00:03:16.000Every now and then, people do make mistakes, and in Fight Island, everyone was tired, it was quiet in the arena as well.
00:03:21.000So, you can, I mean, you can hear me yelling.
00:03:24.000It wasn't the first time I'd done it though.
00:03:26.000I yelled at him in Moscow for a CB Dollarway fight.
00:03:29.000And 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?
00:03:41.000You know, and the way that that that Jai Herbert fell, it was just.
00:04:00.000And then there was this, and I think, of course, because it was quarantine times, it was silent in there.
00:04:06.000The time, it was like you could hear a heartbeat in the air.
00:04:10.000And there was just this moment where Ronaldo stood over him and looked at Herb.
00:04:15.000And Jai's still on the floor, kind of not fully conscious.
00:04:19.000And Ronaldo just started cracking him with more shots.
00:04:23.000And that was the point where I stood up straight away and I'm yelling.
00:04:25.000And Paul Felder was doing the same thing next to me.
00:04:28.000You actually see Herb look at me through the cage and point at me and tell me to shut up.
00:04:32.000The thing that annoyed me about it was the miscommunication about what had happened.
00:04:36.000Because 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.
00:04:57.000And then we had another desk in front of that.
00:05:00.000So, 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.
00:05:12.000He came over and he started yelling at me, and you know, you stay out of it, can't be shouting, and this and that.
00:05:17.000And that's where you see me go, That was two times, it's the second time of the night.
00:05:21.000Um, after the, I mean, as it's going on, and this was when we're not doing interviews in the cage as well, right?
00:05:29.000So I'm standing, also hilarious, yeah, just.
00:05:33.000Breathing on each other, sweating and bleeding on each other.
00:05:35.000And we're shaking hands in the hotel and everything, and it was kind of odd.
00:05:39.000But because I'm not going into the cage, I'm now turning around and my interview camera is behind me.
00:05:45.000So 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.
00:05:51.000Me 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.
00:05:57.000So everything got a bit delayed because I was having an interaction with Herb.
00:06:03.000As 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.
00:07:04.000But there was another one, it was UAE Warriors.
00:07:06.000And I think someone had kept hold of a choke too long.
00:07:10.000And then Goddard had separated the fight, and then he came over to Mark and he's trying to push Mark and stuff.
00:07:16.000And 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.
00:07:28.000The 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.
00:07:40.000But 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.
00:07:47.000And I'm like, I've got a bunch of hours sitting on a plane on the way back to the UK now.
00:08:25.000And 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.
00:08:35.000And it was about an hour and a quarter long.
00:08:40.000But 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.
00:08:50.000Not sure whether you remember that one.
00:08:52.000Cowboy went down at the end of the first round and they actually helped him back to his stool and sat him on the stool.
00:10:08.000So 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.
00:10:16.000But it was the way they responded to me which pissed me off.
00:10:19.000And then the way that the UFC kind of pulled all their support for me.
00:10:24.000And they contacted me and they said, hey, we're going to organize a conversation with you and whoever.
00:10:30.000And I said, I just want to let you know I've got this video ready to go.
00:10:33.000And I am going to post it because it vindicates what I did, in my opinion.
00:10:40.000But it also offers some understanding of what Herb was trying to do and the job that he has and how difficult it is.
00:10:48.000And unfortunately, I mean, it got a couple of hundred thousand views before it was taken down.
00:10:52.000But it's just, it's still on the channel now.
00:10:54.000If you look at it, it's just a little gray square with three dots, and there's just nothing on the back of it.
00:11:00.000They literally went into my channel and took it away.
00:11:02.000That's so weird that they could take down something that doesn't violate any laws or rules.
00:13:42.000But 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.
00:15:06.000It 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.
00:15:22.000But 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.
00:15:40.000And 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.
00:15:50.000And from a fighter's perspective, I want to feel that warlike feeling when I step in the cage.
00:15:57.000I want to feel like I can throw everything at my opponent.
00:16:00.000And I also want to feel safe that they can throw everything at me, right?
00:16:04.000I 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?
00:16:09.000Like, there are three people in there, and one person's got the job to protect both of us.
00:16:13.000Neither of us have a responsibility to protect each other.
00:16:16.000We 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?
00:16:24.000Who was the referee with Anderson Silva and Michael Bisping?
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00:19:45.000Still, one of the best fights I've ever called.
00:19:46.000This and Max Holloway, Calvin Cater, one of the best fights I've ever called.
00:19:50.000It was a privilege to be sat cageside for it.
00:19:52.000But, like, Bisping's, you know, coming out now with 10 minutes left and stamps his authority on this fight, which was very, very impressive.
00:20:01.000But it was just, this was just a messy situation.
00:20:03.000And I kind of didn't really mind this because of the circumstance that had played out.
00:20:07.000I mean, Herb was very clear in him saying I didn't stop the fight.
00:20:10.000But then, if you remember the Cowboy Cerrone.
00:21:16.000Potentially, 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.
00:21:23.000I think by his hand movements there, I don't think that qualifies.
00:22:25.000You 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?
00:22:34.000So, 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.
00:22:42.000Versions of fencing response from K1 to football to rugby, all kinds of stuff.
00:22:49.000Like consciousness is not removed immediately with every punch, is it?
00:22:53.000Like you've got everything on a spectrum.
00:22:56.000You'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?
00:23:05.000The point where someone's unable to defend themselves or not intelligently defending themselves.
00:24:20.000It'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?
00:24:32.000Instead of a drug test, like, hey, Dan, get on the scale.0.99
00:24:35.000Oh, but I've been eating and I don't give a fuck.1.00
00:25:48.000Like, 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
00:26:02.000It's just, you're dehydrating the shit out of yourself.
00:26:05.000He would weigh in 40 pounds more than he weighed, like on Fight Night.0.99
00:26:09.000Fight Night, he would be 40 pounds heavier.
00:26:35.000Like, I invested too much in getting bigger and stronger and.
00:26:38.000Because 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.
00:26:46.000So I was always within about 10 pounds.
00:26:48.000There were very few fights before the UFC that I cut a lot of weight.
00:26:52.000And 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.
00:27:58.000I mean, that was back when they didn't have those options, like those small portable sauna options that they have now.
00:28:04.000Like, 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.
00:29:31.000And 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.
00:29:53.000He was the favorite to win the Cage Force tournament, and I pulled him in the first round.
00:29:58.000And 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.
00:30:05.000I had a little bit more to cut because of the flight.
00:30:07.000But 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.
00:30:21.000Because, like, I look back to that third round and I just didn't have the power.
00:30:36.000And 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.
00:30:46.000I 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.
00:30:56.000But in hindsight, pulling the whole thing apart.
00:30:59.000Like, 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.
00:31:06.000My position is that the UFC, and I think MMA in general, PFL, all of them, we need more weight classes.
00:32:00.000I've actually developed a A system of introducing weight classes over the next several years for the PFL.
00:32:06.000I 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.
00:32:13.000But 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.
00:33:29.000I 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.
00:33:38.000But 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.
00:33:47.000Because, 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.
00:33:57.000But then a lot of these, a lot of those shows are now starting to get dropped off of Fight Pass, right?
00:34:01.000And the reason for that is because Contender Series is replacing them.
00:34:05.000So, what shows have been dropped off Fight Pass?
00:34:06.000I think LFA's just been dropped, hasn't it?
00:34:32.000And 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.
00:34:44.000Before 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.
00:34:51.000I was up and down the country and across Europe all the time.
00:34:55.000But then when we started having two or three UFC events a year, a lot of the smaller shows just.
00:35:11.000And look, and what they did when the UFC landed in Europe, they legitimized the sport.
00:35:16.000And then, you know, so the perspective started to change very quickly.
00:35:20.000Like 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?
00:35:52.000And 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.
00:36:02.000Just a second, and I've watched a bunch of clips.
00:36:04.000I've watched a bunch of people get flatlined and bounce their head off the podium and fall backwards.
00:38:47.000The 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.
00:38:54.000It's that, and then it's also we're in the TikTok era where it's just really all about clips.
00:39:10.000I think it's much more digestible in these very short clips.
00:39:15.000You 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.
00:39:30.000There's guys that are coming in their debuts and you can watch YouTube videos of guys.0.90
00:39:33.000Breaking down these guys' skill sets, and you never even heard of these cats.
00:39:37.000Guys who are fighting in Russia, guys who are fighting in Brazil, and there's no power slap hardcore fans.
00:39:44.000There'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.
00:41:30.000Yeah, she got an artificial disc, which is really interesting that they could do that now.
00:41:35.000And guys go, look, Altramane did it and came back better than ever.
00:41:38.000I 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.
00:41:51.000And then he went and got an artificial disc put in his neck.
00:41:54.000And then came back and dominated in the rematch.
00:41:57.000And then, did you see him in his last fight?
00:42:15.000And 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.
00:42:51.000You 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.
00:44:27.000The problem with that is with these surgeries, if you have macular degeneration and it continues to progress, you are going to need it again.
00:44:50.000The thing is, though, you know, athletes.0.98
00:44:52.000Like, 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?
00:45:01.000And a good portion of them said, yes, they absolutely would.
00:45:03.000Most athletes, in order to achieve their goals, would do absolutely anything.
00:45:08.000So, 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?
00:45:22.000How about that Tommy John surgery that people get electively so they can pitch better?
00:45:26.000Before surgery, he was extremely nearsighted.
00:45:50.000Wood reportedly achieved about 2015 vision better than the standard 2020, meaning he could see more detail at distance than the average person.
00:45:58.000He 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.
00:49:28.000I 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.
00:51:24.000And 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.
00:52:50.000It was just, it was in Vegas and it was, you know, It was kind of getting a little bit of attention.
00:52:55.000It 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.
00:53:12.000It's really crazy where, like, the stars align with one fight, the whole sport takes off.
00:53:37.000Like, you and I, between you and I, we probably have 500 fighters' names in our head.
00:53:43.000And then plus jujitsu guys, plus wrestlers, plus boxers.
00:53:48.000Like, oh my God, there's so many names in your head.
00:53:51.000And 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.
00:54:55.000And 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.
00:55:03.000He 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
00:55:09.000I said, Oh, fuck yeah, I'll do it.0.80
00:56:57.000Yeah, it's similar to me though, really.
00:56:58.000I mean, I was because I'd been sidelined because, you know, because of my heart situation and they wouldn't clear me in California.
00:57:04.000So then the UFC just wouldn't match me anywhere.
00:57:07.000And 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.
00:57:16.000And 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.
00:57:24.000I want you to go and see my specialist, you know, my family specialist and get a second opinion and et cetera.
00:57:30.000But he said, also, we've got another plan for you.
00:58:02.000I just want you to be you sitting cage side.
00:58:05.000And 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.
00:58:16.000And then someone from the truck came through and said, Oh, I've just realized we've not practiced any post fight interviews.
00:58:23.000I said, Oh, I'd not really thought about it.
00:59:17.000So 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.
01:01:32.000And 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.
01:01:40.000And he had the Gion, so he had all this friction.
01:01:44.000And then everybody took Jiu Jitsu, including me.
01:01:45.000I'm like, I got to learn Jiu Jitsu.0.98
01:01:47.000And then to watch the evolution, like these giant, juiced up fucking wrestlers come along, like Mark Coleman, and Mark Kerr smashing everybody.0.98
01:01:56.000They're like, oh my God, we got to get on the sauce.0.98
01:01:58.000And so everybody, you know, Vitor got up to like 240 pounds and his fucking neck started at the top of his head.0.99
01:02:36.000He's like 6'7 or something like that.0.98
01:02:38.000And 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
01:02:50.000And then they're screaming, Jiu Jitsu, Jiu Jitsu.0.99
01:06:43.000So, 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.
01:06:51.000I think there's more of an understanding now.
01:06:53.000So, my response to everybody is I'm going to try and do Joe's job.
01:07:48.000Same for me, but it can't have been accidental because I had somebody to learn from.
01:07:53.000That's why I asked you because you didn't have anybody that kind of, you know, was successful.
01:07:58.000Well, 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
01:08:06.000So, 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.
01:08:16.000So, I would have to, and also people at home, what's going on?
01:08:20.000So, 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.
01:08:59.000Even 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.
01:09:08.000But I would have to explain why this works and what's happening and what's going on and what's in danger.
01:09:15.000And it was weird because I felt like this obligation to jujitsu that.
01:09:39.000You 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.
01:12:00.000I 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.
01:12:12.000And 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.
01:12:21.000You 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.
01:12:29.000Like, I'd be like calling Bruce on and he always used to come to me.
01:14:25.000You 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
01:14:53.000And I would love to see a Masters division, especially now we could accommodate it with some of the older fighters around.1.00
01:14:58.000Because most of them, they just kind of bounce over onto, you know, bare knuckle or whatever else is out there as options.
01:15:05.000Whereas, like, they've still got so much to offer.
01:15:07.000And if the fights are fairly matched, I think we get some more real good ones.
01:15:11.000Yeah, 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.
01:15:20.000And you're like, good lord, don't do this.
01:16:19.000Doesn't anybody recognize their skills are gone?
01:16:22.000Doesn't anybody recognize they get knocked out way too easily now?
01:16:25.000There's a bunch of fighters like that that I just really wish would not be doing it anymore.
01:16:29.000And 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.
01:16:39.000The 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.
01:16:48.000And 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.
01:17:05.000No one is at their athletic peak forever.
01:17:08.000But we also should still be celebrating what people have achieved, you know?
01:17:11.000And I feel like that's something that we're not, we don't get as much in the sport.
01:17:14.000And 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.
01:17:35.000Because I can see what's, Being done there.
01:17:38.000And 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.
01:17:50.000And they're the fights that I would like to not see anymore.
01:17:53.000Because 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.
01:18:04.000We 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.
01:18:26.000And if I don't do this, I'm going to be questioning myself my whole life.
01:18:30.000But 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.
01:19:10.000I remember going into fights feeling like, I have no idea how this is going to play out.
01:19:15.000I 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.
01:19:20.000And 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.
01:19:30.000And I'm like, how am I going to consume all of this knowledge?
01:19:44.000If I look back, that was where my anxiety came from.
01:19:47.000It was the over analysis of the sport and the feeling like I was never going to be able to learn all of this information.
01:19:52.000Whereas now, in actuality, I feel very, very opposite.
01:19:55.000I feel like now, if I was going back, my training would be very, very focused and very, very streamlined.
01:20:00.000But 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.
01:20:07.000So it was almost like, and I said this, I've said this to a lot of young fighters.
01:20:13.000If 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.
01:20:24.000When I stopped fighting and I was doing commentary and doing inside the octagon and stuff, like my knowledge was growing on a daily basis.
01:20:39.000I 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.
01:20:49.000It was a bottomless pit of knowledge, you know?
01:20:53.000Whereas 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.
01:21:13.000Sometimes I watch somebody and feel like I'm getting worse when I'm watching them.
01:22:10.000I was like, oh, I'm just watching these two guys as a fan.
01:22:14.000I'm not comparing Robbie Lawler to me and Roy McDonald to me.
01:22:18.000And my process of Preparing for an opponent was very similar to what I would do for an analysis.
01:22:23.000I 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.
01:22:31.000So now I'm watching my fights with their skill set in mind, right?
01:22:36.000So 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.
01:22:43.000But there's always a bit of ego involved there.
01:22:46.000So, like, say with Carlos Condit, an incredible fighter.
01:22:49.000Right, 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.
01:22:54.000You know, Mohawk flapping in the wind, you know, and it was like, and that was my ego getting in the way, right?
01:23:01.000Because if I was looking at Carlos Condit versus Robbie Lawler or Carlos Condit versus GSP, I would have respected his counter punching, right?
01:23:09.000But my ego was a block in that scenario.0.93
01:23:12.000So 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
01:24:26.000It'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.
01:24:32.000But the scariest world to not be good at is the striking world.
01:24:53.000And 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?
01:25:04.000Like, take Conor McGregor Cowboy, for example.
01:25:21.000And this is the benefit of, say, Conor McGregor, say his brand is the left hand, right?
01:25:29.000Conor 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.
01:25:36.000And there's an angle from, from, Cowboy's backed up against the fence and he sees Connor close his left hand.
01:25:44.000And straight away, Cowboy goes, Left hand's coming.
01:26:30.000They throw the technique that they worked in the changing room, warming up on the pads.
01:26:34.000But 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.
01:27:22.000Like TJ Dillashaw is probably his greatest student.
01:27:24.000And TJ fought completely different than Dwayne.
01:27:28.000He constantly switched stances, constantly was like, he was giving you so many looks.
01:27:33.000And, you know, it's wild watching when, you know, you watch like Dwayne style versus what he would teach.
01:27:41.000Because 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.
01:27:51.000And this is where I don't think we get enough people crossing over to coaching afterwards.
01:27:54.000Like, 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.
01:28:06.000You 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.
01:28:31.000He used to be able to heel hook himself and he created the double bagger, and there's a few different things.
01:28:35.000But 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.
01:28:43.000And that's such an unusual thing in a lot of martial arts schools the teacher being a student, right?
01:28:49.000And that's something that always stood out to me about particular people.
01:28:54.000Like, 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.
01:29:00.000You 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.
01:32:28.000I 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
01:32:41.000Being on the mats during the class and watching you smash the bag with your back kick and then stepping onto the mats and just.
01:32:48.000And 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.
01:32:59.000Yeah, that's at least how it felt to me.
01:33:00.000It was like you were the different role on the mat to everybody else.
01:33:04.000Well, I got obsessed with head and arm chokes.1.00
01:33:35.000Like 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?
01:33:41.000Well, 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.
01:33:52.000Marcelo Garcia was just like a master.
01:34:50.000You 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.
01:35:02.000But then you've got people that understand that each one of their weapons.
01:35:06.000Is a different thing at a different time and serves a different purpose at a different time, you know?
01:35:11.000Like with a jab, for example, everybody in their game has got a jab.
01:35:14.000But 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?
01:35:29.000If 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?
01:36:53.000Well, 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.
01:37:09.000You're not just like, oh, we hit them hard.
01:37:12.000You're looking at all the different layers and you analyze things on multi levels, which I always find fascinating.
01:37:22.000You have a great commentary style, it's really excellent.
01:37:25.000You're absolutely one of the best out there.
01:38:28.000And he told me a story when they were driving from LA to Vegas.
01:38:31.000And Scroobius Pip, his record label's called Speech Development Records.
01:38:35.000He has a stammer, he has a speech impediment.
01:38:38.000And 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.
01:41:22.000And 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.
01:41:30.000Looking away while thinking, Known as gaze aversion, a common cognitive behavior that helps people process information by reducing external distractions.
01:41:39.000By looking at an empty space or upward, the brain shifts from environmental input to internal cognitive tasks, such as memory retrieval or complex thinking.
01:42:28.000Well, 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
01:42:41.000That's why, like, I used to do interviews in my car and I stopped doing them because I sound like a moron.0.81
01:42:47.000And I realized this because I'm thinking about cars.0.94
01:43:13.000But 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
01:43:46.000It's like I'm conscious and cautious all the time.
01:43:49.000I 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.
01:44:00.000You know, I'm very opinionated, unfortunately.
01:44:34.000I 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?
01:44:45.000And 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.
01:44:51.000I 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.
01:45:21.000And there's this understanding of that as an audience member.
01:45:24.000You're supposed to be able to accept that.0.98
01:45:25.000But 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
01:45:39.000Like, this is what this person actually thinks and believes.0.99
01:45:41.000Like, no, that's not what we're fucking around.1.00
01:46:22.000Like, I watch Prime Minister's questions every Wednesday.
01:46:25.000And I listen to just the nonsense that comes out of it.
01:46:29.000And we've got Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenock just going at each other over just nonsense.
01:46:35.000It's not nothing real, no real quality of conversation is coming out of that.
01:46:41.000But 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.
01:46:57.000Things that I don't think we're lacking in a lot of ways.
01:47:00.000Well, the Lakota had that in their tribes.0.75
01:47:03.000They had a thing called the hiyoka, which they called a sacred clown.1.00
01:47:07.000And the hiyoka would be able to make fun of everything.1.00
01:47:10.000And as soon as you couldn't make fun of something, you knew it was bullshit.0.97
01:47:13.000So 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
01:47:21.000As soon as you couldn't make fun of something, like, hey, why are you so defensive?
01:47:44.000It 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.
01:47:52.000Patrice O'Neill had a great statement about that where he was talking about something that happened on the Opie and Anthony show.
01:48:02.000He 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.
01:48:09.000They 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.
01:48:21.000And 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.
01:48:27.000They're just trying to make people laugh.
01:48:29.000It's just sometimes it doesn't come out right or sometimes it's a miss, like, especially if it's an ad lib.
01:48:36.000Like, 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?
01:52:43.000The 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.
01:52:54.000The anger just emanating off Aldo the whole day was exhausting for me just to be around.
01:53:01.000And 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.
01:53:12.000Yeah, and as soon as I saw that, I'm like, wow, that is it's.
01:53:15.000That's like a level of witchcraft that you see in the fainting of striking.
01:53:19.000And when you can start to pull somebody's emotions out like that.
01:53:43.000You could talk all that mad shit about him.0.99
01:53:45.000You 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
01:53:53.000You 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
01:54:01.000You know, I mean, he's very stoic, but afterwards, his celebration is even like, Look, look, it's so cool.
01:54:10.000I 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.
01:54:19.000Disturbing that Yuri thought he was using spiritual warfare.
01:54:23.000Like Yuri accused him of using sorcery.
01:55:04.000If 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.
01:55:16.000But 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?
01:55:23.000And there were two versions of Marcus, right?
01:55:25.000There 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.
01:55:31.000Or there was the Marcus that was a little bit slender and he just looked different.
01:55:35.000And that version of Marcus Davis was knocking everybody out.
01:55:41.000And 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.
01:55:50.000So 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.
01:55:57.000He's going to want to edge his bets and try and force the fight into the range that I'm not very good at.
01:56:10.000And like, there were clips of him training, he's like, his nose is bleeding, and he just looks.
01:56:15.000And then that's when I'm, for the weigh ins, I made the I Hate Dan Hardy t shirts.
01:56:19.000Because we did a like a 10 minute countdown show for it.
01:56:22.000And I was training at Wildcard at the time just to try and get inside his head.
01:56:25.000You know, I'm training a boxing gym, I'm, you know, I'm expecting you to be a boxer.
01:56:29.000And I played the game really hard on that fight.
01:56:32.000And 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?
01:56:43.000And he was so angry at me that his vision was, his mind was clouded.
01:56:48.000And 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.
01:57:19.000So it's not going to have any kind of impact.
01:57:22.000So I just waited until the press conference and brought him a runner up trophy.
01:57:27.000And he was like, I'm bringing this to the cage on fight night and I'm going to give it back to you.
01:57:31.000But, you know, but it's interesting to see what you can do, how you can affect people like that and make them act out.
01:57:38.000You know, like the countdown show, the very start of it.
01:57:43.000It's just hilarious, still in my mind.
01:57:45.000Is 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.
01:57:58.000And then there was a pause, and the USC nailed it with the editing.
01:58:02.000And he looked down the camera and he went, I hate Dan Hardy.
01:58:05.000And 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.
01:58:13.000I think I've still got a folder in my old email account because I saved it all.
02:00:21.000Sometimes people are like face to face, it's palpable, you know.
02:00:26.000And 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.
02:00:34.000He was feral at 145, at 155, he was he was cutting, but he was.
02:00:38.000On point at 170, he was like, Right, feel great, just a different three different versions of the same person, 10 pounds apart.
02:00:45.000Yeah, 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.
02:00:57.000And I knew that it was going to be a rough weight cut for him.
02:00:59.000He was a big guy, he was massive, and he'd never been the distance 16 and four.
02:01:03.000He was knocked everybody out that he fought.
02:01:04.000And I was, do you remember when he fought?
02:01:48.000So, my thought to myself is, I'm going to get right in his face as soon as I've stepped off the scales.
02:01:53.000And 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
02:02:02.000He didn't feel like shit like I did yesterday.0.92
02:02:06.000And as I walked onto the stage, I'm standing on the scales and I'm looking at him.0.98
02:02:11.000And there's never a photograph of me looking at the At the crowd and flexing, I'm looking directly at him.
02:02:16.000And 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.
02:02:22.000And that was because we were on weight.
02:02:23.000If 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.
02:03:22.000It's so hard to pick up that wrestling later in your career.
02:03:27.000It'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.
02:03:39.000Lost his first MMA fight to submission.0.94
02:03:42.000Really couldn't fucking grapple at all.0.97
02:03:45.000Gets together with Glover Teixeira and just figured it out.0.97
02:03:48.000But I also think with him, it's a freak athlete thing.
02:03:57.000But 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?
02:04:07.000And this is where former fighters passing on knowledge, like we talked about.
02:04:11.000I mean, look, we went Bass Rutten, Dwayne Ludwig, TJ Dillashaw, right?
02:04:17.000Glover 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.
02:04:29.000The reason why was because his game was so solid and so sound.
02:04:34.000I 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.
02:04:56.000I remember hearing his name a lot because you were, same with Pereira, you were talking about him before the UFC signed him.
02:05:02.000But, 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.
02:05:14.000And then he would have had a wrestling coach that would have tried to teach him folk style or freestyle wrestling.0.98
02:05:19.000Whereas Glover Toucher is like, there's a lot of this shit you don't need, brother.0.97
02:05:22.000Like, first of all, I'm not going to teach him any submissions because you're not really going to need them.0.98
02:05:29.000But that's the thing is like, does he know the whole database of jujitsu?
02:05:33.000Does he know everything that a normal black belt would learn?
02:05:35.000And 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.
02:05:45.000But 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
02:05:56.000Whereas 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
02:06:05.000And like, I don't know if you'd get that kind of attention there.0.98
02:06:08.000You know, There's two different schools of thought.
02:06:11.000You 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.
02:06:17.000And 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.
02:06:24.000I'm more inclined to think of the small gym.
02:06:28.000I think the small gym with elite trainers is a better option than being in a giant.
02:06:34.000I mean, it's not that ATT doesn't create amazing world champion athletes, it certainly does.
02:06:40.000But 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.
02:06:53.000And 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.
02:07:23.000So, 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.
02:07:36.000And I would imagine that, you know, if you rolled with him, he would be a real problem.
02:07:39.000But I would imagine his game's still very direct.
02:07:41.000Like, he's not using crackhead control and he's not rolling for knee bars and that kind of thing.
02:08:37.000But including some heel hooks and things like that.
02:08:39.000Like, 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.
02:09:03.000See, I often think that I'm quite fortunate that I came into martial arts before MMA.
02:09:10.000And the reason for that is because the way that I learned martial arts was not for sport, right?
02:09:16.000And 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?
02:09:24.000My 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.
02:09:33.000Because I'm doing it for self defense.
02:09:37.000He's not teaching me techniques that I can use when he's there to coach me through a street fight, right?
02:09:43.000He's trying to give me the techniques that I need.
02:09:45.000So when he's not there, I know what I'm doing, right?
02:09:48.000Same thing with like spatial awareness.
02:09:50.000Like 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.
02:10:04.000Which I feel is not necessarily used as much as it could be in MMA these days.
02:10:09.000Like, there are certain fighters, they just don't.
02:10:11.000Like, how often do you see two fighters up against a fence panel and the whole cage is there?
02:10:16.000And they're like, they're not, no one's using the pressure that they could be using.
02:10:20.000Sometimes people circle themselves onto the fence unnecessarily.
02:10:23.000Like, 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.
02:10:32.000So I think the way that I learned martial arts allowed me to kind of see it as a.
02:10:41.000Like, 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.
02:11:58.000But 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.
02:12:08.000So 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.
02:14:36.000I 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?
02:14:45.000Right, 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.
02:14:56.000So by making it boring, by backing up.
02:15:00.000Yeah, but at the same time, I don't necessarily think.
02:15:03.000I don't know if that was a calculation of going down.
02:15:48.000Well, you know, you got to think, like, he had some fights that didn't go his way as well.
02:15:55.000Strike Force, the Nate Marquardt fight.
02:15:57.000The Nate Marquardt fight where he got KO'd, where Nate hit him with, like, a video game combination with those elbows against the cage.
02:16:03.000Like, so there's consequences to just wait.0.71
02:16:06.000And 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
02:17:08.000So if you're just looking at octagon control, well, you're going to score it's Paolo because he was in the center.
02:17:14.000But there was no doubt that Izzy was just toying with him and lightening him up from a distance.
02:17:18.000Yeah, but you couldn't say octagon control because Izzy was landing all his shots.
02:17:22.000But that's the thing, that was a very, very clear one.
02:17:24.000Right, where you've got one person moving back and giving the center of the cage, but clearly winning on the striking.
02:17:31.000Whereas, 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.
02:17:40.000Yes, 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.
02:17:49.000But even when it got to the end of the fight, I'm like, are these judges going to score this right?
02:17:54.000Are they because they don't have the stats that we have on the screen in front of us, right?
02:17:59.000But because they don't, are they going to go, oh, well, you know, he was moving forward?
02:18:04.000And 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.
02:18:26.000But 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.
02:19:06.000Both 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
02:19:15.000Like Saruki, and I called his debut against this Lakachev.0.98
02:21:25.000I always used to use fear techs if I could.
02:21:27.000There's a there's a curve in the glove, right?
02:21:30.000When 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?
02:21:44.000And then when you get them on Saturday, they've kind of curved a little bit, right?
02:21:48.000But it's not the curve is not built into the padding, right?
02:21:52.000And the the the the new ones that they made, there was just Too much technology and not enough common sense.
02:23:24.000You click on his Instagram, and he's, I mean, in my opinion, he's one of the best strikers in the world right now.
02:23:29.000And 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.
02:23:37.000Like, that's where you go back to saying about dimensions, right?
02:23:41.000There are rangers in fights, and then there are dimensions in those rangers.
02:25:30.000And 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.
02:25:37.000So then a lot of the people that get signed to contenders are like five, six, seven fights into their career.
02:25:42.000I was talking to somebody about this the other day, and there's good clear examples.
02:25:46.000Like I was 19 and six when I joined the UFC in 2028.
02:25:50.000Conor McGregor had already built a brand and a sponsor.
02:26:31.000I 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.
02:26:40.000We don't see that as much anymore, right?
02:26:42.000We 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?
02:26:50.000Right, but why is that the UFC's responsibility?
02:27:19.000You 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.
02:28:42.000But like if you think about it, like say Air Rake Records, right?
02:28:46.000They couldn't afford to pay the UFC $50,000.
02:28:49.000They would pay me £300 to have the thing on my banner, right?
02:28:53.000So 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.
02:29:02.000And then you've only got a few that are lingering.
02:29:04.000And then, if you're a clothing distributor, if you sell a variety of different brands, it was $100,000 that you had to pay.
02:29:12.000So 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.
02:29:32.000I get that argument, and I definitely agree about fighter pay.
02:29:36.000Like, I'm always in favor of fighters getting paid more.
02:29:38.000It's a very dangerous job, and it's the only thing that people are paying to see.0.91
02:29:42.000They'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.
02:29:46.000They're paying to watch the fights.0.99
02:29:48.000Fighters should get the majority of the money.0.99
02:29:50.000And it is a problem when they don't have leverage.
02:29:52.000And I think that it's great that you have things like MVP getting involved with the Netflix card.
02:29:57.000And I wish the card was a little stronger, but it's difficult.
02:30:00.000Like, 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
02:31:58.000I'm guilty of not watching enough PFL.
02:32:01.000Um, 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.
02:32:11.000Look, the thing is, as a UFC fan, I get it.
02:32:14.000Right, 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?
02:32:21.000It was about finding out who's the best.
02:32:23.000Listen, man, that guy could kind of compete with anybody, of course.
02:37:51.000So I was doing all the signing and matchmaking.
02:37:53.000I 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.
02:38:00.000And 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.
02:38:11.000And we'd gather in one of the changing rooms in the arena, and Dana would give us this speech, and it was stirring.
02:38:17.000Like we were all there to murder each other, but for like five minutes, we all felt like we were in it together.
02:38:33.000I'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.
02:38:39.000Every single person stepping into the cage has got a fair chance of winning.
02:40:18.000I mean, it's essentially become most of their fights now.
02:40:21.000And 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.
02:44:04.000The back of the head kick, you win by knockout, and you shouldn't have hit them there.
02:44:09.000Yeah, but then also you've got to go into well, did they turn their head?
02:44:12.000What was the circumstance of it, et cetera, et cetera.
02:44:15.000I mean, the thing is, like, you can't, in the rules, you can't strike joints, right?
02:44:18.000But 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.
02:44:25.000And they're like, okay, so where does the elbow start and where does the, you know, where is it for the forearm?
02:44:31.000But 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.
02:44:43.000If you take that out, you're taking out a giant chunk of all techniques.
02:44:47.000But the side kick to the knee, the problem with that is you're going to ruin careers.
02:44:51.000Like, there's a lot of guys that are just not the same.
02:44:54.000Tiago Silva, I don't think was ever the same after the John Jones fight.