JRE MMA Show #83 with Firas Zahabi
Episode Stats
Length
3 hours and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
209.93304
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with my good friend and long-time friend Joe Deontay Wilder. We talk about the Wilder vs. Wilder fight, how he's one of the most underrated fighters in the history of boxing, and why he's the best at what he does. We also talk about what he's been going through in his life, and what it means to be a professional boxer. I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode and I hope you enjoy listening to it. -Joe DeCanelo Alvarez - "The Touch of Death" - "Wilder VS Wilder" - "Canelo vs Wilder: Who's Better?" - "Who's the Better Fighter?" - "The Truth About Muhammad Ali" - "How Canelo Is Better Than You" and much, much more! Enjoy & spread the word to your friends and family about this amazing fight night! - Joe Deelo Alvarez and his incredible performance. - The Truth About Boxing Tweet Me! if you like what you hear, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode! and we'd like to respond in the comments section below! Thank you so much for your support and your support! Love ya, bye! - Joe, Joe & Joe - P.S. - XOXO - The Truth about Boxing - The Touch Of Death - The Eaters :D - Joe and Joe Deon & Joe DeLuis Music: "The Magic" by Joe Deleonard "The Handy by: Joe Deeno ( ) , & "The Best Man" by: . (R. (Music: "Lovin' It's a Good Thing" (feat. ) (NSYNC ( ) - ) , (Solo: "I Can't Sleep Tonight" ( ) & ( ) ( ) ( (Trying To See The Stars ( ) and ) - "I'm Too Effing Good Morning, My Thoughts on This Is My Life ( ) by: Mikey ( ) . & , "I'll See You'll See Me Soon ( ) :D ( ), ( , ) & ( ) , "Can't Get Over It ( ) " ( , & / ) by
Transcript
00:00:02.000
If you're listening to this, an audio version, you are denied the beauty of my salmon-colored t-shirt.
00:00:17.000
I use one of your expressions all the time, the touch of death, and there is no better example than what we saw Saturday night with Deontay Wilder.
00:00:31.000
And I thought one round was really close, could go either way, but I had it six to none.
00:00:41.000
When you look at that shot, it landed it above, like, kind of like in the forehead, this area.
00:00:50.000
Usually here, if you're a powerful puncher, You could daze a guy.
00:01:26.000
Out of anyone that has ever fought in the heavyweight division, he is the one guy that literally can shut everyone's lights out with one shot.
00:01:37.000
Frazier, Tyson, of course, was a knockout artist, but not like this guy.
00:01:40.000
This guy's got, it's like another level of craziness.
00:01:48.000
If he was less strategic, he would have started fighting really early and maybe zap that power he has.
00:01:56.000
He had no qualms about it and he got hurt just before he knocked out Luis.
00:02:05.000
He's like, oh, now you're going to come for it?
00:02:09.000
Well, I think he also knew that from the first fight, Ortiz started to fade.
00:02:13.000
And the first fight was very similar in that the first few rounds, there was very little action.
00:02:22.000
If you watch that first fight, you're like, wow, this is a crazy rematch for him to take.
00:02:26.000
In this fight, he just fought a perfect strategy, just waiting.
00:02:30.000
And people, oh my god, I was on Twitter reading people, this guy can't even box.
00:02:40.000
He's the fucking heavyweight champion of the world.
00:02:42.000
He tied Muhammad Ali for the most title defenses ever.
00:02:53.000
If I laced you up, right before you would be like, you'd be so petrified you would turn white and faint.
00:03:02.000
And you know, when he fought Tyson Fury, he told me he weighed 209 pounds.
00:03:15.000
Some people just have a beautiful hand of cards.
00:03:19.000
That guy's got four aces, and he puts them right in your face.
00:03:23.000
He understands what he's good at, and he fights that way, which is brilliant.
00:03:28.000
I always tell my students, fighting is two things.
00:03:34.000
And then the second thing, you have to figure out your style.
00:03:39.000
Like, for instance, if you look at Ali and Tyson, they fought totally differently.
00:03:44.000
Two equally, in my opinion, like, okay, we could split hairs and say who was better.
00:03:48.000
Let's say they fought, it would be very competitive.
00:03:50.000
Whoever you think would win in that fight, it would be very competitive.
00:04:00.000
If you look at the book of boxing, they tell you don't circle towards the power side.
00:04:09.000
He's thrown a handful of body shots in his entire career.
00:04:22.000
If Tyson tried to fight like Ali, he would lose.
00:04:33.000
And that's why at one point you have to figure out your style.
00:04:35.000
And I feel that's where most fighters fall apart.
00:04:39.000
They're trying to do what some trainer told them.
00:04:40.000
They're trying to do what the guy they most admire in the ring does.
00:04:43.000
They never find out exactly what's best for them.
00:04:46.000
Mmm, that's such a good point because it's such a creative art form in that way and I do believe that martial arts are an art form I really do because to me it's so beautiful like even that right hand that Deontay landed that to me was gorgeous There's never been a prettier sunset or a more beautiful mountain just blap watch that spray That's the way you see the spray the sweat come off his head and then Ortiz crumbles and Deontay walks away like this chest up like motherfucker you're not getting up He knew he wasn't getting up.
00:05:27.000
But what you said is so important because it's a creative endeavor.
00:05:32.000
You're trying to figure out how to land shots, and you're also trying to disguise what your ideas are, what your tactics are, and you've got to figure out what works best for your body type.
00:05:45.000
And that's so open-ended, like martial arts are so, it's so open-ended.
00:05:50.000
Once the referee says fight, there's all this creativity involved, and that's something that I think a lot of people don't really appreciate.
00:05:58.000
Sometimes you have a trainer who kills that creativity because he tells you, look, this is how you fight.
00:06:03.000
And if you go outside of that mold, no, no, you're reprimanded.
00:06:06.000
So me, if a fighter wants to drop his hands, should you drop your hands in a fight or should you hold them up?
00:06:12.000
If you got incredible eyes and you see shots coming from a mile away and you're successful with your hands down or one hand down per se, let's say.
00:06:22.000
But that's why I think sparring is so important, because when we spar, we actually try it.
00:06:30.000
Well, we better test it in the gym before we take it out in the arena and find out it doesn't fly.
00:06:34.000
And I always tell guys, look, if you're fighting with your hands down, show me in practice that you're successful.
00:06:44.000
But first we have to see that you're successful, because theory is one thing.
00:06:48.000
But then when you get in there and try it, it's a whole other.
00:06:50.000
Well, Wonderboy Thompson is an excellent example of that.
00:06:56.000
He is, to me, the consummate karate style fighter that has made the perfect transition to MMA because he fights so well with his hands down.
00:07:07.000
You don't know whether it's coming up, whether it's coming around, whether it's going straight at you.
00:07:11.000
You don't see it until you're looking at his body and these things are coming up from his hands being down like this and he's standing sideways.
00:07:20.000
You can take him to the wrong trainer and ruin him.
00:07:23.000
Let's say he was really young and he was forbidden that style.
00:07:28.000
They forbid a certain type of maneuver or style altogether.
00:07:34.000
Like for instance in the 70s most trainers would not train a left-handed boxer.
00:07:48.000
Because your trainer is limited and he only understands fighting in one way, now I'm gonna limit my fighter.
00:07:57.000
What do you think about fighters who say that even if you're a right-handed person, there's an advantage to fighting as a southpaw?
00:08:03.000
Because you have your most dexterous hand, the hand that you have the most control of, is your lead hand.
00:08:09.000
And you're also fighting in this unusual stance that is only like...
00:08:14.000
It's like maybe two out of ten people, something like that.
00:08:31.000
Yeah, like they drive on the other side of the road.
00:08:40.000
I always tell fighters, try both sides and see which one you like better.
00:08:44.000
I can't tell you which one you're more comfortable with.
00:08:48.000
So when you're like this, it's kind of killing you.
00:08:55.000
So when people tell me, do I grab it like this or like that?
00:08:58.000
In some instances, there's a right way and a wrong way.
00:09:00.000
As far as we know, one way is right, one way is wrong.
00:09:09.000
So in this particular instance, I say it's a question of comfort.
00:09:13.000
Like people freak out if you grab a kimura like this with your thumb.
00:09:16.000
In some instances, I grab the kimura with my thumb.
00:09:21.000
So I just show people both and I say, look, that part, it's up to you.
00:09:24.000
You certainly can finish it by using the thumb.
00:09:26.000
In some instances, it's stronger with the thumb.
00:09:31.000
Yeah, you know, just clamping down on it, you're actually isolating it.
00:09:34.000
I mean, some people have just ridiculous grip with their hands, too.
00:09:43.000
Semi Schilt had hands that were as big as his table.
00:09:45.000
He'd grab ahold of the guy's wrists, and they'd be just fucked.
00:09:49.000
Like, if you were in his guard, he'd just grab your wrist.
00:10:05.000
Lima is one of the arguments for me where I feel like there's got to be, as a fan, I want to see Lima fight the best 170-pounders in the world.
00:10:17.000
I know the UFC never wants to see a co-promotion because that pumps up Bellator.
00:10:21.000
But right now, Lima, especially after he just decisioned Rory, you know, and the way he knocked out Michael Page.
00:10:37.000
I thought it was 50, like I was right around the middle.
00:10:39.000
I'd have to watch it again because all I remember was Lima starching him.
00:10:47.000
But he got hurt right before he knocked them out.
00:10:49.000
He got a little wobbled and then he kind of got his base again and then low kick, boom, uppercut.
00:10:58.000
And his low kicks are some of the best in the world.
00:11:04.000
Didn't he say that took like six months before he could use it right?
00:11:10.000
It's like a torsum fascia, so if you look at it, his leg is a little bit like there's like some hanging soft tissue.
00:11:19.000
You remember Pedro Hizzo when he was fighting heavyweight?
00:11:21.000
He would kick guys in the leg and they'd have this look on their face like, what in the fuck is that?
00:11:28.000
That's why in the rematch, we want to make sure we got to take that off the table.
00:11:36.000
Roy's had some conversations where he's talked about not fighting again.
00:11:41.000
I think he's had some mixed emotions, but I think it's clear he wants to fight now.
00:11:46.000
I think it was just that moment in the ring and he was emotional, but once his head clears up, he wants to fight again.
00:11:52.000
I don't think you could stop him from fighting.
00:11:58.000
What did you think when he went up to fight Mousasi?
00:12:04.000
But if you want to win double gold, you got to take that risk.
00:12:09.000
I don't think you should fight a champion in his prime when you're a weight class below.
00:12:13.000
When they were asking for BJ Penn versus George, I was like, yeah, let's do it.
00:12:18.000
You want to bring a champion and a guy with another belt?
00:12:21.000
But I think it was a bad decision for BJ. If I was BJ's trainer, I wouldn't let him do that.
00:12:25.000
For instance, when they wanted to put him with Anderson Silva, I said, look, give me a game plan that I'm really confident in, and then we'll do it.
00:12:41.000
Because at that level, 15 pounds more is 15 tons more.
00:12:46.000
Well, there's fights that people win, and even if they won.
00:12:49.000
My position on Stipe versus Francis Ngannou is very similar.
00:12:53.000
I mean, I know Stipe won that fight, but Jesus Christ, Francis Ngannou, he scares the shit out of me, man.
00:13:02.000
When he knocked out Alistair, I mean, literally, like, you saw his soul leave his body.
00:13:06.000
And then Stipe survives that fight, but then gets KO'd by DC with one punch shortly afterwards.
00:13:13.000
And it's something that I don't want to take anything away from DC, because he clearly landed that punch.
00:13:19.000
It was clearly a strategy of working in the clinch and is a beautiful punch.
00:13:24.000
Maybe he lands that beautiful punch in the rematch and he knocks him out again.
00:13:30.000
And I wondered how much of that punch, having such a dramatic effect on Stipe, who's had an amazing chin most of his career, how much of that was because of that incredible war that he had with Francis.
00:13:41.000
Because the first round of that was terrifying.
00:13:50.000
But if you lose to Nganu, it could be the end of your career.
00:13:59.000
But other fighters, I mean, Jon Jones helped Miocic as well.
00:14:06.000
Like, if I was his trainer, I'd put him in boxing.
00:14:12.000
He has a few fights left on his UFC deal, and apparently his idea is to one day make his way into boxing, which is just fantastic.
00:14:23.000
He's lifting weights again, apparently, just randomly.
00:14:26.000
I ran into his agent at this place called Dreamscape.
00:14:31.000
DreamScape is this cool virtual reality thing in LA. You put on these goggles and you go through this adventure.
00:14:36.000
And his family and my family did it together, just randomly.
00:14:42.000
And he was saying that Francis wants to eventually fight as a boxer, as a heavyweight boxer.
00:14:47.000
And that right now he's been lifting weights and he's like well over 270. He's apparently like 275, 279, somewhere in that range.
00:14:54.000
But he's got to be careful with weights because weights can actually make you weaker.
00:14:57.000
Like if you balloon yourself up too far, it can gas you out and later on you can lose the sustainability of your power.
00:15:03.000
There's a right amount of muscle for each athlete.
00:15:05.000
I don't agree that bigger is always better and more power.
00:15:09.000
It's not necessarily the case, but he has to stay within his natural limits for optimal power.
00:15:16.000
Look, a guy that big, at 279 pounds, he's probably not really accustomed to cutting weight.
00:15:30.000
So, yeah, he's at the UFC Performance Institute, so he gets a chance to use all...
00:15:38.000
I was actually supposed to work with Nganu, but we had a little trouble connecting, but getting him in the country and all that.
00:15:54.000
In Thailand, if you've got good hands, like if you do a couple of Thai fights, Muay Thai fights, and you knock a couple of guys out with your hands, they take you right away into boxing.
00:16:03.000
If you're world champion Muay Thai, it's not the same as being world champion in boxing.
00:16:07.000
How much do you think Deontay Wilder won this weekend?
00:16:11.000
But the way he's winning, it's got to be something special.
00:16:18.000
But the interesting thing, too, is this tournament that's involved.
00:16:25.000
Are we a week or so away from the rematch between Andy Ruiz and Anthony Joshua?
00:16:41.000
And Andy Ruiz, man, you can't judge that guy on his belly.
00:16:45.000
You don't know nothing if you think that's what it is.
00:16:54.000
The fluidity of his combinations, it's gorgeous, man.
00:17:04.000
If he hit him once, he's going to hit him 13, 14, 15 times after that.
00:17:28.000
Well, the word is, and this is from people that really know what's going on.
00:17:34.000
I mean, I can't give specifics, but apparently Joshua got knocked out in training.
00:17:44.000
That's one of the reasons why they say his father was so furious at the promoter after Ruiz knocked him out.
00:17:51.000
They said that he had some sort of a panic attack in the locker room leading up to the fight.
00:17:56.000
So if he was compromised and he knew he was compromised, and you know as well as anybody, there's certain knockouts that you can get in the gym that can fuck a fighter up for months.
00:18:07.000
That's why in the practice room I don't like rough training.
00:18:13.000
Like, certain fighters who are coming up to a fight, I'll let it go further.
00:18:18.000
But I don't like to go in the gym and see this guy knocked out this guy, then this guy knocked out this guy.
00:18:23.000
You go in the practice room, there's nobody there the next week for sparring.
00:18:28.000
So if I had a world champion and he's sparring, and I felt one of his sparring partners was out of control, I would definitely have a talk with him or not use him anymore.
00:18:35.000
Like, when George spars, I pick all his rounds, but they have to be reasonable rounds, not...
00:18:40.000
Not touch barring, but not also being malicious and trying to injure each other.
00:18:46.000
But George told me that you told certain guys to try to knock him out.
00:18:54.000
Because the guys at one point, he was too famous.
00:19:06.000
You're going to be the number one man on Tinder.
00:19:27.000
If I touch you, I'm going to back off if I hurt you.
00:19:29.000
But if I touch you and I'm trying to knee you and kick you and I'm trying to like...
00:19:33.000
And the thing is with George, sometimes I'll keep a guy fresh.
00:19:35.000
So he'll be two rounds in and then I put in a fresh guy.
00:19:38.000
So that fresh guy has to have some control as well because George is tired now.
00:19:47.000
If you get knocked out in practice before a title fight, it could be an accidental, but it could also be negligence.
00:19:54.000
Because sometimes you do go in boxing gyms and it's like, kill or be killed.
00:20:01.000
And it's very unfortunate because a lot of people, they ruin their career inside the gym.
00:20:06.000
Because they're sparring not just once a week, but twice, three times a week.
00:20:12.000
They might get concussed on Tuesday and spar again on Thursday.
00:20:19.000
If you got head kicked tomorrow, no one's stopping you from showing up on Saturday and putting your mouthpiece in and going into class.
00:20:28.000
And I think most people don't think about those sparring sessions as being cumulative, like that adding on to the number.
00:20:37.000
I always tell people to look at their brain like a punch ticket.
00:20:39.000
Let's say you have 100 spots on that punch ticket.
00:20:42.000
Don't use them up sparring with some guy where you just decide to bite down your mouthpiece and go to war with this guy for no reason.
00:20:50.000
If you want to be a professional fighter, you have to act like a professional.
00:20:55.000
You have to treat your profession with respect and think that you only have a certain amount of time in the game.
00:21:03.000
This thing that you teach and this thing that I love, this mixed martial arts, it must be treated with respect.
00:21:11.000
Because when done perfectly and when someone wins a title and someone has an amazing run like George did when he was the welterweight champion, it's a truly spectacular thing.
00:21:24.000
It's one of the reasons why I asked you, is Rory want to fight?
00:21:27.000
You said yes, he wants to fight, nothing can stop him.
00:21:31.000
The worst thing you could see is someone who maybe doesn't really want to fight anymore, and they keep fighting, and they keep getting knocked out, and no one tells them, hey, you gotta stop.
00:21:42.000
I was talking to Freddie once upon a time, Freddie Roach, and he was telling me about different guys, how they train.
00:21:49.000
And one boxer, I don't want to say his name, but he was telling me that guy's routine was 12 rounds of sparring every day.
00:22:02.000
He's one of the greatest counterpunchers of all time.
00:22:10.000
I know what you mean, but they had to put subtitles.
00:22:32.000
Senchai is one of the greatest Instagram pages too.
00:22:36.000
And he's sparring with no gloves on, no shin pads.
00:22:40.000
They're just tapping each other and slapping each other.
00:22:43.000
And when he's not doing that, he's hitting pads.
00:22:50.000
They brought him a foreigner he's never seen before.
00:23:09.000
It's a perfect example of what you were saying.
00:23:11.000
Even though he's fighting in this discipline, Muay Thai, he fights his own way.
00:23:16.000
I mean, if you saw a silhouette of Sanchai fighting, you'd say, well, that's Sanchai.
00:23:21.000
Light on the feet, switching stances all the time, like really interesting style that he developed this.
00:23:30.000
There's so many ways to do it and you don't know which one is right until you try it on.
00:23:34.000
When I show them a new technique, I say, do it for two weeks.
00:23:37.000
If you don't like it after two weeks, I don't want to ask you to do it again.
00:23:40.000
But you got to have that grace period because sometimes you teach something to somebody.
00:23:43.000
And I've done this too where I learn to move and I'm like, no, I don't do guillotine like that.
00:23:47.000
And then a year later, I'm like, that's my favorite way to do guillotine.
00:23:52.000
I actually figured out the nuances after exploring it a little bit more.
00:23:56.000
And all of a sudden, I like this guillotine above this one.
00:24:04.000
But goddamn, when you do it on a person, it feels amazing.
00:24:12.000
Oh, because you have more leverage on the forearms?
00:24:21.000
And then you got like Marcelo, who grabs the hand on the outside.
00:24:24.000
He grabs like the blade of the hand, and that's his grip.
00:24:27.000
And his thought is that he's sliding this in better, and also for the rear naked.
00:24:33.000
So if you're rolling, if he goes through that and he's rolling and he gets your back again, he's always sliding under the chin.
00:24:47.000
Yeah, it's a blade of the bone against the esophagus, too.
00:24:52.000
His style is so unique, too, because everything was based on no big man moves.
00:25:02.000
Because if you're doing a Kimura against a big giant guy, you're not going to be able to get it, because he's going to wrestle out of it.
00:25:12.000
Do you ever see a smaller guy, a Kimura, a bigger guy?
00:25:23.000
Because this philosophy is if the finish doesn't finish everybody, it's not good enough.
00:25:27.000
Well, there's a lot of guys who teach a system based on Kimura traps, like using the Kimura to get to the back, using the Kimura to set up an armbar.
00:25:35.000
I mean, look, I'm a fan of a Kimura, and Jocko, who just left, he'll rip your fucking shoulders off.
00:25:43.000
You know, I mean, Jocko's 5'11", 240, and he's fucking...
00:25:49.000
He's all about ripping shoulders apart and neck cranks.
00:25:53.000
If he grabbed the Kimura on me, I'd be freaking out.
00:25:58.000
When I'm rolling with a bigger guy, I know that I have to do everything not to give them that grip.
00:26:04.000
You have to know the pros and cons of every hold.
00:26:09.000
Because if you don't do Kimura, you're going to get caught in Kimura.
00:26:13.000
And it's also an effective way to get out of certain situations.
00:26:17.000
If you don't know Kimura, it's like if you don't know Darce, like when Darce came on the scene, everybody was getting Darced by the guys who knew Darce.
00:26:25.000
When Anaconda came out on the scene, everybody was getting caught in Anaconda.
00:26:29.000
Leglocks came out on the scene, it was a leglock fire.
00:26:31.000
If you don't know the leglock game, you don't know the new leglock game, you're done.
00:26:35.000
So, every time there's something new, I like to learn it.
00:26:38.000
Whether I like it or not, long term, I still know it.
00:26:43.000
If you show it to me again, I'm not so surprised.
00:26:46.000
What are your feelings on guys like Gary Tonin, who's doing fantastic now in MMA, but he hasn't really faced the upper level of competition?
00:26:55.000
We're not seeing anybody with that style winning.
00:26:58.000
I mean, since Paul Harris, who has a similar, sort of modified, but similar leg lock attack...
00:27:05.000
Look, I think ultimately, the most important martial art is Jiu Jitsu.
00:27:10.000
Because to beat Jiu Jitsu, you need Jiu Jitsu mixed with something else.
00:27:18.000
Because if you have zero Jiu Jitsu and you're going into a fight, you're gonna get beat.
00:27:27.000
So if your foundation is jiu-jitsu, because how is jiu-jitsu developed?
00:27:33.000
When they were fighting in Brazil, it was a two-hour fight, a three-hour fight.
00:27:37.000
You took me down, you held me down for three minutes.
00:27:46.000
The fight's going to last three, four hours if it has to.
00:27:51.000
Why wrestling is being so successful in MMA? One, it's a great sport, for sure.
00:27:59.000
If I take you down in the middle of the round, you got two and a half minutes to sub me or get back up to your feet.
00:28:14.000
However, if I take you down and there's no time limit, I'm going to behave very differently than if I know I can bank in this round.
00:28:20.000
If there's just two minutes left, I'm going to spend that energy to hold you down.
00:28:22.000
I'm going to spend that energy to kind of like shut you down and kind of like give you little punches.
00:28:26.000
They're not fight-enders, but they're round-winning.
00:28:29.000
So because we have these rules, that's why I love pride.
00:28:40.000
In round one, Damien Maia had a partial back take against the fence.
00:28:52.000
You got out of my controls because of the state, because of the referee, because of the whistle, because of the bell, whatever it is.
00:29:00.000
If I take you down on the ground and the bell rings, I should start again on the ground.
00:29:05.000
There should be some basic positions that the referee is going to choose.
00:29:08.000
We're starting in this position because that was the closest to what you guys had when we ended the fight.
00:29:17.000
Fighters would train differently, fight differently, or make it one 15-minute round.
00:29:29.000
How come they can play basketball on a giant court?
00:29:37.000
Okay, because you think there should be no interference with the fans.
00:29:42.000
What are the odds they're ever going to get to the edges?
00:29:45.000
Okay, let's say we're to get into a fight right here.
00:29:59.000
You should be able to protect yourself in any environment.
00:30:06.000
We don't know if it's going to be a cage, an office, a podcast, an elevator.
00:30:21.000
It's like five or six different things with a wheel.
00:30:30.000
They did, I think, well, World Combat Club or World Combat League where Wonder Boy came up.
00:30:42.000
So they knew when they got to the elevated edges.
00:30:58.000
And you're allowed to knee, but not allowed to clinch.
00:31:05.000
But look, when you see it like that, there's no restriction as far as there's no boundary to push up against.
00:31:13.000
This is Wonderboy in his actual kickboxing style.
00:31:17.000
He was so good at leaning away and then firing back.
00:31:21.000
And then also that right high kick that he would throw over the shoulder where you didn't see it coming until it was too late.
00:31:29.000
Boy, that's a slippery-ass floor they're fighting on.
00:31:31.000
Without the cage, we won't have cage techniques anymore.
00:31:35.000
That's true, but I feel like there's a lot of wrestling that gets done against the cage that's sort of assisted.
00:31:41.000
It's assisted wrestling, assisted takedowns, and even takedown defense, right?
00:31:45.000
If you're in the middle of the cage and you get up, you earn that.
00:31:50.000
But if you're up against the cage, you can kind of press your back up against the cage.
00:32:01.000
But this, you know, I don't know if this would work with takedowns, because of course someone would fire up and keep driving over the top.
00:32:24.000
You watch his fights, you watch some of those Letway fights, you realize, like, that's legit, man.
00:32:30.000
Rory once, he was like, he was between contracts and he's like, book me a fight at Letway.
00:32:38.000
He's like, because now's the time or else I'll never get to fight with headbutts before I re-sign.
00:32:43.000
He wanted me to take him down to the jungles of Letway and book him a fight for $10.
00:32:57.000
I'll never get to fight with headbutts or else.
00:32:59.000
I'm like, okay, I hope you never fight with headbutts.
00:33:06.000
Mark Coleman used to take guys down and smash their face with his head.
00:33:11.000
He would hold onto their biceps and BOOM! Headbutt you and punch you in the face.
00:33:24.000
The argument is, look, if you can punch me in the head, why can't I use my head to hit you?
00:33:29.000
If you can kick me in the head, what is so much more dangerous about me using my forehead to hit you with?
00:33:42.000
Would it increase the level of concussions or decrease the level of concussion?
00:33:47.000
Because for me, that's the major sin of our sport.
00:33:51.000
If we could take that away, I think it would be better because these fighters would be healthier long-term.
00:33:57.000
I'm hoping that medical science somehow steps in and comes up with a solution that's legitimate, similar to a solution for repairing ligaments.
00:34:09.000
They're a real legitimate part of the game, but if you get someone in an inverted heel hook and you crank on that fucker, you might rip that guy's knee apart.
00:34:17.000
So that guy might have to go and get everything replaced and get cadaver ligaments and a fake ACL and all that jazz.
00:34:27.000
The sidekick to the knee that we see a lot of guys use on the upper thigh where it hyperextends the knee.
00:34:33.000
There's going to be someone who gets their knee blown out.
00:34:36.000
I don't think we've had it in the UFC. If they have, I haven't heard about it.
00:34:42.000
He definitely hurt it, but I don't know if it blew out.
00:34:47.000
And then he went and did it in the rematch with Yoel right away.
00:34:50.000
And also, Jorge Masvidal did that to Wonderboy.
00:35:00.000
So, if there was a way that they could repair brain damage, the same way they could repair ligament damage, I'd be so happy.
00:35:13.000
I mean, they're experimenting with things, and I know they're having some positive effects.
00:35:18.000
But, you know, nothing is like, hey, you tore this, go to the doctor, he'll fix that.
00:35:26.000
Because the thing is, like, with the headbutts, the fighters are going to go and train headbutts after.
00:35:32.000
They're going to be hitting the bag, they're going to be doing all this thing.
00:35:34.000
And what is the training going to do to their head?
00:35:41.000
So he'll do like an accommodation on the pad and then a headbutt.
00:35:46.000
Yeah, but let's see when he's 50. He's only like 28. Yeah, exactly.
00:35:59.000
People always tell me, like some guy wrote me an email recently.
00:36:03.000
He's trying to stop his kids from doing MMA. And to give him something to convince them not to do MMA because the boxer had died.
00:36:14.000
The thing is, we don't want to live in a bubble.
00:36:25.000
But when I take a flight, I'm like, is this an acceptable risk in my life?
00:36:36.000
People don't die in MMA. In any sport, people will die.
00:36:39.000
If you look at football, there's going to be deaths.
00:36:41.000
If you look at running, there's going to be deaths.
00:36:46.000
They take every measure, and the referee is there.
00:36:54.000
It gives us proof of what real martial arts is.
00:36:57.000
Because before MMA, we didn't know what fighting was.
00:37:00.000
We had many theories, but it's not what we have today.
00:37:03.000
And if you look at what we were doing before UFC, It's totally different.
00:37:11.000
26 years the world has just been flipped on its head.
00:37:13.000
I've said many times that we have had more advancement in innovation and more growth in martial arts over the last 26 years than we have over the last 2,000 years.
00:37:25.000
It's just an instantaneous burst of knowledge and understanding of what works and what doesn't work.
00:37:35.000
Probably, no, not probably, the most important family in the history of martial arts.
00:37:59.000
I mean, against elite, world-class competition.
00:38:12.000
And he's also a legitimate black belt in jiu-jitsu too, so he's not easy to submit.
00:38:17.000
And for Krohn to go from Alex Caceres right into Cub Swanson, that's a giant leap.
00:38:22.000
And look, Krohn's jiu-jitsu is top of the food chain.
00:38:27.000
I mean, he is an absolute legitimate world champion caliber jiu-jitsu talent from the best DNA the world's ever known, right?
00:38:42.000
If there was no time limit, Cub Swanson versus Krohn, who wins?
00:38:50.000
I saw no evidence that Krohn was taking Cub down.
00:38:54.000
No, the takedowns were not going to come just yet.
00:39:05.000
Takes a tremendous shot, both to the face and to the body.
00:39:12.000
If there was no time limit, I'm telling you, I don't know who wins that fight.
00:39:18.000
You could always use that argument if someone wins a decision.
00:39:21.000
No, he didn't even look like he was remotely going to start thinking of slowing down.
00:39:25.000
But I mean, there's the other question is, how much does he endure if that fight goes 30 rounds?
00:39:31.000
I mean, how many more shots to the head does he take and does eventually his brain give up?
00:39:41.000
I mean, that was one of the reasons why it was so competitive and interesting.
00:39:47.000
And in that kickboxing fight, the jiu-jitsu master landed good shots.
00:39:51.000
I mean, Cub's face was cut up at the end of the fight.
00:39:56.000
So, I think, I mean, I think what a guy like Krohn needs is a guy like you.
00:40:06.000
I don't know who, I know he does a lot of work with the Diaz brothers.
00:40:11.000
He has a very successful jiu-jitsu school of his own.
00:40:14.000
But I think a guy like that needs to just put together the overall game so that you could see the best expression of his jiu-jitsu, which is ultimately going to be his strength.
00:40:23.000
But I think that has to be expressed in a more confusing and harder-to-solve puzzle.
00:40:39.000
But if I don't get you, maybe I don't strangle you.
00:40:44.000
The thing about a guy who comes forward all the time is it's so much easier to counter than it is to attack.
00:40:53.000
You remember the fights where Anderson Silva had boring fights?
00:41:06.000
When you're fighting a counterpuncher, don't give him anything to counter.
00:41:11.000
I remember when you had Hickson on your podcast and you had asked him like, what do you do if you can't take a guy down?
00:41:19.000
But then he was telling you also, when I pull guard, I have to open the guard.
00:41:22.000
And it was like, well, the guy will just back out of your guard.
00:41:25.000
If you pull guard on me and you keep your guard closed, well, okay, we're on the ground.
00:41:32.000
And it seemed like, then you were like, okay, if he gets up, well, I got to pull guard again.
00:41:41.000
Because we never did see him against the cream of the crop.
00:41:46.000
You know, Funaki was the best fighter he fought.
00:41:48.000
And Funaki was arguably towards the end of his career when he fought Hickson.
00:41:54.000
And, you know, he did some damage, broke Hickson's orbital.
00:41:56.000
Remember, he had the really fucked up swelling.
00:41:59.000
Yeah, his eye was all fucked up and swollen after that fight.
00:42:09.000
He was standing up over Hickson and Hickson kicked his knee.
00:42:12.000
Like he extended his knee when Hickson was on his back.
00:42:21.000
I had the honor of going to Hickson's house one night.
00:42:31.000
And then we went to Hickson's house, and then we watched fights.
00:42:36.000
Breaking down what other guys were doing wrong.
00:42:41.000
Like, when Jiu-Jitsu guys got people on the ground.
00:42:43.000
And, you know, he was just talking about various positions and different things that were happening in the fights.
00:43:17.000
This was probably the guy who was the most dangerous guy that he fought.
00:43:21.000
I mean, when he fought in Japan, Valley Tudo, those guys just really had nothing for him.
00:43:25.000
That one guy got him in a guillotine, remember, and held on to him for a long time, but he eventually got out of it and submitted him.
00:43:39.000
The first pride, people forget, was Hicks and Gracie.
00:43:43.000
Hicks and Gracie fought Takata in the first pride.
00:43:49.000
Eventually this fight goes to the ground and Funaki landed a big shot.
00:44:02.000
After the fight, he gets him on the ground and he reverses position.
00:44:06.000
And then he eventually chokes him completely to sleep.
00:44:22.000
He's got his hand wrapped across his neck, punching him in the face.
00:44:25.000
So he's got Funaki's hand across his own face, and he's punching him in the face.
00:44:31.000
And then Funaki's forced to try to move to better his position.
00:44:36.000
And Hickson eventually sneaks his body behind him.
00:44:45.000
But he got his back and then when he chokes him out, Funaki's eyes are wide open and he's completely asleep.
00:44:50.000
And Hickson gets off of him and kicks him aside.
00:44:55.000
Look, he gets him and Funaki kind of knew he was getting put to sleep too.
00:45:00.000
So he's out cold and Hickson just climbs off and kicks him off.
00:45:08.000
If you see if there's a close-up on him, Hickson's eye after the fight...
00:45:26.000
Yeah, I believe he got hit with a big punch from Fanaki.
00:45:29.000
You know, Hickson was never a guy who was trying to kickbox you.
00:45:33.000
He wasn't trying to do what his son did at all.
00:45:35.000
Hickson was always just trying to figure out a way to be defensive, just enough to impose his game and get you on the ground.
00:45:41.000
All the black belts that ever work with Hickson, they always say the same thing.
00:45:47.000
They go train with him, they go roll with him, like, oh, he killed us all.
00:45:51.000
There was, you know, like 20 years ago, the Gracies used to get together like once every year, every two years to train.
00:45:58.000
And Eric Paulson was invited and he said in an article, I remember reading this article when I was really young, he was saying that, look, we don't say what happens in that practice.
00:46:06.000
Obviously, it's a family thing, so I was, I'm not going to be saying what happens, but one thing I can tell you all is Nobody came near Hickson.
00:46:12.000
Hickson was the head and shoulders above everybody.
00:46:15.000
And the reason why they could say that is because everybody admits to it and it's like an open secret.
00:46:19.000
Everybody knows Hickson's way better than everybody else.
00:46:22.000
And just hearing those stories growing up and you're like, man, how good is he?
00:46:27.000
And then you have these clips where, look, it's one-sided, but that was a different time and place.
00:46:31.000
But then again, if he was training today, he would probably be kickboxing too.
00:46:39.000
But then also, he hadn't had any fights in a cage.
00:46:45.000
In the ring, there's a lot more you can do in terms of movement.
00:46:49.000
You can slide through the ropes a little to avoid things.
00:46:54.000
There's a lot of weird things that happen inside of a ring.
00:46:57.000
You could argue that a ring is better for the view, because you could see straight through to the fighters, but...
00:47:03.000
It's also more dangerous because you can fall through the ring.
00:47:06.000
You know, the ropes, you know, I mean, even in boxing, you occasionally see that.
00:47:10.000
Bernard Hopkins' last fight, when he fought Joe Smith, he got KO'd by going through the rope and he fell and hit his head.
00:47:17.000
He fell, like, right on his fucking head on the concrete floor.
00:47:26.000
There's one guy who died in Thailand many years ago.
00:47:28.000
He ran forward charging and he did a kick, went over the guy's head, flew out of the ring, hit the table and died.
00:47:36.000
That's why in Thailand now you're not allowed to run anymore.
00:47:38.000
If I catch a kick, I'm allowed one step forward, not three steps charging across the ring like they used to.
00:47:49.000
Now it's like you're allowed one or three steps.
00:47:53.000
Yeah, you can't just charge through because the ring can't contain.
00:48:00.000
What Bellator did for the kickboxing events when they had kickboxing and MMA in the same weekend, they put the kickboxing ring inside that gigantic circular pad.
00:48:10.000
So even if you fell through the ropes, you just landed on the outside pad, which is so much superior.
00:48:16.000
I just, I feel like we haven't really found the perfect fighting surface.
00:48:28.000
Now we know if you really can adapt to anything.
00:48:31.000
You take a guy who's like a Mighty Mouse guy, who's like a phenomenal mover, and now he's got to fight in an elevator.
00:48:47.000
I see fights that happen overseas with, like, 1FC allows fights in a cage but with soccer kicks.
00:48:56.000
And the argument against that, I think, would be that you can't get your head out of the way.
00:49:01.000
Like, if you're trapped up against the cage, like, at least in Pride or in K1 when they fought in the ring, if you're on the ground, you can move your head through the ropes.
00:49:13.000
But if your head is stuck and someone's soccer kicks you or stomps you...
00:49:26.000
Did you ever see Roger Huerta's KO when he got knocked out in 1FC? It was brutal, man.
00:49:35.000
He was fighting at 170. Roger fought at 155. Yeah, yeah.
00:49:41.000
And he fought this guy who was much, much bigger than him.
00:49:45.000
And then when he went down, the guy soccer kicked him.
00:49:53.000
And his head, his whole body moves from the kick.
00:49:56.000
Where it's just like full power to the head, on the ground.
00:50:06.000
Like if I ask you to break a baseball bat, you can do it if I hold it low.
00:50:10.000
If I hold it high, you better be an incredible kicker because you don't have as much leverage now.
00:50:14.000
So if somebody falls down and I kick him in the head as he's down, I could really put him out.
00:50:22.000
So I think it's one technique we have to be very careful about.
00:50:25.000
Yeah, because I think a wheel kick has more power, but it's so hard to land.
00:50:29.000
Whereas a soccer kick is going to happen often.
00:50:32.000
I remember watching Vanderlei, his first fight with Benson Henderson.
00:50:43.000
I was like, my goodness, what are they going to do to stop this fight?
00:50:51.000
And that was Vanderlei with like one eye completely swollen shut.
00:50:55.000
I mean, any reasonable organization would have stopped that fight.
00:50:59.000
They would have looked his eye like, you can't see a goddamn thing out of that eye.
00:51:03.000
Oh, well, that was Vanderlei when he was Vanderlei, you know?
00:51:08.000
You want to talk about a guy whose face, just from sheer impacts, made a...
00:51:39.000
I mean, he's like really on Queer Street before he even goes to the ground.
00:51:53.000
Well, I mean, Brandon Vares won fights like that in one as a heavyweight with soccer kicks too, which is even more scary.
00:52:02.000
Yeah, because they give you a clear or not clear.
00:52:04.000
Because apparently sometimes you can head kick a guy on the ground, soccer kick him, sometimes you can't.
00:52:13.000
I mean, it looked like he was just so badly hurt.
00:52:17.000
It's so hard to tell, too, because you got guys like Frankie Edgar when he fought Gray Maynard.
00:52:21.000
He looks like he's out on the first round, and then he comes back and wins the fight.
00:52:26.000
Yeah, if it's a title fight, I understand they let it go a little further, because that's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
00:52:31.000
But if there's no title on the line, which I think that fight there wasn't, I would have stopped it after he fell down looking drunk, you know?
00:52:38.000
Well, also, you've got to take into consideration the size difference, the fact that one guy's just pummeling him.
00:52:51.000
But yeah, so soccer kicks, that's a tough one, right?
00:53:01.000
In that situation, if you're rolling the wheel, in that situation, it really doesn't matter if that's a ring or a cage.
00:53:06.000
That's just a soccer kick, and that's a horrific technique.
00:53:15.000
I want us to find a balance of rules that take away concussions as much as possible because some guys are too tough for their own good and then they're going to go out there and practice it.
00:53:25.000
So they're going to be like, oh, we should soccer kick each other in practice.
00:53:33.000
I mean, I remember in Taekwondo training, even guys would try to pull a kick.
00:53:37.000
They'd walk into that and you'd accidentally hit him and people would go to sleep.
00:53:47.000
You remember when Edson Barboza fought Terry Edom?
00:53:50.000
Which was the first ever wheel kick KO. Was it the first one?
00:53:56.000
And he connected with that wheel kick and Terry went stiff like someone just pulled the power cord and just fell back.
00:54:04.000
And it was a crazy fight because, like, Terry really didn't have anything for him.
00:54:10.000
And I was just saying that he's going to have to risk getting knocked out in order to do something.
00:54:16.000
And right when I said risk getting knocked out, whack, he landed that crazy wheel kick.
00:54:21.000
But that's one of those kicks where you go, okay, should I even be legal?
00:54:28.000
Beautiful technique, but man, that's a horrible thing to get hit with.
00:54:34.000
I mean, it's among the most powerful kicks in the game.
00:54:41.000
Yeah, there's not a lot of guys that can throw it...
00:54:44.000
With the kind of speed and precision that also have real MMA skills.
00:54:53.000
I mean, remember when he fought Jake Ellenberger and he hit him with a wheel kick?
00:54:56.000
And that was a crazy fight because Ellenberger was talking shit, saying that those things don't work.
00:55:02.000
And then, of course, that's what he hit him with.
00:55:14.000
Well, if it's Mike McFuckstick from Chicago who's never really taken martial arts classes like that and doesn't have a background in karate, but Wonderboy can do some wild shit with his legs.
00:55:39.000
I think sometimes guys say things like that just to pump themselves up because they're scared, they're worried.
00:55:46.000
It's interesting that we're starting to see the level of female MMA really elevate now.
00:55:51.000
And like, of course, Amanda, you know, Amanda Nunes, who fights, she fights in December, right?
00:55:57.000
Which is a really good fight, man, that a lot of people aren't talking about.
00:56:19.000
Yeah, but Amanda and Valentina Shevchenko, they represent the highest level right now.
00:56:28.000
I mean, when she won the title like that, I was like, holy shit, that's another one.
00:56:33.000
I mean, and that woman, being from China, where martial arts is so gigantic over there and representing like that, woo!
00:56:45.000
And to win that way with such a spectacular knockout like that?
00:56:50.000
And there's a shortage of women, and not only is there a shortage of women, she's a champion, world champion.
00:57:05.000
Yeah, I mean, and then, you know, as the UFC is making its way through China, to have someone like that as a champion.
00:57:11.000
I heard they build a PI there three times bigger than the one in Vegas.
00:57:18.000
The only one I've seen in person is the one here.
00:57:25.000
All the different state-of-the-art techniques for recovery and even those little pods you take naps in.
00:57:31.000
If I lived in Vegas, man, that would be the spot.
00:57:33.000
If you were a fighter and you were living in Vegas, that's the spot to train.
00:57:49.000
When I was talking to him, I knew he was like a little bit lost and trying to figure out his way.
00:58:00.000
I mean, not saying he's the same level as George, but it's George fights like that with wrestling and great striking and submissions.
00:58:23.000
He doesn't have somebody to kind of put it all together.
00:58:26.000
And, you know, we're talking about styles and level.
00:58:29.000
He's a bit of a, like his personality is a wildcat.
00:58:43.000
A little bit of discipline, a little bit of wildness.
00:58:47.000
So like his last fight, I was happy he stayed disciplined.
00:58:52.000
And he could become a world champion if he's disciplined.
00:59:03.000
I also told him all that shit that he does where he's moving up to the cage and he's dancing around and going crazy.
00:59:17.000
Because then you have to think, oh, all I did, if I lose right now, I'm going to look stupid with all that dancing.
00:59:22.000
And there's all this pretending that you're not feeling the feeling that you're feeling right now.
00:59:30.000
Six months of preparation, getting ready for this one moment.
00:59:43.000
I was really happy because I like guys who come in the gym and work.
00:59:48.000
If guys tell me, I'm not in today for whatever reason, I let them, okay, you don't want to be in, you don't want to be in.
00:59:54.000
I'll tell them, look, I think you should be in, but you don't want to come in.
01:00:00.000
He came to all the practices and it worked out beautifully.
01:00:25.000
And experienced fights where he didn't live up to his potential.
01:00:28.000
And I think that ultimately will be a motivating force.
01:00:31.000
Because we see what he can do when he's really focused.
01:00:38.000
You know, I mean, people see that spectacular head kick knockout and they don't understand how good Gregor Gillespie is.
01:00:45.000
And so when I found out that Kevin was going to fight Gregor in his fight back to 155. Not a good comeback fight.
01:00:54.000
And also getting down to 155. What did you guys do differently to get him down to 155 easily this time?
01:01:09.000
His brother Keith, we kind of got our heads together and we're like, look, we got to keep losing weight at this rate, no matter what it takes.
01:01:18.000
And if he protests, if he wants to ease up, we'll listen to it, but he's got to bite the bullet at one point.
01:01:25.000
We can't go fall behind this rate of losing weight.
01:01:31.000
And at a certain point, now it's a pound an hour.
01:01:39.000
The week of the fight on Monday morning, what is he weighing in at?
01:01:54.000
Did he do anything different in terms of weightlifting or running, extra running?
01:02:08.000
But when he came to me, it was six weeks before.
01:02:14.000
Because in six weeks, you can't bulk and then cut.
01:02:23.000
Not too much plyometric, not like a little bit.
01:02:25.000
But I don't want to put any size on him because he's got enough size.
01:02:36.000
We need to create endurance and discipline in him.
01:02:41.000
That's what I think was making the big difference.
01:02:45.000
And we cut the 24 hours before he was 174. 174. So 20 pounds.
01:02:57.000
So there was a point where we had to hit, after losing a preliminary weight, we have to hit one pound an hour.
01:03:07.000
I was with him the last 48 hours, making sure he was doing the last few steps really well.
01:03:11.000
The rehydration process, I was with him the whole time.
01:03:22.000
I mean, okay, so one o'clock in the morning, it was 164. One o'clock in the morning.
01:03:34.000
Five o'clock in the morning, he was 163. That's when we started.
01:03:37.000
So I let him sleep for a couple hours, four hours.
01:04:20.000
I tell guys, if you're not used to the sauna, let's do bath.
01:04:22.000
I always tell guys, before your fight, go once a week to the sauna, like six weeks out.
01:04:30.000
Some people sit in the sauna for 45 minutes and there's nothing.
01:04:34.000
I don't know if you know that, but in Finland, they have the world championships of sauna.
01:04:44.000
You know Laird Hamilton, the guy who makes this amazing coffee?
01:04:56.000
But this guy gets in the sauna, cranks it up to 220 degrees, and rides an air bike.
01:05:08.000
Because the bar is so hot from being in the sauna, you can't grip it with your hands.
01:05:13.000
So he's in there like on one of them rogue Echo bikes.
01:05:20.000
But he does all kinds of crazy shit, like, you know, especially like hot sauna work and then jumping.
01:05:28.000
This is not the last one, but the most famous one.
01:05:31.000
They were at 230 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 110 Celsius.
01:05:36.000
And at six minutes, I think the guy on the left in this picture passed out and ended up dying.
01:05:53.000
Russian competitor dies in sauna world championship.
01:06:16.000
Yeah, I was doing 220. He had me doing 220 for a little bit, but you know what?
01:06:22.000
I felt like it was burning the inside of my mouth.
01:06:27.000
I did it a few times, but afterwards I'd lay down after I did it, and I was doing it for fucking like 15-20 minutes too.
01:06:41.000
This guy has an ankle that's like three of these Yeti cooler mugs because he broke it and just kept working out on it after he broke it, so it's all calcified.
01:06:55.000
He just broke his ankle and just kept working out.
01:07:06.000
And that's just from breaking and never stopping to do anything with it.
01:07:16.000
He's a crazy person, but he's also one of the greatest surfers that ever lived, and I think sometimes you have to be that to be that.
01:07:32.000
There's a touch of genius and there's a touch of madness.
01:07:35.000
I say that madness and genius are next door neighbors and they borrow each other's sugar.
01:07:42.000
You have to be like literally fucking up almost every other part of your life to achieve real greatness.
01:07:51.000
Because you gotta abandon personal relationships, you gotta be totally unbalanced, completely obsessed, and focused upon your goal.
01:08:00.000
But the beautiful thing for a fighter is, fighters can do that in camp and then break.
01:08:11.000
How much time do you, after a fighter like Kevin wins, how much time do you recommend to just fuck off?
01:08:21.000
Yeah, just go chill for two weeks, but I feel like everybody wants to take a month and six weeks, I think that's too much.
01:08:28.000
There's too much to learn in MMA. There's too much.
01:08:35.000
So in that six weeks, how many positions did you miss out on that you don't know about?
01:08:43.000
You know, I know this is only his first victory back at 155 pounds, but he said something, and I believe him.
01:08:55.000
He thinks Khabib's style, which is so wrestling heavy...
01:09:03.000
He missed Gregor with a crazy head kick before he landed the one that put him out.
01:09:26.000
More of these sort of fights, more experience with a guy like you in his corner.
01:09:31.000
Is he going to move to Montreal or is he going to stay down in Vegas?
01:09:35.000
Actually, he told me he's going to be back in January.
01:09:40.000
I'm like, first of all, Vegas, as great as it is, that nightlife is always like, Kevin.
01:09:54.000
First of all, that winter teaches you something about life.
01:09:57.000
That winter up there, I remember my first December in Montreal was like 1992. I did the Montreal Comedy Festival.
01:10:19.000
You know, you only have a certain amount of time to get to where you need to go and if you're walking.
01:10:25.000
I think it was, actually it was 93 now that I think about it.
01:10:28.000
But that, you guys are a good style at 10 to 15 degrees colder than Boston.
01:10:46.000
But it's just, there's something also, I think, about cold weather people, like people that live in cold weather and there's more resilience.
01:10:58.000
I mean, I've often thought, I don't want to move to a cold weather area, but if I did, it'd probably be good for me.
01:11:06.000
I don't know what it is about it, but it's a special time of the year.
01:11:09.000
And then when summer comes, it's like summer is the most incredible thing you've ever lived because you just went through winter.
01:11:21.000
We're just so used to everything being perfect.
01:11:24.000
If it rains at all, we're like, oh my god, the world's over.
01:11:29.000
When you go through a brutal winter and then it breaks, it's like, I don't know how to explain it.
01:11:37.000
Well, the passing of the seasons is also symbolic of life, the cycle of life.
01:11:42.000
There's a real cycle to this, and you only have a certain number of those fall, winter, spring, summer events.
01:11:51.000
You hear the howling wind of the freezing cold, and you're in your home, and you have to...
01:11:56.000
It's like, when I come home and I see my house buried in snow, I love it.
01:12:01.000
Yeah, because I don't know what it is about it, but when you get inside, it's like...
01:12:10.000
All the highways are getting shut down right now as we speak.
01:12:17.000
I think it also makes people that appreciate nature.
01:12:21.000
Because in California, we don't even know what the fuck nature is.
01:12:29.000
Because we're so immune to it out here, essentially.
01:12:41.000
Well, it's also another good choice about moving to Montreal is that you've accumulated a culture up there at TriStar.
01:12:49.000
And that is as important to success as almost anything, is to go into an environment and feeling the culture of that environment and knowing, like, this is a place where real assassins go to train.
01:13:03.000
This is a real world-class facility with some of the best competitors on Earth are going to hone their edge.
01:13:11.000
This is the place you check your ego at the door.
01:13:20.000
What are we doing today is whatever's going to make us better, period.
01:13:23.000
There's no, all these guys in the practice room, we've got to cater to his needs and we've got to move things around.
01:13:28.000
I've had some big stars come in and I tell them, look, you can come in with your entourage, but you have to do it this way and you have to come in and do the workout like this and you have to be like everybody else.
01:13:41.000
I can't stop the world for a guy to massage his ego.
01:13:46.000
He was very humble and he works with everybody.
01:14:00.000
And not even just outside of the sport, meaning after he's done.
01:14:03.000
I mean, if he does make big strides in the sport and becomes a champion, he could transcend.
01:14:13.000
It's just a matter of doing what he did for that Gregor Gillespie fight over and over and over again.
01:14:20.000
Especially if he fights Khabib or when he fights Khabib.
01:14:26.000
Khabib said he's only going to fight a couple more times.
01:14:35.000
And Khabib, it would probably be nice for him to...
01:14:57.000
You could put Tony Ferguson, Masvidal, 165 BMF. You have control of everything now.
01:15:12.000
The people who are badmouthing it, I'm like, you're still going to watch.
01:15:17.000
Whenever a belt says bad motherfucker on it, we're living in a good time.
01:15:26.000
And I'm happy to see George get the shine that he deserves, and I'm happy to see Nate get the shine that he deserves.
01:15:32.000
So for me, the title was great, nice, fantastic, whatever.
01:15:37.000
Five round fight with two of the very best 170 pounders in the world.
01:15:43.000
And whether or not Diaz could handle the overall skill set of Masvidal, because his skill set is so comprehensive.
01:15:52.000
His creativity, his instincts, his killer instincts, his knockout power, the fact that he's a great kicker as well as a great puncher.
01:16:00.000
People forget, he knocked out Eve Edwards with a head kick in Bodog back when Eve was a fucking man.
01:16:06.000
Back when Eve was arguably the best 155 pounder in the world.
01:16:13.000
That body shot, that's a lost art of body punching.
01:16:17.000
Kind of like this, but he was an uppercut to the body.
01:16:24.000
It was a brilliant strike, like really beautiful shot selection.
01:16:28.000
He's got one of the highest fight IQs in the sport.
01:16:38.000
Now that he's in far better shape than he's ever been any other time in his career, he's more disciplined.
01:16:45.000
I mean, I'm very excited about him right now because from his resurgence, from the knockouts that, you know, knocking out Cowboy Cerrone, knocking out Darren Till, the knockout of Askren, which is just like fucking insane, man.
01:17:17.000
I think if he had a lot of rounds to do it, or let's say there was no rounds, I would pick him.
01:17:27.000
But the problem is, he could also get out-wrestled.
01:17:35.000
But I could see Masvidal turning it around later on and finishing, because he's a great finisher.
01:17:56.000
I mean, Tyron takes a good shot, and he had Tyron in real, real bad trouble.
01:18:06.000
He's, to me, one of the most intriguing characters in the sport.
01:18:09.000
Because he gets you tricked into thinking that he's a bum.
01:18:12.000
Because he's got the fucking Donald Trump Jr. book, and he has a cheap suit on, and a MAGA hat, and the old belt.
01:18:19.000
But meanwhile, that motherfucker puts it on you, and he doesn't get tired.
01:18:24.000
And he's got this brilliant strategy of everything he throws, very Nick Diaz-like, 50-60%.
01:18:35.000
And you keep thinking you're going to get this break where you're going to be able to fire back, like Robbie Lawler.
01:18:39.000
He kept trying to find an opening to fire back.
01:18:50.000
Like your next workout, just hit the bag 500 times.
01:18:53.000
Just get someone to stand there with a clicker.
01:19:06.000
And you know, he created that character because he thought the UFC was going to cut him.
01:19:19.000
Jamie, we've got a little issue here with this thing.
01:19:31.000
I'm going to call these Brazilians a bunch of shitty names.
01:19:34.000
He called them dirty animals and all this crazy shit.
01:19:37.000
And he basically just created this pro wrestling heel persona.
01:20:02.000
And when the fans don't want that no more, he won't give it to them.
01:20:04.000
He can also fight his ass off, which is what's so crazy.
01:20:10.000
They get it twisted in their head that he can't really fight.
01:20:31.000
If he was just a high-level contender, he'd be like, fuck, keep an eye on that guy.
01:20:38.000
But all this craziness that he does has got everybody confused with the MAGA hat.
01:20:54.000
And he really gets a rise out of people because people would try to fight him outside the ring.
01:21:10.000
Pro wrestlers like each other and they still throw each other through tables.
01:21:26.000
I went to the green room to get a coffee and a little bite to eat, and then they're like, this area's closed.
01:21:31.000
I'm like, okay, I just gotta, no, so you can't move around.
01:21:35.000
I'm like, okay, the whole section here is locked down.
01:21:44.000
Well, I gotta contact UFC. We don't care about UFC. Well, I'm like, who talks to UFC? Who from UFC is talking to Secret Service?
01:21:54.000
Yeah, I had to wait a whole hour and a half before I could leave.
01:22:00.000
They had to wait until Trump's entourage or whatever.
01:22:04.000
All the bulletproof fucking tanks that take him through the city.
01:22:26.000
The dogs had to walk around the truck and sniff the truck.
01:22:34.000
Night vision, machine guns, all over the place.
01:22:38.000
I mean, if someone was a terrorist and they wanted to create a gigantic thing, you'd kill Trump at the UFC. I was shocked he's in the stands.
01:22:54.000
It was funny too, man, because everybody was like torn over whether or not he got booed or cheered.
01:23:09.000
If you're standing, if you're seated in a place where there was Trump fans, you heard cheers.
01:23:19.000
Okay, like, say if he, like, there's certain people that walk in and you hear cheers, right?
01:23:26.000
Like, if Deontay Wilder was there, the place would go apeshit, right?
01:23:41.000
He's like, well, if you were sitting in the cheap seats where the people were Trump fans, you'd hear a lot of cheers.
01:23:48.000
It's entirely dependent upon who's around you and whether or not they're supporting him or not supporting him.
01:23:53.000
But the idea that they all cheered him, that's fucking nonsense.
01:24:01.000
Like, holy shit, the President of the United States is here for the UFC. He's here for Masvidal versus Diaz.
01:24:17.000
I mean, I don't know if he really enjoys the fights.
01:24:20.000
I wonder if he's going to come to Vegas for Colby's fight.
01:24:23.000
Imagine if he's like Colby's little fucking dog who follows him to all the fights.
01:24:31.000
Well, he definitely doesn't have the time to tweet.
01:24:40.000
I'm sure he probably has something that day, and he's going to move it around.
01:24:43.000
It would be hilarious if he made it to, look at that, him with Colby.
01:24:54.000
Colby, I'd like to get him in here, but I don't know if you'd break character.
01:24:58.000
I don't know if you'd break character or if you'd stick to who he is.
01:25:02.000
But I'm telling you, I hung out with him at the comedy store and I talked to him.
01:25:14.000
There's always a few, but most of them are good.
01:25:16.000
This is a thing I was just getting into with a friend of mine.
01:25:20.000
We were talking about people and their motivation for getting into fights, or for getting into fighting, and I was like, I go, some of it is not good, man.
01:25:27.000
Some of the motivation, it's just, but what happens once you become a fighter?
01:25:36.000
Like a lot of people, they got motivated into fighting because of abuse.
01:25:44.000
You know, a father beat them or something like that.
01:25:46.000
And then they became this angry, mean person and wanted to get back to the world.
01:25:50.000
But through martial arts, you can transcend that and find peace.
01:26:00.000
Because people don't hear it too much from the fighter's perspective.
01:26:04.000
Because fighters don't really express these ideas that much.
01:26:06.000
They just try to win and kick ass and do their best.
01:26:14.000
You can find a better version of yourself by getting through things that are even more difficult than the childhood that you went through.
01:26:30.000
I always tell people, you think George Semper didn't get killed in practice when he was a white belt?
01:26:41.000
Now you see a black belt, he rarely ever gets put in a bad position.
01:26:51.000
Lierberg, he's the world's greatest dog trainer.
01:26:58.000
I don't know if he's still relevant today, but when I was a kid, my older brother was obsessed with dogs and he used to watch Lierberg's videos.
01:27:05.000
Yeah, it's a library of videos on how to train a dog.
01:27:07.000
The first thing he does, he tells you how to pick a dog from the litter.
01:27:10.000
And he says he walks up to the litter, and he takes each puppy, and he pinches the puppy until the puppy cries.
01:27:16.000
So the puppy will whimper, you know, like, he'll cry.
01:27:23.000
If the puppy makes up with him, and then when he walks off, the puppy follows him, he's like, that's a good dog.
01:27:28.000
If the dog doesn't make up with him, and is bitter about the experience, and he's walking away from Leerberg, he won't pick that dog.
01:27:36.000
That dog, when I'm going to train him later, he's going to be so bitter from the corrections I'm going to give him, and I'm going to have to, training him, I have to polish him, polish his dog.
01:27:55.000
And I feel like the new generation today, they're like this.
01:27:57.000
They're harder to train than the last generation.
01:28:05.000
They're always trying to make a reason why they're not doing well.
01:28:08.000
As opposed to saying, look, I need to get better.
01:28:15.000
I think it's because we have a privileged life.
01:28:22.000
The first generation of any pioneers of any country, they always have nothing.
01:28:32.000
The first generation claws their way to the top.
01:28:36.000
So you came in here, you had nothing, you could barely put food on the table, but you did everything to make it.
01:28:46.000
But you're handing them down all these resources, a business, inheritance, education.
01:28:52.000
Like for instance, my parents pushed me to be educated.
01:28:55.000
But when they came to Canada, they pushed me to become educated.
01:28:58.000
And now with your education, these new assets, this new business, you're ahead.
01:29:03.000
The third generation is where generally things go wrong because now they're getting things but they didn't see how it was made.
01:29:19.000
But there's one generation that just got stuff, but they didn't go out in the wild to go get it.
01:29:23.000
And those are the ones that are going to tell you, hey, you sinned with that food on the table.
01:29:26.000
You killed that animal, you put him on the table.
01:29:42.000
Like, for instance, me and my kids, I don't give them anything unless they earn it.
01:29:46.000
I feel like if I give my son something for free, I cripple them, psychologically.
01:29:50.000
Take a tiger from the zoo and take a tiger from the wild.
01:29:57.000
One of them can hunt and kill, the other one can't do nothing.
01:30:01.000
The one from the zoo, you took something from him.
01:30:14.000
So one day, I tell my kids, what are you going to do when I'm dead?
01:30:23.000
Because if you give somebody a lot of nice things, they become very egotistical.
01:30:34.000
You can tell an insecure martial artist from a secure martial artist.
01:30:38.000
The insecure martial artist doesn't want to roll with this person, doesn't want to train here.
01:30:45.000
It's because he doesn't want to eat humble pie.
01:30:58.000
So I feel like that's what happens at one point.
01:31:01.000
Success breeds what Nietzsche calls the last man.
01:31:06.000
You fight so hard to give your kids a great life, but that great life kind of ruins them.
01:31:13.000
So I feel like this generation of martial artists, not the hardcore guys in UFC, not them, but I'm talking about the everyday guy coming in.
01:31:20.000
Because now in jiu-jitsu you have clubs giving away belts with membership.
01:31:27.000
- Yeah, so if you show up, we count how many times you come to practice, and then you have a stripe every so often.
01:31:35.000
We tell you when you're gonna get your proper belt.
01:31:38.000
- Who the fuck is doing that? - I don't wanna say because-- - You don't have to say, but that's real.
01:31:44.000
So if you train for 50 days, you get a stripe. - Yes.
01:31:53.000
In the 70s, people don't know this, Masoyama sent three black belt karate experts to Thailand to fight Thais, three Thais.
01:32:05.000
Today, not all karate schools, but most of them are watered down.
01:32:12.000
Let's take out all the hard training and guarantee this guy a black belt in four years, three years.
01:32:17.000
Whereas opposed to taking 10 years, the guy down the street is going to go out of business.
01:32:24.000
It's going to take you 10 years and you're going to have pain and suffering.
01:32:27.000
Whereas this guy, your neighbor, your competitor down the street, he's giving it to you in 3 years and there's not much pain and suffering involved.
01:32:34.000
So you get the prestige of a black belt without the hard training.
01:32:43.000
But jiu-jitsu seems like one of the rare meritocracies in martial arts.
01:32:46.000
If you don't spar, you don't tap people, you don't get a black belt.
01:32:50.000
If you don't spar, you don't tap people, you don't make your way through.
01:32:53.000
But it's one of the rare ones because in karate, there's a lot of bullshit sparring where they're touching each other.
01:32:59.000
They put all sorts of rules and the sparring that was like...
01:33:07.000
A lot of those guys who went to those other kind of schools, they end up in other academies.
01:33:11.000
I've had a purple belt come up to me and say, I want to give back my purple belt.
01:33:15.000
I got a purple belt from a certain school and he went to the basics course in my gym.
01:33:26.000
But when I roll with him, I was like, who the hell?
01:33:36.000
The definition of blue belt, according to Elio Gracie, is you can beat a bigger, stronger opponent that's untrained.
01:33:54.000
To go from blue to purple is the most painful transition, in my opinion.
01:34:07.000
I was a brown belt for like eight years though.
01:34:13.000
I always tell guys, I'd rather you be a purple belt that tops out black belts.
01:34:16.000
Then be a black belt that's getting killed by blue belts.
01:34:20.000
You harm your student when you give him a belt he can't carry.
01:34:24.000
Because like you said, jiu-jitsu, people walk in from out of town, they jump into your class.
01:34:32.000
At least he's a blue belt getting beat by a blue belt.
01:34:44.000
John Dennehart, if you say, hey, John, we're going to do tests, he'll laugh at you.
01:34:51.000
I think there's also a situation where these people are realizing that, hey, if you have X hundred students and they're paying $150 a month, you can get this amount of money.
01:35:03.000
They're doing a thing in their head and they realize, like, look, I am only making X amount of money.
01:35:07.000
I can make triple that if I just lighten up on people.
01:35:16.000
Jiu-jitsu is one of the rare martial arts where you go full blast.
01:35:23.000
If you get caught in an arm bar, even though the guy's not yanking on it past the point where it's going to snap, they're showing some control.
01:35:30.000
They catch you in that arm bar and they know they have it.
01:35:38.000
If you wheel kick someone in the head, they're not going again for a long time.
01:35:41.000
Especially if you actually do it the way you would do it in a fight.
01:35:45.000
It's just like that difference of striking training versus grappling training is one of the things that really separates jiu-jitsu from the other martial arts is that you can learn in a real situation.
01:35:56.000
So like, if you're in a street fight with jiu-jitsu and you grab a hold of a guy, it's so normal.
01:36:07.000
But if you're in a street fight with someone who's only been point sparring and someone's swinging haymakers at you like, yikes!
01:36:13.000
You're scared because you're not accustomed to that because the actual consequences of getting hit like that in training are so high that you don't do that.
01:36:26.000
There's a lot of people that have black belts in karate that would get fucked up in a street fight by a guy who's quick, who can hit hard, who just knows how to just hit you.
01:36:33.000
A mean person that's been in a lot of street fights and knows how to punch you in the face.
01:36:37.000
There's also real karate instructors out there that have real good karate students.
01:36:55.000
Yeah, it's not susceptible as much, jiu-jitsu, because you have to roll.
01:36:59.000
Or, like, eventually, you couldn't have gotten to pro belt without rolling.
01:37:07.000
If they have a kid who they know he's going to compete, they'll hold them back.
01:37:11.000
If they have a guy who's a lawyer, they'll boost him up faster.
01:37:18.000
A young kid who's competing and a guy who's older.
01:37:21.000
But there has to be still a purity to the game.
01:37:25.000
Because I think it's going to backfire in the end.
01:37:29.000
Other schools to my gym and they're like, I don't want to tell you what belt I am.
01:37:33.000
They're embarrassed to tell me what belt they are.
01:37:35.000
So is that a Canada thing or is that happening all across the world?
01:37:41.000
That's so disappointing to hear because when I started in 96, it was grimy, man.
01:37:52.000
And it was a bunch of people that had seen the UFC and were like, holy shit.
01:37:56.000
It was like I realized that I was so vulnerable.
01:38:06.000
I mean, just by people my size, just manhandling me.
01:38:13.000
Because you realize, like, wow, so much to learn.
01:38:21.000
And they would show me what they did, and I was like, mind blow.
01:38:25.000
Yeah, it's interesting how vulnerable you really are.
01:38:29.000
Like, when you first learn, your first few days of classes.
01:38:42.000
I felt like sparring, when I kickbox sparred with people that were better than me, I'm like, at least I can move.
01:38:49.000
At least I can avoid this guy and maybe survive a few rounds if I fight defensively, don't extend myself, don't leave anything hanging out there, just play tight to my chest, spar smart.
01:39:00.000
I know this person's better than me, but I can get through this round.
01:39:03.000
I would do jujitsu against guys who are black belts when I was a white belt or a blue belt.
01:39:19.000
Because you could teach somebody jujitsu in a nice way.
01:39:27.000
The first commercial for UFC 2. I saw them hoist up the champion.
01:39:42.000
I begged my parents to buy UFC 2. I showed it to my brothers.
01:39:48.000
I showed everybody like, we have to watch this.
01:39:51.000
And then they showed the lineup of guys he's going to fight.
01:39:54.000
I didn't see part one, but this guy, this Brazilian guy is going to get killed.
01:40:08.000
And if the new generation hasn't watched that, they have to go back and watch it.
01:40:13.000
Because that's the genesis of, like, they set martial arts on fire.
01:40:18.000
I couldn't find a jiu-jitsu school in Montreal.
01:40:22.000
If you ask me, cut your arm off, we'll teach jiu-jitsu, I would do it.
01:40:26.000
I met a purple belt from Henzo Gracie, Angelo Xaracos, and I was, like, religious with my lessons.
01:40:32.000
He would teach twice a week, but I would train all week.
01:40:37.000
It was such a mind-boggling experience to learn jiu-jitsu.
01:40:44.000
Do you remember Henzo and Craig Kukuk had the first instructional videos?
01:40:54.000
Yeah, those were like the first instructionals.
01:40:57.000
Because before, you would have to go somewhere to learn.
01:40:59.000
They were the first guys to actually put it down in an instructional form.
01:41:05.000
I remember I used one of the Mount Escapes once in class against a guy who was, I was like a, maybe I was a blue belt.
01:41:13.000
But I secured this guy's arm and I bucked and kicked him over towards where I had taken away his base.
01:41:24.000
Because I watched it in the video and then I wound up doing it in the class.
01:42:00.000
They're unskilled to deal with a situation that might occur.
01:42:16.000
It's like mathematics is mandatory to a certain level.
01:42:19.000
In Canada, you can't say, oh, I want to drop out of high school.
01:42:27.000
But it's like you need a certain level of education.
01:42:30.000
I'm not sure now if high school is, like let's say elementary school.
01:42:37.000
I have to double check, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal now at this point.
01:42:39.000
Well, I think that would stop a lot of bullying, and I've said this before, but I think it's counterintuitive to people.
01:42:44.000
They think that bullying is a mean person, and if you taught them how to fight, they'd become meaner.
01:42:52.000
I think if you took away that, and they got to really establish through training that they have character, and that they're worth something, and they don't have to be insecure, and they build up this confidence, you wouldn't see them going out and picking on people.
01:43:08.000
I've had so many parents tell me, I don't recognize my son when he's with you.
01:43:22.000
Well, here, if you did that, it would be a problem.
01:43:29.000
They respect the environment they're in because there are other guys out there that put you in line.
01:43:35.000
I remember one time I was in an airplane and a guy punched the back of my seat.
01:43:51.000
The guy pushes like, he palmed it hard, like, boom.
01:44:00.000
I'm like, this is a guy who's never gotten a beating in his life.
01:44:02.000
The way he talked to me, Was so rude, I was like, dude, man.
01:44:09.000
Because you learn through martial arts, you know, like, respect everyone, man.
01:44:14.000
One day you're the hunted, the other day you're the hunter, and it's just like the way life works, you know?
01:44:20.000
Why should, like, this guy's instigating a fight now.
01:44:29.000
Yeah, I would have been like, sorry sir, my apologies.
01:44:32.000
I would have bought the guy, I would have bought him whatever he wants.
01:44:39.000
Some people don't know the realities of violence.
01:44:40.000
I've seen people on video, they're in a certain situation and they act all crazy.
01:44:49.000
You've seen it on TV. You've seen it in a movie.
01:44:51.000
You think you know what it is to be punched and kicked.
01:44:56.000
Would you want to play with that if you know what it was?
01:45:00.000
I'm like, this person has no idea what they're talking about.
01:45:08.000
They don't know what it is to be hit, to be attacked, to be in a fight.
01:45:13.000
I find it always jaw-dropping when somebody's going to instigate a fight over something so small.
01:45:19.000
And they don't even know how to fight, which is what's even crazier.
01:45:29.000
And I was like, yo, what are you going to do now?
01:45:33.000
I'm like, dude, like I could have been an old lady here.
01:45:48.000
But it's like, dude, you want to fight over this laptop?
01:45:52.000
No one can possibly know that you have a laptop open.
01:45:58.000
Me, when I'm in public, the last thing I want to do is fight.
01:46:05.000
Like, when was the last time you saw a fight at the gym?
01:46:11.000
Some guys get mad if some guy doesn't let go with some taps or something like that.
01:46:25.000
You understand what it is, and I think most people don't, and I think most people are scared of it, and I think that's why they posture.
01:46:36.000
Most people that haven't had any sort of physical altercation, they have zero idea of how vulnerable they truly are.
01:46:49.000
My wife, when I did it once, she's like, it's an illegal turn.
01:46:54.000
I had to send it to her, and she's like, oh, okay, you're right.
01:46:57.000
I take that left turn twice a day every day to go to the gym.
01:46:59.000
One day, I take that left turn, and this guy races his car towards me like he's going to plow through my door, honks at me, starts telling me off.
01:47:13.000
I'm like, dude, you're talking to me like you're my father here.
01:47:17.000
And the guy was like, he didn't want to come out of his car.
01:47:34.000
People are crazy when they're behind the wheel.
01:47:35.000
It's also, someone explained it to me psychologically.
01:47:37.000
What happens is when you're driving, you understand that you have to make these split-second decisions because you're moving fast, right?
01:47:46.000
So if someone does something wrong, like, you're fucking...
01:47:49.000
It's like people blow up at a level that they would never blow up if you were just walking.
01:47:53.000
Like, how many times have you been in a crowded street like Manhattan or something and people accidentally bump into people?
01:48:01.000
You know, you don't have that heightened sense of worry because you're not moving very fast where you have to make these split-second decisions.
01:48:08.000
So your brain is geared up to the speed that you're moving at.
01:48:11.000
That's why on the highway, people go fucking nuts!
01:48:15.000
Because their brain is already at like 7 or 8 before anything ever happens.
01:48:19.000
Do you think it has a lot to do, like on the internet, you're behind your keyboard?
01:48:26.000
The guy's behind his car thinks I'm going to drive away.
01:48:33.000
But there is a psychological aspect to driving a car because your brain is ramped up to make quick decisions.
01:48:40.000
You know, I think that the society that we live in with people behind keyboards and with anonymous names, that's a coward's way of existing.
01:48:54.000
Saying mean things to people while no one can see your face.
01:49:02.000
And when you see it happen with fighters, to me, it's fucking crazy.
01:49:06.000
I'll go to people's Twitter pages when a fighter wins or something like that, and they see all the assholes Oh my god.
01:49:14.000
I wish they all had to use their name with their face and it showed the city where they live.
01:49:20.000
I wish like if you wanted to have a more civilized version of social media you should be able to see your face and your name and where you live.
01:49:30.000
I don't use Facebook, but I guess it's probably a little...
01:49:32.000
The only way I use Facebook, it's connected to my Instagram.
01:49:35.000
So if I post on Instagram, it goes to Facebook.
01:49:37.000
I've read it a few times, like the crazy shit that people write.
01:49:44.000
The thing about Facebook that drives me crazy is there's no limit to how much you can write.
01:49:53.000
People that post those things, they also write it.
01:49:55.000
But there's something about that, at least with Facebook, it's your name.
01:50:04.000
I mean, I guess you could have a fake name on Facebook.
01:50:10.000
I think the only problem against that would be, like, say if you were a woman and you're working at an office and your boss was abusing you or sexually harassing you and you couldn't say anything anonymously.
01:50:22.000
Like, you should be able to anonymously say something, or maybe even there's something going on at your job where it's illegal, where people's lives are being put in damage.
01:50:35.000
You should be able to say certain things anonymously.
01:50:37.000
But other than the talking shit, as soon as you talk shit, all those privileges are revoked.
01:50:44.000
Again, same thing as what we were talking about earlier.
01:50:48.000
It's also when people are constantly criticizing people and constantly judging people and constantly insulting people, that is a way to avoid self-analysis.
01:51:00.000
And it's a way you're comparing yourself, whether you like it or not, to that person.
01:51:04.000
And instead of self-reflection, you're just shitting on that person.
01:51:09.000
When guys are talking shit to Jon Jones, It's like you're giving a finger to the lion.
01:51:15.000
You see the lion in the cage, like, you're in a fucking cage, faggot!
01:51:20.000
It's like they can't do anything because he can't get out of that cage because he doesn't know who you are because you have a fake Twitter name and you're hiding behind one of those little eggs.
01:51:31.000
And you can say all this crazy shit to him or to fill in the blank, any UFC fighter.
01:51:43.000
With 16-ounce gloves, you're going to freak out.
01:51:52.000
You're just staring down at the beginning when the referee is reading your instructions, just wetting your pants.
01:52:10.000
I was the one who told me how to get out of New York.
01:52:21.000
You know, it's one thing about being an observer, like being on the outside, but caring about those guys.
01:52:33.000
You know, he was like, when he's beating up Stefan Bonner.
01:52:44.000
He had such a strong wrestling background, but also so creative.
01:52:48.000
He would just do spinning elbows and shit, like practice stuff.
01:53:01.000
He could have gone to a lot of different places.
01:53:05.000
When you're 23 years old, you open up your first title fight with a flying knee against a legend like Shogun.
01:53:15.000
Certain guys, that's the interesting thing about the UFC style of sort of throwing fighters to the wolves.
01:53:24.000
Because the UFC, unlike boxing, in boxing they take a guy and they'll slowly work him through the ranks of journeymen and they give him different looks.
01:53:37.000
This guy likes to fight inside, let's see how he handles that.
01:53:40.000
And then they eventually get him to the point where he's 15-0, 16-0, they get him in there with a contender, and they calculate risk versus reward.
01:53:48.000
With the UFC, man, you could have, you know, you could have like two fights, and, you know, Usman needs a fight, and they'll throw you in there.
01:54:01.000
Because the thing is, if you take two studs and you put them together, the crowd doesn't know that they're two studs.
01:54:07.000
They nullify each other, so they look like average fighters.
01:54:12.000
If you give them a 500 fighter, he'll eat them up.
01:54:15.000
And you're showing to the fans, look, this is a 500 fighter.
01:54:19.000
We're going to give that guy a chance to prove himself.
01:54:28.000
These are fights to demonstrate that this guy's in a different league.
01:54:31.000
And then you have this other guy you had built up.
01:54:33.000
And when you put them together, there's an anticipation.
01:54:39.000
Because if you put Mayweather and De La Hoya early on, nobody knows how good they are.
01:54:47.000
Yeah, you can certainly make an argument for that, but then again, there's the argument of the outlier, like Jon Jones, few fights into his UFC career, becomes the youngest champion of all time.
01:55:02.000
And very important that people don't think about that as fights, but they're competitions at a high level with physicality.
01:55:12.000
And it's also, there's something about having the ability to stuff takedowns and then execute takedowns, which is such a, it evens things out in so many different ways.
01:55:24.000
Because you can always dictate where the fights take place.
01:55:29.000
The greatest reach in history of UFC. There's no longer reach ever.
01:55:34.000
I think Sammy Schilt probably had a longer reach.
01:55:58.000
And they were saying that the reach is the deficit of your height and length.
01:56:05.000
How much longer is your reach compared to your height?
01:56:21.000
Well, John is the very best at utilizing that reach and just keeping guys on the outside.
01:56:30.000
He knows what's going on in the fight all the way and he shifts his strategy as the fight goes on.
01:56:36.000
I'm really curious to see if Dominic Reyes can hang with him.
01:56:48.000
Well, I think he also realizes, like, look, he lost a lot of time fucking off and getting suspended and all the dumb shit that he did.
01:56:56.000
He's still, right now, the number one pound for pound fighter in the world.
01:57:01.000
And if he moved up to heavyweight, he would be the number one contender.
01:57:09.000
I think he has a couple fights at light heavyweight.
01:57:12.000
And I think now there's a real possibility that he might stick.
01:57:16.000
I think you've got Corey Anderson, who looked fantastic in his last fight.
01:57:21.000
You know, Johnny Walker, they were thinking was going to be the next guy for the title.
01:57:52.000
There's Corey Anderson and there's Dominic Reyes.
01:58:09.000
Not a good fight to go to 205 for the first time.
01:58:14.000
I liked him versus Rockhold at 205. That's interesting.
01:58:22.000
If they're going to fight those two, that's the fight to make.
01:58:37.000
I don't know if there's anything actually scheduled.
01:58:53.000
All those Donaher leg locks, especially, scare the fuck out of me, man.
01:58:57.000
Listen, if you're talking a lot, it might take a second or two longer to let go of the leg lock.
01:59:03.000
And you hear the cracking and popping of your ligaments and meniscus.
01:59:07.000
Like, my favorite grappling match of all time is Paul Harris versus Gary Tonin.
01:59:15.000
And Paul Harris was probably like 25 pounds heavier than him.
01:59:25.000
Now he's out of UFC. Gary tested positive from being in the same room as him.
01:59:50.000
But Gary, if there was no time limit, Gary's going to sub him.
01:59:56.000
And Gary was just picking it up, picking it up on him.
02:00:01.000
Well, another great one is Cyborg versus Gordon Ryan, where Cyborg was a multiple-time jiu-jitsu champion, veteran of the game.
02:00:08.000
Gordon Ryan had only been doing jiu-jitsu like five years.
02:00:13.000
John Denahar has found a way to teach you jiu-jitsu in a nutshell.
02:00:20.000
He's just now the most efficient trainer in the history of jiu-jitsu.
02:00:34.000
The best jiu-jitsu place in the world today is New York, Hansel Gracie Academy.
02:00:39.000
I'm telling you, the purple belts today are scary as hell.
02:00:42.000
Like, if you roll with their purple belts, like, he's a super seasoned black belt.
02:00:46.000
Like, I had one of my students, I promoted him to brown belt, and I got in a lot of trouble from John.
02:00:51.000
Because I took him from purple belt to brown belt, and that guy had subbed, my student had subbed, like, five black belts that year.
02:01:01.000
But he set five black belts in competition, like real good black belts.
02:01:08.000
Their purple belts today at Hensel's John, it's a new standard.
02:01:18.000
It's crazy too that it's in Manhattan where the price for rent is so goddamn high and they still have like a thousand students.
02:01:25.000
If you go there and you're a stud, if you're a stud and you go in that practice room, you're a regular Joe.
02:01:31.000
I don't care if you're GSP. This is going to be a hard day.
02:01:44.000
I'm telling you, they're so good this generation.
02:01:50.000
And Eddie Cummings opened up his own place, right?
02:02:08.000
Like I'd roll with him once and he was okay, you know.
02:02:10.000
Then I came back like six months later, a year later, and he's like freaking, he was unbelievable.
02:02:16.000
And John had just been developing these new, John's in there eight hours a day, man, figuring out little things.
02:02:25.000
He's a good athlete, but not like, it's not his athleticism.
02:02:29.000
Like he's catching me in things I don't even know what they are.
02:02:33.000
Once they innovate something, you don't know what it is.
02:02:39.000
He's innovating all sorts of things in the game that now his student who's a purple belt is better than that black belt over there.
02:02:50.000
He got on the podium and they gave him his purple belt.
02:03:03.000
I didn't go to Henzo's last time I was in New York.
02:03:17.000
I think he was the one, now that I'm thinking of it, who they said was going to have a grappling match against...
02:03:42.000
Meet the guy who won third at ADCC trials after just six months of training.
02:03:56.000
Yeah, I'm telling you, they're getting good so fast.
02:03:58.000
How does someone come in third place in Abu Dhabi with six months of training?
02:04:09.000
He was making money being on a fitness model or something.
02:04:14.000
Like, you could have an Instagram page where you stick your ass out.
02:04:21.000
I think he's only like 19. I think he's really young.
02:04:35.000
And I've been doing his shit so longer than he's been alive, you know?
02:04:48.000
He's a really interesting guy, too, because his brother's so big.
02:04:51.000
And he's like, what is he, like 150 pounds or something like that?
02:05:10.000
I think they were in a neighboring school, but this is John's curriculum.
02:05:16.000
I've been in the practice room with them many times.
02:05:24.000
There's not a movement in there that's not him.
02:05:46.000
4.3 times 2 is about 9, 10. 4.5 times 2 is 9. So Rockhold, when he fought at light heavyweight, I wonder how much weight he cut to get to 205. That's interesting, though.
02:06:20.000
Is there anybody that's close to putting out that kind of talent that quickly?
02:06:28.000
It seems like usually when someone comes along like that, then others rise as well.
02:06:36.000
People will go down, see what he's doing, try to figure it out.
02:06:50.000
But what's crazy is that John Donaher has his fucked up knee and a fucked up hip, and he's teaching people how to fuck people's knees up.
02:07:14.000
Because if you underestimate Reyes, you're going to lose.
02:07:21.000
Everybody obviously is, but he's got to take this guy seriously.
02:07:24.000
Because the thing is, you're undefeated, you have this allure to you, you can't be beaten, and all of a sudden somebody beats you.
02:07:33.000
And that's one thing I think that made George great because George was always scared of that day.
02:07:46.000
You got to get up before that day comes because that day, it's going to happen.
02:07:51.000
And I feel like, you know, Reyes is a serious contender.
02:07:58.000
That counter punch that he knocked out Weidman with, like holy shit.
02:08:03.000
And finishes him on the ground with hammer fists.
02:08:05.000
But I was saying that I just think there should be more weight classes.
02:08:09.000
I think the jump between 85 and 205 is just too giant.
02:08:13.000
I would love to see lightweight, super lightweight.
02:08:18.000
There's going to be so many interesting fights.
02:08:23.000
I mean, I don't think that's unreasonable at all.
02:08:25.000
In boxing, it varies, sometimes 4, 7, it depends on the weight class, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having a 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, and do it like that.
02:08:37.000
Yeah, and let guys fight in different divisions.
02:08:41.000
There's going to be so many great fights to make.
02:08:44.000
I think they have this idea that there'll be too many champions, but I just completely disagree.
02:08:49.000
They just made a belt for the baddest motherfucker in the world.
02:08:57.000
Because originally it was supposed to be Usman and Colby, if I remember correctly.
02:09:01.000
You can't get them to agree for whatever reason.
02:09:03.000
Well, we're going to have this other title fight.
02:09:09.000
You know, you got to have something really amazing.
02:09:13.000
You can't have like a regular three-round fight.
02:09:27.000
It's like when you're in Madison Square Garden, it's not just the fights.
02:09:38.000
Yeah, you're in the most iconic arena in combat sports history and that's the spot.
02:09:47.000
So for Kevin to win that fight by head kick KO and come back and do it in Madison Square, how happy were you, man?
02:10:06.000
During that camp, the last two weeks, Kevin pops his ankle.
02:10:12.000
So I was like, oh man, the fights might be off.
02:10:21.000
That Friday he sparred again, but I told him, you've got to put on an ankle brace.
02:10:35.000
He shouldn't have been sparring, but I couldn't stop him.
02:10:41.000
He told me, don't worry, I don't feel anything.
02:10:48.000
You want to win a big fight, you have to work through these kind of things.
02:10:55.000
And PI, the Performance Institute, helped him a lot.
02:11:00.000
They said it's still, you know, it's mechanically sound.
02:11:03.000
It's just kind of like no key ligaments are broken or anything like that.
02:11:06.000
And he ended up winning with a head kick with that bad ankle.
02:11:14.000
Sometimes you can be as safe as you want to be.
02:11:18.000
But, I mean, fighters, when they get in there, a lot of times they're already injured.
02:11:25.000
You got a wrist, you got a neck, you got something.
02:11:35.000
He was a lot better by then, but still I was worried about it.
02:12:02.000
They were covered halfway up his thigh, all the way down his calf.
02:12:06.000
He used to have the most crazy knee wraps ever.
02:12:09.000
I mean, and Sakuraba was a leg lock specialist too.
02:12:22.000
Do you remember when he fought Conan Silvera and they made him fight again?
02:12:33.000
And Sakuraba jumped down, grabbed a hold of an ankle, was fighting for a takedown.
02:12:45.000
This was the same year, this is the same fight, where Frank Shamrock submitted Kevin Jackson.
02:13:09.000
And so when they fight again, Sakuraba gets him in an armbar and makes him tap.
02:13:23.000
This generation that didn't get to watch him fight has to go back and look at those fights.
02:13:31.000
And look, I love the Gracies and he was beating the Gracies and you couldn't help but like him.
02:13:46.000
Well, in that scramble, Henzo's arm just was...
02:13:53.000
Enzo beat him after in Metamoras in a grappling match.
02:13:56.000
And Halleck beat him in the MMA. Halleck Gracie went back to him.
02:14:09.000
When Mayhem Miller went over and fought in Pride when he was in his prime.
02:14:18.000
And he systematically broke Sakuraba down, beat the shit out of him, and submitted him.
02:14:31.000
And then, you know, like, legit problems after that.
02:14:35.000
And then after the Bisping fight, you know, then he had even more legit problems.
02:14:42.000
The scariest loss, though, that Sakuraba ever had, well...
02:14:57.000
With soccer kicks on the ground and all that crazy shit.
02:15:12.000
Remember when he knocked out Mark Hunt with one punch?
02:15:16.000
He was 185 pounds and he knocked out Mark Hunt with one fucking punch.
02:15:36.000
The greatest fight, one of the greatest, the greatest comeback fight I've ever seen in my life was K1 Hero Sakuraba.
02:16:28.000
And when Mark Hunt charges at him, Melvin just catches him while he's coming in.
02:16:32.000
So, they exchange a little bit here on the feet.
02:16:48.000
Who the fuck knocks out Mark Hunt with one punch?
02:17:04.000
And this guy is beating the hell out of Sakuraba.
02:17:11.000
And he's between the ropes and the Lithuanian guy is just...
02:17:17.000
And the Japanese people just believe in him so much.
02:17:31.000
And then they throw up the confetti and everybody's like, the Japanese people just believe.
02:17:42.000
He's getting punched in the back of the head and everything.
02:17:50.000
Oh no, they want to bring him back in the ring.
02:17:55.000
Yeah, he's punching him while the referee's got a hold of him.
02:18:00.000
This is one of the greatest comebacks I've ever seen in my life.
02:18:03.000
Yeah, it makes you think there's no way Sakuraba's going to survive here.
02:18:07.000
And he keeps moving and this guy keeps punching him.
02:18:22.000
And sometimes that was horrible to watch because he would wind up getting beat up.
02:18:47.000
And the Lithuanian guy beats him up standing too.
02:19:04.000
the crowd was losing it at this point yeah they believe in him so much when he lost the first time he was like oh look i'm happy now that the weight is off my shoulders you know the japanese people now they know i can lose and like he had too much pressure on him they always expect him to win scoot ahead oh there it is say mounts him incredible that's how he finished konan too same same move yeah incredible Yeah.
02:19:32.000
There's another great come from behind with Melvin when Melvin fought Robbie Lawler.
02:19:40.000
Melvin was fucking Robbie Lawler's legs up and then Robbie Lawler hit him with a hay maker.
02:19:54.000
I think the craziest knockout I ever saw was Michael Venom Page versus Cyborg when he caved his head in.
02:20:00.000
In all the years I've seen fights, I've never seen a guy get his head literally caved in from a knee.
02:20:06.000
When you knock a guy out like that, you don't dance.
02:20:09.000
I feel like after Kevin knocked out Gillespie, I told him to take a knee.
02:20:21.000
But sometimes you know, like, this guy's injured.
02:20:24.000
I don't think anybody thought that he was going to be injured like that, though.
02:20:33.000
Well, the other thing was Cyborg was saying, like, he wants to fight again in three months.
02:20:45.000
He's got so many demons in his mind after that, he doesn't know what's going on.
02:20:57.000
It's hard when your face gets broken like that.
02:21:08.000
Sage fought Cosmo Alexander, which is another ridiculous fight.
02:21:46.000
I'd rather have gone to a fight that I could have done more.
02:21:50.000
I could have beat a better guy than going to a fight where this guy was way too much for me.
02:21:53.000
Let me just go up slowly and see how far I can go and then challenge myself where it makes sense.
02:22:03.000
Like, his face was broken in so many different places.
02:22:14.000
He's going to go back to 155. He said, I learned my lesson.
02:22:21.000
He was in surgery for like 18 hours or something like that.
02:22:27.000
It can happen to anybody, but at least if I had done it in my weight class against somebody on my level and it just happened, okay, fine.
02:22:36.000
What do you think about 1FC's desire to stop weight cutting?
02:22:50.000
Why are you pretending that you weigh less than you weigh?
02:22:55.000
The weigh-in is about, we want two guys of the same size to fight each other.
02:23:02.000
And now everybody has to do it because otherwise...
02:23:06.000
But when Kevin went up to 170, it just didn't seem right for him.
02:23:14.000
And they're doing the same thing that he was doing to get to 155, but now he's not doing that thing anymore.
02:23:20.000
And it also seemed like he got tired, but also he wasn't with you.
02:23:24.000
I really believe this, and this is one of the things that I said to him.
02:23:35.000
Someone who can look at your overall game, figure out what you're doing, find the flaws, be honest with you, and then tell you when to ramp it up and when to slow it down.
02:23:51.000
It's just so hard to do all that shit by yourself.
02:24:04.000
Just get in the ring and show me your opinion is correct.
02:24:08.000
So that's why, like, sometimes I work with trainers and they have these crazy ideas.
02:24:16.000
I get trainers all the time that want to show me something.
02:24:25.000
Like one time I had this guy who had this way of making me stronger through like a physical therapy.
02:24:31.000
So I said, okay, let me do my max set of pull-ups.
02:24:37.000
And then we did his treatment and I went back to the pull-up bar and I did 15. I wasn't stronger.
02:24:55.000
I'm going to dig into your scapula with my knuckles and it's going to...
02:25:04.000
Well, what's interesting is sometimes the placebo effect catches on and they'll work with one fighter and the fighter will go, dude, the guy fixed my neck.
02:25:14.000
And the next thing you know, this guy's got a business going.
02:25:16.000
And he's, you know, standing on people's backs.
02:25:23.000
I don't want to say names, but I've seen it, man.
02:25:24.000
I don't want to say names either, but I've seen a lot of it.
02:25:26.000
And there's one guy that was going through a bunch of different fighters, and I went and did it with him, and I was like, what are you doing?
02:25:32.000
And this is after 15, 20 minutes of questioning, right?
02:25:37.000
He basically said, well, you know how the placebo effect works, right?
02:25:40.000
And I said, well, it works because you think it works, right?
02:25:46.000
He goes, no, it does work if you believe in it.
02:25:48.000
I go, so you're saying that you're bullshitting, but if they believe you're bullshit, then it's real.
02:25:56.000
I trapped him with this long conversation about this.
02:26:03.000
You're just fucking pushing on people's back and pretending you're fixing their eyesight.
02:26:10.000
But there's a lot of that out there because fighters want any kind of edge, whether it's cupping or acupuncture.
02:26:15.000
Bro, once I started doing Thai massage, my game changed.
02:26:18.000
And if you believe your game changes, sometimes your game does change, you know?
02:26:28.000
It's like, you know that Game Changers documentary?
02:26:39.000
Because they're bored of doing battle rope for longer than eight minutes.
02:26:41.000
Who does battle rope for more than eight minutes?
02:26:45.000
If I tell you, Joe, you got to do battle rope for an hour and I'll give you a million bucks, I guarantee you're going to do battle rope for an hour.
02:26:57.000
If I put you on a treadmill and you tell me, look...
02:27:02.000
I'll be like, on an incline, I'll be like, wow, that's measurable.
02:27:13.000
The reason why you went for an hour is because we're not measuring how much output you're doing.
02:27:22.000
There's all these things that are not controlled.
02:27:34.000
You know, you got to be careful with the voodoo stuff.
02:27:36.000
But the thing is also you got to be open-minded because sometimes people do find real things that actually work.
02:27:41.000
I'm not talking about like massage and stuff like that.
02:27:47.000
But there's also a lot of concrete evidence on these.
02:27:53.000
Visualization, there's actually evidence that sometimes it's as effective or more effective than actual training in certain sports.
02:28:00.000
They think about one specific type of motion, like throwing a baseball or something like that, and you could argue that if you just really visualize throwing that baseball over and over again, and then get motivated and maybe even allow your muscles to heal so you're not throwing the ball as much, but you understand the motion better.
02:28:18.000
There's a point of diminishing returns where you're training too much so your body breaks down but yet you still think about it and you want to do it and then you go overboard and then your tissue doesn't recover in time and then you train again and you're in a compromised state whereas if you trained less but visualized the extra time.
02:29:06.000
He wrote a great book called With Winning in Mind.
02:29:17.000
He basically talks about how everybody has a self-image and you live up to your self-image.
02:29:24.000
So he has this thing where let's say he does something good in practice.
02:29:27.000
Let's say you landed a good throw in practice or a submission.
02:29:30.000
He would tell himself, he'll give him a cue, that's me.
02:29:34.000
If he did something wrong in practice, he would visualize him doing it right.
02:29:41.000
So then he says, guys, when they're under the lights, the guys who screw up, the guys who choke, is because they couldn't visualize themselves as a winner.
02:29:51.000
But he's not talking about visualizing yourself raising your hand.
02:29:54.000
He's talking about visualizing the process of winning.
02:29:57.000
Like actually doing every step so that you're telling your subconscious mind this is where you're going.
02:30:02.000
He has a very interesting system and I think it makes a lot of sense because guys who relive the bad in practice, those are the guys who are going to screw up again.
02:30:15.000
It's B-A-S-E-H. S-S-H-A-M. S-S? S-S-H-A-M? Yeah.
02:30:39.000
When I go on vacation, I might get that book and put it on the Kindle.
02:30:52.000
Have you visualized in the isolation tank before?
02:30:59.000
Because you can imagine yourself going through movements.
02:31:04.000
When your body's just floating around in there, you have more access to resources.
02:31:11.000
You lose what's real, what's dream, what's thought.
02:31:15.000
Six hours a day pretending you're shooting shit.
02:31:18.000
And why I believe the system works is because not only was he champion, his son also went through his curriculum and he became a champion.
02:31:28.000
And it's a lot about getting everything lined up perfectly.
02:31:43.000
How much, when you're training young fighters, how much time do you spend with them talking to them about how to think?
02:31:50.000
I always tell fighters that far from the fight, it's 99% physical.
02:32:00.000
Closer we are to the fight, like the week of the fight, now it's 99% mental.
02:32:09.000
So as we get closer to the fight, it becomes more and more mental.
02:32:12.000
Do you tell them to stay off social media the week of the fight?
02:32:15.000
Some of them, that's how they let their energy go.
02:32:20.000
You see fighters three days out fighting with people on Twitter.
02:32:27.000
I have a YouTube channel, but everything else I don't do too much social media.
02:32:31.000
But some people, the events, some people, they feel like it's how they connect.
02:32:34.000
I don't know if it's going to help them or hurt them, but I like them to be surrounded with their training partners before the fight.
02:32:41.000
Just training partners, like least amount of public as possible.
02:32:46.000
But if the guy feels comfortable with his wife and daughter, that's up to him.
02:32:50.000
But I feel like when you're going to war, I wouldn't bring my family to war.
02:32:58.000
I know some fighters do, but I wouldn't want my child in the arena when I'm fighting.
02:33:04.000
Well, I remember watching the fight this weekend with Luis Ortiz and Wilder.
02:33:09.000
When you see Luis Ortiz's family sitting there watching, and then Wilder starches him.
02:33:33.000
This kid's five years old watching his dad like totally out.
02:33:40.000
Like, we're not here to, you know, we're not here to play games.
02:33:50.000
You know, and by the way, the universe doesn't give a fuck if you're holding your kid's hand.
02:33:53.000
If you didn't practice correctly and if you're not skilled enough, you're going to get hit.
02:33:58.000
Yeah, and if you're not as good as the person you're fighting, your kid's going to watch you get starched.
02:34:11.000
Me, I don't let my kids watch fights where they know the people fighting.
02:34:17.000
Unless, okay, if it went well, let's say it's a sub, I'll let them watch.
02:34:25.000
I tell my wife, when the fights are going on, let them go play.
02:34:33.000
Yeah, my kids started coming into the room to watch when I was watching fights on TV when they were like six, six or seven.
02:34:40.000
And I have to tell them, I don't know if you're ready to watch this.
02:34:44.000
And I'm like, these people are hurting each other.
02:34:51.000
Why do you tell these people, do you do the commentator so you tell the people what's happening?
02:35:00.000
She goes, do you like it when they beat each other up?
02:35:06.000
For me, the hardest thing is if I really know someone and I like them, watch them get fucked up.
02:35:11.000
And then also being excited about the guy who fucked them up.
02:35:42.000
Yeah, but there was a respect, and I'm not going to hurt you more than I have to, and this was beautiful.
02:35:48.000
Well, Machida had some great moments like that, man.
02:36:06.000
I don't want to talk for George, but man, he can kill anybody.
02:36:20.000
When he came back and fought Bisping, I was like, man, this is going to be interesting to see.
02:36:24.000
And he came back and he looked fucking better than ever.
02:36:30.000
And that rear naked choke was one of the best rear naked chokes to win a title I've ever seen in my life.
02:36:34.000
Because it wasn't this one with the palm on the back of the head.
02:36:41.000
Rock solid and his jiu-jitsu looks so fucking sharp, man.
02:36:45.000
It's like he clearly showed that he had been training the whole time.
02:36:50.000
That even though he hadn't fought in those years, he had been training hard.
02:36:57.000
Then he was coaching some blue belts and purple belts and just kind of hanging out with them, talking technique.
02:37:16.000
He always tells me, like, so many crazy characters in MMA. I'm like, dude, you're the craziest one of all.
02:37:29.000
He puts a foam roller against the door like this.
02:37:42.000
The next day he'll know because the foam roller was moved.
02:37:45.000
Doesn't he think aliens can come through walls?
02:37:48.000
They're just taking him through the hallway and holding his hand?
02:37:54.000
He put the foam roller there so when they move it...
02:37:57.000
When they move it, it's a cue for him to remember.
02:38:02.000
What if the aliens really are experimenting on him?
02:38:04.000
What if they really come down and they say, this is their world's greatest martial artist, we are going to run tests on him?
02:38:10.000
He's awesome, but I don't know what to say about his mind.
02:38:17.000
38 now, yeah, 38. Does he have a thought in mind of when he's going to definitely throw it in?
02:38:24.000
It has to be, in my opinion, it's going to have to be.
02:38:26.000
I don't want to talk for him, but I think the thing that's going to motivate him is a mega fight.
02:38:31.000
He doesn't want to be champion again and fight every three, four months.
02:38:47.000
I mean, like, maybe not he could do five rounds right away, but he needs a few weeks, then he's doing five rounds.
02:39:08.000
A lot of the guys, they stop fighting and they just lose that discipline.
02:39:13.000
Well, that's what's important about George is that he's a martial artist.
02:39:18.000
And that desire to learn and enjoying the training and the struggle.
02:39:29.000
Why don't they say, George, we got a fight for you, buddy.
02:39:35.000
Well, first of all, I want to see Tony Ferguson versus Khabib.
02:39:49.000
That means I'm going back to Peter Luger's Steakhouse.
02:39:56.000
Please, Tony, don't fall down and hurt your knee.
02:40:11.000
If this one doesn't happen, because they both pulled out twice on each side.
02:40:26.000
Whoever wins that is the greatest lightweight of all time.
02:40:39.000
Broke his arm and then finished the fight and lost the decision.
02:40:51.000
He goes back to the corner, not even breathing heavy.
02:40:55.000
The opponent's face looks like it's gone through a fucking meat grinder.
02:41:01.000
That guy punches people and just breaks their face apart.
02:41:24.000
The way he beat Donald was extremely impressive.
02:41:27.000
Yeah, because Donald's a really good striker and he battered him on the feet.
02:41:37.000
Yes, but round two was like, what happened now?
02:41:45.000
And when he beat up Pettis like that, I was like, Jesus Christ.
02:41:50.000
He's something special, and I gotta see him fight for the title.
02:41:53.000
You know, and also, I really disagreed with them stripping his interim title because he hurt his knee.
02:41:59.000
The guy's doing fucking all this press for you guys.
02:42:01.000
He falls down in a freak accident and hurts his knee, and you take away the interim title?
02:42:07.000
In MMA, it's always knees or shoulders you have to protect.
02:42:12.000
But knees and shoulders, you have to go under the knife.
02:42:17.000
You should do everything in your power to avoid these.
02:42:21.000
I think George's career would have been a lot longer.
02:42:24.000
If he didn't have those ACL injuries, what we know today, we could have avoided it.
02:42:27.000
But the way we were training, we were doing certain things that were a little bit crazy.
02:42:43.000
I always thought it was the greatest training book in the game.
02:42:50.000
If you don't have great form, you're going to get injured.
02:42:52.000
As I get older, I realize how important form is.
02:42:56.000
And he has these rules in the book that protect your knee.
02:42:59.000
And George was doing the vulgus fault all his career, and I never noticed it until I read his manual.
02:43:14.000
And I was reading the book and I was like, George had an ACL injury already.
02:43:17.000
I was reading the book and I was like, holy moly, I do this fault.
02:43:22.000
He's like, oh, this will tear your ACL. I'm like, what?
02:43:31.000
And it's so important because everybody hurts their knee in the game.
02:43:37.000
And I'm always telling them, guys, read the book.
02:43:44.000
And the other one, avoid overtension in the muscle.
02:43:49.000
That's why I bought the DMS. You ever heard of DMS? Deep muscle stimulator.
02:44:00.000
By the way, let's tell everybody about the Tim Tam because I'm a bit a fan of that Tim Tam since you brought it in here.
02:44:06.000
But now there's a new one that's fucking ten times better with heat.
02:44:13.000
Yeah, bring it out because here's the thing about this too.
02:44:15.000
It sounds like a commercial, but it's just for you.
02:44:58.000
Oh, you know what girls are going to use this for, right?
02:45:24.000
If you have a tight muscle in your body, you got to kill it.
02:45:27.000
If your hamstring is tight, you're going to blow your ACL. Yes.
02:45:37.000
He says, I'm telling you, this guy changed my career.
02:45:39.000
He says, look, if you sit in an airplane or in a chair, he has a great book on sitting.
02:45:47.000
But you got to know how to sit because you cripple your back.
02:45:55.000
And then what happens when you go and do athletics, your hips are tight.
02:45:58.000
When you're sitting for prolonged hours, you're creating overtension in certain parts of your body.
02:46:10.000
I wouldn't be able to train as much as I do if it wasn't for him.
02:46:13.000
Well, I'll tell you what helped me is these fucking chairs.
02:46:19.000
It's called the Capisco, rather, from a company called Fully.
02:46:21.000
Actually, I think they changed the name of the company again.
02:46:31.000
These are fucking phenomenal because they force you to sit erect.
02:46:38.000
I mean, I used to have like regular office chairs the way my ass would sit into them.
02:46:41.000
I would slump and by the end of a podcast, the middle of my back would be hurting.
02:46:55.000
Oh, HAG. H-A-G. Capisco by HAG. That's an H with a weird little thing on top of it.
02:47:04.000
The fuck is that A? Is that a new A? What is that?
02:47:20.000
Cut it out with your fucking extra A. But anyway, the chair is amazing.
02:47:28.000
It's just a bigger platform where you're sitting.
02:47:31.000
And you can cross your legs like you're in the Lotus position.
02:47:35.000
That's why he says, like, you see people who meditate, they sit in a particular way.
02:47:40.000
So for me, the ultimate way to sit, for me personally, like you see the Japanese, they sit on the floor.
02:47:45.000
They cross their, like, they're in a lotus position.
02:48:06.000
So anyways, this book, he talks about all the various faults people do.
02:48:23.000
You have to have a wider platform, like a wider cushion.
02:48:25.000
Then you can get comfortable and kind of chill.
02:48:28.000
Yeah, but even then, I don't know if I could do that for a whole podcast.
02:48:37.000
Yeah, because people get injured because of prolonged sitting.
02:48:43.000
There's some that have weird platforms too, where the platforms are moving.
02:48:48.000
They wiggle and go back and forth, so you're always standing, kind of funky.
02:49:08.000
You have a place to put your foot, you have a place to sit, and you can get up.
02:49:12.000
You're almost sitting and standing every so often.
02:49:19.000
Because what happens to a muscle that's just not moving for hours and hours?
02:49:23.000
So is that just the bar or does he sell the desk too?
02:49:33.000
So that is just something that someone made to their specific height.
02:49:39.000
When you're at a bar, you can put your foot on it.
02:49:42.000
There's the bar and then you can put your foot on the bottom of the bar.
02:49:54.000
So a bar under here would be good if I had a bar.
02:50:02.000
Yours might be the older one, but the new ones they sell.
02:50:13.000
So you're supposed to sit with your feet on that?
02:50:16.000
I think this table, maybe it's three inches too low.
02:50:36.000
This is actually, for me, it wedges my knees underneath this table.
02:50:49.000
But if, like, when I fly, I have to take care of my back as soon as I get to a hotel.
02:50:52.000
I got to keep away all the tension in my hips, in my glutes.
02:50:56.000
What is your issues with your back just from training?
02:51:01.000
This whole area I do whenever I fly because I'm sitting down and my muscles just get super tight, super, super tight.
02:51:08.000
Does your back itself, the spine itself get tense or just the lower part, your glutes?
02:51:27.000
Imagine lying down on your back and you raise your legs.
02:51:31.000
Like, let's say I was on the floor and I put my feet up on a...
02:51:33.000
Okay, and you put one of those twin lacrosse balls or one lacrosse ball and you kind of, you put it on your back and you just kind of wedge.
02:51:42.000
Because you're lying down, you're naturally decompressing the spine.
02:51:45.000
Anyways, in his book, he shows you how to take care of your back.
02:51:53.000
This thing I do, instead of going to the gym and rolling up and down for 45 minutes, I get it done in 5 minutes.
02:52:03.000
The manager at my gym just popped his heel cord just by doing a round off.
02:52:23.000
I'm like, dude, I can't afford that to happen to me.
02:52:32.000
If I did that, it'd probably destroy my business.
02:52:42.000
If you get one ACL tear, it's very bad for your career.
02:52:48.000
Like George, when it happened the second time, okay, he had the finances and the name.
02:52:57.000
If that happened in the first or second year of his career, his career would have been over.
02:53:09.000
Because you know, typically your other ACL pops two years later.
02:53:13.000
Yeah, you know, if you pop your ACL on the right, you're a candidate now for the left.
02:53:23.000
I hope you put enough money in the bank because that's a long time to be on the sidelines.
02:53:31.000
When George fought Condit, he'd come back from an ACL injury.
02:53:35.000
Man, that was a horrific training camp because it was such a small window.
02:53:38.000
Look, are you okay enough to do the training camp?
02:53:43.000
It was such a stressful time because that fight was happening on a particular date and George was making his comeback.
02:53:49.000
I would have liked a few more months to get him ready.
02:53:51.000
It was a small window to fit in that big fight.
02:53:54.000
And luckily it worked out, but ACL injuries are something very serious.
02:54:04.000
This left one was a patella tendon graft where they cut your own patella tendon and drill it in and open you up like a fish and screw it in place.
02:54:20.000
I could do stuff, but it just always hurt and I couldn't get on my knees.
02:54:24.000
Like if I was on my knees and I was going to start from a kneeling position, it would hurt like hell.
02:54:37.000
I know I'm going to break my ACL now because I say this next week.
02:54:44.000
I'm very careful and I do a lot of leg locks and my students are leg lockers.
02:54:56.000
I don't care if somebody grabs me in the leg lock, tap.
02:55:01.000
It's very safe if you have a good culture in the gym, but some guys are just, you know.
02:55:06.000
And those guys, I don't let them do leg locks or off the mat?
02:55:08.000
Well, you know, Dr. Roddy McGee out of Vegas, he does a lot of work with the UFC fighters.
02:55:15.000
They have some new technique where they can reattach ACLs where they don't have to get a cadaver graft anymore.
02:55:23.000
They reattach your own torn ACL. They put it back together again.
02:55:28.000
And they had one athlete, I forget what sport it was, but he did it and then four months after the surgery competed in the Olympics.
02:55:39.000
Yeah, he showed me videos of this guy and he also showed me...
02:55:42.000
It's like they take the cord, let's say as the ACL snaps, so the ligament snaps, they put it back together again, they have this crazy intricate method of stitching it all back together again, and then it heals up much faster that way.
02:55:55.000
And I think they do it in conjunction with stem cells, they use stem cells as well.
02:56:08.000
He's always like going to all these different conferences and finding out about these new research Projects that have been done on new healing methods and surgery methods and stuff like that.
02:56:23.000
Last time I saw Francis in his office, rather, Francis in Ghana was in there getting some stem cell shots in his arm.
02:56:33.000
When you come to TriStar, the gym is jam-packed.
02:56:38.000
And I had one friend of mine, an instructor from another province, and he's like, he came to the gym and he was shocked how much students I have.
02:56:45.000
And I was like, yeah, because here when you come to train, nobody gets injured.
02:56:51.000
When you come in here, if I see any guy going out of control, it depends.
02:56:55.000
The more experienced you are, the more I let you guys go hard.
02:56:58.000
But if you're a beginner, if I see two beginners killing each other, I put a stop to it.
02:57:03.000
The blue belt's going to teach him, take him under his wing, but he's not going to brutalize him.
02:57:08.000
Because what happens, you're losing that student.
02:57:13.000
And then that's one less guy in the practice room.
02:57:16.000
He's a good training partner for my other guys.
02:57:20.000
Now, all of a sudden, he's a key training partner.
02:57:25.000
That guy, you lost him on day one because you smacked him around.
02:57:36.000
So, that's why I like to train at my gym because I know everybody has that kind of attitude.
02:57:39.000
I always tell my students, if your partner gets injured, it's your fault.
02:57:45.000
When you get good, like my students, I have some students that are knuckleheads.
02:57:52.000
I tell them, by the time you're good, you're going to be crippled.
02:57:55.000
You got to black belt, but you got to retire now.
02:57:59.000
I'm very big on technique, physical conditioning, But rough sparring has to be controlled or done very rarely and in a smart way.
02:58:17.000
Yeah, MMA, Jiu-Jitsu, even Muay Thai, all martial arts.
02:58:21.000
I think that's so important to treat it like your training partner is someone who you're in partnership with.
02:58:32.000
If you don't have good training partners, you're never going to be good.
02:58:35.000
I'll tell you, the one guy who never hurts anybody in practice is George.
02:58:40.000
I've seen him hurt like three people in practice.
02:58:47.000
I could tell you three times you hurt a guy, like bad.
02:58:52.000
And one case was a guy got out of control and just kind of like, Georgia just kind of lit him up.
02:58:57.000
But that's very rare because Georgia just like finished around, not spar with that guy.
02:59:00.000
That guy's like, you know, he's going to hurt himself if he continues.
02:59:05.000
But that's why everybody wants to train with George.
02:59:13.000
That's the kind of guy, there's some students I have that nobody wants to train with.
02:59:19.000
Like, sometimes I roll with people and they scratch my hand.
02:59:22.000
When they scratch, like, you're rolling and they dig their nails.
02:59:25.000
They're digging their nails because they're nervous.
02:59:26.000
I won't roll with that guy for a while because every time I wash my hands, my hands are stinging.
02:59:32.000
You know, like, it's such an annoyance to have scratched, like, you know, it's painful.
02:59:35.000
Every time you wash your hands, and then I roll, somebody grabs my hand, it's like, you know, it's like a paper cut.
02:59:40.000
And it's like, or the guy who kicks you in the groin, he's too nervous, he's spazzy, and he kicks you, I can't stand it.
02:59:51.000
I got to the hospital, my vision was still not there.
03:00:00.000
People are nervous because they're rolling with me.
03:00:03.000
Some guys are just nervous because I got to show him I'm good.
03:00:16.000
By the time I got to the hospital, I still wasn't seeing.
03:00:35.000
They told me, if one day you see like black polka dots, you have two days to get a surgery or else you're going to lose your eye or something like that.
03:00:45.000
My vision goes polka dot black, like I start seeing black spots.
03:00:51.000
But luckily now, it's been over a year, so my eye's fine.
03:00:53.000
When you say you see light shows, like what is it?
03:01:00.000
Isn't that what Bisping said that caused him to retire?
03:01:14.000
Because you realize he's already, I mean, he's basically blind in one eye.
03:01:24.000
That's why I took him, like, when you don't see the shot, it's worse.
03:01:27.000
Well, he said he's effectively fighting blind in one eye for, you know, since the Vitor fight, essentially.
03:01:37.000
And sometimes I turn my head because I think they're outside.
03:01:58.000
You wait eight hours in line, and then they give you the minimum care.
03:02:08.000
And then they give you the minimum amount of treatment.
03:02:16.000
I would like you to get it checked out, though, if you're still seeing weird lights.
03:02:40.000
In Canada, you want to see a doctor, you have to wait a long time.
03:02:42.000
And I'm lucky because I have friends that are doctors, so I just call them up and I go see them.
03:02:46.000
But, man, to go do the tests and all this and waiting, it takes forever.
03:02:55.000
Holding pads for someone, the guy misses a kick on the pad and hits his toe into his eye.
03:03:08.000
Never had any problems with his eyes and loses an eye that way.
03:03:21.000
There's less between me and the kick and the knee.
03:03:26.000
And I hold sometimes for seven fighters one night.
03:03:32.000
I always wear a cup but I have nothing on my eyes.
03:03:36.000
I never had concussion in my life except for this time.
03:03:44.000
I'm telling you, I was seeing stars for like an hour and a half.
03:03:49.000
I was seeing like lights and I was like, I was concussed for sure.
03:04:10.000
But I'm always holding in a way to protect myself.
03:04:12.000
But if I get a little bit sloppy, which can happen, you know, you're tired, boom, the holder can get hit really hard.
03:04:21.000
And there's a lot of guys who let people kick them when they have those body shields on.
03:04:41.000
You're holding for three punches and he throws a fourth one, but just because it flowed.
03:04:53.000
That's why me, when I hold pads, I'm always on guard.
03:05:03.000
There's some people that do it really well, and those people are cherished.
03:05:08.000
And then there's some people that just, you know, they just do basic shit.
03:05:27.000
And there's nothing they can do about it, right?
03:05:44.000
I don't know if they can maybe get him a donor one day.
03:05:52.000
For us, we just did three hours and 25 minutes, man.
03:06:10.000
Listen, folks, I'm not blowing smoke up his ass.
03:06:31.000
If you're a trainer, or if you're a fighter, rather, and you want to be trained by the best, it's one place to go.