funny because Eddie Bravo and I were backstage at one of these events.

00:52:08.000 I met Eddie way back in the day.

00:52:10.000 So it was like, this was like 97, 98.

00:52:13.000 Eddie and I were backstage. 0.99

00:52:14.000 We were like, you know what this fucking sport needs? 1.00

00:52:16.000 Some crazy billionaires with a ton of money who love the sport. 0.99

00:52:20.000 Because we know it's so exciting and we know people would think it's so exciting, it just needs to be in everybody's face.

00:52:26.000 And then who comes along with Frititas?

00:52:28.000 It's like we manifested them.

00:52:30.000 Yeah.

00:52:32.000 It was crazy because, like, you know, one of the first events that I did for the USC, I did for free.

00:52:38.000 I did like the first 15 events for free.

00:52:40.000 And I just said, just get my friends' tickets. 0.97

00:52:42.000 So it was like Eddie and I would go and, you know, we'd be like, bro, it's fucking happening. 0.89

00:52:46.000 It's actually happening. 0.62

00:52:47.000 But even back then, it wasn't famous.

00:52:50.000 It was just, it was in Vegas and it was, you know, It was kind of getting a little bit of attention.

00:52:55.000 It wasn't until 2005 that Forrest Whitaker, the main event of, rather, excuse me, Forrest Griffin and Stefan Bonner, main event of The Ultimate Fighter, that one fight changed everything.

00:53:12.000 It's really crazy where, like, the stars align with one fight, the whole sport takes off.

00:53:19.000 Yeah.

00:53:19.000 Because it really was that.

00:53:20.000 I can't believe I called him Forrest Whitaker.

00:53:23.000 I did that on commentary.

00:53:25.000 I called Robert Whitaker Forrest Whitaker live on commentary. 0.64

00:53:28.000 I've called people, I fucked up Juliana Pena's name once. 0.96

00:53:32.000 I fucked people's names up. 0.99

00:53:33.000 It's like you have so many names in your head. 0.99

00:53:35.000 That's what people don't understand.

00:53:37.000 Like, you and I, between you and I, we probably have 500 fighters' names in our head.

00:53:43.000 And then plus jujitsu guys, plus wrestlers, plus boxers.

00:53:48.000 Like, oh my God, there's so many names in your head.

00:53:51.000 And then project that into the history of the sport now because we've got the history of the sport and the history of boxing on top of that as well.

00:53:51.000 Yeah.

00:53:56.000 The way I describe my memory is like I have a whole bunch of boxes of folders. 1.00

00:54:02.000 And if I find that box, I can open that bitch up and talk to you about Marvin Hagler versus Juan Roldan. 1.00

00:54:07.000 And it'll tell you like the knockdown was fake and this and that. 1.00

00:54:10.000 And Hagler went on to stop him.

00:54:12.000 I'll tell you details.

00:54:14.000 But if I don't have that folder in front of me, I'm like, I don't know why.

00:54:19.000 I don't know why I can't immediately remember sometimes.

00:54:22.000 But sometimes I can pull that box out and it's right there.

00:54:25.000 And I can just get that folder out and boom.

00:54:28.000 Do you remember the first time you sat down at the commentary booth and put the headset on?

00:54:31.000 Yes.

00:54:32.000 Yes, that was UFC 37 and a half.

00:54:35.000 London?

00:54:36.000 No.

00:54:37.000 Oh, no, of course.

00:54:38.000 It was just after that, though, right?

00:54:40.000 UFC 38 was London.

00:54:41.000 Well, it was 37 and a half because it was like a fit. 0.95

00:54:44.000 It was an event they put together for Best Damn Sports Show.

00:54:49.000 So remember Best Damn Sports Show, which was on Fox Sports, I think? 0.96

00:54:49.000 Right. 0.96

00:54:53.000 Fox Sports Net?

00:54:55.000 And so what it was was they had this opportunity to do a show, and this is when Dana asked me to do commentary, and I just did it as a favor.

00:55:03.000 He goes, It'd be great if you did it because it was the Fear Factor days and it was Chuck Liddell versus Vitor Belfort. 0.85

00:55:09.000 I said, Oh, fuck yeah, I'll do it. 0.80

00:55:10.000 And I think, I remember who else. 0.97

00:55:14.000 I think Robbie Lawler might have made his debut.

00:55:16.000 Berger versus Robbie Lawler.

00:55:17.000 That's right.

00:55:18.000 Thank you, sir.

00:55:19.000 Yeah.

00:55:20.000 So it was fun.

00:55:23.000 And I did it once and then they asked me, Would you do it again?

00:55:25.000 I'm like, Okay, I'll do it again.

00:55:27.000 But it was really just, I just kept doing it.

00:55:30.000 It wasn't a job.

00:55:31.000 Like I said, I didn't even ask for money, I did like 15 of them.

00:55:35.000 And then finally, Dana says, Look, I want to sign you to a contract.

00:55:39.000 I want to pay you.

00:55:40.000 I was like, Okay.

00:55:43.000 All right.

00:55:43.000 I was like, reluctantly got dragged into being a commentator.

00:55:46.000 Yeah.

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00:56:56.000 That's kind of cool.

00:56:57.000 Yeah, it's similar to me though, really.

00:56:58.000 I mean, I was because I'd been sidelined because, you know, because of my heart situation and they wouldn't clear me in California.

00:57:04.000 So then the UFC just wouldn't match me anywhere.

00:57:07.000 And I'd had a, I'd had like a month or two of just kind of wallowing and being depressed and, you know, avoiding MMA gyms.

00:57:16.000 And Lorenzo had invited me into the offices on Sahara and I got and sat with him and we were chatting through and he said, Hey, you know, I'm I'm going to send you out to California.

00:57:24.000 I want you to go and see my specialist, you know, my family specialist and get a second opinion and et cetera.

00:57:30.000 But he said, also, we've got another plan for you.

00:57:33.000 He said, I won't spoil it.

00:57:35.000 At some point, you'll see Dana and Dana will tell you what the plan is.

00:57:39.000 And as I was, it was like a movie.

00:57:40.000 As I was walking out of the offices, a stretch monster Hummer pulled up.

00:57:46.000 Literally, I'm like, what's going on here? 0.99

00:57:49.000 And Dana got out and he was like, oh, just a fucking blah, blah, blah. 0.98

00:57:52.000 I just wanted to see. 0.98

00:57:54.000 He was like, I want you to go to the UK.

00:57:56.000 I want you to be an ambassador.

00:57:57.000 I want you to do commentary.

00:57:58.000 And I said, That's great.

00:57:59.000 You know, let me know what I need.

00:58:00.000 Media training.

00:58:01.000 He's like, No, none of that.

00:58:02.000 I just want you to be you sitting cage side.

00:58:05.000 And I remember getting to the first USC London event and sat down at the desk, just fighting imposter syndrome bad, and seeing all the fans starting to trickle into the arena.

00:58:16.000 And then someone from the truck came through and said, Oh, I've just realized we've not practiced any post fight interviews.

00:58:23.000 I said, Oh, I'd not really thought about it.

00:58:24.000 But It's just talking to fighters.

00:58:26.000 I'll be fine.

00:58:27.000 He said, No, no, no.

00:58:28.000 I'd feel better if we practiced.

00:58:30.000 I said, Okay.

00:58:31.000 He said, Okay.

00:58:33.000 Brad Pickett wins by knockout.

00:58:34.000 Go.

00:58:35.000 I'm like, How did you knock him out? was my first question.

00:58:41.000 And it was weird because it was like, I'd not even thought about it up until that point.

00:58:44.000 But when they raised the.

00:58:46.000 When they asked me to do the kind of practice rehearsal with not any scenario that was realistic, then all of a sudden I started to panic.

00:58:57.000 But I remember sitting there feeling like a.

00:58:59.000 Like a 14 year old, like someone's going to tap me on the shoulder in a minute and throw me out.

00:59:03.000 Really?

00:59:04.000 Yeah.

00:59:04.000 It's so weird.

00:59:05.000 It felt really weird.

00:59:05.000 That's funny.

00:59:06.000 That's interesting.

00:59:08.000 I don't remember if I felt imposter syndrome.

00:59:10.000 I think because I wasn't getting paid, I probably thought it was just fun.

00:59:14.000 Yeah.

00:59:14.000 I probably didn't think it was a job.

00:59:17.000 So I probably thought, like, oh, they just want me to do this because I'm famous and it would be good for the sport if the fear factor guy is enthusiastic about the sport.

00:59:28.000 So that's how I thought about it.

00:59:29.000 And so, like, I would go on like the Howard Stern show and stuff, and we'd wind up just talking about the UFC.

00:59:34.000 And this was, again, I wasn't even working for the UFC.

00:59:37.000 I was there to promote Fear Factor, but I was talking about how much I loved UFC.

00:59:42.000 And I just think it's awesome.

00:59:44.000 And back when I was competing, no one knew what the best sport.

00:59:50.000 It's so hard for people to recognize that today because it's not that long ago, you know?

00:59:55.000 Like when I was last time I fought was like 88 or 89.

00:59:59.000 You would think like we kind of had it sorted out back then, but you didn't, no one knew.

01:00:04.000 No one knew, like, what was the best thing to study.

01:00:07.000 I remember I went to this gym.

01:00:09.000 A friend of mine was teaching at this university, and I would go and train with him and his students sometime.

01:00:15.000 And I would go there, and they had a judo program there. 1.00

01:00:17.000 And I'd be like, look at these suckers practicing this stupid judo. 1.00

01:00:20.000 Like, this is useless. 1.00

01:00:21.000 You can't even kick anybody. 0.99

01:00:24.000 Meanwhile, all those guys would have killed me. 1.00

01:00:26.000 They would have just grabbed me and fucking thrown me on my head. 1.00

01:00:28.000 But I didn't think that. 0.99

01:00:29.000 I was totally delusional. 1.00

01:00:30.000 I thought I was going to kick them into the fucking shadow realm. 0.99

01:00:33.000 And no one knew what the right thing was. 0.99

01:00:37.000 Thing the study was. 1.00

01:00:38.000 If you took Kung Fu, you thought Kung Fu was the shit. 1.00

01:00:41.000 Bruce Lee, right? 1.00

01:00:42.000 I'm wearing a Bruce Lee shirt.

01:00:43.000 He was really the only guy that was wise enough to realize you just got to take a little bit from everything.

01:00:49.000 And having one style, whether it was his initial style, which was Wing Chun or, you know, whatever it is, karate, that's not the way.

01:00:57.000 The way is the right way to win.

01:01:00.000 In close quarter combat, you need to learn how to grapple.

01:01:02.000 You need to learn boxing.

01:01:03.000 You need to learn how to block correctly.

01:01:05.000 You need to learn how to kick correctly.

01:01:07.000 Back then, we didn't know. 0.98

01:01:09.000 And we always wondered, like, what would happen if they did, like, a fucking put a bunch of guys together. 0.89

01:01:14.000 And I knew Benny the Jet had competed in some weird stuff in Hawaii, but no one really knew. 0.94

01:01:20.000 So when it was finally happening, To me, I was like a little kid.

01:01:24.000 I was like, oh my God, it's happening.

01:01:26.000 It's really happening.

01:01:28.000 And I was like, please let this work.

01:01:30.000 Please let this work.

01:01:32.000 And then to watch the evolution of it from the beginning, which is just Hoist going in there and dominating everybody because no one knew Jiu Jitsu.

01:01:40.000 And he had the Gion, so he had all this friction.

01:01:43.000 It was amazing.

01:01:44.000 And then everybody took Jiu Jitsu, including me.

01:01:45.000 I'm like, I got to learn Jiu Jitsu. 0.98

01:01:47.000 And then to watch the evolution, like these giant, juiced up fucking wrestlers come along, like Mark Coleman, and Mark Kerr smashing everybody. 0.98

01:01:56.000 They're like, oh my God, we got to get on the sauce. 0.98

01:01:58.000 And so everybody, you know, Vitor got up to like 240 pounds and his fucking neck started at the top of his head. 0.99

01:02:04.000 Oh, yeah, bro. 0.94

01:02:05.000 I was training at the same gym as him when he made his UFC debut.

01:02:09.000 So I was training at Carlson Gracie's gym.

01:02:11.000 So you kind of knew what was coming then?

01:02:12.000 Well, I didn't.

01:02:13.000 I knew he was awesome, but I didn't know how good his hands were because I only saw him doing jujitsu.

01:02:19.000 Okay.

01:02:19.000 Right.

01:02:20.000 Well, I knew he was a beast.

01:02:21.000 Like, and he was a black belt in jujitsu at the time and, you know, a phenomenal athlete.

01:02:26.000 Just so fast.

01:02:28.000 But then I saw a video of him.

01:02:29.000 He fought John Hess.

01:02:31.000 In Hawaii.

01:02:32.000 Do you remember John Hess?

01:02:33.000 Safta fighting?

01:02:34.000 Yeah.

01:02:35.000 So John Hess was this giant guy.

01:02:36.000 He's like 6'7 or something like that. 0.98

01:02:38.000 And Vitor just fucking took him to the ground and bang, hit him with like 30 fucking unanswered punches in a row, like in three seconds, like and put him away. 0.98

01:02:50.000 And then they're screaming, Jiu Jitsu, Jiu Jitsu. 0.99

01:02:53.000 And I was like, wait a minute.

01:02:55.000 This is not, I mean, I get it.

01:02:57.000 You know Jiu Jitsu, but that was boxing.

01:02:59.000 You used striking.

01:03:02.000 But it was like to be there at the very beginning and watch this evolution.

01:03:07.000 There it is.

01:03:08.000 There's Vitor.

01:03:08.000 Look at this.

01:03:09.000 Boom, My man.

01:03:10.000 My God.

01:03:11.000 And look how thin Vitor was back then.

01:03:14.000 That was Vitor at like, you know, 199 pounds, maybe.

01:03:18.000 Maybe 190.

01:03:19.000 Oh, he was so fast.

01:03:20.000 And so that was there for his UFC debut.

01:03:22.000 So that was UFC 12.

01:03:24.000 So he fought Trey Telligman.

01:03:26.000 And Trey Telligman had no idea that this guy could box that way.

01:03:31.000 Like no one did.

01:03:32.000 They thought he's a Carlson Gracie jujitsu black belt.

01:03:34.000 I was like, okay.

01:03:36.000 You know, avoid the takedowns.

01:03:37.000 This guy's really good on the ground.

01:03:38.000 And he just starts tuning people up with his hands.

01:03:41.000 Yeah.

01:03:41.000 And Tellingman was Lions then, wasn't he?

01:03:43.000 He was one of Ken Shamrock's guys.

01:03:44.000 Did he have a missing peck?

01:03:46.000 Yes.

01:03:46.000 He was in a car accident, I believe, when he was a child.

01:03:49.000 Oh, is that right?

01:03:50.000 And his peck was not attached on one side.

01:03:50.000 Yeah.

01:03:53.000 And he was fucking jacked, dude. 0.99

01:03:55.000 And then he fought Scott Ferozzo after that, who was like a giant fat guy. 0.99

01:04:00.000 He was also like a tank, you know, like a huge fucking knockout artist. 0.95

01:04:06.000 And Vitor tuned him up too. 0.98

01:04:07.000 Just the speed he had.

01:04:09.000 So this is like.

01:04:10.000 You know, 1997.

01:04:12.000 And it was wild.

01:04:14.000 And that was in like a high school auditorium in Dothan, Alabama.

01:04:17.000 It was like really weird.

01:04:18.000 Crazy.

01:04:19.000 I was like, this is so strange.

01:04:22.000 These events were so bizarre.

01:04:23.000 You know, I was hanging out with the Lions Den guys.

01:04:25.000 We'd go drinking together and stuff.

01:04:27.000 It was fun.

01:04:28.000 But it was just weird.

01:04:29.000 It was like, what is this thing that we're doing?

01:04:32.000 This is it.

01:04:33.000 The Dothan Civic Center.

01:04:35.000 That's what it was.

01:04:36.000 Look how small it is.

01:04:37.000 Look how little that place is.

01:04:39.000 Yeah.

01:04:39.000 Night seven.

01:04:40.000 So that would have been the time when I was.

01:04:42.000 I was at art college.

01:04:43.000 Yeah.

01:04:44.000 And I went to Virgin Megastore.

01:04:46.000 There you are, look.

01:04:47.000 Jeff Blatnick. 1.00

01:04:48.000 He was the fucking man. 1.00

01:04:49.000 I went to Virgin Mega Store and look how you're beautiful, man. 1.00

01:04:54.000 Look how beautiful you are.

01:04:56.000 And no one taught me, no one told me what to do.

01:04:59.000 No one gave me any instruction.

01:05:01.000 Nothing.

01:05:02.000 They gave me a microphone and then said, We're going to come to you backstage.

01:05:05.000 I'm like, What do you want me to say? 0.99

01:05:07.000 Like, literally, it was fucking nothing. 0.99

01:05:10.000 It was nothing. 0.99

01:05:12.000 You probably knew better than everybody else, though.

01:05:13.000 Well, luckily, I was a huge fan.

01:05:16.000 So it was pretty easy.

01:05:17.000 I got the job because they had a guy that was doing it before.

01:05:21.000 And they got rid of him.

01:05:22.000 And Campbell McLaren, who was one of the producers, was good friends with my comedy manager.

01:05:28.000 And he was just casually talking.

01:05:30.000 He's like, We're looking for someone to do post fight interviews.

01:05:33.000 And he's like, Joe loves the UFC.

01:05:35.000 And he's like, You think you'd do it?

01:05:36.000 And so they called me up. 0.99

01:05:37.000 I was like, Fuck yeah, let's go. 0.99

01:05:39.000 I was like, This is. 0.99

01:05:40.000 I was like 97.

01:05:40.000 And this is.

01:05:42.000 I guess I was 30.

01:05:44.000 Yeah.

01:05:44.000 Is this how the judges used to announce their picks?

01:05:48.000 They just held a roll?

01:05:48.000 I guess so.

01:05:50.000 There was a bunch of rules at the beginning that seemed very strange to me, too.

01:05:53.000 I saw they had overtime rules.

01:05:56.000 Oh, I forgot about that.

01:05:57.000 I forgot about Obi-Wan.

01:05:58.000 They called him Laws of the Octagon.

01:05:59.000 Valigi. 0.96

01:06:01.000 Valid Ishmael.

01:06:01.000 Yeah.

01:06:02.000 Ishmael, he was a lunatic. 1.00

01:06:03.000 He was a mad dog. 1.00

01:06:04.000 Mad dog. 0.99

01:06:04.000 So intense. 0.99

01:06:06.000 Yeah, it says.

01:06:06.000 No biting, no eye gouging, no fish hooking.

01:06:08.000 That was it. 0.98

01:06:09.000 You could hit people in nuts. 0.99

01:06:10.000 That's it. 0.99

01:06:11.000 That's it.

01:06:13.000 I've got to tell you what, I've got a piece of my gum missing from someone trying to fish hook me.

01:06:17.000 They took a piece of the gum away with their fingernail.

01:06:17.000 Oh, God.

01:06:20.000 I'm going to have to get something done.

01:06:21.000 I've got some teeth that need fixing at some point.

01:06:23.000 Jesus Christ.

01:06:25.000 Ay, ay, ay.

01:06:25.000 Not nice.

01:06:26.000 Fish hooking is dangerous.

01:06:27.000 Yeah, that's nasty. 1.00

01:06:28.000 If someone fish hooks you, you should bite their fucking fingers. 1.00

01:06:31.000 Oh, I think so. 1.00

01:06:31.000 You should be able to bite them. 1.00

01:06:32.000 Like, fuck you. 1.00

01:06:33.000 Get your fucking fingers out of my mouth, motherfucker. 1.00

01:06:36.000 That's interesting about commentary. 1.00

01:06:37.000 I've always wondered because everybody came after you, right?

01:06:42.000 When it comes to MMA commentary.

01:06:43.000 So, like in the early days when I was first doing the job, no one knows what a color commentator or a play by play commentator is back in the day.

01:06:51.000 I think there's more of an understanding now.

01:06:53.000 So, my response to everybody is I'm going to try and do Joe's job.

01:06:58.000 But you'd set the bar so high.

01:06:58.000 You know what I mean?

01:07:00.000 I think partly that's what fed into my imposter syndrome.

01:07:03.000 I'm sitting there and look, and the podcast that you did with Dustin, I appreciate all the kind words you did.

01:07:09.000 I want to throw it back to you though, because you were the person that raised the bar for everybody else to reach.

01:07:15.000 And I didn't realize, because I never had an intention of being a commentator.

01:07:19.000 It just came off the back of my career because my career was ended abruptly.

01:07:23.000 So then anyone that ever says, oh, you're actually pretty good at this, the reason why is just because I listen to you religiously.

01:07:31.000 A lot of people watch the fights and don't pay attention to the commentary.

01:07:34.000 Like, I tuned in.

01:07:35.000 I was paying attention to everything that you said.

01:07:37.000 So, even the delivery and the cadence and stuff, what you did laid the foundation for me to learn.

01:07:43.000 So, I very, very much appreciate that.

01:07:44.000 Oh, thank you.

01:07:45.000 Thank you.

01:07:46.000 It was accidental.

01:07:48.000 Same for me, but it can't have been accidental because I had somebody to learn from.

01:07:53.000 That's why I asked you because you didn't have anybody that kind of, you know, was successful.

01:07:58.000 Well, it was weird because I think I was one of the first people to do it that had a real understanding of jujitsu. 0.92

01:08:06.000 So, when the fights would go to the ground, the play by play guy would have, you know, like Goldberg, great guy, didn't train, didn't know what the fuck was happening.

01:08:16.000 So, I would have to, and also people at home, what's going on?

01:08:20.000 So, I'd have to walk them through exactly when someone's in danger and why they're in danger and how they can get out of it and when they're free.

01:08:27.000 Okay, see his elbow?

01:08:28.000 He's free now.

01:08:29.000 He's good.

01:08:29.000 And so, my mind is spinning like 100 miles an hour.

01:08:33.000 I'm like, now I don't have to do that as much because people kind of understand things much more.

01:08:37.000 But there's certain situations and certain positions where I would have to say, no, this is a submission.

01:08:42.000 Like, he's very close here.

01:08:44.000 Like, okay, now he's got to cinch it up.

01:08:46.000 He's got to put his ankle behind his leg.

01:08:47.000 He's got it.

01:08:48.000 And you'd have to talk people through it.

01:08:51.000 So it was different than any other sport because you're kind of like educating people on what's happening.

01:08:57.000 Like I couldn't use obscure. 0.81

01:08:59.000 Even though I used the obscure term, like crackhead control or something like that, like weird stuff like that, that Eddie comes up with these fucking ridiculous names for submissions and positions.

01:09:08.000 But I would have to explain why this works and what's happening and what's going on and what's in danger.

01:09:15.000 And it was weird because I felt like this obligation to jujitsu that.

01:09:21.000 That was the one thing.

01:09:22.000 Like, you could. 0.99

01:09:23.000 Someone kicks you in the head, you get it. 0.98

01:09:24.000 Someone knees someone in the head, oh, you hit him with a flying knee, you get it. 0.99

01:09:27.000 But explaining someone, like, what, like, you know, a calf crusher is, like, that's a weird fucking position. 0.99

01:09:38.000 Yeah. 0.96

01:09:38.000 Like, what is going on there? 0.96

01:09:39.000 You know, explaining to someone, you know, why a triangle works and why it doesn't work and why someone's safe, you know, with a head and arm choke, why, okay, he's okay, he's got his hand over his ear.

01:09:50.000 There's.

01:09:51.000 It was all this weird stuff where it was.

01:09:54.000 Partially trying to be entertaining, but also trying to educate.

01:09:59.000 And I had to kind of figure it out as I did it.

01:10:02.000 You know, as I called, I don't know how many fights I've called.

01:10:04.000 It's probably thousands.

01:10:06.000 Yeah.

01:10:07.000 I mean, I've called a lot, and you've been doing it a lot longer than me.

01:10:09.000 Well, I don't do as many now. 0.99

01:10:11.000 You know, I only do North American pay per views, and I don't even go to Canada anymore, so fuck them. 0.99

01:10:16.000 I love Canadians. 1.00

01:10:18.000 It's the government that fucking creeps me out. 0.98

01:10:20.000 But the amount I was doing back then, I was doing like 22. 0.99

01:10:25.000 Shows plus a year, 22 shows a year.

01:10:28.000 So I was doing a show almost every other weekend.

01:10:28.000 Yeah.

01:10:30.000 I was flying somewhere.

01:10:31.000 And it was exhausting.

01:10:31.000 Yeah.

01:10:32.000 It was a really, it was a problem.

01:10:34.000 But it was, and at one point in time, it became really my main job after Fear Factor was over.

01:10:39.000 And I loved it, but the traveling was brutal.

01:10:43.000 You'd go to Australia, you come back from Australia, and now you're going to Dallas, you're going to Dallas, you're going to New York.

01:10:48.000 It's like, whew.

01:10:50.000 Yeah.

01:10:51.000 First time I went to Australia with the UFC, it was a 56 hour round trip, and I was on the ground for 30 hours.

01:10:51.000 I was in Australia.

01:10:57.000 You feel like you're on drugs.

01:10:58.000 You feel like someone gave me a drug.

01:11:00.000 I don't even know where I am.

01:11:01.000 I loved it, though.

01:11:02.000 I loved being there.

01:11:03.000 I was like, wow, what a crazy country.

01:11:05.000 You guys are on the other side of the planet and you're all cool and the food's great.

01:11:09.000 It's fun.

01:11:10.000 And I got all the gigs that most people didn't want to do.

01:11:13.000 I was being sent to all of the farthest reaches.

01:11:16.000 You know what I mean?

01:11:18.000 Singapore, I loved.

01:11:19.000 Japan, I loved.

01:11:20.000 Going out to Australia to do those events.

01:11:22.000 I did a lot of the Russian events.

01:11:24.000 I was even back at one time in case Bruce Buffer didn't make it.

01:11:27.000 I was going to be the.

01:11:28.000 Really?

01:11:28.000 MC as well, yeah.

01:11:29.000 Oh, wow.

01:11:31.000 That's crazy.

01:11:32.000 That's a hard job.

01:11:33.000 Absolutely.

01:11:34.000 That guy set the bar.

01:11:35.000 Right.

01:11:36.000 He almost dies every event.

01:11:38.000 Really?

01:11:39.000 We're looking at him like one day is going to be loud.

01:11:42.000 Because, you know, Bruce has got to be like 70 years old now, right?

01:11:45.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:11:45.000 I'm like, one day that motherfucker is going to stroke out in the middle. 1.00

01:11:49.000 Alisonia! 1.00

01:11:51.000 Just fucking pop. 1.00

01:11:54.000 Blood starts leaking. 0.99

01:11:55.000 But if you ask Bruce, that's the way he would like to go.

01:11:55.000 That's it.

01:11:57.000 That's how you'd want to go.

01:11:58.000 One of my craziest experiences.

01:11:59.000 Sweet suits on.

01:12:00.000 I remember coming down a slide, like a metal slide from the Great Wall of China with Bruce Buffer in front of me and Uriah Faber behind me.

01:12:12.000 And we're going down on these like rugs on the way down from just weird experiences that you have on the road with the UNC.

01:12:17.000 Yeah, that was good.

01:12:19.000 I've always loved Bruce.

01:12:20.000 Yeah, he's a great guy.

01:12:21.000 You know, that's another thing as well is like, and you'll remember this from back when I made my debut, like, I would get into it with Bruce.

01:12:29.000 Like, I'd be like calling Bruce on and he always used to come to me.

01:12:34.000 I loved it because it was.

01:12:35.000 Just the idea of hearing Bruce Buffett say my name was just wild to me.

01:12:39.000 The outlaw!

01:12:41.000 Hardy!

01:12:42.000 Dude, I'll get goosebumps.

01:12:43.000 We always talk about whether or not it's a jinx to fist bump buffer.

01:12:50.000 Can't be.

01:12:51.000 Me and Anak were talking about it, but I was like, no, Khabib fist bumped him every time.

01:12:55.000 So it can't be a jinx.

01:12:57.000 Because you look for jinxes.

01:12:59.000 You look for things that are a bad omen or a bad sign.

01:13:03.000 Weirdly superstitious, aren't we?

01:13:05.000 We like to hang stuff on things that aren't our responsibility.

01:13:08.000 Isn't that weird?

01:13:08.000 It is strange.

01:13:09.000 Especially with fighters.

01:13:10.000 Fighters are super superstitious.

01:13:13.000 They get real weird about the things they do, their rituals before fights, what they.

01:13:18.000 What they eat, where they like, what they wear.

01:13:21.000 Yeah.

01:13:22.000 Yeah.

01:13:23.000 And like some of the things they do, like, I mean, like Ben Henderson with the toothpick.

01:13:26.000 Like crazy.

01:13:28.000 I was interviewing him post-fight.

01:13:28.000 Yeah.

01:13:29.000 I'm like, yo, a toothpick in your mouth?

01:13:32.000 And he got in trouble for that.

01:13:33.000 Yeah.

01:13:34.000 Dangerous, though, especially if you know you get knocked out and that toothpick's going down your throat.

01:13:38.000 I just didn't understand why he did it.

01:13:39.000 Like, what is it?

01:13:40.000 It seems like a bit of a safety blanket almost.

01:13:42.000 It's like a familiarity that it's there.

01:13:44.000 It's the weirdest one of all time.

01:13:45.000 Yeah.

01:13:45.000 A toothpick in your mouth?

01:13:46.000 Yeah.

01:13:47.000 Like, okay.

01:13:48.000 Yeah, very strange.

01:13:49.000 I like a toothpick, but not during a fight.

01:13:50.000 That dude's still at it.

01:13:52.000 Yeah.

01:13:52.000 He's got a fight coming up in Brussels.

01:13:54.000 Wow.

01:13:55.000 It's a rough fight as well.

01:13:56.000 How old is he now?

01:13:57.000 44.

01:13:58.000 Wow.

01:13:59.000 Yeah.

01:14:00.000 Fighting a kid called Patrick Haberora.

01:14:03.000 Good Belgian fighter.

01:14:04.000 Yeah.

01:14:05.000 It's interesting, though.

01:14:06.000 I mean, you know, you've got a former champ with all that experience.

01:14:09.000 Oh, yeah.

01:14:10.000 I mean, he's still in great shape.

01:14:11.000 Yeah.

01:14:12.000 He still can compete at a high level.

01:14:13.000 It's just, wow, these guys, when they're competing for that long, it's so nuts.

01:14:18.000 You know what I've suggested, as well as a thousand other things that I've suggested to the PFL, but a master's division.

01:14:18.000 Yeah.

01:14:25.000 Right? 0.99

01:14:25.000 You know, the likes of Cowboy and Tony Ferguson and the guys that you want to keep fighting, but you don't want to see them just get smashed by Chamaev. 0.99

01:14:34.000 Sure. 0.72

01:14:35.000 I would love to see some of those fairly matched fights.

01:14:38.000 Like when we had Nate Diaz against Chamaev, wasn't it?

01:14:42.000 And then Chamaev was taken out of the fight and Tony Ferguson was put in the place and Nate won the fight.

01:14:47.000 That to me was the perfect matchup. 0.99

01:14:49.000 Like the Chamaev one would have made me feel really uncomfortable to watch. 1.00

01:14:53.000 Yes. 1.00

01:14:53.000 And I would love to see a Masters division, especially now we could accommodate it with some of the older fighters around. 1.00

01:14:58.000 Because most of them, they just kind of bounce over onto, you know, bare knuckle or whatever else is out there as options.

01:15:05.000 Whereas, like, they've still got so much to offer.

01:15:07.000 And if the fights are fairly matched, I think we get some more real good ones.

01:15:11.000 Yeah, it is a problem when you see those old veterans that still have something to offer, and then you see them getting thrown in there with some 27 year old assassin.

01:15:20.000 And you're like, good lord, don't do this.

01:15:22.000 I mean, I'm, what, 43?

01:15:24.000 I'd fight someone this weekend.

01:15:26.000 Like, I love it.

01:15:27.000 It's still in me.

01:15:28.000 But I know I'm physically, like, I mean, even if I was at my athletic peak, I wouldn't be competing with these guys now.

01:15:34.000 They're terrifying.

01:15:35.000 But, you know, like, to know that I'm getting into a fight with someone that's as game as me, right?

01:15:41.000 But has also had the experience as well as the wear and tear.

01:15:44.000 You know what I mean?

01:15:45.000 Yeah, evenly matched.

01:15:46.000 Yeah.

01:15:46.000 Like, look at Pacquiao's about to fight Mayweather.

01:15:49.000 Yeah.

01:15:49.000 Makes sense.

01:15:50.000 Yeah.

01:15:50.000 Right?

01:15:51.000 You know, like, fighting Terrence Crawford, you'd be like, don't do that.

01:15:56.000 Exactly.

01:15:57.000 Yeah.

01:15:58.000 Like, I don't want to see you get stretched.

01:16:00.000 You know what I mean?

01:16:01.000 But, like, you guys are both in your late 40s.

01:16:04.000 Like, okay.

01:16:05.000 Yeah.

01:16:05.000 All right.

01:16:06.000 I'll pay for that.

01:16:08.000 Yeah.

01:16:09.000 It's as long as they're not gone.

01:16:12.000 You know, there's some guys that they get to a certain point and they're like, why is their family letting them compete?

01:16:18.000 Why hasn't anybody stepped in?

01:16:19.000 Doesn't anybody recognize their skills are gone?

01:16:22.000 Doesn't anybody recognize they get knocked out way too easily now?

01:16:25.000 There's a bunch of fighters like that that I just really wish would not be doing it anymore.

01:16:29.000 And the thing is, it's sad about it as well, and this is where I feel like the community around MMA has probably changed in the last decade or two.

01:16:29.000 Yeah.

01:16:39.000 The old, the veteran fighters were just carried in such high regard, whereas now you're the highlight of somebody else's, the start of somebody else's career.

01:16:48.000 And a lot of the fans, I mean, certainly what I see online, they're very dismissive of fighters that at one point were great and are now not quite where they used to be.

01:16:48.000 Right.

01:16:57.000 And, you know, they start throwing around words like washed and stuff.

01:17:01.000 You've got to.

01:17:01.000 Yeah.

01:17:02.000 You've got to respect where these guys came from.

01:17:04.000 Like, no one lives forever.

01:17:05.000 No one is at their athletic peak forever.

01:17:08.000 But we also should still be celebrating what people have achieved, you know?

01:17:11.000 And I feel like that's something that we're not, we don't get as much in the sport.

01:17:14.000 And that's partly because the young fighters get matched with the veterans to, you know, like, you know, bring Ken Shamrock back out of retirement and dust him off for Rich Franklin to fight him because no one knew who Rich was and he was so close to a title shot.

01:17:28.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:17:29.000 Like, that was one of those moments where I'm like, that's kind of a, I don't like that fight.

01:17:34.000 You know what I mean?

01:17:35.000 Because I can see what's, Being done there.

01:17:38.000 And I mean, not that Chamay have needed it, but the boost that he would have got from smashing the hell out of Nate Diaz, you know, that was kind of part of the benefit of throwing Nate into that fight, you know.

01:17:38.000 Right.

01:17:50.000 And they're the fights that I would like to not see anymore.

01:17:53.000 Because I think we get more fights out of some of these guys towards the end of their career where they, maybe their athleticism is not where it was, but their knowledge is way ahead of where it used to be.

01:18:04.000 We go back, you know, we were talking about the old days and when we're first getting into it and when MMA first became a thing.

01:18:04.000 Right.

01:18:10.000 Like me as a 17 year old sitting, I wheeled the TV in with the VHS and I put the tape in and I watched UFC 2 and 3.

01:18:18.000 And I had this feeling of I'm like, now I'm questioning myself and everything about me as a martial artist.

01:18:24.000 I have to do this.

01:18:26.000 And if I don't do this, I'm going to be questioning myself my whole life.

01:18:30.000 But at the same time, I'm looking at this going, well, I know one martial art really well, taekwondo, and I know probably four or five other martial arts.

01:18:39.000 All right.

01:18:39.000 You know, Wing Chun.

01:18:41.000 I'd done some traditional jujitsu, I'd boxed quite a lot, you know what I mean?

01:18:45.000 So, like, I had a decent handle, but I also have a library of martial arts books.

01:18:51.000 And I would sit in front of that library and think to myself, like, how am I going to consume all of this information?

01:18:57.000 And it wasn't like, okay, I need this bit of information and this.

01:19:00.000 And it wasn't a case of absorbing what is useful and rejecting what's useless.

01:19:04.000 I had to absorb everything in order to go through that shedding process.

01:19:08.000 And it just felt so overwhelming.

01:19:10.000 I remember going into fights feeling like, I have no idea how this is going to play out.

01:19:15.000 I don't know half of this guy's skill set just purely because I haven't had the time to learn all of this stuff.

01:19:20.000 And it's like the more you pick at it, the more, you know, it's like you're hitting a rock and all of a sudden it falls in and it's a massive cave inside and it's just full of information.

01:19:30.000 And I'm like, how am I going to consume all of this knowledge?

01:19:32.000 You know what I mean?

01:19:34.000 I remember feeling very, very overwhelmed by it all.

01:19:37.000 And that fed into a lot of anxiety during fight week, which was, you know, something that everybody always manages.

01:19:43.000 But.

01:19:44.000 If I look back, that was where my anxiety came from.

01:19:47.000 It was the over analysis of the sport and the feeling like I was never going to be able to learn all of this information.

01:19:52.000 Whereas now, in actuality, I feel very, very opposite.

01:19:55.000 I feel like now, if I was going back, my training would be very, very focused and very, very streamlined.

01:20:00.000 But that's because I've had years and years of experience of watching the sport and knowing what works and what doesn't and pulling things apart.

01:20:07.000 So it was almost like, and I said this, I've said this to a lot of young fighters.

01:20:07.000 You know what I mean?

01:20:13.000 If I, in my career at one point, could have stopped and taken six months out or a year out just to be a student and just to learn and absorb, that would have been a real benefit for me.

01:20:24.000 When I stopped fighting and I was doing commentary and doing inside the octagon and stuff, like my knowledge was growing on a daily basis.

01:20:31.000 I felt it.

01:20:32.000 And I just thought to myself, man, I could have done this when I was in my career.

01:20:36.000 But I didn't because I was.

01:20:39.000 I was partly scared of the over analysis of it, you know, and partly concerned that I was going to show myself so much that I didn't know that I was just going to feel like it was endless.

01:20:49.000 It was a bottomless pit of knowledge, you know?

01:20:53.000 Whereas when I started doing Inside the Oxagon and I was watching fights in chronological order from the beginnings of people's careers all the way through, and then I was going back and I was watching prelims of fights that I wouldn't have watched in my career because I only want to watch this guy and this guy because I don't want all of this.

01:21:13.000 Sometimes I watch somebody and feel like I'm getting worse when I'm watching them.

01:21:16.000 You know what I mean?

01:21:17.000 So I'd be very, very specific about who I would watch.

01:21:20.000 Whereas in actuality, if you watch the whole card start to finish, the fight IQ increases generally as the card goes on.

01:21:27.000 So the guys at the top make far less mistakes and they're the guys that I'm watching.

01:21:32.000 So I'm watching people that are, you know, way closer to flawless than I am.

01:21:37.000 But if I watch the prelims, I can see the same people, the same mistakes that people are making.

01:21:41.000 They're just making them far more regularly on the prelims.

01:21:44.000 So it was almost like watching the prelims was uncovering problems.

01:21:48.000 And bad decisions much quicker than it was when I was watching the few specific guys that I was trying to learn from.

01:21:55.000 So there was a real benefit in just absorbing all of it.

01:21:58.000 And then the next stage was, and it was specifically Robbie Lawler against Roy McDonald.

01:22:03.000 It was the first time I realized I was watching a fight without putting myself in the cage.

01:22:08.000 And it was like an epiphany.

01:22:10.000 I was like, oh, I'm just watching these two guys as a fan.

01:22:14.000 I'm not comparing Robbie Lawler to me and Roy McDonald to me.

01:22:18.000 And my process of Preparing for an opponent was very similar to what I would do for an analysis.

01:22:23.000 I would get into him, I would watch it as much as I could of that person, but then I would go back and watch my fights that I knew were available to them.

01:22:31.000 So now I'm watching my fights with their skill set in mind, right?

01:22:36.000 So now I'm almost pretending to be that person to watch me and go, okay, well, I can do this to him and I can do this to him.

01:22:43.000 But there's always a bit of ego involved there.

01:22:46.000 So, like, say with Carlos Condit, an incredible fighter.

01:22:49.000 Right, he's great at everything, but he's not gonna be able to take me down, and there's no way in hell he's gonna be able to knock me out.

01:22:54.000 You know, Mohawk flapping in the wind, you know, and it was like, and that was my ego getting in the way, right?

01:23:01.000 Because if I was looking at Carlos Condit versus Robbie Lawler or Carlos Condit versus GSP, I would have respected his counter punching, right?

01:23:09.000 But my ego was a block in that scenario. 0.93

01:23:12.000 So by watching two fighters and being able to remove myself entirely, I just saw things differently, and it took my shit out of it, it took my drama out of the way. 0.92

01:23:21.000 That's interesting. 0.97

01:23:21.000 Your ego really can get in the way. 0.97

01:23:24.000 And it really makes you make terrible decisions.

01:23:26.000 Like, how many people have taken fights they shouldn't have taken just because of their ego?

01:23:31.000 Their ego just gave them a distorted perception.

01:23:33.000 Absolutely.

01:23:34.000 There was this guy that was training with us that was really good at jujitsu and he had no striking, he was going to take an MMA fight.

01:23:39.000 And I remember saying to him, You have to understand that what you can do to people on the ground, right?

01:23:48.000 You could make a person feel helpless, right?

01:23:51.000 Someone could do that to you standing up, and it's way scarier.

01:23:55.000 It's way scarier.

01:23:55.000 Like, you have no idea.

01:23:56.000 Like, you have no idea.

01:23:57.000 You think it's this weird Dunning Kruger effect, right?

01:24:03.000 Like, you think you're really good, so you think you're good at that.

01:24:07.000 Like, you've this distorted.

01:24:09.000 You don't know anything about striking.

01:24:11.000 Like, his striking was like, pap, pap, like rudimentary, like nothing.

01:24:11.000 Yeah.

01:24:16.000 I'm like, someone's going to set you up and boom!

01:24:19.000 Right. 0.99

01:24:19.000 And head kick you. 0.99

01:24:20.000 They're going to. 0.70

01:24:21.000 And he got TKO'd.

01:24:22.000 He got beat up badly. 0.95

01:24:24.000 And I think it really fucked him up, too. 0.95

01:24:25.000 Yeah. 0.73

01:24:25.000 Really? 0.73

01:24:26.000 It's almost like you pull the curtain back and you realize there's a whole other world behind the curtain that you'd not anticipated was there.

01:24:32.000 But the scariest world to not be good at is the striking world.

01:24:35.000 Absolutely.

01:24:36.000 That's the scariest world.

01:24:36.000 Absolutely.

01:24:37.000 And I've tried to quantify this myself because it is an interesting thing.

01:24:42.000 Because often I find myself explaining the nuances of feints and movements that are opening doors for other things to land.

01:24:49.000 I mean, Adesanyu was a master at this.

01:24:50.000 Conor McGregor was a master at this.

01:24:53.000 Yes.

01:24:53.000 And the way that they deliver their techniques, there's such an elite level of intelligence to it that it's easy to just think that it's chance what they're doing, right?

01:25:04.000 Like, take Conor McGregor Cowboy, for example.

01:25:07.000 Right.

01:25:08.000 And the beauty of Inside the Octagon is I would download all the angles of the fight.

01:25:13.000 I would watch every angle, the full fight from the whole angle.

01:25:17.000 So I'd see different things.

01:25:19.000 And there's a moment in that fight.

01:25:21.000 And this is the benefit of, say, Conor McGregor, say his brand is the left hand, right?

01:25:29.000 Conor McGregor's left hand brand was a very, very powerful weapon for him to take into the fight against Cowboy because Cowboy was so focused on it.

01:25:36.000 And there's an angle from, from, Cowboy's backed up against the fence and he sees Connor close his left hand.

01:25:44.000 And straight away, Cowboy goes, Left hand's coming.

01:25:47.000 And he moves on to the head kick.

01:25:49.000 It was the threat of the left hand coming that had forced Cowboy to make that mistake.

01:25:54.000 Anderson Silver, Vitor Belfort, when he looked at his leg and kicked him in the face.

01:25:59.000 Like the idea of him being able to sell.

01:26:01.000 And you look at that fight, Vitor's checking the inside low kick while he's got Anderson's toes in his mouth.

01:26:07.000 It's like he was able to sell a technique purely with his eye line, purely with a feint.

01:26:07.000 You know what I mean?

01:26:12.000 And Adesanya is another master at it as well.

01:26:16.000 And that to me then shows that there are, we've got ranges in MMA, but in each one of those ranges, there's dimensions as well, right?

01:26:23.000 There's dimensions of understanding.

01:26:25.000 Like you could be a button mashing fighter, and a lot of people have success with button mashing.

01:26:29.000 Right.

01:26:30.000 They throw the technique that they worked in the changing room, warming up on the pads.

01:26:34.000 But then there are people that understand that each one of these techniques and each thing that they do or piece that they have in their arsenal is a setup for something else.

01:26:43.000 Right.

01:26:44.000 You know?

01:26:45.000 Well, that's what's interesting about people that have a real system.

01:26:48.000 Dwayne Bang Ludwig.

01:26:48.000 Yeah.

01:26:49.000 Have you ever trained with him?

01:26:50.000 I haven't, but we fought, didn't we?

01:26:52.000 So I've still.

01:26:53.000 I mean, I was a huge fan of him back in the day.

01:26:55.000 I remember him, TK Owens, somebody in King of the Cage up against the fence.

01:26:59.000 And he did that.

01:26:59.000 Oh, yeah.

01:26:59.000 I fell in love with him.

01:27:00.000 Yeah.

01:27:01.000 That was King of the Cage, wasn't it?

01:27:03.000 Yeah.

01:27:04.000 Great system of footwork, though, isn't it?

01:27:06.000 Oh, he has an amazing system.

01:27:07.000 And his system is like he has a giant notebook filled with like techniques where everything, his system is like very well thought out.

01:27:17.000 And it's really interesting because he didn't fight the way he teaches.

01:27:20.000 No.

01:27:21.000 That's what's really interesting.

01:27:22.000 Like TJ Dillashaw is probably his greatest student.

01:27:24.000 And TJ fought completely different than Dwayne.

01:27:28.000 He constantly switched stances, constantly was like, he was giving you so many looks.

01:27:33.000 And, you know, it's wild watching when, you know, you watch like Dwayne style versus what he would teach.

01:27:41.000 Because it was just like, oh, if I had only known this while I was fighting, if I had only known this while I was coming up, if I had only known this early, early on in my career.

01:27:50.000 Yeah.

01:27:51.000 And this is where I don't think we get enough people crossing over to coaching afterwards.

01:27:54.000 Like, whenever I see a former fighter in the corner, Mike Brown, Robbie Lawler, whoever it is, like, I'm filled with confidence that the sport is moving on because they're going to pass on information that they've taken on from somebody else and refined.

01:28:06.000 You know, like my taekwondo teacher told me when I was a kid, if you're not better than me at my age, I've failed as a teacher.

01:28:13.000 Right.

01:28:14.000 And, like, and he always, Mick Rowley's name is, he always gave me everything.

01:28:19.000 There was never any restriction because he wanted to see what I would do with it and where I would take it.

01:28:23.000 Because then, same with Eddie Bravo, we were just chatting about it.

01:28:27.000 Backstage, you remember Sean Bollinger?

01:28:30.000 Sure.

01:28:31.000 He used to be able to heel hook himself and he created the double bagger, and there's a few different things.

01:28:35.000 But I remember being on the mats and watching Eddie Bravo listen to one of his 16, 17 year old students to see what he could learn from him.

01:28:43.000 And that's such an unusual thing in a lot of martial arts schools the teacher being a student, right?

01:28:49.000 And that's something that always stood out to me about particular people.

01:28:54.000 Like, I would never want to train a fighter and hold anything back from them because I always want to be just a little bit better.

01:29:00.000 You know, I want to give you everything, throw everything I've got on the table, and then see what you pick up, see what you run with, and see what you can teach me from it.

01:29:08.000 Yeah, it'll make you better, too.

01:29:10.000 And that's the thing.

01:29:12.000 Absolutely.

01:29:12.000 But you have to have an honest ego.

01:29:16.000 Yes.

01:29:16.000 Like you have to be able to really say, okay, this is how good I am.

01:29:19.000 I can't pretend I'm better than I am for these people.

01:29:22.000 This is how good I am.

01:29:23.000 And you have to be able to show it.

01:29:24.000 Yeah.

01:29:24.000 And that's one of the beautiful things about jujitsu is like you have to roll.

01:29:28.000 Like if you're a teacher, you're rolling with people.

01:29:31.000 But if Eddie gets caught in something, he'll tell people.

01:29:33.000 And he'll show you.

01:29:33.000 Yeah.

01:29:34.000 Show me what you did.

01:29:35.000 And everybody, look what he did.

01:29:37.000 And he'll bring people around.

01:29:38.000 He's like, he's like, he'll let you know.

01:29:39.000 I'm just a human being.

01:29:41.000 I just happen to be really good at this.

01:29:42.000 And even if I'm really good at this, there's openings, there's holes, there's things that I don't know.

01:29:47.000 And this is a constantly changing and evolving game where people are bringing in new things.

01:29:53.000 And some of these new things, you know, you analyze it and you go, well, here's a simple way to stop this.

01:29:58.000 And as soon as someone knows this, that submission's gone. 0.93

01:30:02.000 And so then you kill it and you put it aside. 0.50

01:30:04.000 Well, we tried that one. 0.99

01:30:05.000 Didn't work.

01:30:05.000 Sometimes you're like, Try to stop this.

01:30:08.000 And you're like, I don't, I think that's legit.

01:30:11.000 And then guys would get down, they would go, What if you do this?

01:30:14.000 And you'll, like, he'll have classes.

01:30:14.000 What if you do that?

01:30:16.000 We'll have like 15 guys come up with different solutions to these problems and say, Okay, get him in it and put him in it.

01:30:23.000 All right, now how do you finish it?

01:30:24.000 And you grab here?

01:30:26.000 Okay, what would you do here?

01:30:28.000 And then, like, you have guys like break things down.

01:30:30.000 And that's that honest approach.

01:30:33.000 Someone told me that, remember when Hoist Gracie tapped Dan Severin with a triangle?

01:30:38.000 They were training at one of the Gracie schools, a friend of mine.

01:30:42.000 He saw that and he said, Can you show us that?

01:30:45.000 He said, You're not ready for that yet.

01:30:47.000 I can't show you that. 0.99

01:30:48.000 And he's like, What the fuck are you talking about? 0.98

01:30:50.000 Like, the guy, it's his technique. 0.99

01:30:53.000 Like, show me the technique.

01:30:55.000 Like, he just did it.

01:30:56.000 And he's like, No, we're not going to.

01:30:57.000 Like, they were holding back.

01:30:59.000 Yeah.

01:30:59.000 So in the early days, there was a lot of holding back.

01:31:02.000 You know, this is like, What was that?

01:31:04.000 What year was that?

01:31:05.000 That had to be like 94 or something like that.

01:31:07.000 Right.

01:31:08.000 But then, you know, but then, like, everyone's reputation as a coach back in those days couldn't really be questioned too much.

01:31:14.000 You know what I mean?

01:31:15.000 Because there was no way of them proving it.

01:31:15.000 Right.

01:31:17.000 I just can't, it's too deadly.

01:31:18.000 Right.

01:31:19.000 You know what I mean?

01:31:21.000 Whereas, you know, like the people that's, and those people stand out in my mind.

01:31:26.000 You know, Eddie was one of those people.

01:31:27.000 He stood out in my mind because of how he approached the sessions.

01:31:32.000 He was always a student, even when he was the teacher.

01:31:34.000 Yeah.

01:31:35.000 And the other thing as well, that, you know, everybody wanted to name something in the 10th planet system.

01:31:39.000 Right.

01:31:39.000 You know, so everyone was trying to create something and make it stick.

01:31:42.000 So it, like, it created this really.

01:31:45.000 Like it was a thriving environment to be in.

01:31:48.000 I loved being at Legends back in the day, and you know, obviously Bomb Squad as well before that.

01:31:54.000 Yeah, what year did you start training with us?

01:31:56.000 It was Legends.

01:31:56.000 It was after the Bomb Squad had closed.

01:31:58.000 I went back to the Bomb Squad, well, what was the Bomb Squad to train with Paolo Tolcia of Bloodsport fame?

01:32:04.000 Yeah.

01:32:05.000 But yeah, Legends.

01:32:07.000 And it had just opened when I arrived there.

01:32:08.000 So what year was that?

01:32:09.000 2005?

01:32:11.000 Six?

01:32:12.000 Probably 2006, yeah.

01:32:14.000 Yeah, because before that, I've been training in the Air Force.

01:32:14.000 Wow.

01:32:16.000 Bro, that's 20 years ago.

01:32:17.000 Isn't that crazy?

01:32:18.000 I know, two decades, man. 0.99

01:32:19.000 That's when we met, 20 fucking years ago. 0.97

01:32:22.000 Yeah, and a lot's changed. 0.98

01:32:24.000 Yeah.

01:32:24.000 Nuts.

01:32:25.000 It's nuts how time just flies. 1.00

01:32:26.000 Fucking waits for no one. 0.98

01:32:28.000 I was just saying to the guys here, it's funny, the Joe Rogan experience, if you'd have asked me what the Joe Rogan experience was 20 years ago, it was getting crushed inside control. 0.99

01:32:39.000 That was my experience of Joe Rogan.

01:32:41.000 Being on the mats during the class and watching you smash the bag with your back kick and then stepping onto the mats and just.

01:32:48.000 And you almost had the opposite game to most of the guys on the mat because all the 10th Planet guys were pulling you into half guard or into guard and trying to wrap you up, whereas you were very much a top game player.

01:32:59.000 Yeah, that's at least how it felt to me.

01:33:00.000 It was like you were the different role on the mat to everybody else.

01:33:04.000 Well, I got obsessed with head and arm chokes. 1.00

01:33:08.000 Yeah, I felt it. 0.99

01:33:10.000 You know, it fucked my neck up, I think. 1.00

01:33:12.000 I wound up having a bulging disc in my neck. 0.99

01:33:13.000 It was either that or not tapping the guillotines.

01:33:16.000 But I got a head and arm choker.

01:33:19.000 It developed it where it was like, if I locked it on, you were pretty much done.

01:33:24.000 You know, and when I started tapping like brown belts and higher level guys with that, and then I just really concentrated on it.

01:33:30.000 And it's one of those things where it's like, you know how it is.

01:33:33.000 Just like with a kick.

01:33:35.000 Like everyone has strong legs, you know, you can lift weights with your legs, but like how come some people can kick harder than other people?

01:33:41.000 Well, it's the coordination, the technique, the refinement of it, where it just and there's something like that in a squeeze, like Marcelo, like Marcelo would get your back and his rear naked choke.

01:33:52.000 Marcelo Garcia was just like a master.

01:33:54.000 He's not a big, strong guy.

01:33:56.000 Like, so what is it?

01:33:57.000 And so I that was like my number one go to was the head and arm choke. 1.00

01:34:02.000 If I could get that shit, I was pretty. 1.00

01:34:04.000 Sure, I could lock it up. 0.99

01:34:05.000 So I just developed this style of just crushing where I would just have my whole body would just lock onto something like a pit bull.

01:34:14.000 You know?

01:34:14.000 Yeah.

01:34:16.000 But that's interesting the difference between striking and grappling and going back to what we were talking about a minute ago.

01:34:20.000 Like, there's something mechanical about grappling, right?

01:34:23.000 If you pull on somebody's head, their head's going to come down or they're going to force back and their head's going to go back.

01:34:28.000 There's a cause and reaction in grappling almost all the time that even a person that doesn't fight.

01:34:34.000 Can see the basics of.

01:34:36.000 Right?

01:34:36.000 Yes.

01:34:37.000 Where if I pick one leg up and I throw you around, you're going to lose your balance.

01:34:40.000 Right.

01:34:40.000 Even something as simple as that.

01:34:42.000 But with striking, there's so many things that happen with striking where no one touches anybody.

01:34:47.000 Especially when you've got, and then this is where the dimensions come in.

01:34:47.000 Right.

01:34:50.000 You know, you've got the button mashes at the bottom, you've got the guys that have refined their button mashing skill sets, and now they've got two or three combos that work well for them, or they've got a particular technique that they refine to a point where they can deliver it in 10 different ways.

01:35:02.000 But then you've got people that understand that each one of their weapons.

01:35:06.000 Is a different thing at a different time and serves a different purpose at a different time, you know?

01:35:10.000 Yeah.

01:35:11.000 Like with a jab, for example, everybody in their game has got a jab.

01:35:14.000 But if you strip that jab down into its core components and you go, you know, you look at like a secondary identifier, right, of that technique, there are going to be differences, right?

01:35:29.000 If I throw my right hand straight and I throw it over your jab or I throw it when I split your cross, that to me is three different techniques, right?

01:35:37.000 It's the same.

01:35:38.000 The same weapon that you're using, but the delivery system's different, right?

01:35:41.000 Right, but then on top of that complexity, you've got all of the damage that you can inflict that draws responses to people, right?

01:35:50.000 Like the calf kick.

01:35:51.000 Now you can feint a calf kick and get someone to pick their leg up.

01:35:54.000 And that's a very, very basic example.

01:35:55.000 Or when someone's been hit with a body shot, you feint a body shot and their head's almost always open.

01:36:01.000 There are certain things.

01:36:02.000 I mean, headshot dead is another good example.

01:36:04.000 How often do you see someone throw a punch followed by a kick and knock their opponent down?

01:36:09.000 Duke Rufus used to teach that.

01:36:10.000 Is that right?

01:36:11.000 Yeah, he taught me that.

01:36:13.000 That was his thing.

01:36:14.000 He really liked to shield the vision with a punch and have the kick come behind it.

01:36:20.000 See, that for me is one delivery mechanism of one particular technique, right?

01:36:25.000 And there are lots and lots of those.

01:36:27.000 Lots of them.

01:36:28.000 But that's where I find it really interesting is and how.

01:36:33.000 I sat one day and I thought to myself, I'm going to nail down the jab.

01:36:36.000 I'm going to start with that.

01:36:37.000 Because I have intended on writing a book or two about this at some point.

01:36:41.000 And I started with the jab and I got to like 20,000 words. 0.99

01:36:44.000 And I thought to myself, no one's going to read this shit. 0.99

01:36:47.000 Like, I'm going to sell one copy and it's going to be to myself so I can criticize it. 0.99

01:36:51.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:36:53.000 So it's like.

01:36:53.000 Well, you've always been a very thorough guy in the way you analyze things, which makes you a perfect candidate for someone who's a commentator because you really have a very complex understanding of the mechanics of movement and of all the different things that are happening.

01:37:09.000 You're not just like, oh, we hit them hard.

01:37:12.000 You're looking at all the different layers and you analyze things on multi levels, which I always find fascinating.

01:37:22.000 You have a great commentary style, it's really excellent.

01:37:25.000 You're absolutely one of the best out there.

01:37:27.000 That means a lot to me.

01:37:28.000 Thank you.

01:37:28.000 Yeah, you're great.

01:37:29.000 I'm fortunate enough to have a bit of the tism, you see.

01:37:31.000 So it's like, I see the patterns. 1.00

01:37:32.000 That's a good thing.

01:37:33.000 Yeah, I'm touching the tism is good. 0.99

01:37:35.000 Oh, my God. 0.94

01:37:35.000 Yeah. 0.94

01:37:36.000 Yeah.

01:37:37.000 I don't think I have that.

01:37:39.000 I don't know.

01:37:39.000 No?

01:37:40.000 I have ADHD.

01:37:41.000 Yeah, I was going to say.

01:37:42.000 My dad's ADHD.

01:37:42.000 Yeah.

01:37:43.000 My mom's tism for sure.

01:37:45.000 You know what I mean? 0.67

01:37:46.000 We're having a bit of both.

01:37:47.000 I don't have the tism, but I have this weird ability to lock in on things where the world goes away and I don't need food.

01:37:54.000 Yeah.

01:37:55.000 And I can just, I could do something for like 12 hours in a row.

01:37:57.000 100%.

01:37:58.000 I forget to eat all the time.

01:38:00.000 In fact, Tom Hardy's just announced that he's autistic.

01:38:00.000 Yeah.

01:38:00.000 All the time.

01:38:03.000 He's just collaborated with a brand and they've created a whole line of, you know, no eye contact rash golfers.

01:38:10.000 How convenient. 0.97

01:38:11.000 How convenient he's autistic. 0.97

01:38:13.000 Come on. 0.98

01:38:13.000 You know what was really interesting? 0.98

01:38:14.000 You're claiming autistic. 1.00

01:38:15.000 Like, unless you're coding in your sleep, shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:38:19.000 You know what was really interesting is I have a friend called Scroobius Pip. 0.99

01:38:22.000 He's a rapper in the UK.

01:38:23.000 You know Scroobius, yeah.

01:38:25.000 So he was in Taboo with Tom Hardy.

01:38:28.000 And he told me a story when they were driving from LA to Vegas.

01:38:31.000 And Scroobius Pip, his record label's called Speech Development Records.

01:38:35.000 He has a stammer, he has a speech impediment.

01:38:38.000 And on this drive between LA and Vegas, he's driving, Tom Hardy's in the passenger seat, and Tom started to mimic his stammer but apologized for it.

01:38:48.000 He's like, I can't help it.

01:38:50.000 Oh, wow.

01:38:51.000 He's like absorbing parts of his character while he was sitting there.

01:38:56.000 Very similar to it happened with Johnny Depp and Bill Murray when they played. Hunter Thompson, right?

01:39:02.000 Like, you watch Jack Sparrow, and Jack Sparrow's got a Hunter Thompson kind of move to him.

01:39:07.000 And even Johnny Depp said himself he don't think he was ever the same after he played Hunter Thompson in Fear and Loathing.

01:39:12.000 Well, he was such a giant Hunter Thompson fan.

01:39:14.000 Yeah.

01:39:15.000 Yeah.

01:39:16.000 I think it's interesting about, like, certainly method actors, people that can play a role.

01:39:21.000 Like, Jim Carrey is another good example.

01:39:23.000 Christian Bale, right?

01:39:24.000 Daniel Day Lewis, oh my goodness, maybe the best.

01:39:27.000 Like, their ability to, like, almost like Shang Tsung out of Mortal Kombat, they can absorb a bit of the person's character.

01:39:34.000 And then kind of become that character.

01:39:37.000 I met Tom a couple of times at Henzo's in New York.

01:39:41.000 And he's a lovely guy, but he's kind of hunched over, no eye contact.

01:39:46.000 Well, I think a little bit of that is famous as well.

01:39:46.000 Oh, he is?

01:39:49.000 I think so.

01:39:49.000 There's a little bit of fame that just weirds you out.

01:39:52.000 Like, if I go places, I try not to make eye contact sometimes.

01:39:55.000 It's just too odd.

01:39:57.000 I just like, hi.

01:39:59.000 Like, you might think I'm autistic, but I'm just fucking weirded out by too many people. 0.75

01:40:04.000 I totally get that.

01:40:05.000 You know, one of my favorite shows that you ever did was with Henry Rollins, the first one.

01:40:09.000 And he said something that always stuck in my mind.

01:40:12.000 He said, I'm very good being the party.

01:40:13.000 I'm not very good being at the party.

01:40:15.000 Yeah.

01:40:16.000 Stuck in my mind.

01:40:18.000 I feel like that all the time.

01:40:19.000 But I go the opposite way.

01:40:21.000 I. I've realized recently I hold too much eye contact.

01:40:26.000 And I find it exhausting.

01:40:28.000 I was walking through the park next to the hotel last night and I'm having a conversation in my head stop looking at people.

01:40:34.000 Stop looking people in the eye.

01:40:36.000 Stop making eye contact.

01:40:37.000 I do it all the time.

01:40:38.000 I lock in.

01:40:39.000 I'm even doing it now.

01:40:40.000 We're talking.

01:40:41.000 I'm kind of locked into you.

01:40:43.000 And even in your conversation, you have a look away.

01:40:46.000 I struggle to do that.

01:40:47.000 I'm actually trying to concentrate on the conversation.

01:40:49.000 I have to sometimes if I'm thinking of an idea.

01:40:49.000 I have to sometimes.

01:40:52.000 Yeah, I look away.

01:40:54.000 My wife said that I wonder if that's autism.

01:40:57.000 Because it's like one of my daughters has my recall, my ability to like, she'll talk about like, you know, whatever it is.

01:41:06.000 Like, she can rattle off like information about the Titanic. 1.00

01:41:09.000 Like, she's like, you have your fucking dad's brain. 1.00

01:41:13.000 Like, that's nuts. 1.00

01:41:14.000 But I do, when I do it, I look away sometimes.

01:41:17.000 Like, I look up.

01:41:18.000 Like, I'm talking about things.

01:41:19.000 I really want to be clear about what I'm saying.

01:41:21.000 I look up.

01:41:22.000 And it's because I want to, I think it's because I want to take out the element of eye to eye and communicating with someone.

01:41:30.000 Looking away while thinking, Known as gaze aversion, a common cognitive behavior that helps people process information by reducing external distractions.

01:41:38.000 Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

01:41:39.000 By looking at an empty space or upward, the brain shifts from environmental input to internal cognitive tasks, such as memory retrieval or complex thinking.

01:41:48.000 Yeah, that's what I do.

01:41:49.000 I didn't know it was a.

01:41:51.000 Similar to when people turn down the radio when you're trying to find where you're going.

01:41:54.000 Oh, yeah.

01:41:55.000 You have to block whatever it is.

01:41:57.000 You can still see, but you have to.

01:41:58.000 Oh, right.

01:41:59.000 Or if someone's yapping at you while you're trying to figure out where you're going.

01:42:02.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:42:03.000 And they're telling you, and I told her, and they're like, we shut the fuck up. 0.93

01:42:06.000 I don't know where I am. 0.97

01:42:07.000 We have to figure out where we're going.

01:42:07.000 Yeah.

01:42:09.000 You know, I find myself doing it when I'm walking through airports.

01:42:11.000 When I'm traveling, I've got my wife with me, Veronica.

01:42:13.000 Like, I notice I consciously don't make eye contact with her when we're traveling.

01:42:17.000 And I don't know why that is.

01:42:19.000 It's like, I feel a little bit like there's enough to be dealing with right now.

01:42:22.000 If I then open a conversation with you by looking at you, that's another layer of, let me just deal with the airport.

01:42:27.000 Yes.

01:42:28.000 Well, you know, people don't think about that, but when you're involved in multiple tasks at the same time, You know, you're taking away your ability to concentrate and do a great job at any one of those things if there's multiple things going on at the same time. 0.98

01:42:41.000 That's why, like, I used to do interviews in my car and I stopped doing them because I sound like a moron. 0.81

01:42:47.000 And I realized this because I'm thinking about cars. 0.94

01:42:50.000 Right.

01:42:50.000 I'm going 60 miles an hour.

01:42:52.000 There's a car to the left, a car to the right, a car in front of me, a car behind. 1.00

01:42:54.000 This guy, this fucking asshole, oh, this guy in a motorcycle, he's going to get killed. 1.00

01:42:58.000 Look at him zipping in between the lanes. 1.00

01:42:59.000 And so I'm thinking all these different things and then I'm trying to explain different stuff.

01:43:03.000 I thought it would be a great way to multitask. 0.98

01:43:08.000 Let me do this fucking stupid interview that I don't want to do anyway, and let me do it while I'm on the phone. 0.99

01:43:12.000 It'd be kind of fun. 1.00

01:43:13.000 But meanwhile, I just sound like a moron because I can't articulate well because I'm thinking about too many different things simultaneously. 0.91

01:43:21.000 Well, you're already multitasking. 0.95

01:43:23.000 Yeah, which is why I like the sensory deprivation tank so much because there's nothing, there's no tasks.

01:43:29.000 Is that still a regular thing for you?

01:43:30.000 I got it right here.

01:43:31.000 Yeah.

01:43:31.000 Have you really?

01:43:32.000 I've only done it a couple of times, but I found out.

01:43:34.000 Where are you living these days?

01:43:35.000 I'm in the UK.

01:43:36.000 I'm right in the Midlands in the UK.

01:43:38.000 But I mean, it's getting a little kooky over there, isn't it?

01:43:41.000 Yes, you might want to bail before they lock you up for thought crimes.

01:43:44.000 I know, right?

01:43:45.000 I know for real.

01:43:46.000 It's like I'm conscious and cautious all the time.

01:43:49.000 I feel right now like I'm kind of holding my tongue on a lot of things, just purely because I kind of know that when I start talking, I'm just, ah, you know, because that's how I am.

01:44:00.000 You know, I'm very opinionated, unfortunately.

01:44:02.000 That's a good thing.

01:44:03.000 Well, if I decide to start talking, then I won't shut up and I've not opened that floodgate yet.

01:44:07.000 But I do feel like it's coming.

01:44:10.000 But I also feel like I need to prepare for it a little bit.

01:44:13.000 Like there's a bunch of books I need to consume before I'm in the right place where I can open up and.

01:44:13.000 You know what I mean?

01:44:19.000 Fully express yourself, express certain things.

01:44:21.000 Yeah, it's just where it's going right now is not in a good direction.

01:44:25.000 It's going, it's tightening down on people's ability to express themselves.

01:44:30.000 Yeah, and you got so many issues.

01:44:32.000 It's happening everywhere, though, isn't it?

01:44:34.000 I mean, even like you know, like I mean, as a comedian, you know, freedom of speech is so important to you and to your industry, you know what I mean?

01:44:45.000 And I feel like that's changed a lot, you know, across the world, it's the same in Europe as well, in a lot of places.

01:44:51.000 I think in America, in comedy, it was closing down, and then people realized we can't have this, and it's opened right back up.

01:44:58.000 Right, okay.

01:44:59.000 You know, there was a bunch of people that were trying to conflate jokes with your actual opinions.

01:45:05.000 Yeah.

01:45:06.000 You know, I talked about on stage once, I'm like, you know, Bob Marley didn't really shoot the sheriff.

01:45:10.000 You know, it's just when Quentin Tarantino's filming a film, nobody's dying, okay?

01:45:14.000 This is entertainment.

01:45:16.000 And you say things that you don't really believe because it's an outrageous thing to say because it's funny.

01:45:21.000 Yeah.

01:45:21.000 And there's this understanding of that as an audience member.

01:45:24.000 You're supposed to be able to accept that. 0.98

01:45:25.000 But then you have these cunts out there in the world that are just looking to find words that someone said and ascribe them as if they're, you know, put it down on paper as if this is a statement. 0.97

01:45:39.000 Like, this is what this person actually thinks and believes. 0.99

01:45:41.000 Like, no, that's not what we're fucking around. 1.00

01:45:44.000 We're talking shit. 0.99

01:45:45.000 Like, you can't pretend. 1.00

01:45:47.000 Yeah.

01:45:47.000 And then take a small clip and put it completely out of context on TikTok or a social media.

01:45:51.000 All the time, man.

01:45:52.000 All the time about all kinds of things.

01:45:54.000 People.

01:45:55.000 Which is part of the game.

01:45:56.000 You know, people love to do that.

01:45:57.000 It's like, it's fine.

01:45:58.000 It's okay. 0.83

01:45:59.000 You know, it's fine for TikTok minded people.

01:46:03.000 The real problem is people that don't know you and don't understand you, and then they get an impression of you based off of that. 1.00

01:46:09.000 This is their first introduction to you, and it's based off, well, the fuck that guy. 0.99

01:46:13.000 But, you know, that's just part of the game. 0.99

01:46:15.000 It's going to happen.

01:46:15.000 Yeah.

01:46:16.000 I think comedians and satire is one of the last lines of defense against tyranny.

01:46:21.000 I really do.

01:46:22.000 Like, I watch Prime Minister's questions every Wednesday.

01:46:25.000 And I listen to just the nonsense that comes out of it.

01:46:29.000 And we've got Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenock just going at each other over just nonsense.

01:46:35.000 It's not nothing real, no real quality of conversation is coming out of that.

01:46:41.000 But what I feel like is if we had a panel of comedians sitting in the gallery somewhere, you know, you've got Robert Mitchell and Ricky Gervais and James A. Caster and a few others just sitting there just going, well, that sounds like nonsense, and then poking fun at it and making a joke out of it.

01:46:55.000 It brings a reality to people.

01:46:57.000 Things that I don't think we're lacking in a lot of ways.

01:47:00.000 Well, the Lakota had that in their tribes. 0.75

01:47:03.000 They had a thing called the hiyoka, which they called a sacred clown. 1.00

01:47:07.000 And the hiyoka would be able to make fun of everything. 1.00

01:47:10.000 And as soon as you couldn't make fun of something, you knew it was bullshit. 0.97

01:47:13.000 So it's like you couldn't make fun of the chief's wife or you couldn't make fun of, you know, someone, some warrior, couldn't make fun of something. 0.97

01:47:21.000 As soon as you couldn't make fun of something, like, hey, why are you so defensive?

01:47:24.000 How come I can't make fun of that?

01:47:25.000 That's interesting.

01:47:26.000 Yeah.

01:47:26.000 I mean, so you had to actually be.

01:47:28.000 Funny.

01:47:28.000 Heioka.

01:47:29.000 Heioka. 0.98

01:47:29.000 It had to actually be funny, of course, or you'd probably get killed. 0.98

01:47:32.000 But that's your new move.

01:47:34.000 That's your new move, Joe.

01:47:35.000 You need to settle by Heioka for the world.

01:47:37.000 Well, I think that's what comedy is in many ways it's a test.

01:47:43.000 You test things.

01:47:44.000 It doesn't mean it always works, and it doesn't mean that jokes are always funny, and it doesn't mean that sometimes people don't overreach.

01:47:52.000 Patrice O'Neill had a great statement about that where he was talking about something that happened on the Opie and Anthony show.

01:48:02.000 He was on Fox News and they were criticizing it, and he was saying, You've got to understand that all jokes come from the same place.

01:48:09.000 They all come from the place of trying to be funny, and some of them you might find a And some of them you might laugh at really hard, but it's the mindset, the place that it's coming from is all the same.

01:48:21.000 And I was like, that's so wise because that's really the best way to describe it because that's really what everyone's trying to do.

01:48:27.000 They're just trying to make people laugh.

01:48:29.000 It's just sometimes it doesn't come out right or sometimes it's a miss, like, especially if it's an ad lib.

01:48:36.000 Like, at any moment in time, you generally don't know what the next word out of your mouth is going to be like right now, right?

01:48:42.000 I don't know.

01:48:43.000 I'm just freeballing.

01:48:44.000 And sometimes you'll say something really hilarious, and sometimes you say something you're like, Cut that out, Jamie.

01:48:51.000 It's because you try, you swing, you miss, you don't know.

01:48:54.000 And people want to take these things that you're freeballing with and just trying to make laughs and call them a statement.

01:49:05.000 And think of that as like this well thought out you sat down, you wrote this out, you went over it with a fine tooth comb.

01:49:13.000 This is my press release.

01:49:15.000 That's not what comedy is.

01:49:16.000 It's jokes. 1.00

01:49:17.000 You're just fucking around. 1.00

01:49:19.000 And if you can't take a joke, You're probably annoying. 1.00

01:49:23.000 Yeah.

01:49:23.000 And you really shouldn't be in any position to regulate discourse because you're not a fun person, right?

01:49:30.000 You're a person that's looking to take things very seriously.

01:49:32.000 Yeah.

01:49:33.000 We know a lot of people like that that are bad faith actors and, you know, they play gotcha.

01:49:38.000 You just said this.

01:49:39.000 Like, you really mean that.

01:49:41.000 So tell your position on that. 1.00

01:49:42.000 Like, oh, fuck off. 1.00

01:49:43.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:49:44.000 Like, you're not, I'm not interested in engaging with you because you're not real.

01:49:48.000 You know, like, this is not a real thing. 1.00

01:49:49.000 You're playing a stupid game. 0.99

01:49:51.000 I'm playing a game of we're two human beings communicating with each other and we're going to overstep sometimes. 1.00

01:49:56.000 We're going to slip up.

01:49:57.000 And every now and then, you're going to nail it, knock it out of the park.

01:49:57.000 We're going to.

01:50:00.000 And even if I don't like you, if you fucking make me laugh, I'll clap. 0.98

01:50:03.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:50:03.000 You know? 0.99

01:50:04.000 It's kind of similar with trash talking, isn't it? 0.96

01:50:06.000 You know what I mean? 0.95

01:50:07.000 And if somebody.

01:50:08.000 Like one of the funniest lines ever was.

01:50:10.000 And I remember Connor, as he was saying it, he was laughing at himself.

01:50:13.000 And it was the back and forth with Chad Mendez.

01:50:15.000 And he was.

01:50:16.000 Chad was saying, you can't wrestle.

01:50:17.000 And Connor.

01:50:18.000 He was on a live feed at BT Sports Studio.

01:50:20.000 And I remember it so clearly.

01:50:21.000 Because he was like, as he was saying it, he was finding it funny in himself. 0.98

01:50:25.000 He was like, I'll wrestle my balls on your forehead. 0.95

01:50:28.000 And it was just, and then he's laughing, and everybody in the room's laughing. 0.98

01:50:32.000 Even Chad Mendez is laughing.

01:50:33.000 You know what I mean?

01:50:34.000 But then, like.

01:50:35.000 Funny dude.

01:50:36.000 How about the Jeremy Stevens one? 0.99

01:50:37.000 Who the fuck is that guy? 0.98

01:50:39.000 And that's become a part of MMA lore, right? 0.99

01:50:41.000 Like, it's amazing how he's influenced it. 1.00

01:50:44.000 Oh, he was the master shit talker. 1.00

01:50:46.000 And also the master at emotional warfare. 1.00

01:50:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:50:49.000 Yes.

01:50:50.000 Like the Jose Aldo fight.

01:50:51.000 I remember being there for that fight going, Aldo is out of sorts. 0.99

01:50:55.000 His whole, he looked fucked up. 0.99

01:50:55.000 Yes. 0.99

01:50:58.000 His body looked smooth.

01:51:00.000 He didn't look like he wanted to be there.

01:51:03.000 And he just threw himself at Connor and got cracked.

01:51:06.000 Wasn't it crazy?

01:51:07.000 He was so emotionally torn and like the moment was so big.

01:51:12.000 And then Connor across the other side looked so relaxed and loose because he knew he had won the emotional warfare.

01:51:19.000 The emotional warfare was won.

01:51:21.000 And that is a giant factor in fights, whether or not someone bites on emotional warfare.

01:51:27.000 And I think that's a giant factor this weekend.

01:51:30.000 I watched your war room.

01:51:31.000 By the way, I love your YouTube show.

01:51:33.000 It's really excellent.

01:51:34.000 Thank you.

01:51:35.000 And this fight this weekend is a lot of emotional warfare, right? 0.98

01:51:41.000 Strickland has said some wild shit about Hamzan. 0.99

01:51:43.000 He would say he'd shoot him. 1.00

01:51:45.000 He calls him a goat fucker. 1.00

01:51:49.000 I mean, but it's interesting to me that it doesn't seem like Hamzan is biting on any of it. 0.99

01:51:55.000 He's like, this guy, he said this thing, but he doesn't believe it.

01:51:58.000 Yeah.

01:51:58.000 And you're like, whoa.

01:52:00.000 Like, he's not, he doesn't seem upset about it.

01:52:03.000 It doesn't seem like it's under his skin.

01:52:06.000 He's like, this guy says he wants war, but I don't think he wants war.

01:52:10.000 He'd be dead.

01:52:11.000 That's it.

01:52:12.000 I mean, Strickland would be the same.

01:52:12.000 That's how it should be.

01:52:14.000 I don't think you could say anything to Strickland that would offend him.

01:52:17.000 He's just.

01:52:17.000 He'll laugh.

01:52:18.000 Yeah, he'll laugh.

01:52:18.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:52:19.000 Whereas, like, say, when I had that fight against Marcus Davis coming up, like, I was surprised at how angry he got at me.

01:52:26.000 Like, in the countdown show, I'm like, I'm laughing.

01:52:29.000 I'm like, I can't. 1.00

01:52:30.000 I literally can't believe he's this het up and wound up about it, you know?

01:52:35.000 And, like, you go back to the Connor thing. 0.85

01:52:37.000 You remember the press conference where he stole Aldo's belt?

01:52:39.000 The last one they did in Ireland?

01:52:41.000 So I was behind.

01:52:41.000 Yes, yes.

01:52:43.000 The stage for that one to start with, when they were both being kept separate and Dana was there, and then when they went on stage, I was on Connor's side of the stage at the bottom of the stairs.

01:52:54.000 The anger just emanating off Aldo the whole day was exhausting for me just to be around.

01:53:01.000 And then after the press conference where Connor had taken his belt, as soon as they circled back and they were behind the thing again, Aldo was like beside himself angry.

01:53:12.000 Yeah, and as soon as I saw that, I'm like, wow, that is it's.

01:53:15.000 That's like a level of witchcraft that you see in the fainting of striking.

01:53:19.000 And when you can start to pull somebody's emotions out like that.

01:53:23.000 Yeah.

01:53:23.000 And for me, I think fighters should be completely impenetrable.

01:53:28.000 Like, no one should be able to say anything to a fighter to upset them.

01:53:32.000 It's an immediate weakness that you throw on the table for someone to get their teeth into.

01:53:36.000 Well, it's one of the things that I really appreciate about Pereira his stoicism.

01:53:41.000 He's always just stoic. 0.99

01:53:43.000 You could talk all that mad shit about him. 0.99

01:53:45.000 You know, and like the Uncle I have the rematch with Uncle I have, like Uncle I have had talked so much shit after that first fight, yeah. 0.99

01:53:53.000 You know, and then when he blasted him out in the first round, then he went like this beautiful, you know, the same thing with Jamal Hill, yeah. 0.52

01:54:01.000 You know, I mean, he's very stoic, but afterwards, his celebration is even like, Look, look, it's so cool.

01:54:10.000 I like the fact that his coldness is a part of his brand, oh, yeah, you know, yeah, he's very cold, that stare down, yeah, like him and Yuri Prohaska, it's so.

01:54:19.000 Disturbing that Yuri thought he was using spiritual warfare.

01:54:23.000 Like Yuri accused him of using sorcery.

01:54:26.000 He's like, No magic this time.

01:54:31.000 Yeah.

01:54:32.000 Yuri's so crazy.

01:54:34.000 Such a crazy request. 0.95

01:54:35.000 Yeah.

01:54:36.000 Like, do not invoke spirits.

01:54:38.000 I had someone trying to get a witch doctor on me in Brazil once.

01:54:43.000 They thought I was casting spells.

01:54:43.000 Really?

01:54:45.000 They tried to get a witch doctor. 0.82

01:54:45.000 Yeah. 0.82

01:54:48.000 Casting spells is fun.

01:54:48.000 Yeah.

01:54:49.000 Because if you believe it, it'll work.

01:54:51.000 If you really believe it, that's why.

01:54:51.000 Right.

01:54:51.000 Yeah.

01:54:53.000 Voodoo works, right? 0.99

01:54:54.000 Because if you believe in voodoo, it will fuck you up. 0.99

01:54:57.000 But someone says, I'll curse you. 1.00

01:54:58.000 You're like, oh no, I'm fucking cursed shit. 1.00

01:55:01.000 If you really believe that, it will work. 1.00

01:55:03.000 Yeah.

01:55:04.000 If you can make someone afraid of something or sensitive to something, you know, and I was always a big fan of Marcus Davis and I knew how dangerous he was in the division.

01:55:16.000 But I also knew that if I poked him enough in the right direction, I would get a particular version of him that suited me, right?

01:55:23.000 And there were two versions of Marcus, right?

01:55:25.000 There was the Marcus that showed up and he was like, Stacked, looked like the Hulk, and then you're like, okay, he's gonna grapple.

01:55:31.000 Or there was the Marcus that was a little bit slender and he just looked different.

01:55:35.000 And that version of Marcus Davis was knocking everybody out.

01:55:38.000 That's when he's coming into box.

01:55:41.000 And I knew that if I pushed him enough, because it was easier for me to deal with the heavily muscled grappler version of Marcus Davis than the slick southpaw boxer version.

01:55:50.000 So my thought was if I can push him to be really, really angry at me, he's not going to want to roll the dice on striking games.

01:55:57.000 He's going to want to edge his bets and try and force the fight into the range that I'm not very good at.

01:56:02.000 So there was a purpose to it.

01:56:04.000 But as soon as he bit on it, I was like, that was too easy.

01:56:09.000 That was too easy.

01:56:10.000 And like, there were clips of him training, he's like, his nose is bleeding, and he just looks.

01:56:15.000 And then that's when I'm, for the weigh ins, I made the I Hate Dan Hardy t shirts.

01:56:19.000 Because we did a like a 10 minute countdown show for it.

01:56:22.000 And I was training at Wildcard at the time just to try and get inside his head.

01:56:25.000 You know, I'm training a boxing gym, I'm, you know, I'm expecting you to be a boxer.

01:56:29.000 And I played the game really hard on that fight.

01:56:32.000 And it was just, it was interesting to see how it played out because of what he expected from me and, and, and, The version of him that I got, right?

01:56:43.000 And he was so angry at me that his vision was, his mind was clouded.

01:56:48.000 And even in the, was it the end of the second round, he went back and sat on his stool and it always stuck in my mind, Mark Delagrotti in his corner.

01:56:56.000 It wasn't advice, it wasn't anything.

01:56:58.000 He said, You're one round away from shutting this kid up.

01:57:01.000 It was all about silencing me, putting me in my place.

01:57:05.000 Interesting.

01:57:05.000 You know?

01:57:06.000 And then, funnily enough, after that, the next fight was Mike Swick. 0.85

01:57:11.000 For the whole training camp, Mike Swick was like, he was waiting for me to start trash talking.

01:57:15.000 So I'm like, I'm not going to do it because he's expecting it.

01:57:18.000 And he'll find it funny.

01:57:19.000 So it's not going to have any kind of impact.

01:57:22.000 So I just waited until the press conference and brought him a runner up trophy.

01:57:27.000 And he was like, I'm bringing this to the cage on fight night and I'm going to give it back to you.

01:57:31.000 But, you know, but it's interesting to see what you can do, how you can affect people like that and make them act out.

01:57:38.000 You know, like the countdown show, the very start of it.

01:57:43.000 It's just hilarious, still in my mind.

01:57:45.000 Is you've got this whole kind of thing, it's like dimly lit, and Marcus is there, and he's like, You know, when I was a kid, my mum used to say, You can't say you hate this unless you think a little bit about how much you dislike it every day.

01:57:58.000 And then there was a pause, and the USC nailed it with the editing.

01:58:02.000 And he looked down the camera and he went, I hate Dan Hardy.

01:58:05.000 And then it cut to me, and I'm just laughing like a prick, like, You know, like, and I totally got so much hate mail for that fight.

01:58:13.000 I think I've still got a folder in my old email account because I saved it all.

01:58:13.000 I can't even tell you.

01:58:16.000 That's fine.

01:58:18.000 I got death threats.

01:58:19.000 I got all kinds of stuff.

01:58:20.000 People hated me from that fight.

01:58:23.000 But as soon as I thought, you know, I'm going to make I Hate Dan Hardy t shirt, surely to kind of bring some light to this.

01:58:29.000 I even made one for Marcus and he threw it back at me.

01:58:32.000 But, you know, it was just like I wanted a particular version of him, you know, just like what Connor did with Aldo.

01:58:39.000 He primed Aldo to run onto that counter left.

01:58:43.000 And Aldo, a clear mind, training from a blank slate, not having any of that.

01:58:49.000 Psychological warfare in mind.

01:58:50.000 He never charged like that.

01:58:52.000 Would have been so much more dangerous for Connor, right?

01:58:54.000 And Connor was always heavy on the front leg, and Aldo was one of the best leg kickers ever.

01:58:54.000 Right.

01:59:00.000 You know, he probably would have tried to kick the legs and piece them apart from the outside and find his motions.

01:59:05.000 But Connor was always going to be a problem for Aldo because he's so fast and he's so explosive and so big.

01:59:11.000 He was so big for 45.

01:59:11.000 Yeah.

01:59:14.000 His weight cut was hell.

01:59:16.000 Watching him weigh in, and that was the days where you would actually weigh in.

01:59:20.000 This is before the ceremonial weigh in.

01:59:21.000 So he would.

01:59:22.000 Have to make 145 and then stand there, and he looked like a dead man. 0.99

01:59:26.000 He looked like someone from like fucking The Walking Dead. 0.99

01:59:30.000 It was weird. 0.98

01:59:31.000 And then he would just rehydrate, and the next day he had to be $1.65 when he actually fought.

01:59:39.000 Easy.

01:59:40.000 I like what they've done with the weight cutting.

01:59:42.000 I like the fact that it's done in the morning and people can rehydrate and stuff.

01:59:46.000 The thing I miss is to see people facing off when they're in that feral, dehydrated state.

01:59:51.000 Right.

01:59:51.000 That's the thing I miss because a lot of the time I'll be looking for reads.

01:59:55.000 There's the picture of you kind of looking around.

01:59:57.000 You know what I mean?

01:59:58.000 It's like you want to see that face off of where people are in that state.

02:00:01.000 That's one of my favorite things to do, see the guys.

02:00:04.000 Head to head, looking in each other's eyes because you just there's a smell, yeah, there's a feeling in the air.

02:00:12.000 You get a sense.

02:00:14.000 I wear the meta glasses when I'm doing face offs now, so you can see Pierre Fuller made a little logo, Hardy's Hardy Vision.

02:00:20.000 Nice, and you can see.

02:00:21.000 Sometimes people are like face to face, it's palpable, you know.

02:00:26.000 And and and what I what I always loved when people were cutting weight is you got a far more genuine version of them than the version that was.

02:00:32.000 I mean, even look at Connor, right?

02:00:34.000 He was feral at 145, at 155, he was he was cutting, but he was.

02:00:38.000 On point at 170, he was like, Right, feel great, just a different three different versions of the same person, 10 pounds apart.

02:00:45.000 Yeah, and when I fought Roy Markham, that was co main event in my second fight in London, UFC 95, he arrived at fight week on the Tuesday at 195 to make 171.

02:00:57.000 And I knew that it was going to be a rough weight cut for him.

02:00:59.000 He was a big guy, he was massive, and he'd never been the distance 16 and four.

02:01:03.000 He was knocked everybody out that he fought.

02:01:04.000 And I was, do you remember when he fought?

02:01:05.000 Is it Brody Farber?

02:01:07.000 Kicked him in the neck. 0.65

02:01:08.000 And, like, as he went down, he crossed his legs on the way down. 0.97

02:01:11.000 That was at the Palms.

02:01:13.000 And it was just dead at him.

02:01:15.000 And it was brutal.

02:01:17.000 But, like, when we did the weigh ins in a theatre in London, and obviously we're all on weight.

02:01:24.000 I've been on weight since two o'clock, as most people have.

02:01:26.000 We've journeyed into London on the bus.

02:01:28.000 Everyone's still on weight, no one's drinking.

02:01:30.000 And, like, you walk through the changing rooms in the back, and we're in, like, an old West End theatre.

02:01:36.000 And, like, you can see where people are at, what state they're at, how much they've cut weight.

02:01:40.000 And I remember seeing Roy Markham just sitting there, just.

02:01:43.000 He would just look like he was broken already.

02:01:45.000 He was just so drained and exhausted.

02:01:48.000 So, my thought to myself is, I'm going to get right in his face as soon as I've stepped off the scales.

02:01:53.000 And I wanted him to feel that I wasn't as depleted as he was the day before, because that would then be his memory going into the fight on fight days that he didn't cut as much as me. 0.96

02:02:02.000 He didn't feel like shit like I did yesterday. 0.92

02:02:06.000 And as I walked onto the stage, I'm standing on the scales and I'm looking at him. 0.98

02:02:11.000 And there's never a photograph of me looking at the At the crowd and flexing, I'm looking directly at him.

02:02:16.000 And as soon as they read my weight, I went straight over, I put my forehead on his, and I tried to push him back a step or two.

02:02:22.000 And that was because we were on weight.

02:02:23.000 If that was a morning weigh in and we were doing it later in the day, it wouldn't have had the same kind of impact.

02:02:29.000 Right.

02:02:29.000 He would have already been replenished.

02:02:31.000 He would have felt much better.

02:02:32.000 Yeah.

02:02:33.000 Anyway, no, it's a good point.

02:02:34.000 He would have pushed.

02:02:35.000 That's why I always wore contact lenses as well.

02:02:36.000 I always had the contact lenses on the stage.

02:02:39.000 I just didn't want people to see my eyes.

02:02:41.000 I didn't want them to get a real version of me until fight night.

02:02:44.000 Yeah, emotional warfare.

02:02:44.000 Yeah.

02:02:47.000 It's real.

02:02:48.000 It's very important.

02:02:49.000 I loved it.

02:02:49.000 I mean, I wasn't very good as a fighter, you see, so I had to lean on whatever.

02:02:53.000 Look at the guys in my division, though.

02:02:55.000 I mean, John Fitch.

02:02:56.000 I know.

02:02:57.000 Mike Swick was great.

02:02:58.000 Josh Koschek, a bit of a prick, but great fighter.

02:03:00.000 You know what I mean?

02:03:01.000 Like, there were good guys in my division at the time.

02:03:04.000 And man, I didn't have the wrestling to be competing with a lot of those guys.

02:03:08.000 That is a giant factor.

02:03:09.000 And that's a factor that takes so long to catch up to.

02:03:12.000 Yeah.

02:03:12.000 God, if you can ever, unless you're like a real superior athlete.

02:03:17.000 Just a freak athlete.

02:03:18.000 It's just like someone who's got a gymnastics background or something.

02:03:21.000 It's like very explosive.

02:03:22.000 It's so hard to pick up that wrestling later in your career.

02:03:27.000 It's like, that's what's so crazy about Pereira, is that he figured out how to just stuff everything, like from a multiple champion kickboxing career where he didn't do any grappling at all.

02:03:39.000 Lost his first MMA fight to submission. 0.94

02:03:42.000 Really couldn't fucking grapple at all. 0.97

02:03:45.000 Gets together with Glover Teixeira and just figured it out. 0.97

02:03:48.000 But I also think with him, it's a freak athlete thing.

02:03:51.000 For sure.

02:03:52.000 Because there's the same reason why he hits so hard.

02:03:55.000 I think he's just weirdly built.

02:03:57.000 But even a freak athlete, though, you take him back 10 years and you take Glover Teixeira away, and he's not supplied with the information where it can apply that athleticism, right?

02:04:07.000 And this is where former fighters passing on knowledge, like we talked about.

02:04:11.000 I mean, look, we went Bass Rutten, Dwayne Ludwig, TJ Dillashaw, right?

02:04:16.000 Right.

02:04:17.000 Glover Teixeira to Alex Pereira is probably one of the best relationships because for me, Glover Teixeira was he overachieved in his career based on his age and his athleticism compared to other people in the division.

02:04:29.000 The reason why was because his game was so solid and so sound.

02:04:34.000 I say to young fighters, you need that Glover to share a base level where you can be semi conscious, taking big shots, sweep to top position, take someone's back and choke them out.

02:04:45.000 He did that consistently.

02:04:46.000 You get dropped and come back from the dead and finish people.

02:04:50.000 Glover also missed six years of his prime.

02:04:52.000 Because he couldn't get out of Brazil.

02:04:52.000 Crazy.

02:04:53.000 Well, you were talking about him constantly before he was signed.

02:04:56.000 I remember that.

02:04:56.000 I remember hearing his name a lot because you were, same with Pereira, you were talking about him before the UFC signed him.

02:05:02.000 But, like, if you'd imagine Alex Pereira walked into an MMA gym in 2005, they would have probably tried to teach him a whole system of jujitsu.

02:05:14.000 And then he would have had a wrestling coach that would have tried to teach him folk style or freestyle wrestling. 0.98

02:05:19.000 Whereas Glover Toucher is like, there's a lot of this shit you don't need, brother. 0.97

02:05:22.000 Like, first of all, I'm not going to teach him any submissions because you're not really going to need them. 0.98

02:05:26.000 But he does know submissions.

02:05:27.000 He's a jujitsu black belt.

02:05:29.000 But that's the thing is like, does he know the whole database of jujitsu?

02:05:33.000 Does he know everything that a normal black belt would learn?

02:05:35.000 And I'm not discrediting his black belt, but what I'm saying is his game has been very specifically tailored to be effective in the arena that he's fighting in.

02:05:44.000 That's true.

02:05:45.000 But it's also the relationship that he has with Glover, too, where it's one really elite coach with the world championship level experience concentrating on a very special athlete. 0.96

02:05:56.000 Whereas if you're at ATT, you know, there's fucking Chechens and fucking Dagestanis and just a room full of assassins and there's five coaches. 0.91

02:06:05.000 And like, I don't know if you'd get that kind of attention there. 0.98

02:06:08.000 You know, There's two different schools of thought.

02:06:11.000 You know, there's the school of thought that you need to be around those people because that's a shark tank and that's how you get better.

02:06:16.000 You'd be around all these killers.

02:06:17.000 And then there's the other school of thought is like, no, you're better off at a very small gym with a small group of people that really concentrate on you.

02:06:24.000 I'm more inclined to think of the small gym.

02:06:28.000 I think the small gym with elite trainers is a better option than being in a giant.

02:06:34.000 I mean, it's not that ATT doesn't create amazing world champion athletes, it certainly does.

02:06:40.000 But I think if someone's coming up, Maybe you're better off with someone like, first of all, you'd have to find someone like Glover who's really interested in taking the time and really working with you.

02:06:52.000 Yeah.

02:06:53.000 And Glover, and you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier, like Glover's already gone through the process of learning jiu jitsu and absorbing what's useful and rejecting a lot of what's useless.

02:07:01.000 Yes.

02:07:02.000 So he's not giving Pereira the useless part of jiu jitsu for MMA.

02:07:06.000 Right.

02:07:07.000 Right.

02:07:07.000 Now, how much of jiu jitsu specifically is applied to MMA, right?

02:07:13.000 There are so many positions that it just changes when you start to use.

02:07:16.000 Punches.

02:07:17.000 Things become a lot easier when you can start to strike as well because you can force people to do things they don't want to do, right?

02:07:22.000 Yep.

02:07:23.000 So, like, I feel like the refinement that Glover Tashira went through to be the great fighter that he was is the reason why Pereira's become so successful because he's been given the pieces that he needs.

02:07:36.000 And I would imagine that, you know, if you rolled with him, he would be a real problem.

02:07:39.000 But I would imagine his game's still very direct.

02:07:41.000 Like, he's not using crackhead control and he's not rolling for knee bars and that kind of thing.

02:07:46.000 I just.

02:07:47.000 But neither is Hodger Gracie.

02:07:49.000 Of course.

02:07:49.000 You know what I mean?

02:07:50.000 But he's also gone through the shedding process, right?

02:07:52.000 Yes.

02:07:52.000 Because I don't think he ever really.

02:07:56.000 Acquired all the crazy shit. 0.99

02:07:58.000 I think there's a lot of these guys that like fundamentals are just like laser focused. 1.00

02:08:02.000 It's like Hickson.

02:08:04.000 Hickson was always just laser focused fundamentals.

02:08:07.000 Bititaro Noguera, laser focused fundamentals.

02:08:12.000 Do you think the existence of Valitudo kind of forced them to go very specifically to what worked though for no rules contests?

02:08:21.000 Probably.

02:08:22.000 There's probably some of that because obviously Hickson created and competed in Valitudo very early on.

02:08:29.000 So it's like, yeah, yeah.

02:08:32.000 I mean, a lot of stuff goes out the window as soon as you punch.

02:08:35.000 Right?

02:08:35.000 Yeah.

02:08:35.000 A lot of stuff.

02:08:36.000 Absolutely.

02:08:36.000 Yeah.

02:08:37.000 But including some heel hooks and things like that.

02:08:39.000 Like, there's certain positions where you see guys in jujitsu tournaments, like, boy, you find yourself like that in a fight, that guy's going to blast you in the face.

02:08:47.000 Like, you're in a bat.

02:08:48.000 Like, you're grabbing a hold of someone's leg, and your head is right here, and you're hooked.

02:08:52.000 Like, there is nothing stopping someone from elbowing you or punching you in the face.

02:08:56.000 It's kind of nuts to even pursue those.

02:08:59.000 But as long as there's no striking.

02:09:01.000 Boy, it's very effective.

02:09:02.000 Yeah.

02:09:03.000 See, I often think that I'm quite fortunate that I came into martial arts before MMA.

02:09:10.000 And the reason for that is because the way that I learned martial arts was not for sport, right?

02:09:16.000 And this is an observation I've had recently where, you know, a fighter just would fall apart if they don't have a particular person in their corner, right?

02:09:24.000 My martial arts instructor back in the day from when I was six was teaching me taekwondo or teaching me martial arts, should I say, for him not to be their corner in me.

02:09:33.000 Because I'm doing it for self defense.

02:09:35.000 There's no sport context.

02:09:37.000 He's not teaching me techniques that I can use when he's there to coach me through a street fight, right?

02:09:43.000 He's trying to give me the techniques that I need.

02:09:45.000 So when he's not there, I know what I'm doing, right?

02:09:48.000 Same thing with like spatial awareness.

02:09:50.000 Like often, like, you know, when I was in clubs and I was fighting a lot back in the day, my awareness of fire exits and tables and that kind of stuff gave me a similar awareness to how I can use the cage against my opponent.

02:10:04.000 Which I feel is not necessarily used as much as it could be in MMA these days.

02:10:09.000 Like, there are certain fighters, they just don't.

02:10:11.000 Like, how often do you see two fighters up against a fence panel and the whole cage is there?

02:10:16.000 And they're like, they're not, no one's using the pressure that they could be using.

02:10:20.000 Sometimes people circle themselves onto the fence unnecessarily.

02:10:23.000 Like, the idea of being backed up against a wall is only if you don't want people attacking you from behind, was my perspective in a self defense context.

02:10:32.000 So I think the way that I learned martial arts allowed me to kind of see it as a.

02:10:39.000 In a more efficient way, right?

02:10:41.000 Like, say, for example, if I'd have learned jujitsu, I wouldn't have wanted to use jujitsu for a street fight because a lot of the street fights I got in, it wasn't one person.

02:10:49.000 Right.

02:10:49.000 So I don't want to be inside control or choking somebody out while he's volleying me in the head.

02:10:54.000 Like, for me, it was the efficiency of, okay, here's a guy, here's a guy.

02:10:59.000 You know what I mean?

02:11:00.000 Like, how quickly can I get through these people?

02:11:02.000 Yeah.

02:11:03.000 And I feel like that's something that this is maybe where the scoring criteria can be adjusted so we keep.

02:11:03.000 You know?

02:11:09.000 Getting what we want out of the sport because there are stagnant fights.

02:11:12.000 They do slow down.

02:11:14.000 People do start to think, okay, this round, this round, this round.

02:11:18.000 There's not an instigation for a conclusion built into their game necessarily.

02:11:23.000 But isn't that also dependent upon matchups?

02:11:26.000 Like sometimes people just cancel each other out skill wise and that's just part of the game.

02:11:30.000 Absolutely.

02:11:30.000 But usually the ones where they cancel each other out skill wise are actually the more interesting fights.

02:11:36.000 Because whether it's grappling or striking, it keeps moving.

02:11:39.000 Almost always it's when there's a dominant skill set on one side and the other person just can't deal with it.

02:11:44.000 Like look at me against GSP.

02:11:48.000 Like I didn't have the skill set to compete with him.

02:11:51.000 Right.

02:11:52.000 If I'd have been able to wrestle, I'd have forced him to strike.

02:11:54.000 If I'd have been better at jujitsu, I'd have maybe forced him to strike a bit more.

02:11:58.000 Right.

02:11:58.000 But because there was a way of him completely taking me out of my game, there wasn't necessarily an onus to instigate a conclusion to the fight.

02:12:08.000 So almost always, when you see one person that is so dominant in wrestling and the other person can't handle it, that's when the fights can sometimes be quite stagnant.

02:12:08.000 Right.

02:12:17.000 My argument in those scenarios is okay, well, yeah, you're winning this with wrestling, you're winning it with wrestling.

02:12:17.000 Yeah.

02:12:24.000 But you're not concluding it, right?

02:12:26.000 Like, you're going to get to the end, and the judges are going to go, Well, yeah, you controlled him for more of the fight. 0.90

02:12:31.000 Like the Hamza trick as well.

02:12:33.000 Yeah.

02:12:34.000 I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this.

02:12:36.000 I think we should stop scoring control in MMA, right?

02:12:40.000 Control is scored up against the fence, right?

02:12:43.000 Defense is not scored in MMA, right?

02:12:45.000 Defense is its own reward, right?

02:12:47.000 Control, in my opinion, is its own reward.

02:12:50.000 If you're a grappler and I'm a striker, it's on you to take me into the range.

02:12:56.000 That suits you.

02:12:57.000 But if someone's taking someone down and controlling them and working towards a submission, how do you quantify that?

02:12:57.000 Right.

02:13:05.000 Because they might not get it, but they're working towards it.

02:13:09.000 So then, if you consider top control as you would center control, right?

02:13:14.000 When everything else is even, you go to octagon control as one of the later scoring criteria.

02:13:20.000 When the striking and the grappling, everything's even, then we move into, okay, well.

02:13:24.000 Octagon control is weird, though, because it's like.

02:13:28.000 So, octagon control could be you're in the center of the cage and you're pressing the action.

02:13:34.000 But what if you're a counter striker?

02:13:35.000 Like, what if you're Tyron Woodley versus Stephen Wonderboy Thompson and you spend a lot of the time just moving away?

02:13:41.000 Like, remember, they fought to a draw, right?

02:13:43.000 Didn't they fought to a draw in one of their fights?

02:13:45.000 Yeah, but that was also, I mean, and I don't necessarily want to criticize Tyron, but I don't really think Tyron liked fighting.

02:13:52.000 He spent a lot of time wearing his back heel down against the fence with the crowd booing in the championship rounds.

02:13:57.000 I never got the impression that Tyron liked fighting, he was just good at it.

02:14:01.000 You know, that's interesting.

02:14:02.000 I don't know why you would think that.

02:14:04.000 I just thought that was the style to beat Wonder Boy.

02:14:07.000 I think that's the smart style to beat Wonder Boy because he didn't fight that style that Darren Till.

02:14:11.000 Well, could Darren Till, the rest of them took him down and got rid of him quick. 0.99

02:14:16.000 But with Wonder Boy, you cannot stand in the middle of the cage and kickbox that guy because he's doing weird shit. 0.98

02:14:24.000 He's doing things with his legs you can't do. 0.96

02:14:26.000 And you know, if you see a guy like Raymond Daniels or MVP, like.

02:14:31.000 You can't.

02:14:32.000 You can't, yeah.

02:14:34.000 You can't.

02:14:34.000 Yeah, if you can.

02:14:36.000 I hear what you're saying totally, but like, say, for example, in the Damian Meyer fight, he defended 26 takedowns in that fight, went the distance, right?

02:14:45.000 Right, but with the Wonderboy fight, he rocked Wonderboy and he had Wonderboy hurt, where Wonderboy didn't hurt him, which is because he forced Wonderboy to be offensive instead of countering.

02:14:56.000 So by making it boring, by backing up.

02:15:00.000 Yeah, but at the same time, I don't necessarily think.

02:15:03.000 I don't know if that was a calculation of going down.

02:15:05.000 You think?

02:15:05.000 I think it was.

02:15:06.000 Yes, because he fought him that way the second time as well.

02:15:09.000 But I think that was intimidation from what Wonderboy could do on the feet and him not wanting to waste energy trying to take him down.

02:15:13.000 I don't think he was intimidated.

02:15:15.000 I think he was waiting.

02:15:16.000 He was waiting for moments to explode because it's not like he was timid when he blasted him and had him rocked and hurt.

02:15:23.000 He never made a fan out of me, Tyron.

02:15:25.000 And the thing is, what was interesting is I had a similar.

02:15:27.000 You weren't a fan after the Darren Till fight?

02:15:29.000 Oh, absolutely.

02:15:31.000 And same with the Robbie Lawler fight.

02:15:32.000 That was an incredible knockout.

02:15:34.000 And this was the thing that was frustrating he had the capability to do that kind of thing.

02:15:38.000 And sometimes I just felt like he wanted to play King of the Hill, he didn't want to be the smashing champion that other fighters did.

02:15:47.000 You know what I mean?

02:15:48.000 Well, you know, you got to think, like, he had some fights that didn't go his way as well.

02:15:55.000 Strike Force, the Nate Marquardt fight.

02:15:57.000 The Nate Marquardt fight where he got KO'd, where Nate hit him with, like, a video game combination with those elbows against the cage.

02:16:03.000 Like, so there's consequences to just wait. 0.71

02:16:06.000 And by the way, Nate Marquardt, boy, there's the guy that kind of people forget how fucking good that guy was when he was in his prime. 0.95

02:16:14.000 Woo! 0.95

02:16:15.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:16:15.000 When he went over to Strike Force, he was a fucking monster, dude. 1.00

02:16:19.000 Yeah, facts. 1.00

02:16:19.000 That guy was good. 1.00

02:16:20.000 Good, he was good, you know.

02:16:23.000 I had heard stories about him training at um in Colorado with GSP with all those guys.

02:16:29.000 Like, dude, Nate Marquardt everybody up, he was that good at one point in time.

02:16:33.000 Man, so many names of fighters that have just been kind of lost to time that people don't realize.

02:16:38.000 Yep, there was so much.

02:16:39.000 There's another one I talk about him all the time.

02:16:41.000 There's a point in time where Eve Edwards was the best 155 pounder on the planet.

02:16:46.000 Facts, yeah, it's just like people forget, people forget how good people were.

02:16:50.000 You know, interesting, you put.

02:16:51.000 The point you made about counter striking, I've always thought this about guard playing as well.

02:16:54.000 If you're a guard player, you've kind of got to accept that you're losing until you win.

02:16:58.000 It's like Machida was one of the best examples of a counter striker.

02:16:58.000 Yeah.

02:17:02.000 And then, you know, you say Adesanya against Paolo Costa.

02:17:05.000 Paolo Costa was in the center of the cage for most of that.

02:17:07.000 Yeah.

02:17:08.000 So if you're just looking at octagon control, well, you're going to score it's Paolo because he was in the center.

02:17:14.000 But there was no doubt that Izzy was just toying with him and lightening him up from a distance.

02:17:18.000 Yeah, but you couldn't say octagon control because Izzy was landing all his shots.

02:17:22.000 But that's the thing, that was a very, very clear one.

02:17:24.000 Right, where you've got one person moving back and giving the center of the cage, but clearly winning on the striking.

02:17:31.000 Whereas, if when it gets very even with the striking, you have to really have good judges to be able to pick apart who's landing what.

02:17:40.000 Yes, even because like we had a fight the other week, Jakub Kasuba, he was fighting Natan Schultz and he was backing up the whole fight, but he was landing way more strikes than his opponent.

02:17:49.000 But even when it got to the end of the fight, I'm like, are these judges going to score this right?

02:17:54.000 Are they because they don't have the stats that we have on the screen in front of us, right?

02:17:57.000 They should, exactly, they should.

02:17:59.000 But because they don't, are they going to go, oh, well, you know, he was moving forward?

02:18:04.000 And we had a fight in Sioux Falls the other day where the female fighter, Sharon Bowers, was pushing forward and she was landing, but her opponent was backing up and countering a lot of the shots.

02:18:14.000 And the judges scored it to Sabrina.

02:18:16.000 It was, you know, it was the right decision to make.

02:18:18.000 But the crowd didn't like it because they felt like the Bowers was the one pushing forward and making a fight out of it.

02:18:24.000 Yeah, but that's casuals. 0.92

02:18:26.000 Of course, yeah.

02:18:26.000 But it is a risky thing to be a counter striker and a guard player in MMA because you have to, first of all, credit the judges to see what.

02:18:34.000 But who's left that's a guard player?

02:18:36.000 Not many, right?

02:18:37.000 It's kind of been cycled out of the game.

02:18:39.000 Oliveira is like the best at it.

02:18:40.000 But even that didn't work out for him in some times, did it?

02:18:43.000 There was a lot of time he'd spend energy guard playing.

02:18:45.000 A lot of the time, why good wrestlers decide not to wrestle because the amount of energy it costs.

02:18:50.000 That's true, but I mean, look what he did to Gamrot, and that was super impressive.

02:18:54.000 Gamrot's so good.

02:18:55.000 So good.

02:18:55.000 The fact that Gamrot was just lost on the ground with Oliveira.

02:19:01.000 Gamrot's debut against Garam Kataladze.

02:19:04.000 Both of those guys.

02:19:05.000 He's in karate combat now.

02:19:06.000 Both of those guys are so elite, and then when they got matched up against each other in their UFC debut, I'm like, Man, people aren't going to realize how good this matchup is, right? 0.99

02:19:15.000 Like Saruki, and I called his debut against this Lakachev. 0.98

02:19:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:19:20.000 And he was 5% behind Islam in that fight. 1.00

02:19:23.000 But that 5% was an incredible fight. 1.00

02:19:27.000 Yeah. 0.88

02:19:28.000 Yeah.

02:19:29.000 I am very curious to see how Pereira does against Cyril Gahn.

02:19:34.000 Yeah.

02:19:35.000 Cyril Gahn's a different thing.

02:19:36.000 Just moves differently for a big guy, doesn't he?

02:19:39.000 He's also a real heavyweight. 0.89

02:19:41.000 There ain't a fucking time since he's been 15 where that guy's making 185. 0.97

02:19:46.000 That's a. 0.98

02:19:46.000 No. 0.98

02:19:46.000 Right? 0.98

02:19:47.000 Big man, and he's an incredible athlete and a really elite striker like a really good striker, like and a big heavyweight man.

02:19:58.000 I know Pereira weighs like 260 now, I get it, I get it, yeah, he's a heavyweight, yep, definitely.

02:20:04.000 But he was 185, it was 185 just a few years ago, and he was a 185 pound champion and then the 205 pound champion.

02:20:11.000 I don't think Cyril Gon could even make 205.

02:20:14.000 No, Cyril's big, yeah, and he's big and thick, and he's Good man, and I'm telling you that Tom Hardy fight, excuse me. 0.97

02:20:23.000 Um, Tom Aspinall fight, Tom Hardy, my mind sucks.

02:20:29.000 Um, the Tom Aspinall fight in that first round before the eye pokes were disgraceful. 0.84

02:20:33.000 Like, first of all, I think still got to fix the gloves.

02:20:36.000 Oh, god, you know, my solution is mittens.

02:20:39.000 Why, why, we don't do this anyway.

02:20:41.000 Why, why are these out like this?

02:20:43.000 Yeah, it's a good point.

02:20:46.000 The thing that annoyed me is like they went through all the all that the effort to fix the gloves, but they never asked a fighter.

02:20:52.000 Or a person that wraps hands, like what they actually thought.

02:20:55.000 They were getting contender series fighters to grade them.

02:20:59.000 And of course, they're all like, they're great.

02:21:01.000 I'm so happy to be here.

02:21:01.000 They've got UFC on them.

02:21:02.000 You know what I mean?

02:21:03.000 Like, you know, like talk to Tate, for example.

02:21:05.000 I'm like, they must have asked you about the hand wrapping, about the gloves and stuff.

02:21:09.000 Because the problem is, right?

02:21:10.000 Like, when you get there on Tuesday and you try your gloves on, you're like, yeah, they feel good.

02:21:14.000 And then you get to fight night and they put a quarter inch of padding underneath.

02:21:19.000 Right.

02:21:19.000 And then you're trying to close your hand.

02:21:21.000 And like, the difference between like the Pride gloves or the rising gloves, or the like the fear techs.

02:21:21.000 Right.

02:21:25.000 I always used to use fear techs if I could.

02:21:27.000 There's a there's a curve in the glove, right?

02:21:30.000 When you try your gloves on, what the people, what the blue shirts backstage do because they know the game is they roll the glove up and then wrap it with the velcro of the wrist so it stays rolled from Tuesday to Saturday, right?

02:21:44.000 And then when you get them on Saturday, they've kind of curved a little bit, right?

02:21:48.000 But it's not the curve is not built into the padding, right?

02:21:52.000 And the the the the new ones that they made, there was just Too much technology and not enough common sense.

02:21:58.000 Have you used Trevor Whitman's?

02:22:00.000 Veronica's just got a pair of them.

02:22:00.000 I have.

02:22:01.000 The best.

02:22:02.000 They are very, very good.

02:22:03.000 Absolutely.

02:22:04.000 They're the best.

02:22:05.000 That's an ownership problem, though, isn't it?

02:22:06.000 It is.

02:22:07.000 I've tried to negotiate that and broker that, and maybe I still can be successful.

02:22:13.000 I talked to them.

02:22:14.000 I talked to Trevor.

02:22:16.000 Maybe it still can be done.

02:22:18.000 But even with Trevor's, the fingers are still exposed. 0.98

02:22:20.000 And I think there's certain guys who just have this fucking impulse to do that. 0.94

02:22:26.000 And I think one point every time. 0.98

02:22:28.000 Poke someone in the eye, one point. 1.00

02:22:29.000 Every fucking time. 0.99

02:22:31.000 Because there's a lot of fighters that have never poked anybody in the eye, right? 0.99

02:22:34.000 So, how come?

02:22:35.000 How come?

02:22:36.000 They've been in wild scraps, never poked anybody in the eye.

02:22:38.000 Yeah.

02:22:39.000 I mean, well, I watch one championship, small gloves Muay Thai, and they are in range.

02:22:44.000 Right.

02:22:44.000 They're not poking each other.

02:22:45.000 No, they're not.

02:22:46.000 And by the way, I love small gloves Muay Thai.

02:22:48.000 It's so cool.

02:22:49.000 It's so good.

02:22:50.000 It's so cool.

02:22:51.000 And it's so interesting.

02:22:52.000 And for all these people that hate when fights go to the ground, my God, that's the solution.

02:22:56.000 And I've been trying to sell this to the UFC forever. 1.00

02:22:58.000 I'm like, fuck all this slap fight shit. 1.00

02:23:00.000 And I know you're really interested in Zufa boxing. 1.00

02:23:02.000 That's great.

02:23:03.000 How about UFC striking?

02:23:05.000 How about UFC Muay Thai?

02:23:06.000 You know, like, cause, and even kickboxing, what they're doing with one, you know, guys like Yuki Yoza and, you know.

02:23:14.000 Watch out for Ben Woollace.

02:23:15.000 Have you seen this guy?

02:23:16.000 Oh, yeah.

02:23:16.000 He's a beast.

02:23:17.000 I signed him to PFL a little while ago.

02:23:19.000 Just can't get him matched.

02:23:21.000 Just couldn't get him matched.

02:23:22.000 People don't want to stand with him.

02:23:24.000 You click on his Instagram, and he's, I mean, in my opinion, he's one of the best strikers in the world right now.

02:23:29.000 And I've, you know, he trained at Renegade for a long time with the Edwards brothers, and I would watch him just play spar with people, and the level of trickery.

02:23:37.000 Like, that's where you go back to saying about dimensions, right?

02:23:41.000 There are rangers in fights, and then there are dimensions in those rangers.

02:23:45.000 Yeah.

02:23:45.000 And he's at like a Jedi level of dimension, of understanding of striking.

02:23:50.000 And to see him have the success he has, I mean, stopping John Lineker with calf kicks and, you know, just aggressive.

02:23:55.000 You're going to see him go straight.

02:23:57.000 How is one doing?

02:23:59.000 Not good from what I can tell.

02:24:01.000 Yeah, that's what I've heard as well. 0.96

02:24:02.000 And that concerns me because if we have more limited options, that sucks.

02:24:08.000 This is why, I mean, and I feel very much like I'm in the right place now with the PFL because we need more organizations.

02:24:16.000 Yes.

02:24:17.000 We need more organizations.

02:24:18.000 Unfortunately, in my opinion, the USC is not the custodian of the sport that we need right now.

02:24:23.000 What do you think they're doing wrong?

02:24:26.000 I mean, I think it's a variety of different things.

02:24:29.000 I mean, underpaying the fighters, killing the sponsorship market, they buried a lot of growth of the subculture.

02:24:35.000 You know, you remember the old UFC expos that we used to do?

02:24:38.000 I'd do like five, six hours a day signing, tap out over to Silver Star, over to Zions. 0.99

02:24:43.000 And like, as soon as that was all killed off, a lot of that subculture died off. 0.99

02:24:48.000 And all those subcultures offer jobs outside of fighting, you know?

02:24:53.000 It allows people to then start a brand and sponsor some young fighters.

02:24:57.000 Like Charles Lewis Mask paid me double what I was getting paid for my purse when I was in Japan.

02:25:05.000 Double, just to wear tap out shorts in a tournament and cage force.

02:25:10.000 He didn't need to do that, but he was a fan of the sport.

02:25:13.000 He loved it and he wanted to support it.

02:25:15.000 And back in the day, I had sponsors like Air Rake Records and stuff that was on my banner, just a heavy metal brand from my local town.

02:25:24.000 Like, The idea of being able to have these personal sponsors that would help you out was massive.

02:25:29.000 Yeah.

02:25:30.000 And then the other thing that the other issue that we've got is that we don't have enough events now for a lot of fighters to get experience.

02:25:37.000 So then a lot of the people that get signed to contenders are like five, six, seven fights into their career.

02:25:42.000 I was talking to somebody about this the other day, and there's good clear examples.

02:25:46.000 Like I was 19 and six when I joined the UFC in 2028.

02:25:50.000 Conor McGregor had already built a brand and a sponsor.

02:25:53.000 Wait a minute, you just said 2028.

02:25:55.000 Sorry, it's.

02:25:56.000 2008.

02:25:57.000 Maybe there's a return on the car.

02:26:00.000 So I was like, Are you a time traveler?

02:26:00.000 2008.

02:26:03.000 I feel like I'm here a little bit with the UFO.

02:26:08.000 Yeah.

02:26:08.000 So in 2008, like, there was, where was I going?

02:26:12.000 I lost my train of thought.

02:26:13.000 Sponsors.

02:26:14.000 Sponsors.

02:26:15.000 So, like, we had sponsors.

02:26:15.000 Yeah.

02:26:17.000 There was a subculture that was growing around the brand.

02:26:19.000 And there were shows that would host you long enough for you to develop a brand, right?

02:26:25.000 So, like, I didn't have nearly as big of a following as Conor McGregor or Paddy Pym looked.

02:26:29.000 But I had a similar platform, right?

02:26:31.000 I was Cage Warriors champ, then Connor was Cage Warriors champ, and he was an established fighter with a game and a following before he came to the UFC.

02:26:39.000 Same with Paddy.

02:26:40.000 We don't see that as much anymore, right?

02:26:42.000 We don't see the fighters growing on their local scene and building a local fan base that really starts to grow the sport on a grassroots level, you know?

02:26:50.000 Right, but why is that the UFC's responsibility?

02:26:53.000 Oh, no, I'm not saying it is.

02:26:55.000 What I'm saying is that unfortunately, I think the UFC is now kind of paying for the control that they took many years ago.

02:27:02.000 Because the industry has been stifled around it.

02:27:05.000 Like the sponsorship industry for a start was massive, you know?

02:27:08.000 And I thought.

02:27:09.000 The problem with it was there were a lot of sponsors that weren't paying. 0.97

02:27:12.000 So, a lot of fighters would wind up in lawsuits, and there was a lot of bullshit that was going on. 0.87

02:27:17.000 Some of them were, and it was great.

02:27:19.000 You know, like, you know, I'm really good friends with Brendan Schaub, and there was a point in time where he was making X amount for a fight, but he was making like three times that in sponsors.

02:27:19.000 Yeah.

02:27:30.000 Yeah.

02:27:31.000 I mean, I doubled my show money on the GSP fight because of my banner.

02:27:34.000 I only got $22,000 for that fight, but.

02:27:36.000 Which is crazy.

02:27:37.000 It's crazy.

02:27:38.000 World title fight.

02:27:38.000 But that's what I signed up for.

02:27:39.000 I wasn't going in for the money.

02:27:40.000 You know what I mean?

02:27:41.000 But in hindsight, when I look at it, and GSP was getting, I mean, he got like six million.

02:27:45.000 He spent a quarter of a million on his training camp.

02:27:48.000 How could I compete?

02:27:49.000 Like, he would book out a whole hotel and bring guys in from New York. 0.92

02:27:53.000 I had Alda in my corner, who at the time was a brown belt, you know.

02:27:58.000 And I had a tie boxing coach that was telling me to knee him in the head on the ground from bottom position, you know.

02:28:03.000 Like, bless him, he just didn't know the rules.

02:28:05.000 I didn't have the support network because I just couldn't afford what I would have really needed for that, you know.

02:28:11.000 But if I go back to, you know, I mean, the sponsorship.

02:28:16.000 Process was interesting because the first thing they did was they brought in the fees that the sponsorship companies had to pay.

02:28:22.000 So it was like if you're a clothing brand, you have to pay $50,000 a year to sponsor UFC fighters, and that goes to the UFC.

02:28:28.000 Now, before that, as long as it wasn't offensive and it wasn't a conflict in sponsor, the UFC would tick it and you'd carry on.

02:28:37.000 Condom Depot.

02:28:38.000 Oh man.

02:28:38.000 Remember that?

02:28:39.000 No.

02:28:39.000 Awesome.

02:28:40.000 I turned them down a few times.

02:28:42.000 But like if you think about it, like say Air Rake Records, right?

02:28:46.000 They couldn't afford to pay the UFC $50,000.

02:28:49.000 They would pay me £300 to have the thing on my banner, right?

02:28:53.000 So then, as soon as you bring in this, okay, everybody has to pay $50,000 to be a sponsor in the UFC cage, almost all of the sponsors then fell out the market straight away.

02:29:02.000 And then you've only got a few that are lingering.

02:29:04.000 And then, if you're a clothing distributor, if you sell a variety of different brands, it was $100,000 that you had to pay.

02:29:12.000 So if you're MMA Warehouse and you're sponsoring Alistair Overeem, And your sponsorship budget for the year is $250,000, and straight away, $100,000 has been taken out because the UFC needed it.

02:29:25.000 Just your pool's gone down.

02:29:26.000 So you've got less money to give to the fighters, and then you're sponsoring less fighters overall.

02:29:31.000 I get that.

02:29:32.000 I get that argument, and I definitely agree about fighter pay.

02:29:36.000 Like, I'm always in favor of fighters getting paid more.

02:29:38.000 It's a very dangerous job, and it's the only thing that people are paying to see. 0.91

02:29:42.000 They're not paying to look at the cage, they're not paying to look at the ring card girls, they're not paying to hear me talk.

02:29:46.000 They're paying to watch the fights. 0.99

02:29:48.000 Fighters should get the majority of the money. 0.99

02:29:50.000 And it is a problem when they don't have leverage.

02:29:52.000 And I think that it's great that you have things like MVP getting involved with the Netflix card.

02:29:57.000 And I wish the card was a little stronger, but it's difficult.

02:30:00.000 Like, like Lynn's fighting against Francis Ngano, like, you know, you need, like, who the fuck is even available that's not signed to a contract that you can get Francis to fight? 0.88

02:30:13.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:30:13.000 That's not a goddamn execution, you know? 0.99

02:30:16.000 You know, Francis is the legitimate heavyweight champion of the world. 0.99

02:30:19.000 Absolutely.

02:30:20.000 And the thing is, the heavyweight division is always going to be more of a victim.

02:30:23.000 Of the underpayment than any other industry.

02:30:25.000 Is Francis no longer with the PFL?

02:30:27.000 How did that happen?

02:30:27.000 No.

02:30:28.000 What happened there?

02:30:31.000 I just think it was a bad deal done by the previous CEO.

02:30:35.000 Oh, it was a previous CEO?

02:30:36.000 Yeah.

02:30:37.000 So I'm not aware.

02:30:38.000 So he fought Hen and Ferrara in that one fight.

02:30:42.000 Is that the only fight that he had in the PFL?

02:30:42.000 Yes.

02:30:44.000 That's kind of crazy.

02:30:44.000 I think he had.

02:30:45.000 Yeah.

02:30:46.000 It was just, I mean, it was a bad deal for the PFL.

02:30:49.000 And we've done a lot of bad deals.

02:30:51.000 Who's that guy that just knocked out Hen and Ferrara?

02:30:54.000 Oh, Sergei Bilosteni.

02:30:56.000 Woo!

02:30:57.000 Used to train with Fedor and.

02:30:59.000 Woo! 0.99

02:31:00.000 That guy is fucking legit. 0.97

02:31:01.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:31:02.000 And very, very fast.

02:31:04.000 Like him v Tom Aspinall is an interesting fight.

02:31:04.000 Yeah.

02:31:06.000 Oh, that is an interesting fight.

02:31:07.000 As anybody's interested in, he's Cyril Gant.

02:31:09.000 He moves a lot like Cyril Gant, but he's got Sambo background. 0.74

02:31:12.000 And that guy's legit. 0.99

02:31:14.000 I watched that Ferrer fight and I was like, Holy shit! 0.99

02:31:17.000 Spun his head around, didn't he? 0.99

02:31:18.000 Yeah, dude.

02:31:19.000 And you know, I mean, this cat, yeah, pull this up.

02:31:22.000 Here we go.

02:31:23.000 Look at this guy.

02:31:24.000 I mean, he moves like Fedor, too.

02:31:26.000 He trained with Fedor, which is interesting.

02:31:28.000 Yeah, yes, you want to get through to the third, yeah, that's that little body shot.

02:31:33.000 So, third round was the finish, and it catches him with this dominant shot.

02:31:37.000 He looked so dominant, like, throughout the fight, man.

02:31:40.000 Like right away, he's a beast.

02:31:42.000 This kid is very, very legit.

02:31:45.000 Oh my goodness, the speed!

02:31:47.000 Yeah, so the world needs another big heavyweight, man.

02:31:52.000 Yeah, and this is this is awesome that this guy exists.

02:31:54.000 What's his name again, Sergey Bilestany?

02:31:56.000 I just saw this yesterday.

02:31:58.000 I'm guilty of not watching enough PFL.

02:32:01.000 Um, but the thing is, it's like the fights are legit, the talent is legit, but man, it is just not getting the attention that it deserves.

02:32:11.000 Look, the thing is, as a UFC fan, I get it.

02:32:14.000 Right, because you want to watch one promotion where all the fighters are so you can find out who the best is because that's what ultimately it was about, right?

02:32:21.000 It was about finding out who's the best.

02:32:23.000 Listen, man, that guy could kind of compete with anybody, of course.

02:32:26.000 Of course, absolutely.

02:32:26.000 And we've got guys that can across the sport.

02:32:28.000 I mean, you know, across the promotion we have.

02:32:31.000 I mean, you know, Dakota, Thad, Gene, you know, we've got some real, real good fighters.

02:32:35.000 And even in like, we're if you've not watched Lewis McGrill and Dean Garnett, it is one of the best fights you'll ever see.

02:32:42.000 There were 13 knockdowns in it, it was carnage.

02:32:45.000 But then we're also seeing really interesting things like the Scottish Twister.

02:32:49.000 Have you seen the Scottish Twister, right?

02:32:51.000 Yes, yes.

02:32:51.000 So that was Stevie Ray who hit it against Pettis, and then he hit it against Lewis Long in Glasgow.

02:32:59.000 And then he's passed it on to Jake Hadley.

02:33:01.000 And then Jake Hadley's just submitted Mateus Matos with it.

02:33:05.000 And it's fascinating because it's kind of a twister.

02:33:08.000 It's like, it's.

02:33:08.000 Uh huh.

02:33:10.000 Yeah.

02:33:10.000 Have you tried it?

02:33:11.000 I mean, I struggle with it.

02:33:12.000 But look at this.

02:33:12.000 So here it is.

02:33:13.000 The key is the foot in the thigh, it's like an offside triangle.

02:33:17.000 You can see that right foot is just hooked in.

02:33:20.000 And he's going to threaten with an arm triangle.

02:33:22.000 He's kind of holding Matos here.

02:33:24.000 There's a bit of a hand fight going on.

02:33:25.000 He's going to keep hitting Matos, and Matos is going to go to an arm triangle position.

02:33:30.000 Then he's going to start to try and force that right elbow down so he's not in an arm triangle and turn into the body triangle.

02:33:37.000 But that right foot caught in his thigh doesn't allow him to turn fully into the guard.

02:33:42.000 So look at this how he turns in, clears the head, and there's the crank.

02:33:45.000 Look at the foot on the inside of the thigh.

02:33:46.000 That's nasty.

02:33:47.000 So that is, I mean, I've had this done to me as well as I've done it.

02:33:51.000 So you've got compression into the neck.

02:33:53.000 Pressure into the lower back, your hips being lifted off the floor.

02:33:57.000 It's a horrible submission.

02:33:58.000 It looks horrible.

02:33:59.000 And this is the Cheesecake Assassin demo in it.

02:34:02.000 Interesting.

02:34:04.000 But this is what's fascinating still to me about MMA is that I still feel like there are technologies that we've not yet discovered.

02:34:12.000 The calf kicker being a good example.

02:34:14.000 Scottish Twister being another good example. 0.98

02:34:16.000 What comes next? 1.00

02:34:17.000 There's going to be some shit. 0.99

02:34:18.000 I've got books and books of martial arts books, and I feel like if I dug, I might find something. 0.99

02:34:23.000 Yeah, I don't know what's missing.

02:34:27.000 Here's something that I think might be missing front leg roundhouse kick to the face.

02:34:32.000 Guys who are fast with that, I used to see that a lot in Taekwondo.

02:34:37.000 I used to see that a lot. 1.00

02:34:38.000 There's guys that just throw it out there like a jab, and if it hits you in the face, you're fucked. 0.99

02:34:43.000 And we've seen it a few times in MMA. 0.99

02:34:45.000 We've seen a few guys get dropped.

02:34:47.000 We saw Rose Dama Yunus and Zhang Weili.

02:34:50.000 You just don't see it very often.

02:34:52.000 And man, if you're good at that, if you have a fast one, That is a devastating kick.

02:34:58.000 Yeah.

02:34:59.000 See, that is a good example because that's a great technique and a great setup. 1.00

02:35:04.000 Because the reason why the head kick landed was because she just landed an inside low kick. 1.00

02:35:08.000 Yes. 1.00

02:35:08.000 So Wei Lee had pulled her lead leg back and pitched her head forward. 1.00

02:35:12.000 Beautiful set. 1.00

02:35:12.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:35:13.000 I totally agree with you.

02:35:14.000 I think there's a lot that's still to be discovered.

02:35:16.000 It's just stunning to me how few people get cracked with that.

02:35:20.000 I mean, I feel like that was a major weapon when I was doing Taekwondo.

02:35:24.000 A lot of people used that.

02:35:25.000 Crescent kick as well.

02:35:25.000 Yeah.

02:35:27.000 Oh, yeah.

02:35:27.000 There's a few guys that use that still.

02:35:29.000 Anderson used that a few times.

02:35:31.000 Yeah.

02:35:31.000 There's a cat.

02:35:33.000 I'm so sorry, man.

02:35:34.000 I forget your name.

02:35:35.000 But this is a dude who's got a video on Instagram where he knocks this guy out with an inside crescent kick to the face.

02:35:40.000 There's a few people that are pulling it off, you know?

02:35:43.000 Yeah.

02:35:44.000 There's definitely more to come.

02:35:45.000 There's definitely a lot more.

02:35:47.000 There are a lot more techniques.

02:35:48.000 I also think there are going to be a lot more targets on the body that can be exploited that we're not yet exploited.

02:35:54.000 Right.

02:35:55.000 Well, a lot of the guys in kickboxing, in particular, in one, are using that toe kick to the body.

02:36:01.000 Yes.

02:36:02.000 App Chaggy. 0.92

02:36:03.000 Right.

02:36:04.000 There's this guy.

02:36:04.000 Yes.

02:36:05.000 What is his name, Jamie?

02:36:06.000 I've actually congratulated this guy.

02:36:08.000 I apologize.

02:36:10.000 Sir, because I went back and forth with him.

02:36:14.000 Jason Barry, is that what it just said?

02:36:17.000 Back it up a little bit.

02:36:19.000 Before that? 1.00

02:36:22.000 See, look at those Cage Warriors.

02:36:23.000 Justin Barry.

02:36:24.000 That's it.

02:36:24.000 Justin Barry.

02:36:25.000 Look at the curve in those Cage Warriors gloves.

02:36:28.000 So they're basically, they're either Fairtex gloves or they're a copy of the Fairtex gloves.

02:36:33.000 Look how he does that.

02:36:34.000 It's crazy.

02:36:34.000 That's slick, isn't it?

02:36:35.000 Crazy.

02:36:36.000 Very cool. 0.62

02:36:37.000 Crazy.

02:36:37.000 Yeah, Cage Warriors is another great organization that's really producing elite talent.

02:36:42.000 It's just.

02:36:43.000 I agree with you.

02:36:43.000 There's not enough of them.

02:36:45.000 But it's like, what does the PFL have to do to get more attention?

02:36:48.000 You know, because it seems like they're throwing a lot of money at fighters.

02:36:51.000 Like, is that million dollar thing still happening?

02:36:53.000 No, we've got rid of the tournament.

02:36:55.000 We've gone to regular shows now.

02:36:57.000 So we have main and co main.

02:36:58.000 We've got rankings now done by Combat Registry.

02:37:00.000 They don't have all the crazy point system where you're like, oh, that's gone. 0.87

02:37:04.000 That didn't make any fucking sense. 0.84

02:37:06.000 I'll be honest. 0.97

02:37:07.000 I love the PFL, but PFL's been its own worst enemy for many, many years, right?

02:37:11.000 We've got a new CEO, John Martin, who's been on Ariel's show a couple of times.

02:37:15.000 He does great interviews.

02:37:16.000 He.

02:37:17.000 He loves the sport from a fan's perspective.

02:37:19.000 Doesn't know it quite as much as other people, but he's making the right moves and making the right decisions.

02:37:26.000 Previously, I mean, I love Don Davis, but he was like Willy Wonka of MMA.

02:37:30.000 He was like, I've got a great idea.

02:37:32.000 Let's do this.

02:37:33.000 And then you had Pete Murray, who just was consistently making bad deals.

02:37:37.000 All the point things were like, I didn't understand any of it.

02:37:40.000 So I was running PFL Europe for a couple of three years.

02:37:44.000 I stepped in at the end of 2022 as commentator.

02:37:47.000 In 2023, I became the head of.

02:37:50.000 Head of fighter ops for Europe.

02:37:51.000 So I was doing all the signing and matchmaking.

02:37:53.000 I only had four shows a year, but I mean, it was a passion project for me to sign all these young guys and match them.

02:38:00.000 And my argument was every single one, and I always used to say this to the fighters because remember when Dana used to do this back in the old weighing days where he'd get all the fighters, no corner men, no coaches, just translators and the fighters.

02:38:11.000 And we'd gather in one of the changing rooms in the arena, and Dana would give us this speech, and it was stirring.

02:38:17.000 Like we were all there to murder each other, but for like five minutes, we all felt like we were in it together.

02:38:24.000 I loved that feeling.

02:38:25.000 I missed it.

02:38:25.000 Even walking out, we're like fist bumping each other and we're all hyped, and that's where he'd announce the bonus amounts and stuff.

02:38:31.000 So I would do that with PFO Europe.

02:38:33.000 I'd gather all the fighters together and I'm like, look, there's not a single fight on this card that has been matched for one person to win.

02:38:39.000 Every single person stepping into the cage has got a fair chance of winning.

02:38:43.000 Your destiny is in your hands, right?

02:38:46.000 And with PFO Europe, I was able to build a good roster and to.

02:38:52.000 I mean, we had some fantastic shows, but when I first inherited it, we had four tournaments, right?

02:38:57.000 So I had to sign 16 fighters sorry, eight fighters per weight class.

02:39:03.000 So I had 32 fighters on my roster that was done already before the year started.

02:39:07.000 And then I'm having to get loads of different flags.

02:39:09.000 So we're going into a place and I've got a bunch of fighters on the card that I don't need that aren't going to sell any tickets.

02:39:14.000 And it was just working against me constantly.

02:39:17.000 So I pushed to go down to two tournaments and have just a normal MMA show for the rest of it.

02:39:22.000 And that worked out well, but.

02:39:24.000 They just loved the tournament format because it was a distinguishing factor.

02:39:28.000 And the question is, you know, what do we have to do to make a difference?

02:39:33.000 Like, I mean, I think we are doing those, we are making those moves.

02:39:36.000 We have to make more content, tell the fighters' stories better, for sure. 0.98

02:39:40.000 Maybe you guys should start a fucking Muay Thai song. 0.98

02:39:43.000 I'm down for it. 0.99

02:39:45.000 I'm suggesting. 1.00

02:39:47.000 I've sent Dana all these different fights.

02:39:49.000 I sent him all these.

02:39:50.000 Is Iman Gazaliyev, that dude, Azadullah Iman Gazaliyev? 0.98

02:39:56.000 Holy shit, is that guy good? 0.98

02:39:57.000 I'm like, look at this. 0.99

02:39:59.000 Like, this is what people want to see, man.

02:40:01.000 Like, everybody booze when the fights go to the ground if it gets boring. 1.00

02:40:05.000 This shit's never boring. 1.00

02:40:06.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:40:07.000 Maybe you guys should pick up the slack.

02:40:08.000 100%.

02:40:09.000 I mean, I've thrown hundreds of ideas on the table.

02:40:12.000 I always am.

02:40:13.000 That might be the move, man.

02:40:14.000 I mean, that might be what differentiates.

02:40:16.000 Yeah, I think so.

02:40:17.000 Just look how big it is with one.

02:40:18.000 I mean, it's essentially become most of their fights now.

02:40:21.000 And it's accommodating fighters that have got two or 300 fights in another discipline that don't want to learn how to wrestle or grapple, but they are.

02:40:21.000 Yeah.

02:40:29.000 The elitist of elite strikers and so easy to translate, everybody knows what's going on. 0.97

02:40:34.000 Yeah, a kick to the face is a kick to the face.

02:40:36.000 Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. 0.68

02:40:37.000 I mean, I think, but I'm always throwing ideas at the PFA.

02:40:40.000 The one that stuck was introducing elbows.

02:40:42.000 Like, when I first started working for the PFA, we didn't have elbows because crazy, crazy, crazy, like, and I hated it, you know.

02:40:49.000 And I'm like, well, it's pride, they didn't have elbows.

02:40:52.000 Yeah, did Bellator?

02:40:54.000 Bellator had elbows, so what the well, see, that was my selling point.

02:40:58.000 That was the way I got, I managed to convince them.

02:40:59.000 I said, okay, right.

02:41:01.000 We've taken on Bellator now.

02:41:02.000 We've inherited Bellator and everything that we've done.

02:41:04.000 Take the rules too.

02:41:05.000 Right?

02:41:06.000 Yeah.

02:41:07.000 Well, this is how I pitched it to them.

02:41:09.000 One of my biggest opponents was Ray Cefo.

02:41:11.000 He did not want elbows added in.

02:41:13.000 I could not get my head around it because he's always coaching elbows from the corner.

02:41:17.000 Why didn't he want elbows?

02:41:18.000 I'm not sure.

02:41:19.000 I couldn't get my head around it.

02:41:20.000 But the thing that pushed it over the line was me going, okay, right, we've just taken on Bellator, right?

02:41:26.000 We've got Bellator and we've got PFL.

02:41:28.000 Imagine in a world where we now apply PFL rules to Bellator.

02:41:32.000 What are the fans going to say?

02:41:33.000 They're going to be like, well, that'd be terrible.

02:41:35.000 They'd hate it because you're taking elbows out.

02:41:36.000 I'm like, you've illustrated my point.

02:41:38.000 Exactly.

02:41:39.000 So clearly, that's not the right way to go.

02:41:41.000 So then we need elbows. 0.96

02:41:42.000 Well, I'm glad they listened to you because that's ridiculous. 0.93

02:41:44.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:41:45.000 You know, what really needs to happen is knees to the head on the ground.

02:41:48.000 100%.

02:41:49.000 Absolutely.

02:41:49.000 It's crazy that someone could just huddle in a turtle position and not get pummeled.

02:41:54.000 Like, you shouldn't be in that position.

02:41:55.000 The only thing I can do without, and I loved it in pride and I wanted to fight in pride for the soccer kicks as well.

02:42:01.000 That's the only thing I can reasonably do without.

02:42:05.000 And the reason why.

02:42:06.000 The ring is different.

02:42:06.000 No ring.

02:42:08.000 Yeah.

02:42:08.000 You can move.

02:42:09.000 The problem with being planted into the cage and then stomped or soccer kicked.

02:42:13.000 For sure.

02:42:14.000 Remember Wes Sims' Frank Meer? 0.96

02:42:16.000 Stomped him, yeah.

02:42:18.000 The thing with, and I've watched every single Pride fight that's ever existed, I'm sure.

02:42:23.000 I only ever see people getting volleyed in the head when the fight's already pretty much done.

02:42:26.000 Right.

02:42:27.000 So it's like Melvin Manhoof and Sakuraba.

02:42:27.000 Right.

02:42:30.000 Exactly.

02:42:31.000 It's like the icing on the cake that we don't necessarily need when you can just hit them with one more shot.

02:42:35.000 And they tried something in Cage Rage when Cage Rage existed back in the day.

02:42:40.000 Where the referee would decide that you could stomp on or kick him in the head.

02:42:44.000 Let me ask you this What do you think about sidekicks, the knees?

02:42:47.000 I don't mind it.

02:42:48.000 The problem with that is it's one shot and you're out for a year.

02:42:53.000 But then heel hooks are just as dangerous, aren't they?

02:42:55.000 But they're not because you can tap.

02:42:57.000 You can tap and you can hold on to the arms before it gets to that position.

02:43:00.000 You can tap.

02:43:02.000 The thing about the sidekick to the knee, like, what's his face?

02:43:07.000 Khalil Roundtree.

02:43:08.000 Yeah, but the guy, Modestus.

02:43:10.000 Modestus.

02:43:11.000 When you watch his knee go sideways like that, you're like, good lord.

02:43:15.000 Like, you're done for a year.

02:43:16.000 If you're ever the same again.

02:43:18.000 I mean, I know Shavkat's in a similar situation right now, isn't he?

02:43:22.000 But you can't hit to the back of the head.

02:43:24.000 But you do hit to the back of the head.

02:43:26.000 Because if it's a roundhouse kick and it goes over the shoulder, guess where it lands?

02:43:29.000 Absolutely.

02:43:30.000 See, the thing is, the back of the head is more protecting from the bottom of the base of the skull downwards, isn't it?

02:43:35.000 If someone throws a roundhouse kick and it goes over the shoulder, it's going bong right to the back of the head.

02:43:35.000 That's real.

02:43:42.000 But then how many football players in a season are taken out with a low tackle?

02:43:46.000 I mean, it's the same in rugby as well.

02:43:48.000 It's like, for me, that is a risk of the sport.

02:43:52.000 That is a part of the.

02:43:53.000 But it's a victory with an illegal move that we all allow.

02:43:57.000 It's only illegal because you can't strike to the knee.

02:44:00.000 No, no, no.

02:44:01.000 Back of the head kick.

02:44:02.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

02:44:03.000 You know what I'm saying?

02:44:04.000 The back of the head kick, you win by knockout, and you shouldn't have hit them there.

02:44:09.000 Yeah, but then also you've got to go into well, did they turn their head?

02:44:12.000 What was the circumstance of it, et cetera, et cetera.

02:44:15.000 I mean, the thing is, like, you can't, in the rules, you can't strike joints, right?

02:44:18.000 But then it was the same thing when we had elbows, and I'm like, we're doing shows in France, and I'm saying to the French Commission, We don't have elbows.

02:44:25.000 And they're like, okay, so where does the elbow start and where does the, you know, where is it for the forearm?

02:44:30.000 It starts with the forearm, right.

02:44:31.000 But a thing about like attacking the knees, you would have to say, well, it's got to be a straight kick where you hyperextend the knees because you can't say, don't leg kick the knees because you're going to be able to leg kick the back of the knee always.

02:44:43.000 If you take that out, you're taking out a giant chunk of all techniques.

02:44:47.000 But the side kick to the knee, the problem with that is you're going to ruin careers.

02:44:51.000 Like, there's a lot of guys that are just not the same.

02:44:54.000 Tiago Silva, I don't think was ever the same after the John Jones fight.

02:44:58.000 In my mind, it's the game we play.

02:44:59.000 I agree with you.

02:45:00.000 I see your point.

02:45:01.000 I see it.

02:45:02.000 No one's dying from a knee injury.

02:45:03.000 It's very unusual, too.

02:45:04.000 It's like the Modestus fight was one fight that you can name, and Khalil's obviously a very elite striker.

02:45:11.000 But I don't mind it.

02:45:11.000 Yeah.

02:45:13.000 I genuinely don't.

02:45:14.000 I mean, I'm more interested in making sure the fighters are protected when they can't protect themselves.

02:45:20.000 That's where we need to raise everyone's understanding of what's happening.

02:45:23.000 Yeah.

02:45:24.000 I agree with you.

02:45:24.000 But listen, brother, always good to talk to you.

02:45:27.000 We should do this more often.

02:45:28.000 We should, absolutely.

02:45:29.000 Six years.

02:45:30.000 We're back in Austin soon, though.

02:45:32.000 We're back in Austin soon.

02:45:33.000 Oh, when is it?

02:45:33.000 Middle of July.

02:45:34.000 Johnny Eblin's fighting Costello Van Steenis in the rematch.

02:45:37.000 What movie season?

02:45:38.000 When in July?

02:45:39.000 July 19th, Saturday.

02:45:41.000 Saturday, July 19th.

02:45:42.000 Is that the right day?

02:45:43.000 Or is it the 18th? 1.00

02:45:43.000 Oh, motherfucker. 1.00

02:45:44.000 I'm out of town. 1.00

02:45:45.000 I know where you are. 1.00

02:45:46.000 Damn it. 1.00

02:45:47.000 I'm out of town. 1.00

02:45:48.000 Yeah, I know.

02:45:48.000 I know where you are.

02:45:49.000 I'll be there.

02:45:50.000 You'll be there?

02:45:51.000 Yeah, I think I'll be there.

02:45:52.000 Okay, well, we'll talk about it afterwards.

02:45:54.000 Yeah.

02:45:54.000 You know what we're talking about.

02:45:55.000 Well, yeah, we'll talk about it.

02:45:57.000 But yeah, Johnny Eblin, Costello Van Steenis.

02:45:57.000 Yeah.

02:45:59.000 That's too bad.

02:46:00.000 I want to see that.

02:46:01.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:46:01.000 Fuck. 1.00

02:46:02.000 And I will say, like, for me, our middleweight division is probably the most competitive with the UFC's middleweight division. 1.00

02:46:07.000 With Johnny Eblen. 0.99

02:46:08.000 Johnny Eblen's a bad motherfucker. 0.99

02:46:09.000 Like, Costello Van Stienas, the current champ. 0.99

02:46:11.000 Did you watch that fight?

02:46:12.000 No.

02:46:13.000 So, Johnny Eblen, undefeated in 17, 18 fights, was beating the brakes off Costello.

02:46:18.000 Oh, you got the most of it?

02:46:19.000 Like, last 10 seconds.

02:46:20.000 Yes, I did see that.

02:46:22.000 Yes, that's right.

02:46:23.000 So, Costello's defended his belt.

02:46:25.000 He beat Fabian Edwards, Travis Brown elbows.

02:46:27.000 Yes.

02:46:27.000 And then, Johnny Eblen just ragdolled Brian Battle like it was nothing.

02:46:32.000 I saw that too.

02:46:33.000 Yeah.

02:46:33.000 That was insane.

02:46:34.000 No, he's a beast, dude. 0.74

02:46:35.000 Well, now those two boys are going to rematch.

02:46:37.000 Austin at the Moody Center, middle of July.

02:46:39.000 It's going to be a good one.

02:46:40.000 I wish I was here.

02:46:41.000 Me, too.

02:46:42.000 All right.

02:46:42.000 Thank you, brother.

02:46:43.000 Thank you.

02:46:43.000 Very good to see you always.

02:46:46.000 Dan Hardy, what's your Instagram?

02:46:48.000 Dan Hardy MMA.

02:46:49.000 All right.

02:46:49.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 06, 2026

JRE MMA Show 178 with Dan Hardy

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